[MD] False Messiah

[Peter Corteen]

Hi Scott,

I can see that there have been lots more posts between yourself, David and
Heather since your earliest reply to my last post; I'll try to respond
without reading all those follow on posts which would likely take me a lot
of time to read, more time still to digest and even more time to reply.

Do sticks and stones have value in themselves?  Avoiding the obvious escape
route via solipsism and qualifying my answer first by reminding that all I
have to work with is the model of the world reflected in my consciousness I
say yes, a stone experiences value within itself;  if you nudge a stone hard
enough it will respond by breaking into pieces.#

You said 'I don't know what enlightenment means -- it is a mystery'; you do
have ideas and expectations about enlightenment though but you think that
you haven't yet 'got it' so you listen to people who assume they have more
enlightenment than you. You are a mystic as well as those you listen to; as
I understand it enlightenment is an ideal to be aimed at -  we can always
strive for and maybe attain more clarity of mind but you will never get a
completely clear mind i.e. a completely accurate model of the world in your
mind - it just ain't big enough!

You said 'What we know through scientific instruments tells us nothing of
whether or not electrons experience value. Yet the MOQ says they do. In
other words, you are dodging the issue'. You obviously have read a lot more
about quantum physics than me. I think, as with sticks and stones, that
value is inherently present  in all matter however fine. To try to explain
what I imagine a little more: I understand that diamond is formed from a
very stong and very regular  lattice work of molecules; the way I see it the
diamond has fewer possibilities than other less regular materials, it has
less value.

You said 'neo-Darwinist -- more specifically those who think that
consciousness is some kind of spatiotemporal process that developed in time
-- are taking the product of perception (spatiotemporality) to explain
perception. That is fallacious reasoning'.  I have a few problems with this:
'the product of perception' not just what is perceived at the moment but
filtered through the history of previous related perceptions; 'to explain
perception'  really  to explain the perceived.
It may seem fallacious reasoning (like that the speed of light is defined in
metres per second yet metres and seconds are defined in terms of the speed
of light) but we only have the mental model to work from.

You finished with 'But what I've tried to show is that -- for those who take
to heart the dictum "reason requires faith and faith requires reason", faith
leads to a new and higher level of thinking, not its stoppage'. I don't like
it. Faith is unlike assumption because an assumption is thrown out when seen
not to fit but with faith the believed is inviolable and the observations
have to be denied if a fit can't be found.

Peter