Peter M. Burfeind writes:
According to the various social theories—all claiming to be scientific—it is an ironclad law that to be human is to have all your thought and thinking inescapably determined by whatever structures you’re born in. A Cretan can’t stop being a Cretan any more than an apple can stop being pulled to the earth by gravity. At least that’s the pretense of the sociologist (who fantasizes he’s doing science, but that’s another story.) The only escape exists in something transcending the physical nature of the subject, something outside its earthy, physical nature. Thus, if you wished to escape your human-ness, you’d have to be supra- or trans-human.
This was the exact position of the Gnostics. A Gnostic believes our flesh imprisons us in various fleshly designations—our place in space and time; our sex; our family and culture; our race and country, the language we grow up with. An elite few, however, are able to escape the tyranny of flesh and its various institutions and systems. They are able to see things purely, free of the various constructs established by life in a physical world.This sets up, in effect, a radically binary world. Where the non-Gnostic (traditionalist) understanding of human thought invites a host of thinkers to discuss and strive for objective truth—yielding a form of federalism that when working best begets humility, tolerance, and curiosity as each deals with other seekers of the truth (i.e., what a university education used to be)—the Gnostic says all these posers are blinded by social forces they don’t perceive or understand. They’re all just on power quests, one blind thinker imprisoned by social forces leading another, all living the delusion they are pursuing the truth.
But he, the Gnostic, is not blind. Coupled with evolutionary thinking, the Gnostic is one who has “progressed” to the next age, who is on the right side of History, who is on the verge of trans-humanism, and who is charged with shepherding us benighted folk into the bright future. The program can’t be federal—a bunch of blind idiots leading other blind idiots in random circles. It must be universal, the enlightened leading the benighted out of systemic darkness into systemic light.
This is, needless to say, terrifying, because it dabbles in the idea that those not properly advanced in their thinking are of a lesser species, stifling the progress of the earth. And we’ve seen where that idea has led before. Sieg Heil!
If you want to know what permanent progressive rule will be like in North America, check this out.
At the time, I was so shocked by the violence of the encounter that I only realized eight days later that I was myself a witness to what I knew was true. That was why I couldn’t agree to say it was false on any account.
Progressivism, as described above, is about narrative, spin, and talking points, not about truth, fact, or evidence.
We will all face this soon. It will not be pretty.
Burfiend writes,
This is extremely, and inaccurately, black-and-white: there is no “ironclad law” that humans are “inescapably determined by whatever structures you’re born in”.
Yes, we absorb various aspects of our culture as children. However, as we grow up our experiences broaden, both actually and vicariously through reading, and we mature in our ability to step back, so to speak, from our surface and examine our beliefs.
I am a Western middle-class American, and as such there are ways of being that are so deeply embedded that I don’t see them, like water to a fish. However, I have also broadened my perspectives tremendously over the years, and am fairly unattached to many of the cultural prescriptions that I grew up with.
In fact one of the spiritual goals of many is to learn to be able to see yourself from behind yourself, so to speak, and to moderate your more culturally and psychologically-based reactions and beliefs.
For instance, I, like many of you, was born into a traditional Christian family, in a conservative mid-west town. Through reading and thinking I came to abandon all that, obviously disproving Burfiend’s thesis by counter-example. 🙂
JDK,
I suspect the issue is more or less:
KF
I’m sure many theists would agree with what I said above. This issue has nothing to do with theism/atheism.
jdk,
Of course the theory is wrong. You will get no argument from us. You are missing the point. The point is that many people believe this nonsense. Indeed, many materialists have preached it in these very pages. The point of the post is that believing this error can have serious consequences.
I doubt that very many social scientists would agree with Burfiend’s statement that I quoted.
jdk,
Care to share anything specific about what you read or thought that caused this abandonment? Genuinely wondering.
Andrew
Hi Andrew. That would be an interesting question to respond to in the proper venue, particularly if it was done more in the interest of genuinely wanting to understand someone who made that transition rather than arguing against all my conclusions and observations. (I’m not saying you would do that, but some here would.)
But that would be way too off-topic for this thread, I think.
I appreciate your interest: maybe the opportunity will arise sometime.
Additional comment to Barry at 5: I would be surprised that anyone has preached Burfield’s strong position in these very pages, also.
jdk @ 9. They have, so I guess you are surprised.
Ok. It isn’t important enough to me to try to find some, so I’ll just repeat that I think Burfiend’s statement is a gross mischaracterization of what mainstream sociology and psychology would say.
jdk @ 11. All you’ve given us so far is your personal incredulity. Perhaps others find your personal incredulity persuasive. I am unimpressed.
It is not worth my time to go into details, but I completely agree with jdk.
I also find the attacks on Gnostics to be from the point of ignorance: Christianity is the religion made up by the people who failed to understand any of the thoughtful or complex parts of Gnosticism. The stories were always ALLEGORIES. Failing to get the POINT of the Allegory, Christians took to believing that the STORIES were important enough to form the basis for a religion. And then they took to arguing about the details of the stories.
Actually I’m giving you the opinion of someone who has taught sociology and psychology, and has a degree in anthropology, and is somewhat familiar with the subjects, so I think I have more to offer than personal incredulity.
However, I’m not going to do the research for you. My challenge to you is to find a sociology or psychology textbook and see if you can find a statement anywhere close to as strong as Burfield makes.
If you don’t what to investigate, that’s fine: I’m not trying to convince you, and perhaps others will think there is something to what I have to say (or not.)
jdk, just imagine how much more powerful your comments would be if you weren’t hiding from physical evidence and rationale.
But you are.
How am I hiding from physical evidence when I say the statement that “According to the various social theories—all claiming to be scientific—it is an ironclad law that to be human is to have all your thought and thinking inescapably determined by whatever structures you’re born in” is a gross misstatement of mainstream sociology and psychology.
What evidence are you referring to?
jdk,
You must have forgotten. A few days ago you were here pressing the wedge as a rhetorical tool to discredit to ID. I then asked a question relevant to the general premise: can the evidence in support of ID be discredited in that way?
Instead of directly addressing that question — which would have only highlighted the irrelevance of the wedge to ID evidence — you followed up with…
UB, re JDK:
Which is the absolutely material issue, in the context of the grounding of science in inductive, empirically driven reasoning.
KF
So lets have a conversation.
This is in particular to our atheist friends who has been very vocal about gay rights and the people here at UD being bigots.
I am very interested in your thoughts on this;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....-love.html
I see, Upright. You were referring to a previous discussion about a different, unrelated, issue, not the particular point I’ve made on this thread.
jdk, you’ve come to UD to attack ID and the people who support it. You’ve promoted rhetoric that is entirely irrelevant to the subject of detecting an act of intelligence in biology, while simultaneously ignoring that same evidence.
Everything you say here is related to this fact. I’m not sure why you think you deserve a pass. The idea that you need merely say “I don’t want to talk about it” is nothing less than horse poo.
UB, I don’t come here to “attack ID”. I come here to discuss various issues of interest to me, and to interact with people who have varying ideas about those issue, for many of the same reasons wjm mentioned in his last post.
yawn
of course you do
you don’t think positioning ID as non-scientific is not an attack on ID? … and to do so as you continue to avoid the science?
Is disagreeing with someone the same as attacking them? Or are there distinctions, and if so what are they?
Oh good grief, jdk
Yes yes yes, lets now talk about whether or not a “disagreement” on a debate forum is the same as an “attack” on someone’s position. Let’s surely spend some time wandering through the vagaries and commonalities of English word use. Perhaps we should check the etymology and find some historical or cultural context to settle the issue? After that we can talk about steaming clams, coal byproducts, and sewing with natural plant fibers – ANYTHING — but address the evidence of design in biology.
You’ve been here for days talking about how you were raised a mere pup in a theist’s household, but that you’ve opened yourself up to the world of science and reason, and become intellectually emancipated from the small thinking of your pedigree. Yet, I’ve asked you to focus on just one unambiguous requirement for biology to exist, and you’ll do anything rather than submit yourself to even the slightest bit of scrutiny. One could be forgiven for thinking your entire shtick is nothing more than a carefully choreographed defense. Do you actually have any idea whatsoever the evidence for design in biology?
You exaggerate. One example: I made one small comment about growing up in a Christian environment, and you write, “You’ve been here for days talking about how you were raised a mere pup in a theist’s household.”
I think you’re a little over the top.
But I’ll let this whole thing rest at this point.
As I said, you hide from physical evidence while wrapping yourself in the flag of science and reason. It’s intellectually fraudulent. You avoid science and reason. It profits you to do so.
Since science and reason can both only be reasonably grounded within the Theistic worldview, I certainly would like to hear how reasoning led someone to embrace the atheistic worldview in which reasoning itself is an ‘illusion’.
Andre @20
What is the connection between homosexuality and incest?
Pindi, transgressivity, defiance of, contempt for and dismissal of sound moral standards and norms. (Note Plato’s warning, here, from 2350 years ago. Ponder also Rom 1 with Nero as transgressor in chief per relevant chapter of Lives of the Caesars.) KF
F/N: I should give a warning regarding delicate stomachs before reading Suetonius on Nero. KF
jdk:
Well, I was not born into a traditional Christian family in a conservative mid-west town, so I cannot really understand how you came to deny that you were born into a traditional Christian family in a conservative mid-west town.
How did your reading and thinking lead you to deny what you also admit as rather obvious facts?
ba-dum-tsss
Upright BiPed:
Yet jdk claims:
I suppose that the best way to live with uncertainty is to live a life that refuses to subject what one believes to any fact about the real world that might reveal that one believes things that are not true.
Cute, Mung, I guess, sort of. I abandoned (probably not the best word) Christianity and being conservative, as I’m sure you understood.
Mung says,
Nope. I’ve thought a great deal about all these issues and examined a lot of evidence: living with uncertainty is not the same as sticking your head in the sand or choosing to live in willful ignorance.
But I feel pretty certain that lots of people believe things that are not true – for instance, religious beliefs that claim to know something about the metaphysical world, whatever it might be, are all false, in my opinion.
I am willing to, and do, entertain some unprovable speculations as possibly true, but those range over a spectrum of possibilities, in my mind, from close to 0% to some bigger number, but nothing anywhere close to certainty.
So living with uncertainty is a necessary accommodation to knowing the difference between what we can really know and the things that we make up stories about but can’t really know.
JDK,
I don’t really care regarding conservative ideology.
We already know you are “not interested” in discussing the logic and science foundations of the design inference.
Let us ask how your worldview foundations fare vs a 101 for ethical theism, starting with self-evident first principles of right reason and other plumbline considerations. Which, inter alia, include Josiah Royce’s error exists. For to attempt denial implies inadvertent confirmation. Then, utterly certain and undeniably knowable truth exists. Therefore, any worldview that doubts utterly certainly knowable truth about the outside world fails decisively.
Then, how said foundations fare vs say, a 101 grounding basis for the Christian gospel, noting the force of Greenleaf regarding evidence. Where, the truth of the gospel can be warranted to moral certainty, never mind common selectively hyperskeptical dismissals.
KF
Pindi
Surely if the one is permissable on the premise that; when two consenting adults love each other so the other would be also? It would be hypocritical to accept the one but not the other? Is that not so? What possible difference does it make wether its incest or homosexuality the common denominator is love.
jdk @ 37 you state:
First off, there is no ‘I’ to do any thinking within atheistic naturalism.
In fact, in what ‘I’, a Theist, consider a shining example of poetic justice, in atheists denying the reality of God as a real person, atheists end up denying that they themselves really exist as a real person.
In other words, under atheistic naturalism, the lights are on but nobody is home!
Moreover, it is impossible for atheists to live as if their worldview were actually true, i.e. to live as if they did not really exist as real persons:
In the following article, Dawkins himself reluctantly admits that it would be ‘intolerable’ for him to live as if his atheistic worldview were actually true:
In what should be needless to say, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on fantasy.
Secondly jdk, in your sentence that ‘I’, (a real person), highlighted, ‘you’, (a real person I grant for the sake of argument), stated that ‘you’ have “examined a lot of evidence”.
As others have noted, you always make these vague allusions to ‘lots of evidence’ for atheism but that you never seem to bother getting into any specifics of that ‘lots of evidence’.
Personally, I have been through ‘lots of evidence’ myself and cannot find any real time empirical evidence whatsoever to substantiate atheistic naturalism or the claims therein.
Perhaps you would like to be the first on UD to present knock down experimental proof that your position is actually true? I’m not asking for much really. Just a single verified example of unguided material processes generating a code would suffice to knock ID out of the water and prove your atheistic position as reasonably feasible:
The main point being, jdk, is that these people on UD, UprightBiped, kf, WJM, etc.. etc.., asking for you to get specific on your ‘lots of evidence’ claim are people who have been around this debate for years and are not just whistling Dixie when they want you to get specific in your evidential claims. They are people who know the ins and outs of the evidence like the back of their hands. And who are more than capable of refuting each and any piece of imagined evidence that you, an imaginary person, think that you have to support your atheistic worldview.
@ your #22, Upright Biped re jdk’s #8, in response to asauber’s #7 ! :
‘The idea that you need merely say “I don’t want to talk about it” is nothing less than horse poo.’ Likewise, ‘ …. way too far off topic for this thread…”
JDK, we are not pedants, still less, or martinets, here. Truth is more important than following ‘tram lines’. Why don’t you enlighten us now, rather than wait for a ‘suitable’ thread.