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[Hereandnow]

Religious discussions usually begin with assumptions about how the whole matter is grounded. Talk about God, whether he exists, the soul, the scriptures, the basis for belief or faith, and so on, generally proceeds without really digging in to the real foundational questions. Here, I ask, what are the foundational issues of religion? This is a question that goes to matters that are in the constitution of the world itself, and not the historical fictions and bad metaphysics generated by culture. When Kierkegaard wrote about the what religion is really about, he brought into the conversation the apparently absurd notion that culture itself is the basis of sin, and he meant by this term nothing at all like what Luther called an abomination against the God too wicked to conceive (see the Smalcald articles), the kind of thing religious people believe. No, he took the essence of sin to lie in the both the structural analysis of our existence and the historical setting of our cultural institutions that we find so infatuating that we "forget" who we really are.
At any rate, religion is our collective metaphysics, but what is the concrete substance of being a human being that gives religion its basis in meaning? The essence of religion has to lie in existence, otherwise it is just an abstraction, and so what is there in existence that could be a starting place for inquiry?
I stand before an object, the cup on the table. I hold that the entirely of substantive philosophy lies in the hands of this relation between me and this cup. First question: how do I know there is a cup on the table? Such a question eventually penetrates the extremities of metaphysics, and straight into the very foundation of religious possibilities. The trivially true possesses the deepest secrets of the world, if you want to talk like that. Quite true, really.
So, this question is given to you, philosophers of the most basic questions, a feast for thought, as Heidegger put it.

[Hereandnow]

Just read what I wrote. Sorry for not proofreading!

[Lagayascienza]

The nature of religion? If I reflect on it, I cannot say anything that would be comprehensive. However, some thoughts come to mind.

Perhaps there is some truth in the idea that "religion is the opium of the people". That idea entails a lot. And it's worth reading the quote in the context of the full passage in which it occurs.

As to foundational questions such as How can we know what exists? and How can we discover what is real? it's hard for me to see that religion can have anything useful or satisfying to say. We must turn to philosophy and science for that. Religious assertions such as god did it all, god underlies everything... just don't work for me.

I look forward to reading what others have to say in the matter.

[Hereandnow]

Lagayscienza wrote
The nature of religion? If I reflect on it, I cannot say anything that would be comprehensive. However, some thoughts come to mind.

Perhaps there is some truth in the idea that "religion is the opium of the people". That idea entails a lot. And it's worth reading the quote in the context of the full passage in which it occurs.

As to foundational questions such as How can we know what exists? and How can we discover what is real? it's hard for me to see that religion can have anything useful or satisfying to say. We must turn to philosophy and science for that. Religious assertions such as god did it all, god underlies everything... just don't work for me.

I look forward to reading what others have to say in the matter.

Well, this is the nature of any analytical approach, not to take what is offered in opinions that circle throughout a culture, but to first observe the thing itself, see it for what it is. This is just the scienctific method at work, and it doesn't rest on philosophical issues. Religion and God, what are these in the basic conditions laid out before us. How to approach this is most important. A responsible beginning would be to begin with skepticism since it is obvious there is a long history of very bad thinking on the matter (keeping in mind that the same is true for the sciences! A truly essential read is Thomas Kuhn's Structures of Scientific Revolutions, but you likely know this), this has to be dismissed, which requires putting aside the bibles, and other scriptural authorities that have plagued adequation. Then we can proceed like good scientists: what is there in the observable world that can explain religion? This requires, simply, description. What is "there"?

I have to be brief and careful because the philosophy is difficult. First, religion is NOT an empirical phenomenon, so it will not be found in the empirical sciences (of course, one can argue this further). Second, there is the temptation to then move to psychology which is where most skeptics end up: we are all just so afraid of the world that we have to invent fictional narratives to make it bearable. Hume said something like this., and he was right. It does, however, beg the question: What is IN the world that is so terrifying? We didn't invent this.

This opens the door. For now, I am convinced the setting is genuine: to talk about religion's nature, we have to talk about what it is the world is "doing" to warrant all the fuss. So what is it doing? It is torturing us. We are born to suffer and die. Another begged question: what is suffering? Many believe the question impossible, for no one can talk about such things. It is simply there, in the basic givenness of the world, and not a contingent matter, that is, not reducible to anything else, meaning it is not like, say asking what a bank teller is or a maple tree, as these things have ready to hand answers, while suffering doesn't have this contextual embeddedness. One cannot say what it is without straying from IT. Of course, talk about internal physical systems of a body, the nerves, the brain, but this only tells us of a causal matrix, and says nothing of the pure phenomenon.

Suffering is a mode of value, and value is the general term for experiences that are concrete reals, the ughs! and yums! and AHHs! and OOO's of living and breathings in the world. This is the proper setting for a discussion about the nature of religion.

[value]

Lagayscienza wrote
The nature of religion? If I reflect on it, I cannot say anything that would be comprehensive. However, some thoughts come to mind.

Perhaps there is some truth in the idea that "religion is the opium of the people". That idea entails a lot. And it's worth reading the quote in the context of the full passage in which it occurs.

As to foundational questions such as How can we know what exists? and How can we discover what is real? it's hard for me to see that religion can have anything useful or satisfying to say. We must turn to philosophy and science for that. Religious assertions such as god did it all, god underlies everything... just don't work for me.

I look forward to reading what others have to say in the matter.

Well, this is the nature of any analytical approach, not to take what is offered in opinions that circle throughout a culture, but to first observe the thing itself, see it for what it is. This is just the scienctific method at work, and it doesn't rest on philosophical issues. Religion and God, what are these in the basic conditions laid out before us. How to approach this is most important. A responsible beginning would be to begin with skepticism since it is obvious there is a long history of very bad thinking on the matter (keeping in mind that the same is true for the sciences! A truly essential read is Thomas Kuhn's Structures of Scientific Revolutions, but you likely know this), this has to be dismissed, which requires putting aside the bibles, and other scriptural authorities that have plagued adequation. Then we can proceed like good scientists: what is there in the observable world that can explain religion? This requires, simply, description. What is "there"?

I have to be brief and careful because the philosophy is difficult. First, religion is NOT an empirical phenomenon, so it will not be found in the empirical sciences (of course, one can argue this further). Second, there is the temptation to then move to psychology which is where most skeptics end up: we are all just so afraid of the world that we have to invent fictional narratives to make it bearable. Hume said something like this., and he was right. It does, however, beg the question: What is IN the world that is so terrifying? We didn't invent this.

This opens the door. For now, I am convinced the setting is genuine: to talk about religion's nature, we have to talk about what it is the world is "doing" to warrant all the fuss. So what is it doing? It is torturing us. We are born to suffer and die. Another begged question: what is suffering? Many believe the question impossible, for no one can talk about such things. It is simply there, in the basic givenness of the world, and not a contingent matter, that is, not reducible to anything else, meaning it is not like, say asking what a bank teller is or a maple tree, as these things have ready to hand answers, while suffering doesn't have this contextual embeddedness. One cannot say what it is without straying from IT. Of course, talk about internal physical systems of a body, the nerves, the brain, but this only tells us of a causal matrix, and says nothing of the pure phenomenon.

Suffering is a mode of value, and value is the general term for experiences that are concrete reals, the ughs! and yums! and AHHs! and OOO's of living and breathings in the world. This is the proper setting for a discussion about the nature of religion.

I am not originally interested in the philosophy of religion, but I have been following your posts

With regard your argument about suffering. I am very interested to learn more about it but my first idea would be that I would not share the view that suffering should be philosophically considered for insights about value and perhaps that is also a reason that I do not see value in religion or other dogmas such as scientism.

Suffering in my opinion should be shunned for what is good, as described by Spinoza's assertion that "an attempt to escape evil with good results in evil" with the conclusion being that good only follows from reason.

He who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.
...
Corollary.--Under desire which springs from reason, we seek good directly, and shun evil indirectly.

I would personally advocate for a concept such as Positive Deviance by business professor Dr. Kim Cameron (Ross School of Business), for which there is evidence in topic: Nature vs nurture or beyond... ?

Dr. Kim Cameron's research focuses on virtuousness in and of organizations, such as forgiveness, gratitude, kindness, and compassion, and their relationship to performance. Dr. Cameron is William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations in the Ross School of Business.

It concerns the perspective of a 'human beyond' relative to human performance and in my opinion anxiety and suffering are not relevant in that context beyond being a means to an end (e.g. the fitness wisdom "No Pain No Gain").

In my opinion, to perform as an actor such as Jim Carrey doesn't require anxiety or fear since that might result in attempts to inflict self-harm to find a ground for authenticity in the face of Nothingness.

Religion would spur people on such a path of seeking a ground for authenticity in suffering, by which they are spurred to cling on to what the religious authority is presenting to them.

Jim Carrey once said “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”

Why would he say such a thing? What 'answer' is he talking about? Would a dose of anxiety and fear in the face of Nothingness be an answer for him? Should he try to live with a gun under his nose like the Nazi's did?

An often cited quote from Nazi Hermann Göring:

“When I hear the word culture, I unlock my gun!”

I believe that reason can overcome darkness before it was ever present. There is simply no place for Evil in the context of reason and thus is there no place for anxiety and fear. Reflecting on cruelty (anxiety, suffering, pain, fear etc) in nature fuels cruelty while reflecting on reason enables one to become reasonable.

"Within the context of reason, there is no place for evil."

Kant wrote in "Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,": "pure reason is the faculty of concepts, and concepts are not concerned with the inclinations, but only with the understanding and its object"

Therefore, according to Kant (who authored one of the most profound works on reason), pure reason cannot be the source of evil, which arises from the inclinations and desires of the human will. Kant believed that every human being has the capacity to resist evil and choose the moral path, which is the path of reason.

In my view, philosophy is a direct exponent of the source of the Universe.

Levinas wrote the following about the source of the Universe:

"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/

That signification, which is 'moral valuing' (the eternal question 'what is good?'), that is the essence of philosophy. Philosophy therefore should be seen as the source of the world.

Levinas concluded in his work Totality and Infinity that "Ethics is the first philosophy" (the first philosophical question upon which everything else is based is "what is good?").

Aristotle considered a state of philosophical contemplation (eudaimonia) the greatest virtue (highest human good). It is an eternal strive to serve life: the discovery (pursuit) of good from which 'value' follows.

Value therefore, in my opinion, is not about suffering but about what lays beyond. And not just any beyond, but a beyond that can be considered good using philosophical reason.

My argument has been that in order to advance into a reasonable and moral world one will need to become aware of the fundamental questionable nature and Ungivenness of the world. A world without an Absolute or ability to 'cling on to' using either religions or dogmatic scientism, and a world in which for example comedy is possible because the world never was!

[Lagayascienza]

Lagayscienza wrote
The nature of religion? If I reflect on it, I cannot say anything that would be comprehensive. However, some thoughts come to mind.

Perhaps there is some truth in the idea that "religion is the opium of the people". That idea entails a lot. And it's worth reading the quote in the context of the full passage in which it occurs.

As to foundational questions such as How can we know what exists? and How can we discover what is real? it's hard for me to see that religion can have anything useful or satisfying to say. We must turn to philosophy and science for that. Religious assertions such as god did it all, god underlies everything... just don't work for me.

I look forward to reading what others have to say in the matter.

Well, this is the nature of any analytical approach, not to take what is offered in opinions that circle throughout a culture, but to first observe the thing itself, see it for what it is. This is just the scienctific method at work, and it doesn't rest on philosophical issues. Religion and God, what are these in the basic conditions laid out before us. How to approach this is most important. A responsible beginning would be to begin with skepticism since it is obvious there is a long history of very bad thinking on the matter (keeping in mind that the same is true for the sciences! A truly essential read is Thomas Kuhn's Structures of Scientific Revolutions, but you likely know this), this has to be dismissed, which requires putting aside the bibles, and other scriptural authorities that have plagued adequation. Then we can proceed like good scientists: what is there in the observable world that can explain religion? This requires, simply, description. What is "there"?

I have to be brief and careful because the philosophy is difficult. First, religion is NOT an empirical phenomenon, so it will not be found in the empirical sciences (of course, one can argue this further). Second, there is the temptation to then move to psychology which is where most skeptics end up: we are all just so afraid of the world that we have to invent fictional narratives to make it bearable. Hume said something like this., and he was right. It does, however, beg the question: What is IN the world that is so terrifying? We didn't invent this.

This opens the door. For now, I am convinced the setting is genuine: to talk about religion's nature, we have to talk about what it is the world is "doing" to warrant all the fuss. So what is it doing? It is torturing us. We are born to suffer and die. Another begged question: what is suffering? Many believe the question impossible, for no one can talk about such things. It is simply there, in the basic givenness of the world, and not a contingent matter, that is, not reducible to anything else, meaning it is not like, say asking what a bank teller is or a maple tree, as these things have ready to hand answers, while suffering doesn't have this contextual embeddedness. One cannot say what it is without straying from IT. Of course, talk about internal physical systems of a body, the nerves, the brain, but this only tells us of a causal matrix, and says nothing of the pure phenomenon.

Suffering is a mode of value, and value is the general term for experiences that are concrete reals, the ughs! and yums! and AHHs! and OOO's of living and breathings in the world. This is the proper setting for a discussion about the nature of religion.

It’s interesting to begin with a sceptical stance and then, as you say, drill down to see how far it takes us. Eventually, on your account, we hit bedrock at suffering, which is said to be not reducible to anything else. I would agree that we cannot give a account of IT without straying from IT. But the causal matrix that produces IT is, on my account, all there is to see. It is within this causal matrix that it is produced and felt. Without the causal matrix suffering vanishes.

If this is true, then religion is still as Hume et al would have it, a way, for some people, to make suffering more bearable, a salve to reduce the sting, a story some of us tell ourselves to help us stop being afraid of non-existence after death. And so, maybe Marx was close to the mark when he said it was “…the opium of the people”.

[Hereandnow]

value wrote
I am not originally interested in the philosophy of religion, but I have been following your posts

With regard your argument about suffering. I am very interested to learn more about it but my first idea would be that I would not share the view that suffering should be philosophically considered for insights about value and perhaps that is also a reason that I do not see value in religion or other dogmas such as scientism.

Suffering in my opinion should be shunned for what is good, as described by Spinoza's assertion that "an attempt to escape evil with good results in evil" with the conclusion being that good only follows from reason.

He who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.
...
Corollary.--Under desire which springs from reason, we seek good directly, and shun evil indirectly.

I would personally advocate for a concept such as Positive Deviance by business professor Dr. Kim Cameron (Ross School of Business), for which there is evidence in topic: Nature vs nurture or beyond... ?

Dr. Kim Cameron's research focuses on virtuousness in and of organizations, such as forgiveness, gratitude, kindness, and compassion, and their relationship to performance. Dr. Cameron is William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations in the Ross School of Business.

It concerns the perspective of a 'human beyond' relative to human performance and in my opinion anxiety and suffering are not relevant in that context beyond being a means to an end (e.g. the fitness wisdom "No Pain No Gain").

In my opinion, to perform as an actor such as Jim Carrey doesn't require anxiety or fear since that might result in attempts to inflict self-harm to find a ground for authenticity in the face of Nothingness.

Religion would spur people on such a path of seeking a ground for authenticity in suffering, by which they are spurred to cling on to what the religious authority is presenting to them.

Jim Carrey once said “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”

Why would he say such a thing? What 'answer' is he talking about? Would a dose of anxiety and fear in the face of Nothingness be an answer for him? Should he try to live with a gun under his nose like the Nazi's did?

An often cited quote from Nazi Hermann Göring:

“When I hear the word culture, I unlock my gun!”

I believe that reason can overcome darkness before it was ever present. There is simply no place for Evil in the context of reason and thus is there no place for anxiety and fear. Reflecting on cruelty (anxiety, suffering, pain, fear etc) in nature fuels cruelty while reflecting on reason enables one to become reasonable.

"Within the context of reason, there is no place for evil."

Kant wrote in "Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,": "pure reason is the faculty of concepts, and concepts are not concerned with the inclinations, but only with the understanding and its object"

Therefore, according to Kant (who authored one of the most profound works on reason), pure reason cannot be the source of evil, which arises from the inclinations and desires of the human will. Kant believed that every human being has the capacity to resist evil and choose the moral path, which is the path of reason.

In my view, philosophy is a direct exponent of the source of the Universe.

Levinas wrote the following about the source of the Universe:

"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "


That signification, which is 'moral valuing' (the eternal question 'what is good?'), that is the essence of philosophy. Philosophy therefore should be seen as the source of the world.

Levinas concluded in his work Totality and Infinity that "Ethics is the first philosophy" (the first philosophical question upon which everything else is based is "what is good?").

Aristotle considered a state of philosophical contemplation (eudaimonia) the greatest virtue (highest human good). It is an eternal strive to serve life: the discovery (pursuit) of good from which 'value' follows.

Value therefore, in my opinion, is not about suffering but about what lays beyond. And not just any beyond, but a beyond that can be considered good using philosophical reason.

My argument has been that in order to advance into a reasonable and moral world one will need to become aware of the fundamental questionable nature and Ungivenness of the world. A world without an Absolute or ability to 'cling on to' using either religions or dogmatic scientism, and a world in which for example comedy is possible because the world never was!

Not sure what you mean by comedy, but this is the kind of thing it is almost impossible to be brief about, the kind of thing that no one wants to read because it is long and tedious and alien to normal thinking. I speak of that Archimedean point where all things are made still as one finally stands outside of the conditions of contingency and in an impossible absolute.

First ungivenness: Can't be approached unless one accounts for givenness. Givenness is intuitively what is placed before us, but one has to see that this givenness as an intuition is eidetically structured, to use Husserl's terms. This means that we understand a thing according to its essence, and essences are in the epistemic relationship between the transcendental object, this cup on the table, and me. This is why I often ask the question, how is it that something out there gets in here, my cognitive space of knowing something to be the case? Why take this so seriously? Because it is foundational for epistemology and ontology, two sides to a single phenomenon, the cup. And this is simply implicit. There is no responsible ontology without a full analysis of the knowledge relation, and you can just confirm this by acknowledging how any claim about what is, is a CLAIM. Without an account of how one knows X, there can be no validity to positing X's existence. Ep[istemology and ontology are not two divisions of philosophical inquiry; they are the same, and without seeing this clearly, philosophy cannot even begin. Analytic philosophy and the naturalistic attitude that dominates it (See the way Quine defends this) fails so miserably because it is offended by this singular epistemic-ontological unity. This is the at the center of defining givenness. This cup IS how I know it, to put it simply. This is not idealism. It is phenomenology, which does not recognize traditional divisions. All one has ever witnessed is phenomena, no more and no less. A description is first before moving on to what and why something does not appear, your ungivenness.

When you talk about the Nazis or Jim Carrey and the rest, you take the matter out of a disciplined method of procedure. Not that such things are not interesting, but they stand outside of the question, which is to be as rigorously approached as any science.

Objections so far?

[value]

Not sure what you mean by comedy, but this is the kind of thing it is almost impossible to be brief about, the kind of thing that no one wants to read because it is long and tedious and alien to normal thinking. I speak of that Archimedean point where all things are made still as one finally stands outside of the conditions of contingency and in an impossible absolute.

I primarily sought to make a case for the nature of value, relative to the concept suffering, with my view being in line with the fitness wisdom "No Pain No Gain" and the idea that one should merely have attention for what lays beyond (what can be considered good using philosophical reason).

For example. Dr. Kim Cameron showed in several studies that a focus on positive outcomes improves ones performance over time significantly more profound than focusing on failures and trying to learn from mistakes. The idea of a beyond can enable people to move mountains, figuratively speaking.

In the topic Philosophy of Love I cited a video with a philosophical notion about love:

What is love even?
...
Why is it so hard to keep a feeling. Maybe it is better to sit by and watch but never have. The idea of meeting the beauty and magic we see in the world around us to be ours, mine, we end up smothering it. Looking to deeply at it. And then we see how very regular all these things are. I think that magic, beauty and feeling are only real and true when they are free, passing and unscrutinised.

The primary question that is asked in the film is "how does love last?" and it is then described that when one attempts to cling on to love that the beauty of life disappears before ones eyes.

Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy is a theory based on the idea “all life is suffering”. His reasoning was the following, which in my opinion describes the same phenomenon as expressed in the video about love.

The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom comes over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself becomes an intolerable burden for it. Hence its life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents.

For Schopenhauer, boredom has three forms. The first is when the world shows itself to the bored as lifeless, “dead”, colorless, and “dreary”. Nothing is attractive or interesting and everything is indifferent, detached, and distant. The second form of boredom is when the world shows itself to the bored as valueless, meaningless, and pointless. Schopenhauer says that these feelings of pointlessness, valuelessness, and pointlessness render existence itself burdensome.

"When the world shows itself..." (I read in this: when I consider the world as given to me) ... all beauty and meaning is ultimately lost when I start to seek for a ground within the infinite depth of Nothingness...

In my view the meaning of the world, the meaning of value, is a priori to the world and therefore one cannot cling on to it.

I once wrote the following of how that idea would relate to the achievement of a meaningful life:

"When one considers the value in the world - which includes everything of which it can be said that it 'matters' within the scope of a human perspective - one could argue that that value logically must have been preceded by an aspect that is necessarily meaningful but that cannot be 'value' by the simple logical truth that something cannot be the origin of itself.

When one considers the concept pure meaning as the only ground for relevance in the scope of one's perspective on life, one can become detached or go beyond attachment of 'value' while fulfilling a moral life, which includes optimal performance in life's bigger whole, such as a community of people, or humanity in general.

Morality (a moral life) can be achieved by addressing the question "What is 'good'?"."

More simply and more practically: kindness is the wonder of the world. (fundamentally so, according to my logic).

"From my perspective, meaning is fundamental to human nature (precedes it) and therefore it would be sufficient to fulfil a moral life, which philosophy can provide.

Many philosophers have argued that virtue (a moral life) is the highest human good. From that perspective, no human is average and a simple act of kindness towards another person is sufficient to initiate a foundation for a meaningful life. The initiation can be done by any person in any condition and it can have profound - life changing - effects on the lives of others.

Morality in daily life isn't directly visible in history (i.e. 'change the world') but its effects and importance for human and cultural evolution is profound."

I understand that this reply might not be what you are seeking for in the topic, and in that case I apologize. I am very interested to learn about your perspective on the nature of religion and especially related concepts.

My contribution was more specifically directed at your notion of value and the fundamental meaningfulness of the concept suffering, which in my view might lay at the root of (peoples inclination to seek salvation in) religions.

My philosophical mantra since the beginning, that has facilitated any further reasoning, has been: "If life were to be good as it was, there would be no reason to exist.".

Salvation might not be given... One cannot float on a cloud towards success. That is why I believe that the 'written down' idea of an Absolute might put people on the wrong path, despite that ones attempt to seek it might enable one to reach great spiritual heights. It is just that ultimately, it might not be something that can be clinged on to and provide 'salvation'.

What other reason than salvation would make people seek religions? An AI provided a list of reasons that people seek religions and they all were related to the concept salvation.

Without suffering, there is no desire for salvation. But I would argue that one should put ones attention on what lays beyond, on what can be considered good using philosophical reason. A moral life isn't a given life, but it is meaningful. Life is a fight and philosophy can make it a good fight.

First ungivenness: Can't be approached unless one accounts for givenness.

I do not believe that that assertion is valid. While it might be valid for the word Ungiven, philosophically it could be substantiated with logic that does not depend on the idea of Givenness, i.e., outside of the scope of (empirical) subjective experience.

Givenness is intuitively what is placed before us, but one has to see that this givenness as an intuition is eidetically structured, to use Husserl's terms. This means that we understand a thing according to its essence, and essences are in the epistemic relationship between the transcendental object, this cup on the table, and me. This is why I often ask the question, how is it that something out there gets in here, my cognitive space of knowing something to be the case? Why take this so seriously? Because it is foundational for epistemology and ontology, two sides to a single phenomenon, the cup. And this is simply implicit. There is no responsible ontology without a full analysis of the knowledge relation, and you can just confirm this by acknowledging how any claim about what is, is a CLAIM. Without an account of how one knows X, there can be no validity to positing X's existence. Ep[istemology and ontology are not two divisions of philosophical inquiry; they are the same, and without seeing this clearly, philosophy cannot even begin. Analytic philosophy and the naturalistic attitude that dominates it (See the way Quine defends this) fails so miserably because it is offended by this singular epistemic-ontological unity.

I am not certain that the argument that epistemology and ontology are the same would provide a solution. What if there is a totally different path beyond them both, one outside the scope of language?

One might argue: what else than language can be used to convey meaning between people? What else than language can facilitate philosophy's business? But the business of philosophy per se might not be defined by language.

To quote Albert Einstein again:

Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.

Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things.

Leibniz made an attempt in 1714... What can modern day philosophy do, in the face of the evolution of scientism and AI, I would wonder?

This is the at the center of defining givenness. This cup IS how I know it, to put it simply. This is not idealism. It is phenomenology, which does not recognize traditional divisions. All one has ever witnessed is phenomena, no more and no less. A description is first before moving on to what and why something does not appear, your ungivenness.

I believe that this assertion is wrong, and obviously so in plain sight. Whatever description can be given about the world is language bound and is a mere reflection of what is the case, while philosophy, of which you once argued that it goes beyond science, can do more than being restricted to a scope of language.

All this means that when science makes its moves to "say" what the world is, it is only right within the scope of its field. But philosophy, which is the most open field, has no business yielding to this any more than to knitting "science" or masonry. Philosophy is all inclusive theory, and the attempt to fit such a thing into a scientific paradigm is simply perverse.

Science: know your place! It is not philosophy.

Therefore, while the written down concept Ungivenness may not mean much as a reference, I believe that it is a valid concept that can stand on its own philosophical basis without first requiring a description of the world. The world doesn't need to be experienced as given before the concept is valid from a philosophical perspective.

Evidence: philosophy can ask: what can explain the potential to describe the world? What can explain the potential of a begin per se?

The concept would be similar to the idea of beginningless that also does not need a begin to be conceptually plausible. For empirical thought, yes. For what is the case philosophically, for diverse more advanced reasoning, no.

When you talk about the Nazis or Jim Carrey and the rest, you take the matter out of a disciplined method of procedure. Not that such things are not interesting, but they stand outside of the question, which is to be as rigorously approached as any science.

Objections so far?

Well, the question that Jim Carrey asked, isn't that what makes people seek religions? The pursuit of salvation, which in his sentence would be 'the answer'?

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”

The Nazi's seemed to have found 'the answer': to live with a gun under the nose and be guided by fear.

My conclusion: philosophy can overcome these dogmatic attempts to cling on to the world, by being the source of the world. And not just the source of any world, but of a good world.

[Sy Borg]

If religion is a search for meaning, then that suggests disappointment with life. It is usually the dissatisfied who search for meaning because the happy are immersed in their relationships and projects.

There is certainly a great deal to be disappointed about in life. One has the impression that life is a pyramid with just a few at the top having a marvellous time while most struggle to either maintain their position or to even survive.

It's as if nature (including humans) operates like a flowering slime mould, where most of the cells take on the dirty work and support roles to enable a minority to actualise on their behalf. There lies the dynamic that brings forth the Ubermensch, the idol, the star, the messiah - where the success of a leader is not seen as exploitation, but a success that belongs to all members.

The question of self-identification is key. Do you see yourself as a lone individual, a member of a family, a nation or region, a church / political group, a corporation, maybe like Hatrman's marines in Full Metal Jacket?

'But always remember this: Marines die. That's what we're here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever'.

There is a comfort in knowing that you are the cell of something far greater, whose life extends far beyond your individual death. That, of course, is clearly the case in reality, but it's one thing to appreciate a fact, another to internalise it (to the point where one does not fear death at all).

Ultimately, religions have been filling voids in the human psyche, the torment of living in an ouroboros, while being acutely aware of the past and future. No other animal had to deal with humanesque shame, guilt and regret or awareness of future threats beyond the immediate.

Being alive is not easy, and humans have particular perks and problems.

[Hereandnow]

value wrote

I primarily sought to make a case for the nature of value, relative to the concept suffering, with my view being in line with the fitness wisdom "No Pain No Gain" and the idea that one should merely have attention for what lays beyond (what can be considered good using philosophical reason).

For example. Dr. Kim Cameron showed in several studies that a focus on positive outcomes improves ones performance over time significantly more profound than focusing on failures and trying to learn from mistakes. The idea of a beyond can enable people to move mountains, figuratively speaking.

But you won't get very far into the "nature" of religion if you stay at this level of thinking. No pain no gain simply begs the question, and it is a metaphysical question. Religion is our metaphysics, specifically, the foundational indeterminacy of ethics and aesthetics. To discover the essence of religion, one has to go this threshold, that of metaphysics, metaethics, metaaesthetic, metavalue. Again, religion is metaphysical concept. Only a discussion at this level will produce an understanding.

What is love even?
...
Why is it so hard to keep a feeling. Maybe it is better to sit by and watch but never have. The idea of meeting the beauty and magic we see in the world around us to be ours, mine, we end up smothering it. Looking to deeply at it. And then we see how very regular all these things are. I think that magic, beauty and feeling are only real and true when they are free, passing and unscrutinised.

The primary question that is asked in the film is "how does love last?" and it is then described that when one attempts to cling on to love that the beauty of life disappears before ones eyes.

This is why the reduction of Husserl is so important. The conversation that crowds around the issue turns to peripheral matters that distract from the endeavor at hand. The reduction removes this explicitly. Husserl, in his Ideas I, begins his chapter on the reduction like this:

From the side of the phenomenological science which we propose to establish, this amounts to the query, “Which sciences does it draw from whilst leaving its pure meaning unimpaired ? Which should it depend on as already given, and which should it not depend on? Which then need to be bracketed ?” It lies in the peculiar and essential nature of phenomenology as a science of “origins”

What he is talking about is his method of discovering, in the totality of knowledge that constitutes our possibilities for understanding the world, a way to discern what is there in the pure givenness of the world, prior to, that is, presupposed by, ordinary apperception. One makes this discernment by "bracketing" everything else, setting aside the constructs of culture that interpret the world in familiar ways. He wants to break the spell of familiarity! You can see why philosophers like Sartre and Heidegger and Jaspers were called existentialists: The reduction takes one to the world "beneath" the unquestioned assumptions that rule our world of general affairs. This is essential for understanding the essence of religion as it is essential for understanding the essence of the world and its existence. The reduction takes one directly to the source of metaphysics, that is metaethics, metaaesthetics, metavalue.

Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy is a theory based on the idea “all life is suffering”. His reasoning was the following, which in my opinion describes the same phenomenon as expressed in the video about love.

The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom comes over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself becomes an intolerable burden for it. Hence its life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents.

For Schopenhauer, boredom has three forms. The first is when the world shows itself to the bored as lifeless, “dead”, colorless, and “dreary”. Nothing is attractive or interesting and everything is indifferent, detached, and distant. The second form of boredom is when the world shows itself to the bored as valueless, meaningless, and pointless. Schopenhauer says that these feelings of pointlessness, valuelessness, and pointlessness render existence itself burdensome.

"When the world shows itself..." (I read in this: when I consider the world as given to me) ... all beauty and meaning is ultimately lost when I start to seek for a ground within the infinite depth of Nothingness...

Schopenhauer didn't understand the world, is my position. Of course, what does it mean to understand the world? It means we look clearly at what is before us. But since this is clouded with errant and diverging thinking, a method is needed, but not a method that simply clears the logic of thought, as if one were seeking a logically well formed statement with a true conclusion about all things. This, certainly will emerge, but it is incidental. What is sought at the outset is liberation from a distracted mind, or better, from a distracted collective mentality of a people. a culture, an education, all of which conspires to keep things muddled (interesting note: what I am calling muddled, Kierkegaard called sin: hereditary sin. Nothing biblical about this at all, but it makes an important point: One needs to wake up from the blind participation in all that is given).

In my view the meaning of the world, the meaning of value, is a priori to the world and therefore one cannot cling on to it.

I once wrote the following of how that idea would relate to the achievement of a meaningful life:

"When one considers the value in the world - which includes everything of which it can be said that it 'matters' within the scope of a human perspective - one could argue that that value logically must have been preceded by an aspect that is necessarily meaningful but that cannot be 'value' by the simple logical truth that something cannot be the origin of itself.

But this is not why we give analysis to the world, to discover something that is by itself an entity, separated and whole. This is why Plato is so absurd, to think that ideational entities constitute the absolute. The reverse is the case: analysis discovers, to a categorical mind (thinking), a way to think about the world, which is impossibly transcendental at first. When we talk of value and metavalue, it is not say there IS something called this. Rather, it is to say Being's nature has been in part disclosed in this concept. So when the term is in play, value that is, there are two ways this can be: one isin ordinary thought and issues that are contingent, meaning the meanings are contextually determined: ask what a bank teller is, and I can tell you, but this itself will "beg" yet another explanatory account (Derrida), and this in turn will require the same. This is how contingency works (see Rorty's Irony, Contingency and Solidarity). The other way is our concern here and where the reduction takes us, which is to the givennes of the world, where we find metaphysics (?) So, value in play, and what is value in this context in which, say, I love my cat. There are dmany ways this can be discussed contingently, but follow the reduction to the "thing itself" as Husserl put it: the love presence. This is happiness, bliss, joy, adn the like as an actuality in existence. It is out of time and space because analysis discards these to acknowledge what is there in the absolute clarity of an occurrent event. Consider if you were to meditate (and pls, no authoritative references to what some Buddhist text might say. There is only ONE authority here and that is the living reality of what is before you isolated for understanding its nature) seriously, and achieved the intended effect, which is just this very thing the reduction talks about (in my Michel Henry post Husserlian thinking). So there you sit in radical repose. Now ask questions about the world, its love, it happiness. This is where value is affirmed as a "stand alone" unconditioned existential purity. This is to stand in, if you will, metaphysics. (See the Abhidamma. This is discussed as an apprehension of ultimacy, but really, it is no longer meta-anything anymore, because now it is there, and can be discussed with like minded others, and so forth, as with anything else.)

But to the point regarding value being an origin of itself: There is only one way something can be, as Kierkegaard put it, a presupposition unto itself, and that if it is an absolute. But one has to discard this term 'absolute' in the context of this kind of radical existential disclosure discussed above, for one is here not confined to the logicality of accepted terms as they are generally regarded.

Of course, all this is analytically problematic.

When one considers the concept pure meaning as the only ground for relevance in the scope of one's perspective on life, one can become detached or go beyond attachment of 'value' while fulfilling a moral life, which includes optimal performance in life's bigger whole, such as a community of people, or humanity in general.

It is not simply taking on an investigation to achieve purity. Rather, purity is discovered in the analysis. One uses the term because there is actual warrant. And as to the practical side of this, the "detachment" you worry about, the case is quite the contrary: metaethical affirmation is like a stone tablet from a mountain for ethics. The understanding that what resides within the moral sentiment, the love and happiness and the noble pursuit of these for oneself and for others now is seen as a mandate that issues from Being itself, God, if you can deliver this concept from its historical nonsense. Here is the world: first, what is the most salient feature of this "place"? It is the value that flows through it, speaking loosely, for consciousness itself, and its stream of events, is inherently, qualitatively of care. Even as I lift this cup, there is caring. (See Dewey's Art As Experience for a convincing exposition on this, but it is simply in plain sight, this caring and interest and affectivity of anticipating the next moment.) What I here will call the value-reduction, is the first acknowledgement of the essence of religion.

Morality (a moral life) can be achieved by addressing the question "What is 'good'?"."

More simply and more practically: kindness is the wonder of the world. (fundamentally so, according to my logic).

Certainly. I don't disagree with statements like this.

"From my perspective, meaning is fundamental to human nature (precedes it) and therefore it would be sufficient to fulfil a moral life, which philosophy can provide.

Many philosophers have argued that virtue (a moral life) is the highest human good. From that perspective, no human is average and a simple act of kindness towards another person is sufficient to initiate a foundation for a meaningful life. The initiation can be done by any person in any condition and it can have profound - life changing - effects on the lives of others.

Morality in daily life isn't directly visible in history (i.e. 'change the world') but its effects and importance for human and cultural evolution is profound."

I understand that this reply might not be what you are seeking for in the topic, and in that case I apologize. I am very interested to learn about your perspective on the nature of religion and especially related concepts.

My contribution was more specifically directed at your notion of value and the fundamental meaningfulness of the concept suffering, which in my view might lay at the root of (peoples inclination to seek salvation in) religions.

My philosophical mantra since the beginning, that has facilitated any further reasoning, has been: "If life were to be good as it was, there would be no reason to exist.".

Salvation might not be given... One cannot float on a cloud towards success. That is why I believe that the 'written down' idea of an Absolute might put people on the wrong path, despite that ones attempt to seek it might enable one to reach great spiritual heights. It is just that ultimately, it might not be something that can be clinged on to and provide 'salvation'.

What other reason than salvation would make people seek religions? An AI provided a list of reasons that people seek religions and they all were related to the concept salvation.

Without suffering, there is no desire for salvation. But I would argue that one should put ones attention on what lays beyond, on what can be considered good using philosophical reason. A moral life isn't a given life, but it is meaningful. Life is a fight and philosophy can make it a good fight.

Fine. No complaints.

do not believe that that assertion is valid. While it might be valid for the word Ungiven, philosophically it could be substantiated with logic that does not depend on the idea of Givenness, i.e., outside of the scope of (empirical) subjective experience.

I don't follow this, really.

I am not certain that the argument that epistemology and ontology are the same would provide a solution. What if there is a totally different path beyond them both, one outside the scope of language?

One might argue: what else than language can be used to convey meaning between people? What else than language can facilitate philosophy's business? But the business of philosophy per se might not be defined by language.

These are terms that have an indeterminate meaning; I mean, they are not so well defined that considering kinds of being or ways of knowing has any real exclusivity. All that is meant here is understood in a simple observation that knowledge is IN the essence of being. This is a powerful truth ignored by analytic philosophy.

[Count Lucanor]

Religious discussions usually begin with assumptions about how the whole matter is grounded. Talk about God, whether he exists, the soul, the scriptures, the basis for belief or faith, and so on, generally proceeds without really digging in to the real foundational questions. Here, I ask, what are the foundational issues of religion? This is a question that goes to matters that are in the constitution of the world itself, and not the historical fictions and bad metaphysics generated by culture. When Kierkegaard wrote about the what religion is really about, he brought into the conversation the apparently absurd notion that culture itself is the basis of sin, and he meant by this term nothing at all like what Luther called an abomination against the God too wicked to conceive (see the Smalcald articles), the kind of thing religious people believe. No, he took the essence of sin to lie in the both the structural analysis of our existence and the historical setting of our cultural institutions that we find so infatuating that we "forget" who we really are.
At any rate, religion is our collective metaphysics, but what is the concrete substance of being a human being that gives religion its basis in meaning? The essence of religion has to lie in existence, otherwise it is just an abstraction, and so what is there in existence that could be a starting place for inquiry?
I stand before an object, the cup on the table. I hold that the entirely of substantive philosophy lies in the hands of this relation between me and this cup. First question: how do I know there is a cup on the table? Such a question eventually penetrates the extremities of metaphysics, and straight into the very foundation of religious possibilities. The trivially true possesses the deepest secrets of the world, if you want to talk like that. Quite true, really.
So, this question is given to you, philosophers of the most basic questions, a feast for thought, as Heidegger put it.

The essence in existence, how the world is constituted and how do I know there's a cup on the table. All of this points to figuring out things by mere contemplation, in the relation between the observer and what is observed. The project fails from the start. Only when the cup, the table and their surrounding objects enter dynamic relations, we begin to understand them. Our naked eye is, however, very incompetent in capturing all these relations and we can't never get the entire picture. The world is a puzzle of moving, dynamic parts, of which we build theoretical models. Intertwined with cultural practices, these models become narratives. That's the basis of myth and religion: ways of solving the puzzle that owe much more to imagination and fantasy, our most basic skills at hand, than to systematized tools for inquiry and discovery, which require more complex social conditions. That's just the basis, the essence if you want. How it develops historically is another issue.

[Hereandnow]

Sy Borg wrote
If religion is a search for meaning, then that suggests disappointment with life. It is usually the dissatisfied who search for meaning because the happy are immersed in their relationships and projects.

There is certainly a great deal to be disappointed about in life. One has the impression that life is a pyramid with just a few at the top having a marvellous time while most struggle to either maintain their position or to even survive.

It's as if nature (including humans) operates like a flowering slime mould, where most of the cells take on the dirty work and support roles to enable a minority to actualise on their behalf. There lies the dynamic that brings forth the Ubermensch, the idol, the star, the messiah - where the success of a leader is not seen as exploitation, but a success that belongs to all members.

The question of self-identification is key. Do you see yourself as a lone individual, a member of a family, a nation or region, a church / political group, a corporation, maybe like Hatrman's marines in Full Metal Jacket?

'But always remember this: Marines die. That's what we're here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever'.

There is a comfort in knowing that you are the cell of something far greater, whose life extends far beyond your individual death. That, of course, is clearly the case in reality, but it's one thing to appreciate a fact, another to internalise it (to the point where one does not fear death at all).

Ultimately, religions have been filling voids in the human psyche, the torment of living in an ouroboros, while being acutely aware of the past and future. No other animal had to deal with humanesque shame, guilt and regret or awareness of future threats beyond the immediate.

Being alive is not easy, and humans have particular perks and problems.

I have little to say against this. All true. But it is point of view conceived out of the psychology of our deficit, to put it generally, and if religion's metaphysics were a careless construct of primitive minds at the end of their rope (we speak here of the church and it theology and neo platonic ideas), the matter would be closed. But then, is metaphysics simply an empty concept? This is what drives the question of religion's essence. The psychology of human desires needs to be taken, therefore, to a level that is more committed understanding metaphysics. This is philosophy.

There are two doors to open, it might be said, in order make this move a responsible one, but one thing has to be made clear: philosophy is not a rationalization of fictions that are comfortable to imagine. It is a very rigorous method of discovery; a science, keeping in mind that a science is just a method that is an extension of the formal conditions of knowing, which are accepted as justified true belief (this goes back to Plato's Theaetetus, but epistemology still affirms this). Philosophy just deals with the most unfamiliar themes and there is strong resistance to agreement.

At any rate, one door is epistemology. The question, and what I am calling a first step to understanding the nature of religion, is What is there in causality that can make for a knowledge relationship? This is really a kind of backdoor way to ask Kant's question, How are apiori synthetic judgments possible? I won't go into this unless you want to. The point is that when a brain-thing (it is after all an object) stands fully equipped with perceptual apparatus in visual, say, proximity to a cat or a rug or whatever, how is a knowledge relation even possible?

Why is this question important? Because the door that is opened is to metaphysics. If there is no way one can conceive of epistemic connectivity in the principle of causality, and explanations about empirical events always go this way, then knowledge relations are not empirical events.

The hard part is acknowledging this to be the case, but once one yields to this, then the world becomes a radically different place.

But you likely have objections thus far.

[Hereandnow]

Count Lucanor wrote
The essence in existence, how the world is constituted and how do I know there's a cup on the table. All of this points to figuring out things by mere contemplation, in the relation between the observer and what is observed. The project fails from the start. Only when the cup, the table and their surrounding objects enter dynamic relations, we begin to understand them. Our naked eye is, however, very incompetent in capturing all these relations and we can't never get the entire picture. The world is a puzzle of moving, dynamic parts, of which we build theoretical models. Intertwined with cultural practices, these models become narratives. That's the basis of myth and religion: ways of solving the puzzle that owe much more to imagination and fantasy, our most basic skills at hand, than to systematized tools for inquiry and discovery, which require more complex social conditions. That's just the basis, the essence if you want. How it develops historically is another issue.

The question begged in this; when the eye does encounter a piece of the puzzle, as I am right now encountering my cat, how does one give a good faith analysis to this? I agree that their are aspects in a given perceptual event unattended, and some for now unattendable (yet to be fathomed at all).
But here I ask, what is their in the full breadth of discovery IN the this essential relation between your "observer and what is observed"? The focus now on the phenomenological structure that is the knowledge nexus between me and the cat. Once this is laid out, then of course, one can speak of other matters. But this is first.

[Lagayascienza]

Hereandnow, can I ask how a phenomenological investigation of religion would differ from an investigation of religion by modern science? If such investigations would not be similar in their methods, would they both still be valid attempts to understand the reality of religion? Are there different ways of understanding religion? This strikes me as an important question if we are to arrive at an understanding the phenomenon of religion.

Would it be true to say that an understanding of religion by science and by phenomenology would yield different results? Or would you deny that science can have anything to say about religion?

[Sy Borg]

Sy Borg wrote
If religion is a search for meaning, then that suggests disappointment with life. It is usually the dissatisfied who search for meaning because the happy are immersed in their relationships and projects.

There is certainly a great deal to be disappointed about in life. One has the impression that life is a pyramid with just a few at the top having a marvellous time while most struggle to either maintain their position or to even survive.

It's as if nature (including humans) operates like a flowering slime mould, where most of the cells take on the dirty work and support roles to enable a minority to actualise on their behalf. There lies the dynamic that brings forth the Ubermensch, the idol, the star, the messiah - where the success of a leader is not seen as exploitation, but a success that belongs to all members.

The question of self-identification is key. Do you see yourself as a lone individual, a member of a family, a nation or region, a church / political group, a corporation, maybe like Hatrman's marines in Full Metal Jacket?

'But always remember this: Marines die. That's what we're here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever'.

There is a comfort in knowing that you are the cell of something far greater, whose life extends far beyond your individual death. That, of course, is clearly the case in reality, but it's one thing to appreciate a fact, another to internalise it (to the point where one does not fear death at all).

Ultimately, religions have been filling voids in the human psyche, the torment of living in an ouroboros, while being acutely aware of the past and future. No other animal had to deal with humanesque shame, guilt and regret or awareness of future threats beyond the immediate.

Being alive is not easy, and humans have particular perks and problems.

I have little to say against this. All true. But it is point of view conceived out of the psychology of our deficit, to put it generally, and if religion's metaphysics were a careless construct of primitive minds at the end of their rope (we speak here of the church and it theology and neo platonic ideas), the matter would be closed. But then, is metaphysics simply an empty concept? This is what drives the question of religion's essence. The psychology of human desires needs to be taken, therefore, to a level that is more committed understanding metaphysics. This is philosophy.

There are two doors to open, it might be said, in order make this move a responsible one, but one thing has to be made clear: philosophy is not a rationalization of fictions that are comfortable to imagine. It is a very rigorous method of discovery; a science, keeping in mind that a science is just a method that is an extension of the formal conditions of knowing, which are accepted as justified true belief (this goes back to Plato's Theaetetus, but epistemology still affirms this). Philosophy just deals with the most unfamiliar themes and there is strong resistance to agreement.

At any rate, one door is epistemology. The question, and what I am calling a first step to understanding the nature of religion, is What is there in causality that can make for a knowledge relationship? This is really a kind of backdoor way to ask Kant's question, How are apiori synthetic judgments possible? I won't go into this unless you want to. The point is that when a brain-thing (it is after all an object) stands fully equipped with perceptual apparatus in visual, say, proximity to a cat or a rug or whatever, how is a knowledge relation even possible?

Why is this question important? Because the door that is opened is to metaphysics. If there is no way one can conceive of epistemic connectivity in the principle of causality, and explanations about empirical events always go this way, then knowledge relations are not empirical events.

The hard part is acknowledging this to be the case, but once one yields to this, then the world becomes a radically different place.

But you likely have objections thus far.

You are right, I have some objections. What you refer to as "philosophy" is continental philosophy, seemingly disregarding the analytical school. Whatever, I try not to separate science and philosophy because I think each field is part of a single larger concern - humans trying to understand what is going on with reality.

"If religion's metaphysics careless construct of primitive minds at the end of their rope ... the matter would be closed" is a straw man. There's nothing "primitive" about a mind that has doesn't know about germ theory and sees illness as evil spirits. It's just education.

Speaking of education, if possible, I'd like to take you up on your offer to go into apiori synthetic judgements and its relationship with metaphysics. Cheers.