Posted on 09/10/2013 10:07:53 AM PDT by Hoodat
Maybe Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin really did discuss the idea of putting Syrian chemical weapons under international control last week on the sidelines of the G20 conference. Putin sure doesn’t care that Obama’s taking credit for the proposal, or that the administration is posturing like a Mob enforcer. “The only reason why we are seeing this proposal,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, “is because of the U.S. threat of military action.”
Right, Putin is laughing to himself. Whatever. If Obama wants to sell it like a Christmas miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue that’s fine with Putin, because Putin won.
Reset with Russia was originally a strategic priority for the Obama administration because it saw Moscow as the key to getting Iran to come to the negotiating table. Putin, from the White House’s perspective, was destined for the role of junior partner. Now Putin has turned “Reset” upside down. By helping Obama out of a jam with Syria, Putin has made himself the senior partner to whom the White House is now beholden. Accordingly, when Putin proposes the same sort of deal with Iran, with Russia having established its bona fides as an interlocutor for Syria, Obama is almost certain to jump at it.
What’s unclear is whether Obama understands that his foreign policy legacy will be to have ruined the American position in the Middle East, our patrimony of the last seven decades. If the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran signaled weakness, the Russian deal screams surrender. The real surprise is that it’s not Iran kicking the United States out of the region under Obama’s watch, but Putin. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
HUGS!!!
America, America, God shed his grace on thee.
Thanks for the ping.
I do not doubt the sincerity of scientists who argue for the value of evolution theory as relevant to their work. But in science, theories seldom become law but rather are continually subjected to falsification attempts. The value of a theory grows the more it survives such attempts (Popper.)
But when a theory - especially by forced allegiance or repetition - becomes dogma, it affects the worldview of its adherents. It then is philosophy or theology being done under the color of science.
Anthropogenic Global Warming comes to mind.
Thank you so much for all your wonderful insights, dearest sister in Christ!
For one thing, first and final cause are disallowed a priori. The result we've seen in more than a few debates is a correspondent tripping over his tongue trying to discuss biological systems without using the word "function" or "purpose" since that would suggest first and/or final cause.
The rejection of theories based on supernatural causes is not imposed by the Theory of Evolution. It is imposed by emperical science, and applies to theories across all disciplines of science. If that's the sticking point, the the complaint is with science in general, not just the ToE.
Obama agreed to Russia’s proposal on Syria. Under the negociated plan, Syria will hand over its chemical weapons to international control and Barack Obama will hand over his Nobel Peace Prize to Vladimir Putin.
That's the bottom line.
I think one important difference for us is that "transforming" America is job #1 with Obama.
Putin has other, more pressing, priorities.
Therefore.. Obama has returned to his further work of destroying our nation and it's economy with the idea of taking it far enough down that it can no longer interfere in the ME East affairs except for using our Military as Mercenaries for Saudi interests.
Kerry will continue to make runs on the Palestinian/Israel issue...but Obama has completely lost all credibility with Israel and the Palestinians.....so it will amount to very little gain for either side...ONLY Kerry and other representatives believe the US has any clout in that affair...Israel knows Obama is undependable and so do the Palestinians....he's proved it. But it'll occupy Kerry and make him feel significant.
Meanwhile Putins March for Israels oil and gas..and the Pipeline thru Syria to Europe will be Putins agenda....while Saudi continues it's fight for control of Syria which Putin will never allow.
Expect Saudi to rile up the Chechen's against Putin with a “pin prick” for not cooperating with their efforts to buy him out if he'd leave Syria alone.. as they attempted to do the first of Aug and then threatened Putin they would sic the Chechen's on the Olympic games ahead.. But if they do so Putin will unleash Iran against Saudi..which he made clear he would do....checkmate.
The US has zero influence now in the ME...that is gone...it's all a show for Obama to sustain the Democratic Party..and the “stories” we'll be hearing of what he's done and will do...there is NOTHING he's doing whatsoever except keeping our representatives off Obamacare....so far he's been successful at keeping the dialog from being heard by the American people via the Syria negotiations.
The problem is, the word "supernatural" is used as the antonym for "natural." "Antonym" is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "a word opposite in meaning to another (e.g. bad and good)." In my view, however, "supernatural" and "natural" are not opposites; they are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are complementary, empirically and phenomenologically speaking.
When people think of the supernatural, they often conjure up images of God or angels or whatever, whose distinction is that they are not material entities susceptible of direct observation.
But then again, neither are mathematics and the natural laws susceptible of direct observation, though both are indispensable to the conduct of the natural sciences. Nobody would dream of calling mathematics and the physical laws "supernatural entities"; but to the extent that they are immaterial and universal, that is exactly what they are.
A "universal" is a term familiar to philosophers. It denotes a principle or concept of general application that is independent of the particular time and place where it is applied.
For instance, it is said of mathematics that it is the universal language, because its statements mean the same to all intelligent minds everywhere on Earth and possibly throughout the Universe itself. A mathematical statement means the same whether the person reading it speaks English, Hindi, German, etc. Because it is both time- and space-independent, a universal "transcends" the sphere of its application, which for science is the natural world. It is in precisely this sense that a universal is "supernatural."
But that word carries so much emotional freight and confusion for many, I prefer the word "transcendent" to "supernatural."
Next let's consider the issue of "supernatural causes." Again, philosophy helps us get a grip on this species of causes, in particular the insights of the great Aristotle (who many call the founder of systematic natural science).
Aristotle isolated four distinct causes operating in the natural world: formal, material, efficient, and final. His greatest insight was that they all operate together in the production of actual phenomena in the world susceptible to observation and measurement. I.e., to the methods of the natural sciences.
The formal cause (eidos) is the pattern or design according to which materials are selected and assembled for the execution of a particular goal or purpose. For example, in the case of a Boeing 747, the blueprint (or schematic) would be its formal cause. This is the key “explanation” for the jet; for its construction materials and subcomponents would be only a pile of rubble (or a different jet) if they were not put together in the particular way its blueprint specified.The problem is, ever since Newton, modern ("classical") physics only admits two of these four causes: the material and the efficient. The formal and final causes have been utterly banished from formal science.
The material cause is the basic stuff out of which something is made. The material cause of a Boeing 747, for example, would include the metals, plastics, glass, and other component materials used in its construction. All of these things belong in an explanation of the 747 because it could not exist unless they were present in its composition.
The efficient cause is the agent or force immediately responsible for bringing that material and that form together in the production of the Boeing 747. Thus, the efficient cause of the jet would include the efforts of engineers, materials fabricators, hydraulics specialists, and other workers who use the designated materials and components to build the jet in accordance with its specifying blueprint. Clearly the Boeing 747 could not be what it is without their contribution: It would remain unbuilt.
Lastly, the final cause (telos) is the end or purpose for which the Boeing 747 exists. The final cause of the jet would be to provide safe, reliable, comfortable air transportation for human beings. This is part of the explanation of the 747’s existence, because it never would have been built in the first place unless people needed a means of air transportation.
Dear tacticalogic, I sensed your suggestion that I am "anti-science." Nothing could be further from the truth.
And you may be surprised to learn that I admire Charles Darwin. He was just my kind of guy.
Darwin was not an "educated" scientist, in that he did not have a long string of academic degrees from prestigious institutions certifying him as an "expert" in anything.
What he was: A British gentleman of leisure with a passion for natural philosophy. (That's what they called it at the time.)
By "gentleman of leisure" I do not mean to suggest a "filthy-rich" guy. Rather, he was a man with sufficient financial means to grant him the independence to pursue his passionate interests without running out of funds anytime soon.
There were a great many others of this style in London society of the time. And they would meet to compare notes at their clubs and societies on a regular basis.
Anyhoot, Charles Darwin had independent means to carry out and fulfill any expedition that would place his eyeballs in contact with the goings on in remote places all over the world, which had not yet fallen under the observation of the Europeans. Principally in his case, the Galapagos Islands.
And the rest is history.
I love Darwin's independence. I also love his honesty and integrity as an observer and theorist. It was Darwin himself who declared that his evolution theory would need to be substantiated by the fossil record, or else it would fail. He was also aware that the fossil record at his time was still incomplete. I imagine he had faith that the "missing evidence" would be found in due course.
But that has not happened. We are speaking of the pre-Cambrian "graduated, intermediate precursor forms" of the fossil record we do have today. Those archeological records are still missing.
With all due respect to Charles Darwin, it is conceivable that precursor organisms that did not have exo-skeletal or skeletal forms would not have left anything behind to "fossilize." Soft inner parts would melt away quickly in time, leaving nothing much to detect thereafter.
Anyhoot, dear tacticalogic, I really do keep an open mind on such matters.
It seems that, here, biology runs into the "cosmological censorship problem": One cannot, in principle, ever logically or observationally reach back to the origin, or the beginning, of things.
The cosmological censorship problem has intruded, not only into biology, but also into physics. It suggests there is a limit on what the human mind can know. For example, with Darwin's theory, what one cannot know is what happened before the geological record started showing fossils. In physics, it deals with what immediately followed, after the Singularity "blew up" in the Big Bang. Or what is taking place inside of Black Holes.
Not only do we not know, we don't even know how to find out.
But we humans keep asking the question, Why???
You are such a dear, tacticalogic, to humor me through all these considerations. Thank you so very much, and may God ever bless you!
It wasn't intented as a suggestion that you hold a general animosity to science, simply that the complaint seemed misdirected. Regardless of what you call it, "transcendent" or "supernatural", there are no tests or metrics for it. Science long ago embraced empiricism, and Darwin wasn't responsible for that.
Since information theory (a discipline of mathematics) has become increasingly important in molecular biology, I expect the mathematical models to prevail, laying aside the aversion to first and final cause.
What can a mathematician do to help prove a cause that doesn’t have metrics?
In fact, if my deacdes of studying scripture is a hint, the very process of a developing unbiverse is described quite well in the Old Testament, then affirmed int he New Testament, with this caveat: the evolution of material (4D bound phenomena) 'stuff' has well defined limits which humans have discovered and done a pretty good job of examining ... entropy rules; yet we seem perplexed to define another evolving process which is intimate to the none 4D bound aspects of the Universe, namely the evolving soul/spirit which has been tasked with choosing autonomous arrogant self or God-worshipping self willingly submitting to change/evolution of the behavior mechanism (the soul) via growth of the spirit component God breathed into Adam at the start of this phase in the process.
Meant to ping you ...
Your long view powers are showing ... so many miss the forest as they are distracted by the different trees in abundance.
That is the point.
As an example, please read Rosen's Life Itself.
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.