Valentinus

Are you asking those questions for purely rhetorical purposes or are you genuinely curious? So far in this discussion, I have not opposed your thesis ...

Your breakdown of how the various Hellenistic communities understood what happened is helpful. Your previous explanations of this history puts the eve...

I appreciate you bringing up different ways to help. It is a difficult topic to discuss because what could be more ripe for one's own bullshit than to...

Perhaps one part of the question of what to make of the ruler is in verse 89: In the other Gospels, the reference to the cup is presented more as a ch...

One way to think about is through the work of theater. It takes a lot of work to put on a show. If you know that you are not doing anything toward tha...

Understood. I will take a few days to ponder the parts of the text I have in mind before opining something.

One of the windows is how sexuality is referred to as not being important in some passages while others call for everyone to be "male." It sounds like...

I remember that time (being kind of old) but let us take up the topic as well (or as poorly) as we can in the present moment with whatever resources t...

That work is a good element to bring into the discussion. While noting the difficulties of confirming texts that so much energy went into erasing from...

I really like the advent calendar approach. One doesn't have to understand the whole world by looking out of a particular window.

The biggest departure of this Gospel from the others is a matter of timing. We are in the changed place rather than waiting for it to be changed. So I...

Are you "attracted" to this material?

One of the interesting qualities of the Gospel of Thomas is how the language is very close to the received canon of the Church Fathers. So the "esoter...

I brought up the matter of taking responsibility as an objection to your statement: "That is, unlike Christians believing we must be saved by a supern...

Great observations. In regards to the Critique of Judgement, I still wonder like I did when first encountered: "who is this person and what is he sayi...

Many criticisms of Christians are framed as putting too much responsibility upon individuals for their choices. Your description does not account for ...

It might be helpful to consider Plotinus as a self-identified follower of Plato who disagreed with his Stoic contemporaries. I would like to draw more...

I disagree. What was done by removing our enemies requires something else. That is the central thesis in Plato's Republic.

Maybe not so much.

The charge was brought forward as corrupting youths. And he more or less accepted that he was guilty as charged. A struggle between generations, if yo...

As it is represented in the text, none of those outcomes are necessary. Observing the progression is to suggest another movement is possible. Otherwis...

Thank you for considering the passage. I think the latter parts of the Ethics address the William James perspective more directly than the first parts...

I understand your request. Maybe there is something in the Unicode that does that. But I doubt it, for reasons already offered.

Set theory may have something like what you are looking for. But logic uses the Aristotelian either/or. Maybe you could say more about what you are lo...

Reading Zhuangzi, the release from duality is becoming more circumspect about saying what essence may be of anything. And thus all the jokes told to s...

Camus objected to Sartre, not by disagreeing that "Existentialism" is what happens when the grounds for one's being has to be discovered in the contex...

Maybe this observation belongs on a more Spinoza specific thread but the determinism relates to how something is either caused by itself or by somethi...

Yes, the actual work is where the rubber meets the road. In the Taoist practices (which I am more familiar with than the Zen), that element is strongl...

Spinoza's argument against free will was not to say there was nothing to be done about changing one's experience and of those around you. Consider the...

That is well said. Much to think about.

The interests various people may have in the discussion of religion is interesting. It seems to me that if you are interested in different motives for...

But you are speaking to intellectuals on a forum set up by such people to talk about stuff. Where are you going with this thought?

Sounds more like a principle of action than a result of consideration.

It would certainly be unreasonable to expect James to solve the problem (or question) of what is "supernatural." I don't think Kierkegaard's challenge...

William James' look at religious experiences also concerned his effort to make the "psychological" a perspective of common experiences that could be r...

The Russians started doing it and the practice became about other things.

I think so. There is a materialism amongst communitarians such as Ivan Illiich who considered our tools as limiting what could be made of them. That p...

Love is not a resource one is able to use in this way or that. If you accept it as your only guiding light then who knows what will happen next. Maybe...

Or maybe the hoped for connection will not happen at all. I had one tutor a long time ago who asked: Are you sure you are sharing his problem? Isn't y...

Maybe one way to think about it is the way the dynamics of families are brought into question or practically challenged by other dynamics. Stated that...

The number one is being used as the only divisor of a prime. It is difficult to understand how the function can be applied to the value given this job...

The article is interesting in how nouns are used to group things or not. But the matter of being singular or not in distinction to the zero is a count...

It is a salon. It is interesting whether one is well understood or not by others. There are many times where I am unable to separate the elements I wo...

Working backwards, there is a fan fiction element to Dante, Milton, (and Shakespeare too). But they also had living enemies who were implicated by the...

Well, he put himself up as an encumbrance, a bridge not easily crossed. I don't completely understand what he was saying. But he has had made my life ...

I see one element of the disassociation with history you are describing in the energy put into "fan fiction." The genre would not have been possible w...

As practical matter, planning is attracted to the most difficult elements to achieve and seeks various ways to make those things manageable. I figure ...

I don't think Nietzsche was proposing a fatalism for creatures in the circle he proposes. He expressly opposes a simple mechanistic view of the univer...

As a matter of ethics, the idea challenges the notion that our life in "this world", as articulated by Paul, is an entry exam for the next life. On on...

Loy makes good points regarding how the importance of personal conscience came to occupy the stage. But the arguments from that side also include a de...