are you an atheist?

but i think the ultimate drive in it is something transcendental - an infinite + incomprehensible longing, an irreducible need

imo this is otm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellant

this may sound strange or too obvious, but the prevalence of "sexual" versions of this (beyond fetishistic idiosyncrasy) corroborates my sense of some kind of encoding, particularly re the problematics of power/ freedom/ will/ self

(one of my fave versions of this religious ascetic/ atheist sexual/ metaphysical ambiguity is in Beckett's Murphy, tying himself naked to a rocking chair)

i find myself imagining religion-in-the-world, in the metaphysical/meaning sense as opposed to the social/cultural/institutional identity sense, as analogous to an infinite convergence series a al zeno's paradox. there is a contradiction between the infinite and the finite but each coexists in a disjunctive way. similar to relativity and quantum mechanics. it's pretty half-baked. influenced by deleuze in a very basic way.

i definitely fall on the side of doubting that a metaphysical perspective can be marshalled toward any "good" social / cultural end though, at least not in the way it's presented in contemporary american evangelical forms. like, acknowledging any kind of mystical machinery at work can feel liberating but this is the tip of the iceberg and all the stuff underwater that comes along with it, the endless anxieties, neuroses, justifications of power, pure fiction required to keep everything moving along as a social movement, all that stuff is very .. pressurized, i think? hard to see any good in it.

it's probably obvious but most of this is reflection on my personal experience and not generalizable to many others.

basically, i see the institutionalization of metaphysical whatever-you-want-to-call-it, mystery, emergence, the empty set, as something that follows given how humans are but not something that *furthers* something that can't be *furthered*

(xpost)

ps of course by "encoding" i do not *at all* mean intelligent design (though someone who wants to take it that way could); i mean more like fallenness/ throwness.

i like to think of fallenness as, literally, gravity, and redemption as the diagram of differentiating galaxy clusters that operates within that framework of "absolute" limits, or emergence, contingency, chaos. the difference between these two realms is, idk, what enables their repetition? something. time for my cookies and milk.

i definitely fall on the side of doubting that a metaphysical perspective can be marshalled toward any "good" social / cultural end though, at least not in the way it's presented in contemporary american evangelical forms. like, acknowledging any kind of mystical machinery at work can feel liberating but this is the tip of the iceberg and all the stuff underwater that comes along with it, the endless anxieties, neuroses, justifications of power, pure fiction required to keep everything moving along as a social movement, all that stuff is very .. pressurized, i think? hard to see any good in it.

i think i agree with all of this except i don't think it's so clear where the "exit" or "exception" is.

for example, hypothetically one could (and I would) argue that it's healthy to have a church/ state, transcendental/ worldly distinction which stands against radical ideologues *on right and left*; but some "anti-right" critiques are so easy that I think the "left" too often exempts itself from its own possible metaphysical fictions. (For example, hypothetically, I may be more comfortable with a leader who "renders under Caesar" than an atheist who doesn't see any distinction between those realms.)

(even if, I know, those realms are always deconstructible)

xp oh definitely. i agree that these forms are difficult, maybe impossible to avoid in the political / social worlds we are all a part of. on some level though i don't know that it matters. i picture the "spark of life", for want of a better term again, maybe it's literally indescribable or pre-language, as purely migratory, making these formations possible but simultaneously escaping their attempts to represent it. so that we don't have to do much, but think about what we are somehow compelled to do and why, also maybe what we might be able to do together. i guess it's an approximate buddhism i'm aiming at, and i'm a little embarrassed about being so overbearing about it tbh.

i like to think of fallenness as, literally, gravity, and redemption as the diagram of differentiating galaxy clusters that operates within that framework of "absolute" limits, or emergence, contingency, chaos. the difference between these two realms is, idk, what enables their repetition? something. time for my cookies and milk.

I might not entirely get this but I like it! My own mental models of throwness largely resemble this; but (among other things) what I'm most stuck on is Guilt.

I'm not religious but I might as well be, in terms of certain psychological dynamics.

Few things I have more contempt/ mockery for than a lot of New Age gobbledygook; but I do get where that need is coming from. (In the present historical moment, that housewife will turn to Oprah, not Epictetus.)

i picture the "spark of life", for want of a better term again, maybe it's literally indescribable or pre-language, as purely migratory, making these formations possible but simultaneously escaping their attempts to represent it. so that we don't have to do much, but think about what we are somehow compelled to do and why, also maybe what we might be able to do together. i guess it's an approximate buddhism i'm aiming at, and i'm a little embarrassed about being so overbearing about it tbh.

feeling this, very much

you are garbage

u can apply all these different contexts for understanding religion (as culture, as political formation, as philosophy) but i think the ultimate drive in it is something transcendental - an infinite + incomprehensible longing, an irreducible need.

what's interesting to me about this is that it's so often now expressed in secular terms. in psychoanalysis as "desire," in science as the asymptotic approach toward truth, in art as the continual search for the new...because of this i dont really assign religion any kind of unique place in society but i do think it represents a heightened form, and one of the oldest forms, of what all kinds of discourses or social systems have to cope with. much as in hans blumenberg's argument that religion leaves an "unoccupied place" in secular modernity's differentiation that gets filled with whatever's at hand.

like, what mattresslessness is talking about in onto-theological terms i'd rather describe in terms of "modernity"--that term in itself can describe the transition from societal forms of hierarchical wholeness or totality to the "fallen" forms of what Hegel might call a "bad infinity."

Do you guys not believe in the independence of these things from religion when people claim "spiritual but not religious"?

That's a fine claim if you mean "interested in this stuff but not dogmatic" but popular over-use of that it makes it come across as mostly low-risk self-serving statement. There is tremendous value in exploring religious/spiritual ideas wo adhering to orthodox/mainstream interpretations but people use it as an intellectual status symbol (tho again that's not exclusive to religions).

This idea of encoding, could you explain it more? Is it like Jungian archetypes?

I can see a lot of religious ideas that have been shifted over to secular areas in modern times.

isn't "spiritual but not religious" just a religious claim that tries to disavow institutions?

i think the very possibility that that distinction can have meaning is a fascinating thing. puts me in mind of Jonathan Edwards's notion of "religious affections" as feelings that are essentially devoid of actual content.

if you start to codify what "spiritual" means at all then its sorta religion by my definition. but as that phrase tends to get used i dont think it's terribly coherent unless its taken as "i make up my own religion."

You can be religious about Jesus's anti-authoritarianism. There are a lot of things the Bible says about not holding public office or serving two masters whether that be God/state or God/money or God/idolatry of the Bible. Institutions clearly don't own a monopoly on religious meaning - just look at The Indulgences for a historical example of them thinking they did.

i think the pt is that "religion" is a pretty dumb term which was supposed to shoehorn a variety of practices known in the 18th century into one rubric so that you could compare christianity to whatever shamanic cult anthropologists had just discovered.

even anti-authoritarian forms of religion are still, in a sense, doctrines or loosely organized forms of belief. "spiritual but not religious" implicitly claims, i think, to be free of that kind of social organization--it's just an extension of the cult of individualism imo.

The "spiritual" part of that phrase seems to mainly a reference to Spiritualists, maybe it's more of a modern version of that mostly 19th century social phenomenon. Belief in ghosts, telepathy, auras, hypnotizing, etc. mashed together with heretofore unseen Eastern concepts like reincarnation, chakras, yoga, and encompassing true believers, charlatans (skeptics), and on-lookers. All those elements are still around but they don't really seem to be based on any doctrines other than pop culture or pop folklore. Throw in quantum mechanics/collapse of waveform/holographic universe/What the Bleep!/The Matrix and here we are.

this conversation reminds me of a book i like a lot about the link between 19th century spiritualism and technology (like ppl hearing ghosts through the static of a television):
http://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Futures-Past-Spiritualism-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0520274539

what's interesting to me about this is that it's so often now expressed in secular terms. in psychoanalysis as "desire," in science as the asymptotic approach toward truth, in art as the continual search for the new...because of this i dont really assign religion any kind of unique place in society but i do think it represents a heightened form, and one of the oldest forms, of what all kinds of discourses or social systems have to cope with. much as in hans blumenberg's argument that religion leaves an "unoccupied place" in secular modernity's differentiation that gets filled with whatever's at hand.

like, what mattresslessness is talking about in onto-theological terms i'd rather describe in terms of "modernity"--that term in itself can describe the transition from societal forms of hierarchical wholeness or totality to the "fallen" forms of what Hegel might call a "bad infinity."

true, modernity “reocuppies” religion in various ways; but i’m thinking more the continuity of questions than answers; i guess i want to call some fundamental questions/ questioning “religious” (for lack of better word). i think thinking human(ity) as fundamental lack, thinking radical finitude, just *has* an ontotheological or “sacred” dimension, transcendent rather than immanent (even if that transcendent thinking is just vertigo, or bumping up against contradictions, aporia). An irreducibly mythic & untheorizable dimension, whether or not it involves an idea of “god” or is enacted through rites of organized religion.

"spiritual but not religious", for me Trevor, is equal to "spiritual without even the poor excuse"

drash I think that's a fair take; but for me dragging in theological or religious baggage isn't strictly necessary. I'd like the idea of the "untheorizable" to be more prosaic, less burdened with the high stakes of religion or existentialism--especially because when we talk about the untheorizable in such terms we tend to reify it in a backhanded way.

another way of putting that is that I am intent on preventing religion (or philosophy, or science) from claiming a central or universal competence, even if it's one achieved through a negative transcendence.

agreed

incidentally if anyone wants to read a gripping and comprehensive book on the whole California new age type thing look for Jeffrey Kripel's "Esalen."

^^ Recently re-read "Helter Skelter" for the first time since I was like 14 years old, and was surprised by the many references to Scientology and the Esalen Institute, both of which were frequented by Manson Family members.

ryan maybe you'd find it more agreeable to say that from the perspective of ppl who are 'believers,' religion becomes the universal competence, and that this is bc it makes unlimited + infinite claims

not sure if a culture that gives a shit about surveying spirituality outside of religion is sweet or narcissistic

I am intent on preventing religion (or philosophy, or science) from claiming a central or universal competence

Well all three are intimately tied together, the idea that we can investigate nature and use it to our own ends (magic/science) grew out of idiosyncratic religious and philosophical (alchemical) explorations.

new age spirituality is such an interesting phenomenon to me (and as gr8080's thread on "awesomeness fest" attests, hilarious/ horrifying).

it makes me think of all the philosophico-religious cults, sects, gurus of the hellenistic period, many of which were quite new agey

analogous in what some of you have noted, the individualist/ narcissistic/ self-involved streak of new age spirituality. after the crumbling of hellenic civic religion, in the hellenistic period people turned to an obsessive "care of the self"-- not qua citizen, but qua "self"

i see new age spirituality (and scientology for that matter, and oprah and "the secret" etc.) as like that, religion focused on the "care of the self" (to use foucault's phrase); religion as self-help

I see it as an expression of marginalized groups, groups that are just now starting to gain human rights. If you look at the long history of witch hunts and branding people as heretics or cults, it was a oppression of women, non-hetero sexual orientations, ethnic minorities, and the disabled. It's important those struggles do not get swept under the rug and defined by the institutions which once hunted them down.

Also maintaining state power: once the printing press was invented many authors of books (often in the regional/common language) were imprisoned in dungeons, tortured, and had their books destroyed. During this time the church also spoke Latin, which was a language the common people could not understand. New Age or Cult or whatever you want to call it was really the only means available of intellectual rebellion.

New Age or Cult or whatever you want to call it was really the only means available of intellectual rebellion.

something to that. yet interestingly, at origins of christianity itself (early christianity before establishment of capital C Church), it too was chosen expression of marginalized groups (women, slaves, poor, etc.) and rebellion against state power

abrahamic revelation of monotheism is characterized in the bible as being against the mores + traditions of the polytheist culture surrounding him (Nimrod throws him into a fire for denying the gods), and the exodus narrative is about the redemption of a marginalized slave group from its taskmasters.

good point, judaism too

so expression of marginalized groups/ rebellion against state power not necessarily unique to new age spirituality (but i guess in particular historical period, it was)

edit to: but i guess in particular historical period, arguably it was

That's the way I see it, historically at least. I mean nowadays it's all about commerce but then again what isn't.

from the perspective of ppl who are 'believers,' religion becomes the universal competence, and that this is bc it makes unlimited + infinite claims

unlimited and infinite, not just ontological or theological claims, but ethical claims

levinas may be relevant here but haven't read much levinas (reminded i should read levinas)

I think I'm about thisclose to abandoning atheism for maltheism.

I agree mostly politically w atheism Christianity has some kind of unrelenting vast hold on the political process to the point of alienating everyone not in line with a very narrow very oddly defined ideology. Ultimately these are all tools we use to justify our actions so the emphasis should be on encouraging good action rather than justification.

5-year check in!

Depends on what the question means

For all intents and purposes, yeah, but I'm open to having my mind changed. Doubting Thomas ftw.

I'm fond of the theory according to which God does not exist at the moment but possibly will at some point in the distant future.

"Oh my lord, what are you all doing? that isn't how I intended pizza to be cooked"