ID as a Cultural Phenomenon (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, October 03, 2009, 20:34 (5528 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,
> First of all, my apologies if I put words into your mouth. I used "invalidates", but "makes them meaningless" is not, I agree, quite the same thing.
> 
> You've used politics as an analogy, but again we're approaching the subject from completely different angles. You seem to be looking for precision where there can't be any, and I'm simply stating a possible explanation (no more than that) of mysteries. I certainly don't expect you to provide answers to these questions yourself! My analogy would be ten witnesses to an accident giving ten different accounts. The fact that their reports are different does not mean that the accident didn't happen, or that there is no objective truth beyond their subjective accounts. In other words, I'm suggesting that all these different religions and concepts may be seen as attempts to grasp the same ungraspable truth. Common agreement on the details is impossible, because if there really is a "soul" and an "ethereal presence" they are almost certainly beyond our philosophical and scientific reach. For a materialist, that makes them into fairy stories, but for a neutral like myself, they are no more and no less a fairy story than inanimate matter coming to life and giving itself evolutionary powers. My plea is not for belief in a soul or in an ethereal presence, but for open-mindedness towards concepts that have permeated human cultures since time immemorial. It's just possible that your "90% of the world" (I haven't counted) has cottoned onto something that your 10% has lost touch with.
> -For that I would ask if you've read some of my posts recently with David that involve my explorations into much of my ancestry's pagan heritage. Saying that I'm out of touch with mysticism; there's a connection there that cannot be ignored. A UI of the sort that David and you espouse... sounds much more out of touch with the more wild and human elements that moved man of old. The thoughts that come to mind when say, meditating on Odin, as well as the emotions that it evokes, is not something translatable, and indeed even as someone who purports to be "godless," I get a great deal of insight both meditating on this ancient mythos as well as others. The only difference between myself and someone who actually follows Asatru, is that I am both willing and ready to admit that both the emotions and images these old gods conjure, are completely within my own head; images that live and die only within me. (For the record, I'm not stating I worship Odin.) There's a human component to these old religions that creates a more vibrant and dare I say, sacred feeling, that is lost when the image of God becomes an "all-encompassing everything." I also get similar moving feelings when listening to medieval chants (specially those written by "Anonymous 4."), and certain books of biblical Apocrypha. I almost take offense to the suggestion that I'm not being open-minded. My study of religion is probably more extensive than my knowledge of computers and math. -Religion and the experiences they evoke are something that is properly emotional in nature. Logic didn't even play a role in it until Plato/Aristotle. (Not as a structured system of inquiry.) To me, religion is properly seen as a cultural mechanism that binds humans together. -
> The "Roman arches which evolve naturally as well as artificially" are a hilarious misunderstanding. I would call them "natural arches", so I was trying to figure out how the Romans could have devised arches that grew of their own accord! However, I would say this is a somewhat disproportionate analogy. If the statistics behind the chance formation of your inanimate block are "staggering", the statistics behind the chance formation of your living, moving, seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, reproducing, remembering organic machine are so staggering that they totter off the statistical stage and collapse at the bottom of the pit of can't-stagger-any-further statistics.-You see I think on statistical arguments we come from such drastically different backgrounds that when I'm staring at the midday sun, you're looking at the full moon; we're on opposite sides of the world. -Saying that a direct line of contingencies necessitates astronomical odds in terms of the going from matter to us is "can't-stagger-any-further" is betraying lack of knowledge of an important detail or two.
You've mentioned here that the odds of that arch appearing are better than that of us appearing. By what knowledge can you make that claim?

--
\"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.\"