Lucky Guesses?

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
Gertie
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Gertie »

So are we attending this conference or what? :?

Hope the meds are doing the biz for you DM :)

And hope this place didn't contribute to driving you to them!

To me, the fact that a tablet which adjusts some chemical which has gone a bit awry in the skull can significantly change how we feel about the world is truly mind-blowing. What odd, incomprehensible creatures we are, how delicate and arbitrary our grasp on the experience of being...

Talking of which...
What I'm making of your position is this -

The universe is manifested as different types of stuff (including conscious experiencing creatures) because the universe had the 'desire' to experience different ways of being, and it had the 'agency' to achieve this desire. And this is what we see when we observe the change from the infinitely dense and uniform Singularity to the infinite but varied universe today.

Yes? No? Close-ish?
Dark Matter
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Joined: August 18th, 2016, 11:29 am
Favorite Philosopher: Paul Tillich

Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Dark Matter »

Close-ish. Tillich, in talking about the Trinity, wrote:
The doctrine of the Trinity does not affirm the logical nonsense that three is one and one is three; it describes in dialectical terms the inner movement of the divine life as an eternal separation from itself and return to itself.
Unity is meaningless without diversity, and diversity is meaningless without unity. The dialectical movement is simultaneously from the top down and from the bottom up. It may be said that time is the movement between the birth of an idea and its fulfillment, but the process itself is timeless. Everything changes, but nothing changes.

Nothing said here contradicts science, but science proves nothing.

As for the meds...my wife says I'm not as `snippy` and easier going. A panic attack drove me to them and this place has, I think, actually helped with finding out what`s going on with my hypervigilance. Odd (or maybe not)...in something impersonal like this, it's much easier to talk about. :)
Fooloso4
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Dark Matter:
I agree, especially about my inability to articulate what I so clearly "see" in my head. es
In my opinion, what can be thought clearly can be said clearly, and conversely, if it cannot be said clearly it has not been thought clearly. This is something that I initially resisted but came to see as fundamental to my education. When we are forced to express our ideas we are confronted with the gaps and inconsistencies that have gone unnoticed.
Dark Matter
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Dark Matter »

Fooloso4 wrote:Dark Matter:
I agree, especially about my inability to articulate what I so clearly "see" in my head. es
In my opinion, what can be thought clearly can be said clearly, and conversely, if it cannot be said clearly it has not been thought clearly. This is something that I initially resisted but came to see as fundamental to my education. When we are forced to express our ideas we are confronted with the gaps and inconsistencies that have gone unnoticed.
The problem with that is that our tools to think with (be it mathematics or spoken language) define in discrete terms, whereas what we measure, whether subatomic particles (waves) or the complexity of a human’s behavior, is continuous, so it can never be precisely defined.

-- Updated January 7th, 2017, 4:45 pm to add the following --

Sometimes, what we know experientially falls somewhere between common discrete terms.
Gertie
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Gertie »

Alright! Close-ish is progress.

Then the obvious question is why do you (or should anyone) believe the uniform universe of what we call the Singularity had something akin to what we talk about in anthropomorphic/mental terms as 'desire' and 'agency'?

What is your justification? Philosophical arguments? Evidence?

As clear and straightforward as you can please.
Dark Matter
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Dark Matter »

Gertie wrote:Alright! Close-ish is progress.

Then the obvious question is why do you (or should anyone) believe the uniform universe of what we call the Singularity had something akin to what we talk about in anthropomorphic/mental terms as 'desire' and 'agency'?

What is your justification? Philosophical arguments? Evidence?

As clear and straightforward as you can please.
It's really quite simple: an effect entirely absent in its cause is akin to magic -- something from nothing. For a more detailed explanation, I defer to Alan Watts:
Either the living God is, or he is not. Either the ultimate Reality is alive, conscious and intelligent, or it is not. If it is, then it is what we call God. If it is not, it must be some form of blind process, law, energy or substance entirely devoid of any meaning save that which man himself gives to it. Nobody has ever been able to suggest a reasonable alternative. To say that Reality is quite beyond thought, and therefore cannot be designated by such small, human terms as “conscious” and “intelligent” is only to say that God is immeasurably greater than man. And the theist will agree that he is infinitely greater. To argue that Reality is not a blind energy but a “living principle,” an “impersonal super-consciousness,” or an “impersonal mind” is merely to play with words and indulge in terminological contradictions. A “living principle” means about as much as a black whiteness, and to speak of an “impersonal mind” is like talking about a circular square.

...If the ultimate Reality is indeed a blind energy or process devoid of inherent meaning, if it is merely an unconscious permutation and oscillation of waves, particles or what not, certain consequences follow. Human consciousness is obviously a part or an effect of this Reality. We are bound, then, to come to one of two conclusions. On the one hand, we shall have to say that the effect, consciousness, is a property lacking to its entire cause—in short, that something has come out of nothing. Or, on the other hand, we shall have to say that consciousness is a special form of unconsciousness—in short, that it is not really conscious. For the first of these two conclusions there neither is nor can be any serious argument; not even a rationalist would maintain the possibility of an effect without a sufficient cause. The main arguments against theism follow, in principle, the second conclusion—that the properties and qualities of human nature, consciousness, reason, meaning, and the like, do not constitute any new element or property over and above the natural and mechanical processes which cause them. Because Reality itself is a blind mechanism, so is man. Meaning, consciousness, and intelligence are purely arbitrary and relative terms given to certain highly complex mechanical structures.

But the argument dissolves itself. If consciousness and intelligence are forms of mechanism, the opinions and judgements of intelligence are products of mechanical (or statistical) necessity. This must apply to all opinions and judgements, for all are equally mere phenomena of the mechanical world-process. There can be no question of one judgement being more true than another, any more than there can be question of the phenomenon fish being more true than the phenomenon bird. But among these phenomena are the judgements of the rationalist, and to them he must apply the logic of his own reasoning. He must admit that they have no more claim to truth than the judgements of the theist, and that if rationalism is true it is very probably not true. This is intellectual suicide—the total destruction of thought—to such a degree that even the rationalist’s own concepts of mechanism, unconscious process, statistical necessity, and the like, also become purely arbitrary and meaningless terms. To hold such a view of the universe consistently, one must separate oneself, the observer, from it. But this cannot be done....

...Now this is pure nonsense. Man’s subjective presence is, of course, the very condition of knowledge both of the universe and of God. It is precisely the existence of man in the universe as a conscious, reflecting self that makes it logically necessary to believe in God. A universe containing self-conscious beings must have a cause sufficient to produce such beings, a cause which must at least have the property of self-consciousness. This property cannot simply “evolve” from protoplasm or stellar energy, because this would mean that more consciousness is the result of less consciousness and no consciousness. Evolution is, therefore, a transition from the potential to the actual, wherein the new powers and qualities constantly acquired are derived, not from the potential, but from a superior type of life which already possesses them.

Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion
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Ormond
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Ormond »

Before I dive in to the rest of the Watt's quote, let's chew on the first sentence a bit...
Either the living God is, or he is not.
Here we see an example of the kind of horrible trap we can fall in to if we fail to dig deep enough.

We start with the binary assumption that things either exist, or they don't, one or the other. And then upon that rarely examined assumption we proceed to conduct endless centuries of passionate debate about such binary questions as, does a God exist, or not?

If the original binary assumption is false then all those endless centuries of debate are revealed to be entirely pointless, a complete waste of time, no matter how clever the arguments within that debate may be. It's like arguing over which is larger, the color green, or the sound of a dog barking. A broken question will never yield useful answers, no matter how much effort is applied.

Before continuing to race round and round this hamster wheel to nowhere, let's back up and challenge the binary assumption the God debate is built upon, the notion that things either exist, or they don't, one or the other.

Does space exist, or not? Space seems a good test case, given that it is the largest part of reality by far.

PUHLEASE let us not now begin a 73 page physics debate among those of us, probably all of us, who actually know very little about physics. My argument is very limited, I am proposing only that space as it's currently understood does at least appear to have properties of BOTH existence AND non-existence. That is, it's not at all clear that space is limited to only existing or not existing. For the moment at least, it's reasonable to question whether space is confined within an "exists or not" paradigm.

Given that our binary assumption of "exist or not" can not be easily applied to space, the very largest property of reality, why do we insist on making such an assumption the rock solid unshakeable unexamined foundation of the God debate???
If the things we want to hear could take us where we want to go, we'd already be there.
Fooloso4
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Dark Matter:
I defer to Alan Watts:
...Now this is pure nonsense.
That is about as much of what he says that I can agree with.
Either the living God is, or he is not. If it is not, it must be some form of blind process, law, energy or substance entirely devoid of any meaning save that which man himself gives to it. Nobody has ever been able to suggest a reasonable alternative.
Watts seems to be unaware of apophatic or negative theology or the idea that God is not something that is but the ground or source of what is as other possibilities.
To say that Reality is quite beyond thought, and therefore cannot be designated by such small, human terms as “conscious” and “intelligent” is only to say that God is immeasurably greater than man.
No, it is to say that Reality is immeasurably greater than man. To call this reality God is a form of measure.
To argue that Reality is not a blind energy but a “living principle,” an “impersonal super-consciousness,” or an “impersonal mind” is merely to play with words and indulge in terminological contradictions.
But isn’t that what you are doing Dark Matter when you reject a personal god?
We are bound, then, to come to one of two conclusions. On the one hand, we shall have to say that the effect, consciousness, is a property lacking to its entire cause—in short, that something has come out of nothing. Or, on the other hand, we shall have to say that consciousness is a special form of unconsciousness—in short, that it is not really conscious.
He seems to be laboring under an outdated model of causality.Sean Carroll:
What we’re seeing is a manifestation of the layered nature of our descriptions of reality. At the deepest level we currently know about, the basic notions are things like “spacetime,” “quantum fields,” “equations of motions,” and “interactions.” No causes, whether material, formal, efficient, or final. But there are levels on top of that, where the vocabulary changes. Indeed, it’s possible to recover pieces of Aristotle’s physics quantitatively, as limits of Newtonian mechanics in an appropriate regime, where dissipation and friction are central. (Coffee cups do come to a stop, after all.) In the same way, it’s possible to understand why it’s so useful to refer to causes and effects in our everyday experience, even if they’re not present in the underlying equations. There are many different useful stories we have to tell about reality to get along in the world.
preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/05/0 ... ne-cosmos/
At a more mundane level, if I rub two sticks together I can cause a fire, but fire is not a property of the sticks or the action of rubbing them together. According to Watts this would be something from nothing, which of course ignores the fact that in both his example and mine there is in fact something out of which something else emerges. To say that consciousness is a special form of unconsciousness is either just a play on words or hopelessly inept.
Dark Matter
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Dark Matter »

Ormond wrote:Before I dive in to the rest of the Watt's quote, let's chew on the first sentence a bit...
Either the living God is, or he is not.
Here we see an example of the kind of horrible trap we can fall in to if we fail to dig deep enough.

We start with the binary assumption that things either exist, or they don't, one or the other. And then upon that rarely examined assumption we proceed to conduct endless centuries of passionate debate about such binary questions as, does a God exist, or not?

If the original binary assumption is false then all those endless centuries of debate are revealed to be entirely pointless, a complete waste of time, no matter how clever the arguments within that debate may be. It's like arguing over which is larger, the color green, or the sound of a dog barking. A broken question will never yield useful answers, no matter how much effort is applied.

Before continuing to race round and round this hamster wheel to nowhere, let's back up and challenge the binary assumption the God debate is built upon, the notion that things either exist, or they don't, one or the other.

Does space exist, or not? Space seems a good test case, given that it is the largest part of reality by far.

PUHLEASE let us not now begin a 73 page physics debate among those of us, probably all of us, who actually know very little about physics. My argument is very limited, I am proposing only that space as it's currently understood does at least appear to have properties of BOTH existence AND non-existence. That is, it's not at all clear that space is limited to only existing or not existing. For the moment at least, it's reasonable to question whether space is confined within an "exists or not" paradigm.

Given that our binary assumption of "exist or not" can not be easily applied to space, the very largest property of reality, why do we insist on making such an assumption the rock solid unshakeable unexamined foundation of the God debate???
I do not disagree, but I was asked a question that required a conventional answer and I answered it in a conventional way.

This may come as a shock to you, but our whole existence is binary. Like I told Foolso4: "The problem with that is that our tools to think with (be it mathematics or spoken language) define in discrete terms, whereas what we measure, whether subatomic particles (waves) or the complexity of a human’s behavior, is continuous, so it can never be precisely defined."

-- Updated January 8th, 2017, 2:30 pm to add the following --

Hehehehe.

Fooloso4's reaction to the excerpt from Watts' book was as predictable, but what I didn't predict was how weak it would be or that he would suggest that I reject a personal God.

That's the problem with cataphatic theology: people see analogical language, take it as univocal, and come to an absurd conclusion.
Fooloso4
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Dark Matter:
Fooloso4's reaction to the excerpt from Watts' book was as predictable ...
Apparently you found it to be so predictable that you did not bother reading it. Watts either/or option is one that you also reject. I provided two other options, one that you yourself have advocated elsewhere. Calling Reality God is problematic because there are various conceptions of God, and you have made clear that there are some that you do not accept.

You defer to Alan Watts on the question of causality. I defer to a highly regarded physicist who is also a more than capable philosopher. Given your occasional appeal to quantum physics you should be familiar with the problem of traditional notions of causality.
… he would suggest that I reject a personal God.
I am not suggesting that you should reject a personal God and not suggesting that you do. I really don’t know whether you do or not. The problem is that you jump from one concept of God to another depending on what you are arguing for or against and these concepts are incompatible. If God is not a being then how can God be a person? If God is impassive then God does not take personal interest or an interest in the persons. Tillich does maintain a version of a “personal God” but not God as a person. In any case, whatever the flavor of the day, when Watts rejects an “impersonal super-consciousness,” or an “impersonal mind” he is not advocating for a personal God however you conceive of that term.

In the link below Watts makes it clear that he also rejects Classical Theism, specifically Aquinas’ God as necessary being. He calls such conceptualization idolatry. I suspect he would say the same of your self-referential system. See below.
That's the problem with cataphatic theology: people see analogical language, take it as univocal, and come to an absurd conclusion.
But in the article I cite he rejects cataphatic theology, and not because of people reach absurd conclusions by misunderstanding the language, but rather because of what they are "clinging to":
In other words,a person who is a fanatic in religion, one who simply has to believe in certain propositions about the nature of God and of the universe is a person who has no faith at all- he’s holding on tight.
yin4men.com/files/24dd69dd8bf6da0410ab8 ... d-154.html
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Ormond
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Ormond »

Fooloso4 wrote: The problem is that you jump from one concept of God to another depending on what you are arguing for or against and these concepts are incompatible.
One concept of God is that such a thing does exists. Another concept of God is that such a thing does not exist. It is assumed by pretty much everybody on all sides of the issue that these two concepts are incompatible.

And yet it is at least reasonable to make a case that most of reality both exists, and doesn't exist, at the same time. Something separates the Earth from the Moon, but that something seems best described as a nothing, given that as far as we know it has none of the properties we associate with the definition of existence.

The point here is that before any of us can reference human reason as an authority that can settle such questions, we bear the burden of first demonstrating that human reason is binding upon those questions.

In this particular example case quoted above, Fooloso4 is proposing that a God could not have contradictory properties, as understood by human beings. He is asserting, or at least assuming, that the rules of human reason are the highest authority which none can violate, including any hyper-intelligent entity typically defined as being capable of creating billions of galaxies.

Consider the theist who tries to conclusively end an argument by quoting Bible verses, without making any attempt to prove the Bible is a credible qualified authority on the questions being discussed. This theist takes such authority to be an obvious given, and thus sincerely sees no need to provide proof of the Bible's qualifications. He dismisses such a request for proof with a careless wave of the hand, considering it to be an irrelevant distraction.

This is essentially what is happening in all these threads, and yes, it is a very predictable pattern. The unproven authority usually being referenced in these threads is usually human reason instead of some holy book, but other than that it's the same blind true believer syndrome at work.
If the things we want to hear could take us where we want to go, we'd already be there.
Dark Matter
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Dark Matter »

Fooloso4 wrote:
Apparently you found it to be so predictable that you did not bother reading it. Watts either/or option is one that you also reject. I provided two other options, one that you yourself have advocated elsewhere. Calling Reality God is problematic because there are various conceptions of God, and you have made clear that there are some that you do not accept.

:lol: When you said, "Watts seems to be unaware of apophatic or negative theology or the idea that God is not something that is but the ground or source of what is as other possibilities," I thought you were joking. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who is familiar with Watts knows how absurd that is. Even the subtitle of the book, A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion, belies your assumption. If I didn't know better, I'd think you're just upset that he put forth an irrefutable cataphatic argument using discrete either/or terms.

Now, read carefully what you said: "Calling Reality God is problematic because there are various conceptions of God." In the context of what Watts said, it's a non sequitur
You defer to Alan Watts on the question of causality. I defer to a highly regarded physicist who is also a more than capable philosopher. Given your occasional appeal to quantum physics you should be familiar with the problem of traditional notions of causality.

You mean chance-in-the-gaps is sufficient reason. Guess where I got that phrase.
I am not suggesting that you should reject a personal God and not suggesting that you do. I really don’t know whether you do or not. The problem is that you jump from one concept of God to another depending on what you are arguing for or against and these concepts are incompatible. If God is not a being then how can God be a person? If God is impassive then God does not take personal interest or an interest in the persons. Tillich does maintain a version of a “personal God” but not God as a person. In any case, whatever the flavor of the day, when Watts rejects an “impersonal super-consciousness,” or an “impersonal mind” he is not advocating for a personal God however you conceive of that term.

Weird...things aren't either/or until it seems to suit your purpose. It a photon a particle, wave or context-dependent?
In the link below Watts makes it clear that he also rejects Classical Theism, specifically Aquinas’ God as necessary being. He calls such conceptualization idolatry. I suspect he would say the same of your self-referential system.

But I thought you said, "Watts seems to be unaware of apophatic or negative theology or the idea that God is not something that is but the ground or source of what is as other possibilities." :lol:
Fooloso4
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Dark Matter:
Anyone, and I mean anyone, who is familiar with Watts knows how absurd that is.
I know of him only in passing from his questionable popularization of Zen. This was the first I have read anything he has to say regarding God. My comment was based on his either/or alternative. The point is that apodictic theology does not fit the dichotomy and neither does the idea that God is not a being but the ground of being. There is a sense in which with regard to both of these that one could say that God is not, but that is misleading, as is the assertion that God is.
If I didn't know better, I'd think you're just upset that he put forth an irrefutable cataphatic argument using discrete either/or terms.
Upset? Why? Even if I thought the argument was irrefutable it would not upset me, but if what I said above is correct then it is not irrefutable.
Now, read carefully what you said: "Calling Reality God is problematic because there are various conceptions of God." In the context of what Watts said, it's a non sequitur


I don’t follow. Here is what he said:
Either the ultimate Reality is alive, conscious and intelligent, or it is not. If it is, then it is what we call God.
If “we” means those who define God in the way he does there is no problem as long as they are talking to each other, but as soon they address others with different concepts of God there is inevitable confusion.
You mean chance-in-the-gaps is sufficient reason. Guess where I got that phrase.
I have no idea where you got it from. Why not link it so that I know specifically what you are referring to? A Google search credit William Dembski, but that tells me nothing about what you think it has to do with what Carroll says about causality. Do you think he is guilty of this? Does he address it? Where? What does he say?
It a photon a particle, wave or context-dependent?
What does this have to do with your concept and belief or nonbelief in a personal God?
But I thought you said, "Watts seems to be unaware of apophatic or negative theology or the idea that God is not something that is but the ground or source of what is as other possibilities."
Yes, I did. That comment, once again, was based on his either/or argument. There is no evidence there that he had considered these alternatives and from what you provided he did not address them. His rejection of conceptualization in the article I linked does not resolve the problem of the either/or argument, in fact, it contradicts it since “is or is not” is a conceptual formulation and Apophatic theology rejects that formulation. “Ultimate Reality is alive, conscious and intelligent” are all concepts as well.

In any case, you ignored the fact that he would consider your self-referential system idolatry. But then again, maybe he is wrong about that as well (or not).
Dark Matter
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Dark Matter »

Yes, Watts' argument is either/or. It's dialectical, comprised of contradicting ideas whose interaction serves as the determining factor. It's obvious you don't like the logical conclusion, but by referring to apophatic theology as a rejoinder, you are conflating incongruent ways of thinking. It muddies the water and makes you look confused and desperate.

Just address the argument using simple, plain, univocal language like Watts did in this particular excerpt. But before you do that, go back and read the excerpt again, only more carefully.

BTW, I got the "chance-in-the-gaps" phrase from Paul Davies.
Fooloso4
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Re: Lucky Guesses?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Dark Matter:
It's dialectical, comprised of contradicting ideas whose interaction serves as the determining factor.
The argument as presented is not dialectical. Choosing one of those opposing claims is not dialectic.

But let’s look at what you have said about it:
If I didn't know better, I'd think you're just upset that he put forth an irrefutable cataphatic argument using discrete either/or terms.

Weird...things aren't either/or until it seems to suit your purpose.
You do just what you wrongly accuse me of doing. First you say that they are discrete either/or terms used to present an irrefutable cataphatic argument, and then that they are not but are the terms of a dialectical argument.
It's obvious you don't like the logical conclusion …
The conclusion is God exists. It rejects the claim that God does not exist. There is nothing dialectical about the logic or conclusion.
… but by referring to apophatic theology as a rejoinder, you are conflating incongruent ways of thinking.
It is actually cataphatic theology that is opposed to dialectic - it choosing option A: God exists. Apophatic theology on the other hand says neither this nor that - both choices lead to false conclusions. It is in fact called “apophatic dialectic”.

I am not conflating ways of thinking, I am simply pointing out that the terms of the argument are problematic because either God exists or God does not exist are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive. It does not address ways of thinking about God that are not based on these options.
BTW, I got the "chance-in-the-gaps" phrase from Paul Davies.
You still have not said how that relates to what Carroll says about causality.
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Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
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August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
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The Preppers Medical Handbook

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Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
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Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

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