Secular philosohy....continued!

[rgutsell]

I recently up loaded my thoughts about some of the basic principles of a Secular philosophy...and got various mixed responses. To get to the point, but avoiding the barbs (geddit?) I have also thought about how a Secular Philosophy might define the common shared aspects of world wide humanity. Here they are!

CORE SHARED ASPECTS OF HUMANITY for a Secular philosophy

This is a proposed list of basic shared qualities that define us as human beings, and which may be considered a basic part of a Secular Philosophy.

1. We are all temporary.

2. We all pass through common ?phases? of life (child, adult etc) which require adaptation and development.

3. We all have to learn to manage complex and changing relationships in our lives, which are also temporary.

4. We spend our lives in relationships and cannot be without them.

5. We all have a spiritual ?Impulse?, and an equal potential to develop ?spirituality?.

6. We all have the same basic physical needs; water, food, warmth, shelter, relationship, company.

7. We all experience the same fundamental emotions; happiness, sadness, fear, anger, pain.

8. We all develop, and take a part in, cultures.

9. We all intrinsically have the same potential ability to develop insight into the experiences of other human beings no matter which culture they originate from.

10. We all have to resolve the struggle between our constructive and destructive impulses.

There you go! Waddya think?

R GUtsell

[El Pibe]

well some of them are givens you can't do much about, some of them express truths but without really say anything about them (ie 10, yeah but no but. They don't have to be resolved, neither do they have to be resolved toward the consructive, but wouldn't it be nice)

How about

1. You're Born, You die.

2. Shit Happens.

3. Don't be an arse.

[uncleglen]

I bet if you looked back at some ancient Greek philosophy you would find most of this stuff- but then unfortunately some people decided that they thought that they knew better- created religion and then the whole world turned to shite

[HonaloochieB]

I have to go with south London's own philosophers, The Godfathers and their song Birth School Work Death.

Crudely, I'm three out of the four.

More nuanced re the song, it'll be, always learning until dismissed.

"I know one thing: that I know nothing" - you've got to like Socrates for that one and also William Goldman for paraphrasing it as the great aphorism regarding the film (filum for my Irish readers) industry "Nobody KNOWS anything".

Mind, talking of The Godfathers I like that 'I Want Everything Song' of theirs as well.

Bit Aleister Crowley in philosophy that one.

Video's magick an' all.

[El Pibe]

Oh those ancient greeks the lovable atheists, overseeing a golden age of multi-cultural tolerance and understanding and love for your fellow man; undermined by some geezer coming up with religion.

Plus Rolf Harris would have been better off if we'd retained some of their values!!

You are a fount of knowledge uncleglen, keep up the good work ;)

[KidKruger]

Zeus was a Greek God, wasn't he ?

[El Pibe]

Yes, somehow the huge pantheon of gods and mythology underpinning the whole of western literature, art and language somehow passed uncleglen by...

[El Pibe]

The 10 thingies weren't such a terrible starting point, and i may paraphrase a bit:

1) If you're going to believe in a god, just be nice about it, don't make it an excuse to hate 'the other'.

2) Look up to positive influences in your life (don't by Heat for goodness sake).

3) Try to avoid being a sweary mary, except when you hit your thumb with a hammer, because then it helps.

4) Have fun at the weekend, take the time to be with those you love.

5) Be nice to your mum and dad, they earned it (mum and dad, don't screw up your kids, earn it).

6) Don't kill.

7) Don't cheat on yours or anyone else's partner

8) Don't steal.

9) Don't Lie.

10) Don't be Jealous, be content.

[rgutsell]

Hiya all

Some good reactions!

The problem is that us secular thinkers need to pursuade people that it isn't just "not religion"; and that it is not just non-religous structures, such as government departments, organisations etc.

Secular thinking does approach all the "deeper" aspects of life, and does have insights into them. For example, you can be spiritual, without being religous. Morality is created and developed by us all, and has not originated from other "religous" systems, although they have appropriated it for their own ends. You can have no religous beliefs, and be "Moral".

R Gutsell

[El Pibe]

"The problem is that us secular thinkers need to pursuade people that it isn't just "not religion""

This smacks of the polarised debate over the pond.

I don't think anyone needs to persuade anything of anything, just get on with your life. Who are you trying to persuade that you can be moral without religion, why bother, just be moral.

I don't think religion appropriated morality for its own ends, I think religion was something that built up over time and was both a way of explaining a tough and mysterious world as well as a manifest expression of those societal norms and exigencies required in order to survive.

We can get along without it now, but the majority (globally) choose not to.

But why should that bother you, I sense a chip on your shoulder or inferiority complex as if you're protesting too much that you have some sort of spiritual structure and purpose despite a lack of religiosity.

Stop protesting and persuading and just be happy in yourself.

And i still don't really get the point of spirituality without religion.

[Burbage]

El Pibe Wrote:

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> I don't think religion appropriated morality for

> its own ends, I think religion was something that

> built up over time and was both a way of

> explaining a tough and mysterious world as well as

> a manifest expression of those societal norms and

> exigencies required in order to survive.

At least some Egyptologists will differ. The thing about Egypt is that they had a different god at every town and village, same way as we have postcodes, which fostered a useful tribalism. Far better for those in charge to have the occasional minor scuffle to deal with than to find themselves up against a multi-borough conspiracy or whatever sort of Spring they might have had before the Arab invasion.

The explicatory value was obvious and, even now, religions the world over go to great lengths to explain why rulers are rulers, why plebs are plebs and why shit tends to happen only to the latter. The admission of the existence of a spirit (or soul or footishistic vibrancy) is a classic get-out for those seeking more power than they deserve. See, for example, point 5 of the Gutsell manifesto (the remaining points, being variously inapplicable to sociopaths, hermits, the comatose and/or Breatharians, are by no means universal and point 1 is merely an unprovable assertion).

Morality, or ethics, is something a little different. It's very much a subset of philosophy and before it can really be considered, you've got to at least address what society might be, the individual's place in it and whether whether there's any point to the whole business at all. Most philosophers reckon there is, but, three millennia later, there's still nothing to say that most philosophers aren't wrong. The Greeks may be widely credited with developing ethical frameworks (as is Hobbes, whose work RGutsell appears to be trying to replicate), but they didn't come to many conclusions. Their chief contribution was the alleged development of logic - a method of debating things that excluded the invocation of gods or spirits which then, as now, was the equivalent of booting the ball into Mr Grumpy's garden. It was the Romans, more or less, who developed out of this a sort of Natural Law, which was later nicked by Hobbes, whose act of larceny bore fruit amidst the dismal thickets of English law. And, in the fullness of time, the tedious detail of the UN's supposedly universal (but not, in any sense, actually universal) declaration of human rights.

Which all begs the question of why, given this stuff already exists, we're bothering to watch RGutsell trying to reinvent the wheel without the benefit of homework. I think, in a very real sense, the answer lies in a couple of lines from They Might Be Giants: "(Either) I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want / Or I' m still alive and there's nothing I want to do". Words that, I'd argue, sum up the most important, and universal, of human qualities.

[El Pibe]

Interesting stuff Burbage.

Although I think you first point is more the powers that be appropriating religion for its own ends rather than religion appropriating morality as such, but I quibble.

I've occasionally pondedred on the whole morality thing at the usual times, in the shower, having a pooh, that sort of thing.

I guess I subscribe to the idea that there isn't any as such.

It's a useful collective framework by which we hope bad shit doesn't happen to us, that we have to police using more coercive mechanisms for those less inclined to buy into it, or at least more inclined to buy into their own desires above those of others to a degree deemed unreasonable by the collective framework, like the metaphysical carrots and sticks that involve your flavour of perpetuity, and more mundane ones such as punishment, physical freedom and a good old fashioned snuffing out.

The details of that framework are down to individual societies, hence why your universal charter is indeed ultimately balderdash, it's an elite western christian liberal one.

Which again boils down to my first 3 rules, the first two, thinking about it, noone can do anything about, so we can whittle it down to

1.Don't be an arse*

*as defined by a societal collective illusion based on tradition but subtly altered over time given socio-economic shifts blah de blah de blah de yawn

[El Pibe]

Actually just read a lovely passage in Banks' latest final Culture novel, musing about how simulations become so sophisticated that the variables can have a pretty good basis for calling themelves life, and what responsibility the simulation programmers have to their creations both in maintaining their lives and whether or not to inform them of the nature of their reality.

Then of course the angst that they might themselves be part of a simulation. Enough experimentation has been done to be reasonably certain that one's reality is the ultimate physical one so to speak, but then of course that could simply be part of the programming of the simulation.

A lack of evidence of a creator certainly isn't proof gainst their existence, but neither is it a reason to pursue slightly bizarre dogma in a bid to please someone who ultimately doesn't care what you do, just what the wider outcome is, and whether or not to switch you off afterwards!!

[PeckhamRose]

HonaloochieB, an American band fIREHOSE also sang "I am aware there are definite errors in my thinking. Example: Knowing I can't know".

I agree with the We are born, we live, we die, thing.

Good thread, this!

[rgutsell]

Richard Dawkins, (the "Selfish gene" guy) attacks established religous ideas as "Memes"; that is a set of ideas that have no basis in a logical reality, (or which aid survival, in his opinion) but which are handed down between generations as "truth".

However the problem I have with his approach, is that a society that has developed a set of memes which contain moral guidelines, probably does have a survival "edge", no matter how "right" or "wrong" the ideas are. It may be that our genetic inheritance does include a chemically based propensity to develop socially, or imaginatively create such "memes; if that is the case, then it should be part of a secular philosophy.

R Gutsell

[StraferJack]

But surely we should re-examine any meme as we evolve - saying "no matter if it's right or wrong" is a cop out

Look at Female Genital Mutilation - might be a moral code/meme passed down through the generations but enough now ok?

[El Pibe]

I'm afraid you seem to be caught in the simulation conundrum RG.

The point dawkins is making is that a propensity to spirituality may be advantageous as an extra layer of bonding to the social animals we are genetically deisgned to be. As indeed is society. We're not hive or solitary, and that's governed by genes, our programming. We can't work out wether we're in a simulation or not because that's the programming we have.

Morals therefore are part of that programming made manifest in terms of our interactions. We're too big to base it upon grooming, so we worked out other ways to make it function.

Religious ideas are a meme that helps to fulfil the yearning that the religious gene imparts and, as we created sophisticated societies, became entrenched, institutionalised if you will.

You have a problem with those memes, because they're based on an irational concept, but you want to replace those memes with a new set based upon (and i waver before using the term) rational, or secular principles.

But actually all you are doing is subtly changing the flavour to fulfil the genetic dispositional yearning that Dawkins describes. You're trying to express it with new language but there's nothing new about it.

Now if you can make anarchism work in a world of big numbers or persuade us towards hive mind, then I'llbe intrigued by your fumbling.

[Otta]

El Pibe Wrote:

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> 3) Try to avoid being a sweary mary, except when

> you hit your thumb with a hammer, because then it

> helps.

That's me fucked then!

> 9) Don't Lie.

What, never?

> 10) Don't be Jealous, be content.

Being content does sound nice.

[El Pibe]

I just translated them, never said I fucking live by them.

"what never" actually I always live by them.

[Otta]

That made me think of this

[rgutsell]

Some relevant background that I gleaned from recent news articles;

1. That the teaching of Creationism is on the rise, particularly in "Faith" schools.

2. That teaching in some faith schools is aimed at conversion or re-inforcement of faith in specific faiths.

3. That in Ireland athiests have secured the right to teach primary school children that god does not exist.

4. That RE in Ireland may still be aimed at "Faith formation".

5. That the Irish constitution directly links itself to god; "The state acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to almighty god."

I am a godammed pinko leftie, so much of this comes from the Guardian, that bastion of subversive communism.

R Gutsell

[El Pibe]

SO your goal is to defeat religion or just stop tax money headed there in any way shape or from?

You have to remember that belief in a sky fairy isn't necessarily harmful and sky fairy advocates do enourmous amounts of 'good'* in the world.

Those people so inclined may well have done so anyway, ... or not.

*using graeco-christian-elite-enlightenment moral code ISO666

[El Pibe]

Are you irish by the way?

I used to be in the cubs and swear alleigance to both god AND the queen!!!!!

And look at me now, gawd bless her maj.

[uncleglen]

(I wonder if Poland whose legal system is linked to religion, would still imprison someone for 2 years for vandalising a Bible?)

I would say that I vehemently oppose tax money being used to fund faith schools. They are divisive, brainwash children (let's bring back the hemlock for corrupting the young) and they hi-jack every aspect of the human condition whenever an opportunity arises and then the nearest member of the cloth offers one up before you can even display an emotion.

To see grown adults, and in such numbers, appealing to their imaginary friend is an example of an unbridled display of delusional behaviour imho.

[El Pibe]

more quotesage that might be appropriate. in this case Neal Stephenson from his book wot i just read.

"What he wasn't so good at was manipulating the internal states of other humans, getting them to see things his way, do things for him. His baseline attitude toward other humans was that they could all just go fuck themselves and that he was not going to expend any effort whatsoever getting them to change the way they thought. This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood."

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"That, as far as she could tell, was the purpose of the religion she had been brought up in: it made people feel better when really horrible things happened, and it offered a repertoire of ceremonies that were used to add a touch of class to such goings-on as shacking up with someone and throwing dirt on a corpse. None of which especially bothered Zula or made her doubt its worthwhileness. Making sad people feel better was a fine thing to do."