[KO] Perhaps Ham is closer to a deist - a God or fundamental particle that does its bit and then sits back while the universe unfolds - no dogma, no religion.
[Arlo] Yeah, I mentioned this in my last post. The problem is, that in Ham's cosmology, human consciousness appears in the timeline as the direct result of willful deliberation on the part of the "Source". And human consciousness evolves over time by willful and deliberate "updating" by the "Source". Where Deism may hold a passive God that sets the ball rolling but sits back and has no deliberate or intentional intervention with things, Ham's "Source" does indeed intervene (when He doles out improved consciousnesses to subsequent human generations). And the appearance of consciousness itself is certainly interventional by his "Source". So, at best I'd say Ham's "metaphysics" is a hybrid of Deism and Theism. Nothing wrong with that, as far as metaphors go, but he should at the least be honest about it. He can peddle theology all he wants, but to pretend it isn't theology is disingenuous. This is why he simply will not answer my questions about "how" consciousness evolves, or how it appears in the historical timeline. He KNOWS his only recourse to answer is the finger-snapping appearance brought by his Source, and the doling out of "updated models" again by his "Source". But to say this admits to Deism/Theism, and he will not do that. And so he asks you to "look away", will resort to all sorts of distractive rhetoric (last time it was a bounce between calling me a (gasp!) collectivist, nihilist and scientist). And again, despite my being a "virulent anti-theist", I actually find many Deistic/Theistic metaphors quite valuable (in a Campbellian or Gnostic sense, or in the sense Pirsig unites Quality with The Tao)... but that's another topic. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
