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Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Introduction to Nowlos
Introduction to the topic:
The following is a series of pieces I wrote up some years ago to explain a philosophical point of view in simple terms. I invented the word "nowlos", used just like the word "know" but with a deeper meaning: it isn't false. The word "knowledge" to some people implies that there can still be error, whether it be innately in what is "known" or in the person's interpretation of that. The idea beyond creating nowlos is an attempt to label what truth humans possess - what we can trust. At some point, I intend to speak about the difference between knowing and believing, which will attempt to argue away any objections to the idea of nowlos or anything I have said in this paragraph, but no guarantees. XD
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Limitation of Knowledge
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Introduction
We seek truth, we seek some connection with it, fact that is undeniable. Many of us who have explored various logical paths have realized that it is not only impossible to prove, that is, declare as truth beyond the shadow of a doubt, the existence of God, but it is also impossible to prove, according to the same such definition, the existence of oneself. Such men, particularly Soren Kierkegaard, believed such facts because they seemed to be consistent with man's knowledge of reality. Kierkegaard was one of them who did not find reason to deny the existence of God, but rather understood that it is equally impossible to prove that God does not exist. However, being that we live in a broad world full of many perspectives, there are undoubtedly people whose perspective differs from this, believing that man can know things. They think that, because an idea is in mind, it must be true. There are an innumerable number of errors in this - far too many to label. Nevertheless, only the aforementioned philosophers find this peculiar and an unacceptable definition. In the common man's eye, it is reasonable to accept that some knowledge may be faulty, and therefore not true, even if he denies such a claim. For example, a banker may state that he knows the money he put in the bank safe is still there even though, unbeknown to him, a thief came and took it. Rather than redefining the ordinary person's definition and having to explain why this redefinition makes the word inapplicable everywhere, I propose a simple definition for study:
Knowledge -- The possession of ideas believed to be true.
What determines whether some knowledge is considered as truth is science, or more precisely, study. On the most basic level, this means observation of phenomenon. Those of you who are scientists already probably have an understanding of the word "phenomenon", but for those who don't, I present an example: Consider throwing a rubber ball at a wall. Assuming you are in an isolated system (that is, one in which your experiment will not be interfered with beyond the ones normally expected such as gravity), the ball should bounce off the wall once you have thrown the ball with the proper amount of velocity in a direction towards the wall. I say proper amount of velocity because the ball does need enough speed to reach the wall so you can observe the collision. The collision will result in the reversal of the ball's direction. If you repeat this experiment, the ball will observe the ball bouncing off the wall every time they collide. Thus, we say that the ball consistently bounces off the wall when the two collide. In science, this would be called scientific law because, given that the circumstances remain the same (and for the most part, they do), the observation reveals the same result. It is important to note that scientific law, as we have just discussed, does not say anything about the cause of the result, that is to say, the law does not say anything about the underlying principle (in this case, the "transfer of momentum"). This is a very important fact as shall be presented.
Before we continue, you should be aware of the difference between a scientific law and a scientific theory. A law is a phenomenon - it has a condition (ex. a ball colliding with a wall) and a result (ex. the ball bounces away from the wall it collides with). A theory is an idea of the cause, that is, an explanation for the result (in our example, the cause was the principle of momentum transfer). Theory does not have to be true for the law to be true. The theory may be completely wrong, therefore, it is better to refer to a theory as a suggestion that explains a law (or explains another theory). It is important to note this because, as a matter of fact, all human observation is science, and much of what we believe is in fact only theory. Nevertheless, possession of information concerning the theory (that is, information about what the theory says or what it is) is, by academia, considered to be knowledge.
Of a Great Many Apples
The following is an analysis of scientific law and theory:
Suppose a scientist (or anyone in general) went out to observe what would happen if they left an apple on their back porch. Assuming they watch carefully and live in a wooded area, the person might observe a squirrel climb upon their porch and steal the apple. If the repeat this experiment day after day and they observe the same thing happens, they may conclude that a squirrel will steal an apple from off of their porch if they leave it there. This idea is consistent with reality, therefore, it is considered true. Suppose one day, a bird steals the apple. No longer is the person's past observation scientific law. Rather than throwing away the idea, however, scientists generally modify it, adding various restrictions so that the law will remain consistent with what is observed is reality. In the given example, the condition for the law to be true might be given the addendum: "as long as another animal does not take the apple first". Notice that the law (Squirrels steal apples) says nothing about the cause (Why squirrels steal apples).
Ideally, the law is true for a multitude of cases. However, the more we examine the scenario, the more restrictive the conditions in the law would be in order for it to remain consistent with reality. It the example, for instance, the person may discover another person taking their apple or the apple being eaten by fungus or the apple being blown away by the wind. There are an infinite number of scenarios that would lead to the law being violated, and thus the condition of the law would have to be restricted all the more. However, as human beings who cannot devise every possibly scenario (nor care about most of them), we settle for the most functional definition, that is, the one based off of the results from scenarios we have observed.
The Apple in a Room
Given that we observe what seem to be all possible scenarios of interest, or at least those that are most common, we make assumptions. It is fundamental to human nature to make assumptions. Without making assumptions, we would not be able to progress very far in pursuit of knowledge. However, with assumptions, we also skew our view of truth, or at the very least, skew our view of how truth should be attained.
Recall that if an idea is consistent with reality, we say that the idea is a law or, at the very least, we assume it is true for all scenarios of interest, that is, those scenarios whose explanations can be explained in terms of our past experiences. We turn our attention, now, to examine the possibility of this not being the case; we set there be the possibility that we have not observed all scenarios of interest or have forgotten them. There is nothing other than our faulty intuition to say that this is not the case. In fact, people often forget that is possible they have not considered (or believed in the possibility of) all of the possibilities. Hence, when they are informed of their error, they are surprised. This surprise occurs only when the person makes an assumption, regardless of whether they are closed-minded and confident about something but also when they are seeking truth (as do detectives).
Now, an attempt will be made to surprise you. Suppose there is an apple in an empty room with a table in the center. A person walks in the room and sets an apple on the table. The person leaves the room, noticing no one come in or out. When the person returns, they find the apple missing from the table. A good detective is also a good practical philosopher. This is why practical philosophers like G.K. Chesterton could write mystery books like Father Brown. These men ask practical questions and make themselves aware of the situation. In light of their example, there ought to be a thorough analysis of things. Such an analysis might reveal that the window in the back of the room in open. It would reveal footsteps of various shapes on the floor and leading up to the table. A variety of thieves come to mind; the natural assumption, based on past experiences of ours, might be to assume that another individual or creature stole the apple. How else could it be missing. How much time elapsed between when the person left the room and when they returned. At this point in the analysis, it may seem extraneous to speak of details outside of the room, considering we only want to know what happened within it. However, now we shift the analysis to things unquestioned. For example, where is the room? We learn it is in a house? How old is the person who entered the room with the apple? - Maybe age 8 or 9. What was going on at the time? - Someone was yelling. What was the yeller shouting? - "Bring it back!" After a thorough analysis, we discover that the simplest explanation for the disappearance of the apple was that the person who put it on the table proceeded to pick it up and return it to the person shouting at them. This is a practically reasonable explanation, but one often overlooked. Many people discover things in their pockets that they had put there and had simply forgotten about.
It is important that you extract from this the fact that our assumptions and opinions can error, and not only that, but see a practical example of it. There are many books of wisdom and science that explain, in one way or another, we can be wrong, have faulty knowledge (that is, knowledge that is inapplicable to reality), or make assumptions that were not useful. However, this principle is not often applied, despite how fundamentally it is to world view or personal perspective on everything ranging from core beliefs, to personal relationships to one's favorite kind of apple.
Expanding Consideration
There is a pressing question that is often overlooked because of its annoyance: Why not? It is the response question to "Why?" The latter question asks for a cause; the former question asks for the restrictions or the system. If there are no restrictions on a system, there is no cause nor need of it. The lack of restrictions is the cause or allows something to be the cause.
For example, suppose a bird dropped an apple into a bucket. The likelihood of that occurring is quite rare, and therefore unexpected. If someone who observed such an event were to be questioned by someone who did not wake the same observation, the latter might question why the apple is in the bucket. The observer can claim that a bird dropped the apple in, but the questioner might be in disbelief, given the unlikelihood of such an event, unless he makes such an observation himself. When he objects, the observer might ask "Why not?", questioning why the doubter thinks a bird could not have dropped the apple into the bucket. The observer is seeking for the limitations that would restrict a bird from dropping an apple in the bucket. In short, there is a lack of restrictions, which allows for the bird dropping the apple to be the cause of the apple in the bucket. The apple's arrival in the bucket is obviously no the only route an apple could have taken in order to enter the bucket. For instance, the observer could have dropped an apple in the bucket. However, the bird dropping the apple is nevertheless a viable explanation.
There are an infinite number of examples of unlikely causes resulting in events that could have been caused in simpler ways, but I have resorted to choosing these few and hopefully you will begin to understand the idea. Utilizing questions such as "why not?", we can begin to see the arising of a great number of absurdities having possibility. These possibilities are considered unlikely, not because they are impossible, but because we have neither experienced them nor are we able to contrive a "simple" explanation as to how they might come about. Unfortunately, this is the case with many ideas, silly ones or not. The phrase "today's science fiction is tomorrow's reality" comes to mind. Nevertheless, if a person cannot contrive or is unable to obtain from someone else a "simple" or reasonable explanation for something, they are not as likely to believe it. Notice, here, we make the assumption that something is only possible if it can be explained. This, however, is not the case, and by making that kind of assumption, we limit the options we are able to conceive as possibilities.
Examine for yourself the possibilities. Think of a scenario and begin to envision all of the things associated with it. To make it easier, insert something into the scenario something that you normally would not imagine in it. If you come up with an idea and decide to reject it, ask yourself why you rejected it. Then try to come up with viable reasons for why those things that you did include should or should not be present. In a sense, you are becoming a story writer, but at the same time, you are improving your philosophy. There is a paradox you ought to remember that some people have not yet applied to itself: The more you know, the more you know how little you know. Hence, Socrates said, "I know that I am wise because I know that I know nothing." The more possibilities you have, the more "why not?" questions you ought to have, and then you may begin to realize just how little you know and how many things are actually possible.
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Blur
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Knowledge can be flawed, as was already examined. If we disagree, we obviously are not sharing the same knowledge or the same perspective. One of us might be wrong. As discussed in Limitation of Knowledge, the definition of knowledge is the possession of ideas that one believes to be true. A translator (in other words, a perspective), is required to interpret these ideas. A person does not have knowledge of an apple if they cannot recognize one when they sense it (come into contact with it, touch it, taste it, smell it, etc.). They person has an idea of an apple that they believe to be true in reality. For those of us who can see, an apple is usually a red, smooth, rounded fruit with a stem. Apples vary in shape and size, but the general idea remains the same.
There is an inconsistency with the idea and reality. Though consistency is intended to be the proof of an idea (that is, what makes an idea knowledge), it ends up countering the definition. To perceive what I mean, consider an apple being morphed beyond recognition. The apple could be elongated from top to bottom for its morphing. The question of key importance is, At what point does the object cease to be an apple? When does it become merely a cylindrical fruit, or does it ever lose its apple nature? If you believe apples are forever apples, then consider it in your digestive tract or just consider an entirely different object. There are multiple examples like this that could demonstrate the same point. One example: What is the transition state of a person when they go from jogging to running? Or when does the jogging begin to become a run? Or is it always a run just less so than could be? The essence of each question asks for a boundary, a limitation, a definition. There are disagreements on this, but the fact is, it is easy for a person to distinguish someone in a full-fledged run from someone who is simply jogging. And yet, people disagree on this as well. The fact is, knowledge is limited to such definitions. And yet, we don't have a definition of "jogging" or "running" that is consistent amongst all people. What we do possess are similar enough ideas that we can communicate. That is why you can understand what I am saying to a certain degree despite the fact that you neither share my perspective nor possess the exact same idea, or at least, that's what I assume.
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Nowlos
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Sandstorm
A definition of knowledge was presented in Limitation of Knowledge that seems to be the most common one shared by people, but the definition is described in such a way that only the current writer of this document understands its intended meaning. (In the future, I will have probably forgotten the meaning of that phrase, even if I know the principle behind it.) Rather than altering this definition, I propose letting it (or whatever definition of knowledge you currently do have) remain unchanged. I do this not only to avoid conflict with redefinition of the word, but more appropriately because of the limitation of knowledge.
Psychology has greatly assisted us in understanding the human mind. Through it, we have studied what appear to be cases of insanity, that is, when a person is "out of touch" with reality. In some cases, a person can experience peculiar sensations: feeling, seeing, and hearing things that no one else is, and are thus considered by "normal" people as not representative of reality. However, we find that "normal" people are susceptible to experiencing similar delusions when traveling through the desert without haven eaten for many days. Considering that there is a possibility of everything, it is possible that humanity itself is delusional, or rather, believing things about reality that may be entirely constructs of our minds. The phrase "your mind can play tricks on you" points out the fact that there is a disconnect between our mind and reality. That is, when I see an apple, an apple could be in front of me or I could be dreaming of it. Nevertheless, I see the apple. This brings up an important point. But first, turn your attention to two-dimensional art.
Influence of Art
The realm of art has presented an important aspect about reality: it can be represented in two dimensions. If reality can be represented on a surface with two dimensions, then it should be obviously possible that reality itself might be two-dimensional. Why not? I have yet to find a reasonable answer to this question, even though I continue to believe in three-dimensional space. Reality, regardless of whether reality is two-dimensional or three-dimensional, it appears to act in a manner that we believe is three-dimensional. This, however, does not prove that reality is three-dimensional. Why should it? Why should it not? There seem to be no identifiable boundaries other than our own definitions of things, which may or may not be boundaries, depending on your perspective of reality.
Admittedly, one could assume that the two-dimensional nature of things is invalid, for even "two dimensional" works of art are conveyed through mediums possessing three dimensions. But that is not what is of interest. What we are interested in is the nature of the image to appear as though it had a dimensional aspect that it does not have. If someone drew an apple on a page and "made it look realistic", the apple would appear as though it were as wide in every respect as every other apple even though we believe it is flat. It is this aspect that we find of most interest and that to which have called attention in our comparison of two-dimensional art to reality.
Nowlos
So far, effort has been made to draw to your attention the possibility that the world may not be as you believe it to be. Everything could be just a myth of your mind. Admittedly, this is a discomforting feeling and many people I have spoken with will outright deny it: a response that is expected, especially considering that the human desire to know truth makes anything that would suggest they are far from it seem undesirable. Why even accept such ideas? Doesn't everything work anyways? Once again, we return to the idea of consistency: if something is repeated enough times with the same result, it is deemed as truth or being representative of reality.
What is of interest in this study, then, is not knowledge, but something far more fundamental than knowledge. Something that every human possessing the faculty for is capable of having - a starting ground. In other words, what is being sought by epistemologists and like-minded philosophers: something we "truly know" beyond the shadow of a doubt: truth. We are interested in possessing truth, but knowledge may or may not give it to us. Precisely, we want some connection that relates our ideas to reality. But all we have are the faculty we have been given: our senses.
As a philosopher searching for truth, I am not interested in sub-conscious knowledge - only in conscious knowledge. What I am not aware of is not of interest since I cannot sense it consciously. The good philosophers reading this will note that I have skipped a great deal of debate concerning sub-conscious knowledge and its role. I have done so precisely for the reason of avoiding contestation. If something can be reasonably contested then obviously that something is not an undeniable source of truth. This is particularly true for a blind man: he can deny that anyone else can see simply for the reason that he cannot see. What then is of most interest is that of the senses. Those with the senses cannot reasonably deny them. Granted, it is true that one can deny anything. But to deny something reasonably, the claim of reality that their denial makes must be consistent with reality. Recognize too there is a difference between denying an idea in name and denying an idea in concept. For instance, if someone told their friend that apples were square, orange boxes, the friend would be in disbelief if they believe that apples are round, red fruit. However, if the person were referring to orange boxes by the name of "apple", then whenever they say "apple", to them it means an orange box. I have discovered that this example can be misinterpreted easily, despite the fact that it is closely tied with the idea of different languages. A pattern of sounds may refer to something completely different in one language than it does in another. However, it seems people are more willing to accept this idea only in the context of comparing linguistics than they are in a simple example in their own language. Nevertheless, the problem does occur: various words take on various meanings as they are used. In search of truth, then there must be some way of avoiding having to put it in words, given that words are, as has been shown, rather vague in their definitions.
The point of presenting these limitations on "knowledge", as shown in the ambiguity of definitions words and faultiness of assumptions in perceptions of reality, was to demonstrate that the only truth we can possess (in the raw, undeniable form that philosophers want) is from our senses, specifically through the faculty that bring them about. Note that a person does not need eyes in order to see, but if one does not possess some faculty to bring about sight, then one cannot "see". In the same way, a person cannot hear if they do not have faculty for bringing about the sense, but they do not need ears to hear. By faculty, I do not mean an external mechanism that attaches directly to your brain. Your brain is perfectly capable of generating its own idea of sound. I wish to call to your attention the specific experiences associated with these senses. The experience a person receives from one sense is different from what is experienced with another sense. No one makes the mistake of believing that they heard the sunset when they merely watched the sun setting. The experience is entirely different. One can listen to sounds and visualize the things associated with them, but that visualization is nevertheless distinct from those sounds.
To describe not only the distinction between the experiences from the senses, but also to relate them to truth without conveying the notion that they may be flawed as knowledge is flawed, I have devised the word "Nowlos". Nowlos is similar to knowledge in that it speaks about reality. In contrast to knowledge, it does not imply the possibility of error. Nowlos refers to the experience of each sense. We nowlos that we see, even if we do not know what it is that we see. For example, I may be observing a red apple. I do not necessarily know that what I am seeing is indeed an apple or that it is real. I could be dreaming, I might be staring at a picture, or I could be mistaken about what an apple is (that is, the object in front of me is not the same as what I believe to be true of an apple). I do, however, see an area of red in my vision. I consider this splotch of red to be an apple because it has the shape I expect of an apple whether it be one or not. I nowlos what I see: I see a splotch of red. I cannot make any claim about the splotch of red other than that it is in my vision. The same can be said for that of smell: I nowlos the scent of apple, even if I do not know from what the scent originated. The principle carries over to the other senses, including smell, touch, and taste. There is question over whether we have more senses, particularly time or spiritual sense. Some have contested the sense of time, claiming that we are merely in a constant state. However, to state such is a contradiction in itself: which state are we possessing? Surely what I will learn in five days is not known now, otherwise it would be the time after five days. We are aware of the passing of time, that is, we have faculty for it (or at least some of us do), and thus we nowlos it: we nowlos the change in time, even if we do not know its rate or even what to label it. This brings up an important point: one does not have to have a label for a sense in order to nowlos something from utilizing that sense. That utilization provides nowlos. A person can see even if they do not have a word for "sight". A person can hear and nowlos what they hear even if they have no word or concept of hearing.
The definition of nowlos is deeper than as first presented. Nowlos refers to incontestable experience. For example, we experience differences in sounds. The key of "A" is obviously different than the key of "B" unless you are tone-deaf. Furthermore, it is true that the color of red is different than the color of green unless you are color blind. When the two keys are played together, a non-tone-deaf person can nowlos that there are two different sounds even if they do not know which sounds. This ability diminishes as the two sounds are brought closer in frequency. Until they are the same frequency, a person can nowlos the difference even if they do not notice it. There is thus a difference between noticing (or being aware of something) and nowlos. Where the former is what you can consciously detect, the latter is truth that you possess.
Given that nowlos speaks of truth and reality, there ought to be some questions arising in your mind.
First, what about those who are insane, or out of touch with reality, particularly those who see things that no one else sees. In such cases, each of these people does nowlos what they see. That is truth. However, what they nowlos will probably not help them outside of their bodies. (I can conceive of ways that it would, but all of which are special cases.) In other words, they do not nowlos anything in the world outside of the confines of their mind. Of course, neither do we, but at least we seem to have a functional, consistent model of what's going on.
The second question you might ask is if we have other senses. If we are not consciously aware of the sense, we probably do not know anything from it even if we nowlos it. There are two senses that I did not discuss, 1) because discussion of them is ambiguous, 2) because they are not necessarily senses in the ordinary sense of the word, no pun intended. One of these two is that of thought. We nowlos that we think, even if we do not know what we are thinking about. We do not have to visualize things, we merely are connecting ideas. We do not have to understand anything about those ideas; we just happen to nowlos that there are distinct things passing through our minds. These things we call "ideas". The other "sense" that we may possess is that of another realm. We may have many such senses, and I leave room for that possibility, but we are not as aware of them as we are the aforementioned. We do not nowlos that there are other senses, much less know that there are, but if we do possess them, we can nowlos things from them.
One last thing to note is that a sense can be lost. When such is the case, one can no longer obtain nowlos from that sense.
Extending Nowlos
What if one could nowlos the physical, that is, not just nowlos that they see and nowlos that they see color but nowlos what it is they see. This is not only beyond merely knowing aspects of an object, such as its dimensions or whether it tangible, but beyond asking for an innate sense of knowledge of an object. Someone already beat me to the best word for the term. It is called "grokking", though I'm afraid this particular word is not understood the same way that I have in mind. Nevertheless, it generally conveys the idea: that one possesses the raw truth about something, not merely an understanding of it.
Limitation of Knowledge
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Introduction
We seek truth, we seek some connection with it, fact that is undeniable. Many of us who have explored various logical paths have realized that it is not only impossible to prove, that is, declare as truth beyond the shadow of a doubt, the existence of God, but it is also impossible to prove, according to the same such definition, the existence of oneself. Such men, particularly Soren Kierkegaard, believed such facts because they seemed to be consistent with man's knowledge of reality. Kierkegaard was one of them who did not find reason to deny the existence of God, but rather understood that it is equally impossible to prove that God does not exist. However, being that we live in a broad world full of many perspectives, there are undoubtedly people whose perspective differs from this, believing that man can know things. They think that, because an idea is in mind, it must be true. There are an innumerable number of errors in this - far too many to label. Nevertheless, only the aforementioned philosophers find this peculiar and an unacceptable definition. In the common man's eye, it is reasonable to accept that some knowledge may be faulty, and therefore not true, even if he denies such a claim. For example, a banker may state that he knows the money he put in the bank safe is still there even though, unbeknown to him, a thief came and took it. Rather than redefining the ordinary person's definition and having to explain why this redefinition makes the word inapplicable everywhere, I propose a simple definition for study:
Knowledge -- The possession of ideas believed to be true.
What determines whether some knowledge is considered as truth is science, or more precisely, study. On the most basic level, this means observation of phenomenon. Those of you who are scientists already probably have an understanding of the word "phenomenon", but for those who don't, I present an example: Consider throwing a rubber ball at a wall. Assuming you are in an isolated system (that is, one in which your experiment will not be interfered with beyond the ones normally expected such as gravity), the ball should bounce off the wall once you have thrown the ball with the proper amount of velocity in a direction towards the wall. I say proper amount of velocity because the ball does need enough speed to reach the wall so you can observe the collision. The collision will result in the reversal of the ball's direction. If you repeat this experiment, the ball will observe the ball bouncing off the wall every time they collide. Thus, we say that the ball consistently bounces off the wall when the two collide. In science, this would be called scientific law because, given that the circumstances remain the same (and for the most part, they do), the observation reveals the same result. It is important to note that scientific law, as we have just discussed, does not say anything about the cause of the result, that is to say, the law does not say anything about the underlying principle (in this case, the "transfer of momentum"). This is a very important fact as shall be presented.
Before we continue, you should be aware of the difference between a scientific law and a scientific theory. A law is a phenomenon - it has a condition (ex. a ball colliding with a wall) and a result (ex. the ball bounces away from the wall it collides with). A theory is an idea of the cause, that is, an explanation for the result (in our example, the cause was the principle of momentum transfer). Theory does not have to be true for the law to be true. The theory may be completely wrong, therefore, it is better to refer to a theory as a suggestion that explains a law (or explains another theory). It is important to note this because, as a matter of fact, all human observation is science, and much of what we believe is in fact only theory. Nevertheless, possession of information concerning the theory (that is, information about what the theory says or what it is) is, by academia, considered to be knowledge.
Of a Great Many Apples
The following is an analysis of scientific law and theory:
Suppose a scientist (or anyone in general) went out to observe what would happen if they left an apple on their back porch. Assuming they watch carefully and live in a wooded area, the person might observe a squirrel climb upon their porch and steal the apple. If the repeat this experiment day after day and they observe the same thing happens, they may conclude that a squirrel will steal an apple from off of their porch if they leave it there. This idea is consistent with reality, therefore, it is considered true. Suppose one day, a bird steals the apple. No longer is the person's past observation scientific law. Rather than throwing away the idea, however, scientists generally modify it, adding various restrictions so that the law will remain consistent with what is observed is reality. In the given example, the condition for the law to be true might be given the addendum: "as long as another animal does not take the apple first". Notice that the law (Squirrels steal apples) says nothing about the cause (Why squirrels steal apples).
Ideally, the law is true for a multitude of cases. However, the more we examine the scenario, the more restrictive the conditions in the law would be in order for it to remain consistent with reality. It the example, for instance, the person may discover another person taking their apple or the apple being eaten by fungus or the apple being blown away by the wind. There are an infinite number of scenarios that would lead to the law being violated, and thus the condition of the law would have to be restricted all the more. However, as human beings who cannot devise every possibly scenario (nor care about most of them), we settle for the most functional definition, that is, the one based off of the results from scenarios we have observed.
The Apple in a Room
Given that we observe what seem to be all possible scenarios of interest, or at least those that are most common, we make assumptions. It is fundamental to human nature to make assumptions. Without making assumptions, we would not be able to progress very far in pursuit of knowledge. However, with assumptions, we also skew our view of truth, or at the very least, skew our view of how truth should be attained.
Recall that if an idea is consistent with reality, we say that the idea is a law or, at the very least, we assume it is true for all scenarios of interest, that is, those scenarios whose explanations can be explained in terms of our past experiences. We turn our attention, now, to examine the possibility of this not being the case; we set there be the possibility that we have not observed all scenarios of interest or have forgotten them. There is nothing other than our faulty intuition to say that this is not the case. In fact, people often forget that is possible they have not considered (or believed in the possibility of) all of the possibilities. Hence, when they are informed of their error, they are surprised. This surprise occurs only when the person makes an assumption, regardless of whether they are closed-minded and confident about something but also when they are seeking truth (as do detectives).
Now, an attempt will be made to surprise you. Suppose there is an apple in an empty room with a table in the center. A person walks in the room and sets an apple on the table. The person leaves the room, noticing no one come in or out. When the person returns, they find the apple missing from the table. A good detective is also a good practical philosopher. This is why practical philosophers like G.K. Chesterton could write mystery books like Father Brown. These men ask practical questions and make themselves aware of the situation. In light of their example, there ought to be a thorough analysis of things. Such an analysis might reveal that the window in the back of the room in open. It would reveal footsteps of various shapes on the floor and leading up to the table. A variety of thieves come to mind; the natural assumption, based on past experiences of ours, might be to assume that another individual or creature stole the apple. How else could it be missing. How much time elapsed between when the person left the room and when they returned. At this point in the analysis, it may seem extraneous to speak of details outside of the room, considering we only want to know what happened within it. However, now we shift the analysis to things unquestioned. For example, where is the room? We learn it is in a house? How old is the person who entered the room with the apple? - Maybe age 8 or 9. What was going on at the time? - Someone was yelling. What was the yeller shouting? - "Bring it back!" After a thorough analysis, we discover that the simplest explanation for the disappearance of the apple was that the person who put it on the table proceeded to pick it up and return it to the person shouting at them. This is a practically reasonable explanation, but one often overlooked. Many people discover things in their pockets that they had put there and had simply forgotten about.
It is important that you extract from this the fact that our assumptions and opinions can error, and not only that, but see a practical example of it. There are many books of wisdom and science that explain, in one way or another, we can be wrong, have faulty knowledge (that is, knowledge that is inapplicable to reality), or make assumptions that were not useful. However, this principle is not often applied, despite how fundamentally it is to world view or personal perspective on everything ranging from core beliefs, to personal relationships to one's favorite kind of apple.
Expanding Consideration
There is a pressing question that is often overlooked because of its annoyance: Why not? It is the response question to "Why?" The latter question asks for a cause; the former question asks for the restrictions or the system. If there are no restrictions on a system, there is no cause nor need of it. The lack of restrictions is the cause or allows something to be the cause.
For example, suppose a bird dropped an apple into a bucket. The likelihood of that occurring is quite rare, and therefore unexpected. If someone who observed such an event were to be questioned by someone who did not wake the same observation, the latter might question why the apple is in the bucket. The observer can claim that a bird dropped the apple in, but the questioner might be in disbelief, given the unlikelihood of such an event, unless he makes such an observation himself. When he objects, the observer might ask "Why not?", questioning why the doubter thinks a bird could not have dropped the apple into the bucket. The observer is seeking for the limitations that would restrict a bird from dropping an apple in the bucket. In short, there is a lack of restrictions, which allows for the bird dropping the apple to be the cause of the apple in the bucket. The apple's arrival in the bucket is obviously no the only route an apple could have taken in order to enter the bucket. For instance, the observer could have dropped an apple in the bucket. However, the bird dropping the apple is nevertheless a viable explanation.
There are an infinite number of examples of unlikely causes resulting in events that could have been caused in simpler ways, but I have resorted to choosing these few and hopefully you will begin to understand the idea. Utilizing questions such as "why not?", we can begin to see the arising of a great number of absurdities having possibility. These possibilities are considered unlikely, not because they are impossible, but because we have neither experienced them nor are we able to contrive a "simple" explanation as to how they might come about. Unfortunately, this is the case with many ideas, silly ones or not. The phrase "today's science fiction is tomorrow's reality" comes to mind. Nevertheless, if a person cannot contrive or is unable to obtain from someone else a "simple" or reasonable explanation for something, they are not as likely to believe it. Notice, here, we make the assumption that something is only possible if it can be explained. This, however, is not the case, and by making that kind of assumption, we limit the options we are able to conceive as possibilities.
Examine for yourself the possibilities. Think of a scenario and begin to envision all of the things associated with it. To make it easier, insert something into the scenario something that you normally would not imagine in it. If you come up with an idea and decide to reject it, ask yourself why you rejected it. Then try to come up with viable reasons for why those things that you did include should or should not be present. In a sense, you are becoming a story writer, but at the same time, you are improving your philosophy. There is a paradox you ought to remember that some people have not yet applied to itself: The more you know, the more you know how little you know. Hence, Socrates said, "I know that I am wise because I know that I know nothing." The more possibilities you have, the more "why not?" questions you ought to have, and then you may begin to realize just how little you know and how many things are actually possible.
======================
Blur
----------------------
Knowledge can be flawed, as was already examined. If we disagree, we obviously are not sharing the same knowledge or the same perspective. One of us might be wrong. As discussed in Limitation of Knowledge, the definition of knowledge is the possession of ideas that one believes to be true. A translator (in other words, a perspective), is required to interpret these ideas. A person does not have knowledge of an apple if they cannot recognize one when they sense it (come into contact with it, touch it, taste it, smell it, etc.). They person has an idea of an apple that they believe to be true in reality. For those of us who can see, an apple is usually a red, smooth, rounded fruit with a stem. Apples vary in shape and size, but the general idea remains the same.
There is an inconsistency with the idea and reality. Though consistency is intended to be the proof of an idea (that is, what makes an idea knowledge), it ends up countering the definition. To perceive what I mean, consider an apple being morphed beyond recognition. The apple could be elongated from top to bottom for its morphing. The question of key importance is, At what point does the object cease to be an apple? When does it become merely a cylindrical fruit, or does it ever lose its apple nature? If you believe apples are forever apples, then consider it in your digestive tract or just consider an entirely different object. There are multiple examples like this that could demonstrate the same point. One example: What is the transition state of a person when they go from jogging to running? Or when does the jogging begin to become a run? Or is it always a run just less so than could be? The essence of each question asks for a boundary, a limitation, a definition. There are disagreements on this, but the fact is, it is easy for a person to distinguish someone in a full-fledged run from someone who is simply jogging. And yet, people disagree on this as well. The fact is, knowledge is limited to such definitions. And yet, we don't have a definition of "jogging" or "running" that is consistent amongst all people. What we do possess are similar enough ideas that we can communicate. That is why you can understand what I am saying to a certain degree despite the fact that you neither share my perspective nor possess the exact same idea, or at least, that's what I assume.
======================
Nowlos
----------------------
Sandstorm
A definition of knowledge was presented in Limitation of Knowledge that seems to be the most common one shared by people, but the definition is described in such a way that only the current writer of this document understands its intended meaning. (In the future, I will have probably forgotten the meaning of that phrase, even if I know the principle behind it.) Rather than altering this definition, I propose letting it (or whatever definition of knowledge you currently do have) remain unchanged. I do this not only to avoid conflict with redefinition of the word, but more appropriately because of the limitation of knowledge.
Psychology has greatly assisted us in understanding the human mind. Through it, we have studied what appear to be cases of insanity, that is, when a person is "out of touch" with reality. In some cases, a person can experience peculiar sensations: feeling, seeing, and hearing things that no one else is, and are thus considered by "normal" people as not representative of reality. However, we find that "normal" people are susceptible to experiencing similar delusions when traveling through the desert without haven eaten for many days. Considering that there is a possibility of everything, it is possible that humanity itself is delusional, or rather, believing things about reality that may be entirely constructs of our minds. The phrase "your mind can play tricks on you" points out the fact that there is a disconnect between our mind and reality. That is, when I see an apple, an apple could be in front of me or I could be dreaming of it. Nevertheless, I see the apple. This brings up an important point. But first, turn your attention to two-dimensional art.
Influence of Art
The realm of art has presented an important aspect about reality: it can be represented in two dimensions. If reality can be represented on a surface with two dimensions, then it should be obviously possible that reality itself might be two-dimensional. Why not? I have yet to find a reasonable answer to this question, even though I continue to believe in three-dimensional space. Reality, regardless of whether reality is two-dimensional or three-dimensional, it appears to act in a manner that we believe is three-dimensional. This, however, does not prove that reality is three-dimensional. Why should it? Why should it not? There seem to be no identifiable boundaries other than our own definitions of things, which may or may not be boundaries, depending on your perspective of reality.
Admittedly, one could assume that the two-dimensional nature of things is invalid, for even "two dimensional" works of art are conveyed through mediums possessing three dimensions. But that is not what is of interest. What we are interested in is the nature of the image to appear as though it had a dimensional aspect that it does not have. If someone drew an apple on a page and "made it look realistic", the apple would appear as though it were as wide in every respect as every other apple even though we believe it is flat. It is this aspect that we find of most interest and that to which have called attention in our comparison of two-dimensional art to reality.
Nowlos
So far, effort has been made to draw to your attention the possibility that the world may not be as you believe it to be. Everything could be just a myth of your mind. Admittedly, this is a discomforting feeling and many people I have spoken with will outright deny it: a response that is expected, especially considering that the human desire to know truth makes anything that would suggest they are far from it seem undesirable. Why even accept such ideas? Doesn't everything work anyways? Once again, we return to the idea of consistency: if something is repeated enough times with the same result, it is deemed as truth or being representative of reality.
What is of interest in this study, then, is not knowledge, but something far more fundamental than knowledge. Something that every human possessing the faculty for is capable of having - a starting ground. In other words, what is being sought by epistemologists and like-minded philosophers: something we "truly know" beyond the shadow of a doubt: truth. We are interested in possessing truth, but knowledge may or may not give it to us. Precisely, we want some connection that relates our ideas to reality. But all we have are the faculty we have been given: our senses.
As a philosopher searching for truth, I am not interested in sub-conscious knowledge - only in conscious knowledge. What I am not aware of is not of interest since I cannot sense it consciously. The good philosophers reading this will note that I have skipped a great deal of debate concerning sub-conscious knowledge and its role. I have done so precisely for the reason of avoiding contestation. If something can be reasonably contested then obviously that something is not an undeniable source of truth. This is particularly true for a blind man: he can deny that anyone else can see simply for the reason that he cannot see. What then is of most interest is that of the senses. Those with the senses cannot reasonably deny them. Granted, it is true that one can deny anything. But to deny something reasonably, the claim of reality that their denial makes must be consistent with reality. Recognize too there is a difference between denying an idea in name and denying an idea in concept. For instance, if someone told their friend that apples were square, orange boxes, the friend would be in disbelief if they believe that apples are round, red fruit. However, if the person were referring to orange boxes by the name of "apple", then whenever they say "apple", to them it means an orange box. I have discovered that this example can be misinterpreted easily, despite the fact that it is closely tied with the idea of different languages. A pattern of sounds may refer to something completely different in one language than it does in another. However, it seems people are more willing to accept this idea only in the context of comparing linguistics than they are in a simple example in their own language. Nevertheless, the problem does occur: various words take on various meanings as they are used. In search of truth, then there must be some way of avoiding having to put it in words, given that words are, as has been shown, rather vague in their definitions.
The point of presenting these limitations on "knowledge", as shown in the ambiguity of definitions words and faultiness of assumptions in perceptions of reality, was to demonstrate that the only truth we can possess (in the raw, undeniable form that philosophers want) is from our senses, specifically through the faculty that bring them about. Note that a person does not need eyes in order to see, but if one does not possess some faculty to bring about sight, then one cannot "see". In the same way, a person cannot hear if they do not have faculty for bringing about the sense, but they do not need ears to hear. By faculty, I do not mean an external mechanism that attaches directly to your brain. Your brain is perfectly capable of generating its own idea of sound. I wish to call to your attention the specific experiences associated with these senses. The experience a person receives from one sense is different from what is experienced with another sense. No one makes the mistake of believing that they heard the sunset when they merely watched the sun setting. The experience is entirely different. One can listen to sounds and visualize the things associated with them, but that visualization is nevertheless distinct from those sounds.
To describe not only the distinction between the experiences from the senses, but also to relate them to truth without conveying the notion that they may be flawed as knowledge is flawed, I have devised the word "Nowlos". Nowlos is similar to knowledge in that it speaks about reality. In contrast to knowledge, it does not imply the possibility of error. Nowlos refers to the experience of each sense. We nowlos that we see, even if we do not know what it is that we see. For example, I may be observing a red apple. I do not necessarily know that what I am seeing is indeed an apple or that it is real. I could be dreaming, I might be staring at a picture, or I could be mistaken about what an apple is (that is, the object in front of me is not the same as what I believe to be true of an apple). I do, however, see an area of red in my vision. I consider this splotch of red to be an apple because it has the shape I expect of an apple whether it be one or not. I nowlos what I see: I see a splotch of red. I cannot make any claim about the splotch of red other than that it is in my vision. The same can be said for that of smell: I nowlos the scent of apple, even if I do not know from what the scent originated. The principle carries over to the other senses, including smell, touch, and taste. There is question over whether we have more senses, particularly time or spiritual sense. Some have contested the sense of time, claiming that we are merely in a constant state. However, to state such is a contradiction in itself: which state are we possessing? Surely what I will learn in five days is not known now, otherwise it would be the time after five days. We are aware of the passing of time, that is, we have faculty for it (or at least some of us do), and thus we nowlos it: we nowlos the change in time, even if we do not know its rate or even what to label it. This brings up an important point: one does not have to have a label for a sense in order to nowlos something from utilizing that sense. That utilization provides nowlos. A person can see even if they do not have a word for "sight". A person can hear and nowlos what they hear even if they have no word or concept of hearing.
The definition of nowlos is deeper than as first presented. Nowlos refers to incontestable experience. For example, we experience differences in sounds. The key of "A" is obviously different than the key of "B" unless you are tone-deaf. Furthermore, it is true that the color of red is different than the color of green unless you are color blind. When the two keys are played together, a non-tone-deaf person can nowlos that there are two different sounds even if they do not know which sounds. This ability diminishes as the two sounds are brought closer in frequency. Until they are the same frequency, a person can nowlos the difference even if they do not notice it. There is thus a difference between noticing (or being aware of something) and nowlos. Where the former is what you can consciously detect, the latter is truth that you possess.
Given that nowlos speaks of truth and reality, there ought to be some questions arising in your mind.
First, what about those who are insane, or out of touch with reality, particularly those who see things that no one else sees. In such cases, each of these people does nowlos what they see. That is truth. However, what they nowlos will probably not help them outside of their bodies. (I can conceive of ways that it would, but all of which are special cases.) In other words, they do not nowlos anything in the world outside of the confines of their mind. Of course, neither do we, but at least we seem to have a functional, consistent model of what's going on.
The second question you might ask is if we have other senses. If we are not consciously aware of the sense, we probably do not know anything from it even if we nowlos it. There are two senses that I did not discuss, 1) because discussion of them is ambiguous, 2) because they are not necessarily senses in the ordinary sense of the word, no pun intended. One of these two is that of thought. We nowlos that we think, even if we do not know what we are thinking about. We do not have to visualize things, we merely are connecting ideas. We do not have to understand anything about those ideas; we just happen to nowlos that there are distinct things passing through our minds. These things we call "ideas". The other "sense" that we may possess is that of another realm. We may have many such senses, and I leave room for that possibility, but we are not as aware of them as we are the aforementioned. We do not nowlos that there are other senses, much less know that there are, but if we do possess them, we can nowlos things from them.
One last thing to note is that a sense can be lost. When such is the case, one can no longer obtain nowlos from that sense.
Extending Nowlos
What if one could nowlos the physical, that is, not just nowlos that they see and nowlos that they see color but nowlos what it is they see. This is not only beyond merely knowing aspects of an object, such as its dimensions or whether it tangible, but beyond asking for an innate sense of knowledge of an object. Someone already beat me to the best word for the term. It is called "grokking", though I'm afraid this particular word is not understood the same way that I have in mind. Nevertheless, it generally conveys the idea: that one possesses the raw truth about something, not merely an understanding of it.
Philosophical Coverage
I began exploring philosophy at age 18. It spawned out of my desire to prove the existence of God beyond the shadow of a doubt. That turned out to be a silly idea for a multitude of reasons, primarily beginning with the problem of defining "God", which isn't possible if one wishes to speak of the real one, and ending with the fact that nothing can be proven. I am not, however, agnostic - if I was to even accept agnosticism on the basis of philosophy, I would feel compelled to go the whole extent of denying the elements of reality were any bit distinguishable (which they are, as I intend to explain).
Epistemology is a very interesting subject. Yes, anyone can appreciate it once they understand it. However, I have yet to see someone put it in layman's terms. Therefore, I bestow on myself that task. This post will begin what will probably be a long series of posts to explain epistemology in understandable terms. As you read, you will probably have objections, but hopefully, you will have more questions, a sign that you are actually understanding what I'm saying and not just basing your interpretation of my words off of your first impression.
For speaking about epistemology, I've chosen a simple outline. It is important that, in examining my posts, you follow the logic pattern in the order of the outline. Note that by no means does this say that the subsequent posts will be in this order. Rather, I will select from these topics and proceed to develop what I've said about them. I would prefer that you "get the gist" of what I'm saying than trying to remember my exact words since the way I phrase things will probably not be how you are accustomed to seeing them (and the idea you perceive after reading each sentence will probably not be what I had in mind when I wrote it).
The outline I have chosen is as follows:
> Introduction to the topic
> Philosophical Chaos
> Practical applications
> What we can trust
Introduction to the topic
Articles in this category are meant to begin explaining philosophy and epistemology. Commonly-used terminology will be explained. Furthermore, the origins of philosophy (including examinations of ancient philosophical ideas, how they may have been developed, and what their implications are) will be presented.
Philosophical Chaos
Articles in this category are designed to explain the concept of what I call "philosophical chaos", an idea that describes the lack of truth and definition of things. It accounts for why proof of things is impossible and arguments can go either way. The implications of philosophical chaos and the consequences of its implications will be explored in articles discussing it.
Practical applications
The articles will attempt to present the practical applications of epistemology and philosophical chaos. These articles may also cover the abuses of epistemology, including both how people speak negatively about it and how people have misused it.
What we can trust
These articles will present ideas against having a purely existentialistic or nihilistic point of view. They will also present ideas that counter the applicability of philosophical chaos to the real world. In other words, there is such a thing as absolute truth. The concept of nowlos will be explored but only as much as it can be.
Epistemology is a very interesting subject. Yes, anyone can appreciate it once they understand it. However, I have yet to see someone put it in layman's terms. Therefore, I bestow on myself that task. This post will begin what will probably be a long series of posts to explain epistemology in understandable terms. As you read, you will probably have objections, but hopefully, you will have more questions, a sign that you are actually understanding what I'm saying and not just basing your interpretation of my words off of your first impression.
For speaking about epistemology, I've chosen a simple outline. It is important that, in examining my posts, you follow the logic pattern in the order of the outline. Note that by no means does this say that the subsequent posts will be in this order. Rather, I will select from these topics and proceed to develop what I've said about them. I would prefer that you "get the gist" of what I'm saying than trying to remember my exact words since the way I phrase things will probably not be how you are accustomed to seeing them (and the idea you perceive after reading each sentence will probably not be what I had in mind when I wrote it).
The outline I have chosen is as follows:
> Introduction to the topic
> Philosophical Chaos
> Practical applications
> What we can trust
Introduction to the topic
Articles in this category are meant to begin explaining philosophy and epistemology. Commonly-used terminology will be explained. Furthermore, the origins of philosophy (including examinations of ancient philosophical ideas, how they may have been developed, and what their implications are) will be presented.
Philosophical Chaos
Articles in this category are designed to explain the concept of what I call "philosophical chaos", an idea that describes the lack of truth and definition of things. It accounts for why proof of things is impossible and arguments can go either way. The implications of philosophical chaos and the consequences of its implications will be explored in articles discussing it.
Practical applications
The articles will attempt to present the practical applications of epistemology and philosophical chaos. These articles may also cover the abuses of epistemology, including both how people speak negatively about it and how people have misused it.
What we can trust
These articles will present ideas against having a purely existentialistic or nihilistic point of view. They will also present ideas that counter the applicability of philosophical chaos to the real world. In other words, there is such a thing as absolute truth. The concept of nowlos will be explored but only as much as it can be.
Blog revival
It's been a long time since I've posted on this blog. I've learned more about life, philosophy, and theology in that time, so some of this stuff has become outdated. Surprisingly, my philosophical wanderings haven't changed so much. Expect to see in this blog more philosophical musings as well as thoughts concerning interesting topics in theology and religion. Note that this blog is confined to ideas that have been well thought out as opposed to being recent news.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
The Song of Losoam
(written Aug 28, 2010)
==================
I peeked into a universe
where creatures don't understand
their universe like gelatin
their memory like sand.
I became thankful
that I know my God above
who comforts and teaches
by His everlasting love.
They needed a God so loving
so caring and so kind
but none could be found for them
in whose love they could reside.
The greatest mystery for me
was why they did exist.
They had no memory to tell of
by what cause they came to be.
To their world I gave a name
the mournful land of Losoam
and gave to them the title
of the creatures of Losoam.
I find no words to express
their pitiful estate
save to express in every sense
how no silence they could break.
They had no mouth to speak
no ears to hear a sound
no hands to clap or signal
to eyes they did not have.
But of all the things to notice
this one was important
that they had no understanding
but possessed a consciouness.
Their fate was forboding;
no future did they have.
The past was all forgotten,
the present now at hand.
Without a fear or worry
should be their lot in life;
yet they feared so immensely
their lack of purpose or plan.
Within them an emptiness,
a black pit of dispair:
no hope, no dreams, no pleasures
no reason for them to care.
How they longed for something,
I cannot even describe.
Their thoughts like ours vaguely;
they actually had minds.
One of them spoke out
to me who could hear.
With newly-granted voice he spoke;
this purpose was it for:
He sang to me a song:
the Song of Sad Losoam;
about their ever-forsaking god
who left them all alone:
Weep, weep
gone HE is
our one and only.
No one to care
no one to share
no love to all of us.
Fear, doubt, loneliness;
we fear the loneliness.
Emptiness without HIM;
no HIM to make us whole.
Dependent we are upon HIM.
HE made this vast expanse.
HE placed us in this space;
HE put us in emptiness.
Oh our hearts, our empty hearts;
nothing will us fill.
Lack we understanding;
freedom we do not know.
Then turn to me it did,
a creature of fear and woe.
To me he gave this command
that I must always obey:
Give thanks to your God
who reigns in heaven above
and bestowed on you the blessings
that come from faithful love.
I reflect upon this journey
into the Losoam land
and gratefulness fills my heart
to God for all He's planned.
No ignorance have I
in matters I should know:
not a type of omniscience
but enough to seek Him so.
No separation from God,
lest it be by my choice;
but not now that I know God,
who gave me this voice.
==================
I peeked into a universe
where creatures don't understand
their universe like gelatin
their memory like sand.
I became thankful
that I know my God above
who comforts and teaches
by His everlasting love.
They needed a God so loving
so caring and so kind
but none could be found for them
in whose love they could reside.
The greatest mystery for me
was why they did exist.
They had no memory to tell of
by what cause they came to be.
To their world I gave a name
the mournful land of Losoam
and gave to them the title
of the creatures of Losoam.
I find no words to express
their pitiful estate
save to express in every sense
how no silence they could break.
They had no mouth to speak
no ears to hear a sound
no hands to clap or signal
to eyes they did not have.
But of all the things to notice
this one was important
that they had no understanding
but possessed a consciouness.
Their fate was forboding;
no future did they have.
The past was all forgotten,
the present now at hand.
Without a fear or worry
should be their lot in life;
yet they feared so immensely
their lack of purpose or plan.
Within them an emptiness,
a black pit of dispair:
no hope, no dreams, no pleasures
no reason for them to care.
How they longed for something,
I cannot even describe.
Their thoughts like ours vaguely;
they actually had minds.
One of them spoke out
to me who could hear.
With newly-granted voice he spoke;
this purpose was it for:
He sang to me a song:
the Song of Sad Losoam;
about their ever-forsaking god
who left them all alone:
Weep, weep
gone HE is
our one and only.
No one to care
no one to share
no love to all of us.
Fear, doubt, loneliness;
we fear the loneliness.
Emptiness without HIM;
no HIM to make us whole.
Dependent we are upon HIM.
HE made this vast expanse.
HE placed us in this space;
HE put us in emptiness.
Oh our hearts, our empty hearts;
nothing will us fill.
Lack we understanding;
freedom we do not know.
Then turn to me it did,
a creature of fear and woe.
To me he gave this command
that I must always obey:
Give thanks to your God
who reigns in heaven above
and bestowed on you the blessings
that come from faithful love.
I reflect upon this journey
into the Losoam land
and gratefulness fills my heart
to God for all He's planned.
No ignorance have I
in matters I should know:
not a type of omniscience
but enough to seek Him so.
No separation from God,
lest it be by my choice;
but not now that I know God,
who gave me this voice.
Monday, November 29, 2010
The Impossibility of Proving - a basic summary
It is impossible to prove that something is true in an absolute sense, that is, prove it is innately true. To do so would first require that the mechanisms or arguments used in the proof do indeed lead to truth. However, that requires that those mechanisms or arguments, used to show the former mechanisms or arguments are true, be shown to lead to truth. Ad infinitum. At some point, we may even question whether the idea of proving leads to truth, yet that is not in question because the definition of proving is the assembling of mechanisms or arguments to reveal truth. However, that in no way means that there are mechanisms or arguments that will lead to truth (for reasons given above). We cannot even be sure that the mechanisms or arguments are innately true themselves.
If something were innately true, we would not have to prove that it were true because we would know it innately. This is true with the senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and such. Though the blind and the deaf may not see or hear, it does not nullify the fact that it is true that the person reading this sees and possibly hears. I may be the only person who exists to experience such sensations, yet the person reading this might make the same claim. I cannot prove that they experience them, though it does not nullify the fact if they do. Likewise, I experience the sensations and someone else cannot prove that I do not, however, they are unable to prove the fact to themselves, the fact being that I experience such sensations. To them, I speak what they think is only true for them and thus they make think that I speak merely myth. Somehow, that is quite unlikely, thus if someone reads this and contemplates on the notion that I might not be capable of any sensations, they ought to reconsider the idea - for if I write these things, it does not prove that I can experience some sensations, but there is great evidence for another soul in the world like them.
Friday, October 29, 2010
What Matters
Consider two atoms moving back and forth. Does God truly care about the fact that those atoms are moving or how they move? There are two answers, and both are correct. First: Yes, but only inasmuch as the atoms play a role in affecting a person's life. By God's divine control, all of the complications of reality sum up in such a way that every particle plays an important role in affecting choice of the free will of each and every person in the universe. Hence, each particle is significant in that respect. The second answer: No. Particles are only a medium through which God conveys His love and we convey our love to God (via acts directed to please Him, especially such acts of loving neighbor). The motion of these particles is irrelevant. With respect to how I perform an act of love, God does not care if I move particular molecules of air around someone in order to perform the act of hugging or if I move the molecules of air a quarter inch above the other molecules in order to perform the same action. To summarize, in and of themselves, particle motion is meaningless or without significance.
Amongst theists, there are various points of view as to how God created the human race. Did God do things exactly according to a literal, six-24-hour-day interpretation of Genesis, or did it God use a more gradual process, perhaps macro-scale evolution? The answer to this question is hidden within the reason as to why God made the universe in the first place.
See "for-love-of-humanity".
So if God created humanity for their love, why would He watch the world build itself up, even if does seem instantaneous to Him? Why wouldn't God get started on what is significant immediately? Critics have commented that they don't like to put-thoughts-in-God's-mind, so-to-speak, implying that I might be doing so. Honestly, I am in a sense, but this is not because I think I know God inside out, but because we CAN know what God has revealed to us about Himself. It is not putting-a-thought-in-God's head to quote First John and say that God is loving and loving leads to self-sacrifice ("This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." - 1 Jn 4:10). Hence, since God is Love, it is not wrong to have certain expectations of that love. For example, love considers the beloved significant. Everything else is not necessarily insignificant, unless it has no meaning to the lover apart from the beloved. Hence, considering all this and the fact that the motion of the particles is meaningless, it is impossible to conclude that anything besides humanity is worth occupying God's attention before humanity's creation. Thus, the ideas of macro-evolution (in which creation progresses towards the point of humanity) or even six-24-hour-day creation are absurd theologically-speaking. It would make more sense for God to do everything instantaneously.
Concerning macro-evolution and six-24-hour-day creation, there are problems with each.
First, macro-evolution relies purely on scientific arguments. Instead of relying on God to instantaneously do His will, the viewpoint attempts to conform religion with science, essentially putting God in a box where the idea of God becomes the well-criticized model of "the god of the gaps". There are also some people who may take a different viewpoint and say that God was taking pleasure in forming creation. However, once again, forming creation is essentially the meaningless motion of particles. How long would God, an eternal being of infinite patience and creativity, "watch" His creation take shape via the meaningless motion of particles? It might be argued that, in this case, the motion of the particles is not meaningless since it is building up for the human race. However, this argument is flawed in that it fails to realize that God, when He instantaneously creates something, can arrange the particles in the exact setup they need to be in and with the exact speeds they need to have in order to fulfill the exact same role as if they had a 60 billion year head start. When "God saw that it was good" (various verses in Genesis 1 say this), it does not necessarily mean that God's creation was now an enjoyable thing to watch for its own sake. On the contrary, it simply points to the fact that God instilled Himself in His work, and He is thus visible in it. Notice that it never says, "God delighted in His creation" in the accounts of creation.
The 24-hour-day creation has similar problems. First is the time delay, which has already been accounted for. Second is the indescriptive nature of the word "day". The original word in Hebrew is "yom", meaning some indeterminate time period: anywhere from a moment to however long you wanted; it does not specifically mean "day". The word is used for "day" occasionally, but remember that the Hebrews only knew of a "day" with respect to the sun. A day for them could just refer to the morning hours (6 AM to 6 PM), and not restricted to 24 hours. Considering that Genesis is written to the Hebrews who would have interpreted "day" in that way, it would seem peculiar that the first "day" of creation would be over before the earth (dry ground) even existed, since light was created first.
In conclusion, there is little or no Biblical evidence to support either the macro-evolution hypothesis or the six-24-hour-day creation. What is most probable is that God instantly created everything.
For the Love of Humanity
God, who is love itself, decided, in His divine wisdom, to expand His community of love that existed between the three persons of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This extension was meant to include free wills, like Himself, and thus made in His image and likeness. This being His objective, God created humanity, people, each person possessing a free will like Himself. Being an act of God, creation is an act of love. God did not create free wills to be subjected to Him, but rather, free wills must be truly free. To be part of God and become one with Him in order to enjoy existence in the Divine Trinity's community of love, each free will must willingly love God - choose God and pursue of Him - in order to share in His nature. Free wills in the realm of eternity make a single, eternal choice that cannot be altered. In this respect, all of the angels of God who choose to follow Satan had chosen to disobey God from the moment of their creation, and all of those who choose obedience remained with God. In order that it would be possible for the free will of each person to change from evil to good, that is, to choose God, supposing that the free wills would first chose evil, God created humanity to exist within the framework of finite time.
Love from the free will is God's desire from people, considering that He wants to bring us into His divine community of love. This gives people significance in the eyes of God, and for no other reason than humanity did God create anything. In order that His creation might communicate love for Him or rejection of Him, God created the physical universe as a medium through which love can be conveyed. The medium in and of itself is meaningless (physical matter and motion are meaningless), bearing no significance that is not in relation to human persons. This being so, God had no need to form it in a state of less-than-complete before the formation of humanity. That is, God did not create a universe that needed to build humanity for God, whether directed by His divine guidance or not. Instead, God instantaneously began His work of significance by creating humans. By His divine patience, God waited for the progression in finite time of humanity's decision to love or reject Him. In hope, the servants of God waited for God to reveal His promised act of restoration, the death of Himself in His Son, an act already at work since the fall of man. At every moment, God calls men to Himself, yet they are free from the moment of bodily conception to choose to love Him or reject Him. It is when they have grown to an appropriate age are they fully capable of an informed decision concerning God and fully responsible for the choice they make.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Theology of Nothingness
From my stack of random musings...
Sunday, September 19, 2010
10:45 PM
When there is true nothingness to work with, there is philosophical chaos, that is, indescribable pure contradiction. From this, God used logic, His Word, His Truth, Jesus Christ, His Son to form the definition of existence with His wisdom, as given through the Holy Spirit. Hence, that which exists was created from nothingness by God the Father, through the Son, and with the Holy Spirit.
Now since God is good, and therefore that which has God in it or sustaining its existence it is good, that which does not have God in it or sustaining its existence (save God Himself) is not good. That which is not good must then be evil. There cannot be anything less than a dichotomy between the two, for God is either in it and/or sustaining it or He is not in it and/or sustaining it. Hence, all things are either good or evil. Indeed, all creation in and of itself is good, since God sustains its existence. Now whether or not it is morally good, that is, complying with God's law, is irrelevant. This particular quality or property applies to the physical realm, which is entirely good because God made it to be so (a direct result of Him creating it). Therefore, anything that exists and any motion that is in the physical realm is good. However, such acts are neither good nor evil with respect to morals. Moral goodness is on a different plane than natural goodness.
Moral goodness is spiritual goodness, that is, having God in oneself spiritual. From the fall of man, sin came into the world, not to remove its physical goodness (as though that were even possible) but to remove its spiritual goodness. When sin entered the world, goodness, by natural definition, left the world, and hence sin entered. Sin, in its essential form, is evil. Rather, it is the act of evil, which is synonymous with motion. However, it is notable that particles in the physical universe are a peculiar unity of matter (substance) and energy (ability to generate motion). Therefore, it is not impossible to imagine that term "sin" (motion/act of evil) correlate with the term "evil" (lack of the substance of divinity in the spiritual realm). The overlapping of the meanings of "sin", "evil", and "death" are thence inseparable. This is not surprising, since God, who is life, would have left this world (or rather, the world left Him since He does not move due to His absoluteness) and sin entered it. If then God, who is life, is gone from the world, death has entered.
The most peculiar relationship, however, is the philosophical relationship between philosophical chaos and evil. The two are almost entirely synonymous, since evil is derived from philosophical chaos. The nature of philosophical chaos is pure contradiction: something is both true and not true, existing and not existing. Truth itself is and yet is not. The surprising attribute about this fact is that from philosophical chaos there can, with divine logic, spawn something that is both truth and existing. That is, the Logos of God (the Word, or Logic) of God, which is Truth itself, can imbed itself into this philosophical chaos and cause it to be in conformity with itself: that is, force this contradiction to become truth and to exist. Thus, in this manner, God sustains the universe. This is true if nothingness, from which God created the universe, is itself philosophical chaos. Yet how could it be anything else, unless God made the universe out of Himself (which is certainly not the cause, or else He would have been making it out of something). Nothingness itself is the absence of everything, including God. And if God is not in nothingness, than neither is anything belonging to His nature, especially truth, divine logic, and existence. If something does not have truth or anything else as part of its essence, it is, by definition, philosophical chaos and nothingness. Furthermore, to speak of it as though it had truth is a lie. And a lie is evil. Hence, all of the words describing the absence of God are linked, one deriving another: evil and sin are the spiritual forms of nothingness and philosophical chaos; lies and darkness (in the spiritual sense of the term, considering that God is in glory, which is spiritual light) are the spiritual forms of the absence of truth. The words "evil" and "sin" are describing particularly that spiritual absence of God not the physical absence of Him. The entrance of evil is the soul's (or object's) departure from the spiritual world as sustained by God. This departure leaves an emptiness in man. Considering that the spiritual world as sustained by God did not exist before Creation, and then came to be, it was evil that was swallowed up, just as philosophical chaos was. Thus, it is logical to say that God created the spiritual realm (universe) out of evil, and then "God saw that it was good."
Theology of the Body - the Love in Holy Communion
Monday, July 12, 2010
10:49 PM
Why did Jesus Christ institute the Eucharist ("Thanksgiving")/Holy Communion? The purpose was not necessarily to fulfill the Old Testament prefigurements since it was their duty only to prefigure the things God had planned, from the beginning, to institute.
Recognizing, then, that God is Love, the Eucharist is a manifestation of God's love. The Eucharist, Holy Communion, is called a sacrament because it is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. From "Theology of the Body - the Resurrection" (by Nicolaus Anderson, 12 July 2010):
"Notice that the actions in the physical universe are, in fact, meaningless were it not for the meaning given to them by the spiritual realities. Thus, all of the sacraments have meaning, but not in meaning merely in relation to human free will. What is meant by 'in relation to human free will' is this: That the spiritual meaning of something is a direct consequence of human choice. The Mosaic Law is of this sort. (In Romans 7:4-25) Paul emphasizes how sin gained power through the Law. Before the Law, how could man be accountable for unrighteousness save because of the Law written on his own heart? If man did not have the Law written on his heart, nor had he received the Law in writing, man would not be accountable for his physical actions as to the breaking of the Law. It is not the physical actions that matter, but it is the heart...
"Nevertheless, God has chosen to give the physical meaning through the spiritual. He does this in a variety of ways: through the Mosaic Law, through the human body, and through the sacraments."
It is logical that God, who gives spiritual meaning to the physical, would be willing to continue to apply meaning to it. There are several reasons why it is good that God does this. All that God does concerning the application of spiritual meaning to the physical is for people. This medium (that is, the physical) is used by people in order to communicate their love or hatred of God and to receive or reject the love that God gives to them freely. The physical is a medium that is perfect in every way for allowing communication between people and God. Communication can occur via a variety of physical actions. Such actions include prayer, which indicates trust in God, and sin, which indicates rejection of God in various degrees (i.e. rejecting the presence of God, distrust in God, hatred of the commands of God, or forgetfulness of God).
Most of the physical actions of communication are done with the movement of body in forms other than speech. In fact, much more can be communicated through the body than through speech. By identifying the posture or stance of a person's body, it is possible to identify if a person is in a state of reclusiveness versus gentle surrender, undisclosed anger versus composure, and so forth. God instilled in human beings such nature to reveal themselves in this way so that they might better communicate with each other and Him. When God came down as Jesus, He used a great deal of body language that is only described to a certain extent by the writers of the Gospels. The writers did not have to record such body language in great detail because Jesus either told them what He had on His mind or He revealed it in His actions, such as His acts of love. (For example, the Gospel writers say that Jesus felt compassion for people, a compassion He revealed in His many miracles of healing, not necessarily verbally.)
The Eucharist, Holy Communion, is a device of the continuation of the communication of God, as well as a device of surrender. It is a device because it is a tool used by God in the same way that the hand is a tool to a human. On the night He was betrayed, "Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, 'Take it; this is my body.' Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. 'This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,' He said to them." (Mark 14:22-24)
In each sacrament, there is something being surrendered: In baptism, it is surrender of the right to seek one's own way in life. In marriage, it is the right to one's personal control of their own body and soul. In the Eucharist, it is God's surrender of His own Body and Blood.
God, in order that we might be more in Him and He in us, offers Himself to us out of love. The Eucharist is a direct consequence of God's love for us. It is, in itself, not a demand to humans, as baptism is. On the contrary, the Eucharist is an offering of God to generate a Holy Communion between His people and Himself. He, as a lover, is surrendering Himself to His people, just as any spouse does. The Eucharist, as the words of Jesus declare, is Jesus Himself in physical form, body in blood. The flesh and blood are not as we ordinarily think of as flesh and blood, but that begs the question, "What is flesh and blood?"
To demonstrate this point, consider your hand. Your hand is part of you. The most important criteria for something to be your body are these: it must be attached to you or your body, it must be interacting with the rest of your body in the functions of life to produce life, and it must be alive. Slugs are alive, but whether or not they are attached to your body is irrelevant since they do not interact with your body in the functions of life. Perhaps that which is closest to interacting with the functions of life in your body, and yet is not part of your body, is a pathogen. It, too, is alive, but it is not attached your body nor is it producing life. Finally, dirt may be attached to your body, and though it may be ingested into your digestive system, it nevertheless will find its way back out, and it is not alive. To be part of your body, something must be attached to you or your body, interacting with your body to generate life, and must be alive. Skin fulfills these criteria easily.
Thus, God, who is all powerful and all wise, is capable of making grape juice and crackers part of His Body (making them the Eucharist) every Sunday. Yet the question remains: Why?
Consider the attributes of bread and grape juice. Both are edible. Yet God did not pick carrots and dip. The color of the bread and wine seem more like human flesh and blood, but God could have picked a variety of foods if that was the case. Perhaps because these are symbolic in ways other foods are not, God decided that these were the perfect consumables. However, that does not explain His intention of having food in the first place, and perhaps examining God's purposes for it will reveal exactly why these specific foods were chosen.
By offering Himself as food, allows for the greatest and most widespread communication between Himself and people. Through the Eucharist, God can be given to everyone wherever they are at. No longer do people have to seek the man body of Jesus in order to see and communicate with Jesus physically. People, each in his own time, can meet with Jesus and worship Him in the body and blood, or they can desecrate His Body in the most horrid ways. Bread and wine allow for certain methods of physical manipulation that allow humans to show a great (though not total) extent of their love or hatred for him in ways that would otherwise be impossible if Jesus came down only as a human being.
The most important way that humans communicate their love for God via the Eucharist is by eating it. By eating the Body of Christ and drinking His blood, they allow God to offer Himself to them physically, in a world they understand. They accept God's surrendering of His Body at the same time they offer the Eucharist back to God as a holy and living sacrifice in themselves and for themselves (as for payment for their sins). In the Eucharist, then, God's people can truly say "Thank you" to God for His offering of Himself to them. Because this is an offering of love by God to His people, it would be considered an insult to God to not accept Him into one's body, as if God's physical body was not good enough or one is not willing to surrender one's uniqueness apart from Christ (to become more intimate with him). By accepting the Eucharist into one's own body, the person has taken God into their physical body and they become every bit more a part of the Body of Christ.
"...my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one load, we, who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf." (1 Cor 10:14-17)
The Eucharist is the ultimate offering of God's love to His children: He offers His body to them and for them. They may do with it as they wish, just as they may do with the free gift of salvation as they wish since the two are directly related. The Eucharist, being the ultimate offering of God's love to His people, is a manifestation of the crucifixion of Christ. Indeed, it is the crucified body of the risen Lord, since the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord transcends time and space, extended throughout all time and cleansing the world of all sins in the past, present, and future. The Son of God, present in the Eucharist, is the ultimate offering of God to His people to offer back to Himself for the payment of sins. As such, God is both the Just Judge and the Ever Provider for His people.
Now because the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, consequences can arise from taking it in an unworthy manner. If a person is aware of their sin and seeks no forgiveness and yet tries to eat the Eucharist, they disrespect God by not cleansing their self for, as a member of the Church, they are the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
"For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself." (1 Cor 11:26-29)
Yet it must be asked, what is necessary? For if a man dies without taking the Eucharist, can he still be saved? - Of course! Remember always that God looks at the heart of the man and not at his physical accomplishments. It is reasonable to assume that a man seeking God would be willing to partake of the Eucharist if he had known of the necessity of doing so as well as the meaning behind it. Furthermore, it is not necessary that both species (that is, the Body and Blood) be taken, since both are equally part of God. Of course, what if a person finds their self in the bizarre scenario where they are allergic to both wheat and grapes? In such a case, it may be quite likely that God will not require them to eat the Eucharist. Why should He put their health in danger in order to be accepted by them? If He did, He might be a very selfish god.
In conclusion, the Eucharist is a wonderful gift of love from God to His church. By accepting it, we accept more of God into our lives. Our eating of it communicates to God our acceptance of Him in a physical way, even better than if we had confessed to God with sincere hearts that we love Him more than anything else in the world. And that is what He wants: our love in return for His.
Theology of the Body - the Resurrection
Monday, July 12, 2010
8:41 PM
A sacrament is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. Notice that the actions in the physical universe are, in fact, meaningless were it not for the meaning given to them by the spiritual realities. Thus, all of the sacraments have meaning, but not in meaning merely in relation to human free will. What is meant by "in relation to human free will" is this: That the spiritual meaning of something is a direct consequence of human choice. The Mosaic Law is of this sort. (In Romans 7:4-25) Paul emphasizes how sin gained power through the Law. Before the Law, how could man be accountable for unrighteousness save because of the Law written on his own heart? If man did not have the Law written on his heart, nor had he received the Law in writing, man would not be accountable for his physical actions as to the breaking of the Law. It is not the physical actions that matter, but it is the heart.
"I would not have known what sin was except through the Law... For apart from the Law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful." (Rom 7:7-13)
"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law." (Rom 15:56)
"But sin is not taken into account when there is no law." (Rom 5:13)
Thus, it is the spiritual reality that is important. Nevertheless, God has chosen to give the physical meaning through the spiritual. He does this in a variety of ways: through the Mosaic Law, through the human body, and through the sacraments.
God deemed it necessary to give humans a physical form so that they might interact with a world and each other and recognize themselves as distinct individuals. Yet more than that, God gave humans a particular physical form that He could raise from the dead as He did with His Son. The physical body allows the death and resurrection of all of the faithful, including the Son of God, making it possible for God the Son to complete His mission of love through the crucifixion. The resurrection of the dead is of great importance to Christianity, as the Apostle Paul emphasizes, because it plays a major role in the meaning of the human body and the purification from sin (and escape from the law). If God did not give spiritual value to the physical body of the individual, there would be no purpose for Him to resurrect it or even provide it to human beings at all. For God, who is all powerful, could have made human beings in such manner without the need of a physical body and still would be capable of conveying to humanity His great love through some sort of death and resurrection of His Son. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, discusses the importance of the Resurrection, especially with respect to salvation and eternal life.
"If there has been no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith... And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man." (Rom 15:13,14,17-21)
"But some may ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?' How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as He has determined... So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
"If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: 'The first man Adam became a living being"; the last man Adam [(Jesus)], a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as if the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
"I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. List, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'
" 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?' "
(Rom 15:35,38,42-55)
We see in the last passage that the new man will be different than what he was before. It seems at first that Paul is suggesting that humans' spiritual body will not include their physical body, but then he sums his message by saying "For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality." Before that, in verses 39-41, he says that not all flesh is the same, that "men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another", and he further speaks of the differences in the splendor of the heavenly bodies. Notice that all of these "fleshes" are different, yet all of them are physical.
Recall two important things: First, recall that when Jesus rose from the dead, His physical body was resurrected, but, different from before, His body was now IMPERISHABLE!!
"...Jesus himself stood among them [(the disciples)] and said to them, 'Peace be with you... Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." (Luke 24:36,39)
The second thing to recall is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Their bodies were imperishable, for their was no death, but "sin entered the world though one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned - for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as did Adam." (Rom 5:12-14)
One fascinating aspect of the resurrection is the unity of the physical. Considering the interrelationships between the matter and energy in the physical, as well it the transcendence of time of the existence of particles, it may be possible to better understand the meaning of the physical body as a member of the Church via partly by the unity of the physical universe. That is, at the resurrection of the dead, the righteous may be ever more unified to each other and Jesus because of the unity of the physical. In this way, God fills all things, and in this way, Jesus becomes the first born of many brethren. "For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also GLORIFIED" (emphasis mine) (Rom 8:29-30)
Note that Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren in many respects. (cf. Rom 14:8-9) In Rom 8:29-30, the primary two respects are the glorification after the resurrection ("...He also glorified") and possibly the change in character, both of which can be seen in "conformed to the likeness of His Son" (for the resurrection, this means a new, glorified body and immortality; for character, this means righteousness). The surrounding context of the passage is encouragement of the saints ("we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom 8:23)), which seems to suggest Paul is referring to the former idea (glorified body via resurrection).
One of the sacraments that Jesus instituted is baptism. This sacrament is a physical act of being immersed in water, and it is symbolic of the dying and rising again with Christ as well as purification of the soul. In the Jordan River, Jesus, before He is baptized by John, says, "It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." (Matt 3:15) Part of the spiritual meaning in baptism is found in the purification of the soul that occurs when the person is baptized. ALL sin is removed from the person (cf. Acts 2:38), and thus the sins are "washed away", not by the water itself (since the physical is meaningless without the spiritual), but by God reacting to the consent of the baptized who are willing to follow Him. The sacrament of baptism unifies a person with Christ, and they are thus unified with Him in His death and resurrection, as the Apostle Paul declares:
"...don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just a Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once and for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God." (Rom 6:3-10) (cf. Col 2:12)
The unity with Christ results in unity in Christ with all of God's sons and daughters. Thus we become part of the Body of Christ, the Church, with Christ as its head.
"...for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:27-28)
"For we were all baptized by (by/with/in) one Spirit into one body - whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." (1 Cor 12:13)
Baptism is a necessary part of salvation (cf. John 3:5), especially since it is a uniting with Christ in His death and resurrection. From time to time, however, some people may die without having received baptism. Yet God does not judge according to physical accomplishments (recalling that the physical is meaningless without the spiritual) but judges men by their hearts. Thus, those in pursuit of God who die without baptism can be supposed as having a willingness of heart to have partaken in the sacrament should they have known of its necessity. To show that it is only the heart that matters, God chose to poor out the Holy Spirit upon those in Cornelius' house who believed even though they had not yet been baptized (see Acts 10, esp. Acts 11:16).
Finally, the Lord Jesus commands His disciples to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19).
In conclusion to the matter, baptism is a spiritual uniting with Christ. All of the sacraments lead a person closer to being united with Christ and thus more with the Church. The sacraments are not just symbols, but they actually do things spiritually. Nevertheless, they all require the physical, and through them, God gives the physical more meaning. In baptism, water maybe symbolic of life, yet, in order to be baptized, a person must be baptized in water, indicating that the physical form/molecules of water are significant, that is, have meaning to all that baptism does.
The result of baptism is a new creation, one that is freed from sin. Nevertheless, temptation still reigns in the body, though it cannot harm the person unless they submit to it. It is still possible for a person to sin, and death still reigns in the members of one's physical body. At the resurrection, such will change. The freedom from slavery to sin will be accompanied by the freedom from death, and death shall be the last enemy to be defeated. From the grave shall spring forth new life in the glorified bodies of the righteous. And the faithful will ascend to God in their glorified physical bodies, now clothed in immortality for all eternity.
The Necessity of Love
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
11:05 PM
Suppose your memory were entirely wiped. Where would your faith in God be much less your concept of Him? Would you, on Judgment Day, still be held accountable for not having faith in God? Quite the opposite is true! You are required to love God. How can you? Innately in every man there is some idea of God, regardless of whether man can express that idea in words or symbols or not express it. Furthermore, there is innate in every man the knowledge of the moral law that tells a man what is good and right. Can a man forget such things? Is it not true that God has ingrained in man's mind such truths? Or rather, is it not true that if a man's soul is headed towards the Lord, then the Lord will lead the man back to truth. Since it is possible that a man whose memory is lost may never hear of God again or even learn a language again, God will surely be just and not count it against that man for having lack of knowledge. thus, knowledge from the outset is clearly not what God is seeking from man.
What is God seeking from humans? It must be that which man can offer God at every moment: the choice of his free will. How can a man choose God if he has forgotten who God is? - By loving his neighbor. If you love your neighbor, you are indeed loving God because God is love. Only those who have knowledge are required to do more because they have been given the capability of doing more. Thus, these extra acts, as they could be termed, are ways that gifted (or blessed) people can deepen in their relationship with God and love Him. Having faith in God; being baptized; partaking of the Eucharist; all of these are acts of loving God. Loving your neighbor is an act of loving God; that is why God did not put us in a universe alone. We are not on a planet full of people merely as a consequence of human reproduction, for if it were necessary, God could have created a new universe for every human soul that came into existence. On the contrary, God placed us an a planet with other people in order that we could love and be loved by other people, and in so doing, love and be loved by God.
11:05 PM
Suppose your memory were entirely wiped. Where would your faith in God be much less your concept of Him? Would you, on Judgment Day, still be held accountable for not having faith in God? Quite the opposite is true! You are required to love God. How can you? Innately in every man there is some idea of God, regardless of whether man can express that idea in words or symbols or not express it. Furthermore, there is innate in every man the knowledge of the moral law that tells a man what is good and right. Can a man forget such things? Is it not true that God has ingrained in man's mind such truths? Or rather, is it not true that if a man's soul is headed towards the Lord, then the Lord will lead the man back to truth. Since it is possible that a man whose memory is lost may never hear of God again or even learn a language again, God will surely be just and not count it against that man for having lack of knowledge. thus, knowledge from the outset is clearly not what God is seeking from man.
What is God seeking from humans? It must be that which man can offer God at every moment: the choice of his free will. How can a man choose God if he has forgotten who God is? - By loving his neighbor. If you love your neighbor, you are indeed loving God because God is love. Only those who have knowledge are required to do more because they have been given the capability of doing more. Thus, these extra acts, as they could be termed, are ways that gifted (or blessed) people can deepen in their relationship with God and love Him. Having faith in God; being baptized; partaking of the Eucharist; all of these are acts of loving God. Loving your neighbor is an act of loving God; that is why God did not put us in a universe alone. We are not on a planet full of people merely as a consequence of human reproduction, for if it were necessary, God could have created a new universe for every human soul that came into existence. On the contrary, God placed us an a planet with other people in order that we could love and be loved by other people, and in so doing, love and be loved by God.
The Justice of God
It is often said that God is loving but He is also just, as if the two were entirely separate ideas. This notion is false for two reasons. First, it is wrong philosophically because it insists that God has an element contrary to His nature. For if God is Love, how can He also be just? Second, the notion can be shown wrong in actuality when justice is examined in light of love. The conclusion of this examination reveals that justice is both compatible with love (as the notion allows) and also stems from it (as the notion does not allow).
When God created Adam, He made man a person, a being with a free will. A person has the ability to choose. Whatever is set before the soul for the free will to pick and choose is a subject for a different discussion. What only matters here is the fact that man can choose to love God or not love Him. Ultimately, this is the only aspect of man's choices that God actually cares about. God does not care if the choice of a man will make him rich and famous or poor and unknown, though out of love for the man, God may manipulate the situation of a man for his own benefit. God cares for every single person He has made, and He wants everyone to love Him and every other human being. Everything that happens in a man's life will ultimately be to guide man towards a loving relationship with God. How the man views it and responds to it is entirely determined by the free will of the man. Though God knows the future, He nevertheless allows people to die outside of a state of grace, that is, in sin and on the road to hell. The question as to why He allows them to die at this point can be answered by the idea that the spiritual growth of the person (or their increase or decrease in love towards God) had stopped. At that point in their life, the person was not going to be any different. Maybe they might fluctuate over the course of their life should they have lived longer, but ultimately, they would not have changed. Those whom God allows to live some time longer than this point are probably being kept for a special purpose or purposes. Thus, it is reasonable to see why God allows people to die outside of grace. However, why God sends people to hell is an entirely different question.
God, being a just God, will send people to hell. He will judge them according to what they have done. To those who sought Him and His will in life, He will grant eternal life. Those who sought their own way in life He will send to hell for all of eternity. Why would God not forgive the sins of other people after a finite amount of time in the same way that men do? The answer can be found in examining justice in light of the love of God from the beginning of time. When God planned to create man, He did so because He wanted someone to love and someone to love Him. He did not need man, but He wanted him. However, love demands that it be free. Love cannot be forced from someone. It must be an act of a free will. That is why God gives each person a free will. If a person does not want to be with God, then God, in accordance with the rules of love, will not force that person to be with Him. However, the only thing remaining for the person to have when God allows them to leave is whatever is contrary to God, more specifically, the absence of Love. Since love is the ultimate source of the pleasure humanity so desires, and since God is love, then those who reject God are ultimately rejecting the sole source of happiness their souls are longing for. Thus, the justice of God is the assigning to each person a status based on, not what his or her soul longs for, but what their free will actually choose to pursue. The judgment of God is thus the examination of the life of a person to see if they choose to pursue a loving relationship with God. It is also the enactment of the justice of God. That is, it is the giving of each person what they want.
When God created Adam, He made man a person, a being with a free will. A person has the ability to choose. Whatever is set before the soul for the free will to pick and choose is a subject for a different discussion. What only matters here is the fact that man can choose to love God or not love Him. Ultimately, this is the only aspect of man's choices that God actually cares about. God does not care if the choice of a man will make him rich and famous or poor and unknown, though out of love for the man, God may manipulate the situation of a man for his own benefit. God cares for every single person He has made, and He wants everyone to love Him and every other human being. Everything that happens in a man's life will ultimately be to guide man towards a loving relationship with God. How the man views it and responds to it is entirely determined by the free will of the man. Though God knows the future, He nevertheless allows people to die outside of a state of grace, that is, in sin and on the road to hell. The question as to why He allows them to die at this point can be answered by the idea that the spiritual growth of the person (or their increase or decrease in love towards God) had stopped. At that point in their life, the person was not going to be any different. Maybe they might fluctuate over the course of their life should they have lived longer, but ultimately, they would not have changed. Those whom God allows to live some time longer than this point are probably being kept for a special purpose or purposes. Thus, it is reasonable to see why God allows people to die outside of grace. However, why God sends people to hell is an entirely different question.
God, being a just God, will send people to hell. He will judge them according to what they have done. To those who sought Him and His will in life, He will grant eternal life. Those who sought their own way in life He will send to hell for all of eternity. Why would God not forgive the sins of other people after a finite amount of time in the same way that men do? The answer can be found in examining justice in light of the love of God from the beginning of time. When God planned to create man, He did so because He wanted someone to love and someone to love Him. He did not need man, but He wanted him. However, love demands that it be free. Love cannot be forced from someone. It must be an act of a free will. That is why God gives each person a free will. If a person does not want to be with God, then God, in accordance with the rules of love, will not force that person to be with Him. However, the only thing remaining for the person to have when God allows them to leave is whatever is contrary to God, more specifically, the absence of Love. Since love is the ultimate source of the pleasure humanity so desires, and since God is love, then those who reject God are ultimately rejecting the sole source of happiness their souls are longing for. Thus, the justice of God is the assigning to each person a status based on, not what his or her soul longs for, but what their free will actually choose to pursue. The judgment of God is thus the examination of the life of a person to see if they choose to pursue a loving relationship with God. It is also the enactment of the justice of God. That is, it is the giving of each person what they want.
Hell - Why God would send people there
God is not in need of any human being for his happiness. Nevertheless, out of love, not out of some bizarre weakness of supernatural beings, God created man. This being was created not out of an act of self-exaltation, as if God needed a weak being in order to exercise his might upon (which would undoubtedly reveal a weak god). Nor was man created as though God needed him for service. Instead, man was created to participate in the community of love that at one time only the members of the Holy Trinity participated in. Yet in the Garden of Eden, man chose to be like God but "without God, before God, and not in accordance with God" (St. Maximus the Confessor ? - Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 398). The original intention of man's creation was at that point not an objective of man. On the other hand, God never abandoned the purpose for which He had made man. Nevertheless, God allows men to go to hell. In fact, contrary to what we as humans would do, God actually sends people to hell. The easier of the next to questions is "How does He?" He is God, and He has control over where people go. A person's own soul cannot directly move itself into hell, especially since God forces it to present itself to Him on judgment day, lest that person's choices caused them to move towards hell anyways and God's only part is "cutting the safety line" so-to-speak. In this case, God would not be responsible for transporting people to hell. Nevertheless, He will be responsible for sending them to hell on the grounds that He is the ultimate Judge. He gets to decide where people go. Granted, He is merely granting people their wish. Nevertheless, humans are God's children. Why should He send any of them to hell? This is the second question. If we put ourselves in "God's shoes" so-to-speak, the act of sending people to hell is illogical. If these people are our children, then we would want them all to be happy and be with us for all eternity. However, none of us is God. God, who is love, will only bring to be with him those that love Him. How could He accept anything else? Does that mean that God does not love those humans that He sends to hell? - Of course not! God weeps at the loss of His children because He loves them. When man sinned in the Garden of Eden, God wept. When a man suffered the consequences of that original sin, Jesus wept.
Jealousy
In Sacred Scripture, there is a distinction between jealousy, envy, and coveting. Jealousy, apparently, is suitable for even God for the Lord says, "I your God am a jealous god", not once, but on several occasions. What is meant here is the fact that God is deserving of all worship. He is to be the central object of our love. His jealousy is a natural element of love: to desire from the beloved a return of affection. Furthermore, God, who is the Creator of the universe, is deserving of all that He asks for He is the owner and Creator of all. God's jealousy is merely a desire for what He is rightfully due and what He graciously requests from each and every individual, specifically, their love. In the case of human jealousy, God never once commanded that humans not be jealous. Pure, that is holy, human jealousy is the desire to receive what is rightfully due to oneself and of which is given to one to whom it is not due. God demands that His people not worship idols because this is the giving of something that belongs to God to rocks or wood or such, which is certainly NOT deserving of worship. In the same way, a husband has right to be jealous when his wife loves another man more than him. Though the other man may be special in the life of the woman, she should not neglect her responsibility of loving her husband in order to please this other man.
Envy and coveting are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Neither one is justified. Envy is the selfish desire to have that which one's neighbor has, especially (if not specifically) physical things. A man ought to desire a wonderful relationship with God, even one better than one's predecessors. Elisha requested double the portion of Elijah's spirit and received it! The relationship of another person with God ought not be the limit of our own relationship with God, especially for the reason "because we're not trying to surpass them". However, we ought not think of our spiritual journey as a competition either. Envy, in contrast to the proper good desires, wants to be even. The envious mentality says, "If my neighbor has it, I should have it." This is the mentality of the workers from the marketplace in that capitalistic parable our Lord told. The parable may have been about entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, and that we all receive the equal reward of salvation or God's love, yet it pointed out something natural in human character arising from the sinful nature, namely, envy. The men had been hired in the marketplace and had agreed to work for a small sum. That same sum was eventually given to all of those who came to work long after them. They became envious when they were not paid more. They thought that they deserved to have the same pay per block of time that the last workers received, yet the owner of the field did not give them that. He gave them what they had agreed to work for, and yet they wanted to have more than they deserved. This is envy: to desire a false sense of equality that would give oneself more than what one actually has earned.
Coveting is similar to envy, but is even more selfish. Unlike envy, which simply desires to be even with another person without actually affecting the other person in the least way, coveting is the seeking of oneself at the expense of another. Coveting is the desire, not to have what another person has in the sense of equality, but to have that actual thing that the neighbor owns. It is a desire to possess an object belonging to one's neighbor, but without the thought of an exchange. In no way does bargaining come to mind. Perhaps coveting follows the offer of a bargain, since the object being sold may be the only one of its kind. Business deals are not wrong. There is nothing envious or covetous about desiring to buy certain foods or goods, regardless of whether the person who owns them is not willing to sell. What is covetous is the desire to steal. When our blessed Lord addressed His disciples in His Sermon on the Mount, He presented to them a higher form of righteousness. This form of righteousness dealt with even the thoughts in their minds. Undoubtedly, the Lord would consider coveting as the act in the mind that precedes stealing.
In conclusion, the mindset of jealousy has its place and proper contexts in which it can be viewed as a good thing. On the other hand, envy and coveting will always be amongst the many evils that pollute the human mind. It is best, then to always justify one's own thought in light of God's perspective of love in order that one can be sure they are not being selfish and displeasing their Creator, the Jealous God.
Envy and coveting are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Neither one is justified. Envy is the selfish desire to have that which one's neighbor has, especially (if not specifically) physical things. A man ought to desire a wonderful relationship with God, even one better than one's predecessors. Elisha requested double the portion of Elijah's spirit and received it! The relationship of another person with God ought not be the limit of our own relationship with God, especially for the reason "because we're not trying to surpass them". However, we ought not think of our spiritual journey as a competition either. Envy, in contrast to the proper good desires, wants to be even. The envious mentality says, "If my neighbor has it, I should have it." This is the mentality of the workers from the marketplace in that capitalistic parable our Lord told. The parable may have been about entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, and that we all receive the equal reward of salvation or God's love, yet it pointed out something natural in human character arising from the sinful nature, namely, envy. The men had been hired in the marketplace and had agreed to work for a small sum. That same sum was eventually given to all of those who came to work long after them. They became envious when they were not paid more. They thought that they deserved to have the same pay per block of time that the last workers received, yet the owner of the field did not give them that. He gave them what they had agreed to work for, and yet they wanted to have more than they deserved. This is envy: to desire a false sense of equality that would give oneself more than what one actually has earned.
Coveting is similar to envy, but is even more selfish. Unlike envy, which simply desires to be even with another person without actually affecting the other person in the least way, coveting is the seeking of oneself at the expense of another. Coveting is the desire, not to have what another person has in the sense of equality, but to have that actual thing that the neighbor owns. It is a desire to possess an object belonging to one's neighbor, but without the thought of an exchange. In no way does bargaining come to mind. Perhaps coveting follows the offer of a bargain, since the object being sold may be the only one of its kind. Business deals are not wrong. There is nothing envious or covetous about desiring to buy certain foods or goods, regardless of whether the person who owns them is not willing to sell. What is covetous is the desire to steal. When our blessed Lord addressed His disciples in His Sermon on the Mount, He presented to them a higher form of righteousness. This form of righteousness dealt with even the thoughts in their minds. Undoubtedly, the Lord would consider coveting as the act in the mind that precedes stealing.
In conclusion, the mindset of jealousy has its place and proper contexts in which it can be viewed as a good thing. On the other hand, envy and coveting will always be amongst the many evils that pollute the human mind. It is best, then to always justify one's own thought in light of God's perspective of love in order that one can be sure they are not being selfish and displeasing their Creator, the Jealous God.
Loving needs reason
In considering the idea of love, I developed various arguments that defended the idea of love as requiring reason. That is, a person has to have a reason for loving someone else. By this, I am not pointing out that people's existence is the reason. Though indeed that is true, I am primarily concerned with the role of the human free will and its dependence on reason. The arguments themselves are not flawless, but they are food-for-thought and you would do well to consider them.
The various arguments about this subject are fairly unorganized in thought, and are presented here in chronological order of their creation:
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6:47 PM, March 23, 2010
Some people (it is reasonable to assume many) think that you must love people as an end and not a means to an end. That is to say, you must love a person just as a person and not for anything that you will receive out of them. Certainly this is true if what you are receiving is a material gain, for in such cases, you do not truly love the person; you desire what they give you. However, the reasoning cannot be taken much further than this. Ask the question, "What is it that I love about the person?" You cannot love a person just for a person's sake, just as you cannot love a rock for a rock's sake. Are you to love them because they are a person? Can you love a rock because it is a rock? When you open the door for someone, are you doing it because they are a person, or out of habit, or for another reason? Another reason might be that you are trying to please God. Why would you try to please God? - Because He would give you joy in return. What is it then that makes you love other people?
If I told myself one day that I was going to love all the people around me every minute, I know that I would fail miserably. Why would I fail? It is not that the task is too difficult as much as it is daunting. Nor would I fail because I did not make some commitment in my head that says I will love people. Over the course of the day, my focus shifts, my vision changes, and I am no longer looking at people as objects to love, but rather, I am trying to please myself. It turns out that we are always trying to gain pleasure. There are various means by which we gain it, none of which include simply loving a person for a person's sake. In fact, we gain pleasure from caring for people because God gives us joy when we do so. Our mind senses this boost and encourages us to return to such tasks. If we were not lead by this desire for pleasure, there would be no reason for us to do anything. However, God made us this way, not so that the world could be flooded by selfish people, but because He wanted to be the ultimate source of joy.
"Falling in love" is quite different from loving a person. This sort of "love" belongs to a type of love that finds pleasure (usually aesthetically) from another person. The person has attributes or characteristics from which you can obtain pleasure. That does not mean that you "fall in love" with that person. The "love" that you seem to "fall" into is this love that you not only gain pleasure from other people's attributes but also that your feelings are more tangled up in your relationship with them. That means that interactions with them (such as simply seeing them, or thinking of their smile, regardless of whether actual or psychological) are stimuli for the mind that give you pleasure.
There are two important things that must be distinguished between. The first is the emotional, and the second is the sensual. Let the former (that is, emotional), pertain to the soul. Emotional feelings are the inner feelings that you have inside your soul, regardless of your current state. Sensual feelings, on the other hand, refers to what the brain senses and encourages the soul to command it to seek. Sensual feelings arise pertaining to things such as pain and sex. In response to pain, your brain generally takes the initiative and commands your appendages to retract or move in such a direction and speed that would decrease the intensity of, if not obliterate, the signal originating from the nerves. The same is true with sex. If you know yourself well enough, you can easily tell when your body desires sex even though nothing else pertaining to sex or sex stimuli has come to mind. Emotional feelings are independent of sensual feelings. For example, a man might be suffering for a cause he cares for and feel emotionally happy about it even though sensually he may be being persecuted, injured with techniques beyond his wildest dreams. The opposite can be true: the man might be suffering emotionally because he is doing something that happens to be giving him sensual pleasure. The most ironic idea about this system is that both affect the decision of the individual because the sensual pleasure may lead to emotional pleasure. However, it is only the idea of the potential emotional pleasure that a person thinks they will find in something that drives them towards seeking it.
9:30 PM, March 28, 2010
It is quite possible that, being made in the image of God, we as humans are given some of God's own selfless love from the beginning and can thereby love people without actually having a reason to love them. Loving people, at least to a small degree, would be a part of our nature. If we believe in God, He gives us enough more of His selfless love to share. However, we have to desire that love or He will not give it to us. However, how can we desire such love? It must be by some pleasure we get from loving already. In such a case, it would be our selfless love, given to us by God, that causes us to do something, and in return, our souls are given pleasure that they desire to perpetually renew as time goes on. One way our souls can do this is by continuing to love in that simple manner that we started loving. The other way is by asking God to grant us more love.
Is this really the way it works?
10:50 PM, March 30, 2010
You can practically make happiness spawn anywhere, in a manner of speaking. That is, you can decide to think of something as a source of pleasure. Now, although it will not necessarily be a source of sensual pleasure, it will, however, be a source of emotional pleasure. Emotional pleasure is slightly harder to pursue because of the body naturally desires sensual pleasure. It is the free will of the soul that decides whether a man will try to gain emotional pleasure or sensual pleasure or both. Nevertheless, the emotional pleasure does not always if ever cause the body to provide itself with an instantaneous boost of pleasure that acts as motivation for someone to pursue the source of the pleasure, whether it be an action or thing to acquire, etc. Of course, if your soul is a slave to sin, it becomes quite difficult to imagine emotional pleasure in good deeds.
9:48 AM, April 12, 2010
When you are relaxed and in your "comfort zone" (hypothetically, the place on earth you are happy most of the time), it is quite obvious that, when asked to go to immediately go to the funeral of friend, of which no one is attending, you will no doubt be quite reluctant. You may not mention your reluctance, since that would cause people to judge you and you certainly do not like that. However, at the moment, you are in your comfort zone and could think of hundreds of reasons why not to go to the funeral. You could say, "There's no point. My friend is dead. I cannot resurrect him." On top of that, you would add other excuses such as, "His own family is not even going to be there" or "I do not know anyone going to the funeral, so what good would my presence do? I would not be a comforter to anyone." Regardless of your list of excuses, should you not mention them for fear of being reproached, you would no opt for remaining in your comfort zone. On the other hand, should it be that you had just finished a battle in which your friend had died, be he courageous or a coward, you would (after learning of your friend's death), if you are of noble character, go immediately to the body of your friend and mourn for him. Following that, you would make funeral arrangements.
The question that I wish to pose is this: Do these two examples lead to different conclusions about why we do things? When ethics and morals demand something of us, their demands are usually not accompanied by instructions ("Here's how to do") but only by commands ("Do"). This allots a person freedom to go about fulfilling such moral commands by whatever means is necessary. The question arises, however, do morals ask us to be concerned with motives? A person who "selflessly" devotes their life to others is highly esteemed and said to be virtuous or moral, but what is their motivating reason for "selflessly" giving away their life? Surely one does not automatically give one's own life away? Given that the freewill acts like a scale which is tipped one way or another by randomness and the various things in life, such as sinful desire and God's grace, man only does what will give him pleasure. Or is there something else? Do morals demand truly selflessly giving one's life away? That is, is a person not permitted by morals to receive pleasure after he does a good deed?
Perhaps the terms need to be more well defined. Good deeds are called that because generally they are voluntary actions that are intended to benefit people though such actions are not commanded by law. Morals encompass both "good deeds" and the laws that each person has in his or her heart and mind. On far end of the positive (desirable) end of the spectrum, there is "selfless" giving, that is, giving (e.g. caring for the sick, feeding the poor, and spending time for good causes) but without expecting a return.
How can, or is it even possible for, a human to selflessly give? Our morals may or may not require this "selfless" giving, but we feel inclined to do the deeds it is associated with, such as feeding the poor and caring for the sick. The acts themselves do not necessarily have to be acts that are completely selfless giving; you can have a reason for being charitable. However, what makes us inclined to do such acts in the first place? Surely with a sinful nature, man is (at least initially) inclined to only do evil and think selfishly. Yet something happens in a man that allows him to make such free acts of charity. Furthermore, those acts are often accompanied by a joy that survives the moment and dwells in the memory of a man, where it might be extracted at some random occasion and please the man for another moment before being returned to the shelf. This joy is somehow obtained by honest charitable works (that is, deeds that did not require an evil thing be done first) and remains undiscovered lest we cease ignoring the small voice in the back of our heads that encourage us do a charitable act. Note that the charitable act is not the same as the selfless act, for in the charitable act, we receive a burst (short or long, great or small) of joy that remains ingrained in our minds so long as the memories of the good acts we had done remain. Selfless acts, by their very name, remove the motivation for completing them. It would require someone's freewill to act contrary to the nature it was intended, or at least it would require that the human be controlled or enticed into such actions by a higher power.
When Jesus visited the tomb of his friend Lazarus, He had to first leave (what might be called) His "comfort zone". When He came, He wept, and the people said, "See how He (Jesus) loved him (Lazarus)." In this actual scenario, Jesus, who is God and does not need to obtain pleasure from anyone, weeps for Lazarus as though He has lost something of great importance. Indeed, Lazarus had died, and the Son of God was showing to the people God's love for every single individual. God does not will that even one of His created persons should be lost. Jesus is not only God, but also fully man. The human freewill of Jesus was submissive to the divine freewill of Jesus, the Son of God. To be fully human, the freewill of Jesus' human side must have had motivation. Indeed, there was great motivation promised to the human freewill of Jesus by the divine freewill of Jesus that He Himself would be taken up into heaven and worshiped as King and God. This brings up an important point: the difference between why Jesus went to the tomb and why any other man would go. Jesus goes out of command of His own divine freewill, not because the loss of Lazarus would decrease the pleasure that He would receive from him (for indeed, to gain pleasure from another human and mourn their loss because of the loss of your own pleasure is purely human). But when God enters into the heart of a man, does not He shape the man such that the man can love others as God loves others? When man goes to a funeral, if he is of noble heart (one influenced by the grace of God), then it is quite likely that he goes out of love for the man and not purely because of the loss of potential pleasure for himself.
Within relationships, there may exist a spiritual bond between the two people involved in a relationship such that, though they may gain no pleasure from each other and even never see, speak to, or hear of each other again, they still feel obligated to preserve that relationship. When one of the two of them breaks that relationship by deciding not to be friends with the other person, they feel a bitter flavor in their decision, depending on how well developed the relationship was as well as the kind of relationship it was. What this possibly indicates, if it exists, is that God wants them to preserve their relationship, and He has made the spiritual or physical mind such that, within the bond of friendship, some pleasure is intertwined and some is transmitted along it.
11:49 PM, October 27, 2010
Loving needs reason. It is impossible for a person not to love for a reason. Furthermore, the free will must consent to the reason to bring forth love. Various individuals may state that they are capable of loving without a reason, but this is not so. Consider what is going on in their subconscious mind. If a person loves another person, they feel a sense of happiness from it. It is this happiness or expectation of something they desire that gives them reason to do such an action. The reasoning is the same whether they begin to love in order to test and see whether they will receive what they so desire (evidenced by a sense of pleasure, which is what they hope for) or they love already expecting that what they do will result in something they desire, perhaps a sense of pleasure. If a person does not have to have a reason for loving, then people would naturally love, but we can see from reality that this is certainly not the case.
Considering the requirement of reason, loving is an act of the will. It is not as though one is driven solely by God or natural instinct towards such. Otherwise, there would be no reasonable explanation as to why people do not love. If loving required no choice, people would naturally choose to love. The counter-argument would be best described in an analogy of a ball rolling down a hill: the ball continues to roll down the hill unless stopped by an external force. In the same way, people would be naturally loving unless there were a reason not to be. On the contrary, this is irrational in light of the definition of love (considering love perseveres through struggles and difficulties and reasons not to remain faithful or loyal, so why would naturally-loving people invent reasons not to love?). Furthermore, the definition of love is external to human beings. If it is only relative to human beings, we can define it however we want and define it in such a way as to encompass the actions of all humans. However, if we define it extrinsic to humans and exclusive of some human activity, then it is no longer an innate quality but is, with respect to its physical manifestation in human beings, a category of actions. Hence, nothing binds us to automatic obedience to the rules that define this category.
The various arguments about this subject are fairly unorganized in thought, and are presented here in chronological order of their creation:
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6:47 PM, March 23, 2010
Some people (it is reasonable to assume many) think that you must love people as an end and not a means to an end. That is to say, you must love a person just as a person and not for anything that you will receive out of them. Certainly this is true if what you are receiving is a material gain, for in such cases, you do not truly love the person; you desire what they give you. However, the reasoning cannot be taken much further than this. Ask the question, "What is it that I love about the person?" You cannot love a person just for a person's sake, just as you cannot love a rock for a rock's sake. Are you to love them because they are a person? Can you love a rock because it is a rock? When you open the door for someone, are you doing it because they are a person, or out of habit, or for another reason? Another reason might be that you are trying to please God. Why would you try to please God? - Because He would give you joy in return. What is it then that makes you love other people?
If I told myself one day that I was going to love all the people around me every minute, I know that I would fail miserably. Why would I fail? It is not that the task is too difficult as much as it is daunting. Nor would I fail because I did not make some commitment in my head that says I will love people. Over the course of the day, my focus shifts, my vision changes, and I am no longer looking at people as objects to love, but rather, I am trying to please myself. It turns out that we are always trying to gain pleasure. There are various means by which we gain it, none of which include simply loving a person for a person's sake. In fact, we gain pleasure from caring for people because God gives us joy when we do so. Our mind senses this boost and encourages us to return to such tasks. If we were not lead by this desire for pleasure, there would be no reason for us to do anything. However, God made us this way, not so that the world could be flooded by selfish people, but because He wanted to be the ultimate source of joy.
"Falling in love" is quite different from loving a person. This sort of "love" belongs to a type of love that finds pleasure (usually aesthetically) from another person. The person has attributes or characteristics from which you can obtain pleasure. That does not mean that you "fall in love" with that person. The "love" that you seem to "fall" into is this love that you not only gain pleasure from other people's attributes but also that your feelings are more tangled up in your relationship with them. That means that interactions with them (such as simply seeing them, or thinking of their smile, regardless of whether actual or psychological) are stimuli for the mind that give you pleasure.
There are two important things that must be distinguished between. The first is the emotional, and the second is the sensual. Let the former (that is, emotional), pertain to the soul. Emotional feelings are the inner feelings that you have inside your soul, regardless of your current state. Sensual feelings, on the other hand, refers to what the brain senses and encourages the soul to command it to seek. Sensual feelings arise pertaining to things such as pain and sex. In response to pain, your brain generally takes the initiative and commands your appendages to retract or move in such a direction and speed that would decrease the intensity of, if not obliterate, the signal originating from the nerves. The same is true with sex. If you know yourself well enough, you can easily tell when your body desires sex even though nothing else pertaining to sex or sex stimuli has come to mind. Emotional feelings are independent of sensual feelings. For example, a man might be suffering for a cause he cares for and feel emotionally happy about it even though sensually he may be being persecuted, injured with techniques beyond his wildest dreams. The opposite can be true: the man might be suffering emotionally because he is doing something that happens to be giving him sensual pleasure. The most ironic idea about this system is that both affect the decision of the individual because the sensual pleasure may lead to emotional pleasure. However, it is only the idea of the potential emotional pleasure that a person thinks they will find in something that drives them towards seeking it.
9:30 PM, March 28, 2010
It is quite possible that, being made in the image of God, we as humans are given some of God's own selfless love from the beginning and can thereby love people without actually having a reason to love them. Loving people, at least to a small degree, would be a part of our nature. If we believe in God, He gives us enough more of His selfless love to share. However, we have to desire that love or He will not give it to us. However, how can we desire such love? It must be by some pleasure we get from loving already. In such a case, it would be our selfless love, given to us by God, that causes us to do something, and in return, our souls are given pleasure that they desire to perpetually renew as time goes on. One way our souls can do this is by continuing to love in that simple manner that we started loving. The other way is by asking God to grant us more love.
Is this really the way it works?
10:50 PM, March 30, 2010
You can practically make happiness spawn anywhere, in a manner of speaking. That is, you can decide to think of something as a source of pleasure. Now, although it will not necessarily be a source of sensual pleasure, it will, however, be a source of emotional pleasure. Emotional pleasure is slightly harder to pursue because of the body naturally desires sensual pleasure. It is the free will of the soul that decides whether a man will try to gain emotional pleasure or sensual pleasure or both. Nevertheless, the emotional pleasure does not always if ever cause the body to provide itself with an instantaneous boost of pleasure that acts as motivation for someone to pursue the source of the pleasure, whether it be an action or thing to acquire, etc. Of course, if your soul is a slave to sin, it becomes quite difficult to imagine emotional pleasure in good deeds.
9:48 AM, April 12, 2010
When you are relaxed and in your "comfort zone" (hypothetically, the place on earth you are happy most of the time), it is quite obvious that, when asked to go to immediately go to the funeral of friend, of which no one is attending, you will no doubt be quite reluctant. You may not mention your reluctance, since that would cause people to judge you and you certainly do not like that. However, at the moment, you are in your comfort zone and could think of hundreds of reasons why not to go to the funeral. You could say, "There's no point. My friend is dead. I cannot resurrect him." On top of that, you would add other excuses such as, "His own family is not even going to be there" or "I do not know anyone going to the funeral, so what good would my presence do? I would not be a comforter to anyone." Regardless of your list of excuses, should you not mention them for fear of being reproached, you would no opt for remaining in your comfort zone. On the other hand, should it be that you had just finished a battle in which your friend had died, be he courageous or a coward, you would (after learning of your friend's death), if you are of noble character, go immediately to the body of your friend and mourn for him. Following that, you would make funeral arrangements.
The question that I wish to pose is this: Do these two examples lead to different conclusions about why we do things? When ethics and morals demand something of us, their demands are usually not accompanied by instructions ("Here's how to do") but only by commands ("Do"). This allots a person freedom to go about fulfilling such moral commands by whatever means is necessary. The question arises, however, do morals ask us to be concerned with motives? A person who "selflessly" devotes their life to others is highly esteemed and said to be virtuous or moral, but what is their motivating reason for "selflessly" giving away their life? Surely one does not automatically give one's own life away? Given that the freewill acts like a scale which is tipped one way or another by randomness and the various things in life, such as sinful desire and God's grace, man only does what will give him pleasure. Or is there something else? Do morals demand truly selflessly giving one's life away? That is, is a person not permitted by morals to receive pleasure after he does a good deed?
Perhaps the terms need to be more well defined. Good deeds are called that because generally they are voluntary actions that are intended to benefit people though such actions are not commanded by law. Morals encompass both "good deeds" and the laws that each person has in his or her heart and mind. On far end of the positive (desirable) end of the spectrum, there is "selfless" giving, that is, giving (e.g. caring for the sick, feeding the poor, and spending time for good causes) but without expecting a return.
How can, or is it even possible for, a human to selflessly give? Our morals may or may not require this "selfless" giving, but we feel inclined to do the deeds it is associated with, such as feeding the poor and caring for the sick. The acts themselves do not necessarily have to be acts that are completely selfless giving; you can have a reason for being charitable. However, what makes us inclined to do such acts in the first place? Surely with a sinful nature, man is (at least initially) inclined to only do evil and think selfishly. Yet something happens in a man that allows him to make such free acts of charity. Furthermore, those acts are often accompanied by a joy that survives the moment and dwells in the memory of a man, where it might be extracted at some random occasion and please the man for another moment before being returned to the shelf. This joy is somehow obtained by honest charitable works (that is, deeds that did not require an evil thing be done first) and remains undiscovered lest we cease ignoring the small voice in the back of our heads that encourage us do a charitable act. Note that the charitable act is not the same as the selfless act, for in the charitable act, we receive a burst (short or long, great or small) of joy that remains ingrained in our minds so long as the memories of the good acts we had done remain. Selfless acts, by their very name, remove the motivation for completing them. It would require someone's freewill to act contrary to the nature it was intended, or at least it would require that the human be controlled or enticed into such actions by a higher power.
When Jesus visited the tomb of his friend Lazarus, He had to first leave (what might be called) His "comfort zone". When He came, He wept, and the people said, "See how He (Jesus) loved him (Lazarus)." In this actual scenario, Jesus, who is God and does not need to obtain pleasure from anyone, weeps for Lazarus as though He has lost something of great importance. Indeed, Lazarus had died, and the Son of God was showing to the people God's love for every single individual. God does not will that even one of His created persons should be lost. Jesus is not only God, but also fully man. The human freewill of Jesus was submissive to the divine freewill of Jesus, the Son of God. To be fully human, the freewill of Jesus' human side must have had motivation. Indeed, there was great motivation promised to the human freewill of Jesus by the divine freewill of Jesus that He Himself would be taken up into heaven and worshiped as King and God. This brings up an important point: the difference between why Jesus went to the tomb and why any other man would go. Jesus goes out of command of His own divine freewill, not because the loss of Lazarus would decrease the pleasure that He would receive from him (for indeed, to gain pleasure from another human and mourn their loss because of the loss of your own pleasure is purely human). But when God enters into the heart of a man, does not He shape the man such that the man can love others as God loves others? When man goes to a funeral, if he is of noble heart (one influenced by the grace of God), then it is quite likely that he goes out of love for the man and not purely because of the loss of potential pleasure for himself.
Within relationships, there may exist a spiritual bond between the two people involved in a relationship such that, though they may gain no pleasure from each other and even never see, speak to, or hear of each other again, they still feel obligated to preserve that relationship. When one of the two of them breaks that relationship by deciding not to be friends with the other person, they feel a bitter flavor in their decision, depending on how well developed the relationship was as well as the kind of relationship it was. What this possibly indicates, if it exists, is that God wants them to preserve their relationship, and He has made the spiritual or physical mind such that, within the bond of friendship, some pleasure is intertwined and some is transmitted along it.
11:49 PM, October 27, 2010
Loving needs reason. It is impossible for a person not to love for a reason. Furthermore, the free will must consent to the reason to bring forth love. Various individuals may state that they are capable of loving without a reason, but this is not so. Consider what is going on in their subconscious mind. If a person loves another person, they feel a sense of happiness from it. It is this happiness or expectation of something they desire that gives them reason to do such an action. The reasoning is the same whether they begin to love in order to test and see whether they will receive what they so desire (evidenced by a sense of pleasure, which is what they hope for) or they love already expecting that what they do will result in something they desire, perhaps a sense of pleasure. If a person does not have to have a reason for loving, then people would naturally love, but we can see from reality that this is certainly not the case.
Considering the requirement of reason, loving is an act of the will. It is not as though one is driven solely by God or natural instinct towards such. Otherwise, there would be no reasonable explanation as to why people do not love. If loving required no choice, people would naturally choose to love. The counter-argument would be best described in an analogy of a ball rolling down a hill: the ball continues to roll down the hill unless stopped by an external force. In the same way, people would be naturally loving unless there were a reason not to be. On the contrary, this is irrational in light of the definition of love (considering love perseveres through struggles and difficulties and reasons not to remain faithful or loyal, so why would naturally-loving people invent reasons not to love?). Furthermore, the definition of love is external to human beings. If it is only relative to human beings, we can define it however we want and define it in such a way as to encompass the actions of all humans. However, if we define it extrinsic to humans and exclusive of some human activity, then it is no longer an innate quality but is, with respect to its physical manifestation in human beings, a category of actions. Hence, nothing binds us to automatic obedience to the rules that define this category.
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