Posted on 10/06/2007 2:38:18 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Ladies and Gentlemen and All Interested Parties...This is in regards to the previously advertised debate announced here previously.
The audio transcripts of the debate are now available here
The debate featured Professor Richard Dawkins, Fellow of the Royal Society and Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and Dr. John Lennox (MA, MA, Ph.D., D.Phil., D.Sc.), Reader in Mathematics and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, Green College, University of Oxford.
Dawkins, voted by Europe's Prospect Magazine as one of the world's most important intellectuals, is regarded by many as the spokesman for the "New Atheism." BBC has labeled him "Darwin's Rottweiler." He has written numerous best-sellers, most notable among them, his recent book, The God Delusion. TGD has been on The New York Times List of Best-Sellers for over thirty weeks. It is a no-holds-barred assault on religious faith generally, and Christianity specifically. According to Dawkins, one can deduce atheism from scientific study; indeed, he argues that it is the only viable choice.
Lennox, a popular Christian apologist and scientist, travels widely speaking on the interface between science and religion. Like Dawkins, he has dedicated his career to science, but he has arrived at very different conclusions. "It is the very nature of science that leads me to belief in God," he says. Lennox possesses doctorates from Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Wales. He has written a response to the notion that Science has exposed the Bible as obscurantist in a book titled God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?. The book will be published this fall.
If you'll recall, the original claim was that atheists can give no rationally coherent and consistent account of their morality. Well, I think I have done so but it will ever be admitted.
Me: you do not say why historical development creates an obligation to refrain from causing unwanted human suffering.You: "Selfish" reasons. The need to satisfy yourself.
Morality reductio ad absurdum: "I ought to be unselfish so that I can be more selfish."
All you have done is give a description of bipedal animals conditioned by their environment to act in certain ways a label called, "morality". But what you label "morality" is not morality at all. You're explaining something different. Morality is prescriptive, not merely descriptive, which is why some sort of purported historical process of evolutionary psychology can never serve as an adequate, sufficient explanation for morality. You can't derive an "ought" merely from what is.
Me: you are not saying why is there an obligation to be compassionate.You: There isn't of course.
More conclusive evidence that we're not talking about the same thing. Morality entails incumbency. Anything less is unworthy of the name. I know you are UndauntedR, but if I could save you some time and effort, you will never be able to derive a coherent, sufficient explanation of morality from a materialist premise. It's impossible. A materialist premise has no foundation for good and evil. Dawkins himself admits as much, but he can never seem to remember his own words any time he feels like going on a moralizing bender.
Cordially,
I'd say "nicely done, edsheppa," except you neglect to account for one pesky detail: innate human values. From whence do these arise?
No matter what country or continent we come from we are all basically the same human beings. We have the common human needs and concerns. We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering regardless of our race, religion, sex or political status. Human beings, indeed all sentient beings, have the right to pursue happiness and live in peace and in freedom. As free human beings we can use our unique intelligence to try to understand ourselves and our world. But if we are prevented from using our creative potential, we are deprived of one of the basic characteristics of a human being. It is very often the most gifted, dedicated and creative members of our society who become victims of human rights abuses. Thus the political, social, cultural and economic developments of a society are obstructed by the violations of human rights. Therefore, the protection of these rights and freedoms are of immense importance both for the individuals affected and for the development of the society as a whole.It is my belief that the lack of understanding of the true cause of happiness is the principal reason why people inflict suffering on others. Some people think that causing pain to others may lead to their own happiness or that their own happiness is of such importance that the pain of others is of no significance. But this is clearly shortsighted. No one truly benefits from causing harm to another being. Whatever immediate advantage is gained at the expense of someone else is short-lived. In the long run causing others misery and infringing upon their peace and happiness creates anxiety, fear and suspicion for oneself.
The key to creating a better and more peaceful world is the development of love and compassion for others.
You can’t reason with an atheist, Diamond. There is simply no common ground of discourse.
If by "reason with" you mean "proselytize into believing as I do", you are probably correct. The notion that all atheists are incapable of reason is ridiculous and false on its face. I understand that people often lapse into hyperbole when engaging in discussion of a topic important to them, but brash insult is uncalled for, don't you think?
Ditto for accepting false and manufactured quotations, and accepting assertions that political evil, abortion, homosexuality, and failure to take out the trash all originated with Darwin.
That is not what I'm doing here, disrgr: I am not proselytizing. As far as I'm concerned, you can believe whatever you want to, and do.
Also what I wrote isn't hyperbole. You are invited to observe the world of man, nature, and society, and to try to understand the way things actually are: i.e., some (most) things change, but other things never do; the universe presents itself to us as a dynamic, integrated whole; the natural world manifests regularities, due to which we are able to apply reason and experience to the solution of problems; there are universal laws of nature and of morality; and so forth. Then there is the simple, pesky matter of accounting for a universe that contains intelligent beings. One can state that a world that contains intelligent beings cannot have less than an intelligent cause. Then start totting up all the evidence from these different yet related lines of inquiry....
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is just to consult the natural empirical record here. Then try to come up with a reasoned explanation of such things which obviates the necessity of the ultimate principle, ground of being, intelligent cause and "guide to the system" that we Christians call God.
Then please report back to me, I'm interested in your views. Good luck!
Are you no longer speaking to me, js1138? WRT the above italics, you of all people should know that I have not done any of those things.
This thread is mainly about atheism, and I don't think Darwin was an atheist. Neither do I think you are an atheist. Indeed, how could you be? You've been running away from God for years now, and you wouldn't be running if you thought He did not exist.
Yes, I do agree.
But I think the answers to the rest of your questions are unknowable. Tell me what test I can do to decide if I have some real moral duty to the universe? Maybe someday it will be possible for us to answer the question. Maybe we'll discover the universe has a real moral rule. But maybe not. I can't say.
But this is the heart of the matter. I phrased the question the way I did because you cannot owe a moral duty toward a thing. You can only owe moral duty to a person. Further, to say that you can't say is essentially an epistemological claim that there is not enough information for you to be in a position to know whether or not the universe has a real moral law. But since you are a finite being and cannot have searched everywhere you are not in a position to say with any certainty that that there is not enough information for you to be able to know.
A precondition of objective morality is a personal cause of the universe. If the cause of the universe was impersonal, there can be no objective morality because morality entails, among other things, (including freedom) personal commands from, and accountability to, an authoritative source of those commands. A purely materialistic, physical, impersonal origin of the universe offers no foundation all for any of these necessary preconditions of objective morality.
As I said to UndauntedR, mere descriptions of bi-pedal animals that act in certain ways because they have been conditioned to act that way, that you have labeled "morality" is not morality at all. The reason I think you have not and cannot provide a rationally coherent and consistent account of morality is that you have to rely on all sorts of things that are logically precluded by your presuppositions.
If materialism is 'true' in the end it does not matter what values you choose, utilitarian rationality applied to "innate human values" and feelings and transmitted as culture, or not, for there is no right and wrong; good and evil do not exist and all actions are morally indifferent, amounting to nothing more than fungible, subjective, personal preference.
Cordially,
BB, we have spent weeks at a time discussing your false and manufactured quotations. “Life comes from life” ring any bells? You have also ascribed all kinds of evil to Darwin, but you are not the most prolific poster in that regard, and I was not thinking of you on that subject.
You also have an active imagination regarding my religious beliefs.
On the contrary? It sure sounds like hedonism to me.
You need some more Bertrand Russell
That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.If that self-refuting nonsense is not enough to make you go insane or kill yourself I don't know what is.
Cordially
Yes, I've been conspicuously silent about that, haven't I? The reason is that, for the purposes of my argument, it is not material. Whatever the source of these values, the argument stands.
However, since you ask, I will tell you my opinion. First, they are biological, a product of our brains and bodies. Feeling that you've been treated unfairly or feeling sympathy for someone else so treated come from within us just like feelings of hunger.
Second, we don't have a detailed understanding of how these feelings actually work inside us but I consider it probable that, in time, we will.
Third, and I'm sure you expected this, I think it's probable that our capacity for these innate feelings and for the ability to wrap rationality and culture around them to improve our well being is an evolutionary endowment. Again we aren't even close to understanding the details of how that could have happened but, in time, I think we will. In broad strokes though the story will be that groups with innate moral leanings and capacity are more fit than those without.
Betty is right, there's no common ground, but it's not for the reasons she thinks.
Well then what is the reason esheppa, in your view? :^)
Yes; and you're only making my point by putting it that way, edsheppa!
It is the source of these values that makes them values. But the source is not "material." There's more to say on that, but it'll have to wait for later -- I have some errands to run right now.
Hope to see you soon!
Also what I wrote isn't hyperbole.
Are you saying, then, that you actually believe that all atheists everywhere are incapable of being rational? Perhaps I should ask what definition of "rational" you are using?
It sure sounds like hedonism to me.
How so? Is appreciating the present moment, savoring every minute of your days hedonistic? Is it hedonistic to give yourself over to the thrill of a perfectly sung Mozart aria? Or to be entirely present to the sensation of kissing your wife, if you are lucky enough to have one? Or to taste fully an exquisitely cooked meal? Cyrano de Bergerac did so with only a grape, half a macaroon, and some water. Is that hedonistic?
Or is all of that nothing more or less than mindfulness, which gives us the means to appreciate every "present moment, wonderful moment" (Thich Nhat Hanh)? To me, it is obviously the last.
bump
This answers Leibniz's two great questions: "Why are things the way they are, and not some other way?" It also answers his other great question: "Why is there something, why not nothing at all?" (Because God wills it.)
Scientists must assume uniformities in nature; otherwise science has nothing to do. The fact that there is science at all is tacit proof of the existence of God.
Amen, BB. Perfectly stated.
And as if this logic weren't enough, we have the very real, tangible, day-to-day data before us that illustrates the "good fruit" of those who are His, who love Him beyong all telling.
Who is happier than the Christian? Who faces adversity with as much strength as the Christian? Who produces as much goodness according to the God-given good fruit of faith as the Christian? Who wishes bounty for all the world and who wishes every man to know this very same joy and comfort and assurance?
Only the Christian.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.