Listening to Mark Vernon and Rupert Sheldrake is always a cerebral joy for me. Thanks guys :-)

I like Philip Goff’s characterization of what he calls pan-agentialism: "Particles are never compelled to do anything but are rather disposed, from the own nature, to respond rationally to their experiencing…the first flowerings of reason are found in the most primitive drives. To pursue what you are attracted or to avoid what you dislike are rational responses.” Maybe it is pink elephants (life) all the way down.

@PlatosPodcasts

18 күн бұрын

Trying to find the right language is key, yes...

Great

It's interesting to see (11:27) Spinoza's philosophical concepts in use, about time.

Is it, then, possible to imagine a new Natural Philosophy, continually conscious that the natural object' produced by analysis and abstraction is not reality but only a view, and always correcting the abstraction? I hardly know what I am asking for. I hear rumours that Goethe's approach to nature deserves fuller consideration - that even Dr Steiner may have seen something that orthodox researchers have missed. The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained it would not explain away. When it spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. While studying the It it would not lose what Martin Buber calls the Thou-situation. The analogy between the Tao of Man and the instincts of an animal species would mean for it new light cast on the unknown thing. Instinct, by the only known reality of conscience and not a reduction of conscience to the category of Instinct. Its followers would not be free with the words only and merely. In a word, it would conquer Nature without being at the same time conquered by her and buy knowledge at a lower cost than that of life. Perhaps I am asking impossibilities. Perhaps, in the nature of things, analytical understanding must always be a basilisk which kills what it sees and only sees by kiUing. But if the scientists themselves cannot arrest this process before it reaches the common Reason and kills that too, then someone else must arrest it. What I most fear is the reply that I am only one more' obscurantist, that this barrier, like all previous barriers set up against the advance of science, can be safely passed. Such a reply springs from the fatal serialism of the modern imagination - the image of infinite uniUnear progression which so haunts our minds. Because we have to use numbers so much we tend to think of every process as if it must be like the numeral series, where every step, to all eternity, is the same kind of step as the one before. I implore you to remember the Irishman and his two stoves. There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis - incommensurable with the others - and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on seeing through^ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see. The Abolition of Man CS Lewis. Concluding Paragraphs.

My God...

Now lets talk about death or what it is to be dead, at what point does an inanimate object such as snow flake or crystal become dead? Is it simply a change of state and at what point is that change of state defined as death?

@PlatosPodcasts

18 күн бұрын

Good point. Wisdom traditions would suggest that death is a part of life, and not merely in the sense of death being the end of life, but a transformation.

If Sheldrake doesn't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was there at the beginning of time, he doesn't understand the incredible mystery of the incarnation. That God became man and dwelled among us is the key to Christianity. It sounds crazy and impossible but that's the whole point. don't know who "the cosmic Christ" is but I do know that Jesus is God and that's our hope. If he can't believe the doctrine, should stop calling himself a Christian.

@PlatosPodcasts

18 күн бұрын

I don't think you disagree. Jesus of Nazareth was a temporal, is in "in time", image of eternity.

@bakhop

17 күн бұрын

@@PlatosPodcasts Except he transcended the temporal by rising from the dead and being bodily ascended into heaven, so he can't be considered "in time" like other people.

@Creative-os3hx

16 күн бұрын

Being the judge of who can identify as a Christian, could cause me to question your Christianity. When I judge you I judge myself. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. :)

@bakhop

16 күн бұрын

@Creative-os3hx then if I advocate for child marriage I can say I'm a Christian. Without definitions words have no meaning. If you don't follow the creed you aren't a Christian.

@ambientjohnny

15 күн бұрын

@@bakhop And how do you KNOW you interpret everything correctly? Seeing as the Bible is not to be taken literally and is internally inconsistent anyway.