Re: on atheistic principles? (was macroevolution or macromutations? (was ID) 1/2)

From: Tom Pearson (pearson@panam1.panam.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 14 2000 - 22:59:49 EDT

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    At 11:10 PM 07/09/2000 +0800, Stephen E. Jones (responding to Tedd Hadley)
    wrote:

    >SJ>An atheist, especially one brought up in a Christian home (as many were),
    >>>might already be aware (as I wasn't) that some things are immoral and
    >>>avoid doing them by virtue of his/her upbringing. But the atheist would
    >>>have no reason *within his/her atheism*, for not being immoral.
    >>>Any reasons he/she had for not being immoral would be found
    >>>*outside* his/her atheism.
    >
    >TH>That's vacously true because atheism doesn't claim to address
    >>questions of morality. By analogy, you might as well argue that
    >>the scientist would have no reason *within his/her science*,
    >>for not being immoral.

    Ted, a good deal of the research (including my own) done over the past
    decade into the moral decision-making processes of scientists is beginning
    to show that, in many cases, your suggestion above is false. Based on my
    own investigations, it is turning out that bench scientists and research
    managers in medical research labs and biotechnology firms display a strong
    tendency to derive moral norms precisely from the scientific community of
    practice they inhabit. In other words, it is precisely *within his/her
    science* that many (perhaps "most"; the numbers vary a little) scientists
    find the ethical standards that guide them toward "not being immoral."
    Most interesting (and, initially, most dismaying) to me was the fact that,
    among those researchers sampled, those who had been working in the field
    continuously for 20 years or more and who were rated by their peers as
    exhibiting "excellent" or "very good" ethical standards, "religious values"
    ranked last among the list of possible sources for their moral standards.
    These people (the morally-excellent 20-year veterans) reported that the
    standards of moral rectitude that were implicit in the actual practice of
    scientific research were their primary source for shaping their ethical
    conduct. Again, these same people reported that "religious values" played
    a very small role in determining appropriate choices and behavior when
    functioning in their professional scientific role. For what it's worth.

    >If Ted is an atheist, then this is a damaging admission which his fellow
    >atheists might not agree with?
    >
    >Because it would mean that atheism is not a complete worldview, like
    >Christian theism is, and indeed atheism would be parasitic on other
    >worldviews, like Christianity:
    >
    >"Worldviews should be tested not only in the philosophy classroom but
    >also in the laboratory of life. It is one thing for a worldview to pass
    certain
    >theoretical tests (reason and experience); it is another for the worldview
    >also to pass an important practical test, namely, can the person who
    >professes that worldview live consistently in harmony with the system he
    >professes? Or do we find that he is forced to live according to beliefs
    >borrowed from a competing system? Such a discovery, I suggest, should
    >produce more than embarrassment." (Nash R.H., "Worldviews in Conflict,"
    >1999, p.62)

    This is a subject I have been mulling over for the past few years. Why
    would anyone think that Christianity comprises a "worldview"? Certainly
    the New Testament writers and early church fathers were, with few
    exceptions, focused on the single historical event of Christ's crucifixion
    and resurrection, and the soteriological implications of that event -- they
    don't seem the least bit interested in crafting "worldviews." Aquinas and
    the later medieval scholastics constructed "worldviews," but the
    sixteenth-century reformers, particularly Luther, were deeply skeptical of
    treating Christianity as a "worldview."

    It is, however, entirely possible that Theism comprises such a worldview.
    Ralph Cudworth, who coined the term "Theism," did so in his aptly-named
    *The True Intellectual System of the Universe*, published in 1678. This
    "true intellectual system" which is Theism, was spawned in the midst of the
    seventeenth-century fascination with scientific methods and results, and is
    the effort to produce Lockean empirical certainty in religion by rendering
    Christianity a kind of scientific discipline. But it looks radically
    different from ancient Christianity (an observation which also troubled
    Newton, who rejected Cudworth's Theism, among others -- Cudworth was at
    Christ College, Cambridge at the same time Newton was at Trinity,
    Cambridge).

    Although I am a committed and active Christian, I am beginning to suspect
    that I am no Theist. Although the two share some basic common ground, they
    are rather different in scope and emphasis, something perhaps most easily
    seen in the Theistic confection of a "worldview."

    Tom Pearson
    __________________________________________________________________
    __________________________________________________________________

    Thomas D. Pearson
    Department of History & Philosophy
    The University of Texas-Pan American
    Edinburg, Texas
    e-mail: pearson@panam1.panam.edu



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