The great high priest, Phillip Adams said it all on Sunday night ABC when he spelt out the above doctrine of meaning . Nothing new, of course, This brilliant sounding piece of doctrine means, at least for one thing , that he won't be insisting that other faiths are not able to take science facts and use them in another mix ..... as he does by calling for meaning out of soup.
ABC church, surely, is a mass of contradictions: While there is some consistency in that familiar note of fanaticism poking out awkwardledy from many of the corners the do what you feel like approach of the lead singers is sounding far too passe ; Can't quite work out how Adams epistemology works--: esp especially when he exorts us "to wonder" at what he says is "not wonderful".
What Adams doesn't seem to realise is that to talk of wonder is to talk of worship . His brilliant sounding Claytons remedy for wonder simply doesn't work -as the history and practice of ideas from Dostyevesky through Polpot , Eugenics and Hitler to the presents day medical mind study shows. If man is a mere animal, all he gets to play is mere animal . Its no fun ! There is no room for evil
While Adams would clearly would like to have his stale old anti celebration cake and eat it too with his preferred kind of icing - he only has steps to play with . You can't be "not religious" and "religious" at the same time . Paradox is part of reality mate - it used to be called dialectic - seems such talk in ABCchurch is heretical.
Adams seems to think we would all like to join a camp with boring old stepups all day .ABC church may be in charge of a few agendas but it doesn't mean the parish is not on the move or just plain fat asleep . Its a camp where everyone must focus only on the stairs - just millions of years of walking upstairs. Adams, like others with their blinkers on, would have us focus on the stairs rather than the view.
His insistence on myopia is as helpful, and as predictable, as his view of science ( or should we say science as the tree god of all knowledge)- Sound good till you come to the stairs questions and all you have is a rather wooden worldview. Still, as a agent of many truths its good to hear Phillip reflect that all WV's have their limits -his comment on the commos at age 15 . Pity he doesn't take the idea further at middle age limits. Forever the chamelion ?
When it comes to WV then ---I prefer mine . I find all his talk of the wonder of the stairs in his deterministic monistry deeply depressing. Not that as a scientist I am against recognising the stairs--its just that, unless I am mistaken, there is still some possibility that all the stairs are not the same are still very many missing and most scientists within all the branches , would probably not thank him for building bridge where there aren't any yet. Give me wondering how we could get here to such a wonderful view , over the moronic and meaningless worship of mere stairs. Every stair is , according to him, exactly the same . Some engineer- the bloke who invented that stair- what am i saying ............smack! We are in church!
As a scientist i know there are some stairs but I wouldn't be silly enough to say that each one is all down to a simple legup force. Feedback loops are just as important in the progress of any process of growth . I will reserve my judgement of the mechanics of natural selection till we know a little more about them
Personally I like to focus on 3 aspects of the same thing- I am a kind of trinitarian. My WV involves the stairs , the material the stairs are made of , as well as the view from the stairs. All part of the same unity regarding the world I find myself in - Its simply wonderful if you take enough time and thought to allow the big picture to take over. One wonderful fact, is of course, that HOWever it happened , We are here NOW to WITNESS It!
