From: "Dominic Le Fave" <dominic.lefave-AT-the-spa.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 17:32:50 +0000
Subject: Re: Machining theo-logics 


 
> Greg 
> 
> (who is currently working on a list of post-Enlightenment atrocities to
> lend force to whatever argument I'm making.  They're seeming so popular
> recently; I figure the longest list wins.  Damn!  Wouldn't you know it?  I
> cannot find my copy of J.G. Ballard's _Atrocity Exhibition_ when I'd like
> to throw a witty quote in somewhere.)
> 
Greg: I've been saving the posts to this thread from the beginning 
because I thought to myself "O, good: this will interesting" (which 
it was, of course, as anthropological data).  I have just completed a cursory 
review of the entire thread and I can't see any arguments--certianly 
not any that were supported by atrocities.  At the beginning there 
were some suggestions for a discussion on issues in post-modern 
theology, then there was inter-religious conflict and mud-slinging 
interspersed with some suggestions for topics in post-modern 
philosophy of religion.  Then more mud, moralizing,recitations of 
creeds, statements of faith, and a few really 
good sermons.  But I'd like to think I overlooked some arguments.  
What were they?

--good point about the Hume book, by the way.  It seems to me though 
that belief in this sense is something like "unverified knowledge".  
This is the sense in which one would say "I hold this belief: life is 
suffering".  Belief stands in for dogma, extrapolations from 
experience, etc.  This is unquestionably some real serious shit in 
the world as you've pointed out.  It also seems to me to be crucial 
to any post-modern conception of God, a divinity that exists in the 
varieties of religious experience.  I would like to hear
Phil's objections to identifing God with the "mechanosphere" 
though: I inevitably do this in my thinking about God though I think 
there are further conceptual movements of divinity that are not 
identical with Her dogmatic substrate: a parallelism of substance.  
But this is not the belief that Steve is talking about.  He is 
objecting to a belief that ADDS something to the dogmatic concept.  
The concept plus truth is a believed concept. Or, the concept plus 
some transcendental correspondent is a believed concept.  

--dominic.lefave