BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Peter T.
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 10:33 AM

Not only that, but there is no agreement as to what would count as empirical evidence.

(Woody Allen: "I'm not asking for any great miracles. I would even settle for Uncle Mischa picking up a check occasionally.")

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 10:48 AM

That's right, Peter. There isn't. Actually, there can't be, because spiritual things are, by definition, things that are happening "in spirit", not here in this dimension of existence. ;-) That is, they are presumed to be happening outside the parameters of this physical reality in which we seek and find empirical evidence. Although spiritual events may be observable in some way by various individuals, there is probably no way of assembling any empirical evidence, as it would be considered simply anecdotal evidence..."hearsay".

There have been some interesting instances of apparent ghostly phenomena that have shown up in photographs or on security cameras. I've seen some of that. That is evidence of something all right, but it's hard to say of exactly what... At any rate, it's not evidence of "God". At least I wouldn't think so. ;-)

There might well be ghosts, after all...and still be no God.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Peter T.
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 11:18 AM

The evidentiary problem is made even more complicated by what the "spirit" is being asked to accomplish (Kant and Schopenhauer worked on this for many years). God has to at the same time create the incomparably vast universe of billions of galaxies, somehow isn't responsible for any evil in the universe, but cares intimately about whether my sister is going to be cured of her cancer.   Even the "spirit" is going to have to work really, really hard to do all of this by, let's say, this time tomorrow.


yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 11:43 AM

Darned right, Peter! ;-) That's a very anthropomorphic "God" you are describing there.

When we use terms like "good" or "evil", though, we are dealing in wholly subjective values strictly from our own point of view. Is it good when a squirrel is caught and killed by a marten? It's very "bad" from the squirrel's point of view, and the marten would appear to be "evil" from the perspective of the squirrel. It's very good from the marten's point of view, as he needs to eat. The marten would regard it as absurd that his actions should be termed "evil".

We humans are the same. When a CIA operative or a Taliban member tortures a prisoner, he thinks it's a "good" thing to do, because he thinks he's protecting America or defending Islam or something along that line. The prisoner, however, thinks it's a horribly evil thing to do, and so would anyone else who was in the prisoner's position.

That's how we assess "good" and "evil". "Good" means something beneficial...to us. "Evil" means something harmful...to us. But what about the other guy?

Is it good or evil to kill a cow and eat it? Is it good or evil to spank your child? Is it good or evil to fight a war? Is it good or evil to execute a murderer?

It's both! ;-) ...entirely depending on your own personal perspective in that situation.

If there is a God then wouldn't there also be some Divine viewpoint at that level of consciousness that completely transcends our subjective views on matters such as "good" and "evil"? Perhaps there is no good or evil ultimately...but there just is what is, period.

People work out their many ideas of good and evil and they incorporate them into their various cultures in order to sort out what to do and what not to do. The human mind needs some order and some "rules" so that it can make daily decisions. This is what people do...it doesn't necessarily mean that "God" would do the same thing. God may be fully at peace and in harmony with ALL of what we term "good and evil".

If so, it would be a very big disappointment to those who wish to see "the evil" punished and damned, wouldn't it? ;-)

To think that God has to accomplish anything is to assume that God is apart from "his" (or her) (or its) accomplishment. That may in itself be a faulty assumption. After all, how can what is infinite be apart from anything?

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Peter T.
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 12:55 PM

Kant argues that all human beings have some transcendent moral imperatives that imply -- and perhaps more strongly require -- some transcendance of some kind. The pressure of those imperatives on our conduct -- not necessarily the same in detail in all cultures -- is the puzzle.

Sociobiologists have a different set of answers to the same question.....

(and then of course there's beauty.......)

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 02:24 PM

Kant may well be right. I'd certainly like to think he is. Most humans are indeed aware of beauty, whether it is architectural beauty, physical beauty, the beauty of a pastoral scene, etc...they're aware of it as a concept they can relate to, and that's quite interesting. I wonder if animals are aware of beauty? And if not, then why are humans aware of it? Is there a divine spark of intelligence in humanity that links every human being to a much greater source of awareness? Again, I'd certainly like to think there is. I suspect that there is. I cannot prove that there is.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Peter T.
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 03:07 PM

A nice little discussion on this point at Lost Borders --

"Darwin wrote that he "sometimes felt much difficulty in understanding" why species have some traits that seem unnecessary for their survival. Unimportant organs were an example of such traits. Even more difficult to understand than unnecessary organs was beauty, superfluous beauty. Some naturalists in Darwin's time questioned the adequacy of natural selection to explain the origin of the species because it did not seem able to account for beauty. Darwin wrote, "They believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety." Darwin considered their argument that beauty had its own reason, a separate reason from the preservation of life, to be a serious problem for his own argument that natural selection accounts for the origin of the species. The stakes in this dispute were high. They still are. In his words, "This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory."

Darwin argued that unnecessary organs and traits that are merely beautiful were once necessary for the survival of progenitors and had been inherited by the descendent species even though they were no longer necessary for survival. He argued that natural selection would have eliminated these traits if they caused harm to the descendent species, but would not necessarily have eliminated them if they caused no harm.

A final conclusion about such things seems beyond the reach of science.

Much remains at stake here. Beauty remains potentially fatal to Darwin's argument. If beauty is superfluous to survival, and yet exists, then perhaps God not natural selection was, after all, responsible for the origin of the species."

Well, hardly fatal. There are other beauties than organic beauties to contend with....

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 03:46 PM

Peter, you have hit on precisely what troubles me about Darwin's Theory. I think it's partly right. I think it's probably right as far as it goes, but that it simply doesn't go far enough. I do not think evolution is entirely or solely about survival issues (natural selection being based on survival issues), I think it's about a number of things and that survivability of a lifeform is just one of them. I think there are other ideals of perfection embodied in Nature as well as the prosaic issues of survival.

I think it's a reflection of a highly intelligent process which is concerned about considerably more than mere survival.

If you convince humans that they are products of mere "natural selection", you have, in effect, robbed them of believing in any higher purpose. You might as well rob them of their hearts and their souls. You might as well rob them of all poetry and nobility and beauty and romance. You might as well convince them they are no more valuable than dirt, and that nothing they do ultimately matters. It's unthinkable to me to do that to people. (and I don't think for a moment that Darwin intended to do that, by the way, but I think the widespread exclusive adoption of his theory has unwittingly helped to do that subliminally to modern humans) We have lost much of our idealism in the modern age, and we have produced horrible things which would have been unthinkable not too long ago.   As with Communist theory, it doesn't bode well for the psychology of a people when you succeed in convincing them that man lives "by bread alone" and that their place in life is just a meaningless end result of nothing else than a natural survival process.

You have taken something away from people when you do that...something noble, something beautiful. You don't need a concept of a "God" to have that something in your life, but you need to believe that your life is about higher ideals of some kind, not just survival.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Peter T.
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 08:42 PM

Well, I suppose you could argue that it is amazing that nature -- natural selection -- ended up producing consciousness (Hans Jonas, the eminent German philosopher argued this way). I personally think that nature and natural selection are much weirder than we think -- for example, scientists are currently enthralled with horizontal selection (a lot of species seem to hybridize in ways that really, really complicate the purity of standard selection).   We know almost nothing about nature when you really study it.

Beauty is odd -- hard to think of it as completely delusional -- and then there is mathematics. Mathematics is just so strange. That is even beforfe we get into quantum physics.

The two simplest things in the universe are completely inexplicable: time and space.

So any discussion is really presumptuous.....

yours ever,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 09:11 PM

Yes, I agree. It is presumptuous unless you admit to yourself at the start that you simply don't know, and probably never will...and then you explore various possibilities with that degree of humility. I agree that we know very little as yet about Nature. My own guess...and that's all it is...is that consciousness didn't arise out of Nature (which would indeed be amazing...extraordinary!), but that Nature arose out of consciousness. I think consciousness comes first...then come all the various manifestations that arise out of it. I think the Universe is entirely built of consciousness, projected into forms and structures of various kinds...rather as a movie is projected onto a screen. Our dimension of time and space is like the screen, and everything that appears here is like the movie.

This does not mean that I think an anthropomorphic God figure made the world in 7 days. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Peter T.
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 03:00 AM

In case it interests you, you are a Yogacara Buddhist.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 12:44 PM

Really? Dang! I didn't know I was... ;-) Thanks for telling me.

I'm going to go look it up and do some reading.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Stringsinger
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 06:48 PM

God is not beautiful. Darwin is. Darwin was a great appreciator of beauty and Evolution is really beautiful when you think about it. He made some reference to peacock feathers being beautiful but not for survival but this doesn't mean he didn't appreciate beauty.

Consciousness comes from the brain, not some external mist. The knowledge we receive in our observation of nature comes from the brain, not some cosmic weird "consciousness".

Not to discuss what we know is presumptuous because this is what is in our genetic code.
Communication is a constant for our species. The sharing of ideas gives our lives meaning.

The idea that no one can know anything is ridiculous. We can know parts of anything very well as science has taught us. We have learned quite a lot about nature. The information about it is being discovered every day and is not in some quizzical void.

Evolution is a process but not always even.

Higher purpose doesn't come from the denigration of Evolution. In fact, Evolution insists on a higher purpose. Survival is beautiful. It is life and that needs no other higher purpose.

Sociobiologists have been misinterpreted by those who really don't understand it.
It's been given a deterministic label which it never purported to espouse.

Idealism in the modern age has been replaced by a more genuine understanding of our world. The idealism of the past was vague by comparison and embraced much violence and prejudice.

Darwin started with a viewpoint closer to creationism and as he studied, he changed.

Actually, agnosticism and atheism are just labels for degree of non-belief. Somehow, it's more fashionable today to declare agnosticism (which really is an admission of ignorance).
Atheism is not ignorance with the issue. It simply states that until valid proof exists that there is a god, then it means unbelief. (That simple). It's really hard to know what label Darwin put upon himself for what reason but it must be stated that he came from a theological point-of-view. I'm sure that he was conflicted on this issue.

The teleological argument about a divine creator and an ontological argument about the existence of a "soul" are easily disputed. The cosmological argument can never be finally brought to any conclusion.

Any claim of an intervention or cause of Evolution by a god has not been tested and is purely wishful thinking. Evolution flies in the face of a designer god. Many "mistakes" are made in Evolution and if it were designed, the designer would have had to been mad.

Mark Twain said it best. "Faith is believing in something you know ain't so".

Stringsinger

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 10:47 PM

Ah, quotations!


"Man is a credulous animal and must believe something. In the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."      
Bertrand Russell


"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned."

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 10:49 PM

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned."

Whoever wrote that never studied Talmud.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 10:50 PM

"Theology is the finding of bad reasons for things we are going to believe anyway" G E Moore

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 11:04 PM

Strinsinger - Did I suggest that Darwin didn't appreciate beauty? I'm sure he appreciated it as much as most people do, and more than many do. You ain't gettin' my drift at all, son. ;-) I already know for sure that life is about far more than survival. It's about many things, and survival is just one of them. There are situations where death in the service of others or of a worthy ideal is a far nobler thing than mere survival, and people have always known that. That's why they have heroes like the men at the Alamo or a million other examples of that sort of thing. Even animals will do that, and they will do it for LOVE. Dogs have given their lives in the defence of those they loved. If they were thinking only of survival, they would run away and save themselves.

I put it to you that life is about LOVE more than it is about anything else at all...and I am not talkin' boy-girl romance when I say LOVE, I'm talking about caring for someone else to the point that you will defend them no matter what the cost is to you if the need is truly there. One can also love one's country that way...or one's military unit...or one's friend or children or family...or one's pet. If it's real love, then you will sacrifice on their behalf. If it's not...well, then you'll mainly think just of your own survival.

Mark Twain, by the way, changed his opinion of faith after he spent nine years studying the life of Joan of Arc. You should read his biography of her...you'd be very surprised.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 07:16 AM

Twain's essay on Joan is one of the greatest things he ever wrote -- that she was the most extraordinary human being ever. Curiously enough, given this discussion, the whole point of the essay is that the environment around her was of absolutely no importance.   She just erupted out of this pig-ridden village and at seventeen commanded the armies of France. Completely inexplicable: except for one thing.....She talked to God and the angels all the time.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 11:54 AM

I think it is the greatest thing he ever wrote, Peter, although that's debatable, of course, but Twain himself said that for him it was more important than any other book he wrote...and that he worked much harder to write it. The others, essentially, were just written off the top of his head. In the case of Joan he had to do many years of research before he even commenced on the book.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 01:30 PM

This is the essay (not the bigger book):

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/stj05003.htm

It's the sort of essay that makes you want to rush around the room with your head on fire....

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Feb 09 - 02:07 PM

Thanks for the link to the essay. It was the longer book I was speaking of...but either way, Twain's writing is absolutely inspired.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 09 - 03:45 PM

Consciousness comes from the brain?

More like it comes from everything from quantum fluctuations to gigantic colliding branes. The brain is just a storage, sensory receptor and activating system with a plethora of feedback loops and evolved systems that have proved most successful for survival.

Ah if only Charlie could see the genome proofs for his theory today.

Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!!
From: DMcG
Date: 19 Feb 09 - 05:42 AM

Perhaps he might like to talk to Dr Aric Sigman about it. This doctor is reported to claim "a lack of face-to-face networking could alter the way genes work". Hmmm. I wonder how that happens.