In either case he clearly lacks the kind of dispassionate critical intelligence that is needed to discharge his responsibilities as a moderator of comment on a philosophy forum.

Ah, the sheer arrogance (and impudence) of ignorance ! It never ceases to astonish me !

I agree, Augustino. Mr "Streetlight X" stands indicted by his own testimony of intellectual corruption ! I hereby call upon him to either defend the charge immediately or to have the moral integrity to do the honourable thing and surrender his position as a moderator on this forum forthwith.

Silence fool ! Enough of thine blather and bumbulum ! (Lest I let flee a fert in thine general dyrection).

Baden...philosophy is not a frivolous game; not a kindergarten playground for humanity's faint- hearted, sensitive plants. A true philosopher must always strive to have the courage of his convictions and never shrink from "calling 'em as he sees 'em" in his search for (the) truth. If that means ruffling a few prim and proper feathers, or jarring a few delicate sensibilities , or fracturing a few fragile egos then so be it. Neitzsche, if I recall, was an inveterate and most prolific hurler of "grenades" throughout much of his career in philosophy. He made lots of loud complaints and did not tend to view them as being "negotiable". Despite this, his books continue to be widely read today and will, -I have no doubt at all- still be widely read for centuries to come? So bang goes your theory, Baden.

Why does that not surprise me.

Your opinion that the tone of my feedback post (above) was "histrionic" is not only unwarranted but is also, ironically, insulting in its own right (?) I might , in similar fashion, voice my opinion that most of your own posts on this forum are typically meandering, luke -warm pieces of tedious, quasi-meaningful postmodernist drivel, but naturally I would never be so rude as to actually do so. In short, I charge you with intellectual cowardice and that charge still stands. My feedback post was, in any case, addressed to Baden and not yourself.

Your Cordially

John

Are you seriously suggesting that "open dialogue" can extricate a pyschiatric patient with a severe psychotic disorder like schizophrenia from the jaws of madness and harmful dysfunction?

Are you actually suggesting that this form ( or any form) of intersubjective "talk therapy" can be efficacious in remediating the symptoms of, for example, acute schizophrenia such as : hallucinations ( auditry, visual, tactile, etc), delusional thinking ( paranoid, grandiose, etc), cognitive derailment ( the "word salad" spoken in schizophrenia), negative affective traits ( anhedonia, amotivation, anergia, etc) ? Are you honestly suggesting that the gross, organic structural/functional neurobiological abnormalities commonly associated with diagnosed chronic schizophrenia can be renormalized through a process "open dialogue"?

If so, you are talking arrant nonsense !

You say, in the context of your concerns about technology in the modern era (at the end of your op), "In a way the question comes down to, "What differentiates the natural from the artificial ?"

I think you will definatly find Martin Heideggar's, (relatively) short and accessible 1954 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology", helpful in answering this question.

Regards,

John

I agree that America has long abandoned the pursuit of any genuinely Christian vision. There is a conspicuous typo in the nation's official motto "In God We Trust". The error is the letter "s" in the word "trust".Here is the correction : "In God We Tru$t". Alternatively, you can correct the motto by, for example, placing the word "Incorporated" after the word "Trust" in the official 1956 motto, like the hard punk band the" Dead Kennedys" did in the early 1980s with their EP entitled : "In God We Trust Incorporated".

I do not agree with you that this is a good thing. I do not think that this " how it should be, actually".

Your belief that "ALL things are apparently transitory (fleeting, ephemeral, evanescent) in nature and THEREFORE lack an(y) inherent identity or existence" is a cardinal symptom of NIHILISM and the pervasive realitivism ( moral/ethical, epistemological and metaphysical) and skepticism accompanying it that have now taken a firm hold in contemporary, advanced Industrial Western societies as a result of the crisis of Enlightenment rationalism.

To begin to understand yourself, you must understand , first and foremost that you are a victim of your times - your historical circumstance. That is, you are a victim of the current crisis of rationalism in the West.

Regards

John

Praxis

As this is a philosophy forum, please enlighten us as to what precisely your intellectual understanding of our true human nature might be according to Buddhist thought.

Thanks

John

That is pure "eyewash" and you know full well that it is.

The first of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths is that all existence is "DUKKA" ( "suffering", "anguish", "pain", "unsatisfactoriness").

The second noble truth is that THE CAUSE OF "DUKKA" IS CRAVING (i.e. desire).

Regards

John

Dear Wayfarer

Thank you very much indeed for your link to the introductory essay on the topic of the Buddhist notion of "emptiness" which I have now read. Unfortunately, I am afraid I have to tell you that it does very little to change my opinion that Buddhism is a fundamentally nihilistic system of thought. Here is a brief explanation of why I think this is so...

I am not a professional expert on Buddhism, though I believe my understanding that the "Four Noble Truths" of the Buddha serve to shape the fundamental thinking of almost all of the different Buddhist schools, sects, traditions is pretty much correct, at least for most reasonable intents and purposes ? (Please let me know if I am mistaken in making this general assumption).

I interpret the "Four Noble Truths" to mean the following:

(1) Suffering exists.

(2) Suffering is caused by desire.

(3) It is possible to eliminate desire and consequently suffering.

(4) The cessation of desire ( and thus suffering) is achieved via the eight-fold path which terminates in nirvana.

To begin with , let's look at the second noble truth, the claim that suffering is caused by desire.

It is true that unsatisfied desires, whether positive or negative, are the source of suffering. In the negative case, if I desire not to be hungry, to feel pain, or to be cold, one could say that my desire is the source of my misery. If I could come to terms with the fact that I am hungry, in pain, or cold, such that I no longer desired the cessation of those feelings, I theoretically might no longer suffer. In the positive case, I might want sex, or money, or power, or expensive consumer good/services, and my inability to attain these things might cause me to suffer. If I didn't want these things in the first place, I could not resent not having them.

But, there are two ways to deal with desire - one way is, as Buddhism suggests, to eliminate it. The other way is to actually achieve what you desire, to get what you want. There are entire moral theories that suppose that desire satisfaction is the principle source of good. So, though desire may be the source of suffering, it may also be the principle source of goodness. How else can we be benevolent to towards others other than by helping them to get the things that they want or ought to want. The kind of benevolent/charitable (compassionate) behaviour Buddhists are taught and encouraged Yet that does indeed seem to be the goal of Buddhism - those who achieve nirvana cease to reincarnate and cease to be. to engage in via the eight-fold path seems to require that they fulfill the desires of others (?) How can the path to enlightenment entail leading others away from enlightenment ? It's contradictory !

Next we have the third noble truth ( and consequently the fourth) which are the beliefs that desire,( and thus suffering), can be altogether eliminated. But to eliminate desire altogether would not merely eliminate suffering, it would eliminate happiness, since happiness is the product of satisfying our desires. In order for it to be possible to eliminate desire, we would have to actively pursue an entirely NEUTRAL mental state. And how could we pursue such a mental state without, on some level, DESIRING that mental state itself ?

More importantly, if we are not desiring anything -if we are in a perpetually neutral mental state, are we really alive in any meaningful sense? Does not life entail pursuits of one kind or another ? The man without any goals or dreams is a man already in the grave. Yet that does indeed seem to be the ultimate goal of Buddhism - those who achieve nirvana cease to reincarnate and cease to be. So the goal of Buddhism does seem to be well and truly non-existence. This leads to a very disturbing contradiction. The point of life, according to Buddhism, is to achieve permanent, eternal death (?)

In which case, doesn't Buddhism imply that we ought not to create life in the first place ? If all beings that are alive are beset with desires and suffering until they achieve nirvana, and most beings never achieve nirvana, isn't creating life an overwhelmingly harmful activity ? Yet Buddhism does not explicitly oppose childbirth anywhere that I can see, and it certainly does not advocate for the humane killing of other beings in order to eliminate the suffering that goes with life for most of them.

But perhaps, in order to achieve permanent death all we have to do is behave benevolently towards other for some length of time. But what meaning does this benevolence have if all of these other beings are themselves best off permanently dead in a state of non-existence ? How else can we be good to someone whose life purpose is not to be happy but to achieve death ?

You may say that I am an ignorant fool who is drawing crude, simplistic conclusions about the complex nature of the concept of Sunyata; that I am one who lacks a fittingly nuanced understanding of the Buddhist doctrine of Voidism and the Buddhist void, but, as an ordinary, non-expert layman of at least average ( I hope) intelligence, I have to tell you, Wayfarer, I sense a definite stench of nihilism about all of this. All human projects are the result of desire, so Buddhism negates all human projects. At the same time, Buddhism maintains that we should behave benevolently ( charitably/compassionately) towards one another, but if benevolence consists of making others happy and happiness for others means achieving their projects and humans having projects is the source of human suffering, then being benevolent under Buddhism consists of preventing people from achieving their rightly considered life purpose, the fulfilment of permanent death. And how could we all simultaneously attempt to achieve permanent death when doing so involves sating one's another's desire that we are all mutually committed to eradicate ? In the end, all of this must be resolved one way or another - the contradiction is too strong.

Either, Buddhism is a nihilist theory in which life's only purpose is its end, or Buddhism is a moral theory of how we should treat one another, in which case Buddhism's methodology for eliminating suffering is not really about desire, but is really about just being nice to other people. In the later case, either Buddhism is mistaken about what suffering is, or Buddhism is mistaken about whether or not it can be eliminated or ought to be eliminated.

In sum, it just doesn't hold together. While desires lead to suffering, they also lead to happiness if we can manage to to achieve them. The entire human project has, for thousands of years, been about improving the quality of the human condition by achieving human goals. Buddhism rejects the very idea that human beings ought to have projects, tasks, dreams or goals that they desire to achieve, and in doing so Buddhism denies the human project " in toto". If that's not nihilism, Wayfarer, then I don't know what is !

Regards

John

In answer to your question, what I mean by "absolute truth" is THE truth. The ONE, unchanging, eternal , absolute truth of God the Father Almighty.

Don't be like Pilate. Don't make the same mistake. I exhort you to realise how much is at stake in Jesus' claim to have brought THE truth to this world; to realise that It is literally a matter of eternal life and death; to realise that YOUR own life is on the line right now as we speak. You are an intelligent man. Pick up the Gospel and read. Do this and THE truth will set you free.

Regards

John

If you are referring to that labyrinthine corpus of semantic waffle promulgated by certain Western intellectuals who endeavour to differentiate the Buddist conception of "emptiness"( as it appears in doctrines like the Mahayana "voidism" of the current Dalai Lama) , from what is "nothingness" ( in the sense of what the "nothingness" that defines Western nihilism connote) ) let me tell you straight up that none of it cuts any ice at all with me. I have already read enough of this fringe, quasi-intellectual pulp to see it for what it actually is, that is, nothing more than an elaborate exercise in obscurantist sophistry. It seeks , in short, to inject higher meaning into what is clearly meaningless and in doing so fails dismally.

So , with respect, I do not believe I need to study the "concept ( of Buddhist "emptiness") to better understand it" because I believe that I understand it very clearly already. I understand it as clearly representing a core foundational construct in what is essentially a morbid philosophical system of passive nihilism. (And) any claims to the contrary are ( pardon the vernacular) in my opinion pure 100% bullshit and I will demonstrate this for you tomorrow as promised.

Regards

John

Emptiness = nothingness. Nihilism is, by definition, a philosophy of nothingness ( Latin: "nihil" = nothing) therefore , you are, logically, and for all reasonable intents and purposes, a nihilist.

John

" I am not a nihilist and I didn't claim to make a definitive commitment. I said that MY BELIEF advises a definitive commitment SHOULD be made."

Your belief in WHAT ?

Regards

John

PS: I am being called right now to high tea, so I shall have to ask you to wait until tomorrow morning for the critique of Buddism you have requested, I provide ( as it may take me some time to type out for you).

You claim "there are no absolutes". I take that you therefore deny the notion of absolute truth ? Is that correct?

John

Maw,

Newton was a deist and Kant an agnostic. To "cut to the chase", both Kant and Newton denied the notion of the revelation of ( divine) supernatural knowledge from the Biblical God and therefore the Christian conception of faith.

Thanks

John

Praxis,

You claim that...

"Everything in life is fleeting and provisional ( empty), and for Buddhists and people like myself it is THIS belief that advises a definitive commitment should be made..."

I am sorry to have to tell you, my dear fellow, that this statement expresses a logical contradiction.

The belief that everything in life is transient, fleeting, provision ( empty) IS nihilism. Nihilism is a philosophy of nothingness, and one cannot make a "definitive commitment" to anything in world wherein one believes that no-thing has any absolute, objective, enduring meaning, value or purpose. In other words, please explain for me to what PRECISELY it is that you ( a nihilist) claim to make your "definitive commitment" (?)

The Buddhist doctrine of "voidism", by the way, is nothing more than a morbid form of passive nihilism; indeed, insofar as Buddhism can be defined as a group of philosophical/religious traditions grounded in the "Four Noble Truths" of the Buddha, I am more than happy to quickly demonstrate for you that Buddhism is based on a set of logical contradictions.

Regards

John

Bitter Crank,

I must thank you. I have just read your "sage" advice to Intrapersona (above) and the sheer comic foolishness of your "Impermanent Meaningfulness" thesis actually made me laugh out loud; something I hadn't done for a long time ! The fact that you had even underlined the word "meaningfulness" in the phrase was just too much - it totally cracked me up! ( Ha !! You ARE a card, Crank - you most definately ARE a card !)

Therefore, I hereby propose to this forum that we should officially declare the squawk "Impermanent Meaningfulness !" to be the definitive, native cry of the modern-day , common or garden variety, "Nihilist Chicken Bird" ! (NB: related to - but not to be confused with - Mr Charles Dickens' famous "High Cockalorum Bird").

All those in favour say "Aye" !

Regards

John

Maw,

The Law is an ass ( haven't you heard?)

Regards

John

Maw,

I agree with Augustino insofar as Trump has the integrity to stand up for what he believes in and ACT not talk. What comes out of his mouth is what he actually thinks and I find that very refreshing indeed. His prompt executive decision to ban Muslim immigration into the US got a big "thumbs up" from me, just a shame that he was ultimately prevented from fully implementing/ extending the policy on a permanent basis by the spineless liberal legal establishment opposing him . Muslims, by definition, VOLUNTARILY adhere to Koranic Sharia Law and the barbaric articles of this primitive legal code have no place whatsoever in a (relatively) civilised modern democracy like the US, FULL STOP . Likewise , Trump's swift retaliation with Tomahawk missiles against that lying, evil Syrian bastard , Assad, who used Sarin nerve gas against his own people had me cheering in the living room when the news came down the wire. Just a shame, once again that he couldn't go further and send in some Special Op troops to put a bullet through that animal's head. As for the ISIS terrorists in the Middle East, it is a concrete cold fact that the American intelligence agencies know right now almost literally down to a man EXACTLY WHO they are and EXACTLY WHERE they are, I think Trump would very much like to send in US ground forces and mow down every last one of these vermin a sap, let's hope he does!

Regards

John

Dear WISDOMfromPO-MO,



You emhasised that you would like a simple, straightforward answer to the question you posed at the start of this thread, namely, "Has the Enlightenment/Modernity resolved anything?" So here is my response...

Before I set it out, I must remind you that as a verb, the term "resolve" has a number of different connotations, so I am going to presume in my reply that you are using the word in the sense of its meaning: "to settle or find a solution to a problem or contentious matter."

To begin with - as Wayfarer reminds us- Kant, the last and indisputably the greatest of the Enlightenment era's philosophers, coined the dictum "Sapere aude !" (Dare to know !) in order to provide what he felt was a fitting motto for enlightenment. Kant's earnest plea - "Sapere aude !" - exhorts us to have the courage and firm resolution to use our own ( independent, "untutored") human reason in seeking (the) truth. In urging man to have the daring and bold tenacity to use his own reason to seek (absolute) truth, alone and unaided by any external mode of learning, Kant is effectively rejecting any role for supernatural faith ( i.e. the knowledge delivered by Christian revelation) in humanity's quest for (Absolute) truth.(And) over the past 500 years I believe his advice has been increasingly accepted by Western modernity, to the extent that it has, indeed, become its dominant intellectual principle. In short, what most distinguishes the era of Enlightenment/Modernity is the manner in which human reason (both the empirical reasoning associated with scientific theory and research, and, the speculative reasoning of philosophy ) was ever more radically sundered and isolated from faith in Christian revelation (theology).

Returning to the your OP, I would like to propose, therefore, that the fundamental and most important question that calls for resolution with respect to Enlightenment/Modernity is whether or not its strident exhortation and guiding principle - " Sapere aude !" - was, in retrospect, a triumph or a catastrophe for modern man ? That is, was the project of unaided, unguided, independent and unfettered human rationalism ultimately successful in helping to illuminate the path to ( absolute) truth and draw mankind closer toward to it? In my view, as I will try to briefly explain below , the answer is a resounding "No, it did not !" , and what Enlightenment/Modernity has served to "resolved" for human beings today is that when human reason is arrogantly and radically severed from its proper foundation in faith ( Christian revelation), man's search for the truth is not only destined to fail, but to fail indeed in the most disastrous and destructive manner.

The progressive sundering of reason from faith in modernity that began in the humanism of the Renaissance and its keen revival of philosophical interest in Aristotalian logic and reason, and then flourished in the atheism and deism of key Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke and Newton, reached its zenith in the 20th century with the ascention of various forms of atheistic humanism expressed in philosophical terms which viewed faith as alienating and damaging to the flourishing of full rationality. They did not hesitate to to present themselves as new religions serving as a foundation for projects on the social and political planes which soon gave rise to totalitarian ideological systems which proved catastrophic for humanity. Never before in the history of humanity had evil stalked the globe the way it did during the last century. Consider, for example, the rise of National Socialism in Germany under Hitler that ultimately resulted in the death of 50 million human beings in the Second World War including the systematic murder of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, the indiscriminate nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the appalling brutality of Stalinism in Russia, the ten years of violence, terror and death by starvation brought to bear on the people of China during Mao Zedung's "Cultural Revolution", the sinister Pol Pot and his lethal brand of communist utopianism which saw 2 million men, women and children hacked to death with primitive axes and hoes in the "Killing Fields" of rural Cambodia between 1975 and 1977/8 , the insane brinkmanship of total nuclear annihilation that played out through September and October of 1962 in the terrifying "Cuban Missile Crisis" standoff between Nikita Kruschev and John F Kennedy, and the catalogue of murderous mayhem, rampant moral evil, human misery and suffering, devastation and destruction that marked the last century as the most benighted and God-forsaken 100 years in human history goes on and on.

Turning now to the role of science in the culture of Enlightenment/modernity...The scientific revolution triggered by thinkers like Isaac Newton and John Locke during the Enlightenment led to the great Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. William Blake famously lamented the destruction of nature and enslavement of millions in the dismal working conditions of its "dark satanic mills" as a manifestation of human evil , though in the time since then to date an increasingly unbridled and unfettered technology has, ironically, seen Enlightenment reason turn even more destructively on itself to become an instrument not of human liberation and political /intellectual freedom, but of profound human oppression and ruthless domination. In the modern era, the rise of scientism in the West ( in particular, over the past 60 years ) has seen a pervasive positivistic mentality take hold which has not only abandoned the Christian vision of the world but rejected every appeal to a moral or metaphysical vision. Lacking any ethical point of reference this scientism has, for instance, fuelled a market-based logic that has, in turn, created giant corporate, techno-capitalist cartels that continue to cast their shadow apace over increasing portions of the globe.Their rapacious exploitation of the natural world has, amongst other things, generated climate change through global warming, a phenomenon that now constitutes one of the gravest, most threatening and potentially apocalyptic moral issues humanity has ever faced. At the same time, in the sphere of human affairs, corporate techno-capitalism has become the late West's dominant politico-economic ideology, creating extreme plutocratic republics like the United States where the obscene greed of a super-rich ruling elite minority has fomented wide-spread ,bitter social division and, as recently witnessed dangerous levels of political instability.

Today, in the West, as a result of the crisis of Enlightenment/Modernity rationalism, what has finally appeared is nihilism. As a philosophy of nothingness, it seems to have a certain appeal for the people of our time. Its academic adherents (in such fields as postmodernist philosophy) claim that the search is an end in itself, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of (objective) truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral and evanescent have pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which advises us that a definitive commitment should no longer be made, because everything in human life and the world is fleeting and provisional. As we stand amidst the current crisis of rationalism in the West we see ,as well, that different forms of agnosticism and relativism ( moral, epistemological and metaphysical ) have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting ,sands of widespread skepticism. In recent times we have seen the rise to prominence of various doctrines which tend to devalue even the truths which had been judged certain. A legitimate plurality of of positions has now yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based on the assumption that all positions are equally valid, and this is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth. Even certain conceptions coming from the East betray this lack of confidence, denying truth its exclusive character and assuming truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines, even if they contradict one another. On this understanding, everything is reduced to mere opinion; and there is a sense of being cast adrift., While, on the other hand, philosophical thinking has succeeded in coming closer to the reality of human life and its forms of expression, it has also tended to pursue issues - existential, hermaneutical or linguistic - which ignore the radical question of the truth about personal existence, about being and about God. Hence, we see among the men and women of our time, and not just in some philosophers, attitudes of widespread distrust of the human being's great capacity for knowledge. With a false modesty, man in the modern West now rests content with partial or provisional truths, no longer seeking to to ask radical questions about the meaning and and ultimate foundation of human, personal and social existence. In short, the hope that philosophy might be able to provide definitive answers to these questions has all but died.

I am beginning to ramble and rant I fear, so let me now quickly "cut to the chase" of this post.That is, in answer to your initial question, I would argue that what Enlightenment/ Modernity has very clearly resolved is the fact that human reason - however daring and courageous it may be, cannot by itself - alone and unaided - succeed in guiding humanity closer toward (the) truth. Rather, it would seem, as the great "Angelic Doctor", St Thomas Aquinas, taught us so long ago, that the boldness of human reason must always be matched and complemented by a firm foundation in the parhesia of supernatural faith (in the divine knowledge Christian revelation). But this, of course, is a topic for a separate post.


Regards


John

Modern Conviviality,

So...tell me what happens to you after die? What does your illustrious, daring human reason with its pristine rationalism, its earnest philosophical "logic-chopping" and it clever scientific methods nobly pursuing the Truth suggest? Let me see... Ummm, Eternal death isn't it? Do I have that right MC? That is, when you die you, it's "Goodnight Vienna ! " as they say in the football, - I.e. death as FINIS ( dead is dead). Death that is the stone- cold, perfect stillnes of oblivion... death as nothingness. For you there is no supernatural bullshit going on after you die, correct? But the (Eternal) Death you preach seems to me a pretty hard-core old thang buddy.? Because Eternal Death is the prospect that renders EVERY SINGLe lived experience you ever experienced - your every magical, miraculous moment of awareness in lived phenomenal consciousness your every: CONVIVIALITY, every love, every sadness, every joy, every triumph, every poignancy, every tenderness, every pang of the bitter-sweet, every sorrow, every remorse, every striving, every unguarded smile, every soaring of , and song in, your heart, every fervent hope, every act of kindness or charity you have offered, or gift of compassion you have received, every noble dream, every cherished thing or moment, ALL for naught..ALL OF THEM and the rest, all ultimately meaningless, purposeless, pointless, amoral and frankly absurd. Were they all purely futile and worthless? Just a collection of random biochemical reactions ? . YOU , and your own life on this Earth- the lives of your wife, your children, those you love and care for; are you and they nothing more, ultimately, than meaningless, worthless, purposeless biological automata wandering aimlessly here and there - Lumps of organic matter whose destiny and sole raisin d'etre was always to be no more , in the end, than fodder for the grave worm?

Is THIS what you SINCERELY believe?

John

Samuel,

With reference to the Christian God, I have tried to emphasise in my posts above that mankind cannot have any knowledge of God AS HE IS IN HIMSELF; that is, as God the divine Subject ( the One who IS - what man has, amongst other things (futilely, in his desperate struggle to place Him within human reach) referred to as- the final, ultimate and absolute Truth) who is transcendent, and forever hidden from humanity. For mankind, God the divine Subject is always "wholly other": unspeakable, incomprehensible, unimaginable, unthinkable, wholly inconceivable and completely imperceptible. There simply ARE NO divine predicates/affirmations that we human beings can ever use to describe this God and that includes supernal adjectives like infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent and so on. In orthodox Christian theology THIS God , i.e. God as He is in Himself is referred to as the "essential" or "ontological" Trinity.

Human beings CAN , as I say, know something of God through what God has chosen to REVEAL of God Self to mankind; that is, through GOD'S HUMANITY. This revealed knowledge is a gift freely given by God at his sole discretion to man, and it is important to appreciate that it is only ever INDIRECT knowledge.

God revealed God's humanity , for instance, in the incarnation , life, teaching and resurrection ( as Christ) of Jesus of Nazareth, and also in the written testimony of the Biblical prophets and apostles as we have it in the Old Testament and the Gospel. To genuinely know God through what He has revealed of Himself to human beings ( in sources like Christ and the written word of the Bible, for example) one must, however possess a special (supernatural) WAY of properly understanding what been revealed by God of God self. This special way (mode) of understanding revealed knowledge is called faith. Faith, very briefly, is also a freely given gift of God, and ultimately only God decides upon which particular human beings the gracious gift of faith will be bestowed. Through faith, we can have sure and certain knowledge of such things as that God IS love or that God is Almighty (omnipotent) or that God is an eschatological God who brings human beings ( through His revelation of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth and the ( vertical) ascension the risen Christ Jesus to the Right Hand of the God the heavenly Father above) or the good news that there is hope for a new life everlasting beyond the grave and eternal death with God in His Kingdom, and hope, as well, for a deliverance from evil and a redemption of suffering, etc, etc.

Regards

John

Sir2u,

It was not "God's fault" that humanity screwed up. Remember that it was God Himself who chose to endow human beings with the gift of free will ( freedom of choice) So Man, when he did ultimately screw up - and screw up "big time" -did so purely of his own volition. In any case, there was was no way, having already decided to granted mankind the gift of free will that God could (logically) intervene and act to prevent man's fall from grace before it happened. If He had done so, then it would have defeated the whole purpose of giving human being freedom of choice in the first place . Had God done this, man whom He created in His own image would have been reduced to nothing more than a mindless, (albeit righteous and well-behaved) puppet and He a mere puppet master predictably pulling the strings that would keep his toy on the straight and narrow , safe from harm's way.That's was never God's intention; apart from anything else he would have found it a very boring "gig". Rather the earth that God created for mankind was intended by Him to be a "vale of soul -making" , that is, a place where human beings could - through the process of erring and suffering the consequences of their mistakes, hopefully learn in a way that would eventually lead themto to freely choose Himself and the , infinite , burning love He so selflessly lavished on the humanity He created in. His very own image.

As for God and Hollywood, it is not so much a case of God saying "Don't call me, I'll call you." God has said that you are free to call Him anytime you like , AND He sincerely hopes that you will decide to give him a ring, it's just that you should expect that He is in any way obliged or "duty bound" to answer your call. Whether or not He chooses to pick up His iPhone when yo call Him and PERSONALLY talk to you is purely a matter for Him to decide, not you. He might pick up, then again, He might not...Like it or not, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.in this case and I'm afraid that there's nothing at all you personally or anyone else can do to change it.

Finally, with respect to having the shit scared out of oneself, I don't know about you, but nothing ever did that for me quite like the firm belief I once briefly held that there was no prospect of hope for redemption of the suffering that I and those I loved had endured - and would inevitably continue to endure - in this life... that all I ( and they ) had waiting in store was the grim reality of eternal death; of death, that is ,as FINIS ( where dead is dead).

Regards

John

Sir2u,

In answer to your question, there IS, in fact, a way that we (human beings) can know God, but it must be emphasised that the particular knowledge of God I am referring to is something that we are given; something that man can never earn or merit through his own efforts, and also that this knowledge is only ever INDIRECT- as opposed to - absolute, knowledge.

To begin with, it ALWAYS remains the case that there is no path from man to God; that is, there is no possibility whatsoever that man can ever know God (personally, I.e. as He is in Himself, as the divine Subject) through any process of human reasoning. No amount of philosophical "logic-chopping" however fervent nor rational analysis however rigorous and cogent nor application or scientific investigation even within a completed physical theory in the hypothetical future, none of our most compelling motivations, our most earnest strivings, our most heroic efforts to know Him will ever unveil God the Unknown. They are all futile and in vain. But while there is no direct path from man to God, there IS a path from God to man...

The good news is that God has chosen - of his own free will - to reveal Himself ( God self) to humanity. The choice or -in more theological terms - the "election" that God makes to reveal God self to man is, it must be stressed, the sole perogative of God; it is a choice that He and He alone elects to make solely at his own discretion. There is absolutely nothing man can do to force it or even to merit it. It (revelation) is, nonetheless, graciously GIVEN to man freely and regardl as a gift of the infinite love that God lavishes upon humanity. As St John rightly tells us, God's humanity can be summed up in three words: "Deus Caritas Est" ( God IS love). God, in graciously condescending to save a fallen and lost humanity through revelation of Himself is truly "Sir2u". Remember that and be grateful. And If you lack faith, then pray for it.

To continue. There are ,very briefly, a number of mediums through which God reveals Himself to man, the primary channel of communication being Jesus Christ. Christ is - if you like - the "go-between" or "middle man" through which God has freely chosen to reveal Himself to humanity. The resurrection of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, as Christ ( the risen Son of God) on the third day after he died an excruciating death on the Cross at Calvary, IS the revelation of God. Human beings cannot know God apart from His revelation in Jesus Christ. It is in the resurrection of Christ that all impossibilities are combined and all irreconcilables reconciled. Christ is the miraculous, paradoxical bridge that spans the profound chasms between God ( the Unknown and transcendent) and moral humanity, between the separate and distinct realms of time and eternity and between the domain of eternal death and that of hope for the promise of new life everlasting beyond the grave. In the resurrection of Christ, God reveals himself as the eschatological God, and it is in this precise fact that atheism in the postmodern era faces its greatest challenge. This ,however, is a matter that fully warrants a separate "thread" in its own right, so I will not discuss it any further here.

Finally, returning to the question at hand, and again very, very briefly, although man may ( in faith) know God through revelation, the knowledge he is given is, as I said above, only INDIRECT knowledge. For even after His revelation in the resurrection of Christ, God remains forever the Unknown and incomprehensible, "wholly other" God. (And) this is because in manifesting Himself, He is, ironically, actually even farther away than He was before. Put simply, the more mankind knows of God, then the more He is still to be known and the more there are of things of God which will yet remain unknown to him. Any serious scholar who has devoted an academic career - or even an entire lifetime - striving to master some particular subject matter in his field of interest- be it in the sciences, philosophy, mathematics or the humanities - will automatically confirm his experience of exactly the same kind of ultimate irony. It is through His revelation to man in the resurrection of Jesus Christ that God, in short, REALLY becomes a mystery. It is in Christ that He makes Himself known as the Unknown ; as He who speaks as the eternally silent One.

Regards

John

Sir2u,

With respect to the God I am referring to - the Biblical God - AS HE IS IN HIMSELF, that is, as what orthodox Christian theology refers to as God in his being as "essential" (or "ontological") Trinity , I am sorry to disappoint you but the answer is an emphatic "No, I cannot !". I absolutely cannot provide any such list of finite descriptive qualities or attributes as those you request. This is because the essential, "intrinsic" nature of God, the divine Subject, as essential/ontological Trinity is utterly unknowable, inconceivable, incomprehensible, unspeakable, transcendent (supernatural), "wholly other", and forever hidden from, humanity.

Regards

John

Mad Fool,

According to St Anselm and yourself THE perfect button exists and it is something that human beings can conceive of in their mind, that is, hold as an entity in their waking consciousness/phenomenal domain ( I.e. as an experienced entity, that presents itself in their perceptual and conceptual consciousness ). You mention that the perfect button has (amongst other attributes) a certain cost. Please tell me roughly what its value is in US currency as I am interested in purchasing it and would like to know if I can afford to buy it. Remember I am a serious man on a quest for the perfect button so don't waste my time.


Over to you.

Thanks

John

Samuel,

You are presuming that the essential nature of a button MUST be defined in utilitarian terms. What if my friend Mr X insists that the essence of a button is fundamentally a question of aesthetics (beauty). The onus is now on you to prove that Mr X is mistaken and that his thesis that the perfect button is the most beautiful button is false.

The ball is now in your court. Please present your objection/s.

Regards

John

Sir2u,

But there are lots and lots of buttons that do their job properly ! Iam only interested in nature of THE perfect button and apart from doing its job properly what physical properties ( for example) it possesses in terms of, say its size, shape, colour, mass, density,what substance it is made from( wood , metal, plastic?), how many thread holes it would possess, or is it the case that the perfect button is one that is not sewn onto a shirt or trousers with cotton, etc?) and so on? According to Anselm's ontological argument we can possess an idea of God as THE perfect being, now a button is a much humbler thing than God Almighty so surely you should have no difficulty providing me with a brief descriptive account of the nature of THE perfect button as it is in itself?

Thanks

John

Mad Fool,

You assume that we can describe God. I disagree. Let's put God aside for a moment and focus our attention on buttons, like the buttons on a shirt. Could you give me a brief description of the perfect button?

With thanks

John

Banno,

As a village worthy you should not practice sophistry.

Regards

John

Mad Fool,

Saint Augustine said of God, "Si Comprehendis non Deus est", - ( If you understand Him, he is not God).

Augustine means that If we (human beings) could , in fact, fully understand and describe God (I.e. accurately describe the ESSENCE of God,- the personal nature of God the divine Subject as He is in Himself)) using human language and human concepts, then "He" would not be God, would he? He would be nothing more than a mere human construct - a finite, false idol created by , and possessed by, man -a "Nicht Gott" like the God whose death Nietzsche famously announced in the 19th century. But the one true (and living) Christian God can never be a possession of mankind, human beings can never "put God in their pocket" as it were, and hold Him hostage to their mortal diktats and desires. Human beings cannot, in short, deem to tell Him- "God the Father Almighty" - what He is or is not. Any attempt to do so represents nothing more than a foolish, futile word game which very quickly goes "pear-shaped" in the form of semantic problems like the "stone paradox" and so on.

Regards

John

I got it from God who (mercifully) gave this knowledge to me Himself through - to give one of many examples in the Scripture- the prophet Isaiah, whom I have already cited for you in my post (above.
). When God spoke directly to Isaiah about Himself, the prophet carefully wrote down what he was told, as follows...

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts
Nor are My ways (plans) " declares THE LORD.
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts higher than your thoughts"

Do you geddit? Do you understand what God is saying? He is basically saying," Look, don't even THINK about trying to work me out because I am way, waaaaaay above and beyond anything you (human beings) could ever possibly imagine.

Check it out for yourself in the Old Testament (cf: Isaiah Chapter 55 verses 8-9)

Regards

John

Mad Fool,

With regard to God's transcendance, Karl Barth - who was arguably the 20th century's most influential Christian (Protestant) theologian - explains the issue far more eloquently than ever I could. So I will quote him directly to help clarify the point I am making about the "stone paradox" being merely a semantic problem... a problem rooted in the fact that human language totally lacks any capacity to even begin to attempt a description of ANY aspect of the true nature of God as He is in Himself - the "wholly other"and utterly mysterious divine Subject.

Barth says of Him...

"For humankind God is always on the other side, new, removed, foreign/Unknown, superior, is never within reach, never his possession, whoever utters God always says miracle"..."There is, to be precise, no divine predicate/affirmation ( such as "omnipotent", "omniscient", "omnibenevolent, etc), no divine concept that contains in particular that which God is, there is, to be precise, only the divine Subject and in Him the fullness of His divine affirmation"..."Insofar as a confirmation by the human is concerned, insofar as a spiritual happening is determined and receives its direction from God and takes on the form of faith, the impossible, the miracle, the PARADOX"
, takes place."

Regards

John

Mad Fool,

The "stone (omnipotence) paradox" is merely a problem in semantics. That is, questions such as "Could God square a circle ?" or "Could God create a stone so heavy that He could not lift it ?" Are formulated in human language, and human language is simply not capable of describing any attribute or characteristic of God as He is in Himself. When I say God " as He is in Himself" I mean God the divine Subject or God as what Christians refer to as "essential" or "ontological trinity".

The Biblical God - as He is in himself- is, with respect to humanity, transcendent and "wholly other". He the divine Subject, is utterly unknowable, incomprehensible, unspeakable and forever hidden from man's view. He , as the divine Subject, is totally mysterious. As it is written of God in the Old Testament( Book of Isaiah) : " His ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts".

Given this, human language is not capable of describing the kind of power an omnipotent being like the Christian God possesses. Even attempting to formulate questions like the "stone (omnipotence) paradox" is an exercise in futility since human words cannot begin to refer to God as He is in Himself.

Fishery,

The contemporary Kalam cosmological argument as it is presented and defended by academics like the Christian theologian/philosopher William Craig, has its roots in the thought of the 12th century Muslim scholar, Al-Ghazali, who argued that the notion of a beginningless universe was absurd. He formulated his argument very simply in the following statement:

"Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning, now the world is a being which begins, therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning."

Al-Ghazali recognised that if the universe was "past-eternal" and never began to exist in time there must have been an infinite number of (cause -and -effect) events prior to today, but he denied that an infinite number of things could actually exist. He realised that if an actual infinite number of things could really exist then various absurdities would result like, for instance, "Hibert's Hotel" as illustrated in David Hibert's famous thought experiment. If "Hibert's Hotel" could really exist, then it would have a sign posted outside saying " No Vacancy ( guests welcome) which is patently absurd.Briefly, It is clearly unreasonable, I think, to expect that such a Hotel could actually exist. And since nothing depends on Hibert's illustration involving a Hotel, the argument can be generalised to show that that the existence of of an actual infinite number of (any) things - such as an infinite number of past events prior the existence of universe as we observe it is today is frankly absurd.

Your repeated objection is that developments in modern mathematical set theory have seen the use of actually infinite sets become commonplace, such, for example, as the set of negative integers ( 0, -1, -2, -3, -4...) which has ( in set theory) an actually infinite number of numbers in it. You suggest that this invalidates or at least undermines premise (2) of the Kalam argument, but does it ? In my opinion the answer is "No, it does not.". I fully accept that if , as a mathematician, you adopt certain axioms and rules, then you can TALK about actually infinite collections in a way that is consistent and without contradicting yourself - BUT, insn't it true that all this ultimately achieves is showing how one can set about constructing a particular universe of discourse for talking consistently about actual infinities. That is, It does absolutely nothing to show that an actually infinite number of things can really exist. So, in short, if Al-Ghazali is right, ( and I believe he is) we can dismiss this universe of mathematical discourse as a merely fictional realm, like the world of Sherlock Holmes or Harry Potter, or something that exists only in your imagination. The onus is on you to show that this is not the case.

Another objection to the Kalam argument you forward is that premise 2, namely the proposition that that the universe did have a temporal beginning, makes things too easy for a natural theologian like Craig because it patently "bakes in" ( as you put it ) the necessity of a creating cause of the origin of the universe. Even if this were true and Craig was being "disingenuous", the fact remains that overwhelming majority ordinary lay persons (people, that is who are not employed as professional astrophysicists , cosmologists or philosophers etc) ,would agree with the Kalam argument's conclusion that there MUST be a creating cause of the universe. When, for example, the fundamental principles of the "Big Bang" theory is first explained to most non-expert adults, their very first question is: "What caused the Big Bang ?" This question evinces a pre-philosophical/pre-scientific intuition that whatever begins to exist has a cause, and that things do not somehow simply "pop" into existence ( ex nihilo) without having a distinct cause. In my view, this is a perfectly rational and reasonable intuition and therefore offers strong prima facile justification for thinking that if the universe did begin to exist in time and that it's origination must therefore have been the effect of some transcendent cause ?

What do you think?

Regards

John