Admitting You're a Sinner

[The Grand Nudger]

My impression is that there is an institutional tolerance bordering on commitment to encouraging a wide range of belief levels, ranging between the literal with an emphasis on rule following on up to someone like Mother Teresa who recognized she no longer believed in God at all.

Not on the issue of original sin.  Its fundamental, as they state in catechism, nothing of scripture can be made sense of..in their intepretation of it, without that literal and very specific insistence.  The central mystery of their faith depends on it. Catholics -can- believe in a range of things..especially on peripheral issues..this isn't one of them.  It's central not only to their theology..but it;s the whole purpose of their rites..of mass - of recieving communion, hell, even the confessional is not necessarrily meant for ones current sins, but an expression of your openess to god and your relationship with the divine by being willing to divulge them honestly, in humility and a true spirit of repentence. This is thought to effect the deeper issue of sin. It's thought to help us bare the sin of adam, our real first parent, whose trangression we inherit as a mark upon our souls and whose sin was so great that it condemded all mankind in that very instant.

Now ofc our protestant friends are going to tell us that's wrong or unbiblical and double plus ungood..even catholics are..apparently, willing to object - but that -is- catholicism. It's more rigid than some faiths. A necessity of creating that unity, that ring of the church of christ they perceive themselves (and seek, I;m sure) to be.

[vulcanlogician]

He approaches religious experience alone (as the title suggests)... first he circumscribes the topic. He does his best to remove cultural precepts from religious experience and evaluate it accordingly. First he argues that religious experience has "morbid origins" (aka physiological causes) but should not be dismissed on that account. He makes some good points. I found the passage from Theologia Germanica that I quoted to Steve in there.

I'll have to dig up the quote, but he makes a case for the pragmatic utility of religious feelings to carry one through difficulties when a strictly clinical interpretation of one's circumstances may not be capable of spurring the requisite enthusiasm to overcome tribulations.

The third lecture is rather weak. It tries to make the case that religious feelings (for all we know) are caused by extant entities. He says that the holder of religious feelings can sense the presence of such an unseen entity in the same way a holder of a magnet may sense metal which he cannot perceive with his senses.

I'm into a part where he begins to differentiate "healthy minded" religious individuals from sick souls; he thinks that both types of religious individuals seek a method to overcome pessimism. That's where I'm at in the book (Lecture IV-V).

https://csrs.nd.edu/assets/59930/williams_1902.pdf

[The Grand Nudger]

He approaches religious experience alone (as the title suggests)... first he circumscribes the topic. He does his best to remove cultural precepts from religious experience and evaluate it accordingly. First he argues that religious experience has "morbid origins" (aka physiological causes) but should not be dismissed on that account. He makes some good points. I found the passage from Theologia Germanica that I quoted to Steve in there.

Yeah, it's a good (if maybe good/trivial?)point.  Its real to the religious, regardless.  

I'll have to dig up the quote, but he makes a case for the pragmatic utility of religious feelings to carry one through difficulties when a strictly clinical interpretation of one's circumstances may not be capable of spurring the requisite enthusiasm to overcome tribulations.

A bridge I haven't had to cross.  I can see why religion would be usueful to a person who can believe in that context..though that use seems necesarrily limited in scope and time.   
What do you think?  

The third lecture is rather weak. It tries to make the case that religious feelings (for all we know) are caused by extant entities. He says that the holder of religious feelings can sense the presence of such an unseen entity in the same way a holder of a magnet may sense metal which he cannot perceive with his senses.

The pipes...the pipes are calllin.  "Paddy, there aint no fuckin pipes, you're drunk."  

I'm into a part where he begins to differentiate "healthy minded" religious individuals from sick souls; he thinks that both types of religious individuals seek a method to overcome pessimism. That's where I'm at in the book (Lecture IV-V).

https://csrs.nd.edu/assets/59930/williams_1902.pdf

Thx, I'll give it a read. But, continue, obviously.

[Catholic_Lady]

Personally I adhere to the faith, except for that part about how I just told everyone I don;t adhere to a core and foundational doctrine of the catholic church..original sin.

I'm not positing that I know more about your faith than you do, trollerina...I'm suggesting that the catholic church, and their official doctrine...does...argue with them until you;re blue in the face...convinced the whole time your arguing with me.  Their opinion on the heretical theological musings of women is world renowned.  

My impression is that there is an institutional tolerance bordering on commitment to encouraging a wide range of belief levels, ranging between the literal with an emphasis on rule following on up to someone like Mother Teresa who recognized she no longer believed in God at all.  The pope she corresponded with about it touted her struggle to continue in her convictions even without belief laudable.  

Then there was that person at the Vatican interviewed by Bill Mayer for Religulous who was very openly accepting of this even as he conceded the difficulties for the literally minded.

Hm, didn't realize Maher had ever interviewed Father Foster.

Anyway, I wouldn't bother trying to explain to Khem about any of this. I know his AF persona well enough by now to know that he's not interested in what's actually true. He's going to keep accusing me of heresy for what I said about Original Sin, despite the fact that what I said is exactly what was taught to us in Catholic school. Moron.

[The Grand Nudger]

You may have been taught that in catholic school..but that's not the official position of the catholic church. Their position, on this matter..is explicit...and they are the authority on "the catholic position." Not you, not me, not your catholic school.

Your frustration is misplaced..it's more appropriately directed at whoever taught you that.

(on the matter of doctrine, obviously, I take full responsibility for whatever amount of that frustration my general dickishness produces - I don't deliver bad news gently or with much tact, lol)

[vulcanlogician]

A bridge I haven't had to cross.  I can see why religion would be usueful to a person who can believe in that context..though that use seems necesarrily limited in scope and time.   
What do you think?  

I think that it is on this account that James has made his best points thus far. What he points out is that reality can be harsh, and religion can provide a context for one's difficulties other than the apparent world. A commentator on James, whose name I forget said something like "Once we understand that the locus of meaning is situated beyond our egos, we can transcend the difficulties peculiar to the ego."

We shall see how infinitely passionate a thing religion at its highest flights can be. Like love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else. This enchantment, coming as a gift when it does come—a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tell us, a gift of God’s grace, the theologians say —is either there or not there for us, and there are persons who can no more become possessed by it than they can fall in love with a given woman by mere word of command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject’s range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste.

If anything, James expresses something which we nonbelievers ought to take into account. This is a viable method of transcendence, a "new sphere of power" for one who cannot find sufficient inspiration from mundane sources of enthusiasm.

Keep in mind also that James does not chain religious experience to theism of any kind, as one might expect of one contemporary to his epoch.

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for
us THE FEELINGS, ACTS, AND EXPERIENCES OF INDIVIDUAL MEN
IN THEIR SOLITUDE, SO FAR AS THEY APPREHEND THEMSELVES
TO STAND IN RELATION TO WHATEVER THEY MAY CONSIDER
THE DIVINE.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a very novel way to use the term religion, I think.

[vulcanlogician]

That's what I'm liking about it. It's a novel approach.

---

James compares/contrasts religious contexts with Stoic philosophy and says that the two pursue the same transcendent wisdom, one cooly and rationally (via logic)... the other fervently and passionately (via the emotions).

[The Grand Nudger]

Are you concerned that..in his novel approach of calling that religion..he might lose the majority of religion, or the pulse, if you will..and be talking about something else instead?  t the beginnig, removing the cultural artifacts...that;s a hel of alot of the substance of what we take the term religion to sensibly mean or refer to. Is it really still religion when you remove all of that, and the gods too?

The value of an lsd induced "religious" experience is, in that paradigm, functionally equivalent.  A sudden experience of the numinous can be..and often must be distinguished from "religion" - as they aren't in any way limited to religious people and obviously don;t always refer to anything we'd otherwise consider a religion.  

We had a thread..can't remember if it was before you came or after..but it was a "what is sacred to you" thread...atheists weren't short on answers.  I know I'm not. I can manufacture that feeling with such intensity and reliability that I like to joke with people about having found zen at the bottom of a hole. I put in the work, it's not actually natural talent. Part of therapy.

That religion..specifically christianity, is recognizable in comparison to stoicism is unsurprising...they cribbed a bunch of it when they wrote magic book.

[Astreja]

Where does guilt come from?
Isn't it a basic fear of survival?

I'm not sure, but it might be an evolved trait.  It may be related to the shock to the gut one feels after having a really close call in a dangerous situation.