701. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167438 by MPhil on April 24, 2008 at 3:41 am

I think the primary goal should be developing, discussing refining and helping to set in action "enlightenment strategy", how to go on the offensive, what strategy to employ to get the public to listen and to enlighten them ...

The fora aren't visible enough IMO.

702. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167226 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 6:23 pm

"Any thoughts?"


No, those comments of yours are pretty conclusive... you don't have any. No go and play with your poo some more, instead of flinging it at us.

703. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167208 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 6:06 pm

Any takers? By now anyone on here can call him out on that... but I'd rather have Steve do it (no, not out of sadism :)

704. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167206 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 6:03 pm

Damn - seems I was a moment too late.

Great post, Cartomancer...

-and again it shows that I'm not a non-native speaker. It always takes me some time to figure out that you can pronounce "theories" as two syllables and either "fella" as one or "educate" as two.

Just goes to show - the learning never stops :)

705. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167201 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 5:58 pm

And now we're waiting for a post along the lines:

Oh come one - that's not evolution and you know it. It's not evolution unless a bacterium splits into two frogs!

706. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167196 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 5:53 pm

passing on of genes in which the stronger ones able to show resistence were then able to pass on their more resistence genes.

Ah, you mean random mutation, some of which caused antibiotic resistance - and the only those organisms that had the resistance could pass on their genes... ie random mutation and natural selection? ie evolution?

707. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167177 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 5:32 pm

You would never admit it, we all know that, but deep down you are totally aware of the incredible lack of _{[true scientific]} evidence for _[evolution]. It's just a matter of time before it all caves in. One day you will be accountable for participating in one of the biggest injustices in all humanity.

...and that by a theist. Cute.

708. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167138 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 4:52 pm

Interesting - I always knew that our madam chancellor studied physics... but not what specifically. Now I know - Quantum-Chemistry.

If only she had remained in that field. Terribly inept madam chancellor.

:)

709. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167136 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 4:49 pm

That sounds even better, Steve...

... certainly more practical, and structured.

But I wonder if we can get the same amount of contributions on a private blog?

Like an web2.0 "enlightenment think-tank".

710. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167132 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 4:42 pm

I am trying to think of ways to attack. Not just on this site, but in other forums as well, and using other methods of communciation.

Maybe we should actually conduct a serious discussion on that, gather and refine ideas, discuss approaches and help each other out in actualizing them. Lay out a diverse strategy etc.

I suggest the Fleabytes thread... and we will have to ignore any interruption by theists - not engaging anyone.

I think we could also plan such gatherings, schedule them... or, when we see that many commentators are active, gather them there to discuss this?

What do you think?

711. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167128 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 4:38 pm

On a side note - there's a documentary about Plank on right now... interesting, a nice reminder that Munich University has produced some real greats:

Plank, Hahn, Heisenberg, Pauli, Berthold Brecht, Roentgen, Karl Jaspers, Schelling, Edward Teller, Cassirer, Ian Flemming... (okay, and Ratzinger as well :)

Anyway, I didn't know Plank was such a tortured personality... interesting.

712. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167123 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 4:31 pm

I am afraid I am feeling tired of these battles. A few idiotic creationist nutters come here, and it distracts us all. These are not the battles that need to be fought, I feel. Expelled has not been that much success as a film, but hundreds of thousands have seen it, and millions believe its message. Sparring with a few deluded individuals here achieves nothing. We need to think about how to spread the message further; how to collaborate to ensure that religion does not stifle education.

I think you're right...

...it's just that when I see such mental diarrhea on this board, I cannot help it - I have to respond... because who knows, one might change a mind or two... and once one has responded stopping would appear to outsiders as admitting defeat.

But still, you're right.

713. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167108 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 4:11 pm

Is that all you have?

Breathtaking inanity.

I have provided arguments for the impossibility of god and the unscientific nature of ID - so have many others. You chose to ignore them.

And you dare to ask that question?

If your IQ should ever rise to room-temperature (in degrees Celsius)... you may try again.

714. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167092 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 3:53 pm

Crick was prepared to even discuss in detail how the mind worked purely as a physical mechanism.

He was a rock-solid naturalist.

Yep, "The Astonishing Hypothesis":

"You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.'

715. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167069 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 3:29 pm

Well - the thing about "atheism" is a slight semantic problem. It invites misconception. But since I personally am not only don't believe in god, but am also an antitheist, anticlericalist and rationalist - I don't really mind.

716. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167061 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 3:18 pm

PBUM,

I was merely attempting to state that this identifier is useless. "-ist" has connotations of ideology... and we don't want that misconception. Rationalism is an ideology - the best there is :)

And "idiot" is in fact the accepted identifier for people whose ideology and/or thinking and acting in general are contrary to rationalism :)

717. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #167053 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 3:14 pm

We're showing how the religious conception of god as all-good is contradictory to what he does (send people to eternal, infinite torture - and then saying "Well it's your choice, you obey or get tortured")... and the ridiculous attempts by theists to defend the bible as humanitarian and god as loving.

Idiot.

718. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167048 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 3:06 pm

why don't evolutionists simply state that, as far as science is concerned, evolution is the answer.

Because the validity of anything that isn't science cannot be established. In fact, not being scientific makes it incapable of explaining anything in the world.

We do not know and can't answer if there was ID in the origin of life.

Then ID is worthless - if it isn't testable, it explains nothing.

Actually, serious theories of abiogenesis at least have explanatory value.

And again, there are no "evolutionists", just as there are no "gravitationalists"

but at the same time make claim that there is no God.

Not all do... but then, the claim is justified. Read my above posts.

719. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167043 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 3:00 pm

I think we should stop asking the question "who made god"... as theism has generally maintained that god is metaphysical, which makes the question meaningless.

Of course we might ask it to get this answer and then point out how a metaphysical agent is a logical impossibility, and how even if that wasn't so, it couldn't influence the physical world etc etc

720. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #167034 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:55 pm

TheTruthID

biology studies these questions,

it's just that "how did life come about", and "how did the diversity arise" are different questions.

You might as well say that General Relativity is inadequate because it cannot explain computer programs.

The origin of life is a different question than the one evolution answers.

I can understand that one can come to the conclusion of evolution but still keep an open mind of the possibility of a creator. Why are so many evolutionists so quick to degrade and ridicule a beliver,whom believes in a higher power when in fact they themselves separate evolution from the origin of life.

Because while life on earth might (unlikely, but testable) have been spawned there by super-advanced aliens, this is a regress-problem, who designed the aliens?

And why ridicule believers? Because postulating a supernatural designer is unscientific and logically impossible, as I and others have shown time and again.

Every event in space-time is either completely random or has a necessary and sufficient physical cause.

Given the conservation of energy and momentum, no interference from something nonphysical is impossible. If you want to claim otherwise, you have to show that conservation of energy and momentum do not hold.

But that won't do you any good, because a supernatural agent is a logical contradiction, omnipotence is another contradiction, and something nonphysical effecting something physical is a category mistake.

721. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #167016 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:41 pm

self-replicating molecules are not hypothetical, they are actual.

And if what we have is a religion (it isn't) - then shouldn't you respect it just because of that? After all, all you have is religion as well.

But I'm happy to say I have no religion at all. I have reason and evidence.

You have shown to be incapable of even knowing what these are, much less make use of them.

722. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #167012 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:38 pm

nighty-night epeeist.

723. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #167007 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:35 pm

easeltine,

Notice that Eugenics began as an idea by Darwin's cousin after reading "The Origin of the Species."

Ever heard of the practices of the Spartans? That was slightly before Darwin. Similar things happened in many societies.

Religious morality is a contradiction.

Let me spell it out for you by quoting myself (if I may):

I will say this much for mainstream religious morals [Protestant/Catholic bibles], they are in black and white,

Which is why they fail to apply, their world-picture is far too coarse.

include much detail, and some even have a stated explanation behind them [within the text].

But in the end it comes down to "because god said so".

That's the thing with theistic ethics. Either god commands things because they are intrinsically right or wrong - that is objectively, in which case god is just a middle-man and is not required for morality. Or things are right and wrong because god said so, or because it is god's nature that determines this, in which case the values are not objective, but subjective to/dependent on god's nature.

Also, "because it is god's command" is never a moral reason unless you have already have made the moral choice to accept the bible/god as the commander of moral values - which has to be justified from without the moral theory of theism - which is impossible for the theist. The logic of theistic morality is circular.

Furthermore, the concept of ethical responsibility is meaningless in theistic ethics because there it comes down to following commands by a celestial dictator (however benevolent one might think he is) - not because things are objectively, intrinsically moral or because of the reasons a rational philosophical ethical theory can provide.

Also, the moral commands of the bible are at places contradictory. Also, they are decidedly unegalitarian and unfair. The basic liberties, rights and freedoms cannot be affirmed. Liberty of Conscience cannot be affirmed. At least if taken seriously. As Jean-Jaques Rousseau correctly noted:

It is impossible to live in peace with people of whom one thinks they are damned; [...] There is no other choice but to either convert or punish them. [...] Such a dogma [there is no salvation outside of the church] is only compatiple with a theocratic constitution, in every other it is ruinous.

If you think that someone who doesn't affirm your doctrine will suffer eternally, you cannot let that happen if you like or love that person and thus have a duty to convert him - and indoctrinate your children, thus crippling the child's ability to make full, rational use of his liberty of conscience, freedom of choice (a child successfully indoctrinated will not even develop that ability to any reasonable degree) and freedom to embrace or reject(!) any religion.

This is incompatible with the requirement to grant everyone freedom to of thought, liberty of conscience and freedom of religion - since this religious practice does not allow for the people over which its adherents have influence (especially children) to develop and make use of that freedom.



But as shown above, theistic morality is inconsistent, incompatible with basic liberties, faces a dilemma and has a seriously inadequate underlying world-picture.

724. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166995 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:30 pm

You gotta to love that "science of the gaps" mentality. We'll discover it someday, just abandon your faith in the mean time kids.

That cracked me up... that anyone could have it so completely backwards...

Thanks, I really needed that laugh.

Gotta save this somewhere and show it to people, perfect example. Might also use it in future papers as an example of theistic irrationality.

Could you possibly do anymore to confirm every negative conception about theists?

725. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166983 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:25 pm

An accepted first principle of knowledge is that life does not come from non-life.

Actually, that's complete bullshit. Even for medieval theists - that wasn't a "principle of knowledge" - "Where did biological life come from" was always a question.

Theists also say that life comes from non-life. After all, the definition of "life" only applies to biological things. God, being outside time - cannot have a metabolism, cannot reproduce etc.

So he is not "alive". So even for you, there is "life from non-life".

Accepted first principle of knowledge my ass...

...you're just pulling things out of your arse.

726. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166972 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:20 pm

Bonzai,

I think I have a better one:

"Explicatio non habemus. Ergo deus est."

"We don't have an explanation. Therefore God exists"
____________________

On a completely unrelated matter - you said there are only very few musicals you like... have you seen "Once"? Brilliant, touching, wonderful music and plot - and especially good because it is everything but the typical Hollywood musical.

727. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166961 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:10 pm

I knew this would come...


even only the comment about the second law of thermodynamics shows what an incredibly ignorant, deluded fool remnant is.

Let me spell it out for you, remnant:

The second law of thermodynamics means - putting it non-technically - that disorder in a closed system will always rise (entropy).

Disorder can only decrease by external infusion of energy.

The earth is not a closed system. There is this thing called "sun", providing huge amounts of energy every day.

Evolution has no problem with thermodynamics.


You come to a site with biologists, physicists, engineers, mathematicians, historians, philosophers and tons of other people, many very knowledgeable in one or several fields.

You show ignorance and idiocy concerning every field you engage in - and make yourself out to be an expert.

Moron!

728. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166945 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Bonzai,

I don't know what Brian's translation was - but this would be correct:

"nescio, ergo deus est"

729. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166934 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:53 pm

I just needed some comic relief, and thought it mildly funny :)

I will attempt to do better in the future :)

730. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166923 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:44 pm

I say 'pha, prove that i dont have the ticket!!!'

And then the guy behind the counter pulls out the winning ticket, labeled "evolution" - and shows that it has the winning numbers.

Then remnant says: It isn't - look, there's a smudge on the numbers!

Then the guy behind the counter says: No, that's a smudge on your glasses, here, let me fix that for you... (offers a handkerchief to clean the glasses)

Then remnant says: "NO! These glasses work perfectly, I can see everything!", attempts to take the winning ticket to show that it has a smudge on it and isn't the winning ticket...

...and grasp half a metre above and to the right of the ticket...

731. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166915 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:40 pm

What we want aren't quotes simply stating "It's not possible"... we want the arguments for that,

We want:
-Testable predictions of ID (How can it be falsified?) Every theory has to be able to make predictions that can be tested, and if found untrue, will show that the theory is incorrect.

-Corroborations through these tests.

THEN you can proceed.

732. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166897 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:31 pm

MaxD and Steve,

yes indeed!

733. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166892 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:30 pm

Science could (but doesn't) lead to the conclusion that a designer is the most probable explanation (again, this is counterfactual) - but never a supernatural one, as that would contradict all science, would be a category mistake and would be physically impossible (conservation of energy and momentum etc)

734. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166886 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:27 pm

Since we're being specific, I believe that should be 'evidence?'

I think it proves the possibility - but if you want, call it evidence. I don't object.

The very same reasons it does not compare well to the human mind.

This is not about investigations of the mind, or how possible the situation is - it is impossible. But it is a hypothetical model, that - because it is idealized - can provide us with objective standards of fairness.

Even math gets distorted with predispositions of the subconscious, statistics being one example.

Applied mathematics can where assessments about the world are made, simply deterministically unfolding a mechanism cannot.

And since the original position does not claim actuality or possibility, these objections are all fine but irrelevant to the matter at hand.

The model does lead to objective standards of fairness - and if we want such fairness, the model can provide us with the details. That's all this is about.

The examples I provided should have made it clear that this is a workable thought-experiment.

735. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166874 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Everything to you has to be explained by science

If it's a statement about a supposed fact about the world, it is accessible by science. Logic, rationality in general and science as the embodiment of rationality in inquiry are the epistemic gold standards.

If a supposed explanations is illogical and fails the standards of rationality - it is crap. It has no epistemic justification. If you want to maintain the infantile and desperate idea that postulating something that "simply does" what we need to explain without being observable or testable - and at times even being logically contradictory or meaningless - that's your delusion.

You claim to have an explanation - you need to provide a mechanism, and it has to be potentially testable.

What you are doing is equivalent to what Voltaire ridiculed a few hundred years ago:

"Why does opium make people sleepy?"
-"Because it has a sleepy-making spirit/force".

It's vacuous - useless.

Postulating a god is even worse.

It's beyond ridiculous.

736. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166864 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:14 pm

MaxD, good work...

I think what it generally comes down to is what I have stated in my post #166574:

You cannot infer the existence of a certain entity from the incompleteness of explanation of a phenomenon from within a certain theory. You cannot infer any existence statement from that. And while the probability of the incompleteness of these explanations is raised by the assumption of a god, this hypothesis itself is in light of the scientific evidence completely improbably - aside from the fact that I have already shown that the theistic conception of god is impossible.

Also, the probability of the incompleteness of the explanations is explained perfectly on scientific grounds.

737. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166860 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:10 pm

I'm a philosopher... I wouldn't be good at what I'm doing if I didn't practice what other people might consider nitpicking :)

Anyway - things "logical laws may not be violated", methodological naturalism and the standards of evidence and other methodological statements thus could be described as assumptions, since they are taken for granted without proof.

But these assumptions are minimal and for all we know necessary- simply the standards of rationality, rigorously applied. And in the end - they have proved to be prudent assumptions, given that the epistemic stability of science is greatest for all ways of looking at the world.

738. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166854 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Under the social sciences falls both political science and social work.

Again, political science is not ethically normative - it can at most uncover which course of action is prudent. Where it incorporates non-descriptive, ie normative ethics, it is no longer scientific. Science is always only descriptive.

I'm a philosopher, so I have no objection against philosophical ethics - but one has to clearly distinguish between descriptive scientific investigation and morally normative statemts.

Social work is part of social science? It can be studied by it, and can investigate which courses of action, which actions based on which ethical theory and metatheory have which effects, but it cannot say "we have scientifically uncovered that this is morally right and this is morally wrong"... that's not science.

All reasonable definitions of science will state that it is only descriptive.

Anyway - my assessment of Darwin's letter:

For the most part, he makes no ethical judgments about it - only methodological ones. The only statement that can be interpreted as an ethical judgment is this:

the object seems a grand one; and you have pointed out the sole feasible, yet I fear utopian, plan of procedure in improving the human race.

And even this must not be ethical. It could mean that he rationally judges that this would be the only means to improve humanity, but that he doesn't state whether this would be worth it - and would be ethically justifiable.

But if that was to be interpreted as moral approval - I would disagree, because this would not lead to a just and stable society. The standards of fairness from the original position are not met.

Yet, while I have some serious reservations, I am not in all cases and degrees against things like diagnosing the embryo in its earliest stage to check the genome for debilitating diseases (mutations or inherited recessive or dominant traits leading to that) and only implanting the ones without such diseases.

Does that answer your question?

739. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166821 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 12:49 pm

Of course science makes tacit initial assumptions - and these are exactly the things I pointed out, that this and that constitutes evidence, that this and that constitutes corroboration, that this and that are the methods to be employed - only not about what it will find.

Even methodological naturalism is among these assumptions - but not ontological naturalism.

Although "assumption" might be a wrong word, since that assumes that there is a matter of fact about this. These methodological and demarcation criteria and standards are postulations - and they have proved to be the most rigorous and helpful ever... and also those that lead to the epistemically most stable conclusions, under any reasonable theory of epistemology.



Thus, for any "method of coming to know thing", logic is the gold-standard, and in extension science.

Since ID is creationism in disguise, it starts with ontological pluralism, assuming the existence of the supernatural. Which is in itself incompatible with science.

And as I said - logic tells us that supernatural influence in the natural world is a category mistake - like saying that "colourless green ideas sleep furiously".

740. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166794 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Oh please, no conceptual scheme starts from nothing - science neither. It has logical standards of evaluation of evidence, procedural standards and methods of corroboration. Also, it makes use of logic - thus not allowing for category mistakes or logical inconsistencies.


Since the assumption of something supernatural influencing something natural is a category mistake, it always fails to be science, and cannot possibly be supported by any evidence.

You might as well try to find evidence for the statement:

"Colourless green ideas sleep furiously"

741. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166787 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 12:31 pm

Imagine (I know it's hard, remnant) you are a rational adult, capable of rational discussions and very willing to engage in them.

Then someone comes near you and starts telling you that the world actually rests on the back of four giant elephants who stand on a turtle. At first, you ask for evidence. He draws a pamphlet from his jacket on which it says

"The world rests on the back of four giant elephants"

"The elephants stand on a turtle"

You tell him that's no evidence... he says "but the earth moves, and how could it move if it wasn't carried. Ha! See, I'm right"
just repeats himself, throwing more pamphlets at you.

Then he starts telling you that if you don't believe him, you will be horribly tortured someday.

You put questions to him which aren't answered.

You give up on this idiot - and say aloud that he is not contributing, just making inflammatory comments and is incapable of rational debate.

Then he claims "Ha! See - you resort to censorship. That's all you can do!"

----

See?

742. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166763 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 12:18 pm

By conceptualizing another's predisposed influences we can arrive at an influence-free frame of mind? I like the know-thyself-offset concept better.

That's not what I meant - I was offering that as a proof that we can coherently conceive of persons who do not have our predispositions. That is all that is required.

The censor bypasses, even supersedes, the rational mind, often giving the unconscious a priori status.

True, but of no consequence. Since you have a laid out "algorithm", with an objective task - it is logically demonstrable which statements follow from the premises and which don't.

That's why I gave the math example. The internal censor doesn't matter - it is objectively, logically verifiable if something follows from the original position or not.

But you really should read the entry - take your time, I'm here for a while.

Example: I (MPhil) am a white male of rather high education. Yet I and anyone else can perfectly well see that from the original position, behind the veil of ignorance,
A rational person would not affirm that white males of higher education should have a better standing in society, since beyond the veil of ignorance, one does not know what color, sex or education one would have, and as such it would be irrational to affirm any bias, since one might receive a disadvantage from it.

This is a quasi-algorithmic procedure... and as such my predispositions are of no consequence.

Your objections are thus almost like stating math is impossible because everyone has an internal censor and a certain bias might be there without you knowing it. This is irrelevant for logical deduction.

743. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166750 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 12:09 pm

I will say this much for mainstream religious morals [Protestant/Catholic bibles], they are in black and white,

Which is why they fail to apply, their world-picture is far too coarse.

include much detail, and some even have a stated explanation behind them [within the text].

But in the end it comes down to "because god said so".

That's the thing with theistic ethics. Either god commands things because they are intrinsically right or wrong - that is objectively, in which case god is just a middle-man and is not required for morality. Or things are right and wrong because god said so, or because it is god's nature that determines this, in which case the values are not objective, but subjective to/dependent on god's nature.

Also, "because it is god's command" is never a moral reason unless you have already have made the moral choice to accept the bible/god as the commander of moral values - which has to be justified from without the moral theory of theism - which is impossible for the theist. The logic of theistic morality is circular.

Furthermore, the concept of ethical responsibility is meaningless in theistic ethics because there it comes down to following commands by a celestial dictator (however benevolent one might think he is) - not because things are objectively, intrinsically moral or because of the reasons a rational philosophical ethical theory can provide.

Also, the moral commands of the bible are at places contradictory. Also, they are decidedly unegalitarian and unfair. The basic liberties, rights and freedoms cannot be affirmed. Liberty of Conscience cannot be affirmed. At least if taken seriously. As Jean-Jaques Rousseau correctly noted:

It is impossible to live in peace with people of whom one thinks they are damned; [...] There is no other choice but to either convert or punish them. [...] Such a dogma [there is no salvation outside of the church] is only compatiple with a theocratic constitution, in every other it is ruinous.

If you think that someone who doesn't affirm your doctrine will suffer eternally, you cannot let that happen if you like or love that person and thus have a duty to convert him - and indoctrinate your children, thus crippling the child's ability to make full, rational use of his liberty of conscience, freedom of choice (a child successfully indoctrinated will not even develop that ability to any reasonable degree) and freedom to embrace or reject(!) any religion.

This is incompatible with the requirement to grant everyone freedom to of thought, liberty of conscience and freedom of religion - since this religious practice does not allow for the people over which its adherents have influence (especially children) to develop and make use of that freedom.

I'm still searching for as much from the social implications which stem from naturalism.

Unless you take a theistic morality or supernatural morality as default, there are none.

But as shown above, theistic morality is inconsistent, incompatible with basic liberties, faces a dilemma and has a seriously inadequate underlying world-picture.

744. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166708 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 11:45 am

seeker_of_truth

nothing making ethically normative statements is science. Social sciences don't do that - they maximally describe what ethically normative statements are made by people in what situations with what consequences.

The opinion of Darwin or someone else is beside the point. Ethically normative statements -> not science.

745. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166693 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 11:36 am

TheTruthID

Are religious standards of morality universally adhered to? NO? They only claim to be universally true. So does Utilitarianism - but with much better evidence (not conclusive, but still).

Most people on this world don't believe that the ethical commands you think are universal in fact are. So all you have is a vacuous claim, whereas philosophical ethics can have a basis in rationality and the general facts about life.

746. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166639 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 11:02 am

Have you read the Stanford-entry yet?

The self-censoring etc don't matter either.

Consider these facts:

1. One can have concepts of persons radically different from oneself, extrapolate what they would do in certain situations, and how they would judge something

2. Procedural objectivity is possible. Consider mathematics. You have a strict scheme of axioms and inference rules. You can construct inferences and test sentences to their coherence with the axioms and inference rules.

This is not really different. The censor doesn't come into it at all, as you are rationally constructing a hypothetical modal - personal motivations (conscious or unconscious) have no influence on the process. For every statement you make about choices in the original position, you can check objectively whether that is coherent with and follows from the model.

See my example above.

747. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #166629 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 10:54 am

Not to mention that the Jesus-myth is a copy of the mithras myth, the osiris myth, the hercules myth etc...

The supposed attributes of Jesus are those of many many mythical figures before Jesus - it was a common mythological theme.

748. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166626 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 10:51 am

What don't you understand about this?

scientific evidence - by virtue of being scientific and evidence cannot point towards the supernatural. It could point towards a designer, but not a supernatural one. "Supernatural influencing the natural" is another category mistake!

Breathtaking inanity.

749. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166609 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 10:41 am

seeker_of_truth,

cocnerning social darwinism:

Depends on what you mean by "justified". If you mean whether I think that Darwinism justifies Social Darwinism - absolutely not. Darwinism is science, science per definition does not and can not make ethically normative statements - if anything does, it isn't science anymore. That would be the naturalistic fallacy (see e.g. George Edward Moore, 'Principia Ethica'). You cannot infer or derive a non-natural property from a natural one, and there is no epistemic justification for identifying a non-natural with a natural property. Meaning there are no facts about this, it cannot be "found out" and is as such unscientific.

But you can place a value on certain properties, processes, actions, intentions etc. - That is what all ethics do. The final justification is however not a matter of "finding out", but of deliberate construction of these values via this identification.

But as explained above with contractualism, this can be aided by rationality a great deal. If you want to construct a first-order ethical theory, you'd be wise to have as realistic a picture of the world (including its agents) as possible. For example, you might want to construct an ethical theory that takes into account facts about psychology and sociology in order to give proper directions and model the theory so that it can be applied. Utiliarianism for example has as a central premise the fact that happyness (though a bit more complicated than the everyday sense) is the only thing that agents desire in itself. This is a psychological statement.
Contractualism needs sociology, psychology etc as well.
If your ethics is to be comprehensive, it better have a picture of the world that is as complete in the relevant aspects as possible - you have to minimize the probability of situations arising with which the theory cannot deal.

So, no - Darwinism does not lead to Social Darwinism, nor can the latter be inferred from the former, nor does the former even lend any amount of justification to the latter, as the latter is all about ethically normative statements.

750. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #166597 by MPhil on April 23, 2008 at 10:26 am

It isn't a huge stretch, really.
Just as a physicist who has his common sense notions of space and time can perfectly well work with relativity.

It's simple, and not a stretch at all. We construct a model of people with only certain attributes (capability of rationality, knowledge of the fact that they will be a part of society and capability of imagining certain situations that would arise etc)

I really don't see why you think there's a problem with that. Sociologists construct models independent of their own preferences all the time. Actually, it's no more of a problem than any model. That what it's about is something that is relevant to oneself doesn't matter when analyzing the model.

I'm sorry to say - you're absolutely wrong that this is a stretch and hardly possible. I can perfectly well analyze what would be done there.

Please read the link I gave you.

For example - beyond the veil of ignorance, everyone would see to it that his chance of fulfillment of his rational self-interest is maximized. The only way to make sure of that beyond a veil of ignorance is to make sure that society is structured in a way that everyone has an equal opportunity for participation - and that inegality between in starting-positions are minimized. Also, in the original position, I know that I will as a member of society endorse some comprehensive doctrine, or will want to do so. Since I know this, I want to make sure that I can. But since I don't know which it will be, I must make sure that all are treated equally and none is forced upon the citizens, and that none are allowed whose goal it is to be forced upon others, because I might be on the receiving end of that. And I wouldn't want that.


... see, not hard at all. And not a stretch either. This is of course a very simple example, but it proves that there is no problem with that.