ID as a Cultural Phenomenon (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 02:40 (5539 days ago) @ dhw

Matt: The biggest reason I originally became an atheist, wasn't due to evolution or any other such phenomenon. I made a connection: what religion a person follows is largely determined by where you're born.
> 
> I sometimes wonder if the course of my own beliefs doesn't run perversely against the current. Darwin changed me (quite early in my life) from being an atheist to being an agnostic, and the connection that turned you towards atheism doesn't have the same effect on me, though your argument gives ample grounds for not accepting any ONE religion. Virtually every culture I know of entertains belief in some force outside our everyday material reality...-I suppose my thoughts here deserve a deeper look. The reason that the relativity strikes at me so much is that it is extremely easy to forget the shaping influence of society. Why I love Nietzsche? He points out with an almost cruel level of consistency, the fact that no one escapes society. No one. The story of god (to me) is one of religion... at one time God(s) were the explanation for absolutely everything. Pagan and animist cultures have a pretty constant tendency to build a mythology from important events, I forget the name of this fascinating documentary I recently watched. The people had an annual tradition of chopping down a tree, stripping it of limbs, and then sticking it back upright, the men would climb it, tie vines to their feet and then leap off. The reason: In the tribal history, a woman was beaten by her husband and finally left him; he chased her and as she lept a gorge holding a vine, her husband didn't and fell to his death. -So while what you say is true, that almost all cultures believe in something spiritual, this something is so incredibly vague and abstract that it becomes meaningless. (I uh... didn't think all THAT up as a kid though.) -My main reason for this line of probing is because to me, a truth can only be truth if it remains such regardless of your frame of reference. In a previous conversation with George, I spoke of certain constants such as PI. While he still might maintain that they are artificial, to me the number itself is meaningless compared to the fact that there IS a constant. -
> You are under the impression that ID is "a response to be able to hold onto both science and religion", in the sense that those who believe in it are really seeking a scientific justification for their innate beliefs. One can, of course, equally argue that rejection of ID ... which I equate with acceptance of chance ... is a response by atheists seeking a scientific justification for their innate disbeliefs (probably more prevalent on this side of the Atlantic than on yours). Both sides claim that science is on their side, whereas you and I know that science is (supposed to be) neutral. My subjective view of ID is that it has a believable premise (the complexity of life) leading to a shaky argument (some indefinable being), whereas atheism has the solid premise of the material world, and the shaky argument that life's complexities could fashion themselves. I can't base beliefs on shaky arguments, and so I stick in the middle, but that makes me wrong one way or the other, so it's nothing to be proud of!
> -I do designate a specific difference between the ID "movement" and the argument for design. One is a vile political machine, the other is an honest philosophical quest for a designer. I'll try to be consistent but when I mean the political entity it's usually ID whereas what David professes to me is simply "Design." I do not apply one set of arguments from them to people like David. -As an agreement and slightly different take on your post, we are the same; but being in a state of unsurety to me is something that over the past few years is something of a badge of courage. Few people are willing to admit they don't know and fewer still are actually comfortable with it. And to be frank; there's nothing to be right or wrong about here. Keep in mind that my Buddhist training has made me quite accepting of the "middle way" between materialism and immaterialism, and I'd rather be in the place to identify perspective as perspective than to be concretely "right." I cannot accept an unstudyable prime-cause and I cannot also accept the precepts of raw materialism. -> (I've just read your post under "Two sides". Thank you. I will try to reply in the next day or so.)

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"