Was Judas the first Liberal?

[-TheLastAmerican]

Whether there is, or is not a God / Creator - a belief in a higher power to which each individual could be held accountable to in an afterlife, has existed in one form or another, since the dawn of humanity, and has done more to mitigate humankind's innate pathological endeavor to hold dominion over other humans, especially those that disagree with them, hate, than any other philosophy known to mankind.

The reverse of this is liberal/socialism, wherein a Creator does not exist, and all the matter in the Universe is the result of a process that just popped into existence one day, from absolutely nothing, in the middle of a void that did not previously exist, just because it wanted to, and we are no different than Jackals led by the most psychotic of Jackals. A 100% self-serving belief that holds the believers of same, 100% unaccountable to anyone but themselves and their whims.

Obviously, even cavemen were infinitely more insightful than humankind's current crop of experts - in my humble opinion.

[-TheLastAmerican]

[Edit] delete "hate" in first paragraph. Man I wish there was an edit feature at least for 15-minutes or so...

[Ecurb]

Whether there is, or is not a God / Creator - a belief in a higher power to which each individual could be held accountable to in an afterlife, has existed in one form or another, since the dawn of humanity, and has done more to mitigate humankind's innate pathological endeavor to hold dominion over other humans, especially those that disagree with them, hate, than any other philosophy known to mankind.

Accountability in the afterlife is certainly not a feature in many religions of which we are aware. The Greeks, for example, thought everyone (or at least said they thought everyone) went to Hades as a shade, and nothing you did in this world could change that. The shade of Achilles (the great Greek hero) told Odysseus that he wouild rather be a living slave then a king in Hades. We don't know what neolithic people believed -- although there is some evidence, based on grave sites, that they did have some concept of an afterlife.

[Nick_A]

Whether there is, or is not a God / Creator - a belief in a higher power to which each individual could be held accountable to in an afterlife, has existed in one form or another, since the dawn of humanity, and has done more to mitigate humankind's innate pathological endeavor to hold dominion over other humans, especially those that disagree with them, hate, than any other philosophy known to mankind.

The reverse of this is liberal/socialism, wherein a Creator does not exist, and all the matter in the Universe is the result of a process that just popped into existence one day, from absolutely nothing, in the middle of a void that did not previously exist, just because it wanted to, and we are no different than Jackals led by the most psychotic of Jackals. A 100% self-serving belief that holds the believers of same, 100% unaccountable to anyone but themselves and their whims.

Obviously, even cavemen were infinitely more insightful than humankind's current crop of experts - in my humble opinion.

Are these the only two options? Is our choice between a personal God telling us what to do or floundering around in the dark trying to figure out how best to live together?

What if the machine we know of as universe is a necessity. What if it is the body of God where our ineffable source is unnecessary? Can our species evolve to understand the mechanics of the machine and Man's place and importance within it rather than floundering in the darkness of Plato's cave and practicing idolatry? An open question.

Jesus represents Man's potential to awaken and what is necessary for it while Judas represents that it is impossible for some.

[-TheLastAmerican]

I was expressing an observation. I have no idea what there is, or isn't! However, the argument that the Universe created itself, from nothing, as some believe, is irrational to me.

Nevertheless, whomever, or whatever, "created" the nothing from which everything created itself, is obviously far beyond humankind's comprehension - and would probably scare the entire human race to death.

I do not believe in a God that has personal relationship's with people, but I do believe that there is something out there.

What is the purpose of the Universe?

[Nick_A]

I was expressing an observation. I have no idea what there is, or isn't! However, the argument that the Universe created itself, from nothing, as some believe, is irrational to me.

Nevertheless, whomever, or whatever, "created" the nothing from which everything created itself, is obviously far beyond humankind's comprehension - and would probably scare the entire human race to death.

I do not believe in a God that has personal relationship's with people, but I do believe that there is something out there.

What is the purpose of the Universe?

I agree that it is irrational to assume the universe created itself from nothing. However is pure consciousness nothing or is it no-thing? The universe as I see it is the actualization of a conscious potential

"Do you wish to know God? Learn first to know yourself." - Abba Evagrius the Monk.

If true, the first question is the purpose of our bodies. What do they do? Regardless of how we imagine ourselves what do they do? We know that our bodies as machines transform substances through our bodily processes. Eating, drinking, sex, breathing, thinking, all serve the process of transforming substances by changing one thing into another.

As I understand it, the universal machine is the same. Our conscious source, beyond the limits of time and space, enables the machine within time and space to do its work. The complimentary cyclical process or flow of forces of involution (into creation) and evolution (return to the source,) serve the machine much like our bloodstream serves our machine.

We know we can help the health of our machines, our bodies. But can we serve the necessity of the universal machine serving its purpose?

[Sy Borg]

If true, the first question is the purpose of our bodies. What do they do? Regardless of how we imagine ourselves what do they do? We know that our bodies as machines transform substances through our bodily processes. Eating, drinking, sex, breathing, thinking, all serve the process of transforming substances by changing one thing into another.

As I understand it, the universal machine is the same. Our conscious source, beyond the limits of time and space, enables the machine within time and space to do its work. The complimentary cyclical process or flow of forces of involution (into creation) and evolution (return to the source,) serve the machine much like our bloodstream serves our machine.

We know we can help the health of our machines, our bodies. But can we serve the necessity of the universal machine serving its purpose?

If we are little machines that are part of a universal machine then it's hard to see us having any choice but to serve its purposes. That is, our freedom to do anything would lie within acceptable parameters, being part of the entropic interplay of growth and destruction that results in ever more complexity and sophistication over time. So, whatever we do will play some small role in the overall development of the Earth, and thus, the universe.

My understanding is that some mystical schools seek to escape being part of the machine and, seemingly, become one with the "programmer", escaping the trials and struggles of being one of the "programmed". Then there's an idea that these special individuals are just the first and that, in time, the programmed will all either become one with the program or they will be deleted - waste data destined to be recalculated as new forms.

[Nick_A]

If true, the first question is the purpose of our bodies. What do they do? Regardless of how we imagine ourselves what do they do? We know that our bodies as machines transform substances through our bodily processes. Eating, drinking, sex, breathing, thinking, all serve the process of transforming substances by changing one thing into another.

As I understand it, the universal machine is the same. Our conscious source, beyond the limits of time and space, enables the machine within time and space to do its work. The complimentary cyclical process or flow of forces of involution (into creation) and evolution (return to the source,) serve the machine much like our bloodstream serves our machine.

We know we can help the health of our machines, our bodies. But can we serve the necessity of the universal machine serving its purpose?

If we are little machines that are part of a universal machine then it's hard to see us having any choice but to serve its purposes. That is, our freedom to do anything would lie within acceptable parameters, being part of the entropic interplay of growth and destruction that results in ever more complexity and sophistication over time. So, whatever we do will play some small role in the overall development of the Earth, and thus, the universe.

My understanding is that some mystical schools seek to escape being part of the machine and, seemingly, become one with the "programmer", escaping the trials and struggles of being one of the "programmed". Then there's an idea that these special individuals are just the first and that, in time, the programmed will all either become one with the program or they will be deleted - waste data destined to be recalculated as new forms.

Yes, you have explained the theory behind accelerated conscious evolution for some individuals. Can animal man or the human machine become consciously human?

Simone Weil describes conscious human potential in this inspired observation. How she knew these things and wrote them in her diary and in essays later on put into books by others just leaves me in awe

“The sea is not less beautiful to our eye because we know that sometimes ships sink in it. On the contrary, it is more beautiful still. If the sea modified the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a being possessing discernment and choice, and not this fluid that is perfectly obedient to all external pressures. It is this perfect obedience that is its beauty.”

“All the horrors that are produced in this world are like the folds imprinted on the waves by gravity. This is why they contain beauty. Sometimes a poem, like the Iliad, renders this beauty.”

“Man can never escape obedience to God. A creature cannot not obey. The only choice offered to man as an intelligent and free creature, is to desire obedience or not to desire it. If he does not desire it, he perpetually obeys nevertheless, as a thing subject to mechanical necessity. If he does desire obedience, he remains subject to mechanical necessity, but a new necessity is added on, a necessity constituted by the laws that are proper to supernatural things. Certain actions become impossible for him, while others happen through him, sometimes despite him.”

Excerpt from: Thoughts without order concerning the love of God, in an essay entitled L'amour de Dieu et le malheur (The Love of God and affliction). Simone Weil

Nature is natural. Laws determine its reactions. Consciousness is supernatural and a conscious being is capable of conscious action. I remember reading once where our bodily cells die each day yet brain cells if they are not killed, can live the life of the body. Can a body cell evolve to become a brain cell? Can animal man die to himself, his imaginary beliefs, so as to become conscious man?

[Sy Borg]

Can animal man or the human machine become consciously human?

No need to be consciously human given that we can't be anything else. It may seem nice to be, say, an aardvark, but we cannot will it to be so

Sure, some people are dummies and others are sophisticated. I think the greater challenge is, not to decry the animalistic aspects of ourselves, but to recognise them. If anything, people seem to be too caught up in the meta layer of human opinion and pay not enough attention to nature - be it in and outside of themselves.

I see people who are so hopelessly lost in the meta realm that they shrink in fear in the presence of even small, gentle dogs, completely unable to read the body language, or to understand that these are not wild animals but co-travellers with humans for tens of thousands of years. They walk in the bush and won't notice the startling play of sunlight on trees or deeply striated clouds, instead lost in the remnant maelstrom of societal abstractions.

For the sake of our wellbeing, humans need to simplify, to touch base with their roots. To switch off. Hence meditation, which is in itself an act of trust in the world (that it won't harm you while you are not watching out). Hence nature walks. Dogs. Outback retreats. Sea changes and tree changes.

Yet we are cram together in human hothouse conditions aka cities, because that's how we best survive. Ironic that the conditions that make us most safe ultimately drive us bonkers.

Simone Weil describes conscious human potential in this inspired observation. How she knew these things and wrote them in her diary and in essays later on put into books by others just leaves me in awe

“The sea is not less beautiful to our eye because we know that sometimes ships sink in it. On the contrary, it is more beautiful still. If the sea modified the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a being possessing discernment and choice, and not this fluid that is perfectly obedient to all external pressures. It is this perfect obedience that is its beauty.”

Nope. The sea is beautiful because it is distant, not because it is uncaring.

Beauty comes from observing order at a safe distance. Countless things that we consider beautiful will kill us at close range.

Nature is natural.

Naturally.

Laws determine its reactions. Consciousness is supernatural and a conscious being is capable of conscious action. I remember reading once where our bodily cells die each day yet brain cells if they are not killed, can live the life of the body. Can a body cell evolve to become a brain cell? Can animal man die to himself, his imaginary beliefs, so as to become conscious man?

I don't believe in the supernatural. Everything is natural. In my reckoning, the supernatural is just the weirdness of nature.

A brain cell without the rest of the body would presumably only feel what microbes feel - somewhere between "not much" and "nothing".

Animal Man is doomed. After the success of Ant Man, the writers pitched Animal Man to Marvel. Alas, he was rejected as being too close to Beast and Wolverine.

[Belindi]

Nick claimed

Consciousness is supernatural

.

But consciousness can't pertain to a supernatural order of being if consciousness has anything to do with cells or other natural stuff. this is because there can be no connection between a natural being and a supernatural being.

A supernatural being cannot communicate meanings to a natural being(and vice versa) because a supernatural language is by definition not a natural language.

[Nick_A]

There are at least two essential questions for all those seeking to make sense out of human existence and to feel human rather than animal purpose. Animal conscious is not relative while Man on earth is capable of both animal and higher consciousnss. For example can a dog experience Diotima's Ladder of Love?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diotima%2 ... _teachings

Diotima's teachings

Diotima began with saying that if a man is normal, he will naturally fall in love with one particular beautiful body. Then, he must consider the similarities of the beauty in different bodies. If he understands that all bodies are beautiful he will become a lover of all bodies, not just one. Next, he must realize that the physical beauty is meaningless and impermanent, unlike souls. Whenever he encounters with other individuals that have beauty within their spirits and even if the bodies aren't particularly attractive, he will fall in love to the immaterial part. From this, he will learn to contemplate and appreciate what those people with beautiful souls create, institutions. Then, his attention should ascend from institutions to science, so now he will accept the beauty of every aspect of knowledge. And lastly, once he sees the beauty in a wide horizon, his vision of the beauty will not be anything that is of the flesh. It will be neither words, nor knowledge, nor a something that exists in something else, it will be the beauty of beauty itself that he loves.[4]

Steps on the ladder of love

Plato mentioned the steps of love by putting it under the teaching of Diotima to Socrates. The higher the steps, the more intellectual it is. To be able to climb the ladder, one must understand the prior ladder thoroughly.

First: Love for a particular body Love is a desire for physical features. An individual tends to get attracted to what is missing from the own body. Different particular bodies trigger different individual.

Second: Love for all bodies When an individual recognizes the physical features that he is attracted to and understand that many bodies can have the beauty. Love is then express towards all beautiful bodies in the lover's view, not just a particular body. He then sees beauty in all body and learns to love the differences.

Third: Love for souls The stage in which physical features are put aside and spiritual and moral beauty trigger love. One will fall in love with beautiful minds in this step.

Fourth: Love for laws and institutions Love for the practice, custom or foundation that derived from people with beautiful souls.

Fifth: Love for knowledge When an individual turns his attention to all kinds of knowledge and love that there is knowledge to acquire everywhere.

Sixth: Love for love itself An individual sees the beauty in its form and loves the beauty of love as it is. Every particular beautiful thing is beautiful because of its connection to this Form. The lover who has ascended the ladder apprehends the Form of Beauty in a kind of vision not through words or in the way that other sorts of more ordinary knowledge are known. [5]

Love for the dog is limited to the physical and indoctrination. Love for the human being can evolve beyond the physical to include the love for wisdom and finally to evolve to experience the love for the form of beauty.

The second question concerns the difference between natural and supernatural. For this I'll rely on Plato's divided line:

http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/plato1.htm#intro.

Below the line there are more laws governing the reactions of our universe and less conscious action. Noesis is a psychological quality the higher parts of a person's being can experience but Man normally lives by animal consciousness. Plato provides four qualities of consciousness:

noesis (immediate intuition, apprehension, or mental 'seeing' of principles)
dianoia (discursive thought)
pistis (belief or confidence)
eikasia (delusion or sheer conjecture)

Noesis and dianoia are attributes of the intellectual realm above the divided line while pistis and eikasia are attributes of reactive consciousness or opinion normal for the visible realm.

Noesis or direct apprehension would be a natural potential for Man which is normally called supernatural. This is why it is said that the higher can understand the lower but the lower cannot understand the higher. It lacks the quality of consciousness essential for understanding.

How many are willing to sacrifice the battle over opinions in order to pursue the love of wisdom and possibly opening their being to the experience of noesis? They are either moving underground or there are less of them. A frightening thought.

[Belindi]

It is probably true that a certain number of human beings are the only beings that can aim for and aspire to abstractions such as love, truth, and beauty.

What ethic do you abstract from this?

Did "the supernatural" mean the same to Plato as it does to philosophers after the time of Descartes?

[Nick_A]

It is probably true that a certain number of human beings are the only beings that can aim for and aspire to abstractions such as love, truth, and beauty.

What ethic do you abstract from this?

Did "the supernatural" mean the same to Plato as it does to philosophers after the time of Descartes?

I support those dedicated to awakening to objective ethics in contrast to the indoctrination of subjective ethics. Supporting philosophy as described by Jacob Needleman rather than an excuse to feel important by cursing out Trump is one method

Jacob Needleman: from "The Heart of Philosophy"

Chapter 1
Introduction

Man cannot live without philosophy. This is not a figure of speech but a literal fact that will be demonstrated in this book. There is a yearning in the heart that is nourished only by real philosophy and without this nourishment man dies as surely as if he were deprived of food and air. But this part of the human psyche is not known or honored in our culture. When it does breakthrough to our awareness it is either ignored or treated as something else. It is given wrong names; it is not cared for; it is crushed. And eventually, it may withdraw altogether, never again to appear. When this happens man becomes a thing. No matter what he accomplishes or experiences, no matter what happiness he experiences or what service he performs, he has in fact lost his real possibility. He is dead.

……………………….The function of philosophy in human life is to help Man remember. It has no other task. And anything that calls itself philosophy which does not serve this function is simply not philosophy……………………………….

Do I really want to end up as a walking dead thing? The older I get the more I am attracted to the ineffable objective good described by Plato that offers Man the reason to be.

"Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good." Simone Weil

The world hates it and prefers indoctrinated subjective concepts of the good to appease the fallen human condition.

The forms are the initial results of the GOOD. Some are open to contemplating this great question while most prefer arguing lower partial or fragments of truths. Ethics for me then is striving to keep the inner path to the good open for those including me seeking to transcend defense of opinions to experience the GOOD regardles of the world demanding Man to "give us Barabbas."

[Ecurb]

The forms are the initial results of the GOOD. Some are open to contemplating this great question while most prefer arguing lower partial or fragments of truths. Ethics for me then is striving to keep the inner path to the good open for those including me seeking to transcend defense of opinions to experience the GOOD regardles of the world demanding Man to "give us Barabbas."

And yet the world's demand to "give us Barabbas" saved the world, did it not? If the mob had freed Jesus we would never have been saved from our sins.

[Nick_A]

Belinda

Did "the supernatural" mean the same to Plato as it does to philosophers after the time of Descartes?

Descartes believed in cartesian dualism while I believe in a tinitarian universe (3in1)

Is a miracle a supernatural event if it exists or just a natural occurrence we don't understand?

“A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws, but rather represents laws which are incomprehensible to us.”
— G.I. Gurdjieff

Of course Gurdjieff knew of the levels of realty which create universal cosmology so appreciating a miracle as either an intentional or accidental connection between a higher and lower level of reality is purely a natural or conscious expression of universal laws. No new age fantasy or altered state of consciousness is necessary to appreciate them