Perhaps the most bewildering quality of energy is its indestructibility. It is invincible. — Benj96

Can you even imagine completely destroying an object?

it can be known by use of one's faculty of Intuition. — 1 Brother James

It can to known by reason that God doesn't exist so your "intuition" is just your imagination

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It’s the material
world that transcends our intending acts. Material nature for Husserl is an abstraction, — Joshs

This sounds like Sartre who said we are nothingness inside of being. It seems to me that we are matter and know what matter is in a very real sense but yet there is something about it and us we don't know. Husserl isn't an idealist is he? Information seems to me to just be the brain conceptualizations we get from matter. Information isn't out there. It's just the aspects of matter we can grasp and this can map the external world very well

My complaint about phenomenology has been about the degree to which it places the discussion back in the land of Cartesian sensory experience and ineffable qualia. — apokrisis

Internally there is nothing transcending our nature that does not require our activity to create. Externally there is matter which we are. The sole definition of matter is "that which we are". The world is one material entity with many entities inside. I understand Hegel as saying that the world emerges from it's totality as materiality. I understand Husserl as understanding the transcending of the material world by act as intention, as beyond the totality of it's parts because of it's nature as a acting (verb). Hegel would agree with this. I wish I knew more about Peirce's philosophy but it's style is near impossible to read and I read Hegel!

What problem did Peirce have with Hegel, or what did Peirce say that was different from Hegel and not just stated differently?

If God is the creator of the world then there can be nothing ugly in the world. Everything must be beautiful because how can God sustain a positive ugliness thru his creative power? Does not his holiness prevent it. Now turn to the world and see there is much that is ugly and much that is good. Nothing all good can partake of this. A gnostic dualism would actually make more sense

Husserl didn't get into rationalizing about the mystical like Peirce, to his credit

I would be interested in learning the old Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Aramaic words in the bible, and that's what I meant by the literal understanding of the bible. It has nothing to do with matching the contents of the bible with the real world events or happenings, and drawing some bizarre analogies from them. — Corvus

This is interesting because of the question of translation. Criticism tries to establish what type of document each text is but this requires some initial hermeneutics to start with. It's most interesting that we see a text differently when we read it in it's original language even though one might think you are just switching sounds and signs into your primary language. Something new seems to emerge but it's not clear how this works. I was, also, reading about Derrida's philosophy on Wikipedia and he seems to think as well that there is no definite reading of any text

The brain creates everything. We don't know its size but it is material. Spiritual things are activities of the brain. All you experience is the spiritual activity of the extension of matter

when much of it is plainly figurative or allegorical. — Wayfarer

It tells more about the reader and interpreters' spiritual and mental makeup / history than the Bible verses being quoted or interpreted in many cases, and that is why it could be regarded as Existential philosophising in some sense I suppose. — Corvus

Which is why it seems to me that the Bible left on it own doesnot give us a faith or religion. It gives us innumerable ones. Even the Catholic claim that their Church interprets for them is based on their interpretation of the "pope in the Bible" stuff in order to have something to start with

This problem greatly vexed Augustine. Ultimately, he identified the pre-solar light of day 1 with the spiritual/angelic creation. — Ortlund

It makes more sense to say the light was stars because they could have caused the heat and light for vegetation to grow before they were pulled back for the sun and moon to be created after all that. If there is no literalism to the creation than what does it even mean? Other parts of the Bible, sure, but why this sequence if it's meaningless without a literal interpretation?

If we don't know what type of book each book of the Bible is intended to be, every interpretation is valid and none heretical.

Can we say than the the Bible can only give us something subjective?

Based on a literal reading the Old Testament had a clear separation between God and man. In the New Testament though man "partakes of the Divine Nature". This is an acquittal of guilt by receiving the merits of Jesus. To have someone's else's worth given to you is to become that person. So, therefore, the New Testament says to give your self into a system that makes you one with Jesus in order to acquit you of what you bound yourself to in the first place. The Old Testament is more like Islam, wherein their is sufficient repentance and thus true forgiveness by the laws of karma (if I may use that word). The separation remains. Christians say that nobody can remedy their situation and thus must metamorphosize into Jesus and leave their sins behind like a snakes skin. But again this is not true forgiveness but pure acquittal because "Jesus says so". Augustine himself says this

I read Christian literature because I was raised with it and I enjoy atheism more the more I understand the true place of Christianity. We all have connections to the past but they should never take away morality, as literal Christianity does

The first lecture is good so far and dovetails with Jung's writing on Job. I'll make more comments latter, but there seems to be two types of archetypes in the human brain. One is the idea of one God who has a purpose and the other is our connection to old stories. I'm not a man of prayer or one who likes a mystery when it involves him. But I've loved history as a child and after I've seen more of these lectures by tomorrow I'll try to write something intelligent here about Genesis and history if I can. I'll just say now that the idea of a supreme God, although powerfully influential to the human brain, comes in many forms and this comes out in music. Jewish chants present a God of great emotion while Christian chants sing of a God above emotions of the heart

I plan on rereading a few books of Schopenhauer's in the future, having finished some books by Hegel recently. There is this element in psychology where we know there are other people and we know we are dependent but there is then are element in logic that makes the world dependent on us. The scientific mind tries to understand these together by analyzing the mind-object relation

This seems to indicate something about our relationship to history and ancient text. There is the line of history, people, events, translations, and commentary from now to back then. I don't see how we can know anyone was truthful about their times or were to be imitated based on their biographies because we don't have access to those times and their language directly. But then again, what about just the 1800's? Can we not truly interpret their worlds. This is a great dilemma and is the reason I study philosophy mostly instead of history. I don't see how to resolve the dilemma to any satisfactory position

Why should I read them if we don't know what they say?

You are always pointing the finger sir. I am interested in learning which texts are more reliable and how we know this based of linguistic philosophy. Genesis is an example of how literal readings are not needed (because it could have another meaning) but the question arises how we know which genres ancient text fall into and what a genre meant in those days. It seems the further in history it goes the less likely we can understand it

Finally, where are your threads? Are you strong minded enough to make them or do you just trash others

If you take the Bible literally, the earth is flat and circular with 4 corners on it like a modified pentagram

If we don't know what is literal in *religious texts* how can they have a "meaning" anymore?

If an ancient Jew read Genesis he would probably think it was literal unless it's author implied other by the author or tradition. But Acts and Mark, for example, might not have been intended literally either

Why would Schopenhauer say only causality is a category of the mind. Kant admitted that the self is will ("free will) and since such is apart from space and time the relationship to the world from it is paradoxical

Usually theologians say God let's some go to Hell in order to save and make others happy, who are happier because they were chosen and others not. Imagine people being invited to a special party. Those who miss out get a greater punishment and those who are saved a special joy

Reading Kant himself will increase your knowledge

Many scientists do claim that consciousness arising from quantum effects can be tested. Those with a religious bent will always claim this is the quality in front of the soul\atman. Perhaps the classical is reduced to the quantum, but there is no consensus on how to interpret the quantum realm and furthermore information travels faster than light there so it seems to me the classical and the quantum are worlds apart. Just as the soul\atman might be beyond science, so may the classical be beyond the quantum.

Nonetheless, the OP is well thought out and very well written. I did enjoy it

If consciousness is fundamental than how is it not a soul? And if quantum waves create consciousness how is that not physicalism?

Let me try:

1) understanding is the categories in the mind while reason-intellect-judgment is the higher free human function that operates to connect all the "given" forms it finds in itself

2) representation is either imagination (pictures in the head) or the phenomena of the world

3) this is because the categories are said to be complete and humanity is made for activity

4) this question throws me but judgment synthesizes all of the work of understanding into free thought and action

Kant seems consistent with the Copenhagen Interpretation. The quantum world is the thing in itself and consciousness through the categories makes it what it is.

My point was that Aquinas's belief in the superiority of light to matter was based on aesthetics and not science OR philosophy

Aquinas got the four elements from the Greeks and the superiority of light over matter from Aristotle and Augustine

If God has to allow pain for a greater good, there is still the problem of predestination. Why create people who will go to hell or not ensure that they go to heaven?

I read somewhere that Kant claimed his ancestors came from Scotland, the land Hume was from, although Kant was most likely just German. He did have a fascination with empiricism and in his system he rejects innate ideas as understood by the rationalists

It's just a general thread about medieval thought. If you don't like it go away

It's called Construction of Nature. It's not well written, lucid, and interesting that I can't recommend it enough

I wondered too why he says basis instead of base. "Basis" is used several times so far and I'm on pg 70. But what I think it means is that we project space unto the thing-in-itself and time is the base of our internal life. So we have our projection of space out there and our inner sense and find that time enters space through our interaction with the world

I quoted Aquinas's arguments on why he thought light was immaterial. Just as people quote and criticise Aristotle's physics.. There are people who still believe this stuff and reject science

It's accurate

Everything on the quantum scale (which includes light) have a particle\wave duality. Quantum mechanics is the most successful theory in physics (which means it has the best predictive ability) and they see particle behavior and wave behavior at these levels. The world in itself is how we experience it on the classical level everyday. However Aquinas says light has no material nature and about this he was wrong. He thought Aristotle settles questions in philosophy but Aristotle was no better at philosophy than the other great minds in history. Rejecting science without being in that field is presumptuous