[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?]

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[SA]
Yeah, Ham finds quietness to be unintellectual.

[Arlo]
Noticed this on Ant's site when I was looking for that other reference. Think
its apropos to pop it in here.

"The "Quality" of the Metaphysics of Quality is not a basic substance, or
anything like it. The Buddhists call it "nothingness" precisely to avoid that
kind of intellectual characterization. Once you start to define Quality as a
basic substance you are off on a completely different path from the MOQ.

I'm not original on this point, except to identify Quality with the Tao and with
Buddha-nature (hence the title of ZMM). The amount of material on these two
would overflow most library rooms, but it is essential to both that the basic
constituent of the universe is nothingness, and by this is meant not empty
space but "no-thingness." It is somewhat incorrect to call "no-thingness" a
basic constituent since it is not really even that, (it is not even an it) but
in an everyday philosophic "finger-pointing-toward-the-moon" discourse that's
about as good as you can get. It is very incorrect to call it a substance in
the way that substance is usually meant today.

...

The Metaphysics of Quality itself is static and should be separated from the
Dynamic Quality it talks about. Like the rest of the printed philosophic
tradition it doesn't change from day to day, although the world it talks about
does. To use an Oriental metaphor, it is just another finger pointing toward
the moon. The static language of the Metaphysics of Quality will never capture
the Dynamic reality of the world but some fingers point better than others and
as the world changes, old pointers and road maps tend to lose their value.
Religious orthodoxy is composed of old pointers. Classical science is now an
old road map, and modern science keeps looking for new ones. It is this looking
for new pointers, not the pointer itself, that is the essence of Dynamic
philosophy." (Pirsig, 2005)

Or, perhaps, it is the journey that matters.