There are no winners and losers here, only two different takes on reality. Iamb’s take does not fit the existential experience of most people, but is an outdated take on the condition of humanity, especially on human destiny. The difficulty here is in attempts to describe spiritual matters in logical terms, in ways not poetic, in ways not intuitive.
The theme of this thread is that evolution is God in action. It is much more than a “mental contraption”. It has a plethora of references on the web, but is most understood as a real experience in which all partake. We all are involved in evolution.
The basic difference between the two points of view consists in the atheistic charge.that if Theism be true, why the need to suffer?
This has stumped most everyone who seriously tried to think about it. But if the correlate problem with the distinction between body and mind, and brain and mind , and body and soul are considered, the question can be simplified by the notion of a continuous evolution between them.
The conscious manifestation of an objjective consubstantive spirit , becomes more and more evident, rather than less, as can be seen by the positive effects that codes of ethics have in behavior in general. The proof is in the pudding that ancient wisdom, and it’s preoccupation with ‘the Goid’, flows over and conflates into religion, exactly for that reason.
Reason itself is not primary, it is the need to assure and perpetuate the continuous progression of evolution.
By a higher analogy, the mind as an effected neural totality of the brain, is more similar to the matrix like informational sum of reality of the universe, then not. This is a jump, but a future hyperglide will certainly bear it out. The sum total has been in a quantum sense has always “existed”, and since it does consist of a 0 sum, it is eternally reoccurring.
This model is far more believable than justifying the existence of ’ nothingness’!
That’s not accurate Meno.
The conception of a God that would not allow any suffering is a relatively new one in the history of humanity, and pertains only to the very specific figures of Jesus and Buda.
Being a gentleman that knows the Old Testament, this will not be a strange concept to Irrellus, but being a Christian, I believe he is also attuned to the idea of a God that would not willingly allow suffering.
There is absolutely no reason for there to be any contradiction between religion and evolution. Again, it is very recent that religion has been held to be anti-naturalistic and separate from the natural world. Ancient philosophers before Plato would often speak of very advanced scientific concepts and Gods in the same sentence. Plato is the one that put an end to that, that introduced the idea that we have a right to demand anything of God, that it is God that has to fit our ideas of what is correct.
The problem Irrellus poses is very far beyond such petty considerations as “why is God such a dick?” The problem he poses is: how can evolution be reckoned while accounting for everything, which it would have to. See, a purely materialistic study of evolution leaves out, well really most of what experience is. A scientific quesiton is: how does evolution include teleology? Teleology exists. So how is it involved in evolution?
The standard Darwinian answer is: teleology exists because it helps us survive and procreate. So survival and procreation is the teleology of evolution. But teleology is not a point of evolution, but a consequence of it. This is an absurd circle. Why does it do X? To survive. Why does it survive? To do X. This is not a circle any scientist is trapped in. Only people that want to inject an agenda into science.
Evolution simply describes the way things have come to be the way they are. It is the explanation of how things are the way they are that leaves nothing outside itself, no explanation for the state of things that is outside of it.
Only Aristotelians have any need for a figure that is that which stands outside of things that are to make them be. It is not an actual question that poses itself, it is a question that poses itself after you have posited an ideal world. Meaning, it is a disingenuous question.
If they had the capacity for honesty, Platonists and Aristotelians would say: given that an ideal world exists, how is this real world derived from it? This is an entirely different question from: how can things exist without being derived from an ideal world?
Ideal just means coming from an idea, which means something in a person’s imagination.
I strongly feel the burden of proof is on the Platonists, to show that there is any reason the real world, the one we all see, is derived from a thought a person had, and not the other way around. I cannot stress enough how strongly I feel this.
Pedro: Your argument is a legitimate ine, and the fact that the archaic and the post modern temporal flows are being perceived by less configured spaces, brings into question the relevance of distinction been the Old and New way of holding a Supreme Being responsible fir the shift .
Not that it doesent “exist” on the level of the Old, testimentally, but the New doesen’t intend to negate the Old, it merely humanly forgets the distinction.
Artificially the flow can be reconstructed, like the frames of still reality on a photograph nears perfected filmed simulation.
I think Irrellus is aiming for a bit more of an advanced concept than the narrative continuity between ancient Jewish lore and neo-Platonic Roman lore.
The Jewish God, or Old Testament God, does not come as if from outside reality or nature. The immense and unspeakable greatness of him is, that he doesn’t.
Blessed are the Christian sects that put their focus on the Old Testament, for they may still be saved.
And yet Irraelus may not have brought up the diminishing of temporal significance between the archaic and post modern cintinuum, which appears to decrease the frames or reference within which the continuum between the old and the new testaments may be indicated.
With that the simulation of that significance may not even being to form , an essential difference, ; in congruence to the manifestation of conceivable , or apparent temporal difference-in light of the meta-temporal mechanics of quantum and classical apprehension .
Memes about the nature of a god in relationship with humans do have an extensive history. The progress of mankind over the millennia suggests that these memes exhibit teleology, that they are evolving into concepts of God in which God’s morality as written in sacred texts is becoming more humane, universal and all-inclusive. I’ve read postmodern works that describe God as, not a loser, but as an eventual reclaimer of all souls, including those of atheists. Nels Ferre once opined that even Hitler will eventually be saved.
I fear we are falling into the trap of discussing what the teleology might be, instead of the question of the fact of teleology, of a personal evolution that encompasses more than just the anthroposphere.
I agree with Crick’s suggestion of panspermia–that organic matter in comets and on asteroids fell into the sea, seeding life on the planet. This is prior to the anthroposphere and is continuing now. This is the transition of matter into life, which goes back to matter ejaculated from exploding stars. DNA is a combination of four chemicals, is matter. Yet it expands life. So there needs to be no talk of teleology that does not include matter. There is no mind/matter schism. Add to mind and matter spirit, the intuitive awareness of the whole as a realistic goal. The mind/brain is a masterpiece of evolution and the spirit recognizes its origins.
Agree enthusiastically.
Your personal evolution from a fertilized egg to an adult human being mirrors the larger evolution of all life forms. The determinism with which this comes to be is not an obstacle for free will. We can make choices within the general confines of evolutionary determinism. That we can hope at all is indication of a spiritual nature. Thus it saddens me to hear some people claiming that they see no need or possibility of hope from their given set of circumstances. They have a choice of accepting or denying the kingdom within, which is the source of hope. Once again, evolutionary determinism is progressive and creative with room for hope in our preferred choices. Still the problem of determinism is as thorny an issue as is teleology.
Our choices can change the course of evolution.
In “The Essential Kabbalah” by Daniel C. Matt quotes Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook: “The theory of evolution accords with the secrets of Kabbalah better than any other theory. Evolution follows a path of ascent and thus provides the world with a basis for optimism. How can one despair, seeing that everything evolves and ascends? When we penetrate the inner nature of evolution, we find divinity illuminated in perfect clarity. Ein Sof generates, actualizes potential infinity.”
Of course, individuals can and do despair. We do this when we cannot see that we are evolving as individuals, or we don’t see things evolving on a grand scale. Why people see things one of these ways or the other is a mystery. Often the ego is blocking the view. Those disparate ways of seeing the world are ones that I traverse often multiple times in a single day.
Thank you for the timely reference. As for the despair, it may be that evolution is not always a straight forward progression, but is riddled with false starts and retrogressive thinking. Ideas such as that we are competitors vying for survival and progression as fortuitous need to be considered in the light of how they have determined existence in the West. We in the West, in a debt no doubt owed to Martin Luther, have worshipped the idea of rugged individualism. Although there is good reason to see the I often as a necessary perspective, it is the Other and the we that are necessary considerations for any sense of morality. In other words orthogenesis as a path to morality may be a crooked road forward. But no spiritual journey is easy.
You and I are both students of the perennial wisdom tradition. I see oneness behind Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Animism, Science, Depth psychology, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Agnosticism even Nihilism. The list goes on. Presently Kabbalism is rocking my world. Also archetypal astrology. Esoteric religion participates in the common core at the center of everything. Like gravity love always seeks the center.
Amen, Felix. How does the Kabbalah account for false starts?