Quote of the Day

_{Barry Arrington
April 19, 2009

Intelligent Design

2}_{Categories
Intelligent Design}

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Some [men] kill because their faiths explicitly command them to do so, some kill though their faiths explicitly forbid them to do so, and some kill because they have no faith and hence believe all things are permitted to them. Polytheists, monotheists, and atheists kill – indeed, this last class is especially prolifically homicidal, if the evidence of the twentieth century is to be consulted. Men kill for their gods, or for their God, or because there is no God and the destiny of humanity must be shaped by gigantic exertions of human will . . .

Men will always seek gods in whose name they may perform great deeds or commit unspeakable atrocities . . . Then again, men also kill on account of money, land, love, pride, hatred, envy or ambition.

Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.

David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions, 12-13

Can anyone possibly doubt that these claims are true. They are practically self-evident. Thus, the currency of the “religion is the cause of all violence” dogma currently fashionable among the new atheists is all but inexplicable on rational grounds.

Comments

Diffaxial, "Tens of thousands of years of incredibly diverse cultural evolution and innovation come to mind." I said "something else" other than evolution.Clive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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David Kellogg, so Gould wanted to have his evolutionary materialist cake and eat it too. What, pray, is your point? The fact remains that a materialist who says that there anything can be accounted for by non-material causes is talking out of both sides of his mouth, even if, as with Gould, he does so with great erudition.Barry Arrington_{April 20, 2009
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Clive @ 106:
I’m not interested in what Gould believed. I’m interested in what else comes into play that takes us out of the torrent on evolution and provides something else, something beyond, that we adhere to IN SPITE of evolution when determining anything.
Tens of thousands of years of incredibly diverse cultural evolution and innovation come to mind.Diffaxial_{April 20, 2009
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Allen MacNeill @ 70:
One slight correction: I think it would be more accurate to say that Harris and Klebold were both sociopaths, not psychopaths. The difference is important, as psychopaths are both irrational and insane, whereas sociopaths are usually neither. Andrea Yates was a psychopath, Harris and Klebold were sociopaths.
Unfortunately, that is not correct. The terms psychopath and sociopath are often used interchangeably, both denoting exceptionally narcissistic persons whole are profoundly incapable of empathy and are entirely devoid of a conscience and attendant capacity for guilt. The distinction between these two terms that I have encountered most frequently is the suggestion that sociopaths originate as a result of social factors (poverty, violence, gang membership, etc.) whereas psychopaths appear to display their profound deficits from childhood regardless of upbringing and experience. Andrea Yates was neither. Yates was psychotic, probably paranoid schizophrenic IIRC, a sometimes terribly disabling mental illness that is reflected both in "positive" symptoms such as hallucinations, delusional and often disorganized thinking, formal thought disorder, etc., as well as "negative" symptoms such as loss of motivation and direction, aimlessness and inactivity, restriction in the range and intensity of emotional expression, limited fluency and productivity of thought, and loss of goal directed behavior. Psychopaths are not psychotic. The classic "Cleckley psychopath" can be identified by use of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (a complex diagnostic instrument), which specifies several characteristics. These have been found to conform to two factors, by means of factor analysis: Factor one: - Glibness/superficial charm - Grandiose sense of self-worth - Pathological lying - Conning/manipulative - Lack of remorse or guilt - Shallow affect - Callous/lack of empathy - Failure to accept responsibility for actions Factor two: - Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom - Parasitic lifestyle - Poor behavioral controls - Early behavior problems - Lack of realistic, long-term goals - Impulsivity - Irresponsibility - Juvenile delinquency - History of revocation of conditional release PCL Items not included in factor scales: - Promiscuous sexual behavior - Many short term marital relationships - Criminal versatilityDiffaxial_{April 20, 2009
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With all due respect, Clive, you're not interested in that in the least. You've already decided that an evolutionary perspective rests on some fundamental incoherence or contradiction and and are "interested" in proclaiming that as you have already done several times in this thread.David Kellogg_{April 20, 2009
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David, I'm not interested in what Gould believed. I'm interested in what else comes into play that takes us out of the torrent on evolution and provides something else, something beyond, that we adhere to IN SPITE of evolution when determining anything.Clive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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Earlier Adel said,
hazel can speak for hazel, but my position is based on the Golden Rule. I want to be treated as if I have dignity, and it would be unreasonable for me to treat others differently.
I’ll agree to that as a good starting point. Later, there was this reply:
Yes, I understand that it is based on your wishes, but what if someone else’s wishes conflict with yours. Why should the wishes of those who prefer the golden rule be honored over the wishes of those who prefer “might makes right?”
I have the same problem with people whose justifications are religious: why should I prefer one religion over another when people on both sides (many sides) think they are right - that God is on their side - and who seem content to exercise their might on people on the other side. As Dylan famously said, “If God’s on our side, he’ll stop the next war,” and I haven’t seen that yet, so I’m pretty disinclined to believe that a God that represents my values exists. People’s religions conflict with other religions just as much as people’s wishes conflict with others, so I don’t think invoking a religious justification for one’s values adds anything. We all have to eventually choose what values and principles we want to live by. I don’t see that believing in God helps us escape that responsibility. And yes to what Diffaxial said.hazel_{April 20, 2009
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DanSLO, That's my point. Evolution becomes the judge and the thing on trial. What I am calling evolutionary standards, could also be called Instincts for the purpose of the following illustration: "Telling us to obey Instinct [any standard provided by evolution] is like telling us to obey 'people'. People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own cause and deciding it in its own favour would be rather simple-minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged; or, if he is, the decision is worthless.... The idea that, without appealing to any court higher than the instincts themselves, we can yet find grounds for preferring one instinct above its fellows dies very hard. We grasp at useless words: we call it the 'basic', or 'fundamental', or 'primal', or 'deepest' instinct. It is of no avail. Either these words conceal a value judgement passed upon the instinct and therefore not derivable from it, or else they merely record its felt intensity, the frequency of its operation and its wide distribution. If the former, the whole attempt to base value upon instinct has been abandoned: if the latter, these observations about the quantitative aspects of a psychological event lead to no practical conclusion." ~The Abolition of Man, C. S. LewisClive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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Clive, Gould believed that humans are really free to make their own destiny. That's central to his arguments against Wilson and against Dawkins. I can't give a one-sentence answer to summarize Gould's views on this, but nobody who thinks Gould reduces everything to evolution knows what he's talking about. Read in the Gould archive -- anything responding to evolutionary psychology, or Wilson, or Dawkins, or Pinker, or the Bell Curve -- and you'll understand that.David Kellogg_{April 20, 2009
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These discussions quickly break down because the discussants argue from within (at least) two very different frames of reference without accounting for that fact as they talk past one another. I am not in this post advocating either frame, but rather describing them and pointing to the disconnect that results. For example, when operating within the frame of reference of atheism, the choice is not between non-belief, and the resulting obligation to anchor ethics and morality in human judgement and conduct, and belief, with its attendant moral tether to a relationship with God. There is no such choice. The choice is seen as one between non-belief (and its consequences) and mistaken belief, and the necessary construal that what is taken by the believer to be a moral tether to God is both fictional and of human origins, its spiritual content notwithstanding. Because, within this framework, both moral systems are construed as of human origins - one explicitly so, the other equally human but cloaked in fictional origins - atheists prefer to reason about moral questions themselves, rather than accept moral reasoning originated by people who were remote both culturally and historically, at least not without examination and reformulation. Similarly, for those operating within the framework of belief, the choice is not between life in a universe created and given its moral center by God, on one hand, and life in a universe in which there is no God and no such moral center. There is no such choice. Rather, life is conducted under God's eye and in relationship to that moral center regardless. Some have a relationship with God and the moral center God creates; others ignore God and his morality, and invent ethical systems of their own. God and his moral center obtain regardless. Moreover, the only moral system that counts is that which emanates from God; what the atheists claim as morality isn't morality at all, but rather human foolishness. Conversation across these frames of reference is quite problematic, not the least because atheists construe believers very differently than believers construe themselves, while believers construe atheists very differently than atheists construe themselves. Further, arguments for the adoption of either frame of reference, advanced from within one or other of these frameworks, and based upon preferences for consequences of one system or another as interpreted from within one or other framework, often become exercises in futility. So the wheels come off.Diffaxial_{April 20, 2009
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Clive, I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean by that. Why are we prevented from using something that wasn't supplied by evolution to want to transcend our own brutal nature? And even that is to assume that this desire was not supplied by evolution. What if the opposite is true? What if it is our own evolved capabilities for empathy and compassion that is driving our desire to create a better world?DanSLO_{April 20, 2009
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David, "Gould certainly did not say that evolution accounts for everything in human behavior" Then what does?Clive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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DanSLO, In other words, there is no judge that is not also on trial if we use evolution as both.Clive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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Gould certainly did not say that evolution accounts for everything in human behavior, and of course human behavior is what we're talking about here. See his "The Politics of Biological Determinism":
I regard the critique of biological determinism as both timeless and timely. It is timeless because the errors of biological determinism are so deep and insidious and appeal to the worst manifestations of our common nature. It is timely because the same bad arguments recur every few years with a predictable and depressing regularity.
Over and over in his writings he argued that culture and consciousness cannot be reduced to evolutionary adaptations, and that the attempt to do so is both futile and wrong.David Kellogg_{April 20, 2009
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Allen--According to your logic, the Judeo-Christian-Muslim-Mormon cultures should have a significantly lower rate of murder and all other violent crimes per capita than, say, Japan. True? No. Japanese culture is based on religious traditions prohibiting murder. Remember, the claim being made is that religion leads to violence and murder. If we repeal the 6th Commandment will we be safer? Or if you want to make it universal, if we establish that there is no divine command not to murder, will we be safer, better off, more enlightened etc. as some seem to insist?tribune7_{April 20, 2009
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DanSLO, This is how it's incoherent: The difficulty runs deeper than I think most people grasp. It runs all the way down, even in to what constitutes brutality and non-brutality. We can’t take it for granted–as if our grantings are outside of evolution–and use anything that wasn’t also supplied by evolution even in order to claim that we should rise above any other evolutionary standard.Clive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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Your point about sitting on a tree branch and floating above it is rather interesting. It reminds me of one of the central premises of a book that I am in the middle of - GEB. We humans do seem to have the unique ability to "step out" of what we are doing and analyze our own place in the universe. Rather than being contradictory, it seems to be one of the defining features of being human.DanSLO_{April 20, 2009
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How is that incoherent? Even if it were true that Dawkins and Gould say that evolution accounts for everything in biology, why does that preclude us from wanting to rise above that and build a better society?DanSLO_{April 20, 2009
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DanSLO writes: “A society based on natural selection would be a terrible one indeed, and you’ll find that prominent evolutionary biologists (Dawkins, Gould) all say the same thing.” But of course Dawkins and Gould also say that evolution accounts for everything in biology. It is as if Dawkins and Gould think they can simultaneously sit on a tree branch and float in the air above the tree branch to examine it. I don’t know what is more amusing. Dawkins and Gould trying to have it both ways; or their followers quoting Dawkins and Gould trying to have it both ways without, apparently, seeing the self-referential incoherence of their masters’ arguments.Barry Arrington_{April 20, 2009
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DanSLO, The difficulty runs deeper than I think most people grasp. It runs all the way down, even in to what constitutes brutality and non-brutality. We can't take it for granted--as if our grantings are outside of evolution--and use anything that wasn't also supplied by evolution even in order to claim that we should rise above any other evolutionary standard.Clive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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Clive, I don't quite know how to respond to the first part of your post - I think we are talking about two different things. Maybe you can clarify what you mean by "explicable". However, as to the point you raised at the end, evolution does NOT help us find real values. A society based on natural selection would be a terrible one indeed, and you'll find that prominent evolutionary biologists (Dawkins, Gould) all say the same thing. We as humans are under no obligation to construct our moral values based on what we see in nature. Just because nature is brutal doesn't mean we should not strive to rise above that.DanSLO_{April 20, 2009
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---Allen: "Do you acknowledge that neither atheism nor “Darwinism” should be singled out for exactly the same kind of special opprobrium?" . . I think atheists should be singled out for the simple reason that they devalue life when circumstances create inconveniences and challenging circumstances. Very few people are whacked out enough to actually "want" to take someone else's life. On the other hand, when the heat is on, that is when the real philosophy of life comes out. That's when we say, "I'm personally opposed, but......... we must kill for the "greater good." How many atheists do you know who will defend the life of an unborn baby?StephenB_{April 20, 2009
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Why can't you atheists come to grips with the fact that you're responsible for so much murder and eugenics? If you deny that atheism is responsible, how am I supposed to think that you're aware that atheism tends toward genocide, and that you've taken precautions to ensure that you don't slide down the same slippery slope? The reason atheists refuse to take stock is because they are moral degenerates. Even the ones who aren't directly responsible for genocide just don't give enough of a damn to care if it happens again in the future.AmerikanInKananaskis_{April 20, 2009
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DanSLO, "Yes, in a way you are wrong. It is a common trap that many people fall into thinking that anything can be explained by Darwinian natural selection as long as you can rationalize that it provides some kind of benefit or advantage. Steven Jay Gould wrote about this problem quite a bit in many of his essays. If you haven’t read any Gould, I definitely recommend it." I'm not "rationalizing any advantage or benefit" in my statement. Advantage and benefit are the product of evolution, but so is disadvantage and non-benefit. Everything is the product of evolution, those that live, and those that die, what we think, what we don't think, what we believe, what we don't believe, how we act, how we don't act, etc. There is, apparently, no escape into any realm that isn't wholly explicable by evolution, right? This includes believe in God and atheism, BOTH the product of evolution. Evolution becomes the standard for what standards are. It cannot be otherwise, UNLESS, we admit, that there is some province or domain within the whole of biological existence that isn't ruled by evolution. Until we do admit this, evolution takes the brunt of everything, even though it made the standard of what constitutes taking the brunt of any judgment. I wonder, is there any other standard above and beyond evolution that evolution approximates to in what it considers its standards? The old Euthyprho Dilemma, normally advanced against God, now becomes "Does evolution make what is good? Or does evolution adhere to a standard above and beyond itself? It seems obvious that since evolution has dethroned God (sarcasm intended) then all of the old problems that were reserved for God are now applied to evolution. So how does evolution help us to find "real" values, that we can reference objectively, and use as our standard when condemning other aspects of evolutionary behavior? Hmmm?Clive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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----Adel Dibagno: "hazel can speak for hazel, but my position is based on the Golden Rule. I want to be treated as if I have dignity, and it would be unreasonable for me to treat others differently." Yes, I understand that it is based on your wishes, but what if someone else's wishes conflict with yours. Why should the wishes of those who prefer the golden rule be honored over the wishes of those who prefer "might makes right?"StephenB_{April 20, 2009
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Allan MacNeill writes: “Do you acknowledge that neither atheism nor “Darwinism” should be singled out for exactly the same kind of special opprobrium? . . .The reason I ask is that you and Denyse O’Leary have posted multiple times on precisely this point: that both “Darwinism” and (especially) the atheism that you assert naturally follows from it are directly responsible for most of the human depravity of the 20th century (to the self-righteous applause of most of the regular commentators here). Do you now deny this, and if so, why?” Sigh. First, I will address the strawman set up and knocked over with such élan. I never said that atheism was responsible for most of the human depravity of the 20th century. I merely pointed out that tens of millions of bodies can be laid at the feet of atheists. Why do I point this out? Because tendentious anti-religious partisans like Dawkins, Dennet and Hitchens seem to believe that a world purged of religious influence would be a model of reason, peace, love, justice, beauty and light. I merely point out that the evidence – in the form of bodies stacked like cordwood – is to the contrary. The two largest experiments in militant atheism in the history of the world – Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China – were drenched in blood. Pointing out this obvious fact is not the same thing as saying that most of the evil of the 20th century can be laid at the feet of atheists. I don’t know why you think it is.Barry Arrington_{April 20, 2009
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In [56] Allan MacNeill acknowledges there is no reason to single out religious belief for special opprobrium. It is good to know that Allan disagrees with Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. Good for him.Barry Arrington_{April 20, 2009
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Clive, Yes, in a way you are wrong. It is a common trap that many people fall into thinking that anything can be explained by Darwinian natural selection as long as you can rationalize that it provides some kind of benefit or advantage. Steven Jay Gould wrote about this problem quite a bit in many of his essays. If you haven't read any Gould, I definitely recommend it.DanSLO_{April 20, 2009
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StephenB:
As an atheist, you may well believe in inherent dignity, but you have yet to provide any rational justification for it. For all I know, you may actually have one that makes sense, and, if that is the case, I look forward to your explanation. It is all clear now?
hazel can speak for hazel, but my position is based on the Golden Rule. I want to be treated as if I have dignity, and it would be unreasonable for me to treat others differently.Adel DiBagno_{April 20, 2009
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Allen McNeill, "The reason I ask is that you and Denyse O’Leary have posted multiple times on precisely this point: that both “Darwinism” and (especially) the atheism that you assert naturally follows from it are directly responsible for most of the human depravity of the 20th century..." But isn't it responsible? Isn't Darwinism responsible for everything? Aren't we all just the product of our evolution? Even if we admit that religious motivations are responsible for the atrocities, aren't religious motivations a result of evolution? I thought that evolution accounted for everything, am I wrong? Is there a place where we can go where evolution is not the answer, and that part of us is not explainable by it, but rather by something else separate and apart from it?Clive Hayden_{April 20, 2009
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