This piece was originally posted on my secod wesote, "the religious a proiri." I am trying to increase the exposure of that s9ght. It has a weath fine material
https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2021/05/welcome-to-religious-priori.html
This topic is of great importance for believers in God because it encompasses almost every facet of the territory upon which the battle over belief is fought. It impinges upon what one believes about the ability to be good or to refuse sin, the freedom of belief vs. the view that belief is just a side effect of bad psychology, the nature of religious experience and its veracity, even the after life. This topic should be of great importance to non believers as well as it impinges upon our ability to understand ourselves as free agents capable of governing ourselves, and as individuals who would seek the meaning of our lives and the expression of self in art. I suspect also that the determinist/reductionist view point encourages atheists in their materialism and rejection of the soul.
Brain/Mind
Ideological and philosophical types of reductionism seek to reduce human consciousness to a level of side effect produced by brain chemistry; to do this reductionsts will lose the phenomena that describe an irreducible consciousness. This is done by employing the standard reductionist tricks of re-labeling, re-describing, and bait and switch. The bait and switch is primarily a replacement of consciousness with brain function. Phenomenoloigcally consciousness might be thought of as the awareness of self, others, nuance, place, time, ambiance, and the feel of perception. In place of this the reductionist places the way the brain functions, and puts it over as consciousness. The reductionst, assumes there is nothing to consciousness that is not produced by the physical apparatus of the brain. This just puts in place the outgrowth of the physical apparatus minus the aspects of consciousness the consciousness supporters talk about then points to those brain function aspects as proof that this is all there is; after all this is consciousness. Whereas in fact all they are doing is removing consciousness and pointing to the aspects they want to support as proof because those are the aspects they can get at through their methods. This is something like a prosecutor at a trial replacing the evidence with his own briefs then saying “well see the evidence is so in line with my briefs that it proves my case.”
The debate about consciousness stacks believers in unique irreducible nature of human consciousness against those who think that consciousness can be reduced to mere brain chemistry. This is not an issue of theism vs atheism; major positions allied against the reductionism are also materialist positions, as well as God-believing positions. On the side of the mind are materialists such as property dualists, Functionalists and supervenience theorists. Property dualists are often mistaken for theists by the term “dualist,” yet they are not true dualists they don’t believe there are two levels of reality but that each property can have dual aspects. Functionalists hold that mental states are functional states but mental properties cannot be identified with mental biological properties. Supervenience says that mental life correlates with physical body.[1]
Perhaps the major source for this kind of reductionism where brain/mind is concerned is the now classic work Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett.[2] Dennett is a master of the bait and switch, using a vast amount of data about all sorts phenomena based studies dealing with brain function, all the while asserting that it’s explaining consciousness with which he does not even deal. I urge the reader to see the article by my friend Lantz Miller who wrote it for the academic journal that I once published; Negations: an Interdisciplinary Journal of social Criticism.[3] Dennett seems to say “we are all zombies, no one is conscious.”[4] Kevin B. Korb seems to think this is just Dennett’s attempt to motivate the reading, sort of a shock effect by taking an extreme position.[5] Be that as it may Dennett represents the functionalists position. Functionalism, introduced by J.J.C. Smart and U.T. Place, is the thesis that mental states are identical to some particular brain states.[6] If the goal of Dennett is the old positivist’s dream of clearing away the clutter so science can get on with its work, the clutter he seeks to clear away is twofold, two positions stemming from the brain/mind questions as dealt with by philosophy: (1) mental states cannot be shared since the physical make up of our brains cannot be shared (Korb uses the term “goo”). (2) the dualistic homuncular theories which had been advocated by many dualists. That idea suggested something like this, there is a part inside us that has the true brain function and that part really understands our motivations, even though we don’t. This gives way to an infinite regress as there has to be a homuncular thinker inside to give the powers to the first homunculus and so on.[7] This latter view can work out to be one of the tricks of reductionism, redescribing an otherwise valid position in terms of “homuncularism.” Atheists on the internet tend to call anything that involves internal states “homuncular.”
Even though dualistic options are no longer defended, hold over ideas remain and obscure the valuable reductions. Korb sums up:
Dennett shows that the homuncular concept retains a powerful grip on the imaginations of many, perhaps most, cognitive scientists. While explicit dualism and homuncularism are (no doubt properly) `endangered' theses, a great many theories and judgments advanced by cognitive scientists rely at some point upon there being a magical place in the head where everything comes together---in what Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater. This concept is pernicious in a variety of ways. For one thing, it leads to lazy analysis: if we can rely upon some arbitrarily complex central process to clean up our functional loose ends, we needn't be very careful about specifying whatever functional processes we do provide. But worse, this Cartesian Materialism (functionalism with the Theater at the center) again leads to infinite regress: if there is a theater where consciousness is `projected', then there must be an observer viewing the projection (else why bother with the theater?). As before, we will find it difficult to understand this observer: if the theater and its audience are needed to understand conscious processes then an `inner' theater and `inner' audience will be needed to understand the observer, and so on. But if the theater and its observer are not needed to understand conscious processes, then why introduce them in the first place? As Dennett notes, the best place to stop an infinite regress is usually at the beginning.[8]
The opposition of the functionalists to the Cartesian theater is the opposition to a center of internal control where the subject makes a conscious decision or carries away an awareness of his own internal states. As an alternative to the ‘center’ (the Cartesian theater) Dennett proposes the idea of “multiple drafts.” This idea says that the version of what is perceived is contrastingly re-written. The drafts are edited and reedited endlessly and passed along through endless processes.[9] So there is no one key center perception. While this is highly reductionist, it takes out the conscious control of the subject. It loses phenomena of consciousness as our own experience tells us that we do take part in editing some of the drafts. It’s also problematic because it’s a reprise of the homuncular concept. Who is writing the drafts, a little reductionist inside the brain? The true position of Dennett is ambiguous, although no doubt he does believe that consciousness reduces to brain chemistry.
We know this from 150 years of neurology where you damage areas of the brain, and faculties are lost… You can cease to recognize faces, you can cease to know the names of animals but you still know the names of tools…What we’re being asked to consider is that you damage one part of the brain, and something about the mind and subjectivity is lost, you damage another and yet more is lost, [but] you damage the whole thing at death, we can rise off the brain with all our faculties in tact, recognizing grandma and speaking English![10]
Atheists on the popular level use this argument quite a bit. From that premise, that brain damage means destruction of consciousness, they conclude that consciousness is reducible to brain chemistry and imagine a complete factual basis for the supposition. They have created a bogus science of neurology which they imagine has already answered all questions and proved conclusively that consciousness is reducible to brain function. This is far from a done deal. Science is just getting started on understanding the brain, despite what popular atheism wants to believe. This fact is stated bluntly by one of its expert teachers, Vitzthum in his lecture to the Atheist club: “Since how the brain actually works is today one of the least-understood and most hotly-debated subjects in science, I'd like to explain briefly the most promising of these theories and in the process finish my discussion of philosophical materialism.”[11]
The position that mind is reducible to brain and that it is proved by neurology is far form a proven position. Moreover, the brain damage argument is a weak argument. There are better arguments to be made by documenting brain function through neurological evidence, even though that is not proof. The brain damage argument is almost separate from any scientific evidence as we can observe the connection between damage and loss of consciousness without any scientific equipment. Either way the bran damage argument proves only that brain is essential to accessing consciousness, not that consciousness is reducible to brain function. The access argument can be illustrated with the following analogies. We can destroy computer hardware such as the monitor and that eliminates or blocks our access to soft ware but it doesn’t’ mean that soft ware is hardware or that software is erased by the damage of hardware. The logic of the brain damage argument can be applied to prove that television programs are not broadcast through the air waves but originate in the tv box. After all if we damage the box, take out parts or what have you, we don’t get the picture or the sound or the program. By the logic of the brain damage argument proves that he signal originates in the box.
Mind irreducible to brain function
By way of explanation of the two sides, I will take property dualism as representative of the pro-mind side, on the proviso that it’s not the only position. Panpsychism can be thought of as a subset (one of four types) of property dualism.[12] I will compare them with John Searle’s article “why I’m Not a Property Dualist.”[13]
Searle summarizes the property dualist position:
(1) Empirical reality exits in two categories, physical and mental.
(2) Because mental states are not reducible to physical states they are something over and above the physical. The irreducibility in and of itself is enough to demonstrate that there is more than just the neurobiological.
(3) Mental phenomena do not constitute separate objects of substances but rather are features of properties of a composite, such as human or animal. Thus humans or animals have two types of features or properties, mental and physical.[14]
Searle takes issue with this in that he ascribes the categories to just one world. There are not two sets of characteristics. We have one world, everything is physical, but we can describe it in a number of ways. Searle may be thought of as part of the pro-mind side, but he is not a property dualist. He explains why in terms of the problem of the mental and the causal. If the mental is removed from physical then it can’t play a causal role. Ultimately he’s going to argue that the conventional terms are the problem because they invite us to discuss the issue in dualistic ways. So Searle accepts the premise of the reductionists that everything is physical and material but he can’t be called a reducationist because he also recognizes the importance of ontology. He says in terms of neurobiology there is one world and consciousness is a product of the causal process. On the other hand, since descriptively our mental states are not reducible or accessible by others there is an ontological dimension that can’t be reduced. He seems to take the ontological as a descriptive dimension. As argument against the ramifications of Property dualism he lays out a dilemma. If consciousness is closed from the physical realm its not part of the causal mechanism and that means our behavior has nothing to do with consciousness. The alternative is that if the conscious is part of the causal it creates a dualistic causality in which case each action has two explanations, the mental and physical.[15] It seems rather coherent to me to appeal to the mental as motivation for movement and to the physical as the actual mechanics of carrying out the “enabling legislation” so to speak.
I agree with Searle that a large part of the problem is the dualistic nature of language. We are forced into categories of dualism by the way we are led to speak about the distinction between physical and mental. I can accept Searle’s position, even as a Christian, with the proviso that we can’t understand God and God is obviously an exception to what we know and could contradict all of it. The qualities in humanity that make us “eternal sprits” and put us above the realm of the mere physical can be described in functional terms rather than taken as “essentialist.” That is to say, we can see “spirit” as mind, and mind as mental phenomena without positing a discrete entity or ghost in the machine. On the other hand I hold back from commitment to Searle’s position due to one question that he doesn’t seem to answer. When we say “consciousness” do we mean the actual awareness, or even the texture of mental awareness that comes with mental states, or do we mean the apparatus that makes that texture possible? That seems crucial because if we mean the apparatus then I would agree with his position in so far as we stipulate for biological life only; for biological life consciousness is rooted in the neurobiological. We need not confine our understanding of the texture of awareness or the function of awareness to biological life. If the texture is what we mean by “consciousness,” then it could be much more vast and irreducible to the neurobiological. This is an explanation of the term “source of consciousness.” That term I apply to God.
I think Searle is wrong in assuming that two dimensions of human being (mental and physical) make for two causes in every action. One cause beginning with the motivation (mental) and working itself out as a cause over two dimensions of our being. That argument is not proof that mental can be reduced to the physical, nor does the threat of being dualistic disprove the reality of dualism. David Chalmers has an argument, or several arguments, for the irreducealbity of consciousness.[16] Chalmers observes that consciousness escapes the reductive net and is not easily reduced to the physical by the assumptions reductionists make. It’s natural to assume that everything reduces to the physical that consciousness supervenes upon the physical. No physical explanation can wholly account for the nature of consciousness. The argument is in what I call the “texture” or the “conscious nature” of consciousness itself.[17] Chalmers argues that consciousness does not logically supervene upon the physical. The reductionists pull a biat and switch by demonstrating the reduction of brain function to the physical, obviously, then speaking as though they have demonstrated that consciousness is the same as brain function when in fact they have no such demonstration. The very nature of consciousness resists such a demonstration, yet the reductionist is often blind to this fact because they can’t stop identifying consciousness with brain function.
Chalmers full argument entails the theory of the supervenient but he also makes arguments without it. He says one can do it either way. I will avoid the complex and highly specialized issue in order to keep it simple; otherwise I am apt to become confused. He sets up the arguments so that they can be made and make sense without the supervenient analysis.[18] The basic argument is grounded in the nature of consciousness which is seen in the so called “hard problem,” the inability to explain the nature of consciousness without losing the phenomena of consciousness. To illustrate the hard problem Chalmers constructs the notion of the philolophical zombie. Philosophical zombies differ from Hollywood zombies in that they are not mindless automatons who can’t think wondering about doing someone’s bidding. They are identical to us in every way so they cannot be identified as such externally. The only difference is they don’t have mental states or the “texture” of consciousness. They can think they can react logically and reason but they don’t have the mental experience going on inside. The zombie can’t feel the good morning but she can say “good morning” and in a way that implies that she means it. It doesn’t matter weather such zombies are actually possible or not. This is not a possible worlds argument its really more of an analogy that illustrates the distinction between consciousness and brain function.[19] The upshot of the zombie thing is that one could have all the brain function to memic everything humans do, but still lack consciousness and that illustrates that consciousness is not explained by brain function. If the organism with all the brain we have lacks the texture of consciousness then the two don’t share the same properties one is not dependent upon the other. Of course the opponent will argue that we are making more of consciousness than we should and that in imagining a world of such zombies we are inherently putting in the mental states just in ascribing to them our behaviors. The burden of proof is on them to prove that there is nothing more to the texture of consciousness than behavior.[20]
The epistemic asymmetry of consciousness affords Chalmers a powerful argument. Conscious experience is a complete surprise given the relationship between mathematics and the rest of reality. That is to say, if not for our actual experience of consciousness we could never theorize or guess as to its’ existence just based upon scientific knowledge about brain function or the physical world. A world of philosophical zombies in which there was no experience of consciousness with all the scientific understanding we have could never come to realization that consciousness must exist for some beings somewhere.
From all the low-level facts about physical configurations and causation, we can in principle derive all sorts of high-level facts about macroscopic systems, their organization, and the causation among them. One could determine all the facts about biological function, and about human behavior and the brain mechanisms by which it is caused. But nothing in this vast causal story would lead one who had not experienced it directly to believe that there should be any consciousness. The very idea would be unreasonable; almost mystical, perhaps. It is true that the physical facts about the world might provide some indirect evidence for the existence of consciousness. For example, from these facts one could ascertain that there were a lot of organism’s that claimed to be conscious, and said they had mysterious subjective experiences. Still, this evidence would be quite inconclusive, and it might be most natural to draw an eliminative conclusion—that there was in fact no experience present in these creatures, just a lot of talk.[21]
If consciousness was dependent upon the physical entirely as a shared property of the physical it would be deducible immediately by its relation to the physical. We should be able to deduce anything that is physical by understanding its physical break down. We can’t even get at a definition of consciousness that doesn’t exclude the mental qualia and reduce to brain function. That is not an explanation (though its taken for one by reductionists) it’s nothing more than losing the phenomena and re-labeling.
What Chalmers calls the most vivid argument against the logical supervienence of consciousness upon the physical is ‘the knowledge argument’ put forth by Jackson (1982) and Nagel (1974). The example he uses is that of a woman he dubs “Mary” who is the world expert on neurophysiology of color vision. She lives in an advanced time when science has all knowledge of the physical realm. Mary has been raised in a black and while room where she has never seen color. She understands everything there is to know about the physical processes of producing color but she does not know what red looks like. No amount of reasoning from the physical facts can tell her how red appears.
It follows that the facts about the subjective experience of color vision are not entailed by the physical facts. If they were, Mary could in principle come to know what it is like to see red on the basis of her knowledge of the physical facts. But she cannot. Perhaps Mary could come to know what it is like to see red by some indirect method, such as by manipulating her brain in the appropriate way. The point, however, is that the knowledge does not follow from the physical knowledge alone. Knowledge of all the physical facts will in principle allow Mary to derive all the facts about a system’s reactions, and its various abilities and cognitive capacities; but she will still be entirely in the dark about its experience of red.[22]
He reinforces this idea by reference to Thomas Negal’s famous article of the 70’s “What is It Like to be a Bat?”[23] All the physical knowledge about bats can’t tell us what it’s like to be one. That’s just multiplying examples at that point. We can’t know what it feels like to be a bat because we don’t have the consciousness of a bat. The texture of the experience is a point in consciousness. The reductionists sometimes substitute brain function for the actual nature of the experience of consciousness. Until they get at that they can’t get at the hard problem. They argue, as does Dennett in Consciousness Explained, discussing the theory of multiple drafts proposes that consciousness is just an epiphenomenal illusion that results from the process of editing perception by the brain. It’s like a number of still photos shown in rapid succession that becomes a moving picture. So it is with the multiple drafts and the continuous flowing sense of consciousness. "You seem to be referring to a private, ineffable something or other in your mind's eye, a private shade of homogenous pink, but this is just how it seems to you, not how it is."[24] There’s a lot that could be said to this point, for example see Latnz Miller’s devastating critique of Dennett’s book in Negations. [25]Yet the most to the point criticism that can be made is that it’s not about consciousness. This is about the function of the brain. That doesn’t do anything to get at the nature of consciousness itself. Tending to brain function in this way does not prove that consciousness arises out of brain function and has no larger reference as a basic property of nature. The only thing it does prove is that conscious awareness is accessed through brain function.
The issue of access is not the issue of causality. To say just exactly what is access and what is causing what, is hard to tell. It would be necessary to know that to resolve the argument either way. If there is a larger framework for consciousness than just being a side effect of chemicals in the head, such as a basic property or a principle of physical law or some such, then there must be some way in which what seems like an emergent property is actually connected to a larger principle. The fact that consciousness is communicated through brain chemistry is not a disproof. It may be the case that the evidence for irreducibility doesn’t prove it either. It would seem that irreducibility is a good reason to think that consciousness might be a basic property of nature. While at the same time the link between access and brain chemistry is not proof that mind reduces to brain or that consciousness is wholly a side effect of brain chemistry. The organizing effect of mind also adds another valid reason to suspect that consciousness could be a basic property.
Notes
[1] Richard C.Vitzchum, “Philosophical Mateirlism.” The Secular Web, On-line resource, URL: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_vitzthum/materialism.html#F9 visited 4/12/2012 from lecture given to atheist students association, University of Maryland, College Park, Nov 14, 1996.
[2] Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained. Back Bay Books, second edition, 1992
[3] Lantz Miller. “The Hard Sell of Human Consciousness part 1. (no 3, Winter 1998)
_______________________________________________part II, (no 4, Spring 2002)
this is only going to be found on line. go to this URL: http://negations.icaap.org/ see the menu on left side bar, click on winter of 1998, and scroll to the title "Hard Sell of Human Consciousness" by Lantz Miller, part one, then for part Two go to the 2002 issue and just scroll down until you see the title then sroll further to page number. It's well worth reading. If you really care about the top you must read this article.
[4] Dennett, ibid, 406
[5] Kevin B. Korb. “Stage Effects in the Cartesian theater: A Review of Dennette’s Consciousness Explained.” Pdf file published online, URL: http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2271.pdf visited 4/16/2012.
Korb is at School of Computer Science and Software Engineering Monash University Clayton, Victoria 3168 Australia.
[6] Ibid, section 1.1
[7] ibid, section 1.3
[8] ibid section 1.5
[9] ibid, section 1.6
[10] Sam Harris quoted by Luke Muehlhauser, “Sam Harris, Argument Agaisnt the Afterlife,” blog, Common Sense Atheism, March 15, 2011 URL: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=14919 the original quote is from a “You tube video” URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48xmvFgtKmc&feature=player_detailpage#t=92s
[11] Vitzthum, ibid.
[12] “Consciousness,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archives pages. Website URL: http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/archives/sum2004/entries/consciousness/#8.1 visited 1/22/11. Robert Van Gulick ed. and Copyright. (2004)
[13] John Searle “Why I am not a Property Dualist” originally from online document: URL: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc. from the Google Html version, propertydualismFNL.doc. November17, 2002 visited 12/6/10. URL: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Y4Fr7m7rItQJ:socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc+consciousness+is+not+reducible+to+brain+chemistry+but+is+a+basic+property+of+nature&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
[14] ibid.
[15] ibid.
[16] David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a theory. England, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 3-5.on line version: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16574382/David-Chalmers-The-Conscious-Mind-Philosophy Scribd, David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Theory of Conscious Experience, webstie Department of Philosophy, University of California at Santa Cruz, July 22 1995, visited 3/1/11 on line page numbers apply.
[17] Ibid, supervenient specialized philosophical term that refers to the necessary sharing of peripheries between two existents when one is a subset of the other.
[18] Ibid. 84
[19] ibid.84-85
[20] ibid. 90
[21] ibid,
[22] ibid
[23] in Chalmers, 90, originally in Philosophical Review, pp. 435-50
[24] Daniel C. Dennett, op cit, 329
[25] Lantz Miller, “the Hard Sell of Human Consciousness, and the recovery of consciousness in the nature of new language. part 1.” Negations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Criticism. Issue 3, Winter 1998. On line copy: URL: http://negations.icaap.org/ (scroll down). For part 2 of Miller’s argument see the 2002 issue on the same site.
Posted by Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) at 6:40 AM
Labels: apologetics, brain/mind, Cartesian theater, consciousness studies, David Chalmers, John Searle, Philosophical Zombies, Reductionism
Sunday, March 13, 2022
Friday, March 04, 2022
The Truth of Christ does not depend upon the flood (2)
We can regard Jesus' references to "the days of Noah" as metaphorical statements. I have at times referred to the middle ages as "the days of Robin Hood." I did not mean by that that I think Robin Hood is a historical figure. Jesus knew the people of his day were not ready to learn modern science. Rather than explain the truth about the flood he spoke metaphorically and spoke within the story.Let's examine the passage which seems to indicate Jesus believed in the flood. One thing to remember the real point is not the impossibility of a flood but the absurdity of Noah's ark.
There are only about four major passages and Henry Morris advances all four to prove that Jesus believed in a historical flood.[1] Morris was a major force behind the Institute for Creation Research. As an undergraduate I used his evidence to argue with my professer in geomorphology class. He shot Marris down in flames. That for me was one of the defining moments that showed fundamentalism is not the answer.
The passage in Matthew:
"For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matthew 24:38-39)Morris says:
There is only one major passage, Matthew. Luke is derived from it. Luke copied Matthew and mark. The passage in Mark doesn't mention the flood. the Passage in Mark says nothing about the flood:" 6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’[a] 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,[b] 8 and the two will become one flesh.’[c] So they are no longer two, but "one flesh." It is not a second statement by Jesus backing belief in a literal flood but does not mention the flood. Luke was not an eye witness but copied Matthew.As for Morris's assertion of physical evidence of the world wide flood, real science laughs at the so-called evidence. That is YEC propaganda.
It is possible that Jesus took Genesis flood account as metaphorical and that he spoke assuming the metaphor. There are physical reasons to assume Jesus knew the flood was not historical. I assume here Jesus really knew the truth of Modern science even though he did not teach it.
For example, the Genesis account seems to be based upon much older pagan accounts,Mark Rlliot quoting Robert R. Cargill:
Phil Senter wrote fine scholarly article following blow by blow the evolution and the rise and fall of flood geology, that is acceptance of the flood among some geologists s He concludes with the seeming demise of the discipline due to the lack of sedimentation denoting a world wode flood:
He akso quotes Max Hunter:
(2009:88), “It is somewhat ironic…that, almost a half century after publication of The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris in 1961, the geologic record attributed to the Genesis Flood is currently being assailed on all sides by diluvialists…[and] there remains not one square kilometer of rock at the earth’s surface that is indisputably Flood deposited.”
There are numerous logical reasons why the ark is impossible. For example, How did they get the animals from the Western hemisphere and Australia? They would need another Ark as big as the first one to haul food and water for all the animals. They would spend all their t,e shoveling excrement.
I believe that Jesus was omniscient; he knew there had been no world wide flood. We can know that he must have known this since there was no flood. We need not interpret his statements as being literal indications of belief in worldwide flooding.
Notes
[1]Henry Morris, "Jesus and the flood," Glen Iris Baptist Church website *(2020) https://www.gleniris.net/blog/post/jesus-and-the-flood
Accessed feb 27. 2020
[2]Ibid.
[3]Robert Raymond Cargill quoted in Mark Elliott,"Forget about Noah's Ark; There Was No Worldwide Flood," The Bible And Interpritation, web page, University of Ariozona, (2022) URL:
https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/flood357903
Accessed feb 27. 2020
Mark Elliott received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Near Eastern Studies. He is also the editor of Bible and Interpretation at www.bibleinterp.com.
Dr. Robert Raymond Cargill is Associate Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at The University of Iowa. He is a biblical studies scholar, classicist.
[4] Robert Schadewald,"Six flood argumemts creationists can't answer," Creation/Evolution JournalVolume 3, No. 3, NCSE:National Center for Science Education, web site, (Summer 1982)URL: https://ncse.ngo/six-flood-arguments-creationists-cant-answer
Accessed feb 27. 2020
[5]Phil Senter,"The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology:The ironic demonstration that there is no trace of the Genesis Flood in the geologic record," Reports of The Nationsl center for science education. (May–June 2011). Printed electronically by California State University, Northridge. Retrieved 7 June 2014; Hunter M. Ophiolites: Oceanic lithosphere mixed with continental lithosphere during the Genesis Flood. Journal of Creation 23(3)(2009):84–89 http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Flood%20geology.pdf
Accessed feb 27. 2020
Phil Senter is a vertebrate paleontologist. He teaches biology courses at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. SENTER is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Fayetteville State University,NC.
There are only about four major passages and Henry Morris advances all four to prove that Jesus believed in a historical flood.[1] Morris was a major force behind the Institute for Creation Research. As an undergraduate I used his evidence to argue with my professer in geomorphology class. He shot Marris down in flames. That for me was one of the defining moments that showed fundamentalism is not the answer.
The passage in Matthew:
"For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matthew 24:38-39)Morris says:
The Lord Jesus Christ not only believed in the special, recent creation of all things by God (note Mark 10:6-8), but also in the worldwide Flood of Noah's day, including the special preservation of life on the Ark. The Flood in which He believed was obviously not a "local flood," for He compared it to the worldwide future impact of His Second Coming...This is what Jesus said, and what He believed, and therefore, those who are truly His disciples must also believe this. The destructive effects of the Flood can still be seen today, not only in the biblical record, but also in the abundant evidence of cataclysmic destruction in the rocks and fossil graveyards all over the world. To refuse this evidence, as do many modern intellectuals, can only be because they "willingly are ignorant," as Peter said in referring to this testimony (2 Peter 3:5).[2]He makes several assertions not backed by scripture. Nowhere in the passage does the Lord say that creation was recent, nor does he say the flood was worldwide. The comparison between the second coming and the flood is the surprise effect not the world wide effects.
There is only one major passage, Matthew. Luke is derived from it. Luke copied Matthew and mark. The passage in Mark doesn't mention the flood. the Passage in Mark says nothing about the flood:" 6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’[a] 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,[b] 8 and the two will become one flesh.’[c] So they are no longer two, but "one flesh." It is not a second statement by Jesus backing belief in a literal flood but does not mention the flood. Luke was not an eye witness but copied Matthew.As for Morris's assertion of physical evidence of the world wide flood, real science laughs at the so-called evidence. That is YEC propaganda.
It is possible that Jesus took Genesis flood account as metaphorical and that he spoke assuming the metaphor. There are physical reasons to assume Jesus knew the flood was not historical. I assume here Jesus really knew the truth of Modern science even though he did not teach it.
For example, the Genesis account seems to be based upon much older pagan accounts,Mark Rlliot quoting Robert R. Cargill:
The worldwide flood described in Genesis 6-9 is not historical, but rather a combination of at least two flood stories, both of which descended from earlier Mesopotamian flood narratives. Note that this does not mean all of the claims made in the Bible are false (or true for that matter); I am dealing here only with the biblical stories of the flood. (Also understand that the "slippery slope" claim of "all of the Bible is true or none of it is true" is simply an unnecessary rhetorical device designed to keep readers from doing precisely what scholars do every day: analyze each claim in the Bible on a case-by-case basis. It is not necessary to accept an "all or none" stance towards the Bible.) Most biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholars argue that the flood is a mythical story adopted from earlier Mesopotamian flood accounts. These earlier accounts include the 17th century BCE Sumerian flood myth Eridu Genesis,(5)(his fn within the quote) the 18th century BCE Akkadian Atra-Hasis Epic,(6) and the Epic of Gilgamesh,(7) which are some of the earliest known examples of a literary style of writing.[3]There are numerous geomorphological reasons to doubt that there was a world wiode flood.
Phil Senter wrote fine scholarly article following blow by blow the evolution and the rise and fall of flood geology, that is acceptance of the flood among some geologists s He concludes with the seeming demise of the discipline due to the lack of sedimentation denoting a world wode flood:
Unfortunately for the proponents of that view, the hypothesis that a Precambrian Flood occurred and left no sedimentary strata is less scientific than the hypothesis that most or much of the Phanerozoic sedimentary column was Flood-deposited. This is because the latter hypothesis is testable and falsifiable—and has been tested and falsified by the Flood geologists themselves—whereas any hypothesis that a phenomenon occurred but left no evidence for its occurrence is an untestable, unfalsifiable hypothesis. Some may argue that the igneous Hadean and Archean deposits are evidence of the geological catastrophe that caused or accompanied the onset of the Flood, but the equation catastrophe = Flood is fallacious. No recorded geological catastrophe has caused worldwide flooding[5]
He akso quotes Max Hunter:
(2009:88), “It is somewhat ironic…that, almost a half century after publication of The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris in 1961, the geologic record attributed to the Genesis Flood is currently being assailed on all sides by diluvialists…[and] there remains not one square kilometer of rock at the earth’s surface that is indisputably Flood deposited.”
There are numerous logical reasons why the ark is impossible. For example, How did they get the animals from the Western hemisphere and Australia? They would need another Ark as big as the first one to haul food and water for all the animals. They would spend all their t,e shoveling excrement.
I believe that Jesus was omniscient; he knew there had been no world wide flood. We can know that he must have known this since there was no flood. We need not interpret his statements as being literal indications of belief in worldwide flooding.
Notes
[1]Henry Morris, "Jesus and the flood," Glen Iris Baptist Church website *(2020) https://www.gleniris.net/blog/post/jesus-and-the-flood
Accessed feb 27. 2020
[2]Ibid.
[3]Robert Raymond Cargill quoted in Mark Elliott,"Forget about Noah's Ark; There Was No Worldwide Flood," The Bible And Interpritation, web page, University of Ariozona, (2022) URL:
https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/flood357903
Accessed feb 27. 2020
Mark Elliott received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Near Eastern Studies. He is also the editor of Bible and Interpretation at www.bibleinterp.com.
Dr. Robert Raymond Cargill is Associate Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at The University of Iowa. He is a biblical studies scholar, classicist.
[4] Robert Schadewald,"Six flood argumemts creationists can't answer," Creation/Evolution JournalVolume 3, No. 3, NCSE:National Center for Science Education, web site, (Summer 1982)URL: https://ncse.ngo/six-flood-arguments-creationists-cant-answer
Accessed feb 27. 2020
[5]Phil Senter,"The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology:The ironic demonstration that there is no trace of the Genesis Flood in the geologic record," Reports of The Nationsl center for science education. (May–June 2011). Printed electronically by California State University, Northridge. Retrieved 7 June 2014; Hunter M. Ophiolites: Oceanic lithosphere mixed with continental lithosphere during the Genesis Flood. Journal of Creation 23(3)(2009):84–89 http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Flood%20geology.pdf
Accessed feb 27. 2020
Phil Senter is a vertebrate paleontologist. He teaches biology courses at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. SENTER is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Fayetteville State University,NC.
Sunday, February 27, 2022
The Truth of Christ does not depend upon the flood (1)
I was cleaning out old bookmarks and I came across a link to a "debate" I had with an atheist named Miklos Jako a couple of years ago. We spoke by phone and he put it on his website.[1] It was not a good debate. My big mistake was in not demanding set timed speaches. We should have each recieved 10 minutes to speak without being imterup[pted. Then five minutes rebuttles also uninterrupted. We did not do this and thus he was able to disrupt all my explanations and to garble complex positions with innuendo and double standards.
The major issue was the flood. He insissts the flood never happened thus Christianity is false. His title is "The flood story is not true but Christianity is." That is his characterization of my position. He is attacking my position.My position is that the flood is mythology. The fact that there are myths aboung Christian sacred writtings is not a dispropf of the Gospel. There can be no flood and Jesus still died for our sins and rose from the dead. His view is that the flood is false, therefore, Christianity is false. Jako is a very lieralistic thinker. He can't appreciate complex positions and he would not allow me to explain my ideas.
I will not waste time trying to prove my assertions about his unfair and illogical arguments, I don't care. I am going to present what I think is the best argument he makes, the essence of what he is trying to say. I present this in it's best light then show what is wrong with it.
I think what he's really trying to say is that the vast majority of Christians believe in the kind of God who is claimed to have drowned most of the world. This shows Christianity has the kindo idea of God that is just wrong headed. If God did exist he would not be that kind of God. Belief in the kind of God who would drown most life on Earth is indicative of falsehood. That the flood is part of Christian mythos implies that Christianity is wrong. This is a simplistic notion that reduces religious belief to a straw man argument. He won't allow anyone to believe in other versions of Christiatiy, one must cling to the version of Christianity against which he rebelled. So one has no option to develp a more sophisticated understanding because Christianity must be a priori stupid and untneable or it is not Christianity.
He probably senses the wrong nature of this view and tries to ground it in the requirment that Christians must follow Jesus, and Jesus believed in the flood. I argued that this is debatable but he insisted we only understand Jesus' words in one way.I tried to show my own interpretation but he kept interrupting, I will deal with this question in part 2.
One indication of the foolishness of his only one kind of Christianity theory is the fact that major theological traditions disagree and reject the idea that one must believe in the flood.
Fabio Paolo Barbier
Catholic layman
Answered Aug 29, 2018
How foolish to claim it's not Christian when Popes and major theologians agree with it.No creed includes the literal truth of the flood as a tenet of faith. Obviously then doubting the historical nature of the flood does not stand opposed to Christian belief.
The ccommentator at biologos thinks there are clues in the text kf Genesis that it's not litteral.
notes
[1] Miklos Jako,"The Flood Story Is Not True, But Christianity IS," youtube video (Dec 20, 2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yJZJKjw2Msacess Feb 25, 2022
[2]Fabio Paolo Barbieri."Does the Catholic church believe that the great flood and Noah's ark were real?" Quora, website (Aug 29, 2018) https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Catholic-church-believe-that-great-flood-and-Noahs-ark-were-realacess Feb 25, 2022
Barbieri:BA in Social Anthropology & Religious Studies (college major), School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London (SOAS)Graduated 1990 2.5M content views35.6K this month.
[3]staff, "How should we interpret the Genesis flood account?" Biologos. (2019) https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-should-we-interpret-the-genesis-flood-account/acess Feb 25, 2022
The major issue was the flood. He insissts the flood never happened thus Christianity is false. His title is "The flood story is not true but Christianity is." That is his characterization of my position. He is attacking my position.My position is that the flood is mythology. The fact that there are myths aboung Christian sacred writtings is not a dispropf of the Gospel. There can be no flood and Jesus still died for our sins and rose from the dead. His view is that the flood is false, therefore, Christianity is false. Jako is a very lieralistic thinker. He can't appreciate complex positions and he would not allow me to explain my ideas.
I will not waste time trying to prove my assertions about his unfair and illogical arguments, I don't care. I am going to present what I think is the best argument he makes, the essence of what he is trying to say. I present this in it's best light then show what is wrong with it.
I think what he's really trying to say is that the vast majority of Christians believe in the kind of God who is claimed to have drowned most of the world. This shows Christianity has the kindo idea of God that is just wrong headed. If God did exist he would not be that kind of God. Belief in the kind of God who would drown most life on Earth is indicative of falsehood. That the flood is part of Christian mythos implies that Christianity is wrong. This is a simplistic notion that reduces religious belief to a straw man argument. He won't allow anyone to believe in other versions of Christiatiy, one must cling to the version of Christianity against which he rebelled. So one has no option to develp a more sophisticated understanding because Christianity must be a priori stupid and untneable or it is not Christianity.
He probably senses the wrong nature of this view and tries to ground it in the requirment that Christians must follow Jesus, and Jesus believed in the flood. I argued that this is debatable but he insisted we only understand Jesus' words in one way.I tried to show my own interpretation but he kept interrupting, I will deal with this question in part 2.
One indication of the foolishness of his only one kind of Christianity theory is the fact that major theological traditions disagree and reject the idea that one must believe in the flood.
Fabio Paolo Barbier
Catholic layman
Answered Aug 29, 2018
Pope Pius XII said clearly that the early stories of the Bible were intended to teach metaphysical truths in terms suited for unsophisticated, early men. The Church has NEVER taken the early books of the Bible as sources of historical and scientific truth; for instance, it rejected very early any attempt to base the understanding of physics and geography on the Bible (Cosmas Indikopleustes, in the sixth century, tried to set up a Genesis-based geography, and his effort was rejected), instead accepting the rejected), instead accepting the results of Greek mathematics and astronomy. As a result, all Christians from the sixth century knew that the world was round, and that it was minuscule as compared with the size of the heavens. The attempt to turn the Bible into a source of factual truth is a modern disease, going back to the 1890s and to a set of books called Fundamentals (hence “fundamentalism).[2]
How foolish to claim it's not Christian when Popes and major theologians agree with it.No creed includes the literal truth of the flood as a tenet of faith. Obviously then doubting the historical nature of the flood does not stand opposed to Christian belief.
The ccommentator at biologos thinks there are clues in the text kf Genesis that it's not litteral.
The Genesis Flood story contains many literary clues that its writers (and original audience) were not intended to narrate an actual series of events. The story employs the literary device known as “hyperbole” throughout, describing a massive ark which holds representatives of “every living creature on Earth”, and a flood which flows over the tops of the highest mountains in the world. These are not meant to challenge readers to figure out the practicality of such descriptions, but rather they are important clues that we are dealing with a theological story rather than ancient journalism.[3]
notes
[1] Miklos Jako,"The Flood Story Is Not True, But Christianity IS," youtube video (Dec 20, 2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yJZJKjw2Msacess Feb 25, 2022
[2]Fabio Paolo Barbieri."Does the Catholic church believe that the great flood and Noah's ark were real?" Quora, website (Aug 29, 2018) https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Catholic-church-believe-that-great-flood-and-Noahs-ark-were-realacess Feb 25, 2022
Barbieri:BA in Social Anthropology & Religious Studies (college major), School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London (SOAS)Graduated 1990 2.5M content views35.6K this month.
[3]staff, "How should we interpret the Genesis flood account?" Biologos. (2019) https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-should-we-interpret-the-genesis-flood-account/acess Feb 25, 2022
Thursday, February 24, 2022
critical race theory: Misunderstanding and Propaganda on the part of it's critics
The concept of Critical Race Theory (CRT) Has been advanced by conseratives and right wingers as a major scare tactic. It's a mysterious sounding phrase and perect for scarig anti academic anti free thinking Republicans. To hear the right wing tell it CRT is an organized body of political propaganda based upon hating white people. What is the boogie man really? What is CRT?
According to Stephen Sawchuk:
No one with A MODICUM of intellegence could doubt that attitides of racism do find their way into statues and social structure, and that is really all CRT says.Otherwise how does one explain Jim Crow laws? Yet the right has foamented a paranoid reponse. Greg Abbott, our illustrious govener (Texas) has singed into law a bill controlling how histry can be taught in Texas schools. He said:“more must be done to abolish critical race theory in Texas,”[2] this is nothing more than curtailing academic freedom.
Let's examine the article "The Danger of Critical Race Theory" by Marc A. Thiessen.[3]He says:
Allen Carl Guelzo (born 1953),who Thiessen quotes above, is "an American historian who serves as Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities and Director of the Initiative." He teaches at Princeton.[5] He is more reasonable but still off the beam.
This reading of Kant fliess in the face of most modern readings of Kant. I was teaching assistant for a class on Kant when doing my doctoral work. i know this from my own readimg. That stament islso verifiedd by7 comsultation with my professor William S, Babcock retired, Perkins school of theology. It can be easily seen with a bit of research.
It is a grave mistake to think that Kant rejected reason. Let us hear from Kant himself: "Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own intelligence is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."[8]
How they got the notion that critical theory led to Jim crow laws is absurdly ridiculous. Jim crow was the embodiment of racial prejudice wokiredito a means of restaiingandoppresssimg black people, African Americans.There have always been those who distort and besmirch the reasonimg process iwth bad ideas, Ti blame critiocaltheory for thatislike blamimg all crime on language.Jim Crow laws prpve thye truth of CRT.
Sources
[1] Stephen Sawchuk, "What is Critical Race Theory and Why is it under attack?" Education Week, May 18, 2021,URL: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05. Accessed Feb 20, 2022.
[2]Isabella Zou, "Demystifying Critical Race Theory And Efforts To ‘Abolish’ It" Giving CompasThe 74 Jun 25, 2021. URL: https://givingcompass.org/article/demystifying-critical-race-theory-and-efforts-to-abolish-it. Accessed Feb 20, 2022.
[3] Marc A. Thiessen, "The Danger of Critical Race Theory," op ed Washington Post, November 11, 2021.URL:https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-danger-of-critical-race-theory/.Accessed Feb 20, 2022. Thiessen is a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.
[4]Ibid.
[5]Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Allen Guelzo, "WTH is critical race theory? How a philosophy that inspired Marxism, Nazism, and Jim Crow is making its way into our schools, and what we can do" AEI, pod cast,Episode #108 | June 23, 2021. URL: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/6.23.21-Guelzo-transcript.pdf?x91208. Accessed Feb 23,2022.
[6]Allen Guelzo, in Ibid.
[7]Marvin Perry, et. al.Introduction to Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"Sources of the Western Tradition, Volume II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), pp. 56-57, third edition.
URL:file:///C:/Users/Joe%20Hinman/Downloads/Kant_What_is_Enlightenment.pdf, accessed Feb 23,2022.
[8]Ibid.
According to Stephen Sawchuk:
"Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies...The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others."[1]
No one with A MODICUM of intellegence could doubt that attitides of racism do find their way into statues and social structure, and that is really all CRT says.Otherwise how does one explain Jim Crow laws? Yet the right has foamented a paranoid reponse. Greg Abbott, our illustrious govener (Texas) has singed into law a bill controlling how histry can be taught in Texas schools. He said:“more must be done to abolish critical race theory in Texas,”[2] this is nothing more than curtailing academic freedom.
Let's examine the article "The Danger of Critical Race Theory" by Marc A. Thiessen.[3]He says:
Critical race theory, Guelzo says, is a subset of critical theory that began with Immanuel Kant in the 1790s. It was a response to — and rejection of — the principles of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason on which the American republic was founded. Kant believed that “reason was inadequate to give shape to our lives” and so he set about “developing a theory of being critical of reason,”[4]
Allen Carl Guelzo (born 1953),who Thiessen quotes above, is "an American historian who serves as Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities and Director of the Initiative." He teaches at Princeton.[5] He is more reasonable but still off the beam.
...critical race theory may also be the most irresponsible way to think about race in eory is a subset of critical theory, which has got long roots in Western philosophy back to Immanuel Kantin the 1790s. Kant lived at the end of a century known as the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, but he feared that experience had shown that reason was inadequate to give shape to our lives. There had to be a way of knowing things that went beyond reason, and for him that meant developing a theory of being critical of reason, hence critical theory. The problem was that critical theory got away. It instead justified ways of appealing to some very unreasonable things as explanations [of] things like race, nationality, class...[6]
This reading of Kant fliess in the face of most modern readings of Kant. I was teaching assistant for a class on Kant when doing my doctoral work. i know this from my own readimg. That stament islso verifiedd by7 comsultation with my professor William S, Babcock retired, Perkins school of theology. It can be easily seen with a bit of research.
Kant valued the essential ideals of the Enlightenment and viewed the French Revolution, which put these ideals into law, as the triumph of liberty over despotism. In an essay entitled "What Is Enlightenment?" (1784), he contended that the Enlightenment marked a new way of thinking and eloquently affirmed the Enlightenment's confidence in and commitment to reason.[7]
It is a grave mistake to think that Kant rejected reason. Let us hear from Kant himself: "Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own intelligence is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."[8]
How they got the notion that critical theory led to Jim crow laws is absurdly ridiculous. Jim crow was the embodiment of racial prejudice wokiredito a means of restaiingandoppresssimg black people, African Americans.There have always been those who distort and besmirch the reasonimg process iwth bad ideas, Ti blame critiocaltheory for thatislike blamimg all crime on language.Jim Crow laws prpve thye truth of CRT.
Sources
[1] Stephen Sawchuk, "What is Critical Race Theory and Why is it under attack?" Education Week, May 18, 2021,URL: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05. Accessed Feb 20, 2022.
[2]Isabella Zou, "Demystifying Critical Race Theory And Efforts To ‘Abolish’ It" Giving CompasThe 74 Jun 25, 2021. URL: https://givingcompass.org/article/demystifying-critical-race-theory-and-efforts-to-abolish-it. Accessed Feb 20, 2022.
[3] Marc A. Thiessen, "The Danger of Critical Race Theory," op ed Washington Post, November 11, 2021.URL:https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-danger-of-critical-race-theory/.Accessed Feb 20, 2022. Thiessen is a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.
[4]Ibid.
[5]Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Allen Guelzo, "WTH is critical race theory? How a philosophy that inspired Marxism, Nazism, and Jim Crow is making its way into our schools, and what we can do" AEI, pod cast,Episode #108 | June 23, 2021. URL: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/6.23.21-Guelzo-transcript.pdf?x91208. Accessed Feb 23,2022.
[6]Allen Guelzo, in Ibid.
[7]Marvin Perry, et. al.Introduction to Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"Sources of the Western Tradition, Volume II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), pp. 56-57, third edition.
URL:file:///C:/Users/Joe%20Hinman/Downloads/Kant_What_is_Enlightenment.pdf, accessed Feb 23,2022.
[8]Ibid.
Sunday, February 20, 2022
The Transcendental signifier argument for the existence of God
The new Proof for the existence of God:The Transcendental Signifier Argument (TS)
The Argument:
p1. Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
p2. The TS sums up all Ops
p3. Modern Thought either rejects TS outright or takes out all aspects of mind.
p4. Therefore, Modern thought fails to provide a rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe.
p5. minds organize and communicate meaning
p6. Therefore universal mind, offers the best understanding of TS
p7. Concept of God unites TS with universal mind therefore offers best explanation for a view that is Rational, Coherent, and Meaningful (RCM).
Analysis of the propositions 1-3. 4-7 are self explanatory.
p(1) Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
OP 's make sense of the universe and explain hierarchies of conceptualization: effects need causes, conclusions are mandated by premises, meaning in language is organized by rules of grammar. (RCM (rational, coherent, and meaningful) = Hierarchical order).This premise is rooted directly in observation, a coherent view of the universe requires OPs, and observation. That a rational and coherent view requires a principle that organizes reality according to some aspect of logic or math should be obvious. That's really no different than saying to really understand things we need a logical coherent view. At this point the skeptic might assume that the argument is a design argument or that it is saying that “laws imply a law giver.” Jerome E. Bickenbach and Jackqueline M. Davis tell us that the argument “laws require a law giver” is the fallacy of equivocation.[1] Right they are, since scientists don't mean the term “laws” in the sense that early modern scientists such as Newton and Boyle meant it. They really meant a divine command that the universe must behave in a certain way. The term “law” is a hold-over from a former age. “The laws of physics, and other scientifically discovered laws of nature are principles formulated by scientists (not prescribed by lawmakers) in order to describe regularities and patterns observed in the natural world...while there may be a God this is not shown by taking the existence of laws of nature as evidence.”[2] Whether or not physical laws are evidence of God remains to be seen, but this argument is neither design nor laws imply a law-giver. First, it's not a design argument to the extent that the inference is not drawn from design per se. Design works through either fitness, function, or the resemblance to things we know are designed. Since it does turn upon order there is overlap with design, especially the latter kind (resemblance to known design). Yet the point of inference is not taken from resemblance to known design but to the all pervasive nature of necessary to contingent order
Secondly, the argument is not based upon the assumption laws imply a law giver. That idea assumes that physical laws are a simple list of rules mandated by a God. That concept of God is based upon the Suzerain model. The argument does not assume a set of rules but a more organic relation. The point of inference does not turn upon a set but upon one central, simple, and elegant idea that frames and grounds the metaphysical hierarchy in a single all-encumpasing first principle. Since I don't assume that scientists speak of “laws of physics” in the same way we speak of “laws of traffic” or The U.S. Code Annotated, or Black's Law Dictionary, then there is no fallacy of equivocation. How I connect physical “law” to a prescriptive sense without reducing description to prescription will be dealt with in chapter four.
Above I point to grammar as an example of a TS. The skeptic might argue that grammar is just cultural, that would be wrong. First of all it doesn't have to be innate to be an example. If language is just cultural constructs ideas might still be formed in their function from logical necessity (not the actual signifiers themselves but the concepts to which they point). An example would be the logical rule A cannot be non A. That is not arbitrary, but self evident. A thing cannot be other than itself. Thus the logical law marks the fact as a road map marks geography, but like a map the two might not always line up. In that case, if grammar is a purely cultural construct, its still an example of hierarchical conceptualization. Secondly, there is a lot of good evidence that generative grammar is genetic. Children of one month old can distinguish between different phonemes in a language, such as “b” and “p.” Researchers know this by reaction of the infant to the sound. A phoneme is a unit of sound in a word. Two such studies are one by Kuhl and one by Scott, et al.[3] More on this in a subsequent chapter.
Western thought has always assumed Organizing principles that are summed up in a single first principle (an ἀρχή) which grounds any sort of meaning: the logos or the transcendental signified (TS). When I have made this argument skeptics have argued that there is nothing in science called an “organizing principle.” One opponent in particular who was a physicist was particularly exercised about my use of this term. While there is no formal term such that scientists speak of the “organizing principles” along side laws of physics or Newtonian laws, they speak of organizing principles all the time. A google search resulted in 320,000,000 results.[4] On every page of this search we see articles by cell biologists, cancer researchers, environmental biologists. Mathematicians, physicists, and so on. Yes there are also articles by crack pots, new age mystics, people with all kinds of ideas. There is even a book by a physicist who argues that the scientific thinking of the poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang Goethe is valid in modern terms of quantum theory. He talked about organizing principles.[5] An Article in Nature entitled “Organizing principles” discusses a famous experiment in developmental biology: in 1924 carried out by Hilde Mangold, a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Hans Spemann in Freiburg. “It provided the first unambiguous evidence that cell and tissue fate can be determined by signals received from other cells…This experiment therefore demonstrated the existence of an organizer that instructs both neuralization and dorsalization, and showed that cells can adopt their developmental fate according to their position when instructed by other cells.”[6]
M.J. Bissell et. al. Discuss malignancy in breast cancer. “A considerable body of evidence now shows that cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions are essential organizing principles that help define the nature of the tissue context, and play a crucial role in regulating homeostasis and tissue specificity.”[7] All objects in nature are connected to other objects. This can be demonstrated easily enough, as William Graham makes clear in discussing “Natures Organizing Principles.”[8] He turns to ecosystems as an example. Fish in a school work by individually possessed set of common principles such that they act in unison without a leader. These are not evidences of God they are not a design argument. They merely serve to bring home the point there are organizing principles about. I know this general informal use of the term does not mean that the Ops I want to talk about exist. But it is clear there are plenty of structures that organize and guide the way things turn out we do not have an understanding of what organizes the OP. Yet modern science still seeks a logos or a TS that would bind them all together and unite them in one over arching principle.
A skeptic could argue that there are self organizing structures in nature. The self organizing structure supposedly doesn't require an outside source to exist, that would defeat the principle of the necessity of organizing principles. Self organizing systems do exist, although they may not be truly self organizing. A self organizing system is one in which the organization is decentralized or distributed throughout the system. Examples include crystallization (snow flakes), swarms of bees or birds, or neural networks. There are two problems with trying to use self organizing against OP's. First, there are contradictions within the concept. self organizing is part of dynamic structures, but dynamic laws operate locally. They can't produce large structures (like a universe).[9]
Moreover,extending the familiar notion of algorithmic complexity into the context of dynamical systems, we obtain a notion of “dynamical complexity”. A simple theorem then shows that only objects of very low dynamical complexity can self organize, so that living organisms must be of low dynamical complexity. On the other hand, symmetry considerations suggest that living organisms are highly complex, relative to the dynamical laws, due to their large size and high degree of irregularity.[10] Secondly, the term itself (“self organizing”) is a misnomer. Systems are not organizing themselves, they are being organized by physical laws and properties. As the Johns article points out self organizing systems are limited by “dynamical laws,” thus the prior conditions under which the system emerged (physical laws) is a limit on the system. An example of physical laws limiting self organizing is entropy.[11] The Gershen and Heylighen article shows that according to the second law of thermodynamics entropy in an isolated system can only decrease, thus, “[self organizing] systems cannot be isolated: they require a constant input of matter or energy with low entropy, getting rid of the internally generated entropy through the output of heat('dissipation')..”[12] John Collier finds that, “Self-organization requires an entropy gradient that is external. But this need contain no further organization...”[13] He goes on to say that new “selves” can emerge within the system but as stated above it does depend upon external forces. The article deals with self organizing systems and questions of identity. He defines self organizing as “a process by which larger scale (macro) order is formed in a system through the promotion of fluctuations at a smaller (micro) scale via processes inherent in the system dynamics, modulated by interactions between the system and its surroundings..”[14] Apparently even his definition of the process defeats the argument that self organizing is indicative of some kind of emergence from true nothingness. Some of the questions he explores include:
1) What is the self that organizes ?
2) Why is it a self ?
3) What is it for a process to be inherent to the system dynamics ?
4) What does it mean for interactions with the surroundings to modulate rather than determine or control ?
Maturana holds that there are no satisfactory answers to the first two of these questions, if for no other reason than that the self that supposedly organizes does not exist at the onset of organization. Self-organization appears to require a sort of lifting oneself by the bootstraps without having even boots at the beginning. Self-organization thus appears to be an oxymoron, or at least a misnomer. Autopoiesis is a self-producing process that presupposes an organized self (Maturana and Varela, 1992 : 43ff).[15]
Collier finds that Maturana and Varele are wrong, Autopoiesis does not explain the process of self organizing. The “new self” that emerges is changed enough to deserve the name self organizing, but it is not a process whereby a self creates itself apart from external forces. Of course we need not think of God interacting with new entities as each new process comes up. Clearly there is a law-like regularity that must be set up in advance of the effects it produces. We explore that law-like regularity in chapter four (are laws of physics descriptive or prescriptive?). Suffice to say self organizing systems do not negate the necessity of a TS A skeptic who is a physicist pointed out to me that science doesn't recognize anything called an “organizing principle.” Yes it does, they just don't call it that. Sometimes they are called “laws of physics,” or “natural laws.” But the concept is not limited to laws. There is an organizing principle grounding and influencing anything organized. Alphabetical listings, political ideas against or for which the group needs to be organized, necessity and contingency, any principle which forms the basis for organizing something, but science recognizes this too. They are also called “causes.”
p(2) OPs summed up in TS
Op's can be categorized and understood in relation to a few key principles that describe their relation to each other, such as mathematics, language, thought, culminating in one overarching first principle or ἀρχή (are-kay) that makes sense of it all. Just reason might be said to make sense of thought. TS's are first principes and they vie for status each one as the first principle (TSED). I've already discussed the logos of the Greeks and the use made of that concept in various ways. Kant's categories and abstract principles that regulate our understanding of everything, which corresponds to Ops to some extent or perhaps transcendental signifiers. I spoke of Paul Davies and his assertion that laws of physics have replaced God in the works of modern physicists, and in his own ideal along those lines as well. There's another aspects in which modern physics sees a TS. In principle this concept of a single elegant idea that explains everything is what science has been working toward for years. John Horgan says of Steven Weinberg, “In his 1993 book Dreams of a Final Theory, he extolled particle physics as the culmination of 'the ancient search for those principles that cannot be explained in terms of deeper principles.' He predicted that 'the convergence of explanations down to simpler and simpler principles will eventually come to an end in a final theory.'”[17]
A skeptic might question the scientific veracity or the idea of a single principle that reveals explanations built into the logical structure of nature. Yet in Dreams of a Final Theory, Weinberg tells us, “this is what our science is about: the discovery of explanations built into the logical structure of nature.”[18] David Deutsch a quantum physicist at Oxford produced a constructor theory that is a framework that unites all physical theories and eliminates the impossible in hopes of finding the basic principle that explains it all.[19] The concept of uniting theories and the meta law are organizing principles. The meta-law is a transcendental signifier, so where is the TS? That's the reality in the real world that these theories point to. The physicists are talking about things like gravity. The ideas in their minds that point to the TS are impersonal forces of nature; that single structure might well point to God and the physicists would have no way of knowing it or ruling it out. We have a couple of ways. One of them is to follow the logic of the argument. Clearly the premises are not ruled out by physics. I have used TS and OP in a seemingly interchangeable way and this may lead one to ask “which is it?” TS is a form of OP. I usually use OP in speaking of ideas that are known to be either naturalistic, or if constructed, the notion of something no one disputes. The latter might be bigotry (most people agree it exists), or that of freedom. The former might be a more easily demonstrated idea such as cause and effect. TS is more theoretical and might be metaphysical such as justice, or the absolute soul, God, or the Buddha mind. TS is an organizing principle but I tend to use the term of more theoretical ideas, or ideas not as easily demonstrated to which some may or may not give ascent. If there is an actual TS, it organizes the organizers, the OP's. The TS tends to be the next wrung up in the metaphysical hierarchy; yet since TS organizes it is an OP.
The TS is necessary and cannot be abandoned. Even attempts to abandon it result in the adoption of new Transcendental signifiers that refer to to the perennial concept of the ultimate first principle. One example of this replacement theory is that of Derrida trying to break down ethics, the attempt leads to the establishment of a new TS for ethical paradigm, i.e., “differance.”[20] The goal of difference as the answer to hierarchy and becomes the new principle around which the ethical paradigm is structured. An example of imposing a new OP in science would be the paradigm shift. An example of imposing a new TS is the atheist abolishing God talk from her vocabulary and putting science in its place. Or Marx with the same motivation makes ideology his version of God or the TSED, the top of the metaphysical hierarchy.
Finally, TS as a term stands for the top of the metaphysical hierarchy. The actual thing at the top itself is the TSED, the object of belief to which all TS's point. In other words as transcendental signifiers point to one reality at the top, the transcendental signified. so any given transcendental signifier might be wrong, but there has to be a Transcendental Signified. The words that describe the reality may very but there is a reality there. That which is all pervasive and mutually exclusive is not necessarily part of the definition but it flows out of the nature of being the top of the metaphysical hierarchy. It is clear that for some examples of the TS it is exclusive, such as “God.” We can understand this tendency of all OP's to be summed up in and explained by the TS as hierarchical ordering, This is what I call “metaphysical hierarchy,” the TS functions as the top of the Metaphysical hierarchy. This forms a major part of the argument because the TS is the best explanation for the hierarchy.
p(3) Modern Thought rejects TSED
It would be more technically correct to say postmodern thought rejects TS. But modern thought may keep TS's such as reason but doesn't allow them to be connected to mind. I use the term “modern” here to mean contemporary, no reference to the academic schools. I've already described this process. They reject God but leave in place an organizing principle in terms of laws of physics as a mindless principle that can take the place of a creator. It is impossible to do without OPs, all attempts to do so have ended in establishment of a new organizing principles: such as the Derrida and ethics. We cannot organize without a principle of organizing. Modern thought either reduces the TS to laws of physics or rejects it out right but in either case fails to unite the grounding function of the TS in such a way as to explain a coherent hierarchical ordering in the universe with an understanding of what it means to be. I don't know who invented the term “transcendental signifier,” but Derrida took it over in a sense and made it famous. It actually refers to any universal concept in human understanding. There are so many TS's because it's not limited to one notion, but also because it refers to or includes the ultimate first principle. That means it's basically about the areas of reality of which we know so little, thus there are many different ideas about it. Yet the hierarchical nature implies a single first principle. There are many different ideas, God, the life force, the over soul, the Buddha mind, being itself, but they all point to a single first principle at the top, The discussion is always about which one: reason, logic, math, God.<> The new Proof for the existence of God:The Transcendental Signifier Argument (TS)
Sources
[1] Jerome E. Bickenbach and Jackqueline M. Davis, Good Reasons for Better Arguments: An Introduction To The Sills and Values of Critical Thinking. Calgary: Broadview Press, 1996, 189.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Patricia Kuhl, “Early Language Acquisition: Cacking the Speech Code.” Nature reviews Neuroscience 5, (Nov. 2004) 831-843, doi:10.1038/nrn1533. Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. Email: pkkuhl@u.washington.edu See also: Sophie K Scott et al, “Categorical speech representation in human superior temporal gyrus. Is Categorical perception a fundamental property of speech perception?" Nature Neuroscience,(2010). 13: 1428-1432.
[4]Google search, organizing principles in nature,https://www.google.com/#q=organizing+principles+in+nature accessed 5/3/16
[5]Henri Bortoft, Wholeness of Nature of The Universe: Goethe’s Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in nature. Herdon VA:Lindisfarne Books originally published by Steiner Books,1971, 1985, re worked version 1992, 69. Henri Bortoft, (1938 – 29 December 2012) received undergraduate degree at university of Hull then did Postgraduate research at Beirbeck college. He studiedQuantum Physics with David Bohm.
[6]Barbara Marte, “Milstone 1: Organizing Principles,” Nature.Org (july 1,2004) doi:10.1038/nrn1449 URL: http://www.nature.com/milestones/development/milestones/full/milestone1.html accessed 6/3/16 Marte is senior editor Nature.
[7]viiM.J. Bissell, D.C Radisky, and A. Rizki, “The Organizing Principle:Microenvironmental Influences In The Normal amd Malignant Breast.” Pub Med, NCB, Dec;70(9-10): 2002, 537-46. on line resource URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12492495 accessed 6:3/16
[8]viiiWilliam Graham, “Natures Organization Principles,” Nature’s Tangled Web: The Art, Soul, and Science of a Connected Nature. Oct. 30, 2012, Online resource.http://www.freshvista.com/2012/natures-organizing-principles/ accessed 6/3/16.
[9]ixRichard Johns, “”Self Organizations in Dynamical Systems,” Synthese, Volume 181, issue 2,( July, 2011) 255-275 Johns is in the Dpartment of Philosophy, University British Columbia.
[10]xIbid.
[11]xiIbid., 258.
[12]xii Carlos Gershen and Francis Heylighen, “When Can We Call A System Self Organizing?” Advances in Artificial Life, Berlin Heidelberg: Springer, Volume 2801 of the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2003, Gershen is from Mexico, he earned his Ph.D. from University of Burssels in interdisciplinary studies. He studies self organizing systems.
[13]John Collier, “Self Organization, Individuation, and Identity,” Revue Internationale De Philosophie, 2004/2 (n 228) 151-172, 172. John Collier is a philosopher at University of Natal. The University of Natalis in Durbin South Africa, it has now become The University of Kwazulu-Natal. Collier is from Canada, he has taught at MIT and published extensively on self organizing systems.
[14]Ibid., 151.
[15]xv Huberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varele, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of HumanUnderstanding. Boston: Sambhala,, 43ff.
[16]xviCollier, “Self Organization...” op. cit.
[17]xviiJohn Horgan, “Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg Still dreams of a final Theory,” Scientific American, (May 1, 2015) Graham isa marine biologist. Online resourse, URL http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/nobel-laureate-steven-weinberg-still-dreams-of-final-theory/ accessed 9/20/15 John Horgan was staff writter, A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science, 1996, re-published with new preface 2015; and The End of War, 2012, paperback published 2014.
[18]xviiiSteven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: Scientists Search For the Ultimate Laws of Nature. New York: Vintage, reprint edition, 1994, 10.
[19]xixZeeya Merali, ”A Meta-law to rule them all: Physicists Devise a Theory of Everything.” Scientific American, (May 26, 2014) online rfesource URL http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-meta-law-to-rule-them-all-physicists-devise-a-theory-of-everything/ accessed 9/20/15.
[20]Derrida misspells “difference” for special reasons dealing with his theory “deconstruction.” Se chapter three on “the Derridian Background of the Argument Posted by Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) at 12:30 AM
The Argument:
p1. Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
p2. The TS sums up all Ops
p3. Modern Thought either rejects TS outright or takes out all aspects of mind.
p4. Therefore, Modern thought fails to provide a rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe.
p5. minds organize and communicate meaning
p6. Therefore universal mind, offers the best understanding of TS
p7. Concept of God unites TS with universal mind therefore offers best explanation for a view that is Rational, Coherent, and Meaningful (RCM).
Analysis of the propositions 1-3. 4-7 are self explanatory.
p(1) Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
OP 's make sense of the universe and explain hierarchies of conceptualization: effects need causes, conclusions are mandated by premises, meaning in language is organized by rules of grammar. (RCM (rational, coherent, and meaningful) = Hierarchical order).This premise is rooted directly in observation, a coherent view of the universe requires OPs, and observation. That a rational and coherent view requires a principle that organizes reality according to some aspect of logic or math should be obvious. That's really no different than saying to really understand things we need a logical coherent view. At this point the skeptic might assume that the argument is a design argument or that it is saying that “laws imply a law giver.” Jerome E. Bickenbach and Jackqueline M. Davis tell us that the argument “laws require a law giver” is the fallacy of equivocation.[1] Right they are, since scientists don't mean the term “laws” in the sense that early modern scientists such as Newton and Boyle meant it. They really meant a divine command that the universe must behave in a certain way. The term “law” is a hold-over from a former age. “The laws of physics, and other scientifically discovered laws of nature are principles formulated by scientists (not prescribed by lawmakers) in order to describe regularities and patterns observed in the natural world...while there may be a God this is not shown by taking the existence of laws of nature as evidence.”[2] Whether or not physical laws are evidence of God remains to be seen, but this argument is neither design nor laws imply a law-giver. First, it's not a design argument to the extent that the inference is not drawn from design per se. Design works through either fitness, function, or the resemblance to things we know are designed. Since it does turn upon order there is overlap with design, especially the latter kind (resemblance to known design). Yet the point of inference is not taken from resemblance to known design but to the all pervasive nature of necessary to contingent order
Secondly, the argument is not based upon the assumption laws imply a law giver. That idea assumes that physical laws are a simple list of rules mandated by a God. That concept of God is based upon the Suzerain model. The argument does not assume a set of rules but a more organic relation. The point of inference does not turn upon a set but upon one central, simple, and elegant idea that frames and grounds the metaphysical hierarchy in a single all-encumpasing first principle. Since I don't assume that scientists speak of “laws of physics” in the same way we speak of “laws of traffic” or The U.S. Code Annotated, or Black's Law Dictionary, then there is no fallacy of equivocation. How I connect physical “law” to a prescriptive sense without reducing description to prescription will be dealt with in chapter four.
Above I point to grammar as an example of a TS. The skeptic might argue that grammar is just cultural, that would be wrong. First of all it doesn't have to be innate to be an example. If language is just cultural constructs ideas might still be formed in their function from logical necessity (not the actual signifiers themselves but the concepts to which they point). An example would be the logical rule A cannot be non A. That is not arbitrary, but self evident. A thing cannot be other than itself. Thus the logical law marks the fact as a road map marks geography, but like a map the two might not always line up. In that case, if grammar is a purely cultural construct, its still an example of hierarchical conceptualization. Secondly, there is a lot of good evidence that generative grammar is genetic. Children of one month old can distinguish between different phonemes in a language, such as “b” and “p.” Researchers know this by reaction of the infant to the sound. A phoneme is a unit of sound in a word. Two such studies are one by Kuhl and one by Scott, et al.[3] More on this in a subsequent chapter.
Western thought has always assumed Organizing principles that are summed up in a single first principle (an ἀρχή) which grounds any sort of meaning: the logos or the transcendental signified (TS). When I have made this argument skeptics have argued that there is nothing in science called an “organizing principle.” One opponent in particular who was a physicist was particularly exercised about my use of this term. While there is no formal term such that scientists speak of the “organizing principles” along side laws of physics or Newtonian laws, they speak of organizing principles all the time. A google search resulted in 320,000,000 results.[4] On every page of this search we see articles by cell biologists, cancer researchers, environmental biologists. Mathematicians, physicists, and so on. Yes there are also articles by crack pots, new age mystics, people with all kinds of ideas. There is even a book by a physicist who argues that the scientific thinking of the poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang Goethe is valid in modern terms of quantum theory. He talked about organizing principles.[5] An Article in Nature entitled “Organizing principles” discusses a famous experiment in developmental biology: in 1924 carried out by Hilde Mangold, a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Hans Spemann in Freiburg. “It provided the first unambiguous evidence that cell and tissue fate can be determined by signals received from other cells…This experiment therefore demonstrated the existence of an organizer that instructs both neuralization and dorsalization, and showed that cells can adopt their developmental fate according to their position when instructed by other cells.”[6]
M.J. Bissell et. al. Discuss malignancy in breast cancer. “A considerable body of evidence now shows that cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions are essential organizing principles that help define the nature of the tissue context, and play a crucial role in regulating homeostasis and tissue specificity.”[7] All objects in nature are connected to other objects. This can be demonstrated easily enough, as William Graham makes clear in discussing “Natures Organizing Principles.”[8] He turns to ecosystems as an example. Fish in a school work by individually possessed set of common principles such that they act in unison without a leader. These are not evidences of God they are not a design argument. They merely serve to bring home the point there are organizing principles about. I know this general informal use of the term does not mean that the Ops I want to talk about exist. But it is clear there are plenty of structures that organize and guide the way things turn out we do not have an understanding of what organizes the OP. Yet modern science still seeks a logos or a TS that would bind them all together and unite them in one over arching principle.
A skeptic could argue that there are self organizing structures in nature. The self organizing structure supposedly doesn't require an outside source to exist, that would defeat the principle of the necessity of organizing principles. Self organizing systems do exist, although they may not be truly self organizing. A self organizing system is one in which the organization is decentralized or distributed throughout the system. Examples include crystallization (snow flakes), swarms of bees or birds, or neural networks. There are two problems with trying to use self organizing against OP's. First, there are contradictions within the concept. self organizing is part of dynamic structures, but dynamic laws operate locally. They can't produce large structures (like a universe).[9]
Moreover,extending the familiar notion of algorithmic complexity into the context of dynamical systems, we obtain a notion of “dynamical complexity”. A simple theorem then shows that only objects of very low dynamical complexity can self organize, so that living organisms must be of low dynamical complexity. On the other hand, symmetry considerations suggest that living organisms are highly complex, relative to the dynamical laws, due to their large size and high degree of irregularity.[10] Secondly, the term itself (“self organizing”) is a misnomer. Systems are not organizing themselves, they are being organized by physical laws and properties. As the Johns article points out self organizing systems are limited by “dynamical laws,” thus the prior conditions under which the system emerged (physical laws) is a limit on the system. An example of physical laws limiting self organizing is entropy.[11] The Gershen and Heylighen article shows that according to the second law of thermodynamics entropy in an isolated system can only decrease, thus, “[self organizing] systems cannot be isolated: they require a constant input of matter or energy with low entropy, getting rid of the internally generated entropy through the output of heat('dissipation')..”[12] John Collier finds that, “Self-organization requires an entropy gradient that is external. But this need contain no further organization...”[13] He goes on to say that new “selves” can emerge within the system but as stated above it does depend upon external forces. The article deals with self organizing systems and questions of identity. He defines self organizing as “a process by which larger scale (macro) order is formed in a system through the promotion of fluctuations at a smaller (micro) scale via processes inherent in the system dynamics, modulated by interactions between the system and its surroundings..”[14] Apparently even his definition of the process defeats the argument that self organizing is indicative of some kind of emergence from true nothingness. Some of the questions he explores include:
1) What is the self that organizes ?
2) Why is it a self ?
3) What is it for a process to be inherent to the system dynamics ?
4) What does it mean for interactions with the surroundings to modulate rather than determine or control ?
Maturana holds that there are no satisfactory answers to the first two of these questions, if for no other reason than that the self that supposedly organizes does not exist at the onset of organization. Self-organization appears to require a sort of lifting oneself by the bootstraps without having even boots at the beginning. Self-organization thus appears to be an oxymoron, or at least a misnomer. Autopoiesis is a self-producing process that presupposes an organized self (Maturana and Varela, 1992 : 43ff).[15]
Collier finds that Maturana and Varele are wrong, Autopoiesis does not explain the process of self organizing. The “new self” that emerges is changed enough to deserve the name self organizing, but it is not a process whereby a self creates itself apart from external forces. Of course we need not think of God interacting with new entities as each new process comes up. Clearly there is a law-like regularity that must be set up in advance of the effects it produces. We explore that law-like regularity in chapter four (are laws of physics descriptive or prescriptive?). Suffice to say self organizing systems do not negate the necessity of a TS A skeptic who is a physicist pointed out to me that science doesn't recognize anything called an “organizing principle.” Yes it does, they just don't call it that. Sometimes they are called “laws of physics,” or “natural laws.” But the concept is not limited to laws. There is an organizing principle grounding and influencing anything organized. Alphabetical listings, political ideas against or for which the group needs to be organized, necessity and contingency, any principle which forms the basis for organizing something, but science recognizes this too. They are also called “causes.”
p(2) OPs summed up in TS
Op's can be categorized and understood in relation to a few key principles that describe their relation to each other, such as mathematics, language, thought, culminating in one overarching first principle or ἀρχή (are-kay) that makes sense of it all. Just reason might be said to make sense of thought. TS's are first principes and they vie for status each one as the first principle (TSED). I've already discussed the logos of the Greeks and the use made of that concept in various ways. Kant's categories and abstract principles that regulate our understanding of everything, which corresponds to Ops to some extent or perhaps transcendental signifiers. I spoke of Paul Davies and his assertion that laws of physics have replaced God in the works of modern physicists, and in his own ideal along those lines as well. There's another aspects in which modern physics sees a TS. In principle this concept of a single elegant idea that explains everything is what science has been working toward for years. John Horgan says of Steven Weinberg, “In his 1993 book Dreams of a Final Theory, he extolled particle physics as the culmination of 'the ancient search for those principles that cannot be explained in terms of deeper principles.' He predicted that 'the convergence of explanations down to simpler and simpler principles will eventually come to an end in a final theory.'”[17]
A skeptic might question the scientific veracity or the idea of a single principle that reveals explanations built into the logical structure of nature. Yet in Dreams of a Final Theory, Weinberg tells us, “this is what our science is about: the discovery of explanations built into the logical structure of nature.”[18] David Deutsch a quantum physicist at Oxford produced a constructor theory that is a framework that unites all physical theories and eliminates the impossible in hopes of finding the basic principle that explains it all.[19] The concept of uniting theories and the meta law are organizing principles. The meta-law is a transcendental signifier, so where is the TS? That's the reality in the real world that these theories point to. The physicists are talking about things like gravity. The ideas in their minds that point to the TS are impersonal forces of nature; that single structure might well point to God and the physicists would have no way of knowing it or ruling it out. We have a couple of ways. One of them is to follow the logic of the argument. Clearly the premises are not ruled out by physics. I have used TS and OP in a seemingly interchangeable way and this may lead one to ask “which is it?” TS is a form of OP. I usually use OP in speaking of ideas that are known to be either naturalistic, or if constructed, the notion of something no one disputes. The latter might be bigotry (most people agree it exists), or that of freedom. The former might be a more easily demonstrated idea such as cause and effect. TS is more theoretical and might be metaphysical such as justice, or the absolute soul, God, or the Buddha mind. TS is an organizing principle but I tend to use the term of more theoretical ideas, or ideas not as easily demonstrated to which some may or may not give ascent. If there is an actual TS, it organizes the organizers, the OP's. The TS tends to be the next wrung up in the metaphysical hierarchy; yet since TS organizes it is an OP.
The TS is necessary and cannot be abandoned. Even attempts to abandon it result in the adoption of new Transcendental signifiers that refer to to the perennial concept of the ultimate first principle. One example of this replacement theory is that of Derrida trying to break down ethics, the attempt leads to the establishment of a new TS for ethical paradigm, i.e., “differance.”[20] The goal of difference as the answer to hierarchy and becomes the new principle around which the ethical paradigm is structured. An example of imposing a new OP in science would be the paradigm shift. An example of imposing a new TS is the atheist abolishing God talk from her vocabulary and putting science in its place. Or Marx with the same motivation makes ideology his version of God or the TSED, the top of the metaphysical hierarchy.
Finally, TS as a term stands for the top of the metaphysical hierarchy. The actual thing at the top itself is the TSED, the object of belief to which all TS's point. In other words as transcendental signifiers point to one reality at the top, the transcendental signified. so any given transcendental signifier might be wrong, but there has to be a Transcendental Signified. The words that describe the reality may very but there is a reality there. That which is all pervasive and mutually exclusive is not necessarily part of the definition but it flows out of the nature of being the top of the metaphysical hierarchy. It is clear that for some examples of the TS it is exclusive, such as “God.” We can understand this tendency of all OP's to be summed up in and explained by the TS as hierarchical ordering, This is what I call “metaphysical hierarchy,” the TS functions as the top of the Metaphysical hierarchy. This forms a major part of the argument because the TS is the best explanation for the hierarchy.
p(3) Modern Thought rejects TSED
It would be more technically correct to say postmodern thought rejects TS. But modern thought may keep TS's such as reason but doesn't allow them to be connected to mind. I use the term “modern” here to mean contemporary, no reference to the academic schools. I've already described this process. They reject God but leave in place an organizing principle in terms of laws of physics as a mindless principle that can take the place of a creator. It is impossible to do without OPs, all attempts to do so have ended in establishment of a new organizing principles: such as the Derrida and ethics. We cannot organize without a principle of organizing. Modern thought either reduces the TS to laws of physics or rejects it out right but in either case fails to unite the grounding function of the TS in such a way as to explain a coherent hierarchical ordering in the universe with an understanding of what it means to be. I don't know who invented the term “transcendental signifier,” but Derrida took it over in a sense and made it famous. It actually refers to any universal concept in human understanding. There are so many TS's because it's not limited to one notion, but also because it refers to or includes the ultimate first principle. That means it's basically about the areas of reality of which we know so little, thus there are many different ideas about it. Yet the hierarchical nature implies a single first principle. There are many different ideas, God, the life force, the over soul, the Buddha mind, being itself, but they all point to a single first principle at the top, The discussion is always about which one: reason, logic, math, God.<> The new Proof for the existence of God:The Transcendental Signifier Argument (TS)
Sources
[1] Jerome E. Bickenbach and Jackqueline M. Davis, Good Reasons for Better Arguments: An Introduction To The Sills and Values of Critical Thinking. Calgary: Broadview Press, 1996, 189.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Patricia Kuhl, “Early Language Acquisition: Cacking the Speech Code.” Nature reviews Neuroscience 5, (Nov. 2004) 831-843, doi:10.1038/nrn1533. Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. Email: pkkuhl@u.washington.edu See also: Sophie K Scott et al, “Categorical speech representation in human superior temporal gyrus. Is Categorical perception a fundamental property of speech perception?" Nature Neuroscience,(2010). 13: 1428-1432.
[4]Google search, organizing principles in nature,https://www.google.com/#q=organizing+principles+in+nature accessed 5/3/16
[5]Henri Bortoft, Wholeness of Nature of The Universe: Goethe’s Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in nature. Herdon VA:Lindisfarne Books originally published by Steiner Books,1971, 1985, re worked version 1992, 69. Henri Bortoft, (1938 – 29 December 2012) received undergraduate degree at university of Hull then did Postgraduate research at Beirbeck college. He studiedQuantum Physics with David Bohm.
[6]Barbara Marte, “Milstone 1: Organizing Principles,” Nature.Org (july 1,2004) doi:10.1038/nrn1449 URL: http://www.nature.com/milestones/development/milestones/full/milestone1.html accessed 6/3/16 Marte is senior editor Nature.
[7]viiM.J. Bissell, D.C Radisky, and A. Rizki, “The Organizing Principle:Microenvironmental Influences In The Normal amd Malignant Breast.” Pub Med, NCB, Dec;70(9-10): 2002, 537-46. on line resource URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12492495 accessed 6:3/16
[8]viiiWilliam Graham, “Natures Organization Principles,” Nature’s Tangled Web: The Art, Soul, and Science of a Connected Nature. Oct. 30, 2012, Online resource.http://www.freshvista.com/2012/natures-organizing-principles/ accessed 6/3/16.
[9]ixRichard Johns, “”Self Organizations in Dynamical Systems,” Synthese, Volume 181, issue 2,( July, 2011) 255-275 Johns is in the Dpartment of Philosophy, University British Columbia.
[10]xIbid.
[11]xiIbid., 258.
[12]xii Carlos Gershen and Francis Heylighen, “When Can We Call A System Self Organizing?” Advances in Artificial Life, Berlin Heidelberg: Springer, Volume 2801 of the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2003, Gershen is from Mexico, he earned his Ph.D. from University of Burssels in interdisciplinary studies. He studies self organizing systems.
[13]John Collier, “Self Organization, Individuation, and Identity,” Revue Internationale De Philosophie, 2004/2 (n 228) 151-172, 172. John Collier is a philosopher at University of Natal. The University of Natalis in Durbin South Africa, it has now become The University of Kwazulu-Natal. Collier is from Canada, he has taught at MIT and published extensively on self organizing systems.
[14]Ibid., 151.
[15]xv Huberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varele, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of HumanUnderstanding. Boston: Sambhala,, 43ff.
[16]xviCollier, “Self Organization...” op. cit.
[17]xviiJohn Horgan, “Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg Still dreams of a final Theory,” Scientific American, (May 1, 2015) Graham isa marine biologist. Online resourse, URL http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/nobel-laureate-steven-weinberg-still-dreams-of-final-theory/ accessed 9/20/15 John Horgan was staff writter, A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science, 1996, re-published with new preface 2015; and The End of War, 2012, paperback published 2014.
[18]xviiiSteven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: Scientists Search For the Ultimate Laws of Nature. New York: Vintage, reprint edition, 1994, 10.
[19]xixZeeya Merali, ”A Meta-law to rule them all: Physicists Devise a Theory of Everything.” Scientific American, (May 26, 2014) online rfesource URL http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-meta-law-to-rule-them-all-physicists-devise-a-theory-of-everything/ accessed 9/20/15.
[20]Derrida misspells “difference” for special reasons dealing with his theory “deconstruction.” Se chapter three on “the Derridian Background of the Argument Posted by Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) at 12:30 AM
Saturday, November 13, 2021
Did God Command Slaughter of Women and Infants?
A reader asks:
"Will you do an article on Numbers 31:17-18? Because many use that that God is a child killer and promotes rapes and underage marriages."
The author of Hebrews tells us:
Ihe traditional inerantist view sees the Bible as a memo from the boss to be read to the entire company on the shop floor. In my view the OT is a record of divine/human encounter. Thus it is a mixture of both human and divine outlook. It is written by humans and thus is stained with their cultural outlook.The truth of God breaks through here and there but amid a sea of human perspective.
The purpose of the OT is to crate a framework in which the meaning of Messiah makes sense beyond it's ethnographic borders and in which the mission of Messiah makes sense.
Obviously if we take Jesus as the lens through which to read the OT we can't accept the notion that the God of love would order the killing of infants. we need not accept this as God's command.That was the scribes making assumptions based upon the barbarus culture of the day.
Turning to the specific passage there are a couple of points I would like to make.
First, some scholars think v18 "But all the women and children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" carries the connotation that these young girls would be sex slaves for Israelite warriors. One could look at it through Mary Poppins sunglasses and say they were to raise them as daughters and then marry them off as adults to repectable Israelite gentelemen, but the vast perpondrence of scholarship sees it as sex slave, at least in connotation. Even the traditional believers embrace this view among its major scholars.[1]
Secondly, one might think the reason for killing the woman was to punish them for having sex.The real reason whch does not justify the act, is because these women lured men of Israel to worhip other Gods throgh their sexual favors.This caused a plague in Israel,thousands died.[2]
notes
[1]"A detailed Historical Examination of numbers 31:18."Discover the Truth, Aug 7,2016. https://discover-the-truth.com/2016/08/07/a-detailed-historical-examination-of-numbers-3118/.
[2]"What do Christans Think About Bible verses numbers 31:17-18." Quora., Jan 7/2030.https://www.quora.com/What-do-Christians-think-about-Bible-verses-Numbers-31-17-
17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.Before going into specifics I must point out that my views on the OT are unconventional. I am not an inerrantist. Thus I do not feel duty bound to make all such verses right with the reader.I do not intend to try and prove that God makes killing infants ok. Here's a quick overview of my take on the OT:
18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.(all quotes NIV unless otherwise noted).
The author of Hebrews tells us:
1:1 "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.""Various ways" might well include mixtures of human and divine. This passage suggests to me that Jesus is the standard through which we should read the OT. This is backwards historically.It nakes more exigetical sence than does inerrency.
Ihe traditional inerantist view sees the Bible as a memo from the boss to be read to the entire company on the shop floor. In my view the OT is a record of divine/human encounter. Thus it is a mixture of both human and divine outlook. It is written by humans and thus is stained with their cultural outlook.The truth of God breaks through here and there but amid a sea of human perspective.
The purpose of the OT is to crate a framework in which the meaning of Messiah makes sense beyond it's ethnographic borders and in which the mission of Messiah makes sense.
Obviously if we take Jesus as the lens through which to read the OT we can't accept the notion that the God of love would order the killing of infants. we need not accept this as God's command.That was the scribes making assumptions based upon the barbarus culture of the day.
Turning to the specific passage there are a couple of points I would like to make.
First, some scholars think v18 "But all the women and children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" carries the connotation that these young girls would be sex slaves for Israelite warriors. One could look at it through Mary Poppins sunglasses and say they were to raise them as daughters and then marry them off as adults to repectable Israelite gentelemen, but the vast perpondrence of scholarship sees it as sex slave, at least in connotation. Even the traditional believers embrace this view among its major scholars.[1]
Secondly, one might think the reason for killing the woman was to punish them for having sex.The real reason whch does not justify the act, is because these women lured men of Israel to worhip other Gods throgh their sexual favors.This caused a plague in Israel,thousands died.[2]
notes
[1]"A detailed Historical Examination of numbers 31:18."Discover the Truth, Aug 7,2016. https://discover-the-truth.com/2016/08/07/a-detailed-historical-examination-of-numbers-3118/.
[2]"What do Christans Think About Bible verses numbers 31:17-18." Quora., Jan 7/2030.https://www.quora.com/What-do-Christians-think-about-Bible-verses-Numbers-31-17-
Saturday, November 06, 2021
Trump commanded DOJ to ignore election outcome 9 times
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1044015379/senate-report-details-trumps-efforts-to-use-doj-to-overturn-election-results
NPR:"Senate report details Trump's efforts to use DOJ to overturn election results"
NPR:"Senate report details Trump's efforts to use DOJ to overturn election results"
An interim report from the Senate Judiciary Committee provides the most detailed look yet at former President Donald Trump's attempts to enlist the Justice Department in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.He is essentually saying forget the will of the people, make me king. He wants to be dicktator. Hw is still in full controlof the repubs, Duch tight cobtrol the got no votes toremove him from office. A vote for the repubs is a vote for Trump.
The report from the panel's Democratic majority documents the chaotic final weeks of Trump's presidency following his loss to Joe Biden, and how Trump tried to force Justice Department officials to help him keep his grip on power.
Department leaders ultimately resisted Trump's pressure, but it took threats of mass resignations across the department to get him to back down.
A key moment that emerges in the report is a Jan. 3 meeting in the Oval Office between Trump and senior Justice Department leaders, including then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his top deputy, Richard Donoghue.
Trump continues to lie, says 'real insurrection' happened when he lost election POLITICS. Trump continues to lie, says 'real insurrection' happened when he lost election Rosen told the committee that Trump opened the three-hour meeting by saying: "One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren't going to do anything to overturn the election."
Sunday, September 05, 2021
OT Genocide does not defeat Christianity
Randal Rauser is a Canadian Phillosopher who teaces at a University in Canada. He is a Christian apologist and he may be best known for his unique approach to Genoscide and related isssues in Old Testaemt. The "Counter Apoloogost" (CA) is an atheist who makes a attack on Plantinga's eposteopgy. He attacks Rauser at the points were he backs Plantinga.[1][2] In this essy I will deal only with one small point the CA makes agaist Rauser.
Rauser's approach is different because he does not suppoprt wipping out the pagans but instead finds fault with the OT.It is what he is best known for. I do not understand all of his moves so on this piont I will use my own approch athough I think the two are simiilar.
The logic to falsify the idea that even if there is a God, Yahweh - the Christian deity, cannot be God is straight forward:
4. The bible shows Yahweh explicitly commanded killing infants on the basis of their race/nationality Those passages are not it. We are no more oblogated to believe God did that than we are six day creation.
5. Killing infants on the basis of their race/nationality is an evil act\\ Killimg infants for any reason is wrong. But the fact is God did not say kill them for their race but kill them for their socioetie's ills.
6. Yahweh explicitly commanded an evil act. If we assme the historocal validity of those passages. But we need not do so.
7. Therefore, Yahweh is not all good
Iff one acccepts those passages
8. Therefore, Yahweh cannot be god[3] Or we could just as easiy conclude that given p 1-2 God did not order those thigs.
He says of this argument:
Let's focus on I Sam 15.2f the injunction to slaughter the Amalekites. this contains the infant passage.The text of 1 Samuel is one of the most heavily redacted in the Bible. As we will see, it's very presence in the canon has been brought into question, but the version we have is probably a corrupted second rate copy, and the LXX is closer, and Q4Sama at Qumran closer still, to the actual original.[6]
for more depth and detials see my essay[9].
Notes [1]The Counter Apologist, "Countering Christian apologetics arguments with logic, evidence, and reason." blog (June 21,2012) https://counterapologist.blogspot.com/2021/06/countering-plantingas-reformed.html
[2]R,Rauser,"Biblical Violence and Epistemology: A Conversation with Counter Apologist"(Aug 28, 2021) "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdVPHM8Yczw&t=2792s&ab_channel=RandalRauser Rauswer's answers [3]Counter Apologist, op cit [4]Ibid [5]Ibid [6]Institute for Biblical & Scientific Studies "The Dead Sea Scrolls & the Text of the Old Testament," website updated 2021 https://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/dss.htm
[7]James H. Charlesworth "The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Volume One: The Hebrew Bible and Qumran edited".Institutte Bibilcal Scientific Studies: Bible Press, 2000.227-8
[8]Albert C. Sundberg, Jr Thomas J. Sienkewicz and James E. Betts "The Old Testament of the Early Church"published by Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois in 1997.
[9]Joseph Hinman 'The Amalekite Problem' D0xa 2000 https://www.doxa.ws/Bible/amel_problem.html
Rauser's approach is different because he does not suppoprt wipping out the pagans but instead finds fault with the OT.It is what he is best known for. I do not understand all of his moves so on this piont I will use my own approch athough I think the two are simiilar.
The logic to falsify the idea that even if there is a God, Yahweh - the Christian deity, cannot be God is straight forward:
1. God, if one exists, is all good.Before turning to the major problem, there are a couple of things to say about the argument itself. First, p1-2 must be granted but no 3 is a problem:3. The bible’s description of Yahweh’s explicit actions are factually accurate (Christian assumption) That is notthe only Chritian assumption. It's the fimdamentalost assmptopm. It is a demonstraly false assumption. For example the unierse was not created in six days,there is not eidece of a world wide flood. We need not make that assmption.Atheist argumemts often depend upon Christoanity being represented by the fundies.
2. An all good being cannot command an evil act
3. The bible’s description of Yahweh’s explicit actions are factually accurate (Christian assumption)
4. The bible shows Yahweh explicitly commanded killing infants on the basis of their race/nationality
5. Killing infants on the basis of their race/nationality is an evil act
6. Yahweh explicitly commanded an evil act.
7. Therefore, Yahweh is not all good
8. Therefore, Yahweh cannot be god[3]
4. The bible shows Yahweh explicitly commanded killing infants on the basis of their race/nationality Those passages are not it. We are no more oblogated to believe God did that than we are six day creation.
5. Killing infants on the basis of their race/nationality is an evil act\\ Killimg infants for any reason is wrong. But the fact is God did not say kill them for their race but kill them for their socioetie's ills.
6. Yahweh explicitly commanded an evil act. If we assme the historocal validity of those passages. But we need not do so.
7. Therefore, Yahweh is not all good
Iff one acccepts those passages
8. Therefore, Yahweh cannot be god[3] Or we could just as easiy conclude that given p 1-2 God did not order those thigs.
He says of this argument:
This is a particularly powerful argument against Christianity in particular, and its power is compounded by the fact that some of the most popular apologists working today will defend the Canaanite genocide as a justifiable act by a loving god! William Lane Craig expressly states that it was morally obligatory for the Israelite soldiers to put broadswords into babies. Paul Copan wrote an entire book either minimizing or justifying the Old Testament atrocities and he got the various big names in conservative apologetics to endorse it! As an atheist looking to help move people away from Christianity, this is basically a gift.[4]It is ashame that so many apologists try to defend thse pasages. But that has nothing to do with the truth of the argument. This is not a powerful argument becaseor only works with fnsanwentalists who feel hamstrung to accept te entire OT.
Nothing discredits a Christian apologist faster than having them present the moral argument for god’s existence and then in retort force them to become an apologist for slavery and genocide.[5]I think that is true, however, we need not accept those passages. WE can't reject them on the bassis of our shame at the commads. That leaves it a moot point. There are reasos of textal criticim to assume that those passages are emendations.
Let's focus on I Sam 15.2f the injunction to slaughter the Amalekites. this contains the infant passage.The text of 1 Samuel is one of the most heavily redacted in the Bible. As we will see, it's very presence in the canon has been brought into question, but the version we have is probably a corrupted second rate copy, and the LXX is closer, and Q4Sama at Qumran closer still, to the actual original.[6]
"For the past two centuries textual critics have recognized that the Masoretic Text (MT) of 1&2 Samuel has much textual corruption. The Samuel MT is shorter than the LXX and 4QSama. The Samuel MT has improper word division, metathesis, and other orthographic problems. Certain phrases and clauses go against the Hebrew grammar rules. Parallel passages vary from each other" (See Charlesworth, 2000, pp.227-8).;'[7]The scribes at Qumran believed first Sam was not even Canonical. for a ,ich ore imdpeth loo
Thus, it is evident that the canon in Sirach consisted of the Law and the Prophets. Daniel (9.2) cites Jeremiah (25.11 ff.) as "the word of the Lord to Jeremiah."The possibility presents itself that the genocide passages were emendations from the exile an attempt to build Isarel's sense of prode while in Bblyonian exile.
This tells us that the place of Samuel in the canon was by no means assured. Because the redactor didn't feel the former prophets were canonical, great libertties were taken. We also see differences between the Ms which form the parent of the LXX translation, and those of MT. What all of this amounts to is that 1 Samuel is a very corrupt text, and the likelyhood is quite high that the passage is redacted. This is even more certain when we consider that the infant passage itself has been redacted.[8]
for more depth and detials see my essay[9].
Notes [1]The Counter Apologist, "Countering Christian apologetics arguments with logic, evidence, and reason." blog (June 21,2012) https://counterapologist.blogspot.com/2021/06/countering-plantingas-reformed.html
[2]R,Rauser,"Biblical Violence and Epistemology: A Conversation with Counter Apologist"(Aug 28, 2021) "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdVPHM8Yczw&t=2792s&ab_channel=RandalRauser Rauswer's answers [3]Counter Apologist, op cit [4]Ibid [5]Ibid [6]Institute for Biblical & Scientific Studies "The Dead Sea Scrolls & the Text of the Old Testament," website updated 2021 https://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/dss.htm
[7]James H. Charlesworth "The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Volume One: The Hebrew Bible and Qumran edited".Institutte Bibilcal Scientific Studies: Bible Press, 2000.227-8
[8]Albert C. Sundberg, Jr Thomas J. Sienkewicz and James E. Betts "The Old Testament of the Early Church"published by Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois in 1997.
[9]Joseph Hinman 'The Amalekite Problem' D0xa 2000 https://www.doxa.ws/Bible/amel_problem.html
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Superstition in Atheist Ideology
The word superstition is often used to refer to a religion not practiced by the majority of a given society regardless of whether the prevailing religion contains alleged superstitions.[1] Let's look at an authoritative definition of the word, webster:
Definition of superstition
At this point it would be well to examine the origin of religion and superstition. The two did actually come out of the same phase of human development and their origins are linked. Since I don't buy a literal Genesis account I attribute human origin to evolitom. At one point humans began to notice the sense of God' s presence and mystical experience. All experiences of the divine must be filtered through cultural constructs, or symbols. God is beyond our understanding, thus beyond language. If we are talking about our experiences, however badly, we must filter them through culture.
RELIGION, although inherent in man, borrows its expressions from the setting or milieu in which man appears. The forms through which man expresses the supernatural are all drawn from the cultural heritage and the environment known to him, and are structured according to his dominant patterns of experience.In a hunting culture this means that the main target of observation, the animal, is the ferment of suggestive influence on representations of the supernatural. This must not be interpreted as meaning that all ideas of the supernatural necessarily take animal form. First of all, spirits do appear also as human beings, although generally less frequently; the high-god, for instance, if he exists, is often thought of as a being of human appearance. Second, although spirits may manifest themselves as animals they may evince a human character and often also human modes of action.[4]
In his work The Evolution of God,[5] Robert Wright distills the work of anthropology over the last two centuries and demonstrates an evolutionary development, form early superstition that personified nature (prehistoric people talking to the wind)[6], through a polytheistic origin in pre-Hebrew Israelite culture,[7] to monotheistic innovation with the God of the Bible.
The point is we left superstition ages ago. It was an attempt at coping with the unknown, but divine revelation proved a better one. We outgrew it. Lest one argue that this still implies a weakness in religion let's not forget astrology and astronomy grew up together and out of the same thought and the same stars. As did Chemistry and Alchemy
NOTES
[1]Vyse, Stuart A. (2000). Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 19–22.
[2]Superstition, Merroam-Webster online https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superstition (accessed 1/10/21)
[3]Siperototom, Wikepedioa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition#:~:text=The%20word%20superstition%20is%20often,prevailing%20religion%20contains%20alleged%20superstitions.(accessed 1/10/21)
Soirces used in the Wiki artickle:
w1:cf. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superstition w2:Drinkwater, Ken; Dagnall, Neil. "The science of superstition – and why people believe in the unbelievable". The Conversation. Retrieved 2020-09-21. w3Vyse, Stuart A. (2000). Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 19–22. ISBN 978-0-1951-3634-0.
[4]Ake Hultkrantz, “Attitudes Toward Animals in Shashoni Indian Religion,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Spring, 1970) © World Wisdom, Inc. no page listed,online archive, URL: http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/browse_g.aspx?ID=131, accessed 3/21/13
[5]Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, New York: Back Bay Books, reprint edition, 2010. The book was Originally published in 2009. The company “Back Bay books: is an imprint of Hachette Books, through Little Brown and company. Wright studied sociobiology at Princeton and taught at Princeton as and University of Pennsyania. He edits New Republic and does journalistic writing of science, especially sociobiology.
[6]Wright, ibid, 9
[7]Ibid 10
Definition of superstition
1a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causationb: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary. More Webster:Recent Examples And the superstition has bled outside of stories — even today, many hotels don't have a 13th floor.— Wyatte Grantham-philips, USA TODAY, "It's Friday the 13th. In 2020. Here's a brief history about the superstitious date and some hilarious tweets to get you through the day.," 13 Nov. 2020While the other 3 out of 4 Americans might scoff at this, there is actually psychological science to back superstition.— Marika Gerken, CNN, "Friday the 13th: How it came to be and why it's considered unlucky," 13 Nov. 2020These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'superstition.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.[2]When I first read this definition in Webster I said to myself they will use the bit about ignorance and deard of the unknown to indicate the mystical and the bit about causation to impune the cause argument. I think Webster's meant things like a black cat crossing your path is bad luck. The atheist take it to mean argument from first cause. The Wiki article footnotes Webster as it's source..
A superstition is "a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation" or "an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition."[Wiki 1][Wiki 2] Often, it arises from ignorance, a misunderstanding of science or causality, a belief in fate or magic, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy, and certain spiritual beings, particularly the belief that future events can be foretold by specific (apparently) unrelated prior events.[Wiki 3] [3]They justify these additions by citing other sources. No one beyond that segment of atheism i call "Dawkamentalism"' believes that belief in God per se is superstition. There is another funny thing about that quote. It starts out telling us "A superstition is 'a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation' or 'an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition.'' What that actually says is that superstition results from Superstition. It defines the word by itself. Their reasoning is circular, they define the term by itself. That tells me they don't really understand they are just regurgitating party lines.
At this point it would be well to examine the origin of religion and superstition. The two did actually come out of the same phase of human development and their origins are linked. Since I don't buy a literal Genesis account I attribute human origin to evolitom. At one point humans began to notice the sense of God' s presence and mystical experience. All experiences of the divine must be filtered through cultural constructs, or symbols. God is beyond our understanding, thus beyond language. If we are talking about our experiences, however badly, we must filter them through culture.
RELIGION, although inherent in man, borrows its expressions from the setting or milieu in which man appears. The forms through which man expresses the supernatural are all drawn from the cultural heritage and the environment known to him, and are structured according to his dominant patterns of experience.In a hunting culture this means that the main target of observation, the animal, is the ferment of suggestive influence on representations of the supernatural. This must not be interpreted as meaning that all ideas of the supernatural necessarily take animal form. First of all, spirits do appear also as human beings, although generally less frequently; the high-god, for instance, if he exists, is often thought of as a being of human appearance. Second, although spirits may manifest themselves as animals they may evince a human character and often also human modes of action.[4]
In his work The Evolution of God,[5] Robert Wright distills the work of anthropology over the last two centuries and demonstrates an evolutionary development, form early superstition that personified nature (prehistoric people talking to the wind)[6], through a polytheistic origin in pre-Hebrew Israelite culture,[7] to monotheistic innovation with the God of the Bible.
The point is we left superstition ages ago. It was an attempt at coping with the unknown, but divine revelation proved a better one. We outgrew it. Lest one argue that this still implies a weakness in religion let's not forget astrology and astronomy grew up together and out of the same thought and the same stars. As did Chemistry and Alchemy
NOTES
[1]Vyse, Stuart A. (2000). Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 19–22.
[2]Superstition, Merroam-Webster online https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superstition (accessed 1/10/21)
[3]Siperototom, Wikepedioa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition#:~:text=The%20word%20superstition%20is%20often,prevailing%20religion%20contains%20alleged%20superstitions.(accessed 1/10/21)
Soirces used in the Wiki artickle:
w1:cf. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superstition w2:Drinkwater, Ken; Dagnall, Neil. "The science of superstition – and why people believe in the unbelievable". The Conversation. Retrieved 2020-09-21. w3Vyse, Stuart A. (2000). Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 19–22. ISBN 978-0-1951-3634-0.
[4]Ake Hultkrantz, “Attitudes Toward Animals in Shashoni Indian Religion,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Spring, 1970) © World Wisdom, Inc. no page listed,online archive, URL: http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/browse_g.aspx?ID=131, accessed 3/21/13
[5]Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, New York: Back Bay Books, reprint edition, 2010. The book was Originally published in 2009. The company “Back Bay books: is an imprint of Hachette Books, through Little Brown and company. Wright studied sociobiology at Princeton and taught at Princeton as and University of Pennsyania. He edits New Republic and does journalistic writing of science, especially sociobiology.
[6]Wright, ibid, 9
[7]Ibid 10
Monday, August 23, 2021
Transcendental Signifier Argument
The argument
1. Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
2. OP's summed up in TS
3. Modern Thought rejects TS outright or takes out all aspects of mind.
4. Therefore, Modern thought fails to provide a rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe.
5. minds organize and communicate meaning
6. Therefore universal mind, offers the best understanding of TS
7. Concept of God unites TS with universal mind therefore offers best explanation for a view that is Rational, Coherent, and Meaningful (RCM).
1-3
Randal Rauser's Interview of me On this argument new
(1) Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
OP 's make sense of the universe and explain hierarchies of conceptualization: effects need causes, conclusions are mandated by premises, meaning in language is organized by rules of grammar. (RCM (rational, coherent, and meaningful) = Hierarchical order).This premise is rooted directly in observation, a coherent view of the universe requires OPs, and observation. That a rational and coherent view requires a principle that organizes reality according to some aspect of logic or math should be obvious. That's really no different than saying to really understand things we need a logical coherent view. At this point the skeptic might assume that the argument is a design argument or that it is saying that “laws imply a law giver.” Jerome E. Bickenbach and Jackqueline M. Davis tell us that the argument “laws require a law giver” is the fallacy of equivocation.
[1] Right they are, since scientists don't mean the term “laws” in the sense that early modern scientists such as Newton and Boyle meant it. They really meant a divine command that the universe must behave in a certain way. The term “law” is a hold-over from a former age. “The laws of physics, and other scientifically discovered laws of nature are principles formulated by scientists (not prescribed by lawmakers) in order to describe regularities and patterns observed in the natural world...while there may be a God this is not shown by taking the existence of laws of nature as evidence.”
[2] Whether or not physical laws are evidence of God remains to be seen, but this argument is neither design nor laws imply a law-giver. First, it's not a design argument to the extent that the inference is not drawn from design per se. Design works through either fitness, function, or the resemblance to things we know are designed. Since it does turn upon order there is overlap with design, especially the latter kind (resemblance to known design). Yet the point of inference is not taken from resemblance to known design but to the all pervasive nature of necessary to contingent order
, Secondly, the argument is not based upon the assumption laws imply a law giver. That idea assumes that physical laws are a simple list of rules mandated by a God. That concept of God is based upon the Suzerain model. The argument does not assume a set of rules but a more organic relation. The point of inference does not turn upon a set but upon one central, simple, and elegant idea that frames and grounds the metaphysical hierarchy in a single all-encumpasing first principle. Since I don't assume that scientists speak of “laws of physics” in the same way we speak of “laws of traffic” or The U.S, Code Annotated, or Black's Law Dictionary, then there is no fallacy of equivocation. How I connect physical “law” to a prescriptive sense without reducing description to prescription will be dealt with in chapter four.
Above I point to grammar as an example of a TS. The skeptic might argue that grammar is just cultural, that would be wrong. First of all it doesn't have to be innate to be an example. If language is just cultural constructs ideas might still be formed in their function from logical necessity (not the actual signifiers themselves but the concepts to which they point). An example would be the logical rule A cannot be non A. That is not arbitrary, but self evident. A thing cannot be other than itself. Thus the logical law marks the fact as a road map marks geography, but like a map the two might not always line up. In that case, if grammar is a purely cultural construct, its still an example of hierarchical conceptualization. Secondly, there is a lot of good evidence that generative grammar is genetic. Children of one month old can distinguish between different phonemes in a language, such as “b” and “p.” Researchers know this by reaction of the infant to the sound. A phoneme is a unit of sound in a word. Two such studies are one by Kuhl and one by Scott, et al.
[3] More on this in a subsequent chapter.
Western thought has always assumed Organizing principles that are summed up in a single first principle (an ἀρχή) which grounds any sort of meaning: the logos or the transcendental signified (TS). When I have made this argument skeptics have argued that there is nothing in science called an “organizing principle.” One opponent in particular who was a physicist was particularly exercised about my use of this term. While there is no formal term such that scientists speak of the “organizing principles” along side laws of physics or Newtonian laws, they speak of organizing principles all the time. A google search resulted in 320,000,000 results.[4] On every page of this search we see articles by cell biologists, cancer researchers, environmental biologists. Mathematicians, physicists, and so on. Yes there are also articles by crack pots, new age mystics, people with all kinds of ideas. There is even a book by a physicist who argues that the scientific thinking of the poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang Goethe is valid in modern terms of quantum theory. He talked about organizing principles.[5] An Article in Nature entitled “Organizing principles” discusses a famous experiment in developmental biology: in 1924 carried out by Hilde Mangold, a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Hans Spemann in Freiburg. “It provided the first unambiguous evidence that cell and tissue fate can be determined by signals received from other cells…This experiment therefore demonstrated the existence of an organizer that instructs both neuralization and dorsalization, and showed that cells can adopt their developmental fate according to their position when instructed by other cells.”[6]vi
M.J. Bissell et. al. Discuss malignancy in breast cancer. “A considerable body of evidence now shows that cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions are essential organizing principles that help define the nature of the tissue context, and play a crucial role in regulating homeostasis and tissue specificity.”[7] All objects in nature are connected to other objects. This can be demonstrated easily enough, as William Graham makes clear in discussing “Natures Organizing Principles.”[8] He turns to ecosystems as an example. Fish in a school work by individually possessed set of common principles such that they act in unison without a leader. These are not evidences of God they are not a design argument. They merely serve to bring home the point there are organizing principles about. I know this general informal use of the term does not mean that the Ops I want to talk about exist. But it is clear there are plenty of structures that organize and guide the way things turn out we do not have an understanding of what organizes the OP. Yet modern science still seeks a logos or a TS that would bind them all together and unite them in one over arching principle.
Sources
[1] Jerome E. Bickenbach and Jackqueline M. Davis, Good Reasons for Better Arguments: An Introduction To The Sills and Values of Critical Thinking. Calgary: Broadview Press, 1996, 189.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Patricia Kuhl, “Early Language Acquisition: Cacking the Speech Code.” Nature reviews
Neuroscience 5, (Nov. 2004) 831-843, doi:10.1038/nrn1533. Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. Email: pkkuhl@u.washington.edu See also: Sophie K Scott et al, “Categorical speech representation in human superior temporal gyrus. Is Categorical perception a fundamental property of speech perception?" Nature Neuroscience,(2010). 13: 1428-1432.
[4]Google search, organizing principles in nature,https://www.google.com/#q=organizing+principles+in+nature accessed 5/3/16
[5]Henri Bortoft, Wholeness of Nature of The Universe: Goethe’s Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in nature. Herdon VA:Lindisfarne Books originally published by Steiner Books,1971, 1985, re worked version 1992, 69. Henri Bortoft, (1938 – 29 December 2012) received undergraduate degree at university of Hull then did Postgraduate research at Beirbeck college. He studiedQuantum Physics with David Bohm.
[6]Barbara Marte, “Milstone 1: Organizing Principles,” Nature.Org (july 1,2004) doi:10.1038/nrn1449 URL: http://www.nature.com/milestones/development/milestones/full/milestone1.html accessed 6/3/16 Marte is senior editor Nature.
[7]viiM.J. Bissell, D.C Radisky, and A. Rizki, “The Organizing Principle:Microenvironmental Influences In The Normal amd Malignant Breast.” Pub Med, NCB, Dec;70(9-10): 2002, 537-46. on line resource URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12492495 accessed 6:3/16 [8]viiiWilliam Graham, “Natures Organization Principles,” Nature’s Tangled Web: The Art, Soul, and Science of a Connected Nature. Oct. 30, 2012, Online resource.http://www.freshvista.com/2012/natures-organizing-principles/ accessed 6/3/16.
1. Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
2. OP's summed up in TS
3. Modern Thought rejects TS outright or takes out all aspects of mind.
4. Therefore, Modern thought fails to provide a rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe.
5. minds organize and communicate meaning
6. Therefore universal mind, offers the best understanding of TS
7. Concept of God unites TS with universal mind therefore offers best explanation for a view that is Rational, Coherent, and Meaningful (RCM).
1-3
Randal Rauser's Interview of me On this argument new
(1) Any rational, coherent, and meaningful view of the universe must of necessity presuppose organizing principles (Ops)
OP 's make sense of the universe and explain hierarchies of conceptualization: effects need causes, conclusions are mandated by premises, meaning in language is organized by rules of grammar. (RCM (rational, coherent, and meaningful) = Hierarchical order).This premise is rooted directly in observation, a coherent view of the universe requires OPs, and observation. That a rational and coherent view requires a principle that organizes reality according to some aspect of logic or math should be obvious. That's really no different than saying to really understand things we need a logical coherent view. At this point the skeptic might assume that the argument is a design argument or that it is saying that “laws imply a law giver.” Jerome E. Bickenbach and Jackqueline M. Davis tell us that the argument “laws require a law giver” is the fallacy of equivocation.
[1] Right they are, since scientists don't mean the term “laws” in the sense that early modern scientists such as Newton and Boyle meant it. They really meant a divine command that the universe must behave in a certain way. The term “law” is a hold-over from a former age. “The laws of physics, and other scientifically discovered laws of nature are principles formulated by scientists (not prescribed by lawmakers) in order to describe regularities and patterns observed in the natural world...while there may be a God this is not shown by taking the existence of laws of nature as evidence.”
[2] Whether or not physical laws are evidence of God remains to be seen, but this argument is neither design nor laws imply a law-giver. First, it's not a design argument to the extent that the inference is not drawn from design per se. Design works through either fitness, function, or the resemblance to things we know are designed. Since it does turn upon order there is overlap with design, especially the latter kind (resemblance to known design). Yet the point of inference is not taken from resemblance to known design but to the all pervasive nature of necessary to contingent order
, Secondly, the argument is not based upon the assumption laws imply a law giver. That idea assumes that physical laws are a simple list of rules mandated by a God. That concept of God is based upon the Suzerain model. The argument does not assume a set of rules but a more organic relation. The point of inference does not turn upon a set but upon one central, simple, and elegant idea that frames and grounds the metaphysical hierarchy in a single all-encumpasing first principle. Since I don't assume that scientists speak of “laws of physics” in the same way we speak of “laws of traffic” or The U.S, Code Annotated, or Black's Law Dictionary, then there is no fallacy of equivocation. How I connect physical “law” to a prescriptive sense without reducing description to prescription will be dealt with in chapter four.
Above I point to grammar as an example of a TS. The skeptic might argue that grammar is just cultural, that would be wrong. First of all it doesn't have to be innate to be an example. If language is just cultural constructs ideas might still be formed in their function from logical necessity (not the actual signifiers themselves but the concepts to which they point). An example would be the logical rule A cannot be non A. That is not arbitrary, but self evident. A thing cannot be other than itself. Thus the logical law marks the fact as a road map marks geography, but like a map the two might not always line up. In that case, if grammar is a purely cultural construct, its still an example of hierarchical conceptualization. Secondly, there is a lot of good evidence that generative grammar is genetic. Children of one month old can distinguish between different phonemes in a language, such as “b” and “p.” Researchers know this by reaction of the infant to the sound. A phoneme is a unit of sound in a word. Two such studies are one by Kuhl and one by Scott, et al.
[3] More on this in a subsequent chapter.
Western thought has always assumed Organizing principles that are summed up in a single first principle (an ἀρχή) which grounds any sort of meaning: the logos or the transcendental signified (TS). When I have made this argument skeptics have argued that there is nothing in science called an “organizing principle.” One opponent in particular who was a physicist was particularly exercised about my use of this term. While there is no formal term such that scientists speak of the “organizing principles” along side laws of physics or Newtonian laws, they speak of organizing principles all the time. A google search resulted in 320,000,000 results.[4] On every page of this search we see articles by cell biologists, cancer researchers, environmental biologists. Mathematicians, physicists, and so on. Yes there are also articles by crack pots, new age mystics, people with all kinds of ideas. There is even a book by a physicist who argues that the scientific thinking of the poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang Goethe is valid in modern terms of quantum theory. He talked about organizing principles.[5] An Article in Nature entitled “Organizing principles” discusses a famous experiment in developmental biology: in 1924 carried out by Hilde Mangold, a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Hans Spemann in Freiburg. “It provided the first unambiguous evidence that cell and tissue fate can be determined by signals received from other cells…This experiment therefore demonstrated the existence of an organizer that instructs both neuralization and dorsalization, and showed that cells can adopt their developmental fate according to their position when instructed by other cells.”[6]vi
M.J. Bissell et. al. Discuss malignancy in breast cancer. “A considerable body of evidence now shows that cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions are essential organizing principles that help define the nature of the tissue context, and play a crucial role in regulating homeostasis and tissue specificity.”[7] All objects in nature are connected to other objects. This can be demonstrated easily enough, as William Graham makes clear in discussing “Natures Organizing Principles.”[8] He turns to ecosystems as an example. Fish in a school work by individually possessed set of common principles such that they act in unison without a leader. These are not evidences of God they are not a design argument. They merely serve to bring home the point there are organizing principles about. I know this general informal use of the term does not mean that the Ops I want to talk about exist. But it is clear there are plenty of structures that organize and guide the way things turn out we do not have an understanding of what organizes the OP. Yet modern science still seeks a logos or a TS that would bind them all together and unite them in one over arching principle.
Sources
[1] Jerome E. Bickenbach and Jackqueline M. Davis, Good Reasons for Better Arguments: An Introduction To The Sills and Values of Critical Thinking. Calgary: Broadview Press, 1996, 189.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Patricia Kuhl, “Early Language Acquisition: Cacking the Speech Code.” Nature reviews
Neuroscience 5, (Nov. 2004) 831-843, doi:10.1038/nrn1533. Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. Email: pkkuhl@u.washington.edu See also: Sophie K Scott et al, “Categorical speech representation in human superior temporal gyrus. Is Categorical perception a fundamental property of speech perception?" Nature Neuroscience,(2010). 13: 1428-1432.
[4]Google search, organizing principles in nature,https://www.google.com/#q=organizing+principles+in+nature accessed 5/3/16
[5]Henri Bortoft, Wholeness of Nature of The Universe: Goethe’s Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in nature. Herdon VA:Lindisfarne Books originally published by Steiner Books,1971, 1985, re worked version 1992, 69. Henri Bortoft, (1938 – 29 December 2012) received undergraduate degree at university of Hull then did Postgraduate research at Beirbeck college. He studiedQuantum Physics with David Bohm.
[6]Barbara Marte, “Milstone 1: Organizing Principles,” Nature.Org (july 1,2004) doi:10.1038/nrn1449 URL: http://www.nature.com/milestones/development/milestones/full/milestone1.html accessed 6/3/16 Marte is senior editor Nature.
[7]viiM.J. Bissell, D.C Radisky, and A. Rizki, “The Organizing Principle:Microenvironmental Influences In The Normal amd Malignant Breast.” Pub Med, NCB, Dec;70(9-10): 2002, 537-46. on line resource URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12492495 accessed 6:3/16 [8]viiiWilliam Graham, “Natures Organization Principles,” Nature’s Tangled Web: The Art, Soul, and Science of a Connected Nature. Oct. 30, 2012, Online resource.http://www.freshvista.com/2012/natures-organizing-principles/ accessed 6/3/16.
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