Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[BigMike]

Alexiev, this is the kind of intellectual performance that looks deep if you squint hard enough through a fog machine and suspend all standards of clarity.

You start by saying that if Jesus rose from the dead, it would be “natural.” That’s not clever—it’s just desperate reframing. You’ve basically admitted that “supernatural” means nothing except “stuff that’s real when I want it to be.” So the moment someone calls you out, you just move the goalposts and rename the magic trick. Resurrection? Totally natural—if it happened. Big “if,” right? Because you don’t have to explain how, just imagine it. That’s your standard. Imagined logic in fictional tales.

And your defense of fairy tales? “If you blow this horn, the walls fall down”—yes, internally consistent in a made-up universe. You might as well say that Bugs Bunny walking through a painted tunnel is logically sound, too. Sure—it’s logically sound in Looney Tunes. But that doesn’t make it reality, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean supernatural claims should be immune to scrutiny just because they follow cartoon logic in their own mythos.

Then you pivot into your TED Talk voice to explain how language is both emergent and transcendent, like we’re supposed to be amazed by the mystery of it all. But you conveniently skip over the fact that everything you just said—about language shaping the brain and the brain shaping language—is exactly what determinism predicts. There’s no transcendence needed. It’s feedback loops in a physical system. You just dressed up recursion in philosophical perfume and called it holy.

And your closing move—dragging in Kant as if that somehow absolves you from making a coherent point—is the cherry on top. Kant was exploring the limits of perception, not giving you permission to believe in ghosts because epistemology is hard. You’re using uncertainty as a smokescreen to justify clinging to fantasy while pretending it’s philosophical sophistication.

Here’s the truth you keep trying to dance around: your entire argument is a tangle of slippery language, dodged definitions, and hollow appeals to ideas you half-digested from textbooks and mythology. There’s nothing transcendent here—just a refusal to accept that asking “what is it, how do we know, and how does it work?” is the bare minimum for any claim about reality.

This isn’t postmodernism. It’s post-accountability. And it’s not profound. It’s pathetic.

Cut the crap, Mike. I'm not "dancing around" anything. You are. You misuse the language (writing "illogical" when you mean "not in conformance with my world view"); you repeat your defense of "determinism" (which I have never objected to, except to say it's irrelevant). Unfortunately for you, your "determinism" is not very good at predicting anything about human behavior. That's the problem with it: not that it is untrue, but that it is irrelevant. Who cares if our thoughts are "determined" by the physics of our brains? (I suppose some of the religious people on this forum care, but I don't.) We don't learn anything by accepting that premise. Instead, we learn about language by studying language; we learn about culture by studying culture; we learn about human behavior not by looking at brains, but by looking at behavior.

I'm sick of your insults and sick of your nonsense. It is you, not I, who pretends to be profound, but instead is trite, moronic, and full of yourself. You act as if "believing in" physics is some sort of revolutionary world view, when it is simply a normal, human world view that fails to be particularly enlightening in regard to those things we humans care most about. You repeat your idiotic nonsense about how other people are "dancing around" the issue, and then simply repeat yourself. It is you who dance around issues, claiming that the "supernatural" refers to things that don't happen (as opposed to me, who says that whatever happens is "natural"). You seem unable to comprehend simple, straightforward English.

Here's an example. You wrote:

I'm not "trying to talk about the supernatural" as if it has something legitimate to say. I'm dismantling it. I'm not attempting to understand it—I'm pointing out that it's incoherent, unverifiable, and logically self-defeating, and that pretending otherwise is intellectually dishonest.

So, according to you, if something (like Jesus rising from the grave) is coherent and verifiable then it cannot be "supernatural". However, the supernatural is not "logically self-defeating" as I pointed out with my fairy tale example, which you were too stupid to understand. I give up. You are hopeless.

Oh, Alexiev—this is exactly what happens when your tangled metaphors, lazy mysticism, and philosophical name-dropping finally collapse under the weight of a simple demand for clarity: you lash out.

You accuse me of misusing language, but let’s be honest—you’re the one flailing around with words like “transcendent,” “emergent,” and “supernatural” without ever anchoring them to anything concrete. You say I call something “illogical” when I mean “not in conformance with my worldview.” No, Alexiev—I call it illogical when it violates the principles of basic reasoning, when it contradicts itself, and when it's impossible to define or analyze without retreating into metaphorical gibberish. That’s not my worldview—that’s just intellectual hygiene.

Then you try to argue that determinism is “irrelevant” because it doesn’t predict every human behavior like a horoscope. You don’t get it, and that’s your problem. Determinism isn’t a crystal ball—it’s an ontological statement about causality. It's the recognition that everything, including human thought, emotion, language, and behavior, arises from physical causes. Saying it's irrelevant because it doesn’t hand you a daily planner for people’s moods is like calling gravity irrelevant because it doesn't predict who will win a marathon. You're confusing levels of analysis.

And your smug little “we learn about language by studying language, not brains”—as if that’s some kind of mic drop—is just embarrassing. Of course we study language as a system, but where do you think that system came from? What do you think’s doing the speaking and processing the symbols? You act like culture and language float in some metaphysical ether disconnected from neurons and evolution. It’s laughable. You’re just allergic to reductionism because it makes your foggy abstractions feel small.

Then you claim I “believe in physics like it’s some revolutionary worldview.” No—I just take it seriously. You, on the other hand, want to borrow its credibility while shoveling untestable nonsense underneath it, then cry foul when someone notices the stench. And when you’re finally cornered, with no answers left, you throw a tantrum, call me stupid, and declare you give up.

Good. That’s the first coherent statement you’ve made. If you can't define what you mean, can’t explain how it works, and can't respond without melting down, then yes—you should give up. Because you're not contributing to the discussion, you're just polluting it with pseudo-intellectual fluff and then storming off when it doesn’t get praised.

You’re not defending ideas, Alexiev—you’re defending the right to never be questioned. And in a serious conversation, that’s worthless.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Oh God.

[BigMike]

Phyllo, stop. You’re not making a profound philosophical point—you’re flailing.

When I say I don’t need to “explain all the deep physics,” that’s not using gravity as a placeholder. It means we have an actual, working framework with demonstrable, predictive value. Gravity isn’t some vague poetic word I invoke to feel spiritual about falling fruit. It’s a mathematically modeled, empirically verified force. We don’t have to explain everything about it to recognize that it works, consistently, and across contexts. That’s not a placeholder—that’s a working tool.

Your “divine force” has none of that. No math. No predictive ability. No experiments. Just hand-waving and mysticism. You're using a fantasy to explain something you don't understand, and then trying to level the field by saying, “Well, science can’t explain everything either!” That’s not an argument—that’s an excuse.

And this idea that “if you drill down far enough, reason ends, so it’s all the same” is pure intellectual cowardice. You’re not drawing a boundary between knowledge and mystery—you’re erasing the entire line so you can pretend your baseless claims have equal standing.

Yes, science doesn’t answer why existence itself exists. No one claims it does. But that doesn’t give you a license to throw a god into the gap and call it insight. You’re mistaking not knowing everything for not knowing anything.

What you’re doing is the philosophical equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, “Well, you can’t explain the absolute origin of the cosmos, so I can believe whatever I want.” No. That’s not open-mindedness—that’s epistemological laziness.

So here’s your harsh truth: If your idea can’t be defined, tested, or reasoned about, then it doesn’t belong in a serious conversation. It’s not “beyond logic.” It’s beneath it.

I'm more open-minded than you.

I'm prepared to accept that one framework is not the solution for everything.

I'm prepared to use different thinking in different situations.

I'll stop because you can't seem to handle any challenges to your cherished idea.

No, Phyllo—you’re not being open-minded. You’re being noncommittal. And that’s not the same thing. It's intellectual cowardice dressed up as flexibility.

Open-mindedness means you're willing to consider new ideas while still holding them to standards of evidence, coherence, and explanatory power. What you're doing is throwing out all standards the moment they get inconvenient, so you can claim any belief is valid as long as someone finds it emotionally or poetically satisfying.

You say you're “prepared to use different thinking in different situations.” Translation: you're willing to suspend reason when it suits your narrative. That’s not adaptability—it’s strategic ambiguity. It’s the philosophical version of putting everything in air quotes so you can weasel out of committing to anything.

And spare me the bit about “my cherished idea.” Determinism isn’t some fragile worldview I’m defending out of sentimentality. It’s a conclusion drawn from everything we’ve ever observed about the universe: cause and effect, systems governed by physical laws, brains shaped by biology and experience. You know—reality.

You, on the other hand, are waving away challenges with this smug little “I’m just more open-minded” line, like that absolves you from making a single coherent point. It doesn’t. It just makes you look like someone who wants to pretend they’re above the debate—because deep down, you know your position can’t hold up under real scrutiny.

So yeah, if you want to retreat now, go ahead. But don’t pretend it’s because I “can’t handle” challenges. The only thing I can’t handle is watching someone tiptoe around basic logic while patting themselves on the back for being so enlightened.

You didn’t challenge me—you just backed away while calling it transcendence.

[Belinda]

BigMike: That’s not my problem. That’s the cost of trying to pass off fiction as philosophy.

Philosophy is an intellectual tool and a method of analysis. It is uniquely relevant and even powerful within its domain, however it is not determinant in all domains of being — of interacting to Existence, to our own being, to Life.

So, I would refer to a simplistic hemispherical model for the sake of the elucidation I want to make: we have a “left brain” and we have a “right brain”. The left brain when it dominates perception in the widest sense gives a picture, a sort of intensity, like that of BigMike. But the tight brain — so they say — combines pictures in a holistic and simply put a wider way.

I do not think that this “answers” the question about what so-called divinity is (it is a word I use of course) and the entire problem of the collapse of metaphysics is completely real and very present. We are living in that death-process.

And therefore all that I say is each person finds their own means of relationship with what that word — divinity — connotes. Call it false, an illusion, a trick played against the realness of mathematically perceived and understood reality — in my case it has no effect. I understand however the left-brain impasse!

There is nothing I can do or say, no verbal proof that I can provide. I have no problem with the fact that that is so!

It resolves down into a question of experience and also hard-won knowledge.

All academic disciplines are "intellectual tools". The point is that some people seem to think that sound and fury in their use of English is the same as rigorous application of the discipline.

What you seem to be talking about is gestalt.

"Gestalt" in German means "whole," "form," or "shape," and in psychology and therapy, it refers to the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, emphasizing holistic understanding and present-moment awareness

[Alexiev]

Oh, Alexiev—this is exactly what happens when your tangled metaphors, lazy mysticism, and philosophical name-dropping finally collapse under the weight of a simple demand for clarity: you lash out.

You accuse me of misusing language, but let’s be honest—you’re the one flailing around with words like “transcendent,” “emergent,” and “supernatural” without ever anchoring them to anything concrete. You say I call something “illogical” when I mean “not in conformance with my worldview.” No, Alexiev—I call it illogical when it violates the principles of basic reasoning, when it contradicts itself, and when it's impossible to define or analyze without retreating into metaphorical gibberish. That’s not my worldview—that’s just intellectual hygiene.

Then you try to argue that determinism is “irrelevant” because it doesn’t predict every human behavior like a horoscope. You don’t get it, and that’s your problem. Determinism isn’t a crystal ball—it’s an ontological statement about causality. It's the recognition that everything, including human thought, emotion, language, and behavior, arises from physical causes. Saying it's irrelevant because it doesn’t hand you a daily planner for people’s moods is like calling gravity irrelevant because it doesn't predict who will win a marathon. You're confusing levels of analysis.

And your smug little “we learn about language by studying language, not brains”—as if that’s some kind of mic drop—is just embarrassing. Of course we study language as a system, but where do you think that system came from? What do you think’s doing the speaking and processing the symbols? You act like culture and language float in some metaphysical ether disconnected from neurons and evolution. It’s laughable. You’re just allergic to reductionism because it makes your foggy abstractions feel small.

Then you claim I “believe in physics like it’s some revolutionary worldview.” No—I just take it seriously. You, on the other hand, want to borrow its credibility while shoveling untestable nonsense underneath it, then cry foul when someone notices the stench. And when you’re finally cornered, with no answers left, you throw a tantrum, call me stupid, and declare you give up.

Good. That’s the first coherent statement you’ve made. If you can't define what you mean, can’t explain how it works, and can't respond without melting down, then yes—you should give up. Because you're not contributing to the discussion, you're just polluting it with pseudo-intellectual fluff and then storming off when it doesn’t get praised.

You’re not defending ideas, Alexiev—you’re defending the right to never be questioned. And in a serious conversation, that’s worthless.

"Transcendence" and "emergent" are good words. They don't refer to anything "mystical". Instead, they refer to the notion that by "transcending" examining the physical process of (for example) creating and using language scientists can understand language better than they can when they merely look at neurons firing in the brain. This is obvious (to anyone who isn't a moron). Of course language was developed by people. So what? Why shouldn't our interest in it and study of it "transcend" the physics of the brain, the study of which is largely unenlightening.

Thanks, though, for explaining my interest in dismissing reductionism. Did you arrive at that by examining my neurons? Or are you figuring it out some other way?

Yes, you call things "illogical" when they are "impossible to define or analyze without retreating into metaphorical gibberish." Have you ever read Lewis Carroll's logic puzzles? If you had, you would know that this definition is incorrect and ridiculous.

Everything has a physical cause. Great! Where does that get us? The Big Bang caused everything. But when we humans (does that include you Mike?) use the word "cause" we are looking for a handle we can manipulate. I tripped "because" I didn't look where I was going. OK. Maybe that was inevitable. But maybe (just maybe) by identifying the more proximate cause (the handle I can manipulate) I can avoid tripping in the future. Maybe I can learn to look where I'm going.

I grant that I despair of your ability to learn anything. You are like a religious fanatic. You think you know all the answers when in truth you know none of them. The question is not whether your form of determinism is correct, but whether it is valuable. As I tried (unsuccessfully) to explain before, it isn't. Just as the predetermined order of the shuffled cards is irrelevant to the gambler (because he doesn't know the order), the physical determinism of the universe is irrelevant to all of us (because we don't know the outcomes).

[Alexis Jacobi]

Homework (soul-work!) for dreary, afflicted Mike. I will help you! Take one step towards me, I’ll take 1,000 toward you!

Here is your assignment: Read and sing the following:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

[Alexis Jacobi]

…Poetry, the hand that wrings,
Bruised albeit at the strings,
Music from the soul of things.

[BigMike]

Oh, Alexiev—this is exactly what happens when your tangled metaphors, lazy mysticism, and philosophical name-dropping finally collapse under the weight of a simple demand for clarity: you lash out.

You accuse me of misusing language, but let’s be honest—you’re the one flailing around with words like “transcendent,” “emergent,” and “supernatural” without ever anchoring them to anything concrete. You say I call something “illogical” when I mean “not in conformance with my worldview.” No, Alexiev—I call it illogical when it violates the principles of basic reasoning, when it contradicts itself, and when it's impossible to define or analyze without retreating into metaphorical gibberish. That’s not my worldview—that’s just intellectual hygiene.

Then you try to argue that determinism is “irrelevant” because it doesn’t predict every human behavior like a horoscope. You don’t get it, and that’s your problem. Determinism isn’t a crystal ball—it’s an ontological statement about causality. It's the recognition that everything, including human thought, emotion, language, and behavior, arises from physical causes. Saying it's irrelevant because it doesn’t hand you a daily planner for people’s moods is like calling gravity irrelevant because it doesn't predict who will win a marathon. You're confusing levels of analysis.

And your smug little “we learn about language by studying language, not brains”—as if that’s some kind of mic drop—is just embarrassing. Of course we study language as a system, but where do you think that system came from? What do you think’s doing the speaking and processing the symbols? You act like culture and language float in some metaphysical ether disconnected from neurons and evolution. It’s laughable. You’re just allergic to reductionism because it makes your foggy abstractions feel small.

Then you claim I “believe in physics like it’s some revolutionary worldview.” No—I just take it seriously. You, on the other hand, want to borrow its credibility while shoveling untestable nonsense underneath it, then cry foul when someone notices the stench. And when you’re finally cornered, with no answers left, you throw a tantrum, call me stupid, and declare you give up.

Good. That’s the first coherent statement you’ve made. If you can't define what you mean, can’t explain how it works, and can't respond without melting down, then yes—you should give up. Because you're not contributing to the discussion, you're just polluting it with pseudo-intellectual fluff and then storming off when it doesn’t get praised.

You’re not defending ideas, Alexiev—you’re defending the right to never be questioned. And in a serious conversation, that’s worthless.

"Transcendence" and "emergent" are good words. They don't refer to anything "mystical". Instead, they refer to the notion that by "transcending" examining the physical process of (for example) creating and using language scientists can understand language better than they can when they merely look at neurons firing in the brain. This is obvious (to anyone who isn't a moron). Of course language was developed by people. So what? Why shouldn't our interest in it and study of it "transcend" the physics of the brain, the study of which is largely unenlightening.

Thanks, though, for explaining my interest in dismissing reductionism. Did you arrive at that by examining my neurons? Or are you figuring it out some other way?

Yes, you call things "illogical" when they are "impossible to define or analyze without retreating into metaphorical gibberish." Have you ever read Lewis Carroll's logic puzzles? If you had, you would know that this definition is incorrect and ridiculous.

Everything has a physical cause. Great! Where does that get us? The Big Bang caused everything. But when we humans (does that include you Mike?) use the word "cause" we are looking for a handle we can manipulate. I tripped "because" I didn't look where I was going. OK. Maybe that was inevitable. But maybe (just maybe) by identifying the more proximate cause (the handle I can manipulate) I can avoid tripping in the future. Maybe I can learn to look where I'm going.

I grant that I despair of your ability to learn anything. You are like a religious fanatic. You think you know all the answers when in truth you know none of them. The question is not whether your form of determinism is correct, but whether it is valuable. As I tried (unsuccessfully) to explain before, it isn't. Just as the predetermined order of the shuffled cards is irrelevant to the gambler (because he doesn't know the order), the physical determinism of the universe is irrelevant to all of us (because we don't know the outcomes).

Alexiev, you keep swinging wildly, hoping that if you hit enough buzzwords with enough attitude, it'll somehow count as a rebuttal. It doesn’t. What you’ve offered here isn’t a counterargument—it’s a defensive ramble dressed up in faux sophistication, as if name-dropping Lewis Carroll and whining about reductionism makes up for your inability to engage with the core point: your ideas are empty until you define them, ground them, and show how they work.

“Transcendence” and “emergent” are not magic passes that let you skip the hard part of explanation. They’re perfectly fine concepts—when used properly. But you’re not doing that. You’re trying to use “emergent” like a mystical escape hatch—some ethereal domain that language floats up into, safe from the dirty, deterministic hands of neuroscience. Except language doesn’t live in the clouds, Alexiev. It lives in brains, in mouths, in ink, in circuits. Studying how brains produce and process language is part of understanding language. You want to cherry-pick the layers that feel more poetic and pretend the rest are irrelevant. That’s not transcendence. That’s laziness.

And your snide remark—“Did you arrive at that by examining my neurons?”—is the kind of smug nonsense people use when they’re out of arguments. Of course we don’t have to slice your brain open to understand what you’re saying. But your words, thoughts, and behavior are still caused by brain activity. That’s not some cute contradiction. That’s just how causality works. There’s no ghost behind the wheel, no metaphysical puppeteer. Just meat, electricity, experience, and context—interacting in deterministic chains you keep trying to wave away.

Then you stumble into this gem: “Everything has a physical cause. Great! Where does that get us?”

Seriously? That gets us science, Alexiev. It gets us the ability to explain, predict, intervene, and understand the world we live in. If everything has a cause, then knowledge becomes possible. Manipulation becomes possible. Progress becomes possible. If you really believe that saying “everything has a cause” is trivial or unhelpful, you’re either being disingenuous or you’ve missed the last 400 years of human advancement.

Your gambling analogy? Cute, but false. You say determinism is irrelevant because we don’t know the exact outcomes. That’s like saying weather science is useless because we can’t predict the exact temperature five weeks from now. Just because we don’t know the full causal chain doesn’t mean we throw causality out—it means we improve our understanding of it. You want to sit in the fog and say “oh well, it’s all too complex.” Meanwhile, the rest of us are building models and making progress.

And finally, your parting shot: “You are like a religious fanatic.” No, Alexiev. A religious fanatic believes something without evidence and calls it truth. I’m demanding evidence, explanation, and coherence, and calling out those who refuse to provide it. You, on the other hand, are defending unfalsifiable fluff, misusing terms, refusing to define your claims, and throwing tantrums when challenged.

You’re not offering a meaningful worldview. You’re offering a tired dance of deflection, dressed in jargon, sprinkled with arrogance, and hollow at its core.

If this is your best, it’s no wonder you keep falling back on fairy tales and philosophical name-dropping.

Keep dodging. I’ll keep dragging the fog into the light.

[promethean75]

See what i mean, Mike? It's just more flagrant flourishes of fluff from the mob of mendacious metaphysical marauders and rhetorically tangled pseudo-scientific snake-oil swindling sophists.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I do not (yet) offer a snake oil. I just don’t think there is money in it these days. But, I do have an Angelic Elixir which will knock your metaphysical ball out of the lonesome park of flickering scientistic images …

[BigMike]

See what i mean, Mike? It's just more flagrant flourishes of fluff from the mob of mendacious metaphysical marauders and rhetorically tangled pseudo-scientific snake-oil swindling sophists.

Exactly, Promethean. That’s the perfect distillation.

These people aren’t having a conversation—they’re performing a ritual of evasion, dressing up empty assertions in lyrical misdirection and calling it depth. They think if they stack enough adjectives, conjure a few vaguely Kantian phrases, and use “emergent” or “transcendent” in every other sentence, no one will notice that there’s no engine under the hood.

It's all performance. No clarity, no evidence, no coherent structure—just philosophical cosplay with a thesaurus and a superiority complex.

And when you cut through the fluff and ask the obvious question—what do you mean, how do you know, and how does it work?—they either collapse into hand-waving or accuse you of being too "literal," too "modern," or too “closed-minded” to grasp their brilliant, unexplained insight.

You nailed it: rhetorical snake oil—slick language bottled up and sold as revelation, with no active ingredients.

But hey, at least it's entertaining watching them implode under their own metaphors.

[BigMike]

1. Assumption – A belief taken for granted without much evidence or even reflection. It’s the mental placeholder we use before we know what’s what.

2. Supposition – A belief that has some rationale or plausibility, but remains tentative and untested. It’s the realm of “what if” thinking—curious, but uncertain.

3. Belief – A conviction that feels reasonably grounded—perhaps supported by experience or indirect evidence—but not rigorously proven. Comfortable, familiar, but open to doubt.

4. Knowledge – A belief justified by strong evidence, logical coherence, and empirical validation. This is where confidence meets verification.

5. Faith – A belief held with emotional or existential commitment, regardless of—or without needing—external proof. Not always irrational, but untethered from strict evidence.

6. Dogma – A belief held with rigid certainty despite contrary evidence. This is blind faith: not just belief without evidence, but belief against evidence.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But hey, at least it's entertaining watching them implode under their own metaphors.

… which is also a rather fun metaphor.

I wonder if some sort of collaboration is possible between the philosophy of Promethean and the acute rational scientism of BigMike could be forged?

If nothing else Promethean is a sort-of revolutionary Marxist. I am aware of no “metaphysical” dimension nor much that is allusive or provocative in any but a kind of nihilistic way. I regret (in some sense) pointing out that he reveals himself as loveless, relationship-less, an outcast due to past social misdeeds. Not the happiest of pictures. Yet adept conceptually. Nevertheless trapped (or perhaps “lost”) in unfulfilled life.

Note that if I try to describe a man situationally I do not necessarily set myself up as outside of the same problem. And I really do think we exist in a severe problem.

And that “problem” is rarely discussed, it seems to me. Or rarely admitted. Or unrealized in the Platonic sense of self-knowledge.

What I notice in Mike is the intensity of his desire to construct an absolutist edifice. It is so much like religious conviction! But Promethean has no comparable idealistic motive. He is like a dead man who yet talks — in continual ironies. Every once in a while something semi-serious is expressed but nothing of idealistic value. Just the vain hope that the workers will take over the means of production. Not enough to live on there.

Overall, if there is a “battle” here, it is not really about physical facts in contrast to ideational potencies, but (in my view) a contest between deadened protagonists of a stultifying “philosophy” (which is no philosophy at all) and others who have realized certain things about Life that have to do with meaning. And all valuable meaning always deals on what is metaphysical to the raw world of merely natural processes.

So, how about it? A Promethean/BigMike synthesis. Maybe a pamphlet is forthcoming?

[Alexis Jacobi]

If “gods” is understood in a certain way what is expressed (Plato’s Laws) expresses a great deal of valuable sense:

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

And this which you now deem of no moment is the very highest of all: that is whether you have a right idea of the gods, whereby you may live your life well or ill. But first I would point out to you something bearing on this question, which you will hardly dispute; — it is thus:

Neither you nor your friends are the first to hold atheistical opinions; there have always been plenty of persons suffering from this disease — and I can tell you how it has gone with a good many of them who were in your condition: how not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods, ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction; although I grant that the other two diseased notions concerning the gods may and do persist with a few persons: the notion I mean that gods exist but that they regard not human affairs, and that other notion that they regard human affairs but are easily persuaded by sacrifice and prayer.

Whatever doctrine then concerning the gods may have won your immature conviction, you will, if you listen to me, await before seeking even to examine it, whether it be false or true.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The last lines of Kafka’s The Hunter Gracchus come to mind:

“I have no intentions,” said the hunter with a smile and, to make up for his mocking tone, laid a hand on the burgomaster’s knee. “I am here. I don’t know any more than that. There’s nothing more I can do. My boat is without a helm—it journeys with the wind which blows in the deepest regions of death.