Philosophy Now Forum

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Aug 11, 2023 7:23 pm Immanuel, Immanuel, do you not see what we are up against when we encounter you? confront you? have to process what we are to take you as? You are problem after problem stacked six ways to Sunday — or Friday evening when “three stars” become visible.

The “argument” that The Parting happened in accord with science-principles indicates a mushy brain. Belief cycles backward, perversely, and causes the rationalizing mind to fabricate an argument that quells genuine thought.

Janoah wrote: ↑Sun Aug 13, 2023 9:30 pm But in those days, people used to believe in "miracles" - violations of the laws of nature.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 7:41 pm

Janoah wrote: ↑Sun Aug 13, 2023 9:30 pm But in those days, people used to believe in "miracles" - violations of the laws of nature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrIvwPConv0

This is only 16 minutes long, but is excellently articulate and a brilliant summary of the reason why thinking that faith and science are opposites is a mistake. It's really worth your time.

Janoah wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 12:50 pm

Age wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:49 am

Janoah wrote: ↑Sat Aug 28, 2021 8:39 pm

My question was, is the Christian concept of the One from a philosophical point of view true?

Yes.

Janoah wrote: ↑Sat Aug 28, 2021 8:39 pm Let's say Aristotle proved that the One, the Primary cause (or first uncaused cause) - is immaterial.

What are 'we' saying this for, EXACTLY?

The Apostle Thomas proved the materiality of Jesus by poking. And thus discovered the philosophical failure of the concept of the Christian God. For God is non-material from a philosophical point of view.

promethean75 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 2:35 pm Please see The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 9:49 pm Preliminary notes. (This is so easy).

First, it is entirely conceivable that some divine power, some extraordinary consciousness, and events that are outside of the possibility of comprehension (existence), stands behind everything that exists. All peoples, all humanity, through one description conception or another has postulated something like this. Indeed there is much in Vedic metaphysics, the story narratives that they tell, and which were arrived at through *deep intuition* or revelation-processes, offer cosmological pictures that often seem to coincide with some of the more outlandish theories and speculation of modern physics. For example that which proposes discreet and simultaneously existing universes, or an infinity of them.

But to postulate that *God exists* is clearly an inference drawn from our observations of the unreal complexity, the *impossible* complexity and organization of things. It is simply beyond reckoning how any of this has come to be, and also that there is a *someone* (you and me) who is there, if only for a moment, who sees it all, who is driven to wonder what it all is and why it is. The problem with the postulate is that it remains just that: something intuited, proposed, but in no sense demonstrable -- unless one veers into the territory of mysticism.

The man speaking in the video speaks from his cultural position, and through the lens of a mind developed in the Occidental world. Is he right? is he wrong? That is not quite the question. He is *situated* within specific intellectual traditions and, within his situation, he draws on the theological proofs that are foundational to our culture.

As a rational man, and as a scientist, he cannot and I assume he does not attempt to propose that there was a *Garden of Eden* or any of the story-pictures that make up Genesis. Were he to do so, were he really to attempt such a thing, he would be laughed out of Oxford Union. Those are things that are now impossible to believe. So he does what he can: he focuses on the *design* angle to draw an inference to the existence of a supreme and evident design-power which he then boldly associates with the Christian mythological narrative, and especially with the reference to Jesus Christ as 'Savior'.

One can have all those grand and interesting speculations -- one can hold to them and propose them -- but the proposition, and this is Immanuel's sole and core proposition, that a given person must in some way surrender himself or turn his fate over to the Imago of the Divine Power that has been created and empowered by Judea-Christianity -- it is there that his theoretical speculations, his postulates, are seen as so very culturally specific and likely to a degree that he is unaware. It takes a "master metaphysician" to see our own metaphysical constructs which, inevitably, are projections.

So you can propose such a God as John Lennox believes exists, or which he is bound to propose exists -- since he cannot imagine existence without such a God -- and that is fine as far as it goes. That is also my own position: existence itself, as evidenced by itself, leads the mind that is sensitive to such way of understanding, to a postulate of a Divinity.

But what that divinity is, and why we are here in this domain, and why the domain is so unutterably strange, and why we must deal with life that is best understood as *tragic* and in that sense terrifying and weird -- none of this is addressed by his postulated speculation. Sure enough though, given his own predicates, what more reasonable or perhaps logical choice could he avail himself of than to hunker down into his own tradition? To refer to the Biblical material. And to carry on in accord with principles established by theology? It is all very reasonable indeed.

But there are a dozen different ways to respond to the intuition of the existence of a Divine originator.

What many object to -- specifically in the Hebrew and the Christian traditions -- is their terrifying absolutism, their terrifying possessiveness. Their terrifying judgmentalism and denial of other ways of being, seeing, acting and perceiving that *divinity*.

And this is, and for Immanuel it has always been, a terrible stumbling block. It would likely be the same, or very similar, if one were talking with a hard-headed and religiously-committed Orthodox Jew, or an Imam, or perhaps a Vedic priest.

Part of the Occidental process, if one considers certain relatively recent trends in our own Occidental traditions, is that what I am explaining here, these are all things that some intellectuals already went through. They already realized that *story* is not actuality nor reality. Story is story.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 3:23 pm The open question remains, what are mystics getting in touch with (as evidenced by the traditions that span the globe) and are the rest of us all doing what we ought to be doing? And that begs the question, what ought we to be doing?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 2:31 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 3:23 pm The open question remains, what are mystics getting in touch with (as evidenced by the traditions that span the globe) and are the rest of us all doing what we ought to be doing? And that begs the question, what ought we to be doing?

I am uncertain if the question is ‘open’ since what you actually mean is that you don’t have even a slight idea of what ‘mystics’ deal in and you know nothing of the topic.

In regard to the question about “what we ought to be doing”, if I had to comment I’d say you are one without any base at all to offer an opinion or to suggest anything. You had best place yourself in an extreme humbled position of simply trying to form the best questions in relation to those topics of which you are ignorant.

One problem is in the democratic universalism in the question I quoted. There is no answer for what Mass Man should, as a unit, do. Mass Man does best when he finds a trustworthy authority and follows the advice and outlines provided. On his own — and you are a fairly good example — he flounders. He cannot guide himself. When he does he goes astray and fucks things up.

The actual question is what should or must more advanced men do with their conscious power.

I know it is harsh and in some sense I ‘apologize’, yet one definite thing I get from my time spent on this forum is the sense that intellectually stranded people populate it. Clueless really. Historically ignorant. Non-interested. But full of ‘passionate intensity’. I do not necessarily exclude myself from the basic problem as I often say.

The time we are in is one of clamorous confusion. The great mass will do as great masses always and can only do.

But if the question is what more conscious and prepared men might or could ‘do’, I think that is a very good question.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 2:31 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 3:23 pm The open question remains, what are mystics getting in touch with (as evidenced by the traditions that span the globe) and are the rest of us all doing what we ought to be doing? And that begs the question, what ought we to be doing?

I am uncertain if the question is ‘open’ since what you actually mean is that you don’t have even a slight idea of what ‘mystics’ deal in and you know nothing of the topic.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 10:50 pm That’s the idiot’s response, Gary.

If you want to deal with the real content you’ll have to do more intellectual work.

If not, no hay problema!