New Sub: s/LogosRising...a place to talk about God.

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If you haven't defined God, how do you know it's not just "natural"? Natural means "not made by man". Don't you have to define what something is before rejecting it?

I'm interested in where you are going with this line of reasoning. Most contemporary atheists that are able to articulate themselves on the epistemological points will eventually get to the position: "Positive claims of the existence of X must be made with empirical evidence. Proving a negative existence claim is not, on principle, a scientific modality for knowledge."

Of course, it all depends on what it is you're trying to prove and with what evidence. The above applies for inductive methods, but you might think that you could argue a negative existence claim on the basis of the impossibility for something existing, and perhaps you could do that, say, mathematically.

With most atheists it doesn't seem to be the case that they're appealing to the latter. I'd put my own pocket money on the fact that most atheists would say they don't believe a deductive proof of the impossibility that God is T is even feasible.

Most of them want to hang their hats on a common sensical sort of empirical proof, and they don't believe that it's their burden to make the negative case that God is impossible; rather, it's on you to show that He is real, and not just probable.

I'm interested in where your thread (which I quoted) is going. If you took a metaphysical approach to cause a person to doubt that God is a substance that is amenable to empirical discovery, then you might be getting somewhere. I mean, to show that if what we think God is, is true, then God cannot be the sort of thing that is discoverable in just the way this the typical atheist is demanding that we prove Him.

@PS @BurnInHelena

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This is insightful. What it is to know, in the human sense, is an imperfect act necessarily. The act of intellection is always with respect to The Other, whatever that thing in the world is which I think I know something about. For example, a chair. How am I situated with respect to the reality when I think I know something about that chair? Perfect knowledge of any thing just is identification with that thing. Therefore, the only possible true knowledge that one can have in the world would be self-knowledge, as the Delphic Oracle tells us in the Greek tradition: "Know thyself", which was also recapitulated in the Matrix series with respect to the path of The One. The message is that realizing you are The One is a matter of knowing that you are.

That said, we must distinguish between possibilities for the intellective process of knowing oneself. There is the psychological sense in which I know myself, and which I would take to include things like personal identity. Both this and deeper means of knowing ourselves are still fundamentally an expression of Logos - it is The One thing referring to itself in this localized human experience, so that separation still exists in the intellect. It's obvious that this is true, for we can say that in meditation, for example, that we are thinking about our self. That intentionality still assumes separation.

This is where the concept of gnosis enters the picture, which is a purer reach of intellect that transcends the world and points toward the source, that is, from whence you actually derive. But this kind of knowing is a function of grace. It cannot be achieved, in my estimation, from even the deepest meditation - but we might think that meditation represents a pathway wherein one's striving and exaltation of sensory-death could bring upon him the grace of gnosis. So too do we think that great suffering and self-rejection is likely to attract said grace, hence the reason for so many of the great spiritualists and prophets to have denied the body and pushed themselves to the brink of intentional suffering.

The significance of Christ, as I see it, was that Christ is a channel for this gnosis. Christ is the ultimate grace because by way of the Passion and the piercing of the veil, gnosis became accessible to all without the covenantal requirements of sacrifice. Belief in and thought about Christ, meditation on the image of Christ and the imitation thereof opens a divine channel to man's intellect, which by way of grace, can cause the intellect to see beyond the veil, to transcend the bare nakedness of the Self-Other distinction and to realize a fundamental unity at the point of the source.

It's too much to get into here, but I don't believe that this gnosis is all that we are to achieve here. I think it is one half of the mystery. After all, we're here. There is a reason we are here, and that reason is not simply to achieve gnosis, but to further mankind's descent into the emanation and elaboration of God into existence. This is one of my primary criticisms of the Buddhist tradition.

So, equipped with gnosis, we gain the understanding that serves as the foundation for our faith to bear our cross, to suffer as if we were suffering (like Christ) for all the iniquities of every man and to continue through our own example to be channels for that spirit to open others up to gnosis - so on and so forth, generation by generation, as the creation continues to develop and become realized.

@PS @KingOfWhiteAmerica @BurnInHelena

This is insightful. What it is to know, in the *human sense*, is an imperfect act *necessarily*. The act of intellection is always with respect to The Other, whatever that thing in the world is which I think I know something *about*. For example, a chair. How am I situated with respect to the reality when I think I know something about that chair? *Perfect* knowledge of any thing *just is* identification with that thing. Therefore, the only possible true knowledge that one can have in the world would be self-knowledge, as the Delphic Oracle tells us in the Greek tradition: "Know thyself", which was also recapitulated in the Matrix series with respect to the path of The One. The message is that realizing you are The One is a matter of knowing that you are. That said, we must distinguish between possibilities for the intellective process of knowing *oneself*. There is the psychological sense in which I know myself, and which I would take to include things like personal identity. Both this and deeper means of knowing ourselves are still fundamentally an expression of Logos - it is The One thing referring to itself in this localized human experience, so that separation still exists in the intellect. It's obvious that this is true, for we can say that in meditation, for example, that we are thinking about our self. That intentionality still assumes separation. This is where the concept of *gnosis* enters the picture, which is a purer reach of intellect that transcends the world and points toward the source, that is, from whence you actually derive. But this kind of knowing is a function of *grace*. It cannot be achieved, in my estimation, from even the deepest meditation - but we might think that meditation represents a pathway wherein one's striving and exaltation of sensory-death could bring upon him the grace of *gnosis*. So too do we think that great suffering and self-rejection is likely to attract said grace, hence the reason for so many of the great spiritualists and prophets to have denied the body and pushed themselves to the brink of intentional suffering. The significance of Christ, as I see it, was that Christ is a channel for this gnosis. Christ is the *ultimate grace* because by way of the Passion and the piercing of the veil, gnosis became accessible to all without the covenantal requirements of sacrifice. Belief in and thought about Christ, meditation on the image of Christ and the imitation thereof opens a divine channel to man's intellect, which by way of grace, can cause the intellect to see beyond the veil, to transcend the bare nakedness of the Self-Other distinction and to realize a fundamental unity at the point of the source. It's too much to get into here, but I don't believe that this *gnosis* is *all* that we are to achieve here. I think it is one half of the mystery. After all, we're here. There is a reason we are here, and that reason is not simply to achieve gnosis, but to further mankind's descent into the emanation and elaboration of God into *existence*. This is one of my primary criticisms of the Buddhist tradition. So, equipped with gnosis, we gain the understanding that serves as the foundation for our faith to bear our cross, to suffer as if we were suffering (like Christ) for all the iniquities of every man and to continue through our own example to be channels for that spirit to open others up to gnosis - so on and so forth, generation by generation, as the creation continues to develop and become realized. @PS @KingOfWhiteAmerica @BurnInHelena

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There are some really good ideas here. No time to really elaborate now. I would point out, though, that rather than saying "it's pseudoscience", I would say, "It is outside the epistemic closure or boundaries of science". Saying pseudoscience suggests that it is attempting to fit within the epistemic bounds of science, but doing so disingenuously. Being a subject matter naturally beyond science's epistemic bounds is another matter.

I really like your connection between the immavulate conception and virgin birth, and the fullness of Christ's example. Two controversial (yet infallible) Catholic dogmas, that Mary was born without flaw, without even original sin; and that she remained a virgin even after giving birth. In this sense, both the human and Divine origins of Christ were perfect and uncorrupted, and this lends well into your arrow analogy.

@Chiro

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Also, if you want to springboard from here into other topics, or keep going down this path, I'd say let's get out of this thread. Maybe think about creating a new post in LogosRising. I hope people won't hesitate to do that, as if posts there need to have some super special purpose or significance. I want it to act like a place to just talk about this stuff.

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