Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 11, 2024 11:30:51 GMT -8
"But once it becomes evident that something isn't working, it's not consistent with teleology. Once it proves to be degenerate and causes people to become demoralized and sick of life, then we have to do away with it." He wasn't specifically talking about the Democrat Party (Marxism/socialism/wokism, etc.), but that's as good of a description as I've read.
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I wonder who he was talking about when the interviewer said: "I don't like drag queen story hour. But we need to tolerate it as one of the blessing of liberty."
I don't think even Goldberg would go that far. But David Frum, David French, maybe. What do you think?
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"Descartes before the horse." Oh, he got me with that one as well.
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kungfuzu
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 11, 2024 11:58:14 GMT -8
I do believe that is a direct quote from the scumbag phony conservative David French.
That was nice, wasn't it?
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 11, 2024 12:11:29 GMT -8
I watched it to the end. I can't pretend to understand Langan's metaphysics. But he sure seems sure of them.
I thought it was interesting that he pretty much said there wasn't anyone worth reading since Aquinas. Well, that may be an exaggeration. But what one comes away with from this conversation is:
1) There is a God and this matters.
2) Popular culture is a vortex which wants to draw you into their materialist/atheist hive mind.
3) If you are drawn in, you will lose your ability to reason, among other things.
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kungfuzu
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 11, 2024 12:57:43 GMT -8
I got only part of what he was saying. I think one problem is that most of us don't understand the meanings of many words and ideas used in metaphysics. In his case this is even more of a problem as he assigns some very specific meanings to words as well as coining new phrases for specific ideas.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 11, 2024 13:41:34 GMT -8
That's all true. But I think the bigger issue is: describe the taste of a pickle.
You can say it's like this or like that. But it's all based on actually having tasted something. To say that it is "salty" relies on having tasted salt, etc. We don't share his I.Q. so maybe he sees or knows things that we can't. Maybe.
However, Buddhism (as an example) is full of religious-authority-via-hocus-pocus. Someone says they are "enlightened." Perhaps they are, for they have a whole official esoteric lexicon to go with it. But how would one ever know if they were enlightened, especially when they aren't able to describe it?
So that's what I think about a lot of Langan's comments. I don't think he's a liar. I don't think he's a braggart. And yet he wasn't able to communicate his ideas, despite his I.Q. I've run into this many times.
But he is centrally correct about the Hive Mind that you must join if you wish to make a lot of money or, in many cases, just to exist socially. You have to bow your knee to the secular gods of progressivism and relinquish common sense. You must relinquish truth. You must relinquish individuality. And to a large extent, you must embrace chaos and evil.
And it sounds as if Langan won't do that, which is to his credit. But as for the metaphysics, philosophy, and religious ideas he forwards...well, frankly, it probably would be better at this point to read some Aquinas. And I just might do that.
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kungfuzu
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 11, 2024 15:46:26 GMT -8
I don't much blame him for not being able to communicate his detailed ideas in 2 hours. Frankly, I am not sure anyone can truly communicate a completely coherent metaphysics in any amount of time. At some point, belief has to be taken on faith. The rest of it can get so tangled and complicated that very very few can understand it, including those espousing such metaphysics.
That said, he did have some interesting ideas which are worth considering. As far as I am concerned the only thing that is logically provable is that there is a God given the mere fact that there is creation/existence. Nothing comes from nothing so something had to be behind creation. Whatever that something is, is by definition God. Beyond that it can get murky. I think one of the great advantages of the early Church was simplicity. Man has the tendency (especially the Chinese  ) to make things complicated. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 11, 2024 20:58:36 GMT -8
This is not to be unkind to a fellow who is clearly an ally. But there is a propensity for eggheads to be obscure, whether intentionally so or not.
Granted, there are some ideas (such as high mathematics) that if you don't have the brainpower to handle, any explanation is not going to suffice. And if you try to make the explanation so simple, it might no longer be describing the thing in any meaningful way.
So I'll just take it for granted that Richard Feynman understands the math of quantum physics and could never explain it to me, although I do mention his name because he is one of the very few eggheads who has, more or less, explained some of these esoteric topics for the layman.
As for most of these issues regarding god and whatnot, they are a function of ego or social dynamics. We can parse the nature of existence and God to what we suppose are fine and reasonable detail. But this has almost nothing to do with why people don't believe in God and/or hate the very idea. I would posit (and I think quite reasonably, just as you noted) that existence (being) itself is ample evidence for something stupendous and that stupendous explanations (God) should be the default assumption, whereas any idea of negation or meaninglessness inherently needs to shown to be reasonable or else it can be assumed to be false.
I do believe, from first glance, that Langan's metaphysical explanations are reformulations of Thomas Aquinas using different language and different terms, for it's quite likely that Aquinas dealt with the question of being from a whole bunch of essential angles, even if the language was different.
And I'm not sure that quantum physics shines even a bit of light on the subject except to inform us that there is an impenetrable wall of mystery, quantum physics being so intrinsically strange and (by their own accounting) not subject to reason or cause-and-effect. And thus we swing back to the Kungian-endorsed rule of nothing new under the sun: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
It is likely that there are scores of biblical passages that explain the metaphysics in an accurate way, and comprehensible from an overall perspective, or in a general way, but not in a fine-grained way that science or pure reason could ever penetrate and demonstrate. And that's where I will differ with most eggheads. They believe they are digging deep down into the details. And I really doubt that they are.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 11, 2024 21:47:45 GMT -8
I thought his take on UFOs was interesting, at least from the standpoint of saying that he thought something was going on.
However, I don't buy the argument that "all these people can't be mistaken," especially from recent experiences with all kinds of fantasies such as: "climate change," viruses can be stopped by loose-woven cloth, men can have babies, and hating white people being defined as "diversity." Oh, Mr. Kung, I have no problem believing that scores, nay, millions can see things that aren't there or believe entirely irrational things.
But, I would say, again, the question isn't about extra terrestrials. We can make all kinds of arguments pro and con, and quite reasonable ones. But it's all counting angels on the head of a pin until we have something concrete.
So what this tends to really be about (at least today) is that, although Darwinism forbids god, it does not forbid space aliens. And although the idea of God is now scoffed at as the realm of the ignorant or gullible, UFOs and space aliens are all the rage for those still looking to attach their sense of wonder to something. It is an idea that all the smart people take seriously.
These smart people (read: atheists) don't believe in God, but they believe in the multiverse (of which there is zero evidence). They believe that there is some type of creative force that can churn out infinite varieties of universes, but are repelled from the notion that, basically, they have just given a pretty good description of the traditional omnipotent, creative Almighty.
The ignorance and self-delusion of atheists/materialists can always astound. Another concept they talk about in the video (but not deeply) is the universe being a simulation. That is another popular idea among the Smart Atheists. And yet this really is an idea without substance, for a simulation implies a Simulator. And I can assure you that the idea that we are all living in a simulation is not an attempt by the atheists or materialists to find God.
And the term "simulation," simply mean "a construct." And no Christian would have the least problem of saying that God constructed the universe. Call it a "simulation," if you have no better word for it. But positing "simulations" adds nothing to the conversation at all. It is just more intellectual tom-foolery.
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kungfuzu
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 12, 2024 7:53:47 GMT -8
That is from my favorite verse in the Bible 1 Corinthians 13.
Eggheads too often try to break everything down into materialist tangible parts. In my view, this is somewhat crazy as when trying to understand God, one must also try to enter into a "spiritual?" area which does not have to follow the same physical rules which confine us. This calls for a "leap of faith."
I was thinking of this earlier this morning. Faith in God is something like loving another. You have no guarantee that God is there, just like you have no guarantee that the one you love will return that love. Yet the acts of faith and love raise the human spirit in ways that other things cannot. I will have to consider this further.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 12, 2024 8:29:58 GMT -8
I think that's an excellent point and a large part of the reason that I see drawing conclusions from quantum physics (perhaps any physics) as a dead end. We don't, like quantum particles do, exist in many states at the same time. We don't pop out of thin air. The similarity, however, is that we humans also often do very strange things. But deriving a Theory of Reality from the way the smallest parts or particles act seems dubious, at best.
Still, if you think about it, it is astonishing that something such as quantum physics (as we currently understand it) was the method chosen by God Almighty for making a coherent physical reality workable. It's random. Things pop out of thin air. Particles exist in many states at once before being made material in a specific place and time. Cause and effect is seemingly irrelevant.
But we know it does indeed work. And I'm confident in saying that no one in the age of Newton or earlier (or since) could have ever imagined this as a method for undergirding reality. And anyone that says otherwise is making it up as they go along, ex post facto. Nothing about quantum physics (if that's all you considered, and knew nothing about higher states of our physical world, which is where we live) would lead anyone to believe it would or could create reality.
So from our perspective, parsing Ultimate Reality is inherently a non-physics thing, which is exactly as you said. Logic and reason are certainly key. But there is nothing, at least from our perspective, logical or necessary about the universe or our existence. You're not ever going to will it into necessary existence by reason and measurement alone, which is why reductionism can never be the method of truly understanding the big questions.
It is a core belief among the Christian faithful, particularly those in convents and monasteries, that prayer is an active way to help those in need. No good deed, in this case, is considered wasted.
I was reading just a bit of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica last night. It's perhaps not fair to comment on something that I don't fully understand. But clearly he is trying to bludgeon the idea of God into logical reality through the sheer will of his words and intellect. Whether he succeeds or not, I don't know. Honestly, it just seems like so much word salad.
But then admittedly he was way smarter than me, so who knows?
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kungfuzu
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 12, 2024 8:40:38 GMT -8
All I can say is that quantum physics seem to demonstrate that there is a huge "potential" in pre-physical reality. Why is some form of physical reality is created over another is a mystery. I wonder about the actual randomness of things. Perhaps we are simply not yet able to note patterns and causes.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 12, 2024 9:07:25 GMT -8
Einstein bristled greatly at the random aspect of quantum physics. And, I think, for good reason. He intuited, I think (much as you and I do), that there is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than dreamt of in your Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle.
That is self-evidently true. We had such great ambitions for physics, for our "science." And, indeed, we understand a great deal of how the physical world works. But we don't know why this physical world, and not another. We can measure the mass of an electron and we don't know why this weight and not another. But we do now notice (even atheist scientists do) that our universe is almost infinitely fine-tuned with a myriad of constants (weight of the electron, etc.) so that we calculate that if even one of these measurements was off by one part in (I forget exactly) a billion zillion that our physical reality couldn't work.
That shows design. It's spooky, for sure, especially if you are an atheist. But as a whole, our universe has nothing "random" about it in the overall even if quantum physics seems to be nothing but random at diminutive levels. Through a glass darkly, and all that. And I do believe that's all that the study of things at the smallest level (reductionism) can ever give us.
Indeed, because he have sort of hit a dead-end in this regard, it has helped to birth all kinds of wacky theories, such as the multiverse. Even string theory is starting to be seen as a complete mathematical construct with no evidence in reality. I believe the same will soon be said of so-called "dark matter" or "dark energy."
My god, to have to depend on philosophers and theologians for how things really are? This is highly offensive to the materialist/atheist/Marxist mentality. But it's ultimately what we're left with. And everything we see today seems to confirm G.K. Chesterton's remark of: "When men cease to believe in God they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything."
Space aliens. Multi-verses. Men can have babies. Scientific American endorsing Kamala. The KFF hysteria and gas-lighting of the public. Fat is beautiful. Dogs are our new children. Trudeau isn't anything but a pussy-man who isn't qualified to be dog-catcher. Etc.
And your thoughts on the potential or pre-physical sound like some of Thomas Aquinas' thoughts on the various types of causation and other metaphysics. Things have "potential." I forget the exact terminology. It's all difficult to understand (at least for me), but I think it logically makes sense, or must make sense.
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) to make things complicated.