[MD] The Trouble With Wilber

[Krimel]

dmb said to DM:
Oh, I see. You've been talking some kind of Platonic theism. No wonder I 
smelled bullshit. Seriously. This is unsupportable, unknowable, ridiculous 
stuff. Don't you think? Eternal objects that reside in the bossom of god? 
Puh leeez.

Krimel replied to dmb:
Oh right, you can sum everything Whitehead had to say into two sentences. 
That makes him easy to dismiss. Given the title of the thread and your 
avowed love of Wilber I thought it was a given that you liked bullshit. That

smell is probably coming from your upper lip.

dmb says:
Sum up everything Whitehead had to say? No, I was responding a one small 
snippet from Sneddon's paper. But what I really want to know is why you'd 
object to my objection. Are you saying that its not bullshit to assert the 
existence of eternal objects that reside in god?

I thought I was supposed to be the gullable one? You can object to the idea 
of a broader empiricism in our science and yet you can swallow this 
nonsense? Say it ain't so. Gav's going all soft on me and now you too?

I'd pray for help, but I don't believe in that.

[Krimel]
I make not pretext to expertise in Whitehead's philosophy. What I have read
is scattered at best. Frankly his use of the Platonic ideals bothers me as
much as does Plato's use of them. My chief objection to Plato is that
Plato's reverence for mathematical abstraction led to a view that the real
world is a messy sinful place from which the wise should retreat into their
own perfect little inner worlds. 

But there are aspects of Whitehead that I find worthwhile. Sneddon's
demonstration of the parallels between Whitehead view of process and Pirsig
conception of DQ for example is far more enlightening than those who link
the MoQ with Zen nothingness. I am neither prepared to condemn nor embrace
Whitehead. But I am certainly not going to reach snap judgments based on
snippits.

Your claim that I am unwilling to embrace a broader empiricism is nothing
short of silly and this should be obvious to even lurkers in this forum.