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Some very beautiful thoughts and ideas have been presented here, thanks everyone!!!
Philosophy is indispensable to universe comprehension and ascension, but most times it is relegated to the status of unwanted sibling to its big brothers, religion and science. Of course all three are merely necessary adjuncts to personality, spirit and love–the pattern, soul and consciousness of the cosmos. That’s my current understanding.
Unfortunately philosophy is more the butt of jokes and an indicator of a low quality education than it is a method of grasping universe significances. In the West, seldom is it taught except at the college level and above, and few philosophy majors will find sustaining employment in the field, in spite of the sorely aching need for it at every level of education and vocation. Expanding values make the time/space universe go round, without them no one, and nothing evolves Paradiseward.
Hopefully, someday soon, philosophy will be able to assume its proper role in everyday life. And in schools, from elementary to post grad. The East may be ahead of the West in the promulgation and promotion of philosophy, the inculcation of the values wrought from cosmic comprehension, religious insight and scientific evaluation. The Tao has long been a staple of Chinese thought, a guiding philosophical influence from cradle to grave. It’s great flaw is of course the neglect of the personality of God. We can pray (and work) that the revered philosophy of the East and the distinctive God concept of the West will make good companions when once they are reconciled by the revealed cosmic philosophy given in our new revelation.
If we think well and do good, truth and beauty will follow us everywhere, thank God.
Richard E Warren
Gene wrote:So what’s happening when a human being deduces facts about the universe we live in without experience? example: Einstein doing his thought experiments and coming up with his relativity theories? Theories that have been later proven to be mostly correct/factual. philosophy involved I believe?Einstein was using facts, putting them together in reasonable ways and coming up with theories based upon his realm of experience. He took his outer world, applied it to his inner world of astute reasoning and arrived at a theory. He still had to prove his theory in the outer world which he did with the solar eclipse photos. Just because he used his mind and imagination does not necessarily constitute philosophy; he was merely reasoning. Theorizing about scientific facts is still science. In order to be called philosophy there must be a union between reasoning and faith, a soul level of consciousness. Philosophy is supposed to marry science and religion. Einstein’s theories have nothing to do with religion; they are science.
103:7.13 Reason is the act of recognizing the conclusions of consciousness with regard to the experience in and with the physical world of energy and matter. Faith is the act of recognizing the validity of spiritual consciousness—something which is incapable of other mortal proof. Logic is the synthetic truth-seeking progression of the unity of faith and reason and is founded on the constitutive mind endowments of mortal beings, the innate recognition of things, meanings, and values.
Rick Warren wrote: If we think well and do good, truth and beauty will follow us everywhere, thank God.That’s an interesting way to put it. I always thought that truth comes first, then beauty and goodness follow.
103:9.10 Through truth man attains beauty and by spiritual love ascends to goodness.
TBG are merely intellectual exercises unless coordinated by personality. Fortunately for us we have the personification of truth living within our souls so it is easy to make truth personally relevant and experiential. The world of truth is about relationships; relationships between persons and persons, persons and things. It’s through the personality relationship between Creator and creature that we begin to appreciate the stabilizing harmony of beauty and its relation to goodness. But I think truth leads the way. The Spirit of Truth is the Way.
56:10.8 3. Ethic sensitivity. Through the realization of truth the appreciation of beauty leads to the sense of the eternal fitness of those things which impinge upon the recognition of divine goodness in Deity relations with all beings; and thus even cosmology leads to the pursuit of divine reality values—to God-consciousness.
Rick Warren wrote: If we think well and do good, truth and beauty will follow us everywhere, thank God.That’s an interesting way to put it. I always thought that truth comes first, then beauty and goodness follow.
103:9.10 Through truth man attains beauty and by spiritual love ascends to goodness.
Point taken, notwithstanding they must go hand in hand to remain united
Richard E Warren
Rick Warren wrote: Point taken, notwithstanding they must go hand in hand to remain unitedYes if we strive for unity with more than just our intellect and develop a philosophy of living a triune approach to reality, otherwise there’s distortion. Think of the poor souls who only strive for goodness without truth. Good deeds alone may be only socially relevant. Adoration of beauty alone can be tragically shallow. Truth must lead the way. If the coordination of TBG is part of the evolution of the Supreme, then the Spirit of Truth is the only way we can hope to approach it.
117:1.7 Truth, beauty, and goodness are correlated in the ministry of the Spirit, the grandeur of Paradise, the mercy of the Son, and the experience of the Supreme. God the Supreme is truth, beauty, and goodness, for these concepts of divinity represent finite maximums of ideational experience. The eternal sources of these triune qualities of divinity are on superfinite levels, but a creature could only conceive of such sources as supertruth, superbeauty, and supergoodness.
117:1.8 Michael, a creator, revealed the divine love of the Creator Father for his terrestrial children. And having discovered and received this divine affection, men can aspire to reveal this love to their brethren in the flesh. Such creature affection is a true reflection of the love of the Supreme.
Thank you Bonita.
not sure how to post quotes yet but this makes me consider the paper on the 7 Master Spitits where things like “The Reality Response” and “The Cosmic Mind” and “The Cosmic Intuitions” are discussed.
i believe Einstein was a moral person otherwise he would not have written a book like “Mein Weltbild” where he expressed his humanism, unity of personality, the high mission of science and the need for us all to overhaul our mental attitudes. He was more than a scientist.
also he would not have been surprised and disgusted when his famous equation that unifies energy and matter was degraded into a bomb. It never occurred to him, he was totally taken by suprise.
then there is a part of that paper that gets into Morals, Virtue and Personality and this struck me as relevant: “man is able to exercise scientific moral, and spiritual insight prior to all exploration or experimentation.”
einstein stated several times he wanted to discover the mind of God and I believe he had a relative degree of success.
Rick wrote:
“How do we cultivate interest in this NEW cosmic philosophy so recently delivered into the hands of mankind?”
A great question which makes me think about why others might become interested in this new cosmic philosophy. If philosophy reconciles “the verifiable facts of science and the genuine insights of religion,” this may partially explain why there is so little interest in it. In the modern understanding, it is impossible to reconcile the immanence of God with his transcendence, because God is no longer believed to live in the universe. The strong theism of pre-modern religion has been attenuated by deism. To remain culturally relevant, all major religions have been compelled to accept the scientific idea of a Big Bang origin. This materialistic cosmology is inconsistent with the presence of an actively engaged God who creates, controls, and upholds the evolving universe. There is no place for cosmic philosophy when science succumbs to the mechanistic philosophy of materialism and religion tends toward the deistic philosophy of spiritism. But there is still a deep religious need for a truly cosmic philosophy.
“It is well-nigh impossible for human logic and finite reason to harmonize the concept of divine immanence, God within and a part of every individual, with the idea of God’s transcendence, the divine domination of the universe of universes. These two essential concepts of Deity must be unified in the faith-grasp of the concept of the transcendence of a personal God and in the realization of the indwelling presence of a fragment of that God in order to justify intelligent worship and validate the hope of personality survival.” (5:5.6)
Revelation answers this need. Religion has long discerned the immanence of God in the spiritual values of truth, beauty, goodness, and love. Revelation reveals the transcendence of God in an entirely new and unique cosmology, in which God literally dwells at the center of the universe on the Isle of Paradise. It then gives guidance on how these two essential concepts of Deity can be harmonized in a logically consistent philosophy of the universe.
Part of the reason why this new cosmic philosophy is not of interest to the world is due to its dependence upon a radically different concept of the universe. This revealed cosmology fundamentally contradicts the nearly universal belief in a mechanistic universe originating in a Big Bang. As a result, the scientifically minded tend to immediately dismiss this revealed universe as an implausible fiction, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It may well be that a worldwide interest in and acceptance of The Urantia Book must wait upon those scientific developments which will overthrow this false mechanistic concept with empirical proof of the truth of revealed cosmology.
George
i believe Einstein was a moral person otherwise he would not have written a book like “Mein Weltbild” where he expressed his humanism, unity of personality, the high mission of science and the need for us all to overhaul our mental attitudes. He was more than a scientist.
also he would not have been surprised and disgusted when his famous equation that unifies energy and matter was degraded into a bomb. It never occurred to him, he was totally taken by suprise.
Gene, I also believe that Einstein was a moral person, but not necessarily because he wrote a book depicting his Picture of the World from within as he saw it. Nevertheless he was human and was subjected to the same type of disappointments as others who may not have been able to see the things as he saw them. It must also be noted that he had help or collaboration with his formatting his equation, in that his first wife was also a formidable Physicist, where even in those days he know that her collaboration would not be accepted by the status quo, therefore did not mention her contribution to his work. But once he was able to assimilate these concepts through joint collaboration, he found that this union was clashing, like two positive forces repelling themselves. So he found it necessary to leave this association and continue his living with what he found, and joined with, in favor of his cousin, who was more of a compliment then an equal. This is not that well known but, it was confirmed in that when he won the Nobel Price, he gave the money to his first wife, who was a primary contributor to his formulas in the beginning where he was finding himself.
Once he found himself, he was able to more fully, fulfil his destiny and much of his thought process was from a philosophical nature which can be found in the many quotations which we now fall back on to note, which was in the nature of his religious conviction which coincided with his scientific abilities.
Quotations by Einstein:
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Albert_Einstein
http://www.alberteinsteinsite.com/quotes/Some fine thinking there, George:
…Part of the reason why this new cosmic philosophy is not of interest to the world is due to its dependence upon a radically different concept of the universe. This revealed cosmology fundamentally contradicts the nearly universal belief in a mechanistic universe originating in a Big Bang. As a result, the scientifically minded tend to immediately dismiss this revealed universe as an implausible fiction, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It may well be that a worldwide interest in and acceptance of The Urantia Book must wait upon those scientific developments which will overthrow this false mechanistic concept with empirical proof of the truth of revealed cosmology.
Another part might be philosophobia, dread of discovering cosmic values
Richard E Warren
einstein stated several times he wanted to discover the mind of God and I believe he had a relative degree of success.
Oh I agree. Without doubt Einstein was moral and spiritual. I still think his scientific theories were only science though. There’s no mention of religion in his treatise on relativity. In order to qualify as philosophy there has to be some melding of both science and religion.
As to discovering the mind of God, I think all of us are capable of that. He lives within all our minds, and because of that fact, we can know the mind of God like we know any other mind. I think that’s remarkable.
p1123:1 102:4.1 Because of the presence in your minds of the Thought Adjuster, it is no more of a mystery for you to know the mind of God than for you to be sure of the consciousness of knowing any other mind, human or superhuman. Religion and social consciousness have this in common: They are predicated on the consciousness of other-mindness. The technique whereby you can accept another’s idea as yours is the same whereby you may “let the mind which was in Christ be also in you.”
. . . I still think his scientific theories were only science though. There’s no mention of religion in his treatise on relativity. In order to qualify as philosophy there has to be some melding of both science and religion. [. . .]
I agree that “There’s no mention of religion in his treatise on relativity.” Nevertheless, there is a certain amount of “religious experience” involved within “philosophy” or the method by which one may deduce theory. Religious experience would not imply a practice of theology per say, but an understanding of God-consciousness, whether it be by use of the fragment of God within us or, by having spiritually-fused with that fragment whereby the person and the fragment are one. With the latter, the mind would have access to many other aspects and the cosmic mind and its attributes, which includes imagination which is vital to creative thinking.
(17.2) 0:12.13 We are fully cognizant of the difficulties of our assignment; we recognize the impossibility of fully translating the language of the concepts of divinity and eternity into the symbols of the language of the finite concepts of the mortal mind. But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience — God-consciousness.
If man is able to exercise scientific, moral and spiritual insight prior to all experimentation does this not give us a hint that in regard to the scientific-material realities, secrets of the universe, can come to a man like Einstein similar to revelation? If not then what is the mechanism, just mental exercise? He is obviously using cosmic mind in addition to his material mind.
Mind, matter and spirit are all equally real. Discovering them without experimentation or experience certainly has interesting implications.
Perhaps the 4th Adjutant Mind Spirit is more efficient with high intelligence and advanced knowledge. The more we know the more we have questions and the more questions the more evidence of curiosity. How far could this go?
I believe Einstein stated that he was heavily influenced by David Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature,” particularly Book 1,Part 2 “Of the Ideas of Space and Time”. Hume believed that space and time cannot be conceived on their own apart from objects in space or objects changing in time. Hume was an empiricist who believed that scientific ideas are based upon tangible evidence and experience.
I guess what you are all suggesting is that Einstein could not have arrived at his theory without spirit influence on some level. Perhaps, since we know that some talented individuals receive Adjusters who can help establish their gifts so all can benefit (44:8.2). But Einstein’s theory is still a scientific theory, not a philosophical theory.
There are scientific revelations, or discoveries, but they are still science, not philosophy. Insight into how the material universe works is not philosophy. Philosophy, when aided by revelation, gives us insight into the workings of both the material and spiritual universe. Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us nothing about the spiritual universe. It is about physical gravity, physical light, physical mass. His famous formula gives us no insight into morality or the nature of the personality of God. It only gives us insight into the realm of God, not God himself.
The cosmic mind has three reality responses. The first is causation which has to do with science; the second is duty which has to do with morality; the third is worship which has to do with the personality of God. Einstein’s theory shows no evidence of duty or worship, as far as I can see. That does not mean that Einstein was not a moral individual, nor does it mean that he was not in a personal relationship with God. It simply means that he was using his human reasoning powers of discrimination concerning a scientific concept; which I think is only the first reality response of causation.
Although the mind of man has a divine origin, it is not divine. The cosmic mind endowment of man does not lead all the way back to Paradise Deity; it is a local phenomenon, and without the Adjuster cannot begin to approach divine status. The spirit of worship is the morality adjutant. The adjutant of curiosity is number four, the spirit of knowledge. The adjutants of understanding and courage (two and three), are involved in reasoning and intelligence. How far can it go? All the way to wisdom and then the long arm of the Holy Spirit grabs it and ushers it into the soul where an idea has a chance to be spiritized. Then it has the power to be acted out under the auspices of the Spirit of Truth. I’m not seeing Einstein’s theory of relativity as something that has been spiritized. I could be wrong, but I just don’t see it.
Although I don’t think his theory of relativity is philosophy, I do think Einstein was a philosopher as per his quotes:
- There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
- I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.
- Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
- The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
- As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
- The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
- We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
- When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
Expanding the mind aspect into the discussion is helpful. I generally agree, Bonita. What underlies most all these Forum discussions is truth seeking, a very good mind activity, regardless of whether we agree. It seems to me the most important and highest level of active wisdom seeking is a simple question for all aspects of life, which could be, ‘What is true?’ Or substitute “real” for true. This underlies living philosophy and rebuts any tendency within the total planetary discussion for any one person’s closed mindedness.
My main point for Einstein is he likely was very closely observed on high and his Adjuster knew his preferences, posits and tendencies. What is more important than one or a few persons is the direction humanity is moving. He added mightily to increased material understanding. He only lasted a short time in the flesh, but his contributions added new thought. He was not omniscient, but he contributed to the overall planetary plan of progress, IMHO.
Thanks for your input!
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