Thomas Paine. Perhaps my favorite figure from history and arguably THE reason the Revolutionary War was waged. He does not get enough recognition or credit. He was way ahead of his time...er...well seeing as what we are working with today...may be ahead of this time as well. So I read a few paragraphs in his park. Also had a rabbit hanging out with me, not scared or skittish.

Bordentown NJ - What a wonderful historic town.

An early example of politics taking the place of religion as a lens with which to interpret meaning and a subject to argue about.

I don't see it as a direct replacement for religion. If anything, just how to use the power of ourselves as inspiration.

Not a direct replacement, no. But meaning structures only come in a few varieties, and one of the features of the Enlightenment was a kind of replacement among the thinking elites, setting aside religion but picking up political humanism and skepticism of traditional aristocracy.

Oddly enough, the church was a hotbed of intellectualism replacing piety or genuine faith. In a book I read long ago, possibly by Roger Tawney, it went into the replacement process during the 1700s. Because Anglican clergy were appointed by the local nobility, many of them vied for status with their erudition, the more impenetrable the better. Proud of sermons that put everyone (including the local nobility) to sleep.

John Wesley's Methodist revival was largely in response to that folderol.

Harry Marks wrote:Not a direct replacement, no. But meaning structures only come in a few varieties, and one of the features of the Enlightenment was a kind of replacement among the thinking elites, setting aside religion but picking up political humanism and skepticism of traditional aristocracy.

Well, it can be said that we have been going in circles since we started becoming modern humans. Maybe even before then. Myth as a structure for what we do not understand of reality, becomes religion, becomes humanism as we understand more.

I do not deny that there were free thinkers in the church of this or that religion. I always wonder how much they were restrained, either by coercion or self restraint.

On the topic Harry mentioned, a writer in the April Atlantic digs into some implications of the fading of religion. He does say that politics/ideology tends to take on a substitute role.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... on/618072/

I briefed the article but will try to read in full.

One reason we are where we are now is... The side that's dying is fighting with every last breath. Consolidation in this country to the red states, land mass rich but population poor, vs blue states is driving this current political divide. Going to their corners so to speak, hopefully a last gasp of those who would hold us all back so they can still compete with their fictions. Maybe we are in a true transitional state.

Maybe not. People, as long as they embrace their ignorance, may be doomed to this type of existence eternally.

I think of myth, superstition, religion, humanism as not replacing each other, but a natural growth of how we exist in reality based on how much we have learned.

Mr. P wrote:Myth as a structure for what we do not understand of reality, becomes religion, becomes humanism as we understand more.

Well, greater understanding of the world certainly makes authority claims for myth-based religion more difficult. But the mystical side doesn't necessarily draw on the myth-based description. There's some interesting investigation being done into the more holistic, right-brain approach to life and how it may offer more wisdom about the living of life than science offers.

The interesting transition I would underline is the one you mention from myth to religion. When people of faith began to turn the question, "Why did the gods release such a horrible disaster on us?" into the question, "What does a divine rule-giver and oath-enforcer really want from us?" we began to have access to a powerful set of questions about society and relationship.

Some prefer their questioning to be explicitly self-conscious, not happening through stories and imagined conversations. That's fair enough, but it comes mostly from the left-brain, checking-things-more-carefully approach to thought. And therefore, if it is not done with more holistic priorities in mind, it can rip apart real wisdom while never realizing it did anything except check truth-claims.

I blame the church's authority-based approach to its handling of mystical language and thinking. The fragmentation of the right-brain relationship to life made an extension of empire out of what started as an alternative to empire.

Mr. P wrote:I briefed the article but will try to read in full.

One reason we are where we are now is... The side that's dying is fighting with every last breath. Consolidation in this country to the red states, land mass rich but population poor, vs blue states is driving this current political divide. Going to their corners so to speak, hopefully a last gasp of those who would hold us all back so they can still compete with their fictions. Maybe we are in a true transitional state.

Yes, the authoritarian impulse is a huge part of religion's appeal, and if left untempered by grace it is a toxic part. People want to know how to live "correctly". And the more they perceive life to be riddled with vague, amorphous threats over which there is no hope of control, the more they want to take refuge in a sense that the decisions they made in their life are the right ones.

It sort of stands to reason that the people who have least sense of understanding of where we are and where we are going will also have the greatest need for an external source of validation. And of course that makes them vulnerable to manipulation by the ultra-rich who pay mouthpieces to rail against godless communism and other threats to their psychical structural integrity.

A lot of modern thinking has gone into expression of religious wisdom without the brittle, denial-of-reality dependence on illusions of external validation. Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, for example, studied with professors who were morally and spiritually vibrant without sacrificing intellectual values. The average ignoramus, of course, has no interest in understanding any of this reformulation. It just sounds like a threat to their view of life.

Mr. P wrote:Maybe not. People, as long as they embrace their ignorance, may be doomed to this type of existence eternally.

I think of myth, superstition, religion, humanism as not replacing each other, but a natural growth of how we exist in reality based on how much we have learned.

I hope you are right. The Four Horsemen and other militant atheists have not demonstrated great openness to holistic approaches to life's deep questions. As long as they can stay on the "solid rock" of issues of fact, they feel secure. Unfortunately they also have to live life in the real world, where issues of fact are usually not the most important issues to be addressed. Even Sam Harris, for whom I have tremendous respect, falls more easily into the "move fast and break things" mentality of the 90s than into the priorities of a genuine quest for wisdom.

Harry Marks wrote: I hope you are right. The Four Horsemen and other militant atheists have not demonstrated great openness to holistic approaches to life's deep questions. As long as they can stay on the "solid rock" of issues of fact, they feel secure. Unfortunately they also have to live life in the real world, where issues of fact are usually not the most important issues to be addressed. Even Sam Harris, for whom I have tremendous respect, falls more easily into the "move fast and break things" mentality of the 90s than into the priorities of a genuine quest for wisdom.

This strikes me as defining what I've been uncomfortable with regarding these writers, so thanks. It also occurs to me that certain members of the humanist class look down on aspects of religious faith as frailties, notions that would not be necessary if people would courageously lash themselves to fact and reason. But what if devotion to reason/science could itself be called a frailty, that is, just as much of a potential mind-monopoly as thinking by the guidance of faith revelation? At the advent of the Enlightenment, the humanists gained the upper hand in the debate, but that doesn't mean they've won.

Any one-sided, all encompassing, shut off way of thinking is to be received with skepticism. While I agree that there is a militant, ignorant faction within the humanist worldview, it's just not that pervasive and, personally, not reflected in my thoughts today.

However, I do respect what Dawkins, Hitch, Dennett, and Harris have brought to the table over the past decades. But in no way do these folks exert any hold on me more than others I also read, and I feel confident that I am not in any danger of anything close to a mind-monopoly. In fact, I find that this concern is often a strawman erected by those who wish to defend against the decline of religious and superstitious paradigms. Whataboutism.

I do not even use the term atheist or humanist anymore, because a label is the shortest path to being caught in a meaningless position. I am not a label, I am a conversation.

There is room for more when searching for meaning in life that facts and science. But shit sure science and facts need to be considered. What I find concerning is the complete disregard of facts, truth, and science these days by those obviously wanting, so desperately needing, to remain in their outdated mind-monopolies.

Religion has modernized in many ways, but many are still using the old ways to justify horrid behaviors. That needs to end. There are very profound thinkers that came from religious institutions that moved fact and reason forward. I do not deny that. Shoot, I am even happy with the current Pope.

But in my view, no one has done more to progress our species more than those that became prominent in the time of the enlightenment and since. And I personally do not come across many folks, at least not those that I 'follow' and respect, that preclude views or beliefs other than fact and reason in speaking to the complexity of human existence.