Yep, you've already exposed your total ignorance of the subject, so there is no need do it again. — Apollodorus

Anyone who reads through this knows what's what.

However ... — Apollodorus

Do you think that by repeating this yet again it becomes true? You attempt to give a literal reading to something that makes no sense when read literally.

Obviously, the importance of the Sun in Jewish thought decreased over time ... — Apollodorus

And yet you go on and on and on. None of this makes any difference to the issues you are trying to bury. Namely, the influence of paganism on Christianity. Whatever views may have been held hundreds of years earlier, does not address the view of Judaism at the time of Jesus.


From the article in Haaretz:

“At the time, it was evidently considered permissible to use imagery of people, animals and even pagan godsas long as it was in the service of Jewish tradition and adopted Jewish meaning,” says Prof. Moti Aviam, an archaeologist at Kinneret College and an expert on ancient religious structures. (Emphasis added because of your deceptive habit of skipping the parts that run counter to your fabrications)

They would have presumably objected to representations of pagan gods, however, hence the solar deity in the synagogues was meant to represent the God of Israel, most scholars agree.
(Emphasis added)

Aviam suggests that Helios doesn’t represent Yahweh per se but the sun. “Together with the moon and stars, the 12 months and seasons, the image is representative of the power of god in the universe he created,” he says.

(Yup, more stuff you skipped)

All of this stands in opposition to your claim that they worshipped the sun as a god.

Given that Jewish religion was not very different from Greek religion at the time — Apollodorus

It is not a given. It is a claim you have failed to substantiate. The Jewish religion did not accept the existence of men who become gods or gods who become men. They do not accept the idea that God impregnated a woman who gave birth to a man/god. They did not accept a trinity of gods.

To strive to become perfect — Apollodorus

The term had a specific meaning:

In Jewish scripture certain individuals such as Abraham and Noah are referred to as perfect because of their obedience to God. In these passages perfect is used as a synonym for complete, and perfect obedience to God is simply complete obedience to God./quote]

Now your game of word association may reveal something about your psychological make-up but says nothing about Judaism at the time of Jesus. — Wiki Matthew 5:48

But clearly being is contingent on some things existing, as if absolutely nothing exists, there is no being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So, being is contingent on being?

But if the claim doesn't flow from logic then it needs empircle support, but empircle support in the absence of experience is definitionally impossible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, question begging. There are no claims in the absence of thought. And no logical or empirical support in the absence of thought.

Now, arguably, being without thought is inconceivable ... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, conceivability necessitates thought.

By definition, being without conception can't be conceived. That would be the crux. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A tautology is necessarily true. How is this the crux of the matter? Conceivability marks a limit of human thought. It does not mark a limit of what is.

There is no difference between these unless it is specified either I see more than I eat, or I do not see more than I eat. — Metaphysician Undercover

A Venn diagram with one circle being the things you eat and the other circle being the things you see shows that there is an area of overlap but also an area that does not overlap. They are not the same.

A Venn diagram with one circle being the things you pursue and the other circle being the things that are good shows that there is an area of overlap but also an area that does not overlap. They are not the same.

It is your failure to see the difference that leads to your absurd conclusion that everything we do must be good. A claim that Plato not only does not make but one he rejects.

So being without thought is unprovable and unverifiable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Once again, you beg the question. Proof and verifiability are not necessary conditions for being. Being, however, is a necessary condition for proof and verifiability.

Thought can be discussed in the same way, without a reference to thinking something concrete. — Tobias

Eating can be discussed without reference to anything that is eaten, but there is no eating without something eaten.

Yes, the former, but what is than being thought is equally empty, the same emptiness you object to. — Tobias

The object is thought itself. Thinking is what is being thought. As you say:

we think while we examine thinking. — Tobias

Thinking is both subject and object.

The activity of thinking is still qualitatively the same. — Tobias

The activity of thinking changes with what is thought. Thinking is not a content free activity.

It uses the same concepts, just applies them differently. — Tobias

The concepts of nuclear physics are not limited to:

It uses identity, difference affirmation, denial etc. — Tobias

The fact of the matter is we could not do nuclear physics based solely on these concepts.

Or do you think there is some qualitative jump, now not with QM but the emergence of the scientific method? — Tobias

Let's see what Hegel has to say:

11. Spirit has broken with the previous world of its existence and its ways of thinking ... just as with a child, who after a long silent period of nourishment draws his first breath and shatters the gradualness of only quantitative growth ... This gradual process of dissolution, which has not altered the physiognomy of the whole, is interrupted by the break of day, which in a flash and at a single stroke brings to view the structure of the new world.

12: Yet this newness is no more completely actual than is the newborn child, and it is essential to bear this in mind. Its immediacy, or its concept, is the first to come on the scene.

In the same way, science, the crowning glory of a spiritual world, is not completed in its initial stages. The beginning of a new spirit is the outcome of a widespread revolution in the diversity of forms of cultural formation ... — Preface to the Phenomenology

...can you clarify the last 'regarded as mystical'? — Tom Storm

A few quotes from the Tractatus:

6.41
The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no
value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens
and is the case is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.

6.422
So our question about the consequences of an action must be unimportant.—At least those consequences should not be events. For there must be something right about the question we posed. There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself.
(And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)

6.43
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

From his Notebooks:

Being happy means being in agreement with the world (NB 8.7.16)
Living in agreement with the world is living in accord with one’s conscience, which is the voice of God.

I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16)

More from the Notebooks on God:

God is how all things stand, how it is all related (NB 1.8.16)

To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning (NB 8.7.16)

There are two godheads: the world and my independent “I”. (NB 8.7.16)

Being happy means being in agreement with the world (NB 8.7.16)
Living in agreement with the world is living in accord with one’s conscience, which is the voice of God.

I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16)

From his Lecture on Ethics. In no particular order:

I believe the best way of describing it is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the
world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as 'how extraordinary that anything should exist'
or ‘how extraordinary that the world should exist.'

I will mention another experience straight away which I also know and which others of you might
be acquainted with: it is, what one might call, the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the
state of mind in which one is inclined to say 'I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens.'

This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it
springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the
absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But
it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply
and I would not for my life ridicule it.


Now instead of saying “Ethics is the enquiry into what is good” I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is really important, or I could have said Ethics is the enquiry
into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living. I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a rough idea as to what it is Ethics is concerned with.


Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance. That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language.

The question is to what extent the apocalyptic angels were widespread in all Jewish circles. — schopenhauer1

According to Stavrakopoulou it was not at that time widespread. Of course much of the evidence for such beliefs comes from written works, that is from scribes. These works reflect their views and not necessarily what initially were more commonly accepted views. In what she writes she does not identify scribal circles and apocalyptic groups with particular sects,

I think there has been a tendency in modern times to ensure that emphasis on angels were simply a Christian thing. — schopenhauer1

She places the development of changing beliefs in angels in the third century BCE and eschatological beliefs in the second century BCE, well before Jesus.

layer upon layer. — schopenhauer1

An important layer is pagan belief in human gods and offspring of men and gods. We do find the sons of gods and daughters of women in Genesis 6. Whatever this might mean, such a thing was not part of Jewish beliefs during the time of Jesus. We do find, however, the pagan misunderstanding of the HB term 'son of God' and 'sons of God'

That is why they condemned the average person from speculating what is above and below and beginning and end of time. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, leave it to the professionals. I think there was probably more that a little jockeying for power and authority here.

In a way, Jesus is trying to check all the boxes that were popular at the time for what the messiah was to be.. — schopenhauer1

I think it is an open question how much are things ascribed to him rather than things he took to be true of himself.

Of course, Jesus died and the End of Times did not occur and this posed an existential dillemma for a group centered around a charismatic leader. — schopenhauer1

And the explanations his followers found to overcome what might have been the end rather than the beginning for them was quite a feat!

Trivial — Tobias

Really? Can there be thinking without something that is thought? Even if thinking about something there is still an object of thought, that which is thought.

Well, Hegel tries to articulate thinking, thinking itself. — Tobias

Do you mean thinking thinking itself or thinking itself? If the former then there is something thought, some object of thought, that is, thinking itself. If the latter then it refers to the activity of thinking rather than the activity. We do not walk by examining walking.

Suddenly the way we thin changed because of nuclear weapons? — Tobias

Splitting the nucleus of an atom was the result of several scientific discoveries. It was the result of the development of scientific thought, of changes in thought. In addition, the threat of total or near total annihilation of all human life has changed the way we think. This is not something people think about every day but these days, with Putin's invasion of Ukraine it is something must be thought about.

Just yesterday my wife told me that our neighbor has the same table we bought. I said that is impossible, it's right here and has not been out of the house. She expects that kind of thing from me.

What do you mean by 'pure being is not'?
In fact 'being' is prety quickly 'aufgehoben' into becoming in Hegel's Logik. — Tobias

You found your answer.

Hegel does not thematize the Heideggerian distinction. — Tobias

But you make the distinction:

Being is not the same as 'beings', — Tobias

I o not see why 'thinking' has to change. — Tobias

Here is why:

We think differently about things — Tobias

Thinking without what is thought is an empty concept.

However, the jump from we think about things differently now and that is because they correspond now to what we think about them and not then, is a leap of faith. — Tobias

? We did not think about QM at all until the 20th century. We did not know that the quantum world existed. Our thinking is changing in order to understand what is still inadequately understood about what is going on at the quantum level. Old concepts, old ways of thinking don't work at this level.

which I did when getting a Philosophy degree and Graduate degree in Professional Writing. — Joe Mello

You have mentioned this several times, as if it confers a kind of authority. What is your degree in philosophy? An AA or BA or equivalent. Surely if it was a higher degree you would have said so. Instead you have graduate degree in professional writing.

You should know that there are some here who have a Ph.D. or equivalent in philosophy, but we are confident enough in our education to rely on the strength of our arguments rather than our degree status. With a BA you have only begun to scratch the surface.

Perhaps Freddy, like old Socrates, is an ironic anti-sophistry sophist ... — 180 Proof

A good example of Nietzsche's irony:

Nietzsche said he is a complete skeptic when it comes to Plato. Nietzsche’s perspicacious reading of Plato is instructive not only for how we are to readi Plato but for how we are to read Nietzsche. Nietzsche the skeptic teaches us to read skeptically, esoterically, to read between the lines, to make connections, and not take things at face value.

Nietzsche says he is a complete skeptic when it comes to Plato because both he and Plato are skeptics. We are accustomed to thinking of Socrates as a skeptic (“I know that I do not know”) but do not think of Plato as a skeptic because of his talk of Forms. We assume that Plato knows the Forms or at least defends a “theory of Forms”. Nietzsche is skeptical of this. He thinks that Plato was a skeptic, that he too knew he did not know.

Only one who is skilled at sophistry can teach us to guard against sophistry. But sophistry can be put to good use. It is often necessary to get people to let go of the beliefs and ideas they cling to before they can being to learn from the philosophers. They must first be persuaded by "the weaker argument" before they can begin to evaluate the strength of an argument and then in turn reject the argument that persuaded them in their pursuit of finding and creating stronger more rationally persuasive arguments.

Not including it opens your metaphysics up to a broad side of attacks that show your theory can't account for numerically different entities with identical properties. — Count Timothy von Icarus

?

My metaphysics? What theory?

Wittgenstein attempts to draw the limits of thinking through its expression in language. What lies on the other side of those limits, what can be shown and experienced, but cannot be said, the ethical and aesthetic are mystical. They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical.

It's not that being has a substratum, the theories posit that objects have a substratum — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see no reason why objects need a substratum.

There are a few things touched on here in Francesca Stavkakopoulou's "God: An Anatomy". A few key points,(pages 386-387):

As the pantheon of gods shrinks to one, the angels proliferate. The idea that this god is the source of both good and evil is rejected. Evil is ascribed the agency of some of the angels. She points to the book of Job. Job asks his wife:

Shall we receive the good from God and not receive the bad? — Job 2:10

"The Satan" is introduced by a second writer as part of a junior council of gods. It is the Satan and not God who becomes responsible for Job's afflictions. And, I might add, our own.

From about the third century BCE the anonymous divine messengers became a hierarchical organization of angelic beings, headed by powerful archangels, with distinct roles and personalities. Most prominently Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. On the other side a group of malevolent supernatural adversaries of God.

According to Stavrakopoulou this overtly dualistic view was not widespread but developed within certain scribal circles, and was a prominent feature of apocalyptic groups convinced the end times were approaching, where the final battle between good and evil would be fought. By the end of the first century CE, these apocalyptic groups had come to include some of Jesus' devotees, many of whom held that humans were not only naturally inclined toward wrongdoing, but dangerously vulnerable to demon-induced sin, from which only Christ could deliver them. — Anatomy of God, p. 387

The necissarily unthinkable (for all minds,) cannot have being period, unless you posit some sort of absolute God's eye view of existence as a ground, or some sort of unanalyzable bare substratum of being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This assumes the very thing in question.Esse est percipi is a supposition. I see no reason to assume that existence is dependent on the existence of sentient beings. I also see no reason to assume that being requires a substratum. I don't think it is even a coherent concept.

This is the unstated premise, (that you do not eat everything you see), which makes your example an example of sophistry. — Metaphysician Undercover

What are you talking about? There is no unstated premise in the distinction between seeing what you eat and eating what you see. Either you eat everything you see or you don't.

Being is not the same as 'beings' — Tobias

Are you claiming that Hegel made the Heideggerian distinction? He distinguishes between pure being and determinate beings. Pure being is not.

If something is to be an object for us ... it must be thinkable for us — Tobias

Of course! How could something be an object for us and not be thinkable for us?

However for it to be discoverable as a 'new thing' it has to fit within the conceptual makeup of 'spirit' that whole of rational relations in which 'we' dwell. — Tobias

For Hegel 'Concept' 'Begriff' has both an overarching sense of the movement or working out of spirit and concepts as in the concepts of mathematics or physics. It is this latter sense that both enables and impedes knowledge. For example, QM does not fit within the division of the concepts of 'wave' and 'particle'. Here thinking had to change to get more in line with being, that is, with what is.

Actually, the idea that everything is deducible is very un-hegelian I would say — Tobias

I was responding to this:

They aren't the products of deduction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Twt"/"Dḥwtj" (Thut) and "Dwd" (Dawid) are phonetically sufficiently close to represent distinct yet related pronunciations of the same name. — Apollodorus

I almost forgot "Todd the Polka King". Here we see both T and D. Some pronounce this Dot. This has caused a great deal of confusion because he had a sister named Dot. And as if that was not enough they had a brother named Tad, although some insisted that Tad and Todd were actually the same person. One intriguing piece of evidence is a scrap of paper that says: "Dat polka playa", clearly showing that T and D are just different pronunciations of the same letter. Which explains why when the two or three of them were young they were called tots.

I see what I eat means very exactly, that I eat what I see. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you eat everything you see?

I am not going to bother addressing any of this again. Your tenuous connections sinks under their own weight.

More importantly all of this is nothing more than an attempt to bury the real issues regarding Judaism at the time of Jesus and the pagan influences of Christianity. Judaism had changed significantly by this time.

First you attempt to bypass Judaism and go straight from neoPlatonism to Jesus. When that failed you attempt to make Judaism indistinguishable from other religions.

Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson ... — Joe Mello

Isn't he the guy that is all over the internet and youtube? Shouldn't that disqualify him? Are you a closet internet plagiarizer?

... an atheist, disagrees with you three boys, and calls the discovery of Dark Energy the best argument he's seen for the existence of an omnipotent God. — Joe Mello

And yet, he remains an atheist. The best argument but not good enough. How about a citation quoting where you read this so we can read it in context.

Grandpa Joe is a foreman and owner of a painting company — Joe Mello

Good to know if I ever want to discuss house painting. Brush or roller or spray?

Grampa Joe: Does the scientific discovery of dark energy logically reveal an omnipotent power at work?

Grandchild: Can you tell me what you think dark energy is? Maybe we should start by doing some research. What are the sources of your information?

Grampa Joe: Don't be a smart aleck. The logical answer is God, goddamnit! Now go to sleep.

Mother: Dad you're frightening him.

Grampa Joe: Good! It will keep him off the damn internet.

Mother: So dad, where do you get your information on dark matter?

Grampa Joe: I don't need no damn information. The answer is God, goddamnit! Now go to sleep.

Mother: I don't think I can.

a theoretical particle — Count Timothy von Icarus

A theoretical particle is by definition thinkable. To theorize is to think.

necissarily unobservable — Count Timothy von Icarus

You shift from 'thinkable' to 'observable'. Thinkable, in the context of Rasmussen's paradox means explainable.

The unthinkable (as in unthinkable for all minds, past, present, and future, necissarily as opposed to contingently unthinkable) obviously can't be observed — Count Timothy von Icarus

All that is thinkable is contingent on our ability to think. Will we ever be able to explain all that is observable that goes on at the subatomic level? Maybe, but maybe not. When you shift from our minds to hypothetical minds then you can posit whatever you want, including omniscient minds. But to think about the existence of minds that do not have human limits does not mean that there are such minds, even though we can think them in the sense of hypothesize or imagine them.

“covering himself with light as with a garment” — Apollodorus

The more you attempt to dig yourself out of the hole you dug the deeper down you go. It follows from your claims that the sun covers "himself" with light. Why would the sun cover "himself" with light? Is the light of the sun not enough? Does it need light to cover its light?

In ancient religions, the Sun-God is often associated with a mountain (or pair of mountains) from which he is said to rise. For example, the Ancient Akkadian Sun-God Shamash rises from a great mountain and lights up the world. The God of Israel also resides on a hill, namely Mount Zion (Isaiah 8:18; Psalm 74:2). — Apollodorus

You are not the only one who can play this juvenile game:

The "Fool on a the Hill" also lives on a hill.

But a hill top is not a mountain top. Davy Crockett was born on a mountain top.

an Egyptian pharaoh called Thutmose (Twt-Ms, “son or heir of Twt) III whose name in Hebrew would be Dwd (Dawid/David). — Apollodorus

What is your source? The Hebrew letter dalet (with the dot) דּ is pronounced as 'd' not as 'th'. In addition, 'th' in the first part of Thutmose is not the same as the 't' at the end. There are, however, different pronunciation guesses. Most pronounce the first part differently than the last.

Thutmose I (sometimes read as Thutmosis or Tuthmosis I, Thothmes in older history works in Latinized Greek; Ancient Egyptian: ḏḥwtj-ms,[2] Tʼaḥawtī-mīsaw, pronounced [tʼaˈħawtij ˈmisˌaw] — Wiki

Therefore, it seems that the OT has preserved some of Thutmose's memory — Apollodorus

First, there is about a 400 year gap between Thutmose lll and King David. Second, it there is a connection it would not be a matter of preserving Thutmose's memory but of erasing it.

The Ark was reportedly brought to Jerusalem from a place called “House/Temple of the Sun” (1 Samuel 6). — Apollodorus

Beth Shemesh was named by the Canaanites.

The First Temple was built by Solomon who was the son-in-law of the Egyptian pharaoh and who built shrines to the Sun-God. — Apollodorus

It is not clear whether this an attempt to distort the truth in order to save your failed argument or simply a reflection of your ignorance.

As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. — 1 Kings 11:4

This is not evidence of Jewish worship of a sun god or any other god other then the God of the people. Solomon turned away from his God. That is the point. See God's response to what Solomon did.

The temple structure excavated at Tel Motza outside Jerusalem, which is from the period of Solomon, follows established pre-Israelite temple architecture with east-facing entrance to enable the rising sun to illumine the cult statue located in the interior. — Apollodorus

The East, the Hebrew word means "the direction of the rising sun", does not derive its significance from pre-Israelite temple architecture. The garden of Eden was planted in the east. (Genesis 2:8) God was not following established pre-Israelite temple landscape architecture.

Indeed, even in later religion, the Sun in said to be under the control of God, which makes all its actions the actions of God. — Apollodorus

Once again you undermine your own argument. If the sun is under the control of God then clearly the sun is not God.

Whether the Sun acts independently as a deity in its own right or under the control of a higher deity, makes little difference to mankind in practical terms. — Apollodorus

We are not talking "in practical terms", but the question of worship.

All facts considered, I think it stands to reason — Apollodorus

Correction: it stands to your perversion of facts and reason.

In the final analysis, it is evident that much of the OT narrative cannot be taken at face value, and that, by comparison, the NT is more consistent and more credible. — Apollodorus

Your "final analysis" does not even begin to address the lack of consistency and credibility in the NT.

I wonder if there is a connection between an increased emphasis on the difference and distance between man and God. Is there a parallel between the increase of distance and an increase in the appearance of angels as intermediaries.

The idea just occurred to me. I have not tried to find support for it. One problem in doing so may be later redaction. Note the ambiguity between Genesis 18:1 and 2:

The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.

Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.

Is 2 a redaction reflecting later beliefs?

You fail to see your mistake. It does not follow from the claim that we pursue the good that the good is whatever it is we pursue.

A little help from Lewis Carroll:

To say what you mean is not to mean what you say. We may see what we eat but that does not mean we eat what we see.

If the good is whatever we pursue then the destruction of the rain forests to build luxury housing is good. To kill everyone you do not like is good. To enslave people in order to obtain cheap labor is good.

A self-acknowledged fool obsessively studying, and reflecting upon, foolery in order to unlearn (reduce) immiserating (maladaptive) habits of judgment & conduct, as a way of life, may be called a "philosopher". — "180

This is close to explaining the meaning of my username.

This is sort of all aside the point, because my comment was specifically about the reference to things that can never be thought of, not things that we didn't think of until X point in time. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Things that were not thought of until X point existed before X point. Can we know that there will be an X point for everything that exists?

They aren't the products of deduction. It is a guideline based on past experience itself, the results of observation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see what this is supposed to show. One might argue that if thinking and being are the same then we should be able, a priori, to deduce all that is.

I should add @Tobias that the identity of thinking and being for Hegel is based on the aufheben of the difference between thinking and being. It there is no difference there cannot be an identity.

This concept of Absolute Knowing is not identical with the Absolute — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. The universal is unity of the immediacy, direct and unmediated, of knowing and being, of knowing and for knowing. (Preface to the Phenomenology, #17)

"truth is the whole" — Count Timothy von Icarus

The true is the whole. However, the whole is only the essence completing itself through its own development. This much must be said of the absolute: It is essentially a result, and only at the end is it what it is in truth. — Preface #20

The true is not an original unity as such, or, not an immediate unity as such. It is the coming-to-be of itself, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal and has its end for its beginning, and which is actual only through this accomplishment and its end. — Preface #18

Physicalism is necissarily an ontology where an abstraction (physical reality) is accepted as more basic than perception. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For there to be perception there must be something to be perceived, the object of perception.

Now if something can't be thought (and thus also can't be perceived) it's hard to see what sort of being it can have. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This begs the question. To ask what sort of being it can have is to say what it is. To treat it as an object of thought. Whenever we discover something new, something previously unknown, we have an example of something that is but was until then not thought and not perceived. It does not come into existence when it is perceived, it already was, we simply become aware of it. In fact, at the astronomic level it may no longer exist. What we perceive is what was but no longer is.

That being some sort of angelic figure representing Man — schopenhauer1

One problem with this is that Jesus died on the cross. Angels don't have bodies and don't die. But as you said earlier:

He need not be an actual angel, but sort of have a metaphysical connection somehow.. — schopenhauer1

I think this is part of the standard view found in both the HB and NT.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. — Exodus 7:1

The miracles that Moses performed were not the result of him being more than human. The metaphysical connection is the power of God.

This is not to say that some may have seen things differently. Judaism never had the dogmas and "official" doctrines that Christianity does.

Hegel likely wouldn't have had too much of a problem with QM or relativity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That may be, but the concepts of QM and relativity are not found in Hegel. Thinking is not Hegel's concepts of thought. Our thinking in terms of these concepts (QM and relativity) were not available to him.

It might be argued that even though there are things that cannot be explained now they must still have an explanation that in time can be provided.

I would argue that there are things that cannot be explained now that will be explained later, but not that everything that cannot be explained now must still have an explanation that in time can be provided. That is simply something we do not know.

His vision of progress towards to Absolute as historical in human history doesn't have to shift that much to incorporate contemporary theories of life, particularly ones centered around biosemiotics (Hegel is a precursor of semiotics to some degree), information, and life as a self organizing far from equilibrium system. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Progress toward the Absolute, according to Hegel was completed by Hegel. Whatever new discoveries are found, whatever new understanding that occurs happens within the circle of knowledge becoming self-knowledge. But thinking has content. It is not just the movement of thought thinking itself. What there is, being, is not limited by what has been thought. If there are limits to human thought, that is, if we are not omniscient, then the limits of thought are not the limits of being.

I agree with the notion of self-organization. This is fundamental to my argument in favor of physicalism.

Yes, but also for the ancient Jews. — schopenhauer1

That is what I had in mind.

It's like there was some odd ideas rolling around about a Son of Man ... — schopenhauer1

A son of man is also ambiguous and fertile ground for imagination. The imagination has always been an essential part of theology.

THE LAW — schopenhauer1

Is in one sense a codification of behavior but in another an attempt to arrest the imagination. This is even more pronounced in Christianity.

The Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 "strokes with fiery rods" to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.[ — Metatron Wikipedia

Although there are a few notable exception the term 'god' is singular and refers to a unique being, the terms divine is used to refer to the elevated or supernatural status of angels by some but objected to by others. The passage from the Talmud points to the mistake of confusing what is divine a deity. Failure to understand the difference has caused @Apollodorus a great deal of confusion, especially with regard to his neoPlatonic interpretation of Plato, where he makes both the sun and the good gods and conflates this with the Christian God.

there is room in this debate for a "squishy middle" whereby a "metaphysical" messiah was not out of the question of beliefs of Jews in 1st century Judea. The idea that Jesus, a messianic claimant, would be attached to this idea, might not then be unreasonable — schopenhauer1

As with these other terms, messiah is a fertile imaginative ground. The question was not only who is the messiah but what is the messiah. I don't think the Hebrew expression translated as son of man, that is, 'ben adam', son of Adam, is ambiguous. It refers to a human being. I think it is in this sense that Jesus and his disciples used and understood the term.

Cyrus ll, Cyrus the Great, was, according to the Book of Isaiah, was anointed by God. (45:1) Anointed is the translation of the Hebrew word transliterated , as messiah. Here the term means liberator. There is a clear a clear connection here with the divine but Cyrus, although of elevated status is still human.

Given the diversity of beliefs within a fairly narrow range, it seems likely that different beliefs regarding such things sprouted.

It is only by abstraction that we say something must have happened before the emergence of us. — Tobias

How could this emergence happen if nothing happened before we emerged? Obviously we could not say something must have happened if we had not happened but this does not mean that what happens is dependent on us.

The grue word denotes a color we cannot discern and because it cannot be discerned we cannot say whether it is or is not there. — Tobias

It does not denote a color. It is a hypothetical property of of something at time t. The term along with 'breen' were invented by Nelson Goodman in order to illustrate the problem of induction.

What is thought always changes of course — Tobias

Good. Now let's return to something I said earlier:

An early formulation of this presupposition is found in Parmenides claim:

To think and to be is the same.

It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or given and account of. — Fooloso4

The problem I am raising is not with "thinking as such", by which I take it you mean the dialectical movement of thought in time, but with the content of thought, what we can think or comprehend or give an account of.

I raised this in response to Rasmussen's paradox. More specifically the first premise:

1. Everything must have some explanation (PE).

It follows from this "must" that if something cannot be explained it must not exist. It might be argued that even though there are things that cannot be explained now they must still have an explanation that in time can be provided. But this assumes that there are no limits to human knowledge. Such metaphysical privileging should not be accepted on faith.

Hegel's theory is not only about the movement in time, but in place. It is Eurocentric. In addition, our thinking is not simply in terms of forms of thought, but in terms of specific concepts that change. Hegel knew nothing of relativity or quantum mechanics, both of which shape our thinking in ways that they could not have shaped his understanding of reality.

The Torah was compiled and redacted from earlier myths and established as THE LAW and retroactively written as it if it was written in its full form prior. It was during this time that the commandments were codified as THE way to live as a Judean — schopenhauer1

This is an important point.

Confluence and influence. Various stories and beliefs that are for one reason or another embraced, are embellished, altered, and combined. There is a sense in which influence flows in both directions of time. On the one hand I do not think there is a linear progression, old ideas gain new currency. On the other, redaction distorts and erases the direction of influence.

The ideas of angels ... — schopenhauer1

I find the ambiguity of the status of angels interesting. Their intermediary place has been fertile ground for the imagination.

No, if we would have no ability to discern change from sameness it would not happen. — Tobias

Do you think nothing happened before there were humans or something else that was able to discern change?

Just like there is no color 'Grue' because we do not have the ability to discern it. — Tobias

There is no color grue because 'grue' is a word that was made up that does not name a color.

You need the conceptualization of it in order to articulate it as happening. — Tobias

What happens and an articulation of what happens are not the same. Something must happen in order to articulate it as something that happens.

Thinking as such did not change, we just managed to articulate the process more richly. — Tobias

It is not a question of "thinking as such" but of what is thought, and that changes.

I also do not, like I told you. My Hegel interpretation does not follow that rather traditional path. — Tobias

But for Hegel the identity of thinking and being is realized, made actual in time. Prior to this they are not the same, and it is only through the dialectic of difference that thinking and being become the same. How does your interpretation differ?

Declaring they are identical, and that that fact is obvious to anyone who has done enough reading is an odd abandonment of a thesis. — Paine

Well, consider the source. Enough said.

In fact, at the time of the original composition of Psalm 84:11, the words "Shemesh umagen Yahweh Elohim" could perfectly well have meant "God Yahweh is the Sun (source of light and life) and a shield/protector (to those who take refuge in his cult). — Apollodorus

It could not "perfectly well have meant" that. If it did then either the sun speaks, and walks, and gets angry and has hands and face or these things are all later amendments. But you have no evidence of such amendments. Based on the passage you cite, which you seem to illogically and inexplicitly assume was preserved in its ancient form, it is only by forcing the text to conform to your assumptions that it could mean what you claim.

Hence the OT’s warning against this: “When you look to the heavens and see the sun and moon and stars—all the host of heaven—do not be enticed to bow down and worship what the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven (Deuteronomy 4:19). — Apollodorus

You are doing a good job of arguing against yourself. The issue with which we started was the pagan influence in Christianity that was not present in Judaism. By the time of Deuteronomy worship of the sun and moon and stars has not past of Jewish life.

You have gone on and on elaborating on things that others have already said. The religion developed and by the time of Jesus and his preaching regarding the law and prophets pagan beliefs that became part of Christianity had become foreign to Judaism.

Interestingly, not a single Israeli town or village is named after Yahweh. — Apollodorus

Of course not! You seem unaware of the stupidity of this observation.

In any case, Hellenistic influence at the time of Jesus is evidenced by the Greek names of some of his close disciples ... — Apollodorus

Once again, and you have refused to address this to the detriment of your argument, Greek names does not translate into Greek religious influence.

Perhaps I misunderstood you. I took the undecidable question to do with whether viruses are alive.

The division between living and non-living is problematic. There is no single agreed upon definition of what it means to be alive. In that case, while we can distinguish between a cat being alive and rock not being alive there seems to be no dividing point where everything on one side is alive and everything on the other is not.