To be read with ambient cosmic horror music playing in the background. I recommend this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlDivIaiuMU
"I think, in the grand scale of things, humanity thinks too much of its own understanding. It only takes a little honesty and humility to admit that we are nothing in the face of the cosmos, which indefinitely stretches out into a strange nothingness. The more difficult admission is that there is no salvation in attempting to expand our knowledge of the universe, because dust mites, however clever, are nothing when faced with the alien corpse of a sperm whale in the darkness of the ocean depths. The vastness of existence is beyond our ability to comprehend. That having been said, science ought not to proceed with the assumption that everything can be known, because there will always be an unknown horizon for us to explore. Just when science thinks it has adequately described the universe, new phenomenon will throw our certainty into panicked disarray.
It's worth noting that science has a place in human life and a perfectly legitimate employment. People like the great Carl Sagan, who are humble in their exploration of the wondrous universe, are a credit to their disciplines. The benefits of science are obvious, and there is no reason to avoid learning more about the amazing world we occupy, though complete mastery may elude us.
But science is not infallible. A common mistake, I have experienced, is to place faith in the ability of science to make all matters clear. The mistake lies in the fact that science is equipped to be descriptive of the world, but not prescriptive. It has power to tell unravel the intimate workings of the natural world, but it has no power to make value judgements or inform one how one's life ought to be lived. Science is often misappropriated as a basis for philosophies or world views, many of which history looks back on with disgust. For example, it was once declared in the name of science that the white man was superior to all humanity, and that the sterilization of society's "undesirables" might benefit humanity's general situation. These prescriptive misappropriations of science contributed, as many know, to the evils of the Holocaust, which the Nazis considered the fulfillment of everything American scientists had described in their detailed writings on eugenics.
Additionally, science has a tendency to change. What is fact one year is made obsolete the next. Today's fact is yesterday's disproved theory. The most that science can consistently afford us is knowledge of what can be safely predicted in the occurrences of the natural world. But even then, it is mere prediction, not certainty. Nothing is set in stone. The very earth beneath our feet, and how we permit ourselves to think of it, is under constant revision. There is no solid footing left, no still moments, no rest. Humanity becomes tossed about on a sea of change. But despite the uncertainty of its position, humanity becomes somehow determined to think of its rocky boat as a firm foundation, as a describer of the world and as a prescriber of values.
I think it worth noting that the prerogative to make prescriptive claims on human life has more firmly rested with religion and faith. Theology and spirituality, while not exempt from the chaotic change of the other sciences, profess as their foundations a more or less stable axiom, that there is more to life than can be empirically shown. These disciplines, more preoccupied with the truths of poetry and literature, are no less valuable than the natural sciences. They may not have the descriptive power of science, but they engender in us the honesty and humility to know that human beings are finite and in desperate need of something more. In a sense, theology and spirituality are open to the strangeness of the world, its infinite incomprehensibility and impossible strangeness.
Of course, these traditionally religious areas of human life are, like science, not without grievous faults. All too often, scripture is shown to have petty human interests at heart. Wars convenient to those who stand to benefit are often started in the name of religion. Spiritual awareness can lead to zealotry and evil in the name of good. Wrongly construed, the "word of God" can be taken to be an endorsement of ethically reprehensible practices. Faith, while a reaction to something more than human, is all too often warped into something small, petty and human.
Ultimately, it isn't what humans do or write that is interesting to me. The failures of humanity, whether in matters of faith or science, are not difficult to affirm. I witness them every day, both in my actions and in the actions of others. No, whatever human beings derive on the basis of their own inspiration and capabilities, it does not matter; it holds no interest for me. What does hold interest for me is the intrusion of the alien and divine into human life, and the human reaction to that intrusion. Such a dynamic defies all the rules of our little existence. Could such a thing could ever happen? The sheer size of the world and what lies beyond it is so immense that the human mind simply cannot take it all in. The world is completely beyond us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlDivIaiuMU
"I think, in the grand scale of things, humanity thinks too much of its own understanding. It only takes a little honesty and humility to admit that we are nothing in the face of the cosmos, which indefinitely stretches out into a strange nothingness. The more difficult admission is that there is no salvation in attempting to expand our knowledge of the universe, because dust mites, however clever, are nothing when faced with the alien corpse of a sperm whale in the darkness of the ocean depths. The vastness of existence is beyond our ability to comprehend. That having been said, science ought not to proceed with the assumption that everything can be known, because there will always be an unknown horizon for us to explore. Just when science thinks it has adequately described the universe, new phenomenon will throw our certainty into panicked disarray.
It's worth noting that science has a place in human life and a perfectly legitimate employment. People like the great Carl Sagan, who are humble in their exploration of the wondrous universe, are a credit to their disciplines. The benefits of science are obvious, and there is no reason to avoid learning more about the amazing world we occupy, though complete mastery may elude us.
But science is not infallible. A common mistake, I have experienced, is to place faith in the ability of science to make all matters clear. The mistake lies in the fact that science is equipped to be descriptive of the world, but not prescriptive. It has power to tell unravel the intimate workings of the natural world, but it has no power to make value judgements or inform one how one's life ought to be lived. Science is often misappropriated as a basis for philosophies or world views, many of which history looks back on with disgust. For example, it was once declared in the name of science that the white man was superior to all humanity, and that the sterilization of society's "undesirables" might benefit humanity's general situation. These prescriptive misappropriations of science contributed, as many know, to the evils of the Holocaust, which the Nazis considered the fulfillment of everything American scientists had described in their detailed writings on eugenics.
Additionally, science has a tendency to change. What is fact one year is made obsolete the next. Today's fact is yesterday's disproved theory. The most that science can consistently afford us is knowledge of what can be safely predicted in the occurrences of the natural world. But even then, it is mere prediction, not certainty. Nothing is set in stone. The very earth beneath our feet, and how we permit ourselves to think of it, is under constant revision. There is no solid footing left, no still moments, no rest. Humanity becomes tossed about on a sea of change. But despite the uncertainty of its position, humanity becomes somehow determined to think of its rocky boat as a firm foundation, as a describer of the world and as a prescriber of values.
I think it worth noting that the prerogative to make prescriptive claims on human life has more firmly rested with religion and faith. Theology and spirituality, while not exempt from the chaotic change of the other sciences, profess as their foundations a more or less stable axiom, that there is more to life than can be empirically shown. These disciplines, more preoccupied with the truths of poetry and literature, are no less valuable than the natural sciences. They may not have the descriptive power of science, but they engender in us the honesty and humility to know that human beings are finite and in desperate need of something more. In a sense, theology and spirituality are open to the strangeness of the world, its infinite incomprehensibility and impossible strangeness.
Of course, these traditionally religious areas of human life are, like science, not without grievous faults. All too often, scripture is shown to have petty human interests at heart. Wars convenient to those who stand to benefit are often started in the name of religion. Spiritual awareness can lead to zealotry and evil in the name of good. Wrongly construed, the "word of God" can be taken to be an endorsement of ethically reprehensible practices. Faith, while a reaction to something more than human, is all too often warped into something small, petty and human.
Ultimately, it isn't what humans do or write that is interesting to me. The failures of humanity, whether in matters of faith or science, are not difficult to affirm. I witness them every day, both in my actions and in the actions of others. No, whatever human beings derive on the basis of their own inspiration and capabilities, it does not matter; it holds no interest for me. What does hold interest for me is the intrusion of the alien and divine into human life, and the human reaction to that intrusion. Such a dynamic defies all the rules of our little existence. Could such a thing could ever happen? The sheer size of the world and what lies beyond it is so immense that the human mind simply cannot take it all in. The world is completely beyond us.
And for that reason, I call scientism an overrated fad. Faith in human epistemic and rational capabilities is far less compelling to me than faith in what is transcendent of those same human capabilities. That alien and unknowable otherness, which has made itself known in whispers and brutal death, intangibly calls every human mind to contemplation. It implants symbols into the mind. The cross is both a taunt and acknowledgement of death, a call to the madness of an eternal existence. I use the word "madness" quite deliberately, for love is mad, and God is love. And by the narrow definition of rationality and reason that we insignificant specs put forth as incontestable, God is utterly insane, for his love knows no rational limit, and he will love in ways that confound our tiny sense of ethicality or logic. What he sees and does goes utterly beyond what we can see and do, and so he appears from the human perspective as irredeemably insane. There is no single logos tying his behaviors down in ways that we humans can grasp. He is wholly other. We think ourselves sane, and he mad. But perhaps it is he who is sane and we who are mad. And who is to say what constitutes saneness or madness in an objective sense? Surely not we humans, whose eyes are so imperfectly dim. And yet God has shown himself willing to stretch out his hands and reveal the eldritch truth to those open to seeing.
Logic (and any paradigm of science that glorifies logic) is ultimately a tiny god to worship; I will never understand the people who appeal to it over the overwhelming insanity and otherness of God.
Maybe Lovecraft had more insight into faith than he could have ever guessed."
This is the Idiot, signing out.
This is the Idiot, signing out.
