I am a Catholic. I love God, as Father, Jesus and their Holy Spirit.

But I am sure I won't be able to convince anyone about Jesus or God through argument.

You don't seem to understand what an argument is. — Arcane Sandwich

Way hot out of the gate. I didn't mean to insult you. Your argument basically just gave a definition "God is identical to Jesus." You don't move anywhere from that. You asserted that God exists, and asserted that God is identical to Jesus. Nothing else was operating in the argument to move from the assertions to some other conclusion. You basically just said "God is Jesus." So I said, that's not an argument.

Again, I love how people think about these things and post here. I'm not trying to discourage anything. But if you want a good conversation, on this forum, God is very often a non-starter.

Philosophers have a problem clarifying whether a cat on a matt is really two things, or a thing at all.
— Fire Ologist

I don't have that problem. It's a bit presumptuous of you to assume that I do. — Arcane Sandwich

I assume all people have this problem because it's the same conversation Heraclitus and Parmenides and Hume and Descartes and Hegel, and Kant, and Nietzsche and Quine, and people here today have been trying to address.

You jump way to hard and fast into the personal. I do that too sometimes. Always regret it. And what do you want me to say?

The animal is serving as a kind of "substitute" for our animal side in trying to separate out what makes human language different. — Moliere

That inquiry would be instructive, because we are animals. Contrast our own impulsive responses with our own deliberated, reasoned, chosen responses.

Or, on the other hand, it's a counter-example if we believe that the dog can refer or have true beliefs. — Moliere

I am just saying I can't tell how or why I refer or have true beliefs, so finding something instructive in a dog's behavior is unlikely, other than to highlight that thinking/knowing/believing may all be tied up in language (in all its complexity), and therefore, we are able to rule out that anything other than a person will help us figure out what is going on in this conversation.

(FTI1) If God exists, then God is identical to Jesus.
(FTI2) God exists.
(FTI3) So, God is identical to Jesus. — Arcane Sandwich

If.....God is identical to Jesus....God is identical to Jesus.

That's not an argument. Nothing to digest there.

"If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs." - Larry Fine.

That's a better argument, but similarly, leaves you hungry for something to actually digest.

Philosophers have a problem clarifying whether a cat on a matt is really two things, or a thing at all.

This post will go nowhere illuminating. I'm not picking on you, just sayin...

It is very difficult to discuss God in any empirical, critical, scientific manner, especially in a forum where many people have no inclination to entertain the notion of "God" seriously.

Mostly to help us make sense of the Dog — Moliere

I'm just saying that, in a conversation where we are trying to make sense of a person's behavior, trying to make some sense of using language to explain reality in a communicable, logical way, as if reality needed explanation or was amenable to it, or oppositely as if explanation was a wrong turn, observations about a dog's behavior are not going to clarify anything. And we should admit our observations about a dog's behavior may be utterly irreflective of what the dog is doing in reality (which reality is the original question).

Why does it have to be so black and white? — Apustimelogist

It doesn't. I am saying I have no idea how I have ideas, and discussing this as the inscrutability of reference. Why would the actions of a dog, or anything else, inform this discussion?

And I am asking this question of myself as much as anyone else. We all do it - personify and analogize in order to explain. But we are trying to explain the act of explanation, and so I am trying to point out that data observed from anything other than the behavior of explainers (ie, people), could be way off the mark and we wouldn't know it (because we are trying to explain "knowing" in the first place and instead talking about some other animals behavior as if it were "knowing").

My point isn't so much that dogs don't think. It's that it can't help us understanding the objects of thought or thinking that we do, by inferring something from a dog that could have other explanations.

the dog has a kind of animla-belief — Moliere

We can't tell what is actually happening in another person's head, or our own head, when we are believing or are knowing. Why would we think invoking dog-beliefs would help clarify anything?

The dog senses food. The dog may not believe or know or think anything at all. It might be carried by circumstances to sense food just as it is carried by circumstances to find it and eat it. Does the dog who steps on a hot coal, yelps and leaps away, have to think at all to yelp and leap? Maybe, or maybe not (we are not dogs, so who knows, and dogs aren't talking about their inner lives). But if you can imagine a dog does not need to think to yelp and leap from being burnt, why can't we imagine the dog is behaving according to the exact same impulses in everything the dog does? Like a plant cell photosynthesizing - wherefore belief as a component of these motions?

For my part, humans personify everything we touch. We even personify ourselves. We alone use words to refer to other words and concepts - no animals bother to do so. Because, for my part, animals don't believe, or know, or think. They are better than all of that (or less than all that, if you want to feel special about the act of personification).

We string together samplings of NOW and construct of these TIME as the string is said to refer to PAST and NOW as if however it is that NOW might exist, the string including PAST with NOW might exist.

When we recall yesterday, we don’t look into the past - we actively, now, construct a recollection - we re-collect, or collect impressions.

It’s all, always, only NOW. The construct of time helps us see NOW as bigger then it ever is.

From the discussions so far, it seems to be safe to conclude that,
1) Jesus was not God. He doesn't appear to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. If he was, then he could not be in the situation he was, and would not have said what the OP noted.
2) Jesus was not one with God. Therefore Trinity doctrine is unsound and invalid. — Corvus

It is a mystery to us how we are able to KNOW anything. Despite that we seek to summarize everything in a tight, simple bit of KNOWLEDGE, that we can put into pithy arguments.

Now you do so with "Trinity doctrine".

Any arguments summarizing anything we know are formed in mysterious ways. Yet it continues to be easy to allow ourselves to draw such concrete conclusion about OTHER things, such as what "Trinity" is (be it valid or sound, or conceivable, or not), while remaining utterly inconclusive about what it means to KNOW anything.

One step at a time.

Of course the Trinity is invalid to any linear, logical scrutiny - logic only sees one thing at a time.

Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist. — Corvus

If you are going to say time doesn't exist, but space and objects do, then you should go further and realize that if time is a construct, so is space, and therefore only objects exist.

But that denies motion, which doesn't seem right.

In my view, like Einstein realized the better conception of time and space is as one space-time, I think the better view is space-time-matter.

The existence of the object is as much a demonstration of matter, as it is a demonstration of motion, which is measured in space-time. It's all one thing.

There are objects.
We are objects that perceive objects (human beings).
When we perceive an object, we take measure of matter-space-time (or if you are a post-modernist, we construct matter-space-time).

Motion means: objects, through space, over time.

Take any object, say, an apple.

It is at once matter, taking up space, now..., and now again...and now again...over time. With matter, once perceived, comes space-time-matter. Space and time are the mental act of measuring, or perceiving. They look objective, but they are the act of objectifying.

By creating, God becomes change.

So God wasn't change until God created, and now God moves in and with what is created.

So in a linear way, I agree with the idea that God changes - there was God before creation, and THEN there is God after creation, so God, after creation, exists in a new context, and, from our perspective, looks new, and therefore, is changed and new.

This is theology - for believers who want to understand. It's not science, for empiricists who seek to explain.

God is impossible to think of. God and creation make no sense, empirically.

The explanation empirically is probably something like, God the Father draws motion, but does not move; God the Son moves to the Father and through the Son all things (like us) exist; God as Spirit unifies the Father and Son as one God, and therefore is both motion and permanence at once.

Impossible.

...extremely introverted, analytic, brutally honest (with myself), and I yearn for absolute truth. I cannot live without doing philosophy, just as much as I cannot live without eating.... — Bob Ross

It's both as much a salvation as it is a burden, this philosophy thing - hopefully more salvation. Philosophizing is one of those purely human things we do, so I agree, I can't live without it. The unexamined life is impossible to live, because being a person, means examining life. We look IN, not just around, with our eyes - and with our eyes in the light, sometimes we see wisdom and foolishness as hiding between the red and green things and everything else...

You said "yearn" for truth, and I would say it that way too. At the same time I would say, I would never fear or shrink away from any truth, meaning, all of the truth is the same to me, having itself torn everything else down (marking error and the false as illusion) and built everything that is in its image, as what alone remains all the time is always and only, the absolute.

what makes a person interested in philosophy? — Rob J Kennedy

Hey Rob - love it.

What is this "thing" that we call Reality? — Arcane Sandwich

What is it really? How do we know? — Philosophim

us verbal guys that get sucked into the intricacies of philosophical ideas. We prefer to be alone — T Clark

it is philosophy that makes me interested in it — unenlightened

(Love that.)

You may not talk explicitly about philosophy or philosophers, but that doesn't mean that you dont ever think philosophically...

I would turn the OP’s question on its head. What does it say about someone who calls themself an artist and yet who has no interest in philosophy? — Joshs

I like to think I'm an artist - I wrote songs, played them for years in bars, really wanted to be an artist. Had a bunch of friends. Hung around college grads and non-college grads alike.

I wouldn't say I preferred being alone as T Clark said but I get that he said that, because I never minded being alone (I'm never "lonely"). I'd say I was introverted, but I've always been in public positions (like singing my songs and at work..), so I'm really more a center-leaning introverted type with plenty of extroverted behavior.

The introversion is important though, because, to me, it is equally a source of art and philosophy - it provides the well for doing the work of the artist and the philosopher. But I digress...

It was early, in high school, that I discovered philosophy. We read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" (just that section of The Republic); I had no clue what I was reading, and in one class, my teacher made it clear to me that nothing is as it has always seemed. All that was plain before my eyes, instantly evaporated. "Seeing" delivered only shadows, and the truth of anything and everything was on the table, all in disarray. And the whole class was arguing whether anyone could prove what "brown" really was. I got it. I got the bug immediately, reading Aristotle for Morons books (Mortimer Adler), and on to major in philosophy in college. I ate it all up. Had the band the whole time.

But on that day in high school when I got it that none of us really get anything, things were not the least bit bad. It was exhilarating, like playing a great song with friends. Eerything in the world was just as beautiful as it was before, but, because of what Plato said, somehow everything was new. Like when some people first realized the sun didn't circle around the earth, but the opposite was occurring as the earth spun on it's axis. The same world was somehow more beautiful, because I saw something new just as well.

Everything is much richer and deeper, if we want to go there. And I did want to go there.

That was what got me into philosophy.

That was what led me to ask:

What is this "thing" that we call Reality? — Arcane Sandwich

What is it really? How do we know? — Philosophim

us verbal guys that get sucked into the intricacies of philosophical ideas. We prefer to be alone — T Clark

it is philosophy that makes me interested in it — unenlightened

What they said.

On a practical level, to sort of echo (and digress from) what Joshs said about thinking philosophically, I am of the opinion that all of us do philosophy; it is part of being a person; it is using language and making generalizations and forming descriptions, to make arguments, and test conclusions, and tear away illusion, and challenge the words of others. Learning philosophy is learning how to clarify thoughts and language. It is like the art of logical relations.

Philosophy proper is as unique a science as biology is unique from quantum physics; we are not all biologists or physicists. And we are not all philosophers; but we can tell the difference between a physicist, and me, who is not a physicist, and to do that, we have to do philosophy. We all create a big picture view (universalize), place ourselves in it (particularize), and organize everything else around and between these (relate these) - we are human, constructing the meta in the physics, fixed in motion. (Already my description of what all humans do is pissing off various other philosophers, but then, who in thousands of years has summed up philosophy in a few sentences?)

And the artists, who can completely empty their mind, not thinking at all, but instead performing their art, leaving all intention to melt into the motion of the body, "following the muse" that is always, already there, the motion itself that always guides as it drives us - these artists, though they are not philosophizing, often generate the most philosophically interesting creations. So, philosophy is inevitable with the human, and I would say united with our arts. Good art will always inspire a philosopher, just as a clear bit of wisdom or just the visceral, hard truth, (like the clarity of a distinct and new perspective) informs and inspires the artist.

Last thing I want to say here, is that, although the real work of the philosopher is lonely work, dialogue is a big motivation - we read and think, and then write, for hours alone, but we write to throw something out at the rest of the world, and we want to see what bounces back. And some of us mostly dialogue - which makes TPF in a sense what philosophizing really is. We have to be interested in challenges to what we think, so we have to be interested in capturing what we think in words. And we are just as interested in confirming agreement, as we are disagreement (especially when these lead to further honest analysis), and we don't begrudge our own or others' error, nor covet the discovery a better, maybe opposite view. We live for what we think, meaning: what I think is worth my own time, and may even be what there is to think for any thinking being. Peer review completes a certain justification in what I think, keeps philosophy tied to science (though it often falls into poetry, or mysticism, or theology). Even though most people (including me) are easily wrong about what they think, philosophers care about what people can really think, and say with any lasting gravity.

This conversation is the heart of philosophy.

Or the inscrutable meaning of “philosophy.”

The object of thought here that prompts us to communicate with words such as “essence” and “thing” and “existence” and “universal” and “referent”, to balance carving up the world against the lines the world has despite any carving (if any), all in the context of language and meaning and use and logic itself, as well as phenomenological experience itself - it is my position that we are standing on a precipice in this conversation (with everyone from Heraclitus and Parmenides to Aristotle and Kant and Russell and Wittgenstein and Quine standing next to us) attempting to explain, at once: the ground we stand on, the plateau of ground we walked to get here, the abyss in front of us, we the explainers of these things, and the language we all are subject too (by subjecting ourselves to it) standing here explaining.

We need to do too much at once to make the smallest move with any validity.

All philosophers have failed to lock this down in any kind of linear argument that impresses the rest of us.

So this conversation is difficult.

And for those coming from opposite sides (perhaps focused on the metaphysical or physical ground, or instead abandoning metaphysics and focused on our language use/meanings/logic, or focused on the abyss that separates all these concepts) this difficult conversation is very difficult. It is difficult for two people who fervently agree with Aristotle to say what a substance, a thing, an essence, knowledge of these and the act of knowing is. It is likely they will face significant disagreement on what is best to say next, or say first.

I have come to the conclusion that until we figure out a language that allows us to address the physical, metaphysical, ontological, epistemological and logical/linguistic aspects of this topic all at once, interlocutors will forever undercut any ground any philosopher attempts to cover in one of these areas. Epistemological issues will always undercut physics; metaphysics will always undercut ontology or vice versa; linguistics will always undercut metaphysics or vice versa, etc.

My solution is to rule out any conclusions that shrug off metaphysics - I know what not to say.

But what can be said?

I think the best language to speak standing on this precipice is mystical, sort of pre-logical. We both know and don’t know the object of inquiry. This object is both most immediate to us as it is utterly cut off from us. We can speak about it clearly, but never say enough to capture it.

What is so simple and easy about “there is a tiger and here is not a tiger” is also so deeply complex and puzzling.

The solution will not be one that saves the complex but ignores the simple, nor one that keeps it simple while ignoring the complex. Each, and both together, must be addressed at once. If there is a tiger.

Sellar's myth of the given argument, even if one accepts it, respects epistemology. It doesn't imply that the existence of a rabbit as a whole/organism cannot be distinct from our conventions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes.

This conversation is at once one of physics, metaphysics, and epistemology. And if we do not address all three at once, and focus only on one of these aspects, the others unaddressed undo whatever we say.

This is physics in that we are referring to access to tigers. (Positing content).
Metaphysics in that we are referring to distinctions among multiple, distinct things (using language such as “same” and “different “ to draw tigers distinctly from the things tigers are not. And metaphysics in that we have to speak about language itself as if it is a metaphysical object.
And epistemology in that there is no certainty our physics and our metaphysics have merely been constructed to align despite possibly having nothing to do with things in themselves (a metaphysics of illusions based on a physics of appearances in motion).

Bottom line for me, each word we utter refers internally to its essential meaning, as it refers externally to all of the forces that make it impossible to define absolutely.

Snow and sleet may demonstrate the confusion of knowing essences (is sleet really just snow depending on what snow is…like rain or a wintry mix…??); but the differences between snow and fire demonstrate the confusion of not knowing essences (snow is never burning and fire never freezes still).

There either are differences, be they phenomenally constructed or mind independent objectivities, or there is no difference between snow and fire and no distinctions to speak of.

Essence, like decay causing motion, is undeniable.

Is there an "essence", common to all and only the members of a family, that makes it what it is?
— Banno — Fire Ologist

Simply put. No.

You place the essence of a thing apart from the thing in order to form your question. The thing is its essence; it is what it is to be it.

You asked is there a “X” common to all and only the “Ys” of a family that makes “it” (presumably one of the “Ys”) what it is?

(Aside, what do you mean by “what it is?” as you just said that?)

No. The essence doesn’t come first from over there and then make some member over here one who has this essence and shares it’s own essence with the other members. That’s too many ontological/ metaphysical pieces.

There is the thing.

One thing.

We can categorize the thing as a member of a family if you want but that can be a separate question (about universalizing a particular..). That’s advanced identification of a thing, its identification of many things as a family so they all can be distinguished at the same time as if they were one thing.

One thing is the question in the first place, so I don’t think adding family resemblance helps sort this out.

There is the thing.

And like any thing, while it remains a thing, it makes some form, is being some essence, that words alone can recapture in reference to what “it” is.

Forms/essences come and go, just as things are all moving. Things and the essence spoken of those things do not make two kinds of things. There are just things. Things distinguished as “this” from “that other one” reveal what come to spoken of as their essences, the distinguishing lines that form the thing like they inform our words and thoughts of the things.

But none of this conversation has even happened without all of us fixing essences and putting them in motion. It’s too late for us to avoid the punch in the face of an essential difference between even this sentence and my next.

Essence happens where happenings happen. It is not simply motion that is happening.

There can not be relations without relata, be they identified particular unique individual relatives, or familiar resembling relatives.

Motion is only found where fixed things are moving and fixed things only rest long enough to be carved out as “things” as they are moving into place.

Heraclitus said it best: “It rests from change.” There is peaceful harmony in warring tension.

Part of the tension here is knowing we are talking about actual things, experiencing phenomenal appearances hiding things in themselves, knowing the epistemological impossibilities involved, positing a thing such as “tiger” as if an objective, mind independent thing, and then speaking about speaking and language using “essence” as if we are not referring to a real tiger, sinking its teeth into your leg, because we aren’t…

It’s a precarious conversation at best. Going on for thousands of years now.

But it’s only a conversation, a communication, if there is some essentially common ground, apart from us we are sharing.

(This is why we all fall into referencing universals - because where two agree about a thing, they have created a universal common ground. So many simultaneous topics at this moment in philosophical thinking.)

Is there an "essence", common to all and only the members of a family, that makes it what it is? — Banno

I would ask “Is there (in the same form as you said above) an experience you call “makes it” without making a “what it is?” There is the motion that undoes all family resemblance on the fringes, and there is the family, the essence, that is undone.

So simply put, there is “is to be” and there is “what” is to be; never can these be separated, except in words, as I have referred to the motion of “is to be” as if it was a separate moment from “what it is to be.”

Is there an "essence", common to all and only the members of a family, that makes it what it is? — Banno

Simply put. No. The essence doesn’t come first from over there and then make some member over here one who has this essence. There is the thing. And there is the essence, the form, the distinction, that is this same thing, now spoken, or “known” for what it is.

There is.
So there is it.

It.
So it is.

What is assumed, in "assuming essence"? — Banno

Because we are asking about things as we simultaneously talk about talking about things, the words of your question are the answer to the question:
“What” is assumed in assuming essence.

Somewhat interesting, frustratingly annoying thread.

I’m still stuck on how one can speak to another about anything, and uses more than one word to form a sentence, without reference to, without invocation of, without admitting, without assuming, essence.

Arguing that essences aren’t knowable is like using words to argue that there are no such things as letters.

Essential distinctions are present in every move we make, be it a movement of speech, or a lump of magma distinguishing itself from the earth’s core and the volcano that tossed it.

Movement and essence - or simply distinction - undeniable. Unless one stops speaking. And breathing.

Whether we ever know the essence of anything correctly, that is another matter; but we know something of the essence of knowledge when we admit motion (being, becoming) and quiddity (distinctions measured) are what can be known.

Things have essences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think saying “have” creates the issue for people who try to deny essence. I agree things have essences, but at this rarefied level of universality, it may be better to try to see the unity, the identity, that is the essence of the same unified things thereby identified. The “what it is to be” is a “what” whether it has anything else or not, so to speak; we don’t need to distinguish “it” from what it “has” to understand essence; we just need to break it all apart to speak about it, so “has” becomes efficient for speaking, but not to those who don’t admit of identity.

An essence of some item is the set of properties that are necessary and sufficient for it to be that item.

A necessary property of some item is one that is correctly attributed to that item in all possible worlds.

It is a trivial exercise to posit a possible world in which any particular property associated with an item is absent from that item.

Therefore the notion of essence is problematic. — Banno

Your quote above points to the fact that it is really hard to drill down to the essence of anything. We divide unified things into many parts in order to simply speak about one, distinct thing as it essentially is. What a mess. I agree with that. But so be it. We need unity (essence of identity) to speak at all. Your quote doesn’t mean there is no, or can be no, essence. In fact, because it refers to “item” and “properties” (to which I can ask if there is a difference between this property and that property, requiring reference again to essence as much as “this” from “that”), it relies on essences as much as it relies on words or other things.

There is no possible world that can be distinguished from any other possible world without each such world referring to itself as distinct and referring to all other worlds as not itself.

Distinction reveals something of the essence of two things (or more) distinguished; without distinctions, without difference, there is no way to speak about anything. Without essence, without distinction, there is nothing to say nor means of thinking of a reply (or means to reply or ply, at all).

There is nothing to disagree with nor two items to bring into agreement, where there is no essence to speak of.

Could there be a possible world, much like ours, but the only difference is that in that world, there are no other possible worlds possible? Seems like this has to be possible if we allow for possible worlds to be spoken of. Or maybe such a world is not possible..?

was I wrong in expecting something in return when loving someone — Dmytro

Hey - hang in there. You seem to know what love is and it’s worth all the heartache it brings.

You aren’t wrong. You wanted a girlfriend, to share with, which is normal and involves real life, practical give and take. You wanted mutual love with someone who wanted mutual love with you together. Nothing wrong about wanting that or letting the relationship end if it wasn’t going to happen.

But on a more analytical level, you are right about love in itself - it has no expectations. When you love a baby or a child, you just love them - they can do and be and say anything and the parent’s love remains.

Love is beholding, not an actual holding in hand.
Love seeks to consume the loved one to unify with them, without ever touching or changing them in any way. Love wants one thing, and receives maybe not what it wants, but much more instead.

These things are irrational, unspeakable, and so cannot be formulated into an expectation.

Love is a blessing. A pure gift. Something to thank one’s lucky stars for. Not something we can plan or construct all by ourselves and set out to accomplish.

Do you think it's possible to record the individual human experience? — Ayush Jain

My individual experience IS my body - this is the “cord” that there is to “re-cord” so to speak.

Talking about it is recording it. Thinking about thinking is an attempt to record thinking.

So yes, it’s not only possible, it’s what we do when we speak. Problem is, the recording quality sucks.

If there is no room in the universe for freedom to reason, judge and choose our actions, then each word of this post is not from “me.”

Seems absurd to say that this post is not coming from choices I am making right now, and now again.

But if there is no room in this universe for freedom, no position from which to halt the constant drive of determined necessity and take responsibility for these words here, and here again, and stake a claim as being the sole source of “these words precisely here in this post” as I alone cause them to be, then we are all stenographers. And we have no idea why. Or how. Or why I just said “how”.

If one were to know the truth of a significant matter, would transparency and honesty be owed to the community — Benj96

Who is this “one” who “knows the truth” of a “significant matter?” I want to be that guy.

The “integrity of free will” - doesn’t that rely on truth? How are you freely choosing between A or B if A is a lie or B is something I’m actually ignorant of? There’s no freedom there, just a stone falling down a hill by what forces it knows not.

Are you just saying “what they don’t know won’t hurt them?” In which case what do you mean by “significant matter” because it seems running around the world with no knowledge of a significant matter could lead to harm.

Without an example of how one could protect ignorant bliss in other people, I don’t see why one would keep truth hidden for the sake of the “integrity of free will.”

Seems Orwellian to me, and a recipe for slavery.

Buddha retreated from Nirvana to tell us all the truth. Jesus said he is the truth. US Constitution protects free speech so that all can express their thoughts and reveal what they believe is true.

Truth is like guns. Once you let truth loose in the world, if you don’t make it available to all, those without it will be oppressed. Seems to me hiding truth will hurt any chance at free will.

• The Earth evolves — Seeker25

I have trouble right out of the gate. I don't see that evolution occurs outside of life. The earth doesn't evolve.

We can use the word "evolve" metaphorically to describe a change, but it is just metaphor. You need mutation, so you need reproduction, to evolve. You need survival impulses and the death of weak individuals and reproduction of the strong individuals, to evolve. You need the interaction of living things and their environment for evolutionary forces to bring about new adaptations. Without living things, there is no adaptation. The misshapen form of a planet doesn't adapt to gravity and evolve to be spherical.

In fact, evolutionary forces allow trees to defy gravity. So if the unifying forces of gravity were the ethical law of the land, life and evolution, in trees and birds, would be unethical!

Equating all change with evolution, is like equating all destruction with death; and all emergence with birth. It makes for nice poetry and metaphor to speak of the birth of sun, and to see the destruction of a comet that falls into the sun as the death of a shooting star, but we are not talking science anymore, but poetry. You crash a care into a wall and total it. You don't actually kill the car. The car isn't evolving into some other use for the steal it is made of.

And just like we can't use mere physics and gravity and speed to explain how dolphins evolved to be seafaring creatures from land-based creatures, we can't use evolutionary forces too explain how personal interactions have an ethical component to them.

• The Earth evolves according to tendencies that, thanks to science, we know.
• When we act in the same direction as these tendencies, we foster humanity’s positive evolution. — Seeker25

If ethics is to be discovered in the tendencies of natural world, even absent any persons, in evolution, then all of our human ethical norms become so forced and contrived. Why is it wrong to murder? Because life seeks to beget life and evolution tells us so? No! Life also kills and eats dinner, or males hurt and shun rivals and kill their offspring to prompt new reproduction. Life leads to more miscarriages than births. Sometimes the stronger ones are killed and the weak ones reproduce. From what I can tell, nature and evolution give us no clue as to what is good versus bad, and how one ought to act versus how one has evolved to act.

Ethics is confined to the world that exists between persons. The rest of the universe and all of history before persons is devoid of ethics, innocent of its possible judgment. Since persons evolved to walk the earth, since that time, only persons have discovered a disconnect between how something is and how something ought to be. And we didn't just discover this gap between what is and what ought to be; we made it, when we did what we ought not do. We created the first gap between "is" and "ought". We created the first injustice in nature. We probably started hiding things, leading others to believe something to be the case that actually they ought not believe, because they were hiding the truth that they alone knew. Lies and hiding - words representing nothingness as if it were somethingness - this is the initiation of "ethics." Maybe?

Your question about where ethics resided before life is well-posed, but I don’t know the answer—just as I don’t know where intelligence, life, or consciousness were, and yet no one doubts that all three exist. — Seeker25

My question was actually where ethics resided before persons.

You seem to be saying ethics is imbedded in evolution, or more generally, in life.

Looking at earth’s history, we can say chemical reactions were followed by biological reactions, so from physics, we get something new called life.

And we can say that with life came the evolutionary forces, arising when the first RNA behavior moved into DNA behavior (billions of years ago on earth). So life and its evolution were once new, sui generis. Before that time, there was no life and so no evolutionary forces. There was no “eating” to “grow” or “reproduce” in any strict sense of these words before there were a living things, not just chemical things.

Then we can say the evolutionary forces led to a species that contained the human person, and from this species the universe had something new again, called the person. There were new forces again such as “meaningful words” and “ethics” and “immoral actions” and “ought” “self-awareness of logic” and “math science”. These new forces (words) did not exist prior to persons, like eating did not exist prior to life and evolution.

If we want to talk about “eating” or “reproduction” or “sensation” or “growing to adulthood” we have to look at living things, and if we look only to chemical/physical things, we will never see these things at all. (Not in a non-metaphorical, non-post-hoc, strict sense.). Similarly, if we want to talk about “ethics” we have to look at persons; and if we look only at evolutionary activity and/or chemical activity, we will never see “evil” or “morality” or “something that ought not to exist.”

The entire universe is innocent of ethics. Except for wherever a person is. Just like the entire universe contains no evolution, except where life exists.

How life sparked from chemicals - I have no idea.
How persons sparked from life - I have no idea.
How ethics sparked from persons - I have no idea.

But I don’t see how ethics could skip over the personal and spark from life itself.

Poisoning the blood? — RogueAI

Like I said, conservatives have to confess their evil, lying hearts before anyone who is reasonable would believe an “honest” dialogue on the issues. Racist, facist pigs.

If I was using “blood” as an analogy about the border, instead of the shameful shit Trump says, I’d say America is wounded, bleeding at the border, and hurting Mexico, the Mexican people, and the rest of the world in the process. And America can fix its own bleeding if it really wanted to, but instead it just continues bleeding. America’s border policy is weakening itself, and poisoning the rest of the world.

But that’s all more political headline grabbing bullshit metaphor, poisoning the blood of actual discussions Dems should be having and positions they should be articulating.

A large segment of Republicans is incredibly racist. — RogueAI

Right. Foregone conclusion. No use talking with a racist. All smart people agree on that, right?

But then, how can the Dems talk with Republicans and win them over, and win elections, if all those Repubs are not worthy of any human interaction?

Maybe jumping right into “you’re a racist” in conversations isn’t the best approach? I mean, we all know already, racism has become a feature of the Republican. The media is doing a great job with that. So is that it? Conversation on the merits of any issue is over? Trump only dog-whistles? Full stop?

I wonder if there are a few Repubs who aren’t racist, who find racism immoral. Unfortunately, I’m just as sure there’s “a large segment of” Democrats who are “incredibly racist” as well. So maybe racism grinding every issue into a food fight isn’t productive of expanding a Dem base?

Dems should learn how to express what they want on the border and debate it with Repubs. That’s my point. So do we need an organized border, or not? Dems say “yes” and Dems say “no” (sometimes, it’s the same Dem). Which is it?

Any clear answer to that question will help the Dems. But Dems have trouble talking about the border for some reason. I don’t see why they can’t draw a clear line at the border like they can draw a clear line around a “large segment of” Republicans as racists..

There is something essentially elitist about philosophy, — Tom Storm

That is true and that’s a shameful failure of philosophy. The way I see it, wisdom can and does come from anywhere, from anyone at any moment. It’s always a surprise. Wisdom is not merely some reward for the philosopher, or even the mystic. Philosophers, like scientists, usually (not always) seem to think only the long, methodical path of logic can justify any such claim of “knowledge” or “wisdom”; or the mystic will not settle until there is nothing left of themselves to be settled before claiming a glimpse at enlightenment. But these paths are only necessary because we philosophers and broken mytics make it this way. And then someone accidentally speaks wisdom. It’s the same wisdom whether you struggled to know it or find it given by accident.

Well, śūnyatā is often misinterpreted as a kind of monstrous void, but in reality it's much nearer to the phenomenological epochē of Husserl (who commented favourably on Buddhist Abhidharma.) — Wayfarer

The void is often misinterpreted as monstrous, instead of just being. The one.

I like to think of it as 'going beyond the word processing department' i.e. going beyond the part of your brain that encodes everything in language — Wayfarer

See, interesting, This conversation (these words) sits on an edge between what can be said, and what can’t. At the edge of logic and self. Where Parmenides says “it is the same thing to think and to be.”

It’s because there’s a kind of unspoken prohibition on certain topics or attitudes in the consensus view. — Wayfarer

Interesting conversation.

I liken it all to a jigsaw puzzle. Some like Parmenides worked to put the puzzle together, not seeing the pieces once he saw the whole picture, while today we are told the pieces are all there is to talk about and must not talk about any whole picture. And the consensus today is that we aren’t being scientists anymore when we think we see a whole. (We can’t even do metaphysics if we try, as if we should not trust our own experience, because of the limitations of grammar). But we will never be able to escape the whole picture. It keeps calling us to look at it. We sit, severed from the whole and that is how we know it is there. Somewhere. Some of us will always love to know, to experience truth. Buddhists would have us empty out even the science and the metaphysics to experience truth, and let the whole be whole, where none of the pieces even exist anymore. That is a better way, to move beyond metaphysics, not balk from it before we might experience the whole; try as post modernism may, we will never be convinced to remain here with only puzzle pieces as if there isn’t already a whole and maybe one we can come to know, to be with.

I doubt this makes much sense but good convo.

Right = grassroots media & free speech.
— Leontiskos

When it comes to the airwaves, this is factually wrong. — Fooloso4

But when it comes to the main stream legacy media (three major networks, all major newspapers, oldest cable news company) and their rockstars in Hollywood (99% of movies and TV shows, and the wise and sagacious universities, this is factually accurate. The right has carved out a kid’s table on two cable tv stations, a couple internet sites and AM radio (the kind of radio our grandparents invented).

Dems lose the Make America Great argument because they don’t think America was ever great nor do they really want it to be. The one time Dems are consistently honest is when a sentence has the words “great” and “America” in it - they instinctually insert the word “not” is those sentences.

The dems will beat repubs every time the Dems offer a clear framing of a clear problem the majority faces, and a reasonable, realistic solution to that problem. They don’t even need a solution - if they clearly identify a problem the majority faces.

But instead, the Dems pick problems most people don’t really face everyday (LGBTQ issues, global environment issues, class issues, race issues), and they create solutions that are unreasonable. When it comes to actual solutions, the Dems mostly convert one problem into two other problems, occasionally don’t impact the problem at all, and less occasionally do some good. So when they pick a problem most don’t care a lot about, they look terrible. They need to identify what the real issues are that federal government has some real control over.

One major issue I see keeping people apart is that conservatives have to confess their policy positions and apologize for having them, if progressives will even entertain a discussion. Conservatives have to answer questions like “do you support white nationalism?” And “do you hate immigrants, women and LGBTQ?”

Those questions have nothing to do with most conservative policies. But for some reason, if you support republicans, you must be a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, heartless, greedy pig. And no honest conversation can be had if the repub doesn’t first confess these truths and apologize for them.

And then progressives don’t believe the answers when the conservative says “no” to all of them. Dems are as conspiratorial as the worst maga election and vaccine deniers. They find “dog whistles” everywhere and never take things conservatives say for their face value.

(Here is a tip - Maga has no depth - it is all face value - and the Dems refuse to see this. That is what populism is - taking the populace at face value. The naive want to have the naive discussions.)

Progressives in the media have made it this way. It started in the 60’s. Progressive voices became so loud and were supported so uniformly in all forms of media (movies, TV, news, print) and college/education, now, anything that opposes progressive speech and liberal thinking is seen as only coming from a bad, backwards place. Public speech has now all become virtue signaling political correctness, and the Dems made it this way.

Dems can’t even debate differences of opinion with each other anymore.

So if a Republican wants to talk to a Dem, he or she needs to apologize for all of the wrong words they will use, and apologize for having ideas that conflict with the prevailing wisdom of the brilliant media and college professors.

Believe it or not, the vast vast majority of republicans, like the vast majority of human beings, are not racist. It’s unfortunately true and the Dems don’t want to believe that they might be the ones fomenting racism. Someone who thinks the phrase “build a border wall” is racist may have their own issues with race, and may be seeking a different conversation than border policy.

We all hate racism. It doesn’t have to be part of every discussion.

BTW, Hate and racism have a much cozier home in a party that hates white, patriarchal, colonizing profiteers. A basis for hating a whole group of people based on nothing to do with individual blame but merely because of their membership in a group exists to a much much greater degree in the Dem party (lots of groups of people the Dems sanction hating - there is no reason for a democrat to even speak with someone who likes being white, or a white male, or depending on the conversation any male, or a capitalist big business owner, or a Christian gun owner - none of these groups really deserve a fair hearing, the dems have heard enough from such people back in the 50’s and have moved on, progressed beyond all of those deplorable people.)

So conversations between progressives and conservatives never really happen - they each talk about different things and hurl their insults over each others walls and never hear each other or see each other at all.

For instance, to the average Repub, the issue at the border has nothing to do with the nationality of the people on the other side of the border. No conservative republican cares where you are from (including Trump); if you want to respect America’s laws, apply and enter the country legally, great, welcome aboard from wherever you are from. The border issue is simple: to say “America” and mean it, you need a border so you can point on a map to what you mean. We need a border first to be the country everyone can find on a map so they can leave their country’s borders and come here for a better life. We need to build a better America so that when they cross the border they find the hope they seek. Borders are real and matter for the sake of Americans and the rest of the world. Race and nationality of an individual person has nothing to do with this issue, save for one nationality - American - which nationality only exists inside a border (once there is a border). Republican policy at the border is for the sake of people of ALL nationalities creeds and colors who are legally American.

This a reasonable, debatable position. There is much to say in support and in opposition to this that need never use the word “race”. It’s insulting and betrays weak analysis to raise race with every issue.

Questions like: “why do you only want to help the rich while exploiting the poor?” Many poor people now see through this loaded question in all its forms in the media. People registered dem and repub, rich and poor, actually think that if they can make some of their own money, save to build their own security, they can freely create whatever society they want here in America, already. They don’t need or want government to figure out what bathroom signs should look like, or how many Asians or women are on boards of directors. At least not now, when they can’t save any money at all. They want to be able to run their own lives and communities.

The biggest divide between Dems and (real) Repubs is over the size and role of the federal government. Repubs are supposed to create results for people by limiting the role of federal government to its strengths (national security, foreign policy and trade, interstate issues) and cutting it down to the minimum size necessary (lower taxes) to address those limited things. Repubs try to create conditions within which people can identify and solve their own problems, not tell them what the problem is and take their money to solve it for them. Dems think the feds in Washington will be better suited to tell people in a small town in Wyoming and big city New York, and the big corporations and the mom and pop business what they need, how to get it and how much it should cost, and what is good for their business and what is good in the public square. And that has never worked once in 100 years.

The Dems over-promise and under deliver, in my view, because government is inefficient and will never provide the resources to improve society. It’s a necessary evil, not suited to knowing and managing what people need.

Progressivism really is like a secular religion, complete with the Paradise of Power to the People through Big Brother Federal Government. Republicans are the party of the immoral, selfish and stupid. Dems are the party of the morally upright, the community based, and the brilliant thinkers. Yet they still lose. Maybe they don’t understand anything at all about the people who didn’t vote for them. And God forbid, maybe their ability to identify and solve national problems aren’t as brilliant as they thought. Maybe the poor uneducated white man has a good idea once in a while.

My question is, with the media and higher education deeply in the back-pocket of progressive supporting Dems, why is it Dems could possibly lose any election? How could anyone, let alone a whole country, elect a racist, sexist, raping, felon nazi (all synonyms for Trump) if the dems are really for the people at all? It’s because Dems take the people for granted, and misjudge them. And instead of focusing on the people, they’ve given up on the people’s ability to help themselves, they don’t even want people to help themselves, and think the answer to any problem might somehow magically be found in bigger government dominance of all facets of life, as if there is one way people should be, as if the problems Dems see as priority are the biggest problems we all must see, as if the solutions they devise to address these problems are the only way.

Humans have only existed for 0.004% of the Earth’s lifespan. Before formulating principles, it is essential to consider what occurred during the remaining 99.996% of that time. — Seeker25

I take it evolution is a word reserved primarily to describe living things. We could say that the earth evolved from star dust into a fiery ball, but that is metaphor. So before there was life on earth, there was no evolutionary process on earth; evolution happens where living things happen.

Similarly, ethics is a word reserved to describe personal activity. Ethics didn’t exist on earth before people did.

But life and evolution existed before people did. So for ethics to derive from or be bound to evolution, you have to show where ethics lived before people evolved. Life, and for that matter physics, seems to be equal parts generation and decay, hunger and murder before satiation and peace. So it is not clear to me that when ethics arose it was a necessarily related to evolution, just like it is not clear to me that life and evolution arose following a model that could be found in chemistry or physical things that don’t live.

Life is sui generis, arising out of physics/chemistry, but unlike physics/chemistry. With life there arises its own driving forces, namely evolution. Evolution did not arise outside of or before life.
Then humans arose or evolved, and then ethics came to be. Ethics, it seems to me, is sui generis, arising through the evolution of human beings but once ethics came to be it created its own driving forces, namely good and bad and free agency between them. Just like we can’t look to only chemical reactions to understand “eating” or “reproduction” or “genetic information” found in evolution, we may not be able to look to evolution to explain “murder” and “bad killing versus good killing” in ethics.

I disagree that Republicans destroy any more so than any other ideological movement destroys. Conserving by nature seeks to preserve the status quo, so destruction it would seem, is more useful to a liberal than a conservative. Liberals by nature seek to overthrow (destroy) existing institutions, mores and customs.

But I knit-pick. I agree with most of your post.

Save for reproductive rights being a good issue for liberals. It’s a loser issue for both sides. The sides have hardened as ‘protecting the baby by destroying the mother’ versus ‘protecting the mother by destroying the baby.’ Losers all around. Both parties should figure out a way to start that conversation over. Conservatives should abandoned government intervention and focus on charity if they want to change minds and save unborn babies from being aborted, and liberals should be less spastic about slippery slopes - abortion is legal all over the place. Make some laws and deal with it (many of the abortion protection measures won a greater majority than Trump did, showing that many “conservatives” or people in general, are going to keep on protecting or extending abortion rights.). On current terms proposed by either side, abortion is a loser issue lodged deep in each party’s respective base so it is useless to move any needles.

Hating white men is just a bad idea, and it contradicts human rights. Maybe just hate the bad white men, for the sake of all good people, which includes the good white men? The whole line of liberal thinking about the hetero paternalistic white male has to be reevaluated. It’s just too simplistic, too reductive, too brittle when challenged, and any white dad who sees value in hating white dads because they are white and a dad is kidding himself.

Hating guns and gun owners - another loser like abortion. Guns and gun owners, like unwanted pregnancy and abortions, are here to stay. Figure it out, regulate it, set limits, argue to change minds, but do not ban. Here, the republicans have to get over the slippery slope bullshit. Homeowners don’t need nuclear weapons. Find some lines, adapt them as technology changes, but recognize government will always need to regulate this.

I don’t think it is moral to see any individual as you might see a stereotype. Talking about “liberals” and “conservatives” helps move conversations in big steps, which is fine. But to hate me personally, for instance, because I am a “conservative” or a “white male”, to even think that you know someone because he said he was a conservative, is just wrong. Our politicians, leaders, and media, and most of all, you and me, do this all of the time. We ignore the individual by seeing only some stereotype. Politicians and media want to rally voters or sell ad space, so they dramatize stereotypes of evil-doers and throw whole groups of people in them. It’s immoral, or simple-minded, or childish, or simply ignores the texture ad complexity that actually exist.

We all need to remember the people in our lives that we know and love who also happen to vote for the other party. We have to humbly accept that our own opinions may be the wrong ones and listen. Just listen to the other side and sift through all of their stereotypical bullshit for some semblance of a good reason they might think differently than you do.

Both sides need to listen to each other. Because I love some people who vote democrat and some people who vote republican I asked how it can be that I can see polar opposites at the same time as I see the same love and friendship? How are liberals good? How are conservatives good? I came up with this analogy: picture a baby in a small tub of dirty water. Conservatives see the baby and say “look at how cute babies are, we may want to do something to clean the water but no matter what we need to preserve that cute baby.” Liberals see this and say “look at how ugly that water is, we may need to do something to protect that baby, but no matter what that water has to change.” Conservative impulses are to preserve the good; liberal impulses are to change the bad. Both are needed.

Everyone is looking to do good. But we are often mistaking two different conversations (baby or bathwater) for two different ideas of what “good” means. No one wants to actually listen to each other. Most don’t think the other side is worth listening to or capable of listening to our side, because of stereotypes bombarding us by the media and the politicians.

We should never think of our political party of choice as anything more than a convenience. We de-humanize ourselves when we buy into the categorization of whole groups of people as “deplorable” or “vermin” or even simply “they”. They is our own family, our neighbors and friends.

Emptying oneself of everything, that the grace/Word of God may manifest, sounds eerily similar in practice to these other meditative traditions. — Nils Loc

I agree with that and have grown very interested in Buddhism these past few years. “Not my will, but thine be done.” We cannot become filled with God until we are emptied of ourselves.

Good stuff!

My point here is that, from what I can tell, the Yogic and Buddhist traditions do not make appeal to anyone or anything else to help the individual become empty. Assistance with obtaining enlightenment might actually be seen as a hindrance to enlightenment.

So I agree I must be empty to receive God or enlightenment fully, but, because of the impossibility of the resurrection that nevertheless actually occurred, I think we are shown that I will never find salvation/ enlightenment myself unless it calls me toward it, unless it raises me from the dead, and this reaching out is grace. This reaching out to me is God acting, not me acting, and this grace is essential before I can give my self up. The final step taken to achieve enlightenment is not taken by me; it is when the last bit of myself is taken by God, or taken by ultimate reality for the Buddhist. I have to serve myself over to God or ultimate reality, but it is not up to me whether what I serve will be taken. Salvation, total self-denial and union with reality/God, enlightenment, is unattainable by our own hand, our own self. We who would deny ourselves completely, affirm ourselves as deniers just as instantaneously. “I deny myself, therefore, I am still a self.”

So any moment of final enlightenment must be a gift, something we could not have made of our “selves”. We can’t be self-made empty selves. We can participate in making of our salvation, but we can’t complete it alone.

The resurrection as an actual historical event (an impossible physics that nevertheless stood in the light of day), means to me I need the supernatural to overcome the natural - I can’t raise myself from the dead without grace, just like I can’t achieve enlightenment without grace.

So belief in the actual resurrection may not be essential to a belief in the need for grace, but it is maybe the clearest sign that we must seek grace, let God do the final, ultimate work.

And I don’t know for sure if Buddhism and Hinduism truly deny grace. It’s just my current sense of them. In any event, my point is that, for Christians, the resurrection and proclamation that we all can be raised from the dead, makes clear that we must need God before we might be saved (or enlightened). So if someone says they are a Christian but doesn’t think the resurrection actually occurred, they might not understand what grace is and that there is no salvation without it.

good summary — T Clark

:cool:

As much as any idea could be mine alone, it’s all yours now.

We’re all familiar with the idea that philosophy operates at a level of discourse than which there is no higher, in some structural sense. What does this claim actually amount to?

First, a clarification: The idea I’m referring to doesn’t denigrate poetry, or fiction, or prayer, or paying compliments, or any other non-discursive uses of language. — J

Interesting discussion.

I certainly recognize that philosophers attempt to address everything and anything that was, is, will be, actually or potentially, in reality and in illusion, for all persons and other things, be they mindless or omniscient Gods or somethings else; and philosophy incorporates logic (math and language), poetry (aphorism), fiction (thought experiments), physical objects and theoretical impossibilities, and more in order to do its work. But that said, there is no need to think of any type of discourse as "higher" or "highest". I think such gradations may actually get in the way of what philosophers are trying to do (so all of the many philosophers in history who placed themselves above, instead of just apart, from the rest of us, were wrong). Philosophy, in a sense, is a leveler of discourse, always relentlessly sifting through the illusory for the reality and trying (mostly failing) to speak of the sifting; philosophy makes all discourse "discourse" and recognizes only a rankings like "valid or invalid" or "true and false".

The subject of the philosopher is everything, just like separately, the subject of the philosopher can instead be anything; but the subject of the philosopher is not just everything or anything over there, it is these things as they relate to or include the relator, the subjective experiencer; everything that is for me, with me, from me, and not for me, but moving away from me, from somewhere else - it is all of these at once that makes the topic of philosophy.

That said, philosophy is the science of scientific thought and language. It is a science. Reason or logical process is nearby, if not thoroughly infused within, every word of the philosopher. It is the discourse on discourse. It is the science of the self-aware being, being self-aware about scientizing.

Philosophy cracks open and destroys everything in its path, from Gods to atoms, in order to see if anything must remain bound, indestructible. It seeks to know what knowing knowledge means.

Philosophy is also born of love and desire, intention and focus, and is creative. This is to say, philosophy is one of the arts. (Maybe discourse on "art" is the highest discourse then?) The poet sees the meadow and builds something new out of it, with words, that can find their way into the minds and hearts of other people (other poets), so that something of the meadow and of the poet might now exist in the words and further in those who cannot see the meadow. Like the poet sees the meadow, the philosopher instead sees "seeing" or "being" or "minding" or "speaking" and builds something new out of it, with words, that can find their way into the minds and hearts of other people (other philosophers), so that something of this "being" or "minding" now exists in the words and further, in those who can only see for themselves.

The philosopher constructs, or creates, something new, in order to reveal to others for the first time in their lives, something that already is.

Philosophy is a doing, and not just the words that are constructed. Priests, poets, politicians, nearly all of us at some point, do philosophy during our lives. But the philosopher proper does philosophy on the philosophic itself; philosophizing is a self-aware activity (which is why it can be skeptical of its own existence).

The philosopher who speaks is conducting a never-ending test on speaking itself; they subject everything to such tests, such as what priests say when they say "God is one" and test what poets say when they say "we have the infinite within us" and test what politicians say when they say "This is the way forward, towards 'the good' and 'the just'." Philosophers must test every word of every sentence before they will say that something has been said at all. Philosophy is a testing (that is the science of it).

But if all of the content and art produced by the philosophers, all of their words, might be empty and hollow (still talking about "everything" as you can see), there is still great value in doing philosophy. Say what you will about the content of Plato, of Kant, of Nietzsche, of Buddha, of Heraclitus, of Wittgenstein, of Russell, of Derrida, of Aristotle, Lao Tsu, Descartes and Hegel..., in doing philosophy, we learn how to think. We learn how to recognize bullshit (illusion) faster. We learn to probe for our own biases and learn ways to shatter them as well as anything can be shattered. We practice logic. We practice clarity in discourse and precision in focus.

Philosophy is rarefied scientizing, in need of no matter, no particular clay, as it carves and molds nonetheless.

In the end, I would say that philosophy is only the highest discourse to those of us who have fallen in love with the mysteries of human experience - philosophy is the only activity, the only discourse, that might requite this love. Physics and biology may in the end satisfy this love, but it would still take the philosopher to notice our philosophy has been mistaken all along, so the philosopher would remain, abandoned and alone. "Desire is the cause of all suffering." So by some accounts, the lovers of wisdom, the philosophers, are the sowers of their own suffering. Seems undeniable, given that after 3,000 years of advances in the science of all things, we still can't say anything about everything.

if Jesus didn't physically ascend, then it completely changes the nature of the Christian faith
— Wayfarer

Yes, I think that's right. — Leontiskos

I agree as well. People can certainly believe what they choose (that’s the nature of belief), but it seems to me the most important difference between Christianity and all of the other major religions (Jewish, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and others) is that for Christians, the one God became a man, died, and rose again. Without these three facts believed as a part of human history, Christianity offers nothing more (and maybe even less) than some of the others. If you don’t believe Jesus, who is God actually became a man, died, and rose again, then much of the New Testament is either lying or foolishness; and why listen to liars and fools when you could look to Buddha or to Hinduism for more depth, more honesty and more practical application?

The other important difference between Christianity and some of the other religions has to do with the resurrection, and that is our need for grace from God to be saved. Christians believe we can’t save ourselves. Whereas Hinduism and Buddhism place it all in our hands (or place the task of removing our hands from the picture, losing one’s self as up to us alone) and don’t speak of grace from God. So if you don’t believe in the resurrection, the proof of salvation and biggest out-pouring of grace, you may still believe in the need for grace and salvation, but you’d probably be better off pulling in some wisdom from the Indian, Tibetan region, and/or Buddhist histories that aren’t waiting around for grace and claim to have already connected with the other side of the shore line on their own.

Babies and adults have qualities that match my concept of ‘person’. — praxis

What are those qualities, besides Caucasian, and hair? If Caucasian and hair matter at all towards a definition of person, all people from India, Asia, Africa, along with zygotes, are off your list of persons.

I assume by not not answering that you do not recognize the image on the left as a person just as I don’t recognize it as a person. — praxis

Come on, let’s stay with you for a bit more. I don’t want us to have to talk about my crappy reasoning yet, I’d rather we get back to your crappy reasoning.

I assume by not answering my questions you have no idea why you regard the image on the right as a person. You just do. It’s cute and cuddly. A zygote is slimey, so it can’t be a “person”. Is something like that the best we got?

We can see many personal things about the baby in the picture. It looks caucasian, has light hair, etc. — praxis

We can’t use “Caucasian” to identify a person, because what about other non-Caucasian organisms? Making “caucasian” have anything to do with being a “person” sounds racist. I know you didn’t mean that, but I don’t know how referencing the race of a person tells you anything at all about why a newborn is a person but a zygote is not.

“Light hair” - what about bald babies? What about bald adults? What about dark haired babies? Again, this provides no insight into why an adult and a baby are both persons, but a zygote is not.

I regard a properly functioning individual human being as a self-sustaining organism with certain physical and intellectual capabilities, including a sense of self. — Relativist

I absolutely agree with that. I don’t think that is enough, but “sense of self” is a good one when talking about “person”.

The phrases “I regard” or “I recognize” have no explanatory powers here, because I recognize and I regard a human zygote as and individual human being and you seem to think I must be blind or need my powers of recognition and regard checked. The question is WHY would either of us recognize distinctions or similarities?

A newborn baby isn’t self-sustaining. It won’t eat unless other things feed it.
A newborn baby has no intellectual capabilities.
A newborn baby has no sense of self.

So is a newborn baby a person or not?