Welcome
Natural Theology
A theology that . . .
. . . respects the scientific worldview
. . . has no idolatrous regard of any scripture
. . . has no anthropomorphic god or gods
Enjoy
Natural Theology: introduction, science converges, religions diverge; science/religion in Italy, Iran, India; science converges to objective truth; different, contradictory religions; Christianity has 200 different sects, different views; ask a Baptist, a Roman Catholic, and a Mormon how to get into heaven and you’ll get three different answers; religion has contradictory answers; could sometime like science’s way of knowing, science’s epistemological method, be applied to the questions religions addresses? writings but no scriptures, i.e., no writings accepted on the authority of their alleged inspiration; God as a transcendent person (“Our Father, who are in heaven”) versus God as an impersonal, immanent entity; ground of existence; God is love; gods who are persons, if they exist, are creatures like ourselves; we have a monist philosophy, only one ultimate reality; Godhead, out of which personal gods flow, as personifications; more interested in method than results because correct method eventually corrects incorrect results; spirit of scientific inquiry; Welcome!
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Discusses basic concepts; component object, car example, table example, relative existence, dependent existence, fist example, act/action, water example, lead/diamond example, pure, simple, absolute existence, independent existence, ultimate ground of existence, ground of being, Tillich.
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Discusses various views of God such as personal/impersonal, transcendental/Immanent; molecule, atom, proton, neutron, electron, quarks; ultimate ground of existence; Heisenberg; uncaused cause; temporal relation; ontological relation; that in which we live and move and have our being; made in its image; light and movie analogy; uncreated; unoriginated; absolute; immanent; subsistent being itself; personal god; impersonal god; Vivekananda; Zeus; Athena; Dionysius the Areopagite; essence of personhood; all-pervading; omni-present; space and time; Brahman; Clear Light of Buddhism; Godhead; Father, Son, Holy Spirit; priest faced altar, now faces congregation;
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Describes unbiased natural theology and compares it to (biased) natural theology; bias: 1) sincere belief, 2) fear, intimidation; intelligent design; human eye; bacteria, virus, polio virus, parasites; malevolent intelligent designer?; evil; the fall; inquisition; woman who didn't like ham; blasphemy; pre-determined conclusions; unpleasant conclusions; the work that God does: hope, comfort, justice, live forever; fruit of religion; emotional and moral foundation; only pioneers need apply
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Discusses God as Ultimate Ground of Existence; a trans-species God; subsistent bring itself; sheer existence subsisting of his very nature; God is subsistent being itself; pure and perfect Substance; the word 'being' applies strictly only to God; Reality is independent of any creator; God alone is the real and permanent Substance; the only Reality; there is an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed; revelation; gospel; pre-destination or not?; is everyone eventually saved?; hell forever?; epistemological method; child's way of knowing; a trans-species God; rabbit god?; spider god?; objective truth; consensus; objective reality; unbiased natural theology; the supernatural world?; lightening supernatural? Ben Franklin's lightening rod; "frustrate the artillery of heaven"; we do not know the limits of the natural world; trans-species God
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Describes "the great fear" - that we are alone in the universe with no god to protect us, no afterlife, where good is not rewarded and evil is not punished; no scripture accepted as authoritative; cannot know something is beyond nature; describes our place in the universe, in terms of time and space; big bang; our lifetime compared to the lifetime of a star; Milky Way; Andromeda galaxy; Hubble Deep Field image; my insigifcance; one of billions of people; our place in the universe according to science; no soul? no God?; retreat to scripture; religious faith; emotional need; a different kind of faith; a purer, truer, higher type of faith; ultimate goodness of the universe; the "great fear" is a wall we must somehow surmount; pioneer-type spirit
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My place in the universe; Catholic school; Catholic way of getting into heaven; Catholic Church like Noah's ark; Jehovah Witnesses; evil people cease to exist?; Catholics and Mormons in need of salvation? must be baptised by immersion; Christian groups disagree about the say to salvation; why I can't go back to organized religion; "Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation"; He begets not, nor is He begotten; faith; did Jesus fail?; subconscious disbelief; is life meaningless?; faith in the universe; a story that gives hope?; Jesus and Santa Claus; belief, have faith, don't think too hard; genuine, whole-hearted belief vs "Sunday" belief; refuse to turn off higher mental faculties; hell a "boogeyman" for weak-minded people
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Discusses morality and natural theology; personal god needed for objective morality?; right or wrong regardless of opinion; why haven’t objective moral values been revealed?; is killing witches moral or not?; is slavery moral or not?; is abortion moral or not?; sh+C12ould a child who curses parent be put to death?; morals from society, family, religious leaders; the golden calf; social justice; fair trade; first and second world slaughter; a just war or just a war? Note: Original Aug 24, 2020 version replaced with improved sound on Sept 15, 2020
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Presents some philosophical prerequisites to discussing the question of identity: specifically: 1) the Ship of Theseus, 2) sorites paradox, 3) equivocation; component object; thought experiment; when does a pile become not a pile?; exactly when does a boy or a girl become a man or a woman?; abortion; human life vs a human life; cells with human life; blood with human life; time of ensoulment; whirlpool; a flow; who am I?; am I a body?; to exactly what does my name refer to?; atoms replaced; the body is a flow; a question of identity; exactly what has existed since birth; body doesn’t go to heaven until resurrection of the body; what are we?; body, emotion, intellect, soul; four evangelists: ox, lion, eagle, man or angel; “my” body, “my” feelings, “my” mind, who or what is “my”?
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What happens after death? who or what am I? what, if anything, has existed since birth? the body is a flow; act; Harvard University; conventional self vs enduring self; body, emotion, intellect, soul; is the soul my identity? does soul equal consciousness? the hard problem of consciousness; consciousness as a light; Buddhist no-self?; five aggregates; reincarnation; candle lighting another candle; unchanging unique identity?; Aunt Sally evolving in heaven? the question of identity; bored of being yourself? bored of being a limited being? revolt in heaven? the desire to cease to exist; tired of individual self; consciousness same as ultimate ground of existence; phenomenal self vs eternal self; the ocean is the wave but the wave is not the ocean; the ultimate ground of existence playing the character which we are? It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; Theologica Germanica; reincarnation, heaven temporary? Individually merging back into ultimate ground of existence? blinking annoying?
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Natural Theology as found in Theological Germanica, one of Martin Luther's favorite books; is ultimate ground of existence equivalent to consciousness; non-dual Vedanta; the hard problem of consciousness; consciousness a fundamental part of reality? not a revelation; stimulate inquiry; cherry-picking; if God is objectively real; if it’s possible to experience God; the great furry rabbit; looking for correspondences; perfect vs creatures; substance, that which stands under; image vs ground of being; movie analogy; light vs images; in whom all things have their Substance; substance of all things; visible appearance floweth out; creature; no other true substance; image has no substance of its own; for in what measure we put off the creature, in the same measure are we able to put on the Creator; creature-nature, qualities, the I, the Self and the like, must all be lost and done away; the eye of flesh and the eye of spirit; soul of Christ; Godhead; sub specie aeternitatis, under the aspect of eternity; images vs light; bare of all images (creatures); Hindu yogi in a cave; meditate (middle); anchorites; Julian of Norwich; Mass of the dead; dead to the world, alive only to God; alone with God
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Experiencing the Ultimate Ground of Existence; baby in a field of pure isness; the body, object persistence, other minds; ego associated with name; a separate person; parents as all-knowing; all-loving, all-good; the child's idea of God; child’s hierarchy of existence: dumb matter, animals, other children, other adults, parents, God; contrasted with ground of existence; importance of ego; evolution has instilled ego in us; eye of flesh vs eye of spirit; how to experience God; negative theology; ego transcendence; positive theology; spiritual materialism; selfless service; mystics; union with the Absolute
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Experience of God; mysticism; St. Augustine, Pascal, Evelyn Underhill, source of being, Uncreated Light, the Real, Pascal, pure undifferentiated Being, Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, unborn, non-created, Clear Light of Reality, Hallaj, Mansur, Absolute, Hesychasm, experiential knowledge of God, Symeon, the New Theologian
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Emanations; impersonal, immanent God; transcendental, personal God needs to reveal himself? Divine light; light/movie analogy; manifestation of God; all things derive from first Reality; emanation vs creationism; emanation vs materialism? “Infinity and the Mind”; The Mindscape; Plotinus; neo-Platonism; the Absolute; the vegetative, animal, rational souls; Godhead; energy, matter, life, mind, culture; matter, molecule, atom, proton/neutron, electron, quark; “are” and “ear” have same components but different relation; relative existence; dependent existence; act/action; fist as an action; chemical elements as acts; how do sodium (metal) and chlorine (poisonous gas) combine to make (non-metal, non-gas) salt? Combining two acts to get a new act; bicycle wheel creates cycloid; free, online book; series is not about making money
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The ontology and epistemology of natural theology and religion compared and contrasted; ontology: what exists? what is true? what is real?; epistemology: how do we determine what is true? what is real?; impossible to verify something is beyond nature; in ontology of religions, supernatural beings and places exists; scientific method, epistemology; luminiferous aether; Michelson-Morley experiment; theory of relativity; GPS satellites; relativistic effect on GPS clocks; science’s epistemological method on rock foundation; religion’s epistemological method on sand; which scripture? how to choose? religious faith; Sola Scriptura vs Magisterium, scripture, tradition; Adam and Eve; age of the earth; evolution? Tower of Babel; why not flat Earth? witches, slavery, faulty epistemological method is blind leading the blind.
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Discusses objective/intellectual language vs subjective/emotional language; male chauvinist pig; weaker sex; hypocrite; Bronx cheer; the blood of Jesus washes all sins; no salvation without Jesus; baptism needed for heaven; the Three Wise Men, Magi; Star of Bethlehem; slaughter of the Innocents; angel warns Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
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Discusses a hypothesis about existence, about the relation of oneness to duality; experience of uncreated light; lose consciousness of outer world; falling from oneness into duality; yin and yang; a call a 3 AM; boss’s son-in-law; looking back at 70 years of age; tragedy of some of the rich, powerful or famous; no free lunch; ultimate justice?
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Discusses the One True God; Easter Island, small, isolated; Easter Island’s creator of humanity; Jerusalem; thousands of gods have been worshipped on Earth; your god is too small; pervades the entire universe; that in which we live and move and have our being; some of us seem to need Gods who are persons; personifications of ultimate ground of existence? ocean personified: angry, serene
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Discusses Gods who are persons; inductive reasoning; inductive leap; deductive reasoning; black swans; scientific method, Sir Karl Popper; falsifiability; is “natural law” really “natural habit”? habitual choice of seats in a classroom; Gods who are persons as creatures, as manifestations of the ground of being? the all and the one; that in which we live and move and have our being; sea of existence; flows from the Godhead
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Reincarnation, Heaven, Hell; the hard problem of consciousness; surviving death; rewarding good, punishing evil; belief in reincarnation reduces empathy? the One; the creature; image/light; is living eternally really desirable? boredom; heaven and hell temporary, eventually return? biased? Pope can make or unmake something a sin; eating meat on Friday was a mortal sin; hell for a hot dog? seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth; stops us from achieving highest level? eternal torture believable? bogeyman for the weak-minded? my reluctance to declare something a mortal sin; subjective/emotional language vs objective/intellectuals language; forgiveness
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How to make a scripture; Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon; the Great Flood, whitewashed; drowning rabbit bunnies and kittens; Garden of Eden; Adam and Eve, as mental children? the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; walking, talking serpent as Satan; Jesus tempted by Satan; painful childbirth; earn bread from sweat of brow; sin, death, evil infects the entire universe; who is responsible? beautiful city with doomsday device in middle; creating divinely-inspired piece of music; Mozart; defeating person’s confidence in their own judgment; self-doubt; putting scripture above reason; a hypothesis but I may be wrong
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How the perfect is sometimes the enemy of the good; Voltaire; soup kitchen; Walter Hilton’s The Stairway of Perfection; my video imperfections, bloopers
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God as a person or as an impersonal entity; as transcendent or as immanent; God as transcendental person who creates the universe but is separate from it; child’s hierarchy; arguments for God as s Person, i.e., theism: 1) intelligent design, 2) fine-tuning of the universe, 3) Kalam cosmological argument; bacteria flagellum; COVID-19, polio virus; malevolent intelligent designer?; inordinate fondness for beetles; randomly transported to a point on Earth; Ambrose Bierce; does anything have “a” cause? God of the gaps; Ben Franklin’s lightning rod; A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom; Neil deGrasse Tyson; God who are Persons as creatures; what a genuine universal revelation might look like; no wide-spread access to Bible for centuries; Gods who are Persons don’t measure up to the universe; Errata: 1) Michael Behe wrote the preface, not the book, 2) theory of evolution describes evolution, not origin, of life.
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Looking back on a few of our assumptions; trying to do natural theology, making it as compatible with science as possible, assumptions: ultimate ground of existence: 1) objectively exists, 2) is equivalent to undifferentiated energy, 3) is conscious (a big assumption); luminiferous aether, caloric fluid; energy, matter, life, mind, culture hierarchy; subsuming Gods who are Persons as creatures, as manifestations, as emanations, ocean of uncreated light; Buddhist primordial Clear Light of Reality; non-dual state; “God alone is real, the Eternal Substance”, uniting science and religion, eliminating doublethink, a view which is “neither religious or scientific but simply our view of the world”; 1960s; hippies, Hari Krishnas changing; Beatles, Tim Leary; Richard Alpert (Ram Das); Be Here Now book; Good Friday experiment; ego loss; psilocybin; Catholic Jesuit high school; Carthusian monk leading meditation retreat; life of contemplation; Julian of Norwich; anchorite; birth of new religions? Rajneesh; Rajneeshpruam; trans-species natural theology - wave of the future? Pioneering
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Looking ahead; fourth assumption: direct experience of Uncreated Light is possible; psychedelics and mystical experience; God as One objective reality underlying Gods who are Persons; trans-species religion; chemistry; original Star Trek; vision of an attractive future world; Catholic saints; faces of Godhead; religious wars; magnetism and static electricity in the ancient world; compass; earth, wind, fire, air, and supernatural aether; Newton; gravity applies to heavens as well as Earth; Ben Franklin's lightning rod showed lightning as a natural phenomena; Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism; radio waves; Titanic radioed for help; Einstein; E=mc^2; book: Future Shock; faith that what is true matters
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Value of disillusionment; Newton’s laws; colonialism; Belgium Congo; French Indonesia; the sun never sets on the British Empire; not Saint Newton; not sacred theory; Einstein; 1919 eclipse, planet Mercury; scientific epistemological method contrasted with religious epistemological method; truth supreme; astronomy and the Bible; young Earth geology; visceral disgust; more interested in ideas than people; rejecting genuine knowledge; Bible’s talking donkey; mental lobotomy; scriptures as idol, as golden calf, as false god; disgust and anger; the value of disillusionment; the only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions
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Analyze question first; meaning requires agreement between sender and receiver; too; at work; mea faigaluega; Paul Revere; one if by land, two if by sea; "meaning of life" not the right question? "purpose of life" a better question? purpose not necessarily inherent; hammer, for nails or as paperweight? "God made me to know, live and serve Him"; does Ultimate Reality have a purpose? Sri Ramakrishna; purpose: to know God, to follow a religion, to help, to love, to get wealth, fame, or power? It's our choice
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Uncreated Light as God, not as a creature; uncreated = never created = eternal; Rome moved empire's seat to Constantinople in 324; Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy; Roman Empire fell in 1453; Filioque: “and the Son”; Nicene Creed; great schism of east-west Christianity in 1054; Patriarch and Pope excommunicate each other; Pope as successor to St. Peter; new testament written in Greek; Hesychasm; experience of God as Uncreated Light, Uncreated Energies; St. Gregory Palamas; Mount Athos; Light of transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor
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Self-reflection; jack of all trades, master of none; STEM background; critical thinking; "gullible" not in dictionary? sharing ideas; mindscape; tour guide in my museum of ideas; criticizing a general statement; criticizing for what it was not meant to be; dishonest criticism?
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Be Here Now book; supernal Light; Guru Maharaj Ji; emotionally-driven; intellectually-driven; St. Augustine; Light Unchangable; body, emotion, intellect, soul; yoga: karma, jnana; bhatki, raja; Salvation Army; Jesuits; devotion to Mary; Centering Prayer; Thomas Keating; The Cloud of Unknowing; Michael Molinos, The Spiritual Guide which Disentangles the Soul
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Is the world an illusion? the world is real; brain in a vat; The Matrix; Berkeley's Idealism; Samuel Johnson; I refute it thus; all we experience are our senses; matter as a theoretical construct; the real vs the REAL; transitory/impermenent; unsatisfactory; non-self; ; lifespan of the proton; entities seen from the viewpoint of oneness versus seen in duality; Buddha's three attributes of existence; identity; actor playing Hamlet; consciousness the same for all of us? no unique self? Toward the Truth by Buddhadasa; heaven and hell; relationship between the world and the Uncreated Light; in one sense, the world is an illusion; 1) the Uncreated Light is real, 2) the world is unreal, 3) the Uncreated Light is the world; universe like a fountain; fist; the action has a lesser reality than what is acting; dance of Shiva; never felt so good, but would die willing in a minute; just some guy with ideas
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Stream of consciousness talk; death, what happens after death? no salvation for non-Catholics; hell forever for a single mortal sin; disbelief even among priests and nuns; a way to stop kids from asking questions; why the bad evidence; a cruel, vicious god; free will in the face of certain knowledge of god; the gods of native peoples; time discontinuity; faith; drastically different types of people; offending religious faith; Westboro Baptist Church; religious proselytizing; the right to believe
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Briefly revisited hell, the flood, Eden; dissonant stories in the Bible; God as father; child's hierarchy; the Lord's Prayer; Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7:15; God's will; forgive us our trespasses; first encounter with Catholic Mass, in Latin
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Only one God; Gods who are Persons have, at best, a creature-type existence; existence of Clark Kent doesn't prove Superman exists; "Jesus", a Roman name; Sabbath moved to Sunday; Jesus abandons his parents; parents search for three days, worrying; miraculous births; about 34 miracles of Jesus, most concerning healing; regrettable effect on the practice of medicine; parents pray but child dies; Roman/Byzantine Empire; the death of Hypatia
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Woman loses parent, world becomes harsh, dark place; meets wonderful man; world is transformed; doesn't allow criticism of man for fear the world will revert; belief in Gods who are Persons transform the world into a safe place, where we have a protector, where there is a bright, happy afterlife waiting; criticism not allowed; one universally accepted god superior to many different gods; peoples' and religious hierarchy's fierce reaction to criticism and disbelief; usefulness to the state
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Personal morality vs society's moral code; personal morality not actually based on revelations; Kant's categorical imperative; golden rule vs not-so-golden rule; foundation of morality; how to derive morality on nature, on what science tells us about the world; experts in morality and ethics; is vs ought; Hume's guillotine; chess analogy; is plus goal/value equals ought; human flourishing: - eudaimonia"; shared values/goals; veil of ignorance; tolley problem; constant need to educate; education level of general populace; hurricane Katrina; Pastor John Hagee; problem of persuading people to follow rational moral code
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Sin of Adam and Eve; re-opening the gates of heaven; sacrificial, atoning death of Jesus; the Romans put Jesus to death; Herod; Pontius Pilate; Barabbas; Magi, priests of a foreign religion; did Jesus break the law? the census of David; prophecy of Jesus? Matthew 1:22-23 a mistranslation; miracles of Jesus? Moses kills the Nile’s fishes; the Egyptian magicians do the same; did the Romans have reason to kill Jesus? Palm Sunday; a million killed in siege of Jerusalem; Aelia Capitolina; Jesus freely choose to suffer and die; earliest copies of gospels date from mid 300s
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Open to discussion, but not with the closed-minded; William Lane Craig; Christian apologists; the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit, wholly apart from the evidence; all Canaanite men, women, and children killed; death of children actually their salvation? suicide bomber; Son of Sam; turning off a part of the mind; meme, a mental virus; what could Natural Theology say to a person in deep grief? our place in the universe, in time, in space, on Earth; gods who are persons are creatures; the question of identity; consciousness as identity? no enduring identity? a wave on the ocean? as an actor plays Hamlet; body, emotion, intellect, soul; pioneers; a question of solace is an open question for us, for now
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Objective language; subjective language: my daddy is the best daddy in the world, that woman is a doll; "God" is subjective term; does the Ultimate Ground of Existence possess objective reality? Luminiferous aether; Phlogiston; concept of God as a tool of cultural dominance
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Thoughts of planets and stars; scar; "space"; COMPLETE return address; small, snug world; mediaeval serf; cosmic egg; security blanket; huge age and size of the universe; more stars than grains of sand; a small part of the whole; elementary facts of existence; expanded consciousness; cosmic consciousness; a world view too small, too narrow? moving in the direction of religion? the new man; a natural theology “saint” or “new man”? veneration? warring tribes in Tibet; many types of excellence: nurse, teacher, fire fighter, police, physician; cosmic egg vs cosmic consciousness
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Why I criticize religion; religions often criticize other religions; Jewish people as God's Chosen People; Catholics become new Chosen People? Protestants? whore of Babylon; Sola Scriptura; God's special people; baptism by immersion? Achilles' heel; Muhammad as Seal of the Prophets; original Christians; Filioque phrase; "so-called churches of the West"; religions' one-upmanship common; do unto others . . .
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Do these video clips have worth? is treating uncomfortable themes like death, our smallness in the face of the size and age of the universe, etc., worthwhile? the value, power, importance of truth; exploring magnetism and electricity led to E=mc^2 led to our modern world; truth led to power, which was sometimes misused (as in colonialism); the dark side of some truths; overall truth benefits us; faith in truth as a pursuit in itself; “cosmic” consciousness vs small, comfortable consciousness; smallness of religious faith; the return of Jesus and the rapture; Biblical creation; young Earth creationists; some religious faith as idolatry in a book; belief in truth as a superior type of faith; faith that true matter the most; we should desire truth more than comfort; two types of faiths compared
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“God” as an emotional term, that expresses what we consider ultimate, supreme; “God is Love” seems to be an immanent, impersonal God; “Oh, God” used in sexual union; does embarrassment of a personal God looking on engender a restrictive attitude towards sex? Jesus praised voluntary eunuchs; missionary position the most moral? do believers in an impersonal God have a freer sex life? hidden motives disguised with elevated philosophical phrases? hidden motives in the abortion controversy? pro-choice; non-descriptive labels? prostitution? selling human organs? pro-life; vegetarian; capital punishment; war; empty the orphanages; posing? health coverage in the U.S.; so idea for your consideration
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A type of person I call "the religious hysteric"; stable and unstable equilibrium; Terra Incognita; the Playboy Philosophy; Hugh Hefner; Dr. Kellogg; “Plain Facts for Old and Young”, a guide to a sane sex life; postponing puberty; mental unchastity; filthy imaginings; lascivious daydreams can cause premature death; only proper use of sex is reproduction; marital excesses; a child conceived in lust; birth control a crime against nature and a form of perversion; contraception a form of abortion; masturbation; penitential books; detecting a child practicing the “solitary vice”; tie the hands; bandage the parts; cover the organs with a cage; circumcision without anesthetic; internationally renowned doctor; representative views; physiology texts used in public schools; Errata: "hideousness" not "hiddenness"
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Does the idea of unstable equilibrium apply to Natural Theology? A summary of most previous videos, reviewin of various topics we discussed and how they often sit between organized religion and atheism; an indication of the truth of Natural Theology?
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Natural theology midway between religion and atheist; Jesus as the "Truth"; truth as Reality, Uncreated Light? a human personification of the Ultimate Ground of Existence? Gods who are Persons as personifications; false beliefs about Reality due to seeing it through the distorting lens of scripture? seeing darkly vs seeing reality as it is; scripture as an idol; religion and atheism aren't the only two alternatives; natural theology as a third alternative, as a way to give up the false without giving up the religious attitude; natural theology as a temptation
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Could natural theology be developed as a science? Hegel, the philosopher; thesis, antithesis, synthesis; scientific symposium? epistemological method more important than conclusions, beliefs; no slavish devotion to Newton; Einstein not condemned as a heretic; what would constitute success
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Pain of childbirth; Genesis; King James; Eufame MacAlyane burnt to death; offer it up for the souls in Purgatory; pain banker; Jesus paid our pain debt; gofundme; indulgences; Martin Luther; Jesus paid a debt; Sixteen Tons; brute fact; pain as a protective mechanism; pain not always educational; children with cancer; pain as unbearable experience of Uncreated Light? creatures; raised the question but didn't answer it; not aware of an answer I consider satisfactory; theology matters; truth matters; the rainbow; Marx, Lenin; usury as a sin; the value of being able to say "I don't know"
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Mysticism; direct experience of Uncreated Light; Eastern Orthodox Christianity; Aldous Huxley; The Perennial Philosophy; Bhagavad-Gita; Vedanta, Tao The King, Gospel according ot St. John; Mahayana; Plotinus; Areopagite; Sufis; Christian mystics; highest common factor; contemplation; essentially indescribably Fact; 1) phenomenal world is a manifestation of a Divine Ground; 2) human beings can directly experience; 3) our double nature: phenomenal ego and eternal Self; 4) our purpose: unitive knowledge; self-denial and charity; human Incarnations; is this series a form of the perennial philosophy?
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Body, emotion, intellect, soul/consciousness; physical plane, astral plane, causal plane, ultimate plane; eye of the spirit; mindscape; dualism vs monism; logic and mathematics inhere in the world; unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences; language of God; remainder of dividing square by 3; the foundation of mathematics and logic; Quantum Questions by Ken Wilber; Einstein: Nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas; matter as a crystallization of mind; guiding principle: selecting the simplest and most elegant mathematical description; Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder
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Dark themes; At Seventeen; age, size of the universe; life expectancy; inrush of Uncreated Light; sad and broken; phenomenal ego and deeper self; perpetual eucharistic adoration; Quaker silent meeting; dark thoughts bring me to light? oneness and duality; everyday state of mind; sadness and death lead to opening to the universe; unbalanced? go within; John Butler; late-life renunciants in India; politics; 2020 presidential debate; unaware of death? altruistic; a fuller cosmic consciousness; getting in touch with the deeper, inward self; expanded awareness Errata: golden monstrance not golden chalice
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Child's hierarchy; God and matter at opposite ends of the hierarchy; wonder reserved for next world? we are making matter act in more complex ways; GPS satellite must use Relativity Theory; computers play chess; we didn't come into the universe, we came out of it; we've discovered new, undreamed worlds in matter, not beyond it; Hubble deep field image; if objective truth about the supernatural exists, why haven't we found it? we don't know the limits of the natural world; different scriptures, different interpretations of the same scripture; no epistemological method of arriving at a common "spiritual" truth; natural theology? suspect the natural world has mysteries yet to be discovered; better epistemological method needed for approaching the “supernatural”? natural theology? Errata: suspect supernatural “doesn’t agree” should be “doesn’t exist”
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“Moral evil” means “mortal sin” NOT “killing a human being”, which is what most people care about; the Bible does not mention or condemn abortion; Exodus 21:22 demands only a fine for causing a miscarriage; Doctors of the Church Augustine, Jerome and Aquinas said early abortion did not constitute the killing of a human being because the fetus did not possess a human soul (Ensoulment); various popes ruled taking the life of a fetus which lacked a human soul was not murder; for centuries, the Church’s own law said there was a difference between the ensouled fetus and the fetus that lacks a human soul (Canon Law); personal human life and cellular human life are not the same thing (Equivocation); the Catholic Church HAS NEVER OFFICIALLY CHANGED the dogma that the fetus does not have a human soul at conception but acquires one over time; the Catholic Church’s does NOT hold that the fetus has a human soul from the moment of conception, and therefore it does NOT teach taking the life of an fetus which lacks a human soul is murder
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Religion diverges, fragments; science converges; alchemy; science finds objective reality; Bible compiled end of 4th century; 200 Christian “denominations”; science converges to a single reality; science proves itself daily; Italy, Iran, India: ask a chemist and get the same answer but ask a religious question and get contradictory answers; ways of knowing (epistemological methods); religion’s way of know: scripture and authority; no way of reconciling contradictory scriptures; religions’ way of knowing does NOT reveal reality; the opposite of faith? “a view of the world which is neither religious nor scientific but simply our view of the world” – Alan Watts; apply something like science’s way of knowing to religions? But how? A huge, difficult problem; religion upholds an ideal of love, concern for neighbor, peace, charity and other virtues; we have “evolved” beyond Coliseum and slavery; an ideal beyond wealth, power, and fame-lacking in today’s popular media? superior religion lead to more elevated humanity?
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Self-reflective episode; how to make a scripture; early doubts about hell; Latin class dunce; “not with you guys”; religion teacher: “Yahweh”; Jehovah Witness music teacher; everything true or false implies predestination? adding all numbers from 1 to 100 = 5,050; artists; musicians; sensitivity to logic; higher math; religion tuned to the emotional person; in heaven: resurrection of the body versus immortal soul; applying rationality to religion
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The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, Pascal's Wager, finite gain versus eternal loss; 200 Christian "denominations", what are the odds? Bertrand Russell: “Not enough evidence, God!”, sports car for cheap; “please point my feet in a direction where God is not”, Rorschach Test, heart-centered people versus mind-centered people, the search for truth; Albert Einstein, “the idea of a person al God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously”, “The divine reveals itself in the physical world”, “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever”, I tried to follow the truth as best I could
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Mindspace, not the mindscape; COVID-19 pandemic; hoax? our mindspace is our beliefs; business, society, government, religion try to implant ideas in our mindspace; ideas sometimes useful and true, sometimes not; The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard; Capitalism vs Communism; Viet Nam war; Hell, strongarm technique for children? our way of knowing is the gatekeeper of our mindspace; fake news and misinformation; the word "gullible" is not in the dictionary; why do you believe that? the logical fallacies; false belief can be fatal
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Type of prayer: 1) petition, 2) intercession, 3) thanksgiving, joy, 4) contemplate; positive and negative theology; interior silence; centering prayer, Thomas Keating; deepest center; profound depths of our being; the cloud of unknowing; Evelyn Underhill; the spiritual guide; Michael de Molinos; intellectual stillness over vocal prayer; quietism; transcendental meditation; Quakers; way of Mary versus way of Martha; Aldous Huxley; perennial philosophy; advertisers; goals of power, wealth, fame; ethos; don't need stain glass windows, etc.; cutting out the middle man; discernment of spirits; organized religion as guard-rail?
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Is this all there is? Two solutions: add or deeper appreciation; ascended masters; angels; extraterrestrials; astrology; powers of ten video; small world; mental ghetto; xenophobia; one book; one leader; hate; we build our cell and then find it barren; the world we know has mysteries and wonders if we but open our eyes; balance
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The mindscape, abstract objects vs concrete objects, Mathematical Platonism, the emotescape, the 7 senses: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, emotions, thoughts; eye of the heart; eye of the mind; Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Platonic world of forms; class/object distinction; type/token distinction; did Shakespeare create or discover his plays? did the number 2 exist before the Big Bang? we have no sense that directly experiences matter; matter is a theoretical construct, an explanatory inferred concept; coherent sensory input vs incoherent sensory input; reality of numbers exceeds the reality of matter
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Objective moral values or simply the prejudices of the majority? the moral argument for the existence of God; reasonablefaith.org; William Lane Craig; strawman logical fallacy; generic fallacy; laws need a law giver; equivocation fallacy; false dichotomy fallacy; is/ought; Hume’s Guillotine; greatest good for the greatest number; blood feud; proof by contradiction; we have not been told what is objectively moral; killing witches, slavery; slay the Amalek
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Rodney Dangerfield; I don't get no respect; science; atomic bomb; aura of respect for scientists in the 1950s; Viet Nam War; napalm; the natural; chaos of the 1960s/1970s; The Late, Great Planet Earth; a desire for the world to end? anti-intellectualism; metric system; anti-vaccine; anti-evolution; climate change denial; eggheads in ivory towers; Athens and Jerusalem; science proves itself daily, is in contact with reality; the end is near; May 21, 2011, judgement day; fires in California; flooding; secret funding of climate change denial? COVID vaccine; woman in wheelchair prayed for healing; is it asking too much?
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Natural Theology; Jesus Christ; Christ Consciousness; a state of consciousness potentially available to any conscious, intelligent being; Enlightenment, Fana, Nirvana, Kingdom of Heaven; Sat Cit Ananda; Self Realization; Moksha; religions converge to an objective reality, at least, in this case? contradictory ways of salvation; the Perennial Philosophy; contemplation; mysticism, direct experience of God; religions’ common core; can Natural Theology led us to direct experience of God? probably, not yet; intellectual backbone of Natural Theology; pioneers; stay tuned
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Body, emotion, intellect, soul/consciousness; meditative exercise; consciousness like the light that lights up a room, illuminating body, emotions, thoughts; consciousness as subject, but body, emotion, thoughts as objects; consciousness as our inmost, most enduring self; the Spiritual Guide of Michael Molinos; the Cloud of Unknowing; going within appropriate for an immanent God; still to sense the presence; self-referential, self-reflexive processes go to infinity; feedback; Quakers, Quaker meeting; bare room; stain-glass windows not needed; sit in silence; everyone a potential minister; being “led”; implied values; honesty? forgiveness? still the emotions; scripture; mantra; Jesus prayer; still the mind; aside: ability to focus useful in school; spark of God within us; the body as a prison of the soul; Gnostics; Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse; maya; loving the world; the world as a manifestation of the Ultimate Ground of Existence; the positive way (affirming the world) and the negative way (withdrawal from the world); Way of Martha and the Way of Mary; contemplation and meditation, East and West
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Counting three apples; one-to-one correspondence; countable infinity; aleph-null number of numbers; as many even numbers as numbers? Galileo; the universe is stranger than we can imagine; from the infinitely large to the infinitely small; convergence: closer and closer; the limit; uncountable infinity; Georg Cantor; Cantor’s diagonal argument, Buzz Lightyear
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Past is a memory; future is a thought; the present, the now is real; trying to be more consciousness, more aware of the present; high-school dances; office work; past and future exist in the mind; the now exists here, is reality; moral values aid living in the present? “forgiveness is giving up the desire for a better past”; desire reduces appreciation of the present? “Be, Here, Now”; sun and sky analogy; radiant elderly man; “The Practice of the Presence of God”; monks’ awareness; mindfulness; sitting, walking meditation
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First new video since Dec 2, 2020. Describes hiatus from then until today.
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A parable of sorts. Giordano Bruno Rabbit is tried for blasphemy: GOD IS NOT A RABBIT.
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For us the past and future are mere thoughts in our mind; reality is in the present. Therefore, if we are to encounter God, we must encounter God in the present. An immanent God exists in the present. Followers of a God who transcends the universe, for instance, Christians, sometimes they believe they encounter God in the present in the form of the Holy Spirit. If God is real and, for us, only the present is real then to encounter God we must encounter God in the present.
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"Bait and Switch" in the sense of luring someone with the promise of an attractive, exceptional product, but then substituting another". This video describes how that is done with the Bible.
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How two different types of people regard the ideal earthly epoch; view of the past; the trajectory of the present; Earth's future; sexuality; punishment; xenophobia, the economic spectrum; expertise; politics. Does fMRI demonstrate a physiological correlation?
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The finiteness and limitations of the human conditions force us to "cut God down a bit", force us to limit our description of God, so that we can relate. Describes various steps in the cutting-down process and asks, "When do we go too far?"
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Defining consciousness as distinct from mechanism; the conscious mouse trap; explanations in terms of mechanism; mechanisms of human mental states fail to explain consciousness of those states; philosophical zombie; other minds problem; solipism; consciousness as inner experience; brain stimulation; "Minds are simply what brains do"; C fibers and pain; thought experiment; spring's potential energy; standard model of physics
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Bible verses of type level 1 and level 2; "Call no man Father"; don't take oaths; verses are ignored; not what the Bible says, but what preachers claim the Bible says; too literally, exegesis, hermeneutic, etc.; kill cursing children?; the Bible as a Golden Calf; burning witches; slavery; abortion; the serpent; "reject the evidence of your eyes and ears" 1984 George Orwell; the power of God's self-proclaimed representatives; the Crusades; why we do not accept any writing as scripture, as authoritative; preachers do not ACT as if scripture is God's Word; next video: "74 - (2/2) Why The Bible Matters"
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Immanent God, democracy, freedom of religion, separation of church and state; transcendental God, revelation, priesthood, monarchy, Divine Right of Kings, stratified society, racism, misogyny; religion usually supports state, just war for each side?; religion useful to state, rewarded with privilege, immunity from law; all scriptures cannot be true; salvation by faith alone, or by faith and works? Several "One True Religions"; why religion is prevalent; religion and state, mutually beneficial relation; afterthought: nuclear war; list of wars over last 1,000 years; war in the "DNA" of some religions?
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