Bits of information

@KellyJay said
We live and have our being in a creation made by God, who not only made everything from the air we breathe to every molecule across all of time and space, so we share in our current state of affairs as individuals. Joined together by the one who created us, we now spend much of our time dividing ourselves into groups, justifying hating one another for this reason or that.

All of the hate is born of delusion, yes. Substitute "Mind" for "God," and I could almost wholly agree with what you say, with the exception that Mind does not "create" with self-aware intent. Mind has an essential nature that is innately ordered in some way, a priori, without forethought.

We have nearly met in the middle, maybe.

@Soothfast said
All of the hate is born of delusion, yes. Substitute "Mind" for "God," and I could almost wholly agree with what you say, with the exception that Mind does not "create" with self-aware intent. Mind has an essential nature that is innately ordered in some way, a priori, without forethought.

We have nearly met in the middle, maybe.

Well, God created minds, He has a will, and He acts according to His will, so putting things together for a purpose with intent is the exact opposite of random chance and necessity. Even before the point of intent or randomness occurs the entire board on which everything occurs has to be formed, all the pieces have to be available precisely at the right time and place. Not much different than the game of chess, with no board, no pieces, then no game.

@KellyJay said
Well, God created minds, He has a will, and He acts according to His will, so putting things together for a purpose with intent is the exact opposite of random chance and necessity. Even before the point of intent or randomness occurs the entire board on which everything occurs has to be formed, all the pieces have to be available precisely at the right time and place. Not much different than the game of chess, with no board, no pieces, then no game.

As I said, Mind is not random. Being consciousness incarnate, and consciousness being what it is, many (if not all) of the same self-organizing tendencies we see in human consciousness occur also in Mind, whose mental processes give rise to both the universe and human consciousness.

The way I see it, it is the interplay between different conscious agents (which includes even rudimentary forms such as amoebae and bacteria) that gives rise to the appearance of complete randomness in certain natural processes, such as biological evolution. Mind is not random, but Mind dissociates, and the dissociated alters do their own thing to some extent, because they have varying degrees of free will. Yet still there is structure here, and guiding principles.

What does this mean? Well, physical laws, which are reflections of Mind's essential nature, and an expression of its innate "mathematical archetype" (see my 3rd post above), should be expected to not be the sole factor guiding nature's hand, or the mechanisms of evolution. There are other archetypes, as there are in the human psyche, that may be expressing themselves in the universe. I think this reasonable because, in a sense, the universe is like a "dream" of Mind, and so what goes on in the universe may be representations, or symbols, pointing to truths about Mind's essential nature.

So, like a dream, the universe is saying something—a lot of things—and if life has any purpose, then it is to play a part in interpreting what the messages are. As Schopenhauer says, the "will" wants to know itself. The accumulated evidence, from quantum physics to neuroscience, that the ground of reality is more than some chart full of ridiculous quantum particles and nothing more, is to me quite overwhelming. I was an unyielding physicalist for decades, but gradually I came 'round to concluding that the truth must lie somewhere nearer where Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies lie.

The only given in this existence is our own introspectively accessible phenomenal inner life. Everything else, including matter, energy, time, and space, is a theory about the things we witness playing out on the "screen" of our five senses. That is the basic idea. Beyond that empirical fact, the first best theory we should adopt is that other organisms have their own introspectively accessible phenomenal inner lives. This is to avoid an extreme variant of solipsism, which states that one's own self is the only self that actually exists.*


*Technically solipsism holds that one cannot know that other conscious centers exist aside from one's own. Most reject this idea because it is a metaphysical dead-end and leads to wildly implausible conclusions.

@Soothfast said
As I said, Mind is not random. Being consciousness incarnate, and consciousness being what it is, many (if not all) of the same self-organizing tendencies we see in human consciousness occur also in Mind, whose mental processes give rise to both the universe and human consciousness.

The way I see it, it is the interplay between different conscious agents (which includ ...[text shortened]... reject this idea because it is a metaphysical dead-end and leads to wildly implausible conclusions.

This is again looking at everything from the perspective that we are at the center of it all, you are most concerned about our perspective as if that alone defines reality as it is, but it is the Creator, not the created who has clear sight, at best we see through a glass darkly.

@KellyJay said
This is again looking at everything from the perspective that we are at the center of it all, you are most concerned about our perspective as if that alone defines reality as it is, but it is the Creator, not the created who has clear sight, at best we see through a glass darkly.

Our own perspective is what we must start with, as with any organism. But, using our human intellect, we should study the universe using science and reasoning, and let our findings inform our understanding of its behavior. Science only works out how things behave, not what they are. What reality is, at its nethermost foundation, is the purview of metaphysics (also called ontology). The metaphysical framework we construct should be parsimonious, not contradict the known facts, and have maximal explanatory power. Physicalism (a.k.a. materialism) fails utterly in this regard. The form of metaphysical idealism I'm arguing for fares much better. And do you see? Schopenhauer's metaphysics, or one of its recent updates called analytical idealism, completely removes us from "the center of it all." You should at least recognize that, even if you do not believe in the idea. It is largely consonant with Buddhism, which also denies utterly the existence of a self as an autonomous entity when a holistic view of reality is adopted.

I'm really having a hard time seeing why you cannot at least understand that last point. It isn't blasphemous, surely, just to see it from a conceptual standpoint. You don't have to disavow the Bible to do so.

In any case this was interesting, but I must away for a few days.

@Soothfast said
Our own perspective is what we must start with, as with any organism. But, using our human intellect, we should study the universe using science and reasoning, and let our findings inform our understanding of its behavior. Science only works out how things behave, not what they are. What reality is, at its nethermost foundation, is the purview of metaphysic ...[text shortened]... to disavow the Bible to do so.

In any case this was interesting, but I must away for a few days.

Science and reasoning, okay, well part of reasoning takes into account personal
experiences that science cannot measure. An encounter with God is personal.

Science would not register God in any device used in any scientific study, it can
only be taken as something outside of the science proper for measuring, It would
have to instead take personal testimony. This puts blinders on science, so
to suggest all that can be known can only be known by science is to put on
blinders personally.

Much like seeing the color red, that is an experience, taste is an experience
neither can we graph independently to give someone the experience, by just
looking at a readout describing the experiences. Even with a spectrum analyzer
of some sort, you may get some data, but that is not the same as seeing red, a
color-blind person needs help to overcome their inability. To see what has
been denied to them now can happen, and it is fun watching them experience
color for the first time. Eyes that see, ears that hear, can still be dulled to miss
out on what is there.

Those who wrote scripture were not looking for the best possible explanation
about the metaphysical nature of the universe, something happened to them.
Many suffered a great deal instead of recanting, a theory isn't something many
would die for, and something they knew was a lie isn't something worth dying
for either.