Comments by "Peter deWolf" (@StoneShards) on "Douglas Murray and Jonathan Pageau | EP 290" video.

  1. Symbolically, "resurrection" = "reincarnation"...uh-oh, problem...49:30--Jordan gets into "time"...Perhaps, gentlemen, consider: God's purpose is the redemption of the matter of which you are constituted AND with which you have contact! Then, that matter is made responsive to spiritual gravity--it becomes directly useful for God in His greater purpose, which it is impossible to consider. Matter has an infinity of grades, densities, from the most (or nearly most) dense that we are familiar with to the most subtle which is God. The density immediately above (more subtle, less dense) the grossly material is the most problematic for us. It is a grade of matter highly malleable for us: emotional. We are the masters of our own misery. Our individual efforts to find God, to the degree they are competent, redeem the matter of our being, of whatever grade, furthering God's Grand Plan. Count me in...I want to participate in the cosmic adventure. Sure beats anything atheism has to offer!
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  2. At 1:08:20, Murray brings up "love"...and proceeds to overwork an already overworked term! "God is love"...Love is the universal tendency of association. "Eternity" is not "all time"; it's "timelessness"--"no time". Nothing matters--but everything makes a difference. Isn't that alright? Jonathan raises "belief", again...mentions "the moment"! For the individual, the "moment" is the period of his "blink rate", how fast he can go from noticing one thing to noticing another thing. Awareness is in the space BETWEEN MOMENTS as a comparison of the previous moment to the expectation of the next moment, as it manifests! Quite a balancing act! Jonathan's other point was "practice", as an important advantage religion has over philosophy. He didn't say it, but that practice is "mysticism"...and some philosophers go there. But he's right that religion makes philosophy accessible to the masses.
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  3. Around 54:00, "faith" enters the picture...But I don't see it as "a statement of belief", but as "perfect, undoubting expectation"..."If you have the faith of a mustard seed you could command that mountain to move and it will move." Murray..."what does it mean that we notice patterns?" Great question. But he ends up questioning whether "meaning" actually exists! hmm...Meaning is the instantaneous experience of awareness. Jonathan mentions "identification of things"...Consider: there is a universal "blink rate", a ridiculously high frequency, the period of which is infinitesimally small and defines the minimum amount of time it can take for anything to change--no change can happen faster than that. There is a reflection of this in the subjective realm: there is a maximum speed with which a person can change realizations, IDENTIFICATIONS. You see something, identify it; how fast can you see and identify something else, now?--that's your characteristic "uptake" rate; and it increases with intelligence.
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  4. At 18:40--Jordan's starting to speak my language: "...the hierarchy of attention you bring to bear on it, and so your intent"...he goes on to be quite correct. The dynamic interplay of attention and intention IS awareness, which Jordan might call "consciousness", where, to me, consciousness is the tendency for association. Awareness is very much the Tao, as attention is the yin and intention the yang. This is the origin of the direction of our internal lives under the auspices of IMAGINATION, the seat of spirit.
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  5. Around 17:00--Jonathan wonders about the perception of the glass...it's "is-ness", and wanes philosophical. I'd suggest something simpler: ratiocination supports a constant flurry of COMPARISON operations, psychically, which locate, by circumambulation of MEMORY, the perception of the glass. Every memory is a buoy embedded by the original awareness into the universal substrate. The observation of the glass elicits "pings" of previous such encounters in memory...because ASSOCIATION is how everything works. Now, isn't that simpler?! hehehe...maybe not...
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  6. "An ethic comes down and makes it possible for us to see the world", Jonathan? That's a hard sentence to listen to. And it's quite a stretch for an "ethic" to descend from somewhere to somewhere else that then enables our capacity for perception of existence. Murray wants to "get down to brass tacks"...has a hard time with total "belief", but not making a good case for the necessity of it.
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  7. Murray has a hard time with the concept of "value" being immaterial...29:00...Then...what should hold top place in the spiritual hierarchy, Jordan? The top of the hierarchy of attention and action is characterized as God!? I can go along with that if you don't limit God to this "internal hierarchy". The top of the hierarchy of manifest existence is also God--THE SAME GOD! Ahhh! "A meta-truth instead of a falsehood"! Indeed, Jordan, falsehood, itself, is a falsehood.
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  8. The "value-judgement" is the crux of moment-to-moment appreciation of reality. Then Jordan warns that if science doesn't get its act together and adhere more strictly to its own principles it will cease to exist as it morphs into a repository of orthodoxy.
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  9. "What survives of us?", Murray wonders, voicing the question of every natural man--but that no atheist would ask! hehehe...good. It shouldn't be too difficult for him to take a "leap of faith" from the precipice...from the place a certain logic leaves you: the existence of God is inherently impossible to prove--or disprove. Therefore, an inspired choice is allowable. Falsity is illusory; there is only truth.
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  10. "...the bottom of things...conceptual"--tall order, Jordan. Let's see how it goes...
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