Ted Hoffman

It shows that you have no idea what you are talking about when you talk about the cogitant. The gloop and gluff about ideation and the flummery and flapdoodle about intuition are just empty rhetoric. I think it is time for you to wake up and start studying Physics. It is time to put away childish things and confront reality. Like an adult.
Mysticism is the starting point because it is appreciation of oneness. Physics is an appreciation of how the oneness comes about and how we come to observe it. Mystics are floating in the comfort of Physics. But Physics explains why they are floating.
Not protestant theology: Taoism and a play with concepts. The cross is a phallic representation that elevates the son above the mother, who is at the foot of the cross.
Eternal bliss is a conscious construct of the timeless period of sleep during time the individual is in the womb. It doesn't exist and is merely an infantile fantasy by psychoneurotic mythmakers, who thirst for that effortless period of warmth and comfort. The enlightened revel in struggle and pain and have no desire for comfort. Because struggle is the source of dependence. Comfort begets dependence, which is an infantile quality.
The netherworld represents the desired womb from which man emerges as invinsible, as opposed to a helpless, fragile, crying baby dependent on the parents. Again, it is a mythic construct. That is why Inanna emerges from it after attaining immortality. Note that Dumuzi is male.
Oblivion being childhood infantile desires.
Of course the mythmaker was once the fathers sperm. Per Jungian Psychology, the son inherits some memory from the father. The apple never falls far from the tree, the ancients said.
This is like saying that God is anthropomorphic because he was made by man: trivial.
The mythmaker is male because society was patriarchial and men were drunk with self-adoration.
They are different colours from the same spectrum. You are being confused by apparent differences. When you wake up, you will grasp actual differences. Paul says that when he was a child he thought like a child. But when he grew up, he threw away childish things. Throw away your Toys Chilli.
There is no reality behind myths because myth is the very antithesis of reality. Myth is an avenue for escaping reality and that is its purpose. It is like saying "the truth behind the false statement is found". Such a statement would violate the logical law of non-contradiction and violate order in reality, which is fundamentally binary.

Solo

I gave a few examples, above.

Let's be clear on what I mean by "apologia". It is something very different than John Henry Newman had in mind. My purpose is not to argue for gospels as witness to Jesus' divinity a but a psychological attestation of Jesus as human and fallible.

There are cognitive structures present in a number of gospels events which IMHO cannot be explained as mythical as they admit a competing point of view with which they argue. Such view, my theory goes, would be grossly redundant if Jesus originated as myth. We do not have another example in the history of religions or mythology of Divinity Obstructed by Reality. Yes, sure, we have models of dying and rising gods, gods sacrificing themselves in a cause, or gods being slaughtered by other gods. But we simply do not have a cognitive model which parallels the New Testament, in which events (internal and external) seem to have been worked over and over to fit a changing communal pattern of belief. The resulting product is a bewildering scenery in which has a mythical panoply erected over a cast of actors only to be defied or ignored by them, and who in their "dissenting" grasp of issues assert mundane interests and goals with impunity.

So, what is the best explanation for this "end product". How did it originate ? We have Luke's Jesus lecturing to the non-believing Saducees that sons of "resurrection" cannot die "any more" (20:38), in a consistent Lukan pattern of Jesus preaching "resurrection" as internal psychic transformation, which has nothing to do with the fact of biological death. This belief is sprinkled around liberally in all the NT texts starting with the the Q saying "let the dead bury their dead" and ending with Revelation 2:11. That this belief was overwritten by the later scribal community's obsession with Pauline Cross theology which supplied the Easter events, and to which Jesus' prescience of his own death became a magistral vector, seems to me the most natural explanation for the dissimilarity. It was Paul who supplied the theological afferent which transformed the Cross, a mark of shame and defeat, into a mystical symbol of victory over death.

Jiri

No Robots

I believe it was Spinoza scholar Errol Harris in this book, The Substance of Spinoza, who compared Brunner's work to Bohm's. Before I found Brunner, I was interested in Bohm. Now, I see him as attempting the same old conjuring trick of pulling the rabbit of mind out of the hat of matter. In contrast, Brunner points to the great observation of Spinoza regarding the identity of matter and thought: the order and connection of ideas is identical to the order and connection of things.

Brunner states that scientific observation leads to the conclusion that all things are in a state of inter-dependent motion; and thought is our internal experience of motion.

I really have nothing to say about physics that wouldn't just be a crib of Brunner. If you are interested, you can get an idea of what he has to say here.

As far as answering all your questions is concerned, I think you have to look carefully at the questions and answers. You asked several questions about the Cogitant, and I replied with one answer that I think covered the bunch. If you ever feel I am avoiding something, please restate it with emphasis. I just find that on this board there is too much petty nitpicking over side-issues followed by peevish triumphalism if something is ignored. In general, I try to follow what I see as the main thrust of the discussion, leaving aside what I think are points that don't really merit discussion. Please don't think that I can't answer your questions. I think my record for defending my viewpoint here is pretty good. There comes a point, though, where, yeah, I really have no interest in arguing something that has no bearing, in my view, on the real issues under discussion. If discussion on the main point is pretty much terminated, then we can see if we all wish to pursue any issues that arose earlier.

Ted Hoffman

You are right, lets stick to B C & H. I only wandered far afield in attempting to expose the issues that someone promoting a "unified thought" worldview would have to address. But of course, that is beyond the purview of this forum.
Arguing with Brunner is like arguing with someone from another world because he claims for example, without any basis, that Judaism is anti-religion (yet in the OT we have Yahweh showing Moses his backparts - how materialist can a religion get?). Brunner also redefines atheism the way he wants. He also redefines ontological proof against Kant and Descartes - the way he wants. Then he has issues mixed up: on the one hand, he has it that evangelists were people who wrote down what they were told by prostitutes and fishermen regarding Jesus and on the other hand, the evangelists were disciples of Christ. He also redefines religion the way he wants.
What he is doing is altering reality to accomodate his own doctrine and worldview. This is not valid.
A very simple illustration: the fact that he admits on the one hand that atheism is mistaken for denying an external God. Then after saying that, he notes that the cogitant is in us and he cannot think of being alone and not part of God. Then he says that he is an atheist because he is idol-less.
As if idol-ness=atheism!
I will stop here. I will rewrite the article and probably put it up on the web somewhere. Cheers.

No Robots

I look forward to it. Let me know where and when you post it, please.

If you ever want to explore the "dark side", you can join me here.

Chili

But I like my toys Ted and I am sorry that you don't have any.