Amos

[quote]Originally posted by jaliet:
<strong>Amos
I believe you've got the existentialist concept backwards. What Soren Kierkegaard meant when he said existence precedes essence was that the chair must exist in the mind of the chairmaker before it can have any essence. Essence being intrinsic or indispensable properties that serve to characterize or identify something.</strong>

No Kierkegaard here Jaliet and no Existentialist either. It is not good enough to just know what the purpose of your creations are because you must also have the insight to arrive at that end. The know-how of every detail of your chair must be in place or your chair will never match the image you had in mind before you started the project! That is, we're not making "something" that we can sit on or "serve" as a chair.<strong>

I dont believe anyone has done what you are saying above Yet. .</strong>

My argument is not new but it is my own. Remember here that it is my ambition to call everything black the rationalist/atheist calls white (thanks to Eris, Jobar would add). My post was not an addition to Alberts' post but an objection to "existence precedes assence." I actually avoid this area out of respect for Kenny and Albert.<strong>

But jaliet, I understand natural selection well enough to state that nature does not have a mind of its own to "select" because if I would ask you to show me some nature you have to point at something that exists in nature and this would have survived the local conditions and forces of nature. If you would point at a bare mountain I would agree with you but I would also point out that not much has changed there in the last millions of years (oxidation is also a lower form of life).

For all living things adaptation is the name of the game and survival of the fittest is the evidence that intelligence is at work there. The term "natural selection" is just a statement made from the bottom of oblivion and therefore the height of ignorance. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Amos

Tharmas

Jaliet I had no idea that Kierkegaard ever said “existence precedes essence," because every time I’ve tried to read him I’ve found him so gloomy I’ve had to quit. I was referring to the phrase more in the sense that Satre made famous and which is exactly the way Amos took it.

Amos your metaphor of the blueprint is interesting to me because I spent a number of years of my life in structural engineering, literally drawing blueprints of the design elements and detailed plans of many of the giant high-rise buildings that grace our North American skylines. What for you may be mere metaphor is for me a complex of very real memories involving mathematical calculations, pencil lead weights, complex drafting projections, charts of steel grades and tensile strengths and moment connections and weld strengths and you name it. I got out about the time CAD systems were becoming essential. For somebody who has actually done it, following the process from Architect’s conception to blueprints to construction site to topping off, I can tell you that your metaphor fails. There’s a whole lot you have to know – about materials and physics and how things work, in other words, about what ALREADY EXISTS, what is given to us to work with, before you can bring that Idea into Form. And the final shape, the essence, is as much determined by existence, by the materials you have to begin with, than it is by any idea in an architect’s brain.

I can tell you that in every shop I ever worked the engineering side looked at architects with, at best amusement and at worst, contempt. The Sydney Opera House is the most famous “architect horror story,” but all engineers have dozens of their own. I won’t bore you with mine.

I will say that I’ve also constructed furniture out of wood, complicated stuff, floor looms and the like, and know my hand tools and my power tools and my woods and my grains and my finishes. And again I say before you get that Big Idea and draw that Blueprint you had better have a pretty good idea of what Existence has already made possible for you in terms of materials and physics.

[Side Note: whoever was the Architect of the human body, be it the Mind of Nature or God, could have used the services of a competent structural engineer, believe me, as my old knees tell me every time we get humidity in these parts.]

So I know too much about blueprints to be swayed by your metaphor. Blueprints tell me Existence precedes Essence.

And I think the same thing may have been true for Darwin, in a way. Darwin knew a whole lot about animals. Darwin spent so much of his life in close observation of animals that he was able, as one for instance, to write a volume on the ecology of earthworms. I kind of have the feeling that for someone who knew as much about animals as Darwin did, Paley-esque metaphors about the perfection of Creation were simply not worth thinking about.

Thanks for your replies Amos. I value the passion you bring to the discussion.

Jobar thanks for your alternate site. I’ve looked at it and I’ll enjoy lurking there some. Mostly on these boards I’m a lurker. I really try not to get too involved in these discussions, and actually framed my original post above deliberately to draw out Mr. Cipriani if possible. Instead I end up in a mutual bombast bombardment with Amos. Go figure!

Amos

Thanks Tharmas, with all respect, and I hope you enjoy the discussion because we're not done yet.

First I should tell you that in my view a metaphor is real and not just a symbol (which is not real).

With regard to Kierkegaard you are correct and I liked Sartre better but in the end it doesn't really matter because they're all wrong anyway.

Let me take you throught the following to make my point clear. Also know that I hold that science extrapolates from omniscience and will try to show you how.

Noetic = all knowing is omniscient. Noetic vision is required to be gnostic as opposed to agnostic. By definition the gnostic knows and the agnostic does not know. The agnostic has hyletic vision. Hyletic vision is what you and I have when we look at things as they appear to us (typical Cave vision). For example we see cooks cooking and architects drawing blueprints.

To be an architect an eidetic image (the essense)is needed of the building before we start. In this we must know what we need and how to combine the components before we start. This means that we must know the finished product (the eidos), its name (onoma), the articulation of components (logos), and their image (eidolon), and the knowledge to combine these components (episteme), so as to match the true eidos of the image we had in mind when we first began the project.

Notice also that the components themselves are called eidolons and affirms your line how things work, in other words, about what ALREADY EXISTS, what is given to us to work with, . . .. This is because they too, in themselves, are eidetic images of the component maker. As components they must also be right to serve the purpose he had in mind on your behalf as structural engineer/blueprint maker ("spec-sheet" and "material data sheet").

Plato called these eidetic images "forms" and we should make these forms daily and so continue our learning process lest we get older and not wiser. In Catholicism they are called masses and we should make these daily (this does not mean that we must go to church but "daily masses" are symbolic of this). In Buddhism they are called daily rounds of samsara.

I should add here that the drawing of one blueprint does not make you an architect and so the ability to make different blueprints is really the eiditic image of the architect and the blueprint itself, now, in its turn, becomes the component (eidolon), as did the components that were part of our eidetic image for one blueprint. This means that all eidetic images are connected in the process of learning to which I now add that also the architect himself is but an image of himself as architect (this gets scary and close to predestination, but then again, I am a Determinist).

Here now comes my side issue.
[In the bible (my interpretation) the eidetic image is the shepherd and the blueprints are the sheep that they were herding on the night that Christ was born. The many shepherds (12) were the eiditic images of Joseph the wealthy but upright carpenter, who was a carpenter because carpenters are known to make many different things (eidolons) and was an "upright" carpenter because he was honest with himself and engaged upon the grand inquiry to find the idenitity of the co-creator that was behind the eidolons he had made. In other words, he wanted to know "who he really was." For Plato this was the Final Form, in Buddhism it is the final round of samsara and for Aristotle it was the "final ousia" called Parousia. In Catholicism it is the final mass or Christ-mass].

If drawing blueprints is one eidetic image, each trade, or craft, or art will have its own story to tell that we can make our own to become our different eidetic images. Hence the "many shepherds" that were out herding sheep at night when Christ was born.

As we make more of these images we become wiser and will soon learn that there is a superior mind behind our success as artisan and eidolon maker. To find out who this superior intelligence is (when we earnestly want to know "who we really are" --as did Joseph the upright carpenter and Siddharta when he left his kingdom) we toss all the eidetic images--that we once had created with extreme dilligence and utmost care--aside and unknowingly "go for the pearl of great worth" (we now have telic vision). Collectively they now become the ingredients (eidolons) for the final eidos (Form or Mass or Ousia or round of Samsara) of which we do not know the end because in the grand inquisition we want to know "who we really are." The outcome of this will be noetic vision, or the mind of God--which is not always true because for Camus it was "the horror." For Joseph it meant a Beatific Vision in which the child was born that was to become his liberator from sin (sheep). Plato holds that such trauma (telic vision) holds man bound at the bottom (Freye's Parody and Joseph's stable), and leads to a miracle when released outside the Cave where he is blinded by the radiance of omniscience--and must therefore go through purgatory, the Catholic Church would add, so he can see clearly in the full radiance of omniscience (you just got to love them Catholics don't you?)

In the end what really happens is that the conscious mind is exposed to the full radiance of the subconscius mind wherein we always observed things in their own "suchness" (purpose of things), when we were examining them for their logos (purpose for things, we had in mind during the science. This in turn is how science proliferates omniscience and it does not really matter if we are consciously aware of this or not. It just happens if we are energetic participants in the rout of discovery (science).

I should add here that my concept sin is somewhat different and includes creation, co-creation and procreation.

For me it would be annoying to read Darwin because I would have to disagree with him too often. I'd rather do a poem.

Amos

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Jobar

Amos, I want you to know that I appreciate your bringing up Eris. Have you read the "Illuminatus!" Trilogy? It starts, I believe, with "The Eye in the Pyramid." One of the groups in this fantasy were the Erisians. You, Amos, are the first Erisian I have ever met. You just pretend to be a Catholic.

I like Albert because however much I may disagree with him, he is honestly trying to communicate, to make his views as clear and understandable as he can. You, on the other hand, strive to be obtuse and obscure. You're quite good at it; I am sure that your Goddess is highly pleased with you!

Amos

Sorry Jobar, no I haven't. I know, I should read more. Sorry, but I am busy too.

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Albert Cipriani

Dear Et al,
I have been buried. But I will resurrect. I always manage to. If you guys were theists, I could ask you to pray for me. As it stands, I'll just ask you to think and maybe manage to work up a little hope.

After one year at a dot com, my job has gone south really badly, such that I'm even having difficulty sleeping now. Guess you could say I'm depressed. How unfortunate that this should happen at such an exciting time here. I was loving this thread and the Atheist Breakfast one. I promise to come back and leave not one jot or title unturned. Until then, please have patience.

In addition to being a bit dyslectic, I'm kinda bi-polar, at least my wife thinks so. But I'm sure that the specifics are bad enough to make even a normal person depressed. But that's what all nut cases think, right? I'm exaggerating slightly here, but essentially, it's the truth. I'm down but not out, for a while. Sincerely Sorry, Albert

Panta Pei

Albert:

Please keep in touch with us here at the II.

I have enjoyed your posts and the assortment of responses they generate.

May you keep understanding and tolerance with you on your journey and always remember to find happiness in every moment.

Just a simple aspiration.

One human to another.

~ Steve, the mild mannered human

Ted Hoffman

Albert
Sorry about your "death". I am sure you will resurrect. I hope the hornets stings, which you said were merely "gum bites", have nothing to do with your being down.

Sorry to hear your'e bipolar. I hope you are coping well.

Amos
I don't mean to be rude, but your long story about noetic, eidos, eidoma, eidolon, logos, hyletic vision bla, bla, bla is just sophistry at work. Whatever it is you wanted to put across, I am sure you could have done it using plain english.

We make images and become wiser? Oh puleeze!

And where does the superior mind come from? How come not all successful artisans are theists?

Your conclusions simply don't follow from your premises. You have simply told us a story, Joseph, Sidharta etc.

I don't mind stories, but I just thought you should know that whatever concept you wanted to illustrate using the myths, It was lost in the fog of noetic vision. Get some hyletic vision and then try to retell the story from a hyletic point of vision.

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: jaliet ]</p>

HelenM

Actually I have trouble understanding many of Amos's posts and judging from other responses to him, I sense that other people do too.

My guess would be that Amos already does his best to make his posts as clear as possible, although that is just a guess.

I mean, most people if they bother to post, do want what they post to be understood - otherwise it's a waste of time their posting at all...I realize there are probably a few who find it entertaining to deliberately confuse people - but I really don't sense that Amos is one of those.

Albert I'm sorry to hear all you're going through .

love
Helen

Amos

Thanks jaliet, I actually thought that my story was very well articulated and should be easy to follow.

The reality is that most people get older but not wiser and it seems that wisdom is often absent because we wish to adjust to the climate of popular opinion.

All artisans are artisans because to be an artisan is to be gifted and if this was not true we would all be Piccaso's (or structural engineers) and finally nobody would really be Picasso and we could never even be able to enjoy the simplest joys of life. Did you follow that? This now means that even our simplest joys are extrapolations from eternal bliss to identify with the gifts of the artist, or with the visions of the architect as artist who relies upon prior scientific extractions (your choice of words here would be "discoveries") to arouse our passions in agreement with him. The architect is gifted and combines his giftedness with existing science to worship omniscience in his creations (earth is crammed with heaven).

Theism and atheism are just two sides of the same coin with the only difference that atheists disagree with the theistic concept of God and subsequently their search for God. This has to be true because both of them have the same mind that includes the mind of God in which we have noetic vision and from which we extract hyletic vision (the "celestail light" from which we extract the "light of common day").

To suggest that all artisans should be theists is to cling to definitions which is the very reason why atheists object to theism which in turn is also why very few fundamentalists are artists or even artisans. We now have the situation that also very few [di-hard] athiests can be artisans.

It also means that you should not call me theist because I do not fit your idea of theism. This in itself does not make theism wrong but only your idea of it.

Amos