Ted Hoffman

Amos
This sounds nice and even agreeable. But:
From what do we derive the essence of existence?
If there was nothing at all existing, could the essence of existence still be present? What would it be representing?
I would also appreciate it if you came up with a clear definition on what the essence of existence is. Are there some properties together which make up the essence of existence or is it one entity that is not made up of parts.
Where is this essence when there is nothing existing?
Isn't it true that from existence we derive the essence of existence?
I mean people construct a structure for sitting, they recreate it and modify it until they come up with the most comfortable combination then they call it a chair.
Next time one of them sees something that has the essence of a chair, he will say he saw a chair. You cannot define the essence of something until it exists. It could exist in your mind or in reality, but the thing must exist first then you decide in its indispensable properties(its essence).
And that is why I think the essence of existence can only be determined after one has known what existence means or after one has experienced existence for that matter. Then one can decide the characteristics that accompany existence.
Why do you disagree with this?

You haven't demonstrated that the essence of existence is eternal (and what does eternal mean?) and if you did, you will need to explain how it came to exist and its purpose in existence (unless it has no purpose) and why it finds it important to manipulate the destiny of man?

Amos even if the Prime Mover existed, there is no
reason to believe he is masculine and has a proclivity for making virgins pregnant.
And why it is so fascinated by mankind and not itself.

Ender
I am sorry I did not respond earlier, but here we go...
Here you have intentionally misunderstood me. As far as abstract and concrete things go, something can be considered abstract through different perspectives. I classified emotions as abstract based on the context Albert put it and the misleading comparison he was making.
I specifically said that emotions are not quantifiable. Which is a fact.
I said moving a rock is quantifiable and requires physical force (kinetic energy) unlike an emotion which may involve the release of hormones(a biochemical reaction).
It still remains a fallacy to compare moving a rock to moving someone emotionally. Because there is no standard of comparison(at the simplest level). He equivocated and comitted the fallacy of reification.
This does not make them quantifiable or even tangible or visible(palpable).
There is no entropy in your statement.
Emotions are not concrete and they are not discrete. I say they are abstract because an emotion cannot be measured (quantified), touched or seen. Just like Justice.
I say emotions are abstract solely on that basis.
The slippery slope you have created above that you call an epistemological model sprinkled with names like Hume and new words like impressions does not refute that fact.
Thank you very much.

Albert
I hope you are not intentionally ignoring my responses to you. If that is the case it would help me alot if you made it clear. My intention is to get to grasp the basis of your belief in God.

I can see the discussion shifting to epistemology(safer ground) and I am comparing your reaction to a phototrophic plant moving from discomfort to a comfortable region.
Maybe focused, rigorous discourse is not your cup of tea?
Sorry if you have had to increase your medications. Don't break down on me Albert.
[edited to remove the essence of existence]

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: jaliet ]</p>

Ender

Not quite- unless you are confessing telepathic skills.

In other words, you do think there are more ways to skin a cat than your all-too-austere model of reality.

Strictly speaking, from a phenomenological standpoint, you’re wrong. You are capable of quantifying that particular passion or emotion. You are capable of identifying the emotions or passions you are experiencing or have experienced.

Otherwise we would have no such language or applicable means of communicating about human emotions. Your avowed allegiance to the scientific method sacrifices the subjective experience- which I am willing to wager you do experience an isolated set of perceptions that isn’t quantifiable ONLY according to an independent methodology.

Care to explain how a “biochemical reaction” cannot be quantifiable? It may not require physical force…

I did not make this fallacy, but there are more ways to skin a cat. According to a methodology that limits itself to objective verification, yes. But according to a subjective viewpoint? Nope. Moving a rock requires a will, a desire, a volition, the elements you need to move someone emotionally.

Then your understanding of empiricism is utterly shallow. The roots of science came from British empiricists in the 18th century whose models I am liberally using in order to sabotage your desire to undercut Albert’s reification.

Do you know why emotions aren’t ‘quantifiable’ in your means of methodology of appropriating the “tangible” from reality? And why are you looking for entropy in my statement?

So they are one big miasma of convoluted concepts? A smorgasbord of indiscrete “experiences”?

You will admit they are “experienced” in a subjective manner not privy to the scientific method, which is an objective method of measurement, of repetition, and an outgrowth of our animal faith. And the only way we “quantify” emotions are via an “intersubjective” means- language. You know the exact identity of whatever emotion you are experiencing or experienced better than anybody else because of your private access to your experiences, to your passions. This avowed allegiance to science merely overlooks the phenomenological viewpoint.

Passions, emotions are the roots of morals, correct.

I don’t have an argument with that assessment, given you are laboring with a methodology that rules out the subjective experience a priori.

Slippery slope? Methinks you are being overly defensive. I strongly suggest you need to re-read everything I said, and slowly this time, and do a little introspection on why you adopted that delineating methodology.

Do not champion your ignorance as a badge of honor.

Bone up on empiricism and phenomenology before you write your acceptance speech.

~WiGGiN~
((edited for UBB code)))

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

Amos

Albert Cipriani

Dear Jobar


I apologize for my imprecision. That tends to happen when emotion makes me wax rhetorical. By "seeking God" I mean a theist seeking God. There’s a night and day difference between a theist’s grandiose self-serving seeking and the curious atheist's humble seeking Who it is Who is knocking at your door.



No. Fundamentalist Protestants are. In the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas quieted those heretical tendencies in the Catholic Church and ushered in the reconciliation of reason and the new science with faith.

Mystics and gurus are "poster children for an arrogant God that disgusts me" in the sense that only an arrogant God can be sought. A loving God seeks and knocks. The Catholic God is the latter. All pagan gods are the former. Hence pagans have mystics and gurus to light their way and instruct them how to sit, meditate, exercise, and what food to chew and what mantras to spew. They're hucksters for flimflam gods.



Agreed. You are so right. I misspoke. We can only infer that things exist. And we can only infer that a Being is. Based upon experience, we infer the existence of things. Based upon on our inference of existent things, we infer a Being is.



Being trumps action. Action is a subspecies of Being, for something must first be, before it can act. Ergo, the appellation of "Prime Mover" is descriptive of God, like "All-Knowing" or "All-Powerful" and is not definitive. Definitively, God is Being. Derivatively, God is Actor. So to suggest as you do that He must be acted upon, is to suggest that there are false gods before Him.



Yes I disagree and it is not doctrine.

The De fide doctrine is: God is an absolutely simple. substance or nature, substantia seu natura simplex omnino (D424, 1782). This is the most central doctrine defining God. Tangential to it, in relation to His infinite context, we have the following De fide doctrine: In reason and will and in every perfection God is infinite, intellectu ac voluntate omnique perfectione infinitus (D1782).



All the best things in life are "not countable, not measurable, not comprehensible, not speakable," not just God or His infinity. Love, beauty, and truth are all likewise dumbfounding. You're committing the logical fallacy of reification whereby you conclude something does not exist because it cannot be manipulated in a narrowly prescribed manner (via numbers, or words).

For example, would you likedumb argue against the existence of neutrinos because they cannot be counted or weighed (as they have no mass), nor spoken of comprehensibly since we can only detect their movement but not their there-ness?



This would be true if we were not demigods in the sense of being given a hand in the moving. Free will must be conceived of not in terms of physical movements, all of which God does, but in terms of assent. We have the freedom only to assent to or dissent from His movements. Outside of that, yes, His Prime Mover status would be a steam roller over our having our own destiny. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

John Page

Albert:

Two questions:

1. From the second sentence above, are you concurring there is more than one god?
2. Taking the import of both senetences, it does not seem to me that the "Catholic God" you describe is related to the "Catholic Church" that I know. Maybe this is just a trademark issue but I really want to know what the supposed special link is between the (self-appointed) catholic church and its "simple" god as you describe it.

Cheers, John

HelenM

But, Albert, how do you answer all the people here who would say, "I didn't ever perceive being sought by God and/or when I was seeking such a God no-one responded so I concluded that no such God exists"?

love
Helen

Adrian Selby

"Dear Adrian,

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) My sensory inputs allows me to, in good conscience, infer that the things I experience really exists.
2) Conversely, things that exist allow me to likewise infer that their existence is really my experience.
How does 2 follow from 1?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The converse of a true statement is necessarily true. For example, if 2 + 2 = 4, then 4 = 2 + 2. If my wife is not a blond, then a blond is not something my wife is.

Likewise, if sensory inputs = our experience of existence, then our experience of existence = sensory inputs. "--Albert

There seems to be a problem.

I experience an apple, I infer it exists.
Because it exists it allows me to infer that it is really my experience.
So the apple itself is merely your experience of it? It has no existence apart from your experience?

Your response, by way of explanation seems to be.
Sensory inputs (of apple)=experience of existence of apple. So, experience of existence of apple = sensory inputs of apple.

In your initial formulation you seem to conclude that the existence of the apple is merely your sensory experience. If so, then the latter tautology offered would be true. But I still don't see how an object that you perceive IS your experience. Surely it is itself and you perceive some aspect of it.

To observe an apple is to experience it, but if you only observe one side, are you saying that the apple is only the one side you experienced. That's how it sounds when you say the following:
"their existence is really my experience."
Is a distant galaxies existence only the content of your senses and your brain? Does what you experience sum it up entirely?

Adrian

Albert Cipriani

Dear Jaliet,


NEVER!!! It's my birthright to be cheap, as it's the correct pronunciation of the first syllable of my last name, "Cipriani." And as for "low-down," dealing with such a snake in the grass as yourself, what da ya expect!?

You ask for a philosophical book that collaborates with my definition of God as Being. I quote from the first philosophical book of all time, the Bible, and you upbraid me, insisting that the Good Book isn't the kind of book you had in mind. Well, as a Traditionalist, I can't give you a more philosophically traditional source than that. It is the origin of these others:

St. Hilarius wrote:


St. Bernard wrote:


St. Thomas, the premiere Doctor of the Church wrote:


You assert that there is no logical connection between the following two statements:


Allow me to connect the dots of statement #4 for you.
1) Experience is our indirect relationship between existent things.
2) We call what we experience information and process it as knowledge.
3) Ergo, information (and consequently knowledge), is indirect and relational, not direct and substantive.
4) Ergo, existent things, being indirectly experienced, are only indirectly knowable and not substantive.

The preceding means that the universe we've come to know and love as an informational universe, that is, as a relational universe, is only informational and relational up to the limits of our abilities to experience it. Beyond our existential limits of experiencing relationships between existent things, is the experience of being the existent thing. But we've already established that we cannot be an existent thing, only experience relationships between existent things.

So we make one of two choices: atheists suppose that nothing experiences being (in which case, existent things have no being and existence is an illusion), and theists suppose that all existent things, have being, that is, are experienced by a Being. Allow me to connect the dots of statement #5:

5) If existent things are not completely experienced they cannot be completely known.
6) Being a thing is how a thing is completely experienced and completely known substantively.
7) Ergo, if things exist substantively, are completely informational and relational, a Being must be supposed.
8) If a Being IS NOT SUPPOSED, the universe is informational only to the extent of our ability to experience its relationships. (E.g. The tree falling in a forest when no one is around makes no sound.)
9) If a Being IS SUPPOSED, the universe is absolutely informational beyond our ability to experience its relationships. (E.g. Each speck of dust no one ever has or will experience is being directly experienced independently of its relationships and thus maintained in existence.)



So that pink rhino in orbit around the earth that Koy keeps landing on Rainbow Walking DOES exist after all??? What possible meaning can existence have if it cannot in some way be experienced?



Convention. Whatever is in relationship to us is not only experienced and known by us but is really a part of us. So when I learn something about you, something about your really becomes who I am. When I consume what was living, what was living lives again in me and I in it. The clump of atoms I identify as mine, are all in relationship with each other. But at any given time, Albert can only be aware of 0.00001% of those relationships. And that's an almost infintie exaggeration.



1) Everywhere that things exist.
2) Not in space time, but absolutely in eternity.
3) When experienced in space time, the experience is a miracle.
4) Yes, it experiences rather than knows, everything.
5) The evidence that this Being exists is found in our inference that things exist. If experience is existence, and nothing can experience anything directly, everything must be being experienced directly by something or else nothing could exist.

Living things are effected by at least one more things than non-living things are, they can be caused to die, whereas non-living things cannot. To confirm the truth of my statement that living things are affected by many many more things than non-living things, simply multiply the aforementioned fact by all the interrelationships causing it to stay alive.



You are mostly unconscious as you do what you are doing. In fact, that is how you are able to do it! Maturity may be defined as learning how to be more selectively conscious.

If you were not filtering out 99% of your sensory data every conscious moment of your day, you could not drive a car, feed yourself, or carry on a conversation with me. (I guess this explains everything! ) There's evidence that it is this loss of ability to filter out information and be mostly unconscious of your sensory inputs, that accounts for the behavior of schizophrenics



It's not for me to decide but your doctor. I advise you not to delay making an appointment. If you are aware of your every breath, if it involves your conscious attention, you are suffering from a rare but deadly disease of the autonomous nervous system. Get ye to a doctor's office lest ye meet your maker before you believe in Him. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>

Amos

Hello John Page, good point, and no, there are is only one "God" but there is also a "god" (small "g").

There is God with a capital G from Gen.1 and the god with a small g is from Gen.3 and is actually called "like god" in verse 5. This god is called Adam because from that point on man was no longer "naked to wit" because he felt shame (cf with Gen.2 where man was naked to wit and felt no shame). The god conjectured here was the persona of man wherein we have a dual identity. Notice that this essence was never formed to have an "existence of being"-- as did man who was formed in Gen.2 after the essence of man created in Gen.1.

Because of this dual identity the prefix -hu was placed before man to make us hu-man, or earthly, beings (-hu is from -humi) and if you allow me to place heaven opposite to earth we can easily conclude that man prior to the conjecture of this second nature was created as a heavenly being.

Let it be understood that both Gods are known to the Catholic Church because that is why the Reformation happened. In fact reformers similar to Luther have been with the Church ever since its conception and long before that even which is why Jesus died for the Children of Israel in effort to show them "the way" -- because they also worshipped the lesser god and died nonetheless. To be brief here, their problem was unbelief as in rebel/repent, much like protestants who fear loss of salvation and feed a hungry wolf with daily scriptures and devotions in effort to remain assured of their salvation.

The diffrence between the two is identified in many places and here are some of them.

Jn.1:13, "who were begotten not by blood, nor by carnal desire, nor by man's willing it, but by God." The difference here is the manner of rebirth and if the rebirth is incipient from God via the angel Gabriel (The Annunciation) we will be illumnated by the celestial light (Epiphany). If the rebirth is incipient from carnal desire (parents, fear, girlfriend, preacher etc.) we will be give the angel of light because God will never bestow supernatural powers to our Adamic human nature so it will become an asset to work against His will.

Alternatly, if we do the knocking we will be given a scorpion and if God does the knocking we will be given a fish. If we seek and do not find we are looking at the wrong places (curious eyes) and if we read and are not illuminated we read in the wrong places. Instead we must contemplate the icons left by the saints who are in heaven now (such as The Annunciation by Fran Angelico or The Crucifixion by Masaccio). Really, there is thousands of them and that is how we must have communion with the saints before things go wrong (remember here that I hold that the last thing we should do is read the bible, Jn.5:39).

The descend of the HS is crucial and if ever we must pray the HS down from heaven we already know that he flew the coupe and we've been given a scorpion instead of a fish. After all, the Dove descended after "the father and I [became] one" wherefore the dove descended never to be needed again because if we are one with God what would the HS be needed for? If, on the other hand, we've been given a scorpion the "angel of light" will have to be prayed down from heaven and hence the yo-yo effect after self induced salvation from sola scriptura recipes.

This same imposter can become the final imposter if resurrection takes place before the third day (Mt.27:64) and subsequently those will die with the unresolved paradox "sinful yet saved" (the "saved sinner complex" emits the smoke of torment and therefore requires courage to be anything but Catholic).

The above is from the Church I knew and if yours was different there must have at least been one protestant in your town who spread the wrong gospel.

Amos

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Ted Hoffman

Ender
Just give us the SI unit for measuring/ quantifying emotions and I will admit that emotions can be quantified.


And I must admit, I liked this:

Dont you know that ignorance is bold?