Breaking Dennet's Spell

Lately, I've been reading through Daniel Dennet's new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon and must say I'm very disappointed...my initial thought after reading a brief synopsis of the book a month ago was encouraging -- I thought this could be a ground-breaking work pulling science from its theory-of-everything slump into some relevant insights concerning the future. Though disappointingly, Dennett though speaking from only a biological perspective does not even use the method he relies so heavily on to defend his argument, which comes across as imaginative conjecture -- combinging various ideas to fit his own atheistic and 'pietistic' worldview. His whole argument fails in his unbelief in reason, to which he so desparately cleaves. Critiquing religion, or rather belief for believing in a belief in God is ridiculous since the very notion undermines his entire argument based upon a scientific (specifically biological) rationality. Outside this particular biological lens, one almost gets the sense that he is at tension with other explanations outside of biology, and so he is making an apologetic stance from the very beginning. Belief can only be proved false based on its content as this New York Times review of the book contends....After reading the book, this article encapsulated many of my thoughts on the work, though I would perhaps give Dennett a bit more credit than does this review...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/books/review/19wieseltier.html?ex=1298005200&en=9ecb4016f9ff8682&ei=5090&

Time (a short, incomplete thought)

Currently, the term has a rather negative connotation being associated with aging, wrinkles, nose hair, baldness, sickness, and eventually a face-to-face realization that yes, we are all going to die. Depressing, is it not...? Think really hard. Is it really depressing? Why is it so depressing? We westerners spend the better part of our days ignoring the fact that we are mortal in a technopoly that attempts to 'butter us up' into believing that technology will one day spare us this fate. And when we finally own up to the fact that we will die, there are often-times regrets, confessions to our actions that we chose conciously ignorant of what it means to live. Is this how it should be? Taking an Epicurean outlook on life, indulging in life's pleasures knowing that our pleasures are another's pain, and then later recanting for hope of more life, more time. It is life in time that we know, that we use and abuse, that we measure, that we base our scientific inquiries on, that we worship in. Can we assume that what comes after death is in any way in time? Or perhaps a merger of the temporal with the atemporal?

What does it mean to live in time? It means to live as a limited being obtaining limited knowledge in limited time with limited answers with others. In other words, it means that we must live dependently rather than independently of each other for support.

If scientists do 'cure' the death disease, I fear true individualism and independence will rip apart the social world...with a taste of immortality, there is more of a chance for self-destruction in the end when time loses its credibility and transcendence moves in. How might this look? I have some theories, but I'll spare them for now...

Always reforming

'Reformed always reforming, reformed always reforming' -- you can hear it here accompanying the march upon dust fields of glory -- this undercurrent of mind grasping hold to tradition's noose.
Beautiful this chant rings in my ears, and yet blissfully pangs my eardrum senseless...seducing brains with sense, seducing sense with a harmonic melody of sorts. Ghostly harmony charm me more, for I can still think! Sweet muse limit yourself not within our bonds and infiltrate our whole selves so that we might truthfully think...truthfully think creatively neither hindered nor constrained by cross-like limitations. 'Reformed always reforming, reformed always reforming' -- ah yes, aye, Imago homo, imago traditiones! Limit me not maker of melody, and move my molecules oh muse...sculpt, paint, sing, write in me pneumonic music to inhale and exhale as long as I am able.

This said (though perhaps a bit ambiguous), I have had qualms and struggle with aspects of the tradition in which I am a part. Most of these struggles have been based on theological, rational and practical grounds. It is bad in a theology class when no one can make a good statement concerning faith, when no one can explain the authority of a text held sacred, when the only answer is grounded upon an intuitive notion yielding nothing but circular logic and needless mindwork when foundations of that logic have nothing to stand on...

aye, I find myself in error...

'Hope' and 'love' are two factors I see as tenets perhaps holding Christendom together...though in my experience compared to the experience of those around me, 'faith' has different faces...it has a little different meaning for everyone, even within Christendom...it allows for a multicultural mosaic of representatives within the world, it allows for all to hold onto hope and love as they experience it in their own lives. Faith is what locks the individual with the corporate. Is it categorical? Impossible...it shape-shifts along with our individual sacreds. Does tradition hold this faith in check? To some degree I would contend it holds the faith of those within a particular religion in check, however I think it also constrains one from embodying his or her sacred. People who merely imitate do so out of fear, anxiety, habit with no substance...perhaps to some degree it creates nominal Christians always rushing to catch up with time spent dwelling on what theologians before have said...

Faith also binds humanity together under one umbrella at a common table with each other...but we can't see it except under our exclusive umbrella's of tradition! Perhaps the term 'global community' is misunderstood by truth claims everywhere. Truth is not exclusive and yet we flail our own exclusive fashions of it for the world to see. For one to truly convert all others perhaps could be the greatest sin of all, to irradicate inclusivity, for a monopoly bound for violent revolt.

Search for Truth

"Who is she, this Truth of yours, of yours, of mine...
Shape-shifting to the tune of individual conception...
Illusory yet there, cold yet warm, loving yet distant, freeing yet constraining...
Who is he, this Truth past, present and future...
Leading us astray yet keeping us close...
Why the violent game oh Truth! People die because of you, for you in hopes of life...
So much death, so much right, so much wrong, so much violence...
Ash and dust we all are, yet ash and dust we defend behind our conceptualized veils of belief...
Better to believe than not, aye...!...To cope with who we are, what we are, why we are...
Oh Truth, the easy answer, surely, but not totally...
Only ignorance relies on Truth as easy! Truth is not done revealing herself...
How then can we know Him, this clandestine plastic Spirit, devoid of lifelong search?
'Sweetbreads,' aye...without brains is folly says the poet...
Turn inward you say...beyond mere 'membrance...I can see her now...
the psychotic disposition of calculating behavior...not far enough...
Is Truth outside high in the sky, beyond the burning balls of gas, dark matter, primordial chaos?
Why so cruel, Truth, shifty, dodgy, finger-tips away, teasing, goading...?
Why so beneficent, giving, loving, warming, attractive...?
Damn the mystery veiling your inconceivability so that I might see...
not with my eyes, but with my being...
Bring to order me that I might relate...

Amen..."

Rekindling that feelin'

I was given a copy of the original greatest hits of BB King from a co-worker and it has rekindled in me an empirical sensation not felt for a long time...a curious thing, memory...we can remember emotions at given times, abstract ideas, mathematics...we can forget for some time other memories and recall them later...where do forgotten memories go? How are they triggered years later at unexpected times? Are neural connections lost? Is memory a matter of substance taking up space and time or something outside of space and time...?...makes me wish I'd stuck it out in psychology with a neural emphasis...or actually, now I'm wishing I'd stayed with music...beatin' those drums with my buddies to the rhythm of our selves...soul music, connecting the band and audience...those were the days...it's too bad my drums are disassembled in my closet...