On Jan 18, 1:27 pm, Justintruth <[email protected]> wrote: > Think of it this way... The religions are about something. You don't > need religions. You need what religions are about.
True. > If you eliminate religions only, and still comprehend what they are > about, then you are left with what religions are about (both the good > and the evil of it) in a secular interpretation that includes some > notion of "the sacred" in the form, for example, of "that which must > be protected". You can then "have ethics" "feel guilty" "love" etc and > in fact you can do everything except understand completely with no > problem. Therefore you can have a secular philosophy that is aware and > responsive to what "the sacred" is about - that protects life, > celebrates love, and has some aesthetic [dimension] - while lacking only > the more extreme forms of mystical union in its intellectual form.[...] > The task of showing that what religions are about can be included in a > purely secular world view is a task that involves understanding beauty > and love in secular terms. As long as the secularism is not > fundamentalism as it so often is in its "materialist" [manifestation], > then secularism itself is not a problem. [...] I'm not sure that I really understand what the adjective 'secular' means, either here or anywhere else. Of course, it is clear in outline, but the devil is in the details. The definitions in Chambers Dictionary (1998) fall into three classes, one of which consists of all those uses of the word which are clearly irrelevant to the present context, and so can be ignored. The other two classes (the first consisting of a single definition only, although it is complex and problematic) are: (I) relating to the present world, or to things not spiritual; (II) civil, not ecclesiastical; lay, not concerned with religion. I think it is clear that definition (II) is the one according to which your argument is justified. But unless your argument is a tautology, which it does not at all seem to be, must not definition (I) also be in play, and then do the obvious philosophical questions it raises not point to tensions which must necessarily be present in such a secular (II) society? After all, does not the phrase "the spiritual" denote precisely "what religions are about"? And, as "the present world" includes persons and their relationships, how can it not include "the spiritual"? Finally, /can/ anything contain whatever it is that religions contain (a kind of fire, or magma, as I imagine it - "both the good and evil of it", as you rightly say) without either being religious, or else losing more than "the more extreme forms of mystical union in its intellectual form", as you put it (snipped, sorry). The example of the Scandinavian societies would seem to answer "yes" to this last question (and I feel it would be nice to live there!), but might that not be in virtue of some unspoken understanding, widely shared in those countries, perhaps, but needing to be spoken about, even if only so that it can also be understood elsewhere? I realise that I have not put this at all clearly (it promised to be clearer, but got a bit garbled in the writing, and I can't fix it), but I can always struggle to clarify it later. Also, I realise that you may not be able to give a non-technical answer; but it is OK to have an answer which I might not understand for years. Perhaps I should have written less and just asked: how do you define "secular" here? > On Jan 14, 9:42 am, Slip Disc <[email protected]> wrote: Dear me, no, he didn't! Someone else wrote those words! You must therefore remove your post, and forthwith, additionally, and without prejudice, you must at once cease, surcease and desist from all thought, and/or from any and all linguistic appurtenances thereunto, not excluding the aforementioned thought itself, and any or all expressions thereof, insofar as these may be distinguished, wherein the party of the first part, hereinafter referred to as Expletive Deleted, yadda yadda, per ardua ad nauseam. > > The world seems more religious than ever these days. > > [...]
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