The Practical [as Opposed to the Ideological] Benefit of Religion

Here is a good example of de-contextualized language. In other words, words are only meaningful within a wider text or discourse. Without a context, what would 'free will' mean? That it is absolutely free? Randomly free from everything? A freedom from, or a freedom to?

The freedom of our will is relative to a context. And when confronted with Nature conceived as a deterministic machine, as popularized by science, we want to respond that we are free to choose between alternative paths.

Indeed, as far as one wants to engage in rational discussion, you are presupposing a freedom of the will - you listen to some theory and freely choose whether to believe it or not.

Except you should never believe a theory, but just accept it provisionally until a better one comes along. Theory is fiction - it is a theatre of the mind, and yet it becomes impossible for us to suspend our judgement forever, and so we lapse into belief. We mistake the representation for reality... and find ourselves back in Plato's cave. We do this because our culture today is void and nihilistic.. lacking philosophical, cultural and religious beliefs, which it is in our nature to hold.

 

You first draw a distinction between practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge is always asking how do I know I know.... how can I be certain. It wants pure objectivity. Practical knowledge on the other hand, presupposes our first person experience. For example, in the first person I experience myself making a decision as to whether I continue watching my movie, or put it on hold and answer a post. It is the 'subject' experiencing himself consciously, concretely and existentially.

Even so, to detach yourself from experience and imagine yourself engaging in objective rational thought, in the realm in which pure theories are made, still requires the presupposition of freedom. At the performative level, when I am engaging in rational debate, I must presuppose the capacity to think one doctrine true and another false. Rationality itself stands on freedom. Without it, we get the post-modern collapse into irrationality.

Consciousness has a higher status than theory, for consciousness itself creates theory. It is rather ridiculous, from a philosophical and critical perspective, that a theory could undermine the reality of consciousness. And yet this is what has happened today. The prestige of scientific method has invaded all aspects of our life to the point where people seriously wonder whether their own thoughts are illusory. Here-in lies a lack of criticism, which is essential to an intelligence. And what fills the vacuum? Science, which is really just a power over our imaginations... just as it's a power over our environment. There's no better way to rob a people of freedom than by telling them they don't have it.

 

I am not a materialist. I think it is difficult to say exactly what we are in words... in so far as words are limited. But we have moral and rational capacities... we have the potential to be self-determining creatures with a moral/ rational agency. That is why we have been able to create civil society and sciences in the first place.

It's ironic that the religious tend to be seen as the indoctrinated ones today. And yet, religion only goes to support the common sense views of agency above. To seriously doubt these views, to think they are illusory and that we could actually be just cogs in a machine, to my mind seems to reflect a greater indoctrination of a different kind.

 

https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

 

You are grounded in reality.

On the slippery slope to absurdity here.

The fact that I am thinking is not illusory, which was Descartes' point. The content of my thought on the other hand might be illusory... or should I say delusory.

But we are more than analytical thought, and more than the Cogito. That is just one function of our mind.. among other functions. And it seems perfectly sensible to say I have a mind... as well as a body. Language and grammar is our guide. Where Western/ scientific thought starts to go wrong can be seen in Locke's discrimination between primary and secondary qualities. The primary qualities are the mechanical ones and only those are thought real; the secondary qualities are the so-called subjective ones and accordingly not 'real'.

Nothing can be known with certainty.. or through the desire for proof. This is actually a moral problem, and was identified early on by St. Augustine. For besides the obvious lust, there are the other ones - the libido dominandi, and libido scientia.. the lust for knowledge and power. 'Post-modernism' [hyper-modernism] has gone full circle back to this very point.

BUT we can still have sensible and coherent beliefs. This is a more coherent and humane way of thinking about thought. It leads to an urbane approach, out of which comes the cultures of the humanities. It is also pre-Cartesian/ pre-modern. It puts belief first and knowledge secondary... reliant on belief. The justified true belief that stretches back to antiquity. From a modern perspective it is practical knowledge. I'd recommend you read Kant, who, though a modern philosopher, still had a foot in the old world.

Yes, in a way. We choose those beliefs that resonate most deeply will the various faculties we have at our disposal. Other ideals counter-balance our lust for Truth such as Beauty, the Good Life, and Unity. In this way we develop a rich inner life. If we remain in doubt instead, we are in Plato's cave to have manufactured beliefs fed to us.

The idea we can prove what lies beyond us is itself the illusion.

 

Before the pollution of our minds with French philosophy [thinking Descartes here], people never initially submitted themselves to a purge of doubt from which they then tried to construct a certain philosophy. Where we have inherited this initial 'will to doubt', other ages approached thought quite differently, and I'd argue more humanely. Philosophy was always more than mere epistemology. But that said, there also developed a stream of modern thought very critical of this purely epistemological approach [continental philosophy].

Personally, I see the whole project of modern philosophy doomed, and rather than be caught up in the 'post-modern' collapse... I'll look further afield for my wisdom. The reason that we too often do not explore this option is that most of us are anachronistic today - we project our on assumptions on the past, or buy into the dogma of universal progress.

So it is simply sensible to believe I have a body and a mind. And there is an identity of sorts to which they belong. And if they are attributes of me, then I myself am more than them. I have an idea of the infinite and God, which could not have come to me by the senses and observation. I am in no need to prove any of these things... they are given to me. They are the conditions by which I begin to speculate, and in believing certain knowledge is a chimera, I develop coherent beliefs. Actually, I'd say coherent belief is itself reliant on an epistemological skepticism. Because it's that willful and arbitrary drive for certainty that leads to all manner of absurdities.

The other difficulty we have with modern philosophy is our concepts and language. They seem outward orientated to the world around us, and when we try to apply them to our inner life, or the world beyond us [metaphysics] then we come up against their limitations. Kant is once again good for this critical aspect to philosophy. For him. so-called knowledge of appearances is one thing [science] and practical beliefs of morality and metaphysics quite another.

Do not be a reductionist in your beliefs and philosophy because all you are doing is reducing the potential richness and abundance of experience available to you in life. As far as metaphor goes, we are more like a biological plant that grows and develops, with a life of its own, than a machine with a certain function. Ask yourself which view fosters freedom and dignity, and which one would subjugate you.