Mr Khan said:
And therein lies the key point of your debate. Is the physical world fundamentally bad or fundamentally neutral. Is it a sphere in which we should strive for as much pleasure as possible, or is it a sphere which we should shun because it is contrary to the spiritual life which is the only good? And of course its impossible to disprove one of these views... |
I like this post. While my knowledge of religion is limited, this debate always reminded me of Plato's distinction between desires and rationality, where desires are considered a human weakness and the rational mind has control over them. By control, he didn't mean people could control their desires or stop them, but they could control how they reacted to them. Basically, their rational or calculating mind allowed people to not act on their desires. While I simplified Plato's argument, the whole view derived from Plato's metaphysics where he rejected physical reality as the ultimate reality in favor of his unchanging, eternal forms
My history is a little sketchy, but I do remember reading that early Christians liked Plato's writings as well as the writings of the neo-Platonists. I can't say whether they adopted his views, but I always saw a similiarity between them.
The big problem and the one you pointed out it that it is incredibly difficult, probably impossible, to judge the truth value of these statements. This is a problem that confronts all ethical systems, whether Plato's ideas or those of its antithesis utiliarianism. It is really difficult to ascribe truth to a statement telling people how they should act because there is a big difference between identifying how people act (which would be a fact) and identifying how they should act (which derives from a value judgement). It really just comes down to what people find acceptable or what people find pragmatic- this can build an ethical system, but it can hardly result in an ethical system that would be labeled as true.
