{"id":601,"date":"2008-05-15T08:02:48","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T14:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=601"},"modified":"2008-05-15T08:06:12","modified_gmt":"2008-05-15T14:06:12","slug":"a-vivid-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=601","title":{"rendered":"A Vivid Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"

59\u00a0 bar steady\u00a0 30.02\u00a0 1mph WSW dewpoint 42\u00a0 Beltane, sunny<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.” – Sir R. F. Burton<\/a><\/p>\n

Burton is an interesting guy. He traveled the world and did a translation of the Arabian Nights.\u00a0 He is, however, not much of a theologian.\u00a0 His genes must have cascaded down to Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.\u00a0 They, too, seem to believe that if you betray your ignorance loudly, then others will agree.\u00a0\u00a0 All faith traditions are far more subtle, more nuanced that mere projection.\u00a0 Do they each have their problematics? Absolutely.\u00a0 Do the problems justify the kind of reductionist argument deployed by religions cultured despisers (to borrow the phrase from Frederick Schleiermacher)? Not at all.<\/p>\n

The simplest argument against them is this.\u00a0 Have you ever seen a love?\u00a0 Have you ever smelled justice?\u00a0 Yes, you have seen or smelled their physical manifestations, but have you seen the complex of emotions and judgment that produce them?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 Because they are constructs of the mental world.\u00a0 What constitutes the mental world?\u00a0 Is it just the firing and stimulation of neurons?\u00a0 Oh, how do you know?\u00a0 Because the fMRI tells you so?\u00a0 How does the fMRI tell you its information?\u00a0 That’s right, through sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m with Kant here.\u00a0 The ding an siche, the thing in itself, is unknown and unknowable due to the mediation of the senses.\u00a0\u00a0 Therefore how Dawkins and Harris can claim to reach beyond their sensorium and know a negative is beyond me.\u00a0 Does the trashing of their fundamental argument make them wrong?\u00a0 Unfortunately, no.<\/p>\n

By the by, if you’ve never read the Arabian Nights, The Thousand and One Nights, then you’ve missed something.\u00a0 Find a\u00a0complete edition because the Muslims who wrote it had a vivid imagination.\u00a0 I mean, really vivid.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

59\u00a0 bar steady\u00a0 30.02\u00a0 1mph WSW dewpoint 42\u00a0 Beltane, sunny \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon\u00a0 “The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.” – Sir R. F. Burton Burton is an interesting guy. He traveled the world and did a translation of the Arabian Nights.\u00a0 He … Continue reading A Vivid Imagination<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263,14,184],"tags":[21,456,4358],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dreams","category-faith-and-spirituality","category-literature","tag-faith","tag-kant","tag-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}