 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > General Chat > Greg Was Right. | Forum Quick Jump
|
 | 
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 7/17/2011 10:18 AM (GMT -6) |   | | Another thing. Sam is admitting that there are such things as intentions. He is also admitting that the effects of intentions can be distinguished from other effects. Isn't that all ID'ists are saying? That the ability to distinguish between the two discursively (as opposed to intuitively) at some level is possible? And yet he arbitrarily rejects his own concession in a different context. When a person doesn't believe he/she has free-will, it should not surprise us when their arbitrary (rationally speaking, i.e.) and inconsistent thinking corrresponds to actions that conveniently coincide with their self-interest.
I would contend that at one level, all events are intended. In particular, it is intended that there be regularities in event sequences such that inductive minds can discursively infer competently. And that implies that the specific timing, etc of natural events is itself intended. But we infer intent at other levels all the time. E.g. we do it in court trials to justify different sentences.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 7/17/2011 11:08:13 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/17/2011 11:09 AM (GMT -6) | | Similtude:
I'm comfortable with the conclusion that our true volitional choices are relatively rare as compared to habit-induced activity that we intellectually assent to. But that still means that myriads of subsequent decisions are only explicable in terms of those relatively few final causes. Sam is denying there are ANY final causes. This utterly eradicates the possibility of REAL moral accountability. He's just too confused to see the arbitrariness of his approach.
Well, he can't admit of any type of final causality TRANSCENDING the brain and it's activities, because of his assumptions. Once he did that, it'd be all over. But there is EVIDENCE for that kind of final causality lying in just such a reality. (Wilder Penfield's neurological work as discussed by Loder).
Penfield concluded that if one were to simply take the evidence available, one would have to posit "two essences": one would be the brain, it's structures and programmed patterns of behavior; the other would be the "I" who had the capacity to enter into the program and "blaze new trails through the neuronal structure," create new programs and redirect previously programmed behavior. This is the source of choice, meaning, and belief.
James Loder
The Knight's Move
p. 44
Interestingly enough, on a total other vein, Stephen Covey has his whole business based from a belief he has...
“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.”
I thought is was interesting. This "other essence" that Penfield points to...actually corresponds QUITE WELL with these four endowments: basically the necessary parts for self-relationship, self-other relationship, and "world" composition and re-composition. But Harris can't really acknowledge this as being grounded in reality that transcends (yet includes) the brain.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 7/17/2011 11:30:11 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 7/17/2011 11:33 AM (GMT -6) | | D: But there is EVIDENCE for that kind of final causality lying in just such a reality.
J: Right. But as Porter argues, evidence has to do with SPECIFIC causes of SPECIFIC events, not WHETHER causality is a real relation of events. There is no such thing as evidence FOR causality or final causality. There is only evidence for specific conditions BEING the necessary and/or sufficient conditions of a subsequent effect once we believe that:
1) Events are caused,
2) Reality is teleological, causally.
In that sense, Harris is confused to say free-will is a non-starter. Free-will is just another way of saying there are final causes. And the concept of causality is, by definition, a PURE starter. It has to be fundamental to get anywhere in terms of SPECIFIC explanation (i.e., causal accounts of specific SOFA's and events).
Indeed, big-bangers have insisted for decades that the universe was uncaused. That is about as hard of a start as you can get. The problem with that is this: it implies that we need a criteria to determine WHEN an event is caused or not. No one has any such a criteria that even a simple majority of humans finds intuitive. And such a criteria is certainly not derivable discursively.
These people have weak powers of abstract analysis. That's why they do well when doing EMPIRICAL science. They should stick to what they're good at. They're causing a lot of confusion and, therefore, trouble by feigning expertise in areas in which they are, quite frankly, sophomoric. Their interest in philosophy, metaphysics and epistemology seems more driven by animus for those they disagree with than an interest in truth.
How can they even claim they're interested in the truth when they frankly admit that they believe we are blindly evolved and are non-intentionally fitted to extra-ego conditions, whether or not knowing truth has anything to do with that fittedness/survival. Plantinga has demonstrated the pure abitrariness of that approach and how it implies that all belief is blind--including the belief that we evolved to a fitness with an extra-ego reality.
That's the approach that is the TRUE non-starter. If the grounding propositions and inferential relations are believed blindly, so are the inferences therefrom. By that approach, NO belief is warranted, and therefore NO belief is knowably BETTER than any other.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 7/17/2011 3:47:14 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 7/18/2011 8:36 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 7/18/2011 11:54 AM (GMT -6) | | | Most atheists either believe (or find equally plausible as the denial) that humans have a natural inclination to synthesize event sequences into teleological sequences. IOW, they basically agree that humans are natural-born teleologists/theists. But this means that teleology/theism is not something POSITED by theists to explain things. It's INTUITIVE. It doesn't NEED to be posited. It is entailed our very mode of inductive inference just as surely as the law of identity is entailed in the LNC for deduction.
That's the point. To deny the knowability of what seem to be fundamental intuitions that can not be disproved IS to posit that there is no such thing as intuitive knowledge. That's what atheists do. But that's exactly why they can't be more parsimonious. But insomuch as they deny the non-negotiableness of intuition, they are also starting and ending with blind faith as well. They fail in both respects. Their beliefs are arbitrary in the sense that they are posited to coincide with their own satisfaction, not because they think they are valid for truth determination for humans as a species.
And that is exactly why most of these debates aren't even philosophical debates. They're political debates. They know the State funds the academy, so they vie for control of the content of the curricula.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 7/18/2011 12:30:55 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 7/18/2011 1:07 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 7/18/2011 7:21 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 7/23/2011 9:23 AM (GMT -6) | | |
A Linnean Society of London meeting sponsored by The Royal Entomological Society, the British Ecological Society and the Natural History Museum
In scientific circles “The triumph of the Darwinian method” is generally accepted. In the wider world, however, at least 80% of the 6.5 billion people currently alive on Earth have religious beliefs based on a non-material afterlife, and/or reincarnation. Although many intellectuals of religious conviction accept Darwinism, it seems likely that most people do not.
This is fascinating. Finally there are Darwinist scientists that PUBLICLY admit, by implication at least, that evolution per se isn't even the issue between benevolent theism and its logical alternatives. Indeed, Greg's book on the warfare view of spiritual powers demonstrates that there are multiple conceivable theodicies that don't even assume that what we call extreme instances of natural evil exist in accord with any original intent of the benevolent Designer. Once this part of the theodicy problem is solved thus, it is precisely post-mortem experience that finishes out the theodicy.
The attempt by Francis Collins, Ken Miller, Ayala, etal to argue that the problem of evil is fatal to Christianity unless macroevolution is both true and non-teleological was still-born from day one. The atheists saw the naivety of it all along even when they were blind to their own oversight.
More interesting, however, are the abstracts for the papers to be presented at the meeting. They are pointing out, by implication at least, that the very adaptive variation (i.e., variation beyond that which is not believed to account for macroevolution anyway, like that caused by recombination, etc) we observe seems to be teleological because of the amazing degree to which it seems to be directed in terms of either feed-back processes, Lamarckianism, etc.
IOW, we're not even close to having ruled out vitalism in biology yet. The more we learn, the more complicated and teleological it all seems. In accord with this, Noah Porter said that "ends" are most conspicuous precisely where the efficient causes are least discernable. E.g., it is much easier to infer that the eye is FOR seeing than it is to know HOW it sees in terms of all the efficient causes. The exact same thing is true of adaptive evolution. Insomuch as it is adaptive, it is seen to be FUNCTIONAL in some specific sence (there's our "end"), but the efficient causes are so complex that no one has a clue what are the total complex of the efficient causes involved.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 7/23/2011 11:38:15 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
| 84 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 3 4 |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 8:27 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|