Benjamin Cain
2 min readFeb 27, 2022

--

You keep going to ad hominem and to pop psychological diagnoses. It's none of my business why individuals believe what they do. I'm not a therapist. I'm talking about the beliefs in the abstract.

And I honour the universe's sublimity with pantheism. Theism is redundant. Saying that the natural order requires intelligent design is a pseudo-explanation. Pantheism is consistent with scientific knowledge, whereas theism isn't.

I agree that there's a difference between knowledge and understanding, and there's much that scientists know and can control even though they don't understand fully what's happening. That's where philosophy and perhaps religion should supplement scientific models. But scientists show that they know what they're talking about by being able to apply their models with technological exploitations of natural processes. I call this the Promethean, Faustian, humanistic, and instrumental agenda of science (links below).

I agree that philosophical reasoning might be an exaptation and perhaps even more of a burden than a boon. But it's part of our nature that makes us tragic heroes in the animal kingdom. You can say it's sinful and impudent for animals to attempt to be gods. But how petty would God have to be to be "jealous" in that respect, to punish us for eating from the Tree of Knowledge, and to divide us to conquer us for building the Tower of Babel? Clearly, that conception of God is an all-too human representation of the unknown. We're the ones who are jealous, petty, and vindictive.

God is alien, amoral, indifferent nature. The question is how we should respond to the inhuman Other, not whether we should credit our cheap, tribal personifications.

https://medium.com/the-philosophers-stone/the-promethean-revolt-and-the-cosmic-meaning-of-art-a43dd213ee91?sk=c53c9da512ed22b88d192242ba44070c

https://medium.com/@benjamincain8/the-greater-miracles-of-science-e75790c945d?source=friends_link&sk=3c4e333f10982ba00dfd341c8dc162f2

--

--

Benjamin Cain
Benjamin Cain

Written by Benjamin Cain

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://benjamincain.substack.com / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom

Responses (1)