Superstition, Luck and Vodoo
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just curious, with your parents being hippies, what say they about their capitalistic financial trader son ??
best,
surf
best,
surf
yes, i agree. however, up until recently it was thought that the early organisms could only have been sprung into existance thanks to a giant coincidence. hence the statements that the "unassisted" development of life was "nonsense of the highest order", that you quoted.
- jaan
ps. thanks everybody for a fascinating thread! it left me with a feeling similar to having watched a good thriller -- every time i thought i knew what's going to happen next, there was a HUGE twist
where would dad start? probably by trying to find a natural cure for cancer, or running for congress again under the Natural Law Party with a bigger campaign (he's run twice, once in the seventies and once in the nineties), or trying to set up some anti-establishment style think tank- he had a talk radio show in california for a couple years, alternative medicines and evil government power structures were pretty much his two fave topics
Jaan I agree the language in that article was inflammatory (not my words either, twas a cut and paste if I failed to clarify)- I threw that in there mostly for kicks, while I am highly skeptical of evolution the possibility or impossibility of it is wholly tangential to my belief support structure- not one of the legs of the stool if u know what I mean
Jaan I agree the language in that article was inflammatory (not my words either, twas a cut and paste if I failed to clarify)- I threw that in there mostly for kicks, while I am highly skeptical of evolution the possibility or impossibility of it is wholly tangential to my belief support structure- not one of the legs of the stool if u know what I mean
thanks for the reply. its great meeting someone with such far reaching intellect. i was reading robert anton wilson, tim leary, terrence mckenna, & the bible, among many others, pre-highschool. so i can apprieciate where you are coming from.
all the best,
surf
all the best,
surf
Yeah - thanks for the article, very interesting.
Before I say anything else, I'd like to thank the other contributors to this thread - as I've enjoyed reading it, and will begin to miss it as soon as it disappears. Its popularity may suggest that we as traders share a desire to lend greater meaning to our apparently rather meaningless, for most of us rather lonely and difficult vocation... Maybe this desire to have SOMETHING make sense explains why, contrary to what I would have expected from traders, there have been so few positions offered that clearly qualify as agnostic. Seems most of us are long or short the deity. Hardly a single flat or or net flat position. So here's mine (subject to revision and re-consideration without notice):
Even without evidence such as that collected by astrobiologists, there would be no reason to put the requirement to evolutionary theories that they demonstrate the possible origins of life in random processes. Why should we assume randomness in a universe that otherwise exhibits so many kinds of order and "lawful" behavior? Natural selection in particular is anything but a random process, though in some forms it does integrate elements of randomness.
In the possible ubiquitousness of the building blocks of life, some will see indications of a grand design, and therefore of a designer - but there's a difference between non-randomness and intentionality. Similarly, science can't definitively answer the basic philosophical question, "Why is there something and not nothing?" - but its failure in this regard doesn't force us to posit an omniscient and omnipotent deity as "causeless first cause." If such a deity could arise on its own, then why couldn't an organizable, ordered universe arise on its own? We can decide to call the causeless first cause divine, and attribute divinity to the organizing principles that may have originated in it, but I don't see the justification for moving from there immediately to the idea of a conscious or quasi-conscious super-entity directly concerned with our individual lives and our history as a species.
I can, however, imagine something on the order of an emergent collective consciousness that might possess certain godlike attributes, and that might be seen in effect as mediating the relationship between individuals and species to the larger universe. Such a mediating collective consciousness might in theory even be accessible to "enlightened" individuals and even by groups or whole cultures of human beings, in some ways even susceptible to their wishes, entreaties, or prayers. Truth, morality, salvation, meaning and the other concerns of religion and the spiritual life might be understandable as conditioned by and validated through such a virtual entity. I see no reason to presume that such a consciousness would be subject to discrete limits. It could be imagined as integrating all life forms and all existence in some aspects, and I don't see why it couldn't exist in multiple forms simultaneously (and for that matter beyond or outside "time"), and couldn't be usefully envisioned under some circumstances as an individual or as like an individual, at other times recognized by other facets of its existence. Though in some regards it would be eternal and unchanging, in others it could be seen as evolving. There is also no inherent reason why critical aspects of this being couldn't be investigated and explained by scientific methods.
So, though I personally am uncomfortable with established religions and especially with any enforced literal interpretation of sacred texts and related dogmas, I can accept that what a Christian calls God or a Muslim calls Allah or an ancient Greek ascribed to an entire pantheon may actually "exist." I may be unable to accept their modes of expression except as metaphorical, but I may think more of metaphors than they do. To me, the universe and life within it are already divine enough, and must exceed any particular, limited description.
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