Dear Josephus,

Thank you for telling your source. I regard it and the Bible as most unreliable.

http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/tripos-papers/themes-sources is about historical sources from the history department at Cambridge.

http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/tripos-papers/part-ii-papers-2015-2016/specifieds-pdfs-2015-16/paper-7 refers to the period from 284 to 476 in the Roman World. At the bottom of the page are sources that those working in the period can use. Note that none of them are religious documents. Serious historians when writing about a period examine coins, archeological findings, government archives and similar material. Legends such as found in religious material are useful for what they tell us about what people believed or were influenced by during the period. However, they are completely unreliable as a chronicle of what actually happened.

There was only two displays of faith that I can see that come under this threads heading; faith in the Koran and the Kalashnikov.

Yuyutsu

“Perhaps the confusion comes back to Descartes”.

I’m not sure we should be too ready to blame Descartes, because your ontological dualism presents as characteristically Cartesian, with some differences of detail.

His phenomenologically derived identification of the thinking self/soul is guaranteed from error by a benevolent and truthful deity, with its distinction from the material universe (required by “existence” in your terms) effected through the pineal gland.

Your decontextualised “IS-ness” (“independent of any context”) seems to me to be fundamentally the same ontological character as Descartes’ thinking self/soul. However, your “IS-ness” seems to want it both ways:

(1) it wants to be ontologically autonomous like the subject of Descartes’ Cogito, in that “it does not require a universe”, a universe which you have previously said to be “implied” by “existence” (“existence requires a context, a universe”), but at the same time,

(2) “you [“IS-ness”, independent of “existence”] also exist (while not thinking, say when your body is asleep or dead)”.

“IS-ness” independent of “existence”, yet it “exists”? Puzzling equivocation.

Dear Pirate,

We are coming close to the limit that words can express.

Let me try another way of saying the same:

It's conceivable (or makes sense) to talk about things which do not exist.
It's inconceivable (or doesn't make sense) to talk about things which are not what they are.

If you consider the latter trivial, then indeed it is: let there be any context whatsoever or no context at all, still I cannot ever be what I am not!

I am not "blaming" Descartes, I just explained that he can be easily misunderstood as one could say "Descartes says Cogito Ergo Sum, thus Ergo must be subject to Cogito", which Descartes of course never said.

Now Descartes may have said many other things, but please don't hold me responsible for his views, especially since I never introduced "ontological dualism".

Yes, I did say that existence would require duality, but that would imply ontological duality only if existence was real. Descartes might well have assumed that existence is real, thus conclude that "I think therefore I exist", but I follow the Hindu (and Buddhist) school of Advaita Vedanta, which states that existence is an illusion, an error of perception, or "Maya", that in fact there is nothing but God and duality is but an illusion.

This could all be solved pretty quickly if
God would come down to earth and say

"Look here I am, and here is what My commands are, to
Clear up any confusion."

If you doubt I am God, well here is a demonstration of my power.
He could then lift a mountain off the ground and suspend it in the sky.
Or some such thing,

What is God hiding for.
Why doesn't God deal with humankind honestly and face to face so to speak.
Why all the secrecy. God has nothing to hide surely.
God must realise how confused humans are. Why not clear things up by appearing?

Yuyutsu

“We are coming close to the limit that words can express.”

Well, as words are our medium for discussion, I guess it’s your call.

“Now Descartes may have said many other things, but please don’t hold me responsible for his views, especially since I never introduced “ontological dualism” “

I introduced the term because (1) you were presenting and explaining an ontology, (2) it presented as dualism for the reasons I outlined, and (3) I was exploring different ways of construing your worldview in order to find common ground.

Anyway, thank you for engaging in discussion.