Health and Religion

[CoinCube]

I wanted to share with anyone who is interested what I am reading at the moment. I have recently started reading the Way of God: Derech Hashem by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/087306769X/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1/159-3751462-6767111?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_r=NM9R7T16A9G2147WGMJX&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1944687722&pf_rd_i=1598264672

It is an older classic 18th century philosophical book. It is very logical and is set out in parts that are divided into a few chapters. The parts are:
1. Fundamentals, covering The Creator, Man, Human Responsibility.
2. Providence, covering Providence in General, Individual Providence, How Providence Works.
3. The Soul, Inspiration and Prophecy, with The Soul and Its Influence, Theurgy, The Prophetic Experience.
4. Serving God, Love and Fear of God, Prayer, Seasonal Commandments.

There is a free class in Seattle that is currently going through this book chapter by chapter taught by Mark Spiro.
Geography unfortunately prevents me from attending his class but audio recordings of it and discussions of each chapter are available for free here.

http://www.livingjudaism.com/the-way-of-god.html



Both Moshe Chaim Luzzatto and Mark Spiro approach the issue from the Jewish tradition but I think anyone interested in God or religion will find it worthwhile. I do and I am not Jewish.

[CoinCube]

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/tozer/5j00.0010/5j00.0010.11.htm

"I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

...

Sin is always an act of wrong judgment. To commit a sin a man must for the moment believe that things are different from what they really are; he must confound values; he must see the moral universe out of focus; he must accept a lie as truth and see truth as a lie; he must ignore the signs on the highway and drive with his eyes shut; he must act as if he had no soul and was not accountable for his moral choices.

Sin is never a thing to be proud of. No act is wise that ignores remote consequences, and sin always does. Sin sees only today, or at most tomorrow; never the day after tomorrow, next month or next year. Death and judgment are pushed aside as if they did not exist."

-A.W. Tozer 1897-1963

[BADecker]

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/tozer/5j00.0010/5j00.0010.11.htm

"I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

...

Sin is always an act of wrong judgment. To commit a sin a man must for the moment believe that things are different from what they really are; he must confound values; he must see the moral universe out of focus; he must accept a lie as truth and see truth as a lie; he must ignore the signs on the highway and drive with his eyes shut; he must act as if he had no soul and was not accountable for his moral choices.

Sin is never a thing to be proud of. No act is wise that ignores remote consequences, and sin always does. Sin sees only today, or at most tomorrow; never the day after tomorrow, next month or next year. Death and judgment are pushed aside as if they did not exist."

-A.W. Tozer 1897-1963

Having and listening to the moral law, and then going out and disobeying it...

... is worse than not having it and disobeying it.

It is a difficult thing to judge which nation will be destroyed when. But Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel (Bible Old Testament) shows us that all the nations will eventually be destroyed... all nations except one, that is.

According to Daniel's interpretation of the dream, the one great nation of God will become a mountain that will fill the earth. This nation is made up of all who believe in the salvation of Jesus, and maintain their faith by obeying the theme of the law... love. These people will come from and be found in every nation on earth.

[nihilnegativum]

For philosophy, nihilism is foremost the metaphysical nihilism, that is a nihilism in ontology and epistemology (there is no eternal ontological ground, in theistic terms, world doesn't have a creator, in any sense, and therefore has no unity as the world, this lack of unity, this unity is the concept of the world, therefore onlogical nihilism can claim that there is no world, just things).

I fail to see how metaphysical nihilism does not lead inevitably to moral nihilism. On what grounds do you establish morality. You can make rules codified into law reflecting the preferences of the majority but how can anything ever be right or wrong. At best you have the preferences of a majority or realistically the preferences of the ruling elite subject to change and personal expediency. What is the inherent significance of these rules? Nothing just transient strictures that carry a degree of risk if broken. If there is no world just things what does that say about humanity itself? Well we must simply be one more group of things with no real necessary value. If you can reach any other conclusion starting from metaphysical nihilism I am curious as to how.  

You fail to see it, because the common metaphysics is a theological one, and for a theological metaphysics nihilism is just everything bad. You can establish morality on the grounds of knowledge and reason, and not on a shared belief. Majority consensus of believers is still just a different kind of theology, it measures beliefs not knowledge, but believing has nothing to do with truth, the number of people convinced is not an adequate measure of something being either true or just.

 We have no real value just because value isn't real, but a property of knowledge. Like mathematics is not inherent in things, apples on tables don't have the inherent property of two-ness, this makes the predicate of quantity at the same time unreal, but true in an objective sense; the judgment has grounds in objectivity, yet isn't contained in it. This same distinction is pertinent to ethics, while things themselves aren't good or evil, facts serve as the basis of our knowledge of them as good or evil. Inherent significance is an oxymoron, there is only extrinsic meaning, yet this does not mean there is none, or that it is subjective in the sense that it would be arbitrary. So you have a thing X, a purpose Y, any only knowledge can tell you whether X is good for Y, the additional problem is to ground universal purposes, this is also possible with reason alone (but it requires a larger philosophical work, not a forum post).

This should not be confused with the simplistic claims that there is nothing, and we can't know anything as theists interpret it, but as its own metaphysical ground capable of producing rational ontology, epistemology and morals without succumbing to spiritualism. On this basis what we can say is that there is no intrinsic value, and therefore valuing is required as a finite process among other, susceptible to context and change, and because of that capable of progressing. To take values as fixed, therefore only blocks the potential progress of values and robs them of their rational basis.

Have you considered the possibility that the the end point of such a search the optimal rational ontology and morals may be ethical monotheism and if so the potential consequences of rejecting the optimum while searching for it. Ethical monotheism does not require a belief in spiritualism.

Some degree of spritiualism is necessary, although it becomes harder to spot and more abstract philosophical critiques are necessary to reveal it. Of course the rationalists in history were all theists, and monotheists (Spinoza has immanent monotheism as pantheism, Leibniz the transcendent monotheism of christianity), yet they were wrong, their systems contained assumptions no longer philosophically tenable.

There is a certain ironic elegance to a universe in which continued and sustained existence comes only to those who honor and respect its creator not via divine intervention but through inevitable cause and effect. Do we live in such a universe? It is entirely possible that we do.

Elegance is simplicity of function, it is inevitable as the mode of contingency, every star and stone and every mountain slope is a proof of impossibility of God's existence and a monument to the power of time.

[BADecker]

For philosophy, nihilism is foremost the metaphysical nihilism, that is a nihilism in ontology and epistemology (there is no eternal ontological ground, in theistic terms, world doesn't have a creator, in any sense, and therefore has no unity as the world, this lack of unity, this unity is the concept of the world, therefore onlogical nihilism can claim that there is no world, just things).

I fail to see how metaphysical nihilism does not lead inevitably to moral nihilism. On what grounds do you establish morality. You can make rules codified into law reflecting the preferences of the majority but how can anything ever be right or wrong. At best you have the preferences of a majority or realistically the preferences of the ruling elite subject to change and personal expediency. What is the inherent significance of these rules? Nothing just transient strictures that carry a degree of risk if broken. If there is no world just things what does that say about humanity itself? Well we must simply be one more group of things with no real necessary value. If you can reach any other conclusion starting from metaphysical nihilism I am curious as to how.  

You fail to see it, because the common metaphysics is a theological one, and for a theological metaphysics nihilism is just everything bad. You can establish morality on the grounds of knowledge and reason, and not on a shared belief. Majority consensus of believers is still just a different kind of theology, it measures beliefs not knowledge, but believing has nothing to do with truth, the number of people convinced is not an adequate measure of something being either true or just.

 We have no real value just because value isn't real, but a property of knowledge. Like mathematics is not inherent in things, apples on tables don't have the inherent property of two-ness, this makes the predicate of quantity at the same time unreal, but true in an objective sense; the judgment has grounds in objectivity, yet isn't contained in it. This same distinction is pertinent to ethics, while things themselves aren't good or evil, facts serve as the basis of our knowledge of them as good or evil. Inherent significance is an oxymoron, there is only extrinsic meaning, yet this does not mean there is none, or that it is subjective in the sense that it would be arbitrary. So you have a thing X, a purpose Y, any only knowledge can tell you whether X is good for Y, the additional problem is to ground universal purposes, this is also possible with reason alone (but it requires a larger philosophical work, not a forum post).

This should not be confused with the simplistic claims that there is nothing, and we can't know anything as theists interpret it, but as its own metaphysical ground capable of producing rational ontology, epistemology and morals without succumbing to spiritualism. On this basis what we can say is that there is no intrinsic value, and therefore valuing is required as a finite process among other, susceptible to context and change, and because of that capable of progressing. To take values as fixed, therefore only blocks the potential progress of values and robs them of their rational basis.

Have you considered the possibility that the the end point of such a search the optimal rational ontology and morals may be ethical monotheism and if so the potential consequences of rejecting the optimum while searching for it. Ethical monotheism does not require a belief in spiritualism.

Some degree of spritiualism is necessary, although it becomes harder to spot and more abstract philosophical critiques are necessary to reveal it. Of course the rationalists in history were all theists, and monotheists (Spinoza has immanent monotheism as pantheism, Leibniz the transcendent monotheism of christianity), yet they were wrong, their systems contained assumptions no longer philosophically tenable.

There is a certain ironic elegance to a universe in which continued and sustained existence comes only to those who honor and respect its creator not via divine intervention but through inevitable cause and effect. Do we live in such a universe? It is entirely possible that we do.

Elegance is simplicity of function, it is inevitable as the mode of contingency, every star and stone and every mountain slope is a proof of impossibility of God's existence and a monument to the power of time.

Of course, the fact that the machinery of time holds all the other machinery of nature, is far greater evidence for God than of lack of a god.

[nihilnegativum]

there is no intrinsic value, and therefore valuing is required as a finite process among other, succeptible to context and change, and because of that capable of progressing.

So you conclude "there may be value depending on the context"; if this is so, then only one who has educated oneself about the entire diversity of contexts and the whole of history can say that he has the correct "finite process" for valuation. So this path to knowledge obviously involves learning about the other worlds and those rational beings of a different and higher kind. You also would eventually have to realize that the world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived, and that there are contexts presently unknown to you. This very line of reasoning denies humanism, and it is a problem for the nihilist because according to secular scholars, "all rational atheists are humanists" (unless you are some oddball French philosopher from the 20th century). The nihilist needs a wide diversity of contexts in order to have a complete glimpse into the valuation problem, therefore any educated discussion of these contexts will turn to the subject of extraterrestrials, etheric beings, and the like.

Succeptible, not reduced to, there is absolute knowledge, you don't need to know irrelevant contexts and you don't need the knowledge of the whole to determine which are irrelevant, you only need knowledge of knowledge to do that. Perhaps we should keep the churches and teach epistemology in them. The line of thinking you describe does not deny humanism, not in philosophy at least, it does go against the standard humanism of human self-imporatance most commonly found among historians and the touchy-feely humanism of the social sciences.
You assume valuation is a relative measure that it depends only on empirical knowledge, but we don't need to compare a human to a galactic hive-mind in order to compare it to a plant, and we don't need any particular empirical knowledge in order to determine the idea of good.

I think that your version of nihilism is nothing new;

In place of the old morality, we will get the new morality-one that's more relevant-namely that "nothing is real except our world of desires and passions," as Friedrich Nietzsche phrased it in his book Beyond Good and Evil. Formally, this philosophy is not called pluralism, but secular humanism. The problem Christians have with secular humanism is not that it is truly pluralistic, but that it subjects man to the sentimentality and enthusiasms of the moment. Indeed, history has shown that secular humanism - the view that man is the sole judge of the world, including morality, the shape of society, and the value of the individual - is very bad for humanity.

The assumption that is required in your argument is that human knowledge of value can progress, but this is dependent on humanism, the idea that man is the sole judge of all things.

How can you say that man's knowledge of value can progress unless man himself is the judge of that progress?

Nietzsche was not a nihilist, he was one of its greatest opponents, as he saw it as a mere reaction to theism (as is mostly the case, but as I claim not necessarily so), and he believed that there is a third option (one that leads through nihilsim and overcomes it), but he was speaking of moral nihilism, and the will to nothingness of a disilussioned culture where their value framework had lost its center (the death of god).
The idea of progress has nothing to do with the idea of man being the judge of all things, but a very similar one, that rational beings are the judges of all things, this however is very unproblematic as it is a mere tautology, to be a rational being means to be a being that can judge. Progress is just another idea of value, what is required is knowledge of one idea alone, the idea of good. This knowledge is not a progression, we either have the knowledge of the idea or we don't, and the concept of progress is merely an application of it. What you're getting at is how can we be certain of our knowledge of progress? By being certain in our knowledge of idea of good. And how to be certain in the knowledge of idea of goood? You have to deduce it a priori, much like a mathematical proof, without its convience of formalization.

To take values as fixed, therefore only blocks the potential progress of values and robs them of their rational basis, that they always possess in some form. It doesn't even mean there isn't an objective basis of values, just that they aren't inherent to mere objectivity itself. As an analogy, we can take mathematics, that has an objective basis, yet isn't inherent in things themselves, but has to be created in order to describe them.

It is good that you bring up the rational basis of values in the context of objectivity; one philosopher has said:

Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict “It is.” Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say “It is,” you are refusing to say “I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: “Who am I to know?” he is declaring: “Who am I to live?”

Since values have a rational basis, it is sensible to ground our highest virtue in thinking, and the highest evil would be to refuse to know about other contexts of knowledge and values; therefore, only a sufficiently diverse education can allow the potential for the progress of values.

This philosophers says; thinking is overhyped. Anyone can think, some can even think very well, but to know is a thing something completely different. Virtues are neat, but they are empirical properties determined as good only on the basis of a before constructed idea of good that is applied to some properties, if you only have ethics based on virtues it is completely contextual and is therefore merely a thing of common-sense morals not pure ethics. In a land of cowards, cowardice is a virtue, etc.

PS: perhaps you'll be interested in this project of Formal Theology: https://github.com/FormalTheology/GoedelGod it detected a flaw in Gödel's ontological argument.

[BADecker]

there is no intrinsic value, and therefore valuing is required as a finite process among other, succeptible to context and change, and because of that capable of progressing.

So you conclude "there may be value depending on the context"; if this is so, then only one who has educated oneself about the entire diversity of contexts and the whole of history can say that he has the correct "finite process" for valuation. So this path to knowledge obviously involves learning about the other worlds and those rational beings of a different and higher kind. You also would eventually have to realize that the world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived, and that there are contexts presently unknown to you. This very line of reasoning denies humanism, and it is a problem for the nihilist because according to secular scholars, "all rational atheists are humanists" (unless you are some oddball French philosopher from the 20th century). The nihilist needs a wide diversity of contexts in order to have a complete glimpse into the valuation problem, therefore any educated discussion of these contexts will turn to the subject of extraterrestrials, etheric beings, and the like.

Succeptible, not reduced to, there is absolute knowledge, you don't need to know irrelevant contexts and you don't need the knowledge of the whole to determine which are irrelevant, you only need knowledge of knowledge to do that. Perhaps we should keep the churches and teach epistemology in them. The line of thinking you describe does not deny humanism, not in philosophy at least, it does go against the standard humanism of human self-imporatance most commonly found among historians and the touchy-feely humanism of the social sciences.
You assume valuation is a relative measure that it depends only on empirical knowledge, but we don't need to compare a human to a galactic hive-mind in order to compare it to a plant, and we don't need any particular empirical knowledge in order to determine the idea of good.

I think that your version of nihilism is nothing new;

In place of the old morality, we will get the new morality-one that's more relevant-namely that "nothing is real except our world of desires and passions," as Friedrich Nietzsche phrased it in his book Beyond Good and Evil. Formally, this philosophy is not called pluralism, but secular humanism. The problem Christians have with secular humanism is not that it is truly pluralistic, but that it subjects man to the sentimentality and enthusiasms of the moment. Indeed, history has shown that secular humanism - the view that man is the sole judge of the world, including morality, the shape of society, and the value of the individual - is very bad for humanity.

The assumption that is required in your argument is that human knowledge of value can progress, but this is dependent on humanism, the idea that man is the sole judge of all things.

How can you say that man's knowledge of value can progress unless man himself is the judge of that progress?

Nietzsche was not a nihilist, he was one of its greatest opponents, as he saw it as a mere reaction to theism (as is mostly the case, but as I claim not necessarily so), and he believed that there is a third option (one that leads through nihilsim and overcomes it), but he was speaking of moral nihilism, and the will to nothingness of a disilussioned culture where their value framework had lost its center (the death of god).
The idea of progress has nothing to do with the idea of man being the judge of all things, but a very similar one, that rational beings are the judges of all things, this however is very unproblematic as it is a mere tautology, to be a rational being means to be a being that can judge. Progress is just another idea of value, what is required is knowledge of one idea alone, the idea of good. This knowledge is not a progression, we either have the knowledge of the idea or we don't, and the concept of progress is merely an application of it. What you're getting at is how can we be certain of our knowledge of progress? By being certain in our knowledge of idea of good. And how to be certain in the knowledge of idea of goood? You have to deduce it a priori, much like a mathematical proof, without its convience of formalization.

To take values as fixed, therefore only blocks the potential progress of values and robs them of their rational basis, that they always possess in some form. It doesn't even mean there isn't an objective basis of values, just that they aren't inherent to mere objectivity itself. As an analogy, we can take mathematics, that has an objective basis, yet isn't inherent in things themselves, but has to be created in order to describe them.

It is good that you bring up the rational basis of values in the context of objectivity; one philosopher has said:

Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict “It is.” Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say “It is,” you are refusing to say “I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: “Who am I to know?” he is declaring: “Who am I to live?”

Since values have a rational basis, it is sensible to ground our highest virtue in thinking, and the highest evil would be to refuse to know about other contexts of knowledge and values; therefore, only a sufficiently diverse education can allow the potential for the progress of values.

This philosophers says; thinking is overhyped. Anyone can think, some can even think very well, but to know is a thing something completely different. Virtues are neat, but they are empirical properties determined as good only on the basis of a before constructed idea of good that is applied to some properties, if you only have ethics based on virtues it is completely contextual and is therefore merely a thing of common-sense morals not pure ethics. In a land of cowards, cowardice is a virtue, etc.

PS: perhaps you'll be interested in this project of Formal Theology trying to proove gods existence with code, I'm only following it because its wrong in such a great way: https://github.com/FormalTheology/GoedelGod

Is anybody beginning to grok any of this?     

[nihilnegativum]

Of course, the fact that the machinery of time holds all the other machinery of nature, is far greater evidence for God than of lack of a god.

Dogmatism clearly has its upsides too, it saves a lot of effort on presenting reasons for claims.

[BADecker]

Of course, the fact that the machinery of time holds all the other machinery of nature, is far greater evidence for God than of lack of a god.

Dogmatism clearly has its upsides too, it saves a lot of effort on presenting reasons for claims.

Dogmatism is like fundamental science. Everybody uses them, but most of us have forgotten the realities behind them.

[CoinCube]

We have no real value just because value isn't real, but a property of knowledge.
...
While things themselves aren't good or evil, facts serve as the basis of our knowledge of them as good or evil. Inherent significance is an oxymoron, there is only extrinsic meaning,

For most this line of reasoning takes us to utter materialism. Meaning becomes not only extrinsic but also relative. What is factually and demonstrably desirable for me becomes the definition of good. If I have the power to enforce my will I should always do so provided I can avoid negative repercussions. Any harm inflicted upon others is meaningless for those others have no value beyond their usefulness to me. This worldview leads to bondage, suffering and stagnation.

Alternatively, the knowledge of an infinite Creator who formed existence out of nothing and maintains creation leads us to the derivation of something not only functional but also wonderful and elegant. This is the knowledge that allows man to escape from bondage and transform himself into something better.

Of course the rationalists in history were all theists, and monotheists... yet they were wrong...

every star and stone and every mountain slope is a proof of impossibility of God's existence

Your argument that the vastness of time and creation somehow disprove God are unconvincing. These things simply give us a small taste of what infinite truly means.

And how to be certain in the knowledge of (the) idea of good? You have to deduce it a priori, much like a mathematical proof.

My a priori deduction of good is likely to differ from yours nihilnegativum. My definition of good is that of an infinite Creator. Others will define it as some physical pleasure and fall into the materialism described above. You have conspicuously failed to provide us with your definition.

[nihilnegativum]

We have no real value just because value isn't real, but a property of knowledge.
...
While things themselves aren't good or evil, facts serve as the basis of our knowledge of them as good or evil. Inherent significance is an oxymoron, there is only extrinsic meaning,

For most this line of reasoning takes us to utter materialism. Meaning becomes not only extrinsic but also relative. What is factually and demonstrably desirable for me becomes the definition of good. If I have the power to enforce my will I should always do so provided I can avoid negative repercussions. Any harm inflicted upon others is meaningless for those others have no value beyond their usefulness to me. This worldview leads to bondage, suffering and stagnation.

Alternatively, the knowledge of an infinite Creator who formed existence out of nothing and maintains creation leads us to the derivation of something not only functional but also wonderful and elegant. This is the knowledge that allows man to escape from bondage and transform himself into something better.

What would that mean that meaning is relative? That content of concepts are in itself arbitrary? They are so evidently, we can think and conceptualize anything. Or that that its only determined in relation to something else? This is would only be so in a fully empiricist epistemology, the opposite of rationalism. The absence of god does not imply a positive definition of good as useful. Suffering is not a result of evil, but a natural condition, the world itself as indifferent to our purposes is the reason we are bound in chains, and there is only one way of escape, building better chains.
Ah you mean materialism as in hedonism, this again is the problem for empiricists (the don't have a priori and therefore can't have nice things).

And how to be certain in the knowledge of (the) idea of good? You have to deduce it a priori, much like a mathematical proof.

My a priori deduction of good is likely to differ from yours nihilnegativum. My definition of good is that of an infinite Creator. Others will define it as some physical pleasure and fall into the materialism described above. You have conspicuously failed to provide us with your definition.

Most likely, but the reasons used would be subject to critique. Even your definition of good is not the infinite creator, but something else. Leibniz defined this world as the best possible world in order for the world to have a good reason to exist, this was god's will as the good itself, that gives the idea of good as perfection, I use the same without the theological conceptual framework .. my definitions are very technical, I'm afraid it would not go far, explaining them here in more detail. Suffice it to say, that the idea of good is one of perfection, that there is an essential duality to it (the a priori idea of perfection as imperative and a necessary relation of its determinations and a posteriori practical perfection as a contingent relation), that this leads to to the specific practical idea of good for a human society as the identity of the good of individual and the good of common (everyhing done in a way not at the same time beneficial to the individual and the society as a whole is bad), etc. but thats not really the nihilist part, nihilism is about ontology, the lack of onlogical ground, the absence of the infinite that would prevent time from having a reality.

[CoinCube]

...
Ah you mean materialism as in hedonism, this again is the problem for empiricists (they don't have a priori and therefore can't have nice things).

Most likely, but the reasons used would be subject to critique. Even your definition of good is not the infinite creator, but something else. Leibniz defined this world as the best possible world in order for the world to have a good reason to exist, this was god's will as the good itself, that gives the idea of good as perfection, I use the same without the theological conceptual framework .. my definitions are very technical, I'm afraid it would not go far, explaining them here in more detail. Suffice it to say, that the idea of good is one of perfection, that there is an essential duality to it (the a priori idea of perfection as imperative and a necessary relation of its determinations and a posteriori practical perfection as a contingent relation), that this leads to to the specific practical idea of good for a human society as the identity of the good of individual and the good of common (everyhing done in a way not at the same time beneficial to the individual and the society as a whole is bad), etc. but thats not really the nihilist part, nihilism is about ontology, the lack of onlogical ground, the absence of the infinite that would prevent time from having a reality.

It is clear your are not an empiricist and we agree on the problems with that worldview (they don't have a priori and therefore can't have nice things). So lets set that aside and move on to talk of the good.

Leibniz views on good are not that far from my own and you may be surprised to know that I do not necessarily disagree with your concept of good as written above. Such a conceptualization is very similar to the idea of good proposed by Leibniz. It is also very close to the idea of good as proposed by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto who's book the Way of God I linked to a few posts back. I became interested in that book after someone described it to me as the most systematic exposition of monotheism fundamentals ever written. Given your interest in philosophy you might find it interesting. I have copied a few paragraphs from the introduction below so you can get a feeling for the text.

My problem is with the nihilist portion of your worldview for this is the part that forces you to separately a priori define the good which does not naturally follow from the ontology of nihilism. Metaphysics is serious business although few people recognize it as such. Assumptions have consequences. You can choose whatever you want to believe but if you choose to live by the wrong assumptions (especially thinking by them) they can lead to nonsensical and self-refuting outcomes. The original post in this thread can be looked at as an argument that atheism is one such self-refuting belief as indirectly evidenced by the health data cited.

I suspect your a priori concept of the good as perfection would eventually if taken to its logical conclusion lead you to the rejection of nihilism but the road is probably long and tortuous with many opportunities to fall into self-refuting outcomes.      

Excerpts from the Introduction:

When one knows a number of things, and understands how they are categorized and systematically interrelated, then he has a great advantage over one who has the same knowledge without such distinction. It is very much like the difference between looking at a well-arranged garden, planted in rows and patters, and seeing a wild thicket or a forest growing in confusion.

When an individual is confronted by many details and does not know how they relate to one another or their true place in a general system, then his inquisitive intellect is given nothing more than a difficult unsatisfying burden. He may struggle with it, but he will tire and grow weary long before he attains any gratification. Each detail will arouse his curiosity, but not having access to the concept as a whole, he will remain frustrated.

If one wishes to understand something, it is therefore very important that he be aware of other things associated with it as well as its place among them. Without this, one's longing for truth will be frustrated and he will be pained by his unsatisfied desire.

The exact opposite is true when one knows something in relation to its context. Since he sees it within its framework, he can go on to grasp other concepts associated with it, and his success will bring pleasure and elation.

When one studies a subject, he must therefore be aware of the place of each element within the most general scheme. When one takes into account existence as a whole, including everything imaginable, whether detectable by our senses or conceivable by our minds, then he recognizes that things are not all in the same category and level. The categories are both varied and numerous, and as they vary, so do the rules and principles associated with them. In order to comprehend the true nature of each thing, one must also be able to recognize these distinctions.

There are, however, certain primary elements that must be recognized as part of the essential nature of each concept. Out of all the levels and categories, one should be able to distinguish the following: the whole and the part, the general and the particular, the cause and the effect, and the object itself and its associated qualities.

Thus, when one examines something, he should first determine whether it is a whole or a part, a general category or a detail, a cause or an effect, an object or a property. When he realizes its place in the general scheme, he can then recognize the elements needed to complete his understanding and provide a precise general picture. If it is a part, then he will seek to discover its whole. If it is a particular case, he will seek to find its general category. If it is a cause, he will seek its effect; if an effect, its cause. If he finds something to be a quality, he will seek to discover its subject. He will also strive to ascertain what kind of quality it is, whether it precedes, accompanies or follows its subject, and whether it is intrinsic or accidental, potential or actual. All these are distinctions without which we cannot have a complete picture of any thing's true nature.

Beyond this, one must look into the nature of the thing itself, determining whether it involves an absolute or limited concept. If the concept is limited, he should ascertain its limits, since even when a concept itself is true, its truth is corrupted if it is improperly compared to something, or if it is taken outside its area of validity.

It is also important to realize that the number of individual details is so great that it is beyond the power of the human mind to embrace them and know them all. One's goal should therefore be to attain knowledge of general principles.

By its very nature, every general principle includes many details. As a result, when a person grasps a general principle, automatically he also grasps a large number of details. Although at the outset a person possessing a general principle might not be aware of its specific details or recognize them as elements of the general principle, later, when confronted by them, he will be able to recognize them. Once he is aware of the general principle he will not be at a loss to recognize the details that [fall under it and] cannot exist without it...

Taking all of this into consideration, I have written this small book. My intent was to set forth the general principles of belief and religion, expounding them all in a way that is clearly understood, to provide a complete picture, free of ambiguity and confusion. The roots and branches are presented according to their place in the general scheme, so that each one can be put to heart and be grasped with the greatest possible clarity. This book provides a basis which will make it much easier for you, its readers, to attain knowledge of God

 

[nihilnegativum]

...
Ah you mean materialism as in hedonism, this again is the problem for empiricists (they don't have a priori and therefore can't have nice things).

Most likely, but the reasons used would be subject to critique. Even your definition of good is not the infinite creator, but something else. Leibniz defined this world as the best possible world in order for the world to have a good reason to exist, this was god's will as the good itself, that gives the idea of good as perfection, I use the same without the theological conceptual framework .. my definitions are very technical, I'm afraid it would not go far, explaining them here in more detail. Suffice it to say, that the idea of good is one of perfection, that there is an essential duality to it (the a priori idea of perfection as imperative and a necessary relation of its determinations and a posteriori practical perfection as a contingent relation), that this leads to to the specific practical idea of good for a human society as the identity of the good of individual and the good of common (everyhing done in a way not at the same time beneficial to the individual and the society as a whole is bad), etc. but thats not really the nihilist part, nihilism is about ontology, the lack of onlogical ground, the absence of the infinite that would prevent time from having a reality.

It is clear your are not an empiricist and we agree on the problems with that worldview (they don't have a priori and therefore can't have nice things). So lets set that aside and move on to talk of the good.

Leibniz views on good are not that far from my own and you may be surprised to know that I do not necessarily disagree with your concept of good as written above. Such a conceptualization is very similar to the idea of good proposed by Leibniz. It is also very close to the idea of good as proposed by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto who's book the Way of God I linked to a few posts back. I became interested in that book after someone described it to me as the most systematic exposition of monotheism fundamentals ever written. Given your interest in philosophy you might find it interesting. I have copied a few paragraphs from the introduction below so you can get a feeling for the text.

My problem is with the nihilist portion of your worldview for this is the part that forces you to separately a priori define the good which does not naturally follow from the ontology of nihilism. Metaphysics is serious business although few people recognize it as such. Assumptions have consequences.

This is exactly the point, the main distinction of metaphysics (serious buisness as it teaches how to use one's understanding), is the epistemological distinction between a priori and a posteriori that can hold only when this distinction is a pure difference. When one assumes this distinction to be based on some from of positivity, it either assumes a theistic ontology (an ontology where the pure infinite is the ground of everything and time a mere illusion), and thus lose the reality of a posteriori or the opposite, assume there is not pure ground, lose the a priori and be stuck with mere empiricism. My type of nihilism changes the mode of grounding, and grounds a priori on the pure negativity of inexistence. Far from leading to theism as its logical conclusion, this is the stepping stone towards a rational worldview without spiritualism and without inconsitencies that follow.

You can choose whatever you want to believe but if you choose to live by the wrong assumptions (especially thinking by them) they can lead to nonsensical and self-refuting outcomes. The original post in this thread can be looked at as an argument that atheism is one such self-refuting belief as indirectly evidenced by the health data cited.

I suspect your a priori concept of the good as perfection would eventually if taken to its logical conclusion lead you to the rejection of nihilism but the road is probably long and tortuous with many opportunities to fall into self-refuting outcomes.      

Excerpts from the Introduction:

When one knows a number of things, and understands how they are categorized and systematically interrelated, then he has a great advantage over one who has the same knowledge without such distinction. It is very much like the difference between looking at a well-arranged garden, planted in rows and patters, and seeing a wild thicket or a forest growing in confusion.

When an individual is confronted by many details and does not know how they relate to one another or their true place in a general system, then his inquisitive intellect is given nothing more than a difficult unsatisfying burden. He may struggle with it, but he will tire and grow weary long before he attains any gratification. Each detail will arouse his curiosity, but not having access to the concept as a whole, he will remain frustrated.

If one wishes to understand something, it is therefore very important that he be aware of other things associated with it as well as its place among them. Without this, one's longing for truth will be frustrated and he will be pained by his unsatisfied desire.

The exact opposite is true when one knows something in relation to its context. Since he sees it within its framework, he can go on to grasp other concepts associated with it, and his success will bring pleasure and elation.

When one studies a subject, he must therefore be aware of the place of each element within the most general scheme. When one takes into account existence as a whole, including everything imaginable, whether detectable by our senses or conceivable by our minds, then he recognizes that things are not all in the same category and level. The categories are both varied and numerous, and as they vary, so do the rules and principles associated with them. In order to comprehend the true nature of each thing, one must also be able to recognize these distinctions.

There are, however, certain primary elements that must be recognized as part of the essential nature of each concept. Out of all the levels and categories, one should be able to distinguish the following: the whole and the part, the general and the particular, the cause and the effect, and the object itself and its associated qualities.

Thus, when one examines something, he should first determine whether it is a whole or a part, a general category or a detail, a cause or an effect, an object or a property. When he realizes its place in the general scheme, he can then recognize the elements needed to complete his understanding and provide a precise general picture. If it is a part, then he will seek to discover its whole. If it is a particular case, he will seek to find its general category. If it is a cause, he will seek its effect; if an effect, its cause. If he finds something to be a quality, he will seek to discover its subject. He will also strive to ascertain what kind of quality it is, whether it precedes, accompanies or follows its subject, and whether it is intrinsic or accidental, potential or actual. All these are distinctions without which we cannot have a complete picture of any thing's true nature.

Beyond this, one must look into the nature of the thing itself, determining whether it involves an absolute or limited concept. If the concept is limited, he should ascertain its limits, since even when a concept itself is true, its truth is corrupted if it is improperly compared to something, or if it is taken outside its area of validity.

It is also important to realize that the number of individual details is so great that it is beyond the power of the human mind to embrace them and know them all. One's goal should therefore be to attain knowledge of general principles.

By its very nature, every general principle includes many details. As a result, when a person grasps a general principle, automatically he also grasps a large number of details. Although at the outset a person possessing a general principle might not be aware of its specific details or recognize them as elements of the general principle, later, when confronted by them, he will be able to recognize them. Once he is aware of the general principle he will not be at a loss to recognize the details that [fall under it and] cannot exist without it...

Taking all of this into consideration, I have written this small book. My intent was to set forth the general principles of belief and religion, expounding them all in a way that is clearly understood, to provide a complete picture, free of ambiguity and confusion. The roots and branches are presented according to their place in the general scheme, so that each one can be put to heart and be grasped with the greatest possible clarity. This book provides a basis which will make it much easier for you, its readers, to attain knowledge of God

 

Any arguments found in this are arguments for metaphysics and some necessary framework for understanding, with which I agree, of course the issue then becomes whe whole of what needs to be known for it, if it is the whole of the positivity (all the domains of ontology) the task is futile in the same sense for the empiricist and the theist, if it is the whole of the concept, the task is easy, a conceptual analysis. I am a fan of the latter.

[CoinCube]

Suffice it to say, that the idea of good is one of perfection, that there is an essential duality to it
..
This is exactly the point, the main distinction of metaphysics (serious buisness as it teaches how to use one's understanding), is the epistemological distinction between a priori and a posteriori that can hold only when this distinction is a pure difference. When one assumes this distinction to be based on some from of positivity, it either assumes a theistic ontology (an ontology where the pure infinite is the ground of everything and time a mere illusion), and thus lose the reality of a posteriori or the opposite, assume there is not pure ground, lose the a priori and be stuck with mere empiricism. My type of nihilism changes the mode of grounding, and grounds a priori on the pure negativity of inexistence. Far from leading to theism as its logical conclusion, this is the stepping stone towards a rational worldview without spiritualism and without inconsitencies that follow.

I agree that grounding ontology in the infinite implies that our reality including time must in some way be unsubstantial. This is hard to grasp from our frame of reference for we are fully immersed in our reality. However, this concept is not limited to theism. Several physicists have argued that reality is other then what it appears to be and that we may actually live in a Holographic Universe. This of course raises the question of who sustains the projection?

Godels incompleteness theorem tells us that for any overarching logical system no mater how complete there will exist unprovable assertions which if assumed true will require a priori knowledge (truths which are assumed but cannot be proven from within the system). With this in mind the logical course of action is to work to minimize our reliance on such assumptions while ensuring that our chosen system is not inconsistent for it is an elementary fact of logic that in an inconsistent formal system every statement is derivable, and consequently, such a system is trivially complete.

I cannot evaluate your concept of nihilism without further detail specifically your first posit and what you derive from it. However, the typical concept of nihilism argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or value, and that morality does not inherently exist. It argues that established moral values are simply contrived abstractions. This definition appears inconsistent with your a priori assertion of the good as perfection.

...
Our total reality and total existence are beautiful and meaningful . . . . We should judge reality by the little which we truly know of it. We have concluded that the awareness is the finest and greatest item in this world based on the practical analysis here itself. If the practical experience is neglected, the logic will lose its basis...

Now I will also quote Gödel and Chopra for their very helpful comments on this difficult discussion:

It is more elegant and far easier to accept as a working hypothesis that sentience exists as a potential at the source of creation, and the strongest evidence has already been put on the table: Everything to be observed in the universe implies consciousness.

- See more at: http://www.chopra.com/ccl/what-is-cosmic-consciousness#sthash.qAGM6TT1.dpuf

Now all of this is according to the "philosophical viewpoint" of the most brilliant mathematician of the 20th century:

The world is rational.
Human reason can, in principle, be developed more highly (through certain techniques).
There are systematic methods for the solution of all problems.
There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.
The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived.
There is incomparably more knowable a priori that is currently known.
The development of human thought since the Renaissance is thoroughly one-dimensional.
Reason in mankind will be developed in every direction.
Formal rights comprise a real science.
Materialism is false.
The higher beings are connected to the others by analogy, not by composition.
Concepts have an objective existence.
There is a scientific (exact) philosophy and theology, which deals with concepts of the highest abstractness; and this is also most highly fruitful for science.
Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not.

I now present more fascinating and salient quotes from this mathematical genius:

"The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit."

Positivists decline to acknowledge any a priori knowledge. They wish to reduce everything to sense perceptions. Generally they contradict themselves in that they deny introspection as experience. … They use too narrow a notion of experience and introduce an arbitrary bound on what experience is …

One bad effect of logical positivism is its claim of being intimately associated with mathematical logic. As a result, other philosophers tend to distance themselves from mathematical logic and therewith deprive themselves of the benefits of a precise way of thinking.

What I call the theological worldview is the idea that the world and everything in it has meaning and reason, and in particular a good and indubitable meaning. It follows immediately that our worldly existence, since it has in itself at most a very dubious meaning, can only be means to the end of another existence. The idea that everything in the world has a meaning [reason] is an exact analogue of the principle that everything has a cause, on which rests all of science.

Source: http://kevincarmody.com/math/goedel.html

Why would awareness come from nothing and return to nothingness?
Would it not make more sense to say that awareness comes from a sort of non-awareness and returns to non-awareness in a cycle?
What is so difficult about accepting the possibility of another existence under conditions of material non-being? And the endlessness of these cycles?

What is so funny about all of this talk of "scientific proof" is that skeptics apply different standards of proof for parapsychological research and mainstream science. I strongly advise anyone to browse the spiritual development site to discover the facts behind skeptical misdirection, eminent researchers, etc.

I too wish that others will understand the debate, so I am putting forward the facts. One final fact I want to mention: For any authority, the final stage is experience, which alone gives validity... Matter does not force upon us a belief and neither does science have much to say about death; we know for sure that it is a miracle to be alive if indeed the true home of our minds is annihilation (i.e. non-existence or nothingness). Gödel agrees that simple mechanism cannot yield the mind, and that the mind did not arise in the Darwinian manner. That home which gave birth to... mind "out of nowhere" (can be) described as both "pre-existing" (quantum fields) and "nothingness" (an absence of any thing), but it cannot be both! If it were, then our existence would be scientific proof of a miracle.


...

The standard dogma is that consciousness emerges from complex computation among brain neurons and synapses acting like ‘bits’ and switches; I will point you to four reasons given by Hammeroff for doubting the standard dogma; the implication is that the brain is acting more like a receiver of consciousness than a generator of counsciousness;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stuart-hameroff/darwin-versus-deepak-whic_b_7481048.html

[qwik2learn]

Even your definition of good is not the infinite creator, but something else.

Right, the old problem of giving something a name; a philosopher will ask me what do I mean by REALITY: am I talking about the physical world of nature or am I talking about a spiritual world--or what? And to that I have a very simple answer: when we TALK about the material world, that is actually a philosophical concept, so in the same way, if I say that reality is spiritual, that is also a philosophical concept, and reality itself is NOT a concept--reality IS... and we won't give it a NAME!
Most civilized people are out of touch with REALITY because they confuse the world as it IS with the world as they think about it, talk about it, and describe it; on the one hand there is the real world, and on the other a whole System of Symbols about that world, which we have in our minds. These are very, very useful symbols, and all our civilization depends on them, but like ALL good things, they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with REALITY, just as we confuse money with actual wealth, and our NAMES about ourselves, our IDEAS of ourselves, with our SELVES.

if you only have ethics based on virtues it is completely contextual and is therefore merely a thing of common-sense morals not pure ethics. In a land of cowards, cowardice is a virtue, etc.

If anything be placed before GOD--IT IS EVIL, good friend.
And WHO is THE MOST HIGH in nihilism? Come again? It is a MAN--GOD IS ONLY "OFFERED THROUGH THE RITUAL" AS "BEING FIRST" BUT "HE" IS NOT! Almost everything in the "churches" is FIRST before the ACTUALITY OF GOD PRESENCE.  LOOK AT YOUR WORLD AND CHECK IT OUT. ARE YOU INTO CHAOS AND TROUBLE OR ARE YOU IN THE MIDST OF HARMONY AND BALANCE IN GODLY TRUTH? Maybe your way and "wisdom" didn't work?

But let me reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure it not to be a god! Hence there are no Gods.

After the failure of Christianity (if there is such a failure), the final philosophy is Nietzsche.
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/18055
Nietzsche does not seem to rejoice in the reality of atheism in any of his works. He doesn't seem to regret it either (as it just is). As to nihilism, he saw it as a crisis, a crisis that must be overcome.
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/37246

[CoinCube]

I wanted to share with you my all time favorite book by an author you may have never heard of. As a fan of both Science Fiction and Fantasy I have read many many books everything from the classics of Tolkien and Asimov to modern and mostly inferior works. Having reached an age where the wonders of youthful imagination have slightly faded I did not expect to ever find a book that would displace the favorites of my youth. I was wrong. Other reviews have done this book far more justice then I can ever do so I will quote some of their words below.

https://www.amazon.com/Awake-Night-Land-John-Wright/dp/9527065224/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

   

Moments ago I finished Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright.

As I sit to give you my thoughts on it... the first thing that comes to mind is a question. How does one review... or critique... something like this? I am unfit.

One does not critique the great works of literature. One appreciates them. You define good and bad by them. Good and bad do not apply to them.

And so... it is with quivering hand that I must Awake in the Night Land in the most cherished of bookcases... where it will stand. Not with the merely great. Not with Zelazny or Heinlein. No. It rests with the masters that tower over the merely great. It shall stand with Tolstoy.... with Faulkner... Defoe... Melville.

A few men have great things to say. A few great men say things beautifully.

Cherish the tiny few who say a great thing in a beautiful way.

John C Wright is one such man. Awake in the Night Land is one of the finest books of any type in any genre I have ever read. It is Moby Dick. It is Paradise Lost. It is Crime and Punishment.

This is not hyperbole. Great books challenge you. They speak to the spark in your soul. One may improve himself... by merely reading them.

Go.

Go and read. Go and appreciate.

I have written a number of books. Never once have I said to you, my readers, "you must read this book". That is because I have never written a book like this one. There are a very small number of books of which I would say "you must read this book": The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Watership Down by Richard Adams.

There were also others that came close, books that I enjoyed very much indeed, but did not quite justify the assertion. Embassytown by China Mieville. Cryptonomicon and Anathem by Neal Stephenson. A Game of Thrones by George Martin. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. Dune by Frank Herbert.

I will tell you now that if you appreciate excellent books, then you must read this one. I cannot imagine you will regret it.

I read this book a month ago. My intent was to review it immediately but I found that I couldn't. I purchased it based on the reviews of other readers and, for all that it impressed me, I couldn't concur with them. I agreed with the components; darkness, heroism, fatalism, valour, pride, corruption in a landscape of inimical intent toward all that is human. But there was something that bothered me, something that was missing in the descriptions.

The four tales develop the theme through the lives of four people who confront this horror, each in their own way, for their own motivations, and with different ends. The stories cover aeons of time, linked by the refusal of the protagonists to submit to the certainty of failure forseen by their situation and prophets.

Finally, it struck me. I had been fooled. Completely. In the heart of one of the darkest and most nihilistic narratives that I have ever read was a love story. A twisted ribbon of love between man and woman, brother and sister, father and son, generation by generation, through eternity.

Congratulations Mr.Wright, you made this hard old bastard weep.

AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND is an epic collection of four of John C. Wright's brilliant forays into the dark fantasy world of William Hope Hodgson's 1912 novel, The Night Land. Part novel, part anthology, the book consists of four related novellas, "Awake in the Night", "The Cry of the Night-Hound", "Silence of the Night", and "The Last of All Suns", which collectively tell the haunting tale of the Last Redoubt of Man and the end of the human race. Widely considered to be the finest tribute to Hodgson ever written, the first novella, "Awake in the Night", was previously published in 2004 in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection. AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND marks the first time all four novellas have been gathered into a single volume. John C. Wright has been described by reviewers as one of the most important and audacious authors in science fiction today. In a recent poll of more than 1,000 science fiction readers, he was chosen as the sixth-greatest living science fiction writer.

[nihilnegativum]

I agree that grounding ontology in the infinite implies that our reality including time must in some way be unsubstantial. This is hard to grasp from our frame of reference for we are fully immersed in our reality. However, this concept is not limited to theism. Several physicists have argued that reality is other then what it appears to be and that we may actually live in a Holographic Universe. This of course raises the question of who sustains the projection?

It hardly matter who is proposing the idea, or its specifics, if it is an ontology where infinity grounds finitude it is a theistic ontology. The fact that physicists and mathematicians are prone to this kind of theologies, while at the same time not knowing what they are doing, claiming to be athiests and claiming the uselessness of philosophy, just tells me that there is in fact something very common about our misapplication of the concept.

Godels incompleteness theorem tells us that for any overarching logical system no mater how complete there will exist unprovable assertions which if assumed true will require a priori knowledge (truths which are assumed but cannot be proven from within the system). With this in mind the logical course of action is to work to minimize our reliance on such assumptions while ensuring that our chosen system is not inconsistent for it is an elementary fact of logic that in an inconsistent formal system every statement is derivable, and consequently, such a system is trivially complete.

This is not what a priori means, it is a designation of non-empirical knowledge (regardless of its certitude). Gödel had shown the limitations of formal systems, and that they can either be consistent or closed, but knowledge is not itself a formal system. The problem of self-reference is in fact much older than Gödel's formalization and proof, it lies at the heart of transcendental philosophys as the self-referentiality of subjectivity and/or knowledge and is an essential problem for epistemology. If for formal systems, the problem of self-reference is proven by Gödel, its more epistemological implications are so far unknown, and so the essential problem (neither Russel nor Kripke, were successful, however the latter had progressed in the right direction).

I cannot evaluate your concept of nihilism without further detail specifically your first posit and what you derive from it. However, the typical concept of nihilism argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or value, and that morality does not inherently exist. It argues that established moral values are simply contrived abstractions. This definition appears inconsistent with your a priori assertion of the good as perfection.

The first thing to know is that there is nothing simple about abstractions.

Even your definition of good is not the infinite creator, but something else.

Right, the old problem of giving something a name; a philosopher will ask me what do I mean by REALITY: am I talking about the physical world of nature or am I talking about a spiritual world--or what? And to that I have a very simple answer: when we TALK about the material world, that is actually a philosophical concept, so in the same way, if I say that reality is spiritual, that is also a philosophical concept, and reality itself is NOT a concept--reality IS... and we won't give it a NAME!
Most civilized people are out of touch with REALITY because they confuse the world as it IS with the world as they think about it, talk about it, and describe it; on the one hand there is the real world, and on the other a whole System of Symbols about that world, which we have in our minds. These are very, very useful symbols, and all our civilization depends on them, but like ALL good things, they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with REALITY, just as we confuse money with actual wealth, and our NAMES about ourselves, our IDEAS of ourselves, with our SELVES.

I agree, the confusion between concepts and reality is an essential problem, however the concept of reality (or Being, or Gods) is itself a confusion of a concept of infinity for something existing outside of a concept, this is my whole point.

If anything be placed before GOD--IT IS EVIL, good friend.
And WHO is THE MOST HIGH in nihilism? Come again? It is a MAN--GOD IS ONLY "OFFERED THROUGH THE RITUAL" AS "BEING FIRST" BUT "HE" IS NOT! Almost everything in the "churches" is FIRST before the ACTUALITY OF GOD PRESENCE.  LOOK AT YOUR WORLD AND CHECK IT OUT. ARE YOU INTO CHAOS AND TROUBLE OR ARE YOU IN THE MIDST OF HARMONY AND BALANCE IN GODLY TRUTH? Maybe your way and "wisdom" didn't work?

There is nothing before god, because there isn't one. Nihilism does not imply that man is the highest, man is just a finite creature, his concepts are much higher.

But let me reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure it not to be a god! Hence there are no Gods.

After the failure of Christianity (if there is such a failure), the final philosophy is Nietzsche.
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/18055
Nietzsche does not seem to rejoice in the reality of atheism in any of his works. He doesn't seem to regret it either (as it just is). As to nihilism, he saw it as a crisis, a crisis that must be overcome.
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/37246

Of course, Nietzsche was rooting for the whole pantheist/pagan Dyonisian mythology, nobody ever accused Nietzsche of being a rationalist, the closest we have come to nihilism was in the most theistic rationalists (Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes), it comes quite unintentionally, as knowledge is the natural enemy of gods.

[qwik2learn]

I agree, the confusion between concepts and reality is an essential problem, however the concept of reality (or Being, or Gods) is itself a confusion of a concept of infinity for something existing outside of a concept, this is my whole point.

Infinity is said to be inconceivable by man, but this is actually an "unknown unknown"; man does not really know what he is missing from God's invisible universe. During his mortal stage he has but the one language of the senses, but as he becomes aware of his immortal nature he gradually acquires an understanding of the divine language of Light which comes to him from out of the silence.

The human race is still in its infancy.

Witness, for example, the many schools and foundations which have been formed for "advanced learning" and "higher knowledge". All that have so far been formed show by their teachings and curricula that their conception of higher knowledge is limited to finding out more about the MATERIAL universe through sensed observation and deductive reasoning. They do not even suggest the necessity of reaching out to the Mind-Source of the material universe. The very facts of the matter are that it is certainly NOT DESIRED THAT YOU COME INTO HIGHER KNOWLEDGE! They ask only for more intensive and deeper concentrative observation of VISIBLE EFFECTS rather than INVISIBLE CAUSE. In other words, their concept of higher knowledge means greater power for arriving at conclusions from sensed-observations through the processes of reasoning and deduction. There is not the slightest indication in any of the high institutions of learning of the need of the genius type of mind, even though the greatest mental and cultural progress of man is due to the genius type of inner-thinking, inner-visioning and imagining. The outersensory thinker of the mathematical and statistical research type of mind is the one who is favored and highly patronized. In him is the hope for better instruments and machines for human comfort, and better machines to kill man in greater numbers. This means that physical man, who constitutes your present civilization, recognizes only the supremacy of physical man and the power to reason and deduce in him rather than to create by inspired guidance as all geniuses do. Your civilization would progress materially very much faster and with the greater stability of moral character which accompanies spiritual growth if the paramount purpose of man were to help the omnipresent Mind to THINK and KNOW rather than the present purpose of helping the physical brain to remember and repeat.

If anything be placed before GOD--IT IS EVIL, good friend.
And WHO is THE MOST HIGH in nihilism? Come again? It is a MAN--GOD IS ONLY "OFFERED THROUGH THE RITUAL" AS "BEING FIRST" BUT "HE" IS NOT! Almost everything in the "churches" is FIRST before the ACTUALITY OF GOD PRESENCE.  LOOK AT YOUR WORLD AND CHECK IT OUT. ARE YOU INTO CHAOS AND TROUBLE OR ARE YOU IN THE MIDST OF HARMONY AND BALANCE IN GODLY TRUTH? Maybe your way and "wisdom" didn't work?

There is nothing before god, because there isn't one. Nihilism does not imply that man is the highest, man is just a finite creature, his concepts are much higher.

And might I ask from what source man's concepts come from? If it comes from the outersensory thinker of the mathematical and statistical research type of mind, then their present purpose IS of helping the physical brain to remember and repeat, rather than to help the omnipresent Mind to THINK and KNOW and to create by inspired guidance as all geniuses do. In other words, physical concepts are mundane, but higher knowledge is acquired from Cosmic thinking toward one's inner immortal MIND-SELF as opposed to the conclusions which is called knowledge which come from outer-sensing by the mortal BRAIN-SELF.

But let me reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure it not to be a god! Hence there are no Gods.

After the failure of Christianity (if there is such a failure), the final philosophy is Nietzsche.
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/18055
Nietzsche does not seem to rejoice in the reality of atheism in any of his works. He doesn't seem to regret it either (as it just is). As to nihilism, he saw it as a crisis, a crisis that must be overcome.
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/37246

Of course, Nietzsche was rooting for the whole pantheist/pagan Dyonisian mythology, nobody ever accused Nietzsche of being a rationalist, the closest we have come to nihilism was in the most theistic rationalists (Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes), it comes quite unintentionally, as knowledge is the natural enemy of gods.

I agree that the human race is still in its infancy, especially with respect to knowledge; perhaps less than ten per cent of the so-called "enlightened" people of the earth are inwardly driven to seek and find that inner Cosmic something which their Souls desire.

None of these institutions for higher knowledge gives any indication that higher knowledge means searching for God as the Creator-CAUSE of the effects of motion of which they believe knowledge to consist.

Higher knowledge means trying to discover what the greatest Mind that ever lived meant by saying, "The kingdom of heaven is within" or "I and my Father are ONE", or "The Father dwelleth within Me," or "God is Light" and "God is Love" and all such other teachings of that great Mind. The fact that such teachings are not of first import in every cultural institution in the world is PROOF of the fact that your civilization is still too young to be ready for them. The great mass of the human race is still at such a low intellectual level that it even resents the idea of the divinity of man, even though the Christ taught it very plainly when He said, "I and My Father are ONE," "What I am you also are," and "What I do, you can also do." Moreover, the message has been repeated in every language from the onset of man.

The Sacred Circle of the Christ Being, the Pale Prophet, Immanuel, Buddha, Krishna and Mohammed--be them who they might be--all spoke this very clearly and told mankind, in their separate ages, exactly where to find God and His Heaven, but countless millions of men still retain the concept of heaven as being "up there above the earth somewhere" instead of being within Self. Many men still think of God as an objective Being "out there somewhere" who sits in judgment over His countless billions of people who come and go upon billions and trillions of earths like yours--or believe that you are the only "earth" like yours. Over nine-tenths of the people of today's world retain this inherited concept of long past ages of man's primacy.

As the spiritual in man unfolds so also will man's institutions of science, education and religion. These three greatest necessities of the human race will then unite and become ONE. While awaiting that day, science will gradually unfold its spiritual awareness of God's invisible universe of Light and know God as CAUSE of the effects of which it makes use. Education will make as its highest objective the study of MAN as it, too, unfolds instead of the material product of man's body, and religion will some day substitute its God of fear and wrath with the God of Love.

Human institutions progress slowly but they do progress and, like all humans, they progress more through their mistakes than through their traditions. Religion has made greater progress in the last century than in the previous five centuries. Hundreds of thousands have eliminated the God of wrath, fear and vengeance which plunged the Christian world into eight centuries of Dark Ages and have substituted the God of Love teachings.

A spiritually illumined civilization will place its highest standards in making MAN, THE UNKNOWN become MAN, THE KNOWN instead of its present standard in making man a better material-producing machine. It will then realize the warnings of the great poet who said, "In vain do we build the city if we do not first build the man."

A spiritually illumined science, which has grown to its present level through gaining knowledge from what it can see, feel and measure, will set its standards to KNOWING God's invisible universe which it can neither see, feel or measure. It will have then discovered the omniscience of Mind, the omnipotence of Mind-thinking and the omnipresence of Mind-product in action-reaction. When that day comes, science can then verify God, for humans will then revel in the ecstasy of KNOWING instead of having but emotion and abstraction as the basis for their devotions.

As it thus unfolds, it will gradually come to be realized that Science knows many things, but the least of these many things it knows is MAN. The SCIENCE OF MAN is the least known, and most important, of any and all sciences.

We began to give that higher knowledge of WHO and WHAT God is--and WHERE to find Him--and WHAT heaven is and WHERE to find that also--in the prior printings and we will continue to reveal God and His zero universe throughout the remaining writings--may the WORD be blessed.

[Leprikon]

Religion as any system protects their be committed. They need this system to recharge its energy. Therefore, I believe that the system maintains a good level of health of their people, so they served it longer

[CoinCube]

I cannot evaluate your concept of nihilism without further detail specifically your first posit and what you derive from it. However, the typical concept of nihilism argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or value, and that morality does not inherently exist. It argues that established moral values are simply contrived abstractions. This definition appears inconsistent with your a priori assertion of the good as perfection.

The first thing to know is that there is nothing simple about abstractions.

Again you provide little to nothing. An emptiness that seems consistent with nihilism itself. You reject ontology where infinity grounds finitude yet refuse to offer any alternative other then a first posit that there is no infinite. You argue that nihilism somehow allows for complex abstractions that allow you to define the good as perfection yet offer none of these abstractions. As a logical framework you are falling far short of ontology grounded in the infinite.

(Study of holy scripture) brings one to vigilance, vigilance bring one to alacrity, alacrity brings one to cleanliness, cleanliness brings one to abstinence, abstinence brings one to purity, purity brings one to piety, piety brings one to humility, humility brings one to fear of sin, fear of sin brings one to holiness, holiness brings one to Divine inspiration, Divine inspiration brings one to the resurrection of the dead.