* Deriving the universe is hard. You cannot get from A is A to Pop Tarts and Pickleball.
* The universe is what it is. While we can rule out some contradictions, that is because contradictions are meaningless verbiage. But we cannot rule out a preexistant omnipotent God, a preexistent merely powerful God, an emergent God, no God, many gods, etc. by mere logic and shuffling around words.
* Solipsism is extremely unlikely. I cannot even keep track of my reading glasses. I doubt my imagination is up to the task of generating the experiences I experience.
*Assuming away paranormal activity is anti scientific. But, then again, so is believing magicians of the con artist variety.
* Assuming that a passage in the Bible was written later than advertised just because it contains a prophecy which came true is anti scientific. Then again, such assumptions *could* be true in some cases. Additional data needed. (The REALLY interesting question to me is: how far back can we trace the book of Daniel. It contains an awful lot of reasonably clear prophecies which came true, including the fact that the Roman Empire would break in two, crumble, but never completely go away.)
* Pride Month gives us evidence of the non-physical. All this faggotry runs afoul of the theory of evolution, but it is completely compatible with believing in Satan.
Back in the heyday of Anglo-American Academia, "close readings" were used on Great Books (and related works) to do a few different things; one of which was to look at a Narrative and 'go backwards' a la piecing together the atomics and concepts that gave rise to it.
If you read Aristotle (which you, My Friend most definitely have... so just go back and do some "Close Readings" ;-) ) and just slow down the Tempo, you'll notice something interesting. The "Universe is Eternal"... that notion comes from atomics that have one thing in common:
Ascribing to the Universe more Causal, Essential, properties, etc than it ought to be having.
Once you do so, the "skeleton" which you get yields philosophical + theological argument, debate, etc that inevitably gets you to the Aristotelean "Eternal Universe". And this in turn... generates organically those atomics + concepts which naturally (overtime) yield a Dharmic worldview.
Said worldview (of which Hinduism and Buddhism are the primary vehicles today) reject the existence of the external world (as "Maya"/illusion), ascribe cyclicality to Life (a la Reincarnation) and finally ascribe different values to human souls with regard to their "experiences" reincarnating.
(Not really a worldview that is conducive to most of the other stuff you choose to pursue!)
This however did not happen in the West, precisely because Christianity's rise "killed" the "Eternal Universe"- derivatives. Christianity however did not succeed to stop the "Eternal Universe"-notion to hibernate in Academia, and then awaken with a vengeance in the "Idealistic Turn".
So now we are back again... starting off with "Eternal Universe"-precursors. The Doom Funnel is as follows: "ET" precursors -> "ET" is respectable -> "ET" derivatives -> "ET" derivates respectable -> Dharmic precursors -> Dharma respectable -> Dharma derivatives -> Death of the West.
Civilization (as opposed to "Character") Game Over My friend ;-)
... At least if these sorts of Tenets are fleshed out in their entirety.
As has happened from time to time on the Tree of Woe (see in particular "The Problem of Evil, parts I and II), the commenters on my article have led me to greater insights than I offered in the original article.
In this case, @SAUVAGEPEN suggested I check out the work of Wolfgang Smith, with whom I was previously unacquainted. Smith does exactly what I thought no one else was doing, which is to integrate Aristotelianism, Christianity, quantum physics, and post-physical and paranormal phenomenon. He even integrates Traditionalism *and* Direct Realism/Anti-Skepticism.
I'll probably make a Part II to this essay to discuss Smith's work, once I've had a chance to read and digest more of it.
The Quantum Enigma is what I’ve read and that is what I was thinking of when I said there is at least one Aristotelian interpretation of quantum physics but I am eager to read more Wolfgang Smith.
Materialism or physicalism if they are the same thing are a modern rejection of and proposed alternative to what came before it. Since physicalism is simply wrong, why bother reforming it somehow or try to create a “post”physicalism? Doesn’t it make more sense to reject it entirely? Where does that leave us? Really, since all modern errors come from or are reactions to the errors of nominalism and Cartesian dualism, where it really leaves us is back at the highly and well developed, logical, consistent and to those who understand it, obviously good and true Thomistic metaphysics that was widely accepted before the west was seduced by the “physicalist” and other modern errors. Thomism does not err in any of the ways that Taylor listed; there is no mind-body problem in thomism; mind-body problems come from Cartesianism or semi-Cartesianism. Thomism was never abandoned by everyone, it has been studied and developed by a few throughout the modern era, there is a thomistic interpretation of quantum physics which I think is the best of the many proposed interpretations; I don’t know which if any “findings of parapsychology” contradict Thomism but If parapsychology is real I’m sure Thomism will help us understand it and account for it. Thomistic metaphysics is a living philosophy, if somewhat dormant from lack of disciples, but if we abandon modern errors, Thomism will flourish and become vibrant and productive.
I’m not convinced that Thomistic metaphysics could not account for reincarnation. Even though Aquinas does write dogmatic theology his metaphysics is just metaphysics. It is true that Christian theology rejects reincarnation but it seems to me that in this post you are talking about metaphysics per se and that Taylor is here talking about metaphysics per se.
This is tangential but the traditional Christian explanation of the phenomenon of reincarnation is a good one: it’s the human imagination and spiritual deception by fallen angels --who of course have knowledge that we don’t have.
Sure, sure. Look, I'm not an enemy of Thomism! I consider myself Aristotelian in general outlook and have said so many times. I have all of Ed Feser's books and that hefty Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science that came out a couple years back. If someone had written a Christian version of Taylor's book I'd have happily cited it, but to my knowledge, they haven't...
So far all I have seen in terms of Thomistic science writing has been explaining how materialistic scientific findings can be understood from a Thomistic perspective. It's defensive. And therefore it can't gain territory. What I think is needed is a focus on how the recent findings of non-materialist science support Thomism.
It seems to me as if Christian philosophy today is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. For several centuries, the advance of science has come at the detriment of religion. As such Christianity has been playing defense, trying to find the "God of the Gaps" and prove that one can be a Christian and a scientist without conflict. But nowadays there are hundreds of scientific findings that support the existence of "something more" and I don't see much effort by Christians to investigate it. Why isn't the Catholic Church commissioning a worldwide study on NDEs or reincarnation? If this sort of discussion of post-physical science is happening in Christian circles I haven't seen it.
Ed Feser, in all of his voluminous writing, has written exactly three articles that even *mention* paranormal activities, and in each case he's been utterly dismissive of them as irrelevant to metaphysics and stated that if they are real they simply *must* be demonic. That's not a scientific nor a philosophical approach. That is a blanket refusal to examine evidence that his theological worldview on such things might be wrong. It's no different than how materialist skeptics handle things. https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/search?q=paranormal
The question “Why isn’t the Catholic Church…” implies an assumption that said church has goals/motives in broad alignment with those of the author. I have doubts that this is so.
This is a great read. You lay everything out so clearly and carry a reader, who may not be as up to speed with all these topics (like me), along through this idea in an easily digestible way. So thank you for that.
As for the 10 tenets of post physicalism - I tend to agree with these tenets, for a few different reasons, but mainly because I just feel the physicalist view of things is not only incredibly reductionist, but also just leaves far to many things not sufficiently answered.
Thanks for the kind words! I largely agree with the tenets of post-physicalism too (obviously) with the exception of a few quibbles, one of which is I think Taylor goes too far in rejecting the existence of reality independent of us. He veers closer to idealism, I'm more dualist.
Perhaps we are having a semantic debate rather than a meaningful difference. I believe that the contemporary consensus holds two views simultaneously, which are both wrong and contradictory:
- Reality is a social construct
- Reality is nothing more than dead matter that has nothing to do with our minds
I do not read Taylor as saying that reality is a social construct. I see him as saying that the reality we perceive emerges from the interaction of mind and matter, similar to Henry Stapp's realistic interpretation of orthodox quantum mechanics. or the Traveling Minds interpretation, and I think that is likely true. I think Taylor probably overstates the ramifications of this, but I don't think he's wrong that there's a relationship between them.
Are we on the same page or do you take a different approach?
> I see him as saying that the reality we perceive emerges from the interaction of mind and matter
From this it would seem to follow that different minds can create different realities from the same matter. Of course, once everyone is free to create his own reality, that's going to include realities where matter doesn't exist at all.
I think Taylor is trying too hard to reject every aspect of physicalism. In so doing often falls into the opposite error. For example:
> The world does not exist “out there” in separation to us. Our own consciousness is deeply interconnected with it. We share the same essence as all things, and are therefore one with all things.
sounds a lot like the Gnostic "we are actually gods, we just need to become aware of this fact".
That tenet is the one I have the most difficulty accepting as well. The fact that we are connected to things doesn't imply that they don't have an independent existence.
'Gnosticism' is rather overused as a label. Panentheism has it's defenders within Orthodox Christianity, for example.
The key tenet of that heterodox stream of neoplatonic woo-woo of archons and shells and projections that gets labelled, somewhat a-historically but nonetheless commonly, as 'gnostic' is that the world, creation, matter, is evil. That this world is a prison for pure and good spirits, who should escape it using the particular secret knowledge, the 'gnosis' granted by the sect.
That is somewhat problematic as so many of the primary sources are either in Greek or Russian, and we're dealing with high level speculative theology rather than dogmatics. But the collective wisdom on the Orthodox wiki acknowledges (https://orthodoxwiki.org/Panentheism) the concept, as understood within the Orthodox symbolic system, as legitimate. The main name you will see in connection with Orthodox Panentheism is Sergei Bulgakov, a white Russian exile priest. From my, admittedly rather dilettante understanding, it emerges from the Platonic metaphysics of Saint Gregory Palamas.
Yup. That’s what “universe” means. How about this: “God is that Being whose nature is to be” or “God is being (existence) himself” or “I AM THAT AM”
One day when I was a dumb teenage atheist, I realized that what a thing is is different than that a thing is--that existence and essence are not the same thing--and that existence is real, is important, and is different than nature or essence. I understood that saying “existence itself is real and is important” is logically the same thing as saying “God is real and important” since in western thought that is the most basic and essential definition of “God” so I thought “well I guess I am not an atheist after all.” It didn’t make me a Christian and it wasn’t a big deal, atheism wasn’t a religion to me so I could easily abandon it. I started telling my friends “I am a theist but I don’t believe in a PERSONAL God.” Then I started thinking about it more and reading...
But in just a few years I was baptized, so it really was a big deal I just didn’t know it.
I'm not sure, but I think you are missing my point.
The universe could conceivably be turtles all the way down, but observation indicates that this is not the case. Observation, not axiomatic philosophy.
A quick check with Google Maps indicates that the Greek Gods have either abandoned Mount Olympus or moved out at some point.
Christianity has taken huge hits because the geologic record does not match a literal interpretation of Genesis chapter 1. (There are other aspects of Christianity which do still hold up, and maybe Genesis 1 was meant to be metaphorical to some degree. This gets tricky for many reasons. )
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The really tough question: can we ascertain the true nature of the cosmos and who/what/if the Creator is even with observation? Should some being appear and claim to be the Creator, could we KNOW he isn't lying? We run up against Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology become indistinguishable from magic.
Should humanity run into a hard brick wall in terms of fundamental science for a long enough time, then we might get a demonstration which is convincing.
For example, now that we "know" that stars are gigantic balls of gas trillions of miles away, if a giant were to arrive and successfully call the stars to fall to earth to be collected in his basket, that would be a good indication of supernatural power. Resurrecting the dead would also qualify. I have great faith in the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
“Turtles all the way down” is a allusion to a joke that you have apparently taken seriously?
I don’t have anything to say about the Greek gods. I know homelessness is a serious problem but I don’t have the answer.
In regards to geology being a problem I think you are talking about the phenomenon of Fundamentalism which is a fringe movement and not the Christian mainstream, historically.
“Can we understand...who/what/if the Creator is?” The finite cannot comprehend the infinite but obviously it’s not that difficult to understand what “the Creator” means, in a limited human sense at least. The creator is the source of existence, is that Being whose nature is being--existence--itself. As for evidence that existence is real, everything that exists is evidence. No demonstration of “supernatural power” would add to that. If anything, it would probably just make you doubt your own senses.
If people are walking up to you and telling you “I am the Creator” I am confident that you are bright enough not to take them seriously.
It's definitely his own spin on things, which I find rather irritating - we already have a lot of very solid writing on the spiritual side of reality, so please stop reinventing the wheel (especially when your version happens to be square) already...
But we don't. The vast majority of older spiritual writing entirely ignores the recent findings of parapsychology, quantum physics, and so on. Thomism has nothing to say about Stapp's dualist interpretation of wave function collapse, or the very strong evidence for reincarnation that is documented in hundreds of pages in Irreducible Mind.
For conventional science, it's easy to dismiss those findings but the *basis* for rejecting those findings is physicalism, "they can't be true because physicalism." But if we want a philosophy of something more, we need (IMO) to accept those phenomenon as real and account for them. Christianity has been fighting a rear guard defense of a traditional worldview, but it's done it from the wrong paradigm without leveraging the evidence accumulated that its critics are wrong.
"But we don't. The vast majority of older spiritual writing entirely ignores the recent findings of parapsychology, quantum physics, and so on. Thomism has nothing to say about Stapp's dualist interpretation of wave function collapse, or the very strong evidence for reincarnation that is documented in hundreds of pages in Irreducible Mind."
I should think not - given St Thomas wrote centuries before Bohr, Stapp et al were born :P . Jokes aside though, Eugine Nier has a point regarding quantum physics, Christianity has always allowed for some forms of what we'd probably call parapsychology these days (think of witchcraft or demonic possession), and reincarnation is but one possible explanation for the experiences described.
To go into the last point in a bit more detail, suppose you have a memory you believe is from a past life. What is the available evidence? A memory. Okay, but what are the possible causes for having that memory?
1. Mental trickery you've performed on yourself.
2. Reincarnation.
3. A "free-floating" memory your mind acquired somehow.
4. A memory (real or false) implanted in your mind by another being.
I'm sure people can think of others too. Anyway, the point is not that there isn't evidence for reincarnation, but that said evidence is also evidence for a number of other things. The question is now which is more plausible (my guess is 3 and/or 4, but YMMV).
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"Christianity has been fighting a rear guard defense of a traditional worldview, but it's done it from the wrong paradigm without leveraging the evidence accumulated that its critics are wrong."
All four are possible explanations. But there are, to my knowledge, absolutely no church authorities actually investigating this.
There are secular parapsychologists who insist its real based on the evidence, and theological thinkers who insist it can't be real based on theology, and they are not working with each other. Put another way: There are Christian biologists who can intelligently speak on issues of evolution. There are Christian astrophysicists who can intelligently speak on the big bang.
Where are the Christian parapsychologists? Where are the Christian researchers into OOBs and NDEs and UFOs? Where are the Christian quantum physicists? (There's been one that I know of.) All of that research seems to be coming from the secular or 'new age' or Hindu thinkers.
> Thomism has nothing to say about Stapp's dualist interpretation of wave function collapse
Surprisingly, yes it does. In fact quantum physics fits much better with an Aristotelian potentiality and actuality metaphysics than with a classical materialist metaphysics.
Sure, sure, I'm familiar with Ed Feser's work. I actually wrote an article about the Aristotelian view of quantum physics as traveling forms, "Escaping the Black Iron Prison", a few months back! But I specifically meant they haven't interacted with *Stapp's* work, which I consider to be the best philosophical explanation of what quantum mechanics is telling us.
Put another way:
There are scientists seeing evidence for non-physicalist reality
There are theologians who believe in non-physicalist reality
There are philosophers making arguments for non-physicalist reality from theology
There are philosophers making arguments for non-physicalist reality from science
But these groups are not interacting with each other in a way that will help. Almost no one (other than Taylor) seems to have tried to integrate them. Most of the science-based philosophers go out of their way to disclaim "this has nothing to do with religion!" and the theology-based philosophers go out of their way to try to explain how their findings still work within the existing paradigms.
Nice post. Personally I think the biggest problem the west faces is its Christian-derived core belief in egalitarianism. Only a Nietzschian transvaluation of values back at least partially into warrior values has a chance of righting the ship, imo... I delve into it and a discussion of the historian Tom Holland here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why
That's a really excellent essay. I've noted in my own writing (Terrible Swift Sword, On St. Michael, etc.) how I have found the anti-warrior values of Christianity problematic. On a personal level I struggle to reconcile them with my own intuitive value system, which is considerably more in tune with Roman aristocratic values. On a public level I'm trying to find the balance you speak of...
There is always a tension between the priestly caste and the warrior caste, this is part of what drove the emergence of Buddhism out of an inchoate Brahmanism.
But to call the Medieval Christian Order somehow 'egalitarian' is rather strange. Christianity only gained these strange new egalitarian outlooks in conversation with modernity, with 'liberte, egalite, fraternite.'
Christianity is not purely egalitarian. People vary in their talents, as the parable goes. Or, people differ in their spiritual gifts as St. Paul put it.
The fundamental point of Christianity is that the leader must serve, not oppress. The Spiderman slogan is very Christian: "With great power comes great responsibility."
That responsibility thingy is what separates populism over left-socialism. A nation of human scale businesses and independent family farms spreads power and responsibility.
The situation we have today is a high concentration of wealth not seen since the Gilded Age plus enormous proxy power granted to investment banks such as Blackrock. And then there is the incredible concentration of power in the federal government.
The call for more equality is strong because the unjust inequality is so high. We have people and institutions who have incredible power without the responsibility to go with it, and the common man is expected to live on government goodies.
The main path upward is to prove greater need. We have gone from meritocracy to grovelocracy.
We need to tax the crappe out of woke rich rent seekers, and encourage the break up of overly large corporations. We need to rethink antitrust, and realize that antitrust is not just for consumers. Antitrust gives producers multiple workplaces to choose from. Every workplace is hostile to somebody.
(And for those who groan at the thought of reviving antitrust lawsuits, I feel your pain. I'll be suggesting alternatives when I get to Rule 13. For now, note that the huge regulatory overhead of creating a public corporation plus the favorable treatment of capital gains over ordinary income has favored merger-mania for decades. We have protrust policies in effect currently.)
Post physical ism: While these are not my precise conclusions, most are clearer expressions of what I have been grinding towards for some years. They are also what I derived from Edward Feser’s blog, which I am sure our host is aware of, and which I strongly recommend.
Feser is a genius, for sure! I part ways with him on some matters but I would not dispute his excellence (and probably wouldn't debate him for fear I'd lose)
"Of the Logos which is as I describe it men always prove to be uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos, they [men] are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when asleep." Heraclitus, a beautiful essay, I always wanted to merge stoicism, Platonism, and dualism.......thank you for wise words, ushta te my friend
The closest I have seen to a merge of Stoicism, Platonism, and Dualism is the Middle Platonic work of Plutarch. He integrates them impressively well, with Aristotelian ethics thrown in too.
Seems to be on the right track. Have you looked into Whitehead and his followers? It's a non-dualistic picture which provides some details as to how "we are all connected" might work. A great book about it is David Ray-Griffin's "God exists but Gawd does not".
I think Whiteheadian philosophy provides some crucial insights and a complementary perspective to the Platonism of Smith or the supernaturalism implicit in much of theism and Christian theology. As for Stapp, I'm not entirely convinced of the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics as individual humans "collapsing wave functions" (if I remember correctly), there seems to be missing a higher horizon that holds reality stable (the collapse might be thought of as mitigated by a higher form of consciousness of which we are nonetheless part of).
Then again, I'm a bit of a relativist/postmodernist when it comes to "grand ontologies", in that I think each perspective can bring something valuable to the table, unless we assume it's the whole truth.
I have not read Whitehead, but a number of the other writers I've read have referenced him as a key thinker, including Henry Stapp and Wolfgang Smith and a few others.
I conversed with Dr Stapp a couple years ago and he agreed (and said in his latest book) that a type of Logos-like divine mind is necessary to make sense of his system, because collapse was happening before humans evolved.
It was in his very last book, Quantum Theory and Free Will: How Mental Intentions Translate into Bodily Actions. Here was the conversation we had...
Dear Dr. Stapp:
I have read your books with avid interest. I am by training a lawyer and philosopher (Harvard Law '00), but I was fortunate to have enough college education in mathematics and physics to be able to grasp the basics of quantum theory. As an armchair philosopher I have long seen the problems evident in the orthodox materialism that is taught in the mainstream, in its inability to solve the mind-body problem or even to offer any reason to believe our thoughts have any meaning or value whatsoever. Your books have been a breath of fresh air.
I just finished your most recent book and I wanted to ask if you had written anything further on the topic of chapter 11, the Fundamentally Mental Character of Reality. I would be curious if there is a particular philosophy you think that has been developed that corresponds to the universal mind. Do you see our own minds as being instantiations of the universal mind, like particles emerging from a field? Do you think it is possible that the universality of mind explains some paranormal phenomenon?
Prior to reading your chapter, I had concluded that the ancient Stoics (with their conception of the Logos or Reason as the underlying basis of reality, with all of Mankind sharing in the Logos), were the closest to what quantum physics was telling us today about reality. E.g.:
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"The Stoics identified logos (reason), fate and god, regarding them as different aspects of the one principle which creates and sustains the world. The logos, through acting on passive unqualified substance, makes it what it is. But since the logos is considered to be a body, and is co-extensive with the world and is in everything, god or logos must also be in us. The Stoics believed that the governing part of each human soul, the hegemonikon, is a fragment of the divine logos. Epictetus imagines Zeus talking to him: "I have given you a part of myself, the power of impulse and repulsion, of desire and avoidance in a word, the power of using impressions." (Discourses 1.1.12, trans. Dobbin 1998, 3) Later, he writes:
For if god had so arranged his own part, which he has given to us as a fragment of himself, that it would be hindered or constrained by himself or by anyone else, he would no longer be god, nor would he be caring for us as he ought.
[Therefore]... we should view fate as operating through agents. We are partners with god, working with god to bring about the history of the world as it is meant to be brought about. Should we find ourselves reacting to circumstances in this way rather than that, this is not necessarily fate compelling an outcome that has been predestined behind our backs so to speak; it may be that we ourselves are of our own free volition and in some very small measure, making fate into what it is.
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This seems to me to be very much in line what you are saying - that the universal mind is in each of us, and through our exercise of our shared participation in that mind, we cause events to occur.
Thank you very much for entertaining the musings of a fan, and thank you for your efforts to illuminate a complex field and restore sanity and reason to physics and philosophy.
Kind regards,
Alexander Macris
To which he responded:
Dear Alexander,
I gratefully appreciate your alerting me to the close similarity of my ontology to that of the ancient Stoics!
I had heretofore not been aware of that connection, but now certainly agree with you about that. I shall henceforth not neglect to mention it
I too was an ardent admirer of scientism but also feel there is something more. I mean with modern science, quantum physics and relativity, there always has been something more tapping the physicalist on the shoulder.
The question for many people I suspect, at least it is for me, is how to leave the security and take the next step into something different. Anything positing teleology or some unknown aether that connects us feels risky in that it's hard to know whether we're slipping into bed with the woo-mongers.
But there's lots of bridging material out there for new ideas. For me now the subjective/objective divide does feel dated, explaining the universe as quarks and gluons is transparently bereft, and the ignoring the scientist that does the science an obvious performative contradiction, ie science creates a system that fails to account for our 'being in the world'.
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. The only weak point I can think of is that this doesn’t offer the promise of reuniting with lost loved ones, which is an important aspect of Christianity and something many of us increasingly hope for as we grow old.
Yes. The treatment of the afterlife was somewhat lackluster in Taylor's book but that's because he largely only dealt with areas for which there was scientific discussion, e.g. OOBs and NDEs. He personally seems to believe we do reunite, and I do too!
As a Christian and an Engineer, squaring the circle between the dead materialistic philosophy of post modernism and my faith seemed a useless endeavor. Philosophy was for those who couldn’t do math or build something useful.
As I have aged the burdens of military service, regrets and weight of life demands a more robust answer to my common and shallow understanding of our Christian faith and our reality. Thank you for showing where and why I was wrong in my youth.
* Deriving the universe is hard. You cannot get from A is A to Pop Tarts and Pickleball.
* The universe is what it is. While we can rule out some contradictions, that is because contradictions are meaningless verbiage. But we cannot rule out a preexistant omnipotent God, a preexistent merely powerful God, an emergent God, no God, many gods, etc. by mere logic and shuffling around words.
* Solipsism is extremely unlikely. I cannot even keep track of my reading glasses. I doubt my imagination is up to the task of generating the experiences I experience.
*Assuming away paranormal activity is anti scientific. But, then again, so is believing magicians of the con artist variety.
* Assuming that a passage in the Bible was written later than advertised just because it contains a prophecy which came true is anti scientific. Then again, such assumptions *could* be true in some cases. Additional data needed. (The REALLY interesting question to me is: how far back can we trace the book of Daniel. It contains an awful lot of reasonably clear prophecies which came true, including the fact that the Roman Empire would break in two, crumble, but never completely go away.)
* Pride Month gives us evidence of the non-physical. All this faggotry runs afoul of the theory of evolution, but it is completely compatible with believing in Satan.
Back in the heyday of Anglo-American Academia, "close readings" were used on Great Books (and related works) to do a few different things; one of which was to look at a Narrative and 'go backwards' a la piecing together the atomics and concepts that gave rise to it.
If you read Aristotle (which you, My Friend most definitely have... so just go back and do some "Close Readings" ;-) ) and just slow down the Tempo, you'll notice something interesting. The "Universe is Eternal"... that notion comes from atomics that have one thing in common:
Ascribing to the Universe more Causal, Essential, properties, etc than it ought to be having.
Once you do so, the "skeleton" which you get yields philosophical + theological argument, debate, etc that inevitably gets you to the Aristotelean "Eternal Universe". And this in turn... generates organically those atomics + concepts which naturally (overtime) yield a Dharmic worldview.
Said worldview (of which Hinduism and Buddhism are the primary vehicles today) reject the existence of the external world (as "Maya"/illusion), ascribe cyclicality to Life (a la Reincarnation) and finally ascribe different values to human souls with regard to their "experiences" reincarnating.
(Not really a worldview that is conducive to most of the other stuff you choose to pursue!)
This however did not happen in the West, precisely because Christianity's rise "killed" the "Eternal Universe"- derivatives. Christianity however did not succeed to stop the "Eternal Universe"-notion to hibernate in Academia, and then awaken with a vengeance in the "Idealistic Turn".
So now we are back again... starting off with "Eternal Universe"-precursors. The Doom Funnel is as follows: "ET" precursors -> "ET" is respectable -> "ET" derivatives -> "ET" derivates respectable -> Dharmic precursors -> Dharma respectable -> Dharma derivatives -> Death of the West.
Civilization (as opposed to "Character") Game Over My friend ;-)
... At least if these sorts of Tenets are fleshed out in their entirety.
As has happened from time to time on the Tree of Woe (see in particular "The Problem of Evil, parts I and II), the commenters on my article have led me to greater insights than I offered in the original article.
In this case, @SAUVAGEPEN suggested I check out the work of Wolfgang Smith, with whom I was previously unacquainted. Smith does exactly what I thought no one else was doing, which is to integrate Aristotelianism, Christianity, quantum physics, and post-physical and paranormal phenomenon. He even integrates Traditionalism *and* Direct Realism/Anti-Skepticism.
I'll probably make a Part II to this essay to discuss Smith's work, once I've had a chance to read and digest more of it.
The Quantum Enigma is what I’ve read and that is what I was thinking of when I said there is at least one Aristotelian interpretation of quantum physics but I am eager to read more Wolfgang Smith.
Indeed, you were correct and I was in grave error.
I have asked to be tortured by twice the number of vultures during my next contemplation on the Tree of Woe in order to make up for this error.
Materialism or physicalism if they are the same thing are a modern rejection of and proposed alternative to what came before it. Since physicalism is simply wrong, why bother reforming it somehow or try to create a “post”physicalism? Doesn’t it make more sense to reject it entirely? Where does that leave us? Really, since all modern errors come from or are reactions to the errors of nominalism and Cartesian dualism, where it really leaves us is back at the highly and well developed, logical, consistent and to those who understand it, obviously good and true Thomistic metaphysics that was widely accepted before the west was seduced by the “physicalist” and other modern errors. Thomism does not err in any of the ways that Taylor listed; there is no mind-body problem in thomism; mind-body problems come from Cartesianism or semi-Cartesianism. Thomism was never abandoned by everyone, it has been studied and developed by a few throughout the modern era, there is a thomistic interpretation of quantum physics which I think is the best of the many proposed interpretations; I don’t know which if any “findings of parapsychology” contradict Thomism but If parapsychology is real I’m sure Thomism will help us understand it and account for it. Thomistic metaphysics is a living philosophy, if somewhat dormant from lack of disciples, but if we abandon modern errors, Thomism will flourish and become vibrant and productive.
I’m not convinced that Thomistic metaphysics could not account for reincarnation. Even though Aquinas does write dogmatic theology his metaphysics is just metaphysics. It is true that Christian theology rejects reincarnation but it seems to me that in this post you are talking about metaphysics per se and that Taylor is here talking about metaphysics per se.
This is tangential but the traditional Christian explanation of the phenomenon of reincarnation is a good one: it’s the human imagination and spiritual deception by fallen angels --who of course have knowledge that we don’t have.
Sure, sure. Look, I'm not an enemy of Thomism! I consider myself Aristotelian in general outlook and have said so many times. I have all of Ed Feser's books and that hefty Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science that came out a couple years back. If someone had written a Christian version of Taylor's book I'd have happily cited it, but to my knowledge, they haven't...
So far all I have seen in terms of Thomistic science writing has been explaining how materialistic scientific findings can be understood from a Thomistic perspective. It's defensive. And therefore it can't gain territory. What I think is needed is a focus on how the recent findings of non-materialist science support Thomism.
It seems to me as if Christian philosophy today is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. For several centuries, the advance of science has come at the detriment of religion. As such Christianity has been playing defense, trying to find the "God of the Gaps" and prove that one can be a Christian and a scientist without conflict. But nowadays there are hundreds of scientific findings that support the existence of "something more" and I don't see much effort by Christians to investigate it. Why isn't the Catholic Church commissioning a worldwide study on NDEs or reincarnation? If this sort of discussion of post-physical science is happening in Christian circles I haven't seen it.
Ed Feser, in all of his voluminous writing, has written exactly three articles that even *mention* paranormal activities, and in each case he's been utterly dismissive of them as irrelevant to metaphysics and stated that if they are real they simply *must* be demonic. That's not a scientific nor a philosophical approach. That is a blanket refusal to examine evidence that his theological worldview on such things might be wrong. It's no different than how materialist skeptics handle things. https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/search?q=paranormal
Now I have to take it all back and its JD Sauvage's fault for pointing out Wolfgang Smith's work to me. :-)
The question “Why isn’t the Catholic Church…” implies an assumption that said church has goals/motives in broad alignment with those of the author. I have doubts that this is so.
This is a great read. You lay everything out so clearly and carry a reader, who may not be as up to speed with all these topics (like me), along through this idea in an easily digestible way. So thank you for that.
As for the 10 tenets of post physicalism - I tend to agree with these tenets, for a few different reasons, but mainly because I just feel the physicalist view of things is not only incredibly reductionist, but also just leaves far to many things not sufficiently answered.
Thanks for the kind words! I largely agree with the tenets of post-physicalism too (obviously) with the exception of a few quibbles, one of which is I think Taylor goes too far in rejecting the existence of reality independent of us. He veers closer to idealism, I'm more dualist.
> rejecting the existence of reality independent of us
Rejecting the existence of an independent reality is not a minor quible.
Relative to my disagreement with the contemporary consensus, it's a minor quibble!
The rejection of an independent reality is one of the main causes of the problems with the contemporary consensus.
Perhaps we are having a semantic debate rather than a meaningful difference. I believe that the contemporary consensus holds two views simultaneously, which are both wrong and contradictory:
- Reality is a social construct
- Reality is nothing more than dead matter that has nothing to do with our minds
I do not read Taylor as saying that reality is a social construct. I see him as saying that the reality we perceive emerges from the interaction of mind and matter, similar to Henry Stapp's realistic interpretation of orthodox quantum mechanics. or the Traveling Minds interpretation, and I think that is likely true. I think Taylor probably overstates the ramifications of this, but I don't think he's wrong that there's a relationship between them.
Are we on the same page or do you take a different approach?
> I see him as saying that the reality we perceive emerges from the interaction of mind and matter
From this it would seem to follow that different minds can create different realities from the same matter. Of course, once everyone is free to create his own reality, that's going to include realities where matter doesn't exist at all.
"post-physicalism" sounds alot like, no EXACTLY like, yoga.
We have come full circle. Embrace tradition, frens
Indeed!
I think Taylor is trying too hard to reject every aspect of physicalism. In so doing often falls into the opposite error. For example:
> The world does not exist “out there” in separation to us. Our own consciousness is deeply interconnected with it. We share the same essence as all things, and are therefore one with all things.
sounds a lot like the Gnostic "we are actually gods, we just need to become aware of this fact".
That tenet is the one I have the most difficulty accepting as well. The fact that we are connected to things doesn't imply that they don't have an independent existence.
'Gnosticism' is rather overused as a label. Panentheism has it's defenders within Orthodox Christianity, for example.
The key tenet of that heterodox stream of neoplatonic woo-woo of archons and shells and projections that gets labelled, somewhat a-historically but nonetheless commonly, as 'gnostic' is that the world, creation, matter, is evil. That this world is a prison for pure and good spirits, who should escape it using the particular secret knowledge, the 'gnosis' granted by the sect.
Can you link me to any writers from the Orthodox perspective who have defended panentheism? That's something I'd really like to understand.
That is somewhat problematic as so many of the primary sources are either in Greek or Russian, and we're dealing with high level speculative theology rather than dogmatics. But the collective wisdom on the Orthodox wiki acknowledges (https://orthodoxwiki.org/Panentheism) the concept, as understood within the Orthodox symbolic system, as legitimate. The main name you will see in connection with Orthodox Panentheism is Sergei Bulgakov, a white Russian exile priest. From my, admittedly rather dilettante understanding, it emerges from the Platonic metaphysics of Saint Gregory Palamas.
https://jesusandtheancientpaths.com/2022/05/26/on-orthodox-panentheism-part-3-st-gregory-palamas-and-his-platonic-inheritance/
https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9783957437303/BP000018.xml?language=en
Thank you!
Fabius: “The universe is what it is.”
Yup. That’s what “universe” means. How about this: “God is that Being whose nature is to be” or “God is being (existence) himself” or “I AM THAT AM”
One day when I was a dumb teenage atheist, I realized that what a thing is is different than that a thing is--that existence and essence are not the same thing--and that existence is real, is important, and is different than nature or essence. I understood that saying “existence itself is real and is important” is logically the same thing as saying “God is real and important” since in western thought that is the most basic and essential definition of “God” so I thought “well I guess I am not an atheist after all.” It didn’t make me a Christian and it wasn’t a big deal, atheism wasn’t a religion to me so I could easily abandon it. I started telling my friends “I am a theist but I don’t believe in a PERSONAL God.” Then I started thinking about it more and reading...
But in just a few years I was baptized, so it really was a big deal I just didn’t know it.
I'm not sure, but I think you are missing my point.
The universe could conceivably be turtles all the way down, but observation indicates that this is not the case. Observation, not axiomatic philosophy.
A quick check with Google Maps indicates that the Greek Gods have either abandoned Mount Olympus or moved out at some point.
Christianity has taken huge hits because the geologic record does not match a literal interpretation of Genesis chapter 1. (There are other aspects of Christianity which do still hold up, and maybe Genesis 1 was meant to be metaphorical to some degree. This gets tricky for many reasons. )
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The really tough question: can we ascertain the true nature of the cosmos and who/what/if the Creator is even with observation? Should some being appear and claim to be the Creator, could we KNOW he isn't lying? We run up against Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology become indistinguishable from magic.
Should humanity run into a hard brick wall in terms of fundamental science for a long enough time, then we might get a demonstration which is convincing.
For example, now that we "know" that stars are gigantic balls of gas trillions of miles away, if a giant were to arrive and successfully call the stars to fall to earth to be collected in his basket, that would be a good indication of supernatural power. Resurrecting the dead would also qualify. I have great faith in the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
“Turtles all the way down” is a allusion to a joke that you have apparently taken seriously?
I don’t have anything to say about the Greek gods. I know homelessness is a serious problem but I don’t have the answer.
In regards to geology being a problem I think you are talking about the phenomenon of Fundamentalism which is a fringe movement and not the Christian mainstream, historically.
“Can we understand...who/what/if the Creator is?” The finite cannot comprehend the infinite but obviously it’s not that difficult to understand what “the Creator” means, in a limited human sense at least. The creator is the source of existence, is that Being whose nature is being--existence--itself. As for evidence that existence is real, everything that exists is evidence. No demonstration of “supernatural power” would add to that. If anything, it would probably just make you doubt your own senses.
If people are walking up to you and telling you “I am the Creator” I am confident that you are bright enough not to take them seriously.
It's definitely his own spin on things, which I find rather irritating - we already have a lot of very solid writing on the spiritual side of reality, so please stop reinventing the wheel (especially when your version happens to be square) already...
But we don't. The vast majority of older spiritual writing entirely ignores the recent findings of parapsychology, quantum physics, and so on. Thomism has nothing to say about Stapp's dualist interpretation of wave function collapse, or the very strong evidence for reincarnation that is documented in hundreds of pages in Irreducible Mind.
For conventional science, it's easy to dismiss those findings but the *basis* for rejecting those findings is physicalism, "they can't be true because physicalism." But if we want a philosophy of something more, we need (IMO) to accept those phenomenon as real and account for them. Christianity has been fighting a rear guard defense of a traditional worldview, but it's done it from the wrong paradigm without leveraging the evidence accumulated that its critics are wrong.
"But we don't. The vast majority of older spiritual writing entirely ignores the recent findings of parapsychology, quantum physics, and so on. Thomism has nothing to say about Stapp's dualist interpretation of wave function collapse, or the very strong evidence for reincarnation that is documented in hundreds of pages in Irreducible Mind."
I should think not - given St Thomas wrote centuries before Bohr, Stapp et al were born :P . Jokes aside though, Eugine Nier has a point regarding quantum physics, Christianity has always allowed for some forms of what we'd probably call parapsychology these days (think of witchcraft or demonic possession), and reincarnation is but one possible explanation for the experiences described.
To go into the last point in a bit more detail, suppose you have a memory you believe is from a past life. What is the available evidence? A memory. Okay, but what are the possible causes for having that memory?
1. Mental trickery you've performed on yourself.
2. Reincarnation.
3. A "free-floating" memory your mind acquired somehow.
4. A memory (real or false) implanted in your mind by another being.
I'm sure people can think of others too. Anyway, the point is not that there isn't evidence for reincarnation, but that said evidence is also evidence for a number of other things. The question is now which is more plausible (my guess is 3 and/or 4, but YMMV).
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"Christianity has been fighting a rear guard defense of a traditional worldview, but it's done it from the wrong paradigm without leveraging the evidence accumulated that its critics are wrong."
That much we can agree on.
All four are possible explanations. But there are, to my knowledge, absolutely no church authorities actually investigating this.
There are secular parapsychologists who insist its real based on the evidence, and theological thinkers who insist it can't be real based on theology, and they are not working with each other. Put another way: There are Christian biologists who can intelligently speak on issues of evolution. There are Christian astrophysicists who can intelligently speak on the big bang.
Where are the Christian parapsychologists? Where are the Christian researchers into OOBs and NDEs and UFOs? Where are the Christian quantum physicists? (There's been one that I know of.) All of that research seems to be coming from the secular or 'new age' or Hindu thinkers.
> Thomism has nothing to say about Stapp's dualist interpretation of wave function collapse
Surprisingly, yes it does. In fact quantum physics fits much better with an Aristotelian potentiality and actuality metaphysics than with a classical materialist metaphysics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQYZ2lR2B-s
Sure, sure, I'm familiar with Ed Feser's work. I actually wrote an article about the Aristotelian view of quantum physics as traveling forms, "Escaping the Black Iron Prison", a few months back! But I specifically meant they haven't interacted with *Stapp's* work, which I consider to be the best philosophical explanation of what quantum mechanics is telling us.
Put another way:
There are scientists seeing evidence for non-physicalist reality
There are theologians who believe in non-physicalist reality
There are philosophers making arguments for non-physicalist reality from theology
There are philosophers making arguments for non-physicalist reality from science
But these groups are not interacting with each other in a way that will help. Almost no one (other than Taylor) seems to have tried to integrate them. Most of the science-based philosophers go out of their way to disclaim "this has nothing to do with religion!" and the theology-based philosophers go out of their way to try to explain how their findings still work within the existing paradigms.
Does that make more sense?
Now I have to take it all back and its JD Sauvage's fault for pointing out Wolfgang Smith's work to me. :-)
Rule #1: Complexity sells.
Nice post. Personally I think the biggest problem the west faces is its Christian-derived core belief in egalitarianism. Only a Nietzschian transvaluation of values back at least partially into warrior values has a chance of righting the ship, imo... I delve into it and a discussion of the historian Tom Holland here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why
That's a really excellent essay. I've noted in my own writing (Terrible Swift Sword, On St. Michael, etc.) how I have found the anti-warrior values of Christianity problematic. On a personal level I struggle to reconcile them with my own intuitive value system, which is considerably more in tune with Roman aristocratic values. On a public level I'm trying to find the balance you speak of...
There is always a tension between the priestly caste and the warrior caste, this is part of what drove the emergence of Buddhism out of an inchoate Brahmanism.
But to call the Medieval Christian Order somehow 'egalitarian' is rather strange. Christianity only gained these strange new egalitarian outlooks in conversation with modernity, with 'liberte, egalite, fraternite.'
I'll let you and Neoliberal Feudalism fight it out!
Christianity is not purely egalitarian. People vary in their talents, as the parable goes. Or, people differ in their spiritual gifts as St. Paul put it.
The fundamental point of Christianity is that the leader must serve, not oppress. The Spiderman slogan is very Christian: "With great power comes great responsibility."
That responsibility thingy is what separates populism over left-socialism. A nation of human scale businesses and independent family farms spreads power and responsibility.
The situation we have today is a high concentration of wealth not seen since the Gilded Age plus enormous proxy power granted to investment banks such as Blackrock. And then there is the incredible concentration of power in the federal government.
The call for more equality is strong because the unjust inequality is so high. We have people and institutions who have incredible power without the responsibility to go with it, and the common man is expected to live on government goodies.
The main path upward is to prove greater need. We have gone from meritocracy to grovelocracy.
We need to tax the crappe out of woke rich rent seekers, and encourage the break up of overly large corporations. We need to rethink antitrust, and realize that antitrust is not just for consumers. Antitrust gives producers multiple workplaces to choose from. Every workplace is hostile to somebody.
(And for those who groan at the thought of reviving antitrust lawsuits, I feel your pain. I'll be suggesting alternatives when I get to Rule 13. For now, note that the huge regulatory overhead of creating a public corporation plus the favorable treatment of capital gains over ordinary income has favored merger-mania for decades. We have protrust policies in effect currently.)
Post physical ism: While these are not my precise conclusions, most are clearer expressions of what I have been grinding towards for some years. They are also what I derived from Edward Feser’s blog, which I am sure our host is aware of, and which I strongly recommend.
Feser is a genius, for sure! I part ways with him on some matters but I would not dispute his excellence (and probably wouldn't debate him for fear I'd lose)
"Of the Logos which is as I describe it men always prove to be uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos, they [men] are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when asleep." Heraclitus, a beautiful essay, I always wanted to merge stoicism, Platonism, and dualism.......thank you for wise words, ushta te my friend
The closest I have seen to a merge of Stoicism, Platonism, and Dualism is the Middle Platonic work of Plutarch. He integrates them impressively well, with Aristotelian ethics thrown in too.
Seems to be on the right track. Have you looked into Whitehead and his followers? It's a non-dualistic picture which provides some details as to how "we are all connected" might work. A great book about it is David Ray-Griffin's "God exists but Gawd does not".
I think Whiteheadian philosophy provides some crucial insights and a complementary perspective to the Platonism of Smith or the supernaturalism implicit in much of theism and Christian theology. As for Stapp, I'm not entirely convinced of the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics as individual humans "collapsing wave functions" (if I remember correctly), there seems to be missing a higher horizon that holds reality stable (the collapse might be thought of as mitigated by a higher form of consciousness of which we are nonetheless part of).
Then again, I'm a bit of a relativist/postmodernist when it comes to "grand ontologies", in that I think each perspective can bring something valuable to the table, unless we assume it's the whole truth.
I have not read Whitehead, but a number of the other writers I've read have referenced him as a key thinker, including Henry Stapp and Wolfgang Smith and a few others.
I conversed with Dr Stapp a couple years ago and he agreed (and said in his latest book) that a type of Logos-like divine mind is necessary to make sense of his system, because collapse was happening before humans evolved.
Interesting about Stapp, perhaps he was careful not to go too far "out there" in the book I've read. Thanks.
It was in his very last book, Quantum Theory and Free Will: How Mental Intentions Translate into Bodily Actions. Here was the conversation we had...
Dear Dr. Stapp:
I have read your books with avid interest. I am by training a lawyer and philosopher (Harvard Law '00), but I was fortunate to have enough college education in mathematics and physics to be able to grasp the basics of quantum theory. As an armchair philosopher I have long seen the problems evident in the orthodox materialism that is taught in the mainstream, in its inability to solve the mind-body problem or even to offer any reason to believe our thoughts have any meaning or value whatsoever. Your books have been a breath of fresh air.
I just finished your most recent book and I wanted to ask if you had written anything further on the topic of chapter 11, the Fundamentally Mental Character of Reality. I would be curious if there is a particular philosophy you think that has been developed that corresponds to the universal mind. Do you see our own minds as being instantiations of the universal mind, like particles emerging from a field? Do you think it is possible that the universality of mind explains some paranormal phenomenon?
Prior to reading your chapter, I had concluded that the ancient Stoics (with their conception of the Logos or Reason as the underlying basis of reality, with all of Mankind sharing in the Logos), were the closest to what quantum physics was telling us today about reality. E.g.:
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"The Stoics identified logos (reason), fate and god, regarding them as different aspects of the one principle which creates and sustains the world. The logos, through acting on passive unqualified substance, makes it what it is. But since the logos is considered to be a body, and is co-extensive with the world and is in everything, god or logos must also be in us. The Stoics believed that the governing part of each human soul, the hegemonikon, is a fragment of the divine logos. Epictetus imagines Zeus talking to him: "I have given you a part of myself, the power of impulse and repulsion, of desire and avoidance in a word, the power of using impressions." (Discourses 1.1.12, trans. Dobbin 1998, 3) Later, he writes:
For if god had so arranged his own part, which he has given to us as a fragment of himself, that it would be hindered or constrained by himself or by anyone else, he would no longer be god, nor would he be caring for us as he ought.
Epictetus, Discourses 1.17.27, trans. Dobbin 1998, 36
[Therefore]... we should view fate as operating through agents. We are partners with god, working with god to bring about the history of the world as it is meant to be brought about. Should we find ourselves reacting to circumstances in this way rather than that, this is not necessarily fate compelling an outcome that has been predestined behind our backs so to speak; it may be that we ourselves are of our own free volition and in some very small measure, making fate into what it is.
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This seems to me to be very much in line what you are saying - that the universal mind is in each of us, and through our exercise of our shared participation in that mind, we cause events to occur.
Thank you very much for entertaining the musings of a fan, and thank you for your efforts to illuminate a complex field and restore sanity and reason to physics and philosophy.
Kind regards,
Alexander Macris
To which he responded:
Dear Alexander,
I gratefully appreciate your alerting me to the close similarity of my ontology to that of the ancient Stoics!
I had heretofore not been aware of that connection, but now certainly agree with you about that. I shall henceforth not neglect to mention it
Many thanks,
Henry
I too was an ardent admirer of scientism but also feel there is something more. I mean with modern science, quantum physics and relativity, there always has been something more tapping the physicalist on the shoulder.
The question for many people I suspect, at least it is for me, is how to leave the security and take the next step into something different. Anything positing teleology or some unknown aether that connects us feels risky in that it's hard to know whether we're slipping into bed with the woo-mongers.
But there's lots of bridging material out there for new ideas. For me now the subjective/objective divide does feel dated, explaining the universe as quarks and gluons is transparently bereft, and the ignoring the scientist that does the science an obvious performative contradiction, ie science creates a system that fails to account for our 'being in the world'.
Amen.
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. The only weak point I can think of is that this doesn’t offer the promise of reuniting with lost loved ones, which is an important aspect of Christianity and something many of us increasingly hope for as we grow old.
Yes. The treatment of the afterlife was somewhat lackluster in Taylor's book but that's because he largely only dealt with areas for which there was scientific discussion, e.g. OOBs and NDEs. He personally seems to believe we do reunite, and I do too!
And thank you!
As a Christian and an Engineer, squaring the circle between the dead materialistic philosophy of post modernism and my faith seemed a useless endeavor. Philosophy was for those who couldn’t do math or build something useful.
As I have aged the burdens of military service, regrets and weight of life demands a more robust answer to my common and shallow understanding of our Christian faith and our reality. Thank you for showing where and why I was wrong in my youth.
WP class ‘02
And I just bought all the books cited in your article.
Honored to be a part of your philosophical journey, sir.