It's not a given! — Another

What i meant was it’s not deductively reasoned. I inductively arrive at it because it makes the best sense of my experience. If you can prove as you are trying to that I’m internally inconsistent thought, you would disprove me, yes.

You say I'm lucky? And u suspect I probably don't really care. — Another

I was trying to be funny. You didn’t find it that way. I apologize. I was trying to lighten things. You seem very intent on discussing my underlying assumptions on God. I wasn’t expecting that in this thread. If needs I’ll draw up a better defense.

Meh, OK maybe I did just loose care, enjoy infallible logic and your firmly grounded beliefs. — Another

I am actually so glad you said this! I don’t think either of us really want to get into it. I respect your views and your reasons for believing what you do.

You’re lucky!! Though I suspect really you probably don’t care :) Actually in this thread I did posit a brief defense of God and Monism.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2266/my-own-personal-religion-depression-has-enlightened-me-to#Item_2

I was with you until you called yourself “new age”. You’re better than that! New Age don’t believe in anything they just grab at whatever flashy idea they see first from astral projection to reincarnation to God to dualism to non-dualism. (That makes me want to hunt for a non-dualist dualist out there, I’m sure there is).
My real objection, joking aside, to new age beliefs is that are not internally consistent.

I really would agree with you. God is the source of all goodness, meaning, and true joy. If God doesn’t exist there is no unified source of meaning and the only thing we have is philosophy which is our collective and individual search to find or create meaning. If nihilism is right and this philosophy is pointless, giving up is also pointless and I say it’s better to dream and hope than to dispair.

Philosophy isn’t some perfect place where everyone is completely open minded. We are discussing what for me is a first principle. “God exists and is the source of all goodness.” I can’t define that down any further, it’s a given.
I completely acknowledge it’s not your first principle. I posted a while ago about my reason form my existential choice to believe in God. But it’s not a deductive fact for me, it’s a choice. You (if you are an atheist or a dualist) make a different choice. But it’s not an irrational choice, I’ve made mine for what I think are good reasons. I think going into why I choose to believe in God is off topic and is sort of a given for even discussing hell.



Perhaps.. I think is outside the scope of this argument. Obviously if God doesn’t exist there isn’t hell either.

If you both want to discuss the existence of God we could in a new thread. There are always tons of those though and I’ve akready made a defense of it before.

The perennial philosophy is not a school as such. There is an intellectual clique that are known variously as perennialists or traditionalists, with notable names being Frithjof Schuon, Rene Guenon, Ananda Coomaraswami and even Julius Evola. They’re generally reactionary - they think that modern culture is essentially degenerate and will soon destroy itself or collapse. Interestingly (or depressingly) Rene Guenon has come up in discussions about alt-right Uber troll Steven K Bannon, who apparently had some interest in such subjects; Evola also is associated with fascism and reactionary politics — Wayfarer

Wow. Thanks for filling me in. I thought it was just a bunch of reinsance guys and then Huxley.

There are a lot of syncretic philosophies and faiths. I definitely believe that the Absolute is encountered in many different ways and that this encounter is more important than doctrine or intellectualization (so I’m a mystic). Yet I find every attempt at explaining this or having a community around this principle falls flat. Probably the ones I like the best are the Baha’i. But even they fall into being dogmatic and put authority in the hands of their ruling body the UHJ.
Maybe it’s that the point of contact with the Divine is so primary for me the only thing to do is to return again and again to it. If God grants us revelation in prayer, why look anywhere else or to anyone else but back to prayer? We might disagree on something so instead of arguing (if we really want an answer rather than just to argue) we should both return individually to prayer and ask God. I know I’m switching the problem of oppressive authority and imposed conformity for unchecked delusion and self centeredness. But I think many people are able to hold themselves mostly in check. If your neighbor is crazy you don’t have to listen to them anyways.
This is sort of stream of consciousness and not systematic. I probably given up on being systematic about God.
Thoughts?

Let's break it down and make it simple. — Another

I agree. Good way to go.
Good comes from and is defined by God. So doing good actions is following God’s will, doing evil actions is acting contrary to God’s will.

Is one actions not to be encompassed in their 'being'? — Another

No. Actions aren’t metaphysical, they happen outside of a individual. Are you your running? Even if you are then it is only while the action occurs. So maybe a theif is evil when they are stealing as a temporary denial of their intended purpose (Love God, love others). But even when he is stealing, he is still existing and existing is a good. Evil doesn’t exist on good because it depends on it for the source of its existence, but it’s not the other way round.

How do u define good without a counterpart. — Another

As a monist I don’t need a counterpart to define anything. It just is. In fact, to be a monist I believe a pluralities and dualities have a ultimate, singular first cause.
Okay there isn’t a God and an anti-God coexisting in eternity, there is just God. Good comes from God, that is what gives it meaning. It doesn’t need an an opposite force. If reality was entirely subjective than perhaps good would mean not evil and evil would mean not good. Yet at least one of these concepts would have to have some intrinsic value or definition for either to be meaningful.
Let’s take American politics, it’s very close to becoming meaningless this way. Let’s suppose the democrats change their platform to be completely against any Republican legislation, they automatically vote no to every republican bill but offer none of their own. They only offer bills that condemn Republic bills. “House Bill 789 condemns the proposed right to Work bill 772.”
Then the Republicans retaliate and stop proposing any bills of their own. “802 condemns 789 which condemns 772” pretty soon the two parties mean nothing. Is that where that idea of good and evil ends up?

I sense a trap and getting out of my league here. This is what I get for just studying monists (Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza, Maimonides)... it always assumed.

“Is the fleeting No in 'a fleeting No to God’s eternal and all-powerful Yes' Good then?”

Umm... the no is an action, right? The theif is evil only in the act of stealing, not in being a living being. God sustains the thief’s material body as well as his soul with His loving kindness, so it’s not evil.

Monism, seems self evident to me, in meditation and prayer. You can take my word for it, right? Just kidding.

Hmm... yes. If the mortal world ends and everyone is in heaven, do they eventually forget about evil and without evil there is no good? It’s a clever argument.
But my screen name is MysticMONIST. You propose an argument that assumes a dualistic view of no good without evil. I say as a monist there is only good and evil doesn’t exist itself. It’s only a fleeting No to God’s eternal and all-powerful Yes. I think resolving the monist and dualist debate is beyond my ability. For me, Monism is a given, it’s a self evident first principle. But I could be wrong.

I’ve have thought about how it may be kind of silly how if we live for only 100 years but are immortal after that, we will able sitting around telling stories from our glory days like my father in law, about high school track, forever! “St. Alban, yeah, I know you were martyred and are patron saints of refugees. You’ve told the story 10 billion times!”

I used pretty sarcastic language for effect to point out the logical absurdity and cruelty of the position on hell.
Yet. I acknowledge that you never said that you believe in hell. Just clarifying the typical understanding of hell.
Second, I don’t wish to imply anyone who believes in hell is a bad or foolish person. I attack the argument and not the person. Actually, if someone believed in hell and thought I, as a non-Christian, was going there would be morally obligated to warn me as a compassionate act.

Not that this forum lives up to being free of personal attacks, but I believe as philosophers we should. I mean no offense to anyone.

Another argument, hell assumes that time only matters from a human perspective, not a divine one.
I was a good kid I went to church and was baptized. Then I read the Tao te Ching and talked to a Zen master and was fooled by his be nice people mumbo jumbo and now I die and am damned. Serves me right!
Okay the 35 year old me deserves hell, okay. But what about the 8 year old me? Does that me not exist anymore? But God is eternal. Maybe the 8 year old me doesn’t go to hell, because I was alive when I was 8. Well what about the parts of life that suck and I how I got stuffed into lockers and all that? I prayed to God to help. Not only did he not relieve my suffering (which is fine if I go to heaven) but he tells the 8 year old me “don’t worry in another 30 years you’ll be stuffed into boiling vats by demons, this is nothing.”

Then He sustains in token presence only and doesn’t care about the people in hell.

That video was really well done, thanks for sharing.
I still think we are dealing with more than just left and right brain thinking. Maybe an intuitive grasp of a transcendent Reality?
My proposed approach is to avoid putting a name or full definition on the phenomenon but to value the subjective nature of these meaningful experiences. Mindfulness is sort of an example. There is nothing trippy about fully enjoying a cup of tea for its own sake. Yet such an experience can provide perspective and “wisdom” that can help living in a more compassionate and holy way

It wasn’t till lately that I realized that I had a consistent pattern in the type of stuff I practice since I’ve drifted away from traditional zazen “just sitting” meditation. I’m going to try to see a hypnotherapist to have some help figuring it out actually.
What is the difference between meditation and hypnotherapy anyways? Reading a few things online isn’t probably enough to answer this. I would say that meditation in its fullest sense though is about a lot more than just sitting on a cushion. It’s a comprehensive way of life and self-renunciation. I don’t think hypnotism teaches this.

Au contraire, one can have a stroke of insight. — praxis

This is an interesting example. So I think it would be a mistake to identify spiritual awareness/insight with one particular function or area of the brain (in this case the right hemisphere) because of the changing nature of brain science. I would run the risk of being like Descartes with his penal gland as the gateway to the soul, which is laughable now (though not really because of the amazing role of the endocrine system).

But sure I may have been putting the wrong emphasis on illuminaton being external to the self. Yet really the Divine is neither external nor internal and the parts it illumines are definitely parts of us, whether that be a hemisphere or the whole brain or whatever.

The only way this type of brain science refutes my claim of illumination is to say that all experiences of transcendence or spirituality (drug, stroke, or prayer induced) are straight up delusion. Like impaired vision from cataracts with no basis at all in any external reality. Simply an inherent flaw in our mental programming (cause there is no programmer to debug us!!!). That may be so... but then it really doesn’t matter if we are delusional or not.

Mindfulness, breathing meditation, visualization based on religious texts (some Pure Land Buddhist or Kabbalistic texts), other kinds of visualization, listening to repeated songs or read prayers and scriptures.
What I realized is this may not be necessarily spiritual, but there are more of hypnotic qualities to it.
I’m actually not that knowledgeable about hypnosis, but I think the basics is relaxation plus focus, right?

The atheist, non-religious, non-spiritual, unreflective, not very thoughtful lump can't count on a short cut to depth and profundity. Neither can the religious, spiritual, reflective person. — Bitter Crank

So perhaps we are combining insight with real action/change. This isn’t a problem unique to psychedelics. What about people who have religious experiences on Sunday morning but cheat and lie and pursue wealth the rest of the week? I think that divine illumination is universal but embracing that Light is not. Though I don’t think we have the power to truly deny it, so I reject hell.

Personally, I don’t think I want to pursue use of drugs. There are inherent problems with use of chemicals primarily that are illegal and can be addictive. But also I don’t have the control I do with meditation or hypnosis. I can exit a trance like state or vision whenever I want, i can’t become sober as easily.

I was thinking about some of your points when I posed my question. If everyone in world just avoided being terrible and didn’t commit murder, or significant theft and other very bad things then the world be instantly much better with far less suffering. It wouldn’t require us to be saints just no one to be completely terrible. Just a little bit of decency and morality universally applied would go a long, long way.

I think I’ve mentioned the Jewish teaching about the noahide covenant on the forum before. But it’s 7 laws that as a gentile you can follow and according to the Jews merit life in the “world to come” even without being a Jew.
1. No idolatry
2. No blasphemy
3. No murder
4. No theft
5. No sexual immorality
6. No eating limbs torn from live animals
7. Help establish just laws and courts
If have violated or do in the future violate one of these, repentance and atonement is requried but it’s not one strike and your out. The Rabbis also interpret there pretty narrowly so
Sexual immorality basically means no rape or adultury but doesn’t include many lesser sexual impurities.
Again it would be nice if everyone was a noahide and lived by those laws. But as someone who practiced being by a noahide (Judiasm light) for about a year I quickly found it lacking in greater depth or where to go from there.

Are there more heretics in the language departments than the theology department? — Bitter Crank

At least heresy is more severely punished by English teachers than by theology ones. At least double the risk of defenestration. (I got to use that word in context, so fun).

I have a sister in law who is a middle school English teacher. I thought she would be interested some aspects of philosophy of language or my rejection of standardized grammar (my posts take a brave stand there!) or my criticism of being taught MLA citations only to use APA in my career. I even shared my thoughts on the philosophic undertones of commonly assigned high school literature and the ascetics of literature in general. You’d never guess this, it’s shocking. But instead of being greatful for my insights I was nearly defenestrated and I never bring up language or literature around family gatherings again.

In contrast, after discussing withmy very conservative, evangelical grand father in law about the Gospel of Thomas we politely agreed to disagree. I fear the grammar police more than the inquisition.

Up north here we say "you guys." — T Clark

I’m in SW Virginia so I do use y’all. Fun fact: my town of Lynchburg is home to Liberty University a gigantic super conservative Christian college that pretty much runs everything. They just finished this large tower to be higher than anything else in the city to house their theology program. I think they need to reread their Old Testament!

So we are discussing moral virtue. Though I don’t deny that if there is one Source of goodness and beauty and thus might be related. Creating a skilled and inspired painting might be morally good.

I think I’ve solved my quandary with y’all’s help. (Got to love when you can use the 2nd person plural).
It seems to me that the way we are talking about virtue or being good is very simmilar to conversations of “enlightenment” in Buddhism. You run into same problem of if enlightenment is common or uncommon or is any person enlightened at all. Claiming to be enlightened is a clear sign you aren’t.
The way I solved this for myself when studying Zen was to see enlightenment as a verb not as a noun or adjective. So as a Zen practicioner I was able to attain moments of “kensho” the awareness of “satori” or enlightenment that is always around us. I apologize for the Japanese but it’s hard to describe these things simply. But the basic jist that enlightenment is gained thru meditation only in meditation. It’s not a permanent state or one time achievement.
So on a basic level, you are virtous only when you are practicing virtue. No one is always virtuous. Are you virtuous when you sleep? No, not usually.

This can also been seen on a deeper level. If as Wosret states that only God is good, or all goodness comes from God, we are only good in and when we participate in God’s goodness (Kadosh or holiness in Hebrew). This also means that my mystical/contemplative practice and my moral practice are intrinsically linked, which is an intuitive truth.

I now understand the original question of are most people virtuous to be a misunderstanding of virtue. The real answer is obvious. A few people are rarely virtuous, most people are sometimes virtuous, a few people are frequently virtuous.
It makes sense then I feel like a good person when I practice good deeds but don’t feel that way all the time and when I make a mistake I feel rather worthless. It’s a moment by moment, action by action thing.

I just can't be a cynic, and believe that everything ultimately reduces to prudence, or selfish benefits. — Wosret

So are you saying we gain happiness/contentment/nobility/validation from virtue for its own sake really isn’t for its own sake? Instead it’s just another way to get something?
I don’t know.. I think we have an inherent desire to want to be good and be closer to the Divine. Is this still selfish?
I do think that this holy and pure desire to be good is easily corrupted into wanting to seem good or to be free of nagging guilt regardless of actual goodness.
Or did you mean something else?

Empathy makes contentment impossible, for as long as even a single feeling thing remains discontent. You can be content some of the time, but not all the time, as life involves personal and vicarious suffering. — Wosret

That’s a really great thought. I remember dealing with this when praying Zen meditation and reaching content but detached states. I would hardly say this is moral.

I think there is a difference in self centered suffering because of one’s own desires and anxieties and compassionate suffering for the sake of another. Both are unpleasant but there is a nobility that comes from compassion and empathy that outweighs the suffering (otherwise you would be wisest to never have empathy).

I liked both your descriptions. They definitely point to virtue being uncommon.
Even if Virtue is too high of a standard to be fully attainable these descriptions suggest that the majority don’t ever come close.

I hope that by desiring Virtue for its own sake (or at least the contentment and self validation it brings) is a sufficient start. I find I have daily failures to be always kind and even tempered (I’ve got two young kids and am perpetually sleep deprived) and to avoid temptations of sloth. I wonder how significant these small short comings are? I suppose they do signal that I’m far from perfected and still have work to do.

What is this virtue you speak of? — T Clark

Actually I think that’s the real question. Once you establish a concrete understanding of Virtue/morality/ethics then it would be pretty easy to see how widespread it is.
I admit I’ve not yet established a good enough understanding yet. I’ll finish reading Plato’s works and then maybe Aristotle’s Nichomacean Ethics and then the Stoics. If by then I still don’t know what Virtue really is, I’m probably hopeless!

There is another way to determine how widespread Virtue even I I don’t know exactly what it is yet is based off its fruits. The fruit of virtue is abiding contentment. A wise person takes consolation in virtue and has equanimity in all things. I suppose wisdom and virtue are two seperate concepts and you can be virtuous without being wise in the way you can have a healthy diet yet be ignorant of nutrition. Regardless, there seems to be very few content and equanimous people in the world. Though again content people don’t need to brag about their contentment.

As someone who is very interested in both Platonism and Buddhism, this can create some cognitive dissonance. — Wayfarer

Absolutely! I am in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance.
There is one very important common ground between Plato and Zen though which is awareness of one’s ignorance. I love how Socrates is the wisest because he knows he does not know and is adept at pointing out the ignorance of others.
Seung Sahn is a Korean zen teacher, now passed, whose focuses on the not knowing mind.

Thanks for the breakdown of the article.
As a Platonist I’m starting to believe all sorts of things that seem ridiculous at first glance.

Carrol seems to also being getting really hung up on the soul as a “thing”. Immaterial means that it can’t be some fine essence or special field or exist in a particular location, since that would be material.
Personally, while I think some aspect of us must be an eternal soul (Plato makes multiple compelling arguments and since I believe in God it pretty much follows) I’m not exactly sure what our soul is comprised of. At the least, it could just be the divine spark within us (God’s illumination itself) combined with the fact that we are eternally known and remembered to God.

I also think karma flows from life to life and karma is a highly misunderstood concept. As you said in Buddhism there is no self and only our karma gets reincarnated. Though the Dali Lama claims to have recollected his past lives but he’s also the supposed incarnation of a bodhisattva. So it’s complicated for sure. So I’ll only this basic understanding. In my life I create karmic energy and attachments thru my deeds. These actions effect everyone else. Once I’m dead the ripples of my deeds continues weather or not I have a seperate soul that’s lifted out of the pool.

I like the idea that only our virtuous parts are immortal. That after or thru death we are purified. So our bases, unilluminated natures are purified away. Take the classic example of Hitler, how much of his life was virtuous? I’ve read he treated his dogs well maybe but he also poisoned them. So in the afterlife, there isn’t much of a virtuous Hitler but there is some like the mere fact he existed. So the Hitler I meet in “heaven” is pretty different than the one on earth (who no longer exists). Rather, a holy saint will be less changed and the old parts of him/her will delight in having been refined. Complete repentance would also be purifying..

You’ve been a philosopher longer than I’ve been living then (I’m 35)
2000 for me, but as a philosophy major we touched on Plato and his forms and then left him in the dust. I spent most of my rest of my time on more modern philosophy. It was a shame. Really it was a Lutheran theology program anyways. Spoon feeding answers.
I picked back my interest in theology and philosophy after gradschool (in an unrelated field of rehab therapy)

I agree that’s there’s no deductive proof. I hardly expect to every persuade someone away from an opposing view. Rather I use arguments to increase my own confidence in my beliefs so that they are not unexamined. The best I can hope for is a plausible explanation for reality that in internally consistent and accounts for the majority of phenomena.
Plato is surprisingly good at that. My philosophy 101 class did him poor justice.

I believe that persons have intrinsic worth that goes beyond one's ability, and that one's intrinsic worth demands that we treat people with respect, and that we treat them justly. I don't believe this is dependent upon one's belief in God, or some other lawgiver. — Sam26

This is well said and I agree! There is an intrinsic worth to every human being.

You say it need not neccesarily come from God. That’s okay, because you still hold that it is real. I posted a while ago about a mystic’ s version of Pascal’s wager. Even if God doesn’t exist and there is no objective meaning (two seperate claims, its plausible to have objective meaning without God) then there is still philosophy. This forum alone proves it. Philosophy is the noble endeavor to find meaning or if it cannot be found to create it. Believing in the intrinsic worth of every person is exactly part of this endeavor and our faith in advancing this cause can never be in vain. Even if it is a pointless hope, is it not better to hope than dispair? I know this is a bit off topic but your made a perfect example of this point.

Thanks. I find it really comforting to seperate illumination/salvation/divine presence from intellectual beliefs about God. It seems that one’s mere belief would change their spiritual reality or make God love them any more or less.

Atheists and agnostics also have a moral sense which they can follow or ignore completely seoerate from their religious views.

I converted between faiths more than is psychologically healthy, but I quickly felt that God didn’t seem too concerned about my faith of choice that day. Soon conversions became anti-climatic despite how big of deal humans make out of them.

By evidence you must mean empirical support. But I ran across a logical proof of Plato’s of the immortality of the soul I found quite compelling. I apologize for the continuous Plato references, but it’s what I’m reading. Hopefully you’ll indulge me in sharing it.
Plato says that if souls are merely the “harmonies” of the physical parts of the body then those with greater or lesser bodies have greater or lesser souls.
I work with individuals with disabilities and injuries and this argument speaks directly to my daily experiences. If our minds and indenties are based entirely off physical brain functions that people are naturally greater or lesser quality based on the quality or fiction of these structures and their function. A person with greater dendrite density in speech areas with greater verbal abilities is superior to a person lacking this enhanced variance. Even greater are both these typical individuals versus a child with cognitive impairments or an adult with a brain injury or stroke affecting their speech.
People born with lesser cognitive capacity or those who suffer injuries to their brain are inherently lesser human beings if there is no non-physical enduring source of worth.
This is then simmilar to Kant’s argument for God based on the need for justice. It is monsterous to imagine there are people with lesser or greater souls therefore souls must be independent of the body and must endure beyond bodily ills. If the soul is impervious to bodily injury it would then be impervious to death.

By "knowlegde" are you referring to your direct experience of God or some interpretation of the experience that you might have extrapolated?

If the former then it begs the question as to how you could reject it, that is how could direct experience ever be rejected? — Janus

It's tricky. Isn't what we say we experience almost always a combination of direct impressions and our conception of them? In this case it is a combination of occurrences during meditative states, psychological and emotional experiences, intuition, and inductive reasoning. All of this is hardly irrefutable evidence.

How can one reject direct experience? In this case by simply discounting the experience as delusion. I was taught that this is what these experiences were and I still think delusion is a very plausible explanation. Religious delusion is very common.

Take an example of a schizophrenic having psychological delusions. A doctor explains the visions aren't real. Assuming no medication worked, how would you handle the delusions? Even if you did trust the doctor it would be nearly impossible to resist believing in these visions if they were consistent and repeated. Even trying multiple things (meditative techniques or detailed studies of the mechanics of delusion) they continued.

I still have moments where I worry all my religious experiences are delusion or that I've lost my faith in one of the religions that's true and I shouldn't have. I'll get to the afterlife and be in big trouble for having tried the faith and faltered, being better off to never have attempted it in the first place. It's clear such a possibility is logically ridiculous, yet its unnerving how many other people think it's true. It's interesting that fundamentalist or conservative Christians, Jews, and Muslims all sound identical in tone yet would all be condemning each other to hell.

Too much existential angst and doubt which goes nowhere. The main reason I believe is that it gives at least temporary reprieve but to reject theism would be existing in s constant state of denial of my experience and doubting my conviction.

On the surface illumination and enlightenment are simmilar concepts. Both are insights into the real. Though amoung Buddhism there is considerable differences on true meaning of enlightenment, a rabbit hole we don't need to go down.

In adopting Platonism, I've had to take a hard look at the unreconciliable views of God and Reality of Buddhism (particularly Zen) and mystical theism. My lingering, almost involuntary, theism made me a poor Buddhist. Yet I wouldn't be a mystic if it wasn't for my Zen training. It comes back to direct (or self-evident) knowledge. I'm not supposed to accept a Priests authority on God, but reject it and use direct knowledge. Though what if I have direct knowledge of God, am I to reject that on my Zen Master's authority? By no means.

lest same falls on a Sunday, in which case there shall be no game, but instead the day will be a day of fasting and contemplation. — Hanover

So if I fast and contemplate, I have a 1:7 chance of winning (the odds of the game beginning on a Sunday). Which is far better than the chance of winning 1:X, X being the number of participants. Given of course that I don't disqualify myself by use of the two prohibited words and have correctly interpreted the obscure meaning of the rules.
To be safest, I should practice this austerity each and every Sunday but I would probably be safe with just Sundays in March and April given the unclear meaning of the formal beginning of the game.

That's a great article!! Thanks.
I think it's funny that the SEP is so appologetic for premodern views of things. It has simmilar tone on an excellent article on the immortality of the soul.

I suppose being a mystic bent I find it so strange that they "premodern" ideas are seen as so implausible. The world is actually rather wonderous if you take time to notice this. I'm not a scientist (beyond some anatomy) but I've heard that study of the working of the universe increases this wonder rather than dispels it.

I know I just made a big deal about not being Christian but if I'm interested in virtue and illumination, I think I need to study Christian (particularly catholic) moral theology. Maybe Islamic theology too.

Fair enough.

as we advance through things, at the most general level, the telos of everything put together is seen to be God. God is thus seen as being that which holds everything together. — Agustino

This was well put.

You mention animals eating one another is the result of sin? That's a curious thought. I want to revisit this later. Anything I should read about this view of sin in the meantime?


Yes Paul does mention this, but so does Torah. I'm coming back around to theism, but I'm far from theologically orthodox Christian. I tend to take a Quranic view on most things. So I don't imply a Christian meaning to anything I say. I'm definitely not a trinitarian. I'm not a fan of Paul