This is what passes for an eminent philosopher these days: Julian Savulescu [Part II]
[NOTE: Part I can be found here.]
Later on in his interview, the philosopher and bioethicist Julian Savulescu has much to say about what humans can do on the biological level to help make the world better, in the general sense as well as the biologic sense:
In my view, we should choose genes if those characteristics affect a person’s happiness. A rising percentage of kids today are on Ritalin for Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. But that’s not because there’s suddenly been some epidemic of ADHD. It’s because you’re crippled as a human being if you have poor impulse control and can’t concentrate long enough, if you can’t defer small rewards now for larger rewards in the future. Having self-control is extremely important to strategic planning, and Ritalin enhances that characteristic in children at the low end of impulse control. Now, if you were able to test for poor impulse control in embryos, I believe we should select ones with a better chance of having more choices in life, whether you want to be a plumber, a taxi driver, a lawyer, or the president.
Does he hear himself? One of the dangers of “playing God” is to think we know what we do not know. I’m referring to the consequences of decisions such as what Savulescu is proposing here. Hubris is a mild word for what he’s displaying. People with ADHD are “crippled as human beings?” Yes, they have certain problems, but so does everyone—including, I imagine, Savulescu himself. In fact, for some people with ADHD, there might even be other characteristics going hand-in-hand with ADHD that are a plus. Some are creative, energetic, and out-of-the-box thinkers who’ve contributed much to society.
We are not equipped to measure the worth of a life, and the more we think we can, and the more circumstances we include in our deity-like measuring and eliminating, the further we have gone towards the territory of “life unworthy of life” Nazi-esque judgments.
In other words, Savulescu (along with his mentor, Singer) gives me the willies.
Here Savulescu addresses—or thinks he addresses—the problems inherent in eugenics and the Nazi comparison:
People concerned about eugenics remember the Nazi program of sterilization and the extermination of people deemed to be unfit. Now it’s important to recognize this wasn’t unique to Nazi Germany. The extermination part was, but sterilization was common through Europe and the United States. Many states in the U.S. had eugenics laws so people who were intellectually disabled or mentally ill were sterilized against their will. This kind of eugenics was one of the darker sides of the 20th century.
But eugenics just means having a child who is better in some way. Eugenics is alive and well today. When people screen their pregnancies for Down syndrome or intellectual disability, that’s eugenics. What was wrong with Nazi eugenics was that it was involuntary. People had no choice. People today can choose to utilize the fruits of science to make these selection decisions. Today, eugenics is about giving couples the choice of a better or worse life for themselves.
Yes, one of the many problems with Nazi eugenics was that it was involuntary. It was a huge problem, although in their own hubris the Nazis didn’t see it that way at all. But it was hardly the only problem. Another problem is that all eugenics, not just the coercive variety—as I’ve already indicated—comes complete with an alarming degree of hubris that ignores the unintended consequences of such policies, much as all large-scale central social planning does. But it’s a persistent leftist/statist delusion that the person currently doing the planning is smart enough to avoid (or ignore) those inherent problems.
Also, didn’t Savulescu already state the following (emphasis mine), in the same interview from which I’m taking all these quotes?:
Q: So you don’t see any fundamental ethical objection to human cloning?
A: In reality, hardly anybody does. Remember that 1 in 300 pregnancies involves clones. Identical twins are clones. They are much more genetically related than a clone using the nuclear transfer technique, where you take a skin cell from one individual and create a clone from it.
Q: But twins are not something we engineer. That just happened.
A: One of the big mistakes in ethics is to think that means make all the difference. The fact that we’ve done it or nature has done it is irrelevant to individuals and is largely irrelevant to society. What difference would it make if a couple of identical twins come not through a natural splitting of an embryo, but because some IVF doctor had divided the embryo at the third day after conception? Should we suddenly treat them differently? The fact that they arose through choice and not chance is morally irrelevant.
So, according to Savulescu’s own belief system, wouldn’t the distinction between voluntary eugenics and coerced eugenics be one of means, and therefore wouldn’t it be a “big mistake” to think it’s a difference that makes a difference? I assume that he would answer that question by saying that it’s more than a distinction of means; that somehow distinctions based on voluntariness or coercion are of a very different order. But why would that be, if we are bioengineering a Brave New World?
Come to think of it, Savulescu reminds me quite forcibly of the character Mustapha Mond in Huxley’s masterpiece:
Resident World Controller of Western Europe, “His Fordship” Mustapha Mond presides over one of the ten zones of the World State, the global government set up after the cataclysmic Nine Years’ War and great Economic Collapse. Sophisticated and good-natured, Mond is an urbane and hyperintelligent advocate of the World State and its ethos of “Community, Identity, Stability”. Among the novel’s characters, he is uniquely aware of the precise nature of the society he oversees and what it has given up to accomplish its gains. Mond argues that art, literature, and scientific freedom must be sacrificed to secure the ultimate utilitarian goal of maximising societal happiness. He defends the genetic caste system, behavioural conditioning, and the lack of personal freedom in the World State: these, he says, are a price worth paying for achieving social stability, the highest social virtue because it leads to lasting happiness.
I would also assume (although I’m really not sure) that Savulescu would say that he differs from Mond in that he doesn’t believe in caste systems, and he doesn’t want to sacrifice personal freedom either. Well if so, bully for him. But such a smart person should be smart enough to see that once the sort of things he’s advocating become normal in society, the rest can easily follow, and that once social engineers are in charge personal freedom will always suffer greatly.
Savulescu does seem to have an inkling of some problems, although even there his insights seem interspersed with mistaken assumptions:
I think we are the biggest threat to ourselves. The elephant in the room is the human being.
This seems to be true. But then he says this:
For the first time in human history we really are the masters of our destiny. We’ve got enormous potential to have unprecedentedly good lives. We’ll be able to live twice as long. With our computers and the Internet, we already are smarter than any of our predecessors.
I don’t agree with any of the assertions in the above quote. I don’t see us as the “masters of our destiny”, and since Sevulascu has already just said that the elephant in the room is the human being, I doubt he actually thinks so either. Is that not a contradiction, right there?
And then there’s the phrase “unprecedentedly good lives.” “Good” measured how? People certainly don’t seem happier than they used to, if one measures “good” that way. But there are other ways to measure “good” than “comfortable” or “easy” or even “long” (see this).
And will we actually ever be able “to live twice as long” as the oldest of us do now? Perhaps, but perhaps not. It remains to be seen.
Lastly, does Savulescu really think that computers and the internet have made human beings “smarter than any of our predecessors”? I certainly don’t see that effect of computers. Whatever the reason, I see us as creeping closer towards the situation portrayed in the film “Idiocracy,” and although computers have made some people more well-informed, at least, they seem to have given others more access to false information and circles of hatred and paranoia.
Savulescu went on to add:
But we also have the possibility to completely shackle ourselves, if not destroy ourselves. The Internet is a good example. In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother was placing us under surveillance, controlling and censoring everything that happened. In some ways we already are under surveillance. But my worry is not the government—at least not in the U.K. or the U.S.; it’s each other. As soon as we publish something, it’s immediately pumped around the Internet to every fanatical group, which then mobilizes within minutes and creates such momentum that it doesn’t matter what you said or what the truth is; what matters is the perception. So we now live under a kind of censorship of each other and that’s just going to increase.
He said that right after he said “With our computers and the Internet, we already are smarter than any of our predecessors.” Seems contradictory to me.
I will close with something I wrote earlier in one of my posts about Peter Singer (the teacher Savulescu credits as his mentor):
When I was a child of about twelve years old, I came across (I think it was in an encyclopedia) a Goya etching entitled “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” Here it is:
At the time, I was puzzled by the title. Did it mean that when reason goes to sleep, bad things happen? Or did it mean that when reason gets free reign, bad things happen? Since then, I’d always seen it interpreted the first way; after all, Goya himself wrote “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters.” But that’s not the full quote, which adds, “united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders.”
I’d add to “imagination” something like “emotion,” or perhaps “the eternal and ancient human truths.”
Here’s more:
“Kearney (2003) suggests two different meanings based on the dream/sleep debate. Firstly, ‘reason must govern the imagination’, it must be watchful, otherwise the ”’forces of darkness’, will be ‘˜unleashed on humanity’. Alternatively, a more romantic approach is that the ‘˜rationalist dreams’ promoted by the ‘˜Enlightenment’ are just as capable of producing their own ‘˜monstrous aberrations’.”
Reading about Peter Singer immediately made me think of that Goya etching.
[NOTE: The interview with Savulescu was first written up in 2015, but it’s been recently republished.]
Remember, eugenics was a basic building block of the PROGRESSIVE ideology.
Maybe instead of trying to genetically engineer kids without ADHD, we should look at our child-rearing practices that might cause it. Parents can see in their kids things that interest them and might be a way to get them to focus on them. Kids could be given more time to play and explore outdoors without helicopters over them. By helping their parents with everyday chores, kids may acquire a sense of accomplishment that is very different from today’s overhyped self esteem.
This guy doesn’t seem to have much contact with real families or kids.
expat:
On Savulescu’s personal life:
Read the whole thing. Quite fascinating, actually.
I can’t find anything on whether he has remarried, or whether he has children.
I do not find it worthwhile to rebut people like Savulescu. He is too much like my psychiatrist brother. They worship themselves, an exercise fraught with futility, and eventually realized as such. They lack humility, and that makes them monsters.
On your Part I, the commenter Lightning wrote, “The modern thinkers don’t seem to consider how others are impacted by the action taken.” This true of Singer and doubly true of Savulescu, whose rise I started following many years ago. Singer, for example, proposed that parents (mostly mothers, natch) can ethically kill their children up to two years of age. He had no understanding that two-year-olds and their parents don’t exist in a vacuum; the fabric of society cannot withstand a tear that allows a someone to kill a grandchild, neighbor, or playmate just because he/she is the parent.
By the way, I completely turned a budding Utilitarian philosopher off Singer by pointing out that any of his philosophical writings could be reduced to the utterances of our at-risk, maladjusted sophomores. That includes “Speds ( education students) are a waste” and “If everybody gets the same amount of money, everybody would be happy” and “As long as you don’t kill it, nobody should care if you f*** a cat or dog.”
“bioethicist”???
Just how sick does a person have to be to consider himself an expert on ethics? If I said “I’m an expert on what’s right and wrong” people would rightly regard me as a nutcase.
The baby is a separate human life, albeit dependent on her mother for the first 9 months, and upon her mother and father for nearly 2 decades thereafter. When and by whose choice does a human life acquire and retain the right to life?
Selective-child, recycled-child. Summary judgment. Cruel and unusual punishment. Unconstitutional before the Twilight Amendment. Immoral, but ethical. Here’s to progress.
C. S. Lewis already talked about this in The Abolition Of Man. The “voluntary” eugenics that Savulescu thinks is okay is involuntary for the population that results from it, every bit as involuntary as that practiced in the 1930s:
For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please. In all ages, no doubt, nurture and instruction have, in some sense, attempted to exercise this power.
But the situation to which we must look forward will be novel in two respects. In the first place, the power will be enormously increased. Hitherto the plans of
educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we read them — how Plato would have every infant “a bastard nursed in a bureau”, and Elyot would have the boy see no men before the age of seven and, after that, no women,’ and how Locke wants children to have leaky shoes and no turn for poetry — we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses. But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.
This just in from The Epoch Times:
Georgia Governor Signs Bill Protecting Unborn Children After Heartbeat Detected”
Dunno … somehow this seems … pertinent … to the present discussion…:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/georgia-governor-to-sign-heartbeat-abortion-ban-joining-a-u-s-movement_2910038.html
I have no patience for people like savulescu. They seem dangerous and boring to this old farm boy.
Savulescu correctly states that,
It’s amazing that such a ‘smart’ person should fail to realize that inculcating impulse control and the self-control necessary to concentration and deferred gratification are precisely the attributes that good parenting are intended to produce in the young adult by emphasizing their attainment throughout childhood…
Typical academic, unable to advance wisdom, he purveys deceit.
Savulescu then opines that,
Apparently, the “involuntary” elimination of children rejected as NOT better in some way is of no concern to him. Yup, he’s a monster all right and, given the blow-back he implies has come his way… in willful denial of it.
I was looking for the article but cannot find it re:ADHD. A neurologist discovered that a surprising rise in ADHD symptoms, including adult onset, were caused by sleep deprivation. That’s the sort of medical background that so-called “bioethicists” don’t seem to have.
A neurologist discovered that a surprising rise in ADHD symptoms, including adult onset, were caused by sleep deprivation.
Correlation, not cause. It means ADHD can also cause sleep deprivation.
Autism is a new type of soul energy. They have problems adjusting to this human body, especially with a Ritalin addiction added on top. It’s like those cultures that put a board to the back of a child’s head, so that as they grow older, their heads look like a pineapple clone head. The Egyptian head covers did the same thing, because the skulls of the royalty were a peculiar shape.
As for bioethics, my bioethic is “stop killing incarnated souls in human babies, the line is already long enough”.
If you kill enough of us trying to incarnate, don’t blame us when the Host of Heaven crashes down on your nation with a force greater than a planet killer.
Some spirits have a hard time with grudges, they tend to have long memories for eternal entities. And killing them a few times in 3d physical form… doesn’t do much to them.
Yup, he’s a monster all right and, given the blow-back he implies has come his way… in willful denial of it.
Nope, he’s not a monster. He’s just a human, like you GB. From your point of view, there are differences yes.
From the point of view of the Divine, you humans look like ants. Does it matter if an ant is 50% stronger or weaker than the other ant? To you ants, yes. To the Divine… no. You are still ants.
Pro-life advocate Rachel Guy, 20, introduced Kemp before he signed the bill. Guy’s mother was advised by three different doctors to have an abortion in 1998 because her unborn baby (Rachel) was thought to have a chromosomal abnormality that was “incompatible with life,” but she rejected their advice.
Good job making it out of the spawn camping grounds called Earth, Rachel.
Now she is Pro life advocate, lol. Btw, “incompatible with life” is the Doctor Class’s way of saying “we don’t know jack sh, so we can only bullsh, but otherwise mutational evolutionary advantages with DNA in epigenetics is too hard to comprehend”.
“point of view of the divine”
Well, it is comforting to know at least someone knows everything about the divine.
“In fact, for some people with ADHD, there might even be other characteristics going hand-in-hand with ADHD that are a plus. Some are creative, energetic, and out-of-the-box thinkers who’ve contributed much to society.” – Neo
I have a memory that I think comes from Robert Graves biographer, that he refused to seek treatment for psychiatric difficulties (serious post-war trauma) because he was afraid that, if he got cured, he would lose his ability to write poetry.
“Mond argues that art, literature, and scientific freedom must be sacrificed to secure the ultimate utilitarian goal of maximising societal happiness. He defends the genetic caste system, behavioural conditioning, and the lack of personal freedom in the World State: these, he says, are a price worth paying for achieving social stability, the highest social virtue because it leads to lasting happiness.” – Huxley
The “happiness” this leads to is the lowest possible level of human satisfaction.
Why would one even want to live in a stable world bereft of art, literature, and scientific advancement?
Actually, we are living in a world without any new great advances in any of those (also music), and it isn’t very stable.
Lewis is much better at philosophy, among other things, in that he recognizes that our true end is to find joy.
“We are not equipped to measure the worth of a life”
Exactly right. We are not equipped to measure, or understand, lots of things.
Man cannot be at the top of the pyramid. That’s where God is, and must be.
‘˜rationalist dreams’ promoted by the ‘˜Enlightenment’ are just as capable of producing their own ‘˜monstrous aberrations’.”
In Economics, this is called unintended consequences.
What we need to do, as humans, is to create societies which value and support those dreams of people which do not conflict, too much (minimize?) the dreams of others.
If being homosexual actually was genetics based, and lots of parents begin to abort based on wanting hetero kids, I’m sure the PC-Klan would be quick, and loud, to be against it. And rightly so.
Part of his power comes from being so ‘super rational’ that he’s allowed to say things so very politically incorrect (eugenics), tho perhaps mostly because he’s so much on board the pro-abortion train.
Morality is not, despite Singer, Savulescu, or Ayn Rand, purely “rational”, altho some basic morality is a requirement for civilized cooperation. And it’s human cooperation which is the huge advantage humans have long had over other animals, combined with imagining a better outcome and being willing and able to delay gratification in order to achieve the better outcome.
A number of people here – R.C., AesopFan and Fredrick – have some outstanding observations on the development and implications of the present Spirit of the Age.
By coincidence Edward Feser, in reviewing a book just published in English for the first time, had written a review; which in essence, constitutes a thumbnail sketch of “the general problem”.
In particular Feser has formulated (he swims in this current constantly) some beautifully terse descriptions of the present dynamic and logical dilemma, which make instantly obvious why it is that the moral reasoning of the progressive kind, seems so ludicrously incoherent.
[Note Feser is an American but some of the spellings have been rendered according to British conventions; “s” for “z”, “c” in place of “s” …
A few excerpts:
https://catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/a-medieval-cure-for-modern-mans-unease/
Modern liberals act like that image I have used before of a shrill Margaret Mead standing before of a classroom of antagonistic pupils, arguing that murder is merely a cultural taboo … and then expressing surprise and outrage when one of them moves to kill her just for the hell of it.
Well, on the assumption that their own view is that abortion for any reason whatsoever and at any time whatsoever is an absolute right of the person with the fetus, I cannot see how it could be self-consistently rightly so, given their own premisses.
Now their politically motivated hypocrisy and party interest may prevent them from doing something which they should refrain from doing on grounds other than the grounds they cite, but that is just an accidentally congruent effect.
If they are correct that it is a mother’s privilege to terminate a pregnancy for any reason at all, then a decision to abort homosexual foeti, or even to offer bounties to females who are willing to do so (the motive being the receipt of a cash payment) for eugenics reasons they may be indifferent to, then there is certainly a gross inconsistency at work in saying that homosexual foeti, should constitute an exception to the rule that the woman’s will is supreme in this matter.
“… that once social engineers are in charge personal freedom will always suffer greatly.”
The masters of social media are in charge and personal freedom is already suffering.
I have an off-topic question, for which I apologize:
ymarsakar …can you give me a bit of an intro into you, what your perspective is, what I should expect from your posts?
I ask because when I read your comments, sometimes I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, or trolling, or coming from a some philosophical, cultural, or religious perspective I don’t recognize, or just have an unusual communicative style, or what? And it’s just sometimes. Other times I just nod and breeze on past, and then do a double-take and say to myself, “Wait, that was ymarsakar?”
I genuinely don’t mean anything rude by asking. And I wouldn’t single someone out were it not for the fact that, well…you stand out. Would you give me some context for why that is, and what to expect, so that I don’t have to make uninformed guesses and (probably) misinterpret your meaning?
Well, it is comforting to know at least someone knows everything about the divine.
First you have to realize how much you don’t know about the Divine, to begin to understand anything about the Divine.
The beginning of Knowledge is Ignorance.
n.n on May 7, 2019 at 7:04 pm at 7:04 pm said:
The baby is a separate human life, …
* * *
Well, that’s what you think… (/sarc just in case)
https://pjmedia.com/trending/cnn-contributor-claims-when-a-woman-gets-pregnant-that-is-not-a-human-being-inside-of-her/#comment-4454006900
As with the question of the leftist position on aborting homosexual children, this dilemma also arises for the statist champions of workplace benefits – with a few edits.
OldDude • a day ago
Would you give me some context for why that is, and what to expect, so that I don’t have to make uninformed guesses and (probably) misinterpret your meaning?
I will gladly do so, since you are honest, upfront, and didn’t beat around the Bush with personal insinuations or the good old debate tricks. Trum reacts with his twitter bashes in much the same fashion, because he has found it is useful for negotiations and dealing with humans. I found it useful when I detected that the other side was being emotional or not exactly intellectual honest or upfront. I don’t need to agree with them, nor do I agree with NeoNeo on 90% of things, but they do have to be emotionally and intellectual balanced for me to have an honest discourse with. If they do shenanigans and weird stuff, well… I can do that too.
That’s just me on a personal style, as this avatar called ymarsakar, here online, having developed a “Thick Skin” throughout the various Iraq war, political, and bio eugenics debates going on.
As for my Origin story, where I came from, and my personal outlook and context… that’s a much more difficult proposition to detail.
When my Spirit decided to incarnate into this energy density and dimension (or world), the agreement was that I needed to forget everything I was, had ever been, and relinquish my powers and knowledge, in order to fulfill a task or mission on Earth. Much the same as most of humanity so far. The primary difference is that this Age has created so much light and knowledge that it has become easier for those of us with Soul Experience, Old Soul wisdom, and Soul Level progression, to begin remember what we have forgotten. Whether you believe that or understand that, is not my issue. But it is the answer of the Origin. Without going too much into religious dogma or scripture quoting, of course.
When I speak of spirits, Divinity, and gods, it has basically 5% to 0% to do with the human conception of spirit, Divinity, and gods. It’s like a right wing Red guy talking to a Left wing blue guy about sexual equality and liberty… you two may be using the same words but you are talking a different dogma, a different Gospel, a different language, and a different socio economic political complex/matrix/tradition.
I genuinely don’t mean anything rude by asking.
I can tell people’s surface intent and their emotions just by reading a few of their text lines. I read your intent as that from the first sentence or two. No need to repeat it. Neat ability right? Heh, horrible troll warfare and flame warfare online however.
And I wouldn’t single someone out were it not for the fact that, well…you stand out.
Of course I stand out. I wouldn’t be a mad scientist or a special soul if I was the same as the rest of the Level 1 and Level 2 souls that move around in human avatar vehicles. Did you ever wonder how some people can be balanced and generous even after horrible life experiences but those born with silver spoons tend to become rotten? It is the caliber of their soul experience and wisdom, not their human genetics or parents. High level souls are attracted to hard and challenging lives, karma, fate, whatever you want to call it. Low level souls, beginner noobs, are attracted to Easy Mode. They participate in the planning of their life, to some degree.
The gaming industry has indirectly come across this phenomenon when they realized a few people just run through a game from start to finish in Full Solo mode. And then sometimes Most Difficult settings activated, Path of the Damned mode, Heart of Fury mode, and then sometimes they will complete the game with Ironman mode on.
Ironman mode is like a Rogue like dungeon. You only have one life. If you die, there is no reload, all you have earned is reset to 0. I am not interested in such difficulties but I suspect some humans are because they are beginning to remember.
coming from a some philosophical, cultural, or religious perspective I don’t recognize
Just treat me as an alien and you’ll be close.
After saying so much, why not think of something true:
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. CS Lewis
ymarsakar,
Thanks for your reply. Given what you’ve said, your conclusion “[j]ust treat me as an alien and you’ll be close,” seems like reasonably practical advice.
I confess I’m a bit curious how you define the noun god. Not the same way I do, clearly! …which you pointed out, up-front. (The Thomistic “pure act” definition that fits with my own metaphysics can’t, without logical contradiction, be pluralized.)
Your definition seems to involve that a “god” is a member of some genus, all members of which share a property called “divinity.” That would seem to put your “gods” into a category more comparable to Judeo-Christian angels, or perhaps to Valentinian aeons …provided, of course, that you don’t picture them as having material aspect, location in space, or an “origin story” in time. (If you do, then perhaps they’re more comparable to Thor, Loki, Hela, etc., either the Norse or the Marvel imaginings…but in that case we’re merely talking about either John Bunyan or Hiawatha, or high-tech space-aliens, and it seems unlikely you’d bother to apply the term “gods” to them, given the awesome connotations of the term in popular usage.)
The “Old Soul” aspect of your self-description seems more reminiscent of Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land, and the idea of “Levels” reminds me of Hubbard and Scientology. (I’m not saying you cribbed directly from those sources, mind you. I’m just telling you what my closest-match referents are. You can say either, “yes, like that” or “no, not like that,” if you wish to clarify further.)
Anyway, thanks again for the reply.
Om:
If the software for commenting on this site permitted me a “thumbs-up” emoji, I’d have put one on your last post. 🙂
R.c. that is perceptive of you. I think of gods as elohim. A term used by the hebrews to describe non human multi dimensional entities. Spirits, demons, ghosts, gods. It is a genus, like an aeon, or paul s rulers… principalities.
The ancients often had a more intuitive understanding of the world, even though they were tech primitives.
Soul levels is easier understood in rpg terms. Yeshua used goats and sheep because everyone worked with them or saw them in life. I use gaming metaphors and parables because that is what my gen and the younger gens comprehend. When a soul learns gnosis or knowledge, it gains experience. Xp levels up a soul so that it has greater grasp and control of the human life experience and challenges.
I am not familiar with the heinlein or hubbard reference. I know of them in generality.
Multidimensional means 5d vs 4d vs 3d vs 2d vs 1d. Think of a point. Then a line. Then a square. Then a cube. Then a tesseract. Then a higher dimensional entity is partially physical but does not have to be. Thor was closer to a hybrid. Dna is the quatum engine connecting trans dimensional data with this realm.
This is more of a thing from plato s cave. As a philosopher perhaps that is easier.
I never accepted the attempt of humans to put Source in a human box. Conceptually, the actions of a god look vengeful to david because his culture was vengeful. It looked like punishment because humans punish each other.
Even after deism, i refused to accept that some omniscient god cares enough about humans to feel anger, rage, and disappointment. That is not the ommmm word vibration, source of all life. Just some human idol and deus ex machina.