Christianity

[Harry Baird]

You imply it is a defect that I hesitate to resort to binaries.

But you often enough don't hesitate! You make declarative statements left, right, and centre! And, often enough, they contradict one another.

It's not a moral failing to be uncertain and confused, nor even to hold contradictory beliefs. And you more or less explicitly acknowledge that this is the case not just for moderns in general but for yourself in particular, so, fair enough - the same is true for me.

A philosophy forum though seems like a good place to try to work through contradictions - or at least to become sufficiently aware of them so as not to enthusiastically (re)assert them all over the place. And, again, this observation applies to me too!

[Alexis Jacobi]

But in regard to the things I think about I perceive no alternative but a more fluid predicate system.

The biological and physical reality described by science is all there is. Oh, and we fell from somewhere, and could ascend somewhere (or could fall somewhere else).

This reality was designed. Oh, and the designer has existence only inside us designed beings.

Metaphysical truths are interpretive (and thus subjective). Oh, and they're also revealed (and thus objective).

As a waning religious-spiritual tradition, the ongoing loss of the Christian metaphysic is tragic, and we should study and recur to it. Oh, and, the oldest continuous religious-spiritual tradition in the world with its metaphysic should just be assimilated and die off already.

Yep, "fluid predicate system" is one way of putting it.

But all you are doing is mocking through juxtaposition different ways that our world or reality is described.

Take this attempt at ridicule:

Metaphysical truths are interpretive (and thus subjective). Oh, and they're also revealed (and thus objective).

You are playing games with language it seems to me. You are acting out a conflict — your own.

You want metaphysical principles do be tangible quantities. It seems to disturb you that they are not. So what choice are you left with? A binary one: reject all of it or attempt to corral “it” in some way that is tangibly intelligible to you. I just do not think that is either possible or sensible.

So a more fluid predicate is a bridge, not an impasse.

Metaphysical truths are both subjective insofar as a subject perceives or received them, and objective since they can be objectively noticed or described. But they are not ‘measurable stuff”. Don’t blame me. I’m just describing a situation.

Metaphysical truths (either Platonic, Hebrew or Vedic) are revealed to seers — so the story goes. They are then concretized or perhaps turned into tangibles. This seems inevitable because people can’t conceive or abstractions. Children also need tangible pictures in order to make their concepts tangible. They are portrayed objectively.

And then assent to them is asked for. Or in any case achieved through an action if agreement or giving assent.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But you often enough don't hesitate! You make declarative statements left, right, and centre! And, often enough, they contradict one another.

Sorry, old boy. It is a facet of the sort of knowledge that we deal with when talking about these territories.

I’d recommend focusing on your own discomfort with this situation.

Yes, I do make declarative statements because it is a strong polemical or rhetorical tactic. But I make them because they are made, right left and center.

Any discussion involves a predicate.

Your problem is not with me it is in relation to yourself. You seem to want me to do what you yourself cannot do.

You want me to make abdolute or final statements … but I bet you’d contradict them yourself.

You said “I want to know the bleeding truth!” and you are frustrated that it is not provided to you.

How frustrating that must feel.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yep, "fluid predicate system" is one way of putting it.

One among seven!

[Dubious]

"The bleeding truth", so-called are the predicates one chooses and lives with until or if another comes along to replace the previous one. That's how it's always been and never ceased to be. Everything follows from there into the future. The metaphysical denotes a psyche of variable values and meanings applied based as much on a host of external factors as internal ones and the human response which objectifies it.

[Harry Baird]

The particular distinction that you are trying to draw here between biological/physical truths and normative/metaphysical truths is false and non-existent.

No, I don’t think so. The distinction is quite useful and I believe needed.

Let's, then, reconsider your earlier post so I can respond to it better.

Here's the way I see things.

Our disagreement regards various truths, very roughly:

1. Concrete physical truths (e.g., "Roughly two thousand years ago, Rome occupied Judea").
2. Abstract physical truths (e.g., scientific laws).
3. Concrete metaphysical truths (e.g., "Christ is currently seated at the right hand of the Father" - N.B., I don't know whether or not this example truth is actually true).
4. Abstract metaphysical truths (e.g., metaphysical principles, corresponding to scientific laws but in the metaphysical domain, or across both domains).
5. Normative truths: (especially ethical) prescriptions, proscriptions, and value statements.

My contention is that all of those truths are true regardless of whether or not any mind is currently apprehending them, and regardless of whether or not any mind knows or even denies that they are true. This is what I mean by their being "objective" truths.

Now, we can consider the religious-spiritual Story told by a given society, taking Christianity as our example.

This Story essentially consists in a set of propositions of all five categories above (allowing for your claim that some propositions of the fourth category have to be abstracted from the Story proper, and noting that in the Story proper there is a relatively small number of propositions of the second category).

Each proposition in/from the Story might or might not be true (I mean epistemically; "for all we know". Ontologically, each proposition definitively is or is not true). Some certainly are; some certainly aren't; the rest each has a greater or lesser likelihood of being true.

Now, (in brief; there's more) I'm saying: the Story - any such Story - is fine and interesting enough as far as these things go, but much more interesting to me than a Story consisting in a set of propositions each of which might or might not be true - and many of which are already known to be false - is a set of actually (and known to be) true propositions that best help me to understand reality (at least for my purposes). I'm also saying that the core social identity - individually and collectively - derived and worked out from the Story over centuries and millennia is mostly (given the caveats in my earlier post) important to me only to the extent that it is based on actually true propositional content in the Story.

Please feel free to reframe your response in that light...

You want metaphysical principles do be tangible quantities.

That's not true. I recognise principles - metaphysical or otherwise - as abstract, conceptual, and intangible. Wanting doesn't apply.

Metaphysical truths are both subjective insofar as a subject perceives or received them, and objective since they can be objectively noticed or described.

That's not what's usually meant by "objective" and "subjective" in the context of truth, and it's at least not what I mean by them in this context. I explained above what I do mean by "objective"; by "subjective" I just mean the negation.

I’d recommend focusing on your own discomfort with this situation.

I do love a good recommendation. Because you were kind enough to share one with me, I'll share one with you: systematically work through your ideas and identify conflicts between them, and then either resolve them or, going forward, express conflicted ideas as tentative and provisional only, rather than as unqualified assertions.

One among seven!

Jaina seven-valued logic is pretty cool, and I remember reading the Wikipedia page the last time you linked to it (I've just read it again to refresh my memory). It's pretty clear that you're not using it though. Nice try anyway.

I do need to reassure you that I have ordered several URGENT shipments and have warned the neighbours to consider ear protection in light of the HIGH risk of anticipated, ongoing ** Pop ** and ** Schwwwwizzz ** ing.

[Belinda]

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 secular context - but you then have to ignore others of them, and you change the original context of the remainder (which doesn't necessarily invalidate them).

You interpret the text your way, and I interpret the text my way. One objective fact remains; the parables of Jesus are as useful to civilised morality this century as they were during the 30th year of the common era.

The fact that Jesus was a liberal Jew is neither here not there for the parables to stand alone as worthy texts.

[Harry Baird]

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 secular context - but you then have to ignore others of them, and you change the original context of the remainder (which doesn't necessarily invalidate them).

You interpret the text your way, and I interpret the text my way.

God literally engages in verbal conversations with human beings throughout the Old Testament, which (that Testament) Jesus more or less explicitly endorses as true, and at Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist, God literally speaks from the heavens, "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased" (or something very similar). I'm very curious to understand how you interpret a God who literally verbally dialogues with, and pronounces from the heavens to, human beings as impersonal.

One objective fact remains; the parables of Jesus are as useful to civilised morality this century as they were during the 30th year of the common era.

The fact that Jesus was a liberal Jew is neither here not there for the parables to stand alone as worthy texts.

In that case, I again don't understand: why try to force an interpretation onto the Bible that isn't plausible? Just strip the parables out and say, "Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in there that I don't agree with, but this stuff is undeniably great and stands alone!"

[Belinda]

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 original context of the remainder (which doesn't necessarily invalidate them).

You interpret the text your way, and I interpret the text my way.

God literally engages in verbal conversations with human beings throughout the Old Testament, which (that Testament) Jesus more or less explicitly endorses as true, and at Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist, God literally speaks from the heavens, "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased" (or something very similar). I'm very curious to understand how you interpret a God who literally verbally dialogues with, and pronounces from the heavens to, human beings as impersonal.

One objective fact remains; the parables of Jesus are as useful to civilised morality this century as they were during the 30th year of the common era.

The fact that Jesus was a liberal Jew is neither here not there for the parables to stand alone as worthy texts.

In that case, I again don't understand: why try to force an interpretation onto the Bible that isn't plausible? Just strip the parables out and say, "Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in there that I don't agree with, but this stuff is undeniably great and stands alone!"

There was a time when many people believed that gods walked and talked with men.

For me, The Bible is literature, not a holy book and so I have no need to read it literally as I would instructions on how to mend a broken engine.
The Bible is also historical source material for how peoples believed in times past. As historical source material The Bible reveals that ideas of God have changed throughout the ages in the geographical area of Palestine and thereabouts .The tribal Jahweh developed into the universal God of Isaiah and Jesus.

Jesus was an interpreter of God as humane and egalitarian.

The life and work of Jesus is conspicuous as viewed against the political background of brutal Roman occupation.

[Alexis Jacobi]

"The bleeding truth", so-called are the predicates one chooses and lives with until or if another comes along to replace the previous one. That's how it's always been and never ceased to be. Everything follows from there into the future. The metaphysical denotes a psyche of variable values and meanings applied based as much on a host of external factors as internal ones and the human response which objectifies it.

The Gospel Truth. Finally! Amen!

[Alexis Jacobi]

It's pretty clear that you're not using it though.

Yet I am doing something which, for good or for bad, allows me greater space and helps me to avoid what I often see as the “trap” of too binary thinking.

Now, (in brief; there's more) I'm saying: the Story - any such Story - is fine and interesting enough as far as these things go, but much more interesting to me than a Story consisting in a set of propositions each of which might or might not be true - and many of which are already known to be false - is a set of actually (and known to be) true propositions that best help me to understand reality (at least for my purposes). I'm also saying that the core social identity - individually and collectively - derived and worked out from the Story over centuries and millennia is mostly (given the caveats in my earlier post) important to me only to the extent that it is based on actually true propositional content in the Story.

Please feel free to reframe your response in that light...

I believe I understand what you are saying. What do you wish from me? What can I do?

[Harbal]

What do you wish from me? What can I do?

I don't know where to start.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs!

"The bleeding truth", so-called are the predicates one chooses and lives with until or if another comes along to replace the previous one. That's how it's always been and never ceased to be. Everything follows from there into the future. The metaphysical denotes a psyche of variable values and meanings applied based as much on a host of external factors as internal ones and the human response which objectifies it.

The Gospel Truth. Finally! Amen!

Ass is as ass does, I always say.

What I think about when I read such a declaration, and I agree with it insofar as I too have thought similarly when confronting the wide variability of “metaphysical assertion”, is that for one who holds this idea, and really internalizes it, is like a boat without a rudder or keel. The sense of definite, believable knowledge dissolves. The individual feels resolute in the decision taken by the inevitable perception (“it is all made up”) and as a result can have no foundation and no anchor. What would and what could an individual build when there is no metaphysical structure? No “metaphysical dream of the world”?

The other problem, in my view, is that without a foundation and without an anchor one is powerless to judge the trajectory that our modernism is leading to. I refer, for example, to the discourse of Jonathan Pageau on the imminency of impinging events of tremendous consequence. On what basis (foundation) could one judge and adjudicate these tremendous, accelerating occurrences?

I grant that we — that man — realizes his sense of powerlessness. And in reaction he reaches out for solidities — objective metaphysical principles not random and invented but real and believable: communicable. I refer to that as “the act of desperation”. But isn’t that where the core of the problem lies? Man in his world exists within sheer mutability. His condition is as a victim of circumstances. The notion — or is it hallucination? — that metaphysical solidities can be defined and realized is linked to the longing for Being as opposed to existing on ever-shifting sands of mutable Becoming.

NB: I am all set to introduce a whole new chapter in my Ten Week Email Foundations course! How to use Energy Drinks to super-power with rocket intensity the search for metaphysical anchors, and how mega-doses of caffeine can effect the “crossing” to high realms of realization where hopped-up angels reside.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I do love a good recommendation. Because you were kind enough to share one with me, I'll share one with you: systematically work through your ideas and identify conflicts between them, and then either resolve them or, going forward, express conflicted ideas as tentative and provisional only, rather than as unqualified assertions.

::: politely tips hat :::

Were I to do that — and believe me I live within irreconcilable contrasts which I yet manage to bridge through a relaxation-effort (otherwise tensions can grow too strong and too disturbing) — what I do would have no effect on the discomfort you (you-plural really) live in and cannot resolve.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I may have found an allusive simile here that might picture Harry Doing Caffeine-Enriched Philosophy.

Not saying it is, but neither am I saying it isn’t. Could be, but then could also not be. But let’s work through the possibilities, eh?