General relativity to my knowledge says objects don't have objective size and location, and the outward appearance of things have an objectivity that is fuzzy. So does modern science confirm the world to be illusion?

I was reading Napoleon Hill's interview with Andrew Carnegie and they were talking about synthetic imagination vs creative imagination. Synthetic imagination is where you recombine things you've learned from experience. This is the only ability humans have according to the British empiricist. However, creative imagination (if it exists) is something else, they say. I think it's different from the logical reasoning of say Parmenides, or the Enlightenment rationalist. I believe theoretical physicists use it a lot, and certainly Einstein comes to mind. It's seemed to me for long time that much of theoretical physics and even the work of Einstein at the very least touches on philosophy. So, I was wondering: if we take philosophy completely away from the work of theoretical physics, is creative imagination left? And what exactly is that? This interview wasn't specific enough for me. Maybe an example from theoretical physics would help. And if we know how physicist build there maps, PERHAPS we can know more about reality from there

Bertrand Russell for one thought that our thoughts and so our creations can never capture reality fully. That was his form of realism. The real is real but beyond us

I want to clarify that Zeno was a relativist in the sense I am describing because he asked what infinity divided by the finite was and what the finite divided by infinity was in relation to the spatial. He got contradictions and his sense of touch could feel that contradiction. I do not say that Parmenides was a relativist, nor Heraclitus

I know the Thomistic God doesn't exist because since he sustains the world he would also have to sustain child rape in act, which would contradict his holiness. So that's one god down

Choosing to meditate could be selfish or selfless. Our genes are designed for reproduction, but an endless future with no human rights or happiness in the middle is worthless. The paradox of genetic predisposition and love. Sam Harris says scientists can predict human behavior ten seconds before a decision is made. Probably no free will is used in those experimental settings however

Ok this is my last contribution to this thread.

You can't logically connect..

(1) The world can't begin without an intelligence

with

(2) the structure of the world suggests an intelligence

They are both different questions. I think the first is more of a science question than the second. To the second I say "the world is what it is"; to the first is say the Confucian Heaven, Platonic form, Heideggarian potentiality, Eleatic one, and so on

And no I don't think etymology is a strict science. I started a thread on it once

Why not a form of panentheism like the Hare Krishna movement held (and George Harrison), an inbetween position between Hinduism and Aristotle?

Why can't energy as we know it be eternal in the form of God's body as Mormons say? Simple question. Btw I'm Italian too

Maybe gods get along even though they are not one substance? Maybe, since the holographic principle was mentioned, we should consider the Eleatic One instead of Aristotle's Prime Unmoved Mover?

I've never read Heideggers lectures on Parmenides. Would Zeno's paradox demonstrate a concealment of being for him? The Eleatics didn't like space or time as concepts so I know he rejected that part of their philosophy

The

Grace is a substance of sorts that presents God to you. Natural light does no such thing as far as I can see. God might be an energy, rarified or whatever. Or he might be all the energy in the world as Spinoza and Teilhard might put it. Or maybe he never existed?

Well the celestial realm is supposed to be filled with God's light, which is grace. I don't see how you get from natural light, even if it's pure energy, to a superconsciousness people call God

I think it's possible reality plays with us. That's what I learned from Kant. It could keep its inner secrets hidden all awhile we are over here with platonic forms in our heads, thinking energy must accord with it

Marco you keep mixing science with philosophy in an attempt to win over people. First you describe the universe, then you say "how can this be without a God". The first part of your remarks have no bearing on the latter parrt, and this is because the world could have any shape, size, qualities, anything you can imagine but that doesn't give you the philosophical right to say without a God there would be just chaos. This is a.philosophy forum. Your argument is herrmaphrodic and I'm not into such things

Why can't God be made of energy?

There is no evidence Jesus did any miracles because (and here comes my extreme sceptical claim) you can't translate ancient texts. Jesus may or may not have existed! My argument is that language changes every generation. Text 2000 years old are far far too old to translate. If future generations read our books, they would see for example us say "I got the impression.." and connect " impression" with making an impression on something, like stamping something. They would then argue, like biblical "scholars" do, "since physical impressions cause a definite mark, by 'got an impression ' it must mean he received something definite". The opposite of what was meant. I have a legion of these examples.

Thanks! I often feel robotic and am interested in techniques to awaken my consciousness and I guess my free will too. Got to use free will to find free will lol

So if you look back to the Greeks, they realised that the intellect (nous) worked this way. This is what enabled them to devise logic and lay down the foundations of science. — Wayfarer

The Liar paradox thread on this forum might throw a monkey wrench into this. Not sure

Let me clarify what I wrote (since it's my thread I better keep it neat). I am Catholic by nature in a majority of ways. That's how I was raised. I don't intellectually believe in the Catholic "supernatural order" anymore though. Catholics condemned Protestantism for saying that faith alone was needed for salvation. They thought faith alone was an incomplete human act. The act of salvation instead was a combination of faith, hope, and love (charity). Through ecumenism, especially the Lutheran-Catholic dialogues, Catholics realized that a lot of Protestants were genuinally like them and concluded that the Protestants emphasize faith for psychological reasons but that their actual acts of "faith alone" were in reality acts of faith, hope and love. This old dispute has relevance to my thread. That is, what is needed for virtuous acts? Is Quietism evil? Is Buddhism quietism? What is good and bad meditation? Sometimes I will lie down and just stare at a wall for about an hour. I think it's a mixture of mulling and focusing, but a yoga instructor friend told me once it is not meditation. I really don't know what meditation is then, what the difference between self-hypnosis and meditation is, and how these types of things relate to understanding oneself and one's own free faculty. I come at this issue, again, from a religious perspective because i was raised a traditional Latin Mass Catholic

I think they are arguing against psychologism

https://www.google.com/search?q=psychologism+mathematics&rlz=1C1OKWM_enUS867US867&oq=psychologism+&aqs=chrome.7.69i57j0l7.9833j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

The

Light is not grace. We are asking for proof of a supernatural order. So you know what that means?

Martin Luther's scrupulosiry created Protestantism. Quietism, although heretical, is often the only answer to such a condition. Have hope it's not despair

Right. That is why I said on this forum "free will is a type of multi-tasking" and yet "the reason, or super-ego, can propose things as possible which the will cannot do". We have to take choices on a case to case basis. Some people may never have made a free decision in their entire lives

It is important to see this because it's the psychological motivation behind our drive to prove their transcendence, and this motivation stops us from comprehending reality. — JerseyFlight

Strange ponderings but I think correct

Psychasthenia can especially make free will hard to understand

Back to the question at hand, scientists argue that there is infinite time in a black hole. That's a mind-blowing idea. Reality is far more complicated than the simplistic notions espoused in the OP

Evolution has no teleology. — Banno

I don't know either way

Did you just assert the general existence of "higher things?" Well this is certainly proof of a strong, Primate imagination. — JerseyFlight

Freud argued thusly

Why, the Trinity is no problem at all. Pater, et filius et Spiritus Sanctus are merely three divine persons all having the same substance. The persons are distinct, but not the substance. The persons answer the question who is God, but the substance determines what is God.

So, God the Son is the Jesus person; God the Holy Spirit is the dove person (a very special dove, though) and God the Father is the person with the white beard. That's who they are. But what they are is God. — Ciceronianus the White

So is the Holy Spirit and Jesus our father or not?

I wanted to repeat my point that evolution may be leading us towards a more intuitive way of understanding the world, as opposed to a mathematical understanding.

Here's a good quote: "Intelligence is recognitive: it cognises an intuition, but only because that intuition is already its own." Hegel

The deeper you get into intuition, the less need to add and subtract, multiply and divide

Fascinating

I'll just offer the opinion that multiple "gods" is a suitable explanation for Multiverses, but not for a Universe. — Gnomon

That's one of Aquinas's argument. "One world, therefore one God" basically. I don't find it convincing at all, especially considering that the Trinity muddles the whole question (is the Son our father too?)

other symbolic structures — JerseyFlight

Explain

Like Zeno, I think Heidegger started with the world and thru it's deficiency found Existence (a clearer word than Being). This was the path of Parmenides. The latter did not espouse thinking about existence, initially, apart from the world

You are not a philosopher and you have no comprehension of the logical alternatives to believing in bodyless supernaturals

.

Good points. The Eleatics were too abstract for Heidegger, and remember that his Catholic upbringing poisoned Aristotle and Plato for Heidegger, as they did for me. Nowadays, I like Heidegger

"Motive is the beginning of all desires" said Andrew Carnegie to Napoleon Hill. Explains religion even better than Freud did

Maybe thru evolution we will, someday, build newer computers using only our intuition

I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I was just pointing out that Heidegger was right that Parmenides found being thru presence-at-hand. This is because the goddess told him to consider the world and how change doesn't make sense. That's how I took the Heidegger quote but you seem to think he didn't understand Parmenides