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The true nature of religion in civilization's development

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Drregaleagle

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I didn't know that Locke considered himself an Anglican! I share your assessment of Locke except for the fact that his philosophy was a driving force of civilization and had early Objectivist elements. However, he didn't come out of Catholic tradition, but Augustinian(Protestant) tradition. Samuel Rutherford isn't too well known, but he was an early example of a philosopher who attacked divine right of kings and he had a enormous influence on John Locke. There is ample evidence of this including Locke's reading list and evidence that Rutherford and Locke's father maintained a correspondence. Rutherford was devoutly Calvinistic. If this were just one instance of Enlightenment values coming from Calvinism, I'd consider it an aberration. However, it occurs repeatedly throughout the Enlightenment until the Industrial Revolution. Max Weber's theories can't be quite right either because religious Protestants weren't obsessed with accumulating wealth. In fact, it was extremely heretical to think that poverty was necessarily a sign that a person was damned. The only explanation I can think of is that Protestant philosophy is closer to Enlightenment thinking than Catholic philosophy.

As Christianity tries to take credit for the formulation of these United States, a crass attempt at revisionist history, its attempt to do so should become a part of the historical evidence, and ultimately the relationship between history and religion will allow us to look for religion in the one place it deserves to be found: in history.

I agree with this, but our country(assuming you're American) still evolved from Protestant Christianity.

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I agree with this, but our country(assuming you're American) still evolved from Protestant Christianity.

Corrolation is not causality. Protestant Christianity is not just a US phenomena. The US was developed from a study of historical principles, and while some of the individuals involved attended church, it was an understanding of the problems inherent in monarchies, feudalship, and democracies that helped for formulate these United States.

The United States was not established on 'a set of mystical views about the supernatural origins of, workings of, and purposes of reality, and what that implies about the living of human life.'*

*'John Ridpth, Religion vs Man'

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I agree with this, but our country(assuming you're American) still evolved from Protestant Christianity

Please study the history of Jamestown, VA.

Identify the purpose of the Jamestown colony.

Was it:

A ) Religious

B ) Penal

C ) Economic

Edited by Greebo
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Please study the history of Jamestown, VA.

Identify the purpose of the Jamestown colony.

Was it:

A ) Religious

B ) Penal

C ) Economic

Actually, it is A according to the primary source documents.

A)

Jamestown's founding statement reads:

“Wee, greatly commending and graciously accepting of their desires to the furtherance of

soe noble a worke which may, by the providence of Almightie God, hereafter tende to the

golire of His divine Majestie in propagating of Christian religion to suche people as yet

live in darknesse and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worshippe of God

and may in time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to humane civilitie

and to a setled and quiet governmente, doe by theise our lettres patents graciously accepte

of and agree to theire humble and well intentioned desires;”

So officially, even Jamestown was founded to spread Christianity. I think the reasons behind the religion were economic and practical, but the official reason for Jamestown's founding was explicitly religious too. It was the Industrial Revolution of Carnegie, Bell, and Edison that marked the evolution into atheism.

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Corrolation is not causality. Protestant Christianity is not just a US phenomena.

Correlation implies causation in a controlled study unless the correlation can be explained otherwise. If you reject this, you reject the scientific method. Neither is Enlightenment thought; the Enlightenment also produced the disastrous French Revolution. Certain aspects of Protestant Christianity were mostly just a US phenomenon by 1700.

The US was developed from a study of historical principles, and while some of the individuals involved attended church, it was an understanding of the problems inherent in monarchies, feudalship, and democracies that helped for formulate these United States.

Yes it was and those historical principles came from religion, particularly Protestant Christianity. You still don't seem to understand the difference between Christianity and a philosophy that evolved from Christianity. Many Objectivists cite Samuel Adams as a major influence on American political thought, rightfully so. Sam Adams was probably a closet Deist or a religious pragmatist, but he stressed the fact that his ideas largely came from his Puritan ancestors. The other Adams, John Adams, was explicitly not a normal Christian. He was a Unitarian, and he readily identified the Reformation as his intellectual precursor on many occasions. He wrote "Let not Geneva be forgotten or despited. Religious

liberty owes it much respect, Servetus notwithstanding.”

John Adams also wrote, "After Martin Luther had introduced into Germany the liberty of thinking in matters of religion, and erected the standard of reformation, John Calvin, a native of Noyon, in Picardie, of a vast genius, singular eloquence, various erudition, and polished taste, embraced the cause of reformation. In the books which he published, and in the discourses which he held in the several cities of France, he proposed one hundred and twenty-eight articles in opposition to the creed of the Roman Catholic church. These opinions were soon embraced with ardor, and maintained with obstinacy, by a great number of persons of all conditions. The asylum and the centre of this new sect was Geneva, a city situated on the lake ancienty called Lemanus, on the frontiers of Savoy, which had shaken off the yoke of its bishop and the Duke of Savoy, and erected itself into a republic, under the title of a free city, for the sake of liberty of conscience. "

The Works of John Adams, edited by Charles F. Adams.

The United States was not established on 'a set of mystical views about the supernatural origins of, workings of, and purposes of reality, and what that implies about the living of human life.'*

*'John Ridpth, Religion vs Man'

No, but the views that did establish the United States evolved from certain mysticism. Mysticism can only be refuted by experimentation, whether it be "thought experimentation" or otherwise. Peikoff readily acknowledges this, but he goes from Thomist mysticism to the Enlightenment. By skipping Protestant mysticism, he gives a weak impression of US history.

Edited by Drregaleagle
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Mysticism can only be refuted by experimentation, whether it be "thought experimentation" or otherwise. Peikoff readily acknowledges this, but he goes from Thomist mysticism to the Enlightenment.

Peikoff acknowledges this?

What Peikoff acknowledges is mysticism is a primacy of consciousness approach. If you want to demonstrate that Mysticism is validated by experimentation, be my guest.

Is this what you are asking to be used as a method of congnition that leads to a validable and provable source of truth?

Mysticism is the theory that man has a means of knowledge other than sense perception or reason, such as revelation, faith, intuition, and the like. As we have seen, this theory reduces to emotionalism. It amounts to the view that men should rely for cognitive guidance not on the volitional faculty of thought, but on an automatic mental function, feeling.
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Peikoff acknowledges this?

What Peikoff acknowledges is mysticism is a primacy of consciousness approach. If you want to demonstrate that Mysticism is validated by experimentation, be my guest.

Is this what you are asking to be used as a method of congnition that leads to a validable and provable source of truth?

Peikoff acknowledges that experimentation refutes mysticism. One needs to be able to interpret sensation, to reason, accurately to experiment. Reasoning skills are not merely innate qualities that we evolved; they are sharpened with practice, study, and the advice of others. If this weren't true, no philosopher would ever need to write any books to convey his philosophy because everyone would instinctively know it. Reason must be developed. Since reasoning must be developed, people will naturally always hold to mystical ideas until their reasoning sharpens. However, it is the recognition of reason's primacy that matters. I think this is why it is important to understand how ideas evolve.

And mysticism doesn't end with atheism. A thousand years from now people may very well consider some of Ayn Rand's views mystical. I don't know which ones, but anyone will ultimately make logical errors.

Edited by Drregaleagle
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I think I misread what you had originally written, in light of this response.

If an individual, regardless of how religious, resorts to reason and evidence of the senses to bring about an advancement in knowledge, by what criteria do we lump this under a "the true nature of religion in civilization's development."? Just because an individual is unfortunate enough to have been stultified by exposure to religious influences during the course of their life, does not exempt them from grasping that there may be something more to discovering what is actually in reality true despite perhaps a lifetime of religious indoctrination? Is this an application of 'religious philosophy', or did some of the truth that religion need smuggle in to appear plausable, burst forth in an erudition - at which point - is it mysticisim at play, or the kernal of truth that germinated and brought forth the fruit?

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I think I misread what you had originally written, in light of this response.

If an individual, regardless of how religious, resorts to reason and evidence of the senses to bring about an advancement in knowledge, by what criteria do we lump this under a "the true nature of religion in civilization's development."? Just because an individual is unfortunate enough to have been stultified by exposure to religious influences during the course of their life, does not exempt them from grasping that there may be something more to discovering what is actually in reality true despite perhaps a lifetime of religious indoctrination? Is this an application of 'religious philosophy', or did some of the truth that religion need smuggle in to appear plausable, burst forth in an erudition - at which point - is it mysticisim at play, or the kernal of truth that germinated and brought forth the fruit?

I probably should have titled the thread "the true nature of the philosophy that emerged from religion in civilization's development". I was considering religion synonymous with philosophy but the mystical aspects are not, once it is rationally demonstrated that they are mystical.

Edited by Drregaleagle
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I probably should have titled the thread "the true nature of the philosophy that emerged from religion in civilization's development". I was considering religion synonymous with philosophy but the mystical aspects are not, once it is rationally demonstrated that they are mystical.

Rand and Peikoff have both written on 'religion as philosophy':

Observe that in mankind's history, art began as an adjunct (and, often, a monopoly) of religion. Religion was the primitive form of philosophy: it provided man with a comprehensive view of existence. Observe that the art of those primitive cultures was a concretization of their religion's metaphysical and ethical abstractions.

Religion, as a philosophy, is still a power which no man can abstain.

Religion is "canned philosophy": you don't have to know what's in it or how it's cooked, no effort is required of you, just swallow it—and if it poisons you, it was your own fault, the cooks will tell you, you didn't have enough "faith."

It is a compromise between poison and food, faith and reason, the poison of faith and the need of reason to properly feed the mind.

The desire to escape that answer {"We couldn't help it"} is the motive that attracts so many haters to the intellectual professions today—as they were attracted to philosophy or to its primitive precursor, religion, through all the ages. There have always been men of arrested mental development who, dreading reality, found psychological protection in the art of incapacitating the minds of others.

By smuggling in one lie packaged among nine truths, religion often destroys or stunts the development of the capacity to discern the difference on one's own.

Religion involves a certain kind of outlook on the world and a consequent way of life. In other words, the term "religion" denotes a type (actually, a precursor) of philosophy. As such, a religion must include a view of knowledge (which is the subject matter of the branch of philosophy called epistemology) and a view of reality (metaphysics). Then, on this foundation, a religion builds a code of values (ethics). So the question becomes: what type of philosophy constitutes a religion?

Another question that comes to mind: what religion could fully integrate Rand's theory of concepts?

Philosophy is the goal toward which religion was only a helplessly blind groping. The grandeur, the reverence, the exalted purity, the austere dedication to the pursuit of truth, which are commonly associated with religion, should properly belong to the field of philosophy. Aristotle lived up to it and, in part, so did Plato, Aquinas, Spinoza—but how many others? It is earlier than we think.

This is a future civilization worth developing.

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Actually, it is A according to the primary source documents.A)Jamestown's founding statement reads:“Wee, greatly commending and graciously accepting of their desires to the furtherance ofsoe noble a worke which may, by the providence of Almightie God, hereafter tende to thegolire of His divine Majestie in propagating of Christian religion to suche people as yetlive in darknesse and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worshippe of Godand may in time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to humane civilitieand to a setled and quiet governmente, doe by theise our lettres patents graciously accepteof and agree to theire humble and well intentioned desires;”So officially, even Jamestown was founded to spread Christianity. I think the reasons behind the religion were economic and practical, but the official reason for Jamestown's founding was explicitly religious too. It was the Industrial Revolution of Carnegie, Bell, and Edison that marked the evolution into atheism.

This is a point not to be taken lightly. The correct Historic, not Historiographic, answer is Economic. But the very interesting thing that this reminds us is that even with the purpose of acquiring gold, and private finance to that end, the English, as any people before the advent of Political Materialism, had to justify unto themselves, and saccramentally mark with a higher, holier symbol (in that age, God), the Heroic, Remarkable, Civilization-changing achievement they were to do.

In some way, the English "Tribe" or people, knew that establishing an outpost farther from their homeland than the holy land, and in an unexpected opposite direction, was an omen not to be debased as a simple commercial venture.

Even if it was just a -failed- commercial venture, they were still conscious that they were doing something else of immense but long term value, as well. Claiming the expansion of what they called God and Humane Civilite was to the extend of their capacity and context, like claiming, We are founding this settlement as a beach-head for the expansion and nurture of the Freest People on Earth.

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Correlation implies causation in a controlled study unless the correlation can be explained otherwise. If you reject this, you reject the scientific method. Neither is Enlightenment thought; the Enlightenment also produced the disastrous French Revolution. Certain aspects of Protestant Christianity were mostly just a US phenomenon by 1700.

I'm not so sure about this.

For example, I can't just go up and say "Hey did you know that sin(x) can be solved by x - x^3/fact(3) + x^5/fact(5) - x^7/fact(7) + x^9/fact(9) - x^11/fact(11) ..... ". I would have to provide a mathematical proof for it, using derivatives, L'Hopital's rule, and all that other crazy shit. "It works because it's right every time you try it" wouldn't work.

Now, I know mathematics has more demands for non-contradiction than other sciences, but it would be very unsafe to assume that a correlation implies causation until there is absolute certainty

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