In my last blog I had mentioned THREE axioms that I have found are to me universal laws that apply to anything and everything.  It was after a period of fasting for 21 days or what some cultures call a vision quest that led to an epiphany that three principles are at work in everything and anything we see and or experience.   It came in a flash, a Photizo moment if you will which of course is the name I use in appreciation of its meaning.  A Greek word that means “to enlighten, render evident, to give understanding to.”  Like a flashbulb that goes off in a darkened room to reveal what was once hidden in the darkness of ignorance of Plato’s cave.

For years I have held the belief in the principle and meaning of the trinity that acts as the underlying reality of all things but is manifest into creation through the fourth principle of intention which leads to our experience. But it was during those contemplative moments while fasting that the three principles that are the pillars and axioms of my experience here in this biosuit revealed themselves as:

Perspective – Relationship – and Environment
which through my own volition create my experience.

The key as I saw it was differentiating the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd perspectives
in relation to whatever environment the particular perspective understood to be the real.

Like Einstein says,

Reality is merely an illusion,
albeit a very persistent one."

Suddenly literature, art and science had new meaning and I was immediately apprehended by the words of Friedrich Nietzsche

"And those who were seen dancing were thought
to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

It became apparent that there were those who were awakened and expressing through writing, painting and numbers a universal language that acted like a code, there for everyone to see, but for few to understand. The music has always been playing, but few were dancing and it didn’t take long to find those who were awake once the code was broken. There are some of you reading this I’m sure know exactly what I’m saying.

Vitruvian Man
 Leonardo da Vinci

For me, a key to breaking some these universal codes was when I understood FOR ME, the three universal principles that I use to appreciate my waking experience in the illusory Mayan dream we call reality. But I always found it interesting that there was always a tripartite law at work in everything.

Like the Tao, there is the ever present duality of this or that, up or down, past or future. But centering or underlying  all creation is the unifying singularity point that is neither this nor that, up or down, past or future, but is NOW, the neutral principle or non duality.

 We speak of the

Beginning – Middle and End
just as we speak of
Active and Passive
that is
Reconciled
through
Balance
or the

Middle Way.

When we look at what we call reality or the
Mayan world of illusion, what do we SEE?

Time + Space + Matter

Where Time can be expressed as

Past – Present- Future

And Space expressed as

Length – Breadth – Width

Matter as

Energy – Motion – Phenomena

Or if you like,

Liquid – Solid – Gas

such as…

Water – Ice - Steam.

Just as Energy again can be expressed as

Source – Generation – Procession

so Plato understood

The Good –  The Beautiful and The True

or…

Of Course Ken Wilber broke this down to

I- We and It

and thus AQAL was born of what Ken calls the

BIG THREE

This idea of the trinity is not new and has been expressed throughout time. Pythagoras said that when the triangle is once established any problem is already twho thirds solved as the foundation of all existence is triangular. One of my favorite explanations of the universality of the trinity comes from Charles Pierce who tried his entire life to disprove his own theory on the trinity as he saw it in everything, but could not.

Charles. S Pierce

Best Friend of William James

Pierce was an American physicist and philosopher who obtained his BA and MA from Harvard and was the innovator in fields such as mathematics, research methodology, the philosophy of science, epistemology, and metaphysics. But more than anything he considered himself a logician first and foremost.

Bertrand Russell opined,

"Beyond doubt [...] he was one of the most original minds of the later
nineteenth century, and certainly the greatest American thinker ever."

Max H. Fisch in Sebeok, The Play of Musement says of Pierce,

Who is the most original and the most versatile intellect that the Americas have so far produced? The answer "Charles S. Peirce" is uncontested, because any second would be so far behind as not to be worth nominating. Mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, metrologist, spectroscopist, engineer, inventor; psychologist, philologist, lexicographer, historian of science, mathematical economist, lifelong student of medicine; book reviewer, dramatist, actor, short story writer; phenomenologist, semiotician, logician, rhetorician and metaphysician. He was, for a few examples, the first modern experimental psychologist in the Americas, the first metrologist to use a wave-length of light as a unit of measure, the inventor of the quincuncial projection of the sphere, the first known conceiver of the design and theory of an electric switching-circuit computer, and the founder of "the economy of research." He is the only system-building philosopher in the Americas who has been both competent and productive in logic, in mathematics, and in a wide range of sciences. If he has had any equals in that respect in the entire history of philosophy, they do not number more than two.

"[The fundamental hypothesis of science is:] There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect out senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are out relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion."

Peirce goes on to divide all of our experience into three general, universal categories and names them firstness, secondness, and thirdness.

Peirce's writings are pervaded by triadic divisions, which, given that he felt himself to be at heart a mathematician, he expressed most basically in numerical form as Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. While still in his twenties Peirce first began to formulate these divisions using personal pronouns:

I (Firstness),

IT (Secondness), and

THOU (Thirdness).

In Peirce's evolutionary cosmology, Thirdness, or triadic relation, or semeiosis, is considered to be a fact of the universe and not simply limited to the human mind.

Peirce explains that while phenomenology is the study of phenomena in their Firstness, normative science is the study of phenomena in their Secondness, and metaphysics is the study of phenomena in their Thirdness .

Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are the three categories or modes of being which give meaning to all phenomena and to all objects of thought. All phenomena may be regarded as manifestations of either  Firstness, Secondness, or Thirdness.

Peirce further explains that philosophy may be divided into three areas of study:

1) phenomenology (i.e. the study of phenomena as objects of perception),

2) normative science (i.e. the study of the proper relations of phenomena), and

3) metaphysics (i.e. the study of the nature of ultimate reality).

It was in Pierce that I had found my three axioms of Perspective, Relationship and Environment confirmed and was later to find Ken Wilber through searching Pierce’s ideas of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd person perspectives. Views which are quite similar in many respects to Ken's as Pierce further breaks down Normative science and divides it into:

1) aesthetics (i.e. the science of ideals),

2) ethics (i.e. the science of right and wrong conduct), and

3) logic (i.e. the science of the laws of thought)

Having found this relationship of a unifying perspective again and again expressed in the cardinal number that is the sum of one and one and one, I realized the balance of the middle way.

When one realizes oneself, one realizes the essential nature of the universe and the existence of duality is only an illusion. When the illusion is undone, the primordial unity of our own nature and the nature of the universe is realized. We become aware that we are literally self-reflecting mirror-images of God and self-realization of our self is our responsibility to awake beyond fear of this fact. As Meister Eckhart has said,
 

This can only be appreciated through the singular eye of what some call the witness, the watcher or what I will title the next blog,  The Viewmaster.

Viewmaster

1971 - GAF Viewmaster w/ Jodie Foster and Henry Fonda

Stay Tuned!

DEO

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge  begins with  experience… but
though all  our knowledge  begins with  experience, it does  not follow  that it
 all arises out of experience.”  Pure and Empirical Knowledge - Immanuel Kant

 So the other day C4 Chaos blogged about a friend he describes as the “the dude behind the hip blog Foreignerd,”  Paul Salamone, who had posted a comment in response to his blog post, The Portable Atheist: A Great Holiday Gift.

.

Paul said: ".... Either way, the real difference between the Wilber and Hitchens (who professes a belief in the transcendent and the "numinous" btw) positions on religion is a tactical one: would it serve collective human interests better to a) use the "conveyor belt" approach, or b) root out and destroy all religious idea-viruses before they can breed and mutate the next plague? The role of moral instruction, in the latter view, would be taken on by a reconstructed "rational religion" as advocated by Harris and others. Is it easier to inculcate this into the youth, or to raise them on tradition and hope the literalistic and warlike aspects of the sacred texts do not come back to haunt us?"

Now when it comes to Religious Systems, Dogma or belief in the absence of justifiable reasons no matter what their label, I’ll be the first to roll my eyes in dismay at the ever-present brainwashing of those who would instill fear and panic through blind faith in a SYSTEM. With that said I can’t help but read this statement and its pompastic audacity to assume that anyone has the right to “ROOT OUT” and inculcate moral instruction by a reconstructed "rational religion." Substituting what has been the very problem with religion from the dawn of time doesn’t seem like forward progress.

If I didn’t know better, I would say this was eerily familiar with the Imperialistic doctrine of the Neocons, with their glorious doublespeak of war for peace, and rooting out the Axis of Evil as if it were a crusade of moral imperative in creating a “New World Order “of “Moral Clarity.”

The idealistic view, the “Wilsonian view," that the world would be a better place if only America can make it that way.

 Woodrow Wilson

To seek to inculcate (implant by repeated statement or admonition; teach persistently and earnestly) moral instruction of a reconstructed rational religion into the youth is an elitist statement.  It should not be the role of the state, science or public schools to fashion or “Implant” a “New Religion” but that of an awakened individual guided by principles of his or her choice. To remember what was always known, that love, peace and happiness are states of being and not cultural memes to be co-opted into one life because of repeated manipulative statements.

Is it not bad enough that we have to watch our culture and nation of children dumbed down on purpose to bring about the Idiocracy of America by those who see themselves as platonic philosopher kings who believe it is their place to “implant by repeated statement or admonition; teach persistently and earnestly,” what they believe our children should know?

Who are they or anyone for that matter, whether you be Dawkins, the Pope, Stalin, Marx, Bush or some dude behind the hip blog Foreignerd to make such a statement.

Such popish remarks make claim to the same propensity of all other religious tyrants who by cloak of “Moral Instruction” seek the “Best Interest of Humanity"by ridding the “Opiate” of the masses and injecting some rational vaccine as the benevolent philosopher kings of Plato’s republic over the clones.

Mad Marx

 Call it what you will, but one thing man never learns form history is that man never learns from history. Perhaps a closer look at collectivism vs. individualism might be helpful before we all jump over the deep end of the collective mantra and begin repeating...

"We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological
distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us."

Like the report entitled “A Computer-based Exploration of Alternative Futures for Mankind 2000.” The report that was included in the book Mankind 2000, which is full of rather disturbing quotes like this one:

“In the organization of a civilization of the future we anticipate that the individualistically-oriented man will become an anachronism. Indeed, he will be viewed as a threat to the group organization as well as to his fellow man. Hence, as stated, he in all likelihood will have few individual expectations. While such a picture may not be pleasant to contemplate, when viewed with our present orientation and value judgment, we would be amiss to deal with unrealistic imageries that would blind us to future reality.”

The Borg Queen's First Appearance

I am not trying to defend one position or another of the debate between the “New Atheists and the other “Religious Camps”, that is NOT the point here.  I understand the conveyor belt idea as presented by Wilber. But the “rooting out” and “ re-definition” is exactly what is called for in the never talked about  intensive research project entitled “Societal Consequences of Changing Images of Man.” where Joseph Campbell is listed as one of the report’s reviewers.

“Societal Consequences of Changing Images of Man”

Quote

 The 268 page U.S. government commissioned project undertaken by the Stanford Research Institute and the Charles F. Kettering Foundation for the Dept. of Education reported on the idea that a new religious movement might be in the process of being created.

 Back in 1973, the SRI concluded that the spread of so-called “new values”- spiritual and ecological awareness and self-realization movements - had become unstoppable. They also predicted that if left unchecked this would bring about a transformation of society that would undermine ‘modern industrial-state culture and institutions’ and result in ’serious social disruptions, economic decline, runaway inflation, and even institutional collapse’.

Here is a look at just a few of the Chapters:

Some Formative Images of Man in The Universe
The knower – Gnostic view
The Age of faith –and contention
The Human as evolving Holon
The Human as spirit- the view of the perennial philosophy
Influence of Science on “The Image of Man”
Consciousness research
Sources and characteristics of a possible new paradigm
Interactions between science and society
Self Realization Ethic
Balancing and Coordinating satisfactions along many dimensions
The Feasibility of an Evolutionary Integrative Image of Man
Cultural transformations
Personal Transformations
Guidelines and Strategies for Transformation
Salient Characteristics of the transformation
Nature of the fundamental anomaly
Essential conditions for resolution of the fundamental anomaly
Difficulty of achieving a non disruptive transition

 
Peter Chamberlin of Online Journal writes,

“The object of the research was the development of a plausible vision of the future in which democratic methods survive, major problems are managed successfully if not resolved, and the unfolding of the human potential continues to expand. In other words, the postulation of a "desirable future" including feasible paths to its realization.

“The government was looking forward to a very troubling future, trying to figure out the best path through it. The plan was to find ways to shape and mold mankind into a new cultural image, complete with new ideas and ideologies, even religious ones. The root of the problem was human nature, and solution was to reshape the competing forces of daily life, in order to forge a new image of a new human nature. The researchers were brutally honest in seeking all available knowledge pertaining to their research, and in assessing the current common image of man-on-earth.”

The report anticipates a lessening of trust in authority and a reaction against a regimented, tightly controlled society. In order to prevent this “worst case scenario”, SRI recommended identifying existing institutions or traditions that could be used to control and contain the impetus of the new movement - in other words, they recommended that the government infiltrate and co-opt the movement for meaningful spiritual/ethical re-definition and social change. So a new science-based religion is in the making, something approved by the voice of “Official Authority,” something safe, neutered, and materialistic or a reconstruction of a “rational religion"

There is War for ideas by those who are convicted of radical impracticality as opposed to justifiable reasoning, but we must be mindful to the words of theorist Willis Harman at the Stanford Research Institute, who edited the report “Societal Consequences of Changing Images of Man,” who said,

 

"There's a war going on between your side and mine. And my side is not going to lose."

 

A report whose authors “recognize the inevitability of the rising new image of man, describing it as a quasi-religious awakening within the collective mind of man, man's new human nature, relating it to the actual process of spiritual learning that has been going on within religions for thousands of years."

Read that sentence then re-read it again and again. It speaks volumes!

In this report Step 4 of their six-part strategy is to "Bring About a Non-Catastrophic Transformation" -- "Encourage a politics of righteousness and a heightened sense of public responsibilities of the private sector,” which “may be indispensable for safe passage through the times just ahead."

In this calling for the manipulation of our economy and our democracy to maximize their profits, the multi-national corporations and their owners are to be exalted as the potential saviors of mankind.”

As David Rockefeller, corporate multination globalist admits of his one world plans:

 David Rockefeller
Feel the love

Just as Communism displaced God with Atheism so too do the plan for a New Order call for the negation of a Creator in favor of materialist science where strength and leadership will be provided through corporate benevolence.

The  idea of a new re-structured religion sounds insidiously close to the strategy of transition and change as spelled out in that rare and relatively unknown report with the "Elements of a Strategy for a Non-catastrophic Transition" as:

These approaches are defined as "restorative, simulative, manipulative, persuasive and facilitative."

So a red flag goes up when I read C4 Chaos comment,,  

Exactly! And that is what I’m exploring intellectually and philosophically. i think *both* approaches--(a) conveyor belt, and (b) rational rooting out--are useful strategies that can be used depending on the situation. for reasons based on human psychological development, rational "rooting out" would not work on people at the "fundamentalistic/mythic" stage. this stage would more likely respond to a gentler and gradual "conveyor belt" approach coming from their (moderate) religious leaders, while people at (to use the spiral dynamics terms) *orange* (scientific/strategic) and *green* (communitarian/egalitarian) are at the stage of rationality which would likely respond to (and even counter) the rational rooting out approach.

It seems to me that the Power of truth is the attraction to the unification of self and society, not the manipulations of a reconstructed rational religion that appears to be following the guidelines and strategies for transformation by establishing the essential conditions for resolution of the “fundamental anomaly.”

It seems with all these camps, the utopian ideal of a unified humanity seeking its noospheic singularity point by re-construction sounds more like the thoughts of the Fabian Society or a German engineering project alla Leo Strauss then a collective awakening when INDIVIDUALS are ready. I have always understood that change begins in the UL.  Like the idea that change does not come about but what we say or do, but of a consequence of what we have BECOME.

DEO

A Call to Reason
Part Two
Part One

Now the big take away as I see these debates is whether or not religion should be held up to scientific scrutiny, as Dan Dennett, the author of the book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a natural Phenomenon writes,

“It is high time that we subject religion as a global phenomenon to the most intensive multidisciplinary research we can muster, calling on the best minds on the planet. Why? Because religion is too important for us to remain ignorant about. It affects not just our social, political, and economic conflicts, but the very meanings we find in our lives. For many people, probably a majority of the people on Earth, nothing matters more than religion. For this very reason, it is imperative that we learn as much as we can about it. That, in a nutshell, is the argument of this book.”

Nothing wrong with a call for honest inquiry.

Duelity is a split screen animation that tells both sides of the story
of Earth's origins in a dizzying and provocative journey through the
history and language that marks human thought. Click here for More

Even as Dennett argues for the scientific investigation to put religion under the microscope if you will of what is supposed to be unbiased look, concedes that, as James N. Gardner states in a recent article in Enlightenment magazine, that the “developmental pathways, and internal dynamics of religious communities and belief systems” should not be shunned as mindless “pathologies associated with the consumption of dangerous and outmoded cultural opiates.”

The idea that religion, science and philosophy cannot interface to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts is patently absurd and certainly not an integral approach. To simply believe as Gould did of a NOMA or Non-Overlapping Magisteria that separates forever the three domains is itself irrational.

Gardner rightly argues British Philosopher Alfred Whiteheads point that the “discoverable pattern of order in the realm of nature” was the conviction of an essentially irrational faith in the “existence of a rational natural order” and “was not the inherently obvious rationality of nature.” That, according to Whitehead, Western religion was in fact the “father of Western Science” and of the “intellectual disciplines that define our concept of modernity.”

In other words it was religious belief in sacred texts that was the foundation for scientist’s faith in the “discoverable rationality of the cosmos.”

That as Whitehead says,

“It is the instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the imagination,which is the
motive power of research – that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. “

From Science and the Modern World

The so called “Strong Atheists” who call for the “rooting out” of that which they see as a “Plague and Virus” again sounds more like a religious crusade then a rational solution, or maybe its their equivalent of a “Final Solution.” So I was glad to read the comment of C4Chaos who says of Harris that he, as he understands him, is not for eliminating stages altogether but proposing to eliminate the unhealthy fundamentalism by shining the light of rationality upon them. “To,” as he says, “not give religion a free pass for protecting its unhealthy versions just because they are called religions.”

The key here is “Unhealthy,” the unjustifiable faith of extremism or religiosity which subverts the minds of their followers by proposing fiendish doctrines to instill fear and compliance. But the texts upon which these “Religious systems” are based, should not be thrown out with the bathwater.

Because the hermeneutics of a particular religious text is taken out of context for the benefit of the “Religiosity of the “Tradition,” this should not be a reason to honestly investigate them with a “reasoned” approach to seek its primal truth. A fact that has some Atheists looking as if they just don’t know what they’re talking about which lessons their credibility.

The lived experience of faith is core to the religious experience no matter what ‘stage’ the ‘state’ of transcendence occupies, it is the fundamental witness of those values that are sought by all. This can be the shared experience of the many paths of “liberation through the doorway of the deepest part of our Consciousness.” A doorway that leads to what some may describe as the timeless and spaceless void of mere being. The emptying of self that some call the filling of God within their being, the Kingdom of God within … Christ in you,  the hope of glory, the truth which sets us free.

Are the scriptures which bring about these transformations a “virus” or a “plague” to be wiped out because we may not fully appreciate or understand them?

Abraham Maslow

“The very beginning, the intrinsic core, the universal nucleus of every high religion…has been the private, lonely, personal illumination, revelation, or ecstasy of some acutely sensitive prophet or seer. The high religions call themselves revealed religions and each of them tends to rest its validity, its function and its right to exist on the codification and the communication of this original mystic experience or revelation from the lonely prophet to the masses of human beings in general."

 Abraham H. Maslow -Religion, Values, and Peak Experiences,
Penguin Books, New York, 1964, p. 19

 Religious tradition tends to obscure the meaning of the basic core elements of the religious phenomena of experience in favor of suppression and repression which leads to aggression of those help captive from truth. Very few take the lonely walk up the mountain to peer into the burning bush of time to see for themselves what others greater then they have come to know. But instead put up walls around the truth and set themselves up as Pontiffs, priests and kings as so many bricks in a wall of thought control for the faceless and unthinking plebes to lock step in line.

This caused the obvious problem of what to do with a “good” soul vs . a “bad” soul that lives forever,  though the Hebrew and Greek say no such thing of an immortal soul.  Ever met an orthodox Jew who believed his soul would live forever?

Exactly…

As this ‘pre-rational” doctrine began to take root, so did the idea of a “Burning Hell” for the “Wicked.”

Nowhere does hell in both Hebrew (Sheol) and Greek ( Hades or Gehenna) mean anything other than the grave or a hole in the ground. Gehenna was the garbage dump where the people of Jerusalem burnt their trash and lit it with fire for sanitary reasons. This was a place of great ignomy for a Jew who being denied burial was thrown out with the garbage to be burned, no longer a member of his tribe or nation.  He was literally thrown out with the trash and whatever part of the carcass the fire did not consume, the worms would perform their natural function. So that upon death, ashes to ashes and dust to dust shall the body return as I’m sure many have heard at a funeral.

"Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that
natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other."
- Francis Bacon

So not so extreme or irrational after all and in fact, the very same belief I assume most atheists hold as to death. So when you see and read these “New Atheists” speak as if they  they know what they’re talking about in such matters, you can see how ignorant they really look to those who actually took the time to not merely read but to analyze and study.

Or maybe the oft taught irrational concept that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Sounds impossible and irrational, yet unknown to those who refuse to study history. The true meaning becomes clear when you realize that city walls were built to protect the inhabitants from beasts and gangs seeking prey in the night. As a traveler approached the city, the main gate had been locked for the night. But there was a small gate, called the needle gate that allowed entrance, but only if all the wayfarers’ belongings were stripped off the camel and even the camel must get on its knees to crawl through the gate. I’m sure you get the metaphor.

 So forgive me for this history lesson, but when both camps cannot dialog on the simple issues because neither of the camps has adequately analyzed the text, having been blinded with their orange colored glasses on one side or blue on the other, then I have a hard time giving any respect to either. They both seem pre- rational and they both play on extremism to make their point. In other words, it seems as if neither knows what the HELL they're talking about.

Now, if the rooting out is the plague of ignorance through reasoned thought is the goal, I’m down with that. But to root out and destroy all religious idea-viruses before they can breed and mutate the next plague seems not only irrational, but downright scary. Or maybe that’s the point.

Religion throughout time has been the conduit for people to try and cope, comprehend and deal with their own mortality in an effort to find an answer to the universal question of what happens to me when I die. Do deny such pursuit is simply a repression of the human impulse. So if one of the noblest specimens of human reasoning such as Socrates upon looking at the eternity of  his death can manufacture a religion in his final moments to justify his own immortality, is it really so irrational to think that there will be those who would seek the same comfort by other means?

"The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death."
    "Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think
I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home."
Cicero -Tusculanes Disputationes

 George W. Bush

Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil

"God told me to strike at Al Qa’ida and I struck them."
"And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did."

Are you kidding me??!!

Forgive me, but wasn’t it Jesus who rebuked the religious system and its leaders controlling the people calling them whited seplechures? I don’t see that much has changed since then.

We’ve seen throughout the centuries the blood spilt over the cause of religion that has always been used as a vehicle to secure the masses for the cause of conquering new lands. Today that same excuse of “religion” is playing out with our leaders in the 21^st century who use it as a convenient excuse to murder, rape, pillage and plunder whole nations of their resources.

It’s
enough to
make one go
Comfortably Numb
watching their lips move
but not hearing what they say
as a nation rages against the machine.

Of course the big take away in all this and even admitted by Dawkins is the proof that God exists or does not exist.

"We cannot, of course, disprove God … says Dawkins… but then goes to the extreme and equates this with disproving “Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster," says Dawkins.  "But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very, very improbable.”

That argument just doesn’t fly with me as a justification for rooting out that which you cannot understand.  A belief in the face of such an argument is itself faith based as belief in improbabilities either way is a belief that it either is or it isn’t. Both are without proof, based on probability or improbability.

This is the old argument of presumption as Atheists like Antony Flew say that the "onus of proof must lie upon the theist.” This haggard idea of presumption based on compelling reasons for God’s existence is the "presumption of atheism." Even as atheist, Michael Scriven, much like Dawkins considers the lack of evidence for God’s existence and the lack of evidence for Santa Claus on the same level. But this presumption of atheism is nothing more presumptuousness on the part of Atheists.

Absence of evidence is not at all
the same as evidence of absence.

At least atheist Kai Nielsen recognizes this: "To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false....All the proofs of God’s existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists."

But Harris differentiates himself buy creating his own little intellectual corner that sets out to disprove the existence of God by reasoning that the existence of evil in the world proves this. Since by this reasoning he feels he has proven the non-existence of God, all arguements for the evidence of God would be a non-sequitur. Thus he summarily dismisses all religions with  "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

 Now this makes for a fascinating argument on many fronts. For example, most of the secular arguements deny the reality of evil altogether. But Harris not only does not deny evil, he is always affirmining its reality with Hitler, the atomic Bomb and the establishment of religion as evil.  In essence, Harris attempts to kill God, or dismiss God altogether because evil exists, therefore God does not.

Yet Harris affirms moral meaning and ethics and so seperates himself from the obvious arguement that leads to nihilism by acknowledging and given credence for meaning of  moral values and ethics.

3

A few blogs ago in the Unifying Perspective of the Middle Way I wrote on what I felt was a universal principle of what has been called the Law of Three. With some of the comments I received I thought it might be fun to add just a few more things concerning three.

 We see three everywhere but we probably don't take the time to notice it, yet we use threes to conceptualize everything. The alphabet is referred to as the ABC's and there is of course Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Our basic sentence structure to communicate is subject, verb, object. While grammarians distinguish simple, compound, and complex sentences with punctuation rules of three major medial marks: comma, semicolon, and colon, whose orthographic symbolism itself reflects trichotomic structuring a, ab, and b. There are also three principal terminal marks: period, question mark, and exclamation point. The latter marks are allegedly indicators of the three major sentence types: declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory.”

There are also three basic types of reasoning.

Induction (Declare answer first, then proceed to prove; eg. math theories)
Deduction (Proceed to prove then find answer; eg. Sherlock Holmes, Clue)
Analogy (By comparision)

 But as Bronislaw, Malinowski wrote in A Scientific Theory of Culture.

"Nothing is as difficult to see as the obvious."

We use Colloquialisms such as three cheers for someone, such as "Hip, Hip, Hooray" or the starter of a race will say "One, two, three, go." There are the three commands "On your mark, get set, go. There is beg, borrow or steal and in movies there is "Lights, Camera, Action.” On a sinking ship the order is Women and children first, men last. And of course in real estate there is the mantra of Location location, location which could be here, there and everywhere because we have things to do, places to go and people to see in  any way, shape or form. I mean there are no ifs, ands, or buts yet if we stay calm, cool, and collected and Stop, look and listen we won’t fall Hook line and sinker because we’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt so lets just eat, drink and be merry...Jesus Marry and Joseph!

Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil

Closer to home on earth, the third rock from the sun we have states of matter divided into solid, liquid, and gas with the tripartition of the earth distinguished as land (solid), sea (liquid), and air (gas). These in turn are subdivided into air or atmosphere which may be broken down into troposphere, stratosphere, and ionosphere, while the earth may be divided into three types of climate zones: frigid, temperate, and torrid. There are three basic planes: Above- Surfaced- Beneath with three basic Earth divisions: Core- Mantle- Crust. We further divide the three kingdoms of matter - animal, vegetable or mineral and white light composed of the mixture of the three primary hues: red, green, and blue. On this earth food providing energy is in 3 forms (protein, carbohydrates, fat), with the water made up of 3 parts (two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen) and the air primarily consisting of 3 parts (78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, .93% argon.)

Third Rock from the Sun

There are the spacial geographical divisions such as North, Central (or Middle), and South America or the East, the Central, and the West.  And just as the world is divided, so is man. The human ear is divided into the outer, middle, and inner ear, the brain into cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla, the small intestine into the duodenum, the jejunum, and the ileum. The human voice range continuum of the soprano, mezzo-soprano, and alto (female), and tenor, baritone, and bass (male). For more anatomical tripartite relations see List of Three's in Anatomy.

 
We see the tripartition in time periods or Ages divided into three such as the Stone Age which is commonly divided into Old, Middle, and New, i.e., Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic.

 
Pythagoras said that when the triangle is once established any problem is already two thirds solved as the foundation of all existence is triangular, of which there are 3 types- acute, obtuse and right.

 

Pythagoras Diagram

It's interesting to note that in the number three we have the first geometric figure as two straight lines cannot enclose any space. Thus three lines are necessary to form three dimensions that are required to form a solid. A triangle is the simplest planar figure and a cube is the simplest three-dimensional solid. So as two could represent a square, three could represent a cube or solid contents. So it would seem that there is a universal law at work where three represents that which is solid, real, substantial, complete and entire. As such we see this law stamped on all things that are considered complete and manifest as real because as some might say, God’s attributes are three - omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence. In the bible there are  66 (3 x 22) Books[39 (3 x 13) in the Old Testament- 27 (3 x 9) in the New Testament]  31,173 (3 x 10,391) Verses in the Bible [23,214 (3 x 7738) in the O.T.- 7959 (3 x 2653) in the N.T. There were 333 prophecies concerning the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus Christ was crucified at the age of 33, after a ministry that lasted 3 years. He spent nine (3 x 3) hours on the cross, with 3 of those hours in darkness. He was buried for 3 days and 3 nights, and resurrected on the 3rd day.

 Ephesians 3

Newton Laws of Motion were first published in his work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) concerning the motion of physical objects wrote in the third volume (of the text), the Three Laws of Motion as:

Sir Isaac Newton

1.  First Law: Law of Inertia - Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.

 "An object at rest or traveling in uniform motion will remain at rest or traveling in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net force."

2. Second Law: Law of Motion -  Lex II: Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae, et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimtur.

"The rate of change of momentum of a body is equal to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction."

  3. Third Law: law of reciprocal actions -  Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et aequalem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones is se mutuo semper esse aequales et in partes contrarias dirigi. 

"All forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction."

  Sir Isaac Newton

According to Ayurvedic ("the knowledge of life", or "the science of life") philosophy, health is dependent upon one's ability to live in harmony with one's self and with the external universe and recognize three major body (or physiology) types which they refer to as the three DOSHAS: VATA, PITTA, and KAPHA.

 Ayurvedic

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831) Idealist philosopher, born in Stuttgart, Germany published his Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1817, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences), in which he set out his tripartite system of logic, philosophy of nature, and mind and his famous dialectic, positing something (thesis), denying it (antithesis), and combining the two half-truths in a synthesis which contains a greater portion of truth in its complexity.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180 CE) - The Three topoi     

 Central to Epictetus' philosophy is his account of three topoi, or areas of study. He suggests that the apprentice philosopher should be trained in three distinct areas or topoi (see Epictetus Discourses 3.2.1-2):

1. Desires (orexeis) and aversions (ekkliseis);
2. Impulse to act (hormas) and not to act (aphormas);
3. Freedom from deception, hasty judgement, and anything else related to assents (sunkatatheseis).

 These three areas of training correspond to the three types of philosophical discourse referred to by earlier Stoics; the physical, the ethical, and the logical (see Diogenes Laertius 7.39).

And of course there is Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914),
U.S. philosopher, logician who said,

Gurdjieff claimed that there were only three ordinary ways for real spiritual development from the three eastern teachings that emphasize the development of the body, mind, or the emotions.

 
The first three ways are:

 The way of the fakir-  The fakir struggles with the physical body and self-mastery through difficult physical exercises and postures.

 The way of the monk -  The way of the monk (or nun) represents the way of faith, the cultivation of emotional feelings.

 The way of the yogi -  The yogi's approach is through knowledge and the mind.

G.I. Gurdjieff

 Gurdjieff purposed a fourth way which I might write on in a later blog. But all this was in fun so you could see that you could literally spend hours upon hours with what I see as a law of Three. But as in everything there are 3 versions to every story- my version, your version and the truth and then you can answer for yourself,

yes,
no
maybe

Because all we want is

The Truth
The whole Truth
and
Nothing but the Truth.

:-)