You are using the language of the Faithful to describe scientific knowledge.
"We" don't know anything. The people who "know" are the ones who have done the primary research. Have you? The rest of us have to look at evidence, as 2nd-hand witnesses, and then accept the testimony of those we have no reason to disbelieve.
For instance, "you" have likely only seen third-party evidence of the roundness of the earth. Perhaps video footage and photographs. Maybe from high up in an airplane, you noticed the earth's curvature. That isn't a terribly conclusive piece of first-hand evidence, though.
What primary evidence do you have for the age of the universe? Probably none. But, you believe those who say they do have evidence. You take their word for it in good faith.
The scientific statement is this: It is certain that the earth's shape is a spheroid and that evidence suggests the age of the universe to be approximately 14 billion years.
I got my Kindle 2 last week. I never tried the original Kindle, nor any other ebook reader. I did read a lot of the forum chatter about issues such as no SD slot and only 1.4GB storage.
So far, I've been really happy with it, other than the brief panic over my credit card company shutting down my account after the dozens of ebook downloads tripped their fraud sniffer.
I'm not concerned about expandability. I've downloaded mostly the classics in literature and philosophy, including more than several entire collections of works from authors like Twain, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Verne, Dostoevsky, Locke, and many others. I currently have more reading material stored on it than I might hope to enjoy in a lifetime. So far, it all occupies a few hundred megabytes. It must be pretty sparse on pictures.;)
I won't use the device for file storage, photos, music, or audiobooks. A smartphone, PDA, laptop, or MP3 player is better suited to those formats. Some people might prefer an all-in-one device, which the Kindle is not.
Some other criticisms of the Kindle include worries over the DRM, file organization, and the inconvenience of converting personal and other documents for use with the device. These are things to keep in mind, although they are all software issues that could conceivable by fixed with a simple update. I don't think the Kindle truly replaces the hardcopies that I value the most, but it is very handy to be able to tote them around in an electronic format.
Another great benefit, for me, is that the Kindle saves me from scribbling and marking my books. I can make annotations on the Kindle which are saved in a file. I can then easily search my annotations or download and organize them however I like. That is a great study help.
The Kindle is designed to mimic the simple readability of a book. It does that much fairly well.
Naw, the Internet is bad for kids because it keeps them stupid, like TV does. Actually, that's probably more true for teenagers than for smaller kids. My little kids are far more likely to use sites like NASA Kids or Nat'l Geographic than my teenager is.
Teenagers don't use the Internet to learn things. They use it to surf You Tube and social networking sites where the tenor of discourse is intensely adolescent. Teenagers are also more likely to intentionally look for trouble on the net.
One of my younger kids did accidentally come across some sort of "sexy games site" while looking for online Flash games to play. I turned on the parental controls after that, but my kid was clueless the whole time because the site wasn't obnoxiously explicit. I don't think he noticed the erotic content at all, happily playing away in the very public place where we keep our family computer.;)
I'm more worried about the moronic content that teens think is "cool." They get sucked into these stupid chain letters, lolcats, epic fails, adolescent profanity laced dumb-talk, and so forth. There's plenty of it right here on Slashdot. Worse, teens begin to make lame and ridiculous videos of themselves being idiots, and then they post it on You Tube. I'm sure their future potential employers and constituents will find this material just as "cool," right?
We don't need to save kids from the Internet; we need to save the Internet from our kids. And save kids from themselves on the Internet.
No I don't think any of those things will happen, but I do think that Obama will be thoughtful and listen to people. For the record, I didn't vote for either of the big candidates.
Presidents can give direction and leadership, they can stick to principles and get things going, they can avoid corruption and be honorable men, but it often falls to the masses of "regular people" to make the real changes.
The fanatics and extremists come up with lists like yours and expect a worshipful leader to establish their unique vision of Utopia within the first 100 days. It takes a tyrant to effect that kind of change.
I think the kind of change that Obama had in mind was one of direction.
Hardin's essay is called "The Tragedy of the Commons." It is a great essay, even though I disagree with his recommendations. It's only about 16 pages, and worth the read. Hardin was a biologist. Some of his claims are, I think, unassailable. His advocacy of environmental responsibility is very eloquent.
As for your assessment of my view of sexuality: you are correct. I also suggest that blindness and deafness are commonly observed in nature. Yet, this does not cast into question the intended function of eyes and ears. The biological design of sexual anatomy is similarly well known, in spite of any strange uses we (or other creatures) may invent for them. Nature is the designer, not the user; Natural Law arises from nature's apparent recommendations and not from observed use cases (again, this is the distinction between principle and casuistry).
This does not mean that homosexuality, et al., do not exist naturally in some individuals. Ethics involving these situations are a good exercise for casuists, and the debate has been a heated one. Unfortunately it has been rather dominated by theism on one side and atheism on the other. It has become a religious debate.
I prefer the philosophical discussion. It is clear to me that licentious views of sexuality (and other acts) are incompatible with Natural Law philosophy, and that scientific advances over the past few centuries have not significantly altered the essential tenets of the Empiricists. I concede that Rights come from Nature.
It can be reasonably argued, as you have done, that rights are granted rather arbitrarily by those who have the guns. This is not my belief, but rights and liberty, after all, are subjective ideas.
I do have a higher opinion of the philosophies that were established during the Age of Reason. I consider them to be a good deal more than mere hand-waving, in spite of the failings and contradictions that were sometimes present in practice. I am not a moral relativist, although I do believe cases should be considered in the light of principles, and that exceptions can be made.
The description of liberty that you provide is certainly one way of looking at it (and very popular today), but it is not the definition of liberty that was accepted by the Natural Law philosophers who established much of what later became American jurisprudence. Your description of "liberty" is what Adam Smith termed a "licentious system."
The concept of liberty that I am talking about is intertwined with the idea of "Rights." What are Rights, and where do they come from? According to the Natural Law philosophers, Rights are endowed by Nature. If this is true, then ancient humans had largely the same set of natural Rights that modern humans have. We may have greater privileges today, but our Rights are essentially the same.
This does not mean that we don't have rights to our art. Humans naturally create new things, and thus we would naturally have some rights to those things. However, we do not have natural Rights to actions that are only made possible by the existence of "artificial" things.
In the area of human artifice, we must rely on casuistry to determine the liberties that can be properly taken with them. This is where our civic discourse gets ugly, particularly when people confuse these "civil liberties" (granted by the State, or "Leviathan," as Hobbes had it) with natural Rights (granted by Nature as John Locke claims).
You are correct that a "carve-out" for rape can not be made under the general principle of Natural Law. That is why I qualified that claim with casuistry. You must be a casuist in order to do it. You have to say: Here is a case that is an exception to the Rule. This woman did not choose pregnancy by her own actions, and therefore has no moral responsibility for the consequence. Thus, if by our art we can avoid the consequence, it would be Just to do so.
Casuists recognize that there do exist apparent exceptions and exemptions to the natural order of things, and they attempt to establish privileges that take these exceptions into consideration, given the context of the times.
The point is that we don't confuse our privileges, or civil liberties, with natural Rights. There is no natural Right to abortion (I mislead: sometimes a woman's body will spontaneously and safely abort a fetus. This is called miscarriage; but it is not a chosen action).
Liberty, in the sense that I speak of it, requires Self Command. Without it, our actions could produce consequences that preclude future actions from being possible, which can degrade Liberty in general. For instance, the addict can in no wise consider himself to be liber once he can no longer choose to not take drugs. The initial act might have been considered a type of liberty, but now other liberties have been taken away. This is a moral hazard, and it is a worry to those who see sexuality divorced from its natural partner, which is biological reproduction.
Garrett Hardin used this same Hegelian principle in his 1968 essay, stating essentially that we have to give up the natural Right to breed if we want to maintain the "freedom" of our excessive lifestyle. Ironically, Hardin would probably agree with your position on how this is to be done: since our lifestyles are unnatural anyway, there is no reason why we shouldn't maintain them by unnatural means. He used the term "mutually assured coercion." His essay is the foundation of modern liberal views.
Anyway, I am merely trying to demonstrate that there exists a perfectly rational argument against a very loose abortion law. No trolling intended.
who would present profund insight into the value of personal libery and personal choice, and then in the next breath condemn legal abortion as a great evil.
Because rational thinkers know that license is not the same as liberty. We have long understood the concept of "moral hazard," when natural consequences to our actions are artificially avoided. We become dependent upon the privilege of artifice, which cannot provide a coherent view upon the past generations of humanity that did not have such "rights" simply because they did not have the art. These things are not natural to man.
Under the philosophical system of Natural Jurisprudence, we can rightly choose our actions, not the consequences of them. There is indeed a personal choice: the choice to avoid making a fetus in the first place. We well understand the natural biological consequences of sexual intercourse, and the artificial circumvention of those natural phenomenon is the definition of "evil" to the philosopher of Natural Law.
For the casuist with these same underlying principles, a case for abortion could be made under certain circumstances (rape, incest, physical harm), but never as a licentious act.
No theistic religion is necessary to make such an argument.
Yes, I agree with you that the founding documents are full of religious language. The Founders were, however, very careful to remove this religious language from the confines of a specific denomination or even a general religion. It is religious, but does not belong to "a religion." This is what I mean by "positive secularism," which in fact is a term that I borrow from Benedict XVI (I am not a Catholic myself).
I disagree with those who claim that America was founded on Christian principles, or that Christianity is at the core of it. I think this argument probably began in the days of Noah Webster (William Henry Harrison was the only President to use distinctly Christian verbiage in his Inaugural address, which was written by Webster). Yes, we have Christian principles in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights. But they are also principles that can be found in Buddhism, Islam, and in other religions.
The language of the American Forefathers is in fact the language of Deism, which is very non-denominational, but also friendly to the idea of religious faith in general.
The Founders were also influenced by the various philosophies of Natural Law, including those established by John Locke, and to a lesser extent, Adam Smith.
It was their belief that the "Almighty" revealed Himself by the laws of nature and through Reason; thus, from Nature arise the Rights of Man.
I was impressed, while reading Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, with how frequently he refers to the observation that "Nature seems to recommend" a certain action over another.
So, according to our theory, we receive our rights from Nature, or from Providence, or from the Almighty, or from the Creator. These are called Natural Rights, and the system that establishes them is a system of Natural Jurisprudence.
Natural Rights are basic: A Right to Life, a Right to Liberty, and a Right to Property. All of these things must be tempered by what is natural, what is recommended by nature in general, what is proportionate, and what is proper to man. Thus, excess, artifice, and casuistry fall outside of the protections provided by the Constitution. Lesser "rights" are sometimes granted by men, and these deal with the proper use of human arts and with individual cases where justice doesn't seem to be served by following the absolute principle, or letter of the law. Sometimes we call these rights civil liberties, but most often we confuse them with our Natural rights and suppose that all rights are equal. We have become very egalitarian in this regard as well.
When we apply the civil liberty model of the casuists at the Federal government level, we are implementing what Thomas Hobbes described in Leviathan, which was the de facto system in Britain at the time of George III.
Under such a system, there are many rights and liberties, yes; but they are all granted rather arbitrarily by something other than Nature, and thus they may be waived at any time. These rights are fleeting, often licentiously based, and usually designed to maximize central authority while keeping the subjects as happy as possible. For instance, people often equate great material wealth with freedom. We also tend to equate licentiousness with liberty: The idea that whatever I do that does not infringe the "right" of someone else, is therefore my "right." This is not the American theory.
While you and I might admit that Rights "correctly" come from the Creator, we must remember that the "idea" of Rights is experienced subjectively. "Rights" cannot be applied to empirical tests, only to reason and philosophy.
Although the pronouncement that ours is the only "correct" way to view Rights happens to coincide with the philosophy of the Founding Fathers, it presumes a certain epistemology. You and I accept subjective evidence to prove the reality of abstract things, but others do not. So, when we talk about our "correct" interpretation of the origin of rights, we are not persuading anyone who is not already in our camp.
What about the idea of property? To be free, should there be a notion of property? Should people own things they need? Like food, clothing, and shelter? Where does the idea of ownership end? Describe the act of owning. How can you know if you own something or not?
How does one violate the "self-ownership" of another? When can you decide that this concept of liberty has been violated?
Does your philosophy tolerate others whose ideas of liberty differ to some extent or other? Or do believe that other people should follow this same formula?
When you have answered these questions, you will also have established a type of law.
We keep using abstract terms like "democracy," "right," "liberty," and "ideal."
We make statements about these things, take positions on them, argue about them, but never seem to define them.
Some would say that liberty and democracy are synonymous. Other would claim at least they are coincidental. You seem to have a different idea about it.
You seem to think that liberty for yourself and others is a good thing. What is your idea of liberty? Can it be achieved without law? How can it be guaranteed?
What a strange philosophy. Is it true, then, that our government is in the business of telling us how to live our lives? Do you believe that? Do you think that by casting your vote, you are telling someone else how to live?
What does that mean, to "tell another individual how to live?" What does that entail? Why do you believe it is wrong? Or rather, why do you believe that there isn't a "right" to do it? What is a "right?" Where do "rights" come from? Do they even exist? Why or why not?
These are questions that all participants of the government process should ask themselves.
In an case... whatever suits you best, I suppose. I think it's a good idea to vote because I believe in that aspect of the American system. If you do not, then I guess you shouldn't vote.
It does matter that you vote. If all the people who believed that their vote doesn't matter got up and cast their vote, they would at least make a very powerful statement, if not alter the outcome of the election.
If you have ever been to vote, you may have noticed that there are other choices on the ballot. You can even write in your own preference.
If you are interested, there is the Green Party, which often appeals to disaffected Democrats.
There is the Libertarian party, which sometimes appeals to the disaffected Republicans.
The Constitution party attempts to capture the spirit of the Founding Fathers and of the intent of our Constitution, although they have swapped the Founders' positive-secularism and Deism with a decidedly Christian view. So, this party sometimes appeals to the Christian demographic.
Those are the big alternatives. Of course, there are many other political parties in America. If you want communism, socialism, fascism, capitalism, centrism, and any other manner of "ism" that humans have invented or described, there is a party for you.
I personally am not affiliated with any political party, although I find virtues in all of the major parties (and also ideas that I do not agree with). But this does not prevent me from voting.
So, get involved. Ignore what people tell you about "throwing away your vote" or "as good as a vote for the bad guy." Vote for what you think is best.
Join the civilized world and stop executing people? Because euthanasia is what we do to dogs and people deserve more dignity than that?
So let's keep them in kennels until they die of natural causes. Is that the "civilized" way?
I suggest we give the condemned more dignified ways to leave this world; ways that require a little bravery and human courage to face. Keeping them in cages until they expire is just as barbaric as euthanasia.
How does one feel good about administering justice to the guilty, anyway? Justice has to do with equity, and to deal equitably with a criminal requires administration of inhumanity. We'll join the civilized world when we stop having criminals. There are mighty few in the "civilized" club at the moment.
If there is no law against a thing, does that make a "right?"
It's hard to nail down what "being offensive" means and whether or not there are rights involved.
Some people are offensive to other people just by being alive. On the other hand, there are those who go out of their way to be offensive on purpose. In the former case, the offensive person certainly has a right to be alive. In the latter case, someone else's rights might have been infringed by the offender, or at least great privileges taken where no right exists.
What this means is that we ought to use good personal judgment when we assume privileges. As Americans, we assume many privileges that we do not have rights to, according to our theory of natural law. Sometimes we even establish privileges by legislation, and these are usually called "civil liberties." There is nothing wrong with civil liberties. It could be said that we have a natural right to civil liberties.
The problem is that people (who do not understand the philosophy of natural jurisprudence as laid down by John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and others) confuse civil liberties with natural rights.
If you listen to the politicians, the lack of "critical thinking and objective reasoning" is rarely found on their list of grievances with the school system.
According to 21st-century America, schools fail when they no longer mass produce a population fit to compete in a global economy.
Critical thinking and objective reasoning do nothing to advance that agenda. What kind of mass production consumer economy can survive when people know how to think and reason?
I think you mistake the whole point of a factory-style education. If you want "critical thinking" to become an attribute of a successful education system, then you better start re-thinking the whole thing from the ground up.
You have entirely missed the point of my argument.
I am not arguing, and never have argued, that empirical and undeniable proof of God exists. If it does exist, I have not seen it. If I have seen it, then I haven't comprehended it. I have never made such a claim, and have no argument with you. You seem to be very well prepared to take issue with only one aspect of a disagreement when someone calls you into question.
In the second place, your main point, the contradiction you identified, the bit of irony, I never once criticized. In fact, my first phrase to you was something along the lines of "nice post." This is because it is very evident, and very keen of you, to call out this apparent contradiction. From a rational, empirical world-view, your observation is spot-on. I never argued against it at all.
My argument was for something far subtler that, even after all of this literary exposition, remains apparently entirely obscure to you.
My argument is simply that, from one who claims such a high regard for rational thought, it is very odd to read language that is considered poor form when making a rational argument.
Yes, good job for pointing out the irony in a religious person's statement. You should have left off there. But no, you couldn't resist making a silly statement of your own: a generalization that implies some sort of absolute certainty regarding a whole class of people. Those kinds of assertions aren't made by reasonable people, they are made by religious people.
I have a problem with that. If you are going to be an atheist, be a good one. Atheism doesn't need the type of rhetoric that will often go unchallenged when the religious begin to argue. That's the argument I'm making. I'm merely validating Mr. Hoffer when he pointed out that everybody seems to be religious in our day, whether they think they are or not. After all, there is a meaning for "religious" that doesn't include God at all.
Thank you for your magnificent demonstration of religious polemical argument. This is a classic sample. Let us examine the finer points.
The religious man begins with a flourish: he must first find a label for his opponent's argument. He will call it sophistry. In fact, the religious man attempts no sort of dialectic examination whatsoever. In truth he has no argument, but he relies instead upon artifice to establish his position. So, sophistry it is.
The religious man can get away with this sort of non-argument because he perceives within himself a type of final authority. He does not need to argue, because whatever adjective he uses to describe his opponent's thinking is obviously true. It is self-evident. The religious man, you see, has utter certainty in himself. There is no question in his mind. The questions have all been settled.
This self-confidence lends the religious man a boldness needed for his next attack: name-calling. The enemy is a "god-lover." Religious men can afford to treat their opponents in this manner. They have a natural disdain for those whose ideas don't coincide with their own world-view.
Without missing a beat, the religious man introduces his next non-argument: the unsubstantiated generalization. He claims that these "god-lovers" are typically incapable, and that their mode of language is something called "twisting words." God-lovers "twist words." They must.
You see, the religious man only preaches to the choir. He is sharing his disdain among those who already believe as he does, and having his little chuckle at the word-twisting god-lover. Well, god-lovers are incapable of comprehending argument, so why attempt persuasion? This language isn't for them.
Next, the religious man incorrectly summarizes his opponent's argument. He produces a paraphrase that sounds something like what has been said, but introduces entirely new ideas to make the arguments seem banal and silly. He knows that other religious people will not have read his opponent's argument carefully, or will not have come to their own conclusion by themselves. So he can risk re-stating the argument so that it is firmly in his own rhetorical territory, where he can safely attack it.
The original argument made a well-known logical assertion that metaphysical attributes can't be empirically proven. In the paraphrased argument, this assertion becomes "it's difficult to put into words the obviousness [of certain things]." To the religious man, his axioms are "obvious" and quite provable, but they happen to be "difficult to articulate" apparently. But this verbiage was not in the original argument.
Then this: "people aren't allowed to ask for evidence for the silly crap you invent."
Of course, this was never said, nor even implied in the original argument. The careful reader of the argument would have seen that the exact opposite was in fact advocated: that people are allowed to accept subjective evidence for self-evident axioms. People can sense reason, so therefore it can be accepted. People can sense quantity, so therefore it can be accepted. People can sense spirituality, so therefore it can be accepted. That was the real argument, but the religious man must turn it into something else. It is "invented crap."
Then the religious man turns to his old stand-bys: straw men and caricatures. Although the argument never said anything about specific theologies, the religious man has a particular straw man that he favors and knows how to burn down quite effectively. He trots out the Judeo-Christian straw-man and makes him up in the most absurd way possible, using the language of ridicule. Oh, how it burns! See? This is what my opponent believes in! Isn't it absurd?
You see, the religious man is a common bigot. He presumes to tell those whom he wishes to discredit what they believe in, and hopes to make them feel silly about it. This is his method.
The religious man ends his diatribe by claiming that his opponent has violated one of his articles of faith: he h
Subjective "truth" is just opinion without any supporting facts. Is it? Then the entire field of mathematics is based upon opinion, as are the studies of philosophy, reason and logic. The attributes of reason, logic and quantity all apply themselves to our subjective senses. We can neither see, hear, smell, taste, nor touch any of those abstract ideas, so we are left with subjective senses to rely upon. These ideas are not empirical objects, therefore they must be mere "opinion" by your estimation.
It is unfortunate, then, that science should rely so heavily on the abstract field of mathematics. It casts a pall of religion over the whole thing.
I see that you have a very low opinion of such subjective things, because you believe that subjectivity and opinion are the same thing.
What "subjective" really means, is that you experience the thing with a sense other than your empirical senses. The subjective sense is an inner sense that assigns a quantity to a set, a moral value to an action, and a truth value to an assertion. When we experience these things differently from each other, we call it opinion. When we experience these things in the same way, we call it truth. Either way, it is subjective. You can dismiss all subjective experience as silly opinion of you want, but doing so eliminates our ability to assign meaning to anything.
That we're having this discussion is proof that I believe in reason, but what I believe is immaterial. Oh, I know that you believe in reason. I don't doubt that at all. I'm merely asking you to prove that reason exists, using "external proof," as you put it, so that you can be consistent with your stated principle that only objective things should be believed in.
You shouldn't believe in reason unless there is some external proof for it, right? But, empirical proof does not exist for metaphysical attributes, such as reason and logic; empirical objective proof only exists for entities that inhabit the physical world, and it relies on reason to make it all work. So, what is your evidence for reason as a truth? I can guess that it is internal and subjective evidence, just like the evidence for the existence of God that other people accept as truth.
Merely stating that you believe in reason is not good enough for science. It makes you sound like a religious believer. The scientific method requires a different standard for proof, but accepts reason as an axiom. On faith.
You see, you have within you the same kinds of subjective senses that allow you to assign value and meaning to things, such as your criticism of believers. What you fail to see is how the thing you criticize in others arises from the same subjective sense that allows you to make judgments in the first place. It's a terrible contradiction for an atheist to fall into, akin to the infighting we see among religious sects.
I'm more impressed with atheists such as Hemant Mehta, who appear to understand the philosophical and logical ramifications of their beliefs. They understand the fallacy of criticizing those who do not share their epistemology, because they know it is possible to remain rational within the framework of many different epistemologies. Such atheists have a true internal consistency and have good subjective reasons for choosing atheism. It is too bad to encounter atheists who use the same logical deficiencies as those whom they criticize. such atheists consider themselves the most objective of all people and have nothing but disdain for the "religious." Just like the religious.
Again, your post shows that belief in religion lacks critical thought. The gods of the old roman empire are not the same gods that Spinoza or Newton believed in - so, which one is the "real deal?" At least one of them isn't, so your "argument from authority", always a bad idea, fails on the face.
Wrong fallacy. You made a generalization about how "people who believe in god" can't be rational. To counter your assertion, I produced individuals who do believe in God and also believe in reason. This is not an appeal to authority. I was not appealing to the "authority" of these illustrious thinkers as some sort of proof of the existence of God, merely to demonstrate that there are indeed rational individuals who do believe in God.
I'm not "suggesting" - I'm stating as a fact that these people are indulging in superstition, that they've checked their brain cells at the door in their unquestioning acceptance of a belief with no objective proof. What ever happened to "The person who makes extrordinary claims must provide extrordinary proof"? Take it on faith? They should, if they were capable of critical thinking, take it with a grain of salt.
Ah, atheist dogma. Give me an experiment whereby I can vet your so-called "fact."
Subjective truth does not require objective proof. Do you believe in rights? Prove that they exist. Do you believe in quantity? Prove that such a thing exists. Do you believe in ethics? Demonstrate them with the scientific method. There is no objective proof for these abstract concepts. Likewise, those who believe in God may do so based upon subjective evidence and nothing more.
Your epistemology demands only objective proof. Nothing else will do. It is a limited world-view which fails to contemplate any other possibilities in a rational sense.
Not all theists are rational, it is true; but even the presence of a single exception among the bunch disproves your former assertion of "fact." That makes you a dogmatist.
No, it's a statement *about* religion, not a "religious statement. Just like if I make a statement *about* money, my statement is not itself money. Don't confuse the label for a thing with the thing itself (something object-oriented programmers forget all the time).
Earlier you accused me of making an appeal to authority; let me do so now. The social critic, Eric Hoffer, has been called the most literate man of the 20th century. He wrote a book called "The True Believer," and in it he said that although ours is a godless world, it is anything but irreligious. Everywhere the True Believer is on the march, shaping the world after his own image.
The greatest delusion of the atheist (though not all atheists), the one that makes him as dangerous as any zealot, is that he supposes that he is entirely irreligious. He believes that religion only applies to those who believe in God.
And so, when you say that all believers are irrational, you have made a statement that requires faith to believe in. Oh yes: faith. Why? Because you can never know, first hand, objectively, for yourself, the mind and disposition of all who believe in God. Such knowledge is impossible to obtain, unless you happen to be omniscient and I just don't know it.
No, you can't know whether such people are rational or not; you can only classify them according to your own limited epistemology, applying a particular inductive reasoning to the lot of them. Yes, it was a religious statement about religion. That was the irony of it.
They believe in something extrordinary without any proof whatsoever. It is *their* judgment that I question. *Their* inability to think critically. *Their ability to step outside the bounds that they have vested so much in, socially, emotionally, psychologically, and look at the FACTS. Since they have no FACTS to back up their beliefs, what is left is "I believe... " without any reason to believe except "because!" That works for a tw
Of course, critical thinking and logic are anathema to anyone who believes in god.
Baruch Spinoza believed in a God. So did Isaac Newton. The Deists from the old Empire of Reason, the philosophers of Natural Law, believed in God. Immanuel Kant believed in God. There are plenty of rational people whose epistemology includes the possibility of subjective truth. They believe in God and remain rational. They believe in Rights and remain rational. They believe in quantities and remain rational. They believe in beauty, love, ethics, right, and wrong and remain rational. They find it possible to reason about more than what may be seen or heard or touched or tasted or smelled. None of them are part of a super-conspiracy of coercers who desire power over people by subjecting them, through fear, to some imaginary concept of "good and evil."
Now, you have suggested that people who believe in God - theists - don't want to (or can't) think logically. You are taking a group of individuals, whose own minds and experiences you have never personally known, and made an assumption about them. You are speaking from a position of arrogance and presumption. Your epistemology constitutes the one true mode of truth telling. Perhaps you feel that you have enough certainty in your own objectivity, that you can safely exclude "anyone who believes in God" from the salvation of critical thinking and logic.
Perhaps you have witnessed poor and illogical thinking, and then made judgments about the conclusions arrived at by religious people who participate in such thinking. Argumentum ad logicam.
Do you know what your statement reminds me of? It reminds me of hellfire and damnation preachers who eagerly condemn to hell all those who don't share their beliefs. You can't be saved because you don't accept the Bible! Righteousness and good works are anathema to anyone who does not believe in God!
Do you know what irony is? It's when a man fancies himself reasonable and logical, yet he slips and betrays his mind to be of the same quality as those whom he despises. In fact, your statement about "anyone who believes in god" is a religious one, because you have no way of knowing for yourself the validity of such a claim.
Ok, so here we have an article about Big-Brother-style government in China. It seems pretty important, right? This is a big deal.
But actually, the more interesting thing, in my opinion, is the Slashdot commentary about it:
An article in Rolling Stone? The pop-culture rag? How important can it be? Why haven't I heard of this before? Can this source be trusted?
Let's consider the article itself, found on RollingStone.com. There, next to the boring black-and-white text (that you actually have to read) are lovely full-color ads. Meet the Spartans! The all-new VW Tiguan! Caffeinated liquer! Come to the dark side of Toyota! More than 1000 smileys and emoticons... FREE!! Meet sexy singles!
What am I to make of all this? Does China's all-seeing eye matter? Does it matter as much as sexy singles or sleek new cars? Flashy emoticons? Pop culture? Or is it just another maybe-factoid to file away in my data-bank of useless knowledge?
At least a handful of Slashdot commentaries don't buy it. But others seem almost frantic: the sky is falling!
So we'll argue about it. But what does it mean? Is there something to be done? Not likely: we'll forget this bit of news shortly. There are a million other stories ready to inundate us with something new to get momentarily impassioned about.
So, while we're fretting about Orwellian nightmares, something else equally interesting is happening.
The social critic, Neil Postman, picked up on it. So did Aldus Huxley and even Ray Bradbury. Their dystopias look very much like Orwell's, except for one critical point: There is no Big Brother, no bogeyman or coercive external agent to suppress information.
How can people be manipulated to act as cogs in a great machine? Not a communist machine, but as agents of the Invisible Hand? How can we make servants to a mass-production economy?
Too much information, it turns out, is just as mind-numbing as too little. Stories of great importance in a pop-culture magazine? How does one discern what matters and what doesn't? What is real, and what is fake? All information is now equal: the ravings of True Believers, the theories of scientists, the saccarin glurge of advertising, the maudlin patriotism of politicians, this post on slashdot... It's all carries the same weight.
Choose your preferred information opiate and plug in. You'll forget, soon enough, what really matters. It's the non-thought of received ideas now. There is no time to own thoughts anymore. Even the skeptics have their own preferred formulas for labeling things as useful or not. Besides, after 6.5 hours in front of Tivo, GTA IV, iPod and StumbleUpon, who has time sit and think?
We mostly live, like Dilbert, in 4x6 cloth-covered cubicles, and in small automobile cabs. Our human relationships consist of attaching little machines to our ears and fingertips as we zoom about, alone. Our world-view is shaped by an electronic fire-hose, where everything is made irrelevant by sheer volume.
How will things be different when we are spied on and brainwashed? Whose dystopia is the preferred one? Maybe that is something to argue about, but it seems silly.
Slashdot Mirror
You are using the language of the Faithful to describe scientific knowledge.
"We" don't know anything. The people who "know" are the ones who have done the primary research. Have you? The rest of us have to look at evidence, as 2nd-hand witnesses, and then accept the testimony of those we have no reason to disbelieve.
For instance, "you" have likely only seen third-party evidence of the roundness of the earth. Perhaps video footage and photographs. Maybe from high up in an airplane, you noticed the earth's curvature. That isn't a terribly conclusive piece of first-hand evidence, though.
What primary evidence do you have for the age of the universe? Probably none. But, you believe those who say they do have evidence. You take their word for it in good faith.
The scientific statement is this: It is certain that the earth's shape is a spheroid and that evidence suggests the age of the universe to be approximately 14 billion years.
I got my Kindle 2 last week. I never tried the original Kindle, nor any other ebook reader. I did read a lot of the forum chatter about issues such as no SD slot and only 1.4GB storage.
So far, I've been really happy with it, other than the brief panic over my credit card company shutting down my account after the dozens of ebook downloads tripped their fraud sniffer.
I'm not concerned about expandability. I've downloaded mostly the classics in literature and philosophy, including more than several entire collections of works from authors like Twain, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Verne, Dostoevsky, Locke, and many others. I currently have more reading material stored on it than I might hope to enjoy in a lifetime. So far, it all occupies a few hundred megabytes. It must be pretty sparse on pictures. ;)
I won't use the device for file storage, photos, music, or audiobooks. A smartphone, PDA, laptop, or MP3 player is better suited to those formats. Some people might prefer an all-in-one device, which the Kindle is not.
Some other criticisms of the Kindle include worries over the DRM, file organization, and the inconvenience of converting personal and other documents for use with the device. These are things to keep in mind, although they are all software issues that could conceivable by fixed with a simple update. I don't think the Kindle truly replaces the hardcopies that I value the most, but it is very handy to be able to tote them around in an electronic format.
Another great benefit, for me, is that the Kindle saves me from scribbling and marking my books. I can make annotations on the Kindle which are saved in a file. I can then easily search my annotations or download and organize them however I like. That is a great study help.
The Kindle is designed to mimic the simple readability of a book. It does that much fairly well.
Yes: News flash! Corked bottle moves without engine, paddles or sails!
Naw, the Internet is bad for kids because it keeps them stupid, like TV does. Actually, that's probably more true for teenagers than for smaller kids. My little kids are far more likely to use sites like NASA Kids or Nat'l Geographic than my teenager is.
Teenagers don't use the Internet to learn things. They use it to surf You Tube and social networking sites where the tenor of discourse is intensely adolescent. Teenagers are also more likely to intentionally look for trouble on the net.
One of my younger kids did accidentally come across some sort of "sexy games site" while looking for online Flash games to play. I turned on the parental controls after that, but my kid was clueless the whole time because the site wasn't obnoxiously explicit. I don't think he noticed the erotic content at all, happily playing away in the very public place where we keep our family computer. ;)
I'm more worried about the moronic content that teens think is "cool." They get sucked into these stupid chain letters, lolcats, epic fails, adolescent profanity laced dumb-talk, and so forth. There's plenty of it right here on Slashdot. Worse, teens begin to make lame and ridiculous videos of themselves being idiots, and then they post it on You Tube. I'm sure their future potential employers and constituents will find this material just as "cool," right?
We don't need to save kids from the Internet; we need to save the Internet from our kids. And save kids from themselves on the Internet.
No I don't think any of those things will happen, but I do think that Obama will be thoughtful and listen to people. For the record, I didn't vote for either of the big candidates.
Presidents can give direction and leadership, they can stick to principles and get things going, they can avoid corruption and be honorable men, but it often falls to the masses of "regular people" to make the real changes.
The fanatics and extremists come up with lists like yours and expect a worshipful leader to establish their unique vision of Utopia within the first 100 days. It takes a tyrant to effect that kind of change.
I think the kind of change that Obama had in mind was one of direction.
Hardin's essay is called "The Tragedy of the Commons." It is a great essay, even though I disagree with his recommendations. It's only about 16 pages, and worth the read. Hardin was a biologist. Some of his claims are, I think, unassailable. His advocacy of environmental responsibility is very eloquent.
As for your assessment of my view of sexuality: you are correct. I also suggest that blindness and deafness are commonly observed in nature. Yet, this does not cast into question the intended function of eyes and ears. The biological design of sexual anatomy is similarly well known, in spite of any strange uses we (or other creatures) may invent for them. Nature is the designer, not the user; Natural Law arises from nature's apparent recommendations and not from observed use cases (again, this is the distinction between principle and casuistry).
This does not mean that homosexuality, et al., do not exist naturally in some individuals. Ethics involving these situations are a good exercise for casuists, and the debate has been a heated one. Unfortunately it has been rather dominated by theism on one side and atheism on the other. It has become a religious debate.
I prefer the philosophical discussion. It is clear to me that licentious views of sexuality (and other acts) are incompatible with Natural Law philosophy, and that scientific advances over the past few centuries have not significantly altered the essential tenets of the Empiricists. I concede that Rights come from Nature.
It can be reasonably argued, as you have done, that rights are granted rather arbitrarily by those who have the guns. This is not my belief, but rights and liberty, after all, are subjective ideas.
I do have a higher opinion of the philosophies that were established during the Age of Reason. I consider them to be a good deal more than mere hand-waving, in spite of the failings and contradictions that were sometimes present in practice. I am not a moral relativist, although I do believe cases should be considered in the light of principles, and that exceptions can be made.
The description of liberty that you provide is certainly one way of looking at it (and very popular today), but it is not the definition of liberty that was accepted by the Natural Law philosophers who established much of what later became American jurisprudence. Your description of "liberty" is what Adam Smith termed a "licentious system."
The concept of liberty that I am talking about is intertwined with the idea of "Rights." What are Rights, and where do they come from? According to the Natural Law philosophers, Rights are endowed by Nature. If this is true, then ancient humans had largely the same set of natural Rights that modern humans have. We may have greater privileges today, but our Rights are essentially the same.
This does not mean that we don't have rights to our art. Humans naturally create new things, and thus we would naturally have some rights to those things. However, we do not have natural Rights to actions that are only made possible by the existence of "artificial" things.
In the area of human artifice, we must rely on casuistry to determine the liberties that can be properly taken with them. This is where our civic discourse gets ugly, particularly when people confuse these "civil liberties" (granted by the State, or "Leviathan," as Hobbes had it) with natural Rights (granted by Nature as John Locke claims).
You are correct that a "carve-out" for rape can not be made under the general principle of Natural Law. That is why I qualified that claim with casuistry. You must be a casuist in order to do it. You have to say: Here is a case that is an exception to the Rule. This woman did not choose pregnancy by her own actions, and therefore has no moral responsibility for the consequence. Thus, if by our art we can avoid the consequence, it would be Just to do so.
Casuists recognize that there do exist apparent exceptions and exemptions to the natural order of things, and they attempt to establish privileges that take these exceptions into consideration, given the context of the times.
The point is that we don't confuse our privileges, or civil liberties, with natural Rights. There is no natural Right to abortion (I mislead: sometimes a woman's body will spontaneously and safely abort a fetus. This is called miscarriage; but it is not a chosen action).
Liberty, in the sense that I speak of it, requires Self Command. Without it, our actions could produce consequences that preclude future actions from being possible, which can degrade Liberty in general. For instance, the addict can in no wise consider himself to be liber once he can no longer choose to not take drugs. The initial act might have been considered a type of liberty, but now other liberties have been taken away. This is a moral hazard, and it is a worry to those who see sexuality divorced from its natural partner, which is biological reproduction.
Garrett Hardin used this same Hegelian principle in his 1968 essay, stating essentially that we have to give up the natural Right to breed if we want to maintain the "freedom" of our excessive lifestyle. Ironically, Hardin would probably agree with your position on how this is to be done: since our lifestyles are unnatural anyway, there is no reason why we shouldn't maintain them by unnatural means. He used the term "mutually assured coercion." His essay is the foundation of modern liberal views.
Anyway, I am merely trying to demonstrate that there exists a perfectly rational argument against a very loose abortion law. No trolling intended.
Because rational thinkers know that license is not the same as liberty. We have long understood the concept of "moral hazard," when natural consequences to our actions are artificially avoided. We become dependent upon the privilege of artifice, which cannot provide a coherent view upon the past generations of humanity that did not have such "rights" simply because they did not have the art. These things are not natural to man.
Under the philosophical system of Natural Jurisprudence, we can rightly choose our actions, not the consequences of them. There is indeed a personal choice: the choice to avoid making a fetus in the first place. We well understand the natural biological consequences of sexual intercourse, and the artificial circumvention of those natural phenomenon is the definition of "evil" to the philosopher of Natural Law.
For the casuist with these same underlying principles, a case for abortion could be made under certain circumstances (rape, incest, physical harm), but never as a licentious act.
No theistic religion is necessary to make such an argument.
Yes, I agree with you that the founding documents are full of religious language. The Founders were, however, very careful to remove this religious language from the confines of a specific denomination or even a general religion. It is religious, but does not belong to "a religion." This is what I mean by "positive secularism," which in fact is a term that I borrow from Benedict XVI (I am not a Catholic myself).
I disagree with those who claim that America was founded on Christian principles, or that Christianity is at the core of it. I think this argument probably began in the days of Noah Webster (William Henry Harrison was the only President to use distinctly Christian verbiage in his Inaugural address, which was written by Webster). Yes, we have Christian principles in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights. But they are also principles that can be found in Buddhism, Islam, and in other religions.
The language of the American Forefathers is in fact the language of Deism, which is very non-denominational, but also friendly to the idea of religious faith in general.
The Founders were also influenced by the various philosophies of Natural Law, including those established by John Locke, and to a lesser extent, Adam Smith.
It was their belief that the "Almighty" revealed Himself by the laws of nature and through Reason; thus, from Nature arise the Rights of Man.
I was impressed, while reading Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, with how frequently he refers to the observation that "Nature seems to recommend" a certain action over another.
So, according to our theory, we receive our rights from Nature, or from Providence, or from the Almighty, or from the Creator. These are called Natural Rights, and the system that establishes them is a system of Natural Jurisprudence.
Natural Rights are basic: A Right to Life, a Right to Liberty, and a Right to Property. All of these things must be tempered by what is natural, what is recommended by nature in general, what is proportionate, and what is proper to man. Thus, excess, artifice, and casuistry fall outside of the protections provided by the Constitution. Lesser "rights" are sometimes granted by men, and these deal with the proper use of human arts and with individual cases where justice doesn't seem to be served by following the absolute principle, or letter of the law. Sometimes we call these rights civil liberties, but most often we confuse them with our Natural rights and suppose that all rights are equal. We have become very egalitarian in this regard as well.
When we apply the civil liberty model of the casuists at the Federal government level, we are implementing what Thomas Hobbes described in Leviathan, which was the de facto system in Britain at the time of George III.
Under such a system, there are many rights and liberties, yes; but they are all granted rather arbitrarily by something other than Nature, and thus they may be waived at any time. These rights are fleeting, often licentiously based, and usually designed to maximize central authority while keeping the subjects as happy as possible. For instance, people often equate great material wealth with freedom. We also tend to equate licentiousness with liberty: The idea that whatever I do that does not infringe the "right" of someone else, is therefore my "right." This is not the American theory.
While you and I might admit that Rights "correctly" come from the Creator, we must remember that the "idea" of Rights is experienced subjectively. "Rights" cannot be applied to empirical tests, only to reason and philosophy.
Although the pronouncement that ours is the only "correct" way to view Rights happens to coincide with the philosophy of the Founding Fathers, it presumes a certain epistemology. You and I accept subjective evidence to prove the reality of abstract things, but others do not. So, when we talk about our "correct" interpretation of the origin of rights, we are not persuading anyone who is not already in our camp.
What about the idea of property? To be free, should there be a notion of property? Should people own things they need? Like food, clothing, and shelter? Where does the idea of ownership end? Describe the act of owning. How can you know if you own something or not?
How does one violate the "self-ownership" of another? When can you decide that this concept of liberty has been violated?
Does your philosophy tolerate others whose ideas of liberty differ to some extent or other? Or do believe that other people should follow this same formula?
When you have answered these questions, you will also have established a type of law.
We keep using abstract terms like "democracy," "right," "liberty," and "ideal."
We make statements about these things, take positions on them, argue about them, but never seem to define them.
Some would say that liberty and democracy are synonymous. Other would claim at least they are coincidental. You seem to have a different idea about it.
You seem to think that liberty for yourself and others is a good thing. What is your idea of liberty? Can it be achieved without law? How can it be guaranteed?
What a strange philosophy. Is it true, then, that our government is in the business of telling us how to live our lives? Do you believe that? Do you think that by casting your vote, you are telling someone else how to live?
What does that mean, to "tell another individual how to live?" What does that entail? Why do you believe it is wrong? Or rather, why do you believe that there isn't a "right" to do it? What is a "right?" Where do "rights" come from? Do they even exist? Why or why not?
These are questions that all participants of the government process should ask themselves.
In an case... whatever suits you best, I suppose. I think it's a good idea to vote because I believe in that aspect of the American system. If you do not, then I guess you shouldn't vote.
It does matter that you vote. If all the people who believed that their vote doesn't matter got up and cast their vote, they would at least make a very powerful statement, if not alter the outcome of the election.
I'm glad to hear that you will vote anyway.
If you have ever been to vote, you may have noticed that there are other choices on the ballot. You can even write in your own preference.
If you are interested, there is the Green Party, which often appeals to disaffected Democrats.
There is the Libertarian party, which sometimes appeals to the disaffected Republicans.
The Constitution party attempts to capture the spirit of the Founding Fathers and of the intent of our Constitution, although they have swapped the Founders' positive-secularism and Deism with a decidedly Christian view. So, this party sometimes appeals to the Christian demographic.
Those are the big alternatives. Of course, there are many other political parties in America. If you want communism, socialism, fascism, capitalism, centrism, and any other manner of "ism" that humans have invented or described, there is a party for you.
I personally am not affiliated with any political party, although I find virtues in all of the major parties (and also ideas that I do not agree with). But this does not prevent me from voting.
So, get involved. Ignore what people tell you about "throwing away your vote" or "as good as a vote for the bad guy." Vote for what you think is best.
Join the civilized world and stop executing people? Because euthanasia is what we do to dogs and people deserve more dignity than that?
So let's keep them in kennels until they die of natural causes. Is that the "civilized" way?
I suggest we give the condemned more dignified ways to leave this world; ways that require a little bravery and human courage to face. Keeping them in cages until they expire is just as barbaric as euthanasia.
How does one feel good about administering justice to the guilty, anyway? Justice has to do with equity, and to deal equitably with a criminal requires administration of inhumanity. We'll join the civilized world when we stop having criminals. There are mighty few in the "civilized" club at the moment.
What are rights and where do they come from?
If there is no law against a thing, does that make a "right?"
It's hard to nail down what "being offensive" means and whether or not there are rights involved.
Some people are offensive to other people just by being alive. On the other hand, there are those who go out of their way to be offensive on purpose. In the former case, the offensive person certainly has a right to be alive. In the latter case, someone else's rights might have been infringed by the offender, or at least great privileges taken where no right exists.
What this means is that we ought to use good personal judgment when we assume privileges. As Americans, we assume many privileges that we do not have rights to, according to our theory of natural law. Sometimes we even establish privileges by legislation, and these are usually called "civil liberties." There is nothing wrong with civil liberties. It could be said that we have a natural right to civil liberties.
The problem is that people (who do not understand the philosophy of natural jurisprudence as laid down by John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and others) confuse civil liberties with natural rights.
If you listen to the politicians, the lack of "critical thinking and objective reasoning" is rarely found on their list of grievances with the school system.
According to 21st-century America, schools fail when they no longer mass produce a population fit to compete in a global economy.
Critical thinking and objective reasoning do nothing to advance that agenda. What kind of mass production consumer economy can survive when people know how to think and reason?
I think you mistake the whole point of a factory-style education. If you want "critical thinking" to become an attribute of a successful education system, then you better start re-thinking the whole thing from the ground up.
If patience were something we could quantify reliably, I suspect that we would find computers to have none at all.
The reason? Computers also have no boredom.
You have entirely missed the point of my argument.
I am not arguing, and never have argued, that empirical and undeniable proof of God exists. If it does exist, I have not seen it. If I have seen it, then I haven't comprehended it. I have never made such a claim, and have no argument with you. You seem to be very well prepared to take issue with only one aspect of a disagreement when someone calls you into question.
In the second place, your main point, the contradiction you identified, the bit of irony, I never once criticized. In fact, my first phrase to you was something along the lines of "nice post." This is because it is very evident, and very keen of you, to call out this apparent contradiction. From a rational, empirical world-view, your observation is spot-on. I never argued against it at all.
My argument was for something far subtler that, even after all of this literary exposition, remains apparently entirely obscure to you.
My argument is simply that, from one who claims such a high regard for rational thought, it is very odd to read language that is considered poor form when making a rational argument.
Yes, good job for pointing out the irony in a religious person's statement. You should have left off there. But no, you couldn't resist making a silly statement of your own: a generalization that implies some sort of absolute certainty regarding a whole class of people. Those kinds of assertions aren't made by reasonable people, they are made by religious people.
I have a problem with that. If you are going to be an atheist, be a good one. Atheism doesn't need the type of rhetoric that will often go unchallenged when the religious begin to argue. That's the argument I'm making. I'm merely validating Mr. Hoffer when he pointed out that everybody seems to be religious in our day, whether they think they are or not. After all, there is a meaning for "religious" that doesn't include God at all.
I rest my case.
Thank you for your magnificent demonstration of religious polemical argument. This is a classic sample. Let us examine the finer points.
The religious man begins with a flourish: he must first find a label for his opponent's argument. He will call it sophistry. In fact, the religious man attempts no sort of dialectic examination whatsoever. In truth he has no argument, but he relies instead upon artifice to establish his position. So, sophistry it is.
The religious man can get away with this sort of non-argument because he perceives within himself a type of final authority. He does not need to argue, because whatever adjective he uses to describe his opponent's thinking is obviously true. It is self-evident. The religious man, you see, has utter certainty in himself. There is no question in his mind. The questions have all been settled.
This self-confidence lends the religious man a boldness needed for his next attack: name-calling. The enemy is a "god-lover." Religious men can afford to treat their opponents in this manner. They have a natural disdain for those whose ideas don't coincide with their own world-view.
Without missing a beat, the religious man introduces his next non-argument: the unsubstantiated generalization. He claims that these "god-lovers" are typically incapable, and that their mode of language is something called "twisting words." God-lovers "twist words." They must.
You see, the religious man only preaches to the choir. He is sharing his disdain among those who already believe as he does, and having his little chuckle at the word-twisting god-lover. Well, god-lovers are incapable of comprehending argument, so why attempt persuasion? This language isn't for them.
Next, the religious man incorrectly summarizes his opponent's argument. He produces a paraphrase that sounds something like what has been said, but introduces entirely new ideas to make the arguments seem banal and silly. He knows that other religious people will not have read his opponent's argument carefully, or will not have come to their own conclusion by themselves. So he can risk re-stating the argument so that it is firmly in his own rhetorical territory, where he can safely attack it.
The original argument made a well-known logical assertion that metaphysical attributes can't be empirically proven. In the paraphrased argument, this assertion becomes "it's difficult to put into words the obviousness [of certain things]." To the religious man, his axioms are "obvious" and quite provable, but they happen to be "difficult to articulate" apparently. But this verbiage was not in the original argument.
Then this: "people aren't allowed to ask for evidence for the silly crap you invent."
Of course, this was never said, nor even implied in the original argument. The careful reader of the argument would have seen that the exact opposite was in fact advocated: that people are allowed to accept subjective evidence for self-evident axioms. People can sense reason, so therefore it can be accepted. People can sense quantity, so therefore it can be accepted. People can sense spirituality, so therefore it can be accepted. That was the real argument, but the religious man must turn it into something else. It is "invented crap."
Then the religious man turns to his old stand-bys: straw men and caricatures. Although the argument never said anything about specific theologies, the religious man has a particular straw man that he favors and knows how to burn down quite effectively. He trots out the Judeo-Christian straw-man and makes him up in the most absurd way possible, using the language of ridicule. Oh, how it burns! See? This is what my opponent believes in! Isn't it absurd?
You see, the religious man is a common bigot. He presumes to tell those whom he wishes to discredit what they believe in, and hopes to make them feel silly about it. This is his method.
The religious man ends his diatribe by claiming that his opponent has violated one of his articles of faith: he h
It is unfortunate, then, that science should rely so heavily on the abstract field of mathematics. It casts a pall of religion over the whole thing.
I see that you have a very low opinion of such subjective things, because you believe that subjectivity and opinion are the same thing.
What "subjective" really means, is that you experience the thing with a sense other than your empirical senses. The subjective sense is an inner sense that assigns a quantity to a set, a moral value to an action, and a truth value to an assertion. When we experience these things differently from each other, we call it opinion. When we experience these things in the same way, we call it truth. Either way, it is subjective. You can dismiss all subjective experience as silly opinion of you want, but doing so eliminates our ability to assign meaning to anything. That we're having this discussion is proof that I believe in reason, but what I believe is immaterial. Oh, I know that you believe in reason. I don't doubt that at all. I'm merely asking you to prove that reason exists, using "external proof," as you put it, so that you can be consistent with your stated principle that only objective things should be believed in.
You shouldn't believe in reason unless there is some external proof for it, right? But, empirical proof does not exist for metaphysical attributes, such as reason and logic; empirical objective proof only exists for entities that inhabit the physical world, and it relies on reason to make it all work. So, what is your evidence for reason as a truth? I can guess that it is internal and subjective evidence, just like the evidence for the existence of God that other people accept as truth.
Merely stating that you believe in reason is not good enough for science. It makes you sound like a religious believer. The scientific method requires a different standard for proof, but accepts reason as an axiom. On faith.
You see, you have within you the same kinds of subjective senses that allow you to assign value and meaning to things, such as your criticism of believers. What you fail to see is how the thing you criticize in others arises from the same subjective sense that allows you to make judgments in the first place. It's a terrible contradiction for an atheist to fall into, akin to the infighting we see among religious sects.
I'm more impressed with atheists such as Hemant Mehta, who appear to understand the philosophical and logical ramifications of their beliefs. They understand the fallacy of criticizing those who do not share their epistemology, because they know it is possible to remain rational within the framework of many different epistemologies. Such atheists have a true internal consistency and have good subjective reasons for choosing atheism. It is too bad to encounter atheists who use the same logical deficiencies as those whom they criticize. such atheists consider themselves the most objective of all people and have nothing but disdain for the "religious." Just like the religious.
Again, your post shows that belief in religion lacks critical thought. The gods of the old roman empire are not the same gods that Spinoza or Newton believed in - so, which one is the "real deal?" At least one of them isn't, so your "argument from authority", always a bad idea, fails on the face.
Wrong fallacy. You made a generalization about how "people who believe in god" can't be rational. To counter your assertion, I produced individuals who do believe in God and also believe in reason. This is not an appeal to authority. I was not appealing to the "authority" of these illustrious thinkers as some sort of proof of the existence of God, merely to demonstrate that there are indeed rational individuals who do believe in God.
I'm not "suggesting" - I'm stating as a fact that these people are indulging in superstition, that they've checked their brain cells at the door in their unquestioning acceptance of a belief with no objective proof. What ever happened to "The person who makes extrordinary claims must provide extrordinary proof"? Take it on faith? They should, if they were capable of critical thinking, take it with a grain of salt.
Ah, atheist dogma. Give me an experiment whereby I can vet your so-called "fact."
Subjective truth does not require objective proof. Do you believe in rights? Prove that they exist. Do you believe in quantity? Prove that such a thing exists. Do you believe in ethics? Demonstrate them with the scientific method. There is no objective proof for these abstract concepts. Likewise, those who believe in God may do so based upon subjective evidence and nothing more.
Your epistemology demands only objective proof. Nothing else will do. It is a limited world-view which fails to contemplate any other possibilities in a rational sense.
Not all theists are rational, it is true; but even the presence of a single exception among the bunch disproves your former assertion of "fact." That makes you a dogmatist.
No, it's a statement *about* religion, not a "religious statement. Just like if I make a statement *about* money, my statement is not itself money. Don't confuse the label for a thing with the thing itself (something object-oriented programmers forget all the time).
Earlier you accused me of making an appeal to authority; let me do so now. The social critic, Eric Hoffer, has been called the most literate man of the 20th century. He wrote a book called "The True Believer," and in it he said that although ours is a godless world, it is anything but irreligious. Everywhere the True Believer is on the march, shaping the world after his own image.
The greatest delusion of the atheist (though not all atheists), the one that makes him as dangerous as any zealot, is that he supposes that he is entirely irreligious. He believes that religion only applies to those who believe in God.
And so, when you say that all believers are irrational, you have made a statement that requires faith to believe in. Oh yes: faith. Why? Because you can never know, first hand, objectively, for yourself, the mind and disposition of all who believe in God. Such knowledge is impossible to obtain, unless you happen to be omniscient and I just don't know it.
No, you can't know whether such people are rational or not; you can only classify them according to your own limited epistemology, applying a particular inductive reasoning to the lot of them. Yes, it was a religious statement about religion. That was the irony of it.
They believe in something extrordinary without any proof whatsoever. It is *their* judgment that I question. *Their* inability to think critically. *Their ability to step outside the bounds that they have vested so much in, socially, emotionally, psychologically, and look at the FACTS. Since they have no FACTS to back up their beliefs, what is left is "I believe ... " without any reason to believe except "because!" That works for a tw
Good post, except for this bit:
Of course, critical thinking and logic are anathema to anyone who believes in god.
Baruch Spinoza believed in a God. So did Isaac Newton. The Deists from the old Empire of Reason, the philosophers of Natural Law, believed in God. Immanuel Kant believed in God. There are plenty of rational people whose epistemology includes the possibility of subjective truth. They believe in God and remain rational. They believe in Rights and remain rational. They believe in quantities and remain rational. They believe in beauty, love, ethics, right, and wrong and remain rational. They find it possible to reason about more than what may be seen or heard or touched or tasted or smelled. None of them are part of a super-conspiracy of coercers who desire power over people by subjecting them, through fear, to some imaginary concept of "good and evil."
Now, you have suggested that people who believe in God - theists - don't want to (or can't) think logically. You are taking a group of individuals, whose own minds and experiences you have never personally known, and made an assumption about them. You are speaking from a position of arrogance and presumption. Your epistemology constitutes the one true mode of truth telling. Perhaps you feel that you have enough certainty in your own objectivity, that you can safely exclude "anyone who believes in God" from the salvation of critical thinking and logic.
Perhaps you have witnessed poor and illogical thinking, and then made judgments about the conclusions arrived at by religious people who participate in such thinking. Argumentum ad logicam.
Do you know what your statement reminds me of? It reminds me of hellfire and damnation preachers who eagerly condemn to hell all those who don't share their beliefs. You can't be saved because you don't accept the Bible! Righteousness and good works are anathema to anyone who does not believe in God!
Do you know what irony is? It's when a man fancies himself reasonable and logical, yet he slips and betrays his mind to be of the same quality as those whom he despises. In fact, your statement about "anyone who believes in god" is a religious one, because you have no way of knowing for yourself the validity of such a claim.
I read your post, and my irony meter pegged.
Ok, so here we have an article about Big-Brother-style government in China. It seems pretty important, right? This is a big deal.
But actually, the more interesting thing, in my opinion, is the Slashdot commentary about it:
An article in Rolling Stone? The pop-culture rag? How important can it be? Why haven't I heard of this before? Can this source be trusted?
Let's consider the article itself, found on RollingStone.com. There, next to the boring black-and-white text (that you actually have to read) are lovely full-color ads. Meet the Spartans! The all-new VW Tiguan! Caffeinated liquer! Come to the dark side of Toyota! More than 1000 smileys and emoticons... FREE!! Meet sexy singles!
What am I to make of all this? Does China's all-seeing eye matter? Does it matter as much as sexy singles or sleek new cars? Flashy emoticons? Pop culture? Or is it just another maybe-factoid to file away in my data-bank of useless knowledge?
At least a handful of Slashdot commentaries don't buy it. But others seem almost frantic: the sky is falling!
So we'll argue about it. But what does it mean? Is there something to be done? Not likely: we'll forget this bit of news shortly. There are a million other stories ready to inundate us with something new to get momentarily impassioned about.
So, while we're fretting about Orwellian nightmares, something else equally interesting is happening.
The social critic, Neil Postman, picked up on it. So did Aldus Huxley and even Ray Bradbury. Their dystopias look very much like Orwell's, except for one critical point: There is no Big Brother, no bogeyman or coercive external agent to suppress information.
How can people be manipulated to act as cogs in a great machine? Not a communist machine, but as agents of the Invisible Hand? How can we make servants to a mass-production economy?
Too much information, it turns out, is just as mind-numbing as too little. Stories of great importance in a pop-culture magazine? How does one discern what matters and what doesn't? What is real, and what is fake? All information is now equal: the ravings of True Believers, the theories of scientists, the saccarin glurge of advertising, the maudlin patriotism of politicians, this post on slashdot... It's all carries the same weight.
Choose your preferred information opiate and plug in. You'll forget, soon enough, what really matters. It's the non-thought of received ideas now. There is no time to own thoughts anymore. Even the skeptics have their own preferred formulas for labeling things as useful or not. Besides, after 6.5 hours in front of Tivo, GTA IV, iPod and StumbleUpon, who has time sit and think?
We mostly live, like Dilbert, in 4x6 cloth-covered cubicles, and in small automobile cabs. Our human relationships consist of attaching little machines to our ears and fingertips as we zoom about, alone. Our world-view is shaped by an electronic fire-hose, where everything is made irrelevant by sheer volume.
How will things be different when we are spied on and brainwashed? Whose dystopia is the preferred one? Maybe that is something to argue about, but it seems silly.