Magnum Mysterium
The Appalling Failure Of Secular Humanism To Accommodate The Magnum Mysterium
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Dear F,
Concerning George...
There are always "outliers" - and "confounding variables."
The fact that we never "absolutely know" is actually cause for celebration.
"Not knowing" -- at least in an "absolute" sense -- obliges us to realize that freedom depends on "chance."
"There is always a chance..."
Reality is not a straightjacket.
At the outer limits of possibility, the "outlook" is always: "Maybe yes. Maybe no. Maybe something else altogether."
I sometimes think how my life would change if I moved to Istanbul, wrote only fiction, sang with a rock and roll band, and wrote a weekly restaurant review for a local newspaper. Just leave the (apparently) collapsing empire behind.
But back to my main topic...
The worst of our epistemological quest for Absolute Certainty, is that when we convince ourselves we "know it all"... well... we become "know-it-alls."
Then, by virtue of pretending to know it all, we become the stupidest of people.
Here's who the "know-it-alls" become:
Why "Absolutists" Prefer To See "Relativists" Dead... Whereas "Relativists" Prefer That "Absolutists" Just Mind Their Own Business
The Innate Hostility Of Absolutists: Relativists Are "Okay" With Absolutists; Absolutists Prefer That Relativists "Go To Hell" - Which Is Where They Belong!
"Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling and The Redemption Of The Modern World"
Biblical Literalism And Bibliolatry Are Open Invitations To Self-Righteousness, Wrath And Hatred
"The Thing About Propaganda And Disinformation Is That It Works," Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times
"The Great Flood" Was "God's Plan" To Cleanse The World Of Evil. As Events Unfolded, Noah's Own Children Were At Least As Bad As The Humans Killed By The Flood
Simone Weil: Why "Good People" Embrace Evil
F, I encourage you to open the above link and riffle through the quotations.
Another way to look at our built-in inability to know - at least not in any final sense - is that this need imposes the humility that we cannot, finally, know the mind of God... and therefore cannot finally usurp God's "throne of judgment." (Of the four women mentioned in Jesus' New Testament genealogy, two were prostitutes; Rahab and Tamar.)
If anything like karma exists, who knows what "God/Universe/And-Beyond" has to "work out," and how many eons resolution might take.
We cannot know the full chain of cosmic causation.
My Liverpool artist friend John Griffin Green used to stick his foot out, drag his heel backward across the floor, and proclaim -- with great delight! -- "There. I've started the next ice age."
The smallest minds are those that claim to know it all. ("God said it. I believe it. That settles it." is a particularly repugnant distillation of know-it-all cheerleading.)
Not only have these small minds crafted their own "shrunken heads," they have done so deliberately in order to maintain their cherished illusions, which is to say, to avoid ANY of the changes that come with enlightenment (even bit by bit enlightenment as an incremental process).
And so the dimwits are not only stupid "out of the gate", they then double-down, triple-down and googolplex down on their stupidity.
Generally speaking, people cling to absolutism to the extent that their "psychological shadow" wonders if their axioms and premises are wrong.
And so they reduce the world -- the universe -- to the size of their shrunken heads.
Not surprisingly, they join groups of like-minded idiots who pretend they too "know it all." They destroy the universe that IS, replacing it with a "snow-globe world" comprised of their never-ending pendejadas.
And since "the simplest belief of all" is to pretend "that there is strength in numbers," they ally themselves with "the mob" and have no trouble convincing themselves that their "mob of choice" is "the one, true religion."
"Confirmation Bias And The Power Of Disconfirming Information"
"The Paranoid Style In American Politics," The Definitive Essay By Richard Hofstadter
My Most Important Late-Life Findings: The Fundaments That Illuminate My Understanding Of The World
"Fear And Anxiety Drive Conservatives' Political Attitudes": How The Values Of "Strict Father" - Or "Nurturant Parent" - Control Our Political Views
Love
A
On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 7:55 AM F V wrote:
This is interesting.Taking the cut, inflammatory and healing response model, I get a paper cut and take 4 or 5 days to heal. George can gouge his finger and it healed the next day.So smoking, drinking and poor diet for most of his life has put him on the road to longevity. His parents both died fairly young.On Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 3:33 AM Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
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