Acting in line with a tradition, bigbooze, is already proof your freedom is in a sweet slavery submissive state. Be my guest! :razz:

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William Kingdon Clifford

Wrong!

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William Kingdon Clifford

A vital touchstone since my adolescence ... :fire:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tXsxvdF481I

When you believe in things
that you don't understand
then you suffer ...

Yes, incorporated into my own sigil :death: :flower: (i.e. memento mori, memento vivere).

:death: :flower: Now I get it! Death and Life.

the flower is perceived by some to bear resemblance to a human face, and in mid-to-late summer it nods forward as if deep in thought. — Wikipedia

Just look at the facial expression. Something obstructs, obfuscates, clearly... What can it be? :starstruck:

mono no aware

Death and Life — Agent Smith

amor fati

A vital touchstone — 180 Proof

If that's a vital touchstone for you, I won't remove it. Your world would collapse. I prefer the sweet security of the spicey divine lickstone.

:broken:

I won't remove it. — EugeneW

Sapere aude. I dare you to try, Mr D-K. :point:

My favorite theologian is Frederic Brown (1906 - 1972)

Short Story: The Answer (Frederic Brown, 1954)

Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the sub-ether bore through the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe – ninety-six billion planets – into the super-circuit that would connect them all into the one super-calculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then, after a moment’s silence, he said, “Now, Dwar Ev.”

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.”

“Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question that no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”

He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?”

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of single relay.

“Yes, now there is a God.”

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.

A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. — Voltaire

If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him. — Mikhail Bakunin

The Supreme Fascist! That's what Paul Erdős, Hungarian mathematician, called God.What do we do with fascists? What did we do to fascists?

:confused:


:up: More!

:clap: :strong: :sweat: An oldie but goodie!

"Kirk to Enterprise. Red Alert! Cestus Three has been destroyed." — ST TOS, s1e18

\\//_ :nerd:

:smile:

I dare you to try, Mr D-K. — 180 Proof

To try what bigbooze? To prove your thinking is not free?

I even quoted you for context. Are you that obtuse? (Oh wait, just trolling again.)

Where you quoted me fellow troll bigbooze? To take up the stone? Its a light one.

The Supreme Fascist! That's what Paul Erdős, Hungarian mathematician, called God. — Agent Smith

Being a mathematical ratio fascist himself that comes as no surprise. Clash of the titans. Difference being, good old Paul is no real titan. Just a confused thinker translating the universal language into his limited symbolics and numerology, assigning meaning to numbers and creating silly formula and spells to play with them in infinite vector spaces and Lie algebras introducing Lie brackets or derivatives. But if it rocks his boat. Let him rock in peace! He dont need no lullaby!

If we’re defining Neo-Scholasticism as the revival of medieval Christian philosophy then I personally don’t see a problem with it; I’m currently writing my thesis on St. Thomas Aquinas in comparison to Soren Kierkegaard. Neo-Thomism, however, I take issue with. I can’t stand philosophers from this framework who argue from the perspective of “If St. Thomas and the Vatican don’t consign your statement then your statement is false.” This is a limiting tradition that mocks what Thomism is all about. I’m not a Thomist, however; I don’t believe that we can know God’s essence but we can know Him via His energies (i.e. Palamism).



I love Avicenna. There’s so many others that I could’ve listed but if I did that I’d be typing all day. I recently read a fascinating article about Avicenna and medieval Franciscans on the concept of beauty. Don’t know if I can attach pdf’s on here but I’ll play around and attempt to send it.

GK Chesterton is not conventional philosopher/theologian, but did apologetic work for Catholicism and Christianity in general. He was famous as author of paradoxical detective stories and other books. I would say (roughly) that he created characters obsessed with ideas or ideologies(like, character is personification of idea). And then he shows how true religious worldview is the best way of thinking. Like in popular stories about Father Brown (who plays role of detective). Because it is like his faith make him think better than a crime does).

character is personification of idea

:smile: :up: Isn't that the way it really is? Real people tend be an assortment of ideas - the objective then seems to be not truth, rather coherence, purging one's worldview of inconsistencies (contradictions).

No one should object to your theism so long as you, simultaneously, don't deny the existence of angels and demons, heaven and hell, souls and spirits.

well, real people have bodies also :nerd: .

well, real people have bodies also . — BohdanZ

That's what personfication means, bodies are implicit in that concept.

no, talking about Chesterton, he wrote fiction literature, personification is a term from literature theory here, not from philosophy.

no, talking about Chesterton, he wrote fiction literature, personification is a term from literature theory here, not from philosophy. — BohdanZ

We can co-opt concepts when it makes sense, oui?

does it? :smile:

does it? :smile: — BohdanZ

It does (to me). People are identified by their ideas; he's a theist, she's a physicalist, that guy over there is a nihilist, that girl, a realist, so on and so forth.

:chin:

Yes, now there is a God.” — Agent Smith

I recently, how coincidentally, saw scientists claiming that we are creations of the alien superdooperdeluxe intelligent race. They have established links between all planets and all life on Earth is a giant simulation created by these new gods.
These scientists were probably frustrated about their scientific status. Yearning for gods while trying to stick to their limited science. Where has the world come to?

Addendum to my list is George Carlin:

:death: :flower: