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Intentional Design v. Darwin
22 June 2000
"Networking, Emergence & Complexity Studies Initiative" <NECSI@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM>
--a posting to the discussion list--
Kim & John,Von Humbolt's imagery was probably too broadly addressed for its day (high reaching, beyond the mindsets of the day). That Darwin succeeded is exactly due to what Kim says: simplistic issues, accomplishments of pragmatism.
That SFI should need to call for reinforcements in order to deal with the inventive adaptive lengths that Creationism is going to these days to - countering every rise of the bar-of-proof that 'science' throws at it - is indictment of the severe weakness in SFI's core paradigm, it's inability to stand as a complete enough contemplation of universal relations and dynamics. There is more psychology to existence than 'emerge, then compete'. And I agree with Kim's remarks re Dawkins, Pinker and Dennet (among others).
Survival and self-orientation is ... process that exists only in correlation with existence that accompanies 'self'. Von Humbolt, Buber, Lovelock, et al. But that's only a penultimate realization of the state of things. The final step is recognizing that identity, integrity, is a relationship of conditions, not necessarily of a 'thing' or a 'tangible'. Any collection of 'behaviors' that recourse and reinform and reinforce become an 'entity'. They become 'comfort zones' (using vernacular) where less energy is needed to maintain the self, than if constantly engaged in establishment and the defining-process .. searching and testing and coming toward fulfillment.
Systems, things, lives, ideas become very very self protective.
And when the Meaning and an assignment of Value for a given life or lifestyle is adopted, then it's obvious that fierce tenacity will be brought to bear to secure it's survival. Without fail.
The only thing that can amend this and the acts that go with it are if a 'self' morphs, accepts a transformation, allows its identity to have different associations ... alters the horizons it recognizes as self and self-with-world. If a godhead plays a role in the scenario somewhere, the game becomes one of challenging a person's Absolute Cosmology. And if a person's godhead story and existence story are open to question, what deeper threat and potential invalidation is there? None.
That the spate of current popular complexity notions are what science has hung its reductionist hat on as visions of the world/universe/behaviors, yet they haven't recognized or been able to enunciate these simple (but not un-intricate or unimportant) notions I just mentioned, speaks volumes about their essential deficiencies. Deficiences I've spent the last several years raising voice about while promoting my own views and inclusive concerns.
For the thing is, we are not sentiences which appeared out of nowhere, placed into The Garden. We .. and all our behaviors, attitudes and cognitions .. are connected products of qualities which had to be resident ... however nacsent, unformed and not easily recognizable .. within the primal formative beginnings .. the conditions / characteristics.
Why does that technique of Universal performance have to preclude the inordinately Purposeful? It doesn't. All it does is call into question the primacy of any fabricated or received wisdom which EXCLUDES. No matter how wonderful or self-satisfying or socially amenable or soulfully calming. Any paradigm or worldview or belief system that EXCLUDES or dichotomizes the world, partitioning it into ABSOLUTE us/them self/else right/wrong, is a system too ingrained as 'ego' ... emphasis on the word: 'too'. They brook no compromise, no resilience, no blended coordination, no courtesy and little or no acknowledgement of worth in companion existants.
I think the tenacity and entrenchment of most religions to the challenges of science are not simply because neutral mechanics may be able to account for events and senses and realities that were once seen as divine and meaningful beyond the pale limitations of less-than-magnificent existences.
The subtler challenge is to all religious tenets for them to morph and change from what they identify with as their 'self'. To give up and give over some if not most of their most sacred aspects,and transform into HIGHER and broader and more encompassing spirituality than have been achieved in all the thousands of years passed.
Can you imagine that??!??!! Asking for a Self - the mindset of a collective - to let go of all it holds sacred and identifiable, and to allow itself to become something it has no way to plan or prepare for!
As for Science .. it has to do the same thing. No more and no less.
The intimacy of reality re-immersing itself in/as/with its else and selves. Fusion. Superpositioning. Separate yet same. Many yet one. Singular yet awe-inspiringly complex.
If we can make it through the trauma of the morphing, the product will be the delight of eons and essences, spacetime and transfinity...meaning and value. Enthusiasm without conflict. Opportunities for each and every life.
At least that's the view from inside my braincase. :-) beyond Godel beyond Complexity flying the transfinite
p.s. In the meantime, this nation's political leadership ought to be reminded that it was the stifling of personal beliefs, economic opportunities and social voice which led to the formation of this nation in the first place. And if an Idea isn't appropriate enough to survive in the venue it exists in, running to Daddy-Congress to fight its battles for it is not going to work. Gee, I've been annoyed that the Miami Dolphins haven't won any championships in the past 30 years. Think I'll go petition Congress to have them proclaimed co-victors in all the past SuperBowls.
Message to the science community from this self-appointed philosopher of existence: The more you become self-impressed with achievements of Knowledge, the more you think that 'control' and 'power' mean superiority, the more esoteric and linguisticly/conceptually distanced you become from your fellows, the more demeaning you become of others because you envision yourself as advanced and evolved ... then the more extreme and reactive will be the responce from people who get-the-message: you dis-value their lives, why shouldn't they dis-value yours. (!)
A little more Wisdom seems called for here, to catch up with the Knowledge that's jumped out so far ahead of itself.
Concerned about I.D. influencing too many impressionable and future minds? .... get yourself a better marketing director who understands the audience. :-)
June , 2000
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