Perspective

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

Reflex wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 11:06 pm
-1- wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 11:01 pm
Nick_A wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 2:59 am

Reflex makes sense to me.
Nick_A, it is clearer than the azure sky in the deepest summer that Reflex makes sense to you.

The problem, if you want to consider it, is that Reflex makes no sense to normal, reasonable human understanding. A circle is not a circle; god is impotent' god can withdraw himself from himself; etc. I am not surprised at all, not the least bit, having read your posts quite extensively, that these things make sense to you.
I can’t speak for Nick, but I’m flattered! Thank you! :)
I am also flattered.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists"
-1- admires himself as a reasonable person adopting reasonable positions. I always worry about the effects of reasonable people. Wars are started by reasonable people. I prefer to know the unreasonable people aware of the human condition who make the unreasonable efforts to bring sanity into the world.
Reflex
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Re: Perspective

Post by Reflex »

fooloso4 wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:16 am Reflex:
Do you think F4 will ever come to understand that, in final analysis, ideas are meaningless images frozen in time?
Will you ever come to understand that, in the final analysis, you have not moved beyond ideas? Even the idea that ideas are meaningless images frozen in time is an idea. You may desire something more but that too is an idea. You are ensnared in the idea of going beyond ideas. And where does that idea come from? No doubt from what you have read. It is an idea that resonates with you, but it is still just an idea. You can read as much as you want and talk as much as you want, but it is still just talk. You will mistake the meaning of this as long as you think that this is a statement about anything other than you. It does not mean that there is nothing but talk but that you are not free from talk.
Finger, moon.
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

Reflex:
Finger, moon.
I assume the irony of you parroting what has become an overused cliche escapes you.
Reflex
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Re: Perspective

Post by Reflex »

Nick,

FYI, my felt insights/perspectives are inspired as much by the ambiguity in modern physics as mysticism and historical religions, maybe more.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Perspective

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Reflex wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 6:16 pm It’s really quite interesting. On one hand, there is VA who is irrational and on the other, there is F4’s over-rationalizing. Maybe together they make sense?
You [& other theists] were triggered by desperate psychology and ventured into the irrational, i.e. an illusory God.
Where did I state any thing irrational, all I did was to advocate 'Know Thyself' i.e. understanding more deeply about one's own brain and its psychology.

I don't agree with F4 in the finer points but I support the rigorous approach he is using.

Caputo used very heavy philosophical 'machineries' to dig and arrive with his views on God which to me is like those of the pantheist, i.e. a indifferent God which is weak. You will not understand Caputo's use of "call" unless you have similar philosophical groundings as Caputo, i.e. note the basis for his views;
Caputo is a specialist in contemporary continental philosophy, with a particular expertise in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Over the years, he has developed a deconstructive hermeneutics that he calls radical hermeneutics, which is highly influenced by the thought of the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. Additionally, Caputo has developed a distinctive approach to religion that he calls weak theology. Recently, his most important work has been to rebut the charges of relativism made against deconstruction by showing that deconstruction is organized around the affirmation of certain unconditional ethical and political claims.

Caputo has a special interest in continental approaches to the philosophy of religion. Some of the ideas Caputo investigates in his work include the "religion without religion" of Jacques Derrida; the "theological turn" taken in recent French phenomenology by Jean-Luc Marion and others;
the critique of ontotheology;
the dialogue of contemporary philosophy with Augustine of Hippo and Paul of Tarsus; and medieval metaphysics and mysticism.
In the past, Caputo has taught courses on Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Lévinas, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida.
-wiki
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

Reflex wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:24 am Nick,

FYI, my felt insights/perspectives are inspired as much by the ambiguity in modern physics as mysticism and historical religions, maybe more.
As I understand it laws are the same everywhere. The same laws effect the horizontal line of science as the vertical line of being. Trying to understand quantum entanglement is as meaningful as exploring relative consciousness in acquiring universal understanding. IMO you are fortunate to be open to the ambiguity as you describe rather than deny one or the other as what happens all too often.
Reflex
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Re: Perspective

Post by Reflex »

Nick_A wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 3:47 am
Reflex wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:24 am Nick,

FYI, my felt insights/perspectives are inspired as much by the ambiguity in modern physics as mysticism and historical religions, maybe more.
As I understand it laws are the same everywhere. The same laws effect the horizontal line of science as the vertical line of being. Trying to understand quantum entanglement is as meaningful as exploring relative consciousness in acquiring universal understanding. IMO you are fortunate to be open to the ambiguity as you describe rather than deny one or the other as what happens all too often.
Unity (Oneness), of course, is primal.

Whether Albert Einstein actually said it or not, my approach to life is accepting as a general principle “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Another principle I follow is that Reality is without a definite form: the set of classical laws are the perceived average and what we perceive are but a momentary average of our constituent relations. Change our relations and we change our perception; change our perception and we change our relations.

Quantum weirdness is weird (to us) because it is the interface between the qualitative and quantitative aspects of Totality.
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

Reflex wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 8:27 am
Nick_A wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 3:47 am
Reflex wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:24 am Nick,

FYI, my felt insights/perspectives are inspired as much by the ambiguity in modern physics as mysticism and historical religions, maybe more.
As I understand it laws are the same everywhere. The same laws effect the horizontal line of science as the vertical line of being. Trying to understand quantum entanglement is as meaningful as exploring relative consciousness in acquiring universal understanding. IMO you are fortunate to be open to the ambiguity as you describe rather than deny one or the other as what happens all too often.
Unity (Oneness), of course, is primal.

Whether Albert Einstein actually said it or not, my approach to life is accepting as a general principle “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

I agree with you but do you agree that it is easy to go wrong. For example: "SOCRATES: I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher; for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. (Plato, Theaetetus 155c-d, tr. Jowett; "wonder" in Aristotle.)

Wonder leads to imagination which can open us to noesis but can easily devolve into justifying escapist fantasy. How can we discriminate between the two?

Another principle I follow is that Reality is without a definite form: the set of classical laws are the perceived average and what we perceive are but a momentary average of our constituent relations. Change our relations and we change our perception; change our perception and we change our relations.

Do you mean that reality is like a wave created by a storm. It has no definite form but is the result of the interaction of universal laws which we interpret. We don't really see the wave but actually an interpretation created by our acquired perspective.

Quantum weirdness is weird (to us) because it is the interface between the qualitative and quantitative aspects of Totality.

Agreed. Our trouble is that we don't recognize the vertical dimension of objective quality. We limit ourselves to the quantitative so reality must appear weird.

Reflex
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Re: Perspective

Post by Reflex »

Nick_A wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 6:52 pm
I agree with you but do you agree that it is easy to go wrong. For example: "SOCRATES: I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher; for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. (Plato, Theaetetus 155c-d, tr. Jowett; "wonder" in Aristotle.)

Wonder leads to imagination which can open us to noesis but can easily devolve into justifying escapist fantasy. How can we discriminate between the two?
Not for me to say. We have to make our own determinations.
Do you mean that reality is like a wave created by a storm. It has no definite form but is the result of the interaction of universal laws which we interpret. We don't really see the wave but actually an interpretation created by our acquired perspective.
There are no laws per se. The set of "classical laws" are the perceived average of quantum events, the dynamics of which are contained within one system, one closed loop, referring back to itself (self-referential) and thereby establishing relations of sameness and difference on a multitude of levels.
Our trouble is that we don't recognize the vertical dimension of objective quality. We limit ourselves to the quantitative so reality must appear weird.
Download Holophany: The Loop of Creation here.
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

Can we really expect to acquire a human perspective when we defend partial truths and self justifying imagination learned through daily life even to the level of hate? How would our lives change if we had a human perspective? An interesting question.

"Much on earth is hidden from us; but to make up for that we have been given a precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why the philosophers say that we cannot understand the reality of things on earth. God took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on this earth, and His garden grew up and everything came up that could come up. But what grows lives and is alive only through the feeling of its contact with other mysterious worlds. If that feeling grows weak or is destroyed in you, the heavenly growth will die away in you. Then you will be indifferent to life and even grow to hate it. That's what I think."

—Father Zossima from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karazamov," trans. by Constance Garnett (New York: New American Library, 1957)
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Perspective

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Nick_A wrote: Sat Dec 15, 2018 6:02 pm Can we really expect to acquire a human perspective when we defend partial truths and self justifying imagination learned through daily life even to the level of hate? How would our lives change if we had a human perspective? An interesting question.

"Much on earth is hidden from us; but to make up for that we have been given a precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why the philosophers say that we cannot understand the reality of things on earth. God took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on this earth, and His garden grew up and everything came up that could come up. But what grows lives and is alive only through the feeling of its contact with other mysterious worlds. If that feeling grows weak or is destroyed in you, the heavenly growth will die away in you. Then you will be indifferent to life and even grow to hate it. That's what I think."

—Father Zossima from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karazamov," trans. by Constance Garnett (New York: New American Library, 1957)
Note while humans will have experiences [intuition and senses], humans are also endowed with the faculty to reason out the highest ideals.

The problem with thinking of the ideals is humans end up with ideals that are illusory and with no empirical backing, i.e. God exists, the independent Soul that survives physical death. This is purely for selfish personal psychological issues. Such thinking must be weaned off when its cons outweigh its pros as it is happening at present.

However it is also possible for humans to reason out the highest ideals that are grounded on the empirical and can guide the pragmatic.
One good example is the ZEROING and abolishment of Chattel Slavery.
This was a wish, hope and ideal of people then 200 years ago but now such an ideal is realized pragmatically at least in terms of laws.

That is solely based on the human perspective while theism is still condoning slavery eternally.
Reflex
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Re: Perspective

Post by Reflex »

Is there any empirical evidence that VA is a self-conscious entity? Is there any objective reason why I can suppose VA is NOT a Chalmer's zombie?
Nick_A
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Re: Perspective

Post by Nick_A »

Veritas

Plato wrote that “Man is a being in search of meaning.” How can Man acquire a human perspective which serves this need? Can reason alone satisfy the need for meaning? Does it for you?

What IYO creates a conscious human perspective as opposed to a conditioned animal perspective?

I agree that it is easy to speak of ideals but the process of working towards them is abused in the most harmful ways as it is with the question of God. Man creates a personal God for the sake of acquiring power. It is a distortion which creates the impression that God serves Man rather than Man serving a universal purpose within creation.

It is obvious that the concept of God as the source of creation is abused for pragmatic reasons. This doesn’t deny the connection of Man’s being with higher consciousness but rather proves the dominance of human hypocrisy.

Intellectual reason has its value. One important value often overlooked is that it protects our emotional intelligence from obvious self deception. But when it represses the needs of the heart to feel objective value, it defeats its purpose.

My impression is that your experiences with religion has made you deny the quality of emotional intelligence necessary to satisfy the needs of the heart which are a necessary part of acquiring a human perspective in which the mind, heart, and body work together rather than against each other.

A human perspective is defined by what we do, not what we think. Say for example that a person decides they must lose twenty pounds so decide to go on diet. However the body has been conditioned to like sweets. When a person is in a bad mood they support the body’s desire for sweets but when they see an attractive member of the opposite sex, they remember why they want to diet. What we do in relation to our aim changes both by external and internal circumstances. So in reality we can’t have a human perspective. We are creatures of reaction with the potential for a human perspective which feels and reflects higher values not because we are conditioned to but because it is normal for the human soul or essence.

Consider these questions of the heart Jacob Needleman refers to in this interview. Do you believe a person could have a human rather than a conditioned animal perspective without having felt such questions and understood them in a way that satisfies the needs of the heart? I don’t think so. These questions refer to soul knowledge and without understanding these deeply human needs as normal and living by them as natural, I cannot see how we can be said to have a human perspective.

https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/blog ... -question/

Jacob Needleman is describing the need for “meaning.” As opposed to factual knowledge. The head reveals facts while the heart or our emotional nature should lead to the experience of meaning. But this ability has been sacrificed for the glorification of egoistic pragmatic gain. As a result a human perspective is only possible for the minority with the need and will to become normal for human being.

It is one thing to think objectively and quite another to feel objectively. How many even know what it means? Yet without both, how can we expect to acquire a human perspective?
fooloso4
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Re: Perspective

Post by fooloso4 »

Nick:
Plato wrote that “Man is a being in search of meaning.”
Plato did not say that. Nowhere in Plato’s works will you find this. But I am sure that this will not stop you from repeating it. Attributing it to Plato does not secure its credibility it undermines your own. A single misquote can be considered a mistake, but for you it is common practice and by no means limited to Plato.
Reflex
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Re: Perspective

Post by Reflex »

fooloso4 wrote: Sun Dec 16, 2018 7:23 pm Nick:
Plato wrote that “Man is a being in search of meaning.”
Plato did not say that. Nowhere in Plato’s works will you find this. But I am sure that this will not stop you from repeating it. Attributing it to Plato does not secure its credibility it undermines your own. A single misquote can be considered a mistake, but for you it is common practice and by no means limited to Plato.
Who said what is irrelevant. It’s the meaning that’s important.
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