From the blog
The Universe is a Spiritual Black Hole
Exposing the illusion of the material world. The term black hole is a misnomer. A black hole isn’t empty space, it’s the opposite. It’s a region of space so dense even light can’t escape its boundary. When viewed from the outside the space appears to be empty, because a black hole swallows everything, even light.…
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The Perfection of Free Will – Voluntary surrender to divine love
The will is the power which moves everything in the conscious world. How you choose to move and interact with the world is determined by your will. While our limited sphere of influence moves according to our will, the entire reality moves according to God’s will. God is omnipotent, his will is all-powerful. There is…
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The Problem of Evil and Suffering – Is there a solution?
The problem of evil is often called the rock of atheism. This describes its enduring power to cast doubt on the existence of a loving God. While we think of it as a logical problem, its force reaches far deeper than the intellect. It’s a simple matter to solve the logical problem of evil and reconcile…
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The Insidious Cult of Scientism – The power of cultural indoctrination.
We can’t avoid cultural conditioning. We absorb it through psychological osmosis. From the moment of our birth, we’re immersed in social interactions which instil the cultural values and beliefs of our society. All human societies function through a set of shared values, beliefs, and practices. Culture is the conceptual infrastructure of a society. These cultural…
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The Fulfilment of Consciousness – Moving in harmony with the divine.
The conscious dimensions of nature are the substance of reality. The conscious self within your body is the substance of what you are, and the same principle applies to the whole of reality. The field of spacetime is a continuous fabric on which the details of the world are embroidered. Spacetime also has inner conscious…
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The Silence of the Cosmos is the Sound of Freedom
The human search for meaning. Human life is an existential crisis. We do what we can to avoid it. We try to ignore it, outsource it, delegate it, divert our attention from it or deny it exists. But they’re all feeble and futile attempts to avoid the unassailable law of our being, the essence of…
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Heaven is not a Geographical Location
In the spiritual view of reality, the inner dimensions of the world are primary. The foundation of the world is consciousness. Instead of the naturalist view that consciousness is a state of matter, the idealist view is that matter is a state of consciousness. Matter is an idea. When we limit our view of the…
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The Substance of Reality – Consciousness filtered through space-time
In the modern world, naturalism exerts a potent influence on our way of thinking. The exuberance produced by the success of science caused an overconfidence in its ability to explain the world. As scientific discoveries accumulated, people assumed this trend would continue indefinitely. Eventually, science would discover the Theory of Everything, a complete description of…
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The Inner Dimensions of Nature
There is a lot of debate about the characteristics of nature and the existence of the supernatural, but through it all the concept of nature is often obscure. We may use the same word, but often we’re not talking about the same thing. For the materialist, nature consists of the objective properties studied by science…
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The Law of Karma – cosmic justice or natural law?
The doctrine of karma is sometimes interpreted as a system of cosmic justice. God is the chief prosecutor enforcing his laws through reward and punishment. Suffering is divine retribution for sin, and sin is disobeying God’s commands. With this interpretation of karma, it follows logically that people deserve to suffer. Their suffering is a just…
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How to Construct a Worldview – A blueprint for building tolerance and humility.
Human beings need a worldview to function. A worldview isn’t a single belief or even a collection of beliefs. It’s the widest possible view we can take of reality. A worldview is an interpretative framework, a conceptual map containing all the various facts about the world. It orientates us to the world and informs us…
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Can all the Different Religions be True?
The harmonious outlook of religious pluralism. There is a wide diversity of religious claims and practices. Conceptions of the divine range from the God of Abraham to Hinduism’s impersonal Brahman. This diversity exists between religions and within religions. Many of the different claims seem contradictory. Some people think this means only one religion can be…
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Universes from Nothing?
Scientific euphemisms and equivocations The question of cosmic origins is a perennially popular question, but most theists think the answer has been known for thousands of years. God is the ultimate cause of the cosmos. While there’s room to disagree with that theistic conclusion, there are rational limits on the valid ways to reject it.…
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Reflections on the Nature of Faith – Transcending the limits of the intellect.
Faith is sometimes described as belief without evidence. Non-believers promote this idea, but many believers also say this is the substance of faith. If we had evidence, why would we need faith? But this is a shallow understanding of faith. If that was the substance of faith, faith would be irrational. But the deeper understanding…
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In Pursuit of the Good Life
The search for the foundation of ethics. Everyone wants to live a good life, but what does that mean? Generally we picture a life with enough money to make us independent, time to pursue activities we enjoy, and opportunity for sensual pleasures. But can you live a good life even if you don’t have the…
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The Fingerprints of God – A finely tuned universe
Modern physics has produced some amazing insights into the nature of the universe. One of the most astonishing is the discovery the fundamental forces of nature are balanced with a delicate precision. Upset this delicate balance and the universe could have collapsed in on itself before getting started. No atoms could form, which means no…
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The Presumption of Atheism on Trial
It’s become fashionable to say atheism has no burden of proof. It’s said atheism is the default assumption and the onus is on the theist to prove, not on the atheist to disprove. While this idea has the superficial gloss of rationality, under a critical cross-examination it falls apart. Rather than promoting rational methods, it…
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The End of Knowledge – Introduction to Vedanta
Vedanta has been called the science of spirituality. It’s one of the six schools of Indian philosophy and takes its inspiration from the literature of the Upanishads. Upanishad means to sit nearby. It suggests the texts contain the secret knowledge of the sages. The Upanishads give the conclusions of India’s sacred Vedic literature. Veda means knowledge…
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Why is there Something Rather than Nothing?
The cosmological argument for God. The cosmological argument is a formidable argument for the existence of God. It’s not a single argument but a family of arguments with a similar theme. While there are several different versions of the argument, it’s unfortunately one of the most misunderstood. This is a vast topic, but in this…
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The Impossibly Hard Problem of Consciousness
The philosophical zombie apocalypse. In 1994 the philosopher David Chalmers raised questions about consciousness which ignited a zombie apocalypse. These weren’t questions no one had asked before. These were questions that rattled the established orthodoxy. They challenged the complacent modern assumption that science had settled all such questions. Many people assume it’s no longer an open…
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Do Extraordinary Claims Need Extraordinary Evidence?
Exposing the skeptics linguistic sleight of hand. You can’t travel far on the internet without hearing someone chanting the mantra: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It’s often assumed that merely reciting the incantation is sufficient to reject any idea its power is aimed at. The saying was popularized in Carl Sagan’s 1979 book Broca’s Brain in reference to…
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Rhetoric: The ancient art of persuasion
Communication tools to inspire and motivate. Rhetoric has a bad reputation. It’s often used as an insult to suggest speech which is intended to deceive. In connection with the speech of politicians it implies they’re misrepresenting the facts. We associate rhetoric with propaganda, not truth. There is some basis for this reputation. But to place a…
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The Invisible Mythology of our Modern World
Why our ideas of human progress could destroy us. In the modern world, our civilization has a story. It conveys our vision of who we are, the expression of our self-image. There are many versions of the story, but they all have a similar theme of progress. Our stories of progress permeate our culture. The…
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How to Practice Intellectual Charity
A philosophical principle to help you avoid bigotry and dogmatism. The Principle of Charity is a fancy way of saying we should be open minded and reasonable. It’s a method used in philosophy to avoid bigotry and dogmatism. If we’re mindful of this principle, it helps us assess every viewpoint — including our own —…
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Are you a Prisoner in Your Ideological Comfort Zone?
How to recognize when you’re in an echo chamber. Being imprisoned in your comfort zone doesn’t sound unpleasant, but even a luxury prison holds you captive. Could you recognize if you were a victim of ideological imprisonment? How can we be confident we aren’t trapped in a comfortable social media bubble filled with like-minded opinions? There…
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Metaphysics — Mysticism for the Intellect
What is metaphysics and why is it important? When most people hear the word metaphysics they think of mystical things like ghosts, auras, and supernatural beings. It’s a logical way to interpret the meaning of the word. Meta means beyond and physics means physical stuff. We naturally think of immaterial things. But this is almost…
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The Limitations of Skepticism
Is it always wrong to believe without evidence? It’s currently fashionable to disparage belief in God as irrational and lacking sufficient evidence. Most of the discussions focus on the philosophical evidence we have and whether it qualifies as sufficient. But understanding the evidence is a complex task. It requires detailed knowledge of a broad range…
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Is a Universal Basic Income the Solution to Inequality?
Imagine if you were entitled to an unconditional payment from the government which was enough to provide you with the basic necessities of life. What would you do? And more importantly, what wouldn’t you do? How would this economic security affect your life decisions? For most people that sort of payment has the potential for…
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The Mystery of Existence — From the Cosmos to God
The question of why there is something rather than nothing is the most fundamental of all questions. This is not the question of why some particular thing exists, but the mystery of existence itself. When we stop to contemplate existence in the abstract, we find ourselves in an encounter with reality that at every moment…
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About Me
Hi, I’m Prudence,
I love philosophy, religion and exploring all the big questions in life. This blog is my way of sharing all the knowledge I’ve gained in my studies. I hope you find it as inspiring and fulfilling as it’s been for me.
Prudence Louise 