Sunday, October 04, 2009

It Is On: Moses vs. Queeg

Slept too late to write a new post. I decided to repost one on Israel, and this is the first one I pulled out. It has been edited, revised, and fortified with new insultainment. Bear in mind that Queeg is just a convenient prop for a more general class of philosophical knucklehead.

As we know, many on the left love Jews. It's Israel they hate. Which, as Dennis Prager points out, is about as logical as saying that you love Italians, but that Italy has no right to exist. However, in the case of Charles the Queeg, there's a slight variation (unless he's done a 180 on this issue as well). That is, he loves Israel. It's Judaism he hates. Is hate too strong a word? I don't think so, not if he's remotely intellectually consistent.

Now, I don't think too many people will accuse Queeg of intellectual consistency, so I guess we'll have to draw out the implications of his stated beliefs for him.

First, it is strictly impossible for one to simultaneously be a reductionistic Darwinist and a religious believer. Please bear in mind that, as always, when I use the word "Darwinist" or "Darwinism," I am referring to natural selection in the scientistic sense, as a broad philosophy with materialist metaphysical assumptions. In this sense, to say that one is a Darwinian is to say that one believes that natural selection alone is man's sufficient reason.

As I have explained many times, belief in evolution is not problematic for the religious believer. In fact, a moment's thought informs you that evolution is a necessary consequence of God's existence, being that the Creator is outside time, whereas creatures are within it. Therefore, anything within time can develop or decay, but can never be unchanging or "eternal." To the extent that things evolve toward their nonlocal archetype -- and human beings are quintessential in this regard -- then that is only because God exists. It cannot be explained on any Darwinist basis. (And it is indeed interesting that the recent discovery of a more ancient human furbear suggests that some present day primates may have devolved from man, so to speak.)

All we ask is that the metaphysical Darwinist draw out the moral and epistemological consequences of his materialist assumptions. Thus, to the extent that everything may be reduced to natural selection, then there is no "point" to human life -- there can be no "true self," let alone a "higher self" and a "lower self" (or inner and outer self), a conception which which is at the basis of all orthodox traditions. Obviously, in the Darwinist paradigm there can be no teleology, no transcendent normality, no culminating point of development, no essence, and no perfection. I would think this would be an uncontroversial statement, something with which we can all agree, even a shrill and spiritually purblind Lizard living in his reinforced bunker beneath the Reino del Ciego errport.

Queeg fails to see that a nation of Darwinist flat-earthlings will not defend itself from the Islamists he once warned us about. Rather, with no transcendent principles animating us, we will eventually go the way of old Europe. For a Darwinist Lizard, anyone who puts his genes on the line to defend a transcendent principle would have to be an idiot. (This argument is forcefully made in Natan Sharansky's new book, Defending Identity; he says that liberty without a transcendent identity will not defend itself, while spiritual identity without liberty is fascism.)

My guess is that the vast majority of our men and women in uniform are animated by Judeo-Christian, not Darwinist, principles. This would be equally true of those who fought for our freedom in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. To be intellectually consistent, Queeg would have to say that these people were shills, phonies and frauds. They need to be as courageous as Queeg, and fight for the right to have no transcendent principles to fight for. Admit it: to fight for a God that cannot exist is just plain stupid. And if Darwinism is correct, then God either cannot exist or has nothing to do with our essential being. Indeed, a term like "essential being" is completely meaningless. We truly are just replicating machines, just as Richard Dawkins insists.

In order to be intellectually consistent, Queeg must express as much contempt for Judaism as he does for the Discovery institute, unless he is just ignorant of Jewish metaphysics, which seems likely. It's almost embarrassing to have to remind him of something so elementary, but Judaism teaches that human beings are in the image of the Creator. For the Darwinist, this is pernicious nonsense. Not only is it wrong , it's not even wrong. To the extent that people believe such nonsense, it's only because we have some sort of "religious" gene that makes us believe in sacred cow manure.

Judaism maintains that existence is holy -- or that it is our earthly task to make it so. For a Darwinist, there can be no real qualiity of "holiness" or "the sacred." Again, these are just illusions, tricks of the genes. They can have no basis in reality. In truth, nothing is sacred. Period.

Now, all awakened souls know that awareness of the sacred is one of the keys to comprehending God, as it is one of the "divine modalities" that shines through matter and lends it its metaphysical transparency. I remember when I was younger, camping in Yosemite and being overwhelmed by its majestic beauty. But for a Darwinist, there can be no such thing as transcendent beauty. Indeed, to waste one's time nurturing such illusions probably just compromises one's chances of survival, as a hungry bear might be just behind that tree.

For the Darwinist, thought is merely the meaningless byproduct of the physical brain. In can have no metaphysical certitude and no ultimate significance. But for the Jew, it is a link between man and Spirit, as is Man as such. For the Jew, human thought mirrors the creator's "metacosmic wisdom," on the one hand, and his "intracosmic intelligence" on the other. In other words, there is the "uncreated wisdom" of Torah, and the "word" as embodied in the book of creation itself. For the Lizard who crawls in his intellectual belly, the Torah is just a manmade book of fantasy, while the cosmos is just a random accident with no intrinsic meaning.

For Judaism, existence is a revelation; to a certain extent, it is an externalization of God's interior, which is why we find traces of divine beauty everywhere, and why we have access to Truth and to Virtue, the latter of which is "beauty of soul" and "truth of conduct," so to speak. For the Darwinist Lizard, truth can only be convention, while virtue can only be a social agreement.

Or, if Queeg does believe in absolute truth and morality, I invite him explain how. But you will have no doubt noticed that Queeg only trucks in sneering contempt, ad hominem, and argument from authority. He never fleshes out and explains the basis for his philosophical views. Which doesn't matter, for if he were to attempt to do so in any consistent manner, he would soon discover that he cannot, because it is impossible. He would just look silly trying. You can't just omnipotently delete those aspects of reality that do not fit your paradigm, and then call it "consistency." Well, I suppose you can, but as Gödel taught us, such consistency can only be purchased at the price of completeness.

Here is another example of a nonsense statement to the vertically challenged Lizard encased in matter: "All the light God has given to Israel is hidden in the Torah; the Torah is the crystallization and mysterious permanence of the Sinaitic revelation. On Sinai, the real presence of hokhmah, divine 'wisdom,' appeared before the 'Chosen People': 'Israel penetrated the mystery of hokhmah,' says the Zohar..." So if Queeg wishes to be intellectually consistent, he would again express just as much contempt for Israel as he does for the Discovery Institute, because this is a lie and a fraud perpetrated on generation after generation by rabbinical shills on gullible Jews -- who were indeed "chosen," but by natural selection, just like the rest of us.

For a Darwinist, the Torah cannot be what Judaism says it is, the "static letter" which "serves as the unchanging point of departure for spiritual contemplation of revealed truth." The traditional interpretation, or oral dictrine, "is like a hammer which shatters the stone, thus freeing from it spiritual 'sparks' of hokhmah which dwells within it."

Now, I'm not even Jewish, but I have enough experience of Torah study to know the above statement to be 100% true. But if it is true, then Darwinism can't be. I mean, really. "Sparks of holiness" hidden in a book? Striking a book with a hammer of esoteric doctrine to make the spiritual sparks fly? What utter nonsense. There is no "light" in any book, much less a collection of pre-scientific fairy tales.

What is Man? For the Darwinist, nothing special, just an accident of the genes. This view is obviously 100% at odds with Judaism, for which the mystery of man is central to the Divine-Cosmic drama. In Judaism, Man is both revelation and symbol, which "links the lowest world with the supreme 'self' of all things." Within us, we contain the "superintelligble principle," which breaks out into "ontological wisdom" on the one hand (hokhmah), and "onto-cosmological intelligence" (binah) on the other. This is why we may know the truth of God on the spiritual plane, the truth of man on the psychic plane, and the truth of the cosmos on the material plane. But ultimately it is all One integral -- and simple -- Truth; for it is all a reflection of the Absolute One.

For the Darwinist, there can be no "One," only the many. As such, there can only be a chaotic babel of opinions and tastes, a path from nowhere leading to nothing. While existence is a mystery, it is an "empty mystery," unlike the "full and divinely overflowing" mystery it is for the observant Jew.

Our primary home is the vertical world, and it is strictly impossible to derive it from any purely horizontal world without doing great violence to man -- in fact, annihilating Man as such. It is quite literally a kind of genocide, which is again what is so disturbing about the darkness of LGF. For the first principle of conservatism is that there is a real transcendent order to which man owes his primary allegiance. This is another way of saying that man lives in a vertical world which is the real and enduring world, in contrast to the horizontal world of ceaseless change and mutation. No enduring principles can be derived from that world, at least none that apply to the human station per se.

This downward spiral into scientistic anti-humanism cannot continue indefinitely without eventually hitting bottom and then crashing through to the other side (recall my graph of spiritual space from a few weeks back), thus completing the cosmic inversion, i.e., the Fall. But the very essence of Jewish spiritual practice is the "inversion of the cosmic inversion," so it is again 100% at odds with the foolish beliefs of Liztards.

Inquiring minds want to know: from whence comes the reptilian certainty of the Liztard on matters that far transcend his cramped and earthbound intellect? It comes from the transcendent absolute, only dissipated and "frozen" within the confines of a quasi-animal ego, the latter of which is only the exterior internalized.

For when someone asks if you "believe in Darwinism," let's be honest. They aren't asking if you believe in whatever the theory has been demonstrated to prove -- like a bacterium that learns a new trick. Rather, they are asking if you believe that it provides an all-encompassing explanation for human existence, and ultimately whether or not you are a theist. And to the extent that God exists, then Darwinism quite obviously cannot embody any kind of "total explanation." Not even close. Indeed, it can only be a kind of elaborate lie when it exceeds its rightful bounds, for it becomes a Tree of Death -- death to the intellect, death to objective morality, and death to the very environment in which man's soul flourishes.

When the Darwinist protests that "you don't have to be religious to be moral," know that he is mouthing a pure absurdity, for he is presupposing eternal principles that cannot be explained on any Darwinian basis -- again, because Darwinism only accounts for change of outward form, not the permanence of what not only transcends form but in-forms it to begin with, i.e., transcendent interiority.

Reductionistic Lizards would have us believe that merely "having morals" is somehow synonymous with knowing the Good and acting in conformity with it. All people have morals. The question is, are they Good? And for the last time, it is a strict impossibility that one could ever arrive at the Good through natural selection alone. Frankly, it is an absurd argument that no remotely sophisticated person could take seriously. Again, in this struggle for survival between rabbi and reptile, we only ask that the latter be intellectually consistent in following their first principles to their meshuginna consequences.

(Quoted material taken from The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah by Leo Schaya.)

36 comments:

julie said...

Oh, perfect!
Last night, we went with friends to see The Invention of Lying, which apparently has some Christians up-in-arms because of its supposedly anti-religious message. That may even have been Gervais' intent; I don't know, and don't care. The result for me was quite the opposite - it was clear that if there were no god, man would have to invent him to make life worth living.

I thought it was well done, for this reason: it was a fairly faithful representation of what life in a properly Darwinist world would look like. The premise is that lying never developed, and therefore never religion, since in his pitifully horizontal experience god could only be a lie.

Anyway, the world that results is utterly humorless, totally lacking in creativity (movies are just guys with nice accents sitting in a chair reading history texts), nihilistic and generally heartless. He has a neighbor who attempts suicide every night because he's been branded a loser; everyone generally agrees, and thus it is so. You are what others tell you you are, since they must be telling the truth. Everyone is utterly incapable of seeing each other with any depth. People are judged instantly and permanently based on their looks. His love interest continually rejects him because his genes will guarantee "short, fat, snub-nosed children" (always accompanied by an expression of utter distaste).

When he finally does accidentally invent religion, it's with all the skill and depth of a small child, well, telling a lie. But even that changes everything, and towards the end when he's the only one on the planet who knows it's false, he falls back into nihilistic despair.

I thought it was both funny and very demonstrative of what would happen if Queeg's world were drawn out to its logical conclusion.

Anyway, I hope that wasn't too much of a diversion, it just seemed apropos.

Gagdad Bob said...

I think it's perfectly apt. It reminds me of a quip by Bion to the effect that the origin of thought is the experience "no breast." This gives birth to the ontological division into which flows both Truth and the Lie. The painful truth is the there is a breast, and that I am not it. But many lies are spilled between lip and nip.

julie said...

Also apropos, the Anchoress today:

"It is interesting to think, isn’t it, that if America is brought low (a no-longer unthinkable notion, unfortunately) and the crazymen that we’re hot to appease in Iran, or North Korea or Venezuela get together to do crazy things, the only fully-functioning and war-ready Democracy left to help the world will be…Israel."

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, especially after reading The Israel Test, I truly believe that Netanyahu is the leader of the free world. I wish he could be our president.

julie said...

That would be revolutionary, wouldn't it? A non-self-hating-Jewish president. If that ever happens, we'll know racism has well and truly been vanquished in this country (and sanity restored), but honestly I don't see it happening in my lifetime.

Unfortunately.

Gagdad Bob said...

Evolutionary.

Unknown said...

Bob,

Isn't it possible to defend Darwinism against attacks by religious fanatics, but not uphold it as an all encompassing metaphysic? My sense of what Johnson is trying to do (don't know, though, if he is completely scientistic and non or anti-religious) is defend against those who seek, like the Jesuits in Galileo's day, to make the Bible a book "about how heaven goes" rather than "how to go to heaven". When I read LGF's postings on Darwinism, I see an effort aimed primarily against the fundamentalist conflation of religion and science in order to preserve science as an illumination of creation (with science itself being the product of our God-given reason). The joining of Athens and Jerusalem, as Leo Strauss pointed out, is rooted deeply in our Christian and Jewish tradition- granting science its purview, with true faith not disputing its findings, but giving them meaning.

Gagdad Bob said...

"Isn't it possible to defend Darwinism against attacks by religious fanatics, but not uphold it as an all encompassing metaphysic?"

No, that is not what Johnson is doing. It's what I am doing!

Gagdad Bob said...

Of course, if Charles wishes to explain how the truth of Darwinism is only a small subset of a much larger and encompassing truth disclosed by religion, I'd love to see it.

julie said...

That would indicate a return to sanity on his part. It would be nice to see, but I won't hold my breath...

Rick said...

If Darwinism is all that there is, what is the purpose of reproduction? In this situation aren't you just raising your own competition for food, sex, etc?
Reproduction must have a purpose. But why should the reproducers care to have offspring. Of course less of us do these days.
It's almost, if not exactly, as if the purpose is smarter than the things which are being reproduced.
It certainly seems more patient than the Darwinian who needs to catch up with it.
Hmmm.

julie said...

You've nailed it, Ricky. The Darwinian purpose of reproduction, until this point in history, was to achieve a sort of immortality-by-proxy. But with the Methuselarity approaching, there's no need for immortality-by-proxy when you can practically have the real thing. In fact, in such a scenario reproduction becomes counter-productive, because the resulting growth would put too much pressure on resources.

Of course, under Darwinism, the question of why anyone would want to live forever is conveniently overlooked. Life, death - what's the difference? It's enough for the shallow thinker that they think, therefore are, and would like to continue to be. Or not. Whatever.

Rick said...

The concept of evolution itself must exist prior to the evolving thing or it's not possible to have an evolving thing. Thanks Julie.

So if you believe it's possible to evolve, but nothing greater than that, you just transcended your own theory.

I don't know this Charles, but going by what I hear of him here, Charles and I agree we should not live a lie.
Would you say that is a true statement?
If "all this" is the result of only chance and accident, then isn't that kind of evolution a type of lie -- if lie is error is accident?
End the accident! What are we waiting for?!
Of course, 13 billion years of evolution just to find this out.
What a rip. Should have invented Charles a long time ago. Saved a lot of trouble.

Dougman said...

Am I crazy or do I see a resemblance between a world of only truth and the unfertilized egg?
The lie being the fertilizer that brings Life to the both.
(It gets more complicated with multiple sperm.)

Gagdad Bob said...

That's sort of what Bion thought -- that truth doesn't require a thinker, while the lie obviously does. But at the same time, the liar must implicitly know the truth in order to lie. This is why we see, for example, that even in Iran the mullahs engage in a charade of democracy, or how the American left pretended they supported "the good war" in Afghanistan.

BabbaZee said...

I love you Bob.

Official raccoon oooo-oooo to you from La Kosher Nostra

And remember... Dick Dawkins before he Dicks you!

http://babbazeesbrain.blogspot.com/2009/09/dick-dawkins-before-he-dicks-you.html

julie said...

Am I crazy or do I see a resemblance between a world of only truth and the unfertilized egg?

I think you're right, to a point. It depends on what is meant by "only truth," though. What I mean is, in a world limited to concrete materiality, lacking even symbolism and abstractions (which, being other than what they represent and necessarily different, could be said to be lies), really it should be impossible to get beyond mere animality.

But I think once language is introduced, which is necessary to be able to partake in the Word, lies become inevitable (because it is always possible, even inadvertently, to express what is not) and even necessary, in the form of creativity, symbolism, mythology, etc. So in that sense, they could be called "true lies," without which developing any understanding of the world and the Word would be impossible. But of course, to allow for the true ones the false ones must also be possible.

That's my purely made-up-on-the-spot take, anyway, fwiw.

julie said...

Off topic, but I was just checking over at Robin's place. Maybe a word or two of comfort is in order.

julie said...

Eerie - wv now is "wailed."

Anonymous said...

What is Man? For the Darwinist, nothing special, just an accident of the genes.

Man is whatever the prevailing sentiment about him may be, according to the Earthly Powers.

In short, an oligarchic caprice. Price subject to change.

Gagdad Bob said...

Excellent piece by Doctor Zero that touches on what we call "higher bobnoxiousness." Some truths must be said with pliers and a blowtorch in order to be heard through the leftist noise machine.

I'd sure like to know who he is. He's brilliant.

Rick said...

I cooncur with the good doctor.

There are there a few comments there by a Paris someone. Makes the tired old case for electability. Doesn't love Romney but hey somebody else does.

I have wild idea. Hows about everybody votes for who they really want instead of trying to guess who everybody else wants. Jus might gets who we really wants dis way?

Like I said, I know, it's crazy!

PSGInfinity said...

Not that it matters, but I've been heading over to Charles' site less an less often. The last time I posted pretty much sealed it for me. Statements that previously passed unremarked, or even updinged, would suddenly receive nine downdings. Newcomers and hauteurs would pedantically attempt to contest every statement. Worse, no one would rise verbally to my defense.

Yesterday, I went over again. A LoTR-style darkness has settled over LGF. I came up with a good riposte for the sneering 'Real'Climate attempt to deflect Steve McIntyre's demolition, but didn't post it.

After all, what good would it serve?

Charles has described people as flouncing their way out of LGF. (Shakes head). I'm just sad at once was, and is now gone...

WV: exezinia (an exercised zinnia?)

Gagdad Bob said...

Either Vanderleun is correct that Queeg's sudden change is due to financial troubles, or else he's gone crazy. There's no other possible explanation.

Rick said...

RE Dr Z's article, the MSM is in big trouble.
They were not interested in finding out, nevermind telling us, who this Obama candidate was. Then recently they turned to silencing the news as Dr Z reminds. Can they survive the rise of Sarah? ...considering her continued momementum and strategy while they decline. She doesn't seem to need them at all frankly.

PSGInfinity said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
PSGInfinity said...

For whatever anyone thinks it's worth, I did post my response on my little blog-husk.

WV: alightsu, finding my way upward?

debass said...

Is the left incapable of lying since they are incapable of knowing truth? The scariest thing for me is that these people actually believe what they are saying with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

PSGInfinity said...

debass,

I think it's truer to say they can't face the truth. Deep down, they know it, and can't face it. Hate it, wage war with it, invent hockeystick-shaped graphs, insult Bob, subvert Charles, but not face it.

Gagdad Bob said...

Bion thought that people defended against truth because truth is catastrophic (as in catastrophe theory).

julie said...

Sounds about right.

Related at Powerline, NYT Keeping Readers in the Dark.

debass said...

So, essentially, the left, which is in charge at this time, is spending trillions of dollars denying the truth of ideas that have proven to work and lying about their failed ideas and ideology and all its manifestations. In short, perpetuating failure.

ximeze said...

debass -
VDH has an item in The Corner to today which includes the following:

...an unintended prism of exactly what's wrong with California — the fear or inability to speak honestly about what is wrecking the state.
In fact, the pathologies behind the symptoms are never mentioned.

debass said...

ximeze,

I live in CA and work in the timber industry. Don't get me started!
I am not sure that it would be worse if the powers that be in Sacramento set out to intentionally bankrupt and destroy the economy of CA.

ximeze said...

debass - bailed out of the Central Valley this past August - yes, the West Side that's had its paid-for-water turned off for frigging Delta Smelt ratfish.

Just could not take the ever increasing Blue-State insanity anymore. Too bad - loved the Mediterranean climate, so like my childhood memories of Sicily.

Susannah said...

OT, but maybe not, considering denial of evident truth... Heard on Interfaith Voices yesterday--What kind of Catholic was Ted Kennedy? I kid you not. I think the saddest part of it was Kennedy's assertion that "atonement is a lifelong thing." (I paraphrase.) How can one be a Christian, yet completely unaware that self-atonement is a dead-end street?

Theme Song

Theme Song