Posted on 11/17/2003 6:02:20 AM PST by Tribune7
The idea that he is a devotee of reason seeing through the outdated superstitions of other, lesser beings is the foremost conceit of the proud atheist. This heady notion was first made popular by French intellectuals such as Voltaire and Diderot, who ushered in the so-called Age of Enlightenment.
That they also paved the way for the murderous excesses of the French Revolution and many other massacres in the name of human progress is usually considered an unfortunate coincidence by their philosophical descendants.
The atheist is without God but not without faith, for today he puts his trust in the investigative method known as science, whether he understands it or not. Since there are very few minds capable of grasping higher-level physics, let alone following their implications, and since specialization means that it is nearly impossible to keep up with the latest developments in the more esoteric fields, the atheist stands with utter confidence on an intellectual foundation comprised of things of which he knows nothing.
In fairness, he cannot be faulted for this, except when he fails to admit that he is not actually operating on reason in this regard, but is instead exercising a faith that is every bit as blind and childlike as that of the most unthinking Bible-thumping fundamentalist. Still, this is not irrational, it is only ignorance and a failure of perception.
The irrationality of the atheist can primarily be seen in his actions – and it is here that the cowardice of his intellectual convictions is also exposed. Whereas Christians and the faithful of other religions have good reason for attempting to live by the Golden Rule – they are commanded to do so – the atheist does not.
In fact, such ethics, as well as the morality that underlies them, are nothing more than man-made myth to the atheist. Nevertheless, he usually seeks to live by them when they are convenient, and there are even those, who, despite their faithlessness, do a better job of living by the tenets of religion than those who actually subscribe to them.
Still, even the most admirable of atheists is nothing more than a moral parasite, living his life based on borrowed ethics.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
It’s a big universe, and 15 billion years is a long time. That seems sufficient for molecular interactions to produce some combination of amino acids (like glycine) that again interact to produce a very simple self replicating life form of some type. But scientist and creationist alike recognize that it’s not sufficient to produce a known outcome if all interactions are removed. Those are the erroneous presumptions behind Hoyle’s calculations of the odds of life that are nevertheless promoted by a few evangelicals, misrepresenting biogenesis.
Not exactly. I’m saying that I think the various attempts to rationalize all those contradictions away without infringing upon the Bibles divinity are far less convincing than explanations that don’t accept the Bible’s divinity. That’s why I disbelieve.
I've got to run for the day...
IMHO, once we know the other person's worldview we know the boundary of a useful discourse, i.e. people do not easily change their worldview. Examples:
To an autonomist "reality" is all that is, the way it is
To an objectivist "reality" is that which exists
To a mystic "reality" may include thought as substantive force and hence, a part of "reality"
To Plato "reality" includes constructs such as redness, chairness, numbers, geometry and pi
To Aristotle these constructs are not part of "reality" but merely language
To some physicists, "reality" is the illusion of quantum mechanics
To Christians "reality" is God's will and unknowable in its fullness.
2. There is good reason to suspect something else is going on. What that something is - to you - becomes a matter of belief, but the "something" is proposed by science. PatrickHenry, betty boop and I have been bouncing this around on this thread beginning about post 70 and culminating about post 210.
By all means don't feel threatened ;) If you can find Dr. Suess in a bookstore, read Marvin K. Mooney. He's the naive nihilist.
And look what we have to show for it ... an appreciation of Raphael's work. Here's an even bigger, more complete view of the School of Athens.
Ah, don't be so harsh. Think of him like the moon. It's smiling face sets the terms if you care to land on it.
Nature and ego are identities; self-possession is redundancy; a cosmological view must recognize a measure of sovereignty in a plural world.
But you understand you don't have 15 billion years plus or minus several billion?
We estimate the earth to be stable enough for life at 3.8 billion plus or minus several hunderd millions years ago. Then, if you accept evolutionary theory, another 2.8 billion years is needed to explain the rest of evolution.
So you're window is down to a billion years or so.
Still a long time but remember what needs to occur.
Amino acids need to form. Life uses 20 of these acids and it has been shown that 13 of them can occur naturally. Let's assume that holds true for the remaining seven.
So we have these 20 amino acids. They must all form in the same place.
They must then form into 2,000 different proteins containing strings of 300 amino acids each for the simple bacterium to exist.
The baceterium must then survive, reproduce and evolve.
It is irrational to believe that this could have happened without direction.
It would be irrational to believe it happened [production of a very simple self replicating life form of some type] without direction if -- and only if -- there were a convincing demonstration that such a thing is impossible. Because there is no such demonstration, and because there are encouraging signs that complicated organic molecules, the precursors of living cells, can be formed by natural means, it seems worthwhile to proceed with the scientific investigations.
In one sense there is no single universal valueThis destroys everything you say afterwards.
Ah, too bad you didn't continue reading. You know, that next sentence which began, "And yet..." ;-)
You're trying to derive value from fact in a purely deductive system. You want to start with an "objective" universal premise, and by deduction & deduction alone, generate moral judgements. The problem is, in the real world you can't deduce your way thru life. You need induction too. The justification of our ultimate values comes as much from our real-world lives as it does from any axioms we accept.
Plenty of people are suicidal; you have no reason that they shouldn't commit suicide if they want to. If all of society wants to commit suicide (or destroy itself), likewise. The problem is that you're reading a certain universal value into life that you've just admitted you can't justify - it might be of value to one beholder, but that of course doesn't make it objectively so.
If all society wanted to commit suicide, then the world would become a dangerous place indeed. But societies don't decide to destroy themselves, do they? People (except for the truly suicidal or deranged) want to live - it's the basic condition of any species; otherwise all would have gone extinct long ago. The worst that whole societies can do is pursue tragically foolish philosophies or moralities in pursuit of what are almost always quite reasonable basic goals. This is why I said:
And yet the difference between a life-affirming principle and a life-destroying principle is the difference between thriving and extinction. So my goal of a society that sustains the lives of humans as humans (as opposed to savages or slaves) is hardly something that needs to be justified. It's axiomatic, IMO. How could you begin to convince people that the goal they should be orienting their life around should be death & destruction?
As for how relative values can produce a moral code approaching objective validity, remember that morality by its very nature concerns principles of behavior.
You may have noted in a link in my last message that one amino acid has been identified in stellar gas, independent of earth’s age. All of this doesn’t have to occur on Earth.
Life could have begun here or on any of the millions or billions of earth like planets with varying ages. That’s one of the points in the other link in my last message to you. The odds of any specific person winning the lottery may be 15 million to one, but someone wins it. Earth may be one of the winners.
You don’t know the odds of biogenesis. Because of the unknowns and the interdependent dynamics, no one knows the odds, except God of course :^). So you have no way of claiming that this is “irrational” with credibility. That’s only what you want it to be.
I sometimes wonder why the people who can’t accept that a simple replicating life form was produced from the universe over billions of years insist that something as great as God came into being from, whatever… ;^)
I’m going to be unavailable for a day or so. Best regards…
Read it all... I just found it (to be irrelevant to proving/unable to prove) your point. I see little reason to reproduce non-vital parts of a discussion in my replies when Free Republic makes it easy to trace back to the post being replied to, not to mention it makes it a less convoluted read for everyone involved.
You're trying to derive value from fact in a purely deductive system.
In the line of argument I've been using, perhaps I have. But that is not to say that induction cannot be used to prove my argument - only that I have not yet used it. I try to stear clear of using inductive anecdotes because I'm convinced they're largely useless, or far less effective (and could end up diverting attention from the real points), when discussing theism as the only justification for objective morality. My reason for arguing this case is not necessarilly to prove theism true, or objective morality true, only to show the dependency of the latter on the former.
If all society wanted to commit suicide, then the world would become a dangerous place indeed. But societies don't decide to destroy themselves, do they? People (except for the truly suicidal or deranged) want to live - it's the basic condition of any species; otherwise all would have gone extinct long ago. The worst that whole societies can do is pursue tragically foolish philosophies or moralities in pursuit of what are almost always quite reasonable basic goals.
Here you again invoke ideas - "danger," "destroy," deranged," "worst," "tragic," etc. - that require universal value to be placed on humanity, or at least some aspects of it, in order to even be understood in your own argument. "Deranged," for instance, by its nature as a description insists that principles of human behavior are recognized in order that we also recognize aberrations from them - but those principles of behavior alone don't explain why it is bad to act deranged, only that it is relatively different to act deranged. In fact, "deranged" ends up losing its negative connotation and its reason for existing altogether as an idea seperate from "different."
Your entire line of thought seems to be:
1.) By and large (people/living things/whatever) don't seek the destruction of their own lives,
2.) Therefore, the (continuation/improvement) of (life/existence/whatever) is objectively good.
In other words, 'it is the regular occurence, thus we can infer that it is the good.' Is that really what you're saying?
Chew on these quotes by C.S. Lewis. The existence of God and claims of Jesus are by far the most important things one must deal with in one's life.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the...coffin of your selfishness...The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers...of love is hell. ~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
The safest road to Hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. ~ C. S. Lewis
One reason why many people find [the false idea of the "force" or "life-force"] so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in [a god] and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere [chance evolution] of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great...force rolling on throughout the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the life-force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The life-force is a sort of tame god. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of its costs. Is the life-force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important. ~ C.S. Lewis
There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. ~ C.S. Lewis
The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself, and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. ~ C. S. Lewis
There are only two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." ~ C. S. Lewis
[I felt] the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In...1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, "compel them to come in"...plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. ~ C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
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