JASPERS’ WORKS APPLIED TO RICHARD DAWKINS’SECOND CONTINUUM (JUNE 23, 2006), RICHARD DAWKINS V. KARL JASPERS ON CONSCIOUSNESS, FAITH AND MENTAL DISEASE
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SECOND CONTINUUM 8. Dawkins v. Jaspers on biblical faith--The conflict between vatic authority and the biblical standard continues. Richard Dawkins has, in part, said: “People believe in evolution…because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence”, “faith cannot move mountains…” and he refers to Doubting Thomas as “the only…admirable…apostle…” (330 Selfish). There is enough said here for at least a preliminary hearing to determine what is meant by an apparent commitment to overwhelming propaganda, a committed challenge to Jesus’ meaning, and an apparent debasing reference to martyrs. We can consider this enough for a prep-hearing to determine whether there are sufficient grounds for Richard’s belief that this faith is “a kind of mental illness”, and to hear also my counter-claim that his evolutionism and personality present phenomenal material for psychopathology. It should be emphasized that my counter-claim predates any awareness of Richard’s charge, and it was part of the reason pressure was exerted which led to censoring by Herbert Muller on his “Karl Jaspers Forum” (an inappropriate title exploiting Jaspers). 8.01. Anthropogenesis--Nearly a half century ago while a seminarian at Lincoln Christian Seminary through independent reading I became familiar with the notable Catholic evolutionist Teilhard De Chardin. He was predicting and promoting a Roman Catholic Church of Evolution. I had not yet started reading Jaspers. I found Teihard’s musings not unlike my own at that academic point with regard to possibility thinking—except for my engrained protestant conscience. Shortly thereafter I began reading Jaspers and saw then but more clearly now that the Catholic institution treasured Teilhard as a potential personage that could be harvested for institutional enhancement. But, as a representative of Catholicism, an institution with compunctions not limited to burning heretics, he got caught up in that Piltdown scandal. When offered the chair of Paleontology at College de France, he deferred to his religious superiors and declined. Though declining the position occurred before the announcement about the fraud, questions had been in the air for sometime and it may have been thought that the time was not best for a Catholic’s direct involvement in “evolutionary” propaganda. Perhaps it was thought that such propaganda would best come through not only a non-catholic, but a militant atheist and one who could do all that Chardin said needed to be done relative to promoting “a science of anthropogenesis”. What I am saying is that if one were committed to a definitive prime cause relative to the development of humankind’s consciousness, that determining cause is bound to show up in the form of a rationalized “god” and then exploited by a similarly immanentally orientated religious institution. It is not an unworthy hypothesis to entertain that it is in the best interest of Catholicism to vatic-vector all popular facts through propaganda. The history of Catholicism is such that one can think that once evolutionism reaches a point of no return from pop culture, it will be collected as a force and by covert and overt means. It has reached that point and has been collected. It is my preliminary opinion, falsifiable of course, that Dawkins serves Catholicity to that purpose. But, it needs to be said, that I’ve not studied the Dawkins’ phenomena, and my first impression might be wrong. Ongoing phenomena might reveal adjustments in his thinking. He has admitted errors, which is to his credit, but whether awareness of limits will reach fundamentals is hard to imagine given his public confession for evolutionism. He seems prepared to go to the stake for evolutionism and in that sense could be considered dis-eased. At least that is what he is being paid for. 8.03. So, I checked out disingenuously The Selfish Gene, New Edition, 11:21 AM, 6-15-2006 #510 receipt.* It is obvious that the title has gross urge appeal--firing for effect so to speak. After a brief review, paying special attention to the last two chapters added in the New Edition, and the defensive End Notes, I found that the title would have been less deceptive if changed to something like “non-selfish gene” or “amoral genotype process.” But “selfish gene” is a designed title (like Radical Constructivism) suggesting a certain content that would foster the impulsiveness of base urges. It seemed Oxford-designed to appeal to youthful and unruly urges. But, again these are first impressions. 8.04. The next day at 11:19 AM I got The Ancestor’s Tale. It has a Jacket design--obviously with Richard’s approval--depicting a split DNA spiral in the shape of an oval with some DNA unites penetrated by the spirochaete-like tale of the K in the Kins of the name of DawKins. “Martha Kennedy” was listed as the artist of this bit of Freudianism. Richard is not so objective that he can avoid the temptation of being robustly suggestive. To bring home the mystic-interplay of “evolutionary” organisms Richard compares it to the foreplay and orgasms in love affairs (p. 264, long reach of the gene). These seem like telling subjective signs of more than just a declared lack of moral objectivity in the name of unadulterated science. 8.05. Nothing suggestive like this is to be found in the works of Jaspers. But with Richard the a-moral deficiency continues. While comparing gene behavior with love “affairs” he states that historians must avoid stringing together narratives to avoid even the smallest degree of homing in on a “human climax”. He means of course, anthropomorphizing, but as we can then see, he does the same thing misanthropically—that is, reflects negatively on responsible conduct. I mean there are school children referred to Richard’s works. The phenomena Richard manifest makes for data, and if the phenomena were counted it makes for statistical data, i.e., data for wondering about connections to personality complexes bordering on disorders. The title of the latter book could have no less academic affect if it had been named “Grand and Great Genes’ true confessions, and your place or mine”. Because there is an a-moral standard involved here, it seems fair to include Richard’s efforts to discredit the biblical standard that occasioned Catholic reaction at Oxford. It is tempting, without further study, to relate what Richard says about Darwin’s Termites “Mastotermes darwiniensis” to spirochaete pallida (syphilis) and Nietzsche’s symptoms and possible diagnoses to something inherited. But that later perhaps. 9. Richard’s anti-bible symptomatic exegetical exclamations—Neither inspiration or revelation is involved at this point with regard to Richard’s exegesis of the bible. I don’t need to speak to it…yet. But Richard’s elation over some research he did suggests unwarranted aside-conceit, a groundless self-confidence carried over when he departs his chair and does some exegetical research. He does what anyone can do with any word; he shows the meaning can be ambiguous. The Hebrew word, he didactically declares, for “young woman” can mean virgin or not. Richard wants to be the one to determine whether “young woman” is virgin or whatever. What he‘s trying to show is that NT authors are unreliable and make OT words subject to prevailing mythical NT thinking. Of course there’s a Judaic faction needing this sort of friendliness. What Richard overlooks is the contextual and dichotomous cultural milieu. “Young” woman has to be read in the context of “old” woman. Sarah and her spouse were too old to have a child, but the testimony is that they had one; and the Messiah comes from one too young and effectively without a spouse, i.e., both due to something outstandingly abnormal for special humankind. Next, Richard overlooks meaningfulness in his effort to impose meaninglessness unto the virgin birth concept, whereas it is a matter of testimony, and now a technical possibility and appropriate for falsification. It is almost as though he--more so than Henry VIII--must show that the biblical standard for proper behavior is questionable. For Henry the standard was to be found outside vatic authority. For Richard, if needed at all, the standard must be found anywhere but the bible. With Richard, the standard must be rejected unless it can be made complicit with his evolutionism. This excludes the bible but includes a “Vatican”. Biblical exegetes who think unavoidably in dichotomous terms and out of consciousness-conscience have no sudden amazement respecting the ambiguity of words, such as with the Genesis author’s meaning of the word for “forming” in Genesis 1:1 and “reforming” in Genesis 1.2ff. 9.01. Richard must know, or has forgotten, or doesn’t think others can notice that he sort of denies his vatic cake and has his vatic authority too; he defers to vatic influences that have infiltrated the Tübingen School. The bible-force v. vatic-force has not overlooked the Tübingen School, or any other competitive school at large. Both forces can be found there with dominant traces of Catholicism in the name of catholicity and concordia. Richard can, with sources from the School, say with usual disquieting certitude, that Matthew is not the author of the first Gospel (p. 270 in endnotes The Selfish Gene, New Edition). 9.02. However, Origen, the Didache, Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius, Hermas, and Justin Martyr etc. thought Matthew was the author. Perhaps the greatest argument is that the early church unanimously ascribed this Gospel to the biblical apostle Matthew, and this was before the Catholic Church needed documentary support for its “evolving” system of force—before it needed to capitalize apostle for apostolic succession. If Dawkins is finding support for casting doubt, it could easily be coming from the Tübingen School’s Catholic influence which has now a vested interest in promoting doubts about the early witnesses if the doubts tends to discredit the protesting standard, the bible, over the inherited tradition. What we have here is that “Darwinian evolutionary” form of thinking that modern critics can be more advanced in there thinking than earlier observers--if it is convenient for Richard. But, he has shown verbalizing signs of moving away from the idea of progression as a construed or traditional value. I mean one cannot believe evolutionism and believe therefore that consciousness and the mind have evolved and not get the feeling and idea that there has been some progress over animal states, and over those simply accepting what is without getting serious about ultimate causes—except where mental and/or somatic illnesses are concerned. 9.03. Richard’s research abilities are at least questionable relative to biblical exegesis, and his vatic authority should be taken as an indication of probable infiltration by forces into his research sources. That his bias carries over into other fields of research seems an appropriate affirmative proposition. He is indubitably referring to the Tübingen School and to theologians, those he prefers because they see scribes copying originals and doctoring New Testament history to conform to Old Testament prophecies. Here again he manages to squeeze in the bias that the “gospel-maker…lived long after Jesus’s (as is) death” He says that if the predictions don’t specifically say Jesus was born in Bethlehem, then the scribe would add the detail to fulfill the prophesy (p.19 The Ancestor’s tale). Richard seems to need to establish this fallibility in the limited minds of others to make room for his own infallibility regarding his anecdotal descriptions. The biblical milieu leaves open a window for transcendental intervention, and Richard wants to close that window. Well…except for what use he can make of the window from space. 10. A special UFO myth and evolutionism, extraterrestrial fundamentalism—In Ancestors p. 4 Richard states that historians must avoid linguistics homing in on human climatic ideas. He demonstrates an awareness of how this is done, and then because he thinks he has been the first to see and state it, he has earned the license to abuse the principle. He then demonstrates the type of love affair that evolutionist have in the very next paragraph. Out of uncharacteristic regard, special regard is offered to a fellow evolutionism-member, and perhaps out of tit-for-tat fear, he alludes to a book the title and author of which he does not mention because it is a “good book”, and then criticizes correctly the basic errors regarding confusing science with progressive subjectivism. The book is good, he says, in effect, because it uses the word “evolution” but bad fundamentally. But where it is bad Richard will use any word but a form of “evolution”. He could have used evolutionism, or said this is not “evolution”. Rather, a qualifying phrase is used like “the conceit of hindsight” but not “evolutionism”. It’s possible that acoustical gratification was a decisive factor. The abuse of humankind’s origins and goals is further demonstrated by the use of unidentified foreign officials (UFOs) who evaluate earth-human progress and worth in terms of whether they know they evolved. It seems to me this amounts to a UFO’s search for the master race. Richard assumes a transcendental deistic position telling us what an alien would look for; that advanced, evolved alien would see who believes in evolution and who does not, a “darwinian evolutionary” style of a second coming and great judgment day. 10.01. Why I’m reading Dawkins—So here again is a competition that Karl Jaspers is the only nice guy not permitted to participate in due to propaganda and money. My tax money is going to Richard Dawkins, The Oxford Press, and other pheno extension kickback arrangements with schools and publishers, and one way or another to…others not in need. There are no books by Karl Jaspers but several by Richard Dawkins. That library score is predetermined; it is Jaspers “0” to Dawkins too many, and it all totals up to no triangularity—except for me. Most disturbing is that there is no responsibility assumed by, for instance, Richard, i.e., he can excuse it all on the grounds of a principle of “evolutionary” parasitism. That is not to say he has no feelings, for he can take criticism by S. Gould, total misunderstanding even, so long he does not become entirely dislodged from the thickening shell of the “evolutionary”-time’s snail’s slithering. He accepts what he thinks is unjust criticism from Gould and uses the occasion to point out that they are both members of the same gang, i.e., evolutionism. 10.02 Dawkins not recommended—Orientation imperative: Einstein once did not recommend Jaspers because he could not understand him. Without an orientation, that anecdote could be misunderstood. On the “Karl Jaspers Forum” J.S. Johnson stated that he did not read Karl Jaspers because Einstein could not recommend Jaspers. In effect Mr. Johnson was saying if Einstein would not recommend reading him why should he. This is a convenient misunderstanding. In that instance, Jaspers was asking Einstein for a recommendation so he and Gertrude could immigrate to America. Einstein was not saying he could not recommend reading Jaspers, but rather he could not recommend him to authorities because he knew nothing about him from his writings. Richard should not be read unless the reader is properly prepared to be critical, and aware that Richard’s possible weakness is epistemic, that his treks into consciousness might be woefully lacking, and that I might be wrong to right to some degree. 11. How to approach Dawkins— 11.01. First, approach Richard’s writings with the idea that the more we know the more we know we do not know. Approach with a consciousness and conscience regarding intellectual and emotional, limits. It’s called learned ignorance. It’s a familiar concept in philosophical and theological thinking and in quantum physics too. Though it’s learned ignorance, it’s earned humility. Though the mind has limits, anything conjured (wholly this side of inherited tradition) as source of mind’s ground is a mind’s invention, especially the mind’s definitive source. Target Article 70 (Under Extracts) on my Website is designed to prepare one to systematically hit bottom rationally, thus preparing one for the limits of thinking. It is free, wholly at my own expense. It is based on Jaspers’ concepts of the ultimate situations of life. Without preparation one can get in a rut walking Richard’s primrose or sweet pea path. It’s good to keep in mind that Richard, so far to me, seems uncomfortable with consciousness. Consciousness is the mysterious ground of mind, but yet it is mind and consciousness that Richard uses. For this reason we will start with applying Jaspers’ works’ like General Psychopathology to Richard’s manifested phenomena. Before trekking with Richard we need to know how balance he is. 11.02. Secondly, be prepared to substitute “nothing” or some other word not emotionally attached to the primordial conflict between the dichotomous forces, vatic or biblical-like faith, whenever you see any positive form of the word “evolution” or “Darwinian”. Suspect it to be a substitute for “I don’t know but look at the big guy and big Ben next to me”. And remember that like in psychopathology where no genotype connection can be made, reposing into causality tends to short circuit thinking. Jaspers once said that psychopathologists must learn to think, to which his superior stated he should be spanked. Don’t let Richard lead at any point. He is not color blind and should not be point person. Beware of adverbial and adjectival expletives. Perhaps Richard distracts from parasitically overreaches even the phenotypical cantilevering off Darwin. Perhaps Richard has to pheno-ontic off someone; i.e., he has to start, origin-rationalizing off a personage and with a fundamental nomenclature. For instance, with regard to time, look for him to use some matrix, or immanental linguistic reductionism to make sure that the in-vogue turf-gang language is being used. Time is always “evolutionary” time when out of touch with real conscious time, and it could be used like one would use a four-letter word to let others know there are no moral limits restraining tat for tit retaliation. Darwinian or Darwin-“evolution” is like a double expletive, like using a name of a personage and gross stick-throwing-fitful movements to show one’s willingness to violate anything that is valuable enough to restrain. “Over evolutionary time” can be used as a cuss word to emphasize aggression if one should question one’s domain of comfortable certainty 11.03. Thirdly, never read Richard without reading the psychopathologist, philosopher, and theist Jaspers. If one cannot read and grasp Jaspers’ General Psychopathology, such as Chapter 10 on Heredity, then put off reading Richard’s works. Jaspers is more difficult, but more challenging and more realistically in touch with the complexity of reality. Jaspers has trekked consciousness and mind. 11.04. Fourthly, one should remember that Richard has at his disposal state of the art cybernetic technology and probably some about which the public is unaware; it means that the infinite phenomena of complexity is at his…disposal, but most of all, remember that the nomenclature is ever qualifiable and quantifiably by novelty. In Selfish Genes (278) he admits consciousness is a “deep problem”. He admits it is unclear to him whether the brain can simulate modals of itself, such as with regard to computer simulation, serial and parallel processors. He deserves credit for that intuitive and honest judgment. Cybernetic language can be a new wolf in old sheep formals.. 11.05. Fifthly, Richard must not be allowed to set the terms of engagement. CONTINUE TO: THIRD CONTINUUM (JULY 20, 2006), PANDERING TO “MEME” THE MARTYR SPOILER FIFTH CONTINUUM (OCTOBER 17, 2006)—EPISTEMIC POSTURING OF DIS-EASED EMOTIVE AFFECTIVE STATES, CONSCIOUSNESS AND MIND: further preparation for handling objective research through epistemic triangularity; a special application of epistemology to torture-trends BACK TO: JASPERS’ WORKS APPLIED TO RICHARD DAWKINS’ (JUNE 5, 2006) *The documentation here is meant to preclude the claim that ideas may have come from Dawkins’ works.
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