Secular faith

[GSOgymrat]

OK. But if you offer an understanding in universal terms as a solution as opposed to another in symmetry (finitude as opposed to the eternal soul), you are pointing out some sort of a possible utopia. That's why I am saying it is doable? The bolded part is exactly how religions define the existance and neccessity of evil and so 'sin'. Because 'without evil there is no good'. I mean it automatically falls down to that category, because it is a stipulation.

That's a good point. From my perspective, finitude (what I've referred to in previous posts as impermanence) is as close as one can get to fact, where eternal is entirely theoretical. There is nothing in the universe that I'm aware of that doesn't change; everything is affected by relative time and motion. I don't consider finitude and eternal to be equal opposites. I feel like human beings have to face the fact of finitude and a coping skill is to deny its existence by believing in something eternal, despite there being no evidence of permanence in the physical universe or the process of human consciousness.

BTW, I wanted to say that I appreciate your comments because I recognize that you see things in a very different way than I do.

[drunkenshoe]

That's a good point. From my perspective, finitude (what I've referred to in previous posts as impermanence) is as close as one can get to fact, where eternal is entirely theoretical. There is nothing in the universe that I'm aware of that doesn't change; everything is affected by relative time and motion. I don't consider finitude and eternal to be equal opposites. I feel like human beings have to face the fact of finitude and a coping skill is to deny its existence by believing in something eternal, despite there being no evidence of permanence in the physical universe or the process of human consciousness.

Yep, constant change. When you say, coping skills. Desire to avoid pain and rejection in simple terms. I just wondered if that was Hägglund's initial departure point. We are subjected to bombardment of visual stimulations of news of shocking events, atrocities, every kind of violence and through mass communication we experience the hopelessness in a grand, whole scale. (30 years ago people didn't have this. I remember the times we haven't had any of this.) So trying to avoid pain is far more difficult for everyone today from early ages. In a way, the 'depressed state of mind' becomes the personality of the thinking individual. It's a far more stronger drive today, isn't it? We try to do it consciously. And that transforms the simple details of daily life too. And people need more effective ways to cope. Probably, even the social media movements created by young generations could be linked to this.

Having said all that, I haven't suceeded with meditation yet. It doesn't work on me. But I'm told to work on it and that I'm not taking it seriously. ? 

BTW, I wanted to say that I appreciate your comments because I recognize that you see things in a very different way than I do.

Same here. Thanks. :)

[aitm]

I readily admit a determined passion to not just discount ideas of “faith” “spirituality” and religions in specific whether secular or not. And I also readily admit my position to ignoring such ideas as a purposeful avoidance of such, particularly due to my lack of intellect and not wanting to understand the various positions.

Simplicity in as much a Occam’s razor, could suggest all our efforts to uncover what makes humanity human is far simpler. While half the world lives in terror of their immediate neighbors trying to kill them in the night, or desperately scratching for some morsel of food simply to survive another hour, or speaking in hushed voices lest a wayward sentence be met with a bullet or sword, the other half has no understanding of how wealthy they are just to be able to sleep without fear, to know you have enough to eat for a week, to be able to speak relatively fear without reprisal. These  are those who ponder the ego driven need to be something more perhaps than we are. The other half cares not at all to these speculations or beliefs. Existence is sometimes hour by hour....ain’t got time for this shit. 😉

[drunkenshoe]

I readily admit a determined passion to not just discount ideas of %u201Cfaith%u201D %u201Cspirituality%u201D and religions in specific whether secular or not. And I also readily admit my position to ignoring such ideas as a purposeful avoidance of such, particularly due to my lack of intellect and not wanting to understand the various positions.

Simplicity in as much a Occam%u2019s razor, could suggest all our efforts to uncover what makes humanity human is far simpler. While half the world lives in terror of their immediate neighbors trying to kill them in the night, or desperately scratching for some morsel of food simply to survive another hour, or speaking in hushed voices lest a wayward sentence be met with a bullet or sword, the other half has no understanding of how wealthy they are just to be able to sleep without fear, to know you have enough to eat for a week, to be able to speak relatively fear without reprisal. These  are those who ponder the ego driven need to be something more perhaps than we are. The other half cares not at all to these speculations or beliefs. Existence is sometimes hour by hour....ain%u2019t got time for this shit. %uD83D%uDE09

I completely agree with you on the real life dynamics. That's the reason behind my initial response. That's not lack of intellect, aitm, that's a specific attitude you have and it is very valuable. However, they are not that seperate as you might think.

First of all, the reason that theoretical thinking -certain fields- was able to develop in the Western cvilisation because real life conditions have reached a certain standard. People do not worry about being bullied, harassed, or killed for speaking and publishing research or thought, opinion.

The other thing is, everything that now sounds -or is- intellectual, abstract in high levels, complicated, difficult to follow...blah blah -contemporary or historical- is born out of physical relation between things -natural or human made- and humans' relationships with them.  There is no such concept or thought in human history that was born out of thinking alone. 

If you try to trace back the evolution of the concept of secularism as we know today, you'd end up with Catholic-Protestant fights on literal vs allegorical vs symbolical cyclic interpretations of some ritual based on eating a man god's flesh and drinking his blood. Because that's one of the main contexts you need to go to understand how human thought evolved to create modern secularism, while the concept of context is born out of looking for forged documents, objects, seals...etc.

Bottom line, we don't really need much to live in prosperity, let alone to survive. And at that point, it looks like besides the law and STEM, the rest is bullshit. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Because we are made of bullshit and that bullshit is very important and closely attached to how we shape that reality so we woldn't get killed for expressing an opinion or pursuing a world vision.

[GSOgymrat]

The other half cares not at all to these speculations or beliefs. Existence is sometimes hour by hour....ain’t got time for this shit. 😉

If that is true, why are poverty and religious belief highly correlated? Death and loss are universal concerns that each individual and society must deal with. I don't consider this topic to be abstract or only the purview of philosophers. One strategy when faced with death is to believe that this life doesn't really matter, that good people transition into a better existence. This belief has consequences. If I sincerely believed that my behavior in this life determined my fate for eternity I would be a hermit because almost all sins are the result of interactions with others. A lifetime of deprivation is insignificant compared to eternity, which is exactly what religions are selling. Poverty and suffering become virtues for the religious, however for the secularists these are problems to be addressed.

[aitm]

Perhaps poorly worded, or just to lazy to elaborate, GSO. The real impoverished, those multitudes in other countries have the one faith, religion or whatever snake they may find agreeable, but most likely they have no interest, time, or the safety of discussing secular thingamajiggies. While you and I can munch on a bag of ghost pepper pistachios and sip on a raspberry white claw and ponder such important questions that our egos think are necessary in order to place us in the category of worthy or unworthy beings. Their lives, is of the moment, are worth living and those around them that can assist in that are also worth living. No doubt there are many chained, or worse, even at a young age who see no evidence of the use of living.
We are mere animals trying desperately to remove us from that reality by imagining a spiritual presence that does not exist.

[GSOgymrat]

I highlight and save things that I find interesting. Today I came across an article I clipped from a newspaper in 2010 titled "Curmudgeon Looks At The Great Beyond." Some of the quotes:

"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." - Susan Ertz

"The Baptists believe in The Right to Life before you're born. They also believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by spending the interim in guilt-ridden misery. At an early age, I decided that living a life of pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it's over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end." - A. Whitney Brown

"It's a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste." - Evelyn Waugh

"I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." - Isaac Asimov

"He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt." - Joseph Heller