If God is pure consciousness, it appears we cannot "know" whether higher consciousness may be superior to matter. The "evidence" squints ambiguously between the quantitative and the qualitative. We can believe or not believe, on evidence, that some aspect of consciousness that connects us persists through countless metamorphoses of beliefs that are signified in forms. For all we know, even God may reason likewise: "I may have only this one unfolding of universal consciousness. After that, nothing. I may as well make the best of it while I can."
If one assumes materialism proves only materialism, one will be biased against all evidence that is not quantifiable in materialism. If one assumes immeasurable aspects of consciousness abide, on par with, or possibly superior to, materialism, then one finds "evidence" in qualities of inner experience. However, these are not facts; they are only truisms. They are given their force of "truth" by assumptions, based on first assumptions ... by consciousness. The lights for "convincing" will not come from exterior facts, but from interior intuitions.
To my lights, it would be hard to believe in higher values without believing in a reconciling, higher purpose. Even were civilizaton to acquire capacity to nurture artificial intelligence for being expressed through machines, such expressions of self awareness may well intuit their own connections with higher values and purposefulness. Regardless, as to persons such as Horowitz and others, I am more concerned with how their beliefs may be consistently illustrated in their actions than I am with whether their attempts to achieve philosophical consistency may encounter glitches.
The only reconciling value or higher purpose I have intuited is this: Consciousness, having no choice but to abide, seeks to comfort and entertain itself by availing communications of understandings and empathetic appreciations of sacrifice. In that respect, there abides continuous striving towards decent civilization, i.e., a City of God. As that vision becomes imprinted and associated with genes, genomes thus expressed may become children of a City of God, such that no power on earth will subjugate the essential quality of that genotype.
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If the whole of our universe were nothing more than a flux of mathematics and equations, predestined and predefined from its origination, then, limited to that relation, our unfolding would be of little more meaning or import than a mindless Truism (like Rand’s “1 is 1"). We would not experience “Facts” made separate in any quality for themselves, but only truisms, all derivative of, and merely variations of, one original, encompassing, unifying, synchronizing, limiting fact. However, each of us has inside information to the contrary. That is, we "know" we are not mindless, nor without capacity for guiding and attaching meaning to our several experiences of unfolding facts. We know we have Will to apprehend, summon, define, and commission such facts as suit the unfolding parameters that are availed us for expressing our freedom. Thus, there are substantive and Quantitative “facts,” but they are of a Quality that is not independent of a Field of consciousness, which Field makes potent enough Perspectives of consciousness to accompany and attach to every expression of substance. There are no substantive facts that are more than truisms, unless they are tied to facts inter-functioning with consciousness at some level.
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Necessarily, leaders tend to lead others either (1) to respect the right of those who are generally able to look out for themselves to be left alone by the government, or (2) to dupe the most easily misled to help control all. Societies that fall to the 2nd choice tend to be those whose citizens are most self-satisfied, complacent, mis-educated, divided, and corrupt. Thus, leaders tend either (1) to respect the dignity of others, or (2) to believe in and value little more than themselves. The distinguishing characteristic is NOT necessarily religion, although there are sects of many religions that conflate charity with the re-distribution of other people's money.
Complications arise when those of the first type mis-construe their principles, as if a principle of respecting the dignity of others should encompass respecting the dignity of those who respect few apart from themselves. For one to tolerate those who will not tolerate himself is to tolerate his own demise. Yet, that kind of confusion and ignorance is now everywhere. Corruption and ignorance of sustainable principles are riding rampant, throughout America and the world. A society can easily pass to a point of conversion, from respecting the dignity of others to presuming a right to foist upon them what is best in the eyes of the foisters. Thus, it becomes very difficult to reverse the process. It's hard to collectivize people for the purpose of gaining or restoring freedom. Washington was that rarest of leaders. Unless we expect easily to find another Washington, it would be best to captain the ship of state far from points that mark the bounds of no return. That is a lesson about which most college profs seem blind and dumb. And therein marks the danger.
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