Simone Vs. Dawkins

[Nick_A]

How do we see the universe in perspective? Richard Dawkins' perspective sees it as chaos. Simone Weil' perspective,sees it as perfect order. What does your perspective reveal to you?

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.-- Richard Dawkins, "God's Utility Function," published in Scientific American (November, 1995), p. 85

“The sea is not less beautiful to our eye because we know that sometimes ships sink in it. On the contrary, it is more beautiful still. If the sea modified the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a being possessing discernment and choice, and not this fluid that is perfectly obedient to all external pressures. It is this perfect obedience that is its beauty.”

“All the horrors that are produced in this world are like the folds imprinted on the waves by gravity. This is why they contain beauty. Sometimes a poem, like the Iliad, renders this beauty.”

“Man can never escape obedience to God. A creature cannot not obey. The only choice offered to man as an intelligent and free creature, is to desire obedience or not to desire it. If he does not desire it, he perpetually obeys nevertheless, as a thing subject to mechanical necessity. If he does desire obedience, he remains subject to mechanical necessity, but a new necessity is added on, a necessity constituted by the laws that are proper to supernatural things. Certain actions become impossible for him, while others happen through him, sometimes despite him.”

Excerpt from: Thoughts without order concerning the love of God, in an essay entitled L'amour de Dieu et le malheur (The Love of God and affliction). Simone Weil

[Nick_A]

QED


This would mean that the laws that produce order occur by accident. I can't see how this is possible

Ah yes, the logical fallacy of personal incredibility.


"I can't understand therefore God did it"

Which god did it?

You tell me.

However, it has been shown that complexity can arise from simple rules. I don't see how saying 'it's too complex to be not designed' is reasonable, considering the
information we have.

Now, were those simple rules 'desgned' or happenstance, I don't see a way for testing for that.

And how is that?? Please describe the methology to determine that.

Impossible for a post. The lawful division of unity into diversity where "one" becomes many in a lawful involution into levels of reality is a process that people study but it takes a lot to explain it.

[Goat]

QED


This would mean that the laws that produce order occur by accident. I can't see how this is possible

Ah yes, the logical fallacy of personal incredibility.


"I can't understand therefore God did it"

Which god did it?

You tell me.

However, it has been shown that complexity can arise from simple rules. I don't see how saying 'it's too complex to be not designed' is reasonable, considering the
information we have.

Now, were those simple rules 'desgned' or happenstance, I don't see a way for testing for that.

And how is that?? Please describe the methology to determine that.

Impossible for a post. The lawful division of unity into diversity where "one" becomes many in a lawful involution into levels of reality is a process that people study but it takes a lot to explain it.

evasion and pseudointellectual nonsense. l. Typical of the I.D. movement. Full of sound and fury, but of no substance.

[Nick_A]

QED


This would mean that the laws that produce order occur by accident. I can't see how this is possible

Ah yes, the logical fallacy of personal incredibility.


"I can't understand therefore God did it"

Which god did it?

You tell me.

However, it has been shown that complexity can arise from simple rules. I don't see how saying 'it's too complex to be not designed' is reasonable, considering the
information we have.

Now, were those simple rules 'desgned' or happenstance, I don't see a way for testing for that.

And how is that?? Please describe the methology to determine that.

Impossible for a post. The lawful division of unity into diversity where "one" becomes many in a lawful involution into levels of reality is a process that people study but it takes a lot to explain it.

evasion and pseudointellectual nonsense. l. Typical of the I.D. movement. Full of sound and fury, but of no substance.

What you don't see is that it is your negativity that denies you substance. You cannot be closed minded in denial when considering top down reasoning.

The sad thing now is that the young are trained in denial and adopt it before having the maturity to realize what they are losing.

[Goat]

evasion and pseudointellectual nonsense. l. Typical of the I.D. movement. Full of sound and fury, but of no substance.

What you don't see is that it is your negativity that denies you substance. You cannot be closed minded in denial when considering top down reasoning.

The sad thing now is that the young are trained in denial and adopt it before having the maturity to realize what they are losing.

No, it is your inability to produce something of substance. Don't blame others for your failings. You make a claim that is not metaphysical.. you can not back up that claim.

I am from the old school. Show me the money. You are unable to, yet blame me for not indulging in your fantasy.

[Nick_A]

Goat

Your way is not new. It is described in the Bible as building the Tower of Babel.

Genesis 11

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, [a] they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [c] —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

If you stopped denying long enough you would see how the tower directly relates to this discussion. The ideas hidden within this passage will remain hidden as long as one denies and refuses to be impartial in front of it.

We have to seriously consider what we want. Do we want to deny in order to justify and glorify our denials or do we want to understand and adopt the impartiality necessary for understanding with the whole of ourselves that brings true understanding.

We must choose what we want and proceed in that direction.

[Beto]

Goat

Your way is not new. It is described in the Bible as building the Tower of Babel.

Genesis 11

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, [a] they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [c] —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

If you stopped denying long enough you would see how the tower directly relates to this discussion. The ideas hidden within this passage will remain hidden as long as one denies and refuses to be impartial in front of it.

We have to seriously consider what we want. Do we want to deny in order to justify and glorify our denials or do we want to understand and adopt the impartiality necessary for understanding with the whole of ourselves that brings true understanding.

We must choose what we want and proceed in that direction.

If all you have are subjective points of view (and that's all I've seen so far), how can we deny what we haven't experienced? Would you enumerate (as in specify one after the other) a few points we are "denying" so they can be addressed? Let's see if there's anything objective and of substance to deny.

[Nick_A]

Beto

If all you have are subjective points of view (and that's all I've seen so far), how can we deny what we haven't experienced?

You've got it backwards. Actually, you cannot experience because of denial. Think what that means.

[Goat]

Beto

If all you have are subjective points of view (and that's all I've seen so far), how can we deny what we haven't experienced?

You've got it backwards. Actually, you cannot experience because of denial. Think what that means.

I think it means you are using the logical fallacy of 'special pleading'.

[Beto]

Beto

If all you have are subjective points of view (and that's all I've seen so far), how can we deny what we haven't experienced?

You've got it backwards. Actually, you cannot experience because of denial. Think what that means.

It means you don't know what I'm supposed to be denying?

[Nick_A]

One thing all these replies together with the "Expelled" thread along with commentaries I've read has proven to me is that only a few ever consider or even have ever considered what comprises a human perspective other than secular influences.

We've come to value knowledge but completely ignorant of "perspective" as a whole. This thread deals with perspective but apparently cannot be understood as such.

My path isn't anthroposophy but I respect a lot of what Rudolph Steiner introduced. One such idea is the Christ influence in relation to Lucifer and Ahriman. These are three different perspectives that a person is capable of. For example, what goes by the name Interfaith is Luciferic and Fundamentalism is Ahrimanic.

A Course in Miracles is Luciferic as a form of denial of materiality. Fundamentalism is also a form of denial that pulls one into materialism. Yet only a few ever consider these ideas as perspectives and being in Plato's cave, we don't consider the value of perspective and what a human perspective is in relation to its potential.

The Ahrimanic influence is materialist and literal and Steiner did predict its influence to be growing in these times and that seems true enough.

And the scientists, with their penchant for studying only the external sensory world by means of statistics and abstract principles, are also fundamentally wrong. They will never reach "the innermost being of things" unless they change their approach and include that most delicate of instruments, the human being, in their panoply of measuring devices.

It appears that the growing Ahrimanic influence has restricted such development of perspective to a small minority so we end up with a growing number of spiritually dead kids comprising the coming generations. Not a pleasant experience to witness our loss of the ability to even comprehend quality of human perspective other than in blind platitudes