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

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

I disagree with the sentence on Page 122, Paragraph 3. "If heaven exists only in the future, then it does not exist because the future does not exist."

Hi, Shirley Labzentis,

Thank you for your reply.

Can you explain specifically which part of the sentence you disagree with and why?

Can you also confirm that you are sure that is the very first sentence in the book with which you disagree, meaning you agree with every single sentence on pages 1 through 121?

For example, here are a couple sentences from page 71:

To elaborate, in spacetime, space is fundamentally indistinguishable from time, at least according to Einstein’s physics. The present that you consciously experience—your conscious present—is as much a here as it is a now and as much a now as a here. In Einstein’s physics, there is no now across all of space, but only infinite relative subjective here-and-nows in a seemingly static unchanging eternal timeless 4D spacetime of infinite presents.

Presumably, you must agree with those, since they appear before the sentence you listed; correct?

Regardless, if these topics interest you (and/or you find some of my statements about them disagreeable or doubtable), I recommend you read and reply to some or all of the following topics:

- Your left is not the left. There is no "the left". Likewise, there is no "the past" or "the future". Time is not real.

- In the same sense leftness is not real, time is not real.

- There is no objective now. If there are subjective nows, there's infinite ones equally existing across all of spacetime.

- 2D Maps of the Earth's Surface Act as Analogy for the Wrongness of Objective Time Theories & Classical/Newtonian Physics

- The beauty and peace of spatiotemporal presence itself will be with you, always, anywhere.

- Would Flat-Land Four-Eyed Freddy Notice a Difference?

- Objective Leftness and Rightness Do Not Exist

- Neither time, time-ness, unconscious here-ness, unconscious now-ness, nor any unconscious presence exist.


I recommend reading some or all of the above topics, not because it's important to me that you agree with my statements on the illusion of time (that's not important to me), but rather because it's interesting and can fun to read about. Moreover, even just taking an hour to get a very brief overview of Einstein's physics and the tenseless block universe model it requires (be it from me or another source) tends to leave one having a much deeper and more confident understanding of the Universe. It tends to feel as if you've been dating the Universe for your entire life, but with only superficial talks and no kissing or such, and then within just that one hour you have taken your relationship with the Universe to the next level with the deepest one-on-one talk of your life and getting at least your first glimpse of it naked. It's so beautiful and revealing.

It's only a quick glimpse because, as I say in the book (on page 133), "the essence is always clothed in form, and the dreamer must dream the mirror before she can see her beautiful but dreamy reflection in it." Even though it's a quick glimpse that is soon to be re-covered and deceptively re-clothed in what Einstein called the "persistent illusion" of time, a quick welcomed single glimpse of its nakedness can forever deepen your relationship, despite its possible unwillingness to ever let you see it naked again. Sometimes all it takes is one quick fleeting glimpse.


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

In Einstein's Special Relativity, there is no objective order to events, meaning in one reference frame the order of three events (A, B, and C) can be that event A happens before B and then C happens ( A -> B -> C ), but in another reference frame it could be C first then B then A ( C -> B -> A ), or C first then A then B ( C -> A -> B ), and so on. There can be observers in your present who have your distant future in their past. Likewise, your entire life and death can be in another person's past even if their entire life and death is in your past.
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[Juanita Phelps]

Like many others here who have been asked to post, I am not a philosopher. Also, even though I have been asked to post a sentence, I am posting something less than a sentence, and there is no page number for the thing that I disagree with; it is on the cover. I do not agree with Scott using a pen name. In the chapter titled "A World of Problems," he states, "Truth is something that can be revealed, not something that can be done." I do not understand how using a fake name can align with that statement.

Hello Diana,

I am not a philosopher either, but I do view names as ambiguous things. Think about languages. There is a skillet and a loaf of bread on a table. I have an index card with "PAN" written on it. Where the label goes depends on the language of the person to whom I pass the label.

Human names are labels. I am labeled by a man's last name. In our culture, we get our father's last name. Aha! But some people get their moms' last names. It doesn't matter because somewhere along the way, that last name came from a grandfather...

So, people are not their names. Have you ever heard the old joke, " I don't care what you call me, just as long as you call me in time for dinner"?

Almost all celebrities use stage names. Many kids get nicknames that last through adulthood.

You say toe-MAY-toe; I say toe-MAH-toe. It is still a round red fruit (or green, or yellow).

So, is it dishonest of Scott to use a pen name? I wish we could ask Mark Twain.

Grinning, I am
Suzy Q
Scissor Bill
Carrie
Sissy
Mom
Gree
G-ma
Or Juanita [depending on who you ask]

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

However, we discussed at great length our definitions of words and concluded that perhaps we do agree in philosphy if not in semantics.

All of this said, I enjoyed the book,
Juanita Phelps

Yes, I believe we agree.

What that sentence you quoted means is as follows:

"Logic tells us that if there is an all-loving god, then there would be no should-not-have-ness. So those who believe in such a god, but then also see should-not-have-ness in the world, find a paradox that we can call the problem of should-not-have-ness."

Do you agree with it more confidently when it is written like that?

If so, then I suggest when reading anything I've written where I use the word "evil" just imagine and pretend that I actually wrote 'should-not-have-ness' because that's what I meant.



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

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

On to something else...
I heard someone say, "I am not a human being having a spiritual experience; I am a spiritual being having a human experience."

Assuming evil IS a problem:
In this human state, if an act of evil is committed, is the spiritual self also guilty?

Hi, Juanita Phelps,

Thank you for question!

Unfortunately, I don't (yet) know what you mean when you use the word 'evil'. Thus, I don't understand what you are meaning to ask.

If I was interpret your question as if you were using the terms in the way I do, then it would mean the following:

"Assuming should-not-have-ness is a problem: In this human state, if an act is committed that shouldn't have been committed, is the spiritual self also guilty?"

I understand that version of the question, but unfortunately even then I cannot answer it for two reasons:

(1) I cannot imagine (or "assume") should-not-have-ness exists. To me, that's like imagining 2 + 2 doesn't equal 4. I can loosely imagine some impossible hypotheticals (e.g. what if you were born a girl in a Canada instead of boy in USA, or what if you had a time machine and could travel back in time, etc.), but when it comes to some things the fact that 2 + 2 equals 4 and the non-existence should-not-have-ness, I just can't eve get my brain to even barely imagine what a world might be like where those eyes-closed truths weren't true. They are just so fundamental and so necessarily true at such a deep fundamental all-encompassing level that I cannot playfully imagine it as a hypothetical.

(2) I'm not completely sure what you mean by the word 'guilty'. For more on that, you may be interested in the following topic of mine:

Letting go of expectation | How clinging to the superstitions of expectation and blame disrupts your inner peace


In most contexts, I don't believe in guilt (or blame or conventional temporal one-way causality).

For one who believes in God, my views on time, causality, and what I typically think of when I think of the word 'guilt' could all be explained by saying this: Imagine the story of the whole universe (including what you see as the distant past and the distant future) is a book, a single unchanging already written eternal timeless book. Imagine that book is all that physically exists. It's all there is, that book and god, nothing else at all. Then, it's just as true to say that god wrote the ending first and the beginning last rather than vice versa. Or you could think of it like he wrote a little bit of the ending than wrote a little bit of the beginning making sure to keep the story consistent without plot holes or contradictions, and then wrote a little more of the ending and then wrote a little bit more of the beginning, and so on, always making sure to keep the story consistent without plot holes or contradictions.

The above paragraph is a decent model that explains my metaphysics, with the understanding that I'm using the word God similar to the philosopher Spinoza did and/or similar to the way Einstein did when he famously said that he believes "God doesn't play dice."

However, to really make it better match my metaphysics (and Spinoza's if I understand his correctly), you'd have to think of God and the book (i.e. the universe) as being one in the same, or at least as if God is in the book and contained by it and living inside of it, even if you still imagine him as somehow still being the writer of the book from within. In that way, it would be more analogous to a dream you have a night where you are simultaneously in the dream and the dreamer who is writing the dream all at the same time, and yet in another sense you are the dream and the dream is you. There's room to construct the metaphor in different and even opposite ways since it is afterall just a metaphor and/or analogy.

Accordingly, even I was an adamant atheist, the above model and description would still be perhaps the best model and description of my metaphysics, just with the understanding that it uses a lot of analogy and/or metaphor to make it so our little minds can take it in and hold onto it.

Needless to say, things aren't ever exactly how we describe them to be because the reality is wonderfully indescribable.


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

Science proves there is no objective now. There is no singular now. Objectively speaking, all points in 4D spacetime are equally here-and-now. Subjectively speaking, no two subjects will agree on where is the here-and-now because they all see themselves as being at the center of the 4D universe, meaning they see whatever point in the 4D universe they are at as being here-and-now (i.e. the center).
eternalism-block-time.png (280.82 KiB) Viewed 42384 times

[Eziokwu960]

I disagree with this quote "There is no fight you need to win to have content inner peace and spiritual freedom."

Being a spiritual person, I believe and I am almost certain that there are spiritual forces that fights one's inner peace and spiritual freedom. I have seen cases where some spiritual sacrifices had to be done to free one from a bondage spiritually, and this is the reason for my answer.

[Juanita Phelps]

On to something else...
I heard someone say, "I am not a human being having a spiritual experience; I am a spiritual being having a human experience."

Assuming evil IS a problem:
In this human state, if an act of evil is committed, is the spiritual self also guilty?

Hi, Juanita Phelps,

Thank you for question!

Unfortunately, I don't (yet) know what you mean when you use the word 'evil'. Thus, I don't understand what you are meaning to ask.

If I was interpret your question as if you were using the terms in the way I do, then it would mean the following:

"Assuming should-not-have-ness is a problem: In this human state, if an act is committed that shouldn't have been committed, is the spiritual self also guilty?"

I understand that version of the question, but unfortunately even then I cannot answer it for two reasons:

(1) I cannot imagine (or "assume") should-not-have-ness exists. To me, that's like imagining 2 + 2 doesn't equal 4. I can loosely imagine some impossible hypotheticals (e.g. what if you were born a girl in a Canada instead of boy in USA, or what if you had a time machine and could travel back in time, etc.), but when it comes to some things the fact that 2 + 2 equals 4 and the non-existence should-not-have-ness, I just can't eve get my brain to even barely imagine what a world might be like where those eyes-closed truths weren't true. They are just so fundamental and so necessarily true at such a deep fundamental all-encompassing level that I cannot playfully imagine it as a hypothetical.

(2) I'm not completely sure what you mean by the word 'guilty'. For more on that, you may be interested in the following topic of mine:

Letting go of expectation | How clinging to the superstitions of expectation and blame disrupts your inner peace


In most contexts, I don't believe in guilt (or blame or conventional temporal one-way causality).

For one who believes in God, my views on time, causality, and what I typically think of when I think of the word 'guilt' could all be explained by saying this: Imagine the story of the whole universe (including what you see as the distant past and the distant future) is a book, a single unchanging already written eternal timeless book. Imagine that book is all that physically exists. It's all there is, that book and god, nothing else at all. Then, it's just as true to say that god wrote the ending first and the beginning last rather than vice versa. Or you could think of it like he wrote a little bit of the ending than wrote a little bit of the beginning making sure to keep the story consistent without plot holes or contradictions, and then wrote a little more of the ending and then wrote a little bit more of the beginning, and so on, always making sure to keep the story consistent without plot holes or contradictions.

The above paragraph is a decent model that explains my metaphysics, with the understanding that I'm using the word God similar to the philosopher Spinoza did and/or similar to the way Einstein did when he famously said that he believes "God doesn't play dice."

However, to really make it better match my metaphysics (and Spinoza's if I understand his correctly), you'd have to think of God and the book (i.e. the universe) as being one in the same, or at least as if God is in the book and contained by it and living inside of it, even if you still imagine him as somehow still being the writer of the book from within. In that way, it would be more analogous to a dream you have a night where you are simultaneously in the dream and the dreamer who is writing the dream all at the same time, and yet in another sense you are the dream and the dream is you. There's room to construct the metaphor in different and even opposite ways since it is afterall just a metaphor and/or analogy.

Accordingly, even I was an adamant atheist, the above model and description would still be perhaps the best model and description of my metaphysics, just with the understanding that it uses a lot of analogy and/or metaphor to make it so our little minds can take it in and hold onto it.

Needless to say, things aren't ever exactly how we describe them to be because the reality is wonderfully indescribable.


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




eternalism-block-time.png

Scott,
I may be going down a rabbit hole on this. But, first to explain my physical deed and my spiritual culpability-- see what I did here? Look, no evil. No guilt. I have since childhood had difficulty understanding the thought that God knows what I will do before I do it. That bumps up against free will in a big way. Yes my mind is running on two tracks.

Full stop. The body is a container that houses the spiritual part or the soul. So, according to the book, what others see is a shell, not the real person. But, by the laws of our society, if a person is convicted of, say, murder, and sent to prison. Which part of that person is culpable for having done the deed?

Or, when a benevolent deed is done, or, a mundane act such as preparing a meal occurs, is God involved? Is the physical human in charge? Or is the free will of the spiritual part in charge? But if free will means I can change my mind, did God know that too? If so, is it fre will or is it written in that book? Are the plot holes the places where people get to surprise God?

With a grin,
Juanita

[Surabhi Rani]

I finished reading your book, 'In It Together,' for the third time. I agreed with every part of the book theoretically, and I found nothing that I disagreed with. Your philosophiy of life is similar to mine.

[CrisX]

One point to discuss is if we can help others, particularly children. We are complex systems, and we may not be the best. We can be motivated by helping others, particularly children. It can be a higher purpose we have.

[Juanita Phelps]

This is a discussion forum topic for the November 2022 Philosophy Book of the Month, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All.


Do you agree with everything in the book, In It Together?

If not, what is the very first sentence in the book with which you disagree?

Please copy and paste the sentence in full.

Please explain why you disagree, including any evidence or argument you may have to support your alternate belief.

I love hearing and learning about different viewpoints. So thank you in advance for your honest answers to these questions.

I also love friendly, respectful debates, especially philosophical ones. Much like if I choose to invite you to my literal home for a game of chess or to play some sport or game, please note if I seem to want to or choose to question, debate, or argue you about some thing, please do take it as a major compliment and a sign of my respect and admiration for you. I deeply love, value, and respect people who can disagree and explain their side. And generally I don't bother to debate or argue with people unless I think there is a good chance they could win the argument and thereby change my mind.

If you read the whole book already and don't remember the specific sentence, I strongly encourage you to read the book again up to the point of the first disagreement, and highlight the first sentence you find disagreeable, and then come back here as soon as you can to post it here.


The book is available for purchase from all major book retailers in both ebook and hardcover format.

I am unsure how to proceed. We discussed my answer. However, on the Review Team Page, my score for this forum dropped from 10 to zero. The reasons given are that I haven't read the book or completed the survey. The survey link brought me back to this question. Please advise.
With a grin,
Juanita

[Mounce574]

"Logic tells us that if there is an all-loving god, then there would be no evil."
However, if you are of the Christian faith, you know that Satan is evil and that he causes the evil that fills the heart of man. So this isn't really logical from my point of view.

[Nicky Rita]

I disagree with the quote "There is no problem with evil because there is no evil" because it dismisses the very real existence of harm, suffering, and injustice in the world, and ignores the need to acknowledge and address these issues to create a better society.

[diana lowery]

I am not a philosopher, but I am curious about something. It is not a sentence, so I cannot copy and paste one here.
I do not agree with the use of a pen name on the cover. One of the themes in the book is truth and honesty, and this appears to go against that philosophy. It has been a while since I read the book, but I do not remember that issue being discussed or explained in the book. I am curious about how that decision was made.

I apologize for the multiple posts. It appears there was a glitch because I kept getting a reply that my post was too short, and then it posted all three of them. Also, a similar post that I had submitted a few days ago suddenly appeared after going missing somewhere. Sorry

[Paul Great Grace]

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with everything in the book, it's a compelling book indeed. Good job boss.

[diana lowery]

I am unsure how to proceed. We discussed my answer. However, on the Review Team Page, my score for this forum dropped from 10 to zero. The reasons given are that I haven't read the book or completed the survey. The survey link brought me back to this question. Please advise.
With a grin,
Juanita
[/quote]

Hi Juanita,
I am in the same situation on my score. If you find a way to resolve this, please let me know.
Thanks,
Diana

[Paul Great Grace]

Guys, I am currently experiencing same thing, I bought this book for the sake of increasing my reviewer score, but I haven't been given any bonus at all.