Hi Arlo, Thank you for your question and giving me the opportunity to elaborate.
On 5/8/12, ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR <ajb...@psu.edu> wrote: > [Mark] > You have to admit that the whole idea of leaving Quality undefined is highly > religious in its instructions. There is no wonder that Pirsig claims to be > "anti-theist" since his explanations smack of theism. > > [Arlo] > Hi Mark, I noticed this in your reply to Ant, and it seems to answer an > unanswered question of mine, and that is whether "undefinedness" is > equivalent to "religious". Or if one does not imply the other, how do you > see them related? Would you consider Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems, for > example, to be religious in nature? Is there any way for a metaphysics (in > your view) to NOT be theistic? Or is any metaphysics (including the denial > of a coherent metaphysics) ipso facto a religion? > > I keep coming back to this because in your claims of Pirsig's 'theism', but > I can't see any way in your view how anything can NOT be a theism (i.e. > everything is a theism). Let me phrase it this way, for Pirsig to be > genuinely "anti-theistic", what would you think he would have to do? Define > Quality? (Is it the undefined term that makes something a religion?) What do > you think are the distinguishing features between theism, anti-theism and > even atheism? Maybe a clarification in how I am using terms here is appropriate. When I say "religious", I am referring to the dogmatic dictatorial leadership of something like the Christian Church. This "religious" claims that everything in terms of how we need to behave has been written and we need simply to follow instructions. The Church has also created a "God" as some kind of objective "thing" which exists as something separate. What this means is that we have to worship this objective creation. Of course this is all in the name of Power. That is why I use the word "instructions" in the quote you placed above. Moving over to MoQ. We seem to be parcing the words which Pirsig spoke or wrote in the same manner as the bible is read by many. We throw out quotes to show how right we are. I find this to be religious. On the undefined. I fully understand why there is a necessity to leave Quality undefined. This is for exactly the same reason why the Tao, the Gnostic Christian God, the God of the Christian Mystics, Brahman, The Great Spirit etc, etc, is taught to be left undefined. Unfortunately, this does not work in this age of Definitions, especially if we want to create a Western metaphysics which is representative of much older metaphysics. I believe we need to understand what we are trying to do by leaving it undefined. In older customs, such denial of definition required meditation, yoga, (yes even) prayer, personal teacher, in order to achieve an understanding. Again, this does not work in our modern world of "explain to me with words" society. We know what undefined means. With such knowledge we can then move forward and discuss Quality. Any discussion requires objective definitions. These are simply tools and do not bind Quality unless we let them. We are not so degenerate. I find Gödel’s theorem to demonstrate that math and logic are human creations and are therefore self-referential. They exist as a bubble and can never be fully proven except through acceptance and circular logic. This is no big surprise except to those who think that knowledge is something we discover; those that think that somehow we are unlocking something hidden through the creation of knowledge. As I have said before, our intellectual musings are like the hum that comes from a bee hive. I say this not to put such endeavors down, but simply to raise the bee hive to a grand level. The musings of a photon are no different than our own, at a fundamental level. This is how the universe can be made of moral fabric. This is how everything can have free will. This is how Quality becomes the very basis for reality. In terms of theism. I personally do not have a problem with that word since it implies knowing of that which cannot be defined. Anti-theism requires that everything be shown empirically, defined, and proven in order to be of value. If indeed Pirsig wants to be anti-theistic, then he should move forward in a typical humanist fashion (in my humble opinion). But it would see that he wants to have it both ways (which is fine by me). That is, he wants Quality to not be defined, yet he writes a whole book defining it as undefined. In this way he has objectively transformed the "undefined" into something. Once he has done this, the conversation begins on what this something is. It is impossible, then, to say we must never talk about it and simply view it out of the corners of our eyes, like something lurking but somehow divine. Theism: Belief in something that can never be known. Anti-Theism: Belief that everything can be known and only that is real Atheism: Belief that the belief in God as some supernatural being is wrong. I have two of those, how many do you have? Hope this explains how I use the words. Cheers, Mark > > > 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/md/archives.html > 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/md/archives.html
