The Anthropic Puzzle, and the Nature of Human Epistemology

Imagine you find a twenty-four-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle in a thrift store. You assume it is twenty-four-thousand pieces because that's what it says on the box---and it's a huge box. The only other thing on the box is a picture of a man. There are no explanations.

The price tag sticker on the box says "2 cents". When you look inside the box, you see only a bunch of normal-sized pure black puzzle pieces that shimmer in the light. Despite the large number of pieces, you find this puzzle compelling. You estimate that its assembled size would be about 144 square feet---not too big for your living room floor.

So, out of an odd curiosity, you buy the puzzle and take it home. After all, it only cost you two cents. As you begin laying out the pieces on the floor, you notice that they all are randomly shaped on two opposing sides, while the other two sides are shaped like normal jigsaw puzzle pieces.

A few months later you have assembled enough groups of the pieces to realize that there is nothing random about the 'random' sides of the pieces: the puzzle is just a really huge border outlining the shape of a man. But, there is still something about this puzzle that puzzles you. Eventually, you get a hunch. You get working.

Your hunch is right: the shimmering quality of the pieces are parts of a faint hologram when laid out in a grid, with each piece simply abutting adjacent pieces. The hologram is of the words "You asked for it: my two cents."

At this point, you take a trip back to the thrift store to ask the employees, and hopefully also the owner, about this puzzle. You want to know who made it, and why. Strangely, every employee you find is identically reticent in their answer. They all reply with a shrug and say, "It's just a puzzle." This gets on your nerves.

Weeks go by before you finally track down so much as the store owner's phone number. It's an unlisted number---which increases your irritation. You call him up, your hands shaking in frustration, and you beg him to tell you about the puzzle. He replies simply, "It's just a puzzle". You explode.

You scream through the phone at him, demanding that he explain why everyone who knows about the puzzle keeps giving that same non-answer.

He replies that "that's the whole point: it's just a puzzle: the actual world is already assembled, and you're down in it."

"I'm down in it?", you ask. "What does that mean?"

He replies, "From your perspective, the actual world is highly topographic, and you are not able to look down on it. The only thing you can look down on is the puzzle itself----like a paper map of the world, it's not the actual world down in which you live. If you want to understand the world, you have to understand your relative position in it. You have to be willing to look up."

After a few moments of silence, you ask him, "Who made the puzzle?"

"You did." he says.

"I mean, who made the pieces?"

He hems and haws for a bit, and then says, "Why..., do you want your two cents back?"

He Was, Too, Just Doing His Job: What Spiritual Leadership Is Not

I want here to ask one of many questions about a particular kind of pastor regarding his oft claim to have been called to be a pastor. First, I must describe the kind of pastor I ask about:
Before he became a 'pastor', and before he even began studying to become a 'pastor', he was not inclined of himself to minister to people's spiritual needs. In other words, when he was, as yet, 'merely a Christian', he was not particularly inclined to 'spiritual service' until he got the idea of 'becoming a pastor'. ^^^Furthermore, the core of this pastor's concept of 'being a pastor' was (and still is) that he had something to say and wanted people to hear it and assent to it. In other words, he had opinions that were itching to be heard, and specifically heard by an audience who would be loyal to his 'leadership' as the official spokesman for The Smallest Details Of The Truth of God's Word As He Saw It. ^^^Finally, this pastor had, and still has, no natural inclination to treat others as fellow human beings, much less as friends, unless he already thinks or knows that they believe, and do, exactly as he believes and does regarding everything that he is uptight about which the New Testament letters mention for being faithful members of a church---namely his church. In other words, his fellowship with a particular person is something that he has the special authority to grant or reject based on his presumptions as to what this person believes because of how that person reacts to his 'ministry'. After all, he speaks the words of Truth [as did the uptight pharisees], so he feels that if this person rejects fellowship with him, then he presumes that this person is also rejecting fellowship with the Truth.^^^I should here mention that my very sanity was in question until I had spent years NOT attending, years spent alone trying to understand what was the truth about me and why I did not want to attend; years spent trying to sort out my fear of divine damnation for not being able as a small child to welcome the 'evangelistic' arm-twisting of my elders that supposedly resulted in people 'getting saved' ('Repeat after me' or else we will hound you for life as unsaved and needing to submit to our salvation machine, including, afterword, playing a cookie- cutter 'I'm saved!' 'new believer' 'witnessing' frenzy).^^^I had never officially-and-formally 'said the Sinner's Prayer'. The few times that I found myself being asked 'when I got saved', I was simply terrified of them lest they find out that I had not 'said the Sinner's Prayer', because I knew that if they asked me to do so, I would have been unable either to do so or to convincingly play their 'I'm saved!' new believer frenzy.^^^I could not begin to understand why I did not want to kiss their holy asses in 'saying the Sinner's Prayer' if they asked me would I like to. I felt very internally conflicted; that, even though I always felt and knew that God loved me as his child, somehow God must have decided to reserve me for damnation because I knew that I would be unable to submit to these 'spiritual leader's' requirements to their satisfaction.^^^I was unable to be truly welcomed as a fellow Christian by my own biological father because he believed that I was not 'saved' since he had never seen me with a 'lifted load of sin', nor heard me 'happy in Christ as a new believer' as he had been. So, I grew up being occasionally reminded, in effect, that I was not welcome as a fellow Christian in ant Christian gathering: I had no 'witness' to being 'saved'. I knew that if some officially 'saved' person thought that I was not saved, then I knew that I had no way to prove either to him or to myself that I was, since I had never either officially 'said the Sinner's Prayer' or went through an 'I'm saved!' new believer's frenzy.^^^I felt I was doomed to be damned, because I neither had ever 'said the Sinner's Prayer' nor wished ever to begin what I knew would be a never-ended struggle with these 'spiritual leaders' to 'get me truly saved' by repeatedly putting me through their Salvation Machine and seeing what I acted like when I came out the other side of it. I could never pull off a 'new believer' act, because I was put under the impression by these zealous 'spiritual leaders' that 1)salvation is an officially overseen formality, 2)the initial proof of salvation is a 'new believer' frenzy on the part of the new believer, and 3)the highest proof of salvation is a radically changed life.^^^So, I had no words, acts, or 'feeling of assurance' to prove either to myself or to these 'evangelistic pastors' that I was saved. I was terrified, traumatized, every time the subject came up. I still am, but now only by these sick-and-twisted uptight vipers, who, at their 'righteously' presumptuous whim, can simply send me into that inescapable dark trauma again and again. From the pulpit, without ever directly getting to know me as a human being. As if I can never be tenderly treated like he treats his own adopted son unless first I become what I, in fact, can never be: his own 'pastorly' reflection.^^^So, my question is, does this kind of pastor warrant anyone's loyalty as a genuine spiritual leader---much less the loyalty of those he mistakes as rebellious for their endless refusal to 'attend church.' My own answer is simply that I have no fellowship with vipers who are full of their own sense of their ability to 'discern' people through 'The Plain Word Of God'. The fact is that I have never, in my life, had a genuine spiritual leader when it counted. And, I'm not the only one in my shoes, not by a thousand. I know some quite personally who are in basically the same fix. Some directly related to me.^^^So, Preacher Boy, if you ever read this, know one thing: there is a price on your head in the court of Heaven. Because, it is against such as you are that the feebleminded have the best defense attorney in that court. You do not cause me to sin, which would be a small thing compared to what you do cause: you cause me to lose all sanity by the dread of your falsely discerning sternness. My question to you is, which sin of these of your two would be worse for you to commit? You are like your father and grandfather, a viper. You adore your ability to 'discern' individuals, and your father presumed for his own selfish position as a 'pastor' that I was his sheep. Me, Superman. You, like your father and his father, count sheep in the worst way: by simply presuming both to know a sheep for who and what he really is, and then to count him as yours: a mere sheep underneath you as his Head. Step down or be cursed. Walk away.^^^Preacher Boy, not you, not your father, and not his father, was ever called to be a pastor. Because you smash and scatter the feeblest sheep when they do not stay in lock-step with the dumbest-but-strongest like yourself. You are simply a man with an opinion as to what everyone is about, based on what you are about in your own twisted, 'Biblically' [self-] 'righteous' heart. You look to the heavens with only one eye, the other eye always fixed firmly on those over whom you most presume to rightfully-shepherd-if-only-they-would-submit. So, what you see in either image has no depth. Like what must have been the way of the early-model replicants never seen in the Bladerunner movie: No real memories, just programs.^^^How is it that you did not know that you shall judge angels, until you heard that the Bible says so? You still didn't know even then, you simply accept it as 'revealed truth' because 'God said so', and so you did not see the implication of the Apostle's question. To you, it was merely like a computer program that you have the duty simply to accept as true because the Bible asserts it. Like the following assertion of your own:
"Our mission centers around this question: Where will you be 10 minutes after you die? "
http://www.towncenterbaptist.com/?content=message
^^^Preacher Boy, not every kind of 'centered-around' is good just because the thing being centered around is good. The Sabbath and the Tithe were very 'centered around' by the Pharisees. And marriage is neither synonymous with, or created by, the sex act, because, among less evil things, rape is not marriage by any means. And, if you think that you or your father has never raped anyone simply because you and he have never intended to do so, think again. The effect of your self-adoringly 'ordained' and 'Biblically' puplit-centric 'ministry' speak louder than any truthful words you can mouth from it. The error of secular state incorporation to which the Church has commonly submitted 'itself' is not the disease, it is a final symptom. You are the disease.^^^False spiritual leadership always ends up admiring its sense of 'discernment' so much that, generations of 'pastors' later, nothing so insignificant as secular incorporation of the Church is particularly worth worrying about either way. You strain at a legal gnat and swallow a spiritual camel. The first man, Adam, was a pastor, but he did not presume to call down a miracle of blessing upon his 'special' words uttered from a pulpit. That's partly because he had only one certain thing around which his ministering could be centered: his own life story and for which all his listeners found themselves in a fallen life in a fallen world. And, partly because he had not inherited the notion of being a 'pastor' which you have, a notion within which you think you are so rich because you can simply judge every act and evidence according to the mere words of a book that you worship in place of God.^^^To you, like to your father, being a spiritual leader is about interpreting everything everyone does by looking at the mere words in that book. If the book neither states or actively implies an exception to a rule that it does state, then you feel that you are in the right to simply come down against anyone who fails to abide by the merest words of its statement. You do this all for maintaining your own 'pastorly' position. So, the spiritual wolves against which you love to preach (many of whom are not as you accuse) are saints compared to you, because you are a viper in a long line of vipers.^^^Your only grace, Preacher Boy, as a 'pastor' is that, unlike your grandfather, you see no good in throwing hymnals at dozing attendees. I wrote your father once, but he did not reply. So I wrote him again, and again, and again. And, still, he never stooped down to me, never sought me out as a fellow human being to find out what makes me tick. Because he was too busy 'working in the Word'. Too busy thinking within the tidy box of his self-adoringly 'called-to-be-a-pastor' presumptions.^^^No, Preacher Boy, your father had a sense that he was a sinner alright. But, a lack of that sense is not what being a self-righteous pharisee is quite entirely about. He was still counting sheep and preparing to 'feed' them, so he did not at all know the few feeble ones for what they were: feeble. He was perfectly content in his official, 'ordained' position to mistake them for supermen and over which he loved to feel that he was so recognized-by-God-as-being-among-the-very-elect-in-wisdom as to be these supermen's spiritual leader. He simply presumed what they were about by way of 'what is warranted': no direct knowledge necessary, no inquiry required. Just 'preach the Word'. As if everyone is just like you, and only that some will not submit to the 'Word of God' from your pulpit.^^^Do you think that by 'being a pastor' of the Word of God you have more grace of wisdom than anyone who refuses to submit to you as their pastor? If you don't think it, yet you still feel, act, and 'discern' as if you have such grace. As if by 'being a pastor' you have a corner on a kind of grace that you feel is available only to those who are 'saved' by way of your self-centered 'pastoral grace'. I'm here to tell you that there are only two kinds of grace, and that you have almost none of either: saving grace, and common grace. I am the thief on the cross; and you, like your father and his father, are a pharisee who presumes that this thief cannot be counted righteous unless he goes to Christ through you or someone like you. You viper. I will not call you for need of a pastor. You will call me for need of your life.

Monday, February 11, 2008
Still Counting Sheep: Heathen Spirits in the Name of Christ (Atheism Doesn't Get Any Worse Than This, Preacher Boy)
Too many preachers think of themselves as pastors, as spiritual leaders, as under-shepherds. Too many of them adore themselves in quoting scripture from behind a respected pulpit, such as:The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'But, atheism is not primarily a denial of God. It is primarily a denial of how people ought to think of, and treat, each other in the face of the invisible God. It is the spirit of heathens, which is primarily self-admiration in the face of visible fellow human beings. Many Christians are atheists, or heathens, in effect, because of how they think of, and treat, strangers who they target for 'soul winning', and because of how they think of, and treat, children in the name of education. Adam did not learn spiritual leadership from a self-admiring preacher boy with a dogmatic, 'Biblical' attitude.If thought (or discernment) is defined as the ability to recognize something, then this is not enough to know anything in the first place. You need to be able to identify something to begin with in order to be able 're-cognize' it when you see it again. And, that's the very problem, because even if thought is defined (i.e., identified) as the ability both to identify and to recognize things, then a computer can, in effect, think. The question is what criteria is to be used to identify whatever it is that is being identified. The wrong criteria will result in partial, or primary, or even complete, misidentification.So, what is needed for actual thought is an actual sensibility, a sense about things, whether the experience of the red of a rose, or the observing of one's own thinking (qualia and metacognition, respectively). A sense about things might alternatively be called imagination, or awarness, or sentience. Sensibility is something which neither radios or computers have, because these objects are only objects, only machines; they are nothing more than glorified hammers; there is nobody 'in there', there is no 'little man inside the radio'; they cannot actually identify anything, they can only simulate for us what we 'identify with'. The same goes for books.An 'educational process' that consists primarily of being spoon-fed a Primary Document to identify-and-recognize, and according to prescribed criteria, does not produce an educated mind, it produces a programmed mind---a brainwashed mind. And, if the victim of such brainwashing arrogantly welcomes it as THE TRUTH, then that victim's mind becomes preoccupied with a sense of its ablity to 'discern' both facts and spirits, both conditions and intentions. The less such a 'discerning' person knows about the differences within different people, the more such a person feels sure of his own ability to 'discern' other's through that Primary Document.Imagination---a sense about things---is the core of thought. To learn anything for real, you not only need the ability to identify-and-recognize things, you also need imagination. And, I hope you recognize that imagination includes an awareness of the black expanse of personal ignorance and solely from which new knowledge is gained. Wanting to know something implies ignorance, and every baby is born with the natural action of 'searching' for things to discover, things that are new to him. We can search inside things that we have never explored before, or inside things with which we are already acquainted. This natural act of 'searching' for things to discover (or identify) is the root of effective thought, because it implies sensibility. Computing machines do not actually search, we simply make them function in ways that automate a presentation of raw information. The crowds of little 'bugs' you are currently looking at (what Tarzan called the letters of these words) is simply raw information.Notice that I said the NATURAL act of 'searching' for things. But, this natural act can be prevented or corrupted if the person is routinely and arbitrarily imposed upon to 'pay attention' to something else. And, the 'something else' can even be nothing more than the effort to comply with an impatient and presumptive demand that he initiate a search. This is human thinking turned into a chore. An even worse implication about this is that chores can often become things you do simply to get them done and out of the way. Worse still, the compliance to the command to initiate a search is degraded by an order of magnitude if the searcher is imposed upon to identify new things according to prescribed criteria. In this way, a person's efforts to learn---to search for things---becomes hijacked.A child sometimes needs guidance in understanding things, especially in regard to wisdom in an evil world. But, this does not mean he must be treated meanly just to make sure he doesn't one day end up rejecting what we tell him. To hijack a child's effort of searching is to treat the child as if his mind were little more than the Mars Rover commanded by NASA. This kind of teacher-to-child relationship presupposes that the child may rightly be 'tested' constantly such that the 'testing' attitude of the teacher toward the child makes the child self-conscious in an uncomfortable way: a micro-managed, breathing-down-your-neck-even-when-the-teacher-is-absent feeling.Such hijacking is not a natural human relationship, especially if it is heavy-handed, or even if it feels heavy-handed to the child from past abuse (analogous to having a very raw wound that someone handles as if there is no wound, so that the pain is out of proportion to what the handler intends). This unnatural relationship is compounded when the teacher, at least in effect, equates thought with expression---especially with preconceived forms of expression. Such a teacher may think that the child's relative inability to articulate his thoughts about certain ideas means that the child only poorly understands those ideas. The teacher can articulate her own thoughts about those ideas comparatively well, so she assumes that her own thoughts about those ideas are right, especially if the child has no ready and articulate objection to her expressed thoughts.To hijack a child's mind like this is to make an effective claim to essential dominion over the child (Genesis 1:28)---just as if the child were a robot made to serve its human maker. Don't presume to represent my maker to me, preacher boy. Atheism doesn't get any worse than you. In fact, you can be worse than an atheist because only the Truth, not a lie, can be misused. Only the Truth misused can truly rape feeble-minded souls.God's Word was made for man, not man for God's Word. That's because it's not sufficient in every sense of sufficient. Only God is that sufficient. Even God's Word, in the book of Revelation, says that there shall, in the future, be two prophets of God who shall prophecy. Don't you know that the Last Fact in a list of Facts is not synonymous with the Last Truth, and that the Last Truth in a list of Truths is not synonymous with the last word?You, Preacher Boy, are not a pastor, much less a suitable one. You are a vending machine from hell. The ability to carefully prepare highly proprietary slop, and dump it in a feed trough, does not make you a pastor when, regardless of your success in getting most of your sheep to stand and eat it, you condemn as stubborn what is, in fact, another man's sheep that is both very ill from this heathenized slop and was born without legs. This one sheep, that you thought was a strong one of your own, which you thought to show off to other shepherds as proof of your 'blessing of superior discernment'; that God would give you, of all shepherds, such a sheep.So, what about the fool? I have just one thing to say, and it is not to him. Rather, it is to the preacher who claims that since he has the Word of God, he has the automatic discernment of God: You are a viper dancing to your own charm.
Posted by Daniel Pech at 11:57 PM 0 comments
Labels: 1333 words

Still Counting Sheep: Heathen Spirits in the Name of Christ (Atheism Doesn't Get Any Worse Than This, Preacher Boy)

Too many preachers think of themselves as pastors, as spiritual leaders, as under-shepherds. Too many of them adore themselves in quoting scripture from behind a respected pulpit, such as:
The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'
But, atheism is not primarily a denial of God. It is primarily a denial of how people ought to think of, and treat, each other in the face of the invisible God. It is the spirit of heathens, which is primarily self-admiration in the face of visible fellow human beings. Many Christians are atheists, or heathens, in effect, because of how they think of, and treat, strangers who they target for 'soul winning', and because of how they think of, and treat, children in the name of education. Adam did not learn spiritual leadership from a self-admiring preacher boy with a dogmatic, 'Biblical' attitude.
If thought (or discernment) is defined as the ability to recognize something, then this is not enough to know anything in the first place. You need to be able to identify something to begin with in order to be able 're-cognize' it when you see it again. And, that's the very problem, because even if thought is defined (i.e., identified) as the ability both to identify and to recognize things, then a computer can, in effect, think. The question is what criteria is to be used to identify whatever it is that is being identified. The wrong criteria will result in partial, or primary, or even complete, misidentification.
So, what is needed for actual thought is an actual sensibility, a sense about things, whether the experience of the red of a rose, or the observing of one's own thinking (qualia and metacognition, respectively). A sense about things might alternatively be called imagination, or awarness, or sentience. Sensibility is something which neither radios or computers have, because these objects are only objects, only machines; they are nothing more than glorified hammers; there is nobody 'in there', there is no 'little man inside the radio'; they cannot actually identify anything, they can only simulate for us what we 'identify with'. The same goes for books.
An 'educational process' that consists primarily of being spoon-fed a Primary Document to identify-and-recognize, and according to prescribed criteria, does not produce an educated mind, it produces a programmed mind---a brainwashed mind. And, if the victim of such brainwashing arrogantly welcomes it as THE TRUTH, then that victim's mind becomes preoccupied with a sense of its ablity to 'discern' both facts and spirits, both conditions and intentions. The less such a 'discerning' person knows about the differences within different people, the more such a person feels sure of his own ability to 'discern' other's through that Primary Document.
Imagination---a sense about things---is the core of thought. To learn anything for real, you not only need the ability to identify-and-recognize things, you also need imagination. And, I hope you recognize that imagination includes an awareness of the black expanse of personal ignorance and solely from which new knowledge is gained. Wanting to know something implies ignorance, and every baby is born with the natural action of 'searching' for things to discover, things that are new to him. We can search inside things that we have never explored before, or inside things with which we are already acquainted. This natural act of 'searching' for things to discover (or identify) is the root of effective thought, because it implies sensibility. Computing machines do not actually search, we simply make them function in ways that automate a presentation of raw information. The crowds of little 'bugs' you are currently looking at (what Tarzan called the letters of these words) is simply raw information.
Notice that I said the NATURAL act of 'searching' for things. But, this natural act can be prevented or corrupted if the person is routinely and arbitrarily imposed upon to 'pay attention' to something else. And, the 'something else' can even be nothing more than the effort to comply with an impatient and presumptive demand that he initiate a search. This is human thinking turned into a chore. An even worse implication about this is that chores can often become things you do simply to get them done and out of the way. Worse still, the compliance to the command to initiate a search is degraded by an order of magnitude if the searcher is imposed upon to identify new things according to prescribed criteria. In this way, a person's efforts to learn---to search for things---becomes hijacked.
A child sometimes needs guidance in understanding things, especially in regard to wisdom in an evil world. But, this does not mean he must be treated meanly just to make sure he doesn't one day end up rejecting what we tell him. To hijack a child's effort of searching is to treat the child as if his mind were little more than the Mars Rover commanded by NASA. This kind of teacher-to-child relationship presupposes that the child may rightly be 'tested' constantly such that the 'testing' attitude of the teacher toward the child makes the child self-conscious in an uncomfortable way: a micro-managed, breathing-down-your-neck-even-when-the-teacher-is-absent feeling.
Such hijacking is not a natural human relationship, especially if it is heavy-handed, or even if it feels heavy-handed to the child from past abuse (analogous to having a very raw wound that someone handles as if there is no wound, so that the pain is out of proportion to what the handler intends). This unnatural relationship is compounded when the teacher, at least in effect, equates thought with expression---especially with preconceived forms of expression. Such a teacher may think that the child's relative inability to articulate his thoughts about certain ideas means that the child only poorly understands those ideas. The teacher can articulate her own thoughts about those ideas comparatively well, so she assumes that her own thoughts about those ideas are right, especially if the child has no ready and articulate objection to her expressed thoughts.
To hijack a child's mind like this is to make an effective claim to essential dominion over the child (Genesis 1:28)---just as if the child were a robot made to serve its human maker. Don't presume to represent my maker to me, preacher boy. Atheism doesn't get any worse than you. In fact, you can be worse than an atheist because only the Truth, not a lie, can be misused. Only the Truth misused can truly rape feeble-minded souls.
God's Word was made for man, not man for God's Word. That's because it's not sufficient in every sense of sufficient. Only God is that sufficient. Even God's Word, in the book of Revelation, says that there shall, in the future, be two prophets of God who shall prophecy. Don't you know that the Last Fact in a list of Facts is not synonymous with the Last Truth, and that the Last Truth in a list of Truths is not synonymous with the last word?
You, Preacher Boy, are not a pastor, much less a suitable one. You are a vending machine from hell. The ability to carefully prepare highly proprietary slop, and dump it in a feed trough, does not make you a pastor when, regardless of your success in getting most of your sheep to stand and eat it, you condemn as stubborn what is, in fact, another man's sheep that is both very ill from this heathenized slop and was born without legs. This one sheep, that you thought was a strong one of your own, which you thought to show off to other shepherds as proof of your 'blessing of superior discernment'; that God would give you, of all shepherds, such a sheep.
So, what about the fool? I have just one thing to say, and it is not to him. Rather, it is to the preacher who claims that since he has the Word of God, he has the automatic discernment of God: You are a viper dancing to your own charm.