Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Reinventing the Wheel of Karma

I suppose it is possible to deny free will, but only for someone who either denies or is unaware of the existence of the soul as causal agent. And I suspect that this is the true agenda of such a-souls or assouls.

For example, the soul is the greatest impediment to the left's inhuman agenda, since it means that man was made to be free, and that the purpose of his existence isn't just anything the state forces it to be.

This is the dreadful situation that prevailed for most of history: the state had the freedom and the power to rule over human persons, without having to bother with the consent of the governed. The state has never been at peace with this situation, and has been fighting back ever since to regain its prerogatives. Indeed, this is the common thread that unites premodern tyranny and the postmodern left. Extremists meet.

Offhand, I can't think of anything that proves the existence of the Creator more than free will. Other things are equal to it -- e.g., truth, beauty, virtue, beer -- but one routinely reads of hapless Darwinians who come up with theories to explain these away, lame though they may be. Free will is trickier, because one cannot prove it doesn't exist without proving it does. In this regard, I suppose it's similar to affirming that "truth doesn't exist," whereby the statement refutes itself (or the belief that all beliefs are a result of insecurity: TW Van).

It also reminds me of a story about Lord Kelvin, who was touring a plant that manufactured electrical appliances. His guide, who didn't know who he was, was explaining various properties of electricity. Lord Kelvin asked to be informed as to what electricity actually is, but the young man was stumped. "No matter," said Lord Kelvin. "That is the only thing about electricity which you and I do not know."

Just because we don't know what electricity is, that hardly disproves its existence, nor does it prevent us from using or abusing it.

Likewise, just because free will escapes quantitative determination, this hardly disproves its existence. Free will is by definition irreducibly qualitative, which I suppose is what irritates materialists so much. For one property that can never be derived from physics or biology is freedom, baby. It demands a metaphysic in which it plays a central role. Any metaphysic that denies freedom is a non-starter, because freedom cannot be reduced to anything less than itself.

As Stanley Jaki writes, just the intimation of free will is sufficient to belie mere material existence, "for in the final analysis, the elemental registering of free will almost exhausts whatever can be said about its reality." "Everything else is embellishment," because "it is irrelevant unless achieved and articulated freely" (emphasis mine). In other words, if there is no freedom, there can be no meaning. As Emerson wrote, "Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free" (in Jaki).

Some nagging trolls seem to be confused by the fact that freedom requires constraints, and is impossible in their absence. In an analogy we have used a number of times, the twenty-six letters of the alphabet are fixed, but not completely. As a result, we are able to use them as boundary conditions for the emergence of words. Likewise, words are the boundary conditions for sentences, sentences for paragraphs, paragraphs for plot and theme, etc. One could say the same of DNA or of the laws of physics, both of which are languages that permit the emergence of higher -- which is to say, freer -- realities.

Humans are the cosmic tipping point at which freedom trumps determinism, which then permits the conscious ingression of divine energies, or (↓). In man, God now has a conscious co-creator at the other end of the line (or "ray of creation").

And this is where all the love, truth, and beauty get in. Again, they do not -- and could not have -- come from below (i.e., the horizontal), only from above (the upper vertical). Like other fundamental transcendentals, the reality of free will brings one "face to face with that realm of metaphysical reality which hangs suspended in mid-air unless suspended from the Ultimate Reality, best called God, the Creator" (Jaki).

Free will introduces conscious purpose into the cosmos: no freedom, no purpose. Prior to the emergence of man, there can be only "God's purpose" or the purposelessness of laws of physics. But the Raccoon believes that these laws are not purposeless at all, but that they are analogous to the letters we use to create sentences (alluded to above). They are the cosmic scaffolding on which man will climb.

So the Raccoon takes a moderate position between necessity and freedom, law and adventure, harmony and improvisation. He denies neither side of the complementarity. Unlike the materialist, he does not deny the great realm of spirit, and unlike the naive religionist, he does not deny the great realm of matter, of manifest existence. Clearly, it requires both to make a man. This is hardly a new idea, as it was central to Thomas' metaphysic, in which body and soul go together like body and soul, hence, the significance of the Incarnation.

"... Thomas sees natural reality as divine creation which in the event of the Incarnation has been reunited... with its Origin" (Pieper). You might say that this is where the ↑ doesn't just meet the ↓, but where the two are intermingled in an inseparable manner; distinct with no divisions, you might say -- most importantly, between God and man. Thanks to the Godman, there is the cosmic possibility of the mangod, i.e., theosis.

Which will probably be misinterpreted by non-Orthodox Christians, for it hardly means that man becomes "God," only that he may participate in the divine nature. Or not. It's up to you. But it's only up to you because of your God-given freedom. In any event, we're talking about personal communion with God, not displacing him.

Here is how Father Anthony (Coniaris) describes it: "Thus, if we allow the dust in us to be animated by the breath of the Holy Spirit, then by God's grace we can rise from dust to image of God; from dust to likeness of God; from dust to sons and daughters of God," gradually (and endlessly) becoming (but not being) through grace what Jesus is by nature.

Interestingly, Father Anthony points out that anthropos is linked to a word meaning "to look up," while humanus is linked to a word that means "earth." This again speaks to man's uniquely dual aspect, of matter and spirit, freedom and necessity, dirt and divinity. As Gregory of Nyssa wrote, "Man's life is a strenuous and endless ascent toward God, that is, theosis." One could cite countless similar statements by the early fathers (as does Fr. Anthony).

This is the great Circle of Toots, of which Thomas was obviously aware, in which "there cannot be completion unless the last joins with the first.... Now since God himself is the first, and man the last among created beings," it is fitting that the completion of the universe involves God becoming man, through which the way is cleared for man to become divinized. Mission accomplished.

To be continued....

63 comments:

Gagdad Bob said...

Speaking of assouls, in case you missed Van's link in the previous thread, Deepak gets punked.

Rick said...

"In this regard, I suppose it's similar to affirming that "truth doesn't exist," whereby the statement itself is refuted."

This reminds me of that Archie Bunkerism, "People don't make-up jokes, Edith. They read them in magazines."

Van Harvey said...

"Reinventing the Wheel of Karma"

LOL, love the title. Now back to see what's under it.

Skorpion said...

And speaking of reality checks on pop-Easternism....

Gagdad Bob said...

Excellent article. Real Buddhism is vastly different from what clueless new agers realize. There's a reason why most Buddhist nations are such crapholes, at least until they begin importing western values.

Gagdad Bob said...

Heh. "Chopra" and "deeper truth" in the same breath!

Rick said...

Bob,
Have you finished Father Anthony's book already? (not in the sidebar anymore)

Skorpion said...

The Mikal Maxim: If you want to truly understand a spiritual tradition, look at how it is practiced in the lands of its origin, and what sorts of societies are produced by its teachings.

Gagdad Bob said...

Have not finished the Coniaris book. I found it a little basic for my taste.

Give Hitchens credit: guy can write.

Rick said...

True dat.

I lol'd the "my chest hair ..once the toast of two continents".

Lol!

Gagdad Bob said...

Wish I could see his face when he finds out that irony comes from above.

Dianne said...

I read in a biograpical article about Buddha that he probably would be appalled to know that people worshipped him as some sort of God.

Rick said...

Bob, this sounded familiar:

"Of course my book hit the best-seller list on the day that I received the grimmest of news bulletins.."

Gagdad Bob said...

"You know who you are? Even Steven." -- Kramer, to Jerry, in "The Opposite"

mushroom said...

Humans are the cosmic tipping point at which freedom trumps determinism, which then permits the conscious ingression of divine energies, or (↓). In man, God now has a conscious co-creator at the other end of the line (or "ray of creation").

To continue with an electrical analogy -- humans are the ground.

I knew life was shocking for some reason.

julie said...

(Re. the Deepak link, it would be remiss of me not to note that Sehoy actually gave it first, as the first comment in one of last week's posts. Sorry, Van!)

robinstarfish said...

Dirt and divinity.

Making us a sort of battery, with infinity between the two poles.

Anonymous said...

"And this is where all the love, truth, and beauty get in. Again, they do not -- and could not have -- come from below (i.e., the horizontal), only from above (the upper vertical)."

Considering the incarnation - I guess we could say that all these things also can come from whithin. Still the same thing though.

Tigtog said...

To Mikai re:

"The concept of ‘Tibet’ becomes a symbol for all those qualities that Westerners feel lacking: joie de vivre, harmony, warmth and spirituality… Tibet thus becomes a utopia, and Tibetans become noble savages.” Western losers have ransacked Tibetan Buddhism in search of the holy grail of self-meaning."

Reading this article I was reminded of the adage describing anthropologists: "the eccentric in search of the exotic." Think that pretty well describes our pampered Flounders.

Funny WV: dommo

Tigtog said...

To Nags re: I Ching

Did you try the experiment? How did it go?

Gagdad Bob said...

Homosexual judge in California redefines marriage to her satisfaction, imposing her weird views on the rest of us. Unbelievable.

Gagdad Bob said...

I would be shocked if you weren't confused about so elementary a matter.

JP said...

Nags says:

"I applaud the judge's ruling and hope it's allowed to stand. I'm sure you're shocked, just shocked to hear me say that. ;-)"

As the attorney in the office next to mine just pointed out, this ruling will provide substantial finanical benefit the divorce lawyers in California.

So, divorce attorneys are happy, too.

julie said...

Fanfrickintastic. The will of the people doesn't matter, just the judge's personal preference.

In other news, has anyone seen Dupree lately? Just checking...

Gagdad Bob said...

As clear an instance of judicial tyranny as one can imagine. It takes an insane level of narcissism and grandiosity to simply redefine words one doesn't like, and then force that definition on others.

Gagdad Bob said...

Imbecile.

Gagdad Bob said...

One moron finally leaves, only to be replaced by an imbecile. People will think my standards are slipping.

Tigtog said...

Nags, I am starting to think you are happy being a toadstool. Were you always this way or did you have to work at it? Remember, toadstools are found in dark, dank environs and eat a lot of shit.

Appropriate WV: cheerch

Gagdad Bob said...

Tigtog:

You have no idea.

Then again, it seems you do.

Gagdad Bob said...

It is only a matter of time before all perversions are protected by law. As it is, I believe that in California we have to pay for government employees who want to have a penis installed or removed.

Gagdad Bob said...

... and people wonder why California is a failed state.

JP said...

While we are on the subject of same sex marriages, I found this exciting article:

"The problematic elements are clear: women are taking dexamethasone (dex) because they are afraid of the "psychosocial problems associated with having ambiguous genitalia" (and here I'm quoting Time), as well as the threat of same-sex attraction, which is less explicitly addressed in the article but is clearly one of the main issues for the people who are prescribing and taking dex. Regardless of whether CAH can actually influence sexual orientation, the anxiety is reflective of fear of traits that blur gender lines. Girls with CAH do not exhibit traditionally feminine traits; they behave "tomboyishly" and do not express the same interest in motherhood. Dex can, essentially, create feminine children who will exhibit "normal" sexual orientations, as well as (and this is pretty shocking) de-masculinize "peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood." Yes - this is implying "masculine" and "feminine" career paths, and suggesting that this drug can push girls toward the correct, feminine track."

This is from care2.com by the way.

Van Harvey said...

Tigtog said "Nags, I am starting to think you are happy being a toadstool."

Put it this way, he's been at it so long, so poorly and so repetitively, that even I finally figured out he's not worth arguing with.

Van Harvey said...

"This is the dreadful situation that prevailed for most of history: the state had the freedom and the power to rule over human persons, without having to bother with the consent of the governed. The state has never been at peace with this situation, and has been fighting back ever since to regain its prerogatives. Indeed, this is the common thread that unites premodern tyranny and the postmodern left. Extremists meet."

O, so true.

The modern development is that they've figured out how to impose their tyranny not just on the outside, but on, and even from the inside as well (see nag's comments for reference), via philosophy and control of education.

Modern tyrants take it to a whole new level - the one within you.

julie said...

Good grief, I step out to get groceries and the newest old troll lets slip the mask of moronity to reveal his true, er, genius.

I don't think the standards are slipping, though - he's just on a par with the other(s).

ge said...

i recall a meditative breathing tip from the Tibetan Tarthang Tulku his KUM-NYE book] : you breathe equally thru both slightly-open mouth and nose [this apparently energizes the chakras in both areas evenly]---the tongue lightly touching palate behind upper teeth.
seems cool...

Gagdad Bob said...

Tigtog nailed it upon first contact. A toad living at the bottom of a well wonders why people speak of "mountains."

Van Harvey said...

"Offhand, I can't think of anything that proves the existence of the Creator more than free will."

It was actually in contemplating the nature of free will (at the end of a long philosophical train) that I finally began to not dismiss the idea of God as entirely arbitrary. The realization of what the nature of choice is and implies... takes you to the point where all the circumstantial hints no longer seem quite so ridiculous.

wv:ovenelly
elly must be getting hot.

Gagdad Bob said...

At least Anon is right about that -- Democrats hated Brown vs. Board of Education, and they've hated racial colorblindness ever since.

Gagdad Bob said...

Wow. If all this is accurate, the Democrat party has been even more racist than I thought.

julie said...

Wow. And after all that, they have roughly 95% of the black vote.

JWM said...

Excellent post, Bob. This one made bells ring, and it made me smile, too. Thanks

JWM

julie said...

JWM! Long time no see :)

Van Harvey said...

"Likewise, just because free will escapes quantitative determination, this hardly disproves its existence. Free will is by definition irreducibly qualitative, which I suppose is what irritates materialists so much. For one property that can never be derived from physics or biology is freedom, baby. It demands a metaphysic in which it plays a central role. Any metaphysic that denies freedom is a non-starter, because freedom cannot be reduced to anything less than itself."

"In other words, if there is no freedom, there can be no meaning. As Emerson wrote, "Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free" (in Jaki)."

YES! Another thing which proves Free Will, is that there is something, anything, most things, that we don't know!

Ignorance is a product of not having absolute knowledge of anything. Even Certainty, is a product of your choosing to believe the obvious... but witness those all around us who choose not to.

Perfect knowledge would mean no gaps between what is and our comprehension of it, but we are separated from such perfect knowledge by our snaptic gaps which can only be bridged by our choice to accept the reality we are faced with.

Or not... you are free to choose it.

But you are not free to choose to disregard all of your previous choices. Each choice you make, each decision you make and affirm, you action you put your decisions into practice with, establishes a structure of accepted knowledge and habit which you cannot easily escape from.

The only way is to escape from yourself in that situation, is the long, painful process of choosing to recognize the reality before your face which contradicts your beliefs, and step by step, disintegrating and willfully reintegrating your beliefs, habits and responses, brick by brick by brick.

The only other way is if something so overwhelmingly shocking and devastating to every conception you have, happens and shatters your misintegrated slagheap of beliefs. The proverbial 'hitting the bottom'... which you may unexpectedly be graced with.

But you've still got to freely choose to rebuild it all, and to abide by the Architects established building codes.

Van Harvey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Van Harvey said...

sigh. blogger's doubling down on the goofy glitches again.

Van Harvey said...

Julie said "...that Sehoy actually gave it first..."

Doh!

In my defense, I wasn't able to see the video (even the still image is nearly always blanked out thourgh our network at work)... but the caption seemed to fit the bill.

I just watched it... still great the second time around!

Gagdad Bob said...

I hear you, brother. Everybody knows the liberal narrative is true.

Gagdad Bob said...

I hope everybody has seen this. Pass it along.

Van Harvey said...

Gagdad said "Wow. If all this is accurate, the Democrat party has been even more racist than I thought. "

I glanced through it... hits a lot of the low points, but I don't know that it ought to put up Teddy Roosevelt as a highpoint of Rep thought... maybe his Republican side found it's manners to meet with Booker T. Washington, but his Proregressive side, naturally attracted to proregressive leftist ideas like eugenics, did a lot of ruminating about reducing or in some way eliminating the 'negro problem'.

By the way, from a comment I made elsewhere some while ago,...


... my favorite Supreme, Clarence Thomas, prodded some questioners about the importance of keeping reality tied to the words you get into the habit of mouthing:

"He added that the history of Congressional regulation of corporate involvement in politics had a dark side, pointing to the Tillman Act, which banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in 1907.

“Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”

It is thus a mistake, the justice said, to applaud the regulation of corporate speech as “some sort of beatific action.”
" (There's an audio clip here)

Yep, that's right. Same with the minimum wage, sold with the slogan of providing "a living wage", and pushed by FDR as a measure to secure union jobs (and their votes) from competition from Blacks, the young and immigrants.

Another site gives some more background on Tillman, including,

"...But there is another part of Tillman's philosophy that is directly relevant to efforts to regulate political speech today. Nearing the end of his career, Tillman commented in 1916, "I have come to doubt that the masses of the people have sense enough to govern themselves."

As we have often noted, and will explore in other posts about the Tillman Act, today's reformers, with their restrictions on campaign giving and spending, largely share this distrust in the ability of the electorate to discern good arguments from bad and to vote for the policies they prefer. And because they don't trust the electorate to make good decisions, today's "reformers" feel compelled to try to shape the opinions people can hear, to gently guide the "masses" to the proper conclusions.... "


What sounds 'fine and high', may well be rooted in the deepest of evils, the intent to ensure your inability to make your own choices in your own life - to enslave you - for your own good, and that has been the message of the left from the days of Rousseau on down to today... and those who accept and promote them on the basis of their slogans alone, without further thought... are a danger to U.S. all.

Van Harvey said...

anunce said "Do you want to make yourself stupid?"

Nah, no one here wants to hang out with you.

Gagdad Bob said...

Via PowerLine:

"Conservatives have long said that the day would come when liberal judges declare the Constitution unconstitutional. That happened today, when a gay federal judge in San Francisco, relying on the opinions of mostly-gay "expert" witnesses, ruled that an amendment to the California constitution, which was adopted in perfectly proper fashion by a substantial majority of voters, is "unconstitutional." In this context, unconstitutional means "unpopular with me and my friends."

"As a legal matter, Judge Walker's decision is a bad joke. It will be appealed, of course, but the outcome of the appeal will be determined by politics, not law. I think it is safe to assume that anyone nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President is explicitly or implicitly committed to the proposition that gay marriage is a constitutional right. If you think that is bizarre, stop voting for Democratic politicians.

"Lest one think that John might be exaggerating, Kathryn Lopez does us the favor of drawing attention to this great thought from Judge Walker's endless opinion: "Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage."

"When precisely did "gender" drop out of the equation?"

Gagdad Bob said...

Via Ace:

What's Dear Leader going to say?

As I recall, he was against gay marriage.

Will he have Holder file against this ruling? Yes, I imagine he'll use every means at his disposal to stop this, just as he did with Arizona.

Van Harvey said...

And extending that even further back in time, I'll make anunce's day by saying that I too think that Brown v Board of Ed was one of THE worst instances of judicial reasoning in the 20th century, and ensured that blacks and other minorities would not be able to stand on their individual rights, but would have to seek favorable sentiment for their personal collective.

I'm not, of course, against the alleged decision that the state should not allow segregation in state run institutions because everyone has equal Rights before the law (which is NOT what it ruled), after all if they had ruled on the simple grounds of property rights, THAT should have been a slam dunk decision, along with a few well delivered "WTF is wrong with you folks in Kansas?! Get a friggin' grip ya damn morons! Which damn part of equal rights before the law do you not understand?!"... or some other such legal sounding jargon.

Problem was that the courts had several decades back begun ruling against the only true protection for Individual Rights and equality before the law - Property Rights - and the SCOTUS's recent rulings in the Gold Clause cases made Property Rights nearly a judicial punchline... but they wanted a fine sounding decision, so the problem for Justice Warren was how to get a decision which supported Rights... when you've already largely tossed the only proper justification for those rights out the window?

So what they came up with was to finagle a fine sounding warm hearted decision out of one of the most irrelevant, arbitrary splats of non-constitutional legal reasoning not to be topped until the later 'penumbra' talk it enabled. Justice Warren found that he was deeply affected by the sociologist studies (not long afterwards found to be deeply flawed, at best) which, based on how black children responded to playing with black and white dolls, claimed to show that black children felt bad as a result of separate but equal.

That is the sum total of the 'legal' reasoning which Warren used to lobby the rest of the court for a favorable decision. Even Thurgood Marshall was stunned by it. One Law Prof. at Harvard, struggling to find some justification for it defended it with this,

"Prof. Wechsler singled out the Brown v. Board of Education opinion. He maintained that in relying heavily on social science, the decision had been roused more by the practical desire to secure a favorable result - integrated schools - than by a general principle, whose reasoning and analysis, he stated, would achieve the result independently. He even offered a "neutral," if flawed, "principle" of his own to iterate his position, citing the First Amendment's guarantee of "freedom of association," in place of the sociological testimony on which he believed Brown had been built. "

It was one of the worst bits of judicial 'reasoning' because it based it's constitutional legal judgment upon material which had zero legal standing, and introduced the concept that a legitimate judgment can be made from the "...context, unconstitutional means "unpopular with me and my friends."

Brown v. Board of Ed made no one equal before the law, it did more than any other decision of the 20th century to ensure that we would run from being free people in a nation of laws, rather than powerless subjects before the whims of those in power.

anon said...

I'm sort of baffled by the opposition to gay marriage. Gays don't want to interfere with anybody's opposite marriage, they just want the same rights that straight people do, to enter into a legal relationship with their choice of partner. As long as the government is in the business of granting recognition to couples, then it's pretty clear that equal protection means that they can't discriminate on the basis of gender or sexual orientation. Whether you find gays icky is immaterial. People used to feel the same way about interracial marriage -- that it was something unnatural and deeply disturbing, disgusting even -- but for the most part, they got over it.

I know you people are strong believers in indivdual rights and freedom, because you say so. So why do you think the government should be in the business of declaring some adult voluntary relationships legal and others illegal? What is the overarching value that you think trumps personal freedom and gives the state the power to declare who a person can marry?

Gagdad Bob said...

I think I'll sue to get my aunt redefined as an electric car, and then get a subsidy from the state.

Van Harvey said...

Gagdad said "I'll sue to get my aunt redefined as an electric car..."


Hmmm... will you charge her up using AC or DC power... or both?

:^)

julie said...

a confederacy of imbeciles...

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"Free will is by definition irreducibly qualitative, which I suppose is what irritates materialists so much. For one property that can never be derived from physics or biology is freedom, baby. It demands a metaphysic in which it plays a central role."

Irreducible indeed.
And yet, leftists ceaselessly try to reduce free will to slavery and call it utopia.

I reckon you can say that the socialists/proregressives (and commies), who are notorious for ignoring the lessons of history, are always tryin' to rewrite and pass into law the means of their own destruction (and everyone elses) with an increasingly meaningless language.

"Hey! Let's create utopia through tyranny! It'll be fun!"

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"I support Nagarjuna and anon and form a bloc coalition with them at this time."

Right, a coalition of blockheads. The three stooges of idiocy.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"...they just want the same rights that straight people do..."

You mean the right to redefine words and institutions? Hell, they (the militant activists) already redefined "gay" and "bareback," to name a few.
Why not make up a freakin' new word?
I always hear of how creative homosexuals are, so it shouldn't be that difficult.

Sir Elton John is against this idiocy too and for good reason.

Or do you really wanna just "give" everyone the "right" to redefine and co-opt whatever the hell they want?
Lingistic anarchy? Symbolic anarchy? Throw the Constitution in the garbage or rewrite and redefine it?
Or is tyranny more your bag?

No need to answer that. I already know what you'll say and it will be beyond stupid.

If that happens you'll need more than luck to hold on to the freedom you have left.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Outstanding post, Bob!

BTW, beer is a great example. You know beer wasn't created by useful idiots. :^)

Hi John! :^)

JP said...

Black hole says:

"I support Nagarjuna and anon and form a bloc coalition with them at this time.

We need Ray to come back and then we'll be a force to be reckoned with here."

I think your most significant impact would be to cause Van to post comments more vigorously than usual.

Van vs. The Troll Alliance

I suppose I can watch that show for a little while before it jumps the shark.

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