If you want to debate in good faith sans insults I'm happy to, but otherwise this is pointless.

Sorry, I am just fed up with people who can't read.

You mean something like a higher power? If yes, then certain issues crop up.

First thing is, given a higher power, can we ever understand its intentions and reasons? If we can't then you and the theologians you mention are both in the same boat. So, no use pointing fingers.

Being rational has worked for us - this attitude has led to many discoveries that are now helpful to us. It's sort of a certificate of worthiness for tge rational approach. Can we, then, apply rational analysis to God - this higher power - and judge God?

delete

What is Truth?
Whoops I was on a different page... way behind... ha

↪MysticMonist You mean something like a higher power? If yes, then certain issues crop up. — TheMadFool

Absolutely certain issues crop up! A mystical path has many potential pitfalls, so does philosophy but perhaps seeking God raises the stakes. It's easier to go crazy or become self righteous. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't embark at all, we just need to be careful and practice a healthy self renunciation.

The apophatic (negative theology) has a strong tradition here.

The most important though I think is to deny human authority about or in judging God. We can talk about God or make limited concepts about Him/Her. It's okay to use restrained rationally or other faculties like insight, just not with any authority.
Religions no matter how liberal assume some authority or special revelation about God. That's a problem, because no one can speak for God. Of course that's a trap too, since I don't know if I can even with certainty say that. Who am I to say God doesn't grant the gift of prophecy (the ability to actually speak for Him)? So all I can say is that I don't find authorathive revelation helpful in my path, but not that God cannot do so if He wishes. I know I am very likely incorrect and ask that God continue to correct and illumine me. That's what the whole thing is about seeking greater correction and illumination from God.

Being rational has worked for us — TheMadFool

I'd like to ask a follow up question.
What to Plato is reason? What do you think us reason and is it different from being rational?

I was a philosophy undergraduate and the impression I got from the meaning of reason was that it was deductive and obtained from first principles. To use reason meant to sit and think really hard.

But I think Plato and Plotinus mean something much broader by reason. They say we have two parts of our nature or soul. We have a higher rational part and a lower animal desiring part.

I suspect use of reason in that context means many faculties used together to make a concious and principled choice over a more conditioned and automatic choice. Reason includes deductive thought, but also insight, learning from experience, knowledge, and wisdom along with the will or capacity to choose. It's more than just being Data from Star Trek with purely computational thinking.

What's your thoughts or anyone else's on reason and our rational versus animal soul?

You seem to value something more than reason. Why? Because if you rely on reason, mysticism goes into the trash can. What is this something? Intuition?

Anyway, I'm sympathetic to your views. Reason and rationality isn't the be all and the end all. Note that mysticism hasn't yielded anything useful, at least not as much as reason and rationality has. Unless, of course, you think the odd hermit/fakir who claims liberation/salvation is a useful result.

That said, there's still much that is beyond our grasp and that's assuming that we really know what we think we know. Perhaps there are stages of knowledge and we get closer and closer to the actual truth. There could be many paths to knowledge and the mystical way may be one of them. If so, we have no reason to prefer one way over the other. Whether mysticism or science, ultimately, we get to the truth. You'll have to explain why you prefer mysticism.

You'll have to explain why you prefer mysticism — TheMadFool

I don't really know if I can define mysticism. It's such a loaded term. Prayer? Meditation? Contemplation? All of those are loaded too.

Your depiction of the frair seeking salvation is good picture of what's it actually like. I do seek salvation, not in the evangelical sense of rescue from hell. Rather I seek it in the now, continually, and from myself and my own suffering. It's a liberation from the self-harming ways of my baser nature and a seeking of participation in a higher life with invincible joy and refuge. It's also an individual quest I really don't know how to tell anyone else how to walk their path and I'm interested in converting anyone because I'm still don't have it figured out. But the process brings me comfort and fullfillment nothing else does.

Mysticism should never replace science. It's a completely different type of knowledge. I work as a therapist in a nursing home. I do pray for my patients and sometimes even pray with them or talk about how "God's not done with them yet" so they can get stronger and go home to play with their grandkids again. But if that's all I did, I would be a terrible therapist. I use science and evidence based methods to improve their strength or balance or regain use of an affected arm from a stroke. I'm a mystic but I want my doctor to use his or her medical knowledge not their spiritual insight. It's different types of knowledge for different situations.

Ultimate knowledge of all of creation would require every type of knowledge, wouldn't it?

The most important though I think is to deny human authority about or in judging God. We can talk about God or make limited concepts about Him/Her. It's okay to use restrained rationally or other faculties like insight, just not with any authority. — MysticMonist

I think you are confusing "God" with people.

think you are confusing "God" with people. — Jeremiah

How so?

I actually have a few problems with your statement.

I would suggest there is no authority above questioning/judging; however, that said, it is not actually a god being judged but instead a human idea being judged.

actually have a few problems with your statement. — Jeremiah

Yes, I see what you mean. "Human authority about God or in judging God" (grammar corrected for clarity). So I'm evaluating human ideas about God. I have my own ideas about God too. But we can only evaluate our ideas, not God himself. God is definitely never the same as our ideas of Him.
That's a helpful clarification.
Is that what you were pointing out?

Yes, that is what I was getting at, but I would go one step further and say that when faced with the incomprehensible you still have no choice but to rely on your own judgement and questioning is less dangerous than blind acceptance.

less dangerous — Jeremiah

Blind acceptance is dangerous for sure. Going on your own judgments and questioning is also dangerous. But you are right, we have no choice because refusing to choose is still a choice isn't it? So putting blind faith in someone else is a decision made by your judgement and questioning. The vast majority of people choose the religion and cultural views of their upbringing without being aware they really chosen them or at least being unaware of the alternatives.

I go could a lot of directions with that, so I'll just make two short points. First, I have a theory that maybe why many Christians (I say this because it's my cultural context) are so convinced that their religion is the only right one is because Jesus or their pastor is the only spiritual teacher they've been honestly exposed to. Jesus is a wise and insightful teacher and he lays out a wonderful spiritual path (or actually multiple spiritual paths depending on your emphasis). There are also many great Christian preachers and theologians as well as just ordinary, holy people in the pews to be inspired from. If this is all you know, of course you'd be Christian. They've never read the Quran or spent time in a synagogue or studied under a Zen teacher. These are all alien and their current context tells them they are wrong or even evil.

Second thought is a quote from Rabbi Nachman (18th century Hassidic Rabbi) that speaks for itself:
"Through a blemish in believing in the Sages, one never has whole counsel, he’s always in doubt, his counsel is divided, and he doesn’t know how to give counsel to his soul regarding any matter."

Thanks! I've really enjoyed our conversations thus far.

What do you all think about my existing (body) and experienced (mind) disctiction? — MysticMonist

I'm not sure. If God is merely an experience he isn't in existence. God must be both a reality and an experience if he is anything at all.

I actually think that God may be at least somewhat physical (Sort of pantheistic). This falls in line with the idea that God is both existence and experience. God is both sensed and communed with daily in a variety of ways here.

I'm almost tempted to think that spirituality is experienced but God is himself in existence.

The Rob Bell in me wants to say everything is spiritual.

The distinction between epistemology and ontology was not clear cut then - and not entirely clear cut since, perhaps, as you say. Parmenides wrote of non-existence being 'unable to be spoken or thought of'. His attack on the common view of the world is called the 'Way of Opinion' or the 'Way of Seeming'. So he was very concerned with our understanding of reality and what reality is; and the gap between the two. Another distinction that was blurred at that time was between the 'is' of existence and the 'is' of predication. And confusion arising from the scope of modalities was not clarified until Aristotle. But the main point is that debates about these problems go back at least to 6th Cent BC.

It it a typically modern phenomenon? -- this preoccupation with how we can know what really exists? I think it might be? Starting with Descartes. I could be wrong. I'm not very familiar with Greek philosophy aside from Aristotle and Virtue ethics. — bloodninja

Let's not forget the Chinese - Lao Tzu for example. Roughly from the same time period as the Greeks.

Okay if you say so, fair point. You obviously know quite a bit about ancient philosophy. Can you please point me in the right direction? If I wanted to learn about Parmenides and his thoughts about being/ontology, where would I look?

Where would we be without Stanford..? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/ . But it's a bit dense.

This is easier but not as authoritative: http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_parmenides.html

And you can't beat the original text - like most pre-Socratics, we only have fragments, mainly quoted by opponents, but you get the idea, especially see Fragments 2-8:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments_of_Parmenides

"Exist" and "Real" don't have definite metaphysical definitions, do they?

So, whether something exists or is real depends on how you define those words.

From what I've been able to find out, the metaphysical meaning of Reality is "all that is." That's pretty broad, and it must include abstract-objects too, including the abstract logical facts that I claim are the basis of our universe (as one of infinitely-many possibility-worlds).

Other than that, I don't think that "exist" and "real" have definite metaphysical definitions.

It seems to me that I've heard the word "actual" used with a stronger meaning than "existent" or "real".

...meaning "in, of, or referring to this physical universe".

The other possibility-worlds, other than our own, are "real" in the sense that they're obviously part of Reality. But they aren't locally-real or "actual" for us.

Martin Buber said that God is above such distinctions as existing or not existing. That makes sense. I've been saying that God isn't an element of metaphysics. Do "exist", "real" and "Reality" apply only to metaphysics and its elements?

Someone spoke of not knowing what's "beyond reality". I told him that's nonsense, because, in philosophy, Reality is all that is. But, I guess if we took "Reality" to mean only all of metaphysics and its elements, then there is such a thing as "beyond Reality".

So how about it? Does "Reality" mean all that is? ...not limited to metaphysics and its elements? Or do "Reality" and "is" only have meaning in metaphysics. ...as Martin Buber seemed to imply.

Michael Ossipoff

So the strongest definition I've stumbled into thanks to this forum is that Reality is that which is made real by the Source of all reality (the Monad) and participates in the whole of all that is real. It's a completely circular definition. But if I'm going to be a Monist, I need to commit in my metaphysics and my ethics and pretty much every other way to one Absolute Source/First Cause of being and goodness and meaning. It's helpful because that's the whole point for me of philosophy, to seek the One. I just finished Book 6 of the Republic where Plato talks about the true philosopher as a lover of all Truth. It's not about opinions about metaphysics or this or that. It's about knowledge of the Absolute.

I agree that metaphysics can be more than opinions, and that it's possible to say definite things about metaphysics. I claim that the metaphysics that I propose, describing a life as a life-experience possibility-story, consisting of if-then facts, is inevitable.

I guess the only 2 requirements for a life-experience possibility-story are 1) A protagonist, experiencer, its central and essential component; and 2) Consistency.

You're in a life because there's a life-experience possibility-story about you.

When one investigates the physical world, via direct experience, or physicists' reports, one finds a possibility-world consisting of an independent system of inter-referring inevitable logical if-then facts about hypotheticals. Logical facts just inevitably and timelessly "are".

A possibility world is there as the setting for your life-experience possibility-story.. Of course there are infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories, and infinitely-many possibility-worlds--worlds of "if", rather than "is".

I call my metaphysics Skepticism, because it doesn't use or need any assumptions or brute-facts.
It's similar to Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, but one difference is that it's a Non-Realism, about the individual-experience point-of-view, instead of the universe-wide objective 3rd-person point-of-view.

Everything that anyone knows about the physical world, is through their experience.

That's the genuine Empiricism.

I feel that individual experience is primary.

It's similar enough to Vedanta, especially in its conclusions and consequences, to qualify as a Vedanta metaphysics version, though it doesn't really match the metaphysics of any of Vedanta's 3 usual versions (which of course differ greatly from eachother anyway). It isn't Advaita.metaphysics.

It's tempting to want a perfect Monism in which there's only one Existent. But I can't justify such a metaphysics by skeptical standards. Though the experiencer is primary, and though all experiencers are similar, at their innermost, I can't call them all one experiencer without making an un-skeptical assumption. Leibnitz said something about identical entities all being instances of one thing, but I don't find that supportable. (Leibnitz also believed in the fallacious, unnecessary, imaginary "Hard Problem Of Consciousness").

Of course, at the end of lives, when one's last life is ending, there likely is a stage, before complete body-shutdown, at which one no longer knows that there ever was such a thing as time, events, a body, individuality or identity (or hardship, menace, dissatisfaction or incompletion). At that no-identity stage, it could be said that we all experience the same Reality.

Of course, at that stage, the person's body is about to shut down, but s/he doesn't know that there ever was a body, and s/he has already reached Timelessness. ...

I agree that the remarkable goodness of what is, suggests--gives me the impression of--a good intent behind what is. That's a feeling. It's about a good intent beyond metaphysics. I don't feel that metaphysics is or describes all of Reality.

...unless "Reality" is defined with the limited meaning of metaphysical reality. I guess I don't use it with that limited meaning.

I realize that much of what Advaita says is about more than metaphysics, a verbal conceptual subject.

So maybe it isn't so much that I disagree with Advaita, but just that I'm mostly only talking about metaphysics.

Michael Ossipoff

God is definitely never the same as our ideas of Him.

How could you possibly know that without comparing God to an idea of God?

:-x

Ahhh... clever
The God that our reasonable, logical mind conceives of naturally falls short of infinity and absoluteness. Yet intuitively we sense (but do not grasp) it's infinititude. So we know our concept is lacking.

I've been thinking of a response, I haven't ignored or forgotten. It was a well thought out and interesting post.

You're in a life because there's a life-experience possibility-story about you. — Michael Ossipoff

Hmm... so our lives are narratives? I think this is intuitively true. In common language we talk about taking paths or ones story all the time.
Individual moments only make sense in context and it's the overall story that gives meaning.

The infinite possibility and infinite worlds is interesting. Are these determined by individual human choices? I'm not a propent of free will, but if one were to assert free will I think they'd have to go in this direction. There are all sorts of possible outcomes/worlds. I could right now leave my current life entirely and start a completely new life in another country. Why I would suddenly do so is irrelevant, only the fact that I could.

As for monism. Having one universal Source of reality doesn't mean we all have the same experiences. We can retain individual identities while having a shared source.

Thanks again for your post.

The point was obscure. I'll make it clearer...

There is no difference between an idea of God and God. There are only differences between ideas of God.

You may need to explain more because you are assuming particular meanings to ideas and to God and perhaps meaning something different between idea and ideas in your statement.
I could take a few guesses about what you mean, but it would probably best if you just explain if you'd like.

My own understanding of ideas, mind, the soul and of Forms and of God are all conflicted and still being sorted out. I'm trying to see how closely I can conform to a monism or perhaps even Platonism while still being internally consistent and making sense of what I experience to be true. So far Plato has suprised me in the strength of his explanations and how well they create an effective world view.

What's left to explain?

In order to know that two things are alike and/or similar, we must be able to perform a comparative analysis. Unless God appears in a way that we can compare God to an idea thereof, there is nothing to compare an idea of God to...