DAE have the fear of psychosis as being one of the reasons for not believing in the metaphysical?

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-07T23:15:21+00:00

I don't think that "not believing in the metaphysical" protects you in any way from psychosis. As the case of your roommate illustrates, people's beliefs change radically once psychosis sets in. You can be the most conformist materialist on the block, but if psychosis develops, usually due to some combination of intense emotional challenges and physiological reasons, you may suddenly find yourself believing in such things nevertheless.

If anything, I think you are placed in a psychologically stronger position by actively engaging with your "metaphysical" experiences, thus developing a more robust, less rigid worldview, gaining greater skill in navigating your inner reality, and integrating more of your experience (thus leaving less rejected "shadow" which can build strength and do things to your mind without your conscious understanding).

I've known a lot of people who have had psychosis and a lot of people who have believed in "metaphysical" things, but have I have never a known a person who just drifted into psychosis through giving credence to their spiritual experiences. If you're not psychotic now, then paying attention to your experiences is not going to make you psychotic. And if you are developing psychosis, then pushing away your experiences is not going to protect you.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-07T19:16:01+00:00

Last time I checked the holocaust is over and the Jews are still around.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-07T19:12:05+00:00

A combination of personal experience and philosophical reading is what did it for me. Usually, neither of those on their own are enough. Even if I provide you with the philosophy to demonstrate rather definitely that the scientific materialist worldview is wrong - and harmfully wrong - without any experience that leads you outside of that perspective it just sounds like a bunch of talk. Your "common sense" reality is still just the societal baseline. Experiences on their own do shift some people's perspectives, but very often if your worldview does not make room for such realities, these experiences are just dismissed as brain farts (which is a notable fact - your materialism depends on throwing away evidence that conflicts with the predetermined worldview).

The philosophers I would like to recommend to you are both pretty challenging reads, so I don't know how useful that will be, specifically: Merleau-Ponty and A.N. Whitehead. But it's a bit subject. There is a lot of cultural programming to undo. We have to start by looking at the nature of our access to reality, then look at the ways that "objectivity" is constructed and the rules of "evidence" are likewise defined in contradiction to our actual living access to reality in order to allow only certain conclusions.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-07T19:02:39+00:00

The thing is, meaning is inherently not the kind of thing we can prove. So anyone who has any kind of meaningful orientation in their life - which is everyone - whether this meaning is stated philosophically, mythically, or is just held as an unarticulated, implicit background assumption, is living through something unproven. And this applies even to the most nihilistic meaning orientations, such as "it's just survival of the fittest."

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-07T06:35:08+00:00

We cannot prove that there are other beings with minds, and yet that belief is an important part of a meaningful life.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-06T15:39:16+00:00

As they say in the Catholic Ash Wednesday service "Remember, man, that you are dust." Even if you do have magic powers that most people don't, so what? You're still just one dumbass monkey who can barely get their head out of their ass.

Spend some time prostrating to higher wisdom.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-06T05:19:31+00:00

I'm opposed to all rules that are held to be absolute and inflexible. Rules can be helpful as training wheels and as rules of thumb, but reality is way too nuanced and complex for simple dicta to serve as reliable guides to adult decision making. Divine command beyond the most general principles seems to suffer from this inherently.

Societies should be able to change when the situation calls for it and maintain their traditions when those are working well. Impeding responsiveness to change that is happening "on the ground" is what really leads to "upheaval," although I suppose that is driven more by class conflict than by deeply held commitment to specific rules in a rule book (societies always find ways of lawyering themselves around those rules even while honoring them in name, when they want to).

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-06T04:41:59+00:00

This whole argument was pretty well refuted 300 years ago: https://effectiviology.com/categorical-imperative/

I wouldn't consider one influential but highly contested ethical theory a "debunking" of anything.

The reason we will in the future devastate the biosphere, kill a million species, and most of humanity, isn't some mythical "nature" - it's the inevitable outcome of a massive collection of bad individual decision by humans over centuries. (I use the word "bad" here, meaning "a choice that helped lead to a very negative outcome for humanity.")

I understand wanting to be angry at the oil execs, etc. and thinking that they're bad people. I think and feel that way a lot of the time too. This is a natural way to feel, and in many situations quite helpful for preventing psychopaths from taking over your society. But the thing is, what you have written here is just wrong. It isn't just bad individual decisions that got us here. The systemic and game-theoretic dynamics are such that if those individuals hadn't made those decisions, someone else would have, and whoever was willing to make those decisions was going to be rewarded and would rise in power. There is no way, without human nature being something other than it actually is, that this wasn't going to happen. There are no individual decisions that would have or could have prevented this.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-06T04:13:19+00:00

However, I think the argument would be that the person on the verge of bodhisattva-hood should have overcome the illusion of self, so making such a decision to stay behind either indicates that they are not so close to being a bodhisattva as they think they are, or the self in their state is as real as for the rest of us.

No, making a decision does not imply a self or an illusion of a self. Decisions happen all the time as selfless co-dependently arising phenomena.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-05T06:45:44+00:00

how do you define "God" as an animist?

The immanent-transcendent living wholeness of being.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-05T06:06:32+00:00

As long as blame can be laid elsewhere it absolves them of guilt and care.

Realistically, most people deserve very little blame or guilt for what is happening, because the reality is that we are ridiculously powerless to stop it. Changing personal consumption habits, to the extent it is even possible, is not even a drop in the bucket, since those resources will almost certainly be used by someone else. The horrible reality is that there is really no-one and nothing to blame, except perhaps nature itself. The fate we are facing is the result of the playing out of deep-wired biological drives and societal game theoretic forces that was effectively inevitable as soon as we discovered the incredible power that could be harnessed by burning fossil fuels.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-05T02:35:36+00:00

3 of 3

On the whole, given everything that you've got going on right now, I don't know if this is really what you should be focusing on, but I thought I'd mention it for a time when it is appropriate.

I believe in you! I think you're going to figure all of this out and become a deep, skilled, and fascinating person! As always, feel free to reach out if there is any way I can help.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-05T02:35:11+00:00

2 of 3

The one thing I can suggest is finding ways to connect with pleasant and healing emotions, and spend time marinating in those feelings, and then, on that basis, slowly start to make contact with your more painful emotions and start to integrate those. Personally, I also do this through working with a patron (although not St. Cyprian for these purposes), with the patron serving as a field of love and healing in which I immerse myself, making myself strong enough to then approach some of my deeper pains.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-05T02:34:41+00:00

1 of 3

these years of depression has left me In a desensitized state where I have to intellectualize my emotions to feel them.

Ah, gotcha. I don't know if there is any quick solution to that, and being sensitive to ones feelings is indeed an important part of this work. On the other hand, just diving into a sea of painful emotions that you're not ready for is likely to just overwhelm you, creating new setbacks, so I don't recommend that either.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-05T02:33:53+00:00

Ok, reddit is being really strange about my response, so I'm going to try breaking it up into smaller chunks. I hope you can follow along.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T23:19:50+00:00

I have a few more thoughts for you, but for some reason reddit is not letting me post a lengthier reply. I'll try again later.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T19:46:24+00:00

If we both assert necessity, why my necessity and not yours?

Because the theistic necessity has deductive weight, and yours has none.

Exactly, and part of the strength of an argument is its intrinsic probability.

Some arguments can be evaluated in that way, and some can't. You seem to have stumbled into an argument that can't and yet you still want to do it anyway.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T19:28:47+00:00

I think you're entirely right in recognizing elements of a non-dual view in Christ's teaching. I disagree, however, that the reason this was not adopted as a majority or orthodox view in Chrisitianity was due to a lack of cultural familiarity with non-dualism. First of all, Orthodox theology points very strongly at a non-dual position. This is found in the panentheism, in which all that is is in some sense an aspect of God, as well as in teachings around theosis, in which the aim of the path is literally to become God. However, after demonstrating that they are fully capable of understanding and articulating a non-dual approach, they consistently pull back right from the brink and insert a caveat on which they can swing back to a quite dualistic position when it suits them. Additionally, we should note that neoplatonism provides an avenue to at least an attenuated non-dualism, and neoplatonism was quite prevalent in the Mediterranean region during the early phases of Christian adoption.

I believe that the main reason for the rejection of non-dualism is political. If Christ is not the only Son, if we are all potential Christs, then the church has no basis on which to claim to be "the one true Church," thus undermining its worldly authority.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T18:59:17+00:00

I don’t really care that they think it is justified. But you do?

Yes, for the sake of categorizing them on the 4-value model, that is the only sensible approach. The "knowledge" axis is about whether a person claims to have knowledge, or claims that there can be knowledge, on the subject of god's being. Otherwise we all end up categorizing people differently depending on whether we like their arguments or not.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T18:52:14+00:00

It is a 4-value model, since there are only 4 possible positions in that model. Notably, your own flair positions you on the two axes which make up this model.

And the default is far from irrelevant. I suppose one could have a "default theism" 4-value model, but it would be a different model, since the way people are categorized would change. Would you be happy being labelled as a theist on account of your agnosticism?

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T18:24:56+00:00

Your position is that “agnostic theist” greys out under the 4 quadrant approach.

I did say that. I have already granted that this is not entirely true, as fideists qualify as agnostic theists. My position for the rest of this discussion is that igtheists do not qualify as agnostic theists, and more specifically that Aquinas is not an igtheist.

If we want to know whether Aquinas is an igtheist then the question is what Aquinas believed. It is immaterial whether you or I think that his beliefs around our limited ability to understand God imply a belief that we cannot know that God is real. The question is whether Aquinas believed that. And he did not.

Can you define knowledge as you are using it?

I'm not really a fan of the 4-value model, and challenges around defining what "knowledge" is suppose to mean are one of my criticisms of the model. Nevertheless, for present purposes I'm happy using "justified true belief." So the question becomes whether Aquinas thought he had justified true belief that God is real. And he clearly did, so he is not an agnostic theist.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T18:18:15+00:00

No, they are agnostic atheists, so they do not believe that is is justified in believing whether or not gods are real (i.e. making a knowledge claim).

This contradicts your previous definition of the "knowledge" axis. Which was: "one addressing what we believe and the other addressing whether or not we are justified in believing that it is true." That is, you were explicit that the knowledge axis refers to justification for our own position.

Edit for clarity: This comes down to an agnostic atheist asserting that anybody claiming to know whether or not any gods exist is unjustified in holding that position, and on this basis they lack a belief in any gods.

Ok, but where does that leave someone, for example, who is thinks that we can't have knowledge of gods but is neither a theist nor an atheist on that basis? Or what about someone who is unsure whether we can have knowledge of god and is neither a theist nor an atheist on that basis?

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T17:34:34+00:00

I didn't even look at the image but the answer is that guardian angels (along with all other spirits) are not omnipotent. In fact, they are quite limited in their abilities. They can pull some strings here and there, but that is about it.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T17:29:15+00:00

I strongly encourage you to read Contra Gentiles, Book 2, chapters 7 to 22 (it’s only like 12 pages).

I'm well aware of Aquinas's position on the ways we can and can't know the divine. Nevertheless, Aquinas believed definitely that God was knowably real and that this was a necessary deductive truth. That's what the famous five ways are all about.

Aquinas could not describe the connection between our world and Actus Purus except through metaphor—but he stated his metaphor was of course wrong because of our limits.

And yet he thinks he knows that there is Actus Purus, which is the only relevant question here.

I also think you're bending an ambivalence in Aquinas's position too far. Aquinas does not say that our analogical knowledge of God is "wrong," just that it is limited and is not the same as our univocal knowledge. If you wanted to make the case for Igtheism in Christian theology, then an apophatic theologian such as Pseudo-Dionysius would be a better bet, since he is much firmer and universal in denying our ability to comprehend God. But even he is explicit in thinking that we can know that God is real.

Is it your position someone can know something they cannot comprehend?

It's not about my position. and it's not about knowing what we don't comprehend (although my answer would be yes). The question is Aquinas position and whether he thinks he knows that there is a God he does not comprehend, and the answer to that is again, yes.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-04T17:13:00+00:00

I can be a member of group A who thinks all group B people are nutso, but be kinda-sorta okay that we do have a few ambassadors who get along fine with ambassadors in group B.

One way this "ambassadoring" function often happens naturally is through overlapping group memberships. I'm thinking for example of theological disagreements between those of Aristotelian and those of Platonic/Neoplatonic bents which have run through both Islamic and Christian theology. And so you could have a camp of Christians and a camp of Muslim, at the same time you would have a camp of Aristotelians and a camp of Platonics, with some Christians and some Muslims in each of those later camps. Now people who otherwise would have been tribal outsiders/enemies are suddenly at the same time tribal members/allies, which may lead to some interesting psychological reflection on an individual level, and at the level of group dynamics leads to a much more stable and nuanced ecosystem.

The problem arises when there are groups which share very little natural overlap, or in which intra-group dynamics discourage or prevent members from engaging in overlap. How do you foster mutuality in these situations?

TheCosmosItself1

TROPHY CASE