At The Stream: Why IS racism wrong if Darwinism is true?

_{Denyse O'Leary

March 8, 2020

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Racism}

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Ask Darwinists — who believe that all life, and our life, and our intellects, are the waste product of random mutation and ruthless natural selection — a few simple questions. You’ll quickly encounter The Thing. It’s their answer to every question. So I wrote, in an essay (Brew a cup of coffee and read it!) aimed at college teachers. They should demand of their “Woke” students answers to each of the following:
What’s wrong with racism?
Why is inequality bad?
Why should those who enjoy the benefits of “privilege” ever surrender it?
If the results of injustice are more aesthetically pleasing to me than those of justice, why shouldn’t I choose injustice? Assuming that I can keep the whip hand, of course. Whatever answers they manage, teachers should “critique [each] response by referring strictly to Darwinian materialism. Any argument that can’t withstand that corrosive acid, toss in the trash.”
John Zmirak, “In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was with the Thing, and the Word Was the Thing” at The Stream

Here’s the essay Zmirak refers to.

Hmmm. It may be cruel to expect the young Woke to think carefully about such questions. They might be so much better adapted by their education to relieving their intellectual frustrations by smashing things.

See also: Historian Richard Weikart weighs in on Darwinian anti-Semitism in Poland. According to Weikart, unfortunately, it is not fake news. White nationalists use Darwinism and evolutionary psychology to promote their perspective.

Comments

TF, I agree with Wesley J. Smith’s thinking on the subject. As I write at National Review, “we don’t treat animals as mere things or as being akin to inanimate objects.” We created animal welfare laws, I write, “precisely because we understand that animals are sentient, have emotions, and can feel pain—meaning, as a matter of human exceptionalism, we have the duty to treat them humanely based on their capacities and levels of sentience.” Yes, we are animals in the biological sense—as are flies, clams, and jellyfish. But we are separate and distinct in a moral sense. It is crucial that we keep this clear moral distinction always in mind. Human exceptionalism imposes the solemn duty upon us to treat animals humanely. That’s why animal welfare is important. But animal rights—which is an ideology that suggests moral equality between us and them? Never. https://www.discovery.org/human/2020/02/24/elephants-are-awesome-but/john_a_designer_{March 12, 2020
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*Humanness*.Truthfreedom_{March 12, 2020
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@164 John_a_designer: I believe animal husbandry is a very important issue, central to our humanity. - Do you believe animals have certain 'rights'. Or not? And why?Truthfreedom_{March 12, 2020
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@156 Marfin
Ed (George) did not explain how men and women are equal because as a believer in evolution he must realise that evolution has made Men bigger, taller,faster, stronger, fitter, able to spread their genes around a population at hundreds of times the rate of women ,and more aggressive than Women ,so this does not seem all that equal to me.
According to Ed's doctrine, naturalism, we are all equally useless, defective lumps of DNA, the un-intended products of a mindless process, with the same shared 'purpose' of achieving... nothing. Truthfreedom_{March 12, 2020
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Academy Award winning actor Joaquin Phoenix apparently thinks we should all stop drinking milk. This is what he said during his acceptance speech a couple month ago.
I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full Well maybe he’s just saying we should feel guilty about it or maybe he is just being facetious. (After all, he won his award for playing the Joker.) Whatever it is, it demonstrates the complete and total idiocy of woke virtue signaling. However, it also underscores the irrationality of the typical moral subjectivist who believes I am morally obligated to believe what they believe just because they believe it. PS I am going to continue to drink milk. And I must be really jaded because I feel absolutely no guilt about my decision.john_a_designer_{March 12, 2020
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@146 Ed George
Nope. Any duties I have to truth, right reason, blah, blah, are conscious subjective decisions made based on conclusions derived from my ability to reason and predict likely outcomes of actions, not objective obligations.
Nope. C- again. 'Reason' is the result of neuronal processes, like flatulence is the result of digestive processes. From Love To Voting: Who Really Decides, You or Your Brain?
"Even when we think we’ve made a conscious decision, our brain has already made up its mind up to seven seconds before".
Yes, Ed George. You are a meat-robot tricked by evolution to achieve... nothing really. No-purpose, no goal, no directive. Nihil.Truthfreedom_{March 12, 2020
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Acartia Eddie:
Any duties I have to truth, right reason, …
You have abandoned truth and right reason a long time ago.ET_{March 12, 2020
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@160 John_a_designer:
As I have said before moral subjectivism is a rationally indefensible position.
Exactly. Naturalists do not get it.
Arguments with self-refuting premises don’t prove anything.
Exactly. Naturalists do not get it.
Fine. If you want to believe nonsense that’s your choice.
Naturalism to a tee. Self-refuting non-sense .
But your subjective beliefs are not morally binding on me.
Exactly. Naturalists do not get it.
It’s not only irrational but hypocritical for you to push the beliefs on anyone else because they are not morally binding on anyone else.
Exactly. And sad. Naturalists do not respect neurochemical diversity. They try to impose their brain chemistry upon others. They are, by definition, dictators.Truthfreedom_{March 12, 2020
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BA77, thanks for giving some of the details and specifics of class-ethnicity phenomena. Of course TIA discusses at length. Let's see if our interlocutors will recognise why I started by giving hints, summaries and links. KFkairosfocus_{March 12, 2020
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MS, I am quite aware of the legitimate part of the conclusion from JT's argument. As I laid out from my very first response, 123: "The number of people in the US who are nominally Christian is quite large and spans the range of social classes. The number of declared atheists is by comparison tiny and is typically [--> note the modifier] biased to the classes not likely to indulge in violent crime, or to be caught and convicted for white collar crimes." When you and JT tried to pile on, I then amplified:
If about 4/5 of a country across all classes are nominally Christian in identity — not, Christian by repentance, personal commitment and life-transforming discipleship [a far smaller number] . . . another issue with the posing of the matter already — then you will obviously find that that nominal identity will dominate in crime statistics. If on the other hand, you specify and measure by good proxies for serious Christian commitment, the proportion will be far, far lower. I have already noted that those who explicitly identify as atheists will tend to come from classes unlikely to be in the criminal system for the sort of crimes most in gaol are there for. White collar crimes are another matter. And, collectively, there is the issue of the ongoing holocaust, a natural law crime that under colour of law is actually protected by law enforcement agencies. Further to this, we note a desperation to distract attention from the implications of and historical lessons regarding evolutionary materialism. Remember, just in the past century atheistical regimes murdered over 100 millions and it is no accident that penetration of atheistical worldviews and cultural agendas in halls of power are directly connected to the dehumanisation of the unborn that set the stage for the ongoing, worst holocaust in history.
I took time to give parallel cases here in the Caribbean and with US WW2 cemetaries that will also reflect that dominance effect. However, in each case I also pointed out that "Christian" has two very different senses, one a nominal-cultural effect [which BTW will restrain trends that may otherwise go far worse . . . the salt and light effect], the other the committed disciple; who will be very unlikely to be involved in habitual criminality. Something, that will be well known to anyone who has a sound understanding of the Christian faith, gospel ethics and history sufficient to properly understand the parable of the wheat and the tares. For that matter, I can add that when Alcoholics Anonymous emerged, they were derided and dismissed using the fact of an incidence of backsliding. But now, their twelve step approach [a generic form of moral discipleship] has had such impact that there are now a great many 12-step, X-anonymous movements. The your'e all hypocrites cynical dismissal of serious reform movements is a very old and very fallacious reaction. As long as people are significantly free, any movement of reformation will face backsliding. And, it is obvious that social-cultural influence will spread far beyond the active core of any movement that has major impact on a community or culture. That you suggested that I imposed an ad hoc distinction to preserve a false generalisation therefore speaks volumes, and not in your favour. But, more interesting is the implicit intensity in the dismissive hostility. In one sense it is a good sign, kicking against pricks. In another sense, it is also a warning, as it shows unjustified resistance and hostility. Where, I note above, how something as inescapable as the moral government of our rationality under known first duties of reason is being dismissed even at the expense of arguments that -- inescapably -- appeal to the very same first duties they would dismiss. That sort of incoherence and kicking against the pricks is telling us something. Especially in a day when what is on the table is the enabling of the in-progress, all time worst ever holocaust. KFkairosfocus_{March 12, 2020
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At 120 JT states,
All of this fancy philosophizing overlooks the important thing about morality which is behavior. If you randomly grab an atheist in America and a Christian in America, and you had to bet on one of them having a criminal record, which one would you bet on?
And yet,
Atheists in U.S. prisons argument and atheist morality One of the arguments atheists use to address the issue of atheism and morality is the percentage of atheists in U.S. prisons.[2] See also: Irreligious prison population The atheist Heina Dadabhoy published at the atheist website Skepchick an article entitled Fellow Atheists: Quit Bragging About Our Prison Underrepresentation which declared concerning the United States prison population: “ Atheism is a movement comprised mostly of middle-to-upper-class white people. A middle-to-upper-class white person is far less likely to be incarcerated than a poor person and/or a person of color. The only way atheists as a whole might be less likely to be incarcerated than theists would be if we were a female-majority community. Atheism is hardly the cause of white middle-to-upper-class people’s underrepresentation in the prison population, injustice in the criminal justice system is... Intersectional issues aside, being arrested and convicted means being caught breaking the law. Would most of us atheists consider, say, possession of small amounts of marijuana to be a crime worthy of incarceration, let alone an immoral act? Yet prisons teem with non-violent drug offenders. As for being caught, I will return to the example of marijuana. How many of us class and race privileged* atheists would be imprisoned for drug possession had it not been for residence in low-density housing in areas rarely patrolled by the police? Living in a detached home reduces the likelihood of a neighbor or passer-by reporting drug use to the authorities but is hardly an indicator of superior moral character. Given that we’re a movement of people not exactly known for dealing so well, if at all, with issues of race or class.[3] In 2015, BloombergView reported concerning the United States: “ According to a much-discussed 2012 report from the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life, only 3 percent of U.S. atheists and agnostics are black, 6 percent are Hispanic, and 4 percent are Asian. Some 82 percent are white. (The relevant figures for the population at large at the time of the survey were 66 percent white, 11 percent black, 15 percent Hispanic, 5 percent Asian.) ...Craig Keener, in his huge review of claims of miracles in a wide variety of cultures, concludes that routine rejection of the possibility of the supernatural represents an impulse that is deeply Eurocentric.[4] See also: Western atheism and race The Pew Research Forum reported in 2013 concerning American atheists: "About four-in-ten atheists (43%) have a college degree, compared with 29% of the general public."[5] In 2012, the Pew Research Forum reported regarding American atheists: "And about 38% of atheists and agnostics have an annual family income of at least $75,000, compared with 29% of the general public."[6] See also: Atheism/Christianity and socioeconomic status diversity In order to scientifically determine the relationship between atheism as a causal factor for criminality/non-criminality one would have to do proper statistical analysis (for example, using the generalized linear model). Contents 1 Religion and crime reduction statistics 2 FiveThirtyEight on atheists in prison statistics 3 British irreligious prison population 4 Atheists in U.S. prisons argument to defend atheist morality ignores the vast amount of social science data and the historical data relating to religion and crime reduction 4.1 Dramatic effects of the Welsh Revival of 1904-1905 on criminality and ill-behavior 4.2 Korean Revival of 1906-1907 and crime reduction 5 Atheists in U.S. prisons argument to defend atheist morality ignores the historical data and the social science data relating to atheism and immorality 6 Atheism and theft crimes 7 Atheist Marquis de Sade, 120 Days of Sodom and prison 8 Atheistic China, political prisoners and forced labor in prisons 9 China and involuntary organ harvesting of prisoners 10 North Korean communist prisons and torture 11 Soviet Gulags, political prisoners and forced labor 12 Islamic countries and crime 13 See also 14 External links 15 References https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheists_in_U.S._prisons_argument_and_atheist_morality Irreligious prison population Concerning the irreligious prison population, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, according to the 2011 Census, the irreligious make up only "around a quarter of the population."[1] However, they are over-represented in the prison population, forming over 34% of all criminals.[2][3] Theodore Beale declared: "While the USA doesn't keep comprehensive statistics related to religion, the UK does..."[4] These statistics confirm recent scientific research, which has concluded that "the more involved people are with religious life, the less likely they are to fall into criminal behavior." (see: Religion and crime reduction).[5] https://www.conservapedia.com/Irreligious_prison_population Atheism and stealing https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_stealing Atheism statistics 28 Irreligion and criminality statistics 28.1 Irreligious prison population 28.2 Atheist prison statistics 28.2.1 Atheism and theft crime statistics 29 Atheism and repressive prisons statistics https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_statistics Atheist population and immorality Not possessing a religious basis for morality, which can provide a legitimate basis for objective morality, atheists are fundamentally incapable of having a coherent system of morality.[2] For example, atheists have been the biggest mass murderers in history (see: Atheism and mass murder). See also: Atheism and morality and Atheism and culture Atheism and various types of immorality: Atheism and human rights violations Atheism and sexual immorality articles Atheism and violence articles Atheism and theft crimes Atheism and deception articles Atheism and racism Atheism and unforgiveness articles Atheist mass shooters List of atheist shooters and serial killers Atheism and care of the environment Atheism and animal abuse https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheist_population_and_immorality
This 'statistical trick' of trying to claim that atheists commit less crimes than Christians, and are therefore supposedly more moral than Christians, (whatever being more 'moral' is suppose to mean in the atheist's amoral worldview), reminds me of the time that Sam Harris falsely tried to claim that atheists were more charitable than Christians,
Who really cares? The fallacy of charitable secularism - Dec 18, 2017 Excerpt: “Charitable”? “Giving”? Really? The most laughable part comes when Sam (Harris) begins arguing about “charitable giving.” He knows he cannot honestly claim that atheists give more to charitable causes than religious folk, so he uses the word “charitable,” but narrows the definition of the word almost into nothingness. He says, "Countries with high levels of atheism are also the most charitable both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world."2 Such a fact might shock the average casual reader until he sniffed out Sam’s fishy “terms.” Then we, together, have a good full belly-laugh. If by “devote” and “give” Sam means “devote through government confiscation, and give by forced taxation,” then he can hardly call it charity. Is this the charity of atheism? “Giving” when you may not want to, an amount you may not want to, and to be spent somehow you may not care for? What a blessed assurance! My, how charitable our atheist is with other people’s money. No, charity is voluntarily given. If it’s tax-generated, it ain’t charitable. Besides, boasting that less religious countries take more in government welfare reveals about as much as pointing out that Christians put more in church offering plates than atheists do. What? Really? Get outta here! If, however, Sam means “devote” and “give” in the true sense of “charity,” then his claim is so embarrassingly bogus that not even a third-world tax bureau would accept his tax returns. Unfortunately for Sam, he wrote this nonsense in his Letter to a Christian Nation just a few months before the actual science was done on charitable giving. November 2006 saw the release of the definitive in-depth study on the subject of charitable giving: Who Really Cares? by Syracuse professor Arthur Brooks. Results? Across the board, in every category, accounting for every variable, no matter how you slice the pie, the single biggest factor behind charitable giving is . . . religious faith.3 The amount of private charitable giving from American individuals alone (not including foundations, corporations, etc.) could easily finance the entire gross domestic product of Sam’s more “atheistic” nations, Sweden, Norway, or Denmark.4 The results must be alarming for all secularists. The working poor in America give more than the poor on welfare who have the same income. In fact, the working poor give a larger percentage of their income than the middle class. Two-thirds of American private donations go to other than religious activities (in other words, about 70% in places other than church offering plates). Yet, religious people are more likely to donate even to secular causes than non-religious people are. America gives as much to foreign aid as other nations do, the difference is that we do it mostly through private charity and not government aid. We give it freely—not through socialist government compulsion. No European nation comes close to us in freely-given charitable donations. https://americanvision.org/1820/who-really-cares-the-fallacy-of-charitable-secularism/
What is truly ironic in the deceptive way that JT, EG and MS have tried to claim that atheists are more moral than Christians, in their false claim that atheists commit fewer crimes than Christians, is that they are, by default, admitting that there are objective moral standards to judge by to see if one group of people are behaving more morally than another group of people. :) But that defeats the entire moral premise of Atheism. Namely that morality is subjective and illusory. They can't have it both ways, either morality is objectively real and one group of people can act in a way that is more morally acceptable than another, or else morality is subjective and illusory and there is no yardstick to measure whether one group of people is acting more morally responsible than the other. In short, the atheists on UD, in their false claim that atheists are more moral than Christians, have, once again, shot themselves squarely in their collective foot and issued a blatantly self-refuting argument. As Van Til pointed out years ago. Atheists need God to be real just to have the ability to argue against His reality in the first place.
Once while Van Til was a youth traveling on a train in Holland, he noticed a father with his young daughter sitting in his lap. Apparently, the father urged his daughter to do something when she suddenly slapped her father in the face. Van Til's application? The girl's behavior illustrates rebels who live in God's world and who are supported by God's common grace (Ps. 24:1). They sit, as it were, on the lap of God, and it is precisely because they sit on God's lap that they are able to deliver the slap of ingratitude. Thus unbelievers who toot their own independence and autonomy are only able to do so as they are supported by God Himself (Jn. 19:10 -11). Their denial of God is His affirmation. https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/van-tils-illustrations
As to MS's testimony of him turning against Christianity because he personally found God to be morally reprehensible. well here is a testimony of an atheist becoming a Christian because of the opposite: Nicole Cliffe: How God Messed Up My Happy Atheist Life The second starting point is usually what I lead with. I was surfing the Internet and came across John Ortberg’s CT obituary for philosopher Dallas Willard. John’s daughters are dear friends, and I have always had a wonderful relationship with their parents, who struck me as sweetly deluded in their evangelical faith, so I clicked on the article. Somebody once asked Dallas if he believed in total depravity. “I believe in sufficient depravity,” he responded immediately. What’s that? “I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, ‘I merited this.’ ” A few minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears. Later that day, I burst into tears again. And the next day. While brushing my teeth, while falling asleep, while in the shower, while feeding my kids, I would burst into tears.,,, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/june/nicole-cliffe-how-god-messed-up-my-happy-atheist-life.htmlbornagain77_{March 12, 2020
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KF @ 152 Wow! Way too much to answer tonight. I'll give it a look tomorrow. I'm also working on a more substantial posting on what morality is and why we want good morals. Meanwhile, please read message 120. You keep missing the last sentence. I've put the msg here. 120 Jim Thibodeau March 11, 2020 at 10:29 am All of this fancy philosophizing overlooks the important thing about morality which is behavior. If you randomly grab an atheist in America and a Christian in America, and you had to bet on one of them having a criminal record, which one would you bet on? All the castles-in-the-sky word games about grounding etc. would disappear and you’d bet on the Christian. Cuz that’s statistically the correct bet. Please note "you’d bet on the Christian. Cuz that’s statistically the correct bet."MatSpirit_{March 12, 2020
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Ed George , Ed did not explain how men and women are equal because as a believer in evolution he must realise that evolution has made Men bigger, taller,faster, stronger, fitter, able to spread their genes around a population at hundreds of times the rate of women ,and more aggressive than Women ,so this does not seem all that equal to me. Now I believe men and women are equal as we are both made in Gods image, Christ died for both our sins ,and both are of equal value in the eyes of God.Marfin_{March 12, 2020
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Matspirit- Seeing you dislike so much the God of the bible`s Morals , perhaps you could give us a definition of Moral and then explain how you know that definition is correct. And as for western Christianity started with Constantine blah ,blah , Christianity started with Christ , then the apostles, and has been sustained thru the Bible ever since , the fact that it has been hijacked by Luther, Calvin etc and people then follow these men`s teaching is not the problem of God or Christianity but of men. I am a Christian , there are about 40 of us we assemble every first day of the week and follow the teaching of Christ and the apostles, we have no head office , no organisational structure apart from us being an autonomous body of Christians self governing and basing all our teaching on the new testament only , which is exactly how Gods set it up , if you knew the scriptures you would Know this. So Matspirit please help me understand my religion better.Marfin_{March 12, 2020
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JAD:
As I have said before moral subjectivism is a rationally indefensible position. What the moral subjectivist is really trying to argue is that there are no moral truths about anything. However, it is self-refuting to say there is “no ‘moral truths’ about anything,” because in doing so you’re making a universal truth claim about truth which takes the legs out from under the very argument you are trying to make… https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/why-do-atheists-deny-objective-morality/#comment-648486 Arguments with self-refuting premises don’t prove anything.
Correct. But unfortunately if one makes a crooked yardstick into his standard for straightness and uprightness, then what is genuinely those things will be rejected. In some cases, including the natural case of a plumb line. And, there are those who try to reject the principle of non-contradiction. That is how bad things now are. KFkairosfocus_{March 12, 2020
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PS: Yes, there are ill educated Christians who may jump on theological hobby horses and who may well manifest the fallacy of the closed mind. In the case you cite as by rhetorical implication typical, he overlooked the clear warning in the NT that date setting is going to fail. As to the wider dismissal of "fundamentalism" a clue is, that AP warns in its style guide of a few years back to avoid the term.kairosfocus_{March 12, 2020
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MS, With all due respect, you are doubling down on error, regardless of whatever background you may have. Here is the key clip in 130:
Let’s see now … John says the AVERAGE Christian is much more likely to have a criminal record than the AVERAGE athiest and you accept that without argument. You try to excuse this because their are more Christians than athiests, but that does not compute because we’re talking about averages.
You here set up a strawman, which enables an argument that pivots on conflating two senses of being Christian. Nominal cultural identity vs committed, discipleship transformed life. In the former sense, we do have domination of a population which will then be overwhelmingly present in all classes and circumstances. As a parallel, look at WW2 era US servicemen graveyards, you will see a smattering of stars of David among a sea of crosses. In this context, while one may find declarative atheists in any class, they are concentrated in some sectors of the population and those classes are not going to dominate the classes that tend to find themselves in gaol. And BTW, said atheists will as a rule be influenced by the [now waning] influence of gospel ethics and linked natural law thought, which restrains the impacts of the inherent amorality of evolutionary materialistic scientism. But, as the ongoing holocaust of our living posterity in the womb shows, that restraining influence is waning. A grim warning on the other dominoes lined up to go down. In this light, it will be advisable to ponder the blood and tears bought lessons of history in Plato and the history of radically secularist and atheistical regimes over the past century. Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago would be an excellent place to begin. In that context, fairly common atheistical arguments on the superior moral conduct of atheists vs Christians become fallacious. Now, I pick up several other points that catch my eye: >> “No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.>> Notice, the fact of an alternative name? That's clue no 1. Clue no. 2, Flew was an Englishman. Second, the projection of an ad hoc, arbitrary purity criterion is too often fallacious, and that obtains in this context. Nominal cultural identity is worlds apart from the pattern of repentance, discipleship and transformation that is focal to committed Christian life. And, you should know this. >>Actually, Western Christianity started when Emperor Constantine moved his Capital to Constantinople in 324. Of course, he moved the Imperial Church and all it’s best and brightest, highest ranking members and leaders to Constantinople with him, leaving his “B Team” behind in tired, dirty old Rome.>> Your history, narrow and broad, is erroneous. In the narrow sense, Diocletian reorganised central government to have an E/W split, each with a senior and a junior Emperor. This was because of severe challenges and a trend of wars. In this context, Constantine ended up in civil war -- the bane of the Roman Empire and Republic. After his victory, he moved from W to E to lead defence of frontiers on the more threatened, more critical half. Byzantium, of course, is at a critical narrows between Europe proper and Anatolia, as say popped up again in 1915 with the Gallipoli campaign. At pivot was the need for a unifying religion. In 325, he called a council, i/l/o the challenge of Arianism and the obvious failure of older paganism and Mithraism etc, all of which had been tried. The Council, after months of debate trying to find a summary that was not ambiguous, issued the first form of the Nicene Creed. Fifty years later, after Constantine was baptised on his deathbed by an Arian bishop, after Julian the Apostate tried to reinvent Paganism, and after further conflict, an expanded form was issued in 381. I have personally showed that it is indeed a sound, scripturally based systematic summary of the core of NT Christian theology, clause by clause. [And, BTW, the Evil Bible argument is also deeply questionable, as well as yet another cat out of the bag moment.] What Constantine did not do is invent the Christian Synthesis of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, or its roots in the river valley civilisations of the Fertile Crescent. The foreshadowing of that synthesis was in the superscription above Jesus' head on the cross, both the declaration of his kingship [with messianic implications] and the language choice: Hebrew (or Aramaic), Greek, Latin. That was then backed up by the resurrection of said victim of judicial murder for political convenience [a familiar issue], with 500 witnesses. Then came the former arch persecutor who took the place of Stephen, first martyr: a diaspora Jew from Tarsus, a centre of Greek learning and a Roman Citizen (as opposed to subject). He led the sort of synthesis we can read in textual summary in his justly famous Epistle to the Romans. So, you are 300 years late. The clever pol in the mould of a Cyrus went with the coming wave, he did not create it. >>I should have said, “The Christianity we know today” instead of “today’s Christianity” because Orthodox Christianity and the various small Christian religions like Coptic Christianity have different roots.>> Orthodoxy, Rome and Protestantism have the same roots, reflected -- note the term -- in mutual acceptance of the same Nicene Creed, fruit of the first Council since the Jerusalem Council of 48/49 AD, 15 years before the storm broke. Those fifteen years of toleration BTW, were the period in which the key missions and synthesis happened. The split of 1054 and that of 1517 on, though regrettable reflections of the wheat and tares principle, do not change that commonality. Your turnabout attempt fails. KFkairosfocus_{March 12, 2020
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EG, you expect us to implicitly rely on said duties in order for your arguments to have any convincing power; such duties are then reflexive as well. That you deny and/or try to reduce known duties to subjective perceptions poses precisely the dilemmas identified by Plato 2360 years ago. Indeed, you have just told us not to take anything you say with any degree of trust or credit. KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2020
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I should have said, "The Christianity we know today" instead of "today's Christianity" because Orthodox Christianity and the various small Christian religions like Coptic Christianity have different roots.MatSpirit_{March 11, 2020
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KF: ... you project a fallacy that is by even its name offensive as an insult to ancestors whose heritage I bear, written into name and family history. Pull the other one! Here's Wikipedia: "No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. They give this as an example: Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge." Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." If that insults you, your skin is waaay too thin. Oh, by the way, Wiki says that Anthony Flew, ID's Favorite Philosopher, coined the term in 1971. KF: Western Civilisation as it is now usually styled, grows out of the Christian synthesis of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. Actually, Western Christianity started when Emperor Constantine moved his Capital to Constantinople in 324. Of course, he moved the Imperial Church and all it's best and brightest, highest ranking members and leaders to Constantinople with him, leaving his "B Team" behind in tired, dirty old Rome. And of course, today's Christianity is the direct descendant of that B Team. Explains a lot! KF: I again suggest a re-think on your part. Honestly, I think you should follow your own advice.MatSpirit_{March 11, 2020
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KF @ 143: I know you love to write, but you'll be doing yourself a favor by actually reading message 120 again, especially the last two sentences. But then, maybe you're right to avoid them because they make you look like a right pratt. I also resent your saying that I don't understand Christianity. I was raised Christian. My Dad was General Association of Regular Baptists and my Mom was Missouri Synod Lutheran. We alternated between those two churches for several years and then settled on the only other Protestant church in our small town, Congregational (now United Church of Christ). I absolutely believed in God and Christianity just like I believed that Australia existed. Mom said it was true, Dad said it was true, the Pastor said it was true, the teacher said it was true, my schoolmates said it was true - there was no reason known to me to ever doubt it. Then in my early teens, I started studying for my Confirmation and read the Bible for the first time. What a shock! I don't remember which passage first caught my eye, but it was describing one of God's mighty feats and I suddenly realized that if I ever did anything like that, they'd lock me up for the rest of my life! That was over 50 years ago and I still remember the shock of reading that passage like it was yesterday. The God in the sermons wasn't like that! Neither was the God my parents and schoolmates told me about! And the Bible was supposed to be completely true! That was when it first occurred to me that maybe (gasp!) God might not really exist. One thing I was sure of, I couldn't trust the sermons or my parents or friends because the God they told me existed wasn't remotely like the one I read about in the Bible. I stifled myself and got Confirmed and then more or less ignored religion until I logged into a BBS and found a message there from a guy who was overjoyed because he had just read a book, "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988" and he was looking forward to the destruction of the earth. Needless to say, it didn't happen, but that BBS and others like it gave me my first closeup look at a real born-again Christian and the very first thing I learned was that you couldn't argue with him. The guy was obviously reasonably intelligent, but absolutely nothing got through to him about that book. I often wonder how 1989 affected him and whether he got over the disappointment. But the reason I was on that BBS in the first place is because Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and millions of other fundamentalists (who were calling themselves Evangelicals by then) were weaponizing Christianity and trying their hardest to stuff their immoral and foolish religion down my throat and I didn't like it! I decided to follow 1 Peter 3:15 and have a ready defense to the Evangelical Horde and started studying Christianity. I'm always ready to help a Christian understand his religion better.MatSpirit_{March 11, 2020
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As I have said before moral subjectivism is a rationally indefensible position.
What the moral subjectivist is really trying to argue is that there are no moral truths about anything. However, it is self-refuting to say there is “no ‘moral truths’ about anything,” because in doing so you’re making a universal truth claim about truth which takes the legs out from under the very argument you are trying to make…
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/why-do-atheists-deny-objective-morality/#comment-648486 Arguments with self-refuting premises don’t prove anything. Indeed, what the subjectivist is really arguing is:
I don’t believe that there are any objective moral truths. Therefore, there are no objective moral truths for me or anyone else.
I wouldn’t have a problem if the subjectivist simply claimed, “there are no moral truths for me.” Fine. If you want to believe nonsense that’s your choice. But your subjective moral beliefs are not morally binding on me. It’s not only irrational but hypocritical for you to push the beliefs on anyone else because they are not morally binding on anyone else.john_a_designer_{March 11, 2020
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KF
Your arguments all rely on our known duties to truth, right reason, prudence [so, warrant], fairness and justice etc. I suggest you re-think. KF to truth, right reason, prudence [so, warrant], fairness and justice etc. I suggest you re-think. KF
Nope. Any duties I have to truth, right reason, blah, blah, are conscious and subjective decisions made based on conclusions derived from my ability to reason and predict likely outcomes of actions, not objective obligations.Ed George_{March 11, 2020
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PS: All of the above brings Plato back into focus, especially given the enabling of holocaust in progress:
Ath [in The Laws, Bk X 2,360 ya]. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [ --> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity] . . . . [Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-
[ --> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only for morality, ethics and law: accident of personal preference, the ebbs and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by "winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . " cf a video on Plato's parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]
These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,
[ --> Evolutionary materialism -- having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT -- leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for "OUGHT" is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in "spin") . . . ]
and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [ --> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ --> such amoral and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive, manipulate and crush -- as the consistent history of radical revolutions over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in legal subjection to them [--> nihilistic will to power not the spirit of justice and lawfulness].
kairosfocus_{March 11, 2020
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First horn of the dilemma: that which is right is commanded by Evolution because Evolution could not care less and *right* is a trick that helped your ancestors to achieve nothing because life is purposeless and now is a spandrel. Makes sense. Naturalism solves everything, best doctrine ever.Truthfreedom_{March 11, 2020
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MS, you profoundly misunderstand what it means to be a Christian. That's why you project a fallacy that is by even its name offensive as an insult to ancestors whose heritage I bear, written into name and family history. But then proud Edward still needs to be sent homeward tae think again. Western Civilisation as it is now usually styled, grows out of the Christian synthesis of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. As a result, it is of rather mixed wheat and tares character [and yes, I allude to a highly relevant parable]. The Christian influence partly restrains what is perhaps the all time most aggressive civilisation. As a result, many will have a nominal, culturally shaped Christian identity; but that is a very different thing from repentance, commitment and life transforming discipleship. Something, that any fair minded and responsibly informed person will readily acknowledge. And yes, we are seeing much expressed or implied in this thread on the roots of the palpable hostility that is surfacing. Too late, the cat's out of the bag. Back on point, once we recognise the difference between nominal identity and serious commitment leading to disciplines of discipleship, the point I made above is manifest: if 4/5 of a population is nominally Christian, we would expect that that would be sufficiently present that the dominance of population would show up in everything from schools to gaols. Just as -- and this comparison is now advisable as it just may help some to rethink the underlying hostility, prejudice and bigotry in the sort of commentary we see above -- here in the Afro-Caribbean triangle, sheer population dominance of people of noticeably African ancestry shows up in everything from schools to gaols to the Cabinet also. And yes, there are pockets of diverse ancestry that may dominate aspects, e.g. here, Sindi's [and some Tamils] dominate the grocery trade, for various reasons. I again suggest a re-think on your part. KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2020
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Sev, your attempt at the Euthyphro dilemma fails. Fails, because you fail to understand God, moral government and natural law. The God of ethical theism is the inherently good and utterly wise creator, a necessary and maximally great being; worthy of loyalty and of the reasonable, responsible service of doing the good that accords with our evident nature. That good is expressed in the built-in law of our morally governed nature, starting with first duties of responsible reason. Duties, to truth, to right reason, to prudence (so, warrant), to sound conscience, to fairness and justice, etc. Your assumption/ projection/ rhetorical suggestion that God in effect arbitrarily, capriciously demands what is irresponsible and irrational is a strawmannish caricature that should be corrected. And indeed, one of the Divine titles in Jn 1 is Logos, communicative reason himself. I suggest that a re-think is in order. KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2020
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EG, reason is a faculty of freedom, or it undermines itself. That wchich is of freedom is morally governed. Your arguments all rely on our known duties to truth, right reason, prudence [so, warrant], fairness and justice etc. I suggest you re-think. KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2020
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@60 Ed George
The Bible clearly states: Wives should obey their husbands in everything, just as the church people obey Christ.
The evolutive Bible clearly states:
Meat-robots (a.k.a. humans)*are forced* to obey the dictates of Evolution, just as *every other living creature on Earth is forced to obey the dictates of Evolution, because you know, there is nothing else you can do*.
The evolutive Bible is of course more inclusive, and well, you have to do what it says, because YOU CAN NOT ESCAPE THE CLUTCHES OF EVOLUTION.Truthfreedom_{March 11, 2020
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Oh my. It is *flatulence*, not *windiness*. My neurons just informed me. But wait, I am my neurons! Or not? What a conundrum!Truthfreedom_{March 11, 2020
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