The Atheist Perversion of Reality

April 5, 2009 | Jean F. Drew

[betty boop]

The Atheist Perversion of Reality
By Jean F. Drew

Atheism we have always had with us it seems. Going back in time, what was formerly a mere trickle of a stream has in the modern era become a raging torrent. Karl Marx’s gnostic revolt, a paradigm and methodology of atheism, has arguably been the main source feeding that stream in post-modern times.

What do we mean by “gnostic revolt?” Following Eric Voëgelin’s suggestions, our definition here will be: a refusal to accept the human condition, manifesting as a revolt against the Great Hierarchy of Being, the most basic description of the spiritual order of universal reality.

The Great Hierarchy is comprised of four partners: God–Man–World–Society, in their mutually dynamic relations. Arguably all the great world religions incorporate the idea of this hierarchy. It is particularly evident in Judaism and Christianity. One might even say that God’s great revelation to us in the Holy Bible takes this hierarchy and the relations of its partners as its main subject matter. It has also been of great interest to philosophers going back to pre-Socratic times — and evidently even to “anti-philosophers” such as Karl Marx.

In effect, Marx’s anti-philosophy abolishes the Great Hierarchy of Being by focusing attention mainly on the God and Man partners. The World and Society partners are subsidiary to that, and strangely fused: World is simply the total field of human social action, which in turn translates into historical societal forms.

Our principal source regarding the Marxist atheist position is Marx’s doctoral dissertation of 1840–1841. From it, we can deduce his thinking about the Man partner as follows:

(1) The movement of the intellect in man’s consciousness is the ultimate source of all knowledge of the universe. A human self-consciousness is the supreme divinity.

(2) “Faith and the life of the spirit are expressly excluded as an independent source of order in the soul.”

(3) There must be a revolt against “religion,” because it recognizes the existence of a realissimum beyond human consciousness. Marx cannot make man’s self-consciousness “ultimate” if this condition exists.

(4) The logos is not a transcendental spirit descending into man, but the true essence of man that can only be developed and expressed by means of social action in the process of world history. That is, the logos is “immanent” in man himself. Indeed, it must be, if God is abolished. And with God, reason itself is abolished as well: To place the logos in man is to make man the measure of all things. To do so ineluctably leads to the relativization of truth, and to a distorted picture of reality.

(5) “The true essence of man, his divine self-consciousness, is present in the world as the ferment that drives history forward in a meaningful manner.” God is not Lord of history, the Alpha and Omega; man is.

As Voëgelin concluded, “The Marxian spiritual disease … consists in the self-divinization and self-salvation of man; the intramundane logos of human consciousness is substituted for the transcendental logos…. [This] must be understood as the revolt of immanent consciousness against the spiritual order of the world.”

How Marx Bumps Off God
So much for Marx’s revolt. As you can see, it requires the death of God. Marx’s point of theocidal departure takes its further impetus from Ludwig von Feuerbach’s theory that God is an imaginary construction of the human mind, to which is attributed man’s highest values, “his highest thoughts and purest feelings.”

In short, Feuerbach inverts the very idea of the imago Dei — that man is created in the image of God. God is, rather, created by man, in man’s own image — God is only the illusory projection of a subjective human consciousness, a mere reflection of that consciousness and nothing more.

From this Feuerbach deduced that God is really only the projected “essence of man”; and from this, Feuerbach concluded that “the great turning point of history will come when ‘man becomes conscious that the only God of man is man himself.’”

For Marx, so far so good. But Marx didn’t stop there: For Feuerbach said that the “isolated” individual is the creator of the religious illusion, while Marx insisted that the individual has no particular “human essence” by which he could be identified as an isolated individual in the first place. For Marx, the individual in reality is only the sum total of his social actions and relationships: Human subjectivity has been “objectified.” Not only God is gone, but man as a spiritual center, as a soul, is gone, too.

Marx believed that God and all gods have existed only in the measure that they are experienced as “a real force” in the life of man. If gods are imagined as real, then they can be effective as such a force — despite the “fact” that they are not really real. For Marx, it is only in terms of this imaginary efficacy that God or gods can be said to “exist” at all.

Here’s the beautiful thing from Marx’s point of view: Deny that God or the gods can be efficacious as real forces in the life of man — on the grounds that they are the fictitious products of human imagination and nothing more — and you have effectively killed God.

This insight goes to the heart of atheism. In effect, Marx’s prescription boils down to the idea that the atheist can rid himself and the world at large of God simply by denying His efficacy, the only possible “real” basis of His existence. Evidently the atheist expects that, by his subjective act of will, he somehow actually makes God objectively unreal. It’s a kind of magic trick: The “Presto-Changeo!” that makes God “disappear.”

Note that, if God can be gotten rid of by a stratagem like this, so can any other aspect of reality that the atheist dislikes. In effect, the cognitive center which — strangely — has no “human essence” has the power of eliminating whatever sectors of objective reality it wants to, evidently in full expectation that reality itself will allow itself to be “reduced” and “edited down” to the “size” of the atheist’s distorted — and may we add relentlessly imaginary? — conception.

To agree with Marx on this — that the movement of the intellect in man’s “divine” consciousness is the ultimate source of all knowledge of the universe — is to agree that human thought determines the actual structure of reality.

Instead of being a part of and participant in reality, the atheist claims the power to create it as if he himself were transcendent to, or standing outside or “beyond” reality. As if he himself were the creator god.

This type of selective operation goes a long way towards explaining the fanatical hostility of many Darwinists today regarding any idea of design or hierarchy in Nature — which, by the way, have always been directly observable by human beings who have their eyes (and minds) open. What it all boils down to seems to be: If we don’t like something, then it simply doesn’t exist.

We call the products of such selective operations second realities. They are called this because they are attempts to displace and finally eliminate the First Reality of which the Great Hierarchy of Being — God–Man–World–Society — is the paradigmatic core.

First Reality has served as the unifying conceptual foundation of Western culture and civilization for the past two millennia at least. What better way to destroy that culture and civilization than an all-out attack on the Great Hierarchy of Being?

Thus we see how the gnosis (“wisdom”) of the atheist — in this particular case, Marx — becomes the new criterion by which all operations in (the severely reduced and deformed) external reality are to be conducted, understood, and judged.

Conclusion
Marx is the self-proclaimed Paraclete of an a-borning utopia in which man will be “saved” by being reduced to essentially nothing. With God “gone,” man, as we denizens of First Reality know him, disappears also.

But whatever is left of him becomes a tool for social action. He becomes putty in the hands of whatever self-selected, self-proclaimed Paraclete seeking to promote his favored Second Reality du jour (usually for his own personal benefit) manages to stride onto the public stage and command an audience.

Such a charmed person blesses himself with the power to change human society and history forever, to bring about man’s self-salvation in a New Eden — an earthly utopia— by purely human means.

Of course, there’s a catch: As that great denizen of First Reality, Sir Thomas More, eminently recognized, the translation into English of the New Latin word “utopia” is: No-place.

In short, human beings can conjure up alternative realities all day long. But that doesn't mean that they can make them “stick.” Reality proceeds according to its own laws, which are divine in origin, and so cannot be displaced by human desire or volition, individually or collectively.

And yet the Marxian expectation argues otherwise.

Out of such fantastic, idiotic, specifically Marxian/atheist foolishness have great revolutions been made. And probably will continue to be made — so long as psychopaths hold the keys to the asylum.

Note:
All quotations from Eric Voëgelin’s article, “Gnostic Socialism: Marx,” in: The Collected Works of Eric Voëgelin, Volume 26 — History of Political Ideas: Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999.

©2009 Jean F. Drew

April 4, 2009

[CottShop]

[[I would rather discuss “could be’s” as opposed to what some consider “facts”..]]

i can chime in here- and point to a few facts of science-

—it’s a fact species have biological limits that if exceeded result in species degredation to hte point hwere hte species is no logner fit- this isn’t just an opinion, this is a study/tested fact

—Mutations cause stresses o n a system and result in loss of information

—Macroevolution needs icnreases in non species specific information- Nature does not provide that htrough mutaitons

—it’s a fact that the bible said there was no death of spirit or bloodshed before the fall- in order for macroevolution to have happened, were it even a biological possibility, the bible would have to have stated a lie about sin and death

—it’s a fact that it is mathematically impossible for mutaitons to create new non species specific infromation

—it’s a fact that it’s biologically impossibile for chemicals to produce metainformation and hte heirarchal system of information needed before Macroevolution even has a slight chance of being a possibility

—it’s a fact that metainformation NEEDS to be inpalce first before any new non species specific informaiton can be itnroduced- otherwise the species receives nothign but noise that the species system can not cope with- introducing non species specific info also results in again, loss of species specific info, and degrades the species specific info resulting in less fitness for hte species.

—it’s a fact, that when species experience change due to mutaiton, that hwen left to their own, they tend to begin shedding htose changes, and return to their original fitness levels- the do not keep moving away fro mtheir originally created kind as woudl be needed IF mutaitons could possibily result in macroevolution- which it can’t at any rate. this is a studied and tested fact.

— it is a fact that the second law is detrimental to living systems- whether it be in an open system or a closed on, and in order for macroevolution to be possible, the second law woudl have had to have been violated in billions of species trillions of times all through hte process

—it’s a fact that we have no examples of living systems being able to violate the principle of hte second law except in one single species of bacteria, and even there, the species is STILL beholden to hte law, but has hte ability to renew it’s DNA AFTER it’s old DNA gets too degraded to continue on- this is a unique ability however, and is only seen in one bacteria species, and infact is not an actual violation of hte second law, but a delaying due to the unique ability to renew it’s own DNA thus delaying hte inevitable.

—it’s a fact that an objetive look at hte fossil record shows discontinuity, and hte only way to claim continuity, is by assuming naturalism without any evidence to back the assumptions up

—it’s a fact that there was an ‘explosion’ of fully formed species during what is called hte cambrian age- most species which were the same hten as they are now- with perhaps minor trait changes, which as we know is microevolution, not macroevolution

—it’s a fact that micro and macro evolution are two entirely different biological processes- one causes change to info already present, the other is a result of the creation or introduction of new non species specific information

—it’s a fact that macroevolutionists try to equate hte two processes as beign hte same, but they are not.

There’s lots of facts- not just opinions based on beyond reasonable doubt conclusions based on the evidences present.

[hosepipe]

So then, its your opinion, that these are facts?...
Accurate as you presented them?..

And that you are not "spinning minutia" in abbreviated form to make a point?..

If so, your opinion is your opinion.. and thats a fact.. in my opinion..

[betty boop]

it’s a fact that an objetive look at hte fossil record shows discontinuity, and hte only way to claim continuity, is by assuming naturalism without any evidence to back the assumptions up

The fossil record shows, not only discontinuity, but stasis: the preservation of species morphological form over extended periods of time, unto the hundreds of thousands of years or more. In light of these facts, one wonders where the macroevolutionist got the idea that the evolution of species (as "simulated" by the fossil record) is in any way "continuous" is beyond me. Stasis and continuity are mutually exclusive terms. There seems to be nothing "empirical" about such a claim.

[betty boop]

I suspect only the first two on the list would be manifest in such a way that science might be able to detect them - the last two are specially given gifts of God.

I question whether science as presently constituted could even reach to (2)....

That, however, is a minor quibble. IMHO, it does not in the least detract from your magnificent, luminous essay/post! Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ!

[betty boop]

This will turn out to be the essential temporal feature for us, not time divided into minutes and seconds, but time encoded as a chase through a diagram.

In other words, in Rosen's model it is counterproductive to think of time as reducible to a series of discrete, "quantized" steps moving irreversibly from past to present to future. Instead, we are invited to think of time in terms of flow — or as Rosen puts it on pages 222–223, i.e., with respect to a class of material objects called "machines" — of time as a transducer of causal events that relate back to a formal cause, the system's "program." Which respecting the class or set of machines is essentially algorithmic in character.

At this point in the text, we have a description of "machine" — a material system in nature classified generically as a mechanism with "special" properties. As such, Rosen regards the machine description as too "impoverished" (a correlative of "special") in the causal entailment department to have much to say about material systems in nature of the class living organisms. (Pardon my redundancy there.)

The figure or diagram in Life Itself that so entrances me is the one that appears on page 251 as [10C.6].

Though conditioned on an "if," it has a certain beauty to it....

Thanks so much for getting back to me with the page cite! I was looking for the "chasing" reference in later chapters, forgetting that in context it referred to Rosen's discussion of machines.

In any case, the Shannon model would seems to apply to whatever case we're looking at. That is, whether from the standpoint is of the machine (e.g., "chasing", as defined by a program or algorithm) or of biological systems (relentlessly non-algorithmic "life"), "efficient cause looking to impress material cause because that's what formal cause specifies and final cause requires" is the rule applying to both. And to inorganic nature also.

I fear these issues are tiresome for most readers, dearest sister in Christ. But I have to say no thinker has excited me more than Robert Rosen since my "discovery" of Eric Voegelen in 1985. :^)

And thus he joins my "pantheon of truly great ones"....

Just to say I think it's time for me to "put a sock in in." :^)

Thank you as ever, dearest sister in Christ, for all your help and able guidance!

[Alamo-Girl]

I question whether science as presently constituted could even reach to (2)....

You have a point there, dearest sister in Christ! Thank you so much for your encouragements!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your wonderful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

In any case, the Shannon model would seems to apply to whatever case we're looking at. That is, whether from the standpoint is of the machine (e.g., "chasing", as defined by a program or algorithm) or of biological systems (relentlessly non-algorithmic "life"), "efficient cause looking to impress material cause because that's what formal cause specifies and final cause requires" is the rule applying to both. And to inorganic nature also.

Indeed!

I'm very pleased to hear that Rosen is at the top of your list of great ones! He certainly got my attention as well.

For the moment, most all of the Rosen-speak is between you and me. But I expect as the concepts have a chance to sprout and grow, we'll pick up a few more correspondents.

After all, the subject "what is life v non-life/death in nature" seems to come up a lot around here.

[mrjesse]

Alamo-Girl,

Thank you very much for your in-depth post. I did read it through and have lots to say - but I'm out of time at the moment. Just wanted to say thanks and let you know I wasn't ignoring you!

But here's a couple comments anyway:

Said Alamo-Girl:
But I also have no “dog” in that dispute because I see Adam as created in the spiritual realm, the first man to become a “living soul” (Genesis 2) and I do not see him becoming earth bound until he was banished to mortality at the end of Genesis 3.

Ahh, so God created Adam from the dust of the earth, then took'im back to heaven? If Adam was not bound to earth, then where in tarzan was he when he and his wife ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? (Someone once said it's not about the fruit on the tree but the pair on the ground!) (Do you believe that Adam and Eve did eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? That is when sin entered into the world through the one man Adam, right? Or maybe that never happened and sin never entered into the world? ha ha)

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
(Romans 5:12, v14 mentions Adam)

That actually raises more interesting questions - if Adam was not earth-bound but rather a non-physical spirit being (formed out of the dust of the earth..?) busy about his tasks of tending a spiritual garden, then did he actually eat the forbidden fruit, or, well, anyway, I'd love to hear your comment on this!

It was also the early Christian understanding. This, from the Epistle of Barnabas 15:3-5:...
Ahh - you're Catholic, right? Hadn't known that. Not that it makes any difference -- except it may be that you take some things as inspired word of God which I do not. I'm non-denominational Bible-believing, God-fearing, if that helps any. And I tend to be skeptical of a scriptural principle if the only way to back it up is with the apochryphia - I'd like to see the same point in the main part of the Bible.

Have a great day,

-Jesse

[CottShop]

[[For the moment, most all of the Rosen-speak is between you and me.]]

Well it wouldn’t be if you two would speak something other than Swahili :) Having trouble following your lines of htought- I think that Rosen was stating that living systems aren’t to be compared to mechanical or software due to ‘chasing’ which occures when the programs search for the best answers (and protect the ‘species’ or program by isolating it from errors that would otherwise affect living systems??) is this correct? If so, that’s about hte bottom line of things as GA’s certainly can’t mimic living systems, and end up artificially protecting the ‘evolving’ systems, and artificially introducing elements not seen in nature such as far greater rapid development minus the negative effects seen in nature.

[CottShop]

[[That actually raises more interesting questions - if Adam was not earth-bound but rather a non-physical spirit being (formed out of the dust of the earth..?) busy about his tasks of tending a spiritual garden, then did he actually eat the forbidden fruit, or, well, anyway, I’d love to hear your comment on this! ]]

This brings up a good point too inthat, Angels had the ability to sin against hteir God before Adam and Eve were created, and if so, if Adam was a spiritual being, he would not have needed the tree of knowledge of good and evil because spiritual beings already knew good AND evil, and could make hte choice between the two- thus no tree was needed needed to make that descision.

[CottShop]

And just a further note- some peopel question why God woudl have created the ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’ and htus ‘tempt’ man to sin- thinking that God had stacked the deck against man right fro mthe start- However, in order for true love to exist, there MUST be the ability to excercise free will, and htere can’t be an ability to do so without the possibility of being unfaithful- , True love can only flourish deeply when htere is the possibility that another ‘love interest’ could capture the heart- the person dedicated to hte spouse shows true love by stickign to their mate or their one true devotion (Soemthign Sanford seems to have forgotten)

Man could have remained moral had hte tree not been available- had hte ability to sin not been made available, but complete morality without the chance of falling ends in a stale relationship- man HAD to go from morality to mortality in order to experience the ability to show true love toward His Creator

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, dear mrjesse!

First off, no I am not a member of the "Catholic Church" though about half of my family is. I’m just a Christian plain and simple. See number 2 on my twelve point answer to the epistemological question for more.

Secondly, the Epistle of Barnabas is not part of the Deuterocanonical books that the Catholic Church includes in its canon. And it is not to be confused with the late sixteenth century Islamic fraud, “The Gospel of Barnabas.”

The Epistle of Barnabas dates back to the first few centuries after Christ’s resurrection. It is quoted by Clement of Alexandria and also mentioned by Origen. It was part of the Codex Sinaiticus but is not part of the Catholic canon today.

I quote it because it unambiguously informs us how at a major part of the early church viewed Creation week in Genesis vis-à-vis prophecy. Both it and the Pseudepigraphal book, 2 Enoch which is dated to the first century and only preserved in Slavic refer to the new heaven and earth as the “eighth day” – a time of no more counting when God makes everything anew, and that our present age corresponds to Creation Week – 7 days to 7,000 years with the last 1,000 being the Sabbath, Christ's reign on earth (fulfilling the Jewish Messianic prophecies.)

In sum, my Spiritual understanding is that the first three chapters of Genesis are from the Creator’s perspective. He was the only observer of Creation week.

At the top of Genesis 4, the perspective changes to Adamic man – the clock starts clicking, death has entered the world because he was banished to mortality (end of chapter 3.) The death here is not just physical, it is “muwth muwth.” (Genesis 2:17)

Adam was made to be a living soul in paradise, always communicating with God.

And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. - Genesis 2:7

The “dust of the ground” does not mean physical to the exclusion of spiritual, earthy to the exclusion of heavenly. Emphasis mine:

These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and [there was] not a man to till the ground. – Genesis 2:4-5

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. – Genesis 1:1

The difference between the physical and the spiritual is not a “here v there” matter of geometry, e.g. the ark, the tabernacle, the holy mountain, the temple, you and me.

Note that the tree of life is in the center of the garden of Eden and also in the center of Paradise. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is also in the midst of the garden.

And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. – Genesis 2:9

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. – Revelation 2:7

But Adam brought upon himself – and thereby, us - the penalty of “death death” by not loving God enough to obey Him (comment emphasized:)

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die [literally, muwth muwth or “death death”]. – Genesis 2:17

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. – Matthew 10:28

And so he was banished to mortality, bringing "muwth muwth" - "death death" - into the Creature which now groans and suffers yearning for the children of God to be revealed (Romans 8.)

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. – Genesis 3:22-24

Notice how the time changes along with the perspective:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. – Gen 2:17

And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. – Genesis 5:5

The above is the key to understanding the ancient Jewish/Christian belief that Creation week is also prophecy.

Adam did indeed die (muwth muwth) in the “day” he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because a day from God’s perspective in this revelation to us is a thousand years from Adamic man’s perspective.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. – Psalms 90:4

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. - 2 Pet 3:8

The penalty is Truth because God said it. Adamic man, now banished to morality - muwth muwth - is doomed. The only way man can live in paradise as a member of God's family, where he belonged in the first place, is that he must be born again.

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. - John 3:5-7

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. – John 1:12-13

By the indwelling of the Spirit, we become new creatures – indeed, we are made anew, restoring us not only to the kind of creature man was intended to be, but enlivening us as adopted members of God’s own family.

So also [is] the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam [was made] a quickening spirit. – I Corinthians 15:42-45

Only the Blood of Christ could accomplish this.

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether [they be] thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all [things] he might have the preeminence. For it pleased [the Father] that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, [I say], whether [they be] things in earth, or things in heaven.– Colossians 1:15-20

In my experience, those who view the revelation of God in Genesis chapters one to three as written from man’s perspective – that it is speaking of physical creation and little if any spiritual creation – either end up in the Young Earth Creationism corner by holding Scripture as their most certain source of knowledge - or in the Old Earth Creationism corner by subordinating Scriptural knowledge to knowledge gained from physical evidence.

To me, all of God's revelations are consistent. He is the Creator, the author of Scripture, the only observer of Creation, that He created both spiritual as well as physical and that the observer-perspective of Scripture changes from the Creator’s to Adamic man’s at the end of Genesis 3. That’s when the clock starts clicking.

To God be the glory!

[Alamo-Girl]

Well it wouldn’t be if you two would speak something other than Swahili :)

LOLOL!

I’ll try to “sum it up” this way…

There are four different kinds of “causation.” To use an example, the formal cause would be the blueprint for your house. The material cause would be the lumber, nails, etc. The efficient cause would be the construction workers who build it. And the final cause would be the house itself, the reason for the previous three causes.

Since the days of Newton, science has ignored formal and final cause with the assumption that the everything in the universe is a machine that can be understood by material and efficient causes.

Among other things, this allowed them to insist philosophers and theologians stay away to let them do their work.

And their presupposition has been wildly successful for centuries because, with the notable exception of living things, the rest of the universe can be understood as a machine.

Evidently, the scientists always considered biology to be a “special case” – minor in comparison to the rest of the universe – and not really worth their time. The machine presupposition works well in physics and chemistry, so it’s just a matter of time before they can explain life as a machine, too.

The biologists meanwhile didn’t care either. The machine way of looking at things works well enough in the laboratory until people ask inconvenient questions – and besides they can always claim that life is evolution, the historical record itself. Which is to say, it is because here we are (see Anthropic principle.)

Well, enter the mathematical biologists (Rosen and his predecessors) and mathematicians/physicists who dared to ask (vonNeumann, Pattee, Yockey, Chaitin, Wolfram et al) and it becomes glaringly apparent that life is not simply a machine after all.

From Rosen’s outstanding arguments we see there is no (efficient) cause outside of the organism doing the maintenance, repair, metabolizing and building. It’s doing it on its own. And so he has developed a relational biology, a mathematical model looking at the organization itself. And thus Rosen declares that "a material system is an organism if, and only if, it is closed to efficient causation."

That is how he answers the question “What is life?”

His model is not static, the organism doesn’t just sit there dead as a doornail. There is a flow in the organizational model from one element to the next. And that flow involves both encoding and decoding. That is “chasing” in the model. His model is not concerned with time but with the ordering, the flow, the chasing.

The same is true of Shannon’s mathematical model of communications. It is all about the chasing. Information is defined by Shannon as the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver (an element to Rosen’s model) – the chasing, the flow – not the message itself.

My only complaint so far about Rosen’s book is that he did not give enough credit to Shannon even though his theory relies on Shannon’s work.

To compare the two, think of Shannon as a discrete single chase through Rosen’s organization, e.g. it starts with a sender, a message which is encoded and sent through a channel subject to noise whereupon it is decoded and thereby reduces the uncertainty of the receiver. Shannon's has a beginning and an end. It is discrete.

Rosen's is not a discrete instance, his goes endlessly one to another, turning it into a circular model. One flow (input>process>output> to another (input>process>output) seamlessly.

And so, if anyone asks me “What is life?” I will answer them with both.

Under Shannon, that which successfully communicates in nature is alive. If it cannot, it is either dead or non-life. Shannon’s model doesn’t care whether the elements of the model are biological, radios, tvs, computers, non-physical, etc. Thus the Shannon definition applies to biological organisms (nature), alien life forms (cosmos), artificial intelligence (man-made), spiritual beings, etc.

Under Rosen, expanding his above definition beyond the material (nature) - a thing is alive if it is closed to efficient causation. Which is to say, the thing doesn’t need an outsider to do maintenance, repair, etc.

Because of this, Rosen’s definition rejects artificial intelligence and thus has been criticized by some in that camp. It also arguably would only recognize God as having Spiritual life in Himself (as the Scriptures say.)

The two models are not mutually exclusive. Which one I emphasize in a debate will probably depend on the subject matter.

The Shannon model has a track record in pharmaceutical and cancer research. The Rosen model is just now getting some attention and its application is also reaching to physical cosmology (Fineman et al.)

Did that help?

[betty boop]

I think that Rosen was stating that living systems aren’t to be compared to mechanical or software due to ‘chasing’ which occures when the programs search for the best answers (and protect the ‘species’ or program by isolating it from errors that would otherwise affect living systems??) is this correct? If so, that’s about the bottom line of things as GA’s certainly can’t mimic living systems, and end up artificially protecting the ‘evolving’ systems, and artificially introducing elements not seen in nature such as far greater rapid development minus the negative effects seen in nature.

I think what Rosen is saying is that living organisms can't meaningfully be compared to mechanisms or machines (though all are material systems in nature) because the latter are "simple" systems (i.e., essentially reducible to their algorithms) while the former are "complex" systems (i.e., not ever so reducible — the causal structure of such systems simply isn't "algorithmic" or "computable").

Rosen's idea of causality comprehends a system of entailments, which relate the events and phenomena occurring within.

The "chasing" behavior A-G pointed out in the context of the machine model is perhaps just Rosen's way of describing the moving input–output character of machine processing. Rosen expresses such notions with relational diagrams that show the system of causal entailment that models a given particular system. The mechanistic models and the machine models he shows all demonstrate situations of "paucity" of causal entailment. That is, there is insufficient causal basis in such systems to account for such real phenomena as life and mind. That's putting it in a (very abstract) nutshell! :^)

Another way to put it is to say all material systems in nature are studied by science (as presently constituted) on the assumption that they can exhaustively be explained in terms of three of the Aristotelian causes: formal, material, and efficient. It is postulated: There can be no final cause!!!

Yet the relational diagrams of living systems are rich with "final causes." The very idea of biological function is related to the idea of final cause. So Rosen argues, science must put the final cause back into its method if it wants to deal with issues of life and consciousness (mind).

In particular, he believes this would be essential to any understanding of the dualistic genotype–phenotype relation, which essentially involves a "cause–effect" relation between two incommensurable phenomena.

The restoration of final cause to science is a suggestion most strenuously resisted nowadays, by physicists and biologists alike.

The reasons given for abolishing formal causes from science: (1) they are not "objective"; (2) they are not computable (i.e., reducible to an algorithm); (3) worst of all, they clearly point to a type of cause which is "anticipatory" in some sense, and this is forbidden by the Newtonian Paradigm, which demands that causation must always flow from past to future.

The book Life Itself largely deals with the inadequacy of contemporary physics to deal with the questions, "What is life?" and "What is mind?" Indeed, you pointed to one of the main strategies — mimesis — WRT your comment regarding "GAs." (I agree with your conclusions there.) The other main strategy (and the more common) is reductionism. Here's a funny story Rosen tells (in "Mind as Phenotype," Essays on Life Itself) about the reductionist strategy:

Many years ago, I heard a routine of Woody Allen that bears on exactly this point. As he told it, he acquired a Rolls-Royce while in England and wanted to return with it to the States. On the other hand, he didn't want to pay the duty on it. So he hit upon the idea of disassembling it, packing the parts into many suitcases, and describing them to the customs inspectors as modern sculpture, not dutiable as art. He was successful, got his many suitcases home, and proceeded to try to reassemble his car. In his first attempt, the parts yielded 200 bicycles. On the second attempt, he got many lawn mowers. And so it went; he never could retrieve the car.

I won't further belabor reductionism here, except to say that what is "lost" in any such reduction is precisely information about how to reconstruct the system to restore it to its original form. No study of the "parts" can give one any notion of this. Analogically speaking, you have the elements of the genotype (i.e., its parts, the genes); but you have no clue how to reconstitute the phenotype (the original phenomenal system and its behavior).

Anyhoot, we see reductionism most clearly today in the way biochemistry and microbiology are usually conducted.

Regarding mimesis [the basic strategy of artificial intelligence and artificial life studies]: What is involved here is to replace the system of interest by some behavioral or phenotypic mimic, then to study the mimic to see what you can learn about the original system.

Case in point: the typical assumption that a mimic capable of demonstrating a sufficient number of "thinking behaviors" is actually, in fact, "thinking." What we learn about its "thinking" is assumed to shed light on how human beings actually think. Or at the very least, the mimetic model is imputed to human thought as the best descriptor of it.

There seems to be a huge "leap of faith" involved in this strategy. The mimic is a (comparatively small) collection of behaviors manifested by the original system. What behaviors one puts into the mimic is largely arbitrary, and no attention is given to the causal underpinnings of such behaviors. Then, as Rosen points out, "something like an Occam's Razor is invoked to argue that explaining these behaviors in the mimic is adequate for explaining them in the original system."

As Rosen points out, both these strategies involve replacing the actual system of interest by some kind of surrogate, and then studying the surrogate.

What is clear to me is that both strategies drain all life and mind aspects from living organisms simply by employing the methods that characterize the strategies themselves. The irony is these strategies are attractive to scientists because they meet the scientific criterion of "objectivity." And yet each strategy, as a model, is relentlessly subjective, a "choice" of how one wants to look at material reality, and an assumption that one's model is up to the task.

Neither reduction nor mimesis looks to be a "wining strategy" if what we want is to answer the question, "What is life?"

Don't know if any of this helps, CottShop, to indicate what Rosen is up to in his work. His insights are rigorous, penetrating, profound, and — among other things — often go straight to the very foundations of mathematics.

[betty boop]

My only complaint so far about Rosen’s book is that he did not give enough credit to Shannon even though his theory relies on Shannon’s work.

Astute observation, dearest sister in Christ! Certainly the two theories dovetail nicely — once we understand that Rosen is dealing with the WHAT, and Shannon with the HOW. (If I might put it that way.)

I loved your description of what Rosen meant by "chasing" — indeed, it's far better than my own humble attempt to deal with this issue. You wrote:

His model is not static, the organism doesn’t just sit there dead as a doornail. There is a flow in the organizational model from one element to the next. And that flow involves both encoding and decoding. That is “chasing” in the model. His model is not concerned with time but with the ordering, the flow, the chasing . [Emphasis added.]

The encoding and decoding aspects cry out for Shannon....

I somewhat sheepishly have to tell you that, today, I had what I'd love to dignify as a "Eureka!" moment, but that was really a "Doh!" moment. It concerns this, from your last:

Since the days of Newton, science has ignored formal and final cause with the assumption that the everything in the universe is a machine that can be understood by material and efficient causes.

The "Doh!!!" was my realization that classical (i.e., Newtonian) science actually does recognize formal cause, and in a systematic way. In the context of the Newtonian Paradigm, formal cause can be stated: the physical laws plus initial and boundary conditions. Then there's material cause — understood in this paradigm as "matter"; and efficient cause, understood as "force." BUT NO FINAL CAUSE. That's streng verboten, for reasons mentioned in my last. In the Newtonian model of the universe, the idea of final cause invokes what Rosen calls "the Zeroth Commandment: Thou shalt not allow future state to affect present change of state."

An interesting property of some of Rosen's models (specifically those referring to living systems) is not only do their relational diagrams form closed loops (because all efficient causation arises from within the system, as you point out); but there are closed loops within the diagrams as well. These have been termed "impredicativities" because they invoke the idea of "self-reference" (i.e., they are "subjective"). Science hates them for that reason, and also because they are effectively unanalyzable by computational methods. Yet they also happen to be the relations that express function in these diagrams; which in turn evokes the idea of final cause.

Which remains BANNED from science.

Strictly speaking, a final cause is not something entailed by any other cause or complex of causes within the system; rather it entails them — all of them. There's nothing "mystical" about this observation. Or "subjective" for that matter. Looks pretty "phenomenal" to me; and thus ought to be a proper thing for science to look at.

Oh, there is just so much here, in Rosen's works. It'll take some time to digest it all....

Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your outstanding essay/post! We both thought to reply to CottShop virtually at the same time — poor CottShop! LOLOL! There's some "overlap" between our two accounts. Yet you had certain striking insights I hadn't thought of before.... Thank you!!!

[Alamo-Girl]

As Rosen points out, both these strategies involve replacing the actual system of interest by some kind of surrogate, and then studying the surrogate.

What is clear to me is that both strategies drain all life and mind aspects from living organisms simply by employing the methods that characterize the strategies themselves. The irony is these strategies are attractive to scientists because they meet the scientific criterion of "objectivity." And yet each strategy, as a model, is relentlessly subjective, a "choice" of how one wants to look at material reality, and an assumption that one's model is up to the task.

Oh so very true!

In life, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its part.

Thank you so very much for all of your wonderful insights, dearest sister in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

The "Doh!!!" was my realization that classical (i.e., Newtonian) science actually does recognize formal cause, and in a systematic way. In the context of the Newtonian Paradigm, formal cause can be stated: the physical laws plus initial and boundary conditions.

Well, "doh!" for me too. I stand corrected.

The physical laws plus initial and boundary conditions do comprise the "blueprint" for the "house" we call the universe.

Now of course I'm going to have to dig back through Rosen's book to see whether he considers his circular model to be the "blueprint" for life in nature.

Thank you again for your outstanding essay-posts and insights, dearest sister in Christ, and thank you for your encouragements!

[hosepipe]

Another beautiful sermonette..
No fluff just the FACTS..

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your encouragements, dear brother in Christ!

[betty boop]

Just had a thought. RE: the discussion of mimesis, I gave as examples studies of artificial intelligence and artificial life. Then it struck me: "climate change models" are terrific examples of mimesis. We use the mimic to "predict" the future — and the mimic is telling us our future is catastophic if we don't do this and that (i.e., reduce CO₂ emissions). Kinda looks like a rigged game to me — and yet we get "cap and trade" anyway. Sigh....

Oh, well.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY dearest sister in Christ, and to all our FReeper friends!