Religion Vs. Philisophy

Same here. Some traditional Buddhists would say that we're part of the problem, blurring the lines.

There is a revolution going on in the way that people interact with religion. People are increasingly rejecting the monolithic, "take it or leave it" packages that come with social accountability systems to enforce conformity.

It looks like an opinion to me.

 

For Western Philosophy and Western Religion, I would draw the line in terms of what each paradigm seeks to accomplish. For philosophy, you are usually reading an individual's rational and logical inquiries (occasionally it's in the form of a discussion) into how they arrive at their arguments and ideas. Going back to Socrates, one of the founders of Western Philosophy, an integral part of philosophy has been to question the arguments and ideas being made prior to verifying the validity, soundness, likelihood of the assertions. Philosophy invites critical thinking.

This contrasts with religion where the collection of ideas, anecdotes, precepts and predictions are to be accepted for truths in some manner. Another notable difference is religion largely relies on events from the past in their holy books to inform understanding, as where in philosophy events of the philosophers by and large are secondary and in most cases irrelevant to understanding.

From my understanding of Eastern Philosophy and Eastern Religion is that they generally are more intertwined. I haven't delved too much into Eastern Philosophy but I think there are some areas such as the Middle East which have contributed very little to the legacy of Philosophy like Buddhism or Indian Philosophy has. Then another interesting perspective is Confuscianism, where ethics is the main concern and very little else is mentioned such as metaphysics or several of the other topics usually deemed worthwhile in philosophy. So yes I think the West and East have different approaches when it comes to philosophy and religion.

 

I once told a friend that I had buddhist leanings and she asked if I was a regular at the local temple, which is actually walking distance from my house.

I told her i'd been there once. it was really pretty and serene inside. no interest in going back. I was definitely a tourist too. She didn't understand and probably thought I was just trying to sound cool about the buddhist thing, since why then have I not been going to the temple, hehe. Hard conversation with some.






There's an amazing hindu temple driving distance from me that I want to visit.

 

Thing is though, a lot of eastern philosophy is deeply entangled with 'religion'. If you decided for instance that Buddhist philosophy is the thing, there might well come a time when you'd want to act on it. One of the basic teachings of Buddhism for instance is that all life is suffering, and Buddhism says it has the means to bring that to an end. Just by philosophy you can't do that. You'd eventually have to take to meditation or some other technique, because that's what the philosophy is really all about.

One thing I've always liked about Hinduism is that there is the concept of yoga, which is not really the same thing as religion although related to it. One can practice yoga and not get drawn into other aspects of Hinduism which are less attractive. Also in this instance, it's probably the only way really for westerners to have any access to the core of Hinduism. I've spoken to Indian practitioners about this and they tend to agree.

 

I didn't mean meditation has to be 'religious'. Just that it forms part of the religion of Buddhism in general. Maybe there are Buddhist sects who don't meditate, I don't know. Either way, if you start meditation, that's going beyond what's usually described as philosophy.

I wasn't talking about any form of yoga in particular. But one could certainly practice hatha yoga, raja yoga, integral yoga, even bhakti yoga without going fully into the 'religion'. And in the case of Hindusim, I don't think western people , with a very few exceptions. can 'become' Hindu, because it's a culture as well as a religion. In a way, the separation of religion from the rest of the culture is more a feature of western traditions.

 

I think drawing the line between religion and philosophy is more difficult than it may at first seem. Unless you clarify it as, say, philosophy of the 19th century to the present. The Judeo-Christian tradition has shaped both Western thought and Western philosophy as much as that of Greek Philosophy (See Barrett's Irrational Man, for example).

Descarte's radical skepticism that gave birth to the Modern Age, for example, was an attempt to find that one undeniable truth, which could then be used to build up a proof of God.

The real split between religion and philosophy started with Kant, and yet he too believed himself to be religious---but concluded that there can be no proof of the metaphysical. He liberated science from religion and is just as responsible for the Modern Age as Descarte. If it wasn't for Kant, this OP question would probably not even be conceivable.

Unfortunately, Kant also closed the door for Modern Man to have a bona fide spiritual experience. Therefore religions have been reduced to what Carl Jung called, "a creed."

Kant also paved the way for what I believe is ultimately the logical end result anyway of rationalist objectivism: Nihilism (and once you take away the spiritual experience, and the spiritual mysteries of a religion or a spirituality, all you are left with is rationalist objectivism).

We are living in the Age of Nihilism, where there is no more truth, no more value, and no more meaning. We are culturally programmed to think that there is truth, value, and meaning, but in the end what we are given is the shallow manufactured values of consumerism. The deeper questions of 'Why' are never answered. Many people who think they have a personal philosophy, are more likely to just be regurgitating a rationalization of their cultural programming. (Granted, there are those who are genuine in their philosophies, and/or their spiritual beliefs).

A sign of the times is the fact that philosophy is dead. This is especially obvious in the English speaking world where Analytical philosophy is the rule---which is really a philosophy that can no longer find meaning, so it resorts to trying to find meaning in the words that philosophy uses. As Stephen Hawking said (and I paraphrase), today when one wants to find the meaning to life he turns, not to a philosopher, but a scientist.

This state of Nihilism means that as a culture, we have no true unifying myth. This unifying myth is what would provide meaning to our culture, to our lives, to our philosophical reasoning. This unifying myth would be our cultural truth. It may ultimately prove to be wrong, or misguided, or inaccurate--but that doesn't really matter because it is our defining zeitgeist---spirit of the times. It is the truth as we see it now. But we do not have one----instead we are spoonfed consumerism.

So there is a struggle to find meaning to our lives and our culture. The New Age movement is a prime example of that. The problem is that we cannot go back as a culture to the institutions and values of the past---we have already, as a culture, burned those bridges. In fact, Kant blew up a few of them. We will therefore strip meaning from religious institutions for our own personal use, and philosophical experimentation, just as we strip ritual and ceremony from all kinds of traditions---removing them from their original cultural and spiritual context, which we then mix and combine in hopes that the meaning lies therein. All the while we are oblivious to the realization that what we are doing is nothing more than parodying the original, and creating a simulacra that generally has no more meaning than the lives we are already living.

We cannot go back---at least, not as a culture. Individuals can, if they are lucky enough to find the truths that Kant has buried out of sight for the majority of modern man. For the rest of us, those old ways are no more than superstition. No---we can only move forward----in hopes of rediscovering meaning, truth, and value. In hopes of one day bringing even philosophy back to life.

 

All religions began as spiritualities, based on deep spiritual experiences of those we refer to as their prophets, and teachers, and so forth. The religion itself, however, was a man made attempt to legitimize such subjective experiences, for purposes of power, and control. It is, after all, a cultural institution. The only difference between Eastern and Western religions is that the Eastern religions retain a higher priority on the mystical experience. But Eastern temples are institutions just as are Western churches. For example, Buddhist temples in China underwent some very bloody wars for control in the past.

Spiritual experiences occur in the language of the subconscious---because our subconscious is the doorway to the spiritual. In other words---spiritual truths and realities do not necessarily correspond directly to physical truths---it is of a different reality.

Yes----this is what it really is all about---the key part of the truth, meaning, and value that we need to rediscover. But not in the industrial age consumerist version of value----life and being should not be subject to a market value, people should not have a price tag, or represent an expense, or have a vanity price tag (aimed at inflating one's own personal and selfish value). Life and being should have value simply because it 'is.'

 

Religion is specific, philosophy isn't.

 

I don't see why meditation can't be a part of a personal philosophy. I guess I don't see philosophy like the rest of you do. To me it's any way one decides to live their life. I don't think most people necessarily think of themselves as being philosophical, yet they are being philosophical. One way or another they're gauging their reality and living out their lives based on the reality they perceive.

I don't think a philosophy has to be based on physical truths. To me a spiritual existence still boils down to a personal philosophy. I guess when I say maybe religion began as philosophy, I mean it began as one man's way of doing things. Though I guess in the case of Jesus it did seem like he was looking for attention.

 

I think I agree, though I would say that you are then entering the realm of psychology. Vipassana Meditation is an experiment, every time. Do we do experiments in philosophy?

Sam Harris describes meditation as akin to the Large Hadron Collider; it's a technology for peering into the truth of the universe.

 

I actually agree with you----I didn't mean to disagree with you.

 

I didn't think you were. I'm just bored.

 

Could you elaborate on that? I immediately want to (mostly)disagree, but I can see where you're headed if you really want to define it - which to me seems to miss the point of meditation, but I suppose it falls into something somewhere within the intellectual sphere.. so, I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts

 

Well psychology is the study of the human mind through experimentation and observation, and vipassana meditation consists of observing the mind and performing exercises/experiments such as maintaining attention on the breath and noting the reactions of the mind to this.

 

I assume you're talking about America in general. In the South, you surely know there are tens of millions who think we can and should go back to a time when life was all about Jesus; specifically the Americanized version of him.

 

I think you got it Karen J---that is especially a problem here. But then there is the Middle East. To clarify for everyone:

Modern Culture has become a global cultural phenomena--largely because it has been shaped by industrialization. Each nation, and each culture interprets that global culture in its own way, but it is still a global phenomena with many shared values and globally dominant influences. There was a time when Europe had great influence over Modern Global Culture. In all my travels and living abroad I believe that today it is American Modern culture that by far has the greatest influence on Global Culture.

For example, there is the mythohistory of the rugged American individual--supposedly individualism at its finest. Yes there were the mountain men that embodied individualism, and there were early pioneers that set out on their own--but I believe that American individualism is really just masquerading an industrial age elitist group ethic. Outside of the mountain men though, the hippies were, their first years, probably the only other genuine instance of true individualism, at least until pop culture absorbed it.

But American individualism is a global cultural phenomena. In Japan, a very group oriented culture, for example, there has been a massive shift towards individualism going on since the 1970's. But Japanese pop culture embraced 1950's American pop culture (and not the 1960's) as an icon and paraded it as the 'American free spirit.' In the late 1980's in this land of duty (to one's nation, one's employer, one's family, and so on) and life-time employment, a new trend took off to meet the individual tastes of young people who wanted the freedom to travel and so forth---a trend of arubaito---part time employment. Not in the sense that it previously meant---work for college students, and the unemployed poor, or a wife that wanted to supplement her husband's income working for a small business or a coffee shop. But a lifestyle for young people that wanted to work only long enough to then take off and travel, or ski, or whatever.

I have not been back to Japan for years and I do not know how this has survived the multi-decade recession. But the myth of life-time employment is dead. I do, however, still observe the trends from afar. In a recent Japanese commercial, there is a wildman that is glorified---beginning with an almost Bacchanalic pastoralism--then moving to modern life with the statement that while he is wild and roams the fields, he is just at home roaming the cities. He is an individual---then you see him, what appears more like an anthropomorhised lion, but definitely with a human face---well dressed in a sports coat, with a drink---the archetypal cool guy at the party, who doesn't care what others think about him, or even if they like him---the commercial ends with the suggestion that you too could be him, and then we find out that he is really a car not a living thing. This commercial plays along the same theme as being a Pepper here, and that drinking Dr. Pepper will make you unique.

This is a global phenomena. It is the secular and materialistic threat that Modern Global culture threatens and imposes that is behind all the terrorism coming out of the Middle East (even as terrorists munch McDonald's or go out to eat at Denny's or Applebees, or other 'Middle Eastern' restaurants). You can find discarded Coke bottles deep in New Guinea jungles, and American pop stars are idolized and loved in the next village, no matter how deep in that same jungle.

So I am talking about both global culture and American culture. Fundamentalism is a particularly American phenomena, and it is a reactionary phenomena just as jihadism is reactionary. You could say that post-world war II, Europeans for a large part have resigned themselves to their fate, not to mention that they demonstrate more intelligence than the average American in many parts of our country---such as much of the South East and Texas...

But while the church can never again be our unifying truth, this does not mean that the rest of America is anti-Christian, or that our future is one of being Anti-Christian or even Anti-religion. We are not destined to become a Godless State where Christians are persecuted, and crucified. But secularism is clearly here to stay, otherwise we would always be trapped by religious dogma (which perpetuates racial, sexual, and other biases).

Globalization shapes American culture with foreign influences just as American Culture shapes global culture. Your referencing Buddhist interpretations of other religions, for example, would have sounded crazy back in the 1950's and much of the 1960's. Most people would have been completely oblivious and unable to understand what you were suggesting.

Globalization demands a multiplicity. Consider how small the world is growing. We can now talk to my wife's family in the Philippines, as easily as calling my next door neighbor on the phone, without spending a fortune, just by calling via facebook. And really, much of my life, it was somewhat prohibitive to even make long distance calls across the country, because long distance bills would add up. With a cell phone this is no longer even a consideration. Next year there is a new airline starting up that will offer regular flights from the East Coast to Europe as cheaply as $75 or so. Depending on the day of the week, you can fly to and from London to Barcelona and other European locations as cheaply as $35. Cebu Pacific allows you to fly to and from Manila to other South East Asian locations for very cheap fares. For that matter (and probably only you older folks are going to know what I am talking about) there has no longer been a 'jet set' since the mid 70's or so. The people flying today are no different than those riding busses. Do any of you remember 'dressing up' to ride a plane?

In this world of increasing globalization, the problem of a religion as a unifying truth quickly becomes 'Whose religion? Whose truth?

And in the end, a church or religion cannot be the answer to a world of Nihilism where there is no meaning, truth or value. It can only impact individuals on a subjective level, not on a cultural level. Not even a world of relativism, where our understanding of reality has been shaped by a relativistic understanding of physical reality. And what is next? Quantum mechanics has not even come of age yet, and its understanding of reality, and the implications it brings forth are only beginning to dawn----which, coincidentally (or not) is one of multiplicity.

 

philosophy remains in the abstract, where as religion is a human construct.

I think a better formed question would have been to question the line between philosophy and spirituality.

 

traditionally a philosophy has ontology, epistemology, and ethics - religions mostly throw out ethics so they aren't really philosophies