Is Richard Dawkins still evolving?
Melanie Phillips - 23rd October 2008
On Tuesday evening I attended the debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox at Oxford’s Natural History Museum. This was the second public encounter between the two men, but it turned out to be very different from the first. Lennox is the Oxford mathematics professor whose book, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? is to my mind an excoriating demolition of Dawkins’s overreach from biology into religion as expressed in his book The God Delusion — all the more devastating because Lennox attacks him on the basis of science itself. In the first debate, which can be seen on video on this website, Dawkins was badly caught off-balance by Lennox’s argument precisely because, possibly for the first time, he was being challenged on his own chosen scientific ground.
Tags: Dawkins, Social Darwinism
PERFECTIBILISTS: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati
The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism
Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith
America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones
December 20th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
So you don’t actually believe an invisible gray-bearded man created the world in 7 days do you? lol
And Jesus was born of a virgin? lol…
Christianity is stupid.
December 20th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
It needn’t be one or the other. Look at the Universe, tell us how it came to be. Darwin is inadequate. His so-called “scientific theory” is laughable in the face of the grandeur of it all. Insulting, even.
Big Bang Schmig Bang. The active causal agent of the Universe - the beginning and the end. Tell us what it is: when, where, what, why, how?
Prediction: hundreds or thousands of years from now (if we don’t wreck it and destroy ourselves and civilization), there will be a powerful enough computer, and large enough - with enough memory and cpu - to create a simulation with perfectly viable sentient beings; interacting and pondering upon their environment. These sentient beings - if we don’t interfere and announce our presence - will inevitable have the same endless arguments. From whence did we originate? What is the nature of our Universe? How is it that we came to exist? Is there a God? What is the purpose in life?
Mark my words.
December 20th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
The evolution of dinosaurs to birds, land mammals to whales, etc etc is quite strongly accounted for. And genetically, viral junk DNA is strong evidence as well. What are the chances of humans and chimpanzees having the same accidental virus DNA insertion in the exact same place in our genomes if we didn’t have a common ancestor. Tracking these viral genetic insertions, which correspond so tightly to the evolutionary tree, is concrete proof of evolution in and of itself, not to mention the enormous body of more circumstantial evidence found in the fossil record.
For every missing link found between two kinds of animals, bible thumping fundamentalists will point at the two remaining gaps and say “Aha! now there’s TWO missing links!!!” You can’t argue with that “logic”. Bunch of flat-earthers.
Its the Christian paradigm that says everything needs to be “explained” and wrapped tightly into an all-encompassing history of the world. Scientists know there will always be gaps in our knowledge and are fine with not having every single missing link in the history of planet earth on file in order to come up with a falsifiable working theory of what we DO know.
To the anti-science crowd, I say, you don’t like our theory? Fine. What kind of theory do YOU have. What is the evidence for it?
“Well maw Bible says….”
LOL.
The freakin bible. Right. Jebus save us all.
Shit I wish the Illuminati did wipe out Christianity and every other monotheistic religion. No more Jihads, Inquisitions, “my invisible man in the sky can beat up your invisible man in the sky”…Much better place, earth would be.
December 21st, 2008 at 1:00 am
“Much better place, earth would be.”
Sure, we saw the result with Stalin, Hitler and Mao Zedong. Together, these atheist ideologues, mass-murdered more human beings in a fifty year span than all the religions combined, in all of recorded history. The end.
December 21st, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Tyrants will always be tyrants. The numbers have more to do with where the population curve, geopolitics, and technology was at than their ideology. The Church would have killed more people if they had the weapons and the cannon fodder to do so. But in fact, “ideology” is the very problem, whether its religious or political. Doesn’t mean we should promote the ignorance of invisible fairy men. The dark ages were dark because of the oppressive Christian religion. Heard of Galileo? That kind of irrational Christian opposition to their precious Buy-bull is what caused truth searchers to form groups like the Illuminati in the first place. ‘God knows’ if it weren’t for the enlightenment we’d all still be subsistence farming peasants dodging inquisitions for heretical beliefs.
Plus, Hitler was always promoting Xtianity. http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm See also the book “Hitler’s Priests”
“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.” - Adolf Hitler
“Human culture and civilization on this continent are inseparably bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he dies out or declines, the dark veils of an age without culture will again descend on this globe. The undermining of the existence of human culture by the destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent Creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.” - Adolf Hitler
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If there is a God, I’d like to spit in his face for everything he lets go on down here. He’s either not omnipotent at all or he’s the sick genocidal freak described in the old testament. (Or just plain doesn’t exist…since there’s no evidence for him anyway.) You know, the guy that had the Israelites slaughter woman and children of the people they invaded? Yay for that.
So since you are opposed to science, what exactly do you believe in? Do you believe the Bible is the word of god? Wow that really stands up to a lot of scrutiny with tall tales like Noah’s ark, Virgin births, fictitious history, etc etc…Its easy to sit back and poke holes in something when you don’t present an alternative.
December 21st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
You believe in God more than anyone I’ve ever encountered. That is all you speak about. God that God this God that. Must be a professed atheist, since they are the only ones continually railing upon the subject - day and night - non stop. They contemplate it more than monks in the dark ages.
Most people go about their business with their mouths shut about “God.” It is personal - and none of anyone’s business. Atheists are the ones continually bringing it up. Quite ironic; and sad; and petty; and hypocritical.
“If there is a God, I’d like to spit in his face for everything he lets go on down here.”
It’s called free will. Free to care or free to kill. Free to love or free to destroy. The choice is ours - and the consequences thereof. We’d all be automatons if a Creator encroached upon our free will, and intervened on a regular basis. Free will is paramount for a sentient conscious being. Hopefully, we’ll get what we deserve in the end.
I’m not opposed to science. Science cannot explain the active causal agent of the Universe - and neither can you, nor I.
Please spew your hatred at another place. It is not welcomed here. If you want to discuss the article, please do. So far you haven’t.
December 21st, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I do not proselytize on this site - never. I expect the same courtesy from the dogmatic materialists who visit this site.
I allow you the privilege to comment in my house. Pay some respect, or get the fuck out.
December 21st, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Actually, I’m agnostic. If I met god, I’d believe in him. But I lived as a Xtian for many years as a child before I realized that the whole doctrine was a complete fraud put together by politicians and power brokers in 325 AD. The truth is Christianity, like every other belief system, evolved from preceding beliefs. In this case a marriage of gnosticism and judaism and the Roman Empire.
I assign the possibility of a loving, caring god existing to be very low indeed. A decision to allow free-willed creatures to exist with a nature knowing in advance they would cause unspeakable pain to each other(or just by fate/chance) is an evil decision.
And that’s not even taking into account the fact that most of them would be sent to hell for eternity (according to Christian theology) for picking the wrong prophet in American Idol.
So yeah, show me this where “god” is, that I may spit on his face.
“I do not proselytize on this site - never.”
No, you just take a stand on a controversial issue and then refuse to have to explain your position under the guise of not wanting to “proselytize”. Well if you don’t want to show what it is you do believe, than how about not making posts on what others believe. Not holding your own beliefs up for scrutiny while criticizing/commenting on others is quite spineless.
December 21st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Spineless?
Mr. “xxxx@cnn.com”; “Wait” from anywhere and nowhere calls me - Terry Melanson, 163 Whitney Ave. Moncton NB Canada, E1C 8C8 - spineless? Anytime “Wait,” anytime.
You are a bitter person, “no one from nowhere.” I’m an angry one.
December 21st, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Apparently, you’re not used to the whole “blog thing”, where, you know…blog posts invite anonymous participants to discuss ideas - something which you’d rather not do, it seems. Maybe when your website gets more popular you’ll be comfortable with the idea of anonymous comments. Its something most blogs with a decent level of readership have.
December 21st, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Ooh, now Mr. Anonymous #2 (xxxx@zeitgeist.com) is talking out of their ass. You know squat about this site. I get more than a million page views every 3 months. Since 2002 when the site began, untold millions have come and gone. What type of readership can you muster, “Mr. Anonymous xxxx@zeitgeist.com“?
“Anonymous” participants - great. But when “anonymouses” start talkin smack about ME being spineless - well, the takes the cake.
December 21st, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Why don’t you just tell everyone what it is that you believe?
10 bucks says its more loony and fantastic than anything Dawkins would think.
Probably some Christian “Jesus wuvs me, dis I know” bullshit. LOL
Hey…look that-a-way…its the second coming!!! ZOMG!!11!!!1 Behold a pale horse!!!!!1!!!
.
.
.
Made you look!
Betcha think I’m part of the Illuminati conspiracy or something too.
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Wait,
Nope. No one thinks you’re part of the so-called “Illuminati conspiracy.” Don’t flatter yourself.
What you believe is your business. However, when you throw rocks in a glass house, be prepared to get hit by some shards.
Some questions for you…
How can you affirm a negative in the absolute? That is, essentially, what an atheist does when he/she claims that there is no God. The atheist is claiming to possess knowledge that could only be attained outside the ontological plane of the physical universe. The paradox is that the atheist is claiming infinite knowledge to reject the existence of a being with infinite knowledge. In other words, the only way to affirm the nonexistence of God is to lay claim to one of his core attributes: omniscience. The claim is a self-refuting one. The logical contradiction of such thinking is axiomatic. As any one who has studied philosophy can tell you, there is no circumventing the law of non-contradiction. Do you feel that this rule does not apply to you?
You decry religion, yet Darwinism qualifies as a religion itself. First of all, it makes the metaphysical claim that life sprung from non-life (i.e., abiogenesis). Metaphysical claims are the province of religions and Darwinism is no acceptance. Arguably, all Weltanschauungs are unavoidably religious in character because they must proffer a metaphysical claim. Moreover, the Darwinian thesis of abiogenesis provides the metaphysical premise for self-salvation, an inherently Gnostic doctrine. Given these facts, can you honestly proffer an anti-theistic Weltanschaaung as a viable alternative to religion? After all, aren’t just proffering your own religion… one that is sculpted to suit your own pragmatic ends?
How can you characterize the case of Galileo as an instance of science conflicting with religion when the Church was merely upholding the dominant SCIENTIFIC paradigm previously formulated by Aristotle? That’s right… Aristotle. Heard of Aristotle? He wasn’t a theologian. He was a scientist. Evidently, this was a historical case of one scientific paradigm displacing another one, not science displacing religion.
You claim to be an agnostic, yet you refuse to give your assent to the probability of a theistic Weltanschaaung… particularly Christianity. This bespeaks some atheistic propensities and, as I have already demonstrated, the atheist lays claim to a core attribute of God while simultaneously rejecting his existence. Not surprisingly, atheism provides a philosophical segue for the enthronement of man as God. You are betraying your own hubris. You simply want to be God so that you can rationalize your own self-interests. This is made evident by your aspiration to “spit in God’s face.”
“Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist.” — C. S. Lewis
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:20 pm
“If atheism spread, it would become a religion as intolerable as the ancient ones.” — Gustave le Bon
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
Way to set up straw men there, chief.
“Actually, I’m agnostic. If I met god, I’d believe in him. ”
So how does it feel to have wasted a rant? “How can you affirm a negative in the absolute? ” Nope. Didn’t do that. I’m agnostic about pink unicorns too. I really really doubt they exist, but there’s no way for me to know for sure.
If you are going to make an outrageous claim about invisible beings existing, why is God given any more leeway than a pink unicorn? If I were to go around claiming that pink unicorns live on the moon because I prayed and talked to them, I’d better have a DNA sample.
Now, I give a Brahman style deity a higher chance of existence than a Xtian god, simply because I doubt any supreme being would be as petty and trite as the Xtian God.
“Moreover, the Darwinian thesis of abiogenesis provides the metaphysical premise for self-salvation”
What? Salvation from who? What? Just because you as a Christian feel guilty about your natural urges (sin) and think you need “salvation”, don’t assume that everyone else is burdened by such self-loathing.
You really show your ignorance by saying Aristotle was science. Aristotle was NOT science. He was a philosopher and a natural observer…he never set up experiments, falsifiable theories, etc. Take a “History of science” class and you will start with studying Descartes and Bacon. While you are at it, study evolutionary theory. Its falsifiable and makes predictions just like any other scientific theory. BTW, abiogenesis is not evolutionary theory. It is a separate study to hypothesize how life formed naturally. Science has no need for fairy men in the skies. So no branch of science will incorporate such wild speculation. Whether you deem it “metaphysical” is irrelevant, because it happened in the natural world so therefore is open to the tools used to study nature (science). Not old fabricated books and the nonsense jabberings of old deluded cult leaders and mystics.
“This is made evident by your aspiration to “spit in God’s face.”
“Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist.” — C. S. Lewis”
I don’t hate god. I doubt he exists. If I did confirm his existence, then I would hate him the same way I hate everyone other powerful being who butchers people. But I can’t confirm his existence (even after years of trying) so I don’t waste the energy.
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And again I repeat…More bickering and nit-picking from (presumed) Christians who refuse to hold their beliefs up to scrutiny.
Let me ask you this….Do you believe Noah put all the animals on a rickety old ark? Do you think Jeebus was born of a virgin? Do you think slaughtering Caananite tribes -even women and children- was justifiable? Should slaves obey their masters?
What do YOU believe, so that a fair two-way debate can be held.
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Uuuummm… you didn’t answer any of my questions, Wait. It’s called polemics.
I have taken a history of science course. It was one of my college prerequisites. I have already studied Bacon and Descartes. Next time, think before you speak.
Yes, Aristotle was a scientist. In fact, much of Aristotle’s work was instrumental in the formulation of modern scientific paradigms. For instance, Aristotle’s emergent materialism was a precursor to Darwin’s evolution. And, while abiogenesis is a separate thesis from evolution, Darwinism’s anti-teleological premises are completely contingent upon it. Again, this is a metaphysical claim, which is a core attribute of all religions.
As for the question of salvation, perhaps you should define the term first. Salvation merely means “a source or means of being saved.”
So, you ask, “Salvation from who? What?” Fair enough.
In a Darwinian context, it’s salvation from extinction. And, immortality is merely re-conceptualized as the continuity of the species, a contention expressed through the notion of genetic memory. Herein are all of the trappings of a religion. Interestingly enough, many sociopolitical movements that subscribed to Darwinism (e.g., communism and Hitlerian fascism) behaved, sociologically, like religions. In fact, many scholars have referred to Darwinism as a “secular theodicy.”
You are really on a slippery slope when you attempt to relegate sin to the realm of fantasy and characterize all human impulses as “natural urges.” First of all, you condemn Christianity for many of its alleged atrocities. Yet, from the evolutionary standpoint, atrocities have preceded the advent of religion. It is the Darwinian contention that the strong will invariably wipe out the weak. Such a genetic propensity would qualify as a “natural urge.” So, you are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Secondly, the rejection of the reality of sin presupposes a morally relativistic Weltanschaaung. Moral relativism is self-refuting. Moral relativism is predicated upon the contention that there are no absolutes. Yet, if there are no absolutes, then one cannot absolutely declare that there are no absolutes. In fact, declarative statements cannot exist because they are statements of fact. Facts are absolutes and, according to relativism, do not exist. Immediately, the position implodes, crushed by its own intrinsic irrationality. Relativism is a self-refuting philosophical position.
Ironically, your moral relativism defeats your own argument. Just by citing all of the evils of the world as evidence that there is no God, you are presenting a normative statement. However, a normative statement posits an “ought,” or a way that things should be. An “ought,” in turn, presupposes right and wrong. Yet, you just made it clear that you don’t believe in right or wrong. There are merely “natural urges.” Your argument is logically incoherent.
Moreover, you did attempt to affirm a negative in the absolute, as is evidenced by your refusal to give even the slightest assent to the probability of a Creator because He is not empirically demonstrable. Unfortunately for you, empiricism is no less mystical in character than cognitio fidei (the cognition of faith). This fact becomes evident when considers David Hume… you do know who that is, don’t you? Hume showed that an exclusively empirical approach relegates cause to the realm of metaphysical fantasy. In the absence of causality, science becomes a matter of faith itself. What is perceived as A causing B could be merely a consequence of circumstantial juxtaposition. Although temporal succession and spatial proximity are axiomatic, causal connection is not. Affirmation of causal relationships is impossible. Given the absence of causality, all of a scientist’s findings must be taken upon faith. Ironically, science relies on the affirmation of such cause and effect relationships. But, I guess it’s alright for scientists to have faith, but Christians must be deemed irrational.
So, you ask me what I believe… Yes, I am a Christian. Yet, your questions concerning what are clearly miraculous events are already framed in a fashion that presupposes the irrationality of faith. Unfortunately for you, I have already demonstrated the fact that your empirical criterion for determining truth is equally premised on faith.
Let me ask you this… What makes you so sure that Noah’s ark was “rickety” and “old?” Were you there? Did you establish its dimensions? Did you choose the wood?
Let me ask you this… had Jesus (whose name you consistently misspell as a misunderstood allusion to an episode of The Simpsons) not been born of a virgin, how could he have acted as the propitiation for sin? How could someone with the blood of Adam pumping through His veins have redeemed mankind? While the event clearly defies rational explanation, its logic remains coherent. Therefore, it does not qualify as irrational, but supra-rational.
Let me ask you this… Do you think the Caananites’ practice of human sacrifice–of even women and children–was justifiable? Moreover, how can you condemn such acts when you, by your own admission, have reduced all human behavior to “natural urges?” Again, you are presenting a normative contention while simultaneously rejecting moral absolutes. Hardly a logically coherent argument, Wait.
I could care less about what you believe. If it is life affirming for you and it does not prompt you to hurt anyone else, then have at it. But, when you throw rocks in a glass house, be prepared to be hit by some shards.
This is not “bickering” or “nitpicking.” You are the one who raised the issue in the first place. So, I gave you a response. It called apologetics, Wait. Apologetics is derived from the word “apologia,” which means “to respond.” By the very fact that you raised the issue, I am supposing that you were demanding answers. However, your characterization of my response as “bickering” and “nitpicking” betrays the fact that you were never interested in what a Christian had to say on the matter. Evidently, your mind is made up. So, why don’t you get a life and leave this blog alone? Do you persist because you are seeking to proselytise on behalf of your own anthropocentic religion?
It doesn’t matter what I say to you. Nor would it matter if God said anything to you. Like you said, you’d hate Him if He did exist. So, we’re in a catch 22. Ultimately, you are seeking to have your own presuppositions affirmed, which is philosophically unethical and, frankly speaking, juvenile.
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
“Given the absence of causality, all of a scientist’s findings must be taken upon faith.”
That would include the so-called Big Bang, the Universe as a whole, or life for that matter.
Here’s an empirical observation: Mr. Anonymous’ latest comment was initiated using an IP address corresponding to J.P Morgan Chase offices in Manhattan.
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Doesn’t surprise me, Terry.
BTW, concerning Wait’s claim that Aristotle was not a scientist…
I submit to you the following Wikipedia entry:
“He was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and SCIENCE, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle’s views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by modern physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were only confirmed to be accurate in the nineteenth century.” (emphasis mine)
As for Hitler’s alleged Christian Weltanschaaung, it was clearly disingenuous, as is evidenced by his own Darwinian contentions. Consider the following quotes with accompanying pagination, just in case Wait wants to actually do some real research:
“The German Fuhrer as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.” (Sir Arthur Keith 230)
“One of the central planks in Nazi theory and doctrine was. . .evolutionary theory [and]. . .that all biology had evolved. . .upward, and that. . .less evolved types. . .should be actively eradicated [and]. . .that natural selection could and should be actively aided, and therefore [the Nazis] instituted political measures to eradicate. . .Jews, and. . .blacks, whom they considered as ‘underdeveloped’” (Wilder-Smith 27)
“(Hitler) was a firm believer and preacher of evolution. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his psychosis, it is certain that [the Darwinian notion of perpetual struggle was significant because]. . .his book, Mein Kampf, clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and the extermination of the weak to produce a better society.” (Hickman 51-52)
Ernst Haeckel, the famous evolutionist responsible for Hitler’s introduction to social Darwinism, promoted the concept of the Aryan. Hardly a Christian concept, is it?
And, let we forget, Nazism had some distinctly Gnostic trappings. Gnosticism invokes some Christian terminology, but re-conceptualizes those terms in a purely occult context. Thus, Hitler’s alleged Christian statements must be contextualized in conjunction with the occult culture in which they were invoked.
Oh, and Wait cites the Big Bang as an infallible substitute for a Creator. First of all, he is confusing mechanism with agency. Secondly, what came before the Big Bang? According to physicists, the Big Bang was preceded by a singularity, the point at which all the laws of physics break down. Therefore, even Big Bang cosmology does not invoke a rigidly scientific starting point. And, suspiciously enough, notice the parallels between Big Bang cosmology and Gnostic cosmology. Are scientists just exchanging one form of mysticism for another?
Wait fancies his observations as being more profound than they actually are. Obviously, he hasn’t done his homework. He merely seeks to affirm his own presuppositions.
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Wait: The evolution of dinosaurs to birds, land mammals to whales, etc etc is quite strongly accounted for.”
Jay: In fact, it is not, and this is why Gould proposed the ridiculous, (miraculous) “punctuated equilirbium,” where there is a relatively quick ‘jump’ because there was no fossil connection betwixt species or ‘kinds.’ Where is the whale-mammal? where is the birdosaurus? Even more laughable is the fact that members of your own crew have been caught more times than can be counted faking the fossil record: in fact, Teilhard de Chardin was involved in several of the frauds, such as Piltdown man.
Recall the silly invented “Archeoraptor” from National Geographic in the 1980s? Yet another fraud, as their own magazine now admits!!:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_raptor.html
This is just a brief fact check. Next, I want to examine the philosophy of your views.
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I’m sorry, it was the 199, not the 80s.
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Wait: To the anti-science crowd, I say, you don’t like our theory? Fine. What kind of theory do YOU have. What is the evidence for it?
“Well maw Bible says….”
Jay: The best argument for our view is, I believe, the impossibility of your view.
Wait: Shit I wish the Illuminati did wipe out Christianity and every other monotheistic religion. No more Jihads, Inquisitions, “my invisible man in the sky can beat up your invisible man in the sky”…Much better place, earth would be.”
Jay: By this statement, you assume that there must be some moral bench-mark or criterion by which one can make value-judgments about facts of experience. You point to an Inquisition or Jihad, and argue that this is in some sense wrong. My simple argument is this: on a Darwinian basis, what universal moral standards can you appeal to to call something “wrong” or “evil” or something that should not be done?
In your view, there is no basis, and this constitutes a central point against the Darwinian worldview, merely in the realm of ethics. If we examine the other to central points of a worldview, epistemology and ontology, we will see that Darwinism cannot account for principles that it utilizes in either field. And guess what: ethics, metapysics and epistemology are all inter-related, so to make a single claim about a fact of the world can be shown to presuppose all sorts of epistemic, metaphysical (and even ethical) truths.
For example, when you communicate with us through your words on the screen you are presupposing all sorts of realities and sates of being which cannot exist in a Darwinian system, since that worldview is ultimately destructive of the possibility of knowledge to begin with. How is that your words make sense to my mind? If we are chemicals bouncing around and nothing more, clearly the universal concepts are referring to are not the same thing as the images on the screen or the chemicals in our brains. And yet, mysteriously, we seem to understand what we are referring to. In other words, Darwinism cannot account for any universal, invariant non-physical entities, such as laws of logic or concepts. This is merely a variation on the argument I gave above about there being no absolute moral laws in your view. So, carrying it further, if Darwinism was true you couldn’t even talk or communicate with us.
An entire host of philosophical problems arise when you X-OUT God. You cannot account for unity and diversity in the world, the self, identity over time, or anthything at all!
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Wait: I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.” - Adolf Hitler”
Jay: Way to cite your sources. Hitler was no Catholic, and in fact, persecuted Catholics as well as Jews. St. Maximillian Kolbe and St. Edith Stein were Catholics who opposed his occult fascism and died in prison camps. Any standard text on Hitler, especially one’s that focus on his occult views, will tell you he was into neo-Teutonic paganism and hated Christianity, and especially Catholicism, because, for him, it was too Judaic. You can find this in Peter Levenda’s “Unholy Aliiance” or Robert Payne’s “Adolf HItler.”
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
As a Catholic, I assure you he was no Catholic.
The hard struggle which the Pan-Germans fought with the Catholic Church can be accounted for only by their insufficient understanding of the spiritual nature of the people.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
The root of the whole evil lay, particularly in Schonerer’s opinion, in the fact that the directing body of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it was hostile to the interests of our nationality.
-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Again, we can ask you, on what grounds was Hitler wrong about anything in your view? Hey–what was it that Darwin’s book was originally titled?
Oh yeah–for the preservation of the favoured races. Eugenics is Darwinian, not Christian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origin_of_Species_title_page.jpg
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Wait: Let me ask you this….Do you believe Noah put all the animals on a rickety old ark? Do you think Jeebus was born of a virgin? Do you think slaughtering Caananite tribes -even women and children- was justifiable? Should slaves obey their masters?”
Jay: Yes, I believe all things things, and that they were morally justifiable at the time due to God’s command and will. Christian theology distinguishes between a standing command of God (normative ethics) and a special command (kill the Amalekites) in theology. Yes, slaves should obey masters, where slavery is a lawful social practice, as St. Paul says. So what? Again, you’ve made it clear that you don’t like these things and you hate the idea of a God who is in control, but I want to know on what grounds, in your worldview, you can make sense of *why* these actions of Jehovah are “evil” and “wrong”?
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Wait: Here is a 2 minute video where Dr. William Craig lists 5 simple metaphysical problems your worldview cannot account for:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/2008/10/dr-william-lane.html
December 23rd, 2008 at 6:09 pm
And, since we are so dumb, perhaps you can respond to Edmund Husserl’s devastating arguments against skeptical relativism:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/2008/10/dr-william-lane.html
December 23rd, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Aristotle followed no scientific method. The “scientific method” IS the foundation on which modern science is built, not the musings of a philosopher better suited to aesthetics than science.
Evolutionary theory predicted we would find intermediary forms between dinosaurs and birds. Lo and behold, we did. Check out http://www.talkorigins.org
What makes you so sure that Noah’s ark was “rickety” and “old?” Were you there? Did you establish its dimensions? Did you choose the wood?
My point exactly. No one was there. Its just an old legend. You just believe because you copy and pasted your beliefs from your parents (or some charismatic BS peddler) and you use backwards rationalization to justify your emotional clinging to an old superstition.
“Let me ask you this… had Jesus (whose name you consistently misspell as a misunderstood allusion to an episode of The Simpsons) not been born of a virgin, how could he have acted as the propitiation for sin?”
An omnipotent and omnicient God would not have a need for propitiation unless he arbitrarily demanded it. God’s behavior in the Bible is what the average decent person in any developed society would call cruel and unusual. No moral absolutes necessary…just the “law inscribed on [our] hearts”, or in other words the basic rules for social behavior developed by our species. Some of which is culture-dependant (modesty standards), some of which is more core to our nature (do not commit murder).
“How could someone with the blood of Adam pumping through His veins have redeemed mankind?”
Again, by a simple word from god. There’s no reason why it has to be that way except the very strange demands of “God”.
“Let me ask you this… Do you think the Caananites’ practice of human sacrifice–of even women and children–was justifiable? Moreover, how can you condemn such acts when you, by your own admission, have reduced all human behavior to “natural urges?” Again, you are presenting a normative contention while simultaneously rejecting moral absolutes. Hardly a logically coherent argument, Wait.”
No, it wasn’t moral, in my opinion. The taking of human life is not moral. Any mentally healthy, non-deluded person will tell you this. Abstract absolutes serve the purpose of holding society together. A functional society can not exist with its own people murdering each other and infringing on individual dignity. This is why we(normal, healthy people) have evolved an revulsion to such activity.
But do two wrongs make a right? Under what moral framwork was it ok for the Israelites to commit genocide? Feel free to answer within your own paradigm to see if you can formulate a cohesive logical answer that backs God up here.
“An “ought,” in turn, presupposes right and wrong. Yet, you just made it clear that you don’t believe in right or wrong. ”
^Not a matter of “right” or “wrong”. I was borrowing from your paradigm to describe your own Gods behavior. To me, its “better” or “worse”. Colloquially, I use right or wrong just like anyone else.
“Moreover, you did attempt to affirm a negative in the absolute, as is evidenced by your refusal to give even the slightest assent to the probability of a Creator because He is not empirically demonstrable.”
More straw men, I give assent to the probability of a Creator. I just assign the Christian God (jealous, judgemental, active in the affairs of man) the same very low probability of existance as a pink unicorn or Flying Spaghetti monster. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t.
A broader “universal proto-consciousness” or “Einstein’s God” I assign a higher probability too this simply because such a being isn’t constrained by old fallible human superstition as the Xtian God is, nor is such a force likely to be a singular point of self aware consciousness that we are.
“And, suspiciously enough, notice the parallels between Big Bang cosmology and Gnostic cosmology. Are scientists just exchanging one form of mysticism for another? ”
No..unlike religion, science is generally ok with not having all the answers at any given point in time, although it does seek to find them. Personally, I’m skeptical of the Big Bang -theory invented by a Jesuit- preferring another universe model, but that’s another convo.
As far as your “faith in causality”…The difference is in observability and repeatability. Induction. A problem of Christian apologetics is that it assumes the combatant is trying to completely negate their whole worldview, as opposed to merely showing why it is improbable, or not worth pondering.
You could use the very same Christian apologetics, the very same line of reasoning you are using now, to defend a faith in a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Don’t believe me? Well try to convince me as an excercise that the FSM really doesn’t exist. Of course, this shows that your brand of Xtian apologetics can be used as words on a paper to successfully argue that any kind of fantastic unnatural events could have taken place. I guess that’s why you guys publish articles from David Icke, Mr. shapeshifting reptilian advocate and COINTELPRO op. LOL. Therefore, such line of reasoning is useless, although consistent.
December 23rd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Hi people,
I’m on the Panoptic Age Yahoo groups with some of you guys, I suspect the acknowleged anomaly on there: an agnostic (though you probably think I am an atheist…I sense you think that there is not any difference between the two).
This discussion is most interesting and heated, as all secular empiricists vs Christian proponents of Intelligent Design seem to be.
Before I enter a short comment here, specifically a response to one of Jay Dyer’s posts; I should lay out my position on this clash and where I stand.
I don’t see any religion as the direct expression of the will of a god, or gods. It all represents man grasping to understand his existence and the cosmos to me. I don’t dismiss the very possible existence of some kind of creator figure or entity (the latter term will stick in your craws, I now) but I do not see any particular religious text that can fully represent the word of a god, or gods, and should be taken as the only true faith. If there is any true faith. Too many claim they are the sole arbiter of god’s will. I neither see science as having anywhere near the complete answer to life, the universe and everything.
I guess I am really treading the wasteland between two polar opposites of human creation. I don’t see it as taking the easier middle ground, but not sticking resolutely to fallable concepts of human creation.
So…back to my contention then. As depicted in the old testament there now seems to be no direct contact, in the sense depicted therein, with a god figure who spoke directly to prophets or chosen emmisaries. It all hinges on faith in a creator being, Jehovah, and that the stories of both testaments are to be taken literally, with no equivocation. The word of god, though it seems that it cannot be heard anymore as depicted literally in the old testament, as there seem to be no modern day burning bushes, angelic messengers, etc, is to be taken as total and universal absolute. An entirely self-referential ultimate form of which all else is a resultant epiphenomenon.
This piece of logic appears to be an ironclad circular argument: everything is to be taken as an immutable relation to the word of god. Human free will and reason is only there due to the existence of a creator, and faith in him will bring salvation and ever-lasting life. All logic stems from faith in that theology, from what I think is merely a statement of belief and does not seem to constitute logic. You start with given premise, belief, and use that in its entirety as the basis for “logical” argument. Anything that falls outside of that belief system constitutes an erroneous value judgement based on faith; not logic are reason. But then that is the whole issue in a way.
Enlightenment principles calling into question ultimate truth, of the existence of god; and therefore it is the enemy of god. A lucerfarian adversary. Truly biblical.
Nothing can exist without your god, all is measured by him, all law, justice, morality is derived from the infinite absolute omniscient, omnipresent & omnipotent creator you believe in.
That is what you say, or rather your god says. As is laid down in the bible.
Jay, let me quote one of your posts that I really take issue with:
“Jay Dyer Says:
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Wait: Let me ask you this….Do you believe Noah put all the animals on a rickety old ark? Do you think Jeebus was born of a virgin? Do you think slaughtering Caananite tribes -even women and children- was justifiable? Should slaves obey their masters?”
Jay: Yes, I believe all things things, and that they were morally justifiable at the time due to God’s command and will. Christian theology distinguishes between a standing command of God (normative ethics) and a special command (kill the Amalekites) in theology. Yes, slaves should obey masters, where slavery is a lawful social practice, as St. Paul says. So what? Again, you’ve made it clear that you don’t like these things and you hate the idea of a God who is in control, but I want to know on what grounds, in your worldview, you can make sense of *why* these actions of Jehovah are “evil” and “wrong”?”
I’d just like to ask, if your god presented himself to you, in a literal fashion as presented in the bible, and issued you a special command to slaughter a loved one; someone precious and loved to you…would you attend to it?
If the loci of universal law, justice & morality is your lord, and he is infallable, you should have no problems carrying out this order.
I know I’m being slightly unfair here, but I am using an extreme example for my purposes.
I expect some animated and difficult responses here and I put this post out to everyone to have a go at; but I’m quite curious to see where this goes.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
“I guess that’s why you guys publish articles from David Icke”
Nope. It’s a link. And no one has anything to do with it but me. He gives me tons of traffic and since he wrote a new article that isn’t bad, this was my opportunity to give back a little.
I take full responsibility. Mock and jeer all you like - it is what you do best.
December 24th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Wait: Aristotle followed no scientific method. The “scientific method” IS the foundation on which modern science is built, not the musings of a philosopher better suited to aesthetics than science.”
Jay: Aristotle was an empiricist. He followed what would have been the equivalent of a scientific method, though not formulated in a modern scheme, obviously. He is the father of taxonomy and we still use his terms in biology today.
Wait: My point exactly. No one was there. Its just an old legend. You just believe because you copy and pasted your beliefs from your parents (or some charismatic BS peddler) and you use backwards rationalization to justify your emotional clinging to an old superstition.”
Jay: Quite the opposite. Noah was there. There is a written record in the Mosaic texts. Who observed the Big Bang? No one. Who observed species-mutations? No one. Your view is far more mythological, buddy.
Wait: An omnipotent and omnicient God would not have a need for propitiation unless he arbitrarily demanded it. God’s behavior in the Bible is what the average decent person in any developed society would call cruel and unusual. No moral absolutes necessary…just the “law inscribed on [our] hearts”, or in other words the basic rules for social behavior developed by our species. Some of which is culture-dependant (modesty standards), some of which is more core to our nature (do not commit murder).”
Jay: He does not “need” a propitiation in an absolute sense, as He needs nothing. As St. Paul says in Romans 9, the purpose for God’s will in history, which includes evil actions, is to manifest His attributes of justice and mercy. Justice in those He wills to punish, and mercy in those He wills to have mercy on. Thus, such manifestations are ultimately good for us, in that a universe where one of God’s attributes (justice as seen in propitiation) would not as good as a universe where we only saw God’s grace. This is because if God exists, then He is the highest good, and the more He gives us of Himself, the better for His creatures.
Wait:
No, it wasn’t moral, in my opinion. The taking of human life is not moral. Any mentally healthy, non-deluded person will tell you this. Abstract absolutes serve the purpose of holding society together.”
Jay: In logic, this is a fallacy and its simply being arbitrary. On Darwinian grounds, nothing is objectively immoral. You missed the entire argument (or avoided it) that Phillip and I both gave–that you want there to be moral absolutes, but you have no basis to believe in them. Your system precludes the possibility of a moral absolute. What happens when a society such as the Aztecs as a whole accepts the sacrifice of, on some ocaissions, 10,000 humans per day? Is that true for them? The mere fact that you consistenly rely on ad hominem attacks shows you’re quite infantile in your supposedly philosophical and enlightened reasoning.
Wait: A functional society can not exist with its own people murdering each other and infringing on individual dignity.”
Jay: On what basis, in a Darwinian worldview, is there such a thing as individual dignity? If you’re simply atoms bumping around, I may murder you and do as I please, as the deterministic rule of chaos happens to dictate. Your dignity in this view is a complete illusion–in fact, its once again something that only makes sense in a Xian view where men are made in the image of God and on that basis have dignity.
Wait: Not a matter of “right” or “wrong”. I was borrowing from your paradigm to describe your own Gods behavior. To me, its “better” or “worse”. Colloquially, I use right or wrong just like anyone else.”
Jay: You have totally contradcited yourself. You said above, as you can see from your own quotes, that “taking human life is not moral.” This means you believe it *ought* not be done. And you think we’re stupid. n a Darwinian, materialistic worldview, not only can you not make moral judgments, you also cannot make value judgments as your trying to do by re-defining it in terms of better or worse. These still presuppose absolute immaterial categories.
Wait: No..unlike religion, science is generally ok with not having all the answers at any given point in time, although it does seek to find them. Personally, I’m skeptical of the Big Bang -theory invented by a Jesuit- preferring another universe model, but that’s another convo.”
Jay: You assumpion here is that science is neutral. But Kuhn has already shown that to be false in his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”
Wait: Induction. A problem of Christian apologetics is that it assumes the combatant is trying to completely negate their whole worldview, as opposed to merely showing why it is improbable, or not worth pondering.”
Jay: Now you’ve really shot yourself in the foot. Have you read David Hume? He was one of your own-a skeptical atheist/agnostic. How do you answer Hume’s challenge concerning induction? And remember, all science is based on induction, so tell me how you answer his skeptical challenge, given your worldview.
Flying Spaghetti Monster? Come on. Did you think no one in Christianity had thought through anything? Do you really think Dawkins is the hallmark of reason?
December 24th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Justin: As depicted in the old testament there now seems to be no direct contact, in the sense depicted therein, with a god figure who spoke directly to prophets or chosen emmisaries.”
Jay: There is nothing inconsistent in this idea within a Christian worldview. God had a certain way of dealing with the Old Testament prophets that He, as far as we know, chooses not to do today. This is because, as the writer of Hebrews says (1:1-2), God has in the last days (meaning the entire period of Christ’s first advent until the second) spoken to us in His Son. So, in our view, we do not need a continual office of prophet, since the Revelation has been complete with the death of St. John, the last of the Apostles. We have everything we need in Christ and the deposit of faith He left with the Apostles, and do not need another Moses or Elijah to declare any “new revelations.” But God does miracles all the time–however, I doubt you would believe that.
Justin: It all hinges on faith in a creator being, Jehovah, and that the stories of both testaments are to be taken literally, with no equivocation. The word of god, though it seems that it cannot be heard anymore as depicted literally in the old testament, as there seem to be no modern day burning bushes, angelic messengers, etc, is to be taken as total and universal absolute. An entirely self-referential ultimate form of which all else is a resultant epiphenomenon.”
Jay: Its a bit more complicated than that, and we are not that unsophisticated, as to not grasp proper principles of interpretation and hermeneutics. I am trained in hermeneutics and exegesis (not that I expect you to merely accept my claims), but its an area I do know a little about. I can’t speak for Terry and the Collins Brothers, as I don’t know all their views, but I can tell you how we operate when it comes to understanding parables, tropes, symbols, allegories and the grammatical-historical level of the texts. We hold the following:
“The senses of Scripture
115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.
116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.”83
117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.
1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.84
2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.85
3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.
118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:
The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;
The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.
119 “It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgment. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.”88
But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me. (St. Augustine)”
In other words, we know how to take into account all the levels and complexity of the texts and are not overly simplistic in our views–Provided you are discussing things with a reasonaly educated Christian stance (which I hope to be able to defend).
December 24th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Justin: An entirely self-referential ultimate form of which all else is a resultant epiphenomenon.
This piece of logic appears to be an ironclad circular argument: everything is to be taken as an immutable relation to the word of god. Human free will and reason is only there due to the existence of a creator, and faith in him will bring salvation and ever-lasting life. All logic stems from faith in that theology, from what I think is merely a statement of belief and does not seem to constitute logic. You start with given premise, belief, and use that in its entirety as the basis for “logical” argument. Anything that falls outside of that belief system constitutes an erroneous value judgement based on faith; not logic are reason. But then that is the whole issue in a way.”
Jay: Perhaps you could flesh this out a bit more. I don’t understand what your view is here. We do not believe there is no free will and we do not hold that there is no truth anywhere other than the written Word of God. Certainly mathematics is ‘true’ and immutable, but its not in the Bible explicitly. We are not obscurantists. In fact, I have argued consistently that our view is entirely logical, though not without its paradoxes. I argued that our position is the only logical and reasonable one. Not that I am a rationalist, but that our position is really the only logical one to hold. Read that Husserl piece i linked against skeptical relativism and tell me its not an air-tight refutation.
Justin: Enlightenment principles calling into question ultimate truth, of the existence of god; and therefore it is the enemy of god. A lucerfarian adversary. Truly biblical.”
Jay: The Philosophes were Luciferian. And often openly so. That is not a biblical conspiracy view, Voltaire said he was Luciferian and revelled in it. Rationalism is an exaggeration. As a Thomist and a Catholic philosopher, in fact, I am not irrational: I believe that the Christian Faith is oh-so reasonable!
Justin: Nothing can exist without your god, all is measured by him, all law, justice, morality is derived from the infinite absolute omniscient, omnipresent & omnipotent creator you believe in. That is what you say, or rather your god says. As is laid down in the bible.”
Jay: Yes. You may not like that position, but guess what: it sure does resolve so many pesky philosophical questions that arise when you cut God out.
Justin: I’d just like to ask, if your god presented himself to you, in a literal fashion as presented in the bible, and issued you a special command to slaughter a loved one; someone precious and loved to you…would you attend to it?”
Jay: Notice that I said in the post you’re quoting that temporary commands to kill some person or group were, in the very context of the Old Testament, not normative commands even for the Israelites, much less for persons living in the New Covenant.
As I said above, there are no new revelations since the death of teh last Apostle, St. John. So, what you are proposing is something impossible in my worldview. If an angelic entity appeared and said “kill so and so,”I already have the injunction from St. Paul in Galatians 1 to not listen to even angels if they preach not what St. Paul taught. So, since I actually believe the Bible, for what you are saying to occur, I would actually have to reject my beliefs and becoming something else, somke kind of fringe cult member or something. But as it stands, I am an orthodox Catholic who believes the same things the Church Fathers and faithful saints believed up through today.
I bring that up not to change the topic, but to say that I have certain theological guidelines that are normative to my beliefs. As such, I could not consistently be what I am and, say, promote abortion. To do so would make me non-Catholic and non-Christian, no matter what I claimed. Such is someone like John Kerry or one of the Kennedys. In short, we don’t accept any private revelations that tell you to kill someone because truth cannot contradict truth.
Jay
December 24th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hilarious.
Wait, you came in and thought you were going to blast a one-off insult at a bunch of rubes and it turns out they have some wits.
I’m going to stay tuned for you when you try to outline the belief system of the all-cute, yet unmerciful Pink Spaghetti Unicorn Monster.
-B
(I’m hungry now. All this talk of Monsters and Spaghetti has got me thinking about Monster Tacos and Spaghetti Carbonara. I wonder if this helps or hurts Dawkins? Maybe he
December 24th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Sorry - I realized I failed to link my paper on Husserl’s death-blow against skeptical relativism:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/2008/06/husserls-four-a.html
Jay
December 26th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Jay,
Before I reply to your last posts I have to say that I only entered the frays due to your statement about your Lord’s “special command” to slaughter the Amakelites. This really is something I need to investigate, I do not approve of Wait’s needless antagonistic, provocative and disrespectful blasts here, though when he, or she, seeks to stick to decent argumentation some (I mean only some) good points are made. It seems that Wait is only playing the sceptical secularist’s favourite game of ‘Goad the Christian apologist.’
Now to respond to your previous posts:
Justin: An entirely self-referential ultimate form of which all else is a resultant epiphenomenon.
This piece of logic appears to be an ironclad circular argument: everything is to be taken as an immutable relation to the word of god. Human free will and reason is only there due to the existence of a creator, and faith in him will bring salvation and ever-lasting life. All logic stems from faith in that theology, from what I think is merely a statement of belief and does not seem to constitute logic. You start with given premise, belief, and use that in its entirety as the basis for “logical” argument. Anything that falls outside of that belief system constitutes an erroneous value judgement based on faith; not logic are reason. But then that is the whole issue in a way.”
Jay: Perhaps you could flesh this out a bit more. I don’t understand what your view is here. We do not believe there is no free will and we do not hold that there is no truth anywhere other than the written Word of God. Certainly mathematics is ‘true’ and immutable, but its not in the Bible explicitly. We are not obscurantists. In fact, I have argued consistently that our view is entirely logical, though not without its paradoxes. I argued that our position is the only logical and reasonable one. Not that I am a rationalist, but that our position is really the only logical one to hold. Read that Husserl piece i linked against skeptical relativism and tell me its not an air-tight refutation.
Yes, that statement is a mess. It was due to my attempts at ‘fleshing out’ my original paragraph ironically, in a hurry, as I was due to go out. Let me try to clarify it.
I think, that without being disrespectful here, backwards reasoning is employed to justify your premise.
You start out with your Christian faith, and with the onslaught of scientific thought and logic in the past three hundred years especially, Christianity seeks to refute a mortal enemy where previously it had not such an adversary that questioned it’s very nature and grounds as a universal truth.
I thank you for the info on Husserl as I have not looked into him previously, but it seems after reading your piece and a Wikipedia article on him outlining his refutation of psychologism & anthropologism specifically, it seems that you have adapted his criticism for your purposes. As is quoted from your article:
“Husserl’s primary concern in the Logical Investigations is to ground the sciences in an ideal, a prioristic theory of science that is objective and absolute. This theoretical science Husserl terms “pure logic,” which must be apodictic, thereby forming the ground of the practical and empirical sciences.”
There it seems that Husserl is not denying absolutely the role of the empirical sciences, of the scientific method as a whole. I take onboard the four points as you outline, but I never said that I am a ’skeptical relativist.’ And is your God ‘capable of demonstration’? I would say not.
And Husserl’s critique seems to stem from a Platonist concept of logic so it seems that we are back at Plato’s Theory of Forms; to some degree. I am not concretely versed in philosophical thought so I will look into these schools of thought further before I comment on them.
Justin: Enlightenment principles calling into question ultimate truth, of the existence of god; and therefore it is the enemy of god. A lucerfarian adversary. Truly biblical.”
Jay: The Philosophes were Luciferian. And often openly so. That is not a biblical conspiracy view, Voltaire said he was Luciferian and revelled in it. Rationalism is an exaggeration. As a Thomist and a Catholic philosopher, in fact, I am not irrational: I believe that the Christian Faith is oh-so reasonable!
Many enlightenment thinkers were open and professed ‘Luciferians’ I know, but often enough it seemed that they did not even countenance the existence of an actual entity known as Lucifer; it was symbolic of the illuminated mind, of reason, of intellect. Terry Melanson’s Conspiracy Archive was the first website I ever came across when I first typed in the term ‘Illuminati’ on my PC some two years ago, so I’m somewhat familiar with the whole Bavarian Illuminati history and it’s genesis in the Enlightenment (Am eagerly anticipating Terry’s book on the subject!).
Of course whether the higher degrees of the various ’societies with secrets’ really did worship some knid of representative “Luciferian” entity interests me greatly still. But it seems that staunch Christians will latch onto the whole ‘Luciferian Illuminati’ truly as the enemy of your God, where as it may be that they have been rejecting the notion of a false God; a lie. They enshrined Luciferian intellect in opposition to this malfeasance; as they saw it.
Justin: Nothing can exist without your god, all is measured by him, all law, justice, morality is derived from the infinite absolute omniscient, omnipresent & omnipotent creator you believe in. That is what you say, or rather your god says. As is laid down in the bible.”
Jay: Yes. You may not like that position, but guess what: it sure does resolve so many pesky philosophical questions that arise when you cut God out.
It has nothing to do with liking or disliking your position. It has everything to do with questioning it as I do hold out the probability of there being some creator figure/entity of some kind, I just don’t see it as the wrathful God laid in the Old Testament especially.
Here again it looks like you using your God to solve ‘pesky philosophical questions that arise’ to create a complete universal worldview, where I acknowledge that mankind is nowhere near achieving such a thing. If ever. It appears to be a glorious theological-cum-philosophical fix-all patch for all of the things we do not know.
And I don’t have an alternate view to replace yours either. I just accept that I don’t have all the answers. I am merely an imperfect human in an isolated segment of existence who hopes to find answers where he can.
Justin: I’d just like to ask, if your god presented himself to you, in a literal fashion as presented in the bible, and issued you a special command to slaughter a loved one; someone precious and loved to you…would you attend to it?”
Jay: Notice that I said in the post you’re quoting that temporary commands to kill some person or group were, in the very context of the Old Testament, not normative commands even for the Israelites, much less for persons living in the New Covenant.
As I said above, there are no new revelations since the death of teh last Apostle, St. John. So, what you are proposing is something impossible in my worldview. If an angelic entity appeared and said “kill so and so,”I already have the injunction from St. Paul in Galatians 1 to not listen to even angels if they preach not what St. Paul taught. So, since I actually believe the Bible, for what you are saying to occur, I would actually have to reject my beliefs and becoming something else, somke kind of fringe cult member or something. But as it stands, I am an orthodox Catholic who believes the same things the Church Fathers and faithful saints believed up through today.
So again, the bone of contention for me:
“2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Sam. 15:2-3).
I don’t see how this ’special command’ can be viewed as anything but morally reprehensible.
I see that you will probably say that my destructive Darwinist outlook precludes any inherent moral structure, but this is not the way I feel about it. I am not a Darwinist anyway. I don’t need a Judaeo-Christian God to sense that this is repugnant.
It seems that from this single example of a genocidal Old Testament God morals are indeed relative, as your God dictates. And you now have a prescription to abstain from these commands but it seems not to change your assent to your God’s previous murderous intent.
Justin: It all hinges on faith in a creator being, Jehovah, and that the stories of both testaments are to be taken literally, with no equivocation. The word of god, though it seems that it cannot be heard anymore as depicted literally in the old testament, as there seem to be no modern day burning bushes, angelic messengers, etc, is to be taken as total and universal absolute. An entirely self-referential ultimate form of which all else is a resultant epiphenomenon.”
Jay: Its a bit more complicated than that, and we are not that unsophisticated, as to not grasp proper principles of interpretation and hermeneutics. I am trained in hermeneutics and exegesis (not that I expect you to merely accept my claims), but its an area I do know a little about. I can’t speak for Terry and the Collins Brothers, as I don’t know all their views, but I can tell you how we operate when it comes to understanding parables, tropes, symbols, allegories and the grammatical-historical level of the texts.
Don’t confuse me with Wait. I don’t hold for minute that you “unsophisticated,” dogmatic simpletons. Not in any way. I have entered this discussion to learn from what you express for the very opposite of that is what I hold.
I hope that this reply is a little more coherent. I’ve re-read it and I’m not fully happy with it, but I will leave it stand.
I look forward to your reply.
December 28th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Justin: You start out with your Christian faith, and with the onslaught of scientific thought and logic in the past three hundred years especially, Christianity seeks to refute a mortal enemy where previously it had not such an adversary that questioned it’s very nature and grounds as a universal truth.”
Jay: I do start with my Christian Faith as a starting point, but I do that because all humans do this in some fashion. You have your presuppositions, and I have mine. You begin with anti-supernaturalists assumtions, and interpret the facts of the world through that filter. We all do this. Where you and I differ, is on our presuppositions. The question between us is, which worldview is coherent and which is destructive of the very possibility of knowledge. Science and scientific endeavors make perfect sense in an Christian view, and, in fact, Christianity gave birth to the sciences. Universities are a Byzantine and Medieval invention. Knowledgable Christians are not opposed to “science,” as you continue to assume. Christianity is opposed to scientism.
December 28th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Justin: There it seems that Husserl is not denying absolutely the role of the empirical sciences, of the scientific method as a whole. I take onboard the four points as you outline, but I never said that I am a ’skeptical relativist.’ And is your God ‘capable of demonstration’? I would say not.”
Jay: Yes, I am appropriating his argumentation, because he gives an air-tight critique of skeptical relativism. You may not have claimed the title “skeptical relativist,” but agnostic and or atheistic materialism must ultimately end in skepticism. This is how I demonstrate God’s existence: by the impossibility of your view.
December 28th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Justin: And is your God ‘capable of demonstration’? I would say not.”
Jay: I would demonstrate His existence by the impossiblity of the contrary. This is called a transcendental argument. This is a logically valid line of reasoning, and its one of the good things Kant pointed out. There are all kinds of things we believe in that are not demonstrable, if by that you mean empirically demonstrated. Laws of logic are not demonstrable, so how do I show that laws of logic are? By the impossibility of their non-existence. To deny, say, the law of identity is to affirm it. This is, in fact, the strongest possible argument one could give.
Justin: Husserl’s critique seems to stem from a Platonist concept of logic so it seems that we are back at Plato’s Theory of Forms; to some degree.”
Jay: Yes, Husserl is somewhat Platonic, in that he affirms universals. This is not, however, identically the same as the forms of Plato. I agree with Husserl’s affirmation of universals and critique of nominalism (and modern empirical skepticism is an outgrowth of medieval nominalism), and if you’re interested, I wrote a paper on that as well (and I apologize for the weird spacing. Typepad is a bitch sometimes and refuses to accept some things):
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/2008/01/husserls-affirm.html
Also, if you read this link, you will see that I am arguing, like Husserl, *for science.* What I oppose and what the Collins Brothers have written against in masterly fashion, is scientism: not science.
Justin: it seems that staunch Christians will latch onto the whole ‘Luciferian Illuminati’ truly as the enemy of your God, where as it may be that they have been rejecting the notion of a false God; a lie. They enshrined Luciferian intellect in opposition to this malfeasance; as they saw it.”
Jay: Sure. I don’t know to what degree each Philosoph or Luciferian acknowledged other entities or were basically atheists. From a Christian perspective, in the loong run, it doesnt really matter, since the essence of that worldview is that you are God, so you can do and believe whatever the hell you want. Either way, I believe the philosophes were under the devil, whether fully cognizant of that fact or not.
Justin: Here again it looks like you using your God to solve ‘pesky philosophical questions that arise’ to create a complete universal worldview, where I acknowledge that mankind is nowhere near achieving such a thing. If ever.”
Jay: Well, this is why I would have assumed you were a skeptical relativist. Yes, Xianity is an entire, cosmological worldview. It gives an overarching mythos that does, I believe, explain quite a bit. It doesn’t tell us everything, like mathematics or quantum physics, but it is an excellent foundation and explanation for why the universe operates the way it does.
Justin: I don’t see how this ’special command’ can be viewed as anything but morally reprehensible. I see that you will probably say that my destructive Darwinist outlook precludes any inherent moral structure, but this is not the way I feel about it. I am not a Darwinist anyway. I don’t need a Judaeo-Christian God to sense that this is repugnant.”
Jay: Yes, that is the argument. On what grounds do you think this was repugnant? Do you are not a Darwinist; you are a well-rounded agnostic? And how exactly is this different from being a skeptical relativist, which you said you weren’t?
By definition, God is the ultimate norm for a Christian worldview. Thus, whatever He commands is just, since He is commanding in accord with His nature. The Amalekites were a wicked people, who had persecuted God’s people. God, in His justice, knowing how each of these Amalekites would have turned out, had they continued to live, determined that they had progressed in wickedness to the point of no return. St. Paul speaks of this point of moral degradation in Romans 1. So, while we don’t have the authority to make these kinds of judgments, if God is God, He can. Point being, there is nothing here inconsistent with a biblical worldview. You have voiced that you do not like it, but we have yet to see any grounds for morals at all in your view. This is why I said you may not like it, but there’s nothing inconsistent about it.
Justin: Don’t confuse me with Wait. I don’t hold for minute that you “unsophisticated,” dogmatic simpletons. Not in any way. I have entered this discussion to learn from what you express for the very opposite of that is what I hold.”
Jay: I know you’re not Wait, but I said this in reference to your comments about taking things “literally” in the Old Testament. My point was that there are sound principles of hermeneutics that guide one in a balanced understanding of what is literal and what is symbolic that avoids extremes: the liberalism of a higher critic like Bultmann or the ignorance of a wild fundamentalism with Scofield.
December 28th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
And let me add this point from the Husserl paper on universals. Science is founded on empirical observation. No one disputes this. However, enlightenment rationalism and its relative, radical empiricism end up with a nominalistic theory of meaning. This is why I said above that if materialistic Darwinianism is true, you couldn’t even communicate with us, since there is this whole problem of “meaning:” what does it mean to mean something? On purely empiricist grounds, this is impossible to account for:
“Husserl goes on to demonstrate that the radical nominalist argment that individuals only and always experience particular objects, which denies even the Lockean doctrine of concepts, devolves into further difficulties. In this view, only individual intuitions exist, which never extend beyond the sphere of what is individual.[15] There is, then, on this view, no ideal unity between experiences. Meaning, then, ceases to have continuity from one experience to the next. Nothing could be predicated at all, were this the case. If nothing can be predicated sensibly of any object, then clearly all possibility of meaning and intercommunication between individuals is rendered impossible. Radical nominalism is thereby refuted by its own absurdity.
An experience of a tree, for example, from one minute to the next, from the radical nominalist perspective, would not be the same tree, as each momentary experienced ‘tree’ has its own independent proper greenness, solidity, etc. As Husserl taunts, this yields “complete nonsense.”[16] In other words, the nominalist view cannot account for meaning and identity over time, or, by extension, from one mind to the next. These arguments demonstrate the necessity of universal entities as the foundation for meaning and identity over time and beyond individuating experiences.
In conclusion, Husserl proceeds to criticize nominalism along the same lines as he critiqued skeptical relativism: by turning the position in on itself and showing it to be self-destructive, leading to various absurdities. These arguments, Husserl believes, demonstrate that the human mind can conceive of universal entities and render nominalism and impossible theory. Once again, as with skepticism, nominalism is still prevalent in our day and Husserl’s hundred-year-old critique is as vital to academia and the sciences as it was in his era.”
December 28th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Terry Melanson writes:
It needn’t be one or the other. Look at the Universe, tell us how it came to be. Darwin is inadequate.
Of course Darwin is inadequate. Darwin wasn’t proposing how the universe came to be. He was proposing how species originate. You don’t appear to be aware of what Darwin actually wrote.
December 28th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
He wasn’t responding to just a Darwinian conception of origins, but a commenter above who was espousing radical atheism and that there is no Creator.
December 28th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
“Of course Darwin is inadequate”
Great. I already knew that but was just waiting for an admission. Darwinian theory can’t explain how life began any more than it can explain how the Universe came to exist.
“You don’t appear to be aware of what Darwin actually wrote.”
Oh you mean the natural selection and “Preservation of Favoured Races” bit? I admit I haven’t fully digested it; but then again most of the sacerdotal Darwinian propagandists have never fully read it either. They just toe the line of officialdom dogma. Indoctrination factories is what colleges have become.
The sniveling rat Dawkins is the most unintelligent twerp I have ever laid eyes on. He gets a licking every time too when he tries to debate “the other side.” No one made him look like a fool in Expelled; that’s him being himself.
December 28th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Terry Melanson writes:
Great. I already knew that but was just waiting for an admission.
Uh, no. It only shows you don’t even know what you’re talking about.
It’s like criticizing molecular biology because it doesn’t explain why planets form. That’s not what it’s even trying to do.
Darwinian theory can’t explain how life began any more than it can explain how the Universe came to exist.
Again, you’re exposing your own ignorance. Darwin didn’t attempt to do either one. He talked about the origin of species.
Oh you mean the natural selection and “Preservation of Favoured Races” bit?
Do you realize it doesn’t refer to either the origin of the universe or the origin of life? Apparently not, because you try to criticize it as if it does.
The sniveling rat Dawkins is the most unintelligent twerp I have ever laid eyes on.
Sorry, your red herring ad hominems only throw your ignorance into sharp relief.
No one made him look like a fool in Expelled; that’s him being himself.
Oh dear, you mean you regard Expelled as something other than a waste of film?
December 28th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
“Oh dear, you mean you regard Expelled as something other than a waste of film?”
Yup.
December 28th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Brian,
Care to interact with any of my arguments above?
December 28th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I can’t seem to find any. Given that you don’t appear to know that a whale IS a mammal (”Where is the whale-mammal?”), I’d rather you put forward what you consider an “argument,” as what I mostly see on your part are mere assertions.
December 28th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Nice try. I produced no arguments, eh? Well, since you’ve produced such strong rejoinders so far to everything that has been said, what could I possibly say. I’ll just stay stupid.
Jay
December 28th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
You know the argument. Where is the observed species-transition?
December 28th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
You can’t interact with any of the philosophical arguments given above, so you bitch about nit-picky things.
December 28th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
“The” observed species-transition? Are you referring to a specific species?
December 29th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Jay Dyer writes:
You can’t interact with any of the philosophical arguments given above, so you bitch about nit-picky things.
Sorry, it isn’t “nit-picky” to point out that Darwin was talking about the origin of species, NOT the origin of life or the origin of the universe. Getting basic information like that wrong dooms any argument from the start. People need to know what they’re talking about.
December 29th, 2008 at 2:37 am
What I would like to know is what people think about the article, which is well written and the reason why I posted it in the first place.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:18 am
Jay,
I thank you for the time taken to respond to my posts. I’ll leave this discussion now as I’m sure Terry is peeved at a discussion that only skirts around the article he posted.
As I wrote previously I joined the debate because I need to understand how anyone can view a genocidal order from your God as justifiable.
I still don’t, but this discussion has raised some issues I need to ponder. I felt that you were trying to stick me in a box labelled “skeptical relativist” and I wasn’t happy with it. But I guess that some definition of my position is needed.
If you don’t mind I may come back to you later on your Nicene Truth site after reading and thinking quite a bit more, or perhaps I’ll start a discussion relating to what we have discussed on the Collins brothers Panoptic Age group if they are amenable.
December 30th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Justin,
Sounds good. Feel free to debate what you want at Nicenetruth.
Jay
September 12th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
why is theory of evolution being promoted as if it were already proven? Lets take for example the advent of premature cells. While evolutionists speculate things just happened by chance and some force/conditions created some intelligent life form, that theory has absolutely no evidence or an experiment to prove that those conditions are possible. Not to mention the fact that in order for a cell to perpetuate itself requires a complex system that can translate/transcript DNA in order to multiply, a reasonable energy making apparatus in order to cause chemical reactions, a porous outer shell that protects itself from lethal elements and provide semi permeable conditions to obtain nutrients, a transportation system within the cell to distribute necessary elements to different parts of the cell, a digestive system to break down the bonds of molecules for ingestion, and etc. To say that this all came about in a single stroke of chance, which would require trillions of codons to arrange it self in correct composition, is an absolute absurdity. To put it simple, theory of evolution is a faith, not science.