Helmut, Gary R, List,
Helmut: “The ‘great replacement’ is a conspiracy theory by
nazis.”
Are people still using that word, “nazi”? The word has become so over-used that
it’s lost its original meaning. These days a “nazi” is simply anyone that
Leftists disagree with.
Helmut: “Two cultures are not like oil and water, because cultures
are there for mutual appropiation, not for demarcation. Not only in music, but
there it is most obvious.”
There are complex nuances of a systemic nature that must be factored into the
current migration programs of the EU and the UK:
* Migrants from cultures whose misogynistic religions routinely abuse
women, are not going to assimilate easily into cultures emphasizing women’s
rights and democratic values. The incentivization of migration from despotic
regimes, comprised of the worst elements that include grooming gangs, rapists,
drug cartels and criminals, is not going to end well;
* Persons motivated by the promise of free stuff are a very different
category of migrant to those whose motivations revolve around survival or a
better life (as in the Europeans that settled America). It’s not a crime to
take advantage of free stuff. The crime is the EU/UK’s deliberate program of
incentivisation. The problem is not the unskilled economic migrants, often
masquerading as refugees, taking advantage of freebies, such as welfare and
free accommodation, towards which they’ve never had to pay taxes. The problem
is the treason being perpetrated by EU/UK politicians against European/UK
interests, whether as “Great Replacement” or “Stupid Progressivism” (take your
pick). Regardless of the motivation, treason, as the aiding and abetting of
invaders, is the one word that defines both.
Helmut, if I read you correctly, you think it’s all good, we get to benefit
with nice music in a diverse, equitable ambiance, without crime, rape or
violence. You’re proving my point. Us Westerners, confined to our
anthropocentric religions and physicalist scientisms (the God/Not-God schism),
just don’t get it. And we never will… until, perhaps, it’s too late.
Europe has had an extensive history of unavoidable challenges with minorities
and their assimilation… not always perfect, but we’ve done the best we could.
But what we are now facing is something new and unprecedented. Human
exceptionalism is an anthropocentric God’s curse and it will soon be coming
home to roost. A new Dark Age is on the horizon.
Helmut: “I think it is not only ok to leave the God-question open,
but to not leave it open is blasphemy, as God obviously leaves it open, which
we should respect.”
On this, we agree.
Cheers,
sj
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Helmut Raulien
Sent: 18 August, 2025 9:54 PM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]
Subject: Aw: [PEIRCE-L] Planck and Peirce on mind as primary, matter secondary
Stephen, List,
The "great replacement" is a conspiracy theory by nazis. Two cultures are not
like oil and water, because cultures are there for mutual appropiation, not for
demarcation. Not only in music, but there it is most obvious. I think it is not
only ok to leave the God-question open, but to not leave it open is blasphemy,
as God obviously leaves it open, which we should respect. Scriptures are never
the words of God, though they claim it, and prophets mainly have their own
agendas (career goals). I guess, the best religious scripture is the Granth
Sahib, in which on 1430 pages God is an object of worship, not of assumption =
attempted analysis.
Best, Helmut
18. August 2025 um 16:48
"Stephen Jarosek" <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >
wrote:
Jon, Gary, List,
Jon: “Peirce considered the ‘anthropocentric bias’ of Western philosophy to be
a feature, not a bug" […] "To say, therefore, that a conception is one natural
to man, which comes to just about the same thing as to say that it is
anthropomorphic, is as high a recommendation as one could give to it in the
eyes of an Exact Logician" (CP 5.47, EP 2:152, 1903).
Gary: “So, in a word: the spirit of the ‘Religions of the Book’ and those of
the East are, in my view, quasi-necessary; the language, symbols, doctrines and
dogmas, however, are mainly insufficient for the needs of our era.”
Allow me to expand on my motivations for leaving the god question open. One of
them, I've already touched on... the creative void, as first cause, may itself
be the progenitor of life. If so, then this raises questions as to whether God
is a product of life processes (the universe as a unified collective), or the
creator of them… or even both, in the sense of a god-universe bootstrapping
itself into existence. Indeed, is God even necessary, whether as the creator of
life, or the arbiter of moral purpose? By leaving the god question open, one is
forced to address first principles.
First principles? The creative void is one such first principle. Another is the
pervasiveness of maternal love throughout nature. How do the mothers of so many
species know to love their offspring? Where does this come from? Darwinians
typically trivialize maternal love (or any other kind of love) as an "adaptive
trait", an adjunct to the meat-and-potatoes of dumb stochastic processes.
Religious folk, by contrast, might describe it as God's love pervading
throughout nature. I introduce a different slant... maternal love as of
semiotic significance prioritizing the known, an expression of the tension
between the known and the unknown.
An anthropocentric bias would presuppose that only humans are capable of love,
and that its manifestation outside of the human domain is in the form of
"instinct" as an adaptive trait. In this context, maternal love in non-human
animals, as "instinctual", is merely incidental - an artificial fabrication of
God's perfect love that He reserves for humans. With our anthropocentric
interpretation, we lose sight of its semiotic significance, rich in meaning and
purpose… and even, as a first principle in all sentient life throughout the
universe, not just human life on Earth.
On the moral question and its intent... is morality defined by God? Or does it
relate to cultural health and well-being? Self-interest versus the greater
good? Christianity has already demonstrated that morality relates to the
greater good that makes progress in cultures possible. The foundation of
civilisation, the European Renaissance and all that. In the absence of
morality, overwhelmed by self-interest, degeneracy and misery would be the
end-point of that trajectory. The European Renaissance is now in the past, a
new future beckons. A new Dark Age, perhaps? [I allude here to Douglas Murray’s
“The Strange Death of Europe”]
So where has the anthropocentric, "man made in God's image" indulgence brought
us? Yes, it gave us the European Renaissance that preceded the industrial and
technological revolutions. But it never tempered its human exceptionalism, the
notion that only human logic and reason are real, everything else a mere
simile. And in this our indulgent anthropocentrism might have now brought us to
the edge of extinction, that's where. The God/Not-God tension of the Occident
is unlike the synthesis that emerged in the East. Our Creationism flips to
Darwinism morphs into Neo-Darwinism morphs into physicalism/materialism, the
notion that everything can be explained in terms of matter and math.
Who here hasn't heard of "The Great Replacement"? A strategic agenda or a
stupid experiment? Regardless, the established physicalist narrative cannot
comprehend that mixing very different cultures, like mixing oil and water, can
only ever result in catastrophe. The European cultures that had taken millennia
to evolve from the hunter-gatherers now stand at a precipice. The chaos that
has arrived at our doorstep we owe to the human exceptionalism that renders
human ways of knowing as exceptional, not required to answer to a higher
authority, other than the god made in Man's image.
The god that I have in mind is Hubble Deep-field, trillions-galactic big. He
won’t know my name. Insofar as I might occasionally conjecture, he is very
different to the Abrahamic god made in Man's image that has set the stage for a
God/Not-God duality, an irreconcilable religion/materialist schism. I'm sure He
won't be offended were I to leave Him out of our conversations. He's bigger
than that.
Cheers,
sj
From: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <
<mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]> On Behalf
Of Gary Richmond
Sent: 18 August, 2025 8:18 AM
To: Peirce List < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]>; Stephen
Jarosek < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]>; Jon Alan
Schmidt < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Planck and Peirce on mind as primary, matter secondary
Stephen, Jon, List,
SJ: Too many Western interpretations are tinged with anthropocentric
(god-leaning) biases, and that’s why I am more inclined to Eastern
interpretations, which leave the god-question open.
I too am more and more inclined to "leave the god-question" open, although I
still consider myself something of a 'Cosmic Christian' in Matthew Fox's sense
of Christ as Logos and Pantokrator (Fox follows de Chardin and Meister Eckhart,
for example, in seeing Christ as a cosmic reality, as an energy pattern, a
presence pervading the universe) However, this is for me likely an interim
measure as I move further from traditional theism to I know not what (none of
the Eastern religions either). So, in a word: the spirit of the "Religions of
the Book" and those of the East are, in my view, quasi-necessary; the language,
symbols, doctrines and dogmas, however, are mainly insufficient for the needs
of our era.
On the other hand, I didn't comment in the Planck/Peirce discussion that both
thinkers were wholly opposed to atheism and made many statements to that
effect. And I too am opposed to materialism, nothing-but-ism, social Darwinism,
irreverence (for people, animals, the earth), etc. As did First Nations people
of the Americas, I see all of nature as sacred. And Tat Tvam Asi.
My own thinking to date is that some Eastern thought posits Mind in a way which
not only leaves 'the god-question open' but which offers such stimulating ideas
as expressed in a Tibetan Buddhist tantra I read decades ago which opens:
Samaya: Gya, Gya, Gya, translated, Universal Mind: Vast, Vast, Vast. And I am
inspired by those metaphysical ideas which suggest that we are of the very
nature of that Vast Intelligence. For example, Vedanta, Tat Tvam Asi
(translated, You Are That: 'Tat' = 'That', 'Tvam = 'You', 'Asi' = 'Are')
identifies the person with the essence of Tat. So I welcome a discussion of how
some Eastern thought can help us find a way to see Vast Intelligence at the
core of the cosmos without making That 'an anthropomorphic God' as Peirce and
billions of Jews, Muslims, and Christians do. I have great respect for those
who hold such beliefs as they all have at least the potential value of finding
life -- and not only human life, but all life -- valuable, sacred.
Jon: Despite viewing consciousness as "limited to embodied and living beings,"
Peirce considered the "anthropocentric bias" of Western philosophy to be a
feature, not a bug. . . Applying this directly to "the god-question," he
preferred "the anthropomorphic conception" of "an old-fashioned God" as "more
likely to be about the truth" than "a modern patent Absolute".
Gary: I would agree that for many an abstract 'Absolute' resonates very little
with the sense of the profound mystery of our being in this vast cosmos (just
spend a little time with the images take by the Webb telescope to get a sense
of what I mean by 'vast cosmos'), that for some of us our 'intellect' and
'soul' or 'spirit' senses a connection to something profoundly Real/Vital which
the extant religions no longer adequately address. The 'old-fashioned God' of
the "Religions of the Book " has apparently worked well enough for multitudes
and for centuries, and still has a powerful grip on many today. But there seems
to be an increasing desire among some for a faith which, if not exactly
'scientific', is at least not at odds with science (again, neither Peirce nor
Planck thought it need be). Still, should it ever evolve, that now quite
inconceivable religion will need symbols more powerful than those of the
existing major religions which, however, and in my personal experience as a
Christian, are very powerful indeed in pointing the way to the sacred.
Perhaps there's a truth in what Jon quoted Peirce as saying ". . .that each of
us believes in God, and that the only quest is how to believe less crudely."
Best,
Gary R
On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 1:08 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:
Stephen, List:
SJ: Too many Western interpretations are tinged with anthropocentric
(god-leaning) biases, and that’s why I am more inclined to Eastern
interpretations, which leave the god-question open.
Despite viewing consciousness as "limited to embodied and living beings,"
Peirce considered the "anthropocentric bias" of Western philosophy to be a
feature, not a bug, because "every scientific explanation is a hypothesis that
there is something in nature to which the human reason is analogous" (CP 1.316,
1903). "To say, therefore, that a conception is one natural to man, which comes
to just about the same thing as to say that it is anthropomorphic, is as high a
recommendation as one could give to it in the eyes of an Exact Logician" (CP
5.47, EP 2:152, 1903). Applying this directly to "the god-question," he
preferred "the anthropomorphic conception" of "an old-fashioned God" as "more
likely to be about the truth" than "a modern patent Absolute" (CP 5.47n, EP
2:152; see also CP 8.168, 1902).
Of course, Peirce famously professed his own belief that God is "Really creator
of all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2:434, 1908), and he even
asserted, "It may, therefore, truly be said that each of us believes in God,
and that the only quest is how to believe less crudely" (SWS 283, 1909).
However, he also insisted that "'God' is a vernacular word and, like all such
words, but more than almost any, is vague," going on to suggest that the reason
why many people erroneously deny that they believe in the reality of God is
because "they precide (or render precise) the conception, and, in doing so,
inevitably change it; and such precise conception is easily shown not to be
warranted, even if it cannot be quite refuted" (CP 6.494-6, c. 1906). After
all, he adds a few paragraphs later, "it is impossible to say that any human
attribute is literally applicable" to God (CP 6.502); so, accordingly, "we must
not predicate any Attribute of God otherwise than vaguely and figuratively"
(SWS 283).
My forthcoming paper in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society,
"Peirce's Cosmological Argumentation: God as Ens necessarium," explores
Peirce's answer to "the god-question" in greater detail. As usual, I will post
a link and the abstract when it is published, presumably in the next issue.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt>
/ twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 8:11 AM "Stephen Jarosek" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:
Gary, List
Gary R: “While Planck was cautious about explicitly theological language
(although he was a practicing Lutheran), my sense is that he tended towards a
view in which the universe’s ultimate reality is mind-like, far more general
than human consciousness, perhaps more like a universal cosmic field in which
human minds participate.”
Resonates with aspects of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and the quantum void.
Peirce’s and Planck’s interpretations are exceptional. Peirce, for example,
appreciates that “consciousness seems limited to embodied and living beings”,
and this resonates nicely with my own thinking. However, my exchanges with
Grok focus more on Eastern philosophies, rather than Western. Too many Western
interpretations are tinged with anthropocentric (god-leaning) biases, and
that’s why I am more inclined to Eastern interpretations, which leave the
god-question open.
In my latest research (current paper under review with a journal), I factor in
the parallels between the quantum void and Sunyata (the creative void of
Buddhism/Hinduism), within a Peircean-semiotic context. My extensive convo with
Grok covers the “creative void” in greater detail, around the notion that the
“tensions” in the void (its potentialities) are essentially semiotic. If anyone
is interested, DM me and I can send you a Word transcript of my convo with
Grok… or I can post it to the forum, if there’s a way of doing this.
If anyone is interested in my current paper that is under review, here’s a link
to a preprint on Academia.edu:
<https://www.academia.edu/129898049/UPDATE_Association_as_Downward_Causation>
https://www.academia.edu/129898049/UPDATE_Association_as_Downward_Causation
Cheers,
sj
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