What do you REALLY believe?

[Corvidia]

Areligious. Not even atheist, exactly, as I simply do not care.

[Archduke Omni-Fap!]

Although I'm satisfied that Gods do not objectively exist, I don't think their objective existence is relevant to the issue of their importance, since the sbjective universes inhabited by human beings are composed of symbols, of which the gods are condensations.

On the other hand, religion really pisses me off. There's no bullshit like systemised bullshit, that's for fuckin' sure.

[Kai]

Found a label for my beliefs.

Religious Naturalism.

http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/index.html

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

There's even a link to Kauffman's book on Emergence in the first link lol

[Bu🤠ns]

Found a label for my beliefs.

Religious Naturalism.

http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/index.html

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

There's even a link to Kauffman's book on Emergence in the first link lol

sounds a bit like Taoism for 'round-eyes'   you know, people living in harmony with 'natural law'.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Found a label for my beliefs.

Religious Naturalism.

http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/index.html

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

There's even a link to Kauffman's book on Emergence in the first link lol

sounds a bit like Taoism for 'round-eyes'   you know, people living in harmony with 'natural law'.

Discordianism???

[Bu🤠ns]

Found a label for my beliefs.

Religious Naturalism.

http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/index.html

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

There's even a link to Kauffman's book on Emergence in the first link lol

sounds a bit like Taoism for 'round-eyes'   you know, people living in harmony with 'natural law'.

Discordianism???

Although i'd love to meet a discordian who lives in harmony with natural law.

[the last yatto]

i just spent the last 6 hours walking, does that count?

[Iason Ouabache]

Found a label for my beliefs.

Religious Naturalism.

http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/index.html

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

There's even a link to Kauffman's book on Emergence in the first link lol

As I was saying in IRC, it reminds me of Natural Theology which was all the rage amongst Christians in the 19th century. Then it died a quick death thanks to attacks by evolution and Fundamentalism (capital-F Fundamentalism) at the exact same time.

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

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Found a label for my beliefs.

Religious Naturalism.

http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/index.html

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

There's even a link to Kauffman's book on Emergence in the first link lol

sounds a bit like Taoism for 'round-eyes'   you know, people living in harmony with 'natural law'.

Discordianism???

Although i'd love to meet a discordian who lives in harmony with natural law.

Define "natural law", please.

[MMIX]

Define "natural law", please.

no queer policemen

[Bu🤠ns]

Found a label for my beliefs.

Religious Naturalism.

http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/index.html

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

There's even a link to Kauffman's book on Emergence in the first link lol

sounds a bit like Taoism for 'round-eyes'   you know, people living in harmony with 'natural law'.

Discordianism???

Although i'd love to meet a discordian who lives in harmony with natural law.

Define "natural law", please.

Honestly, it was a more comment in jest lightly alluding to Kerry Thornley's Zenarchism that I just finished reading yesterday so it was fresh in my head.  FTR, i have no desire to debate this.  The passage in question, however:

Tao West

In a discussion of Natural Law, the philosophical basis of early American conceptions of liberty, Henry B. Veatch (in an article, "Natural Law: Dead or Alive?" in Literature of Liberty, October-December 1978) writes: "What, though, is this doctrine of so-called 'natural law', that thus had such a long and chequered career, and has even displayed, in the words of more than one authority, the happy faculty of repeatedly being able to bury its own undertakers!"

So it was also with a doctrine called 'tao' which buried its Indian Buddhist missionary undertakers in China by way of a Taoistic response called Ch'an Buddhism that Japanese pronounce as Zen. For when the emperor became a Buddhist, many Taoists joined and influenced the Ch'an sect of that religion rather than loudly resisting its attempts to convert the empire. That is why in Zen today we hear so much about the Tao. For the Ch'an Buddhists did a better job of preserving the spirit of the philosophy of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu than did the formally Taoist religion which, instead, degenerated into fortune telling and other superstitions.

A similarity in content between Natural Law philosophy and the original Taoism preserved in Zen is uncanny. Both consist of the same common-sense observations about human be-ing in accord with nature and uphold the notion that laws of nature also apply to society. Yet neither view much resembles Social Darwinism, which also claimed to derive its principles from the natural world.

Speaking of Natural Law in the ancient world of the West editor Leonard Liggio comments elsewhere in Literature of Liberty: "The Stoics posited an identification of physics and nomos, nature and law. The wise man lived in harmony with nature; he was not dragged in the train of events." What is that but following the Tao?

Veatch also says in "Natural Law: Dead or Alive?" that the views of Natural Law held by Thomas Aquinas did not go far enough. "But why not," Veatch asks, "consider ethics and politics, as construed in the light of this conception of natural law, an analogous to certain arts, skills, and crafts? Why does the skilled surgeon, for instance make his incision in one way rather than another?"

Exactly the same point is made about an ox butcher in one of the parables of Chaung Tzu. Why make an incision one way instead of another? Following the Tao, an expert butcher cuts between the joints and thus never has to sharpen his blade. Although a good surgeon is anything but a butcher, incisions must just the same be made one way and not another. This fact can be generalized to all reasonable human activity, including construction of social arrangements. So we see there are rights, or naturally right ways to behave, ways of the Tao, that take conditions into consideration, as well as ecology and sociology. Therefore it is possible with common sense to distinguish between natural ethics that work and unnatural moralities that eventually only produce widespread misery.

If Tao is not Natural Law or, in other words, if Natural Law is not Tao independently discovered by Western philosophers, then what is the difference between them? Alan Watts says in Psychotherapy East and West: "The whole literature of Taoism shows a deep and intelligent interest in the patterns and processes of the natural world and a desire to model human life upon the observable principles of nature as distinct from the arbitrary principles of a social order resting upon violence." That is exactly the project of Natural Law philosophy!

[MMIX]

I'm torn between two not quite accurate choices. . .
         Atheist - I believe in no gods
Atheist - there are no gods, fact- there are also no fairies at the bottom of my garden, I can't actually prove it but that hardly makes my healthy scepticism viv a vis the likelihood of their existence a "belief"
         I believe in Eris as an entity but do not follow other Gods      
I believe that Eris as a useful heuristic but I do not follow 'her' any more than I follow any of the other non-existent Gods people are so prone to invent


also - how is this project going Cramulus?

but since I self-define as an atheist that's what got my vote

[Kai]

Found a label for my beliefs.

Religious Naturalism.

http://www.religiousnaturalism.org/index.html

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

There's even a link to Kauffman's book on Emergence in the first link lol

sounds a bit like Taoism for 'round-eyes'   you know, people living in harmony with 'natural law'.

You can definitely see strings of it in Tao Te Ching and other eastern religions. Likewise, it has roots in the Naturalistic Pantheism of Spinoza (though his doctrine of final causes is completely wack and not in line with Religious Naturalism).

What I find so nice about this is that I've been using my emergence language and talking about The Process of Sustaining for years now, and these people more or less are on my level, mixing science and religion in the same way I've been going about it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

See, I'm familiar with this "Natural Law" movement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Law_Party

[MMIX]

See, I'm familiar with this "Natural Law" movement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Law_Party

I actually voted Natural Law in one election. Kinda like spoiling your ballot paper but the giggle you get is better