Is anyone more civil than Aristotle's Revenge? (Link is in my sidebar). It is the nice and kind side of Aristotelian philosophy and it is a gentle attempt at taking psychology toward teleology without offending people. I read it for the calming effect. Here is what Syphax says in a discussion with a non-believer who objected to Syphax claiming things that cannot be proved: "Furthermore I don’t think the Scientific Method itself can be subjected to the Scientific Method to test for its accuracy, without logical circularity. For instance, when you say “The only thing that is dangerous is the idea that we can just make stuff up ad-hoc and then pretend it is true without going through the usual process of justification, tentativism, evaluation, and correction,” can you think of a non-circular way to test for the truth of that statement? I can’t. Your position is self-refuting."
Here is another gem: "I’m not criticizing science at all, I rather like it actually. I’m just demonstrating that it has limits – which was my point to begin with. It seems you concede that point. It seems that you also concede my point that the starting points for human inquiry are arbitrarily chosen (or, in your words, they are just “asserted axiomatically”). "
and another: "I’m in the middle of finals for the semester, so I’m not sure how much longer I can discuss this matter (though it’s been fun). I guess my point here is just to point out that, when pressed, it seems that many naturalists end up doing exactly what they criticize religion-ists of doing – making arbitrary assertions based on emotional reasons and not bothering to prove them using any sort of scientific or empirical inquiry. The only difference is that the religion-ist denies that science is the only valid method of inquiry, and the naturalist extols it as the best thing humans have while simultaneously throwing it under the bus."
I am also in the middle of finals (for another working as grandma/babysitter vacation that starts .... now!), so I can't read this quite as closely as I would like. I am 'getting it' more now when it comes to philosophy, and I really like A. Revenge's blog. So calm. So Mormon. Just as calm and collected as my Mormon-housewife blogs.
Here is how cheap my husband and I are: we are not taking suitcases. The reasonable airline tickets we purchased require people to pay even for carry-on bags. It would still be a reasonable cost, actually, but will we add that option? No. We can each take a large purse-sized bag. I will be like Heidi - wearing all my clothes at the request of my crabby grandmother husband. Just kidding - he's not crabby. Be glad you are not sitting next to us on the plane on the way back though! What is on my Kindle? (see how glad I am that I am not hauling books this time!) I have Divine Providence, Ian's Starting Science From God, and a book by Jesuit philosopher Henri Nouwen that I can't wait to read. So exciting.
Ok, I was wrong about Gary Lachman's 'Swedenborg' when I said it was snarky. It is a delightful read. It's a testimony to one man's love of Swedenborg. When we find Swedenborg, we come from unique places and we interpret him differently. Lachman ... hmmm ... I need to google him ... he's interesting. He came to Swedenborg after already being interested in the occult, so he sees it from that viewpoint. But, I learned a lot from his book about Sw.'s background, times, influences, and sex life. Just sayin'.
Lachman did back up his remark about a predilection for women. Having never read Spiritual Diaries, I had a more staid view of Sw., but this is better actually. What Lachman never backed up, however, were his remarks about Swedenborg being all about his own fame and influence. I'm still not seeing that. Just because Sw. saw his own 'self-love' does not mean he was motivated by a love of adulation. I disagree with this bio - Swedenborg did not do the things he did, scientifically or morally or esoterically, to promote his fame.
But other than that, this book fascinated me. Lachman stressed Swedenborg's concrete mind and his difficulty in remembering and being able to repeat what he had heard from angels. Angels can say more in two words and one second than we humans can explain in a whole book. "What strikes me as important here [in comparing Swedenborg's visions to other men's visions ] is that the difficulty Swedenborg had in retaining the significance of his angelic conversations did not necessarily lie in what those conversations were about, but in the slowness of our intellects and, perhaps more important, the inefficiency of our language, something that Swedenborg clearly recognized and experienced. ... But what they are saying is not necessarily ineffable." (Ineffable, for people like me, means: "incapable of being expressed; indescribable or unutterable".) This strikes me as good way to sum up Mr. Swedenborg - he showed that the inner heavenly world is not something we cannot understand, but is something we do not yet have the background to understand. Aiming to understand it is not a useless pursuit. There really is a way to put it into words, it's just not easy to do so.
Lachman has a modern intelligent viewpoint that does not succumb to freethinking atheistic nonsense. It's refreshing to find people among us who know "of course there is more than the material world - duh." He has an appreciation of all things interior and can see that what is 'imaginary' is perhaps more real than the real world.
The main thing I like about the book is the wholesome character of some people's (Lachman's in this case) "occult". There is wholesome occult and insidious occult and I often lump them together. Swedenborg was wholesome. Reading Swedenborg is wholesome. He is a good influence on modern occultists, if they care to borrow him from the rest of us. You are welcome, people who follow Ouspensky.
Has anyone read this? Swedenborg by Gary Lachman? Here are some telling phrases I've come across in the first couple chapters:"modern" occultism or esotericism; secret agent; Rosicrucian; aching hunger for recognition; predilection for women; self-recrimination; hunger for fame; acute sense of smell ... both schizophrenia and manic depression (bipolar syndrome) are associated with [that]; portrait ... shows a slightly effeminate young man. And I'm only on page 18 of this very short book! Lots of innuendo and guilt by association.
But in the nicest possible way. Lachman does not say Swedenborg is these things. He just paints a picture and takes a "just sayin'" attitude. It's dishy. Swedenborg's pronouncements on hypocrisy were possibly from seeing his own father's personality up close. Just sayin'.
This book will bring Swedenborg to a whole new audience - people who love the occult and mysticism and ... Ouspensky? (I just looked ahead in the book). It's actually pretty good. It's a slant on Swedenborg I have never encountered. And while it is "not the Mr. Swedenborg I know!", it is going to answer a question I have long had. Who were the influences on Swedenborg and how much did he already know from our world before he had the visions? Lachman is about to spill the beans on that.
The book I call Divine Providence was actually named "Angelic Wisdom About Divine Providence" by Emanuel Swedenborg. I love that it has that unknown (by me) real title. Divine Providence would be way too dangerous to tell me about. Swedenborg once said that the Lord will only tell you (let you understand) things that will not ultimately harm you: you can only find out good and truth that you will not profane before the end of your life. I am not to be trusted with inside news about Divine Providence. However, angelic wisdom is just right for me. All information in this book has been filtered through angels, who, after all, are only glorified people and not God. I was about to say, "this book is all about Divine Providence with the caveat that it is actually only about the part that angels understand". Off the subject, I googled caveat to make sure it really means what I think it means and it does not. I wonder where I could have been all my life - it means "warning"? - I thought it meant more like "clarification, exception" - sheesh. Good thing I am not a lawyer.
"Hey, God, I am reading all about Your Divine Providence!" "Yeah, sure you are, Sue."
Here is what this book just explained about heaven: It is an external of God - as body to His soul. So, heaven is God. The Divine can only behold His Divine in His creation. Well, maybe He only does behold His Divine in His creation. The aspect of us that He beholds is His Divine in us. He looks to eternity with His plans. His ends. His goals. (If all Swedenborg books had used the translation "goals" for "ends" I would have understood about 133% more than I did. The word "ends" never registered at all to me until Mr. Wunsch called it "goals". Thank you, Mr. Wunsch. You have made me see what ends are.
Machinephilosophy says: "Behind every great atheistic doctrine is an even greater self-referential
inconsistency."
Definition of doctrine: "3.abodyorsystemofteachingsrelatingtoaparticularsubject:thedoctrineoftheCatholicChurch."
Definition of self-referential inconsistency: "A second kind of inconsistency is more subtle. It is called self-referential
inconsistency, and it occurs if an assertion implies that it itself cannot be
true, or cannot be known to be true, or should not be believed. My statement
that "All opinions are false" implies that the opinion I just expressed is
false. Similarly, my claim that "Only statements that can be scientifically
proven should be believed" is a statement that cannot be scientifically proven."
Random sample of an atheist doctrine:
Axiological, or constructive, atheism rejects the existence of gods in favor of a "higher absolute", such as humanity. This form of atheism favors humanity as the absolute source of ethics and values, and permits individuals to resolve moral problems without resorting to God. Marx and Freud used this argument to convey messages of liberation, full-development, and unfettered happiness.
... French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre identified himself as a representative of an "atheist existentialism"concerned less with denying the existence of God than with establishing that "man needs ... to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God." Sartre said a corollary of his atheism was that "if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and ... this beingis man." The practical consequence of this atheism was described by Sartre as meaning that there are no a priori rules or absolute values that can be invoked to govern human conduct, and that humans are "condemned" to invent these for themselves, making "man" absolutely "responsible for everything he does".
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Let's see if I can figure out why this doctrine is self-referentially inconsistent.
Humanity cannot be a higher absolute? Unfettered happiness is not believable?
It is silly to say "there is no God" and then go on to discuss God?
Sartre got his whole definition of 'man' from what some other people had said about God, which makes his man not a god but more of a copy of a god?
Man would not be lost if he wasn't mistakenly trying to find himself by himself?
When I went to find what "self-referential inconsistency" meant, I came across this:
From Yahoo! Voices: "Logical inconsistency refers to making two assertions that could not both be true under any possible circumstances, that is, they completely contradict one another. For instance, suppose a philosopher states that God determines everything in the world but that humans have free will. These two assertions completely contradict one another for if we are determined, how can we be free as well? To avoid this logical inconsistency, these terms would need to be defined differently from what they normally were to clarify how this could be. Therefore, if a philosophy is logically inconsistent, then it cannot possible be a very good one."
Well, I disagree. I think it might be a very good one indeed. The point of a great philosophy is that it can work with logical inconsistencies and not be beaten by them. A great philosophy does not even think that is a fight worth having. "Have fun with your logic", it says, "but don't bother me with the results!" (Great philosophies can be snotty.)
In fact, the author above gives her insecurity away in saying this: These two assertions completely contradict one another for if we are determined, how can we be free as well?,
rather than this: These two assertions completely contradict one another for if we are determined, we cannot be free as well.
I am so glad she asked. It is possible for both "God determines everything in the world" and "humans have free will" to both be true. That is a pillar of my time philosophy: God determines everything in the world because by 'everything in the world' is meant not just what we perceive, but truly "everything in the world', and that is a near infinity of possiblilities; they are possible paths that could be taken. God determined all of those and He already knows all the paths. He can see them. He can also see which one we are travelling, but it is one of gazillions. We have total free will. We are choosing a path through the maze. It has probably not quite an infinity of possible paths, but very close to it. For our purposes on earth, it is an infinity of paths. From where I am now, I am constricted by all that I have previously chosen. I am in a real place on one path. But, from here on, anything possible could be what I chose. Total free will.
Don't you love this Swedenborg quote: " ... and so to understand is from the other faculty, called rationality, STEADILYimparted to him by the Lord."?
and, "... thus GRADUALLYputting heavenly freedom in place of infernal freedom."?
This always happens to me if I read a Swedenborg book: I read along til I'm about halfway through (and carefully, I might add), and then a light bulb goes off and I see what he's saying. So then I go back and begin it again. I am a tragically slow reader. I do not recognize this book. And it's not like I read this years ago - I read this days ago.
One pattern I'm seeing (which people have tried to point out before) is that man's 'faculties' of reason and liberty take lots of time to develop. He likens them to a seed. Which, as we all know this time of year, you cannot hurry. I'd love a homegrown tomato right now but this is my situation:
God would love for me to be regenerated, but He's got an even worse situation on His hands. Also, Swedenborg puts in lots of energy convincing us that everything flowing into both our liberty and our rationality is from the Lord. Nothing from us. We are allowed to feel that it is coming from us, but evidently the key to the whole regeneration thing is to keep making yourself know that it is all from the Lord. I didn't remember either theme.
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I was reading this the other day and I loved the expression, "fundamaterialists" (And the reason they are afraid of life after death is that they are (in the word he coins for the occasion) "fundamaterialists." )
Ooops, now I am in blogger trouble because there will be no way to get my font back to what it was. sheesh. Anyway, sometimes I think we do not appreciate atheists and fundamentalists and fundamaterialists enough. We spend all our time with them trying to convince them to believe in God or to stop being so weird. But they are not weird, probably. They are probably scared to death of how unglued we believers can be and they are desperately trying to hold the world together. One small case in point from this very article:
"I am reminded of the answer the late Indian philosopher T.M.P. Mahadevan gave me when I asked him for the basic difference between Indian philosophy and Western. He answered, "Western philosophy philosophizes from a single state of consciousness only, the waking state, whereas India philosophizes from all four states: waking, dream, dreamless sleep, and a fourth, turiya, that defies description." " I chose that randomly and I'm so glad I did because my font is back! Now, T.M.P and I have something in common I think in that we will say any wacky thing that comes into our head, like turiya, which defies description.
And not that T.M.P. and I and the Catholic church and other human believers are not fairly sane and all, but imagine what would happen if there were not some fundamaterialists to keep us in line. I think they are doing the world a favor. Because even though we believers really are more rational than they, we are not fully rational. It takes us a long time. In the meantime, someone has to keep a status quo.
DP 176. If man perceived or felt the activity of divine providence, he would not act in freedom according to reason, nor would anything appear to be his own doing. It would be the same if he foreknew events.
That implies that he is being prevented from foreknowing events, which in turn implies that God foreknows events. If God foreknows them then that implies that they have "happened" at least potentially. Reading Divine Providence I have been surprised to find Swedenborg discussing time without nixing the branching universe theory (not the one that says there are a multitude of universes, but mine, which says there exist a multitude of branching possibilities, but only one path that actualizes from a man's perspective). He leaves it open. He doesn't give the impression of there being only a linear flow of time from past to future. He has God as not being in time.
DP 59. It has not been known that divine providence in all its procedure with man looks to his eternal state. It can look to nothing else because the Divine is infinite and eternal, and the infinite and eternal or the Divine is not in time; therefore all future things are present to it. It follows that there is eternity in all that the Divine does. But those who think from time and space perceive this with difficulty, not only because they love temporal things, but also because they think from what is on hand in the world and not from what is at hand in heaven.
He perhaps agrees with me.
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I started the book over after getting to the halfway mark. It's reading like a whole new book.
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You know how Swedenborgians say a person should think of the Lord as Man (Jesus, as I would say) instead of as the invisible ethereal aspect of God? Actually, that was Swedenborg who said that. We should go to the Lord and think of God in Human terms in order to have a way to have conjuction with Someone we can sense.
But I notice I usually pray to the invisible ethereal aspect of God. I prefer Him to Jesus (just kidding). That got me wondering if autistic people, who are not particularly "people persons", would prefer to picture God as invisible and mysterious rather than as Jesus.
Divine Providence really is a great book. Swedenborg takes you on a vacation from your daily life and explains things you never even knew existed. And he does it skillfully. He spins out a whole new way of looking at your world. He uses a lot of painless repetition - it is easy to miss his points the first time he tells you; the repetition gives you another chance. Every page is a surprise.
Sunday I got to church late and was sent by the usher to the nearly empty balcony. I took the very front, very precarious seat overlooking the Mass and the mass of people. OSHA would die if they saw it. Ditto for anyone afraid of heights. The front seat is not safe. But the change in perception is wonderful. When the part came where our church annoyingly makes us shake hands and say "Peace be with you" to everyone nearby, I got to experience it as pure sound. For about a minute there was a pure "ssssssssssss" coming up to the balcony. Only the "sss" from the word peace prevails for a whole minute. Cool. I would have never known that if the usher hadn't wanted me not to disturb the Mass.
And that is how I feel reading Divine Providence. Swedenborg has kindly taken me up to the balcony for a tour of something I would never otherwise experience.
Here's a nice thought: "Reduce enjoyment and pleasure and you grow cold and torpid; take them away and you expire and die. Vital heat comes from the enjoyments of the affections and the pleasures of the perceptions and thoughts. As every affection has its enjoyment and the thought thence its pleasure, it may be plain whence good and truth are and what they are essentially. Whatever is the enjoyment of one's affection is one's good, and one's truth is what is pleasant to the thought from that affection."
I'm half way through the book and I think that's why Sw. let me hear that. He's already got me convinced that true happiness comes from following the Lord closely and allowing myself to perceive His divine providence in all that has happened to me. So, now he can let me relax into joy. Relaxing into evil joy would be bad, but now I know that only goodness is joy, so he can mention that being holy does not mean being torpid. Vital heat requires enjoyment. 'Now, go do the right thing, Sue', as Dr. Laura would say.
Spiritually, that is. Reading Divine Providence is great, but it is too much like a quiz for Am I (Spiritually) Hot Or Not? I see why the Lord never led me to read this book and instead steered me toward Arcana Coelestia. Arcana C. is all about learning a certain kind of esoteric knowledge: how to see the interior meaning of the Bible. It makes no predictions about whether I will understand; it intersperses the lessons with dire warnings about hellish things; and it does not think overly highly of me, the reader. "Here's some really cool stuff, take a year or so and read it - you will be sore amazed." says AC, "and btw, do not think it makes you enlightened because you are far from it."
DP, on the other hand, is hilarious in my hands. It is straightforward about discerning whether you can discern spiritually. It gives lots of pointers about enlightenment. It lays out the whole program and lets you rate yourself. [Granted, this is not what you are supposed to be doing, but if your external mind acts like a twelve year old, that is what you ARE doing]. In one part, Swedenborg delineates the various looks that the spiritual sun will have depending on which of six realms you are in. A ruddy light - you are celestial!! That's great. A glowing white light - you are spiritual! Pretty good. If you see light that is similar to earthly sunlight, well, I regret to inform you that you are only in the lower of the three heavens. But not to worry because, how about these losers?: glowing coals - yuk! Worst of hell. Light as in a fireplace? Middle hell. I am presently in denial over what light is in the best level of hell - hmmm ... is it the dreary light of the moon that I am seeing? Yikes. Yes. So, on second thought, I discern that I am seeing .... seeing ..... seeing ... a ruddy light! I'm sure I see it. I am awesome. Yea, me!
Late last night I had gotten to 164: "This is an arcanum of angelic wisdom, however, and therefore cannot be comprehended by man unless his spiritual mind has been opened; for such a man, who is united to the Lord, is an angel. From what has preceded he can comprehend the following:"
(And I could see it was followed by a series of multiple choice questions. I was sleepy, but I just knew I could ace this!)
Weirdly, my Kindle lost power -boom - it was off and dark and I would have to wait and take the test in the a.m. I got cheated out of my chance to prove I am an angel.
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By morning, my mature, older-than-its-years interior mind had taken over again. It sent my extremely immature exterior mind to a corner to read about what happens to those in our midst who study religion and strut around knowing it all. Buzz kill.
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So, I am rather surprised the Lord is letting me touch this book with a 10 foot pole.
******************
It reminds me of the Swedenborgian online course I took last year. When we were asked what our spiritual goals were, one fine young man wrote that he wanted to reach the highest heaven! Whatever it took, that was his goal! He could do it!. Nothing less would be worth working toward!
The professor about choked. You could feel him choking even online. "Well, now, you know, it is not seemly for us mortals to desire to ascend only to the celelstial level. There are problems at the celestial level that we may not be suited for. We must be humble about our talents." After having listened all semester to the young man's story, I sort of thought he might be right: for better or worse he really was headed to that quirky celestial level.
Swedenborg's Divine Providence 124 "To this let me append two arcana of angelic wisdom showing further what divine providence is like. One is that the Lord never acts on one thing by itself in man, but on all things at the same time, and the other is that He acts at once from inmosts and outmosts. He never acts on some one thing by itself but on all things together because all things in man are in such connection and from this in such form that they act not as a number but as a one. We know that there is such connectedness and by it such organization in man's body. The human mind is in similar form as a result of the connection of all things ..."
The lending library wants its copy of Huw Price's Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point back. Boo hoo. I barely read a third of it. But I told the lady I would "spur my patron to finish quickly", so it must go into its bag.
Do you ever love a book even though you don't actually read it? I will miss carrying this one around and intending to finish. What will most stick in my mind is, "Is that a way to spell Hugh? Cool. What are the chances I could talk one of our children into naming the next one Huw?"
The other thing that will stick in my mind is that the author believes in backward causation. Evidently, if the universe is symmetrical and the big bang ends up in the big crunch and you could take an outsider's view and if quantum physics is to be believed and simplified, then everything could well be caused from the future.
Is that just insane? I also found and partially read an article which sort of plays devil's advocate with what it calls conspiracy theories - it includes a massive amount of detailed physics that I had to gloss over or I would surely die. But, I found I don't need to actually read articles to 'understand' them. Even these scientists come up for air at the end of most paragraphs and lapse into plain English.
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In Divine Providence I am at the part where Swedenborg concentrates on what my translation calls Reason and Liberty. Man has, from God, the gifts of reason and liberty which are his means of coming into conjunction with the divine.
I heavily quote the article below in red- don't you think Independence and Locality (two physics theories) could be Liberty and Reason? Freedom from the measuring device is to freedom of desire as refusal to be different than other particles is to the ability to think cohesively?
The first alternative proposal for
violating Independence I will consider is Price’s backwards-causal
strategy ...
Most
of the arguments considered in the previous section clearly don’t apply to a
backwards-causal theory. There is no need for a vast hidden mechanism, so the
arguments against the postulation of such mechanisms are beside the point here.
Those arguments that do apply equally to both strategies, such as worries about
free will and about skepticism, can be dealt with in exactly the same way for
the backwards-causal strategy as for the hidden-mechanism strategy. So the only
argument against hidden-mechanism theories that might be a threat to Price’s
proposal is the new argument—that the theory suffers from the measurement
problem.
Price’s theory is
that something that occurs when the particles encounter the measuring
devices acts as a cause of the hidden variables of the particles. If the
proposal were that the cause is the act of measurement as such, then
there would clearly be a problem. Whether or not the backwards-causal mechanism
is triggered makes a difference to the earlier hidden variables of the
particles; in other words, if measurement as such were the cause, then whether
a measurement occurs would have a dynamical effect on the behavior of the
system. But as stressed before, since there is no fundamental distinction
between measurement processes and non-measurement processes, any theory that
gives a dynamical role to measurement as such is ill-founded. Price is fully
aware of the threat posed by the measurement problem to his theory, and
stipulates that “it is a constraint on any satisfactory development of this
strategy for quantum theory that the advanced effects it envisages be products
of physical interactions in general, rather than products of some special class
of measurement interactions” (1996, 249). Let us briefly investigate, then,
whether this constraint can be satisfied.
Recall
that Bohm’s theory evades the measurement problem because it is not measurement
as such that plays a dynamical role in the theory, but rather the
motions of the particles during the measurement process; the motion of particle
L directly and non-locally affects the motion of particle R. A hidden-mechanism
conspiracy cannot avail itself of this solution, because the telltale motions
of the particles occur after the hidden mechanism has done its work. But
it looks like Price’s theory can avail itself of the Bohmian solution;
even though the motions of the particles during measurement occur after the
correlation has been established, backwards causation allows the particle
motions to be a causal factor in producing the correlation. Again, the cause
that explains the correlation is not the act of measurement as such, but the
motions of the particles during the measurement process. The directions in
which the two particles move under the influence of their respective magnetic
fields is determined by the device settings, and the particles can bear the
traces of this motion backwards in time to their common source, hence
explaining the correlation between the particle properties and the device
setting without any superluminal causation.
But
the causal explanation has to be handled carefully here, or it risks vacuity.
According to the version of Price’s proposal currently under consideration, the
device settings explain the motions of the particles, which in turn explain the
hidden variables of the particles. But the hidden variables, presumably, themselves
explain the motions of the particles on measurement; a particle moves upwards
under the influence of a magnetic field precisely because its spin-value
is “up”. The worry here is that the backwards-causal mechanism makes the causal
explanation viciously circular; the particle moves up because it moves up.
With
care, though, it is possible to construct backwards-causal explanations of the
Bell correlations that do not court vacuity. A straightforward way to do this
is to distinguish between the axis along which the particles move, and
whether they move up or down along that axis. The backwards-causal
mechanism determines the axis alone; the settings of the measuring devices
explain why each particle moves along a particular axis, but not why the particle
moves up rather than down along its axis. The two particles carry the axis
information backwards to their joint source, and this information enables some
mechanism at the particle source to arrange the hidden variables for these two
axes so as to satisfy the Bell correlations. But it is the mechanism at the
source, whatever it may be, that provides the causal explanation for the actual
values of the hidden variables, and hence for the actual motion of the
particles, up or down, on measurement. This causal story avoids the circularity
of the simpler story above. The fact that a given particle moves up rather than
down on measurement is explained, as it should be, by the hidden variables of
the particle, which are in turn explained by the process by which the particle
is produced at the source. The fact that a given particle moves along this axis
rather than some other, though, is explained, as it should be, by the setting
of the measuring device, which is in turn explained by the procedure by which
the device is set.
Hence
a backwards-causal conspiracy theory of the kind proposed by Price is not ruled
out as a local explanation of the Bell correlations. Of course, this is not to
say that such a theory can actually be formulated; there is no guarantee that a
coherent dynamics for the hidden variables can be constructed along the lines
of the sketch considered here. Indeed, the backwards causation alone raises
numerous philosophical difficulties that would need to be overcome. However,
given the dearth of viable alternatives, this is a research project that surely
deserves attention. *******************
I don't know if any of that is true, but the "numerous philosophical difficulties" could be resolved with my idea of the future as ALL being in existence already. That way, yes, there is still total free will and no determinism.
(I think it is a conspiracy of people who own rights to these articles that the font changes when I put it on my blog).
Is it just me and my sour grapes or is 'proving' philosophical and religious ideas nonsense? I like to think that Emanuel Swedenborg did not prove his ideas. If he found out something was the truth, then he explained it. He did not bother to prove it. He even mentioned that the Bible could be used to prove anything. I hope he felt the same way about the human mind: it can be used to prove anything.
Proving truths does not make them true.
Tune in to Prosblogian, for instance, bless its entertaining heart. Can you make sense of this discussion? I commented on this post, admittedly a rather naive comment, but still ... instead of publishing it, here is what the author did: he took time to email me and ask, "But, Sue, the question is, can you prove this?"
And then he very kindly did not post my comment. Because, I guess, I would be making a fool of myself.
And so I stand corrected. The point of the discussion is only about whether the conjecture can be proven. Whether it is true or false is beside the point. Fine. Ok. But isn't this sort of what is wrong with philosophy nowadays? It's a game of gotcha and proofs, instead of a game of finding a correct philosophy. These are the intellectuals of our society. Sheesh. Just my opinion, but no wonder religion cannot make inroads nowadays into college science goings-on.
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True Christian Religion 334 334. The third experience. After this one of the angels said: 'Come with me to the place where they are shouting "How wise!" You will see monstrous people there, with the faces and bodies of human beings, though they are not human beings.' 'Are they animals then?' I asked. 'No,' he replied, 'they are not animals, but bestial people. They are those who are utterly unable to see whether truth is truth or not, although they can make anything they wish appear to be true. We call such people proof-mongers.' We followed the noise of shouting and reached its source. There we found a group of men surrounded by a crowd. There were in the crowd some people of noble lineage, who, on hearing that they proved everything they said, and so obviously agreed in supporting each other, turned around and said 'How wise!'
[2] But the angel said to me, 'Let us not approach them, but let us call out one from the group.' We did so, and took him aside; we discussed a variety of subjects, and he proved each point so that it seemed exactly as if it were true. So we asked him whether he could also prove the opposite. He replied he could do so as well as the earlier points. Then he spoke openly and from the heart: 'What is truth? Is there any truth in the whole of nature other than what someone makes true? Say anything you please, and I will make it true.'
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The above is a hilarious story from Swedenborg's True Christian Religion, but is not meant to demonstrate anything about Prosblogian, whoever he is. Nor Feser. Nor ... any of them. It's the "crowd" that is the point of Swedenborg's story, not the individual.
The more I think about this article - The Book of Human Language - the more Swedenborgian it seems. I am reading Divine Providence and the article is a mirror of parts of it.
Swedenborg:"For example, it is from the love into which he is born that he desires to commit adultery, to defraud, to blaspheme, to take revenge"
Coates: "The acceptance of this violence was framed by still greater violence. For all of us it was the violence parents did to children. But for many of us it was more--sexual violence, the violence adults did to each other, the violence brought out by addiction, the constant presence of the police. This greater violence influenced our principles, which themselves were premised on other implicit, unstated principles. Among them: That the world was--and would always be--violent. That we were powerlessto alter this fact."
Swedenborg: "One can refuse to will and do evils for the reason that they are sins, only from an interior or higher freedom, belonging to his interior or higher love."
Coates: "I walk into a room and the Power in the room refuses--with very few exceptions--to speak a common language. More she speaks to me in such a way, and with such a manner, that I am supposed to understand. Even the rules of that foreign language are given in a foreign language. And when she calls on you, it's with the expectation that you will understand. And you never do."
Swedenborg: "This elevation as to affection would not be possible did he not from rationality have the power to raise the understanding, and from liberty the power to will this."
Coates: "The only way forward is that path I found as a young boy--principles."
Swedenborg: "Everything that meets our eyes in this world can serve to convince us that the universe and absolutely everything in it was created out of divine love by means of divine wisdom. Take any particular thing and look at it with some wisdom, and this will be clear. Look at a tree--or its seed, its fruit, its flower, or its leaf .... Then too, if you are willing to press your spiritual thinking further, surely you see that this power does not come from the seed or from our world's sun, which is nothing but fire, but that it was put into the seed by a creator God who has infinite wisdom."
Coates: "But as surely as you once committed to shooting the fair one, to swinging your hapless and errant blows, you now commit to spouting what little French you have at your command. You commit to sounding like a fool ..."
Swedenborg: "For man's every enjoyment is from some love of his and has no other source, and to act from the enjoyment of one's love is to act in freedom"
Coates: "When I was a boy, I did not understand. More, I did not understand that not understanding was how it all happened. ... And yet I learned the syntax, the vocabulary, the sounds. And I came to like the sound. I got fluency and then fraternity. I walked outside. And then I got love."
Swedenborg: "It is otherwise with man, who has affections not only of natural love, but also of spiritual and celestial loves. ... man can think on high about what he thinks below. ... Obviously, man thinks above his thought, and sees it, as it were, below him. This comes to him from rationality and liberty. ... Unless he had liberty to think this way, he would not have the will, nor the thought from it."
I copied the title of Aristotle's Revenge blog. 'Unity of consciousness' - when I read his post just now I thought that that would mean that we all have a unity of consciousness with each other: that we share something as humans and think together more than we realize. But no, it actually means that when we as individuals experience the world we take it all into our consciousness at once. Well, not all of it. But what we do absorb, we absorb as a whole and not as little parts of what is happening.
That is taken to be an indication that materialism is false. Machines take in and dispense information as separate parts, whether it seems that way or not. Our minds take in a wholeness that machines cannot.
I can also see it as an indication that time is the way I have been picturing it. We end up choosing a certain path. Time is just like geography - it exists all at once and we experience it from points as we go along. We choose a path as a whole thing. Whatever we choose is not in little parts, it is one big whole. The only reason we don't think that is so is because we do not physically see time with our eyes the way we see physically see geography with our eyes. If I go home in an hour as I plan it doesn't mean I think I just invented "home" and now the "grocery store" does not exist since I did not go there. But with time I have been conditioned to think that what happens in the next few minutes is not "perceived from out of things that already exist" but is "created on the spot" as the clock ticks.
From John 19:
Jesus said: "I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father."
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Working for pay, I learned from Swedenborg, has to do with the spiritual thought realm as opposed to the celestial love realm. Only from actual love do we really care about others. From thoughts, we instead do right by them for something more like "our own good".
Hmmm ... that's what I thought this a.m. when they read the above passage at church. But then I went looking for Swedenborg quotes to back me up. Instead I found sayings that seem to have 'payment' as a kind of natural love. ?? Hmmm ... not sure now. But I really this Sw quote anyway:
from Arcana Coelestia 2946 'The field I give to you, and the cave that is in it I give to you' means preparation from themselves as regards the things that belong to the Church and to faith. This is clear from the meaning of 'a field' as the Church; from the meaning of 'the cave that is in it', that is to say, in the field, as the obscurity of faith; and from the meaning of 'giving the field and giving the cave' - or what amounts to the same, not taking any payment from Abraham - as not wishing to be redeemed by the Lord, but to achieve it by themselves and so to prepare themselves in these matters. Such is the first state of all who are being reformed and becoming spiritual; that is to say, they do not believe that they are reformed by the Lord but by themselves, that is, that all will of good and all thought of truth originate in themselves. What is more, the Lord maintains them in that state, for if He does not they are not able to be reformed. Indeed if they were told before regeneration has taken place that they are incapable by themselves of doing anything good, or by themselves of thinking anything true, they would either lapse into the mistake of supposing that they must wait for an influx into the will and an influx into thought, and not attempt a thing, if that influx does not take place; or into the mistake of supposing that if good and truth have any other origin but themselves, nothing would ever be attributed to them as righteousness; or into the mistake that in this case they would be like machines without a mind or any control of their own; or into further mistakes. Therefore they are allowed to think that good and truth originate in themselves. [2] But after they have been regenerated, the recognition that the situation is different is gradually instilled into them - that everything true comes wholly from the Lord. And as they grow more perfect it is also instilled into them that whatever does not come from the Lord is evil and false. Those who have been regenerated are led, if not during their lifetime then in the next life, not only to know this but also to see it with perception, for all angels enjoy the perception that this is so. Please see what has been stated already about these matters in the following places: ****************
So, see? The moral of this story is that I have no idea what I'm talking about or thinking. But that is not a bad thing (or so I tell myself lately). Swedenborg suggested I delve into interior meanings in Bible passages, but he did also mention it wasn't important to actually figure them out correctly. And He (the Lord that is) has to maintain me in my delusional religious states, else I could never be reformed.
Ergo, if I were to make sense on my blog, I would be deluded for no reason. But if I make no sense, I am deluded for a reason. I am so on track!
I got to thinking about Ian Thompson's concept of how perhaps the appearance of reincarnation being real has to do with spirits from the spiritual realm (who Swedenborg says hang around us and influence us). The memories of a former life could be simply the memories that the spirits have of their own former lives. "They [the associated spirits] are living like "normal people" in the spiritual world, and then (somehow) they are transformed to be associated spirits with us (on earth) and with no active memory of their own. I suggest that this process appears to them just like reincarnation."
Thompson has a clearer grasp, I think, about that spiritual world than I do, but that world could also account for prayer seeming to be (or being) effective. If those spirits are influencing a loved one negatively and you pray for him, it might truly get them to back off. In the Catholic church intercessory prayer is taken seriously. That's one of my favorite things about the church. I believe that intercessory prayer works wonders. But I think Swedenborg would have said, "no, it does not". Ooops. I'm putting words in his mouth; I should say that I have not read anything by him where he shares my confidence in that type of prayer.
But if that spiritual world is real and is equated with the mental world's interior (as I think I just read), then it seems a person could mentally contact those pesky evil spirits hanging around a loved one and pray them away: 'back off, buster, you have no idea of what you are dealing with' is what I pray. This is where experience in being mean pays off! The reason it works best with loved ones is because it has to be motivated by sincere love if you want to feel safe while scolding evil spirits.
I was clearing brush yesterday in my yard's perimeter when what should I see but that lovely cocoon of worms. I left it in place, but took out a lot of its shade, so I don't know if it will live ... my friend came over and encouraged me to kill it before it kills any trees. For her, it was evil. I can see where worms get their association with evil. They are coming forth from some marriage of decay that has spun itself into a cocoon. I like them, so I will claim they only have the appearance of evil.
Divine Providence by Swedenborg develops this proof of spirtual life equalling reality:
That which is in good and at the same time in truth is something.
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That which is in evil and at the same time in falsity is not anything. It "seems" to be something, but that is only an appearance.
By not being anything is meant that it is without power and without spiritual life.
After death everyone must be either in good and at the same time in truth or in evil and at the same time in falsity for the reason that good and evil cannot be united, ditto for good and the falsity of evil andevil and the truth of good. (the latter three pairs contain opposites which will contend until one destroys the other.)
Before death, a person usually does not come fully into one of those pairs (unions, actually, as in marriage, is what they are). He is kept in a state of reformation/regeneration. But after death he remains such as his life was in the world. If his life was good, then all his falsity falls away and in its place truth that matches his good is given to him.
Ergo, a person who is in spiritual life after death with her good and truth is in something rather than nothing. And I call that 'reality'. So, after-death will be more real than before-death if you are in good. (You don't even need to be in truth; you only need to be in good.)
In our amazing world, it is possible to download Swedenborg books on a Kindle in a few seconds. I find it easy to read that way, so why struggle with an old adorable copy? Translation matters to me however and Amazon won't tell me ahead of time. Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Providence - which translation would you read? Wunsch, Rose, Dole, Ager? Or a mystery potluck version? I took the free version first (Wunsch is what it turns out to be). The price is certainly right. For between $3.50 and $10.00 I could get a different one.
Look at all the other Swedenborg Kindle books! The ones that intrigue me most are priced from $1 to $3, because, hey - why not? It's so cheap. Look at this one: for only $1.29 you could read The Secret of Swedenborg by Henry James. I have little idea of what that is or why I would want to, but it would only take 30 seconds and $1.29 to find out. I'm so glad I live now.
Some atheism blogs are prayers. I recognize the format: struggling, snarky and whiny. It's how I pray - it takes one to know one. These atheists do believe in God, they just decline to pray conventionally and so they think they do not believe. Here is a quickly chosen sample:
God and evidence - a strident proposal Why should theists concern themselves with inconsistencies when God can bend the rules? But how can we non-believers accept something as evidence when that “evidence” is supposed to point to something which is beyond logic, beyond rules? What does “evidence” even mean in such a situation?
And finally, what I consider the most absurd position of all – theists claim that we are far more than material beings, that we can exist beyond death of our bodies, that our true selves have a supernatural foundation, and yet they insist that we could not exist unless God had tuned the universe just so, to make the physical, natural world perfect for our existence, an act which would seem absurd if our true selves were non-physical.
Good without God Then the earth comes back to life. Nature resurrects itself. That is the real story of Easter, and it’s why the Easter and Passover season is probably my favorite of the year if I had to choose....I love the family gatherings around these ... And so I love gathering for Humanist Passover Seders...removing the prayers that might have been said thoughtlessly and without intention anyhow, and substituting little rituals to highlight the modern significance of the occasion, like the new Passover tradition of dipping a finger in one’s wine ten times and spilling drops of “blood” for ten modern-day plagues like homelessness, child-trafficking, and nuclear proliferation.
Unequally Yoked In math and quantum mechanics, there’s not a terribly long lag between learning a new mode of abstract thought and seeing positive consequences. And the benefits you accrue in these disciplines (being able to write proofs, read papers, and imagine tesseracts) are a lot less ambiguous than possibly being in contact with God. Ultimately, I see brain-hacking as pretty similar to making any other kind of radical personal change: it’s better to do it as the result of a considered decision, not as a way of exploring a possible choice.
It is not so much what they say, but how they say it. When anyone is thinking with logic, imo, they are running a theory by God. "See, nature is like this, and so we don't need God, right?, because if this is true, then that is true, right?, and religions are mean, right?, and God is not supposed to be mean, right?, and those who believe are just crazy, right? because it does not make logical sense, right?, and if there were a God He could just tell me, right?, so I wouldn't have to be so mixed up, right?"
Amen.
