Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.
On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.
I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.
Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.
Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,
We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.
That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!
It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.
There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,
I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.
There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.
The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.
Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.
Muslims do not have an empty tomb.
It won’t be a problem.
I did not, and did not mean to say that you supported communism.
And let’s don’t go the route of “why can’t you read, dummy?” type of argument, that doesn’t get anywhere, and besides, you misread what I said and accused me of misreading what you said. Pointless.
I said that your measurement of the “rightness” of a moral code, to the benefit of Man, is the same measure that the Marxists use, so therefore, without inherently referring to an objective, outside human definition standard, you can’t say the Golden Rule is superior to the ethics of Marxism.
As for the dogs, I wouldn’t attribute “Golden Rule” or any sort of ethics to the dog in question. I do know that a dog will risk its life for a human or even a chicken, if it’s the right breed. I don’t attribute any human faculties to animals at all, though. Humans are not animals.
Imagine a grain of sand. that grain of sand represents your life, every second that has ticked by and will tick by before you pass away, every experience, every decision.
Now think of all the sand on Earth, on the beaches, in the deserts and sandboxes, at the bottoms of lakes, oceans and rivers. All those other grains of sand are the rest of eternity. I think where you will spend it is the most important question there is.
So the dog, in spite of all its intelligence faculties and survival instincts, decided to run into a busy freeway, grab its companion and save it, because it was being an unthinking robot? On what basis did you decide that the dog cannot think?
Here’s the reason for the “universality” of the “Golden Rule”:
Romans 2:14-15
14For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
I don’t see where I said a dog can’t think... I must be “misreading” my own post again. I hate it when that happens.
Dogs are loyal. They were created that way by the Master Designer, so I have no basis on which to question why.
If so, is it sufficient to just have faith in your deity? I mean, what are all the pages in the Bible that mirror the Golden Rule for, if only a sentence, "Believe in me!" suffices?
The ultimate aim of implementing the Golden Rule is to produce superior collaboration, wilfully. As social beings, this is the most important weapon aiding human survival. Non-collaborative societies collapse due to their inherent instability. Communist societies are an example of non-collaborative societies because the forced collaboration kills wilfulness.
Isn't that a non-answer? Two dogs can be trained to behave as one would want, based on reward-punishment approaches - thus violating the design intent of the "Master Designer". A dog can be trained to kill, if it thinks obeying will allow it to gain resources that will allow it to survive. If a wild dog displays Golden Rule-like qualities, it is because such a behaviour inherently helps the social unit of the dog to survive - which is to say, collaboration aids survival. That's the reason why the dog ventured into the busy freeway.
INDEED.
No. Not even close.
Sure, they make that claim, but it's like claiming I voted for the same president as you did and instead of showing you a pic of McCain or Obama I show you a picture of Clarabelle the Clown.
To put it simply, the God of Islam demands that I send my son against the infidel to die for him. The God of the Bible sent His son to die for me.
Jesus told us to love our enemies. Muhammad had a poet assassinated because she mocked him in verse. She was stapled to the couch in her house by the assassin's dagger while her baby slept next to her. Check into how he treated the Beni Qoreiga tribe of Jews, executing somewhere around 700 of their men and selling the women and children (about 1,000 people) into slavery.
I know you're one of those fools who says in his heart there is no God, but further attempts to claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God will be about as credible as a claim that Hasidic Jews and Southern Baptists have the same attitude toward pork.
Well of course, dogs do not have religions as far as we know. Nor do they seem to be self-conscious, which is necessary to making a free choice — and moral behavior requires conscious choice. They operate on the basis of feeling and instinct. IOW, dogs do what God "programmed" them to do.
The video conveys a touching scene, one that deeply affects us emotionally: A dog rescuing another dog. But I think we may be "anthropomorphizing" this scene, reading our own human sentiments and judgments into it....
You mention The Golden Rule. Well, where do you think that came from?
The Golden Rule is a universal, as are all the universal laws, physical and moral. Universals are immaterial, timeless and spaceless, or to put it another way, eternal. God made a lawful creation — i.e., one which responds to the universal laws that structure and guide it.
Man, made in the image of God, has God's moral laws "written on his heart," as it were. This is the source of the Golden Rule, which, though not a strictly religious concept, points to a transcendent cause. By transcendent cause I mean a cause that does not arise from events in the immanent (physical) world.
Classical philosophy understands that transcendent causes issue from "beyond" the world of created nature. Thus Plato ever pointed to the God "Beyond" the Cosmos, the divine Idea from which issues the created world of nature, and which furnishes the formal basis of everything that physically exists, according to its kind.
Interestingly, Socrates deplored the Olympian gods for their immoral behavior. (This is probably what got him killed.) The Olympians, to Socrates, were just as much creatures of a creating God as were men, with a like propensity to moral disorder in the organization of their lives. In short, ultimately they were not the creators of the Cosmos, rather more like man "writ large."
But I digress.
Besides the Golden Rule, Christianity is not the only vision of the divine source of truth and justice — i.e., of the moral order that structures this world. The classical Greeks were probably the first to articulate this vision.
So to the question, where does morality come from? you answer "the Golden Rule."
So let me ask again: Where do you think the Golden Rule comes from, if not from the God Beyond the Cosmos? Do you think it is an evolutionary development, a by-product of evolution based on natural selection? If so, how did it get to be a universal?
It seems so often that atheists do not have a good grounding knowledge of religious history or theology. But this does not stop them from disparaging both. To put it bluntly, their "enemy" probably isn't "religion" per se, but rather a particular religion: Christianity — the values of which inform the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and have formed the very basis of the American culture of liberty under just and equal laws.
Take a shot at God, you end up hitting man; take a shot at Christianity, you undermine the American order.
Thanks for writing, James C. Bennett!
Since this is bad, how do you say that this is good:
"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
1 Samuel 15:3
?
Dogs can be trained to kill, too. So humans can change the "design intent" of your god. Dogs can also be bred to produce certain behaviours (docile pit-bulls vs. aggressive ones).
Do you think it is an evolutionary development, a by-product of evolution based on natural selection? If so, how did it get to be a universal?
Of course. The survival advantages in a species gained by propagating collaborative qualities, is immense and demonstrably evident in the wild. Intelligence and collaboration aid each other, and aid survival, overall. The trending is universal because the pressures faced are universal. Collaborative efforts are better than individual ones, due to the advantage of multiplying effort, tactic and intelligence. The human success story is due to collaboration.
Oh, but the communists DO believe that, ultimately, everyone wants to cooperate in the collective. They sincerely do believe this.
Ref: “You can still trust communists to be communists” - (Fred Swarz, David Noebel)
So, your assertion of “forced collaboration” doesn’t factor into their opinion of the rightness of communist morality.
Now, it seems to me that you’ve asked me to summarize the message of the scriptures... tall task.
The old testament is a combination of the history of the world, the reason for the depravity of mankind, the Law as given by the Creator, and the promise of redemption.
Now, this Law is a more detailed version of your “Golden Rule”, which Jesus basically summarized when summarizing the last 6 commandments, which deal with human to human interaction (the first four are “vertical”, dealing with our interaction with the Creator).
God knows that we cannot live up to His standard in adhering to these rules. You’ll agree that you, I, nor anyone else can do so, and we know it. The OT laws were written, not for our salvation, but for us to know our doomed status and the penalty for it.
The rules of creation also require that (a) death be the penalty for failing to get 100% on this test.
However, from the time that the original person failed the test of obedience, God made a promise to redeem mankind. His prophets foretold of this coming Savior, how & where He would be born, His ministry, and the circumstances of his death by Crucifixion (this was a fascinating prophecy because it was made 800 yrs before crucifixion was thought of), and most importantly, His resurrection as a promise of our own resurrection. Those who saw the living Christ were martyred rather than renounce their belief, their belief was so strong.
Jesus lived a sinless life, kept the Law perfectly, and His death atoned “once for all” mankind’s sin, with the only requirement of trusting and believing in His sacrifice for you, and YOU personally.
Thus, the hope of all mankind for eternity lies in the passage:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
"Forced collaboration" is not collaboration. It is wrong because it breeds resentment against the very act of collaborating. Communism, in other words, kills itself.
"The OT laws were written, not for our salvation, but for us to know our doomed status and the penalty for it."
So, in all the thousands of years that the OT laws and its barbarism were active, what was your god trying to do to those who really believed that the laws were the way to "salvation"? Wasn't it inherently cruel to put them into this mad chase, so that you, two thousand plus years hence, can be taught a lesson?
The rules of creation also require that (a) death be the penalty for failing to get 100% on this test.
If death is a penalty, what was David and Bethsheeba's bastard child guilty of?
When the OT god orders that prostitutes be stoned, why did Jesus not obey that law? He was fully man, right?
That said, I'll say here that Bint Marwan was murdered because she offended Muhammad's ego with a poem. The Amalekites were wiped out because the God of the Universe, who measures the waters of the Earth in the crook of His palm, gave an order.
On that basis alone, there is no comparison.
You say the killings are okay because Yahweh wills it, they say the killing are okay because Allah wills it. Those who weren't Amalek were spared, and Yahweh punished the killers for this mercy (IIRC). Later, Jesus tells to turn the other cheek. You believe Jesus and Yahweh are the same. How do you square all this?
By the way, Muslims don’t buy the Asma bint Marwan incident and come back with this:
“The story of her death, allegedly on commands from the Islamic prophet Muhammad after she insulted him, reviled his religion and provoked other pagans to violence against him with her poetry, can be found in Ibn Ishaq’s work, Sirat Rasul Allah, and Ibn Sa’d’s Kitab Tabaqat Al-Kubra. However, classical and modern hadith scholars have rejected the story, with some declaring it as fabrication, pointing out in their arguments against the factuality of the incident that the chains of transmission by which the story was transmitted are all very weak.”
You’re rather frustrating to correspond with. Your “forced collaboration is not collaboration” is a non-sequitur, a nonsense response.
I said the communists do not see it that way, because in the end all will cooperate willingly, so therefore the entire concept of “forced collaboration” is a NON-ISSUE to them.
As for the rest of your post, you’re jumping all over the place.
Now, you’re jumping back to rejection of God based on “the problem of evil”, which was addressed about 300 posts ago.
And please don’t make assertions about “the OT God” or the Law that are nonsense. Barbarism? come on.
I’m starting to get the impression that you’re another dishonest broker like LeGrande.
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