Posted on 01/01/2012 5:02:18 PM PST by grey_whiskers
One of the things that is fun about forums such as Free Republic is the sheer volume and scale of topics discussed. Everything from discussions of GOP primary races (come BACK, Sarah!) to speculations on the Middle East, from Kim Jong-un to fitness resolutions for the New Year, from Naughty Teacher threads to black helicopter speculations. If the Internet is a microcosm of the real world, then Free Republic is a microcosm of the internet. And all helpfully sorted by keyword, date, and author in order to make drinking from the fire hose easier.
But of course, not is all fun and games. Free Republic bills itself as “the world’s premier conservative internet forum.” And as such, it is a welcome place to hang out and talk with like-minded people, away from the “rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, sh*t-kickers and Methodists”
found on the rest of the internet. Unfortunately, that means that all kinds of people, from Paultards to Mitt-bots, from DU infiltrators to atheist crusaders (a little ironic, that), *all* consider it their dishonor-bound duty to try to worm into FR unnoticed or at least post here, to “set the record straight”. Free Republic has developed its own defense against such, the famed Viking Kitties and their famous ZOT!
And why is there the necessity for the ZOT? Are we not broad-minded enough, intelligent enough, magnanimous enough, tolerant enough to allow the existence of contrary or dissenting viewpoints? Sure. But that’s what the rest of the Internet is for. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, the purpose of an open mind, like that of an open mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. Or, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say, “I am balance.” Conservatives need a place to go to recharge without constantly being ridiculed, calumnied, mocked, and shouted down by main force.
So what happens? The voices of “tolerance” are so offended by the existence of an oasis for conservatives (and, what’s worse, most of them are Christianists as well -- of all the nerve!) that they seek to plant a flag for reason (as they proclaim it) right here on FR. Which leads to noteworthy fireworks when they try to do so, as many of the ideas which they hold to be axiomatic, are marked as heresies here on this site. As Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) wrote, “everybody is someone else’s weirdo.”
But how is that that people identify someone else as a weirdo? After all, with so many different subjects around, and different opinions available on each subject, conservatism is not nearly as monolithic as liberals and atheists assume (indeed, there are some conservative atheist, some of them even have remained unzotted on FR for years). May I suggest, for the purposes of insight, that we borrow a page from statistics, and in particular, from analytical chemistry? This is not meant to be a rigorous discussion, only a semi-humorous one to get the creative juices flowing. Say hello to my little friend, Student’s t-test.
Despite the name, and its use in classes, “Student’s T-test” was originally developed by W.S. Gosset, who went by the fictitious name “Student” and worked for the Guinness brewery. Come to think of it, maybe that had something to do with the name he chose :-) Student’s t-test is used when comparing two small sets of data, to decide whether differences in the data sets are due to chance, or are “significant” (that is, whether or not, the data sets “really are” different -- meaning, that is, 95% of the time, or 99% of the time, or whatever -- the differences in the data sets cannot have come about due to random differences). The idea is conceptually simple. Everyone has heard of a “bell curve” to describe data. The t-test is used to compare, not theoretical bell curves, but sets of experimental data, which have ranges of values instead of infinitely long tails. By looking at the mean of each data set, as well as the range of values of each data set, one can determine whether the two data sets are ‘most likely’ measurements of the same thing or not.
That’s fine, you ask, and how exactly does this relate to websites or social interactions therein? Consider someone’s political views as a set of data points, with the extent of “liberalness” or “conservativeness” for each topic being spread along the X-axis, and the *count* of topics of which a person is liberal or conservative to that extent as the height above the axis. If you plot out a person’s political views in this fashion, you will trace out a curve. It might be a symmetric bell curve, it might be somewhat asymmetric, it might even exhibit kurtosis. But in general, you will be able to get a feel for how a person “stacks up,” left or right, by talking to them.
And so it is on discussion groups, or in forums such as FR. Typically most of the posters in a self-identified, semi-autonomous site such as FR would, if their “political bell curves” were plotted, would be somewhat similar: a significant difference between two people could come about if either the overall shape of their bell curve were different, or if they had a particular outlier on a important topic, on which they differed *greatly* from someone otherwise similar. In either case, other people talking to the person would begin to feel that “something is amiss here”: something which bears an analogy to statistical sampling and comparison. And if the difference is significant enough, the person is outed as a TROLL.
“Everybody is someone else’s weirdo.”
Cheers!
So, since you admit to being a "creature," does this mean that you are indistinguishable from a "parasitic organism?" That there's no difference to speak of between you?
And just because you observe cats to be "just like little humans" does not make them so.
You wrote:
All creatures have wants and needs, but most of them don't have much empathy. And this world is an illustration of those facts.Brutal facts, indeed. But can you say that this world is nothing more than a pile of such brutal facts? If it is, then why do you speak of empathy? That's not exactly a brutal fact; it's not even a "natural object" in the scientific sense.
It seems you imagine the world is, in the end, some kind of static, pointless zero-sum game.
That's interesting; but I don't know what to do with it.
Thanks for writing, A_perfect_lady!
I would be, if I found the right man. ;^)
Empathy, as far as I can tell, is a limited attribute that crops up at random intervals. But yes, I do think this list of brutal facts sums up the world. It answers all my questions.
It seems you imagine the world is, in the end, some kind of static, pointless zero-sum game.
Yes. Although I wouldn't say I "imagine" that, I'd say it's what I've observed.
Thank you ever so much for the link to Gagdad Bob's classic piece, "Creation Myths of the Tenured." I'd read it before; but not down-thread, to reader comments. And there are some real beauties there, the above italics being a sample.
Plus your citation of Gagdad Bob, down-thread: "Darwinians can’t help anthropomorphizing the theory, being that the dullest of them are still anthropomorphs."
I surmise they will ever continue to function at the level of "anthropomorphs" (i.e., not yet fully human) as long as they continue to willfully avoid any recognition of the following:
...the suddenness (especially in Darwinian terms) of man's psychospiritual transformation also surpasses anything natural selection can explain. It can try, but to say that a random genetic mutation accounts for the human capacity to know truth and beauty makes no sense whatsoever.What could possibly be more "anthropomorphic" than the following "attitude":
Anyway, at least Ridley is honest in acknowledging the problem, although he doesn't exactly name it or draw out its full implications. But the problem is this: that there is a literally infinite gap between man and animal (even though there is an obvious continuity as well), just as there is an infinite gap between nothing and existence or matter and life.
What's funny is that in their haste to discredit the weak anthropic principle, the militant secularists have retreated into cosmology of repeated spawning of universes, each with arbitrary values for physical constants, thus "guaranteeing" after enough trials that there will be at least one which is capable of supporting life; left indeterminate is if there ever will be a rigorous way of interacting with the other multiverses.ANY ESCAPE HATCH will do. But still they are in the position of "criticizing others" (i.e., for holding any "anthropic principle") for doing the very thing they themselves are doing....
Whatever. I still hold with what I said: Without the human mind, there is no science. All the knowledge we have of the Universe comes to us via human minds. To me, this is the bottom-line of the anthropic or anthropomorphic principle, right there. How can we rationally disparage it?
And without the human imagination, there is no religion. LOL!
Of WHAT is empathy an "attribute?" And if you don't know that, then how can you say it "crops up at random intervals?"
"Attributes" are manifestations of aspects of substantial Being. If you don't know what the substantial being is, then how could you even tell if it "cropped up" — i.e., became manifest in Reality at some frequency, be it "random," periodic, or according to some other temporal (or even eternal) measure — such that you can say you perceived its attribute(s)?
It's really a very basic question....
Thanks for writing, A_perfect_lady!
Okay, I have NO IDEA what you just said. This is why I sometimes compare you to a Scientologist. I know you think I'm just trying to tick you off, but I'm not: sometimes you and Matchett just seem to be speaking some code, or gibberish, and I don't get it. What's more, I don't think very highly of it. I pride myself on putting things simply and clearly. So I'll do my best to answer you, but as I said, I have no idea what you just said.
An attribute -- like empathy, for example -- is merely a characteristic. Like being artistic, or short-tempered, or lazy, or mathematically gifted. Some people have it to varying degrees. Many people lack it completely (we call them sociopaths.) Thing is, some animals have it too. We all have read the various weird stories about, say, a mother dog or cat who adopts young that are not her own. Sometimes they aren't even of the same species. We've seen animals bond with one another for reasons that don't seem related to either food or sex. But they display a love, compassion, concern, kindness, whatever you want to call it... that most believers associate with the human "soul," or with "God's goodness manifest in man."
This suggests to me two possibilities:
1) Some animals have "souls" (which is not supported in any religious tradition that I know of)
2) "Souls" are a human idea, made up like the idea that hearts are the source of love. A cultural construct that has no basis in reality.
The simplest answer is usually the right one.
A couple of points re: this observation.
When we speak of the human mind, it seems that imagination is its highest "function." A whole lot of stuff the mind does (or brain if you prefer, though arguably, finally, they cannot be identified) could be easily outsourced to a computing machine. A whole lot of the rest — relating to the maintenance, repair, and correlation of bodily systems — is entirely unconscious, left to the "lower brain" executing autonomous processes.
The point is, (1) if the imagination is the highest point (so to speak) of the human mind; and (2) if it has access to "religious ideas," then (3) this only tells me there is something fundamentally right about religious ideas and experience in general....
The upshot being, to put it bluntly, if one "falsifies" God, one "falsifies" man.
But maybe that looks like a change of subject to you.
But for me, it cannot be: For I believe/accept that man is made "in the image of God."
FWIW my friend.
Mankind has come up with a plethora of ideas that can be grouped under the word “religious.” Druids, Greek gods, Islam... the fact that we have come up with a word under which to group them means nothing but that we have recognized that some things are merely imagination in the service of justifying behavior.
Seems to me that, in general, one ought not answer questions that one does not understand. Understand the question first.
BTW, I am not a Scientologist, not in any way akin to a Scientologist.
What I do have, however, is the benefit of training in classical and scholastic philosophy. Which might help to explain why you and I are finding it so difficult to "get on the same page."
Well, look at my answer. Did it answer your question? If not, rephrase your question. But please put it clearly. I’m not terribly moved by academic lingo.
The bell curve is overused, even possibly in Student’s day. But in his day there was an excuse for it — it was a simple thing (a simple model) to calculate with. It is amenable to many forms of manipulation.
Today with computers we can and should model much closer to the real dynamic is of a system.
I fear the typical statistician today has no idea what I’m speaking to.
All useful statistics are merely models of real processes, of the dynamics of real systems. Today, I think, statistics has abstracted away from reality, and applies an idiot’s cookbook that utterly obscure the real dynamics being measured.
I'm not a statistician, but I perfectly understand what you mean, bvw. Thank you so very much for your astute observation.
Which answer? To what question? Sorry, A_perfect_lady, I'm really not trying to be cute here, I'm just confused by your replies. I didn't see any "answers," just speculations about whether some animals have souls, etc.
But again, if that is your answer, what was the question? (I don't recall having asked about animal souls.)
Let's try again.
I don't see that one scientific theory gets replaced by another, in light of some facts turning out to be something else altogether. For example, Newtonian mechanics is still amazingly fruitful in its "domain." Even though is has been shown to be incomplete by the relativity and quantum theories, those theories did not "replace" it.
When I look at the history of science, what most impresses me is how this multigenerational community of minds (scientists, that is) builds on the theoretical work of its predecessors, right back to the beginning, as it were, in ancient Greece, that amazing historical period in which both natural science and the science of psyche burst onto the world stage for the very first time. One sees a sort of "evolution" from there....
Don't forget, the original atomic theory was proposed by Democritus (ca. 460 BC — ca. 370 BC)....
As I wrote, I think "Reality is an 'abstraction' from Truth, and not the other way around"; and you replied that was close to what you meant by regarding Truth as an "abstract." In one sense, I think that's true: For Truth is a universal; immaterial; timeless. Which definitely means it is not the sort of concrete phenomenon with which human beings ordinarily engage in their practical lives.
But on the other hand, practical daily lives would be impossible to live if the world were not ordered in Truth. Truth is that which does not change; all the phenomenal world is in a state of constant change. But that change is not "random," rather it is constrained by the limits imposed by Truth.
To use religious terms, Truth is the Logos, Alpha to Omega, a/k/a the Word of God, which has been in the world since the Beginning, and will be there in the end, and in all the in-between. The world is what it is because the Logos is what it is. This is what I meant by "reality is an 'abstraction' from Truth, and not the other way around."
As my dearest sister in Christ, Alamo-Girl, has put it (I'm paraphrasing here): What IS is what God has said, His Word (Logos) in the beginning. Because God said it, it is Truth.
In conclusion, to me Truth is the Logos of God, operating in the world — First Cause, to Final Cause, with Immanent Cause "in-between" guiding the evolution of the system from first to last. In short, God IS Truth. "Get rid of God," and you "get rid of" Truth. To put it yet another way, there is no foundation for Truth absent God.
So call me simple-minded! LOLOL! On the other hand, I resonate to Renée Descartes' telling observation that "the idea of God is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself" (as Wolfhart Pannenberg expresses it). Thus, God is THE necessary idea, ontologically and epistemologically, that underpins Reality (if I might put it that way).
Just some thoughts, dear Mind-numbed Robot! I'm so enjoying this discussion! Thank you so very much for your thoughtful and thought-provoking essay/post!
Seems pretty obvious. But then it seems so often that it is the "obvious" that we tend to miss.... It just drops down into the unconscious, where we tend to leave it. I.e., we do not become critically aware of it.
I just love Whitehead's observation: "I requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." And yet validity in systematic analysis depends on clarity WRT to what is "obvious."
Lack of clarity on that score is probably the source of the disapproval we see in many circles today for any tinge of "anthropomorphism" in scientific theorizing. My point was that science itself is irreducibly "anthropomorphic" by its very nature.
Or so it seems to me, FWIW. Thank you so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ, and for your kind words!
Oooooopppps! Sorry for misspelling René....
Indeed, God is Truth.
He says a thing and it is. It is because He said it.
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. - Psalms 33:6
For he spake, and it was [done]; he commanded, and it stood fast.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. – John 1:1-4
The Universe may be flat but it is nevertheless musical
And for further information, click here.
Only God sees all that there is all at once - every where and every when. He alone knows objective Truth, He alone speaks it.
The best that man can sense of reality is very subjective - merely a glimpse, an abstraction.
God's Name is I AM, YHwH (He IS), Alpha and Omega, the Creator, El Shaddai (God Almighty)!
...since we seem to have reached an impasse.
It seems to me the basic difficulty is both of us have pretty much the same set of "facts" before us, and yet we draw radically different conclusions from those facts, conclusions so sweeping that they effectively constitute — or should I say reflect? — a "worldview." How to account for this?
Trial answer: Possibly you and I are looking at the problem from different perspectival "levels." It is difficult to describe this situation. But there's a marvelous analogy in Max Tegmark's Level IV Parallel Universe (a/k/a multiverse) model.
The linked paper classifies different "species" of multiverse theories at four levels. The fourth is Tegmark's own proposal (I gather). And I find it brilliant. He proceeds by analogies, populating his Level IV model with "birds" and "frogs," the representatives of Plato and Aristotle respectively:
ARISTOTELIAN PARADIGM: The subjectively perceived frog perspective is physically real, and the bird perspective and all its mathematical language is merely a useful approximation.You can't get more "basic" questions than that! LOLOL!
PLATONIC PARADIGM: The bird perspective (the mathematical structure) is physically real, and the frog perspective and all the human language we use to describe it is merely a useful approximation for describing our subjective perceptions.
What is more basic — the frog perspective or the bird perspective? What is more basic — human language or mathematical language?
Trial answer: One is not "better" than the other. This is not a true/false proposition; it is a BOTH are valid in their respective domains proposition. And Natural Law theory is premised on their intimate correspondence.
Me, I tend to be "birdlike." In practice, this means that one tries always to "fly to the highest point," and look down on problems "from there." The problem with that is, the higher the bird flies, the more detail "below" fades away. Yet strangely, what emerges next in the bird's view is pattern.
Meanwhile, the frogs "down there" are masters of detail. They don't seem to be particularly interested in "pattern." Or to put it yet another way, the important thing for them is that something "works," not that it "means" anything.
But you know what? It seems to me that both perspectives are entirely valid within their respective domains. They are not "mutually-exclusive," but essentially complementary. Indeed, it seems to me the world of Truth emerges (evolves?) from their mutually productive, dynamic synergy.
Dear A_perfect_lady, I don't know whether you would align yourself with either the "birds" or the "frogs." Or would even consider doing such a thing.
Thank you ever so much for conversing with me!
p.s.: I hope you don't mind, but I invited a few friends to this post, thinking they might be interested in our topic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.