1 Jul 2007
alfred
It's all about truth and transcendence, "Secular Illusions."

A clear, clever, learned, highly intelligent (but complicated, for a simple fellow) argument for transcendence as truth.

How's this for a simplified exegesis (for the simple):

For truth: wait until you are hungry. Really, really hungry.

For transcendence: try transcending your hunger (just imagine your plate is full and think of England).

For truth in transcendence: try prayer to some preferred Cosmic Progenitor to fill your empty plate.

Ergo, no transcendence in truth, and no truth in transcendence.

This simplistic thought experiment is of course too simple for those enamored of "Secular Illusions" verified by sophisticated argumentation.

But I am a simple fellow. And that's the truth.

And I stand against Islam and all its vile alleged transcendent truths.

That too is the truth, as absolute and unequivocal as my empty dinner plate.

3 Jul 2007
lonestarblues
Stopped reading when I encountered this sentence: "The reasons for this lack of societal response to the basic most human questions are deeper than a simple fear of the answer provided by scientific materialism; namely that there is no point to life."

That's nonsense. Scientific materialism says nothing of the sort. Scientific materialism is what guides the scientific method toward descriptions of what is.

Now metaphysical materialism may comment on what ought to be, and may argue the claim, but it is intellectual dishonesty to conflate the two, and typical of religious authoritarian's hatred of secular free thought.

4 Jul 2007
jwkersten
Rebecca Bynum shows a common communication problem, when talking with a religious inclined persons. The inability of said persons to imagine beyond their basic view on the world. Since they subscribe to a metaphysical view on the world, they assume everybody has a metaphysical view. But for secularist/atheist metaphysics are irrelevant to the point of non-existence. This does not mean their is no point to live, live can very well be enjoyed and procreation and providing for your familie and friends are very good reasons to live and to do so in freedom without anyone telling how you should live, be it an religious, political or philosophical is well worth defending. If that lifestyle is threatend us secularists will stand up, be that against communists, creationists or islamists.

4 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum

So, if I understand this correctly, the last two posters are saying that we're not machines, we're animals. Animals enjoy life and procreate and provide for their families, etc...

That still doesn't deal with the obvious non-material aspects of life man can comprehend. What is mind and all its works, higher mathematics, language, poetry and so forth if not higher than mere matter. Mind is non-material and values are non-material. So what? I don't understand why the acknowledgement of the non-material should be so threatening except that it acknowledges aspects of life that cannot be controlled. Man with his mind and his "omnicompetent method" can control the material world to some extent.

Secularists often talk about religionists as being closed-minded, but in reality, it's just as likely to be the other way around. I don't think understanding or even acknowledging non-material reality will put us back in the dark ages of religious authoritarianism, and I've always advocated personal freedom and spoken against the cruelty of forced conformity.

I don't think we have to choose between religious authority on the one hand and material determinism on the other.

4 Jul 2007
lonestarblues
Rebecca Bynum says "So, if I understand this correctly, the last two posters are saying that we're not machines, we're animals."

No, Rebecca, you got it wrong from the get go again. Neither I nor the previous poster said anything of the sort. We're humans.

Why do you insist on arguing straw men constructed out of your own prejudices and projections? Is it because you just don't understand what atheism is? Is it because as a theist you need something exclude and hate and fear?

You ask "What is mind and all its works, higher mathematics, language, poetry and so forth if not higher than mere matter."

Simple, emergent properties of complex, dynamical, but material life.

Not expecting an answer you continue your straw man: "I don't understand why the acknowledgement of the non-material should be so threatening except that it acknowledges aspects of life that cannot be controlled."

No, I don't feel threatened at all. That man and his scientific materialism is limited in not only what he can understand but also control is perfectly acceptable to me. Tell me, do you feel so threatened by life that you need to depend on an omni-god as controller?

Then you raise another straw man: "Secularists often talk about religionists as being closed-minded...."

No one here is saying anything about being closed-minded but you: "it's just as likely to be the other way around". Why do you project your prejudice on secularists?

You say "I've always advocated personal freedom and spoken against the cruelty of forced conformity."

Good, that's what most atheists argue as well. That, Rebecca, is what is meant by secularism, religious neutrality, religious freedom, without any implication of all the material determinism you associate with it.

You conclude "I don't think we have to choose between religious authority on the one hand and material determinism on the other."

Agreed, but do you realize that that is a false dichotomy? Remember, I pointed out in my post the difference between scientific materialism and metaphysical materialism? If you would acknowledge that you conflated the two, you would recognized why the choice is not between two metaphysics. As the previous poster pointed out quite clearly, I thought, "for secularist/atheist metaphysics are irrelevant to the point of non-existence.."

The choice, Rebecca, is between metaphysics, be it religionist faith in revelation or materialist faith in reason, between metaphysics and no metaphysics.

4 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum
Lonestarblues, But here again you have the problem: what is reason without mind and if you say mind and matter are one, how can matter evaluate itself? Material machines can't do that. Mind must transcend matter for reason to be possible. And simply asserting, "We're humans" doesn't tell me anything unless you define the term.

4 Jul 2007
lonestarblues
"But here again you have the problem: what is reason without mind and if you say mind and matter are one, how can matter evaluate itself?"

Again you argue a straw man. Did I say anything at all along those lines? No. So where do you come up with these straw men you project onto me? As the previous poster put it, your limited world view.

Please respond to what I said: Mind etc are "emergent properties of complex, dynamical, but material life." What I said was an explanation of your mystical "Mind must transcend matter for reason to be possible." Fredrich August von Hayek saw the free market, an emergent proprty of the complex, dynamical interactions of individuals exchanging goods and services, as transcending older religious tribal instincts.

"Material machines can't do that."

False. Genetic algorithms do just that. Neural networks learn. A good source of all that's being done computationally with silicon material in the area is Beinhocker's _The Origin of Wealth_.

"And simply asserting, 'We're humans' doesn't tell me anything unless you define the term."

We are what we are. Scientific materialism explains some of that. It's metaphysical materialism and other forms of mysticism that fail to explain anything.

4 Jul 2007
jwkersten
hear hear lonestarblues.

What I don't understand is, whether mind is related to brain according to you, Rebecca? Do you think mind is something outside our body? You do think it's higher than mere matter. Is it spirit? is it Soul?

The recent developments in neurobiology indicate a strong indications that mind is emergent out of the brain. Which makes the idea that mind is more than just matter less likely, further research may make this more clear.

In any case why should it be more than that? What are you afraid of if that is how we are? It doesn't make us immoral, because clearly we (humans) are (although not all of us and not all the time). There is no reason to suppose there's more to life, just because we are moral, as there is no reason to suppose we stop being moral when we happen to be mere machines.
This is by the way a Pragmatic worldview, not  utilitarianism

4 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum

Lonestarblues, so you're saying that groups of human beings can act in a machine-like, predictable�manner at times and that an�algorithm (which is a non-material mathematical concept) can explain some phenomena in the material world.� Sorry, I don't see your point.

My point, however,�in asking these questions is simply to challange some widely held assumptions. There are many things in this world that do not belong in the domain of the purely material and obviously�mathematics is one of them. Human beings reach into these non-material realms in order�to understand reality as it is.�The very fact that we can do so shows we are not totally material beings.

I assert that living matter is qualitatively different�from non-living matter. Now, the fact that I can make such a judgement and that perhaps you disagree with it, shows�a level of non-uniformity in human beings�that matter alone cannot express.

4 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum

jwkersten, no I do not think that mind and brain are one at all. I do think, however, that genetic factors are very much involved in how well we access mind by way of our brains. But I think mind itself is a actual level of reality all its own. 

4 Jul 2007
alfred
I have really enjoyed the posts and ripostes on Ms. Bynum's topic. Learned a lot, too. But I have a simple question for Ms. Bynum--maybe too simple for her obvious sophistication re this topic.

Ms. Bynum says, "Many things in this world do not belong in the domain of the purely material and obviously mathematics is one of them. . . ."

Well then, how about doing mathematics without a brain. Now, while I do have a brain, of sorts, it isn't a very smart one.

So I can't do "higher" mathematics, the abstruse or recondite sort at all. Too dumb, you see. The problem is my material brain, it's just not configured right.

But I have the impression, from what's been said so far, that Ms. Bynum thinks mathematics exists somewhere out there on some Platonic plane, which even I could dial up, if I had the correct sort of non-material assets. Such as faith?

Ms Bynum, I think Plato, that great old fox, has gone and done you wrong, as he has, mutatis mutandis, so much of Western philosophy. Although, to be sure, Christianity ought to pay the old boy royalties, indefinitely.

4 Jul 2007
lonestarblues
Rebecca, you had said "what is reason without mind and if you say mind and matter are one, how can matter evaluate itself? Material machines can't do that."

I replied, oh, but they can, and gave a couple examples, referenced more.

Now you respond "so you're saying that groups of human beings can act in a machine-like, predictable manner.... Sorry, I don't see your point."

No, you don't. Largely because you reversed what I'd said to try and make your point. Let me be clear: Machines can be programmed to imitate man's reasoning, learning, self-reflection, and all that without an algorithm, mind, soul, or other designer.

"My point, however, in asking these questions is simply to challange some widely held assumptions."

Understood. My challenge, other than to point out your confusing conflation of scientific and metaphysical materialism, has been to ask you why you set up a straw man in which you ascribe metaphysical assumptions to secularists and atheists and free thinkers and such who do not hold them? Rather than answer that you keep repeating your straw man in your questions. No secularist or atheist or free thinker or such will defend metaphysical nonsense. Why, again, do you do that?

Scientific materialism leads to the explanation mind, whatever it is, emerges from the complex, dynamical nature of the brain. No need of metaphysics.


You toss in "I assert that living matter is qualitatively different from non-living matter. Now, the fact that I can make such a judgement and that perhaps you disagree with it, shows a level of non-uniformity in human beings that matter alone cannot express."

Shouldn't you credit St Anselm for that ontological argument?

And our disagreeing proves what point? Which, to cite an obscure author, "brings us by a commdius vicus reciculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

5 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum

Dear Alfred and Lonestarblues,

Contrary to what it seems you both are saying, I think it highly unlikely that our brains exude a little bubble of isolated mind in which non-material thought activity takes place. And of course in a minute, lonestarblues will be telling us that thought is simply an electrochemical brain process anyway. I reject both those hypotheses because if they were true, either communication would be impossible, or in the lonestarblues scenario, unnecessary because as purely material beings we would exhibit the same reactions to the same stimuli.

I think the more likely case is that we perceive, use and explore mind, but we do not create it, just as we do not create the material side of reality by the act of perceiving, using or exploring it. I think mind exists a level of reality independent of man. We do not create it afresh each time we open our eyes in the morning, just as we do not create the material world, although there are some people who will disagree.

And no, regardless of your assertions lonestarblues, matter cannot evaluate itself without mind. Man, and animals too to some extent, can evaluate and manipulate matter by using mind. But, dead matter alone cannot ponder the meaning of its existence.

5 Jul 2007
alfred
I can't speak for LSB, but in argumentation, oblique responses to clear and direct statement leave me. . .well, speechless, and wanting very badly a very large single malt. Very, very large. I give up.

Maybe Texans are made of sterner stuff.

5 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum

Okay, let me try to be clearer. Yes, obviously�you need a brain to utilize and explore mind, just like you need eyes to see, or ears to hear - that doesn't mean the eyes and ears create sight and sound, or the things we hear and see. Okay?

Now, I'll join you for that scotch. Cheers!

5 Jul 2007
alfred
But. . .but. . .NOW JUST A DARN MINUTE! A couple more points, then I shall stop annoying you.

Sans eyes, sans ears, sans everythiing, there would still be the material world and its physical/chemical causation. . .gravity, space, time and their interactions don't require my registering presence, or indeed sentient life of any sort.

The universe could get on without me, as it did for 6-7 billion years, and as it will without me, for another stretch, however long, until the great crunch.

I don't see why a GC (Great Cruncher) is essential or helpful in trying to act and react throughout an existentially moral or principled lifetime (which I think is your concern, as well as mine, and thus au fond the precipitent of your metaphysics). On balance, doesn't the sorry human record show such a positing hurtful rather than helpful?

Also, didn't I learn that given any two hypotheses, the simpler is the more likely to be true? Isn't the god-hypothesis awfully complex? Don't you have to account for an awful lot. . .that is juat plain awful in existence and in human history? Isn't that accounting what religious philosophers have twisted themselves into knots and kinky notions over for centuries?

In the end, one just finishes, exhausted, issuing the Platonic definition of reality--something that silly savages in a dark cave cannot perceive until they free themselves of the binding chains and step into the blinding sunlight.

Then shall they perceive that every sight every sound the great globe and the universe surround are but reflections in a golden eye, and in themselves merely shadows and dust.

Isn't that what you think? Now I really do need that drink. Hope I don't get stuck with the check.

6 Jul 2007
jwkersten
Dear Alfred,
It's not so important who's right, everybody is entitled to his/her believes, the problem is the distortion Rebecca gives of secular ideas. First she equates secularism with materialism, then in stereotypical fashion she denies materialist the possibility to give meaning and/or value to life. Thereafter she confuses hostility to religion with hostility to the wishes of some fanatics to corrupt education and science with their religious worldviews.

For her it's clear that mind transcends matter and she presupposes that this is so self-evident that everybody must think so as well.

Then after distorting Rorty's views on truth ( Rorty denies the existence of a Absolute truth base, from which truth is derived, like a god or Marx or a theory), she attaches those views to all secularists ( Ironically she quotes somebody who attacks positivism in 1957, which has since been discredited by philosophers like Rorty)

After this it becomes really confusing: "secularists replace god", they have churches, somehow are group-oriented( how she comes up with this one is really bizarre ) and secularism = liberalism.

After all this it is obvious that secular materialist should accept Islam( A false religion of course) and fully incapable of defending ourselves against the coming totalitarian onslaught.(??)

yours

jwkersten

6 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum

Dear Jwersten, If secularism had remained neutral toward religion, I would have no quarrel with it, but it hasn't. I think that's obvious. All the great ethical systems of the past required some measure of humility toward creation and that has been withdrawn. This has left society vulnerable to decay from within - I think that is also quite obvious. We used to live in a society in which the consensus was that the universe was benevolent and just - that consensus has been undermined and this was the source of societal cohesion. In case you haven't noticed, society isn't just crumbling around the edges, it's flying apart.

Alfred, the "Great Cruncher?" This goes to my point. If we no longer agree that God or the universe is Good - then we might as well agree that God or the universe is cruel and Islam is correct. I wrote about it here and here.

Take a good look at societies where the consensus is God is cruel. Look at Somalia, look at Gaza, look at Saudi Arabia. Then tell me how material secularism has an answer for this. Where is the source for freedom or human rights if not in religious principles?

Speaking about mind, I'm trying to say that reality, in its totality, does not consist of the material alone.

Think about the assumptions underlying the "big bang - big-crunch."  For some unknown cause all matter was clumped together, there was a big explosion, creating both time and space and then miraculously, matter organized itself into atoms and molecules and elements and worlds then it was zapped by lighting (another miraculous material organizational feat) and spontaneously came to life and then that life became human so it could be not only conscious, but also conscious of its consciousness, ..I mean, common. How is this different from belief in magic? And this is magic without an basis for ethics. This will never work as a basis for civilization.

6 Jul 2007
alfred
jwkersten: I had not heard of Rorty. So I Googled him and retrieved the entire "Consequences of Pragmatism" initially published by U. of Minnesota (1985), my old school. I started reading, with fascination, left off with reluctance, anxious to return. This man makes sense. Clarifies so much that is murky in discussions such as this, with Ms. Bynum.

I don't know how this man slipped through my net, until now, and now only through you do I know of him.

Thank you. I owe you one. In fact, I owe you several. Ms Bynum: I highly recommend Richard Rorty to you. You surely would not reject such plain and sensible and logical thinking. Would you?

6 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum
Alfred, I quoted Roger Kimball quoting the ridiculous Richard "truth is a lie" Rorty in my piece. You weren't paying attention.

6 Jul 2007
jwkersten

“If secularism had remained neutral toward religion",???

If only that would be possible.

Secularism:

1. Religious scepticism or indifference.

2. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.

It's a case of too good to be true. Ever since 1968 religion has made a steady retreat but with the rise in attention Islam is getting, other religions see an opportunity to reassert themselves and try to get back what they had lost. Eventually they will fail, but it takes an effort.

I'm not prepared to start another polemic, but it is "obviously" humbug to put ethics and creation together.

I'm not sure what you mean by "decay" and "flying apart", but is this not a bit difficult to combine with your plea against groups?

The source for human rights and freedom lies in our empathy, in our ability to feel the pain and joy of others. This leads to the golden rule, from where most ethics start. There are various studies now in the field of evolutionary psychology from which it becomes increasingly clear that altruism etc. is an evolutionary product (i.e. it’s in our genes and thereby material), so basically the source for our ethics is born within us.

And the great story from the big bang, to the origins of existence to development of consciousness is not magic; It has come about through observation, hypotheses, experimentation and readjustment. (ie the scientific method) The story is not complete and some parts maybe wrong, but we are getting there and the place for a creator is in the ever shrinking gaps of our knowledge.  I understand why creationists are coming out of the closet and pushing for their own space. Now for the first time in history we begin to see the end of science, we begin to see the possibility of no more gaps and when there are no more gaps no more creator, no more creator no more God and that frightens them. So they want to stop science getting there or at least stop them educating their children, because they are afraid to compete with the logics of science, for if they were sure in their fate they could refute science and convince their children of the truth of creation.

6 Jul 2007
alfred
Yes, I see that you would reject "the rediculous. . .Rorty." Odd how I could miss his saying "truth is a lie." Perhaps I haven't read far enough.

He does say that absolute truth predicated on apperceptions of the absolute transcendent don't advance our understanding of pragmatic concerns, aren't useful, and are likely to impose erronious convictions on our consciousness. I think that's a long way from stipulating that "truth is a lie."

Well if that's "rediculous," then color me a rediculous infidel dog pragmatist anti-islamist atheist.

(I see I have misspeled "ridiculous" throughout. SOBRIETY HAS ITS VIRTUES. There must be others not orthographic. But I don't think misreading Richard Rorty is one of them.)

6 Jul 2007
alfred
This is the last day of my vacation so I must depart these fascinating and informative exchanges with fascinating people and get back to the mundane, the routine, the quotidian necessities of the commonplace. Where people talk mainly of sports, of celebrity scandal, of the price of this or that. . .where people use expressions such as "like, ya know?" and "cool!" and "hot!" (meaning that whatever it is, is "cool") and where any word with any syllabification beyond "yeah" marks you as an INTELLEKTSHUAL. Like, ya know? So that illustrates my place on the food chain.

However, I cannot depart without one last observation re a statement by Ms. Bynum. She said, in her post on 07/06, "If we no longer agree that God or the universe is good--then we might as well agree that God or the universe is cruel and Islam is correct."

The "universe" is neither "good" nor "cruel." It is what it is. People are "good." People are "cruel," humane or inhumane, contingent on values, ethics, morals. The Muslim ideology/theology is cruel, pace Hugh Fitzgerald's splendid scholarship, and inhumane, lacking values, ethics or morals willingly applicable to all creatures, great and small, infidels and dogs.

As to God, I know nothing. And neither does any other human, except the stories they tell themselves or, like Kipling's Jungle Monkeys, each other: "It must be so, we say it's so."

And so a fond farewell, and as the splendid Edward R. Murrow used to say, concluding his broadcasts from London during that prior threat to the Land of Hope and Glory, the Nazi blitz, surely comparable to this present one of the Muslim horde, "good night, and good luck." Alfred, Atheist Infidel Dog.

7 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum

Alfred, if you can think that everything of value in this world, all we love and cherish, is doomed to be extinguished by mindless material inexorability, I'm afraid I must characterize that as very cruel indeed. The fact that you accept this idea with such stoic resignation is the same attitude exibited by Muslims, with their inshallah fatalism.

Civilizations are built upon a common understanding of the nature of the universe. Christian civilization was built on the understanding that the universe is benevolent and just. People could believe in each other and trust each other because of their common understanding of the kind of world we inhabit.  If the understanding is that God is Love and places the highest value on the individual, then we have one kind of civilization. If God is cruel and created man to torture, test and condemn, then we have another kind of civilization, or lack thereof.

7 Jul 2007
Chris Chrisman

People of faith often find themselves tongue-tied when trying to defend their convictions vis-a-vis secularists.  This is partly because faith and belief are mentally "compartmentalized" as separate from facts and science.  As you say, "True religion is neither threatened by nor hostile toward science."  We must break down this barrier and integrate our faith into our "world view" which covers the whole gamut from our origins to our ultimate destiny.

A very cogent book on this subject is "Total Truth -- Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity" by Nancy R. Pearcey.

18 Jul 2007
Rebecca Bynum

Dear Chris,

Thank you for recommending the Pearcey book. I'm about 200 pages in and am enjoying it very much.

21 Jul 2007
Norman Hanscombe

Always interesting to come across a furious battle between theistic religion and non-theistic religion.  Not to mention lonebluestar or whatever his name was, with his new theory about the nature of humans.  Neither machine nor animal?  I assume mineral is included somewhere in the machine alternative, so does that mean we're some sort of super carrot?  Or perhaps we're all one of those favourite straw men to which he likes to refer?

To think I once hoped that the collapse of utoian marxism might be the harbinger in Western Society of an increase in careful analysis.  Silly boy that I was?