Gnosticism - The world is a vampire, sent to drain? Secret destroyers hold you up to the flames?

hypermagda said:
By saying that "we can choose how we frame the things that happen" you end up implying that there is no objective moral truth. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.
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When we say something is "objective" we mean that like an "object" it is consistently perceived in more or less the same way by lots of other beings. How we perceive and describe physical objects is also dependent upon the frames we out around them. If we're talking about climbing mountains (this is the frame) then we might agree that Mount Everest is "big". It is "objectively" big. If we're talking about planets, Mount Everest is small.

Now if many sensitive beings who have empathy see something as wrong because we naturally all put the same frame on it, then I would say it is objectively wrong just like Everest from a mountaineer's perspective is objectively big.

By shifting the frame to a larger one, the meaning and the morality didn't go away... They're just contained in a smaller frame. So let's say you're reading a bedtime story and it gets too intense, you can close it up and put it on the shelf for a while which takes you out of that frame so you can chill out and go to sleep.

We like stories that have conflict (I don't recall a story about gardening making the NYT best-seller list) because we can empathize with the characters. Things are "objectively" good and bad within the story, but whether the story itself on the whole is good or bad cannot be judged within the frame of the story.

I am not advocating that we completely abandon the human perspective which naturally frames things based on empathy. I am only saying that if it gets too intense to handle we can recall a larger frame.
 
Steve said:
Aargh - that would be the last thing I'd try to do. I'm no churchgoer, nor do I consider myself religious. I do however, consider myself a fan of Jesus, and probably Buddha and others too. So what does that make me? :eek: ;)
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....a very loveable guy! :)

But not someone who I can have a fruitful logic-based discussion with (which is what I'm mostly interested in)....same goes for Typoz - I love you guys, but I'm here in Skeptiko to make some progress in my rational understanding of "reality" while you two have a pretty different approach and are happy with it, so please don't get offended if "I give up" ..but our exchanges don't seem to take us very far. Peace & love though, as I said I'm very grateful for lovely people like you in this horrible world!
 
Steve said:
My feeling is that Typoz maybe regrets getting involved ! :)
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Broadly speaking, no matter what the topic, I don't go for long drawn-out debates. My ideal is to say what I think and leave others to agree or disagree as they see fit.There's nothing personal in that, nor is it specific to this topic.
 
Hurmanetar said:
I am not advocating that we completely abandon the human perspective which naturally frames things based on empathy. I am only saying that if it gets too intense to handle we can recall a larger frame.
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...mmmhhhh....not too sure about the rest of your post but to bring this long discussion to a close (while mostly agreeing to disagree :-)), I can say that I am with you on with these two final sentences (above)....provided this "larger frame" does not boil down to "oh well, I am sure that it all makes sense in the big scheme of things". That certainty is an intellectual and ethical copout for me.
 
hypermagda said:
...mmmhhhh....not too sure about the rest of your post but to bring this long discussion to a close (while mostly agreeing to disagree :)), I can say that I am with you on with these two final sentences (above)....provided this "larger frame" does not boil down to "oh well, I am sure that it all makes sense in the big scheme of things". That certainty is an intellectual and ethical copout for me.
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I'd prefer to say I believe in balance and happy endings. :)

Also the example you gave of the abused wife illustrates how the frames we put on things can keep us stuck in a bad situation. Should we put an optimistic frame on things to try and push them in a good direction or should we put a negative frame on things to help us see that we should get out of it entirely? That's a tough one and something I'm probably not very good at - being sometimes overly optimistic.
 
The world is a vampire sent to drain? aka: Why does evil exist?

I've been googling this question for the past several days and happy to report back that the "answer is out there". The only catch is there are as many answers as there are points of view. The only tough part is chosing which answer we think is most compatible with what we already "know to be true."

Then it occured to me that the question is actually a Rorschach Test. It's an ink blot in which we get to describe what we see. Of course what we see depends entirely on who we are.

To me: evil is that which strips everything from our lives that can possibly give it meaning. It takes it all, every last bit of light, right down to our very bones, and then grinds our bones into a fine powder and disperses that residue into the 4 directions of the winds, until there is nothing left at all.

What remains for us, when everything is gone that could possibly provide meaning for us, is us stripped down to our very essence. It is at that point that we get to decide is life meaningful for us? No one else can answer that question for us. We have to answer us with our self.

I then wondered how might a holocaust survivor answer that question for themselves? We could all agree that someone who went through that particular hell, where everything they held holy was ground into dust, and yet still decided that life had meaning, well then their answer could be of some interest to me.

Some quotes from Viktor Frankl:

What can life I over me life?
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing the last of human freedoms - to chose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to chose one's own way.
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Life is never made unbearable by cicumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
 
Michael2 said:
I then wondered how might a holocaust survivor answer that question for themselves? We could all agree that someone who went through that particular hell, where everything they held holy was ground into dust, and yet still decided that life had meaning, well then their answer could be of some interest to me.
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You might check out "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom.
 
hypermagda said:
I don't love the suicide bombers who blew themselves up here in Brussels on March 22nd causing the death (and the burning and mutilation) of dozens of people (and who could easily have killed me as well, incidentally, only that day I was not working and therefore did not use that subway station). So in your opinion I should start loving them? Please explain how this would be in any way sensible or even useful. I could perhaps understand if you said to me "do not hate them", but why should I LOVE them of all people? What is your definition of love, exactly?
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Wow I didn't realize you were so close to the bombing... Glad you didn't work that day!

I think love in this sense would be a desire for good to ultimately come to that person... Even if it is on the other side of burning in hell for a bit.
 
Steve said:
Laird said:
On the other hand, I think it's important to recognise the logical inconsistencies in our own positions
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Any logic we may treasure doesn't appear to be that important in reality as Quantum Mechanics has shown.



I don't know. Not too bothered about speculating.



I'm a father, I can tell you what I think. I'm not God. (Well maybe, but it's complicated.....:))



Maybe.



Maybe they're the ones who are lucky? You're assuming too much.



How can you know?



Who knows? Maybe it is. Maybe making bad choices forces us down a particular path, when a more loving choice would have avoided it. If we believe NDErs then it seems that death is not the horror that it is seen to be, most people report that they now have no fear of dying.

Most of your comments are based on an emotional reaction to what must be seen as pre-judging things that we just do not know.



So let's be clear. You're saying that a human is in a very good position to know how God should react. I humbly suggest that's preposterous. I can only think I might know from my perpective.



Typoz provided a better response to this than I might have done.



I don't think Jesus did anything to warrant his suffering.




Yes.


I had to smile at this. Hasn't this whole conversation been hypothetical?

Thanks Laird. I will leave any of your responses to Tom Campbell to others who might want to chip in. I really don't think very much of this matters, all that does, is that we try to make loving choices. The rest I'll leave in 'others' capable hands.
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Thanks, Steve. It's probably not fruitful to continue this discussion, except for a couple of points:

You suggest that quantum mechanics shows that logic is not that important in reality, yet didn't we arrive at our formulation of quantum mechanics in the first place through the use of logic and the scientific method?

You try to clarify that I'm "saying that a human is in a very good position to know how God should react". Not quite. I was specifically referring to the human being (you) who had asserted that God sees His creations as we see our children. I think that once you take that view, then, especially given that you are yourself a father, you should have a very good idea of how God would react to our suffering: just ask yourself how you feel about the suffering of your own children.

Thanks for the cordial exchange of views.

P.S. I think this all does matter very much, but I don't expect or need for you to agree.
 
Hurmanetar said:
If you could somehow know all the facts around a choice (including all the butterfly effects) and neither option was the clear winner, then the ambiguity is within you and your own motivations and intents. ...it's still ambiguity!
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If you could know all the facts around a choice then that would imply that everybody else's choices are fixed (facts), I suppose - at least given any particular choices you might make. Sounds kind of deterministic, although that depends on your definition of determinism...

But is your concept necessarily best framed as "ambiguity" or could it also (or better) be framed as "freedom"? The genuine freedom to choose for yourself which is the winner rather than for it to be deterministically predictable which wins! But this might lead back into one of those interminable discussions about free will, so maybe I'll just leave it there (which is not to stop you from responding)...

Thanks for the philosophical interlude. :-)
 
Typoz said:
Obviously not.

If it was so, there's no way I would have made the distinction in the first place.
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So, you distinguish between evil people/beings and evil acts, and you say that we should love the former and... take what frame re the latter?

I think, as Magda pointed out, that a lot of this depends on what you mean by "love". I can think of at least four different meanings that might apply in this context.
 
Laird said:
I think, as Magda pointed out, that a lot of this depends on what you mean by "love". I can think of at least four different meanings that might apply in this context.
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Following up on this, here are the different senses of "love" that I can think of that could apply in this context:

  1. Approval, endorsement or preference. e.g. "I love Bernie Sanders as a candidate. He's really standing up against the corruption, greed and self-interest in the political system. I especially love him over Hillary".
  2. A positive extreme on the scale of (platonic or romantic) affection. e.g. "I love my girlfriend, she's so sweet and wonderful, there's nothing I wouldn't do for her. And I love my father too, he's been a total rock, and he's such a caring man".
  3. A wish of goodwill towards; a will for no harm to occur towards another - due to, or alternatively - a form of fundamental respect (for the rights, needs, preferences and desires of the other). e.g. "I love animals and plants. That's why I don't harm them unnecessarily".
  4. The basis of an act of positivity or improvement towards another. e.g. "Joe, using your last dollar to buy that homeless stranger a meal was a real act of love".

I suspect (hope) that you don't intend for us to "love" evil people/beings in either of the first two senses, Typoz, and my earlier comment that loving evil [people] seems evil in itself was predicated on the context of love in the first or second sense.

I suspect that you mean it more in the third sense, with perhaps some element of the fourth. I can accept that to some extent, but it comes with qualifications. Before getting to qualifications: I do not believe in punishment for the sake of retribution, and thus I wish no harm upon evil people/beings merely because they are evil. In that sense, I can accept an attitude of love in the sense of goodwill towards them, and even of acts which they experience positively. In other words, a positive experience is, in and of itself, an objectively good thing whether it occurs to a good or an evil person/being. The qualifications are these: "in and of itself" is not enough; sometimes, actions need to be taken to prevent evil from causing harm, or rewarding it with good experiences might teach it that it should continue what it is doing. Sometimes, too, due to finite resources, to reward evil would be to withhold a reward from good, and I do believe that rewards should be preferenced for good rather than evil. So, sometimes (often), it is appropriate to withhold goodwill or "love" (in the third and fourth senses above) from evil for consequentialist reasons, even though I can see no justification for doing this for purely retributive purposes (and will probably start a new thread on this to see if anybody wants to try to change my mind).
 
Laird said:
I suspect (hope) that you don't intend for us to "love" evil people/beings in either of the first two senses, Typoz, and my earlier comment that loving evil [people] seems evil in itself was predicated on the context of love in the first or second sense.
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I don't think we can know the love that drives god, I suspect that none of the four examples you have given come close, with two being the closest. Many people who have had a taste of this love are NDErs that, when they come back having been exposed to the light are very often profoundly changed.

I have no doubt that the most evil person on earth's heart would simply melt when exposed to such a love. A total all forgiving, all embracing love. :)
 
Hurmanetar said:
Wow I didn't realize you were so close to the bombing... Glad you didn't work that day!
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Thank you my friend. Yes, it was certainly not a day I'll ever be able to forget - though I suffered no harm, I can assure you that when something like this happens so 'close to home' it leaves a mark on your soul. I happened to write a short post just a couple of hours after the attack because, syncronistically, Steve posted a reply to me just after the bombing (and that was the first time he addressed me here on Skeptiko!) - his kind, uplifting message truly meant a lot to me because I was very distressed, but also because it contained a very personal sync - something extremely personal so I won't share it publicly, but it's something which immediately made me think of a dead member of my family, so I felt like "something was speaking to me" through Steve (who, though? I don't know - and maybe it's all in my mind!). It goes without saying that when Steve wrote it he didn't know that I live in Brussels (I had never said it here before), that one of the bombings had been in "my" subway station, and perhaps he wasn't even aware that there had been a terror attack in Brussels. You can find these two posts here (#60 and #61 http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threa...g-tv-between-psychic-and-magician.3100/page-3)

Anyway Steve's post also contained another sync - he mentioned a musician named Gareth Malone (and nobody else that could be googled - I mean, he could have mentioned other names or none at all). I checked him out on the Internet and saw that he was born on Nov 9th, so 9/11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Malone The bomb went off in "my" subway station at 9.11 : http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/News/1.2612438

In fact there are several more syncs related to the terror attacks but I would have to publish detailed info here about what I have been experiencing in these past three years (as well as about my private life) so I won't, however there are a couple of people here in the Forum with whom I've shared some of this info who will probably see some more syncs in what I have written. For their benefit I will also say that exactly 73 minutes elapsed between the explosions (airport: 7.58 - Maalbeek station: 9.11), I only noticed this because it was something that was published in the papers here (they wondered "what happened in those 73 minutes?" http://www.dhnet.be/actu/belgique/z...t-pendant-73-minutes-56f518cb35702a22d5b7d7cc). Bizarrely, the date of the death of that family member that Steve's message made me think of is, in fact, 7/3.

And, as I said, there would be more.
 
Wow, this thread certainly took off! :)

Excellent thoughts all round, was a very interesting read - thanks to all!

I'm struggling to contribute here, and like a lot of other times - I pretty much agreed with everything everyone said.

Actually, I think that kind of sums up my life over the past 16 years (after I stopped just mindlessly believing in a "Good God" and mindlessly rationalising away suffering.......unlike, might I say, ANYONE in this thread, very sophisticated & "open-minded" expressions of the "God is Love" idea here, very impressive!).

One moment I'm swearing, spitting and cursing at "God", "reality" or whatever...why is the world like this! What kind of a fucking imbecile "God"....

.....and then the next day I feel like everything makes perfect sense & I feel "embraced" by something indescribable which re-contextualises all this suffering of sentient beings we see around us into something indescribable.....

More recently....as my brain and intelligence dims..... I've begun to see even this dynamic as a dance, a dance of that very "love", and that that is all there ever is/was...

......but who knows, tomorrow I may be spitting & swearing in God's face all over again! :mad:;)
 
Hello everyone, this is my first post and I am happy to be here.

I've been partial to Gnostic ways of thinking for my entire life. The irony of this is that I've had a pretty good life which involved relatively little suffering or evil. However, being a very sensitive person, the anticipation of suffering and the suffering of others has always been a roadblock to my spiritual development.

What I would like to explore is the idea that suffering is necessary for positive growth. A couple years ago I started to experience the minor health issues and decline we all get as we grow older. Some people can handle this with grace, but for me it was devastating. I only recount this to make a very important point. It's undeniable that this experience promoted positive change in my life. I've made more changes for the better in the last two years than I had in the previous 30. I won't list all the changes, but the most important one is that my concept of love has both broadened and deepened.

The point of this story is to show that, at least for me, that growth could not have happened without the pain and suffering. It definitely seems as if we're here to experience exactly that kind of learning and growth. The problem is that all of this new understanding rests on the idea that there is a life after death. If not, then the whole discussion is pointless. But this may also explain why there is a veil of ignorance about any possible afterlife. If we had concrete knowledge of an afterlife, it would immediately put a halt to the growth and development. It also explains why only extremely good people (like saints, etc.) are allowed to have mystical confirmation of the afterlife, but not the rest of us.

Having said all that, it's still my greatest (and close to only) desire in life: For everyone to know that we do not die.

Thoughts?
 
Arete said:
Hello everyone, this is my first post and I am happy to be here.

I've been partial to Gnostic ways of thinking for my entire life. The irony of this is that I've had a pretty good life which involved relatively little suffering or evil. However, being a very sensitive person, the anticipation of suffering and the suffering of others has always been a roadblock to my spiritual development.

What I would like to explore is the idea that suffering is necessary for positive growth. A couple years ago I started to experience the minor health issues and decline we all get as we grow older. Some people can handle this with grace, but for me it was devastating. I only recount this to make a very important point. It's undeniable that this experience promoted positive change in my life. I've made more changes for the better in the last two years than I had in the previous 30. I won't list all the changes, but the most important one is that my concept of love has both broadened and deepened.

The point of this story is to show that, at least for me, that growth could not have happened without the pain and suffering. It definitely seems as if we're here to experience exactly that kind of learning and growth. The problem is that all of this new understanding rests on the idea that there is a life after death. If not, then the whole discussion is pointless. But this may also explain why there is a veil of ignorance about any possible afterlife. If we had concrete knowledge of an afterlife, it would immediately put a halt to the growth and development. It also explains why only extremely good people (like saints, etc.) are allowed to have mystical confirmation of the afterlife, but not the rest of us.

Having said all that, it's still my greatest (and close to only) desire in life: For everyone to know that we do not die.

Thoughts?
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Depends on the particular perspective I guess...
 
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