We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day “I have met several people, who when explaining the extreme youth or old age of their parents, have told me, “Of course, I was an accident.” Well, if they can admit it, why can’t we all. Our existence is not due to the preference of some fabulous Being: it is just dumb luck. Why people should feel bothered by this I don’t know. They have won the lottery of life!”
Jamie Whyte, Bad Thoughts, page 128
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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And all this time, I thought I was here because my parents really liked to bang each other.
🙂
I have a theory that I was conceived on the motorway; I read that’s where most accident happen.
Actually, according to the state employee at my recent re-education session (drivers awareness scheme), only about 3% of accidents happen on the motorway.
Quite correct,
Most of them happen in the home 😉
Most of them happen in the home
I guess I should move somewhere else then.
The arguments for the existence, or not, of God and search for a ’cause’ or explanation of creation of the universe are perennial, and probably of occasional interest to us all. These are extremely difficult questions, and ones that I have thought for a long time are totally unanswerable (on the basis of evidence or rationality), and hence are issues of faith (including dismissal as unimportant or irresolvable).
Equating the creation of the universe to the splitting of a condom or similar, however, is not a contribution that I find attractive or useful, neither as theology/philosophy nor as advertising of a book.
Best regards
Nigel,
I think the point of the quote is that the little accidents of life are, when considered in the same depth we ordinarily only apply to major philosophical questions, even more marvellous, mysterious, and beautiful.
It is a comment on humans’ special blindness that we can look at anything in this wonderful universe and consider it trivial or unworthy. And that we imagine the pallid fantasies we make up about it all, to re-fill our mental image of the world with human ‘meaning’, could equal or exceed its least part.
This feature of human nature, and why we are so, I also find fascinating, marvellous. But it requires one to temporarily lay aside judgement to see it.
Quite a sniffy response there, Nigel. Au contraire, I think the analogy that Jamie Whyte used is extremely effective. Religion gains much of its hold over people’s minds by the idea that we came to exist because we’re “special”; that we have been created by some great Being who wants Nigel, Johnathan or whomever to exist, right here, right now. To admit that this is in fact not the case strikes many people at the core of their being.
Whyte’s book is a joy to read from start to finish, I certainly recommend it.
Nigel,
The questions are unaswerable because there’s no evidence of the god hypothesis.
There are answers, but they’re only on the balance of probability, and based on that, you won’t like the answer.
But guys, there are quite a number of planned pregnancies and subsequent children, you know?
Just because I was an accident (in the sense that I was unplanned), does not mean that my sibling was an accident too.
So, if we humans are capable of planning, designing and constructing events and machines, why not posit the possibility of a Planner who can do the same, except on the grand scale?
Actually, going back to the original issue, (unplanned pregnancy) this is a stupid argument. Normative science requires the mechanism of cause and effect. Nothing happens without a reason, and if two fertile humans of opposite sexes did not take pregnancy into consideration (or even if they did in fact take proactive steps in prevention) when performing coitus, more fool them, since this is after all the intended result of sexual intercourse.
Dare I say, the whole fucking point? (semi-pun intended)
Being 10 years younger than the youngest of the rest of my siblings, I always thought I was an accident. Mom happened to mention a short wile back that I was the (only) planned one.
Another quote back at you:
It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to put confidence in man.
Psalm 118:8
KRM: tell your folks a job well done:-)
Gregory,
“Normative science requires the mechanism of cause and effect.”
Interesting point. So far as I know, normative science doesn’t exclude the possibility of random events (the Copenhagen version of quantum theory positively revels in them), and for anyone who believes in free will, acts of will would also have no prior external cause.
The universe may indeed be deterministic and every outcome be determined by some cause, but this appears to be contingent.
For every event to have a cause, there arises an “infinite regress” problem, which is logically inconsistent with a finite history. (And invoking ‘God’ here doesn’t help, because one has to immediately ask “what caused God?”) The simplest conclusion to draw is that the hypothesis is incorrect, and events without causes may occur.
It’s not the only possible way out of this philosophical conundrum. The alternatives do tend to be a little bit weird, though.