Atheist Bait and Switch: The Illusion of the Empirical

 

 

NoctambulantJoycean's bait and switch.

Still with Noctabulantjoycean's argument on carm. (see last post) He has argued that he has a  lot of empirical evidence to disprove the resurrection. He further argues that the attempts to defend the doctrine are "had hoc" and that's damning for it becuase it opens it up to the charge of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance is a major psychological theory, one advanced by Leon Festinger in the 1950s. The theory has stood the test of time and has become a major theory in psychology.

Noctambulant doesn't really have any specific evidence against the resurrection. The articles he linked to actually said that Festinger's theory has become accepted and there is a great deal of empirical evidence to support it. The empirical evidence supports the theory, and Noctambulant wants to apply the theory to the resurrection. In all fairness it has been done, in fact Festinger himself raised the possibility if memory serves correctly.I don't have a link for that but I was reading Festinger for a sociology class around the time I got saved and I considered it as a major factor in my deliberations about belief.

I had argued before that the nature of belief system includes certain doctinal elements that can't be considered ad hoc because of their position in relation to the whole bleief system, the come with the package. He argues that this has nothing to do with it.

Noctambulant

post 11

An ad hoc explanation is one that is constructed with no supporting evidence or argument simply to avoid an unwanted conclusion. Thus, pointing out that a doctrine "ancient" does nothing to show its not ad hoc. For example, take the article "When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists: A Theoretical overview" or any of the plethora of studies on what ad hoc mechanisms religious believers use to rationalize the failure of a prophecy. I think (and others have argued) those same mechanisms were used by the early disciples of Jesus to rationalize his death (after all, the Jewish Messiah was not prophecied to die before completing his work). You could not then respond to my argument by saying "well, the claims of the disciples represent an ancient tradition and thus cannot be ad hoc." That would be a silly response. A claim can be ad hoc, no matter how old it is or who said it before a given speaker resorted to employing it. ."

the paper he refers to is by Lorne L. Dawson. you can see the abstract and first page here:

 
 Leon Festinger


The ad hoc argument came up in the previous post. The issue as he raised it was essentially about epistemic presumption. In his view religious doctrines dont' have any. Of course for the typical atheist being religious doctrine is automatic disproof anyway.I argued that doctrines of a belief system come with the package and enjoy the same presumption for the believer that the  system as a whole does becuase they rest on the same support that convinced the bleieve in the first place. This argument soared over his head.


 Noctambulant's particular "evidence" is an article by Dawson. Dawson is not necessary concerned with even arguing agaisnt Christianity per se. He's actually talking about proving the psychological Principe of connotative dissonance which is what Festinger discovered. The Festinger case is very amusing, everyone should read it. The original book is called When Prophecy fails" it was about infiltrating a flying saucer cult in the 50s, one that watched an old sci fi tv show called "captain video" to get secret codes about when the saucers were coming to save the group from an impending flood. (see an episode of Captain Video).

NoctambulantJoycean's argument is a bait and switch becuase he's actually not talking about the same things is celebrated empirical proof is talking about. The mountain of evidence that Dawson refers to is not evidence against Christianity but evidence for cognitive dissonance. That is a major principle in psychology an used in advertizing, and it is rock solid. It's just as much an argument against atheism as it is agaisnt religion.

The thing is atheist can't really be said to dispassionately and logically analyze and dismiss God arguments evidence when they have a huge psychological motive to unfairly reject it out of hand (if they didn't reject it they would have to accept that they are damned). so the more vociferously they have argued fro atheism the stronger their motive not to consider the arguemnts fairly. There are other ways in which connotative dissonance effects atheism because it effects all arguments.

That leads to the second bait and switch. The idea that there's this great fortress of facts backing atheism is based upon just this kind of deception. I'm not saying it's purposeful, this pheromone itself is probalby caused by cognitive dissonance. It's a bait and switch becuase there is no fortress of facts, there's a lose connection of self selected ideas that may or not may not really pertain to religion.Luke the cognitive dissonance evidence it's not really evidence against the resurrection.

They cannot prove that the early disciplines needed an exploitation that kept them going when the prophesy failed they have no proof that it failed. They are assuming he did not raise form the dead. They assume that based upon ideological considerations they have no proof to that effect. They make a circular argument to the effect that well since we assume he didn't they must the using CD and that means that's the way prophesy works so that disproves prophecy and prove he didn't raise form the dead: perfect circle. unfortunately it's logical circle not a hermeneutic one.

they can't prove he didn't raise from the dead and thus it's not really evidence against prophesy of the resurrection. It only becomes that when you pull the switch and replace real argument with ideological assumption.

Then we see this thinking in the way naturalism deals with all of God's activities. Noctambulant says:

Its like saying "since God as an explanation of natural disasters is an ancient claim, it is not ad hoc when theists say God caused a tsunami, even when we have clear scientific, empirically supported explanations for what caused the tsunami Knowing naturalistic causes of tsunamis is not proof God didn't cause one of them. there we have the bait and switch no 3. They use the same circular reasoning to dismiss any idea that God does anything. Becuase some naturalistic process are known and we have a self imposed ideological taboo agisnt the activity of God in the world we assume (a) all references to God's activity must be assumptions of no naturalistic process (b) knowing the naturalistic process is enough to assume God didn't do anything. That's' all the need to justify the claims that they have proved that God doesn't do anything.

the ideology of naturism and anti-supernatural work by circular reasoning.


he paper he refers to is by Lorne L. Dawson. you can see the abstract and first page here:


Meta: Dawson is not necessary concerned with even arguing agaisnt Christianity per se. He's actually talking abuot proving the psychological Principe of connotative dissonance which is what Festinger discovered.



Noct

Dealing with you is like dealing with a dishonest child. But much more frustrating.
Nowhere did I say Dawson was interested in arguing against Christianity per se. I specifically stated that I (and others) claim that the rationalizations and other ad hoc mechanisms Dawson presented evidence for in certain religious sects (including some Christian sects), applied to the behavior of Jesus' disciples after his death. 

 Meta:

yes but you contradict this very statement by the end of the post where you assert that I didn't read the paper because it disproves the res.

yes you sure as hell implied it. that's the closest thing to any kind of empiricle that I have seen you offer and you made big deal out of how you have all this empirical evidence.


NoctambulantJoycean's argument is a bait and switch becuase he's actually not talking about the same things is celebrated empirical proof is talking about. The mountain of evidence that Dawson refers to is not evidence against Christianity but evidence for cognitive dissonance. That is a major principle in psychology an used in advertizing, and it is rock solid. It's just as much an argument against atheism as it is agaisnt religion.

The thing is atheist can't really be said to dispassionately and logically analyze and dismiss God argument evidence when they have a huge psychological motive to unfairly reject it out of hand (if they didn't reject it they would have to accept that they are damned). so the more vociferously they have argued fro atheism the stronger their motive not to consider the arguemnts fairly. There are other ways in which connotative dissonance effects atheism because it effects all arguments.


Noct

Now here's how you might have responded to my argument if you had modicum of intellectually honesty or reading comprehension:

"NJ argued that these dissonance management mechanisms (especially ad hoc rationalization mechansims) were displayed by Jesus' disciple after his death. Here's some evidence from historical records written about the disciples at the time showing that this was not the case." Of course, you didn't take that route. Instead, you misconstrued my argument (as you always do to virtually every atheist I've seen you respond to). *sigh* 

 Meta:

(1) No reason to take it becuase you don't have any evidence that JC and the boys were under cognitive dissonance. you can't prove the prophesy failed. you are only assuming so because the ideology says it must have.

(2) if you did have any such evidence it was piss off the Jesus myth guys becuase it prove he existed that would be the end of that.

(3) what you are really doing is making a straw man argument. It's always a dangerous prostration to right your opponents arguments foremost. even if it's a good straw man it's still a straw man.

(4) there are two things you do with a straw man argument: you can say "this is weak I can beat it." that's what most do. you can also say "you could have argued this and thus divert attention from what was argued.

Nothing wrong with the argument I made and suggesting a straw man is not disproof of my argument.


That leads to the second bait and switch.

I will take this opportunity to point out that there's nothing personal in saying "this is a bait and switch." the best thinkers of the day use bait and switch, even though it's not a valid tactic. it is nevertheless used by the best of them. I's not an insult to say you did it. I'm sure you don't mean to say "I'm a dishonest child" in a personal way right? (sure you don't.you don't hate Christians do you? those re-education camps are meant to be fun).

The idea that there's this great fortress of facts backing atheism is based upon just this kind of deception. I'm not saying it's purposeful, this pheromone itself is probalby caused by cognitive dissonance. It's a bait and switch becuase there is no fortress of facts, there's a lose connection of self selected ideas that may or not may not really pertain to religion.Luke the cognitive dissonance evidence it's not really evidence against the resurrection.

They cannot prove that the early disciplines needed an explaination that kept them going when the prophesy failed they have no proof that it failed. They are assuming he did not raise form the dead. They assume that based upon ideological considerations they have no proof to that effect. They make a circular argument to the effect that well since we assume he didn't they must the using CD and that means that's the way prophesy works so that disproves prophecy and prove he didn't raise form the dead: perfect circle. unfortunately it's logical ciricule not a hermeneutic one.

they can't prove he didn't raise from the dead and thus it's not really evidence against prophesy of the resurrection. It only becomes that when you pull the switch and replace real argument with ideological assumption.
Then we see this thinking in the way naturalism deals with all of God's activities. Noctambulant says:

Knowing naturalistic causes of tsunamis is not proof God didn't cause one of them. there we have the bait and switch no 3. They use the same circular reasoning to dismiss any idea that God does anything. Becuase some naturalistic process are known and we have a self imposed ideological taboo agisnt the activity of God in the world we assume (a) all references to God's activity must be assumptions of no naturalistic process (b) knowing the naturalistic process is enough to assume God didn't do anything. That's' all the need to justify the claims that they have proved that God doesn't do anything.the ideology of naturism and anti-supernatural work by circular reasoning.

Noct

If you're really arguing that we can't use Occam's razor to rule God out as an explanation for phenomena N once we have empirical evidence of a purely natural causal explanation for N, then I would again suggest you enroll in your local community college's epistemology course and their philosophy of science course.

Meta:
Any  knowledge you possess is always already gong to be contingent. that is a priori the case. it must be so, because it's about nature.. You can never possess knowledge that God is not necessary becuase by definition God is necessary. you can say we don't need to appeal to God to show how the universe came to be but even that is not using the term "necessary" in the same sense as Occam's razor.

Moreover scinece does not have that kind of evidence Nowhere in modern science is any kind of proof that we don't need God. Half the theories of phsyics today are conjecture with no empirical basis.


Noct

None of what you said above addresses the content of Dawson's paper nor argues that the disciples of Jesus did not display the dissonance management mechanisms in question.

 Meta:

yes it did. I read the paper nothing in it says "this is a proof that Jesus dint' raise form the dead." It's about the nature of and modern state of the theory fo Cog Dis not a disproof of religion. you are doing the B and S again. you giving us the promise "I have empirical proof" but you don't because it's not proof about the right things. You have no proof of any kind to show that JC and the boys exhibited any kind of CD. If you had that you wold have proof already that the res didn't' happen you dont' have that. if you did you wouldn't need Festinger.


Noct

I'm beginning to doubt you even read the paper. 

Meta:

YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE AGAINST the RES!

(1) you are argue from sign

(2) you are asserting that because the article is about empirical evidence and it could be used to infer that the res failed then it must be empirical evidence against the res. that is argument from the consequent and argument from sign.

Noct

Maybe you're intimidated by long pages of text and prefer pretty colors and images. If so, then check out ProfMTH's Youtube series "Did the Disciple dies for a lie?" Maybe you can actually follow along with his argument since you can't seem to fairly present my own argument without straw-manning my claims. 

 Meta:

Isolate the quote and quote it where he proves the prophesy failed in the first place?

and show me a quote where hey say "I am specifically arguing against the resurrection."

btw you also forgot to answer the bit bout CD being applicable to atheists. that means you don't have a special proof against the res all you are doing is making a general application of a principle that we can all use.

in short you have proved nothing.

Anatomy of Argument: A Well Trod Atheist Fallacy

 


 The other day on CARM we were having a discussion about the Euthephro Dilemma. This is the question about is there a higher standard to which God must adhere in shaping morality, or in other wrodsd, is it Good because God says it or does God say it because it's good. The Atheist will shape the question so that the only available answers are either that God manufactures good based upon arbitrary whims, or he has to follow an higher standard and thus is not the highest reality. Out this discussion came the comments below:

Originally Posted by NoctambulantJoycean

No, not really. There is empirical evidence that theists simply (unconsciously) project their moral beliefs onto God, as opposed to God communicating anything to them. They also more easily project their feelings onto God since religious experience involves a breakdown on the "self/other" distinction.

Meta:
 The assumptions you make about religious experience are per conceived by reductionist premise. The sense of the numinous is empirical and embodied sense of God's love and goodness. that in itself is reason enough to assume it.

Noctam:

Here's a sampling of the relevant data:
"Believers' Estimates of God's Beliefs are More Egocentric than Estimates of Other People's Beliefs."
"Was He Happy? Cultural Difference in Conceptions of Jesus."
"Creating God in Our Image: The Role of Self-Projection in Estimating God’s Beliefs."
"How Christians Reconcile Their Personal Political Views and the Teachings of Their Faith: Projection as a Means of Dissonance Reduction."
page 1001 of "The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology."

And if you prefer video to text:
Youtube, AntiCitizenX’s “Psychology of Belief” series
Youtube, KnownNoMore’s video “Against Religious Experience…”

Meta:

that doesn't really prove anything. If humans are made in God's image than that probably pertains to consciousness. lots of reasons to assume God is the source of consciousnesses. essentially any argument for panpsychism is an argument for God's consciousness.


Noctam:

I've noticed that a lot of theists on CARM (especially you) start screaming out buzz-words like "scientism!" and "reductionism!" whenever your views are criticized. It's tiresome. It basically amounts to a defense-mechanism you employ so your beliefs don't have to meet the same epistemic standards as everything else. That's not going to fly anymore (by the way, I'm a property dualist regarding qualia, so your charge of a "reductionist premise" I'm using is laughable. Please stop assuming stuff.)

Meta:

That could be a valid complaint that I speak over your head and I should be more considerate. It doesn't really damage my arguments taht youa re unread and don'tknow the termenology in the field. Maybe you should be more humble and seek to learn more before eneter into discussion.

Noctam:

Moving on, I really don't care what possible scenarios you can make up (ex: we're made in God's image, panpsychism implies God's conscious, numinous, blah blah blah). No. As Duhem's thesis in philosophy of science shows, one can make up any number of ad hoc, unfounded, possible explanations to protect one's pet idea. But if you resort to that, no one would and should take you seriously. So instead of just giving me possible explanations theists made up, give me plausible ones supported by evidence and not just your bare assertions. I'm getting tired of some theists like you acting as if the same epistemic standards that apply in philosophy and science in general don't apply to you.

 Meta:

 There are couple of things wrong with this particular display of ignorance.I must say I more enjoy your scientist schtick. First of all, to characterize well known ancient doctrinal potions in Christianity as "ad hoc" makes you look so unread. anyone exhibiting the knowledge I see in your arguments would be well enough read to know that image dei is an ancient doctrine. calling it ad hock well that's like saying "waiter! this Gazpacho soup is cold, send it back!"

Secondly, you didn't answer the argument. instead you merely mock and ridicule my beliefs. that is not an answer. I told you honestly and directly why I think you are wrong. the answer to that cant' be "well your ideas are silly and I don't bleieve them." I know you don't bleieve it that's kind of like betting the question! calling my beliefs names is not disproving them.


 Noctam:

So stop dodging empircal data by saying "that doesn't prove anything" (I hear that same line from AIDS denialists or other such sorts of people who are unwilling to change their beliefs regardless of the evidence you present them; yes, I'm comparing you to them). Stop accusing people who use scientific evidence to reach conclusions of being "reductionists." And start providing evidence for your claims and not just using implicit reference to properly basic beliefs, or "embodied sense of God's love and goodness," or ... as epistemic cop-outs (or really just ad hoc methods of begging the question and reducing the burden of proof for you and increasing it for everyone else) so you don't ever have to revise your beliefs.

 Meta:

 That sounds like an argument but it's not. the bit about "made up" is question betting. All you are really saying is 'I dont' believe that so it must be wrong." I didn't make it up it's an ancinet doctrine It's not just made up it's a valid bleief within a larger belief system and it answers the issue.

All scinece can do is offer explanations. Science is about proving things. So for you to gain say the notion of offering explanations is silly. You have no empirical data that disproves God or that proves morality is an independent standard. Just refusing to allow me to defend my beliefs by referencing what they are neither logical nor empirical. The experiences of the sense of the numinous are empirical, that is the mystical sense of God's reality is experienced directly. To the extent that it is always linked with the sense of God's reality it can be regarded as the co-determinate of God, that is the trace, the track the footprint of God in the snow of human experience. Thus we can regard mystical experience as experience of the divine and we can regard that as empirical.



 Noctam:

Sorry I had to be so firm. But I'm getting sick-and-tired of these tactics some theists like you employ. If you're not willing to revise your beliefs in light of new evidence and find ad hoc methods of disregardig evidence, don't expect people to take you seriously.

Meta:

I don't take atheist ridicule seriously, and since you are not willing to try and understand my bleiefs in terms of their inner logic there is basis for discussion.


What started all of this is the Euthyphro dilemma. That's not something science can prove empirically. in fact it pertains to a theistic system. The dilemma basic boils down to this: are the gods good becuase they are gods, or are they gods becuase they are good? In other words do they follow a higher standard to which they must submit. If so then something is higher than the gods.Of course Euthyphro was Socrates major foil that's why its set in the metaphysical system of Greek Mythology, and the fates are the weavers of the higher standard. it makes sense to ask questions of this sort in a Polytheistic system where the gods are contingent and not ultimate basis of all reality. It makes no sense to even consider it in a Christian system where "God" is the term we give to the basis of all that is. In that case there cannot be a higher standard.

The answer that I have brought to this question in terms of the Christian God has always been that the "higher standard" is actually God's own character, which is love. Thus I see love as the background of th moral universe. There is no standard higher than God because the moral standard to which he adheres is his own character and that all boils down to love as the basis of ethics.

Now looking at his specific claims. In terms of the anatomy of discussion he's doing the following

(1) substituting mockdry and reidicle for refuation

(2) He's begging the question and calling it "emprical evidence."

(3) He's trying to privilege his position with reference to the fortress of facts.

On the surface this all appears like he's given reasoned comments but in reality he's merely evoking ideology. He doesn't actually present any evidence he only presents the threat of evidence. We don't have to prove every detail of our belief system. We only have to show that belief is warranted by sound and valid arguemnts.

Is Love Just a Little Feeling from Chrmiclas in Your Head?

 


This is an exchange I had with an atheist on CARM. I don't even remember the context that prompted it, but it brings up two issues that I think are very important. The first one deals with the near universal atheist acceptance of reductionism and how they truncate reality by reducing ideals such as love and justice to mere momentary feelings, which they dis-value as the result of chemicals and nothing more. The second issue deals with a notion I see more and more, the reduction of concepts to the realm of the un-real. Both of these are extremely important issues because they amount to nothing more than gimmicks, yet I see atheists trading on them all the time as ways of disparaging belief.

(1) feelings are bad, they are subjective, according to most atheists, they are only the result of chemicals in the head, they have no further use or value beyond this.

(2) concepts are always unreal, God is a concept, thus God is unreal (this gimmicky "argument" pulled by "Big Thinker" on CARM incessantly. No matter how many times one disproves it he's always bringing it up again.

So in argument with a particular atheist the issue of love came up. Is it a feeling or is there something more important and wider than just the feelings and physical response that go with the notion of "love?" I say there's a concept to it which of course he says means it's not real.

Below I said to him (in blue) "no it's not' meaning "no love is not just a feeling." Love is more than just the racing heart beat and butterfly stomach of momentary infatuation, in fact love is much more than just romantic infatuation; there are different kinds of love but they all revolve around the idea of the will to the good of the other (agope, the highest form of love).

He says it's just a reaction to chemicals firing across the synapse.


Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
no it is not. It's not a feeling at all. It's a concept, the will to the good of the other. The feeling is something that comes with it and reinforces it.

Of course it's a concept. Everything is. But it's not "the will to the good of the other". That's something you have decided to attach to it. And please don't drag out some nonsense like "Oh, so you don't want good things for those you love?"

Meta:

you are reducing it to little butterfly feeling that's not really even the thing itself. Those are the results of love not love itself. It's a concept.

In saying that this is a concept I've added to love, he's also adding something to it. He's assuming that certain physiological responses typify the term "love" which means he's using a concept to designate a stimulus response, and he is no less evoking a conceptual understanding of a set of responses than am I.


Atheist:

The feeling is love - whatever else comes with that (and, of course, that varies wildly from person to person) is not love - it's a consequence of it for that particular person.

The idea doesn't come with the feeling, how could it? the feel is a consequence of the concept. That's like saying feeling good about voting is all there is to democracy.



Quote Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
obviously it would. you can't just have chemicals promoting a feeling and also have that backing up an idea. There is no such thing as innate ideas.

Atheist:

Who said anything about innate ideas? We are talking about an emotion - love. One which is caused by certain chemical reactions in the brain. That feeling existed before we put the label 'love' on it.

The reason I brought up Innate ideas is becuase we are both attacking a term to a set of stimulus responses. He is limited the set to just certain physiological responses that go with romantic or ludic stimuli while I am taking in a large use that has often been made of the limited English term, "love." He's limited the use of the term in order to cut off the wider concept because that would disprove the propagandist notion that love is nothing more than this little narrow range of physical feeling. His view still henges upon the very thing he says mine henges upon, attaching a term to set of feelings.

Innate idea come in to it because for thousands of years people have been using concepts to describes things they feel that are deeper than just this one little set of ideological responses. Al the conceptual talk that goes with the idea of love (such as "will to the good of the other," agope, koinonia and the like) are descriptions of things people feel. If they weren't feelings that refer to a broader conception there would not be such elaboration on this one concept. To say that it's just chemicals is like saying the concepts that go with it must be innate because they too are suggested by the chemicals.

My position is that love is not just a feeling its an emotion. There's more depth to emotion than just a little momentary feeling. He's arguing that if you attack a broader concept to it then you are just making up a bunch of stuff becuase it's not confined this the narrow range. His view just arbitrarily cuts off most of the what had histrionically been used for. This is done for ideological reasons:

No you have reduced the meaning of emotion:

(1) atheist are scared to death of feelings
(2) anything involving feelings must be discredited by atheist
(3) you reduce love to just a feeling because if you did not it would destroy your world view.
(4) you are dogmatically asserting that the feeling is the thing itself and the word is made up to describe the feeling. that's arbitrary.

that is proved by the fact that other languages have different words for different kinds of love. English doesn't' have that. Greeks were highly educated, the Anglo Saxons were barbarian. The Anglo Saxon's stopped with the feeling,the Greek cataloged all the related phenomena.

Quote Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
then you don't have argument against religious experience. so religious experience is a chemically induced feeling about something real. what's the problem?

Atheist

Did you actually read what I wrote? I have no problem at all with religious experience in as much as it is a chemically induced feeling. The problem comes up with someone claims that the cause for that religious experience is external - that is, that it is a chemically induced feeling about something real. That you cannot evidence.

The fact of the feelings in relation to the concepts, and the effect of religious experience upon that process, such that one's life is transformed in valuable ways across the board, is the proof that it has to be external. If not you have to accept that it's innate ideas, which against are supposed to be impossible so that would indicate some higher origin. As a direct result of religoius experiencing the person doing the experiencing senses undifferentiated unity, or an all pervasive sense of love (and in that feeling of "love" there is a grander and broader and deeper correspondence to concepts such as "will to the good of the other" than in any other kind of set of feelings to which we attach the term "love).


The effects found by two of the major studies include:

Long-Term Effects

Wuthnow's Sutdy:

*Say their lives are more meaningful,
*think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life is
Meditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style

Noble's study:

*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic
*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient
*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,
*increased love and compassion

The reason for assuming it's an external cause is that these effects are in direct correlation to a sense of presence that the expericer citified as "God" or "higher power" most of the time. One of the most common effects is that the experience is drawn into religious belief, either first time or a deeper sense of commitment, as a result of the experience. This is all in relation to the correlation bewteen sense of presence and the all pervasive sense of love, which the person experiencing identities with the broader concepts not with just the little truckled set of physiological response.

The atheist gimmick would be to say concepts are about unreal ideas in the mind. Yet concepts are about anything. Everything we think is a concept. I have a concept of the world around me. I have concepts of millions of real things all the time. You hae two things working there, the concept and the referent that it is a concept of. Some referents are only in the mind, like Superman. Some referents are real, like the world around me. All concepts are in relation to their referents. Being a concept in no way means the referent is unreal. So the the referent of the concept of Love includes but is not limited to the little set of physiological feelings, but also the deep and broader senses that are attached to the various words that English reduces to the one word "love."


the Greeks even had about several words for different kinds.


eros--the desire to have sex (simiar to ludos)
koinonia--comradeship
phileo--brotherhood
agope--the will to the good of the other.

All of those are both feelings and concepts. I have a concept of willing the good of the other, but I also feel a sense of the rightness of this. The strong feelings I have for it reinforce the idea that it's right enable me to be committed to it. It's not less just becasue I can put it into words. The words are probable inadequate to give full justice to what is being felt.

If we look though the literature of the world we find vast amounts of evidence for this idea. In Huckleberry Finn when he decides slavery is wrong and feels it deeply enough to say "Ok I'll go to hell then." He's willing to go to hell for the rightness of freeing slaves, and he knows it's true, but he feels it. There the concept is correlated with a physical feeling in connection with it. The feeling backs up the concept. Its' not just an "illusion" brought of my physiology it's concept that he knows is right by the concept of the concept.

We see this reflected all the time in literature around the world, complex idea accompany deep feelings and we call them "emotions." In reducing concepts to feelings and then dis-valuing feelings the atheist reductionists are merely truncating reality and setting up a situation where your world view so automatically privileged and the data that disproves it is lost.

The concept of agope, sometimes translated "charity," although that's inadequate, or "God's love," is not only a Christian concept but had a currency in Greek culture. It is defined by Tillich as the willingness to according the other the basic human dignity due him/her. That requries a complex and compound conceptual referent. Not only does it involve the idea of "good of the other" but also the concept of "human dignity." The reductionist says "you are just sticking a bunch of things on this simple set of physiological responses." Of cousre truncating it in that way takes away the concepts which are felt in themselves. One can have passionate feelings about the good of the other, and about willing the good, about human dignity and according it to people who are being denied it.

I have always sensed that the feelings I feel when responding to something like civil rights workers singing "we shall over come" are must different kind of feeling than a response to the stimulus of a beautiful woman, and I consciously understand that they are and can feel that depth in the feelings at the moment. These are not the same feelings. When thinking of the term "love" in the broader context of agope I clearly sense the connection. There is something in that amalgum of feelings I have about political committment to ideals I care about that I can easily term "love." Che Guevara said Marxism is a strange kind of love, not for gleaming steel factories but for people.

Racist Implications stirring anti-Obama votes?

Some idiot in Dallas hung an empty chair form a tree with an American Flag. then he claims he can't see the racist implications. He made some veg excuse like "It' just there to show the greatness of America." The empty chair symbolizes President Obama because Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair at the Republican convention pretending that Obama was in it.

What else did Texans used to hang from trees? why the use to hang blacks form trees. Like this moron doesn't know that. what does this mean that it's for the glory of America? He wants to lynch the President for the glory of America?

I think we have handled these tea party guys with kid gloves long enough. We need to start calling them on their true motivations for hating the President.

I'm in the wrnog 47 percent!

Obama draws crowd of 75,000

I am a victim and I'm entitled. I'm largely a victim of my own stupidity and I'm entitled to all the rights granted in the bill of rights. I don't see why everyone should not be entitled to or granted the basic right to food, medicine, shelter, and safety. Why should I deny myself what I am willing to grant others? 

The major mistake made by the Obama 47 is that they are too obstinate to ask their parents for money. If they would barrow that money form their parents no one would be poor. The economy is still bad and people are still hurting but things are going to pick up in the next couple of years. On ABC News today they talked about five million jobs will be added to the economy in the next two years. Here are a couple of other sources that echo that news.



 White planes

America's economy will continue its recovery this year and next as it adds nearly 5 million jobs and unemployment falls below 8 percent, say University of Michigan economists.
"The performance of the U.S. economy during much of 2011 did nothing to alter the perception that we were mired in a sluggish recovery," said U-M economist Joan Crary. "Indeed, by late summer economists were considering the likelihood of a double-dip recession.
"The economy regained some momentum during the fall, however, with the closing quarter registering some of the best economic readings of the year. Although the economy is growing at a subpar rate to begin 2012, we expect the pace of economic activity to accelerate over the next two years as the economic headwinds that have plagued the recovery begin to abate."

In their annual spring forecast update of the U.S. economy, Crary and colleagues Daniil Manaenkov and Matthew Hall say that employment rises at a moderate pace, consumer spending increases, the housing market picks up, vehicle sales improve and inflation remains in check in 2012 and 2013.
They predict that payroll employment will rise by 2.5 million jobs during 2012 and 2.3 million during 2013, an average of 200,000 jobs per month.

 Obama can't take all the credit because part of it is due to lower energy prices due to the boom in natural gas mined form shale (such the boom in gas drilling in Ft. Worth). Lower energy prices have contributed to boom in productivity and thus in sexpots, according to Scot Malone. (Boston, Reuters). Neither can he take all the blame. The stimulus packed did help and Republicans are holding the jobs bill back and thus negating a million Job increase that would come from that (Daily Kos)

A year ago today, Republicans began blocking the passage of the American Jobs Act. This is not a happy anniversary. Without Republican obstruction, the very jobs report that Republicans are crowing about as proof of the President's failings would instead show an increase in hiring and GDP.

On September 8, 2011..........President Obama laid out a series of policy proposals known collectively as the American Jobs Act. The plan included stimulus spending in the form of immediate infrastructure investments, tax credits for working Americans and employers to encourage consumer spending and job growth, and efforts to shore up state and local budgets to prevent further layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials. The American Jobs Act never became law....because Republicans opposed it from the start, blasting it as another form of “failed stimulus” that wouldn’t help the economy. (They ignored the fact that the first “failed stimulus,” the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, wasn’t a failure at all.) One month later, the GOP blocked the bill in the Senate, preventing the creation of more than a million jobs and the added growth that multiple economists predicted would occur if the bill passed:
    –Moody’s Analytics estimated the American Jobs Act would create 1.9 million jobs and add two percent to gross domestic product.
    –The Economic Policy Institute estimated it would create 2.6 million jobs and protect an addition 1.6 million existing jobs.
    –Macroeconomic Advisers predicted it would create 2.1 million jobs and boost GDP by 1.5 percent.
    –Goldman Sachs estimated it would add 1.5 percent to GDP.

God is not Just another Guy

This was a post on CARM about meta ethics.It's saying that if the basis of Christian ethics is divine command (God said it that makes it true) then it's just as subjective as any other ethical basis because it's just God's opinion.

Originally Posted by Willem DeChrist

The thread on the is/ought divide brought up one issue with moral realism that I never understood. Namely, almost everyone who is a moral anti-realist is also an atheist. But there really isn't any logical relationship that makes moral realism more likely in a theistic universe than an atheistic universe.

If moral judgments are just a function of subjective preferences/emotions, then God's desires remain equally subjective and thus do not constitute a theory of moral realism. If moral judgments reflect some objective feature of the universe, then that feature can exist whether or not a divine being exists.

Can anyone give me some view of meta-ethics that would make moral judgments subjective in an atheistic universe and objective in a theistic universe? I don't really see anyway this could be, so it seems like there should be at least a few Christians who also see morality as subjective.

I will never understand what it is in the atheist brain will not let them get the concept of transcendental signified. God is not just another guy. he's not another drunk in a bar on Saturday night. He's the basis of the all that is thus his view point is the thing that creates the ought. there can't be ought without him because there's no one in nature. there's nothing there but "is." Therefore, God cannot be subjective any sense. He can be experienced subtly but his view are the essence of objectivity they are only object view point there is. its what makes things true. God = truth!

it's really not hard to understand. "Should" Is predicated upon the top of the metaphysical hierarchy, which is God.


Originally Posted by Willem DeChrist

If morality is an expression of his necessary nature, this seems to suggest that moral laws bound God (rather than are created by God) and exist antecedent to God. If you are defining God as a perfectly good being, this presupposes some notion of goodness which he must conform to.

that doesn't make much sense. God authorizes what is good or right, that's what is being said. How do you get out of that that what God authors is a boundary for him and not for others?

Granted it wouldn't be "created" so much as based upon God's character and it would be boundary for God. that's not the issue I have. the issue is it would not be only a boundary it would still be the basis of "ought." It would be equally a boundary for all others.

DeChrist

However, if you are admitting moral laws exists independent from God, then morality does not require God to exist in the first place.

just a rehash of the Euthaphro dilemma. Doesn't apply to Christian God and it's beaten by the realization that moral stand is derived by God from his own character. The reason it doesn't apply to the Christian God is becuase the Dilemma was made under a metaphsyical system where the metaphysical hierarchy was split between the gods and the fates. The real question was which was more powerful, Zeus or the fates? Christian theology assumes no fates. What would have been the fates is part of God, that is foreordained aspects of universe. In a Weselyan theology for exampel, or any Armenian view, there is no deterministic pre ordination that subsumes human free will. In the Greek world there was.

DeChrist:

No, not really. 'Subjective' refers to the contents of a mind rather than of objective reality. God's preferences are therefore subjective. It doesn't matter what he did or how powerful he is, that doesn't change the definitions of words.

Meta

no, you are doing bait and switch. when you speak of subject/object dichotomy you speak of mind when you speak of God's "preferences' then you jump over to deontolgocial matters rather than merely matters of perception.

It shouldn't matter that God's preferences are the result of his perceptions. that doesn't make them "subjective" anymore than scientist's discoveries are subjective becuase they are discovered with the aid of his/her mind. Mind can discover objective reality and minds can think objectively (less subjectively). Atheists use the term "subjective" to mean flawed, defective, mistaken. This is the assumption they are making about God, that God can make mistakes. That's a assign assumption. It's born totally out of the God hater club's obstinate refusal to consider the nature of the divine.

When I say it doesn't make God's perceptions subjective I mean in the sense that atheists use the term. Actually what I really bleieve is that there is no objectivity. Everything is subjective. Saying that God's view is subjective is no more a limitation upon its veracity than saying that it's real or that it's right. Objectivity is a pretense. There are only varying degrees of subjectivity.

That has nothing to with the prescribing of morals. thus declaring an act "right"or "wrong" is not invalidated by it's prescription by mind.

DeChrist:

I think most theories about moral realism claim that it applies to rational agents generally, not human agents in particular. The notion of rationality seems a bit more significant than the human species in particular.

Are you equating rationality with objectivity? How can you do that without accepting the potential of mind for discovery of objective truth? That view is basically a means of unseating scinece as the umpire of the real.

Really I don't understand this tendency to try and make like this all knowing perspective is just subjective. Especially given that when an atheist says "subjective" he really means flawed, mistaken, error. Subjectivity means not just that it's mind but that it's a limited perspective."that is just your subjective view point." It's a view point from the subject and not the object. God's perspective is not limited to anything. God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves. God is truth so God knows us all from a perspective we can't know ourselves. God can't be considered "subjective" in that sense. God's view is the basis of meaning.

Are Christians Re-defining Omnipotance to Avoid Alledged "Incoherence of the Concept?"

Atheists claim that Christians have re-defined omnipotence because God of the OT appears not to be omnipotent and becuase Christians supposedly re-define in terms other than doing anything one can think of or name.


Originally Posted by themuzicman

Yes. In fact, it is a denial of omnipotence to say that God cannot create something that is able to act independent of His control.

In the same way it is a denial of omnipotence to say "he" can't control it.

Backup

Let's face it. The Christian God is not omnipotent. This is why Christians have had to redefine omnipotent to mean something less.

Skylurker (same thread)

would it be denial of God's omnipotence to say that God cannot create something more powerful than itself?

Austine Cline:
About.com, "God is Omnipotent
what does it mean to be 'all powerful.'

Unfortunately, the most absolute sense of omnipotent has been found to be incoherent. If God were truly omnipotent in an absolute and unlimited sense, then God could be capable of both existing and not existing at the same time, meaning that every form of theism and every form of atheism would be equally justified at all times simultaneously. Such a God could be capable of informing humans of certain requirements for attaining heaven and avoiding hell but actually holding to entirely different requirements without ever actually lying.

Webster's isn't much help but it's better than letting atheists assert opinions.


webster's online

1

often capitalized : almighty 1

2

: having virtually unlimited authority or influence omnipotent ruler>

Notice "virtually unlimited" so it means almost but not quite. It also says authority of influence not the ability to do nonsense.


Wallace Smith
How is God Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent.
extracted from God and the
"Three 'O's in the Living Church News, Sep-Dec 2007).
2007

This is, perhaps, the easiest of the three to answer: Yes, God is omnipotent! There is even a verse that, in the King James Version and New King James Version, uses this very word: “Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!” (Revelation 19:6).

The Greek word translated as “Omnipotent” here is pantokrator, meaning “All-ruling” or (as it is more frequently translated) “Almighty.” When we say God is “Almighty,” we are stating our belief in His authority and rulership over all creation, and the Bible is firm in declaring this fact. Even though Satan is now the “god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4), it belongs to him only because Almighty God has granted it to Him: “And the devil said to Him, ‘All this authority [over all the kingdoms of this world] I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish’” (Luke 4:6).

So what we see here is that it really refers (at least in Bible) not to unlimited ability to do anything but to authority over everything. Pantokrator, doesn't so much mean the ability to do anything as ruler over all things. 3841. pantokrator, pan-tok-rat'-ore; from G3956 and G2904; the all-ruling, i.e. God (as absolute and universal sovereign):--Almighty, Omnipotent. Strong's Dictionary (Greek Lexicon).

What's really happening is Christians are not re-defining it but they are talking it back from atheists who butchered the meaning of the word. Atheists distorted the meaning so they could ask question like those Cline is asking, not meant to encourage real learning but merely an overture to mocking. Questions like the one about the rock are merely there to create controversy and to create the sense that 'O here's something Christians can't answer." The argument is based upon taking omnipotent to mean "God can do nonsense.

That is no better than saying "if god can smell next Thursday then he's not all powerful so he can't be God." But wait, days of the week don't have smells. It's it a bit silly to require God to smell days of the week. "O no he's supposed to be able to do everything or anything." who says? where does it say God can do nonsense things that are logical absurdities? This is why I say that god is limited to logical necessity. Something that is not logically necessary in the linguistic sense is not a valid concept. Husbands can't be unmarried men. Squares can't be circular.

Many modern theologians no longer use the omnis they speak of "maximal greatness." I vacilate between that opion and just arguing what I'm arguing now that a ture understanding of the term omnipotance (understood as pantokrator) need not include the doing of nonsense.


another issue some have raised is that of free will. If God allows free will then he's limited, if he doesn't then it's not free. The answer is obvious. this is anther attempt to foment difficulty. Voluntary limitation is not a limit on his ability but his own idea. That's not a drain on omnipotence.

why no scientific proof of God's existence and why it doesnt' matter

This quote was on Theology Web recently, it's obvously an atheist. But I can't find the url or the thread at all. nevertheless I think the quite is general enough it doesn't matter who said it. This encapsulates the basic atheist desire for scientific proof of God. I kind of like the way I answer this:

Unknown Atheist (every atheist):

Scientific evidence is not faith. Science is not faith based. Why doesn't God show Himself or give scientific evidence for His existence? because according to the skeptics, it would be pointless for God to do so, since scientific evidence is not faith, and that is what God wants us to have, faith. The demand for scientific evidence of God is a self defeating one, the lack of scientific evidence for God is actually evidence of His existence.

Metacrock:

The questions that science poses and the questions that religious belief pose are totally different sorts of questions. There are points of overlap. Most of these stem form the ages before science really had an systematic to it, the ancient world, pre historic world. These are the days when the most sophisticated scientific knowledge was smelting and sword making, and even that was not understood in a way that we would call "scientific." In that setting it was natural (meaning logical and practical) to use religion as the explanation for the natural world. From this era when people looked to religion to make it answer questions it can't answer, we have hold over ideas (such as Genesis creation myth--which we need to learn how to read as a myth--and that means we need to learn the value in myth) that we have these conflicts.

Understanding the workings of the natural world does not require faith, it requires skills we posess, thinking skills to make systemic use of what we learn, the five senses to gather empirical data, and that means we are limited in that domain to knowledge which can be gleaned empirically.

How are we going to understand the nature of begin empirically when we can't get outside of being to study it? We can understand it from the standpoint of beings in being, but that's subjective. We can't get outside of being to understand what being is. Just supposes for the sake of argument that we believe that God is imagining the world. Our physical existence is similar to that of the "matrix" (I hate that movie) or the Holodeck on Star Treck TNG, (better) in that God is imagining the world. We are figments of God's imagination. Let's just say that for now.

How are we going to know that? We can't get outside of God's imagination because that is the part and parcel of our whole existence. We can't exist outside of that because that's what we are. How can we step outside of what we are to see what that means?

Suppose you had a big room with lots of objects and one pair of scales. Your task is to weigh every object in the room. You have only one pair of scales. how can you weigh the scales themselves?

All you can do is to find an object that feels as heavy as the scales and weigh it. That could be off by a lot, but it's the only way other than just guessing that you are going to get a true reading. Let's also assume that there are materials in the room to build another pair of scales.

That's why my post is about. It's a means of taking some kind of soundings of something that is beyond our ability to sound out. Now you assert that faith is nothing more than belief without any sort of reason just some wild leap in the darkness for no reason. That is a misunderstanding of faith. That is not what faith is. [i][b]Faith is the ability to place confidence in a partially proved hypothesis.[/b][/i]

This means there is evidence upon which faith is based. It's the evidence that amounts to the reasons why we believe. We do not believe because we are idiots or because our parents told us to or any of the other stupid ideas that atheists come up with to convince themselves that they are superior. We believe for highly personal reasons, we believe for subjective reasons.

At this point we raise one more concept that atheists can't handle. Atheist are scared to death of subjectivity. This why atheist cling to empiricism and to scientist ideologies. Because they are scared to death of the subjective. But guess what? there is no objectivity. Humans are not objective. The subject object dichotomy is a sham. There are only varying degrees of subjectivity there is real objectivity.

All scientific knowledge requires an ideological reading at some point. If you read thew works of Thomas Kuhn (No he was not a Christan he was not a creationist such ideas are stupidly idiotic but atheists have concluded that we was because I use him in arguments) if you read his works you will see that scinece turns on ideology. The paradigm is basically a just like a political ideology. When the paradigm shifts, which makes science work, the paradigm becomes like a political machine and is defended exactly like a political regime under attack. So the atheist pretense that faith vs atheism is really faith vs science is nothing more than their ideological reading. Science is not atheism an dit is no a tool of atheism any more than it is a tool of religion. Science is systematic gleaning of human knowledge about the workings of the physical world. There is nothing in that proposition that is anti-religious.


The ideology of scientific empiricism reduces knowledge and thought to a point where all counter phenomena are lost. So spiritual experience becomes a misfire of some chemical in your head. Before you know it you are not even talking about spiritual experience anymore, you've lost the phenomena. Then the reductionist pretends it never existed.

Because reductionism and empiricism are factually oriented they reduce all knowledge to facts about the world. So it is predictable that they understand belief in God adding a fact to the world. This is why they go through this stuff about "faith is not based on any evidence." Because they only accept as evidence that which supports their ideology.

God is not just anther thing in the universe. God is the basis of all that is. God is not on the list with existing things, not because there is no God but because God is transcendent of "thingness." God is not just another thing alongside "stuff" in creation. God is the basis upon which "stuff" exists.

This means God requires a different kind of evidence and different level of knowing than do scientific facts. You have to talk differently you have to read a different set of books, you have to hold a different set of epistemic priorities. Given all that God belief is backed up by a wealth of knowledge, but you have to understand that new way of understanding. Its' not reductionism. It's holistic. It's not [b][i]empiricism[/i][/b] it is [b][i]phenomenology[/i][/b]

Reflections upon the DNC 2012

Clinton speaks at Convention


It was a great convention. I was convinced. Of course I've been convinced all along. I like Anne Ricard's Daughter, Cecile. She tried to re create the folksy touch of her mother back there in the 80s when she stunned the convention with her use of Texanisms. She said "that dog wont hunt" and the convention went wild. Cecile's contribution, "if Romney helps me any more I'll have to take in ironing." Good solid Texanism but greeted with mild laughter. The governor of Montana used "that dog wont hunt" (stealing our folksy sayings) and used it as a call and response kind of thing got the coward worked up, all together now "that dog wont hunt." Clinton's speech was brilliant and wonderful. "People are always asking me what magic I used to get down the deficient I tell them one word, arithmetic." Michelle's speech was brilliant and moving. There was a fine film of Edward Kennedy and a couple of Kennedys on hand (Caroline and Robert's grand son Joe III).

One of the most striking and ruder realities was the reaction of the press trying to spin the convention away from the bounce. Every single commentator I heard after Clinton's speech said "no speaker at the convention directly faced the question 'are you better off now than you were four years ago.'" That is ludicrous and it is a lie. Every single speaking, every one said clearly and directly "hell yes we are better off now than we were four years ago." They did say it too because I noticed it and I kept tack. One major difference Romney used the version that says "are YOU better off." The dems used the version "are WE better off?" they answered decisively "yes." Here the press lies about it. Biden's answer was "Ben Ladin is dead and GM is alive." Biden's speech was rousing and moving too. He does repeat himself too much. The speakers of those four days brought out a vast of array of things Obama has done that make us better off than we would have been. No it's not perfect and if allowed to continue Obama is not finished. He laid out a plan for major continued work to bring jobs, create economic growth and save failing programs like medicare. Now that he knows the pitfalls of trying to something he can better deal with it. The Republican strategy is hasten the failure of social programs and then make the rich richer.

No one was better and bring out the triumphs of Obama's record than former President Bill Clinton. As he put it "here's the Republican argument in a nut shell: we gave him a huge mess to clean up, he didn't clean it up fast enough, so put us back in." Of course the elephant (pun intended) in the room is the employment mess. This elephant was talked about. The stimulus program did have one major draw back, because they didn't foresee the fact that would want to destroy it. States like Texas put the money into programs that already existed, and so didn't create many jobs. The next phase will be administrated better. Yet the stimulus package did have an effect. It did not produced he major solution and create full employment, it did create two million jobs and without unemployment would be nearing 10% now. The day after convention it was seen that unemployment has come down from 8.3% before the convention to 8.1%. Of course that's the lag time in reporting not that they did than in four days. Without the program we would be a lot worse off. But the big benefit it was supposed to bring was watered down by ineffective state administration and big increase in unemployment that was already the result of ripple effects from the Bush era.

Obama was given the bank bail out as a continuation of a Bush policy. A lot of pundits and talking heads have said we shouldn't have done the bail out. The republican trickle down spinners have said "O those were failing companies, the banks, just let them fail." That's ok for the 1% and their servants to say that. How many average people were willing to wake up a couple of days latter and find none of their money was any good? The major banks would have filed immediately as soon as they knew there was no relief. The small local banks and credit unions would have started closing like dominoes. I was the first to say Obama should have nationalized the banks. That's easy to say but it probalby would have gotten him shot. If the Republicans say he was is a communist or trying Bob Dole's medical care program can you imagine what they would say if he nationalized banks? He had to do the bail out and it took guts. It put a floor under the fall and saved the economic system.

He also saved the auto industry. That would have been another two million jobs down the drain in addition to the two million that would have been created with no stimulus package. We are clearly better off as a nation with him in. One of the first things he did that never get's talked about is pass the Lilly Ledbetter act

111th Congress, 2009–2010

A bill to amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and to modify the operation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, to clarify that a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice that is unlawful under such Acts occurs each time compensation is paid pursuant to the discriminatory compensation decision or other practice, and for other purposes.

Introduced:

Jan 08, 2009

Sponsor:

Sen. Barbara Mikulski [D-MD]

for 50 years people talked about equal pay for equal work and Obama made it a reality. Ledbetter spoke at the convention. She's practically force of nature.

The health care issue is extremely important. Doubed "Obama care" as a mark of derision but anyone who has any kind of medical issue can tell you we need something. The voucher system* Romney supports is designed to limit care for the elderly and to kill off medicare. Then rhetoric about getting rich and the sanctity of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. The "Obama care" is also called "take over" which is extremely silly since it's handing the insurance companies the uninsured on a silver platter. What is it taking over? It's making sure the private companies that dominate health care now, and that run the cost up seven times the rate of other prices, will continue to dominate even more. How is that a government take over? Taking away medicare and putting in a lame voucher system to limit care for the elderly is not taking over?

Now of course that was rhetoric at a convention so we can expect it to be somewhat flawed. Politifact.com says it's muddy but essentially Sebeilius is both half right and half wrong. The figure she tags for Romney plan costing the elderly $6,400 is based upon an old plan. She's right there could be a shortfall for those under 55 who have the "preium support" ("voucher") between the premium and the cost of care.

Sebelius recycled an old number about an outdated Republican plan when she said, "Republicans would give seniors a voucher that limits what's covered, costing seniors as much as $6,400 more a year."

She’s right that a shift to paying a defined amount for seniors to buy their own insurance essentially offers them a voucher. But the Republicans’ Medicare exchange with market-based premium support payments would offer more protection than a pure voucher. And we simply don’t have enough details about that new plan to know how much extra money seniors might have to pay for traditional Medicare. We rate her full statement Half True.

Ok so they have more protection than a voucher but still not enough. Not as much as they get with the health care reforms. We need all we can get. They are testing it agaisnt a hypothetical voucher system when all we have to do is look at the reality of health care to know any short fall in aid limits care. The Republican rhetoic that Obama "stole" from medicare for "Obama care" and that he took money out of the system was effectively disproved by Clinton.

There's a good discuss about that on NPR

HORSLEY: The president's health care law does reduce Medicare spending by more than $700 billion over the next decade. But that savings is supposed to come from insurance companies, hospitals, drug makers and the like, not from cutting basic services to the 48 million Americans who are on Medicare.

HORSLEY: Romney has promised to undo the president's health care law, and put that $700 billion-plus back into Medicare....

But doing away with Obamacare would also mean getting rid of some special help for seniors, says Medicare expert Tricia Neuman of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

TRICIA NEUMAN: The other thing that was in the health reform law were provisions that actually improved coverage by expanding the prescription drug benefit in the Donut Hole.

HORSLEY: Mr. Obama told supporters in Iowa this week that measure is already saving money for millions of seniors who take pricey prescription drugs. The president's also sparring with Republicans over how to handle future Medicare for people retiring at least a decade from now.

The real sense that I came away with is the striking difference that the Republicans are about individual's getting richer and leaving behind anyone can't claw his way to the top. The Democrats are about working together to pull everyone up. Tirckle down vs rising tide lifts all boats.


*is it fair to call it "voucher?" That's the term the Democrats give it to mock it, the Republicans call it "Premium support" to dignify it. Several fact checker pages say "voucher system" does describe it.

Philosophical Totalitarianism part 2

Josiah Royce (1855–1916)

Meta:

the real problem you are suffering from what I call sophomore syndrome. that's when people staying philosophy get the names of the schools down real good and they think all think must proceed in narrow strait jackets. Color within the line dont get out of school. real belief real life and philosophy don't work that way.

SG:

I don't spend my time learning the names of the different schools of thought, I spend my time analyzing the advances each school makes and the problems each school has. Existentialist thinkers do little else other than make vague, aesthetic remarks about human existence.

Meta The arguments you make imply that just naming the school an idea comes from is itself a refutation of the idea.

besides all that the idea that modern man has left idealism behind is just bull. First of all reductionism is idealism. so while it seems on the surface that scientisim (the extreme of love to exclusion of real thinking) is opposed to philosophy i8t's really a case of extreme philosophy. Scietnism is very very philosophical and the philosophy it comes out of is idealism. (reduce reality to one thing, that's ideal).

SG:

I think you are very confused about what Idealism entails. Idealism entails that there exists a transcendental realm of being. Pragmatism (use the correct term... scientism is pejorative and silly) is the rejection of such an ideal realm. It, instead, sees the ideal as imaginative and merely directive.

Meta: The views you are exposing are not pragmatism. You want them to be identified with that, but Josiah Royce was a pragmatist and He was also a Hegelian. Some scholars speak of "transcendental Pragmatism" which blows your categories away (see prior link). Some writers speak of They are scientific becuase scientism refers t the extreme lionizing of science, such that scientific knowledge is seen as the only form of knowledge, which is exactly what you have advocated.


SG:

It describes what is potentially possible given a current understanding and is something that is to be tested through experience. Pragmatism is not Utopian nor is it dogmatic in its assertion of truth. What we know is only known through the intelligent relation of practice and theory... using experience to test ideas allows us to form better ideas which in turn allows us to direct experience in a more refined manner in order to develop even more precise ideas. In order to further understand how it works, you only need read the history of scientific discovery. The first experiments are clumsy and imprecise, as are the first hypotheses. As the process goes on, it becomes self-corrective... measurements become less clumsy and more precise, and hypotheses become more far more comprehensive and robust. Practice doesn't make perfect... it doesn't lead to an ideal... it makes better practice.

That's just a justification for ideology. You only allow the questions to be ask that you can answer to your own satisfaction that just creates the illusion that's all there is. Reducing knowledge to what you control is nothing more than an bias, so one ideas comes to dominate all forms of thought. It's self referential and self validating. Something can't help but validate itself when it's the thing there is. Erasing all other view points means you just reduce everything to the only view point you can get the answers you want from.


Meta:

another aspect of idealism that's back is panpsychism which is growing by leaps and bounds.

SG:

Panpsychism is just plain silly. An atom has no mental aspect to it.

Meta: that's a good exampel of what I'm talking aobut. you just create a straw man version of panpsychism so you can rule it out before anyone has a chance to really understanding. No in that schools says that individual atoms have conscoiusness. That argument is analogs to saying water can't be made out of molecules becuase individual molecules aren't wet. Moreover you don't know what atoms don't have conspicuousness. You have no way of knowing it. It doesn't fit your ideology so you just declair it wrong and dont' even bother to consider that fact that you have no way of knowing.

that's a misleading trap and you fell for it. It's really a put up job because reductionism is not proved by experiment. It's a philosophy.In fact experimental thinking is a philosophy. Philosophy is at the heart of everything. science is no more a departure form philosophy than the man in the moon is a man.


SG:

Where did I say that science wasn't philosophy? In fact, I believe that divorcing philosophy from science is dangerous. That's why philosophy ought to change to accept the experimental nature of human understanding.

Meta: You are reducing philosophy too. This is really a validation of my observation that atheists create a fortress of facts mentality. (see fortress of facts part 2). The notion of prgamatism is not the exclusion of idealism or of transcendence. That can't be used to rule out possibilities or to constrain the nature of reality based upon some pre conceived idea. That is nothing more than ideology. Philosophy by taxonomy doesn't work becuase there are too many exceptions. You can't disprove an arguemnt just by linking it to a certain school, and moreover, various thinkers cheat on the categories. Royce is a good example. He believed in God and transcendent reality but wanted to be pragmatic about proving it. Moreover, ruling out transcendent reality on the basis of not providing evidence for it is illogical, since the whole concept of transcendence is that it's beyond our understanding. What sense does it make to expect proof of something that's supposed to be beyond proof? Then to compound the error by asserting dogmatically there are no transcendent realms is just as metaphysical as statement as saying that there are. If we say we can rule out something form existence we are saying we know there is no such thing. That means we are pretending to a form of knowledge we don't have.

Reducing the concept of knowledge only tho those things we can know with certainty and to those things that support our world view is tyrannical. It takes the knowing out of knowledge. It means knowing is not based upon what we know but some what preconceived rubric someone else decides we must know.

A Chilling Example of Modern Philoshpical Totalitarianism

Yesterday on a message board an atheist assaulted me with a little essay on philosophy that I find most depressing. It's depressing because it basically confirms all the most alarming and anti-human aspects of modern thought I have accused the New atheists of harboring, it affirms in an unabashed, proud and defiant manner as though they are so obvious that to state them is prove them. Yet what's being is proving is basically that none of us have the right to think apart form affirming the ideology handed down form the atheist hierarchy. This "atheist hierarchy" is basically scinece. Not that I think science is an atheist hierarchy, I think that's what the new atheist think it is. I am leaving the interlocutor's name out, because I don't him to feel put on the spot. I'll just call him:

SG

Existentialism is an unfortunate example of how philosophy gets side tracked by bad ideas. Existentialism essentially destroys any meaningful conception of knowledge and resorts to subjectivism to explain the human experience. It's not any better than the Idealism it wished to criticize, simply because it just offers the other extreme as a solution.

Meta: Right away we have what I consider to be pure evil. The vilification of existentialism, if it is not centered around the pretentious nature of his French exemplars, will probably be base upon the desire to control the thinking of others. Existentialism rebelled against imposed structures that filter our understanding of world for us and force us to think in prescribed ways. The criticism made here asserts that to undersatnd reality by understanding our own perceptions of it is a mistake can only mean that the author feels that the prescribed and contorted version of reality is the only one that counts as knowledge. In other words, he wants someone to do his thinking for him. He continues with several several misconceptions about Kierkegaard:

SG

Kierkegaard describes religion as a matter of individual subjective passion, unmediated by others. The reason he favored Christianity was because he lived in a Christian culture. His argument for faith is, even by his own admission, absurd. He denies all reason in it and treats it as something that can never be understood, through experience, by others, which more or less means that the study of human psychology is completely fruitless. He just says faith is a miracle, so there. That's not philosophy, it's art at its best and lazy thinking at its worst. He was a product of his time, and utilizes the same inaccurate theory of mind that rational idealists and empiricists of the time had to rely upon, which explains why all three philosophies are incredibly problematic.

Meta: First of all, as always pointing out that "he's a Christian because he lives in a Christian culture" is just not meaningful to someone who thinks God is working in all cultures. It's no different than saying "he's only a Christian because that's the tradition that speaks to him." You see the contradiction in his thinking here. He says the kind of thinking that recognizes the power of the individual to perceive reality and not be forced a prescribed way of thinking is invalid when it challenges the atheist fortress of facts, that's scinece and science is the only form of knowledge, because it backs atheism (supposedly) but religious belief is based upon a prescribed set of premises then that's proof that it's not true. Yet by his way of thinking the cultural norm should be seen as truth a priori, the individual's understanding of what's true should be shunned a violation of the relationship between perceptions and knowledge (as he talks about above). Wait, the difference is with religion it's not coming through his prescribed form of knowledge (science) so it must be wrong either way. Very convoluted way of thinking.

Moreover, his understanding of SK is sophomoric. SK did not mean that faith is irrational in the sense of being stupid and unjustified. That's a standard misconception. He's just saying that logic is hypothetical and unless faith is experienced, the presence of God first hand, it's not real. He disparaged Cartesian coordinates on the basis that unless doubt is real then faith is not real (by this I mean his philosophical coordinates). Doubt is not real when it's a philosophical exercise and one doesn't really doubt. Therefore, it is not establishing faith to overcome phony doubt with hypothetical. New atheist dread the subjective. They are scared to death by experience. My guess is they are aware of the power of religious experience to convict and turn people to God. The first thing they have to crush is the validity of experiencing God.

He goes on to give a lot phony talk about the history of philosophy which I don't he understands:

SG:

This theory of mind I'm talking about is the nineteenth century paradigm that sees the mind relating to the environment through sensory perception, so experience is seen as passive and observational. Experience can only be described as participatory action with one's environment, which is something that the rational idealists, empiricists, and existentialists failed to recognize. Empiricism grasped the spirit of the modern age, but it lacked the teeth to actualize it. Rational idealists like Kant and existentialists like Kierkegaard understood empiricism to be destructive to knowledge and went in separate directions, the former relying on a transcendental realm of Being that is responsible for absolute truth to restore knowledge and the latter retreating into subjectivism in the personal sphere.

Meta:"Experience can only be described as participatory action with one's environment," I think if I put my mind to it I could describe experience in other ways. What he's really doing there is setting up a the need to actively control things as the basis for knowledge. Anything that doesn't imposes an ideology of atheism is not knowledge. The only proper knowledge is the imposition of control. Defining experimentally based philosophy as a passive reception of sense data is a mistake in understanding the nature of experience. That does not mean, however, the only alternative is the impossition of a pre coincided view.Now to undersand his comments fairly we should probaly think of what he is saying as an active hands-on search for what's out there rather than the imposition of control. Yet what he's prescribing is control because it assumes a set of percipience steps that the only valid steps and screening out of all else that is not part of ht steps (hence the dread of subjective experience). I can relate the notion of knowledge as an active search but why must it be limited to his active search and other those of others? Why just scinece and not all forms of knowledge? Why must it always be active search why can't it be a dialectics where passive gathering of sense data and informed watchful reception is combined with active searching in a global way rather than a prescribed way?

SG:

All of these notions, by today's standards, ought to be considered silly.

Meta:In other words, "all of these notions" existentialism, Phenomenology, experience, individuals thinking for themselves perhaps? Very silly.

SG:

All deny, implicitly, the role of intelligent practice in acquiring knowledge. Sensory perception is merely a stimulus to action, it is not knowledge. Knowledge results from the intelligent modification of habits in relation to environmental stimuli. Knowing is not a matter of passively observing reality, it is a manner of interacting with it... probing it, controlling it, etc.

Meta:Probing it hu? Seriously, this statement confirms all my worst fears. It's a frank admission that it's talking about control. The future belongs to us! How about this definition, knowledge results form "intelligent modification of habits in relation to stimuli " In ohter words knowledge is not about knowing things Perish the thoguht, who would ever think that? Knowledge is about knowing what i want you to know. It's about being trained to look at the world the way we want you to see it. But of course we should just accept that it's all meant for he best, those wonderful science wouldn't do anything wrong would they? They weren't any scientists developing racial scinece for Hitler were there? It's ok to erase the ability of the individual to think for himself, and to decliar everything opposed to out ideology as "non-knowledge." That's just that philosophy stuff that can't get us in any trouble.


SG

This understanding of mind, which is scientifically current, offers a solution to the major criticism of empiricism. The need for transcendental realm of Being in order to have knowledge of the world is gone, which was only needed when the thought was that experience was atomized instead of unified through the very necessities of life.

Meta:What did he just say now? He said the current understanding of mind, which what? According to most new atheist the current understanding of min is that there is none. That mind is just an illusion or a side effect (if it's anything at all) brought on by brain chemistry and it means nothing. So in other words the idea we can erase the mind and thinking of ourselves as deterministic robots is solution to the problem of knowledge. Of cousre it is. There's no problem of knowledge if you dont' seek to know anything. After all his definition of knowledge leaves out the idea that knowledge is about knowing things. Of course he asserts hat transcendental stuff is just an old fashioned for things we don't have any more because scinece has replaced the need. That need was born of pretending that truth is somewhere out there and we have to seek it in ways that are not prescribed by the ideology. So course we course we don't need that now because we have the ideology. Because the ideology frees us form needing it the potential reality of it just goes away. There is no reality in transcendent realm because we we don't need it with the ideology telling us what to think. Yet the worse is still to come:

SG

The absolute subjectivity of human experience disappears because knowledge exists as real interactions... one can judge whether their actions are ones informed by knowledge or not.

Meta:

Subjectivity disappeared? Our qualia and sense data are no longer subjective? We cut that off an let it go away. It's not there we don't have to think about it. I can see how we can ignore the subjective and pretend that all becomes objective. Yet how do we get your experience of it into my head? you can dictate that I must think as you do but you cannot dictate that I experience what you expedience. my experience is still mind. I still perceive the world though my own perceptions and not yours. Now matter how ardently you seek to pretend that all now share the same perceptions we do not. Subjectivity can't ever go away. That's just the epistemological fallacy. you can't get outside your own perceptions to check them and you can't make them become those of others just by trying to impose the same ideas upon the thinking of others. The subjectivity of human experience disappears. What extreme arrogance and nonsense. We don't all start having the same experiences just becuase one imposes a party line.

SG:

While there is still room for authenticity in this view, the notion of it in the existentialist view is overblown.

Meta: Room for authenticity where? Where can there be authenticity when subjectivity is gone? There can only be authenticity if we accept that we have different view points and different sets of perceptions. But we he just said subjectivity is gone. After all, like the transcendent, if we don't need it anymore it must go away.

SG:

Much of what existentialists refer to as "authentic" is merely a product of culture as opposed to something really authentic to that particular individual. It is true that each individual has his own unique impulses, but how he acts on them is largely a product of the given social environment. Kierkegaard, for instance, decided that Christianity was authentic to him, when in reality it was a product of the habits and customs of his culture.

Meta: So in other words there's still some authenticity but only the bit that agrees with the party line. The bit that doesn't is "merely product of culture." There's that contradiction again. He's supposed to think that knowledge is imposing an active view point where everyone has these objective facts that makes them right and they don't need to wonder about things, anything we have to wonder about is not worth keeping around. We reduce knowledge to just the answers that result from the question we can answer our way. There's some authenticity around but not the kind that disagrees with the party line?

web definition of existentialism:

ex·is·ten·tial·ism/ˌegziˈstenCHəˌlizəm/

Noun:

A philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining...

isn't that what's being replaced, the silly idea we don't need anymore? So where's this authenticity going to come from?
part 2 on friday.