[MD] a-theism and atheism

[rapsncows at fastmail.fm]

Ham,
should I still be waiting for your response to my long email?  I have
passed up a number of opportunities to try to bridge the gap between us
in waiting, may be I should not hold back?
more comments below,
Tim


>[Ham]  Our conception of the Creator or Primary Source must in the
> final 
> analysis account for awareness, difference, plurality, and the appearance
> of 
> material reality.
> 
> With this in mind, I'd like to address the issues raised in two recent 
> comments

[Tim]
I think that I will invert your order, me first, then John, and I will
only address the things from John which I must, as I think it best to
let him defend himself (And I can be pretty sure he will).
 
> 
> [Ham] I don't see a problem with an eternal creator "remaining constant".

[Tim]
neither do I.  But neither do I have a problem with an eternal creator
being extended, or compressed, or for it to be fluctuating, throbbing,
vibrating, or barking like a chicken!  My point was, if it is absolute,
it is all the same.  There is no external observer to mark these. 
However you choose to view it is a constraint by fiat, and there is no
way to uphold or refute it.  absolute is absolute, nothing more, nothing
less.  Something.  I think you should be fine if you want your eternal
creator to remain constant, so long as you are self-consistent, but it
is the self-consistency that is important, the remaining constant is
superfluous - at best, and may get you into trouble, or ruin you
altogether.  Case: I can view the progression of choice (the setting of
boundaries within the possible) as a constancy of the absolute by fiat,
whereas you, in trying to protect the constancy, force yourself to
negational terms.  Since constancy is not an attribute of the absolute
itself, since it is a relational term, such a perspective is not true,
but merely A perspective.  I think your constraint to this perspective
makes it difficult for you, because you then envision that our living in
this particular mode of existence can threaten that constancy of the
absolute.  But that constancy can be maintained by fiat, if you like. 
The choosing of a mode of existence does not alter the boundary of what
is absolutely possible!  Any mode of existence can be realized, fully
within the bound set by the absolutely impossible, without altering the
absoluteness of that boundary.  In this sense perhaps teh negational is
the best perspective, but possibility is expanded within that boundary
by the willful setting of a boundary between possible and possible.  I
think you find difficulty because you feel that the absolute must be
realized fully in absolute essence, but one can imagine mutually
exclusive realms within the confines of what is absolutely impossible. 
This is teh law of non-contradiction of Aristotle.

> [Ham]  Nor
> can 
> I understand why you characterize the absolute state as "pitiful and 
> wretched".  In fact, you have no grounds to support such a view.  This is
> in 
> effect complaining that Perfection is confining or boring.  How would you 
> know, Tim?   What state of perfection have you attained as a mortal 
> creature?

[Tim]
I know no more than you know to use 'perfection'.  I characterize it as
wretched because to be open to all potentials is to be open to both of
contradiction.  It is to be open to an even less just ordering of human
affairs.  It is to be open to a world where the poor are not considered
human, are not construed to have rights, are legitimate objects for
extermination by the wealthy.  I call it pitiful because it is teh
setting of boundaries within the possible that creates anything of
Value.  A flower is beautiful because it obeys certain constraints.  You
would not be able to converse here with me unless you chose to set a
boundary within your potential.  This is why the realization of a
potential, amongst all possible potentials, still frustrates you - I
think.  Be confident that the potentials of the absolute are all
nothings, impossibilities, if it is impossible to realize them!  If
realization of a possible, amongst other possibles, were impossible,
your absolute would not be a something!  So I characterize the lowly
state of pure open potential, with no (or next to no) realization as
lowly (and I overstep my bound by saying wretched, and pitiful)

let me state again, you have no grounds to state that such a state is
perfection, or that it is not wretched, or pitiful.  "confining, or
boring",  no!  not confining is boring!  but confining myself here, to
this chair, before this computer, rather than all the other things I
might be doing (I am not riding a bike, I am not dancing, I am not
painting, I am not beating up a poor man, I am not abducting a child, I
am not eradicating the jews, I am not unleashing nuclear winter on all
the earth...), this confinement is fun.  If I could not confine myself,
it would be either terrible or boring.

Of course, this is all my thoughts about something, opinions.  If I had
to limit myself to what I know, I don't even think I could say:
something is.  Even less could I say: I exist; this I faithe.

> 
> [Ham] Much more troublesome for me is explaining how diversity and change
> emerge 
> from constancy or immutability.

[Tim]
try dropping this restriction on YOUR perspective.  I wonder How can
relationship develop from the lowliest state of something-is?  Note:
this is not the same as asserting that such a lowly state is actually
attainable!

> [Ham]  My own hypothesis is that the very
> nature 
> of Essence is "negational", so that creation itself is constant and
> ongoing.

[Tim]
why don't you like what I presented in that long email a while back? 
the response to which I am still waiting eagerly.

>From my perspective, what may be constant is the potential to return to
the lowliest state.  Perhaps it could even happen in the blink of an eye
if the creator became so disgusted with this mode of existence (this
manifestation of potential) that the pursuit of a different blooming
became preferable.  The realization of a particular potential does not
destroy other potentials absolutely, only relationally.
 
> [Ham] I also feel that Pirsig's insistence that DQ is "dynamic" while SQ is 
> "static" is inverted.  Our experiential world is in continuous flux, and
> the 
> universe is always evolving.  We live in a time continuum where things
> not 
> only come and go but relate to each other according to principles that
> are 
> dynamic in every sense, whether analyzed biologically, physically, or 
> psychologically.

[Tim]
"according to principles that are dynamic in every sense"?  Physics
seems pretty static.  And even if there is a drift the principle of the
drift might be static.  Potentials are always being chosen from the set
of the possible.  Boundaries are always being set.  Choices are always
being made.

> 
> [Ham] Conversely, there is no logical or metaphysical reason to assume that the 
> primary source is subject to the dynamics of finitude.

[Tim]
I probable don't understand what you mean enough to say much here. 
Something is.  Something is because no opposite can be imagined.  "no
opposite can be imagined" is a concrete concept: impossible.  This is,
something-is is bounded, by the impossible.  The boundary is real.  The
boundary cannot disturb or distort the something it bounds; this
suggests fair, moral.


> [Ham]  Indeed, the
> concept 
> of eternality has been applied to the Creator for thousands of years.  It 
> symbolizes the "peace" of God, and being "at rest" with one's Maker, in
> the 
> context of "Foreverness".  What better description of an unconditional 
> ("static") source has our language produced?

[Tim]
for my part, I cannot imagine a forever I would choose.  Perhaps this is
my limitation.  a truely unconscious death seems like a welcome gift at
some point.


> [Ham: responding to John]
> 
> I didn't mean to infer that Value is not "real", but rather that it can 
> "exist" only differentially -- as the "co-dependent" link between subject 
> and object.

[Tim]
the perception of value, which is itself valuable, arises from the
realization of a potential.


>[Ham]  Which means that whatever represents value to the observer
> will 
> necessarily be finite and transitional,

[Tim]
but there is some value to the potential too

> [Ham] just as experience is always 
> diversified and relational.  One of the problems I have in articulating
> my 
> ontology is the fact that there are two modes of reality.  What I call 
> "existence" is the compartmentalized or fractional mode better known to 
> Pirsigians as SOM.

[Tim]
I have  tried to insist elsewhere that Pirsig was not opposed to the S-O
division, but he merely thought that such a division was not fundamental
enough for a metaphysics.  Quality comes before and permits of such
divisions.

>[Ham]  I define existence as "the pluralistic physical world 
> that is localized in time and space."  Essence, on the other hand, is
> "the 
> ultimate, unconditional source of all that is or can be."

[Tim]
"unconditional"?  Constant?


> [Ham] That said, I do believe the negation of individualized value-sensibility
> may 
> be thought as "completing" or "perfecting" Essence by some teleology that
> I 
> have not fully conceptualized but can express only as "affording the
> means 
> whereby Absolute Essence may be realized externally by a "free agent".
> 

[Tim]
ha ha!  See, even you here use "perfecting"!

Why not give up on Realizing a "WHOLE" absolute essence, which
necessarily involves contradiction?  Why not ... ?

Why not prefer the realization of a whole (minor) within the WHOLE
(major) potential, recognizing that the WHOLE (major) is only filled out
by recognizing the possibilities opened up by the sub-boundaries
established by a minor whole.  The potential for us to be siting here
conversing,  hinges on, amongst many many others, your having dedicated
yourself to the pursuit of essentialism.  Had you not chosen this minor
whole amongst your potentials, this part of the major WHOLE would not
have been realized; and if it would have been absolutely impossible for
you to realize this minor potential, the major potential too would have
been absolutely impossible - isn't it by this that the contradictions
which can be maintained as open to the major WHOLE (though not
simultaneously realized) are precluded from destroying that potential by
destroying the path to it of the minor whole?

Tim

 
> Essentially speaking,
> Ham
> 
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