Apophenic addendum 1.:
Currently the most noticeable application of "apophenia" as a dismissive is in the raging pseudo-debate over "Intelligent Design".
The case for an Intelligent Design/Designer of the universe gets trivialized as the traditional evidence for it is shown to be part of another pattern entirely. The duck-billed platypus isn't an object of divine humor, but something we find amusing that was produced inevitably by environmental pressure and genetic context. Platypuses are no more amusing, to themselves, than rattlesnakes or black widow spiders are, to themselves.
But the real argument isn't about design, it's about the presence of a designer, and even that isn't the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is the moral valence the existence of a designer makes irrefutable. Not as a builder, but as a witness to the present moment.
So what we may have is, once again, a polarizing conflict - both poles of which lead to the same hidden agency.
The moral valence of the Intelligent Designer as represented by the prominent combatants for, is provided by an anthropomorphic thug; but the lack of moral valence in the lack of a designer makes anthropocentric thuggery permissible, because everything is permissible, because there are no rules beyond those made by the dominant in their own interest, because there is no design.
The main flaw in the argument for a Designer is a curious lack of eternal presence - he makes things, he does things, he reacts to human behavior. Like us he's here one moment, there the next, moving through time. The conceit is that the Designer too looks back at the past.
The real presence, what I believe to be the real presence anyway, is eternal. Always there. God's Unchanging Hand.
So that intelligence has nothing to do with it. Intelligence is a processing of information, it's defined by a movement through time toward a state of knowing. Knowing and being outside of the boundaried instant signifies a lot of things; one of the most pertinent in this argument is greatly simplified by a grasp of what eternal being really entails.
Changelessness, outside of time. We imagine changelessness as occurring within time, a rock in the field through the seasons, a statue in a park, a mountain, the constellations - these are the forms we take in to imagine with, even though we know even the most changeless object is altered constantly, like everything else. It's hard to get a sense of something being eternal and changeless, just like it's hard to imagine the environment around us as living.
What I'm suggesting is the same need to deny the life in the environment is there in the need to deny the "humanity" in primates whose lives are mangled in the bright dungeons of science - "humanity" in this case meaning "deserving of moral consideration as regards pain and degradation".
Notice that among traditional peoples recognition of the living environment, or more accurately the lack of distinction between animate and inanimate as regards all things is common, and consistently derided by representatives of both sides in what I'm calling the pseudo-debate over Intelligent Design.
My contention is it's derided by both because it's equally threatening to both, and scorn is the hallmark of fear in that type of creature.
That "primitive" idea - of a living world, of all things being alive, is exactly what you'd expect to find given a truly eternal presence.
So that the moral valence isn't will so much as consequence, that each move brings inevitable result, getting around that means results again, and the arrogance of one side - that the maker of all things has made them to be so special and privileged they can inflict horrible suffering on all sides simply for their own benefit, is mirrored by the other - that there is no specialness, no anything but the stuff of matter, that anything done just echoes in an empty featureless void, and therefore inflicting horrible suffering on all sides simply for their own benefit has no automatic repercussion.
I'm not just saying this to be cute, I really believe both sides have a partial grasp, enough to justify their own demands. Because they end up at the same place, the result of the conflict they wage so valiantly against each other looks the same in its aftermath no matter who wins.

put here 4:33 PM

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