We ae such stuff as dreams are made of . .

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The fact that our only experience of mind is in the head of a human body does not imply that no other mind is possible.

Physicality is inconsistent with God’s eternity, because the material of our beings had a beginning in time.

ICXC NIKA.
 
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GEddie:
To speak of the “physical existence” of angels begs the question. Angels have no physical or solid bodies.
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How do we determine if angels are ‘real’? Do they manifest in reality in any way that is demonstrable?
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GEddie:
As to getting rid of talk about God’s fullness of being, etc, you need to take it up with Thomas Aquinas.
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I don’t have high hopes of getting anywhere in a discussion with Thomas Aquinas more than seven centuries after his death. But it is the continuing use of the terminology that I was voting against.
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GEddie:
The fact that our only experience of mind is in the head of a human body does not imply that no other mind is possible.
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I agree. It does not imply that a mind without a physical brain is impossible. But, as far as we know, of all the ‘minds’ that have ever been encountered, all of them, 100% of the sample, every single one, has required a physical brain. We must be intellectually honest in saying that the existence of a mind without a physical brain is entirely speculative and not based on any physical evidence.
 
Fair enough, I see the difficulty of trying to solve the issue from the ground up. Is there a way to make sense of the puzzles in the OP within the framework of the Catholic tradition?
 
Let us back up and ask: what is it to be “real”?

By contrast to things we experience which seem real while we’re having them, but turn out not to be, like dreams - or passions/whims, or delusions, have the common feature of being comparatively fleeting, and turn out not to have objective status outside out heads.

That is to say, they can leave footprints and fingerprints (literally and metaphorically) out in the world which often persist after we stop thinking of the imaginary person or passion or figment of the imagination.

Do we not hold the same fleeting status with respect to God?
 
Just to clarify, I mean we are fleeting and God is not. Not vice versa.
 
Even assuming that to be the case, we have to live life as though our life were ‘real.’

It is six of one, half dozen of the other.

ICXC NIKA.
 
GEddie said:
Even assuming that to be the case, we have to live life as though our life were ‘real.’

It is six of one, half dozen of the other.

ICXC NIKA.
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I get that part. In this case, I’m trying to get an understanding of what it means for us to talk about God loving us or sacrificing for us. Those things take on a strangely different light depending on how we make sense out of the “reality” issue.
 
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