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?
Whoever delves into mysticism cannot help but stumble, as it is written: “This stumbling block is in your hand.” You cannot grasp these things unless you stumble over them.
If it had not been inherited in the blood and substantiated through evolving memes, there would exist today no such phenomenon as religion. In all of its forms religion has continued from shamanism to individual perspectives. It continues to evolve in open minds. It has evolved from belief in a God without to experience of a God within. There is no philosophical argument able to refute experience. Most atheists denounce the God without as described in the OT. They cannot refute the NT hope of a saved, from itself, world. The evolution of God from fatherhood to brotherhood offers the only viable remedy for the evils we do to each other and to the planet.
Humanity continues to evolve and our experience of God is evolving too.
I agree.
Proof of the existence of God is available in the experience of evolution.
Okay, let’s say this is true. Let’s say that the proof is there.
Then obviously: Which particular God?
And, down through the ages, given the hundreds and hundreds of often times conflicting assessments of what it means to believe in this God and to bend your will to His own, “how ought one to live” given “morality here and now, immortality there and then”?
The part about God and religion that most interest me.
Again, with so much at stake here – for example, “I” for all of eternity – why has God not made it abundantly clear which path mere mortals are obligated to be on in order to attain salvation for their very soul?
And then the question of theodicy: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=196522
For those convinced the evidence is there to accept that a God, the God, their God is the one derived from the experience of evolution.
Yet another attempt by Iamb to force this thread into the philosophical understanding he supports. It will not fit simply because God is known by experience, not by names. The experience is sufficient proof of God. All descriptions fall short of this reality. By now he should have understood something of the nature of God as exemplified in Nature and the Cosmos.
Right, like noting this in and of itself makes the points I raise above go away.
Though, sure, when I come to a thread pertaining to God and religion, my inclination is to take the discussion to “morality here and now, immortality there and then”. That actually seems reasonable to me. And, come on, for all practical purposes, what could possibly be more profoundly relevant to mere mortals pertaining to a discussion of them?
In other words, what “I” am here is what “I” do.
On the other hand, “force”? What, like others here are actually required to read and to respond to anything at all that I post. Why doesn’t he just join the crowd and “foe” me. That will keep most of the disturbing things I suggest about God and religion out of his head.
Then of course straight back up into the spiritual clouds:
You know, whatever, “for all practical purposes” that means. Pertaining to, say, the fate of your Soul for all of eternity?
As for Nature, down here it’s nothing short of an almost unimaginably savage slaughterhouse.
As for the Cosmos, where does his own experiences relating to God fit into this:
Peter: What branch of physics were you involved with?
Lloyd: Something much more terrifying than blowing up the planet.
Peter: Really? Is there anything more terrifying than the destruction of the world?
Lloyd: Yeah. The knowledge that it doesn’t matter one way or the other. It’s all random…resonating aimlessly out of nothing and eventually vanishing forever. And I’m not talking about the world. I’m talking about the universe. All space, all time just a temporary convulsion. And I get paid to prove it.
Peter: Do you feel so sure about that when you look out on a clear night like tonight and see all those millions of stars? That none of it matters?
Lloyd: I think it’s as beautiful as you do…and vaguely evocative of some deep truth that always just keeps slipping away. But then my professional perspective overcomes me and a see more penetrating view of it…and I understand it for what it truly is…haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.
Iamb.,
You and I speak two different languages. I have no more desire to learn yours than you have to learn mine.
Yes, “Nature is red in tooth and claw”-Tennyson; but nothing is ever lost.
More to the point [mine], the language that you speak comforts and consoles you a hell of a lot more than the language that I speak comforts and consoles me. No doubt about who is the “winner” here, right?
And, in my view, you completely bend over backwards to avoid confronting the points that I raise in order to sustain that crucial distinction.
But: you won’t go there – in a philosophy forum! – because there is simply too much that might be lost if you take the blinders off.
So, sure, keep them on. Stay up in the clouds that are those spiritual contraptions you never dare to come down out of.
After all, I did dare to.
And, trust me, the consequences of that have been brutal. You have no idea how it feels to think yourself into believing that your own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless. And that, even worse, it will come to an end for all of eternity in oblivion.
After all, I was once you too, you know.
Which of us had blinders to shed? Not me. Your outlook on life is too bleak for me to consider in or out of a philosophy forum. And I have seen no rules or regulations in this forum that would make my take on existence unacceptable here or elsewhere. You were never me. You know nothing about me except for your interpretation of my posts. I would ask the moderators here whether or not these posts are acceptable in a philosophy forum.
What my thread is about—implications of the existence of God in the determinism and outcomes of bio-chemical evolution–perhaps lost in useless quibbles over what philosophy allows.
"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.