Two years ago Ann departed from what I had taken for a generally secular and modern public persona by coming out with a book entitled “Godless: The Church of Liberalism” which advanced, of all things, a down-with-Darwin line. Apparently I was not the only one a bit surprised by this development (Jillian Becker). Per Wikipedia, Godless includes the following curious statement: “Throughout this book, I often refer to Christians and Christianity because I am a Christian and I have a fairly good idea of what they believe, but the term is intended to include anyone who subscribes to the Bible of the God of Abraham, including Jews and others.” A hostile review in The New Republic is here.
Now she has a new book out entitled “Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America”. Do any readers know whether it represents a return to earlier, better form?
@Alan Roebuck:
This dispute is about theism, not science: If a god exists (not necessarily the God of the Bible) then it is not necessary to interpret all phenomena in naturalistic terms, and your criticisms of anti-Darwinism are destroyed.
And if one of you theists ever come up with the smallest shred of evidence that any one of these “gods” actually exists, then it would be appropriate to consider this god in making conclusions about existence. Since you can’t, it is no more appropriate to consider the evil God Jehovah any more than it is appropriate to consider not only the thousands upon thousands of gods that humans have made up as well as the near infinite number of things which the human imagination can imagine, but which have exactly the same amount of evidence for their existence as your god: zero.
Conversely, if no god exists, something very much like Darwinism is true virtually by definition, there being no other possible explanation for life other than a vast series of small mindless changes.
Which is why, given the absence of an evidence that any god or supernatural (whatever that means) entity or thing exists, that the tentative conclusions of science doesn’t take the beliefs of theologians, witch doctors, crystal ball readers and their ilk into consideration when forming scientific theories.
Darwinism assumes, but does not prove, atheism (in the form of philosophical naturalism).
Nonsense. It applies methodological naturalism.
All the scientific expertise and knowledge in the world cannot compensate for a philosophical premise that turns out to be false, and the only way actually to know whether it is true or false is to investigate it philosophically, not scientifically. Science is not the only form of knowledge.
You give the appearance of being ignorant of the millennia-old philosophical tradition of arguing rationally for the existence of God.
LOL. No, I’m aware of it. I simply reject it because it is silly and rather pathetic; a thousand-years of theologians sitting around trying to make their wishes into reality by doing nothing more substantive than the Cowardly Lion’s saying, “I do believe in spooks! I do believe in spooks! I do, I do, I do, I do, I DO believe in spooks!”
Like a child who does not understand adult ways, you apparently imagine that you have good reason for rejecting God when in actuality you have simply presupposed that your naïve view of reality is the only possibly valid one.
I reject God, in the same way I reject Darth Vader, and for the same reason.
I say this because you only give invective and slogans; never even the hint of an argument.
LOL. You say it because you are one the long list of passive-aggressive theists who, when faced with someone who sees through your charade and self-delusions, and isn’t afraid to call you on it, thinks that accusing your opponent of not being thoughtful enough about philosophy, because you have no evidence to support your views, somehow constitutes an honest remark.
To give you a just a sense of this tradition of arguing for God, here is a link to an article in which I give rational reasons why naturalism is false, and therefore some sort of super-natural realm must exist:
LOL. If I wrote something this misguided, I certainly wouldn’t cross post it. It is riddled with special pleading, false statements and some really goofy stuff. (Here’s a quick hint, there is no “law” of logic and mathematics in the way that you assert here. They are internally consistent because they are definitional in nature. The equation 2 + 2 = 4 is true, not because there is some law of mathematics or because it resides on some supernatural plane of knowledge, but because “2” “+” “=” and “4” are defined in such a way that the equation is true. )
If you cannot correctly refute this argument, you will need to withdraw your naturalism and admit that doubting Darwinism is acceptable.
LOL. That “argument” is so bad, that to read it is to refute it. I’ll tell you what, if you provide any evidence that anything other than reality exists, I will consider your point. If not, then please don’t come back until you have such evidence.
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@Kristor
Grant Canyon: You say that Auster should have discussed the reproductive behavior of the bonobo and the shark, in order to make his essay, “An Absolute Refutation of Darwinism” at all adequate. But in critiquing a theory, one need not reiterate all the cases in which it seems adequate, one need only discuss the cases in which it does not. That Darwinism seems adequate to explain 99% of the phenomena under consideration doesn’t help it at all when it comes to the last 1%. It’s the stubborn counterexample that kills a hypothesis – and forces us to search for a more comprehensive and adequate theory.
Kristor, the reason why I brought those two is because they give evidence which, viewed as any reasonable biologist would, directly refutes the arguments made by Auster in the essay. These aren’t obscure facts, either. This is first-grade level stuff I’m talking about. If one cannot even consider basic materials that, to any reasonable viewer, directly explains the phenomena that the writer asserts cannot be explained, then the writer is wrong.
At the very least, these examples create the facts which his essay, if it is to have any intellectual substance at all, must address. The fact that he did not do so establishes that either 1) he did not know of these facts, in which case his essay is fatally deficient and Auster’s position can be safely discarded, or 2) he cannot address them because they refute his theory, in which case his essay is intellectually dishonest for failing to address them and Auster’s position can be safely discarded.
One cannot pretend to “An Absolute Refutation of Darwinism” and ignore the very things that make such a grandiose statement utterly ludicrous.
You quote Auster’s criticism of your insults as unsuited to civilized discourse, and respond by mocking him. I hope it is superfluous for me to point out that you have proved his point. Look, if you want to make his arguments look bad, you have to respond to them with arguments, not insults.
Nonsense. Auster’s argument contra my assertion that his position is poisoned by his irrational god-belief is to assert that his position is based on evidence and reason. By quoting his work, in which this irrational god-belief is gloriously set out, I’ve shown that his protests that his opinions are the result of evidence and reason are as nonsensical as his statements about God being the end of man and the reason for his existence. If this is the theist ideas of evidence and reason, then those words have no meaning.
Huffing and puffing doesn’t work; you have to reason in public. In mocking Auster, or his arguments, you only make yourself look bad.
Would it surprise you to know that I really don’t care that you think I look bad? When mockery is appropriate, I mock. I don’t think you or Auster can have any reasonable expectation of being treated with kid gloves when you come on a secular site advocating religious nonsense.
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We are conservatives, you see, and we want the Right side to be as coherent and systematic as possible.
So you’re going to base on beliefs that are no more sound than believing in pixies and fairies???
We think that atheism is a big problem for conservatism. Why? Well, if God doesn’t exist, then nowhere is there perfect knowledge. If no one has perfect knowledge, then no one knows perfectly what is good. But if no one truly knows the Good, then in effect it just doesn’t exist.
That is absolutely nonsensical. It is the equivalent of saying that without God, we can’t know what absolute beauty is (or kindness, or joy, or love, or freshness, or sweetness), and that, therefore, the concept of beauty (or kindness, or joy, or love, or freshness, or sweetness)doesn’t exist. That’s patently rubbish. Even if we can’t know what “absolute good” is (if such a thing could even exist), we can certainly know whether something is better than another, the same way can know whether something is hotter than another without any knowledge of what “maximum heat” is.
Instead, all goodness is merely subjective – i.e., illusory.
First, subjective doesn’t mean illusory. Second, something need not be perfectly subjective in the absence of imagined objectively.
In that case, the contest between socialism and capitalism, or between the West and Islam, are just “he said she said.” No one is right, except in their own illusions. If no one is right, there is no intersubjective justification for any given social outcome; no Justice out there to be had. In that case, what can it matter – what can it matter really, that is, outside your own head – whether you live or die, or your children live or die, or whether your country lives or dies? It can’t. In that case, all society is just a power play, an amoral grab for utility, and nothing more, nothing more whatsoever.
You really do need to rethink your position here. Just because there isn’t some cosmic dictator establishing an objective “Good” doesn’t mean that there is no bias in the manner that humanity, as a whole, considers basic moral beliefs.
You say that Darwinism still holds together. So did Newtonian mechanics – until it didn’t.
Actually, Newtonian physics is still a very useful model, but is limited by a number of conditions. It never fell apart, it was merely supplanted by more accurate models.
However, the equivalent to what the anti-Darwinist propose would be if Einstein established that that mass repels and does not attract or that the acceleration of a body is independent of the force acting upon it.
Actually, Newtonian physics is still a very useful model, but is limited by a number of conditions. It never fell apart, it was merely supplanted by more accurate models.
That’s a much better way of putting it than I did. Thx.
Grant Canyon,
Regarding your assertion that 2+2=4 is not a law, but rather adefinition: If so, then 4 would have an uncountably infinite number of different definitions: 5-3, 36 divided by 9, the square root of 80 divided by the square root of 5, etc. And an infinite collection of definitions is not a definition, but rather a collection of facts about something whose substance is defined differently.
And are you saying that mathematics could be defined as anything but what it is defined to be? (I’m referring to basic mathematics, not, for example, geometry, which is consistent in both its Euclidean and non-Euclidean forms.) And if it could not be defined any way other than as it is, then it is not just a definition. It is objective.
Speaking more generally:
If my arguments were as invalid as you say, and if you actually had confidence that they were, then it would not be necessary for you to sneer at them. Ridicule in the place of argumentation is one sign of a lack of confidence (and of knowledge).
You have not rebutted my argument, you have simply asserted that it is invalid. But an assertion is not a proof. Besides, if you disagree with what I said, it is really the Western philosophical tradition beginning with many of the ancient Greek thinkers with which you disagree. Since this tradition is of long standing, it cannot be regarded as obviously false, as you do. To act as if the nonexistence of God and the supernatural is self-evident, and that arguments are unnecessary, is the quintessence not only of irrationality but also of impudence toward the Western tradition that, as conservatives, this site is presumably committed to defend.
Oops! That’s 5-1, not 5-3
No one is right, except in their own illusions. If no one is right, there is no intersubjective justification for any given social outcome; no Justice out there to be had. In that case, what can it matter – what can it matter really, that is, outside your own head – whether you live or die, or your children live or die, or whether your country lives or dies? It can’t. In that case, all society is just a power play, an amoral grab for utility, and nothing more, nothing more whatsoever.
I would say you are trapped in an intellectual construct that seems so real to you. But it is really a figment. Perhaps the best way to solve it, though I know you won’t do it, is to just try living without God for one year.
You will find nothing much changes. The world is still the world. You still struggle to get by sometimes. Death is still scary. You live, you work.
After a while you start to see that you were told that life was meaningless without God, but that is false. Everything feels exactly the same. Except maybe you are not talking to yourself so much. You know – in prayer.
So life’s meaning does not in fact come from God? You care about your family exactly the same, your country – the same, you fear death neither more nor less.
What I’m saying is that nihilism is great as a theory. But it doesn’t actually feel like that in practice. Life is just life and it makes its own sense.
Can you understand that I wonder. That sometimes theories are just wrong?
Sometimes even very clever theories are false, because the premises they are based on are false.
And the idea that life is meaningless without all that complex medieval theology that you guys seem to soak yourselves in, is just a false theory.
And you find it is another false theory, by testing it the same way you test any other theory.
OK so you are not going to really live without God for a year.
But consider this. What I am telling you is that all that meaning and purpose and all the rest of that stuff that you attribute to God. Actually it doesn’t come from God. Your brain generates that by itself as it’s own mental states under instruction from the genes.
The fact that you love your children above all. That does not come from God. Even if you never heard of God in your entire life, you would still love your children. Your DNA sees to that. A large chunk of your DNA is in your children so it takes no chances.
Same with life. Life feels happy and challenging. And exciting and boring sometimes and sad and everything else, because these are the emotions that your brain produces under genetic control to modulate your behaviour. Your genes do it through the biochemical systems they have constructed in your brain. God quite simply has nothing to do with it.
But you say, it doesn’t matter. Philosophically I would feel different without God. There would be an angst, a sense of emptiness.
All I can say is that – free of the indoctrination of a religious belief system – it doesn’t happen and you are wrong. Evolution has created us to function very well even without any religion at all.
This is what I am saying. Meaning does not come from God. It comes from your genes.
there might be a supernatural reality, there probably is, because what came before the big bang? and all that stuff… but it’s a huge leap to think you can actually know anything about the supernatural world. it’s far more probable that the reason you think u know something about it has to do with your brain unconsciously working to maximize your reproductive potential, albeit in a novel environment where such ‘religious’ responses might very well be maladaptive, or they may not.
God doesn’t have to be brought into this argument at all. Realistically, anyone can see that Darwinism is totally inadequate to explain the origins of life and only somewhat useful in describing developments after that point. Science has only scratched the surface of this heavily veiled field and new ideas will certainly supplant the views we hold today. Humanity will think us ‘quaint’ in our present beliefs in the not-so-distant future. But only if we don’t hobble science and scientists in exploring new areas and ideas.
You will find nothing much changes. The world is still the world. You still struggle to get by sometimes. Death is still scary. You live, you work.
You get to sleep in on Sundays.
On a more serious note, I found it a relief that there was no God. I was always worried about not living up to some duty and facing the prospect of Hell. I have family members who are still terrified of the prospect of eternal torment, and if there is a Christian god, they should be I suppose.
On the negative side, there is a loss of belonging to a “little platoon” that the church provides. I’ve never been the sort of socially network on my own, so there is a loss in that department.
This is what I am saying. Meaning does not come from God. It comes from your genes.
I would cavil at this. Genes may provide a means, but they can’t provide an end. That still has to come from the person himself.
I will say this. The meaning theists look to is a bit illusory itself. Any human is a mere speck, at best, compared to the infinity of God. His meaning in that context is really not much greater than any meaning an atheist creates for himself in a godless universe.
Polichinello,
Kevembuangga pointed this out for me; I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about by meaning: language has meaning, symbols have meaning.
He explained to me that when they say “meaning” they mean subjective “sense of meaning” – like of the narrative they are constructing in the form of the theological myth that underpins their lives.
I’m saying, the subjective architecture of meaning arises from the biological control systems that the genes have built for themselves. Awe, purposefulness, motivation, drives…
All of the components are innate and a large part of it is constructed to make sense in its own terms. So even if you don’t bother with constructing any narratives, and none is indoctrinated into you by the tribe, life still “works”.
Regarding your assertion that 2+2=4 is not a law, but rather adefinition:
No, I said that there is no “law” of mathematics as you mean it. Mathematics is internally consistent because it is definitional. In other words, once we’ve defined the concepts of “2” and “+” and “=” and “4” (not as a semantic matter, but as a conceptual matter), the expression “2+2=4” is true because it is consistent with the definitions of those concepts.
If so, then 4 would have an uncountably infinite number of different definitions: 5-3, 36 divided by 9, the square root of 80 divided by the square root of 5, etc. And an infinite collection of definitions is not a definition, but rather a collection of facts about something whose substance is defined differently.
These aren’t different “definitions” of 4, nor are they a collection of facts; they are various ways of expressing the wholly non-corporal concept we label “four.”
And are you saying that mathematics could be defined as anything but what it is defined to be? And if it could not be defined any way other than as it is, then it is not just a definition. It is objective.
The only context in which I brought up “definition” was in discussing mathematic’s internal consistency. Mathematics is objective because the concepts are defined in a way to be independent of any subjective mind.
If my arguments were as invalid as you say, and if you actually had confidence that they were, then it would not be necessary for you to sneer at them.
It’s not necessary. To the extent I sneer, it is solely because I don’t believe the work is worth more than a sneer. (But I wouldn’t say I sneer. I’m just blunt.)
Ridicule in the place of argumentation is one sign of a lack of confidence (and of knowledge).
LOL. That may be true in some cases. But in others, ridicule is used in place of argumentation because the assertions provoking the ridicule are unworthy of counter-argument. You get nothing out of trying to reason with a street preacher screaming about how the world’s about to end.
You have not rebutted my argument, you have simply asserted that it is invalid.
I didn’t have to rebut your argument. I trust that anyone who reads it will quickly see how it rebuts itself.
Besides, if you disagree with what I said, it is really the Western philosophical tradition beginning with many of the ancient Greek thinkers with which you disagree. Since this tradition is of long standing, it cannot be regarded as obviously false, as you do.
LOL. Even if what you are saying – linking your post to the entire history of Western philosophical thought – was true, the fact that such thinking is of long standing cannot protect it from being regarded as obviously false if it is, in fact, obviously false.
To use the traditional and apocryphal notion: that there was a long-standing belief that the Earth was flat did not make Columbus fall of the edge.
To act as if the nonexistence of God and the supernatural is self-evident, and that arguments are unnecessary, is the quintessence not only of irrationality but also of impudence toward the Western tradition that, as conservatives, this site is presumably committed to defend.
Okay. There are a near infinite number of possible “god” and “supernatural realm” concepts which can be imagined and which are conceptually consistent with reality. From the evil god Jehovah to Allah to Baal to Loki to genies to kamis to pixies to unicorns to Valhalla to Sugar Candy Mountain to The Force to spirits in rocks and animals to the Power of the One Ring to Ganesh to Thor, and on and on ad near-infinitum. Furthermore, for each one , one can also imagine a corresponding “god” or “supernatural realm” with which it is totally incompatible. Also, there is exactly the same amount of evidence for all of these near-infinite gods and supernatural realms, namely, zero.
Given these facts, rationality demands that we give each of these near-infinite possibilities the exact same consideration (as no one is more likely to be true than any other) and that we give each the consideration commensurate with the evidence we have for its existence, namely, none. Acting as if the nonexistence of God and the supernatural is the only rational way to approach the subject.
Exactly why, other than your personal preference, should I take the existence of your god seriously and not the near-infinite alternatives that are not any less unlikely?
And as for the charge of impudence, I plead guilty. Rather impudent than meekly acquiescing in rank idiocy. And just because something is a part of “Western tradition” doesn’t mean it is worth conserving, even for conservatives. Chattel slavery and witch burning are both part of “Western tradition.” Neither is worth saving.
Earlier in this thread, someone quoted something I had said about God, as if to prove I was not speaking truthfully when I said that my arguments against Darwinism are not based on God.
I didn’t say that I never write about God! I said that in article after article, I have looked at Darwinism strictly in its own terms, without referencing God, and shown why the Darwinian theory of evolution does not explain what it purports to explain. That is my chief approach to the subject. In those articles I do not argue that God exists, and then conclude that Darwinism cannot be true because God exists. No, I say that taken purely in its own terms, Darwinism cannot be true.
At the same time, when discussing Darwinism, I also make many arguments that are related to God and the objective good.
For example, I insist that God and Darwinism are completely incompatible. (Most people, particularly religious believers, disagrees with me on that.)
I’ve also argued that if Darwinism were true, there could not be any objective good or any being with intentional consciousness and a love of the moral good.
I believe such arguments are valid, but they are not my main approach to the question of the truth of Darwinism, because to be convinced by them, a person would already have to believe that God exists and that objective morality exists. But many people don’t believe in those things. So I don’t make them the basis of my argument.
My main approach, again, is simply to take Darwinian theory on its own terms, without appeals to God. Now it is true that if Darwinism is not true, then there must be some non-material intelligence or organizational force in the universe. But I do not make such non-material intelligence the premise of my argument, though a belief in a non-material intelligence of some kind (not necessarily the God of the Bible) logically does result from my argument.
Now to a different subject.
Why the ugly, brutish hostility against theists that has been expressed over and over in this thread? I ask this question not on the basis of objective morality, since as Darwinians and atheists you don’t believe in any objective morality. I ask the question purely in terms of the Darwinian theory itself.
Darwinians say that everything about man and other living things has come into being exclusively through random genetic accidents and the natural selection of those genetic accidents that helped the possessor have more offspring. (You can throw in sexual selection if you like, but, as I’ve shown, sexual selection boils down to random genetic accidents and natural selection.)
Now according to Darwinism or evolutionary biology, human beings are totally determined by previously selected genetic accidents. They are automata controlled by their heredity. All of their features, qualities, capabilities exist because they helped their ancestors survive and reproduce.
Further, all human cultures that we know of through all of history, except for the secular parts of the modern West, have believed in some kind of deity or deities. Since religious belief is ubiquitous in humanity, two conclusions necessarily follow: (1) religious belief has been overwhelming advantageous to its possessors; and (2) the individuals who have religious belief did not choose to have that belief, they inherited it from their ancestors in whom that religious belief helped them have more offspring than the people who didn’t have that religious belief.
Therefore, since all human things—including the near totally ubiquity of religious belief—are determined by Darwinian evolution, why do you atheists express such hatred and contempt toward people who have religious belief? From a Darwinian perspective, such contempt and bigotry, or even mere negative judgment, is the equivalent of condemning a lion because it chases a gazelle, or condemning a squirrel because it eats acorns, or despising an African tree frog because it has a bizaree method of reproduction. This hatred for believers makes no sense at all. It contradicts your entire world view.
You atheist Darwinians who hate religious believers are total hypocrites. To stop being hypocrites, you must do one of two things: (1) accept religious belief as the natural product of evolution and stop hating religious believers; or (2) give up Darwinian evolution with its material determinism and admit that man is a being who can choose his beliefs and is thus responsible for them, and therefore can be blamed for having wrong beliefs. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be an atheist materialist Darwinian and condemn people for beliefs that Darwinian evolution has planted in them.
In my previous comment I wrote:
“I’ve also argued that if Darwinism were true, there could not be any objective good or any being with intentional consciousness and a love of the moral good.
“I believe such arguments are valid, but they are not my main approach to the question of the truth of Darwinism, because to be convinced by them, a person would already have to believe that God exists and that objective morality exists. But many people don’t believe in those things. So I don’t make them the basis of my argument.”
I want to add something to that. Many people may not believe in God or objective morality. But virtually all people believe in their own ability to make choices, to have intentions. If you believe that you can make choices,—that you can choose how you spend your time, choose what kind of work you do, choose where you live, choose the people you want to be with—then you believe that you are possessed of freedom.
Darwinism says that everything about living things including man is determined by genes that were previously naturally selected in one’s ancestors. If a male salamander deposits his sperm packet at the bottom of a pond, it’s because his genes make him do it. If a male elephant fights with other male elephants while the female elephants form a cooperate social group with each other, it’s because their genes make them do it. If a female peacock is attracted to a male peacock with a certain color feather in his tail, it’s because her genes make her do it. None of these creatures have any choice in what they do. And, according to Darwinism or evolutionary biology, the same applies to humans. If you believe in Darwinism, it’s because your genes make you believe in Darwinism. If you commit mass murder, it’s because your genes make you do it.
Now, if you don’t think the above is true, if you think that you have the freedom to make choices not determined by your genes, then you must reject Darwinism. If you have choice, then Darwinism is false.
And please don’t play games and say that choice doesn’t really exist, but that evolution plants in you the illusion that you have choice.
Don’t be wimps. Emulate the scientific hard-headedness you profess to admire. If you observe within your own consciousness the process of intentional choice, then Darwinism is false and you must renounce it. And if Darwinism is false, then some kind of non-material intelligence that organizes living things and guides evolution is true.
And speaking of evolution, it looks as though my own argument against Darwinism is evolving.
For example, I insist that God and Darwinism are completely incompatible.
Actually I agree with you about this. Particularly Christianity, because if there was no Fall of Man then why do we need salvation?
Death and suffering did not enter the world as a result of Man’s sin but rather, is part of the ancient condition of all living things. And we inherit it from our prehuman ancestors. The evidence is the fact that every fossil was once a living organism.
Now given this fact; Why does an atoning sacrifice redeem us, since we were not guilty of anything in the first place?
This apart from any question about whether there was ever an original Adam and Eve or why does there need to be a Second Adam (Jesus) if there was never a first?
If you believe in Darwinism, it’s because your genes make you believe in Darwinism. If you commit mass murder, it’s because your genes make you do it.
Nonsense the genes at best control around typically 60% of human behaviour. Everything else is environment and in many cases it is all environment.
I believe in Darwinism like all scientific theories because it agrees with all the evidence. Genes have nothing to do with it and if you think so then you are more clueless than I thought.
Murder? Well…. there are such conditions as extreme sociopathy which can contribute to crimes like mass murder, and it would not surprise me if they have a genetic component. So I don’t rule out the genetic component hypothesis entirely. It needs to be studied.
Therefore, since all human things—including the near totally ubiquity of religious belief—are determined by Darwinian evolution, why do you atheists express such hatred and contempt toward people who have religious belief?
No Lawrence, as I explained above my preferred view is Star Trek Prime Directive. Do not interfere with prerationals.
What irritates is when you preachy people invade our fun space with your obsessions and try to force us to deal with stuff we have no interest in, and you won’t go away and play in your own playground. You challenge us with your medieval logic and your iron age superstitions and demand we have to deal with it. Well a few of us are irritated enough to try. Ego I suppose.
This is what I really want you to get: Believe what you like. But it is nearly 200 years since Darwin was born (Birthday on Friday!!!) and you guys still can’t deal with it, and I just think this is your problem not mine.
AND If you want to argue with the scientific community this is not the appropriate forum.
On second thoughts, based loosely on Star Trek Prime Directive.
The real STPD refers to no interference in pre-spaceflight civilizations.
It just struck me as a good pov for non-believers to take wrt pre-rational cultures and folk generally, pretty much for the reasons you give. So generally I agree with you about not being contemptuous.
Truly I ignore religious folk at the intellectual level. None of their religious beliefs have any meaning to me. I am like an anthropologist among the natives. I observe but it is only data.
But in private conversations with other non-believers, we may console ourselves with how whacky the world is and what can we do to advance the cause of science education, etc.
Remember that since the arrival of individual signaling molecules at synapses is a quantum-scale process, there is an inherently noisy component to neural switching.
Classical determinism is really inapropriate here. I expect all neural behaviour to be probablistic in character.
I can’t say that Ann and I agree on too many politically practical matters but I love her anyway. She’s smart and never apologizes where good taste thinks that she should. She’s intellectually gutsy and she ten times quicker than the average political commentator. Again, I think that she causes many many many people lots of harm but heck, if I can enjoy an episode of some Jerry Bruckheimer show or Law and Order or strawberry haagen dazs ice cream for that matter, why should I not enjoy Ann Coulter? I applaud her bravery and smarts (and some accurate points that no one else has the intellectual freedom to make), denounce her lies and bad intent – and relax and enjoy the show!
mnuez
Of course my reasoning is affected by my nonrational beliefs and prejudices. I’m human. Just to restate my belief about Darwinism: I really don’t know whether it’s true or false. I’m certainly not a “Darwinian fundamentalist”: I think it’s ridiculous to ascribe practically all human behavior to natural selection. But as you say, that could be just my emotional biases talking.
To state my point bluntly: whatever the truth-value of evolutionary theory, the arguments given by Mr. Auster and by Kristor (I don’t remember yours) are so ridiculous and so obviously unsound that they don’t even merit a refutation. They’re just below the level of serious argument, although in the past I’ve replied to some of them anyway, and Mr. Auster has posted some of my responses on his website. Let me add that I think the same about some (not all) of the arguments I’ve seen here from the pro-evolution side. Some of them are so obviously unsound that I think it’s a waste of time for you to reply to them in any detail.
I expect the response to be that it’s I who am unable to grasp the subtlety of your reasoning. If so, then fine. Here’s a suggestion: if you want your arguments to be taken seriously, why not publish them in a peer-reviewed academic journal of philosophy? Then they will get the attention they, um, deserve. You could also post a link or a copy of the refereed paper on your website.
Talk about chutzpah! Your comment’s pretty funny, actually, considering that it was a commenter here who first dragged Mr. Auster’s name into the thread.
As a fellow invader of this blog, who’s in the past been less polite in his criticism of your world view than have the VFR folks, I say the more invasions, the better. Your “Ain’t atheism great!” dorm-room discussions can get pretty boring without some critical responses.
I wrote:
“If you believe in Darwinism, it’s because your genes make you believe in Darwinism. If you commit mass murder, it’s because your genes make you do it.”
To which Daniel Dare replied:
“Nonsense. The genes at best control around typically 60% of human behaviour. Everything else is environment and in many cases it is all environment.
“I believe in Darwinism like all scientific theories because it agrees with all the evidence. Genes have nothing to do with it and if you think so then you are more clueless than I thought.”
Genes have NOTHING TO DO with whether a person believes in Darwinism or not? Then according to Mr. Dare, genes have nothing to do with any human beliefs, ideas, value systems. Or is Mr. Dare saying that there is a radical discontinuity in human “evolution,” that before a certain point in history, people were determined by their genes to have absurd, medieval, superstitious notions, but that after that point, they began to see objective truth, and, further, that their new disposition to be interested in objective truth and their ability to understand objective truth had nothing to do with their genes???
Talking about being clueless.
“…the genes at best control around typically 60% of human behaviour. Everything else is environment and in many cases it is all environment.”
But what environment are we talking about, when we talk about the environment that makes people believe in Darwinism? Obviously we’re talking about the social environment. What brought that social environment into existence? Human beings, who, according to Darwinism, have been controlled through all previous human and pre-human history by their genes. So the social environment is itself a deterministic expression of genes that propelled humans to create a certain type of environment. And those genes were themselves the result of past random mutations that were selected solely because they helped their possessors have more offspring. How do we get from a creature shaped solely by the traits that help its ancestors reproduce more than other creatures, to a sophisticated environment that makes people be interested in abstract scientific questions such as human evolution? There’s no way you can get from there to here. Darwinism can only explain the existence of people who believe in Darwinism as being the result of genes (plus perhaps a gene-determined social environment) that determine people to believe in Darwinism. There is simply no point in the Darwinian process where the intellectual freedom to see and believe a truth BECAUSE IT IS TRUE can come into existence. Genes determine what people are; and social environments created by these same gene-determined humans further determine what people are. There is no point in the process where the intellectual freedom to reject an untruth BECAUSE IT IS UNTRUE and to embrace a truth BECAUSE IT IS TRUE can enter the picture. But since we know that human beings DO have the ability and freedom to embrace truth for its own sake, Darwinism cannot explain the human intellect.
Indeed, E.O. Wilson, the eminent biologist, Darwinian thinker, and founder of sociobiology, agrees with me. In 2006 he wrote in USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-01-15-faith-edit_x.htm
“Although as many as half of Americans choose not to believe it, evolution, including the origin of species, is an undeniable fact. Furthermore, the evidence supporting the principle of natural selection has improved year by year, and it is accepted with virtual unanimity by the biologists who have put it to the test.
“The great question remaining is whether the human mind originated the same way. Many scientists, I among them, believe it did so evolve. Nevertheless, how all of the complex operations of the brain fit together to generate consciousness remains one of the major unsolved problems of science.”
So, Wilson BELIEVES that the human mind originated by random mutation and natural selection. But he DOESN’T KNOW THIS. It hasn’t been demonstrated. Since the thing that is most characteristic of man, the human mind, has not been demonstrated by science and indeed is a “major unsolved problem,” why should Darwinists be so arrogant as to say that Darwinism is an undeniable fact and that anyone who doubts Darwinism is a primitive idiot?
Now to another subject. Daniel Dare writes:
“What irritates is when you preachy people invade our fun space with your obsessions and try to force us to deal with stuff we have no interest in, and you won’t go away and play in your own playground. You challenge us with your medieval logic and your iron age superstitions and demand we have to deal with it. Well a few of us are irritated enough to try. Ego I suppose.”
My participation here didn’t start with any intention or action on my part to invade your space or start preaching an unwanted message. The reason I posted was simply to reply to someone who instead of acknowledging that I have reasons for having the views I have, said that I have some “emotional barrier,” i.e., an irrational force, a mental defect, that compels me to believe the things I believe. That’s what started this whole discussion rolling as far as my participation in it was concerned. It was not about a substantive discussion about the truth of Darwinism or atheism; it was about the crude lack of respect that people in this thread display toward those who have different views. Then the discussion, as often happens with discussions, evolved.
And look where we are now. Daniel Dare expresses the wish that I go away, even as he repeats exactly the same kind of gratuitous insult of my reasoning and intelligence that brought me into this discussion in the first place. Mr. Dare is unable or unwilling to say, in a civil manner, “Look, Mr. Auster, your views don’t really fit here, this website is not about Darwinism.” No, he has to insult me and others and say we’re incapable of rational thought. Which naturally triggers a further response from our side. If Dare sincerely wanted us to go away, he wouldn’t insult us and provoke further discussion.
Finally, I don’t see why a discussion about the truth or falsity of Darwinism is out of place here. This thread began with criticism of Ann Coulter for opposing Darwinism. So what is the justification for participants’ protest against me, Kristor and Roebuck discussing the truth or falsity of Darwinism?
I should have added that altruistic genes are no answer to the question I posed about how do we get from creatures totally determined by maximum production of offspring to human beings who care about truth for its own sake. All that happens with altruistic selection is that my gene for altruism gets selected because my close relative who has the same gene sacrificed himself for my sake. But that is really no different from ordinary, selfish selection: a gene gets selected because it helps in survival. The altruistic behavior that gets passed down to descendants has nothing to do with choice, morality, intention; the individuals who engage in that altruistic behavior do so, not because their reason tells them of the goodness of altrusim, but because they are determined by their genes to engage in that behavior.
The upshot is that “altruistic” selection doesn’t get us any closer to the human impartial interest in truth for its own sake than does ordinary, “selfish” selection. Darwinism has not only failed thus far to explain the human intellect, as E.O. Wilson himself has admitted. By its very logic, it cannot explain the human intellect.
I think it’s ridiculous to ascribe practically all human behavior to natural selection.
I think of course that’s true and no-one would ever make such a claim.
But it is worth remembering that your entire brain is constructed by cells following a genetic program. And while it is true that learning plays a major part in development, post-partum – even that is modulated and constrained by the ongoing influence of genes.
So in a really important sense, you think with the brain your genes grew for you. They built a very large part of the physical substrate of your mind.
Another thing I would argue is that your genes “care” about some things a lot more than they “care” about others. We are very free in some aspects of our lives and much less so in others.
For example I always laugh when I hear how people say they could choose to live or die. And I think: Yes, but somehow you nearly always choose to live. If life is so meaningless, one wonders why the suicide rate among atheists or nihilists isn’t 95%.
It’s like nihilism is a game of let’s see how close to the edge we can go. Like a man playing with a loaded gun pointing at his head and wondering how it would feel to do it.
How many pull the trigger? How many put it down and get on with the rest of their lives? And what/who made you make that decision, do you think?
And look where we are now. Daniel Dare expresses the wish that I go away, even as he repeats exactly the same kind of gratuitous insult of my reasoning and intelligence that brought me into this discussion in the first place.
No you are wrong. First of all it’s not my website. Secondly I did not criticise you first coming here, only how this thread about Ann Coulter was hijacked into a hugely technical argument about the minutae of evolution and meaning etc based on obscure (to many of us) philosophies.
And it seems to me that my original comment was not unreasonable. Namely if you want to engage in hugely detailed technical arguments about evolution then you need to talk to real experts and this is not the place for that. I suggested a few more suitable websites.
See Lawrence, when you post comments at a new blog, sometimes it’s a good idea to read for a while and get a feel for the place first. Actually your more recent posts are just fine which is why we are communicating now.
And by the way, did anyone notice that mnuez posted an ON TOPIC COMMENT!!!!
Wow mnuez, you’ve really got to warn us when you do something unexpected like that. LOL
In truth mnuez I’ve always had a bit of a weakness for leggy blondes.
There. It’s out in the open now. I’ve come clean. I denounce myself for anti-PC thinking, whatever.
Lawrence,
I should have added that altruistic genes are no answer to the question I posed about how do we get from creatures totally determined by maximum production of offspring to human beings who care about truth for its own sake.
See now that’s got to be the easiest question you’ve ever asked.
What makes you think that maximum production of offspring isn’t helped by caring about truth for it’s own sake?
In a universe of natural “laws” where knowledge depends on the accurate interpretation and communication of facts, truth is often life and death.
Lawrence,
So, Wilson BELIEVES that the human mind originated by random mutation and natural selection. But he DOESN’T KNOW THIS.
No he can’t know this. In part because we are talking about theories, that can only be believed in or not believed in according to the strength of the evidence. This is Bayesian probablistic deduction.
I’m afraid I don’t know anything about your math skills Lawrence. If you can manage college-level calculus and probability theory, then I would strongly recommend Probability Theory The Logic of Science by E.T. Jaynes. This was a truly life-changing book for me. I count it as the most important philosophical work I have ever read.
You can download the first three chapters from here for free. It not only gives you a sense of the flavor of the book, but actually contains the most important parts of the argument.
@Daniel Dare
Thanks for the praise Daniel, but could you pack your responses in less numerous comments, it flushes the Recent Comments column in the front page and may result in missed comments from others.
Anyway there is not much point to keep arguing with delusional boneheads. 🙂
“You atheist Darwinians who hate religious believers are total hypocrites.”
This is old news. Try reading David Sloan Wilson’s ‘Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society’. Even Kevin MacDonald (God forbid) presents a similar position vis-a-vis the Puritans. He makes the case that the progression from Paganism to Christianity was indeed partly because Christian women overall bore more children. MacDonald also argues its a component the uniqueness of Western culture.
“Battles over monogamy became an important feature of the Middle Ages as the Catholic Church attempted to impose monogamy on elite males.5 The Catholic Church is a unique aspect of Western culture. When Marco Polo visited the Chinese in the 13th century and when Cortez arrived among the Aztecs in 1519, they found a great many similarities with their own society, including a hereditary nobility, priests, warriors, craftsmen, and peasants all living off an agricultural economy. There was thus an overwhelming convergence among the societies. But they did not find societies where the religious establishment claimed to be superior to the secular establishment and was successfully regulating the reproductive behavior of the secular elite.”
Where’s the hypocrisy? All that we hear is denial.
He makes the case that the progression from Paganism to Christianity was indeed partly because Christian women overall bore more children.
Rodney Stark makes this case, too.
“Darwinism says that everything about living things including man is determined by genes that were previously naturally selected in one’s ancestors.”
How do you explain higher mathematics?
“As Plantinga (and Auster)points out, what counts in evolution is success and not the truth. So how can we ever be sure of the truth? Perhaps none of our thoughts can tell. Perhaps none of our thoughts can tell us about reality. Perhaps we are like beings in a dream world:
“Their beliefs might be like a sort of decoration that isn’t involved in the causal chain leading to action. Their waking beliefs might be no more causally efficacious, with respect to their behavior, than our dream beliefs are with respect to ours. This could go by way of pleiotropy: genes that code for traits important to survival also code for consciousness and belief; but the latter don’t figure into the etiology of action. … It could be that one of these creatures believes that he is at that elegant, bibulous Oxford dinner, when in fact he is slogging his way through some primeval swamp, desperately fighting off hungry crocodiles.
De Sousa has a two-part response to this criticism. First, he argues that our mathematical abilities cannot be the result of natural selection. “On the evolutionary scale, mathematics is part of our present rather than of our evolutionary past. It is therefore out of the question for mathematical talent as such to have been a factor in evolution by natural selection.” Then he goes on to say:
“Once mathematics had emerged into the light of day, there was still nothing to guarantee that it could prove useful outside the domains in which our practical skills had already been operating for millennia. And yet, pure mathematics notoriously finds all kinds of startling applications in the solution of technological and scientific problems that our ancestors could not possibly have conceived of, and it does so by generating theories that would have remained wholly unintelligible to them. That strongly supports the idea that mathematics can uncover aspects of the universe of which neither the usefulness nor even the existence could possibly have been manifested in the environment of our evolutionary adaptations (EEA) in which the basic functions of the brain were being shaped by natural selection. As [Eugene] Wigner has argued, this constitutes at least prima facie evidence for the conclusion that the truths of mathematics do not merely reflect projective constructions of our brains, but probably correspond to an objective reality.” “
Why is Auster pushing this nonsense that the theory of evolution has not been proved? It never was proved. A theory, by its very definition “is generally accepted only in some tentative fashion as opposed to regarding it as having been conclusively established.” The theory of evolution is falsifiable, that what makes it driven by science not teleology.
I would argue that we have a inate capacity for symbolic reasoning in the abstract and geometric domains.
Mathematics emerges when we apply those skills recursively and at depth.
No argument there, Daniel, but what De Sousa is driving at, contra Auster, is the presence of an objective reality. If everything is driven by genes that are naturally selected to enhance reproductive fitness, how does Auster explain high math? High math is evidence of an objective truth over success because it shows no reproductive benefit.
Funny how some children think they have won a debate by calling people names. Is that Darwinian? What I mean is, is your response to a higher intellect, such as those toward LA, Kristor and others, a Darwinian response mechanism? To put it in simple terms you will all understand, do your genes compensate for low intelligence levels by having you revert to school yard behavior and thus shield you from the knowledge that you are pitiful specimens of the human species and thereby allow you to go on procreating instead of doing the altruistically enlightened thing and commit suicide, thereby ridding the gene pool of your substandard genes?
Just a Darwinian thought, nothing personal.
The same can be said of sympathy, which Darwin argued was incidental to altruism because it did not appear in savage man. The example is shown in an incident of the coast of India, where local fisherman got drunk, fell asleep and drifted onto the island occupied by an ancient tribe. If genes drive altruism the response is to kill the intruder, which is what they did. However, civilised man performs differently. German tourists saved drowning Africans off the coast of Spain. If Auster’s logic is followed they should either kill the intruder or ignore his plight. But they don’t. Why, because they felt sympathetic even though the stranger might pose a threat. How can sympathy exist when it does not enhance reproductive fitness?
It’s a gradual extention of the idea of ingroup.
We begin with small tribes of related persons, then wider societies, then modern states then finally mankind and just to go further, maybe even other species, ET, and robots.
My theory: The main advantage of widening it is – the benefit we derive from trade. i.e.specialization and comparitive advantage. Also bigger groups are better at war. It’s better to join a big group if you can.
Grant Canyon
You said
“Mathematics is objective because the concepts are defined in a way to be independent of any subjective mind.”
The clear implication of this statement is that if we had defined mathematics differently, it would not have been independent of any mind. (The word “subjective” is redundant.)
Could mathematics be defined in any way other than the way it has been defined? If the answer is “yes,” then tell me (at least in general terms) what this other definition would be. And if the answer is “no” then mathematics is not objective because it just happened to be defined in such a way that it turns out to be independent of any mind. It is objective because it is necessarily independent of any mind.
If an alternate definition mathematics cannot be specified, that is prima facia evidence that mathematics is objective by its nature, not because of the way we chose to define it. And therefore mathematics exists independently of mind.
And if mathematics exists independently of mind, then naturalism in the strict sense is wrong. This result will obtain unless you can convincingly present an alternate definition of mathematics.
A similar analysis applies to laws of logic and even moral principles. Unless, for example, you can affirm that murder would have been right if we had chosen to define it to be right, then murder is wrong objectively, i.e., independently of mind.
Either murder is objectively wrong, independently of mind, or it is not. Your position requires you to say that murder could have been right if mankind had chosen to say that it was. It does no good to say that murder’s wrongness derives from its destructiveness to society. This only pushes the problem to a new level: why is it wrong to damage society? And if we must not damage society because it hurts us as individuals, the question arises, why is it wrong to hurt myself? Eventually, you have to say either It’s just wrong, in and of itself, or else you have to say “It’s only wrong because we say so.”
It also does no good to say “Evolution has conditioned us to think morally.” Evolution, at most, might describe how we do behave. It has zero ability to describe how we OUGHT TO behave, which is what morality is.
I presume you don’t think that Hitler would have been right to kill the Jews if mankind had just decided that mass murder is OK. I also presume you don’t think he would have been right if evolution had somehow rewarded mass-murdering tryants. (And since, on your view, there is no guiding hand behind evolution, you cannot rule out, a priori, that such a state could evolve.) That being so, what is your basis for thinking the Holocaust to be immoral? Not that we decided it to be so, and not that it evolved.
The only possible answer you could give, while remaining an atheist, is “It’s just wrong, but for no reason.”
Well, if there’s no reason WHY it’s true, how do you know THAT it’s true? By intuition? Intuition of what? By ego assertion?
Atheism cannot answer the basic questions of existence. Therefore either reality is absurd, and man lives by ego assertion, or atheism is false. I choose option 2.
that is prima facia evidence that mathematics is objective by its nature, not because of the way we chose to define it. And therefore mathematics exists independently of mind.
I think this argument is faulty Alan Roebuck. I believe that mathematics is objective and that it does not exist independently of mind.
The reason is that the proofs of mathematical theorems are actually algorithms that we run as programs on our brain-computers as we check the proof in our minds.
Consequently, every mathematical proof is an empirical computation experiment, that is run on your totally-physical, objective, brain-computer.
We obtain mathematical knowledge the same way we obtain any knowledge, by means of experiments and observation using physical devices.
Wow, OK, there are a lot of comments to keep up with here, and I’m not going to attempt to respond to each individually, but if anyone wants to respond subsequently to my arguments they are welcome to.
Disbelief in god/God/gods/the Flying Spaghetti Monster or what have you does not preclude objective ethics. It is entirely possible to justify morals according to the facts of reality, without having to look OUTSIDE reality. I am aware that this is not a view I necessarily share with the other atheist/agnostic posters here, so I am making this argument only on my own behalf, but I maintain that ethics are objective and reality-based, and that we arrive at a proper morality through the use of reason, inferred from the facts of our world and our nature as rational animals.
In addition, descending from other animals does not preclude humans being volitional and making choices. Our consciousness and reason could have evolved like any other trait, and they most likely evolved to have the capacity to interpret the world fairly accurately, because perception and reasoning skewed beyond a certain margin would have been selected against quite strongly (comments on internet blogs and Youtube notwithstanding). Darwinian evolution does not necessitate anywhere near the kind of genetic determinism some on both sides of this question have suggested. Nonhuman animals clearly demonstrate some level of choice and self-directed, environmentally-responsive action. The question of whether human intelligence differs in kind or only in degree from other animals is still a debatable question, but regardless of the answer the gap between us and our complex animal relatives is not so large as to make the evolution of reason seem impossible.
By the way I wish all of you, including Mr. Auster, a HAPPY DARWIN BIRTHDAY today, Feb 12. Of course it is Lincoln’d birthday as well and Obama is busy drawing parallels!!!
Mr. Auster is rare in both his sharpness of mind and independence of thought. I read his essay on how he discovered racial differences and it is a masterpiece.One cannot easily escape his arguments without considerable thought.
Genetic determinism does lead to the conclusion that we are biological robots. All aspects of our world seem to operate according to physical laws that seem entirely material and natural.Evolution is an organismic expression of that same mechanical process.At no point is “spirit” needed. However, the evolution of the brain led to higher level consciousness that involves modular systems that interact in a magnificently complex way that still eludes full explication.Edelman’s neural darwinism is discussed in my book called Apes or Angels? because it is a fairly powerful theory of brain function.Neuronal groups undergo selection as the brain develops.Synapses can themselves undergo modification due to environmental inputs.Reentry is the basic principal of brain circuitry, allowing elaborate signalling over reciprocal fibers.
By operating in a modular and integrated way, brains remain less than holistic yet rapidly effective.There is no “ghost in the machine.”Parts of the system, such as receptors and neurotransmitters, respond to the environment in often exqusitely sensitive ways. Remember Timothy Leary’s historic highs with LSD??
Free will will always feel “free” because the underlying network of neural connections involve far too much complexity.When Auster “chose” to reply, he had other options but freely chose to respond to my apparent jibe because he, feeling no internal hostility, made a dispassionate decision.Even if he felt anger, etc., he could override it with a rational response. In this sense we are free, but compulsive crime and gambling may be far less free. Freedom must involve assessments of capacities and tendencies.
Lastly, the appearance of intellect involves what looks like a jump because 5 million years of separation allowed natural selection to produce the world’s only linguistic brain.This was a gradual process via Homo erectus and archaic hominids that did not quite make it.Harpending and Cochran’s new book The 10,000 Year Explosion covers the latest developments.Even the very high IQ’s of Ashkanazi Jews is explained.Mr. Auster has such a high IQ and can thank evolution for his prize attributes.
Robert B. It’s not what you think. On my account anyway. If I am blunt it is because religious believers need to be warned-off. If you read my comments above you see what I said about non-interference.
We need to be aware that religious believers have great investment in their beliefs. If they come to this site expecting an easy time, they are likely to find that they end up questioning their own religious beliefs.
I am an ex-believer myself and I understand the trauma of losing religious belief.
If you are running a factory and a layperson walks in and starts playing with the dials, do you not warn them that they are in a dangerous place? The danger is to themselves if they stay.
If they continue to stay after warning, then they have made their choice, and what happens after that is their own responsibility.
Unlike most of you, I have no interest in spreading pure reason, seeing it as a calling that each must choose for themselves.
Daniel Dare: In comment 48, you say that you fought your way out of a religious upbringing. I know a number of people like that; generally they were raised Evangelical, or Fundamentalist. Some were Roman Catholic. In every case, they weren’t really reacting against the religion they came to reject, but against certain people who (pretended to) profess it, and who somehow injured them. In every case, they had every right to be really angry. If any such thing happened to you, I urge you to keep clear in your own mind the distinction between the religion and some of its messed up adherents. Healthier, you know? Makes for clearer, more cogent thought.
You also say that you don’t like preachy people. I get the impression you feel I have been preaching at you, but really I’ve only been arguing in the politest way. Trying to, anyway. My guess is that theistic talk of any kind, no matter how recondite, pushes your buttons, so that you feel again all the bad things you felt when people were preaching at your childhood self. That would be understandable.
One last question on this point. The angry, vindictive, dismissive, scornful, contemptuous tone you have often taken in this thread when addressing theists: is that how you were addressed by the Christians of your childhood? No need to answer, of course; these are pretty personal questions. But, if the answer you would give is anything like yes, all I can say is, first, that I am sorry that you should have been treated that way, and you but a child; and, second, that that sort of thing happens to kids in all sorts of environments. Church has no corner on it. Happened to me in public school, in second grade.
I’m pretty sure I disagree that the deep science and philosophy of Darwinism are off topic in a thread that started off by dissing Ann Coulter, and theist conservatives in general, because they are not professing Darwinists. This site may not be used to such high-falutin’ talk, but I recommend a bit of it from time to time. Nothing like an occasional return to first principles to gain greater clarity on the rest of them.
You say that science does not yet know the answer to the question where the initial constraints on the solution space of being came from, and that we should come back in 1,000 years or so to find out (Polichinello: take note of Daniel’s having said this; it is an example of why one needn’t have an alternative theory ready to go in order to begin criticizing the currently accepted Standard Model. It’s OK for a scientist to say, “The current theory has some fatal problems, and I don’t know how to solve them yet.”). But this statement is an example of the sort of category error I have noticed repeatedly in this thread, because that question is in principle not amenable to scientific treatment. It is a metaphysical question. It is totally prior to science, and no scientist in any age will ever be able to address it scientifically. It was a rhetorical question; I think I already have the answer, because every other answer I have encountered has the logical consequence of making experience, thought, or knowledge impossible.
In answer to my statement that, “If no one has perfect knowledge, then no one knows perfectly what is good. But if no one truly knows the Good, then in effect it just doesn’t exist,” you say, “I am a Darwinian Agent. All Darwinian agents are constrained by natural selection of their genomes to seek “goods” such as survival, reproduction, anything that adds to my inclusive fitness etc.” In other words, you agree with me; this is what your scare quotes effectually mean. In the context of the Darwinian game, reproduction is “good,” but the game itself is really all just stuff happening for no reason, so reproduction is not really good; it’s only “good.” In just the same way, a touchdown you score on a video game is “good” in the world of the game, but in the real world it’s not really good (albeit that one’s enjoyment of the game is indeed good).
You ask if I ever listen to anything other than myself. Heck yeah, man; this whole time I’ve been responding to what I’ve heard here. I like listening to you guys, cause I learn stuff; I sharpen my polemic, I learn about new arguments, it’s great. You, too, like to learn stuff through being challenged to think and argue more and more carefully, right? You have an open mind, and are always willing to consider a new angle, right? You’re a good and careful and epistemologically humble man, a true scientist, always ready to jettison a cherished doctrine if you discover a hole in it, right? In fact, you’re constantly on the lookout for things you’ve missed, constantly trying to find out if you’ve misunderstood things, constantly challenging your received notions, right? Right?
But hold on then, why do you want to excommunicate me from the congregation of the faithful here at Secular Right? Is my heterodoxy so intolerable to the men of science who gather here? Must I be consigned to the outer darkness with the Nestorians and Monothelites?
OK, Daniel, re what I said about learning stuff from you guys, case in point: I much appreciated your comment about China’s designs on Iran and the Middle East. An angle I had not fully considered. Makes one wish that Britain and France had held on to dar-al-islam, no? As to the Chinese teaching the Muslims about assassination, it’s too late: “Assassin” is an Arabic word. And the Sovs taught Yasir Arafat about asymmetric warfare and terror; he was KGB.
Polichinello: In comment 50, you point out rightly that my analogy between the Darwinian and Newtonian Mechanical paradigms is poor. I was sloppy; I know, of course, that Newtonian mechanics still hangs together within limits, and is still in use. It would have been better if instead of Newtonian mechanics I had used the phlogiston.
You point out that Darwinism continues to predict new discoveries. But let’s be careful here with diction. Darwinism is the doctrine that random variation and natural selection (plus sexual selection) generated all the life forms on earth. The discoveries you mention are verifications of hypotheses about what path living matter actually followed as over time it explored different forms, not of hypotheses about why it followed that path. That is, they are not verifications of Darwinism itself.
In fact, one of the most interesting things about Darwinism as an episode in the history of science is that it abjures explanation altogether. It insists that we can’t really know why things happened as they did, that such questions are inapposite to reality. Darwinism says, in effect, “what has happened has happened – here’s how – and that’s all there is to say about it.” This is manifest in the famous argument that “survival of the fittest” means only “survival of the survivors.” Any talk of “fitness” or “function” or “advantage” is teleological, and strictly speaking ought to be ruled out by Darwinism’s insistence on randomness.
Speaking of which, thanks for the clarification on your use of “randomness.” Your example of the iterated coin toss with selection is quite clear. I must say, though, that it sounds as if you are saying that everything that has happened has happened for no reason. It just happened to fall out the way it did, entirely by chance. Have you noticed that this is not an explanation? It is as much as to say, “things happened the way they did because they happened the way they did.” This is what I mean when I say that if novelty arises in a purely chaotic process, then science is impossible.
I think science is possible. I think the world is orderly (NB, again, that a probabilistic order such as we discover in quantum mechanics is still a species of orderliness), and coherent. What that inescapably means is that there just can’t be such a thing in this world as a purely chaotic procedure.
Grant Canyon: In comment 51, you ask theists to provide evidence of the existence of God. This is a category error. If God exists, everything is evidence of His existence; but this just means that it is not possible to conceive of a worldly situation in which such evidence could have the option either of existing or failing to exist. In other words, the existence of God is not a scientific question. It is a metaphysical question (St. Anselm would say that it is a logical question). So, it is simply wrongheaded to look about for evidence; that’s what one would do to ascertain the existence of contingent beings such as unicorns.
Your mockery of philosophy redounds to you. You say it is silly; it is silly to say so. I have no expectation of being treated with kid gloves; in fact I’d be rather disappointed if I were. I do confess to some disappointment at the level of discourse here; a lot of it seems to consist of raspberries and playground insults. It’s redolent of the retrograde 9 year old bully who shows off for his cronies by making fun of the nerdy new boy.
I thank you for the clarification re the bonobo and the shark. That’s interesting. I’ll go back and read Auster’s essay as soon as I can, and see how they relate.
At last, at last, an argument: hallelujah! You say, “Even if we can’t know what “absolute good” is (if such a thing could even exist), we can certainly know whether something is better than another, the same way can know whether something is hotter than another without any knowledge of what “maximum heat” is.” Yes. I never said that ignorance of the absolute good would prevent any knowledge whatsoever of goodness. But if there is no absolute, objective Good, then, by definition, relative, subjective goods are the only sort that exist. Reasoned philosophical discussion seems far better to me than playground insults; to you, not so much. Who is to say which of us is objectively correct? Thus begins the slide into moral and cultural relativism, pc, and so forth.
You say that subjective doesn’t mean illusory. That is true, but only if there really is an objective standard of goodness in the world. Let me explain. Say that you find playground insults better than reasoned philosophical discussion. On the supposition that there is no absolute, objective standard of goodness in the universe, the universe as a whole has nothing to say on that question. It is entirely indifferent. So far as the world at large is concerned, nothing is the least bit better than anything else. Thus your subjective preference exists only in your mind, not in the world at large. It is an idea about things, under which you labor, which is false – or, rather, simply inapposite to the world as it really is – everywhere in the universe except in the little playground in your head. When a man perceives something that isn’t really there, we call his experience an illusion.
If on the other hand there is an objective standard of goodness, then your subjective ideas about what is good have a shot at being more or less correct, in just the same way that, because there is an objective standard of heat in the world, your subjective ideas of how hot it is today have a shot at being correct.
Indeed, if there were no objective standard of heat in the world, it is hard to see what it could possibly mean for you to say, “Man, is it ever hot today!” People would look at you like you were some sort of nut, as if you had said, “Man, is it ever gankry today!” So likewise with goodness.
Do we need a cosmic dictator to establish our objective standard of goodness? Well, we need something or other – the idea of goodness can’t have itself, and goodness as a property has to be a property of some actuality (this was one of the ways that Aristotle corrected Plato). Whatever it is that somehow has this objective idea or quality of goodness has to have had it prior to every particular contingent instance of goodness, or it wouldn’t be objective with respect to any such instance. Thus whatever this a priori being is, it must be eternal, necessary, completely general and exhaustively comprehensive. We find ourselves moving pretty quickly in the direction of theism, no?
Daniel Dare: In comment 56 you suggest – in really the kindest way, for which I thank you – that I am trapped in an intellectual construct that seems real to me, but is a figment. But that’s just what we’ve been trying to figure out, no? Which of us is wrong? You suggest that I try living without God for a year. I did so, for many years. As you predict, I found that I loved my kids, enjoyed beer, loved the USA, and so forth. But your experimental design is flawed. The result doesn’t show that God doesn’t exist, because it is perfectly compatible with His existence. So is the fact that the whole history of the universe has shaped my brain so that it pumps out neurotransmitters in certain circuits in such a way as to subvene my love for my kids. If God exists, then every state of affairs that can come to pass is ipso facto compatible with His existence.
You say that evolution has equipped us to function well without any religion at all. Sure. But it has equipped us to function even better with religion, as any number of studies of the health, welfare and happiness of religious believers versus non-believers has shown. As a Darwinist, it ought to be even more dispositive to you that believers outbreed non-believers. Believers have more children, healthier children, and more successful children than non-believers. Those who attend religious observances weekly do even better. Like liberals and homosexuals, secularists aren’t replacing themselves. Religiosity would seem to be an adaptive trait.
Polichinello: In comment 59, you make an interesting point when you say that God is so much greater than any theist that the meaningfulness of the theist’s life is but insignificantly greater than the meaningfulness that an atheist creates for himself. Russell made this same error. It follows from forgetting that God is omniscient. To the individual theist, such as Lawrence, that omniscience means that God knows, better than Lawrence himself ever could, all the pains and pleasures, all the consequences and significances of Lawrence’s life. Lawrence delights in the sight of a bird against the sky, and then thinks of his taxes and forgets the beauty of the bird. But God never forgets the beauty of the bird as Lawrence felt it in that moment, even as He never forgets Lawrence’s anxiety about the taxes. As a theist, Lawrence understands every tiny thing he does or thinks as an immortal contribution to God’s life, and to the everlasting life of the world of worlds. This realization invests every act and experience with immense meaningfulness – or can, if he lets it.
The atheist, on the other hand, can cobble together meaningfulness only for himself. There’s no comparison. No, that’s wrong. It’s like comparing 1 to infinity. The atheist can work himself up from existential despair – the zero of meaningfulness – to Stoic or Epicurean enjoyment – the one.
Daniel Dare: In comment 60, it sounds like you are confused about “meaning.” The meaning of a thing, or of a term, or of a proposition, consists in its potential consequences for experience. That’s pretty informal, but it will do; it covers most of what philosophers mean by “intension.” The meaning of a predicate expression such as “rotten apple” is the concrete togetherness-in-experience of the subject and the predicate, that togetherness being commonly called a “concept.” The meaning of a reference to a concept is the experience of the concept itself. The meaning to an observer of an actual rotten apple is the concrete experience of the concept of the rotten apple. A human life, whether rotten or juicy and sweet, is a lot more consequential than an apple. It is, i.e., more meaningful. This is true a fortiori for the life of God. Intense experiences tend to make a deep impression upon us; this is what we refer to by calling them “meaningful.”
Grant Canyon: In comment 61, you ask Alan Roebuck, “Exactly why, other than your personal preference, should I take the existence of your [Abrahamic] god seriously and not the near-infinite alternative [gods] that are not any less unlikely?” This was a lively question for the Israelites, back in the day. The answer is that some conceptions of the divine make more sense than others; are more logical, work better, are more coherent (I can give you the details, if you’re interested). In just the same way, there are infinitely many possible ideas about what it is that is really happening in the world. Any of them could, with equal probability be true. But only a few of them actually are true, and this is what enables them to work out better in practice than their competitors.
Daniel Dare: In comment 74, you ask why, if life is so meaningless to atheists and nihilists (because they ain’t got religion), their suicide rate is not like 95%. Yes; an excellent question. The answer is that those who espouse the doctrine that life has no meaning other than what we create – which is to say, that it has no objective meaning at all – are almost always engaging in what DR Griffin has called a performative contradiction. The most obvious example of a performative contradiction is that of the determinist: he says all his actions are determined, but he still performs as though his decisions matter. Nihilists say they believe in the final meaninglessness of life, but their reluctance to die belies them. This constitutes, not a demonstration, but a very strong indication, that the doctrine they espouse is false.
Daniel Dare: In comment 77, you point out that a thirst for a true understanding of things cannot but confer advantage in the struggle to survive and reproduce. Yes. Totally right. Note that there could be no such advantage unless there really were an objective truth out there to be understood. In exactly the same way, perception of heat would be useless if heat were not an objective factor of the world – and perception of shoulds and oughts would be useless if the good were not likewise an objective factor of the world. Ditto for beauty. I could argue that perception of the Holy would be useless if the Holy were not an objective factor of the world, but I don’t want you to have a stroke …
Note also that one can’t explain the existence of a population competing to discern the truth by reference to that same population. That would be a circular argument. Discernment of truth is advantageous, but until it arrives on the scene, it can’t be operative therein. I know, I know, discernment of truth is just an elaboration of the elegant fitness of one subatomic particle to another, and of the coherence of physical law. Adaptation of organisms to their environment flows without contradiction from the symmetry laws of physics. But surely you see that to point this out is only to push the problem of explaining the orderliness inherent in things down to the most basic level, no? Do I need to say that “explaining” the coherence of physical law by reference to the multiverse, or to a process of random variation within a population of cosmoi, does not explain anything, but rather in effect argues that that coherence is really only a repackaging of Democritus’ clinamen – i.e., of chaos? Of the opposite of order and the impossibility of understanding?
Desmond Jones: In comments 82 and 85, you ask how Auster can explain the human talent for higher math if he thinks that everything about living things is genetically determined. But he doesn’t think that. He agrees with D’Souza, Plantinga, and Wigner. Ditto for your question in comment 87. Auster agrees with you.
Daniel Dare: In comment 84, you posit that we have an innate capacity for symbolic reasoning, and that mathematical reasoning emerged in the development of that capacity. Sure. I don’t disagree. But this does not contradict Wigner, Plantinga, and D’Souza in their argument that higher math cannot have been a factor that mattered to human cerebral evolution under Darwinian random variation and natural selection.
Daniel Dare: In comment 90, you say that you believe that, “I believe that mathematics is objective and that it does not exist independently of mind.” You might be interested to know that in saying this you are in agreement with St. Augustine. I doubt that Augustine would disagree with you that our thoughts are procedures of our bodies. Certainly St. Thomas would not. But a bit of parsing is in order. If we are to say that mathematics is really and truly objective, then we ought properly to say that it is independent of any particular contingent mind. That’s what “objective” is commonly taken to mean. Note that it was possible at the inception of our universe that it would never produce minds capable of math. Would the truths of math in that case fail; would they be false? No; one of the most ineluctable aspects of mathematical reasoning is the irresistible feeling that the truths discovered therein are true necessarily; they are true everywhere, always, and without exception. Thus they are not true in the same way it is true that I went to the store yesterday. That is a contingent truth; I might never have existed to go to the store. But no matter who goes to what store, no matter what happens, the truths of math are true. They are prior to, and transcendent to, any and every particular contingent being. And this is the only way that the protein computers in our heads could possibly comprehend them. If they were not thus true, then our capacity for mathematical thought would be as useless as the perception of heat in a universe where heat played no role. The truths of math have to be out there, actually true, prior to any – and every – particular instance of contingent reasoning, in order for any such instance to agree with them – this being the only way that such reasoning could possibly confer any practical advantage. It is also the only way that different contingent minds could agree on the truths of mathematics.
OK then; Augustine and Aquinas agree with you that the truths of math are not independent of any mind; but to be objectively true, they must be independent of any and every particular contingent mind. So we need a necessary mind, wherein they find their original instantiation – i.e., wherefrom they originate, and of whose eternal nature they are aspects.
The Kat: In comment 91 you say, “It is entirely possible to justify morals according to the facts of reality, without having to look OUTSIDE reality.” Yes. But if God is real, He is not outside reality. You say that “we arrive at a proper morality through the use of reason, inferred from the facts of our world and our nature as rational animals.” This is better precision. You say in effect that there is an objective moral order to the world. Agreed. There has to be, or moral reasoning – trying to figure out what it would be best to do next (TV? Beer? TV and beer?) – could not make sense, could not be fitted to reality, could not be adaptive.
The question then is, where was the moral order of the world before there were humans around trying to figure out how to conform their lives thereto? This is analogous to the question, where were the truths of mathematics before there were mathematicians around to discover them?
Cornelius J. Troost: In comment 92, you say that “There is no ‘ghost in the machine.’ ” Would it surprise you to know that St. Thomas – and the Pope – would agree? Under Aristotelian metaphysics – i.e., orthodox Christian metaphysics – the soul is not a being disparate from the body. It is, rather, integral thereto. The soul is the form of the body. The ghost – literally the “gust,” the breath, the spirit – is the life of the body. The body, its spirit, and its soul are not separate. If the brain had no form, or no life, it could not compute; and if the form had no material instantiation in the living body, it would not actually exist.
The idea that there is a machine with a ghost in it arises with Descartes, and with the notion that the world is entirely and thoroughly constituted of dead particles pushing each other around. It’s a valiant attempt at parsimony, but unfortunately it gives rise to all sorts of problems that, in a purely material universe, are simply insuperable: the mind/body problem, the problem of freedom, and so forth. Parsimony is not the only criterion of a successful theory; there is also adequacy to consider.
Well, I am done here. It has been fun, but I grow weary, and I doubt I shall again contribute to this thread. Thanks everyone for provoking me to some writing, and thus to thought, and thus to an increase in my understanding. Finally, I apologize for the length of this comment; again, I’m only trying to do justice to the other commenters on this thread, and to the labor they have invested in the discussion.
Finally, I apologize for the length of this comment; again, I’m only trying to do justice to the other commenters on this thread, and to the labor they have invested in the discussion.
Doing justice is spending an inordinate amount of time engaged in what is basically special-pleading on behalf of your particular favourite fairy stories? You mustn’t think much of your fellow interlocutors then.
@Daniel Dare
We need to be aware that religious believers have great investment in their beliefs. If they come to this site expecting an easy time, they are likely to find that they end up questioning their own religious beliefs.
You are overly optimistic here, up to being flat out wrong.
Religiousness v/s atheism isn’t at all a matter of logic, intelligence or any other intellectual capabilities.
Theologians, talmudists, Kristor and Lawrence Auster show a lot of intellectual brilliance, it is their premisses which are delirious, it is a case of aberrant salience, seeing patterns and “meaning” where there is none.
You are likely rationalizing the causes of your own escape from religiousness after the fact in ascribing it to “reason”, you were lucky not to be too infected with delusions and therefore being able to see thru the nonsense.
As I said in another thread only Darwinian selection will get us rid of religion.
@
Kevembuangga
I’ve thought of several models by which religion could ultimately disappear. I’ll try to list them briefly. Remember I am not advocating these merely suggesting them as possible futures. Some of them are totally off the wall. Mad sense of humor.
1.The secularising trend. Note Kristor’s comment about how much healthier religious societies are. Then note that the states of Europe with some of the lowest birthrates are Spain and Italy. Both around 1.4 per female or below. Intesting? Anyway.FWIW. Secularization seems unlikely to be escaped in the long run. Already Europe, Russia, China, Japan are very secular.
2.Long-term victory of Communist China. Sometime around mid-century it could be 4x bigger than USA and almost 2X bigger economically than the West. Unlike us, China has a long-term policy of population control, which means population control can become a tool of state in several ways. e.g. making more boys if you are planning war in 20 years. Or allowing more pop growth if you plan to expand territorially. I believe China’s population engineering techniques are getting much smarter and more focused than most people in the West realise. Also I am not yet convinced that the CPC will democratize or collapse. There are many aspects of Hu Jintao’s policies that suggest to me a long-term accomodation to Confucianism. I believe that resonates very well there; that and the super-rapid economic growth.
3. Science will discover the “god center” in the brain (if it exists). There are two ways this might destroy religion: (a) A targeted therapy could wipe the god center out. Superstition could become a treatable medical condition. Especially if applied in the young. Maybe far-fetched.(b) Find a pill that makes a deep religious experience available to anyone for $5 a pill. Since no other religion can offer this purity and depth of experience on demand, it will soon win the battle for hearts and minds, and so devalue religion, that no-one will care about doctrines anymore.
3. (a) If there is a gene for “religiosity” then there may be ways of silencing that gene, perhaps without harming much else. After all not everyone has a strong form of the gene.(b) Release a virus that silences the religiosity gene in all of mankind. People might not notice it until it is too late. If it then goes pandemic, people will become too secular to care.
4.Transhumanism. Scientific immortality. Or at least very very long lives, perhaps with space colonization or very low birthrates. So that people don’t worry about life after death any more. You are a god yourself.
5. Scientific control of consciousness. We don’t need to understand what consciousness *is* in order to figure out how it works in brain structures. Any more than not knowing what time *is* stopped us from developing relativity. As long as the behaviour is regular enough to work out the laws empirically.
Then we might be able to upload our minds to the web, and live forever in cyberspace. There we could be gods indeed. Permanent god mode if you like. Many people believe in this, I am more skeptical.
For myself I find 1,2,3b,4 really possible. I think the others are purely logical exercises.
Whoops thats the first 3b. I just realised I counted 3 twice. That’s what happens when you paste in extra categories on the fly.
The second 3 is very unlikely since I doubt that there is a single religiosity gene. Maybe many complex ones that interact with a lot of other things.
I am just now revisiting the site for the first time since I posted my last comment early on the a.m. of the 12th and I see that there have been many further comments, which surprised me as I thought the discussion was unwelcome here and was winding down. I also see that I may have been wrong on a point I made and will have to correct it. However, I will not be able to reply today, but will try to do so tonight or tomorrow.