Posted on 01/26/2006 1:47:10 PM PST by jennyp
A rather curious position to take for someone who himself makes blatantly racist posts. Review posts 153 and 186 at your leisure, and see if the racism thing isn't maybe just a little bit of projection.
Central planning and unguided are not synonomous. You ever owned and operated a business? Ever marketed anything? Sold anything? Built anything? All those processes are directed intelligently by individuals with purpose and planning aforethought. Your analogy sucks.
Have you even taken any biology classes?
DNA polymerases have known error rates (even with proofreading enzymes available). From this error rate and the changes in the DNA sequence of a gene betwen two organisms, their interrelatedness and the time back to a common ancestor can be determined.
Genes that code for histones, proteins that the DNA wraps around to compact itself into chromosomes are among the most conserved genes found. Their basic function was set billions of years ago and mutations that disrupt this function are removed from the population because the organism cannot reproduce.
These errors in polymerase function are what allow us to determine identity by DNA profiling. Your DNA is NOT identical to anyone else's, even your identical twin. You have accumulated mutations in your germ cells while growing up.
Please read up on it .
Markets at their base are two individuals, one wanting to sell something and one wanting to buy that something. The purpose of that transaction is to profit the buyer and the seller. Markets in the macro sense, if you insist, are individulas and corporations doing exactly what the other two guys are doing. All done with a purpose, that purpose to profit from the transaction. To that purpose planning, complexity and direction are applied by those individuals and corporations.
So the market at large is the sum of all those planning, little intelligent, busy as a bee capitalists. Now take away the intelligence, the indivdual, the planning, the direction and the complexity. What happens to the larger market?
Beyond the 'hook' of creationism in the title...and the falacy of comparing millions of intelligences competing to non-intelligence evolving...(and a certain order arising from both), Hudgin's main point is that atheists are able to be just as "moral" as believers.
In certain individual cases...externally, surely he's right. However, in the big picture, you really don't find many atheist doctors slaving away in mission hospitals in the developing world. I've never heard of an atheist (or even agnostic) Mother Theresa type character. In history, show me a truly great atheist leader.
Christian belief is certainly no guarantee of good and loving character...but look at the most sacrificially loving people in the world--and by golly there's very (very) few atheists.
Europe probably has the highest concentration of atheists in the world...and their voluntary contributions in charitable causes both within their countries and without are significantly less than places with more believers. Atheism really does seem to breed socialism and apathy...(and vica versa) and Objectivists (atheists devoted to free markets) are truly rare.
The Mother of Objectivism herself, Ayn Rand, did not exibit a morally upright lifestyle...those morals arising simply from human nature always tend to corrupt and run downhill--and good minds (like Hudgins) are easily able to rationalize away selfishness and avarice--or all kinds of evil, especially (unlike Objectivists) if they have a utopian vision. Show me someone who is convinced they are ultimately under no other authority than themselves...and I'll show you someone with serious flaws in character...every time.
Just a guess. How does it "fly" as it were? :)
Ethics, morality and all of those associated ideals, etc., etc., ad nausea, ...are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
Examine my statement for logic (categorical or propositional). It will test true as a syllogism or true if tested in a Venn diagram using Aristotle's logic.
Objectivists don't know how to use it.
Man, you were fed a whole lot of slow hanging curve balls on this thread! LOL.
Thanks for your post. I agree with you. I have noticed that atheism is itself a belief system that also relies on faith...although many who hold that faith deny it.
Nonsense. The vast majority of human beings in history existed in societies that did not recognize natural rights, other that, I suppose, the right of the strong to lord over the week.
Ethics are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
Examine my statement for logic (categorical or propositional). It will test true as a syllogism or true if tested in a Venn diagram using Aristotle's logic.
Objectivists don't know how to use it.
It's fascinating to see how many creationists are missing the point here. With the economy, every economic actor does intelligently design their own part of the economy. I control much of my little company's actions, such as what products we develop, how we will market them, and how they're designed. Though even here, what finally gets sold often looks a lot different, and comes out on a different timetable, than what we initially planned for.
But when you look at the economy as a whole, compared to the little part of the economy that is an individual employee or entrepreneur, there's no comparison. The economy as a whole is staggeringly more complex than the individual person's economic life.
Spontaneous order describes what happens when a collection of self-interested actors get to interact according to a given set of rules. The overall order is more complex than the actors themselves are able to comprehend or control.
In abiogenesis it's the individual (totally unintelligent) biochemicals coming together in mutually-catalytic combinations to produce self-sustaining entities that can propagate themselves. In biology it's the (somewhat intelligent) individual cells & (more intelligent) organisms interacting to create species & ecosystems. In economics, it's highly intelligent employees & entrepreneurs forming companies, industries, & economies.
Each of these higher-order entities feature competition & cooperation, success & starvation, innovation & extinction - all within the context of the rules of the game and the particular circumstances they find themselves in. But in each case it's the same: The individual actors did not design the order within which they operate.
Morality and all of those associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
Examine my statement for logic (categorical or propositional). It will test true as a syllogism or true if tested in a Venn diagram using Aristotle's logic.
Objectivists don't know how to use logic.
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