Friday, August 15, 2008

The Cosmic and Spiritual Retardation of Philosophical Darwinists (7.26.10)

We may be sure that the series of forms does not lead on into infinite progress; it must have a definite completion. The very nature of the scale necessitates this conclusion, because it is a scale, and an ascending one.... It must culminate in what is absolutely whole and self-sufficing, for anything else would contradict and negate all that makes the prior progression recognizable as an ascending scale.... In short, the very nature of the scale necessitates its completion by a reality answering to St. Anselm's definition of God -- that than which nothing greater (or more complete, or more perfect) can be conceived. --Errol Harris, Revelation Through Reason

"Evolution" is just a way of saying "temporal continuity," which must exist if anything is to exist. In other words, if not for time, then everything would have to happen at once. (The word "evolve" is etymologically related to "unroll," as in an ancient scroll.)

And "temporal continuity" is just another way of saying "memory." For example, a person with alzheimer's loses his memory, and therefore his temporal continuity. It's always now, disconnected from all the other nows. Therefore, it's not even really now anymore, because now is only now in relation to a then.

One of my beefs with philosophical Darwinism is that, like an alzheimer's patient, it isolates its own conclusions from the greater context of cosmic evolution. For as Harris writes, "The modern conception of nature is of a continuous evolutionary process, linking the purely physical with the biological, the biological with the psychological, and the psychological with the social, moral, artistic, and religious experiences of man."

Given this temporal continuity, it is wholly arbitrary to define things in terms of the past instead of the present, since everything is in the process of becoming. In other words, in studying any phenomenon, it is important to know what it is in its mature form. If you only study a caterpillar in an isolated slice of time, you won't know anything about its connection to butterflies.

Likewise, if you study the Big Bang in isolation from the human knower, you're missing the whole point, again, because you're arbitrarily excluding the temporal continuity that even allows a subject to know about and comprehend the Big Bang -- which is without a doubt the most astonishing thing about the Big Bang! I still can't get over it.

A couple of posts back we spoke of the importance of spatial boundaries in human development. Only with the creation of a "semipermeable membrane" can the human subject properly evolve. But it is equally true of temporal boundaries. Again, if we weren't bounded in time, we could not be, for we would be the Absolute. But time for human beings is not merely duration. Rather, the point is to metabolize time, so as to create a deeper form of continuity in one's life, or a personal history.

Here again, I'm afraid that this is beginning to sound overly abstract, when it's meant to be as concrete as can be. For example, the typical therapy patient comes in with various temporal discontinuities. These are like "holes" in the psyche, except that they are gaps in time rather than space. As Freud said, the neurotic person suffers from "reminiscences," except that the reminiscences have lives and agendas all their own, disconnected from one's central identity. In short, they are mind parasites, or rogue elements within the psyche. And they are rogue elements because they have split off from the central government, which should ideally have a monopoly on memory.

Let's make this very personal in order to render it more vivid. I remember my first heartbreak at the age of 18. It triggered such a deep level of depression that only years later, in therapy, was I able to piece together what had actually happened.

To make a long story short, that heartbreak was just the occasion to feel a whole host of emotions that had been placed in escrow since my earliest childhood, from before I could even speak. They were there, stored away in a kind of atemporal eternity, just waiting for the appropriate experience through which to express themselves, or to deploy themselves in time. But because of the temporal discontinuity, I could not connect A and C at the time. I thought it all had to do with that dastardly C, which it couldn't have, since it was an effect that so far exceeded its cause.

But Darwinists routinely do the same thing. For example, the human subject so far exceeds the material shuffling of genetic material, that only a fool or a mental patient would deny the deeper temporal continuity. And on the deepest level, it should be a bananaty to peel out that in our cosmos, matter has the astonishing potential to sponsor life and human consciousness. As such, matter cannot possibly be what the physicist says it is, just as life cannot possibly be what the Darwinist says it is, for both, in their own way, deny temporal continuity. Again, they take an arbitrary time slice and impose a manmade boundary where there is none.

So if we're going to take time seriously, we would have to agree with Harris that "the product of an evolutionary process is, and must be, potential at its beginnings, and if what is inchoate at first becomes progressively unfolded as the process continues, the nature of the final outcome will be the key to the understanding of both the process itself and its origin."

Thus, the Darwinist wants to have it both ways: there is a continuous evolutionary series that culminates in man, and yet, this culmination may be reduced to a wholly random and mechanical iteration of genetic shuffling. Again, to do this not only abolishes man and all he values, but it ironically abolishes evolution, because it says that what has evolved has no intrinsic meaning that isn't reducible to the real meaning, which is simply genes in meaningless competition for survival. Frankly, this is psychotic, only intellectually psychotic instead of emotionally psychotic. Again, the psychotic mind dismembers temporal continuity and as a result lives in its own private hell.

It is also ironic that the Darwinist stresses the importance of adaptation to one's environment. For me -- and I am quite sure this is true of all Raccoons -- if I were forced to adapt my soul to the impoverished intellectual environment of philosophical Darwinism, it would be exceedingly painful, very much like living in a totalitarian state in which I had to subordinate my essential identity to the group's ideology. I am only able to articulate and evolve the most vital parts of myself through the pneuma-cognitive environment of the perennial religion. If I could not do this, it would be like a living death. It would be like a musician who was forbidden to ever pick up an instrument. How on earth am I to become myself in the absence of the appropriate spiritual environment to nurture and sustain my spiritual evolution?

Now, I don't doubt that Queeg or our scientistic jester -- or all of the infamous spiritual retards* such as Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris -- feel perfectly "at home" in the Darwinist environment, just as there are millions of people who get their entertainment from video games or their food from McDonalds. But I could no more feed my soul with Darwinism than I could stuff my body with Big Macs, or listen to rap music all day, or read Harlequin romances. Rather, I have a soul with very particular needs, and to be deprived of the means to fulfill those needs would be spiritual death -- which is to say, death.

Again, given the temporal continuity of the cosmos, there is surely horizontal cause and effect. No one would dispute that. But at the same time, an effect cannot exceed its cause, most especially when we are talking about an "infinite" effect. And make no mistake: the human subject partakes of the infinite and the absolute, even if some human subjects prefer to exile themselves to the relative and the finite. They are obviously free to do so, but they are only free to do so because freedom is real -- which is again to say that it partakes of the absolute. But such is the life of a spiritual retard. They just can't crack the cosmic egg, and want to cram the rest of us into their poultry little vision of reality.

For the temporal unfolding is in reality no more nor less than the serial self-articulation of the whole, which, as realized, is eternally complete. The eternal whole is therefore, without qualification, prior to the temporal process, and to speak of temporal posteriority in reference to it is to misunderstand its character. It is not what comes last but what includes and sublates all temporal series. --Errol Harris, Revelation Through Reason: Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy

*And when I use the term "spiritual retard," I certainly do not mean it in the sense of an insult (much less to mentally retarded people) but as a literal diagnosis. It's obviously not a good thing, but it is no more an insult than is a diagnosis of cancer. There are intellectual retards, spiritual retards, aesthetic retards, moral retards, etc.

45 comments:

Anonymous said...

Metabolise - for some reason that resounded. In the post it has the sense of bringing the one out of the many (e pluribus unum), ordering, but also organicizing, giving life to the lifeless. It is a kind of overcoming and conquering the chaos (militia est vita hominis super terram), that the manifold does not have the last word because it is ordered to the one (pros hen analogy). The great Western tradition needs to metabolise the trauma that is Descartes, Kant, (in philosophy but in other realms as well) and so forth, sanitize them and then incorporate what is of value into an organic whole.

In that sense, is there some difference between a parasite and a trauma, in that parasites which have their own metabolization process (hopping on blogs and dragging away time and energy in vain pursuits) need simply to be eliminated, whereas what engages the person (trauma) needs to be metabolized and brought into the whole in a harmonic way?


Regardless, thanks for another deep post.

Gagdad Bob said...

A mind parasite can indeed be thought of as the internalization of the trauma, which will then require certain resonant experiences in order to go on being. And since they are semi-autonomous, they interfere with the metabolism of experience into integral selfhood, which is one the purposes of life.

Ray Ingles said...

Ah, "wholly random" -
a blistering assault on
half of a theory.

julie said...

"...matter has the astonishing potential to sponsor life and human consciousness. As such, matter cannot possibly be what the physicist says it is..."

and

"But at the same time, an effect cannot exceed its cause."

Ho! The true purpose of the daily Tongan Water Torture that is OC is that, with all those drips relentless pummeling the forehead, eventually one will actually seep right into the skull and be properly absorbed.

Today, it's that second quote especially. I don't know why, but it never occurred to me that "cause & effect" is just as true in life, mind and spirit as it is in matter. It's one of those things that should be obvious (then again, I suppose conservation of energy is only obvious if you ever actually sit through physics, so maybe not), but because of the increasing complexity of each level it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of all the transference of energy. Holy smokes, that's a lot of implication packed into one little sentence! Of course, the unpacking is the fun part.

Ray Ingles said...

An "ascending scale"
must have a culmination;
the last prime number.

Anonymous said...

Viewing Vanderluen's picture, third from the left, seated, seems to me the only sane one in the bunch. ;*)

Anonymous said...

the false infinite
of scientistic jesters
is so pre-Hegel

Ray Ingles said...

...an effect cannot exceed its cause...

Gentle gust of wind;
The last snowflake falls to earth.
Comes the avalanche...

...most especially when we are talking about an "infinite" effect.

X squared plus a C.
Infinite potential, but
takes infinite time.

Anonymous said...

That is Bob's whole point,
moron. The psyche is both
bound and infinite.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of evolutionary or temporal "becoming", St. Basil writes,

"Humanity is an animal who has received the vocation to become God."

The early Fathers viewed sin much like Bob's mind parasites, as a spiritual parasitic condition or disease that is passed on through generations, and that prevents many of us from realizing and accepting the gift of our human vocation.

Love in Christ.

Anonymous said...

Do prime numbers represent a scale, with a ratio between them?

As for the other, well, you don't take account of whatever stacked the snow there.

jp said...

Is Ray now "Making the Point" while still "Missing the Point"?

This is "Erasmus". I've changed my posting name for no apparent reason.

Has Ray completed his Treatise, namely On Why Free Will Is Not Something With Which We Should Concern Ourselves Because It Does Not Apply To Either Organic Brains Or Computers?

julie said...

"Gentle gust of wind;
The last snowflake falls to earth.
Comes the avalanche..."

Ray, do you really think we're that stupid? I mean honestly, as an engineer you must comprehend that the snowflake is merely a catalyst (and yes, I'm using the term loosely); the energy released already existed as stored potential in the bank of snow. At least, I hope you understand that - it's one of those basic foundational concepts without which a deeper understanding of physical sciences cannot properly be understood.

If you're going to try and trip us up, at least try to trip us with the truth.

I give this attempt a 2.5 out of 10; you at least earned some points for creative imagery.

Rick said...

Thanks, Bob. I’m pretty sure my grandma would approve.
(And Magnus too…for stirring her memory again this morning)

robinstarfish said...

Thus, the Darwinist wants to have it both ways: there is a continuous evolutionary series that culminates in man, and yet, this culmination may be reduced to a wholly random and mechanical iteration of genetic shuffling.

Here's a fine example.

Again, to do this not only abolishes man and all he values, but it ironically abolishes evolution, because it says that what has evolved has no intrinsic meaning that isn't reducible to the real meaning, which is simply genes in meaningless competition for survival.

Or for mic time.

Frankly, this is psychotic, only intellectually psychotic instead of emotionally psychotic. Again, the psychotic mind dismembers temporal continuity and as a result lives in his own private hell.

As an old bumper sticker said, "I'd rather eat barbed wire than listen to rap."

Anonymous said...

Darwinism. Is there anything it can't explain?

Ray Ingles said...

So, an avalanche
needs a whole cosmos as cause.
Why not with humans?

Anonymous said...

Good. Now ponder that
question for thirty years,
and get back to me

Anonymous said...

Ray:
"So, an avalanche
needs a whole cosmos as cause.
Why not with humans?"

I think we just had a major break through!


/Johan (using the "open id" now as sig)

jp said...

Well, also from New Scientist:

"Quantum strangeness breaks the light barrier

IN THE weird world of quantum mechanics, the phenomenon of entanglement trumps all for strangeness - and maybe also for speed. Two entangled particles are so deeply linked that measuring one influences the other, regardless of the distance between them. In some interpretations, a signal passes between the two particles faster than light.

To test this idea, Daniel Salart and colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland sent pairs of entangled photons to labs 18 kilometres apart. By measuring the properties of each photon in many of these pairs, the team showed that if superluminal signals are responsible for entanglement they must travel at more than 10,000 times the speed of light. The team favour an alternative idea - that a measurement on one photon instantly influences the other"

In my opinion, I don't think that the photons are "entangled" as much as they are two pieces of the same thing, half of each being in a different place.

It's like a child's block. Push on one half of the block, and the other half moves, too.

"Speed" has nothing to do with it.

The "light barrier" only applies to two items that are separate from each other.

I'm filing this under "Scientists Missing the Point".

walt said...

respond with chuckles
or all-knowing sneers
but some paths are serious
'bout those thirty years


Which adds another aspect of time in one's reckoning -- as in, do I have enough, in practical terms?

I suppose the obvious reply is, "Don't waste today!"

Gagdad Bob said...

JP:

Precisely. Nonlocality is an artifact of the a priori wholeness of the cosmos. As such, it "must be," or we certainly could never have the nonlocal interior wholeness of the human subject.

julie said...

Since it's Friday, more news about the magic of beer (brought to you by the Department of Studies of the Patently Obvious)

robinstarfish said...

I just saved 3 hours and 59 minutes.

Anonymous said...

We're playing Raccoon Friday?

Kewl, here ya go.

Anonymous said...

Evolution is built on the premise of chance, whereas the truth of Creation is built on intent.

It's not that they can't believe, it's that they won't believe, because believing will bring judgment on them for their unrighteousness and the need of God for atonement.

Our brother Paul had it right when he wrote to the Romans how man refused to believe in the Eternal and chose rather to believe and worship the creatures of his Providence.

song_and_dance_man

Ray Ingles said...

"the product of an evolutionary process is, and must be, potential at its beginnings..."

Okay, but... why can there be only one potential product?

Ray Ingles said...

Cosmoses are big.
Really big. How are people
out of proportion?

Anonymous said...

The cosmos isn't
big. Nor is it small. It is
nothing without mind.

Anonymous said...

besides, there's just one
cosmos, and it's just right for
love, truth, and beauty

julie said...

A burst of mock-ku
sprang up in my post today.
Shall we play a game?

Susannah said...

I've not got the poet's mind. Taco mess on the counter, dirty children falling asleep without baths, our injured butterfly (we suppose, for it either won't or can't fly away), are not uniting into a whole for me.

Perhaps someone with a little more slack can make it all worthy of a haiku.

"How are people out of proportion Not sure what this is, but if it's what I think...an omnipresent I AM is not bound by proportion. He exists as manifestly present between entangled particles as he does between far-flung galaxies. Immanent/transcendent & all that. What Petey said.

"But at the same time, an effect cannot exceed its cause, most especially when we are talking about an 'infinite' effect. And make no mistake: the human subject partakes of the infinite and the absolute, even if some human subjects prefer to exile themselves to the relative and the finite. They are obviously free to do so, but they are only free to do so because freedom is real -- which is again to say that it partakes of the absolute."

There's no nay-saying that!

Anonymous said...

"But I could no more feed my soul with Darwinism than I could stuff my body with Big Macs, or listen to rap music all day, or read Harlequin romances. Rather, I have a soul with very particular needs, and to be deprived of the means to fulfill those needs would be spiritual death -- which is to say, death."

GBob, this is true for you and also true for me. I am so sure, especially as I read the Coonifesto that you and I see the Cosmos in similar ways. And also, there are in fact other things in my life true for me, perhaps not true for you. Because I have lived with that awareness literally for all my life, I have to wonder what life would be like were I someone else. This leads somewhere promising and ultimately ends in awareness of more than my own likes, tendencies, prejudices, and even needs. The top end of that is what I call compassion.

I am still learning really basic true things about myself in the whole, just as you describe it in this post, including past and future histories. I am not yet that great at compassion.

But things that are true of me but not of most others...

Case in point: peanuts. I have food allergies. I could never eat peanuts on pain of survival. Starting in infancy, I also had severe asthma and all the other typical allergies, such that only living in a bubble (none really existed in the fifties) would have eased my life threatening condition. This allergy to peanuts of course still exists and I have to compensate by truly knowing my environment and my food.

Second case in point: potatoes. When I was twelve, we went to an allergist and he did sleuthing on my continuing difficult condition. What we found was that I was unknowingly as badly allergic to potatoes as to peanuts, but eating them as a staple. My immune system compensated but was so severely compromised in being used that way that I was allergic to so many other things not so much because I was but because there was no resistance left after dealing with the potatoes. It was a hidden condition and the allergist was an excellent doctor to find it.

So I know what it is that there is something that "poisons" me even though nearly everyone else can approach and use it with impunity. I also know what the consequence is of not knowing that and surviving for years in spite of being compromised, indeed a "hell" of sorts.

After a series of desensitizations, I soon had and now still have only mild forms of hay fever and sinus infections instead of trips to the hospital and all else.

This colors my consciousness such that I suspect these kinds of limitations exist in all the realms. There is body poison, heart poison, mind poison, soul poison. I hesitate in this light. Even in my certainty as to what is right for me, I think I should not write it so certainly as true for us all. I have too strong an experience of limits for that.

While I am sure, GBob, that what you write about the cosmos is securely right for me and for the others who agree with us, I am not so sure that you can take that out to the logical opposition to Darwinism. It is poisonous to you and for you would be hell if it were the only food. So you are mentally and spiritually allergic.

But I am not so sure that God agrees with your analysis of Darwinism. This Darwinist manifestation of difficulty in the spiritual landscape can as easily be orchestrated by God as it is a rebellion against Him, that is, that Darwinists ultimately serve His purpose.

AA is unabashedly spiritual, and in fact is Christian in the language of its literature, though anonymously so. Even so atheists come to AA, and according to tradition cannot be turned away. This sometimes creates tedium in the meetings of AA, but nothing like the turmoil that can be caused when severely pathological individuals somehow find a way to stay sober through AA and so persist without really getting less pathological. Those difficult people we also cannot easily turn away. This has been so from the start. We thrive anyway.

And me, even now, avoiding potatoes AND peanuts, I have survived and thrived too. I would never assume that potatoes and peanuts are bad for everyone. I thrive by not forgetting myself, by knowing who and where I am. I offer the removal of the symbols "potatoes" and "peanuts" and replacing them with some other symbols. The statement still makes sense.

NoMo said...

I'm concerned that Ray may have finally become a parody of a parody of himself...and that is a dangerous parody to be indeed.

Take care Ray, the Door may be fading from your view.

NoMo said...

"I'd rather eat barbed wire than listen to rap." Actually Robin, I remember that as ..."than listen to disco". But then I'm really old.

NoMo said...

"In other words, in studying any phenomenon, it is important to know what it is in its mature form. If you only study a caterpillar in an isolated slice of time, you won't know anything about its connection to butterflies."

Christ is the butterfly to our caterpillar?

Anonymous said...

Susannah:
Thought of you today when reading Moms Go for the Gold

NoMo said...

and in that moment
we become a beginning
believing in Him

Susannah said...

We've got the object lesson for that on my blog, Nomo. :D

NoMo said...

if I could only
get out of this jar, I'm sure
I was meant to fly

(Schoolin' at Susannah's)

julie said...

Christopher,

"While I am sure, GBob, that what you write about the cosmos is securely right for me and for the others who agree with us, I am not so sure that you can take that out to the logical opposition to Darwinism."

I'm not sure if I completely agree with you on that point. I get what you're saying, but I think you're making a mistake in comparing Darwinism/ militant atheism to an allergy, which is a body's over-reaction to certain proteins which are harmless to most people. Rather, I think it's more like a poison reaction, akin to the response to small doses of arsenic over a long period. Or even, for that matter, akin to alcoholism. Can it serve a beneficial purpose? Sure, in certain circumstances. And some people develop a high tolerance, even a dependence on the stuff. But since it ultimately involves willfully cutting oneself off from the Absolute (and truly, if that's not hell I don't know what is), how can it be other than antithetical to that which is Good, True and Beautiful?

This is one of those things that doesn't strike me as a matter of opinion or personal preference, in spite of the fact that people have widely different opinions and personal preferences in regard to faith. Either O Is, with all that that implies, or O is not; whatever individuals believe will not change this fact. However, what we believe has a profound effect on how we interact with the world. In this country, atheism is an ideology that mostly affects, for better or worse, the individuals who dis-believe. And since they are surrounded by believers of every stripe, practicing or not, they receive a degree of immunity from the cultural fruits of atheism.

But in parts of the world where atheism is the norm, the results are cultural apathy at best, and outright inhumanity and atrocity at worst. This is not simply my opinion, it is verifiable fact. Why should that be true? If atheism is just another way to see the world, if Darwinism is simply a different perspective on the same great Truth, then why should the places which embraced these ideologies the most be so patently antihuman?

Again, we do not dispute the findings of science - indeed, we embrace good science, because it reveals just as much about the nature of God as it does the nature of the world. It is those who would elevate science to the absolute (often in spite of actual scientific evidence or lack thereof) that must be faced.

I agree, wholeheartedly, that there are many ways to serve God, and that each of us has a unique calling. I know that there are many, even quite a few whom I respect and admire, who are atheists who serve the Good (and so serve God in spite of themselves). This does not mean that atheism is good, any more than it means that Global Warming Alarmism is good. It just means that some people cannot help but be generally good, regardless of what they believe.

Van Harvey said...

Ray:
"So, an avalanche
needs a whole cosmos as cause.
Why not with humans?"

Johan:
I think we just had a major break through!

Nah, Ray'll even miss his own point.

Oh... too tired for more than tweaking Ray (is this how trolls feel all the time? yuck)... try an catch up tomorrow ....

Anonymous said...

Van:
"Nah, Ray'll even miss his own point."

Well, I try to stay positive :)

/Johan

vanderleun said...

Thanks for the nod oh sage from the land of nod who doth nod out.

vanderleun said...

hoarhey notes: "Viewing Vanderluen's picture, third from the left, seated, seems to me the only sane one in the bunch. ;*)"

And he is correct. That would be Wolfgang the Wonder Dog. Great dog. Brother to my great dog from the same litter, Potemkin.

German Shorthair Pointers both.

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