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Showing posts from April, 2018

Argument From Transcendental Signifiers

the Argument: 1. Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops) 2. OP's summed up in TS 3. Modern Thought rejects TS outright or takes out all aspects of mind. 4 . Therefore, Modern thought fails to provide a   rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe. 5.   minds organize and communicate meaning 6. Therefore universal mind, offers the best understanding of TS 7 .  Concept of God unites TS with universal mind there fore   offers  best explanation for a view that is  R ational, Coherent, and  M eaningful (RCM). preleminary observations: Transcendental signifier/signified (TS): A theoretical construct, the signification mark (word) that refers to the top of the metaphysical hierarchy; the organizing principle that makes sense of all sense data and groups it into a meaningful and coherent whole, through which meaning can be understood. The thing to which the Trans

The Folded Napkin Legend

I wrote about t his "urban legend" a few years ago, but it's typical of the silly urban legends we hear about now and then, such as the idea that the head of Proctor and Gamble went on Oprah to pledge his allegiance to Satanism. Christians are no less gullible for this sort of nonsense than anyone else, and frankly, some seem more gullible to believe anything that they consider "edifying". It's no wonder we're mesmerized by self-comfort tunes like "I Can Only Imagine" that contain about as much useful theology as a thimble. ** The Gospel of John (20:7) tells us that the napkin, which was placed over the face of Jesus, was not just thrown aside like the grave clothes. The Bible takes an entire verse to tell us that the napkin was neatly folded, and was placed at the head of that stony coffin.... In order to understand the significance of the folded napkin, you have to understand a little bit about Hebrew tradition of that day. The fol

Prolegomena to God Arguments: Transcendental Sigified

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This is a prelude to unveiling a new God argument I have been working on. The point here is that the God concept is endemic to modern thought..  Western thought has always assumed a logos, a first principle that gives meaning to all ambiguity and grounds all knowledge and norms. This concept has been embodied in many different ideas, collectively Jacques Derrida calls them “ transcendental signifiers”   (TS) . These differing notions all point to a single idea, the one thing that is necessary and universal that orders and gives meaning to all signs and signification. That is the thing  signified   by the words used to mark it, the  transcendental signif ied  (TS) .  Humanity has been unable to find  any matching candidate for this post in modern thought primarily because we gave up the idea of a logos.  Modern science has a sort of truncated logos in the idea that empirical observations will eliminate all hypothes e s until just the true one's are left and that will give us