Posted on 02/18/2015 7:39:18 AM PST by Gamecock
As one considers the values of Hollywood and American pop culture, it would be easy to conclude that no one is concerned all that much about morality. The dominant message is that people should live whatever life-style suits their personal preferences. What is right for one person is not necessarily what is right for another.
Or so it would seem.
Just about the time you are convinced that Hollywood thinks morality is relative, a major entertainment figure steps forward and speaks out vigorously about a moral cause. Maybe it’s the environment. Or perhaps its racism. Or maybe the moral cause is caring for the poor. Regardless, it turns out that, in certain instances, morality is absolute after all. In regard to these moral issues, apparently everyone should be on board.
Such was the case with the latest statements by the actress Julianne Moore. The headline I read about her most recent interview said it all:
“Oscar Actress Frontrunner: I Don’t Believe in God; Gun Control a Must.”
Now right off the bat, it is clear that there are some serious problems with Moore’s worldview. First, she stumbles into the very problem mentioned above. How can we take her moral position seriously, when the message of her industry is that there are no moral absolutes? You can’t say, on the one hand, “Live whatever life-style you want,” and then, on the other hand, say, “You must follow this particular moral position” (in this case, gun control). It’s one or the other.
But, the second problem is even bigger than the first. In addition to making moral claims, Moore makes it clear that she doesn’t believe in God. Apparently, then, she has an atheistic worldview. Of course, she is free to have such a worldview, but the problem is that it doesn’t square with her moral crusade for gun control.
Presumably, she is concerned about gun control because she values human life. She believes it is “wrong” to take a human life, and wants to prevent as many human deaths as possible. But, on an atheistic worldview, why is human life more important than any other life? It is just the product of billions of years of mindless evolution. On an atheistic worldview, taking a human life is no different than taking the life of a cockroach. On an atheistic worldview, there is no right and wrong at all.
Later in the interview, Moore admits as much. She says:
“I learned when my mother died five years ago that there is no ‘there’ there,” she reflects. “Structure, it’s all imposed. We impose order and narrative on everything in order to understand it. Otherwise, there’s nothing but chaos.”
Basically, according to Moore, there is no inherent meaning in the universe–meaning is just something we “impose” on a world filled with “chaos.” All good and well, but what then is the ground for her moral claims about gun control and the value of human life? In a world without meaning, why would it matter what one human does to another? It is just one bag of molecules doing something to another bag of molecules.
Of course, Moore might respond and say, “You can still have morality on an atheistic worldview. Morality is determined by what is good for the most people. And gun control is good for the most people.”
But, this just creates a new moral code out of thin air, namely that “Morality is determined by what is good for the most people.” Where does this moral standard come from? Did she just make it up? And why should people follow it? Moreover, how does Moore determine what is good for the most people? What counts as “good”?
In the end, Moore’s worldview faces some serious philosophical challenges. She wants to have absolute morality so that she can declare murder wrong (and thus advocate gun control), but at the same time she provides no coherent basis for what makes something right or wrong. Indeed, she has a worldview that actually destroys the possibility of their actually being any real right or wrong.
When someone has such an obviously incoherent worldview, it makes one wonder how that happens. What leads someone to embrace two obviously contradictory premises? The Bible actually provides an answer for this. The Scriptures teach that men and women are made in the image of God and the law of God is written on their heart (Rom 2:14-15). This explains why Moore insists that murder is wrong (which leads her to advocate gun control).
The Scriptures also teach that unbelievers suppress this truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18-23). Even though Moore knows there is a God, she refuses to admit such a thing and tries to live her life without him. Thus, her contradictory worldview is inevitable. She is trying to get away from God, but cannot escape him because the Law of God is written on her own heart.
Of course, it should be noted that Christians agree with Moore’s concern for human life. We agree that it is wrong to murder (regardless of what one thinks about the merits of gun control laws). The difference is that Christians actually have a coherent reason for why murder is wrong, namely because humans are made in the image of God (and thus are different from the cockroach), and because God has commanded us not to murder.
While non-Christians might act moral, and might advocate moral acts, only Christians have grounds for why an act is moral or immoral in the first place.
Indeed. Physical experimental set-ups require a decision as to which view of the "particle" one wants to see; because to have both views at once — position and momentum — is not possible.
Yet both views are necessary to the complete description of the "system" that entails them both. This is the essence of the principle of complementarity — which implies that human direct observation has a natural limit.
Yet I wonder: What, exactly, is the "particle" that we observe? This is a difficult question, for two reasons. First, for Newton, a "particle" was a purely abstract idea, unifying all "massive bodies" (i.e., bodies possessing mass) of whatever size, or scale. This is the "classical" idea that continues to inform contemporary physics. The second question isn't really a question, so much as it is a presupposition: that "particles" are material entities.
Eminent physicists have proposed that everything supervenes on the physical, by which they mean the material. That is to say, everything that is bottoms out in matter (albeit matter moving according to physical laws — an acknowledgment which instantly introduces a paradox, summed up in the question: Are the physical laws themselves "material?").
Let that problem be for now. Let's ask the next question: In what does "matter" itself bottom out?
The deeper physics looks, the more constituent "particles" it finds. Indeed, physics has some putative "particles" of which it has been aware for decades; and yet it cannot "isolate" them for direct observation and study. I'm referring to the family of quarks....
Maybe physics can't "find" quarks — whose existence is indubitable, judging from their effects — because quarks are not "material" entities.
But then, neither is DNA, which encodes individual living organisms for life.
Of course, when one speaks of a "code" of whatever description, it seems only reasonable to suppose the existence of a code maker, an intelligent one.
Intelligence is never the outcome of a random process. Also ineluctably, it is not "material"; it does not bottom out in "matter in its motions," that can ONLY be described by stochastic methods.
Anyhoot, just some stray thoughts. I'm probably spending way too much time incubating such problems.
Then again, I'm a virtual shut-in nowadays, the weather hereabouts having been so stunningly awful (or awesome) for the past three weeks and counting. I've only been "outside" three times in this period; and was very glad to see how cheerful my fellow suffering Yankees are under the present conditions.
Though lately I've been manning "the bucket brigade" on a routine basis, I'm cheerful, too. Notwithstanding my little town some 40 miles west of Boston has had over seven feet of snow over the past few weeks! AMAZING!!! I was here during the Great Blizzard of 1978; and it was a total piece of cake compared to our recent experience....
Must sign off, but not before concurring with your finding regarding "the whole is not observable": "[M]an cannot make such an observation — only God can!"
For we humans see only "through a glass darkly," only in part....
Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for your insights — and your very kind words.
Actually, I’m pretty sure I’ve stolen liberally from AG and BB...
:)
And strangely, the atheists never seem to wonder how chaos becomes informed. LOLOL!
An explosion is not chaos... it’s very well ordered..
I’ve often thought of each of us as a person at a moment or as the wave of an entire life.
Had an old WWII vet die earlier this month. I’ve known him the past dozen years. He was at Yalta as part of the security detail for Roosevelt. He witnessed Stalin’s motorcade. He married his lifelong sweetheart after 5 years at war literally from the day after Pearl Harbor to the months after Peace in Japan, he ran a farm, sold cars, ran a service station, worked for veteran’s organizations.
I keep naming periods and those can be broken to points. I saw a lot of them. I can reflect on a continuous person back 12 years.
God can see an entire life’s line, and He can see the moments of that life.
Is that a particle and a wave?
As for randomness, if the randomness is obedient to the laws of physics, it isn't that random. And if at the end of it it takes an intelligible form, then the principles governing it were themselves intelligent.
And thank you both for your encouragements to betty boop and to me!
One other observation about randomness: the term "random" originates in mathematics and is often misapplied in other disciplines.
The result of a throw of dice would be random. Complete entropy would be entirely non-random (everything is the same, every where.)
Randomness is tied to complexity. If a series of numbers can be produced by an equation it is not random. The smaller the equation needed to produce the sequence (the Kolomogorov complexity) the less random the series.
And it can be very deceiving to the observer. For instance, a series of numbers extracted from the extension of the pi (circumference divided by diameter) may appear random but in fact is highly determined by the calculation, e.g. not random.
The "moral of the story" applied to natural science is that something may appear to be random (as you say over long periods of time) when in fact they are highly determined. But since one cannot step outside of Creation (see things from God's point of view) one can only know by trusting God's words on the matter.
Well, a blast wave causes entropy which is not random at all. Nor would entropy be chaos. But, of course, other factors can affect an explosion.
Is that a particle and a wave?
Max Tegmark in his Level IV universe would see that man's mortal life as a bowl of tangled spaghetti representing all of this, the wheres/whens he exists.
I believe in God. I still fervently disagree with this essay. One can form a basis for a moral code without reference to a deity, and many have been formed throughout history. (Code of Hammurabi, tribes that do not worship any gods, etc.) One does not need to refer to God when noting that people should follow certain rules so as to live peacefully alongside each other, and listing those rules.
This essay simply feels like an attempt to not have to rebut idiotic Liberals since they do not believe in God in the way that the author does... which is similar to the way that Leftists seek to shut up their debate opponents. This is not what we should aspire to.
Always great to hear from you, dear friend!
None of which can a man comprehend in terms of the entirety of his own mortal existence, because he is in the position of a "moving present" on a linear, serial, irreversible time series of "quantized moments." Only God can see wholeness in a process like this, because he is not a captive of this particular notion of time.
Which is probably as clear as mud....
I've been grappling with time issues lately. I've received major stimulus from the work that MHGinTN has done on this subject. He postulates different (yet not mutually exclusive) time orders designated as planar and volumetric.
For the sake of argument, might I propose that, on my understanding, planar time and volumetric time designate two temporal categories that "do not operate on the same plane." That is to say, the idea of temporal hierarchy is introduced here, in such a way as to suggest that the planar might in some way ultimately prove to be a function of the volumetric.
For insight into planar time, the model I gravitate to is the Cartesian Plane. This is a two-dimensional mathematical construct built on an X- and a Y-axis.
To represent a man's life in terms of a "timeline," we only need the X-axis. It proposes a model of time divided into discrete steps moving irreversibly, serially, linearly, from past to present to future. It is a number line composed of positive and negative real numbers, "divided" by Zero (0) [which is NOT "nothing"] "in the middle." "Humanizing" the number line on X, we have, to the "right" of Zero, the future. To the left, we have the past. Zero itself represents the "present moment" — which likely flows along in wavelike form to someone who can view matters in that perspective. [Which is probably why the Y-axis is so important.]
The problem seems to be "the present moment" — for it is so terribly fleeting. The present moment slides away into the past at the very moment we think of it in the present.
Linear time — the X-axis of planar time — is seemingly the "time" that most human beings sense, almost all of the time, evidently quite naturally. But that would be a predisposition, quality, or qualification, that cannot be explained in terms of linear time. Hence our need to better understand what the Y-axis entails....
Whatever. We haven't even gotten to volumetric time yet — which is NOT confined to two dimensions....
I suspect volumetric time is the matrix into which linear time is nested. Mostly, it is never directly perceived by human beings. Yet my main point here would be: At some logically irreducible level, humans' ability to perceive at all utterly depends on it.
Dear MHGinTN, if I have misunderstood you in any way, I truly would welcome correction from you.
Alamo-Girl, dearest sister in Christ, thank you ever so much for your wonderful insights!
On that question, I just figure they know very well that they can't ask that question without risking their card-carrying-atheist status.
For atheists, certain questions are just streng verboten — they MUST NOT be asked.
Otherwise, how could an atheist ever be "comfortable" with himself?
Yep, both. Depending on who's doing the seeing....
^ This.
Linear time — the X-axis of planar time — is seemingly the “time” that most human beings sense, almost all of the time, evidently quite naturally. But that would be a predisposition, quality, or qualification, that cannot be explained in terms of linear time. Hence our need to better understand what the Y-axis entails....
Position X, position Y, position Zed... scale X. scale Y, scale Zed... and shape on same three axis.. and the/an extrusion factor..
determines a human’s “reality quotient”.... all different for each one..
Much like a universe with many different “objects”.. all different in unique ways.. and the same in others..
Inhabiting “SPACE”... that is not nothing.. but something “we” know not of.. maybe dark energy/matter..
Speaks to me of the most rare thing I know of............... “humility”..
which is a requirement for conceiving of “GOD”.... even if you don’t believe in one..
for...... all are humble in degrees.. if at all..
***
All of which sounds perfectly reasonable to me, dear brother in Christ!
THANK YOU!
"SPACE." like TIME, seems always to be a controversial matter. WRT space: Is it "empty," or is it "full?" Is it absolute, or contingent? Is it eternal, or limited in time? These are the questions....
I've been thinking of you a lot lately, especially in regard to your "donkey/rider" analogy — which seems to suggest your awareness of a certain basic, deep-seated dualism occurring in natural life forms. That is to say, you note a certain tension between what we might call "spirit," and "matter" that plays out in the existence of living things.
Evidently, when this insight "hit you," you were very impressed.
I've liked your analogy from the first time I heard it. I had a similar "epiphany" when I was a teenager. Only the way the problem struck me at the time was not rider/donkey, but self/machine.
Somehow or other, by age 13 or so, I came to think of my existent "self" as the collaboration of "me and my robot."
The "robot" is the machine that carries "me" — or more grammatically, my "I" — around every day, all the time.
Whatever one thinks of such propositions, for me the takeaway was: "I" do not reduce to physics and chemistry. "I" am ever so much more than that.
Firstly, "I" am an image of God. Physics and chemistry have no purchase on a "problem" like that.
Hugs to my dear, dear brother 'pipe!!! Thank you so much for writing!
I’ve been thinking of you a lot lately, especially in regard to your “donkey/rider” analogy — which seems to suggest your awareness of a certain basic, deep-seated dualism occurring in natural life forms. That is to say, you note a certain tension between what we might call “spirit,” and “matter” that plays out in the existence of living things.
Robot/self works as well.. I need a metaphor to understand what a “spirit” might actually be..
There could be many metaphors to explain “it”...
BUT.. I like the Donkey/Rider humor to answer Jesus(God) riding into Jerusalem on an Ass(donkey)...
Answers to me the WHY? he did it, if he did.. the humor is pregnant..
Not to speak of the vision I had.. which showed me a view to God’s humor..
I cannot imagine a God without humor.. a fun “guy”.. serious as a heart attack but the best stand-up God I know of..
Loki was a prop comic... Jesus was the real thing.. my kind of fellow..
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