politics is the new religion

This quote by Feuerbach, apparently from The Essence of Christianity (1841), 

Individuality has replaced faith, reason the Bible, politics religion and the Church, the earth heaven, work prayer, poverty hell, and man Christ. 

 seems oddly relevant these days.

I don't think I'm identifying with it in the way Camus was but what's striking to me is the extent to which people are putting their efforts into politics instead of religion.  It really just feels like sacrificing your soul for table scraps.  I don't get it.

My main religion I guess is ancient Epicureanism followed by native/Spanish tinted pseudo catholicism but the thing is there's no way I'll exchange my personal commitments for the temporary commitments of the crowd.  

So many people seem to feel like things are so dire they must focus on politics.  And things really are dire which is all the more reason to double down on the religious sphere instead of the political sphere.

As our Stoic friend likes to say "The whole future lies in uncertainty, live immediately." 

get in where you fit in

Nath (the philosophical friend of ours) wrote about a “calling” being one reason for moving back to Utah from Seattle. I’m not sure what he meant by that and he didn’t clarify.

For me a calling isn’t something profound you get from a religious experience but simply what you get when you recognize who you are as a puzzle piece in the larger things happening around you. When you don’t find that spot or find that your puzzle piece doesn’t really fit anywhere you might feel life isn’t worthwhile.

You might also just have oversized expectations for meaning. This life has meager offerings and the religious narratives many of us were raised with no longer provide a whole lot when you can no longer personally take them seriously.

The meager offerings life provides are a context you’re born into and your genetics. Using these you can derive a lot of things about what you should do with your life. This is probably why I don’t feel like I lack direction though figuring out what to do may take some discovery.

Secondarily, if I look to what life aspires toward and give myself those things (food, shelter, exercise, health, growth, yada), I can take a sort of side path to give myself meaning. What does a body need? I better give body that stuff. Feeling like shit? probably better sleep on it.

The larger sense of meaning that many religious narratives seem to provide is something like your whole life being one big video game created specifically for you. In this video game every choice is uniquely designed for you and even if things don’t seem to make sense, in the end there’s a video game creator who will give you justice.

Even if some version of the video game narrative were true I don’t see how the “calling” would be a whole lot different. I’m mostly into pursuing the overlap between what you’re good at, what’s valuable to the world and what you find personally satisfying (assuming there is something in that space). All other routes including good for good’s sake, rationalistic pursuit of the good (or whatever) seem to have negative surprises along the path (ressentiment).

In any case, I know of no sense of meaning that can’t be demolished in an instant. Viktor Frankl seems to think there’s something special about how we endure suffering. I have a lot of respect for the guy but I’m brought back to Hölderlin:

“We speak of our hearts, of our plans, as if they were ours; yet there is a power outside of us that tosses us here and there as it pleases until it lays us in the grave, and of which we know not where it comes nor where it is bound.

We want to grow upward, and spread wide our branches and twigs, yet soil and weather bring us to whatever is to be, and when the lightning strikes your crown and splits you to the roots, poor tree! What part have you in it?”

essential things

Interesting letter from Einstein:

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluation of human behavior ... I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

Lincoln

We've been watching the PBS documentary "God in America" and it was interesting to hear their description of how Lincoln's attitude toward religion changed as the civil war progressed. Initially it sounds like his thoughts were roughly the same as Dylan's With God on Our Side. As the war progressed though, and casualties increased, he felt compelled to the belief that this was all God's plan, that God wanted the civil war and wanted the north to win.

I suppose it was the only way he could think to justify all that pain. I wonder what sorts of beliefs about the afterlife Lincoln held that could foster anything but disdain for the Christian God. Initially Lincoln was more of a deist but his later belief, according to the film, was in a more personal (and rather horrifying) God.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

more complications

A follow-up to my previous post.

So "the world" plays to our selfish default settings. But religions also often promote values that keep us surrounding ourselves with others who are self-same. The shared alternate values provide a balance of powers that may be a step forward for the individual who is hoping to escape a desire fulfillment prison but to be truly other centered or just to be able to understand and relate to diverse people, you have to spend time with them, and focus your energies on it. And know thyself.

To an extent this is what Jesus did, headed out and spent time with tax collectors, sinners, Samaritan women, loved his enemies, etc. But then we get phrases like “do not be yoked with unbelievers” coupled with (species preserving?) protective thinking which makes Christianity resemble just another in-group. To my mind, a properly Christian view of the world does seek to understand and relate to others but it has its limits. For instance, it lacks the resources to advocate a thorough existential exploration of opposing viewpoints.

Along with spending time with communities with divergent values there’s practicing regress-- assuming the truth of a perspective or belief in order to understand it. For all of us I assume the exercise is a pretense but there’s nothing in the perspective I operate from that would keep me from participating in explorations as thoroughly as possible. The kooky consilience is that these attempts to love and understand one another can coincide with a pursuit of objectivity akin to Nz’s perspectivism.

This synthesis makes sense to me, well, coupled with a willingness to play outside the lines. And a willingness just to be. And Listen. And Epochè. And Silence.

complicated relationship with religion

These thoughts are pretty incomplete but if I wait until I find them satisfying I'll probably never post them. I'll start with a few snippets from that David Foster Wallace article I posted a bit ago:

The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship...

Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.

By denying religion I don't thereby embrace the "values of this world". I often find the "values of this world" as annoying as religion's values and I generally think of religion's values as also the values of "the crowd". The values of the crowd need the values of other crowds. Balance of powers and all that.

It used to be that all education was dictated by or associated with the church. Some Oxford dons led me to believe the first separation of Church and state in regard to education came with Henry VIII (something about funding coming directly from the monarchy, they had a lot of positive things to say about ol' Henry). But we're still in danger of homogeny in regard to education. The state is also an agent of homogeny. Homogeny is at odds with freedom (and imagination -- viva Orwell/Huxley).

--
I'm a believer in external reinforcers and religions are what exists.

--
I'm more of a fan of the imitation of Christ (minus the bloody end) than following Christ. Why does the latter often preclude the former? The fear-driven life?

--
We were involved with religion because we are on a growth path and it was part of that path. The path went through religion but I don't deny that religion took us further along that path. If we remained in religion we would stagnate.

from Julian Young's Nietzsche biography

I picked up Young's new philosophical biography of Nietzsche recently (review in the nytimes) and I've been jumping around in it, picking different topics as they grab my interest. I'm trying to read it sequentially as well but the evolution of a thought grabs hold of me and then there I go, pillaging. So here's some plunder related to Nietzsche's view of religion:

Given, however, Nietzsche's enthusiasm for Plato's Republic, this picture of the philosopher as 'using' religion to social ends might seem to conjure up the idea of religion as a 'noble lie' and of the ruler as a cynical outsider who is himself not for a moment taken in by the 'pious fraud': a picture of the philosopher king as, like Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, all too aware that religion is the opium needed to control the masses while regarding it, himself, as nothing but superstition.
...
Actually, though, this cannot be Nietzsche's account of the philosophical leader, since, if it were, he would become indistinguishable from the 'free thinker': the man of 'modern ideas' who looks down upon religion 'with an air of superior, almost gracious amusement...mixed with slight contempt for what he assumes to be "uncleanliness" of spirit that exists when anyone supports a church'.
...
He will obey communal ethos, that 'morality' which is a function of the unique character, history, and current circumstances of his community.
...
[H]e will know that they are not the worse for that, that being fictions (or fictionalized versions of real people) impairs in no way their functioning as 'touchstones' of human excellence.

Nietzsche grasps here, I think, an important point about religious discourse: 'Jesus would never do that' can have just as much ethical force for someone who believes Jesus never existed as for someone who believes he did. As The Jane Austen Book Club illustrates, "This is what (Jane Austen's) Emma would do in this situation" can have ethical force. What this shows is that though religion might be a 'noble lie' told to the masses, this does not at all confine the enlightened ruler to cynical detachment. Rather, in reverencing the gods, he knows he is reverencing the best in his community. The situation is like that between mother and child: both can agree that 'Santa wouldn't like that' even though one knows Santa to be a fiction while the other believes him to be real.
...
[A] good religion must serve human well-being rather than, as with Christianity, subordinating human life to religious prescriptions damaging to human health. 'The gods' should serve man, not man the gods.

p. 430-431

So Young's Nietzsche is pro-religion though not pro-Christianity.

agents of positive change

modified from 10/10/2009

When I was younger and more Christiany I thought evangelical Christianity was the end all be all, that once someone "gave their life to Christ" they'd be all set. With experience came the realization that most the people who "gave their life to Christ" would live an existence that only varied slightly from the American norm. Studying the history of Christianity too showed me that though some were able to do incredible things with Christianity (e.g. Methodists in England pushing to stop slavery, MLK, Jr.), that Christianity itself was often impotent in the face of power or worse, used by the powerful to sedate and confuse the masses. Where I did see substantive positive differences they came mainly, I thought, from temperament and education (especially philosophical education).

After that, I went through a phase where it was hard for me to imagine someone who had studied epistemology and the history of philosophy yet remained content in his dogmatic slumbers reinforcing the status quo and still looking to repetition for answers. I didn't really expect all philosophers to be shining lights but at the least I expected them to understand how precarious and absurd our situation truly is. I was thoroughly disabused of that notion as I read and heard from philosopher after philosopher who clearly understood the material yet seemed to have plenty of psychological and rhetorical resources to keep them from any need to appropriate their knowledge.

At this point I assume as I pick other agents of positive change I'll just be corrected again and again; this must be my Sisyphus task. Imagining Sisyphus happy, I look for another. So what are the agents of positive change we can rely on?

I don't know. Different strokes for different folks? I do think some aspects of religion are the answer for some people at some times and the same for philosophy. They both teach types of discipline that can help us achieve goals and reorient ourselves in ways we require. The best answer, at this point, seems to be to put yourself in the place where there are the most external reinforces to move you in the direction you're trying to go.

And of course love, love is an agent of positive change. Gotta love love.

Pat Robertson gets screwtaped

here.

theology

An old "Jesus and Mo":
Naive bar maid or naive religious figureheads?

can you think of some ways to help him?

the road to economic prosperity is paved with ...

the belief in hell?


h/t Arts and Letters Daily

discussion of biblical inspiration and the character of God

Huenemanniac has a recent discussion that may be of interest to some readers of this blog. Rob Sica also provides a link to these interesting lectures from a philosophy of religion conference that are worth watching.

it bears repeating

Mormons, still the correct answer.

The Final Exam-Mormons are the answer
by samueltheutahnite

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon

Sarah has been reading this book, a favorite of a friend of ours. It's set in a tiny town in Idaho. I've been enjoying a second hand reading.

back from DC

While walking up to the Washington monument,



we came upon a street preacher.



He had a translator.



I made sure to get a copy of their tract. The guy who handed me the pamphlet asked me, "Are you from around here?" I answered "I'm an American if that's what you mean" and we walked away.

The tract tells an interesting story about Johnny.







The tract had a destiny.



I have a new bookmark.

Nz defends Church of Mike

Too Jewish.-- If God wished to become an object of love, he should have given up on judging and justice first of all; a judge, even a merciful judge, is no object of love. The founder of Christianity was not refined enough in his feelings at this point --being a Jew.

Nietzsche GS §140

Indeed. Luckily, the founder of Church of Mike dodged that bullet.

on Paul, Christianity, marketing and globalization

Rob Sica pointed out this somewhat rambley but interesting article in the April issue of The Atlantic. It's titled One World, One God (by Robert Wright) but it could also be called "Paul the apostle-marketer". Paul the apostle-marketer has a bit to teach us about how to thrive in an increasingly connected (globalized) world. Apparently the situation he (and others) faced is not so different from our own.

When people open a local franchise—a McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut—they do so because they expect to get something in return. What did people get in return for making their homes Christian franchises? In some cases, no doubt, it was mainly the benefit of the gospel; Lydia presumably found Paul’s initial teachings gratifying, and what additional benefits she got—social, economic, whatever—from hosting a church, we’ll never know. But as the franchising continued, and the church expanded to more and more cities, it offered new benefits to church leaders.

In particular: reliable lodging. Tents were adequate for overnight stays on the road, but when you reached the big city, nicer accommodations were desirable—especially if you planned to stay awhile and do business. Paul’s letters to Christian congregations often include requests that they extend hospitality to traveling church leaders. Such privileges, as the scholar E.A. Judge put it, were increasingly “extended to the whole household of faith, who [were] accepted on trust, though complete strangers.” This extension was a revolution of sorts, since “security and hospitality when traveling had traditionally been the privilege of the powerful.” The Roman Empire had made distant travel easier than at any time in history, and Christianity exploited this fact. The young church was, among other things, the Holiday Inn of its day.
...
[H]istory expands the range of non-zero-sum relationships—relationships in which two parties can both win if they collaborate, or lose if they don’t. Technological evolution (wheels, roads, cuneiform, alphabets, trains, microchips) has placed more and more people in non-zero-sum relationship with more and more other people at greater and greater distances—and often across ethnic, national, and religious bounds.
...
[E]ither people of different faiths, ethnicities, and nationalities get better at seeing the perspective of one another, and acknowledging the moral worth of one another, or chaos ensues

The main trick seems to be the extension of familial hospitality to any inside the church. I find the arbitrary trust in Christian communities both warm and unsettling. Warm because I like to give people (especially strangers) the benefit of the doubt. Unsettling when I see people manipulated by someone they trust because s/he claims to be Christian (they don't often become aware of the manipulation). For Paul that whole familial-trust thing was very useful. A distrust of people because they aren't exactly like us isn't warranted. Beyond that though, trust still needs to be earned.

conversion story

A commercial database practitioner sees the light.

Göbekli Tepe

Göbekli Tepe is an archeological dig in Turkey that, according to this article, may be the site of the Garden of Eden. The location now seems symbolic for the shift from hunter-gatherer to agriculture based societies. So, metaphorically, the knowledge of good and evil was knowledge of agricultural techniques and animal husbandry and something like overgrazing forced man out of the garden.