DT, you flatterer you,
However I must say, that my rather cruel and thorough-going skepticism always stops me from agreeing with any historical theories or cosmologies. For two reasons, both pragmatic. First, I've experienced a lot of education in my life that later turned out to be wrong, so the latest theories I take provisionally to a high degree. Second, it's distracting from what's really important, and that is the now. Now when we're talking about human thinking, to me the "now" includes all of human knowledge in recorded history. That there are acceptable (to a thorough-going skeptic) documents and reasons to believe this people thought that then. But when you start talking about BEFORE recorded history, and use the "fact" of how different they were to prove some metaphysical assertion... well that's just building castles on air - not concrete. So I don't like going there. Even though you might have actually experienced the truth of the beginnings of thought and the cosmos on a nova program or heard it in sunday school class or whatever, I don't see the point of basing an metaphysics or cosmologies on theoretical and unprovable assertion. Whew. Got that off my chest. Now where were we? On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 1:22 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > >[John] > > Thus, intellect is individual and religion is social. > David Thomas] Yep, this is what I've been trying to get Bo to acknowledge. Individual > human intellect must precede the emergence of the intellectual level by a > considerable period of time. In fact I would claim that you can't create > religions without individual humans intellects living in groups. > > It is always intellect that creates religion, I agree. Therefore, wherever we see a religion today, we find a mind responsible. Sometimes it's a plain and obvious mind, like that belonging to that supreme sophist-philosopher and radical empiricist, Siddhartha Guatama. Sometimes its more nebulous, like that arising in the ways of the Native Americans who evolved creative and elaborate narratives of themselves and their place with no discernible "one originator" but rather an evolving communal consensus of intellectuals - much as Greece had done too, now that I think about it. Gatherings of individual intellects discussed the problems of life, and what was recognised as good was accepted by all. Pirsig, Sidis and me think that cultural play was unique and what helped co-create the American character and style - that after wwII was mostly adopted in the "West". That of individual freedom from having to be like everybody else - the normal religious conformity of any social bonding. And the reason America is diverse today still and even moreso, by international standards, is that in the place itself there dwelt many tribes, all differing, but getting along in a fashion. When this was combined with certain European ideas which meshed well - the pantheon of liberalism, well... heck. I'm getting off into areas over my head what with history and all. > The questions that religions asks are metaphysical (intellectual) > questions. > > The answers or conclusions arrived at however were not. > Right, the answers are social, and in fact, the social "rules of the game" that create and define what a society is. And somebody had to come up with 'em and that took intellect. Thus society presupposes intellect. I been trying to get that through the thick skulls of all these "bottom feeder" upside down evolutionists but I can't seem to penetrate. They seen it on a nova show, with a picture of this ooze climbin' outta the water and breathin. and all. They seen the pitchers, its true I tells ya. But in any religion ALL the questions are answered. Even if the answer is, "it's a mystery to us now", the answer is a dogmatic answer and well understood by all adherents - thus understanding begets easing of social tension. Everybody knows the rules. Everybody follows them. Everybody plays the game. Whew. The more intellectual questioning a religion or society allows and encourages, the less brittle and thus stronger and vibrant it is. > Religiously yours, > Dave > > Intellectually yours, John 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/
