It is amazing how Western thought pervades our worldview in ways that we usually don’t even think about. Thanks for the story!
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I’m not sure we can call personhood western though. A better question is what idiosyncratic things in Buddhism and Hinduism (sometimes) lead to denial of essential personhood, as they are both very much outliers. Even most Buddhists and Hindu’s do not actually subscribe to the denial of personhood. If the trinity is idiosyncratic to Christianity, denial of personhood is certainly idiosyncratic here too.
As for why? The answer is clear if you look at the origins of Hinduism or at the life of Siddhartha.
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What we observe is what is expected on Theism? You would have a point if there were theists a couple of billions years ago who made the prediction that everything will just unfold to generate what we observe today.
But to say that Theism explains best what we see is logically untenable. Post hoc explanations are seldom explanations. Especially when raised by some extant phenotypes.
I could, for instance, make up a complex teleological theory that expects cats as the final product. If I tell you: look how amazing my theory fits the facts, it really looks like this is just part of a master plan…would you consider that convincing?
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- viole
Bayesian? I could say that methodological naturalism is so effective because the world is naturalistic. Of course, that is not a logical inference, but what looks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc. … maybe it is a duck.
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- viole
We are primates. Actually we are still great apes, too.
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- viole
Go for it
I am a she…
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- viole
Very good. Thanks.
Efficiency is important, but I think the inherent amorality of the process is key. Let’s be honest, if we were omnipotent and omnibenevolent, would we design a process that heavily rely on exploiting every weakness and that requires the eating of things with a nervous system?
And why? Why design things that try to outsmart another design from the same designer? The lion is perfectly tuned to eat the gazelle, while the gazelle is perfectly tuned to escape the lion. It is like playing solitary chess. No, a fully naturalistic explanation should generate much less cognitive dissonances and, therefore, be preferred.
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- viole
My brother has been in Japan for 30 years… studying buddhism…
So it’s not exactly foreign territory for our family. But I still don’t know what you think the answer is for why “Easterners” are more willing to imagine karma being devoid of any memories or person-hood… and just a CPA adding sheet of pluses and minuses.
The soul becomes superfluous in a system like that … while in the West, the Soul is the point of the whole effort.
So… spill what you know… if you can answer this…
135 million years is 1350 hundred thousand years. So, more than several, point taken.
Question: it is possible that without the asteroid hitting earth 66 million years ago, we would not be here. Now, assuming that we are the goal of God, how do you rate His intervention on that asteroid? Did He touched it in such a way so that it will earth at the right moment or was everything just set in the initial conditions of the Universe?
Another question: is we are the goal of God, do you think evolution will stop for us now?
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- viole
And this is assuming that consciousness is not an epi-phenomenon.
If robot brains can work just as well as biological ones, one might argue that the “conscious” part is just a metaphysical “foam” generated by the biological brain… with no additional analytical functions.
This last sentence represents my view of the matter.
So I ask myself: does it make sense to me that a conscious foam would emerge in a universe devoid of a divine mind? My answer is: No.
But it does make sense to me that if there is a divine mind, he/she/it would want other conscious entities in the Universe with it!
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mmh, God is an artist. I am happy He did not use art to define the laws of physics and just experimented modern art with biology.
Do you see beauty in a mechanism that crucially depends on exploiting weaknesses and eating organisms able to feel pain?
Ciao
- viole
Animal pain is a problem for Theism in general not just your Theistic evolutions. You’re also ignoring everything I said about the nature of evolution. You are putting way too much emphasis on selection. The evolutionary process I see tells me in death there is life. Kinda like someone else pretty darn important in the Christian faith. Don’t fear death. There are lessons to be learned from it. This is what I mean by looking deeper. It’s also possible that evolution may have been the only way God could have accomplish his goals. We are in no position to know this. Nature red in tooth and claw is also the only way an ecosystem can work and not interfere with creation’s freedom. I don’t see God wanting to intervene non stop to prevent predation.
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Do you think that this will also be the case in Heaven?
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- viole
How did you arrive at this answer?
[note: I will refrain from being argumentative 
]
Let’s start with Hinduism. It is a religion of conquest, designed to absorb local pagan religions, while explain the differences in social status and wealth as totally justified.
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Sometimes a gambler has a hunch that a horse is the winner… one way or another.
If consciousness is literally completely irrelevant to anything and everything in the universe (except to the possessor), that strikes me as an unlikely development.
If consciousness has any meaning… there is a divine consciousness behind it.
Of course, there are agnostics and atheists who ask: but consciousness could be an arbitrary artifact… there is no entailment for a divine being.
While technically true, @T_aquaticus, my intuition is that this technical possibility is so unlikely, I don’t even bother thinking about it. Can’t tell you why. But it is my reality in the same way that walking into an empty elevator does not guarantee that it is working … but virtually all of us conclude that the elevator WILL work.
Sometimes, on this Earth of 7 billion, sometimes … someone makes the logical decision and they are fatally incorrect.
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How does that explain why Karma might be devoid of any considerations for a soul … but is simply an addition of pluses and minuses?
That gives a moral justification for why the ruling class has more than the dalits. They were more righteous in past lives than the poor. The moral thing to do is accept our own fate and those of others. That is why it is a religion of conquest. I adds moral goodness to those that have power, moral depravity those that are poor, and deems immoral any effort to make the world as we see it more just.
That this the moral, social, and historical logic of Hinduism, but that does not mean all versions of Hinduism or all Hindu’s see the world this way. Hinduism works in a very different way than religions like Christianity. This, genuinely, is hard to explain to westerners. I don’t mean to insult any Hindus who read or imply that they personally adopt this ethic.
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I think you are missing my point.
The choice is not between karma and no-karma.
The choice is between a personality that ultimately remembers all his lives and all his lessons, as karma applied to a soul with “continuity”.
versus
a karmic bundle of pluses and minuses… with zero memories… with zero sense of self or person-hood… but still karma … and still the constant working out of the consequences of karma.
Now do you see the question i’m asking?