Nick_A:
If the universe has no meaning or purpose and just a functioning machine, what you see is what you get.
No, what you see is what you see. There is much more than what you see and what you see is not necessary what it appears to be.
Eros doesn’t exist other than as a fantasy and there is no objective conscious direction to be drawn to.
No, eros is not a fantasy, but what one desires may be.
There is no wisdom.
There is for for us only human wisdom, which begins with knowledge of our ignorance and does not mistake what we might imagine to be beyond our ignorance for knowledge.
There is no sense of valuing imagination unless it is a beginning for contemplation into a higher relationship or reality.
There are many reasons to value imagination. It has value in and of itself.
If this is true it is better just to eliminate anything not directly pertaining to the subjective good of cave life and scientific fact defined by secular experts and enforced by their police..
But we lack the knowledge to say whether or not there is a meaning and purpose to the universe or what that meaning and purpose is. In my opinion, following Socrates, human wisdom is about the examined life. If we are in the cave then the task of philosophy must start with our lives in the cave, not with an imagined world that transcends the cave that we know nothing of. You may strive to escape the cave but unless you actual do so you do not even know that there is anything beyond the cave. You are here now, not in some transcendent world outside the cave. It is within your power to make your life here and now better.
That is not to say you should not imagine a world outside the cave or that you should not desire that world, only that you should realize it is only an imagined world and this one here and now should not be neglected or disparaged. For all you know it is the only life you will ever have, here and now. It may not be, but what if it is? Have you lived well or have you neglected your life in hopes of something you cannot attain?
Of course they are reconciled. As a secularist you are not open to how. When I post the Panentheism thread it is one thing I hope to discuss with Seeds; how God is simultaneously one and three. Why does the world have to stop because you refuse to understand it?
What I said is that they cannot be reconciled without doing damage to both. You do damage to both by attempting to make them conform to the Trinity. Plato’s Good is not trinary. Just because yin, yang, and qi are three terms does not mean that it has anything to do with the three terms of the Trinity. Let me remind you that you have in the past tried to relate the Trinity to the Law of Included Middle but failed.
I am referring to Pythagoras perception of the diatonic octave and how it is a universal law
The Pythagorean scale is derived from the ratio of 3:2, the perfect 5th. This works well for some intervals but not for others. The interval of a major 3rd will not sound harmonious, and if the tuning is adjusted to sound in tune it will no longer be in the proper ratio of the notes of the Pythagorean scale. This undermines your magic unity of three and creates dissonance within the scale. In addition, if you go through the cycle of 5th going in one direction up a 5th will yield a different note at the end of the cycle then if you go in the other direction down a 4th. In other words a D sharp and an E flat are not enharmonic as they are on a piano. They are not the same pitch or frequency, and so, the octave generated by going up a 5th will not be exactly the same frequency as going in the other direction down a 4th. It is one of many tuning systems. Any “universal laws” are simply the laws of mathematical relations, that is, ratios.
People who are open to these ideas have a plausible explanation as to the cosmological structure of the universe and the mathematics separating individual cosmoses.
Open to what ideas? Ratios? That the structure of the universe can be described mathematically? That a string can be divided? I see nothing here about separate individual “cosmoses”. The term would make no sense to Pythagoras. Cosmos means the ordered Whole. If there is more than one whole then these wholes are not separate “cosmoses” but rather parts of the Whole, the One or in Greek ‘Hen’.
Music is vibration. You are closed to both the potential detrimental and healing effects of vibrations we interpret as music.
Where have I ever said I am closed to this? I do think, however, that magic thinking greatly exaggerates the effect. In addition, the effect of the vibrations are not necessary from vibrations that we would generally interpret as music. They may be outside the range of human hearing or described as noise rather than music.
Animal or subjective love is a result of universal influences which are part of universal meaning and
purpose. There is nothing conscious in it. It just happens because of the effects of force on animal life and these forces are an aspect of universal meaning and purpose.
This only demonstrates how little you know about actually loving a person. The initial feeling may not be conscious but if love is to endure it must become a matter of deliberate action. Anyone who has been in a loving relationship that has stood the test of time can attest to this.
Conscious Man is capable of conscious ACTION which fallen man is incapable of so is forced to live values by hypocrisy.
Here once again you start with your belief and attempt to force reality to conform to it. It may be that the little value in which you hold yourself or others is a hypocrisy, but do not project this onto others.
You deny the objective good so are limited to arguing pragmatic partial truths which make you feel important.
And once again, I do not deny it, I simply affirm that I do not know that there an objective truth or what it is. This does not make me feel important. On the contrary, without an objective meaning and purpose we are just insignificant creatures of importance only to each other. Ironically, it is Plato’s noble lies, told to “philosophical dogs” that you take to be the truth itself. It is you who prefer the noble lie and Plato who prefers telling it to those like you who prefer the lie to the truth of our not knowing.
Unless a person has prematurely spiritually died inside they can open to the third direction of thought which leads towards the Good.
Yes, we have heard this all before many times. You believe you are on the road to somewhere you have never been, yet you talk as if you are already there. And so once again, unless you have consciously evolved so as to have experienced the objective good then, as it has so elegantly been said STFU.
Secular intolerance is dedicated to destroying the beginning of the path for the young not yet able to stand up to adult secular intimidation.
No, secularism is about allowing others to choose their own path without you telling them they must follow your path, a path that for all you know may lead to nowhere. This is tolerance for self determination and intolerance of your spiritual imperialism. The fact of the matter is that in secular society it is the family that decides what the religious path of their children will be. Secularism is about the separation of Church and State, non-interference in matters of religious belief and practice. You are opposed because you want to impose your own beliefs. And since you believe your beliefs are universal truths you see the issue as a battle between truth and lies, religion and secularism. Except that any religion that does not conform to your beliefs is declared by you to be false and thus, perversely, on the side of secularism.
This just silly and not even worthy of the status of Oprahism.
If you see the question: Are you merely “open to remembering the good” or do you remember and thereby know it? as silly then it is so because your claim is silly. And if you see what follows from it as silly it is not only because your claim is silly but because you do not know what Plato says about knowledge of the good as it relates to knowledge of all the rest.
Don't these believers realise that we "secularists" think of nothing but killing their spirits? Oh my goodness, while any spirit remains alive I could just about stamp my tiny feet in fury (as if scorned)!
I have good friend who is a drag queen and he seems positively sanguine and butch next to the Nickhead.