Christianity

[Gary Childress]

Do I need to?

Not the right question. “What is the cost to a man who does not have defined metaphysical principles?” is a better question.

Or “What happens to a man when he has lost a sense of metaphysical ground and flounders in a no-place?” would be far more demanding questions.

I think that in his childish way Immanuel does attempt such a question. I mean he is pretty aware (in his limited way) of what has happened in the culture when grounding was lost.

You're jumping the gun. Can you tell me why I need to have "defined metaphysical principles?" If I don't have defined metaphysical principles am I a danger to society because I'll murder someone?

[Alexis Jacobi]

You are asking typically dumb questions and therefore you’ll get no answers. One thing about you is your invincible denseness.

You are challenging me to define for you what you would need to define for yourself.

[Gary Childress]

You are asking typically dumb questions and therefore you’ll get no answers. One thing about you is your invincible denseness.

You are challenging me to define for you what you would need to define for yourself.

You seem to be the one going around thinking you need "defining metaphysical principles." You can't even see your way out the closet. You're so stuck on this word "ground" that you somehow think you nor anyone else can live without it. What is your evidence that a person needs defining metaphysical principles? When you make a choice do you make the choice based on what you believe is a good choice to make or do you first consult a decision tree or "reminder" you keep in your pocket that tells you what to do in different circumstances? Do you even have "defining metaphysical principles"? If you do (which I doubt), I'd love to hear what they are.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Evidence, you say? Even that is not quite the right question since no “evidence” can move you. By definition. I can refer however to thoughtful people who have dealt on the questions in substantial depth.

Christopher Dawson in Religion & Culture (1947):

(The “two worlds” he refers to were defined in a previous paragraph. “On the one side we have a world which is full of religious richness and depth but incapable of rational demonstration. On the other, an intelligible order without spiritual depth or direct contact with religious truth.”)

For to-day the two worlds have fallen further apart than ever before. The world of reason has become more arid and spiritually void, and the world of the soul has lost the consecrated ways by which it expresses itself in the world of culture and has been left at the mercy of the forces of darkness which are the negative and destructive aspects of the Unconscious.

This disintegration of modern civilization between a science without significance and the spirit which can only express itself in self-destruction has come so near to us in these last years that no thoughtful man can consider it with equanimity. And it is no longer the fate of a particular culture that is in question, but the doom of the human race.

Nevertheless had we but time to think,— if we are granted a reprieve from the enormous perils we have incurred so thoughtlessly— there is no necessary reason why the dualism of which I have spoken should not eventually be overcome.

The very fact that modern psychology has concentrated its attention on the Unconscious and has realized its scientific importance shows that the two worlds are not completely impenetrable. And in the same way the soul seeks understanding and revolts against the claims of reason only when reason refuses to understand and rejects the reality of the soul's deepest experience and the sources of its spiritual life. In the higher cultures the existence of religion has always involved the existence of theology — that is to say, a rational system of religious knowledge. All the higher religions do in fact assert the existence of a science of divine truth and base their teaching upon it. And it is obvious that if there is no true knowledge of the object of religious experience, religion loses its validity, and even its social coherence, and becomes an irrational impulse like any other delusional form of psychosis.

[Gary Childress]

Evidence, you say? Even that is not quite the right question since no “evidence” can move you. By definition. I can refer however to thoughtful people who have dealt on the questions.

Christopher Dawson in Religion & Culture (1947):

(The “two worlds” he refers to were defined in a previous paragraph. “On the one side we have a world which is full of religious richness and depth but incapable of rational demonstration. On the other, an intelligible order without spiritual depth or direct contact with religious truth.”)

For to-day the two worlds have fallen further apart than ever before. The world of reason has become more arid and spiritually void, and the world of the soul has lost the consecrated ways by which it expresses itself in the world of culture and has been left at the mercy of the forces of darkness which are the negative and destructive aspects of the Unconscious.

This disintegration of modern civilization between a science without significance and the spirit which can only express itself in self-destruction has come so near to us in these last years that no thoughtful man can consider it with equanimity. And it is no longer the fate of a particular culture that is in question, but the doom of the human race.

Nevertheless had we but time to think,— if we are granted a reprieve from the enormous perils we have incurred so thoughtlessly— there is no necessary reason why the dualism of which I have spoken should not eventually be overcome.

The very fact that modern psychology has concentrated its attention on the Unconscious and has realized its scientific importance shows that the two worlds are not completely impenetrable. And in the same way the soul seeks understanding and revolts against the claims of reason only when reason refuses to understand and rejects the reality of the soul's deepest experience and the sources of its spiritual life. In the higher cultures the existence of religion has always involved the existence of theology — that is to say, a rational system of religious knowledge. All the higher religions do in fact assert the existence of a science of divine truth and base their teaching upon it. And it is obvious that if there is no true knowledge of the object of religious experience, religion loses its validity, and even its social coherence, and becomes an irrational impulse like any other delusional form of psychosis.

If you want the "right" questions, then maybe you need to go debate yourself. Apparently, some of us are not matching up to your 'standards' or expectations. I'm sorry, Alexis. I have failed you. I was put on this Earth to meet your expectations, and I have failed. Will you ever forgive me?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Do not worry too much. A $500 fine has been levied and will be subtracted from your account when, one day we hope, your balance rises …

You mindless dolt, did you even bother to read what I submitted?

[Gary Childress]

You mindless dolt, did you even bother to read what I submitted?

Yes. And channeling the spirit of IC, I don't think any of it's true. I'll just ignore all these opinions you throw my way. How's that?

[Alexis Jacobi]

This is an OUTRAGE!!

[Belinda]

It is true what Alexis Jacobi says that (I paraphrase) nature is cruel, and the Christian/Jewish/Islamic God created nature as it is with plagues, ice ages, sociopathic men, volcanic eruptions, asteroid strikes, babies born with cleft palates, and so forth. However Christians believe that God moves in mysterious way his wonders to perform so we cannot understand why God made us to suffer so much.

I wish to add that a long long while before the Levantine religions emerged, those “ancient Rishis” of ancient India saw the world with similar eyes. They became aware of an impermanent, ever-mutable world where “the rule of fishes” (the violent world of nature where creatures devour creatures) reigned and where terrible mortality was the end for all creatures.

They saw that they existed in just that world, but they also saw that if our world existed, within infinity of time and space, that other worlds — any number of them, and also infinite — must necessarily exist. The world was utterly mysterious just as EXISTENCE is utterly mysterious.

So they focused on the pattern or the prototype of the “dome” of the heavens in our world, supposing that in other worlds there too were such “domes” and inside of them “spaces” where lives — different lives, and life under different conditions — existed.

And they noticed that day and night circulated and “dawn” must be a feature of all possible worlds: the entry of “surya” (sun) into our world and by logical extension all worlds in the cosmos. The dawn is symbolic of our awareness, our awakening, and obviously our seeing on all manner of levels.

All elements in the visible world were understood to have symbolic and allegoric meanings, I guess you might say poetic meanings. Dawn, night, manifestation, cataclysmic endings, birth death rebirth.

The underlying understanding though (speculative knowledge) was that our world is an intermediate world. It has extraordinarily beneficent features but always underneath it the encroaching horror of mortal endings. And everything so fragile. Nothing comes easily. Everything must be struggled for.

Naturally it was supposed, or realized, that there are worlds far more brutal and terrible than ours (hellish realms), and also worlds where bodies existed as vessels of consciousness, but not flesh and blood biological bodies, but bodies of lighter, less destructible, less fragile composition.

So again the Science of Religion and a Science of dealing with incarnation in a specific realm took shape. The science of awareness, what it is, how it is developed. Ethics certainly, moral orders, but also something like spiritual science based in metaphysical concepts.

We need, don’t we, a Master Metaphysician to make sense of ourselves and things in this world …

I got the following comparison with help from ChatGPT and I believe it to be correct.

Spinoza vs. Hinduism — Concise Summary

| Spinoza | Hinduism |
|------------------------|------------------------------|
| Infinite necessity | Infinite creativity |
| One Substance expressing itself | One Brahman manifesting itself |
| Immanent monism | Immanent–transcendent non-dualism |
| Rational infinity | Mystical infinity


_--------------------------------

For Spinoza, infinite manifestation is necessary.

For Hinduism, it is playful — but equally infinite and immanent.

[Immanuel Can]

The logic of agnosticism does NOT imply there is no objective moral standard.

No, but it implies that if there is one, the agnostic doesn't know what it is. So he still has no certainty about morality even existing. He might hope it does, but by his own confession, he doesn't know of a basis for any such thing.

That's what intellectually honest people do, admit to what they don't know.

Yes, that's quite true. And it's one of the things that makes agnostics more honest than Atheists. Atheists claim they know there's no God, whereas agnostics admit they don't know. Points for that, for sure.

But what if one has reason to know, and a way to know, and refuses to know? Would that form of agnosticism be so admirable? That's always the worry with agnosticism: that by settling on it, one is refusing to learn what one could, in fact, learn, or to know what one ought, in fact, to know. And sometimes, it's little more than a refusal to know that which, in the back of one's mind, one really DOES know.

So it has shades.

[Alexiev]

No, but it implies that if there is one, the agnostic doesn't know what it is. So he still has no certainty about morality even existing. He might hope it does, but by his own confession, he doesn't know of a basis for any such thing.

That's what intellectually honest people do, admit to what they don't know.

Yes, that's quite true. And it's one of the things that makes agnostics more honest than Atheists. Atheists claim they know there's no God, whereas agnostics admit they don't know. Points for that, for sure.

But what if one has reason to know, and a way to know, and refuses to know? Would that form of agnosticism be so admirable? That's always the worry with agnosticism: that by settling on it, one is refusing to learn what one could, in fact, learn, or to know what one ought, in fact, to know. And sometimes, it's little more than a refusal to know that which, in the back of one's mind, one really DOES know.

So it has shades.

It is of course true that we imperfect humans can know nothing for certain. Our senses (and our scientists and other experts) may deceive us.

I agree with yoy this much: it is cowardly and unproductive to use this uncertainty as a cop out. We must muddle through as best we can; we must act with "faith" even if we acknowledge uncertainty.

[popeye1945]

"IF WE ARE TO SURVIVE AS A SPECIES, WE MUST OVERCOME FAITH." CARL SAGAN

[Alexis Jacobi]

“If Popeye is to survive he must have spinach”.

[Alexiev]

"IF WE ARE TO SURVIVE AS A SPECIES, WE MUST OVERCOME FAITH." CARL SAGAN

This is silly. Faith suggests having the courage of one's convictions. I believe India is the most populous nation in the world becauae I have faith in almanacs. I believe the evidence of my.own eyes becauae I have faith in the dependable accuracy of my senses. All knowledge depends on faith, which Sagan should know, but apparently doesn't.

[Immanuel Can]

That's what intellectually honest people do, admit to what they don't know.

Yes, that's quite true. And it's one of the things that makes agnostics more honest than Atheists. Atheists claim they know there's no God, whereas agnostics admit they don't know. Points for that, for sure.

But what if one has reason to know, and a way to know, and refuses to know? Would that form of agnosticism be so admirable? That's always the worry with agnosticism: that by settling on it, one is refusing to learn what one could, in fact, learn, or to know what one ought, in fact, to know. And sometimes, it's little more than a refusal to know that which, in the back of one's mind, one really DOES know.

So it has shades.

It is of course true that we imperfect humans can know nothing for certain. Our senses (and our scientists and other experts) may deceive us.

Not quite the point, in this case. The secularist who posits a "problem of evil" has the burden to justify his assertion that "evil" exists, even probably. Otherwise, there is no such problem, according to his own reckoning.

I agree with yoy this much: it is cowardly and unproductive to use this uncertainty as a cop out. We must muddle through as best we can; we must act with "faith" even if we acknowledge uncertainty.

True. But faith also comes in differerent grades. Some is unwarranted, and other faith is warranted. Some is premised on wishing, and some on logic or evidence. Some is avoidable, and other faith is unavoidable.

Of what quality, would you say, is the secularist's faith that "evil" is something that objectively exists?