In the beginning

LOL. Stick around IO for any length of time and you'll get the hang of it.

Personally, I live in hope.
 
Lol, Saul was a.learned man who dismissed Christianity as modern nonsense! (When Saul prosecuted Christians and when Paul preached and wrote letters, gospels had not yet been written). It is funny that the first was written by someone who thought the story needed to be clarified and corrected....just as each subsequent one..was like a post or comment to update, correct and clarify the last.
 
True more or less. Thanks for correcting my spelling by the way. Paul was a tent maker and was for a time anti-Christian, but Jesus set him straight on the road to Damascus and his teachings would later become a huge part of the Gospel. Modern nonsense one day, utter gospel the next.
 
Last edited:
Thomas said:
Oh, I never automatically dismiss anything.

Sadly however, I have long lamented that this forum is not that kind of place. IO is the forum for the heterodox and the 'out there'. Orthodoxy of any ilk tends to get a rough ride here, and generally the tendency is to state opinions, rather than reason those opinions.

There are forums where the standard of respect accorded to respondents puts IO to shame, but they are 'specialist' – the ones I know tend to follow the pattern of respectful peer review. More objectivity, less opinion.

Whilst I always listen and I never automatically dismiss (there's always something to learn), but where the error seems is evident, I think it would be a disservice to the other not to point it out. I am under no obligation to accept what I can see to be founded on a misunderstanding, and it could well be me who is wrong. But when it comes to Scripture ... no. The idea that Scripture is scientific is a modern nonsense.

I do think those who contemplate their Tradition rather than themselves have an advantage – they have centuries of learning to call on, and tend also to adopt the long view. Unfashionable orthodoxy tends also to be more aware of ephemeral currents which shape public opinion, because we find ourselves so often swimming against the tide. Those who 'go with the flow' tend to see everything as progress, whereas those who don't tend to see a 'sometimes forward, sometimes back' process at work, both in the short term and the long. (There is a sine wave of Christianity, for example, that goes (so far) on a near-millennia-long frequency.)
Click to expand...


Where can I find this 'specialist' religious forum with more objectivity and less opinion? Can a non-specialist (like me) join, just to observe?

By the way, I was quite bummed when you hinted about leaving the forum. Please don't do that again Thomas! I'm very intrigued with your beliefs + thought process. I've been reading your posts when I can find time. I want to know more about how traditional Christians interpret the scriptures.
 
Devils' Advocate said:
Never understood the need to translate a metaphysical story into scientific fact. Genesis and the scientific origin of the universe are entirely separate concepts.
Click to expand...

Without having read through the whole thread, may I come in with my first post?

I read the story of Adam&Eve as an allegorical description of the real actual process of the descent/birth/emergence of this 'material dimension' from the 'spiritual' -- via some sort of semi-material intermediate/astral dimension (the Garden), and from there into the physical?

Perhaps?
 
Last edited:
This sounds as good as any other theory I have heard, RJ. I personally don't hold to it only because I do not believe the spiritual and the physical are actually separate. I believe they are both part of the one reality in which we all live. Which obviously separates me from all the theists out there! lol.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RJM
Devils' Advocate said:
This sounds as good as any other theory I have heard, RJ. I personally don't hold to it only because I do not believe the spiritual and the physical are actually separate. I believe they are both part of the one reality in which we all live. Which obviously separates me from all the theists out there! lol.
Click to expand...
Only separate in the sense of, perhaps, rooms that are contained by but which do not contain, and are always permeated by the house which enables them to exist?

The greater wheel of spirit turns the lesser wheel of nature, but is not turned by it?

Am glad I found these forums :)
 
RJM Corbet said:
Only separate in the sense of, perhaps, rooms that are contained by but which do not contain, and are always permeated by the house which enables them to exist?
Click to expand...
I think all generally see the spirit as higher than matter, but yes, two rooms in one mansion ... I tend to agree with DA that both are one world, but not to the extent of pantheism or some panentheisms.

Some of the Fathers saw your 'spiritual descent into the flesh', Gregory of Nyssa, I think, for one. The key verse for them is Genesis 3:21 "And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them." They didn't think the text was talking about discreet leaves or whatever ...

It's a really nuanced discussion. I'm cautious about falling into an Hellenistic dualism of an absolute 'this' and 'that' on the one hand, and a version of pantheism on the other.

I rather like something the French theologian Jean Borella hinted at, that there was a time when the 'membrane' or 'veil' between the two realms was not so opaque as it is today. I really hold to that, and think the veil can evaporate like a mist in the face of the light ...
 
Thomas said:
I think all generally see the spirit as higher than matter, but yes, two rooms in one mansion ...

... there was a time when the 'membrane' or 'veil' between the two realms was not so opaque as it is today. I really hold to that, and think the veil can evaporate like a mist in the face of the light ...
Click to expand...

'My Father's house has many mansions' means to me that the 'house of spirit' contains many, perhaps infinite, dimensions of which the material 'world' we experience is just one. That dimensions overlap and intertwine but we can't perceive most of them. That 'life' is what animates the form, and that the universe probably teems with life, mostly invisible to our material senses. So the fact we cannot detect carbon-based life-forms on Mars, for instance, doesn't mean no life exists there.

I believe 'angels' are advanced 'spiritual' beings able to move at will between (certain) dimensions, and that although the speed-of-light is finite -- speed-of-mind is instant.

So the 'spiritual' contains and surrounds and permeates our 'physical dimension' but is not contained by it. All physical manifestations are, so to speak, part of one 'spiritual' reality.

And what lies outside the 'house of spirit'? Why, LOVE, of course.

Beyond that? ??

... there was a time when the 'membrane' or 'veil' between the two realms was not so opaque as it is today. I really hold to that, and think the veil can evaporate like a mist in the face of the light ...

Very nice :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lux
A cat, or a bird exists in a dimension that overlaps with our own, but only to a degree?
 
No, a cat or bird exists in the exact same dimension as ours. So do rocks, rivers, stars, galaxies. Any thinking to the contrary is a result of hundreds of years of theism teaching everyone that man is somehow special - unique above everything else. I reject that philosophy. But then I am a Pantheist! It is my belief that spirituality was at its most pure at the very beginning of human existence. The most primitive beings that were mankind saw the essence of life within all things around them so strongly because they were so intimately tied to everything around them. They saw more clearly in their ignorance than we see with all our knowledge.

We are SO removed from the natural world now, and have denigrated it to second place for hundreds of years. Only a curious thing is beginning to come forth. As we begin to understand the quantum world more completely, we begin to understand that those ignorant savages may have had it right all along! Quantum physics is showing us that at that level everything, all forms of matter and energy are united. One in the same.

I find this a VERY interesting turn of events!
 
  • Like
Reactions: RJM
Devils' Advocate said:
No, a cat or bird exists in the exact same dimension as ours ...
Click to expand...

I think a cat's or a horse's experience of the world is so different from ours that they can be thought of as living in separate dimensions that meet and intermix at certain points. What a cat is seeing through its cat's eyes and experiencing through its cat senses is very different from what a human being is seeing and experiencing?

As we begin to understand the quantum world more completely, we begin to understand that those ignorant savages may have had it right all along! Quantum physics is showing us that at that level everything, all forms of matter and energy are united. One in the same.

However most quantum physicists strongly object to any mystical/spiritual type of inference being attached to it?
 
Last edited:
Devils' Advocate said:
Only a curious thing is beginning to come forth. As we begin to understand the quantum world more completely, we begin to understand that those ignorant savages may have had it right all along! Quantum physics is showing us that at that level everything, all forms of matter and energy are united. One in the same.
Click to expand...
There was a flurry a while ago about the parallels between Quantum Physics and Platonism, in that Platonic viewpoint was far more amenable to contemplating Quantum phenomena than the Aristotelian.

+++

Driving home from my mum's last night, listening to a science programme on the radio ...

It began by detailing the background to Copernicus and the publication of his 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres).

A guest on the show was a philosopher who held the viewpoint that when we get into contemplating the Quantum, then a discrete metaphysics is in play, even if the scientist would scoff at metaphysics as a pseudo-science. An example was even with Copernicus and Galileo, the assumption was that the orbits would be circular, because the heavens were a more perfect world than the earth ... whereas the reality is that orbits are not quite circular, the earth is not quite round, etc., etc.

The philosopher argued that 'evidence' of theories, as well as empirical date, also included ideas of 'simplicity' and 'beauty' signifiy a certain metaphysical viewpoint ...

But this led me to thinking ... it was late at night, the road was clear, I was cruising home ...

... ever common man knows that 'Schrödinger's cat' is a load of boloney. It's not one thing and t'other or both in superimposition, it's a cat in the box and you don't know until you open the box. Simple. I have two cats at home, and I won't know if they're dead or alive, etc., until I open the door ...

But here's the thing.

Reality exists in a flux, and then 'collapses' when it's observed. Any number of realities can exist, all possible realities do exist, until they're observed, and then that's the one.

So how about 'theories of knowledge'? How about the 'unravelling' or 'unpacking' of a theory of knowledge, whether it be Catholic Transubstantiation (very Quantum) or Particle Physics, is really picking through the bones of nebulous knowledge that has collapsed into a particular state because that state we set at the outset.

So does the Big Bang determine what we observe, or does what (and how) we observe determine the Big Bang ... could there be other theories of beginning that would be as viable and empirically demonstrable as much as the BB is, if we had approached it differently?

To be continued ...
 
Thomas said:
... does the Big Bang determine what we observe, or does what (and how) we observe determine the Big Bang ... could there be other theories of beginning that would be as viable and empirically demonstrable as much as the BB is, if we had approached it differently?

To be continued ...
Click to expand...

A scientific theory must be able to predict. Relativity with its 'speed of light' limit has proved itself countless times. So has the 'standard model' of physics. It predicted the Higgs boson, and it works from the big-bang.

It's an astounding feat of human science. It gives us the awesome Hubble telescope images, and much more. The standard model is a wonderful achievement.

However it willingly admits of the dark matter and dark energy which make up the 96% of the rest of 'reality' that it cannot -- yet -- let's be fair -- explain.

These are good, clever people.

But the standard model also brings up countless impossible coincidences and 'fine tuning' of the universe necessary to allow our existence?

This is explained away by the ' anthropic principle' which effectively says: 'There may be countless other universes, but this is the only one we can know anything about, and if it HADN'T HAPPENED BY CHANCE exactly the way it has, we wouldn't be here to talk about it.'

So, that explains that.

This is the philosophical conclusion of the greatest scientific thought of our age.

Really. Truly.

And this is where, as the wise Indian said, 'I just might have a problem'.
 
Last edited:
RJM Corbet said:
I think a cat's or a horse's experience of the world is so different from ours that they can be thought of as living in separate dimensions that meet and intermix at certain points. What a cat is seeing through its cat's eyes and experiencing through its cat senses is very different from what a human being is seeing and experiencing?
Click to expand...

I don't think the first statement is valid. No matter how another creature views this reality they are using the same or similar 'tools' (seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.) to do so as we are, so they are firmly rooted in the same reality we are.

I would agree with the second statement (more or less). Any creature 'views' this reality through the same or similar senses, but how they process this information - we still have very little data about that. I expect that, as you suggest, other animals perceives our reality in a different way from humans. (That's the more). I do wonder though if they might perceive things a lot closer to how we do (Thus the less). And again we don't have any real answers to this. But some tests are beginning to give us these answers.

There are some fascinating, and I mean FASCINATING experiments going on with our modern medical devices. Using an MRI on dogs:

Dogs process speech much like people do, a new study finds. Meaningful words like “good boy” activate the left side of a dog’s brain regardless of tone of voice, while a region on the right side of the brain responds to intonation, scientists report in the Sept. 2 Science.

Similarly, humans process the meanings of words in the left hemisphere of the brain, and interpret intonation in the right hemisphere.

That is pretty darn close to proof that at least some of a dog's perception of the world works the same as it works in people!

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dog-brains-divide-language-tasks-much-humans-do
 
  • Like
Reactions: RJM
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top