Randolph Harris II International Institute

Home » Articles posted by Randolph Harris II International Institute (Page 270)

Author Archives: Randolph Harris II International Institute

The Tragic Sense of Life in Humans and in Peoples on Eternity of the World Part III

Outside the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, a Swiss Guard stood at attention and let his eyes wander across the marble inlay patterns of the floor of the Sala Regia. The grand hall was empty, and his presence there might have appeared pointless. However, the guards and the conclave masters knew that, despite its reputation for being hermetically sealed, the Vatican was actually quite permeable—sometimes embarrassingly so. Honest to God, take this happy ending away, it is all the same. God will not waste simplicity on possibility. Shaking the foundations. Get me up, wake me up, dreams are filling this trace of blame. The God above God–frozen still I thought I could stop, now who is going to wait. No one is calling for me at the door. And unpredictable will not bother me anymore. And silently gets harder to ignore. Look straight ahead, there is nothing left to see. What is done is done, this life has got it’s hold on me. Just let it go, what now can never be. Now what do I do, can my mind? Did I think things through? Traditional theism has made God a Heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the World and humankind. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7

 It was once my life; it was my life at one time. The protest of atheism is correct. How can the church be full of cosmic policemen who sin more than others? A lot of them are former pimps and use the church’s money to buy mansions and luxury vehicles and they live a lifestyle of a superstar. We must now give up belief in God as somebody “out there,” just as Copernican astronomy made people abandon “the old man in the sky.” Most believers are inclined to think of God as a kind of visitor from outer space. Unlike “the old man in the sky” or the “visitor from outer space,” from the perspective of an atheist, God is not another individual entity besides the familiar entities of experience not even the “most powerful” or the “most perfect” one. He is “being-itself.” As such, God is not contingent but necessary, and arguments for his existence are not required. The idea of God, is not thing idea of something or someone who might or might not exist. In making God an object besides other objects, the existence and nature of which are matters of argument, theology supports the escape to atheism. The first step to atheism is always a theology which drags God down to the level of doubtful things. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7

At times we are told that the antiquated-fashioned believers are mistaken in thinking that God is out there because God is really inside of us—in so far as our lives have depth, insofar as we live agapeistically (Christian love). However, even at times Christian denounce God by calling each other sinners and saying that Earth is the Devil’s World. Where one’s interest lies, one’s proficiency also lies. Where something does not lack significance, there is also no lack of sense or organs. Whatever the heart is open to, is also no mystery ahead. Thus, the reason why humanity in modern times lost the organs for the supersensible World and its mysteries, is that in losing faith in this World it also lost the sense for it; because the essential tendency of the modern World has anti-Christian and anti-theological concepts. People worship material possessions, and enjoy knowingly and willfully putting the lives of others in danger for profit and amusement, and then they turn around and blame their behavior on the Devil, but forget that they have free will and that the blood of Jesus Christ forgave the World of the sin of Adam and Eve, so all suffering is related to human’s free will and not of the Devil. The fact that humans try to blame their behavior on a mythical being, so that they may be grossly mentally incompetent and mentally unwell. #RyanPhilllippe 3 of  7

Why do Christians even denounce God when their behavior radically transcends anything we ever experienced that the picture of these glorified humans cannot possibly do justice to the reality of? In the former context, God must not said to be out there because he is really in here deep down, in the latter context, because he is too removed to be even out there. In the former context, theological sentences become a species of very special psychological statements, and in the latter they are clearly items of transcendent metaphysics. There seems to be a constant oscillation between these two positions, so that at times traditional theology is denounced for not being sufficiently this-Worldly, while at other times it is condemned for being too close to the World. If this is the Devil’s World, then you are implying that God is nothing and a dead thing because God cannot create anything that is bad or imperfect. Basically what you are telling us is that, “too many cares are weighing down on me—the pressure is too great.” Why? Because if people can eliminate any responsibility for their problems and bad behavior, they will success in escaping blame or a guilty conscience. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7

Many atheists believe that it is admittedly impossible to prove the existence of God, but it is equally impossible to disprove this existence; hence, we must either suspend judgment or, if we embrace some position, we must do so on the basis of faith alone. To avoid misleading associations of words “prove” and “disprove,” the same point may be expressed by saying that we have no evidence either for or against God’s existence. Sometimes the reminder is added that the mere failure of the arguments for the existence of God does not show that there is no God. Anybody who supposed this would plainly be guilty of the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam (appeal to ignorance), which is a fallacy that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proven false or that it is false simply because it has not been proven true. This error in reasoning is often expressed with influential rhetoric. If one argues that God or telepathy, ghosts, or unidentified flying objects (UFOs) do not exist because their existence has not been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, then this fallacy occurs. On the other hand, if one argues that God, telepathy, and so on do exist because their non-existence has not been proved, then one argues fallaciously as well. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7

In spite of all the talk, not a single report of an actual God has been authenticated. However, if we assume that there is no such thing as God, this would be typical of ad ignorantiam fallacy. Therefore, many people suspend judgement concerning God. However, these same people do not suspend judgment in relation to the gods of the Greeks or in relation to the devil and witches. However, most educated people suspend judgement concerning the Olympian gods or the Devil or witches. Still, some people who believe in God, reject the belief of Olympian gods, but believe in the Devil and witches. So religion and God is quiet a conundrum. Some people even call God by different names and claim that his name is not God. So, there is not telling what deity people are actually worshipping, and that may be why atheists suspend judgment on God because its name actually has led to people being killed, assaulted, and even wars. Some ministers still believe in the Devil. The Devil is introduced as the only plausible explanatory principle of a great many phenomena. However, you also have people who believe the Devil is a good deity. Nonetheless, humans blame everything bad on the Devil, even when they know it is a direct result of their negligence. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7

The Devil is a lie is often a phrase used by many Christians to reject a proposition that they do not believe. It is actually true, however, not in the way they mean it. Yes, to believe that the Devil is responsible for every bad action on Earth is a lie. Did the Devil actually make you do something bad or was it your own free will? People often prefer what is rich and beautiful and ennobling and sometimes their choices so commonly makes them do things that are degrading and the speed with which lies and slander spread in all directions, and also the failure of the World’s diplomats is the cause of unethical and unlawful behavior. Could people of education, intelligence, and honest intent gather around a World conference table and fail so completely to understand each other’s needs and goals if their thinking was not being deliberately clouded and corrupted? Some allege that all such failures are the work of the Devil and they show that he is a creature of vastly superior intelligence, a mighty gifted spirit of infinite resourcefulness. The Devil is no bungling creature, but a price of lofty stature, of unlimited craft and cunning, able to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7

The Tragic Sense of Life in Humans and in Peoples on Eternity of the World Part II

There is a German superstition that a knife must not be left lying with the edge pointing upward because God and the angels might injure themselves with it. If the physical Universe had been created by God, it would follow that there was time when the quantity of matter was less than it is now, when it was in fact zero.  However, physics proves or presupposed that the quantity of matter has always been the same. Since most ordinary people include the creator of the material Universe in their concept of God, and since they mean by “creation” a temporal act of making something out of nothing, the appeal to the eternity of the matter is effective as a popular argument for atheism. Among the traditional atheistic arguments, some point to imperfection or defect in the Universe and argue that the defect is incompatible with the existence of God insofar as God is defined as a perfect being. Among the imperfections or alleged imperfections emphasis has frequently been placed on the enormous waste in nature, especially in matters of reproduction, and on the trial-and-error method of evolution.  

 Nothing could be more unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability to construct an organism at once, without making several tentative efforts, undoing today what was so carefully done yesterday, and repeating for centuries the same tentative and the same correction in the same succession. And in the end, if this entire process of repetition is man, it has been questioned whether it was worth all the pain and tribulations that precede it. If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in it, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final results of my efforts. It has also been suggested by several writers, and not all facetiously, that if there were a God, then surely he would have provided human beings with clearer evidence of his own existence. If an omniscient and omnipotent God did not take care that his intentions should be understood by his creatures, could he be a God of goodness? Would he not, rather, be a cruel god if, being himself in possession of the truth, he could calmly contemplate mankind, in a state of miserable torment, worrying its mind as to what was truth? 

 If God exists, then, he could have so convinced all men and women of the fact of his existence that doubt, disagreement, or disbelief would be impossible.  We are told that with God all things are possible. If so, it was possible for him to create a World in which the vast mass of suffering that is morally pointless—the pain and misery of animals, the cancer and blindness of little children, the humiliations of senility and insanity—were avoided. These are apparently inflictions of the Creator himself. If you admit that, you deny his goodness; if you say he could not have done otherwise, you deny that with him all things are possible. The Design Argument cannot succeed in establishing a maker of the Universe who is both omnipotent and perfectly good. It argues from the nature of the World to the nature of its cause, and since the World is a mixture of good and evil, it cannot be established in this way that its creator is perfectly good. If the theory that the Universe is the work if an all-powerful and all-good being were true, then the Universe would not exhibit certain features; experience shows that it does exhibit these features, and hence the theory is false.  

The argument from evil has no logical force against belief in a finite God. The evil in the World is perfectly compatible with the existence of a God who is lacking either omnipotence or perfect goodness, or both. In fact, there is no obvious incompatibility between the existence of the metaphysical God and evil in the World, since it is not claimed for the metaphysical God either that he is all-powerful or that he is perfectly hood in the ordinary senses of these words. In the light of the injustice and suffering we find in the World, the moral character of God cannot be represented after the model of the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving. God is good in the very same sense in which human beings are sometimes good. The ultimate reality is good and just in the sense or one of the senses in which we use these terms when we praise good and just human beings. It might be more reasonable to consider that evil is of a privative rather than a positive character. Because evil is real and positive, it is the consequence of man’s abuse of his gift of free will and that a Universe without evil and without free will would be one worse than with both.  

The existence of evil does not seem to be of considerable value in showing that this argument does not by itself justify rejection of belief in an infinite anthropomorphic God. It has been argued that although the existence of evil cannot be reconciled with the existence of an infinite anthropomorphic God, this is not too serious a problem in view of the powerful affirmative evidence for this position. We do not abandon a well-supported theory just because we meet with some counterevidence. The fact that divine science, like natural science, brings us face to face with apparently insoluble contradictions. The moral for our discussion is that an atheist cannot afford to neglect the arguments for the existence of God. Unless one can demolish them, the arguments from evil will not by itself establish the atheist’s case. If one has faith, proofs and reasoning are not needed; if one lacks faith, they are of no avail.  

A person who has faith is not shaken by absence of evidence or by counterevidence; a person who has no faith will never become a true believe even if one is intellectually convinced by the argument of rationalistic theology. We that fight the living World must have the Universal for succor of the truth in it. Cast forth the soul in prayer, you meet the effluence of the outer truth, you join with the creative elements giving breath to you. The idea of God transcends both mysticism and the person-to-person encounter. The nature of man and a World with dependable sequences (or causal laws), evil of certain kinds is unavoidable and, furthermore, that (though they do not, of course claim to be able to prove this) in the next life there will be appropriate reward and compensations. Some admit that their faith would be logically weakened, perhaps fatally so, if it could be shown that there is no afterlife or that in the afterlife injustice and misery, far from vanishing, will be even more oppressive than in the present life, or that the evils which, given the nature of man and a World of dependable consequences, they thought to be unavoidable, could in fact have been prevented by an omnipotent Creator.  

The Winchester Mystery House

  Haunted by a ghost warning her of deaths about to come, and ghost haunting her dreams night after night, Mrs. Winchester builds one of the most bizarre mansions in the World. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

 

 

The Tragic Sense of Life in Humans and in Peoples on Eternity of the World Part I

 

My personal feeling is that we have lost all trust. I cannot be with you again, do not remind me of all the good times that we had. Learned a lot from us instead, I never want these feelings to ever come again. You will never hear me crying, you will never see e trying, to love you once again your love is so past tense. People do not tell me that you have changed, do not want to hear on how you have lost your evil ways. The one who has changed this time is me, and I do not want to go back to feeling helpless and deceived. To think you have me fooled every now and then. You had me believing that I was the reason that you left, but I will not fall back in love with you again. I do not want to be your friend. Serval factors have become important factors. It has become an embarrassment trying to convince the World that something is good, when they see imagines and hear stories, on the daily bases, that contradict my devotion. The internal balance of power seems to be off kilter, and you have such a tight grip. And while many are alarmed by the developments you tend to minimize the significance. You do not comment on these things nor take action as if they are sub iudice, you understand what I mean. Sub iudice, of course means, “under judicial consideration.” #RyanPhillippe 1 of 9

 

God, infinitely transcends every finite being. When we say, for example, “God is love,” or “God is Life,” the words “love” and “life” are used symbolically, not literally. They were originally introduced in connection with segments of finite experience, and when applied to God, they cannot have the same meaning that they have in ordinary situations. God is all-powerful, all-loving, infinitely good, perfectly just and so on. When God is referred to as the creator (or ground) of the Universe. The Universe is absolutely depended on God so that it would ease to exist if God were not sustaining it. One will notice as time goes on, and people are taught that there is no such thing as normal, do not go to church, and no longer pray in schools that society is becoming more and more corrupt and the World does seem to be unraveling. People no longer worship God, instead they worship money, status, and material things. “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows,” reports 1 Timothy 6:10. While we need money to live, it should not be something that we worship and love more than honesty and human life. Such a fleshless abstraction cannot be the answer to the cravings of the human heart. Only God can be the loving God to whom we come by the way of love and of suffering. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 9

At one time being an atheist was viewed as walking down a path of decay and disaster, it was seen as a hideous position to adopt by depraved people, and a horrible catastrophe that might spread over the human race. Atheist were seen as people who could not be a true friend, an affectionate relation, or a loyal subject. They were seen as weak, staggering, and special theists and that their philosophy would bring with it hopeless national ruin. An atheist is a person who maintains that there is no God, that is, that the sentence “God exists” expresses a false proposition. The terms atheist and godless are still frequently used as terms of abuse. Nevertheless, there are relatively few people nowadays in whom the thought of atheism and atheists arouses unspeakable horror. It seems oaths and promises are no less trustworthy than those of other people, and in most civilized lands atheists have the same or nearly the same rights as everyone else. Some of the World’s foremost philosophers, scientists, and artists have been avowed atheists and the increase in atheism has been very closely connected as part of the same process. Even spokesmen of the most conservative religious groups have in recent years conceded that atheism may well be a philosophical position that is adopted for the noblest of reasons. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 9

Some people believe that since prayer has been removed from school, American has plummeted from righteous living, prosperity, and success. As you might have already noticed, America’s moral decline rapidly accelerated following the U.S. Supreme Court’s removal of prayer from our nation’s schools on 25 June 1962, as over 32 million students were forbidden to call on the name of the Lord. American’s have been praying to God since the founding of our nation. In fact, America was thought to be a government implemented by God. However, people still believe that life without God need not be bestial, unintelligent, or immoral, and that atheism can be serene and deeply human. And that we should have dialogue with atheists that is truly human and mutually respectful. Yet, one cannot ignore that fact that since God has been removed from government buildings, and schools, society has gotten more violent. There have been 196 school shootings since 2013. There were 372 mass shootings in the United States of America in 2015, killing 475 people, and wounding 1,870. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 9

 It is not to say that atheists are doing these shootings necessarily, but many people believe having kids pray to God in school made them believe in a higher power and understand that there would be moral consequences for their behavior, and since prayer has been removed from school, there is no fear. School is mandatory, but church was not, so this was a center to indoctrinate children and without this indoctrinate, they have been led astray and no longer believe in a higher power. Pope Paul VI, in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, observed that some atheists were undoubtedly inspired by “greathearted dreams of justice and progress” as well as by “impatience with the mediocrity and self-seeking of so many contemporary social setting.” Atheists may not have needed religion in school, but it seems it may have been a great way of controlling the masses. In France, until the Revolution (1789-1799), and in most other countries until some time later, it was illegal to publish works in defense of atheism, and in fact real or alleged atheists were subject to dire persecution throughout the times of Christian domination. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 9

Some of the World’s greatest philosophers were among those who advocated and in some instances actively promoted the persecution of atheists. The story antedates Christianity, and persecution of atheists was already advocated in Plato’s Laws. Plato divided atheists into several groups, all of which must be punished; but whereas members of some groups required no more than admonition and imprisonment, those belonging to others deserved punishment exceeding one death or two. And many believed the people who did not believe in God should be shut off from the World by death. Some argued that such a course is justified since it surely is a much more serious matter to corrupt faith, though which comes the soul’s life, than it is to forge money, through which temporal life is afforded. If, as is just, forgers of money and other male factors are straightway put to death, it is all the more just that heretics be not only excommunicated but also put to death. “I’m still alive but I’m barely breathing. Just prayed to a God that I don’t believe in. ‘Cause I got time while she got freedom. ‘Cause when the heart breaks, no, it don’t break even,” (Breakeven by The Script). #RyanPhillippe 6 of 9

I personally have never met an atheist and I find that I pray to God more and more and mention God more frequently than in the past because it has been proven, by the law of attractions, that what one focuses on tends to manifest in their reality, and God is supposed to be an all God being that will rewards us for living a good life and make our soul immortal. However, in the past Baron d’Holbach’s The System of Nature was falsely a attributed in its first edition to Mirabuad, a former secretary of the French Academy who had been dead for ten years. Very shortly after its publication in 1770, it was condemned to be burned by public hangman after a trial in which the public prosecutor expressed his regret that he could not lay his hands on the unknown real author, adding that the corruptions of moral evident in almost all sections of society was probably due to the spread of ideas like those contained in the condemned book. When the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was an undergraduate at Oxford, he published a short and very temperate pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. This at once aroused a violent protest which resulted in the burning of all undistributed copies and in the expulsion of Percy Shelly and his friend Thomas Hogg from the university. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 9

Some years later, Percy Shelly was judicially deprived of the custody of his children on the ground that he was likely to inculcate the same [atheistic] principles upon them. As late as 1877, Annie Besant, the noted social reformer, was judged to be unfit to take care of her children on the same ground, although the judge admitted that she has been a care and affectionate mother. Until the passing of the Evidence Amendment Act of 1869, unbelievers in Great Britain were considered incompetent to give evidence in a court of law. Atheists were thus in effect unable to sue when they were victims of fraud or slander. However, some people believe those within the church tend to be corrupt. The process had already started happening when the doctrinal congregation was systematically processing sex abuse cases. Pope John Paul, in a crucial but unpublicized document, had defined sexual abuse of minors as one of the graviora delicta (more serious crimes), and had been given the doctrinal office authority over all such accusations around the World. Among these cases now was Father Maciel’s. Ironically, the turning point came shortly after the gala celebration of Father Maciel’s sixtieth anniversary as priest. There were cases of abuse dating back as many as thirty years, and the sex abuse cases were especially egregious. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 9

Reporters sometimes joked about the cloned good looks of Legionary priest and the fact that they tended to show up in pairs when invited anywhere outside their religious headquarters (they could police each other is temptation arose). However, imagine how much worse some of these people in the church would be if they did not have God in their lives. The voice at the other end of the phone was gaining speed, straining my note-taking skills, and the speaker’s heavy accent did not make things any easier. However, what he was telling me had me spellbound. He believed that there was a place for God in civil society. All the believers in question have characterized God as a supreme personal being who is the creator or the ground of the Universe and who, whatever his other attributes may be, is at the very least immensely powerful, highly intelligent and very good, loving, and just. People frequently adopt an attitude of rejection toward apposition for reasons other than that it is a false proposition. The atheist does not say, “there is no God,” but one says, “I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the word ‘God’ is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. The Bible God I deny; the Christian God I disbelieve in; but I am not rash enough to say there is no God as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define God to me.” #RyanPhillippe 9 of 9

 

 

How High was Jacob’s Ladder and do Animals have Souls?

Until it pleases God to deliver us from this misery, we can find no ultimate knowledge, but we can, is we are not destructively skeptical, proceed to gain and use scientific knowledge. Time is a child at play. The debates which have surrounded the animal soul or mind have been sensitive indicators of a number of fundamental issues in modern philosophy and science: the immateriality of the human mind, the immortality of the soul, the existence of other minds, and the basis of free will and responsibility. The concept of the animal soul did not give rise to any serious problems until the seventeenth century because to attribute minds to animals would threaten traditional religious beliefs, since the psychological concept of mind was conflated with the theological concept of soul. Some people argued that it would be impious to imagine that animals have souls of the same order as humans and that humans have nothing more to hope for in the afterlife than files and ants have. Similarly, God could not allow sinless creatures to suffer; without souls, animals would not suffer, and humans would be absolved from guilty for exploiting, killing, and eating them. 

However, the most important reason critics deny souls to animals is because of their failure to indicate either by voice or signs that which could be accounted for solely by thought and not by natural impulse. Thus, the use of language became the criterion of thought—the true difference between man and beast. However, like humans, animals do have sensation, imagination, passion, and memory. And to contrive thought to animals involves granting them immortal souls. Animals are said to possess a substantial form, a sensitive soul endowed with all mental attributes except reflection, reason, and will. The purpose was to form a solution to deny animals of an immortal soul. Animals were denied self-consciousness and the power to recognize eternal truths, which were defining attributes of the souls of humans. Different degrees of mentality could be ascribed to creatures at different levels of the scale of beings. However, if all possible gradations in the scale of beings were realized, no qualitative distinctions could be upheld, and no sharp qualitative distinctions could be upheld, and no sharp demarcation would be tenable. Indeed, some extended mental continuity below animals and concerned themselves with the sensations, wishes, and loves of plants; matter alone was held to be completely insensitive.  

The issues became one of deciding which faculties belonged to man alone. The less sure humans felt about their dignity and the power of their reason, the more they accepted the continuity between man and animals; and the more seriously one took biological continuity, the less one could appeal to the clear demarcations on which a faculty of psychology depends. It followed that humans differed only in a degree from the nearest subhuman species, and a heightened interest in apes and primitive tribes reflected this implication. All that was left in doubt was the amount of difference and the means of determining it. Throughout the debate, some measure of mentality has been granted to animals, although their reasons varied. The whole controversy was reduced to absurdity in 1739, when a Jesuit, Father Bougeant, wrote a very telling criticism of the Cartesian doctrine and prevailing alternatives. He concluded that the only solution which would not threaten religion was to grant souls to animals but to consider these the souls of demons or fallen angels inhabiting animal bodies as a punishment. His position allowed him to concede reason and a true language to beasts and neatly to justify their suffering. Father Bougeant’s order rewarded his ironical wit by applying stern disciplinary measures.  

Nonetheless, it is believed that animals are more sensitive to vibrations, much like babies, and have comparatively restricted experiences because their brains are not seemingly as developed at the adult human. Some believe that animals lack language and symbols and rely more heavily on instincts. However, it is believed that animals different from humans in a degree. God promised to resurrect the human body and therefore, it is retained the humans have immortal souls. The association of pleasures and pains with rewards and punishments and the inheritance of acquired habits and structural changes provided the requisite evolutionary mechanism. Any being, create, or plant that is capable of activity, regeneration, sensation, motions, and all other properties usually is explained by appeal to a vital principle or soul. And many of you who have pets or have interacted with animals have noticed that animals are endowed with reason and conscience, and an ape might be taught to employ language, as well as bird. It thus appears that there is but one type of organization in the Universe, and that man is the most perfect example.

Also, one will notice that a lot of new medications and treatments are tested on animals to see how humans might react and valves from a pig’s heart can be used to replace valves in the human heart. Also, animals use tool, form abstract concepts, employ language, and experience beauty and reverence. I sometimes tell my cockatiel Alex that he has pretty feathers and he starts to comb them with his feet and get happy. Also, sometimes when I come home, before I get to the door, he can sense me and gets all exited and starts dancing and singing in his cage. Therefore, it is human’s possession of a highly developed moral sense, or conscience, that constitutes their most important difference from lower animals. The main difference between human and animals is the mental and bodily evolution. However, pay attention to the mental states of the average animal, they tend to be peaceful and proud, while some humans are very savage and troubled. So it is very likely that animals do have souls, and therefore, we should not say we own animals, I strongly dislike when people say, “I own that animal.” Go forth then, and share with your and have a compassionate heart for all living things. Soften harden hearts with love and restore the destitute of their dignity of Spirit.   

Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen uber das daseyn Gottes

The World sprang into existence five minutes ago, exactly as it was then with a population that “remembered” a wholly unreal past, it is logically possible. There is a beginning or a potentiality of goodness in human nature because humans are rational beings and have a moral sense and knowledge. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individual natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. The Savior has set us free from sin, but this is the freedom that comes from being set free from myself by the Son. We tend to rely on our own energy instead of being energized by the power that comes from identification with Jesus Christ. When the Son of God prays, He is mindful and consciously aware of only His Father. God always hears the prayers of His Son, and if the Son of God has been formed in me, the Father will always hear my prayers. However, I must see to it that the Son of God is exhibited in my human flesh. When I come into contact with the everyday occurrences of life as an ordinary human being, is the prayer of God’s eternal Son to His Father being prayed it me?  

Both learning and thinking are indispensable. Without learning there are no data for inquiry. Without thinking no principle or concept can be reached. The senses of hearing and seeing do not think and are obscured by external things. When one thing comes into contact with another, as a matter of course, one leads the other way. Senses never make a person reflect upon oneself. To the mind belongs the office of thinking. By thinking, it gives the right view of things; by neglecting to think, it fails to do this. Aesthetic perfection arises out of the limits of human understanding. People are unable to conceive, as God can, the real, supreme unity in the enormous variety of things. One must therefore content oneself with introducing an artificial unity (uniformity) into some objects in order to perceive them as wholes; and this is beauty. A beautiful object is not necessarily perfect in itself, but must be perfect in its capacity to be perceived. The perception of beauty strengthens the representative activity of the soul and makes it more perfect, thus causing a feeling of pleasure.  

The perception of beauty causes intuitive knowledge; in its highest stage it becomes the aesthetic illusion in which, for example, fable appears as reality. The conception of beauty explains why some people find pleasurable effects in tragedy. In tragedy, murder is the representation of a morally and metaphysically imperfect event, but its representation may be subjectively perfect. In the sublime, the pleasure in awareness of immensity of distance, size, or number is mixed with some pain because of one’s inability to comprehend it completely. In both cases, aesthetic pleasure is the result of the mixed feeling (vermischte Empfindung) arising in one’s soul: even if some element of the perception is unpleasant, the perception as a subjective whole is pleasurable. However, it is essential that you give people the opportunity to act on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual—you cannot act for another person. It must be on one’s own deliberate act, but the evangelic message should always lead one to action. Faith always works in a person way, because the purpose of God is to see that perfect faith is made real in His Children.  

Aesthetic feelings must be attributed to a faculty different from intellect and desire, a faculty that called the faculty of approval (Billigungsvermogen). The beauty of an object escapes us if we subject it to a process of analysis and definition; therefore, experience of the beautiful cannot be an object of knowledge. A beautiful object gives us aesthetic pleasure even if we do not possess the object; thus, the approval of beauty must be distinct from desire. Metaphysical perfection, unlike beauty, is both know by intellect and an object desire. Beauty is produced by genius. Genius does not imitate nature, but idealizes it, that is, it exhibits natural objects as God would have created them if his aim had been aesthetic and not metaphysical perfection. Genius is independent of rules because it establishes its own rules. A genius’ procedure is instinctive. Both the existence of God and the immortality of the soul can be demonstrated. The soul is a simple substance and therefore indestructible. The soul might nevertheless lose its consciousness, but the divine wisdom and goodness of God will not allow this to happen. 

The soul is a highly personal endeavor that must always remain open and be capable of organic growth in the light of new evidence. It provides a framework for entering into genuine dialogue with the contemporary situation and is essentially an effort of reason reflecting on their data of experience. The soul is a strong affirmative force of the World and has the power to fix the limits of the activity of the mind. Human reason without the assistance of revelation necessarily falls into error. The reality of the World transcends our consciousness of it. Human behavior is a mosaic of reflexes with its emphasis on the involvement of the organism as a whole in all its separate functions. The body is not just an object among objects; nor is it just a contingent fact that our perceptual experience is specially conditioned by what occurs in one particular sector of the physical World. Instead, it is precisely because consciousness has a locus within the World that out knowledge of that World has the perspectivistic and uncompletable character of the soul. The functioning of the human body itself, at least at its higher levels, can be understood only if we attribute to it the intentional structures that the soul would reserve for pure consciousness. We do indeed create our moral being.  

Have You Stopped Beating Your Father?

 

The City of God, and the local accidents of the Earthly city are of little account in comparison. Fulfillment of human capacities requires the possession of a high degree of sophisticated intelligence, and such serenity depends on rightness of the will and affections. These two features, a radical view of the transforming power of grace and a voluntaristic accent, may be regarded as the kernel of the eternal goal. When I turn to God and by belief accept what God reveals, the miraculous atonement by the Cross of Christ instantly places me into a right relationship with God. And as the result of the supernatural miracle of God’s grace, I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my iniquity, or because I have repented, but because of what Jesus has done. Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the only explanation for His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy for us. We are acceptable to God not because we have obeyed, nor because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and for no one reason. Through identification with His death I can be freed from sin and have His very righteousness imparted as a gift for me.

Correspondingly, true wisdom and virtue are obtainable only in the light of the faith and by the provenience of divine grace; much of human nature, grossly corrupted since the Fall, is in need of a correspondingly complete divine remaking. During these centuries of insecurity and uprootedness, there is little intellectual endeavor and we must take on the gigantic task of rethinking and reconstruction with a focus on logic, theology, and classical inheritance, which has slumbered insecurely within the libraries of threatened American monasteries. It is important to assimilate by adopting a framework within which divine grace is seen as completing and fulfilling human nature, rather than dramatically abrogating it in the manner of certain politicians, who cover their ignorance with a curious and inexplicable web of perplexed words, which leaves the individual lacking in total intelligibility and even makes problematic the possibility of an omniscient being’s (God’s) radical understanding of the individual object. Many Earthly states have merely become coercive institutions which would not had existed had man not fallen, and they serve simply to issues punishments and remedies for the corruption of human nature.

Correspondingly, divine grace is playing a dramatically elevating part in the reformation and reordination of the will. And the fact stands that revolution will generate worse evils than the tyranny which it is designed to displace. Therefore, laws should be tailored to fit the type of population for which they are intended; to attempt to legislate a people into full virtue is futile. The rules governing the attribution of the rightness or wrongness to human actions were contingent in relation to the absolute power of God; the consequent contingency of connection between deed and merit has caused to take seriously the fully human realm of reasons, purposes, hopes, and so forth, thus avoiding the split between the thinker as a human being and the thinker as a philosopher. However, there are limits to human understanding. Many modern humans have become notorious for their logic-chopping and paradoxes and for question-and-answer forms of argument. The frivolous use of uncouth, affected, and unintelligible terms have made these people unfit or incapable to be brought into well-bred company and polite conversation. As humans, we have to have understand that it is important to be sensitive and the indispensability of a knowledge of the beautiful within one’s whole outlook on the World awakens the soul.

Patriotism, (emotional attachment to a nation which an individual recognizes as their homeland) and loyalty are the best traditions one can have. My great grandfather used to tell me that as a boy he had been thrilled by the sight of the victorious German troops marching home through the Brandenburg Gate after the Franco-Prussian War. Later he admired the skill with which Bismarck established the long-desired unification of his country and saw with pride Germany’s industrial and commercial expansion into a great power. Some people wonder can reason of a state justify the employment of might against right? May a state properly do things that are ethically forbidden to the ordinary citizen? Does it enjoy a code of morals above and beyond that of the private individual? Well, since power is the essence of its existence, the state is justified in using such means as are necessary to maintain and even extend its power, but this power is limited by the state’s obligation to protect the rights of citizens and to promote their cultural and material welfare. It is, however, impossible to draw a precise line between state egoism and ideal morality. The supreme self-indulgence is to surrender the will to a spiritual director.

One primary underlying thought of great importance is that of individuality—the unique individual character of every event, person, social group, nation-state, or idea is subjected to evolution. The capacity of every individuality for development either by growth or decay is the only sure and safe guide to morality and conduct which is the focus on the individual’s own conscience. Under tyranny many people suffer spiritual agony and physical hardship. God’s moral purity leads me to believe that the problems of grim soulless mortals and human responsibility has been aggravated by political, social, and economics. The cause of sin lies in humans themselves; the hardening of their hearts is due to their own perversity. Humans have a real measure of responsibility for their spiritual condition. Human’s free will, therefore, can cooperate with God’s grace, and does so. The human will, of course, is never the primary cause of human regenerations—the Spirit of God and the preaching of the Word always maintain the initiative—but human will is specifically granted a place, unless there is consent in the human’s part there can be no effective regeneration. Religion is like love. It flourishes best in silence, and is to be felt, not spoke of.

On Dreams Sent from God for his Highest

Nature, like mind, always does whatever it does for the sake of something, which something is its end. Never take a description of the origin of an idea for a definition, or an account of the mental and physical conditions through which we become conscious of a proposition for a proof of it. A proposition may be thought, and again it may be true; never confuse these two things. We must remind ourselves, it seems, that a proposition no more ceases to be true when I cease to think of it than the Sun ceases to exist when I shut my eyes. Self-observation (or introspection) is the way to establish the truth by reducing it to the subjective element of an intimate pathway into one’s own mind, body, and spirit. It allows us to experience new levels of self-awareness, and by so doing to live more conscious, harmonious lives. Because of our conditioning and education most of us live our lives as unconscious automatons. Oblivious to our own real potential, our essence, we are totally identified with our personality, our self-image, and with whatever thoughts, feelings, images, daydreams, or sensations capture our attention at the moment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Many believe that we are masters of ourselves, seldom noticing our own inner fragmentation and our lack of will and choice as a result of this fragmentation. We lose ourselves at every moment in one or another aspect of our lives, out of touch with the remarkable wholeness that is our birthright. Psychology will become the foundation of philosophy that allows us to heal ourselves and see who we truly are. Logic, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of education are all little more than psychology or applied psychology. With all of the concepts of the philosophical disciplines, only what is formed in the human soul according to these laws are understood with certainty and clarity, then a certain and clear knowledge of those disciplines is likewise achieved in seeking the transcendental ground of truth—the objective validity of human knowledge. This marks both a return to and a great improvement of the soul. The soul is a whole of which spirit and mind are attributes and emerge only gradually. And there are rational and irrational parts of the soul. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

CmGPxFdWMAQVAxE

Reason, spirit, and desire represent different levels of being alive. The rational soul is some kind of active agency which inhibits the body for a brief period. The rational soul inhabits the head because the head is round (the most perfect shape and, hence, an appropriate place for the seat of reason) and the part of the body nearest the Heavens. As like can be known only by like, the soul, in its rational aspect, must also be eternal. The rational soul makes contact with the brain, which are conceived of as a kind of marrow encased in the skull. The irrational soul makes contact with the marrow of the spinal cord in its body sheath. The better part of the irrational soul, spirit, inhabits the heart and functions in such manifestations of life as energy, courage, and ambition; the worse part, desire, functions below the diaphragm, in appetite, nutrition, and reproduction. The rational and irrational parts affect each other through the liver, which acts as a sort of mirror of thought. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

In sleep the soul is shut up, and its motion subsides. A few agitations remain, however, and produce dreams. Usually dreams are the expressions of desires which are suppressed. The good person controls one’s desires sensibly and so is not unduly disturbed by them in sleep. In sleep the rational soul, if not troubled by irrational desires, can attain truths not otherwise revealed. The human body receives an impression from without and responds with an inner motion. Some parts of the body—for instance, the hair and the nails—are subject to shock but do not respond with inner movements. Sense organs, however, are good conductors of motion. Thus, hearing, for instance, is the end product of a kind of shock. By means of air in the cavities of the body a blow is transmitted through the ears to the blood and brain and then to the soul. Knowledge does not consist just in sensation but in the activity of the soul in relation to what is transmitted. The transmission is complicated by the intervention of memory, imagination, feeling, and association, all of which act as intermediaries between reason and sensation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

There is a very intimate connection between the soul and body which is a particular case of the more general relationship between for and matter. The soul is the first actuality of a natural body furnished with organs. If the eye were an animal, eyesight would be its soul, this being the form or capacity of the eye. To speak of soul is to speak of a capacity or propensity to function in a certain way which depends on a certain bodily structure, or it is to speak of the actual exercise of such a capacity or propensity, which is the second kind of actuality. Thus, anger, for instance, can be the appetite of returning pain for pain or the boiling of the blood around the heart, depending on whether the dialectician or the physical scientist is considering it; there is always a biological and a psychological account to be given. Body and soul are a particular case of the more general correlatives, form and matter. When speaking of theoretical reason rather than practical reason, the distinction between matter and form is again exemplified in that reason is both passive and active. However, the active reason comes from without and is divine. It is like the helmsman in a ship. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

The heart is the seat of life, sensation, and motion. In the transmission of sensation to the heart and in the vitality which flows from the heart, the connatural spirits play an important role. They are thought of as a kind of inner air quite distinct from the outer air which we breathe. Closely associated with the blood, they act as a universal internal medium for the transmission of sensation. Once love has been acknowledged as our Source of all supply—our Being, this is the real secret of prosperity. Love always returns in the form we can use best—its value always being greater than the value we ascribed to the gift we gave. And it is easy to love the loveable. Love, once accepted in whatever form, converts itself into the help one really needs—finds its way into one’s heart and begins to open what was hardened until then, and slowly the object of affection discovers one own Being as the Source. Love gives unto itself and is extended and increases. Besides the specific senses there is sensus communis, which is not a sixth sense but a generic power of sensation as such provides unity for the sensitive soul in its particular manifestations. Love is thus destined as joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

There is beauty here, indeed. If we allow it to be so, our experience of life on Earth can be Heaven on Earth. A reviving personality must be nourished with another kind of new communication—communication with people. Besides opening yourself to the riches of art and knowledge, you must also open yourself to the riches of new friendships, particularly to those which can reinforce your newly expanded interest. What God places on us allows us to transform something negative into something excellent. No power on Earth or in Hell can conquer the Spirit of God living within the human spirit; it creates an inner invincibility. You will see that your burden is then lightened by the sense of companionship. God is the place of the World and the whole system of thinking. Everything is a mode or modification of God. Thus, nothing can be adequately explained unless its occurrence can be deduced from principles applying to the system as a whole. Human beings, as part of nature, must exhibit the general characteristics of modifications of God or nature. They must be determined within a system; they must have a mental and physical aspect’ and they must exhibit conatus, or the striving to persist within their own being. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Vision and the Reality

Happiness is dependent solely on moral virtue, which involves practical intelligence and so can be taught, partly from a study of the names of things and definitions. However, the good people also require strength of mind and character. The achievement of virtue necessitates a mental and physical effort to toil through opposing difficulties, suffering, and pain. It may be appropriate to consider first whether American philosophical thought is distinguished by any special characteristics. An examination of American thought of the past and present shows that it has been pluralistic and that no single generation can describe it accurately. The United States has been receptive to a variety of intellectual themes and movements, from Puritanism and idealism to naturalism and positivism. Any formula designed to reduce these diverse elements to a uniform tradition is bound to involve overs implication. It is true that Americans have made extensive use of foreign ideas, but these have been transformed to meet American needs. The successive waves of immigration and the divergent philosophies and ideas that accompanied them were a continuing challenge to American intellectual development but only in recent times can it be said that America has made a contribution to philosophy proper. 

The British, more than any other people, influenced the formation of American institutions; and the New England colonists, especially the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay area, appear to have left an indelible make on the American character. They believed that God is absolutely sovereign and that human being, beset with original sin, is totally dependent upon God. Salvation cannot be earned by virtuous works; God has foreordained who shall be elected to the “Society of Saints,” although presumably the performance of good work predisposes man’s soul to receive God’s grace. The Puritans, therefore, were deeply involved in the conflict between the doctrines of free will and determinism. However, in general it was agreed that life was a moral process, and certain moral virtues such as discipline, devotion, honesty, moderation, temperance, frugality, industry, and simplicity were typically praised. True virtue is the beauty of the heart, and religious love of being in general is a love of God. Humans who are sinful and corrupt, are naturally incapable of true virtue; yet there is a grace of God that is given to those who are elected for salvation. 

A sign of having received this grace of God is an individual’s religious affections and a sense of beauty. Belief in God has its source in the affections of religious love and joy, but these are not to be comprehended by the natural senses and are transmitted from a supernatural source. God is first cause, designed the Universe, and all events are determined by natural laws. Therefore, nature (including humans) are a manifestation of the goodness of God. As rational beings, humans are capable of achieving good life on Earth and do not need to wait for the Heavenly Kingdom to come. Humanistic aims and goals are happiness, not faith, provided that standard of choice. The Enlightenment manifested an optimistic faith in science, reason, and education as the instruments of human progress. There is a general conviction that if one improved the social environment, one might improve humans and thereby achieve social justice. National rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and constitute the foundation of social justice. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 6

Governments are artificial contracts designed to protect inalienable rights: if they fail to fulfill their original purpose, their claim to rightful authority is void, and they may justly be altered or dissolved. There is not, however, unanimity concerning the form of the new government to be established. We have truth only when our ideas conform to things, which means mist employ the inductive method and pay close attention to the facts. God’s existence, and the immortality of the soul is natural, mental, and moral. The Highest Being is taken to be entirely simple, immutable, and this essentially beyond our fragmentary concepts but, at the same time, to be the supreme source of an all intelligibility and, consequently, the one supremely knowable reality. Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it just yet. We are not quite prepared for the devastation that may come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? 

A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious—it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has head me.” God’s silence is the very proof that He has. If Jesus Christ is brining you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of Hid intimacy—silence. The Universe is totally dependent on God’s creative power, and its nature and purpose are determined by his nature and reason. The essential reality of every creature is measured by its conformity to God, the supreme and creative Truth. Insofar as creatures reflects the divine reason and will, they realize the authentic order of creaturely existence, truth, and rightness. The rational creature is capable of thought, of choice, and action, and all three capacities are subject to the same ultimate standard. The criterion of the sound mind, the good will, and the right action is its truth, its intelligible rightness, its order grounded in the divine Being itself. The fundamental form of spiritual order is truth, the rightness of intelligence. Unless the mind is informed by the inherent rational order of God’s World, right choice and action are impossible. Furthermore, it is evident that for a rational understanding of the real order of things is in itself a spiritual good. 

The quality of personal life is decisively determined, however, by will and action, rather than by thought. The rational creature, whose mind can apprehend the order of God’s truth and whose will can accept that order for its own decisions and actions, is obligated to maintain moral rightness or righteousness (iustitia) in the exercise of its freedom, which was bestowed on it for that very purpose. When it freely conforms will, word, and deed to the order of righteousness, the rational creature is right and just. To live righteously is to subordinate all creaturely loves and relationships to love for God and the quest for communication with him. It is because righteousness is essentially an orientation to the supreme and transcendent Good that one can see in it the supreme value of creaturely life, to be cherished for its own sake, and the gift of God, rather than human achievement. By Christ’s death man is restored to that righteousness which one had lost by one’s own fault, yet no violence is done to the justice and order of God’s treatment of His creatures. 

Die Logik auf dem Psychologie

hgjkThe plight of a flock of pigeons—the weakest perhaps, and the worst pigeon of the flock controls and wastes all the grain as he pleases. Moral philosophy, Morality, Ethics, Casuistry, Natural Law, mean all the same thing; namely, that science which teaches all humans their duty and the reasons of it.  The nature of the human frame implies that it is God’s will for us to be happy in this life as well as in the next. Virtue is doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God and for the sake of everlasting happiness. Allegiance to God’s will and a desire for everlasting happiness are sufficient grounds of moral obligation after finding that such obligation made persuasive by the prospect of reward. We should carry out those actions which promote the general happiness and avoid those which diminish it. Promoting general happiness requires paying attention to the general consequences of our actions. The general consequence of any action may be estimated by asking what would be the consequence if the same sort of actions were generally permitted. #RyaPhillippe 1 of 10

No special faculty is required to enable us to have moral knowledge. However, some do have a moral sense or an intuitive perception of right and wrong, and other innate and instinctive capacities. Nonetheless, all that is required for the foundation of morality is that each human have the wit to see that certain actions are beneficial to themselves. Then the sentiment of approbation that naturally arises when these actions benefit one will continue to accompany one’s perception of these actions when they benefit someone else. This the custom of approving certain action is begun, and children, who learn everything by imitating their elders, carry it on. Some people believe that God distained (certain to me a particular fate) his human creation for a future state and that he acquainted human beings with their destiny. If these possibilities are granted, then the need for miracles is clear, for they are the certification of revelation. The credibility of the revelation hangs, therefore, on the issue of whether miracles are genuine. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 10

Intuition is immediate apprehension. Apprehension is used to cover such disparate states as sensation, knowledge, and mystical rapport. Immediate has as many senses as there are kinds of mediation: It may be used to signify the absence of inference, the absence of causes, the absence of the ability to define a term, the absence of justification, the absence of symbols, or the absence of thought. Given this range of uses, nothing can be said about intuition in general. Instead, it is necessary to pick out those principal meanings of the term which have played the most important roles in philosophical controversy and to discuss each individually. Four principal meanings of intuition may be disguised: Intuition as unjustified true belief not preceded by inference; in this (the commonest) sense an intuition means a “hunch.” The existence of hunches is uncontroversial and not of philosophical interest. Intuition as immediate knowledge of truth a proposition, where immediate means not preceded by inference. This is a philosophically important sense, since philosophers have found it puzzling that one can have knowledge, and thus justified belief, without having made oneself aware through the process of inference of any justification for this belief. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 10

In psychology, we try to return from psychologism to principle of polarity. Psychologism tends to use the term “mental,” and it has a negative connotation. The source of error is to mistake what is mental for what is merely vital (and, in the spirit of “polarity,” what is natal for what is merely mental). There is a distinguished difference between mechanical and vital processes on consciousness. The mechanical is publicly observable, and the vital indirectly observable, but consciousness escapes observation by the methods applicable to the other processes: consciousness “punctuates” the vital process and is discontinuous. Our knowledge depends on the speed of these punctuations. God is the limiting case who grasps the whole time process instantaneously; for him all punctuations are one. As that, our knowledge catches eternity in the fleeting moment, which is both temporal and eternal. At the base of this theory of perception is the notion of imagined movement. Touching being the basic sense, all perception depends on our ability to trace the object in the imagination. Our theoretical physics, in which our main interest is our perception of space and time (space time being a unity in polarity), can best be understood if approached through this theory of perception. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 10

Intuition as immediate knowledge of a concept here roughly, knowledge which does not entail ability to define the concept. Intuition as nonpropositional knowledge of an entity—knowledge that may be a necessary condition for, but not identical with, intuitive knowledge of the truth of propositions about the entity. Miracles must be exceptions to Universal experience or they would not be miracles. The real issue is whether there is a test for the reliability of witness who report an event that necessarily only they could have experienced. We adduce evidences of the existence of God. The bones and muscles of human beings, animals, and their insect equivalents, are of special interest, for the fitting together of joints and the adaptation of muscles are mechanisms which imply most forcefully a designing intelligence. The chemical aide of physiology does not interest some much, for chemical action does not usually suggest the work of a divine mechanic. The eye, in its various parts and the combination of these parts and their adaptation to function as an instrument of sight is a natural mechanism, and the eye alone, should suffice to convince us of the existence of the divine intelligence that designed it. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 10

The evidence drawn from nature, in addition to establishing the existence of God, permits us to infer certain of his characteristics. Because God has a man, he must be a person. That there is a single intelligence at work is shown by the uniformity of the divine plan, as it is applied to all the parts of the World. Furthermore, God’s goodness is shown both by the fact that most contrivances are beneficial and by the fact that pleasure has been made an animal sensation. The distinguishing mark of a human being is self-consciousness, and the moral aim of life is development. The driving force behind this development is the individual’s sense of limitation. An important mode of moral action is self-sacrifice, as a genuine diminishing of one’s possessions or powers. The spirit has manifested in the conscious direction of one’s impulses, which represents moral maturity. We display a negative consciousness, in which nature and spirit are reconciled, in the sense that our consciousness has successfully turned impulses into moral habits, thus freeing itself for higher moral tasks. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 10

This sense of intuition is exemplified by a sense of perceptions, considered as products of a cognitive faculty distinct from the faculty of forming judgments concerning the entity sensed; sometimes, it is best not to tell people that you love them because they will get scared and think that you have designs on them or you want something from them. Frankly, some people are afraid and suspicious of love; therefore, you love such people without telling them. Intuition of universals, or of such insensible particulars as time and space—intuitions that are necessary conditions of our intuitive knowledge of priori truths is a way of being that transforms everything around you because of the radiation of that energy. It happens of its own. We do not have to do anything, and we do not have to call it anything. Love is the energy that silently transfigures every situation. The mystical or inexpressible intuition that, unlike sense perceptions and intuitions of universals, do not make possible knowledge of the truth propositions about the entities intuited—such intuitions are the mystic’s intuition of God. In the energy field of love, we are surrounded with love, and that bring gratitude. We are thankful for our life and for all the miracles of life. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 10

ghbjnkml,Intuitive understanding progressively unfolds and we have the ability to perceive the thoughts and feelings of others on a non-verbal level. Nonverbal communication with others becomes possible and commonplace. We may assume that, although these different sources furnish contributions in all individuals, they are not all equally strong in all persons. Sensory intuitions are not really cases of knowledge at all, and they are not really mental events, but merely physical one. Sense perceptions is in principal nonessential to attaining complete knowledge, although it is mysteriously necessary in practice. If a child, by virtue of his faculty of sensory intuition, can see that a physical object O has sensory quality Q by simple, uncaused act, prior to acquiring the ability to express this fact in language, then why cannot the same child see with his mind’s eye that every event has a cause and, on the basis of this prelinguistic intuitive knowledge, check the correctness of conventions cornering the words “cause” and “effect”? The influence of sense perception is a special, unanalyzable mental act correlated with certain modifications of sense organs, makes it difficult to question this presupposition. Sense perceptions is a clear example of our ability to know facts without having the ability to express them. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 10

To know what one is saying, in certain cases, to know what one says is true is a possession of intuitive knowledge that dispenses with the notion of intuitive faculties. In the case of sensory intuition, the process of acquiring intuitive knowledge is simply the occurrence of certain sensations in a person who knows a language that contains expression whose utterance speakers of the language that contains ways of describing these sensations (that is, contains expressions whose utterance speakers of the language are conditioned to correlate with occurrences of these sensations). Although I cannot, of course, express (or communicate or put into words) the experience that I had, and hence cannot supply you with reasons for believing the p, I am nevertheless entitled to believe that p solely on the strength of that experience. Again, God’s perfect simplicity—his identity with his own attributes—is held to make it impossible truly to apply any predicate to him, and thus to know any true propositions about him. However, aside from the general difficulties in the notion of private language, private criteria of justification is an intrinsically paradoxical notion. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 10

 One can no more have private rules for justifying beliefs than one can have private rules for justifying actions. A criminal has no greater claim on our sympathy if he proclaims that his private ethical code differs from ours, and a believer in untestable beliefs has no greater claim on our attention when he says that his epistemological code is not ours. The only men and women our Lord will use in His building enterprises are those who love Him personally, passionately, and with great devotion—those who have a love for Him that goes far beyond any of the closet relationships on Earth. When God inspects us with His searching and refining fire, will He detect that we have built enterprises of our own on the foundation of Jesus? Since you have not seen a flying saucer, you have no reason to believe that there are flying saucers; but I have seen one, and so I do believe in them. Here we seem to be justifying a belief solely on the basis of private experience. (If I saw a flying saucer, then there are flying saucers to be seen.)  Even though you cannot see God right now and cannot understand what He is doing, you know Him. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 10

 

The World is a Huge and Beautiful Place

 

The World is a huge and beautiful place. There are over 7 billion people on this Earth and in my neighborhood there are people who I really enjoy seeing and can go months without seeing and when they come around it makes me happy. Common sense would seem to hold that is some properties were taken away from it, relationship would no longer be the same thing.  The positions associated with idealism (objects of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind) and monism (the doctrine that only one supreme being exists), for reasons which will emerge as we proceed. It holds that the connections between a relationship’s properties are so close that the deprivation of a single property would force us to say that, in a nontrivial sense, the relationship is no longer what it was. Although certain properties of a relationship are such that a given description could no longer be correctly applied to it were these properties absent, the notion that the thing would no longer be the same is thee properties were absent is either trivial or misleading. For, in the weaker sense of “same,” the absence of any of its properties would make the thing no longer the same. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5

Omniscience sees the Universe as a seamless web (and, perhaps, as one single individual thing—the Absolute). Relationships do have intrinsic natures, but these can be known only sub specie aeternitatis (in a Universal perspective) some people take for granted that the distinction between physical necessity and logical necessity. If a person is not getting what they need out of a relationship and has just been sticking by your side to support you, they may totally be over a relationship, especially if you are not kind, have been using them, and are not even spending time with that individual. Given the laws of nature and the past history of the Universe, that a given particle, an emotion, may be located at a given point in space at a given time, and there may still be remnants of it left behind, and the sense in which it is not necessary, simpliciter (not comparable). The en passant (a special pawn capture, that can only occur immediately after a pawn moves two ranks forward from its starting position and an enemy pawn could have captured it has the pawn moved only one square forward) nature of a relationship were someone sticks by your side because they are concerned about your mental well-being, while you make a deal and use them is clearly the treatment of causality. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5

It is possible to exhaust your relationship until a person does not care about you or what happens to you. They may have once looked at you as a great person, an esteemed leader, but now think of you are a coward and an arrogant fool who has done nothing, but brought problems into their life. The boundaries to the individual have been drawn and these decisions have been motivated by considerations of practical utility. The effectiveness of the letting go mechanism in problem solving is often quite astonishing. Understanding the process involved here is very important, because it is quite different than the World’s usual methods. The approach that brings fast and easy results is the following: Do not look for answer; instead, let go of the feelings behind the questions. I was once in a situation that was so bad, were a person just totally did the most abusive and exploitive things that I was in more pain that I had ever experienced in my life, and at times felt like I was dying. And this individual knew I wanted nothing to do with them and would hovering around me with other people and try to flaunt them in my face, and it would upset me because I wanted to move on and was sick of seeing them. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5

And every time this individual saw I was doing better and feeling happy, knowing that I was stuck in my situation and could not move, they would call me and leave threatening messages and then show up where they knew I would be, then quickly run off thinking I was want to confront them and chase them, but I would not and they kept on doing the same plots over and over. It was an evil game for them and they really enjoyed it. I stopped asking myself why this person was doing this because I knew why and I let go of any feelings. Then when I saw other people I realized that I did want to get to know someone new, but this person and their friends would start sending my friends threatening letters, or showing up when they thought I was on a date to bother the person I was with. And they would even call my mother and leave her threatening messages. It is an ongoing and horrible situation, and I cannot bring anyone new into something like this. Clearly that individual and their friends are extremely mentally unwell. And it has at times made my life somewhat of a nightmare, but I still love myself and am happy to be alive. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5

And although I am in a lot of pain and constantly stressed out behind a situation and a person I no longer want anything to do with, I was talking to my mother yesterday, and she says, “I do not know why we have to come here and live in these bodies.” I replied, “I love my body, I am happy I have the parents I do and look the way I do. I want to keep my body and wish I could be young forever. I would never want to kill myself because I look at some of these other people and would never want to come back as one of them.” She laughed and that made her feel better. And when I see other people and how happy they are, I realize that I can have a healthy relationship. The individual I was dealing with has a lot of bad energy and always looks angry, sad, hostile and ready to fight. One delightful discovery we will make is that our capacity for love is far beyond what we have ever dreamed. The more we let go, the more loving we will become. It is so sad when a person does you so wrong that you feel like you are going to fall to the ground and your soul is going to fall out of your body. No matter who a person is, or what they say they will do, do not stick around for someone who is just going to abuse you and feed off of you. At times I thought that I was unlovable and this was my only choice. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5