tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8807685073027188764.post2992838120078121561..comments2024-03-14T08:38:46.219-07:00Comments on Biophilia: Wish upon a starBurkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08135758421220520531noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8807685073027188764.post-72461788649763348822010-03-10T20:44:00.083-08:002010-03-10T20:44:00.083-08:00Excellent review! This was one book I was consider...Excellent review! This was one book I was considering buying. Now that I've read what the basis is for his arguments I probably won't bother.Arizona Atheisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17377658912951142427noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8807685073027188764.post-43158665554657749542009-09-02T13:41:27.617-07:002009-09-02T13:41:27.617-07:00Don't get me wrong, of course I can appreciate...Don't get me wrong, of course I can appreciate an analogy; I merely wanted to point out how they can easily become, in argument, the thing which they represent (the finger pointing at the moon, as it were).<br /><br />I agree that people should be taken as human, and wonderful in their humanity. I also agree that no person should be "puffed up" into celebrity status, regardless of what they do. But I still believe that there are those who are saintly, or are (at least) in the process of sanctification. People who are, as the Hindu doctrine would say, more Self and less self. Surely saints are not perfect; they remain human beings, after all. But they are closer than the rest of us. They touch and inspire us to become better merely by being as they are, but it is not they who should be "praised" (and they will tell you that as well), but the God to whom they give their all. If not Mother Teresa, then Gandhi, or Francois de Sales, or Swedenborg, or Easwaran.<br /><br />Lastly, while I realize that much religion is "spinning wishes," I disagree that this is the fundamental aspect of it. I believe true spirituality is just as much God reaching down as it is humans reaching up. But again we come to an impasse - I believe it because I "know" it, because I have felt it in my very bones to be true. It is not (at least not only) because it's beautiful. It's not something I can prove (or disprove) intellectually, which, believe me, irritates me just as much as it does you. It is as Huxley says, "Immediate experience of reality unites men. Conceptualized beliefs... divides them."nuclear.kellyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18218956177203199577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8807685073027188764.post-79419990021393058782009-09-02T10:26:46.777-07:002009-09-02T10:26:46.777-07:00Hi, Kelley-
Don't tell me that the idea of an...Hi, Kelley-<br /><br />Don't tell me that the idea of analogy is lost on you?! An analog does not have to pre-exist the thing being analogized to offer a conceptual link. The analogy should be criticized on its logic, not on its temporal sequence. Dembski (and Paley) offer the turbine and watch as evidently designed objects, and try to argue that the flagellum, or life in general, as likewise evidently designed. Of course that is not such a good argument once one really understands the globbiness of proteins, their continual duplication and tendency to get added to larger complexes, to which, given enough time, they appear to be essential. Likewise, the direct evidence for evolution and its capacity to generate diversification and innovation is well-enough documented that Paley's general analogy is no longer compelling as an argument for non-natural causation.<br /><br />In the case of computers, I was offering a simple analogy of memory as being physically based. But this was unnecessary- just a rhetorical shortcut. The <i>direct</i> <a href="http://biophilic.blogspot.com/2009/04/head-eraser.html" rel="nofollow">evidence</a> for our memories being physically based is far better than just this analogy. So to think that the memory of good and transformative events is somehow special evidence of a super-natural realm is far from compelling. Indeed, there is no evidence that these memories, or even those less good, survive our deaths, or survive the disintegration of our brains, if that happens to take place prior to our deaths (stoke, demetia, alzheimers).<br /><br />I dare say that Christopher Hitches was not persuaded that Mother Theresa was a saint. She seemed to have some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Missionary_Position_(book)" rel="nofollow">issues</a>, even. Now, I agree with you that she was a good person who followed a calling with great energy and conviction, even in the face of crushing ... well... atheism, or horror at the hiddenness of god. But "saint"? Ted Haggard did a great deal of good too, along with all the bad and personal pains. We have to recognize our fellow humans as human, and take them as wonderful in that sense, instead of trying to puff them up into celebrities.<br /><br />And the same argument holds for becoming good, as well. Goodness is learned, as is tennis or other memory-related skills. Children may be naturally good, but some aren't, and few are completely good in the face of temptations and difficulties. The moral capacity to withstand such temptations is a matter of training and cultivation (and temperament). Religion has often played a very positive role in this cultivation, and I give it props in that regard, but that does not make its doctrines true, or its goodness without flaw.<br /><br />For Schrödinger, he makes a seriously defective argument in a place that seems most lucid- circa page 86 (a later chapter.. not at hand right now). He takes Boltzmann's statistical argument to explain the arrow of time- that entropy rises with time in our sense because disorder is more probable than order. But then he says that this argument actually presupposes that the arrow of time in our universe runs in one direction, from past to future. So that completely undercuts the rest of the argument (especially that mind dictates time, rather than vice versa), since the statistical argument, it turns out, does not explain the arrow of time at all, but presupposes it. All it explains is the second law of thermodynamics, given the pre-existing flow of time. <br /><br />I appreciate the beauty of the Hindu/Vedanta view of Self, liberation, etc. But that does not make it true. There seems to be an ongoing conflation of seeing some doctrine as beautiful and therefore true. With apologies to Keats, they really are not the same, as the arts doubtless give enough evidence of. Even in mathematics, beauty, while tending to be true (since physics tends towards simplicity and self-consistency), doesn't have to be. This is the particular franchise of religion, of course, to spin wishes like life after death, answered prayers, and the fundamental goodness of reality, as facts.Burkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11158223475895530397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8807685073027188764.post-45968996080959655002009-09-02T03:46:35.822-07:002009-09-02T03:46:35.822-07:00Hinduism (some flavors of it, anyway) teaches that...Hinduism (some flavors of it, anyway) teaches that a human being is made up of five "pieces" - body, senses, mind, soul (personality) and Self. The Self is the same as the eternal Self (and realization of this is "liberation"). All but the Self passes away with death.<br /><br />I don't believe that merely our "capacity for memory" is nonmaterial. Of course the neurons in our brains are physical; that's not my argument. Here, I'd venture to say you've fallen into the same trap as the Intelligent Designers, only opposite: consider when Dembski argues that because the little bacterial flagellum looks like a turbine, and a turbine is designed, the flagellum must be designed. It appears as though you'd argue, instead: the brain looks like a computer, so it must be like a computer, in that it's purely material. You reach a different (opposing) conclusion from the same information. But here's where the whole idea is wrong - both conclusions have forgotten which came first. In Dembski's case, the flagellum came first. It can't be designed "after" a turbine. In your case, the brain came first. The brain can't be "designated" a computer. Computers are modeled after our brains, not vice versa.<br /><br />That said, I tend to agree with the Hindu view. There may be pieces of me that "fall away" at death, pieces that I would prefer to keep. My mind, my intellect, my intelligence, my personality, even my "soul." They probably are all tied to my physical (material) existence. But there is something more, something which animates and combines it all together into a whole with the rest of existence (and I don't mean "animates" in the crude sense - I'm not talking about a "life force" here), that does not die when my body dies.<br /><br />Regarding sanctification, I think it is a concept which is better understood than you'd suggest. Everyone knows Mother Teresa was a saint, and Ted Haggard is not. I think it's something people can experience and see and "know" without intellectually understanding it. It's not a euphoric feeling. It's not a memory of learning right action results in good and wrong action in bad. It's actually <i>becoming</i> good, understanding it with your whole being, not just your head.<br /><br />Hope that makes some sense. I'll have to reread the Schroedinger now. It's been a year since I last read it, so I'll have to skim it to keep up with you!<br /><br />Knuclear.kellyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18218956177203199577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8807685073027188764.post-88659025643454826282009-09-01T16:12:24.464-07:002009-09-01T16:12:24.464-07:00Hi, Kelley-
It just so happens that I am reading ...Hi, Kelley-<br /><br />It just so happens that I am reading Schroedinger's book Mind and Matter. I wouldn't say it makes a huge amount of sense (it's something of a meandering specimen of Nobel disease), but is nicely written. He was professing ignorance and fine sentiments more that anything else, from what I can tell so far.<br /><br />Anyhow, pending my actually reading the rest of that one... what is "sanctification"? This seems exceedingly nebulous. Is it making one feel good and puffed up? I am all for it, as I am for Reitan's all-good god. But it has very little to do with the issues of naturalism. Being permanently transformed by positive, spiritual experiences is a matter of our brains remembering them, as they do so many other experiences good and bad. <br /><br />I find it hard to believe that you would try to connect our capacity for memory, which is shared with computers, after all, with non-physicality. It is the very physicality of the brain that makes it all possible, and every shred of real data we have on the countless perturbations possible to our brains and minds enforces that view. I may have a little more to add when finished with Schroedinger's book.<br /><br />Best wishes!Burkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11158223475895530397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8807685073027188764.post-63105889294669682262009-09-01T14:27:55.130-07:002009-09-01T14:27:55.130-07:00Burk~
I'm appreciative of your thoughtful comm...Burk~<br />I'm appreciative of your thoughtful commentary (again, it is so nice to read something insightful as opposed to... well... blowhard). I wanted to make a couple comments.<br />First, you said, "What this demonstrates most directly is that, going by the numbers, Dawkins hits the nail of popular religion far better than does Reitan." I don't think this is true. Most of the surveys done in the last ten years indicated that the majority (of Americans, at least) are tending away from traditional organized religion. While the fundies may be the most vocal, they are not the most predominant.<br />Second, many great thinkers (the famous physicist Schroedinger included) have touched on the idea of the mind being something more than just material - that there is a fundamental difference (in kind, not merely degree) between consciousness and things which are inanimate. I tend to agree with them. As Huxley once wrote, "Biological evolution does not of itself lead automatically to this unitive knowledge [of the spirit]. It leads merely to the possibility of such a knowledge."<br />Lastly, while I agree that many "spiritual" experiences are, in fact, psychological, I think Huxley has a good criteria for determining if they are truly "of God." He argues that "Psychic [ie, spiritual] experiences which do not contribute to sanctification are not experiences of God, but merely of certain unfamiliar aspects of our psychophysical universe." This is an eloquent explanation of why I see God as being (as I've mentioned before) truly without and not within. Any transcendental experience (listening to a beautiful symphony, for example) which does not then leave the person permanently, if even just slightly, transformed into a "better" person - in other words, an experience which does not contribute to sanctification, which results in the "fruits of the spirit": love, peace, charity, etc - is not an experience of God.nuclear.kellyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18218956177203199577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8807685073027188764.post-81105948124776017822009-08-25T16:32:41.453-07:002009-08-25T16:32:41.453-07:00As a postscript, transcendence can be taken much m...As a postscript, transcendence can be taken much more simply- as a feeling of getting beyond one's mundane existence and attaining a deeply meaningful experience, such as by participating in a large social group or listening to great music. While not necessarily touching on the philosophical issues of transcendence raised above, this kind of transcendence is not to be sneezed at- it provides an essential sense of meaning and possibility to human affairs, the hope of progress into better forms of existence, even redemption from humanity's mundane foundation. This is probably what is most often meant by transcendence, even as theologians tie themselves to complex narratives of its more formal mysteries. <br /><br />And this meaning is (even more) fundamentally psychological than the philosophical one, since the problem it seeks to solve is the perpetual one identified equally by Freud and the church- our self-hatred (original sin), repression, and broken-ness, not to mention our ultimate mortality. The many defects of which we are intensely aware and wish (as well as work) to transcend- these are the bread and butter of utopiansims and religions sacred and secular. Reitan's book does not touch on this meaning extensively, as far as I can recall, but since formal transcendence seemed to me such a deep theme, it seems worth mentioning.Burkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11158223475895530397noreply@blogger.com