This is a very thoughtful and generous thing to do. I'm not in a position to take advantage of it just now but I will when I am, so preemptively, thanks for doing this.
Congratulations: for being the first person to recognize this masterful joke, you have won a lifetime subscription to my free blog, which I have awarded to an email address I'm like 85% sure is yours.
Okay, now I'm going to tell a story involving discussions of Nietzsche, and I will attempt to make it in a style somewhat like RC:
So, like 15 years ago, on the internet, on the first board that I was willing to participate in... I wind up in the "Religion and Philosophy" subforum. Because I want to be there, because discussions of Christianity, something-something Paul in Athens something-something the Gospel. However, I was extremely frustrated because it seemed that people were unironically, uncritically being like "postmodernism is the only true framework because of course."
There was like one guy there among the "regulars" who is overtly not bowing his back to mind-bendingly "no objective truth at any time"-style postmodern assumptions. And I found a thread of his (I trust not more than 3 weeks old; I was bad about looking at the sell-by date on posts back then! really bad at times!) so I find out it turns out what he REALLY wanted to talk about was Nietzsche. So I carefully read everything in his thread, (I had not read any Nietzsche myself) typed up a thoughtful reply that agreed with some of his basis, but argued with some of his conclusions in a way that I thought took them down BRILLIANTLY, but--imagine this--I got nothing in response! (I was pretty frustrated with him for years to come.)
Anyway, about that time I made a new friend IRL, and her Significant Other was very into Nietzsche. Due to my newfound knowledge, (i.e. time spent thinking about that one guy's Nietzsche thread) I was able to have an intelligible conversation with her and/or her S.O. about Nietzsche, and at that moment in time, that was a really big deal to me! (Plus, when i told her my observation that "guys I run into who are really into Nietzsche seem to be people who are more compassionate than their philosophies think is justified" now I had more data points... N=3 instead of like N=2 from before. Counting that guy on the forum, you see.) The internet is great!
Jerden--also, it looks like my problem with spelling Nietzsche is I switch the "s" and the "z." (Based on the mistakes i just corrected 3-4 times.)
OK so, I just realized your request got missed in the most recent plugpost. I have not forgotten about you, except to the extend I did - good news is you will get top heading on the next plugpost instead of dead last, I think.
I am several days late to this comment section but re: not sending newsletters for more posts, there seems to be something in the Substack UI where you can have multiple sub-newsletters under one larger 'Stack. This may have been specific to The Dispatch, when it was still hosted here, but it's worth asking the Substack team if you can sent that up for your 'Stack and give your readers the option to opt in to additional emails for more posts.
I thought about this, but I wonder if the "average" person really wants to do that - like I technically have a couple different sections in my substack, and I could probably get some percentage of people to spend the time to divide up their subs so they were only getting what they wanted. But for everyone else (and I suspect everyone else is an overwhelming majority) it would just be "more emails coming from this place, time to unsub".
I'm open to being convinced out of that, though. I might be thinking about it backwards.
Please check your Recommendations section, you 'll find our recommendation for the Resident Contrarian Substack there. Please feel free to post it on your Welcome page if you find it helpful.
Plug request - I write a pretty niche Substack about Star Trek (yes, I am a nerd). Maybe there are some more folks besides just me who both read your blog and like Star Trek...? startrekking.substack.com.
Thanks a lot for the plug! As to my work not being specifically Christian, Rene Guenon teaches that the differences between religions are illusory and they are the same Infinite truth being expressed in different ways due to each being adapted to a specific context (a time, a place, and a people). So religions are like ripples from a rock being tossed into a pond (the rock being the suprarational insights at the core of it), and these ripples can collide, but it doesn't make one wrong and another right.
I have a slightly different take: it's not that religions express the same truth, but they do all come from the same place. They are all the result of someone reaching into the Infinite and bringing back something of benefit to mankind.
Either way, the conclusion is that one should not be totalitarian about religion. In addition, humanity has moved on from all that, and the only way spirituality can work out moving forward is by being pluralistic.
So I thought about this a little during the week but wanted to wait until I had some time to respond to this. Bear with me for a bit because the argument it's going to seem like I'm initially trying to have isn't the argument I'm trying to have.
So there's a common argument had between people who have one fairly (strict, literal) definition of belief have with people how have a much looser definition. Basically you have a guy who believes that his religion makes a lot of claims, and believes those claims to be true, and another guy comes up and says "Hey, none of that stuff is true at all - like, all those claims to the specific truth of your religion are false. But, in a sort of vague way, I think all religions are sort of nice and probably have some elements of truth about them, and your religion is true in that way so don't feel too bad".
Where this runs into the hardest collisions is usually with beliefs like mine - fairly traditional beliefs in a religion that makes it endlessly clear that it believes truth is a solid thing that can be grasped and defined, and should be chased after in a definite form that it possesses.
I bring that up for two reasons, one secondary and one (that I mentioned earlier) is the real thing I want to talk about. To get the secondary thing out of the way first, I think it might surprise you to find that the sort universal "I guess you are kind of right, but so is everybody" stance that probably seems more inclusive of me to you is actually from my point of view *farther* and *more in conflict* with my beliefs than one that simply said "what you believe isn't true".
The reason for that is simply that from my point of view neither believes by beliefs as I actually believe them to be true (To that point, you don't believe that the Christian God is the one true god, for instance, a pretty central claim of the religion), but that yours adds another element: it also redefines truth to be a much more liquid thing; anyone can be equally right by latching onto any old thing, since they all mine the aether for some level of truth.
With all that context, on to the main point, as a response to this comment so I don't hit text limits.
So I'm interested in all this in this context because your claims (here and extrapolated wildly from elsewhere) are sort of as follows:
1. Religion as a hard-true thing is defeated, all religions are at the most to be taken as very vague metaphors some unknown truth, and at the least to be thought of as sort of useful lies that exist as fractal systems built off human nature, or something in that vein.
2. But religion is still useful, and nice-feeling.
3. Given 1-2, soft-belief pluralistic religion is the replacement here - it can get us what "I believe this is true" religion used to get us, only better, faster, and without any of the less desirable bits.
I agree on 2 and mostly disagree on 1, but I think the interesting conversation to be had has exists around 3.
Most people who posit *something like* 3. tend to minimalize the possibility that "hard belief" has anything to do with the benefits of religion. I've on multiple occasions seen this go down when rationalists (particularly rationalists, not necessarily you at all) will have a conversation where they try to pin down why the Christian system tends to have certain benefits they want and how they might duplicate those benefits.
But in the same conversations, they often avoid considering that something like "A genuine sincere belief in the religious that they are dealing with something non-metaphorically real" could be a real factor in the successes they are trying to copy. The idea in those conversations is that they can get all the benefits by imitating some of the ritual or habits, but without a huge part of the relevant mindset.
I think your argument above (that the only way forward is metaphoric-vague-truth-only pluralism, where everything is at once false on the specifics but also true in a vague "everything is true, because everything comes from the infinite" way) comes from a very different mindset, but potentially runs into some of the same problems. New post for text-length reasons.
The way I see it, there's five possibilities here:
1. There's no benefits to be derived from religion in any sense, and we might as well just let it die.
2. There's benefits to be derived from religion, and they have to do with the religion being literally true - i.e. If I see benefits, it's because there's an actual God who actually blesses people who follow him.
3. There's benefits to be derived from religion, but those benefits are tied to *thinking* the religion is true in that hard, non-metaphorical sense - that hard-belief in something specific that makes specific demands prompts certain kinds of behaviors and attitudes that come with certain benefits.
4. That religion isn't hard-true and the benefits of the religion have to do with the *systems* of religion, which came about by accident or cultural evolution - i.e. you can ditch the dumb God stuff and just pick out the 7 habits of highly religious people absent all the supernatural stuff and get the same effect.
5. That religion isn't hard-true, but some sort of generalized spiritual belief is enough to get all the same benefits.
I'm a mixture of 2-3. I don't think I'm going to convince you on 2 today, so we can set it off to the side.
3 is interesting, though. I've written elsewhere that some of my closest friendships have come about from chain-reactions started by either me or my friend thinking that an Actual God Who Exists In A Real Sense told us to support each other in some way we otherwise wouldn't have decided to do, and that this resulted in a chain of obligations that grew to trust and inter-dependence.
My gut feeling is that "Everything is true, man - don't sweat it, it's all sort of just reflections of the unknowable, amorphous beyond" stuff will fail along those lines - that it can't replace belief fully because it's hard to see vague, semi-defined feelings of the existence of divinity creating those same "God told me to do this, so I'm doing it" obligations. But I'm interested in discussions around that orbit, essentially.
You know, I basically just relayed what Rene Guenon believes, as far as I understand him. He believed in God, and that it is possible to have a connection with Him. I do too.
What I don't believe is that a specific established religion is the only way to do that. Having read the Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching, I can't adopt the view they are both just packs of demonic lies (not clear if this is what you believe).
They are not perfect to be sure. But so are all religions. No perfection is to be found in the manifest. Religions are all noisy transmissions from God. (This bit is me to be sure, not Guenon)
You should consider that the Satanic Verse problem Muhammad had is more pervasive and universal than that one instance.
And whether God, who is Love, is also a totalitarian who wants a Christian monoculture to engulf mankind.
Right, I get what you are saying - I understand the statement. To repeat it, you are saying "there's some truth, your religion isn't it (or at least is a very flawed version of it) but there might be some truth somewhere that we can't quite get at in a clear way".
In terms of the practical side of this, the "Religion is good and we need it to serve a function" side of this, the following:
1. There's an awful lot of religious people who very much disagree with this, that believe there's an actual truth that goes beyond sort of "there's some sort of spiritual truth somewhere, doesn't matter much what it is, you can't really know it, meditate more".
As an example, I believe there's a guy named God who has certain solid, knowable characteristics and who relayed those characteristics to us, and that we can learn about them.
2. This is a real disagreement that needs to be grappled with, because *even if my religion was a lie* it has practical implications.
So imagine two guys, Dave and Bob. Dave is a committed Christian who believes Christianity is true and real in the way that the existence of rocks is true and real, while Bob thinks that all religions are true only in the sense that they are nice, and sort of point at some greater unknowable truth. Here's a list of things Dave and Bob have in common:
1. They both like rituals
2. They both like quiet time doing things that at least superficially resemble praying and meditating
3. They both believe in at least some superficial form of the supernatural
Let's say you successfully get every Christian to abandon their faith in favor of "there's some truth out there, but it's basically unknowable; every religion is sort of equally true and equally false in that it doesn't grasp that truth. What's important is that you are spiritual in some regard - like, meditation, or sort of contemplating that great truth beyond, whatever. If you do that, you are fine.". And on top of that you allow that they can still have access to rituals while understanding those rituals aren't tied to any hard-and-fast true, because rituals are fun and an important part of the human spiritual experience.
If those three things above are all that matters, this works out fine - humanity globally admits that being spiritual is enough, meditates here and there and there's no downsides for anyone.
But Dave and Bob don't agree on everything. Here's some stuff they disagree on:
1. You can know enough about god, an actual entity with knowable characteristics, to know what he wants.
2. You can know enough about god, an actual entity with knowable characteristics, to know that he has authority and can ask you to do things that you should then do, whether you want to do them or not.
I think these 2 things, if true, have practical implications *even if the religion isn't true*. For instance, say you go to Bob and say "The scriptures say you shouldn't lie". Bob could say this without contracticting his religious views at all:
"Religions are just a hazy, garbled vision of the truth beyond - little books like "scriptures" are just sort of silly fun rituals we do in pursuit of that greater truth, while acknowledging that none of them are true *really* - only hicks think that."
Bob's quasi-religious belief doesn't have any normative power - i.e. it doesn't say *anything definite*, so it can't tell him to do *anything with definite authority*.
Dave doesn't have the same luxury - if he still wants to lie, he has to do something that looks a lot like this:
"I know there's a god, and that this god has authority, and that this god has further told me not to lie. I'm going to lie, but I will know I have done something wrong."
That doesn't mean Dave is perfect and never lies, but it means there's a kind of normative pressure on Dave (Holding him to the normative implications of rock-true beliefs he says are real and accepts) that isn't actually possible for Tom (for whom rock-true beliefs are something you'd only say you had if you were a redneck, insane, or arrogant).
That's what I'm sort of interested here - the practical implications of one thing replacing the other. In terms of "are your beliefs and mine compatible", the answer is a hard no - you think everything I believe is false except where it's kinda-true on accident, which is sort of the opposite of what I believe. To head something off at a pass: I know "these religions are compatible" is true *in the context of your religion*, but "Carlos is wrong about pretty much everything he said" is true in the context of mine - it doesn't have a lot of bearing on the argument.
Well, you are misrepresenting my views. I don't believe religion and spirituality are simply about good vibes. They are games with real stakes to it. You can have the normative pressure to do good even if you don't subscribe to any particular religion. Hell, the Effective Altruists have that (not saying they are perfect) and they typically don't believe in any of this.
Growing up, my dad had a neighbor who was a Santero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santería). My grandmother, a devout Catholic, hated him for that. But dad said that he was one of the best people he ever knew, that he was always, always, looking out for his neighbors and ready to help. That is a very spiritually advanced state the man was in. I cannot see how one is supposed to believe he was deceived or deluded.
So I am not asking for anyone to adopt a view that scriptures are just silly fun rituals, what I would prefer is they saw them as noisy transmissions from literally God, which is not at all the same thing. I would also prefer that they considered the possibility that there is more than just signal and noise, but there is also actual Satanic tampering in there. That this tampering is why religion has been so often used to fulfill the prime Satanic imperative of getting people to harm each other. And it can be very subtle: it's tricky to see how you get the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Wars of Religion from the Bible, but apparently you can get those from it. These events are clear evidence that being fundamentalist about religion is just wrong. They wouldn't have happened if the scriptures and the tradition were enough.
In particular, what I am interested in in this discussion, is trying to determine whether you are totalitarian about your Christianity, and if you are, talking you out of that. Because adopting a view where most of the believers in the world are deluded or deceived is literally listening to Satan. Pluralism (without falling into moral relativism) is a genuine moral innovation almost on the same order as the abolition of slavery. Rene Guenon provides a way to religious pluralism that devout Christians such as Wolfgang Smith and Rama Coomaraswamy have accepted.
As for trying to use your own judgement to discern signal, from noise, from Satanism, well, you are already doing that. You chose to believe the experience of God you had with your friend was genuine and not an advanced delusion. I suspect an Orthodox priest or monk would just dismiss it as prelest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelest), which is a very interesting concept. But as Krishnamurti said, "Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within?".
And I don't think everything you believe is false, just that it isn't perfect. It's an actual cognitive distortion known as all or nothing thinking to believe it has to be perfection or bust. There is a broad, fertile middle ground between the extremes of "my tradition and scriptures are the perfect entire truth" and "religions are just nonsense".
Oh hey, I'm a new writer! Ba-ba-bum: https://consistentlyinconsistent.substack.com/ Currently I'm just writing because my brain seeps strange fluids when bottled up for too long, but if other people like it, that's cool too!
I agree with you about post frequency - it's tricky to post enough to keep people engaged but not so much they feel swamped. But even with forewarning I just know that if I don't get sent an email, I will never think to check your blog for extra material. And I like extra material!
Maybe you could add a para at the end of a regular post saying something along the lines of "And for those who might have missed it, I also posted a brief article on [whatever] this week, please come on over and check it out"?
Plug request: I write Papyrus Rampant (http://papyrusrampant.substack.com ), a blog on "story, history, and theory of story" - or in other words, history and literary theory. I like to say that's one topic because history is a story too.
Been posting every week for the last several months; plan to keep it up.
(And psst, it's been a couple hours since you asked ichneumon for the reminder - want to make that Google doc now?)
Ok, some dumbitude happening software-side. Meh. What I tried to submit, like, 22 times: I was too life-tired to perform 2nd lvl spell summon Cerebral Energy for the last few articles (need long rest) but I read this and was happy. +5 HP
Love the generosity of this. Would be interested in having you on Liberty and Justus (https://rumble.com/LibertyAndJustus) to talk tech, religion, the culture etc. LMK what you think (@justuseapen everywhere including gmail).
Great post. Plug request: I run Thinking About Things (https://thinking-about-things.com/), a newsletter that sends you one interesting blog post or article every other day. You can read a selection of previous articles at our sister site, Read Something Interesting (https://readsomethinginteresting.com). We've featured RC articles a couple of times.
Absolutely, and I'm going to ask you to do me a favor: In about two hours, post a comment below mine saying some version of "RC, make a google doc for this so you you don't forget to do it". I can't do it right now for reasons, and I'm 100% going to forget to do it in the next few hours, so you are conscripted.
Dangit! I'll try to remember wycliff's for next time. People really like what I did promote, for the record - lots of people have brought it up as something that's very useful to them.
This is a very thoughtful and generous thing to do. I'm not in a position to take advantage of it just now but I will when I am, so preemptively, thanks for doing this.
The wannabe intellectual's struggle of never knowing how to spell Neizsche/Neitzsche/Neiztsche/Nietzsche (4th time's the charm!)
(Should have realised it was ie sooner, it's German and that affects pronunciation)
Congratulations: for being the first person to recognize this masterful joke, you have won a lifetime subscription to my free blog, which I have awarded to an email address I'm like 85% sure is yours.
Okay, now I'm going to tell a story involving discussions of Nietzsche, and I will attempt to make it in a style somewhat like RC:
So, like 15 years ago, on the internet, on the first board that I was willing to participate in... I wind up in the "Religion and Philosophy" subforum. Because I want to be there, because discussions of Christianity, something-something Paul in Athens something-something the Gospel. However, I was extremely frustrated because it seemed that people were unironically, uncritically being like "postmodernism is the only true framework because of course."
There was like one guy there among the "regulars" who is overtly not bowing his back to mind-bendingly "no objective truth at any time"-style postmodern assumptions. And I found a thread of his (I trust not more than 3 weeks old; I was bad about looking at the sell-by date on posts back then! really bad at times!) so I find out it turns out what he REALLY wanted to talk about was Nietzsche. So I carefully read everything in his thread, (I had not read any Nietzsche myself) typed up a thoughtful reply that agreed with some of his basis, but argued with some of his conclusions in a way that I thought took them down BRILLIANTLY, but--imagine this--I got nothing in response! (I was pretty frustrated with him for years to come.)
Anyway, about that time I made a new friend IRL, and her Significant Other was very into Nietzsche. Due to my newfound knowledge, (i.e. time spent thinking about that one guy's Nietzsche thread) I was able to have an intelligible conversation with her and/or her S.O. about Nietzsche, and at that moment in time, that was a really big deal to me! (Plus, when i told her my observation that "guys I run into who are really into Nietzsche seem to be people who are more compassionate than their philosophies think is justified" now I had more data points... N=3 instead of like N=2 from before. Counting that guy on the forum, you see.) The internet is great!
Jerden--also, it looks like my problem with spelling Nietzsche is I switch the "s" and the "z." (Based on the mistakes i just corrected 3-4 times.)
Please could you plug my substack?
https://ishayirashashem.substack.com/p/boris-the-terrible-fruitlessly-tries
I delayed this out of shyness, but if you like my substack, I would be very grateful for a plug. It's
https://wyclif.substack.com - mostly social science and politics, with occasional drunk Tang dynasty poets. The substack itself exists to plug and/or support the book https://www.wyclifsdust.com.
OK so, I just realized your request got missed in the most recent plugpost. I have not forgotten about you, except to the extend I did - good news is you will get top heading on the next plugpost instead of dead last, I think.
Thank you very much.
Got it! Should be doing a plugpost soon.
I am several days late to this comment section but re: not sending newsletters for more posts, there seems to be something in the Substack UI where you can have multiple sub-newsletters under one larger 'Stack. This may have been specific to The Dispatch, when it was still hosted here, but it's worth asking the Substack team if you can sent that up for your 'Stack and give your readers the option to opt in to additional emails for more posts.
I thought about this, but I wonder if the "average" person really wants to do that - like I technically have a couple different sections in my substack, and I could probably get some percentage of people to spend the time to divide up their subs so they were only getting what they wanted. But for everyone else (and I suspect everyone else is an overwhelming majority) it would just be "more emails coming from this place, time to unsub".
I'm open to being convinced out of that, though. I might be thinking about it backwards.
This is so generous of you, thank you:-)
Plug request:
https://digitalmasters.substack.com/
Thank you!
Please check your Recommendations section, you 'll find our recommendation for the Resident Contrarian Substack there. Please feel free to post it on your Welcome page if you find it helpful.
Plug request - I write a pretty niche Substack about Star Trek (yes, I am a nerd). Maybe there are some more folks besides just me who both read your blog and like Star Trek...? startrekking.substack.com.
Got it! It's on the list.
Thanks a lot for the plug! As to my work not being specifically Christian, Rene Guenon teaches that the differences between religions are illusory and they are the same Infinite truth being expressed in different ways due to each being adapted to a specific context (a time, a place, and a people). So religions are like ripples from a rock being tossed into a pond (the rock being the suprarational insights at the core of it), and these ripples can collide, but it doesn't make one wrong and another right.
I have a slightly different take: it's not that religions express the same truth, but they do all come from the same place. They are all the result of someone reaching into the Infinite and bringing back something of benefit to mankind.
Either way, the conclusion is that one should not be totalitarian about religion. In addition, humanity has moved on from all that, and the only way spirituality can work out moving forward is by being pluralistic.
So I thought about this a little during the week but wanted to wait until I had some time to respond to this. Bear with me for a bit because the argument it's going to seem like I'm initially trying to have isn't the argument I'm trying to have.
So there's a common argument had between people who have one fairly (strict, literal) definition of belief have with people how have a much looser definition. Basically you have a guy who believes that his religion makes a lot of claims, and believes those claims to be true, and another guy comes up and says "Hey, none of that stuff is true at all - like, all those claims to the specific truth of your religion are false. But, in a sort of vague way, I think all religions are sort of nice and probably have some elements of truth about them, and your religion is true in that way so don't feel too bad".
Where this runs into the hardest collisions is usually with beliefs like mine - fairly traditional beliefs in a religion that makes it endlessly clear that it believes truth is a solid thing that can be grasped and defined, and should be chased after in a definite form that it possesses.
I bring that up for two reasons, one secondary and one (that I mentioned earlier) is the real thing I want to talk about. To get the secondary thing out of the way first, I think it might surprise you to find that the sort universal "I guess you are kind of right, but so is everybody" stance that probably seems more inclusive of me to you is actually from my point of view *farther* and *more in conflict* with my beliefs than one that simply said "what you believe isn't true".
The reason for that is simply that from my point of view neither believes by beliefs as I actually believe them to be true (To that point, you don't believe that the Christian God is the one true god, for instance, a pretty central claim of the religion), but that yours adds another element: it also redefines truth to be a much more liquid thing; anyone can be equally right by latching onto any old thing, since they all mine the aether for some level of truth.
With all that context, on to the main point, as a response to this comment so I don't hit text limits.
So I'm interested in all this in this context because your claims (here and extrapolated wildly from elsewhere) are sort of as follows:
1. Religion as a hard-true thing is defeated, all religions are at the most to be taken as very vague metaphors some unknown truth, and at the least to be thought of as sort of useful lies that exist as fractal systems built off human nature, or something in that vein.
2. But religion is still useful, and nice-feeling.
3. Given 1-2, soft-belief pluralistic religion is the replacement here - it can get us what "I believe this is true" religion used to get us, only better, faster, and without any of the less desirable bits.
I agree on 2 and mostly disagree on 1, but I think the interesting conversation to be had has exists around 3.
Most people who posit *something like* 3. tend to minimalize the possibility that "hard belief" has anything to do with the benefits of religion. I've on multiple occasions seen this go down when rationalists (particularly rationalists, not necessarily you at all) will have a conversation where they try to pin down why the Christian system tends to have certain benefits they want and how they might duplicate those benefits.
But in the same conversations, they often avoid considering that something like "A genuine sincere belief in the religious that they are dealing with something non-metaphorically real" could be a real factor in the successes they are trying to copy. The idea in those conversations is that they can get all the benefits by imitating some of the ritual or habits, but without a huge part of the relevant mindset.
I think your argument above (that the only way forward is metaphoric-vague-truth-only pluralism, where everything is at once false on the specifics but also true in a vague "everything is true, because everything comes from the infinite" way) comes from a very different mindset, but potentially runs into some of the same problems. New post for text-length reasons.
The way I see it, there's five possibilities here:
1. There's no benefits to be derived from religion in any sense, and we might as well just let it die.
2. There's benefits to be derived from religion, and they have to do with the religion being literally true - i.e. If I see benefits, it's because there's an actual God who actually blesses people who follow him.
3. There's benefits to be derived from religion, but those benefits are tied to *thinking* the religion is true in that hard, non-metaphorical sense - that hard-belief in something specific that makes specific demands prompts certain kinds of behaviors and attitudes that come with certain benefits.
4. That religion isn't hard-true and the benefits of the religion have to do with the *systems* of religion, which came about by accident or cultural evolution - i.e. you can ditch the dumb God stuff and just pick out the 7 habits of highly religious people absent all the supernatural stuff and get the same effect.
5. That religion isn't hard-true, but some sort of generalized spiritual belief is enough to get all the same benefits.
I'm a mixture of 2-3. I don't think I'm going to convince you on 2 today, so we can set it off to the side.
3 is interesting, though. I've written elsewhere that some of my closest friendships have come about from chain-reactions started by either me or my friend thinking that an Actual God Who Exists In A Real Sense told us to support each other in some way we otherwise wouldn't have decided to do, and that this resulted in a chain of obligations that grew to trust and inter-dependence.
My gut feeling is that "Everything is true, man - don't sweat it, it's all sort of just reflections of the unknowable, amorphous beyond" stuff will fail along those lines - that it can't replace belief fully because it's hard to see vague, semi-defined feelings of the existence of divinity creating those same "God told me to do this, so I'm doing it" obligations. But I'm interested in discussions around that orbit, essentially.
You know, I basically just relayed what Rene Guenon believes, as far as I understand him. He believed in God, and that it is possible to have a connection with Him. I do too.
What I don't believe is that a specific established religion is the only way to do that. Having read the Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching, I can't adopt the view they are both just packs of demonic lies (not clear if this is what you believe).
They are not perfect to be sure. But so are all religions. No perfection is to be found in the manifest. Religions are all noisy transmissions from God. (This bit is me to be sure, not Guenon)
You should consider that the Satanic Verse problem Muhammad had is more pervasive and universal than that one instance.
And whether God, who is Love, is also a totalitarian who wants a Christian monoculture to engulf mankind.
Right, I get what you are saying - I understand the statement. To repeat it, you are saying "there's some truth, your religion isn't it (or at least is a very flawed version of it) but there might be some truth somewhere that we can't quite get at in a clear way".
In terms of the practical side of this, the "Religion is good and we need it to serve a function" side of this, the following:
1. There's an awful lot of religious people who very much disagree with this, that believe there's an actual truth that goes beyond sort of "there's some sort of spiritual truth somewhere, doesn't matter much what it is, you can't really know it, meditate more".
As an example, I believe there's a guy named God who has certain solid, knowable characteristics and who relayed those characteristics to us, and that we can learn about them.
2. This is a real disagreement that needs to be grappled with, because *even if my religion was a lie* it has practical implications.
So imagine two guys, Dave and Bob. Dave is a committed Christian who believes Christianity is true and real in the way that the existence of rocks is true and real, while Bob thinks that all religions are true only in the sense that they are nice, and sort of point at some greater unknowable truth. Here's a list of things Dave and Bob have in common:
1. They both like rituals
2. They both like quiet time doing things that at least superficially resemble praying and meditating
3. They both believe in at least some superficial form of the supernatural
Let's say you successfully get every Christian to abandon their faith in favor of "there's some truth out there, but it's basically unknowable; every religion is sort of equally true and equally false in that it doesn't grasp that truth. What's important is that you are spiritual in some regard - like, meditation, or sort of contemplating that great truth beyond, whatever. If you do that, you are fine.". And on top of that you allow that they can still have access to rituals while understanding those rituals aren't tied to any hard-and-fast true, because rituals are fun and an important part of the human spiritual experience.
If those three things above are all that matters, this works out fine - humanity globally admits that being spiritual is enough, meditates here and there and there's no downsides for anyone.
But Dave and Bob don't agree on everything. Here's some stuff they disagree on:
1. You can know enough about god, an actual entity with knowable characteristics, to know what he wants.
2. You can know enough about god, an actual entity with knowable characteristics, to know that he has authority and can ask you to do things that you should then do, whether you want to do them or not.
I think these 2 things, if true, have practical implications *even if the religion isn't true*. For instance, say you go to Bob and say "The scriptures say you shouldn't lie". Bob could say this without contracticting his religious views at all:
"Religions are just a hazy, garbled vision of the truth beyond - little books like "scriptures" are just sort of silly fun rituals we do in pursuit of that greater truth, while acknowledging that none of them are true *really* - only hicks think that."
Bob's quasi-religious belief doesn't have any normative power - i.e. it doesn't say *anything definite*, so it can't tell him to do *anything with definite authority*.
Dave doesn't have the same luxury - if he still wants to lie, he has to do something that looks a lot like this:
"I know there's a god, and that this god has authority, and that this god has further told me not to lie. I'm going to lie, but I will know I have done something wrong."
That doesn't mean Dave is perfect and never lies, but it means there's a kind of normative pressure on Dave (Holding him to the normative implications of rock-true beliefs he says are real and accepts) that isn't actually possible for Tom (for whom rock-true beliefs are something you'd only say you had if you were a redneck, insane, or arrogant).
That's what I'm sort of interested here - the practical implications of one thing replacing the other. In terms of "are your beliefs and mine compatible", the answer is a hard no - you think everything I believe is false except where it's kinda-true on accident, which is sort of the opposite of what I believe. To head something off at a pass: I know "these religions are compatible" is true *in the context of your religion*, but "Carlos is wrong about pretty much everything he said" is true in the context of mine - it doesn't have a lot of bearing on the argument.
Well, you are misrepresenting my views. I don't believe religion and spirituality are simply about good vibes. They are games with real stakes to it. You can have the normative pressure to do good even if you don't subscribe to any particular religion. Hell, the Effective Altruists have that (not saying they are perfect) and they typically don't believe in any of this.
Growing up, my dad had a neighbor who was a Santero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santería). My grandmother, a devout Catholic, hated him for that. But dad said that he was one of the best people he ever knew, that he was always, always, looking out for his neighbors and ready to help. That is a very spiritually advanced state the man was in. I cannot see how one is supposed to believe he was deceived or deluded.
So I am not asking for anyone to adopt a view that scriptures are just silly fun rituals, what I would prefer is they saw them as noisy transmissions from literally God, which is not at all the same thing. I would also prefer that they considered the possibility that there is more than just signal and noise, but there is also actual Satanic tampering in there. That this tampering is why religion has been so often used to fulfill the prime Satanic imperative of getting people to harm each other. And it can be very subtle: it's tricky to see how you get the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Wars of Religion from the Bible, but apparently you can get those from it. These events are clear evidence that being fundamentalist about religion is just wrong. They wouldn't have happened if the scriptures and the tradition were enough.
In particular, what I am interested in in this discussion, is trying to determine whether you are totalitarian about your Christianity, and if you are, talking you out of that. Because adopting a view where most of the believers in the world are deluded or deceived is literally listening to Satan. Pluralism (without falling into moral relativism) is a genuine moral innovation almost on the same order as the abolition of slavery. Rene Guenon provides a way to religious pluralism that devout Christians such as Wolfgang Smith and Rama Coomaraswamy have accepted.
As for trying to use your own judgement to discern signal, from noise, from Satanism, well, you are already doing that. You chose to believe the experience of God you had with your friend was genuine and not an advanced delusion. I suspect an Orthodox priest or monk would just dismiss it as prelest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelest), which is a very interesting concept. But as Krishnamurti said, "Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within?".
And I don't think everything you believe is false, just that it isn't perfect. It's an actual cognitive distortion known as all or nothing thinking to believe it has to be perfection or bust. There is a broad, fertile middle ground between the extremes of "my tradition and scriptures are the perfect entire truth" and "religions are just nonsense".
Thank you, flattered!
Oh hey, I'm a new writer! Ba-ba-bum: https://consistentlyinconsistent.substack.com/ Currently I'm just writing because my brain seeps strange fluids when bottled up for too long, but if other people like it, that's cool too!
I agree with you about post frequency - it's tricky to post enough to keep people engaged but not so much they feel swamped. But even with forewarning I just know that if I don't get sent an email, I will never think to check your blog for extra material. And I like extra material!
Maybe you could add a para at the end of a regular post saying something along the lines of "And for those who might have missed it, I also posted a brief article on [whatever] this week, please come on over and check it out"?
Plug request: I write Papyrus Rampant (http://papyrusrampant.substack.com ), a blog on "story, history, and theory of story" - or in other words, history and literary theory. I like to say that's one topic because history is a story too.
Been posting every week for the last several months; plan to keep it up.
(And psst, it's been a couple hours since you asked ichneumon for the reminder - want to make that Google doc now?)
I have made it! Nick reminded me earlier, and you are now on it.
Ok, some dumbitude happening software-side. Meh. What I tried to submit, like, 22 times: I was too life-tired to perform 2nd lvl spell summon Cerebral Energy for the last few articles (need long rest) but I read this and was happy. +5 HP
Love the generosity of this. Would be interested in having you on Liberty and Justus (https://rumble.com/LibertyAndJustus) to talk tech, religion, the culture etc. LMK what you think (@justuseapen everywhere including gmail).
Cheers!
I'm down. I'll email a bit later today!
Great post. Plug request: I run Thinking About Things (https://thinking-about-things.com/), a newsletter that sends you one interesting blog post or article every other day. You can read a selection of previous articles at our sister site, Read Something Interesting (https://readsomethinginteresting.com). We've featured RC articles a couple of times.
Absolutely, and I'm going to ask you to do me a favor: In about two hours, post a comment below mine saying some version of "RC, make a google doc for this so you you don't forget to do it". I can't do it right now for reasons, and I'm 100% going to forget to do it in the next few hours, so you are conscripted.
RC, make a google doc for this so you you don't forget to do it! Sorry for the delay. ;)
Done and done and your stuff included.
Hey, did I screw this up and promote the wrong thing?
Technically yes, but they're sister projects so no worries. ;) Really appreciate the plug!
Dangit! I'll try to remember wycliff's for next time. People really like what I did promote, for the record - lots of people have brought it up as something that's very useful to them.
Yeah, of course! Let me know when you are good to go and I'll be there.