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
KF:
PS: Lest we forget or become distracted, Plato warned us in no uncertain terms 2350+ years ago:
How can we forget something that you repeat several times a weak. What was irrelevant the first time you mention it is equally as irrelevant the hundredth time.
What does this have to do about the possibility of envisioning a world where there is no way world-level IS to ground OUGHT?. And to avoid confusion, let's assume, as jdk has, that a god does exist but that he really doesn't give a damn one way or the other about humans. Maybe his "chosen people" are actually three toed sloths.Armand Jacks
April 23, 2017
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KF @ 117: "PS: Let me add, that we must never let secularist fantasisers forget that in the past 100 years, their would-be utopias and superman political messiahs cost over 100 million victims of democides..."
True indeed.Truth Will Set You Free
April 23, 2017
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KF:
PS: Let me add, that we must never let secularist fantasisers forget that in the past 100 years, their would-be utopias and superman political messiahs cost over 100 million victims of democides, that right now similar amoral fantasies have materially helped to cost 800+ million unborn their lives and rising at a million more per week.
Since you have brought up abortion on what you claim to be your thread, maybe you will finally answer a question that you repeatedly evaded previously.
If the early fetus has the same right to life as you and I, as you claim, why are you opposed to charging women who kill this life with planning and premeditation with murder? The same as we would do for any woman who kills their baby with premeditation.Armand Jacks
April 23, 2017
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BTW, notice how we see the implicit appeal to the government of OUGHT in many objections above intended to promote amorality: we are to be bound by the oughts they wish to impose willy-nilly and at whim; multiply that by power seized and sitting in charge of the Lubyankas, Checkists and Gulags as well as firing squads and see where that gets you, other than what Cuban dissidents report as going on all night in the early 1960's in Castro's Gulags: Viva Christo el Rey, BANG, repeat, repeat, repeat (until c 1963 they gagged those about to be murdered for the crime of wanting to be free in mind and conscience). That direct contradiction, that they cannot even sustain an argument without implying the binding nature of ought -- at least for those they wish to domineer over -- should underscore to us just how impossibly incoherent the world they want to fantasise is. And of course they never want to be accountable before the bloody, tyrannical, oppressive history that such fantasies have repeatedly led to. Just as Plato warned against long since. Until the objectors can show us how they get to trustworthy reason without responsible, rational freedom, we can set aside their fantasies as utterly fallacious and ill-informed destructive secularist utopianism. KFkairosfocus
April 23, 2017
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PS: Lest we forget or become distracted, Plato warned us in no uncertain terms 2350+ years ago:
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].
kairosfocus
April 23, 2017
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Mike:
“Expecting” and being outraged when people don’t comply with your expectations are two different issues.
No they aren't. People get outraged for any number of reasons. I personally think some of these are justified (based on my subjective morality) and others I don't. I suspect that your list and mine would be similar, but not identical.
And subjectively derived societies have all sorts of contradictory expectations, even within a given society.
Agreed. Like thinking that killing is immoral but the death penalty and war not being. But that really isn't supporting your opinion.
It isn’t laughable that you have expectations. My dog has expectations. What is laughable is that you would have any feelings of justification for outrage for any violation of your expectations or views.
Answered above.
And yet subjectivists often act as if there is really and truly some justification for their outrage above and beyond their personal subjective views.
I would argue that we all do at the time that we act. But when subjectivists sit back and think about it logically and rationally, they don't see a need to impose some mythical beast as an arbiter of morality.
At a very young age, all we think about is ourselves. If we were to be judged based on what is seen during the first year of our lives, we would be judged as an extremely selfish, self centred species that does not care about anything but ourselves. Where is that objective morality when we were very young.
As we get a little older, we realize that we are completely dependent on our parents for food and safety. We realize that it is in our best interests to keep them happy. Still completely selfish, but getting better.
And, as with anything, repetition becomes habit. We are indoctrinated through our parents, other adults, teachers, church leaders, peers, etc. This is supplemented with life experiences and our ability to predict the consequences of our actions. I still don't see any need for objective morality.Armand Jacks
April 23, 2017
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You are not addressing the topic at hand, kj. I am not discussing in any way " secularist utopian fantasies" or any of the other apocalyptic concerns of yours.
I will quit, and note that you have made no case whatsoever for the logical impossibility of the scenario I propose.jdk
April 23, 2017
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F/N: It seems that the secularist utopian fantasisers fail to understand that sustained reasoning requires responsible, rational freedom that draws insightful, ground-consequent inferences motivated and kept going by a commitment to truth and right. The sort of fantasy they dream of will simply not play out as they imagine. Computational substrates are non-rational entities, and a world in which morality is a grand delusion decisively undermines rationality. Going beyond that to an imagined world of blind programming not only raises the question of where the FSCO/I comes from, but runs right into the Haldane challenge they so studiously ignore:
"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. (NB: DI Fellow, Nancy Pearcey brings this right up to date (HT: ENV) in a current book, Finding Truth.)]
The proposed world is an impossible, incoherent non-being. and of course, the diversion to debate this with the irrational and agenda driven and trollish only helps to distract the overall thread from its much broader worldviews grounding focus. We need to draw the responsible, prudent conclusion as to where the radical secularist agendas we see reflected in these distractions would take our civilisation -- over the cliff -- and act in defence of a sound future before it is bloodily too late. Already our guilt is adding up at a million further victims per week, just on one front. When will we wake up? KFkairosfocus
April 23, 2017
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Heks:
Now, I think that maybe what you mean to say is something like ‘imagine a world in which the world-root IS does not ground any OUGHTs
But the original question was about there not being a world-root IS to ground OUGHT. That does not preclude a world-root IS for other purposes. I have been over this many times with KF. He knows exactly what I was asking, but refused to answer because of fear of the inconsistency of any follow-on arguments he could make.Armand Jacks
April 23, 2017
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JDK, we all know just how you plan to arrive at a world of utopian meatbots. I have pointed out that meatbots will not be -- for emphasis: CANnot be -- rational or responsible, and that a civilisation pivoting on such will be impossible to arrive at, period. We have already tried the experiment of elites with deadened consciences pursuing secularist utopias too many times in the past 250 years, to uniformly chaotic and bloody results. and that is in cases where the majority of ordinary people firmly believed in conscience-guided responsibility. It only takes a comparative handful to wreck a country, as my homeland learned to our enduring pain, loss and cost. Without stable moral governance rooted in the source of a world, you do not get rational responsibility, period, never mind the fantasies out there in science fiction. What you get is power elites living by what they can get away with in a brutal, ruthless power struggle, a Rom 1 chaos, a ship of mutinous fools chaos. And beyond lies the issue of getting to an ordered cosmos that facilitates life. Yes, it is all bound up in this, and my long considered evaluation is that such secularist utopian fantasies are incoherent impossible worlds made plausible by playing pick and choose consequences narrative games. Let's just say I once worked in a place I called Star Trek World -- the reality. It was ugly. KFkairosfocus
April 23, 2017
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117 is a distraction from the question at hand: logical possibility is the issue on the table.jdk
April 23, 2017
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PS: Let me add, that we must never let secularist fantasisers forget that in the past 100 years, their would-be utopias and superman political messiahs cost over 100 million victims of democides, that right now similar amoral fantasies have materially helped to cost 800+ million unborn their lives and rising at a million more per week. Right now, such utopianism has Venezuelans eating out of garbage cans and facing a rising tyranny, and has been turning the streets of Berkeley into chaos. Not to mention the idiocy playing out in North Korea, with nukes in play. We need to wake up before it is too late, the price tag on such utopianism is far too high in a nuclear age.kairosfocus
April 23, 2017
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I notice in 107 that kf does respond to the IS-OUGHT issue, but he is not understanding the scenario I am positing. He says, as is his wont, that "they do not realise that evolutionary materialistic scientism is in irretrievable self-referential incoherence."
But I am not talking about "evolutionary materialistic scientism".
I am saying that there could be – it is quite logically possible –
a) a supreme being, the root-level of what is, that created and maintains the universe with the physical structure that it has,
b) that as part of that, has instigated, or made possible, life as we know it, throughout the universe, with such things as genetics, increasing levels of consciousness, and ultimately the ability for some life-forms to think abstractly and thus investigate the world we live in, but
c) who takes no notice nor no interest in the particular actions of the life-forms that develop. It doesn't care what we do. There is IS, but there is no OUGHT.
This is a logical possibility. It is also not "evolutionary materialistic scientism."jdk
April 23, 2017
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JDK, you mere imagining and declaring do not convert incoherent impossibility into a possible world. You need to attend very carefully to what rational, insightful inference requires and how such is governed towards truth and right, then address also the issue that there IS a general perception and conviction of being under moral government. The implication of such being a grand delusion needs to be reckoned with. Also, the critical gap between a computational substrate as an essentially mechanical system and the freedom required for rational, insightful inference, as has been repeatedly highlighted. Likewise, the lessons of history when power circles of cultures went over to amoral and/or radically subjectivist and relativist ideologies should be reckoned with. And finally, the rational order of the cosmos and its fine tuning for C-chemistry aqueous medium life have to be reckoned with. The notion that there is a neighbouring world in which we have a cosmos like this and creatures who exhibit morally governed responsibility and rationality like we do but where such moral government [and therefore rationality!] are rooted in grand delusion, is a radical secularist ideological, utterly incoherent fantasy -- one often sustained by making a comparison of an idealised secularist utopia with a pretty jaundiced and unbalanced litany of the real and imagined sins of Christendom. Somehow, it does not dawn on such that honest, clear, accurate, logical thinking and civil, responsible behaviour are difficult to get on a widespread basis in a community and critically turn on the self discipline of conscientious behaviour. For one, so soon as grand delusion is let loose as a bull in a china shop, rational mindedness collapses into chaos. And more. KFkairosfocus
April 23, 2017
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daveS writes, "It’s also far from obvious, to some of us at least, that “the sort of world imagined by AJ in his questioning is an incoherent impossible world, not a credibly possible world”."
Yes, this is the current issue, not the other one brought back up in 107.jdk
April 23, 2017
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Well, if anyone is interested (doubtful), I invite them to check the tape for details.daveS
April 23, 2017
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DS, I won't revisit the matter here, too much on the table already. But it was quite clear that given temporal-causal succession of finite stages that to span the endless past to get here was and remains impossible. Recall, every past stage had to have once been the present and gave rise to a sucessor causally, thus stepwise succession. From the logic of stepwise increments such succession will never actually traverse a transfinite span, which requires endlessness. KFkairosfocus
April 23, 2017
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KF,
Likewise — and there have been several long exchanges on the involved logic of structure and quantity — an endless, beginningless quasi-temporal succession of stages to reach now implies traversing the transfinite in finite stage successive steps. This too will fail but it seems many cannot be brought to see the unachievable supertask involved.
The issue was that you invoked a premise, the truth of which is far from clear. Therefore the soundness of your argument, purported to show that the above fails, is in question.
It's also far from obvious, to some of us at least, that "the sort of world imagined by AJ in his questioning is an incoherent impossible world, not a credibly possible world".daveS
April 23, 2017
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HeKES writes,
Now, I think that maybe what you [AJ] mean to say is something like ‘imagine a world in which the world-root IS does not ground any OUGHTs and describe what that world would look like.’ This is a scenario that could be probed to see whether or not it is ultimately coherent and, if so, whether such a world would look anything like this world. That would be a scenario in which the world does not lack a world-root necessary being, but lacks any objective normative values and duties. These are two very different scenarios.
Yes, this is the scenario that I am saying is not incoherently impossible: in your words, one in "which the world does not lack a world-root necessary being, but lacks any objective normative values and duties."
And more broadly, one in which the world-root being takes no specific interest at all the actions of the life forms which it has instigated throughout the universe: that is, a supremely indifferent supreme being who is fully present in the IS of the universe, but has no interest in how it OUGHT to go within the physical, chemical, and biological limits and structures it has created and maintains.
I see no logical impossibility in this scenario.
To be clear, I'm not arguing for or against this as actually being the case. I am saying simply that it is a logical possibility that someone speculating about the root-level of being can't dismiss just on logical grounds.jdk
April 23, 2017
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to HeKS. I believe there were a few times where AJ said IS when he mean OUGHT. I also found this confusing, and took him to mean OUGHT.jdk
April 23, 2017
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mike1962 @106: well said. Superficial materialists like those here live in and act according to a philosophical worldview infrastructure entirely built by theists. Those that live in the USA live in a country where the laws and mores are founded upon and embedded deep in natural law theism. Taking all of that foundation for granted, they stand at the top of the tower they insist there is no need for the very foundation that holds them up.
They think that people can get along fine if they adopt the idea that morality is subjective - easy to say when you're living in a society built by those who believed in objective morality and inescapable consequences to immoral behavior, and a spiritual duty to do what is right regardless of the personal consequences.
Yes, AJ sits comfortably saying that he can expect others to behave according to a shared social contract because he has the luxury of living in a society embedded in the idea of objective morality for at least hundreds of years. Does he think this "shared social contract" will just continue on as more and more people abandon the idea of objective morality?
How many people does AJ and others think are willing to put their lives on the line to protect their rights and freedoms if those people believe rights and freedoms are just things people make up subjectively? How many people are willing to put their lives on the line to do what is right if what is right is just a matter of personal preference?William J Murray
April 23, 2017
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HeKS,
A world without beings is of course an incoherent concept, it is indeed not anarchy, it is utter nothing. Not, a quasi-space with a seething quantum foam, a genuine non-being. In general, were there ever utter nothing, as non-being has no causal capacity, such would forever obtain and no world would be possible or actual.
That objectors challenging us on imagination do not realise this already shows us that they have not thought this through in any seriously informed way. Never mind that indeed it has been seriously discussed here at UD quite a few times. Doubtless it was seen as so much irrelevant "word salads" or the like.
Such does not give us much confidence in the rest of what they imagine, for cause.
If a world now is, something always was, and we are looking at the cosmological form of the Agrippa Trilemma as was discussed here many times. A world where we see now N produced by temporally successive causal chain faces, was there infinite regress, a circle of cause, or a finitely remote origin:
a: Regress:
. . . . N-k, . . . N-2, N-1, N -->
b: Circle of cause:
{Circle, J --> K AND K --> J] . . . N-k, . . . N-2, N-1, N -->
c: World-root:
ROOT --> N-k, . . . N-2, N-1, N -->
Of course the observational evidence -- such as we have in a world where evidence forced cosmologists to accept a big bang ~ 14 BYA frame -- points to the last, but that is not all. Circularity of cause in which J causes K and K J with no further onward cause is absurd. Likewise -- and there have been several long exchanges on the involved logic of structure and quantity -- an endless, beginningless quasi-temporal succession of stages to reach now implies traversing the transfinite in finite stage successive steps. This too will fail but it seems many cannot be brought to see the unachievable supertask involved.
We face a need for a finitely remote beginning to the causally successive temporal order, and we face a need onward to have an adequate cause thereof, a necessary [and thus eternal!] being. To see that requires the patience to work through the logic of possible vs impossible and contingent vs necessary, world-framework being. That too, when it was discussed was doubtless thought to be irrelevant verbiage. Unfortunately those who think like that then wish to imagine unfettered by the underlying logical constraints and so will not accept that they are proposing incoherent frames.
Further to all of this, we notice -- as has been repeatedly pointed out but was doubtless dismissed by objectors -- how the objectors expect us to be regulated by force of OUGHT. That is their behaviour implies an expectation that moral government is real, e.g. we have duties of care to truth and right. (The alternative is we are in part dealing with the utterly reprobate and demonically cynical; though trollishness is clearly present, I think that has more to do with being entangled in indoctrination than the sort of wickedness just outlined.)
What the objectors refuse to do is to engage seriously the implications of such moral government being merely a subjective perception and/or a culturally induced perception. Namely, setting grand delusion loose on mindedness with the force of the proverbial bull in the china shop.
The resulting absurdity, they refuse to acknowledge, even as they cling to their indoctrination, and particularly the coat-tails of the Magisterium's holy lab coats. They do not realise that evolutionary materialistic scientism is in irretrievable self-referential incoherence and is usurping an authority it has no warrant for; with the so-called march for science yesterday an embarrassing case in point that plainly states that science is now held ideological captive and will only say what the captors instruct. Lewontin is proved shockingly right.
Going on, the evo mat picture leads to grand delusion, and of course attempts to ground mindedness in GIGO-driven computational substrates allegedly created and programmed by cumulative blind chance and mechanical necessity are not even wrong. Hopelessly wrong-headed. Simply trying to account for the required FSCO/I shows the utter failure of the ever more elaborate epicycles.
The alternative is obvious, take our conscious experience seriously as empirical fact no 1, the fact through which all other facts are accessed and understood. That leads to recognising that we are and must be responsibly rational, significantly free morally governed creatures who can actually reason with enough freedom to make insightful, rational inferences from grounds to their consequents and/or from accepted evidence to explanations they support, etc.
This is what, first, demands that moral government, oughtness, be properly rooted.
(We deal with people who are evidently not even aware of the reformer's paradox under radical, community driven relativism: if the majority automatically defines truth and right etc, the would-be reformer is necessarily in the wrong and promoting falsehood. Ironically, they see themselves as on a campaign of social justice and reform, not realising that they are showing themselves to be minions and useful dupes in somebody's cynical will to power nihilist game.)
Post Hume et al, that can only be at world-root level, cf his guillotine argument as it is called. We need a world-root is that fits the bill of being a necessary being IS capable of inherently (as opposed to the Euthyphro dilemma) grounding OUGHT. The only serious candidate is as the OP notes: the inherently good creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of loyalty and of our reasonable, responsible, freely given service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature.
This is of course the God of generic, philosophically grounded ethical theism, but the description will be instantly familiar to those standing in or familiar with the Judaeo-Christian scripturally grounded faith-tradition. All this means is, such a faith is not inevitably rubbish, a resort of the ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.
As this is phil, if you challenge this, simply provide a credible alternative world-root that does not fall apart in incoherence: ____________ (It is noteworthy how consistently this challenge is ducked or diverted from.)
But the matter goes deeper.
We live in a cosmos, not a chaos.
This points to an ordering, rational root of reality. For such to be rational, it too must exhibit the freedom to insightfully and rationally infer and the power of genuine freedom: to be a self-moved actuating, initiating cause, not just another link in the blind chain of mechanical and/or stochastic factors.
That is the root of reality needs to also be rational and responsible, morally governed from within. We are back at the concept, inherently good, from another angle.
Of course, those indoctrinated in atheistical, evolutionary materialistic scientism and/or fellow traveller ideologies are likely to be practically foaming at the mouth. Such need to realise that, first, no emotional state is sufficient to warrant a conclusion. Second, that no authority -- not even the lab coat clad magisterium -- is better than underlying facts, logic and controlling assumptions. Third, it is therefore to the facts, logic and controlling assumptions that we must go. Where, in the context of worldviews analysis, comparative difficulties is the answer to the usual projection that we are starting from question-begging assumptions.
In particular, they need to take seriously the bull in the china shop, grand delusion issue.
Going beyond, let us refresh minds on what Lewontin had to say when he let a few cats out of the bag:
. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads [==> as in, "we" have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge] we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,
[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]
and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth
[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]
. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident
[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]
that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . .
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]
Food for sobering thought,
KFkairosfocus
April 23, 2017
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Armand Jack:Just because morality is subjective doesn’t mean that I can’t expect others to behave in a manner that a subjectively derived society expects them to.
"Expecting" and being outraged when people don't comply with your expectations are two different issues. And subjectively derived societies have all sorts of contradictory expectations, even within a given society. It isn't laughable that you have expectations. My dog has expectations. What is laughable is that you would have any feelings of justification for outrage for any violation of your expectations or views. And yet subjectivists often act as if there is really and truly some justification for their outrage above and beyond their personal subjective views.mike1962
April 22, 2017
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@Armand Jacks #94
If he can’t envision a world with no world-root IS to ground OUGHT then, yes, the problem is KF’s. He has a complete lack of imagination. He didn’t answer the question because he didn’t want to have an honest discussion.
I can think of several possibilities. The most likely being a world just like the one we live in. Even if he disagrees with that he could have answered that a world without IS would be anarchy. Or that it would be a world without humans. And then we could discuss it. As you would.
I guess the problem I'm having is that with the specific way you are framing/describing the issue, KF is right that it is an incoherent impossibility...
You talk about the lack of a world-root IS to ground OUGHT and talk about the notion of a world without IS being anarchy. This is where the problem lies. Without a world-root IS, there is NO WORLD AT ALL. It is not for nothing that theists speak of God as a necessary being. A being like God is logically necessary to explain the existence of any physical reality. There is no possible world in which God does not exist*. No God, no possible worlds. Only nothing. The idea that a world without God as root would be anarchy is incoherent, because it would actually be nothing, and nothing is not anarchy, it is nothing.
Now, I think that maybe what you mean to say is something like 'imagine a world in which the world-root IS does not ground any OUGHTs and describe what that world would look like.' This is a scenario that could be probed to see whether or not it is ultimately coherent and, if so, whether such a world would look anything like this world. That would be a scenario in which the world does not lack a world-root necessary being, but lacks any objective normative values and duties. These are two very different scenarios.
--------------
* KF and I had a long discussion with DaveS about God as Necessary Being. I could probably find it on here if you think that would be helpful.HeKS
April 22, 2017
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Although I also wish for the health of BA77, and hope he will rejoin the threads, his comments were overly long, vacuous, full of links to other creationist sites, and sometimes quite nasty; at least to me.
Hmmm, I like what jdk says @103, it chimes with logic, reality, and mine own thinking. An impersonal world, full of the family, and friends I need to navigate it, and then eternal peace. Sounds a hell of a lot better than eternity in the company of Billy Graham, Dembski,and many of the posters here; no thanks! You can keep that paradise.
That's actually a good question; what is in Christian heaven? Muslims are quite explicit; sex!What is Jesus's place like?rvb8
April 22, 2017
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You wrote, "What happens to the reformer, to what principles of correction can he appeal? What does justice mean?"
Your question doesn't answer my question. What is incoherently impossible about the root of reality having absolutely no concern about how human beings behave?
The fact that that supposition doesn't provide "the reformer" with some "principle of correction" to which he can appeal is not an argument against such a root of reality, and certainly not against the logical possibility of such a root of reality. If the root of reality is supremely indifferent, than human beings just have to cope with figuring out how to behave as best they can, as AJ and a I have described several times.
There is no logical reason why the supreme root of reality cares about, or has any expectations for, our behavior. That is a legitimate possibility. One can choose to not believe that that is the case, but you can't claim it is impossible just because it doesn't provide you with something you think the root of reality must provide.jdk
April 22, 2017
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JDK, kindly scroll up and re-read, including on errors as yardsticks. KFkairosfocus
April 22, 2017
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TWSYF, I am concerned about BA77, and would like to hear from any contacts. KFkairosfocus
April 22, 2017
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I wrote,
But I can easily imagine a coherent and possible world where a supreme being created our universe, with all the qualities necessary to produce the physics, chemistry, and biology that we see (that is, is the ground of IS), but who is supremely indifferent to the details of how the world goes, including the actions of the life forms within it (that is, is supremely indifferent to OUGHT).
I see no incoherent impossibility, no self-refutation, in believing, or at least being able to imagine, that this is the type of supreme IS-ness that underlies the world.
Can you imagine such a supreme being? More importantly, can you explain why such a being, and thus such a world, would be incoherently impossible.
Is this not "serious engagement"?jdk
April 22, 2017
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KF:
Origines, we are not dealing with those willing to engage seriously.
KF, sometimes you really make me laugh. You repeatedly avoid and evade questions and it is us not willing to engage? In the immortal words of Alanis Morrisette, "Isn't it ironic? Don't you think? A little bit ironic? I really do think."Armand Jacks
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.)>>