Pantheism
Pantheism is "a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God". But what exactly does this mean when taken literally?
For starters, I don't think it's solipsistic as we're all separated by the void of death. But perhaps we're all connected by a single conscious energy of sorts. I mean this in maybe the monistic sense.
Monopsychism is perhaps a related concept. This is where there is "one immortal soul of which individual souls are manifestations".
I think this belief would lend itself very well to the golden rule of "treating others as one's self would wish to be treated". We're all interlinked in a way.
I think there are advantages to this point of view over traditional theism. Due to it's apparent simplicity it avoids any overly complicated faith beliefs.
I've never found the doctrine of heaven convincing. I think the accumulative stress of living thousands of years would render eternal life psychologically impossible.
I believe the idea of an omnipotent God to be problematic. If this God has free will, then how do you know he will always do good? Could he be temperamental and throw everyone in hell? Indeed he could easily morph into the "evil demon" or the "deceiving god" that Descartes feared.
For starters, I don't think it's solipsistic as we're all separated by the void of death. But perhaps we're all connected by a single conscious energy of sorts. I mean this in maybe the monistic sense.
Monopsychism is perhaps a related concept. This is where there is "one immortal soul of which individual souls are manifestations".
I think this belief would lend itself very well to the golden rule of "treating others as one's self would wish to be treated". We're all interlinked in a way.
I think there are advantages to this point of view over traditional theism. Due to it's apparent simplicity it avoids any overly complicated faith beliefs.
I've never found the doctrine of heaven convincing. I think the accumulative stress of living thousands of years would render eternal life psychologically impossible.
I believe the idea of an omnipotent God to be problematic. If this God has free will, then how do you know he will always do good? Could he be temperamental and throw everyone in hell? Indeed he could easily morph into the "evil demon" or the "deceiving god" that Descartes feared.
Comments (355)
Presumably, any modifications of those concepts is merely a minor 'tweakng operation' to suit the parochial needs of the palliative user.
Huh? If the entirety of the universe is God, how is anything "separated by the void of death"?
Under pantheism, aren't we all simply part of God, though?
Under pantheism I tend to view God as the collective sum total of individuals rather than one omniscient all conscious entity.
So "everything is the collective sum total of individuals"?
(I'm an atheist, by the way, but I'm just looking at this under the umbrella of a view that's different than my own . . . I'm primarily examining whether the view is consistent, coherent, etc. relative to itself.)
In terms of sentience and pantheism, I get the impression there's a subdued connection between everyone. Maybe there's an unconscious dreamlike spirit that links us; the whole surreality of dreams. I don't know for sure.
Actually, solipsism is pretty hard to escape in a pantheistic universe. You can use the Barcan formula to prove this even in a universe with a near infinite amount of possible worlds.
Yes, you essentially are hurting yourself by being unethical in a pantheistic universe.
I'll interpret it differently. . .
Pantheism is to reflect on God as existing directly in nature. From a certain perspective it might be called: "pagan idolatry". This by no means diminishes the piety of pantheism, but only serves to point out a peculiar characteristic in contrast to the mode of theism which looks inward - toward the immediate subjective relation to God.
As is evident it results in people accepting less and less of what God actually is or is supposed to be - from an omnipotent being with powers to intervene to a sterile observer lacking any will - until finally we, some may claim, mature mentally and abandon the whole thing as nonsense and become atheists.
That sounds closer to Jung's "collective unconscious" than pantheism. It sounds like you think there's something a bit more robust than Jung's idea, but it sounds pretty far removed from pantheism.
Yes, that is certainly a very relevant idea. I might be trying to mix it with pantheism. I don't think they're mutually exclusive ideas.
In the beginning there would have been one of the following:
1. Some stuff that somehow made the universe
2. God and some stuff. God made the universe from the stuff
3. Gold only. God made the universe from nothing
4. God only. God made the universe from himself
So pantheism has a 1 in 4 chance of being true on this basis.
I think God is benevolent so pantheism brings the problem of evil: if he is benevolent an ever present, why does he not intervene to stop evil? Maybe he cannot intervene in the universe or maybe he has no senses in the conventional basis.
There is a potential problem: parts of the universe are flying apart from each other at faster than the speed of light. So he cannot be a conventional being (as parts of him are causally disconnected from other parts - head cannot speak to toes).
I tend to also believe there is a connection between everyone - but that this connection is also with everything: past, present and future. Any sense of disconnect we experience is only a lack of awareness - which can’t really be helped on the ‘physical side of things’, but certainly can on the ‘consciousness side’. Where do we draw the line on our unity or connection with the unfolding universe, and why?
I believe it goes deeper than Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’ (which is restricted to humankind). I think the more we strive to understand consciousness in relation to information processing, biochemistry and quantum physics, the more we will recognise a fundamental similarity and connection between every process in the universe - and the entire path of evolution will become clearer. But that’s only conjecture at this point.
As for ‘God’, my experience with pantheism suggests that these beliefs could be a gateway to atheism, but not necessarily. Personally, I think we need to abandon the idea that ‘he’ is a conventional ‘being’, and see God as more of a concept. God and Evil are mutually exclusive as beings, for instance, but I believe they can co-exist as concepts. I recognise that this moves away from theism, but I still don’t know if I consider myself to be an atheist as such. God just makes more sense to me this way: it exists for me as a concept that equates with the entire past, present and future of the unfolding universe.
Future discoveries on quantum physics and information processing will hopefully shed light on the relationship of the mind and the physical world. When you look up at the night sky the physical world can be awesome. Indeed there's also an active debate on animal consciousness too.
The personification of goodness as God is again thought-provoking. I think it's a nice concept.
Due to parts being capable of err, which is to say not fit.
Whereas an absolute divinity, is unable to err, as it has nowhere to fit.
Too literal for this discussion. The claims under discussion are spiritual in nature. So we are all part of God, but that isn't all we are, and being part of God doesn't mean we're immortal, which is what you're implying. If you want precision, perhaps a more scientific discussion would better suit you? :wink:
Interesting. I view God as both of those things, probably including the maxim the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is essentially the Gaian perspective, which is my personal belief position. Oh, but not necessarily "omniscient". I missed that at first. :blush: Gaia is the soul of the universe, not its creator. But let's not get too detailed. This is an interesting discussion at a simple, general, level. :up: :smile:
I'm not convinced. Applying formulae to God is never a good idea, IMO. God isn't like that. :wink:
But, out of curiosity, how does the Barcan formula ("If everything is necessarily F, then it is necessary that everything is F") lead us from pantheism to solipsism? If God is part of everyone, and vice versa, how does this become "the philosophical theory that the self is all that you know to exist"? [The latter is how WordWeb defines "solipsism".]
So re definitions, when it says "Pantheism is the belief that reality is identical with divinity, or that all-things compose an all-encompassing, immanent god," or "a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God," they really mean, "Well, just some of reality/just some parts of the universe, not all of it, but we didn't write that instead because we want to be more poetic" or something like that?
So, it's my understanding that the Barcan formula imposes epistemic closure in a modally quasi-infinite universe. Meaning, that the domain of discourse cannot just keep on multiplying out infinitely so modally. Hence, certainty for the scope of quantifiers in a modal sense. Therefore, solipsism? Of course, this in some sense implies some form of essentialism, I think.
I couldnt say exactly where this Gaian perspective came from except perhaps Star Trek
In anceint Greece, pantheists believed there was one god for everything, called Pan, who didnt care much what people did. There is one epiphany, for Pheiddipes, otherwise, Pan just played with wood nymphs and left people alone.
The Gaia Hypothesis by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. I thought it was quite well-known. :chin:
That's a new one on me.
No mention of Pan, the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature of mountain wilds, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs. :chin:
I wonder if you are getting confused by Guinan, Whoopi Goldberg's character? "Gaian" refers to Gaia, the Greek God of Nature.
What I said is that Pan and Gaia were not worshipped. What I said was there were no pantheists or gaians. There were no temples to Pan and Gaia. They had no acolytes or priests. Pan was some kind of amusing quirk, like Santa Claus more than anything else, even the Greeks did not take him very seriously. Gaia was part of the cosmogeny, but neither of them particularly cared what human beings did so no one worshipped them. I know thats not what you want to hear, but thats the way it was.
the NEAREST to it was a large number of degenerate Dionysian cults who took drugs and had orgies in forests in the very late years of ancient greece, who said anything whatsoever and no one paid any attention or bothered writing any of it down. Im sure some of them decided they were Pan or Gaia when they were drunk. Otherwise, no.
The point about Pheidippides epiphany was that it signified how important what he did was, because it was the only time Pan ever did anything with humans, and it must have been made up by other people, because when Pheidippedes got to Sparta, multiple records, including Thucidides, said he died from exhaustion immediately, without saying anything.
At least I heard it from someone who actually knows how things were, back then. :wink:
That's just a misinterpretation.
Any cults devoted to Dionysus were merely people trying to live in harmony with nature, as the ancient eastern tradition proposes, and paints the Garden of Eden.
The drugs and orgies were barbaric tendencies of migrants who assimilating with locals formed The Greek. Now guess which direction they came from.
Thanks. But what are you going on about? You don't seem to know much about the ancient Greek Gods, nor are you aware of the modern Gaia Hypothesis, which merely uses the name of an old Greek God as a label for something new (but related to the original role of Gaia).
Quoting ernestm
No, the "pan" in "pantheist" is not "Pan", the name of an old God. You seem to have no idea what pantheism is. :chin:
Very little. The mistake is to take a spiritual declaration "literally". It normally leads to problems of misunderstanding. Perhaps the following quote will be useful?
Link to original article. For myself, I would go with the definitions of pantheism and panentheism (above), blending and accepting both.
I may have been trying to focus on pantheism's effect on our understanding of consciousness in general. I wasn't necessarily trying to exclude nature and the physical world.
I mentioned monopsychism as well but I can't find too much information about it on the web.
I don't think pantheism is immutable as everyone dies which is indeed the biggest change of all.
It's not omniscient or omnipotent as it contains many distinct parts. This would also preclude a god that judges people.
Omnibenevolence is missing as some people are kind and some unfortunately are immoral or even evil.
the romans did have a thing called the pantheon. It was not a place for pantheists, however, it was simply a temple for all gods. The romans didnt care at all who people worshipped as long as they got taxes, and by the time of the middle empire, there were so many gods they gave up trying to make temples for them all and just built the pantheon for everybody to use as they wanted.
But the idea of a personal God (as opposed to God as a person) is still possible for pantheism in my view. David Bentley Hart once explained ‘personal’ as the notion “that God really knows and loves and is related to us”, and he recognised that God doesn’t need to be a person to fulfill this description. What he didn’t recognise was that the very act of realising or actualising potentiality - as the capacity to develop, achieve and succeed - is an act of unconditional love. God as the potentiality that underlies every process in the universe (past, present and future) not only points to its necessary being and its fundamental involvement in the ‘creation’ of the universe, but also its continual involvement and necessity in the unfolding of the universe across spacetime.
God as potentiality then encompasses omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence - it is our own individual and collective ignorance of that potentiality in our day to day interaction with the universe that impairs its current physical realisation. This is not something we can blame on God as a person in pantheism, because we are included in that notion of God, and therefore equally culpable. That as humans we are falling well short of our potential to understand, to achieve and to do good for the universe is not something we can simply ask the God of pantheism to fix. We are that God, and more so than animals and trees and the forces of nature because we are aware of that truth.
Do you see a difference in definition between deists and theists?
I am for my part happy to live in a time in human history when science has come to the point of a theory that everything in the observable universe is really connected, basically consisting of the same energy. This is a great consolation. I could of course be discontent that we do not know more about the ultimate nature of this reality (energy), and the nature of 'dark' energy or matter. But that is what we currently have, and we have come to know so much more about the natural world than our ancestors before the scientific age did, it should console us and reconcile us to this great nature we are part of. To keep on calling it God has become now a mere matter of taste, but I think we are safe if we state that God is neither an interventionist, nor bene-/malevolent, being when it comes to us as the human species. The physical phenomenon called energy that has generated us and that we consist of is indifferent to us as living beings, as indifferent as it was to the dinosaurs and is to Pluto.
Nice discussion by the way, and thank you for bringing the topic of Pantheism up.
You said this before, but it wasn't correct then, either. Pan was not the "God of Everything". You're getting confused with the Greek word "pan", usually translated as "everything", or something close. All of the Greek Gods were worshipped, or they wouldn't've been Gods, would they? That Pan had no temples probably reflects his position as a Nature God (not the "God of Everything"). But I fail to see why you're so keen on this "no-one worshipped Him" idea. What does it have to do with this topic, which is about pantheism, not Pan:
Quoting Michael McMahon
Do you actually believe that "pantheism" describes the worship of Pan? Is that why you keep saying "Pan wasn't worshipped"? :gasp:
Anyway, if you have some evidence of your strange beliefs, post a link. Wikipedia is not infallible, but it's generally pretty good, and its entry on Pan makes no mention of the 'facts' you keep quoting. So, do you have evidence to back up your assertions? :chin:
[[s]My[/s] corrections.]
That's why he's called Pan. Just like Eros was called Eros. And what I tried to tell you is, the Greeks did not think a God of everything was particularly important, because a God of everything would not care about human beings very much. People these days think of the Greek 'PanTHEON' - collection of all Gods, which was a collection and not a conscious entity - as far more powerful than the Greeks did themselves too. Zeus was not the God of everything, just the God of Hellenic Gods. Aphrodite was not the God of all love, and Ares was not the God of all war. They were just the pantheon native to Hellenic Greece, centered in Athens and Delphi.
Sometimes other pantheons had different Gods with the same name too, for example, Artemis was a Goddess of hunting in ancient Greece, but a Goddess of fertility with a thousand breasts in Turkey.
but Pan was always Pan, that was the point of him. there were not different versions of Pan. The Hellenic gods looked down on Pan as a satyr, but in other pantheons he was considered more important than the Hellenic Gods. But nowhere ever worshipped Pan. For reason first stated.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Where is the evidence to back up all this stuff you keep spouting about Pan, or have you just made it up?
Were you there? Presumably not. So I imagine you have some evidence to back up these beliefs that no-one else seems to have heard of...?
But the Greeks turned it into desert, so then Pan became more of an early nomadic deity for desolate places, music, and goat herds who didn't terrify anybody. To the nomads, Pan was still a major deity, but the Hellenic Gods said it wasn't that important.
Then the Romans conquered it, and Pan's temple was abandoned, making Pan more of a curio in 200BC, after which the Romans lost it back to the Persians who replaced Pan with Ba'al again. Then the Romans conquered it again and renamed it Caesarea, by which time Pan didn't have a city named after him either, then it became a holy Christian city.
That's why current mythology of ancient Greece says Pan is the god of everything but doesn't care very much about people, so nobody worships him. It's already more than most people want to know, and it helps children learn what Pan means--its a God with the lower half of a goat and it means everything. That's how Greeks teach children. They were very good at that, and so Greek became a kind of universal language that everyone spoke, because of they way they taught it.
If you'll excuse me, I'm a little tired after explaining all that.
- Link to original article
Link to original article
Link to original article
Now none of the above quotes can be guaranteed correct, and I do not post them as objective evidence of who/what Pan is. But your impressions seem based in schoolboy misunderstandings that no-one else has heard of.
Finally:
Link to original article
Link to original article
Pantheism, it seems, has no direct links at all to the ancient God Pan. :chin:
Again and again you return to your schoolboy misunderstanding. Pantheism is a modern word that describes a modern movement. It has nothing to do with the ancient God Pan, or the worship of Pan. The occurrence of the three letters "p - a - n" in "pantheism" and "Pan" is coincidental. Your misunderstanding is understandable, but mistaken nonetheless.
'Irish freethinker' John Toland (1705) was "a couple of aging hippies in the 1970s"? :rofl:
Quoting Pattern-chaser
[Those words are not mine, I just quoted them; see my previous post for the proper attribution.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarea_Philippi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banias
Yes, everyone except @ernestm knows that. :up: He thinks Pantheism is like the so-called NeoPagan 'revival', a bunch of hippies worshipping Pan. Having committed himself in print, he is too embarrassed to admit his mistake, and has become entrenched in his own misunderstanding.
Quoting Possibility
:up:
Subset: all elements of A are also elements of B.
Imply: if A is true, then B is also true.
Just a little perspective. Sometimes there's more to the word God than meets our minds.
But consciousness, at least in our first person point of view, is never static. So how does an unchangeable God perceive the world? I don't think reality unfolds to God vicariously like an ensemble cast movie.
Also, how does the theistic God find meaning in life Himself if everyone is just relying on Him to provide meaning for them? Is it a bit circular?
Pantheism is indeed a harmonious, pluralistic and tolerant belief. I think Pantheism can really square the circle; the statement of pantheism is simultaneously very humble and highly assertive.
I think pantheism and panentheism can be two sides of the same coin in the way that the destruction of death transcends your own consciousness. Death is incomprehensible and outside of our control. Our state of consciousness at death appears to be outside of causality and time. Yet we’re obviously all conscious now at the same time in parallel and simultaneously rather than in a delayed system of one death after another. So there’s a lot that separates everyone in a literal sense. We clearly don’t ever want to feel very connected to or responsible for people who perform evil actions. But I suppose we can try to feel connected to a spirit of goodwill.
“Camus states that because the leap of faith escapes rationality and defers to abstraction over personal experience, the leap of faith is not absurd. Camus considers the leap of faith as "philosophical suicide," rejecting both this and physical suicide.”
I recognize this is an old post, but the whole "all religions are fairy tales made to make people feel they have meaning," thing doesn't work with all cosmologies. You can, and likely are fairly irrelevant in the Sumerian cosmology, and face a pretty brutal cast of deities. Homer's shades in Hades long for their time on Earth and are pale echos of the beings they were. Not exactly comforting.
I can accept your understanding of pantheism. My understanding was something more akin to polytheism, but with a twist: It's cool to have any god still be a god; whereas panentheism would be all gods being the same thing, not unlike your understanding of pantheism. I could be wrong, though.
My philosophical worldview PanEnDeism, is historically related to PanTheism. However, due to its secular mindset, mine is not a traditional religious perspective, in that it does not require sycophantic worship or arbitrary rituals & practices. Instead, it is intended to be more like an empirical scientific worldview, in that it takes a Pragmatic approach to understanding the real world, and our relationship to it. There is no authoritative or formal definition of PED, but my general concept is similar to Spinoza's notion that the "universal substance" of our world is not physical Matter, but meta-physical Mind *1. Meaning that our reality is essentially an idea in the Mind of G*D. That may not sound scientific, but for me, that general concept of Reality was derived from the counter-intuitive weirdness of Quantum Theory, and the all-encompassing reach of Information Theory. It's not a mystical or magical belief system, but a practical mundane worldview, based on the the scientific conclusion that Information = Energy = Matter *2.
In this post, I won't attempt to explain the conceptually-simple-but-technically-complex reasoning process by which I arrived at that strange worldview *3. So, I'll just get to the bottom line : Taken literally, "PanTheism" means that our apparent Reality is actually an interpretation of ultimate Ideality *4. What this means, when taken literally, is that particular Reality (Pan ; All) exists within (En) holistic Ideality (Deity ; First Cause ; Enformer). In other words, G*D's mental substance (Information, Meta-Physics) is what we know via our senses as material reality (Physics). From that simple equation of Ideal Stuff (substance) with Real Stuff (matter), we can derive all we need to know about the world, and our place in it. Of course the human mind is free to posit conjectures about the logically necessary First Cause. But the current fragmented state of world religions, indicates that such fictions can wreak havoc among competing belief systems. Which may be why the ancient faith-based religious notion of Pantheism, eventually evolved into theoretical philosophical PanDeism, and finally into evidence-based PanEnDeism. :cool:
*1 Spinoza's Substance Monism : Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance. Substance monism posits that only one kind of stuff exists, although many things may be made up of this stuff, e.g., matter or mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism
*2 The mass-energy-information equivalence principle : Here we formulate a new principle of mass-energy-information equivalence proposing that a bit of information is not just physical, as already demonstrated, but it has a finite and quantifiable mass while it stores information.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794
*3 I have already provided a variety of explanations for my rationale in several of my blog posts, and in many posts on this forum.
*4 Empirical Idealism :
Scientific Materialism is the assumption that particle Physics is the foundation of reality, and that our ideas are simply products of material processes. Empirical Idealism doesn't deny the existence of a real world, but reasons that all we can ever know about that hypothetical reality is the mental interpretations of sensory percepts. Platonic Idealism (Myth of the Cave) calls those interpretations illusions, and asserts that true Reality is equivalent to an idea in the mind of God. Enformationism is compatible with both views, depending on your perspective.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
PS__I expect challenges to labeling PED as "empirical". So, I'll simply say that it's just as empirical as Inflation Theory, Multiverse Theory, and String Theory, which all postulate entities that are literally out-of-this-world.
Whats comforting is that death isnt the end. Fear of death is at the heart of every fairy tale about an after life. The exact nature of the afterlife is irrelevant to the comfort the fairy tale provides in this regard so I think the point you were responding to still stands.
Also, both Sumerian and greek mythologies have pleasant afterlife fairy tales to accompany the harsher ones, just like christian mythology has heaven and hell.
Nothing, as far as I can tell, in so far as nature (plus "divinity-providence") is indistinguishable from nature (minus "divinity-providence").
My perspective: I've strong philosophical affinities for (yin) classical atomism & (yang) modern pandeism, but in practice I'm a methodological physicalist (or scientific 'model-dependent' realist), thereby committed currently to (A) naturalistic pragmatism (re: foundherentism + falsificationism) about "knowledge" and (B) non-reductive physicalism (re: functionalism + embodied cognition) about "consciousness"
There’s many layers to this world and we can go however deep we want. There’s an interpersonal level to pantheism of merely trying to feel connected and compassionate towards others in general. There can be many ways to express that simple belief. We could just view the physical universe as being random in its creation. It’s easiest to understand other people compared to nonhuman spirits. As you say there’s also the imbuing of nature with spirituality. From this vantage point it’d be like the natural world was intentionally created by a spirit rather than randomness. We usually view nature as impersonal and incomprehensibly vast or even infinite. Nature worship can of course be compatible with pantheism. But our theory of mind and empathy is more geared towards fellow humans. In my mind the admiration of nature is within a very deep layer of reality and so it personally reminds me more of panentheism or mysticism. I’m not disagreeing with you about nature and pantheism. Technically you’re right that we’re all part of nature. But by its sheer size I feel nature worship sometimes places emphasis on the transcendent qualities of the world rather than interpersonal communication with others in our social environment. Therefore nature worship by itself is consistent with multiple worldviews and faiths to different degrees.
Imagining a personal spirit inside the sky:
Robert Miles - Children - Screenshot
I tend to think panentheism is a more versatile concept, and a bridge to everything from atheism (figurative panentheism) to polytheism to theism. It’s the Swiss Army knife model of reality, it seems to me.
For a while when I was young I foolishly believed that nothing is more than the sum of its parts. Then one day I realized that everything is more than the sum of its parts. This of course includes the universe—so it only makes sense that the universe as a sum would be distinct from that which is more than the sum (literally or figuratively).
Good question. I think the answer is that it means different things to different people. That's why some believe that Spinoza was a mystic and others that he was the father of communism.
Some like Moses Hess believed that Spinoza (whom Hess called "our Master") was the prophet of messianic socialism:
“The Messianic era is the present age, which began to germinate with the teachings of Spinoza, and finally came into historical existence with the great French Revolution ...”
- M. Hess, Rome and Jerusalem p. 188
"With Spinoza there began no other period than that for which Christ had yearned, for which he and his first disciples and all of Christendom have hoped and prophesied."
- The Sacred History of Mankind p. 44
. Pantheism is a belief system ...
. As all belief systems ... Pantheism is not an exception ... inevitably is an abstract organization ... with organized and preconceived conclusions, your so-called a priori ideas, that "God is everything ... there is nothing ... whose nature is apart of God's nature" ...
. God cannot be conceived by any religion ... by any ideology ... by any system of thought ...
. God is beyond any philosophical idea about that which is ...
. Yes ... God is that which is ...
. But when you pronounce verbally ... that God is that which is .... and that which is ... is all ... since ever ... Then ... "God is everything" ...
. You´re lying ... Why is it so?
. Because ...
. Truth cannot be said ... and even said ... it turns immediatly to a lie ...
. Truth is beyond any word ... any pronunciation ... Truth is just a crystal mirror ... a crystal lake ... reflecting the moon shape ...
. Your so-called philosophical words about Truth ... are like ... dust clinging in a mirror. They can even express theoretically ... what Truth is ... Still ... Truth will be missed by them ... because Truth is beyond any mind activity ...
. You must live Truth intensly ... You must live Life intensly ... because ... Life is Truth ...
. Tao cannot be expressed verbally ... and even expressed ... it turns into a lie ...
. Tao and God ... are one ... an unity ... an oneness ... that ... must be lived ... while ... one is Alive ...
@180 Proof
Mind-No Mind Equivalency
What it means to me is that god is the universe and the universe is god.
If something comes out of God that is God because he has no parts but is instead a full unity. Pantheism doesn't deny that you can talk to God because all is one divine nature with many persons in it. Communication happens in pantheism even though there is a complete non-duality. I don't see a third position besides duality of creator to creature vs immanent union
In that thread you say Spinoza is not a pantheist, a panentheist, nor a theist. Why are you cutting such distinctions so this? Spinoza did not want to be *called* a pantheist because he would be executed for that. Yet he says all flows from God instead of God popping the world out of nothing. It makes much more sense to simply put all religious thought into the theist camp (dieties separate) and the immanent group on the other side. Occam's razor is a better way to slice it
I've studied Spinoza's writings & correspondances, that's why. As Maimon, Fichte & Hegel explicitly recognized centuries ago, Spinozism is more consistent with acosmism than with pantheism (or panentheism).
Trouble with local church & civil authorities, in part, is why most of his writings were published posthumously. However, Spinoza trusted that the letter to Henry Oldenburg of the Royal Society in London I quoted from would not be published and that his purpose therein was to clarify the ideas and positions which he'd shared with select, clandestine circles of "readers" – in this case in response to a specific question – and not in order to avoid "being called a pantheist" which, btw, is an epithet coined twenty years after Spinoza's death. If Spinoza had feared sharing Giordano Bruno's fate for "heresy" (why would he when he was not a Catholic, Protestant or cleric/professor with "followers"?), then he wouldn't have undertaken such a wide and varied correspondence wherein he'd excerpted many heterodox, even "blasphemous", passages from his unpublished works. Famously cautious, Spinoza had the courage of his convictions, and thereby (unadvisedly perhaps) sought out dialectical engagement with – to test his thought against – some of the best scientific and philosophical minds of his day.
Here is a brief excerpt from SEP:
What if I told you that I'm one with my room and when you enter my room, all you see is the room? Is annexation a (re)unification?
The universe does act/behave logically, reasonably, intelligently - laws of nature that seems to possess the quality of being designed with elegance & simplicity in mind (hallmarks of genius or so I'm told).
This gives me an idea! Reversibility (inverse functions, mathematically speaking). Perhaps we can, if we're smart enough, reverse this process e.g. 1 + 2 = 3, and (backing up) 3 - 2 = 1, dissociate God from the universe as it were. God reborn!
Dunno... Doesn't God, in the pantheisthic world (different from the polytheistic world), become the universe? Thereby continuing their attributes? We are god. Everything is god. When it's all over, god will return home and think back happily about his time as universe!
:lol:
If I were your mum, I would scream to get your ass out of the closet!
:rofl:
:ok: You might find :point: Truth over Pleasure interesting!
Bitter truths & White lies?
Not always, exactly!
You seem to be on top of things! How? :brow:
Some lies are necessary for the greater truth. :wink:
I guess you mean 'God' here.
The problem with that is, that 'God' is then bad restaraunt meals, crooked politicians, terminal diseases, crocodile attacks....you get the drift. It is simply so broad a claim as to be meaningless.
It's another thing to say that everything is a 'manifestation of the divine' or that 'God appears in innumerable forms'. That's also pan-theist but it's not simplistic drivel.
Why are broad claims meaningless?
'Define' means 'limit', as in specify that a word means something particular. Very general words are very hard to define for that reason - they have many meanings (i.e. they're polysemic).
Just saying 'God is everything' really says nothing. You can just shrug and say, 'sure', and carry on. Means nothing, carries no import.
I don't think the OP, which was created three years ago, falls into that. It tries at least to consider the meaning of 'pantheism' from the viewpoint of philosophy of religion. Also the one above your first comment made an effort to distinguish pantheism from panentheism, another significant distinction. But 'God is everything' is just happy-clappy drivel.
I fear you're conflating an explanatory hypothesis with a concept.
Quoting Wayfarer
:clap:
What's that?
:ok: :up:
Quoting Wayfarer
Can you explain the above statement, elaborate it for me please?
So is "too good to be true" theism. :eyes:
Samwise Gamgee loves me too (& his garden). :blush:
Because ... filthy Bagginses took the preciousss! :grimace:
Is it possible that an evil person might freely choose to live in hell after death without being forced to by God if the punishment wasn't everlasting? Performing evil actions on others objectifies not only the victims but also the perpetrators to some extent. Evil violates the qualities of humanness. If heaven and hell are believed to exist then its inhabitants will be much older than the oldest people alive on Earth. Therefore their subconscious will be much wiser and stronger than it was during life. The unconscious minds of evil individuals might hold them to task for their own desires. Free of the symbolism of social status and power hierarchies in our mundane world it might be possible that evil spirits will embrace masochism as much as sadism in a dissociated state of consciousness after death. The notions of heaven and hell have been imprinted on our neurological genetics since the creations of the oldest religions thousands of years ago. Thus even an evil individual might not be able to 100% eradicate their unconscious beliefs in spiritual justice. In other words their own unconscious might retain traces of divine punishment for bad behaviour even if they consciously rebel against it during their earthly life.
"(A) debate is happening between those who believe in an afterlife of torment and those who believe the souls of those who do not enter Heaven will be destroyed."
https://the1a.org/segments/2019-01-08-hell-and-how-we-think-of-it/
To what extent is eternal oblivion less vengeful of a punishment than a temporary stay in hell?
It's possible to distort any worldview which includes pantheism but nonetheless pantheism can offer another antidote to misotheism. Hating God under pantheism would be an equivocation since it'd essentially be equivalent to hating every other person along with yourself. In a pantheistic framework a misotheist would therefore be closely related to a misanthropist. Misotheism has always been a risk when people feel betrayed by life circumstances. It applies on a collective level too such as how Germany with such a rich Christian history still managed to instigate two world wars. It shows that introducing a personal God into the equation runs the risk of creating a love/hate relationship for those who are uncertain in their faith. A contradiction for any evil people who distort misotheism into misanthropy is that such an "evil God" wouldn't care about the victims. As such committing crimes is never a logical form of revenge against God.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/scientists-test-use-virtual-reality-diagnose-pedophilia
Could a possible God know whether we've done good or committed evil in our lives? Would the souls of murder victims stand in a holy court as witnesses? Perhaps divine judges wouldn't be constrained by our earthly ideals of remaining innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. How do we know there wouldn't be sting operations to catch out malevolent souls in the afterlife? Sexual lie detectors are the last thing we'd be expecting at the gates of heaven! Pinocchio!
"In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person attempting to commit a crime. A typical sting will have an undercover law enforcement officer, detective, or co-operative member of the public play a role as criminal partner or potential victim and go along with a suspect's actions to gather evidence of the suspect's wrongdoing." Wiki
Sounds like we may be kindred spirits. After high school I evolved away from my theistic upbringing, but I found no plausible reason-for-being in Materialistic science. So, I went through phases : Agnosticism, Deism, PanDeism, and finally PanEnDeism. In the latter, everything is indeed connected, even entangled, as vital parts of a single Whole System, the physical universe, which may be a part of a greater Whole, that some cultures refer to as Brahma or God or Tao.
My philosophical "First Cause" is similar to many nature-god-models (e.g. Gaia ; Deism ; PanDeism), except that its primary role was to create the natural system that we are integral parts of. Hence, our world is not separate from the creator, but is in-&-of G*D (PanEnDeism). I spell it with an asterisk to indicate that this is not an intervening Theistic deity -- like a mechanic repairing things that go wrong. If there is Good & Bad in the creation, it's because the designer had the Potential for both, and because an evolving world could not begin in a perfect state, like the Garden of Eden. Instead, our universe seems to be evolving, in complexity & intelligence, toward some ultimate state. Since I don't know anything about that final goal, I simply label it the "Omega Point". What we experience as Good vs Bad, is simply a zig-zagging heuristic search pattern, equivalent to Hegelian Dialectic.
As you suggested, this creative & destructive Causal Force is what we know in Physics as Energy/Entropy. But the current understanding is that Energy & Matter (mass) are interchangeable. And many pioneering physicists have concluded that even Energy is essentially a form of shape-shifting Information. Which boils down to a mathematical ratio between Something (1) and Nothing (0), or Hot (positive) and Cold (negative). The implication of that equvalence is, as some physicists have concluded : that Reality is essentially Mathematical & Logical, hence Mental. Therefore, Matter emerges from Energy, and Energy emerges from what I call EnFormAction : the creative Potential to become Actual (the power to enform). So, the "ultimate nature" of reality is as an Actual instance of a greater Ideality.
My non-religious philosophical worldview is labeled Enformationism (based on Quantum & Information theory, not on revelation). And the logically necessary First Cause has not revealed its name. So, you can call it whatever you like : "G*D", "Nature"; "Deus" ; The Great Mathematician ; or apropos of the Information theme : the Eternal Programmer. I won't expound on this slightly off-topic theme any more in this post. However, if you have questions, I have answers -- but no credentials and no authority. :nerd:
PanEnDeism :
[i]Panendeism is an ontological position that explores the interrelationship between God (The Cosmic Mind) and the known attributes of the universe. Combining aspects of Panentheism and Deism, Panendeism proposes an idea of God that both embodies the universe and is transcendent of its observable physical properties.
https://panendeism.org/faq-and-questions/
1. Note : PED is distinguished from general Deism, by its more specific notion of the G*D/Creation relationship; and from PanDeism by its understanding of G*D as supernatural creator rather than the emergent soul of Nature. Enformationism is a Panendeistic worldview.[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019AIPA....9i5206V/abstract
Forget Space-Time: Information May Create the Cosmos :
A new candidate is "information," which some scientists claim is the foundation of reality. The late distinguished physicist John Archibald Wheeler characterized the idea as "It from bit" — "it" referring to all the stuff of the universe and "bit" meaning information.
https://www.space.com/29477-did-information-create-the-cosmos.html
Besides "woo-of-the-gaps", Pandeus also works for me.
Plus, what motivates such a standpoint? Why retain the word "god" and do away with everything else that previously defined him/her? Isn't that like taking a bag of toys and emptying it, then filling it with guns? The word "god" then is merely being used for effect. Bad Spinoza! Bad!
We must resurrect Wittgenstein! :snicker:
Poo-Poo of Woo-Woo, also works for you, as a Pan-put-down. One answer for all philosophical conjectures beyond the self-imposed limits of Materialism. The job of philosophy, though, is to fill the gaps in our understanding, with reasoning, where observation is impossible. :joke:
I won't comment on Pantheism. But in PanEnDeism, the difference between God & Thing is the distinction between Whole & Part, between Creator & Creature. It's the difference that makes all the difference in meaning.
"God", "Brahma", "Tao" are indeed placeholders --- labels (X the unknown) for an enigmatic Cause with obvious Effects. Even pragmatic scientists, especially in Quantum Physics, commonly give metaphorical labels to unidentified causes of effects observed in their experiments. For example, the counter-intuitive wave-like behavior of quantum particles was defined mathematically, and was labeled as a "waveform". But, the implicit fluid field in which the energy was waving was unknown & undefined. Some researchers desperately resurrected the old discredited notion of "Aether". Yet, there is no physical evidence to support the hypothesis of an invisible intangible fluid in empty space. So, the term is, like "Dark Matter", a placeholder for an unknown cause of known effects.
Likewise, some modern philosophers, and cosmologists, have resurrected the ancient term "God" to serve as a proxy for the logically necessary First Cause of our universe, that was once belittled as a "Big Bang" in empty space. Even the term "singularity" merely served as a stand-in for knowledge, since it literally means "the undefined line between space-time and infinity-eternity". The word sounds like it's pointing to something unique, but that something is on the other side of the space-time boundary, where our senses cannot go.
So, what's wrong with using a well-known word for something imaginable, but un-knowable? One thing that's wrong with it, is the harsh prejudice associated with it. Which is why most of us try to avoid trigger-words like "n*gger", although we all know that it literally refers to a dark color, but metaphorically implies a host of aspersions. Consequently, when I use the "G" word in a philosophical sense, I spell it G*D, to mitigate its baggage : the derogatory political preconceptions of the unknowable referent.
Spinoza used the word "God", but equated it with "Nature". Apparently, he did so in view of its emotional effect on his Jewish & Christian readers. Of course, they were enraged. But philosophical PanEnDeists wouldn't have a problem with that equation, because they interpret its meaning in a different context from the "holy scriptures". :smile:
Aether :
In physics, aether theories propose the existence of a medium, a space-filling substance or field as a transmission medium . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories
Note -- what physicists call the "Quantum Field" is the mysterious Aether by another name.
Tao Te Ching :
[i]The Tao that can be known is not [the eternal] Tao.
The substance of the World is only a name for Tao.
Tao is all that exists and may exist;
The World is only a map of what exists and may exist[/i]
https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/services/dropoff/china_civ_temp/week03/pdfs/select4.pdf
God and the New Physics :
[i]Science is now on the verge of answering our most profound questions about the nature of existence. Here Paul Davies explains how the far-reaching discoveries of recent physics are revolutionizing our world and, in particular, throwing light on many of the questions formerly posed by religion, such as:
Why is there a universe?
Where did we come from?
What is life?
How is the world organized?[/i]
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/134/13406/god-and-the-new-physics/9780140134629.html
Strawman, non sequitur. Yeah, I know you can't help yourself, G (because conceptual incoherence is your superpower!) :sweat:
This [math]\uparrow[/math] is the million dollar question!
HOW (science) is an anagram of WHO (religion).
:smirk:
An oldie but still a goodie, Smith :point:
So "why does the universe exist?" is a nonsensical question to you. What if I say that the question only seeks an explanation and that doesn't necessarily involve a creator deity as described by religions?
:fire:
Why :snicker: do we attribute intentionality to things? Is there a known psychological concept that explains our proclivity to at all times include what is essentially a conspirator [god(s), spirits, etc.] in our explanatory hypotheses? I can think of two: paranoia & pronoia. People back then, during the times of proto-religion and religion proper, were scared to bits I suppose. Someone's out to get us/me! :fear:
Nice! You mean to say religion is infantile, a case of arrested (mental) development! What puzzles me is this: adults don't believe in Santa Claus, that he lives in the north pole, that he has flying reindeer, and that he visits all the children on Earth on Christmas, and yet God, they cling to even till dotage and at death.
There's a pattern I sense in theism in the modern world:
Childhood (ignorance/theism) [math]\to[/math] Adulthood (knowledge/atheism) [math]\to[/math] Old age (fear/theism). It's the god sandwich/burger (theism on top and below, atheism betwixt).
Actually, there is not much money to be made in asking "why" questions. That's a philosophical query, and Philosophy is traditionally a low-income profession. If you want to make money, figure-out "how" a system works, and patent the process. On the other hand, some have figured-out "how" to convince others that they know "why" the world exists. But their money-making answer is typically not a simple mechanical (scientific) or logical (philosophical) concept, but an emotional (religious) myth, which has ME in a key role. By revealing the mysterious "who" of creation, they make their answer personal and meaningful. "Why" is a child-like question, and is often answered with "because . . .", or with assurances that the ultimate solution to the mystery will be revealed only to the Faithful.
Unfortunately, the Enformationism answer to the "why" question is logical, but impersonal. It's not final, but suggestive, and plausible. Like physicist/cosmologist Paul Davies' "who", of God and the New Physics, my Enformer is a postulated abstraction -- similar to Plato's LOGOS -- with no specifically human qualities, such as an emotional attachment to particular persons, populations, or polity. So, it only pushes the "why" question one step farther than the Big Bang, to propose a certain kind of First Cause that lit the fuse of that primordial event. From the Information perspective, there does seem to be Intention behind Evolution. But the Final Cause (the goal, the purpose, the "why") is not apparent to observers in the midst of evolving toward some future Omega Point.
The only revelation of the Enformer is the logical structure of the World itself. From which we gather clues, by empirical examination, or by philosophical Induction into theory. And the "new physics", that Davies refers to, is the Quantum infrastructure that undermined our old classical views of reality. "They learned to approach their subject in totally unexpected and novel ways that seemed to turn commonsense on its head and find closer accord with mysticism than materialism." Enformationism is one of those novel ways of looking at the world, and begins at the Information foundation, to construct a model that accords Mysticism with Materialism. :nerd:
"I want to know how God created this world." ___Albert Einstein
Aristotle's Four Causes :
End or Purpose: a final cause is that for the sake of which [purpose] a thing is changing.
https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/4270_Aristotelian_Causes.html
Induction is a specific form of reasoning in which the premises of an argument support a conclusion, but do not ensure it
God & The New Physics :
"There are many mysteries about the natural world that would be readily explained by postulating a natural Deity."
Note -- his "deity" is natural in the sense of being embodied in the world as the informational structure of reality.
" . . . a fascinating look at the impact of science on what were formerly religious issues."
Back Cover
Just curious,
1. How do you connect information to BothAnd?
2. What's the significance of Quantum mysticism in re EnFormaction?
1. The path to that connection is a long story. And it's best understood by following the logic of the original thesis, as described in the Enformationism website. Basically, the concept for that thesis began from the sudden insight that Quantum & Information theories are "connected" at the root. I trace it back to reading an article about measuring Quantum particles, in which the physicist exclaimed "it's all [only] information". [my bracket] By that he meant, I assume, that we never know the particle as a ding an sich, but only extracted (abstract) information about the particle that is embedded & entangled in a larger system. "Aboutness" is an Information-theoretic concept.
2. The connection between Enformationism and Mysticism is the concept of Holism, as discussed in the Quantum Measurement thread (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/705340). Most Spiritual traditions include some notion that we are all "entangled" in a Greater Whole. Some call it "God", but I prefer to use the less baggage-laden, and more philosophical concept of LOGOS. From a holistic-mystical perspective, you can imagine EnFormAction as the Will-of-God (Holy Spirit) flowing through the world, and causing meta-physical change. Or, from a reductive-scientific angle, you can imagine EFA as Energy flowing through the material world, and causing physical changes. Take your pick -- or just accept it as BothAnd. :cool:
Enformationism :
http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/
https://www.wired.com/2002/12/holytech/ :smirk:
which, of course, doesn't mean it is (they are) vacuous or nonsensical, just without much merit as thought-experiments (i.e. research programs ~ Lakatos) in either physics or metaphysics. What I think Gnomon's "Enformationism" attempts to get at has been much more coherently formulated in Max Tegmark's computable universe hypothesis (CUH) re: Church–Turing–Deutsch principle.
That's OK. The one-eyed man fails to see in perspective, but gets by with a 2D image of the world. On this forum, we don't discriminate against the handicapped.
Digital Physics is a non-trivial hypothesis for those, like Fredkin, who view the world in terms of abstract mathematical forms. But most of us non-geniuses need a little more flesh on the bones, in order to see the beauty of the world.
If natural beauty is woo, I say "woo woo" to you too Boo Boo. But do you really want to continue that childish tongue-sticking & ear wagging on a mature-rated philosophical forum? :joke:
Digital physics suggests that there exists, at least in principle, a program for a universal computer that computes the evolution of the universe. The computer could be, for example, a huge cellular automaton.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics
What does woo woo mean? :
Noun. woo woo (slang, derogatory) A person readily accepting supernatural, paranormal, occult, or pseudoscientific phenomena, or emotion-based beliefs and explanations.
DO YOU SEE THE NON-TRIVIAL DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN FLESH & BONES ??
WOO WOO !!!
JUVENILE PHILOSOPHY (woo free)
Wolfram (creator of Mathematica) attempted to convince the scientific community that cellular automata were at the heart of virtually everything physical. He failed.
I don't know if Fredkin & Wolfram took their proposals of a Computer Universe literally, but the obvious determinism of the Cellular Automata notion may have suggested that the dynamic life-like-behavior & evolution-by-rule-based-selection of matrix-array computer algorithms could serve as a theoretical model for how the universe could work as an inter-active mathematical structure. Other mathematical geniuses have proposed the similar idea of a Mathematical Universe (relational reality) that processes its own internal Information in a logical manner. Even Pythagoras seemed to have a similar worldview 2500 years ago. So, perhaps there is some substance to the idea that mathematical (geometric) logic is at work on the (quantum??) foundation of reality, to produce the classical physical objects that we encounter on the human-macro-scale of reality.*1
Unfortunately for those visionary math geniuses, most scientists are pragmatists, and "radical Platonism" does not compute in their worldview. Moreover, any Theory of Everything is difficult to prove via the typical reductive methods of empirical science. Nevertheless, the "Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics" in describing & predicting physical objects and processes is suggestive that logical structure may be at the root of Reality. So, I wouldn't worry that such an abstract Platonic worldview has failed to get traction in a concrete non-Platonic profession. :smile:
Cellular automata :
Their characteristic patterns appear faster than in other computing models and are shown visually in a compact manner as a result of their synchronous nature making them suitable to be studied both quantitatively and qualitatively, and also to be compared to physical and natural phenomena.
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Cellular_automata
The mathematical universe hypothesis :
I was quite fascinated by all these mathematical clues back in grad school. One Berkeley evening in 1990, while my friend Bill Poirier and I were sitting around speculating about the ultimate nature of reality, I suddenly had an idea for what it all meant: that our reality isn't just described by mathematics – it is mathematics, in a very specific sense. Not just aspects of it, but all of it, including you.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-universe-made-of-math-excerpt/
*1 The Schrodinger equation describes the geometry of the oceanic phase/form of quantum "particles".
A geometric interpretation of Schrödinger’s wave equation
https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0202v1.pdf
A Bug's Life Clip: Scene of the secret base of the grasshoppers
I believe the word 'omnipotent' to be too problematic already. Since if someone or something is claimed to be omnipotent, people tend to counter the claim with examples like "So he/she/it can do something that cannot be done" or a similar contradictio in terminis. though obviously the religious traditions never intended this to be the case when using the word. Mostly they mean with omnimpotent more potent than what a single human being could do on his own.
It is all about hope. This is why religious traditions have always intended to create a “super” (or even “titanic”) figure. To pursue their credibility through fear rather than knowledge
Quoting Tomseltje
:100: :clap:
In physics there is a perennial debate between the quantum mechanics of atoms and the gravity of planets. The two best theories don't interact well with each other in trying to discover quantum gravity. The same could also be said between science and religion. Our two best theories of reality are struggling to reconcile and create religious science. Radical theories are often speculated for quantum gravity given the intensity of the problem. Likewise far out ideas like Pantheism or Deism might help combine science and religion that bit better.
This reminds me of those time travelling questions about the ethics of killing baby Hitler. It seems like a gruesome question because all babies are born with a speckle of the divine but it's clear that Hitler rejected his capacity to do good. All I can say is if he isn't in hell then he'll suffer karma to the highest extent.
"I'm not interested in sodomy and buggery, I am not interested, so forget about it... Under the cloak of caring, you have designated homosexuality to be a vicious, perverted disease."
- Peter Fry
I support the LGBT community and am very libertarian in my outlook towards the personal relationships of others. I'd support gay adoption rights and the whole shebang. Nonetheless I'm also somewhat of a pragmatist when it comes to international affairs. If conservatively religious countries have not yet embraced the LGBT movement then I view it as unlikely that they'd change their stance within the next two or three decades. After all the first Pride Parade was over 50 years ago and yet homosexual welfare has actually declined in certain countries. A possible compromise in extremely strict countries might be allowing public displays of affection like holding hands, hugging and kissing but banning cohabitation. This way there'd be no way homophobic people could distort homosexuality into an obsession about sodomy. Needless to say I wouldn't agree with such a ban but it may be the lesser of two evils when we consider the horrific death penalties that have occurred in countries like Iran.
[quote=Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz]Minds are little gods[/quote]
God has been attributed with omnipresence - that feels like a good place to start arguing for pantheism.
Quoting 180 Proof
which paraphrases Epicurus' observation about death: when we are, "God" is not; when "God" is, we are not. :fire:
Re: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandeism.
Hitler didn't exist! It is ~? for such a person to exist at all. Similarly Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were/are all fictional characters, invented, not real! A malus deus is a contradictio in terminis!
:snicker:
"In response to those who consider that the humanitarian relief granted by the governments of Gulf countries is insufficient, they have defended themselves by showing that a considerable amount of financial aid is granted to the Syrian refugees through NGOs and donations from the United Nations. Since 2011, these countries have supplied them with 900 million dollars. A few days ago, a Lebanese newspaper revealed that Saudi Arabia had offered to fund the construction of 200 mosques in Germany to allow the new arrivals from Syria to practice their faith within the country."
https://www.lejournalinternational.fr/Syrian-refugees-why-won-t-the-oil-rich-Gulf-States-take-them-in_a3477.html
You might like "Information and the Nature of Reality," which Davies edited with Niels Henrik Gregson. Good combo of articles on information theoretic approaches from physics, biology (some by Terrance Deacon, who I always appreciate), semantic information/consciousness, and even theology at the end.
It's my late night book for when Floridi's Philosophy of Information stops making sense. That book is good too but very technical. I am regretting getting it instead of his Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Information, which is apparently more accessible.
I never liked these "arguments from psychoanalysis." For one, they can always work both ways. I've seen it that most physicists misinterpret the delayed quantum eraser experiment because they are emotionally invested in free will (which often gets conflated with experimenter free choice in these arguments). Superdeterninism is the logical conclusion and neatly deals with no locality to boot; dissenting opinions are due to emotional immaturity.
But then exactly the opposite charge is made by partisans on the other side. People commited to super determinism, who assume every measurement that would ever be made was specified "just so" during the Big Bang, are the ones who are letting emotion dictate reason. They can't handle non-determinism, and so they look for any conceivable gaps to keep it alive.
With arguments for or against the myriad conceptions of God, I've seen juvenile and mature arguments on both sides, with varying degrees of merit. You can also come up with all sorts of emotional reasons that people want to deny any conception of God and then project that on to athiest arguments as well.
For my money, I think the fact that very accomplished scientists and thinkers, who show every sign of being open minded, can dedicate their lives to this question and still come to different conclusions (or switch sides throughout their lives), should give us pause when looking for simple descriptions.
The ontological "It From Bit," thought experiment fits what you're describing. It's hard to see how observations would differ if it was somehow "true" or if it was merely an artifact of how we interact with the world.
But the larger model is useful when applied to other, more limited thought experiments. The big one I'm aware of is Maxwell's Demon, which haunted physics from 1867, to 1982, when Charles Bennett came up with an answer that made most people happy (lately, this answer has come into question). Here the information theoretic question was essential for determining why the Second Law of Thermodynamics couldn't be violated. Information Theory informs understandings of Leplace's Demon, the entity which knows the exact position and velocity of all particles in the universe, and so can retrodict the past and predict the future. Such an entity turns out to be impossible because information is only exchanged across surfaces, and so the Demon has no way to attain this information, while at the same time, said demon would need an energy equivalent equal to the algorithmic entropy of the entire universe, and thus would presumably have to be close to universe sized to avoid collapsing into a singularity.
But as interesting and useful as It From Bit is, it seems like we should be cautious about thinking we've hit rock bottom. Every time mankind makes a technological leap, we seem to theorize that the universe and our minds are set up like our most advanced technology. For the ancient Greeks, the universe was like stringed instruments and their new geometry. After Newton, the universe was like a great clock. In Maxwell's time, the universe was a great steam engine, and entropy was the primary concept for understanding it. Now we have a universe in the image of a computer, with the caveat that most theorists say the universe is really in the image of a quantum computer, which is still in its infancy, making the comparison fraught. Each of these new ways of thinking hits on certain essential truths, but none has proven complete so far.
I'll admit that I find it hard to see how to reduce things beyond 1 and 0, but intellectual history seems to have plenty of examples of how reality has been winnowed down to 1 and 0, only to be expanded again with new findings, just to collapse into binary again. I won't hold my breath on having hit bedrock this time.
Well, it's intriguing that someone with a dim view of psychoanalysis knows so much about the subject.
Anyway, I've always had problems in re logical vs chronological order in re history. Chronologically, in the most general of terms, religion precedes philosophy, but the possibility remains that religion could be post-philosophy, logically speaking. I hope this isn't tangential to your point.
I have read most of Davies' books. His Information-centric worldview seems to be very similar to my own. And Terrance Deacon has offered a novel way to think of the ding an sich problem. Floridi's book, Philosophy of Information, stuck a little too close to Shannon's narrow mechanical application of "Information" for my taste. I prefer the books that are presaging a broader new paradigm of science & philosophy. :smile:
There are different kinds of evil. Angry violence is one kind and the fake love of perverts is another type. Both are very wrong and exploitative for somewhat distinct reasons. Viewing yourself as actually being another person in real time might be vulnerable to megalomania or fetishising. Yet viewing yourself as being existentially cut off from the other person could also be distorted into perhaps aggression or apathy. So no metaphysical point of view is incorruptible.
The only thing worse than ethnic charity is no charity at all.
"Researchers have identified many things — like unpredictable laughter, pale skin, unkempt hair — that people tend to find unsettling in others. But they’ve also realized this: We humans are pretty poor judges of who we should trust, says psychologist Julia Shaw."
https://ideas.ted.com/what-makes-a-person-creepy-and-what-purpose-do-our-creep-detectors-serve-a-psychologist-explains/
"Stranger danger is the idea or warning that all strangers can potentially be dangerous."
Jesus rejected death with a belief in heaven and in doing so rejected aspects of the physical world. God is often believed to be the creator of the physical world and so Jesus "rebelled" against a segment of God. God is defined as omnipotent and so to defy God is to make yourself superhuman. In some sense to believe in one religion is to disbelieve in other religions. If we view all religions to be equally part of God then it's possible to interpret one religion as a misotheist of the others. Although it's far more likely that people's religious affiliations are indepent rather than an active rejection of other beliefs. In other words people can be Christian out of its own merits rather than out of a dislike of other religions. Anyway my point of the comparison is that to tempt evil people into converting to religion, we could emphasize the countercultural aspects of God such as humility. This would appeal to their anti-authoritarian beliefs. Does God have a capacity for self-hatred?!
"Ironically, as the church tried to modernize, the counterculture had a growing interest in the occult, popularizing books and films that paved the way for “The Exorcist.” The film became a social phenomenon, and suddenly priests were being inundated with people demanding exorcisms."
https://theconversation.com/amp/the-catholic-churchs-views-on-exorcism-have-changed-a-religious-studies-scholar-explains-why-182212
This is my first response in this thread so I'm responding to the OP.. Here's an excerpt from an article I'm working on which is relevant to the question.
How may we describe the relation of the universe to an immanent, impersonal God? Two analogies come to mind.
One, imagine light projected onto a movie screen. The light is one, but because of the way it moves on the screen, because of the different colors it shows, we see images of people, places, and things. In some similar sense, the people, places, and things of the world are images of God. In New Theology, we are literally an image of God, in which we live and move and have our being.
The movie analogy portrays an immanent God as the basis of physical objects. But a truly monist view must portray God as the basis of all: physical, emotional, and thought, space and time. So, we turn to another analogy.
In a dream, we create the people, their emotions and thoughts, and the universe in which they live. A person in a dream is a disguised version of our self. Or we might imagine the universe as existing in the mind of God, just as figures do in our dream. (This dream analogy suggests the idea that our impersonal and immanent God is, in some sense, conscious.)
Both analogies portray one reality underlying the universe (i.e., the universe as an image or the universe as dreamt.) Science also has the idea of one reality underlying the universe; for physics has found that as we go deeper, towards center, we go towards unity. An oak chair and oak table are distinct objects, but at the deeper level, they are both oak. At a deeper level, a chair and a cat are both a collection of subatomic particles. Physical objects on Earth are composed of about ten thousand different chemical compounds, which, in turn, are composed of about a hundred elements. Looking deeper, science finds the seventeen particles of the Standard Model, and hopes someday to discover some Grand Unified Theory, a single theory of everything. Science’s world view tends toward monism.
Moreover, science has found that matter is not “dumb” but almost infinitely subtle and complex. Quantum Field theory—the science that searches deepest into the heart of matter—has discovered a dance of energy with “virtual” particles popping in and out of existence at any moment. We look into the heart of matter and find something which, as far as we know, cannot be created or destroyed. If, in fact, the foundation of matter cannot be created or destroyed, we easily reach the conclusion that matter is a manifestation of something which is eternal.
New Theology’s view of the universe resembles science’s view: both have the idea of one reality underlying the universe, forming the universe’s foundation.
It's worth investigating what happens to the properties of theism's god and the universe. How do they interact and what's the end result of this interaction?
God's mind contains everything and is omniscient (also proven by the duality between ontology and epistemology, and God's omnipresence), which means God has no ignorance. Evil is a product of ignorance (as per both Western and Eastern religions), so God never chooses to commit evil.
I think they both interact with the practice of faith and doctrines. At least, these are one of the main basic principles of theism, the pursue of developing the witness of God.
So, the result of this interaction could be the construction of "arguments" which root for God's existence.
Can you elaborate on that.
Sure, I would put an example related to Buddhism.
You already know that there were been different schools around the pursue of Siddhârtha Gautama. I.e Tendai Shû the important Chinese T'ien T'ai School, founded by Chih I in 575 AD.
Tendai became the institutionally and politically dominant form of Japanese Buddhism when Saichô began what later turned into a vast establishment of temples and hermitages (the "Three Pagodas and Sixteen Valleys") on the sacred mountain, Mt. Hiei. Most of the Kamakura schools were essentially spinoffs from Tendai, which emphasized Nirvâ?a in this life, the power of the Lotus Sutra.
But how they put it on practice?
Tendai practice on Mt. Hiei was Lotus Sutra in the morning, Pure Land in the evening. This was vividly formalized by the Abbot Ryôgen in 936, when corresponding adjacent halls for Lotus and Pure Land practice were joined by a covered walkway -- creating a , Japanese Ninaidô, or "carrying hall," (i.e. by analogy to the two buckets at the ends of a carrying pole).
This duality is expressed in the saying Asa Daimoku, Yû Nembutsu. "Morning Daimoku/Evening Nembutsu."
We deal with the pursuit of equilibrium in our minds. Fulled by those products of union.
That's a sensible thing to do, but would depend, at least in part if not wholly, for some if not all, on what emerged out of the fusion of God and universe.
Also, some might be of the view that God is the universe, end of story; at no point did God exist separate from the universe and so the former becoming one with the latter is moot.
Both end and beginning of the story :sparkle:
:ok:
Pan-a-theism: The assumption that everything – nature – is godless; therefore, inviolable (i.e. sacred).
:fire: :eyes:
What do you make of the comedians' stance that for there to be peace & freedom, they should be allowed to ridicule anything and everything, that there can be no sacred cows in the modern world (re Islam and the unpleasantess vis-à-vis cartoonists and writers)?
Question: Is everything funny? If there's such a thing as black humor (one can make a joke about children dying of starvation and disease) and there is, a fortiori, everything is ridiculous. Democritus, the laughing philosopher, it seems, knew that and that's 2.5k years ago.
The difference being ... ?
Paradoxical laughter, a condition seen in some psychoses - it ain't funny and that's why it is? :chin:
Paradoxical crying, you see this in beauty pageants & Heraclitus' was known as the weeping philosopher - it ain't sad and that's why it is? :chin:
https://catholicsbible.com/how-do-catholics-get-to-heaven/
One possible way to think of the theory of divine judgement is that God can reject you and that you can reject God. As such using faith alone as a criterion for entry might remove free will on behalf of the deceased soul. If the "residents" of heaven still have a small amount of free without their earthly body then perhaps the people who are judged still have a residual level of free will to atone for a lack of prior faith. Yet I don't think that faith during your earthly life would be irrelevant either. For example if you go to an opera concert on a one-off basis you can enjoy some of the complex musical patterns for a little while before becoming exhausted. Although if you're an opera fan who goes to concerts every week then it makes sense that your superior experience would allow you to better understand the classical rhythms and get more pleasure in each individual concert. Likewise if you'd more faith in your ordinary life it might give you more stamina to appreciate and prolong heaven once you were to reach the afterlife. What one forgets about reincarnation is that is that you might still get to go to heaven again after you die in your next earthly life.
"Like Islam and Judaism or any other tradition, there is a faith requirement towards God.
However, works are not required for salvation.
The Bible says people are saved by grace through their faith. People are not saved by their works, which would give them reason to have confidence in themselves.
Salvation by faith is only logical. God can do everything we can and more.
What can we do that is good enough to impress him? Our actions aren't going to change his mind.
The Bible also says works are a by-product of faith. If faith exists, then actions follow out of love for God."
https://www.redandblack.com/opinion/faith-not-deeds-gets-you-to-heaven/article_8c869e05-b236-532e-bba5-060f5c798df4.html
Did Harry S. Truman (a President of a Christian country) fear God when he ordered dropping atomic bombs on Japan?
:up:
:chin:
"God never, never sends, never will send anyone to hell unjustly. No one will ever be in hell who does not deserve to be there. And this fact that they deserve to be there will be open and plain in all the universe in that day."
https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/does-god-predestine-people-to-hell
"Around 6,200 years ago, a group of at least 41 men, women, and children were brutally murdered before being dumped in a mass grave in what is now eastern Croatia."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/dna-study-ancient-massacre-victims-raises-more-questions-answers
Perhaps God could never endorse a lesser evil in case God were to become biased and divide all of His other followers. So perhaps any lesser evil being pursued is done at their own risk of hell where hell could be truly self-sacrificing to deflect blame away from God:
Well, since "God" is infinite, the meaning of "life and death" must be infinitesmal, or zero, by comparison. It stands to reason that whether or not one "believes" amounts to the same objective "meaninglessness".
God never revealed himself to ancient people in a traditional, prophetic way. The irony of Russel Crowe's character that sadly got enslaved is that he himself initially fought for an army which brutally conquered people:
https://depositphotos.com/12114574/stock-photo-brussels-june-22-crucifixion-on.html
Even if religious people were to believe in hell then there'd really have to be safeguards against an abuse of power. For example if an evil soul were confined to a jail cell in hell then they'd probably need a back-up option of "quantum suicide". This would prevent an overthrow of personal freedom if the evil soul were subject to endless persecution.
A different kinda argument - an old trick in the book, but still quite effective.
"Hozier criticises the Christian idea that babies are born with original sin and must be cleansed of this through a baptism ritual to which they haven't consented."
https://www.joe.ie/movies-tv/watch-hozier-criticises-baptism-and-the-catholic-church-in-meaning-of-life-with-gay-byrne-trailer-512833
For example if there's such commotion about the inability of women to become priests then why not make mass from nuns in a convent just as ritualistic for the laity as a mass at a priestly church?
"Deacons may proclaim and preach the word of God and distribute Holy Communion that was consecrated at a Mass previously. A religious sister, brother, or nun may also lead a celebration outside of Mass and also distribute Holy Communion consecrated at another Mass."
https://zippyfacts.com/can-deacons-or-nuns-say-mass-when-there-is-no-priest/
"Leave Jesus alone? Don't cry! We've all got imaginary friends; I've just grown out of mine."
(2:20) " The Supreme Being? What? Are we living in Star Wars?... Lord? Is it Lord of the Rings? The language is so weird."
Quoting Michael McMahon
Explain.
What if I do not pray to Jesus? Am I a deluded patient too?
Well let's imagine that Jesus somehow hallucinated both speaking to "God the Father" and resisting the devil. The mere fact that other people wholeheartedly endorsed Him meant that He must have been more confident in identifying such "hallucinations". This meant that He may have literally created an entire world of His own by cementing His "dreams". For example we can see how complex Middle Earth is from JRR Tolkien and the author didn't even have anyone praying to him!
I don't see it as a "cause and effect" argument. I mean, it seems that you see it as fact that God does exist because Jesus (the prophet) has a lot of believers who follow his "idea" of God's existence. So, according to your arguments, the cause is the confidence of Jesus and the cause all the believers of God in the world.
But you are missing an important point: faith. Believe or not believe in God depends on faith. It is not necessary to explain why Jesus has a lot of unconditional followers/believers. Those persons follow both Jesus and God because they just believe in them. I am not sure if they put reasonable arguments to explain why they "follow" such doctrines.
Quoting Michael McMahon
I don't understand this example but I must admit it made me laugh :rofl:
There are many atheists in Asia but if we went centuries back in time we could say that they were all descended from meditative beliefs like Buddhism in China. I don't say that as a fact but merely as an interpretation. So no matter how much you or your society reject God, you are still influenced by the genes of religious ancestors. There simply were no materialists before the dawn of science. "Survival of the fittest" in previous millenia meant you'd to be religious or transcendent in some sense because that was the culture you were born into. So in a purely speculative way an impression of an afterlife could be internalised through genes. Would you put yourself in heaven if you could externally assess your past life once you had died? After all the genetics of a species takes a very long time to change. Such far-fetched ideas might help if you're trying to reconcile solipsistic pantheism, transcendent religion and non-conscious science all into one theory! If your mind expanded after you died, would you be able to excuse your past crimes as "work"?!
Disagree. Being religious is not inherited in our DNA. It is a way of life chosen by some believers. Despite there are millions of persons who believe in God, there are also an important community of atheists. So, it is impossible that my genes are influenced by religious affairs. What about the families who are raised by agnostic parents and randomly their child ends up being Christian? That's would be interesting but it could show that religion is a choice and it is not a natural behaviour.
Quoting Michael McMahon
Yes, why not? I am not scared of being judged by "heaven"
Quoting Michael McMahon
What do you consider as "past crimes"? Are you taking about sins or what?
So how do you account for 'the magical thinking stage of early childhood development' that begins prior to using language? Vestiges of this formative emotional cognitive stage last through most of childhood and are usually only limited – but never eliminated – by disiciplined literacy and numeracy as well as cosmopolitan socialization. Magical thinking – natural, visible 'effects caused by' supernatural, invisible agencies – drives religiousity, no? 'Homo religiosi' might be an overstatement, but not by very much ...
Drives to religiousity? I think no. Whenever someone experiences a superstition they tend to attach it to religion because they were taught a religious education, so that's the only manner to explain the "unknown" for those.
Imagine being born and raised by atheist family. It would be impossible to be superstitious and if "Magical thinking" ever happens it would be explained as a oneiric trip, but not related to "God" and "Bible" and such doctrinal stuff.
The OP said that we cannot deny the religiousity of our ancestors. That's a fallacy. Religion has not existed forever or everywhere.
Cite a culture or society of any antiquity that completely lacks religious iconography or rites (i.e. storytelling aka "myths"). :chin:
The oldest known human burial site, discovered in Kenya, is about 78,000 years old. Our ancestors buried their dead so that their "ghosts" may rest (i.e. stop appearing in "dreams"?) Every extant human group in the archealogical record had burial rites of great antiquity. The oldest building dedicated to religious worship, Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, is over 12,000 years old and the Australian Aborigine have been enacting the Dreamtime for an even longer time. Long long before there was 'modern socialization', my friend, where people were "educated in the religion of their parents", religions – arbitrary cults of shared confusions & cathartic fantasies – had been legion and proliferated. The evidence of indigenous religiousity is as ubiquitous as culture itself (the root of which is the word "cult").
I am thinking about Vascones, as a pre-Roman tribe. I have read an interesting paper called: some considerations on the christianization of Vascones. But you are right, even in Iberian groups there were some kind of "myths" around.
But that's far from Christianity or God. I would call those practices as pure rites.
One way to understand pantheism in the context of Christianity would be to think what would happen if you mixed Buddhism with Christianity. What would happen if we meditated to Jesus instead of praying to Jesus? If we wanted to understand panentheistic Christianity then perhaps we could view the religion in light of its Jewish ancestry. Christianity and Islam differ quite a lot when it comes to the afterlife. Yet it's possible to compare the two culturally when it comes to earthly life. So how would we feel if Christianity were like a social bond between the individual and the community? It might be easier to understand the trinity in Christianity if we were to contrast it with the different versions of Hindu's God.
"Multiple religious belonging, also known as double belonging, refers to the idea that individuals can belong to more than one religious tradition. While this is often seen as a common reality in regions such as Asia with its many religions, religious scholars have begun to discuss multiple religion belonging with respect to religious traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."
"According to Bahá?í teachings, religion is revealed in an orderly and progressive way by a single God through Manifestations of God, who are the founders of major world religions throughout history; Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad are noted as the most recent of these before the Báb and Bahá?u'lláh. Bahá?ís regard the world's major religions as fundamentally unified in purpose, though varied in social practices and interpretations. The Bahá?í Faith stresses the unity of all people, explicitly rejecting racism, sexism, and nationalism. At the heart of Bahá?í teachings is the goal of a unified world order that ensures the prosperity of all nations, races, creeds, and classes."
What's the real difference? I have checked a quick research on the distinction between "meditation" and "praying" and I found out: The difference between prayer and meditation lies in the internal intentions of the person. Meditation is an exercise in practicing awareness performed to achieve a stillness or inner peace, and a separation of one’s identity from their thoughts. Prayer is usually an internal plea to a being or deity that absolves someone of the ill feelings regarding their current circumstances.
The definition is ambiguous indeed. But what I reach as conclusion is that meditation cannot be connected with Jesus because with the act of meditation we are separating ourselves from any kind of identity.
So, we can only "pray" to Jesus not meditate about him.
That's true from a purist perspective on Christianity. Yet what if there was an atheist who didn't really want an afterlife but still found peace in certain Christian doctrines? Are they allowed to meditate to Christianity? It's better than nothing!
If I don't want an afterlife, then I don't find anything at all. It is contradictory. A real atheist would not find "peace" in Christianity (or other dogmas) because he already accepted the emptiness of afterlife.
So an atheist doesn't just lack a belief, a real atheist also lacks certain emotional responses to death and has a specific attitude?
And the people who lack a belief in god or believe there is no God, but are terrifed of death, they aren't real atheists?
It is not correlated. You are speaking about death but I was referring of what happens afterwards. An atheist would not have fear about the emptiness because he doesn’t believe in anything or the existence of a “heaven” or “hell”
Fear depends on each individual. I respect those who are fear about no longer keep living for whatever reasons when death is approaching to them. Despite is an opened debate about how we should "handle" our last moments, I still think religion is not the answer. As you explained in your post, it helps for some people because it calms their anxiety down.
Atheists can be soothed too but with a different attitude. I personally believe that, sooner or later, we would experience a feeling where your own awareness says to you that there is no more time to keep living. Again, this is something complex that only experience all of those whose death is near.
:up: "God" is the ur-placebo or cosmic lollipop.
Besides, "fear of death" isn't the problem, as I see it, but rather the lack of courage to live in spite of ... imminent annihilation. Whether or not one believes in a god, cowardice is sin against oneself, and many, maybe most, are damned to remain cowards their entire lives.
[quote=Henry David Thoreau]The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.[/quote]
:up: :sparkle:
I think Jesus's approach was purely verbal. He offered what was likely sound reason and simulatenously sound ethical principle for what ought to be believed about the universe/reality. This deflated any argument against him which was highly frustrating for any opponent to his views. They were likely left scrambling for an argument either reasonable or ethical to confront him with, as his popularity grew.
Which they could not.
"The pen/spoken is mightier than the sword" so to speak.
Hence why it spread ("spread the word"). As a passivist he didn't condone physical/violent means to an end so any aggression against him only served to bolster his ethical principle. Even if that meant he would be murdered in cold blood just so that others may feel righteous/empowered. The irony being that it was physical proof/demonstration of his principle.
Observers of such a horrid offence against a passivist preaching communication and discourse over brute force would have naturally been dismayed that "Evil" (violence against another human being through none other than pure ego) should win and thus Christianity was born of neccesity to verbally rebel against tendencies towards barbarism to uphold conflicting belief systems, when discourse would offer the same solution without bloodshed.
I think it's exactly this sentiment that lead people to so readily propel and uphold anyone's views which they deem as brave/courageous and at a direct head with malice/evil.
They want to support it because they know its right but their own cowardice prevents them from doing exactly that themselves, as they're afraid, intimidated by evil-doers, so instead they allow those willing to put it all on the line to speak on their behalf, and accordingly try to support them all the while protecting their self interests.
In essence they say "sure, go put yourself on the front line and get yourself killed for beliefs that I agree with, and in return I will revere and commemorate you for your noble acts, from the comfort of my own home/safety. You will be a hero in my eyes as you did what no one else was prepared to do. "
A difficulty with faith is that the mind is partially deterministic such that your subconscious mind forces you to reconcile conflicting beliefs. So religious people who are exposed to a lot of science are often forced to analyse their faith to the same degree of logic. A little problem is that while religion is very intelligent it's self-referential to some extent. Thus faith directly clashes with materialism since the material world is more observable. Religion would almost need to investigate science solely to present religious claims more analytically. Otherwise they'd need to conceptualise the afterlife more vividly in order to sway agnostics.
1. Deism
2. Pandeism
3. Panendeism
3. Panentheism
4. Pantheism
Danke!
You're right spiritual intuition and scientific objective method has opposing methods/dogmas for the collection of empirical evidence to support their claims.
Science states that it must be objectively measured to be considered true while spirituality says truth can be accessed through reasoning and ethics alone without having to have those proven as objective. One says "ill believe it when I see it" while the other says "I see it therefore I believe it".
I think as you say, it would be prudent for spirituality and science to approach one another with more openmindedness and curiosity as they both have flaws in their assumptions about what's the most appropriate way to observe reality.
Afterall both disciplines are interpreting existence/the universe. How then can they not be reconciled with one another? I think it's more about unwillingness to consider the other sides points, value and explanatory powers.
Yes they both explain with different methods but they can both approach the actual Truth (existence/universe) as it actually is without bias and contradictions between selves.
Evil people can have extremely violent mindsets but they often don't blaspheme simply because they're not aware of God. Yet if evil people wanted to have violent self-talk towards God then there's not much that could stop them. In other words the fact that some of them don't blaspheme during their life might be an accident. So if evil people are capable of being forgiven in the afterlife then both deeds and faith would be relevant.
Quite right. I guess it's about awareness isn't it? If one is ignorant or clueless in action can we really blame them for poor outcomes?
For example if a child throws a pebble across a road to see how far they can get it but they didn't factor in possible consequences, like not throwing it far enough or at the right time, and thus hit a car windscreen as it passes by, cracking it and startling the driver, should we give them severe punishment? Ought we think the child is evil?
Of course not. It was an accident but its important to teach them the lesson that it could have been very dangerous. Punishment is then self inflicted by the child through realisation/ consideration of all the consequences of their careless actions with the help of a parent to guide them through the ethical and rational logic.
The child probably feels a bit stupid afterward, embarrassed, ashamed maybe that their rolemodel/parent disapproves of them, or that they could have harmed someone (Road users).
That wisdom for consequences, the ability to think critically comes with time (we hope) hence why if an adult did the same thing the consequences would likely be much harsher. There is the expectation that adults are sensible and not reckless unlike children which are not as educated/experienced.
But is this really true do you think ?
Why stop there? Adults don't know everything. Especially when it comes to the big questions - what is existence, what is actually "real", who ought I believe - the religious? The scientists? Both? Should we care about everyone or just the people we know? Should we be capitalist or socialist or communist, Liberal, Conservative? What about the poor? What about the uneducated? Is that my problem?
Adults are not automatically wise just because of their age. Probably having a lot to do with their own parents parenting skills, as well as the quality of their school education and the simple lack of time for contemplation in the busy working world.
In truth, life is the lesson, the world - our classroom, karma - the teacher, and everyone is a student.
I think to commit "Evil" one must knowingly do something to harm another having full awareness of the consequences.
How we treat our planet is becoming increasingly accepted as something evil/criminal as scientists reveal to us the wisdom of ecology, climate, mother nature and making the connection between our actions and consequences harder and harder to not observe.
We wont be able to turn the other cheek forever and not see a fire or a drought or famine of increasing frequency and intensity and think, I just helped do that when I bought fuel for my car etc. I had a role to play, then the wisdom sets in, and so does the shame and guilt.
For me I don't really see the purpose of an "afterlife." It's just existence. What we are made of fundamentally, isn't going anywhere, it has been there from the beginning and it'll be there at the end. The only thing we have is change (death) and the uncertainty that brings with it.
For me an afterlife suggests that your reward for good behaviour only comes after death and so justifies living in suffering. But good behaviour is rewarded in life. You didn't remember what your substance/form was before you were born and thus you likely won't recall it after your dead so there would be no evidence/no recollection for which to accept a reward and be proud of your deeds.
For the same reason, if the going is good it justifies not helping anyone else because you're enjoying the reward for your past lives, you deserve it and can behave however you like.
So for me life is a superposition of the three classical notions of heaven, hell, and purgatory. Heaven is for those that are fully self aware and lack shame/guilt of that awareness because they do right by others - living in paradise and spreading paradise.
Hell is for those that are fully self aware and choose to be selfish instead, desperately trying to offset their guilt/shame onto others by lying both to themselves and others - blaming them and making it their fault, living in hell and spreading hell.
Purgatory is the simple lack of self awareness, being uneducated and helpless, under the influence of hell raisers and heaven bestowers, not really understanding why bad things or good things happen, or what their role is in it, or how and on what scale karma works.
As I discern these concepts ...
1. Belief that a deity created the world but does not intervene providenrially in its processes or human affairs.
2. Belief that a deity became the world and therefore no longer exists as a deity (maybe until the world ends becoming a deity again).
NB: This one troubles me the least.
3. Belief that the world is not ontologically independent of the deity that created it (no. 1).
4. Belief that the world is not ontologically independent – exists only in the belly or mind – of a deity that created it and intervenes providentially in human affairs.
5. Belief in the divinity of the world which constitutes its active, providential structure (e.g. dao, logos, "arc of the moral universe" ..., etc)
Hey Michael. There have been many gods in the past that had a specific character trait: Chronos/Kronos for example (god of time) - where we get the word chronological from.
Janus (god of motion), Uranus (god of the sky/space), Proteus (god of form/matter) and many more: morpheus (dreams), gaia (god of earth/mother nature), hermes (God of messages) these are mostly Greek gods but of course there have been thousands from all tribes and peoples throughout the ages.
What they have in common is that they are personifications of different perceptions/concepts of reality. Often having an ultimate god ruling them all (the brahman for example).
In that way we can see a sort of dualistic concept of God's based on magnitude/hierarchy. Polytheism as the branches of a universal monotheism, with different focuses placed by different cultures.
I think these were ways to appreciate realities components, with the overriding view that somehow consciousness pervades all things (hence justifying personification of abstracts like time, space, matter etc).
It seems that these people that upheld such beliefs all had the commonality of seeing the "self" in the things around them. That "self" was/is fundamental and has a scope, a spectrum, from the most minute to the largest thing (the universe).
Though I acknowledge this will all be somewhat biased, in hopes of somewhat clarifying this issue philosophically:
Some premises first. If granting the occurrence of Divinity, either:
a) Divinity = Nature (i.e., anything stipulating that Divinity is natural and that Nature is divine)
b) Divinity ? Nature (i.e., anything stipulating any kind of substance dualism between Divinity and Nature)
Pan-theism (all-theism) can then be deemed defined by category (a). If there’s agreement, then:
Polytheistic animism, Hellenism. and Hinduism are just three examples of polytheistic systems in which Nature is identified with Divinity. To my knowledge, all polytheisms are (unless one plays around with words and thereby comes to conclude that a plurality of archangels and lesser angels constitutes a polytheism). If so, then all polytheisms would by default fall into a more generalized category of pantheism (which also includes "naturalistic pantheism" wherein nothing we think of as spiritual occurs, as can be exemplified by Spinoza's philosophy).
This distinction between (a) and (b) can then differentiate between subtly contradictory notions, such as that of the super-natural: If entertained within (a), the supra/super-natural is by definition that aspect of Nature which supersedes the aspects of Nature we experience in everyday life - including both known and unknown natural laws and, here relative to cosmology, deities when they are all interpreted/understood as “non-omni-this-and-that”. If the notion is however entertained within (b), then the supra/super-natural is anything that doesn’t pertain to Nature.
Interrelated with the aforementioned, as one example, Aristotle’s notion of a first (teleological) cause can easily enough be argued to itself be fully part of Nature at large in Aristotle's worldview; whereas, to most, the Abrahamic God, as the first (efficient) cause of all that is, is not deemed in any way a part of Nature or the natural world.
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But then, to unfortunately make things complex again for the sake of an honest appraisal, to my knowledge neither “divinity” nor “nature” has any precise definition that is beyond question. So, when granting the reality of divinity, the distinction between (a) and (b) might simply be a matter of looking at the same thing from discordant perspectives.
As one example pertinent to Hinduism, Brahman can be understood to be beyond space and time and, hence, can be seen as being beyond Nature; i.e., can be understood as transcendent relative to Nature. On the other hand - since, for example, Brahman is taken to be the material, efficient, formal, and final cause of all that is - all reality/Nature could be understood as the manifestations of an imminent, rather than the creation of a transcendent, Brahman. This would thereby make Nature an aspect of - rather than that which stand in opposition to - Divinity. Point being, here both categories (a) and (b) could be argued for Brahman depending on perspectives taken - and this without changing the essential properties ascribed to the metaphysical concept of Brahman.
I think an accurate religion would satisfy all walks of life, at all ages. Teenagers are at the pinnacle of uncertainty and thus questioning, as they grapple with both expectation and demands for conformity (adulthood) and previous idealism (childhood).
This leads to a conflict not only between what they once were and what they are expected to become, but internally also. As a transitional state, it is full with doubt and conflict with the self, and this leads to contempt and frustration. Usually pitted against family.
But adults do not have all the answers, while childhood does not require answers in the first place. The change between the two is arguable in most need of spiritual support but at the same time is the most difficult stage to apply such support.
So teenagers are in essence excluded by current religions as children accept religion blindly as do the elderly when faced with impending death and uncertainty.
One way to view a prophet like Jesus or Buddha is that they were democratically elected as God. For example early Christians voted for Jesus simply by converting to Christianity. When we view Jesus as a spirit rather than a human then it can be harder to visualise Him because the physical universe is almost incomprehensible. If Jesus was God in the sense of a creator of the natural world then it implies that our understanding of Jesus would have to be expanded exponentially in an afterlife. So calling Jesus the Son of God might be a self-fulfilling prophecy in relation to your own sphere of the world. After all each democracy can vote in a different president much like each major religion espouses a different God. Applying Christian values to a democracy can be challenging when there are simultaneous problems confronting society as a whole. For example it's rewarding to be forgiving individually. Yet when a court gives a suspended sentence it can be tempting to feel aggrieved simply because we often don't trust the government on other issues like poor infrastructure. In other words all judges are doomed to have some conflicts of interests simply by having a residual level of emotionality. Thus we are effectively multitasking in dealing with lots of harms where stress can be compounded.
Indeed. And self fulfilling prophecies do exist as outcomes based on a pure, unchangeable belief. For example if I'm absolutely sure I'm stupid and unable to study for an exam because of this, totally lacking self confidence, then I don't study because what's the point? I know I will fail. And then naturally, I do fail. For lack of study.
So I reinforce my suspicions as they were confirmed by the outcome.
In the same way jesus likely claimed he was god/close to God and this angered people a great deal, and him knowing this would anger/frustrate people, naturally orated the conclusion: saying he would be martyred (crucified) for his resounding belief. And when no one could argue with him because his beliefs were further proven by any action against him, people were ever more frustrated by his existence to the point that they had to get rid of him.
The minute they did of course they fulfilled his prophecy of martyrdom. And instilled the belief that indeed he could, supposedly inhumanly, see the future and was omniscient. He was after death legacied as god incarnate. Because people believed only a benevolent god would identify themselves and teach of themselves, knowing full well it would ultimately lead to their own annihilation and self-proving as god.
Only a true good god would know how they would die and also that it would be in the sole effort to help others. All they need rely on is the existence of people who cannot stand the fact that he had more power than them. Which is most reasonable that it can be taken pretty much as certainty. As the most selfish people do exist.
A selfless sacrifice was the only proof he required to concretise his belief in others. All he needed to do was tell the truth with pure reason and ethics (love for others) backing up his arguments, and simply wait until it be demonstrated through its opposite: delusion, hatred and resentment.
Yes judges are human and thus have failings, they have not considered everything (omniscience). They are flawed just like anyone else. So when pressured to resolve a dilemma (like Jesus - a dilemma embodied), they tend to go with the most conservative decision, which is to assume he is criminal because half the population believes so - the non believers. He can easily be painted as an anarchist trying to disrupt the peace when in fact the sole reason he came to their attention was because good people tend to be oppressed by the violent (non good/intimidating/aggressive) behaviour of nastier people. And that true peace is not the same as silent oppression.
If there is an afterlife my initial guess would be as a shared mental realm where every soul would be dreamy. Some people believe in a more physical version of an afterlife where it'd have perfect schools and homes. I'd never dispute another person's spiritual beliefs seeing as death is scary enough as it already is. Yet I'd personally struggle with a solidified version of heaven seeing as it might require a parallel universe which some may find a bit disorienting.
Yes I agree. I think if there is a true afterlife it is akin to some sort of great unveiling/revelation - a profound and all encompassing dramatic change in perspective, a regression to some fundamental "dreamy" immaterial state that puts ones life into direct relationship/full perspective - all things considered.
I can't pretend to know for certainty of the existence of an afterlife nor what it might be like, but what I do know for sure is the systems that constructed us (the laws, principles and rules) that birthed life in a seemingly dead universe will continue to prevail.
And that fundamentally, our matter - our substance, as well as the energy contained in its order and self regulation as a strictly controlled hierarchy of balances and interactions, the state that gives rise to living, breathing sentience, will continue, as it is a natural innate part of existence in the universe.
So I don't think all is lost when we die. We just change beyond the scope of comprehension of the living. Our individual identity is lost perhaps, but whatever collective identity that underlies it will be unperturbed, we continue to have our pieces ever involved in the cycles of the ecosystem, recycled, exchanged, renewed in many forms and varying levels of life and awareness.
When one dies, their personhood, their memories, rot away, are unlearned, decay, leaving whatever fundamental truth behind to continue in our personal identities absence.
Our essence, is the universe. We are as much part of it as a star, as a planet, as a galaxy, as the hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen that composes our living bodies as well as everything else: water, gases, rock, diamond.
When we die, we are still the universe, within the system , we have not exited it. We are here. But by what exact definition, what identity, we are here im not sure exactly.
We are just no longer static (a defined, stable, consistent living thing with identity), we are instead a rapidly transfiguring essence.
Most people these days probably woudn't consider being dragged by a horse-drawn chariot along a tranquil Mediterranean beach to be a shameful funeral. After all you'd already be dead where the alternatives are to be naturally decomposed or artificially cremated! The irony is the more painful the death the greater the martyrdom!
Achilles' preface: "There are no pacts between lions and men... You won't have eyes tonight. You won't have ears nor a tongue. You will wonder the afterlife blind, deaf and dumb and all the dead will know this is Hector; the fool who thought he killed Achilles."
:up: :sparkle:
You are approaching to Bushid?.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Louis_XIV
Furthermore you must leave some of the militant women alive with a word of consolation:
Afterwards your soul would disappear in evil to the next life where you too would have to be killed off!
Every race is equal but is separate by hundreds or thousands of years. So if I re-incarnate I don't expect to wake up in Japan but somewhere a bit different from my home country of Ireland for a change. Yet Ireland inter-married for so long with English settlers that the idea we're genetically distinct seems a bit absurd. Truth be told an upper class Irish person who became really evil for a while and then repented may very well concoct a natural English accent! So maybe Christianity works that way where our next life will be unconsciously connected to our previous life somehow.
"Folk religion is the religion of the “folk” — real people struggling with the realities of life. Folk Christianity emphasizes the experiences of Christian folk as they seek to connect their religious experience, as expressed in the Bible and the church, to the reality of their lives. In the process, people tend to rely on their understanding of who God is and what God can do for them. This produces an appreciation of the practical effects of what Christianity claims to be on the one hand (formal/institutional religion), and personal experience on the other (informal/personalized religion)." Wiley
No wonder medieval England didn't like the Celtic strand of Catholicism:
If Christianity ever had to compete against radical polytheism and panentheism then Christians could imbue far more importance into humongous statues of Jesus much like the Egyptian temples!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_Redeemer_(statue)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_King_(Almada)
https://www.worldhistory.org/Abu_Simbel/
"While Protestants and Catholics could agree that constructing religious statues has biblical precedent, the issue of bowing down before statues of kissing them still remains – isn’t this a form of idolatry?
Catholics hold that such acts are in no way akin to worship; kneeling down while holding a Bible doesn’t mean that one is worshipping it. In reality all of these religious images are used as theological devices to improve one’s spiritual life.
Faithful do not pray to statues, but use them as aesthetic tools to better pray to God. Any sacred art can help us venerate the saints and motivate us to ask for intercessory prayers."
https://www.irishcatholic.com/do-catholics-worship-statues/
For all my talk about the risk of cynical post-dated apologies for evil grace periods it's still much harder to beat pre-emptive forgiveness before the crime was even carried out! Perhaps each of our divine judgements in the afterlife has been pre-prepared by deterministic faith systems! After all if we're not fully self-aware in a dreamy afterlife then the judges wouldn't possess as much free will as they once had! An atheist might ironically end up knowing more of Christian theology for their critique than a few lay faith-based Christians! Perhaps pantheism could serve the role of devil's advocate! Good people often joke about evil sins in a way that evil people never joke about being kind. For example we watch so many movies where good people have to contend with evil themes even though the film crew could have made a movie with moral behaviour only. Perhaps good people must always strive to be more independent in how they do good rather than comparing each of themselves as good relative to the low standard of evil people. How industrious would we be in a world with good people only where capitalism didn't even need amoral and immoral people? Let's imagine the most hateful of Richard Dawkin's criticisms of religion as them being deluded. Then the mere act of consenting to another's delusion is actually charitable! In fact viewing the delusion as being evil now creates a perverted bond which can actually be caring to fellow members of the faith! In other words a group of friends often have a shared emotional trait as a common denominator. Thus all criticisms of religion forgets that morality can be paradoxical relative to an uncaring universe. Evil criminals never think through their crimes inter-generationally where they don't want to end up back in Ancient Rome. Even Hitler never considered that his take on Arian physical supremacy neglected that the German Gauls were singled out for destruction by the envious Roman emperor Caesar. Moreover ancient combat was far more athletic in the harshness of close combat as opposed to the convenience of modern day projectile warfare. Thus all evil criminals could be dubbed psychotic and deserving of an insanity defence if we had to be metaphysically pedantic. Evil criminals within a good society don't understand the hedonism of evil war lords are an order of magintude more intense then any evil persona they could mimic. Hence if they fully understood the futility of evil then it's likely they'd never persue it as a worldview even if they didn't empathise with the victims. Society can't afford to re-enact Roman and Mongol conquests just to remind native criminals of how boring evil would be if everyone engaged in it. Yet good people are limited and humble beings and are thus entitled to discipline convicts seeing as no one is as metaphysically pure as God. If being evil can be now viewed as humble relative to the dominance of good societies in the world then good people can also be humble and apathetic about how forgiving we ought to be to evil people! Being humble in a vengeful way is a paradox when Christianity freely inherited the wealth of Ancient Rome by the contradictions of an evil empire without any Cold War being waged against Rome.
'A grace period is a set length of time after the due date during which payment may be made without penalty. A grace period, typically of 15 days, is commonly included in mortgage loan and insurance contracts.' investopedia
Just how much abuse can Christianity take by a Christian while remaining Christian? Perhaps we'll all be succumbing to intoxicating neo-colonial dance vibes!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont-Saint-Michel
"Richard III died in the thick of battle after losing his helmet and coming under a hail of blows from vicious medieval weapons, new research has shown... Richard III, the last English monarch to die fighting, perished at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. It was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York, and paved the way for the Tudor dynasty."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/16/richard-iii-died-battle-losing-helmet-new-research
We forget that many other major religions like Islam and Hinduism might not have as many members as Christianity but nonetheless have far fewer lapsed members. Hence Christianity might even be a far smaller faith than other major religions when partial agnostics are excluded from population statistics. A lack of competitiveness between rival religions might lead to complacency if Christians don't take personal responsibility for promoting a sustainable faith. We take history as inevitable even though Islam has never been beset by a Cold War in the way Christian countries have. Nor has Hinduism ever perpetrated the same level of colonialism as Christian hegemons. Perhaps in times of war and economic crises Christians might benefit from more defensive rather than submissive styles of prayers at mass. A really hierarchical version of supernatural Christianity risks complacency towards capitalistic hierarchies in the material world.
If we compare Christian mass to the education system then we'd notice the smaller the mass the greater the one-on-one attention the priest or vicar can give to the congregants. Yet if lay people aren't focused and participating in the rituals then the level of transcendence in mass might appear a bit superficial. Hence there shouldn't be any excuses not to go to mass even for low turnouts! Maybe Catholicism has to learn a small bit from the Quakers to include lay people more often into the conversation during mass!
"What kind of crazy person celebrates Noam Chomsky's birthday like it's some kind of official holiday? Why can't we celebrate Christmas like the rest of the entire world? You would prefer to celebrate a magical fictitious elf instead of a living humanitarian who's done so much to promote human rights and understanding?"
"Corporations have the same rights as people,
so there's no spending limit on candidates. Which means our country is ruled by corporations and their lobbyists who fund candidates and command their fealty by demanding that... Jesus Christ."
-Captain Fantastic
https://www.stillwatermpc.org/dharma-topics/being-good-for-goodness-sake/
"The message in the song is clear. Your goodness must come from an inner desire to do good and not from an appearance of doing good, or you are not good enough to receive a gift!"
Ideally people would do good for no incentives at all. Yet solipsistic pantheism and afterlife beliefs are simply convenient ways to inspire goodness!
I’d a dream last night in which I was walking around a DIY shop only to find a small male adult lecture me on angels not existing and that the west of Ireland is a victim of the queen. It’s possible that religion and science are capable of being reconciled through athleticism in a way that isn’t fully reductionistic. So smaller adults are capable of being far more reflective of the humility offered by a supernatural religion only if they were committed to the religion. For example the way certain Catholic Mediterranean countries tend to be slightly shorter in height than Ireland and how communist Laos is very short might relate to the cultures in those countries being more ethnically cohesive than Ireland. Yet height is a bit beyond conscious control and can be genetic.
Strip poker where bluffing would be harder for less charitable people in an afterlife!
Beauty and the Beast - Tale as Old as Time
Commando - Mansion Shootout Scene 3/3
America might be a paradox of the Christian religion where capitalism and gun rights seem so insurmountable that American Christians might sometimes appear to be trying to parody the Christian religion as a final nail in the coffin so to speak. Yet the way Christianity is intrinsically forgiving means that anti-Christianity can backfire if they built up such a lead over Christianity that underestimating their own strength and surrendering to Christianity as a version of double espionage might make it nearly insurmountable for others to achieve an equal amount of supremacy over Christianity as we uniquely see in American exceptionalism. So the concept of surviving a lightning bolt in the Passion of the Christ set might have almost parodied the idea that Jesus might really have just fell into a coma on the cross without actually dying if the Romans weren’t skilled enough at taking His pulse for Him to re-awaken a few days later in the cave! Perhaps the idea of parodying the Christian religion can evoke determinism in creating a double negative such that who knows whether the lightning bolt was slightly more intentional than accidental if no one ever had to invoke a divine religion if everyone had already symbolically given up Christianity!
Mandeltrip - Symmetric Brot (2 Sets)
Viewing forgiveness as a double negative that becomes a positive mimics an acceleration in time as either you forgive yourself for not forgiving others or you simply forgive others as if the past simply wasn’t relevant. So a consolation of intergenerational self-forgiveness of your own ancestry is at the bare minimum to symbolise how another country doesn’t have to keep promoting evil even if they already committed evil. Likewise a nightmare can just be about forgiving a nightmare itself to pass faster through time and not just about forgiving others. Forgiveness mimics an external force acting on an evil mind engaged in perpetual motion much like Newton’s first law!
Perhaps part of the problem in desensitisation is increasing entropy and disorder as if prior world wars created so many casualties that citizens are desensitised to mass death even before a new war begins. So if we accelerated many conflicts then the death toll in Palestine is like an atomic bomb, the US invasion of Iraq was like a nuclear bomb and the conflict in Sudan has created more death than the Rwandan genocide but is partially concealed under the guise of a slow war of attrition. Perhaps if Christianity were like a working backwards mechanism to 2000 years ago then part of the dilemma might have been that people overlook how extreme the earlier conflicts might have been to produce less collateral damage as if soldiers in WW1 were so expendable that they didn’t need to risk killing too many civilians. By contrast soldiers in many conflicts today are given a backhanded compliment in bombing raids if poor people weren’t even prioritised in their home country to think their own soldiers needed so much protection. I suppose part of the problem with Holocaust denial in Palestine might be like a game of chicken where the impression of supporting nazism would ordinarily have created such an enthusiasm for world war that the resulting apathy in Palestine means that either they glorified nazism to such a huge extent that they can’t care about it in light of criminal psychosis or else they had already barely supported Holocaust denial. Hopefully the second option is more likely. A nuclear bomb is almost like a Sun God as an ethical defence!
Increased entropy over time can be a partial account for why there can be so many other complicated issues in society that have no full solution. So for example it can sometimes be challenging to fully justify statutory rape if society is already implicated in so much other violence even though there’s still a slippery slope to infantile paedophilia. Yet there’s also an inverse justification for statutory rape if infantile rape sometimes isn’t extremely evil then you’d ironically need statutory still being prosecuted just to downplay how stigmatised other paedophiles already are. The problem is you’d need a sixth sense to fathom how society reflexively find solutions from hidden variables that aren’t intuitive but run the risk of extreme controversy were it not fully analysed. So for example the way many sports stadiums might not have armed security in spite of disarming spectators might not be a great defence against mass shooters but you’d have to take everything into consideration to realise that were gun control never actually going to be enforced nationally then even the symbolism of gun control might still be successful in under-policed concerts or stadiums simply to deflect from paranoia around so many armed provocation defences and international warfare. In other words the slight paradox is that you might have to partially surrender national gun control to promote what would originally have felt like a far more extreme form of gun control in unarmed though under-enforced busy areas.
“Prior conflicts in Sudan, including the first and second Sudanese civil wars and the Darfur conflict, resulted in millions of deaths and even more displaced people. The first Sudanese civil war lasted from 1955 to 1972, the second from 1983 to 2005, and the Darfur conflict began in 2003.”