tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post1098222805654333685..comments2023-09-25T04:26:51.568-06:00Comments on The Barefoot Bum: Atheism, theism and moralityLarry Hamelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-62445497736701628022007-06-03T12:28:00.000-06:002007-06-03T12:28:00.000-06:00ALSO (Sorry, I AM a chatterbox!), I am not so sure...ALSO (Sorry, I AM a chatterbox!), I am not so sure about the 'usual' benignity of any of this phantastical stuff, including science -- sooner-or-later, the botched & power-maddened will do evil, with whatever falls into their hands.<BR/><BR/>AND, To the extent this all is natural, including ALL of the religions and our styrofoam litter in the ditches, this all being Nature, then when Nature 'decides on' tsunamis, asteroids or more wars (we 'think' we are so in chaarge), well, in any case then we ARE fucked & far from home (at least on the molecular scale).Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-71894774205562008212007-06-03T12:17:00.000-06:002007-06-03T12:17:00.000-06:00I Think the problem here is with the still-establi...I Think the problem here is with the still-established use of 'objective' and 'subjective'.<BR/><BR/>THESE Are hallowed by cartesian thought, notably, and they have their value in situ.<BR/><BR/>HOWEVER To-day, of course, whatever the source of the stimulus, whether on the molecular scale or on the electronic, we know more clearly, I think, that the stimulus produces effects which animals such as ourselves perceive in the cortex and its efflative 'mind'.<BR/><BR/>THE Preferred response-path, as a corollary, is a function of conditioning:<BR/><BR/>ONE Can extravert the response, especially if one is a categorical or feeling type, and assign value (sic) & throw bombs (atomic or terrorist).<BR/><BR/>MANY Are vulnerable to this temperamental weakness, whether employed directly in religion or one of the contemporary post-transcendant surrogates ('science', eg, or ... public multicultural-adminstration):<BR/><BR/>HENCE, The Edward Tellers and G W Bushs.<BR/><BR/>AND That is fine as far as it goes -- firemen should not be poets, goes the saying. Nor repressed pervs President, but that is another fish-kettle!<BR/><BR/>ON The other hand one can /intravert/ their response -- unfortunately, educational extraversion and a stubborn clinging-on to the priority of the molecular and 'public' means that education for introversion and 'conscious' subjectivity is virtually non-existent. It follows that people who were meant by 'God' and nurture -- Nature, in other words -- for introverted work, because of the universal egotism & desire to be the big bug, instead all-too-often fall into the public shadow and become a lot of inferior extraverts:<BR/><BR/>HENCE, On a continuum to be sure, the murderous bin Ladins -- and merely-shrill Dawkinses.<BR/><BR/>OBJECTIVE & Subjective categories in other words are so 'interactive', mutually dependent, and no-longer for good-or-ill hermetically sealed off in our cultural set-up, that their heuristic value dwindles even as their epistemological use persists.<BR/><BR/>AGAIN, The problem of creativity is no ones 'fault' & I daresay the many of our woes are from lack of imagination & real phantasy, rather than any efflorescence of these.<BR/><BR/>ANOTHER Difficulty of wishful thinking (sic), at least for those who are not very good at it, is that when the non-wishful are asked to say something about what is phantasy, they tend to say it is 'nothing but' a load of sentimental jacking-off [/wanking/, eg -- NB UK-readers -- BW], or else mahometan screwballs, or porno or something. <BR/><BR/>THIS Again is a problem of education. <BR/><BR/>ALAS, To-day, such a large majority are fobbed-off for leisure and what is supposed to be 're-creation' with sex, drugs & rock-and-roll in our set-up, or (for the really non-sexual) phantasies of unlimited social betterment (all of which feature coercion), that the comparative /imaginal/ poverty of the 21st century post-modern scientific thinker, as opposed to his 13th century mahometan or alchemical counter-part, is not to be wondered at. <BR/><BR/>IN Sum, then , unexamined use of 'objective' and 'subjective' to-day are become, precisely, hopeful forms of apotropaism which less-and-less serve to keep away the boogiemen! This all is a result of our one-sidedness, so hard indeed to identify to ourselves, so fatal to ageing historical systems.Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-46199888115091297372007-06-03T09:23:00.000-06:002007-06-03T09:23:00.000-06:00There is nothing wrong with fantasy, and hope, fic...There is nothing wrong with fantasy, and hope, fiction, wishful thinking, or subjective values. All of these activities are normal operations of the human mind, in themselves entirely unobjectionable and usually benign.<BR/><BR/>What is fundamentally incompatible with science and reason is to call these things <I>true</I> or employ them as a <I>substitute</I> for truth.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28755195.post-12320021870614858312007-06-03T09:15:00.000-06:002007-06-03T09:15:00.000-06:00IT Is perhaps a tad 'superstitious', too, or at le...IT Is perhaps a tad 'superstitious', too, or at least one is at risk of being taken for a secret pessimist, to appear to assert that phantasy, hope and reality in its fullest sense, all of these are somehow 'incompatible' with religion, science & reason. Since I am a mystic, of course, my wicked share of the common power-drive /is/ offended by the 'obviously' filthy & willful refusal of the scientifically-afflicted, to bend over before the authority (!) of my austere & manly, 'superior', view (across the writhing buttock-fields of all these well-oiled toiling technologists at my feet & of every gender). And, the Nobel laureate in his laboratory with his catamites & hypnotised coeds is likewise thrown into a coma of rage, by my antinomian insolence and refusal of the boresome & narrow-minded (!) drudgeries of /his/ factitious contemporary orthodoxy! However, when one beholds the physical world in which all of these /things/ factually and physically exist together (buttocks & coeds & /my/ propinquity thereto most emphatically included!), on various molecular and electronic scales one realises that the difficulty lies not in the lies we tell one another, but rather in our sheer inexperience with our /new/ selves. The trouble is not in our stars from whence we came -- rather, we are caught up in the flood of this comparatively-new phenomenon, of nature's evolving self-perception in our physical being. Doubt-afflicted Methodist, leering pan-sexualist, Sufi sage and ecclaesiaphobic scientist, all declaim in unison despite conceit & selves, and so rings forth the swelling chorus:<BR/><BR/>ONE Reality.<BR/><BR/>THE Fable of the seven blind men and the elephant is not-inapposite....Bodwyn Wookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04152813177593209096noreply@blogger.com