Identity (Identity)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 20:30 (5357 days ago) @ David Turell

My metaphysic doesn't require me to answer that question because it recognizes the question as unanswerable to any tool of investigation I possess;
> 
> Matt, I appreciate your long response. It helps me define the limits of your thinking. We have come to the 'how' desire and the 'why' desire, and that is where we have separated. I've been looking at 'how' life works for many years, and I find it amazing, and beyond belief that it popped up from many chance contingencies. 
> - Yeah, I've suspected for some time that the differences we had really had to be "perspectivist" in nature, and it helps me *immensely* to know the broader foundation of your beliefs--something perhaps I should have just directly asked for before. [EDIT] But now at least I understand it--thank you. - 
> > I know you have a lot of passion and thought behind your conviction, but the resistance you receive from outside observers such as myself is ultimately based upon parsimony. 
> 
> I think it is less parsimonious to require all those steps of contingency, than to assume a supernatural force. A supernatrual force, if present, requires that we accept the fact that we will never know the 'how', completely. In his book, A Concealed God, Stefan Einhorn, a philosopher of religion,states: "Science has not yet been and may never be able to provide all the answers. Taking the matter to its extreme, we can say there are two (not mutually exclusive) explanatory models. Either God is a biochemical process in the human brain, the function of which is to protect the intellect from experiencing the world as insecure and meaningless--feelings that could have resulted in the downfall of the human race in evolutionary perspective--or else there is a God."
> - I guess I'm not sure about the contingency unless you mean scientific models at large? - It was Nietzsche that got me up off my ass and made me "mystical" in whatever strange form its taken in me. I can say for the first time at least that I know what it means to be spiritual. I've learned more from the "higher thinking" of philosophers and theologians than I necessarily have from my scientific training. - > 
> > Look, you've told me that your view is essentially panentheistic, and of course I can respect that, but unless you can tell me how this deity works, you're in no better position than those who support scientific abiogenesis. In fact in a great many ways you're at a disadvantage in terms of explanation, as there is no way to determine "good" theological explanations from "bad." 
> 
> Einhorn, above, is an answer to this comment of yours, but I have a further thought. My approach is to expect science to continue to demonstrate increasing complexity in the coded management of life. I have indicated overtures to this complexity in past entries, briefly, epigenetic mechanisms, and RNA management of genes. Watson-Crick discovery of the coding of protein molecules is a very simplistic beginning to what is now being discovered in the management of those proteins. They just put the camel's head into the tent. My expected 'proof of God' will be exclusionary. The complexity of life will be found to be so enormous, only something supernatural can have created it. We will never fully know the 'why', because we cannot. And so a faith takes over. No one can use 'how' to get to God. Pascal's leap will always be required. For me I've taken the leap, and it feels good, just as my love for my wife feels good. Yes, this is at an emotional level, but at some point that level is required.
> 
> I was invited to join this website. I've acted as a gadfly and will continue to do so. I do understand everyone's position, and will try to continue to have everyone defend them. - Don't stop. I'm at this website because I continue searching, not that I believe I have found an answer. Too much of my persona fights against the concept of faith... even as a child I never liked it. I also know I only grow when pushed, so keep pushing, and I'll keep growing. (Goes for anyone else who reads this, btw.) - When I was a teenager, I got into a minor religious conversation with a buddy at work. His answer seemed comical to me then, he was incredulous at the time that I called myself an atheist, and when asked why he even cared he said "I think that each view has a small portion of the truth." I recognize that as true wisdom in my "ripe age" at present. Sucks being a late-bloomer, lol. - When reading Emerson, I know exactly what Nietzsche's ubermensch was and why it was unattainable by any man. Each person and their singularly defined virtue makes up the ubermensch. [EDIT] The same goes for our collected wisdom.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"