It is almost — almost — amusing but then quite sad to see how objectors to design theory play with logic and worldviews issues, then run away when the substantial issues are taken up.
Let me clip from the FFT, AJ vs Charles thread to pick up these matters, but to avoid making this utterly too long, let me point here on for the underlying questions of worldviews, first plausibles and self-evident plumb-line truths such as the first principles of right reason.
While we are at it, let us observe from the diagram on the right, how worldviews issues influence everything we do as a civilisation, and how the issue arises, on whether business as usual is a march of folly and needs to be turned from to move to a more sustainable, more sound alternative.
In our day, it is pretty clear that evolutionary materialistic scientism and its fellow travellers rule the roost, but that such is inescapably incoherent, self-refuting, self-falsifying and amoral, opening the door to ruthless nihilist factionalism.
So, it is a service not only to the ID community but the civilisation to say what is not politically corrupt today, the unmentionable fact that A is A.
So, now, let us proceed by clipping some posts in the relevant thread:
FFT5: The implications of the familiar extraordinary.
In this thread, there are arguments [posted] that . . . as an observable phenomenon . . . show that we are capable of significant choice and reasoning, i.e. we are responsibly, rationally, significantly free, conscious, en-conscienced, morally governed, communicating creatures. (Indeed, those trying to object are operating on the implicit premise that we are urged by conscience toward the truth and the right; and if we were not, this world would descend into a dark, chaotic ruin in short order. It is a good thing that something urges us on to the truth and the right.)
Locke, in Sec 5 of his essay on human understanding (and yes, I add scriptural references i/l/o his cites and allusions), aptly comments:
Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them, since he hath given them (as St. Peter says [NB: i.e. 2 Pet 1:2 – 4]) pana pros zoen kaieusebeian, whatsoever is necessary for the conveniences of life and information of virtue; and has put within the reach of their discovery, the comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. How short soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect comprehension of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments [Prov 1: 1 – 7], that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own duties [cf Rom 1 – 2 & 13, Ac 17, Jn 3:19 – 21, Eph 4:17 – 24, Isaiah 5:18 & 20 – 21, Jer. 2:13, Titus 2:11 – 14 etc, etc]. Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough to grasp everything . . . It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant [Matt 24:42 – 51], who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us [Prov 20:27] shines bright enough for all our purposes . . . If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly. [Text references added to document the sources of Locke’s allusions and citations.]
All of that is in the context of rebuking a lazy, sneeringly supercilious selective hyperskepticism that will scorn more than adequate warrant for ethical theism, because it shuns the premise of moral government: accountability on plainly recognisable duty, before our Maker, Lord, Governor and utterly just Judge.
But, that is a bit quick off the mark.
Let’s start with computational substrates, whether mechanically or electrically analogue or digital or neural network. For instance a ball and disk integrator as was used in tide table machines or naval gunlaying computers is clearly a cause-effect, blindly mechanical system. If it has a fault or is badly programmed, it will err, and it cares not, it is just like Monadology’s Mill-Wheels grinding away blindly. Leibniz:
[P]erception, and that which depends upon it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is to say, by figures and motions. Supposing that there were a machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perception, we could conceive of it as increased in size with the same proportions until one was able to enter into its interior, as he would into a mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would he find anything to explain perception.
There is no recognition of meaning, no perception, no purpose, just blind cause-effect chains externally arranged to yield the solution to certain differential equations. GIGO, and all that. Likewise, the old Pentium chip neither knew nor understood nor cared about the wired in errors that led to the early recall. And, a neural network is not in principle any different. (BTW this points to serious design inferences on the relevant hardware and software in bio-cybernetics systems, but that is a secondary point.)
The primary point has been highlighted by Reppert:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as [C S] Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
In short, a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)>>
So, we have to first face mindedness and the limitations of computational substrates.
FFT6A: Last evening, in FFT5, we looked at the familiar extraordinary; it is almost amusing to see how this has been almost studiously pushed aside. One hopes that the latest focus for hyperskeptical dismissiveness, heptades, will now settle down.
At this point, we have to deal with a key conclusion in 153:
. . . a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)
What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
That’s rather like a point R W Hamming made in addressing a thought exercise that counter-balances one of the mythical paradigm cases of empirical investigation, the dropping of a musket-ball and a cannon-ball from the famous leaning tower of Pisa. And yes, the very same News who so many hyperskeptics sneer at brought this to attention:
Let us next consider Galileo. Not too long ago I was trying to put myself in Galileo’s shoes, as it were, so that I might feel how he came to discover the law of falling bodies. I try to do this kind of thing so that I can learn to think like the masters did-I deliberately try to think as they might have done.
Well, Galileo was a well-educated man and a master of scholastic arguments. He well knew how to argue the number of angels on the head of a pin [–> which is actually about location vs extension], how to argue both sides of any question. He was trained in these arts far better than any of us these days. I picture him sitting one day with a light and a heavy ball, one in each hand, and tossing them gently. He says, hefting them, “It is obvious to anyone that heavy objects fall faster than light ones-and, anyway, Aristotle says so.” “But suppose,” he says to himself, having that kind of a mind, “that in falling the body broke into two pieces. Of course the two pieces would immediately slow down to their appropriate speeds. But suppose further that one piece happened to touch the other one. Would they now be one piece and both speed up? Suppose I tied the two pieces together. How tightly must I do it to make them one piece? A light string? A rope? Glue? When are two pieces one?”
The more he thought about it-and the more you think about it-the more unreasonable becomes the question of when two bodies are one. There is simply no reasonable answer to the question of how a body knows how heavy it is-if it is one piece, or two, or many. Since falling bodies do something, the only possible thing is that they all fall at the same speed-unless interfered with by other forces. There’s nothing else they can do. He may have later made some experiments, but I strongly suspect that something like what I imagined actually happened. I later found a similar story in a book by Polya [7. G. Polya, Mathematical Methods in Science, MAA, 1963, pp. 83-85.]. Galileo found his law not by experimenting but by simple, plain thinking, by scholastic reasoning.
I know that the textbooks often present the falling body law as an experimental observation; I am claiming that it is a logical law, a consequence of how we tend to think . . .
This ties back to the view that mathematics is substantially the logic of structure and quantity, which we may freely explore because we are responsibly and rationally significantly free.>>
Again: What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?
This surfaces a key issue, that two truths x and y must be such that we never have y = NOT-x; that is in a coherent world all true statements — those that accurately describe facets of reality — will be mutually compatible. I note this, fully recognising that for many, this is actually quite a difficult point today; as, various ideologies have led to a conflation of truth with perception or opinion. Hence, a conversation I had today that turned on the concept, “my truth.” Language decay is an old problem, and Orwell pointed out what could be done through new-speak and double-talk. How many are two plus two, Mr Smith?
My answer was and is, that we already have perfectly adequate words for opinions and perceptions; so, there is no need to corrupt the meaning of the precious or even vital word, truth. The truth — as Ari noted long ago in Metaphysics 1011b — says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.
This in turn brings us to the question of being and non-being, of possible and impossible being, of contingent and necessary being. Thus, of causal roots of the world, of reality. And it points to the issue of possible worlds: comprehensive enough descriptions of how things could be or are.
Impossible beings such as a square circle cannot exist in any possible world. As, core characteristics stand in mutual contradiction and cannot hold of the same thing, X, under the same circumstances. Here, squarishness and circularity.
By contrast, possible beings could exist in at least one possible world. Contingent ones would not do so in all possible worlds but would exist in at least one. I think, in 100 years there will be unicorns, as biotech will be there and people will be willing to pay to have one. Just as we seem to be seeing ever more miniature sized horses already.
Necessary beings must exist in any possible world, as they are frameworking requisites of a world existing. For instance, two-ness or distinct identity (equivalent) must be there for a distinct world to be. This is non-trivial, as distinct identity has three immediate corollaries: Law of Identity, Law of Excluded Middle, Law of Non-Contradiction.
That is, core logic is built into any possible world; including of course the logic of structure and quantity, i.e. mathematical realities. (NB: We already see here, a key reason for the awesome power of Mathematics in our world and especially in scientific work. [So much for the sneer that this thread has little or no relevance to Science.])
Back to us, as being able to significantly freely discuss our concerns responsibly and rationally, and having an inner compass-sense that insistently points to the truth and the right — conscience.
What sort of world must this be to allow such. and what must be in its frameworking structure?
First, we already saw that the denial of responsible, rational, significant freedom lets grand delusion loose and instantly ends in absurdity. Self-evidently, this is a world in which responsibly rational and significantly free, morally governed creatures are possible and in fact actual.
That’s already a huge result and it sweeps away all worldviews — their name is legion — that are incompatible with such creatures. This of course includes evolutionary materialistic scientism, its fellow travellers, radical subjectivism and radical relativism. (Cf. the chain of comments here on, above.)
Next, we face the implication of the IS-OUGHT gap, on many levels. A world with moral government has to be such that OUGHT is well-rooted in the fabric and framework of reality. Post Hume et al and post Euthyphro et al, that can only be in the very root of reality, i.e. there must be a necessary being that so fuses IS-ness and OUGHT-ness, that they are inextricably entangled in the roots of reality.
What sort of being is capable of such?
The answer is utterly challenging, and I have long thought it is best posed in light of comparative difficulties and worldview level inference to the best candidate explanation.
We need to look at serious candidates (as opposed to something like a flying spaghetti monster, which will not be a necessary being — made up from bits and pieces, i.e. composite.)
There is just one serious candidate, after centuries of debate: the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of loyalty and the responsible, reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature (thus, the law of our nature).
This is not an arbitrary imposition, if you doubt, simply put up a viable alternative: ________ (this is after all comparative difficulties analysis).
Prediction: hard to do.
This also has a further highly relevant implication. For a serious candidate necessary being will either be impossible as a square circle is, or else it will be possible thus would exist in at least one world. And, as it would be a frameworking reality, it would be present in every possible world, including our own — an actual world. (And yes, I am not saying THE actual world.)
The God of ethical theism as described, is a serious candidate [e.g. NB’s have no beginning or end, are eternal]. This means that God is either impossible as a square circle is impossible, or he is actual. And decades ago, the problem of evils used to be trotted out to make that argument, but that option is effectively dead post-Plantinga and in fact post Boethius.
Then, too, if one claims to be an atheist or agnostic, s/he implies knowing good reason to doubt or dismiss the God of ethical theism as impossible even as a square circle is impossible. It would be interesting to hear what such a reason is: _______ (esp. post, problem of evils as a serious view as opposed to a handy piece of intimidatory rhetoric).
So, now, we are at a very important threshold, the God of ethical theism is on the table as a serious candidate necessary being, root of reality that grounds a world in which responsibly and rationally free creatures such as ourselves are possible and indeed actual.
That is a momentous turning-point, and it would be interesting to see if we will hear of the viable alternatives, including reasons why such a God is an impossible being.>>
Of course, these two blanks were never ever filled in cogently. So:
FFT6C: It is worth noting the unresponsiveness to 219 and 178 above, especially at the points where objectors were directly invited to put up alternatives.
We can take it to the bank that UD is obsessively monitored by denizens of a penumbra of hostile sites. Denizens, more than willing to pounce when they see opportunity.
In short, the above blanks left unanswered speak to yet another hovering ghost or three in the room.
Here, first, the point that there is no necessary appeal to design inferences and debates to build a case for ethical theism adequate to ground commitment to such.
Second, that the atheistical objectors and their fellow travellers have no cogent answer to the need for a necessary being root to reality, nor to the point that the God of ethical theism is a serious candidate to be such (by utter contrast with the cartoonish flying spaghetti monster etc), nor to the onward point that such a serious candidate will be either ontologically impossible [as a square circle is impossible] or else will be actual.
Third, they have no cogent answer to the significance of the point that just to have a real discussion, we must implicitly accept that we are responsible, reasonable, significantly free and intelligent beings under moral government. Not least, conscience is the compass within pointing to the truth, the right and our duties of care towards such. Undermining this dimension of conscious mindedness by implying it is delusional lets grand delusion loose in our minds, ending in shipwreck.
So, we can see that the evo mat scientism picture of the world falls apart, and that there is no need to go out of our way to accommodate it. It is self-referentially incoherent and so self-falsifying.
Nor, should we yield to the trend to corrupt the concept, truth. (That, too, is part of the benumbing and warping of conscience, as say Orwell brought out so forcefully in his 1984.)
The astute onlooker will also note that we have had a worldviews discussion, not one pivoting on parsing Bible texts. Though, I have noted that this analysis is compatible with at least one key summary argument in Scripture, one that points to this sort of analysis as valid on the whole if soundly done.
Let me clip:
Rom 1:18 For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them.
20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense.
21 For even though [d]they knew God [as the Creator], they did not [e]honor Him as God or give thanks [for His wondrous creation]. On the contrary, they became worthless in their thinking [godless, with pointless reasonings, and silly speculations], and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory and majesty and excellence of the immortal God for [f]an image [worthless idols] in the shape of mortal man and birds and four-footed animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their own hearts to [sexual] impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin], 25 because [by choice] they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen . . . .
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or consider Him worth knowing [as their Creator], God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are improper and repulsive, 29 until they were filled (permeated, saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice and mean-spiritedness. They are gossips [spreading rumors], 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors [of new forms] of evil, disobedient and disrespectful to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful [without pity]. [AMP]
The passage goes on to highlight how the warping of mind and conscience ends up in a topsy-turvy world that approves evil and by implication disapproves the good. That alludes subtly to another text, from the prophet Isaiah:
Isa 5:18 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who drag along wickedness with cords of falsehood,
And sin as if with cart ropes [towing their own punishment];
19 Who say, “Let Him move speedily, let Him expedite His work [His promised vengeance], so that we may see it;
And let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel approach
And come to pass, so that we may know it!”
20 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
21 Woe (judgment is coming) to those who are wise in their own eyes
And clever and shrewd in their own sight! [AMP]
This summary rings all too sadly true as we look out across the moral wasteland of our largely apostate civilisation that has so often deliberately turned its back on the truth and has refused to endure sound instruction. Instead, we have ever so often chosen to go out in the ways of cleverly constructed errors, leading many astray into ruin.
Given an onward exchange, I think I should note from Eta Linnemann on the undermining of theology:
Theology as it is taught in universities all over the world . . . is based on the historical-critical method . . . . [which] is not just the foundation for the exegetical disciplines. It also decides what the systematician can say . . . It determines procedure in Christian education, homiletics and ethics . . . . Research is conducted ut si Deus non daretur (“as if there were no God”). That means the reality of God is excluded from consideration from the start . . . Statements in Scripture regarding place, time, sequences of events and persons are accepted only insofar as they fit in with established assumptions and theories . . . .
Since other religions have their scriptures, one cannot assume the Bible is somehow unique and superior to them . . . . It is taken for granted that the words of the Bible and God’s word are not identical . . . the New Testament is pitted against the Old Testament, assuming that the God of the New Testament is different from that of the Old, since Jesus is said to have introduced a new concept of God . . . . Since the inspiration of Scripture is not accepted, neither can it be assumed that the individual books of Scripture complement each other. Using this procedure one finds in the Bible only a handful of unrelated literary creations . . . . Since the content of biblical writings is seen as merely the creation of theological writers, any given verse is nothing more than a non-binding, human theological utterance.
For historical-critical theology, critical reason decides what is reality in the Bible and what cannot be reality; and this decision is made on the basis of the everyday experience accessible to every person [i.e. the miraculous aspect of Scripture, and modern reports of miracles — regardless of claimed attestation — are dismissed as essentially impossible to verify and/or as merely “popular religious drivel”] . . . . . Due to the presuppositions that are adopted, critical reason loses sight of the fact that the Lord, our God, the Almighty, reigns. [Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), pp. 83 – 88 as excerpted.]
There is nothing in historical-critical theology that has not already made its appearance in philosophy. Bacon (1561 – 1626), Hobbes (1588 – 1679), Descartes (1596 – 1650), and Hume (1711 – 1776) laid the foundations: inductive thought as the only source of knowledge; denial of revelation; monistic worldview; separation of faith and reason; doubt as the foundation of knowledge. Hobbes and Hume established a thoroughgoing criticism of miracles; Spinoza (1632 – 1677) also helped lay the basis for biblical criticism of both Old and New Testaments. Lessing (1729 – 1781) invented the synoptic problem. Kant’s (1724 – 1804) critique of reason became the basic norm for historical-critical theology. Hegel (1770 – 1831) furnished the means for the process of demythologizing that Rudolph Bultmann (1884 – 1976) would effectively implement a century later – after the way had been prepared by Martin Kähler (1835 – 1912).
Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) . . . reduced faith to a leap that left rationality behind. He cemented the separation of faith and reason and laid the groundwork for theology’s departure from biblical moorings . . . . by writing such criticism off as benign . . . .
Heidegger (1889 – 1976) laid the groundwork for reducing Christian faith to a possibility of self-understanding; he also had considerable influence on Bultmann’s theology. From Karl Marx . . . came theology of hope, theology of revolution, theology of liberation. [Biblical Criticism on Trial (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2001), pp. 178 – 9.]
Another text has haunted me for months as I have pondered the path of our all too patently willfully perverse civilisation:
1 John 2:15 Do not love the world [of sin that opposes God and His precepts], nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust and sensual craving of the flesh and the lust and longing of the eyes and the boastful pride of life [pretentious confidence in one’s resources or in the stability of earthly things]—these do not come from the Father, but are from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and with it its lusts [the shameful pursuits and ungodly longings]; but the one who does the will of God and carries out His purposes lives forever.
18 Children, it is the last hour [the end of this age]; and just as you heard that the antichrist is coming [the one who will oppose Christ and attempt to replace Him], even now many antichrists (false teachers) have appeared, which confirms our belief that it is the last hour.
19 They went out from us [seeming at first to be Christians], but they were not really of us [because they were not truly born again and spiritually transformed]; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out [teaching false doctrine], so that it would be clearly shown that none of them are of us.
20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One [you have been set apart, specially gifted and prepared by the Holy Spirit], and all of you know [the truth because He teaches us, illuminates our minds, and guards us from error]. 21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie [nothing false, no deception] is of the truth.
22 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed)?
This is the antichrist [the enemy and antagonist of Christ], the one who denies and consistently refuses to acknowledge the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies and repudiates the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses and acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
24 As for you, let that remain in you [keeping in your hearts that message of salvation] which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you too will remain in the Son and in the Father [forever].
25 This is the promise which He Himself promised us—eternal life.
26 These things I have written to you with reference to those who are trying to deceive you [seducing you and leading you away from the truth and sound doctrine]. 27 As for you, the anointing [the special gift, the preparation] which you received from Him remains [permanently] in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you. But just as His anointing teaches you [giving you insight through the presence of the Holy Spirit] about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as His anointing has taught you, [c]you must remain in Him [being rooted in Him, knit to Him]. [AMP]
In the end, that is the diagnosis, and the answer to the spirit of our age.>>
Now, why should we reject these diagnostic notes, given something like this from Plato 2350+ years past in The Laws, Bk X:
247, >>Plato, on the warping of the moral compass and where it leads a community i/l/o the collapse of Athens:
Ath [in The Laws, Bk X 2,350+ 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].>>
But isn’t all this just an excuse to dress up right-wing fundy theocratic Christofascist totalitarianism in a cheap tuxedo?
Of Lemmings, marches of folly and cliffs of self-falsifying absurdity . . .
FFT7: But, isn’t the whole exercise of a pretended ID science an attempt to dress up dubious religion in scientific clothes, with intent to impose onward some sort of right-wing Christofascist theocratic tyranny that for instance robs women of their “rights” to their own bodies — and maybe would gaol them for even a miscarriage? Etc?
I am of course outlining a summary of trends of strawman caricature argument commonly encountered over the years.
A serious-minded glance above will rapidly demonstrate that the main discussion I have made so far under the FFT theme, has been PHILOSOPHICAL, not theological, first and foremost setting the worldviews comparative difficulties context for discussion. It is in that context that I then proceeded to show why evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow travellers have been tried and found wanting as inherently incoherent, self-falsifying, necessarily false views. They cannot get us to a responsibly, rationally free, morally governed, warranting, knowing mind. So they fail the test of our being able to have a rationally guided discussion.
It will be quite evident above, that active objectors and those lurking from the penumbra of attack sites, have no real answer to this. That’s not new, I have seen that for years at UD and for decades elsewhere. Before me, the point traces back to the likes of Plantinga, C S Lewis and even leading evolutionary theorist J B S Haldane.
He aptly says:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
I invite the reasonable onlooker to scan above and see for himself, if there is a cogent answer forthcoming from the usual objectors or their backers across the Internet.
The truth will be evident, there is no non-incoherent evolutionary materialistic account of mindedness.
As for the associated amorality, radical relativism and reduction to nihilistic might and manipulation make ‘truth’ ‘right’ etc, that unanswered problem has been on record for 2350+ years, from Plato’s reflections i/l/o the collapse of Athens. If you want to see an example of the sort of misleadership that that toxic brew spews up, try Alcibiades as case study no. 1.
Resemblance to recent history is no coincidence, try out his parable of the mutinous ship of state.
Look above, to see if you can find a serious-minded grappling with such momentous issues and their implications. Try out the penumbra of attack sites. You will soon see why I have long been concerned about a civilisation-level march of ruinous folly that manipulates the public and democratic institutions only to lead us over the cliff. Luke’s real-world ship of state microcosm in Ac 27 should — should! — give us pause.
As one simple example I note that the right to life is the first, foremost, gateway right and so a civilisation that systematically dehumanises its posterity in the womb and warps medicine, nursing, pharmacy, law, law enforcement, government, education, media and more to promote and protect the holocaust of 800+ millions in 40+ years (and mounting up at a million per week now), is corrupting its soul through blood guilt, is utterly warping conscience to do so, and is wrecking the ability to even simply think straight and live by the truth and the right. It is setting itself up to be a plague upon the earth that morally taints the land, which will vomit us out.
If we do not repent of our bloody, soul-wrecking folly as a civilisation, we will ruin ourselves. And, whatever emerges from the bloody chaos and dark age to follow, will not see freedom as an important value, as liberty turned to libertinism and wicked, blood-guilty licence.
Yes, I am out and out saying we have become the enemies of sustainable liberty under just law that duly balances rights, freedoms and responsibilities.
If you want a personal motive, there it is. I come from a nation that wrecked its prospects for generations through irresponsible, wicked misleadership, agit prop, media shadow shows and blood shed. That includes a murdered auntie.
I know the hard way, that the lessons of sound history wee bought with blood and tears. Those who refuse to heed them doom themselves to pay the same coin over and over again in their futile folly.
(I have said as much, many times, but no. Those hell-bent on folly have to project garish caricatures unto those who dare stand athwart the path heading over the cliff and cry out, no.)
Anyway, the reader will simply not find a sober-minded response to such concerns.
After this, I set about a sounder foundation, several days ago now, which was of course studiously ignored. This was elaborated through pondering what sort of world has to be here for there to be creatures like us, then followed up.
All, studiously ignored in a rush to set up and knock over conveniently loaded straw men.
Let me clip key points from the last, FFT6C:
It is worth noting the unresponsiveness to 219 and 178 above, especially at the points where objectors were directly invited to put up alternatives.
We can take it to the bank that UD is obsessively monitored by denizens of a penumbra of hostile sites. Denizens, more than willing to pounce when they see opportunity.
In short, the above blanks left unanswered speak to yet another hovering ghost or three in the room.
Here, first, the point that there is no necessary appeal to design inferences and debates to build a case for ethical theism adequate to ground commitment to such.
Second, that the atheistical objectors and their fellow travellers have no cogent answer to the need for a necessary being root to reality, nor to the point that the God of ethical theism is a serious candidate to be such (by utter contrast with the cartoonish flying spaghetti monster etc), nor to the onward point that such a serious candidate will be either ontologically impossible [as a square circle is impossible] or else will be actual.
Third, they have no cogent answer to the significance of the point that just to have a real discussion, we must implicitly accept that we are responsible, reasonable, significantly free and intelligent beings under moral government. Not least, conscience is the compass within pointing to the truth, the right and our duties of care towards such. Undermining this dimension of conscious mindedness by implying it is delusional lets grand delusion loose in our minds, ending in shipwreck.
So, we can see that the evo mat scientism picture of the world falls apart, and that there is no need to go out of our way to accommodate it. It is self-referentially incoherent and so self-falsifying.
Nor, should we yield to the trend to corrupt the concept, truth. (That, too, is part of the benumbing and warping of conscience, as say Orwell brought out so forcefully in his 1984.)
The astute onlooker will also note that we have had a worldviews discussion, not one pivoting on parsing Bible texts . . .
It will then be no surprise to see that the grounding of ethical theism as a responsible worldview (by utter contrast with the radically self-falsifying and amoral evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow travellers) does not turn on design inferences on empirical signs such as FSCO/I.
Evo mat scientism and fellow travellers are utterly incompatible with the responsible, rational freedom required to have a serious, fact and logic guided discussion seeking understanding of the truth. It rules itself out so soon as we must have a serious discussion.
We then address on comparative difficulties, how can we have a world with beings such as we are.
That takes us through the IS-OUGHT gap to issues of being and non-being and rootedness of a world with moral government. Which, repeat, is a condition of serious discussion.
That points to the only serious candidate for such a root, after centuries of debate. Candidate X was duly laid out, and the open invitation was given to put forth a comparable candidate Y that does not instantly collapse.
Silence.
Silence, for good reason: something like the flying spaghetti monster is simply not serious, never mind its appallingly common rhetorical use by those who should know a lot better.
Then, a second invitation to comparative difficulties discussion was given: part of X’s bill of requisites is necessary being. A serious candidate NB either is impossible (as a square circle is impossible) or it is actual.
The challenge was given, break X’s candidacy.
Silence, again.
So — as X = the inherently good creator God of ethical theism, a necessary and maximally great being worthy of loyalty and the reasonable, responsible service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature — it is clear that there is a very good warrant to adhere to ethical theism as a worldview.
Without even engaging design theory debates.
A point that needed to be put up on the table and warranted.
Which, it has.
That’s why at 220 and henceforth, I could freely write:
you will see the stage of argument in FFT6B just above. I wonder what our well-informed skeptical interlocutors will put up as alternatives? Especially, noting that THERE IS NO DESIGN INFERENCE in the argument to date, i.e. the design inference as such is demonstrably not an inherent, inextricable part of an argument to God as root of reality. Where, note, the case I am arguing here is not based in Scripture though it is compatible with it — truths will be compatible the one with the other. And of course, contrary to the talking points I heard today, the God of ethical theism is not automatically the devil, the author of evils and confusions.
Why then has there been such a hot debate over design, and why has it been laced with accusations about creationism in a cheap tuxedo and the like?
Simple: evolutionary materialistic scientism, from the outset in modern times [this is demonstrable historic fact], has tried to come up with a designer substitute that would plausibly put the creator-God out of a job. The idea is that if the world of life and onward the physical cosmos can be explained on naturalistic grounds, the perception of design can be dismissed while wearing the holy lab coat, and belief in God can eventually be made to seem to be the resort of the ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.
That rhetorical stratagem has worked and has become institutionalised.
But at a terrible price.
First, it is ill-founded and credibly false, erecting falsity as the yardstick for judging truth. Where, science first and foremost must seek to discover the empirically grounded truth about our world.
Ill-founded, as there are credible, empirically warranted signs of design, which are copiously found in the world of life and in the structure of the cosmos.
Design theory is the empirically and analytically grounded scientific investigation of such signs, which in fact are not too hard to find. Start with the algorithmically functional text in DNA and the execution machinery of the cell that puts it to work. (This points to OOL and OO body plans. Design is evident in the tree of life from the roots up.)
Likewise, the corruption of science from definitions and outlines of its methods on up makes blatant falsity into the yardstick to judge truth by. Truth cannot pass the test of agreement with relevant falsity, and so the ideological imposition of evolutionary materialistic scientism inherently corrupts a pivotal institution of our civilisation.
So, those who hope to build a sound future will be found on the side of needed reformation of tainted science.
In that context, freed science can then return to its true path.
Such is being ruthlessly resisted because it threatens entrenched worldviews and power interests in many institutions. But, the only way to defend institutionalised and fairly obvious falsity is by means that cannot stand the cold light of truth, facts and logic. That is why we find the distortions, strawman tactics, stalking, stereotyping and scapegoating.
All of which are utterly corrosive to liberty, not just academic freedom.
And so, the time has come to find where one stands, why, even as our civilisation descends into chaos, confusion, folly, bizarre agendas and outright blood guilt all around us.
We stand at kairos.>>
We are at kairos, in the face of a civilisation hell-bent on a march of folly. It is time to think again, soberly. END
Comments
CR:
@KF
Unanswered from a previous thread.
I'm shocked.Armand Jacks
April 20, 2017
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CR:
@KF
Unanswered from a previous thread.
I'm shocked.Armand Jacks
April 20, 2017
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@KF
Also unanswered from another thread..
Again, even if we assume we are somehow “under moral governance”, for the sake of argument, it’s unclear how this helps you in practice. When actually faced with a concrete moral problem, how have identified what part of your conscious is from this moral governance? How do you know you have interpreted it correctly in your current situation? You use human reasoning and criticism, that’s how. It always comes first.
The parable of the ship pilot is an argument for why the philosopher-king should rule. I’m suggesting that’s the wrong question. All of our ideas start out containing errors because they start out as guesses. So, we should setup institutions that make it easy to remove bad ideas without violence. The argument that things will always become corrupt is based on the idea that we started out with some perfect knowledge in the first place. We never truly discover knowledge, we just “remember it”, because it was always there in some perfect form in the first place. That’s a philosophical view of knowledge, including moral knowledge. And that ignores the problem of having to identify and interpret knowledge. Even if you could somehow identify it was God that spoke to you, you’d need to figure out what he meant by that in the context of your specific moral problem. Directly revealing the truth into your brain using divine means leads to the the question of distinguishing what God divinely revealed from your own ideas. Nothing in your experience of that tells you which is which. Many people disagree about what God supposedly reveals to them in ways that are mutually exclusive, so some of them are mistaken. Again, human reasoning an criticism always comes first.
The problem of society becoming corrupt when it wasn’t before assumes that morality started out in some perfect state from which can only degrade. I’m suggesting that’s immoral because it implies that original state cannot be improved upon. It denies our ability to correct errors and make progress because it is immune to criticism. From this principle of criticism, we can get to approximations of moral truth, such as the immorality of slavery, torturing children, etc.
Note, I’m not saying we do not face a problem. Problems are inevitable, but solvable. By presenting a false dichotomy between an infallible foundation and nihilism you are promoting the latter. You are holding morality hostage unless we accept your philosophical view of knowledge.
From the podcast I referenced earlier…
Well, I see human history as a long period of complete failure—failure, that is, to make any progress. Now, our species has existed for (depending on where you count it from) maybe 50,000 years, maybe 100,000 to 200,000 years. But anyway, the vast majority of that time, people were alive, they were thinking, they were suffering, they wanted things. But nothing ever improved. The improvements that did happen happened so slowly that geologists can’t distinguish the difference between artifacts from one era to another with a resolution of 10,000 years. So from the point of view of a human lifetime, nothing ever improved, with generation upon generation upon generation of suffering and stasis.
Then there was slow improvement, and then more-rapid improvement. Then there were several attempts to institutionalize a tradition of criticism, which I think is the key to rapid progress in the sense that we think of it: progress discernible on the timescale of a human lifetime, and also error correction so that regression is less likely. That happened several times and failed every time except once—in the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.
So you ask what worries me. What worries me is that the inheritors of that little bit of solitary progress are only a small proportion of the population of the world today.
It’s the culture or civilization that we call the West. Only the West really has a tradition of criticism, a bit institutionalized. And this has manifested itself in various problems, including the problem of failed cultures that see their failure writ large by comparison with the West, and therefore want to do something about this that doesn’t involve creativity. That is very, very dangerous. Then there’s the fact that in the West, what it takes to maintain our civilization is not widely known.
In fact, as you’ve also said, the prevailing view among people in the West, including very educated people, is a picture of the relationship between knowledge, and progress, and civilization, and values that’s just wrong in so many different ways. So although the institutions of our culture are so amazingly good that they have been able to manage stability in the face of rapid change for hundreds of years, the knowledge of what it takes to keep civilization stable in the face of rapidly increasing knowledge is not very widespread.
In fact, severe misconceptions about several aspects of it are common among political leaders, educated people, and society at large. We’re like people on a huge, well-designed submarine, which has all sorts of lifesaving devices built in, who don’t know they’re in a submarine. They think they’re in a motorboat, and they’re going to open all the hatches because they want to have a nicer view.
critical rationalist
April 20, 2017
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@KF
Unanswered from a previous thread…
[CR], I did not arbitrarily pick distinct identity from a field of candidates. The point is this is tied to a triple cluster self evident truth and grounds both communication and reasoning.
Actually, I said deciding that some ideas are immune from criticism, while others are not, is arbitrary. This is implied in the dichotomy of basic (self evident) beliefs that can play the role of a foundation for non-basic beliefs. However, it’s not arbitrary if we tentatively adopt hard to vary explanations that we currently have no good criticism of.
Specifically, when I suggested that all ideas are subject to criticism, why did you selected identity as an example of a supposedly self-evident truth, as opposed to other possible candidates? It was an idea you tried to criticize, but came back with none. If it was immune to criticism, you would have no reason to have selected it as an example as opposed to other ideas. The fact that identity is a useful idea that plays a hard to vary role in all of our current, best explanations, including communication, is a criticism to the idea that the idea of identity is itself wrong. IOW, this is just more criticism.
Again, not having a good criticism of an idea not the same as assuming it is immune to criticism, which is what is necessary to be a foundation of knowledge that plays a unilateral role.
But then, in our time, we have not been taught the significance of SETs, and may even have been taught to despise and dismiss them; e.g. the oh quantum objection that fails to reckon with how the objectors and the developers of the quantum theory had to implicitly rely on distinct identity starting with the proverbial scratch-marks on chalk boards; cf. here in the UD WACs. More sawing off of branches on which we must all sit. KF
Pointing out there are other epistemologies that lack the problems of foundationalism is the opposite of being ignorant or dogmatically predisposed to rejecting it. Nor do I think they are unimportant.
IOW, I’m still waiting for you to show how variation and criticism, without a foundation, is incompatible with what you call self-evident truths. It’s not that I think they are unimportant, but since they are not actually immune to criticism, they cannot be a foundation in the sense that you are implying.
critical rationalist
April 20, 2017
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KF:
AJ, it is now too late for you. You kept up the reprobate rhetorical patter5n one time too many. This is just a notice. KF
KF, all I have done is ask you to answer a simple question or prove the claim you have made that you have already answered it. You and I, and all onlookers, know that you can't do the latter. If the reputation of a liar is one that you are comfortable with, that is your choice. Alternately you could simply take the effort to actually answer the question.
If we assume that there is no world-root IS to ground OUGHT, what do you think the resulting world would look like?
For the life of me, I can't fathom why you would refuse to answer this question, and lie about answering it. But, it is your reputation. Not mine.Armand Jacks
April 20, 2017
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AJ, it is now too late for you. You kept up the reprobate rhetorical patter5n one time too many. This is just a notice. KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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KF:
AJ, unfortunately, you are now showing a habitual rhetorical pattern of speaking in disregard to truth in hope that what you say or suggest will be taken as true.
KF, unfortunately, you are now showing a habitual rhetorical pattern of claiming to have answered questions that it is patently obvious you did not answer. And in the AJ thread you repeated the lie stated in the OP that I claimed to have a knock down refutation of ID. When called on this you refused to acknowledge your error. A lie of ommision. These are examples of you speaking with disregard to the truth (lying) that anyone can confirm.
You can prove me wrong by simply linking to the comment that answered my very simple question. Or linking to the comment where you admit that I never claimed to have a knock down refutation of ID.
Let's try to start again and see if you have any shred of honesty. If we assume that there is no world-level IS to ground OUGHT, what would the resulting world look like? I am looking for your opinion, not clips of Plato. Your opinion.
Your response to this will be very informative. My gut feeling is that you will avoid the question and delete this comment. Possibly request that I be banned. But I am an optimist. I would like to think that you are basically honest and will respond accordingly. Fingers crossed.Armand Jacks
April 20, 2017
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BO'H: We inescapably live in a morally governed world so the relevant matter is that the question implies that such a moral sense is delusional, leading to setting grand delusion loose and refuting itself. I have already pointed out that moral government influences not only social behaviour but even reasoning through the sense of urgency towards truth and right, so undermining such by promoting amorality would promote marches of ruinous, bloody folly. And overnight, someone else gave a satirical illustration of such. Further to these, from Plato on we have historical examples of what happens when cultures fall under amoral influence: nihilism, domineering ruthless factions, chaos, tyranny driven by might and manipulation make right, mass murder. The past 100 years is especially horrific in this regard, with a toll in excess of 100 millions. What I cannot imagine is that any reasonably informed person is ignorant of the bloody horror of the past century. But then, we here are dealing with one who has resorted to dubious rhetorical devices in the face of the worst -- and ongoing -- mass slaughter of all. I can only conclude at this point, that we are seeing the principle of the reprobate mind at work, with pretty grim implications. KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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AJ, unfortunately, you are now showing a habitual rhetorical pattern of speaking in disregard to truth in hope that what you say or suggest will be taken as true. For multiple threads and topics you have taken to pretending that cogent answers to your challenges have not been given, sometimes from multiple directions. You have indulged the same above, where it cannot be reasonably inferred that you are so lacking in understanding that you don't realise what has been said from the OP on or in direct answer. This suggests that you are exhibiting exactly the pattern of the principle of reprobation that, say Plato pointed to as the consequence of adhering to or being influenced by evolutionary materialism (and its fellow travellers). I think you need to consider your ways and do a lot better. KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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Bob O'H:
AJ – I hope he’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but I think what kf is implying is that such a world is so impossible that he can’t even visualise what it would look like.
That is possible but I think that it is more likely that he refuses to answer because the logical conclusion of a world without a world-root IS would be similar to what we see around us. But, since KF is not willing to actually discuss this, what is your opinion? If their is no world-root IS, what do you think the world would look like?Armand Jacks
April 20, 2017
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AJ - I hope he'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what kf is implying is that such a world is so impossible that he can't even visualise what it would look like. So you're asking one of those questions that can't be answered because (in kf's view - if I have understood it correctly) is assumes something impossible.
I'll leave it to you two to discuss whether such a world is impossible to imagine. :-)Bob O'H
April 20, 2017
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KF:
AJ, long since repeatedly answered, both in the OP and the thread above. There is no world where we are not governed by OUGHT, and the IS and OUGHT are and must be fused at world root level.
That is not what I asked. Here it is again:
If we assume that there is no world-root IS to ground OUGHT, what type of world would you expect us to live in?
Again. It is a very simple question. I didn't ask you if there was a world that not grounded by OUGHT. I asked you what a world without a world-root IS would look like. If you are not willing to have an honest discussion, please say so. Don't dance around and lie about answering a question that all observers can see has not been answered.Armand Jacks
April 20, 2017
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CR, I really have to go, you have projected and knocked over a strawman, unfortunately as usual. I just note to you that knowledge is best understood as warranted, credibly true (and so also reliable) belief; leaving off know-how which brings in the practical side. I suggest you take time to work through the just above linked. KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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AJ, long since repeatedly answered, both in the OP and the thread above. There is no world where we are not governed by OUGHT, and the IS and OUGHT are and must be fused at world root level. There are many worldviews that try to imply that such a root is not there but inevitably end in implying grand delusion, revealing themselves to be self-referentially incoherent and self-falsifying. Among these views is evolutionary materialist scientism, and it has a flock of fellow travellers in the same boat. As a rule, nothing that implies that any major aspect of conscious mindedness is generally delusional will rise above self-refutation. This also exttends to the computational substrate view of mindedness, which fails to understand the vast difference between blind chance and mechanical necessity driving cause-effect, GIGO-constrained blind chains, and rationally aware ground-consequent contemplation informed by the inner conviction of duty to truth and right. An in a nutshell, your rhetorical trick of pretending you have not been answered like a stuck record in the teeth of repeated adequate reply is hereby called out for what it is. KF
PS: For those wanting the fuller response cf here on, and yes I start from what a worldview is: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.com/2010/11/unit-2-gospel-on-mars-hill-foundations.html#u2_bld_wvu notice the in-context discussion here: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.com/2010/11/unit-2-gospel-on-mars-hill-foundations.html#mrl_pltcvkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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WJM, I hear you, though I think there is more to the issue: HISTORY. Readily accessible history tells us why C20 was marked by holocaust after holocaust, a pattern that continues. That should be a warning-sign. Yes, there has been a lot of agit-prop, backed up by Plato's Cave shadow-show games under false colour of being education and news or allegedly informed commentary. Yesterday, I saw another random snippet of one of the major Cable stations and shook my head, they aren't even pretending to playing it straight anymore, it's dirty spin tactics and even worse gaslighting in the teeth of patent reality all the way now. (And yes, I'm adding more to that other thread on that, still -- I lived through a mini civil war and know all too well where this sort of playing with fire can end up.) But that in itself should be a wake-up call, if someone is even minimally responsive to the voice of conscience prompting to truth, fairness, the right. But then, the other day in our local library I had quite a conversation with a young man from here who was in the US and has been steeped in the "my truth" subjectivist-relativist myth. The thing is, truth accurately describes reality and sooner or later daylight opens up between error and reality. The challenge, then, becomes how we respond. And in turn that is why world-roots analysis on comparative difficulties is necessarily such a big part of the job UD faces. I go so far as to say that the ideological monkey is riding on the back of science and is blinding and deafening it to the evidence that is increasingly there for all with eyes open to see and ears unstopped to hear. Okay, gotta get moving fast to deal with RW issues. KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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@KF
This is a straw man as it assumes that knowledge is specific spheres comes from authoritative sources and random chance isn’t an authoritative source.
From a comment on another thread.
When I ask with the origin of that knowledge in organisms. I’m looking for an explanation for how intelligence results in a designer possessing it that knowledge. What is that explanation?
Specifically I’m looking for criticism along the lines of “The explanation for that knowledge is X, Y and Z. However, evolution doesn’t fit that explanation.” This is in contrast to an appeal to induction by saying “every time we’ve experienced knowledge, it has been accompanied by intelligent agents.” and since the future (and distant past) resembles the (recent) past, the designer of organisms was an intelligent agent.
But the future is unlike the past in a vast number of ways. It’s our explanations of how the world works that indicates what we will experience. For example, if our long chain of independently obtained explanations for how our sun works indicated it would suddenly grow cold when its fuel supply is exhausted and that will occur in roughly 4.6 billon billion years after it was formed, we wouldn’t expect the sun to rise tomorrow despite having experienced it rising every day for the entirety of human existence.
In the absence of such an explanation, it’s unclear how you can say a designer is the best explanation for that knowledge. Not to mention that a designer merely being an authoritative source of knowledge is a bad explanation.
However, I can see why a theists wouldn’t find that explanation problematic as theism is based on the philosophical idea that knowledge in specific spheres comes from God, who is an authoritative source. As does empiricism, which says that knowledge comes from observations. These two views simply exchange one authoritative source for another.
“Atoms or random chance isn’t an authoritative source of knowledge” is a bad criticism because it’s applicable to everything. An authoritative source of knowledge has no explanation. It “just was” complete with that knowledge. ID’s designer is abstract and has no such explanation. It is capable of designing things by nature of having the vague property of “design”, which is basically a tautology. At best, this is the Aristotelianism in the sense of saying fire has the property of dryness.
On the other hand, I’m saying that the explanation for how human designers create the knowledge they posses is variation and criticism. They create both explanatory and non-explanatory knowledge. Evolution does fit this explanation, in that the non-explanatory knowledge in genes is created by variation and selection. Both fall under the universal explanation for the growth of knowledge.
IOW, the criticism that “blind chance”, calculators, etc. are not an authoritative sources of knowledge is a bad criticism because it’s applicable to everything. There are no authoritative sources of knowledge that merely choose things in an abstract sense. "It’s not magic", is not a good criticism.critical rationalist
April 20, 2017
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Our regular interlocutors are motivated by either ignorance, delusion or dishonesty. There are no other choices. Whichever it is, there is no evidence that our interlocutors are here to engage in honest debate or dialogue.
To enter into an honest debate one must be able to give honest arguments. An honest argument begins with premises which are, in some sense, either self-evidently true (as in mathematics,) probably true or at the very least plausibly true. In other words, your argument is a waste of everyone’s time unless there really is something or some things which are really true. That begins with the idea of truth itself. Notice the absurdity of the argument the Pomona students are making (see #10 above.) They are arguing that there is no “truth — ‘the Truth’ — “. But that is self-refuting, because their claim, there is no truth, is a truth claim-- a universal truth claim. You can’t even begin to talk rationally about something like universal human rights, as they are trying to do, until you recognize there are moral truths that are universal. Indeed, the idea of truth itself is universal-- it must be.
Please notice, the implications this has for atheism. If atheistic materialism/naturalism is “true”* then is does not provide any grounding for human rights. So our atheist interlocutors do not, indeed cannot, support human rights. And it does not matter whether they believe that or not, they cannot rational argue otherwise.
*Ironically atheists can’t even argue that.john_a_designer
April 20, 2017
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KF:
AJ, With all due respect, you side-stepped the answers already there in both the OP and my reply, including what I cited from Plato et al.
There was no answer in amongst that mass of verbiage. let me repeat the question again:
If we assume that there is no world-root IS to ground OUGHT, what type of world would you expect us to live in?
The answer should start with, "In my opinion, a world where there is no world-root IS to ground OUGHT would look like __________________".
The answer should not be more than a short paragraph in length. It is a simple question. It only needs a simple answer.Armand Jacks
April 20, 2017
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Honestly, I don't think they so much run away from it as they are functionally incapable of comprehending what the issues are. It seems to me they just cannot grasp the real concepts here. I think that AJ and RVB8 et al honestly believe they are responding to the issues brought to their attention.
I mean, if we interpret them charitably and assume they are being honest and earnest in their replies, then we must conclude that they just don't get it, and haven't been able to get it in all the time they've been here.
So, what to make of that, under a charitable interpretation? Either they are biological automatons as their views suggest and are simply responding as best they can according to limited programming with no capacity to conceptually understand anything, or they have made a decision to exist in denial which precludes the understanding of things that would undermine their chosen atheistic/materialist state of being.
If we assume the latter, it's really just up to them to choose to not be an atheist/materialist any more. I had to make that choice. You cannot prove or evidence or argue anyone out of what they have chosen to believe.William J Murray
April 20, 2017
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Pindi
Your jumping-on in the attempted pile-on is ill informed and only shows you did not read the comment properly before latching on to what you imagined finding a handy excuse to lash at this site, which on long track record you hate.
But, your jumping on and leap to attack UD is an occasion for challenging you to address serious worldviews issues that -- yes -- are connected to the ongoing imposition of evolutionary materialist scientism and fellow travellers on our civilisation. (Besides, are you commenting at the current Selensky thread? Did you have anything cogent to say at GP's recent threads?)
Let's roll the tape:
7
ronvanwegenApril 19, 2017 at 8:19 pm (Edit)
Armand Jacks may be onto something: that the world as it is might indicate that there is no IS grounding OUGHT. Frankly, Armand, I don’t care what you “think”. When I meet you I’m going to shoot you in the face. Welcome to your world! In your world that just “is”. [--> Notice, KF] If there are any who are shocked at that, again, I don’t care. Those of you living in the “ought” world experience one brain-chemical state. Those in the “is” world another. [--> see the direct echo of J B S Haldane and Sir Francis Crick, et al? What cogent answer do you have, Pindi et al? If you don't, the jump-on game only shows bad faith on your part. KF] Again, Armand Jacks, I don’t care. I’m going to shoot you in the face anyway. And so on and so forth. Excuse me, I now have to go teach my young daughter (she’s five and cute as a button!) that the world as it is is such that if someone called perhaps Armand Jacks for want of a better name shoots her in the face – tough. That’s just the way the world is. [--> See the Is-OUGHT issue being brought out? Do i have to spell it out even more? KF] What a horror you’re fighting for Armand. Turn away.
I think any fair-minded person would readily see that the closing remarks I just highlighted show plainly the intent: a satirical reductio, followed by a call to turn away.
That things were snatched out of context to divert the discussion suggests strongly that the point was made and there is no good reply, ditto the wider issue in the OP and thread.
All you are showing is the principle of the reprobate mind at work, confirming our concerns.
KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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ronvanwegan, ffs, go and have a cup of tea.
Wow. UD is supposedly the premier site of the "science" of intelligent design? What a cluster fuck.Pindi
April 20, 2017
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PPS: I cross-posted to the agit-prop thread, here: https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/the-problem-of-agit-prop-street-theatre/#comment-629736kairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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JAD, 10:
you can’t begin to make a moral argument unless it is based on moral TRUTH and that it is true that morality is really grounded in interpersonal moral obligation. It appears the Pomona students reject moral truth but still believe in some kind of interpersonal moral obligation. That is either hypocritical or absurd. Their beliefs and opinions are clearly based on passion not reason. When such idiotic thinking begins to spread through a democratic society it’s putting that society at risk. It will first lead to anarchy and then end up with tyranny or totalitarianism.
Prezactly.
And, that is the message of Plato in The Laws Bk X based on the collapse of Athens, and again in his parable of the Ship of State.
Both of which are in-thread above and both of which have been studiously ignored by the advocates of the party of amorality and radical relativism and/or subjectivism leading to might and manipulation make right nihilism.
We are dealing with the principle of the reprobate mind here and its refusal to see the cliff just ahead, even as we are being induced to march towards it in a march of folly.
KF
PS: Geller catches a key clip on the ongoing flash-point in Berkeley, here:
“‘As the violence escalated police in Berkeley stood down and retreated from the crowds,’ reporter Tim Pool tweeted. ‘I have never seen so few police at an event like this.’
“One observer claimed police “ran away,” despite several Trump rally attendees being attacked.
“Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer saw two officers at a patrol car, not engaged in protecting citizens from violence.
“‘Hey, how come you guys are hanging back?” he asked an officer standing in an open door of the car and another sat in the back seat.
“‘That would be a question for the chief of police,’ an officer sitting in the driver’s seat responded.
“‘You want a public statement, right?’ the standing officer asked the reporter.
“‘I would refer you to our public information officer.’
“‘Do they told you to hang back?’ Bauer said.
“‘As I said, I refer you to our public information officer,’ the cop responded.
“‘I’ve been watching all day people get beat up pretty bad and I haven’t seen you guys around much,’ Bauer said.
“‘Okay, and?’ the officer responded.
“Numerous videos show Trump supporters being beaten in the streets as police failed to keep the two sides apart.
“At one point, several black-clad agitators isolated a lone Trump supporter and pummeled him with fists and feet.
“Someone jumped in and clubbed him with a skateboard.”
Of course, this time around, the Trump supporters had their own toughs, who counter attacked, leading to the scenes in the various vids online. (Last time, the pro-Trump etc supporters were swarmed and beaten with no defence, with the Police on obvious stand down -- the toughs on the other side this time are the only real difference, and it sounds like these toughs were more experienced than the blackshirts, especially the woman tossing green glass bottles taken out by a punch "pulled" on realising it was a woman -- yes, 95 lb women have no business in brawls with 180 - 250 lb men with much more robust skeletal structures and the muscle mass to back it, never mind Hollywood fantasies that are creeping into even military doctrine.) I am continuing to follow up in my longstanding thread on this topic. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see the inconvenient truth playing out on the streets.kairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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BO'H: It is obviously a satirical summary of the implications of amorality let loose. I suggest that is the issue that needs to be soberly addressed instead of setting up a needless side track, oh, somebody is making threats. KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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ronvanwegen @ 7 -
When I meet you I’m going to shoot you in the face.
Can you just clarify - this is hyperbole, and not a death threat? I can see it being read both ways, so I think it might be wise to make sure.Bob O'H
April 20, 2017
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RVB8, kindly see the just above. The Alinsky tactic of personalising, strawmannising, stereotyping and denigrating or mocking fails. It is patent that we cannot escape being under moral-rational government with the direct import of responsible, rational freedom. Even your retort above implies that we are accountable before truth and right. Our challenge is, is this sense of how the world is and how we are wrong? If so, we are under the sort of grand delusion as several leading advocates of evo mat scientism have admitted against interest. (Do you really think they would be trying to make the best of a bad hand if they could find an alternative?) That grand delusion is reductio, so comparative difficulties comes to the fore by asking, what alternative worldview emerges, with what factual adequacy, coherence and explanatory power, if we instead take those first facts of conscious mindedness seriously? You have long had opportunity to ponder the answers and to come up with a better alternative. Surely, you have it, kindly let us know: _______ . KFkairosfocus
April 20, 2017
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AJ, With all due respect, you side-stepped the answers already there in both the OP and my reply, including what I cited from Plato et al. That is not a very hopeful beginning, perhaps we can start again by looking at what it means for the sense of our being under moral and rational government as responsibly and rationally free creatures to be regarded as fundamentally false, i.e. delusional. KF
PS: I will start by citing again, William B Provine as was already cited -- I here give a compressed version of the answer in the words of a well known advocate of evo mat scientism:
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . .
The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will [--> without responsible freedom, mind, reason and morality alike disintegrate into grand delusion, hence self-referential incoherence and self-refutation. But that does not make such fallacies any less effective in the hands of clever manipulators] . . . [1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address, U of Tenn -- and yes, that is significant i/l/o the Scopes Trial, 1925]
Similarly, the Nobel Prize winner, Crick:
. . . that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased: "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing. {The Astonishing Hypothesis, 1994. To this, Philip Johnson replied in Reason in the Balance, 1995, that Sir Francis should have therefore been willing to preface his works thusly: "I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and even the thoughts expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Johnson then acidly commented: “[t]he plausibility of materialistic determinism requires that an implicit exception be made for the theorist.”
Similarly, Alex Rosenberg:
Alex Rosenberg as he begins Ch 9 of his The Atheist’s Guide to Reality:
>> FOR SOLID EVOLUTIONARY REASONS, WE’VE BEEN tricked into looking at life from the inside. Without scientism, we look at life from the inside, from the first-person POV (OMG, you don’t know what a POV is?—a “point of view”). The first person is the subject, the audience, the viewer of subjective experience, the self in the mind.
Scientism shows that the first-person POV is an illusion. [–> grand delusion is let loose in utter self referential incoherence] Even after scientism convinces us, we’ll continue to stick with the first person. But at least we’ll know that it’s another illusion of introspection and we’ll stop taking it seriously. We’ll give up all the answers to the persistent questions about free will, the self, the soul, and the meaning of life that the illusion generates [–> bye bye to responsible, rational freedom on these presuppositions].
The physical facts fix all the facts. [--> asserts materialism, leading to . . . ] The mind is the brain. It has to be physical and it can’t be anything else, since thinking, feeling, and perceiving are physical process—in particular, input/output processes—going on in the brain.We [–> at this point, what "we," apart from "we delusions"?] can be sure of a great deal about how the brain works because the physical facts fix all the facts about the brain. The fact that the mind is the brain guarantees that there is no free will. It rules out any purposes or designs organizing our actions or our lives [–> thus rational thought and responsible freedom]. It excludes the very possibility of enduring persons, selves, or souls that exist after death or for that matter while we live.>>
And again:
Ever since Newton physics has ruled out purposes in the physical realm. If the physical facts fix all the facts, however, then in doing so, it rules out purposes altogether, in biology, in human affairs, and in human thought-processes. [--> Note, this is by implication of evolutionary materialistic scientism] Showing how it could do so was a tall order. Until Darwin came along things looked pretty good for Kant’s pithy observation that there never would be a Newton for the blade of grass—that physics could not explain living things, human or otherwise, because it couldn’t invoke purpose. But the process that Darwin discovered–random, or rather blind variation, and natural selection, or rather passive environmental filtration–does all the work of explaining the means/ends economy of biological nature that shouts out ‘purpose’ or ‘design’ at us. What Darwin showed was that all of the beautiful suitability of living things to their environment, every case of fit between organism and niche, and all of the intricate meshing of parts into wholes, is just the result of blind causal processes. It’s all just the foresightless play of fermions and bosons producing, in us conspiracy-theorists, the illusion of purpose. Of course, that is no surprise to scientism; if physics fixes all the facts, it could not have turned out any other way. In fact, the mechanism Darwin discovered for building adaptations is the only game in town. [from: "The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality"
by Alex Rosenberg here at Wayback Machine. For responses at length cf Feser here on ]
With, Ruse and Wilson:
The time has come to take seriously the fact [--> This is a gross error at the outset, as macro-evolution is a theory (an explanation) about the unobserved past of origins and so cannot be a fact on the level of the observed roundness of the earth or the orbiting of planets around the sun etc.] that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day . . . We must think again especially about our so-called ‘ethical principles.’ The question is not whether biology—specifically, our evolution—is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will … In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding… Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place.
[ --> And everything instantly falls apart as this would set grand delusion loose in our mental lives. Even logical reasoning is guided by the conscience-driven urge to truth, right and justice, so once such a grand delusion is let loose it undermines the general credibility of conscious mindedness, setting up a cascade of shadow-show worlds. The skeptical spider has enmeshed himself in his own web. Thus, any such scheme should be set aside as self-refuting.]
[Michael Ruse & E. O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,” Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement, , ed. J. E. Hutchingson, Orlando, Fl.:Harcourt and Brace, 1991. (NB: Cf. a separate discussion on the grounding of worldviews and ethics here on, which includes a specific discussion of the grounding of ethics and goes on to Biblical theism; having first addressed the roots of the modern evolutionary materialist mindset and its pretensions to the mantle of science. Also cf. here on for Plato's warning in The Laws, Bk X, on social consequences of the rise of such a view as the philosophy of the avant garde in a community.]
--> These citations come from the horse's mouth and show clearly that you are not dealing with just a random opinion out there. Leading advocates of evo mat scientism have plainly, repeatedly laid out the consequences of that worldview and that it directly entails that responsible, rational freedom is a delusion. If there is no world-root IS capable of grounding OUGHT, man is dead.
--> That needs to be soberly faced and recognised for what it is, the expose of the utter incoherence of evo mat and by extension any other worldview that implies that responsible rational freedom under moral-rational government is a delusion. Reduction to absurdity by letting loose grand delusion in mindedness, indeed even argument such as is beginning to develop in this thread would collapse.
--> And, of course, the fact that when challenged to find an alternative ground for responsible, rational freedom instead you tried to shift the burden of argument to effectively demanding that I articulate what happens were there no world-root IS capable of grounding ought (never mind that had already been given), strongly suggests that you -- and by extension the circle of online objection that you could easily make reference to, even by Google etc search -- have no alternative to Candidate X as given. If you do, kindly give it: ____________ . Alternatively, perhaps you need to explain to us why we should not take Plato, Heine etc seriously, and why we should not take Provine, Crick, Rosenberg, Ruse and Wilson et al seriously, either: _______
--> I suspect, there will be no cogent answers; I suggest, instead, we need to start over again by asking ourselves, what sort of roots of the world are required for us to be able to recognise our responsible, rational freedom as being true to reality? (Cf the OP above.)kairosfocus
April 19, 2017
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RVB8:
Are you objecting to the notion of objective right and wrong? If so, the claimant's source shouldn't be at issue. If not, then why the gratuitous ad hominem?
we are evolved selfish beings, who upon rare occasions stumble upon goodness.
So, you do believe in objective right, but are pessimistic about human nature in general? Well, that goes along pretty well with Biblical teachings.LocalMinimum
April 19, 2017
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Recently student activists at Claremont Pamona College in California succeeded in shutting down a lecture by conservative author Heather Mac Donald. In a letter to the school’s president they wrote:
The idea that there is a single truth — ‘the Truth’ — is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain,” the students’ letter stated, according to The Claremont Independent. “This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny.”
The following article gives several more long excerpts from the letter:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markmeckler/2017/04/letter-shows-exactly-campus-radicals-think-free-speech/
Libertarian writer, Kat Timf observes that…
“Once you start trying to argue that it’s bad to encourage people to seek the truth, you have officially reached peak idiot. For one thing, admitting that you find valuing the truth to be offensive hardly helps your case when you’re literally trying to convince others that something is true.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446862/pomona-students-truth-myth-and-white-supremacy
Indeed, you can’t begin to make a moral argument unless it is based on moral TRUTH and that it is true that morality is really grounded in interpersonal moral obligation. It appears the Pomona students reject moral truth but still believe in some kind of interpersonal moral obligation. That is either hypocritical or absurd. Their beliefs and opinions are clearly based on passion not reason. When such idiotic thinking begins to spread through a democratic society it’s putting that society at risk. It will first lead to anarchy and then end up with tyranny or totalitarianism.john_a_designer
April 19, 2017
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Is this the old Kairos favourite of suggesting there is objective right, and wrong, or am I once again, hopelessly off topic? The objective right, of course being grounded in scripture, and not just any old scripture, but Biblical scripture, and specifically Jesus centred New Testament 'objectavism.
And just a piece of advice Kairos; when you write, "but to avoid making this utterly too long...", perhaps you should understand what those words mean.
And, I can answer AJ's question; Kairos expects the type of world which is ant-diluvian, a pre-fall world, a Garden of Eden world. All the while missing the point that we are evolved selfish beings, who upon rare occasions stumble upon goodness.rvb8
It is almost — almost — amusing but then quite sad to see how objectors to design theory play with logic and worldviews issues, then run away when the substantial issues are taken up.
FFT5: The implications of the familiar extraordinary.
In this thread, there are arguments [posted] that . . . as an observable phenomenon . . . show that we are capable of significant choice and reasoning, i.e. we are responsibly, rationally, significantly free, conscious, en-conscienced, morally governed, communicating creatures. (Indeed, those trying to object are operating on the implicit premise that we are urged by conscience toward the truth and the right; and if we were not, this world would descend into a dark, chaotic ruin in short order. It is a good thing that something urges us on to the truth and the right.)
Locke, in Sec 5 of his essay on human understanding (and yes, I add scriptural references i/l/o his cites and allusions), aptly comments:
All of that is in the context of rebuking a lazy, sneeringly supercilious selective hyperskepticism that will scorn more than adequate warrant for ethical theism, because it shuns the premise of moral government: accountability on plainly recognisable duty, before our Maker, Lord, Governor and utterly just Judge.
But, that is a bit quick off the mark.
There is no recognition of meaning, no perception, no purpose, just blind cause-effect chains externally arranged to yield the solution to certain differential equations. GIGO, and all that. Likewise, the old Pentium chip neither knew nor understood nor cared about the wired in errors that led to the early recall. And, a neural network is not in principle any different. (BTW this points to serious design inferences on the relevant hardware and software in bio-cybernetics systems, but that is a secondary point.)
The primary point has been highlighted by Reppert:
In short, a physicalist account of mindedness (much less, guidance by light of conscience) faces an ugly, impassable gulch.
In effect, rocks — even refined and carefully organised rocks — have no dreams; computation is not intentional contemplation.
At this point, evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers — and nope you cannot properly, conveniently open up rhetorical daylight between some vague agnosticism and full-blown evo mat to deflect this — face an impassable gulch.
One, that brings out what was already highlighted: mindedness, consciousness, reasoned inference and conscience’s compass-pointing alike are all reduced to grand delusion on evo mat premises.
Grand delusion would collapse responsible, rational freedom and so falls into irretrievable incoherence and absurdity. Thence, the necessary falsity Pearcey and others have pointed to.
But in reality, rational, responsible, conscience-compass bearing consciousness is our first undeniable empirical fact. The fact through which we perceive all others.
This is the familiar extraordinary phenomenon, the pivot on which the project of building a sound worldview turns. In effect, unless a worldview is compatible with our being responsible, reasonable, conscience-guided and significantly free beings, it cannot even sit to the table for a discussion of comparative difficulties. It is silenced by being inconsistent with rationality. It is patently, irretrievably absurd and necessarily false. (Evo mat and fellow traveller ideologies, I am looking straight at you.)>>