is the Christian concept of the One from a philosophical point of view true?

[Alexis Jacobi]

The psychological interpretation is attractive, and seductive, but ultimately it seems a bit hollow. But is is convenient, and it is an attempt to explain.

Another dimension of the religious or spiritual endeavor is that of the psychotropic psychedelics. You know “the doors of perception” and all that. It is a pretty big part in the (existential) evolution of the god-concept in our era. What do we say to a person who has had an experience in which their very self-ego is dissolved and they are shown that they (their life, incarnated) are simply in one stage of a continuum of experience? and when hidden dimensions about this cosmos or universe are (as they say) revealed and things are better understood?

You know what the largest and most resounding complaint of the modern post-Christian is? Simply put it is that “I cannot make sense of any of this”.

An overwhelming sense of incomprehension and impotency. And from that state or position everything really is pretty bleak.

[Janoah]

I have always liked that song.

Thanks. I like it even more than the original

[Janoah]

the Supreme Being.

What kind of the Being, what does it eat, is it a herbivore or an omnivore, does it go to the men's toilet or the women's?


*** I notice, for example that the miracle at the Red Sea is not taken up by you, as a subject.***

With this miracle, everything looks very scientific.
The Torah says that the Jews crossed "Yam-suf".
Yam-suf - literally translated - Reed Sea. In translations of the Bible into English, Yam Suf is translated as the Red Sea, but the Jews crossed the Reed Sea.
But reeds do not grow in sea water.
The word "Yam" in Hebrew means the sea, but can also mean a large lake, for example, "Yam Kinneret" - Sea of Galilee (Kinneret Sea).
Researchers believe that "Yam Suf" is a swampy lake that was located where the Suez Canal is now.
There is even a scientific concept "a Seiche",
'this Swiss French dialect word comes from the Latin word siccus meaning "dry", i.e., as the water recedes, the beach dries. The French word sec or sèche (dry) descends from the Latin.'

And in the Torah it is very scientifically described,
"and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided."

I found a link for you about this in English from religious Christians,
https://www.thebiblejourney.org/biblejo ... rom-egypt/

[Alexis Jacobi]

What kind of the Being, what does it eat, is it a herbivore or an omnivore, does it go to the men's toilet or the women's?

It is a metaphor and one that is predominantly of Eastern conception. For example in the Vaishnava religious conception that Supreme Being is Vishnu, who is also Krishna, who is the inconceivable God beyond all human reckoning (they love statements of that sort) and yet also can manifest as a human being (as Krishna did for Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita). The Supreme Being is then the original Being out of which everything manifests and which it is and cannot be anything else.

Just reporting here ...

As to the rest: there's this.

When in doubt there's Chabad.

[Dubious]

Fair enough. What's the main reasoning you have that there is no intelligence behind what we perceive of reality?

...for one thing, there is no intelligence implied in all of physics...

Now I know that you're not (nor never have been) interested in my metaphysics, but your statement above is a real hoot, Dubious.

Indeed, that's what I imagine an ant would think (if it could think, that is) about its surroundings as it traversed the vast surface physics of a 70-story office building,...

...or the metal wing of a 747 Jumbo Jet,...

...or the motherboard of your computer,...

...or as it negotiated a pathway through the jungle of hair on your arm.

From the ant's low conscious perspective, it would not be able to recognize the presence of intelligence even if it was laid-out right before its very eyes, let alone in that puff of Raid that ended its journey.
_______

Any evidence...evidence not speculation, for the universe being conscious does not exist; if it does, it's only on a minute probability basis, i.e., we can't rule it out completely. Your metaphysics, however remains fixed, reifying products of your imagination, yearning and wishful thinking into some certified reality.

That's your choice, not mine! Your ant analogy is somewhat silly and inapplicable. An ant can't decide anything not even if itself is alive existing as nothing more than a naturally programmed function.

[attofishpi]

You are a man of a specific type. And clearly (though I or anyone may regard it as batty) you have a mystical (intuitive-artistic — even poetically rich) relationship. There is no sense in undermining that subjective relationship. It is infused in your personality.

But you are a absolutely non-traditional, utterly subjective heretic neo-Christian so far outside of traditional dogmatic and even historical forms as to be a totally unique case.

Damn right! I don't simply accept what is written in scripture (of any religion) - because I am analytically minded (qualified) and have personal empirical observation first hand of this God entity - so since this is a PHILOSOPHY forum, you should understand the wisdom of me making my personal analysis of my observations.

It is likely that what I say here won’t make sense to you and you’ll launch into one of your subjective rambles (replete with images and word-games). But some reading here will, I think understand and possibly agree.

Jacobi, you are the master of "subjective rambles" as attested in the waffle I just removed. (don't take offence, I still enjoy reading it )

I am the one being as objective as I can based on 26 years of gnosis, of having empirical observation to analyse.

I don't consider that God created the universe, I have seen zero evidence for that.

I don't know if God exists throughout the entire universe, I have zero evidence of that.

I don't know if ""God"" is not an Artificial Intelligence, that we are in a simulation, but doubt it - see the next point.

I don't know if God is divine, but have been told by the sage\God that Christ DID what as purported in the bible. (so I believe God is divine)


What I DO KNOW from observation is that there is an intelligence (some call God) operating at the fundamental core to what we perceive of reality, an intelligence operating below the Planck scale, not detectable by us or our tech.

Is that not being OBJECTIVE enough ...ya know on a PHILOSOPHY forum?

[Dubious]

Here's another way of thinking about that. God, being the Supreme Being, must have every virtue in ultimate proportions. If He does not, then He is, by definition, not supreme in that respect at all. Something else is "better" than He is, at least in that respect.
So ask yourself: if we humans regard loving people and being sacrificial for their good as high-level virtues for human beings, then would we not expect the Supreme Being to be more -- not less -- loving and sacrificial in His nature than we are? So it can come as no surprise if the Supreme Being is, in fact, much more loving and sacrificial than you and I are. Were he not, that would be a diminishment of his goodness, a deficiency of a virtue of which we have more -- and one respect in which we would be better than God Himself.

Sorry for the delay! Frankly I wasn't sure if I should reply since my response, as usual, is not favorable to your argument...and it's not that I'm simply trying to be recalcitrant. But it kept bothering me, so I decided to come forward.

My main objection to your argument is, though humans have always been the main perpetrators of atrocities of every kind, they have also been instrumental in condemning and stopping it. Where was the Supreme Being in all of this? In all history nowhere to be found. Anything could happen with nothing to stop it except human interference if available and found expedient. For each minor or major atrocity the response is always the same, nada! God appears as indifferent as nature itself but comprehensible if they're actually the same. Where in all this is the "loving" part?

However, if you've already been trained to think of God as a sort of Diestic being, one that's aloof, cold, uncaring and distant, and if you suppose those qualities to be virtues of some sort, then you might possibly imagine a God that was aloof, cold, indifferent to us and distant from us was better than one that loved us and sacrificed Himself to save us.

God resembles nature in its indifference, virtue not being a word that can be applied in either case. Neither can good, bad nor evil be so classified.

What you espouse here is more of a philosophic view relating to the necessary or presumed qualities of a Supreme Being which can theoretically be discussed by anyone...not just theists.

What I always considered literally obscene - an excuse to give the Christian movement credibility when its official founder was crucified - is that Jesus died to save us. It demands an answer to the question, to save us from what? Original Sin, the sinning human race as a whole? What? This puts Jesus in the old sacrificial goat category...a travesty in itself. I'm quite certain he never thought of himself in that way while he was alive. If he did, it would have been more as an insane human than a god who would certainly have other means of correction. Not least, whom did this sacrifice save, since most of the world wasn't aware or didn't care and just plain kept on sinning, Christians included?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Is that not being OBJECTIVE enough ...ya know on a PHILOSOPHY forum?

Your experience is absolutely subjective and personal to you. No one else can share it. And few will be able to understand it — nor will they wish to. And yet you struggle to understand this. In fact you cannot understand it.

Theology on the other hand — an attainment not of mysticism but of application of received ideas and values — is intelligible to great numbers. It can be communicated, interacted with, interrogated. In that sense it is objective.

No, your experience remains totally subjective. Why you desire to have it validated in a public space makes no sense to me.

Interaction with you is a trap. It is better not to say anything! Any commentary about your subjectivity elicits a barrage of demands that your experiences be validated as “real”.

[attofishpi]

Is that not being OBJECTIVE enough ...ya know on a PHILOSOPHY forum?

Your experience is absolutely subjective and personal to you. No one else can share it. And few will be able to understand it — nor will they wish to. And yet you struggle to understand this. In fact you cannot understand it.

Theology on the other hand — an attainment not of mysticism but of application of received ideas and values — is intelligible to great numbers. It can be communicated, interacted with, interrogated. In that sense it is objective.

No, your experience remains totally subjective. Why you desire to have it validated in a public space makes no sense to me.

Interaction with you is a trap. It is better not to say anything! Any commentary about your subjectivity elicits a barrage of demands that your experiences be validated as “real”.

Jacobi, you are a hypocrite. You post esoteric writings from others you have read, St Thomas of the Cross...hold all that spiritual clap trap to high esteem, but when I make my account as above, being objective about what I KNOW and differentiating to what I BELIEVE, you state it has no value.

Well guess what friend - all those other "mystics" and their esoterical writing is EQUALLY "subjective", yet you continue to quote them and treat me like a moron. Worse still, they had their experiences from a land and time of barely any scientific comprehension, and certainly no comprehension of technology that uses electrons and what is plausible about a ""God"" entity with that in mind.

Jacobi, imagine if all those people through time that had accounts of divinity had kept it all to themselves simply because someone like you told them it's not appropriate.

Under_stand?

[attofishpi]

atto,

you are a absolutely non-traditional, utterly subjective heretic neo-Christian so far outside of traditional dogmatic and even historical forms as to be a totally unique case.

Don't feel bad: friendships and enemy-ships are not cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all, affairs.

Yours, with IT, is what we all ought strive for.

..and thanks for your support Henry, but it made me happy, it was the only thing Jacobi got right about me!!

Glad you appreciate my IT angle too..

Jacobi thinks I don't understand his points regarding being focused on (accepted) Theology, the irony is that there would be NO Theology if nobody through time made their accounts of divinity known to others, indeed for all intents and purposes, there would be no God which as we both agree is binarily false.

[henry quirk]

..and thanks for your support Henry, but it made me happy

[Immanuel Can]

With this miracle, everything looks very scientific.

If it was, then it wasn't a "miracle," at all. It was an ordinary scientific phenomenon. So then, HaShem did not call the people of Israel out, did not save them at the Red Sea, and they have no legitimate claim to Israel or Jerusalem, since no HaShem called them out to the Promised Land at all, and they have no more right than, say, the Edomites, the Baal worshippers or the Palestinian Arabs to being there, and plausibly none at all.

The Holy Land isn't "holy." And Israel is not special.

And that's if you win your point. Happy to accept that?

Yam-suf - literally translated - Reed Sea.

An old theory, and debunked. https://www.gotquestions.org/red-reed-sea.html

But were it not a dead theory, and I took your point, you would still only get the above set of conclusions. You would have to deny the origins of Israel were any kind of miracle, and thus were not at the will of YHWH at all...so that Jews today have no Holy Land, and no legitimate claim to the ground on which they stand.

Is that what you are trying to argue?

[Immanuel Can]

Here's another way of thinking about that. God, being the Supreme Being, must have every virtue in ultimate proportions. If He does not, then He is, by definition, not supreme in that respect at all. Something else is "better" than He is, at least in that respect.
So ask yourself: if we humans regard loving people and being sacrificial for their good as high-level virtues for human beings, then would we not expect the Supreme Being to be more -- not less -- loving and sacrificial in His nature than we are? So it can come as no surprise if the Supreme Being is, in fact, much more loving and sacrificial than you and I are. Were he not, that would be a diminishment of his goodness, a deficiency of a virtue of which we have more -- and one respect in which we would be better than God Himself.

Sorry for the delay! Frankly I wasn't sure if I should reply since my response, as usual, is not favorable to your argument...and it's not that I'm simply trying to be recalcitrant. But it kept bothering me, so I decided to come forward.

My main objection to your argument is, though humans have always been the main perpetrators of atrocities of every kind, they have also been instrumental in condemning and stopping it.

Well, are you planning a vacation in Ukraine or North Korea this year? I think it's pretty clear that the atrocities are continuing, and in fact, that the last century witnessed two bloody world wars and a succession of totalitarian regimes that neutral statistics-keeping demonstrates were orders of magnitude greater than at any time in history. Slavery is still increasing worldwide, both in raw numbers and in the wickedness of the kinds of slavery being practiced, we have faced only the first in what is likely to be a succession of global man-made pandemics, we massacre more infants than at any time in history, and we are told we are on the brink of a total global climate meltdown.

I guess I'd ask...what part of that tells you that human beings are "stopping it"?

Where was the Supreme Being in all of this?

What would you have expected him to do? I mean this as a sincere question, not a rhetorical one, and not a trick one: I'm genuinely asking what you envision God, if He existed, would do differently than He has done.

In all history nowhere to be found.

Now, that's a hard postulate to substantiate. Lots of people think God has been and is very much present, and has been involved in all the ways He plausibly "should have been." Leibniz, for example, would have said this was the case.

Where in all this is the "loving" part?

Well, are you prepared to accept any part of the Biblical record as historical? Or is your thought that anything in which God's love was shown has to be excluded from evidence for no other reason than that it contradicts the theory that God has been absent from history?

What you espouse here is more of a philosophic view relating to the necessary or presumed qualities of a Supreme Being which can theoretically be discussed by anyone...not just theists.

I wasn't "espousing" it. I was summarizing the "god" of the Deists. I'm not a Deist, so I don't "espouse" such a view.

What I always considered literally obscene - an excuse to give the Christian movement credibility when its official founder was crucified - is that Jesus died to save us. It demands an answer to the question, to save us from what? Original Sin,

No. From your own sin.

I'm quite certain he never thought of himself in that way while he was alive.

So you're "certain" that what the Bible says He claimed is false? For example, when Jesus said, "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself.” And John adds, "Now He was saying this to indicate what kind of death He was going to die." (John 12:31-33), or when Mark writes, "And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise from the dead. And He was stating the matter plainly" (Mark 8:31-32), Mark just got that wrong? And those are just the first two of many references I could give you that show the same thing.

What we both can safely say is that the people recording Jesus' actual teaching certainly believed that He was telling them He knew about his own death long before it happened, and understood it in precisely that way. You may say, "He must never have said any such thing," or "They must have misinterpreted... (accidentally misinterpreting the exact same way, of course)" but what I would ask is "What source are you getting that from?"

[Alexis Jacobi]

If it was, then it wasn't a "miracle," at all. It was an ordinary scientific phenomenon. So then, HaShem did not call the people of Israel out, did not save them at the Red Sea, and they have no legitimate claim to Israel or Jerusalem, since no HaShem called them out to the Promised Land at all, and they have no more right than, say, the Edomites, the Baal worshippers or the Palestinian Arabs to being there, and plausibly none at all.

The Holy Land isn't "holy." And Israel is not special.

And that's if you win your point. Happy to accept that?

More “out-Jewing the Jew”.

Why you use the Jewish term for God I cannot figure. But it fits: you are really desirous to be a Jew; to align your fate with Jewish destiny. But oddly you are not preaching Christianity to Janoah. You seem to be playing a form of hardball with him. You list those things that “must be believed” to be a believing Jew. You tempt him to deny the core pillars of Jewish identity.

But here’s the thing: once the belief system is punctured and “wounded” it cannot recover itself. So, no miracle. No call to leave Egypt. No Red Sea. No wandering in circles in the desert. These are cultural fables.

You show, inadvertently, the route that must be taken for a man who seeks truth.

[Immanuel Can]

If it was, then it wasn't a "miracle," at all. It was an ordinary scientific phenomenon. So then, HaShem did not call the people of Israel out, did not save them at the Red Sea, and they have no legitimate claim to Israel or Jerusalem, since no HaShem called them out to the Promised Land at all, and they have no more right than, say, the Edomites, the Baal worshippers or the Palestinian Arabs to being there, and plausibly none at all.

The Holy Land isn't "holy." And Israel is not special.

And that's if you win your point. Happy to accept that?

More “out-Jewing the Jew”.

I'm just asking Janoah what he concludes from his own worldview. His assumptions come with particular conclusions that a Jewish person -- let alone a genuinely Christian one -- may be reluctant to accept. As for those who are neither Jew nor Christian, this has nothing whatsoever to do with their worldview, since they don't believe in God, Israel or miracles. They've simply closed their minds on all that, obviously.

But for those who do...