Two Things: Little Epiphany & Statistics | INFJ Forum

Two Things: Little Epiphany & Statistics

Trent

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Nov 17, 2015
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Had an epiphany today. I was thinking about the INFJ Forum. Then it dawned on me, "This is amazing. I've seen this site off and on for a little while now. Now, I'm on finally. What I saw (from an INFJ) perspective is that we are almost all literally wired to be Counselors." Just kind of cool.

The other thing was more legit. Are there any statistics available for this Forum?
- Total percentage of all MBTIs that hit this site or are members
- % by region, locale

I wonder if we would see trends, waves on world events and how that wave affects INFx's. Such as Paris. What is the feeling beforehand, dreams prior to, etc. The government probably already has those charts. Eh. A little bit of INTJ coming out? I guess its the pattern I want to see. Back to INFJ.
 
This is a very interesting observation that shares some similarities to Jung's "Collective Unconsciousness" theory of the nature of intuition. This absolutely warrants further research and observation.

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I almost guarantee trends and patterns occur. Which leads to the next question, why? Perhaps, it all boils down to love. On the basis of love we are made aware via Ni of <fill in the blank>. In my opinion, love will push out fear. Fear also attaches to self. So, self is being pushed out as well. Utopia! Lol. Eventually, this will happen. INFJy of the day. Ok, off my soapbox. :) Lastly, I have not arrived. I am there. Serious work in progress as we all are in this dimension of senses.
 
Had an epiphany today. I was thinking about the INFJ Forum. Then it dawned on me, "This is amazing. I've seen this site off and on for a little while now. Now, I'm on finally. What I saw (from an INFJ) perspective is that we are almost all literally wired to be Counselors." Just kind of cool.

The other thing was more legit. Are there any statistics available for this Forum?
- Total percentage of all MBTIs that hit this site or are members
- % by region, locale

I wonder if we would see trends, waves on world events and how that wave affects INFx's. Such as Paris. What is the feeling beforehand, dreams prior to, etc. The government probably already has those charts. Eh. A little bit of INTJ coming out? I guess its the pattern I want to see. Back to INFJ.

Some people have tried to look at geographical patterns in MBTI, but the data is unreliable for many reasons. Not the least of which being that a single person's MBTI, as determined by standardized measures, can vary significantly. Only a small percentage of the population fits into a single category most of the time, and they vary in degrees within that category. There is a lot of research in this direction that invalidates MBTI measures for research purposes.

For that reason, your results would have issues fitting all (or even enough) relevant people into the categories. Could have unclear or even misleading results.

Today, psychologists use the big five inventory. It is a lot more predictive, and has certain kinds of stability (rank order, for example). I can explain more if you want :)
 
What is the big 5?

In simplest terms, in the way that MBTI is a Type Theory, the Big 5 is a Trait Theory.

Think of a trait as a consistent characteristic, and a type as a category whose members share one or more characteristics. Types are defined by a common set of traits that are shared by group members


So the big five was put forward using what is called the Lexical Hypothesis. This is the idea that all important individual differences have become encoded within language. It is reasonable that, if it is important, then we will have words for it. How important it is means either more words or more uses of the words. So researchers did what they call a Factor Analysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_analysis) to see how common and how many words and what types of words are used to describe personality in the dictionary, and in several languages. What they found was five surprisingly distinct groups of words. Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism which is better described as emotional stability (OCEAN acronym to remember ;) ). A smaller grouping is still argued for which is called Honesty/Humility (change acronym to HEXACO). Here's a decent quick look at what each trait involves: http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/a/bigfive.htm

A significant difference between MBTI and the Big 5 can be thought of as MBTI tries to describe how people think to predict how they would act. On the other hand, the Big five is more of self or observe report data on how a person has acted to illuminate tendencies rather than processes. Basically, it looks at how people have acted to predict how they will act. if I tend to be less talkative, more private, prefer small groups as company, etc., then I am lower in extraversion. If I tend to not try new things, prefer what is familiar, etc., then I am lower in openness. Being higher or lower is then suggestive of how I will act in other situations. Also notice that I said "higher" and "lower". Big 5 offers scales as compared to my peers. MBTI just fits me into a category. The Big 5 recognizes that personality traits are scales rather than categories.

There is a lot more to the research that I can describe if you wish, but that's the gist of it (at least what I can think of right now :m190: ). There's some part's about the predictive power of the Big 5 that I didn't get into, as well as its stability that MBTI does not have.
 
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Thanks Perro. Sounds like you favor the big 5. If so why is that?
 
Thanks Perro. Sounds like you favor the big 5. If so why is that?

Well, I favor the big 5 in certain situations. In personality psychology (especially research) the big 5 is favored because of its consistency and predictability. MBTI has a major problem in that a lot of people can't be consistently classified.

Check this paper, but skip to page 472 for statistical research and explanation:
http://rer.sagepub.com/content/63/4/467.full.pdf+html

Check this paper if you want better explanation and less statistics:
http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/Articles/develop/mbti.pdf

Importantly, the shift across dimensions implies, by the MBTI theory, a radical shift in personality traits. We know that isn't true, as demonstrated by Fleeson, (2004) (which I won't bother finding unless you ask). This makes it hard to run statistics and track personality change because MBTI suggests radical changes when there aren't any. A popular research area for personality psychologists is personality correlations with life outcomes. This allows us to see who is at risk of X, Y, and Z late life problems (depression, poverty, etc.), but we can't study that with MBTI for the reasons I mentioned. Big 5 allows us to do this.

That being said, there are things that MBTI (when talking of a person who can be successfully categorized) can predict that the Big 5 cannot. For example, a person who is very high in contentiousness ought to be a very clean and neat person, so big 5 might predict. However, I rate "very high" on contentiousness and have a very messy room. MBTI predicts that a J type person will be more organized, but the IXXJ combination will focus the organization inwardly, and so I would have a very organized mind but likely a messy room/desk. This reference to cognition gives it certain predictions that Big 5 simply isn't equipped to answer.

This now crosses over into cognitive psychology. While MBTI does attempt to tackle the processing question, Jung simply didn't have the research and understanding of the brain that we have today. While he was on a good track, the view is simply out of date (as a processing model). Really, we don't have a good processing model. The mind is ridiculously complicated, so working out a model of all (or even most) process is going to be ridiculous. It's interconnectedness makes it unlikely that we could work it out by pieces. So instead we just chip away, and correct where we mess up. The scientific method at its best, lol. An example of a more modern approach is the Cognitive-Affective Processing System (CAPS) developed by Walter Mischel. He offers "five types of cognitive-affective units" in his "personality mediating system". Basically, five pieces of the puzzle of how the brain processes personality.

From my lecture slides:

1. Encodings: Categories (constructs) for the self, people, events, and situations (external and internal).
2. Expectancies and beliefs: About the social world, about outcomes for behavior in particular situations, about self-efficacy
3. Affects: Feelings, emotions, and affective responses (including physiological reactions).
4. Goals and values: Desirable outcomes and affective states; aversive outcomes and affective states; goals, values, and life projects.
5. Competencies and self-regulatory plans: Potential behaviors and scripts, and plans and strategies for organizing action and for affecting outcomes and one's own behavior and internal states.

The cognitivist will then construct models of interaction among these areas, and test its descriptive and predictive power. Most fail currently, lol. We just don't know enough yet.
 
Thanks for the follow up and information. Ok...well, so far in my experience personally and with others there seems to be an affinity (for the most part) where people have their personality sweet spot and or resting state if I can present it like that; almost a default. Although I have notice even with myself what you are describing. Sometimes the person can waver between xxFx and xxTx, I/E and so forth, but like I said depending on where that person is in life it is somewhat of a 'snapshot' of their psyvhe and can provide valuable insight inspight of the antiquity of Jungian teaching. I chew the meat and spit the bones. I don't agree with it all, but I appreciate somewhat predictable patterns or trends. And I Do see that more often than not. It seems there needs to be some static variables to assist with prediction. Human nature is both spontaneous and predictable. Lol.
 
Thanks for the follow up and information. Ok...well, so far in my experience personally and with others there seems to be an affinity (for the most part) where people have their personality sweet spot and or resting state if I can present it like that; almost a default. Although I have notice even with myself what you are describing. Sometimes the person can waver between xxFx and xxTx, I/E and so forth, but like I said depending on where that person is in life it is somewhat of a 'snapshot' of their psyvhe and can provide valuable insight inspight of the antiquity of Jungian teaching. I chew the meat and spit the bones. I don't agree with it all, but I appreciate somewhat predictable patterns or trends. And I Do see that more often than not. It seems there needs to be some static variables to assist with prediction. Human nature is both spontaneous and predictable. Lol.

Yeah, I know what you mean, lol.

As for noticing "more often than not" correct predictions in personal experience is very dangerous. Our brain is hardwired to keep what it considers to be relevant information. Unfortunately, negative results (or empty results) are treated as either less, or not important at all as compared to positive results. This is to say that we remember things that confirm an idea. Classic confirmation bias. Further, we will better remember (and more heavily weight) those confirmations because they are rated as important. Classic attribution bias. This is not to say that you have this bias (although I think that you do, because I have the same opinion and know it is because of bias, lol). Rather, this says that, given the nature of the question we are asking (how reliable is MBTI in predicting outcomes), our brains are not equipped to answer these questions based on memory. Statistically speaking, only about half of people fit into the categories decently well. While I am rated highly as an INFJ, I only identify with between 70% - 95% of the profile. That's with me factoring in the two extremes of my behavior (when i'm least like an INFJ and when I'm most), but I can't factor in how long I am of these variances. So, let's assume a worst case scenario. Let's say I'm only 70% consistent (to say that 70% of the profile can be fit within my behavior and personality, not to say that my behavior and personality fit within the profile) with the INFJ profile even though I am always rated as INFJ (almost). To understand what kind of result this is for science, consider gravity. What do you think a physicist would do if, given a theory of gravity, an object falls to the ground (following that theory) only 70% of the time, lol. The rest of the time is just sits there like those old cartoons before falling off the cliff :m180:

Basically, we have to be very cautious when using our experience in determining how reliable something like MBTI is. Our brains are simply not equipped to answer a question like that. That's why we do statistics studies :)
 
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Ok...well, so far in my experience personally and with others there seems to be an affinity (for the most part) where people have their personality sweet spot and or resting state if I can present it like that; almost a default.

I want to address this more directly. You are exactly right about this. When a person is an unstressed, resting state, they will become consistent. But notice what has happened. You have standardized the situation to reach consistency, to then standardize the person. Therefore, your information will only inform you about that person in that specific situation. Perhaps you could talk about it then as deviations from this resting state (assuming there's a connection between these state changes, which there are, lol), but then you risk both arbitrariness and generalizability. This is to say that are you not being arbitrary in using the resting state as your point of reference in this general variation a person goes through during the day? Secondly, how do you know that one person's resting state will be the same as another person's? I am most relaxed when listening to music, but someone else might be most relaxed when painting (and, *gasp* hates music :m071: ). In such a case, you cannot generalize resting states as reference points. If you can't generalize any reference points (which may or may not be the case), then you can't compare separate entities.

A simple way to look at this road is you end up tying yourself up in knots trying to answer the original question. Not a good position to be in, lol :frusty:
 
Both great responses. You are a smart dude for 20 years old. I am 43 :) and that is dog years. So what? I have learned through much painful trial and error how to listen to let's call it "my Ni" and have become pretty accurate. Not 100%, but 90s for sure. That being said you mentioned "the hard wiring of the brain". So...what is neural plasticity. I love that stuff! In addition, I believe in the spiritual aspect as well. I am not sure your standing whether it be agnostic, atheist, etc. ? I am not attempting a debate, but wanting to elaborate because this is a very interesting dialogue. Both of us I think I seeking similar goals. I guess that would be the patterns of the human psyche. I am becoming more convinced this is may very well boil down to motive. Why do I do what I do? Which goes deeper? The ultimate INFJ question, what is my purpose? If I know my purpose, then I have intent with motive which intertwines I believe with will. I know this all may sound heretical, but for me it has been a reality I cannot evade or even want to. I think the other side of the "Ni" dimension something can happen that effects the hard wiring of the brain profoundly. Insomuch, that it changes motive, handwriting, perception, eating habits or essentially the essence of your being. I've messed around with a personal blog for a few years. I wrote this one about the "Arbitrator" about five years ago, http://pushingpeanuts.com/?p=2303. I am not trying to get religious, but hopefully show you my perspective. In my opinion, what I've discovered is every INFJ's dream; not boasting, but sharing in my deepest sincerity. Back in my hay-day I was a hard-headed punk. Now, I am a 43 year hard-headed punk. Lol. Anyways, I recall doing LSD and I suppose like Jim Morrison says, "The doors of my perception" were opened. I got 'stuff', but couldn't put it into words. That is what this is like, but no LSD. That was over 20 years ago. I'm not sure how else to describe it. I have seen and heard that other drug, God molecule?, forgot the name DMEA. IDK. Something like that where people go other places and have this epiphanies. I think we all want to know who we are and our purpose which is akin to spirituality in my humble opinion. Ok, old man shutting up :) Hope I don't sound off my rocker. I speak from my heart and I speak directly. Otherwise, how will anyone know what I am saying? Ugh.
 
Both great responses. You are a smart dude for 20 years old. I am 43 :) and that is dog years.
Lol, thanks, but I must admit I am taking a class on this stuff this semester at UIUC, so the points are fresh to me, haha. Plus I have the lecture slides :mk:

I can tell that you're no slouch either! I have a lot of respect for people who ask questions, and then respond. It shows patience and level headedness that I'm still trying to learn :/. I'm still an energetic college student who is being overly stimulated with all the cool ideas he is being introduced to, lol. I know I think that I know more than I actually know (hmmm....Odd sentence, lol). I catch myself occasionally, but I know that I miss a lot. The only way I know how to fix that though is by awareness, and experience. I got to go screw up a few more times to figure that out, lol :dizzy:

So what? I have learned through much painful trial and error how to listen to let's call it "my Ni" and have become pretty accurate. Not 100%, but 90s for sure.

It is my personal opinion that, in our day to day life, Ni (or standard intuition) is far more powerful than deductive reasoning. While deduction can allow us to be more certain, it is soooo weak when tackling common and complex questions such as why is my girlfriend/spouse mad at me? You'll have far better luck listening to your heart (intuition) than your deduction because your heart will go ahead and make the jump that you need to act, get her flowers, say your sorry (even if it's not your fault ;) lol) because your heart will recognize that the cause or whose responsible isn't really as important as fixing it. It would take forever and a LOT of energy to work through that otherwise.

That being said you mentioned "the hard wiring of the brain". So...what is neural plasticity. I love that stuff! In addition, I believe in the spiritual aspect as well. I am not sure your standing whether it be agnostic, atheist, etc. ? I am not attempting a debate, but wanting to elaborate because this is a very interesting dialogue. Both of us I think I seeking similar goals. I guess that would be the patterns of the human psyche.
My beliefs are...complicated. I do certainly believe in God. And I do so without hesitation, but because I choose to believe. My freshman year in college was my first encounter with philosophy, and the three areas I was learning in was free will, ancient philosophy, and, by extension and other interest, philosophy of religion. At that time I was a physics major, but I came from a very small town in rural Illinois. I was raised in a Christian family, but my parents and I only rarely went to church. I defaulted to faith, but every time I thought about it I recognized that I didn't have near enough information to make a change in either direction (make a commitment to weekly church, or be atheist). During my freshman year, and part of my sophomore year, the question of God had a strong hold on me. I became familiar with arguments on both sides, and realized that, by the (commonly accepted) nature of God, the certainty of his existence cannot be answered. That's when I realized I was asking the wrong question (at least partially thanks to intuition btw, lol). You aren't supposed to get certainty from God. You are only supposed to get belief. Suffice it to say it was quite the "duh" moment when I thought of that, lol. If his question is one of belief, then I worked through reasons (in the philosophical sense) to believe or not to believe, and reached the conclusion that there are good reasons for both sides. Then I realized that I had to ask myself "well, what do I want"? And I decided that I wanted to believe in God. And so I do so by choice. There were a few personal reasons that drove that decision. So when people ask about God, I say that I choose to believe that he exists, but I'm perfectly happy to enterain thoughts of him not existing, as I am secure in what I believe. A few friends of mine in philosophy have talked with me about my reasoning, and only one has tried to put forward a counter argument. Then it was only from the idea that I am supposing extra existence than is necessary, but I responded with there is an open question here, and that claim is itself an assumption. While there is weight to my also using an assumption, I then point out that his argument is only an epistemic indicator (as I call it) rather than a deductive reasoning. He agreed, and we had a good conversation about all that.

That being said, my belief of God is likely to be different from many (and probably most) other people. I tend towards a much less specific conception (not quite agnosticism, but on its boarder). And I still don't have it figured out. I got my important question of whether or not I believe, the rest of the story will develop as I move through life


I am becoming more convinced this is may very well boil down to motive. Why do I do what I do? Which goes deeper? The ultimate INFJ question, what is my purpose? If I know my purpose, then I have intent with motive which intertwines I believe with will. I know this all may sound heretical, but for me it has been a reality I cannot evade or even want to. I think the other side of the "Ni" dimension something can happen that effects the hard wiring of the brain profoundly. Insomuch, that it changes motive, handwriting, perception, eating habits or essentially the essence of your being.
I'm sorry, I think I lost you here. What is it that is boiling down to motive? Do you mean the line of questioning about knowledge? If so, then I agree to an extent, but definitions get tricky here. But I won't elaborate until I know what you mean ;)


I've messed around with a personal blog for a few years. I wrote this one about the "Arbitrator" about five years ago, http://pushingpeanuts.com/?p=2303. I am not trying to get religious, but hopefully show you my perspective. In my opinion, what I've discovered is every INFJ's dream; not boasting, but sharing in my deepest sincerity. Back in my hay-day I was a hard-headed punk. Now, I am a 43 year hard-headed punk. Lol. Anyways, I recall doing LSD and I suppose like Jim Morrison says, "The doors of my perception" were opened. I got 'stuff', but couldn't put it into words. That is what this is like, but no LSD. That was over 20 years ago. I'm not sure how else to describe it. I have seen and heard that other drug, God molecule?, forgot the name DMEA. IDK. Something like that where people go other places and have this epiphanies. I think we all want to know who we are and our purpose which is akin to spirituality in my humble opinion. Ok, old man shutting up :) Hope I don't sound off my rocker. I speak from my heart and I speak directly. Otherwise, how will anyone know what I am saying? Ugh.

Lol! I respect that! I will say that any materialist, however, will be turned away from many of your claims because of the terms you are using (as you described in a previous comment). Now that I'm getting a better idea of your opinions, I don't think you're anti-materialist. However, I think that you are ok with being anti-materialist. Personally, I am a materialist, and more specifically what's called a nonreductive physicalist. All these fancy terms basically just mean that all things that exist are, in some important sense, rooted in the physical world. Existence, even of abstract entities, is constituted by brute physical nature (btw, I can explain this more if you wish. I love this area of discussion. Ontology and epistemology are my two primary areas in philosophy). With that view, I recognize that what you're talking about isn't necessarily contradictory (as I currently understand it). But, it depends on your definitions, lol (classic philosopher's question "what do you mean by....?") :m066:

I'll let you decide the direction here as this is your thread, but I am enjoying this discussion :)
 
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[MENTION=14304]Trent[/MENTION]

I looked up your blog that you linked. I only looked at the one page, but I noticed some interesting points.

Here are some things that caught my eye:

In Christ, our conscience is no longer aware of the judgment or penalty of the law. It has no value of right and wrong.

Anything based on self-imposed law is behind and irrelevant. It truly is dead.

If I do not have revelatory knowledge of a purged conscience then how will I partake in good works

From these statements, it seems that you are talking about grounding morality in Christ. However, I'm not for sure. The first statement has an odd structure. By the parts that I bolded, it seems that you are suggesting that, in turning to Christ, we actually loose sight of moral rightness and wrongness. I'm not sure if that's what you intended, but it leads one to question, "If being moral is what I desire, why turn to Christ if I already have the moral view?" (this is the question I'm wondering how your view tackles).

In the next line, however, you seem to say that the moral view one had prior to turning to Christ becomes irrelevant in turning to Christ. Then you learn the word of Christ, and the moral values therein. This seems to imply that these two moral codes are different. So, I must ask, do you take there to be more than one "true" moral code, and simply that the word of Christ is better for external reasons (perhaps for the reason of accepting Christ to get to heaven)? Or would you rather say that the early moral code is self-inflating in some sense, and is not a "true" morality (or perhaps a lesser morality)? For this reason then, one ought to change to the moral code of Christ. However, both of these solutions seem to have problems.

If you purpose multiple "true" moral structures, then you loose the weight of morality. The weight of morality is in its entailment, the prescribed "ought" of actions. Generally morality is seen as being grounded in logic, something fundamental to reality. This is to say that being immoral is to be literally wrong (irrational). However, if you allow for multiple "true" moralities, then you loose this logical entailment. Entailment is necessary truth, but multiple truths lead only to suggestion. In rejecting the suggestion, you are not necessarily wrong. Perhaps you could say if one agrees to some moral code then they are not necessarily wrong, but to disagree will ALL moral codes you would be. To this I would say that these different moral codes will produce contradicting results. To do the moral good for one might be immoral in another. Therefore, you are simultaneously right and wrong. This is a contradiction.

Now, a potential solution to this problem is to say that the pre-Christ's word morality is actually a "lesser morality" in some sense. Then you can establish a hierarchy of moralities. Now you have an answer to our original question (why should I change to Christ's word), and you can say that, within a contradiction, the superior morality takes precedence. Entailments come from within each morality, but broad contradictions appeal to this hierarchy for entailed solutions. However, this point is not immune to my next point.

On the other hand, if you want to say that the earlier moral code is not a "true" moral code, but is rather a code alternative to the true morality in Christ's word, then you seem to be grounding morality entirely in Christ's word. Here I will add some assumptions, so feel free to correct me if I am misinterpreting. I take Christ's word to be an extension of (or literally is) God's word. In truth, the word of Christ is the word of God, and it is for that reason that it is the moral truth. So, we have grounded morality in the word of God. Now another assumption. As I understand God, he is a perfectly free, omnipotent being (not sufficient categorizing, but this is all that is relevant to my point). Quite literally, he can do anything he wants. Now suppose that God states that it is morally wrong to torture puppies for fun. By the definition of God, it is at least possible for God to, let's say in another universe, make it morally wrong to not torture puppies for fun. This is a contradiction. Now you might say that's irrelevant though because I'm talking about another universe. However, it really isn't. From where the moral code is entailed is only God, so we need only know about God to know what is moral. However, by the nature of God, there is no logical entailment, so morality seems to loose its weight. However, then you might say that the entailment doesn't come from logic, but instead comes from the mere fact that it is the command of God. However, this move actually is circular.

Watch this conversation example:
[Me]: What is the right thing to do?
[You]: God's word.
[Me]: Why is God's word the right thing to do?
[You]: Because God commands it.
[Me]: Ok, so what gives God's command the weight that it has?
[You]: God's word. (the bible)

Because of this circularity, the moral rule you are talking about looses the entailment for anyone who does not grant the assumption of God's word. In other words, it only works for those that already take God's word to be true.

Now, all that being said, this does not say that God's word isn't moral. All this means is that it isn't moral because it is God's word. This entire point is what is known as the Euthyphro Dilemma, as described by Plato. The solution is not that the moral is God's word. Rather, it is that God's word is moral, and the moral is some external (to God) feature that, being an omniscentient being perhaps, God is always correct about.



On a completely separate side note, I noticed you used the term "logos". I was confused because I knew that word only as the Latin root word for "logic" or "reason" from when I read Plato or Aristotle. I looked it up, and I didn't know it had a second meaning: "the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning". I never knew that.
 
[MENTION=14304]Trent[/MENTION]

1. From these statements, it seems that you are talking about grounding morality in Christ.

Watch this conversation example:
[Me]: What is the right thing to do?
[You]: God's word.
[Me]: Why is God's word the right thing to do?
[You]: Because God commands it.
[Me]: Ok, so what gives God's command the weight that it has?
[You]: God's word. (the bible)

2. Because of this circularity, the moral rule you are talking about looses the entailment for anyone who does not grant the assumption of God's word. In other words, it only works for those that already take God's word to be true.

Now, all that being said, this does not say that God's word isn't moral. All this means is that it isn't moral because it is God's word. This entire point is what is known as the Euthyphro Dilemma, as described by Plato. The solution is not that the moral is God's word. Rather, it is that God's word is moral, and the moral is some external (to God) feature that, being an omniscentient being perhaps, God is always correct about.

3. On a completely separate side note, I noticed you used the term "logos". I was confused because I knew that word only as the Latin root word for "logic" or "reason" from when I read Plato or Aristotle. I looked it up, and I didn't know it had a second meaning: "the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning". I never knew that.

Whoa. On your answer. Yes, when I get "enlightened" and then write it down the transcribing process from my spirit to paper or screen needs clarity. Thank you for you insight and feedback. Ok...

1. In the Pauline epistles, it says Christ is our righteousness. Romans talks about righteousness unto holiness. These words have been sooooo diluted it is pitiful. And that is what happens. For me at least, I read these words as dead religion. This would be so much better to say in person. Prior to the Fall, Adam and his wife were not aware of "sin". They were not aware they were naked. Their consciences were pure and whole.

If I "keep" a moral law then I am back under the Old Testament. Under the New Covenant, it says the just shall live by faith; revelation. When revelation comes, manifests or is revealed the side effect is newness of life. Paul says, "We are the true circumcision of the heart." Meaning this metamorphosis is like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Even the organs transform. In the example of a human, I believe DNA is changed, perhaps you can call it also neural plasticity and a synapse to the spiritual which everyone I believe was created to have and desires.

So, there is a difference between me keeping a law and me doing or being because my heart, motive, being and essence have been transformed. I do not believe in being religious. I think it is gross. Anything I do is because I truly want to. Otherwise, why did I do it? I ask myself. And for me it has been religion. And religion kills; "the letter killeth."

2. It is a heart thing. If Jesus is a man like you and me He will not and does not have to impose Himself. One will believe when the desire comes to enable belief. The writer of Hebrews says over and over, "Harden not your hearts." Romans say clearly, "Confess with you mouth and believe in your heart..." And not because you have to or are supposed to.

3. Yes, in John 1, "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God...." I think that's what it says? I am of the opinion that John was possibly thinking of the Hebrew word, davar. A very different definition from logos. Greek thought is more abstract than the concrete thinking of Hebrews, but in both cases I believe the word is not limited, but elaborated and expounded. I can read the same black & white letters over and over for 30 years and something different will show again. Something deeper, bigger, etc.