[MD] are theism and mysticism mutually exclusive notions?

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt previoiusly]
> I think rather than Pirsig taking a first crack at a metaphysics of
> uncertainty he took a crack at a metaphysics of morality. Uncertainty is
> such a familiar part of reality in our experience it needs no further
> explanation other than no one knows for sure what will happen next.
> Everybody agrees the future is uncertain and unpredictable except for
> death and taxes. Nothing new here. No first crack. Just the certainty of
> uncertainty. But what is new and astounding is Pirsig's claim that that
> all that has happened in the past and will happen in the future can be
> attributed to a moral force, to Dynamic Quality. Now that's a first
> crack at a new metaphysics if there ever was one -- one that our science
> friends would never conceive of in their wildest dreams.
> 
> [Case]
> Ah, and what more fertile hotbed of uncertainty is there than morality.
> You are saying that we know everything we need to know about it. I am
> saying it underlies our every thought and action. Calculating and
> responding to uncertainty it what organisms do. Biological, social and
> intellectual systems evolve dynamically in response to the conditions of
> their environments. Morality at least in the sense of a moral code is
> designed to reduce uncertainty in interpersonal interactions.

First of all, the MOQ takes much of the uncertainty out of morality. At
least, that's the claim -- a morality based on reason. Second, morality
"in the sense of a moral code" extends far beyond "interpersonal 
interactions" in the MOQ, as Pirsig describes:

"What the evolutionary structure of the Metaphysics of Quality shows is 
that there is not just one moral system. There are many. In the 
Metaphysics of Quality there's the morality called the "laws of 
nature," by which inorganic patterns triumph over chaos; there is a 
morality called the law of the jungle" where biology triumphs over the 
inorganic forces of starvation and death; there's a morality where 
social patterns triumph over biology, "the law"; and there is an 
intellectual morality, which is still struggling in its attempts to 
control society. Each of these sets of moral codes is no more related 
to the other than novels are to flip-flops." (Lila, 13)

To me this simply means that from the lowliest particle to the highest
cosmological theory, moral codes rule. The choices made in the face of 
uncertainty are inevitably moral choices. It's not that uncertainty 
underlies everything.  It's that morality does  That's the message of 
the MOQ -- a message SOM science ignores because morality is beyond 
anything objectively measurable and thus something best left to pastors 
and priests.  

We agree that many moral choices are made to cope with uncertainty.
We say to ourselves, "Given what I know now and expect will happen, it
would be better to do (fill in the blank)." But the soup-to-nuts aspect 
of morality ranging all across the spectrum of human knowledge is a 
pill few as yet are willing to swallow.

Platt