Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (180882)	2/1/2012 11:37:46 AM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541785

>>And one very prominent school within protestant theology works from the premise that it is not about belief in some sort of ancient cosmic structure but rather how one addresses the religious question of the meaning of life in which, as finite creature, one can never know the answer to.<< To define that as a religious question is to restrict one's thinking about it before one starts. I have always felt that it's silly to assert that we know the answer to questions we can't know the answer to, which is what most religions do. I accept that there are very basic things we don't know, and have no desire to find or invent comforting stories that don't really answer those questions anyway.

To: JohnM who wrote (180882)	2/1/2012 2:11:13 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541785

I appreciate your information. Always! I remember almost nothing about Heidegger, except how important he was. Einstein was one of the greatest philosphers that ever lived , IMO. And both Russell and Whitehead turned to philosophy at about 55 saying they could not get to where they wanted to go through math. No better philosophers than those two. I think we see philosophy differently. I do not see it as a structured discipline. I see it simply as awareness and an effort to understand. As far as existentialism goes, I really did down play it last night and didn't really post what I feel because it is so amorphous and hard to explain and impossible to prove. It is like Zen, something one sees in their minds eye. It is an abstract concept that some see and most don't and no one can explain. The reason the Zen masters work to get the students to see it for themselves. Seeing is something one must learn to do. I feel very few people really understand existentialism. E.g. probably less than half of the univeristy professors in the country see existentialism correstly, IMO. It took me 10 years or so to see it and I got an A in a class on existentialism, but when I finally saw it realized I had no idea what it really was at the time. As mentioned, today people use existentialism to mean "real", but while that is sort of what the thesis of it is, it is does not reflect the mental image Sartre, Camus or Simone De Beauvoir or Gunther Grass were trying to explain. I told both my daughters it was the most important concept they could ever understand as meant they had acheived a level of important abstract thinking and it freed one from primitive dogma. PS while my undergraduate work was in experimental psychology, philosophy was my minor and I had enough units for a major in philosophy, and took comparative religion classes in school. As far as religion goes, I see it like the tar baby, which most people have a very difficult time shedding. <<You are mushing together different philosophical traditions, though Einstein wasn't a philosopher. I made the comment I did because you have often claimed that existentialism means a great deal to you. Given that, and that there are several traditions within it, it made sense to call your attention to a tradition within protestant theology that brought the two together, in this case Heidegger, as the embodiment of one school/tradition within existentialism. If you don't wish to read any of it, I don't have any quarrel with you. You simply should know that there are many answers to the question as to what religion is. And one very prominent school within protestant theology works from the premise that it is not about belief in some sort of ancient cosmic structure but rather how one addresses the religious question of the meaning of life in which, as finite creature, one can never know the answer to.