Beyond theism

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
As to, do we need religion at all, I have to say that the feeling of many if not most people engaged in the kinds of project K-Punk posits is that "religion" per se is unnecessary to spiritual engagement. Indeed the term "religion" is something of a pejorative term in contemporary paganism. (Much of this argument was rehearsed over at the K-Punk blog last year.)

It's interesting to see the voodoo meme rise in this context 15 years after it made serious inroads into the occult scene. I'd caution against understanding voodoo too quickly. I certainly don't. On the one hand it's clearly a contemporary brand of paganism springing partly from the African diaspora and partly from European folk magick in common with Hoodoo, Santeria and much else. On the other it has a quite specific sense of otherness. This seems to be true of much pagan spirituality: it's amenable to classification and analysis but it is all too easy to cross the line from comparison to cultural appropriation. I'd personally fight shy of seeking to "re-work voodoo" for example. There's a real danger of thereby commodifying and de-sacralizing it. (That's not to say that British white people can't do voodoo.

Rather, if you're going to do voodoo, do voodoo, not a bowdlerised copy. If you want a comfortable way in there are plenty of them and in this case, you really do pays your money and makes your choice.) And if you want existing spiritual paths that would be amenable to a non-theist or Spinozist angle, take a look at neopaganism in general and have a poke around the embers of chaos magick in particular.

However there's no doubt that voodoo techniques will generate ecstasy and experiences that are, to all intents and purposes, genuine interactions with deities. That is no surprise. As Uncle Al said, "from certain actions certain results follow." It's not really a matter of religion as usually defined, but of engineering. Whether you're a believer in god or not, if you do the exercises, you will get the results. The difference is that if you keep doing the exercises you will probably find yourself concerned with matters of compassion to self and to others rather than being obsessed with magickal power or whatever, and this of course is the "inner teaching" of all the main religions. So it goes. That stuff about love isn't there by accident. A non-theist spirituality is likely to come back to love, agape, and compassion in the end.
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
autophoron said:
No problem at all. It is the primary structure of all philosophical
arguments for the existence of God. Since this is the governing
motif behind theism, one comes to understand both the entrenchant
nature of the belief and the inability to disprove it.
well, as i said at the outset, religion is a fuzzy concept. i still
maintain that the majority of believers would be unable to understand
such philosophical accounts of (their personal) gods. Many would even
violently deny that god as coherence was religion at all. it's no
coincidence that thinkers like spinoza or kant, who find uses for the
term "god" in their atheistic systems, were violently attacked by the
religious authorities of their days.
autophoron said:
what is the use of saying all acts are sacral, all acts are acts of
god then?

Well Spinoza would say if you want to find God, you don?t have to submit
to the mediation of religious institutions. He might also say that in
coming to understand things under the form of eternity, i.e. having
adequate ideas, you become a more active being, and therefore live a
happier (eudaimonic) life. The understanding of the causes around you
and your aligning yourself with them becomes a sacral and empowering
act. Its like the difference between being washed down the stream and
swimming down the stream.
that's nice, a clearcut empirical statement: using concepts like "god"
makes the users happier, as i initially pointed out. religion as
happiness engineering. a clear stipulation of a mean/ends relation, a
claim of causality. now one can ask the question: is it really true?
does using theistic concepts make one or a community really happier?
or is maybe the opposite the case? or neither? on what empirical
evidence do you base your claims of causality?

empirical evidence aside, considering just concepts, there is nothing
in your construction of the sacral that causes eudaimonia, at least
prima facie. relatedly, if all acts are sacral, why the need for
distinguishing the sacral from acts?
autophoron said:
The purpose of naming it ?God? is simply to provide the sense of
coherence to the process. Call it whatever you like though.
there's a certain disingenuity in such claims. if one may call it
whatever, without loosing the alleged causal powers of increasing
happiness, why not call it "stinky cheese" or "satan"? why this
detour through connotation-rich terminological territory? wouldn't a
straightforward description in the languages of repetition, reduction
of complexity and the like, as i have been using, lead to a much
better "understanding of things" with the concomitant increase in
activity and empowerment? Please remember that one of the most
prominent critisisms of religion centers around the idea that religion,
more specifically its focus on redemoption in the distant future (eternity),
reward for earthly actions, precisely serves to discourage shaping the
current world in a way that would do away with domination and
unhappiness.
 
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borderpolice

Well-known member
dominic said:
doesn't there have to be some kind of encounter with the "numinous" for the act or ritual to be sacral -- either originally or down the road as redemption/renewal

yes, i'd call communication religious/sacral etc, if it refers to something that's beyond what's currently
observable. this means dental hygiene isn't sacral. something that's not observable invites speculation
and projection of desire, the wish to avoid pain/death being a prominent example.
 

autophoron

A Loxian
borderpolice,


well, as i said at the outset, religion is a fuzzy concept. i still
maintain that the majority of believers would be unable to understand
such philosophical accounts of (their personal) gods.


k-punk was exploring something quite far from what the “majority of believers” are able to understand. Philosophy pretty much is an exploration far from what the majority imagines.

Many would even
violently deny that god as coherence was religion at all. it's no
coincidence that thinkers like spinoza or kant, who find uses for the
term "god" in their atheistic systems, were violently attacked by the
religious authorities of their days.


Spinoza vehemently denied that his system was atheistic. This characteristization of his system certainly places you in the camp of the closed minds of his day rather than in his own understanding.

that's nice, a clearcut empirical statement: using concepts like "god"
makes the users happier,


“x” makes us happier. I imagine you can put anything in the blank. Even suffering.

as i initially pointed out. religion as
happiness engineering.


Life is about “happiness engineering”. Happiness defining plays a large part in the history of philosophy.

a clear stipulation of a mean/ends relation, a
claim of causality. now one can ask the question: is it really true?
does using theistic concepts make one or a community really happier?
or is maybe the opposite the case? or neither? on what empirical
evidence do you base your claims of causality?


Spinoza’s universe is a deterministic one. I suppose its “the proof is in the pudding” time.


empirical evidence aside, considering just concepts, there is nothing
in your construction of the sacral that causes eudaimonia, at least
prima facie. relatedly, if all acts are sacral, why the need for
distinguishing the sacral from acts?


In the end nothing. There is a Buddhist saying (paraphrased): at first you see a mountain and its only a mountain, then you see a mountain and its not a mountain, at last you see a mountain and its only a mountain. There is a difference between the 1st and 3rd states, and there is not.

there's a certain disingenuity in such claims. if one may call it
whatever, without loosing the alleged causal powers of increasing
happiness, why not call it "stinky cheese" or "satan"? why this
detour through connotation-rich terminological territory? wouldn't a
straightforward description in the languages of repetition, reduction
of complexity and the like, as i have been using, lead to a much
better "understanding of things" with the concomitant increase in
activity and empowerment?


God implies coherence like no other word. If you understand the coherence, drop the word. There is no such thing as a “straightforward description”. All descriptions are connotation laden and historically mediated. You simply are trying to impose other connotations than those brought forth by “God” which you have resistance to. The interpenetration of these principles across fragmentary time makes them much more God-like rather than stinky-cheese-like or Satan-like. But again, find your truth.




autophoron
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
borderpolice said:
yes, i'd call communication religious/sacral etc, if it refers to something that's beyond what's currently
observable. this means dental hygiene isn't sacral. something that's not observable invites speculation
and projection of desire, the wish to avoid pain/death being a prominent example.

errrr, this depends on whether you have a totalistic or pluralistic conception of existence

in a totalistic account, dental hygiene is simply one moment or concern in a larger sequence of reference and meaning and purpose -- i.e., we desire dental hygiene b/c we desire bodily health, and we desire bodily health b/c we desire -- what??? -- that is, what is the final cause or justification of good dental hygiene? -- again, this is what heidegger means by "orientation" and "directionality" -- i.e., spatialized time

(or perhaps we practice dental hygiene to appear more attractive to others, which leads to another series of questions about why we desire what we desire -- and why we should so desire -- i.e., final cause & justification)

that we give no thought to the larger purpose of dental hygiene merely illustrates your earlier discussion of ritual as the spatialization of time -- i.e., we don't actually think about most things we do -- we relate to space and time instrumentally

and to the extent that ritual is effective, then the ritual is not the object of conscious thought = the ritual is ready-to-hand practice

and to the extent that rituals break down or becomes obtrusive, then we have the moments of the ritual as object of thought = presence-at-hand

the encounter with the numinous -- i.e., that which drives home man's fundamental abandonedness -- serves to redeem, in heidegger, everyday practice

rather than rituals dissolving into nothingness -- rather than rituals have no raison d'tre apart from repetition -- ritual and practice are now newly informed w/ meaning -- i.e., weight & coherence

not sure how heidegger gets there, but this seems to be his argument

so the upshot is that everything is potentially sacral or potentially cheap -- including dental hygiene

unless you argue that some parts of existence are fundamentally separate from other parts -- i.e., give a pluralistic account -- such that dental hygiene is divorced from larger issues

(btw is anyone here familiar with steven smith's book on spinoza -- "spinoza's book of life: freedom & redemption in the ethics" (yale 2003) -- is it worth checking out???)
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
dominic said:
i think that non-theism means breaking away, in the first instance, from the notion of efficient causation

let me clarify: spinoza is most famous for criticizing "final cause" -- i.e., that God creates each thing for a higher purpose -- such that the earth was made to benefit man, and man made to contemplate and serve God

but b/c substance (the entire universe) in spinoza is ONE -- then nothing has ever stood outside of it to bring it into existence efficiently -- i.e., efficient causality is the "how" of a thing's having come into existence -- but b/c substance has not ever not existed, it is error to ask how substance (i.e., the universe) has come to exist

that is, asking "how" the universe came into existence is an even greater error than asking "why" the universe exists

for in asking "how" the universe came into existence, we presuppose that there is something that once stood outside the universe -- and this is what leads to the notion of the creator God

AND YET IT IS THE HOSTILITY of spinozism to the notion of "final" causality that makes me think -- to the extent that i think about such things -- that spinozism cannot be reconciled with the position of heidegger/badiou

for even though heidegger does not endorse aristotle's concept of the final cause, the Appropriative Event (Ereignis) serves to structure existence in the same way as final causality

in heidegger man is indebted to, or bound by, the appropriative event -- much as in aristotle man is indebted to his final cause, i.e., reaches his proper limit in his final cause

or in Being & Time, dasein's ownmost possibility for existence is, roughly speaking, its final cause
 
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autophoron

A Loxian
Dom,

I like all you say here:

we don't actually think about most things we do -- we relate to space and time instrumentally

and to the extent that ritual is effective, then the ritual is not the object of conscious thought = the ritual is ready-to-hand practice

and to the extent that rituals break down or becomes obtrusive, then we have the moments of the ritual as object of thought = presence-at-hand

the encounter with the numinous -- i.e., that which drives home man's fundamental abandonedness -- serves to redeem, in heidegger, everyday practice

rather than rituals dissolving into nothingness -- rather than rituals have no raison d'tre apart from repetition -- ritual and practice are now newly informed w/ meaning -- i.e., weight & coherence


Where you say:

AND YET IT IS THE HOSTILITY of spinozism to the notion of "final" causality that makes me think -- to the extent that i think about such things -- that spinozism cannot be reconciled with the position of heidegger/badiou

for even though heidegger does not endorse aristotle's concept of the final cause, the Appropriative Event (Ereignis) serves to structure existence in the same way as final causality

in heidegger man is indebted to, or bound by, the appropriative event -- much as in aristotle man is indebted to his final cause, i.e., reaches his proper limit in his final cause

Is not the Spinozian “adequate idea” somewhat commensurate with Heidegger? Is not man indebted to the “adequate idea”? Consider the distinction Heidegger makes here:

"formerly, philosophy thought being in terms of beings as
idea, as energeia, as actualitas, as will - and now, one might think, as
propriation. Understood in this way, propriation means a transformed
interpretation of being which, if it is correct, represents a continuation
of metaphysics" (Zur Sache des Denkens S. 22; Time and Being p. 21)


As much as Spinoza rejects the final cause, his appeal to that which is “under the form of eternity” as a path to relative freedom, does place man in relationship to what is outside time, though not outside “the universe”. Because thought and extension are two attributes of the single substance, the adequate idea is a lived event, in a manner. Would not Spinoza's union of power and knowledge produce a kind of Being-in-the-world? I’m not sure, but these ideas (perhaps even Aristotle’s hexis included) might at least be roughly reconsilable.




autophoron
 
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autophoron

A Loxian
Borderpolice,


Consider this definition of Spinoza’s regarding the constitution of a body, and apply this to the concept of what a ritual accomplishes and how it spatializes Time:

“When a number of bodies, whether the same or of different size, are so constrained by other bodies that they lie upon one another, or if they move, whether with the same degree or different degrees of speed, so as to communicate their motions to each other in a certain fixed proportion [ratione], we shall say that those bodies are united with one another and that they all together compose one body or individual, which is distinguished from the others by this union of bodies.” -Part II, lemma 3

or otherwise summarized:

“If the members of a certain collection of bodies tend to preserve a certain relation R among themselves, then the members of that collection constitute a complex physical individual.”


Repetitions in Time (and Space) constitute new bodies.



autophoron
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
autophoron said:
borderpolice, k-punk was exploring something quite
far from what the able to understand. Philosophy pretty much is an
exploration far from what the majority imagines.

Oh sure, but as religion is a mass phenomenon, it is essentially
constituted by what is being communicated about it. and this cannot be
divorced from from mass opinion on the subject.

autophoron said:
Spinoza vehemently denied that his system was
atheistic. This characteristization of his system certainly places you
in the camp of the closed minds of his day rather than in his own
understanding.

so what? I imagine he had reasons for saying so, as had most writers
at the time. But religion is a fuzzy concept, so yes, he's religious
in that he talks about a transcendental entity with reference to
eudaimonia. he isn't religious in that this entity is essentially the
world.

autophoron said:
Spinoza's universe is a deterministic one. I suppose
its "the proof is in the pudding" time.

I wonder about your causal claim that religion leads to eudaimonia.

autophoron said:
I imagine you can put anything in the
blank. Even suffering. Life is about "happiness
engineering". Happiness defining plays a large part in the history of
philosophy.

of course, but that doesn't answer the question: is it really true
that the religious attitude you advertise increases happiness?

autophoron said:
God implies coherence like no other word.

Errr, no.

autophoron said:
There is no such thing as a "straightforward
description". All descriptions are connotation laden and historically
mediated. You simply are trying to impose other connotations than
those brought forth by "God" which you have resistance to.

yes, so what? the history of religions if one of oppression. the
practise of religion is boring.

autophoron said:
The interpenetration of these principles across
fragmentary time makes them much more God-like rather than
stinky-cheese-like or Satan-like. But again, find your truth.

Given the state of the world Satan-like is just as plausible as god-like.
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
dominic said:
errrr, this depends on whether you have a totalistic or
pluralistic conception of existence

I distinguish rigorously between (a) what is being communicated and
(b) what is going on in an individual's consciousness, as i also tried
to explain in the pop-music thread (where i called it fire and ice; it
was never really commented on, i must try and explain myself
better). the former is much more stable than the latter and there's
only a tenuous connection between the two. I would be surprised for
example if a priest mentioned that he needs to go to the toilet
urgently during a service.

when discussing religion here, i refer to (a), as (b) is too
multifarious. in this sense, what I think what i'm doing when brushing
my teeth is irrelevant. what is communicated about it is what matters
(and historically and socially contingent).

dominic said:
so the upshot is that everything is potentially sacral or potentially
cheap -- including dental hygiene

yes, that's kind of what i've been saying, except of course that being
a ritual is not a property a social event has in itself but rather is
relative to observer expectation (the observers may participate in the
ritual).

The interesting questions are: when is communication (with special
case rituals) religious? what is the social function of religious
communication? in what circumstances is religious communication a good
idea? what are the functional equivalents of religious communication,
i.e. what alternative mechanisms would achieve what religious
communication does?

my answer to the first of these has been that religious communication
carries references to that which cannot currently be observed and a
claim that it increases eudaimonia (one can make this description much
more sophisticated).
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
dominic said:
AND YET IT IS THE HOSTILITY of spinozism to the notion of "final" causality

Spinoza could not solve the problem of final causality (which BTW is compatible with all currently known
physics, but vastly unplausible). conatus really is a constrained form of final causality. this problem of
final causality was only cracked later, ultimatly maybe only in the 20th century with cybernetics
and computing.
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
borderpolice said:
I distinguish rigorously between (a) what is being communicated and
(b) what is going on in an individual's consciousness, as i also tried
to explain in the pop-music thread (where i called it fire and ice; it
was never really commented on, i must try and explain myself
better). the former is much more stable than the latter and there's
only a tenuous connection between the two. I would be surprised for
example if a priest mentioned that he needs to go to the toilet
urgently during a service.

actually i think what confused me is that you and autophoron appear to be using the term ritual in two different ways

(1) formal ritual -- e.g., roman catholic sacrament = this is always a relatively conscious process, i.e., if you're kneeling in church you know damn well that it has something to do with repeating christ's suffering as the pain begins to shoot through your knees

(2) ritual as a sociological concept = the ritual of brushing one's teeth or the ritual of driving your car to work each morning or the ritual of smoking a cigarette = any kind of repetitive behavior really = what "they" and everyone does in this world = ready-to-hand practice

so of course dental hygiene could never count as the first kind of ritual!!!!!

and yet both kinds of ritual could be described as ways of spatializing time
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
autophoron said:
Consider this definition of Spinoza's regarding the
constitution of a body, and apply this to the concept of what a ritual
accomplishes and how it spatializes Time:

"If the members of a certain collection of bodies tend to preserve a
certain relation R among themselves, then the members of that
collection constitute a complex physical individual."

I have to disagree with this. individuals are constituted by
observers, relative to latter's ability to observe. what appears to be
a chair to you, is a boundary-less jumble of force-field to the quantum
physicist. the most interesting case is when the observer observes
itself. be that as it may, nothing in your quotes talks about time,
let alone spatialising time.

autophoron said:
Repetitions in Time (and Space) constitute new
bodies.

maybe thinking about it in terms of the medium/form distinction is
helpful at this point. a medium is a loosely connected collection of
basic elements, whose properties don't matter other than that they can
form relations with other elements. A form can be observed whenever
certain relations between elements are more probable over extended
periods of time than others. take letters as example: "aksjdhfao" is a
lot less likely than "washing": the medium letters gives rise to the
form (english) words. but words can be medium themselves: "this is
garbage" is more probably than "is garbage this" and so forth. the
same applies to ritual and repetition.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
borderpolice said:
I wonder about your causal claim that religion leads to eudaimonia.

yeah -- i think it's supposed to be the "scientific" aspect of Lucretius/Spinoza that leads to eudaimonia by dispelling fear of death and divine punishment
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
dominic said:
actually i think what confused me is that you and
autophoron appear to be using the term ritual in two different ways

Such divergence in usage is inevitable and part of the fun.

Well, i am always conscious i'm brushing my teeth to meet certain
standards of smell, look and to avoid dental pain. i also think it is
mistaken to think that religious rituals are understood by the
average adherent to a given religion. this is wrong on two counts:
(1) for a start there is no agreement on just what the basic tenets of
any given religion are. (2) the majority of believers is simply unable
to reproduce even one coherent explanation of the key meaning of most
rituals or basic beliefs. you can easily see this by asking christians
to recite all 10 commandments, surely one of the most important parts
of that faith. i confidently predict that most believers you ask
cannot. can you?

I use ritual as a sociological concept: as repeated behaviour which
requires little mental effort. ritual is religious when it is
accompanied by references to transcendental (beyond current
observation capabilities), numinous entities and is supposed to lead
to eudaimonia. the function of religious ritual is (1) the pleasurable
relaxation effect which is experienced as numinous and (2) the
transformation of the deep metaphysical questions (what's the meaning
of life, where does the universe come from, who created god) into,
well, ritual behaviour, so the lack of answers to such questions
remains unnoticed.
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
borderpolice said:
I distinguish rigorously between (a) what is being communicated and
(b) what is going on in an individual's consciousness

i don't see why this distinction should be so important for you

i.e., intentionality works on many levels

so even if this churchgoer is bored out of his wits while in church -- he's still there for reasons that could ultimately be interrogated and unfolded

and even if the priest has to take a piss -- he's still officiating the ceremony and doing so for reasons

borderpolice said:
The interesting questions are: when is communication (with special
case rituals) religious?

when it is understood by the participants to be about the "most important" things -- i.e., we are taking time to celebrate and contemplate that which is most important

borderpolice said:
what is the social function of religious
communication?

as autophoron has argued = to create in the first instance "one body"

borderpolice said:
in what circumstances is religious communication a good
idea?

when we want people to REPEAT an event = can't necessarily repeat the encounter with the holy or the numinous or the uncanny = but certan collective repetitions have an ecstatic effect

e.g., collective dancing or collective singing of hymns

and collective kneeling seems effective as a repetition of suffering
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
borderpolice said:
also think it is
mistaken to think that religious rituals are understood by the
average adherent to a given religion. this is wrong on two counts:
(1) for a start there is no agreement on just what the basic tenets of
any given religion are. (2) the majority of believers is simply unable
to reproduce even one coherent explanation of the key meaning of most
rituals or basic beliefs.

that's b/c most existing religions have far too much content

in the future religion there will be little to no content = celebration of the void

which is not to say "content free" as in soft and easy

but rather, "content free" as in we're all gonna die and that'll be the end of each of us -- and life has no necessary meaning -- but we can still get off collectively on the dark power of rhythmic music

new religion will seek to REPEAT in collective celebration the realization that hits us in the middle of night, as we lie alone in bed, that we're gonna die and essentially live as aliens on this earth
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
that is, even in the case of an immanent religion, relgion will still be about that which is un-worldly in man

in the earth religion = we are born of the earth, we return to the earth, but we are not of this world

and why do men need religion? b/c their very nature involves thinking about and interpreting that which is = we are meaning-producing creatures

being = the relationship b/w man and that which is, such that even if that which is is the un-dead of the universe (to borrow k-punk's phrase), there is still being b/c man lives in relation to the undead

the question is whether we require an overarching or unitary relationship = heidegger = religion qua that which is most important

or if we're going to abandon the question of the whole for badiou's notion of untotalizable multiple sets, wherein no rank is to be established among discourses of love, art, politics, science = let's deny that man's mortality has any unifying or totalizing force = religion w/o bone-rattling power

i.e., badiou cannot give an account of his own need to do philosophy -- nor can he give an account of the space of compossibility that his philosophy appears to occupy -- i.e., philosophy in badiou is the space where that which is new and of universal import, i.e, truth, is subtracted from the emergent discourses of love, politics, art, science -- philosophy attains no truth of its own, has no drive of its own -- badiou speaks of eros but has no account of philosophic eros -- philosophy is content to weed other people's gardens

(heidegger anticipates badiou insofar as revealing for heidegger is always a kind of concealing, i.e., the process of revealing not only conceals the structure of being as disclosure, but also prevents other possibilities from entering into the light of day ----- so for instance if i reveal myself as a lawyer, i.e., if this is what i develop into, then the other truths of what i might have become reman forever concealed -- and similarly if the truth of science develops in direction A, then what science might have become had it moved in direction B remains concealed ------- AND YET heidegger privileges certain kinds of disclosure over other kinds, namely, the truth-disclosures of those who are most resolute in disclosing that which is, i.e., major philosophers & poets -- for these are the disclosures that shape entire epochs -- these are the disclosures the establish new hierarchies, new standards, new ranks -- these are the disclosures that dis-orient and re-orient in the grandest and most far-reaching sense)
 
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autophoron

A Loxian
Borderpolice,


I went through your replies and most of them seem to have broken down into plain anti-religious polemic which is ironic because this is in spirit similar to what motivated Spinoza who suffered much at the hands of religion and lived at a time when religion held real and lethal political power. The boldness of his theories and his publishing of them was nearly unheard of at the time. If you have a problem with the word "God", simply replace it with the word "Nature" and consider the "wisdom" of his stoic applications. Freedom is freedom from being determined by a particular cause. Desire is to be determined by a particular cause. Knowledge and the leveling of desire leads to relative freedom and more happiness. Its an a b c of wisdom integrated into a physics of bodies, motions and repetitions, each of which seek to preserve themselves. It’s elegant, clean and pure. Ritual is simply smaller bodies coming into larger consonance. I think this is somewhere to where k-punk's OP was heading.





autophoron
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
dominic said:
i don't see why this distinction should be so important for you

it's cruicial for understanding the social. it's also usually not observed and people habitually confuse
the phenomenological with the social.

dominic said:
so even if this churchgoer is bored out of his wits while in church -- he's still there for reasons that could ultimately be interrogated and unfolded

Yes, but such explanations will take place in social situations and will be following the rules of the social.
they will not (in general) be structurally similar to whatever may have been conscious content.

dominic said:
when it is understood by the participants to be about the "most important" things -- i.e., we are taking time to celebrate and contemplate that which is most important

yes, something along those lines, but note that parents say their children are their most important
things, lovers claim each other and so on. religious parents would presumably weaken alligance to
their church rather than their children, should divirgent expectations arise from their respective roles
as parents and co-religionists -- maybe using distinctions like that between true religion and its earthly
degenerations at the hand of religious bureaucrats to maintain the coherency of the parents' world-views.
This is why i have a slight preference for allusion to transcendence, to that which is not (currently)
observable, as the cut off criterion for delineating the realm of the religious, but it's not such a clearcut
thing and i'm happy to accept a melange of different characterisations.

dominic said:
as autophoron has argued = to create in the first instance "one body"

the trajectory of religious developments points to increasing differentiation into multiple
ritual approaches. a multiplicity of religions [although it is possible that globalisation may reverse that
trend ... we'll see], rather than being a modern phenomenon, and despite modernity facilitating
differentiation, is as old as religion itself. this suggests that positing a future convergence towards
one religion, instead of being a likely outcome, points to a problem in your approach to understanding
religious phenomena. another problem with what you say is meditative and privatistic
approaches to religion which don't really fit the convergence towards unity paradigm you seem to
advocate. yet another problem is to distinguish this conception of religion from other mass ritals such
as football fandom.
 
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