RE: Dawkins' BBC Interview/church and 'happiness'

irishrosem

Halo,

This internet is a tricky business. I certainly saw mocking in the choice of syntax and context of your statement: “How is that going, the exposing all wrongs and healing everything, thing?” An afterthought, a tongue-in-cheek question that really has no serious inquiry to it. Kind of like: "How's that going for you, that rocket ship you intend to build?" I will take you at your word, and acknowledge that you meant no harm in the statement.

I don’t think it is impossible to understand peoples’ state of mind from observation. I, however, think it is reckless to make general statements about insubstantial ideas, directed at whole groups of people, based on mere anecdotal evidence:

Quote:
BUT HAPPY? As in a relaxed, confident, self loving, productive, ethical, person, able to think and act for themselves? Uh, no. The people I know who would fit that description, stopped going to church, if they ever went, at age 8 to 11…

That might be true of all the people you know, I doubt it—but I don’t know the people you know. What I said was that it is not a significant observation, or discussion to me. Like I said, have at it—I’m beginning to learn that discussions like these are almost the point of this forum. I just wanted to call out a harm I thought was being perpetrated. As you pointed out, I was mistaken, due to the blurriness of internet conversation. And I concede that I misread your intent.

MadArchitect

Frank 013: So can we start calling you “crazy” architect?

Start? Ha.

misterpessimistic: And as for the last part of your sentence, there is absolutely something inherent in religion that would make it very hard to find cooperation with someone that is in direct opposition to what you hold true in your heart.

Abandoning religion altogether isn't going to change that. People are still going to have differences and differing priorities. They're going to act according to those priorities. And they're going to find it difficult to get along with people whose priorities conflict with theirs. So maybe it is something inherent in religion, but it is by no means unique to it. It's inherent in anything that matters to people.

It is the ability of the human being to reason and examine the world around her that gives us the ability to overcome the religious seclusion inherent in the system.

I don't think so. A great deal of scholarship written in the last 100 years or so has been devoted to examining the ways in which reason contributes to atrocity. Reason is not some unmixed blessing. Considered, deliberate steps can lead just as surely to the gallows.

But then, this all goes back to the argument that all rational arguments are rooted in values that are, themselves, arational, which is a position that you de facto reject. So we should probably just call that one an impasse.

I took you for a pompous ass...and I have yet to stray from that assessment.

Doesn't surprise me. I've never seen you stray from any assessment you've made. I'm not sure you're capable of it.

Mr. Pessimistic

I dont think I have a NEED to.

Well Luke, looks likes we are at an impass on many things.

And just what positions have you strayed from?

Mr. P.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana Boditharta (former booktalk troll)

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

What is all this shit about Angels? Have you heard this? 3 out of 4 people believe in Angels. Are you F****** STUPID? Has everybody lost their mind? - George Carlin

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Edited by: misterpessimistic at: 3/28/07 7:28 pm

Frank 013

Quote:
Mad
Abandoning religion altogether isn't going to change that. People are still going to have differences and differing priorities.

True, but how many differences do we need? especially ones that cannot be logically rectified.

Quote:
Mad
So maybe it is something inherent in religion, but it is by no means unique to it. It's inherent in anything that matters to people.

I do not think anyone here has argued that these issues are unique to religion, but I do think religion adds an element of irrationality to existing conflict.

And shouldn’t we remove all unnecessary reasons for conflict where possible?

Quote:
Mad
But then, this all goes back to the argument that all rational arguments are rooted in values that are, themselves, arational, which is a position that you de facto reject.

Which any practical person who wants to accomplish anything must do.

Later

MadArchitect

me: But then, this all goes back to the argument that all rational arguments are rooted in values that are, themselves, arational, which is a position that you de facto reject.
Frank: Which any practical person who wants to accomplish anything must do.

No, all they need do to stay practical is admit that their reasons are always, at root, personal rather than objective. That still allows for pragmattic behavior and makes us less prone to the delusion that we're behaving objectively and from pure reason.

Frank 013

Quote:
Mad
No, all they need do to stay practical is admit that their reasons are always, at root, personal rather than objective. That still allows for pragmatic behavior and makes us less prone to the delusion that we're behaving objectively and from pure reason.

This does make us less prone to delusion by basically saying that all views are equally valid; from the crazy Sally example to ones based off of evidence that is corroborated and tested by other people and science.

That’s hardly practical.

Later

Niall001

Quote:
This does make us less prone to delusion by basically saying that all views are equally valid; from the crazy Sally example to ones based off of evidence that is corroborated and tested by other people and science.

That’s hardly practical.

But people can make functional assumptions. I can say that on an ultimate level, all views are equally valid, regardless of whether or not they belong to Crazy Sally or Einstein. But when speaking within a specific agreed framework, I can say that (according to the agreed criteria) one view is better than another.

What you seem to be saying is akin to saying that it because a person recognised that positions like right and left are relative, they could not say that the sun was to an individual's right or left.

More interestingly, it is a lot like saying that because you have no belief in a morality that transcends humanity, then you would not be able to behave morally. Think about it.

You believe that morality is a matter of opinion, that it is something artifical (or at least, that is the impression I get), but still, you live your life as though your opinions on what constitues a moral/immoral actions were objective facts. If Crazy Sally's cousin (we'll call her Crazy Ann) were to turn to you and say that she believed that genocide, murder and rape were good things, would you consider the moral scheme she constructed to be the equal of yours?

Full of Porn*

http://plainofpillars.blogspot.com

Frank 013

Quote:
Niall
But people can make functional assumptions. I can say that on an ultimate level, all views are equally valid, regardless of whether or not they belong to Crazy Sally or Einstein. But when speaking within a specific agreed framework, I can say that (according to the agreed criteria) one view is better than another.

This is exactly my point, but Mad seems to want to defeat valid arguments by poking holes in the agreed framework.

Quote:
Niall
What you seem to be saying is akin to saying that it because a person recognized that positions like right and left are relative, they could not say that the sun was to an individual's right or left.

Not at all those examples are based off of sensory input and within the accepted framework.

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Niall
More interestingly, it is a lot like saying that because you have no belief in a morality that transcends humanity, then you would not be able to behave morally. Think about it.

I am thinking about it and I do not see the similarity, morality is made by humanity for humanity how can it transcend humanity?

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Niall
You believe that morality is a matter of opinion, that it is something artificial (or at least, that is the impression I get), but still, you live your life as though your opinions on what constitutes a moral/immoral actions were objective facts.

They are for me. but these moral choices are mine alone I do not expect everyone to agree with me or attempt to force others to follow my example.

Quote:
Niall
If Crazy Sally's cousin (we'll call her Crazy Ann) were to turn to you and say that she believed that genocide, murder and rape were good things, would you consider the moral scheme she constructed to be the equal of yours?

No because I take into account personal freedom and the welfare of all people, Crazy Ann clearly does not.

But under the all views are arational stance, crazy Ann might have a valid point. Who knows maybe she has important information the rest of us are lacking?

Later

Dissident Heart

Frank: In this way we are not vastly different, while I do not pray or expect a loving response from the cosmos I am in wonder of what I see; from the vastness of the universe to the complexity of a single cell.

Perhaps if you expected more out of the cosmos you'd experience something different? Perhaps if you allowed your wonder to expand beyond observation and into intimacy: in other words, not simply observing but really loving...and, in the process the cosmos responds with a sort of gracious hospitality: a prodigious invitation to join in relationship where intimacy and communion take the place of exploration and understanding...the cosmos is no longer simply a great spanse of stuff to learn about, but a loving partner to cherish and honor and care for.

Frank: And while I do love nature I realize that without giving it its proper respect it will readily take my life.

Where does Frank start and Nature end?

Frank: From my experience the cosmos seems to be totally indifferent to the plights of mere humans and it is our own will and resourcefulness that makes the difference.

My experience is more mixed. The cosmos is gracious in billions of ways: cool breeze, warm sun, fresh water, fertile soil, lucious vegetation, ripe fruits, clean air, beautiful beasts, etc...and it is a tsunamic whirwind of crushing force and brutal consumption. I think a great deal of our suffering is related to our lack of resourcefulness and indifference to the miseries of others. But, there is also extraordinary graces thruout the human experience too.

Frank 013

Quote:
DH
Perhaps if you expected more out of the cosmos you'd experience something different? Perhaps if you allowed your wonder to expand beyond observation and into intimacy:

How would you accomplish something like that? My nature does not seem geared towards intimacy with something I can’t completly understand, and seems as hostile as it is giving.

Quote:
DH
in other words, not simply observing but really loving...and, in the process the cosmos responds with a sort of gracious hospitality:

Like how? Do you get super powers?

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DH
a prodigious invitation to join in relationship where intimacy and communion take the place of exploration and understanding...the cosmos is no longer simply a great spanse of stuff to learn about, but a loving partner to cherish and honor and care for.

Sounds like a long wait for a train that will not come.

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DH
Where does Frank start and Nature end?

Frank starts at consciousness and nature ends at instinct.

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DH
My experience is more mixed. The cosmos is gracious in billions of ways: cool breeze, warm sun, fresh water, fertile soil, luscious vegetation, ripe fruits, clean air, beautiful beasts, etc...

While I do appreciate those things I could also argue the opposite, freezing winds, scorching deserts, salty wastelands, inhospitable rocky regions, poisonous fruit, choking volcanic gasses, wild deadly and poisonous animals, viruses, bacteria, natural disaster, all are just as prevalent.

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DH
I think a great deal of our suffering is related to our lack of resourcefulness and indifference to the miseries of others. But, there is also extraordinary graces throughout the human experience too.

Undoubtedly.

Later

MadArchitect

Frank 013: This does make us less prone to delusion by basically saying that all views are equally valid; from the crazy Sally example to ones based off of evidence that is corroborated and tested by other people and science.

I'm certainly not arguing for a completely relativistic point of view; nor do I think the premises I've given lead inevitably to such a view. Why you feel some vested interest in portraying it that way is, naturally, your business.

The alternative -- at least, in the black and white terms you seem to favor -- is a point of view in which you view your perspective as the only valid option, to the degree that you're willing to dismiss out of hand anyone who disagrees. Much more practical, I'm sure.

Niall001: But people can make functional assumptions. I can say that on an ultimate level, all views are equally valid, regardless of whether or not they belong to Crazy Sally or Einstein. But when speaking within a specific agreed framework, I can say that (according to the agreed criteria) one view is better than another.

And that, as I understand it, is the very definition of the philosophical perspective known as pragmattism.

Frank 013: This is exactly my point, but Mad seems to want to defeat valid arguments by poking holes in the agreed framework.

What, precisely, is the agreed upon framework? Has someone made it explicit? Did I agree to it? Did everyone else take a vote?

But under the all views are arational stance, crazy Ann might have a valid point. Who knows maybe she has important information the rest of us are lacking?

You're still trying to fit it into a framework of pure reason. My point isn't that one person has more information than another. My point is that the values from which we derive our personal moral stances are not the result of an objective, external observation -- I don't value family because of anything I've seen in nature, but for reasons that are personal and need no argument. That's what I mean by arational. Someone also used the term pre-rational, and to some degree that conveys the same idea -- these are ideas to which we apply reason, but which we settle on before we begin the process of reasoning. And we may revise them by a process of criticism that involves reasoning, but even in those cases, we're revising them in reference to another arational or pre-rational premise.

On a strictly formal level, the same point is clear. All logical arguments begin with a premise or set of premises, and those premises are provided not by rational discourse, but simply granted.

Frank 013

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Niall
I feel the need to point out, that he did not seem to be arguing that the feelings one might have for their family are mystical in origin, but that they are alogical, meaning that the love you feel for those you care for is not the result of a rational analysis. Even if it were the case that our values were somehow built into us by nature, it would not mean that these values were rational. They would still be alogical.

Mad seems to have brought up the subject to derail any possible rational exploration, which he does at every turn. So I assumed he was doing it again.

But if you put the feeling of family or need for social interaction into context of a social species it is a logical conclusion and is not arational at all. The only real difference between the ways we feel and the way a dog feels it that we are conscious of it and attempt to verbalize it.

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Niall
Not considered mentally healthy? Who decides what's mentally healthy. Not all that long ago, homosexuals were considered mentally ill.

Can we agree that people who are a danger to themselves and others have some sort of mental issues?

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Niall
And even if it somehow we had some way of declaring things mentally healthy or unhealthy, what makes you think that hermits are mentally unhealthy?

People who separate themselves from society often have other mental illnesses and can be dangerous to themselves and others. They often demonstrate symptoms of other more serious mental illnesses even when they do not suffer from them.

But if you think that that is normal mentally healthy behavior than I have wasted my time typing this out.

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Niall
I don't accept the idea that social interaction is required in order to be happy. Yes, it is helpful for most people, but given that the desire for social interaction is a predisposition, it is not required.

Required, no, but sought after defiantly. And I think that most people would be completely unhappy without any social interaction.

In the movie castaway Tom Hanks’ character decided after several years of being alone that he would rather die than live alone for the rest of his life.

This element of the story carries believability for only one reason… we can relate to it.

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Niall
Take another adaptation, the desire to have sex. Now this is clearly an adaptation, but does it mean that those who do not have sex will be mentally unhealthy?

I think you and I are using the term adaptation in different ways, so what do you mean here by adaptation?

And while a person who does not have sex is not defiantly going to go bonkers the forced and willful denial of such urges has been known to manifest into deviant sexual behavior.

see sex in prisons or a catholic priest for references.

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Niall
Not really sure what you mean by this. Would you mind expanding a little?

Monogamy is something that humanity has attempted to impose on itself for social reasons.

Human society has implemented marriage and other rites that limit us to a single partner. This is not our natural condition but we adapted to it because it saves us a tremendous amount of trouble socially.

Later

MadArchitect

me: I'm certainly not arguing for a completely relativistic point of view; nor do I think the premises I've given lead inevitably to such a view. Why you feel some vested interest in portraying it that way is, naturally, your business.
Frank: If that is not your intent I can’t even imagine why you brought it up.

The answer is: I didn't. Either Mr. P or halofrisbeechamp brought it up; I don’t remember which. I simply responded to their mention of it.

When using all available real world evidence (and refraining from using the made up stuff) there really is just one valid option.

That again goes to the question of what counts as evidence. You couldn't assess "all available real world evidence" unless you had somehow limited that category to something manageable. Some scholars devote their entire lives to considering a single subject, and even they can't compass the entire category of "all available real world evidence", so I certainly don't expect either of us to.

me: You're still trying to fit it into a framework of pure reason.
Frank: Well duh? How else do propose we examine something?

Some other way, because there either is no such thing as pure reason, or there is and we don't have access to it. All human reason begins with premises that are arational, which dilutes the purity of the argument, to say the least.

This is still not valid; you value family because we are social creatures geared to by nature.

That claim itself is a cultural construct. You have no direct access to anything that would give you an objective view of human nature.

It's a pretty flawed cultural construct, for that matter, and evidence to that end is available daily. As I've pointed out above, people routinely hurt, betray, abandon, neglect and kill members of their family. So the idea that we are "social creatures" geared "by nature" to value family does nothing to explain why our behavior varies so much.

Imagine four people; call them Anthony, Beth, Carol and Dave. Anthony and Beth claim to value family; Carol and Dave claim not to. But each given an identical set of circumstances, Anthony and Carol make sacrifices to help a family member, while Beth and Dave sacrifice the well being of their family members, even when the benefit they would accrue is null. All four of those personalities are feasible -- I'd go so far as to bet that we can all identify people we know who resemble each of the four -- but the assertion that humans are geared "by nature" to "value family" does nothing to explain the differences in what each espouses and how each behaves.

In its extreme form, what you've argued implies a total disconnect between belief and action. Some people claim not to value family -- does that make any difference in light of their genetic predisposition? The logical conclusion of the argument that says that nature cooks up belief is that we behave because we're hard-wired to behave, and nothing that we can consciously espouse will change the way that we'll behave.

It is true that we as conscious beings can decide what kind of social units are most attractive to us, but this does not remove the need for social interaction, and It doesn’t support Mad’s “mystical” explanation either.

What, precisely, was my "mystical" explanation? I'm really interested to know. Give me a paraphrase. I haven't, to my knowledge, suggested any explanation that would qualify by the furthest stretch of the imagination as mystical.

Niall: Even if it were the case that our values were somehow built into us by nature, it would not mean that these values were rational. They would still be alogical.

Thanks, Niall. Maybe that's a point I needed to clarify.

That you can find a rational explanation for a previously held belief doesn't make it rational. A belief is rational if it's arrived at by a process of reasoning. Even if you took every rational belief that you've ever arrived at and strung them all together, such that the conclusion of one argument supplied the premises for the next argument, they would still all proceed from an initial argument, the premise of which was not supplied by rational argument.

Then, if you turned around and started providing rational arguments in support of that initial premise, you could only do so by assuming other arational premises in support of that initial premise -- unless, that is, you supported that initial premise by reference to some conclusion in the rest of the string, in which case your entire argument would become circular.

Of course, no one ever actually does it that way, so the result is that most people don't end up with a huge string of arguments that can all be traced back to a single, alogical premise, but rather have a collection of arguments that are loosely connected (and sometimes unconnected), founded upon a collection of multiple arational premises.

Frank 013: Mad seems to have brought up the subject to derail any possible rational exploration, which he does at every turn.

Either, you and I mean different things by “rational exploration”, or this is another rhetorical device you’ve employed in order to dismiss everything that I write to this board. I provide references for most of my facts, and present my arguments in a form that would be easy to map as symbolic logic, so I hardly see how you can accuse me of attempting to derail rational discussion.

The only real difference between the ways we feel and the way a dog feels it that we are conscious of it and attempt to verbalize it.


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