[MD] Supernatural & transcendental

[David M]

DMB

I am not very keen on the word supernatural
but I have no doubt that the same reason people
used to use this term about god applies with equal
logic to DQ.

DQ may not be beyond nature but surely it represent
a border to it. Is DQ not another word for the fecund
creativity expressed in our cosmos? Is not DQ astonishing,
does it not allow new SQ to emerge as if from nowhere?
As if from some beyond, crossing some border into the
actual? And what about death? Does not all SQ actuality
pass away again into some apparent not-here? Whilst science
can be nice and neat and tidy with nice and solid SQ realities,
the MOQ has to deal with DQ and its elusive behaviour.
Seems to me that when you pick up an MOQ description of
experience you are required to move beyond a SQ only
descrition of existence and funnily enough you find yourself
looking at many of the same problems that a pre-scientific
world used to address with regards to what we are calling DQ.
The new world of MOQ should be able to explain and supercede
all previous forms of world view if it is to claim greater coverage.
I think the MOQ would be better served by suggesting that it explains
why science is not a complete description of experience/existence
and that the religious impulse also recognises this too (at the same
time suggesting that it is possible to have an approiach to religion
that is based in experience (awe for/thanks giving to DQ) rather
than literalised myths and sacred books).

DM


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 10:54 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] False Messiah


> DM asked dmb:
> What do you understand by the word transcendental?
>
> dmb says:
> On occaision I'll use "transcend" when talking about the shift upward in
> psycho/spiritual development. In the broadest sense, it just means "going
> beyond". But when I describe theism as the belief in a transcendent God, 
> it
> means a God that is outside of experience and outside of nature, "beyond 
> the
> universe or material existence", as my old pal Merriam puts it. So
> transcendent and supernatural mean roughly the same thing.
>
> DM said:
>>I would say, for example, that the world is a transcendental
>>concept. It is certainly not something that can be experienced as
>>a whole. The way it appears in experience is always partial,
>>the whole is largely absent but makes partial and constantly
>>changing appearances. It is a postulated idea, as Pirsig says,
>>and a good one, but nonetheless transcending experience as
>>does most of the cosmology we need to construct to explain
>>existence to ourselves. Also the vast sphere of the possible
>>that is not actual transcends any mere fragment we may experience.
>>Yet is crucial to make sense of existence, to make sense of agency,
>>emergence, mathematics, etc. As for supernatural, it would be pretty
>>easy to say DQ is supernatural and leaves the natural (SQ) in its
>>wake...
>
> dmb says:
> I think it would be confusing to say DQ is supernatural. It is not beyond
> experience nor nature. I would even say that its confusing to say our
> concepts and cosmologies are supernatural. Surely we know them from
> experience and are part of the universe too.
>
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