[lbo-talk] The Argument from Design and Polytheism (Was: The "A"lives, apparently

[Shane Mage]

Eubulides wrote:
>
>"Well then, what usage of the adjective "why" do you have in
>mind that would justify this assertion?"
>
>
>It's a quest for an explanation. No mendacity is involved. Ontology is not
>reducible to politics.
>
An "explanation" of what?  Certainly not of the *present* existence
of the empirically known universe, since that (in principle) can only be
"explained" by derivation from its own prior state. Of a postulated
origin for a postulated initial condition of this *becoming*
universe? But this obviously depends on what has been postulated
as that initial condition, and in the absence of any empirical or
rational grounding whatsoever any such postulation is just as obviously
an absolutely arbitrary and indiosyncratic assertion admitting
of no discussion and permitting no rational application to the
*present* universe however defined.

(by the way,  for anyone living in a totalitarian system like
that of the Inquisition or of Stalinism ontology is an intensely
political matter, a question literally, for one, like Aquinas,
suspect of heresy, a matter of life or death)

Shane Mage

  "Mortals immortals, immortals mortals,

  living their deaths, dying their lives"

Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62