Arguments for God

[Parsifal]

As far as what is going on in that passage, it helps to know something about the shame and honor culture that was Israel in the first century A.D. As that isn't directly a part of this thread, though, I'll leave it at that. If you would like, feel free to start a thread on it, though.

Yes, it is part of this thread, because it proves that the God you so desperately want to prove exists, doesn't exist.

Why do I need to understand an ancient culture's shame and honour (sorry, I am South African and use British English   ) culture?  If anything, it just shows how irrelevant the Bible is to 21st century realities.  I am also to deny evolution?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Of course, none of this addresses at all the pointlessness of praying to the Christian god, anyway:

1) He is said to know everything; meaning, he knows what you need, and he knows whether you're sincere or not.

2) If it is already a part of his plan, it was going to happen anyway.

3) If it's not a part of his plan, it may still fit in with it; but he already knows you need or want the object of your prayer.

4) If it requires a change in his plan, it will not be granted.  To argue that he changes his plan would mean to surrender the concept of this particular god's omnipotence. To argue that he doesn't change his plan means that not all prayers are answered.

[Jac3510]

Actually, what it reveals to me is exactly how much contortion believers must go through in order to explain inconvenient verses.  Not one of those verses mention conditionals (except the requirement to believe, which appears reasonable to me), partial sets, or any other favorite tools of apologetics.  

Furthermore, the imperfection of the message -- the fact that it can be, and is, misinterpreted (which is what you are saying here, and what the existence of the various sects prove as well) -- impeaches the "perfection" argument, anyway.  Certainly a perfect omnipotent being could fashion a perfect message which would not require appeals to apple-colors in order to be understood.

Perhaps, or perhaps:

"The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heartsand turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it." (Matt 13:11-17)

In any case, an appeal to apple colors isn't required in and of itself. It is only required when people make false assumptions about the way a text must be read. Getting at the basic meaning of any text is a fairly simple process. It may require some work, but the process isn't complicated. You simply have to understand that it is a historical document written in a specific time and place for a specific reason to a specific people in a specific language. You only get it wrong when you start trying to read it like a 21st century newspaper.

Still worse, many people are inconsistent on this point. Suppose you wrote your wife a love-letter, and suppose another woman picked it up. Now, you are, as you know, quite a catch, and because of this, this woman gets very excited about your professed love for her. Are you wrong in appealing to intended audience and the meaning of "you"? Of course not. You are simply following the normal rules of language. Why people think that a collection of documents that were written over a fourteen hundred year period by some forty authors in three different languages, all two millennia or more ago, should be treated any differently is beyond me.

Now, all this is very fascinating stuff, but none of it has any bearing on the argument put forward. If you would like to further explore this, I would be happy to in another thread. Thanks ) culture?  If anything, it just shows how irrelevant the Bible is to 21st century realities.  I am also to deny evolution?[/quote]
Again, I am going to have to ask you to trim back some of the polemic. If you want to get into a discussion on specific biblical passages, open a thread on it. I've offered to answer you there. I'd rather this thread not get taken a million miles off course.

Thank you.

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Of course, none of this addresses at all the pointlessness of praying to the Christian god, anyway:

1) He is said to know everything; meaning, he knows what you need, and he knows whether you're sincere or not.

2) If it is already a part of his plan, it was going to happen anyway.

3) If it's not a part of his plan, it may still fit in with it; but he already knows you need or want the object of your prayer.

4) If it requires a change in his plan, it will not be granted. To argue that he changes his plan would mean to surrender the concept of this particular god's omnipotence. To argue that he doesn't change his plan means that not all prayers are answered.

Perhaps. But whether or not it is pointless to pray to the Christian God doesn't have anything to do with the argument put forward in this thread. Again, if you want to discuss that issue, open a thread on it. I'll be more than happy to discuss it there.

[Parsifal]

"The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heartsand turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it." (Matt 13:11-17)

John 18:20 Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing.

Seems like a bit of a contradiction here...  Jesus says in John he never hid anything from anyone, but in Matthew he says he did (presumably from people like me).  Or have I got the intended audience wrong?

Jac, you are trying to prove there is a god, and we're showing you that this god (or God) is a hopeless creature, on his own version.  Not perfect at all.

[i_am_i]

And that raises my question, which is always the same one: where does the possibility, the idea, of god from if not from the human mind?

Maybe a philosopher should come up with a point-by-point argument for just taking the idea of God seriously in the first place.

I don't understand what you are asking for. Where did the idea of gravity come from if not from the human mind?

An idea based on an observed event (apple falling from tree) is not at all the same thing, though.

[Sophus]

I'm aware, which is why I strongly disagree. You know that our understanding of QM is minimal at best. We can make accurate predictions within fields of probability, but we've no idea what we are actually dealing with. If we did, harmonization with Einstein would be simple enough.

The point is that QM doesn't require that nothing produce something. It appears that nothing produces something, which obviously cannot be the case. The very fact that this "nothing" is producing something means that it is something. We need to study it more. The philosophical principle holds, as does, then, the argument I've put forward (as least thus far). I hope you appreciate that to argue that a nothing (which is a contradiction in terms) can produce something is to deny the law of non-contradiction, and in that case, we are forced into absolute and complete skepticism of any and all kinds. Nothing, not even that nothing produces something, can be known.

You could be right. For me, it is because of this unknown I don't draw a conclusion either way.

You are assuming that the PM must move from potential creation to actual creation. That is actually self-defeating, because you are assuming that there is potential in the PM, which would render it not really the PM by definition, and that the PM is temporal, which would also render it not really the PM. As we discussed in the simplicity thread, the PM is pure act. To use inappropriately tensed language, but still be the best we can do, we can say that God "has been creating" eternally. From God's perspective, His creation--every temporal moment of it--is eternal with Him. From our perspective, being temporal, we are finite compared to Him.

A final way to think about this: you are assuming that God has all the necessary conditions to create, but that "before" Creation lacked the sufficient condition, being the will to actually go ahead and create. It is, of course, true that an eternal being that meets all necessary conditions but not sufficient conditions will never move to action. The assumption, however, that God lacks the sufficient condition to create is invalid. The condition has been eternally met in Him as He is actus purus.

Can you explain how this would work? A good metaphor to work from perhaps. Is it like a snowball gathering momentum?

Philosophy studies the nature of things. Science studies the behavior of things. The latter requires empirical observation. The former, in light of empirical observation, is able to make more informed conclusions on its subject matter. We cannot say, however, that philosophical statements cannot be true or regarded as true without empirical verification. That is a position called verificationism that has long been recognized as being self-refuting, because the statement, "All statements need empirical verification before they can be known to be true" is itself not subject to empirical verification and therefore cannot be known to be true under its own definition. It is self-defeating.

I agree with you more than you might think in Epistemological terms,. Yet this sounds like an excuse to abandon evidence. I'm also not sure I see the distinction between the nature and behavior of things. Often I use the two interchangeably. Presumably you mean Philosophy asks the "why" questions and science asks the "how". Why questions are not always applicable, especially to things in nature.

We can know God exists if each of the premises is accepted and the logic is valid. If you want to deny any of the premises, then feel free. So long, however, as the premises are accepted and the logic is valid, the conclusion is true, in this case, that God exists.

Memory could be failing me but I think you used the term before which is why I had used it. So again, I will say, logic is not enough, but it must be demonstrably true. Even within mathematics theorems must be proven, even more necessary is the onus when we are given the task of proving the existence of something in science. If God were to be proven it would occur in the field of science, not philosophy, of course, keeping in mind, as has been pointed out on this forum before, science is technically a branch of philosophy.

[humblesmurph]

I think I get it now Chris.  I don't agree, but I get it.  Perfections stood out to me as weird so I questioned that.

You actually lost me much earlier because of the same weirdness.

2. All essences receive accidental properties through efficient causality.

I reject this. It tastes bad.  I reject Forms and entelecheia as well because they have a similar flavor.

Your definition of essence is different from mine.  For me, essence is what we perceive a thing to have.  For you, essence is what makes the thing.  To quote Sarte "existence precedes essence".  The belief that essence can exist without the thing rests on faith of the supernatural.  What is an essence of a man without the man?  A ghost, spirit, or immortal soul. Your second premise might as well read:

2. I believe in super natural beings such as ghosts, spirits, and immortal souls......

 It's short jump from belief in supernatural beings (essences) to  belief that all supernatural beings (essences) receive their  existence from  a magical supernatural being (essence) creating machine that contains all possibilities of everything.  

 I can't believe it took me this long to notice that.  Regardless of how we play around with the definition of "essences" this is where I get off the train.  It's a fundamental disagreement that will likely be covered (or already has been covered) in another thread.  

Thanks again for your efforts, I don't know why you do this, but you do it well  

[Thumpalumpacus]

Actually, what it reveals to me is exactly how much contortion believers must go through in order to explain inconvenient verses.  Not one of those verses mention conditionals (except the requirement to believe, which appears reasonable to me), partial sets, or any other favorite tools of apologetics.  

Furthermore, the imperfection of the message -- the fact that it can be, and is, misinterpreted (which is what you are saying here, and what the existence of the various sects prove as well) -- impeaches the "perfection" argument, anyway.  Certainly a perfect omnipotent being could fashion a perfect message which would not require appeals to apple-colors in order to be understood.

Perhaps, or perhaps:

"The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heartsand turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it." (Matt 13:11-17)

In any case, an appeal to apple colors isn't required in and of itself. It is only required when people make false assumptions about the way a text must be read. Getting at the basic meaning of any text is a fairly simple process. It may require some work, but the process isn't complicated. You simply have to understand that it is a historical document written in a specific time and place for a specific reason to a specific people in a specific language. You only get it wrong when you start trying to read it like a 21st century newspaper.

Still worse, many people are inconsistent on this point. Suppose you wrote your wife a love-letter, and suppose another woman picked it up. Now, you are, as you know, quite a catch, and because of this, this woman gets very excited about your professed love for her. Are you wrong in appealing to intended audience and the meaning of "you"? Of course not. You are simply following the normal rules of language. Why people think that a collection of documents that were written over a fourteen hundred year period by some forty authors in three different languages, all two millennia or more ago, should be treated any differently is beyond me.

Now, all this is very fascinating stuff, but none of it has any bearing on the argument put forward. If you would like to further explore this, I would be happy to in another thread. Thanks

The idea that any of the Bible is a reliable historical document is risible.  I'd invite you to read about its history, but somehow I doubt that will happen.

Insofar as your thread arguments are concerned, I regard philosophical "proofs" of gods to be useless.  Reality does not bow to logic.

Rather than "proofs" that have been debunked for centuries, you'd do better to present evidence.

[Jac3510]

You could be right. For me, it is because of this unknown I don't draw a conclusion either way.

That's fair enough. I frankly don't see what is so hard in the idea that "from nothing, nothing comes." It's strictly a logical point. But if I tell a student that if A is great than B is great than C, then therefore A is greater than C necessarily, and they say "for me, this is unknown, so I don't draw a conclusion either way," there's not much else I can say on the matter is there? I can just give examples until the cows come home, and that's about it. To use but one, if we see empty space suddenly produce a particle, does that mean nothing produce it? Of course not. There could be something in the fabric of space-time that created the particle. We don't know what it is. Whatever it is, though, must be an "it," because nothing is not an "it" to produce anything. If it were, then it wouldn't be nothing.

Can you explain how this would work? A good metaphor to work from perhaps. Is it like a snowball gathering momentum?

I can try. Imagine a lamp that has existed eternally. It has always been off. It is a timeless lamp, plugged into a timeless wall complete with timeless electricity. Now, would this lamp ever turn on? No. It couldn't. Even though it meets all the necessary conditions for producing life, those conditions aren't sufficient to produce light because the switch is off. To say, "someone could turn it on" implies a change in the lamp, which implies that it is not timeless after all, because to go from a state of off to on is the definition of a temporal change. It was this, now it is that. The same may be true if it were on. It would have forever met the sufficient conditions to be "on." It could never be "off" for the same reasons.

The FC (or PM, or SE, or whatever you want to call it) works the same way. It has always been "on." It has always been "in act." There is no potential to change. It is just doing what it does. It always has been. It always will be. And even those terms are misleading, because "always has been" and "always will be" are still temporal. It just is in act. It's act is to be. Every being in this universe derives its act from that be-ing.

I agree with you more than you might think in Epistemological terms,. Yet this sounds like an excuse to abandon evidence. I'm also not sure I see the distinction between the nature and behavior of things. Often I use the two interchangeably. Presumably you mean Philosophy asks the "why" questions and science asks the "how". Why questions are not always applicable, especially to things in nature.

Not "why" and "how," but "what is it" and "what does it do." You can give a scientific and a philosophical definition of an eye. A scientific definition will talk about its structure and relation to the rest of the body. Based on that, we can make predictions about what it will do when confronted with various elements (the iris will contract when there is more light). A philosophical definition makes no such predictions. It takes what we observe about the eye and forms them into a working discussion about its nature. What is a thing? A man, for instance, is a rational animal.

Far from discarding evidence, we use it at every step of the way. In my proof, every even statement is a statement about reality that is either true or false. If the evidence is against it, then it is false. For instance, consider only the first, that being is an accidental feature of efficiently caused causes. By all indications, especially logic, that is true. But if you can show me an efficiently caused cause in which being is its very nature, then the argument stands refuted.

Memory could be failing me but I think you used the term before which is why I had used it. So again, I will say, logic is not enough, but it must be demonstrably true. Even within mathematics theorems must be proven, even more necessary is the onus when we are given the task of proving the existence of something in science. If God were to be proven it would occur in the field of science, not philosophy, of course, keeping in mind, as has been pointed out on this forum before, science is technically a branch of philosophy.

I didn't say don't use logic. I said don't confuse logic with philosophy. The first deals with the order of reason. The second deals with the nature of things. Let me give you a practical example.

Consider the word "man." This word applies to every human being alive (and dead), and yet "man" is not found in any one of them. When you look at me, you don't see "man." You see a man. So the question is how the universal definition can be applied to things. That, by the way, was really what the entire enterprise of Medieval philosophy was about. But I digress. Let's follow Abailard, the great logician, and see what happened to him as he tackled this philosophical question using only logic.

First, what is a universal? Abailard answers rightly that it is that which can be predicated to several individual things taken one by one, as in the word "man." "Socrates," though, is not a universal, because it only applies to one man. Next, what is the nature of that which may be predicated to many (that is, what is the nature of the universal)? Is it a thing? This is a philosophical question, but Abailard didn't know philosophy. He knew logic, so he answered it as only a logician would (or, as a logician only would). Abailard then argued that universals could not be things, because if "manness" (to use his example) were present in both Socrates and Plato, then neither Socrates nor Plato could be said to have all of the thing, for if "man" was a thing, then if it were totally in Socrates, it would not be in Plato, and vice-versa. Yet we even more cannot say that Plato and Socrates were only partly men. It clearly, then, could not be a thing.Now, for a logician, there is only one necessary conclusion that must be followed. If a universal is not a thing, then because that which is not a thing is nothing, then universals are actually nothing. Consequently, there is nothing in reality to answer our general ideas. In other words, the word "man" really doesn't mean anything! This is good logic, but bad philosophy. The problem he painted for himself by confusing logic with philosophy was that, for him, universals had no reference to reality, and therefore, they could have no meaning. He died unable to answer that question (actually, he did offer an answer, but it is deeply circular and he would have been better not offering it at all). He is yet another example of a person who ended up in absolute skepticism because he mistook his own discipline for philosophy. If only modern "philosopher" would understand that error, we could get on with letting things like science do its real work unimpeded. Alas, until that happens, everyone loses.

Logic, then, is concerned with how we ought to think. Questions like whether or not being is an accidental or essential property, though they rely heavily on logic, are not essential questions of logic. They are questions of philosophy. If, then, the philosophical statements are true, then the conclusions must be true.

If, then, you wish to disagree with the conclusion of the argument I presented, you either have to disagree with one of the premises, as HS has done (and I will respond to tomorrow), or you have to write of the logic as being invalid. Ignoring it as insufficient doesn't make your problem go away.

[Jac3510]

By the way, just a public note:

I'm going to give this discussion through tomorrow. Wednesday, I'll offer another argument, meaning I will edit the first post of the thread with details there and a link on that page to the first post discussing in deeper in the thread. This isn't to say, of course, that all discussion must stop on the argument from subsistent existence. It is to say that more than enough time will have been given for objections to be lodged, responded to, and defended.

That is all. Thanks for the healthy discussion.

[Jac3510]

I think I get it now Chris.  I don't agree, but I get it.  Perfections stood out to me as weird so I questioned that.

You actually lost me much earlier because of the same weirdness.

2. All essences receive accidental properties through efficient causality.

I reject this. It tastes bad.  I reject Forms and entelecheia as well because they have a similar flavor.

Your definition of essence is different from mine.  For me, essence is what we perceive a thing to have.  For you, essence is what makes the thing.  To quote Sarte "existence precedes essence".  The belief that essence can exist without the thing rests on faith of the supernatural.  What is an essence of a man without the man?  A ghost, spirit, or immortal soul. Your second premise might as well read:

2. I believe in super natural beings such as ghosts, spirits, and immortal souls......

 It's short jump from belief in supernatural beings (essences) to  belief that all supernatural beings (essences) receive their  existence from  a magical supernatural being (essence) creating machine that contains all possibilities of everything.  

 I can't believe it took me this long to notice that.  Regardless of how we play around with the definition of "essences" this is where I get off the train.  It's a fundamental disagreement that will likely be covered (or already has been covered) in another thread.  

Thanks again for your efforts, I don't know why you do this, but you do it well  :blink:

[Reginus]

By the way, just a public note:

I'm going to give this discussion through tomorrow. Wednesday, I'll offer another argument, meaning I will edit the first post of the thread with details there and a link on that page to the first post discussing in deeper in the thread. This isn't to say, of course, that all discussion must stop on the argument from subsistent existence. It is to say that more than enough time will have been given for objections to be lodged, responded to, and defended.

That is all. Thanks for the healthy discussion.

Why not just make a separate thread?

[humblesmurph]

Figured I'd go ahead and get this tonight while my wife is finishing up her work.

First, again, I'm not worried about the definition of words. You can define "essence" however you like. In classical philosophy, it refers to what a thing fundamentally is. If you don't want to use the word "essence" to refer to that, then, fine. Call it what-a-thing-is. The same is true with form. I do find it odd that you reject the definition and then quote Sarte, but that's another issue.

Regarding Sarte, I have nowhere argued that essences can exist without existence. That's obviously self-contradictory. In fact, in the very first premise, the statement is qualified that being, though accidental, is prior to the substance, because without being, the substance is not. So there's no faith or supernatural. The important point is that things are whatever they are. The very notion of efficient causality is impossible without this. Suppose I am a carpenter and I make a table. The sentence "I made the table" is meaningless if "table" as an essence or what-it-is was not virtually there to receive existence. If there is nothing to receive existence, then existence isn't predicated to anything, meaning nothing exists. When we say "Something exists," the something is the what-it-is, and the exists is the statement of existence. If what-it-is' aren't real concepts, then nothing in this world is real or can be known.

So, with all that, the second premise is as far removed as anything could possibly be from what I have argued. You and I have taken each other seriously until now. Let's not get into silly straw men, ok? Not that it matters, but I don't believe in the immortal soul (in the Cartesian or Greek sense of the word), nor do I believe in ghosts. Just because you define essence in that sense doesn't mean I do. If you don't like the word "essence" then rephrase my second premise as follows:

"That which a thing fundamentally is receives accidental properties through efficient causality."

And if you want to put the whole statement into non-philosophical language, read it like this:

"Things fundamentally are what they are and are not what they are not, and things can change some aspects of themselves without changing what they basically are--for example, a man can lose his hair and still be a man. So that means that some aspects of a thing, like a man's hair, aren't part of what it means to be a man; having hair or not having hair doesn't affect what a man fundamentally is. Now, what a thing fundamentally is doesn't change throughout its existence. In fact, it becomes what it is--whatever that is--the moment it comes into existence, and the moment it stops being what it is, then what it used to be no longer exists anymore (at least, in that particular instance. A man may die and cease to exist, but there are still other men. That just means that "he" is no longer a man). When things change in the sense of a man losing his hair--that is, when things change in a way that doesn't change what they fundamentally are--then the thing itself stays the same. Something caused that kind of change. Whatever it was that caused that change couldn't be what the thing fundamentally is. For example, it wasn't being a man that caused this person to go bald. It was old age or chemotherapy or a bad hair cut or whatever. So when some aspect about a thing changes that doesn't change what it basically is, we know that something caused that change other than the very definition of the thing itself. In other words, changes that don't change what a thing basically happen when something else brings about the change in the particular thing under discussion."

As you can see, it's much easier to say in philosophical terms. I can't imagine which part of that you would disagree with. Needless to say, it has nothing to do with ghosts.

EDIT: HAT TRICK! I'm getting off of here now. Got stuff to do!    

Regardless of how clumsily I butcher the philosophy/logic, there is a fundamental dissonance between us that simply won't be resolved.  Your general position seems to be that if anything exists then god exists. I don't buy it.  I believe this is as close to a proper explanation of my position as I can get.  I'll let you have the last word on this one, but I'm done with this particular proof.  Thank you again for taking the time to provide it.  

I realize a discussion on skepticism will likely be forth coming. I look forward to it. I also would like to discuss morality, the bible, and the virtues of religion (or lack thereof).

[Thumpalumpacus]

By the way, just a public note:

I'm going to give this discussion through tomorrow. Wednesday, I'll offer another argument, meaning I will edit the first post of the thread with details there and a link on that page to the first post discussing in deeper in the thread. This isn't to say, of course, that all discussion must stop on the argument from subsistent existence. It is to say that more than enough time will have been given for objections to be lodged, responded to, and defended.

That is all. Thanks for the healthy discussion.

Why not just make a separate thread?

Yep.  Changing the premises after the arguments have been proffered is not nice.  It loses continuity.  Reg's right: start another thread.

[Reginus]

By the way, just a public note:

I'm going to give this discussion through tomorrow. Wednesday, I'll offer another argument, meaning I will edit the first post of the thread with details there and a link on that page to the first post discussing in deeper in the thread. This isn't to say, of course, that all discussion must stop on the argument from subsistent existence. It is to say that more than enough time will have been given for objections to be lodged, responded to, and defended.

That is all. Thanks for the healthy discussion.

Why not just make a separate thread?

Yep.  Changing the premises after the arguments have been proffered is not nice.  It loses continuity.  Reg's right: start another thread.

Even if he's not changing the premises themselves, and is just adding on to the argument, he should still make a different thread simply for organization purposes, so that we don't have people arguing about a bunch of different things all in one thread.

Oh, and Jac, what exactly do you mean by "pure being"?