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Thank you so very much for your encouragements and insights, dearest sister in Christ!

And please do bring any appropriate insights from Plato - I find ancient wisdom to be particularly illuminating considering what was knowable to them and that they were not subject to the "noise" of the modern world.

But what does this insight do to the human moral sense, which depends on the foundational idea that all human choices have actual consequences, for good or ill? The entire idea of Justice — human, but most especially divine Justice, which is the measure of human justice — depends on people agreeing about human actions having real and direct consequences. For which they are personally responsible and accountable to others.

Indeed. That is why I mentioned the Great White Throne Judgment. If all of the "what ifs" become known or knowable to us at that time, then we would deeply comprehend the consequences of our poor choices in life.

I believe that would be the most piercing and painful judgment of all for me, not only knowing the bad choices I made but how they hurt others.

To God be the glory, not man, never man!

I find ancient wisdom to be particularly illuminating considering what was knowable to them and that they were not subject to the "noise" of the modern world.

It's amazing to me how much they did know; and how much modern science owes to them, though this is rarely acknowledged nowadays.

I am speaking of the presocratic and classical philosophers of ancient Athens, and preeminently of Plato.

Regarding Plato's unparalleled contribution to human thought, it has been said that "all of philosophy is but a recapitulation of Plato." Plato himself, at least in part, is a recapitulation of the great thinkers of an age older than his own; e.g., Pythagoras and Heraclitus especially.

Yet Plato was a true original in his discoveries. I believe it was he who first identified and "isolated" psyche — self, soul — as an object of study. It was he who sought the relations between the Kosmos and the Unknown God "Beyond" the Kosmos, which gives the Kosmos its Order.

Indeed, "order" is what the Greek word kosmos means. It was Plato's insight that this "order" could not arise sui generis from materials available in the Kosmos itself, but has a transcendent Source, "located" entirely outside the Kosmos. He also said that, in relation to this Kosmos, man was "mikcrokosmos," the eikon or image of the Kosmos, who recapitulates within himself all levels of cosmic hierarchical order.

Plato characterized the God Beyond as Nous, or Divine Mind. It turns out the highest level of the hierarchy of cosmic order is Divine Nous (though it is not "in" this world). At next level below, we find human nous. Thus Plato suggests that God and man can "resonate" together — even though for Plato, apparently the God Beyond has no characterization as Personality.

So I started writing an essay. I'll very likely finish it, too; but wonder whether anyone would find it appropriate to this discussion!

It wouldn't have much to do with UFOs. That seems to be the main topic of interest right now.

Thank you ever so much for your reference to the Great White Throne Judgment. Indeed, in all likelihood the vast majority of us sinners may well have a lot to be sorry for on that day.... especially as we are confronted by all the "roads not taken"....