Posted on 02/05/2002 8:18:30 AM PST by JediGirl
For those of us who are constantly checking up on the crevo threads, why do you debate the merits (or perceived lack thereof) of evolution?
Great significance from what perspective? How can you derive the concepts of 'reason' and 'morality' from strict materialism?
It seems to me that you, OWK, and jennyp are 'classic modernists'. I agree with your principles, but I fail to see how your position can withstand the postmodern critique.
What meaning can 'morality' have without free will and some sort of objective standard (i.e. a standard that produces a "you must" rather than an "I'd prefer if you")? I don't see how a strict materialism can be anything other than strictly deterministic. Further, I don't see how free will can have any meaning in a strictly deterministic universe.
There are societies that operate as you describe. Idi Amin's Uganda is a great example. Rational people reject such societies.
The postmodern man (let's call him 'Clinton') of course prefers to live in a society where almost everyone follows the principles we agree on. It makes it easier to prey on others, and easier to avoid responsibility when caught.
You mean in the date at the end of the Constitution? Is that what you're hanging your hat on? Every document with a date is a religious document?
Well, Alexander Hamilton's stepfather was Jewish. Another was financier Haym Solomon, who provided significant financial support to the Continental Congress and the war effort. South Carolina's Francis Salvador, the first identified Jew to be elected to an American colonial legislature, was the only Jew to serve in a revolutionary colonial congress and the first Jew to die for the cause of American liberty.
I'm delighted you asked. I think it's self-evident that there can be no free will at all in a universe ruled by a deity who already knows the future. To such a deity, we're like characters in a movie, and he knows how the movie ends. So if there's going to be any free will at all, either it's in a universe without such a deity, or the deity isn't what many people imagine it is.
The rest of your question is the classic philosophical "is/ought" problem. How can we get from what is to how we ought to behave? Ayn Rand has an excellent solution to this problem. The philosophy of Objectivism.
But there is an objective standard.
It is called reality.
Morality is not a transcendent ethereal product of the netherworld, but rather the product of human reason applied to observation of reality.
I cannot claim free action by right, without extending the same to others. My unwillingness to extend this courtesy to others, would invalidate the rightfulness of my own claim.
Reality is limited, finite, and non-contradictory.
To suggest rightfulness for my own claims of autonomy, while denying the claims of others, would be an irreconcilable contradiction.
Of course I am. As a rational human being, I have no alternative.
LOL! I'm somewhat surprised you concede this, but ok. Be careful, though. Some might call this metaphysics 'God'.
The Calvinists would agree with you, but I don't. Foreknowledge is not causation. I know the sun will set tonight. Does my knowledge of this cause the sun to set? Of course, the very concept of 'foreknowledge' implies a deity who is within time, something which most theists deny. Further, the anthropomorphized deity of human religion is at best a model of a metaphysical reality, not the reality itself. Unless you agree with those who read scripture literally, which I know you don't.
or the deity isn't what many people imagine it is.
Exactly.
Ayn Rand has an excellent solution to this problem. The philosophy of Objectivism.
I'm not an expert on objectivism, but I have studied it. Ultimately, I don't think it holds up any better than the philosophies of Comte or Feuerbach to the postmodern critique.
You have just mentioned two different things: 'reality' and the 'observation of reality'. The two are not identical. The models our brains generate may be more or less accurate (consider the woeful record of 'eyewitness' accounts), but we do not have direct perception of the universe-in-itself.
I cannot claim free action by right, without extending the same to others. My unwillingness to extend this courtesy to others, would invalidate the rightfulness of my own claim.
To the postmodernist, there are no 'rights', only power (Harry Potter allusion completely unintentional). The postmodernist is more than happy to use others' belief in rights for his advantage, however.
Reality is limited, finite, and non-contradictory.
??? Reality is for all practical purposes infinite. Our perception of reality is frequently contradictory.
To suggest rightfulness for my own claims of autonomy, while denying the claims of others, would be an irreconcilable contradiction.
To which the postmodernist shrugs his shoulders and says, "yeah, so what?"
To understand Clinton and his ilk, you have to keep in mind that they think about the world only in terms of power. These people think that 'reality' is a social construct. Are you familiar with Foucault?
First, the sum of finite terms cannot literally be infinite. Second, our inability to compute a solution does not mean that a solution does not exist. Determinism does not cease to be determinism simply because the system is complicated.
I'm using the phrase "postmodern critique" as a shorthand for the general critique of modernism of such postmodern philosophers as Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, et. al. I did so in the same way that PatrickHenry referenced 'objectivism' without providing a complete description of the philosophy. A google search of 'postmodernism' or 'Foucault' would turn up plenty of material, I would imagine.
I agree. I just thought it worth mentioning that we were around from the beginning, and did play a part, if even a small one, in gaining our independence as a nation.
Hmmm?
Didn't the Evolutionists win?
The construct isn't false, but the premises are arbitrarily selected and defined to yield a particular result. A number of assertions are made that are not necessarily valid or relevant to the argument; the only reason they are made is that they must be made to support a particular point of view. For example, "Nobody created the creator. God is eternal." is semantic gibberish. There is no reason this has to be so and no evidence one way or the other; the universe would still work perfectly if that assertion was false and, say for example, God the creator was merely "very long lived" rather than eternal or immortal. Statement #1 in that post was using a pedestrian definition of "cause" that assumes things that aren't necessarily true. Statement #2 assumes the universe has a beginning; this is neither necessarily true nor required in any case for the general assertion to be true. And so forth.
The conclusions drawn require so many unnecessary implicit assumptions in their reasoning that it doesn't make for a useful argument. Even if God DID create the universe and everything in it and we could prove it, it would still be very possible to refute the argument given by disproving one of the myriad of artificial assumptions utilized in it. If you had listed these implicit assumptions as explicit premises, the argument would have been sliced-n-diced by attacking the premises for similar reasons. Chaining together unverifiable hypotheses to construct the premises for a particular hypothesis is not considered a reasonable argument, as ANYTHING can be proven with the exact same logic, true or not.
One could make the same statement about the denominator.
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