While those who accepted the logical positivism assertions about "statements which can not be verified are meaningless" and the less dogmatic assertions of the analytic philosophy (logical analysis of language) about what types of inquires would be meaningful might not think a lot of metaphysics is worthwhile.

Those trends however I think have run their course, since such assertions themselves can not be verified and I think the trend now is a return to more traditional philosophical questions. Of course, not everyone thinks this is a good thing.

if God is a completely transcendent being or intelligence, then there is no way He can be described by or accomodated in our hypothetical descriptions of the way things work. This actually goes right to the point of the OP. To wonder about the particular causes of particular phenomena, and to frame hypotheses with explanatory power for that range of phenomena, is one type of thinking. But to wonder about 'the first cause' or 'the source of all being' is a different kind of thinking.

I don't think any disputes that it's a different kind of thinking. The question is whether it is a worthwhile kind of thinking.

This is what I don't understand. If God is something transcendent of our intelligence, what use is the different way of thinking? Why assume that a transcendent god is something that can be thought about at all?

But I think you are mistaking 'mystical thinking' for a theory or a proposition in a scientific sense. It is just a completely different type of understanding or outlook. There is a book doing the rounds called 'God: The Hypothesis that Failed'. It is of course an atheist tract.

Because of the testimony of sages - those who have encountered Him (it/that/nothing/whatever.) There is a consistent type of testimony that occurs cross-culturally, and trans-historically. I won't say that they say the same thing, or all have the same outlook - they don't. But there is enough commonality to compare them, which is the main point of the discipline of comparative religion.

That may be true, but many people don't really understand what it is they believe is not worthwhile, so they will dismiss it without ever having really understood it. Many believe that philosophical thinking, or mystical thinking (and these are also different to each other) are really just degenerate forms of scientific thinking. But to understand them requires taking a different perspective. Which they won't take, because... And here we have a regress.

There are different kinds of characters, with different kinds of outlooks. I just want everyone to play nicely in the yard.:bigsmile:

So what is this "different kind of thinking" about? How do you know, deep down, that you aren't just presuming things because the feel intuitive?

So those who haven't taken the different perspective can't judge the different perspectives. But, taking the cue from the first quote, what if we have the testimony of those who were raised in that perspective, cross-culturally, and trans-historically, who then judged it to be a mirage of sorts? It seems to me that we have many people who have understood the "different kind of thinking" and who have decided (despite great pressure to the contrary) that it was not worthwhile..

That is also a very good question. Actually I think we are somewhat culturally deficient in this matter (I got severely flamed over this recently as you may recall but will try again...) 'Types of thinking' have been rigidly circumscribed in recent Western intellectual history, mainly by the influence of Luther and Calvin. In regards to spirituality, Luther in particular insisted on a specific type of understanding through the specific Word of God, as expressed in the only true scripture...and all else was deviance. In protestantism, I don't think you are encouraged to enter the experiential dimension of the mystical side of faith. Basically the only thing you can do is to believe, and anyway, your salvation is entirely up to God, who is entirely inscrutable, and so on.

Please tell me if I have mis-characterised protestant religiosity here.

By way of alternative, there are those who by one means or another have opened up to the mystical sensibility, and this even can happen in those of an otherwise quite secular temperament. Of course one route to this was via entheogens, the experience of which is quite impossible to convey. But there are many reasons why this kind of thing is taboo in our society, protestant religiosity being a major one....

Be interested to see who. I suppose there are always dissidents, critics and so on. Ancient India had a vigorous materialist school called the Carvakas who were totally opposed to any kind of spirituality. But if you do the reading, the unanimity of the accounts of the experience of the sacred is really quite convincing.

This is becoming very lengthy. But essentially, the inability of science or analytic philosophy to answer a given question at this time is perhaps an indicator that the question cannot be answered at this time, rather than an indicator that we need to use more mystical kinds of thinking. Or, alternatively, it can be answered by a different kind of thinking, but not verified or distinguished from countless false answers to the question. Which is rather like not being able to answer it at all.

ould very much like to go to the next one also.

The role of the sages is of course much more clear cut in traditional societies. They have kind of been displaced by 'experts' in the modern world. But the sage and the expert are different kinds of thing (once again!) But it's OK, that was the distinction I was seeking to make, and you have got that.

That is not without truth. That fellow who was President of the American Psychological Association and came up with the whole Positive Psychology theory (name escapes me) was sagacious, I think. Although I am sure there are many experts who lack that special quality of insight.

Martin Seligmann, that's who I was thinking of. He seems like a very positive sort of a thinker. I suppose whether he is a 'sage' is a matter of debate.

[...] I wonder what such people would expect? Let's turn it around a little and ask what we would think of philosophy had it not changed with the rise of science, the most important development in Western civilization since the rise of Christianity, and certainly on a par with it. Not only could it not have happened that philosophy would not change in response to the rise of science, but it would hardly be philosophy had it not.

Philosophy was forced to recognize that its old claim to discover truth and reality could not be seriously maintained when that was exactly what the empirical sciences were claiming. The only expedient philosophy had in response to that claim while continuing to maintain its own claim to be making discoveries about truth and reality was to try to distinguish between different kinds of truth and different kinds of reality.

The pair Christianity-Science is very well chosen. Because Science (together with Democracy) is our time's religion, isn't it?
(Only a madman would question the sacred truth of Science...)

The success of Science led to the assumption that everything that we sense (in some way) is real and can be scientifically explained. Hence the claim that Science is the only true knowledge of the being, or that the scientific method is the only way to proceed to achieve knowledge, extended its hegemony over large parts of the West - and notably over the Anglosphere.

This claim is no longer Science, it is something else. (And, philosophically, it is questionable; Hume and Kant gave some reasons for questioning it - and both were not exactly metaphysical thinkers).
"Going analytic" means not to question this claim.

But one philosophy can be equally concerned with Science moving from different beliefs. And indeed the first problem arise with the question: what is Science, what is the scientific method? Do we really know what Science is?

We are clearly impressed by the power of Science, by the power to control and subdue forces and elements. Is this awe in front of the power of Science still scientific? Or is it something else?.

Having said the above, that's not yet the reason why I dislike - or bemoan, if you prefer - analytic philosophy.
But this is a matter of taste and as I believe that my taste is not of general interest, I'll refrain from getting into it.

However, one should distinguish science (largely a Good Thing, in my book) from scientism, the religion made out of science (and a Bad Thing).

but I would prefer the cheekier "scientismologist".

I think (and hope) that you're mistaken in that judgement. Although many analytic philosophers are scientismologists, I don't think all are.

For instance, Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, author of Divine Motivation Theory (2004) (a book I hope to get down to reading in earnest some time soon, but haven't even started yet) appears to be an analytic philosopher, yet she can hardly be a scientismologist, because she is a Christian.

I don't know, but one of my guesses is that it is a kind of institutionalisation of reason. (I won't attempt to say what Reason is!)

(However, it need not amount to scientism. I'm not a scientismologist, but I am greatly in awe of science.)

I, for one, would quite like to hear the reasons for your dislike; for one thing, it might help me to clarify my own thoughts.

Just one complementary observation: science has been spectacularly successful in the realm of the physical sciences - physics itself, chemistry, and the application of the above to technology and engineering. However when science turns its attention to H Sapiens, or rather on ourselves, it is dealing with questions of a completely different nature. We are not stuff to be manipulated or things to be analysed. I object to the scientific and/or naturalistic accounts of human nature insofar as it attempts to subordinate said nature to 'the scientific method' by taking humans as objects of study. It is invariably patronising and simplistic.