that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
Psalms 8:4
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
Posted on 09/24/2003 11:25:56 PM PDT by betty boop
IMHO, it is instructive to consider how Paul reasoned with the Greeks in Athens with reference to man and his relationship with God.
The people in Athens had dismissed the wisdom of the great philosopher Plato and embraced the superstitions of their poets for their theology. Paul reasoned with them, correcting their error first by dismissing Aristotle’s view that there was no beginning, i.e. “everything always was what now it is.” He then went on to illustrate how their own poet's (Aratus) words which they embraced, would refute their concept of Who God is and what is man:
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by [that] man whom he hath ordained; [whereof] he hath given assurance unto all [men], in that he hath raised him from the dead - Acts 17:22-31
betty boop, your reasoning with others concerning epistemology and ontology is very much like Paul’s IMHO. He was able to show the assertion of the poet as a rebuttal to itself. Kudos to you, my friend!
Man is a creature created for the express purpose of suffering.
Yes. Or else, like Kant, he did look in the cupbaord but believed the cat was only an illusion created by his ability to see. The question is, which is worse, to not look, or to look and not believe what you see? Neither is good.
... I believe there are virtuous pagans ....
I don't. There aren't many viruous Christians, either.
...to be truly human - to realize one's end - is only possible when one lives according to that end...
Yes. That is correct, though, as stated, it seems somewhat circular, "to be a man one must be man." The meaning you intend is nevertheless true.
Out of curiosity, except for perceptual consciousness, by which I mean all that is usually meant by "the senses," (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting) but also all other direct conscious experience, the internal "senses" of pain, neausea, vertigo, etc., as well as the emotions (which are only our perception of the complex general physiological reactions to the content of conscious at any moment), what else can be known, and how? If we cannot be conscious of something, how can we know it?
Usually examples are given of things we are not directly conscious of, like atoms or electrons. But, in fact we are conscious of them directly in everything we see and feel, we just do not perceive tham as atoms, but without them there would be nothing to see or perceive, in fact, we would not be either.
If there is some means to knowledge that does not originate in our direct conscious perception (the only consciousness we have), we ought to be able to have that knowledge without that which concsioucsness is conscious of, namely, material existence. If, for example, we can know about God without any physical means (which is how perception works), then why are physical means employed? Why must there be physical Bibles, why did Christ have to come, "physically," and why do Christians have to witness using physical literature and physically spoken words? (Sound waves are physical.)
I'm not making an argument here either way, only asking the question, so you can make the arugment.
Another thing C.S. Lewis said is that God loves matter, else He would not have made so much of it.
Hank
It depends on how you define "faith." By some definitions, there must be such an unbridgable gap, because those definitions exclude reason. Faith does not need to be defined that way, and ought not to be, if it is Bible faith that is meant.
I hope I have given no offense.
One's honest opinion should never offend anyone, and if anyone is offended by that, it is their fault. I cannot speak for others, but you have not been in the least offensive, but then, it's almost impossible to offend me short of using physical force. I wasn't even offended by your suggestion that I am a pagan, which I am not, although both betty boop and Alamo-Girl are pretty sure that I am.
I enjoyed your postings and they have provoked me to thought.
Likewise.
Hank
With regard to the cat-in-the-cupboard metaphor, from the Spiritual point-of-view, I assert that anyone can look but not everyone can see. Likewise anyone can listen but not everyone can hear.
The Bible is just text to those who read with the eyes, but to those who can and do read in the Spirit, it is alive. To one who cannot see, Jesus was a good man, but to those who can see, He is the Word of God made flesh.
We can use reason to encourage someone else to look or to listen, but the power to see and to hear is a gift of God.
On the other issue, I also believe it is possible for an atheist to live well and at peace with his neighbors. Good conduct is one of the results of Christian faith, but it is not the purpose of it.
The purpose is the restoration of the family of God, according to His will. What made it necessary is the banishment of man from the family for disobedience to His will. Willful disobedience cannot happen where there is absolute, unconditional love.
Hank, I don’t recall ever labeling you a “pagan.” I do not wish to judge you at all. But if you say something of yourself, I will take you at your word.
[HK] C.S. Lewis once said, if you want to know if the cat is in the cupboard, all the reasoning in the world will not tell you. You have to look in the cubboard.
So if the question is, "where is the cat?" and you look in the cupboard and see her, declaring, "she's in cupboard," isn't that the truth?
I don't know Hank, why don't you tell me: Is a true-or-false proposition, such as this one regarding the status of the cat, exhaustive of what Truth is?
Let's take another cat example, Schroedinger's cat in this instance. Whether the cat-in-the-box is to be found alive or dead fundamentally depends on a probability distribution. Observation causes one only of that entire probability distribution to be "selected," and this is the only result (dead or alive?) that can be learned by that observation, and it can only be learned as a function of observation.
But what of the rest of the probability distribution? Because some other probability was not realized at "state vector collapse" does not necessarily mean that it becomes unavailable as a possible selection at the next observation.
A "truth" that focuses on, and is defined by, such low-level true-or-false propositions, it seems to me, is a truth that is incapable of embracing the totality of what is and what may be, which we might call one vast, eternal, cosmic "probability distribution."
Truth either pertains to this universal probability distribution, or it is not truth.
BTW, I had a chance to study your fine essay this afternoon, and to try to play a bit of catch-up with this thread. I owe so many replies! And certainly I owe you one, Hank, considering the time and effort you obviously invested in your essay.
I'll be back! (Gotta go make dinner now.)
[HK] C.S. Lewis once said, if you want to know if the cat is in the cupboard, all the reasoning in the world will not tell you. You have to look in the cupboard. So if the question is, "where is the cat?" and you look in the cupboard and see her, declaring, "she's in cupboard," isn't that the truth?
Then you asked: I don't know Hank, why don't you tell me: Is a true-or-false proposition, such as this one regarding the status of the cat, exhaustive of what Truth is?
No. But, if you are serious, you are being a little disingenuous. My response was to your statement, "Certainly Truth itself is not available to sense perception." You did not say "all truth," but simply truth.
When one swears in court to tell, "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," no one supposes they are swearing to tell all the truth there is, exhaustively. What trial would ever be finished?
A "truth" that focuses on, and is defined by, such low-level true-or-false propositions, it seems to me, is a truth that is incapable of embracing the totality of what is and what may be, which we might call one vast, eternal, cosmic "probability distribution."
Our main difference is very fundamental. In some sense you regard truth as something, if not "metaphysical," then at least very nearly metaphysical. I think it is because you, at heart, are a Platonist and believe in Platonic universals as actual ontological existents.
I regard truth as entirely epistemological. Truth has no meaning outside the context of conceptual knowledge, and is the quality that differentiates those concepts that correctly describe any aspect of reality from those that do not.
As for a "truth that is [capable] of embracing the totality of what is and what may be, we might call one vast, eternal, cosmic 'probability distribution", no such truth is possible, because no single statement, however complex can describe everything there is to describe. In the abstract, all of truth may defined by a single statement, "truth is that which describes reality." One thing that certainly is not that truth is, "probability distribution," which not only cannot explain everything, but cannot very well explain what it does explain (thus the uncertainty principle).
The belief that "quantum mechanics" is somehow the ultimate explanation of everything, both metaphysical and epistemological, is just the new version of pythagoreanism. Pythagoras was convinced the everything could be explained as "number." The discovery of incommensurables cured them.
The new pythagoreans, however are more stubborn, and blatantly admit, their method cannot determine both the position and energy of a particle at the same time, and suppose that failure is proof they have explained everything, when all it does is reaffirm what the pythagoreans discovered long ago, everything cannot be explained in terms of measurement and number.
All of mathematics is only a method of dealing with a certain aspect of reality, that which can be counted and measured. It is a very powerful method, but limited by its essential nature. There are many aspects of reality that are neither countable or measurable. Mathematics is useless in dealing with those aspects of reality.
Science proceeds almost entirely by means of mathematics, especially physics and chemistry. Few aspects of science involve counting alone, and almost all important principles of science involve measurement. Now measurement is always arbitrary (no unit of measure is absolute, and must be arbitrarily chosen on the basis of what seems most appropriate and useful), and, unlike counting, which is absolute, no measurement is ever absolute or absolutely accurate. They are not absolute because all measurement must be made in terms of the relationship of that which is being measured to an arbitrary unit of measure, and no matter how accurate our measurements are, there is always some "margin of error."
No mathematical explanation of existence is either complete (it leaves out all those aspects mathematics is incapable of dealing with) or accurate (because there are aspects of reality that can only be known in terms of their measurable qualities, which can never be measured with absolute accuracy). A, "wave function," is a method of resolving certain "problems" statistically, and are based entirely on the observation that certain behavior of some "particles" or "waves" (because the same things are described as having both properties), can be described in those terms.
I have no desire to minimize the importance of this or any other scientific discovery, but this is hardly a means of understanding the ultimate nature of existence, or reality, or, "the totality of what is and what may be."
The so-called, "collapse of a wave function," is nothing more than a mathematical manipulation, akin to finding the derivative of a function in the calculus. It is not a physical event and it does not cause anything. It is only a way of describing what happens, it does not make anything happen.
You know I am not trying to dissuady you from your views. This is only to explain why I do not agree with them, and to provide you with actual points in my view that you can address, if you choose to argue with them.
How dull it would be if we all agreed all the time.
Hank
On the other hand, I agree with Hank that there is a certain amount of Manicheism and Platonism - I might say also gnosticism - that has permeated popular Christianity.
Cat baby, whar the hail is the basis that equates Plato[nism] with Manicheism?
There is nothing in Plato (or Christianity) that says "the world" of physical nature is (categorically) "bad."
After decades of study, I have found nothing in Plato that wants to "run away" from physis, that is, from natural bodily existence. In fact, the point I think he makes abundantly clear is that psyche-in-soma is indivisible in human existence -- that is to say, in human lived experience, mind (reason, consciousness) -in-soma (physical body) is seemingly innately understood as the process of becoming "itself" (that process of "in-between reality" that seeks to realize being in existence).
The two are parts of one synergistic Whole; and are therefore indivisible in principle.
Fast forward here to the famous curse of the modern age, that burning, seemingly irreconcilable issue first noticed by Rene Descartes. His was a take on reality that propounded a profound dualism in human life and nature, requiring the complete separation of body and spirit.
Plato would never have accepted Cartesian dualism as a reliable model by which "reality" might be reliably known and understood.
For Plato -- and later, Christianity -- the very notion of psyche-in-soma indicated a dynamic, synergistic whole constituted by seemingly mutually-contradictory parts.
For Plato, the "parts" of spirit and body may not be separated, detached from each other. For the "complete picture" of human and natural reality depends, in the long run at least, on the proper correspondance and correlation of two divinely-ordained principles that express and realize the divine paradign, "set up in heaven" -- described by the very language of the formulation, "psyche-in-soma."
So if you want to say that gnostics and Manichees espouse cosmic dualism as the reality behind nature and human experience, well, you're protected by the First Amendment. Plus you probably have a good deal of evidence on your side.
Just please don't impute this result either to Plato or Christianity. Neither espouses dualism in any way, shape, or form. Both seek the One source that alone makes intelligible what is actually seen in human existence and experience, as reflected and meditated by men who seek wisdom.
that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
Psalms 8:4
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
Nice thread!
I did not at all refer to "simply truth". I did not even refer to "all truth." I simply said: Truth.
Do we have a definitional problem?
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