Response to Proff. Nara

[grames]

Dear Sir,

Thanks for a very nice response and it is a delight and privilege to show off my ignorance by responding to your response one more time. The very reason why i asked for an interaction with you is, you stand unique unlike a lot of others here who already have certain faith fixed and have no room for any discussion in terms of learning but only in terms of expanding their already made up faith.

So let me jump on something serious :).

The very first response shows the differences that we have with respect to what is "rational" :). Let me propose an understanding for this and if it is convincing to you, i think we have a deal to produce more substance for the discussion.

Rational - in the simplest form means "ability" to discriminate and figure out the reason for understanding by utilizing the ability to think.

I am sure dictionaries have various other meaning but i take this as prime meaning for being 'rational'. If you have same opinion and agreement i think we are on the same page which makes me little rational to consider you as rational as you are given that position of Prof:. because of someone's conviction that (with their rationality) you can do the best of it. So, i will stick to my earlier opinion that you are "rational" cos i have a reason to justify and have good faith on those who gave you this title and the job.

Next i want to discuss a little about the ways of being rational or what we call justice system that is in built with in us. This development of justice system is happening and happened by an influencing process which is technically called "Domestication". We can be rational only with in our limits of how much we are "Domesticated" by what and your later part of references to the material science evidence of life etc. reflects one aspect of this domestication. Hope you can recognize this and agree if convincing by an acknowledgment. With these premises along with great openness and intelligent thoughts i believe we can have rational discussion with very good substance.

You said:
I deny "personal" god because there is no evidence for it.

I am curious to ask whether you are open enough to ask for evidence(s) or is it a conclusion where you finished all your search? In fact, there are so many evidences and with out even going to Veda etc. for now, it is possible to sense a "personality" behind everything and i will step in to those after your clarify whether you think the evidences are really nowhere or you do not have yet. Also, your very next statement of "personal" God being not logical is very much deniable. In fact, personal God is very much logical and it is impossible to establish "personal' God with out Logic which makes personal God even more rational and very much scientific. At least people who line up under the "Theism" believe that anything not rational are mere sentiments with no value. We can elaborate on this more if your curiosity is triggered already.

You predicated the vision of science as survival and continuation of that survival by replication. It is both the advantage and disadvantage of material science and utilizing science to our advantage and find ways to go beyond the limits will be the path of intellectuals in my humble opinion. We witness so many things in our day to day life, we lament about so many issues to be fixed but not none of them are fixed perfectly yet and take them as positive area to be explored and end up inventing solutions which are mostly imperfect but give some sort of temporary success. Do you see the above pattern as true or something over generalized? If you sense this factual perception behind all the material science as temporary success and not perfection, then you will thrive to go to a domain where there are no temporary or imperfect solution but a perfect, permanent solution. What is it? Let us discuss after we start to resonate in terms of basics of good discussion.

You said:
What I mean to say is, all humans are equal in essence

Very true. What is that essence? That is the very basic question where no "ism" seems to establish a perfect answer yet. If we consider 2000 as a number against the known human history ignoring all carbon dating, bio genetic history etc. we still do not get to see any perfect social setup or way of living individual life and social life in a perfect manner where the survival is easy and all joyful and the continuation of that survival is not a challenge or threat. So many wars, so many biased laws and discrimination based on various factors like color of the skin, economy, directions etc. Are we going to believe the human is not intelligent enough yet to device a way to live to accomplish all these basic desire of the every individual? You share me your opinion. Do you have any solution that you can think of for treating all as equals and if you have please propose for the benefit of my curiosity. :)

I think the rest of the real castle can be built nicely once we start to share our so far knowledge and true experiences which are real to us.

[Nara]

Dear grames, Greetings!



Rational - in the simplest form means "ability" to discriminate and figure out the reason for understanding by utilizing the ability to think.

I agree, this is a good description of rationality.

But, I am not clear with the way you have connected rationality to what you call "Domestication". I need a more precise definition of the term "domestication". If this means the ability of humans to coexist in a large group, and that is a necessary condition for rationality, then I am not sure I can agree. But, I don't know whether that is what you mean.

Rationality is as much a process, than a condition, perhaps even more so. The process of using observable data and logic to make sense of the environment and design and implement actions that provide satisfactory results.



You said:
I deny "personal" god because there is no evidence for it.
[....]
If you sense this factual perception behind all the material science as temporary success and not perfection, then you will thrive to go to a domain where there are no temporary or imperfect solution but a perfect, permanent solution.
I don't agree that the successes of science are temporary. It may even be perfect in the areas where the knowledge is settled.

However, in a grand sense, whether or not a perfect, permanent solution exists, we can only speculate. If it exists, mere speculation is not going to take us there. Even if it did, we wouldn't even know when we get there. So, IMHO, seeking a perfect, permanent solution is fools errand. Making the best of the present condition is all there is for us, no more, no less.


Are we going to believe the human is not intelligent enough yet to device a way to live to accomplish all these basic desire of the every individual? Dear grames, you are expecting too much from human intelligence. Humans are nothing but gene-survival vehicles. The primary function for which our intellect has evolved is to maximize the probability of survival and reproduction, so that our genes get passed on to the next generation.

I recommend the book with the unfortunate title "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. I say unfortunate title because the book is actually about why there is altruism and its limits.

Cheers!

[grames]

Dear Sir,

After reading your response, i think we have tons more to share first and learn about lot of things "rationally" before we can produce any further discussion on the subject matter of God. It will be really too childish or even i can call foolish to step in to the subject matter of God or Super natural power etc. with out having good understanding of very basics of rationality and science. As you said, we will learn from each other so i will begin my little experience first and you can point out if they are acceptable or totally wrong and the very basic minimum expectation i will have here is, Openness to accept the factual truths that comes out of our discussion.

I owe the responsibility of explaining what "Domestication" means. A quick definition of Domestication means process of learning and expanding that learning as justice system with in us and utilize that justice system as means to reason out various experiences, situations etc. to make judgments or act on those issues.

A simplest comparison will be your computer PC. Your computer learns only what you installed as instruction in it with various machine instruction, abstraction etc. to respond to what is expected out of it when you send some request. It cannot do anything beyond the set of instruction it has equipped with and its reasoning power etc. limits itself to what it already has. This is one dimension of domestication. (Most human are like this...)

Second dimension of domestication is related to living being. Take a dog for example. This little animal learns how to respond to your instructions as you teach and it learns as it gets domesticated. Only if it takes your instruction properly and respond to with the expected way, you consider it as Domestic. (Domestic animals in fact means animals that can be domesticated).

Third dimension of this domestication is related to human like us. We do learn from our childhood and develope the reasoning power, response system and finally the justice system with in us. Science classify the power and means to be domesticated is due to the presence of number of senses and we are agreed to posses six senses. Now, this opens up more interesting idea of what domestication process is for a human. (I am leaving out the first two dimension in simple explanation as they are not of much interest for now)

A baby starts learning from being with in the womb and the modern science roughly figures out this period to be from the trimester (or 37th week). The baby learns by hearing the mother's voice and recognize the voice and also knows how to respond by kicking, rolling etc. Lets just leave out the question what makes the baby do all this but focus on what this 'response' style of the baby means. This is the very beginning of the process of "domestication" where the child expresses it presence, acknowledges the mother's voice by means of what the mother also acknowledges as baby's communication to her voice. Sound becomes the first stimulant in the baby's cognitive system and the brain or CNS gets developed to prepare response to that sound stimulus. ( This whole thing is not as simple as i am attempting here). If we study the science of development of fetus, we come to know the fact that the fetus develops what is essentially its body as primary growth and senses and associated response system as secondary growth.

Then after birth, every other senses comes in to play for getting domesticated more by means of learning and responding. New things like sources of information, personalities of information, trust and capability to understand etc. opens up to the world of child. The child once learns the rudimentary language, it develops the appetite to learn more by means of questioning and observing and simultaneously help the development of the justice system of classification and differentiation. Now, the child knows whom to trust, what to trust, what is true and what is favorable etc. and also develops the opposite of it in due course viz. what is not true, what is not favorable and which constitutes the discrimination potent. This process only get expanded as the evolution of that child's sense system expands and in that process the 'filters" out of discrimination and faith comes in to picture. These filters are the barriers or the ones which impose the limits on the intellect or rationality of that individual.

Child start to say, My mother is right, My father is right then my Teacher is right and also expands it to my friends are right. This justification becomes part of the life and in due course, the child start to build confidence and being to believe, I am Right, Mine is good, My idea is best etc. The psychology gets developed and also recorded deeply in the mind. The whole process continues forever endlessly alongside with the filters that the justice system projects. This is exactly where we as individual face so much trouble in dealing with the justice system of our own self and others when we try to talk about subjects. If someone's justice system does not fall in to our jurisdiction, they become fools, unintellectual or our enemies.

I am sure my overall explanation of domestication is still not complete or perfect as it has much more things to understand but i assume the above explanation gives an idea of what it is.

Now, you are claiming yourself as Agnostic but scientifically it is one of the reflection or response of your inbuilt domesticated justice system. If the filters covered your learning system fully with out any room for admitting more sources of information, then it is highly impossible to have a "learning" experience after all we will be just demonstrating the strength of our domestication only. Believing you have still room for learning with openness i would like to engage in this discussion and if you find it is too much we can stop at any time. My objective is not to convince you of you being agnostic or classify you as an atheist but to provide the rational means by which we can see the scope for recognizing the super natural power and the reality of such super natural power as long as you are interested to subject yourself in this kind of rational experiment. Anything more or less will be out of my interest and limits.

Rationality is nothing but arriving at a reason for the understanding of issue, available fact and keeping the intuitiveness to ask for more until there is nothing more to ask. So, domestication is the process which gives the tools and strength for your rational power which is not a constant or static. In other terms, its all about how advanced your intelligent system is and how much your justice system allows itself in the context of learning and self growth. Personality is in fact a milestone description of this development. Rationality itself is not a process but to be rational there is a process which will improve, enhance or grow this rationality and which is nothing but the domestication process and interestingly de-domestication too.

So let me stop with this big explanation and jump on to your message.

You Said:
The process of using observable data and logic to make sense of the environment and design and implement actions that provide satisfactory results.

Exactly but with out ignoring the limits of what is "observable" and what can be "observed" and what we have "observed" so far. Sometimes, this observation alone will not produce any data but just experience. So, experience should also be included as basis of rationality. If i say, touching fire will burn you, you can take that in two ways as either go and touch a real fire and experience it or utilize your trust on me or the source which says it so and take it as truth. (We do this often and even the greatest scientist do not perform all the experiments from scratch as they trust in outcome of other scientists experiments). So, establishing trust on sources of such knowledge also outcome of your rationality and justice system. Do i believe in Newton's theory? Yes i do. Why so? Did i do all the experiments to trust nuclear physics? No i don't but does that mean i don't believe in that science? Not really. So if we analyze all these things we can recognize our own internal justice system and and realize that, it can be expanded by understanding the "filters".

You Said:
I don't agree that the successes of science are temporary. It may even be perfect in the areas where the knowledge is settled.

This is one of the most important point which may either make you a real fool (no offense intended) or real curious learner. Temporary is very significant word here and if you consider the material science has settled knowledge about anything to its completeness, i would be very much interested to know in what area such great feat happened? Just give me only one example and lets see whether it is really settled or not.

Success of material science is always temporary and take any material science department and its achievements. None of them are yet settled be it nuclear science, string theory, medicine, surgery, astronomy or astro physics. Name any and they are not settled and all their success so far is all limited and temporary in nature. If you have to overplay this success as permanent, then i have to take your belief as an emotional "trust" due to your justice system rather than something that can be supported by your own idea of observable data and facts. (Also i am using the word material science as i consider science is generic term which can be utilized for spiritual science also. I hope you keep this distinction in our conversation).

You said:
However, in a grand sense, whether or not a perfect, permanent solution exists, we can only speculate.

Speculation is idea of material scientist and not at all in the realm of true rationalist. You go on and speculate Moon is round, moon is white and a smooth ice cream like a ball. You can show it to your baby as some heavenly toy to play with etc. None of them have any "rational" data supporting such things and they are what you called "speculation". Same material science, though imperfect gives away a lot of clues about such permanent solution and it is only our responsibility to sharpen our senses and de-domesticate ourselves to see those as availability (rather than possibility). The observation of materials reveals a lot of secrets about their existence, forces behind their existence, their stability and a lot more attributes. Also, their transformation in terms of some of the attributes like mass, energy and also the relationship between the attribute like mass and energy. If we observe all the available data, we can realize that there is one strongest force behind all our existence which is "time" and it imparts its effect on almost everything. Then comes to quantum theory, theory of relativity etc which helps us to understand that our cognition is also subjected to relativity. What is true today is not true tomorrow. With all these school or college experience, only very few rationalists will then raise the super smart questions like....

1. Is there a way to realize things with out being subjected to relativity.?
2. If my senses and my being is subjected to Time, is there anything beyond this which is not subjected to time?
3. Can we create a situation like that where we are not subjected to the force of time, relativity etc. Or does the body antibody science gives glimpse of probable requirement of another nature which will not be subjected to time and relativity. Or in other words eternal and absolute.

[...... ]

These kind of questions can be build like a tower and only a rationalist can raise such questions to himself. So, if agnostic means not being rational i do not think i will have anything more to talk about the science of super natural things. In fact, it is a declaration by such super natural power that trying to explain about such super natural science to a fool, irrational, nonsense is not possible. ( Please i again beg ur pardon and no offense intended). It will be like trying to explain nuclear physics to a LKG student and however much you know about nuclear science, your effort of imparting that knowledge to a LKG kid is only useless and unproductive.

You said:
you are expecting too much from human intelligence. Humans are nothing but gene-survival vehicles. The primary function for which our intellect has evolved is to maximize the probability of survival and reproduction, so that our genes get passed on to the next generation.

I believe, it is outcome of your so far rationality but i hope you are keeping your door open to think beyond these temporary milestones of your learning. In fact, my original point is simply accepting the fact that human by his intelligence alone can never device such perfect system where he can live in peace and harmony with the rest of the human. It will never happen and it never happened either. Treating everyone equal will be only a lip service and the cheating will continue as long as we fail to acknowledge that we cannot treat everyone equal with this myriad of differences. My disagreement to your above statement is the last part where you still believe that, human life is like a machine where you come in to being, eat, pass stool, sleep and roam, reproduce and die. This is very much unintelligent way of living a life as you waste the sixth sense, the power to think and rationalize and go beyond the four fold facts of life. Even animals do the same thing though they do not have the rational power and how are we going to utilize this rational power that is part of us (given to us may force you to think super power). I can say, it is just that those who never realize they can think, went on and said human cannot think but only eat, sleep, mate and die fulfilling only the needs of stomach, psychic , genitals and get finished. In fact, they are kind of people we brand as "Fools" and not those who trigger their sixth sense and attempt to find answers for the unknowns that they want to know (and such quest is in fact not in the paradise of fools but only in the kingdom of intellectuals and rationalists).

You Said:
I recommend the book with the unfortunate title "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

I will read it but i have gone through one of Mr Dawkins article where he attempted to deny the "intelligence" behind creation. He is an atheist and if you have to propagate your faith as "agnostic" through some atheistic idea, i will say you are going to trouble yourself first and then myself and others here. :). Also, i have a lot of exposure to Darwin's counterpart George William who in fact gives the foundation for Mr Dawkins and co. This theory of natural selection, group selection, sex selection etc. are proven unscientific and for the clarity, they are all still "THEORIES" and not science. For a rationalist like me, such theories have no significant value or worth and they are outcome of foolish curiosity with out any benefits. I remember one famous quote of Williams and my wordings of that quote may not be exactly same. He believed "Human did not want their legacy finished by death so religion and God as continuation of that legacy is invented". Interestingly, he is finished and his created illogical idea still survives which witness and establish a fact that, even the illogical product of a material mind can survive in this world! and can last because of the belief of other human beings.

[Nara]

Dear grames, greetings....

I have described my word-view rather clearly. If you have a POV please state it and we can see how to proceed having an interesting chat.




... Mr Dawkins [..] is an atheist and if you have to propagate your faith as "agnostic" through some atheistic idea, i will say you are going to trouble yourself first and then myself and others here. .Well, it is hard find day-light between my world-view and that of Dawkins'. I don't want to trouble you or anyone else.

Cheers!

[grames]

Dear Sir,

I think i made myself clear that it will be childish or even foolish to explain my 'world view' in this context especially when we both are not sure whether we have great understanding of what we already know or go through!

So, with out making sure whether we both belong to same class, close to same degree in terms of experience, knowledge and understanding it will be futile attempt as i have given the analogy already of explaining nuclear physics to a LKG student.

On the interesting note, Darwin witnessed the idea of some "hacker" and Williams recognized the "intelligence" behind nature and i can call them really "Agnostic" as they wanted to derive God but not successfully. That is one of the flaw of some people who assume that God is driven or proven by Detective method. :)

[grames]

Dear Sir,

I will wait for some more days for you to think over about this process of "domestication" and only when you understand this, i will be able to engage you in this conversation. With out this understanding, it is impossible to even make you think beyond what you think, you can see, you can hear, you can sense, you can taste and feel.

But if you do not think i am making any sense, i will take over this thread to explain how should we be open and grasp the truths beyond our sense perception.

[Nara]

dear grames, please state your thesis. If it interests me I will participate in the discussion. Thank you...