Beyond theism

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borderpolice

Well-known member
autophoron said:
the truth of statements varies on the field of beliefs which gave rise to them. The field is a relative ontology. This is what I call ideology.
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Why are you telling me this. Of course truth is always relative to, simplifying greatly, background theories. What
makes you think I hold any other position? I must be misexpressing myself.

autophoron said:
Adequate ideas are achieved by understanding the causes that bring about your state.
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which is tantamount to saying there cannot be adquate ideas because it appears impossible to give a complete
enumeration of causal factors affecting human mental state.

autophoron said:
you would like to define “religion” in a fairly pedestrian way
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religion = ritual is not pedestrian? I have suggested why i don't think this is a particularly far reaching equivocation.

autophoron said:
but what is more interesting and productive is to ask what is religion, what are the mechanisms that bring it about and which make it cohere.
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and there i was thinking that that's what i was trying to do?

autophoron said:
one sees that “reality” is a constructed thing.
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I have called myself a constructivist, why do you think i did that?

autophoron said:
If you want to go on and declare “science = good, religion = bad”
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Where have i made such a simple-minded statement?

autophoron said:
cast the effects of religion without the theism invoked.
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but what are the effects? religious intelerance? boredom? eudaimonia? and why?

autophoron said:
More pertinent than the decrying of religion would perhaps be question, “In what way is science the mythology/religion of our age?”
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given your equivocation, even more pertinent would be the question: "can there be anything that is not
religion"?

maybe we should let our discussion come to an end here. you are not going to trip me up with methodological
issues and i seem unable to communicate that "religion = ritual = good", while easily consistent, doesn't appear
to be particularly fruitful.
 
A

autophoron

A Loxian
borderpolice,


“Why are you telling me this.”

I told you this because of your reticence to the term “ideology”. I was clarifying my use of it.

“which is tantamount to saying there cannot be adquate ideas because it appears impossible to give a complete enumeration of causal factors affecting human mental state.”

Correct. But there are more adequate and less adequate ideas. The primary confusion of ideas in Spinoza occurs through the fused representation of an extended state “e” within the body with its cause “c”, beyond the body, with a single idea. Because singular bodies/minds are defined by bodies that move in fixed and communicative proportion to each other, more adequate knowledge is in a way achieved through bodies moving in concert with each other, so that the “c” that resided “outside” of the body, becomes part of the interior. Knowledge becomes a process of assimilation, something that occurs consubstantially in thought and extension. In view of this, ritual as a spatialization of Time (and not restricted to the religious institutional sense that you define it by), plays a large part in the production of more adequate ideas through the production of new bodies.

“religion = ritual is not pedestrian?”

This is not my equation. Ritual is any spatialization of Time. Religious ritual is but a subset of this. I would accept the expansion of the meaning of "religion" though to match the larger meanings of what is "ritual". This would complete the equation, but I would not consider this use of the conception common.

“I have called myself a constructivist, why do you think i did that?”

Problematic seems to be the autonomous subjectivity implied by the name. “A constructivist” becomes “one who constructs”. Missing from your account of your position is the manner in which you (and your position) were constructed. This is the realm of ideology in the historical sense.

“Where have i made such a simple-minded statement?”

No but your urge to focus on religion in a simple minded way (for instance, Spinoza becomes religious because he uses the word “God”, even though his system is regarded as “atheistic” by you), has given me that impression. If you had at any time criticized the ideology of “science” or moved to acknowledge the benefits of “religion”, then I may have understood your motivations differently.

“but what are the effects? religious intelerance? boredom? eudaimonia? and why?”

The spatialization of Time.

“even more pertinent would be the question: "can there be anything that is not
religion"?”

No there cannot be. And I think that this was somewhat the direction that k-punk’s theory was pointed. If posited mythical objects produced the Greek Religion and posited mythical objects produce theoretical physics, then History itself becomes one long continuous “religious” endeavor.




autophoron
 
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G

Gustav

New member
Hmm... what actually is the distinction between religion and politics? They're both forms of collective action. The obvious distinction that comes to mind is that religion relies on transendence (it's about worshipping something both other and greater) whereas politics is, or can be, immanent (when it's about self-determination). But obviously you're not going to accept that, as you want a non-theistic religion.

Brand new to the forum, and on the point of logging off. A quick thought about theism, and on a comment I picked up above, both religion and politics have the same characteristics, with the same responses, luke-warm souls and very committed ones found in both arenas. Regarding a non-theistic religion, is it not possible that by using the very word religion, you cast the discussion into a mould where this concept is associated and followed by that of a theos, and that is then a term for some reality that you and I tacitly accept to be something we wish to be part of, or seek or whatever, excepting that that is not what we want, it is perhaps that but the beyondness of that, and having made it subtler, it is OK, except we will just make it, or refine it, a little more sublter still? A sort of you say the truth, you kill the truth.
Gustav
 
A

autophoron

A Loxian
Gustav,


The obvious distinction that comes to mind is that religion relies on transendence (it's about worshipping something both other and greater) whereas politics is, or can be, immanent (when it's about self-determination).

I think you are exactly right on this in the manner in which it would seem that non-deistic religion would be “History”. The confluence of these two realms, religion and politics is also reflected in Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise, that even in title seeks to dovetail these two, creating a hermeneutic approach to theological texts (and revelation), upon which he then produces an exegesis of reason, forming what becomes a history of reason itself, mediated by the real affects of the imagination.

“The universal rule, then, in interpreting Scripture is to accept nothing as an authoritative scriptural statement that we do not perceive very clearly when we examine it in the light of its history.” TPT, chap. VII

Even the theological, through its real over-determination (political) of the Laws of Nature, as produced by the imagination/revelation, seems to record the historical unfolding of reason (what he calls "natural light"), despite the inadequacy of its ideas, a point that Negri makes much of.




autophoron
 
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Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
So I’m reading On the Nature of Things by Lucretius now, and he seems to posit the conservation of energy “Confess then, naught from nothing can become, since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow, wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.”

Looking at the Wikipedia page for Conservation of Energy, seems he was preceded further yet by Epicurus and further by Empedocles (both of whom I gather figure into the history of the theory of atomism), and further yet by someone named Thales of Miletus, whom I haven’t heard of.
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
This is apparently the book that the term ‘clinamen’ comes from, the swerve of atoms or “primal bodies” which generates the compounding of these bodies unto differentiated structure. Although maybe Epicurus or Empedocles had similar ideas earlier.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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Clinamenic said:
seems he was preceded further yet by Epicurus and further by Empedocles (both of whom I gather figure into the history of the theory of atomism), and further yet by someone named Thales of Miletus
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They were duty bound to conserve the Conservation of Energy theory
 
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