Orthodox theology rejects perennialism's core claim that all religions share one underlying impersonal absolute truth, arguing instead that God is personal and covenantal, not an impersonal monad; this distinction is essential because it provides a coherent moral standard, avoids the problem of distinguishing authentic from inauthentic religious practices, and maintains that reality is not illusory but genuinely real with objective distinctions between persons and things.
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Orthodox Vs Perennialist DebateAdded:
Do you mind me saying your name or what do you want to be known as?
>> Uh, you can call me by airvall, but people can see my real name on my URL anyway, so doesn't really matter.
>> Call you what?
>> Yeah, just call me Eric. It's fine.
>> Okay.
>> Yep.
>> Let's make sure.
Welcome to another episode of Jay's Analysis. Can you guys hear me out there? Are we Are we live?
[snorts] Let's just make sure the stream is going.
I >> think we make sure the stream is good.
>> Yep, we should be good.
>> All right.
>> Oh I just exited out. Hold on.
>> [laughter] >> You should be good though. If you want you want to go ahead and uh start your position, state your position, you can.
>> Yeah, sure.
>> You were gonna you were going to go first and say what uh where you're coming from.
>> So, I'll let you I'll let you go ahead and start and then uh we'll just have Do you want to do a a free flowing thing or do you want to do like a uh a formal?
I'll >> do my thing and then you kind of respond to it and then we'll get into the back and forth.
>> Okay. All right.
>> Um, so first of all, I appreciate you having me on. I'm a great admirer of your work. I think it provides a lot of value to people and I've been watching for probably six years now.
>> There's so much it's hard to get through everything. Wish I could. Um, so yeah, I'm a perennialist and I know that you're Orthodox and I don't have any real antipathy towards orthodoxy and I do identify as a Christian as well as a perennialist kind of like in CS Lewis mere Christianity how he talks about uh, you know, general Christianity being this like big corridor and then the individual rooms being the particular denominations. uh I see perennialism in that same light and the practitioners of traditionalism or perennialism often see fit to identify with a particular religious tradition. Um but there is this general philosophy which is not inherent to any particular religion that appears all over the world. I believe that Linets uh coined the term Sophia Perennis >> and that was just to highlight that there are these commonalities found in many of the world's philosophical systems and mythologies.
Now, as far as I'm aware in history, we can trace this back to the upanachic philosophy, the vantic philosophy, and it seems that there's likely some sort of most likely Indo-Uropean precursor to it because what we know of the religion of the Kelts also uh demonstrates some of these commonalities such as a belief in reincarnation and a practice of some level of aseticism.
So from uh the advice of Adant philosophy I believe this moves with Pythagoras and Orpheus into the Greek world influencing parmenities, Zeno ultimately Plato and um in modern times I believe the philosopher in the western tradition who best exemplifies what I see as the core tenants of the pennial philosophy is Arthur Schopenhau.
And uh in the introduction to Schopenhau's world as will and representation he cites uh Plato and the Upanishads as major influences on him and sees his work as kind of a fulfillment of the system that they set out to construct. So yeah, the reason it's called perennialism is that the notion is there's one underlying truth about reality and various traditions have hit on various aspects of it. Now the position that I'll be arguing for is my own position. Um but like Chopenhau I take a lot from advite vanta meaning nondual vidanta or monistic uh vidanta.
I take from Plato and of course I take from Schopenhau. So this is not synretatism. Perennialism is different from accuminism or synretatism. It's not this process of accreing various aspects of various mythologies to just kind of build something that works. It's really uh distilling down to those essential elementary ideas uh that we can identify in our own person. So as far as the actual uh dogmas of the perennial philosophy if you could call them that uh these include the notion of the atman or the universal soul. So within uh we also have the JVA which is the personal soul and that accounts for our desire and our activity and our representations but at the very core of the self is this universal aspect and uh briefly I'll give an argument for official my official argument for why I should believe there is one universal soul and that comes down to why uh you know subjectivity relies upon some unitary aspect to render the differentiated um contents of the mind intelligible.
Without one simple thing set against the many complex things, we can't have perception. So if you try to imagine the locus of perception or the aperture of awareness having any complex qualities, you'll very quickly realize that what you're in fact doing is setting the actual locus of perspective outside of the thing that you're attempting to examine. So uh for me, subjectivity depends on this ultimately unitary aspect which is fundamentally one simple. uh other aspects of the perennial philosophy include a belief in reincarnation. So if the ultimate source of your identity is this single unitary being then that cannot be extinguished because that's all there is. So if that's what is ultimately essential to your person or I guess below the level of the persona being the Latin for mask I believe um below the level of the person this unitary one can't be extinguished therefore there's no alternative but eternal life and make another more scientific argument for reincarnation but I'll just kind of try to get through this quicker aseticism is seen as the path towards better reincarnation or ultimately towards an escape from attachment to the world and a return to the one. So uh you know Augustine under the influence of manacayism believed that this was the highest goal unity with with the one with godhead.
And then there's also the doctrine of the avatar which is that god does incarnate as a person which okay if we're all god what's the difference? We are caught in samsara. We are trapped by our desires and our analysis of the world is therefore clouded and this is having to do with the doctrine of Maya or the world as illusion. Now I I have heard from Jay one objection to this and I I'm guessing he's going to make that objection so I'll address it when it comes up. But the difference with the Avatar is that the Avatar voluntarily descends from the godhead directly and never acts under the preconception that he is distinct from the many things of the world. So he acts with total compassion caring about the other as much as the self drawing no fundamental onlogical distinctions as we typically draw. This gives him uh great power and he acts with the truth, comes to testify to the truth as Jesus does. Then there's some subsidiary uh doctrines that aren't really essential like the theory of the yugas uh the uh the doctrine of the goonas that is the three uh fundamental energies at work in the personality and Plato also mimics these subsidiary doctrines as well. A lot of this stuff is found in Plato. Um, and I think I'll go ahead and just leave it there and see what Jay has to say.
>> Well, uh, thank you for coming on. I appreciate the attempt to defend or state your position. Uh, I'm not trying to be rude or difficult, but if you have listened to Jay's analysis, you didn't listen too too closely because uh, most of these these ideas have been dealt with explicitly. Now, one that I didn't deal with uh, is I'm getting a little feedback on your end. Is there like speakers or something? Could you maybe >> Yeah.
>> So, um, yeah, I've got a lot of notes here on what you said. I was writing down your comments as you said them. Uh, technically I've not dealt in depth with reincarnation. Uh, but we will deal with that eventually in the future. Um, I did deal with Father Sarapim Rose's response to this kind of stuff. Now, I'm familiar with a lot of the perennialist writers.
I have here with me multiple perennialist titles. Uh I've got everything from Eve to uh I've got my shoe on I've got a big fat shoe on book I just got recently. I've got Marcus Aurelius. So I've got all my Play-Doh.
I've got all the perennial stuff that I have here in front of me. So we can we can delve into specifics if we need to.
But let's start with the assumptions here that I don't think you've questioned when it comes to this position. So for first of all uh you said that let's take the avatar who voluntarily descends to not make distinctions and to be a being of pure compassion. Now how on the basis of what you claim to be a bunch of uh skeletal truths in all these religions? How do you know that there's supposed to be an avatar that descends to give us these truths? and you say, "Well, maybe this is something that's in all the different religions." And but how do you know that's a principle that you should take from all of these different conflicting positions? And they actually are a bunch of conflicting positions. Secondly, you liken that to Jesus. Jesus does not make the claim that he is an avatar, one of many. He says in John 14 that he is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the only way.
And so there's also a confusion about what we mean by things terms like persona or na or person or nature. They mean very different things in our theology than I think what they mean in the [snorts] position that you outlined.
They have a very precise meaning which I'll go into in in a moment. But uh this kind of stuff is outlined in St. John of Damascus's book on the Orthodox faith for example uh in our position. So you said you were a Christian perennialist.
Uh and then you said that by the way I oh I wanted to make one more point about compassion and no distinctions. Uh why why are we supposed to believe that that uh that we should be compassionate? On what basis are we supposed to believe that compassion is somehow a higher virtue than ecstasy or war? Uh, I mean, if I read uh if I read a book that could be arguably a a perennialist work, Dudley Young, uh, the ecstasies, origins of the sacred, the ecstasies of love and war, uh, are are more important to Dudley Young than the supposed virtue of compassion. Uh, why are we supposed to not make distinctions? Maybe distinctions are perfectly fine. Maybe we're supposed to be in a world where things are distinct and it's not some illusory dialectic that we have to get past. I mean, in Orthodox theology, we don't believe that being distinct is inherently bad or wrong. I find it very ironic that you specifically state that it's a monistic position uh of of of the idea of the one or the monad or whatever because that's something that that I critique constantly. I constantly critique the stupidity of the notion that the one is an impersonal uh totally apyone to use the Greek uh beyond being beyond knowing beyond anything that we can conceive of or experience. And yet we're supposed to believe that at the same time in in your position there are things that we know about it. For example, that he sent an avatar or that he created a world which somehow we supposed we're supposed to get out of or maybe the demiurge created. I mean there's no real consistent way to know whether we should adopt a kind of gnostic view that this world is something to escape or this world is actually inherently good. Uh and again the doctrine of creation is central to orthodoxy special creation. Creation out of nothing is a specifically biblical teaching which sets it off against perennialism and all the other heresies.
So while you might say it's not syncratism, it's not an accretion of a bunch of different views, it actually is synratism because it has no way to distinguish between, for example, is butt sex and butt sex magic from Crowley, is that part of the perennial tradition? Uh should we uh practice cannibalism? Is that part of the perennial tradition? Oh, is that is that Caliuga? Is that something that's degenerate and gross? We don't have a clear consistent way because this is not a position that actually believes in special revelation. Now, we believe in the Bible. I'm not saying that that makes it true because we believe in it.
But we believe that scripture has a coherent presentation of of a revelation of who God is. And God for us is personal. He's covenantal. That means that we can have a relationship with him. And that's an analogy to what we have between human beings. Person in an analogous way. We have a relationship to God who is a person, divine person. So, we don't ever blend ourselves into the one. We don't believe that there's a dialectical tension between the one and the many. That's why in orthodox theology, God is both one and many.
There's no imbalance. There's no premacy to the essence of God or the oneness of God set over against the many and God.
We don't believe or accept dialectics in our view. Now all perennialism that I've read, all world religions that I've read all believe and start from the premise that the absolute is utterly beyond any kind of being conception, terminological statements, claims, revelation or anything like that. And so therefore all that we know are therefore imprecise peacemeal distinctions that are dialectically somehow maybe approximations to aspects of the one. But we never ever ever get to the one. Now there's a sense in which maybe that's true in orthodoxy in so far as we don't conceive of the essence of God as being knowable or perceivable or something that we can ever participate in and hence we believe in the distinction between the essence and the energies. Now there was a great debate between Shuan uh Freel Shuan and uh and uh Philip Sherard on this point when Philip Sherard was still Orthodox and Sherard interacted on this very point where where Shuan doesn't understand that in our theology the father is not the same thing as God's essence and the son is not the actions of God. So he was very confused about what the actual orthodox trinitarian doctrine is. So when he tried to argue against Sherard and against the do the the doctrine of the trinity, he basically just said, "Well, look, you're just one mask of a religion that all the religions share."
Uh but again, this is not the the the claim of our religion. And I think that if you want to be fair to our religion, it should come from us. It should come from the Orthodox tradition, from our faith, from our scriptures. And we and Jesus don't claim that all of these different religious traditions are just merely a mask for one giant skeletal uh over system of of something that we don't really have any clear definition of. So I just think that that totally breaks apart. It makes absolutely no sense and it's completely irrational. So not only is the position ironically see trying to be more reasonable and more sensible in a global cosmic sense, it actually breaks down because it has absolutely no thing to point us to that tells us what is part of the perennial tradition and what isn't. Again, is it butt sex? Is it cannibalism? Is it uh pedophilia? I mean, we don't know from just a whole bunch of different religious traditions and vanta what is or is. there's gigantic debates in the history of of uh Hindu thought.
So when it comes to the question of Maya, yes, what I'm going to say is that if you believe that this reality is one that's elucory and that uh it was revealed to you in this life, you came to the to the truth supposedly that you need to escape this life, then the truth of the re of this reality being an illusion is also something that is thus there elucory. And so it's a fundamentally irrational position. And and that doesn't mean that I'm saying that rationality in a in a like enlightenment sense is like the the beall end all of how we view religion.
But reason is something that we believe is a real faculty that man has. And and while God does transcend reason, re uh reason is still able to reason about God. We can still know about God from reason. We can look at mathematics. We can look at logic and we can see how they reflect the mind of God. But we don't do a Platonic or Pythagorean thing where we equate God with impersonal forces or principles. And so you can't have a relationship with a number. You can't have a covenantal bond uh with the number seven or with the Pythagorean theorem. We see those as just reflections of the mind of God. And what perennialism and platonism mistakenly do is identify the mind of God or the person of God, who God is with these principles. And that is a a fundamental problem.
So that would be my opening statement is that the in our view the I am that I am the absolute is personal. Uh and in your view the absolute this is the the conclusion of the debate between Sherard and Shuon the absolute is impersonal. Uh so I think it makes absolutely no sense to talk about an impersonal absolute uh generic force principle from you know the monad. And it makes a lot more sense to talk about Exodus 3:14 when God says,"I am that I am." And that God is very specific. He doesn't tolerate idolatry. He doesn't tolerate all this nonsense of, "Oh, maybe all this world is just an illusion. It's we live in a matrix." And no, it's a bunch of gobbledegook. Uh so [laughter] so um CS Lewis may have said that uh there's a general Christian Christianity but he actually meant that in the sense of not perennialism but in the sense of uh the Anglican branch theory. Now Orthodoxy completely rejects the Anglican branch theory. We believe there's one holy Catholic and apostolic church in history. It's the Orthodox church. It's not Anglicanism. It's not John Calvin's church. And it's not the uh Pentecostal uh strip mall down the road. None of those are the true church.
Uh they're all heresies and schisms. And we can look at the first thousand years of the church to see what they believed and what they taught at the ecumenical councils and what the church fathers teach. So it really doesn't matter what CS Lewis says. I I like CS Lewis. I think he has insightful books. It really has nothing to do with defining what the essence of Christianity is. Uh I think that you know the scriptures are crucial to to our view. Uh, and it's undoubtable, it's undeniable from any tradition, that the first thousand years of the church, especially the first five or six hundred, is what produced our scriptures, what decided what would go into the canon of scripture. Uh, and that has a lot more more power, prowess, and say so than what CS Lewis said for all of his great literary works and insight. It really doesn't matter that CS Lewis thought that. Uh, is there a general philosophy, a skeletal outline in different world systems? Absolutely.
I talk about this quite often. and I talk about similarities between western alchemy and ancient Chinese alchemy. Uh if you've read the uh the bolingen series which I've referenced many times uh which has essays on a perennialism which has essays on uh the orphic mysteries and so on. Uh I've talked about that there's essays in that series that are great dealing with the similarities between western hermeticism and ancient Chinese alchemy. Uh yeah sure uh livvenets absolutely believe that there was a philosophy >> [sighs] >> perennial philosophy and he also believed that that there was a characteristic of universalis a universal mathematical language and so yeah he was a very universal thinker but again that really has nothing to do with whether or not it's true or not um and I I do I've cited linenets many times I read him in grad school I thought he's very interesting but but Livvenets's god is an absolutely simple monad I mean he he consistently talks about the monad and all of us as little monads again directly from hermeticism and platonism And again, what I would stress is that the first and I'm I'm almost done. The first seven centuries, eight centuries, and the first thousand years of the church is a pretty consistent battle of the church with Henanism. So, we absolutely reject Hellenism. Now, I don't mean cultural Henism in the sense of let's take the New Testament, put it into coin a Greek. Let's take the scriptures and translate them into the Septuagent Greek. No, no, no. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is Hellenism as a philosophical system imported into our theology. And this is something that a mistake that a lot of people make and they think well uh Gregory talks about St. Gregory talks about hypostasis that must mean exactly the same thing that Plotinus means when he talks about hypostasis and because Augustine was influenced by uh Plotinus and he was also influenced by Manakian.
Well, that just must all be the same thing. Well, no. The origin of something has nothing to do with the truth truth or falsity of something. I would say so we can't fall into the genetic fallacy of thinking that because something has a similarity to or or has an origin in that it's necessarily true and it's something being older than something else also doesn't mean that it's necessarily true. I mean in our view idolatry is ancient. It's it's more ancient than uh Buddhism. But I wouldn't argue that well Buddhism is false because idolatry is more ancient than Buddhism. No, it really the ancient and so forth has nothing to do unless you're debating whether or not something's more ancient than something else. Really has nothing to do with with the truth or falsity of of the of the issue. So I would say the great monad, the great pumpkin Charlie Brown is not the kind of deity that we would argue for, but rather the kind of deity who can incarnate and specifically explains to us in his revelation what it means to be incarnate. And it's not the same thing as the vidanta avatar. Uh the idea of the many different uh prophets throughout time. And Jesus makes this very clear in numerous claims that he's not merely one prophet. He is the only son of God. Uh and he does fulfill all of those messianic prophecies.
Especially if you listen to my Daniel lecture, you'll see that Daniel talks about the exact timing of the date of Christ's birth, specifically under the Roman Empire. Even the the most liberal scholars date that to the Makabian period, 2nd century BC. So, so it even if it's not written by Daniel and it's written in the second century, which I don't accept, but even if it was, it still predicts the birth of Christ uh in Daniel 9 and it predicts him fulfilling all the Old Testament types and symbols and the and the removal of the Jewish temple worship, which was a a prophetic presifier of when the Messiah would come. So that and our doctrine of creation, the fact that life and things have a beginning, middle and end. And then we move into the eternal state that is very distinct from the perennialist and the pagan view of time, space, history, man, meaning uh as a as an accident, a universal abortion, as living in some giant matrix, an illusion. No, all of that is is rejected by us. And basically I would say that uh that what you're proposing has an air of wisdom and I don't mean this against you personally but just the position itself but it doesn't actually have any substance to it. It sounds like there's a lot to it but but I mean is perennialism I amlicous and ritual magic or is perennialism neo uh neoplatanism and just like thinking about things really hard and and thinking my way out of the giant prison box? There's no way to know what that is. Is it Freemasonry?
Is Freemasonry a real presentation of perennialism? Is Aldis Huxley a real representation of it? When he writes the perennial philosophy and he claims that, you know, for we're going to have a global government and we'll all just worship one giant generic monad and that'll make everybody happy. I mean, perennialism is the meta heresy. It's the exact same thing that the Freemasons teach. Uh, and so it's absolutely antithetical to everything that we stand for.
I think you're muted >> me now.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. With these in, I can't actually talk. So, okay, I'll just go back and forth.
>> I'll mute my side so you can go.
>> Yeah. Great.
So uh you asked why we should believe under the perennialist presuppositions uh that an avatar is something that happens. Now if uh it is the case that it's possible >> why should we believe yeah why that or any avatar why are we supposed to accept that as something that's relevant >> right I'm trying to explain so if there's a a spectrum of acting in accordance with the actual true nature of things if you can act under false conceptions and you can act under uh true conceptions then the asmtote on the true side would be acting in perfect accordance with the truth truth and under our view although you know like you say there's no real method of establishing orthodoxy under perennialism so I can't uh speak to that objection that there's no way to determine like authentic perennialism from inauthentic I have my school of thought which mostly falls in line with adviteto vanta or non-dualistic vanta as well as the philosophy of chop which why I mentioned those particular authors they're different traditions I subscribe to this one so uh If you act completely in accordance with the truth, then you ask, why should the avatar value compassion? Well, under the doctrine of the atman, every object that you perceive, the inner substance of it, the inner reality of it is the same atman that you essentially are. And so if you harm another, you harm yourself. And so just from like a consequentialist perspective, utilitarian, >> but but how do you know that's true?
Like I mean how do you know that that revelation that that that perception that you have or that you've come to is actually true?
>> Uh because I can't coherently conceive the alternative to the basis of subjectivity being something unitary. I don't know how a locus of perspective could be complex.
>> Well, but I mean don't you think sometimes it makes sense to harm people?
I mean if some I mean do you believe in self-defense?
>> Yeah, I do. And I don't think that I mean they're often like in the Bavagita uh >> right >> Juna is advised to go ahead and and kill his cousins on the other side because that's his duty in that place at that time and uh killing someone isn't the worst thing that you can do to them right like killing oh Plato makes this argument in several >> that you don't want to allow the criminal to go unpunished because on his soul is worse than the harm he'll suffer at the hands of uh justice.
Mhm.
>> Yeah, there are times when harming so to speak is good. But in terms of what's good for the soul, the compassionate being would always act uh under the the guidance or the axiom of benefiting the condition of the soul of the other. And so even if Jesus comes back with a sword and uh or like the uh the prophecies of the end times from Hinduism or Zorastrianism, if he wipes out most of the population, that might be ultimately what's best for those people anyway because they were so far gone. Um they might need a reset of sorts. So >> okay, but but again I mean I'm not getting a coherent ethic here. I mean, I'm getting like, well, I can't conceive of it being a different way because subjective experience relies on an absolute unity, but I mean, how does that answer the question of should I have butt sex with my best friend to invoke the the deities or not?
>> Well, that has to do like why should you avoid hedonism is essentially the question. No, no, but I mean but I mean uh Crowley who many people do at times class as a perennialist for in fact he was a big fan of Anand Kumar Swami and Anand Kumar Swami is a famous perennialist who wrote essays about the similarities between the one and the many in vanta and modern philosophy and what he thought Christianity taught. Uh and Crowley was a big fan of that.
Crowley thought that was cool beings. So but Crowley is not saying just be a hedenist. He's saying no use this power channel your power invoke the gods. It just happens to be, you know, a situation where you got to put your your thing up your buddy's butt.
>> Um, right. Well, you know, Crowley represents in my mind the sort of Fouian turn within the perennialist school. So you have like rosacrruianism, hermeticism, philosophy ultimately things like that that represents some turn at some point probably in the medieval period when the people initiated into this sort of tradition um believed that it was acceptable to pursue the end of their own will. That that was the point. And you see modern books like >> are relatively modern like as a man thinkketh or the secret which is basically trying to tap into the power of this philosophy for the purposes of wealth. It's a similar sort of corruption as like the prosperity gospel and Protestantism. So I reject that on that basis. Um but yeah why should you value aestheticism? Why should you try to distance yourself from desire?
>> But but but why should a person reject fast a fouian turn? I don't I mean you don't like it but why should they >> be well I'm the claim that I'm making is that aestheticism is objectively a better path towards the truth and um >> yeah but some ritual magicians think that they're being an aesthetic when they refrain from sex for a long time and channel it into the the sex magic ritual.
Um in more generic terms, extinguishing desire uh attaining, you know, detachment is the ideal because uh thought is descriptive, emotions are prescriptive, emotions interfere with thought. And so if we can be clear-headed and detached from emotion, then we can perceive reality uh more truthfully. And my highest value, if I have a like an ordinal ranking, is truth. And I think it has to be that.
>> Okay. But there's also like a Dionysian component to some ancient religions.
Like I just made the argument in Dudley Young's ecstasies, origins of the sacred ecstasies of love and war. Now he takes it to mean sometimes you just got to freaking go crazy and and it's got to be a giant blood bath and you got to have just giant eyes wide shut ritual orgies.
And that's the true way to dissolution of the self to the realization. And there's other groups that have the idea that you got to go this left-hand path and you have to exceed all taboos and be the most generate degenerate that you can. That's the true path to enlightenment. So what I'm saying is that basically I'm not saying you personally but just the system doesn't have a coherent way to to adjudicate between which of these paths is an actual livable honest coherent path because one is just as valid as the other. I could I can be just as enlightened supposedly if I go the route of bloodbath and giant orgies and or if I go the aesthetic route and this is why I would say ancient religions always bear out this this dialectic and for example one thing that I would say you should read is uh St. Irenaeus's against heresies because in the first several hundred pages he refutes the the many gnostic errors and really what I see in perennialism is just kind of a re regurgitation ofnosticism. It's the idea that that there's a an overarching absolute that nobody can touch even though somehow we know there's an overarching absolute that nobody can touch. And then at the same time there's a bunch of masks that the different religions wear. Uh and this is kind of what you get in toism. It's kind of what you get in Sufism. But you know, so all of these different things kind of blend together and and Erynaeus is at pains to refute this in against heresies because it was such a danger to the church and I see it as a a giant danger to today's church. This is why globalists love perennialism. I mean if perennialism was a real challenge to this to the system to the power structure to to what I think is a giant death cult that wants to depopulate. Uh it wouldn't be perennialism. I mean Aldos Huxley promotes perennialism. He writes the perennial philosophy and says hey this is great. this is how we can all just come together under a meaningless generic blob. So, I know you aren't saying that. You see that as degenerate.
I'm just saying that the presuppositions of the system in my view just seem to lead to that same place. And that's because you guys don't you just simply don't believe the Bible. Uh and this is what I see a lot of orthodox liberals, a lot of higher critical liberals, they just go off in that direction. And when I refuts the Gnostics, I mean, he uses the Bible. So, I see this as just a re I mean, if you read Romans 1, it talks about the foolishness of idolatry.
Idolatry leads people into confusion and nonsense. And that's what I get in this position is I don't even know whether I'm supposed to have endless eyes wide shut orgies or whether I should be an aesthetic. And because they both it's relativized that both lead to the same enlightenment.
>> Well, not all paths lead to the same enlightenment.
>> How do you know?
How do I know? Well, the the idea is that you pursuing the truth is pursuing enlightenment and the idea that the world is illusion. You have to understand that you know my idea of error or falsehood is one of privation.
So every positive content in phenomenology and our experience is real but we attach a notion of a limit to it which we might reify hypothesize as being an onlogical limit. when we really don't have evidence of it as an onlogical limit. It's simply what allows the principium indiv individualness of experience uh to provide this differentiated image that we experience.
So every positive content >> Okay. But but wait a minute wait a minute. So you're talking about what's called the principle of individuation which is the the way that we distinguish as an individual a subjective reality a subject a psyche that's distinct from everything else. Now you said that this was elucory, right? Because ultimately we want to get back to the one and again I mean the the real I think clenching metaphysical critique here is that if you came to that truth in this life then that truth is suddenly negated by the fact that it's also part of the elucory experience. And so again this position while it has an aspect of wisdom to it and yes we the church fathers will talk about the principle of individuation the idea of uh the person being a a singular subject distinct from everything else but we just don't simply see we simply don't see that as a as a dialectic. Why do you think that's a dialectic that has to be overcome to to blend uh the self into the giant absolute the the the ocean of infinite nothingness? I mean this is the problem of all the far eastern philosophies is that they end up I think in this position where they see man's problem as metaphysical as that the fact that he's an individual and he needs to then therefore uh destroy his ego and dissolve into the thusness of of all of all reality of of the one and all this stuff and and again we see that as as satanic. It's not uh uh the goal the purpose of man to lose his identity is to be is to be in harmony with God with other men and that's the purpose of the church that's the purpose of the orthodox conception of symphonia in the Greek which is harmony and that's why we believe in in the church there will be a harmony in heaven there will be harmony we believe that our lurggical singing is done in eight tones in harmony right so this is all kind of preached in our religion and I again I just don't see where any of this has any coherent basis in perennialism.
It just seems to undercut itself from the outset.
>> Um, so what I was trying to say with illusion versus truth, every positive content is true. It's just that when we say that that's all we are, we're making an error. So connected through time if we follow that to its you know you know infinite extension then we coincide with all other instances of what we perceive to be objects. So all all differentiation is ultimately in the grand scheme of things in the light of like the totality um is it anyway I lost my train of thought it's all one but when we say that we're not that I mean just from a phenomenological perspective everything we encounter we in some sense participate in there's nothing that we experience that's not us in some fundamental sense so we really don't have any knowledge directly of something that's completely other everything that we participate with is codependent with the self. And that's what I mean by >> hold on hold on hold I mean in our in our in our worldview we would say yeah fine you you in a sense our metaphysic is participatory uh but that doesn't mean that that if I talk to you that I am you I mean there's no reason to believe that I mean >> well there's nothing that you receive from me that is not you experiencing that it's your experience that you're getting from me nothing that you know of me is completely separate. Everything that you know of me is within you. So you don't directly have access to >> No, this is just the old this is just the old conundrum of Pltonism that uh that there's the assumption that I'm not having a real experience of you. I'm having an experience of you in my mind.
Uh and I don't believe that. I believe in a in direct realism. I believe we have a direct real perception of objects in the world. I'm really experiencing you. I'm not experiencing you as a as a concept in my mind. I'm really directly experiencing you.
Uh well, are you a I I know you're not a materialist in some senses, but do you believe like you're directly perceiving the material substance of me or or what is it essentially that you're I don't understand how that works exactly.
>> Well, we we believe that a person uh is an individual. So, hypotheasis or person in our philosophy, and our theology is very distinct. It comes from our theology about God. So in God there's one essence, one nature, one will but three hypotheses, three persons, father, son, and holy spirit. And so being made in the image of God, we all instantiate human nature as persons. So what's what's particular to me is that I'm the person, Jay. You're the person, Eric. Uh but what we share in common is human nature. So there's a universal aspect of of human nature that all men share across the board. Um but we are distinct hypoases or persons. I'm the person, Jay, you're the person, Eric.
uh in our view that's what makes us distinct and I have a body soul spirit you have a body soul and spirit uh every one of us has this as part of human nature but the way that it's instantiated is as the person Jay and the person Eric so when I interact with you there's an aspect to you which is revealed to me uh and an aspect to you which is obviously concealed much more is concealed because this is the first time I've talked to you there's far more that I don't know about you than what I do know um and there's things that you're learning about me right so we're having a real exchange change. There's a real communion. And for us, this is why we say that God is personal because it is a real covenantal communion relationship. Um, so that's our metaphysic, that's our anthropology.
Um but what I'm hearing is kind of a and I think Schopenhau kind of got you know influenced by far eastern stuff uh which as you correctly said jibes well with Plato which is goes back to this idea that well you know what we're experiencing is really just uh the phenomenal illusory reality and I don't I don't accept that. I just simply we don't believe that this reality is bad or if is is an illusion or something that has to be escaped.
>> Uhhuh. Um now the reality that we perceive is not illusion. Again, every real thing that we perceive is exactly as it appears in that it's all an ideal form. Like it's kind of like Berkeley and idealism. everything that we perceive is the real form exactly as it appears to us. So that is >> okay. Yeah. But the problem with all forms of idealism, whether it's Plato and his uh uh dialectical um dualistic uh conception of idealism or whether it's Berkeley and his empirical there's no material world. It's just all ideas.
The problem with both of these views is that they all they both try to encapsulate everything under one kind of thing. So in other words, monism is always going to be a problem because it ends up making every kind of distinction the problem. And I think I believe that's self-reputing. I I just simply think that it it undercuts the position itself to try to say everything is one thing at base. It's not one thing at base. There's different levels of reality. There's different types of things. They're not all just God.
They're not all a manifestation of God.
They're not all the same thing. They're distinct. And the whole history of western philosophy and ancient pagan philosophies is all built on this one giant chief error that everything is one and God is a giant monad with no distinctions. And when you ask when you ask why is this a problem the answer is always well because if there's distinctions that means there's division there's problems there's composition there's dialectical tensions. No it doesn't. We just simply say as orthodox no we don't believe that there's any inherent tension or dialectical opposition necessarily between something being distinct.
Distinction does not entail composition or division. This is the whole history of why western philosophy uh and and toism falls into its errors. why the Roman Catholic Church has gone to its to where it has because it has the assumption that any kind of distinction entails division or composition. And then people who are modalists or Islamists or Jews turn to the Roman Catholic and they say, "Then why do you believe that there's a real distinction between the father, the son, and the holy spirit? There's just one. They're just masks." And the perennialist Roman Catholic liberal says, "Well, I guess you're right. I guess all of the religions are the exact same and they're just mass because I can't really say on the one hand that distinction entails division and on the other hand the father, the son, and the holy spirit are really distinct and that they're not composite. So again, this is the root error of all false religions across the board. They all believe in absolute divine simplicity and the monad.
>> Okay. So do you agree though that there has to be some sort of transcendental unity of opposition at some level in order for them to be presented to us in a common like linguistic medium in order to for them to be intelligible? This is a point that Chris Langan makes in the cognitive theoretical universe like is that point true?
>> Right. So you're asking basically a question of universals. Uh yeah, we believe that there are universals, but uni universals reflect the mind of God like mathematical principles or like logical principles. Uh they aren't uh at root the exact same metaphysical substrate or substance. And there's just no reason to to think that they are. By the way, I know this is a little off topic, but this is this is very crucial for us because this is where the essence energy distinction comes into orthodox theology and becomes so important. So because we do believe that there is ultimately one God because of one father as Paul says not because there's one essence but because of one father who communicates his one essence to the son and the spirit we we do believe that distinctions and then god acting in the world gives us a basis for uh multip multiplicity and real um differences in the world that don't end up in a dialectical tension. So basically we just don't accept the Platonic assumption or the Arisatilian assumption or what's sometimes called the originist problem that all reality has to at some fundamental level be be one. Uh it doesn't have to be. Um I mean if you mean in the sense that that that all is one in in in God. Yes. But God for us we believe there's an equal ultimacy in the one and the many in God. So God is not more three than he is one. And he's not more one than he is three. For us, that eternality uh is is always and at all times true. And there's never been any imbalance or or some need to like get rid of multiplicity and return to to the one. We just simply don't believe any of that. And that's why our philosophy, I think, is more coherent is that we do have a basis for so what you're talking about language and linguistics.
Ultimately for us, universals, universal categories are grounded in the mind of God. And the mind of God in that in that sense for us is not the essence of God.
It's not the monad. We believe that the energies of God uh are distinct from the essence of God. And so the logoy as they're called by St. Maximus. If a person wants to go deeper into this question, they can read something like Lars Thurberg's book a ma man and cosmos on St. Maximus. They can also read on the cosmic mysteries ambiguous 7 where Maximos deals with what the logo are.
and they should read fathersky's essay creation and creaturehood which explains how the logoy are not the essence of god but they're also uncreated so they're they're they're essentially thoughts or we have an analogy to the idea of god thinking we don't actually know what it is for god to think but uh we are given this revelation of the divine mind and things like logic things like mathematical principles they reflect the divine mind but even the conception that I have of like the number one is not the exact same thing that that god's infinite mind is going to have of the number one. So there's no direct correspondence between these things and the mind of God. But there is an analogy just in the same way that when I talk to you and when you reveal things about yourself to me, uh there's an there's an analogy here. I can I can gather some aspects of what you're like and who you are, but I never have a full revelation of you and I'll never have a full revelation of God. And orthodoxy, we will always be learning God uh forever into eternity. So anyway, I'm getting way off course, but uh you're talking about basically like a platonic view of how we could have a strictly logical rational world. Um and again, I'm just stressing the fact that we don't believe that that that that is true. You can talk about the world in a more abstracted Pythagorean mathematical way. you know, physicists do this, Max Tagmark does that, but that still only describes a certain level of reality or certain way of looking at things, the psychosphere, uh, you know, something like that from Roger Pinrose, but we don't equate that with God. We don't smush that into the divine essence.
There there can be different levels to reality. There can be a spiritual world that's not the same thing as the essence of God. It's just that this position and other positions like it have this obsession to want to smash everything into the the essence of God. It ends up being like a pantheism and pantheism just turns into monism and I think monism is self-refuting.
Okay. Uh specifically why I believe that there must be some sort of common substrate to everything is that I am anformational reductionalist like Max Tagmark. So there's nothing that we observe that doesn't ultimately in our description of it boil down to some information like you know Tegmark talks about how there's nothing in physics that ultimately when you get down to it doesn't like ones and zeros essentially.
>> Okay. But but you and I are talking and we're persons. We're not numbers.
>> Yeah.
>> So persons persons don't equate to numbers. They transcend numbers.
>> Okay. That's an interesting point. I'll have to think about that. Well, this whole argument is about personalism. So, I would say you should read uh is uh Staneloy, father Staniloy's book. The first chapter deals with why our religion is not perennialism. Our our religion is distinct uh because it's based on personalism.
Uh and so Father Stanelloy's book, The Experience of God, Orthodox Dogmatics, Volume 1, first and second chapters specifically deal with perennialism, absolute divine simplicity, and why we don't accept that view.
>> Okay. Uh so thinking about it for a moment, obviously we reject as uh perennialists the notion that the person is what we reduce to. Ultimately, there's something more fundamental. the person is a structure in in reality. But uh so I did have some you know one of the reasons why I'm not orthodox or uh you know more inconformist with like dualistic theism is that I can't reconcile God's omniscience with my being distinct from God. Same thing with God's omnipotence and God's infinitude.
Because if God knows everything, then there's nothing that I know that God doesn't know. All of my knowledge is contained in God. If God is all powerful, then every, you know, I can't do anything that God can't already do.
He has all that power. Therefore, all of my power that I have is in God. And in a more general sense, like there's nothing that I can be that God does not actually contain. Otherwise, he's delimited because there's something outside of him. So, how can be he then be?
>> Okay. Okay. Well, so the problem with this argument is that uh when we say that God is all powerful or he's uh unlimited, uh that's uh defined not by what you're saying or it's not like I sit here and I come up with well uh I think that if God is unlimited then he should be able to create uh a situation where he doesn't exist because if he if he can't make himself not exist then he's limited. No, that's a mistake. That's a mistaken understanding of what it is to be all powerful. Because when you're at that level of reality, go only God himself can define what it is to be all powerful. There's no other way to go about it. We can't use our human fallen reasoning to to speculate on what we would come up with it is to be all powerful or omnisient or for what it means for God to know all things. And the other thing is that when you say that I would be in his mind, well, God has the ability to create beings distinct from himself. So the fact that God knows you and knows about you does not mean that you are in his mind. So there's no reason to make an ontological smooshing together with with you as a being into the mind of God. Uh this is again why there's a distinction between the actions of God or the energies of God and who God is as a person and God's essence. Right? So there's an essence energy distinction which is very crucial for us. So for example, let me make an analogy real quick. St. Gregory of Nessa uses the the analogy of if I as a person build a house, if I build a structure, you come and investigate this house, you would learn some things about me. You would gather some, you know, if I have a if I have a room that's like my princess room, then you might say, well, he has a daughter. Uh or you might think, well, he's a little light in his loafers. He wants to dress up in his princess room.
I'm joking.
>> [clears throat] >> But uh but uh you would you would see that the thing that I constructed was a result of the operations or the energies that I put into that. So you would learn something about me but you wouldn't know me directly. So now if you interacted with me then you were having a direct experience of the energies proper to me as a human knowetic energies vocal energies hand gesture energies which I do quite often. you're you're I'm expressing uh through energetic actions truths about me that convey uh meaning to you.
So so in the same way St. Gregor Niss says God creates the world the world is distinct from him in the same way and and an analogy we're not saying the exact same but in an analogy the way that I create uh a house you can learn things about me of course it's it's different it's an analogy and not not exactly the same it's not univical because God uh is distinct from his creation um and he creates out of nothing and that's unique compared to the situation where I'm working with pre-existing materials right So we don't take the freemasonic view that God is just uh rearranging pre-existing matter. No, we we believe that he created out of nothing. But again, it's just an analogy. So the actions of God in creating the world are distinct from other actions of God like providence or like fornowledge or like justice. This is what St. Basil argues in letter 234 that I just covered today.
Why these attributes are distinct and how stupid it is to say that they're all the exact same in the essence of God, which is literally what toism and the Roman Catholic dogma is. uh it's also the dogma of all the perennials. So basically it reduces God into an unknowable smooshed absolute that has basically nothing to it. There's no content to it. It can mean anything and everything. Uh anyway, but our view is that that God creates the energies that he uses to create are different from the other actions that he does. It's a unique act within time and space to create the world. And it's different than when Jesus also a divine action walked on water. Obviously those are two different actions. So they're not the exact same in our philosophy, our theology as the essence of God. So I would say in response to you, that's our anthropology and our metaphysic as it as it applies to operating and acting in the world. And it's very distinct and it's very unique. And it doesn't smush man into uh a meaningless substrate blob. It doesn't take God and smush him into the world to where everything is an illusory, meaningless manifestation of God. because not everything in the world is of God or is God. Uh I mean that we believe that there's evil. Uh and evil is is you're right it is ultimately in an onlogical sense predatory. It's a privation.
But it's not just a privation. We don't have we don't stop there when we define evil. That's where the platonist stops.
We say and we go further and say it's also an act of the will uh against the the divine law against moral law. Right?
So if I rape, kill and murder, uh if I rape and murder, then I'm actually my will is going against the good. Uh and so it's not just privation, it's also moral violation of an objective standard. And and then I think this is a a central flaw of perennialism is that it has no objective moral standard.
There's no conception of evil beyond privation. And that's why evil is ontologicized. It's no longer moral.
It's ontological. man's problem isn't uh that he does things wrong and he needs to repent. His problem is uh it's it's it's a social thing. It's like the environment. It's it's out there in the world. Oh, you got to like meditate your way out of this reality and come back in the chain of being and hopefully you'll escape it in a you know zillion aons you can like meditate your way out of this.
No, not at all. Uh man's problem is not meditating his way out of the chain of being. Man's problem is moral. man's problem is that he's selfish, that he is fallen, that he tends to vices, right?
That's his problem. He needs to repent.
He needs to have a new heart. So, that's what another big distinction I'm saying that I see between our approach to things and your approach to things. uh you know, not saying that necessarily proves my position just because we have a moral standard, but rather I see no moral standard in that position and I see a completely confused anthropology that just smooshes everything into the monad.
Okay. I think the the moral standard would have to be compassion because acting like just according to utilitarianism or consequentialism, it's always to your benefit to help others and not to hurt them. But that's not >> Yeah, but that's really that's too generic. that that doesn't tell you anything that I mean how do I know for example for example there's different ways to be >> I don't understand it yet maybe you can clarify it for me so the the omniscience omnipotence infinitude problem that I highlighted to my mind I don't have an adequate solution yet so I want to ask you is there such a thing as the totality of God and world can we draw a set around this and in in which case isn't that something in some sense greater than god No. [clears throat] >> And that all has to rely on on just what you mean by greater. Uh you're acting like so it's like, oh, if I can add a thing to God, world plus God, then those two things are greater because they're more. Well, why on what basis would it just because there's two different things that adding them together would that mean that it's greater? I mean, that's an assumption that you have about what it means to be greater. Uh and no, of course not. I mean we believe the world is contingent and it it relies upon God for its ex creation and existence and s sustenance and for its ultimate tilos its purpose. Uh but there's no reason to believe that just because you put those things together that that's how somehow automatically quote greater. So all of these ideas that you're talking about in terms of omniscience and uh drawing a circle around God and world together uh there's just no reason to to assume that that means that that's what it is to be greater.
>> Sorry I was muted. So wouldn't God then though but or the totality rather by subsuming both the world and God uh have as properties attributes that God or powers that God doesn't have? like I have the power to change. God can't change. So that would give this totality a power that God doesn't have.
>> This sounds like Robert Taylor's argument. You can listen to the argument that we had. Uh no uh we don't believe that God can't change. Uh if you mean God can't change his essence or himself.
Correct. But God can and does operate in the world and does do different things and does change things. I mean Jesus becomes incarnate. He walks around. He does things. He changes things. So God can do things and do different actions because we believe God has free will.
God supremely has free will. He's not bound by anything except his own nature.
So maybe this would help clarify our position. I'm not saying that this means you have to accept it because I say this, but when we say God has free will uh or that God can do anything, we mean it limited by his own uh his own nature and his own attributes. So, we don't believe that if if somebody says, "Well, can God make the rock that he can't pick up?" Uh, we say, "No." And we say, "Well, that's not what it means to be all powerful."
Okay. [snorts] Um, there's one other point on that same theme, but I'll just go ahead and move on to the next topic, which is kind of a moral concern. Um, one of the reasons I don't feel comfortable with dualistic theism is that God in that picture doesn't have skin in the game and he creates a serious hazard for his creatures. And if more I mean Jesus says like the >> hold on what you call it dual what do you call it dualistic theism?
>> What dualism? God is not world is not God.
It's it's a dualistic worldview.
>> Okay. But [laughter] we don't believe in dialectics. So, so dualism to me suggests dialectic God and world intention. Like we don't believe that.
>> Okay. The point I'm making though is that God seems to create a moral hazard for the people he's creating. And if more than, you know, if more of them than not are going to hell, why it's not a moral act for God to create all these beings, many of whom are going to suffer eternally.
First of all, >> well, first of all, I would say uh if you read my essay, the western loss of uh theophanes and the descent of Christ, uh you'll get a better picture of the orthodox conception of the fact that for example, from the time of Adam to the coming of Christ, well, we don't teach that all those people were consigned to hell. I'm just going to use the Old Testament period as just one example. So in our theology, it's not the idea that oh we just all of those people are damned except for uh you know five people on the ark and then like you know a few people amongst Israel and everybody else in the world is necessarily damned. No, we don't say that. In fact, we say that when Christ descended into Hades that he actually preached the gospel to all of the dead.
Uh many of the Eastern church fathers say this and this is actually something that I didn't know until the last couple years. I came across uh some bishops that had written on this. Hillarian has a book on this and he goes to great lengths to to quote many of the Eastern church fathers and this gets into the cosmic scope of Christ's redemption again St. Maximus and the cosmic liturgy. And this is very distinct from Western Christianity's very limiting scope of Christ's work where the majority of people are damned because they're not even linked to Christ.
Ultimately, uh the the some of the ideas of Augustine get pretty much adopted wholesale into Western evangelicalism, Calvinism, Lutheranism.
Jesus dies for the elect more or less.
And this this ultimately gets to be a smaller and smaller number. So orthodoxy is very different from that. We don't have that view that God intentionally created most of the world to be damned.
Uh we simply don't say that we know how many of the people in the Old Testament uh who had the gospel preached to them in Hades were damned or not. In fact, Peter covers this very clearly. He says Christ went to Hades and preached the gospel uh to the spirits there in prison. And I never understood that until I got into orthodoxy. So, uh, we don't accept the Augustinian doctrine that, uh, God creates all the babies to damn them and that they're all damned unless they're, uh, infant baptized and all this stuff. No, that's all, uh, that's all Protestant gobbledygook and Catholic gobbledygook. So, we don't believe that. Um, and we would also say that in in terms of the incarnation and the extent of Christ's power and resurrection, uh, the word is near you, even in your heart, Paul says to the the pagan Greeks. And so Christ is near to every man. Christ lightth every man that comes into the world. John says and uh Romans 2 says very clearly that God will judge the world uh based on the light that they're given. Those who have who have uh sinned without the law will be judged without the law. Those who have sinned under the law and the knowledge of God will be judged uh according to that standard. We still have the duty of course to preach Christ to all men. But uh no, so we don't necessarily say that all men are damned or that uh even necessarily that the majority of men are ded. We just simply don't know that.
We're not told that. But in Orthodox theology, we believe in free will. We believe God created man to operate in freedom.
Unfortunately, after the fall, that freedom became a dialectic of sin. Um, and so dialectics entered the picture actually after the fall, we think. Um, but all that will be reconciled in uh in the the the eternal state. Uh that doesn't mean that everybody's going to be saved. It just simply means that there will be a restoration of all things and people are going to get what they want. If people want uh to be against their fellow man and and against God, ironically, you cited CS Lewis uh he CS Lewis presents the best one of the best pictures in modern literature of the orthodox conception of hell and the afterlife in the great divorce where the people that are in hell uh they're trucked into heaven and they can't stand it. They hate it. They don't want to be there. So in an orthodox theology uh the presence of God that is the all-consuming fire is no different than the river of life in the apocalypse. So the apocalypse you chapter 22 has the the river of life flowing out of the throne of God. We believe that's the same as the divine glory and presence and fire of God. It's not lava with torments. It's the very presence of God itself that torments the people that hate him. So God is natural to to man.
That there's nothing more natural to man than to worship and love God and his fellow man. But man wants to hate his fellow man and to hate God. And that's what puts him in his his sort of box where he torments himself. Uh so that's our conception of hell. It's not it's not God the great uh psychopath. It's the individual who creates for himself a tormenting afterlife due to hating God and hating man.
>> I still can't understand why if God knows who's going to uh suffer, who's going to hell, and he creates the personalities that have these unique predispositions and and attributes, he he knows who's damned. So why create those people?
>> Okay. Well, I would say to you, read the book of Job because Job asks some of those same questions in his frustration and uh he gets rebuked and God says, "Who are you to ask these kinds of questions?" Uh secondly, I would say in response to that, on what basis would you say that that's wrong or immoral? In other words, you need a Christian moral to say that something like that would be quote wrong. On what basis would you say that's wrong? I mean, I mean, I don't think that God created people just to be damned. Uh yes, he knows uh uh you know what people will choose. He knew what Judas would do, right? Uh but that doesn't mean that Judas was a robot.
Judas did what he did freely. Uh Jesus said it would even be better for Judas if he'd not been born, but he was. So people I mean that's why we believe in the reality of of free will and decisions that we make. So you're saying that it's it's a mean kind of God that would do this and it doesn't sound moral. Why would God do that? And I'm saying on what moral basis do you have to say that that's even wrong?
>> Um well from this principle of compassion within the worldview but also just my basic moral intuition. I mean my epistemology is kind of like >> that's all that's all subjective. I mean what do you mean your basic moral intu?
I mean who just says what that is? I mean is that part of the illusion? Is that part of the illusion of this reality? Your your moral intuition?
>> No. It's all positive contents. what they really are are true. They are real.
It's a you knowation in the like I don't want to use Deart but like I think therefore I am like these are actual >> you Deart's a dualist. You were talking about you don't like the dualism of God and world. Deart has the exact same problem because he smashes God into the mind of man and he has a duality between mind and world. So you can't get away from these problems by somebody ridiculous like Decart. He's just as much a a dualist, >> right? Well, I I don't know. I mean, analyzing through like phenomenological lenses like Hersel or Haidiger, there there are basic given experiences that it doesn't even make sense to deny them.
Um now, and ultimately like epistemologically I have to rely on some form of common sense intuition um that I just have to take as given otherwise I can't construct any sort of worldview.
Um, now I did remember the point about uh infinitude and that was if >> wait a minute why can't those things be be be doubted? I mean you just saw you just cited Decart Decart's whole project was doubting every single thing including his own existence.
>> Um yeah but then he concludes that Kajto go some so like the fact that you're and I don't agree with Dart's formulation of that. I think it's badly formed. It's not because he's assuming a self. He's assuming an eye. Thought is occurring.
That's all that can really be concluded from that. Um, but just like experience is given. That's that's the basis of uh, you know, why I can't deny it because I'm experiencing this. I'm not going to say I'm not.
>> Yeah. But you were trying to make arguments about moral intuition. Uh, and I'm asking you, how do you know that your moral intuition is correct or bad?
Especially given the fact that you seem to think that this reality is elucery.
And you're saying, "Well, I have to have something basic to start with." Well, how do you know that that's not elucory, the basic thing you're starting with?
>> Yeah. I'm not saying it's a firm epistemological criteria. I'm just saying if my moral intuition rejects an aspect of theism, that's not going to help my conversion to that.
>> Yeah. No, it's not it's not firm at all.
No offense, but >> Yeah. Well, and which is why that's not the the main reason as far as an objective moral uh objective in terms of the worldview perennialism. It's it's a lack of compassion because God would objectively be doing something bad to the being that he created created to suffer in essence. And I know you disagree with that, but I would like to move on to uh what I forgot before, which was >> God's uh if God is pure act, then how I mean God surely could create an infinite creation, but creation seems to be limited. Oh, is God not pure act and orthodox? No, that's the tomistic definition of God uh that that I've spent, you know, about a decade arguing against. So, and I'm not trying to be a I'm just saying that that we we uh we believe in the essence energy distinction precisely because we don't believe God is pure act.
>> Okay. Gotcha. Well, in any case, uh why is it that God creates a finite world as opposed to an infinite world? That maybe you don't it's impossible to speculate into the mind of God. No actually uh we don't have a problem saying that there are uh there are some of the medieval philosophers scholastics talked about this where they talked about of eternity which would be the idea of something being created at a point in time but then continues on into eternity. Um we believe that God creates new people.
They're not reincarnated but he creates a person and they will go on into all into eternity. So in sense in a sense you could look at that as examples of um limited scope infinities right. So, uh, even mathematics talks about multiple infinities, different levels of infinities. So, we don't have a problem with there being multiple types of infinity, but we don't think that God's infinity is a statement of him as essence or that that's his definition, so to speak. Anything that we know about God according to our tradition, all of our church fathers, Basil letter 234, for example, as I covered today, uh, even God's infinity is an energy. Okay?
It's a it's a it's something that God reveals to us, manifests outward, you could say, to us as a divine person.
It's not a definition of who he is in his essence. So any attribute, God's God's uh love, God's compassion, God's goodness, God's justice, these are, we believe, divine energies. They're not uh God as pure act or as monad, >> right? A lot of that depends on revelation. So I'm kind of left wondering why should I >> hold on hold on it is it is but I would also argue that throughout this conversation I think that theological distinction is even made necessary for philosophy and metaphysics and that's one of the chief reasons that again I stressed the point earlier that absolute divine simplicity and god as a monistic monad is the chief error of all false religions. That's what by the way uh [sighs and gasps] St. John Damascus in his where he covers all heresies. This is fascinating and I'm I'm not going to ramble on this too long, but just real quick, if you get uh the fathers of the church, St. John Damascus, and you read the section where he covers 100 heresies, which is the first, oh, it's kind of in the middle. Um he classes all the heresies and false religions under skewing or going off on these starting points about God. And it starts with confusing nature and person and God. Uh which is kind of what I've been trying to outline. So he starts his hundred heresies not with just Christian heresies but uh heathenism uh Hellenism Judaism all of these things go off because they screw up on the doctrine of God. So for us that's kind of where we have to get things right and start.
Uh-huh. So, can you give me an example then of something in the world that can't be explained without this uh idea of the the essence energy distinction in God?
>> Uh yeah, God being distinct from the world, >> right? Which is something I don't believe which doesn't, you know, it's not necessary to believe that to account for things actually exist.
It it reduces to absurdity to identify God with the world.
>> Well, okay. So, my model is that you know reality is an infinite fractal that's holographic. So, every part contains the whole. The innermost essence of everything is the whole. The innermost essence of the self is the whole and that is God. Even though through perception we experience a differentiated image which appears to be limited which is really an aspect of the whole like that. I don't see why that's absurd. And you know, we've tried some of this ground before, but I don't think it hurts, I guess, clarification >> because it ends up meaning anything and everything. So I can I can uh on the one hand posit all of these fascinating sounding facts about the world and I can talk about how world the world is like Max Techmark's giants uh algorithm and everything kind of is mathematically Pythagoreanly explained but I can't even make sense of how the world of change and flux can match up to these invariant unchanging mathematical principles.
Right? So numbers and mathematical things they don't evolve. This number seven doesn't evolve into the number eight. So this is a classic problem for Pltonism. Is this kind of dualism? The dualism of how are things that are unchanging, immaterial, and invariant like numbers and concepts able to stick onto and make sense of a world that is flux, changing, elucory, and so forth?
This is the classic dialectical problem in Plato and I don't think it's ever been answered because Plato's uh philosophy starts out with all the dialectical problems that I've outlined for the last couple hours. So um so how how do you map things like numbers onto a world of flux and change? They're not like numbers. Now they I think the essence energy distinction explains that perfectly. Uh the world is made uh to be what it is distinct from God but it also is made by God. That's what bears his stamp. And so therefore, things like math, Pythagorean principles, numbers, geometry, these things work in the world because the world is a reflection of the logoy or the divine thoughts. Um, and they're personal ultimately. So they're not impersonal forces out there in the world. They're all ultimately personal and they relate directly to God. So for me it makes sense how I can understand the world because the world my mind is kind of like a small little version of the divine mind made in God's image. I can do this kind of reasoning. Um in the other position the perennial position I get like giant metaphysical substrates of absolute that are on the one hand identified with numbers and mathematical logical principles. But those things are not the same thing as my mind except that I am also supposed to believe that they are the same thing as my mind. So for me it's just it's just confusion.
It's total confusion.
>> Okay. Like Tegmark, um I'm a temporal bee theorist or eternalist. So I do subscribe to the notion that time is in some sense illusory. Meaning that it's not a true progression, a true onlogical unfolding. All of it exists already. And it seems like under theism, you kind of have to believe that God, I mean, reality for all intents and purposes exists all at once for the mind of God.
But you know >> well okay but but in the same we also don't think that that that time is necessarily a bad thing. In fact time itself will be in our view transfigured.
Uh this is a really really dense topic to get into. I'm not opposed to getting into it. But I will say that father steniloy again in in Orthodox dogmatics volume one he spends about 60 or 70 pages talking about the orthodox conception of time. Really really deep stuff. Um but yeah, that's a really really complex subject. But uh but no, I mean again I think that the the flaw here seems to be that when we say something is in the mind of God, you seem to be equating that with like smashing everything together and and we just simply say no, it's there's a distinction. Why can't there be a distinction between the mind of God and objects?
because I can't conceive of the basis of that distinction. Any distinction that I draw in my imagination is being unified by some transcendent principle which in the case of my imagination is my my perception or my you know the the locus of my >> I'm made in the image of God and and and because there are universal principles uh and uh that can function as a means by which I can understand the world. I I mean >> I'm not sure I understand your your gist there.
>> You're saying you're saying that you can't conceive of how there are objects in the world that are distinct from the mind of God because if you talk about those objects that means there's a metaphysical unity between those objects. And I'm saying you don't again that's just restating your position of all things being one. And I'm saying no, why can't there be why can't things be both one and many? It's like you're again it's a dialectic where you feel like you have to choose between everything being one or there being real distinctions. And we say there is a there is a unitive aspect to all things and it ultimately does relate to God as the creator, as the sustainer, as the originator. But there's no reason to say that all things are therefore God just because there is a single origin and a single uh sustainer of all things that therefore God is all things because God being all powerful why can't he create things distinct from himself and you say well because when I think about it for me to think that object in my mind there has to be a single substrate underlying it and we say no there can be different levels of reality the the conceptions that you have in your mind do not equate to the essence of God.
>> Right? Which I mean I can't conceive of it but I can kind of hypothesize the existence of true distinctions if I take some of those theological presuppositions. I I agree with that.
>> Well, you make you already believe this.
You make distinctions of things.
>> Um distinctions.
>> You go about your daily life believing that you're distinct from other beings and objects.
Um, well, yeah, I do, but I think that I'm false. I'm being false in my mentality when I'm doing that at some level.
>> Why do you think that?
>> Uh, well, you know, I would have to again restate the position of all things necessarily reducing to some kind of unity.
>> Why do you think that all things have to reduce to a state of unity?
>> Because if I analyze any complex structure, um, if I continue the process of analysis, I'm going to get to something that's undifferentiated. It's simple.
>> Why can't something be have a unitive aspect to it and a multiplicity aspect to it? In other words, so for example, Husurl even kind of saw this even though I don't think he got it right in the long run, but he saw that that that objects have or or even Kant objects have a unity that makes them what they are. I mean, this pen uh has a metal aspect to it, a plastic aspect to it, a but it also has a unitive aspect to it.
But all I'm saying is that there's no reason to think that you have to smush the unique particulars of this of the pen into the substrate. There can be both at once, >> but only from a perspective. So >> no, in reality, >> yeah, I'm I can't Well, okay. So, let's go to this kind of example. I mean again, why why can't something just have multiple aspects to it that are real while it also shares a unitive aspect to it? Like why does it have to be smooshed together? Can't both of these things be true?
>> So the example I was going to give is trying to imagine any shape and like if there's no perspective on the shape then how can we say that there's any particular distance between the different elements of that shape? It seems like for there to be differentiation within any image, you have to have some perspective there to delimmit it. So from the perspective of like the ultimate onlogical set of all sets, um where does that perspective emerge? Which is why at the >> the mind of >> Yep.
You were saying >> the mind of God.
>> Yeah. The mind of the set of all sets.
Um okay. The point I'm trying to make is that both at the level of when you analyze down to the the most essential things, you do hit this simplicity. And if you didn't, you would just continue analyzing, right? There's >> Yeah. But you're mistaking the fact that you analyze down to something with therefore extrapolating that to being the ultimate me metaphysical reality.
Just because your mind >> got down to that level doesn't mean that that doesn't translate into that being the necessary onlogical structure of all things. In so far as it is a substrate, it's an aspect of a perspective. Without a perspective on it, you don't have individual bits of it.
>> You didn't you're not doing that. You're not keeping it at your perspective.
You're extrapolating further and saying that therefore all reality must must be monistic, must all be one.
>> Right? So at the small scale, the things are simple. But as I as I was trying to say without if you take the set of everything all at once, you don't have a perspective because a perspective is a combination of things being present and things being absent. So if you don't have a perspective on the totality of all things, what's the source of differentiation there? Just like how can I imagine a cube if there's no perspective on the cube? How can any two points be distant in in a particular way from one another?
>> Yeah. Uh and that's because I think this perspective is is again too platonic in that it relies on too much abstraction.
I mean we don't we don't deny common sense reality and daytoday existence. In other words, our position while we are very critical of empiricism and we're not naive empiricists, we also don't deny the empirical world or empirical evidence. like we don't just retreat into our minds and think that that what's truly real is just ideas and numbers and you know like into the head of Gell or something. No, we actually believe that there's also a real world.
Uh and common sense and day-to-day living shows us that there are distinctions between things and those distinctions are real and really only a kind of bizarre sort of religious speculation. I'm not faulting you, but I'm saying that that's really the only kind of people that could come to concluding that all reality has to ultimately be be one thing. Uh because they looked at an object and it had a a unit of substrate. That therefore that's how all reality must be. And again, this is why the Greeks are wrong. This is why uh I mean there to be commended I guess in in terms of like the prescratics or the Ionian philosophers for looking at all reality and saying well there's got to be one unifying thing and it's fire oh it's water it's flux it's you know stasis or whatever I mean yeah that's that's interesting and I appreciate them for looking for a unitive unitive aspect under which to to group everything but uh in our view uh that is just a a faulty project from the outset Because number one, there's no reason to think that all things all reality is is at root one thing. There's just no reason to have to accept this or believe this.
It's entirely plausible and in my view sensible it accords with our day-to-day experience to believe that while things do have a unitive aspect to it, they are created, sustained, and relate ultimately to a single originator, God, they also have a real distinction to them. And again, the whole thing is based on dialectics. So why not just toss out the dialectics?
>> Um, in terms of recognizing that there are true distinctions in actual experience, we only ever recognize distinctions through perspective. And you're saying like this positionalism is a rejection of common sense. But every real experience we have for exactly what it is, namely experience, is exactly what it seems to be. Right? It's the extra uh supposition of something like inert matter or something like true onlogical distinctions and true otherness. Like we can't really conceive that because of the nature of our minds.
>> So like all of this requires some sort of speculation.
>> Yeah. But see, again, so you're saying like it's kind of cypism more or less. I mean, it sounds solypistic what you're saying and and again, I think that's self-refuting. Like I don't believe that we just have phenomenal experiences at all. I don't accept that position.
>> What other sort of experiences do we have?
>> Well, I don't accept that Berkeley phenomenalism, I believe that we have a direct real perception of objects in the world. You and I share a common reality.
And you would say, well, how do you prove that? I would say by the impossibility of the contrary. The acceptance of the idea that we only have phenomenal uh individual experiences leads to subjective experiences leads to um cypism which leads to Maya and in all these positions that you're espousing which I think are self-reputing. So, so no, again, I don't accept indirect realism which led to phenomenalism.
>> Mhm. Uh I'm still not seeing how it's self-refuting, but uh maybe we can again shift >> because because you don't if you don't believe that there's a common objective world that we all experience um then what happens is it leads to I believe it leads to cypism. I think Decart's position leads to syypism. Any of the the far eastern positions lead to syypism and the idea that my experience is elucery. If your experience is elucory, then the truths that you come to about your experience being elucory and all the stuff that you've talked about for the last two hours, it's all elucory.
>> Yeah. Well, that's begging the question.
Calling it a reduct absurd. I'm like, you're kind of defining it as absurd, which is begging the question.
I don't [laughter] absurd.
>> Why would it be absurd to say for the last two hour? So basically the last two hours you've argued to me nothing but illusions. That's absurd.
>> No, not what I've said is not that all experiences are exactly what they are.
There are positive contents. There is real knowledge which is why like the godhead the one >> how do you know that how do you know that what you're getting at is the real knowledge and not an illus part of the illus illusion. You're talking about Godhead and you're talking about avatars and all this stuff. And I'm saying if your ultimate reality is is is monistic and beyond your phenomenal experiences, then how do you know that what you're experiencing how do you far it out the illusion from the truth? On what basis?
>> Uh it would I mean it's an ethical path which is why it's really not >> that doesn't answer how you know which of all these things we talked about >> as I said before. of thought is descriptive. Emotion is prescriptive. If we can reduce the influence of emotion, then we should experience the reality for what it is to the greatest possible extent.
>> Why should you reduce emotion? I mean, says who? Why? Maybe maybe Dionian abandon and uh you know, maybe that's the way to truth. Why should you why?
Well, I mean, it seems to be the case that in order to perceive something act, I mean, emotion tends to direct attention towards a given end. I mean, that's kind of the nature of of emotion and appetite, right? And so, if you don't want to engage in discursive ramblings and you want to analyze something and you really want to get into it and see what it is in and for itself as it is, then that emotional factor seems only to distract. I don't have any, you know, absolute epistemological grounding for that position, but it seems to correspond with the nature of my experience that when I remain level-headed and detached, I am actually able to perceive things more clearly.
>> Yeah. I mean, again, the point that I was trying to make isn't that I mean, I know that you see it as justified. I'm just saying that I don't see it I don't see it as justified given the rest of the worldview still rests on monism. I mean, I I just again, I think monism at base is is completely self-refuting. And I know that you think that it's not it can't be avoided. Uh but again, when I say how do you know which things are a loser and which aren't and you say it's a basic ethical intuition, that to me is not an answer. That's just a a restatement of the fact that you think you're correct.
Uh well I think where I was trying to go with it like pointing to the ethics is like how do you know how do you figure it out the truth from the illusion right well it's an orientation and so the culmination of this is following the aesthetic path to its its logical conclusion which is like the syasi and meditation and and you know attaining unity with godhead that's the point and that's the only way that you're really going to get at the truth as it really is because any engagement in the world at in the typical way is going to involve emotions by necessity due to the the structure of the being. Uh >> okay. So, how do you know that in the last two hours all the stuff that you said wasn't tainted with emotion and illusion?
>> Well, I'm sure that it was right. But over time, I notice when I'm in a clearer space and when I analyze things without emotion, I converge on a set of observations like the the observation of fact that can't be a cube without a perspective on it. Like that's something that I've come back to again and again in a relatively clear-headed state. And there, you know, I observe these regularities, these constant relations over time. And that's sort of how I formulate the set of uh you know non-elillusory opinions.
>> Okay. Could it be the could it be the case that in five years you grow to the point where you look back and you realize that at this stage you were trapped in illusion?
>> Yeah, of course it could be.
>> Okay. So then the whole the whole position is nonsense.
>> No, it's just not apppodictically certain following from given axioms which that's the allure I think of orthodoxy. Everything is >> not only it's not No, no, no, no. It's not that it's not apppidictically certain. It's that it's it's totally confusing nonsense. It's gibberish. It makes absolutely no sense because you just admitted that the last two hours of what you've argued in five years you could look back and say, "Oh, it's completely trapped in illusion then."
And that negates everything that you've argued.
>> No, because it would still contain elements of truth. error always.
>> That's that priest. That's that's assuming that you know what what's true and what's false. And that's what I asked you. How do you know? And you said, "Well, I just grow and I'll look back and I'll figure it out."
So, you're basically it's just circular.
It's like >> I mean I that's being we act under uh assumptions like you act under assumptions. I act under assumptions.
One of the assumptions that I act under is like this aesthetic ideal that being less emotional leaves things.
>> Dude, you just said that it's entirely possible that in 5 years you will evolve to believe that that's completely not true.
>> It is possible that I'm mistaken for the moment. I'm assuming that this is true because it conforms with my present experience. It's like the the scientific method as we have a hypothesis and it proves correct enough times and then you know when it's disproven we have to get rid of it.
>> So the scientific method is a thing we'll put over here that's not under the the Maya illusion right.
>> No the scientific method is purely pragmatic. We're kind of grasping at straws there but it seems to be what gets the best results.
>> Yeah. This is it's to me this is just completely arbitrary as to what things you stick into the category of maya and illusion and what things you think point you towards truth. It's just like as we talk about this, it seems like you're just kind of picking out the things that okay, I'll put that in the true category. I'll put that in the Maya category. And emotions go in the Maya scientific method. It goes maybe in between pragmatic. And I'm not being a dick. I'm just saying this is I think the weakness of the position is that it's not a a coherent metaphysic and not a coherent ethic or anything. I think it's fundamentally contradictory. So, you know, I you can disagree with that.
I think you know you see >> it's a a fallibleist position. Mine is mine personally. I mean, if you ask like people at the Madonna Center in Hollywood or something, they're probably going to tell you like, "No, this stuff is absolutely certain." Um, but I don't think just saying something's absolutely certain makes it absolutely certain. And I think it's being honest to admit that, hey, in the past, I've been wrong about things that I was quite sure about.
Therefore, it's very possible that I could be wrong about things that I think are quite sure today. I mean, you do not >> Yeah, but you're not presenting the position as just a hypothesis. I mean, you've made a whole lot of uh uh claims about phenomenalism and and idealism and benanta and avatars and all kinds of things that that uh I'm not clear whether they're elucory or whether they're they're just theories or whether you think they have the same level of certitude as the scientific method or whether you think they're objectively certain or whether you you think it's even possible to have objective certainty. Um it to me it just seems it just seems like a self-defeating position at every turn.
Um, I don't say that it's impossible that to have absolute certainty. I say I'm uncertain as to whether absolute certainty is possible. Um, and I feel like that's just me being honest. I I don't think that we I think that anybody being honest will admit that whatever position they're a part of >> could be wrong. And if you're you're saying that you couldn't be wrong, then you're saying you're infallible. And I think that's just foolish.
>> Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean there's different senses to what we mean by certainty. I mean we can talk about you know op priori mathematic level certainty, logical certainty. We can talk about a high degree of probability when it comes to empirical claims and experience. Um and I think that there are all kinds of transcendental categories that are that are as certain as we can be as humans humanly possible.
Um so the existence of God things like that I think are absolutely certain. uh if you mean infallibility no that's that nobody has infallibility but again I think what we see here in my argument is that revelation while you might might find it difficult at times it does provide a coherent I would say worldview as to how we give an account for these things it doesn't give a perfect explanation for everything gives an account for how these things are possible and how they work together human anthropology the meaning of life uh ethics morality how we should or shouldn't live what we should and shouldn't do, how society, civilization should be organized. Um what we mean by the future, beginning, middle, and end, past, present, future. Uh you know, in in the position that I get from you in Pltonism, there's a lot of insights. I think there's a lot of neat stuff when it comes to Pythagoreanism and insights into the the physical world, but I see it as only going so far. I see it as as giving us a mathematical abstract level of reality, but it always it only stops there. And because it it idolizes, it turns abstract concepts and numbers into an idol, it therefore tries to smush everything into that as a so-called god and really just amounts to another version of idolatry. And then when we try to understand how we should or shouldn't live our lives in this worldview, it just becomes the individual's path and whatever you can uh make out at your local center and and whatever you come to in your own your own idea. And I and I just don't think that that works as a as a worldview. So, um, I think we've gone for I'm not trying to be rude, but we >> I think we exhausted all the territory here. One last point that I have is I think the methodological flaw of the way of setting up a worldview that you describe is that it's inherently going to have to satisfy human intuitions of logic and and reasonleness. Which means if it so happens that the nature of reality does not conform to our intuitions and our sense of reasonleness then we're going to be on the wrong track. Which is why I think it's a little bit better to keep like an open and constantly revising epistemology.
Not to say that truth doesn't or not to say that changes but that we have to keep on you know >> well I would commit I would commend to you uh the many church fathers for example St. John Damascus and on the Orthodox faith who have extensive discussions of Aristotle, Plato, logic, thousands of pl pages that deal with these topics. Many medieval philosophers and theologians uh who dealt extensively with with logic and reason. We just see logic and reason having a place. Uh we don't have we don't see it as exalted to to uh deity and godhood. And anytime we've seen in history this try to be done, it's actually ironically the rational state, the the the ideal republic that leads to mass murder. I'm not saying you, but anytime that the communists have tried to instantiate the ideal republic and all communism is based on Plato and the Republic, uh it just leads to mass murder and death. And so I don't believe that what you're talking about actually gives people the the intuitive uh satisfaction that you think it does.
I think what you're talking about gives a certain eccentric type of person uh an intuitive satisfaction namely people who find abstract mathematics or Pythagoreanism or or uh uh uh deep philosophy interesting. It will it will ring true with those people. And certainly those people make discoveries about the world and science and mathematics. Absolutely. But that's not all there is to the world. The world is not just one giant uh calculator. We don't live in Bhash's head. We don't live in a giant simulation matrix. We actually live in a different kind of world. And it's a world where we have uh a lot of different aspects to our being and not just not just logic and math. I would commend to you the essay ironically as a bridge uh the by sherard uh logic in the absolute if you haven't read that you may have read it I don't know but uh he kind of responds to a lot of the objections that you bring back when he was still orthodox before he kind of drifted out of orthodoxy but it's still a good essay logic in the absolute I think it's at one of the perennialist sites ironically um and that helped me because there was a period about 10 years ago where I was very tempted with some of the same ideas where I thought well maybe there's you know, all the religions are just telling us one general general idea. Uh, and then I got back into reading the Bible and I read uh read some critiques of Pltonism and and I found them to be convincing.
Anyway, so that's my final statement.
Um, this was a great talk, man. I I really enjoyed it. You brought some really good ideas and some deep questions to the table. Uh, some stuff I had to really think about. Um, we'll leave it up to the audience who they found uh more convincing. I hope I didn't uh come off as a jerk or or overt talk you. It wasn't my intention. I just get really heated and I get very very passionate about these topics.
>> I was super entertained, so I really didn't mind. I'm always entertained by you.
>> Cool, man. I appreciate that. Uh and I thank you very much for coming on. So, we got a couple questions. Everybody seems to have liked the debate. We got If you want to send your super chats, I'll split them uh with Eric uh so you can help support us. Uh I always tend to split super chats with guests. So feel free now to to send some super chats and let's go with the first uh Twice remembered 499 says watching live for the first time in a week. Glad to be a part of the community and hope you all have a great night. Thank you twice remembered. Appreciate that. Blake G before resurrection after death. Where do souls go? Uh that's a very in-depth uh topic. I'm sure uh Eric will have a different uh conception of that than I do, but uh you know the orthodox doctrine is is somewhat debated, but Father Sarapim Rose's book uh soul after death for the toll house perspective. Uh you can find some some uh Eastern church fathers have uh some some writings about the soul after death. And then there's the Jordanville or not Jordanville the the Holy Transfiguration Monastery I think just put out the big 500page book of the Orthodox Conception of the soul after death and also I think St. John Maximovic has a book on the soul after death too I think. So you can check those out. Uh but I'm I am almost uh about to pass out. I'm so tired. So Tanner Terry $2 has a question for Eric.
Tanner Terry's question is uh Eric, what is your purpose in life?
>> Finding the truth, whatever it may be.
That's my highest value. I believe I did say that.
>> Yeah, I think that's that's a that's a um classic dictim of Augustine.
Augustine said that when he first uh started pursuing philosophy, he made it his life's goal to know the truth at all costs. Uh and I like that dictim. I I agree with that.
Uh, any other super chats?
If not, I think we'll call it a night.
Uh, [groaning] don't see anything. So, Eric, thank you.
I've got your links below. Uh, well, your link to the what? It's the perennial podcast, right?
>> Yeah, the channel name is Airvol A V L.
>> Okay. And [clears throat] I've got the link below. People can check out his uh his Google chats that he's done. is do you do is the podcast like on iTunes or any podcast outlet?
>> Just starting now. We have like eight episodes up. So, >> okay. Okay, cool. So, everybody can check that out and great discussion.
Thank you for coming on. Thank you for for being uh uh tolerant and lively.
>> Yeah. Thank you, Jay. God bless.
>> All right. God bless you. Have a good night. You do.
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