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Not at all. Although seedy and with worn soles, Nick has successfully hijacked BM’s thread. That rates a tip o’ the old hat.
Not at all. BM wrote:
However, as an American, I can’t help (I mean, when I use my “reason” and read a history book) but see the great debt I owe to soldiers, from George Washington to the last grunt to die in the middle east, who have sacrificed so much for America to become a great nation and remain a great nation.
And, when I use my “reason” further, I can’t help but realize that these men and women sacrificed themselves through much more than a simple political agenda.
The great majority, in “fact”, had religious faith and conviction (especially in the Revolutionary and two world wars) that they would live on after a bullet entered their brains.
So, is not the War On Religion that some atheists spend so much “reason” on in such “abusive language” downright ignorant, ungrateful, and un-American?
The pure spiritual traditions appreciate the concept of the seed of the soul regardless of how it is understood. Our founding fathers sought to provide a quality of metaxu within which the seed can be nourished. Secularism seeks to extinguish it in service to the Great Beast. BM is right on that one.
You have it backwards… Most just don’t have the need for or the courage to experience the truth of it so it becomes a target of emotional denial.
The Triune Scheme is a Holy City. That’s okay, because the scheme is about the perception of Holy Cities. No turtles.
You sir, have a turtle infestation.
Not only does your scheme need souls, but your souls need seeds. What will your seeds need?
The seed needs a healthy metaxu and the light of grace.
Apparently your obsession with turtles has put you in a state of shell shock while suffering the fear of losing to quick rabbits. Just stay on the straight and narrow and continue on the wheel of samsara much like a hamster runs on the wheel. At least it provides the illusion of progress.
We may have circled around here to the Euthyphro Dilemma. Does grace come to all who are open to it, in which case God has no choice in the matter; or, does God grant grace arbitrarily, in which case it’s a matter of chance. Does leading a good live lead to salvation, or do you have to be one of the 144,000? And this light of grace - is this what al Ghazali referred to when he asserted that the Holy Koran was the Sun of the Intellect? Indeed, it is said that by their fruits ye shall know them, but perhaps we can know them by their seeds for yea, the fruits have gone to seed and grasshoppers abound in the land. My associative mind pops a fragment of a comment into mind, where from…, ah yes, a lecture in New York back in 1975… “a culture is born only and exclusively when the Unity has been discovered, never before. Before this there are separate groups in a tremendous territorial fight and nothing more….” Are we at a cusp of American society when a new culture is in the process of crystallizing? How will that crystallization turn out? Rule by Robber Barons? Mobocracy? Perhaps it is even a New World Order! Have we seeded the wind to reap the whirlwind? Is that why there were so many tornado’s? Alas, to questions and questioning there is no end, time to head for the Socratic Cafe to drink a toast with Omar the Tentmaker.
Nick, the human “soul” is the “touch of God” given to us in our mother’s womb. This “seed” thing of yours is your opinion, and nothing else.
And, just as the greatest creation is the human personality, so is the greatest thing about God his personality.
You claim the revelation of the “Christian God” is an idolatry that limits a “quality of understanding” that my “heart” draws me to.
Pretty words. But altogether mere opinion.
My understanding comes from a spiritual gift from the Holy Spirit, not from my heart, an organ.
This Holy Spirit comes from the love between God and his creation, revealed in its most profound way through the life, death, and resurrection of the greatest person who has ever lived.
This Christianity, if that is what you need to call it (I call it the truth), comes from the fulfillment of all God’s revelations throughout history.
Idolatry comes from a person who only possesses personal opinion and loves the way they express it.
Stop writing and reading, for God, the living God, is found alone.
Complicated language is a sign that God is still lost, like burt shows us perfectly above.
Nick, the human “soul” is the “touch of God” given to us in our mother’s womb. This “seed” thing of yours is your opinion, and nothing else.
And, just as the greatest creation is the human personality, so is the greatest thing about God his personality.
You claim the revelation of the “Christian God” is an idolatry that limits a “quality of understanding” that my “heart” draws me to.
Pretty words. But altogether mere opinion.
My understanding comes from a spiritual gift from the Holy Spirit, not from my heart, an organ.
This Holy Spirit comes from the love between God and his creation, revealed in its most profound way through the life, death, and resurrection of the greatest person who has ever lived.
This Christianity, if that is what you need to call it (I call it the truth), comes from the fulfillment of all God’s revelations throughout history.
Idolatry comes from a person who only possesses personal opinion and loves the way they express it.
Stop writing and reading, for God, the living God, is found alone.
Complicated language is a sign that God is still lost, like burt shows us perfectly above.
Since you didn’t understand my statement you call it complicated. Your idol is your belief which you blasphemously call knowledge.
Where did you get that? You’re entirely wrong Nick, I consider them to be different in the sense of two different aspects of a larger cyclical event. The seed is a potential oak, the oak is the fully developed seed, but the seed is also the genetic gift of one oak to another oak.
I recognize the acorn as a seed within which the oak exists as a potential.and the oak as the matured seed. You seem to consider the distinction as irrelevant.
Whatever? You appear to know what I apparently consider, very presumptive, and wrong.
Issac Newton thought enough of the Emerald Tablet to translate it. Apparently Issac Newton was a nut job. Who could have known.
Well Isaac spent most of his years after 1665 commenting on the bible and trying to make scientific sense out of it, he failed miserably. By today’s standards, for him to take seriously the content of The Emerald Tablet, does make him a bit woo-infested, but his 40 year devotion to biblical scholarship tells us that he was full of woo up to his wang wong!
while we’re on the subject of “full of woo” Nick, why is it that all the very brilliant thinkers who have come after Plato do not take his metaphysics seriously (except for some christian dogmatists and the suicidal Simone Weil)? Descartes did not accept the Platonic view, Hume thought it was nonsense. Kant rejected it and even critiqued the idea that pure reason existed in its own special realm, and showed conclusively that knowledge (of the human kind) comes directly from phenomenal experience. Nietzsche proclaimed that Plato and his supremacist philosophy were at the core of the madness of humanity. Heidegger thought that Plato was a child. Wittgenstein realized that Plato was completely blind to the power and the capacity of language. But most damaging to the truthfulness of the Platonic metaphysics is that his own pupil Aristotle, rejected the Platonic idealism fixated on the realm of the perfect forms. If Aristotle, certainly no dummy, had questions about the Platonic philosophy then he could have asked Plato about it, obviously he did, but he conclusively rejected the whole idealistic program as set forth by his teacher Plato.
Certainly there were schools of neo-Platonism for hundreds of years and the philosophy of Plotinus (some 300 years after Plato) reflects some of the Platonic ideals. It is only when christian theologians rediscovered Plato many centuries later that there was a revival of his thought, but even that revival remained mostly in ecclesiastical circles. Then comes Nick_A and once more a human philosopher accepts the entire Platonic metaphysics as if the 2,400 intervening years had never happened? What does this say for all that brilliant philosophical discourse that took place between the time of Plato and the time of Nick? Was it all merely opinion? Were all these people just interpreting shadows on the walls of a cave?
While engaged in my Masters degree at the University of Alberta, there happened to be among us one student who had become 100% convinced of the truth of the Hegelian philosophy. He walked around campus “preaching” Hegel and even changed his name from the generic Brian to the very Germanic sounding Gerhardt, we all just called him Hegel. Even the professors in any of the classes where he might be found became almost apprehensive to speak about anything Hegelian because he would inevitably lecture the prof on the correct understanding of the Hegelian theory under discussion (of course Gerhardt signed up for all the Continental Philosophy courses where Hegel might be mentioned). It was intimidating to challenge Gerhardt on any point because he would be ready with a 10 minute rebuke professing the details of the Hegelian system. Everything he said and everything he wrote was saturated with Hegel-speak. I don’t know what ever happened to Gerhardt/Brian, but I hope that he finally came to realize the futility of his passionate conversion to Hegelianism?
Now I have met a true believer in the Platonic system. It’s been an amazing journey to see how every detail, every perception, and every concept that Nick thinks/imagines comes steeped in the philosophy of Plato. Every properly thinking person since about 410 B.C. has been able to see through the errors of the Platonic view, but then comes one fanatic who accepts without question everything that Plato thought and taught. Very strange indeed!
Where did you get that? You’re entirely wrong Nick, I consider them to be different in the sense of two different aspects of a larger cyclical event. The seed is a potential oak, the oak is the fully developed seed, but the seed is also the genetic gift of one oak to another oak.
I recognize the acorn as a seed within which the oak exists as a potential.and the oak as the matured seed. You seem to consider the distinction as irrelevant.
Whatever? You appear to know what I apparently consider, very presumptive, and wrong.
Issac Newton thought enough of the Emerald Tablet to translate it. Apparently Issac Newton was a nut job. Who could have known.
Well Isaac spent most of his years after 1665 commenting on the bible and trying to make scientific sense out of it, he failed miserably. By today’s standards, for him to take seriously the content of The Emerald Tablet, does make him a bit woo-infested, but his 40 year devotion to biblical scholarship tells us that he was full of woo up to his wang wong!
while we’re on the subject of “full of woo” Nick, why is it that all the very brilliant thinkers who have come after Plato do not take his metaphysics seriously (except for some christian dogmatists and the suicidal Simone Weil)? Descartes did not accept the Platonic view, Hume thought it was nonsense. Kant rejected it and even critiqued the idea that pure reason existed in its own special realm, and showed conclusively that knowledge (of the human kind) comes directly from phenomenal experience. Nietzsche proclaimed that Plato and his supremacist philosophy were at the core of the madness of humanity. Heidegger thought that Plato was a child. Wittgenstein realized that Plato was completely blind to the power and the capacity of language. But most damaging to the truthfulness of the Platonic metaphysics is that his own pupil Aristotle, rejected the Platonic idealism fixated on the realm of the perfect forms. If Aristotle, certainly no dummy, had questions about the Platonic philosophy then he could have asked Plato about it, obviously he did, but he conclusively rejected the whole idealistic program as set forth by his teacher Plato.
Certainly there were schools of neo-Platonism for hundreds of years and the philosophy of Plotinus (some 300 years after Plato) reflects some of the Platonic ideals. It is only when christian theologians rediscovered Plato many centuries later that there was a revival of his thought, but even that revival remained mostly in ecclesiastical circles. Then comes Nick_A and once more a human philosopher accepts the entire Platonic metaphysics as if the 2,400 intervening years had never happened? What does this say for all that brilliant philosophical discourse that took place between the time of Plato and the time of Nick? Was it all merely opinion? Were all these people just interpreting shadows on the walls of a cave?
While engaged in my Masters degree at the University of Alberta, there happened to be among us one student who had become 100% convinced of the truth of the Hegelian philosophy. He walked around campus “preaching” Hegel and even changed his name from the generic Brian to the very Germanic sounding Gerhardt, we all just called him Hegel. Even the professors in any of the classes where he might be found became almost apprehensive to speak about anything Hegelian because he would inevitably lecture the prof on the correct understanding of the Hegelian theory under discussion (of course Gerhardt signed up for all the Continental Philosophy courses where Hegel might be mentioned). It was intimidating to challenge Gerhardt on any point because he would be ready with a 10 minute rebuke professing the details of the Hegelian system. Everything he said and everything he wrote was saturated with Hegel-speak. I don’t know what ever happened to Gerhardt/Brian, but I hope that he finally came to realize the futility of his passionate conversion to Hegelianism?
Now I have met a true believer in the Platonic system. It’s been an amazing journey to see how every detail, every perception, and every concept that Nick thinks/imagines comes steeped in the philosophy of Plato. Every properly thinking person since about 410 B.C. has been able to see through the errors of the Platonic view, but then comes one fanatic who accepts without question everything that Plato thought and taught. Very strange indeed!
Me thinks the laddy doth protest too much. You don’t like Plato, but saying that every important philosopher since has rejected his metaphysics is a bit of a stretch. If you were to survey mathematicians and philosophers today you’d see that there are Platonists of various stripe, as well as Aristotleans, Kantians, etc., etc., etc. Every time we think that mathematics can give a true representation of reality we’re using a Platonic idea. Your resistance to Plato is so strong me thinks there may be something other than pure reason behind it. Perhaps you need to take Robert Anton Wilson’s advice and spend an hour a day reading the writings of somebody you totally detest, trying to understand how any sane person could spout such dreck.
Where did you get that? You’re entirely wrong Nick, I consider them to be different in the sense of two different aspects of a larger cyclical event. The seed is a potential oak, the oak is the fully developed seed, but the seed is also the genetic gift of one oak to another oak.
I recognize the acorn as a seed within which the oak exists as a potential.and the oak as the matured seed. You seem to consider the distinction as irrelevant.
Whatever? You appear to know what I apparently consider, very presumptive, and wrong.
Issac Newton thought enough of the Emerald Tablet to translate it. Apparently Issac Newton was a nut job. Who could have known.
Well Isaac spent most of his years after 1665 commenting on the bible and trying to make scientific sense out of it, he failed miserably. By today’s standards, for him to take seriously the content of The Emerald Tablet, does make him a bit woo-infested, but his 40 year devotion to biblical scholarship tells us that he was full of woo up to his wang wong!
while we’re on the subject of “full of woo” Nick, why is it that all the very brilliant thinkers who have come after Plato do not take his metaphysics seriously (except for some christian dogmatists and the suicidal Simone Weil)? Descartes did not accept the Platonic view, Hume thought it was nonsense. Kant rejected it and even critiqued the idea that pure reason existed in its own special realm, and showed conclusively that knowledge (of the human kind) comes directly from phenomenal experience. Nietzsche proclaimed that Plato and his supremacist philosophy were at the core of the madness of humanity. Heidegger thought that Plato was a child. Wittgenstein realized that Plato was completely blind to the power and the capacity of language. But most damaging to the truthfulness of the Platonic metaphysics is that his own pupil Aristotle, rejected the Platonic idealism fixated on the realm of the perfect forms. If Aristotle, certainly no dummy, had questions about the Platonic philosophy then he could have asked Plato about it, obviously he did, but he conclusively rejected the whole idealistic program as set forth by his teacher Plato.
Certainly there were schools of neo-Platonism for hundreds of years and the philosophy of Plotinus (some 300 years after Plato) reflects some of the Platonic ideals. It is only when christian theologians rediscovered Plato many centuries later that there was a revival of his thought, but even that revival remained mostly in ecclesiastical circles. Then comes Nick_A and once more a human philosopher accepts the entire Platonic metaphysics as if the 2,400 intervening years had never happened? What does this say for all that brilliant philosophical discourse that took place between the time of Plato and the time of Nick? Was it all merely opinion? Were all these people just interpreting shadows on the walls of a cave?
While engaged in my Masters degree at the University of Alberta, there happened to be among us one student who had become 100% convinced of the truth of the Hegelian philosophy. He walked around campus “preaching” Hegel and even changed his name from the generic Brian to the very Germanic sounding Gerhardt, we all just called him Hegel. Even the professors in any of the classes where he might be found became almost apprehensive to speak about anything Hegelian because he would inevitably lecture the prof on the correct understanding of the Hegelian theory under discussion (of course Gerhardt signed up for all the Continental Philosophy courses where Hegel might be mentioned). It was intimidating to challenge Gerhardt on any point because he would be ready with a 10 minute rebuke professing the details of the Hegelian system. Everything he said and everything he wrote was saturated with Hegel-speak. I don’t know what ever happened to Gerhardt/Brian, but I hope that he finally came to realize the futility of his passionate conversion to Hegelianism?
Now I have met a true believer in the Platonic system. It’s been an amazing journey to see how every detail, every perception, and every concept that Nick thinks/imagines comes steeped in the philosophy of Plato. Every properly thinking person since about 410 B.C. has been able to see through the errors of the Platonic view, but then comes one fanatic who accepts without question everything that Plato thought and taught. Very strange indeed!
Certainly there were schools of neo-Platonism for hundreds of years and the philosophy of Plotinus (some 300 years after Plato) reflects some of the Platonic ideals. It is only when christian theologians rediscovered Plato many centuries later that there was a revival of his thought, but even that revival remained mostly in ecclesiastical circles. Then comes Nick_A and once more a human philosopher accepts the entire Platonic metaphysics as if the 2,400 intervening years had never happened? What does this say for all that brilliant philosophical discourse that took place between the time of Plato and the time of Nick? Was it all merely opinion? Were all these people just interpreting shadows on the walls of a cave?
Yes, it is all opinion and partial truths. That is our domain. The question for me is if what Plato called knowledge exists or are we destined only to serve opinion. If levels of reality exist, then man has a conscious future. If it doesn’t, our species is condemned to fight the eternal battle of opinions.
You mentioned Hegel. He appreciated levels of reality.
He describes the exoteric level as similar to Plato’s cave. The esoteric path is what connects it to the transcendent or the origin of the devolution into the exoteric.
CZ, that is why it seems foolish to argue opinions as truly meaningful. The real question for me is if opinions are all there is. You ask why so many brilliant minds deny the transcendent level of reality. I really don’t know but it is part of the question of the diabolical “Question for Atheists” thread
The transition between the fixation with the shadow on the wall and beginning to awaken to the inner direction of conscious quality is called metanoia in Christianity. Of course the experience is not limited to Christianity or someone like Schuon could have never written what he did.
It is the young who most suffer the war on religion. They often have an intuitive appreciation of the connection between the exoteric and transcendent levels. Yet secularism and fundamentalism kills them on the inside. IMO this is a horrible death.
It is the young who most suffer the war on religion. They often have an intuitive appreciation of the connection between the exoteric and transcendent levels. Yet secularism and fundamentalism kills them on the inside. IMO this is a horrible death.
It isn’t secularism that is the problem. Properly understood, secularism just says no enforced religion. The problem, at least in part, is that Western culture has only recently emerged from a period of total domination by a religion that prohibited any seeking for transcendence other than through it’s accepted means, with the Church as the gatekeeper. “We forget—and the young people don’t know since they don’t read history—that we are heirs of two thousand years, more or less, of a most tyrannical régime, beside which Hitler and Stalin are babes. Not that modern tyrants have not learned from the churches, some consciously. ...for two thousand years Europe was under a tyrant—the Christian church—which allowed no other way of thinking, cur off all influences from outside, did not hesitate kill, extripate, persecute, burn and torture in the name of God. To remember this history is not for the sake of keeping alive the memories of old tyrannies, but to recognize present tyranny, for these patterns are in us still. It would be strange if they were not.” Doris Lessing, Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, p.25
You are concerned with life along linear time and i’m concerned with the vertical quality of a moment as it intersects linear time or the qulity of NOW.
What the hell are you talking about?! You do realize these sound like the ramblings of a madman, don’t you? The book of Revelation looks like a vacation pamphlet compared to some of the insanity you spout.
Sciguy, he’s not rambling or spouting crazy stuff (at least not totally). The concept of a “vertical” direction of ascent is standard neo-Platonism. It supposes a hierarchy of levels of being graded from the purely material up to the “highest” level of union with “the One.” This last is conceptualized in a variety of ways, depending on the particular quirks of whichever metaphysical system is being followed. It actually predates Plotinus (the midwife of neo-Platonic thought), and appears in the Stoic system where the goal was union with the Universal Logos. The book The Great Chain of Being by Arthur O. Lovejoy gives a good history of this, and describes how during the eighteenth century Enlightenment the concept of a vertical direction of increasing quality of Being was transformed into a temporal projection of progress into a better future.
Don’t take this the wrong way, Burt, but I think the whole concept is crazy.
I don’t understand all the time spent pondering things for which there is no evidence of. I’m not dismissing the complexities of knowing oneself or of the human condition, but maybe I’m just unique. I’m very comfortable in my skin and very comfortable with who I am. I spend plenty of time relfecting on myself and my own consciousness (even the occasional meditation, but more often with a good cigar or pipe and maybe a bit of scotch), but I’m still aware that all of it happens in the all too real world. If people would stop worrying about trying to understand a fictional god and spend time trying to understand themselves and others, we’d all be better off.
And Nick, don’t start with your bullshit that god and the self are the same or some mindbabble like that. Remember, I’m in denial of it all, so I don’t believe it.
You go, Sciguy.
WTF are you talking about, burt? NA has no idea what he’s talking about because of the way he’s capsulizing all the different forms of thought that he selects and still creating (making up) the non-existent supernatural to punctuate it because it sounds, oh so mystical. There is no accomplishment in trying to communicate with these guys on a rational basis, they never get to the truth of reality. There are many ways and means to comprehend the physical and philosophical aspects of time. Unfortunately, NA doesn’t appear he can impart any type of special knowledge on any one except perhaps for those more confused than him. For all the shit he’s compiled through his disjointed sources (including himself) and spewed forth as jibber-jabber, he could very well simplify and remain within the realm of reality if he chose to. For instance, Campbell’s “Eternity is now.” and “This is it. You are it.” pretty much gets to the essence of the contemplation without straying off to La La Land. He’s also stuck on the assumption a la delusion of grandeur (which all these nut-bags seem to be suffering from despite their exclusive superior claims to their humility vs our arrogance) that he is presenting us with ideas and facts that we have no inkling of, again, knocking himself/themselves out of the game.
You are concerned with life along linear time and i’m concerned with the vertical quality of a moment as it intersects linear time or the qulity of NOW.
What the hell are you talking about?! You do realize these sound like the ramblings of a madman, don’t you? The book of Revelation looks like a vacation pamphlet compared to some of the insanity you spout.
Sciguy, he’s not rambling or spouting crazy stuff (at least not totally). The concept of a “vertical” direction of ascent is standard neo-Platonism. It supposes a hierarchy of levels of being graded from the purely material up to the “highest” level of union with “the One.” This last is conceptualized in a variety of ways, depending on the particular quirks of whichever metaphysical system is being followed. It actually predates Plotinus (the midwife of neo-Platonic thought), and appears in the Stoic system where the goal was union with the Universal Logos. The book The Great Chain of Being by Arthur O. Lovejoy gives a good history of this, and describes how during the eighteenth century Enlightenment the concept of a vertical direction of increasing quality of Being was transformed into a temporal projection of progress into a better future.
Don’t take this the wrong way, Burt, but I think the whole concept is crazy.
I don’t understand all the time spent pondering things for which there is no evidence of. I’m not dismissing the complexities of knowing oneself or of the human condition, but maybe I’m just unique. I’m very comfortable in my skin and very comfortable with who I am. I spend plenty of time relfecting on myself and my own consciousness (even the occasional meditation, but more often with a good cigar or pipe and maybe a bit of scotch), but I’m still aware that all of it happens in the all too real world. If people would stop worrying about trying to understand a fictional god and spend time trying to understand themselves and others, we’d all be better off.
And Nick, don’t start with your bullshit that god and the self are the same or some mindbabble like that. Remember, I’m in denial of it all, so I don’t believe it.
You go, Sciguy.
WTF are you talking about, burt? NA has no idea what he’s talking about because of the way he’s capsulizing all the different forms of thought that he selects and still creating (making up) the non-existent supernatural to punctuate it because it sounds, oh so mystical. There is no accomplishment in trying to communicate with these guys on a rational basis, they never get to the truth of reality. There are many ways and means to comprehend the physical and philosophical aspects of time. Unfortunately, NA doesn’t appear he can impart any type of special knowledge on any one except perhaps for those more confused than him. For all the shit he’s compiled through his disjointed sources (including himself) and spewed forth as jibber-jabber, he could very well simplify and remain within the realm of reality if he chose to. For instance, Campbell’s “Eternity is now.” and “This is it. You are it.” pretty much gets to the essence of the contemplation without straying off to La La Land. He’s also stuck on the assumption a la delusion of grandeur (which all these nut-bags seem to be suffering from despite their exclusive superior claims to their humility vs our arrogance) that he is presenting us with ideas and facts that we have no inkling of, again, knocking himself/themselves out of the game.
The Oracle called Socrates a man of wisdom because he said “I know nothing.” You would consider him arrogant with delusion of grandeur. Who is right: Answerer or the Oracle? I’ll bet on the Oracle.
You are concerned with life along linear time and i’m concerned with the vertical quality of a moment as it intersects linear time or the qulity of NOW.
What the hell are you talking about?! You do realize these sound like the ramblings of a madman, don’t you? The book of Revelation looks like a vacation pamphlet compared to some of the insanity you spout.
Sciguy, he’s not rambling or spouting crazy stuff (at least not totally). The concept of a “vertical” direction of ascent is standard neo-Platonism. It supposes a hierarchy of levels of being graded from the purely material up to the “highest” level of union with “the One.” This last is conceptualized in a variety of ways, depending on the particular quirks of whichever metaphysical system is being followed. It actually predates Plotinus (the midwife of neo-Platonic thought), and appears in the Stoic system where the goal was union with the Universal Logos. The book The Great Chain of Being by Arthur O. Lovejoy gives a good history of this, and describes how during the eighteenth century Enlightenment the concept of a vertical direction of increasing quality of Being was transformed into a temporal projection of progress into a better future.
Don’t take this the wrong way, Burt, but I think the whole concept is crazy.
I don’t understand all the time spent pondering things for which there is no evidence of. I’m not dismissing the complexities of knowing oneself or of the human condition, but maybe I’m just unique. I’m very comfortable in my skin and very comfortable with who I am. I spend plenty of time relfecting on myself and my own consciousness (even the occasional meditation, but more often with a good cigar or pipe and maybe a bit of scotch), but I’m still aware that all of it happens in the all too real world. If people would stop worrying about trying to understand a fictional god and spend time trying to understand themselves and others, we’d all be better off.
And Nick, don’t start with your bullshit that god and the self are the same or some mindbabble like that. Remember, I’m in denial of it all, so I don’t believe it.
You go, Sciguy.
WTF are you talking about, burt? NA has no idea what he’s talking about because of the way he’s capsulizing all the different forms of thought that he selects and still creating (making up) the non-existent supernatural to punctuate it because it sounds, oh so mystical. There is no accomplishment in trying to communicate with these guys on a rational basis, they never get to the truth of reality. There are many ways and means to comprehend the physical and philosophical aspects of time. Unfortunately, NA doesn’t appear he can impart any type of special knowledge on any one except perhaps for those more confused than him. For all the shit he’s compiled through his disjointed sources (including himself) and spewed forth as jibber-jabber, he could very well simplify and remain within the realm of reality if he chose to. For instance, Campbell’s “Eternity is now.” and “This is it. You are it.” pretty much gets to the essence of the contemplation without straying off to La La Land. He’s also stuck on the assumption a la delusion of grandeur (which all these nut-bags seem to be suffering from despite their exclusive superior claims to their humility vs our arrogance) that he is presenting us with ideas and facts that we have no inkling of, again, knocking himself/themselves out of the game.
Well, an earlier criticism I had of Nick (on the other thread, I think) was that he was mixing faith and knowledge. That’s why he comes across in the way that he does (and why it’s sometimes hard to communicate with him rationally). He’d be much better off (if less verbose) if he just bracketed all the religious stuff and used what’s known (from both modern science and various mystical traditions) about the way that human beings behave and how human self-consciousness operates. Religion is a personal thing, but knowing how the human machine works, how it’s operations can be improved, and how individuals can harmonize within society without becoming psychological prisoners of society is all strict scientific stuff (of the softer science variety, to be sure) and trying to dress this sort of information up in religious or pseudo-mystical language (even though in the past this may have been necessary) is just creating resistance.
It is the young who most suffer the war on religion. They often have an intuitive appreciation of the connection between the exoteric and transcendent levels. Yet secularism and fundamentalism kills them on the inside. IMO this is a horrible death.
It isn’t secularism that is the problem. Properly understood, secularism just says no enforced religion. The problem, at least in part, is that Western culture has only recently emerged from a period of total domination by a religion that prohibited any seeking for transcendence other than through it’s accepted means, with the Church as the gatekeeper. “We forget—and the young people don’t know since they don’t read history—that we are heirs of two thousand years, more or less, of a most tyrannical régime, beside which Hitler and Stalin are babes. Not that modern tyrants have not learned from the churches, some consciously. ...for two thousand years Europe was under a tyrant—the Christian church—which allowed no other way of thinking, cur off all influences from outside, did not hesitate kill, extripate, persecute, burn and torture in the name of God. To remember this history is not for the sake of keeping alive the memories of old tyrannies, but to recognize present tyranny, for these patterns are in us still. It would be strange if they were not.” Doris Lessing, Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, p.25
You are confusing expressions of man made Christendom with Christianity. They are not the same.
Man made Christendom like man made politics serves the Great Beast so is double edged. It is capable of both great compassion and great atrocities. It is the way of the world. Christianity though in the world is not of it.
If the essence of secularism accepts the religious influence as you suggest, then secularism like Christianity, is misunderstood. I just don’t believe secularism would be open to the importance of grace as was Simone Weil.
“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
You are concerned with life along linear time and i’m concerned with the vertical quality of a moment as it intersects linear time or the qulity of NOW.
What the hell are you talking about?! You do realize these sound like the ramblings of a madman, don’t you? The book of Revelation looks like a vacation pamphlet compared to some of the insanity you spout.
Sciguy, he’s not rambling or spouting crazy stuff (at least not totally). The concept of a “vertical” direction of ascent is standard neo-Platonism. It supposes a hierarchy of levels of being graded from the purely material up to the “highest” level of union with “the One.” This last is conceptualized in a variety of ways, depending on the particular quirks of whichever metaphysical system is being followed. It actually predates Plotinus (the midwife of neo-Platonic thought), and appears in the Stoic system where the goal was union with the Universal Logos. The book The Great Chain of Being by Arthur O. Lovejoy gives a good history of this, and describes how during the eighteenth century Enlightenment the concept of a vertical direction of increasing quality of Being was transformed into a temporal projection of progress into a better future.
Don’t take this the wrong way, Burt, but I think the whole concept is crazy.
I don’t understand all the time spent pondering things for which there is no evidence of. I’m not dismissing the complexities of knowing oneself or of the human condition, but maybe I’m just unique. I’m very comfortable in my skin and very comfortable with who I am. I spend plenty of time relfecting on myself and my own consciousness (even the occasional meditation, but more often with a good cigar or pipe and maybe a bit of scotch), but I’m still aware that all of it happens in the all too real world. If people would stop worrying about trying to understand a fictional god and spend time trying to understand themselves and others, we’d all be better off.
And Nick, don’t start with your bullshit that god and the self are the same or some mindbabble like that. Remember, I’m in denial of it all, so I don’t believe it.
You go, Sciguy.
WTF are you talking about, burt? NA has no idea what he’s talking about because of the way he’s capsulizing all the different forms of thought that he selects and still creating (making up) the non-existent supernatural to punctuate it because it sounds, oh so mystical. There is no accomplishment in trying to communicate with these guys on a rational basis, they never get to the truth of reality. There are many ways and means to comprehend the physical and philosophical aspects of time. Unfortunately, NA doesn’t appear he can impart any type of special knowledge on any one except perhaps for those more confused than him. For all the shit he’s compiled through his disjointed sources (including himself) and spewed forth as jibber-jabber, he could very well simplify and remain within the realm of reality if he chose to. For instance, Campbell’s “Eternity is now.” and “This is it. You are it.” pretty much gets to the essence of the contemplation without straying off to La La Land. He’s also stuck on the assumption a la delusion of grandeur (which all these nut-bags seem to be suffering from despite their exclusive superior claims to their humility vs our arrogance) that he is presenting us with ideas and facts that we have no inkling of, again, knocking himself/themselves out of the game.
Well, an earlier criticism I had of Nick (on the other thread, I think) was that he was mixing faith and knowledge. That’s why he comes across in the way that he does (and why it’s sometimes hard to communicate with him rationally). He’d be much better off (if less verbose) if he just bracketed all the religious stuff and used what’s known (from both modern science and various mystical traditions) about the way that human beings behave and how human self-consciousness operates. Religion is a personal thing, but knowing how the human machine works, how it’s operations can be improved, and how individuals can harmonize within society without becoming psychological prisoners of society is all strict scientific stuff (of the softer science variety, to be sure) and trying to dress this sort of information up in religious or pseudo-mystical language (even though in the past this may have been necessary) is just creating resistance.
I could just relate with expressions of cave life but what good does it do? If the essence of religion is about leaving the cave, Why argue over cave life?
There is no shortage of people willing to do it. Apparently it is the way of the atheist and the way of the world. It may also be good for coaxing women into bed. My concern is for those who intuiitively feel there is more to life than the obvious results of the conflicting world of opinions
