Krimel said:...Really, Dave if you are going to reason from "authority" you ought to make sure the authorities agree with you.
dmb says:Well, if you think that contradicts what I've been saying then you haven't understood it. James is more tolerant of theism. I'm more with Pirsig and Dewey on that point. Why you think there is a contradiction is beyond me. Krimel said: Let my conclude by repeating one of the questions you keep running from: "But what you constantly dismiss is the fact that the studies that have been done, suggest that religious observance provides a number of health benefits. They suggest that if you practice thinking happy thoughts you will get better at thinking happy thoughts and thinking happy thoughts is good for you. What, I continue to ask, do you think they provide that extends beyond this?" dmb says:The health benefits of thinking happy thoughts? Huh? I don't understand what this has to do with anything. I've ignored it because I deem it irrelevant. Can you explain the relevance? My interest in mysticism, and my insistence on it's centrality in the MOQ, has nothing to do with health benefits unless MAYBE if you mean psychological health in a quasi-Jungian sense or sanity in a Buddhist sense. Why is it always biological with you? I'm not talking about medical science or sociology and I don't go to church, dude. This is a philosophy forum. Does anything I've said hinge on whether church-goers have fewer heart attacks or not? You want me to produce evidence that mysticism provides some tangible benefit beyond physical fitness? How very American of you. In mythology the successful hero finds a great treasure of gold and jewels, wins the day, wins the throne, restores the kingdom, gets the girl. These are symbols for the benefit you're asking about. It can mean almost anything, depending on who you are, depending on your particular journey. Despite the undefined, multivalent meaning of those symbols, they suggest something extremely valuable, fateful or even auspicious. The best way to answer your question is to just let you take that as a clue. On a more practical and immediate level though, the benefit is philosophical coherence. Ignoring the MOQ's mysticism would be like ignoring Ayn Rand's individualism. It's not the whole thing but there's no way it'll work without it. I think it refers to states of consciousness, transformations of consciousness and that sort of thing. Mystical states of consciousness are related to this. James, Jung, Pirsig and I all think that it's bogus to make claims about the nature of reality based on these experiences. You seem to think otherwise and thereby construe this mysticism as a kind of supernaturalism. In all cases, the only claim is that the experience itself is a psychological fact, an empirically valid fact. And maybe you noticed James's little nod to the perennial philosophy in that quote. Since mystical experiences of all kinds have been reported from all times and places, it's perfectly reasonable to take it as a natural human phenomenon. Pirsig and Jung both make a case that our religions have grown out of this experience. That's where the supernatualism comes in. In that sense, I think, theism is a misunderstanding of natural facts, a distortion of what's actually known in experience. All this is consistent with the limits of radical empiricism: all experience counts and needs explaining and say nothing at all about what's beyond experience. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® goes with you. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Mobile1_052009 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/
