Mesopotamian Piety

The young preacher had returned from seminary school and given his first sermon at the church where he'd grown up. After the service, he eagerly wanted to know if he had done well, since, in his inexperience, he did not feel himself the best judge of his performance. At the same time he was aware most of the congregation would a) not praise him if his sermon had been good, in order to avoid tempting him to the sin of pride, but also b) not criticize him if his sermon was bad, out of kindliness toward him. Then he saw near one of the exits an extremely elderly woman who had known him since he was a baby. He felt confident that she would not be sophisticated enough to hide her true feelings about his performance, and approached her.

Before he could say anything she greeting him by saying "that was one of the most wonderful sermons I have ever heard! It made me feel so in touch with the Lord! I enjoyed it ever so much! It uplifted me spiritually as much as any other sermon I've heard in the last year!"

"Thank you, sister," he said. Then, after a pause, "What ... did you find particularly valuable about it?"

She said, "I just can't tell you what a wonderful effect is has on me to hear the word 'Mesopotamia'."

See also InterviewingTheBhagwan. Often people have such a need for a certain kind of pattern to exist, that they don't care how it works. This pattern is easy for (stereotypically atheistic) Computer Science types to identify in unsophisticated members of traditional religious groups (as above) but DouglasHofstadter treated Zen much the same way in GoedelEscherBach (and so by extension do most of his admirers).

To put matters briefly, there are multiple legitimate and self-consistent ways of organizing knowledge/experience. To Hofstadter (taken as representative of a certain very influential tradition) all knowledge can or must be convertible to linguistic or mathematical symbols, which are then manipulated according to logic. GoedelEscherBach is devoted to proving that there are intrinsic limitations to this way of approaching knowledge. Unfortunately, Hofstadter maintains the unspoken assumptions that no alternative way of approaching knowledge could possibly have any consistency, process, or pattern. In other words, he writes as if everything he doesn't understand must be both homogeneous and intrinsically un-understandable. Numerous Zen stories are (mis)quoted to bolster this point.

The concept of "patterns" is extremely helpful for understanding this issue. Patterns exist outside of a "scientific" context as much as they do within it. Patterns are more fundamental to human thinking than is science. ChristopherAlexander 's NatureOfOrder goes so far as to say patterns are the fundamental ontology of existence.