If there is a God, why is there evil?

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.
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Nick_A
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Belindi
That is not how I interpret the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I interpret this tree as forbidden because it gave man moral choice. Of all the animals man is the one which we know has choices, which as we see extend even into the abstractions of moral philosophy. The power of moral choice is a mixed blessing. It brings with it huge responsibilities.
This doesn't make sense to me. Why would this tree have such a prominent place in the garden even before Man?
Genesis2: 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
What purpose does morality serve at the beginning of creation? What is objective good and evil in relation to our "being?"
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Nick_A wrote:
This doesn't make sense to me. Why would this tree have such a prominent place in the garden even before Man?
Because nothing in the world is absolutely this or that, round or oval, tall or short, good or evil . That is the natural world, relative.

The Garden is a 'place' of absolutes simply because God's rule is absolute, not relative.
'Knowledge' refers to the Biblical meaning of knowledge. As beings in the world we know, i.e. we experience, that our knowledge is relative not absolute. Good and evil are relative to each other and to events. We know , in the Biblical experiential sense, this relativity. 'Knowledge' doesn't refer to any ability conferred on us by the Tree to be able to arbitrate correctly which is which, good or evil. That is to say the knowledge is not about how men should be good.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Belindi wrote:Nick_A wrote:
This doesn't make sense to me. Why would this tree have such a prominent place in the garden even before Man?
Because nothing in the world is absolutely this or that, round or oval, tall or short, good or evil . That is the natural world, relative.

The Garden is a 'place' of absolutes simply because God's rule is absolute, not relative.
'Knowledge' refers to the Biblical meaning of knowledge. As beings in the world we know, i.e. we experience, that our knowledge is relative not absolute. Good and evil are relative to each other and to events. We know , in the Biblical experiential sense, this relativity. 'Knowledge' doesn't refer to any ability conferred on us by the Tree to be able to arbitrate correctly which is which, good or evil. That is to say the knowledge is not about how men should be good.
The garden is a place of absolutes. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is in the middle of the garden so should be an absolute. it reflects objective knowledge. On earth we are limited to subjective knowledge or opinions. Good and evil is an opinion for us. The essential question for me here is the difference between objective good and evil which is a universal principle and subjective good and evil which is a man made concept of opinions created by man on earth.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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There are some translators and commentators who translate the Hebrew ra’ as bad instead of evil. Strong’s includes the following: disagreeable, malignant, unpleasant, giving pain, unhappiness, misery, wickedness, etc. It includes but is not limited to moral determinations.
As 2:9 says, there were trees in the garden that were good for food. Eve saw that the tree of knowledge was good for food (3:6). That a tree is a good source of food is not a moral determination. This suggests that we not be too quick to assume that the knowledge of good and evil or good and bad is limited to moral knowledge.

Belindi:
Because nothing in the world is absolutely this or that, round or oval, tall or short, good or evil . That is the natural world, relative.
I agree with this and in my opinion it informs the view of man and the world as presented by the biblical authors. Nothing is either solely this or that. Genesis 1 and 2 brings to light a plurality of dynamic dualisms, wherein the truth is neither this or that but lies somewhere in the tension between them.

Genesis 1 begins with a world in flux where nothing is separate and distinct. God begins by a series of acts that differentiate, starting with dividing the light from the darkness (1:4), day and night (1:5), evening and morning (1:5)*, waters from waters (1:6),dry land from waters below (1:9) etc.

Genesis 2 begins just the opposite condition, a dry world in which nothing happens until God causes the rain and things begin to grow.

Genesis 1 takes motion as primary and Genesis 2 takes rest or stasis as primary.

In Genesis 1 there is a common refrain in which God saw what he had done and pronounces it good. And yet, when it comes to man that refrain is conspicuously absent. God did not see that man was good, and yet he saw that the whole of what he had done was very good (1:31)

Man is the dust of the ground and breath of God (2:7) Man is male and female (1:27), separate but of the same (2:23), to cleave, that is, both to separate and join together (2:24)
Good and bad (2:9).

Life and death (2:9 and 2:17)

The blessing to be fruitful and multiply (1:28) is inextricably tied to Eve’s burden:
Multiplying I multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow dost thou bear children … (3:16)
* Evening and morning, the twilight times stand in contrast to day and night in that the distinction between day and night is clear but evening and morning are the times where it is not clearly one or the other, they are not clearly distinct from each other, and nothing is clearly what it is and can be mistaken for other things in twilight.

What is describes is a world that is neither this or that but both this and that. It is radically open-ended. This is the story of Genesis, the story of man’s ways, of the paths he walks, of the good and bad he is capable of. Not even God seems to know what man will do:
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (6:5-6)
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Belindi
Because nothing in the world is absolutely this or that, round or oval, tall or short, good or evil . That is the natural world, relative.
Are you familiar with concept of the living universe or the conscious universe? It is sustained by two basic flows of life forces. The first is involution. It is the flow of forces from unity and one quality of being into diversity which are lower qualities of forces manifesting as fractions of the whole. The return flow from diversity towards unity is called evolution.

There is a level of reality within this living structure within which mechanical evolution can make the transition to conscious evolution. Man on earth exists at such a level and has the potential to enter into conscious evolution.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree offering the fruit (inner awareness) of this potential. Man proceeding along the path leading to the Good is called good. Whatever prevents Man’s awareness and the meaning of the Tree of Life is evil for Man’s conscious potential

Subjective secular good and evil is a subjective horizontal relationship within linear time. Objective good and evil in relation to consciousness is a vertical relationship within the quality of a moment affecting Man’s “being.”
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Sy Borg
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Nick_A wrote:Belindi
Because nothing in the world is absolutely this or that, round or oval, tall or short, good or evil . That is the natural world, relative.
Are you familiar with concept of the living universe or the conscious universe? It is sustained by two basic flows of life forces. The first is involution. It is the flow of forces from unity and one quality of being into diversity which are lower qualities of forces manifesting as fractions of the whole. The return flow from diversity towards unity is called evolution.

There is a level of reality within this living structure within which mechanical evolution can make the transition to conscious evolution. Man on earth exists at such a level and has the potential to enter into conscious evolution.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree offering the fruit (inner awareness) of this potential. Man proceeding along the path leading to the Good is called good. Whatever prevents Man’s awareness and the meaning of the Tree of Life is evil for Man’s conscious potential

Subjective secular good and evil is a subjective horizontal relationship within linear time. Objective good and evil in relation to consciousness is a vertical relationship within the quality of a moment affecting Man’s “being.”
Well I'll be, a post from you that I actually enjoyed. You are much more fun when not being "political".

It's all very speculative, of course, but it has its own logic and coherence. The conception reminds me of the holographic time hypothesis, where time is not as we perceive it but a gradual movement towards the initial thing that acts as a holographic plate, which becomes ever clearer over time (hence the early universe seeming to us to be diffuse, unformed clouds of atoms and molecules and that become more formed over time). In each case it's as though the Omega Point is the start and everything works up to it. I'm open to it but don't believe it, or anything much.

One issue is I doubt that what is good for "Man" is actually an objective good. Wouldn't it be right that humanity be succeeded by the next evolutionary innovation? If humanity in all its craziness is the highest form of existence that this incredible edifice of stars, planets, moons and other comic objects can produce, then the universe is unbelievably wasteful and it mean that life on Earth was a meaningless fluke. I personally think that to be unlikely; the universe is still very young.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by Belindi »

Nick_A wrote:
The garden is a place of absolutes. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is in the middle of the garden so should be an absolute. it reflects objective knowledge. On earth we are limited to subjective knowledge or opinions. Good and evil is an opinion for us. The essential question for me here is the difference between objective good and evil which is a universal principle and subjective good and evil which is a man made concept of opinions created by man on earth.
I think the word you want is 'absolute' which pertains to eternal truth, not 'objective' which relates to degree of subjectivity. If the Tree were absolute knowledge it would have been nonsensical for God to have forbidden its fruit, as the entire Garden is absolute.

There is no either/or when you consider the difference between good and evil, and this is because ( for people who include eternal truths in their speculations) there is both eternal truth and the relative truth of this world.

Thus:

eternal or relative is ontical, and both are true.

analytic or synthetic is epistemic, and both are true.


Genesis is poetic and philosophical not legalistic and moralistic. For legalistic and moralistic you go to Leviticus, or more generally to the Sermon on the Mount.

-- Updated May 7th, 2017, 5:12 am to add the following --
Nick_A wrote:Belindi
Because nothing in the world is absolutely this or that, round or oval, tall or short, good or evil . That is the natural world, relative.
Are you familiar with concept of the living universe or the conscious universe? It is sustained by two basic flows of life forces. The first is involution. It is the flow of forces from unity and one quality of being into diversity which are lower qualities of forces manifesting as fractions of the whole. The return flow from diversity towards unity is called evolution.

There is a level of reality within this living structure within which mechanical evolution can make the transition to conscious evolution. Man on earth exists at such a level and has the potential to enter into conscious evolution.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree offering the fruit (inner awareness) of this potential. Man proceeding along the path leading to the Good is called good. Whatever prevents Man’s awareness and the meaning of the Tree of Life is evil for Man’s conscious potential

Subjective secular good and evil is a subjective horizontal relationship within linear time. Objective good and evil in relation to consciousness is a vertical relationship within the quality of a moment affecting Man’s “being.”
The Tree represents the nature of the relative world. I do happen to believe that man is naturally sympathetic and that men who inherently lack sympathy are incomplete men . However even with intact and inborn sympathy men have a reasoning problem deciding between good and bad. The Tree is about the reasoning problem, and about what God gave men i.e. innate sympathy. Whether you believe in God or not we men can be comforted by not only but also the view from eternity.

Not only but also lands men with the uncomfortable fact that is is we living men who have to actively make decisions. The reasoning for the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is that we need a lot of help in making moral decisions. Whether the initiative for this help from prophets, scientists, poets, and seers originates with God or with nature is tangential. However the question of whether or not God originated a benign order of nature such that the end of evolution will be the arrival of good is bad for us active and adult men , as it is fatalistic.

It's fatalistic because if don't work very hard , ' carry our crosses', there will be no moral evolution. The signs are that moral evolution is not only stopped but with the advent of technology has become more bad.

-- Updated May 7th, 2017, 5:20 am to add the following --

PS it is an absolute truth that there is such a Tree . God, as absolute truth, has established the Tree. The content or meaning of the Tree is a description in the broadest terms of this relative world and God has established also the content or meaning of the Tree. God as represented in Genesis has made not only eternity but also this relative world. It would be nonsensical for relative good or bad to be present in eternity. Eternity does however contain the possibility of relative values.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Belindi
PS it is an absolute truth that there is such a Tree . God, as absolute truth, has established the Tree. The content or meaning of the Tree is a description in the broadest terms of this relative world and God has established also the content or meaning of the Tree. God as represented in Genesis has made not only eternity but also this relative world. It would be nonsensical for relative good or bad to be present in eternity. Eternity does however contain the possibility of relative values.
It seems a major difference between us is that I take levels of reality and that which connects them seriously while you are concerned with one level within which relative good and evil is the norm and objective good and evil doesn't exist.

It would make it easier for me to understand you if I knew if you accept Plato's analogy of the divided line seriously. The objective vertical conception of good and evil would be the norm for reality above the line while subjective conceptions of good and evil would be the norm below the line. If unfamiliar with Plato's divided line you can get a basic idea here

http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/plato1.htm
The Divided Line is supplied at the end of Book 6 of the Republic, with additional remarks in Book 7 (Rep 6.509d–6.511e; 7.533c–7.534b).

The basic features are as follows:

Using a line for illustration, Plato divides human knowledge into four grades or levels, differing in their degree of clarity and truth. First, imagine a line divided into two sections of unequal length (Figure 1, hash mark C). The upper level corresponds to Knowledge, and is the realm of Intellect. The lower level corresponds to Opinion, and concerns the world of sensory experience. Plato says only that the sections are of "unequal" length, but the conventional view is that the Knowledge section is the longer one.
Then bisect each of these sections (hash marks B and D). This produces four line segments, corresponding to four cognitive states and/or modes of thinking. From highest to lowest, these are:
noesis (immediate intuition, apprehension, or mental 'seeing' of principles)
dianoia (discursive thought)
pistis (belief or confidence)
eikasia (delusion or sheer conjecture)
Subjective conceptions of good and evil take place at the visible level of opinion. The levels of opinion below the line include eikasia and pistis. Objective knowledge is experienced above the line. Objective knowledge begins with impartial dianois and concludes with noesis. Can you accept the distinction between discursive thought and misguided belief and how discursive thought is just the beginning of what can be called human reason and not its conclusion. If so the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil is an artistic means to confuse and bypass elkasia and pistis so as to open to impartial contemplation and possibly the vertical experience of good and evil as conscious human potential and a conscious attribute of noesis.

-- Updated Sun May 07, 2017 1:47 pm to add the following --

greta
One issue is I doubt that what is good for "Man" is actually an objective good. Wouldn't it be right that humanity be succeeded by the next evolutionary innovation? If humanity in all its craziness is the highest form of existence that this incredible edifice of stars, planets, moons and other comic objects can produce, then the universe is unbelievably wasteful and it mean that life on Earth was a meaningless fluke. I personally think that to be unlikely; the universe is still very young.
are you familiar with the Great Chain of Being. From that perspective we are far from the highest form of life in the universe.

http://faculty.up.edu/asarnow/greatchainofbeing.htm

I can see how innovation can be considered as evolutionary from the perspective of opinion below the line in Plato's divided line analogy. However if Man is to consciously evolve it requires Man's being to develop along the Great Chain of Being closer to its source. From the point of view of opinion below the line, innovation and what we DO leads to the good for man. From the point of view of the search for the experience of the Good it requires transcending reliance on opinion and an inner growth of what we ARE.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Nick_A wrote:
Subjective conceptions of good and evil take place at the visible level of opinion. The levels of opinion below the line include eikasia and pistis. Objective knowledge is experienced above the line. Objective knowledge begins with impartial dianois and concludes with noesis. Can you accept the distinction between discursive thought and misguided belief and how discursive thought is just the beginning of what can be called human reason and not its conclusion. If so the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil is an artistic means to confuse and bypass elkasia and pistis so as to open to impartial contemplation and possibly the vertical experience of good and evil as conscious human potential and a conscious attribute of noesis.
I read the link that you recommended. I had not known what it explained about 'the divided line' of Plato' idea. That is interesting.

Conscience is not only Freudian superego but is also compounded with human sympathy . Conscience is then evidence that human sympathy is essentially part of the human psyche, as sympathetic people don't stop being sympathetic when they become uninhibited due to drunkenness or dreams.

I don't accept the claim that human knowledge of nature can advance beyond dianois, i.e. synthetic knowledge. The extent of synthetic knowledge among humans includes knowledge about ourselves i.e. psychological knowledge. There is the exception of certain, deductive, knowledge i.e. noesis within the disciplines we use for measuring quantity which are maths and formal logic. Maths and formal logic don't measure quality because maths and formal logic cannot define quality.

Measurements of quality elude noesis except insofar as nature has determined the existence of certain qualities within the human psyche. Even so, the actuality of any supposed fixed qualities of the human psyche are not absolutely known as noesis; knowledge of them is subject to the inductive gap, so knowledge of any fixed qualities of the human psyche is synthetic and probabilistic.

Experiential knowledge is of course subjectively true, but experiential knowledge is private and the subject has the privileged access to experiential knowledge, and moreover usually confabulates experiential knowledge to suit a culture of belief.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Belindi
I don't accept the claim that human knowledge of nature can advance beyond dianois, i.e. synthetic knowledge. The extent of synthetic knowledge among humans includes knowledge about ourselves i.e. psychological knowledge. There is the exception of certain, deductive, knowledge i.e. noesis within the disciplines we use for measuring quantity which are maths and formal logic. Maths and formal logic don't measure quality because maths and formal logic cannot define quality.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-B ... edic-texts

Is it true that Bohr and Schrödinger, the founders of quantum physics, were avid readers of the Vedic texts?
At first glance, the subjects of science and metaphysics seem to be polar opposites of each other. The pioneers of Quantum Mechanics, however, believed it to be otherwise.
In fact, the founding fathers of Quantum Physics, while formulating their groundbreaking theories, sumptuously dug into annals of Vedic philosophy and found their experiments to be consistent with the knowledge expounded in Vedas.
Danish physicist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr was fascinated with Vedas. His remark, “I go to the Upanishad to ask questions,” reveals a lot about his respect for the ancient wisdom of India.
Erwin Schrodinger, an Austrian-Irish physicist who also won the Nobel Prize for his famous wave equation, was also a keen proponent of the Vedic thought.
In his book Meine Weltansicht, Schrodinger says, “This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.”
This is nothing but a Mundaka Upanishad mantra which proposes the connectivity of all living beings.
“The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. This is entirely consistent with the Vedanta concept of All in One”, Schrodinger said while referring to each particle in the universe as a wave function.
In your opinion do these insights come through dianoia or noesis?
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Nick_A wrote:greta
One issue is I doubt that what is good for "Man" is actually an objective good. Wouldn't it be right that humanity be succeeded by the next evolutionary innovation? If humanity in all its craziness is the highest form of existence that this incredible edifice of stars, planets, moons and other comic objects can produce, then the universe is unbelievably wasteful and it mean that life on Earth was a meaningless fluke. I personally think that to be unlikely; the universe is still very young.
are you familiar with the Great Chain of Being. From that perspective we are far from the highest form of life in the universe.

http://faculty.up.edu/asarnow/greatchainofbeing.htm

I can see how innovation can be considered as evolutionary from the perspective of opinion below the line in Plato's divided line analogy. However if Man is to consciously evolve it requires Man's being to develop along the Great Chain of Being closer to its source. From the point of view of opinion below the line, innovation and what we DO leads to the good for man. From the point of view of the search for the experience of the Good it requires transcending reliance on opinion and an inner growth of what we ARE.
That's looking to me like a reincarnation model, where one keeps having a go and, if they stuff life up (as almost everyone does in some ways), then they are recycled - until they don't stuff up. Or I imagine you'd figure we only get one bite at the cherry. It appears to me that "Man" need not do very much in order to develop because it will all happen anyway through scarcity. I suspect that if humanity consciously tried not to develop, it would be temporary.

Now ... about angels, as per the link. Nick, what's the story there?
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Nick_A wrote:
In his book Meine Weltansicht, Schrodinger says, “This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.”
This is nothing but a Mundaka Upanishad mantra which proposes the connectivity of all living beings.
“The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. This is entirely consistent with the Vedanta concept of All in One”, Schrodinger said while referring to each particle in the universe as a wave function.


In your opinion do these insights come through dianoia or noesis?
My opinion on such a basic matter is not my own but is informed by Spinoza. I don't accept Spinoza's premiss that he has proved his conclusion by way of deduction . I think that Spinoza's huge system is inspired by faith in reason plus speculation regarding his axioms.



Men speculate about eternity and eternal truths. Schrodinger refers to eternity and the view from eternity. The modes of nature i.e. the eternal and the temporal are epistemic however nature is ontically outside of time.

The above can be similarly used by theists. 'The modes of God i.e. the eternal and the temporal are epistemic however God is ontically outside of time'. It's the claim that mens vision sub specie aeternitatis is cloudy . Nature (or for theists, God) is essentially and substantially eternal.
“The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. This is entirely consistent with the Vedanta concept of All in One”, Schrodinger said while referring to each particle in the universe as a wave function.

Schrodinger draws an analogy ; he isn't claiming parity. A scientist is allowed to be also a poet. Vedantists , poets , and scientists all long for eternity.

However science is probabilistic, even physics. Scientists per se aren't metaphysicians. As scientists they hold to the correspondence view of truth



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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Greta
Now ... about angels, as per the link. Nick, what's the story there?
As you know, below the divided line and the level of the sun (son) we can see the gradations of mechanical being manifesting as the qualities of organic life. At the top of this scale is Man. Some would say there is nothing beyond what our senses reveal. Others will say that there is a sliding scale of conscious being the evolution of which begins at the divided line.

Are you familiar with the demiurge? The universe is a living machine and is sustained by qualities of consciousness and universal laws. The demiurge and angels all serve their purpose in serving this living machine. The point is that since qualities of being are easily observed below the line, it is natural they also exist above the line beyond the perception of our senses.

Belindi
Men speculate about eternity and eternal truths. Schrodinger refers to eternity and the view from eternity. The modes of nature i.e. the eternal and the temporal are epistemic however nature is ontically outside of time.

The above can be similarly used by theists. 'The modes of God i.e. the eternal and the temporal are epistemic however God is ontically outside of time'. It's the claim that mens vision sub specie aeternitatis is cloudy . Nature (or for theists, God) is essentially and substantially eternal.
How did the ancients responsible for the Vedas acquire their knowledge? Did it come through discursive thought, noesis, or what Plato called anamnesis? If the answer is both anamnesis and noesis, then Man has the capacity for reason beyond discursive thought.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Nick_A wrote:
How did the ancients responsible for the Vedas acquire their knowledge? Did it come through discursive thought, noesis, or what Plato called anamnesis? If the answer is both anamnesis and noesis, then Man has the capacity for reason beyond discursive thought.
I doubt if the answer is anamnesis and noesis. I think that the answer is that ideas evolve, and that religion evolved from propitiating the forces of natural places and the forces of nature. Ancestors and respect for ancestors and the dead, set traditions which evolved into myths and mythic traditions. The great thinkers, seers, philosophers, and prophets of the past evolved because of economic necessity. Justice has to become, of social necessity, an abstract and eventually in some parts of the world, a supreme force.

God-kings had their day and when economic and social collectives became too unwieldy and market-oriented, for god-kings and their deputies there had to be abstract justice together with its personifications. Jahweh is a case in point and The Bible makes it clear that Jahweh evolved to become the God of justice and mercy which we know today through Judeo- Christianity and its offshoot Islam.

Even the simple history of the Ark of the Covenant , which was carried around by nomads and eventually was set in a fixed temple ,is a metaphor for evolution of religion.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Nick_A: How did the ancients responsible for the Vedas acquire their knowledge? Did it come through discursive thought, noesis, or what Plato called anamnesis?
From Sri Aurobindo:
"In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they have not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank has always been given to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an intellectual conclusion that contradicts this Supreme authority is held invalid.

Secondly, each philosophy has armed itself with a practical way of reaching to the supreme state of consciousness, so that even when one begins with Thought, the aim is to arrive at a consciousness beyond mental thinking. Each philosophical founder (as also those who continued his work or school) has been a metaphysical thinker doubled with a Yogi. Those who were only philosophic intellectuals were respected for their learning, but never took rank as truth-discoverers. And the philosophies that lacked a sufficiently powerful means of spiritual experience died out and became things of the past, because they were not dynamic for spiritual discovery and realisation.

In the West it was just the opposite that came to pass. Thought, intellect, the logical reason came to be regarded more and more as the highest means and even the highest end; in philosophy, Thought is the be-all and the end-all. It is by intellectual thinking and speculation that the truth is to be discovered; even spiritual experience has been summoned to pass the tests of the intellect, if it is to be held valid — just the reverse of the Indian position.

Even those who see that the mental Thought must be exceeded and admit a supramental “Other”, do not seem to escape from the feeling that it must be through mental Thought, sublimating and transmuting itself, that this other Truth must be reached and made to take the place of the mental limitation and ignorance. And, again, Western thought has ceased to be dynamic; it has sought after a theory of things, not after realisation. It was still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for the attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment, spiritual discovery, a spiritual transformation."
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise
by John K Danenbarger
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Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
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February 2023

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
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March 2023

The Unfakeable Code®

The Unfakeable Code®
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The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
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Killing Abel

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June 2023

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead
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July 2023

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough
by Mark Unger
August 2023

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
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Artwords

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Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope

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My Enemy in Vietnam
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2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
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The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
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The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
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In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
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Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
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The Preppers Medical Handbook

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