Why is a \"designer\" so compelling? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Thursday, July 30, 2009, 10:13 (5594 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt has kindly given us a potted version of Nietzsche's "human metaphysic". - I wrestled with Nietzsche in my student days, and lost rather heavily. The background is familiar enough, but the problem with poet-philosophers is that poetry doesn't always make for clarity of ideas. Come to think of it, nor does philosophy, and especially German philosophy! Whether your own version reflects Nietzsche's obscurity or yours I'll have to leave you to decide. - Your post offers an interesting parallel, which I'll come to in a minute. First, though, some Nietzschean points: "N. was suggesting that western civilization focus on bettering the self as a replacement for god...focus oneself on that which is achievable, which according to N. is only hindered by your own ability...Do not think beyond your creating will." Then you go on: "He didn't say that our philosophical questions were pointless as I seem to have expressed, but that the answers to them are not going to come from looking within." - If the self is the new god, and the creating will is the driving force, this suggests to me a great deal of looking within. Even the Christianity to which N was so opposed is not based on looking within (apart perhaps from Puritanism). If you don't look up to God, or across at your fellow humans with charitable feelings (and especially in the old days with a view to converting them!), you can kiss goodbye to your harp. The glorification of the self seems to me to be considerably less outward-looking than the glorification of God and helping one's fellow humans. That's not a plea for Christianity, by the way. It's a complaint about the general woolliness of the argument. - This all ties in very neatly with your reference to Buddhism, which counts as a religion, though I see it more as a philosophy. Buddha's eightfold path (right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right contemplation) is designed to lead the individual to Enlightenment and hence to Nirvana. Once again, the emphasis is on perfecting the self. It has to be trained to renounce just about everything that we humans enjoy most! Not much outward-looking there either. - In relation to our own discussion, however, I can only repeat that I don't find any of this relevant to your quest or mine for the truth about how we got here. Both Nietzsche and Buddha are focusing on how we can best live our lives. Nothing wrong with that, but I get the impression that most of us on this forum have already worked it out for ourselves. - And so to the "prime cause", which is just a convenient way of referring to whatever started things off. I'm not sure that Buddha would have laughed at it. His concern was to help us achieve perfect peace rather than with how we got landed in the otherwise endless cycle of birth-death-rebirth. (I could never swallow that aspect of Buddhism. If I don't remember what or who I was last time round, I might just as well not have been here.) - On the subject of belief, you write: "Even if inconclusive there are some explanations that are more believable than others." That's obviously true. The problem is that there's no consensus as to which ones they are. But you are "in a suspended state of belief on the ultimate question", and that is what I mean by the "prime cause". We have crossed the non-finishing line together!