Knowledge and God ´s Mind

Mic Valen Wi God is Knowledge. God doesn’t know anything. Reply Share 23h Ang V Harr Mich Valenti Wil You're right. Because knowledge is of the mind. And God doesn't have a mind because God isn't a person. Reply Share 22h Si Clous Ang V Harri OM Reply Share 22h M Re Mont An V Harri That sounds a lot like what Aristotle believed, with his esoteric First Cause co-eternal with the Universe. I´m interested in all manner of diverse experiences as someone with a degree in Bio Anthropology, including Michael Harner´s shamanism, Black Elk´s relationship to the Creator, and the Buddha, among them. Yet, nothing has impressed me like the point that emerged as I appreciated the 12 step second step about "being restored to sanity" and the Buddha´s doctrine of "the non-existence of the self." The special role of Jesus and his legacy just popped into my awareness around that moment. Simply put, I see it´s significance in references to Einstein. Many people operating according to the rationalist scientific view of God like Einstein´s comments about Spinoza´s impersonal God. Yet, Einstein actually appreciated the vivid quality of the NT, rejecting mythicist talk, and he gushed over Gandhi, saying, "Who would believe that a man such as he ever walked on this Earth?" Gandhi, for his part, had been a secular law student in London when he went to a vegetarian club and met theosophists. They revived and reoriented his enthusiasm for Hinduism, and with an interfaith spirit. Gandhi went on to become an interfaith Christian Hindu who said he read the Bible for Jesus regularly. Even though he famously "didn´t like Christianity." Those references are a good warm up to that of FD Roosevelt, who has been widely mudslung covering up his Social Gospel influences, his modern spiritual-religious references, and his alertness to fascist danger in the face of conservative business isolationists. Not to mention his vision and legacy in the UN and human rights. As much as people have to do for themselves in spiritual practice and more, the special quality of Jesus Christ is spectacularly personal in nature and as it relates to the developments from the OT to modernity. If God is the eternal Creator, the distinction between human beings in the OT follows a key historical component in which some kind of Divine-human effort was being made before Jesus Christ´s actual life, mission, and message was even possible. And I am impressed how the personal quality of Jesus´ account in the Gospels has been expressed in his legacy in Christian community in Western Civilization. The nature of the abusers of the fruits of Jesus´ legacy is clear as the central role of Christians in changing monastic schools into Universities is made clear over other misleading stereotypes and scapegoating accounts. We are not developing knowledge by ourselves at all, in fact. The comparative evidence amongst cultures and individuals is all around. Learning and knowledge development only flourishes with people valuing decent conduct. Besides Christians developing their monastic schools into Universities, take the end of slavery, no less. The UK, location of early knowledgable monks like Alcuin of York in Charlemagne´s times, the Puritans produced George Fox who led the co-founding of the Quaker Friends. Their remarkable spread outside the establishment Anglican Church interacted with University grads like William Penn in part in the UK itself, with various forms of high integrity protests and inclusionary values. In a hundred years, excluded from the mainstream by and large, the Quakers agitated against slavery, sparking University activity that produced dissenting divinity grad and anti-slavery essay winner T Clarkson. His intense research gave him the epiphany to lead the pioneering social movement against slavery, joining with the Quakers and others in a Society. What split accounts for "knowledge" being associated with merely dissociated individuals? Descartes´ famous "mind-body split" actually involves his role as the kind of human catalyst for philosophy´s various key modernizing steps in introspection, secular mechanicism, and mathematics. I´ve found it helpful to look earlier at the work of the pivotal monk Thomas Aquinas, who Christianized ancient Greek philosophy, as in Aristotle´s esoteric and inscrutable First Cause, co-eternal with the Universe. So, knowledge in fact is related to God´s being a Divine Mind and Love, with Jesus having led to the understanding of both. That highlights the sense of Jesus saying that he was the Son of God and Man, and not doing it crudely at all, in fact, but with great tact. Jesus´ standard of integrity is associated with the rise of Christian spiritual monastic practice after Anthony of the Desert and his sub-legacy. The powerful fruits of that culture in University-based philosophical culture were then appropriated by people in the roles of merchant-soldier-monarch/ politicians who colonized the world by WWII. The personal relationship to God through Jesus, most directly in the NT and the history of high integrity individuals in Christian society, now makes clear the new objective. Secularized Christian-derived University-based knowledge practices now operate at the level of globalized Universities and FD Roosevelt´s UN human rights-sustainability. It is thus the US constitutional democratic Civil Right of Freedom of Religion and UN human rights that governs individual spiritual-religious seeking, ultimately. Interpreting Jesus alone requires modernizing the spirit of the letter, and evaluating the spirit of the letter involves the meaning of "love thy neighbor as thyself." It is that latter message embedded in UN human rights that sets a structured pluralism. Gandhi´s example shows how he processed knowledge, as a secularized Hindu law student in London and vegetarian, he met theosophists at a club. They oriented him to Hinduism again, but with an interfaith awareness that came to include Gandhi´s knowing Jainism, Buddhism, and reading the Bible for Jesus regularly, despite "not liking Christianity." Gandhi´s interfaith Christian Hindu face of God through Jesus. And Einstein, no less. Safely ensconced in FDR´s US at Princeton, as the war raged horribly on, Einstein was a face with his lovable ways of sticking his tongue out, playing his violin, and riding his bicycle as a groundbreaking physicist who discovered the enchanting formula e=mc2. His acknowledgment of Jesus´ vivid NT presence and Gandhi make Einstein worth admiring for how his Spinoza reference is itself an understatement. Einstein was enchanted by personal examples but as a scientist not really a spiritual specialist. &&& Michae Valentinu Wilso Ang V Harrio Knowledge, being the Mind of God, is not information to be learned, as this post seems to suppose. Being eternally unchanging, it does not partake of the dualistic, codependent nature of humanity. However, as His Thoughts, our eternal Self is one with Him. Mark Rego Monteiro Michael Valentinus Wilson God´s nature has been proposed by others, and specifically philosopher, AN Whitehead and the Process Theologians, as di-polar, with both an eternal/atemporal nature and a temporal side. Your assertion seeks to make the distinction that "God´s eternal self" doesn´t "partake" of the human "dualistic codependent nature." You identify a human´s "eternal self" as being God´s Thoughts, somehow relating to Knowledge itself, that you equate to the Mind of God. The problem with asserting abstract metaphysical relationships, also in Whitehead´s case as in many others, is the failure to relate to empirical cases, which makes the assertions in the old tradition of pre-empirical thinking. "Science" has famously generated even vicious overspecialized anti-theists who in part certainly show the limitations of unempirical assertions. For that reason, I have never given up my love of empiricism, but which also demands the application of philosophical thinking, as its foundation. The goal, I am happy to have learned, is philosophical truth with the criteria of logical coherence and correspondence to reality. "Science," ie scientific philosophy, in fact, is just a subdiscipline of philosophy. As for "knowledge" and God, I was fascinated to begin to learn about Anthony of the Desert in recent years. The so-called Father of Christian monks began as an ascetic Christian seeker. I still haven´t read his full account, but the outline of his now-termed psychological and spiritual struggles were expressed as demons of loneliness and the like. After some thirty plus years, he had gone through cycles of psychospiritual crisis until a major episode resulted in his having a youthful appearance with tranquility. Later monks and by Benedict of Nursia had identified three stages of Purgatio-Illuminatio-Unitio, with divinization/theosis a crucial crossover stage, presumably to the "Unitio" level. In looking at later phenomena, with many spiritual practitioners called "saints" by the Catholic church, there comes the pivotal position of the monk Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s following Francis of Assisi (d. 1225). Assisi was the son of a successful merchant without advanced education, who had a spiritual revelation outside the church and monastic system. As for knowledge, Aquinas made landmark efforts taking Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause of the co-eternal Universe with god the Unmoved Mover. Through Jesus, the understanding Aquinas developed is more of the "Moved Mover." God´s effective reality directed Aquinas´ thoughts in his various fairly well-known arguments, like the argument from motion. That is the classic First Cause argument, that all motion in the Universe came from a Prime Mover. That also relates to Aquinas arguing against infinite regress, and locating eternity in God through Jesus´ heritage and legacy. The ancient Greeks, as historian J Hannam points out, didn´t do experiments, and didn´t look for physical laws of nature. They were seeking to understand the purpose of things, Hannam suggests. Aquinas, by contrast, codified the Christian understanding of a loving and lawful God who had created a lawful created Universe. That then provides a more comprehensive and empirical framework for making assertions about our relation to knowledge and God. Aquinas honored the ancient Greeks and eclectic influences as part of Christians turning monastic schools into Universities with modernized, Christianized philosophical scholarship. Descartes´ later contributions, involving a mind-body split quality, correspond to growing secular mechanicism in modern knowledge. The role of the Christian community is hinted at here, as Franciscans also became known in the UK as the proto-scientific Oxford Franciscan School, among other fascinating developments. Thus, I think that empirical historical meditation, reflection, and evaluation begins to value human activity more comprehensively than even the description of "dualistic, codependent humanity" that you want to assert. That ultimately is the importance of keeping tabs on Jesus, and not neglecting as a stereotyped figure. The descriptions of his suffering and death on the Cross relate profoundly to the meaning of his Resurrection and the community that extended his legacy in historical development. In a sense, I see in part the relevance of the Original Sin-Original Blessing polarity. Cause and effect understanding through modern philosophical scholarship, spiritualized,can give us the insight to recognize a balance of forces, and the need for spiritual practice. Jesus taught about people having a light within, and "shining that light in front of others with good deeds to honor God." Matt 5 by "going and learning" Matt 9. The Buddha certainly found similar insights as he formulated his Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, and found his sangha community forming. With secularizing Christian Western culture having significant University-based currents, comparative religious studies has emerged and increased in its knowledge more slowly than scientific philosophy and technology. Yet, with the developments in empiricial psychosocial disciplines as with psychoanalysis and healing in therapeutic psychology with Freud, Jung et al as well, the meaning of academic and other learning communities has signficance for a spectrum in human spiritual levels of awareness. The 12 steps started by AA, by its founders Bill W and Dr Bob, provides its own interesting balance of groups and individuals. Jung sent a letter through acquaintances, as Dr. Bob and Bill W and others were involved in the spiritualized approach of the Christian Oxford Group. William James´ book Varieties.... was also in play. Yet, with limited formal spiritual-religious study, Bill W the stockbroker formulated the innovative 12 steps and Big Book. Process Theology proposes an intimate relationship between God and his Creation that suggests a rich meaning by Divine Love. Its expression through human beings near and far becomes part of the linkage of relations.