Scientism, Atheism, And The Admissibility Of Spiritual Experience

EDIT to my last post: I am implicitly, in my exploration, treating that "natural divine reality" as having the kind of ideal characteristics that Epicurus had in mind -- e.g. harmony and blissfulness -- that we can tap into, as it were, by recognizing it.

Sorry for the late edit.

Given my use of the word “prolepsis” here, I revisited a paper by David K. Glidden. The following are just brief – but I think relevant – excerpts:

“Given Epicurean epistemic realism, these claims on the character of some thing or state must be seen as claims on the world, so that prolepsis, like aisthesis for a realist, is ambiguous between the psychological act of apprehension and the content discerned, some feature of the world. In the case of prolepsis what is discerned should be some abiding character in things, as opposed to some temporary appearance. …

“Such recognitions are part of the evidence, not part of our inferences· And prolepsis, it seems, constitutes such recognitions.” [My emphasis]

https://orb.binghamton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1108&context=sagp

There is a link and some discussion of Dr. Gliddens’ longer paper as well, here:

Thread

Dr. David Glidden's "Epicurean Prolepsis"

Thanks to Don's hard work and to the generosity of Dr. Glidden himself, we have obtained a copy of Dr. Glidden's 1985 paper "Epicurean Prolepsis."

As many of you know we have been discussing Anticipations in our two most recent podcast episodes, and Dr. Glidden came to our attention through a shorter work which we found very interesting. Dr. Glidden developed that shorter work into the longer article which was published in 1985 in the Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy.

While we decide the…

Cassius

March 3, 2023 at 7:34 PM

Quote from Pacatus

With that said, meditation and contemplation might still be philosophically relevant – as is simply contemplating the beauties of nature, and feeling awe.

Anyway, I am trying to explore a third position between the options of real gods thoroughly removed from our everyday natural reality, and gods that are solely ideal mental fabrications.

One version of a third option is suggested by the two sentences in this quote, and relates to the hymn to Venus by Lucretius. It is to contemplate the life force or evolutionary forces and/or processes by which the universe has come to be in its current state, with us in it.

Does pleasure drive a seedling that grows roots and reaches for the light?

True piety is for a man to have the power

To contemplate the world with quiet mind.

Lucretius 5-1203 (Melville translation)