The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Reality beyond thought and intellect

Theology Philosophical
#1

I honestly don’t even know how to even describe such a topic, but will try my best. Now as I best understand it, intellectual knowing is just understanding reality through facts, figures, statistics, words and numbers. I find that our most developed intellectual processing is empirical, in that we have the most concrete understanding of physical objects observed through sensual experience.

Now I can agree that there is reality that the human intellect cannot understand, such as Eternity, infinity, paradox, wholeness, or aseity. Yet the confusion is over whether this inability to know is due to the finite nature of the human consciousness, or if reality is ultimately other than intellectual content. The first implication is that humanity is just ignorant. The second implication is that man has other faculties to understand transcendent matters other than the intellect.

#2

Joe, you will enjoy this (see link). If you have not discovered the Maverick Philosopher (Bill Vallicella) you are in for a treat.

#3

I read it over, and it looks like good stuff. I have heard this argument before from Fr. Robert Barron on his video on faith. Would it be fair to say that faith is towards a whole different form of certitude greater than mere facts or imagination.

#4

I read in a section of Richard Rohr’s book “Hope against Darkness” on different ways of knowing. I also read another book from Jonathan Sachs “Science and Religion and the quest for meaning” in regards to left and right brain ways of knowing. I find that at least in the west, people tend to over-rely on left brain thinking, which I have found to be much of the