Issue #27 ~ I’ve said it many times before that I am much more sympathetic to the Eastern Religions than to the Abrahamic ones (geographically, also Eastern Religions as far as Europe is concerned, but never mind that). However, there is one branch of Christianity that resonates with me more than the rest of it put together (admittedly, this might not be saying much in my case). It’s called the Negative Way, or, even better known by its Latin name: the Via Negativa.
What you call atheists are in fact agnostics. Which is not the same, agnostics do not know and therefore take no position as you described. Atheists, which I would rather call free-spirited, since they do not require the notion of god to give meaning to life and therefore cannot be atheistic unless seen from someone believing in god
At first I thought you were going to invoke Plotinus, obviously not. Although I understand your stand and in big lines agree with it, nevertheless you seem to be claiming that natural laws are immutable, which you know is not the case. So, as long as and in those cases they function, they are valid as approximations of what is not possible. Nevertheless, they remain approximations and therefore cannot be absolute. Which leaves possibilities.
To come back to Plotinus, he sees god as the one and thus the ultimate. There is however another possible interpretation: the whole is the one. The whole being more than the sum of its parts and the parts more than the whole, like a hologram.
Several comments:
What you call atheists are in fact agnostics. Which is not the same, agnostics do not know and therefore take no position as you described. Atheists, which I would rather call free-spirited, since they do not require the notion of god to give meaning to life and therefore cannot be atheistic unless seen from someone believing in god
At first I thought you were going to invoke Plotinus, obviously not. Although I understand your stand and in big lines agree with it, nevertheless you seem to be claiming that natural laws are immutable, which you know is not the case. So, as long as and in those cases they function, they are valid as approximations of what is not possible. Nevertheless, they remain approximations and therefore cannot be absolute. Which leaves possibilities.
To come back to Plotinus, he sees god as the one and thus the ultimate. There is however another possible interpretation: the whole is the one. The whole being more than the sum of its parts and the parts more than the whole, like a hologram.