Friday, June 01, 2007
It's in Our Genes
(3)
Bringing us to the immediate: tonight's music began with Beethoven's Choral Fantasy for Piano, Choir and Orchestra (Brendel). It will soon morph to Mozart. Naturally I will keep you informed.
In chapter one H mentions a sort of 'epiphany' when his bible teacher (a 'pious old trout') outraged his epistemological sensibilities at the tender age of nine, presumably causing him to doubt religion. That's pretty young. I'm not sure I can top that, but I have a clear recollection to the effect that after my first communion (about age six) I concluded that this 'religion thing' might well be bullshit. It would take me another 19 years to reach the definitive conclusion to that effect, and that only after reading (about) the British Empiricists (Locke, Berkley, and Hume). I also liked Mill, of course. I later graduated to Russell's more accessible works like, 'Why I am not a Christian.' Needless to say, I heartily concur with Dobbs' recommendation so far.
(Current (1711) music is Mozart PC#16. Good stuff.)
(time out for the news)
1804 and I am back. Big news is that Kevorkian (Doctor Death) is now out of prison. What a delicious subject! Death. We must all do it. We all hate it, hence religion. Even folks like Billy Graham (for example) and Pat Robertson (for example) hate it. We hate it intuitively. It's in our genes to hate it. It's an evolutionary thing. But the effects of evolution end at death. The processes of evolution end at death. Therefore there are no 'inherited' attitudes concerning the actual state of death. All such attitudes are cultural. We know nothing about 'after-death.' The more rational among us suppose that there is nothing to know in that regard. The rest of us hope for more life, after death, and speculate.
Bringing us to the immediate: tonight's music began with Beethoven's Choral Fantasy for Piano, Choir and Orchestra (Brendel). It will soon morph to Mozart. Naturally I will keep you informed.
In chapter one H mentions a sort of 'epiphany' when his bible teacher (a 'pious old trout') outraged his epistemological sensibilities at the tender age of nine, presumably causing him to doubt religion. That's pretty young. I'm not sure I can top that, but I have a clear recollection to the effect that after my first communion (about age six) I concluded that this 'religion thing' might well be bullshit. It would take me another 19 years to reach the definitive conclusion to that effect, and that only after reading (about) the British Empiricists (Locke, Berkley, and Hume). I also liked Mill, of course. I later graduated to Russell's more accessible works like, 'Why I am not a Christian.' Needless to say, I heartily concur with Dobbs' recommendation so far.
(Current (1711) music is Mozart PC#16. Good stuff.)
(time out for the news)
1804 and I am back. Big news is that Kevorkian (Doctor Death) is now out of prison. What a delicious subject! Death. We must all do it. We all hate it, hence religion. Even folks like Billy Graham (for example) and Pat Robertson (for example) hate it. We hate it intuitively. It's in our genes to hate it. It's an evolutionary thing. But the effects of evolution end at death. The processes of evolution end at death. Therefore there are no 'inherited' attitudes concerning the actual state of death. All such attitudes are cultural. We know nothing about 'after-death.' The more rational among us suppose that there is nothing to know in that regard. The rest of us hope for more life, after death, and speculate.
