What role has religion played in shaping society?

You keep saying that but it still doesn't make it so.

So, something other than a fact is - a fact?

You are no longer being particularly rational here, even at an elementary level, so I suspect you're just playing little pedantic language games in order to obfuscate and mangle this discussion. But, worse, I could be mistaken.

Why for example is an unknown fact a belief? If someone doesn't know it how can he or she believe it?

More - humourous? -mangling of words. An "unknown fact"? Unknown to whom? If its a fact - something that is known - then it cannot simultaneously be - unknown. Your unreasoning here has the same structure as in your previous example above: a fact is both a fact and not a fact, a fact is both known and unknown. Unless you can accept some very basic definitions of what facts are generally assumed to be in rational discourse (maybe at least try the Wiki entry for Fact), none is possible here, just a Karaoke simulation of a Monty Python skit.

If someone doesn't know it how can he or she believe it?

If someone doesn't know a God how can he or she believe it? Beliefs are part of knowledge. You seem to be again falling into the empiricist trap of believing (sic) that all knowledge is exclusively confined to that which is empirically verifiable, everything else being expendable, unknowable nonsense.

Is that a quote from Dawkins?

Certainly NOT. Its, among many others, Nietzsche, its Spinoza, its Lacan, and on and on.


You did already say that and I already pointed out it's not an argument - saying "it's not an absolute fact" does not make it so, you're giving no reason for that to be the case, you're just insisting on it because otherwise everything you've said is wrong.

But I wasn't just saying it, and the reason was supplied ... twice. You're pretending its not there, because you don't understand it, and apparently can't understand it, because you don't seem to know what a paradox actually is, much less the full implications. Or is this all just a good laugh for you?

Maybe you could also use a little musical accompaniment to your clipped laughter?


Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape

I'm still waiting ...


-- excerpt from Crosseyed and Painless, Remain In Light, Talking Heads, 1980.​
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"You are no longer being particularly rational here, even at an elementary level, so I suspect you're just playing little pedantic language games in order to obfuscate and mangle this discussion. But, worse, I could be mistaken."
Do you have to resort to evasive vilification once again?

"maybe at least try the Wiki entry for Fact"
It gives several, this seems to fit most closely to what I was saying:

"In philosophy, a "fact" can be defined as something which is the case ie. the state of affairs reported by a true proposition"

Which seems to align pretty closely with what I've been saying doesn't it?

"You seem to be again falling into the empiricist trap of believing (sic) that all knowledge is exclusively confined to that which is empirically verifiable, everything else being expendable, unknowable nonsense."
No, as you well know (or ought to) that's the exact opposite of what I specifically said.
Sometimes you say things that are worthwhile but when you completely get things backwards like that I think we're back to the old shouter who is spitting things out too fast and LOUD to think about them.

"But I wasn't just saying it, and the reason was supplied ... twice. You're pretending its not there, because you don't understand it, and apparently can't understand it"
I've seen you use this argument before on other people (it's another one of your specials for when the usual blame it on big other isn't working) - "no-one can see it so it must be there". Fairly typical logic from you I'm afraid but not going to get you very far in convincing anyone of what you're saying.
In this case you have said "... is not an absolute fact it is both to point to a paradox..." but that isn't an argument, that is just stating what you wish to be true. You are making a factual claim about what we can know about this underlying Reality. This is still basically the first contradiction you were challenged with and is still the problem for you it was at the start. Apparently you can't see this and it's wasting a lot of time for me, I wonder how much of your time it's wasted, I just hope it can't be measured in years.
The other question I asked about this that you still haven't answered is - why, do you say that this underlying can't be known? You say that a belief in some access to "Ultimate Reality" is equivalent to belief in a god but are you saying that you are agnostic about the existence of such a God or are you actually denying it's existence? If so, why and how?
What I'm saying is that the whole time you have been talking about the consequences of belief in such a deity but haven't done anything about debunking its existence.

"Maybe you could also use a little musical accompaniment to your clipped laughter?


Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
...............................................
Facts continue to change their shape

I'm still waiting ...

-- excerpt from Crosseyed and Painless, Remain In Light, Talking Heads, 1980."
Er, yes right. I guess I can't argue with that particularly insightful point.
 

luka

Well-known member
I didn't say I thought it had no role - more that while people naively muse on abstracts such as Judeo-Christian 'morality' they entirely overlook the central structural determinant of our society: capital. Capital has entirey replaced Christian morality as the foundational reference of western society. One piece of evidence: capitalism is entirely irreconcible with the teaching of the medieval Catholic church on usuary (let alone some of the New Testament's more hardline anti-acquistitve statements). In short, captialism has completely routed religion, inverting its norms, destroying its moral framework, exploding the very assumptions on which it operated. And yet I find myself continually astonished that so few seem to recognise this central fact. If I sound somewhat impatient or dismissive, well that's because I find discussions such as this (in which various participants debate the influence of Judeo-Christianity in shaping social laws, say) as the discursive equivalent of pissing in the wind, frankly. Those 'religious' norms that once conflicted with the successful operation of capital have been entirely eradicated from the social, and religion for a very long time has existed merely to legitimate the norms on and through which capital perpetuates itself.

I love it when people get that huffy, quite frankly tone.
 
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