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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Your posts are always thoughtful, but you still make the common mistake of assuming that only a universe inhabited by "god" (pick your definition) can have "meaning" for people - theists or atheists.
I just don't buy that. My world is filled with meaning. Love, awe, wonder, mystery...all these things mean things to me and enrich my life immensely. They are very much a part of me, not some supernatural (again, pick your definition) otherness that somehow exists but doesn't exist in but not in above or not above it all.
And to claim that a theist's view is "better" because it believes in something beyond the individual is nonsensical. I know the universe at large is much, much, more than me. It is that awareness, and the unending details revealed by science that continues to enrich that awareness, that adds a depth to my awe far deeper than any abstract wordplay about divine beings.
Kuhnigget, I have been enjoying your posts too.
In reply to your last, I guess I was impressed (over-impressed?) by Karl Popper's three-world analysis. There are three Worlds, Popper said: World One, which is the world of nature, ancient, given, indifferent, infinitely intricate and vast; World Two, which is the world of human (and to some extent animal) consciousness, with its perceptions, feelings, motivations, memories, and ideas (Popper does not contest that World Two evolves from World One), and World Three, which are our ideas, feelings, etc. embodied in laws, codes, languages, art-forms, journals, buildings, artifacts, machines and inventions of all sort, which are made from the interaction, as it were, of Worlds One and Two, but which come to constitute a world of their own, and the one we actually live in most consciously, and which feeds back to the other two Worlds ever more, with every passing decade. Unlike theists and deists, I think God belongs to/in World Three. So yes, you can do well without thinking the God-thought (or doing the "God-thing"), I agree, just as you can do well without music, poetry, the latest "news", entering this or that building, or (up to a point) human law. I guess I look around at religious belief and go, "you know, there's something there I don't want to dismiss."
The final position for most religious people is that their 'sacred' experiences justify faith in ... something.
Indeed, so far science has a difficult time quantifying and analyzing feelings like romantic love, aesthetics, feelings of oneness with the universe, or happiness itself. I think further brain studies will actually be able to duplicate these emotions, however. Dopamine is definately the 'happy' chemical, for instance.
However, even now, it is not much of a stretch to say that without the physical body and brain, these modes of consciousness would not exist. Anyone who has done drugs knows that various chemicals can give you these feelings, in various heightened ways. Certainly a material issue, at bottom.
On a survival level, romantic love is part of the survival of the species. Positive feelings also play a role in survival - aesthetics, happiness, oneness with nature, can all be positive survival mechanisms, especially in bad times. And we are still on a Darwinian level.
Sometimes these feelings can lead to individuals giving their lives for others - which actually promotes the tribe, group, or family, or 'might' do so. Dying in warfare is certainly marketed as such, but for the survival of a whole species, might be a contra-indicator. Indeed, smal group 'survival' versus survival of the species as a whole is at the BOTTOM of many political disagrements.
So 'sacred' is just meat for analyses - and good luck on feeling sacred after your brain is gone. Science is not a be all and end all, it is only a method of ascertaining the truth. Science alone might not give ultimate meaning to life, but scientific method certainly leads in the direction of truthfulness. Giving meaning to life is not its ultimate job, after all. That is for you to do yourself.
Thanks for the explication. It's much more clear to me this time, and I honestly don't know whether that's just because the words worked better or I'm more clear this time, or what. It doesn't matter, really. I hear you. I also think we're more in agreement than not, but I get the distinct feeling (from you, but more from some others) that nothing less than absolute agreement/conversion (deconversion?) will allow us to exist side-by-side, because somewhere there are a bunch of religious non-thinkers who have posited a "god", and if anyone believes in any sort of First Cause then they have, to some extent, bought into that hoary "god" figure, which I have not.
There's no reason to try and explain to you what I do believe is so, no obligation, either, as it is not only a highly personal (to me, anyway) issue, but it is also a waste of your time and an intrusion into your "closet" (I also have one of those where I generally think my perverse thoughts about being and nothingness; of course this here is a discussion forum, so I figure a little discussion can't hurt. Wrong!).
"A curse on both your houses" is probably accurate, if not what I had in mind when I set out. I don't even know why I set out, as this really is a too-personal area to discuss at random this way. I think someone is right when they suggest these articles may in fact be land mines laid for us, since we probably get along fine in terms of art, politics, etc. It's some kind of a plot to get us at each others' throats, and how better to dive head first into the shit than to, in effect, say "A curse on both your houses." You're right about that. I'm sure you knew that already, but I also feel it's right for me to acknowlege that.
None of this makes me a different person than I was before we launched into this, and one of this makes me less inclined toward the spoodles arguments in general (although some parts you deconstruct very skillfully).
"God" is a word that means almost nothing to me, except insofar as what a lot of people think it means, which is a terrifying, nightmare image of Zeuss run amok. However, I do acknowlege the universe in which I live and move and have my being. Maybe I even worship the universe, in a sense, simply by my affinity for its sustaining my molecular structure and all the crazy "ideas" and "thoughts" that spawns while I'm here, in this particular space-time construct.
I'm not being sarcastic. I'm speaking about being in another way that's less sentimental than how I actually feel about my "life", which is something I love dearly. For me, that is all the meaning there is: I am.
There, I went and did it anyway. My apologies. Somehow I think maybe it's best left there, though. I don't think it hurts the discussion.
On the other hand, I do rant, rather tirelessly, against the religious right, left, and even, much of the time, the center, because I think they've got everything all wrong. I may not be able to join The Club (nor do I want to at this time), but I do like the idea of trashing the kiosks of the money changelings and of "Jefferson's Bible", things like that. OK, I'm just rambling now.
At any rate, I got it and it's a lot more clear today, and I know there's room in my heart and mind for you, and I hope the reverse may also be true. I don't care what you believe (or don't) about the origin of species (and the Creationists are, just for the record, certifiably insane).
There. I need to put a cork in it. Thanks for responding and for paying attention, and especially for the "curse you both" thing, as that does leave a lot of loose ends hanging out. I stand corrected.
I hope the weather is to your liking wherever you are. The Big Ball of Gas is at least burning brightly here today, and that's better (for me) than dark and cold.
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Salon headlines in your mailbox
