MORE SANDY

This post is a continuation of a correspondance I have been having with Sandy McKean. It should be read after reading the previous post, 'Sandy and Me.' Thanks.

SandyMcKean said...
I appreciate Matt re-organizing our conversation into a true blog post. Clearly, he is a diligent and committed fellow. OTOH, I can't say I am particularly happy with his characterization of me as:

"He is a materialist evolutionist and especially demeaning and sarcastic toward anyone who disagrees with the strict neo-Darwinist party line....."

Frankly, I'm at a loss to figure out how he came to this characterization of me from what I have said here -- especially when he himself has thrown quite a few insults my way comparing me to Joe MacCarthy, a member of the Inquisition, and generally using pejorative terms toward me (as indeed he does in the quote directly above). Oh, and I will confirm that I am male :-). OK, now back to the discussion.....

Matt you say:

"Yes, there is an energy in biology that has not yet been discovered; at least not by evolutionary biologists......that extra energy is desire."

You say here that you (and others presumably) have discovered a form of energy that is apparently not accepted by the scientific establishment. I have a question for you: do you have an independent and objective way of measuring this energy? For example, we can use a thermometer to measure heat energy, and do experiments with heat sources while watch the thermometer go up and down measuring that heat energy just as we might predict. Or we can put a amp meter into an electric circuit and watch the needle move as we claim that electric energy flows unseen around that circuit. Or we can bring what might otherwise be an ordinary rock near a Geiger counter and listen as the clicks register energy coming from radioactive energy; or like Madame Curie we can put that same rock on a unexposed photographic plate and find the next day that something in the rock exposed the emulsion in the photographic plate. Matt, do you have same sort of experiment or device such as these 4 examples where you can MEASURE this undiscovered "energy in biology" in an objective way that is totally independent of human intervention or interpretation (such as a needle moving, or mercury in a thermometer rising, or a photographic plate being exposed without any human involment other than setting a rock on it)?

Further, I'm confused by this statement:

"Replication requires the use of extra energy, of borrowed energy, to overcome the laws of physics and chemistry."

Which specific laws of physics and chemistry have to be violated or overcome? Maybe you didn't mean to say this; maybe what you are actually trying to say is that this "extra energy" is required to overcome what you consider to be a statistical improbability.....but that is not what you said. You said that some laws of physics and chemistry have to be overcome; laws I presume such as F=MA, or the inverse square law of gravity or the electromagnetic force, or the law of chemical valance where atoms lower their energy state by having a certain number of electrons in their outer shells (such as oxygen having only 6 electrons in its outer shell when it is energetically advantageous to have 8, so it naturally combines with 2 hydrogen atoms to form water since each hydrogen has 1 more electron than is energetically advantageous). I know of nowhere in the sphere of life where a law of physics and chemistry is broken or needs to be broken (a broken law would be something like a water molecule spontaneously breaking down into separate oxygen and hydrogen atoms sicne that is energetically disadvantageous according the laws of physics and chemistry (to use my example above). Do you have specific examples of the laws of physics and chemistry being overcome? Can you tell me exactly which laws are being broken? Or are you, as I suspect, simply referring to your personal observation that it is statistically improbable that the living world you see around you could have evolved given only the laws of physics and chemistry?



Sandy,

"Frankly, I'm at a loss to figure out how he came to this characterization of me from what I have said here"

As I told you earlier I recognized your name and your style and your sarcasm from comments that you had written on other posts. Also, your first comment on my blog was a huge ‘Gotcha!’ moment based on the one fact that, not me, but one of the commenters on my blog signed off with the unforgivable words, ‘God Bless you.’ I wonder if on occasion even you let those awful words slip out; say, when someone sneezes in your presence? And when you do say ‘God Bless you,’ when someone sneezes, do you feel ashamed of yourself afterwards? Well, for what it’s worth, I forgive you.

"I have a question for you: do you have an independent and objective way of measuring this energy?"

I do, but before I answer that question, I have one for you. Do you have an independent and objective way of measuring yourself? Where is Sandy? I know you have a name and an address; I know you have a social security number and a telephone number; I know you can give me a list of your accomplishments, your relatives, your attitudes, your scores on various tests; but all of these are measures not of you, but of your possessions, abilities and relationships. What about you? Where and how do I measure you? I can look at x-rays, cat scans, and colonoscopy pictures, and with the help of these I can see your bones, muscle mass, blood vessels and the inside of your intestines; but through all of these Sandy is nowhere to be found. Well, you may say, I may not be my body, but I am my brain. So I’ll do MRI’s and other scans of your brain and what will I see? I’ll see one hundred billion neurons each with a thousand or more axons connecting to the other neurons and to your musculature. I know this because these are pretty much exactly the same kinds of neurons and same kinds of axons that are found in my brain. When your neurons fire, a stream of electrons will flow through these firing neurons leaving a series of chemical deposits. I know this because these are pretty much exactly the same electrons flowing at the same voltage and leaving pretty much exactly the same chemical deposits as they do in my brain. So far, looking at your brain and my brain and any other human brain we can detect no noticeable difference. So, once again, where is Sandy? And as we look at your brain scans we notice that certain areas light up at different times; sometimes the hearing center fires; sometimes the visual center fires; sometimes the memory center fires. The question is why do these different areas light up at different times? And the answer is because YOU WANT to listen to something; YOU WANT to hear something; and YOU WANT to remember something. Whenever you want to do something, whenever you focus on something, a different area of your brain will fire. But the YOU that is focusing, and the FOCUS and the WANTING is not seen by any scan, and cannot be measured by any equipment. And what about your experience; which is the result of all this neural and sometimes muscular activity? Where is that?


Can you show me your experience directly? Can you measure it? Your experience is the actual moment to moment content of your life; but where is it? I know you can write a book about it; you can even write a blog comment about it. But can you measure it directly? Can you tell me how big it is or how much it weighs? You cannot. The only instrument that YOU and your DESIRES and your EXPERIENCE effects are your own neurons. But that is enough. Your neurons, like the ignition switch of your car, are enough to initiate all the processes that allow you to get your desires met and your neurons in conjunction with your sense organs are enough to allow you to experience the world in the way that you want to experience it.

Now, hold on, you say. Anything that is in the physical, material world can be measured. If something exists in space and time then there must be some sort of device that can detect its presence. But this harks back precisely, Sandy, to the experience that you once had. You, the real you, the seer of your sights, the thinker of your thoughts, the experiencer of your experience, is exactly what you thought it was in that one moment when you realized that you were beyond space and time, that you were one with everything; that separation was the illusion and Oneness was the reality. We are here in space/time, we are playing in space/time, but we are not of space/time. You may not appreciate the source, but this is my understanding of what it means in the Bible when it says that ‘we are made in the image of God.” We are part of God, we are an inextricable part of the spiritual underpinning of the universe; but we have chosen to live this life of a separate existence, of duality; of me and you; of up and down, of past and future.

“where you can MEASURE this undiscovered "energy in biology" in an objective way that is totally independent of human intervention or interpretation (such as a needle moving, or mercury in a thermometer rising, or a photographic plate being exposed without any human involment”


Do you think there is no human involvement in the measurement of heat? We can measure expansion and contraction, but aside from that, what is heat? Is there any such thing as hot or cold without a human’s or a living being’s experience of it? Heat is the experience that a being has when it is in an environment where it is becoming too expansive for that being to survive. Cold is the experience that a being has when it is in an environment where it is becoming too contractive for that being to survive. On the surface of the sun, atoms and molecules and subatomic particles may be moving at enormous speeds but they are not looking for an air conditioned movie. At absolute zero molecules may be hardly moving at all but they are not dreaming about hot soup and fire places. Rather than being independent of human involvement, any measurement or even discussion of heat or cold, or what we call temperature, has absolutely no existence apart from the ‘experience’ of living beings. And the same must be said for colors, sounds, smells, soft and hard, permeable and impermeable. What are they apart from our, or other living beings experience of them? Take away the experience and what you are left with, from a space perspective, is just expansion and contraction; and from a time perspective is just frequency and speed. Yet even space and time have no reality apart from the way in which living beings organize their experience.

Your question was about desire and will, and how I could objectively measure them in the same way that one could measure the other forces of gravity, electro-magnetism, the weak force and the strong force. But how do you observe these other forces directly? How can you measure them except by the effect they have on matter. We know how gravity effects matter, but what is it actually? Has anyone seen gravity by itself? And the same is true for the other forces. We can only measure them by the effect they have. That’s how we know they are there. In truth the law of gravity and the laws of electromagnetism have no direct observable reality. They are laws. These universal laws, just like our man-made laws, derive their power from agreement. What is the force that emanates from red lights that has the power to stop traffic? It is simply the force of agreement. We, as a society, decided to organize our traffic that way and we as a society agree to obey these laws that we have set up. They are a result of our intention to have a safe and functional society and, specifically, a safe and functional traffic system.

Let me go back to what I said earlier, that we are made in the image of God; so that, by studying ourselves and how we operate, we can get a glimpse into how God operates. We can ask of any of our fellow human beings, regarding their accomplishments, “How did you do this?” And, they can answer with a detailed list of specific chains of events that resulted in them becoming a doctor, or building a monument, or writing a novel. But this whole chain of events began, the entire thing was first engendered, when that person first said to themselves, “I am going to be a doctor” or “I am going to write a novel.” This intention was the catalyst that energized the whole series of events that resulted in the achievement of their goal. The inviolable, precise and consistent physical laws of the universe are also a result of intention, God’s or the Universe’s intention, to create a world of matter and energy and ultimately a world that could support life forms, which is a way of having separate experiences. Another way of saying that would be, “God said let there be a physical universe, and there was a physical universe.”

So, if you agree that gravity and electro-magnetism cannot be measured directly, but only by their effects on matter, I can now return to the original question. How do I measure desire? I measure it by its effects on living bodies. Remember, I spoke of two kinds of desire. There is human desire and God’s or the Universe’s desire that we call will.

A normal person has a certain level of desire. A depressed person has a lower level of desire. A severely depressed person has a lower level of desire than that. A catatonic person, that has to be force fed and propped up to stay erect, has a lower level still. A body without will is a corpse. A good instrument to measure these differences would be your eyes.

“Which specific laws of physics and chemistry have to be violated or overcome?”


I don’t think I ever used the word violated. Isn’t the purpose of any machine to gather and focus energy to overcome physical laws? My car serves my intention of getting places. It does so by using energy to overcome friction and inertia. In terms of my own biological machine, my desire to climb a mountain creates the energy to overcome gravity. In the same way my body uses energy to overcome gravity to get blood circulating to my head; and on the molecular level I have vast numbers of pumps in every cell that move molecules into solutions with enough energy to overcome the laws of diffusion. Any metabolic system uses energy to accomplish what would not happen without this extra energy. Again, the difference between the force of will in a living body and the absence of will in a living body, is the difference between a living body and a corpse. A corpse is a body behaving as matter; that is, being a completely passive object reacting to whatever physical forces happen to be acting on it or not acting on it. A living body is a body imbued with the intention to survive which energizes a multitude of biological processes to achieve that survival. And the being that occupies a living body uses it to fulfill his or her desires.

SANDY AND ME

Here's what happenned. I wrote a blog post almost two years ago called 'Selfish Genes and Replicators." About a week ago someone named Sandy McKean wrote a comment on that blog. I recognized the style of writing and the name. I had seen some of Sandy's comments (I originally thought Sandy was a woman but I am now sure he's a man) on some other blog commentaries. He is a materialist evolutionist and especially demeaning and sarcastic toward anyone who disagrees with the strict neo-Darwinist party line; in other words a member in good stead of the Church of Richard Dawkins and the Holy Replicator. What followed was a long back and forth between the two of us that I reprint here for two reasons. One is that I thought it was pretty interesting and was buried in the commentary of a blog that I had written two years ago. The second is that the order of comments got confused and, as it is written on that blog post, some of his responses do not follow my comments, as my responses don't follow his. Oh, yes, I think some of it is pretty damn funny, too. I begin this post with another comment by a third party, because Sandy's first response is a reaction to this comment as well as to my blog post. I hope you enjoy.

Rudy said...
Matt, I re-read this again tonight and I found it just as incredible as the first time I read it. Your examination of the phrase "MAKES COPIES of ITSELF" is beyond fascinating. Also your comparison of the evolutionists idea of the first occurrence of life with no parents compared with the virgin birth with only one parent is just jaw dropping powerful.

I have never read any writings such as yours that make the case as strongly for the spiritual plane of existence and yet your blog is tucked away in a hidden corner of the internet. If it was up to me, your blog would be required reading in every philosophy class taught in America.

If you ever decide to take all your blogs and publish a book, I will be first in line. I must tell you that I am very nervous I will go to your blogsite one day and find that all your wonderful writings will be gone and I have no way to capture them. One of these days, I am going to have to copy every one of them as I am fearful your ideas will got lost and overlooked in today's march towards scientism and evolution.

You have a powerful gift indeed. I pray that one day your writings will be more available and to your success.

God Bless You Matt




SandyMcKean said...
I note that the previous comment ends with "God Bless". I find it interesting that folks who would explain away concepts such as those found in "The Selfish Gene" START with a religious belief. The same can be said of the scientists at the Discovery Institute and they now popular ID arguments (I don't have the facts, but I'd be willing to bet that NO scientist that works for the Discovery Institute is a non-believer).

More specifically you said that "One of the basic tenets (or, as Dawkins' calls them, 'memes') of evolutionary thinking is that things proceed from the simple to the complex." This is just NOT so. Dawkins says no such thing, and evolution by natural selection says no such thing. Yes, it's true that it is possible for things to evolve that way (as parts of biology here on earth have), but evolution toward ANYTHING, much less complexity is NOT a basic tenant of evolutionary thinking. It is likely to happen I suppose, but ONLY if the replicators involved statistically increased in numbers by being part of a more complex form, than replicators that were part of a more simple form. There is NO direction, or intent, or grand plan, or goal involved (any more than over time waves on a beach sort smaller rocks higher on the beach than larger rocks).

If you believe this tenant of evolution, as you call it, exists then you either didn't read all of "The Selfish Gene" or you read it without "listening".



Matt Chait said...
Sandy,

Please read my post ‘The G Word.’ Yes, as soon as anyone mentions the G word everyone is guilty as charged. But what am I guilty of? I also do not know what the Discovery Institute is.

You cannot pretend that the whole thrust of evolutionary thinking is not to find a way to explain the fantastic, coherent complexity of modern life forms by postulating a simple beginning and the build up, random blind mutation by random blind mutation, to the complexity you see today. The problem is that there never was any ‘simple beginning.’ Any beginning of life had to involve metabolism, replication, transcription, translation, digestion, elimination, growth and a way of sensing the environment and responding in an adaptive way to it. NONE of that is in any way simple. Also, the path of going from simplicity to complexity, mutation by mutation. has never been described and never will be, because blind accidents with natural selection is not a process that could ever accomplish that level of complexity and coherence.

You also may be interested to know that I do not have a ‘belief’ in God. I also thought, for a time, that I had evolved beyond the silly superstitions of my ancestors and would now be able to march forward in the clear light of reason and science. But science does not explain the origin of anything, and it does not explain how we experience, initiate or desire anything. Biology is the study of the apparatus that life uses, not the study of life itself. I came to these ideas not because of a belief that was inculcated in me, but because of an EXPERIENCE that I had. That experience made it very clear to me that I am not my body, but I am that which experiences my body. That insight and many other related insights await you also, the moment that you are able to suspend your thought processes and not repeat these tired unexamined mantras that you learned in biology classes and from promoters like Dawkins and simply experience yourself as your self. Then you will find, among other things, that you are not a content but a context; that you are not from a physical world of proteins and nucleic acids, but you are from a spiritual world of will, desire, intelligence, love and experience.

I am sorry if you cannot hear these words because they sound too religious too you.

Good luck!



Matt Chait said...
Sandy,

Here are the very first words of Dawkins from his chapter 'The Replicators' in his book 'The Selfish Gene':

"In the beginning was simplicity. It is difficult enough explaining how even a simple universe began. I take it as agreed that it would be even harder to explain the sudden springing up, fully armed, of complex order-life, or a being capable of creating life. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is satisfying because it shows us a way in which simplicity could change into complexity, how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people."

Have you ever noticed that you unmask religious people, real or imagined, with the same enthusiasm that Joe McCarthy unmasked Communists, real or imagined? You seem to be well qualified for an excellent post during the next Inquisition.



SandyMcKean said...

I've tired to make a reponse. It is 550 characters long, but the system rejects it saying that my response must be no longer than 4096.




Matt Chait said...

Sandy,

I haven't heard anyone else make that complaint before, but please try again. Perhaps you could send two shorter ones; or as many as you like.

And in your response please answer the following: In your comment you wrote:
"It is likely to happen I suppose, but ONLY if the replicators involved statistically increased in numbers by being part of a more complex form, than replicators that were part of a more simple form." This explains how natural selection could make the more complex replicators more numerous. But please explain how these more complex replicators got more complex in the first place; and how , through either natural selection or random mutation, they could get still more complex than they already are.

You seem to think that if I don't get it (evolutionary theory) it must be because I am blinded by religious prejudices. You don't entertain the possibility that I do get it; I just think it is stupid.


SandyMcKean said...
Part 1 of 2

This comment will have to be posted in 2 segments due to the limitation of this blog to comments no longer than 4096 characters. Note that this reply was written after first reply to me. It therefore does not address the comments you've made since then (you added 2 additional comments). My 2 part reply here should be read as the 4th post in this series of comments.

--------------------------------------------------------

Matt, you sound like a threatened person; why you should feel threatened I find curious. You ask what you are guilty of. I didn't accuse you of anything, so I have no idea. My statement was that I find it interesting that so many, who find their answers in God instead of in evidence-based disciplines like science, seem to have been committed to their belief in God before they conduct an inquiry into the nature of reality. Note that I never indicated that you believed in God (altho the title of this blog would seem to make that a reasonable assumption). In fact, if you read my words carefully, I think you will find that I was referring to the person who posted the 1st comment in this comment section, not to you. But be all that as it may.....on to the discussion. (I will attempt to take on your issues one at a time.)

I'm not pretending anything. I merely refuted your claim that it is a tenant of evolutionary theory that (to use your words again) "...things proceed from the simple to the complex." This is not a tenant of evolutionary theory. OTOH, evolutionary theory can be used as one highly plausible way to explain the observation that over time there has been, in some life forms, a movement through time from the more simple to the more complex. The mistake you make is to imply that evolutionary theory holds movement from simple to complex as a goal of evolutionary theory. There is no preferred direction in evolutionary theory; however, if one notices evidence that there is a condition of movement from simple to complex (as you and I both seem to agree has occurred), then one can use evolutionary theory to explain how that might have occurred. Huge difference. As you acknowledge, complex life forms are a bit of a side show when one considers the entire biosphere (e.g., bacteria etc). Steven J Gould is probably the most famous person to say that.

July 17, 2009 9:31 AM
Matt Chait said...
Sandy,

“Matt, you sound like a threatened person; why you should feel threatened I find curious.”

If I sound that way it’s probably because I feel that our whole society is threatened by this myopic, soul destroying materialist philosophy that you cling to.

I am not an academic but I have been around enough to know the code. “I find curious” and “I find it interesting” which you used in this comment and in the earlier one, are thinly veiled hostile attempts to undermine my position. In it I hear echoes of the House Unamerican Activities Committee saying, “Mr. Mckean, you say you are not a Communist, but I find it interesting that you were seen at a meeting of the Socialist Workers Party on the night of June 16th; or a Nazi interrogator saying, “You say you have no Jewish blood, but I find curious that a letter was found in your possession signed with the word “Shalom!” But that must be my paranoia. I am sure that butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.

“My statement was that I find it interesting that so many, who find their answers in God instead of in evidence-based disciplines like science, seem to have been committed to their belief in God before they conduct an inquiry into the nature of reality”

I have no problem with evidence based science. So please show me the evidence for pre-biotic evolution. Show me the evidence for mutations increasing the complexity of anything. Show me the evidence for accidental mutations changing the basic body plan of any living creature; and show me how that could happen beneficial mutation by beneficial mutation (If it was a deleterious mutation at any point that life form would be at a disadvantage and would disappear through natural selection). Show me the evidence for any replicator, simple or complex, that ever existed, and tell me when this evolution from replicator to single celled creature took place. (Certainly not on this planet. Bacteria appeared here en masse almost four billion years ago at the same time temperatures at the surface dropped below the boiling point of water.) If you are saying that there is evidence that there are such things as mutations and that occasionally those mutations allow an organism to produce enzymes that will protect it from invasions, fine. But to say that whole body structures are changed by random, blind mutations is an absolute fantasy. Not because of, but in spite of, geological, historical, astronomical and logical evidence to the contrary, Darwinian evolutionists keep concocting these tortured scenarios of how life, will and intelligence emerged, by themselves, from inanimate matter. Why? Because they are as committed to their atheism as the most rabid fundamentalist is committed to his limited notion of God. Please read my post EVOLUTION.

“This is not a tenant of evolutionary theory.”

I never said it was a tenant. In fact I’ve never know evolutionary theory to be anyone’s landlord. I said a tenet of evolutionary theory.

Cheers!


SandyMcKean said...
Part 2 of 2

(Note part 1 and 2 were originally writeen as all one post several days ago)

To address your concerns about a "beginning". Evolution does not attempt to answer that question. Maybe someday we will have an answer to that, but not now, not yet. There is nothing usual in science for this state of affairs to exist. For example, there was a time not so long ago that science had no idea how the sun could produce so much energy and still be shining. Science itself had proven that if the sun's energy were being produced by chemical energy or gravitational energy (the only 2 sources known at the time), the sun would have burned itself out long ago. Eventually, science discovered a heretofore unknown source of energy, nuclear energy, that explained what was previously unknown. I doubt you would consider it a logical criticism of science to say in 1830 that because chemistry could not explain how the sun was still burning that lack somehow proved that chemistry must be a false doctrine. Yes, you are right, we don't (yet) know how the first replicators got started, but we know a lot else (incidentally, Dawkins would be the first to say that we have no idea what the first replicators were -- and BTW, whatever they were, the entire process did not start with DNA because, as you point out, too many other support structures are required for DNA to reproduce -- those support structures must have come after the first replicators started replicating).

You say "because blind accidents with natural selection is not a process that could ever accomplish that level of complexity and coherence". How do you know this? Do you have some sort of proof of this, or does it just "seem that way" to you?

You make "an EXPERIENCE that I had" quite important to your world view. It might interest you to know that I too once (about 30 years ago) had what I suspect was a very similar experience to whatever yours was. For me, it was that my "I" disappeared (or rather my "I" seemed like an illusion), and I existed as what I can only describe as "The One". I was The One, and The One was me, and ALL was only The One: existing on a conscious plane of some undefinable sort that was timeless (incidentally no drugs were involved). My experience was profound as I'm sure yours was, but unlike you, I find that experience to be completely compatible with the concepts found in "The Selfish Gene".

Finally, I want you to know that I do not consider evolutionary theory, and other elements of my world view (most of which I've studied and contemplated with much effort for a very long time), to be "tired unexamined mantras". And even if they were mantras, which I don't think they are, but even if they were mantras, I am dumbfounded that you hold yourself up somehow to know, over the internet, that I have not examined them.


Matt Chait said...
This reply will also be in two parts because of the 4,096 character rule.
Part I

Sandy,

“To address your concerns about a "beginning". Evolution does not attempt to answer that question.”

I don’t know what version of The Selfish Gene you read but in mine the chapter called ‘The Replicators’ which was the bases for this blog post that you are commenting on, begins with the words, “In the beginning there was simplicity.” Dawkins then continues on to explain how life began. He admits that this may not have been precisely the way it began, but whatever way it was, he is absolutely sure that it was pretty similar to his scenario. Isn’t that the whole point? To concoct a scenario that purports to explain how life could begin from inanimate materials, to organic materials to ‘simple’ living beings and then to ‘complex life, by itself, without the intercession of any intelligence or intelligent being? That may not be the intention of the theoretical replicators, themselves, but it is certainly the intention of the evolutionists that are concocting these theories.

“ I doubt you would consider it a logical criticism of science to say in 1830 that because chemistry could not explain how the sun was still burning that lack somehow proved that chemistry must be a false doctrine.”

For almost one hundred years prior to 1778, according to phlogiston chemistry, which was the accepted scientific way of viewing these things at the time, the sun was burning because it was releasing ‘phlogiston,’ the supposed matter and principle of fire. Antoine Lavoisier proved that fire didn’t release anything, that it was actually taking oxygen from the atmosphere. So do I believe in chemistry? Sure. Do I believe in phlogiston chemistry? Of course not. Do I believe in biology? Sure. Do I believe in evolutionary biology and its fanciful assumptions about the origin of life and the origin of species (as opposed to variations within species)? Of course not.


Matt Chait said...
Okay, this is part II:

“Eventually, science discovered a heretofore unknown source of energy, nuclear energy, that explained what was previously unknown.”

Yes, there is an energy in biology that has not yet been discovered; at least not by evolutionary biologists. Imagine that you were a scientist coming from another planet. In observing all the material that you found on this planet, you were able to divide these objects into three categories. The first was inanimate objects. The second was living bodies. And the third were artifacts made by humans and other animals (beavers’ dams, birds’ nests, bees’ hives, etc.) With the first category, inanimate objects, you discovered that they functioned exactly as you would expect objects to function knowing what you knew about the fundamental laws of physics: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force. But in the second and third category of objects you discovered that while they functioned within the four laws of physics, they were not formed simply by those four laws. In each case there was another force, another energy, that overcame those four forces. In the case of artifacts, that extra energy is desire. No artifact was ever built without some one or some animal ‘wanting’ it to be built. Beings do two things that inanimate objects do not. They experience things and they desire things. That desire created the energy which that being marshaled to overcome the four forces of physics and create the artifact that was standing before you. The creation of living bodies, like the creation of artifacts, depends on an energy to overcome the four forces of physics. This energy is also a desire, but it is usually called will. We can call this energy God’s will, or if you find that word repellent, we can say the universal will or life force or the cosmic consciousness’ will, or the will of Allah, or Jehovah or the Tao or whatever you like.

The point is that consciousness, will and intelligence are not accidental offshoots of a material evolution. Life and the entire material world are the result of consciousness, will and intention. The materialist evolutionists have it exactly backwards.

“I was The One, and The One was me, and ALL was only The One: existing on a conscious plane of some undefinable sort that was timeless (incidentally no drugs were involved). My experience was profound as I'm sure yours was, but unlike you, I find that experience to be completely compatible with the concepts found in "The Selfish Gene".”

Thank you for sharing that experience with me. The only way, though, that that can be compatible with Dawkins’ concepts is if you accept the modern schizophrenia of the material world vs. the spiritual world. There is spirit and oneness and then there is this other material world of separation. But the point is that the world of separation comes out of the world of oneness; and the instrument for that separation is will. Before there were life forms with their specific and limited intelligence, consciousness and desires, there was life formless with its unlimited intelligence, consciousness and will. This Oneness, beyond time and space, this unlimited consciousness, will and intelligence, which we both have caught a glimpse of, is what spiritualists (not necessarily fundamentalists, but truly evolved spiritual people) call God.

Peace!


SandyMcKean said...
You neglected to answer my previous question I will reproduce here:

You say "because blind accidents with natural selection is not a process that could ever accomplish that level of complexity and coherence". How do you know this? Do you have some sort of proof of this, or does it just "seem that way" to you?

One other point. You say: "Dawkins then continues on to explain how life began." He most certainly does not. Every reputable scientist admits that no one has any idea how the first replicator formed in an early earth environment that contained only atoms and molecules -- that might form into somewhat more complex arrangements via pure chance (e.g., say the combination of 1 carbon atom plus 4 hydrogen atoms to form the simple molecule methane) -- but have absolutely no ability to replicate exact (or even inexact) copies of themselves. How that first replicator formed remains an unknown in science, and no scientist worth his/her salt would claim otherwise.....and specifically Dawkins does not. Indeed how the first replicator formed may never be known. Dawkins at best describes some possible developments and chemical reactions that may have been involved, but he is clear that these possibilities are pure speculation on his part.


Matt Chait said...
I am happy to address both your points, but I do have to say that while I will answer all your objections I asked you for evidence of six different neo-Darwinist claims and no evidence is forthcoming from your end.

Your first question about blind accidents and natural selection being incapable of creating life at the complexity and coherence that we observe today, is a huge question that I cannot answer adequately in this format. I will answer it, hopefully to your complete satisfaction, in a post that will be called either MUTATIONS or BEHE WATCH. I promise you that within the next month. Please read it and let me know what you think.

Regarding your second point, I said that Dawkins claims to tell us how life began. Then you say, “How that first replicator formed may never be known.” Excuse me! What replicator? Do you see the materialist leap and assumption you make? I am talking about the origin of life and you are talking about the origin of the first replicator. Who said there was a replicator? What is a replicator anyway? Has anyone ever seen one? And please don’t say DNA. DNA replicates, but only in conjunction with a whole cell’s replication. It merely responds automatically to electrical and chemical signals received from the cell. It does not replicate by itself. It does not have a self. I don’t think you appreciate what a colossal, and I might add, absurd, assumption it is to assume that in a universe that Dawkins and I assume you, postulate had no consciousness, no purpose and no intelligence, where all that existed were atoms and molecules randomly colliding with each other; where every event was completely a reaction to a previous event, predictable by determined laws of physics and chemistry, that suddenly a molecule will begin to replicate BY ITSELF! And not only will it replicate its material, but it will replicate in its progeny the same determination to replicate that continues to this day. Sandy, we don’t metabolize by ourselves. We don’t grow by ourselves. Genes don’t replicate by themselves. It is all done for us. How in the world can you assume that the first initiated action in the entire universe is that a molecule replicates itself? Does a molecule have a self? Of course not. Replication is an act that is done by overcoming the four forces of physics. It is an act that uses energy. If the energy to accomplish replication cannot be explained by gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong force or the weak force, it can only be explained by will. Some life forms may have sex, but no life form replicates. They are replicated. Just like we may bring food into our mouths but from there on it is our good fortune to be blessed with the equipment that digests it; so all life forms are blessed by the equipment that allows us to replicate.

And where could that long, long evolution that Dawkins’ details where organic material in tidepools, or wherever, just happened to accumulate into a replicator; and where replicators just happened to accumulate into a cell; where and when could that have taken place? The oldest life forms that we know of are hypothermophilic bacteria, that lived alongside deep sea thermal vents perhaps four billion years ago. These bacteria can exist in temperatures well above the boiling point of water because of the extra bonding of their protein molecules. How do you suggest such a bacteria could ‘accumulate’ in an environment where each of its individual molecular parts would break down faster than you could boil an egg?

Please think about it Sandy. I know Dawkins is very eloquent, but he really makes no sense.


SandyMcKean said...
I will respond to your last post with 3 separate posts limiting each post to just one subject.

For my post #1, you say:

"I asked you for evidence of six different neo-Darwinist claims and no evidence is forthcoming from your end.......Please read my post EVOLUTION" I don't see 6 claims in your comments posts here. Perhaps you mean in the "Evolution" blog post you mention, but I can't find a blog post entitled "Evolution" (it appears your index menu on the left of your home page is out of date). In your comments here I can glean 4 claims ("pre-biotic evolution", "mutations increasing the complexity", "accidental mutations changing the basic body plan", and "any replicator.....tell me when this evolution from replicator to single celled creature took place"). I could address each of these issues, but I'd essentially have to write much of what the books Dawkins and many other biologists have already written. Clearly that would not be productive. My comments here are not meant to argue the ENTIRE case for evolution, I am just responding with my comments to words that YOU say HERE on this blog and in these comments.

However, in brief, to at least respond in a minimal fashion to these 4 issues you raise, I will say that whatever molecule first catalyzed its own reproduction WITHOUT the need of any supporting systems, would not be considered a biological molecule. It would likely be an organic molecule (just as methane gas is), and be very simple. BTW, a molecule has no "intent" to replicate as you seem to imply in some of your writings, the replication would just be a mindless chemical reaction as so many are even today -- especially when a catalyst is involved (such as the nitration of benzene in the presence of concentrated sulphuric acid). Once a replicator exists (again Dawkins and no other reputable scientist claims to know what the first replicator was or how it worked -- altho it is a safe assumption that the molecule and the replication process was very simple), the rest of your issues are all explained by the process of that some random mutations in the replicator molecule are helpful and vastly increase the numbers of that of the replicator that has the mutation over competing replicators that do not have the mutation (note other mutations can be unhelpful and decrease the numbers of that version of the replicator. This selective advantage proceeds via the process of natural selection over incredibly long periods of time (billions of years).

Matt, I suggest that you don't give enough credit to the process of natural selection in your deliberations. So many folks who argue against evolution focus too heavily on the random process of mutations, and not nearly enough on how natural selection (Darwin's contribution) slowly but surely allows one mutation's benefits to build on the last mutation's benefits in a non-random fashion. (I used this analogy before, but in case you missed it, the process of natural selection is similar to how every wave crashing on a beach randomly moves the pebbles around, but with enough time smaller pebbles get sorted higher up on the beach via a selection process -- and the forces produced by gravity and water pressure, a purely random process would never "accidentally" sort all the pebbles in this fashion).


SandyMcKean said...
For my post #3, you say:

"I said that Dawkins claims to tell us how life began. Then you say, 'How that first replicator formed may never be known.' Excuse me! What replicator? Do you see the materialist leap and assumption you make?"

As I've said over and over again, NO ONE knows what this first replicator was, nor the many other more complex replicators were that followed the first one over 100s of millions of years. All we know is what the replicators look like today (primarily DNA and RNA) after a long, long process of evolution over billions of years. This is not so unusual. Surely man's use of the wheel has sophisticated uses today even tho we have no examples of the 1st wheel nor do we know what it was used for.

"What is a replicator anyway? Has anyone ever seen one? And please don’t say DNA. DNA replicates, but only in conjunction with a whole cell’s replication."

Look back at my one of my previous comments, I already stated that DNA and the systems that support its replication could never have sprung up fully made. They evolved. What we see today is the final product of the evolution that started with the first replicators. The first replicator molecule and all the in-between ones form that first one to today's DNA are lost to science -- they are "extinct" if you like. There are no examples of sabre toothed tigers even tho their descendents still exist today. You'd have to do a multi-billion year experiment including the formation of a brand new planet to create all of that in order to "see" one of these long extinct forms. Just because no older forms exist today doesn't mean they never existed.....in the same way we have no examples of the 1st wheel today either, but we know there must have been one.


"....that suddenly a molecule will begin to replicate BY ITSELF! And not only will it replicate its material, but it will replicate in its progeny the same determination to replicate that continues to this day."
There is no determination. DNA just replicates with no more intent than water boils. The first replicators did no more and no less than DNA does today, they just replicated without the need for intent, just as iron doesn't need intent to rust.

"And where could that long, long evolution that Dawkins’ details where organic material in tidepools, or wherever, just happened to accumulate into a replicator; and where replicators just happened to accumulate into a cell; where and when could that have taken place?"

It all happened right here on earth over a very long period of time.....but you know that. It's possible, I suppose, that the initial primitive replicators came from space in some way.....just as all today's water molecules where deposited on earth by comets. The early earth has no, or very little, water.

Matt, I repeat, I don't think you are giving enough weight to the power of natural selection and how much can occur when you are talking BILLIONS of years. I know it all seems hard to imagine the world around us evolving without some "guidance" or other "life force", but that's just because we humans can't come close to imagining a million years much less a billion years. Don't you have the same sense of awe when you look at the Grand Canyon (a totally lifeless thing). We stand there in disbelief, but know at the same time that such a thing as the Grand Canyon is possible given enough time.



Matt Chait said...
Sandy,

I’m afraid this is getting tiresome. You are so inculcated in your beliefs that you cannot hear one thing I say.

“As I've said over and over again, NO ONE knows what this first replicator was, nor the many other more complex replicators were that followed the first one over 100s of millions of years. All we know is what the replicators look like today (primarily DNA and RNA) after a long, long process of evolution over billions of years.”

You don’t see that you are assuming that there were replicators; that replicators are at the center of your whole creation theory. You want to tell me that everyone agrees that they don’t know what kind of replicator it was, but they all agree that it was some kind of replicator. Why? What proof is there of that? As I have repeated to you, DNA and RNA cannot replicate outside of a cell; do not replicate except from signals received from a cell, and would not last for a minute without the protection of a cell. No one has seen an independently replicating molecule. No one has seen an organic molecule that could survive for these supposed billions of years through asteroid bombardments, volcanoes, boiling oceans, etc. which were all part of the hell hole that was early earth (If you want to get a sense of the delicacy of unprotected organic material, think raw eggs outside of their shells). Creating an imaginary replicator is a desperate attempt to avoid the obvious fact that life began with intelligence; with transcendent intelligence.

“ I repeat, I don't think you are giving enough weight to the power of natural selection and how much can occur when you are talking BILLIONS of years”

Again, this is the same drivel you repeat over and over. Natural selection does just that. It SELECTS. It does not create. It selects from choices that are already there. The only other path of change that you offer is accidental mutation, and you cannot create any new structure by swapping out an amino acid. A new creation requires a new plan, a new form, a new way of organizing and shaping and energizing proteins, not just a new amino acid. And again you repeat this nonsense of BILLIONS of years. I told you; this is a fact; the remains of ABUNDANT bacterial communities have been found that are close to four billion years old; right up to the time when the surface of the planet cooled to the point that all the water wasn’t boiling off. There are absolutely NO traces, NO evidence of tide pools of organic materials, of any organic material deposits, what so ever. DNA based bacteria, of the same structure as modern bacteria were here in abundance almost four billion years ago. I don’t care how many times Dawkins says otherwise; I don’t care how mellifluous his voice is, how crisp his diction, how erudite his vocabulary. There is no such thing as a replicator and there was no such thing as an evolution of replicators.

“There is no determination. DNA just replicates with no more intent than water boils. The first replicators did no more and no less than DNA does today, they just replicated without the need for intent, just as iron doesn't need intent to rust.”

Again, you don’t get it. Replication is not like boiling water which is explainable in terms of basic laws of physics and chemistry. Replication requires the use of extra energy, of borrowed energy, to overcome the laws of physics and chemistry. That overcoming and focus of energy requires intent.

"Don't you have the same sense of awe when you look at the Grand Canyon (a totally lifeless thing). We stand there in disbelief, but know at the same time that such a thing as the Grand Canyon is possible given enough time."


Over millions of years the Grand Canyon changed from a fairly shallow canyon into a canyon one mile deep. It didn’t change from a shallow canyon into a hippopotamus.

Matt



Matt Chait said...

You wrote:

“BTW, a molecule has no "intent" to replicate as you seem to imply in some of your writings, the replication would just be a mindless chemical reaction as so many are even today.”

Again you misunderstand me. The high and low frequencies in computer code have no intent to send a message; the letters of the alphabet have no intent to write a novel; and the gasoline in my car does not care if I get to my destination or not. These pieces of matter are organized by a being, me, that uses them to send a message, write a novel and get to my destination. The entire material universe including the imaginary universe of Santa Claus, tooth fairies and replicators, are created by beings for the purpose of providing an experience for beings. Matter and energy are the medium through which intentions are expressed, but they are never the origin nor the ultimate purpose of intentions.

“the process of natural selection is similar to how every wave crashing on a beach randomly moves the pebbles around, but with enough time smaller pebbles get sorted higher up on the beach via a selection process -- and the forces produced by gravity and water pressure, a purely random process would never "accidentally" sort all the pebbles in this fashion).”

If you were on a strange planet and stumbled across this beach, you could probably figure out, if you knew enough physics, why the pebbles were arranged as they were. But if you stumbled upon not stone pebbles, but a stone axe on that same beach, you would probably have a biological accident in your space suit. The level of organization of that axe would undoubtedly tell you that some intelligent being had been there who constructed that axe. So why, if you stumble across a sand crab here on earth, whose construction and organization is infinitely more complex than an axe’s, would you not suspect that it had to be the result of an intelligence also? In fact, a gargantuan, transcendent intelligence.

Peace!

FREEDOM

I could be bound in a nutshell and consider myself a king of infinite space.
William Shakespeare


Today, in America, we celebrate our birthday as a country. It is called Independence Day, the day we declared our independence from Great Britain. We are encouraged, at this time, to consider and have gratitude for our freedom. And these two notions, independence and freedom, have become connected. Once we were no longer dependent on a foreign power we were then free to pursue our own chosen destiny rather than being forced to follow the whims or dictates of others who controlled us. And this theme of freedom and independence for our nation is extended in our Constitution and Bill of Rights to the freedom and independence of individual citizens in relation to our own government. Each of us, even the most defenseless, including the youngest, oldest, most impoverished and infirmed, and even those accused of crimes, are entitled to be treated with dignity and have their inalienable rights upheld.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the continuing brave history of how those rights have been defended and expanded, is an enormous achievement and should be a source of pride and gratitude especially on this day. Elsewhere in this blog I have written about the ephemeral nature of our experience and the entire material universe. If life is merely a dream then why should it matter if we or any particular group of individuals has or doesn't have any rights or privileges? If our physical bodies are merely garments that we cast off when we are ready to move on to a different experience, then how important is our quality of life in the experience that we find ourselves in at the moment?

Let me ask you this: have you ever heard the expression "the terrible twos?" If you are a parent you probably have. It refers to the trying time that parents have when their children are two years old. The twos are terrible if you are the adult responsible for the safety and survival of the two year old. To an outside observer the twos aren't terrible at all; they are terrific. A two year old has just learned to walk, to move about and explore; and there stands the surrounding world in all its fresh glory, with every object and every person holding the promise of adventure. Everything must be touched; everything must be tasted; every thing must be smelled; every thing must be climbed on and crawled under and looked at from every possible angle. Even the movement of this fresh new equipment, this body, is a thrill to explore: it spins, and twists and stretches. And each one of these discoveries of movement is accompanied by another gush of joy. Why is there, in every child, this overwhelming urge to explore and taste and touch and hear and look at? Is there any biological "survival" reason for this irrepressible curiosity and joy? Does it make any sense to trot out the old Darwinian saw that the ones that weren't curious didn't learn enough about their environment and didn't survive, so we are the survivors with the 'curious genes'? That may sound familiar from biology classes that you struggled to stay awake in, but it doesn't really make any sense. What in the world are curious genes? And where are the remnants of those incurious ancestors that never explored their world? Their bones are undoubtedly hidden somewhere alongside those ancestors who couldn't digest, metabolize, eliminate, sense their environment or replicate. Too bad for the dinosaurs who managed to survive here for 180 million years without really being able to digest their food, breathe the air, move around or metabolize anything well enough to have any strength. And lets also shed a tear for those poor single celled microbes whose bodies were so 'crude and simple' that they were able to be here for two billion years before any of us larger creatures even arrived and able to adapt and thrive in every nook and cranny of this planet. Isn't it time we woke up from this Darwinian nightmare? We are here because we want to be here. This world was created for us and our biological equipment was created for us so that we can see and smell and taste and touch and explore and enjoy this created world. Two year olds are irrepressibly excited because this is what they have been waiting for. They are in the world they want to be in with the equipment that they want to have that allows them to explore it in endlessly thrilling ways.

Parents struggle to keep their two year old's curious impulses within the bounds of safety. They cannot allow their kids to walk into the fireplace or past the edge of the roof. And trying to keep one's equanimity and good spirits after a year of having to be vigilant at every waking moment can be a strain. Yet the good parent, while always keeping their child from endangering themselves never tries to unnecessarily suppress this adventurous spirit. Does the child arrive here with a particular agenda, with something or some activity that he or she already loves and which is his or her destiny to fulfill? Or does this child discover what he or she loves in this wondrous free interplay with their environment? Either way, every child should be entitled to have this wide range of unfettered exploration and every adult should have the opportunity to pursue the path that they have either chosen or are destined to fulfill. When we become adults our government should become that good parent who both allows us to enjoy the world and contribute to society in whatever way we believe will bring us happiness and at the same time protect us from harm and prevent us from doing harm to others.

Problems arise when tyrannical governments impose on people a way of life and commitments that they did not choose, and when these governments are organized for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Religious groups, economic groups, military groups, even families, also can have tyrannical leaders who feel entitled to demand of their members that they serve the interests of their leaders at the expense of serving their member's own dreams. And, unfortunately, tyrannical power is usually not easily given up. Sometimes it can yield to economic pressure, to negotiation and non-violent protest. Sometimes the consciousness of tyrannical leaders may be raised. But sometimes, when all other avenues are exhausted, it falls to the bravest among us to protect hard won freedoms or to win back freedoms that were lost.

Eternal life may be beyond space and time, but it is never beyond justice. We may be eternal but we are always living in the present moment; and in that moment cruelty and oppression cannot be tolerated. You say that poor abuser, or that poor tyrant is just on a learning cycle; that he too is evolving and on his way to a deeper spiritual understanding and eventually achieving oneness. Fine! Then let you be the instrument of his enlightenment. Let you speed along his process of education by showing him, or forcing him, to see the error of his ways. We are all here because we want to be here. We have all been waiting for this moment. Freedom is the birthright of all people and tyranny can never be tolerable. Life is a dream, but it is a shared dream, and we have the responsibility for making sure that each person has at least the opportunity of making it a beautiful dream.

What about those who committ heinous crimes? Do we have the right to seek justice and take that person's life in retaliation? No. I do not think we have the right to administer capital punishment. But here is what I think we should do. When someone is convicted of a truly heinous crime, and that person, no matter what they are accused of, is entitled to the full protections of due process, trial by jury, etc.; but when they are convicted, they should not lose their life, but they should lose their relationship to people. In executing them along with all the publicity surrounding their execution, we inadvertently make them role models for twisted and publicity starved imitators. If someone is convicted of such a crime, that is the last that anyone should hear of them. The grieving relatives and loved ones of their victims need never learn about their tormentor's jail house romances, conjugal visits, drug habits, book deals, recording contracts, lines of clothing and biopics or see them on television interviews. They should be confined to a cell which has within it a window through which they can see the sky and an inspirational book of their choice; one book at a time. They should receive three very basic meals a day served through a slot and not directly by a person. Also in this room is a bottle of pills. If, at anytime, they decide to end this life of total isolation and reflection that is always their choice. But that death need not be noted in any way to the public. As far as the public is concerned, that person died the moment he was convicted. This way we not only protect our society from that person but also from their inadvertent glorification by some who might seek, by imitating their deeds, to garner similar publicity for themselves. And we punish them with something they may fear worse than death, total anonymity; and we do it without blood on our hands.

Is this cruel and unusual punishment? Certainly no crueler than death. And history tells us that there were many spiritual seekers who voluntarily put themselves in such conditions and achieved saint hood or a blissful reconciliation with the universe. Whether they become saints or take their lives in abject misery is no longer our concern. By their deeds they have removed themselves from the whole world of human caring, except, in so much, as we have provided an avenue for their spiritual development if they so choose.

All of that being said, in terms of our individual lives, when we enjoy freedom, expecially when we enjoy what we call 'too much freedom' we become anxious,even eager to give it away. We intentionally and willingly give away our hard fought freedom whenever we make a commitment to anyone or anything. In a sense freedom exists in inverse proportion to commitment. When we committ to a career or a school or another person, or even, on a more trivial level, when we committ to going to one movie, or one restaurant, or one main dish or one color dress or one type of car we immediately rule out our other options, and therefore our freedom. With too much freedom we feel adrift and we are encouraged and we encourage ourselves to make a commitment, because without commitment, what we gain in freedom we lose in depth. To develop a deep relationship to anything we must make a commitment and rule out, at least for a time, the possibility of other options. If we don't, we may have a lot of freedom but it feels more like we are window shopping our way through life without fully and deeply participating. A society or a political system is free to the extent that it can offer the possibility of many options to its citizens. The goal is not to have a citizenry with permanent unlimited freedom, but a citizenry that has the possibility of making the choices and commitments that each individual feels is best suited to themselves.

With more commitment comes the possibility of making a greater and greater contribution to our society and others, but along with that comes, on an external level, a diminution of freedom. More and more of our time is scheduled; responsibilities increase, and we begin to feel enslaved by the very committments that we once enthusiastically adopted. And once we have made a commitment, then we become invested in how these endeavors turn out. If we have a family we are committed to the health and success of our spouses and children. If we are invested in a business, we are committed to the prosperity of that business. When we are committed, no matter how diligently and responsibly we carry out those commitments, we are invested in outcomes that to a great degree are beyond our control. At any given moment our endeavors and the endeavors of our loved ones may succeed or fail, and if we are committed to that process our emotions, the quality of our experience, will rise or fall with each of these successes and failures. Where is the freedom in that?

So even if we live in a political system and an economic system that offers us enormous freedoms in terms of our range of options; once we committ to any of those options, we willing enslave ourselves, our time, our energy, our focus and our emotions to the success or failure of these endeavors. What is the way out of this dilemma? Should we make no commitments and window shop our way through life? Or should we make deep commitments and invest all our time, energy and focus in endeavors whose failure or success is ultimately out of our control? The answer is that beyond our freedom to choose and pursue our path, there is another freedom, an internal freedom that has nothing to do with how much 'free' time or 'free' cash we have to spend, or in the particular path that we have chosen or find ourselves on, or in the number of successes or failures that we happen to experience (we all have experienced many of both) but in the context in which we hold that experience; not what we experience, but the way that we experience our experience.

The ability to step back from our experience and look at it is something we all have and we all continue to develop. Judges releasing first time offenders tell them to watch themselves. Parents, when their children are off to a party where there may be a lot of temptations to do things potentially damaging, tell their children the same thing, "watch yourself." Therapists instruct their clients to 'notice' when they are about to go off on an emotional tangent that does neither themselves nor their associates any good. In fact the whole idea of rehabilitation, and the whole idea of therapy and even the idea of parenting would be meaningless without this ability that we all have of stepping back and watching ourselves.

What is this self that is watching itself? Evidently it is a higher self. Our judges, therapists and parents would be very foolish indeed if they encouraged us to watch ourselves if the self that was watching was lower, or even worse than the self that was caught up in doing whatever it is that we were doing or were tempted to do. In fact, if you think about it, it is not any instruction that we follow once we have stepped back from ourselves, but simply the act of stepping back that instantly shows us the wise or more elevated course. This self, this higher self, this observer, is the essential you; not the you that is so caught up in the pursuit of your desires that you forget yourself. This is the self that you are supposed to remember. This is the self that once remembered automatically sees the better path. And this self as distinguished from your engaged or relative self I will call the Self.

The purpose of prayer, of meditation, of chanting, or any spiritual practice, as opposed to other forms of guidance, is not to watch yourself. The purpose of all these practices is to slow down the mind, and in particular, to slow down the desires that drive our thought processes. We are encouraged not to watch ourselves but to experience the Self that I have been talking about. Yes, if you are looking at your behavior, this Self will steer you on a nobler path. But what does it feel like to experience this Self by it Self; to dwell in the Self? Does that sound very selfish, very self-involved? To dwell in the relative self and its network of desires and ambitions may be selfish, but to dwell on the Self is not selfish at all, because the Self has no ambitions. The Self just is; the Self is not concerned about the past or the future; is not concerned about time and space. From the Self's perspective it is always 'here' and it is always 'now.' There is also no sense of separation in the Self and no distinctions. While you are in it, everybody seems to be a part of it, and everybody, both friends and enemies are loved, because they are part of the same Self, and share the same desires and participate in the same games and competitions that you do. From this perspective our antagonists are really our partners. (The catalyst for this entire blog was my reaction to the writings of my nemesis, Richard Dawkins. Thank you, Richard.) We couldn't play any games without opponents. In the Self everyone is loved but in particular the entire fabric of spirit and love and intelligence that is felt when one is really in the Self is loved and the boundary where your interest ends and another person's interest begins, dissappears. We are all one. The boundaries that separate us dissolve and we feel a part of this One Being, this One Cosmic Consiousness, One God that is the essence of us all. In the Self we are no longer bounded by the choices we have made, the period of history we are living in or the body that we occupy. This experience of boundlessness, regardless of whatever our "real" economic or social or physical limitations are, is true freedom, true liberation.

Real freedom is achieved not by avoiding commitments but by being able to, at will, put our commitments and ambitions on hold and return to our true Self. Then, when we go back to our real world endeavors we return with a sense of renewal. We bring more love and enthusiasm to the table. We remember why we chose this job, this endeavor, this person, in the first place. Soon, though, old habits start to reappear and we have to start the process of reminding ourselves, of watching ourselves. But, let me suggest, at this juncture, to get back to real freedom, take a minute or an hour or a day to withdraw into some kind of spiritual practice. It doesn't have to be connected to any organized religion, or it most certainly could. But just time to separate from all your involvements, find your true Self which is beyond space and time, beyond boundaries, beyond success and failure, and which loves all people and all outcomes equally. Then start again. This is why all the major religions encourage us to have a weekly sabbath where we can do precisely that; to the extent that we have lost control and gotten out of sorts by Friday, we can regain our equanimity and our genuine enthusiasm by Monday. Try it. It really helps the world work and helps your experience of it.

I had originally wanted to have this post published on the fourth of July. But I got carried away by a lot of things that had been banging around in my mind and I just wanted to work them into the paper. Also, my apologies to Rudy Davis who is a great fan of this blog and who asked that I write a post answering some questions that he posed more than a month ago. I hope this is acceptable Rudy.

And I thank you for your indulgence. Please let me know what you think. Thanks.