Summary of text [comment] page 45
[Let me discuss the implications of the summary that appeared in last few blogs.
Consider the nested form that was introduced:
Design3(us seeing2( the subject that we are observing1))
Can this set of nested forms interscope with the nested forms that belong to de Chardin’s description of the scandal of biological evolution? If they do not interscope, do they intersect?]
[Finally, I end up in familiar territory. The criteria for failure can be manipulated. Since our intentions are reflected in our artifacts and our social constructs, we can ignore the physical evils (challenges) of our social constructions and avoid the metaphysical evils (limitations). We can engineer social constructs that shift the negative consequences to others in the spontaneous order. Others suffer evil. The elites do not.
Of course, unintended consequences occur as the entire spontaneous order adapts.
We have come full circle to the drama of religion in history.]
[Consider, for example, the so called “liberal” in America in 2014. Here is a person who regards ‘himself’ as most tolerant yet consistently votes for an infrasovereign religion (the Public Cult of Progressivism) that is intent on seizing sovereign power in order to impose its designs (its organizational goals) upon the entire spontaneous order of society.
How counterintuitive is that?
The tolerant vote for the imposition of intolerant designs.]
[I conclude my little summary.
What we see (in the spontaneous order in which we are embedded in) inspires us to design. We design according to our intentions. We thus contribute to an entirely new dimension of success and failure in addition to the biological foundation of natural good and evil. In a very real sense, we know not what we do.]
[I continue my selective summary.
Everything that I said about the spontaneous orders of biology can be extended to culture.
We see cultural spontaneous orders through the lens of design.
In the nested form format, “instrumental causes and formal elements3” put “our seeing2” into context and “our seeing2” situates “the subject that we are observing1”.
Our artifacts and organizations are built according to the dictates of instrumental causes and formal elements. They are all designed.
At the same time, they belong to our cultural spontaneous orders.
How crazy is that?]
[I continue my selective summary.
We do not have an intuitive feel for the ways of spontaneous orders.
Our intuitive feel is so poor that we ask God to act for us in ways that would undermine His own spontaneous order.
One reason why we ask God to act for us comes from our participation in His Created Order, or, less heavy on capital letters, from our participation in biological spontaneous orders. Schoonenberg’s quote of de Chardin shows that we participate in a wide range of interscoping nested forms, which means that failure can occur in all sorts of ways.
We are vulnerable. So we pray for special favors.]
Summary of text [comment] page 45
I continue with page 45, where Schoonenberg accepted that “evil is a statistical necessity” for God’s creation and wondered whether it applies to the realm of freedom and morality, that is, to us.
[Perhaps I should summarize.
Failure of configurations and types is intrinsic to a spontaneous order. Failure occurs. Actuality slips back into the realm of possibility. Spontaneous orders are amazing anti-entropic processes that are apparently (to us) full of design, implying instrumental causes and formal elements.
We evolved to see the instrumental and formal features that typify a designed order. When we look at the spontaneous orders of the biological world, we intuitively see instrumental and final elements and, correspondingly, also see metaphysical and physical (that is, “natural”) evil.]
[Of course, humans have been intervening in natural systems and driving them out of whack since the start of civilization, even before. However, unlike today, there was no pretense of scientific knowledge.
Oh, I have a good idea for restoring all the Earth’s ecologies to their former beauty. Eradicate humanity. OK, I am not the first to think of it. Also, I do not hold the Sovereign Power to accomplish the task.
However, I want to point out one possible weakness of this organizational mandate.
Civilized humanity may be that the reason that the Earth is not a giant snowball at this very moment. Why has the planet not returned to the Ice Age as one would expect from the geological data? According to the cycles of the past 2 million years, glaciation should be going full tilt.
The answer is simple. Heat is retained through the absorption of outward bound infrared radiation by an atmosphere enriched in biomolecules from anthropogenic sources.
Gaia may prefer our interference.]
[We do not see evil when we intervene in a natural system in order to save something. This completely amazes me because interventions intended to “preserve a particular feature of a spontaneous order” only causes the spontaneous order to adapt as if it had less energy going through the system. Or, the system faces greater entropy.
Here, the ongoing rejection of the concept of “design” by secular fundamentalists (who ridicule William Paley and the proponents of Intelligent Design equally) produces an ironic situation. The unconscious denial that “the environmentalist projects design into nature’s spontaneous order” blinds the environmental engineer to the potential of negative dynamic adaptive response to ‘his’ intervention by the spontaneous order.
In sum, the environmentalist sees design in nature, refuses to admit that ‘he’ sees designs, constructs an intervention, then is surprised at the unintended consequences, but accounts ‘himself’ blameless.]
Summary of text [comment] page 45
[The spontaneous order of nature is smarter than we are.
We see design in nature because such intuition increased our reproductive success; that is, our chances of survival.
Consequently, we habitually behave according to our vision and think to ourselves: Of course, this is the way it all must be. We can see the designs. We see some aspect of the natural world apparently failing, and focus on that problem without realizing that the Hippocratic oath might apply: First of all, do no harm.]
