Jonathan and Squad,
Thank you for your informative reply to my message. It was not my
intention to put a stop to the previous thread, I just felt like the squad
was ignoring the evolutionary basis for their discussions.
With a forty year old undergraduate degree in biology, since unused, I am
just able to hold on to your ideas.
If I understand you correctly I have no problems with the universe
originating in a purely deterministic fashion and then becoming so
convoluted and complex that we now have essentially free will, Nor that the
whole process could be a manifestation of Gods will. However, I do feel
constrained to stick with the concept of "process"
I threw in the statement about the brain to possibly raise some hackles
and to call attention to the fact that if the body is a result of the
process of evolution then the brain must be also unless we want to get
really weird.
I am also troubled by the fact that Pirsig goes to great lengths to show
us a pretty picture of the formation of the universe as a purely
deterministic system then switches to discussions about the role of humanity
in the universe which injects randomness back into the picture without
making a case for it. Someone(Struan, I think) pointed this out the other
day and seemed to think it was OK. I do not think it is OK. I think that
humanity should be viewed as a later function of the process which tends to
operate in opposition to the purely deterministic universe. Remember that we
have said that as far as humanity is concerned we now view the universe as
non-deterministic even though it actually is. From the purely human point of
view we can have free will and randomness.
Enough for now. Ken Clark
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