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[deleted] OP t1_j7r017c wrote

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_j7s5hcn wrote

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zazzologrendsyiyve t1_j7rci09 wrote

“Religion or spirituality thus becomes your truth rather than a reflection of the truth and the extent to which we can actually connect with its forms of truth leaves us with a kind of uncertainty we cannot overcome unless we give up the insistence of analytics, reasoning and empiricism as the only way to reality.”

This sentence sounds like a dogma on its own, in my opinion.

In reality it just depends on whether religion makes claims about subjects that can be verified with science. If that’s the case, then the scientific truth is in fact in direct contrast with the religious truth, and it cannot possibly be that they are both right at the same time.

An old example from religion: the earth is 6,000 years old. Nope! So in this case you are not free to “look for your own truths”. You either accept the facts or you are delusional.

When it comes to people like Jordan Peterson, I believe they cannot simply reply something like “I believe / I don’t believe in god” because it would be clear that they are delusional.

It’s a form of intellectual dishonesty and some of them (like JP) absolutely know that. For example when he’s asked whether he believes in god or not, he says something along the lines of “it would take 4 hours for me to explain what I believe”.

No it wouldn’t, unless you want to take the definition of god given by the Bible and change it to fit your agenda. The Bible is really clear about what god is, what he does and why he does it.

You either accept it or not. You cannot change the meaning of something that was written 2000 years ago. You are not 100% free to INTERPRET the scriptures while “forgetting” the context in which the scriptures were produced.

Those people 100% believed what they were writing, so they were either right or wrong. If you allow yourself to interpret the Bible in any possible way, then are you not allowing yourself to interpret the words of a omniscient being?

On the one hand “God did that” and on the other “…yes but I (a “stupid” human being, far from Being omniscient) can the change the meaning of it!”.

The question is: is there a limit to how much you can interpret and how much you should keep as is? It seems that the limits is being changed based on the needs of the culture, which is in fact intellectual dishonesty.

If the limit is not clear (and in JP it is not clear at all and it seems that anything is up from grabs) then you’ll just adapt the “interpretation” to what you already think and feel, which of course is just a sophisticated variant of confirmation bias.

Lots of smart words from smart people who desperately need to confirm their feelings, which is the opposite of intellectual honesty and integrity.

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Crazy-Car-5186 t1_j7s0scp wrote

The article mentions how JP talks of the values and myths etc not of the validity of the bible but of the benefit of myths for the human psyche.

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smoking-stag t1_j7t8wvi wrote

And yet the article keeps using the word "truth". That epistemology can't give us all the answers. Answers to what? Whether God exists?

You mention the benefits of myth to the human psyche. If they do have benefits, why? And does that have any impact on whether they are true?

The way Jung is being presented, along with Jordan Peterson, it seems to me, to mostly being an attempt at a meaningful justification for religious belief, and it's truth, while trying to avoid structural criticism of their arguments.

Which is somewhat ironic to me, it coming from the likes of Peterson, and the rest of the "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd.

We can have great and meaningful conversations about our emotions, what they represent and how they impact us. Just because the concepts and narratives we use to communicate these things are fiction, does not mean the emotional impact is fiction. Ideas that we need some kind of justification for their foundation takes away, in my mind, the value of those conversations. Shakespeares soliloquy in Hamlet does not have to have been said by a real person for its meaning to have impact. The idea that there is a need for truth beyond that the story exists at all in this context, is baffling to me. Similarly the impacts of the Bible do not hinge on its truth.

In short: Myths and stories exists. Myths and stories have impact on humans. Does that provide any justification for the myths and stories being true?

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Crazy-Car-5186 t1_j7ux7oa wrote

If myths and stories impact on humans in a way that adds to their meaning and experience of their life, then them believing it has meaning is a natural consequence. Neither Jung not Peterson argued for a theistic religions fiction to be true, just of the psychological impacts that belief in a God, myths etc has. If you only believed what you could prove, of that we live a meaningless existence on a rock which will eventually be burned up by its star then it feels a lot hollower than a purposeful design. That's not to say it's true, but I think more people feel that than not and to believe in the nihilistic view is arguably harmful to the psyche. Which I believe is what jung and Peterson are getting at, of the benefits of such a belief. Not that any religion etc is correct, I believe Jung talked about how when he killed a God they appeared elsewhere, as a guide for the psyche. Nature for example could be seen as a God in the current zeitgeist with pollution and mankind's greed it's demon.

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