What we Know: Part I, Decision Making Paradigm

Rodin's "The Thinker."

Note: scroll below this post for a list of my empirically based God arguments.

A poster on the comment section of the CADRE blog arrogantly proclaimed:

I understand that some Christians have a mental issue accepting that some people have knowledge that the Christian god does not exist. It is a very scary thought (needing debunking) that someone claims to know what your belief is wrong. It is especially scary when it come from an atheist, not from a "misguided" muslim.

12/10/2007 03:02:00 PM

when challenged to present the argument he just said:

No, I don't have a proof that dodos are extinct, Socrates lived, Allah does not exist or that Model-T Fords are not manufactured any more, but once one investigates an issue sufficiently the usage of the word "know" is generally excepted. Many religious people seem to "know" that their particular deity exists. I don't think you call all of them naive and ignorant?

12/11/07

I had challenged him to show the proof. If you really "know" there's no God then show us how so we can stop the nonsense and get on with our lives as atheists. Of course he had no evidence nor argument either, all he had was the typical "I don't see any God so there must not be one," couched in terms above "no proof of passenger pigeons, can't prove Bigfoot or UFO so therefore, no God. In others what you don't see is what you don't get metaphysically. The strange twist is he then implies that the term "knowing" is valid when used of any sort of knowledge derived from study. This means the concept of actual certain knowledge is really just a synonym for "educated faith" which would make even more puzzling how he could hold this out as some sort of superior position for atheism. If we take that seriously it really means we have much reason to believe in God as not. Unless of course he wants to content that atheist study harder and I would gladly take that challenge. If the volume of study or matter read was really the same as proof of one's position I know my position would win hands down. Rather than speaking in terms of knowledge we are actually speaking of warrants for belief. When a person says "I know X is the case" in the sense of conviction one is saying "the confidence I place in this hypothesis is warranted." This is not absolute knowledge as to a state of affairs that might be demonstrated to the extent that all opposition must become silent. But it is a statement of the veracity of one's warrant. I will argue that Christian warrant for belief is more rational in the sense that it has more positive evidence in its favor than do atheistic warrants.

We have no empirical demonstrative proof that God exists, but we come closer to having that than atheists do to having proof of no God: Once we understand the decision making paradigm, we can see that the basis of belief in God is more rationally warranted than is disbelief. We can observe three things about the decision making paradigm:

I. We should not expect Empirical Proof of God: nor do we need it.

II, We can understand a co-determinate, or God Correlate, which is empirical.

III. The empirical nature of the co-determinate provides prima facie justification for belief, which is sufficient justification for belief.

Let us examine these three observations:

I. We should not expect empirical proof of God.

Atheists don't just want empirical proof, they want absolute proof. They want DNA evidence. They want to see God physically. They want the kind of evidence, literally, that it would take to establish a law of physics. This is an irrational demand owning to the nature of empirical proof. A think is proven empirically when it can be observed and understood within the framework of the cosmos and of our cultural context in which we make sense of the universe. We accept many things that are not empirical and take them for granted. Essentially empirical evidence is meaningless outside the context of a whole set of basic assumptions that we take for granted all the time. These pertain to our understanding of what life is, what the world is, what it means to live in the world. None of that would be possible without logic. We are co;instantly drawing logical inferences about the nature of the world and we take these for granted as givens. Something beyond our understanding, from outside that context of given assumptions, clearly is beyond empirical evidence. Examples of the given assumptions would include:

(a) I exist as a coherent stable entity in a world which is external to my own understanding and being.

(b) the world did not start with the moment of my birth but went on for some time before I existed.

(c) there are other minds external to my own which exist independently of my own perception.

There are many other assumptions, such as the future will be like the past, the sun will rise tomorrow. We can think of many more. The point is none of these things can be proven with the kind of certainty that atheist demand for God. We only take them for granted and they form the basis of our understanding of a stable coherent world that works according to rules of reason and laws of both logic and physics. We have no proof that we are not brains in vats being fed illusions by an evil genius, or even a good genius. We assume not because it doesn't help us get by in life. We find that we navigate in the world much better when we assume the reality of the world, but we can't prove it. We take it for granted.

Empirical proof is not absolute proof in an epistemological sense. This also means that epistemological problems are prior to science, they are foundational to science they are not resolved by science. Science is what we do in terms of systematic observation in lue of an answer to these problems, and it only works within the context of assumptions we have made about the world. This means empirical proof is only good for tangible things within that sphere of assumption. God is beyond that sphere. Why? Because God is the foundation of all that is. "God" is the term we use to designate the basis of reality. Thus God is beyond the sphere in which we can assume and take for granted these basic epistemic assumptions. If we think of God as a mind and ourselves as a thought in that mind, we have way of understanding God or even approaching God other than God's own willingness to let us know.

atheists want to make assumptions about what God would do, because they are hoping under sting will come easily. They are skeptical of any answer from beyond that sphere of knowledge taken for granted, the known zone of epistemic assumption. I will not delve into the reasons for skepticism as thought might take us far afield. It doesn't matter anyway, the point is atheists are loath to accept this idea that empirical evidence is not absolute because to understand it one must step outside the framework of empirical knowledge. It's a conclusion arrived at without the aid of empiricism and to arrive at is is to demonstrate the useless nature of empirical knowledge in an absolute sense. Thus the claim "I have no evidence that passenger pigeons are gone but I know they are." That's an assumption which is itself not based upon empirical proof, because I doubt seriously that this guy has interstage ever aspect of reality such that he can see there is no passenger pigeon. The very nature of statement is begging the question in a sense. It's based upon extrapolation from empirical data, it's inductive as a conclusion. It's a reasonable assumption given the context of that Known zone, but doesn't make any sense in terms of God. Obviously this kin of assumption can't work in relation to something that transcends our ordinary level of knowledge.

In thinking about the basis of reality, there is no way we can understand the foundations of being. This is completely beyond anything we experience. Thus to try and rule out an hypothesis on that level based upon its lack of empirical data is laughable and absurd. If you were a character in the Holodeck, from Star Trek TNG (or yes, the matrix as much as I hate that movie)how would you ever know it? You could not unless someone from outside the program told you about "outside the program." Or of course, unless the program as designed to give clues. Atheists assume that God would tell us but I have given reasons why he would not. He has left clues because he wants us to know, but he wants to know in a certain way, that's why he requires faith. He wants us to seek the truth and find the clues because that will be the only way to internalize the values we will learn form seeking. If he just came down to central park or the UN an held a press conference "O yes I am God, btw better obey me now." We would all probably try to obey but we would all resent it. Only if you seek and find the clues that you internalize the values an then it matters to you that there is truth which must be obeyed. you want to obey because knowing this as the pay of of truth finding is important, having sought and found.

Thus we should not expect to find empirical proof of God, nor do need such proof. We don't need it any more than we need proof that we are not brains in vats. We can get by just fine navigating the world assuming that life is real and other minds are real and that the world is real; we can also get by find assuming that God is real. In fact we get by better assuming that God is real. But I'm coming to that.


II. We can understand a co-determinate, or God Correlate, which is empirical.


Decision Making Paradigm.

Co-determinate: The co-determinate is like the Derridian trace, or like a fingerprint. It's the accompanying sign that is always found with the thing itself. In other words, like trailing the inviable man in the snow. You can't see the inviable man, but you can see his footprints, and wherever he is in the snow his prints will always follow.

We cannot produce direct observation of God, but we can find the "trace" or the co-determinate, the effects of God in the world.

The only question at that point is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answerer in the argument below. Here let us set out some general peramitors:

(1) The trace produced content with specifically religious affects

(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine reality, are transformative of life goals and self actualization

(3) Cannot be accounted for by alternate causality or other means.

Argument:

(1)There are real affects from Mystical experince.

(2)These affects cannot be reduced to naturalistic cause and affect, bogus mental states or epiphenomena.

(3)Since the affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explanations we should assume that they are genuine.

(4)Since mystical experince is usually experince of something, the Holy, the sacred some sort of greater transcendent reality we should assume that the object is real since the affects or real, or that the affects are the result of some real higher reality.

(5)The true measure of the reality of the co-determinate is the transfomrative power of the affects.

Historically this sense of the numinous is at the basis of why religion exists in the first place. Atheists want to believe that religion is like mans failed primitive attempt at science; they had to explain the thunder and the rain and so on. That is not really the answer modern anthropologists are fond of anymore. Now they are much more interested in something more organic. the sense of the numinous is more often seen as the origin of religion because it more completely explains why people began talking about God concepts.


The Origin of Religion in the Sense of the Holy

Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) produced his own notion of the religious a pariori based upon the experience of the numinous or the Holy. This sense "combines both rational and non-rational elements. In his book The Idea of The Holy "Otto saw the origin of religion in what he called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans...some particular experience, usually for primitive people some confrontation with natural forces, but for the more sophisticated some depth of personal relationship, where simultaneously one is both attracted and repelled by a sense of awe..." [R. Jones "Numinous" Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology..(405)]

a) Criticisms based on the primative

This is apt to be taken as a disproof by internet atheists. The argument would say that the sense of awe at encountering the holy is merely the fear of the unknown experienced by primitive people.while it no doubt does contain that, the argument is merely reifying the experience. First, it is centered upon a prejudice against privative people; O, they don't have science so how can they know anying? Secondly, it is reducing the experience to an alleged counter causality which we have no right to do. The "primitive" who intuits a sense of awe is taken for a dummy whis only frightened by the thunder. But that is merely modernist prejudice. Premiative people know what thunder is, the encounter it all the time, it is the added element of what they attach to nature that the senes in thunder (or whatever the case may be) so there is an added dimension that we are reducing and losing in the "explanation" (and explanation which is just ideologically based).

b) the Sophisticated version

In more developed world religions there is a more "sophisticated" sense of the holy that derives from a host of things, including ritual, the sense of the numinous that obtains to holy ritual, doctrine and understanding. This may contain a sense of personal relationship with the Divine. Again, while the explanation of it may be culturally conditioned, the experiencing of the thing itself must be taken on its own terms. We cannot say, without getting into the consciousness of the believer, that a particular believer has not had a particular experience.

3) Religion as the Externalization of the Archetypical

Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences Abraham H. Maslow
Appendix I. An Example of B-Analysis

Maslow talks about the psychological necessity of being able to maintain a tranformative symbology. He is not merely saying that we should do this, but that we do it, it is universal and through many different techniques and psychological schools of thought he shows that this has been gleaned over and over again. What Jung called the Archetypes are universal symbols of transfomration which we understand in the unconscious, and we must be able to hold them in proper relation to the mundane (the Sacred and the Profane) in order to enjoy healthy growth, or we stagnate and become pathological. It is crucial to human psychology to maintain this balance. Far from merely being stupid and not understanding science, striving to explain a pre-Newtonian world, the primitives understood this balance and held it better than we do. Religious beleif is crucial to our psychological well being, and this fact far more than social order or the need for explanations explains the origins of religion.

Quote:

"For practically all primitives, these matters that I have spoken about are seen in a more pious, sacred way, as Eliade has stressed, i.e., as rituals, ceremonies, and mysteries. The ceremony of puberty, which we make nothing of, is extremely important for most primitive cultures. When the girl menstruates for the first time and becomes a woman, it is truly a great event and a great ceremony; and it is truly, in the profound and naturalistic and human sense, a great religious moment in the life not only of the girl herself but also of the whole tribe. She steps into the realm of those who can carry on life and those who can produce life; so also for the boy's puberty; so also for the ceremonies of death, of old age, of marriage, of the mysteries of women, the mysteries of men. I think that an examination of primitive or preliterate cultures would show that they often manage the unitive life better than we do, at least as far as relations between the sexes are concerned and also as between adults and children. They combine better than we do the B and the D, as Eliade has pointed out. He defined primitive cultures as different from industrial cultures because they have kept their sense of the sacred about the basic biological things of life.

"We must remember, after all, that all these happenings are in truth mysteries. Even though they happen a million times, they are still mysteries. If we lose our sense of the mysterious, or the numinous, if we lose our sense of awe, of humility, of being struck dumb, if we lose our sense of good fortune, then we have lost a very real and basic human capacity and are diminished thereby."

"Now that may be taken as a frank admission of a naturalistic psychological origin, except that it involves a universal symbology which is not explicable through merely naturalistic means. How is it that all humans come to hold these same archetypal symbols? (For more on archetypes see Jesus Christ and Mythology page II) The "primitives" viewed and understood a sense of transformation which gave them an integration into the universe. This is crucial for human development. They sensed a power in the numinous, that is the origin of religion."

On to page (2 of 3)
3)Mystical experince at the root of all religions

Trans personal Childhood Experiences of Higher States of Consciousness: Literature Review and Theoretical Integration (unpublished paper 1992 by Jayne Gackenback


http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/cehsc/ipure.htm

Quotes:

"The experience of pure consciousness is typically called "mystical". The essence of the mystical experience has been debated for years (Horne, 1982). It is often held that "mysticism is a manifestation of something which is at the root of all religions (p. 16; Happold, 1963)." The empirical assessment of the mystical experience in psychology has occurred to a limited extent."

a). Core of Organized Religion

The Mystical Core of Organized Religion

David Steindl-Rast

The Mystical Core of Organized Religion





Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., is a monk of Mount Savior Monastery in the Finger Lake Region of New York State and a member of the board of the Council on Spiritual Practices. He holds a Ph.D. from the Psychological Institute at the University of Vienna and has practiced Zen with Buddhist masters. His most recent book is Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1984).

"If the religious pursuit is essentially the human quest for meaning, then these most meaningful moments of human existence must certainly be called "religious." They are, in fact, quickly recognized as the very heart of religion, especially by people who have the good fortune of feeling at home in a religious tradition."

b)What all Religions hold in Common.

Cross currents

Thomas A Indianopolus
prof of Religion at of Miami U. of Ohio

http://www.crosscurrents.org/whatisreligion.htm

Quote:

"It is the experience of the transcendent, including the human response to that experience, that creates faith, or more precisely the life of faith. [Huston] Smith seems to regard human beings as having a propensity for faith, so that one speaks of their faith as "innate." In his analysis, faith and transcendence are more accurate descriptions of the lives of religious human beings than conventional uses of the word, religion. The reason for this has to do with the distinction between participant and observer. This is a fundamental distinction for Smith, separating religious people (the participants) from the detached, so-called objective students of religious people (the observers). Smith's argument is that religious persons do not ordinarily have "a religion." The word, religion, comes into usage not as the participant's word but as the observer's word, one that focuses on observable doctrines, institutions, ceremonies, and other practices. By contrast, faith is about the nonobservable, life-shaping vision of transcendence held by a participant..."

Smith considers transcendence to be the one dimension common to all peoples of religious faith: "what they have in common lies not in the tradition that introduces them to transcendence, [not in their faith by which they personally respond, but] in that to which they respond, the transcendent itself..."(11)

Thus, we know we are "made" to be religious, we are fit to be religious, and our sense of the numinous is the basis of religion in the first place.


from this we derive our decision making paradigm, the sense of the co-determinate: the idea being something like God's finger prints. The finger print of God is the effect of the divine upon humans. We can't see God, we can't get hair samples or photographs but we can see his foot prints in the snow, the effects of God upon human experience.

Since the sense of the numinous is the basis of religion, it only stands to reason that the extent to which it leads us to belief is the extent to which we can understand it as the God Correlate. What else would we understand as divine activity but the basis phenomenon through which humans began thinking of the divine anyway?

This leads us to an understanding of the third aspect of the decision making paradigm, the prmia facie justification. This is similar too the concept of proper basicality, but not identical. Prima facie just says that the argument stands on face value. AT that point the burden of proof is reversed, it then becomes the burden of the opposition to show that a PF case has not been made.


III. Prima Facie Justification.

Thomas Reid
Theory of Knowledge lecture notes.
G.J. Mattey
Philosophy, UC Davis
(this page has been moved over the years)

"Far from concluding that our senses are "fallacious," Reid placed them on the same footing as memory and reason, though they are "undervalued" by philosophers because "the informations of sense are common to the philosopher and to the most illiterate. . . . Nature likewise forces our belief in those informations, and all the attempts of philosophy to weaken it are fruitless and in vain."

"Reid pointed out that when we fall into error regarding the objects of sense, we correct our errors "by more accurate attention to the informations we may receive by our senses themselves." So the "original and natural judgments" that are made on the basis of our constitution lose their original justification in the presence of additional information. Contemporary philosophers call this kind of justification "prima facie," a term from law which describes an initially plausible case that could prove to be entirely implausible given further evidence. A belief of common sense, then, is justified "on the face of it."

"According to the doctrine of prima facie justification, one is justified in accepting that things are the way they appear, when

* it does appear to one that they are that way, and
* there is no reason to think that something has gone wrong.

[Ibid]

"But if there is such a reason, one's justification is "defeated." Thus prima facie justification is "defeasible."

"For Reid, our beliefs about physical objects are justified by sense-experience, which he took to be a product of the interaction between the senses and physical objects. Twentieth-century philosophers have been somewhat more cautious, however, and have followed more closely the account of perceptual knowledge given by Reid's predecessors such as Descartes, Locke and Hume: that what justifies our beliefs about physical objects is a mental state such as:

* looking like something is red
* a sensation of red
* seeing red-ly"

"For example, what justifies a person in believing that he sees something red is that it looks to him as though there is something red. The mental state of that person is one in which there is an appearance of red, and just being in this mental state is enough to give prima facie justification to the belief that he really sees something red. On the other hand, what confers justification might be a belief about how things appear."

This decision making process is far more rational than atheist skepticism because it assumes that the world is wide. The atheist must assume that our tiny sliver of perceived reality is sufficient for ruling out all that doesn't fit into the narrowly perceived materialist truth regime. Atheists do what Thomas Kuhn says defenders of a lost paradigm always do. They hide the anomalies in their paradigm and as long as the paradigm absorbs the anomalies it holds. But we know that eventually, like all paradigms, it will shift. The clues that atheists dismiss as meaningless are a valid decision making paradigm that give us a prmia faice justification for God belief. thus it is useless and counter productive to reject God on the basis of "no empirical evidence." As we will see in part II this is also decremental because it means denying not only the way we are made but the way of life that works best for us as a species.

Thus the decision making paradigm under which all my God arguments are made is:

(1) Co-determinate as the rational warrant

(2) The attempt at making a PF case demonstrating the empirical nature of the co-determinate

this applicable to empirically based arguments. Its' a bit different for analytically based arguments but I will deal with that at another time.

My Empirical Arguments for God

I am really sick of atheists saying "you don't have any empirical evidence for god. So I am doing three things about this:

I am issuing this reminder that I have many empirical or empirically based arguments.




What needs to be understood is the rational decision making paradigm. Once you understand that you can understand that, which I will try to summarize, in a future post but I have talked about it a lot here. Once you understand that you will see that I have actually proven the existence of God many times.

In a nut shell the decision making paradigm is in two parts:

(a) rational warrant for belief

(b) co-determinate

we do not need to prove empirically that God exists. Once we prove that God is rationally warranted and that the co-determinate is empirical we have come close as we need come for rational discourse.

Empirical arguments:

I have 42 arguments for God. These are just the empirically based ones and where they come on the list. You can find them linked here in all their glory and read the full arguments for ourself.


1.Argument from Cosmological Necessity

2.Everything Has to have a Reason



4. Anthropic Principle (2 Pages)

5. From Religious Instinct (3 pages)

6. From Religious a priori

7. From Mystical experience, (3 pages)

8. Thomas Reid Argument, (2 pages)

9. Argument from the Sublime

10.Existential Argument.

11. Feeling of Utter Dependence"


21. Argument from Consciousness.(3 pages)(Revised)

22.Moral Argument.

23.Argument from Moral Judgment and Abstract Values.



25. Argument From Temporal Begining.

26. Elegance of God hypothesis.



28. Near Death Experience.

29. Why anything at all?

30.Positive Epistemic Status.

31. Confluence of Proper function and Reliability.

32. Argument From Induction.

33. Rejection of Universal Skepticism.

34. Hick's Argument from Personal Origin.

35. Materialism Vanishes (2 pages).

36.Argument from Logical Necessity

37.God Pod

38.Miracles

39.Argument from Arbitrary necessity


40.Modes of being

41. Cumulative Case.


42.Koon's Cosmological Argument.

To Know God is To Love God

The horrible secret weapon of
Christianity



I just finished this page yesterday.Why I don't believe in hell. It's too long for the blog (4 pages). So I put it up on Doxa. I really should have done it years ago, it's such a basic issue. I write this in response to a commenter on the comments section who was posting in response to the piece "no Will Greater than My Own."

9:14 PM
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Goliath said...

Ah, at last, you've begun to realize that even if your god exists, not everyone would want to follow him.

Not that I believe that either exists, but I would MUCH rather follow Satan than the xian god. In fact, I would rather die and spend eternity in hell than follow the xian god.





9:36 PM


My response that's your prerogative and your problem. I will just say that you don't know God. you don't know what God is like. Maybe I dont' either but a i have a general idea. you can't go by the OT. you have to go by Jesus. So far all the atheist attempts to show that Jesus was no good have been less than impressive, for me.

I'll look you up in a million an and see what you think then. I jsut warn you of one thing:

I do happen to know, a little known secret of the universe, a large part of hell of his having to hear the replay of "Down Town" Petula Clark over and over again forever. think about it.

8:03 AM
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Goliath said...

I know everything I need to know about the xian god, and I know everything that I need to know about your vile faith.

I hate Jesus, I hate the xian god, and I would destroy both of them if I could.

"I do happen to know, a little known secret of the universe, a large part of hell of his having to hear the replay of 'Down Town' Petula Clark over and over again forever. think about it."

ROFL! Is that the best you can do to scare me into groveling before your god? You're pathetic.

12:50 PM
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J.L. Hinman said...



I am not interested into scaring you into anything. You are only hurting yourself.

6:38 PM
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Goliath said...

Then why try to intimidate me by telling me what hell might be like?

Again: I would rather burn in hell than follow your god. Deal with it.

6:57 PM
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J.L. Hinman said...

that is nuts. to really think that is a serious attempt to scare anyone? I can think of a lot more scary fates than having to listen to "Downtown."

this is something called "humor." Are you so demented you don't even know what "funny" means?

If you bothered to learn more about my ideas you would know that I do not believe in hell as a place of eternal conscious torment. So you are just hurting yourself because you are missing the very essence of what love is by rejecting God because God is love.

scary hu?

If you are just looking for fight you wont get one. I have better thins to do. Go troll someone else. If you really care bout ideas I am wiling to talk but you have to shed the bad boy image thing and grow up and really think.

I am not trying to humiliate this guy or to ridicule him for thinking my joke was a serious threat, although I think it should be obvious it was not. Three things occurred to me as a result of this exchange:

(1) again we see the real issue underneath it all is power. Notice his idea of accepting the existence of God is "groveling." For one reason or another its a power issue. I don't know anything about this guy by my imagination is working overtime playing on images of overly zealous religious people trying to manipulate people into doing their will. Ultimately I don't believe that all the hurt feelings and bitter hatred of hate group atheism is all the fault of religious people. But I certainly don't think we've handled things right.

(2) atheist assumptions about religious people are stereotypes that cause them to cast the issues in certain preset terms.

(3) Perhaps we condition people to think they know what God would be like, or what the Christian idea of God would be like by dealing with Christians. How else could it be? That they think they know what God "is" or would be like is purely a function of two things:

(a) how Christians have treated them

(b) the why they have been conditioned by Christians to read the Bible.

This is why I think it is important up front to get out the message about hell. I urge you all to read those pages because I feel I make a pretty good case for the idea that the Bible does not even teach that hell is eternal conscious torment. It's important for people to understand this because the atheist agenda is wrapped up in propagandizing about Christianity as a punitive and operant notion of religious experience.

two paradigms: operant vs existentialist

The choice of paradigms on the nature of religion lies between two poles, a punitive-operant religion vs an existential religion. Punitive I think we all get drift, hell is thought to be punishment for disbelief, sin and generally doing bad. It is also seen as a means so scaring people into compliance as our friend above thinks.Operant (like B.F. Skinner's positive and negative reinforcement) because through the promise of heaven and the threat of hell one is manipulated into changing behavior on a punishment/reward basis. Existentialist means it is not about punishments or manipulation but a response to one's existential experince of life in the world--based upon personal experiences and aimed at understanding individualistic goals and ends of a person's life rather than fitting into a preset mold of behavior.

While we can't do that much about the way other Christians react to people, we can try to check our own reactions (I do know I still have a long way to go in that area) and we can try to clarify problems with the atheist reading of our belief system. Toward that end I would explain that since I don't believe that hell is eternal conscious torment, I can't really try to scare compliance out of people. There have been instances on message boards where I have told atheists about my view son hell and always some group of them will say "then how can you scare people into being good?" I can only think that they approach the problem from this angle because they feel people have tried to scare them into being good and that's the only way they can see to do it.

The existential paradigm of religion is so much more effective because scaring compliance. Scaring people into obedience defeats the purpose of knowing God and it's really ineffective in the long run. It's much more effective if people internalize the values of the good. This is why God sets up the world in the way it is, why we have to seek truth instead of being issued briefings in press conferences when we are born. Because the search leads to internalizing values and values give us committment for a life time. Belief in hell is a waste. It's childish and it is wasted because no one learns in hell. You cant' come back and try it again, by the time you know you were wrong its' too late to change. Punishment may be just and there should be consequences for evil, but I think ceasing to exist is consequence enough, and humane. Please read the link at the top about Why I don't believe in hell. So I don't believe God's aim is to scare but to enthrall and to bring us to a point of internalizing God's values. We do that by knowing God.

Atheists will no doubt see it as a game and a pretense, but, it is a relationship. One cannot "know enough about the Christian God." you can't get the idea from words on paper or sermons on Sunday. It's not a fair test to go by how Christians treat you because Christians are at all different stages in their walk with God, some don't even have any idea they can know God in a personal way. That being said that is no excuse to treat people badly. We as Christians have to understand how we come across and respond in love, not manipulation. I know I am the worst at responding in love. I have some real idiotic mistakes in lashing out in anger to abuse of atheists. But this doesn't give any clear picture of God, even though they will draw conclusions about God based upon the way we act.

That is no better than trying to know a person by what others tell you. You ever had a friend who had another friend he was always talking about. This guy is the greatest ever, and when you meet that person, nothing like the description. You have to know someone before you can really see how great that person is. You have to actually know God. This brings up the invisible friend effect.

Invisible friend


Atheists use this as derision, its' like a child with an imaginary friend. Well is it? In some ways it is. Imaginary friends are said to be positive things by child psychologists.Through the assumption of God's active presence in our lives we can model holy living just as through imaginary friends children are modeling real friendships latter for life. It really depends upon the extent to which people take it. I've never been comfortable with "Jesus is here invisibly" idea. I am not comfortable with the way of relating to God that assumes God is saving me a parking place. Some Christians sort of assume they are experiencing God and then letting God step into such occasions. That's actually not all bad really. The sense of God's presence, or what we call "God's presence" is documented over and over again in empirical studies as a valid life transforming experince and something that really changes people's lives for the better in dramatic ways. Some studies show that the mystical type experience is the most mature form of Christianity. The study by Robert Voyle shows this, and it links Christian experience to mystical experience.



That being the case we have no choice but to assume that the experience is the sensation of a reality that is actually present to us at the time.

The atheist can't evaluate this by just hearing about or reading about. I thought people who had such experiences were insane until I had one my self. It's as simple as this, you have to experience it. Its' a say of life, it is not not just one more hypothesis in a life of hypothesis testing. It's a relationship and develops over time. Not all Christians think they hear God, or even believe in that sort of interactive interpersonal relationship with God. There are many kinds of spirituality and many ways of relating to God. I went through my Charismatic phase in the 80s. I still believe some of what I picked up in that era, the "gifts" for example, miracles and healing. But I have not tried to interact in that way, that God is my invisable friend, in some time. That is, in my opinion, a phase. Its' the lower level of stages along the road to mystical union. Mystical union is the highest level of relationship with God and most Christians don't even know about it and will never get there. I will never get there in this life. But it is something, I beileve, we will all experience in after life.

Mystical union is not in the Bible as such. There are verses that pertain to it, but its' not stated explicitly as such. It's part of the voluminous literature of Christian mysticism.

Diverse Expressions of Spirituality


There are as many different views of spirituality and styles of relating to God as there are people to do the relating. Christians are very different. G.K. Chesterton was as different from Billy Graham as was Adli Stevenson from Barry Goldwater. Which is to say as different as Clinton from Bush. Even within the closed ranks of Christian mystics is very diverse. You don't have to relate to God like a big guy in the sky.You can relate to God like a principle or an idea. We can internalize the values and just learn to discern the will of God without having to "hear" or sense works or ideas. Atheists can't understand this because they have to assume it's all made up and so they can only go by words on paper. But they don't even bother to read anything except the bible and that they read for loopholes rather than understanding.

Atheists often confuse popular piety with Christian doctrine and spiritual experience. Popular piety is neither, it is not doctrine nor is it spirituality, at least not in a deep sense. The real depth in spirituality is the mystics; St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and mystical writers not saints, such as blessed John Riseborke, Madame Guyon, Baron Von Huggle. There are hundreds, or thousands. They are all different. They are a different form each other as Plato from Thomas Kuhn. Reading them will only give us a clue. You can't know God until you open your heart to ho him and begin a relationship with him. Until then it's only stuff you hear about and assumptions not in evidence. The first step is open your heart to God's love. Let God love you. If you think love is control and manipulation then you are just missing the boat on what life is all about.

Being a Christian is about knowing God in a personal way. This means experiencing God's presence, but it means a lot more than that too. It's a personalized relationship which fits the individual's own style; it's a love relationship:

1Jo 4:7

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1Jo 4:8

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is something that has to be experienced to be understood. Once it is experienced it is known. The atheist claims to "just know" there's no God don't stack up to that because they are by their very definition the absence of a relationship. One cannot experince the fact of a thing not existing. We can experience the lack of food, clothes, shelter, taxes, peace, whatever, but that doesn't prove these things don't exist, merely experiencing a want and a lack is not proof of anything.Experiencing the presence is proof of something. Atheists may assume or speculate as "what that really is experience of" but that is not the same as experiencing it. To have this kind of relationship with God is to know God. To know God is to love God because God is love. It is also knowing that God loves us. No one can understand this fom outside the relationship and no one can judge God. People who think they are rejecting God are really just rejecting love.

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The Classic Moral Argument (for existence of God)

I have been working on an article about knowing God and why I don't believe in hell. I promised this to someone on the comment section. It is taking some time so in the mean time I am putting up an old article. This is one of the first God arguments I drew up on my list. It has never been on the blog before. no 22 on the, the classic version of the moral argument.



Kant: supported Moral argument



The Moral Argument.

Argument:

(1) Humans are possessed of moral motions which we find to be real and important. We cannot deny the senes of moral outrage over "evil" or the sense that one "ought" to do that which we find "good."

(2) Such moral moral motions can be understood as grounded in terms of behavior in our genetic endowment, but no explanation can tell us why we find them moral or how to justify them as "oughts."

(3) Genetic explanations only provide an understanding of behavior, they do not offer the basis of a moral dimension.

(4) Stoical contract theory offers only relativism that can be changed or ignored in the shifting sands of social necessity and politics.

(5) matters of feeling are merely matters of taste and should be ignored as subjective (the atheist dread of the subjective).

(6) God is the only source of grounding which works as a regulative concept for our moral axioms and at the same time actually explains the deep seated nature of moral motions.

A. Universal Moral Law.

The Apostle Paul tells us that there is a universal moral law written upon the human heart. We can see evidence of this universal law throughout the world. Now social science is quick to tell us that moral codes of all cultures differ throughout the world; some are so drastically different as to allow for multiple marriages, in some cultures gambling and even cheating each other are expected, and in a few cultures there doesn't seem to be any notion of right and wrong.But we shouldn't expect that all the moral codes of the world would be uniform just because there is a moral law. The evidence of a universal law is not seen in structured belief systems but in the humanity of humans.People in all cultures have concepts of right and wrong, even they may attach different kinds of significance to them. There are a few cultures that are actually pathological examples, but in the main most people are capable of being good, exhibit a basic human compassion, and feel moral outrage at cruelty and injustice.

It is this sense of moral outrage and the ability to empathize and to feel compassion that marks the moral law best of all. In Nicaragua in the 1980s members of the contra army fighting the Sandinistas conducted a campaign of terror to prevent the people from supporting the revolutionary government. To enforce a sense of Terror they cut off the heads of little girls and put them on polls for all to see (see Noam Chomsky Turning The Tide...Champsky's example comes from United Nations Human Rights Report in 1984). There is something about this act, regardless of our political affiliations which fills us with anger and revulsion; we want to say it is evil. Even those who believe that we must move beyond good and evil are hard pressed not to admit this sense of outrage and revulsion, yet if they had their way we would not be able to express anything more than a matter of taste about this incident for nothing is truely evil if there is no universal moral law.

Moreover, the nature of the moral universe is such that we are capable of elevating basic moral motions to the level of ethical thinking. We understand by this that we must diliborate about moral conditions and to do that we must have free moral agency, a sense of the meaning of duty and obligation, and a notion of grounding for moral axioms. All of these things are without foundation in the relativists scheme but they are part and parcel of what ethical thinking is about. Before trying to link the universal moral law to the existence of God we must first explore the objections to it.

B. Objections.

1) Philological argument.


There are no root words for good and evil universally shared by all cultures, as there are for gender and other things.

Answer: notions of good and evil are metaphysical constructs based upon religious notions. We should not expect cultures that understand God in different ways and have different cogmolical and metaphysical schemes of the universe to share the same terms for designation of good and evil when they do not share the same metaphysics. But, this is actually a greater argument for the universal moral law, because despite different metaphysical schemes of the universe there is still an underlying humanity, which was recognized by people in cultures as diverse as Ghadi in India and even head hunters in Barnio.

2) Genetic Origin of Morality.

This seems like a really overwhelming objection. The notion of "herd instinct" has been around as an explanation for morality for a long time. But, in the 1970s E.O.Wilson invented the theory of sociobiology, which basically said that our genes determine everything in an attempt to mate, and what seems like our own ideas and concerns are all really a ploy my our gene pool to further itself. Morality, in this context is just an attempt to aid the pack. Even self sacrifice is just an attempt to save some part of the gene pool. IN the 1980s sociobiology became known as "naturalistic psychology" and under the lead of Richard Dawkins became an overwhelming force; thousands of websites exist to support sociobiology, and there is no real adequate Christian response. This seems like such an overwhelming flood time of support that there doesn't seem much hope for the moral argument.

Answer: The genetic argument really doesn't defeat the notion of a universal moral law, but it is problematic. The moral law "written on the heart" (Romans 2:7) could well be genetic at its root. Those Christians who have no trouble understanding that God used evolution as a method of developing life can easily imagine that the moral law in encoded into the evolutionary process and is found from the ground up. The problematic part is that it blunts the thrust of the causality argument. Perhaps there is a basic humanity to humans which recognizes moral motions, but how to use that as a proof of God's creation when it could as easily be the product of evolution? More on this at the end of the argument.

a) sociobiology enshrining values of reductionism and consequentualist ethics.

First Things, May 98, 59

The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology. By Howard L. Kaye. With a new epilogue by the author. Transaction. 208 pp. $19.95 paper.

"Sociobiology is a secularized form of natural theology, Kaye explains: an attempt to "translate[e] our lives and history back into the language of nature so that we might once again find a cosmic guide for the problems of living." But the attempt fails, he argues, because in order to derive moral guidance from things like genes, socio biologists first have to attribute to them various cognitive and moral attributes (e.g., "selfish genes"). In short, the socio biologist first reads his own moral program into nature and then, unsurprisingly, discovers it from nature.

b) Reductionism of Sociobiology negates ability to discuss ethics.

(from First Things )

"Moreover, Kaye argues, these attempts at moral guidance are logically incoherent, given sociobiology's reduction of human beings to "mechanisms," "programmed" by natural selection. What, then, can it mean to talk about choice and values? Evolutionary psychology avoids some of the cruder reductionism of the older sociobiology. But by attempting to unmask all thought and feelings as genetically programmed survival strategies, Kaye warns, it may still "have a corrosive effect on our moral principles, social order, and even our souls."

c) Sacrificial (moral) genes is confusion of members and sets.

Val Dusek, Science As Culture "Sociobiology Sanitized: the Evolutionary Psychology and Enic Selectionism Debates"

this Dusek article is no longer located where I linked to. I will try to find it, its' been years.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/rmy/dusek.html

"Despite the new name, the general lessening of totally off-the-wall speculation, far-fetched animal analogies to very distantly related species, and the avoidance of grossly sexist remarks, evolutionary psychologists present the same theories as the sociobiologists. Central to the work of most of them is the genic selection theory, claims that genes, not organisms are selected. It is most well known as selfish gene theory in popularizations by Richard Dawkins. This doctrine, genic selectionism, has been criticized by biologists such as Gould and Lewontin, but many journeyman biologists accept the theory, even attributing the details of the theory to Dawkins himself, when he was only popularizing certain trends in genetics and theories of Hamilton and others. The debates concerning evolutionary psychology have revived the debate about genic selectionism. Part of the debate concerns whether genes alone are selected, as Dawkins claims, or whether individual organisms and species (and perhaps also groups) are selected as well...."

"This fits with the theory of kin selection, in which and individual can reproduce some of "its" genes by sacrificing itself for a relative which carries a proportion of the altruist's genes. Lewontin has criticized Dawkin's theory by claiming that it confuses classes with individuals. The genes which are reproduced by the relative are not physically identical with the sacrificed individual's genes, but are simply similar, the same kind of gene. Lewontin counters Dawkins claim that an extraterrestrial, to gauge earthly intelligence would ask "Do you understand the theory of natural selection?" with the Platonic question "Do you understand the difference between a class and its members?"--which, according to Lewontin, Dawkins, in his "caricature of Darwinism" flunks. Sober and Lewontin have put the distinction in more philosophical jargon, distinguishing genotokens from genotypes." (Sober and Lewontin, 1982, p. 171)

d) Other scientific objections and ethical problems.

Dusek:

"Lewontin, Gould, and some other writers have emphasized against selectionism a number of random and non-selective factors in evolution. These include 1) purely random recombination 2) genetic drift, in which random sampling errors in reproduction change the distribution of genes in a population 3) so-called non-Darwinian evolution, which involves the random mutation of the third letter in some DNA code words, in which two or more words are synonyms which code for the same amino acid, and hence the difference in the third letter makes no difference in the resultant organism, and is not selected for (a significant theory Dennett does not even mention) 4) structural constraints, such as basic body plans, which may become far from optimally adaptive, but which are too difficult to change by piecemeal natural selection without making many other features of the organism maladaptive. 5) geological or astronomical catastrophes such as the asteroid collision causing mass extinctions. 6) species selection, in which differing rates of extinction, and, more importantly, speciation (branching) produce more species in some lineages than in others....."

"There is [in Dennett] a discussion of the naturalistic fallacy in ethics, but no further discussion of scientific reduction. Apparently all that Dennett means by "draining the drama" from the problem is to deny that awful ethical consequences directly follow logically from selfish gene theory. But this ignores the more indirect ideological consequences in terms of cosmologies or models of nature that in turn can have ethical effects. An interesting sidelight of this is that Dennett, like Dawkins holds the Dawkinsian vision of all lower organisms. The are robots, but we, in Dawkins words can rebel against our genes. Surprisingly Dennett, the militant denier of dualism and of non-naturalistic mind, draws as strong a line between humans and other animals as does Descartes."

"What Dennett would have to counter is Lewontin and Sober's argument that when selection coefficients of genes are context-dependent and selection acts on gene complexes, the artificially constructed selection coefficients of genes do not play a causal role. (Sober and Lewontin, 1984). It is true that if one claims that what is selected are not genes but replicators as the later Dawkins does, then whole genomes, incorporating all the contextural effects of genes on each other, might be the object of selection. This would preserve the restriction of selection to the genic level, but it would give up the atomization of modular traits with which evolutionary psychologists work. On the other hand Dennett, surprisingly, does not dismiss the "selfish gene" image as a "mere metaphor" as do many scientists (somewhat in bad faith) but claims that if corporations can have interests, then so can genes (neglecting that corporations are made up of individuals who have interests but genes are not) (p. 328). Perhaps Dennett holds a view which "dissolves" the issues concerning reductionism in relation to levels of selection, but he nowhere argues for it of even states it clearly."

"Although Dennett chastises B. F. Skinner and E. O. Wilson for assuming that their opponents must be religious mysterians, Dennett himself accuses Steve Gould of all people of having secret religious motivations, based on the fact that Gould often quotes the Bible as literature the way he does Shakespeare. Ironically, the one "Biblical" passage in Gould that Dennett quotes is in fact not from the Bible but from a familiar African American song. Similarly Dennett grossly misrepresents the anthropologist Jonathan Marks, portraying him as a new Bishop Wilberforce, denying humans ape ancestry. In fact Marks pointed out the worse than shoddy treatment of data by C. G. Sibley and J. E. Ahlquist in their claims concerning hybridization of human and ape DNA. Dennett makes it sound as if Marks criticisms of Sibley and Ahlquists data was roundly condemned by the scientific community, as evidenced by an apology in the American Scientist. What Dennett neglects to note is that there was a lawsuit threatened against the magazine threatened by one of the criticized authors because Marks review suggested excessive massaging of the data. Despite the quality of Sibley and Ahlquists earlier raw data on bird classification based DNA, it is generally agreed that their work on human-ape relationships was worthless, and molecular evolution anthropologist Vincent Sarich has suggested that even the published versions of their bird conclusions is valueless, despite the value of the voluminous but unavailable raw data. Because of Sibley's eminence the human molecular evolution community has been unwilling to criticize the work, for fear of harm to the reputation of the field. This is far from the sort of replay of the Huxley-Wilberforce debate in which Dennett and other evolutionary psychologists wish to portray themselves as involved."

"Interestingly several of the leading sociobiologists and popularizers of evolutionary psychology, such as E. O. Wilson, Randy Thornhill, and Robert Wright hale from Alabama. One can speculate that the religious fundamentalist atmosphere of the American Deep South may have led those who defected to Darwin to find in Darwinism a cosmic world-view answering the same questions that the dominant religious view claimed to answer. Robert Wright (1988) is quite explicit about this."

CONCLUSION:

"The notion that human beings have evolved from other animals and are a part of biological nature is tremendously important. It is unfortunate and misleading that the evolutionary psychologists make it appear that a commitment to evolution and to the importance of natural selection necessitates a commitment to pan-selectionism, genetic selection and the "selfish gene." We have seen how Wilson and now Dennett attempt to identify their opponents with anti-evolutionist. Even Barbara Ehrenreich dubs her opponents the "New Creationists." The split between selfish gene evolutionary psychology and cultural constructionism in anthropology can only prolong the delay in the development of a genuinely evolutionary view of humanity. "Evolutionary psychology" by preempting the field of evolutionary accounts of human nature and potential helps to prevent a non-reductionist biosocial account of humans.

3) The Inhumanity of humanity.

Many skeptics point out the extreme cases of the holucost in which normal law abiding citizens, chruch goers and Christians, did the most horrid things to babbies and old people and suffered no pangs of guilt over it. Moreover, we have seen on the evening news in Bosnia, in Ruwanda, and other places the most inhumane treatment of helpess victims which surely demonstrates that there is no moral law.

Answer: The explanitory power of the moral argument is demonstrated in this argument. The other side of the moral argument equation is that we are not able to live up to the moral law. There are times when we turn it off, when it can be circumvented. Urges and temptations, ideology, socialization, many things can divert the basic motivations of compassion. If it was simply genetic and the instinctive urge to save the gene pool than why are we so bad at keeping it? While certain extreme examples where the moral law is circumvented do not disprove that there is no moral law (because special circumstances intervened) our anguish (ours not that of those whose consciences were cleared but that of those who look in horror at their deeds) demonstrates, along with our feelings of failure at living up to the mark, that there is a moral law. But it if is genetic why are we unable to live up to the standard that we feel passionately should be met?

C. Explanatory Power argues for God.

How can these moral motions demonstrate that God is the origin of such motions when there are also such strong indications that is genetic? Isn't this merely assuming God as an explaination when none is required?

That we feel such moral motions, both for compassion, and outrage over injustice, is better explained by an appeal to the God hypothesis since it demonstrates the depths of human depravity in man's fallen nature.So much of what we term "evil" is "over the top" and pointless, while the noble aspects of humanity cannot be reduced to mere behaviors. Morality is more than mere behavior, it is also deliberation, moral agency,and the ability to understand constitutive frameworks which embody self and our deepest values. This is so much more than just behavior, an attempt to save the gene pool. That is take is merely enshrining the ideology of consequentialist ethics. See also my take on the Fall of Humanity and what this means on the Gospel page. Without the notion of God a merely genetic morality reduces to behavioral urges and becomes relative and discard able. Yet the outrage and feelings of compassion remain. These are reduced to unimportant epiphenomena without God. This means that we are actually explaining away the phenomena. God is crucial as an postulate of practical reason; without metaphysical assumptions we cannot derive an ought from an is (Hume). But if we think of this observation in terms of the explainitory power of the God hypothesis that hypothesis becomes more than just a useful fiction. Since God explains morality and human nature better than any other view, in so far as it is honest about human depravity and nobility, we have a strong indication of the validity of the God hypothesis.

1) Regulative principle of practical reason (Kant)

We have this urge to condemn with outrage human attrocities and to extend compassion and justice. As with the Holocaust, we know it is evil; merely saying that it violates our genetic code isn't enough! But without assuming God as a regulative principle the alternative is that it does reduce to mere behavior and the moral outrage is groundless; yet we never lose it. That does't prove there is a God, but it at least justifies the notion as a regulative principle.

2) Regulative principle has explanatory power.

Both in explaining why we have these moral urges and yet can't live up to them, and in explaining why we need a regulative principle, why we can't just say it's not right or let it go.

Introducing Atheist Watch

Atheist Watch Is my new Blog where I will chart the progress of the New Atheism in critical terms. Part of the mission of Atheist Watch is to keep track of the New Atheism. I will also present arguments about major atheist ideas and others things pertaining to events connected with the atheist movement. I will use this blog for positive things. Here is where I will put God arguments and analyze ideas and constructs. But Atheist Watch will be used much as old Blog Fundie Watch was used. I hope Atheist Watch gets more traffic. Almost no one ever looked at Fundie Watch.

No Will Greater Than My Own?

The other night I received an IM from a guy who posts on a certain message board. He's an atheist and we had exchanged a few barbs here and there, but didn't really know each other. He didn't attack me, he was polite enough but he said some very disturbing things. First he began with a lot of break the ice sort of questions, such as was I a YEC and what did I think about it? We got into a very shallow exchange about God arguments, by that I mean neither of us got into it deeply enough to say anything profound. Then he began to say that if God was real, he would still choose to go to hell. Why? He said he hates God. He said in no uncertain terms as he proceeded to issue forth the most blasphemous stream of bilge, complete with all sorts of imagined violations of God's body, I'm suer the reader can fill in the blanks. I asked him way he felt that way he said "no evidence." Well, I told him, he's bordering on abusive lanague and what he said if he could do it would definitely get him in put in jail. No one says stuff like that just because there's no evidence. That's pure hate, no one hates something (or someone) just because you can't prove they exist. He said "I hate dictators."

Now I can well imagine things one would say about why God might be considered a dictator, especially the God of the OT. But I asked him Why is God a dictator. The answer floored me. I expected him to say wiping out the Amalekite babies and such, but instead he says "he tells people what to do." I ventured the theory that a dictator is more than just someone who tells people what to do. God, in so far as he created us, might actually be in a valid position to tell us what to do. He seemed not to understand that concept. I don't think this guy speaks for all atheists. I think he might be just a fringe element, but it made me think. A week or so latter I had a discussion on my boards and it was enough like a lot of other discussions of that topic (moral issues, grounding of ethical axioms) that I have to wonder, do the atheists of this generation, the gen xer atheists really understand the concept of authority? Has no one ever introduced them to the notion that there might be a valid authority that really has the right to tell one what to do?

I am sure that atheists can understand this concept, what I'm not sure is that it has been sufficiently pounded into their heads to the extent that they are willing to actually take it seriously. The Xaths are the product of the selfish, hedonistic seventies and the "go along get along" "we generation" eighties, via their parents. That should make them more docile toward authority, but it also means they may never have been taught that there's a valid reason to think of a will higher than their own. They may resent a will that others purport to know but for which they can find no overt empirical demonstration. Following rules of a system is one thing, but submitting to the unseen is another. This is not something that we can reason about intellectually, its' a cultural difference, a generation gap, and there may be no way to bridge it. What was the discussion on my boards that made me wonder about all this?

The issue was advanced by an atheist friend that morality is genetic. Of course they have no data and certainly have no empirical proof, but sometimes atheists are content with speculation and assumptions, when it suites their side. So the argument is advanced, morality is genetic. we have genes to tell us right from wrong, thus we need no appeal to God. But the Christians counter with the bit a bout objective ethics. So it becomes the usual hum drum argument, "tastes great, less..." I mean, objective moralist vs. no need for God. I argued that objective morality is not the issue. The real issue is grounding of ethical axioms. Morality is not objective, but axioms can be grounded or ungrounded. God provides grounding because he created the universe and thus, is the author of its purpose. But the atheists counter by saying that being author doesn't give God any privilege at all. They are free to do as they please because if God was really kind he would have created them as robots so they wouldn't have worry about moral choices. I have seen this argued a hundred times. I've seen it argued on every major atheist board from CARM to Sec Web.

Many atheists will give it a long protracted argument; so what if God created me. That doesn't give him the right to tell me what to do. He's no more special than a drunk in bar on Saturday night. But every time I try to argue that God is necessary to ground axioms many of them chime in with "no he can't because he doesn't exist." This is merely circular reasoning. They are confusing the distinction between the effects of God's hypothetical existence upon meta ethics, and the actual fact of God's existence. Clearly this is circular since the answer to the question "if God did exist what difference would it make to morality?" Just cannot be "God doesn't doesn't exist so he can't make any difference." Then we spend about fives posts going "If he exists," "but he doesn't exist," "if he exists," "but he doesn't exists..."

I think the problem is it just never occurred to them to ground their moral axioms in some higher authority because they have always been taught to think of themselves as the ultimate authority. I wonder if perhaps they are coming at this from the stand point of consumers. They can understand following rules, but ultimately no other will can be imposed upon them since for each one he/she is the final authority and the only one to whom he/she must answer. If one worships the self, the highest blasphemy is that I am not the center of the universe.This is why my argument about the atonement as solidarity is as big a scandal to them as the financial transaction model or any other model. They see no logic in it and no sense. For the willingness of God to be in solidarity with them would be major blasphemy because God dares to put himself on equal grund with them. This must be what Paul meant when he said there would come a future generation that would be lovers of selves rather than of God.

Of course there are exceptions. There are valid concerns, I am not saying there are not. One such valid concern is wiping out the Amalekties. I am not saying that there aren't problematic Bible issues that have to be dealt with. But when push comes to shove the major cultural difference is, I think, that this nrew trend of atheism, while not very significant numerically, may represent the coming to fruition of many issues unresolved revolving around the ego in the modern age. As modern people we see ourselves as individual units, with rights, invested with a total package of personhood; a package that includes right, privileges, and revolves around the "punctual self" as the center of all navigation in the world. We see this tendency to center self in the world and make the world go around it in the Descartes and in the philosophy of modern world. I think, therefore, I am. I am the center, my perceptions determine reality. There is no tribe, there is no higher power there's only what I want and what I can get and what I have to put up with to get it.

Of course they realize that they have to cooperate. Of course they realize that we can't all be the center so we have to work together, that's why they have teleological ethics. Ethical means can't be based upon duty and obligation, that would necessitate another will than my own. I have to form a corporate will for the purpose of cooperating in society so not duty, but outcome becomes the major sticking point for moral value. That outcome revolves around soft values, like greatest good for greatest number, or avoiding pain since we can't impose anything upon anyone. Outcome ethics always leads to a disaster because it proceeds from the premise that there is no duty to impose and the only obligation is to cooperate so we can all have what we want. It can easily lead to the sacrifice of a small helpless group to support the cooperation for the greater number, because after all, the greatest good is getting what I want. Thus Regan's contra war of the eighties could be justified upon utilitarian grounds; and utilitarians supported the salve trade, because the "ignoble" black man had to be sacrificed to support the greater good (white people making money). I am not saying that atheists are on a par with slave traders. Please don't misunderstand me. This is not an argument about atheists not having morals. Atheists can have morals but they can't ground their axioms. They have to coast on Christian memories to ground their axioms.

There could be no stronger grounding than the authorization of the author of the universe. But we cannot move into this through winning rational arguments. One sees on message boards the bitter result of trying to confront the secular minded hoards with logic and theology. We have to find some new way around it. We have to get our bearings again. We are spoiled to live in a society which coasts on Christian memories. We have to find again the way Paul did it. We have to find out how to live in the power of God. We have to show the power and love of God to a pagan world. But it should help to understand the intellectual basis of the struggle.

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Now He tells us, great atheist admission

on carm
12/05/07

Minutes Ago #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fleetmouse View Post
Where did the claim that Horus and other gods parallel the life of Christ come from? I can't find a reputable source that says that Horus was ever crucified etc. Is it all from flakes or does it go back to that Frazer guy?

Reason I ask is, I started watching that Zeitgeist movie and wasn't terribly impressed by the "scholarship"... I shouldn't be surprised - they cite Alex Jones as a reference.
I have crossed swords with other atheists over this matter. The parallels between Jesus and Horus, or Jesus and Mithras, or Jesus and Buddha, are either trivial or fabricated, and they are believed by people like you and me who like tossing grenades into Christiandom. Acharya S is largely the one responsible for meta-myths like those.
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I've only been arguing with this guy about this since 2000.



here's another good one from CARM same day


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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice_Monkey View Post
Yeah, I know you're a well educated dood. Your posts are often stupid, but you're not. You have dyslexia and an anger issue (which makes your rants look like you're typing in tongues) , but I've never known you to lie about anything.

Wrexthehex's response:
lol

you know years ago they used to call Dyslexia stupid and maybe they should now and stop giving idiots excuses to be lazy. And "anger issues" is a joke, control it like everyone else.

this just shows us what atheists are made of. any doubt what they are? hate group?

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People Who Cannot Play Fair

On carm a poster named Hatsoff says:

Earning a Ph.D. isn't the same even as attending graduate school. Oftentimes there are simply better things to do than spend time working towards a formal title.

However, Metacrock's credentials, while impressive if true, are unconfirmed. More importantly, his posts here are quite enough to overturn whatever confidence one may have in a master's degree.

so I wasn't in a Ph.D. program and I don't really have a masters because I argued against this all knowing genius. This is the same guy who answered my Lourdes evidence by saying "I don't believe the evidence and I refuse to investigate it further."

When the chips are down and some people can't win an argument they resort to stipulating dogmatically that the other guy can't know anything. That just says it all for how worthless atheists are. Oddly enough I find that a lot of this happens in connected with disputes about scientific facts, such as creation/evolution debates, or arguments about cosmology. Somehow showing facts isn't good enough, we have to negate the intelligence of those with whom we disagree.

Please, Christians. stop dialogging with Atheists! They have done everything they can do to shut down fair discussion. What could possibly be the point of trying to talk to people who dogmatically refuse to accept that you know anything and defacto take away your credentials because they can't win an argument fairly?

I realized that not all atheists are like this. But the organized attempt at discussing with vast numbers of atheists can't help but bring out a great many who are like this.

Saying that someone doesn't have a degree is argument ad homonym anyway.We need to make sure that we are being fair and that we extend to those with whom we have discussions the most gracious outlook possible. We need to think of this as dialog not as self vindication.

Rise of Modern Science in Middle Ages

Monks at Chaartres were major contrbiutors to rise of Modern Science
in the middle ages.

The medieval Christian doctrine of the supernatural has long been misconstrued as a dualistic denigration of nature, opposed to scientific thinking. The concept of supernature, however, is not a dualism in the sense of dinigrading nature or of pitting against each other the "alien" realms of spirit and matter. The Christian ontology of the supernatural bound together the realm of nature and the realm of Grace, immanent and transcendent, in a unity of creative wisdom and purpose, which gave theological significance to the natural world. While the doctrine of super nature was at times understood in a dualistic fashion, ultimately, the unity it offered played a positive role in the development of scientific thinking, because it made nature meaningful to the medieval mind. Its dissolution came, not because supernatural thinking opposed scientific thinking, but because culture came to value nature in a different manner, and the old valuation no longer served the purpose of scientific thinking. An understanding of the notion of supernature is essential to an understanding of the attitudes in Western culture toward nature, and to an understanding of the cultural transition to science as an epistemic authority.

The ontology of supernature assumes that the natural participates in the supernatural in an ordered relation of means and immediate ends, with reference to their ultimate ends. The supernatural is the ground and end of the natural; the realm of nature and the realm of Grace are bound up in a harmonious relation. The Ptolemaic system explained the physical lay-out of the universe, supernature explained its theological relation to God. The great chain of being separated the ranking of creatures in relation to creator. The supernatural ontology is, therefore, sperate from but related to cosmologies. This ontology stands behind most forms of pre-reformation theology, and it implies an exaltation of nature, rather than denigration. This talk of two realms seems to imply a dualism, yet, it is not a metaphysical dualism, not a dualism of opposition, but as Fairweather points out, "the essential structure of the Christian faith has a real two-sidedness about it, which may at first lead the unwary into dualism, and then to resolve [it]...[into] an exclusive emphasis on one or the other severed elements of a complete Christianity...such a dissolution is inevitable once we lose our awareness of that ordered relation of the human and the divine, the immanent and the transcendent, which the Gospel assumes." Yet, it is this "two-sidedness" which leads unwary historians of into dualism.

In his famous 1967 article, "The Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Lynn White argued that the Christian belief of the Imago Dei created "a dualism of man and nature;" "man shares in God's transcendence of nature." This notion replaced pagan animism, it removed the "sacred" from the natural world, and with it, inhibitions against exploiting nature. Moreover, by the 12th century, nature became a source of revelation through natural theology. In the Latin West, where action prevailed over contemplation, natural theology ceased to be the decoding of natural symbols of the divine and became instead an attempt to understand God through decerning the operation of creation. Western technology flourished, surpassing even that of Islamic culture (although they still led in theoretical pursuits). Thus, White argues, medieval theology did allow science to grow, but at the ultimate expense of the environment.

The insights of feminist scholarship, however, suggest an even more subtle argument for the denigration of nature. Feminist theologian, Rosemary Radford Ruther, argued that there is an identification between the female and nature, the male and transcendence. Women have been disvalued historically through the association between female sexuality and the "baseness" of nature. Londa Schiebinger, calls attention to the fact that the Judeo-Christian cosmology placed women in a subordinate position. Gender was more fundamental than biological sex, and it was a cosmological principle, "...Men and women were carefully placed in the great chain of being--their positions were defined relative to plants, animals, and God." The subordination of women was predicated upon their position in nature. "Male" and "Female represented dualistic cosmological principles penetrating all of nature, principles of which sexual organs were only one aspect. One might suspect that the place of women on the great chain of being is indicative of the true status of nature itself in Christian ontology; an overt denigration of women indicates a covert denigration of nature.

Moreover, the very fact of the medieval cosmos, and the great chain itself, because of the relation of earth to heaven, might be taken as an indication that nature was denigrated. Historians and classicists have tended to assume that the Ptolemaic system was designed so as to give humanity a position of honor and centrality. As Lovejoy points out, however, earth was the closest thing to hell, which was at the center of the cosmos. On the other hand, as Author O. Lovejoy himself admits, it was the fact that earth was the staging ground for the drama of salvation that gave it significance. Everything derived its value from its relation to the eternal. Nature was not disvalued, but re-valued, in its relation to God. It is this distinction that often leads historians to understand Christian medieval ontology as a denigration of nature. White assumes that transcendence must imply denigration of the thing transcended. Transcendence, however, does not mean that God fled the world; God is both immanent and transcendent, in creation and beyond it. Fairweather argues that the most profound symbol of this relation is the incarnation, the transcendent in the immanent, the spirit in flesh.

It cannot be denied that women were assigned an unjust and denigrating position in the cosmos, based upon the ignorance, pride, and self-interest of the dominate male hierarchy. Ruther makes an elegant argument, the associations between denigrated nature and the female gender (the great mother), and the triumphant sky father (the transcendent God of the Christians) fit so neatly, it is hard to reject. On the other hand, the medieval Christian relation to nature was very complex. In late antiquity, for example, St. Augustine is said by Scheibinger to have ascribed to women an inferior nature and lesser reason. Yet, her comments do not represent Augustine's true positions. He tried to correct abuses against women through a doctrine of spiritual equality, he argued that they possessed equal reason to that of men, and he said nothing about inferior natures. Most Christian mystics believed in some sort of illumination of the transcendent through the natural world. Natural creatures were seen as vessels, or mirrors of the divine; "God in all creatures and all creatures in God."

What these arguments really demonstrate, however, is a very complex situation. It is an oversimplification to say that Christian belief in transcendence resulted in the abhorrence and exploitation of nature. A combination of cultural and economic forces produced certain attitudes toward nature which are often read as denigration if one is not careful to understand the relation of value. Historians tend to read back into transcendence their own assumptions of alienation created by the enlightenment, Karl Marx, and Jackob Burkhart's view of Renaissance autonomy. There was a sense of medieval alienation from nature. In German culture, fear of the forest, fear of the unknown, created a certain sense of danger in the natural world. There were anti-naturalistic assumptions surviving from gnosticism and the Manicheans, which asserted themselves in groups such as the Cathori. The bias of Latin culture for action over contemplation created economic forces which took on a life of their own, and laid claim to nature as a thing to control.

David Lindberg draws upon Max Weber's theory of modernization in order to explain the way in which economic forces drove religious attitudes. After the fall of the Roman empire, the center of power and population shifted to the north, where Gaul and the Rhineland had already become the industrial base of the late empire. A less developed culture was struggling to come to terms with a civilization which had ceased to function and had to be re-created. Daily life under such conditions was hard, labor saving devices were much more important than theoretical insights. Technological applications, such as the heavy plow, the harness, wind and water power probably have more to do with conquest of nature than do metaphysical speculations. The supernatural ontology did not denigrate nature, but it did allow for trends which eventually issued in both science and capitalism. The supernatural ontology grew along with these developments, and plays a part in the rise of science. In order to fully understand this argument, however, it will be necessary to take an historical view, to trace the major themes as they unfold side by side, beginning with the Church's early self-identity and relation to nature.

The Church, in the first three centuries of the era, forged its identity in opposition to gnosticism. In so doing, it also forged its understanding of the relationship between God and the natural world. The "gnostic" were not a unified movement, but most of them held in common a Persian style dualism, (a stark contrast between spirit and matter, represented as the forces of light and dark, good and evil) and an abhorrence of the material world. For most gnosticis, the flesh was evil, as was all matter. Humans were divine sparks of light trapped in evil flesh, only the secret knowledge which would return them tot he other world had any value in this life. In struggling to define itself apart from gnosticism's "tragic myth," the emerging orthodoxy, Irenaeus of Lyons in particular, (mid second century, C.E.) proclaimed that God's creation was "a single world full of the glory of the God who created it and to whose providence all its history is subject. The world of matter and time is not alien to man." As the Church made more explicit its views on the relation between God, humanity, and the natural world, the analogical ontology was formulated as the action of Grace upon human nature. External nature was not disvalued, but valued in its relation to supernature as its ground and end. Where the Greeks developed an emphasis upon the transcendence of God, and God's gracious approach to creatures, the Latins thought more along the lines of moral valuations.

Thus, for Augustine, a product of Latin culture in North Africa (late 3d early 4th centuries) grace is divinely bestowed power of action, the effect of God upon the will. The relation of immanence to transcendence is, for Augustine, the relation of a scale of values; temporal and eternal. Eternal values represent that which we are to love, temporal values are that which we use. This does not mean, however, that because the temporal order of the natural world consists of things we use, less perfect than the eternal, that it is unimportant, or of no value. This scale of values, hierarchical though it may be, is not a dichotomy of denigration.

It would be ridiculous, on the other hand, to regard the defects of beasts, trees and other mutable and mortal things which lack intelligence, sense, or life, as deserving condemnation. Such defects do indeed effect the decay of their nature, which is liable to dissolution; but these creatures have received their mode of being by the will of their creator, whose purpose is that they should bring to perfection the beauty of the lower parts of the universe by their alternation and succession in the passage of the seasons; and this is a beauty in its own kind, finding its place among the constituent parts of this world. Not that such things of earth were meant to be comparable with heavenly realities. Yet the fact that those other realities are of higher value does not mean that these lower creatures should have been excluded from the whole scheme of things.

Moreover, for Augustine, no existence is contrary to God, therefore, mater is not contrary to spirit. Enmity with God did not arise out of nature, but of will. "Augustine insisted that sin is situated not in the body, but in the will. This was a point of extraordinary importance, because it helped to liberate Christendom from the [gnostic] notion that the soul is contaminated by its contact with the body--and therefore that matter and flesh must be inherently evil."

Nor was Augustine opposed to study of the natural world, provided the study bare some relation to the scale of ultimate values. Augustine used references to the scientific learning of his day throughout his writings, mainly to illustrate his theological concepts. In the final analysis, he placed less value on knowing physical causes, than on knowing eternal values, but he did not obstruct learning. He even developed a conception of natural laws of cause and effect. Augustine's causality allowed for things to change according to their divinely bestowed natures, "God governs his creation `from the summit of the whole causal nexus.'" This is a description of the analogical ontology, the relation of natural law to the higher law of supernature. St. Augustine does not denigrate nature, nor does its place on the temporal value scale mean that an understanding of nature is to be condemned. Rather, nature is given theological value in relation to the higher scale.

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