Hi Steve,
(Certain sections omitted in the interest of brevity. Please let me know if
I've left out something important to the discussion.)
> >> Platt:
> >>> I agreed we use the term "faith" differently. I didn't agree that
> >>> holding
> >>> beliefs beyond reason is bad. To believe mind emerged from the
> >>> mindless is
> >>> beyond reason, but many believe it to be so.
> >> Steve:
> >> How is such a belief beyond reason? If such a belief is not
> >> considered to be
> >> subject to rational questioning it is held on faith. If it is a
> >> belief that
> >> is considered open to critique it is not. If you can imagine evidence
> >> that could convince you to change your mind about a belief, it is not
> >> held on faith.
> Platt:
> > What evidence can you imagine that mind emerged from the mindless?
> Steve:
> I'm not sure what you mean by that. I don't know if I have this belief or
> not. If what you mean by mind is intellectual patterns, then doesn't the MOQ
> say that it emerged from the mindless since we imagine that there was a time
> when intellectual patterns didn't exist? I'm not sure what you are getting
> at.
>
> I'm just saying that if someone holds a belief but cannot imagine any
> way that this belief could be called into question, this belief is
> probably one held on faith. So if I believe that mind emerged from the
> mindless, it is not held on faith if I can imagine being presented with
> evidence that mind was created by some higher intelligence. It is not hard
> to imagine how God or aliens or whatever could provide evidence that they
> exists.
Platt:
I think we've lost each other in what we mean by "faith," "imagination,"
and "evidence" -- high abstractions that easily lead to talking past one
another which I fear we're doing above. Perhaps we can come back to this
at a later date since there are so many issues involved. .
> >>>> Steve:
> >>>> But Harris would agree that Communism and National Socialism are
> >>>> evil.
> >> Platt:
> >>> Yes, but the major ax he grinds is the suffering caused by believers in
> >>> God, not atheists. That's my problem with his view.
> >> Steve:
> >> He is looking at suffering that is a direct result of dogmatic
> >> beliefs. I
> >> can't understand why you would oppose such a critique.
> Platt:
> > I don't. What I crticize is his emphasis on dogmatic religious belief
> > while ignoring dogmatic belief of atheists.
> Steve:
> There are countless other things that he doesn't talk about. It seems a
> strange way to criticize someone's writings. Is it not legitimate just to
> write a book critical of religious faith without pointing out every other
> bad intellectual pattern?
Platt:
I think that depends on the magnitude of the what is left out. If the
results of religious belief are bad historically, they pale in comparison
to the bad results of atheist belief.
(Omission)
> Platt:
> > As I read this I can't help but note that you have faith in
> > intellectual
> > quality (reason) even though reason cannot show by reason that it is
> > reasonable. What am I missing?
> Steve:
> I think what it may be is that I keep trying to explain that the faith that
> is problematic is not trust or fidelity or other uses of the term faith but
> simply faith as it is applied to belief.
>
> Believing something that isn't proven beyond all doubt is not what I'm
> talking about. I'm talking about the so-called virtue of believing things
> when all you have are doubts.
Platt:
I don't quite follow. How can someone believe what she doubts? Those who
believe in God don't have doubts, do they? As for proving something -- well
that, like what is considered acceptable evidence, raises all sorts of
issues. Just look at the current controversy about global weather changes.
Personally I like Pirsig's solution as to what to believe -- choose what
for you has value like paintings in a gallery and leave the rest.
(Omission)
> Platt:
> > I don't agree that Locke's premises are completely at odds with the MOQ.
> > The "laws of nature" he refers to obviously includes other people,
> > including an individual's parents without whose existence Locke wouldn't
> > naturally be.
> Steve:
> "Completely at odds" is hyperbole of course. I mean it's not like Locke is
> saying the exact opposite of the MOQ whatever that means. But the premise he
> starts with is that reality is composed of subjects and objects. Your quote
> says that man's natural state is "perfect freedom" where Pirsig says that
> the idea that, "man is born free but is everywhere in chains" was never
> true. There are no chains more vicious than the chains of biological
> necessity into which every child is born. Society exists primarily to free
> people from these biological chains."
Platt:
I think Locke had in mind freedom from other men, not from biology.
> Platt:
> >>> Yes, but society also can smother man's intellectual freedom as
> >>> history of
> >>> Communism and National Socialism clearly shows. It is against this
> >>> tendency of society to control intellect that Locke and the Founding
> >>> Fathers established individual rights "endowed by their Creator." Far
> >>> from being "completely at odds with the MOQ, freedom is the highest
> >>> moral value. "This last, the Dynamic-static code, says what's good in
> >>> life isn't defined by society or intellect or biology. What's good is
> >>> freedom from domination by any static pattern, but that freedom doesn't
> >>> have to be obtained by the destruction of the patterns themselves."
> >>> (Lila, 24)
> >> Steve:
> >> I agree, I just don't think we have to take the "endowed by their
> >> Creator"
> >> part in the way that religious folks take to mean the Christian God. This
> >> is not teh Creator that the Deist Founding Fathers were talking about.
> >>
> >> I also think we can agree that it is important to set limits on
> >> government's
> >> ability to smother man's intellectual freedom without appealing to
> >> any gods.
> Platt:
> > "We can agree" presupposes that rights can be taken away by a majority of
> > "we who agree." That's a real and present danger. Rights "endowed by their
> > Creator" is a firewall (to use a popular current word) against loss of
> > individual (intellectual) rights in the name of fairness, equality or
> > other emotional appeal by politicians to a Utopian dream.
> Steve:
> I don't see how this gets us out of the "we can agree" problem. Don't
> we still have to agree on what rights are "endowed by their Creator"?
> It's not like God is going to step in a settle it for us. Not even
> religious people believe that.
Platt:
Good point. But if we don't agree what rights are "endowed by their
Creator," then it's a free-for-all where anything goes depending on the
biggest mob or the group with the most potent weapons.
> Steve
> Would you really rather that politician's talked about what God wants
> us to do instead of "fairness, equality or other emotional appeal"?
Platt:
Rather than any of the above, I would really rather politicians talk about
individual liberty and personal responsibility for one's own happiness.
> > PLatt:
> > I wonder, Steve, if the you see a battle between the intellect and
> > society
> > as Pirsig does, expressed in such ways as: "The one dominating
> > question of
> > this century has been, "Are the social patterns of our world going to run
> > our intellectual life, or is our intellectual life going to run the social
> > patterns?" And in that battle, the intellectual patterns have won." (Lila,
> > 21)
> Steve:
> Pirsig said the intellectual patterns have already won this battle. I
> think we both agree that this battle is ongoing.
Platt:
Yes we agree. And I guess we agree, as Pirsig points out, that the battle
SOM intellect is waging is flawed due to its amorality, resulting in the
problems described in Lila and that are on TV every night. .
Regards,
Platt
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