"'To be alive,' said van Rijn, 'is that not to be again and again surprised?'" (p. 405)
Another wise saying of the Technic History. I could give examples from my recent experience but so could all of us. Make a list of what you expect to happen on a given day, then compare that with what does happen. There will continue to be catastrophes like wars and pandemics and there will also continue to be unpredictable surges of resistance to the global system that generates such catastrophes. Will this system survive, go under or be replaced? As Dominic Flandry says later in the Technic History:
"'Who knows? We play the game move by move, and never see far ahead - the game of empire, of life, whatever you want to call it - and what the score will be when all the pieces at last go back into the box, who knows?'"
-Poul Anderson, The Game of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE, p. 453.
17 comments:
Basically, life is unpredictable and a good deal depends on chance/luck. This is an inherent feature of human existence in a universe that produced -us- pretty much by accident.
Time isn't -going- anywhere in particular, except down the entropy gradient. It's just one damned thing after another.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I'm inclined to agree with you, except sometimes things happen that should make people wonder if there is more to the universe than blind random chance. Such as the miracles recorded at Lourdes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: mental states have quite drastic physical consequences.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Sometimes, I agree. And at other times I firmly believe God intervenes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I know, but a miracle by definition is a non-falsifiable hypothesis. Which as far as I'm concerned, makes it a semantic null set.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I admit to not understanding that attitude. E.g., a man dying of advanced bone cancer instantaneously cured after being placed in the waters at Lourdes, and certified as such by many unimpeachably honest witnesses, certainly seems to be a historical fact. Everything about Lourdes: its history (beginning with apparitions of the BVM), background, etc., makes me conclude the supernatural explains what happens there. Materialist hand waving about "unexplained phenomena" carries no conviction.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the phenomena are unexplained. That is not hand waving. I have so many reasons for either not accepting or actively disagreeing with monotheism, Christianity and Catholicism that I cannot possibly accept them as explaining spontaneous cures. The discussion starts in the wrong place.
Paul.
Visionary experience is universal. People see the Virgin Mary, the Goddess, Christ, Krishna etc.
Kaor, Paul!
We cannot agree, because we start from opposing first premises: antisupernaturalists deny the supernatural is real. So, of course they have to wave away what some of them may have seen with their own eyes at Lourdes. Prosupernaturalists accept that the simplest explanation for a man dying of bone cancer being healed at Lourdes was divine intervention.
I believe the only true and actual visions comes from God. All others are mistakes or delusions at best.
A minor correction, it's a mistake to separate Catholicism from Christianity. Catholicism is the original, oldest, and orthodox form of Christianity.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We do not deny the supernatural. We ask for sufficient evidence of it. To say that we cannot explain a phenomenon is not to wave it away. Divine intervention is the simplest explanation only if there is belief in God.
All "other" visions are mistakes or delusions at best! But all the visions occur and reported.
Catholicism is one form of Christianity. Papal Supremacy has never been accepted by the Eastern churches.
Paul.
Evangelical Christianity is a completely different form of Christianity based on a particular reading of the New Testament.
An important ability in any debate or disputation is to be able to summarize your opponent's views in terms that are acceptable to that opponent. Thus, if you dismiss sceptics as "waving away" evidence, then they will automatically reply that they are not waving away anything but that their assessment and interpretation of the evidence contradicts yours. Thus, you are back to discussing the evidence which is the only discussion that matters. In fact, by dismissing sceptics as waving away evidence, you are waving away the sceptics' contributions to the discussion.
I think that discussion has reached a dead end. Why not agree to disagree?
I'm an atheist and materialist, but I think I can appereciate the approach of people who aren't -- if I say so myself, I've gotten believers of various sorts fairly right as characters (tho' mostly Catholics, as far as Christians are concerned).
It doesn't bother me if people I talk to and am friends with disagree with me on that subject.
I think that the most that we can find is clarification, not agreement, and that there has been some of this.
Page views are rocketing again unless the mechanism for counting this is malfunctioning: 693 yesterday and 449 by 9:47 am today.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: Then, as per your advice, I will terminate this argument as well, agreeing to disagree with Paul.
I think you have characterized many different kinds of persons in your stories very well. Even some of the Nazis in MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA come thru as well rounded characters with understandable POVs. Very Andersonian, IOW!
Paul: Good! I'm glad so many have dropped by. I just wish more would leave comments of their own here.
Ad astra! Sean
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