Re: Darwinian amulets ...
Re: Darwinian amulets ...
Hilston wrote:
Of course. But this thread is about why Bob Enyart lost the debate from his very first post. The reasoning I offer to those who defend Mr. Enyart is that he has violated biblical principles of argumentation. To those who defend Mr. Enyart, what the Bible says is (or at least ought to be) much more relevant than vedic literature, the B-G, etc. Whether or not you acknowledge the veracity of the Judeo-Christian Bible, that the concept of atheistic self-deception is not a novelty that originates with me.
An example of "theistic selfdeception" would be the claim that "there are no atheists" or that there atheists are engaging in "atheistic selfdeception".
This sort of thing provides philosophical comfort to the theist, because to that individual _the existence of a single nonbeliever invalidates the system of belief_.
I would say that Bob Enyart lost the debate the minute that he started rattling off classic "God of the Gaps" creationist claptrap.
OK, just so I understand, I've replaced the word "supernatural" with your definition in your original sentence:
"The average modern person believes in far less of the belief in objects and forces beyond those that can be studied and be made sense of by humans, and the ability of humans to interact with such than our forbears."
Would you say that still accurately reflects what you intended? I just want to be careful that I understand you correctly.
Yes. In our modern world, we have had success of science in allowing us to make sense of aspects of the world around us. Religion has steadily lost ground to the success of science in describing and explaining the phenomena of the world.
The result has been that God has been redesigned to be more "subtle" by some relgionists. Others have backlashed by attempting to create 'Bible consistent science', which essentially is pseudoscience.
You don't know many catholics, do you? Kidding aside, the religion of today is naturalism. It is the "amulet" worn on the sleeves of Darwinists (and sometimes in the form of bumpers stickers and Darwinian fish emblems) to ward off the "evil spirit" of Christian Theism. It is no different that three centuries ago; it is merely a different manifestation of a false religion.
What a laugh! Basically the Darwin fish is intended to poke fun at anti-evolutionists.
An amulet is an object that people actually believed had the power to defend an individual against evil forces (the evil eye, curses, demons, ghosts, what have you). You don't believe in amulets any more than I do, because you do not reach for the supernatual explanation in the same way that our ancestors did. You are the product of our times, just as I am.
As to your other comments about "naturalism as a religion", basically this is more baseless apologism.
First of all, naturalism is, or rather, was, a philosophy of the 19th century and was tied to the notion that Newtonian physics was absolutely true. If that were then case, then one would only need a statement of the positions and momenta of all the particles in the universe at one time, and the positions and momenta for all time could be computed.
This was a deterministic view that collapsed after the advent of modern physics. Now, you might argue that the philosophy of "physicalism" replaced this,
the idea that reality is described only by the laws of physics.
Again, this is the misplaced idea that we "discover" the laws of physics. This is another 19th century holdover, or more properly a 17th century holdover, from the time when it was common for science to be justified as the discovery of "hidden laws of God". (This was a necessary tact in the superstitous society of the time, to prevent science from being branded as magic.)
In the modern world, we recognize that we study regularity in the universe and that we have done remarkably well in describing phenomena, but that we are not "done" yet. This is the world of science. We create scientific theories, which are precise descriptions of that observed regularity.
Now, many scientists are religious, but not many scientists would buy the type of God of the Gaps arguments that Bob Enyart has thrown out, nor do many scientists accept the majority of arguments that anti-evolutionists use. Indeed, because religion has given ground to science, these individuals create a more sophisticated God to believe in. One who operates below the reality we see, safely away from any tests that humans can possibly perform.
I'm curious, is that what you think this is all about? Do Christians believe in God because they need explanations for things they do not understand?
Yes. I would say fundamentally that the supernatural was invented as the primary explanation of the complicated world that we find ourselves born into. It was not invented in the same way that our scientific theories of today are invented but grew up in the context of the earliest human cultures---hunter-gatherer and agricultural.
However it is more complicated that a simple choice of an explanation, because with religion, there is usually a familial/societal/cultural component. Many people are brought up in religious environment, and inherit that religion.
Now, religion itself does not encourage questioning, so religion as a rational choice is something that is done in spite of religion, rather than in accord with religion. Indeed, there are all sorts of pressures from religious communities to suppress questioning. Indeed, I believe that there are still a lot of closet nonreligious people who still do not come out as such because they are afraid of looking bad.
You might be accustomed to debating with "God-of-the-Gaps" theistic apologists, but you won't get that from me. In fact, I would join you in refuting that kind of argument. You're kind of wasting your time with that approach.
Enyart's arguments are largely God of the Gaps arguments. Your "arguments" are simply pious apologetic claims unsubstantiated by facts.
Science and technology depend utterly upon the attributes of God in His creation. Without Him, science makes no sense. Science requires intelligibility and inductive inference. Neither of these makes sense in a random, undirected and purposeless universe where everything is just matter in motion.
And in so doing, the atheist sacrifices rationality on the alter of materialism. The atheist worldview is incoherent, inconsistent, and undermines human reason and experience.
Jim
Again more pious claptrap. Your paragraph has said nothing. The universe is no more and no less regular and understandable for the faithful than for the nonbeliever.
Indeed, if you are Bible literalist, it is not the _regularity_ of the universe that is the core of your belief system. Rather the core of religious belief is the alleged _suspension_ of regularity that is necessary for the various alleged miraculous events that make up the basic story of Christianity. It is the reliance on the existence of forces and objects that we cannot have a hope of making sense of that is the basis of religious belief.
The regularity of phenomena is what we all assume in order to deal with our daily lives, and by all, I mean animals as well. Your dog deals with the world as being objectifiable and intelligible just as you do. So this is not God metaphysics, but DOG metaphysics that is the most basic.
The basic substrate of DOG metaphysics is how we all live. Our *assumed* philosophies, the stories we weave around those things we observe, all of these things are cultural games that we play. They are maps of the territory, not the territory itself. It is DOG metaphysics that puts the bread on the table. Ultimately, it is DOG metaphysics that is formalized and applied in the rational systems of science.
We gain nothing at all by invoking a divine Puppeteer pulling the strings of the universe. This is only fantasy. The atheist does not need such fantasies.
The atheist must accept that only to a certain point does information exist for us to understand reality. Beyond that we must simply be honest and say "we do not know".
The religionist on the other hand, creates his idol God, bows before it, and pretends that he knows, when he, in fact, knows nothing more than the atheist. Indeed, if his idol is also "Biblical literalism" then he may preventing himself from knowing anything that conflicts with that literalist belief.
