Hi Harry, What you write is too bleak for me.
If, as you say: (HP) >>>> You know Classical Political Economy divides the universe into Land, Labor, and Products - which are natural resources, human exertion, and the material results of exertion. So, where does God - or a Supreme Being - come in these three categories? >>>> Without "God" then I, for one, would give up now, and say, with the Preacher, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity". I think economics is interesting because it is a reflection of human nature. And I think human nature is interesting because it seems to be the best example yet of a self-reflecting evolving lifeform. If economics were all, then life would not be interesting beyond, say, the level of being a football or a tennis fan. The sorts of calculations that cosmologists are now doing suggest that the improbability of a universe with physical characterstics which are precisely capable of sustaining long-term evolving lifeforms such as ourselves is so vast as to require an infinite number of variable universes to be sure of just one or a handful of them qualifying. If we were just an accident, this seems to me to be an absurd flight of imagination. To my mind the big question is: "If life is a mere chemical/thermodynamic byproduct of creation, why do we want to know what it's all about, even though we know that in this life we will never know?" And yet we still strive to know. As Fred Hoyle once said of the universe: "There's summat up" -- which is Yorkshire dialect for saying: "There is something very mysterious going on." It seems to me that if we didn't have, at bottom, a desire for human life to exist for as long as possible in order to examine the big questions, then the cleverest people would have been crooks and tyrants a long time ago, having established a unbreakable dynasty that would keep the rest of the population in permanent thraldom. Many clever people have tried in the past, and no doubt will continue to try, but, fortunately for the rest, they are not among the cleverest, and never will be. Keith Hudson At 19:29 12/01/02 -0800, you wrote: >Keith, > >In my lighter moments I regard myself as a kind of neo-sophist. The >sophists were likely to say to their earnest contemporaries - 'You know no >more today than you did yesterday, so why are you still discussing it?' So, >in that spirit, I would say that we know perhaps all we will ever know >about a the possibility of a Supreme Being. > >So, all right already! > >(That's New Yorkese for I'm not sure what - but it fits.) > >Perhaps the major difference between the scientist and the philosopher is >that the philosopher's imaginings are complete, whereas the scientist's >hypotheses must be tested by observation and experiment. > >You know Classical Political Economy divides the universe into Land, Labor, >and Products - which are natural resources, human exertion, and the >material results of exertion. > >So, where does God - or a Supreme Being - come in these three categories? > >Harry > >----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Keith wrote: > > >>At 09:39 06/01/02 -0500, you wrote: >>(SK) >><<<< >>As usual, I enjoy reading your [BmcC] comments. What is mindboggling to me >>is most humans devotion to religion,(incl you as evidenced by your sig file >> quotes.) The leap of faith required to believe in dogmatically derived >>absolute values of ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics is perhaps the >>highest order result of parental and societal conditioning. >> >>>> >>(EW) >><<<< >>There is, IMHO, another understanding of religion, an alternative to >>inculcated dogmatism and perhaps its anathema. This is religion as groping >>toward answers to profound mystery. Dogma prescribes boundaries that >>cannot take you very far. You become very uncomfortable if the boundaries >>are overstepped. Reason can take you a whole lot further, but it too >>eventually reaches its limits. Then you are left with mystery, and yet you >>can't just walk away. You still want to know what lies there. It is at >>that point that you confront God. >> >>>> >> >>Yes, indeed. Those who are atheists are being just as dogmatic as those >>Believers who say that non-Believers are damned. But we can't trust >>language. It contains verbal paradoxes and depend on assumptions that >>cannot be proved. Language and logic are useful crutches and help us to get >>by from day to day, but are no more than that. >> >>But language allows us to construct our own metaphors and every individual >>who bothers to construct a metaphor has a belief that is as valid as anyone >>else's -- so long as he doesn't try to impose those beliefs on others. The >>metaphors become invalid because religions then become Religions -- that >>is, political systems. >> >>For most of their history, religions have guarded their power as implacably >>as any government. In 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome >>by the Christian Church for his "obstinate and pertinacious heresies". He'd >>conjectured: "There are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see >>only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for >>they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around >>their suns, no worse and no less than this globe of ours." >> >>And the situation today is not a great deal better in many parts of the >>world. Islamic women are still being stoned to death and Hindu women are >>still being burned alive for reasons of breaking religious codes. >> >>In modern times, scientific metaphors are more humane. They don't lay down >>inflexible moral laws. They have a better chance than theological ones of >>being shared voluntarily among civilised peoples. Scientific metaphors also >>make for a truly universal language. And, if we ever met aliens from outer >>space (so long as they were from the same universe!), then scientific >>metaphors would be mutually understood. >> >>But at the end of the day, even the metaphors of science are insufficient >>because they themselves reveal that there are problems that cannot be >>explained. That we are aware of insoluble problems and that we are >>conscious of limits to our knowledge are, to my mind, the greatest >>mysteries of all. >> >>Keith Hudson > > >****************************** >Harry Pollard >Henry George School of LA >Box 655 >Tujunga CA 91042 >Tel: (818) 352-4141 >Fax: (818) 353-2242 >******************************* > > > > > __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
