[MD] Dawkins quotes RMP on religion.

[Ham Priday]

Ron --


> All that being said, you simply confirm Craig's
> b) something always existed.
> Since source is absolute, it always is, correct?

The source (Essence) IS eternally and absolutely.  But the predicate IS is 
not the same as "exists" in my vernacular.  What exists is a conscious 
impression of things happening within a space/time system.  It's an 
impression formed by the human intellect from the sense of value converted 
to  experience.  Whether or not the universe "always existed" is a mute 
question, since nothing would exist in the absence of subjective experience.

> You hold source as an explanation, Pirsig holds Quality,
> only you hold that Value awareness manifests as subject/object
> thus source is separated from sense.

Not separated from sense, as selfness is value-sensibility, but from the 
source of value.

> Pirsig posits we are one with source, what we experience is
> patterned Source, from mind to matter. This concept fosters
> oneness and spiritual Unity.

I don't think Pirsig posits anything like "spirituality".  It's a concept he 
despises, along with "supernatural" and "divinity".  As for "oneness", I 
view an aesthetic continuum arbitrarily divided into four dynamic levels 
something less than unity.

> Essentialism fosters the concept of separateness and the inability of
> reconciling this in our experience. Talk about nihilism, it's a nihilist
> tease! Life has meaning! Sorry But you'll never experience it. Talk
> about depressing.

Essentialism acknowledges that life in the differentiated mode of existence 
is a dichotomy of proprietary awareness and objective beingness.  The MoQ 
does not.  Essentialism gives the individual autonomy (freedom of choice) in 
a relational world of otherness.  The MoQ does not.  Essentialism fosters 
the concept that human subjectivity (value-sensibility) is the inviolable 
union of the individual with the source of creation, that each individual 
ultimately reclaims the value lost to him in creation.  What is nihilistic 
about that?  The MoQ fosters the notion that human beings are totally the 
product of inorganic, biological, and social levels, and that selfness is a 
myth.  Where is the meaning of life explained in Pirsig's philosophy?

> By choosing the logic of cause and effect, what's to settle at the term
> "source" as "absolute"? in effect you are also casting a "mu" answer
> by this explanation. The eternal cause. What caused the eternal cause?
> The negation of nothing and otherness?  What caused that?

Only the intellectual creature perceives every phenomenon as having a prior 
"cause".  Observing events sequentially and objects dimensionally is man's 
way of experiencing reality.  Process seen in space/time is the mode of 
human experience.  There is no such differentiation in Essence.  What is 
absolute needs no "cause".

> You address existence as dependent on value sensibility, how
> does Essentialism account for inorganic matter, evolution, and
> the Existence of reality and time independent of living organisms?

This is the universal pattern that is created when value-sensibility is 
negated from Essence.  We each share in the experience of this pattern, 
albeit with different value associations and from a unique space/time 
perspective.

> Thanks

You're quite welcome, Ron.  I appreciate the opportunity.

Essentially yours,
Ham