Some have noted that this is when we really start being religious. I.e. - the man thinking about religion isn’t actually doing religion while he’s thinking about it. But when he stops thinking about it is when he starts actually living according to whatever religious principles he has.
Regarding the three-box framework, I think you, along with many here experience this in explicitly religious terms. But I suppose organized religion has no monopoly on these human tendencies. I’m sure others experience these same sorts of life structures in their contexts too.
I like that way of putting it.
With your formal philosophical training, you’ll have to critique novices like me when we pick up a book like Kreeft’s “Philosophy 101 with Socrates” - which is written for beginners. It may be the shallow end of the pool as far as Ivy League philosophy goes, but I feel like it is a wholesomely life-encompassing approach to the subject.
Further reflecting on your thoughts here - I do think that tensions are more-than-tolerated, even expected by 2nd and 3rd box people (and perhaps in more limited ways, even allowed for in box 1 for those who spend their entire lives in that box and press it as far into maturity as they can.)
A wise pastor once told me that tensions are a good way of staying in balance. If two different passages of scripture have opposing emphases (or ‘tensions’), then they are like two stretched springs fastened to either side of you. When you get too excited about just one of those passages and move towards it, the spring pulling you toward the other one gets tighter then, and helps restore you to more balanced perspective (equilibrium).
I don’t really think I can. I can’t say that studying philosophy has really led me to approach things in any particular way, having more of an effect on how I express ideas than how I formulate them. My wife says it made my thinking less metaphorical so I don’t always describe things as being like. From what @Christy has to say about metaphor I’m not sure that is an unqualified improvement but I do try harder now to limit ambiguity. I like the way you think and express your ideas. Don’t change a thing.
Oh… and how is that not disrespectful (right up there with “your Guy”)? Indoctrination is a good thing, if the doctrine is true. Yes, it [doctrine about one’s worldview] needs to be examined and reaffirmed by the individual, hence “box three”.
We are all religious,¹ in an academic sense and in a practical one, too. The etymology of “religion” shares a root with ligament, ligature and ligand, denoting a binding. An atheist is bound to her worldview, which frontloads into her thinking and excludes the existence of God. Atheists that are philosophical naturalists have an implicit, unwritten dogma in their religion/worldview that tells them to refuse to accept anything as evidence which suggests that anything other than the four dimensions of our spacetime might exist. Similarly, an agnostic is bound to the rejection of the knowability of God or his existence. That frontloads into their thinking and everything is interpreted from those perspectives. That would be confirmation bias.
We continue to confirm our existing worldviews according to our confirmation biases then, unless something, maybe radical, changes them. Everyone who is conscious has a worldview and a faith, even if that faith is only in themselves and their ability to reason.
[Geertz’s definition] suggests that every group–and every individual–may have a religion, even if no one in that group believes in a god or an afterlife or any of the more familiar trappings of organized religion. Every group has a religion because every group has some overall framework that all its members share in common, to make sense out of life and guide behavior.
I would say indoctrination can be good if it is useful, developmentally appropriate and there are pathways transcending doctrine allowing for greater maturity at the appropriate times.
No disrespect is intended but the only one I hear complaining about being disrespected is you. So is it about my nefarious, mean hearted intentions or are you being over sensitive about something? I just listed my childhood impressions of Christianity. For that I should fall on my knees to beg God’s forgiveness for upsetting Dale? If He had feelings as we do I don’t think he’d be as prone to histrionics as you. He might even be amused or pleased. I do wish you’d not follow me around with this constant carping. If you really want to discuss something with me how about you trying to find a more respectful way? Otherwise what reason do you imagine there is for me to respond to your posts?
Youngest Child (13 yo) recently mentioned that her Sunday school teacher had given her an unsatisfactory answer, when she asked how we know the Bible is true. (I understand that that assertion is not a matter of concensus here, but as a Christian participant, I hold to the belief.) Could there be a much more foundational question? So, we’ve spent the last few weeks after supper, reading the chapter on the Bible “How True Is The Bible?” from James Montgomery Boice’s “Foundations of the Christian Faith” (a very readable overview of basic Christian doctrines, which I would describe as “classic” or “standard” Protestant doctrines).
He ends the chapter with this encouraging paragraph:
A number of years ago, a former leader of the Church of England, Bishop Ryle of Liverpool, wrote, “Give me the ‘plenary verbal’ theory, with all its difficulties, rather than this (scientific criticism of the Bible). I accept the difficulties of that theory, and humbly wait for their solution. But while I wait, I feel that I am standing on a rock.
I think Ryle’s patience is part of the key for Christians to sit comfortably with certainty of the imperfectness of our understanding of Scripture and the things we learn from sciences about the universe. We don’t have to choose between them AND we don’t have to make stuff up to force them to seem to agree.
Mark, I finally re-found this post of yours. Been wanting to read it thoroughly, since I saw it flash by weeks ago and them lost it in the shifting sands of dicourse.
Thanks for this background.
Learning about other peoples’ backgrounds and formations reminds me that the world is very, very wide. My life experiences, as valuable as they are to me, hardly represent a norm. That can make conversation more daunting yet more interesting.
Thanks.
Although BA.2 has become the latest subvariant on many people’s minds, there are also three so-called recombinant variants that the W.H.O. has deemed noteworthy enough to be named. One of these variants, nicknamed “Deltacron,” was discovered in February but had not been officially named.
On Tuesday, the agency said that it had named the three variants — two versions of Deltacron and one that combined BA.1 and BA.2 — XD, XE and XF. There was no evidence that these recombinant variants are more transmissible or cause “more severe outcomes,” the report said.
It strikes me as a real-time example of the “messiness” we see, looking at physical remains of earth’s biological history. The “messiness” is part of the process, which includes lots of branching that mostly ends abruptly, or branches further.
This example also indicates the incredible amount of careful work and dedication it has taken to gather, organize and make sense of the physical remains of earth’s biological history.
We keep thinking we’re about to get more bits our missing lives back or at least work out the terms of a new normal. But then another variant appears at the gate and you get the urge to fortify it some more, stop going out. Hell in a hand basket: more than a warning.
Not sure this is of the pith MarkD had when he started this thread. This is far more fun than intellectual. It’s a cheerful poem I particularly enjoy and thought of the other day, when I was foot-deep in mud, and then saw @SkovandOfMitaze’s photos of him knee-deep in mud:
[in Just-]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
One of my favorite poets when I as younger. Rushing to go pick up my niece but will wad this again more slowly when I return and go find some more of his to share.
one’s not half two. It’s two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more
minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth-beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)
one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they’re loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow
deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.
All lose,whole find
Poetry is about potent implicit meanings. So you can’t pin what it means down without reducing it to a singular explicit bit of prose. But for me this poem is about how certainty is the death of the mind while remaining open to discovery allows for renewal.
Thanks for this, Mark. I didn’t know this one. Actually, I don’t know most of his work, but what I know I really like. So, I bought myself his complete poems over a year ago, but haven’t dug in. I need to start working through it, a page or two a day. No more. His work is so elastic and chewy, it would be a waste of it to read fast and end up with indigestion or dementia.
Thanks for sharing your take.
This warning jumped off the page. The whole self consists of two incomplete parts, heart and reason, which cannot exist properly separated.
Like any good piece of art, I see more the long I look.
I just finished a big project this afternoon and was cleaning off my desk. I found a note card with this on it. I think it came from some discussion questions in “The Gospel Comes With a House Key” by Rosaria Butterfield.
“What’s it like to be a human person, interacting with other human people, who are not you?
How do we support each other and meet each other in the here and now? Find a language with which to converse? And find a way to recognize the agnostic nature about the human experience?
Wisdom and knowledge are not enemies; they can converse with each other.”
I ask myself often, “Whaddaya doing, hanging around here?” Same question I sometimes ask others. “Whaddaya doing here?”
In large part: “interacting with other human people, who are not me” but also people who are wrangling with some of the same questions I am and different questions from mine, but who are wrangling in ways that have not been acceptable where I have needed to wrangle the most.
“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
–Sirius Black, “The Goblet of Fire,” J K Rowling. We had a good discussion about that quote tonight.
“No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realised exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Complete Father Brown
