Coincidences? Human interpretation of "striking
improbabilities", I believe. No meaning, no
purpose, no divine intervention... things one
in 10000 are bound to happen when you try many
million times!
Improbabilities are also one of Plaskett's main
arguments (among personal experiences) for the
existence of soul and assumed failure of neo-darwinism.
Why would a god be "more probable" than no god,
I ask? In the first place I dont believe that
the line between "natural" and "supernatural"
can be drawn. Something to exist, it must have
qualities, right? These qualities defining what
it is like. This logical line of thought makes
"supernatural" only different kind of "natural",
i.e. different qualities.
So what is exactly a "soul"? Why should we assume
we need some unknown component, with its unknown
qualities, to define soul? Why cannot the matter
we observe work as an answer to consciousness,
but "matter unknown x" could?? I repeat: For
something to exist, it must have qualities,
right? So why should we make up some unobservable
entity, i.e. spiritual, to explain human consciousness,
when we are doing great by examining the scientificly
observable, as proven by many psychological
and neuro-biological studies in this field.
So, what does Plaskett exactly mean with "there
is a hidden spiritual dimension to the universe"?
Also I could ask such paradoxical questions
as: Where are these souls kept? Where did they
come from? How many souls? What is the differences
between "soul me" and "soul you"? soul 1 to
soul n? what defines/defined what a soul is
like? etc.
Universe being "too darn ordered" is no logical
or rational argument, but rather a logical fallacy.
"Ooh World is so complex certainly it must have
been created!" following such line of thought
we must conclude that the creator of this world
had to be created also, because He is "so too
darn ordered" too! And what we end up with is
a paradoxical eternal line of causality.
Why this kind of existence and not something
else? Why is there something rather than nothing?
Such anthropic questions are best left unanswered
I conclude, but let me just say this hypothesis,
or rather a guess, speculated upon by many atheist
philosophers: Hundreds of trillions of star
systems given 15 billion years of time... coupled
with the concept of "multiple universes" and
anthropic principle, seems like a more workable
answer taken into account... the evil in this
world and how paranormal things (as well as
miracles) "happen" at homes, parties and gardens,
but never under strict laboratory conditions.
But, Mr. Plaskett is right, it is impossible
to refute "personal experiences", mostly because
you cannot do the interepretation for other
people, heh. Nevertheless, I will picture here
one reason why I myself never could believe
in such hylozoism+vitalism+dualism+coincidences
newage yogist view of existence:
- Let's consider what all is needed for a coincidence
to have a purpose, and a higher meaning? It
seems to me that for a pre-ordained coincidence,
miracle or future telling dream to happen an
omniscient divine force is required, which is
in direct contradiction with free will, another
concept Mr. Plaskett is a believer in. Let me
explain this: e.g. for person y to meet person
x at point z at time t, if pre-ordained and
"meaningful", requires some divine force controlling
not only person y and person x, but also other
people, not to mention laws of science, because
in this world everything affects everything...
So such a phenomena would raise many new questions,
to which Mr Plaskett, seems to offer no answers
in his book. Why would this "life force" perform
pre-ordained coincidences for the type of Mr
Plaskett (comfortably living westerner?), but
yet could not pre-ordain a world with no child
prostitutes, child slaves, child soldiers, genocides
and the like, which mankind unfortunately has
witnessed throughout its history. And therefore
to believe existence is meaningfully pre-ordained
can easily make the world we live in look like
a puppet show, with a twisted puppet master.
Anyone can dream of a better world than this.
Anyone. -
Let me comment one last point about "soul":
Natural explanation of spiritual experiences.
I believe it is only logical to hold the following
view: People suffering from psychological disorders
often have visions, hallucinations, "spiritual
experiences", which are NOT by any means real,
but creations of their minds. From what I have
read modern neurobiologists believe that also
mentally stable people can have such experiences,
although much more rarely of course. This would
explain away "the supernatural nature of spiritual
experiences". And also answer the question Mr
Plaskett pondered on, namely: Why such experiences
have never been observed under strict laboratory
conditions?
What comes to Mr Plasketts rather speculative
and biased view on Neo-Darwinism, to quote a
good scientist friend of mine: "In the realm
of knowledge, although this is less dramatic,
I dislike pseudoscientists, who claim to have
Proved The Great Theory Explaining Everything
About The Universe, or who have Refuted In Such
A Simple Way What All Scientists Have Always
Assumed, or who want to give A Philosophical
or Linguistic Explanation To That Minus Sign."
The beauty of scientific method lies in the
fact that ALL theories are subject to exhaustive
scrutiny by the scientific community. Neo-darwinism
has been under this scrutiny for one and half
centuries soon, and is still accepted by the
scientific community as a whole, by people who
have studied the subject for years and years,
millions and millions of hours of hard work
and deep scrutiny. How can a man with no educational
background in science, other than his own studies,
question the results of such enormous scientific
effort? In my opinion, it is even a bit arrogant.
It hurts me to say this, because undoubtly Mr
Plaskett has put a lot of work into his book,
and the book is well written. But what I honestly
think we got here is a modern world newage yogist,
a home & garden philosopher, with a bias (Neo-Darwinism
just must be wrong!) and a hidden agenda (there
is a spiritual dimension to existence, get it?),
venturing on to the journey to speculate upon
and answer anthropic questions. A task, which
I believe, is always doomed to fail, unless
you can "afford" to substitute facts with guesses
and observed reality and logic with wishful
thinking...
AZ79
24 March 2001
AZ79 was asked by the Author of Coincidences,
Plaskett, to review his book without bias. I
present the review text in full here. Thanks
to AZ79 and James Plaskett.
Please
send
me (Jim) a your review or a coincidence
that happened to you.
Related links:
GrapeSoda's
Review
Coincidences
Book Reviews page
What do you think?
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| From: |
Richard Lobo | Subject: | 2001-04-01 14:24:40 |
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