How and Why (Religion)

by dhw, Monday, February 21, 2011, 19:46 (4811 days ago)

There is an interesting dialogue going on between David and Matt, as Matt works his way through David's book. I hope you won't mind if I extract one theme from your posts to start a different thread.-DAVID: The 'why' issue is central to my attempt. And in my thinking as you know, the amazing 'hows' point to a 'why'.-MATT: Don't get me wrong. I'm not necessarily against asking the questions, but they're also necessarily subjective. [...] For me, how questions are always much more important than why questions. [...] I think I need to treat this a little further. WHY questions generally don't have an answer. Therefore ... they don't move you forward.-This subject has more than one layer, but they all tie in with our epistemological framework (a thread which died a sudden death, but which I hope to come back to eventually). You are, of course, quite right that the 'why' is necessarily subjective, but you will see at a glance from the edited quotes above, that your priorities are equally subjective ("For me..."). I think they are also misleading, because all discussions depend on contexts, and in your everyday life the balance between how and why may easily be reversed. For instance, in your post of 20 February at 20.38, you resolve to take up meditation again because you have lost some of your concentration and self-control. You hope to regain these because you want to raise your kids properly and be a good teacher. Motivation (= why) would therefore seem to be a "much more important" factor than finding out HOW, e.g. how meditation affects those little grey cells. Priorities always depend on contexts. By the same token, why shouldn't we argue that we are here, HOW we got here is of secondary importance, and life is all about WHY we are here? (Raising your kids properly and being a good teacher might be an answer.)-On a religious level, if how we got here leads to the conclusion of an impersonal chance origin (atheism), of course we can forget about 'why'. There obviously isn't a 'why' outside our personal scale of values. But if the conclusion is design, 'why' is an inevitable question, unless we can somehow expunge the natural curiosity that makes us ask 'how' in the first place. The fact that it leads to crazy religious conflicts is counterbalanced to a degree by the good that religion does, but in either case you can hardly argue that the 'why' doesn't move people forward. It doesn't move YOU forward. Nor, I should add, does it move me, because I share your preference for making my own way. And if I speculate on the nature of a possible God, I find it difficult to share David's anthropocentric interpretation of evolution (another form of 'why'). But the effect of this 'why' on conventional believers is hardly any different from that of meditation on you. Different minds, different beliefs, different motivating forces, and no hierarchy beyond that of what is important to each individual.