WARNING! The video linked here is extremely disturbing.
Four days ago Alexis Avila, a woman in New Mexico, had a baby. She put the baby in a garbage bag and threw him in a dumpster. She is being charged with attempted murder. The good news is that a passerby found the baby (umbilical cord still attached) still alive and called 911. The medics were able to save his life.
Ms. Avila could have gone to an abortionist a couple of hours earlier and had her baby chopped into pieces in utero. The abortionist could have then removed the pieces, put them in the same garbage bag and thrown it in the same dumpster. In that case, Ms. Avila would have committed no crime. Indeed, pro-abortion radicals would be applauding her “brave” decision to exercise her constitutional “right” to kill her baby in her womb.
Same woman, same baby, same garbage bag, same dumpster. Two hours difference would have resulted in a radically different legal outcome for Ms. Avila. American abortion law is insane and morally grotesque.
JVL repeatedly posted that it was/is morally unfair that he was, (supposedly), being blocked from commenting on kf’s thread, and that his voice was not being heard on kf’s thread.
Yet, I wonder if JVL also finds it morally unfair that millions upon millions of ‘silent screams’ have also gone unheard?
Verse:
From what I can discern Miss Avila’s baby was full-term and so she would NOT have been granted an abortion. She is rightly being prosecuted for attempted murder and could spend a significant amount of time in prison. I assume that everyone agrees with that possibility?
FROM THE EDITORS:
You are a liar.
Here is the first line of the Wiki entry on abortion in NM: “Abortion in New Mexico is legal at all stages of pregnancy.” The Guttmacher Institute agrees: New Mexico does not have any of the major types of abortion restrictions.
What I said is true. There are no limits on obtaining an abortion in New Mexico up until the time of birth. It is sad that you feel compelled to spew lies in order to prop up your wretched belief that it should be lawful to kill babies in their mother’s womb.
And again, since JVL is morally upset that his voice is not being heard on kf’s thread, where is JVL’s moral outrage at these millions upon millions of ‘silent screams’ going unheard?
Tragic as this story is, it has nothing to do with the intelligent design debate. I’m sure there are more than a few alternative venues in which to air one’s abortion opinions.
Now I’m blocked from:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-bigthink-an-author-tries-to-decide-between-science-and-pseudoscience/
You can’t make this up.
So, my choice seems to be: continue to thread jump in an honest attempt to reply to people OR give up because someone either can’t configure their WordPress plugins or because someone doesn’t want me commenting.
It’s one or the other.
ChuckyD claims that abortion has nothing to do with the intelligent design vs. Darwinism debate?
Really???
Join Mark Walker as he interviews Abby Johnson and two other former Planned Parenthood employees as they share their stories of redemption and restoration.
JVL writes:
You are a liar.
Here is the first line of the Wiki entry on abortion in NM: “Abortion in New Mexico is legal at all stages of pregnancy.” The Guttmacher Institute agrees: New Mexico does not have any of the major types of abortion restrictions.
What I said is true. There are no limits on obtaining an abortion in New Mexico up until the time of birth. It is sad that you feel compelled to spew lies in order to prop up your wretched belief that it should be lawful to kill babies in their mother’s womb.
Chuck Darwin writers that this story “has nothing to do with the intelligent design debate.”
Wrong. The atheistic materialism that lies at the foundation of Darwinian evolution entails that the baby is just a tiny hairless ape with no more inherent value than a rock. We all know that is objectively false. (It is objectively false isn’t it Chuck?) That is why the story is so horrifying. Good try at distraction though. I know your cognitive dissonance must be a heavy lift.
I agree that the individual’s right to life should extend to conception or, more practically, that whatever stage of the individual’s development can be detected – whether zygote, blastula or fetus – should be protected by a presumptive right to life.
That said, how many unborn children died in the razing of Sodom and Gomorrah or the Great Flood? How many continue to be lost in miscarriages or through prenatal illnesses?
Texas law SB 8 allows no exceptions in the cases of rape or incest. The law effectively compounds the trauma experienced by the victims of such offenses by compelling them to carry the unborn child to term. Would you not agree that, if the state has a duty to protect the life of the unborn, then it should recognize that there are two individuals involved, both of whom have rights which the state is duty-bound to uphold. Does the state have a moral right to inflict further suffering on an already traumatized victim?
Do we know why the mother was so panicked by the birth that she felt compelled to dispose of the child in the dumpster? There is a report of a 911 call to police some months before in which she complained of a violent assault by her boyfriend of the time. For a girl to do what she did suggests either some sort of psychological disorder or extreme fear of consequences, real or imagined.
Barry Arrington/9
Atheistic materialists recognize that the baby has inestimable value to its kin and to most of the rest of the community of hairless apes. It also recognizes that this is a subjective evaluation arrived at by each individual hairless ape and that even a large number of similar judgements are still each subjective. Does this mean that such judgements are somehow meaningless or worthless?
Seversky, precisely, the inference that moral values are in effect accidents of conditioning and that there are no objective moral truths is driven by a priori evolutionary materialism and/or accommodation to it, not by the rhetorical distractor of diversity of views among an error prone race. So, if a certain community in Germany c 1933 on decides Poles, Jews, Russians, Gypsies etc are inferior life unworthy of life it is merely a matter of who wins the war not right to life. There was no higher built in law for the Nuremberg Courts to appeal to, it was all a matter of who wins subjects who loses to show trials then executes them as they please never mind all that stuff about evidence and justice. Thanks for letting us know and thanks for letting us know the internet atheist anti Bible and anti God talk points are little more than emotional manipulation. KF
PS, do you have rights that demand justice, starting with life?
To keep it simple: humans are as disposable as animals. Both have been made using the same 3D self-replicating “technology”. Both are orders of magnitude dumber than the Creator who made them. Still, the Creator made humans smarter than animals, the Creator also gave most (but not all!) humans a deep sense of empathy. Here we have humans who have a lot of built in empathy complaining that all those other humans are somehow less human or they don’t follow God. Guess what, God made it so that those other humans have less empathy (or for the 4% of humans they have no empathy at all!). Killing babies (or other humans in general) is morally wrong only for those humans who have a lot of built in empathy. This does not apply to 100% of humanity. Such is God’s plan for our world.
True. Humans clearly observe that there is a range of increasing intelligence from inferior animals to humans but somehow they think this range of intelligence finish with them and they are the peak of intelligence. Why some people believe something like that ?
Wrong. It’s about free choice and knowingly broking moral law(called sin). When somebody broke moral law his conscience acuity do not remain in the same ( initial )state/position . Your choices to do /not to do a moral act change your moral acuity.
Barry Arrington: You are a liar.
It was an error on my part; I do not live in the US (anymore) and hadn’t realised that any state allowed abortions up to full term. I stand corrected.
It is sad that you feel compelled to spew lies in order to prop up your wretched belief that it should be lawful to kill babies in their mother’s womb.
You seem to harbour a lot of hate towards some of your fellow human beings; the same kind of hate you ascribe to me, someone who has no say about the laws in New Mexico or the US. You, on the other hand, have a lot of ‘skin in the game’ and I encourage you to use the existing laws and conventions to influence your fellow citizens to change that which you find deplorable. May I suggest you start by being less vicious and nasty in your style of communicating. I rather doubt that kind of approach works well in a court of law.
To hate is one thing but to kill innocent vulnerable defenseless babies is another thing.
People who are already born are in favor of killing those who have not yet been born and after that THEY are upset for the sane people reaction? Insanity alert.
Seversky claims, “Atheistic materialists recognize that the baby has inestimable value”,,,
How so exactly? Under Atheistic materialism the ’resale’ value of all the material constituents of your body is about one dollar?
Materially speaking, there simply is nothing within your material body that should inherently give it “inestimable value”.
In fact, Jesus said that that the inherent thing that gives a human person “inestimable value” is their eternal, immaterial, soul which was created by God, (and which gives their material body life, and which is capable living beyond the death of his material body.)
And again in the Old Testament we find that “the redemption of his soul is priceless”
Yet atheistic materialists resolutely deny the existence of the eternal, immaterial, soul which was created by God and which gives the material body life, and which is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. Which is to say that atheistic materialists hold that we are purely physical/material beings and that we die when our material body die, and that there is no transcendent and/or immaterial component to our being that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies.
The late William Provine made this resolute denial of the eternal soul by atheistic materialists explicitly clear,
Thank God atheistic materialists are now shown, by advances in empirical science no less, to be completely and utterly wrong in their materialistic beliefs.
Specifically, advances in quantum biology have now proven that we have a ‘eternal, immaterial,’ component to our being that is not reducible to materialistic explanations, and which is ‘potentially’ capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies.
Even more specifically, quantum information is now found to be ubiquitous within living organisms. As the following paper explains, “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are (quantum) critical conductors,” and adds, “the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
Darwinists simply have no earthly clue why quantum information should be found to be ubiquitous within life.
As the following follow up article stated, “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
Even DNA is now shown to be, basically, quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
As Dr Rieper notes at 24:00 minute mark of the following video, practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
The interesting thing about finding quantum information to be ubiquitous within living organisms is that quantum information, like quantum entanglement itself, requires a ‘non-local’, i.e. beyond space and time, cause in order to explain it. As the following article noted, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, and especially with the falsification of ‘hidden variables’, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement that is now found to be ubiquitous within biology.
Christians, on the other hand, readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to so as to explain ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement in life (and elsewhere). (And have been postulating just such a ‘non-local’ cause for thousands of years.)
Moreover, it is also important to realize that quantum information is conserved. As the following article states, “In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.”
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal, immaterial, soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Personally, I consider these recent findings from quantum biology to rival all other scientific discoveries over the past century. Surpassing even the discovery of a beginning of the universe, via Big Bang cosmology, in terms of scientific, theological, and even personal, significance.
To repeat what I stated at the beginning of this post, as Jesus once asked his disciples along with a crowd of followers, “Is anything worth more than your soul?”
JVL states to Mr. Arrington, “You seem to harbour a lot of hate towards some of your fellow human beings; the same kind of hate you ascribe to me,,, May I suggest you start by being less vicious and nasty in your style of communicating.”
Are you really appealing to the golden rule JVL?
You just got to love it when Darwinists, who have no moral basis whatsoever, shamelessly steal from Christian ethics in order to try to lecture Christians on how we ought to behave towards Darwinists and their murderous ‘death as creator’ ideology. (which has inflicted unimaginable horror on humanity)
Again, Darwin stated, ““Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”
And in unison Hitler, Mao, and Stalin all said amen.
Verse:
Barry Arrington @9
My cognitively dissonant brain is still waiting for an explanation as to how the OP is relevant to intelligent design…
^^^^
“There are none so blind as those who will not see”
P – world was designed
Q – abortion is against objective of designer
We have four possibilities
1) Believe in p, then highly likely believe in q
2) Believe in p, then highly unlikely believe in not q
3) Believe in p, then not sure about q – estimate a small percentage.
4) Believe in not p, then cannot believe in q
If one is in fourth situation then abortion is meaningless except for local social pressure or individual feelings on life. Not a logical conclusion but an emotional one.
So belief in ID and abortion is morally wrong are highly correlated logically.
This is a tentative framework that helps explain relevance.
Now to get to P which leads to accepting Q requires emphasis on demonstrating P. ID does a great job of that. So why the objection to the implications of ID or in other words the implications of P.
I personally believe that what this does is give reasons for some to say what precedes belief in ID is belief in religion and then say religion is what’s behind ID. This is the monotonous mantra of ChuckDarwin. As opposed to the demonstration of ID first is what leads to religion.
It’s a near absolute then that belief in ID is highly associated with religion. It has zero to say what specific religion.
Will this stop ChuckDarwin’s phony complaints? I doubt it since he seem impervious to logic as is nearly every anti-ID person.
Which is the most ironic finding of the so called believers in evidence and logic. They must abandon logic and evidence to get to their beliefs.
Chuck:
This was explained. Chuck continues to harp on it. Ironically, in the very comment in which Chuck mocks my comment about cognitive dissonance, he manifests that very thing by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the issues on the table. It would be amusing if it were not so tragic.
JVL at 15. It took me literally 30 seconds to find those two sources of information. You implicitly accused me of lying in the OP and when you are called on it, you retreat to “I couldn’t be bothered to do 30 seconds of research.”
You are morally culpable, and I pointed it out. It matters little that you are morally culpable in one way instead of another. Instead of apologizing, you attack the messenger and call him “hateful,” “vicious,” and “nasty.” JVL, getting called on morally abhorrent behavior is painful, and you seem to be smarting. Nevertheless, the correct response is not to stamp your feet like a petulant child and attack the person who called you out. The correct response is to apologize and pledge to do better.
Seversky
You ask that question as if the answer would make a difference. Are we supposed to say, “Oh, she had a traumatic experience, so let’s give her a pass for putting a baby in a garbage bag and throwing him in a dumpster”?
BTW Sev. Chuck dodged this question so I will ask you. Is it objectively evil to put a baby in a garbage bag and throw him in a dumpster or is it just your subjective preference not to do so? And if it is the latter, why should we care what your subjective preference is?
Bornagain77: You just got to love it when Darwinists, who have no moral basis whatsoever, shamelessly steal from Christian ethics . . .
From Wikipedia (as Barry says, it took me seconds to find this):
Barry Arrington: You implicitly accused me of lying in the OP and when you are called on it, you retreat to “I couldn’t be bothered to do 30 seconds of research.”
Not at all. It wasn’t clear from what you published (video aside) if the pregnancy was full term so I checked out a couple of news stories which seemed to imply it was. Then I made the mistake, for which I have owned up to, of assuming that no state in the US sanctioned full-term abortions. I have acknowledged my mistake. I still find it amazing that New Mexico does sanction such abortions. I would have a hard time endorsing such a policy.
You are morally culpable, and I pointed it out. It matters little that you are morally culpable in one way instead of another. Instead of apologizing, you attack the messenger and call him “hateful,” “vicious,” and “nasty.”
Because of the style you choose to use and the terms you choose to use.
JVL, getting called on morally abhorrent behavior is painful, and you seem to be smarting.
Nope, I’m good. I made a mistake and I admitted it as soon as it was pointed out to me.
Nevertheless, the correct response is not to stamp your feet like a petulant child and attack the person who called you out. The correct response is to apologize and pledge to do better.
I’m not the one who used the phrase “you feel compelled to spew lies in order to prop up your wretched belief that it should be lawful to kill babies in their mother’s womb.” which is disrespectful and uses quite divisive language.
I have apologised. I will try hard not to make assumptions in the future but as I am a fallible human being I invite you to point out my mistakes in the future.
JVL
Please point out where you did that. I must have missed it.
JVL, I am aware that other religions recognize the golden rule. (it is implicit in our God given moral intuition, so I expect it to be recognized by other religions, and I even expect it to be recognized by atheists such as yourself). I am also aware that your atheistic Darwinian worldview provides no basis whatsoever for any sort of objective morality.
You do understand that simple point do you not? (I mean really, you are constantly harping on how much smarter you are than we ID advocates)
i.e. In order for you to ‘moralize’ to Barry, you, as an atheist, are forced to ‘steal’ from some other religion, be it Christianity or whatever, since you cannot ‘moralize’ from within your own atheistic worldview of Darwinian evolution.
Barry Arrington: Please point out where you did that. I must have missed it.
I admitted I was incorrect and you were correct. Because I made the mistake without malice or in some attempt to cast aspersions on you I didn’t feel the need to grovel or beg forgiveness.
I don’t think making an honest mistake is something you need to apologise for. I didn’t do it intentionally. The fact that it was counter to what you said was not me trying to take you down a peg. I assumed that you too had made an error. But it was me that made the error and I have acknowledged that.
Bornagain77: I am also aware that your atheistic Darwinian worldview provides no basis whatsoever for any sort of objective morality.
Then you missed or intentionally skipped over part of the reference I provided, i.e. no belief in God is necessary. Something can be objective but not Bible based.
You do understand that simple point do you not?
I understand that it’s vital for you to push that point all the time.
i.e. In order for you to ‘moralize’ to Barry, you, as an atheist, are forced to ‘steal’ from some other religion, be it Christianity or whatever, since you cannot ‘moralize’ from your own atheistic Darwinian religion.
Only if you think that morals can only come from some undefined and undetected moral source. If you don’t think that way then there are other alternatives. What if everyone, even those with religious leanings, respect and understand the basic ‘do under others . . . ‘ rule? What if it’s just true?
You think you’ve won the moral argument because you think yours is the only possible solution. But it isn’t. Your religion is not even the only one that has proposed moral standards you ascribe to. Some of them long before Christ was born.
Maybe you should really try to understand other peoples’ point of view.
Barry Arrington @ 22
Mr. Arrington–how about this, you answer my question (because I asked first) then I will address your question about throwing babies into dumpsters? Somehow, though, my cognitively dissonant brain tells me that that is not your real agenda. What you really want to do is pick a fight about abortion, which I don’t do because (a) it really doesn’t interest me that much and (b) I come to this blog to debate evolution and ID, not intractable political and moral issues.
Run Chuck Run
JVL @ 26: “I have apologised.”
JVL @ “I don’t think making an honest mistake is something you need to apologise for.”
I understand JVL. Being a materialist means never having to say you are sorry. It also means affirming something and simultaneously denying it is A-OK. Move along.
JVL,
It would be amusing if it weren’t sad. Okay, let’s pick up a few points of note:
>>you missed or intentionally skipped over part of the reference I provided, i.e. no belief in God is necessary. Something can be objective but not Bible based.>>
– at least you concede the possibility of objective, knowable moral truth.
– However, the epistemology of warrant (especially involving branch on which we sit pervasive first principles and reductios on attempted denials etc) is not the ontology of sourcing, the wellsprings of the good, the true, the beautiful etc.
– BA77 commented “I am also aware that your atheistic Darwinian worldview provides no basis whatsoever for any sort of objective morality” and he provided a clip from Dawkins that is originally River out of Eden [as he cited, IIRC, p. 8], though there are many other sources on the point from major spokesmen for evolutionary materialistic scientism:
– in short, a materialistic, evolutionary ontology has always been amoral and an opening for nihilism. That was noted 2360 years ago by Plato in The Laws, Bk X, a text that was recently ill advisedly dismissed as irrelevant by one of our objectors.
– Further to which, BA77 had just noted:
– this of course is a reference to branch on which we sit, pervasive first duties that we can reasonably expect many people in various times and places to recognise as built in moral government expressed in intelligible principles. Based on the Roman Stoic and statesman Cicero, I have repeatedly highlighted seven first duties of reason:
– these, as BA77 noted, are generic, and it is almost amusing to see your retort:
>>Your religion is not even the only one that has proposed moral standards you ascribe to. Some of them long before Christ was born. Maybe you should really try to understand other peoples’ point of view.>>
– But, he did, at the outset of his remarks.
– As to just what the Christian Faith, in foundational theological writings, says on the subject, we note:
– Here, we see that conscience is a common gift and where sound testifies to built in moral government, which the Christian faith EXPECTS to find as a common property of the diverse people groups of our world, across space and time.
– So, it is not a point against that faith when what it expects is commonplace.
– There is, however, a second expectation, moral struggle and intellectual conflict within the person and among people. So we can see that with an error-prone and sometimes quarrelsome race, there will be diverse opinions and struggles, errors and entrenched evils.
– But in the midst of contentions, the first principles will stand out due to their self-evident, pervasive nature.
>>You think you’ve won the moral argument because you think yours is the only possible solution.>>
– The solution is that a core of moral government is self-evident, intelligible, warranted, objective, true, and that it will be subjected to contentions notwithstanding.
– Further to which, such moral government is rooted in our creation, is partly constitutive of our nature as conscience attests. Where, at our best we struggle to consistently acknowledge and live up to that core — which does not excuse abandoning the effort.
– This now points to the ontological issue.
– For, what sort of root of reality can account for creatures like that? Surely, post Hume and post Euthyphro we know that the IS-OUGHT GAP can only be bridged in the root of reality.
– Anywhere after that and ought becomes groundless, so, we have a bill of requisites that the root of reality must meet: adequate cause of a fine tuned cosmos with life forms exhibiting abundant further signs of design AND able to be the ground of moral government.
– That means:
– The candidate to beat is a familiar figure, the creator-God of ethical theism.
– All of this is utterly generic.
– What is peculiar to the Christian faith, then, is not ethical theism, it is redemption on a history involving fulfillment of prophecy of messiah, tied to the growing impact of the gospel which answers to our core moral struggle, the issue of radical sin.
– And, redemption on that sure word of fulfilled prophecy is unique and powerful; as millions of the redeemed and transformed — never mind dismissive cynicism and abundant bitter rhetoric — attest..
KF
PS: On objective moral truth:
Thanks KF at 34. Excellent reply to JVL. Better than I could have said it myself.
But to add just a bit more in refutation of JVL. It is not just that JVL’s Darwinian worldview is completely amoral, (shoot Adam Sedgewick scolded Charles Darwin himself about that in 1859, “There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly.”)
No, it is not just that JVL’s Darwinian worldview is completely amoral, (blind, pitiless, indifference), it is that JVL’s Darwinian worldview is ANTI-moral. Moreover, this ANTI-morality is built into the very foundation of Darwin’s theory as ‘one general law’.
Darwin himself put the one defining ‘general law’ of his theory like this, “let the strongest live and the weakest die.”
And here is Charles Darwin working the ‘one general law’ of his theory out in a little more detail,
As should be obvious to everyone who is not a complete psychopath, not only are “let the strongest live and the weakest die”, and “almost certainly exterminate”, amoral statements, (i.e. pitilessly indifferent), but those statements are, in fact, completely ANTI-moral statements.
Adolf Hitler himself, (whom I think even atheists will agree was a psychopath of the first order), directly echoed Charles Darwin’s words when he stated, “Nature,,, wipes out what is weak in order to give place to the strong.”
As should be needless to say, wiping out the weak to give place to the strong is directly opposed to the primary Christian ethic of the strong looking after the weak.
As Sir Arthur Keith noted shortly after WWII, “the (moral) law of Christ is incompatible with the (moral) law of evolution as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed.”
Hitler was hardly the only genocidal maniac who based his ‘ANTI-morality’ on Darwinian evolution. In fact all the leading Atheistic Tyrants of the communist regimes of the 20th century, (who murdered tens of millions of their own people),,, all those tyrants based their murderous political ideologies on Darwin’s theory and the ‘ANTI-morality’ inherent therein.
Thus although JVL may whistle in the dark and try to pretend as if it is no big deal that he cannot ground objective morality within his Darwinian worldview, the fact of the matter is that ‘ANTI-morality’ is built into the very foundation of his theory as ‘one general law’, and that “ANTI-morality’ that is built into the very foundation of his Darwinian theory as ‘one general law’ has had unimaginably horrid consequences for man.
I hardly consider it hyperbolic to state that the blood of over 200 million victims cry out to God for justice against Darwin’s murderous ideology.
Supplemental note:
You declare that certain beliefs are not necessary but your declaration is in itself a belief.
Your belief that “no belief in God is necessary” affirm and accept that unnecessary beliefs
do exist(and belief in God is one of them).
Now after you told us that unnecessary beliefs exist please make the case of your belief(=no belief in God is necessary) proving that is necessary and don’t belong in the same set of unnecessary beliefs (as belief in God).
PS: Funny how atheists think their beliefs are not beliefs but “scientific facts” :)))
Kairosfocus: However, the epistemology of warrant (especially involving branch on which we sit pervasive first principles and reductios on attempted denials etc) is not the ontology of sourcing, the wellsprings of the good, the true, the beautiful etc.
Perhaps . . . if I understand you, which is under contention. But, as usual, I think you miss that many, many people on this planet do not consider your ‘logic’ binding and compulsive. Many of us think it’s quite possible and plausible that there is not creator god. We may be wrong BUT, have you considered, that you might be wrong?
In the end, we all do agree on ‘the golden rule’, so why are we arguing about where it came from? I’m happy to set that issue aside and move on, operating under that basic and agreed upon principle. What say you?
JVL, what we can for good reason claim to know on a warrant and how that comes to be are materially different. I can know for good reason there is a red ball on a table without knowing how such balls come to be or to be on the table. As for finding logic compelling, but of course; people are trying to view logic through rhetorical spectacles. Fail. (See here on the disappearance of logic.) KF
PS, it is you who were raising the ontology. And, the roots of conscience and of morally governed creatures with such a seemingly strange characteristic are a supremely important consideration as to the nature of reality. Materialisms [and other monisms], of course, are non-viable starting out the gate.
PPS: On significance of moral truth and its knowability, I note Dallas Willard:
[Kindly cf here]
F/N: Collins Dictionary:
ontology (?n?t?l?d??)
n
1. (Philosophy) philosophy the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being
epistemology (??p?st??m?l?d??)
n
(Philosophy) the theory of knowledge, esp the critical study of its validity, methods, and scope
[C19: from Greek epist?m? knowledge]
KF
Kairosfocus/12
Yes, we are an error-prone species. As long as we can accept that, learn from our mistakes and try to do better subsequently, isn’t that the best we can do?
I have given my reasons for holding that moral prescriptions can be neither true nor false. How does positing an objective morality get around that? How do we know an objective morality does not itself embody errors? How do we know its source?
If you are proposing the Christian God as the author, need I remind you that, according to the Bible, it was He who felt it necessary to provide a New Covenant, thereby conceding that the original was in error, something of which the greatest of all beings should not be capable?
The risk of “the tyranny of the majority” has long been recognized as a flaw in the concept of a democracy. An obvious solution is the enactment of an agreed set of fundamental individual rights that are ring-fenced against the eddies and currents of transient political opinion such that they cannot easily be abridged or struck down by a simple majority. The Founding fathers recognized this when they embodied the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution.
The Holocaust in Nazi Germany, I would argue, is not an example of the tyranny of the majority. Once the Nazis had seized control of the German state, Hitler was the tyrant. The majority were neither consulted nor polled to discover whether they approved or disapproved of The Final Solution.
I believe I should and, fortunately, most Western states largely agree, at least in principle.
Barry Arrington/24
No, certainly not, on its face this was a shocking act but due diligence requires that we try to ascertain all the facts of this case before reaching a judgement, in case there are any extenuating circumstances we should take into consideration.
I don’t believe in objective evil. When an individual calls certain behaviors “evil” they’re giving their subjective opinion of those acts.
If it was just me that thought dumping a newborn in a dumpster was evil then it would count for very little as I’m just one amongst millions. However if, as I think most of us believe to be the case, the overwhelming majority regard dumping newborns in dumpsters as being evil, does it really matter whether the evil is objective or a matter of intersubjective agreement?
Sev,
I thought that also, but I’m currently reading “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust”, by Danial Jonah Goldhaven, which is making the case that pretty much everyone in Germany knew that genocide was going on. Clearly no large segment of the population fought it; most Germans were stridently anti-Semitic before Hitler came along. He documents things pretty well, and it may cause me to rethink my position on this question.
Sev
Suppose the overwhelming majority regarded dumping newborns in dumpsters as good. Would it then be good?
Sev, in a race that is error prone and quarrelsome, diversity of views or alleged consensus is not a good sign that there is not objective knowable warranted truth regarding duty to right conduct, virtue etc. Besides, truth does not reside in imperatives but in related propositions that may — or may fail to — accurately describe states of affairs, which are abstract. Truth is declarative. For example, see 35 above on the relativist thesis; which inter alia clarifies what a moral proposition is, what makes it a moral proposition and what it would require to be generally knowable and warranted, which implies credible truth on a responsible reliable basis . . . and yes that brings up branch on which we sit and the need for definitions of knowledge to include the weak (defeasible but on grounds evidently reliable) sense common in science, history, practical affairs etc. Likewise, note too at 40 for Dallas Willard on the nature of knowledge and the authority/responsibility it confers. (I intend to speak to that a bit further.) KF
PS, on theology and related study of the idea of God in phil, I suggest restraint on characterisations; formulations, to be sound, require a careful deeply informed exactitude that is balanced and nuanced, Even where phrasing may look simple, this must embrace how easily a seemingly small error or imprecision can lead to a massive divergence much as a watershed line acts in geography. Compare definition of continuum in Mathematics. For example, the issue of a root of reality that is inherently good, utterly wise, creator, necessary being and maximally great is a summary of huge concepts with extreme significance. The Old Covenant, for example, was not viewed as erroneous to be corrected but prophetic-developmental and as stages towards further fulfillment of a programme of redemptive transformation itself still in progress towards culmination.
EDTA, recall, the significance of a ruthless totalitarian state, including the fate of the White Rose martyrs as a capital example of the spiral of silencing. KF
PPS: Sev, I note discomfort on how this exchange developed:
The issue of rights is not an issue of a cluster of blind men unable to find objective, comprehensive truth so that project towards a body of knowledge must be abandoned with serious indictments as oppressive, arrogant etc.
The matter pivots on the civil peace of justice, due balance of rights, freedoms, duties. Where, as a rights claim carries a binding expectation of correlative freedoms on one’s part and equally correlative duties on the part of others, this is a profound issue on right conduct and how such delimits freedoms. For instance, no one may justly claim or imply or impose that the other sully and taint conscience by passive or active enabling in evils and wrongs. Something as seemingly simple as imposing lying through doublethink tactics counts. I note here, Orwell:
Orwell: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it,
Seversky: I’m busy will talk about later…
:)))
Over in L&FP 48a, regarding a new OP 48i:
Today’s addition
L&FP, 48i: Dallas Willard on the legitimate authority of knowledge (vs the radical narrative of oppression)
https://uncommondescent.com/education/lfp-48i-dallas-willard-on-the-legitimate-authority-of-knowledge-vs-the-radical-narrative-of-oppression/
LCD http://www.columbia.edu/~ey2172/orwell.html 1984’s Winston Smith speaks . . .
Darwinists hold that any conception of objective morality that we may have for life is merely a subjective, man-made, illusion. The reality of the situation, they tell us repeatedly, is that life is the result of blind physical forces which are pitilessly indifferent to morality.
In fact, as pointed out previously in this thread, Darwinists hold that not only is life the result of forces which are not only pitilessly indifferent to morality, but they, in reality, hold that life is the result of “red in tooth and claw”, ‘Death as the Creator”, forces which are diametrically opposed to morality, i.e. forces that are “ANTI-moral”.
The trouble for Darwinists holding and/or imagining that life is the solely the result of merciless “ANTI-moral”, i.e. “Death as the Creator”, forces is that life is not overtly ‘red in tooth and claw’ in its overall character. Which is to say that the reality of life does not match Darwinian expectations for life.
For instance, Darwin himself held that “every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers;”
Yet, directly contrary to Darwin’s ‘logic’ of natural selection, “Both plants and animals have built-in programs for avoiding overexploitation of their resources,,”
Moreover, instead of bacteria eating us, as would be expected under the ‘red in tooth and claw’ assumption of Darwinists,
,,, instead of bacteria eating us, as would be expected under the ‘red in tooth and claw’ assumption of Darwinists, we instead find micro-organisms helping each other, and us, in ways that have nothing to with their own ‘survival of the fittest’’ concerns.
For instance, the following researchers said that they were ‘banging our heads against the wall’ by the mutual cooperation that they had found amongst bacteria. They even went so far as to state, ,,, “Maybe Darwin’s presumption that the world may be dominated by competition is wrong.”
And as the following study found, “‘survival of the friendliest’ outweighs ‘survival of the fittest’ for groups of bacteria. Bacteria make space for one another and sacrifice properties if it benefits the bacterial community as a whole.”
Again, this ‘survival of the friendliest’ is, morally and scientifically speaking, directly contrary to Charles Darwin’s primary ‘one general law’ of his theory which holds “let the strongest live and the weakest die.”
If Darwin’s theory were a real, testable, science, instead of being, basically, a blind faith religion for atheists, this should count as yet another direct falsification of a core presupposition of Darwin’s theory.
Also of note:
Moreover, to dive a little bit deeper into the molecular level of life, the ‘scientific/empirical’ falsification of the Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ “ANTI-morality” occurs at the molecular level of life to.
Richard Dawkins’s ‘selfish gene’ concept is more of less directly based on Darwin’s own ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking about competition. Yet genes are now found to be anything but ‘selfish’ as Dawkins himself had imagined. Instead of being ‘selfish’, genes are now found to be exist in an extensive holistic web of mutual interdependence and cooperation (which is the very antithesis of Richard Dawkins’s entire ‘selfish gene’ concept).
Such extensive, even astonishing, ‘holistic cooperation’ between genes is, needless to say, the exact polar opposite of being ‘selfish’ as Richard Dawkins had erroneously envisioned genes to be. And again, should count as yet another powerful falsification of a core Darwinian presupposition.
Moreover, to go even further in falsifying the claim from Darwinists that life is the result of ‘ANTI-moral’ “Death as the Creator” forces, I will point out that for multicellular life to even exist in the first place, then multicellular life itself MUST be based on altruistic, self-sacrificial, morality.
Specifically, multicellular life would not exist if ‘apoptosis’ did not exist,,,, ‘apoptosis’ means programmed cell death, and is a necessary and essential part of embryological development for all multicellular organisms.
In short, multicellular life would not even exist in the first place if life was not, in fact, based upon the highest, altruistic, moral principles found within Christian Theism of self sacrifice.
Thus in conclusion, Darwinists may falsely imagine that any conception of objective morality that we may have for life is merely a subjective, man-made, illusion, but the reality of the situation is that if (altruistic) morality did not first exist in some objectively real and meaningful sense in the first place then multicellular life itself would not even be possible.
Given all these lines of empirical evidence falsifying the ‘red in tooth and claw’ presupposition of Darwinists, the real mystery is “why in blue blazes are Darwinists so dogmatically, even insanely, committed to falsely believing that we live in a “Death as the Creator” universe?”
In my honest opinion, the profound mysteries of quantum mechanics pale in comparison to that “Death as the Creator” preference that Darwinists have.
BA77 @ 53
Anthropomorphism on steroids. You’ve really jumped the shark on this one…
Well actually ChuckyD, contrary to your usual denial of evidence that is sitting right in front of you, (i.e. willful blindness), altruistic behavior has been recognized as being a severe problem for Darwin’s “ANTI-moral” theory for a very long time. Darwin himself admitted as much.
Barry Arrington/45
I’m sorry, I must have skimmed over this.
Presumably, it would be good in the minds of the majority who approved of it. It would not be a good thing from my perspective.