If you will look at my always linked through my name, you will see a summary presentation with onward links on why many of us at UD etc hold to premise 2 as a well-warranted conclusion to our own investigations.

You will note that this broadening of what is primarily a scientific question on the credibility of the inference to agency, comes into play only after looking at the foundational nature of information, specification and complexity, and then exploring OOL, biodiversity at body plan level, and also the issue of cosmogenesis.

Then, the phil and worldviews incidental issues are brought in as the onward agenda for well-rounded thinking. A summary is made in the online note, and onward links are provided.

The issue is not one of “obviousness,” but one that there is a real and longstanding issue with real reasons warranting our conclusion.

[Cf, e.g., Reppert on C S Lewis' Dangerous Question for a simple case in point. Plantinga and others have raised the issue at more sophisticated levels as well. So this is not a mere matter of the deluded, stupid, ignorant fundy rubes going at it again. And, on the "wicked" prong of Dawkins' 4-pronged fork, we plead guilty, for as all men are, we too are finite, fallible, fallen and struggling to avoid being ill-willed and ill-tempered. We also read in Rom 1 - 2, that there is a testimony within and without that points to the God we so often are most eager not to discover; we find an uncomfortable parallel between the Pauline inferences on the predictable consequences of that rejection of evidence, and our own times. We find that there is good reason to conclude that the major lines of evidence cited by the Apostle still hold good in even our C21 scientific era, on their own merits and without appeal to anything more than what is available to a reasonably competent and thoughtful man.]

As can be seen above, I noted on these in brief in 40 – 43 and in 45 above, whereupon the thread paused.

If you wish to look at the issues, why not take them up step by step, and let’s do so right here where we can all see what is going on.

GEM of TKI

PS: Onlookers, here is a 101-level look at the issues, and here is an exploration through a public lecture, of what that means in the context of the battle over the public square here in the Caribbean.

1) any adequate metaphysical system must be able to explain certain basic features of human experience, such as rationality and moral agency.

2) materialism and/or atheism cannot provide an adequate explanation;

3) therefore, it is reasonable to reject materialism and/or atheism.

The first premise strikes me as basically sound, though I could quibble — since some metaphysicians radically revise our understanding of these concepts.

But I’m still not entirely clear on the reasoning behind the second premise. I think that to most people here it is obvious. It’s not obvious to me. The intuition doing the work here seems to me to be, “how could the mere causal interactions of atoms give rise to reason, choice, love, etc? it’s absurd!” But is it absurd? How can you tell?

In any event, I appreciate your willingness to discuss these issues with me. And as I said before, I’m also willing to discuss them over private email exchanges.

Regards,
Carl

Do creationists (IDists, to Pinker) warrant the guarantees of free speech and/or access to the media?

Is it possible to discuss ID without linking it to Holocaust denial?

Is it incumbent upon a Harvard professor to correctly represent a position (ID), or an organization (the DI) he is discussing in the public media as opposed to disseminating rhetoric?

Should pots refrain from calling kettles black?

For Steve Pinker, the answer is apparently “No!”

I WAS disappointed to see that the Globe published a creationist op-ed in its otherwise outstanding editorial section.

The creationist movement, having suffered a string of humiliating judicial setbacks for three decades, recently hit on the brilliant alternative strategy of ginning up a “controversy” and masquerading as advocates of free speech and open debate. The Discovery Institute, at which DeWolf is a senior fellow, is a well-funded propaganda organization that has been executing this strategy.

The reality is that the “debate” between intelligent design and genuine biology is like the “debate” between homeopathy and medicine, parapsychology and neuroscience, or Holocaust denial and history — they are victorious if they are given a seat on the debating platform.

It was sad to see the Globe’s op-ed page taken in by this ruse.
STEVEN PINKER, Cambridge
The writer is professor of psychology at Harvard University

http://www.boston.com/news/glo.....c_inquiry/

Maybe the issue over materialism and the problem of credibly accounting for mind and morality is hotter than was initially evaluated?

Naga Jolokia?

GEM of TKI

Came by after fighting with a 404 error earlier and several follow-ups in the real world. Saw the further activity.

First, 1, 2, 3 are intimately linked, in particular 1 entails both 2 and 3, and 1 is in turn entailed by the implications of explaining all phenomena by a-rational forces: blind chance + necessity: hydrogen to humans by a cascade of materialistic evolutions.

If a system has no basis for responsible choice or agency, the relative to its assumptions REAL choice is impossible and as a result morality [which is based on choice] is in turn arbitrary and accidental in effect.

Further, it undermines reasoning in general on the grounds already noted in brief, i.e reductionism of the mind to matter in motion and bonding, however mediated through accidents of evolution and culture. So, “morality,” “reasoning” and “knowledge” all become arbitrary delusions.

Just ask: Sigmund, what about your potty training? Karl, what about your bourgeois class mentality? Burrhus, aren’t you just another rat in the cosmic maze? Jules, what is the foundation in empirics for your verifiability principle? Etc, etc . . .

In that thought world, there plainly can be no sound basis for mind much less morality.

But of course even materialists do not live in that world in praxis, and that is one of the strongest reasons for seeing out the starting gate that the system is a failure: no-one can live by it, starting with the chains of thought that lead him to accept it. It is self-referential and inconsistent, thus has in it core-level self contradictions that flow out of its evolutionary materialism.

Onlookers: A simple 101-level summary is here, you can go elsewhere for detailed developments, long since on the record.

GEM of TKI

I think that (3) expresses what I believe. I believe 1 and 2 were raised just to show that choosing something can be a folly under materialistic assumptions. If you cannot not choose, then morality is a meaningless concept.

So they are tied together somehow. Though you could make an argument that free will could possibly arise out of materialism and I am sure that most materialist feel comfortable with that assumption since few of us like to be thought of as automatons having no will.

However, even if we do have free will and materialism is the true explanation of the world, then choice of a standard becomes arbitrary. If you disagree that would be an interesting argument. Also many of the non-religious standards in the world do not necessarily lead to nilhism or anti-social behavior or to “materialism” in a life style sense of focusing on material goods. However, you can make the argument that many will lead that way and have already done so.

Choosing some of the religious standards is also problematic since there are so many variations and which one is the right one if any.

1) The problem with materialism is that it cannot explain, or account for, choice or agency.

2) The problem with materialism is that entails that choice or agency is actually impossible.

3) The problem with materialism is that it provides no objective standard as to which moral system is the correct one.

In any event, I think that (1), (2), and (3) are different claims, requiring different arguments, and so I’m interested in hearing which of these, if any, comes closet to expressing what you think.

_______

Darwin expressed incredulity when critics assailed him for undermining morality. In his Autobiography, however, Darwin rejected the idea of objective moral standards, stating that one “can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.” (1) Friedrich Hellwald, an influential ethnologist, promoted a Darwinian view of social evolution in his major work, The History of Culture (1875). Hellwald was quite radical in exalting the Darwinian process of the struggle for existence above all moral considerations. “The right of the stronger,” he insisted, “is a natural law.” (2) He clarified this idea further:

In nature only One Right rules, which is no right, the right of the stronger, or violence. But violence is also in fact the highest source of right, in that without it no legislation is thinkable. I will in the course of my portrayal easily prove that even in human history the right of the stronger has fundamentally retained its validity at all times. (3)

This Darwinian undermining of human rights would be fateful for the Judeo-Christian vision of the sanctity of human life.

Besides stressing human inequality, Haeckel and many of his fellow Darwinists devalued human life by criticizing Judeo-Christian conceptions of humanity as “anthropocentric.” Rather than being created in the image of God, they argued, humans were descended from simian ancestors. They blurred the distinctions between humans and animals, alleging that characteristics that had been traditionally considered uniquely human–rationality, morality, religion, etc.–were also present in animals to some degree. In Darwin’s own words, the difference between humans and animals is quantitative, not qualitative.

Darwin’s explanation that all human characteristics that previously had been associated with the human soul were not qualitatively distinct from animals also undermined the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of body-soul dualism, which endued humans with greater moral and spiritual significance than other organisms . . .
___________

Worth a thought or two . . .

In short, we are still looking at at least a hot Red Savina Habanero here.

GEM of TKI