On Monday, March 18, 2013 8:15:39 PM UTC, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Monday, March 18, 2013 11:33:17 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: >> >> G K Chesterton wrote: >> >> > For we must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether true or >>> not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. >>> >> That is absolutely true, there are more ways of being wrong than of being >> right, so if you don't care if your ideas are self consistent or not (for >> example if you don't care that X is not Y and X is not not Y) and if you >> don't care what words mean (for example if you don't care that if changing >> X always changes Y and changing Y always changes X that doesn't mean that X >> caused Y) then you have much more freedom over what you can believe than a >> logical man does. >> > > The man who thinks he is logical is often just stubborn. There are many > things related to consciousness which can't be defined in the terms we have > learned from manipulating public objects. No state of awareness is uniquely > one thing and not another. All phenomenology is multivalent and impacted by > intention and expectation. > > >> >> If you want all the parts of your belief system to fit together the range >> of things you can believe in is severely limited. And finding ways all the >> parts of the universe fit together in a self consistent way is hard, very >> hard, so often the logical man must just say "I don't know I'm not >> certain", they religious man on the other hand is always certain but seldom >> correct. >> > > The logical man is a man whose religion is logic. Not that I'm opposed to > logic, it just can't penetrate to the cause of awareness. Logic is always > an a-posteriori analysis of a sensory-motor experience. > > >> >> > there is a very special sense in which materialism has more >>> restrictions than spiritualism… The Christian is quite free to believe that >>> there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development >>> in the universe, but the materialist is not allowed to admit into his >>> spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. >>> >> The Christian is not allowed to admit the slightest speck of doubt that a >> invisible man in the sky sent His son, who was also Him, to be tortured to >> death by humans even though he loved His son, who is also Him, very much >> because otherwise he could not forgive humans even though He is omnipotent. >> Even though He is omnipotent torturing His son, who is really Him, for the >> crime of eating a apple is the only way He could forgive the torturers. The >> Christian is not allowed to admit the slightest speck of doubt that it >> makes sense that if I'm mad at you and then you torture my son to death I >> will no longer be mad at you. >> > > No argument there. I only disagree with you on religion in the sense that > I don't think the fictions which have been created are arbitrary. They > reflect metaphorical illustrations about consciousness itself, and when > taken figuratively all myths can reveal important insights. It's only when > people take them literally that it causes problems, and as long as physics > refuses to take consciousness seriously, people will continue to take > religion literally. >
What do you think John 5:19 is trying to say about individual free will? It seems to me to be confirming what non-dual traditions also assert: That there is no independent self and thus no agent to exercise free will. They talk about the universal Self, the unicity of existence, which somehow manifests as our apparent, but illusory, individual selves. This universal Self is the only actual entity and it has no independent parts. Independence/multiplicity is merely a feature of the world of concepts, which is ultimately unreal (a product of the Fall?) Free will and determinism are both concepts - in actuality it all happens the way it happens, and God says it is good, etc... > >> >>> >>> > The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a >>> chain of causation…" >>> >> I don't know when Chesterton wrote that but he lived until 1936 and by >> 1925 physicists, the ultimate materialists, did not believe that history or >> anything else was "simply and solely a chain of causation"; however it is >> unlikely that Chesterton ever knew this and like most self styled >> philosophers remained blissfully ignorant of all scientific and >> mathematical discoveries made during the last century or two. >> > > Are you referring here to the addition of randomness or probability to the > chain of causation? > > >> Incidentally I found some more ideas of Chesterton. In 1290 Edward 1 >> expelled the Jews from England and Chesterton writes that Edward was a >> "just and conscientious monarch" and acted correctly because the Jews were >> "as powerful as they are unpopular and the capitalists of their age" so >> when Edward "flung the alien financiers out of the land" he acted as >> "knight errant" and was the "tender father of his people". Even in 1920 >> Chesterton thought there was still a "Jewish Problem in Europe". Hitler had >> his Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. >> > > Even anti-Semites can have valid insights. > > Craig > > >> >> John K Clark >> >> >> >> >> >>> >>> >>> >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
