Search found 8043 matches
- Sat May 27, 2023 9:52 am
- Forum: Metaphysics
- Topic: Everything is Not a Thing
- Replies: 222
- Views: 12329
Re: Everything is Not a Thing
Interesting, two aspects of one thing. There is only one thing, Nature.(Theists think Nature is a Person). Your claim is Nature is unmanifested energy. I get "unmanifested" but I don't understand what energy is apart from it's being either potential energy or kinetic energy. E.g. potentia...
- Fri May 26, 2023 11:01 am
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
Not the primary value of Jesus, which was, as I affirmed earlier, personal relationship with a personal God . Sure, if you choose to ignore that that was Jesus's primary value, then you can frame his values in a secular context - but you then have to ignore others of them, and you change the origin...
- Fri May 26, 2023 10:10 am
- Forum: Metaphysics
- Topic: Everything is Not a Thing
- Replies: 222
- Views: 12329
Re: Everything is Not a Thing
That which is not a thing is unmanifested energy. Perhaps then one can ask, when does a condition become a thing? Thingness and "unmanifested energy" are each ways of imagining nature. Spinoza's Latin words for these ways were Natura Naturata (the things of nature) and Natura Naturans (na...
- Fri May 26, 2023 9:44 am
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
The values demonstrated by the life and work of Jesus fit well with impersonal God. Not the primary value of Jesus, which was, as I affirmed earlier, personal relationship with a personal God . Sure, if you choose to ignore that that was Jesus's primary value, then you can frame his values in a sec...
- Thu May 25, 2023 9:12 pm
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
AJ, I always enjoy your essays, but this... ...ignores my question. Again (rephrased): is man Grendel, or is Grendel sumthin' 'other' than man? Is Evil man's defect, or is Evil the intelligent infection that, as I say, inflames and makes malign an otherwise benign imperfection? Or: did/does man eng...
- Thu May 25, 2023 8:54 pm
- Forum: Articles in Philosophy Now
- Topic: Was Spinoza Actually An Atheist?
- Replies: 132
- Views: 10974
Re: Was Spinoza Actually An Atheist?
Of course, to them he would have been an atheist, neither Jew nor Christian believed in God as nature. Christians in some places were still burning them at the steak were they not? The usage of 'atheist' is totally to denigrate. The word denotes nothing. Socrates was accused of being an atheist bec...
- Thu May 25, 2023 8:52 pm
- Forum: Epistemology - Theory of Knowledge
- Topic: Robot and God
- Replies: 36
- Views: 6668
Re: Robot and God
SOUL IS NOT THE CREATOR God gave the ability of creating robot, a duplicate human being, to the humanity to show that a human being is a created item only. The human being includes the soul, which is a special work form of inert energy. The inert energy was created by God as the first item in the b...
- Thu May 25, 2023 8:48 pm
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
Alexix Jacobi wrote: Honestly, to get an understanding of what Satan is, one has to turn back to the Medieval Schoolmen. In simple terms, it is an issue bound up with definitions. The conceptual blending of the ‘picture’ offered by Genesis but refracted through a lens of platonism. This may be your ...
- Thu May 25, 2023 1:29 pm
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
Yep, so, you're sort of "forced" to this position... Values is the main reason religions exist ...given that your atheism... The divine is a personification of a society's prevailing values ...precludes you from endorsing this one: connecting to and relating with the divine and transcende...
- Thu May 25, 2023 11:34 am
- Forum: Articles in Philosophy Now
- Topic: Was Spinoza Actually An Atheist?
- Replies: 132
- Views: 10974
Re: Was Spinoza Actually An Atheist?
Glad to hear he wasn't in complete isolation, how is it they did not think of him as an atheist? Because S was not an atheist. He was truly "God-obsessed". His was not the personal God of conventional Jews or Christians but was impersonal Nature. As a Unitarian I have no difficulty believ...
- Thu May 25, 2023 11:16 am
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
The wrong that I've blamed you for is fairly trivial: that you claim(ed?) to value Christianity even though you (had) abstract(ed) beyond recognition whatever metaphysical principles you take(/took) from it, while otherwise explicitly rejecting pretty much every significant element of its Story. It...
- Wed May 24, 2023 8:59 pm
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
Yep, so, you're sort of "forced" to this position... Values is the main reason religions exist ...given that your atheism... The divine is a personification of a society's prevailing values ...precludes you from endorsing this one: connecting to and relating with the divine and transcende...
- Wed May 24, 2023 7:44 pm
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
I see no difference between political values and spiritual-religious aspect. Oh. That's odd. I wonder why. Values is the main reason religions exist Oh, so, you don't think that connecting to and relating with the divine and transcendent reality in general is the main reason religions exist? The di...
- Wed May 24, 2023 7:01 pm
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
Oops, I forgot to post this: Yes, but what you believe is what you do. I get what you guys are pointing at, but I prefer to frame it slightly differently: sometimes, people are hypocrites. The values set out by Jesus are relatively good ones because they conduce to cooperative living among peoples....
- Wed May 24, 2023 6:52 pm
- Forum: General Philosophical Discussion
- Topic: Christianity
- Replies: 17085
- Views: 746531
Re: Christianity
As for Genesis, I find that nobody seems to know what I am talking about when I try to explain what I learn from it. I am not complaining just remarking. Do you learn something from it of significant value, and that would never have occurred to you otherwise? Yes, and No, I got the idea from a favo...