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matsuiny2004
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22 Jan 2009, 4:50 am

I will not say I am a pragmatist, but I do have some pragmatist views. Wen it comes to religon I do not care what people beleive as long as they do not force it on me. I do not care much about the "truth" of the religions.


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Dussel
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22 Jan 2009, 5:00 am

But they don't:

It starts with "little issues" like making noise on Sunday morning by bell ringing, goes further to tax privileges and ends up with wars (if there would be no religion involved the question of the control of the Mount Temple in Jerusalem would be in the same category like the organisational framework of the Acropolis in Athens).



matsuiny2004
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22 Jan 2009, 5:05 am

The truth of them still does not matter to me. It is the respec of religious liberty which ca be supported even by catholics. As far as conflict I see that as a part of life.


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Dussel
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22 Jan 2009, 5:11 am

matsuiny2004 wrote:
The truth of them still does not matter to me. It is the respec of religious liberty which ca be supported even by catholics


... but this is with Catholics a quite new development. They learned their lesson only by the suppression in eastern Europe during the Cold War.

And sometime they still did not get the message fully: When in the German state of Bavaria some years ago the courts decided that a crucifix shall not be displayed at the wall in school class rooms, it was the Catholic clergy which preformed the loudest outcry on the public stage.



matsuiny2004
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22 Jan 2009, 5:34 am

Dussel wrote:
matsuiny2004 wrote:
The truth of them still does not matter to me. It is the respec of religious liberty which ca be supported even by catholics


... but this is with Catholics a quite new development. They learned their lesson only by the suppression in eastern Europe during the Cold War.

And sometime they still did not get the message fully: When in the German state of Bavaria some years ago the courts decided that a crucifix shall not be displayed at the wall in school class rooms, it was the Catholic clergy which preformed the loudest outcry on the public stage.


but the change did happen so I am still not concerned and I would see this event as only applying to a cerain version of christianity at a certain period in time. I think a persn can display a cross in school as long as the freedom to question the teacher and religious liberty of students was respected. Freedom to question a eacher is still a chalenge in secular schools most which seem to not get the concept of inclusion as well as even attempting to have a critical approach to learning as it can not quantified into numbers. yes this is stereotype.


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Awesomelyglorious
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22 Jan 2009, 10:31 am

By pragmatist, do you mean "intelligent moderate", or do you mean the philosophical school of pragmatism including Peirce, Dewey, James, and arguably Rorty?



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22 Jan 2009, 9:14 pm

As I understand it, pragmatism is the philosophy where something is true because it works. So the law of gravity is true because you can predict trajectories with it and it always works. Some people claim that belief in God makes people good, so God works and must therefore exist. There was a thread on here last week about exactly that. I'd call myself a part-time pragmatist, as there are plenty of occasions where it's not appropriate; if someone murders someone, you don't ask who it would be most useful to hang.

One area where the pragmatic approach to truth is useful I think, is with emotion. I think you know how you feel because you assert that this sensation in your body is this concept and if, as a child maybe, this interpretation is useful to you, you believe it to be the truth. This would account for the very different and distinct characters you find in other cultures: Different concepts surround you when growing up, so you learn to place different interpretations on the same sensations.
I bring this up because, suppose a child was isolated growing up, would he place any interpretation on those sensations at all? Would 'emotion,' as the word is generally understood, truly exist? I had an experience once where a certain person/situation was causing me some overload problems: ballooning headache, white noise in my mind etc. Then I realised what was distressing me: I was jealous. It wasn't like the overload stuff just disappeared there and then, but the next time I saw the guy I definitely resented him, in fact I wanted to hit him, which I hadn't before and there was no headache or whatever. I wonder if naming the feeling was in some sense the cause of the feeling?


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