A transition from Agnosticism to Gnosticism.

Shawn

It's been a turbulent month for me, and a lot of changes are occurring for me. For one, I decided to come off all psychotropic meds in my system, that have been blunting my intellectual abilities, and I find faith nagging at me again.

It's difficult to put into words how influential the Tractatus was and still is in my philosophical development. The 7'th proposition haunts my existence since I have taken such a resolute reading of it to understand that the metaphysical and hence mystical that is ethics should not be brushed aside.

Resulting from my newfound feelings, I have been once again been wondering about these people that have influenced the course of human history in such innumerable ways, that is Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, and others. There is something profoundly good about what these people at the very least wanted, as conduits from some higher esoteric realm.

For starters, it is hardly disputed that Jesus was a living entity even amongst academics. Yet, none of them are going to assert that he actually was the son of God.

I've never been an atheist, and predominantly an agnostic my whole life. I've been too hardened by experience and witnessing events to allow myself to accept that a caring and loving God would allow the problem of evil. Now, I don't want to come off as a newborn Christian; since the problem of evil still is something that can only be solved by revelation, and not many people are privy to the intentions of God, at least not since some 2019 years ago.

I don't know where to go from here... I feel at once lost in the sea of faith, and relieved that I am not alone. Has anyone else gone through these issues? How have you emerged from them, and has anyone helped guide you?

Thanks!

Blurrosier

I remember feeling this kind of psychic pressure of the external - a realization (?) that everything "within me" I can ever consider knowledge is never more than one to infinity, in relation to an accordingly "unknowable" exteriority. I would imagine that, were this to have happened within more religious circumstances, I may have been inclined to consider it an encounter with X (God, a peek out of Maya, etc.)

In any case, deities in general (as well as various other religious theories) now seem, to me, to be approximations of apeiron - but even that as a rationalization doesn't rule out the possibility of the existence of an omnipotent/omnipresent/omniscient being.

It seems, to me, that the closest thing to the measure of one's faith is the degree to which they are willing to entrust their existence to X, however thoroughly or thinly they believe in X.

Any of your experiences touch on any of this?

Valentinus

↪Wallows

At a number of points of his enterprise, Wittgenstein made clear that his work did not get past ethics or reach it, if that is the better description. What appeals to me in those various formulations is that he kept himself from inferring what it meant that he could not replace it with something else.

To say what it meant would be a testimony of the kind he was not going to provide.
A boundary like that has something do with testimonies or uses of language he stands resolutely on one side of. The beautiful thing about such stubborn refusal to go further is its quality of remaining open.

Such a point of non departure could never be confused as an article of faith by itself. That is not a bad place to linger before going back to the valley of ten thousand stories.

3017amen

↪Wallows

Sounds like you're experiencing a bit of existential angst. Accordingly, it's okay to take the leap of faith.

Kind of like what Kierkegaard / Pascal advocated...

Shawn

Any of your experiences touch on any of this? — Blurrosier

Somewhat. I encourage these short and enlightening videos as a backdrop to my spiritualism from a Wittgensteinian perspective:

Blurrosier

↪Wallows

Very nice - thank you for sharing these.

I still haven't read Tractatus, but if the "answer to the riddle is the disappearance of the question" tone defines it, I'm sure I have something to look forward to, especially given the influence you say it has had on you.

PoeticUniverse

7'th proposition — Wallows

One cannot speak well about ever invisible unknowns, and so it can't amount to anything and rather becomes a waste of silence, but if it grants comfort then it's fine for one's living choice.

higher esoteric realm. — Wallows

Although Existence is necessity and thus natural, requiring no magic for it to be, it's still the eternal basis of our existence and so there is an awe about it, as the source of us and nature.

Wayfarer

I’m digging those videos. I’m up to the part where he says ‘Wittgenstein asked “what are numbers? Why is maths so powerful?”’ I haven’t listened to the remainder yet, but it is that very question which sparked my interest in philosophy and Platonism in particular.

Second point is that I think a lot of people misunderstood W’s spirituality, which was very austere and Protestant. But a lot of people misinterpret it to say ‘that of which we cannot speak is irrelevant and meaningless so shut up already’.

Back later.

Wayfarer

Although Existence is necessity and thus natural, requiring no magic for it to be, it's still the eternal basis of our existence and so there is an awe about it, as the source of us and nature. — PoeticUniverse

Not wanting to have a go at you, but this is an historic error, I believe. If you delve into the origins of philosophy, which I don’t think you have done, you will find that it was generally argued that existence is not necessary, on the basis that all individual particulars are contingent, manifold, and subject to decay. What was a necessary being, or an uncaused cause, or a general reason for why things are at all, was the over-riding question.

What has happened over the intervening millenia, is that Greek philosophy was incorporated into Christian theology — Platonism provided the intellectual scaffolding for dogma, as it were. And with the abandonment of Christianity, those philosophical principles have also been abandoned. Not replaced with something else; not superseded or outdone; but abandoned and forgotten. That is why nowadays, we tend to put the Cosmos into the position previously accorded to Heaven, and science into the position previously accorded to religion. And, for us, apotheosis, the highest realisation deemed imaginable, is interstellar travel, literally and physically the conquest of heaven - or so we would like to think

PoeticUniverse

on the basis that all individual particulars contingent, manifold, and subject to decay. — Wayfarer

That's fine for their temporary existence as penultimates from some Existent capability.

Shamshir

What do you mean by transition, shedding?
As agnosticism like all other a-- is just a peel.

Also:

For starters, it is hardly disputed that Jesus was a living entity even amongst academics. Yet, none of them are going to assert that he actually was the son of God. — Wallows

The title Son of God is misunderstood.
It's not specifically Jesus, but the anointed genealogy.
David, Enoch, Noah, Moses, Ezra and so forth all shared the title.

As to your issues - tell me, how would you relate them to the sea? Where lost men go to find their fortune?

Shawn

As to your issues - tell me, how would you relate them to the sea? Where lost men go to find their fortune? — Shamshir

I don't know. I find myself a mystery. At the one end I want to be loved, yet have grown up to be extremely self-reliant. Kinda, makes you wonder what was God thinking when S/He/It made the world?

Shamshir

↪Wallows

Ever read Robinson Crusoe?

Shawn

Ever read Robinson Crusoe? — Shamshir

One of the defining books of my youth, man.

Shamshir

↪Wallows

I think that your situation is the same, and that your issue is mainly derived from the pre-established order of things in which you try to fit.

If you were a man of your own island and had to make up your own order - where would the problems be?
Where would depression, anti this and that find place?

Being self-reliant doesn't exclude being loved, like Robinson you just need a little creativity and like Don Quixote a little courage to live like the Sun, which is loved, as though self-sustained it gives and gives.

Shawn

Being self-reliant doesn't exclude being loved, like Robinson you just need a little creativity and like Don Quixote a little courage to live like the Sun, which is loved, as though self-sustained it gives and gives. — Shamshir

That was beautiful, thank you. I love the sun. But, I stay indoors all day, and of all places being California!

Shamshir

↪Wallows

Pick up a pair of rollerblades and go for a long walk.

Shawn

↪Shamshir

Hmm. It's a wallowsome situation. I will have to find some kind of way to stop infatuating myself with myself online then.

Noble Dust

↪Wallows

Get outside dude! I sometimes go on walks in the city for hours. Sometimes seeing a new corner of the city I've never laid eyes on sparks the imagination. Good for the soul if nothing else.

Shawn

↪Noble Dust

On it broseph. Gonna go to the beach later... :)

Noble Dust

↪Wallows

:ok:

A transition from Agnosticism to Gnosticism.

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