From: abell@netcom.com (Steven T. Abell)
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: GOD.
Keywords: god
Date: 26 Jan 93 22:34:38 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

mdc@crash.cts.com (Milo D. Cooper) writes:
>        The human mind is a passive system for the processing of
>information.  Intellect, personality, and ideas are formed through
>interaction with one's environment and no one can achieve active
>thought to allow perception beyond that dictated by experience.
>Anything that any of us ever does is a reaction to established
>elements of the outer environment (the space beyond our bodies) or
>the inner environment (bodily functions).  Everything we do, we do
>for a reason.  Everything we do, we are moved to do, because we
>are creatures of reaction, and not of action.  Reasons for reaction
>are irrelevant at this point; they may be moral reasons or immoral
>reasons or good reasons or bad reasons or obvious reasons or incon-
>spicuous ones.

Wrong! The neat thing about the human mind is that it is *not* a passive
reactor. We continually run simulations on our mental models, consciously
and unconsciously. These models need not be corroborated by verifying
experiences initially: they are usually preliminary tests of potential models.
Simulations help us to disqualify bad models before we commit to having
them judged by reality. They also help us to learn what else we need to learn
before committing to them. An intelligent person projects himself into the
future to see what it's like living there. The projective mechanism holds
a balance between betting on chancy models and disqualifying them outright.

>        Progress of any kind is due to a flaw of human information
>processing which distorts incoming information based on the way in
>which one's mind is shaped by his/her inner and outer environments.
>Our minds divide environments into attention areas based on our
>experience and personal biases.  Insight, the element common to all
>revered figures of history, is a chance defying of logical reasoning
>which reveals a novel and/or better method of information processing.
>Logic itself can only proceed along mental pathways already defined
>by experience.  The best way to innovate is not by engaging in lo-
>gical thought; the best way to innovate is by making a mistake, be-
>cause logic is simply a process involving one reaction after another
>which deliberately avoids any seemingly irrelevant or contradictory
>information.

Wrong in specifics! See the previous paragraph. Insight is the result of an
adventurous mind and sheer good luck. The "flaw" you refer to derives from
scheduling chaos in a rather wet multiprocessing computer. Since this
gives us such a powerful tool for survival, how do you justify calling
it a flaw? It is corroborating evidence for evolution: finding new uses
for existing structures and mechanisms, which can then be extrapolated and
strengthened.

>        One cannot conceive of God when one cannot conceive of a
>being which occurs beyond the limits of time.  Because humans are
>unavoidably limited to existence within the confines of time, which
>happens to describe our terms of being, everything for many of
>us must have a beginning and, in most cases, an end.  Therefore,
>lots of us will be puzzled by the assertion that God was created by
>nothing and no one and "has always" existed and "always will" exist.

If you can accept a god that has no beginning or end, why not a universe
with no beginning or end?

Steve abell@netcom.com