.  Re: Conscience  I do get the gist of what you're saying. I'm not wholly opposed to mysticism, yet I am well aware that when it comes to rational discourse, and communicable language, it becomes a slippery thing easily misconstrued and misunderstood. This is because it is an attempt to express the heart of what is essentially a personal subjective position framed within the knowledge of being among others.  Quite a number of people have considered what "being" means. To name some obvious names, Descartes, Heidegger, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Satre, not to mention me, you and most people who participate on this forum.  It doesn't appear we have a similar approach to this subject matter. We may be closer to each other than others here, but still, it is not apparent to how we can continue this discussion in a fruitful manner.  To start with I am not inclined to start using analogies of musical scales and/or to frame "being" as a atomized matter utterly separate from acting (I wouldn't say in a rational discourse that "doing" and "being" are different items - in terms of mysticism I can grapple more readily with that thought in an abstract and creative manner though).  In simply linguistic convention when we use a verb+ing we mean "acting"/"doing" and "being" is one such instance, so you cannot seriously expect me to accept - in a rational discussion - that "being" is completely disconnected from "doing"? If you do then I don't see where we can go from here?  If you can see some common ground we can work from let me know. Up to now I've only seen some vague hints that we can find such a place. I'm particularly interested in theological discussion tbh  Re: Conscience  Secularismalmost by definition must be closed to the idea of the relativity of "being." What is "being"  What we do is one thing and what we are is another. Secular politics and ethics are concerned with what we do.  Plato's "idea of the good" in the Republic , eternal, immutable, ineffable, perfect, the universal object of desire, is fused with the demiurge of the Timaeus, who constructed the world of becoming because "he was good, and in one that is good no envy of anything else ever arises."  A Republic is an ironclad structural pillar of modern secular societies.  Prior to the establishment of democratic republics in the early 00th century, Europe was composed of a collection of monarchical kingdoms and empires. If you go back a few hundred years, to the period between 0000 to about 0000, the Western world was literally a collection of Protestant and Catholic princely fiefdoms. Every feifdom had a state-sponsored church. The Catholic princes slavishly obeyed the hierarchy of bishops of the Catholic Church in Rome.  When you keep heaping invective at "Secularism" what this means is that you want our present-day societies to return to a time of state-sponsored churches. Within the same forum thread, you then quote Plato calling for a Republic.  Re: Conscience  Secularismalmost by definition must be closed to the idea of the relativity of "being." What is "being"  What we do is one thing and what we are is another. Secular politics and ethics are concerned with what we do.  Plato's "idea of the good" in the Republic , eternal, immutable, ineffable, perfect, the universal object of desire, is fused with the demiurge of the Timaeus, who constructed the world of becoming because "he was good, and in one that is good no envy of anything else ever arises."  A Republic is an ironclad structural pillar of modern secular societies.  Prior to the establishment of democratic republics in the early 00th century, Europe was composed of a collection of monarchical kingdoms and empires. If you go back a few hundred years, to the period between 0000 to about 0000, the Western world was literally a collection of Protestant and Catholic princely fiefdoms. Every feifdom had a state-sponsored church. The Catholic princes slavishly obeyed the hierarchy of bishops of the Catholic Church in Rome.  When you keep heaping invective at "Secularism" what this means is that you want our present-day societies to return to a time of state-sponsored churches. Within the same forum thread, you then quote Plato calling for a Republic.  