Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

I felt compelled to dig into my browser history, because I knew that I had viewed material "extremely [relevant] to Evangelical conceptions and worldview", and one resource which I pulled up, and which I suspect was subconsciously from which I derived the idea of "a relationship of mutual convenience: two parties cynically using one another", was this YouTube video:

Unholy alliance: Trump, evangelicals and QAnon | The Bottom Line

I've just rewatched it, and, I also suspect, AJ, that you would find it very relevant and insightful if you watched it too.

I did watch it. I thought it was pretty good. What is going on in American Culture today, and the different levels of connection to 'global' processes, and the influence of information and news producers, intelligence agencies, and so much else, in attempting to steer the world through what has been described as the *fifth* phase of war (the third phase the Cold War, the Fourth the War on Terror, the Fifth a whole other level to on-going war) is I think at the heart of a great deal of psychic reaction among normal people. Psychic reaction being a form of madness or hysteria.

Religious fanaticism takes many different forms. I have an interesting study of Pentecostalism: Vision of the Disinherited which examines the *phenomena* of religious fanaticism and extremism. We have little choice but to consider this when we examine strange & bizaree 'interpretive movements' like QAnon. To understand that better I recommend A Culture of Conspiracy by Michael Barkun.

My interpretation of the phenomena? I think that when people feel themselves powerless and when the powers that control and decide their world are obscured and often invisible, and when these people have ideas about *the world* that are a hodge-podge of impression which are sort of sciency but also semi- and post-religious (weird metaphysical pictures such as the Christian pictures), and when God is sort of dimly conceived and Satan is also dimply conceived, that in this 'cloud of unknowing' any strange thing can get cooked up in their imagination.

Their lack of sense of *control* over their world produces an anxious, then hysterical state. Or one that can quickly incline to hysteria. And hysterics, as we know, are highly suggestible to rational power that has it as part of their plan and design to steer them along.

Now, let us examine 'spiritual possession' and here in the context of Venezuela. I lived I Venezuela but never went the El Sorte region where these practices go on. This religion (Venezuelan Santeria) is literally the national religion among the popular classes. I submit the (bizarre) image in order to propose that *spiritual possession* is in no sense dead in our world. It just takes shape in less extreme ways. Pentecostal *speaking in tongues* is a form of possession though toned-down.

And here again a form of Pentecostal-like possession which you can notice when the 'spirit' builds up enough and the audience *catches* the spiritual fire.

[seeds]

It's a number's game; a game of chance.

Dubious, it goes without saying that I am well aware of your stance on these issues. However, I nevertheless find it kind of amusing that when I asked Nazon the following question...

So, tell me, Nazon, do you know of anyone who is actually foolish enough to believe the utterly ridiculous nonsense that this...



...is the result of chance?

...you, Dubious,...

(one of my favorite members of this forum, of whom I greatly respect)

...voluntarily step up to the plate and admit to being "...foolish enough..." to believe "...the utterly ridiculous nonsense..." that chance is the foundation upon which the unthinkable order of the universe is based.

There are over a hundred billion planets in the Milky Way alone. What are the odds of a living planet not existing in that entire array of possibilities? Virtually nil!

What makes you so sure that us silly humans...

(a group of [slowly ascending in consciousness] apes who have admitted to not being able to figure out what approximately 96% of the universe is actually made of)

...might not also be mistaken about what might possibly exist on other planets in our galaxy (never mind the more than hundred-billion other galaxies)?

The fact that humans can look at the distant galaxies as seen in the new Webb telescope,...



...some of which are tens of billions of light years away, with each containing billions of suns and planets, and then assume (no, make that "declare") that the universe must be devoid of other life because we (earthbound apes) have not yet been able to locate any, is sheer idiocy!

Come on now, Dubious, where's your sense of wonder and introspection?

I mean, here you are, a living mind whose self-aware central consciousness (your "I Am-ness") can, at one moment, willfully choose to peer-out into the universe through this amazingly designed "window"...



...and view the near infinite variety of phenomenal structures that make up the outer-world (with the window itself being one of those structures),...

...while in the very next moment, can willfully choose to literally "pull the blinds down" on that window and then peer-inward in order to view the near infinite variety of phenomenal structures that make up the inner-world of your thoughts and dreams.

The sheer complexity of how the informational workings of DNA (powered by the sun) managed (in a mere 9 months) to methodically stitch together proteins to form the iris and pupil seen in the image above,...

...is so amazing, and so perfectly done, that it somehow fools (seemingly) intelligent humans into actually believing that such order is a product of "natural processes" (read that to mean "chance processes").

And why does it fool most of us?

Because in precisely the same way that an amoeba or a fly...



...are simply not conscious enough to comprehend the human level of being that ascends way above them,...

...likewise, neither are humans conscious enough to comprehend the level of being that ascends above us.

Indeed, I'm talking about a level of being that is not only capable of creating the amazing (informationally-based) order laid-out before our senses as seen, once again, in this amazing DNA derived structure,...



...but a level of being and intelligence that is able to perfect the overall order of the universe to such a degree...



...that makes it appear as if it were "naturally occurring" so as not to arouse our suspicion as to how it "really" came about.
_______

[Belinda]

The apprehension of natural beauty is not the result of chance. It's the result of nature which is an ordered affair. Nature's harmony that exists between human apprehension of beauty and what is apprehended is not in doubt. This harmony is a function of the human brain/mind.

I take it, Belinda - and please correct me if I'm wrong - that you're responding in turn in the exchange running from seeds's post raising the problem of "order from chaos", to which Dubious responded, to which I in turn then responded.

If so, and if you meant to address the key issue in that exchange, then I think that your response misses the point.

The issue in question is how order might arise from chaos, to which I added the additional observation that the alternative (order coming from order) doesn't solve the issue either, merely pushing the question back. You assert that "nature [...] is an ordered affair", but this, like Dubious's response, simply assumes the order which seeds has asked us to explain. It's not an explanation of that order.

I wrote "This harmony is a function of the human brain/mind". By "harmony" I refer to nature's order and I choose the word 'harmony' because I intend to refer to George Berkeley's idea of pre-established harmony . Berkeley attributed the harmony to God's pre-establishing it: I and other absolute idealists attribute the harmony to human brain-minds establishing it

[Harry Baird]

I and other absolute idealists attribute the harmony to human brain-minds establishing it

OK, thanks, I understand now what you were/are saying. I guess that, for me, it still seems simply to push the question back, which then becomes, "Where did the order which is a human brain-mind come from?", but I don't have an answer myself to the whole question, so I'm not demanding one of you.

[Immanuel Can]

Berkeley attributed the harmony to God's pre-establishing it: I and other absolute idealists attribute the harmony to human brain-minds establishing it

But whereas Berkeley could believe that harmony was real, because God established it, you are logically bound to believe that the "harmony" is only an illusion. This is because human beings don't pre-exist the universe, so couldn't possibly be the cause of any objective harmony the universe may exhibit. They must be "reading" something that is not actually there.

But if they are actually "reading" an objective harmony, one that predates their own existence, then they can't possibly be the "establishers" of any such harmony. They must be merely it's detectors. But the reality of the harmony must predate humanity.

So now you're faced with a far worse problem for that theory: namely, not just how the (allegedly-chaos-originated) universe has any objective harmony at all, but also how it has come about that within that order human beings, beings capable of detecting and interpreting that harmony, have come to exist. The fit between our brains and the universe now has to be explained in terms of harmony...not just the harmony of the universe itself.

Good luck.

[Immanuel Can]

"Where did the order which is a human brain-mind come from?"

An excellent question.

And as I was saying to B., now we also have to ask, how did that orderly brain also come to be so appropriately configured as to be able to detect order in our already-orderly universe?

[Dubious]

Dubious, it goes without saying that I am well aware of your stance on these issues. However, I nevertheless find it kind of amusing that when I asked Nazon the following question…

seeds wrote: ↑Tue Aug 30, 2022 9:39 pm So, tell me, Nazon, do you know of anyone who is actually foolish enough to believe the utterly ridiculous nonsense that this...



...is the result of chance?

...you, Dubious, voluntarily step up to the plate and admit to being "...foolish enough..." to believe "...the utterly ridiculous nonsense..." that chance is the foundation upon which the unthinkable order of the universe is based.

In hindsight, I should have kept out of it knowing well what your position is but you’re total dismissal of chance as a main factor in creation goes against everything I ever learned or studied. Your view makes no sense to me and seems to be a manifestation more of will than actual physics in how the universe came about. Nevertheless, I should have restrained my urge to reply, especially so, since it was not addressed to me. For that I apologize!

...you, Dubious, voluntarily step up to the plate and admit to being "...foolish enough..." to believe "...the utterly ridiculous nonsense..." that chance is the foundation upon which the unthinkable order of the universe is based.

Well, forgive me being foolish but I don’t think I said “that chance is the foundation upon which the unthinkable order of the universe is based.” I’m not in a position to say what its foundation might be; no one is...at least not yet and perhaps never! I expressed myself badly if I gave that impression.

A scenario of pure chance I regard as unlikely as there being some divine agency or intelligence which preconceived it all...an argument as solid as sand sculpture when a tide rushes in. The universe is far more mystical and complex than having its origins and order identified by the incipient intent of some infinite IQ intellect. That, to me, is tantamount to a downgrade.

If there were only chance, there wouldn’t need to be rules which establish what we see and everything we don’t see. Almost nothing of what remains fundamental ever gets established by pure chance alone. Entropy being the weaver and designer of complexity sees to that. But within that process, chance is the arbiter which determines what comes into being including ALL that could have emerged into actuality but never did.

The idea of some divine Provokateur initiating causes based on its own volition is nothing but a remnant of ancient thinking that existence per se must have an overt Cause inflecting it... in effect that it was a much advanced version of a brain, not unlike ours which as yet is only capable of making time pieces not universes...in a manner of speaking.

A process from micro to macro can have many different outcomes which are not predetermined but ruled instead by serendipity or chance. The same process which festooned the earth with life could just as easily have made of it another lifeless rock between Venus and Mars.

As I see it, the element of chance could also fit into your paradigm without infringing any of your views.

Come on now, Dubious,
where's your sense of wonder and introspection?

When trying to figure out how things operate in this universe, having a sense of wonder is only natural. Introspection, conversely gets you nothing. Meditating on the universe usually returns a lot of mystical claptrap having nothing to do with the universe. Its true wonder far exceeds any of its humanly derived mythologizations.

Indeed, I'm talking about a level of being that is not only capable of creating the amazing (informationally-based) order laid-out before our senses as seen, once again, in this amazing DNA derived structure,…

The human eye is often brought forth in these kind of conversations as exemplifying some kind of evolutionary perfection which it really isn’t. That has long been known. Here Dawkins explains the evolution of the eye to a creationist...who still doesn’t get it….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29gvNp3FXyo

...as for these two pictorial comparisons, which you’ve often made, the one above wouldn’t exist without the one below which you consider random, confused, chaotic.





Some of the white noise in the lower picture denotes the remaining remnant of a once colossally hot universe (the Big Bang) coming into being and cooling to the point where it is now. What we see on that screen is its afterglow; it’s a signature of that incipience which created all that followed. Juxtaposing the two as if they were opposites is a false comparison.

My question to you is would you observe the universe to be any less mystical and grand without a creator than how you imagine it to be with one at its core?

Would it change your perceptions any?

[Belinda]

"Where did the order which is a human brain-mind come from?"

An excellent question.

And as I was saying to B., now we also have to ask, how did that orderly brain also come to be so appropriately configured as to be able to detect order in our already-orderly universe?

The harmony between the order we perceive and the objective order is naturally selected. Babies who are unable to make sense of their environments do not naturally survive until old enough to procreate.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm not being critical with this question. I'm curious as to what you've learned from all the books you've read and the opinions they have presented. In your opinion do the multitude of opinions themselves lead to knowledge?

In Book V of the Republic, Plato elaborates on the difference between knowledge and opinion. Both are "faculties," one enabling us to know, and the other to form opinions. The faculty of knowledge is infallible, while the faculty of opinion is subject to error.

Satan or Lucifer's goal is creating the dominance of opinions through obfuscation? Knowledge is lost by attachments to opinions. In this way the world lives in darkness incapable of the infallibility of knowledge. Satan does his job well. Do you think that all the opinions you've read on bring you any closer to objective infallible knowledge? If the world lives in spiritual darkness, then opinions can only reflect the results of spiritual blindness and devoid of knowledge.

The question you pose is, of course, rhetorical. You are trying to assert that there is a 'special knowledge' and it is clear that it is about this special knowledge that you exclusively write. For you that is the 'inner dimension' of what Christianity is truly about and of course this is your primary theme and focus.

Personally, I make certain separations (that perhaps you do not). The inner dimensions of my own understanding (that might correspond to your 'special knowledge') exists in me, as I think it exists in everyone to some degree or other. I think there is a sort of 'essential' position that we have whether we have articulated it or not, seen it and thought about it or not. That is I think what Richard Weaver meant by his idea of our 'metaphysical dream of the world'. How that comes to be formed is an interesting question.

"What I have learned from all the books that I've read" () has to do with the way that people, in so many varied ways, organize their perception of *the world* and outline what I suppose amounts to their 'platform for activism' (the way they recommend that we should act). I do not think I disagree with you that this could all be termed 'opinion' in the Platonic sense. Sure. Why not? But if there is some inner dimension of special knowledge it cannot, and this according to Plato, be expressed in discursive language.

There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith. For it does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself. Notwithstanding, of thus much I am certain, that the best statement of these doctrines in writing or in speech would be my own statement; and further, that if they should be badly stated in writing, it is I who would be the person most deeply pained. And if I had thought that these subjects ought to be fully stated in writing or in speech to the public, what nobler action could I have performed in my life than that of writing what is of great benefit to mankind and bringing forth to the light for all men the nature of reality? But were I to undertake this task it would not, as I think, prove a good thing for men, save for some few who are able to discover the truth themselves with but little instruction; for as to the rest, some it would most unseasonably fill with a mistaken contempt, and others with an overweening and empty aspiration, as though they had learnt some sublime mysteries.

Now what, you might ask, is the point of all the research I claim that I do? It does not have to do with 'special knowledge' this I certainly admit. I do not imagine that it will produce the arrival of that leaping spark Plato speaks of. It would all be, for a contemplative and perhaps for a dedicated yogi & mystic, a grand waste of time. A diversion into the world's conflicts. I am pretty sure this is actually what you intend to state, is it not?

But the case I would make for the sort of study I have undertaken, which has involved years & years of dedicated reading day after day after day and reading as widely as I possibly could, is only and simply that it has given me (I believe) a basis from which to understand better contemporary culture; what is happening and why. You could say (I have said) that my core interest is The Culture Wars. We seem to be witnessing a sort of crescendo in all that certain people, metaphysically invested as they seem to be, in all that that stuff that feels to them to be 'politically correct' and necessary to install into the *world*. That was an inelegant way to put it but I'll leave it badly phrased.

Now, yes, in the Grand Scheme of Things I will admit that what is manifesting in American Culture today will, at some point, just fade away and I mean this in some Cosmic sense. Let me employ a filmic metaphor to illustrate. But nevertheless there is, certainly, a Grand Drama that is being enacted & rehearsed and though it really has little and perhaps no importance or meaning for a contemplative (who retires from the phenomenal world into meditation and discovery on other levels), I can't conceal that I am fascinated by The Spectacle.

To understand The Culture Wars (in America in any case) one is advised to get more understanding the The War Between the States. So much of it extends from that war.

But I sense that I am likely boring you ....

[Alexis Jacobi]

Soundtrack

Well, I'm barely prepared at all. I hear "Inquisition", "Pogroms", Crusades" and so on and I have only a surface understanding of them. However, at that surface level, they certainly don't sound very Christ-like. But I'll leave it you and IC to hash the details out if that's what you guys choose to do.

It would result I think in something interesting were you to read Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. I am aware that one of your primary lines of criticism (against poor defenseless me!) is that you believe or notice that I seem to excise Jesus Christ out of Christianity. You notice, I think fairly, that I seem to state that what Christianity is -- what it had been and in a sense what it is now -- is something quite distinct from what it 'should have been' or perhaps what it 'really is' if it is practiced in absolute fullness. That would be I guess if the admonitions of the Sermon of the Mount were translated into a manual for the living of life.

I feel that I have substantially worked out this question. I have expressed it many times and in different ways. To be such a Christ-follower is to be, fundamentally, a renunciant. You literally have to give up the world. It is all clearly expressed in Satan's carpet-ride to the cartoon Jesus: All of that -- all of it! -- you must renounce. That is why I say that any involvement, in any substantial sense, in the world; in its affairs as well as any *ownership* and *ownership interest* cannot be squared with the Jesusionian path. The Jesusonian path is, at least in its declared form, a path of leaving the Earth behind in order to inherit a conceived 'higher world' (the angelical after-world outside and beyond time and material manifestation).

Every other path -- paths that involve tangible construction in this world, the world in which we really live and the *real world* -- will in every instance, and to one degree or another, be a deviation from the Jesusonian Path of absolute renunciation. The metaphor that I use (or have used) is that of the shovel (or the machete if you wish). In order to create something, in order to built or to plant, you have to violently impose yourself into and in this sense against the natural order. You will have to dig your shovel into the ground. You have to possess a territory and in that possession you will displace other lives.

To take the entire Mississippi Valley as an example. It was one of the most amazing and completely untouched ecological systems when the Red Man lived in it. It could be compared to the Amazon Basin in terms of diversity and interconnected life-systems. It no longer exists. It was *conquered*, it was *overcome*, it was *tamed*, it was *cultivated*.



It was all plowed. It was made *productive* and in a very real sense it is one of the main sources of American wealth. I wish I could find an essay that Winona LaDuke wrote on the eco-system of the Mississippi Basin (I tried). It was, as is often said today' "a powerful indictment" against everything that we in fact are!

Now, I believe it is true that you can find *Christ-like* people living, for example, in a monestary or in some other removed circumstance. At the moment and at the second, however, that the individual becomes an owner, a builder, an actual resident on the planet, in real life, in real time, dealing with real consequences, to the degree that one gets invested on renounces that Christ-likeness.

This is the reason why I think it more relevant to study the Christianesque. And I can elaborate in this more if you'd like.

[Immanuel Can]

"Where did the order which is a human brain-mind come from?"

An excellent question.

And as I was saying to B., now we also have to ask, how did that orderly brain also come to be so appropriately configured as to be able to detect order in our already-orderly universe?

The harmony between the order we perceive and the objective order is naturally selected.

"Naturally selected"? Are you trying to tell me that the universe "cares" whether or not it has intelligent creatures in it that can "read" its order, and so has "harmonized itself" with their cognitions? And it did that by accidental means, did it? It just-so-happened?

Because if not, then you've assumed your conclusion. You've taken order, or "natural selection," as if it were a teleological entity, and presumed its existence in order to explain its existence. That's not an explanation that solves the problem. It just pushes it back one step: why does the indifferent universe "care" whether or not intelligent entities exist at all, or that they survive?

[Nick_A]

I'm not being critical with this question. I'm curious as to what you've learned from all the books you've read and the opinions they have presented. In your opinion do the multitude of opinions themselves lead to knowledge?

In Book V of the Republic, Plato elaborates on the difference between knowledge and opinion. Both are "faculties," one enabling us to know, and the other to form opinions. The faculty of knowledge is infallible, while the faculty of opinion is subject to error.

Satan or Lucifer's goal is creating the dominance of opinions through obfuscation? Knowledge is lost by attachments to opinions. In this way the world lives in darkness incapable of the infallibility of knowledge. Satan does his job well. Do you think that all the opinions you've read on bring you any closer to objective infallible knowledge? If the world lives in spiritual darkness, then opinions can only reflect the results of spiritual blindness and devoid of knowledge.

The question you pose is, of course, rhetorical. You are trying to assert that there is a 'special knowledge' and it is clear that it is about this special knowledge that you exclusively write. For you that is the 'inner dimension' of what Christianity is truly about and of course this is your primary theme and focus.

Personally, I make certain separations (that perhaps you do not). The inner dimensions of my own understanding (that might correspond to your 'special knowledge') exists in me, as I think it exists in everyone to some degree or other. I think there is a sort of 'essential' position that we have whether we have articulated it or not, seen it and thought about it or not. That is I think what Richard Weaver meant by his idea of our 'metaphysical dream of the world'. How that comes to be formed is an interesting question.

"What I have learned from all the books that I've read" () has to do with the way that people, in so many varied ways, organize their perception of *the world* and outline what I suppose amounts to their 'platform for activism' (the way they recommend that we should act). I do not think I disagree with you that this could all be termed 'opinion' in the Platonic sense. Sure. Why not? But if there is some inner dimension of special knowledge it cannot, and this according to Plato, be expressed in discursive language.

There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith. For it does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself. Notwithstanding, of thus much I am certain, that the best statement of these doctrines in writing or in speech would be my own statement; and further, that if they should be badly stated in writing, it is I who would be the person most deeply pained. And if I had thought that these subjects ought to be fully stated in writing or in speech to the public, what nobler action could I have performed in my life than that of writing what is of great benefit to mankind and bringing forth to the light for all men the nature of reality? But were I to undertake this task it would not, as I think, prove a good thing for men, save for some few who are able to discover the truth themselves with but little instruction; for as to the rest, some it would most unseasonably fill with a mistaken contempt, and others with an overweening and empty aspiration, as though they had learnt some sublime mysteries.

Now what, you might ask, is the point of all the research I claim that I do? It does not have to do with 'special knowledge' this I certainly admit. I do not imagine that it will produce the arrival of that leaping spark Plato speaks of. It would all be, for a contemplative and perhaps for a dedicated yogi & mystic, a grand waste of time. A diversion into the world's conflicts. I am pretty sure this is actually what you intend to state, is it not?

But the case I would make for the sort of study I have undertaken, which has involved years & years of dedicated reading day after day after day and reading as widely as I possibly could, is only and simply that it has given me (I believe) a basis from which to understand better contemporary culture; what is happening and why. You could say (I have said) that my core interest is The Culture Wars. We seem to be witnessing a sort of crescendo in all that certain people, metaphysically invested as they seem to be, in all that that stuff that feels to them to be 'politically correct' and necessary to install into the *world*. That was an inelegant way to put it but I'll leave it badly phrased.

Now, yes, in the Grand Scheme of Things I will admit that what is manifesting in American Culture today will, at some point, just fade away and I mean this in some Cosmic sense. Let me employ a filmic metaphor to illustrate. But nevertheless there is, certainly, a Grand Drama that is being enacted & rehearsed and though it really has little and perhaps no importance or meaning for a contemplative (who retires from the phenomenal world into meditation and discovery on other levels), I can't conceal that I am fascinated by The Spectacle.

To understand The Culture Wars (in America in any case) one is advised to get more understanding the The War Between the States. So much of it extends from that war.

But I sense that I am likely boring you ....

Now what, you might ask, is the point of all the research I claim that I do? It does not have to do with 'special knowledge' this I certainly admit. I do not imagine that it will produce the arrival of that leaping spark Plato speaks of. It would all be, for a contemplative and perhaps for a dedicated yogi & mystic, a grand waste of time. A diversion into the world's conflicts. I am pretty sure this is actually what you intend to state, is it not?

No, you are not boring me. You've contributed to the important question of the relationship between knowledge and opinions. I think you misunderstand me. I am not against participating in the world of conflicts. This is how one learns. I am interested in what creates a vertical human perspective as opposed to more opinions. To understand the great Beast as defined by Plato requires studying the ways of the Beast as you are doing.

Imagine yourself on a street next to a tall building. Walking along it and reacting to all the impressions the street provides while interacting with others reveals the nature of the beast.

Now you enter the building and the elevator takes you to the first floor and you look out of the large glass window. The street is beneath you and are part of a larger whole as are the people interacting on it

You go up to the second floor and experience that these interacting people are part of a larger whole called a city. Rising to the third floor reveals that the city is a part of a larger whole called country where all we experience is the horizon.

This is what I mean by a conscious human perspective. Normally our lives are lives are lived on the street level along with other animals. We can acquire more information leading to more and better opinions.

This is all necessary but my concern is how a person’s conscious perspective rises vertically above street level to begin to experience that the universe is a conscious whole in which lower levels of reality fit into higher levels of reality. Then through, deductive reason beginning with contemplating the ineffable, I can experience the value of details as they relate to wholeness rather than the normal method of acquiring details in search of wholeness.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

An excellent question.

And as I was saying to B., now we also have to ask, how did that orderly brain also come to be so appropriately configured as to be able to detect order in our already-orderly universe?

The harmony between the order we perceive and the objective order is naturally selected.

"Naturally selected"? Are you trying to tell me that the universe "cares" whether or not it has intelligent creatures in it that can "read" its order, and so has "harmonized itself" with their cognitions? And it did that by accidental means, did it? It just-so-happened?

Because if not, then you've assumed your conclusion. You've taken order, or "natural selection," as if it were a teleological entity, and presumed its existence in order to explain its existence. That's not an explanation that solves the problem. It just pushes it back one step: why does the indifferent universe "care" whether or not intelligent entities exist at all, or that they survive?

In the sense that 'two' cares that one plus one equals it

[Belinda]

I and other absolute idealists attribute the harmony to human brain-minds establishing it

OK, thanks, I understand now what you were/are saying. I guess that, for me, it still seems simply to push the question back, which then becomes, "Where did the order which is a human brain-mind come from?", but I don't have an answer myself to the whole question, so I'm not demanding one of you.

Absolute idealists believe that experiencers, i.e. animals and plants, create that order.

[Belinda]

The harmony between the order we perceive and the objective order is naturally selected.

"Naturally selected"? Are you trying to tell me that the universe "cares" whether or not it has intelligent creatures in it that can "read" its order, and so has "harmonized itself" with their cognitions? And it did that by accidental means, did it? It just-so-happened?

Because if not, then you've assumed your conclusion. You've taken order, or "natural selection," as if it were a teleological entity, and presumed its existence in order to explain its existence. That's not an explanation that solves the problem. It just pushes it back one step: why does the indifferent universe "care" whether or not intelligent entities exist at all, or that they survive?

In the sense that 'two' cares that one plus one equals it

The universe does not care, but animals especially humans care.The universe does not create harmony/order. Animals and plants create harmony/order.