Email Exchange Between David Neil Bain (California, no relation) and David Gordon Bain (Newmarket, Ontario): On Various Religious Perspectives

Hi. My name is David Bain too. I just submitted an article on the
subject: Do we have a soul? under religion & spirituality>spritual theories
(not sure of the linkage.) I come from the USA, originally Nashville,
now California. I've read some of your articles and your ideas seem
similar to mine (though much deeper). To minimize confusion I think I'll
use my full name here: David Neil Bain.

I wonder if we are related? I am a descendant of William Bean who was
in this country about 1600.

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First Email Response from David Gordon Bain (Newmarket, Ontario) to David Neil Bain (California, USA)

Hi David,

I do not think we are related. It sound like your
ancestors arrived in America much before mine arrived
in Canada from Aberdeen, Scotland. I have no knowledge
of a William Bean in our lineage. Interesting, though.


I have no problem with both of us using our middle
names and/or initials. I will use either David Gordon
Bain or dgb. That should provide enough
differentation.

I haven't written an essay on the topic of 'Do We Have
A Soul?' yet. It is within the reach of my subject
matter to one day try it -- maybe sooner rather than
later. I am doing a lot of papers on religion these
days so it wouldn't be much of a reach. Next time I go
into Helium I will see if I can find some of your
essays including this one.

Cheers, dave

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Second Email From David Neil Bain to David Gordon Bain,

I really wanted to comment on your article about
Rational Thought and Proofs of God (or words to that effect). You seemed to
hold that the idea that we were created by intelligent design, in the
person of space aliens, was tenable, though the speculation that that
creator was God was not.

I got the idea that you were not seriously speculating, as some have
done, that we were created by space aliens because that would lead to an
infinite regression (who created the space aliens?). I think you are
too smart not to admit that at some point life would have to have evolved
without help and if on the aliens' planet, why not our own?

Of course using God as the creative designer leads to the same infinite
regression plus additional baggage. It can only be exited by drawing
the precise conclusion religious people do not want to make.

I openly refer to myself as an atheist, knowing that in some
intellectual circles it is fashionable to dismiss atheism as naive; agnosticims
being the favored alternative. I'll probably take up my atheism, along
with my seemingly contradictory agosticism, in another article.

Of course I am on this blog not only to satisfy my own vast vanity but
to try to make a little money. My article reaching first place in its
category has only netted me one cent so far. What do I have to do to get
to $25 so I can get an actual check? Or am I just going to have to
think of this as another excercise in vanity publishing?

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Second Email Response From David Gordon Bain to David Neil Bain,

Hi David,

I have thrown around a lot of different ideas about religion over the last couple of months. Some -- if not all -- of these ideas are very unorthodox. I was raised Protestant but that does not have too much to say about where I stand now religiously except that I respect my parents values in this regard and it has given me a partial underlying religious background that can be viewed as a starting-point for these other ideas. At this point in time, it is philosophers like Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hegel, Jung, Einstein, and Fromm that are having a lot stronger influence on where I stand religiously. Let me not forget the influence of empiricists like John Locke and David Hume.

As far as epistemology goes, I would have to say -- at least technically -- I am an agnostic. Information that I cannot verify with my senses is exactly that -- unverifiable. Unknown. So it is with God. One very big unknown.

In some respects, I could say I am an atheist in that basically I believe that God is a 'projective myth' -- created at least partly by man to ease his anxiety, loneliness, fear of death, etc. Which is not to say that religion cannot and has not had some very benefical (as well as toxic) influences on the evolution of man. One cannot look at the wonders of the world without speculating how it was created and who created it.

But that does not suffice with me. In my opinion, a person can believe that God is a projective myth -- and still say that that is 'not a bad thing', that it can be a good thing.

If you hold this position, then you are not going to be duped by people who try to tell you crazy epistemological things that defy good, sound reason and common sense. But you can still pursue God as a mythological, spiritual entity that may help to bring a greater sense of depth, wonder, appreciation, and urgency to your life. This is the direction I am going.

I find myself linked to the pantheists and deists in Western history and philosophy -- from Heraclitus to Spinoza to many of the Enlightenment philosophers to Albert Einstein...This is the spiritual place where I find myself most comfortable with the addition of a 'dialectical' presence -- Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, and the like. I even like working with ancient Greek and Roman mythology in the spirit of psychologists like Carl Jung and Erich Fromm... This is a path that I still need to develop more fully.

The essay that best exemplifies my present position on things is the one that follows this email. I just finished it. It is called: DGB Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential Deism and Pantheism. A wordy, technical name but one that I am happy with at this point in time as respresenting where I stand religiously.

Cheers,

Talk to you soon, I hope, and thank your for your feedback and comments.

david gordon bain

dgb, Nov. 19th, 2007.

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Third Email From David Neil Bain to David Gordon Bain,

Reading your multiple references to great philosophers leaves we with the same feeling I used to have playing chess against players who knew the classic moves. I am intelligent but ignorant. Nevertheless my fundamental ideas about religion come from great philosophers. Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian gave me permission to embrace atheism. Descartes's proof of the existence of God made an agnostic of me without dislodging my atheism. I am an atheist with regard to belief. I believe that God does not exist just as I believe I exist. But Descartes's introduced the question "What if a demon is making me believe that I am here writing this essay?" That I don't believe in demons is irrelevant since if demons existed they could deceive me into believing that they did not. Also I could be immersed in a virtual reality; I could be a sophisticated artificial intelligence in a false world, or I could simply be insane. I can't prove any of those things is not true. I believe that Descartes was very intelligent but there were fallacies in his "proof" of the existence of God. I could be mistaken even if I am not insane because of unrecognized fallacies in my own thinking.

Now to the deeper question. Is there really any money to be made on helium? I'm up to one cent and counting.

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Third Email Response From David Gordon Bain to David Neil Bain


Hi again David,

Firstly, you are one up on me relative to the Bertrand
Russell book. I've heard about it but not read it. I
expect that it is a good read and that there would be
lots of ideas in there that I would embrace.

Regarding all the philosophers that I cite, 5 to 10
years ago I didn't know most of them either. I am
almost 100 per cent self-taught in philosophy.
Academically, my background is in psychology which is
what led me eventually to philosophy. I worked
backwards from Freud, Jung, and Perls (Gestalt
Therapy) to Hegel because I eventually realized that
Hegel was the main root philosophical influence of all
of them. Hegel and Nietzsche.

So when i cite off all those philosophers, my intent
is not to 'name drop' or to go over anyone's head but
rather to simply point out my line of influence. I
would wish nothing better than to introduce all of my
'lay' readers to all of the philosophers that I cite.
But I can't do it in every essay. So yes, I tend to
forget that not all of my readers are academic and/or
heavily taught/learned philosophical readers. Sometime
I have problems connecting the 'gaps' between 'lay' or
introductory philosophical reader and heavily educated
philosophical reader.

Secondly, interestingly enough, Descartes has always
been a philosopher who I have mainly avoided. I seem
to avoid most of the 'heavy rationalists' including
for most of Plato and Kant. The lone
exception would be Spinoza who's wholism and pantheism
I have embraced in my work -- integrated with Hegel's 'dialectic' influence -- which turns Spinoza's ideas into my own (DGB) ideas of 'multi-dialectic wholism', 'multi-dialectic evolution', and 'multi-dialectic pantheism'. Please don't get intimidated by these ideas because they have not been properly introduced yet. I will introduce them -- hopefully with simplicity and clarity -- shortly. I can't even take full credit for these ideas because Heraclitus, probably many ancient Chinese philosophers -- most specifically the 'Han Philosophers', also the German Romantic Idealist -- Schelling, and indeed, Hegel himself all have developed the idea of 'dialectic wholism' even if they didn't use the same term that I have to label it. In Chinese philosophy the idea of 'dialectic wholism' is expressed by the idea of 'integrating and balancing yin and yang'.

For me, there has to be a 'multi-dialectical'
connection in philosophy between thought, emotion, and action, and
any philosopher who tends to go too heavy into the
'thought' or 'rationalism' -- devoid of emotion and
action -- I tend to turn away from. I am not the type
of philosopher who likes to engage in what might be
called 'mind games' -- like, as you cited, Descartes
'demon specualtion'. To me, if one goes too deeply
into 'massive abstractions' and the 'heaviest of
rationalist philosophizing' -- in effect, to leave
earth and travel into philosophical 'outer space' --
one might never come back. And what will one have
gained from all this philosophical 'space travel'
except perhaps a massive headache? I have neither the
motivation nor likely the necessary intellect to
follow Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Descartes
or others along this outer space path.

I prefer to stay grounded on earth, even as I
sometimes fly fairly high myself in some of my
abstractions, and get told this by some of my readers
who can't be expected to have read the same books that
i have, and/or be expected to understand all of my
terminology until they get properly introduced to it.
The issues of 'groundedness', 'application',
'pragmatism', 'passion', 'impulse', 'conflict',
'opposition', 'synthesis' or 'integration' and 'action' are why I favor Hegel and
Nietzsche over any two other philosophers. These are my main philosophical mentors (aside from the 'psychological' ones who introduced me to Hegel and Nietzsche: specifically, Freud, Adler, Jung, and Perls).

Even Bertrand Russell -- as much as I enjoy his 'common
sense' approach to philosophy, to the extent that I
have read small snippets of his work -- at times
becomes too much of a rationalist for me, and I start
to turn away. Wittgenstein is ten times worse and if
you read the 'Introducing Bertrand Russell' book, you
might become amused like I did, that Wittgenstein
almost literally drove Russell into insanity trying to
follow Wittgenstein's wicked logic and abstractions. I
would prefer not to become insane going the 'mind
games' route. Applied practicality is important to me.

Which brings me to your last point. Money. If you have
made 1 cent at Helium, then that is 1 cent more than I
have made.

First and foremost, you have to write because it is in
your blood -- because that is what you need to do in
order to creatively express yourself.

There may be many 'money pragmatists' out there -- and
certainly, I would love to be one of them -- who are
making a decent or even a good amount of money on the
internet. Maybe even at Helium. But I am not one of
them.

So the long and the short of the answer to your
question is -- 'I don't know.' If there is, then you
need to follow someone who can show you that route.
And that person, at this point in time, is not me.

For me right now, the motivation for writing is in the
writing itself. I would like to lay out the full range
and depth of my philosophy before I die. That might
take one year. It might take five years. Hopefully, it
won't take more than five years, assuming I live that
long. The older you get, the shorter life gets. I am
52 right now and the husband of a friend of mine very
abruptly died of a heart attack last January at 49. The sister of another friend of mine died of drug complications around the age of 30. So
-- life is fleeting; you never know when your time is
going to expire. You can never say that 'I have all
the time in the world' because anything and everything
can change at a moment's notice. I was lucky I didn't
get killed in a car crash last winter. And I had some
liver problems this summer. So -- you never know.

I've become rather long-winded and 'preachy'. Follow
your heart. Or follow the money. As Kierkegaard would
say in the title of one of his books -- 'Either/Or'.

Or you can take a 'Hegelian' or a 'Post-Hegelian'
(DGB) approach and 'work the dialectic'. Passion vs.
money. How can I integrate them into the same package?

This, of course, would be the ideal Hegelian
synthesis. If you can put together that integrative
package to your ideal satisfaction, then you are much
more than one cent ahead of me.

Right now, I'm just in it for the passion and the
creativity. Maybe tomorrow there will be money. But I
am not counting on it.

Cheers again,

dave (david gordon bain)

From David Gordon Bain (Newmarket, Ontario) to David Neil Bain (California, USA)

Hi David,

I have thrown around a lot of different ideas about religion over the last couple of months. Some -- if not all -- of these ideas are very unorthodox. I was raised Protestant but that does not have too much to say about where I stand now religiously except that I respect my parents values in this regard and it has given me a partial underlying religious background that can be viewed as a starting-point for these other ideas. At this point in time, it is philosophers like Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hegel, Jung, Einstein, and Fromm that are having a lot stronger influence on where I stand religiously. Let me not forget the indluence of empiricists like John Locke and David Hume.

As far as epistemology goes, I would have to say -- at least technically -- I am an agnostic. Information that I cannot verify with my senses is exactly that -- unverifiable. Unknown. So it is with God. One very big unknown.

In some respects, I could say I am an atheist in that basically I believe that God is a 'projective myth' -- created at least partly by man to ease his anxiety, loneliness, fear of death, etc. Which is not to say that religion cannot and has not had some very benefical (as well as toxic) influences on the evolution of man. One cannot look at the wonders of the world without speculating how it was created and who created it.

But that does not suffice with me. In my opinion, a person can believe that God is a projective myth -- and still say that that is 'not a bad thing', that it can be a good thing.

If you hold this position, then you are not going to be duped by people who try to tell you crazy epistemological things that defy good, sound reason and common sense. But you can still pursue God as a mythological, spiritual entity that may help to bring a greater sense of depth, wonder, appreciation, and urgency to your life. This is the direction I am going.

I find myself linked to the pantheists and deists in Western history and philosophy -- from Heraclitus to Spinoza to many of the Enlightenment philosophers to Albert Einstein...This is the spiritual place where I find myself most comfortable with the addition of a 'dialectical' presence -- Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, and the like. I even like working with ancient Greek and Roman mythology in the spirit of psychologists like Carl Jung and Erich Fromm... This is a path that I still need to develop more fully.

The essay that best exemplifies my present position on things is the one that follows this email. I just finished it. It is called: DGB Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential Deism and Pantheism. A wordy, technical name but one that I am happy with at this point in time as respresenting where I stand religiously.

Cheers,

Talk to you soon, I hope, and thank your for your feedback and comments.

david gordon bain

dgb, Nov. 19th, 2007.

God, Religion, Faith, Epistemology, and Ethics

God, religion, faith, and epistemology -- which one does not fit? The answer is epistemology -- the study and analysis of 'knowledge', and particularly 'good knowledge'.

Since the beginning of science, and then the Enlightenment period of philosophy, epistemology -- and the quest for good, solid, credible, reliable knowledge -- has generally been equated with what we will call here 'rational-empiricism', or alternatively, 'empirical-rationalism'.

What is rational-empiricism? Rational-empiricism, or alternatively, empirical-rationalism is not a term that you are likely to find in the philosophical literature. At least I have not bumped into it and I have been studying philosophy for a while now. ...

I just made a major rational-empiricist blunder and at the risk of looking foolish hee, I am willing to confess up to it in the name of teaching, and what I am attempting to accomplish here. I didn't check and verify my assumption regarding the non-existence of the term rational empricism -- or rather I did -- but after I had already started to write this essay and committed myself to a particular line of thought. (Always check and verify before you declare something to be true or not true and then look silly for not have checked.) Now my previous line of thought will have to be modified to take into account already existing philosophy -- which is no big deal. Modification is a critically important part of evolution. We do not need to re-invent the wheel here; just perhaps build a better one through modification. This is '(multi-)dialectical evolution' in process.

The term 'rational empiricism' (without the hyphen) does indeed exist in the philosophy literature, and furthermore, it has exactly the meaning -- at least on the internet where I found it -- that I wanted it to have. So rather than create the definition and description myself, I will defer to an already existing definition and description that I found very easily on the internet and will repeat right here:

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Rational Empiricism
and the Scientific Method


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Rational Empiricism
Even though historically it appears to have other meanings, I (Paul Antonik Wakfer) will use the term rational empiricism for the name of the epistemological method which is the foundation of all current knowledge and continuing knowledge advances in science, technology and philosophy. The methods of rational empiricism have been honed over millenia to their current state of refinement, yet these methods are not a finished product; they continue to evolve, and to be further refined in order to achieve greater efficacy as an aid to human understanding of reality and to the security that such understanding is really valid. However in spite of millenia of refinement, the methods of rational empiricism are still not too complex for most humans to understand, for they are, in fact, nothing more than the rational processing by the human brain of the data of experience (the sensory input to the body) for the purpose of understanding the organization, order and predictability of reality. Both the sensory input and the rational processing have been aided increasingly by the machines which have been created for that purpose. Formally, rational empiricism is a subset of rational thought (the logical integration of the evidence of one's senses into the mind's model of reality and the resulting evaluations, conclusions and decisions) of which the ultimate purpose is to maximize one's lifetime happiness.
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Thus, the three main ideas connected with rational empiricism here are: 1. reason supported by; 2. our senses with the purpose of; 3. maximizing our personal lifetime happiness. Point 3. technically does not, or should not, belong to the definition of rational empiricism because it brings in an assumption that arguably lies outside of the strict realm of rational empiricism -- and that is the realm of ethics and the 'is-ought' gap. However, I have no problem connecting rational empiricism to humanism - 'the pursuit of happiness' -- and our founding Enlightenment fathers (Jefferson, Tom Paine, et al...) because I have found no better ethical alternative.

You will see a lot of hyphenated words in the type of philosophy that I am trumpeting here -- 'rational-empiricism', 'humanistic-existentialism', 'humanistic-capitalism', 'liberal-conservatism' or 'conservative-liberalism' -- becaue these are all outcomes of 'dialectical integration process'.

Two polar concepts, perspectives, philosophies, lifestyles...facing off against each other, assertively and competively, then empathetically and compatibly, resulting in mutual harmony rather than mutual rejection, a place reached integratively through creative imagination and negotiation, a place of better 'homeostatic balance' than either of the two polar concepts, perspectives, philosophies and/or lifestyles could achieve in and by themselves. This is dialectical negotiation, integration, evolution, and harmony or homeostatic balance. The more hyphenated words that you have, the more you are delving into 'multi-dialectics.

Who integrated God and Nature? Spinoza. However, Spinoza's religion, which we now call 'pantheism', is no more 'rationally empirical' than any form of orthodox religion. Why? Because an epistemological belief in God and religion require 'faith' and faith -- at least in any extended degree -- is not compatible with rational-empiricism.

Science is built on rational-empiricism. Our police enforcement and courts are built on rational empiricism -- at least when they are working well. Same with politics when it is working well. There is no room for extended amounts of faith in rational empiricism (except perhaps for faith in rational empiricism). Religion requires extended amounts of faith -- 'epistemological faith' relative to things that most people would not normally believe, or believe strongly without questioning. Thus, religion and rational empirical epistemology, are for the most part, incompatible, and at odds with each other. This is why I view all relgions and all views of God -- as 'myths'. Not necessarily bad because some myths can have good consequences on people's lives. But epistemologically bad because too much (religious) epistemological faith generally results in bad -- or wrong -- epistemology. Thus, all religions and all views of God should be viewed as myths and not as 'epistemological truths'. Treating religions as epistemological truths, and then worse, bringing these alleged religious epistemological truths into politics or a court of law is downright dangerous.

Politics and law should be run by 'good rational-empirical epistemology' and 'humanistic(compassionate)-existential(accountable) ethics'. A religion should be judged by its ethics; not the reverse. To bring unscrutinized religious epistemology and/or ethics into a court of law or into politics is a disaster waiting to happen. This is why our founding Enlightenment fathers clearly separated these totally different realms of human activity. American politics -- particularly among Republican factions -- seems intent of re-uniting what shouldn't be re-united. Religious epistemology (and for that matter, ethics too) -- based on a high degree of faith, trust, authority, and 'suspension of disbelief' -- is prone to pathology because it is not sufficiently scrutinzed on rational-empirical and humanistic-existential grounds. Keep religion out of politics and see all religions for what they are -- different breands of 'better' and 'worse' myths.

db, Sept. 2nd, 2007.