Poor Man’s Metaphysical Naturalism

by Tom Valentine

Talk about taking a bite too big to chew; or overloading one’s hummingbird ass with an alligator mouth. For, me and thee, to take on such a deep subject as being alive and capable of thinking, is to thrust our puny selves into an arena of giants.

Why the hell not? Thee and me, got as much right to philosophize as those old Greeks did, besides, we’ve got computers and Google.

This all got started after I read the Quar’an and a picture of craven images stuck in my mind. I wrote the following and casually e-mailed it to several folks; of course I was expecting many arguments (and got none, proving people I know keep controversial opinions home.)

Here it is:

How do we mere creatures, wanting something “real’ to worship, erect fitting monuments to our Creator? No false images needed; we may use words—words in our language that signify everything of value in our Creation, and the following eleven words, when contemplated, do the job very well:

Consciousness, will, reason, desire, emotion, memory, conscience, creativity, intuition, imagination, humor.

I suggest both Christians and Muslims may worship these words, study them and treasure them. We might monumentalize them in houses of worship—no craven images here. Regardless, we should treasure them and store them in our conciousness so that they are part of every action. These words signify precisely what our Creator/Father gave to each of us equally in order to create us “ In his Image .”

Imbued with these qualities, God established we humans as His special creatures to live freely in a physical world that provides every possible opportunity for each unique individual to experience and grow and appreciate what we are given; He even gives us the choice to defy and/or ignore Him—complete with full opportunity to repent and make things right.

It is abundantly clear from the outset that we human creatures can only give back to the Creator one thing—our faith—in his Revelations about how we were created, and came along to this point in our history.
His revelations came to us from sources beyond our physical abilities to sense or see like we sense and see everything else in the physical world, which we were apparently created to dominate and care for.

Therefore, we must use our minds to freely and willfully give our faith to our creator and his selected messengers. What else could we possibly give to Him? History has shown that by surrendering profound faith we demonstrate that we have learned wisdom —something most pleasing to God.

We are not asked to be automatons directed by God; we are asked, yea commanded, to use our God-given qualities to learn righteousness—that is, learn that which pleases God. He knows full well that each of us has all these mind qualities woven indelibly into our nature, thus, when we fail to use them wisely, the only fault can be within us.
By selecting and worshipping the qualities of Mind as the fulcrum of our Creation, we provide ourselves the means to overcome the greatest obstacles that our ignorance has placed between ourselves, such as race and class neither of which are God’s pleasure. Consider the bigger questions posed to people yesterday, today and tomorrow—first, is there really life after death? And, second Is human life merely the product of time and chance and chemistry—Evolving without purpose?

Actually eleven qualities of mind obviate any need for further consideration. How can such abstract qualities that are clearly part of human life, but contain not a single atom of matter, die?

The answer is: they cannot die, any more than they could evolve—there is no biology involved with which to play genetic mutation games—unless you accept the absurd idea that humans do not have minds to go along with their physiological makeup.

Every human culture developed a philosophy to help people cope with the big unknown about what happens when we die. Obviously, the fact that every human has access to these mental qualities, means that each and every one of us is capable of wondering: Is this all there is ?

Death and evolution are not the stumbling blocks to satisfaction in our lives. Hubris is.

By building awareness to the gift of Mind, we can wipe out even the Talmudic hubris that so bedeviled our own sacred ideas of Creation.

It is not possible to worship the gift of mind, and give credit to any other than the Creator—some may try to expand their own human role in the beginning of this new philosophical experiment, but the worship of the great and general gift of mind will obviate all but that which God gave equally to each of us.

In this scheme of thinking and worship, it will be far easier for multitudes to follow Paul’s advice to the Colossians to think on beauty, nobility, purity and matters of good report.

Also consider Galatians 3:28—“There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (In sharing God’s gift of mind).

My intention is to stimulate serious thought—to use the Gift, and to use it wisely.

I had to research stuff to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Many thinkers, writers, scholars and pontificators have plunged in ahead of me. Apparently many of them had the same obvious idea—Man somehow is set apart from animals by having the ability to think and to reason; Most of the smart guys I read centered upon reason as the key quality, so they didn’t necessarily consider the whole package.

Reason alone would be unreasonable, would it not? So, as they say, back to the drawing board. None of any of it is worth a nanometer in a nanosecond without Consciousness . Am I right? If you are conscious, and can read English, you know I am right.

Now we, you and me dear reader, have reached a snag (I would say a conundrum, but not sure exactly what one is) and that runs us up against modern scientism. Not so much modern science with all it’s tools for seeing into places like human metabolism and microphysiology, but scientism which modern academia and techno-jargon labs have turned into a propaganda tool for humanism.

Consciousness then is before us. It also provides us with what Scientism calls “The Hard Question.” Now we are getting into the nitty gritty of this thesis. The Hard question—meaning impossible from scientism’s view to answer, is:

“Why should a physical system give rise to conscious experience at all?”

Of course, that’s only hard (meaning very difficult) to answer if there is no God, nor Creation. It’s easy for children and peasants to answer, smiling as they do it. Would you believe that today’s world dominated by scientism is much more protectively dogmatic than the Medieval church is alleged to have been?

Tom Valentine

Tom Valentine (born August 20, 1935, same day as Ron Paul) is a businessman, writer, commentator and radio host with an anti-establishment perspective. He worked with Radio Free America from 1988 to 2004. He tends to align with issues from left and right ends of the political spectrum, as well as libertarianism. His main journalistic interests have been unorthodox health care methods and conspiracy theories. He is a believer in many alternatives as cancer cures, and believes that soy products are unhealthy for human consumption. All of his views are at odds with the mainstream medical community.