Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Priyankan Nayak]

Hey Scott

On page 139 You have written "You need not believe in a god to do your best to see the world from a god's eyes, a god's eye view.

The need is an essential requirement. If we want to do our best then we believe in our potential. We need to believe in a god as we ask him to be the light in this dark world. When we try to do our best then yes we look up to him to give us strength and courage. His perception of viewing the world is much better than ours as we may sometimes get distracted. But he is the ultimate. So yes we need to believe in god.

[Edah Chemonges]

I didn't agree with the chapter "We Can't Help Starving Children Because We Can't Help Ourselves". I've quoted the chapter title because the concept in it does not quite sound right. I think we help because of selflessness and nothing else. After all, we could have used whatever we're giving to other people ourselves.

[Surabhi Rani]

In the chapter, 'There is No Problem of Evil,' Page 128, last para, hardcopy, you say 'To realize you needn't worry about whether you find yourself on the mountaintop in the clouds or walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, because in either case and any case you will see beauty with unconditional love - that is liberating.' Please elaborate on how we can see beauty with unconditional love when we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hey Scott

On page 221 the passage goes like "Your human body and would-be zombie brain may be a temple, but they wouldn't be without you."

What do you mean by "would be zombie brain" and in terms of what reference are you saying?

Hi, Priyankan Nayak,

Are you sure that's the very first sentence you don't understand?

For instance, can you confirm that you bother understand and agree with these earlier sentences:

Page 20: "For the sake of argument, we can temporarily ignore consciousness and spirituality, meaning we can conceptually play around with pretend absurd zombie-physicalism, imagining people as all being philosophical zombies, meaning hypothetical people who outwardly seem conscious but aren’t really."

Page 28: "If you prefer, call it the primitive self, the lower self, the egoic self, the non-spiritual self, the body, your ever-changing form, the changing form of your unifying essence, the would-be philosophical zombie you illuminate with your undeniable consciousness, or the sinful flesh inhabited by your heavenly soul."


?


In any case, I suspect these links might help you:

Dictionary Definition for the word "would-be"

Philopedia Article: Philosophical Zombie



Regardless, I can explain in what the quoted sentence you provided means, assuming you understood and agreed with those earlier statements (and the others like them).


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hey Scott

On page 139

I'm confused.

Just before this post, you claimed that the first sentence you didn't understand was on page 221. But then before I even replied to that you now are saying the first sentence is on page 139.

So you have contradicted yourself.

You won't understand the sentences and I can't explain them to you if you read them out of order.

You won't understand later sentences and I cannot explain them to you if you don't already understand all the sentences that came before it.

That is because later concepts build on earlier ones.

So I can only answer you if you make sure to post a verbatim quote of the very first sentence that you don't understand, meaning the one closest to the beginning of the book.


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

I didn't agree with the chapter "We Can't Help Starving Children Because We Can't Help Ourselves". I've quoted the chapter title because the concept in it does not quite sound right. I think we help because of selflessness and nothing else. After all, we could have used whatever we're giving to other people ourselves.

Can you please quote the very first sentence with which you disagree, not including chapter titles?

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

In the chapter, 'There is No Problem of Evil,' Page 128, last para, hardcopy, you say 'To realize you needn't worry about whether you find yourself on the mountaintop in the clouds or walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, because in either case and any case you will see beauty with unconditional love - that is liberating.' Please elaborate on how we can see beauty with unconditional love when we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Hi, Surabhi Rani,

The point is that if you practice unconditional forgiveness and unconditional love[/i] then the external conditions don't matter. Whatever you see will be lovable to you regardless of what it is.

Your invincible inner peace and inner freedom is inside you, the real you, and thus doesn't depend on any external conditions. It doesn't matter how unpeaceful the external world is in which you happen to be put or happen to find your body being located. Your inner world will still enjoy the invincible inner peace of unconditional acceptance and unconditional love.


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

[Moisés Alcántara Ayre]

Pg 139

I did not fully understand the following, perhaps given my Christian perspective:

'You need not believe in a god to do your best to see the world from a god's eyes, a god's eye views."

Please clarify.

[CrisX]

It is a fantastic book. I am not sure about the meaning of philosophical zombie. How do they relate to us?

[DanaLohn]

Here is where I lost you. In a good way, I suppose, (Type 3) True Conscious Love (a.k.a. divine love) True conscious love across space is recognizing that other humans across space are conscious, just like the human you see in the mirror. It is to see that when you both strip away all your figurative clothing, what is left is identical, and that identical shared self is the uniting thread weaving through all-aged and all-located versions of yourself across time and space.
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

[Zanne Crystle]

The very first sentence that I did not understand was on page 12:

"Rather, the political philosophy of political freedom, nonviolence, and self-government acts as an analogue for a much broader and grander spiritual philosophy of spiritual freedom."

I looked up the meaning of "analogue" and found that it refers to something that is similar or comparable to something else, either in general or in some specific detail. I was trying to understand how political freedom, nonviolence, and self-government could be compared to spiritual freedom, but I couldn't grasp it.

I saw your explanation of the A:B::C:D format of an analogy earlier in this thread. Your explanation that "A and B are compared to C and D in terms of their relationship" helped me understand the concept better.

So, the sentence is essentially:

Political philosophy: political freedom :: Spiritual philosophy: spiritual freedom

It compares the relationship between political philosophy and political freedom to the relationship between spiritual philosophy and spiritual freedom.

Then, the paragraph that the sentence is from goes on to compare the relationship between political freedom and self-government to the relationship between spiritual freedom and self-discipline.

I got lost again when it compared the relationship between self-employment to self-government and self-discipline.

Self-employment involves control over business affairs.
Self-government involves control over political affairs.
Self-discipline involves control over spiritual affairs.

This analogy is not in the A:B::C::D format; it's more of an A:B::A:C format.

Self-employment: Self-government :: Self-employment: Self-discipline

The statement compares the relationships of self-employment to self-government and self-employment to self-discipline. They all share similarities in terms of autonomy and control.

[Somto Nwachukwu 1]

I think I do understand the overall meaning of this, especially through the subsequent sentences. I struggled just a little because of the latter part of the sentence;

"The enslavements and false authorities from which this book seeks to see you liberated exist not merely in the form of other humans and not merely on the relatively small political stage of one tiny planet in a tiny sliver of time in an unfathomably vast universe." In page 12.

[Kelvin Suraj]

I must say the title was somehow weird when I first saw the book but the plot is a perfect match for this book. The book exceeded my expectations. Everything in the book was clear and simple.

[mrlefty0706]

Hi @Eckhart Aurelius, I figured out what I did incorrectly and that was not listing a quote verbatim. @Mrlefty0706

[Leslie Kunde]

There was not a sentence that I could not understand, but to truly comprehend and internalize it, it took awhile and several readings.