Lightbringers: A Philosophy Journal

The essence of the mystical experience is this---to see, feel, or otherwise know that you are or have become one with all that is. One with the ‘wholly other.’ The mystical experience involves more than just feeling. It usually takes the form of some direct and immediate and unsolicited apprehension of something wonderfully immanent or transcendent (or both) that is both self-sufficient and of ultimate significance (at least to the recipient of the experience if not others as well).

Plotinus, that great Neoplatonist philosopher of the ancient world, expressed it this way:

This paper looks at the influence that Humanism, itself infused by and with Enlightenment values and ideals, has had on liberal religion in the form of Unitarianism.

An address delivered at State Parliament House, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on 20 June 2014, in connection with World Humanist Day 2104 Australia--Symposium--'Enlightenment: The Roots of Humanism'.

How the exponential growth of knowledge is both creating a singularity and may at the same time provide some way
to avoid or manage the singularity crisis

Presentation to the Philosophy Forum, May 3, 2015

The seven current, proposed and/or soon to be implemented measures of physics are:

Originally the second was 1/(24 * 60 * 60) of the day ; a problem was the Earth's rate of rotation was found to be slowing down. There were others so now:

"The second, s, is the unit of time; its magnitude is set by fixing the numerical value of the ground state hyperfine splitting frequency of the caesium 133 atom, at rest and at a temperature of 0 K, to be equal to exactly 9 192 631 770 when it is expressed in the unit s^-1, which is equal to Hz."

The therapeutic approach discussed in the attached article, which has been called ‘self illusion therapy,’ draws on both Eastern and Western insights including but not limited to the teachings of Buddhism and the work of the English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson, the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, the Australian addiction psychologist Jim Maclaine, and the philosophers David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and P F Strawson.

Mine is a religiously liberal and non-dogmatic faith---faith meaning living with courage, confidence and conviction---drawing on the wisdom of all world religions as well as the insights of science, philosophy, art, music and literature. Mine is also a skeptical faith, for I have always affirmed that every idea is to be tested and every stone turned over.

Human beings are neither evil beyond measure nor good beyond credibility. That is my position as a Humanist and religious liberal even though I am well aware that many Humanists tend to have a view of human nature that is far too ‘rosy’ and unrealistic.

Much of modern-day Judaism, in particular the non-Orthodox movements known as Reconstructionist Judaism and Humanistic Judaism, but also to some extent Reform Judaism, is for all intents and purposes devoid of notions of supernaturalism. This should not come as a surprise, as there has always been much less emphasis on the supernatural in Judaism than in, say, the religion of Christianity which sprang from it. There is more supernaturalism in the Christian New Testament than in the Hebrew Bible.

Enactment theology is one form of radical theology (also known as ‘Death of God theology’) which asserts that the traditional western idea of God is no longer tenable. Enactment theologians assert that if there is a God at all, that God is to be found in personal relationships with and between individuals. It is a God that we humans create and bring into being---that is, 'enact'. (After all, is it not the case that we humans have created all of the supposed gods over the centuries? I think it is indeed the case.

Note. The attached article began as an address to the Sydney Realist Group (‘Sydney Realists’), Glebe, New South Wales, Australia, delivered on 7 May 2013. The article was subsequently published in three parts in the journal The Northern Line, No. 15 March 2014 (pp 13-16), No. 16 May 2014 (pp 10-15), and No. 17 July 2014 (pp 9-13). The article interprets some key ideas and teachings of Buddhism in light of the situational realism of the Scottish-Australian philosopher John Anderson.