Secular Intolerance

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fooloso4
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick:
Do you agree with F4 that there is no distinction between the inner and outer man and that all truth is on the surface.
This is not what I said. While it is possible that you are just deliberately misrepresenting what I actually said, it is far more likely that you simply did not understand it. There is a distinction between your foot and your mouth but when you put your foot in your mouth it is you who is doing it. Strauss did not say that the truth is on the surface, he is talking about the problem inherent on the surface of things. A problem is not the truth. The truth is, you fail to see the problem that is on the surface. You fail to look at yourself, if you did you would see the problem that is right there, it is the heart of things that should be attended to. Instead you look away to a concept of a universal Self and fool yourself into believing that this is yourself, that this and this alone is what you should be paying attention to.

You did not respond to my last post. Why is that? You always have so much to say when you are hurling accusations and spouting quotes, but now this sudden silence. It speaks volumes.
Belinda
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Belinda »

Nick_A wrote: Tue Jul 25, 2017 12:30 am Belinda
What justifies my belief is proportionate to what is brought into focus by reason and by my affection for and trust in reality whatever that may be in practice. Science is one way to access reality, and science's record of success impresses me. Arts is another way that I can access reality, and I can be more intuitive in my approach to arts than I can to science. However arts and sciences are means to know reality and are not reality, as I am sure you would agree.
Is a justified belief anything other than an opinion? An opinion may be based on reality but since it isn’t verified it is still an opinion. Plato asserted that it was possible to transcend opinions and experience the world of forms. Would you agree?
The fideist theory (N.B. fideism is the view that any affirmation of the mind does not come from reason, but from feeling): one believes something because one wants to believe it; belief in certain things becomes an obligation. Fideism is a view very well suited to all forms of spiritual tyranny; fideism always ends up in the subordination of thought to a social myth.
But the fact that doubt is possible shows that fideism is false. What is more, whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.
- Simone Weil, Lectures in philosophy (Leçons de philosophie)
It seems right to me. Attachments to either dogmatic secularism or religious fanaticism is emotional rather than intellectual. Would you agree that emotional blind belief is as dangerous to the human psych as emotional blind denial? Both sacrifice truth for emotional self justification.
In order to obey God, one must receive his commands.
How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism?
To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled--that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.
- Simone Weil, First and last notebooks (last notebook 1942)
(Oxford University Press 1970) p 137
Would you call this an opinion, a justified belief, or both?
The best I can hope for is that what I understand is closer to reality than what it was.
If we can get that far we will have gained.
Dharma in Vedas and Upanishads. ... This development continued in the Upanishads and later ancient scripts of Hinduism. In Upanishads, the concept of dharmacontinues as universal principle of law, order, harmony, and truth. It acts as the regulatory moral principle of the Universe.
The dharma suggests universal principles that human beings should reflect on earth. If the universe has no objective meaning than there are no universal values but just those people create. Under these conditions there is no reason to think of leaving the cave since without these principles the origin of values comes from the cave. If the Vedas and Upanishads are right can you see how harmful secular intolerance and the attitudes it projects are on developing minds feeling the natural attraction to eros..

Do you agree with F4 that there is no distinction between the inner and outer man and that all truth is on the surface. Does "Know Thyself" mean analysing what the outer man does? You find it hard to say "I have a self" Is it also hard to say "I have a personality?" IMO the human organism is a plurality consisting of many selves so we have no inner unity. Our personality is created through reconciling the diverse influences of the myriad and often contradictory selves that comprise our being. The outer man and its personality is a creation of life. We are born as an inner man with unique characteristics. Our personality begins to exist around the age of five. To "know thyself" is the process of what is real in us consciously witnessing the reactions of outer man or our personality. When a person witnesses what their personality has done to them in relation to acquiring a human rather than conditioned perspective it can be horrifying, but at the same time provide the impulse to have the courage to impartially witness truth.

Nick, you wrote:
I have verified that I am the wretched man as described by Paul in Romans 7. If I have verified it, what good does it do to deny it? I have verified that I am dual natured. I have a conscious part and an animal part. Why deny it to appease secularism?
I deny it, not to appease secularism but because my preferred model is a better one than your , and St. Paul's ,preferred model.
You and I are not dual natured. You and I are each a body-mind . It is possible to view body and mind as separate like we can view the same tree from different perspectives. As a matter of scientific fact my psychology and my physiology are perspectives on the same me. What you, Nick, regard as wretched man, and what you regard as your "conscious part" are the same Nick. There is no "wretched" floating around unattached to persons.

You are a relatively free man who, while you are a little unbalanced in your attachments, is articulate and literate, and keen to freely communicate your view, and you live in a society where your are allowed to freely communicate. That you are a relatively free man is one side of the coin of what must be; the other side of the same coin is that you are proportionately autonomously responsible. You are as I have explained relatively free, therefore as a matter of fairness you have no right to push your own personal responsibility for your sins and wretchedness on to some imagined "animal part".

Your "animal part" i.e. your emotional reactions are necessary to keep you alive, and that "animal part" also supplies your spirit with loving kindness. Your, what you regard as, your higher part is necessary to maintain you as a useful member of society . Your spiritual seeking is needed by you to form and maintain not only your self esteem but also to take your part in whatever dignity the human species can amass before it becomes extinct.

You lack sufficient connection between your "animal part", your mind, and your spirit. That 's why you focus overmuch on the world view that you are at present enchanted with, a world view that has the self separated into warring parts as if by an act of God.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

Fooloso4

You are a zetetic skeptic so nothing interests you other than bottom up reasoning you attempt to verify inch by inch. Top down contemplation which verifies itself by experience is foreign to you and most are like you, Yes the initial problem we experience is on the surface. We are not balanced creatures. The head, heart, and body do not cooperate so often they are in conflict and reconciled by imgination. This conflict creates all sorts of opinions which comprise our ego. It is what creates Plato’s cave or unbalanced opinions based on justifying imbalance. This is the life of the Man Animal.

Some begin to question what is all this “doing” and why am I doing it? They sense that this is not “I” I am something different than what is happening. This is the beginning of the third direction of thought. Previously a person’s life was based on duality and a life of reaction. Now the question of the heart arises who am I and why am I here. This is no longer a matter of arguing opinions but the need for direct experiential knowledge.

You seem to be caught up in duality and demand it produce proof of the conscious third direction of thought. It can’t be done. Yet when a person experiences it as young people so often do, they are open to experience. It is quickly closed by the attitudes of secular intolerance which makes a person feel embarrassed about the questions of the heart and the inadequacy of the answers they are exposed to.

The higher part of the collective human organism is what enables a person to have the impartial experience of themselves and yet be open to an even higher level of consciousness that seeks to know us. We can witness our mechanics while higher consciousness can witness our conscious part. Spirit killing is the destruction of the human need to experience what is greater than themselves. Spirit killers seek to indoctrinate people into the conclusion that there is nothing greater than society – the Great Beast. All our efforts must be put into making ourselves acceptable to the Beast.

It is far better initially to learn for ourselves personally what a balanced person is in comparison to what we are to avoid even being led further astray, It is good for society as part of its metaxu but only the beginning for the seekers of truth concerned with what we ARE in relation to the potential for human “being” as opposed to mechanical technology. Where secularism reconciles opposing opinions by a lie, universalism reconciles by a higher conscious truth within which opinions reside.
“There is always something more than two opposing truths. The whole truth always includes a third part, which is the reconciliation.”
I Am Not I.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/1 ... needleman/
“This is the entire essence of life: Who are you? What are you?” So proclaimed Leo Tolstoy in the diaries of his youth. “I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession,” eighteen-year-old Sylvia Plath marveled in her own diary a century after Tolstoy as she contemplated free will and what makes us who we are. Indeed, these three smug lines slice through the core of our experience as human beings, and yet when we begin to dismantle them, we begin to lose sight of that core, of the essence of life. What, then, are we made of? What, then, makes us?
In I Am Not I (public library), philosopher Jacob Needleman picks up where Tolstoy and Plath left off, and enlists more of humanity’s most wakeful minds — from Nietzsche and Kierkegaard to William James to D.T. Suzuki — in finding embrocation for, if not an answer to, these most restless-making questions of existence. Out of the inquiry itself arises an immensely hope-giving offering — a sort of secular sacrament illuminating what lies at the heart of the most profound experiences we’re capable of having: joy, love, hope, wonder, astonishment, transcendence.
The spirit killers offer secular answers which close the mind in the effort to make people into indoctrinated members of society. I support the efforts of those capable of having an open mind and need something more than the technology the Beast offers and feelgoodism to pacify the needs of the heart.
Matthew 22:15-22New International Version (NIV)
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax[a] to Caesar or not?”
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.
Secularism is only concerned with giving to the state what it takes from you. Since the Great Beast is God the secularist gives loyalty the Beast and money to the state (Caesar.) The state has the potential to be a sacrament and aid the evolution of human being. However when it has been secularized it only serves the body and spiritually kills the rest.

So if any kid starts to sense the problem and asks inappropriate questions, every attempt to spiritually kill him and these questions replaced with age appropriate ideas will be adopted. It is too insulting to let it go on. All the kid needs to know is political correctness and the laws of the state. Anything else is just disturbing the peace and must be eliminated.
fooloso4
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
You are a zetetic skeptic so nothing interests you other than bottom up reasoning you attempt to verify inch by inch.
One thing that zetetic skepticism teaches us is not to make claims about things we know nothing about. Zetetic means to inquire. There are many modes of inquiry. It does not mean to reason either bottom up or top down. It is dialectical. It inquires into the limits of reason. Socrates and Plato were zetetic skeptics.
Top down contemplation which verifies itself by experience …
You have been asked several times by several members what you have verified of your levels of reality. All that we have gotten so far is a distinction between mechanical or animal consciousness and self-consciousness, and an avalanche of things that other people have said. You have made assertions about universal consciousness but have not told us the experience that verifies it.
You seem to be caught up in duality …
This is one of your one size fits all accusations. What duality am I caught up in?

You said:
I have verified that I am dual natured. I have a conscious part and an animal part.
You divide bottom up reasoning and top down contemplation, the inner and outer self, those who are fallen and those who have awaken,the higher and lower parts of ourselves, etc.
The higher part of the collective human organism …
How has your experience verified the collective human organism?
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

One thing that zetetic skepticism teaches us is not to make claims about things we know nothing about. Zetetic means to inquire. There are many modes of inquiry. It does not mean to reason either bottom up or top down. It is dialectical. It inquires into the limits of reason. Socrates and Plato were zetetic skeptics.
What happens when the limits of reason are reached and all that results are contradictions. Normally people just keep on BSing. Is the goal of philosophy to just keep on BSing and call it intelligence? It may be the goal of modern philosophy but Prof. Needleman asserts the essential goal in his book “The Heart of Philosophy.”
Chapter 1

Introduction

Man cannot live without philosophy. This is not a figure of speech but a literal fact that will be demonstrated in this book. There is a yearning in the heart that is nourished only by real philosophy and without this nourishment man dies as surely as if he were deprived of food and air. But this part of the human psyche is not known or honored in our culture. When it does breakthrough to our awareness it is either ignored or treated as something else. It is given wrong names; it is not cared for; it is crushed. And eventually, it may withdraw altogether, never again to appear. When this happens man becomes a thing. No matter what he accomplishes or experiences, no matter what happiness he experiences or what service he performs, he has in fact lost his real possibility. He is dead.

……………………….The function of philosophy in human life is to help Man remember. It has no other task. And anything that calls itself philosophy which does not serve this function is simply not philosophy……………………………….
Philosophy as the love of wisdom invites us to remember by opening to intuition which is a higher form of reason.

Tao (pronounced "dao") means literally "the path" or "the way." It is a universal principle that underlies everything from the creation of galaxies to the interaction of human beings. The workings of Tao are vast and often beyond human logic. In order to understand Tao, reasoning alone will not suffice. One must also apply intuition.
In the pursuit of learning every day something is acquired,
In the pursuit of Tao every day something is dropped.
Chapter 48
.............To really deepen a question puts you in touch with another part of yourself that your “answers” usually cover over; this is the freedom from the known, that Krishnamurti and others speak about.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
You are satisfied with arguing to explain essential contradictions while the universalists welcomes the contradiction because it invites reconciliation through intuition and "freedom from the known".

You keep wanting me to explain this and that but how can I if you lack experience? Again from the linked discussion with Jacob Needleman
RW: Yes. And are there levels of the unknown? There are things that are metaphysically, irreducibly unknowable, perhaps—and then way over here is ordinary knowing. I know that’s a chair over there and I know what you do with a chair. But is there a gray area between my ordinary knowing and not knowing? For example, I don’t know where I put my glasses. And after awhile, all of a sudden, I remember. Or maybe there’s a problem I don’t know how to solve, but after awhile, it comes to me.
JN: What is the mind and its knowledge? This is certainly part of the fundamental question, who am I? What you say is so understandable, so ordinary—in a decent sense of the word—but behind this fundamental question of knowledge and the mind there’s a hidden question, and this hidden question opens up a world. Down deep, the question that you’re now speaking about is consciousness. We say, “knowing.” I know that’s a chair. I can touch it and so forth. But that doesn’t satisfy us—because we have the wrong question. It has to do with consciousness. And it’s a great unknown, this thing called consciousness. We don’t know what consciousness is. That’s stunning! I don’t know what consciousness is, and yet I’m sure I am conscious! Isn’t it so? The mind, the thoughts, the categories, the words about every kind of specifically human knowing and action —we’re talking about consciousness. This is the hidden question. One of the great questions in philosophy is how do we know?—but this classic philosophical question is actually a question about consciousness. Consciousness is man. That’s his unique possibility. So I think the whole idea of mind, knowledge, certainty, the unknown, has to do first and foremost with consciousness.
Consciousness is Man. Conscious evolution is evolving from one level of conscious inclusion to a higher level of conscious inclusion or a higher quality of being. But there are so many arguments about what consciousness is, is it any wonder that we don’t know what man is and why we are the great unknown? People would rather argue it than experience it.

You seem to be arguing psychology and how to adapt to cave life. I believe that unless we come to grips with objective human meaning and purpose awakened in part by real philosophy our advanced technology will kill us. There are those opening to remembering and a majority who only want to argue. I support those opening to remembering. After all it is a part of the Good, the Tao, the One, God, the Source, or whatever name you wish to use. It just isn't part of the Great Beast.
fooloso4
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
What happens when the limits of reason are reached and all that results are contradictions. Normally people just keep on BSing. Is the goal of philosophy to just keep on BSing and call it intelligence?
No, that is not the goal. I think you may be having a breakthrough! Finally it occurs to you stop BSing. My work here is done.
Philosophy as the love of wisdom invites us to remember by opening to intuition which is a higher form of reason.
Alas, I spoke too soon. This is where the skeptical part comes in. One needs to know when he has reached the limits of what he knows. He does not start BSing about remembering what he knew when he was dead but can’t remember now that he is alive. Does Needleman endorse Plato’s myth of remembrance or does he mean something else? If he does endorse it, please provide a reference to his discussion of it. If not, then please stop pretending that it is all one and the same.

There are several different concepts of intuition. We have been through this before and yet you continue to treat the term as if the different concepts are all the same.
You keep wanting me to explain this and that but how can I if you lack experience? Again from the linked discussion with Jacob Needleman
What I asked was how your experience has verified higher levels of reality beyond ordinary experience. Earlier you denied your experience was transcendent. What have you experienced? Have you experienced the collective unity of consciousness? Have you experienced the Way? Have you experienced Plato’s Forms? Have you experienced the recollection of what you experienced while dead? More generally, how much of what you post are things you actually know based on verified experience?
There are those opening to remembering …
This seems like equivocation. Being open to remembering is quite different than the experience of remembering. If you are only open to remembering but have not recollected the experience of what you learned while dead then you have no authority to speak of such things and do not know whether they happen to be true. What I am arguing against is not your belief that such a thing is possible but your claim that others should believe what you claim to know or believe (you seem to deliberately blur the distinction) or be a slave of the Great Beast.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

Fooloso4
This seems like equivocation. Being open to remembering is quite different than the experience of remembering. If you are only open to remembering but have not recollected the experience of what you learned while dead then you have no authority to speak of such things and do not know whether they happen to be true. What I am arguing against is not your belief that such a thing is possible but your claim that others should believe what you claim to know or believe (you seem to deliberately blur the distinction) or be a slave of the Great Beast.
You don’t understand what remembering is. The attempt to do so is opposed to secularism. As soon as a person experiences that there is a quality of consciousness greater then themselves they are drawn to it opens them to the experience of apriori knowledge. You demand factual proof and deny the value of becoming open. You only wish to argue the urge into oblivion. Read how Spinoza put it

http://home.earthlink.net/~tneff/index1.htm

"...since the essence of our mind consists solely in knowledge, whereof the beginning and the foundation is God, it becomes clear to us, in what manner and way our mind, as to its essence and existence, follows from the divine nature and constantly depends on God.

I have thought it worth while here to call attention to this, in order to show by this example how the knowledge of particular things, which I have called intuitive or of the third kind, is potent, and more powerful than the universal knowledge, which I have styled knowledge of the second kind [reason]. For, although in Part 1 I showed in general terms, that all things (and consequently, also, the human mind) depend as to their essence and existence on God, yet that demonstration, though legitimate and placed beyond the chances of doubt, does not affect our mind so much, as when the same conclusion is derived from the actual essence of some particular thing, which we say depends on God." - Spinoza (The Ethics)

...it is clear, that we, in many cases, perceive and form our general notions:--

[ 1. Knowledge of the First Kind, Opinion or Imagination:]

From particular things represented to our intellect fragmentarily, confusedly, and without order through our senses; I have settled to call such perceptions by the name of knowledge from the mere suggestions of experience.

From symbols, e.g., from the fact of having read or heard certain words we remember things and form certain ideas concerning them, similar to those through which we imagine things. I shall call both these ways of regarding things knowledge of the first kind, opinion, or imagination.

[ 2. Knowledge of the Second Kind, Reason:]

From the fact that we have notions common to all men, and adequate ideas of the properties of things; this I call reason and knowledge of the second kind.

[ 3. Knowledge of the Third Kind, Intuition (direct, non-inferential knowledge):]

Besides these two kinds of knowledge, there is, as I will hereafter show, a third kind of knowledge, which we will call intuition. This kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of the absolute essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.

Spinoza, The Ethics

"Whatsoever we understand by the third kind of knowledge, we take delight in, and our delight is accompanied by the idea of God as cause." - Spinoza (The Ethics)
...therefore (if once our knowledge and love come to embrace that without which we can neither be, nor be understood, and which is in no way corporeal) how incomparably greater and more glorious will and must be the kind of effects resulting from this union; for these must necessarily be commensurate with the thing with which it is united. And when we become aware of these excellent effects, then we may say with truth, that we have been born again. For our first birth took place when we were united with the body, through which the activities and movements of the [vital] spirits have arisen; but this our other or second birth will take place when we become aware in us of entirely different effects of love, commensurate with the knowledge of this incorporeal object, and as different from the first as the corporeal is different from the incorporeal, spirit from flesh. And this may, therefore, all the more justly and truly be called Regeneration, inasmuch as only from this love and union does Eternal and unchangeable existence ensue...


Spinoza, ST
As soon as the person experiences intuition they are open to appreciate its source. This is poison to the secularist who doubts a source greater than the whims of the Beast. Spirit killers seek to destroy respect for apriori knowledge so are in effect spirit killers. This metaphysical repression is a horrible burden to place on young minds with a need to be human. I know it is unhip to doubt the supremacy of the whims of the Beast and the power of its reason to glorify itself but if it is good enough for Simone it is good enough for me.
fooloso4
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick:
You don’t understand what remembering is. The attempt to do so is opposed to secularism. As soon as a person experiences that there is a quality of consciousness greater then themselves they are drawn to it opens them to the experience of apriori knowledge. You demand factual proof and deny the value of becoming open. You only wish to argue the urge into oblivion. Read how Spinoza put it
More equivocation. I asked if Needleman means the same thing or something different than Plato does when he talks about anamnesis. I asked you about your experience of anamnesis, your recollection of what you learned when you were dead. You were the one who made claims about your verified experience but you refuse to say whether you had this experience or the others that verify what you have read and repeat as if they were things you know. Instead of answering this time you post what Spinoza said (whose concept of rational intuition your comments show you do not understand) last time what Needleman said or what someone else said.

Once again, if you have no actual knowledge of these things based on your own actual experience then say so. Acknowledge that it is all just a matter of your belief and opinion and not of what you know.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

fooloso4 wrote: Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:03 pm Nick:
You don’t understand what remembering is. The attempt to do so is opposed to secularism. As soon as a person experiences that there is a quality of consciousness greater then themselves they are drawn to it opens them to the experience of apriori knowledge. You demand factual proof and deny the value of becoming open. You only wish to argue the urge into oblivion. Read how Spinoza put it
More equivocation. I asked if Needleman means the same thing or something different than Plato does when he talks about anamnesis. I asked you about your experience of anamnesis, your recollection of what you learned when you were dead. You were the one who made claims about your verified experience but you refuse to say whether you had this experience or the others that verify what you have read and repeat as if they were things you know. Instead of answering this time you post what Spinoza said (whose concept of rational intuition your comments show you do not understand) last time what Needleman said or what someone else said.

Once again, if you have no actual knowledge of these things based on your own actual experience then say so. Acknowledge that it is all just a matter of your belief and opinion and not of what you know.
You just don’t get it. What difference does it make if there is a difference between anamnesis as you believe Plato used it and as Jacob Needleman does? The difference is only apparent. The point is that a person is either open to the idea for contemplation or not. What can you know of my experiences? If you re closed you will only argue and demand proof of personal experience. That is impossible.

What does it mean to be dead as it concerns anamnesis? You don’t experience anamnesis when the body is dead but when the seed of the soul is awake. Philosophy as Jacob Needleman said does questions and deepens questions. You want superficial answers that imitate imitate intelligence. You want me to explain what you need to remain closed to and argue it for the sake of your self esteem. If you are closed to Spinoza’s ideas you are also closed to those like Einstein and Simone.

Don’t worry about me. Worry about why you insist on arguing as opposed to becoming open to intuition so as to open to what these great minds are open to who have graduated from a reliance on linear reason into opening to intuition.
fooloso4
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
You just don’t get it. What difference does it make if there is a difference between anamnesis as you believe Plato used it and as Jacob Needleman does? The difference is only apparent. The point is that a person is either open to the idea for contemplation or not.
I get it, you are just evading the issue. You refuse to address the question of whether you have experiential knowledge of those things you claim are part of a higher reality. Being “open to the idea for contemplation” is very different than making claims about a transcendent reality, universal consciousness, and all the other things you talk about as assertions of what is and what secularists cannot and do not know.
What can you know of my experiences? If you re closed you will only argue and demand proof of personal experience.
What I can know is whether you claim to have actually had such experiences. It is not that I am closed, it is that you are attempting to close off this line of inquiry that you opened up. I am simply trying to establish whether these are things that by your own criteria you know. Your evasiveness speaks for you.
What does it mean to be dead as it concerns anamnesis? You don’t experience anamnesis when the body is dead but when the seed of the soul is awake.
According to Plato, anamnesis is the recollection of what happened when the soul was free of the body, that is, before it was bound to a body. It is not that you experience anamnesis when the body is dead, but rather that what is remembered is from when the soul was not bound to a body. The experience of remembering, anamnesis, is one of remembering what was experienced when you were dead, when the soul was not bound to a body. I have in previous discussions referred to this as a myth and you strongly objected.

You have either had this experience or not. If not, it is just an image on the wall of your cave. And, of course, the same is true of the rest of your claims about a higher reality. If you have not experienced it, it is just an image, and all your claims about what is true and what is real are just claims about the images. You cannot be open to what is true and real if you insist that what you have been told by others is what is true and real. Words are not a substitute for experiential knowledge.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

F4
I get it, you are just evading the issue. You refuse to address the question of whether you have experiential knowledge of those things you claim are part of a higher reality. Being “open to the
idea for contemplation” is very different than making claims about a transcendent reality, universal consciousness, and all the other things you talk about as assertions of what is and what secularists cannot and do not know.
Secularists cannot see it because they are closed to the third direction of thought as previously explained. Are you suggesting that Plato shouldn’t have discussed the good or Plotinus shouldn’t have discussed the ONE because they had not personally experienced it? No, they had become open to the third direction of thought which includes awareness of the complimentary processes of evolution and involution. So according to you it shouldn’t be discussed and Simone’s search to become part of a reality from which all truth abides is just iron age fantasy.

Amazing Grace Lyrics
Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see
Do you really want me to explain this to you? Secularists used to and defending life in the darkness of Plato’s cave are offended by people having such an experience and with ignorant intellectual snobbishness call it fantasy. To make matters worse they kill the natural impulse of the young to experience the light by expressions of secular intolerance. I cannot tell you my experiences but I do know what it means to be once blind to reality and then experiencing the light.

Once a person experiences this third direction of thought it changes everything
Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith: in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be atheistic with the part of myself which is not made for God. Among those men in whom the supernatural part has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong. Simone Weil

The errors of our time come from Christianity without the supernatural. Secularization is the cause—and primarily humanism. Simone Weil
In each case the loss of the conscious third direction of thought which reconciles contradictions at a higher conscious level of reality makes both Christendom and humanism impotent and just subject to the dominance of the Great Beast. This is fine for you and Greta but this psychological child abuse on the young having experienced the light and want to grow out of the darkness is just cruel
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Greta
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Thu Jul 27, 2017 10:49 pmIn each case the loss of the conscious third direction of thought which reconciles contradictions at a higher conscious level of reality makes both Christendom and humanism impotent and just subject to the dominance of the Great Beast. This is fine for you and Greta but this psychological child abuse on the young having experienced the light and want to grow out of the darkness is just cruel
"loss of capacity" - check

"Great Beast" - check

idiotic accusations - check

Nick's conclusion: As usual, that his faith gives him capacities that make him a much deeper and better human being in all areas of life than anyone else here.
Last edited by Greta on Fri Jul 28, 2017 5:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
fooloso4
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
Are you suggesting that Plato shouldn’t have discussed the good or Plotinus shouldn’t have discussed the ONE because they had not personally experienced it?
Are you suggesting that you should discuss these things as if you had knowledge of them even though you don't because Plato and Plotinus discussed them even though they had no knowledge of them?
Secularists used to and defending life in the darkness of Plato’s cave are offended by people having such an experience and with ignorant intellectual snobbishness call it fantasy.
By the same token, as a cave dweller you with ignorant emotional snobbishness call it truth.

You have previously admitted that you are still in the cave. If you have seen the light then it can only be the light of the fire in the cave, which according to Plato, is nothing more than an image of an image.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

When a person has the conscious experiences of top down reason a whole new dimension unfolds which secularists have never experienced and will do their best to deny and destroy as outdated iron age thought. It is obvious that fooloso4 and Greta will fight against it. But for those on the fence I will post a link to the basic difference between the top down reason of the Platonist and the Christian and the bottom up reason of the secularist

http://www.platonic-philosophy.org/plat ... sPlatonism
∼ Seven Basic Elements ∼

About these general principles, Lloyd Gerson (Aristotle and Other Platonists, 32-34) identified seven essential elements of Platonism that takes into account the varieties of individual positions: The viewpoint of the Platonic universe is that its logical and ontological structure is "top-down", meaning that the transcendent and divine realities are prior to and explains the physical world we see around us. (A "bottom-up" philosophy like materialism, on the other hand, would take the visible and physical world as being starting point of explaining reality, and that incorporeal things like the mind and consciousness somehow emerge from it.) In the Platonic "top-down" approach, Gerson identifies seven basic features:
It is lost on Greta and fooloso4 but not on many young minds who naturally open to the top down approach of Platonism. The reality of secular intolerance is strictly the egoistic inability created by negative experience to open to ones intuition. Most want to argue about abortion, gender rights, politics, right and wrong, political correctness, and all these “isms” like racism and sexism which have become the rage of the day. Yet there is a minority of young people who will naturally open to the top down experience of the third direction of thought connecting above and below which responds to the natural human need for objective meaning. This leads them to their natural spirituality the secularists wish to destroy. We have chosen our paths. Those who care will do something in the cause of keeping the top down ideas alive and will not just submit passively to some sort of secular statism the Beast is increasingly attracted to.
davidm
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by davidm »

Gosh, Nick, you are such a dumb ass. :lol:

I can't imagine someone wading through all your twaddle, much less bothering to reply to it.
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