Anonymous Defends Atheist Incredulity

That Anonynmous sure gets around. What an amazing volume of work tha guy(gal?) has posted over the years?He/she has a comment in response to my article of May 2006 "why doesn't God heal Stupidity:"

Anonymous said...
Atheists are very scientifically minded. They came to their beliefs through careful thought and lack of scientific evidence in a God. If you are going to have any luck convincing an atheist, you will need to back up one of your cases with visual and scientific proof meaning x-rays, pictures and doctors notes. You have anecdotes on your site but I personally did not notice any pictures or x-rays where you can physically see a visual change from unhealthy to healthy. I think the spontaneous regeneration of a lung would be very good evidence for something supernatural, do you have x-rays of this? Do you think an atheist is going to believe you if you have no visual scientific evidence and doctors notes to back up your claim?

4:30 AM

I was an atheist. I know how they think. My webstie is loaded with such evdidence, and I've posted articles on this blog featruing many of them, especiallythe Lordes evdience Atheists are not scientific thinkers, they will escew science so fast it will make your head spin. They are only "scientific" in so far as scientific evdience backs their opinions. The minute thier opinions are challeged by scientific evidence they have had enough of science.


Ironically the two peices before that one were about atheism and science. here's one that I think might be apt:


I don't think atheists care about evidence. Evidence just means that one has something to reason from. What atheists demand is absolute proof, and at a level that can't be given for anything. I would bet that if for some reason atheists didn't like science, no amount of scientific "proof" wood suffice to prove to them that science works; because they would demand absolute proof, which can't be gotten.

In thinking about the two other threads I initiative over the last few days, and the atheist take on my arguments and their 'dicing' of my thought processes, and their refusal to acknowledge standard resiances that I give all the time, I find the following state of affairs to be a good description of the current state of dialectic between atheists and theists on the boards:

(1) Theists have a vast array of knowledge and argumentation built up over 2000 years, which basically amounts to a ton evidence for the existence of God. It's not absolute proof, because true, sure enough, actual absolute proof is just damn hard to come by on anything--even most scientific things; which is why they invented inductive reasoning. Science accepts correlation's as signs of caudal relationships, it doesn't ever actually observe causality at work. But that kind of indicative relationship is not good for atheists when a God argument is involved. Then it must be absolute demonstration and direct observation.

(2) This double standard always works in favor of the atheist and never in favor of the theist. I suspect that's because Theists are trying to persuade atheists that a certain state of affairs is the case, and at the same time we are apt to be less critical of our own reasons for believing that. Atheists make a habit of denial and pride themselves on it.

Why is it a double standard? Because when it works to establish a unified system of naturalistic observation the atheist is only too happy to appeal to "we never see" "we always see" and "there is a strong correlation." We never see a man raised from the dead. We never see a severed limb restored. The correlation's between naturalistic cause and effect are rock solid and always work, so science gives us truth, and religion doesn't. But when those same kinds of correlation's are used to support a God argument, they are just no darn good. to wit: we never see anything pop out of absolute noting, we never even see absolute nothing, even QM particles seem to emerge from prior conditions such as Vacuum flux, so they are not really proof of something form nothing. But O tisg tosh, that doesn't prove anything and certainly QM proves that the universe could just pop up out of nothing!

(3) "laws of physics" are not real laws, they are only descriptions, aggregates of our observations. So they can't be used to argue for God in any way. But, when it comes to miraculous claims, the observations of such must always be discounted because they violate our standard norm for observation, and we must always assume they are wrong no matter how well documented or how inexplicable. We must always assume that only naturalistic events can happen, even though the whole concept of a naturalism can only be nothing more than an aggregate of our observations about the world; and surely they are anything but exhaustive. Thus one wood think that since our observations are not enough to establish immutable laws of the universe, they would not be enough to establish a metaphysics which says that only material realms exist and only materially caused events can happen! But guess again...!

(4) The Theistic panoply of argumentation is a going concern. Quentin Smith, the top atheist philosopher says that 80% of philosophers today are theists. But when one uses philosophy in a God argument, it's just some left over junk from the middle ages; even though my God arguments are based upon S 5 modal logic which didn't exist even before the 1960s and most of the major God arguers are still living.

(5) They pooh pooh philosophy because it doesn't' produce objective concrete results. But they can't produce any scientific evidence to answer the most basic philosophical questions, and the more adept atheists will admit that it isn't the job of science to answer those questions anyway. Scientific evidence cannot give us answers on the most basic philosophical questions, rather than seeing this as a failing in science (or better yet, evidence of differing magister) they rather just chalice it up to the failing of the question! The question is no good because our methods dot' answer it!

(6) What it appears to me is the case is this; some methods are better tailed for philosophy. Those methods are more likely to yield a God argument and even a rational warrant for belief, because God is a philosophical question and not a scientific one. God is a matter of faint, after all, and in matters of faith a rational warrant is the best one should even hope for. But that's not good enough for atheists, they disparage the whole idea of a philosophical question (at least the scientistic ones do--that's not all of them, but some) yet they want an open ended universe with no hard and fast truth and no hard and fast morality!

(7)So it seems that if one accepts certain methods one can prove God within the nature of that language game. now of course one can reject those language games and choose others that are not quite as cozy with the divine and that's OK too. Niether approach is indicative of one's intelligence or one's morality. But, it does mean that since it may be just as rational given the choice of axioms and methodologies, then what that taps out to is belief in God is rationally warrented--it may not be only rational conclusion but it is one ratinal conclusion Now i know all these guys like Barron and HRG will say "hey I'm fine with that." But then when push comes to shove they will be back again insisting that the lack of absolute proof leaves the method that yields God arguments in doubt, rather than the other way around. I don't see why either should be privileged. Why can't we just say that one method is better suited for one kind of question, the other for the other?

and if one of them says 'why should I ask those questions?' I say 'why shouldn't we leave the choice of questions to the questioner?

CARM Plays a new Dumb Little Game

Up to this point the bans have always been limited, banned until some further time. Now it says "ban lifted: never." The descritipon says this is for continuing to insult other posters. When have I had the chance to do that? I have no been back on the CARM boards since late octobre. But I did recieve an eail form someone, one of the fundies, dregning up all the stuff from the summer. I saw no purpose in continuing the argument and told them. I gues this is what they consture as "continuing to insult." That and mentioning one of them on AARM. Of course they feel they can police other boards.

Well I will continue to insult them forever,I will never stop and it suits me that that moron Mat Slick wants to ban me "forever." He's banned forever, In fact I prounce anathatema him, he is dmaned and bound for hell. Good riddencence.

curse of the lambed wolfnik be upon. booga booga.

Pope Slick. he is totally unprofessional, not bright, silly, unable to run a message board like an adult.

The Campbells are Coming!

Certain arguments evoke from atheits a misguided use of a fallacy called "no true Scottsman." In their arrogant and misguided bill they are so sure this fallacy really proves something that they Here's what I've said about it before:


You Take the high road,
and I'll take the low road,
and I'll win the Argument,
before ye...

Me and Critical thinking,
will never meet again...


There is a ploy practiced by many atheist of the type who inhabit places such as the Secular Web and Infidel guy. It's been so institutionalized it's almost a mortar. In fact I've seen this kind of things so many times now, when the Christian apologists get together they can stamp it out, but no soon will they rid the net of one institutionalized atheist fallacy, than another will rear its ugly head.

The fallacy to which I reefer here is the "No true Scotsman," fallacy (NSF). I dot' know the etymology exactly, but the general idea is that in the heat of argument one is likely to say something like "no true American would ever (do whatever)" The way it's used is this:

Atheist claims something like "Hitler was a Christian." The Christian makes the mistake of saying "O but he wasn't a true Christian because bah, so the atheist says 'that's the NTSF So without even thinking about it, they just dogmatically declare anyone was ever a Christian of any kind to have always been one. Once a Christian always a Christian (unless you become an atheist a post on the secular we) and then anything you do that's negative pertains to Christianity as the upshot of being a chrisiatn. So Mao was a Christian because he heard a Bible verse once, therefore, Christianity makes you become the Chairman of the Chinese communist party and write little red books.

This has become such a mantra that it cancels any kind of critical thought. Anytime any apologist comes near any sort of questioning as to one's Christian credentials the atheist says something like "I hear bag pipes playing." We need to make up a Name for the fallacy of calling everything the no true Scotsman fallacy. What really amusing is that they are using the fallacy in the wrong way, as though they don't really know what it means! The true fallacy is aimed at people who try to use patriotism to win arguments. No true American would call for pulling out of Irak (or Vietnam or whatever hopeless mess we've gotten ourselves into this decade). But that is not the same as saying that any time one says "so and so Is not a Christian" it's the fallacy. That fallacy has nothing to do with the commitment level of a particular individual. It has to do with the way in which I construct another person's commitment level. If the commitment level of an individual can be demonstrated toward some affiliation then obviously that person can be said to be or not to be "a true so and so" (whatever it is). The only requisite criteria would be that there must be clear guidelines as to what a true so and so is about. That's why the no true Scotsman thing is a fallacy, because there is no way to know what a true Scotsman would say about any given issue, since being a Scotsman (or an American) is rarely a voluntary affiliation. Of course there are cases in which we CAN say no true Scotsman would do X and it not be fallacious. Fore example; no true Scotsman is born in China of Chinese patrents who have no relation of any kind to Scotland and who have never been to Scotland. Such a person hardly had any claim to being a Scotsman, but even in such a case the idea of being a Scotsman is still rather veg. Perhaps one could be a true Scotsman if one pinched pennies, played golf, kept sheep, ate fried Mars bars, and wore plad, even if one had never been to Scotland and was not of Celtic origin.

The idea of being a Christian is a bit more voluntary than being a Scotsman, thus it is a bit less difficult to pin down. This is true, moreover, because Jesus did says something about what his followers would do and would not do. We can say "no true Christian would be anti-Semitic" since Christ was Semitic. Since worshiping Jesus of Nazareth as the son of God is part of being a true Christian, and this is stated in the manifesto (the Bible) then we just might conclude that one who doesn't' do that is not a Christian. Moreover, the church itself laid down guidelines for being member of the Christian community (the church invented the word "Christian" not Jesus). Those guidelines are embodied in the creeds. So in fact yes we can exactly say with no fear of contradiction or of fallacy that no true Christian would ever say anything contrary to the creeds. Because to say that is to be an untrue Christian. Paul said no one by can say by the power of the Spirit "Jesus be cursed" (1 OCR). He was not committing the no true Scotsman fallacy. He was laying down a statement of spiritual fact. So we can say based upon this fact, "no true Christian prophet can say by the power of God that Jesus is cursed." This is a factual statement, given the assumptions of Christian belief. and not the NSF.

It would not be smart to concentrate too hard on stamping out this silly fallacy of the atheists. They will only replace it with another. In the mean time, we know to deal with it, we can always use it to our advantage. If it is a fallacy to argue that so and so wasn't' a Christian, because Christianity is very diverse and we can't say who is and who is not and the attempt to try is always a fallacy, then it must also be the same fallacy to say "all Christians do x." The idea that Christianity causes all these social harms and leads people to be right winners is also the same fallacy.


the thing is atheists always make known this fallacy with great fan fare. They are so sure they really have something that they will say "do you hear bag Pipes playing?" I have seen references to Scottish things on several boards in this connection. But he other day I was arguing with an atheist who said "Christians have murdered millions of people."

Of course I say "these are not good Christians, they are not following true Christian teaching." Of course he says "the Cambells are coming, do you hear bag pipes, for a tha' and tha', the best laid plans of Mice and Men, flow gently sweet Aften" or whatever scottish stuff reminds one that the good old No true Scotsman fallacy is being trotted out.

I said atheists have murdered millions of people. Stalin and Mao murdered 79million between them.

to which he atheist says "they weren't real atheists, they were just communists and that doesn't count. Communists aren't eral atheists."

Do you hear Bag pipes playing? coud you loan me four bob I have to post a letter?

The Atheist Abhorence of Logic

Again on a message board I find an atheist who abhors logic.He can't answer my cosmological argument, so he just pronounces that it's nothing more than defining God into existence" and a "bunch of Philosophical gobaldy goup." OF course this is nothing more than running from the obvious. He could stand firm and argument that my arguments are not logical, but chooses to just dismiss it all. This is because atheists seem to have predilection for the empirical and genuine dread of formal logic.

Even though he doesn't say so I'm sure he's reacting to the categories of necessity and contingency (N/c). He thinks these are arbitrary definitions that can just be discarded. The supreme irony is that without them you can't have cause and effect. without c/e you can't have empiricism or naturalism. Let me try to demonstrate all this:


(1) Categories are necessary:


The most basic category we can make is being and nothingness. This is the basis of al metaphysical reflection. Either X exists concetely in the space/time world or it does not. If X exists then it muts exist either of necessity, meaning it cannot fail to exist, or it's existence is dependent upon some prior condition, thus it could fail to exist. In other words, for example, there did not ever have to be a flying red horse on the Magnolia building in Dallas Texas of the 1930s. That symbol of what latter became Mobil oil could have been anything else if the designer of the logo has chosen it. So the current location of the red horse, which is still on a building in Dallas, although now hidden by much taller buildings, did not have to resemble Pegesus, the flying horse of Greek myth, and it did not have to be red. These are contingencies. So are the two basic modes of being apart form en spoir and por soir. Since both en soir and por soir (in itself and for itself--categories Heidegger and Sartre make important in phenomenology and existentialism) are both contingent fomrs of being, this distinction and these categories are even more crucial and basic than sentience or inanimation. Being for itself (por Soir) is sentient conscious being. Being in itself (en soir) is not sentient or conscious. But both are contignent.

There is no logical way to get around these categories. Even if one cannot find an example of a necessary existant, one can find that all causes are certainly necessary to their effects, unless we want to view everything as merely probabalistic. Without the categories of necessety and contingency it is meaningless to talk about cause and effect in times arrow; because there is ability to speak of a contingency which depends for its existence upon a prior cause. One could just change the terms. But using cause and effect rather than contingency and necessity really would not cut it. contingency and necessity are more general, they include cause and effect but are not limited to them. Thus describe the range of conditions not directly related to causes, such as the nature of a prior conditions or set of conditions and it's relation to the existence of an effect. The example I always give is that of a fish and its relation to dependence upon water. Water does not cause fish but without it fish do not survive. Thus water is a necessary condition to fish without being their direct cause, they are a prior condition to the survival of fish. The upshot of this in terms of the cosmological argument is that Quantum particals seem not to be directly caused, but they certainly seem to require some prior conditons (never observed apart form time and seem dependent upon time, phsyical law, vacuum flux).


(2) Cause and effect is necessary to empiricism.


The great Irony is that the very alternative that most atheists use to save them from the logic of God argments would not be possible if in fact the logic of God arguments was nothing more than "defining God into existence." It is only if we have cause and effect, which in turn is dependent upon the categories of contingency and nescessity, can we have the very empiricism that atheists would use as an alternative! This is obvious since without cause and effect there is corrolation, or rather without the ability to assume some form of caual connection, there's point in making empirical observations.

Here the idea of categoeis of N/c are even more crucial because without having resort to a proven empirical basis for c/e one can use N/c and and draw probalistic correlations while avoiding direct cause and effect.


(3) Naturalism linked to Cause and effect.




1) The notion of something from nothing voilates basic assumptions of materialism


a. Materailism based upon cause and effect


Dictonary of Philosphy Anthony Flew, article on "Materialism"

"...the belief that everything that exists is ethier matter or entirely dependent upon matter for its existence." Center For Theology and the Natural Sciences Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999) http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html Is the Big Bang a Moment of Creation?(this source is already linked above)

"...Beyond the Christian community there was even greater unease. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern science is that every physical event can be sufficiently explained solely in terms of preceding physical causes. Quite apart from its possible status as the moment of creation, the Big Bang singularity is an offence to this basic assumption. Thus some philosophers of science have opposed the very idea of the Big Bang as irrational and untestable."



b) Something from nothing contraidicts materialism


Science and The Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead.
NY: free Press, 1925, (1953) p.76

"We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... sciene which is employed in their deveopment [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical casation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved."[Whitehead was an atheist]



c) Causality was the basis upon which God was expelled from Modern Science

It was La Plase's famous line "I have no need of that Hypothosis" [meaning God] Which turned the scientific world form beliving (along with Newton and assuming that order in nature proved design) to unbelief on the principle that we dont' need God to explain the univrese because we have independent naturalistic cause and effet. [Numbers, God and Nature]


2) Materilism Undermines Itself


a) Big Bang contradicts causality (see quotation above)


b) QM theory seems to contradict cause/effect relationship.


c) Rejection of final cause


3) Probabalistic Justification for assumption of Cause

We still have a huge justification for assuming causes inductively, since nothing in our experince is ever uncaused. The mere fact that we can't see or find a cause isn't a proof that there isn't one.


4) Therefore, we have probabalistic justification for assuming Final cause

Thus, the basis upon which God was dismissed from scientific thought has been abandoned;the door to consideration of God is open again. The reliance upon naturalistic cause and effect in consideration of ultimate origins is shattered, but this does not make it rational to just assume that the universe opoped into existence with no cause. Since we have vast precident for assuming cause and effect, we should continue to do so. But since naturalistic cause and effect seems unnecessary at the cosmic level, we should consider the probablity of an ultimate necessary final cause.

Answering atheists on Divine Command Theory

Skeptics often attack Christian morality by arguing the old Euthaphore dilemma from Plato: is morality good becasue the gods like it, or do the gods like it because it's good? If the former than it is an arbitrary whim, and if the latter than here is something that is higher than God.

The point for the atheist is to put God in a Bind and to show that God can't be the greatest concieveable being. If God has to keep to morality because it is a higher independent standard than God is not the greatest, but if morality is good just becasue God likes it than it is merely a whim or a matter of taste. Let's ignore the fact that if God is real his tatste and whims might just be more important than ours.


Critique of "Can the Bible (or Any) God Support an Absolute Morality?"


by Tim Gorski, M. D.

The world is in moral decay, say the theists, because of "moral relativism." Only a divine power makes possible an absolute standard of right and wrong, they say. And yet, entirely aside from the evil that men (and women) do, there is much that is terrible and unjust in the world, so that if there be a God, we realize, He can not be both all-good and all-powerful. Because if He were, He would put an end to such things.

Gorski tries to sneak in the Theodicy bit but it doens't wash because he fails to account for the necessity of free will in maintaining a moral universe. Moral universe has to be predicated upon free will, which means moral choices must allow for possibility of wrong choices. This is because a "moral universe" doesn't merely mean a universe in which everyone is moral, but one in which there is possiblity of being moral. Since morality invovles chioces, this necessitates free will, otherwise there is no true moral choice. Morlaity is about diliberating over and choosing the Good.

Gorski goes on:

But I'm afraid the situation is much, much worse even than that. Four hundred years before Jesus Christ is supposed to have been born, Socrates asked "whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods." Socrates also observed that the gods--plural-- argued and disagreed about right and wrong as much as human beings. He got around this by supposing that that which all the gods approved was the good, and that which they all objected to was the evil, and that all else was neither good nor evil. He might just as well have considered the problem of a single god-- like that of the Christian Bible--who's inconsistent about what is beloved. But, as we know only too well, there simply is no honest way out of contradictions like that.


So let's just consider a strictly theoretical situation. Just for the sake of argument, let's suppose there's a God, and that He, She, or It is the absolute standard of morality. Is right and wrong then simply no more than this God's say-so? Or is what is right loved by this God and what is wrong hated by this God because of what right and wrong are in themselves?

God himself Is the standard of the Good. He is synonimous with the good which exists in the mind of God. So it's not a matter of this false dilemma, is God idependent of the standards or does he have to follow the standards himself. He is the standards himself!

Gorski drives home his point:

In the first instance, if good and evil are no more than the product of the will of a divine power, and if that will is truly free, then such a God could, with a thought, cause what we consider to be the most repugnant and heinous criminal act to become the highest virtue. Now the further question would arise, of course, as to whether if this happened we would know it. Why? Because of "the moral law within us," as the philosopher Immanuel Kant put it, or "the work of the law written in our hearts," as "Saint Paul" acknowledged ( Romans 2: 15). If morality is the say-so of a God, then presumably, like the gravitational effects of a massive body, any change in His (or Her or Its) will would cause our own consciences to be instantaneously altered.

But here we have a real problem, because Kant thought that the moral standards have a logical force all there own, and Paul would probably agree with me that God is synonimous with them. So that's just atheistic "cut and paste" logic that doesn't apply. And in fact the whole question is based upon misconstruing the nature of God vis a vi moral standards. God = the good!

Gorski demonstreates the limited view point mandated by his assumptions:

I've never heard of this happening, though.
At any rate, if there is a God, and if this God's will determines what is right and wrong, then this supposed God's being all-good is no more than His (or Her or Its) being all-powerful. Is that an absolute morality? I don't think so. Rather, it's a morality that's completely relative to His (or Her or Its) desire. In a word--well, three actually--it's *might makes right*. It's another version of the law of the jungle. How's that for an admirable system of morality?

But notice the slippery slope argument whereby he slides from a question about God's relation to morality to one of a mere case of "Might makes right." This is accomplished by making the will the the basic fulcrum upon which moral leverage is gained and then sliding things away from the notion of standards altogether. But of course if Standards are based upon God's character it is not merely a matter of tastes, God is not merely commanding "do X, don't do Y" just because God likes X and not Y in the same way that one likes potato chips and not pretzles. But divie command is actually based upon the way "God is," and that is the same as saying "upon the way reailty is." This is because God is necessary being, the ground of being, and all that exists flows out of that. Even the potential of being comes out of the mind of God. so "the way God is" is in essence the nature of reality. God is love, and thus love is the background of the moral universe. This is not something God just up and decided one day, it is the result of the nature of God. It could not be otherwise because it is predicated upon more than will but upon the nature of God.

At this point Gorski dilivers the punch line:

The only uncertainty remaining is whether it's more or less pathetic than the alternative situation of a God who is Himself (or Herself or Itself) subject to a logically anterior or prior standard of morality. That would be the case in the second instance of things that are good being beloved by God because they're good, because, of course, that puts God on the same level with human beings. It makes Him (or Her or It) irrelevant.
Well, we know He--or She or It--is irrelevant. That's why we're revolted by such Biblical stories as that of Yahweh asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering--as if an all-good God could be pleased by a criminal act. Did Abraham really think he was flattering Yahweh to agree to do such a thing? It's curious that this same God is also supposed to have issued orders of mass extermination, orders that "The Good Book" tells us were actually carried out with less hesitation than Abraham had in preparing to kill his own son.

This is just the other horn of the bull that supports the two horns of this dilemma. First, if it were true, it wouldn not make God irrelivant because God would still be our best bet for knowing what the standards are. But secondly, the crucial point, There is no standard of ethics idependent of God to which God must be subject. But the Good is based upon the character, not the?will alone, of God.

Gorski quipts:

Well, so much for theistic "absolute morality." It's anything but.

Of course he hasn't said anyhting about absolute morality. He hasn't touched the need for it, nor the notion that without it all meaning of moral motions are reduced to nothing more than matters of taste. But he certainly hasn't indicated why it should be impossible. IF God were subject to it there might still be a situation by which God is subject to a standard, say one predicated upon logical extensions from ultiamte values, and thereby certainly not be irrelivant since we still must know what they are. God having created us would put that standard into us as a natural part of us, but we have many conflucting notions and still need help. But the fact of the matter is the whole dilemma is false and silly, because God is neither subject to an idependent standard, nor guilty of einforcing pure matters of taste. But is synonmous with that standard as the center of consciosuenss which judges ethical axioms. Moral standards imply judgement, since unlike physical laws they can't simpley "be right" without some mind to understand and apply them. God is that mind. Since God is necessary being, and all else is predicated upon God's creative act, the essence of moral standards is predicated upon God's own character and perfection. Now that that point The aurthor has failed to provide any reason for us to think that such standards can't exist, or to explain why God is not crucial in our knowing what they are, and enforcing them!






Divine Command Theory according to Internet Encyclopidia of Philosphyis the view that moral actions are those which conform to God's will. Charity, for example, is morally proper because God endorses it, and murder is wrong because God condemns it. There are both normative and metaethical versions of this theory. The normative version proposes a test for determining whether any action is right or wrong: if it conforms to God's will, it is morally permissible, if it does not, then it is impermissible. As a normative theory, the divine command theory is difficult to maintain given the epistemological problems of accessing the will of God. The metaethical version simply makes the factual claim that God's will is the foundation of morality. Here, the content of God's will does not have to be explored.


So again, we have the same basic assertions of the false dilemma. Some atheists seems to think that repetition is the key to truth. This notion that Divine command theory lacks any factual knowlege is of course silly. We don't need some Divine fact finding committe to deduce 'facts' for us. It is merely logical; God is necessary all else is contingent upon God, therefore, morality is contingent upon God as well. But in chalcking it all up to God's will the straw man is created. It is not merely a matter of will but of God's nature itself which writes morality into the universe. This is logical given the nature of metaphysical heirarchies. God is the transcendental signified giving meaning to all else.

As a metaethical theory, there are three ways that the divine command theory can be understood. The weakest version claims only that, within certain religious communities, the meaning of the statement, "charity is good," is that God wills us to be charitable. This version has only limited implications. Although it may represent the views of a particular religious group, it has no bearing on what those outside that group mean by the statement "charity is good." A stronger version of the divine command theory concedes that charity is morally good in and of itself, but that God's will provides us with the motivation to be charitable. On this view, only the religious believer has the motivation to be moral. Theoretically, unbelievers could also act morally, but it would only be by accident since unbelievers would lack the motivation for consistent moral behavior. The strongest version of the divine command theory states that morality is a creation of God's will. According to this view, charity is good because God has willed that charity is good. The claim here is not about what particular communities mean by the word "good" or what motivations people have to be good. Instead, the claim is that moral conduct is identical to the conduct which God commands of us. This final version of the divine command theory is the most controversial, and has been criticized from several angles.(Internet Encyclopedia)

Again,this is not coming to terms with he distinction between will and nature.


GENERAL CRITICISMS.

During the Enlightenment, the divine command theory fell under attack from two distinct camps. One group argued that moral standards, like mathematical truths, are eternal and fixed in the nature of universe. Philosophers such as Samuel Clarke argued that moral values can be intuitively perceived and, again, like mathematical truths, can be understood by any rational being. Since God is a rational being, then God, too, endorses these eternal standards of morality. However, God's mere acceptance of moral standards in no way creates them, and in that sense is no different than a human's acceptance of moral standards. A second group argued that moral standards are fundamentally human-based, and are neither fixed in the nature of the universe, nor in the will of God. For example, Thomas Hobbes argued that moral standards are necessary human conventions which keep us out of a perpetual state of war. Others, such as Hume and Mill, argued that they are based on human instinct. In either case, God's will is irrelevant to ethical standards.(Ibid)

And of course he's left out most of the major ethicists of the englightenement and pre-enlightement (England). For example Shaftisburry who thought that the good is natural and part of nature, thus it is in man to be good, if only we can "hook up with nature." And John Locke who agreed to an extent but also argued for Divine command theory as a deontological basis for a social contract (see The Two Treatesies ON Govement). And Joeph Buttler, who argued that God as the author of nature is also the author of moral valaues. And of course all of this side steps the real issue, the Augustinian position of "re-valuing the values" of the empire. The forms are in the Mind of God" thus the moral standards are in the mind of God. They are not independent but proceed from the nature of God's character.

In more recent times, the divine command theory has been attacked on two principle grounds. First, if morality is a dictate of God's will, then it is conceivable that God could choose to reverse the present state of morality and thus make evil actions moral. That is, God could make murder or stealing morally permissible if he chose. The theologian's reply to this possibility is that God would not reverse the moral standards he has created since God himself is infinitely good, and God would not will anything which is contrary to his own good nature. This reply, however, leads to the second problem with the divine command theory. If moral goodness is merely a creation of God's will, then the phrase "God is good" becomes meaningless. For, by definition, "God is good" would simply mean that God's nature is in accord with what he wills. Since there are no pre-existing moral restrictions to what God can will, then even if God was malicious, he would be good. Clearly, this makes nonsense of the notion of goodness.(Ibid)

The argument is putting the cart before the horse. It makes will the prime mover and nature of God the recipient of the move. But if we reverse it, and say that morality is an extension of what God is, God's character, and the standards of morality are merely applications of this, than the problem is solved. It is no longer meaningless to say that God is good, but rather we should say that God is The GOOD. To say "there are no pre-existing moral restrictions to what God can will," is the essence of his argument. But of course there are, since God can't will to violate his own nature! So what could have been a cogent attack just becomes the same old same ol'e because he can't get the drift on the forms being in the mind of God! The very potential for goodness comes out of what God is, since all that comes to be is contingent upon God, including the potential for what comes to be. Thus it cannot be said that the evil could be made good through an act of God's will because the contemplation of such an act is meaningless.


QUINN'S DEFENSE.

There has recently been a revived interest in divine command theory, particularly defending it against criticisms which have accumulated over the decades. In his essay, "The primacy of God's Will in Christian Ethics," Philip Quinn goes on the offensive and presents three arguments for why the divine command theory should be accepted by traditional theistic. Quinn concedes that his arguments will not carry weight for those outside the theistic traditions. Nevertheless, his arguments show the reasons which might incline a theist to adopt the divine command theory. Quinn's first argument is derived from what has been called the "immoralities of the patriarchs." In the Hebrew Bible, several of the Hebrew patriarchs are presented as committing seemingly immoral acts at God's command. Following the lead of medieval theologians, Quinn argues that these stories illustrate that moral standards are indeed creations of God. In these cases, God is temporarily revoking previously established moral standards for special purposes.(Ibid.)

Of course here the argument against Quinn, made by the Encycolpeida article, assumes that Christian ethics is predicated upon the historicity of the Biblical text.

the articel moves on to Quinn's second arguement:

Quinn's second argument is distinctly Christian and draws from Jesus' command that we should love everyone. For Quinn, this is not merely an endorsement of a pre-existing standard of morality, since it is contrary to human nature to love everyone. It is in fact a new standard which was created by God's pronouncement.(Ibid)

AGain, bad "fundie!" BAD "Fundie!" IT's not a "new standard!" God is love. The nature of what love is is syonimous with God's nature. "Not a new command I write to you..." (1 JOhn) Love is the background of the moral universe because God is the background of the moral universe and it can't be any other way! It is a necessary state of affirs, as much as God being the ultiamte final cause (if God exists all necessary caveats) couldn't be any other way!



Quinn's third argument derives from the notion of divine sovereignty.

Traditional theism holds that God is sovereign and in complete control of the universe. If this is so, then it seems that God is in control of moral standards, and, thus, the creator of moral standards. A problem occurs, though, when determining how far God's control extends. Michael Loux, for example, argues that God is absolutely sovereign and that if God happened to believe unconditionally that 2+2=3, then that would make 2+2=3.

You mean it doens't?

the article states:

Quinn argues that this interpretation leads to absurd conclusions, and is therefore unacceptable. Nevertheless, the theist should accept as strong a version of sovereignty as possible (barring absurdity).

Of course it doesnt' say why we should do that. That's a theolgoical diecison which is being rammed in as one person's interpritation, and a Calvinist one, of what Christiantiy is about. This can't be used to set the agenda for all moral defense nor can it be uased as I fear it is here, as a straw man to force debate alone certain lines and ignore "out of the box" directions.

But never fear, the major theologican (nameless) who wrote that artcile will define define soverignty for us:

A more narrow and more acceptable version of sovereignty is one where God is in control over moral standards, but not over math or logic. This bypasses the absurdities of absolute sovereignty. On this more narrow view, if God unconditionally believes specific moral standards, then this makes them so. Given that there is a connection between what God believes and what God wills, then this narrow version of sovereignty entails that moral standards are creations of God's will.

So all he's managed to do is drag out a conservative view that plays into his hands by arguing just what he says they should argue. It's just a straw man that forces us into a narrow corner defending a narrow version of Christianity. All the while everyone in the debate has refussed to think about the true nature of moral standards, as dirived from God's nature, rather than his will.



NIELSEN'S CRITICISMS.

Kai Nielsen arues that morality is not founded upon the commands of God.

Nielsen begins by presenting the classic dilemma of theological morality, as appears in Plato's dialog, The Euthyphro. Plato argues that there are two ways to see the relation between God and morality: (1) God creates the standards of morality, or (2) God himself is subject to standards of morality which are independent of him. Traditionally, each of these options are seen to have unfavorable consequences. If God creates morality, then God could make murder or stealing morally permissible if he chose. If, on the other hand, God is subject to external standards of morality, then he loses some of his greatness. Nielsen presents six arguments which show that the second of these two options is by far the most preferable.(Ibid)

This is just a rehash, and probably the original source or much of the atheist clamour. For an answer to the whole problem of both Euthephro and divine command theory, we turn to Augustine, who re-valued the values of the Roman empire. He re-made them based upon Chrsitian values. The first step was to put the froms in the mind of God. So What was merely pantheon of non-creating gods for Socrates (or at best a "prime mover" for Arosotle) Becomes the God of the Chrsitian faith, necessary being, the ground of being, in whom we live and move and have our being, and in whom the forms are merely a product of mind. This makes all the difference, because it means that there is no dilemma of a seperate standard of morality to which God must be subject or that the good is merely an act of God's wil or a matter of his personal tastes. The standards are in God' mind and they are a product of what God is! Neilsen is merely reitorating the same old tired dilemma which is jundiced anyway becaue it never was based on a being analogous to the Christian God!

Materialism Vanishes

The Argument:Science works by paradigm shifts, paradigm shifts have occurred, and are still occurring, which include into naturalistic understanding idea that only 100 years ago would have been excluded as "magic" or as "supernatural." Thus we can see that scinece cannot be used to rule out the Sueprnatural becuause more and more it incorporates ideas of it into the naturalisitc schemeatta.


Many see a new Dualism emerging which is compatible with either SN or Naturalist assumptions.

Many atheists seem to think that science exclusive domain of atheism, and that it's function is to get rid of religion. But scinece is neutral, scinece is no more a creature of atheism than it is a creature of theism.Ontological judgements, that is ideas about the major sturcure of reality, are beyond the domain of science.
The argument turns on the basic historical fact that atheists have lost the ground uponwhich they dismissed God from science in the first place. In their book God and Nature Lindberg and Numbers demonstrate that the moment at which this happened was when La Place said "I have no need of that hypothesis," meaning the idea that God created the universe. What he meant was that God was not needed as an explaintion because we now have naturlistic cause and effect, which explains everything. But the atheist has cashed in cause and effect to over come the Big Bang. Materialists are now willing to consider ideas like the self caused universe, Hawkings unbounded condition which removes cause completely as a consideration; or based upon quantum theory they are willing to accept the notion that causality is an illusion, that the universe could just pop up out of nothing. With that committment they lose the ground upon which they first removed God from consideration.

Now perhaps they still do not need God as a causal explaintion, but in the Religious a pirori argument, and in the innate religious instrict argument I say that belief was never predicated upon a need for explaination in the first palce. Nevertheless, the fact still remians, the reason for dismissing God was the sufficiency of natural causation as explaination, with that gone there is no longer any grounds for dismissing consideration of God from the universe.

I will argue that more than that is going. There is a paradigm shift underway which demonstrates a total change in sceintific thinking in many areas and over many disciplines. That change demonstrates that the materialist concept is wrong; there is more to reality than just the material world. There are other aspects to the material world wich are non-deterministic, non-mechanistic, and which call into question the whole presupposition of excluding the supernatural from consideration.


1)Materialism is the antithesis of belief in God, it rules out any such belife on the grounds that a deterministic, reductionist, or mechanistic understanding of the natural world is all that is needed to explain the natrual world.


2) Materialism is wrong on all these counts; it is not based upon scientfic objective or "ultimate" proof, but is culturally constructed.


3) Materialism is simply inadequate--from the standpoint of modern physics.


4) Paraigm shifts in many different field have led to the includion of concepts that once would have been anti-materialist.


5) Therefore, materialism is inadequate and Reductionism is misguided (at best).


6) "Bigger" views of the universe have emerged, and are being accepted/developed by the academic community.


7)These "bigger universes" include fundamental mechanisms (non-mystical ones!) for mind to 'exist' and to interact with 'matter'.


8) materialism is wrong, therefore, the door is open to the possibility of God and the supernatural.

Now this argument doesn't prove the Christian God, it could open the possibility to a supernatural without God, or a Buddhistic concept of reality, but the step away form total materialism brins us closer to some sort of belief in God.


B. Paradigm Shifts.

1) Thomas S. Kuhn.


Kuhn's famous theory was that scientific thought works through paradigm acquisition, and that paradigms change when they can no longer absorb anomalies into the model and must account for them in some other way. This theory entails the idea that science is culturally constructed, but Kuhn was not "hard project," that is he did not think that science was totally a construct or that it didn't describe true states of affairs in the world. However, our ideas about science are culturally rooted and our understanding of the world in a scientific fashion is rooted in culture. For this reason he thought that science is not linear cumulative progress.




a. Scientific progress not cumulative.


"scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes replaced in whole or in part by a new one..." (Thomas kuhn The Structure of scientific Revolutions," (92)



b. Paradigm Shifts.

"In section X we shall discover how closely the view of science as cumulating is entangled with a dominate epistemology that takes knowledge to be a construction placed directly upon raw sense data by the mind. And in section XI we shall examine the strong support provided to the same historiographic scheme by the techniques of effective science pedagogy. Nevertheless, despite the immense plausibility of that ideal image, there is increasing reason to wonder whether it can possibly be an image of science. After the pre-paradgim period the assimilation of all new theories and of almost all new sorts of phenomena has demanded the destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict between cometing schools of scientific thought. Cumulative anticipation of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost nonexistent exception to the rule of scientific development.The man who takes historic fact seriously must suspect that science does not tend toward the ideal that our image of its cumulativeness has suggested. Perhaps it is another sort of enterprise."(Ibid,94)

c. P shift not based rationally upon data.

"The choice [between paradigms] is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter as they must into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses it's own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense...the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (96).

Kuhn is not alone in these observations, major scientific thinkers have questioned scientific 'pretense of objectivity' thoughout the century:


This 'bigger' aspect can also be seen in Rosenberg's 'liberal naturalism' [CS:JCS:3.1.77]:

"The question of scientific objectivity becomes more compelling when one considers that doubts about the reductive paradigm are by no means new. William James (1890), Charles Sherrington (1951), Erwin Schrodinger (1944, 1958), Karl Popper and John Eccles (1977)--among others--have insisted that the reductive view is inadequate to describe reality. This is not a fringe group. They are among the most thoughtful and highly honored philosophers and scientists of the past century. How is it that their deeply held and vividly expressed views have been so widely ignored? Is it not that we need to see the world as better organized than the evidence suggests?

"Appropriately, the most ambitious chapter of this section is the final one by Willis Harman. Is the conceptual framework of science sufficiently broad to encompass the phenomenon of consciousness, he asks, or must it be somehow enlarged to fit the facts of mental reality? Attempting an answer, he considers the degree to which science can claim to be objective and to what extent it is influenced by the culture in which it is immersed. Those who disagree might pause to consider the religious perspective from which modern science has emerged.

"There is reason to suppose that the roots of our bias toward determinism lie deeper in our cultural history than many are accustomed to suppose. Indeed, it is possible that this bias may even predate modern scientific methods. In his analysis of thirteenth-century European philosophy, Henry Adams (1904) archly observed: "Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict himself, which is one of Man's chief pleasures." One wonders to what extent reductive science has merely replaced Thomas's God with the theory of everything."

2) Paradigm Shifts in last 30 years change materialist conceptions.


a. Medicine.


Medical paradigm shift *Medical Schools and Doctors accept Healing more readily.

Christian Science Monitory, Monday, Sept. 15, 1999

http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1997/09/15/us/us.6.html "Research Starts to Bridge GAp Between Prayer and Medicine.


"The growing dialogue between the disciplines of faith and medicine, was probed this past weekend at the Religion Newswriters Association's annual meeting here. Increasingly, medical institutions are exploring the role of prayer in healing. Three years ago, only three US medical schools in offered courses on spirituality and health. Today, there are 30."


This quotation is old, it's now 120 schools or so.

*Most Doctors Have experience with healing and medical opinion changing.

Ibid.

Larry Dossey, author of several books on the subject, says that he, like most doctors, has witnessed "miracle cures." But the quality of research on the subject varies greatly.

US TOO International, Inc.

Prostate Cancer Survivor Support Groups

US TOO Prostate Cancer Communicator Article
Volume No. 1, Issue No. 6 (January ­ June, 1997)
Survivor's Corner - Issue 6

"I am motivated to write about the healing power of prayer because many men I talk with are not only asking questions about prostate cancer statistics but have a feeling of being depressed after being diagnosed. Some are in a quandary as to what to do if PSA rises after treatment."

"A recent article was titled, "Physicians believe in the power of prayer," and stated that 269 doctors were surveyed and 99% said they were convinced that religious belief can heal."We've seen the power of belief," said Dr. Herbert Benson, author of Timeless Healing which offers scientific evidence that faith has helped to cure medical conditions. Prayer helps and the prayers of others can help in your recovery and healing."

* Good Studies Exist, Skeptics Pick On Worst Studies. Ibid. Skeptics, [Larry Dossey] says, tend to point to the weakest studies. Good scientific method, he says however, requires the medical community to look at the best work to "see what it shows us." Dr. Dossey adds that "I'm not trying to hold prayer hostage to science. I don't think prayer needs science to validate it."

b. Cosmology (end of cause and effect).

Physicists are now embroiled in integrating metaphysical notions into science and in atheists assume them as though they were fact. The self causing universe, something from nothing, multiple universes, all beyond the pale of scientific investigation, all assumed as totally proven facts by the materialists.


*No Physics to explian something from nothing.



John Mather, NASA's principal investigator of the cosmic background radiation's spectral curve with the COBE satellite, stated: "We have equations that describe the transformation of one thing into another, but we have no equations whatever for creating space and time. And the concept doesn't even make sense, in English. So I don't think we have words or concepts to even think about creating something from nothing. And I certainly don't know of any work that seriously would explain it when it can't even state the concept."[John Mather, interview with Fred Heeren on May 11, 1994, cited in his book Show Me God (1998), Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 119-120.]
That is describing the excepted theory, that the universe seems to pop up from nothing, yet physicists just accept it and assume that its possible even with no physics to explian it. That is a total paradigm shift.

*Multiverse is unscientific metaphysics.

Sten Odenwald, Gaddard, Nasa: http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a11215.html

"yes there could be other universes out there, but they would be unobservable no matter how old our universe became...even infinitly old!! So, such universes have no meaning to science because there is no experiment we can perform to detect them."


Some physicists, such as Oldenwald, are aware of this, but that doesn't stop the the materalists from continuing the assumption. So if it is religious metaphysics its bad, but if its metaphysics the materialist can use it's "ok."



c.Consciousness--re-entry of dualism.

There is a revolution in thought about consciousness underway that may include several paradigm shifts at once. It includes an interdisciplinary mix of Philosophers, psychologists, cognitive sciences, physicists, and other disciplines. Some of the more radical theories being advanced by physicists include the notion that consciousness is Quantum, that it is located non-spacilly and non-physically. see the consciousness argument for further details. But the most exciting aspect of this controversy is the fact that it has led to a reemergence of dualism. Glenn Miller does an excellent job researching this topic, most of his evidence comes form the Journal of Consciousness Studies. He also does a good job of putting into persecutive the new dualism and its implications: : http://www.webcom.com/ctt/hmosoul.html


"Now, given this turbulence, re-evaluation, and re-definition going on the field, what is the status of DUALISM?

"Well, the first thing that comes to MY mind is that 'dualism' simply changed its public relations firm and won acceptance!

Strangely enough, the way this was accomplished was simply by defining reality 'bigger'. As one allows consciousness or mind INTO 'nature' as a fundamental 'thing' itself (with causal powers), the dual-worlds were simply collapsed into one 'bigger' world that has both elements in it! Dualism (in most, but not all, senses of the term) was simply given a new name, such as "naturalistic dualism" (Chalmers) or "liberal naturalism" (Rosenberg). No one puts this as clearly as Todd Moody, in responding to someone's 'fear of dualism' [JCS:2.4.371]:

"It's true that I am not troubled by this, in part because I don't find such a sharp line of demarcation between dualistic and materialistic metaphysics in the first place. If we cannot escape the conclusion that the physical description of the world is incomplete (as Elitzur states and many others agree), the main thing is to try to find a more complete one and not worry about whether it resembles previous versions of materialism or dualism"

The New York Times,April 16, 1996Arizona Conference Grapples With Mysteries of Human ConsciousnessBy SANDRA BLAKESLEE[T] UCSON, Ariz.
http://www.as.wvu.edu/~tmiles/myster.html

"The next major group of consciousness seekers might be called modern dualists. Agreeing with the hard problem, they feel that something else is needed to explain people's subjective experiences. And they have lots of ideas about what this might be.According to Chalmers, scientists need to come up with new fundamental laws of nature. Physicists postulate that certain properties -- gravity, space-time, electromagnetism -- are basic to any understanding of the universe, he said. 'My approach is to think of conscious experience itself as a fundamental property of the universe,' he said. Thus the world has two kinds of information, one physical, one experiential. The challenge is to make theoretical connections between physical processes and conscious experience, Chalmers said.Another form of dualism involves the mysteries of quantum mechanics. Dr. Roger Penrose from the University of Oxford in England argued that consciousness is the link between the quantum world, in which a single object can exist in two places at the same time, and the so-called classical world of familiar objects where this cannot happen.Moreover, with Hameroff, he has proposed a theory that the switch from quantum to classical states occurs inside certain proteins call microtubules. The brain's microtubules, they argue, are ideally situated to perform this transformation, producing 'occasions of experience' that with the flow of time give rise to stream of consciousness thought.The notion came under vigorous attack."

Glenn Miller.

"It is very difficult to avoid this conclusion of 'emergent dualism' (chortle, chortle)with all the proposals floating around (reviewed above). The mind as 'immaterial'--in the sense of classical matter--is also accepted as a brute fact! Consider some of the statements and concessions (bold, my emphasis; italics, their emphasis):"

The introductory chapter in CS:TSC (p.1) opens with this statement: "This volume begins with a series of philosophical chapters devoted mostly to the explanatory chasm between reductionist mechanisms and the subjective phenomenon of conscious experience. The chasm is do daunting that many support 'dualism', the notion that the mind is distinct from the brain and merely interacts with it."

Erich Harth, (Univ. of Syracuse, Dept. of Physics) [CS:TSC:611ff] notes that dualism is "not quite as dead as some would have us believe" (p.619), and then goes on to show that the most common objection to old-style dualism just doesn't wash [p.620]:

Miller

"Physicists, predictably [in a quantum wave probability sense, of course..;>)], are very open to this interpenetration of mind/matter: Compare the free-floating quote of noted physicist Feynman:" "Mind must be a sort of dynamical pattern, not so much founded in a neurobiological substrate as floating above it, independent of it" [cited in CS:DP:24]

Hameroff's model [CS:JCS:108] claims to be both reductionist AND dualist:

"As a model of consciousness, quantum coherence in microtubules is reductionist in that a specific molecular structure is featured as a site for consciousness. It is seemingly dualist in that the quantum realm (which is actually intrinsic to all of nature) is seen to act through microtubules."

Atmanspacher gives his view that the dual-world is just this 'bigger' one-world [JCS:1.2.168-9]:

"One of the hot topics in this respect concerns the question of whether material reality and its non-material counterpart can indeed be considered as independent from each other as the concept of Cartesian dualism assumes. The most precise and best formalized indications for a negative answer to this question can be found in quantum theory."

"Two important concepts that present evidence against any ultimate relevance of the corresponding dualism are the concepts of complexity and meaning. In addition to quantum theory, these concepts reflect tendencies to bridge the Cartesian cut from both realms, that of physics as well as that of cognitive science..."

Grush and Churchland [CS:JCS:2.1.10-29] express amazement at how many 'intellectual materials' seem to have 'strong dualist hankerings' (p.27). They talk about these 'residual dualist hankerings' as being a rather widespread phenomenon.

An interesting possible example of this is in Hodgson' book The Mind Matters. In the review of the book [JCS:2.1.93], Squires makes this comment:

"Often I find in this book that the author is almost saying that within a person there is something that is in its essence not physics, but then he realises that this is dualism, which he feels should be avoided, so he tries to escape. These escapes are unsatisfactory."

Chalmers actually refers to his position as 'naturalistic dualism' and says that it does qualify as a type of dualism, but an innocent dualism [e.g. CS:JCS:2.3.210]

McGinn notes that "recent philosophy has become accustomed to the idea of mental causation" [CS:JCS:2.3.223]




d. Psychology of Religion.

See the Religious Instrict argument where I show that a whole discipline arose, transactional analysis, based upon Abraham Maslow's theoires of mystical experince. Documentation on that page demonstates that phychology no longer approaches religion as suspect, but understands it as healthy and normative for human being, and approches unbelief as suspect. There are also studies presented showing the benfits of religion for metal health.,



3) New laws of Physics.



In the NYT Quote from Chalmers above he proposes coming up with a new law of physics to explain the basic property of nature known as "consciousness." He is not the only one to propose this, as one can see from quotations of physicists in the consciousness argument. When theorists start proposing new laws of physics one can be fairly sure that a paradigm shift is underway. This is even more the case when the new law of physics is proposed to explain something that the old paradigm had reduced practically out of existence. The old reductionist/materialist paradigm reduced consciousness to mere epiphenomenal status and located it as brain function. It is the inadequacy of this understanding which has led some scientists to call for a new law!

CARM sux

those guys are such totally diso;noest idiots it's not even worth it to try to make peace with them. I apolgoized to monron Slick for saying he was stuid (he is) and that hes' a liar(he is) I never apologize to those dishonest idiots again. I shoudl have tired to make peace or go back.Jesus said be reconciled to your brother but did he tell us what to do whent he bother is totally false has no honor?

I was banned agian. what grave insult did I utter?I started winning argumetns. that's the only deal. I attacked no one. they are just as dishonest as you can get.

I apologized and that liar sai "O that's ok" but he didnt' say I'm not a false teacher.so It' ok if I run interfearence for them with the atheists, but just dont' take me seriously as a Chrisitain.

they are not Christians. They are flase brothers.


I bad slick from this Blog and all neiophite suck ups.