Reflectorites
I am sending this response since I had already completed it,
but in line with my other post about reducing my responses to the
Reflector, I am terminating this thread.
On Fri, 07 Jul 2000 10:09:27 -0500, Susan Brassfield wrote:
[...]
>>SB>It's so transparent that this [ID as religion] is the
>>>case, that the courts are not going to be fooled or anybody else who has a
>>>smattering of science education and no religious ax to grind.
>SB>Well, we will have to wait and see. But I would hope the Supreme Court
>>has more discrimination than Susan in this matter, and could tell the
>>difference between Scientific Creationist claims based on the *Bible*
>>and ID claims based on the evidence of *nature*.
SJ>no, we don't have to wait and see. The courts have already lumped ID with
>creationism. I couldn't find the reference for it (dern it!) or I would
>post it here.
I would be interested in seeing it. I am not aware of where "The courts
have already lumped ID with creationism" and I think I would be if it had
happened.
It may be that some YECs have claimed that they are only teaching a form
of `ID' but if their beliefs are quite obviously based primarily on the Bible
and have little or no independent scientific support (e.g. the Earth being
6,000 years old and all the geological strata having been laid down by
Noah's Flood), then it is quite reasonable IMHO for courts to regard their
views as coming under the Establishment of Religion clause of the
Constitution.
But while there are IDers who are YECs, there are IDers who are OECs
and even IDers who are not even theists, like Todd Moody.
And even those IDers who are "religious" come from a broad spectrum of
religions. Even within the ID leadership there are Protestants, Greek
Orthodox, Roman Catholic and even one Moonie. There are also
prominent IDers who are Jewish, like Berlinski and Spetner.
In fact ID itself is primarily philosophical, not religious, and dates back at
least to Aristotle.
So even though the USA Supreme Court has made some strange decisions,
I am confident that it would be able to tell the difference between a Bible-
based YEC `ID' and the ID movement's ID which is based on *nature*, not
the Bible.
[...]
>>SB>The answer is in front of you. You simply can't see it. I've had this
>>>conversation with other religionists and they couldn't see it either. It's
>>>like once you get the notion that morality flows into a human being from
>>>some external source, you can't wrap your mind around the idea that
>>>morality can flow *from* the human--and that there are very sound logical
>>>reasons for it to do so.
>SJ>Susan still hasn't answered the question *on atheistic principles*. Most
>>humans aren't atheists. What is there *uniquely* about atheism which
>>generates moral/ethical principles like: [...]
SB>Chris already answered this very well--it's his area of expertise, I merely
>find it interesting. The answer is that there is no such thing as
>"atheistic principles."
I still regard this is a damaging admission. If atheism has no "principles"
then it is not *worth* believing in.
SB>There is *human* morality and no other kind.
That is a truism. But "*human* morality" can range from Christ's Sermon
on the Mount to the atheist Joseph Stalin's purges and pogroms.
It seems that atheism has no way of telling the difference, and that
is most probably why Stalin committed his purges and pogroms.
SB>An
>individual person's morality is a conglomeration of their history, their
>macroculture (European, Middle Eastern, etc.), microculture (family,
>community, etc.) and their own experience and intelligence. Religion
>sometimes factors in and sometimes doesn't.
Again, this is a truism. But it does not explain why one individual
from the same culture turns into an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (a Christian)
and the other into a Stalin (an atheist).
>SJ>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH STALIN, by Richard Lourie, pp.
>>34-37 (Counterpoint, 1999)
>>
>>I was eleven when my father was murdered in a barroom brawl. I wasn't
>>surprised. My father was a very murderable man. Even his own son had
>>thrown a knife at him.
[...]
SB>Pretty much everyone in our culture believes that what Stalin did was
>abhorrent. I think pretty much all the Russians (who are still mostly
>atheists) think that too. In other words, Stalin violated basic human moral
>principles. So did Torquemada, who believed he was doing God's work.
>Sadists can *always* find a justification for their lusts.
The point is that what Torquemada (the Spanish Inquisition) was clearly
inconsistent with Christian principles.
But what Stalin did was not inconsistent with his atheism. Indeed, if Lourie's
biographical novel above is correct, Stalin did what he did *based*
on his atheism (and his Darwinism)!
>>>SJ>Susan again tries to sidestep the question. We all agree that Bakker was
>>>>a hypocrite, judged against the standard of the Bible's teachings.
[...].
>SJ>Where the does Susan think specifically Christian morality comes from
>>then?
SB>see above. Christians are humans and have basic human morality. They merely
>put a Christian "spin" on pre-existing morality and tell each other it's
>from God.
See abovbe. That "Christians are humans and have basic human morality" is a
truism.
But Susan now appears to have conceded that this *specifically* "Christian
`spin'" comes from the Christian's concept of "God".
The real question is the *differences* between the "spins" that humans
place on "pre-existing morality". In the case of Christianity, there is
a limit to the "spin" that a Christian can place on his/her "pre-existing
morality" without it ceasing to be Christian. But in the case of atheism,
there is no such limit.
On the basis of his crimes against humanity I have justification for
believing that Torquemada was not a Christian, but I have no justification
for believing that, on basis of his crimes against humanity, that Stalin
was not an atheist.
There is another point about Susan's Torquemada-Stalin comparison.
Torquemada was restrained by his, and his fellow Roman Catholics
belief in God (perverted though that might have been). Therefore, while
even *one* person killed in the name of Christianity was one person too many, the
total number of people killed under Torquemada was in the order of thousands:
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http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,74863+1+72956,00.html
[...]
Torquemada, Tomas de
... In his capacity as grand inquisitor, Torquemada reorganized the Spanish
Inquisition. ... The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada's
tenure has been
estimated at about 2,000. ... In his final years, Torquemada's health and
age, coupled with widespread
complaints, caused Pope Alexander VI to appoint four assistant inquisitors
in June 1494 to restrain him. ...
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But the atheist Stalin had no such restraint, and so total number of people
killed under Stalin was in the order of *tens of millions*:
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http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,114890+4+108469,00.html
[...]
Stalin, Joseph
... In 1928 Stalin abandoned Lenin's quasi-capitalist New Economic Policy in
favour of headlong state-organized industrialization under a succession of
five-year plans. This was, in effect, a new Russian revolution more
devastating in its effects than those of 1917. The dictator's blows fell most
heavily on the peasantry, some 25,000,000 rustic households being
compelled to amalgamate in collective or state farms within a few years.
Resisting desperately, the reluctant muzhiks were attacked by troops and
OGPU (political police) units. Uncooperative peasants, termed kulaks,
were arrested en masse, being shot, exiled, or absorbed into the rapidly
expanding network of Stalinist concentration camps and worked to death
under atrocious conditions. Collectivization also caused a great famine in
the Ukraine. Yet Stalin continued to export the grain stocks that a less
cruel leader would have rushed to the famine-stricken areas. Some
10,000,000 peasants may have perished through his policies during these
years. ...
Such were the main publicly acknowledged persecutions that empowered
Stalin to tame the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet elite as a whole.
He not only "liquidated" veteran semi-independent Bolsheviks but also
many party bosses, military leaders, industrial managers, and high
government officials totally subservient to himself. Other victims included
foreign Communists on Soviet territory and members of the very political
police organization, now called the NKVD. All other sections of the
Soviet elite--the arts, the academic world, the legal and diplomatic
professions--also lost a high proportion of victims, as did the population at
large, to a semi-haphazard, galloping persecution that fed on extorted
denunciations and confessions. These implicated even more victims until
Stalin himself reduced the terror, though he never abandoned it. Stalin's
political victims were numbered in tens of millions. His main motive was,
presumably, to maximize his personal power. ...
... Stalin has arguably made a greater impact on the lives of more individuals
than any other figure in history. But the evaluation of his overall
achievement still remains, decades after his death, a highly controversial
matter. Historians have not yet reached any definitive consensus on the
worth of his accomplishments, and it is unlikely that they ever will. To the
American scholar George F. Kennan, Stalin is a great man, but one great
in his "incredible criminality . . . a criminality effectively without limits,"
...
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>>>SJ>But as I said: "if a fellow atheist did the same things, on what grounds
>>>>would Susan cricise him/her?"
>>SB>for violating his own, and society's moral standards.
>SJ>If the atheists "own...moral standards" was `adultery is OK' but the
>>Christian's was "Thou shall not commit adultery", which would Susan
>>regard as normative?
SB>normative? Let's put it this way: Yesterday I overheard a woman reading a
>Bible story (one of those scaled-down children's versions you get in
>waiting rooms) to her children in which God destroyed all first-born
>children in a villiage in order to force the pharoh to let the Israelites
>go, etc. First, I found it highly questionable to read a story to children
>in which many innocent children were slaughtered, and second I realized
>that the morality of such an entity conflicted sharply with my own
>morality. If that god was so powerful, why didn't he just kill the damn
>pharoh and leave the kids out of it?
Before I offer an explanation to Susan, I could point out that Susan by her
own admission has no standards by which to judge this. If Susan's position
is "There is *human* morality and no other kind" then on her own
standards, this was just "human morality".
Indeed, if God doesn't exist, then the events couldn't have happened, since
it wasn't just in a "village", but across the whole *country* of Egypt:
"Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh,
who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her
hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well." (Ex 11:5)
So in order for Susan to criticise what God did, she has to grant that God
really exists! Otherwise, all Susan is criticising is just a mere 3,500 years
old story!
But since *I* believe there is a God and this really happened, I will point
out that Pharaoh had enslaved the Israelites and subjected them to terrible
suffering, including decreeing that *every* Hebrew boy born was to be
killed:
"Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: "Every boy that is born
you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live." (Ex 1:22)
Pharaoh had steadfastly refused Moses' requests to let the Israelites go and
his magicians had managed to match Moses' miracles. So God through
Moses gave a demonstration of his power and judgment which Pharaoh's
magicians could not match, in order to force Pharaoh to let the Israelites
go, which worked.
>>>SJ>Susan does more than just "arguing"!
>>SB>I also like to belly dance. But what on earth are you talking about?
>SJ>If Susan really doesn't realise what I am talking about, then I am not
>>going to tell her.
SB>Then it shall remain a mystery. I'm comfortable with that.
OK.
>>>SJ>Why on Earth would I be bothered trying to force Susan to pray with
>>>>me. I have enough trouble forcing myself to pray with me! :-)
>>SB>ROFL!!!
>SJ>I note that Susan doesn't answer this question either.
SB>oops! I thought I had detected humor.
OK.
>SJ>Nevertheless, his statement above and Darwin's statement below has lent
>>support to racist policies by governments well into the 20th century:
SB>see above. Sadists can get justification almost anywhere.
I don't say that Darwin was a "sadist". Indeed he personally was strongly
anti-slavery. But his statements about the inferiority of races which were
later used as scientific authority to try to exterminate Australian aborigines
and American negroes, was, as Eiseley explains, a clear deduction from this
theory of natural selection:
"...Darwin propounded the theory that since the reproductive powers of
plants and animals potentially far outpace the available food supply, there is
in nature a constant struggle for existence on the part of every living thing
... this unceasing process promotes endless slow changes in bodily form, as
living creatures are subjected to different natural environments, different
enemies, and all the vicissitudes against which life has struggled down the
ages. Darwin, however, laid just one stricture on his theory ... It could
allow any animal only a relative superiority, never an absolute perfection -
otherwise selection and the struggle for existence would cease to operate.
To explain the rise of man through the slow, incremental gains of natural
selection, Darwin had to assume a long struggle of man with man and tribe
with tribe. He had to make this assumption because man had far outpaced
his animal associates. ... to ignore the human struggle of man with man
would have left no explanation as to how humanity by natural selection
alone managed to attain an intellectual status so far beyond that of any of
the animals with which it had begun its competition for survival. To most
of the thinkers of Darwin's day this seemed a reasonable explanation. It was
a time of colonial expansion and ruthless business competition. Peoples of
primitive cultures, small societies lost on the world's margins, seemed
destined to be destroyed. It was thought that Victorian civilization was the
apex of human achievement and that other races with different customs and
ways of life must be biologically inferior to Western man. Some of them
were even described as only slightly superior to apes. The Darwinians ...
were throwing modern natives into the gap as representing living "missing
links" in the chain of human ascent." (Eiseley L.C., "The Immense
Journey," 1957, pp.81-83)
SB>Southern preachers found all kinds of support for slavery in the Bible.
>2800 years ago when the Bible was written (and 130 years ago when slavery
>still flourished in the US) slavery was perfectly moral. In fact, 2800
>years ago it was perfectly moral to sell your children into slavery if you
>happened to need the cash. Our culture's morality has shifted so much that
>slavery is now completely unacceptable. Adultery, which could get you
>stoned to death 2800 years ago is now not even illegal. Child slavery which
>was fine 2800 years ago can get you hard time in our culture today.
>Morality doesn't come from either God or the Bible and it never has.
First, no one in claiming that morality comes from the Bible. I think it was
C.S. Lewis who pointed out that there was nothing in the Bible's moral
teaching that we didn't already know in our hearts.
Second, Susan's last sentence is a non sequitur. That there is has been
fluctuations in human perceptions of morality in different cultures and in
different ages, does not mean that "Morality doesn't come from ... God". If
morality doesn't come from God, then Susan has no basis for criticising
Stalin's "human morality". Without God, Susan is stuck in "The
Modernist Impasse" that agnostic Yale Law Professor Arthur Leffs
realised:
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Yale Law Professor, Arthur Leff, expressed the bewilderment of an agnostic
culture that yearns for enduring values in a brilliant lecture delivered at Duke
University in 1979, a few years before his untimely death from cancer. The
published lecture - titled, "Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law" - is frequently
quoted in law review articles, but it is little known outside the world of legal
scholarship. It happens to be one of the best statements of the modernist
impasse that I know. As Leff put it,
I want to believe - and so do you - in a complete, transcendent, and immanent
set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules that authoritatively
and unambiguously direct us how to live righteously. I also want to believe -
and so do you - in no such thing, but rather that we are wholly free, not only
to choose for ourselves, individually and as a species, what we ought to be.
What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and
perfectly free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and the good to
create it.
The heart of the problem, according to Leff, is that any normative statement
implies the existence of an authoritative evaluator. But with God out of the
picture, every human becomes a godlet - with as much authority to set
standards as any other godlet or combination of godlets. For example, if a
human moralists says "Thou shalt not commit adultery", he invites the formal
intellectual equivalent of what is known in barrooms and schoolyards as 'the
grand sez who?' Persons who want to commit adultery, or who sympathise
with those who do, can offer the crushing rejoinder: What gives you the
authority to prescribe what is good for me? As Leff explained:
`Putting it that way makes clear that if we are looking for an evaluation, we
must actually be looking for an evaluator, some machine for the generation of
the judgements on states of affairs. If the evaluation is to be beyond question,
then the evaluator and its evaluative processes must be similarly insulated. If it
is to fulfil its role, the evaluator must be the unjudged judge, the unruled
legislator, the premise maker who resets on no premises, the uncreated creator
of values ... we are never going to get anywhere (assuming for the moment
there is somewhere to go) in ethical or legal theory unless we finally face the
fact that, in the Psalmist's words, there is no one like unto the Lord ... The so
called death of God turns out not to have been just His funeral; it also seems to
have effected the total elimination of any coherent or even more-than-
momentarily convincing, ethical or legal system dependent upon finally
authoritative, extrasystematic premises.'
[...]
Most of Leff's lecture consisted of a review of all the unsuccessful attempts to
establish an objective moral order on a foundation of human construction, i.e.,
to put something else in God's place as the unevaluated evaluator. The
asserted non-supernatural sources of moral authority are many and varied, and
each is only temporarily convincing. They include: the command of the
sovereign; the majority of the voters; the principle of utility; the Supreme
Court's varying interpretations of the Constitutions' great but ambiguous
phrases; the subtle implications of platitudinous shared values like "equality" or
"autonomy"; and even a hypothetical social contract that abstract persons
might adopt in the imagery "original position" described by John Rawls. Every
alternative rests ultimately on human authority, because that is what remains
when God is removed from the picture. But human authority always becomes
inadequate as soon as people learn to challenge its pretensions. Every system
fails the test of "The grand sez who".
[...]
Arthur Leff had a deeper understanding of what the death of God ultimately
means for man. He saw modern intellectual history as a long, losing war
against the nihilism implicit in modernism's rejection of the unevaluated
evaluator who is the only conceivable source for ultimate premises. Leff
rejected the nihilism implicit in modernism, but he also rejected the
supernaturalism that he had identified as the only escape from nihilism. Here is
how he concluded his 1979 lecture:
All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know
about ourselves, and each other, this is an extraordinary, unappetising
prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the
ruling model is Cane and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror,
seems to have worked and made us "good", and, worse than that, there is no
reason why anything should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us
could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things stand now,
everything is up for grabs.
Nevertheless:
Napalming babies is bad. Starving the poor is wicked. Buying and selling each
other is depraved. Those who stood up and died resisting Hitler, Stalin, Amin
and Pol Pot - and General Custer too - have earned salvation.
Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned. There is in the world such a
thing as evil. [All together now:] Sez who? God help us. What Leff said is
fascinating, but what he failed to say is more fascinating still. If there is no
ultimate evaluator, then there is no real distinction between good and evil. It
follows that if evil is none the less REAL, then atheism - i.e. the idea of the
non-existence of that evaluator or standard of evaluation - is not only the
extraordinarily unappetising prospect, it is also fundamentally untrue. Because
the reality of evil implies the reality of the evaluator who alone has the
authority to establish the standard by which evil can deserved to be damned.
(Johnson P.E., "Nihilism and the End of Law", First Things, March 1993, No.
31. http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/LIBRARY/JOHNSON/nihilism.html)
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[...]
Steve
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"Yet Teggart once again points out the truly interesting lesson of Darwin's
confrontation with the fossil record. Darwin's early scientific experience
was primarily as a geologist, and much of what he had to say about the
nature of the fossil record (summarized in the passage quoted above) was
an accurate and insightful early contribution to our understanding of the
vagaries of deposition and the preservation of fossils. But his Chapter 9
(first edition) on the imperfections of the geological record is one long ad
hoc, special-pleading argument designed to rationalize, to flat-out explain
away, the differences between what he saw as logical predictions derived
from his theory and the facts of the fossil record." (Eldredge N., "Time
Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of
Punctuated Equilibria", Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, pp.27-28)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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