Quantum Non-Linearity: Social Pecking Order in Fundamentalism

Thursday, October 03, 2013

Social Pecking Order in Fundamentalism

Every so often Young Earthist guru Jason Lisle's blog gets purged of selected content. In order to ensure the preservation of some significant comments I've published them below. These comments contain interesting material that touches on my primary interest in Lisle; namely Christian fundamentalism as a social phenomenon; in this particular connection I highlight the deferential demeanour of the follower toward his leader.

William Irwin Thompson says this about gurus and their disciples:

The gurus are tolerant and merely condescending now because they have no political power; but even without power they show full evidence of human frailty and vanity and tend to think that their own yoga is bigger and better than the other guru’s. And what is often only a case of mild condescension in the guru becomes in the disciples a fever of zealotry.

After I published Thompson's quote on my blog here I wrote:

This comment (by Thompson) applies to Christian "gurus" and their followers as much as it does to New Age gurus and their followers.

Below I've netted a fine example that bears this out: Here we find a zealous disciple's chagrin at seeing the maestro he so looks up to addressed in a way he perceives as disrespectful; and we must remember here that anything other than metaphorically prostrating one's self before the guru's teaching is regarded as an affront. Talking to a guru as an equal (or worse, making that guru look less than one's equal) means of course that in the pecking order of the guru's social nexus one is placing one's self very much above his fawning disciples and so by implication these disciples are insulted and (greatly) offended by one's behaviour. For these reasons what I publish below is a priceless gem.

Notes:

I hardly need repeat that I'm not at all impressed by Lisle's mature creation cosmology ; Like AiG's Biblical literalist's theme park it's burlesque science; this is the ugly edifice of teaching one is required respect. Below I mention another of Lisle's followers called "Preston". Find out about him using the link I have just given.

Timothy V Reeves says:

January 19, 2013 at 5:28 am

Hi Jason: Still waiting for that serious of blogs you mention above. However, there’s no rush as I realise that that sort of thing, if it is to be done properly, takes as long a it takes; so I’m sure you’re taking your time. However, you’ll be glad to know that I’m looking forward to you coming out to play.

Wayne says:

April 3, 2013 at 10:32 am

You really are proud, aren’t you? It is a wonder that you really think Dr. Lisle would deign to respond to you, as there really is no point. You have formed your own opinions in concrete, and you are not going to change them unless God changes you. So what then would be the point of your statement of Dr. Lisle coming out to play? Do you suppose yourself to be the bully on the playground who is pushing down a child? Dr. Lisle is a well respected Astrophysicist, and has contributed a great deal to science as a whole.
Perhaps you should work on being humble, I am not making a proud statement such as I am more humble than you, however I would not condescend so obviously to someone so obviously my senior.

Reply
- Timothy V Reeves says:
  
  August 4, 2013 at 10:01 am
  
  Well respected astrophysicist? You be can’t serious! Can you show me where in the professional (tax payer funded) literature Jason Lisle’s mature creation cosmology has had so much as a serious mention?
  
  Deigned to respond to me? Really? I count it a mixed blessing when for reasons beyond my control I come to the notice of fundamentalist gurus and their following, as I have on more than one occasion. But in spite of this not necessarily welcome attention, as a private researcher of Christian sectarianism (No tax payer money needed!) such contact can sometimes have the consolation of yielding useful data as has been the case here: Thank you, and thank you very much “Preston” for the fine work you have carried out.
  
  Clearly Jason isn’t being taken seriously as an astrophysicist in any professional capacity, but you will be pleased to know that as a free-lancer who works outside the social nexus of the established science community this won’t bias my considerations or make me think any worse of Jason. But by the same token, as I’m not in the sphere of influence covered by the social hierarchy status markers of the Biblical-literalist community your reference to pride issues are in my case totally without meaning.
  
  And a word of advice for you Wyane: If the social status of your guru-equivalent awes you, you have that much less chance of thinking independently.
  Reply
  
  [TVR Addendum 06/10/13: While I'm here I may as well add the precious gem below as a further sample of the sort of people who hang out with Jason Lisle. The first post below is what I thought to be my rather innocuous reply to an "Old Earther" like myself called Kenny who was posting on Lisle's blog. But just have a look at the response it evokes from one of Lisle's disciples called Preston! Like other fundamentalists of my experience he goes for the spiritual equivalent of the nuclear button straight away! Find out more about Preston here: mature creation cosmology. In that post I do wonder if Preston is in fact a troll!
  
  Timothy V Reeves says:
  
  September 21, 2012 at 12:32 pm
  
  Thanks for the reply, Kenny
  
  I think Jason will tell you (and at one level I agree with him) that he is simply using a (Biblical) coordinate transformation on a straight Einstein space-time. However, gravitational issues do emerge eventually (as we shall see in due time). But running with Jason’s maneuver as simply a coordinate transformation, questions still arise that threaten his ASC model. I’ll look at these at some date on my blog.
  
  So you’re old Earth like me! I have lot of respect for William Dembski and friends (and also Hank Hannegraph) although I wouldn’t say I’m entirely at one with the way ID is being handled by his community. However, sad to say that as far strict and particular fundamentalists are concerned a state of war exists between us!
  
  Reply
  - Preston says:
    
    September 21, 2012 at 6:17 pm
    
    Mr. Reeves,
    
    Your war is with God, and you’ve already lost. You should read your bible and believe it and repent before its too late. A lake of fire and eternal suffering await those who reject God till the end.
    
    [My Comment: That riposte by Preston reminded me of this http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/michael-hell-fire-voris-is-back-with.html ]

No comments:

THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION

“Ideas Versus Experience!" is a slogan expressing the uneasy relation between what we think the world to be and what our actual experience suggests it is. Experience makes or breaks ideas. But the reverse is also true: Well established ideas can influence the recognition, acceptance and even the perception of experience. In short there is a two way dialogue between ideas and experience. Sometimes that dialogue can turn into an argument, even a row.

The success of Science is based on a formalisation of this potentially contentious relationship as it seeks to support or refute theoretical notions by systematically comparing them with experience. In the far less formalized contexts of daily living we probably are using a similar heuristic when we display a tendency to drop ideas that lose the confrontation with experience, and retain those that win. Winning ideas, like the gladiators of the Roman arenas, live to fight another day. This Darwinian slant on the struggle for ideological survival is itself ideology that must, for consistency sake, submit itself to the very process it purports to describe. For example, it should be able to give account of the resilience of traditional theories in the face of contra indicators. And in the extreme, explanation also needs to be given of how conspiracy theorists continue to hold on to a ramifying structure of untested elaborations.

Human theoretical visions are often grand and sweeping, confidently affirming states of affairs that are far beyond immediate sensation. The vast unseen domains covered by our best theories contrasts with the limitations on human perceptual resources, resources that only allow a very sparse experimental sampling of our most ambitious ideas. Even a professional scientist only ever tests a small portion of any theoretical structure. Moreover, our theoretical concepts are ambitious enough to cover unreachable areas like the center of distant stars, sub-atomic dimensions, events long past into history, and very complex inscrutable objects like the human mind and its societies. Thus, science is metaphysical in as much as it has to admit that it covers vast domains inaccessible to testing in practice if not in principle. For the intelligent layman even the keyhole view of the experimental scientist may not be available. So whence comes the authority to affirm ideas that are often so grandiose in their sweep that they make claim to impinge upon the very meaning of life the universe and everything?

The fact is that for most of us the really big ideas diffuse through to us from our societal context, and at most these big ideas are only illuminated here and there, at a very few places, with actual direct experience of the phenomenon they conceptualise. These big ideas float around in the ether-like-media of society in the form of books, lectures, programmes, and the Internet etc, objects that the postmodernist philosophers call "texts".

For someone such as myself the battle to make sense of life was joined as soon as I was aware of mystery. But looking back it is clear to me that I haven't done an honest scientific experiment in the whole of my life. For me the effort to bring sense and integration to the complexity of life boils down to grappling with the many texts of society; These texts carry both big theoretical ideas and raw data from which ideas crystallize. These texts are compared with other texts in the search for coherence and consistency. These texts take the place and role of experiments as one tests theories using texts. These texts are in effect the experience of life. My own modest attempt at grandiose theorising has already been presented to the world. (See this blog "Physics and the Wild Web") and my excuse is that I have simply inherited the theoretical hubris of the human race.

The postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida said, "There is nothing outside the text". I think he was at least right about the primary role texts play in the life of those like myself whose instinct has been to grapple relentlessly with the riddles of life, and to seek out meaning and go where no man has gone before. But one could equally claim, "There is nothing outside the experience". For one might read the "text" of the clouds in the sky as a predictor of impending weather just as one reads socially generated symbolic configurations as the predictor of certain kinds of thought or potential experience. For the text is just as much an experience as more primeval phenomenon like thunder and lightning. Texts are part of our cosmic experience and they imperceptibly grade into the more conventional notion of experience. Where the crossover point is, is difficult to say.

Postmodernism may have got it right about the primary role of the text, but it has made one very serious mistake. Where I would radically differ from the postmodern view is that I believe the mass of social texts, if we allow them, naturally converge upon grand consistent narratives and those narratives are here to stay. And that is because these texts, I submit, are part of a world with an underlying rational integratedness and that integratedness is being revealed to us bit by bit. For revelation it is: Revelation is what we cannot discover unless God chooses that we discover it. My perceptions and reason, limited though they may be, were not self-made, they had to be discovered as gifts. These gifts are given to all of us; one can but trust and use them. Reason is a grace of Revelation. For this reason the hubris of theory making is justified.

Quantum Non-Linearity

Thursday, October 03, 2013

Social Pecking Order in Fundamentalism

No comments:

My Other Blogs

Papers and Essays etc

About Me

Blog Archive

Labels

THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION