Between Science and Spirituality

The Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | Nov. 29, 2002 | John Horgan

[beckett]

Between Science and Spirituality

By JOHN HORGAN

Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science and, more broadly, with reason? To paraphrase the mystical philosopher Ken Wilber, is the East's version of enlightenment compatible with that of the West? If so, what sort of truth would a rational mysticism give us? What sort of consolation?

There are many claimed convergences between science and mysticism. Cognitive psychology supposedly corroborates the Buddhist doctrine that the self is an illusion. Quantum mechanics, which implies that the outcomes of certain microevents depend on how we measure them, is said to confirm the mystical intuition that consciousness is an intrinsic part of reality. Similarly, quantum nonlocality, which Einstein disparaged as "spooky action at a distance," clinches mystics' perception of the interrelatedness, or unity, of all things. I see a different point of convergence between science and mysticism: Each in its own way reveals the miraculousness of our existence.

The more science learns about the origin and history of the cosmos and of life on earth and of Homo sapiens, the more it reveals how staggeringly improbable we are. First there is the fact of existence itself. The big-bang theory represents a profound insight into the history and structure of the cosmos, but it cannot tell us why creation occurred in the first place. Particle physics suggests that empty space is seething with virtual particles, which spring into existence for an instant before vanishing. In the same way, some physicists speculate, the entire universe might have begun as a kind of virtual particle. Honest physicists will admit that they have no idea why there is something rather than nothing. After all, what produced the quantum forces that supposedly made creation possible? "No one is certain what happened before the Big Bang, or even if the question has any meaning," Steven Weinberg, the physicist and Nobel laureate, wrote recently.

Next questions: Why does the universe look this way rather than some other way? Why does it adhere to these laws of nature rather than to some other laws? Altering any of the universe's fundamental parameters would have radically altered reality. For example, if the cosmos had been slightly more dense at its inception, it would have quickly collapsed into a black hole.

A smidgen less dense, and it would have flown apart so fast that there would have been no chance for stars, galaxies, and planets to form. Cosmologists sometimes call this the fine-tuning problem, or, more colorfully, the Goldilocks dilemma: How did the density of the universe turn out not too high, not too low, but just right?

The odds that matter would have precisely its observed density, the physicist Lawrence Krauss has calculated, are as great as the odds of guessing precisely how many atoms there are in the sun. Some physicists are so troubled by the arbitrariness of the cosmos that they espouse a quasi-theological concept known as the anthropic principle. According to this notion, the universe must have the structure we observe, because otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe it. The anthropic principle is cosmology's version of creationism.

The next improbability is life. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins once declared that life "is a mystery no longer," because Darwin solved it with his theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet life is as mysterious as ever, in spite of all the insights provided by evolutionary theory and more-recent biological paradigms, such as genetics and molecular biology. Neither Darwinism nor any other scientific theory tells us why life appeared on earth in the first place, or whether it was probable or a once-in-eternity fluke.

Many scientists have argued that life must be a ubiquitous phenomenon that pervades the universe, but they can offer precious little empirical evidence to support that assertion. After decades of searching, astronomers have found no signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos; a 1996 report of fossilized microbes in a meteorite from Mars turned out to be erroneous. Researchers still cannot make matter animate in the laboratory, even with all the tools of biotechnology. In fact, the more scientists ponder life's origin, the harder it is to imagine how it occurred. Francis Crick once stated that "the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going." In his book Life Itself, Crick offered the speculation that the seeds of life might have been planted on earth by an alien civilization.

Once life on earth started evolving, many scientists have contended, it was only a matter of time before natural selection produced a species as intelligent as Homo sapiens. But for more than 80 percent of life's 3.5-billion-year history, the earth's biota consisted entirely of single-celled organisms, like bacteria and algae. So not even the simplest multicellular organisms were inevitable. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has estimated that if the great experiment of life were rerun a million times over, chances are that it would never again give rise to mammals, let alone mammals intelligent enough to invent negative theology and television. Similar reasoning led the eminent evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr to conclude that the SETI program -- the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which scans the heavens for radio signals from other civilizations -- is futile.

Multiply all of these improbabilities and they spike to infinity. As the psychologist Susan Blackmore has pointed out, we are bad at judging probabilities, hence prone to make too much of chance events; that is why we believe in ESP, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and other miracles. I do not believe in miracles, at least not defined in the conventional religious manner as divine disruptions of the natural order. But if a miracle is defined as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain.

Scientists may go much further in plumbing nature's secrets. They may decipher the neural code, the secret language of the brain. They may arrive at a plausible explanation of how life emerged on earth, and they may discover life elsewhere in the cosmos. They may find and verify a unified theory of physics, which will provide a more precise picture of the origin and history of the universe. Although there are good reasons for doubting the likelihood of such scientific advances, they cannot be ruled out. What can be ruled out is that science will answer the ultimate question: How did something come from nothing? Neither superstring theory nor any other of science's so-called theories of everything can resolve that mystery, any more than our supernatural theologies can.

Although we can never solve the riddle of existence, we can never stop trying. We must keep reimagining our relationship to the infinite. Skepticism alone --- and the cold, hard facts of science --- cannot serve as the basis for spirituality. Blackmore, a practicing Zen Buddhist, helped me reach that conclusion. She described Zen as a kind of rubbish-removal system that cleanses the mind of extraneous beliefs and emotions so that we can see reality as it truly is.

I found Blackmore's garbage metaphor appealing at first, because it provided a handy criterion for judging theories and theologies. The worst ones, I decided, distract us from the reality right in front of us by postulating parallel dimensions and universes, heavens and hells, gods and ghosts and demiurges and extraterrestrials. Too much garbage! Viewed this way, skepticism appears to be the ideal spiritual perspective. Skepticism clears away cumbersome beliefs on an intellectual level, just as meditation (ideally) clears away beliefs, emotions, and thoughts on a more experiential level. Skepticism can help us achieve mystical deautomatization, or so I wanted to believe.

My handling of real rather than metaphorical garbage gradually gave me a more complicated view of the matter. In my kitchen, we put garbage in bags that come in boxes of 20. After I yank the last bag from a box, the box itself becomes trash, which I put into the bag. Sometime after I interviewed Blackmore, every time I pulled the last bag from the box and stuffed the box in the bag, I intuited a paradox lurking within this ritual.

I went through more garbage bags than I care to mention before I solved the riddle: Every garbage-removal system generates garbage. Zen apparently works as an efficient garbage-removal system for Susan Blackmore. But as minimalistic as it is, Zen clutters more than it clarifies my mind. Once I started down this line of thinking, it was hard to stop. I began looking askance at skepticism, too. Maybe skepticism, instead of cleansing our vision, just substitutes one type of trash for another. Instead of belief in reincarnation, angels, ESP, extraterrestrials, parallel universes, and the Oedipus complex, the skeptic crams his mind with disbelief in reincarnation, angels, and so on.

The problem is that any truth or antitruth, no matter how initially revelatory and awe-inspiring, sooner or later turns into garbage that occludes our vision of the living world. Ludwig Wittgenstein had this problem in mind when he described his philosophy as a ladder that we should "throw away" after we have climbed it. At its best, art -- by which I mean poetry, literature, music, movies, painting, sculpture -- works in this manner. Art, the lie that tells the truth, is intrinsically ironic. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, it helps us get to another level and then falls away. What better way to approach the mystical, the truth that cannot be told?

At a scholarly meeting on mysticism I attended in Chicago, one speaker warned that if we can't talk about mysticism, we can't whistle about it, either. In other words, all our modes of expression, including art, fall short of mystical truth. But unlike more-literal modes of expression, art comes closer to uttering the unutterable by acknowledging its own insufficiency. It gives us not answers but questions. That does not mean mystical insights cannot be expressed within other modes of knowledge, like science, philosophy, theology -- and, of course, journalism. But we should view even the most fact-laden mystical texts ironically when they turn to ultimate questions. Some mystical writers, notably the psychedelic raconteur Terence McKenna, supply their own irony, but we readers can supply it even if the author intended none. We can read the Upanishads, Genesis, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the neurotheological suppositions of Andrew Newberg just as we read Blake or Borges or Emily Dickinson.

Viewed ironically, even the most fantastical ghost stories, including the old stories of religion, can serve a purpose. Whether they postulate superintelligent clouds of gas, insectoid aliens in hyperspace, a demiurge with multiple-personality disorder, or a loving God who for inscrutable reasons makes us suffer, well-told ghost stories can remind us of the unfathomable mystery at the heart of things. Our creation myths and eschatologies, our imaginings of ultimate beginnings and ends, can also help us discover our deepest fears and desires. But even the most sophisticated theologies and theories should never be mistaken for ultimate truth. What Voltaire said centuries ago still holds, and will always hold: "It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God defined the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one."

ther than art, is there any method particularly suited to evoking mystical awe without the side effects that so often attend it? In Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, first published in 1979, Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar suggested that the chief benefit of psychedelics is "enriching the wonder of normality" -- that is, enhancing our appreciation of ordinary consciousness and ordinary life. That is the spiritual value cited most often by advocates of psychedelics. But those compounds can have the opposite effect. This world may seem drab in comparison to the bizarre virtual realms into which LSD or DMT propel us. Instead of opening our eyes to the miraculousness of everyday reality and consciousness, psychedelics can blind us.

All mystical technologies that induce powerful altered states pose this risk. One mystical expert who has reached this conclusion is Jean Houston. A pioneer of the human-potential movement, she works as a kind of spiritual psychotherapist, usually for large groups rather than individuals. She seeks to rejuvenate her clients' psyches through dance, song, chanting, guided imagery, and role-playing, often with a mythological dimension. She and her husband, the anthropologist Robert Masters, proclaimed in 1966 that investigations of LSD and similar drugs could help human consciousness expand "beyond its present limitations and on towards capacities not yet realized and perhaps undreamed of."

Houston subsequently became quite critical of the via psychedelica. "l am by nature not pro-drug," she told me. Timothy Leary was one of the most charming people she had ever met -- and one of the most irresponsible. Too many people lured onto the psychedelic path by this Pied Piper suffered breakdowns and ended up in mental hospitals, Houston said. "If I were to take the American pragmatic tradition and say, 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' then I'd have to say I haven't seen too much evidence" that psychedelics promote a healthy spirituality. "Some might say it is a shortcut to reality. But the fact is, it doesn't seem to sustain that reality."

Houston's disillusionment with psychedelics led her to seek safer means of self-transcendence. In the early 1970s, she and Masters devised what they called the altered states of consciousness induction device, or ASCID. It consisted of a suspension harness in which blindfolded subjects could spin around in three dimensions. The contraption worked so well that Houston and Masters discontinued its use. "People would get addicted to it and even refuse to explore their inner states without first taking a ride," Houston recalled. The experience reinforced her suspicion that any spiritual practice or path -- particularly those emphasizing altered states -- can become an end in itself, which leads us away from reality rather than toward it.

Anything that helps you see --- really see --- the wondrousness of the world serves a mystical purpose. According to Zen legend, when a visitor asked the 15th-century master Ikkyu to write down a maxim of "the highest wisdom," Ikkyu wrote one word: "Attention." Irritated, the visitor asked, "Is that all?" This time, Ikkyu wrote two words: "Attention. Attention." Fortunately, life itself is so wildly weird and improbable that sooner or later it is bound to get our attention. And if life doesn't grab our attention, death will. Whenever death intrudes upon our lives, we feel the chill of the deep space in which we are suspended.

Spiritual seekers have employed mementos mori, like a human skull, to keep themselves mindful of death. An extreme version of this technique, used in certain Buddhist sects, involves sitting next to or on top of a rotting corpse. It seems that this practice may merely desensitize you to death rather than sensitize you to life. Moreover, dwelling on death, the abyss, nothingness, may convince you that it is the only abiding reality, and that all finite, time-bound phenomena, including our mortal selves, are ephemeral and hence, in some sense, unreal. To be enlightened, Ken Wilber once wrote, is "to snap out of the movie of life." This is perhaps the greatest danger posed by mysticism -- that you will be left with a permanent case of derealization and depersonalization.

If you are lucky, your glimpse of the abyss will make this life seem more real, not less. You will feel what Albert Hofmann -- the chemist who, in 1943, discovered the psychotropic properties of LSD -- felt after emerging from the psilocybin trip in which he had found himself all alone in a ghost town inside the earth. When he returned from this hellish solitude, back to the world and his dear friends, he felt "reborn," and he was overcome with gratitude and joy at the "wonderful life we have here."

This is by far the greatest gift that mystical experiences can bestow on us: to see -- really see -- all that is right with the world. Just as believers in a beneficent deity should be haunted by the problem of natural evil, so gnostics, atheists, pessimists, and nihilists should be haunted by the problem of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion, fun. Never forget the problem of fun.

John Horgan writes about science. This article is adapted from his book Rational Mysticism: Dispatches From the Border Between Science and Spirituality, to be published in January by Houghton Mifflin. Copyright © 2003 by John Horgan.

[Phaedrus]

Thanks for the recommendation. For a long while now, I've felt that God and consciousness will escape any small, reductionist boxes we try to put them into. Some meld of quantum mechanics and Buddhism moves in the right conceptual direction, always acknowledging that concept is not reality, and that direction is not antithetical to Christianity unless Christians themselves draw the line. I just ordered to book.

[tpaine]

Rand's A = A is fine as far as it goes. Yes, there is an objective reality out there. And yes, A = A throughout the knowable universe.
But Rand's problem, a direct outgrowth of her grandiosity (the same grandiosty that impelled he to announce her atheism at 14,

It is 'grandiose' to decide at 14 your faith in a religion? Why? -- That is roughly the age for 'Confirmation' in the RC Church.

setting the course for a lifelong suppression of the emotional abuse she suffered as a child, which, in turn, lead directly to her over-reliance on and over-hyping of the power of reason),

You're playing at being a psychic, while pretending at philosophy, as was remarked earlier. Amusing.

is that she assigns meaning to A = A far beyond its utility. It's fine, but in the end it is a banal observation.

As yours is a banal comment.

The very certainty of Objectivism discredits it. You either understand that or you don't. 50 - beckett -

I doubt that any do, save you.

[MHGinTN]

Do we sense in the present variable expression of time and remember because of the past variable expression of dimension time? If so, what does that infer regarding the nature of electromagnetic energy (and the weak force, as it has been connected to the other two forces)? How would time being composed of three variable expressions affect the gravitational force?... for unification (G.U.T.) purposes.

[beckett]

Not gonna bite, TP. Exchanges with you are too pointless.

[Hank Kerchief]

The very certainty of Objectivism discredits it. You either understand that or you don't.

I am not an objectivist, although I believe most of objectivist philosophy is correct, as far as it goes.

I am only defending the view here that the ability to reason (rationality) is the only faculty man has for discovering and understanding the truth. If we have any knowledge, it is only throught the faculty of reason that we have acquired it.

Those who do not agree with this view, it seems to me, are obliged to tell use what other faculty man has for aquiring knowledge, and how it works. Do you believe there is some other means to knowledge than reason? If so, what? And, when you have acquired this knowledge without using reason, how to you verify it, that is, how do you distinguish it from hallucination, delusion, illision, or some other form of deception, without using reason, of course?

I do not tell anyone they cannot have knowledge without reason, only that I have discovered no other way to it. I, and all other merely rational men, only have our rational minds for acquiring knowledge. Those of couse who have some other kind of knowledge are irrational, that is, have beliefs and convictions not based on reason. The other name for beliefs without a rational basis is superstition.

I am opposed to all forms of superstition.

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

You sir, are a man who thinks. I would be proud to shake your hand. A is A, existence exists.

Seems so simple, doesn't it? To what great lengths men go evade the truth. The motive is not good.

Thank you! Here is my hand.

Hank

[Sabertooth]

[Would it make sense to pose the temporal dimension as past, present, and future for the variables?... analogous to past=linear, present=planar, future=volumetric.]

I'm not sure I think those analogies hold. Also, who's to say that we have all of the spatial dimensions figured out?

How would time being composed of three variable expressions affect the gravitational force?... for unification (G.U.T.) purposes.

Oh, I'm saving that for my Nobel Prize winning thesis.

Actually, I have a hunch about the G.U.T. If we ever do come up with a theory that explains everything in the observable universe, it will be a tautology.

[Hank Kerchief]

Must one learn they are conscious before they know they exist?

I know this is going to suprise you, but the answer is a very definite YES! Although I would not say one has to learn the word, "conscious," before they know they exist, they must at least have learned enough to know what existing or being is, and that they are a unique being.

The key word here is knowing. My cat is conscious, but does not know she exists. She does not know anything, she just perceives her surroundings and her internal feelings and the instinctive impulses and motives that cause her to behave. She never once considered the question, do I exist. She does not need to know it. She just does it, exist, I mean.

Neither does a child know it until she has learned enough to consider such questions, usually in very simple terms at first, such as when answering her mother, "I'm over here." In some sense she must knows she is to know where she is.

Hank

[PatrickHenry]

Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science and, more broadly, with reason?

I have to be in the mood for this stuff, and right now I'm not, so my answer is "no." However, in the immortal words of Rodney king: "Can't we all get along?"

[tpaine]

"Not gonna bite, TP. Exchanges with you are too pointless."

How droll. -- That's exactly my point about your pretentious efforts at 'philosophy'.
They are pointless exercises in declaratory self puffery. You declare Rand to be 'grandiose' yet 'banal', -- apparently just for effect. Grow up.

[LogicWings]

Multiply all of these improbabilities and they spike to infinity.

At heart this is a self contradictory statement. If improbabilities are infinite, so are the probabilities. So the following

But if a miracle is defined as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain.

doesn't make sense either. Absolutely nothing can explain it, so why is he trying here? Just some of the many things I found wrong with this article.

We must keep reimagining our relationship to the infinite.

Does the 'infinite' in fact exist? I'm not assuming one way or the other but without answering this question first, what does this statement really mean?

The problem is that any truth or antitruth, no matter how initially revelatory and awe-inspiring, sooner or later turns into garbage that occludes our vision of the living world.

Including what this writer is writing here, i presume. Therefore everything is garbage and we can't believe anything anybody says, including this guy.

Anything that helps you see --- really see --- the wondrousness of the world serves a mystical purpose.

Huh, what did he say? Does that include or not include the garbage?

When he returned from this hellish solitude, back to the world and his dear friends, he felt "reborn," and he was overcome with gratitude and joy at the "wonderful life we have here." This is by far the greatest gift that mystical experiences can bestow on us: to see -- really see -- all that is right with the world.

That means the psylocibyn worked, doesn't it? Isn't this guy contradicting himself?

Just as believers in a beneficent deity should be haunted by the problem of natural evil, so gnostics, atheists, pessimists, and nihilists should be haunted by the problem of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion, fun.

Haunted by the problems of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion and fun. These are problems? And nothing previously mentioned included gnostics, they are never mentioned, defined or included.

While I admire the guy for poking holes in just about everything all he ends up with is an empty bag.

[cornelis]

art comes closer to uttering the unutterable by acknowledging its own insufficiency

There was a time when "art" was burdened to paint the soul. They never came close. They tried again in the early part of the 20th century (Paul Klee, I think). Again, not any closer. Artists tried to paint motion. Again and again, the practitioners of art will strain to the point of abuse every limit as they despair for sufficiency

So let's drop the art part of that phrase, and instead recognize the last part "acknowledging insufficiency" is not an act that respects methods. Both the artist and the scientist can understand there's no squaring of the circle.

Plus, if the acknowledgment of insufficiency is honest, it is bound to create respect for Mr. Horgan's "trash." It makes one conservative. It can recognize that even a lie is burdened with truth (if for no other reason than that it comes from a liar). But that makes "trash" a very poor word choice which apparently Mr. Horgan and his editors perhaps saw, but did not make clear. Because it's worth is not in the dispensible, rather in what is retained in it. This attitude recognizes that Newton's physics, although displaced by a newer art, is a ladder still standing and much steadier than Descarte's physics.

It appears then (after our happiness for his "acknowledging insufficiency) that Mr. Horgan has promoted an slight infatuation with obsolescence, which is the peculiar disposition of the Marxist, in the physical sciences and history.

[Hank Kerchief]

Without reason it is not possible to know anything.
Again, how do you know? It's not a kid's question.

Since I am not certain whether your question means, how do I know reason is the only means to knowledge or how do I know reason actually gives knowledge, for the first let me reference an answer already given here:

#65

As to how I know reason is a means to knowledge, or that I have knowledge at all, a complete answer would require my entire epistemology, which I know you are not interested in and I could not do here. But, you do not doubt that I have knowledge. You never questioned that I would know what all the words you used mean, or even that I would know the meaning of your question. That I have knowledge, you have already acknowledged, and of course we all must do that, or communication between us would be impossible.

The only question remaining, it would seem to me, is how we distinguish between ideas we hold which are true from those that might not be true? The answer to that question for me is simple. One uses reason to insure that one's ideas do not contradict any other ideas within the logical hierarchy of all their knowledge. A contradiction automatically means there is an error.

Of course, you are probably using the word agnostic in the very narrow theological sense. I am not constrained by your narrow usage.
OK. Can you define your non-theological usage?

I use the word agnostic to mean what its Greek root means, "not know" or "I don't know." It is for me, the correct answer to all questions for those who attempt to find answers without using reason, "I dont know." What one gets without reason, that is, using anything but the raional faculty, is the irrational, or superstition. Superstion is not knowledge.

Hank

[tpaine]

"Must one learn they are conscious before they know they exist?"

I know this is going to suprise you, but the answer is a very definite YES! Although I would not say one has to learn the word, "conscious," before they know they exist, they must at least have learned enough to know what existing or being is, and that they are a unique being.
The key word here is knowing. My cat is conscious, but does not know she exists. - HK -

-- The Mirror Test --

Scientists have long known that children begin to recognize themselves in the mirror at around 18 to 24 months. That mirror self-recognition, many researchers say, usually marks the beginning of self-awareness, introspection and the ability to perceive the mental states of others.
In 1970, Dr. Gordon G. Gallup Jr., a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, devised a "mark test" to determine whether other animals were capable of recognizing themselves in the mirror. If test subjects marked with a dye go to the mirror and examine the mark, they are believed to exhibit self-recognition.
Confronted with a mirror, many animals either ignore it or respond to it, often aggressively, as if it were another animal, Dr. Reiss said. After becoming familiar with the mirror, some animals, including monkeys, lesser apes, elephants and African gray parrots, begin to use it as a tool to find hidden objects but not to examine themselves. Previous studies suggested that dolphins recognized their own images, but the results were not considered conclusive.
Until now only chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas have used mirrors to investigate their own bodies and passed the "mark test," the researchers said.
The new finding with the dolphins, Dr. Reiss said, "opens the discussion about brain evolution because the brains of primates and dolphins have evolved along very different lines for more than 60 million years."

[from a NY Times article]

[Hank Kerchief]

Either may leg is longer since you posted and I read it, or I just don't get it. How do you get, "suggests 'existense' identical with 'knowing,' from, "science and math can only discover what is."

While I am careful to say, knowledge exists (as a phenomenon of the mind, not material existense), I would never confuse knowledge with that which knowledge is about. My statement only means what-is-not cannot be known, obviously, there is nothing to be known or known about.

If science is a means to knowledge, then it must be knowledge about what is. How can you object to that?

What did I miss?

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

-- The Mirror Test --

Interesting post. It would seem to pretty much verify my point. Even in the case of children and higher animals recognizing themselves, there is no evidence of "knowledge," which requires conceptualization of the percepts that are recognized.

Perceptual recognition is pretty much automatized in most creatures, and to some degree in men.

Hank

[cornelis]

I would never confuse knowledge with that which knowledge is about.

OK. That's cool.

Still, others might, considering your first reply, "All that matters is what you can see and what you can know. There is nothing else.""

Striclty speaking, since existence is not restricting by our knowing, there also exist things that we cannot know (or have not known, or will not know).

[MHGinTN]

... there is no evidence of "knowledge," which requires conceptualization of the percepts that are recognized. Language acquisition would seem to refute your assertion. also, that an animal can be shown (repeatedly if necessary) where something they want is hidden and then they can go to it and take it from hiding seems to refute the assertion.

Octopuses can learn how to take a desired food thing out of a bottle, simply by watching a neighboring octopus do it, and the process of removal can be somewhat complex, as in removing a stopper from a bottle to get at the food. If the animal can learn the action and repeat it without first trial and error discovery, that would appear to refute your assertion, also.

When Koko's --the Gorilla who learned amislan-- kitten was killed and the handlers brought another of very similar size and color to her to become her pet, she refused to call it 'allball', insisting that it was not allball, though she hadn't touch allball after it died out on the street outside her enclosure.

[tpaine]

"Perceptual recognition is pretty much automatized in most creatures, and to some degree in men."

Yep, and some of those automatized 'perceptions' seen on FR can curl yer hair.

[beckett]

...gnostics, they are never mentioned, defined or included.

I questioned the use of the term too. At first I thought he meant to say "agnostics," but, since he himself takes an approach that in some respects can be called agnostic, that made little sense. I suppose it's possible he means to define gnosticism in its most occult sense, to include satan worship, etc.

As for his use of the term "problem" in connection with "love, beauty etc," clearly he is being ironic. He's poking fun at the absurdity of it, and quite rightly suggesting that the mystery of evil in a universe created by a beneficent God is no more mysterious than the existence of "love, beauty, fun etc" in a pointless universe which popped unbidden out of the void.