Posted on 11/10/2008 11:37:17 AM PST by betty boop
Of course you do not know me. We have just met. But, please assume that I have been at this for a decade or two and that I have studied scripture, Plato and have at least read Super Strings and the Theory of Everything
My theory isn't arrived at recently.
I am intrigued by you and your sister bird because you reason and have expanded your horizons beyond the Bible. I must tell you that I am immune to the quoting of scripture. It is faith and I am in pursuit of objective nowledge before I die. Scripture is one view of the universe; birds are supposed to see the whole.
Please answer this question: What "thing" do you encounter that isn't made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons?
Of course you do not know me. We have just met. But, please assume that I have been at this for a decade or two and that I have studied scripture, Plato and have at least read Super Strings and the Theory of Everything
My theory isn't arrived at recently.
I am intrigued by you and your sister bird because you reason and have expanded your horizons beyond the Bible. I must tell you that I am immune to the quoting of scripture. It is faith and I am in pursuit of objective nowledge before I die. Scripture is one view of the universe; birds are supposed to see the whole.
Please answer this question: What "thing" do you encounter that isn't made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons?
Your "immunity" prevents you from achieving your goal.
God is not a "thing" or an "event."
Nor is God a hypothesis. I've known Him personally for half a century and counting. His Name is I AM.
But your "immunity" prevents you from knowing Him and therefore from knowing objective Truth.
Sensory perception and reasoning - even knowledge of Scripture - can only take you so far because you suffer from the observer problem. You must know the power of God, Who is Jesus Christ Himself.
But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. - I Corinthians 1:24
Perhaps your bird instincts will overcome the frog predisposition and you, too, will be given "ears to hear" or if you have chosen to ignore what you hear, you'll change your mind.
To God be the glory.
“I am in pursuit of objective nowledge”
You’ll find that objective knowledge in the person you give the power to ultimately define facts.
I thought we were speaking of science. If you wish to argue theology, I must retire. All theology is true and it is also all false.
It's been fun though, thanks for the conversation.
Good bye.
It does, weston. Thank you ever so much for noticing!
Brilliantly said, Woebama! Somewhere Eric Vöegelin is smiling right now. As am I. Thank you oh so very, very much!
Absolutely excellent observation, the_conscience!
But at the same time, to “reduce” the partners into separate entities fatally detracts from the universal, synergistic cooperation and coherence of the partners, which is what the symbol “great hierarchy of being” intends to convey. Any “reduction into entities” tends to falsify its comprehensive meaning.
As with just about everything, there is a danger of “doctrinalization” of what is fundamentally ineffable. Language is the only carrier of human meaning. It is the articulation of self-reflected human experience. And experience is the key word here. Any doctrine tends to separate the “articulation in language” from the actual experience that gave rise to the language symbols. Further, to the extent that any doctrine holds itself out as authoritative, we are invited to accept its tenets as a sort of substitution for direct experience. Both ways we lose the idea that human experience, self-reflection, and articulation are the very foundations of everything we know or think we know, whether in science or philosophy.
And so I stay constantly aware of the Great Hierarchy of Being, not as any kind of “system” or “doctrine,” but as the most universal description of reality of which I can conceive, which illuminates my own direct existential experience and the articulation thereof. To me, it is the universal context in which human existence is conducted. I say that, not because I’ve been “told” that (by means of some doctrine), but because I have actually “seen” that, based on my own direct experience and my self-understanding of it.
Thank you so very much for your most perceptive criticism. I don’t know whether my reply answers it to your satisfaction, so take it FWIW.
It certainly sheds light on my own personal war between spirit and flesh.
One thing at a time here PasorBob!
First of all, from where I sit, neither A-G nor I have “expanded [our] horizons beyond the Bible.” If you understand what the Bible is, you would understand that cannot be done: God’s Word is the Measure. Scripture comprehends everything that is, everything that ever was, and everything that ever will be. It is the Logos (in the sense of "story" here) of the Alpha and the Omega.
You say you are “immune to the quoting of scripture. It is faith and I am in pursuit of objective [k]nowledge before I die.” I gather by that you mean you are confining your field of interest to physical bodies, to the things that are composed of particles according to the laws of physics and chemistry, which must also satisfy the condition of being directly observable by you as "facts" of external nature. This is what makes them “objective.”
Yet there are two questionable things implied by your method: First, your expectation that physical bodies (composed of “protons, neutrons, and electrons” — i.e., “matter”) are “all that there is”; which of course leaves out the small matter of the laws of physics and chemistry, which are not themselves “physical.” Second, you overlook the not so small fact that the separation of knowledge into “objective” and “subjective” categories is itself a “subjective” operation, an operation of your mind (another non-physical entity).
You wrote that “you birds ‘are supposed to see the whole.’” Well, we don’t "see the whole." No one (save God) ever sees the “whole.” We just try to take a perch where we can get the most expansive field of vision possible.
You and we and all of us humans are all parts and participants of “the whole.” As such, we cannot ever stand outside of it to see it all “entire.” What we are left with is a point of view only. As James Bowman writes in his latest book, [Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, Encounter, 2008], “….we all must have a point of view of the world, if only because we can’t see it all at once.” We must accept we can only have partial views of it based on our spatio-temporal position.
And “partial views” in another critical sense, as Immanuel Kant pointed out. Human perceptual equipment is only designed to register what can be filtered into it by means of direct sensation by our five senses, and mainly sight. Kant, in effect, argues (persuasively, it seems to me) that what we actually perceive by means of sensory experience is a sort of temporal “image” of the surface appearance of the entity under observation. We never see the entity, the intended object of our thought, as it is in itself, but only its surface appearance at a particular moment in time.
I think what you are looking for is not so much “objectivity,” as “certainty.” But there is no certainty in this world! We cannot have that unless we are omniscient, omnipresent observers of its evolution over time, AND we are not “involved” as entities in its process.
Thus there are cognitive limits that we humans cannot transcend. That being so, there is no way we can have absolute “certainty” about anything in this world, this side of the grave at least.
FWIW PasorBob! Thank you so very much for your participation on this thread.
p.s.: There is no "thing" that isn't made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. But man is MORE than a "thing."
For the conversation, I'd like to put the emphasis on the word hierarchy in the Great Hierarchy of Being and offer an example.
Namely that There is only One Great Commandment.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40
But when we invert those two commandments, the result is "Liberation Theology" which of course is Obama's spiritual Christian roots.
In that theology, the true believers put loving neighbor and self ahead of loving God and defiantly declare that if God does not meet their standard of loving their neighbors and self as they think they do, then they reject God.
The consequence of such inverted true belief is socialism.
What a brilliant insight, Alamo-Girl! When the "preferential option for the poor" is established as the main focus of religion, God is eclipsed; the proper hierarchical relation is inverted; and we lose the meaning of "the poor" stressed in Holy Scripture, which is not just a description of someone who is economically disadvantaged ("The poor ye shall always have with you"); but someone who is "poor in spirit," meaning: a man who walks with God in humility — meaning a man who puts God first in his life.
I certainly agree with your conclusion: "The consequence of such inverted true belief is socialism."
Thank you ever so much for you most perceptive essay/post, dearest sister in Christ! — and for your very kind words!
BTW, Obama's particular flavor of Liberation Theology is even more preferential, because it gives even higher priority to disadvantaged people of color.
Spiritual error twice over.
Yup, it sure is "Spiritual error," twice-over!
This "preference" violates the spiritual truth that all men are equal in the sight of God, despite whatever their earthly "advantages" or "disadvantages" might be.
It should be obvious that equality of persons in the sight of God is the core principle underlying the American idea of equal justice for all persons under a rule of law.
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your perceptive observations on this point!
Have you ever tried to imagine God’s understanding . . . each atom in our body, each cell’s actions, our thoughts, our perceptions, the world spinning, rotating around the sun, the sun rotating within the galaxy, the galaxy moving relative to the other galaxies, space itself contracting or expanding (whichever it is), and this for every man, woman, child and animal on the face of the earth and beyond if they exist. All this at once, and for all history and all future. We can be stopped in our tracks by the beauty of a single sunset. God sees all sunsets, his creation, from the beginning of time, at once and forever, through millions of eyes, plus his own. On and on. Lewis in one of his novels called it a dance. God’s glory is an act of love. Since scripture comprehends the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, creator and creation, and the logos, all pointed out by you, I agree that there is nothing outside of scripture in the sense that you mean.
That is the sense I meant indeed! Thank you for expressing it so very well Woebama!
Historical knowledge is a substitute for direct experience but nevertheless a distinct part of reality. Mere existentialism must always flatten out history and assume all past events are cotemporaneous. History loses its revelational content, God becomes unknowable, the Christ event is mystery, humanness is all contingency with no relation to the universal.
Of course the existential is a necessary component of knowledge but to yank the historical revelational content expressed doctrinally out of the knowledge equation leaves the subject swaying the seas of experience without the firm foundation of actual historical events.
The historical event is not merely a language game but actually provides concrete meaning to our experiences.
Happy Providence!
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