The Little Thread Which Grew - the Apollo '73 to Everything But

[Maria Cuervo]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

While I agree for the major part,

I disagree on beings cannot be fixed.

For we fix ourselves all the time thru observation, learning, experimenting, etc.

When one gets caught in a fixed idea system like scientology, or religion, we are stuck.

But, thinking outside the box leads to new ideas.

People every day fix themselves. They touch a hot plate, and go Fuk, bad move, and learn. Of course Hubbard turned this into an engram, secondary or lock. LOL

Gib
I agree that on a practical and educational level we fix ourselves. I was thinking more about another sort of fixing when I wrote that, the illusion that we can fix ourselves spiritually via a technology. Since I previously admitted being Christian I will offer that I feel as a finite human that my human efforts would always fall short of a fix. The only fix for me is through God's intervention.

But even without considering any Christian angle there is a way in which the soul, even for ancient pagan Plato, was immutable and unchangeable. Ontologically speaking then it cannot progress since it is already perfect as itself. This is why St. Augustine church father and also a platonist had a theory that the soul cannot learn because it already 'knows', that all it needs is something to help it recollect.

This Greek and Medieval view can be opposed to the Enlightenment concepts of the I or center of consciousness which was thought to be able to 'develop' itself by learning or other means, concepts that are still working themselves out today in New Age philosophies including Scientology. These same philosophies are also dependent on Freudian conceptions of the structure of the mind. They generally ascribe to the idea of consciousness as an I that progresses or can change. This I is not the same as what Plato called a soul, that unchangeable beautiful being, the being of the beautiful on which he philosophized. The modern consciousness is entirely empirical and changeable and can get better or worse, thus can be fixed. And a weird confused idea in Scn is the association of a 'thetan' with consciousness. Since then the 'thetan' must be equated to a perishable thing that can get worse and needs fixing. The Greeks did not conceive of an I. The I and even consciousness are modern Cartesian concepts augmented by the seal of approval of psychological disciplines. I guess, if I take it only logically, I like the archaic Greek view of the soul better than the modern I and all its need of fixing. If I take it from the perspective of a believer, I accept that as finite I would have no way to justify myself or improve myself without God's help. So many in CoS rely not on divine help but on human means of 'fixing' themselves, which seems to me a fool's errand. Given the preference I have for the ancient view of soul combined with my acceptance of finitude due to a Christian orientation, I guess I cannot feel attracted to the Scientology view of fixing since it means I would have to drop the soul and settle instead for empirical 'consciousness'. Since I find consciousness a shabby thing compared to the soul, in fact not at all equatable to the soul, I can't get myself to be too excited about it or the thought of fixing it.

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

It can be difficult to express completely and succinctly in on short post that which is the subject of volumes. Infinity is indeed a mathematical construct but you frequently hear the expression regarding the ability of a puny human to understand the infinite mind of god or gods. And yes there are greater and lesser degrees of knowledge on any given subject, some questions are in fact binary. God or gods either exist or they do not. I can't think of an intermediate position, although there may be one I suppose. Spiritual beings are real or imaginary. Can't think of an intermediate position.

You are correct that many things are asymptotic and never quite run parallel or cross the limit. But I was speaking of infinity in the theocratic or spiritual usage rather than the mathematical. But then again the concept of "proof" scientifically only exists in mathematics. Evidence leading to a conclusion is not "proof" in any certain sense and can be modified based on new observations and evidence. I'm referring here to things which cannot be observed in any reliably repeatable way with any predictive value. If I cannot test a given hypothesis, how do I decide it's veracity? And can you give me a method of discerning between the imperceptible and the non-existent?
]

You made bold assertions about things which are infinite. I knew you were incorrect in making such broad assertions and gave you a few counterexamples to illustrate my point. As I said, you were painting with too broad of a brush. In response, you in effect took my advice and got out a narrower brush and began qualifying which types of infinity your claims applied to. Fine, I stressed in my post they I got the gist of what you were saying and agreed with a lot of what you said.

On the question of whether or not God or gods exist neither me nor anyone else on Earth knows for sure. My view is the gods such as Apollo, Zeus and all that type of mythology don't really exist but then again, if a group of people such as the ancient Romans or Greeks or Native American Tribes believed they existed, then they could create a society in which those mythical gods do exist for them.

As for God with a capital G, my current view, a view which is always changing, is that that type of God, The God of the Hebrew Bible does not exist as described in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the description of God alters the God of vengeance to a God of love. To me, that change was a change in the right direction. Something greater than ourselves has to exist, whether it be a personality like the God of the Bible, or a Universal force or an energy field. Some sort of Cause or Potential Cause had to exist before the beginning of this Universe. That is almost self evident, virtually axiomatic.

There is no way in hell that a Universe of this nature was formed by ONLY a random interaction of particles following a large explosion. Even in a Big Bang theory, the concept of Space has to exist as if it is a given, the space has to contain highly condensed matter, the matter particles already have to contain all sorts of constants, such as the freezing and boiling points of water, the velocity of light in a vacuum, the melting points of metals, the coefficient of mass for each and every element the gravity attraction between each and every particle, Avocadro's number and myriads of other characteristics of matter and energy and to top it off, before the explosion, nothing is in motion so there is no time and out of nowhere for no particular reason this whole cocktail of matter explodes out into a pre existing space and the matter knows to move out from the center of the explosion, at the velocity of light, out into a space which conveniently happens to exist without actually being created and pre existing space is of infinite extent so that the expansion can continue onwards indefinitely or at least until the universe cools off and freezes up due to a lack of density.

Even if one believed in this model of creation, there is potential cause! The existence of space is part of potential cause, the existence of matter is part of potential cause. Then you get down to what caused the explosion. There was a steady state condition of space and matter, no time passage was taking place since nothing was moving. What ignited the explosion? It is at the point just before the explosion took place where some sort of causative agent had to be present to ignite the explosion. Whatever caused the explosion to occur, if there was a big bang, and the evidence is pretty compelling that there was, a Cause or Potential Cause had to exist prior to the explosion and it had to exist outside the physical Universe because that Universe had not yet been started.

The concept of infinity, itself, is a mental construct which man has constructed. Prior to the beginning of the Universe, either there was no infinity or all was infinity! If all was infinity then humans, all animal and plant life and all matter are all spun off from infinity and so we humans are spin offs from the Potential Cause which existed before the explosion and that means we are particles of the infinite. One thing about infinity which we do know is that when pieces of infinity are removed from something infinite, the residual is still infinite!

As a result of all of these considerations and many more considerations, I have come to the conclusion that a Universe which was not preceded by a Cause or Potential Cause is impossible. I have ruled out that possibility as even being possible. I am 100% sure that theory is in error. I don't think the depictions of God in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are accurate depictions of the way things are but they have some elements of the truth in them, the New Testament God of love being closer to the truth than the God of vengeance in the Hebrew bible. I believe the views of Hinduism, Buddhism, the Tao, etc. are probably closer to the truth than the God of the Bible. The Native American Indian beliefs are remarkably beautiful and seem to contain large and simple truths within them.
Lakey

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Lakey, My point is only that I have, several times, asked her to let it go. This has only resulted in her redoubling efforts to keep escalating not just this dispute, but a disagreement I had with another poster a few days ago where she jumped in the middle and revived the post in an effort to revive and escalate that disagreement. it. It is a distraction and a waste of my time and everyone else's, including yours. And frankly, it's just nasty. As it continues, her intentions become more clear. I'm willing to drop it at any time. It's not me you need to speak to. You don't know whether she has an agenda or not, nor do I, but these sort of actions ares not healthy for ESMB or anyone else here but there's no stopping her, lol, she thinks she's on a mission or something.

Sheila, I believe that she decided to let it go a day or two ago. I see these posts of Maria's popping up from blogs or other threads but these are undated. They give an illusion that she is not willing to let the quarrel end but those posts don't seem to me to be brand new, rather they are from several days ago. I think that if you look for only brand new posts made by Maria on the Apollo thread within the last two days, you will find that Maria has ceased quarreling with you for about 2 days now and she has no intention of restarting the quarrel.
Lakey

 

[JustSheila]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Hi Lakey, I'm not going to argue the dates. Though I disagree with that part (dates and times), I am glad to let it go and I hope that Maria's definition for that is not narrow - meaning, I do not wish her to bring it up on other threads or stir up disagreements with others to play some sort of political or social "us v them" game that breaks ESMB into factions. Letting it go means the whole ball of wax to me. I hope that starts now.

 

[JustSheila]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

And a weird confused idea in Scn is the association of a 'thetan' with consciousness. Since then the 'thetan' must be equated to a perishable thing that can get worse and needs fixing.

Like. Very much. Actually, I like the whole post, but this is the part that I find resoundingly true that is never said enough. I've never been able to get this concept across well to others, but it seems to me one of the biggest lies of Scientology. Nice post.

 

[MrNobody]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

<snip> constants, such as the freezing and boiling points of water,<snip>

Please explain.

Hint 1: If you ever get the chance to get on the highest top of one of earth's highest mountains, please boil a regular egg in a regular pot of water while you're there.

Hint 2: I don't accept the use of pressure cookers in this experiment.

 

[JustSheila]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Maria, we've had a series of about six misunderstandings between us in the last few weeks. I do not want to get into detail on a public forum, nor do I want to get into a thing about it in private. I just want to publicly state that it's pretty clear from that post (that I just commented on) how you think and where you're coming from, so I am beginning to understand you a bit better. Thank you for writing it. Wishing you a good day/evening.

 

[Maria Cuervo]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Maria, we've had a series of about six misunderstandings between us in the last few weeks. I do not want to get into detail on a public forum, nor do I want to get into a thing about it in private. I just want to publicly state that it's pretty clear from that post (that I just commented on) how you think and where you're coming from, so I am beginning to understand you a bit better. Thank you for writing it. Wishing you a good day/evening.

Thank you for understanding. I admit I can be obscure; for example Gib might not have seen why I said no one can be fixed but now when he reads my last post I hope he understands why I'd say something like that which at first glance seems to make no sense. Not that he will agree, even with what I just said, which is not the point or goal. I have no desire to bother anyone; usually I only interject if something someone says make me think of something I had never thought of before or if a post makes something appear differently to me. I probably did not notice an argument was in progress in the last thread; just that something the person said had spurred a thought, made me think of something.

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

Please explain.

Hint 1: If you ever get the chance to get on the highest top of one of earth's highest mountains, please boil a regular egg in a regular pot of water while you're there.

Hint 2: I don't accept the use of pressure cookers in this experiment.

You got me on that one, I should have put more detail such as the freezing and boiling points of water at sea level on planet Earth. It really is a minor point and has no consequences as far as my theory goes. All I have to do is add that all the properties are programmed into matter for certain conditions and that if other conditions arise, matter has programmed into it the exact amount of change required to adapt to the changed conditions. That is even more compelling evidence that there is design behind it all. If no design is involved and something works for Earth's strength of gravity or temperature ranges, it is not a given that matter would automatically know how to adjust for conditions in some other environment. The fact that it does makes my argument even stronger, not weaker.

BTW, everyone knows the velocity of light is a constant, called "C" but C only occurs in a vacuum. If light has to travel through any medium, its velocity is reduced, the denser the medium is, the more it slows light down until at a certain density light will not be able to pass through matter.
Lakey

 

[SPsince83]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

You made bold assertions about things which are infinite. I knew you were incorrect in making such broad assertions and gave you a few counterexamples to illustrate my point. As I said, you were painting with too broad of a brush. In response, you in effect took my advice and got out a narrower brush and began qualifying which types of infinity your claims applied to. Fine, I stressed in my post they I got the gist of what you were saying and agreed with a lot of what you said.

On the question of whether or not God or gods exist neither me nor anyone else on Earth knows for sure. My view is the gods such as Apollo, Zeus and all that type of mythology don't really exist but then again, if a group of people such as the ancient Romans or Greeks or Native American Tribes believed they existed, then they could create a society in which those mythical gods do exist for them.

As for God with a capital G, my current view, a view which is always changing, is that that type of God, The God of the Hebrew Bible does not exist as described in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the description of God alters the God of vengeance to a God of love. To me, that change was a change in the right direction. Something greater than ourselves has to exist, whether it be a personality like the God of the Bible, or a Universal force or an energy field. Some sort of Cause or Potential Cause had to exist before the beginning of this Universe. That is almost self evident, virtually axiomatic.

There is no way in hell that a Universe of this nature was formed by ONLY a random interaction of particles following a large explosion. Even in a Big Bang theory, the concept of Space has to exist as if it is a given, the space has to contain highly condensed matter, the matter particles already have to contain all sorts of constants, such as the freezing and boiling points of water, the velocity of light in a vacuum, the melting points of metals, the coefficient of mass for each and every element the gravity attraction between each and every particle, Avocadro's number and myriads of other characteristics of matter and energy and to top it off, before the explosion, nothing is in motion so there is no time and out of nowhere for no particular reason this whole cocktail of matter explodes out into a pre existing space and the matter knows to move out from the center of the explosion, at the velocity of light, out into a space which conveniently happens to exist without actually being created and pre existing space is of infinite extent so that the expansion can continue onwards indefinitely or at least until the universe cools off and freezes up due to a lack of density.

Even if one believed in this model of creation, there is potential cause! The existence of space is part of potential cause, the existence of matter is part of potential cause. Then you get down to what caused the explosion. There was a steady state condition of space and matter, no time passage was taking place since nothing was moving. What ignited the explosion? It is at the point just before the explosion took place where some sort of causative agent had to be present to ignite the explosion. Whatever caused the explosion to occur, if there was a big bang, and the evidence is pretty compelling that there was, a Cause or Potential Cause had to exist prior to the explosion and it had to exist outside the physical Universe because that Universe had not yet been started.

The concept of infinity, itself, is a mental construct which man has constructed. Prior to the beginning of the Universe, either there was no infinity or all was infinity! If all was infinity then humans, all animal and plant life and all matter are all spun off from infinity and so we humans are spin offs from the Potential Cause which existed before the explosion and that means we are particles of the infinite. One thing about infinity which we do know is that when pieces of infinity are removed from something infinite, the residual is still infinite!

As a result of all of these considerations and many more considerations, I have come to the conclusion that a Universe which was not preceded by a Cause or Potential Cause is impossible. I have ruled out that possibility as even being possible. I am 100% sure that theory is in error. I don't think the depictions of God in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are accurate depictions of the way things are but they have some elements of the truth in them, the New Testament God of love being closer to the truth than the God of vengeance in the Hebrew bible. I believe the views of Hinduism, Buddhism, the Tao, etc. are probably closer to the truth than the God of the Bible. The Native American Indian beliefs are remarkably beautiful and seem to contain large and simple truths within them.
Lakey

I think we mostly agree. There is nothing that demands the "first cause" be supernatural. And physics in this universe is as it is and particles responding are not behaving randomly. They are moving in naturally selected ways. Same with biological evolution. It is anything BUT random.

Yes, sometimes (including this one) I paint with too broad a brush. Chalk it up to watching Bob Ross paint his "happy little clouds and mountains and trees with a house painting brush and a trowel. What I attempt to do is distill the theme down to essence. Sometimes I succeed in my attempt at clarity and sometimes I fail. It seems to me a problem in my editing skills. Plus, due to my own recalcitrance and intransigence, I am sitting in a decidedly un-ergonomic position which makes typing on my laptop a minefield

And finally, I'm just a fuckin' hippie. Sue me

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

Thank you for understanding. I admit I can be obscure; for example Gib might not have seen why I said no one can be fixed but now when he reads my last post I hope he understands why I'd say something like that which at first glance seems to make no sense. Not that he will agree, even with what I just said, which is not the point or goal. I have no desire to bother anyone; usually I only interject if something someone says make me think of something I had never thought of before or if a post makes something appear differently to me. I probably did not notice an argument was in progress in the last thread; just that something the person said had spurred a thought, made me think of something.

The concept if a life entiity being damaged and needing repair is very intriguing. If spiritual in nature and not part of the physical universe, probably the spirit can't ACTUALLY be damaged so as to to need fixing but it can decide that it has been damaged or go into agreement that it has been damaged. Once it has done this, it can behave as if it has been damaged.

If the being itself is creating the concept of being damaged, this has to continually be created for the imagined damage to persist. An epiphany could occur which could immediately stop the being from continually creating the concept that it is damage at which point the being would be undamaged again.

You see this type of thing at these big Billy Graham type of religious revivals. A person is convinced by Billy to come up to the altar and accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and viola, a crippled man is able to throw away his crutches and walk.

Was the man really crippled or was that just a mental construct which he was mocking up? You be the judge. To me, even though he may not have actually been broken, he had convinced himself that he was broken and so some sort of impetus from outside of him had to occur for him to give up the pretense that he was damaged. To some degree he needed some sort of help in order to help himself overcome his imagined shortcomings. To that extant, the being was fixed. True, he fixed himself put he needed a push from Billy Graham to assist him.
Lakey

 

[MrNobody]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

You got me on that one, I should have put more detail such as the freezing and boiling points of water at sea level on planet Earth. It really is a minor point and has no consequences as far as my theory goes. All I have to do is add that all the properties are programmed into matter for certain conditions and that if other conditions arise, matter has programmed into it the exact amount of change required to adapt to the changed conditions. That is even more compelling evidence that there is design behind it all. If no design is involved and something works for Earth's strength of gravity or temperature ranges, it is not a given that matter would automatically know how to adjust for conditions in some other environment. The fact that it does makes my argument even stronger, not weaker.

BTW, everyone knows the velocity of light is a constant, called "C" but C only occurs in a vacuum. If light has to travel through any medium, its velocity is reduced, the denser the medium is, the more it slows light down until at a certain density light will not be able to pass through matter.
Lakey

You disappoint me, Lakey. First you mistake variables for constants and when I mention that, you take that to make an argument for an intelligent designer?

You want to believe in intelligent design? Fine go ahead, have fun with it and all the questions that come from that. Like who designed the designer, what was/is he/she/it designed for, what did he/she/it design this universe for, yada yada yada.

I'm able to live a relatively happy life without this kind of useless, unproductive questions and I'm also happy to live my life without any useless, unproductive answers. I'm happy without having all the answers for the world, the universe and everything.

BTW: The answer to that most important question is: 42.

 

[Maria Cuervo]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

The concept if a life entiity being damaged and needing repair is very intriguing. If spiritual in nature and not part of the physical universe, probably the spirit can't ACTUALLY be damaged so as to to need fixing but it can decide that it has been damaged or go into agreement that it has been damaged. Once it has done this, it can behave as if it has been damaged.

If the being itself is creating the concept of being damaged, this has to continually be created for the imagined damage to persist. An epiphany could occur which could immediately stop the being from continually creating the concept that it is damage at which point the being would be undamaged again.

You see this type of thing at these big Billy Graham type of religious revivals. A person is convinced by Billy to come up to the altar and accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and viola, a crippled man is able to throw away his crutches and walk.

Was the man really crippled or was that just a mental construct which he was mocking up? You be the judge. To me, even though he may not have actually been broken, he had convinced himself that he was broken and so some sort of impetus from outside of him had to occur for him to give up the pretense that he was damaged. To some degree he needed some sort of help in order to help himself overcome his imagined shortcomings. To that extant, the being was fixed. True, he fixed himself put he needed a push from Billy Graham to assist him.
Lakey

For the medievals it is strange that the soul could make mistakes and feel emotions since historically this situated the soul in the material register. Since ancient times matter was held in disrepute exactly because it was not constant but instead changed, deteriorated, etc. If the soul had capacity for change then somehow the worry was the soul was material and could, like organic life, die. Plato offers his solution about the soul and its eternity in the Phaedo dialogue. To a great extent the suspicion against matter continued since then to modernity. Platonic form and Aristotelian categories were privileged and matter was not viewed as a candidate in the quest for origin and truth, except by those like Gorgias, who argued against Plato and quarreled with him, proposing something with more affinity with a materialistic view. Contemporary philosophy since the 1920s and maybe even earlier disdained Philosophies of 'consciousness' for persisting in an idealism. For moderns, the conception of a soul or of God was continued and persisted in what was called subjectivity and consciousness. It was viewed by them as a sly way to reintroduce the idea of transcendence, God, etc. Consciousness for a hyper empiricist and materialist is false because it posits something beyond the body or brain for the source of thinking; for them, any transcendence, even that of the I of consciousness is too much to tolerate.

The ancients and Medievals tried to resolve the soul as emotional by saying the soul was tripartite, having higher or lower elements and thus able to be brought down into the 'flawed' material existence in which things break and need to be 'fixed'. The problem was not resolved since Augustine and Aquinas seriously wanted to find a way to conform religion to logic and science as they understood it. In my opinion it's near impossible to blend religion to science if only because science and religion have different commitments and goals. This effort to fuse the two caused a lot of issues over the centuries and continues to be a sort of quixotic quest, at least I think so.

I have tried to consider ways to reconcile the emotional soul - the war between things that change and transcendental unchanging objects. The way I have tentatively reconciled this is my own idiosyncratic thought, not official anything, not provable by me, probably wrong....but I will write of it in the next post. For me it affirms at least okne Christian view of matter and existence, thus allows me to be an existential thinker and a Christian without feeling this as a conflict. Be back soon to explain....

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

You disappoint me, Lakey. First you mistake variables for constants and when I mention that, you take that to make an argument for an intelligent designer?

You want to believe in intelligent design? Fine go ahead, have fun with it and all the questions that come from that. Like who designed the designer, what was/is he/she/it designed for, what did he/she/it design this universe for, yada yada yada.

I'm able to live a relatively happy life without this kind of useless, unproductive questions and I'm also happy to live my life without any useless, unproductive answers. I'm happy without having all the answers for the world, the universe and everything.

BTW: The answer to that most important question is: 42.

I used to be agnostic on the subject of intelligent design but I have now shifted towards design as being a given. It is axiomatic, a self evident truth. Not believing in some sort of design agent or designer is like digging a hole in the ground and finding a perfect beautiful oil painting signed by Picasso and then declaring that through the passage of time, the painting was created by chance through a random interaction of atoms and other atomic particles. It could be said that there is a slight chance that this theory would be correct, maybe 1 chance in 1,000,000,000,000,000. However, let's face it, in the real world or real universe the actual chance is zero. There is just no chance of that happening.

I have another example which I made up which illustrates my point. Say a casino opened in Las Vegas in 1953 and say they are still operating. Let's say that since 1953 there is one honest roulette wheel that has come up black every time it has been spun for the last 62 years. Figuring 62 years is 22,630 days and that the wheel is spun once every 2 minutes, 24 hours a day, we get about 16,300,000 spins of the roulette wheel. What chance is there that an honest wheel would come up black every single time it was spun for 62 years. Let's say the casino management suspects cheating and so replaces the wheel with a new wheel directly from the manufacturer once a month but no matter what they do, this wheel has come up black for 62 years. Red has never come up even once, even though it has a 50-50 chance of occurring. Casino records are searched for long streaks and the casino finds that once black came up 24 times in a row and that is the all time record. What are the chances of an honest wheel coming up black for 62 years in a row? It is just never going to happen. The mathematical chance is 1 in 16,300,000 spins but the reality of the matter is that such a streak will never happen in the duration of this universe. If one considers the chance to be zero, for all practical purposes they are correct.

Now take the Universe and all the complex conditions required for a planet to form, spawn and sustain intelligent life. We have in the casino example a chance of 1 out of 16,000,000, we have for my hypothetical example of an art treasure occurring by chance a guess of one chance in 1,000,000,000,000,000. Now for an entire Universe to form by random chance, the odds are so minute, that if you wrote, 1 chance in 1,000.000.... and continued with a million zeroes, or a billion zeroes, the chances would be even smaller than that. That is just my opinion but everyone would have to agree that the chance of this intricate universe forming and dovetailing with other parts which have randomly formed to create a functioning ecosystem with intelligent life residing within it have to be very, very small.

Go ahead and live your life as you see fit. I respect your opinions and if you are happy with your conclusions, I have no quarrel to pick with you. I don't even know what your belief system is, all I know so far is that you strongly reject the idea of intelligent design. How about cluing me and our viewers into some alternate theory which you prefer to intelligent design. I, for one, would be interested in hearing what you offer as an alternative theory.
Lakey

 

[SPsince83]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

You disappoint me, Lakey. First you mistake variables for constants and when I mention that, you take that to make an argument for an intelligent designer?

You want to believe in intelligent design? Fine go ahead, have fun with it and all the questions that come from that. Like who designed the designer, what was/is he/she/it designed for, what did he/she/it design this universe for, yada yada yada.

I'm able to live a relatively happy life without this kind of useless, unproductive questions and I'm also happy to live my life without any useless, unproductive answers. I'm happy without having all the answers for the world, the universe and everything.

BTW: The answer to that most important question is: 42.

It's 42 turtles all the way down. How does one regress to -1(infinity)?

 

[Maria Cuervo]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

When I studied the Medievals, particularly the church fathers, I saw a couple of things that, philosophically, I don't know if theologically, helped me understand where early Christians viewed the body differently than did the Greeks some of them so admired. For the Greek the body was a source of evil, since material. For the Christian since God created matter it could never be evil. The body was not evil and neither were its needs. Yes, there was a hierarchy of goods, such that soul was superior to body, and at the top of the hierarchy was God. But since God created bodies they along with creation were good and the Christian scholar had to look elsewhere for the source of 'evil'.

Not only was the body good but according to Augustine humans were never meant to be separate from their bodies, the separation was a result of having disobeyed God in Eden and the separation was not viewed as natural.

Historically existential philosophy has had to do with being in concrete existence, having a body and experiencing the material world. For myself I reconciled matter and spirit by asking myself if it was possible that our glorified bodies, whatever those would be post a mortal existence, are material but of some other material unknown in finite physics in this world. If we are always with a body except at the interruption caused by mortal death, this situation of being embodied is natural to us.... The senses, then, and empiricism, are not wrong since even in the beyond we would have senses, I speculate, albeit more rich or different senses beyond finite measure. In this case it is not strange that the soul has senses if the soul is always embodied and in fact can't be distinguished or separated from a body.

Of course this is all just thoughts. But it is interesting. A final point is that once one decides the evil source is not the material sensuous world, Augustine says that evil can now be recognized as a habit of the soul, a habit of preferring or loving inferior goods; for example loving some aspect of material life more than God. In Augustine's definition evil is a form of misdirected desire, a sort of blindness that fails to perceive and love higher goods.

How I would tie this into Scientology is that the church sees it as a goal to exteriorize a 'thetan' from the body; the exteriorized state is seen as preferable. Cause is conceived as cause over matter, energy, space and time. Thus the view of Scientology, in my opinion, continues the ancient adversarial relationship of the soul against matter, and the immaterial continues for Scientology to be seen as superior to the material. So it seems to me that the Christian view of the body and Scientology's are very different.

 

[lkwdblds]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

For the medievals it is strange that the soul could make mistakes and feel emotions since historically this situated the soul in the material register. Since ancient times matter was held in disrepute exactly because it was not constant but instead changed, deteriorated, etc. If the soul had capacity for change then somehow the worry was the soul was material and could, like organic life, die. Plato offers his solution about the soul and its eternity in the Phaedo dialogue. To a great extent the suspicion against matter continued since then to modernity. Platonic form and Aristotelian categories were privileged and matter was not viewed as a candidate in the quest for origin and truth, except by those like Gorgias, who argued against Plato and quarreled with him, proposing something with more affinity with a materialistic view. Contemporary philosophy winces the 1920s and maybe even earlier disdained Philosophies of 'consciousness' for persisting in an idealism. For moderns, the conception of a soul or of God was continued and persisted in what was called subjectivity and consciousness. It was viewed by them as a sly way to reintroduce the idea of transcendence, God, etc. Consciousness for a hyper empiricist and materialist is false because it posits something beyond the body or brain for the source of thinking; for them, any transcendence, even that of the I of consciousness is too much to tolerate.

I think that Gorgias, has reincarnated and is a major poster on ESMB!!

The ancients and Medievals tried to resolve the soul as emotional by saying the soul was tripartite, having higher or lower elements and thus able to be brought down into the 'flawed' material existence in which things break and need to be 'fixed'. The problem was not resolved since Augustine and Aquinas seriously wanted to find a way to conform religion to logic and science as they understood it. In my opinion it's near impossible to blend religion to science if only because science and religion have different commitments and goals. This effort to fuse the two caused a lot of issues over the centuries and continues to be a sort of quixotic quest, at least I think so.

You see this technique at work in various subjects such as the works of Freud and Jung and of course our boy, LRH, also got involved in this with his Analytical and Reactive Mind shtick. It's not all bad, there is probably a place for this technique in the studies of mankind. I can see right away what you have mentioned. What seems to happen is that when this technique is use, it tends to try and conform religion to logic and this is no easy task. Trying to conform these two subjects tends to create divisions as each subject clings stubbornly to its own independence.

I have tried to consider ways to reconcile the emotional soul - the war between things that change and transcendental unchanging objects. The way I have tentatively reconciled this is my own idiosyncratic thought, not official anything, not provable by me, probably wrong....but I will write of it in the next post. For me it affirms at least one Christian view of matter and existence, thus allows me to be an existential thinker and a Christian without feeling this as a conflict. Be back soon to explain....

My first thought and question is to ask you what unchangeable items exist within the Universe. It seems to me that everything is changing and if change stops occurring, there is no longer time. I am trying to think of something fixed in this universe and am drawing a blank with the possible exception of the concept of God or some sort of mover unmoved. When it comes to the concept of God, to me God would not reside inside the Universe but outside of the universe. Vinay's model starts with the presumption that the universe contains everything and thus any God involved in the universe would be part of the Universe. That concept really simplified the process of pondering the Universe but it was hard for me to accept that point of view.

I can't wait for your next post to see how you have reconciled the war between things that change and transcendental unchanging objects. I wish I was better schooled in Philosophy to I could speak to you more as a colleague but unfortunately that is not the case so when discussing this with you, it is more a I'm a student talking to a professor.
Lakey

 

[JustSheila]

Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

For the medievals it is strange that the soul could make mistakes and feel emotions since historically this situated the soul in the material register. Since ancient times matter was held in disrepute exactly because it was not constant but instead changed, deteriorated, etc. If the soul had capacity for change then somehow the worry was the soul was material and could, like organic life, die. Plato offers his solution about the soul and its eternity in the Phaedo dialogue. To a great extent the suspicion against matter continued since then to modernity. Platonic form and Aristotelian categories were privileged and matter was not viewed as a candidate in the quest for origin and truth, except by those like Gorgias, who argued against Plato and quarreled with him, proposing something with more affinity with a materialistic view. Contemporary philosophy winces the 1920s and maybe even earlier disdained Philosophies of 'consciousness' for persisting in an idealism. For moderns, the conception of a soul or of God was continued and persisted in what was called subjectivity and consciousness. It was viewed by them as a sly way to reintroduce the idea of transcendence, God, etc. Consciousness for a hyper empiricist and materialist is false because it posits something beyond the body or brain for the source of thinking; for them, any transcendence, even that of the I of consciousness is too much to tolerate.

The ancients and Medievals tried to resolve the soul as emotional by saying the soul was tripartite, having higher or lower elements and thus able to be brought down into the 'flawed' material existence in which things break and need to be 'fixed'. The problem was not resolved since Augustine and Aquinas seriously wanted to find a way to conform religion to logic and science as they understood it. In my opinion it's near impossible to blend religion to science if only because science and religion have different commitments and goals. This effort to fuse the two caused a lot of issues over the centuries and continues to be a sort of quixotic quest, at least I think so.

I have tried to consider ways to reconcile the emotional soul - the war between things that change and transcendental unchanging objects. The way I have tentatively reconciled this is my own idiosyncratic thought, not official anything, not provable by me, probably wrong....but I will write of it in the next post. For me it affirms at least one Christian view of matter and existence, thus allows me to be an existential thinker and a Christian without feeling this as a conflict. Be back soon to explain....

Interesting.

I reconcile concepts like the Trinity with Hinduism (which also has a Trinity) - the idea that God can have different aspects in order to be known by humans and takes on these aspects only be somewhat knowable by humans. IMHO, for humans to even glimpse that which is not human still requires a concept within our experience and language, which is terribly limited and biologically based. Considering the flexibility, healing potential and changeability of foetal tissue, a life force that precedes even the birth of the universe would seem limitless when perceived by a human. This may or may not be, but would still be so beyond our biological concepts and experience that the understanding of same as having infinite power or potential is still relative.

Therefore, all understanding of God by any religion must be metaphoric and no metaphor is accurate.

To me, there is no such thing as an emotional soul. Your earlier statement that I quoted covers this. Emotions are linked to biological processes which are part of the birth and death cycle.
The medieval Christian concept that one has a soul rather than one is a soul is preferable to me, though again not entirely descriptive. As biological humans, we are composites. As spirits or souls, we break out of that composite at death and rejoin as an entirely different composite that is part of the whole of the living force that is God, of which our soul/spirit has always been and will always be an intrinsic part. We are never truly alone.

 

[MrNobody]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

It's 42 turtles all the way down. How does one regress to -1(infinity)?

I don't know. Divide by zero perhaps?

 

[SPsince83]

Re: Knowing Things about the Infinite.

I don't know. Divide by zero perhaps?

eh, the emcee's a square