First Believe, Then Understand

Discussion of articles that appear in the magazine.

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Dubious
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Dubious »

Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:20 am The most hated machine is the alarm clock. Mo wants their sleep disturbed.
...and yet we invented the alarm clock to do precisely that! Your mental slumber though is one subsisting 24/7, year in, year out. It's as if the pendulum in your mental cuckoo clock is at a complete standstill always announcing the same time no matter what time it is.
Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:20 amIt's not me that is hated but the ideas I support.
The ideas you support are all imported. Those so subjected to mental imports, as proven by all your quotes, express the inability to produce any of your own or even to vaguely analyse the ones you uninhibitedly accept.

Nothing created by humans is written in stone except by those whose minds remain petrified.
Nick_A
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Nick_A »

Dubious wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 4:53 am
Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:20 am The most hated machine is the alarm clock. Mo wants their sleep disturbed.
...and yet we invented the alarm clock to do precisely that! Your mental slumber though is one subsisting 24/7, year in, year out. It's as if the pendulum in your mental cuckoo clock is at a complete standstill always announcing the same time no matter what time it is.
Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:20 amIt's not me that is hated but the ideas I support.
The ideas you support are all imported. Those so subjected to mental imports, as proven by all your quotes, express the inability to produce any of your own or even to vaguely analyse the ones you uninhibitedly accept.

Nothing created by humans is written in stone except by those whose minds remain petrified.
The ideas are the same. Philosophy as the love of wisdom and the essence of religion as the calling to the truth of human being have always been. Man does not invent universal meaning and purpose. Consequently secularism strives for new ideas while esoteric philosophy and the essence religion strives to remember what has been forgotten.
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Sculptor
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Sculptor »

Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:06 am
Sculptor wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:26 pm
Nick_A wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:24 pm It seems frightening to me that human life has no objective meaning and purpose for most. People create their own reality regardless if it is political or religious. Only a minority have the need, will and the courage to inwardly sense the greater good beyond the domain of beliefs and make the necessary efforts to free themselves from the prison of blind denial and beliefs so as to approach "understanding."
Looks like more self deception
Another one who believes there is no white light but only colors. There is no whole but only fractions. There is no truth but only partial truths. It is the way of the world
Not at all.
Colours are all in the mind. Like "truth".
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Sculptor
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Sculptor »

Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 6:18 amMan does not invent universal meaning and purpose.
Duh, oh so very duh.
This is so obviously wrong.
This falsehoods explains much of your confusion.
Dubious
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Dubious »

Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 6:18 am Man does not invent universal meaning and purpose.
Universal meaning and purpose signifies absolutely nothing if only expounded by our imagination as in X + Y = Z.

Z can be anything as given by X+Y completely annulling any imagined universality. Mere words which define nothing mean nothing. Variables capable of accommodating an infinite number of arbitrary values also reveal nothing.

What does it all mean? Any imagined pre-established harmony of meaning and purpose may be perennially talked about but never made explicit; as long as the latter is the case - not yet having discovered the grand OEM who would have made it inherent in the universe - it ceases to be universal existing at best as a temporary perspective and placeholder.

Everything you write, whatever words you use in expounding your advanced theories of wisdom are yours alone and not those whom you so often falsely quote.
Nick_A
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Nick_A »

The question of universal meaning and purpose and the meaning and purpose of humanity within it earns an emphatic "duh" from sculptor and the belief that it cannot be explicitly understood by dubious. Insistance that the idea is false and naive promotes expessions of secular intolerance which will get one kicked off a philosophy site. So the idea must be discussed in private or on a site free of the domination of secular intolerance. To know of this idea is one thing but to discuss it is another.

Anyhow here is the beginning of an essay I found on Renew America. There are people capable of opening to these qualities of ideas. The trouble is finding them.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/hutchison/120830
Happiness cannot be long sustained unless one lives a life of meaning and purpose. How does one obtain a strong sense of meaning and purpose? Meaning is derived from things which are transcendent and universal. Such things are not accessible to the individual unless man has a nature that is universal to all people. Purpose comes from the idea that the individual is uniquely designed for a special destiny. One has a destiny for which one was created and to which one is called. A universal nature and a special design sound contradictory, but they are actually complimentary. It is difficult to sustain a sense of individual purpose without a source of meaning. Meaning can seem irrelevant if it is not expressed in or connected to a purpose.

Meaning

Meaning is derived from God, from universal truths, and from solidarity with one's fellows. One cannot enjoy human solidarity unless there are traits that are universal among all people. There can be no accessible universal truths without a universal human nature. There cannot be One God for all people and universal truths which impart meaning unless there is a universal human nature. The existence of universal truths and a universal human nature is powerful circumstantial evidence for the existence of God. Those involved in Christian apologetics, take note!

In my youth, I heard a man say, "My life has meaning because I am loved by God with an eternal love." Love is often the channel through which meaning is discovered. Men who love the truth discover meaning when that first lightning bolt of transcendent truth strikes their heart. Human love between man and woman sometimes leads to a sublime sense of being mystically connected to the universe. As the two become one in marriage, they transcend the petty self and feel a solidarity with all mankind..................................
I'm happy to know that the great question of objective meaning and purpose modern society has become asleep to still exists in America so those with the belief that it must exist can find paths leading to understanding regardless of the growls they inspire. It does seem that the closer a person gets to experiencing the reality of the human condition in relation to universal meaning and purpose, the greater the growls they arouse.
Jai
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Jai »

I find Nicks method of presenting his thoughts original, inspiring, elegant to some degree. The need for a humanitarian approach for understanding philosophy, science and religion in seeing ourselves as the living beings who reflect and use concepts for matters of everyday kinds of faith in the full spectrum of human experience, which includes doubt, ignorance and struggle to overcome negative dialectics is encouraging. The method Uwot uses of trying to dissemble every one of NIck A. thoughts resembles to me more the process called 'throttling' used in digital media, more than it does any real attempt to understand and share ideas in a constructive way; as if to assert atheism means that one must also defeat every attempt for spiritual expression.
Nick_A
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by Nick_A »

Jai wrote: Tue Jan 21, 2020 2:49 am I find Nicks method of presenting his thoughts original, inspiring, elegant to some degree. The need for a humanitarian approach for understanding philosophy, science and religion in seeing ourselves as the living beings who reflect and use concepts for matters of everyday kinds of faith in the full spectrum of human experience, which includes doubt, ignorance and struggle to overcome negative dialectics is encouraging. The method Uwot uses of trying to dissemble every one of NIck A. thoughts resembles to me more the process called 'throttling' used in digital media, more than it does any real attempt to understand and share ideas in a constructive way; as if to assert atheism means that one must also defeat every attempt for spiritual expression.
Hi JaI

Thanks for the support. If you are one of the minority who sense that the intent of philosophy worthy of the name philosophy is directed at the heart as well as the mind, I would like to suggest reading the intro to Jacob Needleman's book "The Heart of Philosophy in the Look Inside section of the link below. He describes how philosophy is more than dry debates without meaning over details using the laws of logic.. He reminds me that there are those in the world who genuinely do understand the value of philosophy for human being

https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Philosophy ... B0030V0PBA
owl of Minerva
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Re: First Believe, Then Understand

Post by owl of Minerva »

Revelation and reason have separate realisms in the same way as quantum realism and sense realism are separate. Just as revelation is holistic, quantum realism in its entanglement is also without qualities or attributes until measured. Sense realism is the assessment of the qualities and attributes of already separate entities. Sankara, Antelmi and Acquinas intuitively understood this, that there can be separate realisms.

The Church fathers had to translate the Revelation of Christianity, originally known as dogma, into language that later became known as dogma, for the average person. Classical Greece understood separate realisms. With the advent of the Dark Age this understanding was lost and only sense realism remained. That is why the church turned to Greek thought to help transmit revelation into language. Not everything could be transmitted through language. In the case of transubstantiation words were not enough, and the drama of the Mass with its symbolism was a way to transmit this information, which is beyond the understanding of reason.
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