To be blunt January sucked! LOL But that is life in the evil matrix, isn’t it.
I did surf across some really good online content though.
The first video is by the philosopher David Kyle Johnson, Ph.D. It’s called Why Would God Cause Natural Evil. Obviously along the lines of Theodicy in this one. He shows that all the tri-omni ideas about god 'fail into incoherency’ when it comes to this specific issue. But at about the 20 min. mark he hits the nail square on the head when he posits a logically coherent view of God/s and their relation to natural evil. In short, he posits Christian Gnosis’ idea of the lesser flawed god being responsible for this (HIS) universe. I can’t embed Bitchute videos so here is the link.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Q9JTQUBRxMSH/
The 2nd video is by** Emerson Green.** One can say nothing but good things about a guy who has a Walden picture as an intro.! So Henry Thoreau.
This one covers ole Shopie and is called, Schopenhauer on Mind and Matter. Green is an atheist although an intelligent and honest one. In this one he argues for Dual Aspect Monism when it comes to solving the ‘hard problem of consciousness’. This is my view also. So consciousness is an intrinsic aspect of the material cosmos and exists as panpsychism and proto-panpsychism in lesser developed systems. I’ve left comments on his blog suggesting that this view is none other than Prakriti of the Samkhya school from antiquity. So mind/mentality is one side of a coin and the material cosmos is the other side: intrinsic and extrinsic; subjective and objective; involution and evolution; implicate and explicate, etc...
In my view this solves one of the mysteries about this universe but does not solve ‘the hard problem of god’...It’s important to note that MIND in Dual Aspect Monism is not the same as ‘the super consciousness of god’. This is where much theological confusion exists, IMO. This supernal god consciousness was known as PURUSHSA in Samkhya and is not the causal agent of this material cosmos. The problem here though is that this ‘god like consciousness’ will forever be outside the realm of scientific knowledge and can only be experienced. In the east it is known as Nirvana--or bliss consciousness.
Oh, yes...Green’s video on** Universal Salvation** is fantastic, too, and it’s a breath of fresh air hearing someone dive deep into a subject that they don’t necessarily believe in but want to cover all aspects of the ideas in a thorough and unbiased manner.
I should note that as a Christian Gnostic I’ve equated Prakriti with what I call ’the demiurgic construct’. So the mind of the demiurge is fully embedded within the material cosmos as explained above although there are added ‘fireworks’ that can be accessed by chemicals like DMT, LSD,Peyote, etc...: but those experiences are of this demiurgic construct. Think of them like the fireworks of the Wizard of Oz.
Samkhya’s Purusha I equate with the fullness of the Pleroma in Christian Gnostic thought. Again, like Johnson suggests above, the Pleroma is not the causal agent of this material construct so in that sense the ideas are similar to Samkhya.