Foisted into the limitation of Original Sin
Surrounded by deception
Flesh that is corruptible
Laws are created which bid us to the Grave.
Created from nothing, the void created by God's omnipotence.
The nothingness which all limitation becomes in light of the power of God.
Is there not some purpose to being housed in this husk?
Is there not some reason to be confined among such Evil?
Are not the commands to take up one's cross,
a Father who chastises us to renounce the horror we are?
Does not suffering create for us,
the knowledge of Evil to bring us to Good?
Is not this world the opposite,
of everything that life desires?
Beasts desire food, but their food is hunger.
Beasts desire drink, but their drink is thirst.
Humans seek pleasure because they are not pleased
Humans seek excitement because they are restless.
A world of distractions which whittle us down,
A world of living death.
If I bit of a fruit which was poison,
would not my Father take me to be treated?
If I bit of a fruit which was evil,
would not my Father teach me not to do so?
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Divine Illumination
Divine Illumination is an idea which has been abandoned by most thinkers as a viable source of cognition, and this is a shame, because Divine Illumination is the only theory of cognition which would allow noumena, or things-in-themselves, to be understood by the mind as they actually are.
In modern philosophy, the empiricism of Francis Bacon, Humean skepticism, and the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant were influential ideas, all of which in some way disallow the mind from seeing things as they actually are, either because knowledge is obtained via the senses, and the senses are imperfect (empiricism), all things are subject to doubt (skepticism), or because the mind cannot grasp noumena, but only appearances of things.
What is missing from these theories is that there may actually be a God, and if there is a God, then this God can reveal what things actually are to the mind. In that light, these philosophies which state that one cannot understand things as they actually are the products of either deliberately shunning God, or of God deliberately keeping the person in the dark.
Starting with St. Thomas Aquinas, philosophers started to emphasize the individual, limited intellect more than Divine Illumination, which was a theory not only espoused by St. Augustine, but also Platonist and Neo-Platonist philosophers. By modernity, Divine Illumination had been almost completely abandoned and replaced by various forms of naturalism, empiricism, skepticism, and other philosophies which create the idea in human beings that they cannot know reality as it actually is.
These modern inventions are for the most part something like a negative hubris, the product of human minds consumed by fear of the Divine and deceived by evil surreptitiously keeping themselves and deliberately keeping others in the dark about the true nature of things. Human beings believe that there are rules, limitations which keep themselves in the dark, and shun the light of God, who being omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent can of course reveal and illuminate anything to any mind He desires.
It would be unwise to put limitations on human knowing; if God is involved in the process of human understanding, then there are no limits!
In modern philosophy, the empiricism of Francis Bacon, Humean skepticism, and the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant were influential ideas, all of which in some way disallow the mind from seeing things as they actually are, either because knowledge is obtained via the senses, and the senses are imperfect (empiricism), all things are subject to doubt (skepticism), or because the mind cannot grasp noumena, but only appearances of things.
What is missing from these theories is that there may actually be a God, and if there is a God, then this God can reveal what things actually are to the mind. In that light, these philosophies which state that one cannot understand things as they actually are the products of either deliberately shunning God, or of God deliberately keeping the person in the dark.
Starting with St. Thomas Aquinas, philosophers started to emphasize the individual, limited intellect more than Divine Illumination, which was a theory not only espoused by St. Augustine, but also Platonist and Neo-Platonist philosophers. By modernity, Divine Illumination had been almost completely abandoned and replaced by various forms of naturalism, empiricism, skepticism, and other philosophies which create the idea in human beings that they cannot know reality as it actually is.
These modern inventions are for the most part something like a negative hubris, the product of human minds consumed by fear of the Divine and deceived by evil surreptitiously keeping themselves and deliberately keeping others in the dark about the true nature of things. Human beings believe that there are rules, limitations which keep themselves in the dark, and shun the light of God, who being omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent can of course reveal and illuminate anything to any mind He desires.
It would be unwise to put limitations on human knowing; if God is involved in the process of human understanding, then there are no limits!
Angels Amidst Confusion
Released the EP Angels Amidst Confusion on Bandcamp yesterday, available for $4, or if you just want to listen to it online, for free. The cover art is a digitally manipulated distortion of a woodcut by Albrecht Durer, namely, The Four Angels Restraining the Winds from The Apocalypse.
The first three tracks are dark and explore the darkness of the human soul amidst the confusion of our age, and the last two tracks explore liberation from this confusion and Divine Illumination.
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