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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I agree. God isn't about God. It's about egotism. You hear the egotism when somewhere asserts that God got them through a snowstorm and just never you mind that others died in that snowstorm. God got the special snowflake through that snowstorm and that's all that matters.
I'm mud and I'll return to mud and I'm just lucky that I got to be animated mud for a bit.
Salon must have made some deal with Steve Paulson - he has had a whole series of articles here - all with the "God" apologist message. Salon needs to get some other perspectives from Shermer, Harris, Dawkins, etc. (I know they will say that they have done that, but, not nearly as often as Paulson's stuff).
This whole "atheists don't experience awe" thing is such bullshit. It is presumptive audacious pomposity. How the hell do these "god believers" know how atheists or agnostics or "non-believers" feel about "awe". I can tell you that as a former "believer" that I never felt REAL awe until I let go of the supernatural "god" stuff and started to study the real and natural world. It pissed me off that I had spent so much time with the phony baloney "awe" of religion.
And - those who say that Dawkins and other "non-believers" are "foaming at the mouth" fundamentalists is so much BS. I've never heard Dawkins speak in that manner. It just shows me that his detractors just don't like what he is saying.
well the stuff on self-organizing systems is interesting enough. dynamic models are gaining ground in neurobiology, and they do seem to be a kind of mechanism that the mechanistic conception of nature did not anticipate. the brain and other dynamic systems do seem to be 'continuously active' and 'spontaneous' in ways that contrast with the fundamentally passive picture of the physical world that emerged from the scientific revolution.
the *new* thing in Kauffman's interview is the way he appealed to self-organizing systems to distinguish his view from Spinozism. he seems to be saying most of nature is NOT sacred or creative, but in fact lifeless and passive. only the dynamic, self-organizing aspects of the world are sacred. admittedly, that is not Spinozism. But it is also not very convincing. it is only the theme of the 'sanctity of life' that gives it a plausible and familiar ring. One can be all for self-organizing systems (and even quantum consciousness if you care to) without holding forth on anything about spirituality whatsoever.
And if he is hoping to cultivate an environmental ethic on the basis of the sanctity of life, he is barking up the wrong tree. by far the strongest and most broadly appealing arguments for environmental ethics are strictly UTILITARIAN. We should curb global warming and convert to a sustainable lifestyle strictly because the consequences of not doing so are disastrous for theist, deist, spinozist, pagan, and atheist alike.
Yes, Ely Minnesota, my piece of 'paradise' - the Land of Sky Blue Waters, "God's Country" - Canoes only, so as not to tread on Gaia, close to the real promised land, Canada.
When I sit on my sauna deck, watching the water and setting sun, and know I have enough food to eat, disease is not eating away at my vitals, and I have two days off, this is the 'best of all possible worlds." Heaven on earth. A veritable pantheist panapoly of earthly delights.
You say you can't afford a place on the lake? Well, we got the cabin almost 100 years ago. No Yuppies in Paradise on our lot, though they are down the way in their massive god-given cabins, with 8 bedrooms and soaring ceilings. An American flag flapping in the wind, and Panthia for a bedroom partner, and eight boats outside.
My mother is ashes in the lake, as is my aunt. As I one day will be. No need to dress it up beyond that.
Not surprisingly you misunderstand what I was saying. I was saying you weren't making any sense and then arrogantly claiming others weren't making sense. I suppose your posts are a good warning example of what happens when you post while stoned.
Try as we might, I don't think we'll ever really remove the Big White Bearded Guy from the term 'God.' And accepting all the tedious and outdated baggage that comes along with that is, at best, counterproductive. Let's move forward and let ancient history be ancient history.
... by all means, stay classy (LOL).
It is unfortunate that this guy invokes the word 'God' to explain his attacks on scientism. Most people, especially on the so called liberal-left, educated in America's undergraduate college classes seem to have been utterly mesmerized by additive, reductionist conceptions of life, politics, economics and history.
I take it Kauffman is actually a true materialist, not a spiritualist (despite his language) who sees life as a complex emergent system and creativity as something that can't be reduced to algorithms (didn't Godel point this way?)In this sense he stands with Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, etc, who are accused of being charlatans or extremists, but who at least stood up to the prevailing scientisms of their times.
Read the 'Journal of Consciousness Studies' for serious attempts to apply these 'emergentist' ideas to the mind.
Kauffman posits his position as a departure from Dawkin's position. He even goes so far as to reference Dawkin's book THE GOD DELUSION.
However, Kauffman, for whatever he might say, is a Reductionist. He tipped his hat when he gave praise and embraced the worldview of Spinoza. He reinforced this when he identified himself as a secular humanist.
What's especially funny is that Dawkins specifically addresses the points made by Kauffman (look at the first chapters and last chapter of his book). Dawkins is infuriated by people like Kauffman on the grounds that their attempts to reinterpret God only reinforce the dogmatic views of believers. (is it a coincidence that 90% of the American population believes in a monotheistic God and that Americans know nothing about science?).
Kauffman's real agenda is to recreate God into a non-transcendent being. He is misguided (although undoubtedly well-meaning) and he seems utterly unaware of how condescending his views are. Essentially, Kauffman thinks the religious masses cannot handle losing the God they so desperately cling to so he tries to re-appropriate their love of God into a love of nature. Dawkins also proposes (last chapter of GOD DELUSION) a kind of 'religion' based on a love of the ceaseless wonders of the universe. However, Dawkins takes out the 'God' part, because he understands that as long as religious believers have 'God' they will never let go of the aspect that explains His appeal; that appeal is directly tied to the belief in an afterlife and that insidious and incredibly dangerous 'everything happens for a reason mantra'.
Kauffman needs to give people more credit and be honest!
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
