God in the beginning of every human life

[irichc]

I.

Axiom:

A full cause absolutely determines its effect.

Propositions:

1) If parents were full efficient causes of their sons, every offspring would be identical to the previous one.

2) If not, it would be a worse one.

Dilemma:

But, insofar a generation can be beaten in every facet of the life by that which is coming next, first premise (parents being full or partial efficient causes of their sons) is somehow wrong in both cases.

So, they are neither full efficient causes nor partial efficient causes. Or, better, they are not the only cause of their son's conception as a rational creature.

Solution:

It follows, then, the existence of a partial efficient cause cooperating in the conception of every new individual.

This cause is God, who gives a rational soul to the corpuscle in the very moment of the fertilization of the woman.

II.

Everything is in DNA or, in the other hand, there's something else added.

If everything is in DNA, we have two possibilities when facing the generation of a new being:

1) The engenderers transmit all their genetic potential to it, so the offspring's capacities would be the result of putting together its parents' actual ones, insofar they are biologically compatible (in case of asexual or hermafrodite reproduction, which is not studied here, they would be exactly the same in both generations).

2) The engenderers transmit only part of their characteristics, or all of them but decayed, and this would imply a diminishment of physical and intellectual vigor in the resulting progeny.

The reason is that, as long as an effect can't have what its cause lacks, no one can engender merely with his own forces something that excedes them.

Finally, assuming the fact that there are humans objectively more capable than their immediate biological predecessors (so we can avoid "natural selection" issues), we have to admit that their efficient cause -complete or not- cannot be unique and identify itself with the parents. Thus, we shouldn't try to find this hidden cause in nature, as far as the individual's future characteristics are fully determined since his conception, that is to say, when he had neither any contact with the external world yet, nor any food from the hosting organism. It only remains, then, God's hypothesis, who, not interfering in the world from the order of second causes, creates rational soul, on the trail of preexisting irrational one, perfecting it in a miraculous way.

Cheers.

Daniel.

Theological Miscellany (in Spanish):

http://www.miscelaneateologica.tk

[forteanajones]

So September must be God & Logic Month!

I think you'll need to spend more time on your argument, if you really want to show something substantial. For example, it's quite reasonable to assume that DNA and lineage is actually the full cause, not the parents, and your proposition (I-A) pretty much ignores the fact that both parents are actually the source (e.g. how can you show that one thing is identical to two other things).

This almost feels like it's just a sophisticated attempt to get a reaction.

[SecondSun]

Somewhere Socrates is rolling over in his grave.

[Agent Smith]

"god in the begining of EVERY BITE OF NEW HOLY O'S BREAKFAST SLUDGE"

is how this thread might have read if it were interesting.

[SecondSun]

A full cause absolutely determines its effect.
Without a definition of "full cause" this amounts to a tautology. It's a bit like saying "all conservative politicians oppose abortion." The statement isn't necessarily falsifiable, since any cause which does not absolutely determine its effect could be considered not full.


1) If parents were full efficient causes of their sons, every offspring would be identical to the previous one.
I don't see what this follows from. It seems like parents *are* "full efficient" causes of their offspring since the traits, and hence genome of the offspring are determined by the genome of the parents, and the parents alone. Mendels laws determine whether the expressed trait comes from the mothers allele or fathers allele. This explains why children are not clones of there parents, and why traits can skip a generation. Children are able to be "better" than there parents by a propitious selection of traits from the mother and father genomes. Occasionally a random mutation turns out to be an advantage. This leads to gradual evolution of a species over time. Must I really go thru the whole argument?

[Darryl]

I myself get a little confused when the semantics (or even semiotics) of causes and effects come into play. If the universe derives from causal consciousness--energy which is not predetermined, but rather mutable in the sense that it can produce anything--does the effect always equal the cause, or is an effect a complexification of a cause, or both? You see, I try to be the best philosopher I can be, like some sort of Platonic simile, but something in my head tells me I am not cut out for the acute analytic business. I think I am investing my time in a trades school.

"A full cause absolutely determines its effect."

This axiom reminds me of the old school class game where an individual (full cause) whispers a sentence into someone's ear, and in the end, an individual blurts out something which is antithetical to what was originally stated (effect). Although carrying remnants of the original statement (full cause), the new statement was transmuted into something that either picks on the individual that said it, or conveys something entirely different. Regardless, it is always worth a good laugh in the end.

[Eagle Wing]

irichc,

some of your post seems self-evident to me. I am not sure how you make the leap from the fact that we are all participating in nature, to saying that therefore there is a God that creates the rational soul. To me, it does seem like quite a leap. Second Sun and Forteana have both pointed out some important flaws in your logic. Basically, I think your opening axiom of a "full efficient cause" is not clearly defined. I'd like to hear you describe what you mean more clearly.
Darryl, i think that the "telephone" game you described above is an important illustration, but i would interpret it differently. I don't see the relationships in a dyadic framework of "cause" and "effect." Rather, we can understand the relaying of the message to operate in successive triadic levels. There is information -- the original message. Then, there is the symbol that conveys this information -- that is, the words that compose it, or the sound that is heard. Finally, the triangle is completely in the act of interpretation. This is a more complete and accurate description of what happens for each link in the chain, than a model of "cause" and "effect." In fact, talking about "causes" is always a little dicey, but i think that maybe that was your point.
My philosophical background is rooted in classical Greek and Chinese perspectives, the only "modern" philsophers who have really moved me are Heidegger and Peirce.
Irichc,
as a practicing astrologer, i agree with your intuition that there is "more" to the picture than the lines of material "causation" (DNA) and especially in the reality that the soul does not enter the world as a completely blank slate. But, I think there may be other explanations for this reality than the model you have proposed. One possibility, for example, is that taught by the Tibetan Buddhists, which does not need to rely on a vague concept of God in order to demonstrate the realities of continuous consciousness. But if you like to go in for the western intellectual philosophy, check out this link for a profound perspective from Charles Peirce:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/#psych

[Darryl]

Eagle Wing,

I agree that there are successive triadic levels of ingression in phenomenological circumstances. Well put.

Paul Laffoley, a neo-platonic thinker himself, says there is an epistemic ladder that raises information (such as DNA) to something more emblematic (such as post-modern deconstructionism or anything which looks at the connection between symbols). The epistemic ladder goes as such: sign, index, icon, archetype, and finally it goes into symbol.

Sign would be a rudimentary object untouched by culture (just like the 'zeuhl' language invented by french prog rock masters Magma for example). Then a sign moves into an index. Here the person applies self-knowledge to the object to abstract it from "unclassifiable alienation." In the icon stage, the object passes into an incubation stage in the psyche where it is ruminated over more. In the archetypal stage, the icon becomes apart of the collective unconscious where it is shared with other subjective interpretations of information. When the archetype emerges as the symbol, it has emerged as a significant, novel movement of evolution, and we could arguable say it is dimensionally arabesque compared to the original sign.

To him, all of this means we are moving into the fifth dimension ontologically, and the fourth dimension physically.

Cheers.

[Eagle Wing]

Laffoley's point of view differs from Jung's.
Rather than seeing the archetype as the outgrowth of the rheme (that is, the principle information that Laffoley calls a sign), or the index which seems like a meme, or the matured icon, Jung felt that the archetypes had an autonomy and identity of their own, independent of semeiotics. In fact, he saw them as the foundation of the psychic experience.
This puts Jung in agreement with the entire pre-literate planetary current of connection with "spirits". It is interesting to muse over whether the ancient myths and beliefs of people in the world arose as spontaneous reactions to an overload of index, or whether their connection to existence is a more integral way of knowing. That is, perhaps mythical structures such as the quest, the growth process, the trial, the birth and the death, are facets of consciousness that are themselves the principle information. The indexing of these archetypal processes gives rise to the tri-centric phenomena of what we call the "archetypes" -- personalized forces that arise spontaneously from within the consciousness.
Jung was wholly convinced from his experience that the archetypes exist autonomously and are bigger than the individual. In fact, he described the individual's fundamental challenge for the integration of these forces.
Check out a book by Julian Jaynes called "The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," it was a controversial book that suggested the early transition to mass literacy (as exemplified by the crossroads between oral tradition and written tradition in Homer) was marked by a crisis in the brain patterns of the planet, when the "motivating voices" stopped being referred to as the God within.
In fact, the orginal use of the term "archetype" is in Philo Judaeus. He uses it to indicate the "God-Image" within the human being.

[Darryl]

Originally posted by Eagle Wing:
Laffoley's point of view differs from Jung's.
Rather than seeing the archetype as the outgrowth of the rheme (that is, the principle information that Laffoley calls a sign), or the index which seems like a meme, or the matured icon, Jung felt that the archetypes had an autonomy and identity of their own, independent of semeiotics. In fact, he saw them as the foundation of the psychic experience.
This puts Jung in agreement with the entire pre-literate planetary current of connection with "spirits". It is interesting to muse over whether the ancient myths and beliefs of people in the world arose as spontaneous reactions to an overload of index, or whether their connection to existence is a more integral way of knowing. That is, perhaps mythical structures such as the quest, the growth process, the trial, the birth and the death, are facets of consciousness that are themselves the principle information. The indexing of these archetypal processes gives rise to the tri-centric phenomena of what we call the "archetypes" -- personalized forces that arise spontaneously from within the consciousness.
Jung was wholly convinced from his experience that the archetypes exist autonomously and are bigger than the individual. In fact, he described the individual's fundamental challenge for the integration of these forces.
Check out a book by Julian Jaynes called "The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," it was a controversial book that suggested the early transition to mass literacy (as exemplified by the crossroads between oral tradition and written tradition in Homer) was marked by a crisis in the brain patterns of the planet, when the "motivating voices" stopped being referred to as the God within.
In fact, the orginal use of the term "archetype" is in Philo Judaeus. He uses it to indicate the "God-Image" within the human being.I am pretty much convinced that a majority of what we say or do is recycled psychic sediment sent from a higher matrix of being. So, an archetype--as a majority of buddhist schools purport as well--is mirrored in humanity as semiotic inferences, but they are also entities that could survive independently of contact with a human. Philo Judaeus talks about this with the "LOGOS," does he not? The Cross is a perfect example of the LOGOS, or Laffoley's epistemic ladder. Originally, and this is some speculation on my part, it could have been found in the commodious backyard of some nomad. As it is seen presently in the Arts, Theology, Political Regimes (The Symbol), it comes down to a vast lattice of interpretation where some say it signifies the second coming, or it represents the oppressed state of Man. I am not sure if Jung talked about this in his essay in, "Man And His Symbols."

Thanks for the book recommendation!!! I will make sure to check it out!!!

[johnny]

what about direct transmission? direct, unequivocal "contact" with source, called down, a single nail in the sky that you call down. what does jung, or anyone say about that? it seems to me there has to be a point when filters stop working and you just step into the ocean that's there.

what i mean is also, in the face of enormous crisis, there has to be a moment when prophecy doesn't abide, doesn't apply, and certainly can't do anything for anyone. how will the transformation go if we leave all that for whatever principalities have left for us?

this should really go in the transformations thread or whatever, but the gist of this board has been everyones experience in that regard. what's my point? we're not single rogue agents in a tapestry of good intentions. should we talk about the mechanics of revelation? it's simple: ask. protect yourself and ask. i was initially drawn to Jung because he was a scientist, and i loved the language and it made sense given my experiences.

also, am wondering how people utilize prophecy, archetypes et cetera, and apply in their lives.

[jezebelle]

"there has to be a moment when prophecy doesn't abide"
I so agree. . .
you just surender WITH unity in the moment and step into your place of alignment
be your hero, icon, or archetype if you can muster.