On Darwin and Witnesses
Thanks for your note, Duke. I'm looking forward to your comments.. but please restrict them to issues of logic, as I have. Discussions about virgin births, miracles, evolution, etc, really do seem like a waste of time to me. Much better to get to the heart of things, which is what I hope I've done with that simple little piece of logic.
Once one has accepted, by following the principles of logic, that Materialism is fatally flawed, then one must accept that Idealism of some sort must be 'True'. Then you can start digging deeper. That's what I did, anyway, and got surprisingly far.
On the question of the origin of life, do you remember (from the footnote in 'Scenes') that Darwin mentions 'The Creator' in all editions of 'Origin of Species' but the first? I'll quote the footnote in full, for the benefit of anyone else who reads this who might find it of interest…
*Quote: 'I may here premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself.' Charles Darwin: second sentence, Chapter 8, sixth (final and therefore definitive) edition of 'The Origin of Species'. Does this quotation surprise you at all? If it does, I wonder why? Might you have been previously misled?
And just for the record, Darwin mentions 'the Creator' (yes, with a capital), nine times in the final edition of 'Origins'. Check it yourself. But make sure you are reading the '6th, final' edition. There has been a recent flurry of re-prints of the first edition, the only one which does not mention 'the Creator'. Now why would anyone want to re-print the first and not the last edition?
(A quick test: turn to the last page of your copy of 'Origins'. If the last sentence, ie, the very last sentence of the whole world-shattering book, contains the phrase 'There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator …', then you have almost certainly got the 6th, final edition.. ie, Darwin's final thoughts on the whole matter of Evolution. If, on the either hand that sentence does not mention 'the Creator' you are holding a modern re-print of the first edition. I repeat.. why would anybody print Darwin's first thoughts on the matter, and not his final thoughts? And why would the editor not tell us that he'd done this? In other words, why is Darwin being systematically misrepresented in this matter? Write to Mr Dawkins and ask him!)
I used to find Jehovah Witnesses annoying, as I think you do, until I realised the simple truth that these people were going out of their way to do me what they considered to be a good turn. They were being kind! Me being ratty at them was no sort of way to respond to kindness!
Now I just thank them (quite genuinely) for their kindness and concern for me, and tell them I'm very happy with my own understanding of the universe. We part on very good terms, and quite right too.
I don't think you'll ever get anywhere engaging Witnesses in rational debate. They are driven by belief and not reason. They simply won't hear what you are trying to clarify, and can only give pre-packed answers, as will most other belief-people, who take their rules and paradigms en masse from a book. Reason-people are quite rare in the religious world, and are most likely, it seems to me, to be found among Buddhists.
But that's another story, eh!
Have a great weekend, Duke.
Once one has accepted, by following the principles of logic, that Materialism is fatally flawed, then one must accept that Idealism of some sort must be 'True'. Then you can start digging deeper. That's what I did, anyway, and got surprisingly far.
On the question of the origin of life, do you remember (from the footnote in 'Scenes') that Darwin mentions 'The Creator' in all editions of 'Origin of Species' but the first? I'll quote the footnote in full, for the benefit of anyone else who reads this who might find it of interest…
*Quote: 'I may here premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself.' Charles Darwin: second sentence, Chapter 8, sixth (final and therefore definitive) edition of 'The Origin of Species'. Does this quotation surprise you at all? If it does, I wonder why? Might you have been previously misled?
And just for the record, Darwin mentions 'the Creator' (yes, with a capital), nine times in the final edition of 'Origins'. Check it yourself. But make sure you are reading the '6th, final' edition. There has been a recent flurry of re-prints of the first edition, the only one which does not mention 'the Creator'. Now why would anyone want to re-print the first and not the last edition?
(A quick test: turn to the last page of your copy of 'Origins'. If the last sentence, ie, the very last sentence of the whole world-shattering book, contains the phrase 'There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator …', then you have almost certainly got the 6th, final edition.. ie, Darwin's final thoughts on the whole matter of Evolution. If, on the either hand that sentence does not mention 'the Creator' you are holding a modern re-print of the first edition. I repeat.. why would anybody print Darwin's first thoughts on the matter, and not his final thoughts? And why would the editor not tell us that he'd done this? In other words, why is Darwin being systematically misrepresented in this matter? Write to Mr Dawkins and ask him!)
I used to find Jehovah Witnesses annoying, as I think you do, until I realised the simple truth that these people were going out of their way to do me what they considered to be a good turn. They were being kind! Me being ratty at them was no sort of way to respond to kindness!
Now I just thank them (quite genuinely) for their kindness and concern for me, and tell them I'm very happy with my own understanding of the universe. We part on very good terms, and quite right too.
I don't think you'll ever get anywhere engaging Witnesses in rational debate. They are driven by belief and not reason. They simply won't hear what you are trying to clarify, and can only give pre-packed answers, as will most other belief-people, who take their rules and paradigms en masse from a book. Reason-people are quite rare in the religious world, and are most likely, it seems to me, to be found among Buddhists.
But that's another story, eh!
Have a great weekend, Duke.
posted by Chas Griffin at 3:02 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Chas,
thanks once again for your posts, they really have switched on the old brain box and i find im finally looking into some of the ideas ive so far only vaguely held.
Here goes, ive been looking at your first post and starting at the beginning... "If Life arose spontaneously from un-alive chemicals (Matter/Energy), where did the Life in the living form come from? It MUST have been present (as some form of potential) within those un-alive chemicals, must it not?"
ok, my question is why does Life have to be present as a potential within un-alive chemicals? can't life be a product of the physical conditions which allow it to exist?
What im thinking of as an example would be human thought, allowable because of the way the human brain is.
I hope you understand, to follow your logic through your argument i need to agree with your statements along the way. So thats why im hanging around at the beginning
Jehovahs Witnesses : I too have been happy to think of them as trying to do me a good deed in their missionary, in fact half my family are practising JW's, quite liberal ones really, my Mum still expects Xmas presents. I think my anxieties with them were more about me not knowing enough about 'what' i thought i believed. I think this discussion has set me off on a path to sorting that out.
Something ive found really interesting is how doing a bit of research on what you've talked about has revealed my own belief 'prejudices' i guess you could call it. I read a book by Lewis Wolpert once were he talked about people hanging onto their beliefs, being prejudiced against new/other beliefs because its hard to let go of ours when we've invested so much work into them (he said its a hard wired survival thing). For instance i find i will happily search for errors or try to disprove an idea that contradicts my beliefs but dont try to do disprove what i already hold to be true. This seems like a weakness to me and im sure you've something to say about it (if any of that makes sense!)
Anyway thats it for now.
Cheerio
Duke
I happened upon your discussion while looking for something else, but may have some information of relevance. First, Darwin does mention 'the Creator' in the 1st Edition of On The Origin of Species..., in the second sentence of the second to last paragraph. He furthermore mentions 'the Creator' in the last sentence of all editions after the first (see http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_OntheOriginofSpecies.html).
As to the debate about 'materialism' versus 'idealism,' it does not logically follow that "Materialism is fatally flawed, then one must accept that Idealism of some sort must be 'True'." The truth of one proposition is independent of the truth of another proposition, since, and especially, because these are not the negation of each other.
I have written a recent essay on related questions as to of what reality consists, and believe a compelling case can be made for a reality in which, like quantum particle-wave dual-unity, there is no actual difference between materialism and idealism, except in our limited and misinterpretive underderstanding of reality. To wit: in the Liberal Arts epistemology which has been dominant since The Academy struck a political deal to prevent more scientists like Giordano Bruno being burned at the stake for alleged heresies, Science and Humanities have been treated as separate domains of knowledge, across a divide which I would characterize as Tertullian's dictum: Credo quia absurdum (or, "it must be believed because it is absurd"). Natural philosophy, which became modern science, took the view that, technically, nothing could be 'proved,' but only disproved, by the use of empirical evidence and the 'null hypthesis.' Humanities, which includes all the scholarly branches of arts, philosophy, literature, professions, etc., other than the sciences and the non-literary vocations and trades, are all essentially organized around the view that there is a "Truth," though unprovable, whose evidence typically is supplied, in Western thinking of the Abrahamic traditions, by 'miracles,' in contradisctinction to the 'material' evidence supplied by the empirical methods of natual philsophy cum modern science. So it is that, those who adhere to such 'revelatory' truth, tend to the view that questioning 'miracles' (technically, violations of the Laws of Nature, as contradistinct from 'sins,' which are violations of God's 'Divine Laws') is the equivalent of questioning the entire edifice of 'human values' derived from Divine Law. Of passing note, Liberal Arts are an essentially 'elite' epistemology of learning and knowledge based on what was considered fitting in the education of 'free men,' or 'libera,' who were an aristocratic social class apart from slaves, subordinates, serfs, et al. The Greeks correspondingly eschewed 'populist democracy' because they believed it led to rule of the mob to whom demogogues would appeal, resulting in anarchy, then tyranny, which they opposed. So, they advocated democracy only within the class more akin to the philsopher-kings of Plato's Republic.
An alternative view of reality might consider that the division of Science from Humanities is built upon an epistemological separation of pattern and process - i.e., mathematics (the science of pattern) and physics (the science of the processes of energy) and all the derivative 'natural processes' - from purpose - i.e., meaning from miracles, morals, and spiritual 'things' (construed as 'ideas' or 'ideals' in a poor translation of Plato's concept of forms. If, instead, pattern, process, and purpose are combined, as was the case in Aristotle's orginal division of knowledge (physics concerning the 'natural philosophy' and metaphysics concerning what today we call psychology, but to him was the science of the soul, and mathematics being the province of inquiry of the secret societies of the Pythagoreans), we can see a radically different construct of reality which the Greeks themselves didn't conceive, because they didn't have lasers and holograms. And, they didn't have 'zeroes' and the calculus of infinitesimals.
Briefly, the mathematics of the Fourier Transform (which is a way of combining and decomposing sine wave patterns) is also the mathematics of quantum reality, cognition, and the cosmos because it is the mathematics of 'interference patterns' of holograms and holography, holonomic systems, and dissipative structures. For more, start with Karl Pribram, Ilya Prigogine, David Bohm, et al. In any event, the brain has been shown to process information by means of the Fourier Transform, not separate neuron specialization, and to 'store' the information in 'dissipative structures' (much in the manner of holograms), and not in discrete, destructable physical entities as such - although, fully making use of those discrete, destructable physical units. All 'matter' in the 'universe' is the flow and flux of 'energy' through 'systems' whose integrity as systems arises from their teleonomic 'purpose.' Importantly, teleonomy, a systems science concept, is distinct from teleology, a theological concept, by virtue of not assuming a 'telos' or 'end-state' toward which all action and destiny is directed (predestination, if you will); but, instead, assuming that systems and their component subsystems have goals or purposes toward which they organize their thought and behavior as systems. Moreover, those systems are capable of 'learning,' which is to say, changing their goals and behaviors, hence not being directed in a 'deterministic' manner, but are 'intelligently' organized in a process characterized by its 'indeterminacy.' The irony, in fact, of 'intelligence' is that the independent intelligence of autonomous agents produces chaotic behavior, whereas the mechanical behavior of unitelligent systems is more predictable and lawful, as with entropy and inertia directed inexorably toward the running down of clockworks wound up by God or Nature (hence, a curious agreement between the scientists devoid of ultimate truth and the theologicans devoid of free will and reason) in a thermodynamic 'death' (although Teilhard de Chardin disputed this in his proposition of a noosphere - but then, he was an evolutionist Jesuit who believed in 'complexification').
In any event - it's just a suggestion....
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