See ‘universal reconciliation’ within Christian Universalism, regarding the notion of hell.
See ‘the problem of evil’ and ‘the problem of hell.’
One could spend a lifetime examining the aspects of religious doctrine, whether within Judaism , Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and so on. Maybe it’s more useful to strive to understand the human propensity for religiosity across cultures and eras, in order to see how it pertains to our ethical standards for how we are to treat one another as inhabitants of the Earth.
To what extent does ecology or Deep Ecology and Naturalism clash with religion and other supernatural conceptions of reality because the former involves the idea of human extinction?
How are the ideas of reincarnation and karma, within Buddhism and Hinduism, and the ideas of heaven and hell within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, on the one hand, reconciled with, on the other hand, the ‘concept’ of species extinction within the sciences of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology?
For example, how might the concept of, if not fact regarding, human extinction thru nuclear war, ecological collapse, or thru some other means jibe with the Buddhist concept of spiritual evolution toward enlightenment thru successive reincarnation?
To what extent is the inter-relatedness of life on Earth scientific fact, not an article of religious faith or political dogma ?
To what extent is universal ‘brotherhood’ and ‘sisterhood’ more metaphorical than literal?
To what extent are religious dogma and political ideologies such as socialism problematic in that proponents lose sight of fairness and goodwill, to the point of committing atrocities?
Maybe in some unintentionally ironic way organized religion is ‘anti-god’ in its idolatry, that its fixates on systematic attempts to define the absolute according to patterns of human comprehension?
So, maybe a conception of reality on par with non-belief/skepticism would be to simply think that a divine intelligence may exist? But how far would that view go in terms of supporting any form of organized religion?
A friend referred to what he called ‘super-sized atheism’, but to what extent does that involve the problem of excessive certainty, close-mindedness and arrogance ? An aphorism from Nietsche comes to mind: “convictions are greater enemies to truth than lies.” The basis of my inquiry into religion is the question of the extent to which it detracts from or enhances loving kindness, interpersonal and politically organized.
To what extent do we need religion and political ideology to have ethical values ?
What do you think of the philosophical materialist view that purpose does not exist in the universe intrinsically, whether, for example, in the life and death of stars or in the life and death of trees, or human beings?
Whether we believe in gods or not or life after death, humans inevitably seek to find or create meaning in our lives. How does your belief or lack of belief in consciousness after death (or before birth) pertain to your sense of meaning? How does that sense of meaning pertain to loving kindness?
To what extent do you see a problem with religious dogma and political ideology in that they seem inevitably to involve an us-vs-them mentality? To what extent does Marxism and/or socialism involve an us-vs-them mentality?
How do we define ‘social progress’? If it’s not possible to achieve ‘social progress’ without conflict, how do we engage in that conflict without ‘going too far’ with an us-vs-them mentality? What does it mean to engage in cultural and political conflict, being realistic about who our allies and opponents are while not deluding ourselves into thinking that there is a ‘fundamental basis of difference’ distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘them’?
To what extent is there a way to be realistic about who are opponents and allies are while being aware of our ultimate common ground as inhabitants of the Earth?
I ask because someone who is, for example, a white nationalist, might argue that she is not a racist and not otherwise hateful, but that she is being realistic about emerging modes of affiliation whereby one needs to recognize her allies based on ‘whiteness’ and being a US American.
How credible could she or he argue that they are not intending to oppress and persecute nonwhite and non-US Americans, but instead want to politically organize according to the idea that white US Americans would be wise to unite with one another in order to defend ourselves from emerging threats of oppression at the hands of non-white, non-US Americans?
Maybe an alternative to this ‘racialist’ , if not racist and nationalist view is to genuinely seek common ground as inhabitants of the Earth, but come to terms with us-vs-them scenarios when there seems no viable alternative? I can imagine scenarios in which someone, even in extreme us-vs-them situations courageously and dangerously proclaims her allegiance as an ‘Earthling’ being more important to her ethnic, racial, religious, class, gender, national, or other basis of allegiance.
As for someone not taking such a stand, but instead reluctantly coming to terms with us-vs-them scenarios, to what extent are those us-vs-them scenarios significantly different from our current socio-political situation in the US and the world? To what extent could one argue that our current sociopolitical situation is such that calls for ‘white unity’ or ‘white, US American, Christian unity are inapproriate given the absence of any threat to people with those identities?
To what extent could one argue that, given the lack of threat and the remaining privileges of ‘whiteness’ and of being a US American, notions of defensive unity are dubious, and probably racist?
To what extent has the ‘othering’ been more self-defeating to those socioeconomically ‘below’ thru political fragmentation than it has been harmful to those socioeconomically ‘above’ who are, maybe generally less vulnerable to being affected by depersonalization?
To what extent does it seem to you that thru political ideologies and religious doctrines, seeking unity inevitably involves excluding particular classes or categories of others, and thereby becomes a sort of ‘limited unity’ ? As a contrast, to what extent does it make to strive for ‘unlimited unity’?
To what extent do you think that a problem with religion—whether it’s Buddhism with it’s notions of reincarnation and karma, or Christianity with it’s notions of heaven, hell, and sacrificial salvation—is that it takes our minds off of weighing certain or potential harm against certain or potential benefits, regarding the consequences our actions have for ourselves and others (including nonhuman beings)?
To what extent would you say the inhumane excesses of ideologies such as socialism, whether under Stalin or Mao (were all those historians who depicted atrocities working for the CIA ?) seemed to have resulted from treating Marxism, ironically, as a religion, in the sense of excessive certainty and confusing the map with the territory?
As for socialism, to what extent would you say Marx was brilliant, but that his formulations are conceptual maps, not the actual reality?
To what extent would you say the idea of the historical inevitability of Communist revolution is a good example of excessive certainty which bedevils both political ideology and religious dogma ?
To what extent would you say a main impediment to loving kindness is confusing the political or religious map with social reality?
To what extent is a secular philosophy of explicitly stated loving kindness less likely to lend itself to atrocities than religious doctrines? I ask because, in my opinion, the virtue of loving kindness is in religious texts mixed in with a variety of other ideas that are hard-to-understand and unloving and unkind? How is it that we aren’t better off to strive directly toward loving kindness?
How do we make sense of an all-loving god requiring his son to be tortured and murdered so that he could forgive humankind for our innate sinfulness, a propensity within humans which that god created in the first place? The response from some Christians has often been that the “ways of God are not understandable by man.”
If we are to follow what is impossible for us to understand, would that not seem to extol obedience itself as a virtue?
In that light, to what extent does it seem to you that authoritarianism is a component of religion, especially within its fundamentalist strains?
How compatible are authoritarianism and loving kindness?
What is Christ’s main command ? If it is to love God and to love one another, including our enemies, what are your thoughts regarding the people who may have taught the importance of love, including love for one’s enemies, centuries before Christ?
How can Christ command us to love with all our heart while warning us about eternal punishment in hell?
To what extent do you see virtue as based in acting on principle according to one’s concern for others (including non-humans) , and not based on seeking a reward in heaven nor seeking to avoid punishment in hell ?
What do you think of the idea we can build a better world if we focus on the actual attitudes and behaviors related to empathy and compassion, without concerning ourselves with getting a reward in heaven or punishment in hell ?
How do you find in Christianity a basis of personal accountability that you don’t see yourself finding in Secular Humanism? I ask because it would seem to me that a humanist ethical system based in loving kindness would lend itself to accountability more so than Christianity, given the clarity of the former and the mixed scriptural messages of the latter.
To what extent do you relate to the following? We can speculate about heaven or hell or the origins of the universe, but it’s much more evident how our behavior toward one another affects how just and loving our world is.
If loving one another as members of the community of life on Earth is what matters, then how can it matter what religion we identify with, or whether we identify with any religion?
To what extent are the things that distinguish one religion from another based not in principles of conduct, but instead concepts pertaining to the orgins of the universe and what may exist for us before we are born and after we die and leave ‘ this life’ and how we may end up in heaven or hell ?
To what extent might it be the case that if we focus on what is unprovable or undisprovable, we might detract from our ability to focus our efforts on what we do know : how our behavior towards one another as beings on this planet shapes the type of world we live in ?
It helps to have a framework but ideology can bog people down, including myself. Whether religious doctrine or political ideology, conceptual frameworks can go either way: we can use them to enhance our understanding and organize our thoughts and social relations, and increase our empathy and compassion, and our loving kindness; or, on the other hand, we can improperly conceptualize, and thereby distort our perception of reality and impede our grasp of truth, and impede our empathy and compassion and dehumanize, hate, and be indifferent.
In this sense, by confusing the map for the terroritory, and clinging to an ideology or doctrine, human beings may be more likely to commit atrocities and oppress fellow earthlings. This applies even if a person deems they are following an ideology of justice.
But I wonder. To what extent does this apply to a philosophy of loving kindness? I’ve been thinking that such a philosphy is the least prone to this problem. But if we use concepts flexibly, and not confuse the maps with the territory, we can thereby better engage, politically.
One of my own main conceptual frameworks is that poltical and economic power is increasingly concentrated among a small, super-wealthy elite, within and among nations, thereby detracting from political freedom, civil liberties, human rights, and ecological responsibility.
But I intend to keep in mind that at least some of the people I engage will have schema that differ from my own. It’s important to engage in public and wherever else possible, because that is a key part of ‘building community’ or ‘building unity.’ I’m not sure if ‘unity’ is a better operative term than ‘community.’ —-
Using the conceptual map of thinking that corporate oligarchy is a key problem to address, we can reduce our tendency to entertain the counterproductive Democrat-vs-Republican, left-vs-right, liberal/progressive-vs-conservative mentality. If we get past that binary, we can better engage one another as fellow community members, and communicate with one another on a wide variety of issues.
Consider how many public policy issues there are regarding the needs of life on earth, be it water, food, shelter, medicine, security, commuity, and so on. How can it make sense to engage one another with a blue team-vs-red team mentality?
With such a binary, we make big assumptions about our ability to read minds. Maybe if we can get past that, we can organize grassroots political power to promote political freedom, earthling rights, security, and ecological responsibility?
To be as open minded as possible, I’ll admit there could be something impeding about the framework of maximizing loving kindness. But it seems useful to work from the fact that we have common ground as beings on Earth. Can that common ground be disputed ?
The framework of global solidarity seems a good antidote to a virtually infinite variety of ‘delusions of separation’ that divide and conquer us. Loving kindness as an organized, philosophical aim, seems a way to use conceptual maps, such as socialism and capitalism, as tools, and not get bogged down in ideology.
But to what extent is there is a challenge to address in that if we emphasize our common ground as inhabitants of Earth, we can end up neglecting the political dimensions of morality? Maybe, ‘spiritual’ is a sort of foundation, upon which to build our understandings that draw from the humanities (including religion as mythology) and the social and physical sciences.
A ‘spiritual’ ( certainly not necessarily religious, and in my case, clearly not religious) foundation is what we use to wisely put to use our intellectual understanding, drawn from the humanities and social and physical sciences.
The ‘spiritual’ has to infuse the scientific, rational, and political. Otherwise, ideas about loving kindness are just happy talk. In that light, to what extent does it seems wise to inquire into the extent to which democratic socialism, or more likely better ‘social democracy’ is a tool for putting loving kindness into political practice ? To maximize loving kindness, one has to think systemically and use, to the best of our ability, political and economic principles.
Can liberal democracy be salvaged and should it be? How much of a risk is there of a police state and neo-feudalism, ecological collapse in terms of climate change and/or in terms of energy descent, or some other catastrophe such as nuclear war?
Well, alarmism isn’t a good approach but to what extent is it reasonable to assume that none of the many problems we face nationally and globally won’t come to a head, ecologically, politically, or econonmically ?
Leave a Reply