Re: TECH: re'enai and the emotion classifiers (long)

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

Art Protin says:
>> I hate to say it, but this definition is culturally biased in
>> exactly the same way mine was.  The belief that "God" does not
>> exist PRESUMES some definition of God, and the definition that
>> is generally intended is that of the Judeo-Christian god, at
>> least when the term is used by those brought up under
>> Judeo-Christian traditions.
>
>Wrong!  The definition I offered of atheism is not bound to the
>Judeo-Christian traditions.  The disbelieved god is any and all
>"personal gods" where "personal god" refers to a divine being
>with a personality.  The really big error in my definition is
>that I left out the '(s)'.  The God(s) denied by the atheist are
>not only the Christian Trinity and Yahweh, but Allah and the
>God(s) of the Hindus, of Zoroastrianism, of the ancient Greeks,
>of the ancient Romans, of the ancient Egyptians, of the Norse.
>Belief that any devine person can exist disqualifies the believer
>from being an atheist.

Only one try, since this is only tangential to Lojban.  I am by no means
well-versed on philosophy of religion, or on the various religions of
the world.  But my understanding is that each of the major religions of
the world has a different concept of what a god, or what divinity is.
It is not really possible to classify a Hindu as a theist or an atheist
per se because of these differences in concept of divinity.  In fact,
several of those major religions are not mutually exclusive - it is
possible for someone to be a Buddhist and a Confucianist, and perhaps a
Hindu as well, because the things labelled "Gods" to us are not really
the essence of these religions, and thus it is plausible for people to
use these terms and NOT think of them in the sense that someone from our
culture thinks of when we say "God".

Some of the great heresies of Christian history are labelled thus
because they define God in ways more like some of these Eastern
religions.  Many people would label some of those beliefs atheism,
because the definition of 'God' that results is so alien to our
tradition.

Was a 19th century Deist an atheist or not?  Some deists beieved that
'God' was a spiritual force, rather than a divinity, and some believed
that the creator God existed but was no longer 'active'.  By some of
those traditions, an atheist was inherently aspiritualist.

I would also contend that the radical humanists - those who claim that
Man IS God, would also be considered atheists by most people's definition
of the term.

Perhaps not yours?  Well, unfortunately not everyone shares the same
definition, just as not everyone shares the same definition of
Christian, Jew, etc.  Your definition is based on your concept of what a
divinity is, and that concept is not a cultural universal.

An essay I just read yesterday pointed out that just 100 years ago,
almost no one in the Western knew anything about any of the Eastern
religions - our definitions of terms predate what little knowledge we
have of other creeds.  And most today do not have any real trainning or
understanding of other traditions.  Well, it is easy for me to imagine
someone deciding that they are an atheist, based on a rejection of their
Judeo-Christian cultural heritage/upbringing, and never to have
seriously considered non-Christian concepts of divinity.  And indeed I
contend that 99% or more of all who are labelled by self or by others as
atheists fall into that category.

Relating this back to Lojban, I see re'e as an expression of your own
personal spiritualism or spiritual concept, whatever it may be.  And
re'enai thereby is an overt rejection or denial of that concept (which
rejection may be a short-term feeling/attitude).  It need not have
anything to do with any particular religion, with theism, atheism, or
whatever.  Or rather it has everything to do with your personal religion
(not in the organized sense) of the moment, where religion is defined as
your system of concepts and beliefs of a spiritual nature.

lojbab