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Lucis
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What are your thoughts on this?
#25768858 - 01/25/19 10:00 PM (5 years, 2 months ago) |
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Read this earlier, curious about your thoughts regarding it.
William James' hypothesis of pragmatism stems from the efficacy of religion. If an individual believes in and performs religious activities, and those actions happen to work, then that practice appears the proper choice for the individual. However, if the processes of religion have little efficacy, then there is no rationality for continuing the practice.
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PatrickKn
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: Lucis]
#25768913 - 01/25/19 10:36 PM (5 years, 2 months ago) |
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Seems pretty straightforward.
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Belzebath
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: PatrickKn] 1
#25768918 - 01/25/19 10:38 PM (5 years, 2 months ago) |
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yeah, well sounds pragmatic xD
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redgreenvines
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: Belzebath]
#25770179 - 01/26/19 02:00 PM (5 years, 2 months ago) |
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if it works woohoo! if no good walk away
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sudly
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: Lucis]
#25771170 - 01/27/19 01:34 AM (5 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
Lucis said: Read this earlier, curious about your thoughts regarding it.
William James' hypothesis of pragmatism stems from the efficacy of religion. If an individual believes in and performs religious activities, and those actions happen to work, then that practice appears the proper choice for the individual. However, if the processes of religion have little efficacy, then there is no rationality for continuing the practice.
Well, prayer only works on coincidental recognition IMO.
I think James's outlook is an interesting one, in asking what is it about an idea that has to happen for us to experience it as true.
So how do we come to know an idea as true? A lot of ideas aren't considered true until they are experienced as working, for example with meteorology and the prediction of weather events.
Until someone realises their idea doesn't work it seems to be true for them until they experience it isn't.
Often there is one correct answer that works as an explanation better than any other answer, for example evolution. And until we figure out what answer really does work better than the other answers, competing proposals may be considered true.
It's only when we find reason to think that one of those ideas works better than the other in practice that we come to agree on what the truth is.
Quote:
In his sixth lecture he starts of by defining truth as "agreement with reality". With this, James warns that there will be disagreements between pragmatics and intellectualists over the concepts of "agreement" and "reality", the last reasoning before thoughts settle and become autonomous for us. However, he contrasts this by supporting a more practical interpretation that: a true idea or belief is one that we can blend with our thinking so that it can be justified through experiences.
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William James argued a century ago for a conception of truth that establishes a clear middle way between the rigid logicism of contemporary analytical philosophy and the relativity of contemporary hermeneutics and deconstructionism. James argued for a humanistic and practical conception of truth, rooted in human experience and indexed to available evidence, and the perspective of human individuals or groups.
It's interesting but as with most things of this nature it's difficult to agree upon certain definitions and how they relate to one another.
For me I know what good practices are, and I understand the impacts of certain behaviours but that alone doesn't motivate me to do those actions, it only helps me in improving my understanding of how they work.
If a practice has efficacy I don't know if it really matters how. More so that it has efficacy and that the results are remembered and strived for again and again.
P.S. Again, prayer doesn't have efficacy, only coincidence IMO.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Amuseman
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: sudly]
#25794860 - 02/06/19 11:01 AM (5 years, 2 months ago) |
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It would be ironic (and fitting) if prayer only worked when we're not able to judge the outcomes
-------------------- PM me if you have P. Makarorae (or know where to get some)!! <3
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redgreenvines
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: Amuseman]
#25795103 - 02/06/19 12:55 PM (5 years, 2 months ago) |
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like not thinking is better than thinking - if you do not judge the outcome nor even become aware of it.
this is the good fortune of idiocy.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: Lucis] 3
#25798349 - 02/07/19 10:51 PM (5 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
Lucis said: Read this earlier, curious about your thoughts regarding it.
William James' hypothesis of pragmatism stems from the efficacy of religion. If an individual believes in and performs religious activities, and those actions happen to work, then that practice appears the proper choice for the individual. However, if the processes of religion have little efficacy, then there is no rationality for continuing the practice.
It is a backwards approach. Religious ritual does not create a religious experience. Religious experience becomes ritualized to help keep recollection of religious experience present. Concepts about religious experience do not happen in the throes of the experience but only after one emerges from it. Concepts can be translated into simple symbolic rituals. When I light Sabbath candles on Friday night it is in front of a home shrine. There is a large framed poster of Christ from an icon show I once attended. Above is a red lamp, the Eternal Light. Three times I draw down with my hands the Eternal Light that hangs above the depicted head of Christ, saying "Ain Sof Aur" (Eternal Light), then as I pass the head of the Christ image (and my own head which is at the same level) I say "Kether" (Crown). When I pass the Throat center I say "Da'ath" (Knowledge/Gnosis), and I place one hand over the other on my Heart Center and say "Tiphereth" (Beauty/Harmony/Compassion).
The symbolism is equivalent to the sacred syllables OM-AH-HUM in Vajrayana Buddhism. Lama Anagarika Govida wrote a classic book, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, and my ritual embodies the chapter 'OM and HUM as Complementary Experiences.' "Solve et Coagula." The ego first dissolves in the Infinite (OM), and the second psychocosmic movement is the Infinite indwelling the finite (HUM). So, the practice of my brief ritual is based on an ancient Jewish practice but it also is a weekly recollection of an important moment I experienced one December evening in 1974 - the pivotal mystical moment of my life. At death the movement will reverse again when the temporal 'I' again dissolves into the Eternal.
Similarly, acting saintly does not cause one to experience the mystical, but an experience of the mystical often softens one's heart to a saintly extent. In my own case the expression from the book BE HERE NOW that speaks to the dissolution of the ego in the ONE, as well as the consequential result to people, animals, (and sometimes insects and arachnids) is "unbearable compassion." Heart-Mind. Bodhicitta. Wisdom-Compassion. Sacred Heart. Hridayam. "Head and Heart are not apart." - Paul Reps
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wolfiewolfie
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I think that hypothesis also works if you change religion to placebo.
"If an individual believes in a placebo, and that placebo happens to work, then that placebo appears the proper choice for the individual. However, if the placebo has little efficacy, then there is no rationality for continuing the placebo."
-------------------- The only reason why T-rex's can't walk backwards is because they're extinct, which perfectly explains why there are no headaches in the rainforest; The parrots eat 'em all. My Drawings
Edited by wolfiewolfie (02/21/19 12:34 AM)
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: wolfiewolfie]
#25831297 - 02/23/19 01:44 AM (5 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
wolfiewolfie said: I think that hypothesis also works if you change religion to placebo.
"If an individual believes in a placebo, and that placebo happens to work, then that placebo appears the proper choice for the individual. However, if the placebo has little efficacy, then there is no rationality for continuing the placebo."
Simplistic to the point of non sequitur.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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sudly
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Because every religion is just as right as every other.
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redgreenvines
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: sudly]
#25831740 - 02/23/19 08:58 AM (5 years, 1 month ago) |
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that's the safest approach
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: sudly]
#25835979 - 02/25/19 02:21 AM (5 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: Because every religion is just as right as every other.
Hmmm. I'm thinking of the Branch Dravidians, or the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult in 1980s Miami as religions, and no, not right at all.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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sudly
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Please do enunciate what differs a placebo from religion.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Kickle
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: sudly]
#25840996 - 02/27/19 10:30 AM (5 years, 1 month ago) |
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I'm not really a defender here but one thing that came to mind for me was religious experiences independent of expectation. You can find them on the shroomery from time to time. An atheist who expresses having a religious experience. I don't think anyone has taken a sugar pill, knowing it's a sugar pill, and suddenly felt as though their pain is relieved. They have to be expecting that result and expect that they are taking a pain pill.
That's one difference. That a religious experience can happen without expectation.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: sudly] 1
#25842166 - 02/27/19 07:25 PM (5 years, 1 month ago) |
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placebo | pləˈsēbō | noun (plural placebos) a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect: his Aunt Beatrice had been kept alive on sympathy and placebos for thirty years | [as modifier] : placebo drugs. • a substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs. • a measure designed merely to calm or please someone. ORIGIN late 18th century: from Latin, literally ‘I shall be acceptable or pleasing’, from placere ‘to please’.
religion | rəˈlijən | noun the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods: ideas about the relationship between science and religion. • a particular system of faith and worship: the world's great religions. • a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance: consumerism is the new religion. Middle English (originally in the sense ‘life under monastic vows’): from Old French, or from Latin religio(n-) ‘obligation, bond, reverence’, perhaps based on Latin religare ‘to bind’.
Religion is a far more complex phenomenon than a placebo* or the placebo effect*. Perhaps you are thinking of Mao Zedong's famous saying that "Religion is poison," but that would definitely not equate religion to a placebo (which is inert but harmless). Or, you might be thinking of Karl Marx's statement that "Religion is the opiate of the people," but there too, religion is said to have a psychoactive effect like unto opium, so again religion is not a placebo, not inert and harmless.
Religion has had profound effects on the history of humanity, much of it undeniably horrible. On the other hand, religion, if etymologically coming from the Latin religare, 'to bind,' means essentially the same thing that Yoga means, from the Sanskrit 'yug,' yoke. In both terms it means to bind or yoke human awareness to a transcendental awareness that exists independently of the human mind, the source of awareness itself. Religion has been a very powerful influence on every level, historically speaking, and in no sense does the word placebo describe the global phenomenon. IF, for example, a devout Roman Catholic adherent feels better in some psychological or physical way after eating a eucharistic host, I would suspect the placebo effect This would be a particularity that would be an appropriate use of the term placebo (versus an actual "superabundance of Reality" (Mircea Eliade) being transmitted by the host).
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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sudly
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You have not enunciated a difference, it seems you have again only claimed there is one due to complexity.
From what I can tell this is the only relevant point you’ve made and even then it’s anecdotal at best.
Quote:
Religion has been a very powerful influence on every level, historically speaking, and in no sense does the word placebo describe the global phenomenon.
I’d like to hear you out for a substantive response before properly responding myself.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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redgreenvines
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: sudly]
#25842783 - 02/28/19 06:16 AM (5 years, 1 month ago) |
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mostly a tool to coordinate large groups of people
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beforethedawn
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Markos how has religion moved so distant from its original aims? I know from my own religious and spiritual life based loosely on Buddhism that the aim of us existing is to return to God, non-dual awareness, or "the Self." Yet I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic schools and these people take the father-God image literally and it has nothing to do with Enlightenment. They really think there is a Devil and sin, and that the real world is in the Afterlife. They REALLY think this and call it 'faith', but all these metaphors are cartoonishly, hilariously distorted - the aim of whatever kicked of Catholicism was Enlightenment.
How did this come to be?
-------------------- Hostile humankind Can't you see you're fucking blind?
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redgreenvines
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Re: What are your thoughts on this? [Re: beforethedawn] 1
#25842975 - 02/28/19 08:58 AM (5 years, 1 month ago) |
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let me try,
your early life intro to Catholicism is the original aim of religion for you, always, but the original aim of any religion's founders has always been to enable people to come together with a common idea, a unifying story or myth, and from that can come a socially supportive tradition as well as a common language for the herd. A tool of the shepherds of the flock. Applied gossip. certainly at odds with non-totalitarian alternatives.
your original aim, is not the same as the religion's original aim and that remains a source of dissatisfaction for any religious person.
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