As a retort to the quotes about mysticism, it is *not* correct to call mysticism the sole ("soul"? :-) ) source of religious motivation and faith.
All religions are an amalgum of undeniable facts, (you will find things about eating, for example, in almost all religions, so they all at least admit that physical food has some value) with some aspects of credulity, {just believing something is true, without basis in either evidence or reason}. The general religious term for this credulity is faith. The generic term for credulity is superstition.
An ideology or system of beliefs that included no elements of credulity would not be a religion. It is those elements of belief (by which I mean only those things held to be true, and can inlude both the rational and irrational) that require "faith" that distinguish between religious and non-religious ideologies. The unnamed source for all notions or beliefs call faith based only on credulity is mysticism. Exclude mysticism, and whatever you have, it is not religion.
the emotional/moral/feeling side of human experience and expression. there is more to human expression than pure reason.
Just one comment. Emotion and feelings are generally terms for the same class of human experience, though feeling is broader and includes some things that could not rightly be called emotions (like the physical sensations). It is a bad mistake to mix feeling and morals. Moral or ethical values are rational, based on the nature reality, and determine what is correct or incorrect behavior for moral (rational/volitions) beings who must live by conscious choice.
More often than not, for those people who confuse moral values and feelings, their emotional experience and their moral values are in conflict. Those who clearly understand, truth is truth, right is right, and regardless of how one feels, the truth cannot be violated and one cannot do wrong and get away with it, do not suffer emotional conflicts. The feelings reflect values. First you must have the values, then the emotions can evaluate them and provide the visceral experience of them. Those who look to their feelings for values have it backwards and their experience (and behavior) will relfect it.
Locke is good.
Yes, and then came Hume, and that was the end of philosophy. Every philospher since Hume, whether following his lead or refuting him has implicitly or explicitly accepted his false premsises, and thus perpetuated the errors. Because all philosophers since Locke embrace Hume and Plato (whether they know it or not) and reject Aristotle, there is no sound philosophy today. The Objectivists, for all their faults, at least reject Plato and Hume explicitly, and for the right reasons, and do embrace Aristotle, which at least is a beginning.
Hank
My point is: All systems of belief require faith of some sort - even Science! The hard-core positivists conclude that nothing is really knowable on a certain level, since all constructive 'truths' (ie mathematics) are tautologies, while any empirical truth is subject to error.
Even empiricists have a 'leap of faith', that leap is trust in the sensory perceptions and the reality of experience, none of which can be "proven".
It is why I say skepticism is a process, not a conclusion. It's not that I am mystic in saying this, but there is an element of arrogance in assuming one's own belief system is free from the same grouding: "An ideology or system of beliefs that included no elements of credulity would not be a religion." on the contrary, all systems of belief have *some* element of credulity.
Just one comment. Emotion and feelings are generally terms for the same class of human experience, though feeling is broader and includes some things that could not rightly be called emotions (like the physical sensations). It is a bad mistake to mix feeling and morals. Moral or ethical values are rational, based on the nature reality, and determine what is correct or incorrect behavior for moral (rational/volitions) beings who must live by conscious choice.
This is a wide subject, but it is not only common, it is practically necessary to combine emotions and morals. Emotions are about motivations and both have in them the term that indicates its connection to action - *purpose*. Morals is about what purposes, intentions, motivations and results actions are correct. The emotions are what is the reference point for morals - "Love your neighbor". If you look at Spinoza for example, he talks of 'good' emotions and 'evil' or 'useless' emotions. When you say 'conscious choice' you dont realize that it is *emotions* that are the centerpiece of that consciousness - this is a psychological observation no philosopher has touched on explicitly, but it is implicit in almost all moral philosophy from Aristotle on down. Aristotle spoke of happiness as the ultimate end and tied virtue to the 'good' of human intention. Aristotle said that happiness was the activity of the soul in expressing virtue - In a sense, the utilitarians go the same way, for them it is maximizing that happiness/pleasure that is the culculus of good. But where does desire come from psychologically? Emotional desire. reason has no Will, no intention. Think of a computer, it seeks nothing but creates knowledge and understanding from what it is given
The psychological truth is like this: You have sensations, thoughts (reason) to analyze them, emotions to guide your sense of directions/desires away/towards some action, and actions based on all input sand inner cognition. Reason and emotion dance together to create intentions and actions.
Speaking of reason-based morals sounds good, but that is another way of saying a normative ethics is grounded on rational analysis. That's what the moral philosophers do one the whole. The problem the moderns have got themselves in is this: Just as they cant see any *certain* truths, they cant find any *certain* morals. This is unsurprising fo a group that cant call teh sun rising each day a certainty. (And funny thing is - I agree! - but I think there is a confusion between "knowledge" and "certainty", oyu can have knowledge without it being prob=1 certainty, and that knowledge of things in nature is very much real not an illusion!)
In my view, wisdom and virtue are pairs, the highest ends that relate to the human activities related to them - reason and emotion. A complete reasoning and emotionally healthy individual will exhibit both wisdom and virtue in their inner thoughts and outer behavior. And certainly both can fix eachother - it is base hedonism and ignorance to let emotions and desires act outside of reason as a 'moral guide'; such thinking also reject moral reasoning. reason can indeed correct what is flawed in emotional desires - a drunk may think another drink is what is needed for happiness, but reason might guide instead to drying out and fixing a brain's desire for alcohol with a higher and better set of desire more attuned to lasting happiness, aka virtue.
I agree with you, and with Aristotle, Kant, and objectivists, that such moral study/science is possible. I disagree with the moderns who find such study impossible or insensible. A last thought experiment when face with those who say there are no absolutes in morals. Ask them if completely wiping out all humanity and all life forms entirely off the face of the earth is an evil or bad thing. ask them to *prove* it.