Re: Mind's Eye Re: Science and religion in modernity

Another approach to god (as I see it) is in examination of the way we
live, rather than positing a deity and living in fear of it.

In our heavily sanitized culture, that includes anything related to
micro-organisms, i.e. "germs," dirt, etc. Those of you who know basic
biology understand the irony of this sanitization: in killing off
bacteria, we not only eliminate "good" bacteria we need to stay
healthy, we also eliminate the weakest "bad" bacteria and leave only
the most resistant few to reproduce. This heavily marketed obsession
with sanitization of everything has led to super-bugs which cannot be
killed by conventional antibiotics.

In a way, the self-destructive consequences of obsessive sanitization
is an apt metaphor for the self-destruction at the heart of the entire
narcissistic consumerism project. Where does reacting to constant,
exaggerated messages of fear lead to? To the loss of the ability to
make realistic assessments of reality.

This is linked to an old anarchist message that we live in permanent
adolescence - the state of resolving insecurity, fear and social
defeat by buying things that promise the invulnerability of a fantasy
self and world, and by indulging in instant gratification to mask the
self-destructive derangement of broken ecosystems: not just in the
natural world, but in our bodies, in our society, in our economy and
in our politics.

Nurturing permanent adolescence, anxiety and alienation are highly
profitable, for people responding to the fear and anxiety of Thanatos
(the instinct for destruction) will not only become malleable
consumers, they will lose their grip on Eros, the instinct for life
and love. Once lost to the Dark Side, they have no way to experience
health or intact ecosystems; their world darkens as there appears to
be no alternative to the Status Quo. Health is horribly unprofitable;
illness, anxiety and alienation are highly profitable. That is the
destructive essence of our sociopathological "engine of growth,"
narcissistic consumerism.

I don't need god as a vengeful big brother to see this - and I don't
need that form of introspection which leads to 'the light' either. I
suggest god-concepts are involved - it's just they don't come from men
with beards wearing skirts and waving incense (or even of Gabby's less
flamboyant vicars). I have heard this (Freudian) message from vicars,
priests, mullahs and sages. In big metaphor, science is telling us we
are being suckered by the way we are living. How very Jesus.

On 21 Oct, 17:09, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Science doesn't fascinate me in the way some literature and people can
> generally - I suspect the 'enthusiasm' of the popularisation of the
> subjects.  I concur on the predicament element rigs - insightive.  It
> seems a mistake to me to try and place god in some scientific-
> dimensional space (though I miss Pat) and I wonder instead whether the
> god-positions people hack out are as baseless as, say, phlogiston - we
> need some new thinking.
>
> Science and critical history have demonstrated much religious text is
> fable.  We repeatedly see that image management hides much that is
> foul under 'preaching' - here our current examples would be Jimmy
> Saville, Baby P, priestly paedophiles and Hillsborough (scouting in
> the US etc.) - but I'd say we may be on the brink of realising
> economics is equally vile.
>
> I can imagine spending a few weeks with a group living human-
> constrained lives in a collective of the future.  A woman kisses me
> goodbye.  She will not see me again because I'm off to a near-space
> terminal built off Alpha Proxima.  From there I'm relativity
> travelling to the edge of this universe to undertake genetic
> transformation beyond the gene-splicing that has allowed me to travel
> in space.  I see in 16 colours thanks to a shrimp and can enter
> cryostasis thanks to genes from Arctic fish.  I interface with
> machines and their learning directly.  I can no longer replicate as a
> human - etc.  Now I'm off to meet and form a collective with beings
> who perceive much of the world we can only postulate.  In traditional
> science fiction these 'dark beings' would be bastards intent on taking
> over the human world.  What I don't see is any focus on a future in
> which the rather soppy human-emotional ties are broken - a future in
> which ...
>
> One might ask how the creature I have become would get his jollies.
> One can go the other way in history and ask what religion has actually
> done.  We are not inventive enough about god.
>
> On 21 Oct, 14:50, rigsy03 <rigs...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > And some feel science is boring unless it can be translated into
> > everyday life in meaningful ways.
>
> > On Oct 20, 3:50 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > We travel at 60k plus miles an hour in the solar system and 500K
> > > through the galaxy in our system.  I tend to believe we can measure
> > > this kind of thing and that we are always left with questions like
> > > Allan's about before after and beyond.  Hitch-hikers' Guide probably
> > > gets to the irony.  Quite a few of us discount priests and text-
> > > authority without giving up on spirit.  Spinoza remains the clearest
> > > example.
>
> > > Creation stories end up in infinite regress - scientific and otherwise
> > > - and beg the question of 'what came before that' by positing a
> > > fiction of something that needs no creator or origin.  I don't believe
> > > god whipped up the Grand Canyon, but in the limits of our thinking
> > > something whipped up something that led to the evolution of our planet
> > > etc.  I tend to think science rather than literature may lead to a
> > > different way of seeing this and surviving until this is possible.
> > > Literature is generally bland and lacks depth - though there are great
> > > moments.  I suspect one of the key issues is raised by Gabby a lot of
> > > the time - we need to replace current authority and know the irony is
> > > such attempts just produce the same old business as usual (WB Yeates
> > > was good on this).
>
> > > The stuff on thermodynamics above is very similar in method to
> > > Einstein and what we might now term Wittgensteinian deconstruction -
> > > trying to find the common elements and mistakes in various competing
> > > arguments and readdress the apparent conflict.  Molly has some words
> > > on this too.
>
> > > On 20 Oct, 20:37, Molly <mollyb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > google books had a copy up online, it may still be there.  Used book
> > > > outlets like Alibris will allow you to put in the book you are searching
> > > > for and notify you when a copy becomes available for sale by a store that
> > > > uses their service.  Other than that, you may find some good articles about
> > > > it with excerpts online.  for Einstein fans, it is a favorite.
>
> > > > On Saturday, October 20, 2012 10:14:03 AM UTC-4, Allan Heretic wrote:
>
> > > > > how does a person get a hold of the original text..??
> > > > > Allan
>
> > > > > On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Molly <moll...@gmail.com <javascript:>>wrote:
>
> > > > >> The Einstein "The World As I See It," originally began as his ponderance
> > > > >> of something greater than science, and acknowledgement of spirit in action.
> > > > >>  The original edition is the best, as his editors put together texts with
> > > > >> lectures for him under the same name, and those books have an entirely
> > > > >> different flavor.
>
> > > > >> From my view, "knowing" is not the end of it, but the beginning.
>
> > > > >> On Saturday, October 20, 2012 8:09:19 AM UTC-4, gabbydott wrote:
>
> > > > >>> Honestly, Vam, I don't think that it was Einstein's lack of knowledge
> > > > >>> that made him pose such a daft (in the sense of limited) question. I read
> > > > >>> this as a description of the state of occidental science at his time - the
> > > > >>> conflict between the ontological and the constructivist explanatory models
> > > > >>> of the nature of knowledge.
>
> > > > >>> On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 8:41 AM, Vam <atewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > >>>> You spoke of Einstein, about his " only " interest being whether God<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God> had
> > > > >>>> any choice in manifesting the universe and this observed creation.
>
> > > > >>>> My own suggestion is that if we do not know enough we will always think
> > > > >>>> along those lines.
>
> > > > >>>> To the uninitiate, the desktops of today would seem to be thinking
> > > > >>>> entities ...
>
> > > > >>>> *So, do we know enough ?*
>
> > > > >>>> <https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-EBJSz8MhWQU/UIJGzwpvR3I/AAAAAAAAB0...>
>
> > > > >>>> On Saturday, October 20, 2012 6:36:45 AM UTC+5:30, rigsy03 wrote:
>
> > > > >>>>> I took a course on the Snow-Leavis(1959-1962) controversy in the
> > > > >>>>> mid-'70's. Perhaps we should then conclude scientists do not
> > > > >>>>> understand humanism? Other works involved included various essays and
> > > > >>>>> books by Aldous Huxley ("Literature and Science") and Bronowski
> > > > >>>>> ("Science and Human Values"). Not sure that "incomprehension and
> > > > >>>>> dislike"(Snow) between the two groups has changed at all when
> > > > >>>>> considering the gap between rich and poor nations, smart weapons, etc.
> > > > >>>>> as science and militarism promote the self-interest of various
> > > > >>>>> nations/
> > > > >>>>> political theories and practices. Should we quibble that Nazi
> > > > >>>>> scientists propelled the USA moon landing? At least the moon survived.
>
> > > > >>>>> On Oct 19, 1:37 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >>>>> > The below is rather long, but physics is returning to some of the
> > > > >>>>> > ideas of James Maxwell.  My dog is named after him.  Years ago, we
> > > > >>>>> > were told their were two cultures ( CP Snow) - one knew the 2nd law
> > > > >>>>> of
> > > > >>>>> > thermodynamics and the other did not (literary types).  The 2nd law
> > > > >>>>> > involved was a straw man.  The following, as Max needs his walk, is
> > > > >>>>> > paraphrased from last week's New Scientist.
>
> > > > >>>>> > A few decades after Carnot, the German physicist Rudolph Clausius
> > > > >>>>> > explained such phenomena in terms of a quantity characterising
> > > > >>>>> > disorder that he called entropy. In this picture, the universe works
> > > > >>>>> > on the back of processes that increase entropy - for example
> > > > >>>>> > dissipating heat from places where it is concentrated, and therefore
> > > > >>>>> > more ordered, to cooler areas, where it is not.  That predicts a
> > > > >>>>> grim
> > > > >>>>> > fate for the universe itself. Once all heat is maximally dissipated,
> > > > >>>>> > no useful process can happen in it any more: it dies a "heat death".
> > > > >>>>> A
> > > > >>>>> > perplexing question is raised at the other end of cosmic history,
> > > > >>>>> too.
> > > > >>>>> > If nature always favours states of high entropy, how and why did the
> > > > >>>>> > universe start in a state that seems to have been of comparatively
> > > > >>>>> low
> > > > >>>>> > entropy? At present we have no answer, and there is an intriguing
> > > > >>>>> > alternative view.
>
> > > > >>>>> > Perhaps because of such undesirable consequences, the legitimacy of
> > > > >>>>> > the second law was for a long time questioned. The charge was
> > > > >>>>> > formulated with the most striking clarity by the Scottish physicist
> > > > >>>>> > James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. He was satisfied that inanimate matter
> > > > >>>>> > presented no difficulty for the second law. In an isolated system,
> > > > >>>>> > heat always passes from the hotter to the cooler, and a neat clump
> > > > >>>>> of
> > > > >>>>> > dye molecules readily dissolves in water and disperses randomly,
> > > > >>>>> never
> > > > >>>>> > the other way round. Disorder as embodied by entropy does always
> > > > >>>>> > increase.  Maxwell's problem was with life. Living things have
> > > > >>>>> > "intentionality": they deliberately do things to other things to
> > > > >>>>> make
> > > > >>>>> > life easier for themselves. Conceivably, they might try to reduce
> > > > >>>>> the
> > > > >>>>> > entropy of their surroundings and thereby violate the second law.
> > > > >>>>> > Such a possibility is highly disturbing to physicists. Either
> > > > >>>>> > something is a universal law or it is merely a cover for something
> > > > >>>>> > deeper. Yet it was only in the late 1970s that Maxwell's entropy-
> > > > >>>>> > fiddling "demon" was laid to rest. Its slayer was the US physicist
> > > > >>>>> > Charles Bennett,
>
> ...
>
> read more »

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