Upon hearing an Eric Clapton guitar solo

[fpb]

At times like this, I really do feel sorry for atheists. One has to be grateful for artistry so miraculous, but they have nobody to be grateful to. (And don't give me any crap about "the human spirit" - that is what we owe the Murdoch press and robotic dance noise to.)

Comments

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

There is a cause behind the normal distribution; it's a mathematical theorem and you can read about it.

Either way, you answered nothing to my objection. Namely, that one can be grateful to Clapton, who put in a lot of work. Additionally, one ought to appreciate the rarity of the phenomenon (in fact, I would argue that it is precisely that that you appreciate, but that's a story for another time).

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Clapton's work is not different from the work of the average untalented person, and the gratitude they deserve for working is the same in both cases. But the averate untalented person has not done, and is not likely to do, anything comparable to what Eric Clapton consistently does. You seem to me wholly incapable of seizing on this obvious difference. It is not even to do with success - David Olney, a greater musician even than Clapton, is almost unknown - but simply with unique, inborn, inexplicable genius. And you do not explain it with mathematics, because genius is not the top end of intelligence. There have been plenty of stupid geniuses (including a man who worked with mathematics, Niels Bohr). Genius simply is untypical, random, a thing apart. And that is what it has in common with existence itself. The fact that you exist is wholly random, and it separates you from a million million hypothetical other people and things that have never existed and never will. When people complain about life, one has to ask: "as compared to what?" There is no term of comparison. Non-existence is simply nothing; by definition, it does not exist. Existence itself is the highest term of comparison for everything that is random, unexpected, wonderful, and not to be explained away.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

Genius simply is untypical, random, a thing apart.

I compiled a short list of things that fit this definition from the top of my head: 10 consecutive coin tosses that all came "heads" up; conjoined twins; the Bosavi giant woolly rat; the parrot that humped Fry's zoologist's head; Williams syndrome; Cor Triatriatum.

Would you wish to indicate to me for which of these one is ought to be grateful to the Creator, and to what extent in each case?

When people complain about life, one has to ask: "as compared to what?"

The sheer irrelevance of this observation notwithstanding, I will answer: "as compared to better life." Human unhappiness has much to do with the ability of the mind to imagine better possible scenarios and compare the present state to them.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You are incapable of philosophy.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, a mathematical formula is not a "cause"; it is a "description". The amount of things any mathematical formula has to say about the "reason" and the "cause" why any phenomenon happens is that well known mathematical formula, diddly squat. A million formulae for the growth of trees could not explain one seed. For the love of Heaven, learn some philosophy before you take it on yourself to argue philosophical issues! I suggest Aristotle and Karl Popper to start with, and, after you have gripped the basics of logic - which at present you have not - you can go on to Thomas Aquinas.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. A mathematical explanation can logically reduce a fact that we consider complex to a set of simple facts we would be willing to consider as obvious. Of course, these basic facts are postulated rather than explained. In the case of the normal distribution, one could show that it is to be expected under certain assumptions, which often happen to be fairly reasonable assumptions to make about the distribution in populations of things like intelligence or height.

Probability is indeed a field that gave and gives rise to many questions regarding the interplay between empiricism and the human mind. Lumping the various questions, phenomena and effects into one unintelligible entity seems a bit old fashioned. Looking down on people who abstain from such lumping doesn't seem justified to me.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you had given any sign of even wanting to consider any such question before, I might not have. And I am afraid that I do not suffer from chronological snobbery.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Genius is not the extreme of intelligence. It does not relate to intelligence as the height of basketball provessionals relates to that of the average population. I have said this before, but I want to insist on it. To compare the occurrence of genius to the occurence of extreme height, or even of very high IQs, is to be wholly mistaken about the very basic fact of genius.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

You're quite the typing contradiction, you know. For a good theist, you sure are prone to cutting to the ad hominems. For someone who recommends reading Aristotle and Popper, you certainly don't seem particularly concerned with making well-defined statements.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

What the Hell is not well-defined about "genius is NOT the extreme of intelligence"? What else do you want? Your damned mathematical formula for the distribution of human faculties and features is simply irrelevant here, because genius is not a variously distributed normal human feature. You are obviously unwilling to listen or to understand.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

Provide a working definition of genius.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Read my essay on Darwin and Newton in my community fpb_de_fide. You will find it all there, along with a number of things it would be useful for you to know.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

What you describe there seems to me to be captured better by something like "remarkable achievement", since you refer both to talent and circumstances. Here, you stress the underlying (apparently) innate talent of Clapton as the main thing.

Either way, you opine that "genius" is predicated on a rare combination of events, like I have here. I therefore take it that it is its rarity which you find to be the defining feature of the phenomenon at hand. I continue to say that the rarity is inherently a feature of nature. Perhaps you can explain your position to me on another example.

Michael Jordan had a rare set of athletic talents, well suited to engaging in an activity known as the game of basketball. The circumstances were such that he was able to use these talents to make millions happy and excited. Where does God enter the picture, again?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It is not rarity that I stress, it is unpredictability. Randomness in its most basic manner. You can, if you are a tyrant and the fancy strikes you that way, breed men for height, or for strength, or for blonde hair, or even for IQ; these are things that are partly or wholly innate and that can be bred into someone, whether or not their presence is rare. (There are Indians and black Africans with blue eyes.) But the end of my argument, and the core of it, is that it is a logical impossibility to breed for genius; that any program that sought to create geniuses by any kind of planned action would achieve the reverse of its goals, producing a generation of loquacious but imperceptive critics. That is because genius happens at the interception of a particular kind of individual potential, which is not always the same - the white-hot mathematical logic of the fanatic Newton was certainly not comparable to the emotional fervour of the irascible drinker, Beethoven - and specific cultural and social developments whose appearance cannot be predicted in advance. Eric Clapton would never have been what he is without the electric guitar, the American tradition of blues playing, and the peculiar position of England with respect to anything American - always both near and distant, offering a chance of reflection that the natives perhaps might not achieve. For instance.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

So to you the unpredictability and hence uncontrollability of the phenomenon of genius implies that the atheist's experience of (exposure to) it is incomplete?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Um. Putting it like that jumps a few connections I would make, and I would not say that that is the main feature about it. But having said all that - yes.

That is a long journey for something I really meant as a boutade - and that is not very novel either.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

Okay.

As far as contemporary science knows, it is in principle impossible to predict the position at which an electron will hit a screen after it passes through a narrow slit. Is the atheist's appreciation of this phenomenon incomplete?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Did an electron write the Divine Comedy? And yes, I know that Dante's body was full of electrons. As for the principle of randomness, I think it is completed once you understand it as an aspect of the free will of a sovereign God as expressed in His creation.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

Since you seem to be concerned with tackling that which you assume I am going to say after you answer "no", am I to take it that your answer to my question is "no"?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I thought the question had to do with the principle of randomness and I tried to answer it accordingly.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

The question is the following: are there natural phenomena which are unpredictable (either in principle or in practice - due to their great complexity) of which the atheist's experience is complete? If yes - please provide an example. If no - please justify.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No. Because everything that exists has an extra dimension from whose perception the atheist has cut him/herself off.