Wow. I guess its time for the picadors to relax because here comes
Toro, the big bull. As far as I'm concerned, it just means a bigger
pile to avoid.
At 11:47 AM 2/26/2009, you wrote:
MP,
Nice job of weathering the shit storm that forms around anyone suggesting
that the MoQ is not rabidly atheistic. In rejecting the validity of an
overtly theistic approach to the MoQ, many here substitute what they
consider to be a ration of crap with a ration of crap that they personally
find more palatable. The problem with the kind of postmodern position that
Pirsig stakes out is that in some sense it's all a ration of crap and
personal taste is all that guides us in selecting which ration to chew on.
Notice the merger of the Pirsig's museum and menu metaphors?
I suspect what is most galling about this is that you get painted as somehow
being rationally remiss because you do not share the prevailing aesthetic.
Hence dmb wants to berate you with his claim to "authority" and his posse of
authorities who are really his sock puppets and Marsha wants to alternate
between vicious attacks and claims of indifference.
Theism, to digress briefly, is a concept broad enough, as you point out, to
find plenty of common points within the MoQ despite what Pirsig claims in
the "annotations". Pantheism in particular is more or less endorsed by
William James and as Dawkins points out was essentially Einstein's view of
the divine. It is also the theology of many native American tribes which
oddly enough Pirsig seems to endorse despite what he says in the
"annotations".
There is also Whitehead's semi-theological process philosophy. Whitehead and
Pirsig were intimately connected in the very first Master's thesis on the
MoQ which is posted on Ant's site. Whitehead's view is that reality is a
process, that the Good is not a noun but a verb. His view has been taken up
by theologians and is called process theology.
Even the supposedly atheistic religions like Buddhism are not as atheistic
as some would claim when they paint a picture of reality as unitary, all is
one and so forth. I often wonder how many of those espousing eastern
mystical ideas on this forum actually buy into reincarnation and the other
distinctly nonsensical baggage that comes with this line of thinking.
With regards to faith and skepticism I have long argued that science does
require a kind of faith. Bertrand Russell once said that the only label
attached to him that he really agreed with was that of logical atomist. He
said that what philosophers do is pick a concept and analyze it to the point
that it cannot be analyzed any further. At some point neither rationalism or
empiricism can give us the tools we need to decide what is right and what is
wrong. This is the point where I would say faith kicks in. We decide what is
right or wrong based on our intuitions, our emotional attachment to one set
of concepts or another or our personal estimation of the probability that
one view is not accurate than another. This then becomes a kind of belief in
the face of a lack of reason or evidence for that belief. I like to call
this a skip of faith. It bridges that gap of uncertainty by finding the
shallowest and narrowest point at which to ford the river of doubt.
As always the key here is how to handle uncertainty. Recently Platt listed a
bunch "isms" that he seems to think he has pulled the pants off of. He
thinks he has revealed in them some critical failure, paradox or error. It
is a bit ironic that he claims to have unpantsed an emperor who prides
himself in running around nude. All of those isms strive not only to lay
bare the "assumptions" from which they proceed but to challenge those
assumptions constantly. The "dogma" of those phantom "isms" is always
subject to the "karma" of the practice of those "isms".
I agree with you that there is always some element of faith in any set of
beliefs but personally I think it is important to decide how big a leap you
are willing to make.
Krimel
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Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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