This thread is approaching a tad too much heat for me…
But I did find an interesting quote from the wiki I wanted to bring up:
"
The crux of eidotheosophy lies in the ability to express one’s beliefs with intellectual integrity. By grounding theological convictions in the principles of logic and reasoned discourse, believers can engage in meaningful conversations with skeptics, fostering an environment where the wisdom of God becomes accessible to those who approach with an open mind. This dialogue, enriched by objective reasoning, becomes a bridge between the spiritual and the rational, allowing for a deeper understanding of the divine within the framework of human comprehension.
"
It is interesting to me in that, the underlying personal experience of approaching one’s spirituality with such integrity and reasoning, is so far as I can tell, basically not at all relevant to the experiential underpinnings of the “spirituality” which informs/causes the cultishness stuff we’ve been talking about. As you say:
So, to clarify what I’m saying, it sounds to me like you’re using logic to reason with the unreasonable as to why they should be reasonable… or maybe to you this is about how they can be reasonable, rather than an argument for why they should. Could you clarify this part for me?
@jared123456 Eidotheosophy, instead of using logic to reason with the unreasonable as to why they should be reasonable, gives the believer a reasonable, logical, facts-based foundation for their belief. Using logic to reason with the unreasonable is untenable.
So, for discussion, lets just say I’m a fundamentalist christian, and bible is literal to me (I’m psychologically allergic to reason). Now you present me with this new foundation of reason. Why would I replace my fundamentalism (which enables my other mental shortcuts and saves me the work of logic (which is why I’m a fundamentalist)),…, why would I replace my fundamentalist foundation with your reasonable foundation, when it as a method of spiritual enlightenment is fairly immediately threatening the value/purpose of my current method of spirituality?
A) Does my question make sense?
To me, my question feels like, basically reaching back to my point about the environment enabling the value for one’s such experience of fundamentalism, and the need for our strategy on this issue to address the environment which so enables that way of “spirituality”.
@jared123456 This topic is getting long, and is not about eidotheosophy, so I have started another topic at Discussing Eidotheosophy (Continued From Another Topic) to continue the discussion and answer your question. Give me a moment, I will proceed to answer your question there.
In theory sure in practice it is a slow process for the uninitiated.
It is a bit of practice like meditation, or sleeping. You can become adept at these things in other words you can only catch what your are fishing for (when testing don’t just scrutinize the data / observations you expect). This is true of all things and at the nexus of why science is flawed in many ways right now.
The emphasis is publishability and reputation and less about facts and testing high quality hypotheses.
Your initial post frames need to be a bit more open minded. As a man of science you must not be so dogmatic to the idea that because they believe in a god they cannot further science / rational debate.
I think this is a bit heretical from a scientific stand point, but religion has contributed to science. You must be aware of this.
Not sure this thread is as off topic as is suggested. I’ve enjoyed the exchanges. I tend to agree most with Jared 123456. I will move to read and learn more about on topic posts about eidotheosophy at its new location. This must be a relatively new word. I googled and was fed a lot of stuff about theosophy and one reference to, I believe, Greek gods. My simple-minded question is what does “eido” signify? I’ve not seen a definition of that.
@ironduke I have literally created the concept of eidotheosophy, and have had to create a word for it, because it did not exist before the creation of its concept. Before its conception, nobody has ever seriously tried to resolve Christian faith with scientific principles, only relying on reason, logic, and facts to support such. Eidos in a sense means “seeing”, theos means “good”, and the affix “sophy” means wisdom. Essentially, eidotheosophy means “seeing god’s wisdom”.
@vanidackp An interesting concept, but achieving success can be a problem.
“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” The Boxer by Simon & Garfunkel.
The main problem lies with what are the facts that can be agreed upon given the auspices noted above?
First, the sources
Corporate Media provides conflicting facts (special interest talking points)
There is almost no limit to internet sources
The best sources are independent sources like TYT, but with plenty others in all stripes.
At the end of the day the winners write the history, Was it an insurrection or a Capitol tour.
It is getting to a point where facts are nothing more than perceptions, dependent on the accepted source of the information.
The reason we have Trump is because of over 50 years of corporate influence in both parties. At the heart of the matter lies the ever expanding wealth inequality gap. When Biden warns that we need to save Democracy, he forgets to note that what he is really trying to save is Corporate Democracy, exactly what brought us Trump.
The people that have been hurt the most by Corporate Democracy, say enough! We want change, ergo Trump. These desperate folks have been easily convinced. But unfortunately for those folks it will only get worse.
History repeats itself, because people will always be people. Desperate people will do desperate things. e.g. Follow Hitler.
So that’s the story. With no solution. The people need to take this country back! However, in order to do so they must unite. Eidotheosophy could theoretically help. But the corporate establishment will make sure this doesn’t happen.
A perfect example: the two times Bernie got crushed by the DNC.
Biden’s presidency merely kicks the can down the road. Autocracy is just around the corner. An inevitable lose - lose situation. Greed Kills
@htm31 The concept of eidotheosophy is meant to do its part in respect to bringing believers to reason. From a brief overview of your writing, I can see that either you do not put much stock in logic, reason, and facts-based evidence, or you do not fully understand the fundamental ideas of what logic, reason, and facts-based evidence really are, and do not have a good understanding of the great importance of logic, reason, and facts-based evidence towards making everything better for everyone. I suggest you look into it.
@jared123456 Modern science is typically divided into three major branches that consist of the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy and Earth science), which study nature in the broadest sense; the social sciences (e.g. psychology, sociology, economics, history) which study people and societies; and the formal sciences (e.g. mathematics, logic, theoretical computer science), which study abstract concepts.
Furthermore, there are vast number of fields and sub-disciplines.
The truth is that the concepts of reason, logic, and facts-based evidence are WAY too complex to make a “simplistic summary” there is two primary types of reasoning generally employed in science, which are deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning, but there is also analogical reasoning, abductive reasoning, cause-and-effect reasoning, critical thinking, decompositional reasoning, and more.
Types of logic are even more diversified, as it is not uncommon for various fields to rely on specialized forms of logic, for which examples include classical elementary logic, classical first-order logic, mathematical logic, informal logic, formal logic, symbolic logic, and more. Various types of logic could include deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, or both.
Facts-based evidence is simply a label for evidence used in science and law, where such evidence must meet particular requirements to be considered valid evidence (must be reliable and credible), including a requirement that the gathering of such evidence must have a repeatable form of doing so.
The reality is that the rational form of logic, reasoning, and facts-based evidence is a part of the language of the social construct of the scientific method, and one must study and learn a small amount of the field of introductory science to acquire such language.
Formal study, however, is not require, as one can simply pick up some introductory science books of virtually any field of science to begin learning such language.
Okay, thanks for the overview. I’m also curious about this part:
Could you specify one or two examples from the writing you refer to, and reconstruct a clarifying example of how the ideas you’ve summarized lead you to your conclusions of how those writing samples lack “understanding”? Currently, the path to such conclusions still is obscure to me. I feel as if, if I could see how you get there, then I might understand what you’re saying, and that I don’t understand at the moment.
I also have tangential questions about this section:
What process defines the “particular requirements” ?
What is your perspective on the validity of evidence such as the repeatable experiences from mindfulness practice? Is such practice and experience scientific?
You had no way of knowing that the following was true or not, and as such, you interjected an assumption or conclusion into your question. You violated the rules of reason, logic, and facts-based evidence; which are hypothesize, test, observe, draw conclusion.
At this point, I have to start to wonder, are you just trying to throw out any question you could conceivably come up with, just to see if I have answers? If you are engaging in such mindless speech dribble, than you are wasting both my time and your time. If you really have any interest in eidotheosophy, go to the eidotheosophy wiki https://eidotheosophy.miraheze.org , and read about eidotheosophy.
lol, no, I am very serious in my questions. Though, it is kind of funny that it would appear as otherwise. I actually thought my question exploring how the definitions of scientific validity could include mindfulness experiences was quite salient, since it kind of seemed as if you might hold that it wouldn’t be valid, contrary to my opinion.