[MD] Theism/epistemology

[MarshaV]

Greetings Matt,

Well I thought telos was at the base of Aristotle's 
Metaphysics.  Later to be adapted and extended into a theological 
argument by Christianity, but really I don't care.

The 'beauty is divine' comment was from a dictionary definition, not 
my definition of whatever it is you've decided is 
important.  Actually, I kind of like Ron's explanation, "the ecstasy 
of existing in the now. yes. the experience of being is Quality, for 
me. For it is dynamic and mysterious." minus the "supreme being" 
label.  Picky.  Picky.  Picky...

Thanks for replying.   I know you've written a thoughtful post, but 
really I want to be finished with this topic.  Hopefully, others will 
respond.

Marsha









At 03:43 PM 2/7/2009, you wrote:

>Hi Marsha,
>
>Marsha said:
>Were Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato or Aristotle's philosophy theistic?
>
>Matt said:
>I take this to be a good example of a "mu" question, at least one 
>that doesn't have a clear cut answer because of intellectual evolution.
>
>We all remember that Pirsig, following Aristotle, said that "first 
>philosophy" is called "metaphysics."  We should bear in mind that 
>Aristotle's redactor is the one that named that collection of 
>manuscripts "Metaphysics."  What did Aristotle actually call "first 
>philosophy" in the Metaphysics?
>
>Theology.
>
>Marsha said:
>I thought that was teleology.
>
>Matt:
>I'm not sure Aristotle ever used a word or phrase translatable as 
>teleology, but certainly what came to be identified as that position 
>had its origins in Aristotle's account of causes, four of them to be 
>exact--material, formal, efficient, and final.  It was the last, the 
>final cause, that Galilean science eliminated in its formulation of 
>causation and created the antithesis between teleology and 
>mechanism.  (Pirsig, for his part, doesn't wish to eliminate 
>mechanism, but simply the antithesis between the two--we can have 
>purpose in a cause-and-effect world of rocks.)
>
>Aside from the academic trivia, Marsha, I did want to answer your 
>original, brief question about knowledge and theism.  There has 
>clearly been an extraordinary outpouring on the topic, but I don't 
>like most of them--they are too fast and dirty.  Particularly 
>Pirsig's quick identification of the MoQ as anti-theistic.  If the 
>MoQ is to retain it's identity as a system and not simply one dude's 
>philosophical beliefs (which almost everyone here wants to 
>distinguish, though at almost all points I do not), then the MoQ 
>most certainly cannot simply _be_ anti-theistic.  It is too general for that.
>
>The starting point has to be answering something like your starting 
>question, "What is the relationship between theism and knowledge and 
>how is it determined?"  That is a good beginning question.  And I 
>think the answer has to be something along the lines of--
>
>1) Theism is a collection of intellectual static patterns.
>
>2) Knowledge is a general kind of subset of collections of 
>intellectual static patterns that displays a high degree of internal 
>valuableness, so much that degradation of that value is reason to 
>think one is exclude from that collection.  (In colloquial terms, 
>"No, you are _wrong_" or "No, that's _false_."  Such rebuttals to 
>degradation are exclamations that you have evacuated the static area 
>of typical valuing.  Of course, brujos are told that, and they are 
>also the ones that--by challenging the typical--help the areas, 
>these collections of static patterns, evolve.)
>
>3) Theistic knowledge is a particular subset of intellectual pattern 
>within the larger collection of intellectual static patterns called 
>"theism."  This means that "Christ has risen" is both a statement of 
>fact within that collection _and_, by virtue of that fact (that the 
>statement is taken to be a fact), an announcement of participation 
>in that particular collection of static patterns.  This also means 
>the denial of the statement is an announcement that one is _not_ 
>participating in that collection (one does not _value_ those static 
>patterns of value).
>
>This, I think, is broadly all the MoQ can say as a system.  Anything 
>else, like how the MoQ tells us reality is evolving towards X and 
>therefore we shouldn't do Y anymore (and here we can substitute for 
>X "Reason" and Y "God" and pretty much get the standard MoQ-inspired 
>answers I've been seeing from others and Pirsig, which also look 
>suspiciously like the standard 18th century Enlightenment answers), 
>is just more Marx-like tea-leaves reading, trying to find the 
>pattern of history and then arguing, in a non sequitor, from "this 
>is how things have been" to "this is how things should be"--which is 
>exactly what the brujo story suggests we shouldn't do.
>
>Orienting ourselves to theism and knowledge as (1)-(3) does above 
>also suggests to us the better question we should ask, both others 
>and ourselves--what is it that these collections of static patterns 
>are valuing and why should, or shouldn't we, value them, too?  And 
>since these are _collections_ it shouldn't surprise us if 
>individuals vary between them on what parts of the larger collection 
>they share with each other and if different pieces of the 
>collections can be evaluated separately and with different 
>results.  (I mean, fer Criss sake, religious people have never 
>agreed with each other on what they should exactly believe, so why 
>do us non-believers keep painting them with one brush?)
>
>The result of this kind of inquiry would then fall along the lines 
>of 1) finding pieces that are bad and should be extirpated from 
>everyone ("God told me to invade that country, so I must do it"), 2) 
>finding pieces that fulfill a need that others fulfill otherwise 
>("you read the Bible on Sundays, I read Shakespeare, and that chick 
>watches the sunrise--all of us getting our spiritual nourishment 
>where we most receive it"), and 3) finding pieces that fulfill a 
>need we don't really have anymore, but are otherwise harmless even 
>if we think it is archaic ("I will go to Heaven when I die"; "I 
>can't eat pork, it ain't kosher").
>
>None of the above answers any questions about what to think about 
>theism, God, or religion.  The MoQ doesn't answer questions, it 
>gives us better questions.  This would, I would think, be the 
>perfect place in which a re-orientation is desired and I think the 
>above is the kind of re-orientation engendered by the MoQ.
>
>So, all in all, if you, Marsha, have a religion-of-one that says 
>that beauty is divine, and you seek no converts and receive no help 
>from others in articulating your religion save the few odd books you 
>might happen to come across or what-have-you, than I think that is 
>great, and beautiful, and as religious as any other religion, even 
>if only in its very Emersonian fashion (which I take to be even more 
>beautiful for it).  We don't need a church to have a religion; we 
>don't need a sense of the divine that transcends spatiotemporal 
>boundaries; we don't need to think that science is bad.  All we need 
>is enough imagination and desire to deploy a certain, if kinda' 
>creaky, vocabulary of articulation.
>
>Matt
>
>p.s. Yes, this was for everyone who thinks I couldn't speak MoQese 
>if I wanted to.  I don't have any proof-texts for the things I've 
>said, but I do think they're fairly reasonable extrapolations of the 
>vocabulary Pirsig developed.
>
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