Steve,
I am happy to drink, but not because it improves the quality of my
thought.
There is an idea lurking in this discourse about Whiskey, roughly
*/In vino veritas/*
*//*
Do you think that you think better, in some respects, when you are
drinking?
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On
Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 11:24 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] just faith
I am closer in age/experience to Nick/Eric than the presumed youth
generation in question but am also, myself, more a "None" than an
"Athiest".
It is not (in my case) that I have too many other things going on
(though I do have plenty), it is rather, that I'm not a joiner.
Perhaps I "would not be a member of any club that would have me", but
more to the point, I have always found even the most *inclusive* clubs
to be
*exclusive* at the end of the day. I took a short run at attending
the Los Alamos "Universal Unitarians" only to find that the binding
feature was "more tolerant than though" and I frankly could not
tolerate that kind of intolerance! Ultimately clubs are not defined
by what you
believe in but defined by what you don't. Or in the case of
MonoTheistic religions, it may seem that belief in their "one true GOD"
is the defining factor, it is really the complement... that you are
excluded by lack of belief in their God/Prophet/GravenImage/etc.
In the case of Athiesm... I was drawn to it the first time I heard of
it.. *I* wanted to belong to a club whose definition was the *lack* of
belief in "One True God" but it didn't take long for me to discover
that the existing "card carrying Athiests" also defined their "club"
in the exclusive... to wit, you had to firmly (and vehemenently)
*disbelieve* in any and all Gods to keep your good standing. Card
carrying Athiests, when confronted with the likes of me had to
force-fit me into the club of "Agnostics" because if I wasn't as
anti-God as they were then I must be a wishy washy fence-sitter (e.g.
Agnostic).
These distinctions may seem subtle, but they are very real for me.
I share what I understand to be Doug's position regarding Religion
only not so strongly... and occasionally (only when Doug writes or
speaks on the topic) suspect him of being a proselyte from the
Reformed Church of
Cynicism. As with the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Sikhs, Musims
and Adi Dharmists, I am much more inclined to let card-carrying Cynics
through my door to try to complete my conversion (as I do have and
express sympathies with all the above Religions from time to time) if
they are also carrying a nice bottle of Whiskey, Bourbon, Gin or
Tequila to lubricate the conversation.
Oddly, only a very few proselytes of any religion seem to allow or the
ingestion of strong spirits (poisoning the body, mind, soul?). This
is what draws me most perhaps to "the modern Cynics" (as opposed to
the classical version with which I think I have even more affinity in
their pursuit of "Virtue in alignment with Nature"). If I were a true
child of the sixties, I would perhaps require them to be carrying some
yet-more-toxic and mystical-experience-inducing substances... but I'm not.
It all started perhaps when I refused a draft card, now it is tamer as
I refuse the AARP card I suppose, but the principle holds. I only
wish I'd had the temerity to refuse the Social Security card.
- Steve
> Well atheism would only convey a negation of belief (in God) to me. My
> religious model has no problem accommodating atheists, and contrawise
> I have no problem with an atheist's belief model built around no-God
> (or Gods or gods or GOD ...). As long as it functions its irrelevant
> whether a car (or religion) runs on gasoline or horse-manure or hot
> air.
>
> My religion (loosely called "Adi Dharm") originally reduced the 330
> million "gods" of Hinduism down to one ("Brahma" the absolute
> reality). Having done that very successfully we were forced to go
> underground in the previous century, and a not insignificant portion
> of our adherents became "godless" Communists. Today we don't have a
> conception of a God as a father / creator figure. Instead we conceive
> God as "the" principle which regulates existence/ the uinivers/
> multiverse/ parallel worlds or whatever. Deus is the "mechanism behind
> the clock" and not the "clock maker". The issue is whether atheists
> also acknowledge that there is a principle (or law . or set of laws)
> which govern "their" universe.
>
> I agree with Eric, newer generations are not interested in
> philosophical systems any more or artificial religious categories.
> There are too many other things going on in their lives.
>
> On 9/17/12, Nicholas Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net
<mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net>> wrote:
>> Sarbajit,
>>
>> Given your range of experiences with the religious, I am curious for
>> your reflections on atheism as a religion. When push comes to shove,
>> are we atheists any the less religious, in the very broadest senses
of that term?
>> In what ways?
>>
>> Nick
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>
[mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]
<mailto:[mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]> On
>> Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
>> Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 8:51 AM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] just faith
>>
>> Platinga's view is fairly well aligned with the beliefs of my own
>> faith even though our "God" may be different. We all develop our own
>> models of reality, apparently the trick is to ensure that these
>> models are robust enough accommodate everybody else's gremlins,
>> devils, zombies, or maulvis and still continue to function.
>>
>>
>>
>> I probably know more Muslim's personally then half the members on
>> this list.
>> My neighbour is a Muslim and I also employ Muslims. India is a
>> secular country whose 13% Muslim population is free to migrate
>> anywhere in the world which will take them in - not many do. India's
>> Muslims when asked (by foreigners such as the BBC or the NYT) usually
>> volunteer they consider themselves to be better off in India
>> vis-a-vis their brethren in Muslim countries like Pakistan or Iran
>> (notwithstanding the occasional bouts of communal frenzy which
>> develop over pigs feet or beef entrails being thrown by the butchers
>> of each community).
>>
>>
>>
>> India was ruled for over 200 years by Muslims as was China (Yuan
dynasty).
>> America probably needs to experience Muslim rule for some time to
>> develop a sustainable and robust reality model. The "Dune" SF series
>> was heavily influenced by Islamic models.
>>
>>
>>
>> OT: Interestingly, "Islamic science fiction" is an emergent
>> discipline in the Arabic world to attract younger followers to the
>> world of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
>>
>>
>>
>> Sarbajit
>>
>>
>>
>> On 9/17/12, Roger Critchlow < <mailto:r...@elf.org> r...@elf.org
<mailto:r...@elf.org>> wrote:
>>
>>> Reading
>>>
>>> <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/philosopher-de
>>> fen>
>> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/philosopher-defe
>> n
>>
>>> ds-religion/
>>> was
>>> a rather odd experience this week, mixed in with Sam Bacile, the
>>> Salafists, the zombies, and whatever.
>>> The review is by a non-believer (Thomas Nagel) who finds the book,
>>> written by a believer (Alvin Plantinga), very interesting, even
>>> though he doesn't believe it. Plantinga's day job is analytic
>>> philosophy, so he gets very precisely into what he thinks it is that
>>> his faith and his beliefs do for him. Finally, the main argument is
>>> sort a grand slam of creationism: we wouldn't be able to correctly
>>> figure out how the world works if the deity, more specifically the
>>> deity that Plantinga
>> believes in, wasn't helping us
>>
>>> along the way. Why would natural selection by itself care anything
>>> about
>>> the truth?
>>> As the reviewer says: "The interest of this book, especially for
>>> secular readers, is its presentation from the inside of the point of
>>> view of a philosophically subtle and scientifically informed
>>> theist-an outlook with which many of them will not be familiar."
>>> -- rec --
>>
>>
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>>
>>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures,
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org