From: David Morey (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Mon Jul 26 2004 - 18:29:36 BST
Hi DMB
I think I understand Pirsig's take on religious
practise. Clearly there is a lot of nonsense attached
to religion, all about social control rather than freedom.
But social control has also played its role in creating the
social level on which intellect can be built. Also there
are aspects of religion that have tried to keep open a
possible conversation about an underlying unity below
SOM, i.e. Quality,dynamic,creative possibilities. The problem,
as with every other SQ product, is sorting out the good from the bad.
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Buchanan" <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 7:13 PM
Subject: MD Anti-theism in the MOQ
> Dear MOQers:
>
> The following quotes have been extracted from chapter six of Anthony
> McWatt's book. They are also known as the Copleston annotations. (The
> numbers will help you find them.) My original intention was to find out
the
> context of one particular passage, the one where Pirsig says the MOQ is
> anti-theistic, but I was diverted from that task by the abundance of
> interesting thoughts on religion and spirituality in general. I'm not even
> sure what to do with it all yet, but thought it might spark some
> conversation just to throw them out on the table. Enjoy...
>
>
> 177 "Intuition sometimes is an equivalent of Dynamic Quality. However, its
> also a kind of biological instinct. Since Western philosophy confuses
these
> two, the MOQ avoids the term."
>
> 179 "The MOQ regards ego as a construction of all four sets of static
> patterns that is capable of responding to Dynamic Quality. Independently
of
> DQ, the patterns do not create anything or engage in any original acts."
>
> 180 "The MOQ supports religion but does ot support many Christian
> traditions."
>
> 180 "The MOQ supports both conservatism and liberalism at the same time.
> Freedom and order are contradictory but both are necessary at the same
> time."
>
> 182 "The MOQ sees heroism as a rather low-level social quality that can be
> without intellectual and Dynamic merit. Soldiers are often considered
heroic
> when all they have done is sit where an artillery shell came down."
>
> 193 "Quality is nature. The MOQ says there is no spiritual principle in
man
> that makes knowledge possible. Nature does the whole job."
>
> 194 "There is tht word 'spiritual' again. Whenever I hear it I smell a
rat."
> (Refering to "a single spiritual principle" and "an eternal
consciousness")
>
> 195 (Refering to the idea that "God reproduces his own knowledge in the
> finite mind".)"Here comes the rat. Here, with the word 'his', is the
> anthropomorphism of the rat. All we need now is a priest to collect money
> for the rat and pocket it for himself. I really have no use for these
> smart-talking theists. They destroy religion."
>
> 196 "Thus we make the slow journey from reason to Bible-babble. These are
> the people who create logical positivists as a reaction." "The reason he
> 'knows not why' is that he has abandoned intelligence for religious
> conformity. Actually Green is saying things that are very close to the MOQ
> and it is angering to see him curtseying in this way to medieval dogmatic
> superstition. The selling out of intellectual truth to the social icons of
> organized relgion is seen by the MOQ as an evil act."
>
> 195 "Remember that people were burned at the stake to release their
> 'spirits' from their bodies. Quality inheres in high-priced sausages.
Spirit
> does not."
>
> 198 "Zen argues that it is through stillness, not action, that a man can
> realize himself, in the sense of actualizing his potentialities and
> developing his personality towards the ideal state of harmonious
integraton
> of his powers."
>
> 201 "These platitudes all seem good enough for a college commencement
> address, but they don't crystalize into a structured moral philosophy the
> way the MOQ does."
>
> 208 "The MOQ would add a fourth stage where the term "God" is completely
> dropped as a relic of an evil social suppression of intellectual and
Dynamic
>
> freedom. The MOQ is not just atheistic in this regard. It is
anti-theistic."
>
> 210 "The MOQ says there is an ultimate unity but the interrelation of
> subject and object does not reveal it."
>
> 216 "Faith is not required for an understanding of Quality. Here Quality
> succeeds where Bradley's Absolute and Hegel's Being and the Buddhist
> Nothingness and the Hindu Oneness and the theists' God and Allah and
> you-name-it, all of them fail. For Quality, no faith is required because
> there is no way you can disbelieve that there is such a thing as quality.
> You cannot conceive of or live in a world in which nothing is better than
> anything else."
>
> 219 "The MOQ, like the Buddhists and the Determinists says this
'autonomous
> individual' is an illusion."
>
> 228 "The MOQ does not rest on faith. In the MOQ faith is very low quality
> stuff, a willingness to believe falsehoods."
>
> 235 "When you hear the words 'spirit' and 'faith' always look for a
> traditional religionist trying to sneak his goods in the back door.
> ..like the positivists, the MOQ drops spirit and faith, cold."
>
> 247 "Bradley's fundamental assertion is that the reality of the world is
> intellectually unknowable, and that defines him as a mystic. So it has
> really been a shock to see how close Bradley is the the MOQ. Both he and
the
> MOQ are expressing what Aldous Huxley called "The Perenial Philosophy",
> which is perennial, I believe, because it happens to be true."
>
>
>
>
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