Philosophy

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

(and Lotesse - I'm sure Lief wasn't patronizing you, altho I can see how you took it that way - he wasn't saying that you couldn't follow his train of thought, he was saying that he thought you wouldn't wish to, and he's prob. right, right?)

That is in fact what I meant. I totally didn't perceive the other way my words could be interpreted . . . sorry for being so terribly unclear, Lotesse!

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

I was trying to show you how lack of belief does not necessarily imply that existence is pointless: if anything, it's the other way around because it's up to us as individuals to do what's right

I'm afraid you haven't succeeded. I don't understand . From your post, all I was getting was a gently written confrontation of religion, and a claim that meaning in life is subjective. Am I missing something? How is existence meaningful, do you think? Perhaps you'll need to elaborate to get through to me.

Gautama Siddharta will have to wait for a response until I get back from college.

[Lotesse]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

* clears throat *

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If a believer believes in something which is false, then not only have they missed the point of existence but they've wasted their time with an elaborate delusion.

Consider a beautiful garden. Is it not enough to experience, enjoy and nurture its beauty without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it?

This is the fallacy of religious belief: it artificially separates the physical world from the spiritual. Material things are "downgraded". Suffering, disease, poverty etc are mere fleeting distractions from the real stuff, which is the hereafter. We see ourselves as separate from our environment

To me, life is meaningless in an objective sense. However, it is all about the construction and experience of subjective meaning which is intimately tied to making sense of the physical world we live in. Religious belief is a cop-out and distraction from what really matters.

Here's an interesting essay about the consequences of religious belief (as we currently practice it) upon our environment:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...566820,00.html

BEAUTIFULLY said, Gaffer!

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Gautama Siddharta will have to wait for a response until I get back from college.

today, this semester, or when you finish your degree?

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

today, this semester, or when you finish your degree?

Heh! Nice quote, BJ, new one on me (jings, I'm such a non-widely read Philistine: comes from, years ago, sharing a flat, and a love of good whisky and very long arguments, with a philosopher) and thanks Lotesse.

Lief, I mean that meaning is something that is experienced, which does not exist without people to experience it. Your experience of the "fairy at the bottom of the garden" is, IMO, an experience which you gave meaning, not one which gave meaning to you. It goes in the opposite direction.

Sorry if I was a bit confrontational about it but I don't like the notion that religion has some sort of monopoly on morality or spirituality. That is, IMO, a damaging and dangerous misconception.

[brownjenkins]

i agree... and i'd add that people can define meaning in whatever way works for them... just always remember that it is you that is defining it... not someone/something from the outside

i've met many perfectly moral people who find their meaning from a religious source... and others that can find meaning without any such religious source... these do not have to invalidate one another... they are just two different roads to the same end

[The Gaffer]

Yep. Though I wonder if, as you suggested on the Origins thread, they are actually two different roads that start from the same place too. I mean in the sense that we are moral first, then we think up stuff about where we come from and where we're going to and what it's all about, then we may or may not update our morals in the light of this new information.

It's like the bit from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

All civilisations go through 3 distinct phases as they evolve: the How? the Why? and the Where? phases. As in:

Phase 1: How are we going to eat?
Phase 2: Why do we eat?
Phase 3: Where shall we have dinner?

Poor believers are still stuck in phase 2

[Spock]

Most interesting. I-4-1 don't believe we are born moralists. Socialization makes one so.

[Rían]

Random philosophical thought:

Blood is drippy,
Blood is red,
But without it,
You'd be dead!

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by Spock

Most interesting. I-4-1 don't believe we are born moralists. Socialization makes one so.

You are exactly right, humans are born with this evil nature, I had it, you had it, you are born evil, but your parents teach you right from wrong, black and white, all the moral absolutes that exist whether you believe or they do or not. But without getting into theology here let me say that when a person who has no morals becomes a christian he will find out that God gives him a conscience and his ethics will likely be improved

[The Gaffer]

LOL. Let me get this straight: he's exactly right, socialisation makes us moral but we're born evil. :confused. At least you agree that we our ideas of right and wrong from those around us and not from divine intervention.

Whether it's nature or nurture (and I tend to agree with Spock here, that it's mostly nurture) is a different debate.

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

LOL. Let me get this straight: he's exactly right, socialisation makes us moral but we're born evil. :confused. At least you agree that we our ideas of right and wrong from those around us and not from divine intervention.

Whether it's nature or nurture (and I tend to agree with Spock here, that it's mostly nurture) is a different debate.

what i agree with is that we are born lousy, our nature is evil. there are many reasons people turn out good and bad but nurture is one of them and their religious beliefs (chrisianity, budhism etc.) is another.

If people are left to their own devices with no worry of consequences what you are left with is the looters and gangs in New Orleans doing what ever the damm well please because at the moment authorities are too busy with the emergency.

[Spock]

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
--Woody Allen--

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

today, this semester, or when you finish your degree?

When I get my degree . No, I think it'll be this semester . I don't know precisely when. Entmoot has created for me a backlog of homework that I must sort through, and I have some exams to cope with next week.

I do intend to respond to the highly interesting posts that have been recently posted, here. It'll have to wait, though . I'm sad about that.

[Lotesse]

Originally Posted by Spock

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
--Woody Allen--

Lol! Man, I LOVE Woody Allen -

[Lotesse]

[rohirrim TR]

that is deep

[Elemmírë]

As a philosophy major who has two essays due next week and is completely confused about what she's doing, that really made my day, Lotesse.

Po-mo is cool.

[Lotesse]

You're a philosophy major? Brava, how cool is THAT! I was going to double-major, art history and philosophy - in fact, I took every single phil class my school offered, all of them. I never earned my degree, purtroppo, I dropped out of college and did some damage to my brain cells like a moron. A philosophy degree is definitely the way to undergrad, though; you can apply that sort of brain training to so many things in life.

[Lotesse]

[Elemmírë]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

You're a philosophy major? Brava, how cool is THAT! I was going to double-major, art history and philosophy - in fact, I took every single phil class my school offered, all of them. I never earned my degree, purtroppo, I dropped out of college and did some damage to my brain cells like a moron. A philosophy degree is definitely the way to undergrad, though; you can apply that sort of brain training to so many things in life.

Yeah, I declared my major about a week ago (I'm a sophomore), so I haven't taken that much yet. I was going to do International Relations, but the requirements at my school are awful. One class of philosophy last semester and I was hooked.

It was the sort of thing that I'd never studied officially before (stupid, pathetic high school ), but so much of what was addressed in the class I had taken was the sort of stuff that I had always wondered myself. Now, if only the stupid papers weren't trying to eat me alive. They're the sort of thing I love after I've finished, but hate while writing.