Sheldon… What did we talk about as to pulling definitions from the internet that haven’t been socratically examined or verified by experts in the field?
Yes, but all positions held by the qualitative mind are. All beliefs are, in part, qualitative by nature and require an exercise of faith relative to their exercise. There are beliefs which require a higher standard of epistological justification to rationally believe in, but I just provided the highest standard of epistological justification outside of the Absolute itself (modal logic).
So you believe that it’s not even possible (in mind) that a God-like object exists?
No. Did you read the part on when I addressed the difference between first-order empirical claims and second-order modal claims?
A normative meta-modal claim is not subjective. A normative meta-modal claim is a claim about how we ought to use, interpret, or constrain modal concepts (possibility, necessity, impossibility), rather than a claim within a modal system about what is possible or necessary. They function like epistemic norms or rules of inference: They regulate correct modal practice.
Just as:
“One ought not infer causation from correlation” is not subjective,
neither is:
“One ought not infer metaphysical possibility from conceivability alone.”
Because modal logic can point to a claim without giving you a subjective reason to existentially commit to it.
Modal logic answers a second-order rational question:
“Is it coherent or necessary within a formal modal framework that such an entity exists?”
It does not answer the first-order existential question:
“Should I live as if this is real?”
Faith is not redundant here: it operates in a different logical space.
A common mistake is to think:
If reason points to X, then faith is unnecessary.
That assumes faith is a gap-filler for ignorance (as Søren Kierkegaard did). But in philosophical theology, faith is instead:
**Volitional assent to a proposition whose truth extends, but does not violate, reason.
**
Faith selects a semantic and existential completion of what logic leaves open. Even if a claim is necessarily true, your access to it is still mediated by:
Finite cognition
Symbolic representation
Competing modal frameworks
Undecidable axiomatic choices
Faith is the act of saying:
“Given that reason permits, and perhaps even pressures, this conclusion, I will commit rather than suspend.”
Suspension of judgment is always available. Faith is the choice not to remain suspended.
Full communion with the Absolute is possible as complete participation. It is to recognize that your being is not separated from the Absolute as you think (illusion), but to see the prevalence of the Absolute over all and in all that is ontologically positive.
You already partially dwell in this communion. It is your choice whether you seek communion or discord made manifest through your thoughts and actions.
Communion with the Absolute is not primarily about acquiring facts or gaining power. Its benefits are structural: it reorders being, knowing, valuing, and willing toward their ground.
Finite existence is marked by contingency, fragmentation, and drift. Communion with the Absolute offers:
Participation in necessary being rather than isolation in contingency
A grounding that is not subject to loss, bargaining, or external control
A sense of ontological security that does not depend on circumstances or other people
This matters especially if one fears being at the mercy of unstable systems or unreliable agents: communion with the Absolute relocates the deepest ground of one’s existence outside all coercive structures.
Epistemic benefit: truth as presence, not possession
Rather than accumulating propositions, communion yields:
Intelligibility without totalization
Orientation toward truth rather than domination of it
Relief from the anxiety of having to “figure everything out”
You don’t own truth; you participate in it. This shifts cognition from control to attunement: important if overreliance on external authorities is disempowering.
Moral benefit: alignment rather than rule-following
Instead of morality as imposed constraint:
Goodness is experienced as fittingness
Moral action flows from participation in the Good itself
Less dependence on external approval, punishment, or validation
This is autonomy through alignment, not obedience through fear.
**
Moral benefit: alignment rather than rule-following**
Instead of morality as imposed constraint:
Goodness is experienced as fittingness
Moral action flows from participation in the Good itself
Less dependence on external approval, punishment, or validation
This is autonomy through alignment, not obedience through fear.
Volitional benefit: freedom from compulsive choice
Much suffering comes from having to choose under uncertainty, scarcity, or pressure.
Communion with the Absolute offers:
A unifying telos that orders desires
Reduction of internal conflict
Freedom from frantic self-justification
Choice remains, but it is no longer desperate. Freedom becomes directed, not paralyzing.
Existential benefit: meaning without self-invention
Without an Absolute, meaning must be:
Constructed
Defended
Constantly reaffirmed
Communion provides:
Meaning as discovered participation
A narrative larger than individual success or failure
Dignity that cannot be revoked by market, institution, or peer judgment
This directly counters the feeling that life is a chore devoid of joy or depth.
Affective benefit: peace without numbness
This is subtle but important.
Communion does not eliminate emotion or desire. It:
Integrates joy, sorrow, effort, and rest
Softens despair without flattening experience
Allows sorrow without nihilism
Peace here is coherence, not sedation.
Relational benefit: love without dependency
Because the Absolute is non-competitive:
Relation to it does not diminish individuality
Love is not conditional or extractive
One is no longer required to surrender agency to be loved
This is crucial if past trust has felt dangerous or disempowering.
Meta-modal benefit: living in alignment with what must be
If the Absolute is:
Modally necessary
Ontologically grounding
Normatively ultimate
Then communion is not escapism: it is alignment with reality at its deepest level.
To refuse communion with the Absolute is to live perpetually at a removal from what already is.
Why would it induce anxiety to take personal responsibility for my own moral decisions? The only reason I can think of is some combination of learned helplessness and/or laziness.
Seems like a false dichotomy to me, but in any case, I don’t obey external influences through fear. I internalize my ethics and follow them because it’s in my rational self interest and/or that of people I love.
I don’t know what sort of internal hellscape of being you are describing but the problems you want to solve either have never existed for me, or have better solutions than you’re suggesting that I’ve already discovered.
Well at first glance I seem to be in conversation with a religious person.
Not a religion of the usual sort however. It’s as if the automobile of theism has gone into a chop shop, where the chassis has been kept but the engine of an ancient religious text has been swapped out in favour of the new engine of modal logic. The usual tropes of a God, of faith and of holiness are there, but now powered by a different fuel and now the whole kit and kaboodle has been given a new paint job.
It may have gone into the garage as a Model T and come out as a Tesla, but its still a car.
I’m starting to lose patience with you, bsengstock20.
You need only have looked at what I wrote about you replying to me in a clear, simple and direct way, using plain English to have provided me with concise answers.
You will have known before you even started typing that I had no chance of understanding what you mean by the “mind” of the absolute - but you went ahead and typed that word salad anyway.
So you’ve forced my hand.
I now remind you of what I advised you privately, concerning your conduct in the open forum.
I’m watching you very carefully and will give you one more chance to change your conduct.
Please answer the questions that I put to you in a clear, simple and direct way, using plain English.
Please note.
Any attempt on your part to do otherwise, be it arguing the case or attempting to defend your actions will result in that which I advised you of.
I’m not going to dignify this serving of word salad with anything but a firm request for you to change your conduct or have me take the action I advised you about.
This is not the relief of your epistological duty. This is, rather, coming to terms with your epistological boundness and being at peace with it while knowing and resting in the Absolute and using reason to seek out how the Absolute relates to life.
The religious, in fear of epistological boundness, forsake epistological duty. They let their fear bound them for pretense of knowledge without substance.
You have forsaken your epistological duty, but not in the same way. You were able to see the folly of the religious, but were not able to hold to the Absolute in faith because you believed the Absolute to be a fool’s object because you saw people believe in the Absolute without reason: thereby creating a false Absolute: an easy lie which stunned their growth and ruined their minds. Now that I present the Absolute by reason, you may be fearful to believe as you may become the fool that you despised by faith.
And is that any different from what is?
I simply posit you to take it one step further: recognition of yourself as part of the God-object with devotion to harmony, order, and unity.
The question of meaning. Having to justify your existence.
Very well… I’ll try to strip the term of esotericism…
The “mind” of the Absolute is a state of complete awareness of reality without confusion, effort, or conflict. The Absolute (God) does not learn, guess, or react. God understands everything by understanding itself, because nothing real is outside it (we are merely projections of God). God “will” is simply that reality be coherent and fully itself.
It’s similar in concept to occasionalism… “Created things” never truly cause anything. God is the only real cause.
I assume by “the question of meaning” you refer to existential angst around overall meaning or purpose or how that applies to individuals, which implicitly assumes meaning is externally bestowed rather than individually decided. It is asking the wrong question in the first place.
My only epistemological duty is to understand what knowledge is and how one legitimately comes to possess it, and what it means to possess it with humility. I moved on from the failed epistemology of religious faith long ago, it’s true. I do not see how “the Absolute” adds “substance” to knowledge. More specifically I don’t see how it is a necessary entity to understand anything.
Community Note: the user known as bsengstock20 has been permanently suspended. This user was warned multiple times to adhere to posting parameters given to them by site mods. The user declined to adhere to them therefore choosing this result.
bseengstock, what did I explain about trying to use arbitrary definitions that contradict the dictionary, and common usage? Google dictionary content is licensed from Oxford University Press’s Oxford Languages, so that is a rather dishonest claim to boot. Where exactly did your definition of the word faith come from again, I missed the citation? Anyone deviating from common usage carries the burden to explain precisely what they mean, and offer some sort of citation / context. NB No one is obliged to share your view that definition is more valid that common usage, just because you say so, so your semantic bullying is wasted.
Nonsense, you are simply repeating the same false equivalence, I believe the world is not flat, you believe in a deity you can demonstrate not one shred of objective evidence for, to claim both those beliefs require faith is a dishonest false equivalence, doubly so since religious faith is defined very differently from it’s primary definition which you are implying here, and is not needed at all for my belief in that example, or indeed for any beliefs I hold.
I believe you are wrong about a deity being nomologically possible, unless you can objectively demonstrate something in nature to show this to be the case, the best you could say is it that a deity is epistemically possible, but we could say that about mermaids.
Yes, your claim was wrong, as I explained when I pointed out we can arbitrarily define anything into existence, as Gödel tried to do.
It’s not my rationale, and no, nomologically possible and arbitrary definitions are not the same thing at all.
They are inherently subjective, as is morality and ethics, and as were the ones in Gödel’s premises previously mentioned. I am starting to think you have yet another of your arbitrary definitions for the word subjective.
Not the ones objected to in Gödel’s unevidenced subjective assumptions. Unless you or someone can demonstrate something beyond the bare claim to support them.
Your examples don’t address the specific claims and so are irrelevant to the objections raised about Gödel’s unevidenced subjective assumptions about a deity.
The OED seems to have a very different definition, quelle surprise.
adjective
dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred.
Try again, repetition of this claim won’t sweep away the unanswered objections.
Is this what you think religious belief has by and large produced harmony, order, and unity.? Oh Mama!
I shall note, without further irony that none of those things require a god delusion. Plenty of countries with a high majority of ostensibly atheists, and certainly secular constitutions and or governments manage to achieve this and much more, and consistently rank highest in global studies of happiest / most content people, and best places to live, and some of those highest in global studies on which countries are most democratic.
Who happen to share 98% of our DNA with other great apes, which evolved before us. You’d have to be pretty blinkered not to see how ridiculous that totally unevidenced subjective claim becomes in that context, when offered alongside an objective fact.
Or more plausibly, he sees you’re selling the same unevidenced superstition they were back when…with the same word salad, and vapid claims, all under the pretence it is a rational belief, based on a failed ontological proof.
You’re rather grandiloquent claims about your qualifications revealed only one fact about your strident claims to knowledge, that you are, or were a student. While this on its own doesn’t have any specific relevance, your adherence to a failed argument or proof does, and reads as simple bias.
Thank you for your kindness and empathy towards me regarding my suffering, bsengstock20.
Since you only seem to care about the esoteric hieroglyphics of modal logic, it comes as little surprise to me that you cannot show even the smallest degree of understanding of my grief. Most normal people would be moved to at least say something to comfort me in my distress. But you have only displayed an inhuman detachment from real, human life and a pathological inability to relate to us on any reasonable level of communication.
I see that the Moderators have kicked you out the door.
So, later today I will make good on what I advised and warned you about. Soon everyone in this forum will be able to read what went between us and they will see what kind of person you are.
I am intrigued, there are several reasons I refuse to carry on debate by PM, and one is that people are more inclined to hurl insults around in PM’s, as one apologist did to me recently, even after I had refused to debate in private. I just copied and pasted his PM’s in the thread.
He tried to grandstand and appeal to his own ”qualification” as well, though what qualifies one to believe and promote unevidenced superstition is never quite clear.
Maybe the deity they imagine to be real only wants philosophers and mathematicians with a doctorate to be save?
It seems I am destined for hell even were I to convert.
