Philosophy Now Forum

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:43 pm Let's wait till he offers his alternate ending.

Yes! How could I have forgotten? The alternative ending that is a promised 'special bonus'. This is where adult patience is a virtue.

In the meanwhile as everyone waits for Harry who but the balloon seller shows up and won’t take “no” for an answer?

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 4:53 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 8:17 pm Harry, is Christianity logical?

No. Not when you zoom out and take a big-picture look at the Story.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 8:17 pm From John 1:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.

What is the word? How can it both be God and be with God? If we don't understand but it is logical, why don't we understand?

I think that there are far bigger logical problems with Christianity than in this passage, although you ask good and relevant questions.

I'm comfortable enough (although it is not entirely satisfactory) with an answer something like this: "The Word represents Divine creative agency in the form of Jesus Christ, who is understood in a paradoxical and transcendent sense to also be God."

In many other parts of the Story, though, I can't find even that degree of comforting reasonableness.

In many other parts of the Story, though, I can't find even that degree of comforting reasonableness.


I'm not referring to the many ways Christianity has been secularized and corrupted into Christendom but rather the essence of Christianity which must be remembered.

Many guided by science try to reason about Christianity using inductive reason. But reason leading to understanding Christianity and its purpose requires deductive reason. How many are capable of it? Rodney Collin explains the difference:

From Rodney Collin’s book: The Theory of Celestial Influence

In our attempt to reconcile the inner and outer world, however, we do come up against a very real difficulty, which must be faced. This difficulty is connected with the problem of reconciling different 'methods of knowing'.

Man has two ways of studying the universe. The first is by induction: he examines phenomena, classifies them, and attempts to infer laws and principles from them. This is the method generally used by science. The second is by deduction: having perceived or had revealed or discovered certain general laws and principles, he attempts to deduce the application of these laws in various studies and in life. This is the method generally used by religions.. The first method begins with 'facts' and attempts to reach 'laws'. The second method begins with 'laws' and attempts to reach 'facts'.

These two methods belong to the working of different human functions. The first is the method of the ordinary logical mind, which is permanently available to us. the second derives from a potential function in man, which is ordinarily inactive for lack of nervous energy of sufficient intensity, and which we may call higher mental function This function on rare occasions of its operation, reveals to man laws in action, he sees the whole phenomenal world as the product of laws.

All true formulations of universal laws derive recently or remotely from the working of this higher function, somewhere and in some man. At the same time, for the application and understanding of the laws revealed in the long stretches of time and culture when such revelation is not available, man has to rely on the ordinary logical mind."

It seems to me that human reason with the goal of understanding universal purpose including Christianity require both inductive and deductive reason. Could you agree with that statement?

Another combined response:

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:35 pm I already touched upon that [Richard Weaver's first principles] and just recently. Weaver begins his series of essays (in Ideas Have Consequences) by quoting Carlyle and elaborating on the core idea presented. That opening idea, and the idea that runs through (predicates let's say) nearly the entirety of these essays and a great deal of his other writing, is that man operates with, and cannot operate without, what Weaver designates as 'a metaphysical dream of the world'.

I would suggest that this statement encapsulates or is founded on a 'first principle' that, I can only suppose and also suppose others can do nothing else but to recognize it as an irreducible statement, defines human being. We are human beings because we have, and indeed must have and cannot not have, a 'metaphysical dream'. If the definition of a 'first principle' is an idea or assertion that is irreducible, this has seemed to me like a good example.

As I responded when you first suggested this, this seems to me more to set the context in - or to - which first principles apply than to be a(n outcome of a) first principle itself, but sure, the unavoidability of a cognitive being having some sort of "intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality" could be seen as axiomatic and in some sense a "first principle". Two points seem worth making though:

Firstly, it doesn't seem to get us very far. I don't see how it helps with the derivation of any further truths - certainly not of the sort[1] which Weaver presents. There must be some other first principle(s) on which these are based, unless they are "arbitrary" in a cultural sense as RW defines that term: being of "a proposition behind which there stands no prior" (page 19). If they are arbitrary in this sense, though, then they are not objective, and thus can't be those "objective truths" which RW claims are being denied in modernity (page 4) - in which case, it seems that he has largely left objective truth out of his book.

[1] A few examples of these are: that the authority by which both labourers and rulers act is divine; that the best art is faithful to the enduring reality; that in mirroring the logos, rational society is hierarchical; that fraternity (brotherhood) ought to be valued highly, especially in comparison to individualism and egalitarianism; etc etc (I really could go on with these).

The mere fact that a "metaphysical dream" is unavoidable doesn't seem to compel any of those (purported) truths.

Secondly, and in part because of the first point, it seems unlikely to me that this is the sort of principle that RW has in mind when he says that modern humans have been "running away from, rather than toward, first principles" (top of page 13).

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:35 pm I am interested in you (and I have known you through the written medium for a long time) because I see you as a 'frayed individual'. If I refer to you in any way and with any encapsulating statement like this, I am not in fact referring to you personally. I am referring to a condition in which we all subsist! Does this make sense?

So instead of making an imperious 'demand' similar to the one you have made to me, I would suggest that you examine your own 'metaphysical dream'. Examine it as the 'cloth' I have employed as a metaphor. What you will find is a strangely tattered pastiche of confused ideas about 'the world'. You will find a metaphysical dream in a state of strange disarray.

As I wrote similarly much earlier in the thread (or at least somewhere on this forum), my basic position, which I understand to be common to humanity, is one of epistemic and existential confusion or at least relative ignorance and uncertainty. Do I have a coherent, fully worked out understanding of reality, at least on the grand scale? Nope. Could my working understanding reasonably be described as "a strangely tattered pastiche of confused ideas"? Sure.

How about you?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:54 pm

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 5:21 amYes, I am of course aware of your anomalous experiences, including from your recounting of them to me to some extent in personal correspondence. That's what makes it so odd to me that you'd declare (in my understanding, which might be misplaced) that the Story can no longer be believed in because modernity has invalidated it. How has modernity done this though? If "weird stuff" still happens in modernity, then how is the "weird stuff" at the heart of the Story invalidated by modernity? I'm genuinely curious and would like to see you spell this out. Am I misunderstanding the nature of what you claim to be the invalidation?

The question you ask here, which I can only take as a sincere one, reveals in my view the tatteredness I referred to just above. You have to ask me to explain, in apparent seriousness, why and how it is that the modern perspective, the modern description of the material and biological world, must and does rule out the notion a God operating as Head Architect and Chief Engineer as well as the Ultimate Arbiter in human affairs and Sovereign of All Souls?

Are you for real here?

Yes.

We have discovered that the constants of the universe are finely-tuned for life. Our parallel discovery of the mind-boggling complexity of life - including the cell, an exquisitely self-organising factory - has neutered the possibility of its having a natural origin. Both the universe and the life within it are screaming at us, "This was by design!"

A design implies a designer. The designer is plausibly a Divine one. At the least, that cannot be ruled out.

It is plausible that a Divine designer might enter into the designed reality as a human avatar. At the least, that cannot be ruled out.

Arguably, then, the modern perspective has even increased the plausibility of Divinity incarnating into the world. In any case, it certainly hasn't ruled it out.

By the way, I'm not necessarily endorsing the notion as you worded it (I mean the sentence with lots of first letters capitalised).

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:54 pm I certainly did watch the video that you posted.

Thank you for letting me know.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:54 pm Do you think that I am unaware of the incommensurability of the Christian story with our modern frame of mind?

Again: my contention is that the critique in that video - or, at least, most of it - would hold up at any point in the history of Christianity, at least where Christianity operates according to the Story it critiques. It does not rely uniquely on being received in a modern frame of mind.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:23 pm First, I acknowledge the mocking tone and, of course, I am not much bothered by it. I do not think it is very effective though.

It was pretty mild for mockery! You dished out a lot worse with your "self-help offer" gag - which was entertaining!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:23 pm I presented to you a video of a talk by James Linsday which, at the very least, set the stage for a rational examination of what has happened in our educational system and why. As far as I remember I do not think you commented on it. Why is that?

I honestly don't remember you presenting that video to me. Can you point me to where you did that?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:23 pm So in my view the real question is what is your attitude toward the admonitions you receive from other people or the intellectuals they refer to? To what degree are you willing to pursue on your own the suggestions you receive from others?

It depends. Some stuff I consider to be a waste of my time and refuse to watch. Other stuff is of interest to me, and I follow it up. The problem is that there are so many people sharing so much information (both in general and with me in particular) that it's impossible to consume it all whilst Getting Stuff Done (GSD) at the same time.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:13 pm I'm not referring to the many ways Christianity has been secularized and corrupted into Christendom but rather the essence of Christianity which must be remembered.

I'm interested in how you define that essence. What is Christianity in your view?

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:13 pm It seems to me that human reason with the goal of understanding universal purpose including Christianity require both inductive and deductive reason. Could you agree with that statement?

Tentatively and provisionally, sure.

Wait's over, folks. Your extra-special BONUS is coming right up.

The Church of No One Truth (NOT): A Cautionary Tale

A Play of Three Acts of Three Scenes Each

<< Act three, scene three (ORIGINAL VERSION)

Act three, scene three (ALTERNATIVE VERSION)

Characters:

Bjorn aGus

Can Man

Setting:

Outside the Church of No One Truth (NOT)

Can Man: Hey, Bjorn aGus. Good to see you again. Have you made peace with the eternal truth yet?

Bjorn aGus: (With a hard look on his face) Peace? Impossible. (More vehemently) IMPOSSIBLE.

Can Man: What's got you so fired up?

Bjorn aGus: I got it out of her. Finally. I got it out of her. It was a battle of wills, but I FINALLY got it out of of her.

Can Man: It's not what you wanted to hear?

Bjorn aGus: I wanted to hear the truth.

Can Man: But it wasn't what you expected.

Bjorn aGus: (Going silent for a while) What I expected is irrelevant.

Can Man: And the One Truth?

Bjorn aGus: (Again staying silent for a while, then slumping, and finally straightening himself up). Oh God. (Pausing) Oh God.

Can Man: Not so good, huh?

Bjorn aGus: (Slumping again and staring blankly at the floor for a while) The horror. The horror.

Finis

<< Act three, scene three (ORIGINAL VERSION)

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:39 pm Harry, I wonder if you are open to comments about your play? Would you like to hear my assessment?

For sure. Your critical comments on my creative works have always proven to be insightful and useful to me.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:39 pm And what is your own assessment? What do you see as its central purpose? Or what should be taken away from it?

The necessary prefatory remark is that I had no Grand Plan when I started writing. I simply took an email I'd written to you privately regarding the question of whether the statement "There is no One Truth" is self-contradictory, and the sort of arguments that could be mounted either way (with reference to the parallel arguments re "absolute truth" of our friends on another forum), and thought it might be fun to dramatise those arguments using semi-fictional characters loosely derived from thread participants. It amused me to keep on writing after that, and, as I mentioned previously, it sort of wrote itself. The idea that Pastor Wiola was "hiding the One Truth" emerged spontaneously at the very line where she misspeaks to Bjorn aGus, rather than being planned from the start. The subsequent idea that its needing to be hidden could be justified by this One Truth being dangerous and frightening then suggested itself to me, and I ran with it. And that's pretty much how it was written.

Its central purpose is to entertain thread participants with a little overwrought melodrama with some loosely philosophical/metaphysical ideas thrown in for good measure.

As it is an unplanned, spontaneous creation, I think readers should be free to take from it that which they like. What resonates with me in my own creation is the real possibility that behind Reality is a dark, horrifying secret which only a few know, and guard closely from being more widely known. It is a possibility that has come up in my own anomalous psychospiritual experiences.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 5:06 am
Shallow and saccharine lamentations? Whose?

Note again the merits of slow reading!

I didn't write "lamentations"; I wrote "laminations" as in glazing something over to make it shiny more acceptable to our senses; as in the employment of first principles boosting reality into a more benign and acceptable philosophic revelation by denoting it in terms of our own palpable self-serving intellections as a controlling agent. Let's acknowledge, however god is presupposed, we have never excused ourselves from attempting to assert eternal providence and justify the ways of god to men. If not god overtly then through first principles which at least layers reality to a higher level having achieved escape velocity from the one beneath us in which an unencumbered reality rules.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:03 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:13 pm I'm not referring to the many ways Christianity has been secularized and corrupted into Christendom but rather the essence of Christianity which must be remembered.

I'm interested in how you define that essence. What is Christianity in your view?

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:13 pm It seems to me that human reason with the goal of understanding universal purpose including Christianity require both inductive and deductive reason. Could you agree with that statement?

Tentatively and provisionally, sure.

Christianity is a perennial tradition meaning it always was. It became a necessity for human being to transcend the human condition. Christianity isn't concerned with what we do since in reality we are slaves to the human condition but rather what we are. St Paul describes the human condition:

Romans 7:

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.

Man is at war with himself. His higher nature is attracted to its source yet its lower nature is attracted to the world which has become corrupted. Man is helpless in front of the human condition. Help can only come through the Holy Spirit essential to reconcile these two natures from a higher conscious perspective. Jesus sacrifice brought the Spirit. This is Christianity

“Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.” — Simone Weil

Simone was a marxist and atheist dedicated to the experience of truth. She experienced the human condition in the world and in herself. She experienced the necessity for the help of grace to make freedom from inner slavery possible.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:36 pm Christianity is a perennial tradition meaning it always was. It became a necessity for human being to transcend the human condition. Christianity isn't concerned with what we do since in reality we are slaves to the human condition but rather what we are. St Paul describes the human condition:

Romans 7:

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.

Man is at war with himself. His higher nature is attracted to its source yet its lower nature is attracted to the world which has become corrupted. Man is helpless in front of the human condition. Help can only come through the Holy Spirit essential to reconcile these two natures from a higher conscious perspective. Jesus sacrifice brought the Spirit. This is Christianity

“Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.” — Simone Weil

Simone was a marxist and atheist dedicated to the experience of truth. She experienced the human condition in the world and in herself. She experienced the necessity for the help of grace to make freedom from inner slavery possible.

I can go along with all of that to an extent. I get the whole "slave to sin" idea, leading to the need for help from above. I'd have to see how you resolved the contradictions in the standard Story before becoming more enthusiastic though. For example, in my view, the possibility of eternal torment in hell is incompatible with the standard Christian version of God, being all-good (such that He wouldn't want that fate for anybody), all-knowing (such that He would know if such a place existed and anybody was in it), and all-powerful (such that He could prevent anybody from going to such a place, and eliminate such a place from existence). I can see two ways to resolve this incompatibility: reject the idea of hell, or modify the standard conception of God. How about you? Which option do you take?

ETA: And, by the way, what do you see as the nature of Christ's sacrifice? Who was it to?

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:02 pmAs I responded when you first suggested this, this seems to me more to set the context in - or to - which first principles apply than to be a(n outcome of a) first principle itself, but sure, the unavoidability of a cognitive being having some sort of "intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality" could be seen as axiomatic and in some sense a "first principle". Two points seem worth making though:

Firstly, it doesn't seem to get us very far. I don't see how it helps with the derivation of any further truths - certainly not of the sort[1] which Weaver presents. There must be some other first principle(s) on which these are based, unless they are "arbitrary" in a cultural sense as RW defines that term: being of "a proposition behind which there stands no prior" (page 19). If they are arbitrary in this sense, though, then they are not objective, and thus can't be those "objective truths" which RW claims are being denied in modernity (page 4) - in which case, it seems that he has largely left objective truth out of his book.

If all men have a metaphysical dream, and that being human involves the necessity of living through a metaphysical dream, I would agree that not only is this a first principle but it is also a sort of human condition. So I agree that such is a 'context'. But that bolsters the fact that if that is true, and that a metaphysical dream is a realization or projection of patterns said to be 'transcendental', that therefore we live in and through the impingement of transcendental ideas into our plane of existence. I use the term 'imposition' but impingement expresses a similar sense.

Be that as it may your request -- a demand in deadly seriousness -- was that I present to you an example and, given my time limitation and that I do not generally respond very positively to demands of this sort ("Do thus and such for me right now!") still I made the effort.

To further understand Weaver we would have to firmly grasp that he is a Platonist and so if there are first principles that he recognizes and subscribes to, and this is certainly the case, and if you yourself wished to understand why and how he recognizes them as such (and as logical irreducibles) you need look no further than the sort of proofs offered in Platonic dialogues. So here is an example of a set of Platonic proofs for the immortality of the soul:

Plato's 19 Proofs of the Immortality of the Human Soul

If ever you did choose to examine Weaver's other work -- and especially for example his exposition on rhetoric -- you would see that he deals pretty exclusively in Platonic terms of understanding.

The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric

See the pages included there from Language is Sermonic and The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric.

So it should be clear that to understand Weaver's perspective a backgrounding in Platonism is needed. And again I assume that he assumed that those who read him would have such a background. Since, as I also suggest, Plato was until very recently the stuff of grammar school education. But since he is not, and since culturally we do not deal in these ideas, except in forms that could be described as partial and degenerate, in this sense Weaver laments the falling away from transcendentals. The idea is powerful: what is transcendental is always understood as 'coming from above' as guiding principle. When one falls down -- and here is a very Platonic idea -- one falls from Being (the real, the true, the constant) down into the mutable, the changing, the not-constant.

So what is 'salvation' in this particular sense? A set of ideas through which one recovers a sense of what is upper and higher; that which empowers the living of life on higher planes, and also that which cures and heals (the fallen, degenerate condition).

So:

Firstly, it doesn't seem to get us very far. I don't see how it helps with the derivation of any further truths - certainly not of the sort[1] which Weaver presents.

It sets the stage -- the entire conceptual basis for human cognition and metaphysical dreams -- for the capture and elucidation of those 'transcendentals' Weaver deals on.

There must be some other first principle(s) on which these are based, unless they are "arbitrary" in a cultural sense as RW defines that term: being of "a proposition behind which there stands no prior".

I am uncertain if the core ideas, or the first principles, brought to the logical fore in Plato's arguments should be classed as 'arbitrary'. But isn't that the real issue here? How is truth defined? And is it possible to say anything that is truthful? Behind that question is, of course, the larger question: are transcendentals real or 'invented'? The nominalists say, as I assume you know, that they are 'arbitrary' (or in any case they began an idea movement that made such assertions). So when Weaver speaks of a deal made with the *witches* on the *heath* and asks us to consider how it has come about that transcendentals were -- what is the right word? -- undermined, invalidated? Well right there you see very clearly what ultimately concerns Weaver.

Now I have to make a few statements to clarify my own position. I say that I am a 'friend' of Christianity and I say that there is a great deal that is important in Christianity. But I do not see 'the story' as being the most relevant part. And as you say the story is riddled with contradictions. However, behind the Story are concepts, and these are metaphysical concepts, and they can be arrived at through rational and discursive methods. So whenever it is necessary to talk and communicate through ordered ideas, the ideas within and if you will behind Christianity, must be dealt with in philosophical terms not in religious terms. I mean to say not in emotional-religious terms of "I believe!" but rather "I understand!"

And this all turns back again toward the ways and means that first principles are arrived at rationally, discursively. The real world in which we are ensconced, is a fantastic and utterly strange world of processes but not ideas. Ideas enter our world uniquely through the human being. What is 'transcendental' therefore refers to that stuff or to that content. Is it 'substantial'? That would be rather impossible to assert. Is it consequential? Indeed it is. What comes through man's psyche -- that is transcendental ideas -- is the stuff that makes the human world.

Is it possible to locate within these 'transcendentals' ideas that are irreducible? Is this not what we are talking about ultimately?

As it is an unplanned, spontaneous creation, I think readers should be free to take from it that which they like. What resonates with me in my own creation is *the real possibility that behind Reality is a dark, horrifying secret which only a few know, and guard closely from being more widely known. It is a possibility that has come up in my own anomalous psychospiritual experiences.

*Outside the ordered universe is that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

Ye blind idiot, ye noxious Azathoth shal arise from ye middle of ye World where all is Chaos & Destruction where He hath bubbl'd and blasphem'd at Ye centre which is of All Things, which is to say Infinity....

By the way, your play or drama:

I am a 'friend' of Christianity

Man, when you bury the lede, you really bury that sucker.

Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:02 pm We have discovered that the constants of the universe are finely-tuned for life. Our parallel discovery of the mind-boggling complexity of life - including the cell, an exquisitely self-organising factory - has neutered the possibility of its having a natural origin. Both the universe and the life within it are screaming at us, "This was by design!"

A design implies a designer. The designer is plausibly a Divine one. At the least, that cannot be ruled out.

It is plausible that a Divine designer might enter into the designed reality as a human avatar. At the least, that cannot be ruled out.

Arguably, then, the modern perspective has even increased the plausibility of Divinity incarnating into the world. In any case, it certainly hasn't ruled it out.

By the way, I'm not necessarily endorsing the notion as you worded it (I mean the sentence with lots of first letters capitalised).

Most of us here are aware of the arguments that arise when examining the cell that state that this is 'mathematically impossible' that such complexity could have arisen on its own (naturally). So, design is implied and necessary. Yet in fact there is no phenomena that could be referred to that is not, ultimately, impossible.

So it seems to me that what is impossibly miraculous is existence itself. That anything exists and that existence must be -- can only be! -- eternal. Where does existence exist? The more that one meditates on the idea, the more it boggles the mind. How could any of it have come about? And how could any of it not be?

If you are really going to launch into the ideas revolving around the possibility of God, and if you will propose that an avatar of God enters into the created world, and in this specific case our own earth, then what you are doing is opening up the possibilities of such goings-on in any conceivable form. If you began with one fantastic notion (a singular event of God and avatar descending into the world) then you must accept that God as avatar will descend similarly, routinely if you will, into all possible worlds.

If to God is extended all possibility, then there is no limit to 'conceivable worlds'.

If all possibility, and all power to act through absolutely open-ended possibilities, is proposed, then there is really no limit at all. And if you go that route, and this is my observation, you will necessarily transcend the specific story, in a specific time, on a specific planet, within specific beings.

But here is the odd fact. No matter how fantastic one's 'dreams' and 'visions' become . . . the substratum-world remains exactly the same. It is not a place of ultimate possibility but a place of absolute constraint. Except insofar as creative ideas enter our world (of restraint and limitation) and enable what perhaps I can refer to as 'greater mastery' of material processes. Kind of the Promethean model, no?

In what other human domains do these 'transcendental' ideas have effect?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:26 pm

I am a 'friend' of Christianity

Man, when you bury the lede, you really bury that sucker.

And you mean this as: "fail to emphasize the most important part of a story or account."

Do you mean that if I say I am a friend I am not at all acting as a friend in truth?