Another on “GOD” and the Bifurcation of Faith and Science

I know you all as the benevolent spirit of nature that created the conditions for the possibility of me. With that spirit and that set of conditions still viable, I have the faith and belief that more like me will continue to be produced.

The trouble is, those potential beings like me may have all the attributes of people like me, but they may be missing some good sense of reason and, with a flawed reason, find their nefarious, or extremly unreasonable thinking process leading to ways of action that undermine the reasonable majority, for example, affecting the climate to such an extent that Goldilocks may have to die, that millions must be afflicted with the terror of improvised death, that some will experience gut-wrenching diseases, and mind-blowing inhalations, and the parade toward extinction will thin out to a few hardy souls, crying, “Why couldn’t they just go and leave us few behind, healthy and reasonable and wholly competent to make life rightly lived?!”

What would a life “rightly lived” be?

For that answer, I must bring up the parable of “Doubting Thomas”. It was one of the stories told by Jesus to convey his religious message, straight from the Bible. This point in time has given us the historical dichotomy between faith and reason. Thomas wanted to see the wounds of the Crucifixion of Jesus on the cross. “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails . . . I will not believe.” (John 20 [25]).

Jesus answered, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Does that imply no blessing for Thomas, perhaps even a curse, or some severe affliction or evil spell on Thomas, as the opposite of a “blessing” on unbelievers? Or was it meant simply as a mere slight? No, I think it was something more powerful and hurtful than that. (I know how seriously “scriptural” people take these things.) I think there is something hurtful in a “non-blessing”. It says to me that Jesus, for all his deified presence, did not anticipate the modern era of scientific reasoning, or he could have, or should have, given his blessing to the desire of Thomas for proof in reliable, not rumored, knowledge.

At that point, it seems to me, faith and the power and hope of science part ways, two divergent pathways to truth. A state of being of two minds, is that possible, or healthy? Schizophrenic? Mentally ill? Bipolar, certifiable, confused, demented, deranged, diminished responsibility, insane? The scientist being a Christian?

And yet, I believe people have found some way to live lives in two different compartments, without feeling any need to reconcile the two opposed behaviors. How do they do it, have two ways of thinking, faith and/or reason, a scientific method and “creation”? Some have created “creation science”, or the “science” of “creation”. The acceptance of a creation beginning was the result of the methods of poetry, which prevailed long before science presented a different method of observing phenomena. Early scientists came under the murderous hand of believers who had the upperhand in society. Society made the atrocities of the purgation of heresy happen. It could not happen in present society, could it? Orthodoxy will continue trying, won’t it?

However, the dichotomy still exists, not so much between groups of people, but more within individual people.

How would you agree or disagree?

I believe that any imagineable deity would be accepting of a life-form which, through a species-magnified intelligence, creates an environment that advances survivability for that life-form, or adapts to a given environment that furthers the survival of that life form.

The powers that led to the prosecution and killing of scientists have themselves been “killed”, by the fruits of the labors of the “doubting Thomases” of the healthy skepticisms, living in harmony side-by-side the true believers. Science: “Don’t tell me it can’t be done!? I will prove it to you.” Technology: “I am telling you, this must be done! I will show you how it’s done.”

If a claim to know is spoken, the voice of reliable knowledge in good science and technology will ask you to believe and then deliver, saying, “You will be healthier, safer, because there is a demonstrable way. I will show you.” We must all become “Doubting Thomases”.

My Socrates, My Plato, My Darwin etc.

My Socrates is the late Dr. Karl F. Robinson, Northwestern University. (The function of pedagogical practice is to channel the activity of the organism by the processes, defined in detail.)

My Plato is the late Dr. Clarence T. Simon, Northwestern University. (Verified, contrasted to intuitive knowledge, or self-evident knowledge. One cannot verify knowledge by introducing another’s own subjective evaluations — let alone his own — which are supposed to support what he knows.)

My Darwin is the late Gerald Heard. (“It is at least clear that as Individualism is a neurosis and that man, attempting to cure that unbearable condition, makes his life and civilization only worse by attempting to escape into a pre-individual condition, the only real cure would be by emergence on to a post- or supra-individual state.” And then: “The hypothesis put forward here is that man’s development when it ceased to be physiological became psychological. His history is his specific evolution. He evolves mentally.” [The first physical, unconscious-blind; the second technical, conscious-unreflective; the third psychical, inter-conscious-reflective.] Heard was followed by Julian Jaynes in my Darwinian development, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

My Nicolaus Copernicus (the paradigm changer, from geocentric to heliocentric cosmology) is Jeremy Rifkin. (In The Empathic Civilization and Entropy, he is telling the world our existing world view is crumbling and what will replace it.)

My “King of Pop” is Richard Wagner (Ring Cycle), or Gustav Mahler. (And Ravel. And Glazunov. And Gershwin. And Porter, Fauré, Khachaturian, and so on and on and on…. I am a choral person. Sang in choirs in grade school, high school, university, the Congo-Uni Church — while showering, or working, or always humming, tunes from all those named previously, sotto voce. I won second prize in an amateur contest once when I was in the 3rd or 4th grade, doing imitations, but one especially, an orchestral rendition of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers”.)

[The greatest melodies, ever? For humming? The tenor’s song in Der Rosenkavalier. Hans Sachs song, “Morgenlied”, in Die Meistersinger. “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot. Then there’s — well, I could go on for a very, very long time. There are the very great trios, such as that at the end of Der Rosenkavalier, worthy for inclusion in my humming repertoire. I do all three parts. And the duets, such as the “Evening Prayer” in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel — I once long ago heard Carol Burnet and her show guest, Julie Andrews, sit on the edge of the stage in front of her TV audience and sing that duet to enormous effect.]

I am having trouble with “My Shakespeare”. I am leaning toward Emily Dickenson, but–

A First Approximation of “Genius”

We each and every one of us are like blossoms on a twig on a branch on a limb on a trunk on roots deep in the soil of Earth. We blossoms have in us all the message codes that determine what we are.

Anyone with basic standard intelligence can do the work of genius, but we must apply the ethic that genius is 10% education, leading to 10% inspiration, requiring 80% perspiration.

In undergrad school I began to learn how to study, and especially in grad school, I really learned how to study. I wondered why I had not learned to study in my secondary education. The answer is in that perspiration thing, motivation, that which energizes, arouses, excites, stimulates behavior.

What energized me to make the difference? There are several sources. I was paying for my education. I wanted to have a job on the heady not body side of work. I wanted something beyond the daily grind of working in a machine shop or a furniture factory or a gas station, or an automobile production line. Working as a printer, I found more variation and interest in the job, BUT—

I gave the government my service, they gave me my higher education, and I again owed the public my service on the heady side of work. I was made into a professional student and had to do what professional students do, become more proficient at study-work and want others to become more proficient at study-work, even as a sidelight to regular work, for I saw that as the secret of the more civilized societies, the highly educated work-force. The higher education of study and problem solving for the democratic, problem-solving society. I was motivated to understand through study beginnings and ends and pathways toward “better” ends rather than “bitter” ends. I needed to become a change-agent as I had found the way to change myself. Thus, study became a good habit. Enquiry. Questioning. Analyzing. Investigation and its processes. Balancing alternatives (reasoning). Problem resolution.

I am very critical, BUT — I tend always to be constructive.

Definition is usually the key to understanding, and I learned the ways of defining. Through “science”. I am not a scientist, though I have done scientific studies. But I know the method. The rigor of study aiming at “reliable knowledge”.

When I say “perspiration”, I say with the Germans, genius is nothing but monstrous energy — “Genie ist nichts als ungeheueres Energie.”

With those principles I would legislate for all mankind.

“Genius” is within the reach of most normally intelligent people.

Democracy!
Beyond those who wear tea!
The deliberative mind!