WLC: "You can't prove the negative"

[Neo-Scholastic]

Well, I think you’re quite nice, intelligent, and very reasonable, but probably a bit misunderstood. Showing an interest in certain topics can get a person boxed, labeled, and summarily dismissed pretty quickly around here, and I’m guilty of it myself. It’s just the sheer amount of dishonest interlocutors that blow in and out of the forums on a regular basis starts to jade folks after a while, and you stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. 

At the end of the day,  some people enjoy digging into subjects like epistemic foundations, and others don’t. It really just boils down to personal preference and interest in the subject matter. Some atheists are more practically-minded; i.e. “no god seems to be impacting my life in a detectable way, therefore I’m not going to waste another second of my precious time considering it” (my husband), while others of us enjoy perseverating on metaphysical questions simply for the joy of it, (or because we can’t turn our brains off, as is the case for me), even if it doesn’t change the way we live our lives or lead to any definitive, tangible answers. But regardless of any personal inclinations, as you mentioned, intellectually honest discussions can’t happen if both parties aren’t willing to analyze their reasons for why they believe or don’t believe something. This gets crudely interpreted as, “you’re saying both participants share an equal burden of proof,” which isn’t necessarily correct depending on the nature of the discussion, but both sides certainly bear a responsibility to explain and justify their reasoning. Otherwise it’s not a productive discussion, or really a discussion at all.

My views have changed since coming here; and, I have learned many new things! This forum is like an online Lucky Charms box, lots of new and exciting things, (almost) daily, from our Community!

"Philosophy is a doggone cereal box."

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Those are complex questions well beyond the scope of this thread. That said,  the path from Plotinus's One to the "I am" revelation to Moses is very short. Whereas it takes much contemplation to get to Christ cruxified.

What I will also say is that my personal approach to bible study is more esoteric and heavily influnced by Swedenborg.

I may be wrong, but from what I've gleaned from what you've said about this, both here and in the past (including what you've said in the past about treating the Bible as largely allegorical, far more that I ever did when I was a Christian)... it seems to me that you perhaps have a sort of 'fragmentary' approach to reading the Bible? Ie treating it more like a compendium of literature than a linear historical record... along with Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (whatever exactly that is... I couldn't tell from a cursory read of the Swedenborg wiki, which looks very complicated, but guessing it's perhaps a work of literature like Dante's Divine Comedy?). I read Dante's Divine Comedy a long time ago and though I found it very interesting, provocative, and entralling, it was at the end of the day just very imaginative literature to me (I don't know if within Catholicism (which seems similar to your views, on account of Aquinas etc) it's meant to be taken as revelation, but it certainly wasn't within my Protestant upbringing). If that is your approach... ie more grounded in ideas and literature, than line by line analysis? Then I could at least understand where you're coming from a bit more, but at the same time could pretty much categorically say that that could never be me, and never was me when I was a Christian in the past (ie I grew up a literalist and a creationist), because, differences in beliefs aside, my mind just doesn't work like that; I am [over]analytical and reductionistic by nature, so I could never approach any of this based on vague ideas and impressions even if I wanted to.

Never say never, so I am told. Cultivating an appreciation for the arts in general and of oil painting in particular...that aquired sensibility and understanding gained from craftsmanship has taught me that not all truths can be represented with premises and propositions. They do not proceded step by step to a conclusion: but rather tease and beguile with occational visions of transcendent clarity.

So no, I do not approach scripture like a science text book or pure historical records. If anything, those to me are modern heresies...born of severely limited abilities to recognize truth in its many presentations.