Philosophy Now Forum

Nick_A wrote: The "I don't know" invites impartial contemplation within which a person unites the intellectual and emotional functions asking the same question.

Plato wrote: "Man is a being in search of meaning. God is meaning. It isn't a matter of whether or not a person believes in God but whether they believe in meaning. Meaning is a relative concept. The highest source of meaning is God.

The essence of religion contains both an exoteric and an esoteric purpose. The exoteric affects the outer man or our personality with the intent of telling what is right to do. The esoteric purpose is designed to awaken the inner man to his objective humanity; what we are. A secular expression of religion is an exoteric expression and as such can be beneficial for an individual and society but can be vulnerable to all sorts of deception.

it's very simple, most times it's complete lack of intellect, just like you cozy chatters are in denial of being unable to make just 1 line of philosophy ..but will stoop down to cozy chat for an eternity..

Nick_A wrote:. This is why such ideas are so difficult to discuss. They drift into different directions inviting defensive emotional reactions and battles of answers that ruin everything. Do they have to?

No, they don't have to. All we need to do is stop telling one another what to believe.

Arising wrote: So what you are saying is that it boils down to 'I can't tell if there is or isn't a 'God' but it makes me feel better to think there is, so there is'. So if I say, 'I can't tell if there is or isn't a 'God' but it makes me feel better to think there isn't, so there isn't', I'm as right as you?

You've said this before and once again I say that if meaning is a relative concept then how are you getting this 'highest source'?

You appear to not understand what 'secular' commonly means nor what it means in a Christian context?

Nick_A wrote: ...the collective influence of these rare ones...
...only a few will become able...
...Such people are rare...

Nick_A wrote:You are referring to new Age contemplation where one follows their feelings. I’m referring to the traditional appreciation of contemplation where ones emotions are tools of impartiality and their purpose isn’t to feel good but rather along with the intellectual function to discriminate between the real and the unreal.

It is a maturation process for those who will allow it. You know that what is meaningful to a five year old is different than for a ten year old. What is meaningful to a ten year old is different than for a teenager who has discovered the opposite sex. What supplies meaning changes with the maturation process. When a person reaches a point in maturation where the need for meaning exceeds what the world provides, they become open to influences from sources of higher meaning. They seek the pearl of great price. Such people are rare. Most remain caught up in life

I don’t know what you mean by a Christian context. ...

It isn’t the same as the context of secular Christendom or man made Christianity,

Arising wrote: How can it be "along with the intellectual function" if you say the intellectual function can make no judgement?

What is this feeling then? As from what I understand of such contemplation you've already used your intellect to decide there is a 'God' and then you contemplate it. It's called confirmation bias nowadays.

Don't tell me, you're one of these.

You've not answered my question, if meaning is relative then how can there be a 'highest meaning'?

What appears to supply most theists highest meaning is being told that 'God' is the explanation for their questions at the age before they can reason about things and this appears to stay with them all the to maturity.

Are you telling me Jesus Christ wasn't a man?

Nick_A wrote:The intellectual function provides available facts. But a person contemplating God is not contemplating earthly facts but rather their relationship to the religious emotion of meaning. ...

When a person feels the presence of greater meaning they assume there is merit to their search.

Have no fear, I’m not one of those

It is the same thing as temperature. We know that temperature is relative and the coldest temperature is absolute zero. We cannot experience the highest degree of meaning since we are not God. However we can believe there is a highest level we can reach and call it wisdom

I agree this often happens but at the same time there are the great religious thinkers like Simone Weil who are not blind believers and had the courage to intellectually doubt without falling victim to blind denial..

Jesus was a “son of God” who became man so as to show what was necessary for Man to consciously return to its source.

Nick_A wrote:Not so easy. Secular influences taken together as the Great Beast insists on conditioning people into its whims through something called "education" telling people what to believe and do. Conscious influences seek to awaken humanity to its human conscious potential through inner experience. It is an ancient struggle and IMO only a few will become able to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.

arro asks: Why are you using this term: "the Great Beast"?

Simone Weil gets the term "Great Beast" from Plato. Specifically, this passage from Book VI of his Republic (here Plato critiques those who are "wise" through their study of society):

I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him--he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be that which he dislikes...

The Great Beast [society, the collective] is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.

It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence, my fellow man as an end, since he is my fellow. Nor can I take a material thing, because matter is still less capable of having finality conferred upon it than human beings are.

Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective.