Can we define subjective as false and objective as true? Everything is subjective in that it's filtered through the mind, and true ideas are objective. So it seems to me that truth characterizes whether something is objective and this will always be a personal truth such that error would be a private error

Is three more numerous in pantheons within the scope of religious studies? I would like to see a list of the religions and see how many had 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.

Language only exists as understanding, and the same applies to translation.

"express a text from one language in another language" means "perceiving the meaning of text" while using different grammar, signs, ect

Manuscripts are just scribble unless something understands what the ideas involved there. The language that one uses to read ancient copies of the Bible has passed through many, many generations of change since those books were written. There are disagreements on what words, clauses, and phrases mean because of cultural and linguistic evolution has blurred the ideas themselves that are written about. What this means is that we have the writings of the translators but we don't know the full story of the evolution of language that results in our present usage of language. The longer ago it was, the less likely we know how to translate it properly. People will always disagree agree on what texts mean because that well is endless. It's the history of our ancestors and the older ones are further from, and so there thoughts are as well. The key here is that everything word is really a thought. It's uniqueness is that it is expressed

Translating is a form of understanding

Going from one language to another is expressing ideas that are passed on in the process of translation. We don't know the sounds they used and the ideas we have of their ideas is a rough estimate at best into understanding the minds of our ancestors

There is no diffiference between translating a text and understanding it. The language of ancient texts has changed for 2000 years and it's impossible to read them the way they were intended because the gap between them and us is so vast. English, that which you understand with, wasn't around in those days. That's my argument

Matter is the movable in space. That space which is itself movable is called material, or also relative space. That space in which all motion must finally be thought is called pure, or also absolute space. - Kant

I saw an interview where a geocentrist asked a physicist how the earth orbits the sun and the physicist said all motion is relative. So nothing objectively moves. It all depends on perspective. It's as if physicists don't believe in anything except the relativism of relativity

When physicists say that there is no preferred reference frame they are saying that nothing objectively moves in relation to something else. Things move relatively, which makes no sense. Physicist such a philosophy but much of what they do is just that

Michelson and Morley showed either the earth doesn't move or the ether was not at a degree they thought it was. In GR the earth accelerates in all directions while space itself contracts. The ether question is about whether anything is absolute in the physical world instead of relative.

I thought Bell's inequality was about spooky action at a distance and not randomness

I'd define space as that which everything moves through. There doesn't have to be infinite containers as Zeno thought. There is something which can have things in it without losing anything of itself and we have called this space for thousands of years

I'm not sure what fields mean if they are not spatial. The very word implies space

The reason I say matter is infinitely compact is that holes in it, however small, is space and so all the matter by default has no holes.

A finite piece of space is infinite in it's compactness. There can be space without matter but no matter without space. Objects are spatial and infinitely compact in their spatial element I'm thinking

Is not the only thing conceivable as physically existing something that is spatial?

Space is also inherently continuous (inside), just as it captures all reality in its hands (outside). The community of all points forms finite spatial objects but space itself is only continuous by being differentiated by its points, which are nothing. Space and continuous mean the same thing to me. All space is infinitely dense, so maybe space naturally expands

Religious texts have 1) moral lessons, and 2) religious stories of piety. These are not the same. The religious stuff can be quite immoral

Let me put it this way? If we have space infinitely compact, it is infinite so how can it expand and add more infinity to what it is from itself?

Doesn't substance in space have space in the sense of extension? Spatial things in space. But if space was infinitely compact how could it expand or be anything other than it is??

It seems to me a sense of I is necessary for enjoyment. Is it a metaphysical substance? That doesn't matter. We are all made of of the truly free moments we have experienced and that karma (good and bad) gives you as much identity as anything could

It seems to me that without atman we would be transcendent

Yes, I think Buddhism is about saving yourself

Interesting comment. Nirvana is not knowing good and evil but transcending all duality

So Buddhism has gods but no Supreme God we are trying to get too. Nirvana itself could seem to be atheistic to a Westerner looking for loving union with his creator. It's interesting that all cultures seem to have gods but they don't all have God

What about the part about samsara being nirvana? Does it mean we always live with the world of appearance or is there nirvana beyond samsara ?

I think essence and existence are like 2 segments and their angle. But which are the segments and which is the angle. Plato might say the form shapes existence but doesn't a form have to exist in order to form? And what is bare existence without a form. When we see the world we probably see forms or substances that exist. They exist, they don't have existence and this difference in language is important. Sartre basically wanted to know how fluid our bodily natures are in how we act in culture

when Sartre uttered his existentialist credo, in my opinion he was tapping into QM. — ucarr

We don't experience waves or potentiality. We experience actuality and particles. Waves are what we call that we can't experience

A book I have on Buddhism by Mark Epstein (Thoughts without a Thinker) says that Buddhism rejects pride in self and also negative views of oneself. They seem to always tread the narrow road. Their goal in life is a moral stance, one that doesn't ask if their is eternal joy as a reward

As an antitheist (inspired by Via Negativa), I claim that whatever is said "about God" is not true – theism is not true (type), therefore Abrahamic, Greco-Roman, Vedic, shamanic deities, etc are imaginary (tokens) – and "religions" (i.e. "revealed" attributions of "God") are nothing but superstitions, or false hopes ritually pacifying false fears. 'Deus, sive natura' – sans sub specie aeternitatis, pandeism (i.e. finite unbounded immanence) grounds my speculative inquiries (re: the real). — 180 Proof

Yep

What was your turning point was it to much awareness or was it circumstantial? — TheQuestion

Thanks for the question. I was raised Catholic, served at the Latin mass and all that, but my consciousness changed a lot from 17-19 and one day I realized I had believed only in wishes instead of something I had evidence for. Religion is something that is on my mind a lot though, which is why I post about it

But I haven’t met many Philosophers who is willing to study the teachings of both religion and compare it to philosophy since it would challenge the individuals convictions. — TheQuestion

I use to be Christian and I know their theology quite well. My personal stance is that God is immanent in us and hardly distinguishable from us. I find Hegel's mysticism very well thought out. Religion is about faith and you can't prove a religion based on alleged interventions by divinity. I don't believe any of these have happened because God is not "out there" in my opinion and did not create the world. Reason can point to mysticism but can never grasp it. Basing belief on miracles is a whole different approach than mysticism though. However, you have a point that fits in well here: it's about culture, art, and archetypes at that point. For a person, their culture is their truth in a way, and even Hegel himself said this. I think I am permanently in the camp of German idealist (although I am not Germans), for whatever reason this has happened.

The study of god is not unlike any other inquiry - it is steeped entirely in language, which is a wholly human construct (or at least is the construct of whatever inter subjective group you think is making the inquiry). When you ask about god, what you are really asking about is yourself. Being able to see god talk as fundamentally about our abstractions rather than something “out there” is a useful way to reconcile that we regularly talk about the ineffable — Ennui Elucidator

Very good points

While I have my own opinions on this, your viewpoint does not negate cause and effect, so to avoid going on a tangetnt, its fine if you hold it for the purposes of the OP. If you believe this somehow violates cause and effect, please show me why with a real world example, and I will address it. — Philosophim

I believe in caused and effect and am surprised that others reject it. A determined action can result in spirals that are random whose effects would then be determined. If cause and effect don't apply, then anything can pop into existence without reason and anything can happen. There is something about our reasoning we have to correct if Hume bothers us. You know when you type that your fingers are not controlled by Mars. How we know might be hard to pinpoint but we have to resists irrationality at all costs. You control your fingers, a car while moving controls the wheels, and all the rest is obvious. Philosophy itself can turn bad

I would contend that a determined motion can cause a random effect

I am trying not to interfere in your discussion with Banno, but I thought it would be useful to point this out for others. True randomness has no prior cause. A coin flip is not truly random. We say its random because the ability to measure it exactly is outside of our capability. Physics does not vanish on a coin flip, only our ability to measure it. If there is any confirmed limitation on randomness, then there is a cause for that. Which means, its not truly random. I hope this helps others understand the argument better. — Philosophim

Yes, but there may be true randomness and it would still remain casual. Hume didn't prove that there is no causes. All he seemed to prove is that that we don't know where the cause can be. But he was, imo, disconnected from reality and it took Kant and all of phenomenology to correct him

If one posits a multi verse in order to explain life's unlikely rise then why not a multi verse to explain virtual particles? We have to understand the world as rational. Gravitational astronomy talks about gravity all the time because causation is the language of science. Randomness doesn't mean "without a cause" but instead "not perfectly predictable", and something " coming out of" nothing means nothing because nothing doesn't refer to anything except perhaps to spacetime itself

The ontological argument is a sham unless seen as mysticism

Randomness occurs causally