The Penumbra of the Empty, Part XVI
The creation of the perfect list of religious claims ultimately rests on the idea of knowable and defined attributes, qualities, or predicates of the religious claims.
The list of these knowable and defined attributes, qualities, or predicates could overlap a similar list for secular claims, but in each case of a religious or secular claim, the lists couldn’t be the same. So, in any mixture or heterogeneous composition of claims, the religious claims could be separated out, to whatever practical degree of separation was required or desired, (but presumably to purity—why settle for less?)
What is so unreasonable and questionable about thinking religious claims have attributes, qualities, or predicates which are knowable, defined, and listable? What object does not?
These last questions I believe are crucial to the inquiry and I want to address them in greater detail at a later date. For now, I want to point out that while one can insist that religious claims come in these lists of defined predicates, etc., if one is faced with the discovery, at just the moment one is formulating such lists, of other cultures with religious practices and claims not like one’s own, the list goes into crisis: the list gets torn up, or else the other people get torn (which could be just tearing up their religious claims—but I think that amounts to tearing those people up.)
The list of these knowable and defined attributes, qualities, or predicates could overlap a similar list for secular claims, but in each case of a religious or secular claim, the lists couldn’t be the same. So, in any mixture or heterogeneous composition of claims, the religious claims could be separated out, to whatever practical degree of separation was required or desired, (but presumably to purity—why settle for less?)
What is so unreasonable and questionable about thinking religious claims have attributes, qualities, or predicates which are knowable, defined, and listable? What object does not?
These last questions I believe are crucial to the inquiry and I want to address them in greater detail at a later date. For now, I want to point out that while one can insist that religious claims come in these lists of defined predicates, etc., if one is faced with the discovery, at just the moment one is formulating such lists, of other cultures with religious practices and claims not like one’s own, the list goes into crisis: the list gets torn up, or else the other people get torn (which could be just tearing up their religious claims—but I think that amounts to tearing those people up.)
posted by Yusef Asabiyah at 3:20 PM
2 Comments:
I think Carl could probably suggest that the religious and the secular, are two different vocabularies, two different ways of talking about the world, and mixing them would really be to erronous mistake one for the other.
I also imagine Rudolf Carnap with his book 'Logical positivism' would have something to say here .. maybe something along the lines, that language is an object and its meaning is constituted by the total sum of things that its words refers to. In other words, names are descriptions.
My own take on this, is that it is quite rational to say a prayer before a math test, and many people do this or something like it. I also think that sex can be a religious experience even while being very bodily, since the intercourse act transcends the individual. Or the experience of a raw untamed desire near climax, transcends my individual history by an experience of some primal deep evolutionary force that is greater than me, and yet it is me or a part of me.
I am very fascinated by this Hominid trail (or trace).
Rudolf Carnap and I are in disagreement.
Your own take on this indicates you are sane and healthy. However, if you think that means the general trend of the west over the last 300 years has been towards health and sanity, you and I are also in disagreement.
-Yusef
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