smoking-stag t1_j7t8wvi wrote on February 9, 2023 at 6:05 AM

Reply to comment by Crazy-Car-5186 in Carl Jung, and the realm of knowing beyond knowing by [deleted]

And yet the article keeps using the word "truth". That epistemology can't give us all the answers. Answers to what? Whether God exists?

You mention the benefits of myth to the human psyche. If they do have benefits, why? And does that have any impact on whether they are true?

The way Jung is being presented, along with Jordan Peterson, it seems to me, to mostly being an attempt at a meaningful justification for religious belief, and it's truth, while trying to avoid structural criticism of their arguments.

Which is somewhat ironic to me, it coming from the likes of Peterson, and the rest of the "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd.

We can have great and meaningful conversations about our emotions, what they represent and how they impact us. Just because the concepts and narratives we use to communicate these things are fiction, does not mean the emotional impact is fiction. Ideas that we need some kind of justification for their foundation takes away, in my mind, the value of those conversations. Shakespeares soliloquy in Hamlet does not have to have been said by a real person for its meaning to have impact. The idea that there is a need for truth beyond that the story exists at all in this context, is baffling to me. Similarly the impacts of the Bible do not hinge on its truth.

In short: Myths and stories exists. Myths and stories have impact on humans. Does that provide any justification for the myths and stories being true?

Crazy-Car-5186 t1_j7ux7oa wrote on February 9, 2023 at 4:17 PM

If myths and stories impact on humans in a way that adds to their meaning and experience of their life, then them believing it has meaning is a natural consequence. Neither Jung not Peterson argued for a theistic religions fiction to be true, just of the psychological impacts that belief in a God, myths etc has. If you only believed what you could prove, of that we live a meaningless existence on a rock which will eventually be burned up by its star then it feels a lot hollower than a purposeful design. That's not to say it's true, but I think more people feel that than not and to believe in the nihilistic view is arguably harmful to the psyche. Which I believe is what jung and Peterson are getting at, of the benefits of such a belief. Not that any religion etc is correct, I believe Jung talked about how when he killed a God they appeared elsewhere, as a guide for the psyche. Nature for example could be seen as a God in the current zeitgeist with pollution and mankind's greed it's demon.