kramus

I tend to stay out of debate because I am uneducated and unread i.e. I have not the intellectual tools for defining a consistant viewpoint. But I do feel that philosophy as a structured approach to thought and ethical behaviour, and religeon as a structured approach to social interaction and views of our place in the scheme of things are interwoven and actually different viewings of that wonderful evolved reality - human thought.

It will take time to develop a Universal approach that realigns the contrary interactions of people. We will always disagree and shed enormous amounts of energy and anguish in the process. But a religeous person who uses the developed construct of their belief system to allow them a satisfactory awareness of life, and a philosopher who uses a different and no less rigorous system to do the same thing are not incompatable. They just act as if they were sometimes.

And also, a person who uses the "technology" if I may use the phrase, of their spiritual guides and writings to interact and interpret life - that person is being philosophical - they just are using different tools and a different focus.

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Zeraph

To the OP, indeed. I had a great prof when I took world religions. He said something along the lines of theologins while their knowledge has gone up over the decades the mainstream religious mass has stayed the same.

In general, the thing that always surprises me of people that are so intent on the bible is that a human hand wrote and edited it and yet they act like there can be no mistake or interpretation of the word.

MSD

Moving momentarily from philosophy to psychology, this is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance. We inherently don't want to hear anyhting that disagrees wtih out beliefs. Through selective exposure, we keep ourselves away from anything that challenges what we think, and become hostile to that which we cannot avoid.

One of the things I have learned in life is that seeking out dissonant thoughts is the only way to truly learn. When I was religious, I never wanted to hear anything that challenged my faith. When I was a communist, I didn't want to hear any sort of conservative economic ideas that contradicted my idealistic views. When I was anti-gun, I didn't want to hear anyone telling me that good people could use them responsibly.

When I realized that the only way to improve myself was to critically analyze what I thought and what the other sides said, I prodded my beliefs and found that I didn't damage what was there, but rather that my instrument of prodding hit empty space. Off the top of my head, those are three extreme things that I used to think, and now find absurd. I couldn't justify belief in religious teachings to myself, I couldn't continue to advocate the replacement of our economic system with one so obviously doomed to failure, and I realized that if good people like myself were armed, then someone could fight back against the bad guys.
I have been offered countless pieces of evidnce that suggests the definite existance of Australia (and if it's all wrong, my dad's Uncle Jim has been fuckking with our heads for the past 35 years,) and Carrol made no attempt to classify his work as non-fiction. The Bible is a great piece of work by a lot of talented people, but its validity is up in the air as far as I'm concerned due to a significant lack of concurring evidence and proof of significant meaning-altering mistranslations and creative interpretation during transcription (who can tell me about the original story of Lucifer from ancient pre-translation texts?)

In my mind, only recency keeps Judeo-Christian scriptures above the level of classic mythology in terms of popular acceptance. Sure, billions of people believe in the writing and its messages, but I'm willing to bet that a similar percentage of populations exposed to classic mythology before it became regarded as fantastic tales of fiction believed in one or another of its deities. I expect that in thousands of years, the only difference between our current views of Greek and Roman mythology and future generations' views of our modern religions is that they'll have a lot less names of deities to memorize in elementary school.

ForgottenKnight

Religion can be conisdered to be a form of philosophy. Philosophy suggest a way to live and a reason for doing so. Religion does the same thing, but often goes further into areas where philosophy cannot.

[thread hijack]
Wrong. Science often proves religion. Science and religion DO mix. One must understand that religion says "what" and hints at the "how" but doesn't specifically say "how." Science says "how" and this "how" often coexists with and/or proves the religion. Science and Religion do agree, especially with Christianity and Catholicism. When someone says otherwise, it is often due to not having a full understanding of both. Rather the one that says they don't mix often has only a partial understanding of each, or a partial understanding of one with a full understanding of the other, or a full understanding of one with no understanding of the other, or no understanding of either. This does not mean that one must have a full understanding of both to see that science proves religion. A partial understanding of each, or a partial understanding of one and a full understanding of the other, both can allow one to come to a conclusion that science proves religion. But those with a full understanding of both are much more likely to state that science proves relgion, and not the other way around. That is partially why so many scientists and scholors who have tried to prove religion, specifically Christianity, and the bible wrong end up converting to Christianity. I am not saying that this is always the case, but is often the case.

As USWTO mentioned, God speaks through the Saints. For the Catholic Church, God speaks through the Pope. God speaks to us all the time. The comment shouldn't be that God hasn't had anything important to say for two thousand years, but that most men haven't listened to what God has had to say this past two thousand years.
[/thread hijack]

Sorry to pull the discussion away from the main topic. You may resume with the discussion.

Why is Christianity the only one mentioned in this thread? I can see that people wouldn't question or mention Judism as ever since WWII nobody can openly question Judism without being classified a Nazi. Also, questioning the founding beliefs of Judism is the same as questioning many of the founding beliefs in the Old Testiment of Christianity. Thus it's easier (as in one gets to question both Judism and Christianity, and avoid being called a Nazi) for those questioning Judism to just question the Old Testiment of Christianity. But what about Islam or any other religion without trinity, or the religions and cults overrun by the devil? Why are those religions never brought into question? Could it be because they are so easily disproved when confronted with philosophy? Is Christianity the only one ever mentioned due to being so large, or is it the only one mentioned because it is the hardest to disprove with good philosophy?

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"People say I'm strange, does that make me a stranger?"

asaris

In part because Christianity is one of very few religions that actually bothers with Philosophy. Islam hasn't produced a first-rate philosopher since the Middle Ages, and I can only think of a handful of Jewish philosophers.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

d*d

Religion is not a form of philosophy no matter how you try to dress it up,
Philosophy never suggests a way to live

The fact that science so dismally failed to prove the foundations of christianity and in fact challenged many of it's beleifs led to the creation of theology. Religion is not based on the same tenants as sceince it's faith v fact.

martinguerre

That statement is one of cultural arrogance, not fact. Philosophy as a category is western and Christian by definition....so of course, there are only going to be western "philosophers" and a few others we then throw in to that category because they seem to fit more than they don't. Vedic texts consider the nature of being versus non being, the Gita questions of free will and responsibility...Mahayana texts discuss universality and particularity and questions of cosmic unity....Bhuddism in general contains elements that we westerners would probably categorize as philophy in our own cultural frameworks. Dao and Confucianism in their own ways deal with questions of how the individual relates to the cosmos...what the nature of the human being is, and how that being can know truth. Again...content that if packaged in western terminology, we would divide between religion, philopshy, and proverbial wisdom.

And as for Judiasm...i didn't know that you expected more than Buber, Spinoza and Derrida. I'm sure there's more...but they only happen to be three of the giants of the field. i don't mean to be harsh here, but assuming that only Christianity seriously engages in this kind of thought is just not right.

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For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

filtherton

I said that most christians believe that god doesn't hasn't had anything important to say for 2000 years. I understand that from the catholic church's perspective, god talks to saints and the pope. I'm not sure about the whole "sainting" process, but from what i gather it is strictly a matter of interpretation on the part of the catholic authorities. I also find it questionable that the pope is the only person god speaks directly to. I wonder what the pope would say if i told him that god told me that god could care less if gays got married? Would he make me a saint? The realist in me believes he wouldn't.
Many denominations of christianity are strict interpretationalists. They take the bible to be the literal word of god. They seem to act as if god dropped that little nugget millenia ago and hasn't had anything to say since.

So, among the majority of christianity you have either 1)God still speaks, but only through this one guy, or 2)God said everything that god needed to say about humanity in the bible.

I'm speaking about christianity because that is what i am familiar with. Though before you completely pull the "christian bashing" card completely out of the deck, you should know that i don't think any belief system that pawns things off on a higher power or any kind of text belongs in a secular philosophical discussion.

I don't think its a matter of proving or disproving. There is no proof of the existence of god, there is only faith. You can't disprove the existence of something when no proof of its existence exists. You can't disprove something that doesn't have any evidence to refute. You can't even prove that i don't shit golden goose eggs. Furthermore, to believe in christianity you have to rid yourself of the notion that you require any kind of proof, at least "proof" in the scientific sense.

Any kind of system requires axioms. 1+1=2. Belief in a higher power requires an axiom that declares belief in this higher power. 1+1=2, God exists. How can you have a meaningful discussion about reality if you aren't working with the same set of fundamental assumptions?

xddga

very good point. almost everyone I know uses the bible or their prefered religious belief as a defense in this manner without ever thinking for themselves as to WHY they think that way.

the whole topic kind of reminds me of the book 1984 in how people are limited in their thoughts and emotions by what they are told is the truth and anything outside that is instantly wrong and false. Because everything is spelt out for them they never question why something is this way, or if they do it is in a very limited box set up by their beliefs. by trying to discuss their beliefs without using scripture to back them up it forces them to actually think of why they think/feel that way about a topic rather then just believing in it because they are told to.

roachboy

the interwining of western philosophy and religion is a very old, very complicated historical problem. western philosophy in general starts up with a theologization of plato and aristotle, once they "reappeared" thanks to the muslim conservation/transcription of the key texts.
whence aquinas.

"modern" philosophy usually traces its history to descartes.
this move requires isolating the cogito as the central element in what amounts to an ontological proof (rather, the substitution of an epitemological claim for an ontological claim). but the steps that follow (judgement, which opens onto an infinite regress, the argument concerning imperfection/perfection which resolves onto a claim for god, from which follows everything else) shows that descartes is nowhere near being out from under the religious assumptions that shape the tradition he worked in.

"modern" philosophy emerges via folk like spinoza--within the xtian tradition, it emerges from within nominalism--god is maybe operational, maybe exists, but human understanding cannot know so the structure of the world and knowledge about the world can be seen as an independent zone of being that no longer requires recourse to god as ground. like pascal. but even then god persists--in kant, in hegel (particularly obvious in hegel's case)

i dont think you get explicitly secular philo in the west until the middle nineteenth century. the mathematization of the world, the mathematization of knowledge about the world, etc...a kind of grounding of captialist rationality dressed in philosophical garb--its inversion in folk like marx, nietzsche, etc.

i think that the main residuum of this metaphysical tradition in the present is the affection for transcendent claims. i think that the main reasons for this are institutional--defnese of the genre of philosophy from history, for example, is about the preservation of spaces of professional competence, not about matters of principle: transcendent propositions are the lingua franca of a particualr professional cadre--they exist and function because the cadre exists and functions. nothing about philosophy gets resolved once and for all. it is not a history of isolated heroic individuals. but to develop this would take way way too much space.

in general, whether religious claims are admissable or not within a given argument is a social question, a genre question. at the level of the type of questions/responses philo tends to pose, the flirtation with religious matters is constant. and religion never really goes away--in recent "continental" philo, you see it coming in via particular readings of heidegger (who i take to be a theologian in the main)-- derrida, levinas, marion--the theologizing of phenomenology.
these could be understood in sociological terms (see above on the cadres) or in historical terms (a function of the collapsing back onto old transcendental discourses as a way of coping with the radical uncertainty being introduced in any nmber of dimensions by globalizing capitalism, say). within the history of philosophy, these folk could be seen as a demonstration of the nonlinear nature of that history, fodder for a rejection of the entire ideology of progress--but this claim would be a genre function, whether i could make the argument a function of the community i was part of. not a question of principle.

my apologies for rattling on like this.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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asaris

Martin -- I completely agree with you that Philosophy is a Western category, though not that's it's Christian. Philosophy is just that discipline that people practice when they're acting within the historical tradition started by Aristotle and Plato. Not that non-Western persons can't do philosophy, or that the 'philosophies' of their tradition aren't just as valuable, just that the tradition of philosophy is a western one. So it's been practiced almost entirely by pagans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, and Atheists. Within the tradition, since the demise of paganism, it has been largely Christians who have dealt with the relation between philosophy and religion. I did indeed forget a few Jewish philosophers (I'm pretty embarassed that I'd forgotten Levinas -- the ones I was thinking of were Maimonides, Spinoza, and Maimon). I don't know how much Islamic philosophy has been going on since the Middle Ages, but there we have Al-Ghazali, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Averroes. But among the Christians we have Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Locke, Berkely, Kant, and half of Hegel, and many more of the stature of at least Maimon. So I don't think that it is an exaggeration to say that, from the rise of Christianity probably until today, the problematic of the interaction of religion and philosophy has largely been a Christian problematic. To the extent that Atheists and Agnostics do philosophy of religion, it tends more to be either arguments against the existence of God, or disprooving arguments for his existence.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

ForgottenKnight

I beg to differ on philosopy never suggesting a way to live. Many philosophies suggest a way to live life. Some examples include The Enchiridon by Epictetus, Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics, and some of Socrates' philosophies.

If religion is not a philosophy, then why is there so much discussion of religion and religious ideals in philosophy? And as far as the TFP setup goes, if religion is not a philosophy, then why is do we have so many threads on religion in the philosophy section?

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"People say I'm strange, does that make me a stranger?"

asaris

If we look at it in terms of academic departments, what we're doing here most of the time is clearly not theology. It's much more similar to philosophy of religion.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

kangaeru

Filtherton -- you are my hero. There is no need for me to post here because you take the argument right out of my mouth, making it more articulate and concise in the process.

Thank you for your insight, it's been a pleasure reading your posts.

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RusCrimson

Ummm, maybe contemporary philosophy has shied away from this recently, but ethics - a branch of philosophy - certain suggests a way to live, even more so than the ancient philosophers cited above. Bringing the discussion back to its roots, Aquinas suggested a way to live, as did Kant, Descartes and others.

knowledge2

There is some pretty interesting discussion going on here. I did not get to read every single post so please forgive me if I repeat some things that may have already been said.

I think one of the difficulties we seem to be having here is understanding the true definitions of philosophy and religion. I would agree that philosophy does try to indicate how people should live, though perhaps in its purest form it should not. When it comes to religion the problem is that for most people, religion is not merely a chosen belief system; It is an expression of the relationship that they have with God. Therefore, it would be almost impossible for their religion to not affect their philosophy (even Aquinas...if u study the bible *closely* and compare his studies you can see that).

NONETHELESS .....I do believe that Christians and people of most other belief systems (including atheism..the belief in no God..lol) tend to approach the idea of existentialism with a presupposed bias instead of being open to ...dare I say ...truth. Truth has now become one of the most feared words in the english language and so we have conveniently declared that it does not exist or that is relative...but thats a whole other thread!..lol.

Either way I do firmly agree with what Mr. Self Destruct said about the biases we have..etc. What I notice is that many people do not truly know or understand what they belive and that is why when their beliefs are questioned they flee in ignorance...their entire life philosophy hangs on a thread UNLESS they truly know what and why they believe it.

This gets tricky in a conservative view of "faith" but what Christians (and I will only talk about christianity in this sense...and um....and that INCLUDES Catholics Forgottenknight) believe in terms of faith is that God is literally dwelling inside of them...hard to argue with if you have never experienced it. Still, just because you have been brought up in a church or etc....it does not mean that you have this personal relationship, it is all determined by a choice you make and that choice is initially spurred by faith. This is where the faith in God comes (as there are different forms of faith) and this is primarily a problem and issue for the nonbeliever, not the believer.

STILL....if Christians believe that they have the truth (as do all religions...yes ALL...some may say they dont believe this but when you talk with them more and read their doctrines and such you see that thats not true at all) then they should think they can "prove" their religion. Perhaps this has not been done because people are too indoctrinated to truly question their *DOCTRINES* in search of truth and the sad part is that these people only then hinder God.

I guess ultimately my point is that Christians and all religions should become much more philosophical about their belief systems. I am a Christian myself who has an inherent need to question everything..lol. I am a definite skeptic and yet in becoming more philosophical about my beliefs I have found the statement to be true that this does indeed only strengthen my "faith".

I hope this makes SOME kind of sense

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ForgottenKnight

knowledge2 - Well put. You have some good points. (And yes, all Catholics, or true Catholics at least, are Christians, so when talking about Christians in general, most catholics are normally included.) I as a Catholic, questioned everything as well, even to the point of attending studies with many different churches, and it is this questioning that had continued to strengthen my faith more and more. I agree that all religions should be more philosophical in that they need to teach and study much more on the philosophies of the religion, so that those attending the church know what they believe, why, and how to act upon it and/or apply it in every day life.

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RusCrimson

I think this is in the spirit of the original post. Aquinas started off every question with the main objections and tried to handle those objections using reason and logical argumentation. That in hindsight some of those reasons were not right (even disapproved by the Church), does not reflect badly on his method.