I'll second Cheerskep (and Hume and Penn Jillette). There is so much we do
understand about the world, I don't see why it is necessary or even
desirable to start positing assumptions about a divine purpose or
"overwhelming rightness." I enjoy religious music and art and understand
the attraction of the aesthetics of religion, but my enjoyment is limited to
a fictive stance.
Mike Mallory
----- Original Message -----
From: "leo sullivan" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 5:10 PM
Subject: Re: Aesthetics, intellect, high intelligence, and sensibility.
I agree with conger and apparently pascal on this.you have to start
somewhere and you might as well start with assumption of the existence of
the lord as so mnay have done before you. It isn't religious fervor or
angels of heaven that is the basis but more of an assumption that somehow
there is an overwhelming rightness that will out in the end.that
assumption is the basis for everything else aesthetics included
Kate Sullivan
Sent from my iPod
On Sep 11, 2011, at 7:13 PM, William Conger <[email protected]>
wrote:
For some reason Cheerskep ignores my main point that belief is not a
choice but
a necessity of consciousness. This aspect of belief has nothing to do
with the
existence of a god or gods or anything at all concerned with religious
belief.
But it does imply that Cheerskep's denial of belief ignores the
fundamental
fact that our brains and consciousness rely on a-priori assumptions,
about the
next moment, thought, act all the way on to grand totaliing concepts
like God.
That's also the underlying assumption that Pascal, in the context and
language
of his time, recognized in his argument. Is it silly? Of course! Any
admission of assumptions -- the first recognition of philosophers from
Plato to
Kant and beyond -- is silly form the standpoint of being conjectural and
impossible to set beyond the circle of subjectivity.
It's no less a silly presumption to deny the "verities" of religion (I
extend
this to consciousness) than it is to accept them. What satisfactions
does
Cheerskep attain by denying them? Whatever they are, those
satisfactions are no
more substantial than the ones he denies. When he says he can't
belive, what
takes its place?
What's really silly is to presume the historical imagery of God, angels,
and all
the rest, is to be taken as the substances and not as transient symbols.
If the
symbols are silly does that mean that the symbolized is silly? I've
seen many
silly portraits of Lincoln. Was Lincoln silly?
wc
----- Original Message ----
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sun, September 11, 2011 5:50:12 PM
Subject: Re: Aesthetics, intellect, high intelligence, and sensibility.
William asks:
Why is Cheerskep still angry over his early disillusionment with
religion.
I'm sorry you believe this about me, William. My sole remark about
religion
was this:
With the departure of the religious faith of my youth went many
reassuring
verities.
That remark does not seem to me sufficient evidence of anger. Nor do I
recall any such feeling at the time (or after). When I came to realize
there
is
no Santa Claus I didn't get angry either. A more likely emotion might be
one
of sadness, but I also didn't feel that with either disillusion.
I admit I can imagine someone else getting angry, either about promises
broken ("I was told I'd go to heaven if I were good!") or burdens that
"faith"
brought with it ("I felt uncomfortable guilt about masturbating and
other
sexual stuff because I was told they were impure!"), but for whatever
reason
once a belief in a deity or Santa Claus was behind me, I simply never
had
such thoughts. "Ah! Well of course Santa Claus doesn't exist! Well
that
was
a child's thought anyway." "Ah. So there's no heaven. Well, if you think
about that was a silly thought anyway."
As for Pascal's wager the way he expressed it, I thought that was pretty
silly too because it implied that belief is subject to an act of will,
and
I've never found that so for me. An early murmur of disbelief came when
I read
that God is an eternal being who is perfect and thus never changes, and
yet
he is credited with all sorts of acts affecting humans, that struck my
young
mind as impossible, and by no straining effort of mind could I make
myself
think otherwise. I accept there may be others who can, by an "act of
faith",
block out such doubts, but that ability is denied me. Once I came to see
the various alleged attributes of angels as silly, that was that for
any
further belief in them. The belief or rejection of belief was definitely
not a
voluntary act.
