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[classic_symptom]

Another day of agonizing myself over a religion's universal validity (or lack thereof) and the consequences thereof. Do they all possess a piece of the truth? Comparative religion. Sociology. Maybe if I just keep on repeating myself the answer will become obvious.

An earthy, 'post'-Christianity is the only thing that seems to me to escape the twin

Comments

[classic_symptom]

See, that's what makes sense to me. I'm just afraid of being called a damned theosophist.

[anosognosia]

Religion is a kind of inquiry into and practice of the constitution of our pre-reflexive engagement with the world. As such, it can be a bit misleading to start off wondering what religion is saying. Propositions, to which the question of belief is applied, are part of a world produced by a certain sort of human activity. And when we talk about what we know or what we believe or what we are saying is the case, we're dealing within the frame of that world. For these sorts of inquiries, science and philosophy trump religion

[classic_symptom]

Doesn't this radical otherness (which I do find appealing) of religion seem to preclude a voluntary changing of one's cognitive beliefs?

It seems to jive well with a certain deterministic bent in that you have to wait for God's grace (whatever that means) before you can really believe. Am I so deeply ensconced in the naturalistic worldview that I can't grok your explanation adequately to believe?

It's just so tempting to try and see this Other in the way that I am accustomed to seeing: through science and reason. Should I just try and pray to let this Other remain totally Other?

[anosognosia]

I think if you consider the human subject as having, on one hand, this pre-reflexive or maybe noumenal aspect, and, on the other hand, the phenomenal, narrative, reflexive aspect, it's nonetheless important to resist thereby diving the subject into two beings

[classic_symptom]

Very interesting - in the selfsame speech in which I quoted Zizek, he denied "free will" being conscious decisions made by the Lacanian ego; he compares free will to love in that it's free to the extent that no one can make you love someone or something, and yet, you yourself not not in control of it to the extent that the Lacanian ego is concerned.

Re: Psychoanalysis is not a science. I think so.

[classic_symptom]

I utilize psychoanalysis more as a hermeneutics than as a "science." A non-scientific theoretical framework is used "pseudo-scientifically" if the practitioner claims for it a scientific status akin to that of the natural sciences. I see psychoanalysis as a proto-science at best, though I don't see it as a field that should pursue scientific status. I leave that to the cognitive scientists (though I also study cognitive science).