God and the Problem of our Mediocrity

[Glaswegian]

I'm sure that most people would agree that even the religious redneck is aware - albeit in a dim, rudimentary way - of the Problem of Evil and the threat it poses to belief in an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent God. But there is another, less renowned, problem which ought to be just as unsettling for the religious believer as the Problem of Evil. I call this problem - the Problem of Mediocrity. For those of you who are unaware of this problem and the negative implications it has for monotheistic religion, please allow me to flesh it out for you.

Here is the Problem of Mediocrity then:

Why is it that for every extraordinarily gifted person there are countless millions who are just mediocre? Why are humanity's great artists and geniuses so few and far between? Why do artists of the quality of Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Mozart and geniuses like Kant, Freud and Einstein appear on this earth so rarely? If you are a religious person then you must place the blame for the scarcity of great artists and geniuses in this world squarely on the shoulders of God (if He exists). Evidently, the God of the religious herd is as generous in the production of mediocre people as 'the blacksmith is with sparks' for He inundates the world with fresh millions of them every day. If God does this through choice then He is mischievous. Alternatively, if the relentless hammering out of mediocre people is the best that God can do then He should be viewed as incompetent or unimaginative.

Clearly, the problem of mediocrity in this world is as fatal to belief in a monotheistic God as the problem of evil is. Ask yourself this: If you were an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God would you create millions of people like Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Socrates, Tolstoy, Picasso, Gandhi, Dante, Pasteur, Galileo, Aristotle, Wagner, Homer, Marcus Aurelius, Dostoyevsky, Shelley, Goethe, Hume, Newton, Rembrandt, Nietzsche, Darwin, Kafka, Mahler, Proust, Schopenhauer, etc., etc., etc. - would you create millions of Great Ones like these or would you create millions of mediocre people instead?

So where does all of this leave you and I? Well, compared to the great artists and geniuses of the world there is nothing about you or I which marks us out from the vulgar billions: nothing of distinction at all. This is because our only defining feature is our mediocrity and we share that in common with the human swarm almost in its entirety. To think that each one of us is original, unique and different is a self-deception: a lie that we must construct about ourself in order to keep sane and give our life a whiff of meaning. For everything we think and say and do has already been thought and said and done by millions of others who have lived before us, and again by millions of others who are alive right now and, of course, all of it will be repeated endlessly over and over again by the numberless millions who will come after us when we are dead and our mouth filled with dirt.

Do you doubt that we are mediocre? Well, the next time you are in a public space - say, a shopping mall, a cinema, a park, a subway train, a bar, a busy street, or even at your place of work - look closely at the people around you. Look at their faces. Listen to their utterances. Then ask yourself this: Is there anything about any one of these people which is truly great, truly outstanding, truly exceptional? Is there anything which marks them out significantly from the general run of humanity? Are there not millions of others all over the world more or less just like them thinking, saying and doing more or less the same things? If you are honest with yourself then you will admit the sad truth.

Nor is it any use pretending to ourselves that given time we might do something of lasting importance, something remarkable, something which will allow us to stand out from the anonymous millions who drift pointlessly through life as we do. For in our heart of hearts we know that we are certainly not one of the Great Ones and never will be. The Great Ones have always towered over the rest of humanity like colossi. And when these Great Ones were alive you know what they would have saw if they chose to look downwards, don't you? What each of them would have saw far, far below them - indeed, so far below them as to appear almost microscopic in the distance - was millions of mediocre creatures exactly like you and I, millions and millions of moral and intellectual Quasimodos swarming around their feet like a vast, homogenous mass of insects. Really, to think that there is anything in the slightest degree notable or gifted about us is just our being childishly obstinate and silly: a fanciful and comforting deceit on our part every bit as infantile as whistling in the dark. Further proof of our mediocrity lies in the fact that our friends are mediocre as well. For if there was any sign of greatness in us then they couldn't bear us!

I repeat: There is nothing individual about us whatsoever. Anything we point to as differentiating us from everyone else is only superficial. For example, the number of blackheads on our tongue; or the bald patch on our hairy back shaped like a horseshoe; or the monkey that we're the proud parent of. No, we are as homogenous as curtain hooks - bland, uniform and indistinguishable from each other in any substantial way. We are factory-made, you and I.

Ask yourself another question: Who will remember you fifty years after you're dead or even after twenty years? An old lover? A relative? A friend? Anyone? The truth is that if you are remembered at all then it will be by sheer accident - and even then only fleetingly. Perhaps an old yellowing photograph found at the back of a drawer by an ageing niece or nephew who might recall with a burst of laughter that you were religious. Or perhaps it will be found by a stranger who will merely look at your image with incomprehension. Yes, without a shadow of a doubt our mediocrity guarantees that soon after death we will be forgotten by everyone. Obscurity will engulf us in its inky depths and the universe's amnesia about us will be complete and irrevocable. Forever.

Regards

James

[zinkyusa]

I suppose if we really existed it would be depressing..

[Accountable]

Diuretic;480039 wrote:

No I'm not a mindless Polyanna (can a male be a Polyanna or does he have to be a Polypaul or a Polyjohn?).


Don't forget polyester, if it's not too much of a stretch. :driving:

[Glaswegian]

Glaswegian wrote: Why is it that for every extraordinarily gifted person there are countless millions who are just mediocre? Why are humanity's great artists and geniuses so few and far between? Why do artists of the quality of Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Mozart and geniuses like Kant, Freud and Einstein appear on this earth so rarely?


Why did you and Dr. Brandt want to transplant the brain of one human being into the head of another, Frankenstein?

'We were seeking to preserve for all time the great talents and geniuses of the world. When they die their brains are at the height of their creative power and we bury them under the ground to rot because the bodies that house them have worn out. We want to remove those brains at the instant of death and freeze them thus preserving for posterity all they contain.'

(Victor Frankenstein speaking in the film Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed)

[911]

Why does someone become famous or considered a genius? Because someone else saw them that way and spread the word.

We all remember Errol Flynn but does that make him something other that mediocre? No. Someone in show business liked him and pushed to have him in movies and magazines and started fan clubs and thus he will be remembered.

Most people today do not have the time or gumption or options or backers to take their work to the next level. Do you really thnk Picasso's work would be famous today if it were painted today?

What would be so special about Einstein if everyone was like him?

And that mediocre person walking down the sidewalk that stopped that mediocre man from falling in front of that bus? Did he just save a mediocre life or the grandfather of a President? There are a number of people whose work and wisdom outshine others but neither takes the time to enhance it nor stops long enough to study just a little bit more. That's called free will. We chose to be the way we are.

For crying out loud, think more of yourself than that and you will be more!

[Glaswegian]

Diuretic;480039 wrote: We are all very good at something.


All of us?

But let's just stick with you, Diuretic.

Tell me: What are you very good at?

[Galbally]

Its an interesting post, but I think that the flaw is in the reasoning that God is somehow moral or interested particulary in the affairs of one species on one planet at this moment in time in the almost infinietly large and old universe that he has created (allegedly).

I believe in God, but a God that both created and essentially is everything that is or was, or will be. God is not a moralist, a judge, a christian theologian, a deity, a scientist, a blind watchmaker. He/she/it is simply that which makes what is be, transcending all other, lesser concepts. We are of course part of it all, and of him, but only a very small part, and its our own unceassing need to put our own very parochial and hopelessly simple perspective on the meaning of something that it is not in our remit to understand. Blaming God for the suffering involved in being alive, (or praising him for being so glorious in the wonderment of what his creation is), is like blaming water for being wet, or thanking a mountain for being pretty on sunny day, (they are not what they are for our benefit, but because they can be nothing else). What is, simply is, (whether its the void of space or the teeming life of the amazon), there is no requierment for human approval for the Universe, as we are not somehow seperate and apart from it, we are part of it, and nothing we do, say, or think is anything other than that, which we have, (by the incredible wonder of the universe and its action) been enabled to do.

In short, we only put a moral aspect on such things, because as concious beings, life seems arbitrary, ruthless, baffeling, cruel, wonderful, achingly painful, and more than anything....... hard and short. It is that way because it is meant to be so, not because we happen to like it. We don't get to judge these things, thats a conceit that our admittedly unique (as far as we know) intelligence and more importantly "concious" nature has fooled us into believing. Look at mayflies on a pond next summer, they are every bit as alive and part of everything as you and I, yet their span of existence is based on their biology and the immutable laws of entropy and seems meaningless, but it is as important and as natural in the fact of each individual mayflies existence as you or I, and every single person or creature, or inanimate object, neutron, photon, molecule, that exists now is the same. Is this a bad thing?, it is neither good nor bad, such terms are irrelevant. It is simply that which is, (as is our ability to realize such things, and devise schemes to make our lives more in line with our natural desires for security, food, social standing, understand, spirituality, all of it).

We didn't invent ourselves, we are part of a system we call in shorthand "The Universe" that is as beyond our ideas in its existence (such as being beautiful, strange, familar, distant, comforting, and terrifying) as the idea of any such human questions would be to an ant.

That to me is not a source of despair, but a source of deep belief that for whatever purpose, or because it can be no other way, there has never been, anywhere, or at any time anything that wasn't what it was supposed to be at that moment. I think thats an encouaging thought, not a bleak one. We are a species in love with nothing so much as ourselves (naturally) and its our own inability to seperate ourselves from the universe that we are part of, that makes us worry, we should not, we have neither the power or the responsibility to make any difference in what the universe is, not even the tiniest, because if we did, we would live somehow outside it, and then we would be god ourselves and wouldn't need him, but we are not, no more than anything else in this universe.

[Accountable]

mediocre means about average, right? Well then, if every one of us is special and unique, then that averages out to pretty damn special. :yh_think I can live with that.

[Glaswegian]

Galbally;482042 wrote: I believe in God, but a God that both created and essentially is everything that is or was, or will be.


This means that you are a pantheist, Galbally. That is, you identify the entire universe (including ourselves) with God. As you put it - God is omnipresent in all things, at all times, in all places.

For the sake of convenience, please allow me to respond to your pantheism with an excerpt from a post I made in another forum since it is pertinent.

Viz...

~o~


In the song Help Me Somebody on the album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne (1981 EG Records) the notion of an omnipresent God was given popular expression by the Reverend Paul Morton. Morton proclaimed the following about God:

'There's no escape from Him

He's so high you can't get over Him

He's so low you can't get under Him

He's so wide you can't get around Him

If you make your bed in heaven He's there

If you make your bed in hell He's there

He's everywhere!'

The notion of an omnipresent God was expressed more memorably by William Wordsworth when he wrote of:

'...something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.'

And there has been no shortage of mystics throughout the ages who claimed to have 'experienced' an omnipresent God. For example, the seventeenth-century French contemplative, Malaval, wrote:

'From the moment in which the soul receives the impression of Deity in infused vision she sees Him everywhere.'

Now, developmental psychologists are aware that even children as young as four years find the notion of an omnipresent God silly. But there are many grown-ups who do not - as the above quotations indicate. These grown-ups - or, rather, Big Infants who ought to know better - think that God is an immanent Being who exists everywhere: so much so, that He can see into the most secret corner of their heart and find them hidden under a rock in the deepest part of the ocean if they foolishly sought to evade Him there...and stuff like that. According to religious believers, God can do these incredible things because 'in a sense' (believers love that phrase) He already is in their heart and under that deep ocean rock...etc.

It might be argued that when preachers, poets, mystics and the like talk about the omnipresence of God and how He pervades the mental and physical realms and 'rolls through all things' their words should not be understood in a literal sense. They are only speaking, the argument goes, metaphorically and that this is done from necessity because these individuals are attempting to communicate knowledge whose character is completely ineffable to those who are spiritually dense, and that all they have at their disposal for this impossible task is mere language.

But what does it mean to assert that 'God is everywhere' and then to qualify this by saying: 'However, that statement should be understood in a metaphoric, symbolic or spiritual sense, and not a literal sense'? Well, taken together, what the two preceding statements boil down to in plain language is the following one - God is everywhere but 'in a sense' really nowhere at any point in space and time. Is this intelligible? Are you getting it? I doubt it very much. One must be a theologian or a 'true believer' to make sense of double-speak of this kind. Clearly, when someone asserts that 'God is everywhere' they either believe that what they say is literally true (viz. God really is everywhere) or else they are talking gibberish (viz. God is everywhere but really nowhere). I'll assume for argument's sake, then, that when the religious person asserts that 'God is everywhere' he means what he says.

The notion of an omnipresent God is a glaring piece of religious nonsense which can only be embraced by those who are intellectually dishonest or spectacularly obtuse for it does not stand up to a moment of serious scrutiny. As was noted above, even a child can recognise this notion as ridiculous. Thus, if God was literally everywhere and existed in every nook and space and crevice - as monotheists often claim - then it would be possible for the Christian, the Muslim and the Jew to stick their finger over their own arsehole and say: 'Got Him!' The fact that children of a very young age can instinctively recognise the notion of an omnipresent God as absurd shows that they are naturally more honest and sensible about these things than are many adults whose minds have been impaired and corrupted by religious dogma.

People who believe that God is omnipresent are led into further difficulties by this belief. For example, the omnipresence of God entails that there is not a single part of the physical universe which is not God, no matter how infinitesimally small that part might be. This means that monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Dahmer, Gacy, Bin Laden, and Catholic priests who perpetrate acts of sexual depravity against children are the very stuff of God Himself since there is not a particle which constitutes them that is not God-ridden through and through. According to this line of reason, God is also in the tobacco-chewer's spit, the bulimic's vomit, dandruff, Aunt Becky's nose-pickings, your dog's breath, and the bullet which kills your soldier son in Iraq: more precisely, He isn't just in these things: He is these things. He must suffuse these things entirely for there is no place where He is not.'

~o~


Would you go along with anything I said in the foregoing extract, Galbally?

[Glaswegian]

Diuretic;482133 wrote: I am very good at helping adults learn.


A worthy vocation, Diuretic.

[Galbally]

Would you go along with anything I said in the foregoing extract galbally?

Not really, I understand your points, but I personally find no problem in accepting that bullets, pain, disease, entropy, cruelty, wanton violence, etc. are as natural as love, truth, flowers, moms, apple pies, etc. Any argument that purports to suppose that there is evidence that there is an inbuilt "morality" or scale of "worth" in existence immeadiatly breaks down because (self-evidently) there is none, (other than that which we, as one intelligent species of life, amoung billions of others on one planet orbiting one star amoung trillions of others, choose to arbitrarily provide for the universe we percieve). Thats based simply our own seeming intellectual inability to understand that the universe was not devised on the basis that we would someday come along and give it the "thumbs up", what laughable human arrogance! To suppose, (coming from a species that has lived for a speck of time, on a speck of dirt, in a mundane galaxy) that we can ascertain or quantify some measurable value of moral worth in anything other than the consequenes of our own actions on other members of our species or our planet). Philosophers love such talk, but philosphers place the value of human reason above all else, (a quaint idea). Our own existence is a consequence of the workings of biology and chemistry on this one planet, and our opinions on such matters are of no more consequence than those of fruit flies, pebbles, or neutron stars.

In terms of what I am, I dislike terms regarding ones own belief or disbelief in "God" or the divine, or anything of that nature, as generally any human language breaks down far before we reach the point of discussing such issues, the only really viable one is mathematics, and even that breaks down at the point at which the universe was younger than 1x10-47 seconds old, so before that point (in terms of strict causality) everything is speculation for now.

If I was in a position where I had to use one for the sake of clarity of ideas, I would say somewhere between a pantheist and a deist, in that I believe that the universe in its existence is divine in nature and not merely a random occurence based on the statistical probability that an event such as the creation and existence of our universe (as we percieve it to exist), would happen by strict deterministic reasons, outside for the requirement for any sort of intent. Its actually an open position, because the standard model of physics does decribe to an extreme degree of accuracy how our universe works, but it provides no definite answer whatsoever as to why it actually should, or why the laws of physics as we understand them exist at all, or why mathematics (and not some other concept) so elegantly describes the nature of reality. I am a scientist by training, and undertand intuitively (for some reason) that the universe is a system of matter and energy interacting over what we percieve as time, via a complete and self-enclosed system based on determinism, causality, and discrete sets of integers that represent the nature of the matter and energy involved.

Of course, there are many issues that are still unresolved in physics, very big ones, and especially to my mind the nature of time itself. Despite this, the standard model of physics that we have now, is the only really coherent model that humans have ever developed that describes the nature of the universe accurately to any degree. I am no mystic. However, the fact remains, that despite this, there remains absolutely no clue as to why any of this should be so, again its perfectly valid to say, because it is, and thats enough, I sympathize with that position, I have held it myself, but for reasons that I do not understand I have come to believe that there is meaning in reality, not a human one, but one that exists for its own reasons, and that we are part of, but only a very tiny part.

There are of course various arguments and very valid ones that its nothing more a human need to recognize a divine nature in giving a justifyable cause for anything, but these arguments are in essence as metaphysical as the ones that purport to provide a divine aspect to creation, as there is no evidence for either viewpoint, other than the existence of universe in the first place, and as we do not understand in impirical terms why the universe exists, or what processes (if any) resulted in its coming into being, then it simply is a matter of inclination and perspective as to which postion on that fundamental point any one human being makes.

I do not believe that "God" for want of a better word is omnipresent in the human sense of the concept, because that implys intent, desire and personality in a deity that basically is a discrete and nebulous indivdual, who inhabits this exisentce with is which is basically saying that god is like a human being only far more powerful, that he has some "plan" for us or that he expects us to do one thing or another, and suggests that we or any life have for some reason more importance and significance than the plasma in a star, or the nothingness of the void (which is of course what most of the universe is, i.e. nothing, except spacial dimension in which energy and matter can exist). This is not my perception, God is none of these things, he is simply that which provides a tanscending framework for existence itself, devoid of a desire, conciousness, or meaning that we understand. These religious views of a "God of man" I find generally delusional and self serving for those who hold them as it fulfils something or agenda which they need to be fulfilled. Such a God is actually no God at all, simply a reflection of our own needs and wants in what we see as a cold, harsh universe. Most of our attitudes on such issues are easily explained by the physcology required by inteligent, adaptive primate mammals, living within a biosphere such as we inhabit, of course. However, many of the aspects of our conciousness are not explainable in this way, in fact the exisentence of human conciouness, or its mechanism, has not been explained to any extent, Penrose has attempted this bravely using quantum mechanics, but has not been able to come to any firm conclusions one way or the other in a way that is susceptible to a standard mathematical, or scientific analysis. This perhaps one day will not be the case, at the moment, it is, we do not understand how or why we are concious, we simply and self-evidently are.

I do not believe in a personal god, or the soul, (as its commonly understood), or an afterlife in which we as concious discrete personalities exist, what I believe is that the universe in its workings and existence is simply a reflection of a higher order, transcending our own, of which we in our own tiny way are a valid and meaningful part of, but no more than anything else. My belief in this matter, justfies no political doctrine, social morality, or religious agenda whatsoever. I am cognisant of the fact that this is simply my own belief, pure and simple, with no evidence one way or the other, but of course being a human being with a discrete concious nature provides me with the ability to come to such conclusions based on my own inner nature. And of course being a human being I am also highly fallible, susceptible to self-regard, and prone to wish-fulfillment as everyone else, but the fact remains that it is in my own power to believe that which I choose to (for reasons beyond my intellectual ability to understand), and so I choose to do just that.

Right, you have been so kind as to explain to me what I am, so what would you descibe yourself as glaswegian? And what are your actual beliefs on such matter?

[koan]

The idea of mediocrity requires a judge.

It sounds like Glaswegian is comparing himself to others he perceives as great and then standing as judge and jury over others, many of whom he has never known.

Having worked with famous people, let me assure you fame is not the measure to be using.

I stood in a room with a famous model and her entourage of people fawning over her. In the same room was a young woman hired as an extra. The second was meditating, her hair half hanging in her face, a troubled but focused look upon her face. As I watched peacefulness overcome her features, then glanced back at the model it was clear to me who was most beautiful. If you ask me to measure their success, having taken the time to talk to them both, I would not pick the model.

So how do you come by your measure of mediocrity, Glaswegian?

[koan]

There is a fairly well known book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is not really about Zen or about motorcycles, but it is about the idea of mediocrity and one man's obsession with the concept of quality.

A respected man, an intellectual and teacher, our hero gets the idea that quality can be measured. He designs a few simple tests. If his students are handed out a few pieces of literature they, for the large part, can agree on which stories had quality. They couldn't explain why but they could recognise it. Having determined that quality was some sort of substance that could be studied and analysed, the well respected man slowly drove himself mad. He loses touch with all the important things in his life because he can't get over this need to define quality and bring it into his life. He achieves the opposite result of his ambition. Yet, in the end, he does discover what quality is, he just can't explain it in simple words. It takes him a whole book to do it.

As is often the case, the thing we want most is readily at our fingertips but somehow we manage to grasp everything except that which we seek until the only thing left to grasp is the thing we were looking for.

I also believe this is how people find God.

[Glaswegian]

Galbally;483002 wrote: Would you go along with anything I said in the foregoing extract galbally?

Not really, I understand your points, but I personally find no problem in accepting that bullets, pain, disease, entropy, cruelty, wanton violence, etc. are as natural as love, truth, flowers, moms, apple pies, etc. Any argument that purports to suppose that there is evidence that there is an inbuilt "morality" or scale of "worth" in existence immeadiatly breaks down because (self-evidently) there is none, (other than that which we, as one intelligent species of life, amoung billions of others on one planet orbiting one star amoung trillions of others, choose to arbitrarily provide for the universe we percieve). Thats based simply our own seeming intellectual inability to understand that the universe was not devised on the basis that we would someday come along and give it the "thumbs up", what laughable human arrogance! To suppose, (coming from a species that has lived for a speck of time, on a speck of dirt, in a mundane galaxy) that we can ascertain or quantify some measurable value of moral worth in anything other than the consequenes of our own actions on other members of our species or our planet). Philosophers love such talk, but philosphers place the value of human reason above all else, (a quaint idea). Our own existence is a consequence of the workings of biology and chemistry on this one planet, and our opinions on such matters are of no more consequence than those of fruit flies, pebbles, or neutron stars.

In terms of what I am, I dislike terms regarding ones own belief or disbelief in "God" or the divine, or anything of that nature, as generally any human language breaks down far before we reach the point of discussing such issues, the only really viable one is mathematics, and even that breaks down at the point at which the universe was younger than 1x10-47 seconds old, so before that point (in terms of strict causality) everything is speculation for now.

If I was in a position where I had to use one for the sake of clarity of ideas, I would say somewhere between a pantheist and a deist, in that I believe that the universe in its existence is divine in nature and not merely a random occurence based on the statistical probability that an event such as the creation and existence of our universe (as we percieve it to exist), would happen by strict deterministic reasons, outside for the requirement for any sort of intent. Its actually an open position, because the standard model of physics does decribe to an extreme degree of accuracy how our universe works, but it provides no definite answer whatsoever as to why it actually should, or why the laws of physics as we understand them exist at all, or why mathematics (and not some other concept) so elegantly describes the nature of reality. I am a scientist by training, and undertand intuitively (for some reason) that the universe is a system of matter and energy interacting over what we percieve as time, via a complete and self-enclosed system based on determinism, causality, and discrete sets of integers that represent the nature of the matter and energy involved.

Of course, there are many issues that are still unresolved in physics, very big ones, and especially to my mind the nature of time itself. Despite this, the standard model of physics that we have now, is the only really coherent model that humans have ever developed that describes the nature of the universe accurately to any degree. I am no mystic. However, the fact remains, that despite this, there remains absolutely no clue as to why any of this should be so, again its perfectly valid to say, because it is, and thats enough, I sympathize with that position, I have held it myself, but for reasons that I do not understand I have come to believe that there is meaning in reality, not a human one, but one that exists for its own reasons, and that we are part of, but only a very tiny part.

There are of course various arguments and very valid ones that its nothing more a human need to recognize a divine nature in giving a justifyable cause for anything, but these arguments are in essence as metaphysical as the ones that purport to provide a divine aspect to creation, as there is no evidence for either viewpoint, other than the existence of universe in the first place, and as we do not understand in impirical terms why the universe exists, or what processes (if any) resulted in its coming into being, then it simply is a matter of inclination and perspective as to which postion on that fundamental point any one human being makes.

I do not believe that "God" for want of a better word is omnipresent in the human sense of the concept, because that implys intent, desire and personality in a deity that basically is a discrete and nebulous indivdual, who inhabits this exisentce with is which is basically saying that god is like a human being only far more powerful, that he has some "plan" for us or that he expects us to do one thing or another, and suggests that we or any life have for some reason more importance and significance than the plasma in a star, or the nothingness of the void (which is of course what most of the universe is, i.e. nothing, except spacial dimension in which energy and matter can exist). This is not my perception, God is none of these things, he is simply that which provides a tanscending framework for existence itself, devoid of a desire, conciousness, or meaning that we understand. These religious views of a "God of man" I find generally delusional and self serving for those who hold them as it fulfils something or agenda which they need to be fulfilled. Such a God is actually no God at all, simply a reflection of our own needs and wants in what we see as a cold, harsh universe. Most of our attitudes on such issues are easily explained by the physcology required by inteligent, adaptive primate mammals, living within a biosphere such as we inhabit, of course. However, many of the aspects of our conciousness are not explainable in this way, in fact the exisentence of human conciouness, or its mechanism, has not been explained to any extent, Penrose has attempted this bravely using quantum mechanics, but has not been able to come to any firm conclusions one way or the other in a way that is susceptible to a standard mathematical, or scientific analysis. This perhaps one day will not be the case, at the moment, it is, we do not understand how or why we are concious, we simply and self-evidently are.

I do not believe in a personal god, or the soul, (as its commonly understood), or an afterlife in which we as concious discrete personalities exist, what I believe is that the universe in its workings and existence is simply a reflection of a higher order, transcending our own, of which we in our own tiny way are a valid and meaningful part of, but no more than anything else. My belief in this matter, justfies no political doctrine, social morality, or religious agenda whatsoever. I am cognisant of the fact that this is simply my own belief, pure and simple, with no evidence one way or the other, but of course being a human being with a discrete concious nature provides me with the ability to come to such conclusions based on my own inner nature. And of course being a human being I am also highly fallible, susceptible to self-regard, and prone to wish-fulfillment as everyone else, but the fact remains that it is in my own power to believe that which I choose to (for reasons beyond my intellectual ability to understand), and so I choose to do just that.

Right, you have been so kind as to explain to me what I am, so what would you descibe yourself as glaswegian? And what are your actual beliefs on such matter?


There is a number of things in the above post which I'd like to discuss with you, Galbally. But you'll have to be patient with me now and over the next couple of weeks as I'm up to my eyes in work during this period. In the meantime let me respond briefly to the following questions of yours:

Galbally wrote: what would you describe yourself as glaswegian?


I would describe myself as an agnostic.

Galbally wrote: what are your actual beliefs on such matter?


I'm going to understand this question broadly as meaning: How does the human race stand in relation to the universe in my view? What I think about this matter has been expressed very eloquently by Bertrand Russell in the following quote:

'That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.'

[Wesker]

Glaswegian;483775 wrote:

I'm going to understand this question broadly as meaning: How does the human race stand in relation to the universe in my view? What I think about this matter has been expressed very eloquently by Bertrand Russell in the following quote:

'That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.'


Ok, I have been following a little bit of the conversation. From the quote I can see that you do not believe in free will, or if you do, you only believe it at a very limited level. Also the fact that if there is a God (see first thread) that can make such a mediocre race is very untrue. Many of us does not have the recources or the damn will to do it and that is in us, as humans, to be mediocre.

[Glaswegian]

koan;483068 wrote: Having worked with famous people, let me assure you fame is not the measure to be using.


I think you're on the right track here, koan.

It is important to distinguish between fame and celebrity, wouldn't you say? Here's the broad distinction I would draw between the use of both of these words:

Fame should be used in respect of an individual who has done something of value in the eyes of the sensible people of this world. For example, I would describe Mozart, Shakespeare and Darwin as famous because their achievement in music, literature and science respectively is outstanding and has benefited humanity and its culture enormously.

Celebrity, on the other hand, is simply a media production in my view. It is a phenomenon born of the capacity of modern technology to produce multiple images of an individual and to rapidly disseminate these images into the minds of millions of people across the globe. This is why it is possible to become a celebrity without having done anything of value. This is why it is possible for individuals who are just mediocre to become celebrities (Cf. t.v. shows like Pop Idol and Big Brother). This is why serial killers like Gacy and Dahmer are better known in the mass mind than geniuses like Kafka and Schopenhauer. I would describe a celebrity as an individual who is simply 'well-known for being well-known'.

[koan]

Glaswegian;483905 wrote: I think you're on the right track here, koan.

It is important to distinguish between fame and celebrity, wouldn't you say? Here's the broad distinction I would draw between the use of both of these words:

Fame should be used in respect of an individual who has done something of value in the eyes of the sensible people of this world. For example, I would describe Mozart, Shakespeare and Darwin as famous because their achievement in music, literature and science respectively is outstanding and has benefited humanity and its culture enormously.

Celebrity, on the other hand, is simply a media production in my view. It is a phenomenon born of the capacity of modern technology to produce multiple images of an individual and to rapidly disseminate these images into the minds of millions of people across the globe. This is why it is possible to become a celebrity without having done anything of value. This is why it is possible for individuals who are just mediocre to become celebrities (Cf. t.v. shows like Pop Idol and Big Brother). This is why serial killers like Gacy and Dahmer are better known in the mass mind than geniuses like Kafka and Schopenhauer. I would describe a celebrity as an individual who is simply 'well-known for being well-known'.
Though separating those two aspects, you still maintain the idea of a select group who determine worth "sensible people". Who determines which are the sensible people? You?

The world can not be full of people who all leaving a lasting impression on the minds of the masses. You say that Mozart was great. What about his mother? And father? Without them he would not have existed. You are missing the perspective of a woman who knows upon giving birth that there is nothing more brilliant she can ever do with her life.

[Galbally]

Glaswegian;483775 wrote: There is a number of things in the above post which I'd like to discuss with you, Galbally. But you'll have to be patient with me now and over the next couple of weeks as I'm up to my eyes in work during this period. In the meantime let me respond briefly to the following questions of yours:



I would describe myself as an agnostic.



I'm going to understand this question broadly as meaning: How does the human race stand in relation to the universe in my view? What I think about this matter has been expressed very eloquently by Bertrand Russell in the following quote:

'That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.'




I certainly respect your own view on this, and I would have once called myself an agnostic or even an atheist, though that is no longer the case, and why this is so, I am not really sure. I would certainly be sympathetic to the case made by Russell about the realities of human (and general) existence because he is of course entirely correct in what he states, baldy, in the quote that you have provided. That all things should turn to dust, that all ideas will die, that the universe itself will eventually end in either a heat-death, or some sort of cataclysmic "big crunch" is a certainty. Yet I would say again, that the fact that none of this really implies that there is any evidence whatsoever that there in actuality is no divinity or transcendence above the order upon which we live and die, but merely that looking at things from a human perspective can make the universe seem a very harsh place. What I take from that truth is that the nature of what I perceive as "god" is not moral or conscious in its purpose. Simply put, as I said earlier it is a transcendent reality above our own that provides a framework within which the universe we see (or perhaps a infinite number of them) exist. There is no comfort in that sort of belief for those of a religious mindset, its simply a reflection of what I feel within myself to be "true", in terms of any evidence that I can share with others of course there is none, and each man and woman must come to their own peace with the reality that confronts them.

Anyway, you can certainly debate any of the issues I have discussed here with you, I am always open to interesting opinions, even if I strongly disagree with them.

P.S. As an aside, though perhaps not unrelated matters, do you support Celtic or Rangers? Being Irish of course I am legally bound by my own government to support Celtic, but I won't hold it against you if you support the other lot. Also, have you ever been around Bishop Briggs, I used to go out with a girl from there you know.

[Bill Sikes]

Glaswegian;479550 wrote: Here is the Problem of Mediocrity then:

Why is it that for every extraordinarily gifted person there are countless millions who are just mediocre?


James, this is fallacious, as a moment of reflection will reveal.

[spot]

You know, I'm not one to carp but equally I'm not interested in trying to hold a conversation with someone who has a pre-set collection of template answers. Glaswegian started out just posting his opening argument on multiple boards over a period of months, practicing his approach in the discussion which followed, but at least typing original text responses to each thread as it developed. http://www.shadowsinthecave.com/forums/ ... 549d549574 shows his replies on ForumGarden are copy/pasted as well and it's just lazy.

Why are you conducting orchestras, James? Do you consider that as creative as thinking flexibly? I call it bad form, at least when it comes to doing it without back-referencing each time to make it clear that you've already said and discussed the material elsewhere and been entirely uninfluenced by the feedback you received at the time.

I'll tell you why I don't like it. You have a point of view, you express it, you get response and a discussion and then you go elsewhere with exactly the same point of view to impress it on a whole new bunch of people. Your mind hasn't been altered in the slightest by the earlier discussion (or your template text would at least be updated with your revised opinion). If the discussion on the previous site had no effect on your thinking, why are you here discussing the same question again? If it did affect your thinking, why is the text unchanged?

A discussion forum isn't a write-only medium, it shouldn't be treated as one.

[Glaswegian]

spot;484591 wrote: You know, I'm not one to carp


You have been sulking for 21 days now, spot. Don't you think you're overdoing it a bit? It isn't healthy, you know.

I know that you are a quality debater. So instead of stewing away in your own bile why don't you contribute to this thread productively? I want to see the old spot in action and not some churlish Big Infant. And I'm sure the other members of the forum want to see this as well. So let's go, spot - you're it!

[Bill Sikes]

Diuretic;484510 wrote: Normal distribution curve - yep.


If everyone was "extraordinarily gifted" then the whole polulation would be average, unless there was still variation, in which the current state would

exist!

[spot]

Glaswegian;484970 wrote: You have been sulking for 21 days now, spot. Don't you think you're overdoing it a bit? It isn't healthy, you know.


I'd be far more interested in having my question addressed instead of bypassed. It's a reasonable point I'm making.

[Glaswegian]

koan;483909 wrote: You are missing the perspective of a woman who knows upon giving birth that there is nothing more brilliant she can ever do with her life.


You're right. A woman's perspective on giving birth lies forever outside my experience as a man. However, I suspect that not all women think that giving birth is the most brilliant thing they can ever do with their life - at least not with regard to every birth they make. For example, I doubt that women who have been completely worn out by childbirth hold the same rosy picture of it as you do. I think that after about ten or more of the little blighters have plopped out of you into this world then the novelty and wonder of being a breeder must start to wear off.

Since we are on the topic of childbirth, koan, I think it is interesting to note that many of the world's greatest thinkers showed no desire to reproduce themselves. For example, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Pascal, Spinoza, Kant, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein never reared families. This would suggest that human reproduction might play a compensatory role in many people's lives. Thus, if you are unable to produce anything of original value - not even a single thought - then you produce children instead. I'm sure you would agree that anyone can produce children - even an idiot can do that. But not everyone can produce the Critique of Pure Reason, can they?

[koan]

Glaswegian;485074 wrote: You're right. A woman's perspective on giving birth lies forever outside my experience as a man. However, I suspect that not all women think that giving birth is the most brilliant thing they can ever do with their life - at least not with regard to every birth they make. For example, I doubt that women who have been completely worn out by childbirth hold the same rosy picture of it as you do. I think that after about ten or more of the little blighters have plopped out of you into this world then the novelty and wonder of being a breeder must start to wear off.

Since we are on the topic of childbirth, koan, I think it is interesting to note that many of the world's greatest thinkers showed no desire to reproduce themselves. For example, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Pascal, Spinoza, Kant, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein never reared families. This would suggest that human reproduction might play a compensatory role in many people's lives. Thus, if you are unable to produce anything of original value - not even a single thought - then you produce children instead. I'm sure you would agree that anyone can produce children - even an idiot can do that. But not everyone can produce the Critique of Pure Reason, can they?
I'd suggest that you missed the point.

Compared to the very miracle of life, everything else would be mediocre.

How you live your life will depend on what you think is important.

A Mennonite won't find Nikola Tesla quite as amazing as someone who lives in Las Vegas.

Some don't care much for Mohammed and his ideas and others are willing to die for them.

You don't have to give birth to recognise what a miracle it is and, after that, nothing else matters.

[Galbally]

Glaswegian;485074 wrote: You're right. A woman's perspective on giving birth lies forever outside my experience as a man. However, I suspect that not all women think that giving birth is the most brilliant thing they can ever do with their life - at least not with regard to every birth they make. For example, I doubt that women who have been completely worn out by childbirth hold the same rosy picture of it as you do. I think that after about ten or more of the little blighters have plopped out of you into this world then the novelty and wonder of being a breeder must start to wear off.

Since we are on the topic of childbirth, koan, I think it is interesting to note that many of the world's greatest thinkers showed no desire to reproduce themselves. For example, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Pascal, Spinoza, Kant, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein never reared families. This would suggest that human reproduction might play a compensatory role in many people's lives. Thus, if you are unable to produce anything of original value - not even a single thought - then you produce children instead. I'm sure you would agree that anyone can produce children - even an idiot can do that. But not everyone can produce the Critique of Pure Reason, can they?


Human beings primary purpose is to reproduce like any other species, and from a strictly biological viewpoint, having a child is the single most important thing that any person will get to do, after all that is the whole purpose behind life itself, the replication of DNA through sucessive generations, and in my experinence people are always happiest when they are doing that which they were designed to do. Of course not everyone has children, and many people are happy not to have them, thats fine to, but giving birth is certainly nothing to be sniffed at. Also, having a great intellect doesn't necessarily result in having a fullfilled and happy life, though of course being clever is not a bad thing in itself. However, intellectualism for the sake of it is a sterile thing, as many great intellectuals have no doubt found out for themselves. We are no more purely intellectual beings than we are purely animals either, and trying to find or save yourself (whatever that means) by just thinking about it, won't work, and never will. Thats my tuppence anyway.

[Ted]

Spot:-6

Good post. No, I don't read the crap that glassyeyes writes but do some of the responses. At least they are intelligent.

Shalom

Ted

[Glaswegian]

Glaswegian wrote: 'accidental collocations of atoms'


I used the above phrase by Bertrand Russell in a eulogy I wrote many years ago about a beautiful movie actress I was once hopelessly in love with. Since the eulogy has some bearing on the argument I made in the OP of this thread let me share it with you. Here's what I wrote about the beautiful movie actress:

To my mind, the actress X. was the most beautiful, intelligent and admirable woman ever to have appeared on the silver screen. Her beauty is absolutely unearthly. By 'unearthly' I mean this: whereas you and I might be nothing more than an accidental collocation of atoms, the actress X.'s beauty is powerfully suggestive of an Intelligent Mind at work in the universe. In other words, a beauty of this incomparable order is surely more than just a 'lucky hit'. In the case of the actress X., if God actually exists then He got this particular creature spectacularly right. So where does this leave the rest of us? Well, let's be honest here and admit the painful truth - next to her we are all just botched efforts.

But here I must make a confession. How I laughed just now on reading that eulogy I composed long ago to the beautiful movie actress! And believe me, my friends, it was a terrible and bitter laughter which passed over my lips. For that little eulogy shows what innocent fools we men are when we are young, doesn't it? In its own small way it stands as incontrovertible proof of how easily the female species can enamour us and take us in. Yes, as young men we are so naive and vulnerable in respect of women that a single glance from them is sufficient to cause our reason to desert us completely. They only have to pout their lips at us in order to induce imminent mental collapse in us, don't they? And just think of the countless times we have pledged our undying love for them simply because they smiled at us. Oh, what tragic fools we men are! But what is most heart-breaking of all is that our dreadful condition of being mere babes in the wood vis-a-vis women only comes to an end when Wisdom finally takes pity on us after years of suffering and cruelty at their hands and teaches us the real truth about them - which is, of course, that they are the most loathsome and dangerous life-form in the universe.

[koan]

Glaswegian;486392 wrote: that they are the most loathsome and dangerous life-form in the universe.


I think, if you look closely at that statement, Wisdom may bless you with some understanding of yourself.

[911]

Glaswegian;486392 wrote: which is, of course, that they are the most loathsome and dangerous life-form in the universe.


Now, pretend I'm six years old again, OK?

"Takes one to know one!"

[Glaswegian]

Galbally;483002 wrote: Would you go along with anything I said in the foregoing extract galbally?

Not really, I understand your points, but I personally find no problem in accepting that bullets, pain, disease, entropy, cruelty, wanton violence, etc. are as natural as love, truth, flowers, moms, apple pies, etc. Any argument that purports to suppose that there is evidence that there is an inbuilt "morality" or scale of "worth" in existence immeadiatly breaks down because (self-evidently) there is none, (other than that which we, as one intelligent species of life, amoung billions of others on one planet orbiting one star amoung trillions of others, choose to arbitrarily provide for the universe we percieve). Thats based simply our own seeming intellectual inability to understand that the universe was not devised on the basis that we would someday come along and give it the "thumbs up", what laughable human arrogance! To suppose, (coming from a species that has lived for a speck of time, on a speck of dirt, in a mundane galaxy) that we can ascertain or quantify some measurable value of moral worth in anything other than the consequenes of our own actions on other members of our species or our planet). Philosophers love such talk, but philosphers place the value of human reason above all else, (a quaint idea). Our own existence is a consequence of the workings of biology and chemistry on this one planet, and our opinions on such matters are of no more consequence than those of fruit flies, pebbles, or neutron stars.

In terms of what I am, I dislike terms regarding ones own belief or disbelief in "God" or the divine, or anything of that nature, as generally any human language breaks down far before we reach the point of discussing such issues, the only really viable one is mathematics, and even that breaks down at the point at which the universe was younger than 1x10-47 seconds old, so before that point (in terms of strict causality) everything is speculation for now.

If I was in a position where I had to use one for the sake of clarity of ideas, I would say somewhere between a pantheist and a deist, in that I believe that the universe in its existence is divine in nature and not merely a random occurence based on the statistical probability that an event such as the creation and existence of our universe (as we percieve it to exist), would happen by strict deterministic reasons, outside for the requirement for any sort of intent. Its actually an open position, because the standard model of physics does decribe to an extreme degree of accuracy how our universe works, but it provides no definite answer whatsoever as to why it actually should, or why the laws of physics as we understand them exist at all, or why mathematics (and not some other concept) so elegantly describes the nature of reality. I am a scientist by training, and undertand intuitively (for some reason) that the universe is a system of matter and energy interacting over what we percieve as time, via a complete and self-enclosed system based on determinism, causality, and discrete sets of integers that represent the nature of the matter and energy involved.

Of course, there are many issues that are still unresolved in physics, very big ones, and especially to my mind the nature of time itself. Despite this, the standard model of physics that we have now, is the only really coherent model that humans have ever developed that describes the nature of the universe accurately to any degree. I am no mystic. However, the fact remains, that despite this, there remains absolutely no clue as to why any of this should be so, again its perfectly valid to say, because it is, and thats enough, I sympathize with that position, I have held it myself, but for reasons that I do not understand I have come to believe that there is meaning in reality, not a human one, but one that exists for its own reasons, and that we are part of, but only a very tiny part.

There are of course various arguments and very valid ones that its nothing more a human need to recognize a divine nature in giving a justifyable cause for anything, but these arguments are in essence as metaphysical as the ones that purport to provide a divine aspect to creation, as there is no evidence for either viewpoint, other than the existence of universe in the first place, and as we do not understand in impirical terms why the universe exists, or what processes (if any) resulted in its coming into being, then it simply is a matter of inclination and perspective as to which postion on that fundamental point any one human being makes.

I do not believe that "God" for want of a better word is omnipresent in the human sense of the concept, because that implys intent, desire and personality in a deity that basically is a discrete and nebulous indivdual, who inhabits this exisentce with is which is basically saying that god is like a human being only far more powerful, that he has some "plan" for us or that he expects us to do one thing or another, and suggests that we or any life have for some reason more importance and significance than the plasma in a star, or the nothingness of the void (which is of course what most of the universe is, i.e. nothing, except spacial dimension in which energy and matter can exist). This is not my perception, God is none of these things, he is simply that which provides a tanscending framework for existence itself, devoid of a desire, conciousness, or meaning that we understand. These religious views of a "God of man" I find generally delusional and self serving for those who hold them as it fulfils something or agenda which they need to be fulfilled. Such a God is actually no God at all, simply a reflection of our own needs and wants in what we see as a cold, harsh universe. Most of our attitudes on such issues are easily explained by the physcology required by inteligent, adaptive primate mammals, living within a biosphere such as we inhabit, of course. However, many of the aspects of our conciousness are not explainable in this way, in fact the exisentence of human conciouness, or its mechanism, has not been explained to any extent, Penrose has attempted this bravely using quantum mechanics, but has not been able to come to any firm conclusions one way or the other in a way that is susceptible to a standard mathematical, or scientific analysis. This perhaps one day will not be the case, at the moment, it is, we do not understand how or why we are concious, we simply and self-evidently are.

I do not believe in a personal god, or the soul, (as its commonly understood), or an afterlife in which we as concious discrete personalities exist, what I believe is that the universe in its workings and existence is simply a reflection of a higher order, transcending our own, of which we in our own tiny way are a valid and meaningful part of, but no more than anything else. My belief in this matter, justfies no political doctrine, social morality, or religious agenda whatsoever. I am cognisant of the fact that this is simply my own belief, pure and simple, with no evidence one way or the other, but of course being a human being with a discrete concious nature provides me with the ability to come to such conclusions based on my own inner nature. And of course being a human being I am also highly fallible, susceptible to self-regard, and prone to wish-fulfillment as everyone else, but the fact remains that it is in my own power to believe that which I choose to (for reasons beyond my intellectual ability to understand), and so I choose to do just that.

Right, you have been so kind as to explain to me what I am, so what would you descibe yourself as glaswegian? And what are your actual beliefs on such matter?


As a scientist, Galbally, you are aware that Science is concerned with the investigation of the physical world, the world of phenomena - the world of appearance, if you like - and that in consequence any knowledge it provides us with is wholly empirical in nature. Science does not seek to provide us with knowledge of a metaphysical realm which might lie beyond the world of appearance since by definition such a world falls outside the scope of its enquiry. Therefore, questions concerning metaphysical stuff like 'God' or the 'soul' or 'transcendent reality' or 'the meaning of the universe' (i.e., why it is as it is) etc. are of no interest to Science because these things literally do not touch upon Science.

You, as a scientist, are aware of this. You are aware that the human mind can only have knowledge of the physical world - the world delivered to us by the senses - and none whatsoever of a meta-physical one. This is because the mind - being organized the way that it is - has no access to non-physical things which supposedly exist outside of sensory experience. Thus, if anything metaphysical can be said to exist at all then it necessarily remains a Great Unknown to us. Now, given the fact that you know that metaphysical claims about the universe cannot be established one way or the other you nevertheless believe that 'the universe in its existence is divine in nature'. I won't ask you why you believe this because you have already offered me an answer. And here I have to take my hat off to you, Galbally, because your answer is refreshingly honest - at least compared to the ones typically given by the Christians and other supernaturalists in this forum. You say that you believe the universe is divine 'for reasons that [you] do not understand' - which is tantamount to saying that you believe it 'intuitively'.

I dare say that you are aware that Kant demonstrated over two centuries ago in the Critique of Pure Reason that human beings have no rational basis for believing metaphysical claims since the faculty of human reason has application only to phenomena or the things of this world and not to noumena or the things-in-themselves which supposedly constitute the mysterious metaphysical world. (Incidentally, this is why the Germans call Kant Der Alleszermalmer - 'the all-destroyer' - because he demolished the rational foundation of metaphysics in its entirety. And why theologians ever since have wanted to crucify him.) Therefore, it doesn't surprise me that you are devoid of any reason for your belief that the universe is divine. But, as Nietzsche once said, why bother about that as long as you don't need to. Eh, Galbally?

[Glaswegian]

Galbally wrote: do you support Celtic or Rangers?


Supporting the Old Firm is a form of depravity I abandoned long ago, Galbally.

[Galbally]

Glaswegian;488398 wrote: As a scientist, Galbally, you are aware that Science is concerned with the investigation of the physical world, the world of phenomena - the world of appearance, if you like - and that in consequence any knowledge it provides us with is wholly empirical in nature. Science does not seek to provide us with knowledge of a metaphysical realm which might lie beyond the world of appearance since by definition such a world falls outside the scope of its enquiry. Therefore, questions concerning metaphysical stuff like 'God' or the 'soul' or 'transcendent reality' or 'the meaning of the universe' (i.e., why it is as it is) etc. are of no interest to Science because these things literally do not touch upon Science.

You, as a scientist, are aware of this. You are aware that the human mind can only have knowledge of the physical world - the world delivered to us by the senses - and none whatsoever of a meta-physical one. This is because the mind - being organized the way that it is - has no access to non-physical things which supposedly exist outside of sensory experience. Thus, if anything metaphysical can be said to exist at all then it necessarily remains a Great Unknown to us. Now, given the fact that you know that metaphysical claims about the universe cannot be established one way or the other you nevertheless believe that 'the universe in its existence is divine in nature'. I won't ask you why you believe this because you have already offered me an answer. And here I have to take my hat off to you, Galbally, because your answer is refreshingly honest - at least compared to the ones typically given by the Christians and other supernaturalists in this forum. You say that you believe the universe is divine 'for reasons that [you] do not understand' - which is tantamount to saying that you believe it 'intuitively'.

I dare say that you are aware that Kant demonstrated over two centuries ago in the Critique of Pure Reason that human beings have no rational basis for believing metaphysical claims since the faculty of human reason has application only to phenomena or the things of this world and not to noumena or the things-in-themselves which supposedly constitute the mysterious metaphysical world. (Incidentally, this is why the Germans call Kant Der Alleszermalmer - 'the all-destroyer' - because he demolished the rational foundation of metaphysics in its entirety. And why theologians ever since have wanted to crucify him.) Therefore, it doesn't surprise me that you are devoid of any reason for your belief that the universe is divine. But, as Nietzsche once said, why bother about that as long as you don't need to. Eh, Galbally?


Yes, you are right, and I think you understand my position. I am aware of Kant's hypothesis and am in agreement with his conclusions, because all the available evidence throughout human history supports this view. It (as Nietzsche implied) merely a conclusion I have come to based purely on intuition and not any intellectual process that I can understand. Being aware that intuition is not all its cracked up to be either (I have no illusions about how simple it is to fool oneself completely), but thats the same for us all, as none of us has a privileged position from which to look at such questions, and for now I am content in my beliefs, though always open to any other idea that I find interesting.

Its fair enough about the old firm, I am really a villa fan, I don't get too worked up about Celtic and Rangers, but you gotta ask the question if you know what I mean.

[Glaswegian]

Galbally;489150 wrote: Yes, you are right, and I think you understand my position. I am aware of Kant's hypothesis and am in agreement with his conclusions, because all the available evidence throughout human history supports this view. It (as Nietzsche implied) merely a conclusion I have come to based purely on intuition and not any intellectual process that I can understand. Being aware that intuition is not all its cracked up to be either (I have no illusions about how simple it is to fool oneself completely), but thats the same for us all, as none of us has a privileged position from which to look at such questions, and for now I am content in my beliefs, though always open to any other idea that I find interesting.


Salute, Galbally!

It's nice to know that amongst the mad profusion of poisonous plants and weeds which grow in the Forum Garden one can find a shamrock of sanity.

[Glaswegian]

Glaswegian;488398 wrote: Kant demonstrated over two centuries ago in the Critique of Pure Reason that human beings have no rational basis for believing metaphysical claims


This is why debating with religious believers is always problematic. Religious believers haven't reasoned themselves into their beliefs. Religious beliefs are not based on reason. They are based on emotions, feelings, sentiments, needs, wishes, yearnings, longings, etc. Trying to reason with these things is like trying to reason with toothache or hunger or sexual desire. Such things are not amenable to reason.

[Glaswegian]

Diuretic;489943 wrote: I read that religious beliefs might be in response to the way our brains work.


I have a rival theory which is much more interesting. My theory is that religious beliefs are a response to the way our bowels work. If you're a good boy and eat a bowl of bran every day, Diuretic, then I might share my theory with you some time....

[Glaswegian]

911;481804 wrote: We chose to be the way we are.


When you say that 'we chose to be the way that we are', 911, you are correct up to a point. However, I think you need to appreciate the extent to which the so-called 'individual' self of each one of us has been fashioned by the particular culture in which we are immersed. I tend to see the self as largely the product of culture - i.e., a society's entire way of life - and language as being the primary instrument or channel whereby culture accomplishes this.

I would argue that language goes right to the heart of our understanding of the self. This is because our experience of ourselves (and other selves) is language-formed in its entirety. We can only become aware of our inner experience of the self by projecting language onto it. Language 'lights it up' for us. Therefore, even those aspects of the self which we think of as autonomous, independent and peculiarly our 'own' - viz. cognitions, motivations, memories, feelings, emotions, moods, hopes, fears, etc. - require language in order to come into being for us, which is to say, that public system of meanings, representations and symbols which society has built up for us. And this public system of meanings, representations and symbols pre-exists us - we had no choice or role in its construction. Because the language system that we use is not a transparent medium but has set ways of understanding, representing and imagining the self already encoded within it this means that we should think of ourselves as being more society's creation than our own. Thus, the creation of the meanings encoded in language is not a private or individual affair but a social process: and since we make sense of our self and experience in terms of such meanings social process will necessarily shape and inform how we construe the self and the nature of our experience.

[Glaswegian]

koan;483593 wrote: As is often the case, the thing we want most is readily at our fingertips but somehow we manage to grasp everything except that which we seek until the only thing left to grasp is the thing we were looking for.

I also believe this is how people find God.
I have to congratulate you, koan, on your ability to write that without throwing up. I mean it is so sickeningly saccharine, isn't it? It is the sort of inane drivel one hears from a tenth-rate agony aunt on daytime television or from a frumpy bride of Christ. It is the sort of rhubarb which Mother Teresa used to snore at night. But it's okay - I don't despair. I still have absolute faith in you. I know that you have the intelligence and strength of character to escape from the maelstrom of mystical nonsense in which you flounder: I know that you can swim out from the deadly centre of this swirling vortex of fantasy and unreality which threatens to suck you down into its abominable depths and the most terrible mental disintegration imaginable. I know that you can make it here to the Shore of Reason - where I always stand rooting for you.

[koan]

Glaswegian;492020 wrote: I have to congratulate you, koan, on your ability to write that without throwing up. I mean it is so sickeningly saccharine, isn't it? It is the sort of inane drivel one hears from a tenth-rate agony aunt on daytime television or from a frumpy bride of Christ. It is the sort of rhubarb which Mother Teresa used to snore at night. But it's okay - I don't despair. I still have absolute faith in you. I know that you have the intelligence and strength of character to escape from the maelstrom of mystical nonsense in which you flounder: I know that you can swim out from the deadly centre of this swirling vortex of fantasy and unreality which threatens to suck you down into its abominable depths and the most terrible mental disintegration imaginable. I know that you can make it here to the Shore of Reason - where I always stand rooting for you.


One must wonder why I am perfectly content to let you continue with your beliefs yet you seem so aggressively set on altering mine? Contentment is a sign of inner peace. Your nausea is real but you have misplaced the source.