Comments

  • What is knowledge?
    That is what language is. Communication.

    The problem I encounter on this forum is the lack of basic knowledge concerning, history, biology and physics and chemistry.
    ovdtogt

    No, language is using words and understanding concepts. Crying babies are communicating but they are not using language and they have not learned concepts, such as an encyclopedia is a set of books that contains knowledge of many things. In fact, there is much young children can not learn until their brains are more mature. Unfortunately by then, their hormones turn on and they may get so focused on their feelings they have a near-zero interest in learning any of the subjects you listed. Trying to get a child from a baby to a well-informated adult is full of challenges. Getting them past the "know it all, I don't need you stage" is unpleasant for everyone. The words, "a baby will change your life", do not convey the necessary meaning to young people with raging hormones.

    What does a basic understanding of history and biology mean to you? How much do you know of how our brains work and do you consider that to be biology?

    To clarify, language is what goes on in our heads and what is going on in our heads is different from what goes on the heads of animals and small children. A preverbal child can be traumatized and experience post-trauma syndrome, without having the words to understand the event and emotions experienced.
  • What is knowledge?
    So why do many philosophers then go and say things like, "Truth is a condition of knowledge"?Harry Hindu

    Because knowing truth requires not only the language that makes us aware of concepts, but also knowing the laws of nature. We could not know many of the laws of nature before we had the technology to see far away, such as other planets, or see things invisible to the naked eye, such as bacteria. We could not know what we know today without the highly developed math we now use. Does that make sense?

    Our knowledge is not a revealed knowledge like the Bible, but is the result of developed math, concepts (language) and technology. Because we can not unknow what we know, we can not experience the consciousness of primitive people, or early city people, or the middle ages. Human thought is forever changed by what we know and can not unknow.

    Not even the most religious folks rely on witch doctors and we don't stand around sick people to see if demons come out of them. Those who have knowledge of modern medicine rely on doctors, drugs, surgeries. Praying helps but unless you are Christian Science, you will take a child to a medical doctor and thank goodness we have stopped beating the devil out of our children and torturing women to prove they are witches. We greatly increased our life expectancy when we accepted cleanliness and sanitation are important, and when with knowledge. And when we could grow more food and have full bellies year around, God went for a fearsome, punishing God to a loving God. If we think of holy books as abstract ideas instead of concrete truths, they are not so bad. But to do that we need to learn higher-order thinking skills.

    Does that explain why it is said "Truth is a condition of knowledge", or was I just annoying with my babbling?
  • What is knowledge?
    You know absolutely nothing about biology do you?ovdtogt

    Hum, before I react to what you said I should ask, was it your intention to be witty, disrespectful, or humorous? :brow:

    Researchers say that animals, non-humans, do not have a true language like humans. However they do communicate with each other through sounds and gestures. Animals have a number of in-born qualities they use to signal their feelings, but these are not like the formed words we see in the human language.Apr 20, 2012
    Do Animals Have a Language? - Voxy
    https://voxy.com › blog › 2012/04 › do-animals-have-a-language
    — Voxy

    I make this argument because I think it is important that we understand our language is a different thinking skill requiring the connectivity of several brain centers. Other animals do not have these brain connections. Perhaps we should not speak of the importance of language without also speaking of how our brains work?

    It is amazing what a stroke can do to a person's ability to use language depending on which area of the brain is damaged. A person may have plenty of words, but not understand the meaning of them. Or common to us older folks is knowing the meaning of what we want to say, but not having the word for it. A person with a stroke may be able to understand the spoken word but not the written word or visa versa.

    An organic brain disorder such as Down Syndrome or brain damage can effect our experience of life in many different ways. https://www.brainline.org/article/lost-found-what-brain-injury-survivors-want-you-know.
  • The Counter Arguments to the Prime Mover
    Your subject is fascinating and let me begin by saying I know almost nothing about it. So out of my ignorance, I must ask why a photon appears to have movement? This is not orbiting around something but a line of motion. Where does it come from and where is it going? Why is it moving if it is not orbiting because of gravity?
  • What is knowledge?
    Is knowledge an infinite regress of aboutness? Or is knowledge some kind of set of rules for interpreting sensory impressions?Harry Hindu

    Interesting, your question involves the phenomena of language. We might consider there is knowing without words. The whole animal kingdom has knowing without words (set of rules for interpreting). We also have knowing without words. Our words (set of rules for interpreting) separate us from our experience and interfere with our knowing.

    Try this- you are naked except for some skins and you are crossing a mountain into unknown territory. You have few words for what is around you. What do you know? One reason the Sumerians could not advance is they didn't have a language for categorizing things. That is, they didn't have a word for bushes that made them distinctly different from trees, nor the word "trees" that made all things with the characteristics of a tree and tree. At this level of development, the thing is not separate from the spirit. We return to, out of the one came the many. All things come out of Brahma and are Brahma. Without our language, we are not separated from God. We have knowing but not the set of rules for interpreting.
  • What is knowledge?
    These are patriarchal concepts and totally false. Modern biology has already shown that men are made out of woman. Prior to sexual reproduction you had non-sexual reproduction. Life created life without sexual intervention. The male was created out of the non-sexual organism for the purposes of sexual reproduction.ovdtogt

    :lol: :rofl: :lol: No shit, men and even Jesus come out of a woman? Oh gross! I guess the truth can be pretty ugly. That is pretty scary. It might also mean we are mortal and that puts the t in moral.
  • What is knowledge?
    Knowledge is memory based on experience. From it we derive our own opinions on it and interpret it in different ways. Therefor the same knowledge can lead to different conclusions by different people.

    Knowledge is a tool we use to measure our surroundings in order to better our manner of operating in life and on earth.
    Seagully

    Wow, I didn't see your post before I posted. What you said is beautiful (truth).

    One of the philosophers said something about using measurements to help us be sure we are talking about the same thing with the same understanding of it. I forget which one.

    However, as you said, although we may share knowledge of the same facts, the meaning of those facts can be totally different. We may agree the unemployment rate is over 7% but what that means is very different from those who are unemployed and those who have financial security? Some times what is good for the economy is not at all good for those living below the poverty line. If we are right or left kind of depends on our personal experiences. Our knowledge is different and both sides know the truth.
  • What is knowledge?
    Excuse me but I want to back up to what ovdtogt said about drugs changing our consciousness and what I said about knowledge requiring experience, and the difference between how primitive people experienced life and how we experience life being entirely difference knowledge. I really want to make the point that knowing facts is totally different from knowing the meaning of those facts.

    When I was coming of age the book "Black Like Me" was written by a White man.

    Black Like Me, first published in 1961, is a nonfiction book by white journalist John Howard Griffin recounting his journey in the Deep South of the United States, at a time when African-Americans lived under racial segregation. Griffin was a native of Mansfield, Texas, who had his skin temporarily darkened to pass as a black man. He traveled for six weeks throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia to explore life from the other side of the color line. Sepia Magazine financed the project in exchange for the right to print the account first as a series of articles.Wikapedia

    Do you think you have knowledge of being a Black person or being a White person, or native American, or Asian, male or female? If you lived before civilization do you think you would have the "knowledge" necessary for survival and that your consciousness would be the same as it is today?
  • What is knowledge?


    Thank you for considering language is important. Who realizes the word "human" means moist soil? We call ourselves humans because of the Sumerian and then the God of Abraham religions that tell us a god made us of mud. I wish people would pay attention to the fact in the Sumerian story, it was a goddess, one of many, who made a man and a woman of mud and breathed life into them. Might that be culturally different from a male god, the only god, making a man of mud and the woman from his rib? I am asking everyone not to think of the stories so much but to think about what they think and what is behind their thinking.

    Our culture and words are rooted in a religion that promotes equality and war. How much of our "knowledge" is based on religious mythology? Up to this point in time, how much of philosophy comes from the consciousness of women? Might things have been different if we didn't have the God of Abraham religions and only a male voice until the present? Could what we believe of human nature and the reality of war be different if we held a different "knowledge"?
  • What is knowledge?
    I wasn't aware that the goal was to come up with beautiful ideas (which is subjective). I was trying to come up with useful ideas. IMO, useful ideas are beautiful ideas. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a beautiful idea because it solves the dualistic dichotomy of man vs nature by making man part of nature.Harry Hindu

    Oh no, beauty is not just subjective but has a mathematical component as well. We are attracted to symmetry and harmony. That is art and music as well as playing a role in the mating game, getting a job, or being convicted of a crime or found innocent.

    Yes, useful ideas are beautiful for the same reason symmetry and harmony are beautiful. OMG, I am loving this exchange of thought! :heart:

    Oh, oh can we say man is a part of nature? :wink: The concept of us being part of nature, is very important to our liberty and democracy. Knowing there is a mathematical component to beauty and harmony and that our brains are sensitive this may help us be a little reverent about our place in nature and what we believe is the best form of human organization. That is democracy versus the kingdom.
  • What is knowledge?


    It is more complicated than your science teacher taught the class. Recent DNA studies have revealed some people are YY, some are XXYY, some are XYY and some people are XXXY. Nature gave us more variety than we knew and if we were reverent of nature, the way we judge each other could change.

    Personally, I have a big problem with those who believe the Bible is the word of God. I prefer the notion that nature is our source of knowledge and math is the language of God.

    Would anyone here argue that math is not very valuable in our quest for knowledge?
  • What is knowledge?


    I have not experienced drugs beyond sugar, carbs, coffee, and cigarettes, except for some pot and prescribed opioids which I definitely do not like. I don't notice the experience of being in the moment, just the resentment that I am having more trouble thinking than usual. But I am excited by your introduction into the fact that some people are very aware of nature, and that in our past, survival needs made humans very sensitive to what is happening around them. A form of intelligence we loose when we come thinkers, dependent on our knowledge that puts us in our heads and hinders of experience of life.

    I have had retarded people in my life who have more of an animal instinct and I have to tell a story to express my appreciation for what they have and my displeasure with how our thinking can make us really stupid.

    A friend and I visited someone in a nursing home, and on our way out we were stopped by a gate. It was obvious we were not going to pass that gate without knowing the code to release the lock. That is, that was obvious to me. My friend didn't hesitate to stick his hand through the gate and open it from the outside. I felt really stupid for allowing that gate to stop me, and I wonder about the intelligence of those who thought that gate would prevent a person from leaving.

    Is it clear the answer to what is knowledge can be very different and it may have nothing to do with what we learn in school? Knowledge gained through experience is in some ways superior to what we learn from books and in classrooms. In fact, the knowledge we value can make us stupid. I have heard a primitive person will figure out how to create a bridge across the river, but a modern person is less apt to figure out how to build a bridge because we have become so dependent on what is known.
  • What is knowledge?


    I am loving this sharing of thoughts without judging each other as someone to look up to or look down on. :heart: I think education for technology has brought us to a serious cultural problem of looking up to and down to each other and unpleasant arguments about "the truth".

    I find thinking in opposites gives me great clarity in my understanding of things.ovdtogt

    Yes, thinking in opposites gives us clarity. I liked it when males were males and females were females, and what they did in their private lives was private, compare to today when I have to remember which girl wants to male and which male wants to be female, and hey, I want to be 30 years old again and that ain't going to happen in this lifetime. Life can be very confusing without opposites and this old brain is struggling to keep up.

    I like the eastern yin and yang and in the I Ching the defines differences of oldest child, the middle child, and youngest child. The same and different.

    I have read, the people who think of terms of black and white are less apt to feel crazy than those who are not sure of this division. But I think quantum physics goes beyond this or that, and that Eisenstein just had a hard time accepting the uncertainty factor?
  • What is knowledge?


    Wow, I like that thought. I love that thought! :heart: What a wonderful way of thinking of baking a cake. I don't think I have ever attempted to think of such things as process. It has always been a matter of reading and mixing the ingredients and rotely following directions but not actually thinking about what is happening. I could be wrong, but I think education for technology is more about rotely following steps than actually thinking what is happening.

    I see a problem in our language. Spell check guides me to say "thinking about what is happening". That little word "about" separates me from what is happening. Come to think of it, how much can we know without the language to name the concepts? What does language have to do with knowledge and our sense of reality and being part of the spirit/earth or separate from it?
  • What is knowledge?


    :lol: Whoo, dude you are way over my head. I don't know if you are agreeing with what I said or disagreeing. This is a wonderful case of knowledge being wasted on the ignorant. :lol: What is knowledge? I don't know. I don't have it.

    I speak out of total frustration. I have books on math and quantum physics and read them in a futile effort to understand what is being said. I get some of it, but not well enough to think in the terms of those fields of knowledge. Kind of like diabetes my head isn't sensitive to that insulin. :cry:
  • What is knowledge?


    Oh yes, thinking of life as process instead of opposites is beautiful.
  • What is knowledge?


    Interesting statement. That ought to stir some thinking. :up:
  • Why mainstream science works


    Whoo who is "we"? I decidedly do not want to end up in the Christian heaven. I do not want a reality where there are no risks and I have no sense of being needed and affecting the world. Neither heaven or hell is a desirable reality to me. Surely the popularity of gambling seems to disprove what you said about people, not loving uncertainty. Life is hard because no one would want to play the game if it were not challenging.

    I am listening to an explanation of what liberty has to do with our progress, and liberty gives everyone the chance to discover things and to be inventive. This is the fun of being human. You appear to be as authoritarian as a Christian. If you were born in the US that is unavoidable because Christianity permeates our cultural understanding of reality. I think life on earth would be better without Christianity.

    On my book shelve is a 1930 book titled "Science of Citizens" by Lancelot Hogben. Education for technology is not education for science. It is authoritarian and harmful to our liberty and democracy. Liberal education was education for science when we had a better understanding of what science has to do with good moral judgment and democracy. That is a little more political than the intention of this thread, but it is just wrong to buy into the authoritarian system we put over ourselves when we replaced the education we had with education for technology.
  • Why mainstream science works


    Okay, it appears we have agreement.

    May we say our planet is as aminated as primitive people believed? Might it change our concept of reality if we thought everything as of the spirit instead of as matter with no spirit?
  • Why mainstream science works


    Thank goodness, someone who doesn't think we already know everything important, and if someone questions our understanding of reality it is not a sign of being an idiot. I appreciate that so much.
  • What is knowledge?


    Asking me how I think differently is like asking a person with schizophrenia how s/he thinks differently. The experience of being different is not easy to explain. :lol: How about people have thought I do drugs and I do not, or in forums, people rarely understand my intended meaning. I come to a thought with many different thoughts and I can not understand why others don't get the complexity, while they totally miss what I think is important.

    Kind of like you challenging me on the notion that quantum physics is not dualistic. In my mind, it is not dualistic :lol: Nothing is either/or. It is all this and that and that interacting.

    Is Quantum Physics the End of Dualism?
    by
    Thomas Herold
    Dualism seems to be the biggest concept in history ever. Quantum Physics may lead us to a new paradigm shift in consciousness.

    Our consciousness is programmed with the basic concept of dualism. Either it is this way or it is the other way, either it is good or it is bad. If you think about this you may find hundreds of other examples in your daily life. Wherever you look, look closely and you will find the concept of dualism.

    The belief in matter is another big concept science has come up with. In the last century Newton, Kepler and some other persons made sure this concept made it into every school book in the western world.

    Both concepts, dualism and matter are living on such a big scale that most people don't even realize that they are concepts.

    Is there a Hidden Purpose Behind the Concept of Dualism?
    This is more a philosophical question and it may lead to other concepts and not to the truth. So what is the truth? The truth is that every concept leads to an experience and by experiencing it we may fulfill it's purpose.
    Thomas Herold

    Looks like Plato's perfect forms doesn't it? I thought Plato's perfect forms were just a funky imagination, but now I see, with a different consciousness Plato's perfect forms make sense. When we do not understand something, perhaps we do not come to it with the necessary consciousness?
  • Absolute truth
    Those believe they can know absolute truth and absolutely dangerous people.

    "Okay I grant you that: To have this discussion, something has to exist. That is an absolute truth. Not that this truth is in any way enlightening and does not require any philosophical insight, just everyday 'common sense'."

    So Descartes is sitting in the bar and the bartender asks him if he wants another drink. Descartes says, "I think not." and disappears.
  • What is knowledge?


    What we need here is quantum physics and getting past dualistic thinking.
  • What is knowledge?


    Okay, let us go with your experience of time. Which takes longer, for you to use the bathroom or for someone else to use the bathroom? People commonly experience time quite differently when they are waiting for something compared to when they are having fun, and oh my goodness does fly when I am writing!

    For sure I don't think like everyone else. This greatly troubled me until my later years and being okay with being different. :joke:
  • Why mainstream science works


    I am a bit horrified with that black and white thinking. "If A is false then non-A is true, so to disprove is to prove something...". Reality is not just this or that but is a complexity of this's and that's and a matter of conditions and degrees. A president can make both decisions we like and ones we do not like, and that makes arguing if he is good or bad president a fool's game, but we do that all the time as if one argument cancels out the other. Water is not a liquid when it is cold enough to become ice or warm enough to evaporate. Our truths can be conditional not just true or false.
  • What is knowledge?


    I worded myself poorly. You didn't say time couldn't be known. I am saying time can not be known because we can not experience it.

    "An abstract concept is an idea about something abstract. 'Concept' is fancy for 'idea'." Yes

    "Time is something we have an idea 'of'. It is not itself an idea." It is not? How do we have an idea of time?


    "It's like saying 'free will is an abstract idea' or 'morality is an abstract idea'. Same mistake - confusing the idea with what the idea is of." What is free will if not an abstract idea? Morality is a matter of cause and effect, and our understanding of cause and effect is abstract. Animals are not credited with morality because they do not reason as humans reasons, but they behave morally because their survival depends on it.

    I don't know about you, but I am so tired nothing is making sense to me, however, I think our argument is right on target. Do you remember Robin Willaims "Reality... what a concept." Have you ever tried LSD? I have heard it can be an experience that changes a person's reason. Good night
  • What is knowledge?
    "It seems that you regard human reason as a kind of intuition or feeling that derives (however imperfectly) from Reason. Through a glass darkly, so to speak.

    If so, do you regard it as futile to try to determine the conditions for knowledge? That there just are none (other than emanating from Reason)?"

    Reasoning and knowing are not equal. With math we can reason measurements of time. Time being intangible and not something we experience. If one lives on a desert island with only males, one can reason females are different, but can know the difference without experience. LOL I think some males can know the difference without having reasons to explain the difference, other than they are impossible to get along with. LOL

    Does anyone know Kabala? Kind of a Jewish philosophy. God not having a body could not know what it is like to be human, so Jesus, God in human form, was necessary for knowledge of being human. with this knowledge, the jealous, revengeful, fearsome and punishing god became forgiving and more tolerant of humans. LOL

    Knowledge is dependent on experience.
  • What is knowledge?


    Three o'clock is nothing more than an idea. If we experienced time, we would not need a clock to know it is three o'clock. There is nothing concrete about 3 o'clock. You can not see it, hear it, touch it, taste it. Our measurements are manmade concepts and quite culturally bound. The crazy notion of 3 o'clock, or the 12-month calendar, were not experienced by all cultures, as say a desert, forest, water are actually experienced and known through experience, that is different from knowing time because a teacher taught the concepts of time.
  • What is knowledge?


    I spoke of time because this is in the OP

    Bertrand Russell came up with a counterexample, one of kind made more famous later by Edmund Gettier (and that have subsequently become known as 'Gettier cases'). In Russell's case, a clock has stopped and is reporting a time of 3pm. Someone ignorant of the fact the clock has stopped but desirous to know the time looks at the clock and forms the belief that it is 3pm. By pure coincidence it is, in fact, 3pm. This person has a justified true belief. They belief that it is 3pm, and it is 3pm - so their belief is true. And their belief is justified because they have formed it in an epistemically responsible manner - they looked at a clock, a clock it was reasonble to assume was working. However, though they have a justified true belief that it is 3pm, it seems equally clear to our reason (the reason of most of us, anyway) that they do not 'know' that it is 3pm. — OP

    By what authority do you claim time is not an abstract concept and therefore can not be known?
  • Why mainstream science works


    Ah, you bring up a good point. Not all branches of science are the same. For an engineer, it is pretty black and white. Either it works or it does not. Some wouldn't even call psychology a science, however recently brain studies are more scientific than Freud's speculations and "knowing" which was culturally biased.

    A problem with modern age science is specialization. It is like studying the universe with a telescope that can focus on one light in the sky but is so limited it can not explain the universe.

    And I think our materialism has also created a blindness that may set the US behind the pack of progressive technology. Reality is not limited to matter, but is energy and I don't think we have a good grasp of the forces. Our linear logic got us to where we are now, but nonlinear eastern logic could pick up the ball and maybe leave us in the dust?
  • Why mainstream science works


    I like your explanation of relative knowledge. I found an explanation of it in a very old book "The Science of Logic" along with an explanation of why this demands we remain humble and not be too sure of ourselves. Understanding that is of cultural importance. I think education for technology has taken us down a fool's path with a greatly over-exaggerated opinion of ourselves.
  • Why mainstream science works
    That is a nice belief but there are elites whose voice of authority weighs much more than others, and they can prevent correction just as the church of old was able to prevent correction, short of torturing and killing people. Only a person with much persistence and knowing people with strong connections can get past the control of these guardians of truth.
  • What is knowledge?
    Why doesn't that person's justified true belief qualify as knowledge? IBartricks

    Just for the sake of argument, time is an abstract concept. Time is not a tangible reality. That is, it is not a thing that is perceptible by touch, therefore it can not be known. It can be believed by an individual or the whole state in that time zone can believe that it is three o'clock, as it can be believed the earth is flat, but if I understand the OP argument, believing something is not exactly knowing it. Experience is a vital part of knowing, and if it is not perceptible by touch, it can not be experienced.
  • Is it immoral to do illegal drugs?
    Pattern-chaser

    Both are true. Keep in mind water is essential to life and it can kill.

    Addiction to anything, including sugar, is harmful. An addiction turns us into slaves to the substance or behavior. Even exercising is addicting. In rats and humans the habit of exercising becomes physical in that the our bodies will become uncomfortable if we stop exercising when we are in the habit of exercising, same as we feel hungry when we need food. Our addictions are physical cravings, and they control our thinking. We can use our mental powers to stop addictions but it is not easy to break some addictions and avoid returning to the substance or activity that is addictive.
  • Free speech vs harmful speech
    Is there agreement that cause and effect has nothing to do with morals?
  • Is it true that ''Religion Poisons Everything''?

    Okay, thank you for letting me know you are not interested.
  • Is it true that ''Religion Poisons Everything''?


    Your understanding of our consciousness is very limited. I will dare to say, abstract thinking takes us far beyond the concrete and limited world we crudely perceive. But consciousness is so much more than this. We are aware of only a tiny bit of our experience at any one time and even that can be distorted or lacking in information.

    Because the study of the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) is, by and large, dependent on subjective reports of experience, what passes for the NCC is liable to be merely the neural correlates of meta-consciousness. As such, potentially conscious mental activity—in the sense of activity correlated with experiential qualities—may evade recognition as such.

    As a matter of fact, there is circumstantial but compelling evidence that this is precisely the case. To see it, notice first the conscious knowledge N—that is, the re-representation—of an experience X is triggered by the occurrence of X. For instance, it is the occurrence of a sense perception that triggers the metacognitive realization one is perceiving something. N, in turn, evokes X by directing attention back to it: the realization one is perceiving something naturally shifts one’s mental focus back to the original perception. So we end up with a back-and-forth cycle of evocations whereby X triggers N, which in turn evokes X, which again triggers N, and so forth.
    — Bernardo Kastrup

    I have had mystical experiences and they are more than emotion. They can be concepts with relatively no feeling at all. They can be events that have on explanation other than someone who just passed is communicating to me. The last one was validated, by me sending someone words that made no sense to me, and she gave the words that gave meaning to the words I sent her, without her knowing that was what she was doing. The lights flickering in an elevator when another friend crossed over makes me question why this unusual thing happened at that time. My sense of another incarnation may be imaginary, but the thoughts have impacted my life and I would not claim with the certainty that you have there is no more to reality than what we are aware of.
  • Is it true that ''Religion Poisons Everything''?

    Are you saying all people organize their thoughts the same way with the same fundamental thoughts, so reason should bring them to exactly same conclusion and if it does not, one person is wrong and the other one is right?

    Why are you so sure you know reality? We can know a lot about our planet and we are learning more about the universe but that is not all there is to know.
  • Is it true that ''Religion Poisons Everything''?


    Okay, I will go a step further into a subject I love. First, I use the word "God" because that is what interests Christians and I hope to build a bridge between their understanding of God and mine. Just insisting there is no God, strengthens their notion that they have God's truth and I don't want to do that. That is being a little bull-headed, isn't it? And how much fun is it to around and around in a circle of if God does or does not exist? That is a boring and irritating argument that goes nowhere. It will come to no good. Better to say something that others might think about. Okay, there is a God, now let us talk about what is real about this God. Now we have an argument worthy of our effort.

    Here is something to think about...

    "It is a frequent assertion of ours that the whole universe is manifestly completed and enclosed by the Decad and seeded by the Monad, and it gains movement thanks to the Dyad and life thanks to the Pentad." Iamblichus — Iamblichus

    And here is something else to think about

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNDGgL73ihY

    The laws of quantum mechanics are not the same as the laws of our universe. To this day the quantum mechanic thing keeps happening and gets organized in our universe. I think that is a correct way to explain the existence of our manifest reality and the quantum mechanics from which this comes?

    Oh, oh I keep wanting to say another word we could use is logos. I am not referring to Jesus, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was Gods". I guess all the Bibles are using the word "word" now and not logos but the original word from John would have been logos.

    The phrase "the Word" (a translation of the Greek word "Logos") is widely interpreted as referring to Jesus, as indicated in other verses later in the same chapter.[4] This verse and others throughout Johannine literature connect the Christian understanding of Jesus to the philosophical idea of the Logos and the Hebrew Wisdom literature. They also set the stage for the later development of Trinitarian theology early in the post-biblical era. — Wikipedia

    Logos means, reason, thought of as constituting the controlling principle of the universe and as being manifested by speech. — Webster Dictionary

    Jewish ideas of man and God were hijacked by the Greeks and then codified and formalized by Rome. Very much a work of man, not the voice of God. The notion of a trinity God was impossible to communicate in Latin until new words were created and this lead to a lot of warring between Christians who already had Greek concepts and Christians who did not. However, Greeks with their geometric, sacred math had no problem with the trinity.

    "The Triad is the form of the completion of all things." Nichomachus of Gerasa a Pythagorean philosopher.

    "Surface is composed of triangles" Plato

    "Force without wisdom falls of its own weight." Horace a Roman poet.

    Manifestation coming out of the trinity was a Greek concept long before it became a Christian concept and logos is the voice of reason, the wisdom, also a Greek concept long before Christianity.
  • Is it true that ''Religion Poisons Everything''?
    Mysticism is the antithesis to reason. Reason is our only means to knowing reality.AppLeo

    I think an understanding of what you said depends on understanding the different modes of thinking.
    Understanding the difference between accumulating facts and analyzing those facts with mathematical and scientific thinking and mysticism or the debating Scholastics were doing, are completely different modes of thinking.

    The Church promoted Scholasticism and Scholastic scholars argued how many angels could stand on the head of a pin and if Eve had hadn't eaten the forbidden would babies be born miniature adults instead of helpless babies? They took a lot of pride in their serious contemplation of truth. That is how the Greeks came to argue what is true and good following Aristotle, and we should all know, Aristotle didn't have an understanding of the importance of experimenting to gain facts, and basing our understanding on evidence that can be observed. There was severe backlash against Aristotle that ended scholasticism and brought us into the modern age. Grrrr I am out of time, Here is link that may help...

    Combining these two forms of logical reasoning together with the three different types results in the following distinguish in logical reasoning:
    Deductive. Formal deductive reasoning. Informal deductive reasoning.
    Inductive. Formal inductive reasoning. Informal inductive reasoning.
    Abductive. Formal abductive reasoning.
    https://www.google.com/search?q=different+modes+of+logic&rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS481US483&oq=different+modes+of+logic&aqs=chrome..69i57.6676j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

    Contents
    3.1 Syllogistic logic.
    3.2 Propositional logic.
    3.3 Predicate logic.
    3.4 Modal logic.
    3.5 Informal reasoning and dialectic.
    3.6 Mathematical logic.
    3.7 Philosophical logic.
    3.8 Computational logic.
    More items...

    https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS481US483&ei=kj5HXLqbFN-Ck-4Pp9GvyAQ&q=types+of+logic+in+philosophy&oq=different+modes+of+logic&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i71l8.0.0..169127...0.0..0.0.0.......0......gws-wiz.yxUPt9ieSoc
    — google

    Not all thinking is the same, and if we are using the scientific method we may not put much faith in mysticism. What I said of the difference between Christian and scientific thinking, and these people with their different approaches to knowing truth, do not trust each other.