Prophecy, Blasphemy, Hypocrisy

Prophet(as defined by Wikipedia): A prophet (or prophetess) is a person who has directly encountered the numinous or the divine and serves as an intermediary with humanity. A prophet is seen as a person who has encountered, and speaks as a formal representative of; God.
Now that definition seems pretty accurate, and I think most of us can agree that it matches our own. I am not going to challenge it. What I want to do, however, is attempt to expand it.

"The only Good is Knowledge, The only Evil is Ignorance" The Soc

There seems to be little room in our view(or view from our room) of this concept for anybody non-religious. A prophet seems to not only be the "intermediary" between humanity and the divine, but also somehow tied exclusively to organized religious thought. Whether one wants to admit it or not, science has opened our eyes to the ACTUAL way the world in which we live, pray, and play works. Physics, Mathematics, Biology, Geology and other like sciences along with social concepts like: Sociology, Anthropology and Philosophy have revealed the mechanisms inherent to everything that plays a role in our existence. If Jesus and Mohammad inspired the masses with ground breaking revolutionary ideas about love and respect for your fellow man, then Darwin and Newton painted the blue print of the world where these concepts could be applied. Should we only recognize visionaries that attempt to offer us super natural ROI's, and subsequintly shun those minds that make sense of the tools that God uses to make it all possible? It seems that if our demands for eternal gratification are not met by explanations of what this world is, and how it works, then we can CHOOSE whether or not to legitimize those explanations. I find that not only troubling, but unfair.

"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment" Chuck

A prophet translates the word and message of God for the rest of us. Based on that translation, we make sense of our world and our place within it. But if God is "All Knowing", then he/she must also be.... multilingual. Isn't mathematics the universal language? If so, then obviously God is fluent in math. And since we know now that our world is governed by some fundamental physical laws, then physics too must be a language that God is writing his manuscript with. Can anybody legitimately discredit and disprove modern medical practices? If your leg is hanging on by a thin sheet of skin, who else but a surgeon would you trust to reattach it? So it seems that God also speaks biology. Why are we where we are today with these concepts and discoveries? Is it not because we were lucky enough to have Newton hurt his dome via an apple, or Einstein fatefully filling files at the patent office, or Darwin revisiting his vacation spot by the beaches of the Galapagos? Did they not reveal to us, and translate for us, some of the chapters in God's autobiography?

"Tact in the knack of making a point without making an enemy" Isaac

Now what about Philosophy, a school of thought that many bill as the anti-Godtrine? Should we fail to recognize Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato among others, as prophets because they ask hard questions? Questions that seem to take God out of the equation almost entirely. Take the famous Euthyphro dilemma, where Socrates asks this seemingly simple question:
"Do the gods approve an action because it is pious, or is it pious because it is approved." Morality and God are deemed to not be mutually exclusive here. A revelation that contradicts the main pillars of virtually every religion. Because of thoughts like these, philosophy has been referred to as nothing more than an anecdote, an optical illusion even. But why? The origins of Philosophy predate the common era by centuries, in fact even influencing the creation of religious thought and societal laws. Were talking about people here who spent their entire lives studying and seeking out knowledge, and contesting conventional thought. What a crime to suggest that God works in more mysterious ways than we could possibly know. To suggest that God has the Awesome power to create infinite worlds, to emphasize morality so much that even he/she couldn't alter it. Suggestions that should be quieted, and burned at stakes, and hung in town squares. Should we not recognize these philosophers as prophets for defining and creating some of the most fundamental social ideas?

If blasphemy exists as a form of libel for Christianity, Islam, Judaism and other religions, then it should also exist for Biology, Physics, Mathematics and even Philosophy. This double standard is out dated, and hypocritical. Even if you don't believe in God you can't argue that Darwin, Newton and Aristotle were not channeling and serving as an intermediary between the typical human and the divine. How you chose to define these terms is up to you.

Waking Life Excerpt:

Evolution Through Homer(Not The Philosopher):


Tunes About God:
The Thermals- Here's Your Future

The Thermals- An Ear For Baby

The Thermals- I Need You To Kill

The Hold Steady- Cattle And The Creeping Things

I Think, Therefore I Am Totally Confused

"I Think, Therefore I Am... I Think"

That's the title of a fascinating article by Stephen Cage who, before gifting me this piece, had never contributed to my life in any way. So I can't follow up his name with "writer of..."'s and "from such movies as..."'s. I could just Google him and fix that little problem while sounding as if I actually knew something about the dude. But I'm not that pretentious. Plus there were too many Stephen Cage's on Google and I didn't get anywhere after 43 minutes of sifting.
I have provided a link to this article at the conclusion of my writings here today, so I advise you to check it out either now, or after being worked up into a frenzy by my insights into this matter. I have also provided a link to one of my favorite clips from the movie 'Waking Life', which tackles a lot of fascinating philosophical topics.

Free Will.
Is God just lounging on a La-Z-Boy punching in XBox controller buttons to make us involuntarily run into walls, slay innocent creatures, and dance around our apartment aimlessly so our Sims boredom level doesn't drop down to critical levels? Or are we in control of Tiger Wood's golf swing when we Wii? This question has been around as long as philosophers and thinkers began asking questions(and began playing Halo online). And there's simply not a yes or no answer to it. If you think that you do have free will, that at any moment during the reading of this blog you can decide to direct your browser to Youtube and suck away the minutes by watching Japanese game shows instead, you're oversimplifying the process. And if you think you don't have it, that God knows in advance what the path that you'll be treading looks, feels, and smells like, a host of other problems arise: responsibility, accountability, self motivation, what the hell is the point of the creation of mankind if we have no choice, on and on. You can't even dodge the question if you're an atheist. There are all sorts of scientific complications here too, as you'll read about in Stephens article.

I found myself, and even right now find myself, struggling with a resolution to this whole topic. This article took it to a whole nother level. Particularly the discussion about the neurobiological angles. The fact that our neurons have already set the realization of an action in place before we've even made a conscience decision to make that action is really messing me up. And then it had to go and reference a study that showed that when our neurons are manipulated to prepare for one action in particular, not only would it incite the subjects to act accordingly, but it would also make the test subjects believe that they acted out of their own free will. So for instance, let's say I'm a doctor, and I zap you with some electrical current that makes you want to read this here blog, and you oblige. When you finish reading you'll still believe that it was you're decision to read on, that you were exercising free will. Now you might be saying that this example isn't a very good one, because once you pop one of my entries into your mouth, you just can't stop. But you get the idea. Some argue that since we are nothing more than an elaborate collection of atoms, molecules and the like, that our actions are only dependent on the interactions between these properties, and that's that. Like a piece of machinery that operates according to how the nuts and bolts are arraigned, and not how it feels like operating. A car has to run like a car, and not like an aircraft carrier. Individuality in that context would be nothing more than a paint-job.

There's talk in the article about combining philosophical thought with scientific discovery. And perhaps using the two together to try and come up with new kinds of explanations for some hard to explain behaviors . That sounds like an extremely powerful idea. It also seems like an idea that could potentially lead to all sorts of updates to old theories. The evolution of such an alliance might make the world we live in look totally alien in the future. It could force us to revamp some fundamental social institutions.

Personally, I think that since we know so little, in the bigger scheme, about what happens when microscopic molecules come together to form complex physical structures(why they come together for that matter) we can't be sure whether the output behaves on it's own accord or according solely to what it's design is dictating it to behave like. It's one thing to say that a Honda behaves like a Honda, and not like an F-16, but a totally different thing to say that a hyper computer(some future machine of technological genius) ought to behave like a Dell. Who knows what would happen when you input that much technology into a machine. Until it can be proven that the complexity of an entity doesn't make it more than just the sum of it's parts, I think you can't rule out the possibility that the entity would be governed by more than just it's constituents. Then again maybe because of the complexity no central mainframe exists, like a corporation. I haven't been able to be at piece with any one answer, I guess all I can do for now is go about my business with the thought that just believing that I have freedom in my decision making, forces me to be at my most productive.

I Think Therefore I Am, I Think Article Link:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/81bc32e4-d5e3-11db-99b7-000b5df10621.html

Clip From 'Waking Life':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VxQuPBX1_U

Japanese Game Show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEKqU1fkYCI