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Welcome to the Brave New World of “Science”

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by Emily Morales

January 1, 2020

It’s a pretty scary thing when the world of respected science is turned on its head due to adherence and homage to the Idols of the Marketplace, as elucidated by 17th century statesman, Francis Bacon.

Francis Bacon, credited as the “father” of the scientific method, spoke in detail in The Great Instauration concerning four types of idols occupying the minds of humans, which serve to get in the way of ascertaining and advancing knowledge of the natural world: 1) Idols of the Tribe, 2) Idols of the Cave, 3) Idols of the Marketplace, and, 4) Idols of the Theater.

The Idols of the Marketplace were characterized as being the most menacing, as these creep into the minds of humans by way of terms and definitions for things that are not necessarily tangible or concrete, within the human “marketplace.” We might today find that these grab hold by way of the marketplace of the media. Consider that when the notion of transgenderism first appeared, how many people truly believed that a person could change their gender by the pronouncement of a new pronoun? Probably not many, initially, but today, since this Idol has made its way in the nooks and crannies of every shop and coffee house of the human cyber-marketplace, folks may feel the pressure to sacrifice real science in homage to this newfound idol (after all, it comes with it’s own lovely rainbow flag).

For more on Bacon’s discussion, consider the below article:
https://salvomag.com/post/bacons-enchanted-glass

We might even see where Darwinism has enjoyed similar adherence from the materialistic faithful, as a cursed idol of Bacon’s marketplace. Darwin, in his day was excoriated by Adam Sedgewick (his mentor of the past) for abandoning the tram-road of inductive thinking (Baconian methodology) in favor of embracing the methodologies associated with deductive reasoning carried out by the likes of Aristotle.

https://salvomag.com/post/darwin-may-have-gotten-it-wrong

Sedgewick was not alone in his criticism of Darwin. Louis Agassiz, at Harvard similarly rebuked Darwin for a thesis having no support in the known fossil record (refer to Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt). Note that neither of these men pushed back against Darwin because they were creationists – it was rather that Darwin drew some conclusions on the diversity of life and origin of species that were presumptuous to say the least. As it turns out, Bacon addressed the dangers of this manner of “logic” and “reasoning,” at length, warning us of its ability to stifle scientific inquiry two hundred and thirty years before Darwin’s published work.

Bacon today, would not be impressed with where the brave new world of science is heading. Rather than holding on to those facts that are the fruit of repeated experimentation or steadied observation, society is clinging to fallacies that are oftentimes the fruit of a past college professor’s wild imagination. We best take head of these wild imaginations, no matter how absurd they are – because they eventually show up in your child’s Kindergarten curriculum, and taught as fact!

Reference/ Notes:

Bacon, F. (2016). New Atlantis and the Great Instauration. John Wiley & Sons.

Meyer, S. C. (2014). Darwin’s doubt: Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. New York.

Comments
When I was growing up my parents got to know a doctor who worked with the poor in Bangladesh-- a so-called medical missionary. One incident that occurred during this man’s life has always stood out to me. It happened in the late 1960’s, when I was in high school. The clinic this doctor was working out of for some reason just got overwhelmed with Bengali’s seeking medical treatment (some had very serious conditions.) He and his staff had no choice but to turn people away knowing that many of them would die. It was during this period that Dr. K. had a massive heart attack. His friends said the circumstances literally broke his heart. However, miraculously, he didn’t die. His staff was somehow able to save his life. They then had him flown to Europe where he underwent surgery and then began rehabilitation. I remember having a discussion with some of the adults at our church after a special prayer meeting we had for Dr. K. One of the questions I heard them asking was, what was he going to do next? It seemed obvious to all of us that he couldn’t go back to his work. But after he recovered that’s what he did. That’s what he had to do. That was his calling. Three points: First, a lot of atheists use the so called argument from evil to argue against the existence of God, but they then turn a blind eye to the suffering around them. This man believed in God and that is what motivated him to do something about the suffering in the world. Who’s the hypocrite? It appears to me that atheist uses the so-called argument from evil as an excuse to do nothing about what they term “evil.” Second, if more people like Dr. K. existed we would be able to mitigate a lot more of the suffering that exists in the world. But if mitigating suffering is not really (objectively) good then why would anyone be obligated to do anything about it? And finally, if there is no such thing a moral truth* (objective moral values and obligations) as many atheists argue then Dr. K. was no more moral than Hugh Hefner who at the time was advancing the hedonistic playboy philosophy. According to atheistic materialism there is absolutely no moral difference between Hugh Hefner and Dr. K. They just made different freewill moral choices (ironically, using free will that the materialists say is just an illusion.) In fact from that perspective Dr. K. was a fool. He should have set up his medical practice here in the U.S. where he could have made a lot more money. (*Of course, if there are no objective values and obligations then there is no real evil-- thus there is no problem of evil. Maybe that’s what our atheist interlocutors are really arguing.)john_a_designer
January 6, 2020
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Seversky @ 120
At the time, all they could do was pray over loved ones dying horribly in front of them. Prayers that went unanswered. I seriously doubt if they thought life was an adventure and they found no sign of God.
We are still learning how to cure cancer, for example. People suffer and die. A true "adventure" is not sitting on a beach chair in the sunshine, drinking margaritas. The adventure of life is filled with difficulties to overcome. It is painful, challenging, confusing. God calls upon us to work on these issues, and every generation has problems to solve. But the Christian faith did not die under the circumstances of the plague. In fact, it increased and continued to grow in Europe. People did, in fact, find signs of God even in a disaster like that. The plague showed the courage and integrity of many good people who cared, not only for their own loved ones, but others in the community. Charles Borromeo (15th c), for example, "organized makeshift hospitals, used his own vast fortune to provide food for the hungry, and personally attended the poor and sick. He never contracted the plague and credited his generally healthy nature to a regular regimen of fasting and prayer." The 14th century was marked with that kind of suffering, as you say. But people did find God within it. The Christian faith continued to grow in Europe. I did a little research on some of the great people, and came across St. Gertrude the Great, a woman of the 14th century who wrote some important works of theology which are still in print today -- coincidentally, because today January 6 is her feast day. She lived during the plague. As did St. Catherine of Siena - stigmatist, theologian, social reformer. There were Christian geniuses that influenced all of Western civilization: Duns Scotus, Ramon Llull, Dante Alegheri, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler. They contributed to faith and science, and they taught people in the midst of plague. You can point to suffering in human life in every era. You have to look at the sufferings of Christ, for what He intended. Redemptive suffering. Pain that one person offers for another, takes away evil and sin. That's the way it works. We live on earth only a short number of years, no matter how long. It's temporary.
I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask your God and then tell us what He has to say.
I could tell you a lot about what God has to say. But you have access to Him yourself also. Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find.
We put things to the test because we don’t know what the outcome will be.
I can test my students and know for certain what the outcome will be. The test is not for me, in that case, but for them. They have a chance to show what they've done. For God it's the same. We have a chance to show our integrity, our devotion, our commitment to the Truth. At the end, when we face the Judgement, we will see our life and how we faced the test. It's not for the sake of God's knowledge, but so that we would have to chance to offer something good. The testing of this life, is our chance to show our best, in the face of obstacles and difficulties. From this we can deserve a reward. Otherwise, we would not be able to gain or merit anything.
No, atheism cannot offer you what your religion does. It does not make such a claim. But the fact that your faith makes you feel better does not make it true.
My religion offers the possibility of finding the Truth. It's not a question of feeling better. Atheism cannot offer access to the Truth about life. It cuts off all potential for that. It shuts off inquiry and does not even follow-up on evidence we already have for God. So, it's a closed worldview. Religion offers much more. Seek first the kingdom of God. We can look for God and find Him.
No, I don’t take pride in it but it may be necessary to face up to the possibility that there is no God, at least in the way you envisage. It may do no good at all but, if it’s the case, isn’t it better to accept it?
If there was some rational argument that could indicate that there is no God then perhaps we could accept that possibility. But there is no such argument.
Materialism gives us an objective reality against which we can measure the stories we create to try and explain it. To that extent we can evaluate what is more likely to be true or false and maybe that’s the best we can hope for.
Materialism does not provide any objective reality that we can access. Matter alone, in that view, is the cause of everything. That is illogical in the first place, but even granting that idea -- matter is blind and mindless. It has no meaning. So, if we are created by matter, then we are as mindless as our creator. There can be no truth or falsehood. Our thoughts are directed by something that has no mind. Our thoughts are illusions created by mindless, purposeless molecules. So, there cannot be anything objective here. Materialism cannot evaluate itself. It has no power to evaluate anything. Dawkins explained it well:
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Notice that he says that there is "no evil and no good". That is correct. There is nothing to measure, no objective standard. There is no truth or falsehood. It is blind, mindless, indifference. Matter just "is". There is nothing true or good, nothing false or evil. Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen … don't care about such things. They do not know anything. Whatever we think is in our mind, is really nothing. Molecules created us, and they know or care nothing about anything at all. But this leaves final causality unexplained. No world of physical things can even exist in principle unless there is a divine, uncaused cause which at every moment conserves them in being and imparts to them their causal power. Every physical component of the universe has existence and properties derived from some cause. They cannot possess those derived-aspects unless something exists which can impart properties and existence itself to them.Silver Asiatic
January 6, 2020
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EM, I intend to more completely respond to Monod, who won a Nobel Prize for work on DNA and cellular, molecular processes. So, he had to realise he was dealing with coded information and algorithmic information processing. In short, he should have recognised that he was dealing with language applied to information systems of high complexity. Language like that is a strong sign of design. What Monod did, was to suggest that it is somehow not scientific to infer design [i.e. that the cell showed signs of being the result of a project, "projective"] but instead only appeals to blind chance and mechanical necessity were "objective," as opposed to reflecting the action of a subject, mind. Thus, frankly, he begged the question that there can be a valid, empirically grounded, logically cogent scientific study of signs of design, of the natural vs. the ART-ificial. That is in the background of all of the onward discussion. KFkairosfocus
January 5, 2020
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Now Kairosfocus, I am amused at this characterization of "objectivity"! What's funny is how subjective this really is. As a reminder to anyone just now jumping in the fray, here is what you posted: Oh, try here for one Monod in a 1971 interview on his Chance and Necessity: [T]he scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity—that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product—predictable if not indispensable—of the evolution of the universe.— Jacques Monod [Quoted in John C. Hess, ‘French Nobel Biologist Says World Based On Chance’, New York Times (15 Mar 1971), p. 6. Cited in Herbert Marcuse, Counter-Revolution and Revolt (1972), p. 66.] Notice, the telling redefinition of objectivity. Try as I might, I just could not logically give materialistic, undirected, blind, random processes this much power. As a chemistry teacher, I have a lot of fun telling students how there is no such thing as fruitful "tri-molecular" interactions between particles. Fruitful chemical reactions occur through what is called a "bimolecular" process for the most part: that is, typically not more than two species of atoms/ molecules interact at any given time to yield products. And even then, the colliding particles have to hit one another at just the right orientation. It seems for life to have evolved as the consequence of blind, undirected processes, the tools that nature gives us for the assembling of atoms into molecules, molecules into macromolecules, and macromolecules into cell pathways, and cell pathways into actual cells, cells randomly organized into tissues, tissues ultimately forming organs and organ systems, are simply not there, if we are depending upon materialistic processes alone to accomplish all this. That would seem almost magical!Emily Morales
January 5, 2020
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seversky:
Materialism gives us an objective reality …
Except for the fact that materialism is, in reality, a total non-starter. Atheism and materialism are nothing more than denials of reality.ET
January 5, 2020
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.
Materialism gives us an objective reality against which we can measure the stories we create to try and explain it.
Materialist ideologues made up a story that life can organize itself from non-life using nothing but the dynamic properties of matter. We then discovered that life is a description-based phenomenon; specified from memory using a system of discontinuous symbols and a multi-referent language structure, which are required to organize and achieve semantic closure, enabling life to persist over time. These things were predicted, and then experimentally confirmed inside the cell. Following that, the system was fully and carefully described using the language of physics, just as it was first predicted to be. In response to these historical facts, all you do is protect the dogma in every step you take. You can't even acknowledge the details without attempting to dismiss them in the same breath. You really don't need to be lecturing anyone about integrating "objective reality" Sev. You gave that position up long ago, and needn't pretend otherwise.Upright BiPed
January 5, 2020
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Silver Asiatic @ 116
Seversky
How many billions have died over the whole of human history because it was left to ordinary human beings through plodding, dogged research to get just to where we are now? Why should that be?
Because God gave us a chance to learn something new in every generation. The new findings have not stopped. Life on earth is an adventure – and along the way, we should find God
In the first half of the 14th Century, people already living in what we would think of as squalid conditions began dying like flies. Somewhere between 30-60% of the entire population of Europe was wiped out by what they called the Black Death - what we now know as bubonic plague. At the time, they had no idea what caused it, let alone how to treat it. It would be over 500 years before human medical science developed the germ theory of disease, identified the bacterium responsible and designed drugs to treat it. At the time, all they could do was pray over loved ones dying horribly in front of them. Prayers that went unanswered. I seriously doubt if they thought life was an adventure and they found no sign of God.
But as to “how many people have died”? I think all of them have so far, except for everybody living now. But they will die also. Why is that?
I don't know. Perhaps you should ask your God and then tell us what He has to say.
Because life for humans on earth is temporary. It’s a testing, proving-ground.
We put things to the test because we don't know what the outcome will be. An omniscient God by definition knows all that there is to be known so He already knows in advance the outcome of any test you can possibly devise so there is no need for any "proving-ground".
Atheism has nothing to offer. It is utter nonsense.
No, atheism cannot offer you what your religion does. It does not make such a claim. But the fact that your faith makes you feel better does not make it true.
You seem to take pride in the fact that your view offers nothing but despair.
No, I don't take pride in it but it may be necessary to face up to the possibility that there is no God, at least in the way you envisage. It may do no good at all but, if it's the case, isn't it better to accept it?
But even that is absolutely nothing. Materialism does not even give us a basis to evaluate anything as being true or false.
Materialism gives us an objective reality against which we can measure the stories we create to try and explain it. To that extent we can evaluate what is more likely to be true or false and maybe that's the best we can hope for.Seversky
January 5, 2020
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Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has some fairly profound implications for us personally. First and foremost, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:
November 2019 - despite the fact that virtually everyone, including the vast majority of Christians, hold that the Copernican Principle is unquestionably true, the fact of the matter is that the Copernican Principle is now empirically shown, (via quantum mechanics and general relativity, etc..), to be a false assumption. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/so-then-maybe-we-are-privileged-observers/#comment-688855 (February 19, 2019) To support Isabel Piczek’s claim that the Shroud of Turin does indeed reveal a true ‘event horizon’, the following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’,,, Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673178 The evidence for the Shroud's authenticity keeps growing. (Timeline of facts) - November 08, 2019 What Is the Shroud of Turin? Facts & History Everyone Should Know - Myra Adams and Russ Breault https://www.christianity.com/wiki/jesus-christ/what-is-the-shroud-of-turin.html
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ's resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-study-claims-shroud-of-turin-is.html
Verse:
Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Thus in conclusion, Sev’s denial of free will is a logically self-defeating position that undermines his entire atheistic worldview as to being a rationally coherent worldview. Moreover, his denial of free will is directly contradicted by recent empirical evidence from both neurology and quantum mechanics. Whereas, on the other hand, the Christian Theist is not only logically consistent with his belief in free will, but the Christian is also consistent with the empirical evidence itself (which is NOT a minor thing as far as science itself is concerned). And on top of everything else, the Christian’s belief that Jesus Christ is God incarnate is powerfully vindicated in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides a very plausible, empirically backed, solution, (via the Shroud of Turin), for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’. All in all, as far as science is concerned, I can certainly live very consistently and happily as a Christian Theist! Whereas, the atheist can live as, well, whatever 'meat robots' are supposedly predetermined to live as in their severely depressing, meaningless, purposeless, nihilistic universe.
1 Corinthians 2:9 However, as it is written: "What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived" -- the things God has prepared for those who love him--
bornagain77
January 4, 2020
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Besides this evidence from neurology, and as mentioned previously, there is also evidence from quantum mechanics that now also establishes the reality of free will. As Steven Weinberg, an atheist himself, states in the following article, In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017 Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,, http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/466-17/QuantumMechanicsWeinberg.pdf
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave. For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics) By Mindy Weisberger – March 20, 2019 Excerpt: “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”. https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.html Experimental test of local observer-independence - 2019 Excerpt: The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically exposed in Eugene Wigner’s eponymous thought experiment where two observers can experience seemingly different realities. The question whether these realities can be reconciled in an observer-independent way has long remained inaccessible to empirical investigation, until recent no-go-theorems constructed an extended Wigner’s friend scenario with four observers that allows us to put it to the test. In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we realise this extended Wigner’s friend scenario, experimentally violating the associated Bell-type inequality by 5 standard deviations. If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free-choice, this result implies that quantum theory should be interpreted in an observer-dependent way. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.05080.pdf
Moreover, the Kochen-Speckter Theorem also validates the reality of free will in quantum mechanics. As leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” Anton Zeilinger – Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437
The Kochen-Specker theorem undermines determinism in the most fundamental way possible in that "it would not even be possible to place the information into the universe's past in an ad hoc way."
The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen,,, Since the free will theorem applies to any arbitrary physical theory consistent with the axioms, it would not even be possible to place the information into the universe's past in an ad hoc way. The argument proceeds from the Kochen-Specker theorem, which shows that the result of any individual measurement of spin was not fixed (pre-determined) independently of the choice of measurements. http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/free_will_theorem.html
As well, with contextuality we find that, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation”
Contextuality is ‘magic ingredient’ for quantum computing – June 11, 2012 Excerpt: Contextuality was first recognized as a feature of quantum theory almost 50 years ago. The theory showed that it was impossible to explain measurements on quantum systems in the same way as classical systems. In the classical world, measurements simply reveal properties that the system had, such as colour, prior to the measurement. In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation. Imagine turning over a playing card. It will be either a red suit or a black suit – a two-outcome measurement. Now imagine nine playing cards laid out in a grid with three rows and three columns. Quantum mechanics predicts something that seems contradictory – there must be an even number of red cards in every row and an odd number of red cards in every column. Try to draw a grid that obeys these rules and you will find it impossible. It’s because quantum measurements cannot be interpreted as merely revealing a pre-existing property in the same way that flipping a card reveals a red or black suit. Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment. Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. That’s part of the weirdness of quantum mechanics. http://phys.org/news/2014-06-weird-magic-ingredient-quantum.html
On top of all that, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014 Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics. “It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that the experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of ? 7.4 × 10^21. This experiment pushes back to at least ? 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”bornagain77
January 4, 2020
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At 112 Seversky states:
BA77: Really Seversky?? how people choose to live their lives”,???? Do you now believe in free will Seversky??? Come on Seversky get with the program and at least try to be consistent within your Atheistic materialism. You are a ‘meat robot’ PERIOD! You have no free will to choose anything, much less choosing how you may want to live your life. Sev: You should know. The story of Peter’s triple denial of knowing Jesus is evidence that you don’t (have free will) if your God exists.
Seversky tries his usual dodge of appealing to God’s omniscience to try to get around the devastating fact that, if atheistic materialism were actually true, he is a deterministic ‘meat robot’, and all rationality is completely undermined. Yet, the fatal flaw in Sev’s reasoning is that omniscience does not equal coercion. For instance, if I knew exactly what Sev was going to do tomorrow, and preferred that he not do it, and told him that I preferred that he not do it, but he went ahead and did it anyway, it obviously is not me forcing Sev to do what he did. But it is Sev himself, by his own will and desire doing what he ‘desires’ to do. “Desire” being the key word there. Many times people, like drug addicts and alcoholics, do things that they know they ought not do, but they do them anyway because their ‘fleshly desires’ have compromised their rational free will. Such is the case with Peter’s denial of Christ. Peter’s “fleshly desire” for self preservation outweighed his rational free will that he rightly ought to stand up for what he knew to be true. Namely that he personally knew Jesus. This is all perfectly consistent with scripture. As Jesus himself stated in the same passage where he predicted Peter’s denial, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Matthew 26:41 "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Thus, Sev’s claim that God’s omniscience precludes our free will simply does not hold water. In the Christian view of reality, the main thing that compromises our free will. (i.e. in our choosing to do what we ought to do), is and always has been our fleshly desires. This is common knowledge. That Sev would try to argue against the common knowledge of how free will is compromised by fleshly desires, just to try to shore up his atheism is, besides being ludicrous, par for the course for Sev. Moreover, this disingenuous “Theistic” dodge on Sev’s part completely fails to address the catastrophic failure inherent in his atheistic materialism. Namely Darwinists, in their denial of free will, has lost any right to the claim that he is making a rationally coherent argument in the first place.
(1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts. (2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain. (3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2) (4) no effect can control its cause. Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality. per Box UD “Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God” — C.S. Lewis (from, The Case for Christianity) Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html
Simply put, if you believe in reason then you must believe in God. Atheists, especially with their denial of free will, simply have forsaken any claim that they are being reasonable in their arguments.
“Atheists can give no reason why they should value reason, and Christians can show how anyone who believes in reason must also believe in God.” Cogito; Ergo Deus Est by Charles Edward White Philosophy Still Lives Because God Isn't Dead The Argument From Reason - resource page http://www.reasonsforgod.org/the-argument-from-reason/ What is the Logos? Logos is a Greek word literally translated as “word, speech, or utterance.” However, in Greek philosophy, Logos refers to divine reason or the power that puts sense into the world making order instead of chaos.,,, In the Gospel of John, John writes “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John appealed to his readers by saying in essence, “You’ve been thinking, talking, and writing about the Word (divine reason) for centuries and now I will tell you who He is.” https://www.compellingtruth.org/what-is-the-Logos.html
Moreover, the Christian does not have to rely solely on logical necessity in order to support the reality of free will, but the Christian Theist can now also appeal to empirical evidence from neuroscience and quantum mechanics: In neurology we find, from the work of Benjamin Libet and others, that we have the ability to veto a “unconscious decision”, i.e. to veto a predisposition to a certain behavior that we might have. As Dr. Egnor notes, “Libet even observed that his experimental confirmation of free will accorded with the traditional religious understanding of free will”:
Do Benjamin Libet’s Experiments Show that Free Will Is an Illusion? – Michael Egnor – January 15, 2014 Excerpt: Materialists often invoke the experiments of Benjamin Libet when they deny free will.,,, (Yet) Libet himself was a strong defender of free will, and he interpreted his own experiments as validating free will. He noted that his subjects often vetoed the unconscious “decision” after the readiness potential appeared. ,,,”The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to initiate a voluntary act, but rather to control whether the act takes place. We may view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as ‘bubbling up’ in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto and abort, with no act appearing.” – Libet Libet even observed that his experimental confirmation of free will accorded with the traditional religious understanding of free will:,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/01/do_benjamin_lib081171.html
Moreover, recent research has revealed that we are more free in our decisions than Libet's research had suggested:
A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked For decades, a landmark brain study fed speculation about whether we control our own actions. It seems to have made a classic mistake. BAHAR GHOLIPOUR - SEP 10, 2019 Excerpt: In a new study under review for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schurger and two Princeton researchers repeated a version of Libet’s experiment. To avoid unintentionally cherry-picking brain noise, they included a control condition in which people didn’t move at all. An artificial-intelligence classifier allowed them to find at what point brain activity in the two conditions diverged. If Libet was right, that should have happened at 500 milliseconds before the movement. But the algorithm couldn’t tell any difference until about only 150 milliseconds before the movement, the time people reported making decisions in Libet’s original experiment. In other words, people’s subjective experience of a decision—what Libet’s study seemed to suggest was just an illusion—appeared to match the actual moment their brains showed them making a decision. When Schurger first proposed the neural-noise explanation, in 2012, the paper didn’t get much outside attention, but it did create a buzz in neuroscience. Schurger received awards for overturning a long-standing idea. “It showed the Bereitschaftspotential may not be what we thought it was. That maybe it’s in some sense artifactual, related to how we analyze our data,” says Uri Maoz, a computational neuroscientist at Chapman University. For a paradigm shift, the work met minimal resistance. Schurger appeared to have unearthed a classic scientific mistake, so subtle that no one had noticed it and no amount of replication studies could have solved it, unless they started testing for causality. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/
Dr. Jeffery Schwartz has gone even further. Dr. Jeffery Schwartz has had much success in treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCDs) by changing the ‘workings of the brain’ through the ‘focused attention’ of the mind of the patient. This ability to modify our brain, i.e. ‘neuroplasticity’, would not be possible if our thoughts were determined solely by our material brains as Darwinists hold.
Brains On Purpose Excerpt: Jeffrey Schwartz – Decades ago, he began to study the philosophy of conscious awareness, the idea that the actions of the mind have an effect on the workings of the brain. Jeff’s breakthrough work in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) provided the hard evidence that the mind can control the brain’s chemistry. http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/about_jeffrey_m_schwartz_.html The Case for the Soul – InspiringPhilosophy – (4:03 minute mark, Brain Plasticity including Schwartz’s work) – Oct. 2014 – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsI_ay8K70 Jeffrey Schwartz: You Are More than Your Brain – Science Uprising Extra Content – (2019) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFIOSQNuXuY&list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&index=9
bornagain77
January 4, 2020
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Seversky
How many billions have died over the whole of human history because it was left to ordinary human beings through plodding, dogged research to get just to where we are now? Why should that be?
Because God gave us a chance to learn something new in every generation. The new findings have not stopped. Life on earth is an adventure - and along the way, we should find God. But as to "how many people have died"? I think all of them have so far, except for everybody living now. But they will die also. Why is that? Because life for humans on earth is temporary. It's a testing, proving-ground. It's not how long you live that counts, but how well you live and the kind of relationships we build, with others and firstly with God Himself. Atheism has nothing to offer. It is utter nonsense. You seem to take pride in the fact that your view offers nothing but despair. But even that is absolutely nothing. Materialism does not even give us a basis to evaluate anything as being true or false.Silver Asiatic
January 4, 2020
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KF
Point 1 is key, we cannot practically remove boys from the presence of men; which would itself be abusive and undermining of the critical need to nurture young boys into gentlemanly ways.
True, but many Catholic authorities have now admitted that there was too much laxity in priestly-seminaries in the 60s and 70s and men with homosexual tendencies were permitted into the priesthood.
Myth: Children have been the main victims of priestly sexual abuse. Fact: Since more than 95 percent of all the victims of priestly sexual abuse, as reported by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, are not prepubescent, that means that adolescents have been the primary victims. Myth: Pedophile priests have been the problem. Fact: Homosexual priests have been the problem. Proof: 81 percent of the victims have been male, and more than 95 percent have been postpubescent. When males have sex with postpubescent males, it is called homosexuality. Myth: The problem is on-going. Fact: The homosexual scandal took place mostly between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. In the last ten years, the average number of credible accusations made against 40,000 priests is in the single digits. Myth: The Church’s repressive teachings on sexuality are the problem. Fact: It was liberals outside the Church who pushed for the sexual revolution, and it was liberals in the Church who abetted the revolution in the seminaries. Moreover, it was liberals who promoted therapy as the way to deal with molesters, instead of using punitive measures. Myth: The Church has done nothing about the problem. Fact: Pope Benedict XVI made it more difficult for active homosexual priests to enter the priesthood, thus getting directly to the source of the problem. Also, steps have been taken in every diocese to ensure that anyone who works for the Church must participate in a training program aimed at curtailing the abuse of minors. https://www.catholicleague.org/facts-about-priestly-sexual-abuse-2/
Silver Asiatic
January 4, 2020
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seversky:
The story of Peter’s triple denial of knowing Jesus is evidence that you don’t if your God exists.
And that story could be taken out of context. It could be that Jesus was telling him to deny that he knew Jesus. Not predicting, telling, like an order. As for the "opium of the people", that's just chest-puffing ignorance. What does a person have to be on to think that minds arose from the mindless via blind, mindless and purposeless processes? And seversky still refuses to get it. The bridge is burned. We have to learn for ourselves. That is our destiny while we are here.ET
January 4, 2020
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seversky:
Referring to the theory of evolution as “Darwinism” and its adherents as “materialistic faithful” is suggestive of conservative Christian belief which is opposed to the theory …
What theory? Who was the author? When was it published? What journal? The reason your alleged theory of evolution is referred to as Darwinism is because mainstream evolutionary thought still pertains to the same types of processes Darwin envisioned. And it is still as untestable now as it was then. And one doesn't need to be a Christian to see and understand the untestable nature of what mainstream evolution claims. But anyway... Someday, the special considerations we give to the dysphoric and gender-bending minorities will be extended to the unborn. We care too much about hurting someone's feelings by calling them by their biologically proper pronouns and not nearly enough about our ignorant-based, barbaric population control.ET
January 4, 2020
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Bornagain77 @ 7
Really Seversky?? how people choose to live their lives”,???? Do you now believe in free will Seversky??? Come on Seversky get with the program and at least try to be consistent within your Atheistic materialism. You are a ‘meat robot’ PERIOD! You have no free will to choose anything, much less choosing how you may want to live your life.
You should know. The story of Peter's triple denial of knowing Jesus is evidence that you don't if your God exists.
Moreover, contrary to Seversky’s claim that “science, unlike her religion, is not in the business of passing moral judgments on how people choose to live their lives”, the fact of the matter is that the moral rot of the false science of Darwinian atheism does indeed directly morally impact how people may choose to live their lives. Specifically, the nihilism inherent in the false doctrine of Atheistic Materialism drives people into moral despair.
Perhaps that's why you prefer the "opium of the people". It may or may not be true but it does block out the despair.
Needless to say atheistic materialism, a worldview that is devoid of any real meaning, beauty or purpose, for life is a severely impoverished, even severely depressing, worldview for anyone to falsely believe to be true.
So we agree on something! We both believe that the appeal of religious belief, in part, lies in the fact that, for many people, the alternative is an intolerably bleak prospect. Again, that doesn't mean it is necessarily right, just that it makes people feel better.
Of supplemental note, Seversky once again attacked Christianity for a father praying for his daughter and allowing her to die instead of seeking medical treatment for her. What Seversky will NEVER tell you are the millions of lives that have been saved by medicines that were developed by devout Christians:
The death of that girl was a tragedy that need not have happened. The means to diagnose and treat her condition exist. It is outrageous if your God exists and did not lift a finger to help her. I am quite happy to tell you about the millions whose lives have been saved by medical science and that many of the researchers were devout Christians. The point that you continually miss is that they had to do it at all. Your God could have told them all about bacteria, viruses, prion proteins or cancers and saved a whole lot of time. He could even have wiped them all out with a Jedi-like wave of His hand if He chose. But He didn't. How many billions have died over the whole of human history because it was left to ordinary human beings through plodding, dogged research to get just to where we are now? Why should that be?Seversky
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PS: Just to set a record straight, let's list correctives to the six myths ET linked, from Psychology Today:
1. Catholic clergy aren't more likely to abuse children than other clergy or men in general. 2. Clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church can't be blamed on celibacy. Not having sex doesn't make children the object of one's desire. 3. Clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church can't be blamed on homosexuality [--> in the sense, merely having a same sex attraction problem does not cause preying on teens and young boys, though, doubtless, predators will always try to go to where their favoured prey are]. 4. Clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church can't be blamed on an all-male clergy. 5. Almost all of clergy sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church that we hear about in the news are from decades ago (usually the 1960s and 70s). [--> Doesn't mean nothing is current, but it does give pause] 6. Most clergy sex offenders aren't pedophiles. [--> as in teens and young adults, not younger, pre-puberty children, are targets]
Point 1 is key, we cannot practically remove boys from the presence of men; which would itself be abusive and undermining of the critical need to nurture young boys into gentlemanly ways. In short, the attempted turnabout fails.kairosfocus
January 4, 2020
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Emily Morales @ 2
I would question your credentials as a reader, where did I make any moral judgements concerning transgenderism?
After spending a few years in these discussions, it becomes possible to infer attitudes from the phraseology used in comments. You wrote:
We might even see where Darwinism has enjoyed similar adherence from the materialistic faithful, as a cursed idol of Bacon’s marketplace.
Referring to the theory of evolution as "Darwinism" and its adherents as "materialistic faithful" is suggestive of conservative Christian belief which is opposed to the theory and to homosexuality and transgenderism in part on moral grounds. If you have no moral objections to evolution, homosexuality or transgenderism on moral grounds then I apologize for the error.
My judgement on the matter stems from the fact that the notion one can change their gender simply because they change a pronoun is absurd, and does not constitute “science.” as we know it.
I agree, it is an absurd notion, so absurd that I'm not aware of any one in the scientific or lay communities that has seriously advanced it. I have read of transgender individuals who have insisted that other people use the pronoun most appropriate to their felt gender but never that simply changing the pronoun automatically changes their self-perception as male or female. If you know of a psychologist or psychiatrist who has made such a claim I would be interested to know who it was.
Because this movement is given undue science creds, there are many implications for society: one is legal protection for biological men to be allowed access to women’s places – traumatizing women; medical procedures and treatments that pose unusual risk for minors; and the introduction of a politicized curricula to very young people.
I don't see the movement claiming undue warrant from science for its position. The legal and social implications are just that, legal and social, not scientific. Society as a whole has to make adequate provision to protect the vulnerable as should always be the case. It should go without saying that minors should not be cajoled into reconsidering their gender to suit someone else's political agenda nor should they be subject to any medical treatments or procedures without their informed consent or that of their legal guardians. Are you aware of instances in which this has happened? The Telegraph article you cite at comment 24 can be interpreted as a professional difference of opinion between doctors as to the best approach to the issue and doesn't suggest treatments or procedures were forced on children against their will or that of their parents, which would constitute criminal assault if it actually happened. On a tangent, I assume you are aware that homosexuality was originally classified as a medical disorder according to various theories concerning its pathology in DSM-I and DSM-II but was eventually removed from DSM-III? According to this paper:
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed the diagnosis of “homosexuality” from the second edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). This resulted after comparing competing theories, those that pathologized homosexuality and those that viewed it as normal. In an effort to explain how that decision came about, this paper reviews some historical scientific theories and arguments that first led to the placement of homosexuality in DSM-I and DSM-II as well as alternative theories that eventually led to its removal from DSM III and subsequent editions of the manual. The paper concludes with a discussion of the sociocultural aftermath of that 1973 decision.
For a period it was an illness according to the relevant scientific community. Then it wasn't. It would appear that psychiatry has a similar problem defining psychiatric disorders to the one taxonomists face finding a one-size-fits-all definition of "species". Perhaps because they are very complex subjects not amenable to simple explanations. The reason I cite that paper is that, further down, the author discusses the related issue of gender:
It is rare to find a theory of homosexuality that does not draw upon gender beliefs that contain implicit cultural ideas about the “essential” qualities of men and women [14,16,25]. “Real men” and “real women” are powerful cultural myths with which everyone must contend. People express gender beliefs, their own and those of the culture in which they live, in everyday language as they either indirectly or explicitly accept and assign gendered meanings to what they and others do, think, and feel. Gender beliefs touch upon almost every aspect of daily life, including such mundane concerns as what shoes men should wear or “deeper” questions of masculinity such as whether men should openly cry or sleep with other men. Gender beliefs are embedded in questions about what career a woman should pursue and, at another level of discourse, what it would mean if a professional woman were to forego rearing children or pursue a career more aggressively than a man. Gender beliefs are usually based upon gender binaries. The most ancient and well known is the male/female binary. However there is also the 19th century binary of homosexuality/heterosexuality (or gay/straight in the 20th century) and the emerging 21st century binary of transgender/cisgender. It should be noted that binaries are not confined to popular usage. Many scientific studies of homosexuality contain implicit (and often explicit) binary gender beliefs as well. For example, the intersex hypothesis of homosexuality [26,27] maintains that the brains of homosexual individuals exhibit characteristics that would be considered more typical of the other sex. The essentialist gender belief implicit in the intersex hypotheses is that an attraction to women is a masculine trait, which in the case of Sigmund Freud [28], for example (also see below), led to his theory that lesbians have a masculine psychology. Similarly, biological researchers have presumed gay men have brains that more closely resemble those of women [29] or are recipients of extra fragments of their mothers’ X (female) chromosomes [30].
He goes on to point out the inevitable moral dimension to the issue :
Rigid gender beliefs usually flourish in fundamentalist, religious communities where any information or alternative explanations that might challenge implicit and explicit assumptions are unwelcome. When entering the realms of gender and sexuality, it is not unusual to encounter another form of binary thinking: “morality tales” about whether certain kinds of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are “good or bad” or, in some cases, whether they are “good or evil” [14,15,16]. The good/bad binary is not confined to religion alone, as the language of morality is inevitably found, for example, in theories about the “causes” of homosexuality. For in the absence of certitude about homosexuality’s “etiology,” binary gender beliefs and their associated moral underpinnings frequently play a role in theories about the causes and/or meanings of homosexuality. When one recognizes the narrative forms of these theories, some of the moral judgments and beliefs embedded in each of them become clearer.
In my view, as an atheist/agnostic/materialist/naturalist or whatever you want to call me, it is immoral to discriminate against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender dysphoria. I was also raised as a Christian and, again in my view, discrimination on those grounds is also inconsistent with the spirit of the Christian morality I was taught.Seversky
January 4, 2020
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EG
The last time I looked, we don’t have a right to not feel uncomfortable.
You could reconsider this in terms of laws against sexual harassment.Silver Asiatic
January 4, 2020
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JAD, First duties are coeval with first principles of right reason. Just as, deny distinct identity and you cannot even consistently communicate (as well as undermining the root of numbers!) or demand proof that logic is justified requires said logic to proceed, we are inescapably bound by duties to truth, right reason, prudence, sound conscience, fairness and justice etc. Indeed, in trying to undermine confidence in the built-in, inescapable moral government of our rationality and responsible freedom, EG and ilk are forced to appeal to our implicitly recognised duties to same. Doubtless, the undermining is because of where such inescapable first duties point: we need an inherently good, utterly wise, finitely remote necessary being root of reality and source of worlds. Only thus, can the IS-OUGHT gap be securely bridged. And, that is where such absolutely will not go. So, they are forced to cling to absurdities and to argue inconsistently. From that, the road to might and/or manipulation make 'right' etc is wide open, but winding. And, such nihilism- and- amorality becomes ever more bizarre in its moral inversions and perversities. It is time to stop the madness. KFkairosfocus
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PPS: I remind, from Plato:
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
January 4, 2020
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EG, Spinning the wheels will only dig you in deeper in the mud. The fundamental error and wellspring of the increasingly bizarre errors you and many others promote or enable is adopting or accommodating evolutionary materialism, which ends up in might and/or manipulation make 'right' etc. Such nihilism- and- amorality . . . what the resulting relativism boils down to . . . is immediately absurd and self refuting. We saw how we were just reminded of your blunders on core math [and we could go to town on aesthetics too]. Plato warned against this sort of folly 2360 years ago and you have no more answer now than Alcibiades and co did. Athens' failure as a democracy should be one of the core lessons of history firmly fixed in every educated person's mind, but obviously, such has so conveniently been forgotten. No prizes for guessing why. KF PS: When you keep dragging down into the sewer of sexual perversities and seem unable to stop [even after we took time out to deal with the sewer problem months ago], it speaks. There is a decent lady and mother with a daughter as original poster. Please, have some regard. And no, I have absolutely no intent to go down into the sewers again. The most is, the solution to profound identity confusion is not to be found in pretending that this is not a serious disorder. Serious disorders need help, not enabling and must not be turned into stalking horses for wrecking our civilisation. And if you and ilk cannot read the signs of the peasant uprisings by ballot box and think star chamber and media lynch mob tactics are an appropriate response, please think again on what you are going to provoke.kairosfocus
January 4, 2020
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It’s worth considering the other points Lewis makes.
There are two reasons for saying [morality] belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first is, as I said in the first chapter, that though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great — not nearly so great as most people imagine — and you can recognize the same lay running through them all: whereas mere conventions, like the rule of the road of the kinds or clothes people wear, may differ to any extent. The other reason is this. When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others. We do believe that some of the people who tried to change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers of Pioneers — people who understood morality better than their neighbors did. Very well then. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something — some Real Morality — for them to be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer of less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said 'New York' each means merely 'The town I am imagining in my own head', how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all. In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply 'whatever each nation happens to approve', there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had even been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world would ever grow morally better or morally worse. (emphasis added)
john_a_designer
January 4, 2020
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I saw that Bornagain77, and I actually was a bit amused! Honestly, I love that Ed George is reading UD content and responding (of course I obviously don't have the history with him that you guys all do). Debate makes all of us sharper and more focused. As an example, I have learned much reading the responses to Ed's arguments, things I might not have learned if Ed did not challenge what we were all saying. As a science person, I am only somewhat familiar with C.S. Lewis, and even philosophy! Thank you guys (and ladies) for responding and keeping the conversations civil. I hope Ed reads, argues, and responds to everything I write in the future! Thanks everyone for your very thoughtful responses and civil discourse!Emily Morales
January 4, 2020
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Vividbleau at 93, "the “mansplainer” is telling you that you have no right to feel uncomfortable and your the problem! " LOL :) awesome!bornagain77
January 4, 2020
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Moral subjectivists are really at the root of it all epistemological subjectivists. Recently, I asked on another thread:
Why are we wasting time on people who are epistemological subjectivists like Ed George? His belief is that all he or anyone else has are opinions. You want proof? Here’s a debate we had with Mr. George about a year ago (12/18) when we were debating whether math was something that had been discovered or had been invented with him and others.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/why-is-seeing-the-glaringly-obvious-so-hard/#comment-688256 I pointed out there that on the earlier thread (12/11/18) that Ed agreed that his reasoning goes like this:
Either X or Y could be true EG believes Y Therefore, Y is true. In other words, Ed George believes it. That settles it.
To which Ed, apparently without embarrassment responded:
That is all any of us can do. Mathematics either exists independent of humans or it is something invented by humans to model our observations. My opinion is that it is the latter. ET and KF believe it is the former. But, unfortunately, there is no way of determining which is true. And, frankly, does it matter?
https://uncommondescent.com/mathematics/logic-first-principles-4-the-logic-of-being-causality-and-science/#comment-669576 In other words, Ed is ‘arguing,’ “I don’t know, therefore, nobody knows.” But the question then is how does he know nobody else knows? I would argue his position is self-refuting, therefore, it’s a non-starter. An argument which is only an argument about a personal opinion is not really an argument, it’s only being pointlessly argumentative. The objective of any logical argument is to establish the truth. Doubling down on one’s personal beliefs doesn’t move the ball in either direction. It is nothing more than a self-serving combination of hubris and dogmatism. So far Ed has not responded. Should we, therefore, assume that that is still his position? Perhaps he is beginning to see that his positon is not only indefensible but irrational… Possible, but I doubt it. In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis argued that the truths of morality, or what he calls Law of Human Nature, are very analogous to the truths of mathematics.
[P]eople wrote to me saying 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?' I think there is a misunderstanding here. The people who ask that question are usually taking it for granted that if we have learned a thing from parents and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. But, of course, that is not so. We all learned the multiplication table at school. A child who grew up alone on a desert island would not know it. But surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention, something human beings made up for themselves and might have made different if they had liked? I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent Behaviour from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn everything else. But some of the things we learn are mere conventions which might have been different — we learn to keep to the left of the road, but it might just as well have been the rule to keep to the right — and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths. The questions is to which class the Law of Human Nature[morality] belongs.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/mere1.html Indeed, unlike the people living in the U.S. the Brit’s believe that “left is right and right is wrong.” Of course, we are talking about which side of the road you are supposed to drive on. However, I find it ironic that the very nation where the English language originated created laws that use their language in a paradoxical if not contradictory sort of way. Of course, the paradox is a result of the equivocal way we are using right and left here. Maybe they were just having a little fun-- as in fun with a pun. (On second thought, other than Monty Python do the Brits know how to have fun?) The point is of course is that morality in Lewis' view is not simply an arbitrary conventional set of rules like which side of the road you are permitted to drive on.john_a_designer
January 4, 2020
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Hi Barry: Thank you as well for the welcome. Looks to be a fun adventure, posting to this site! I have to admit, I love debate, rigorous debate, provided it is civil and there's no name calling. Look forward to future posts!Emily Morales
January 4, 2020
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Hi Upright Biped: I like the name! Thank you for the welcome. The conversations on this site are MUCH more civil than on reddit, which I appreciate. Thanks for your input!Emily Morales
January 4, 2020
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Six Myths About Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: There's more fiction than facts in Catholic clergy sexual abuse discussions. Teachers are more likely to sexually abuse kids than priests.ET
January 4, 2020
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Acartia Eddie:
No, I have merely provided you with some uncomfortable facts.
Except you haven't provided any facts. And you ignore reality.ET
January 4, 2020
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KF
EG, you have chosen to spin on with cultural marxist agenda talking points.
No, I have merely provided you with some uncomfortable facts. VB
Emily you getting this? The champion of women, the “mansplainer” is telling you that you have no right to feel uncomfortable and your the problem!
Please don’t put words in my mouth. Of course she has the right to be uncomfortable. Just as I am uncomfortable about the idea of two men being intimate. But the basis of some of the things that make us uncomfortable are not based in actual increased risk of harm.Ed George
January 4, 2020
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