"'...soulless things out of heathendom are not for Christian people to consort with, are they?'" (p. 188)
This is the end of Book Three and of posting for today. (Not before time, says you.)
The introductory Author's Note makes clear that the conceptual framework of the novel is not Thomist theology but medieval popular mythology. Nevertheless, the contradiction is so great that I have to comment. Merfolk exist. That is mythology. They are described as "soulless things." No organism is a "thing," let alone a self-conscious one. If "soul" entails self-consciousness, then the merfolk have, or are, souls.
In any case, they can reason and make decisions. Therefore, they have intellect and will which were meant to be the two faculties of the, supposedly immaterial and immortal, soul. Therefore, by that definition, they already have souls and do not need to be given them.
I now believe that unconsciousness, consciousness and self-consciousness are three qualitatively different properties or states of organisms and that self-consciousness includes intellect and will. Organisms are temporary local negative entropy composed, according to scientific evidence, of mass-energy and of nothing else.
Needless to say, I disagree both with Thomism and with medieval mythology.
13 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree with the mythology of materialism and dogmatic secularism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I dispute that materialism is a mythology or that secularism is dogmatic.
Paul.
Being is that which is, whatever exists. "Being" is the most general and abstract word for it. There are scientific theories of the nature of being, most recently that it is energy. There are philosophical theories of the relationship between being and consciousness. Materialism is the theory that being preexisted and generated consciousness, indeed became conscious. Many states of being are unconscious: primordial hydrogen and helium; stellar processes fusing heavier elements; inanimate matter; organisms without central nervous systems. Within complex and sensitive central nervous systems, being, now a highly complicated and dynamic state of matter, becomes conscious, then self-conscious. These propositions are scientific, not mythological. They are empirical and reasoned, not dogmatic.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't believe in materialism.
And secularism, like any other ideology, can and has been dogmatic, ranging from such extremes as the Chinese Maoists persecuting religious believers to Christians being arrested in the UK for praying silently, at a distance, from abortion "clinics." And I can easily list similar incidents in the US by leftist secularists.
Here and there in his stories we bet indications of the disgust Anderson had for infanticide.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The empirical evidence is that being has become conscious.
Of course any theory CAN be held dogmatically. That is a different issue from whether the theory is valid.
Paul.
Kaor,. Paul!
I reject materialism.
And beyond a certain point "secularism" becomes invalid, as when religious believers start being persecuted.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I embrace materialism as I have explained it, not as some people demonize it.
Beyond a certain point, "religion" becomes invalid, as when religious believers start persecuting.
(I think that we have somehow got into a very unpleasant antithesis here.)
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Dogmatic secularism is far worse, with horrors like "legalized" abortion, "euthanizing" of the sick even when they don't want it, and slaughtering of children after birth if they were somehow "unsatisfactory." And since Christians, esp. Catholics and convinced Protestants, oppose such atrocities, they have been enduring more and more harassment, including acts of violence from secularists. I reject that kind of secularism.
A halfway decent society needs Christianity to exist.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I reject that kind of secularism.
Dogmatic secularism is not worse than dogmatic religion which has waged wars and tortured and burned heretics.
Society does not need Christianity with its glorification of an impalement.
I presented an account of philosophical materialism. That does not warrant this extreme, one-sided response. Surely something has gone very wrong in this discussion?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree, dogmatic secularism of the Marxist kind has killed at least 100 million people in less than a century with its wars, purges, gulags, terror famines, killing fields, boat people, etc.
Disagree, the Passion of Christ was the means chosen by God for bridging the gap between Him and a Fallen mankind.
What is wrong is your stress on materialism, which I do not believe can account for non-material things like "thought." I'm reminded of John Wright, who also did not believe in materialism even when he was an atheist.
I don't know what Anderson thought of materialism but I get the strong impression he was not at all sure it explained everything.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree. Those gulag regimes were not democratic workers' states producing for need but bureaucratic state capitalist dictatorships exploiting workers in order to compete militarily against the Western powers and using "Marxism" as their ideology. They would have used some other belief system if that had been historically expedient.
Disagree. An omnipotent creator could have made creatures with freedom of will and choice (absence of constraint) whose wholesome, instinctive motivations would have been such that they would never have made choices or decisions that would lead to their "Fall" and He could also have bridged any gap without presiding over a history that involved horrors like crucifixions and burnings at the stake.
Thoughts are not "non-material" any more than potentials, forces, fields, gravity and energy are. A thought does not have physical properties like weight or visible shape or colour but nor does a photon, quark, quantum of energy, gravitational field etc. That does not change the fact that, just as masses generate gravitational fields, brains somehow generate consciousness and thought. That is empirically what happens inside organisms with central nervous systems.
Materialism does not "explain everything." Why should it? Materialism is a philosophical theory of the relationship between being and consciousness, not a scientific theory of the nature of being. It is scientific theories that explain aspects of being and they can never explain everything. We are always learning more.
Of course you can name others who think as you do. So can any of us.
But we already know that we think all this. Why keep repeating it? I think that you have some problem with the fact that there are people who fundamentally disagree with you. We have to accept that this is the case. Reality and human consciousness are so complicated that individuals and entire communities formulate diametrically opposed world-views. We can learn from this instead of hopelessly trying to eradicate alternative views. We can refute opinions that we dislike to our own satisfaction but never to everyone else's. And is it even to our own satisfaction if we have to keep trying to refute those unpalatable views yet again?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
There is no such thing as "state capitalism." Every time socialism has been tried it has always become a command economy. What matters are facts, not clinging to failed theories. But I'll stop here.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We repeat ourselves. Socialism (in the case of the Commune, merely an approach to the beginning of socialism) has been tried only twice and has been destroyed both times. That is a historical fact - in my opinion, of course!
Disagreeing with you about this is not clinging to a failed theory but disagreeing with you about this. Let us acknowledge that each of us has a point of view that has to be taken seriously, not summarily dismissed.
There is such a thing as state capitalism. The two features of capitalism are internal accumulation and external competition. In state capitalism, the bureaucracy replaces the bourgeoisie as the accumulator of capital and its external competition takes the form of armaments stockpiling because of inter-state imperialist competition. Any partly nationalized economy is also partly state capitalist. Industries that cannot be run privately at a profit are bureaucratically administered to prop up the profit-making private sector. This is then called "failing" or command economy socialism to suit your argument.
You "cling to" free enterprise which can be made redundant by production of abundance and social reorganization.
I still think that we are going about this completely the wrong way. Endlessly repeated uncompromising disagreements are not any kind of informative discussion. I am really trying, and continually failing, to break us out of this.
Paul.
Post a Comment