Philosophy Discussion Forums

Miracle Kingss wrote: ↑May 29th, 2024, 6:50 am I have read this book a number of times to fully grasp all the knowledge it contains. The only thing I still don't understand how the author came to the conclusion that there is no problem of evil.

Hi, Miracle Kingss,

If you don't agree with every single sentence from the book, please post a verbatim quote of the very first sentence in the book with which you disagree, meaning the sentence closest to the beginning of the book.


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

Edah Chemonges wrote: ↑June 3rd, 2024, 11:25 pm "It's not extreme selfishness, let alone full-blown psychopathy, that is the cause of our failure to save starving children among needy others, but rather the opposite: it is our self-destructiveness."

I think this is more of a hypothetical scenario.

I don't understand what you mean.

The question isn't whether a sentence is hypothetical or not.

Jennifer Coxon wrote: ↑June 5th, 2024, 7:45 pm I really didn't understand the reference to dualism and monoism.

That is not a reference to some kind of philosophical metaphysical dualism. Rather, the truths in this book are agreeable to metaphysical dualists and monists alike. One could even argue that the differences between most forms of dualism and monism are merely semantics.

That is not a sentence; that is three sentences.

Can you quote the very first sentence that you don't understand?

That is, assuming you already understand each word on its own.

Otherwise, you can just use a dictionary to look up the one word.

For instance, if you just don't know what the word 'monism' means in general and/or don't know what the word 'dualism' means in general, you can just look those up in a dictionary or encyclopedia.



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

Adaboo wrote: ↑June 10th, 2024, 3:37 am Did every cell in the body depend on a higher supreme other than your higher self? I believe in a higher supreme existence of a supreme power in every aspect of life, I do not say there's no God but he's in every intelligent matter of the cosmos. By the saying "We created man in our image." A reflection. You need to be a Guru to understand.

Hi, Adaboo,

That is not a quote of a sentence from my book.

If you don't agree with every single sentence from the book, please post a verbatim quote of the very first sentence in the book with which you disagree, meaning the sentence closest to the beginning of the book.


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

Eckhart Aurelius Hughes wrote: ↑June 11th, 2024, 1:24 pm

Adaboo wrote: ↑June 10th, 2024, 3:37 am Did every cell in the body depend on a higher supreme other than your higher self? I believe in a higher supreme existence of a supreme power in every aspect of life, I do not say there's no God but he's in every intelligent matter of the cosmos. By the saying "We created man in our image." A reflection. You need to be a Guru to understand.

Hi, Adaboo,

That is not a quote of a sentence from my book.

If you don't agree with every single sentence from the book, please post a verbatim quote of the very first sentence in the book with which you disagree, meaning the sentence closest to the beginning of the book.


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

Risper Ouma Lisa Anyango
Premium Member
Re: Did you understand every sentence in the book, "In It Together"? If not, what part did you first not understand?
Post June 8th, 2024, 9:25 pm

There is a quote from the Bible which says I can do all things through God who strengthens me. I used to believe this sentence and ask God for his strength when ever I wanted to do anything. But that changed about a year ago. I started believing in my self and letting the universe take control. This means that I did my best and whether it was successful or not I let it be because I can not control the outcome of everything.

This is a particular quote a premium member (Risper Ouma Lisa Anyango) made. And I wasn't trying to be biased and be straight but to diversify the explanation of the existence of a higher power. I mean God is within us. The Bible gurus readers can testify to this. And don't forget that Islam is another religion of 'I Self Learn And Master ' , which is where it meaning is derived. So God really proves anything with the existence of man.

Adaboo wrote: ↑June 11th, 2024, 5:21 pm

Eckhart Aurelius Hughes wrote: ↑June 11th, 2024, 1:24 pm

Adaboo wrote: ↑June 10th, 2024, 3:37 am Did every cell in the body depend on a higher supreme other than your higher self? I believe in a higher supreme existence of a supreme power in every aspect of life, I do not say there's no God but he's in every intelligent matter of the cosmos. By the saying "We created man in our image." A reflection. You need to be a Guru to understand.

Hi, Adaboo,

That is not a quote of a sentence from my book.

If you don't agree with every single sentence from the book, please post a verbatim quote of the very first sentence in the book with which you disagree, meaning the sentence closest to the beginning of the book.


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

Risper Ouma Lisa Anyango
Premium Member
Re: Did you understand every sentence in the book, "In It Together"? If not, what part did you first not understand?
Post June 8th, 2024, 9:25 pm

There is a quote from the Bible which says I can do all things through God who strengthens me. I used to believe this sentence and ask God for his strength when ever I wanted to do anything. But that changed about a year ago. I started believing in my self and letting the universe take control. This means that I did my best and whether it was successful or not I let it be because I can not control the outcome of everything.

This is a particular quote a premium member (Risper Ouma Lisa Anyango) made. And I wasn't trying to be biased and be straight but to diversify the explanation of the existence of a higher power. I mean God is within us. The Bible gurus readers can testify to this. And don't forget that Islam is another religion of 'I Self Learn And Master ' , which is where it meaning is derived. So God really proves anything with the existence of man.

Please do not post in this topic unless you are posting a verbatim quote from the book "In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All" that you didn't understand.

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.

Eckhart Aurelius Hughes wrote: ↑June 8th, 2024, 2:06 am 3. You can do your best to see the world from a god's eyes, meaning from a god's eye view.

 

Juanita Phelps wrote: ↑June 8th, 2024, 4:09 pm 3. The God's eye view baffles me. If I do my best to see the world from a god's eyes, meaning from a god's eye view, what am I looking for? How will I know when I see it?

 
Hi, Juanita Phelps,
 
Thank you for your question!
 
By "seeing things from a god's eye view" or "looking at things from a god's eye view", what I mean is seeing and/or looking at them from an objective perspective, which includes looking at them in a tenseless way (i.e. without leftness versus rightness, without time, without space, and without there even being a difference between would-be time and would-be space). In other words, it's looking at reality as an eternal timeless objective whole.
 
From the eyes of an antelope being chased by a lion, it might be subjectively undesirable that the lion catches the antelope.
 
From the eyes of the lion, it might be subjectively undesirable that the antelope gets away.
 
Objectively (a.k.a. from a god's eye view), it's functionally already fated which of those two occurs (despite the event potentially being in "the future" from the lion's and antelope's subjective perspectives), and more importantly, neither case is objectively undesirable, at least to the extent it is what is the case.
 
To one person, peanut butter tastes good. To another, peanut butter tastes bad.
 
But both of those people can do their best to look at things objectively  (a.k.a. from a god's eye view, or god's tongue taste ), in which peanut butter neither tastes good nor bad because taste is subjective. 



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






In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.

Eckhart Aurelius Hughes wrote: ↑June 8th, 2024, 2:06 am 3. You can do your best to see the world from a god's eyes, meaning from a god's eye view.

 

Juanita Phelps wrote: ↑June 8th, 2024, 4:09 pm 3. The God's eye view baffles me. If I do my best to see the world from a god's eyes, meaning from a god's eye view, what am I looking for? How will I know when I see it?

 

Eckhart Aurelius Hughes wrote: ↑June 14th, 2024, 2:43 am Hi, Juanita Phelps,
 
Thank you for your question!
 
By "seeing things from a god's eye view" or "looking at things from a god's eye view", what I mean is seeing and/or looking at them from an objective perspective, which includes looking at them in a tenseless way (i.e. without leftness versus rightness, without time, without space, and without there even being a difference between would-be time and would-be space). In other words, it's looking at reality as an eternal timeless whole.
 
From the eyes of an antelope being chased by a lion, it might be subjectively undesirable that the lion catches the antelope.
 
From the eyes of the lion, it might be subjectively undesirable that the antelope gets away.
 
Objectively (a.k.a. from a god's eye view), it's functionally already fated which of those two occurs, and more importantly, neither case is undesirable, at least to the extent it is what is the case.
 
To one person, peanut butter tastes good. To another, peanut butter tastes bad.
 
But both of those people can do their best to look at things objectively  (i.e. from a god's eye view, or god's tongue taste ), in which peanut neither tastes good nor bad because taste is subjective. 



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

Hi Scott,

Now, I “see” it. It’s observing without judging, moralizing, or rationalizing the view. It is the absolute opposite of what we humans are taught to do. We learn (and teach) to think in terms of right/wrong, good/bad, should/shouldn’t almost from birth. It’s a hard habit to kick!

The vision of the lion and the antelope is a good one to toss my way as I am quite squeamish and tend to root for the antelope, even though I don’t want the lion to starve. But, from the god’s-eye-view, I get it. It just is. And, that is that. Doris Day (before your time) would sing, “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be…”

You have opened my eyes to see things differently. Cogito ergo sum.

With a smile,
Juanita Carol McCoy Phelps

Everybody wants something to happen for them and we all want something to happen for us. But fate will decide who gets to win and who gets to loose. I draw this from the exampl of the lion and antelope.

I didn't understand the first topic on page 4: "You will quicker find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than find happiness through achieving goals and fulfilling desires."

I find that those who set goals for their lives can find happiness once that goal is achieved. For example, it may be someone's life goal to get their PHD, and once that is achieved, they can move forward with that degree. That doesn't mean they need to get another PHD but enjoy the one they have. Another example is someone could want six children (me), and once they achieve that goal, they do not need to set another baby goal. My parents were very simple people. My dad wanted to own his house when I was small, and once he did that, his goal was fulfilled. He didn't ever buy another house or set another goal. People can be happy once a goal is fulfilled.

Eckhart Aurelius Hughes wrote: ↑January 19th, 2023, 3:04 pm This is a discussion forum topic for the November 2022 Philosophy Book of the Month, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All.


Important Note: Before posting in this topic, please do make sure you have looked up any words or phrases with which you aren't familiar in the dictionary and/or encyclopedia. You can do this in seconds online using your preferred search engine (e.g. Google or DuckDuckGo).


Do you feel you understood every sentence in the book, In It Together? In other words, do you feel you understand what the author (me) meant by every single sentence in the book?

If not, please quote the very first sentence or very first paragraph you do not understand. Then I will do my best to explain and clarify what I meant by it.

The book is written in a certain order, with later ideas building off earlier ones. Like a train going off the track, one point of misunderstanding or disagreement early in the book can (sometimes) lead to and cause many others later that will become clarified once that earliest point of misunderstanding is clarified.

If you don't remember what the first sentence you didn't understand was, then I strongly encourage you to re-read the book and highlight any sentences you don't understand, and then post the first one here as soon as you can.

Even though I am only asking for the first one, once I have clarified that one you can post the next one. And we can go through each one you don't understand one at a time in that way, until you are confident you understand every single sentence in the book.


When replying, please provide your best guess(es) about what you think the sentence probably means. Then, from there, I can let you know which of your guesses (if you have more than one) is correct or closest to correct and/or I can then, based on your guess(es), know what was missed or misunderstood to then know how to clarify it for you.



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

Hi, although the book is beautifully written, I struggle to get the conclusion of inner peace in general. The writing is not straight forward and I personally struggled to keep my attention when reading the book because of the immense detail. That is why I am so glad this forum is available.

My quotes will most likely be about inner peace in general as I do not quite grasp the whole picture of what you were trying to say in the book.

The following is my first quote "If you feel a battle between your so-called higher self and so-called lower self, I ask you to stop fighting the so-called lower self and embrace the so-called lower self, but more than that to realize that even to call something the 'higher' or 'lower' self is to draw a battle line and start a fight, to needlessly attack your own shadow and bitterly chase your own tail."

Like I said I struggled to keep my attention in the book. Although many things were relatable and interesting. I still struggled to grasp many things and I hope you will not think worse of me because of it.

It speaks of self-hate, ego and fighting oneself. Does the high and low represent the bad or the good part of one self? Can you maybe explain to me what the high and low part actually is?

Thanks, Scott.
 
To my not understanding a sentence in your book, You replied the following:
 
1. You need not believe in god, meaning you don't need to believe in god.
 
2. You can do your best at anything.
 
3. You can do your best to see the world from a god's eyes, meaning from a god's eye view.
 
 
Do you understand sentence #1 above? Do you understand sentence #2 above? Do you understand sentence #3?
 
Do you understand all three numbered sentences above? If not, which is the first of the three above that you don't understand? [/i][/i]


I really don't understand # 1. As a Christian, believing in God is what has changed my whole life for the better, and without Him, everything was not life at its fullest. Having being created in the likeness of God motivates me every day: His Word in the Bible lights all darkness.

I hope you can help clarify,

Moises

Hello, Scott. Please could you elaborate on the paragraph
"Without the warmth of true consciousness, even apparent altruism would be nothing more than a cold superficial approximated falsehood unconsciously emerging from fundamental selfish cancer-like cyclical process and feedback loops, runaway aspects of natural selection, such as selfish genes causing the host to kill itself to perpetuate the genome"
Thank you!

That is not a reference to some kind of philosophical metaphysical dualism. Rather, the truths in this book are agreeable to metaphysical dualists and monists alike. One could even argue that the differences between most forms of dualism and monism are merely semantics. In fact, some philosophers argue that all philosophy is just word games.

In It Together (Page 4) wrote: Some would call it, simply, the human condition.

If the word “suffering” simply means having unfulfilled desire, then to be human is to suffer. That is because when one fulfills their current desires, more desires emerge. When one reaches their current goals, their mind creates new ones. “To live is to suffer,” as Nietzsche put it. You will quicker find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than find happiness through achieving goals and fulfilling desires, be they for money, fame, sex, procreation, or whatever. There is always more money to make or more fame to achieve. It is a constant, endless chain of desire. If you get this then you will want that, and if you get that then you will want this, or something else, something more. You cannot eliminate desire by fulfilling desire. Fulfillment causes desire and goals to be replaced, not eliminated. You cannot achieve a state of goallessness by achieving goals. So long as you live as a human, you will have unfulfilled desires and unachieved goals, as the human body and mind will always want more and will invariably create new goals once old goals have been achieved. To be alive is in part to be at war and to struggle.

Penny Ann Criswell Johnson wrote: ↑June 19th, 2024, 3:05 pm I didn't understand the first topic on page 4: "You will quicker find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than find happiness through achieving goals and fulfilling desires."

I find that those who set goals for their lives can find happiness once that goal is achieved. For example, it may be someone's life goal to get their PHD, and once that is achieved, they can move forward with that degree. That doesn't mean they need to get another PHD but enjoy the one they have. Another example is someone could want six children (me), and once they achieve that goal, they do not need to set another baby goal. My parents were very simple people. My dad wanted to own his house when I was small, and once he did that, his goal was fulfilled. He didn't ever buy another house or set another goal. People can be happy once a goal is fulfilled.

Hi, Penny Ann Criswell Johnson,

Thank you for your reply. I have some questions about your alleged counter-examples:


How long did your father live without having any goals at all?

Was he diagnosed with clinical depression?

Often when someone appears to have absolutely no goals or desires (e.g. they just lay around doing nothing because they seem to have no goals or desires) they would be diagnosed with clinical depression.

After he stopped having goals and desires, did he starve to death?




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