> [Michael to Ron] > I do not deny that belief in God is culturally derived. What I am saying is > that belief in g*d is deeper than culture. That it is some sort of inner human > drive to seek transcendence. > > [Arlo to MP] > And this may be the point of your confusion. Belief in god (or g*d) is not > deeper than culture, and it is one possible response to > "transcendence". > > That is, "a belief is god or gods (or g*d)" is a cultural response to this > impetus to transcend. While the "impetus to transcend" may very well > be innate to human nature, "g*d" is not. It comes afterwards, the product of > response to transcendence; not what drives it.
MP: I need to dwell on that, but I think I can generally accept this. I think, though, if there is a confusion, it is not necessarily only in my court, and rather between us as to what constitutes "belief." I see belief in this context, relative to theism, to be the transcendent moment, a DQ moment. You cannot "unbelieve" you can only reach some new belief that contradicts the previous one. And that belief, that DQ moment however, occurs not in a vacuum, but NECESSARILY in a culture. In this sense, I agree with you that theism is cultural, that believing in a "god or gods" is cultural, even where the "god or gods" is all inclusive; we are still including only (even if its all) cultural manifestations. An aside here, is to note that this is what launched me here on this to begin with, that not ALL those cultural manifestations are poor quality. That some are good quality experiences leads me to believe that which is driving them is not by default poor quality per se, just perhaps not well suited to produce good quality results more often than not given the cultural context in which it occurs. Follow so far? Going on, this then leads one to question to what degree theism is the culprit to be rooted out for MoQ to flourish. If theism is a culturally driven thing, and by my reckoning, the theistic DQ event not in itself the bad thing, we necessarily must conclude that culture is the culprit. Theism, while admittedly culturally based, cannot be eliminated. You cannot unring the bell. Culture on the other hand, can change in ways that lead theistic manifestations within it to change. We've seen it historically on an ongoing basis. So while the MoQ as many here like to quote (and which a haven't the knowledge or understanding to dispute so for now accept at face value) is "anti- theistic", I posit that this DOES NOT translate to require atheism or anti-theism on a cultural level. That would be a bit like arguing that bacteria in our stomachs should be abolished because hospitals are anti-septic. Much of culture would fall apart, fall back in quality if theism were removed from it; such is the nature of culture at this time. Theism is culturally independent in that it doesn't matter which culture its in, it will adapt to it; change the culture and theism will adapt. Change theism within a given culture however and you get chaos. So... if the goal is a more MoQ- evolved society, the best approach, IMO is not to eliminate theism for the purpose of arriving at a better culture, but to rather re-mold culture in such a way that theism is not in conflict with MoQ. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
