stevengharms

Some quasi-revolutionary thinking in a place where revolutionary thinking is rarely found:

He [Brother Consolmagno] described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.

Brother Consolmagno is entirely correct. The human mind has sought to apply reason and narrative to the disorder of our world of experience since the very first humans. First we attributed the creation myths and the “why does X happen” myths to mysterious forces. We then structure those forces to have relationships to one another (The goddess of wisdom erupted whole and unborn outside of the ruler-god, etc.)

Ultimately a revolution happened in Greece a few millennia ago, these paltry explanations were set aside for the love of wisdom: philosophia.

I like to imagine it was the work of Xenophanes that undermined this “story-telling” as explanation of phenomena:

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blockquote>“Mortals fancy that gods are born, and wear clothes, and have voice and form like themselves. Yet if oxen and lions had hands, and could paint and fashion images as men do, they would make the pictures and images of their gods in their own likenesses; horses would make them like horses, oxen like oxen. Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; Thracians give theirs blue eyes and red hair.” (from Diogenes Laertes “Xenophanes,” iii.)

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Christianity, for many years, seemed to be at peace with a transcendent God. Yet the plausability of evolution chafes at them (why should you care, if you have faith, ask I) so they posit this nonsense called Creationism. Creationism goes back to making the Christian God a “maker god” not much different than Zeus. I don’t think that’s progress for the religion.

“Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.” — Leonhard Euler

I find this a very interesting attitude for a mathmatician. Why is this?

Let us ask first, what is a mathematician? A mathematician is a person who practices the study of mathmatics.

Well, bully for us. Gold stars all around.

Let us then ask, philosophically: What is mathematics?

Mathematics is the notational system that provides for the representation of

• nouns (“Train leaving boston”, “Acceleration”)

and

• operations (“Addition [ or “+ ], subtraction [ or ”-“ ]

On this definition we can understand statements such as “F = M*A” as meaning: “the noun force results from the performance of the multiplication operation on the noun mass and the noun acceleration”. It may hard to see this with something as “simple” as multiplication of division, but with say, the quadratic formula it becomes a bit more clear. There are nouns, and a complex operation is performed on those nouns to produce product (or products).

But there is one more point that we are missing. Mathematics provides lastly a codex of legal operations that may be made. For example it is an “illegal operation” to attempt to divide 1 by zero”.

So now we know what mathematics is:

Mathematics is a tome that contains rules for valid “statements”, a vocabulary which describes nouns, and a vocabulary that describes operations applicable to nouns.

A mathematician could take one of two stances on the relationship of this notational / behavioral discipline:

1. Math, or the symbolic system that expresses phenomena and rules for manipulating said symbols, shares a common parent with the phenomena themselves. Thus by the same necessary existence of phenomena, so must come the ruleset for describing said phonemena.

   I shall call this view: Mathematics is strong or “Mathematics is necessarily real, and necessarily maps to phenomena”

2. The alternate view would be the one anecdotally introduced to me by my second astronomy teacher my Spring semester: “Do you think that (such and such science) is real? Or are its rules sufficiently permissive / so elastic such that they just happen to map to the phenomena we see around us? “

   I shall call this view: Mathematics is weak or “Mathematics has no inherent bond to phenomena and is essentially, a trivial game - no different than sudoku - that describes a set of symbols, a rule for valid ‘setups’ that has, for some strange reason, a large number of participants in said delusion

Euler seems to have taken the second view, which would be the view of Kant as well. There is a world which we experience, a world of phenomena, whose behavior, with research, would appear predictable and knowable. Euler would take that view and expand it to say, that those knowable and predictable phenomena could be described by the discipline of mathmatics; yet he complicates this phenomenological view by asserting that that’s not good enough. He then claims that while math may seem sufficiently accurate it, well, only seems accurate.

There could be a mysterious world, Euler’s quote would have us believe, a noumenal world in Kant’s parlance, where that mapping may not in fact be true. Thus in the noumenal world “2+3 =6” or “a square has 600 sides” is possible, but in our world, the world of phenomena, we would only ever experience the exceedingly compelling notion that “2+2=4”.

Why did Euler feel the need to posit this invisible realm? Was it the only way for this minister’s son to give his faith a loophole in which to escape as the body of human knowledge increased exponentially (math geek pun intended)? It’s baffling to me that one of the most brilliant mathematicians of all time invented this world, for no necessary purpose.

Kant theorized that God experienced the noumenal world. He could see the 600-sided square and the thing we experienced as a red chair in the phenomenal world was truly a zebra-patterened hammock in the noumenal world.

It was while I was thinking about this that I noticed another Wikiquote:

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” — Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

I always think of the noumenal world as a world behind a wax-paper wall (like japanese shoji but with translucent cellophane versus rice-paper). The good book would have us believe that the noumenal world, where He (as by virtue of being of the same substance as the Father) dwells, is inside of us.

Yet when we think, we think in the world of phenomena. How can we think without thinking? How do we know without reference to the phenomenal world of our experience? It’s a Zen koan again.

I suppose that’s appropriate, when we consider the work of the mathmetician and the work of the mystic against one another we wind up at insolubles.

The only solution is gnosis: radical imparting of the knowledge. A sacred teaching that, instead of writing to our phenomenally-oriented mind, imprint itself into our noumenal connection: our souls. Is it possible to “know” with the soul? To pass through reason and language unfiltered?

Euler seems to think that his work was but an enrichment of the silly symbological game - while he was hunting for that most elusive teaching. The teaching of Solomon, the wisdom beyond wisdom: the fountain of youth, the manna of God, the holy grail, the Great Teaching, the sorcerer’s stone. The gnosis knowledge that turns lead to gold and expugates sin itself.

Yeshua tells us it’s within. Others tell us it’s without. I think i’ll side with the mystic and gnostic Yeshua and the Gnostic Judas. There’s a gnosis for that teaching - why has Christianity foresaken that path?

Original Caption: Pakistani donkey owners take part in rally to condemn the publication of cartoons depicting Prophet in Karachi, Pakistan.

Dear Fundamentalist World,

Western Liberal Society

“There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.” André Malraux (1901-1976) MAN’S FATE

Many people consider that the reason murder is so wrong is because you have deprived another being of all the potential in their future.

Others feel that because a person has dependents, murdering someone causes a web of damage throughout the community.

Both of these assertions lie at the heart of the liberal understanding of jurisprudence as pertains to homocide.

But to see a dependent in the arms of the man you kill, to realize you will unalterably change their future, and to do it anyway - for no good reason.

[LINK]

Then, my friend, what use has a society of one such as this? None, hislife should be forefit: jail or death penalty, whichever is cheaper for the tax payer and more painful for you.

That said, I’m anti-death penalty in this world, but I’m pro-death-penalty in the Platonic world, where evidence is complete, and the enacting of the penalty is not enmired in our process - yes all that despite my “liberal” views on most things.

This evening I was in downtown MV and headed by the half-price bookstore, Book Buyers. While retrieving my bag from the counter (they didn’t have what I wanted) a harried woman came up behind me.

She was having trouble locating the philosophy section and asked for a book by “Eee-manuel Can’t. K-A-N-T. I’m looking for it and I can’t find it.”.

I had to restrain myself on two counts:

1. She can’t find a book by Kant. h0 h0 h0! Being a bit harried I’m sure she wouldn’t have appreciated it.
2. Butting in and asking which work she was looking for and trying to be of assistance.

A quick aside, I don’t mean to be snobby about her pronounciation, it’s probably a strange effect of my mutated head that I can’t conceieve of not saying it “Eye-manu-el Cahnt”.

In any case, the young lady behind the counter offered some directions and the harried lady shot off towards an uncertain fate searching for some Enlightenment-era Enlightenment from the Professor of K?nigsburg. I had to wonder what sort of maddening urge would drive a person to come in, so harried, in pursuit of a Critique (or two).

In light of current research [LINK] it appears that 666 is not actually the number of the beast, it’s 616.

Often when discussing the Bible with my father I took the position something like this:

What’s so special about that book? It’s a collection of folk tales that happened to get on the most powerful broadcast medium of its day (the Roman news network). Had the Apache been in Judea, it might be in The Great Sprit we Trust. Pretty much every tribe has written a story about how they were the first, most beloved by God, deserve to have the good land, etc. What’s so special about the tribe of Israel? I mean the Bible was assembled by men at a conference, it’s not like *poof* a big hunk of scrolls dropped from the sky. Most of the books weren’t written at the time the people involved in the stories lived. And the extent of writing by the most focal character in the New Testament seems to have circles in the dust! [which I actually sorta like, but that’s a discussion for another day]”

My Dad would counter that one would have to believe that the book were assembled under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That instead of this conference being a boondoggle to go to Nicea and hang with similarly-minded people (I doubt the modus operandi of conference attendees has changed much in the last dozen centuries), this conference was different thanks to the unseen hand of the Spiritus Sancti.

This recent discovery would seem to undermine my Dad’s position.

Dad’s position can be logically expressed as:

“The assemblage of all text produced at the Council of Nicea is known today as the Bible.”

“For all texts selected at the Council of Nicea it was done under the guidance of the Holy Sprit”

“For all objects, if it is produced under the guidance of the Holy Spirit it is perfect.”

“For all objects, if it is perfect, it is true.”

Now, the news of the day is:

“There exists a fact in the Bible that is wrong.”

And we come to the uncomfortable position that either the Holy Sprit allowed man to be deceived or that there’s no good reason to believe that the Bible is flawless. This, of course, is nothing new to philosophers who recognize this as a permutation of The Problem of Evil.

Now the question as to whether God (i.e. the Holy Sprit) would allow man to be decieved is at the heart of Descartes’ meditations. Descartes loved God so much that he couldn’t allow God to be a deceiver (ironically enough, he had to obfuscate this position because he was afraid the Catholic Church would burn him for saying there was something God couldn’t do). I’m willing to side with Descartes on this one, anything worthy of the apellation “God” doesn’t go around like the petty Olympian Gods machinating to fool mortals.

By my own setup above, that means I have to accept my position that the Bible is a dusty book of folk tales, inspirational stories, tribal wisdom, tribal chauvanisms and propaganda (“Israel is the best! You get here, we’ll do the rest! Beat Nineveh for the Homecoming Game!”), and the story of a remarkably benevolent man who claimed to be the actual son of God and was nailed to a tree (thanks Douglas Adams!) for being a traitor to the empire.

I hasten to add that I’m not advocating the wholesale discarding of this book. For one thing it’s too culturally significant, it defines what it is to be Western in many ways. Secondarily, the power and comfort people find in this book is in no way lessened due to the fact that it wasn’t flawlessly assembled. Mankind evolves his relationship to his diety(ies) every day he continues existing [1]. That that relationship should evolve in custom, speech, practice and text is perfectly appropriate!

Nevertheless I think we stand at a new era of religion. The Protestants got rid of the the excessive and bloated machinery of the Pope’s fleet of intercessors in favor of the printed word’s relation with the worshipper. In the maw of Naturalism the Catholics reach for The Virgin as intercessor. In the maw of Naturalism the Protestants (best captured in American literature esp. Nathaniel Hawthorne) reached for The Word itself. This begat an unholy and unhealthy logocentrism - an overimportance of the words and the sentences themselves. It’s no accident that the study of structuralist philosophy began in divinity schools as the pious sought to wrench every bit of understanding out of the sentences themselves (i.e. Schliermacher).

But if the book is just as I’ve said it is, a dusty book, and the fascination with the words therein an obfuscation of the essence of its content, just as the machinery of the Catholic institutions obfuscated the spiritual content of the religion according to the Reformation, then what I’m proposing is something akin to a “second reformation.”

We could get rid of our obsession with words (logocentrism) and get back to a primary spiritualism (that certainly would be welcome in the form of a Christian variety of course!) that is faith plus nothing in pursuit of gnosis.

When people can’t rabidly attach themselves and their logocentrism to dusty books, fundamentalism suffers (John Ashcroft and Osama bin Laden, watch out), and the spirituality that’s at the heart of religion blossoms again within each practitioner. It could be a religious renaissance, an 1800 year detour righted. In this sense The US Constitution is superior to the Bible; by being a series of principles it guides by generality and rules by its spirit. Dusty old book religions guide by the particular and (largely) hide the higher spiritual law of the actual practice.

Now I’ve taken Christianity to task a bit in this posting so let me clarify a few points. Far from the destruction of the Christian religion, I’m advocating a purification and a rebirth. When we’re no longer slaves to the social customs of the religion (selling of indulgences, papal courts) or the logocentric fascination-unto-distraction of the text (post-Reformation), we’re able to return to what spirituality is about: transcendence, communion, growth, and the flourishing of the human spirit.

We can be free and closer to God, if we want.

Update: I realize that, reading this, one could think that my father is a dogmatic sort of fellow. In fact he absolutely is not. He never asserted this position as a “that is the way it is” he asserted this position as a Jehova’s advocate to my line of reasoning.

Incidentally, the church knows well the stakes of making something that can be materially disproved part of their “one and only eternal truth.” This is why the stakes were so high for Giodarno Bruno (burnt by the Church for dogma’s sake), Galileo, and Copernicus.

The church had, as part of its one true, eternal, immutable teachings taught that the Earth was the center of the universe. When the heliocentrists espoused their view (backed by observation) the Church realized that this questioning might not have an end. If the material content of the bedrock book of the church can be held dubious, where does the questioning end?

Footnotes: 1. Aldous Huxley amusingly described this “We create our gods, our gods then exist outside of us, but yet we make them move” phenomenon by having the scarecrows in the fields in Island be made to be look like dieties. The image and story of the Buddha / the Christ / the X is a product of mankind, thus we “create” the god; then that story achieves immortality and the tellers die, and thus the god becomes immortal; yet it is human attribution that makes the gods move and act, so even now that the story surpasses the teller, it’s only by our attribution of activity to a god that it actually lives.

This phenomenon is something that the Greeks realized early. It would be a fruitful area of research as graduate work and is what I referred to in this previous post.

Here’s a listing of some commonly used dirty rhetorical tricks — and a list of how to counter them!

[ LINK ]

Derrida was one of the lit-crit, Post-structuralist philosophy icons landmarks that defined English programs from the 80s to the present day.

Derrida was consistently interested in finding out where what we see of the world came from. What are the filters that pre-evaluate our data for us? There are a whole lot of ivory tower buzzwords associated with Jacques and his interest but I’ll not play party to toying up my own pedantic sycophantic philo/lit-crit snob reputation by using them here. [Wikipedia Entry]

Derrida, as he expresses in his biography/documentary, Derrida, became interested in how people see the world through filters as an French child growing up in Algeria. It was his countrymen’s brutal occupation and racism that pushed him to consider and re-consider how people think not at the psychological level or the neuroscientific level, but as manipulators of symbols of communication.

What is the power of a racial slur? What does this building say about our culture (an extension of Foucault), etc.

One of the great pleasures I had in my education was hearing Dr. Louis Mackey (star of several Richard Linklater films) lecture on the moral systems of the the deconstructionist school viz. Kirkergaard’s conception of morality (i.e. the battle between “the ethical” and “the aesthetic”).

{ Aside: Alasdair McIntyre of Notre Dame once said something I’ll never forget: The choice between the ethical and the asthetic is not the choice between good and evil, it is, rather, the choice as to whether or not to view the world in terms of good and evil }

The last thing is that he was a philosophical rascal! Too ofter the post-modern crown are people with edgy glasses and turtle necks (Outfits by Steve Jobs) and don’t seem to be able to laugh at their discipline. Ed Allaire once said about philosophy: “The car’s been broke for 3000 years and yet everyone keeps working on it!” Derrida never got so caught up. When people he was arguing with would start to take their position too seriously, he would enter jester mode and break up their puffed-up positions.

An example is, when in an argument with Searle about signification, Searle had done some copyright voodoo to prevent citation of a piece of text. Derrida then took the copyright notice itself, and applied his theory to it. He does this in the book Limited Inc.

He was a real fun read. Farewell!

HAL: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.