ybgirp,
Although I don't think "rational thinkers of the Enlightenment" rejected religion as such - after all, most of them believed in the Judaeo-Christian notion of God - I don't se where this contradicts what I wrote about the East-West complementarity.

George,
it's a nice idea seeing these traditions in dialectical terms, but such grand narratives are old fashioned and even meaningless on the ground. Realistically, the human race is just a violent rabble, reading all sorts of historical trends into its ethnocentricities, powerplays, genocides and shuffling borders. Even were it so, 'twer a happy accident, rather than any manifold destiny.
But it isn't so. If anything I agree with Adorno and his 'negative dialectic,' much like Weber's iron cage; modernity is a human trap that is never likely to spontaneously synthesise.
Man's problem is we leave our destiny to 'cosmic forces'--God, Enlightenment, progressivism, free markets, dialectics or whathaveyou--but nothing is deliberated, planned, sustainable, congenial, ethical, 'self-directed'.
This is the next stage if there's any progressive hope for the human race. But it's not gong to just happen, certainly not as a hybrid religion! This is just more examining of cosmic entrails that have no rhyme or reason except in the mind's eye. Meaning and destiny are imaginary products of hindsight. Only the future can bestow meaning on the past.
And then only once the past becomes an 'accomplishment', rather than an accident, an excrement.

Ah Squeers.
That post is perfect. Beautifully constructed, succinct, to the point, and makes excellent sense as well! Like all wisdom, I imagine it will fall on deaf ears, but thanks for writing it.

Squeers,

"Meaning and destiny are imaginary products of hindsight." Well said! But why is that a negative? After all, it encompasses the whole of culture, including, especially Scripture. I would claim nothing more. I agree with your naturalistic nihilism, there is no, plan, no destiny, we are on our own in a meaningless universe. I agree with Clarence Wilmot's conclusion, there is no God. But......we do have meaning and destiny as imaginary product of hindsight, that is the only thing we have. Christian theology is all about just that.

A reversal of this: "Only the future can bestow meaning on the past." makes no sense since once in the future we have only the past. Our situation in time does not change, the future is obscure and can only be predicted with reference to what has gone before.

That prediction can only be a waiting for a hoped for event. Welcome to the season of advent!

ybgirp,
thanks.

Peter,
we're not really on the same page.
Your position is closer to that which George found pleasing on your last thread, whereby we celebrate and go with our cultural constructions, rather than bemoan the universe's indifference. This indeed is the concolation of culturalism, popular in academe, but it's not where I'm coming from.
It's surely also a major step into the secular for religion? As well as a post-secular step for sociology: Humanity resigned by sociology to its hopeless infatuation with the symbolic; religion reconciled with the task of fostering a culturally-conceived dimension of meaning?
All very nice existentially, but it doesn't address the problem of securing the future in a sustainable or self-directed way; if anything we become narcissistic in our faith.

My position is only 'naturalistic nihilism' apropos the past. Especially the past we've achieved to date. Despite those 'achievements' as a species, they were merely serendipitous; contingent upon specific circumstances/stimuli. We are not today the collective product of our own determination and husbandry.
There is no 'qualitative' meaning in Wilmot's position unless tangible and self-directed progress is accumulated.
Progress in morality is not enough; ethics is largely cant unless it's directed at an object/ive. We tend to use ethics to rationalise actions in the present, rather than to direct the future in transformative ways; progress is slow, piecemeal and again contingent.

Where my position radically differs is while I acknowledge that "we are on our own in a meaningless universe", this only 'necessarily' obtains in 'our' past present, and not in the future. The future is maleable. We can construct a premeditated future and continue to improve it.
This doesn't only mean we may build an impressive legacy, but remain in a meaningless universe. The future is infinite and I am sceptical of our linear conception of time, within which we live in an eternal present. I suspect this not so, at least not for all time, and if not it changes everything. The future can redeem the past, perhaps even modify it; hindsight becomes 'retroactive'.
Here I'll stop, on the border with mysticism.

Squeers,

Thanks for the rich collections of thoughts that would take many more than 350 words to react to piece by piece.

I agree that dialectics as a grand narrative is old fashioned and I attached it with the proviso “if you like” assuming it was a language you would prefer, since I associated you somehow with the Frankfurt School (c.f. reference to Adorno). My emphasis was more on the concept of complementarity, yin-yang, again, if you like: it is a way of reading cultures (civilisations) - and other realms of human enquiry outside natural science - which others might or might not share.

Another perspective is your “the human race is just a violent rabble, reading all sorts of historical trends into its ethnocentricities, powerplays, genocides and shuffling borders“ which does not negate the legitimacy of other insights, other readings of history and philosophy in general.

You mention God in a context, where I have to agree with you, that “nothing is deliberated, planned, sustainable, congenial, ethical …” although that is not the context of my understanding of God. Meaning (like other concepts) are indeed “imaginative products” of human mind, and when applied to history, of hindsight.

Some people think that higher mathematics is also just a product of the mind, nevertheless it has been shown that it can - not all of it, there is also useless mathematics - be useful for understanding the physical world. Why not accept that religion, with its psychological, sociological even metaphysical dimensions, can also be useful by giving meaning to human experience, to individual or collective self-understanding - again, not all religions, not even all forms of one religion, and of course not to all individuals?

There is mathematics that is beyond the comprehension of people who do not have the “insider knowledge”, and there are ways of living and understanding faith that are beyond the comprehension of people who do not have the “insider experience”. And there are people who need to rationalise their lack of insider understanding of the one or the other. At least, this has been my experience.