Religion is just a peasant tier interpretation of metaphysics

Abrahamic religions have the best metaphysics as they are able to affirm both the One and the Many, and Christianity in particular articulates the reconciliation of the Many to the One without compromising either. Abrahamic religion also has an excellent religious apparatus which makes these remote truths relevant to everyone, from the scholar in his tower to the peasant in the mud.

Eastern religions by contrast try to enter into the One by denying everything else, which is ultimately vain and futile, with the result that they neither know God very well, nor the world.

not that user, but can you explain this "many and one" stuff to a brainlet?

Eastern philosophies conceive of "God" completely differently, so you can't really levy a foreign standard against them, which they wouldn't agree with you on in the first place, and then criticize them by it.

Sure I can, because I know the root of our differences from a metaphysical standpoint: Eastern monism and theism can be rationally evaluated against each other because they are both trying to account for ultimate reality as it relates to the many, diverse and contingent. Monism is one answer- the many are not at all, there is only the One. Theism- the One originates and conditions the many, and the many have a derivative but genuine existence- is another.

The fundamental idea that there is an ultimate reality, and that it is one, is shared and serves as a point of genuine comparison, whatever else may be said. This only takes a moderate amount of intellectual agility.

The short version is that we experience things as many and as one in various respects, and this is real weird when you think about it.

There are many dogs, for instance, but the many dogs have something in common, and what is common is in some sense the same, or one, between the many. The individual is one, but his parts are many. *Being* is in some sense one and the same across all things which have being, yet being is also diverse- there seem to be many beings, and many kinds of beings. A thing cannot be one and many in the same way, hence there is a puzzle, or paradox, or contradiction, to be worked through.

How these are reconciled, or if they are to be reconciled, is a basic philosophical problem: the question of the One and the Many. How do they relate? Is the One in any sense the cause of the Many, or vice versa? Is reality one, or many, or somehow both?

One kind of answer is the Hindu answer: There is Being, and nothing other than Being, hence Being is One, and there is only the One. The Many, in themselves, turn out to be hopelessly paradoxical.

Theism is a different answer: There is the One, who is unqualified being, but there are also the Many, who each qualify or limit being in some way. They have a lesser, approximate being, but it is not nothing. So being is not One and Many in the same sense- only the One has unqualified or perfect being, whereas the many have limited, qualified, imperfect and contingent being.

Atomism is a further answer: the Oneness we impose upon things is entirely extrinsic to the world. There is only the Many, and no unifying principle between them. The closest to this view is Atomism, where there are only diverse fundamental individuals, and anything over and above their sheer individuality is imposed upon them from outside them, and is therefore not real.

i'm this user and have no grasp of what this means or why it matters. :( can you point me to a resource on it? is this "one and many" thing taken from Parmenides?

Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It’s a MUST READ. For browsing lit.

Plato is like nothing at all compared to Aristotle. But you must grasp Metaphysics. YOU MUST

I would recommend The Categories and On Interpretation before Metaphysics.

okay thanks guys, the user's longer comment is helping me to grasp it, and right now i basically feel the Hindu view of "being is one" but i still don't understand exactly why we're speaking of it. also aren't we conflating two different concepts, with the same label? "being", as in "existing", versus "beings", like dogs and humans and so on? i'll read those resources, ty. this seems like an interesting area but my mind is too simple to grasp it currently

You can have more than one ethics from same metaphysics

>"being", as in "existing", versus "beings", like dogs and humans and so on?

That opens you up to Parmenides' argument: if the many things which exist have their existence in common, their diversity must be grounded in something other than their existence- but whatever is wholly other than or opposed to existence, is surely nothing. So whence their diversity?

It proceeds from one, how does it not?

This actually gets into Aristotleian modal propositions. If one is, then one is not. It just follows. Why would the one, which is the negation of its non-being, be nothing? I see no argument for it.

:3

Correct

based

this is racking my brain...i don't get it...

aren't "many" things only possible in the first place if there's something unifying them all, allowing them to be a "singular" many? isn't the concept of "one" behind all concepts? why must diversity of things existent have their concept in something other than existence? you said this but i didn't quite understand why. sorry if i didn't understand you...

i don't get this either...

>isn't the concept of "one" behind all concepts
Congratulations, you figured out how Metaphysics works. It is literally that easy. Now I want you to understand that there are about 10000000 other concepts you should recognize regarding Aristotleian Metaphysics, including that it is perceptually reversible, meaning you can look at it from the ground up, or the top down depending on which way you view it. But yeah, there are a lot of different things going on within Metaphysics.

i'm sorry but it feels like you're making fun of me...are u mocking my shallow assertion? i'm not claiming to know anything, just trying to understand this problem-area which i haven't studied before. can you please explain your comment a bit better, i don't really understand what it says...

Yeah well first of all, there’s a difference between the ‘Archetypal one’ and the ‘numerical one’ since numerals appear after the introduction of ‘many’ into numbers. Just look into how this stuff all works.

Actually many is not introduced from unity, duality is. Many is introduced archetypally after duality , and then the numerical one can be logically argued contemporaneously as the archetypal concept of many is introduced, since everything is composed of ‘one’

Look into Pythagorean’s thoughts on this in Introduction to Arithmetic by Nicomachus.

‘Introduction to Arithmetic’ is just the name given by academia it’s actually a riveting work on Pythagorean Metaphysics. Just fyi. Gerard Massey wrote a goood book on the Theoretical arithmetic of the Pythagoreans as well.

But before you read Metaphysics, the Timaeus is required reading by Plato, because it deals with this very concept. Poorly, I should add. The idea of a ‘demiurge’ ordering chaos is unbelievably mundane and not as philosophically pure as Aristotle’s system.

i didn't understand this, sorry...i was just saying that "singularity" is behind anything one speaks of - speaking of "one", there is singularity, in this case a singularity of one element. speaking of "two", there is a singularity of two elements. three, a frozen singularity of three elements. and in this way, any dualism, tri-ualism, tetra-ulism, etc is still a monism of a kind.

i'll read your books but can you clarify the above for me?

I agree, although with the qualification of Sufism being the notable example among the Abrahamic religions (at least insofar as entire schools of thought go but in every religion there are individual people who are exceptions)
>which is ultimately vain and futile
Recognizing the One truly as such by default necessitates a sublation of the many into the One, to posit anything as having fundamental existence separate from the One is really to creation an opposition to it, a duality, polytheism. Eastern metaphysics does not 'deny' the many generally but places it into the proper place where it belongs on the hierarchy of existence.
You shouldn't conflate everything eastern or Hindu with pure non-dualism, there are popular and influential areas of Hindu thought like Vishishtadvaita and Trika which profess to reconcile the one and the many without negating either; but in a way that differs from western Theism.
>One, who is unqualified being
A truly unqualifed Being would have no need of creation in the first place, and could not create it in reality as a truly existent thing without that act itself and its impetus themselves being qualities making It no longer qualified.

*no longer unqualified

Actually do this do this. This will give you the best experience possible, I wish i had done this. If you want an awesome learning path, it’s
Euclid’s Elements (Book one) ——> Proclus’ Commentary on Book one ——>Euclid’s Elements (Book five) —->
Timæus/Critias—->Introduction to Arithmetic—-> Categories/On Interpretation —-> Metaphysics

There, Holy shit if you did that you win. Optional: reading book V (just book V) of Euclid’s Elements before beginning Introduction to Arithmetic because that book draws on Book V

I did read all of these books, but this is the best order to do it in. And Euclid actually has different metaphysics than Aristotle, those two, believe it or not, are the two biggest divergent views of metaphysics in my opinion (as odd as that may be)

Just see
We’ll end the discussion for now. Do NOT read the entirety of Euclid’s Elements it will take forever, I don’t think you can’t do it, just don’t.

You’re just saying the same shit over and over again and if you aren’t even the same person I don’t care because you say the same argument over and over again, I can tell you liketo have philosophy books lying around to appear intelligent but you aren’t at all :3

why are you insulting him? he never attacked you. you seem very rude

because I am VERY annoyed by these stupid philosophical tropes that exist in reality these days, they basically say the same thing over and over in an attempt to appear smart. That’s all they are trying to do.

What would be the purpose of having objects lying around to impress people whom I regard as identical with and non-different from myself

Let me explain my last comment for anyone intrigued by my odd statement.

Euclid has arranged his definitions thusly: A point is that which has NO DEPTH.

Aristotle begins with unity.

These two philosophers, in my opinion, have the most logical views on either side of the spectrum. And Aristotle either starts with Unit-y or the unit. Either way, he works from something, not nothing. This is his statement, existence necessitates experience. Euclid seems to be making his way from a unit as well, but the unit isn’t introduced until Book V, so he starts from points. Technically the point is not in this dimension, it’s in a lower dimension, while Aristotle’s part is in this dimension.

So who is really correct here?

>Recognizing the One truly as such by default necessitates a sublation of the many into the One, to posit anything as having fundamental existence separate from the One is really to creation an opposition to it, a duality, polytheism.

If by 'fundamental existence' you mean unqualified existence, then I agree with you- only the One is Being Itself. But non-fundamental existence is still not non-existence. It is, rather, derivative existence, an ordering-towards or approximation-of pure unqualified existence. There is a conceptual space for real differentiation between the One and the Many without either subsuming the Many into the One or compromising the unqualified being of the One.

>A truly unqualifed Being would have no need of creation in the first place, and could not create it in reality as a truly existent thing without that act itself and its impetus themselves being qualities making It no longer (un?)qualified.

If qualified being is true existence, then it is clear that the unqualified being could indeed create it. If by 'true existence' you mean unqualified being, then obviously nothing which is created could have unqualified existence.

In any case, it is also true that unqualified being does not create out of 'need,' or lack in itself. But things do not arise only out of lack. Ultimately, it is not lack or even potential which is the primary reality, after all, but Being Itself, without partners or equals. Being thus creates freely, or ex nihilo, out of nothing more than an unforced love of its creations.

The concept of needing to read and believe in a specific scripture in order to not be placed into eternal hellfire, or to get into eternal paradise, is plainly absurd to me. I could never believe any such thing, regardless of how sound the rest of Christian metaphysics may be. Humans have been around on Earth at least 200,000 years, if modern anthropology is correct. And on this Earth, there have been tens of billions passing through life to death from 2000 years onward. If that doctrine were true, then billions have been sentenced to hellfire in the time between then and now, simply for not having known of these scriptures. Plenty of people today will never encounter the Christian scriptures either. Not to mention I simply wouldn't support such a "god" in the first place, even if I believed in them.

from 2000 years ago onward* (referring to Christ's birth)

I'm not trying to be edgy or anything. If you believe in Christ, that's cool. But I can't accept the premises, and personally have confidence that consciousness survives the physical body's expiry, and that I needn't worry about aligning myself to one or any religion.

>The concept of needing to read and believe in a specific scripture in order to not be placed into eternal hellfire, or to get into eternal paradise, is plainly absurd to me
I don’t see why. It seems perfectly logical for God to require you to read books, as that is what some of the best minds ITT are doing. Your argument merely amounts to ‘all important questions can be thought of through ones self and others’ but this is simply incorrect.

A wise being like God would necessitate we read some literature as well

Really? "Don't read or believe in our texts, and you get to sentenced to an eternity of torture" is a sensible reality to you? If a human king did this to his subjects, would you see it as ethical?

>it is, rather, derivative existence, an ordering-towards or approximation-of pure unqualified existence. There is a conceptual space for real differentiation between the One and the Many without either subsuming the Many into the One or compromising the unqualified being of the One.
Yes, but eastern thought largely concerns itself with the unqualified and not the contingent, so they recognize the unreality (which is not non-existence) of the contingent in relation to the Absolute and move on. Most of eastern thought does not crudely and simply 'subsume' the many into the One and leave it at that, but to the contrary comes up with sophisticated and subtle models for explaining the relation with effusive explanations and commentaries; but at the end of the day it leaves these in place to embark on the higher route because they realize that the contingent can only lead one to the door but not through it. Trying to take the contingent through the door with you for sentimental, anthropomorphic or egotistical reasons or for reasons having to do with attachment and fear will prevent one's passage through it.
>If qualified being is true existence
That which is Itself prior to and without being qualified is by necessity true existence and the absolute reality.
>But things do not arise only out of lack.
This question presupposes arising, which is incompatible with the base premise; before you reply "denying", to say that what appears as X may not be X in truth is not to deny the apparentness of X.
>Ultimately, it is not lack or even potential which is the primary reality, after all, but Being Itself, without partners or equals.
To say there is anything other then that single Being is to attribute a partnership, however higher than the other one partner may be.
>Being thus creates freely, or ex nihilo, out of nothing more than an unforced love of its creations.
You doged the point that this Being couldn't truly be unqualified then, because love for creation, the act of creation and existing as other-than-creation would qualify this being in such a way that it could not be the absolute truth and would itself be contingent.

Different person here - can you recommend me, or even send me if possible, specific works you've read that detail these views? They seem interesting, but I'm not familiar with such kinds of metaphysical parlance yet, and I want to.

The unreality of the contingent does in the end mean non-existence for the contingent world. The Absolute, as you make clear, crowds out everything else because the East has no way to talk about finite being without putting it in competition with, and thus negating it in favour of, unqualified being. The only hope for the union the heart seeks with God is denying that there was ever any separation in the first place. Experientially this can only be fatuous self-divinisation and metaphysically it’s only a rung above total nihilism, which is where Buddhism goes on a bad day.

>to say that what appears as X may not be X in truth is not to deny the apparentness of X

Where X is contingent being, and appearance itself qua appearance is a subset of X, then yes, you are in fact forced in the end to deny that there are even appearances. The Hindu inability to affirm the contingent world eventually consumes everything except their thin vision of the One.

>to say that there is anything other than the One in any sense is to qualify it

This simply is not true. Qualification of the creature is necessary to distinguish the creature from the One, but it does not follow that the being of the One is thereby qualified in turn. From the fact that the creature bears and consists in a real relation with the One, it does not follow that the One is in a constitutive relation with the creature. The contingent being of the creature is not in competition with the One’s if its being consists in a relational approximation- it is nothing in itself, but wholly emerges at every moment from the One’s creative power.

>creation and love qualify the One

Again, this seems incorrect. If the One creates ex nihilo, then creation involves no change in the One, no creation of something else which exists in the same sense to the same degree, and hence, no necessity for qualification of his being.

The love of the One for his creatures does not qualify the One if creation does not, since that love follows from the One’s internal relation of self-knowledge as the cause of other things, and his self/knowledge follows precisely from his unqualified being and unity.

>the door

Contingent being can indeed be brought into God’s presence. That’s the genius of the Christian synthesis. It allows one to rationally vindicate the world and the One, as well as the sentiments and intuitions which affirm the creation.

Your concept of religion is awful.

Religion is a separate realm from philosophy.

Religion has to do with religious experience, actual experience and worship of the Divine.

Philosophy often devolves into overintellectualized mental masturbation divorced from the actual experience.

Religions and religious people are fucking stupid. I understand tradition and all the spooked shit that goes along with it but it's getting tiresome to deal with morons who think their actions and morals should be guided by a contradictory compilation of books.

Don't even get me started on megachurches. Charlatans should be shot.

>Philosophy often devolves into overintellectualized mental masturbation divorced from the actual experience.
That's what it became, but it wasn't always like this. This only started happening around the 1600s, when absolute mindlets like Descartes genuinely began to think the mind and body could be separated.

Rene Guenon's 'Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta' is a brief but good overview of some of these concepts
archive.org/stream/reneguenon/1925 - Man and His Becoming according to the Vedânta#mode/2up

A work that explores a similar view from another perspective and in a very different style is the poem 'The Enclosed Garden of Truth' by Sanai
bahaistudies.net/asma/hadiqat.pdf

I've read and enjoyed both of these, I recommend the first before the second.

Religion has little to do with metaphysics. That's just fluff for the educated. Religion is a cultural beast with many layers, if all you have is fucking metaphysics, dumb illegitimate shit, then you barely have a philosophy let alone a religion. You'd have more of a religion by making a painting.

Nobody has been able to answer this anons question yet. I guess Yea Forums is just not intelligent enough. No big brains willing to have a proper intellectual discourse.

Here is the anons link

Religion is humanity's attempt to cope with the concept of the infinite. That how I've been thinking about it lately.

But do you actually believe that not believing will send you an eternity of torment? Do you believe that I'm heading there if I don't reorient myself to your own positions?

>The unreality of the contingent does in the end mean non-existence for the contingent world.
Yes, but this is not to deny that we seem to be experiencing it. This acknowledgment itself grants to contingency a level of conditional reality that is not in itself pure denial of it.
>The Absolute, as you make clear, crowds out everything else because the East
'crowding out' has a wrongful negative connotation to it, it is more appropiate to say, is prior to and is all-encompassing in its infiniteness
>has no way to talk about finite being without putting it in competition with, and thus negating it in favour of, unqualified being.
To the contrary it has many ways of talking about finite being and characterizing it, such as things like Dharma. To say that contingent existence is unreal from the perspective of the Absolute in no way prevents one from talking about it in a meaningful way. Also, you are simply incorrect when you assert "the east" has no way. If you wish to criticize the line of thought I'm speaking of than say 'non-dualism', because the east has other prominent types of thought which don't negate contingent existence. It's not false for me to say "the east in some cases or generally does X", but it's absolutely false when you say "the east does not have X".
>The only hope for the union the heart seeks with God is denying that there was ever any separation in the first place.
Non-dualism does not deny "any" separation took place, the acknowledgment of the illusion of contingency is itself agreeing that a conditional separation took place. Non-dualism is realizing that creation is incoherent and incompatible with an infinite and immutable God, and from this gathering a praxis of returning to the source through the removal of misapprehension.
>Experientially this can only be fatuous self-divinisation
This is completely wrong, anything that could possibly be identified with the ego, individual and conventional self are strictly let go of, what shines forth in their place after this is That which existed prior to them, which is supra-individual
>metaphysically it’s only a rung above total nihilism,
This reveals that you think that if God existed alone without creation that it would constitute a form of nihilism, which is itself a conceited view stemming from assigning undue importance to one's own self, a slap in the face of God. Who are you to say that God existing on his own would constitute even a partial nihilism?

>you are in fact forced in the end to deny that there are even appearances.
That's wrong, one can acknowledge that things may appear as they do in a state of ignorance while maintaining that upon realization of the truth that these appearances are revealed as never having existed to begin with. You are making the mistake of thinking that the truth should be readily and immediately apprehensible by default.
>One’s if its being consists in a relational approximation- it is nothing in itself, but wholly emerges at every moment
Here you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. If there is any relation, there is qualification and God is not unlimited and One, but if it's nothing in itself than it's not existent and God simply is in His infinite and undivided nature. You are fruitlessly trying to fit the square of not-unreal existent contingency through the circle of an unqualified and infinite God.
>Again, this seems incorrect. If the One creates ex nihilo, then creation involves no change in the One
Pure ex-nihilio creation absent any causation by God is impossible; absolute nothingness begets absolute nothingness. Prior to creation there should only be the infinite God, the change that manifests itself as non-God emerging as something separate from God by the force of God's power or creation is itself is a change that violates God's immutability. If anything exists as separate from or as other then God, even contingent existence, then God is no longer infinite because true infinitude is all-encompassing which is incompatible with the notion of anything existing that is non-identical with the infinitude of God Himself.

bump

Yes. The way is narrow because the prize (the infinite good) is utterly beyond (finite) human power, and utterly unlike any other good toward which you could be oriented. Lacking that good permanently just is damnation. If you don’t understand the ubiquity of damnation, you don’t understand the human predicament.

The gift of salvation is given through one man and one community because God is not interested in a merely abstract union with a finite human intellect. That is always going to be limited and inadequate. Rather he reconciles humanity even in its particularity with himself- and that means working in history, through one man in whom the fullness of that unity is realised, and then the concrete society which participates in and communicates the life of that one man. Since he is God, obviously there might be cases of some people joined to the concrete community by supernatural and non-obvious means, but no one has any right to expect such means.

This is a good thread so far, bump

>It seems perfectly logical for God to require you to read books, as that is what some of the best minds ITT are doing.
Okay, so illeterate people deserve hellfire just because.

>To the contrary it has many ways of talking about finite being and characterizing it, such as things like Dharma

Sure, but as I said, these ways of talking are ultimately ways of putting it in competition with and ultimately negating contingent being.

>Non-dualism does not deny "any" separation took place, the acknowledgment of the illusion of contingency is itself agreeing that a conditional separation took place

This doesn't square with your assertion of qualified being as excluding unqualified being, unless ultimately, that separation did not in fact take place.

>This reveals that you think that if God existed alone without creation that it would constitute a form of nihilism, which is itself a conceited view stemming from assigning undue importance to one's own self, a slap in the face of God.

Let me clarify: it is just a rung above nihilism not because God alone would be nothing (he is, after all, infinite being), but because the creaturely apprehension of him in himself is next to nothing, especially when divorced from creation, the lens by which he is (in whatever small way) revealed to us.

To 'let go' of one's contingency, since all there is does not allow the Unconditioned to shine forth, so much as misidentify the lowest depths of contingent being as the highest. What results is only a projection of minimal finite being, not infinite being. God shines to himself, but it is not a light the person who lets go of their personhood ever sees. It is a fitting punishment for one who thinks the infinite can be achieved through subtraction.

> If there is any relation, there is qualification and God is not unlimited and One, but if it's nothing in itself than it's not existent and God simply is in His infinite and undivided nature

Relation does not entail qualification. Someone's becoming taller than I am, for instance, generates a different relation to my height, but does not change or alter it. Even if that change is in some sense dependent upon my height, that does not alter or qualify my height. So with being. Creation does not alter God, because if there is change it is in some extrinsic relation to him, not in his essence or nature or being. God creates ex nihilo not by dividing himself or by changing himself, but through being that upon which the created thing depends- the same act of being by which he would exist if he existed alone.

That which is nothing in itself is only nothing when considered strictly in itself. But considering something strictly in itself is not the only way to consider it- it could be considered in relation to God. As usual, nondualism is plagued by a failure of categories.

So what happened to all the people who the Gospels hadn't been spread to yet, once they were written? What about all those who perished before they were ever written, and before Jesus arrived? What about the innumerable other cultures in the world, isolated from Christian ones? Be it of past or present, like the Amazon tribes that were never reached. What happens to all these souls? There are billions of people on Earth today, and only a portion of this population have encountered the Christian scriptures and been able to read them properly. Take this population level, billions, and apply the same ignorance of doctrine across two thousand years worth of humans living since Christ, and you have literally tens of billions who never received the revelation. There's also the anthropological data, involving how long our species has been found to be on Earth, a figure no less than 200,000 years. What happened to all these souls, who were long before Abraham or Christ had even appeared? I also personally do not agree with you at all, both that an infinite reward is justifiable for a finite volume of virtue, or conversely that an infinite punishment is justifiable for a finite volume of vice. I don't even agree that someone not following Christ or believing in YHWH could be described as a "crime" or "transgression", deserving of any punishment at all, especially to a person who remains virtuous regardless of specific religious affiliations.

You might personally criticize Advaita and other Eastern metaphysics for being shallow, but at least theirs don't run into difficulties of this kind. Reincarnation and consciousness-as-eternal, which are fundamentally interwoven into their metaphysical doctrines, suffer no such criticisms, of ethical or logistical varieties. There's also anecdotal evidence in favor of their conceptions, namely, phenomena like that of children universally exclaiming to their parents of a previous existence of theirs. This is found consistently, and books have been written on the subject, detailing the detailed descriptions these children have given of their previous life. There's other, scientific data on the subject, but it's not entirely valid just yet. These don't "confirm" reincarnation, but they are worth our consideration. And it's up to a person, affirming the Christian metaphysical view, to address the above shortcomings in the doctrine. Your metaphysics may be better in some areas, while being inferior in others, but you must regardless defend your ideological foundation from all sides it can be critiqued for.

>Metaphysics
>Real

Good post, nice argument

>To 'let go' of one's contingency, since all there is does not allow the Unconditioned to shine forth, so much as misidentify the lowest depths of contingent being as the highest

Should read,

To 'let go' of one's contingency, since all there is to one is one's contingency, does not allow the Unconditioned to shine forth, so much as misidentify the lowest depths of contingent being as the highest

Some of them may have been and are connected to the community of the saved by supernatural means. The Patriarchs, for instance, implictly look forward to Christ, and even orders ostensibly outside that community, like that of Melchizedek (an order which Christ explicitly took on), are implicitly part of that community. These means, as I said, are likely still available today, though we have no reason to expect that they will be universally or even widely extended and remain wholly mysterious.

The rest will have pursued the finite goods they had, and then ultimately reverted to a default final estrangement from the infinite good. Still a life worth living and beloved by God (since almost any life is better lived than cut short), but not the infinite good.

I don't think an infinite reward is justified by finite virtue (do you disagree with me on this?). I think finite virtues run out- they have a finite scope. I don't think finite evil merits infinite punishment, either. But then, I don't think that everlasting damnation is an infinite punishment. An infinite punishment is an unlimited privation imposed upon the sufferer- annihilation, which really is total privation, would be an infinite punishment. Rather, all humans have a natural gift- they are naturally everlasting. But they are not naturally infinitely happy, and thus there is a disproportion between what human nature desires and what it is capable of achieving. This disproportion is the just result of a merely finite life lived for finite goods, and is the proper endpoint of the human condition, as alienated from God.

Advaita and other Eastern metaphysics, in any case, do not offer a real alternative: reincarnation is just damnation by another name, since it is an endless extension of our current alienation from the infinite good. The 'liberation' they promise, if they promise liberation at all, is the annihilation of all that you are in favour of a pure act of being which humans simply don't naturally have and can only barely apprehend even at their best.

Christ, who is actually both God and man united in one person in whose life you can share by joining the community he rules, fully reconciles the finite to the infinite in a way Eastern metaphysics could not countenance.

This is rebellion Ivan.

Kirkegaardian despair user

You don't need to have read scripture to be saved. In invincible ignorance (which applies even to those who have heard of Christianity if they had no reason to believe, but not if they fail to give arguments their due) catholicism at least implies that the mercy of God allows them to be saved through Christ, even without knowing Him by name.

METAphysics?

Religion IS physics. GOD IS IN THE STRINGS. OUR MINDS MAKE UP THE COSMOS. BREAK THE FIRMAMENT. ROMAN POLANSKI IS THOMAS PYNCHON. WAKE THE fuck UP.

Are you in second grade?

Given an Aristotoelian reading, God moves everything, at every level (e.g organs, entire bodies, societies) due to It being a reflection back into what encompasses the universe. Evil, if you want to call it that, is a discordance with an individual's nature. For example, the organ is "evil" that poorly contributes to the body. The Human individual is evil who poorly contributes to his family or polis, and the polis is evil that poorly contributes to the whole of Human society. What that contribution is can be questionable, especially at larger levels. I think a better term for this "evil" is disease.

Jesus christ you are a brainlet. read any post-kantian philosophy and, given your iq is above 85 youll want to kill yourself for saying something ths dumb.

I’ve read Kant and many post-Kantians. Eliding the fundamental question of being doesn’t get rid of it.

>doesn't square with your assertion of qualified being as excluding unqualified being, unless ultimately, that separation did not in fact take place.
By 'conditional' I mean 'ultimately unreal but subjectively experienced as real similar to how dreams appear to be real when they aren't'. What allows for the confluence is that God in non-dualism is blissful Awareness or Consciousness, eternally at peace, spotless, undifferentiated, at rest within itself. It's taught that this same Awareness is the awareness observing the mind and thoughts of all beings, and that these beings (through the activity of their unreal minds) mistakenly identify themselves with the unreal mirror that it's reflected in when they are really just the Awareness. The separation never took place in an absolute sense, because they are forever that Awareness, but one is considered to have to reach spiritual enlightenment to realize the truth of the non-existence of the contingent and the truth of one's identity as Awareness. So long as one remains in ignorance separation appears as fact and the truth of it never happening is only fully and immediately revealed to the knower during liberation. So in truth unqualified excludes qualified completely, but one cannot perceive this until liberation. The ontological model holds that everything qualified is not the absolute reality and is ultimately unreal, but places the subjective experience of the qualified into this sphere of the unreal, but this subjective experience collapses into itself and is revealed to the unqualified Awareness as never having existed to begin with upon enlightenment.
> but because the creaturely apprehension of him in himself is next to nothing, especially when divorced from creation, the lens by which he is (in whatever small way) revealed to us.
"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me" - Meister Eckhart. When one trained in non-dualistic spiritual teachings by a qualified teacher (which is traditionally considered the only way most people can achieve this) there is no 'creaturely' apprehension of God, but the self-illumining Awareness of God just shines by itself like the sun after clouds obscuring it have passed away. There is no remnant of the creature left here.
>To 'let go' of one's contingency, since all there is does not allow the Unconditioned to shine forth, so much as misidentify the lowest depths of contingent being as the highest.
This is simply a rhetorical argument premised on the assumption that non-dualism is wrong, you aren't actually critiquing it's logic, ontology, teachings etc but are just here saying that according to the model you believe in there would just be the lowest depths of contingency present here; which non-dualism would obviously disagree with. This is not so much an actual critique as it is just a restatement of your disagreement. If what non-dualism says is true than the Unconditioned would indeed shine forth.

>God shines to himself, but it is not a light the person who lets go of their personhood ever sees.
Non-dualism actually agrees that this light itself can never be the object of knowledge and that it is never actually perceived by the mind, but with the right instruction and with a pure heart and clarified mind one can realize one's identity with and abide as (without it being an object of thought) this light itself, which is the only thing that really exists in the end. The notion that only the Awareness of God exists and that all this is just a dream-like illusion that never actually arises or takes place is an explanation that at once provides a coherent explanation which resolves the two questions of how and why could/would an infinite unchanging all-encompassing God create the universe (He wouldn't and didn't) and also that if this is unreal why do we seem to experience it (God is the unaffected Awareness behind and observing all unreal subjective experience); it also solves the hard problem of consciousness.
>relation does not entail qualification. Someone's becoming taller than I am, for instance, generates a different relation to my height, but does not change or alter it.
That's because you and that person already exist as independent parts within a common substratrum of the universe which is itself the medium through which change is affected, the difference is that according to your model, before creation there is only the infinite God, He does not exist in a common substratum in which he and creation are both contained, but there is a concrete change in the nature of existence where from there being only God suddenly there is non-God arising; by constituting the sole and infinite existent X, and then by constituting the creator and not the sole existent X (as there is now an existent Y) God would indeed be qualified by that creation and would no longer be unqualified. Also, you dodged the point that true infiniteness necessarily precludes by default anything existing as separate.

>Creation does not alter God, because if there is change it is in some extrinsic relation to him, not in his essence or nature or being.
Being the initiator of that change itself is an act which qualifies the actor enacting it, any action taken in a real sense even as the first cause itself cannot be separated from the person or being undertaking, allowing or causing it. Being the creator itself is a qualification, and creating the universe itself involves a before/after change which violates God's immutability.
>God creates ex nihilo not by dividing himself or by changing himself, but through being that upon which the created thing depends- the same act of being by which he would exist if he existed alone.
Again, you're trying to have it both ways here. If creation is caused by God, he is involved in it and is qualified by it; if he is totally uninvolved and unconnected to creation than he's not really the cause of it and you're supposing the nonsensical idea of spontaneous and uncaused arising. If you are trying to claim he is only 'that upon which creation depends' that is an implicit denial of his active role as creator and initiator of its existence and leads to the idea that creation caused itself to arise even though it was dependent upon him. If you accept creation as real, it being 'dependent' upon God is not enough, it's creation has to be initiated. My cooked dinners are dependent on my being for them to come into existence, but they don't actually do so unless I take the act of creating them. There is no middle ground whereby God can allow for creation to take place through his being without being involved, unless you want to say creation is self-caused/spontaneous which is nonsensical and I'm guessing you wouldn't agree with. It's perfectly okay if you want to say God is mysterious and can do anything with his divine powers, but then don't pretend that you can provide a logical explanation for how he does this while remaining immutable, unqualified and infinite, because there isn't one.

>Advaita and other Eastern metaphysics, in any case, do not offer a real alternative:
They do provide a real alternative though, because their model can be separated from its occurrence in time and history and can be considered as a facet or model of existence or the universe itself without any major contradictions to the teachings as they occur in their respective religions. "Official" Christianity in its doctrines (with the exception of a few insightful and wise Christian mystics) presents the schizophrenic and nonsensical vision that a perfect and already completely contented God (who is supposed to have no need of anything) *somehow* creates the universe as a real existent thing *without* that compromising his immutability and infiniteness; and that this act was itself motivated by God's love for his creations and all beings and that out of his benevolence and kindness he placed his created beings in a situation where many of them face eternal damnation and eternal torture in hellfire or however else you want to rationalize it. First off, the notion that people outside the Church can be saved is itself a very recent innovation in Catholic doctrine, for the vast majority of history they unironically maintained that the many billions of humans throughout history (after the fall of man and the beginning of original sin with Adam and Eve, talk about built-in design flaws lol!) who were never a part of the church were sent to hell for something that was out of their control, which is completely incompatible with the idea of a loving God you present. Even granting this recent doctrinal concession to modern society, it's still nonsensical that an all-powerful and omniscient creator God would place people into a situation where there was even the possibility of eternal damnation. If he truly wished to create beings and display his love for them Adam and Eve would not have had the capacity to be fooled and would still be in Eden, and if they were fooled he would have forgiven them for following the natural predisposition God himself instilled in them. The scheme is not unlike a kid displaying his love for the ants in his ant-farm by placing spiders inside, thereby giving them a chance to be saved from the spider that the kid himself put in there.

Meanwhile, Hindu teachings and Buddhism (and largely also Sihkism, Sufism, Daoism, Ayyavazhi etc) can be abstracted from their historical occurrence without contradictions. The Hindu texts speak of an endless cycle of the creation and dissolution of (ultimately unreal) universes, with there being an eternal truth of 'Sanatana Dharma' that manifests itself or is made known to sages cyclically in different ways, and with qualified divine beings (themselves not the absolute reality) descending to spread truth and to liberate people. Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhism speaks of Buddhas and Tantric deities as being transcendental/cosmic saviors who "descend" from beyond Samsara to save all beings. These teachings can easily be reconciled to the idea that these religious truths hold true for all beings in the universe as cosmic and eternal truths and appear to different intelligent species in modes befitting them at a time and in a manner appropriate to their circumstances. With Christianity there are way more absurd contradictions when you try to do this unless you try to port in an implicitly Neoplatonic understanding of God that no longer resembles the God of the Bible anyway (and which is incompatible with it).

>reincarnation is just damnation by another name, since it is an endless extension of our current alienation from the infinite good.
Rebirth/transmigration is not damnation by another name and is not just endless extension of our current alienation for several reasons. It is not any sort of eternal damnation because everyone always has the potential to be liberated. If someone does very bad and acts in a very sinful way they are face the consequences in the next life they experience which can be hellish. Everyone and all beings still eternally have the capacity to attain liberation though, if someone is not doing well they can always make a change of course and work on it over many lives. There is no permanent alienation, no final "you permanently lose a game that you never asked to play". Furthermore there is considered to be a natural order/harmony to unreal contingent existence, a 'Dharma' that ensures that there are avenues which appear to guide beings to liberation, people are not hopelessly and irrevocably lost but there are paths and guideposts which inevitably and cyclically appear so that everyone has a chance. Also, both Buddhism and Hinduism accept that if one does really well, acts very virtuously and is spiritually pure etc but does not attain final liberation that one is reborn into circumstances that make liberation or further progress easier to attain in that next life. So long as one does not reach final liberation there is still a chance of descending but there are both elements that help people reach it, and progress and hard effort on that path are rewarded.

>The 'liberation' they promise, if they promise liberation at all, is the annihilation of all that you are in favour of a pure act of being which humans simply don't naturally have and can only barely apprehend even at their best.
They usually accept that there are multiple paths to the final aim, but they often regard something like that as best (although they wouldn't describe it that way or accept that definition); but they also accept that alternative paths like selfless devotion to God/other people and profound virtue can cause one to be reborn in a life/realm/situation where that comes naturally. Also, if that isn't natural to humans and if humans can barely apprehend it then why do non-dual teachings manifest themselves all across the world throughout history in Hinduism, Buddhism, Neoplatonism, Islam and select areas of Christian mysticism? kinda begs the question...

>Christ, who is actually both God and man united in one person in whose life you can share by joining the community he rules, fully reconciles the finite to the infinite in a way Eastern metaphysics could not countenance.
Does he really though? He just talks about saving people and being united with God but he doesn't actually offer any in-depth theory or explanations, you can find the same rhetoric about saving people in other religious figures as well (as well as allegations of miracles). You are just reading ideas taken from Aristotle and Neoplatonism into Christ that there is no way of knowing whether he actually agreed with, and these ideas are very removed from the OT/Judaism context from which Christ came from, contrast that to something like Hinduism where from the very beginning the oldest Upanishads in the 9th-8th century BC were talking about non-dualism and even select portions of the Vedas before them in the 2nd millennium BC.

> [non-dualism] resolves the two questions of how and why could/would an infinite unchanging all-encompassing God create the universe (He wouldn't and didn't) and also that if this is unreal why do we seem to experience it (God is the unaffected Awareness behind and observing all unreal subjective experience)

It fails to account for the contingent world, since there is no subjective experience to observe if God is really undifferentiated. Even dreams have some reality- when I mistakenly identify with a character in my dreams, while it is true that the referent of the dream does not exist, nevertheless the dream itself, because it is not fully united to my own reality, must be distinct from me, a part of me, and a real constraint upon my consciousness. The possibility of illusion in this way necessarily multiplies being, since one must posit both the reality itself, and the illusion which limits and obscures it. If you really do want to assert the absolute on those terms, you will have to deny even illusion, which makes the world utterly inexplicable.

> infiniteness precludes anything existing as separate.

It doesn't.

Infinite being only excludes other infinite being, since if infinite being were potentially many, it would have to have a respect in which it was multiplicable, and a respect in which it was identical, which introduces qualification into infinite being itself. However, God and his creatures don't exist in the same sense, hence God's absolute act is not multiplied or qualified. God exists unqualifiedly, the creatures by extrinsic relation to his being, thus he alone has absolute existence, and it does not follow that his being is multiplied or qualified by finite things. When things are created, there is a change, but not in the 'nature of existence.' Absolute existence remains what it always was and will be, but there is a becoming in that which is changeable, contingent and qualified- finite being, in dependence upon absolute being.

> Being the creator itself is a qualification,

Not if you're precise. Being the creator is said in two ways: firstly, to be the act upon which the created thing depends. This act is not changed by the dependence of things upon it. Secondly, to be in a relation to creation as its ultimate cause. But the relation is the creature's dependence, which is extrinsic to that upon which it depends. Hence, creation does not qualify God. You seem to be talking of 'initiating' in a crudely anthropomorphic sense, which you are then attributing to me- A initiates B only if the emergence of B corresponds to some change in A. But this is not Creation. What's important to Creation are (i) the complete dependence of the creature upon the One where it did not before, and (ii) the utter contingency and non-necessity of the creature. There is an analogy with human free decision, but the limits of changing initiators can be comfortably dispensed with-God does not need to 'wind up' before he pitches.

Damnation is less like a spider and more like death. It's something that follows on from the disproportion between the finitude and desire of finite intelligent creatures. But since God loves finite intelligent creatures, he allows that privation so that the finite creatures can enjoy some measure of the light of being, even in their alienation from him. This is not a flaw in the divine love, but a perfection of it, since it is a consequence of the divine love's tolerance for evil and love of creatures despite that that we and our world enjoy any good at all. That he has created in addition a way for us to transcend the natural goods we can achieve, is a grace which we cannot deserve but gratefully receive.

Christians are and should be proud of their particularity. It speaks to the completeness of the reconciliation of man to God- man is reconciled not just in his universal nature, not by some philosophical system, but in his individual existence. God does not put on humanity like a suit, in order to help the creature to better negate itself, but unites the creaturely human nature to his very person so completely that he becomes incarnate once and for all, as one particular man, forever. It is unutterably superior to the creation-negating tendencies of the East, since it fully synthesises the universal with the particular. Naturally, this means that the community participating with this one man, will be a particular community, and that all others can participate in it only by concretely joining. This is not a limitation, but a consequence of the very thoroughness of the Christian work of the Kingdom, bringing all things, not just in an abstract and universal sense, but in a concrete sense, in communion with the One through Christ.

God's pure act of being isn't natural to humans, since human nature is a finite and qualified act of being. There is no way that it achieves the divine nature without ceasing to be. We humans dimly apprehend him, and cannot but do so, as the source and end of all things, but this is necessarily indirect. Since we have a common human nature, certain errors are typical. Nonduality arises from an appreciation of the superiority of God's being to our own, and a limitation of understanding in the way in which that superior being is not in competition with, but affirming of, our limited being. Most often, this manifests as either a failure of stable categories, or an excessive asceticism or mysticism.

As for Christ, I don't think you're reading him properly. He is not a metaphysician primarily, but embodies and lives out a new reality with which metaphysicians must reckon. It is the precise character of the salvation he offers, and the kind of union with God he embodies, which distinguishes him from and makes him the ultimate fulfilment of what is true in everything else. It's why Christians have no problem acknowledging or drawing from what is true in Plato or Aristotle.

As someone who thinks they're undergoing an ego-death, can you possibly point me to some resources? You seem really, really knowledgable. Thanks.

The peasant surpasses both the metaphysician and the theologian in sophistication. And through the simplicity of his being turns the whole of scholarly life into an Eleusinian Mystery - which can never be recognised through purchased inspiration. The mystic who never sees shadows; the misanthrope who bathes in sunlight only to cast them.
youtu.be/1Oc2BNvBhic
"Where d'you think the skies are bright
Girls are pretty
Hearts are light
Birds are singing day and night?

Where d'you find a life of ease
Green grass
And greener trees,
Gently waving in the breeze?

Where d'you think the bugs don't bite
And the work
Is quick and light?
Where's it hardly dark at night?

It's to the east of the waning moon
And to the west of the wide horizon,
North of where the sun goes down
And south of where it's rising."

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We would do well to remember civilisation's contest and alliance with nature, a place in which we attempt to sow only plants which lack astringence and weed all that which bears roots tending towards a subterranean battlefield - that which threatens reemergence of wildness, or the cracking of foundations through the endurance of woodsoils. In the end, we are all peasants, and after that great scythe sweeps across the land and we drift away as the chaff of time into darkness, who will remember us? We live in an age of forgetfulness, where remembrance must become a law - for memory itself situates itself in two forms of disease: too much, or not at all. And yet,what is incredible about our age of forgetfulness, an age in total opposition to the muses, is the obsession with nature, its documentation to the point that we have become pastoralists who starve the farther we wander. We tag sea mammals with radio devices, devoting endless resources to an aesthetic of salvation, just as the offspring die from stress or the inability to evolve an abstract migration pattern. We fill museums with stuffed carrion in a crude assemblage of sacrifice and the investigation board - all leading away from any real evidence or reconciliation. Even in the plastic contours of the falsely-lit eternity, we perform the tasks of simple peasants. And the eleventh hour in the field always lends itself a spectral character, the laboured breath of winds exhales the heaviness of what approaches.

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Even the most modern of philosophers come close to grasping this insight, spinning themselves into the harsh textiles of farmlands as if spun up in a web of some greater being. If we were to compare the images left in the dust of our age to their opposite, the Shield of Achilles, we would see all of the greatness worn away, everything but the peasants and slaves now a bared bronze free of luster, as if stripped away in an acid bath. The Great Hero's shield is a striking symbol for anyone who would wield power, or will to sacrifice himself to that power, for it is only in that peace before insignificance that the whole image forms as a single unit: the state which must stand as one. When we refuse to profess our strength and accept that the gods are against us, we understand weakness and realise humility. We realise we must achieve something truly great in order to withstand the harsh retribution of the gods when they enter into our lands. We seek armistice with nature and the beauty of walls which can withstand any attrition of the vengeful gods. This is how we achieve dominion, a lasting state, and the hero knows that the peasant must tend to the crops to prevent pestilence just as the women must weave the wears of culture in humility, so as to prevent Arachne's spinning of webs too close to our home - further separating us from the heavens and convincing us that our homeland must be left behind to burn in its sin. There is an altogether different form of greatness within such an image when situated in its rightful place beneath the heavens.
Perhaps we can also imagine how women are left behind in later myths of the cities - just as the shield is abandoned for swords, axes, pikes, halberds; and then returned in the form of mortar shells. Left in an acid bath the bronze shield becomes a pillar of salt. merely cast aside it becomes a weapon for the unarmed enemy.
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Read this

realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita.html

Thank you, I've sampled it before. It just doesn't seem too specific to what I'm going through right now. But maybe I have to keep reading. I was hoping there is more specific literature in Hinduism/Buddhism that pertains to the sense of losing one's subjective identity. I don't know how to maintain face in society while this experience is happening to me, or simply how to navigate through it at all. Will I only continue down this path, and wind up as nobody? If so, how do I continue to live in society? I don't know what the heck is happening to me right now...I think I might seek out a guru in real life, who knows of these realities, assuming such people can be found. But I've definitely somehow stumbled into some kind of spiritual transformation that I'm clueless on how to navigate, or what the rest of my life will look like.

Are you not a peasant?

does metaphysics justify paranormal entities like ghosts and shit?

i don't know but ghosts definitely exist. subtle bodies make a good explanation for them

neat

The Yoga Vasistha is a good text which combines non-dualism and ego dissolution with lessons about still living normally and peacefully and participating in society in a tranquil daoist-like way without any worries or issues, that might be what you're looking for. Venkatesananda's translation is best, both are abriged because its super long but one is ~700 pages and the other like half that.

Is there any way for someone to overcome pure reason? As an atheist I find all of this quite fascinating but also sort of stupid and made-up. I can't reconcile anything existing outside what can be proved with my own two eyes.

Christians will tell you faith, but all that really means is a gut feeling. So under that logic just believe whatever you want, it's all valid. If empirical truths contradict your personal truths you can just cherry pick and over right them until they somehow fit.

Thank you man. I've jotted it down. :) Your posts are great by the way, here and in every other thread I've seen you in. You understand non-dualism at a very technical level, far beyond my grasp. I don't know how what I'm going through right now exactly happened to me, but I'm naturally a nondualist as a result of it, though more intuitively so. I hope to one day be able to understand, with the rigor that you do, the formal philosophical background of it, so that I could be able to argue in favor of it the way you've brilliantly done here.

If I may ask, what's your personal take on the mention of "cosmic beings" and cosmic cycles like the "kali yuga" we're said to be in now? The nature of consciousness and ego and so on are verifiable through oneself and very grounded realities that something like modern science is beginning to explore. It's fairly straightforward to understand that a sage, skilled in meditative practises, could experience heightened states of consciousness and the accompanied ego-loss, and subsequently write of them. This seems nothing like the knowledge of Devas and celestial sages and cosmic prophecies and so on, so I'm wondering how you personally think such kinds of information entered these scriptures, and whether they hold the same validity as the more straightforward areas?

bump

There is always faith. The difference is that reason assumes faith from the very beginning: that all things can be explained by the material, by experience, and will not be subject to unseen forces.
Poetics, augury, rites, form, abandonment to the wild, peace, sense and metaphor, the oath, will to the gods, justice, the mysteries, parable and myth, resignation to fate, law, meditation, memory, contemplation of nihilism between altars, craft, heroism, necessity, the cult of death, the sight of nymphs, prophecy, war, reconciliation with life, and return to the simple are all ways to overcome reason.
It is the moderns who live in a false reality, a void of abstraction as constructed reality threatens to cut them off from any natural being, the simple sovereignty of existence. They exist atop Descartes's mind/body like a halo, and they only ever approach existence through extrication of themselves into knowledge. The same way that the gods derive power through feeding on aether - only the more that man feeds the more he devours himself, until he becomes the self-carving meat. There is nothing organic or living in the abstraction, modern man is the outside, and through his attempts at extrication he creates a sprawling architecture of catacombs reaching into the heavens.
We see the products of reason every day, and their motto states: Faith in Rebirth against the Eternal. When logic precedes faith we set ourselves upon the path. When faith precedes logic we lay rest to the metaphorical, the poetic. Westerners live in an eightfold position between space (logic, faith, sense, nihilism) and time (seasons, memory, freedom, death). The cult of the instrument suggests a weakening of the natural form of these laws, and our turning them into idols with unlimited adornments, hooks, and hidden compartments.
"Misery me. Misery me. Now black, and roasting fiercely."
Rather than capturing God in the Machine we coax Io back into her cage. We roll an asymmetrical, eleven-sided die into the abyss to which the mathematics of empty numbers give us an arbitrary and ancillary call. Aphrodite the war-wounded, and Asclepius the simple stretcher-bearer.
youtu.be/Xt_2ZdBf3Pw

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>thing cannot be one and many in the same way, hence there is a puzzle, or paradox, or contradiction, to be worked through.
Is there? It seems like you just answered your own question. Dogs aren't both one and many in the same way but in different ways.