anything anybody says at ilp, including biggs (who incidentally coined the neologism). similar to the irony we saw when marx said ‘i’m not a marxist’, derrida said ‘deconstruction is not a method’, and wittgenstein said ‘everything in the tractatus is nonsense.’
the beauty of the concept of the existential contraption is that any attempt to describe it, explain it, or refute it, is - contraption qua contraption - an existential contraption.
it is that which all things are, but not what all things are as that which are not what they are, which they’re not, as they are.
Thanks for the explanation. Maybe the concept of the existential contraption depends on one’s ability to describe experiences in such a way that another can understand them. Whatever the case Iambiguous seems hell bent on refuting that which he will not try to understand.
Have you anything to say about the evolution of progressive Christianity? An old bumper sticker displayed a fish beside the words “Evolve or Die”.
Yes, you have noted this before. And, however one construes the meaning of “postmodern ethical relativism”, they are either willing to intertwine this meaning in an actual description/examination of human behaviors in conflict over value judgments, or they are not.
Same with “new and progressive ideas”. Pertaining to what actual context?
You will either cite examples of “rational and virtuous people” embodying these new ideas juxtaposed to those using the old ones or you won’t.
The old idea that God is an omniscient and omnipotent entity able and willing to judge human behaviors on this side of the grave persists for a reason. It simply makes sense that if you strive for immortality and salvation there must be a distinction made between behaviors that allow you to go up or go down. Otherwise, it’s what, Calvinism?
How then do those who reconfigure this into the new, progressive ideas about God, go about demonstrating [in a philosophy venue] that their own ideas are necessarily in sync with what is actually true?
Other than in acknowledging that they want this to be true because believing that it is true comforts and consoles them?
In other words, by bringing something like this…
…out into the world of human interactions in conflict [over God or over anything else relating to peace on earth] and providing evidence that rational human beings are obligated to think it in turn. To me it’s just one more “general description” qua “psychologism” aimed more at allowing you to ground your own “I” in a more solid – but still spiritual – foundation.
In other words, defining everything into existence here. Definitional logic revolving almost entirely around the belief that the meaning you give to the words in the argument itself makes them true.
i have nothing to say that isn’t already obvious. fortunately the language of the bible is obscure and vague enough to permit ever renewed interpretations in light of what is discovered in the natural sciences. that bumper sticker expresses how what were once diametrically opposed theories - creationism and evolution - are now being converged by modern intellectuals. the ‘new creationists’ movement and what have you. i mean stuff like saying ‘woah maybe seven days was really like seven billion years… in which case the work of god’s creation event is evolution, etc.’ this kind of stuff is going on in christian discourse because christians are being forced to reconcile obvious scientific evidence with a story written by semi-literate bronze age desert tribesmen four thousand years ago that they don’t want to let go of. so, they’ll continue reinterpreting christianity as much as necessary. remember only in the last few hundred years did christian scholars dispel the notion that god was a racist, sexist, misogynistic, slave driver. that took hella effort to dissuade christians of something that was painfully obvious in the old testament.
eventually it’ll be phased out, though. the great monotheisms are the last ones to go… basically because they are such gargantuan forces.
On the other hand, the meaning that I give to the expression “existential contraption” is no less an existential contraption.
In other words, if someone asks me what an existential contraption is, it’s not like I can reach into my back pocket and pull it out like a wallet and say, “here, this is one”.
Thus, my own understanding of it revolves by and large around the idea of a “contraption” being something that is put together existentially — a piece picked up here, a piece picked up there. Existentially because, over the course of living your own unique life encompassing your own unique set of experiences, you’re never quite sure what’s around the next corner. So you’re never quite sure what is there to be picked up next.
I merely focus more on “I” here in the is/ought world. For example, doctors performing abortions are dealing with the same sequence of interactions relating to human biology, sexual intercourse, pregnancy and a woman not wanting to be pregnant. “I” here is existential only in the sense that the facts are all different in every context.
Same with folks striving to attain peace on Earth. There either is peace around the globe or there is not. But peace on who’s terms? What behaviors are all rational men and women obligated to pursue in order to attain and then sustain this peace on Earth?
How is that more or less an existential contraption given how “I” have come to understand it? How, in other words, could it be encompassed so as not to be an existential contraption at all, but an actual objective peace on Earth embraced by all as the only rational manner in which this peace can be manifested.
Evolution is slow but sure, Thanks for admitting that it at least is going on now in the Christian community. Iambiguous seems not to understand this necessary reconciliation of religion and science because it is not so easy to refute as is Christian fundamentalism.
[b][i]Yes, you have noted this before. And, however one construes the meaning of “postmodern ethical relativism”, they are either willing to intertwine this meaning in an actual description/examination of human behaviors in conflict over value judgments, or they are not.
Same with “new and progressive ideas”. Pertaining to what actual context?
You will either cite examples of “rational and virtuous people” embodying these new ideas juxtaposed to those using the old ones or you won’t.
The old idea that God is an omniscient and omnipotent entity able and willing to judge human behaviors on this side of the grave persists for a reason. It simply makes sense that if you strive for immortality and salvation there must be a distinction made between behaviors that allow you to go up or go down. Otherwise, it’s what, Calvinism?
How then do those who reconfigure this into the new, progressive ideas about God, go about demonstrating [in a philosophy venue] that their own ideas are necessarily in sync with what is actually true? [/b][/i]
Respond to this in a more substantive manner or don’t. That’s entirely up to you.
And, then, if you choose to, connect the dots between your argument here and your argument regarding what, in your view, would constitute peace on Earth pertaining to actual human behaviors that would bring this about.
Such that, further, these behaviors can then be assessed in regard to one’s fate on the other side of the grave. The old Christian narrative vs. the new one. And the old Christian narrative is hardly embraced only by the fundamentalists.
Why should I have to respond in a “More substantive manner” when you do not have to do so. I provided for you my best source for explanation the necessary changes in religion, and you dismissed it as irrelevant. I will not go to the plethora of book references and pod casts on the web to prove a point you would simply deny, that is, the evolution of the Christian religion. Maybe it would be best if you take your close-mindedness elsewhere.
Hakuna Matata, Ierrellus. It happens to the best of us, the worst of us and the in-between too.
Thank you for your graciousness.
.
“When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, 'What is the sound of the waterfall?’ 'Silence, he finally told me.”
― Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems
That in Green gives me peace…Peace.
"Two monks were arguing about a flag. Onesaid, “The
flag is moving.” The other said, “The wind is moving.”
A Zen Master passing by remarked, “‘Not the wind,
not the flag; mind is moving.”
I am not so sure how the above koan jives with what you said above but for me it seemed to work.
I thought that it was kind of profound, at least to me. Some of these are capable of blowing one’s mind. It is like a “ah” affect.
Well, I do not know much about that but I LOVE Wordsworth’s poems. Oh, how they do speak to me.
I might just call myself a pagan too because of the way in which I feel about nature. I come close to worshipping nature unless, in fact, I do. Just feel the interconnectedness. lol
…It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
So what was the “not in a good sense?”
There is that side in nature at times. But then again there is that peaceful, sacred, teaching, all-present side too. Awesome.
Yes, though some would like to call them acts of God.
We clearly have a different take here on what constitutes substance.
In regard to the distinction you make between the old religious narrative and the new progressive understanding of God, I asked you to take this out into the world and note actual contexts involving behaviors in conflict as that would pertain to the old thinking – an omniscient/omnipotent God judging human behaviors on this side of the grave so as to allow them access to immortality and salvation on the other side of it – and the new thinking: yours.
In other words, instead of merely assuming that the old narrative need be but linked back to the conservative fundamentalist assumptions about God while the new and improved narrative is patently embodied in progressive liberal assumptions.
Okay, make this distinction, but then illustrate it for us. Provide us with particular examples of this. From, say, your own life. Your own interactions with the fundamentalist ilk. With respect to moral issues here and now and your imagined fate there and then.
An issue re this thread like peace on Earth.
Now, the substance of my argument here is no less awash in assumptions. I am not arguing that I am myself able to demonstrate that all rational and virtuous folks are likely to embrace it.
Instead, my point is that any particular individual’s understanding of God appears [to me] rooted more in the life that he or she lives than in any possible capacity on their part to actually demonstrate – philosophically or experientially – that what they do believe about God is in fact true.
Thus I was once a devout Protestant Christian accepting of the old narrative regarding God and salvation. Then I got drafted, was sent to Vietnam and, through a combination of experiences there and the soldiers I met, I came home an atheist.
Clearly an “existential contraption”. And it is a frame of mind that, in my view, most objectivists [sacred or secular] will do almost anything to avoid attributing to themselves.
Arc,
Thanks for your gracious acceptance of my apology.
Wm. Blake believed we should worship men, great men in particular. So he considered Wordsworth to be an idol worshiper. Some of my fondest teaching experiences were when I taught Wordsworth and watched those bright student eyes light up in discovery of such insights as “the child is father to the man.” And I can attest to the fact that some natural environments can give one a sense of at-one-ment. I’m fond of Blake because studying his work helped rouse me from “My dogmatic slumber”; I was a die hard fundamentalist. The new wave of Progressive Christianity, by eschewing the supernatural, has offered me hope in my spiritual journey."Thanks for sharing the koans.
Iamb.,
Your arguments are a one trick pony, leading one to ask, “Is that all there is?”
“The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”
“The times they are a-changing”.—Bob Dylan
Well, I figured this: that with just immortality alone on the line, it was plenty. But the bottom line [mine] is that you will no doubt take your own comforting and consoling rendition of God to the grave. Something I once thought was in the bag myself. If only in sync with the old narrative.
And, sure, for all practical purposes, that’s the only bottom line that counts for mere mortals. It’s ever and always what the religious objectivists are able to convince themselves is true, rather than what they can demonstrate [even to themselves] is in fact the case.
I get that part. They win, I lose. At least on this side of the grave. And, admittedly, as for the other side of it, what the hell can I really know about that?
My favorite Blake work is “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” Have you read that one, Arc?
And Blake was fond of aphorisms or one-liners.
Urizen was his name for “your reason”, the worship of which he saw as another form of idolatry.
There is no such animal as a “religious objectionist.” This is an oxymoron since religion can be experienced and the only way to communicate an experience is intersubjectively (Changeaux). In fact that may be true of any mental attempts at objectivity. You are communicating to me your own take on dasein, etc., a communication not set in stone or handed down by some group of rational and virtuous mind police.
Dasein is 3 Bs: being or isness, becoming or change, and belonging or meaning. Belonging is admission that what exists is necessary. From the latter come most thoughts on religion or science.
Here of course you can’t lose. You take God and religion and peace earth and reconfigure them. They are reconfigured from the manner in which they are actually embodied by mere mortals interacting on this side of the grave into a “technical” discussion of “objectivism”.
That way the behaviors you choose here and now relating to what you imagine peace on earth to be – as with what you want your fate to be there and then – becomes moot.
That’s just subsumed in the assumption that how you view the new and improved “progressive” God is true merely because you believe that it is.
Nothing actually need be substantiated at at. The old narratives are necessarily wrong because your new narrative is necessarily right. Why? Because, you insist, it is in sync with how you describe communicating religious experiences above.
In your head, in other words. The only place it has to be in order to sustain your own comforting “philosophical” assessment of all this above.
As expected. It would be nice if the matter was only in my head. Then I could take credit for it. The new wave is forming from better minds than mine. My agreement with them is not a problem. It is an opportunity to evolve or die. I comment on objectivity since that appears to be all that would satisfy your lack of curiosity. After all, by your own definitions, objectivity is just a consensus of agreements. In your head are your philosophical arguments. Show me the numbers of rational and virtuous people, even here at ILP, who do not contest your ideas, but align with them.
Yes, it’s in the minds of others too. Better minds than yours. But how would the very best of these minds go about demonstrating that their own new and improved God is in fact more in sync with what religion really ought to be than the very best minds of those who still hold to the old narrative?
Link us to what you construe to be the best contemporary argument you have come upon.
Also, their argument as to how the God that they imagine can ever possibly be squared with the terrible “natural disasters” embedded in what would seem to be a planet that He created. Again, only Harold Kushner’s argument makes any sense to me here.
Evolve or die pertaining to what set of behaviors in what contexts?
Commenting on it and demonstrating it in relationship to God would seem to be the distinction that anyone curious about their own immortality and salvation would make.
And I have come upon few who have delved into it more than I have. Being curious though is actually the least of it when waiting for godot.
On the contrary, in regard to the either/or world, a consensus of opinion is always trumped by that which can actually be demonstrated to be true.
And on the day you are able to demonstrate the existence of this new and improved “progressive God”, I will be the first to insist that any particular consensus embraced by others must give way to the proven facts that you provide.
And it is indeed a fact that many contest my own arguments here at ILP. But that doesn’t necessarily make either them or me rational and virtuous. To the extent that you actually believe this is merely the extent to which you completely misconstrue my point of view.
Also, I suspect that most will reject my arguments here because as I noted elsewhere:
1] I argue that while philosophers may go in search of wisdom, this wisdom is always truncated by the gap between what philosophers think they know [about anything] and all that there is to be known in order to grasp the human condition in the context of existence itself. That bothers some. When it really begins to sink in that this quest is ultimately futile, some abandon philosophy altogether. Instead, they stick to the part where they concentrate fully on living their lives “for all practical purposes” from day to day.
2] I suggest in turn it appears reasonable that, in a world sans God, the human brain is but more matter wholly in sync [as a part of nature] with the laws of matter. And, thus, anything we think, feel, say or do is always only that which we were ever able to think, feel, say and do. And that includes philosophers. Some will inevitably find that disturbing. If they can’t know for certain that they possess autonomy, they can’t know for certain that their philosophical excursions are in fact of their own volition.
3] And then the part where, assuming some measure of autonomy, I suggest that “I” in the is/ought world is basically an existential contraption interacting with other existential contraptions in a world teeming with conflicting goods — and in contexts in which wealth and power prevails in the political arena. The part where “I” becomes fractured and fragmented.
Iamb.,
I am currently reading Freud’s “The Future of an Illusion” and am finding that your “psychoanalysis” of religion is very similar to his. For both of you, I find it a pity that you cannot or in his case could not recognize experience as truth if it cannot be spelled out according to the mental definitions of reason or objectivity.
For you a religious experience simply cannot be sufficient in and of itself, it must be weighed against the current standards of reason.i.e., it must have an agreed upon psycho-physical source to be considered real. I doubt you are enough into evolutionary psychology or neuroscience to make that sort of opinion valid.
In any event, you speak from where your mind is now. For me that offers nothing of hope. So what if my ideas are comforting. I’d rather believe in nothing than to accept your estimate of the ulterior motives of human religious aspirations.
There either is a God or there is not. This God either judges our behaviors or He does not. If He does, there either is a connection between the behaviors we choose here and now and our fate there and then or there is not.
And [re this thread] your new and improved rendition of God in relationship to peace on Earth is either closer to the truth than the old renditions or it is not.
Still, what does one’s psychological disposition have to do with demonstrating the actual truth here?
Are you suggesting that with, as some/most insist, immortality and salvation on the line, the only thing that really matters here is one’s own personal experiences? If you experienced a ghost then for you ghosts exists. If you’ve experienced an encounter with extraterrestrial beings, then for you they exist. If you experienced the presence of a witch, then for you they exist.
That’s the criterion that matters?
Or, sure, I’m misunderstanding you.
Either your own understanding of God is able to be conveyed such that others can understand the experience and learn from it, or it all comes down to “personal experiences”. And, if that is the case, how is this in and of itself to be connected to God in a way that others can understand it?
And if “the current standards of reason” exchanged between philosophers and scientists are shunted aside in favor of merely accepting our own and other’s uniquely personal experiences, then discussions of God and religion in places like this become, for all practical purposes, a gigantic free-for-all of “personal experiences”.
Exactly. I couldn’t have conveyed the manner in which I react to your assessment here better than that. Hope revolves around what you are able to convince yourself is true. And the fact that I construe this to be basically an existential contraption rooted in your own personal experiences is, well, a bit ironic.
We simply understand “I” here in very different ways. You are able to link yours to what I presume is a “soul” intertwined “in your head” with “God”, intertwined in what you imagine attaining peace on Earth would entail.
I was once able to convince myself of the same. Now however I have thought myself into a different frame of mind. “I” believe “in my head” “here and now” that human existence is essentially meaningless and ends in oblivion for all time to come. But I can only assume that this too is an existential contraption going all the way back to 1] the day I was born 2] the definitive understanding of existence itself and 3] the assumption that you and I are in possession of at least some measure of free will.