This work is a “sifter” of sorts using what I call “The 5 Noble Truths”. Some people might wince when the word “truth” is used, however, I use the mother meaning of the word “truth” found couched in classical Greek, Hittite, Sanskrit, and the early reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. I did this in order to elicit a time capsule of rich meaning supporting the word, “truth”, showing its linguistic gold as it tethers to our bank of current words. For “truth” was bigger than a “relative” transient meaning. It was interconnected with a series of other ideas that completed a broad matrix of meaning.
The meaning of “truth”, from its earliest P.I.E. inception, was: *dr- “tree”, as in “root, stem, and branches”. Compare “truth”/”daru”/”dr-” with “druid”: (daru [“tree”, “truth”] + “eid [“wit”, “vision”, “witch”, “videre”, “video”, “to see”])”, i.e., “tree seers”/ “wise ones”/ “seers within the trees”/ “steadfast ones”, etc. {Shipley, Shippey, Watkins})[1].
Such a term was not lightly thrown around for millennia. Just as a test, take the “true” meaning of “true” and apply it to anything you want to find out. Simple things like where you put your keys that you lost. You mentally track your steps back to the last time you had your keys and follow the sequence of your activities. Possibly asking others that were around you as witnesses to your day’s journey to help as to when they last saw you with your keys. Finding your keys uses solid realities to find your real keys.
Circa 4,000 years after the Proto-Indo-Europeans gave us a “zero-grade (linguistic inception)” meaning for truth (*dr-/ daru) we read the following as an example of an a-moral sense for the word, “truth”: Pontius pilot asked Jesus (John 18:38) the question, “what is the truth (“ti ‘estin ‘alay’theia [‘alay’theia: “objectve facts” and not “illusion”])”? Jesus did not reply for Jesus is the cause of the “truth”: root, stem, and branches of created objective reality. Furthermore, Jesus calls himself the Alpha and Omega [Revelation 1:8, 1:11, 21:6, 22:13]) qualifying Jesus as the objective ”truth” living-breathing among us. Therefore, the gospels, being qualified by Jesus, do qualify what “truth” is. Note: “daru” or “dr-” and “ ‘alay‘theia” are not the same words but hold the same meaning. The “truth” still exists within the words.
The ones that could see the “truth” in the deeper sense were those who traveled with Jesus and witnessed all that Jesus the Messiah would fulfill. This meant, the “disciples (Greek: mathetikon-”mathemeticians”; “accounters”)” “took account” of Jesus’ words, deeds, fulfillments, universal truths, parables, etc. Therefore, how could there have been a correct reply from truth itself when Jesus is the truth standing before you? For Jesus is the beginning and end, the Alpha and Omega – which also fulfills the word, “telos”.
Another term that needs to be addressed in our world of illusory “free agency” is the aged idea of “free will”.
Free will as it should be known:
Probability within modern psychiatry aids us from subjective to objective data driven classification into a type of clarity. Such factoring gives an epidemiological approach which shows us that Axis I (mania) and Axis II (hypomania) Bipolar (as is listed in the DSM-TR-5), schizophrenia, etc., are what I call “states of ‘free agency’ ” in that (if untreated) they will exist “freely” from the “neurotypical” standard. I also state that a person who is diagnosed within the gamut of “dysregulation” is medically assigned to that “free from” neurotypical state of existence. Currently, a goal for such a person by the medical provider, and patient’s surrounding community, is the aim for the “neurotypical” standard.
As we have advanced in the neurological sciences we are finding profound “events” that occur “upon” the will of the neurotypical and the dysregulated. Dr. Sam Harris, a neuro-scientist, offers a very brief but intense treatment concerning the study of our very being (ontology) in his book, “There is no Free Will”. To further this, Dr. Harris, a professed atheist-naturalist, attributes natural causes upon the human will making the human being incapable of having “free will”. Dr. Harris attributes genetic, random quantum fluctuations, the micro-biome relation (i.e., the gut-brain axis), parasitic influences – making us act less fearful, etc. Dr. Harris proposes such “outside causes” acting upon us remain outside our control. Therefore, Dr. Harris concludes we have no “free will.”
So, if it is “true” that our human condition, whether “neurotypical” or socially aberrant due to “dysregulation”, is acted upon by preceding causes then what is “free will” from the current theological and scientific perspective? Where is the condemnation or merit to be found? Whether “sinner” or “saint”, one will “act out” from their state or condition. If we can prove theologically and scientifically that neither “rogue agency” nor “free agency” is a force derived from the individual then who or what is left to be “put to the merit or blame”? If it is “merit”, then the only direction to look to is to look backwards for it was something else that was driving you to act. If blame, you would still need to look back and do the same. In either case, if natural-fated-causation is the current adequate argument for the outcome for anything, then we can most definitely eliminate “accountability”. That is, the elimination of the “kind of” accountability that holds judgment upon the object of receiving such merit or blame.
But what if there is an entire new/ old way to look at causation within a “forgiveness paradigm”? Again, holding to a temporary suspension of disbelief (if one is an atheist) one could “imagine” heaven with God eternally existing where there is no blame. Reasonably, this idea could become a wonderful reality enacted by us all in the primary-corporeal world if it wasn’t for our “free wills” to sin against each other for that is what the world does. Therefore, “free will”, is hypothetically not of God if so defined as “free agency” and therefore a “third party” to “choose God” which is not biblically sound.
Sin: can sin be a-moral in the telos meaning?
Linguistically, the word “sin” holds quite a different angle than what we might think of in the old European and Hittite world. The Proto Indo European gives us *snt-ya- and its root, *es-ont- mean: “a becoming to be”; “a truth”, “a root-to stem-to branches” observation, etc. while the Hittite, “ess”, gives us a “formula of confession” as follows: “it is being”, “it exists”, “it is existing”, etc.
To “sin” is to show the “truth” via the etiology and ontology of the one who trespasses. This would, to its furthest extent, show the “reasons”, the “why”, the “etiology” for one’s sin. Would we not understand the “truth” of their “sin” in this fashion? Would we hold judgment to those for whom we understood why their sin “came to be” – the cause of their being, the theological “teleology” of one’s being?
Furthermore, to see the “becoming” of someone, knowing they are being caused to become, would we hold blame upon the cause or causal agent of the one “coming to be”? To conclude this thought: “sin” must be understood as being aligned with “truth” as “truth” is to be known.
To blame your fellow human for being a transgressor of the law is much like blaming a barking dog for its barking. It is in its nature to bark, therefore, a dog is not “free from” its state of being a dog. A dog could be said to be guilty of “doggery” in the same breath that a human can be said to act “all too human”. I am not shocked in either case, dog or human.
In the philosophical teleological view, it is the mere explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose in which they serve rather than the cause by which they arise. This method annuls a theological/God causality opening in which a temporary suspension of disbelief for the non-believer cannot be employed. This faith in “anti-faith” adopted by certain atheists of all walks of life holds no more substance of a grounded argument than does a religious radical laden with faulty beliefs threatening to blow up a building in the name of their god does. This is an unfair approach, for all novice to seasoned scientists have been allowed their beliefs in their field to allow ideas of the “what ifs” and the “thens” and the “therefores”, etc. Why fear to “act” in belief or disbelief if the thing that is being tried (Aristotle’s “telos”) does not yield results as you “wished”? Worse yet, one would be showing a poor ethic of practicing good science and/ or theology, due to the thing observed showing its “trueness”? Should I ask: “why fear the things claimed to be spoken by God on earth if one is to use the “scientific, linguistic, anthropological, and sociological approach” to disprove God or prove his existence? This work more than adequately shows the possibility of the conjunction of these sciences/ -ologies to “prove” a consistent “God narrative”.
It is here that I refer back to one of my favorite dialogues of Plato called “Cratylus”.
Hermogenes’ and Socrates’ daimon (Greek: “spirit”) employed by Plato for use in Plato’s dialogue which shows that “sin” isn’t necessarily “immoral”. It does not, however, disprove that “sin” is not immoral when its context is within a critique requiring “sin” as the source of a fault. What I have found is the uncanny beautiful horror that it is never found to be objective.
Right, Good, Evil, Sin
[420.B/ Loeb classic; Cratylus] Socrates: “Doxsa (glory, rightful, worthy) is derived either from the pursuit (dioxsis) which the soul carries on as it pursues the knowledge of the nature of the thing, or from the shooting of the bow (toxson); the latter is more likely; at any rate “oiesis (belief)” supports this view, for it appears to mean the motion (oisis) of the soul towards the essential nature of every individual thing, just as intention (boule) denotes shooting (bole) and wish (boulesthai) as well as plan (bouleuesthai), denotes aiming at something. All these words seem to follow doxsa and to express the idea of shooting, just as ill-advisedness (aboulia), on the other hand, appears to be a failure to hit, as if a person did not shoot or hit that which he shot at or wished or planned or desired.
The Greek in the classical and New Testament holds sin as “ ‘armateia (“without portion”)”: “a” = “not” + “meros” = “portion”. It is here that we find Plato’s “sin” – “aboulia” to match that of the Greek New Testament’s ‘armateia and the Semitic (both secular and religious) “qat”.
For, ‘armateia etymologically conveys loss, forfeiture, no part of, due to not hitting the target; missing the mark, etc. “Sin”, as I previously stated, in secular Semitic and religious sources, finds itself in the Old Testament Hebrew, giving us the root “CH-T-’ (qat) indicating “a verb of motion” that is “in the missing of the correct point”.
Such a verb of motion as “qat” can be denoted in Psalms 19:2: “he that hasteth with his feet goeth astray (ats berag’liym qot’).” The rushing, speeding, hurrying, making haste, etc. is the root to “going astray” and is in one motion. Qat is very interesting, indeed for it seems to follow an idea of “fate” as known to the ancient Greeks, though fate’s conclusion is quite different in that it leads to “fatality” whereas qat leads to a lesson learned unto life eternal. Qat, to the ancient Semitic mind, held “a sphere of motion as an ‘outside agent’ prior to human action acting upon the objective individual causing both the nature of evil and the fruit of evil, i.e., the root is the “Qat”, the stem is the recipient, and the sinful acts are the branches. Furthermore, this combined series of motions of “truth” require a “reconciliation” as in “atonement” which is connected with the feminine form of the masculine qat. Therefore, the beginning of qat requires the end–much like Plato’s “eternal shapes”. The idiom, “nasa chatta’th” is the verb with the feminine object and always means “the carrying away of the sphere of guilt from the sinner by a third party who intercedes vicariously taking away the consequence of death (Ex. 10:17; I Sam. 15:25).
In all cases above we still haven’t found objective direct blame upon the individual by which we should rank as either right or wrong. So, where is the “judgment” if the causal agency is outside the sphere of our first act?
Through the sifting of my 5 Noble Truths (5NTs) I attempt to dispel unnecessary “moralizations” of words and ideas that can cause dissension within my target audience. Such a method, as you will see in this work, will allow “morality” to ring true as it should.
[1] Might I add, there seems to be an echo of the witch-shaman of the druids which resembles the Satan figure by the tree of knowing good “and” evil. This chapter would be the narrative of the inception in real time of judgment – i.e., dualism and all of its pitfalls, upon all humankind found here in Genesis 3.
