Strauss says, that "a pious man will therefore not investigate the divine things", because "the gods do not approve..." (of that). But how does Strauss know, that the gods do not approve? He must have investigated the divine things to know that, and also, that there is more than one God, as he claims by the plural form. Performative self-contradiction? But I dont know about Strauss yet. I am wondering: Given, a computer programmer tries to make an artificially intelligent program, and suddenly the program asks about his life, how he looks like, if there are others like him, would he approve that, or be scared and pull the plug?
Best,
Helmut
On Jul 1, 2016, at 1:03 PM, Jerry Rhee <[email protected]> wrote:Thank you for that earnest answer. The reason why I asked whether you thought what I said was religious or theological was to ask about your reaction to its systematicity. Whichever word stands for more systematic, that’s what I meant.
Oh. I tend to see both those topics as orthogonal to systematicity. Certainly there’s a lot of systematic theology but I don’t think all is. (Think Anselm for instance)
With regards to systemizing I think it’s quite useful when you have a lot of data for a particular area. When you don’t I think it often obscures as much as it illuminates. In those cases one should be primarily focused on inquiry — finding helpful things to measure. Although as we’ve seen in physics the past few decades sometimes you want data but can’t quite seem to find it. So one is left with a system no one is very satisfied with.
Here is my attitude:
“The gods do not approve of man’s trying to seek out what they did not wish to reveal, the things in heaven and beneath the earth.
A pious man will therefore not investigate the divine things but only the human things, the things left to man’s investigation.” ~Strauss
Yeah, my view is don’t cut off the way of inquiry. It’s just that inquiry in religion is rather difficult. We’re in a far worse position than say physicists trying to figure out what dark matter or dark energy are, or trying to reconcile quantum gravity. However that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Exactly how one applies pragmatism will depend upon what experiences one is analyzing. Peirce only went as far as some very vague and broad experiences in Neglected Argument. Perhaps that’s all available although obviously not everyone agrees. (Which doesn’t mean they’re right of course)
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