tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post7322982694579792539..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: More PluralismDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-25960594025079278492011-12-28T11:46:50.238-08:002011-12-28T11:46:50.238-08:00It's strange, I think my pluralism may derive ...It's strange, I think my pluralism may derive from the habits I acquired training in analytic philosophy (a vantage from which I tend to be excoriated as a menacing relativist now), namely, coming upon a recalcitrant conflict, tension, paradox, either change your mind or propose a distinction to relieve the thing. Again, I get it that you are annoyed by Christian fundamentalists of the American variety, I mean, as an atheist, faggot, lefty, feminist, pacifist, vegetarian I have the ire of no small few of their ugliest and most hypocritical factions aimed at me fairly conspicuously. I must say, though, I do think these people are a more marginal minority than the attention they receive merits, that they are more ambivalent and susceptible of sense in a diversifying, secularizing society than the attention they receive suggests, and definitely they are idiosyncratic enough in their sects neither to be treated as representative of "religiosity" in general or monolithic in their own practice. Not all bad parenting and proselytizing is child abuse -- or, better, all heteronormative child rearing skirts the edge of child abuse in ways with which our society has yet to come to terms while reaping endlessly the harvest of abuse in damaged humans. To attribute that uniquely to religion or Christianity would miss the mark, the sanity of the progressive education movement has been a casualty of neoliberal looting and racist reaction, for both of which the tide has turned leaving us to contemplate the work of a long generation that will bury us long before it's done. I disagree with your certainty that a faith in heavenly resurrection renders those who hold it bad faith actors in such work, since I have observed people of faith are a diverse lot, even if I will admit that I became an atheist while still very young the moment I realized that the presumed existence of hell made me morally superior to the Christian God and my researches into the varieties of religious experience seemed little different from my researches at the same time of varieties of sensory experience, if you will, and came to the conclusion that the whole lot is better conceived a matter of aesthetics and for ethnographers.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-14803803526756567812011-12-28T07:13:37.034-08:002011-12-28T07:13:37.034-08:00> I don't agree that all forms of religious...> I don't agree that all forms of religious faith are incommensurable<br />> with the proper defense of consensus science. . .<br />><br />> I'm an atheist myself but I'm also an aesthete and I have no <br />> trouble squaring the idea that true beliefs that yield prediction<br />> and control should emerge from testable hypotheses attracting<br />> a public consensus of conviction while true beliefs that yield<br />> beauty should make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up<br />> or enable me to empathize with a lifeway that had hitherto been<br />> too alien to me to connect to. . .<br /><br />I understand what you're saying here, of course.<br /><br />I guess it depends on which "magisterium's" (as S. J. Gould<br />put it) "true beliefs" take precedence when they come into<br />conflict. It probably doesn't matter much (except as as<br />an unfortunate symptom) when ordinary people dismiss evolution<br />as the only intellectually compelling framework for the<br />origin and development of life. The advice of a cardiologist<br />is a subject on which **most** (but not all) folks would<br />accept "beliefs" deriving (somewhat loosely, as always<br />in medicine) from the "true beliefs that yield prediction"<br />of modern science.<br /><br />But matters of, say, child rearing, is an area in which<br />religious folks are all too likely to ignore the advice<br />of experts, however well attested by the evidence. Also,<br />of course, public policy as it impinges on matters of,<br />say, sexual morality. I hardly need to give examples of<br />that sphere! (But an unfortunate recent one was the<br />overriding by the Secretary of Health and Human Services<br />of a decision by the FDA to approve over-the-counter<br />sales of a "morning after" pill. Whatever the excuse may<br />have been, you **know** it was a political one driven by<br />a perceived need to avoid a confrontation with the<br />religious right.)<br /><br />Certainly, one's view of the significance of future events<br />on Earth must be substantially altered if one **really**<br />believes that mortal existence is a "vale of tears"<br />destined to end sooner rather than later with all<br />the best people being reborn in indestructible bodies<br />living for eternity in a transcendent reborn reality.<br />(One wonders, though, how many people **really** believe<br />this, whatever they may profess in public -- it does<br />go against the grain of common sense, as well it<br />might!).<br /><br />And of course, as Bertrand Russell said in an interview,<br />"I get letters constantly from people saying 'Oh, God<br />will look after it.' But he never has in the past!<br />I don't know why they should think he will in the future."jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com