Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Bad Theology in Support of Bad Science

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Fransciso Ayala says intelligent design is an “atrocity” and “disastrous for religion” because it makes God directly responsible for all of the evil in the world.  Ayala apparently believes he can get God “off the hook” for all of the evil in the world by setting him up as a remote deity – along the lines of the wind-up-the-clock deity believed in by, say, a seventeenth century deist – who, while He may have set the initial conditions in the universe, has not tended to it since and therefore cannot be blamed if the evolutionary train has gone off the rails in his absence.  Rubbish.  Ayala is pushing bad theology to support his bad science. 

Let us examine Ayala’s claim that evolution gets God off the hook.  His logic apparently runs something like this:  As a Christian he concedes that God is the primary cause of the universe.  Nevertheless, he says, God established numerous secondary causes, including Darwinian evolution, which is responsible for the vast complexity and diversity of life.  But evolution is a creative force that is far from perfect, and such things as genetic defects, the cruelty in nature, and the defective human birth canal result from this imperfect process.  

Now here is where Ayala’s argument gets interesting.  Ayala seems to believe that by laying the imperfections in living things and the obvious cruelty in the world at the feet of a secondary cause (i.e., evolution), the primary cause (i.e., God) is relieved from “responsibility” for the aberrations resulting from the imperfect secondary cause.  

Ayala’s argument runs squarely counter to elementary logic.  Christians believe that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing) and omnibenevolent (unlimited in goodness).  The universe is contingent.  God did not have to create it.  He chose to create it.  Not only that; He chose to create a universe in which evil is possible.  And not only that; in His omniscience God knew perfectly (not probabilistically) exactly what the consequences would be of His decision to create a universe where evil is possible.  God knew evil would exist in the universe He created at the moment He created it.  Therefore, in a certain sense (call it an “ontological sense”) God is responsible for the existence of evil.  Please do not get me wrong.  I am not for a moment suggesting that God is morally responsible for the evil in the universe.  But it seems inescapable that He is responsible in the sense of establishing the conditions in which it is possible for evil to exist. 

Even if this were not the case, one would still have to contend with the combination of God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence.  Suppose I am standing on a sidewalk.  I see a car is about to come up on the sidewalk and strike the person in front of me, and all I have to do to save her is reach out and give her a gentle tug backwards.  If I allow that person to be struck and killed by the car when it was well within my power to save her, two things are true.  My conduct has not conformed to the good, and in a very real sense I am responsible for her death.  In his omnipotence God is well able to stop all evil if He chooses to do so.  If God does not stop the evil He is well able to stop, is He not responsible for it? 

Where does this leave Ayala’s argument?  His logic does not bear up under the slightest scrutiny.  Exiling God to the “primary cause” hinterlands does not get God “off the hook” for the existence of evil in the world.  Intelligent design does not “make God responsible for evil.”  In the ontological sense we have discussed, God is responsible for existence of evil before intelligent design theory speaks.  Therefore, Ayala’s argument fails utterly. 

What about the theodicy?  How can we reconcile the existence of evil with an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God?  The answer revolves around the existence of free will.  Just as He had a choice regarding whether to create the universe, God also had a choice concerning the kind of universe to create.  He could create a universe in which love and also evil are possible, or He could create a universe in which love and also evil are not possible.  But He could not create a universe in which love, but not evil, was possible.  Why?  Because both love and evil are the results of choosing.  In an important sense they are the opposite sides of the same coin.  When a person loves, he chooses the good for the other, and when a person commits evil he chooses that which is not the good for the other.  And just as you cannot have a one-sided coin, you cannot have a universe in which it is possible to love (to choose the other) but not possible to commit evil (to not choose the other).  

God chose to give us the capacity to love.  He gave us the ability to choose (or not) the other.  In short, He gave us a terrible, awful, wondrous gift – free will.  But when He gave us the capacity to love, he also gave us the capacity to commit evil.  And scripture teaches us that all evil, both moral evil and natural evil, is the result of man’s choice to commit evil, which resulted in the fall.  

Ayala displays an appalling ignorance of the scriptures when he suggests that “intelligent design” makes God responsible for evil.  The scriptures teach quite clearly that evil is the result of man’s choice.  This is an elementary doctrine, a doctrine with which Ayala, a former priest, must be familiar.  So it is a mystery why he slanders ID the way he does.

Comments
@Clive #92 But Clive, if we were even to accept seversky's dogmatic assertions about mathematics, such a claim would only serve to undermine scientific realism. It seems to me he is flirting with a reduction ad absurdum thinking like that. I second Pgaedros' notion about C.S. Lewis. Brilliant man he was.above
May 22, 2010
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Clive Hayden- It's true that C.S. Lewis was a great thinker and man. :)Phaedros
May 22, 2010
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Seversky,
Metaphysics and mathematics and morality can all be said to exist ‘in here’. They can be applied to our internal model of what is ‘out there’ but it is a mistake to think that they have any objective existence.
I noticed you didn't include reason and logic into your list of what doesn't actually exist because you haven't found them in your front yard, because you know you would have a fatal self-contradiction arguing that reason and logic do not exist objectively while trying to use reason and logic in an argument, acting as if you were making a "real" or "objectively true" argument. You would be more consistent to say that you cannot reason at all, given that it is an invention by man, much like how we measured land, arbitrarily, but even this would be a contradiction, so you avoid it. You group math and morality into the subjective category, while scrupulously avoiding putting reason and logic into it, knowing full well that that would be self-defeating. Have you found reason and logic in your front yard, and can then make your argument that metaphysical things don't "really" exist? I would like to see them, maybe you can email me pictures. These essays should help clear it up. And I noticed you didn't actually address my argument, but rather told me how you see things; which is fine, but it leaves me wondering if you even understand my argument. "One cause of misery and vice is always present with us in the greed and pride of men, but at certain periods in history this is greatly increased by the temporary prevalence of some false philosophy. Correct thinking will not make good men of bad ones; but a purely theoretical error may remove ordinary checks to evil and deprive good intentions of their natural support. An error of this sort is abroad at present. I am not referring to the Power philosophies of the Totalitarian states, but to something that goes deeper and spreads wider and which, indeed, has given these Power philosophies their golden opportunity. I am referring to Subjectivism. After studying his environment man has begun to study himself. Up to that point, he had assumed his own reason and through it seen all other things. Now, his own reason has become the object: it is as if we took out our eyes to look at them. Thus studied, his own reason appears to him as the epiphenomenon which accompanies chemical or electrical events in a cortex which is itself the by-product of a blind evolutionary process. His own logic, hitherto the king whom events in all possible worlds must obey, becomes merely subjective. There is no reason for supposing that it yields truth. As long as this dethronement refers only to the theoretical reason, it cannot be wholehearted. The scientist has to assume the validity of his own logic (in the stout old fashion of Plato or Spinoza) even in order to prove that it is merely subjective, and therefore he can only flirt with subjectivism. It is true that this flirtation sometimes goes pretty far. There are modern scientists, I am told, who have dropped the words truth and reality out of their vocabulary and who hold that the end of their work is not to know what is there but simply to get practical results. This is, no doubt, a bad symptom. But, in the main, subjectivism is such an uncomfortable yokefellow for research that the danger, in this quarter, is continually counteracted. But when we turn to practical reason the ruinous effects are found operating in full force. By practical reason I mean our judgement of good and evil. If you are surprised that I include this under the heading of reason at all, let me remind you that your surprise is itself one result of the subjectivism I am discussing. Until modern times no thinker of the first rank ever doubted that our judgements of value were rational judgements or that what they discovered was objective. It was taken for granted that in temptation passion was opposed, not to some sentiment, but to reason. Thus Plato thought, thus Aristotle, thus Hooker, Butler and Doctor Johnson. The modern view is very different. It does not believe that value judgements are really judgements at all. They are sentiments, or complexes, or attitudes, produced in a community by the pressure of its environment and its traditions, and differing from one community to another. To say that a thing is good is merely to express our feeling about it; and our feeling about it is the feeling we have been socially conditioned to have. But if this is so, then we might have been conditioned to feel otherwise. "Perhaps," thinks the reformer or the educational expert, "it would be better if we were. Let us improve our morality." Out of this apparently innocent idea comes the disease that will certainly end our species (and, in my view, damn our souls) if it is not crushed; the fatal superstition that men can create values, that a community can choose its "ideology" as men choose their clothes. Everyone is indignant when he hears the Germans define justice as that which is to the interest of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will. Unless there is some objective standard of good, overarching Germans, Japanese, and ourselves alike whether any of us obey it or no, then of course the Germans are as competent to create their ideology as we are to create ours. If "good" and "better" are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than one another. Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words. All this is so obvious that it amounts to an identical proposition. But how little it is now understood can be gauged from the procedure of the moral reformer who, after saying that "good" means "what we are conditioned to like" goes on cheerfully to consider whether it might be "better" that we should be conditioned to like something else. What in Heaven's name does he mean by "better"? He usually has at the back of his mind the notion that if he throws over traditional judgement of value, he will find something else, something more "real" or "solid" on which to base a new scheme of values. He will say, for example, "We must abandon irrational taboos and base our values on the good of the community" - as if the maxim "Thou shalt promote the good of the community' were anything more than a polysyllabic variant of 'Do as you would be done by' which has itself no other basis than the old universal value judgement that he claims to be rejecting. Or he will endeavor to base his values on biology and tell us that we must act thus and thus for the preservation of our species. Apparently he does not anticipate the question, 'Why should the species be preserved?' He takes it for granted that it should, because he is really relying on traditional judgements of value. If he were starting, as he pretends, with a clean slate, he could never reach this principle. Sometimes he tries to do so by falling back on "instinct." "We have an instinct to preserve our species", he may say. But have we? And if we have, who told us that we must obey our instincts? And why should we obey this instinct in the teeth of many others which conflict with the preservation of the species? The reformer knows that some instincts are to be obeyed more than others only because he is judging instincts by a standard, and the standard is, once more, the traditional morality which he claims to be superseding. The instincts themselves obviously cannot furnish us with grounds for grading the instincts in a hierarchy. If you do not bring a knowledge of their comparative respectability to your study of them, you can never derive it from them... ~The Poison of Subjectivism, C. S. Lewis. What makes it impossible that it should be true is not so much the lack of evidence for this or that scene in the drama as the fatal self-contradiction which runs right through it. The Myth [of Evolution] cannot even get going without accepting a good deal from the real sciences. And the real sciences cannot be accepted for a moment unless rational inferences are valid: for every science claims to be a series of inferences from observed facts. It is only by such inferences that you can reach your nebulae and protoplasm and dinosaurs and sub-men and cave-men at all. Unless you start by believing that reality in the remotest space and the remotest time rigidly obeys the laws of logic, you can have no ground for believing in any astronomy, any biology, any paleontology, any archaeology. To reach the positions held by the real scientists- which are then taken over by the Myth-you must, in fact, treat reason as an absolute. But at the same time the Myth asks me to believe that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true. If my own mind is a product of the irrational - if what seem my clearest reasonings are only the way in which a creature conditioned as I am is bound to feel- how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution? They say in effect: 'I will prove that what you call a proof is only the result of mental habits which result from heredity which results from bio-chemistry which results from physics.' But this is the same as saying: 'I will prove that proofs are irrational': more succinctly, 'I will prove that there are no proofs': The fact that some people of scientific education cannot by any effort be taught to see the difficulty, confirms one's suspicion that we here touch a radical disease in their whole style of thought. ~The Funeral of a Great Myth, C. S. Lewis. Can we carry through to the end the view that human thought is merely human: that it is simply a zoological fact about homo sapiens that he thinks in a certain way; that it in no way reflects (though no doubt it results from) non-human or universal reality? The moment we ask the question, we receive a check. We are at this very point asking whether a certain view of human thought is true. And the view in question is just the view that human thought is not true, not a reflection of reality. And this view is itself a thought. In other words, we are asking 'Is the thought that no thoughts are true, itself true?' If we answer ‘Yes,’ we contradict ourselves. For if all thoughts are untrue, then this thought is untrue. There is therefore no question of total skepticism about human thought... ~De Futilitate, C. S. Lewis.Clive Hayden
May 22, 2010
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Clive Hayden @ 85
This is getting to the heart of your issue with what it means to exist and what it means for something to be objective. Something doesn’t have to be physically found in order to exist, metaphysical things exist, and they are objective, such as math. I think you have it in mind that whatever is in your head doesn’t exist, in which case none of your arguments exist, nor does logic, reason, ect., because you won’t find logic and reason out in the yard, nor will you find your argument laying beside them.
You still haven't explained what you understand the difference between subjective and objective to be. My standard is quite simple. Objective is that which is mind-independent. It is what continues to exist whether we are aware of it or thinking about it or whether there are any minds at all to think about it. It is the Johnsonian stone against which we all stub our toes. The problem we all have is that everything we know about the world is experienced in the mind. As I see it, we all live in a mental model of reality which is reconstructed on the basis of the data streaming in through our senses. Much of the model is 'slaved' to that sensory input because our survival depends on it. If someone walks on to a busy freeway because all they see is a green field, that faulty model is unlikely to get passed on. But we can also set aside some of our mental capacity to play and manipulate and experiment with the model. We call it 'imagination' and it can be enormously powerful and useful. The trick is to keep track of what is 'out there' as well as 'in here' and distinct from what is just 'in here'. Metaphysics and mathematics and morality can all be said to exist 'in here'. They can be applied to our internal model of what is 'out there' but it is a mistake to think that they have any objective existence. Mathematics seems to have its roots in the early reckonings that were useful in early agriculture and commerce and civil administration. For example, we can imagine a man who owns a plot of land all those years ago deciding he will divide it evenly between his three sons. Being able to measure it, calculate the area and divide it into three equal plots would have been useful. But in what sense could any of that be said to be objective. After all the land would just have been the land. It existed long before the owner came along, probably long before his species came along, and most probably would continue to exist long after. There would have been nothing in nature, nothing in objective reality, to show the land belonged to that man or that it naturally was divided into three for his sons. The concept of ownership, of an area owned and of the possible divisions of that area are all subjective. They exist only in the minds of the people concerned for the short period they exist. Morality is the same. There is no sense in which it can be said to exist 'out there'. If you want a further argument, consider that the things we call objective, such as light or the air we breathe or gravity, are thought of as such because they are perceived and experienced the same by everybody, regardless of race, creed or color. But there have been and still are many differences over what is moral between different religious and political groups That would not be the case if morality had the same objective existence as the other things I mentioned.Seversky
May 22, 2010
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@Clive "The material world constantly defies “explanation” in that way; it can be “described” by science, but not “explained”. No amount of description adds up to an argument for reasonable proscription, that is, proscription perceived with our reason." Mr. Hammer, let me introduce you to Mr. Nail's head.above
May 20, 2010
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85:
We cannot see the mental connection between a bird that flies and laying eggs. We do not see the mental necessity as we do with metaphysical things like math and morality and reason and logic.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here, because I would have assumed that there has to be some logically necessary reason that birds lay eggs. If you're saying its just some arbitrary contigent state of affairs that arose for no good reason, that would seem to be consistent with Darwinism or what have you. Also consisent I guess with the arbitrary decision of some creative intelligent agent. But I would assume that birds lay eggs because logically it has to be that way, governed of course by some degree of random contigency in their evolutionary history.JT
May 19, 2010
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Clive at 85. Agreed!Upright BiPed
May 19, 2010
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Clive at #85, excellent. I think I heard some Chesterton in there. :DApollos
May 19, 2010
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Clive, nice, thanks.tgpeeler
May 19, 2010
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Seversky,
Now, I have a question for you. Could you go out and find a two somewhere? I don’t mean the numeral ‘2? or any of the other symbols that have been or are being used to represent that quantity and I don’t mean two of anything, not two pens or two books, just two. Does it exist anywhere except in our heads?
This is getting to the heart of your issue with what it means to exist and what it means for something to be objective. Something doesn't have to be physically found in order to exist, metaphysical things exist, and they are objective, such as math. I think you have it in mind that whatever is in your head doesn't exist, in which case none of your arguments exist, nor does logic, reason, ect., because you won't find logic and reason out in the yard, nor will you find your argument laying beside them. However, you need these things in order to make an argument, and it becomes self defeating to then assert that all logic and reason that your argument rests upon doesn't actually exist, it's just "in your head", in which case it "doesn't matter" or "doesn't really mean anything" because you don't see it wash up on a shoreline. Metaphysical things exist more than physical things. We understand them, we understand what makes something just or unjust, we understand freedom, dignity, mathematics and morality, that is, we perceive their reasonableness with our reason. We have no equivalent perception of reason, that is, a rational understanding, with physical things. Physical things are a mystery, in the respect that we cannot reason to them, we cannot see their reasonableness as ideas. We can see the mental connection between a pickpocket and a prison, we take liberty from a man who takes liberties. We cannot see the mental connection between a bird that flies and laying eggs. We do not see the mental necessity as we do with metaphysical things like math and morality and reason and logic. The material world constantly defies "explanation" in that way; it can be "described" by science, but not "explained". No amount of description adds up to an argument for reasonable proscription, that is, proscription perceived with our reason. What you have proposed as an argument doesn't defeat the objectivity of math or morality, it defeats the ability to argue at all. Unless your argument "means" something real, beyond the status of being nothing that you give to it, you cannot argue for anything. You lay the axe to the trunk of the tree whose branch you are sitting on.Clive Hayden
May 19, 2010
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Seversky: I notice you have changed tack overnight. Let's rearrange the matter just a bit:
Now, I have a question for you. Could you go out and find a two [evil, a proposition, information, man, woman, love, a mind] somewhere? I don’t mean the numeral ‘2? [the alphanumerical string "evil" etc] or any of the other symbols [or physical entities] that have been or are being used to represent that quantity [or entity] and I don’t mean two of anything [a sentence or a CD or a vinyl record or an individual human or a brain] . . . just two [or evil or information or propositions or mind]. Does it exist anywhere except in our heads?
Do you not see that "in our heads [and 'hearts']" lies a gateway to a realm of reality that transcends the world of concrete particulars? Do you not see that the best explanation of the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics, logic, information, ethical thought, the power of love, etc is that these things -- though not concrete -- are real? And so, when our cosmos instantiates such realities, it conforms to that reality? A reality that is ultimately mental -- this being classically regarded as a manifestation of soul or spirit? Taking up the case of the reality of evil, which obviously exercises you even though your materialist view cannot cogently address it, having in it no IS that can ground OUGHT (which leads you to express and seek to manipulate emotions). Let us bring to bear some remarks by Koukl:
Evil is real . . . That's why people object to it. Therefore, objective moral standards must exist as well [i.e. as that which evil offends and violates] . . . . The first thing we observe about [such] moral rules is that, though they exist, they are not physical because they don't seem to have physical properties. We won't bump into them in the dark. They don't extend into space. They have no weight. They have no chemical characteristics. Instead, they are immaterial things we discover through the process of thought, introspection, and reflection without the aid of [though informed by experiences acquired through the use of] our five senses . . . . We have, with a high degree of certainty, stumbled upon something real. Yet it's something that can't be proven empirically or described in terms of natural laws. This teaches us there's more to the world than just the physical universe. If non-physical things--like moral rules--truly exist, then materialism as a world view is false. There seem to be many other things that populate the world, things like propositions, numbers, and the laws of logic. Values like happiness, friendship, and faithfulness are there, too, along with meanings and language. There may even be persons--souls [thus minds], angels, and other divine beings. Our discovery also tells us some things really exist that science has no access to, even in principle. Some things are not governed by natural laws. Science, therefore, is not the only discipline giving us true information about the world. [a great error of contemporary education, and one ever so convenient tot he Lewontinian a priori materialists] It follows, then, that naturalism as a world view is also false. Our discovery of moral rules forces us to expand our understanding of the nature of reality and open our minds to the possibility of a host of new things that populate the world in the invisible realm.
Remember, Seversky, we have seen that the inherent reductionism of evolutionary materialism leads it to try to reduce mind to brain and onward to neural networks programmed by genetics and environmental forces. Thus, it ends up in a disastrous self-referential inconsistency (the one you are ever so wont to dismiss by a fallacious negative appeal to authority, when instead you need to ground the reality and credibility of reasoning on the premises of your worldview instead . . . ) as it then undermines the credibility of reasoning. Also, precisely because of your want of an IS that can ground OUGHT, you have no basis other than emotions and power games -- what you euphemistically described as "consensus" -- for grounding morality. But, emotions often blind us, and power elites are often wrong and destructive, to the point where "might makes right" (the baldly put form of "consensus") is a patent absurdity. And, when it comes to the Judaeo-Christian frame that you are so obviously deeply hostile to, pardon my drawing attention to another, even more central text, one that has been there for some 1920 years, as attested by the Rylands fragment of AD 125 or so:
John 3:12I have spoken to you [Nicodemus] of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.[d] 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.[cf. here on a quick survey of the evidence.] 16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him . . . 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
So, Sev, I think that maybe you need to do some comparative difficulties analysis across competing worldviews on factual adequacy, coherence and explanatory power. This, in light of the issue of foundational warranted, credible truths. G'day GEM of TKI PS: T, why not follow my always linked briefing in the Left Hand Column [through my online handle], and explore from there? You might find the discussion of sustainability issues and approaches, here, particularly descriptive of the sort of things I do when I get up from what insomnia power allows me to do in the wee hours of the morning. (E.g. right now, I am working on issues on fixing a draft national constitution and its development process [lots of trojan horse clauses, due to de facto intimidatory imposition by an agenda driven office of a metropolitan administrative power . . . imagine, on issuing a warrant, an externally appointed officer can raid the local treasury "at his or her sole discretion" -- finally fixed after nine years of repeated drafts (though I was not directly involved on this particular one, gives the overall flavour on the least controversial point)], linked to the question of how to rebuild a shattered private sector, destroyed by a predictable disaster for which warnings decades ahead were not heeded.)kairosfocus
May 18, 2010
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Hi Sev, I believe it was in the 4th grade, in Mrs. Pollitt's math class, at Central Grade School in Canton, Illinois, where we learned that numbers weren't concrete. They are indeed abstract. Numerals, on the other hand, we use to represent numbers all the time. I think there is something important in that vis-a-vis the materialist/naturalist ontology. When I started thinking about important things a few years ago my first clue that materialism was false was Mathematics. Also you may want to see a discussion of metaphysical realism and nominalism. A good start is the second edition of Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction by Michael J. Loux, Routledge Contemporary Introductions to philosophy. Chapters 1 and 2.tgpeeler
May 18, 2010
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Clive Hayden @ 66
Please quit deferring to “3? possibly being “V” or “11?. I’m not talking about symbols or models, whether they be Roman or Arabic or martian. I’m asking you a simple question. Can 2 + 2 = 187, as we understand those symbols? No one disagrees that the symbols are arbitrary, who cares? I’m talking about what they represent. Answer my question, can 2 + 2 = 187? And do not change the subject.
No, 2 + 2 cannot equal 187 given our notation and the rules which govern its use. 2 + 2 = 4, 4 + 4 = 8. 8 + 8 = 16 and so on. Now, I have a question for you. Could you go out and find a two somewhere? I don't mean the numeral '2' or any of the other symbols that have been or are being used to represent that quantity and I don't mean two of anything, not two pens or two books, just two. Does it exist anywhere except in our heads?Seversky
May 18, 2010
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kairosfocus: Do you have a web site with more information about your "initiative"? T.Timaeus
May 18, 2010
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T: TKI is The Kairos Initiative [my working persona], and GEM are my personal initials. Gkairosfocus
May 18, 2010
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kairosfocus: Please forgive me if you've been asked this question before, but if you wish to be called "kairosfocus", why do you always sign your name as "GEM of TKI"? And what does "GEM of TKI" stand for? T.Timaeus
May 18, 2010
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Onlokers: Earlier today, I addressed substantially the same reiterated objections to Christian morality by Seversky, here. Other points were already answered above. Note in particular how he is consistently unable to balance his understanding of the core of biblical morality and its impact over the long centuries, which should tell us a lot. GEM of TKI PS: I will go with much of SB's remarks on Mr McVey. We do need to look beyond the external act to act by love under truth, the actual biblical standard for morality.kairosfocus
May 18, 2010
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above, thanks for the kind words.StephenB
May 18, 2010
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@stephenB -"We are not just creatures of isolated acts but rather slaves to our own habits, both good and bad." -"a spirit of charity should cause us to rise above the need for a moral code. Still, we cannot bypass the moral law to rise to that level, we must pass through it. A truly loving person wouldn’t dream of stealing from his neighbor, so, at that level, he doesn’t need the code because his love of neighbor forbids it. On the other hand, he arrived at the point by keeping the code, forming the right habits, and growing in love– not by claiming to have no need for the code" -"There are, in fact, two extremes to be avoided: Legalism, which obsesses over the behavioral code and ignores the heart’s intentions, and permissiveness, which obsesses over good feelings and ignores the behavioral code" Stephen, I really enjoy reading the insight you bring to the table. I must say I agree on all accounts!above
May 18, 2010
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helps to post the link: The Electron - The Supernatural Basis of Reality - video http://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=922bb17d122f4b8e5995bornagain77
May 18, 2010
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StephenB, You like Jazz? There is a cool 'guitar" jazz song in the background of this video you may like. I really enjoyed it.bornagain77
May 18, 2010
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riddick, thanks for the link. I love the classics, but I have also been steeped in traditional jazz.StephenB
May 18, 2010
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StephenB, Thanks. As usual, your response is thoughtful and reasoned. You play the piano, right? Any Beethoven? You'll love this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GazlqD4mLvwriddick
May 17, 2010
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riddick, thank you for the link. I listened to Mr. McVey’s points and he seems like a good man. I am with him on some things but perhaps not most things. Yes, he is absolutely right in saying that we can do what the right things for the wrong reasons, in which case they would not be morally good acts. A man could, for example, tell the truth in order to ruin a person’s reputation or pay someone a compliment in order to manipulate him. On the other hand, it is important to know the moral law and follow it to the best of our ability. We should ask for heavenly help to attain that goal and to heal our wounds when we fail. We are not just creatures of isolated acts but rather slaves to our own habits, both good and bad. We cannot simply become Christians and hope that our mystical experiences will provide all the moral guidance we need. Millions of Christians are addicted to pornography, for example, because no one had the kindness to tell them that lust is, indeed, a sin and it does have spiritual, intellectual, and physical consequences. Viewing those kinds of images forms neural pathways in the brain and enslaves those who develop the habit. Fortunately, new neural pathways can be formed to liberate those unfortunate souls who have fallen victim, though not without heavenly help. It is true, as Mr. McVey implies, that a spirit of charity should cause us to rise above the need for a moral code. Still, we cannot bypass the moral law to rise to that level, we must pass through it. A truly loving person wouldn’t dream of stealing from his neighbor, so, at that level, he doesn’t need the code because his love of neighbor forbids it. On the other hand, he arrived at the point by keeping the code, forming the right habits, and growing in love-- not by claiming to have no need for the code. There are, in fact, two extremes to be avoided: Legalism, which obsesses over the behavioral code and ignores the heart's intentions, and permissiveness, which obsesses over good feelings and ignores the behavioral code. Mr. McVey seems aware of the former danger and unaware of the latter danger. In truth, we need both a loving spirit and a code so we can know when we are really acting out of love and when we are not. Without the code, we can lie to ourselves. If anyone wants to find out how bad he really is, let him try to be good.StephenB
May 17, 2010
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---zero seven: "StephenB, why have you chosen those five standards as the source of your morals? Surely there are other moral teachings in the bible you could have included but decided not to? And why have you elected not to include some of the harsh prescriptions from the old testament?" I listed those five standards, which I embrace, first to dramatize the point that morality cannot be arrived at by consensus. I have invited anyone to place their standards on the table and "work out" a morality with me. None have tried because everyone understands, in spite of their protests to the contrary, that morality cannot be forged throught consensus. Also, I chose those five standards because they represent most of what 2000 years of history has taught us about morality and human nature. On the other hand, they do not form a complete picture of my moral code. I also accept Papal Encyclicals because they integrate biblical teachings with the natural moral law, but that goes beyond the scope of what we are doing. What other moral teachings did you have in mind? Which harsh presriptions in the Old Testament are you talking about that represent a universal code of morality meant for all people at all times and in all places?StephenB
May 17, 2010
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Toronto,
The value of pi is not embedded in the universe. We came up with it and yet we can’t calculate it absolutely. Math is our invention and that is what Seversky is trying to say.
If math is our invention, then we could calculate it with whatever calculation we decided to invent.Clive Hayden
May 17, 2010
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Clive Hayden @66, You are right in saying that 2+2 is not equal to 187, and mathematicians got that right when they said 2+2=4. But what about the value of pi? We don't know what it's actual value is. When someone asks you what the circumference of a 3" dia. circle is, there is no way of determining it with our math. The value of pi is not embedded in the universe. We came up with it and yet we can't calculate it absolutely. Math is our invention and that is what Seversky is trying to say.Toronto
May 17, 2010
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Clive, It seems that you try to show Seversky that there are truths/laws/information/words (choose your favourite word) that exist completely independently of us, or even independently of the entire universe and anything we can think about. You are not alone, some other people already wrote about it in John 5:26.Alex73
May 17, 2010
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Seversky, Please quit deferring to "3" possibly being "V" or "11". I'm not talking about symbols or models, whether they be Roman or Arabic or martian. I'm asking you a simple question. Can 2 + 2 = 187, as we understand those symbols? No one disagrees that the symbols are arbitrary, who cares? I'm talking about what they represent. Answer my question, can 2 + 2 = 187? And do not change the subject. Clive Hayden
May 17, 2010
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Seversky, as one near death experiencer put it in kind of a surprised tone, Well yea you can argue with God in heaven, God WILL WIN, but you can argue. I also find it interesting that the +99% consistent message of people who have been through the panoramic life review part of NDEs is that of learning to love being the greatest goal of life on this earth. The Day I Died - Documentary Part 6 of 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuqRBkooYIs Near Death Experiences - Scientific Evidence - Dr Jeff Long M.D. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4454627 Near Death Experience Miracle Healing - Atheist Out Of Body http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4094105 Near Death Experience (NDE) Song - The Way - Fastball http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4193448bornagain77
May 16, 2010
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