[MD] Is Quality Different from (Mother) Nature?

[Ham Priday]

Good evening, Mark --

> I would drop the term Quality, except that is what this forum is
> about. To get around that I equate such a term to things like
> a prime essence. Others call it the Divine, or the Tao. All of it
> is trying to put into words and concepts into the presently ineffible.
>
> As you state, science cannot explain much about sensibility. I
> would add, yet. I find that there are many similarities between
> science and philosophy. They are both based on logic, cause and
> effect or if/then.  They both compile systems of mutually
> referencing definitions. The PhD is a doctorate in philosophy,
> even though much of it is science. Why do you think that is?
> Do you suppose that at its inception both were the same thing?

I've been perusing Dinesh D'Souza's "What's so Great about Christianity", 
which I don't expect will receive much enthusiasm here.  The title, of 
course, is a direct attack on Dawkins' "God is not Great."  But D'Souza 
makes a convincing case that Science developed from Christianity.  I'm not 
sure I completely buy into this.  But let me quote some of his arguments:

"Well, on the Christian side we have Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Brahe, 
Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal, Mersenne, Cuvier, 
Harvey, Dalton, Farady, Hershel, Joule, Lyell, Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, 
Ohm, Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, Mendel and Lemaitre.  Einstein 
too was a believer in God as a kind of supreme mind or spirit discernible 
through the complex and beautiful laws of nature.  So none of these folks 
saw theism or Christianity as incompatible with science, as Richard Dawkins 
and others would have it.  Dawkins is a decent popularizer of science but 
compared to Kepler, Newton, and Einstein he is a Lilliputian.  So he works 
very hard to make Einstein look like an atheist.  His proof is a complete 
failure, but give the man credit for effort.  The deeper point to be made 
here, however, is not merely that leading scientists over the centuries have 
been Christian, but that science itself, in its assumption that the universe 
is rational and obeys laws discoverable by the human mind, is based on 
Christian precepts and cannot in fact be done without Christian 
presuppositions."
        -- From an interview with Paul Kengor of FontPageMag.

"Before religion as we understand the term, there was animism, which was 
based on the idea of an enchanted universe.  Every river, every tree, and 
every stone was thought to be populated by spirits.  The world was 
mysterious, capricious, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.  Then came 
various polytheistic religions, like those of the Babylonians, the 
Egyptians, and the Greeks.  Each of these religions posited divine 
beings--sometimes immortal, sometimes not--who involved themselves in the 
daily workings of nature, creating storms and earthquakes, turning human 
beings into stags, and so on.  Then appeared the great religions of the 
East, Hinduism and Buddhism, followed by the three monotheistic religinons, 
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

"Of these only one--Christianity--was from the beginning based on reason. 
Judaism and Islam are primarily religions of law; there is a divione 
lawgiver who issues edicts that are authoritative both for nature and for 
human beings.  ...Christianity, by contrast, is not a religion of law but a 
religion of creed.  Christianity has always been obsessed with doctrine, 
which is thought to be a set of true beliefs about man's relationship to 
God.

"...My point is that thrology gives evidence of a high order of reason at 
work, and one cannot, as many atheists do, dismiss these arguments as 
unreasonable, even if you don't agree with them. Rather, they represent 
powerful rational claims about the nature of reality.

"...So it is with Aquinas and Anselm.  In proving God's existence  they at 
no point appeal to supernatural revelation.  Theirs are arguments based on 
reason alone. ...My point is that the kind of reasoning about God that we 
see in Augustine, Aquinas and Anselm is typical of Christianity.  There is 
little of this in any other religion.  And out of such reasoning, remarkably 
enough, Science was born."  -- [D'Souza: 'What's So Great...', Chpt. 8, 
Christianity and Reason]

No wonder D'Souza's book is a best seller!

> I think I get your value sensibility as a means for translating the prime
> essence into something different. Kind of like a radio translating waves
> into music. As always, while this can be described objectively, I have
> yet to come to something in your explanations which derives the
> personal aspect of such sensibility. This of course is an age old
> question which perhaps (at this time) still eludes objective description.
> Perhaps our brains need to grow.
>
> There is no reason to believe that such knowledge is beyond the
> capability of science. It is simply not understood at this time in an
> objective way. Say one day we find a transmitter that is beaming
> souls to this planet. Anything is possible.

On the contrary, I think Science has provided most of our working knowledge 
of the world in an objective way.  The problem, however, is that objective 
knowledge is empirical (experiential), and therefore cannot transcend 
existence to posit ultimate reality.  Only Philosophy can do that.

Cheers,
Ham.