#26 Let’s get Metaphysical

Christine at read Write Poem is asking us to get metaphysical and the prompt at One Single Impression is ‘Word’.  Both of these seem to be right up my street. My interests, apart from poetry and literature, include science, philosophy and spirituality. I’ve chosen to concentrate on the macro world but the micro world inside the atom is just as awe inspiring and unknown. Even hard nosed academics like the novelist Martin Amis said recently  that in the face of the fact that 98% of the universe is dark material, which we know nothing about, it is irrational and counter intuitive to dismiss the possibility that there is a God. In a lecture delivered by Amis and James Wood, the Harvard Professor of Literature, the present was referred to not as post-Christian but as post-secular. People are hungry for spirituality and theology is being taken seriously here in the U.K. where religious practice has declined far more than in the U.S. Anyone who has been reading my blog for over a year will know of my hostility to Richard Dawkin’s campaign for atheism which has currently taken the form of an atheist bus. If I were to put a label on myself I am an agnostic Christian or maybe I’m a Christian agnostic.

Metaphysical

Words are a lamp to the dark matter of the soul –
the chi, essence, life force – that no longer inhabits
a cadaver stretched out on a table.

Questions about the soul’s previous existence
and continuation after death rattle like dry bones
in an empty casket – without words.

If the universe were a fist, all that we know about it
would fit on the nail of my little finger. We still do not know
why we exist but we do have to be  in order to be not.

We do not know why the device that drives the universe
is speeding up, flinging stars further into space. We toss
a salad of words like ‘black holes’, ‘chaos’ and ‘entropy’.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God…

‘Your word is a lamp to my feet’ (Psalm 119: 105)

‘To be or not to be…’ (Shakespeare: Hamlet)

‘Hands that flung stars into space’ (Graham Kendrick)

‘In the beginning was the Word…’ (John 1:1))

Who was Jesus?

Richard Dawkins: winning soldiers for God

My elder son sent me this link today.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/print/eagl01_.html

Not only has the sale of the bible increased by 120% since the publication of Richard Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion, he now has Marxist literary critic and atheist, Terry Eagleton, teaching him about theology.

To Meme or not to Meme

Yesterday, I learned the meaning of the word ‘meme’; increasingly prevalent in Blogland. I should have known that I’d be more likely to find it in Wikipedia than the OED. This word was first used by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976) as meaning ‘a unit of cultural information, transferable from one mind to another; a sort of behavioural analogue to the gene, propagating and subject to variation, mutation and competition in much the same way. ‘Meme’ did not achieve popular usage until the Eighties when it was taken up by the American philosopher and scientist, Daniel Dennett. ‘Meme’ comes from the Greek word ‘mimeme’ which means something imitated and Dawkins later developed Memetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
I have to ask myself about the usefulness and validity of this concept. The examples given of memes such as tunes, catchphrases and fashions in clothes describe what happens in popular culture but does little to explain it. Scientists like Francis Heylighen ask for an empirical grounding for something that is both subjective and nebulous. I would go further. Whilst not doubting that many human attributes are acquired genetically, debate still surrounds others. When I studied psychology in the Sixties, it was not believed that skills like those of a Musician were passed on from one generation to the next. In the current edition of Mslexia, in an article called ‘Born to Write’, two psychologists take up opposing positions in the nature versus nurture debate. When it comes to transferring from biological to human behaviour we are on shakey ground. However, I will stay judgement on the usefulness of the term until I have seen it in action more often but I don’t see Memetics as being in any way scientific.