[extropy-chat] Re: John Wright Finds God

[Samantha Atkins]

john-c-wright at sff.net wrote:

>
>Here I will venture my own opinion. The hunger for truth is universal: I cannot
>see how any organism can survive without it. The hunger for the spirit world is
>widespread; it exists in most men, most of the time, but by no means in all. 
>
>If the hunger for the spirit world is merely the blind programming of inanimate
>nature organizing the molecules of our brains over generations of evolution,
>then we are trapped in an illusionary belief by our basic drives and instincts.
>In such as case, the atheists may rightly congratulate themselves in using their
>minds to break free from a innate but demeaning instinct: their victory is as
>honorable as a pacifist renouncing violence, or a nun renouncing marriage.  
>
>  
>

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that evolutionary programming 
left us susceptible to certain patterns of experience and belief that do 
not necessarily reflect anything truly "out there".   Some of these 
belief patterns are/were actually useful in some ways and thus propagate 
in socieities.   It is not that it was programmed in so much as 
evolution did not result in being programmed out.     We are not trapped 
unless we agree to be, unless we fail to question deeply.    There is no 
"instinct" for religion or the supernatural.

>If the hunger for the spirit world is sent from the spirit world, like music
>heard across a starry sea, promising a farther shore, then the hunger has a
>proper object to satisfy it; an object not found on any earthly shore. All
>spiritual travelers depart from matter and materialism in their search:
>mysticism, by which I mean specifically the search for knowledge by
>non-rational, non-sensory means, is the common ocean onto which all such
>travelers embark. 
>
>Now then, at this point, the skeptic can say that these so-called different
>travelers all ferried themselves to islands existing in their imaginations only,
>and brought back reports fished up from merely dreams and hallucinations: no
>wonder they disagree. 
>
>The point is well taken. And yet, it is ships that sailed from England that
>colonized North America, not elsewhere, and our language bears the stamp of that
>ancestral isle. South America bears the stamp of Portugal and Spain. The
>descriptions of the Spanish Main do not match the descriptions of New England. 
>
>  
>

And yet they brought back actual real things everyone could see and 
touch.    The analogy breaks down.


>Of the many faiths of Earth, I am not bold enough to condemn any as utterly
>false, and my prayer is that all of them might lead sincere hearts, somehow, out
>of this sorrowful world where we find ourselves, to the shining lands of which
>the prophets speak. And yet is seems a cruel truth that not all peoples are
>equal to the task, any more than all nations are equal to discover the arts of
>ship-builders and longitudinal navigation. Likewise, some faiths are better than
>others: the cruelties of the Aztecs are not to be compared to the subtle
>reasonings of the peaceful Buddhist. 
>
>  
>

And while we are looking for those finer and more subtle shores will we 
let this all too apparently real world disintegrate into darkness?   
Will we spend our lives and hearts and energy on inchoate longings for 
the "Beyond the Beyond"?    Every culture where a significant number of 
the finest minds took this path has stagnated and devolved into 
superstition and ritual.   

>You may think it terribly un-multicultural of me to believe that the Jews
>discovered (or were chosen to receive) a monumental truth by which all the
>nations of the world would be blessed, and that the Messiah appeared among them,
>not elsewhere. Perhaps so, but I cannot picture it happening any other way. It
>is not odd or absurd to learn that Euclid elaborated the geometry, or Ptolemy
>the astronomy, which was less developed even in other civilized lands. No one
>thinks the truths in these sciences are invented by nor restricted to one race
>of men. They are objective truths, free for all to discover. But, then again,
>but no one uses Eskimo or Hottentot mathematics and astronomy to determine his
>position at sea.   
>
>  
>

A comparitive study of the world's religions should show you that 
Christianity is not privileged or even terribly original.   An 
examination of the history of Christianity and the creation of the Bible 
as we have it today will surely show good reason to doubt it has some 
shining veracity beyond all other belief systems.   As far as mysticism 
itself goes Christian mystical practice and writing is primitive 
compared to many Eastern variants. 

- samantha