Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
While I‘ve been trying to take a break from all politics and news as I bask in the glow of my family staying with me this week, I’ve nonetheless been fascinated by the fall of Egyptian President Morsi, in what must be described as a military coup. I’ve never been a fan of coups as I expect is true of most of us, yet the fall of Morsi has raises issues that I think are far more nuanced than appear on the surface. The salient facts are that after too many years the corruption of the government of Hosni Mubarak (who had been installed by the Egyptian military) led to severe economic issues and dissatisfaction with totalitarian rule. This then led to such massive protest that the military felt compelled, or justified to remove him. Mubarak’s removal was cheered, but then the clamor for free elections arose and after 18 months of martial law elections were held, as the first step towards transitioning to democracy and formulating a constitution.
The Society of Muslim Brothers, or Muslim Brotherhood was:“Founded in Egypt in 1928as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna,” It’s stated purposes was to: “to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood In a country such as Egypt, with its’ long history of totalitarian rule, the concept of political parties was not strong. Through its 85 years history the Brotherhood became the most stable opposition faction in the Egyptian political scene and was the main focus for opposition to whoever ruled Egypt by dint of the Egyptian Military’s backing. Such has been the success of the Muslim Brotherhood that it has branched out to have a significant presence in 20 nations around the world, many without a Muslim majority, such as the Russian Federation, the Indian Subcontinent, Great Britain and the United States. Therefore when the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 took place, the now legal “Brotherhood” was in an excellent position to vie for political power and formed the “Freedom and Justice Party” as its electoral arm. It won more than 40% of the parliamentary seats and its candidate Mohamed Morsi won election as President with 51.73% of the vote. His chief opponent had been a man who served as Mubarak’s Prime Minister. The Egyptian voters were faced, I think, with a “Hobson’s Choice” of Presidential candidates and chose what they perceived to be the lesser of two evils. Sound familiar? What I will attempt to examine here is a question which is framed as: “Are Religious Fundamentalists capable participating in a pluralistic democratic society?”The stated objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood through its’ “Freedom and Justice Party” politically were certainly ones that few of us could complain about and perhaps soothed the secular voters of Egypt and its non-Muslim Egyptians.
“We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people’s will, removing all obstacles restricting the functioning of civil society organizations,etc”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood
However, that statement is belied by the following objectives openly acknowledged by the Brotherhood:
“In the group’s belief, the Quran and Sunnah constitute a perfect way of life and social and political organization that God has set out for man. Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam’s manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia.[21] It preaches that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam. The Brotherhood strongly opposes Western colonialism, and helped overthrow the pro-western monarchies in Egypt and other Muslim countries during the early 20th century.
On the issue of women and gender the Muslim Brotherhood interprets Islam conservatively. Its founder called for “a campaign against ostentation in dress and loose behavior”, “segregation of male and female students”, a separate curriculum for girls, and “the prohibition of dancing and other such pastimes … “
“The Brotherhood’s stated goal is to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state.”
“The Brotherhood’s credo was and is, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
This is then the dichotomy of beliefs that the Brotherhood’s political party presented to the Egyptian voter. On the one hand it had denounced violence and agreed to work within the framework of a democratic political process. Yet its’ core beliefs are that (at least within predominantly Islamic countries) they should be ruled by the beliefs of Islamic law and justice in accordance with their interpretation of the “Qur’an” which they believe is perfect. Part of the task of the Morsi government was to create and implement a Constitution for Egypt. It was also promised that his government would include all factions of Egyptian society including the large group of Egyptian Coptic Christians. What occurred though was that Morsi only brought in Brotherhood political allies into the various Ministries of government and created a Constitution that was decidedly Islamic in content. Egypt, which was one of the most enlightened countries in the Mid East in the treatment of women, was being pushed into a far more fundamentalist outlook. This decidedly religious obsession of the Morsi government failed to pay attention to improving Egypt’s collapsing economy, growing poverty and the social unrest that goes with those conditions. Rapes of women increased in alarming increments and crime soared as people sought the wherewithal to feed their families. Cairo, that great and venerable city, increased to a population to more than twenty teeming millions the majority living in horrendous slums. City services in Egypt’s capitol collapsed under the weight of those numbers. The elation of the 2011 Revolution led inexorably to the despair of 2013 as millions of Egyptians, many with nothing to lose took to the streets and gave the Egyptian Military the tacit permission to remove Morsi and arrest the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is not my intent to paint the Muslim Brotherhood as evil, nor is it to give a litany of their history of violence and terrorism. Such a view is in my opinion one sided and ignores the reality that led to the Brotherhood’s creation and to its success in surviving for 85 years in a hostile Egyptian climate. Historically, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Mid East has been an area controlled by wealth and Western imperial power. While wealthy rulers lived in luxury, the middle classes were relatively small and the masses lived in abject poverty. No doubt from the perspective of the Brotherhood’s founders they were mandated by their beliefs to aid their brother Muslims and to return them to the “perfection” of Islamic Law. Intermingled with those beliefs was the memory of Islamic empire and the determination to return to its’ glory. However, noble their motives may have been and are, within their beliefs is this inherent problem. If you see that everything you believe is “perfect” and mandated by God, then the idea of compromising those beliefs is blasphemy and sacrilege. How indeed can you live in a pluralistic society, when those who reject your beliefs, are by your definition “evil” and “sinful”?
There are two thoughts that arose in my mind and caused me to write this piece. The first is that the entire concept of “Democracy” has been deconstructed through the years by ours and other governments to mean the ability to vote and little else. How often throughout the world have we seen dictatorships legitimized simply because elections were held? A democratic government needs to be supported by democratic institutions and the agreement of its citizens to abide by the results of the electoral processes. Beyond that it needs an overall conceptual structure that provides the framework for the existence of a government that will protect the rights of all the people, not just the ever changing majority. It requires a legal system and a judiciary that protects its conceptual framework (constitution) and with it the rights of the individual. It’s of course more complicated than that, but if you’re a regular visitor here I’m sure you get my meaning and could on your own flesh it out beyond my brief offering. The point is that when the world saw the welcomed upheaval of the “Arab Spring” it had been conditioned by years of propaganda that made simply holding a vote appear to be the acme of a democratic process. There is much more to developing a democratic society than simply voting for a “leader” and the election of Morsi, given his subsequent actions, did not a democratic Egypt make. This leads me to my second thought on this subject.
I seriously wonder whether it is possible for Fundamentalist religionists to actually be able to take power in a democratic society and wield it in a way that allows people of differing beliefs their freedom to have those differing beliefs? When you have a belief system that you not only see as “perfect”, but as the road-map for a perfect society, how can you make the compromises that are necessary to maintain a pluralistic, democratic society? From the perspective of the Muslim Brotherhood, indeed it is their stated goal; you can only build a “perfect” society based on Islamic law and justice. In this respect they are not really very different from other Fundamentalist true believers that see “their way” as the only way towards true righteousness.
When we apply this to America the abortion debate comes to mind. There is no doubt that the majority of Americans do not believe that women should be denied the right to choose what they do with their own bodies, yet in the years since Roe v. Wade this has been one of the flashpoints of the American political scene. The only conceivable, immutable ending for those anti-abortionists to this national controversy, is the complete end of abortions. Compromise of positions can only be temporary and must include small gains for their side. If and when those opposed to abortion finally gain power they will not hesitate to end it completely, regardless of the equity of the situation and a sizable opposition to their actions. I use abortion though as merely an illustration of this problem. There are many other areas, prayer in schools for instance, where the same dynamic would apply. The problems is that when someone sees their views not only as perfect, but also as the only way to live, compromise becomes ugly and unacceptable.
My contention is that without the ability of people to compromise, maintaining democratic institutions becomes impossible. This is true whether in Cairo, or Washington. The nature of much of today’s religious fundamentalism, be it Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Judaic, is that compromise is impossible, because one cannot compromise “God’s Word”. If you are a true believer than that is an obvious fact of existence and you would cease to be a “true believer” without that philosophy. This brings me back to Morsi and Egypt. I hate the idea of military coups anywhere, but what was to be done in Egypt. There is strong evidence, that contrary to their platform, once in power those of the Muslim Brotherhood returned to their stated principles and were moving quickly to establish the version of Muslim Law upon Egypt, while at the same time denying equality of treatment to others. This fanaticism in the application of their beliefs distracted them with dealing with the economic and social problems that plagued most Egyptians and led inevitably to the Egyptian Military’s coup. I think this is a quandary that is at the heart of the difficulty of maintaining a democratic, pluralistic system in many countries, including ours. While is certainly is not the only difficulty, it ranks high on a list of contributors to political dysfunction. The question is what to do about it and the answer is quite difficult. The problem is that if you exclude religious fundamentalists from the political process due to their authoritarian views, then you no longer have a pluralistic society because of that exclusion. In a pluralistic society religious fundamentalists should also have a voice, or when do you stop excluding. Please help me out here because while I can frame the problem I admit that I don’t have the “perfect” answers.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
David,
If your religions so good then why do you find it necessary to condem others? It seems you take more time to actually practice what you write here…. But then again, some have no knowledge of what they talk about…. Kinda like the brains in neutral and the mouths on high….. Vrooooooommm
Anonymously Yours wrote: “If your religions so good then why do you find it necessary to condem others?”
Excuse me? Ignoring for the moment that I do not profess any religion, where and how have I condemned anyone? I am not aware of doing that. I apologize if I have come across that way.
Any God whose afraid of disbelief from mere mortals isn’t much of a God, is it?
I find it very interesting to contrast comments on this site by people of faith. There is a distinct difference between those statements made by people of the fanatical fundamentalist bent be they from the traditions of Judaism, Christianity (including the Opus Dei lot) or Islam and those like leejcaroll and OroLee who practice their faith without the need to force it upon others. The main difference being that the later is respecting that religious choice is a right of self-determination and not the right to make determinations for others. That difference resting almost squarely on the idea of authoritarianism versus individual choice in matter of conscience.
That reflects more accurately in many ways the teachings of Jesus who was against the dogmatic orthodoxy of the contemporaneous Rabbinical power structure and all about accepting that your relationship with God is personal and yours alone. That’s precisely what got Jesus in trouble with the locals and subsequently the Romans who had little or no interest in the religious practices or local power structures of their provinces unless it presented a threat of instability which would in turn threaten both tax revenues and the ability to recruit into the Legions. Which is what happened once the locals realized the real threat to their authoritarian structures that Jesus’ “heretical” teachings represented.
Jesus wasn’t just a liberal. He was anti-authoritarian. He taught that there is no Heavenly Power or Kingdom on Earth and the only true judge of one’s life was in the Eyes of His Father.
And that combination is what spelled his eventual doom at Golgotha.
He was all “love each other” and “think for yourselves” in a world that didn’t operate that way.
Sounds all vaguely familiar and like a pattern that repeats.
DavidM:
“Atheism causes people to interpret life through a selfish lens which leads to all manner of atrocities in society.”
Arent human atrocities just the result of being human? Religion, no religion, Deist, atheist, no group can claim immunity to bad actors and actions.
Bron wrote: “Aren’t human atrocities just the result of being human? Religion, no religion, Deist, atheist, no group can claim immunity to bad actors and actions.”
Yes, experience teaches us that evil crosses all these boundaries. There are many religious people who are complete charltons who do not believe but claim to others that they believe, so that they can manipulate them and make money. They know that they are fake and are doing it on purpose. Other religious people are simply deceived, and attempt to follow a faith, but fail to be able to do it. Yet other religious people have an ideology that teaches them everybody is evil and the only difference is forgiveness for those who profess belief in some creed or who belong to some church. I certainly do not mean to imply that theism alone creates some kind of immunity from behaving badly.
With regards to atheism, there are many atheists who appear somewhat moral and conduct themselves in a responsible fashion, but often I think this is done in spite of their professed atheism. Especially among intelligent people, they construct moral boundaries based upon their own rules of conduct which they judge make them best able to function well in society. They also often abide by the dictates of their conscience but without acknowledging that they are doing so or without understanding of where that guidance of conscience comes from (deeming it to be strictly cultural, whether that is true or not).
If we judge the atheistic philosophy directly, however, there are some principles that can be deduced using logic about how the atheist principle directs a person.
For example, if atheism is true, there are certain ascetic practices that would be discouraged.
1) What purpose would prayer serve for an atheist? He might replace prayer with meditation, and that might be somewhat helpful because he might actually unwittingly enter into prayer by doing so, but there also is the rationale that prayer is useless and worthless because there is no God.
2) What purpose would a practice like fasting serve an atheist? If there is no God, then the discipline of fasting is basically nonsense. Why put oneself through any kind of sacrificial practices that appear on the surface to help nobody, but seem only to be detrimental needlessly to one’s own body?
3) What about oaths, promises, and covenants? The foundation of civilized society is being bound by our word and entering into such relationships where the creation of such establishes relational expectations and conditions that enable greater societal cooperation. When one holds to the atheist principle, there is no God who sees what you do in secret, and so it may be wise to cheat if you are sure you will not get caught. Oaths are basically done in a manipulative way to get someone else to do something. It would be wise to squirm around agreements through loopholes and the like. This is not to say that theists are immune from doing the same thing, but at least we have a foundation by which to rebuke such action. For the atheist, there is no foundation because ultimately what is best is what leads him to have a better life for himself and those associated with him.
John Locke wrote some of the best arguments for religious toleration that our founding fathers based much of their thinking on for establishing a separation of church and state, but the one group that Locke said society should never tolerate was the atheists. He said that atheists have no foundation for abiding by promises, covenants, and oaths, something central to any civilized society.
4) What about being persecuted for righteous causes? Whereas theism leads a person to be principled and believe that God will judge matters even after death, an atheist has no reason to lay down his life sacrificially for a good cause. If death is the end, unless the atheist feels his life is over anyway, or unless he is depressed and desires to cease from existing, the idea of leading a sacrificial life based upon a righteous reason would be foolish. He should instead seek to mitigate between what is good for himself and his family with what is good for society in general, and his own life should take precedence over the lives of others. From an atheist’s perspective, the way Jesus led his life, marching headlong into being executed at the age of 33, would just be absolutely foolish and stupid. It makes no sense. Who cares if his message drastically changed the way most of society thought for thousands of years. In regards to his own existence, it would have been much wiser to avoid execution.
5) Atheism assumes that knowledge cannot come through the spirit because the spirit does not exist. If their assumption is true, no problem, but if their assumption is not true (and spiritual people have discovered that it is not a true premise), then atheism discourages any person from becoming spiritual in how they relate to others and to society in general. There is no openness to being led by the spirit in ways that would cause great discomfort to the physical part of their being.
6) Atheism discourages the virtue of pure love and replaces it with hedonism as a valid consideration for achieving happiness. Evolutionary theory rightly predicts selfish behavior to come through the carnal, physical impulses of our bodies. If evolutionary theory is true, as well as certain theological arguments by the apostle Paul in the New Testament, any kind of philosophy that causes a person to enhance his own physical being through pleasure rather than keeping his carnal impulses under the direction of his own mind, will, and spirit, would lead to more selfish behavior. This is the prediction based upon applying logic to the atheistic principle. Whereas the theist is led to distinguish Godly love from erotic love, the atheist conflates them all together, believing that carnal love is all there is. There just is no basis for considering spirituality and emotions tied to spirit rather than flesh.
7) Atheism destroys the value of faith in guiding a person’s life. If there is no God and no spirit, faith is rendered useless. Faith becomes ineffective then as a guide to knowledge. Faith also becomes ineffective as a cultivated virtue that allows a person to persevere calmly and peacefully through trials and hardships.
I could go on and on about how pervasive the atheist principle affects people in a negative way, but it would probably only cause them to holler, “how can you say this… prove this or prove that, or I reject what you say without some proof.” This is another problem with the atheist, resting his standards on empirical proofs and having a skeptical outlook toward virtually everything in life. No longer does another person’s experience or honest testimony mean much of anything. Only empirical proof matters to them.
And when we look in actual practice, where are the examples of atheists who would live very holy lives of sacrificial giving, such as Teresa of Calcutta? While some atheists will trumpet their good works and deeds to proclaim how filled with charity they are without believing in God, you just do not find shining examples of the sort you find with theists. It is not surprising when we consider what the tenet of atheism versus the tenet of theism would prescribe or proscribe to a person’s mind. Many atheists proudly and loudly compare themselves with all the religious fakes in the world, pointing to bad behavior of those with a theistic worldview to justify their own atheistic mindset, but rarely if ever do they point to atheistic saints so-to-speak. Virtually all their activity is antagonistic toward religion in society, from seeking to get “In God We Trust” off our money and public buildings to removing Ten Commandment monuments from public courthouses and public squares. I see little gain to the individual or to society in general by embracing an atheistic philosophy, and there are many reasons to avoid atheism like the plague.
Maybe you don’t find examples like Mother Theresa among atheists because it does no one good to proclaim they are an atheist, your comments are a perfect example of why one does not trumpet it.
Atheists do not have to have a G-d to honor their oaths. Inherent sense of decency and that their word is their bond is all that is necessary.
You want to see hate and betrayal of one;s oath and word, we can look to George Bush lying us into war and declaring “mission accomplished”. You can read/hear commentary by people like Mike Huckabee, a minister, who regularly distorts, lies, exaggerates, takes out of context to paint the democrats, progressives, liberals, President Obama with a black brush.
I am a person of Faith but I do not say to myself I had better do good/act good because a Higher Power sees me and will judge me. My word is my bond because it is my word. My behavior I hope is moral and decent because I am a moral and decent person who believes we need to treat one another with respect and dignity.
It seems that atheism/atheist is scary to you. If your Faith is string enough you do not need to fear someone else’s lack of Belief, or excoriate it, or denounce it. That should not be the Christian way, You know Judge not lest ye be judged.?
DavidM says: As for atheism, I think it is among the worst philosophical premises a person can adopt. Atheism causes people to interpret life through a selfish lens which leads to all manner of atrocities in society.
On the contrary; I know many atheists (through the student’s atheist union at my university) and we interpret life through the lens of reality, which leads to the betterment of society, and seldom does it lead to selfishness.
Selfishness in atheists is a product of mental disease or abnormal brain development that creates a lack of empathy, sympathy, or self-control. That is rare; most atheists are possessed of typical emotions (including empathy, sympathy, and a reasonable amount of self-control) and what distinguishes them from theists, in my considerable experience, is just the refusal to let Religious contradictions and paradoxes slide and believe anyway. Atheists are the students that cannot let go of their internal demand for coherence, they are nitpickers. Practically all of them were religious when young.
In fact, a very common response when I ask them how they came to be an atheist is that they were religious, and out of a sense of duty as a good Christian or a desire to be a more knowledgeable expert they decided to read the Bible, not just passages but the whole thing: And as one young formerly devout Christian told me, “When I finished it and I closed the back cover, I was an atheist.”
DavidM says: It also restricts a person’s vision to be purely empirical and causes them to avoid making logical connections that would otherwise be possible to them.
No it doesn’t. It restricts a person’s vision to things that are real, but logic and rationality remain intact. No logical connections are prohibited, we just eschew basing decisions on made up fictions.
For the most part I keep my mouth shut (or do not attend) the student atheist meetings; although their meetings are open to all they do not need an aging professor lecturing them in their social setting.
But I know for the most part they have figured out what I figured out: Emotions are real. Lives are real, and we only get this one. Violence and hatred and selfishness are all real.
Atheists regard life as more precious than theists, because atheists know life is finite (not infinite) and we get only a short time on Earth. There is no afterlife to look forward to; what we have is life now that should not be wasted begging for more.
Atheists regard community and crime differently from theists and Karmists: We do not believe in magical punishment and retribution, we believe it is possible for brutality to go unpunished forever, for the serial killers to die peacefully in their beds of old age, for thieves to enjoy the spoils of their predations without consequence either physical or psychological, because most habitual predators are psychologically broken and do not feel empathy or regret.
So we are more adamant that society band together and prosecute and punish crime; we are LESS selfish with our money and LESS opposed to taxation, because we do not trust in any “higher power” to protect us or keep us safe from human predators, we know the ONLY power that can stand up to the baddest psychopaths on the planet is a collective power, it is the power of the community banded together to protect rights and fight predation of the few percent that ARE selfish, without empathy, sympathy or regrets.
Theists that think atheists are selfish, are selfish themselves: If an atheist helps somebody, they are not doing it for supernatural reward, brownie points or because their Master ordered them to be kind. Help from an atheist is pure and for no reward other than knowing they helped a fellow human being. Help from a theist will always carry the scent of selfishness, in their expected payoff from God for “honoring him” or obeying His commands. Help from a theist can always have an ulterior motive, help or charity from an atheist is the kindness it appears to be on its face.
The Theistic idea that atheists cannot be moral or charitable without the threats of supernatural punishment and promises of supernatural reward betrays a mindset of personal selfishness in the Theist, that they themselves see little reason to be anything but selfish absent those rewards and punishments; that they see life as a transactional zero-sum game, that every kindness bestowed or received must be compensated (supernaturally or otherwise).
An atheist has a clearer vision of morality and charity; because the world is composed of just us imperfect humans. Theists believe that God punishes bad behavior with bad fortune; but atheists know better. If one thinks that bad fortune may be the result of sinful behavior, it skews their judgment of what is moral and what charity should be bestowed upon the unfortunate. Muslims are theists, Jews are theists, Christians are theists, Protestants and Catholics are theists, and discrimination in charity and moral treatment and judgment of human worth by one group is often predicated upon their belief that another of these groups is “sinful,” or infidels or otherwise deserving of punishment (by God in the form of bad fortune and poverty, or by humans inflicting those upon the group in the name of God).
Atheists do not have that issue, we believe all those groups are deluded, but delusion or beliefs do not warrant punishment, supernatural or otherwise. As an atheist I provide charity to an abused women’s shelter, the vast majority of such abused women are religious (despite their proof in hand that God did not protect them). I do not see that delusion as diminishing their need for help in escaping their misfortune. Their beatings are not punishments from God, but from brutal men that should be punished. If anything, their delusion of faith increases their need for help because it increases the likelihood of them thinking they deserve their pain and anguish, or God would not have let it happen.
In my view as an atheist it is both rational and emotionally satisfying to help other people, because I believe we are all they have, and they are all I have, and frequently small interventions or contributions by me, that I will not really miss much, can have large effects for others, even life-changing (or life-saving) effects.
As a rational atheist, what I believe matters in the world is other humans and human happiness. My own is included there, but a part of my own happiness and satisfaction in life is being a net contributor to the happiness of others. Unlike theists, I do not believe that life is a zero-sum transaction, I do not need a supernatural being to balance the books with blessings or punishments, I believe that a group of people can be far happier than the same people individually isolated would ever be. That is not a zero-sum game, the whole is greater than its parts, and happiness does not need to come at somebody else’s expense.
I do not need a blessing of God to compensate me for my good deeds or charitable work. If I am given one, or my acts are attributed to God instead of me, I choose to hear those statements in translation as an atheist: “Thank you for making my life better.” Which is what they would say if they were not deluded into thinking I was the slave of some deity.
Speaking of democracy, the ACLU vs Military Spy Agents NSA case is moving along.
I reviewed the case docket about an hour ago.
All defendants have been served.
A lawyer appeared for military defendants.
Judge grants ACLU application for expedited hearing on preliminary injunction issues (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller – 2).
AY: I am not an agnostic. The Bible is full of contradictions, starting with Genesis 1:26, in which it refers to multiple Gods. (one of the passages the literal believers will cherry pick to be interpreted non-literally, of course.)
I do not believe self-contradicting statements, the Bible is so obviously badly written fiction I do not claim to know nothing, I would more readily believe that Chewbacca is real and has taken up residence at Hogwart’s.
Tony C wrote: “The Bible is full of contradictions, starting with Genesis 1:26, in which it refers to multiple Gods. (one of the passages the literal believers will cherry pick to be interpreted non-literally, of course.)”
I often respect your intellect, but when you plod into fields where you have barely plowed, I feel a little embarrassed for you. The “literal believers” as you call them (not the best term IMO) have spent a great deal of time over thousands of years debating the name Elohim (the plural Hebrew name of God) and what it means. Entire theologies have been built up around it resulting even in the execution of some of those who would disagree with the established theology about God or the Godhead. It also has formed a major split of Islam from Christianity. To claim that they just cherry pick such passages to be interpreted “non-literally” is ridiculous, coming either from ignorance or dishonesty. I think in your case, you just cite from the atheist playbook the same way a barely knowledgeable religious believer quotes from the Bible to communicate what he has been told by others is true.
David, first issue is that Bible has been translated many, many times. Who knows what the original wording or intent(s) was.
And your aimus towards “atheists’, reminds me of those who harbor severe animosity towards homosexuals.
leejcaroll wrote: “David, first issue is that Bible has been translated many, many times. Who knows what the original wording or intent(s) was.”
I do not think that possible translation errors are the “first issue” in considering theism. The Bible is not the only evidence that asserts a theistic worldview, nor is it the most powerful evidence. A person can completely reject the Bible and still be convinced of theism.
I ask this question. Of all the people who ever lived throughout all of history, who is the one person that has most affected the society and the societal roots in which I live? I conclude that Jesus is that person. Like him or hate him or whatever, all of our history seems to be so completely affected by this man. Thomas Jefferson considered Jesus to be the greatest moral philosopher ever. We continue to use a calendar dated by his birth, despite various efforts to change that, and virtually everybody has heard of him and is somewhat familiar with some of his history. Debates and arguments have constantly been raised about this man’s teachings and his existence. Therefore, I think it prudent to set out to understand this man and his teachings by reading not only what others have said about him, but also by reading the closest thing we have to original source material about him and his teachings.
In regards to translations, I just read them all and compare them. With only a few exceptions, they are not really that much different from each other. I take time to learn Greek to see how the translation from Greek to English might be affected. Because Jesus had respect for the Torah and other Hebrew writings, I also read them and learn some Hebrew to consider how those translations might be affected. I read arguments about which translation is best and why. In the end, I have found the issue of “who knows what the original wording or intent was” would be a poor excuse for not taking time to read it and study it. I really don’t care who professes a belief in the Bible as the literal Word of God or not, but I am somewhat suspicious of those who do not take any time at all to even read the book and seriously consider what it has to offer. No other book in our history has been so read and scrutinized and argued about, so if any student takes time to read a textbook to enlighten his mind, he ought also take the time to read the Bible. I’m not claiming that the Bible is a holy book. I am just saying that it is worth the time to read and study, and bias against religion should be discarded in favor of a proper education.
Tony,
In re paradoxes and infinities: yep.
Darren,
From my undemanding that is precisely why folks were afraid of a catholic being elected president…… That the pope would rule the US…..
Tony C,
David believes in a god because its printed on money…. I don’t know if there is or is not a god….. But I’ll take huxleys definition…
ag·nosti·cal·ly adv.
Word History: An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven but holds that one cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. The term agnostic was fittingly coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge. He made up the word from the prefix a-, meaning “without, not,” as in amoral, and the noun Gnostic. Gnostic is related to the Greek word gnsis, “knowledge,” which was used by early Christian writers to mean “higher, esoteric knowledge of spiritual things”; hence, Gnostic referred to those with such knowledge. In coining the term agnostic, Huxley was considering as “Gnostics” a group of his fellow intellectuals”ists,” as he called themwho had eagerly embraced various doctrines or theories that explained the world to their satisfaction. Because he was a “man without a rag of a label to cover himself with,” Huxley coined the term agnostic for himself, its first published use being in 1870.
DavidM: No, you did precisely that. I just excised all the BS in-between so others could SEE that is what you did.
Bron: My atheism is just a subset of a broader principle, that I do not accept “explanations” that are clearly designed to be impossible to test, or that present paradoxes that cannot be resolved.
Religion happens to offers both features; but it is not the only kind of argument that does so: Many mathematical proofs, for example, end with paradoxes. For example, the proof that there is no largest prime integer first assumes there IS a largest prime integer, and then produces a paradox, a larger number that by definition is a product of primes but is not divisible by any primes.
When we can produce a paradox, the answer is not to accept the premises on faith, that there exists numbers that are both composite and not divisible by any prime, but to reject the entire premise: There is no largest prime integer.
The same thing goes for religion: Infinities create logical paradoxes, and religion is packed full of them: All powerful, all knowing of the past present and future, existing forever, all loving, with an unknowable plan that cannot fail, and on and on. The answer to paradoxes is not to accept them on faith because they comfort you emotionally, the answer to paradoxes is to root out where the infinities are, and reject them.
The evidence against a Creator is that any demand for a Creator creates a paradox. If a Creator is necessary to accomplish X (say Creating the Universe) then why isn’t a Creator of the Creator necessary? If one exempts the Creator from the necessity of being Created, then what prevents us from exempting the Universe from the necessity of being created? If one posits the Creator has simply existed forever, then why not posit the Universe has simply existed forever? Infinities create paradoxes and unanswerable questions; it makes no sense to simply believe in a Creator because somebody else says so (and then threatens you with supernatural consequences if you don’t obey what he claims are the demands and desires of the Creator).
In fact there is no proof the Universe has NOT existed forever (Big Bang hypothesis notwithstanding, and not even subscribed to by many well published physicists). Stephen Hawking has proposed a Big Bounce theory that allows an infinitely existing Universe; supported by string theorist calculations (and incidentally doing away some of the ridiculous premises need to support the phony Inflation hypothesis).
Evolution provides a perfectly plausible route to the creation of life, intelligence and man.
All accounts of a Creator are simply not necessary, or just push an infinity (and paradox) somewhere even more implausible than where it was originally: We may have trouble imagining an infinite existence for an inanimate proton, but isn’t it even harder to imagine an infinite existence for an intelligent, thinking, active being?
When we reach a paradox, we reject the premise as nonsense.
Tony C wrote: “Infinities create logical paradoxes, and religion is packed full of them: All powerful, all knowing of the past present and future, existing forever, all loving, with an unknowable plan that cannot fail, and on and on. The answer to paradoxes is not to accept them on faith because they comfort you emotionally, the answer to paradoxes is to root out where the infinities are, and reject them.”
An interesting observation, but you seem to overlook the fact that not all theists believe in these infinities about God. You asked me about these when we first started corresponding and I clearly indicated to you that I did not accept the concept. Yet, here you are touting them as if all theists have the same idea about God.
Tony C wrote: “If a Creator is necessary to accomplish X…”
Unfortunately, the philosophy of science has created this perspective of “if a Creator is necessary …” From my perspective, this is the wrong starting point for the question of whether or not there was a Creator. It presumes no Creator until proven otherwise. While such a premise certainly accelerates empirical discovery by narrowing research questions, it does not adequately address the real question about origins. What is the probability of there having been a Creator involved with our origins versus the idea that processes based upon currently observable natural laws are adequate to explain our origins. Science time and time again begs for more time to make the discoveries that will provide the basis for a theory that finally will provide that adequate understanding and proof. Until then, the supposition is that there is no Creator. The more knowledgeable one becomes of the empirical facts of nature, the less likely the probability is that the complexity and order is explained by any of the present scientific theories.
Tony C wrote: “When we reach a paradox, we reject the premise as nonsense.”
This approach sometimes represents the same kind of cop-out leveled against religious people, who instead of adequately investigating a complex problem resort to the idea that “God did it.” Sometimes issues that appear to be a paradox actually have a solution. It just takes more work to figure it out.
Canon Law and Statutory Law are disconnected in the United States. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. If the SCOTUS declares the constitution provides that gay or straight marriage is to be allowed then Canon Law to the contrary is irrelevant as far as government treament of marriage is concerned.
I don’t know how better to make this any more succinct.
Darren Smith wrote: “Canon Law and Statutory Law are disconnected in the United States. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. If the SCOTUS declares the constitution provides that gay or straight marriage is to be allowed then Canon Law to the contrary is irrelevant as far as government treatment of marriage is concerned.”
Nobody has even mentioned Canon Law, so why are you mentioning it? I have been citing case law from the SCOTUS and other courts, and what is amazing is that not one single person here acknowledges the case law arguments. They simply deny that the arguments in these cases have any merit. They treat the arguments of the courts as if they were my own personal arguments motivated by religion. Tony C (or whatever his real name is) even put forward that the Skinner decision never mentioned marriage, yet it did and this is why Loving v. Virginia referenced this case. Such indicates huge blind spots in Tony’s mind, created by bias and prejudice.
When you say that if SCOTUS declares that the Constitution provides that gay and straight marriage is to be allowed, I assume you mean that if they say that gay unions be classified the same as straight unions under the label marriage. Saying “is to be allowed” erroneously implies that someone is arguing to prohibit same sex unions. Nevertheless, if you are saying that if SCOTUS rules that the Constitution prohibits States from defining same sex unions differently in their laws than opposite sex unions then Canon Law is irrelevant, that is a very dangerous place to be. It is exactly the kind of chaos that I have been warning about that results from poorly applying logic and reason to our laws, to rightly define them in accord with Natural Law Theory. SCOTUS sometimes gets it wrong, as in the Dred Scott decision, and sometimes their decisions are incomplete, such as in Roe v. Wade. If SCOTUS thinks the Constitution says anything about marriage, they diminish their authority because people like me will reject their decision completely regardless of what Canon Law or any other standard says. As a rational human being, I can read the Constitution for myself and see that it does not address marriage in any way. I am surprised that you think the highest court in the land made up of nine unelected elitists make the thinking abilities of millions of other people irrelevant for government. When we go there and fail to have a system of checks and balances in government, we truly have ceased to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We have, in effect, accepted a tyrannical form of government. Some people in our society will not quietly allow that to happen.
“A civil union (whether called marriage or not) that does not have the purpose of reproduction is questionable in regards to whether or not it is a fundamental right.”
David,
Why is that? Historically, marriage has always been an economic issue, having little to do with religion save for the blessings given it by various religious authorities. However, it was always an economic issue until perhaps the last 80 years, or so. While procreation was assumed to be the byproduct of marriage, more important were the dowry aspects of it. The Father of Our
Country didn’t produce an offspring from his marriage to Martha, but did receive much property. No one has called that a failed marriage.
“Back to your assertion, my statement does not mean such non-reproductive unions ought to be prohibited, only that the right to such a union might not rightly be considered a fundamental or inalienable right, and therefore it would be classified as a right with different standards of regulation.”
What does “might not rightly mean?”. David, frankly you could do better, but you don’t because you realize the frailty of your position, so you use equivocation. There is no reason not to consider homosexual marriage an inalienable right except for religious posturing. Not only is it an inalienable right, but it is in the interest of the State to deem it as such, thereby bestowing the benefits to people of the same sex, held by heterosexual couples. That is unless the State treats gay people unfairly by not allowing them the same rights as heterosexual people. If the State acts in that manner, then the State itself is illegitimate, or at the least oppressive.
tony c:
how do you know there isnt a creator? what evidence do you have?
It is all just a bunch of supposition.
DavidM: Like most atheists, I was misled as a child into accepting the idea of a Creator because it was a prevalent myth presented as fact, and I had to learn separately the ideas that allowed me to escape from a delusion which still holds you hostage.
My rational thought does not align itself with my atheism, my rational thought is the source of my atheism. As an infant I had no rational thought, as a child my rationality was weak, around the age of 12 I rejected the literalness of the Bible in favor of less easily disproved mysticism, and by the age of 17 I had learned enough about logic and thinking (thanks to a fine public school and an extremely rational father) to be an outright atheist and reject all supernaturalism. Not as early as some, but some never achieve it at all.
My atheism is entirely a result of rationalism and self-determination, it was not taught to me anybody (my father could never bring himself to claim anything other than agnosticism), and I am not a follower of any philosopher or bright light, my atheism is entirely a result of my own brand and my own reasoning from fundamental truths.
One of which regards assertions for what they are; a human statement that could be infected by the very emotionalism that gives rise to religion in the first place. Somebody’s claim to be inspired by God is not provable. The existence of God (or the supernatural in general) is such a claim, there is no more reason to believe in God or a creator than there is to believe in the claim that invisible unicorns that think in Latin exist, somewhere in the Universe. Can you prove they don’t exist? Of course not. There is just no reason to believe that impossible-to-disprove things exist, and because the list of such things is potentially infinite and their use to influence behavior is equally infinite, every reason to reject them and the efforts of any person to try and exert influence by citing them.
DavidM: You seem to forget how much I labored on the biological issue of reproduction without even mentioning gender diversity or the “completeness of being” concept.
I seem to remember destroying that argument, which forced you to try another idiotic tactic.
DavidM: but rather it is a theoretical framework for interpreting all the available evidence.
No, it is a theoretical framework designed for the sole purpose of promoting your own made up evidence.
DavidM: You cannot allow yourself open to the idea because once fully explored, it is so supportive of the idea of a Creator
No, I am not open to the idea because it is circular reasoning and I reject that; I have explored the idea far enough to see your claim of a Creator rests upon your insistence that there is a Creator. First you assume without any evidence that humans are created as two halves of a “whole being” based on physical gender, then you say, “See? That proves there is a Creator!”
You are correct, no way will I fall for that simpleton’s ruse. And you are right, my predetermined position is responsible, just not the one you think: My predetermined position is that only self-evident positions support themselves, and I do not find it self-evident even a little bit that man or the universe or life are the work of any Creator.
In my view the evidence against that is beyond overwhelming; and it is that evidence that led me to reject all supernaturalism, and made me an irrevocable atheist, and a better person for it.
Tony C wrote: ” First you assume without any evidence that humans are created as two halves of a “whole being” based on physical gender, then you say, “See? That proves there is a Creator!””
ROTFLOL! Surely you did not see me doing any such thing. Amazing. None of my comments have even remotely been about proving a Creator. Your words do reveal where your mind goes in all of this. Deny the Creator at all costs.
DavidM: However, your atheism and perhaps some other reasons not yet revealed,
No other reasons exist to be revealed, I have no inherent biases to reveal I have not revealed already: I am an egalitarian that believes homosexuality is an entirely naturally occurring phenomenon that harms nobody.
As for my atheism, I believe it allows me to see the world as it is without the BS of mysticism or belief in falsehoods or magic or magical entities or states (souls, gods, Karma, witchcraft, ghosts or spirits or afterlife). That is not a handicap for discerning truth from BS bigotry, prejudice, or anything else.
The same Nature that creates heterosexuals creates homosexuals, the same Nature that creates heterosexual emotional bonding creates homosexual emotional bonding. The same Nature that creates heterosexual sexual attraction creates homosexual sexual attraction (and as I have said before, observed in over 1500 species). You do not get to argue about what is “Natural” while ignoring half of what is “Natural,” that is called cherry picking.
DavidM: My position is that they are not identical and so they should be treated differently.
Your position that they are not identical is based on your unfounded subscription to “completeness of being” only occurring in heterosexual relationships. That belief is unscientific and unsubstantiated (and probably impossible to substantiate) claptrap, thus your reasoning is circular: Your position on homosexual marriage is based solely upon your position. Namely, your entirely bigoted position that your mystical state of “completeness of being” is based on physical gender instead of mutual emotional attachment.
Tony C wrote: “Your position that they are not identical is based on your unfounded subscription to “completeness of being” only occurring in heterosexual relationships.”
No, my position that they are not identical is based upon biology and science and much empirical evidence. The “completeness of being” concept certainly is tainted by the theistic concept of a Creator purposefully designing humans in this manner and for this purpose. I grant you that. But there is much other evidence not yet shared here that also shapes the overall theory, evidence based upon scientific sociological studies.
You should consider that while my theistic beliefs might bias my thoughts toward perceiving same sex unions as being different from opposite sex unions, your atheistic beliefs bias your thoughts to reject anything supportive of a theistic theory.
Tony C wrote: “That belief is unscientific and unsubstantiated (and probably impossible to substantiate) claptrap, thus your reasoning is circular: Your position on homosexual marriage is based solely upon your position. Namely, your entirely bigoted position that your mystical state of “completeness of being” is based on physical gender instead of mutual emotional attachment.”
You seem to forget how much I labored on the biological issue of reproduction without even mentioning gender diversity or the “completeness of being” concept. My perspective is not based solely upon some predetermined position, but rather it is a theoretical framework for interpreting all the available evidence. You cannot allow yourself open to the idea because once fully explored, it is so supportive of the idea of a Creator making mankind in halves that are meant to be joined together after birth that you cannot possibly even entertain the notion. No way would you ever be convinced of such a thing. That is your predetermined position which you have previously stated, and according to which all your rational thought aligns itself. I am open to being proven that the concept of a Creator is impossible, and I always will be, for the sake of honest inquiry. But you will never be open to that consideration, so you must arrange facts around your predetermined paradigm. It truly would take a revolution to change your perspective, regardless of what the truth is, or perhaps instead of an errant paradigm, you suffer from what Kuhn called a worldview that can never be changed.
J Brian: Perhaps you have an overblown opinion of yourself. Perhaps you fail to understand that those with better credentials than you are not all that impressed by your credentials (or any credentials, since we know enough to put more emphasis on works actually done than credentials that we all know can be sloppily awarded to the undeserving).
I am quite familiar with Bayesian statistics; I have multiple PhD level courses in statistical analysis, and I have worked with Bayesian expectations in my own field. I am quite qualified to judge both dissertations and to peer review publications; on your work I call BS, an attempt to obfuscate an underlying lack of meaning: As I said, your whole argument boils down to denying free will and endorsing the idea of deterministic fate, which the vast majority rejects as a philosophy, because they feel their choices DO affect future outcomes.
Also, you apparently choose to misunderstand Kuhn as well, and apply a self-serving definition of his work. You say, “who do the work of “scientific revolutions,” work that involves new paradigms that contrast with stark intensity with one or more widely accepted and long established paradigms.”
That is not what Kuhn said at all, and a paradigm shift is not what you think. For readers unfamiliar with Kuhn, his idea is quite accessible: A given paradigm (a framework or way of thinking about and solving scientific problems) solves some problems but not others. The problems it cannot solve accumulate as experience progresses; the paradigm can sometimes be modified to solve some of these conundrums (without losing its power to address all the problems it previously solved), but if the paradigm does not perfectly capture reality, then there will remain a subset of problems that are intractable with the paradigm.
Eventually, enough of these intractable problems accumulate, and somebody recognizes a new way of thinking about ALL the problems, a new paradigm that solves ALL the problems the original paradigm solved plus a chunk (or all) of the formerly intractable problems. That is a “paradigm shift.”
Examples include the shift from Newtonian gravity, which could not explain the orbit of Mercury (one of the intractable problems) to Einsteinian gravity, which explained everything Newton explained AND the orbit of Mercury, as well as other more esoteric intractabilities.
Another paradigm shift was Darwin’s theory of evolution, which explained with rationality all sorts of biological phenomena previously attributed to God’s whims (i.e. intractable). Another was the theory of plate tectonics, which answered previously intractable questions about the shapes of continents and the highly unusual but identical chemical composition of rocks separated by vast oceans.
Paradigm shifts may be radical, but they still have to solve all the problems the previous paradigm solved, and they cannot “revert” to non-explanation or circular explanation or the whims of fate or God. A Paradigm Shift must be MORE powerful in explanation and prediction, not LESS.
Your ideas provide nothing new of use or merit in either explanation or prediction; you are not working toward a paradigm shift but an excuse for bad behavior by trying to justify mistakes and accidents as being inevitable, unavoidable twists of fate. It is nothing, and until you show your work can prevent error or mistakes, it is nothing but a useless entertainment for yourself. Nothing wrong with that, scribble away and fantasize all you want.
DavidM: It is the idea that mankind comes into the world as two disparate types of individuals: male and female. The joining of a man and woman together results in the completion of being.
That is just mystical religious claptrap, unprovable and untestable. Whether that is your argument or not, it is not a valid argument. It is simply a belief, religious or not, it is simply a matter of “faith,” belief without evidence.
The State and society have no valid interest in “gender diversity.” Even in your blind argument, it is none of the State’s business if people feel “complete,” and even if it WAS any of their business, who are they to call consenting homosexuals liars for claiming that only a person of the same gender can “complete” them?
All the science (fMRI and oxygen consumption brain scanning, evidence of fetal androsterone surge, stroke evidence) suggests that homosexual attraction is an inherent component of brain organization determined in the first trimester of fetal development, not a learned response. (Like many inherent traits, such as a rage to kill, we can override and suppress it, but that repression should only be required of us by society if the trait leads us to inflict harm upon others, and consensual homosexuality does not).
Just because 85% of us are more likely to find our happiness with an opposite gender lifelong partner is no reason to deny 15% of us happiness with a same gender lifelong partner.
The government’s obligation is preserve our “self-evident” and “unalienable Rights” that include liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If anything, the government violates an axiomatic right by denying homosexual couples the benefits of law that come with their legal recognition of a marriage, and calling it something else does not correct the fact that they make an unwarranted distinction in favor of heterosexuality.
Self-evident, unalienable Rights should only be abrogated if their pursuit violates somebody else’s self-evident, unalienable Right.
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are impaired when the Law engages in disparate treatment of individuals without good reason; and by “Good Reason” I mean that reason must be sufficient to show the disparate treatment will preserve liberty or decrease the incidents of coercion, oppression, crime or other actions that act as brakes on liberty. Liberty includes the right to make choices in life that do not harm others.
I see nothing in allowing homosexuals to marry that harms anybody outside their marriage, it coerces nobody else into any action, it denies nobody else any rightful action they could otherwise have taken.
Admittedly it may make some people feel “less special” by making homosexual marriage equivalent to their own heterosexual marriage, but that is not a harm, it is a benefit by helping to nullify an unwarranted stigma of societal disapproval of homosexuality, a harmless inborn trait of humanity (and 1500 other species of animal).
David M wrote: “It is the idea that mankind comes into the world as two disparate types of individuals: male and female. The joining of a man and woman together results in the completion of being.”
Tony C wrote: “That is just mystical religious claptrap, unprovable and untestable. Whether that is your argument or not, it is not a valid argument. It is simply a belief, religious or not, it is simply a matter of “faith,” belief without evidence.”
It is not “belief without evidence.” It is a theory of understanding based upon the empirical fact that most people are born either male or female, and that there are distinct differences between male and female that goes beyond the obvious reproductive organs. There are clear sexual differences in the brain, the way men and women think, and cultural stereotypes of the differences between men and women have been talked about and joked about for ages. Sure, a theistic based theory exists about God’s intention and purpose of design in creating man as male and female instead of asexual, but only the atheist would use the existence of a successful religious theory to scoff at and dismiss all the empirical evidence which fits that theory. In the end, your entire argument is simply bigotry, an expression of a prejudice against religion and theism that causes you to ignore the evidence that exists right in front of your nose.
Tony C wrote: “who are they to call consenting homosexuals liars for claiming that only a person of the same gender can “complete” them?”
Nobody is claiming they are liars. They want to create a civil partnership and call it a marriage so they can feel accepted in society. They also want the same kind of rights spouses have in medical situations for visitation, and some of the same tax benefits, etc. The question is not whether or not they should be allowed to create these partnerships, but whether these partnerships are identical to opposite sex partnerships. My position is that they are not identical and so they should be treated differently.
In regards to abortion, I see much of the problem there as resting upon definitions as well. People who are adamantly opposed to abortion for any reason usually define the unborn as a person. They object to treating the unborn differently from any other person. If someone comes along and claims the unborn is not a person but rather a fetus, and that the mother has a right to her own body to destroy that fetus, that person becomes unhinged because they believe this is discrimination against the innocent unborn person who cannot speak for himself. They think that unborn person has every bit a right to life as any other person, so if a mother decides to terminate her pregnancy, they see it no differently than a mother deciding to drown her child in the bathtub. The legal solution is to focus upon definitions which defines the unborn person differently from the born person. What would be used to define them differently? Many have focused upon the joining of genetic material in fertilization. They feel that is a fair scientific way to designate when a person comes into existence. They argue that all the genetic material is present and that if provided the proper nourishment, that embryo will grow into what we fully recognize as a person. Some have attempted to use a beating heart. Others a brain pattern. Some ancients used 40 days after fertilization for reasons unknown to me. Some have used taking that first breath as the point. Some have used viability, but that is not very discrete. My point is that if we do not define the unborn differently from the born in some clear way, the abortion issue will always be a problem. Only by defining them differently and defining the rights based upon them being different can the dilemma be resolved.
I see the homosexual marriage issue in the same way. There are distinct differences between same sex unions and opposite sex unions that you refuse to acknowledge as important. It is like the anti-abortionist who refuses to acknowledge any distinction between the unborn and born, so they feel it is their duty as a good citizen to get a gun and kill the abortionists to protect the innocent.
As a scientist, you should be able to understand the value of a reductionist approach to this issue. However, your atheism and perhaps some other reasons not yet revealed, cloud your judgment and make you unable to even consider the plain evidence that same sex unions and opposite sex unions are not identical and should be evaluated independently concerning how the law deals with them.
David you wrote in an earlier post “In case you missed it, I have already clarified to others that I am not a religious man. I do not attend church or affirm some creed of faith. ”
I think your argument(s) belie that statement. You seem to castigate the “atheists” and bring religious doctrine and thought into the debate as though they are facts.
leejcaroll wrote: “I think your argument(s) belie that statement. You seem to castigate the “atheists” and bring religious doctrine and thought into the debate as though they are facts.”
I am a theist but I am not religious. I am not joined to any religious sect, nor do I affirm some standard creed of any particular religion. I view religion for the most part to be inventions of men. I believe in law too, in the sense that I think society thrives when men use rational thinking to define rules of order by which nature dictates society ought to function. I don’t hesitate to quote Scripture for the sake of analysis anymore than I would hesitate to quote case law, but quoting Scripture does not make me religious anymore than quoting case law makes me a lawyer or a judge.
As for atheism, I think it is among the worst philosophical premises a person can adopt. Atheism causes people to interpret life through a selfish lens which leads to all manner of atrocities in society. It also restricts a person’s vision to be purely empirical and causes them to avoid making logical connections that would otherwise be possible to them. It is like a person refusing to use the power of sight when he considers evidence. You can never tell such a person, look here, see the evidence?
Nevertheless, my aversion for atheism is not as great as the aversion most people here have toward theists like myself. You will not find me expressing outright hatred and bigotry toward them as you have seen expressed here toward me. I am tolerant and respectful, but that does not mean I shy away from expressing my viewpoint and attempting to show them their errors.
Tony C.,
There are research scientists who do what, according to my understanding of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions may be called “normal science” in the form of simple extensions to settled work. There are other research scientists, seemingly very few in number by contrast, who do the work of “scientific revolutions,” work that involves new paradigms that contrast with stark intensity with one or more widely accepted and long established paradigms.
My scientific research is directed almost wholly toward finding ways to correct or improve or replace prior established paradigms.
I have known people who murdered other people and were never charged with a crime, people who were convicted and sentenced for committing crimes that they had not committed (such as The Innocence Project sometimes helps), and, after some family friends were murdered long ago, set out to learn what actually and verifiably causes such murders and what can actually be done to prevent them.
Perhaps you are unaware of the pertinent literature and research field wherein I work, as a Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer, holding paramount the public safety, working in, and only in, areas of my professional competence, and doing all of the above without deception.
Perhaps you do not attempt to keep up with cutting edge research in semiotics and biosemiotics, as I do.
Have you come to recognize that I do the work of a biosemiotician as a licensed Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer having undergraduate and doctoral degrees in bioengineering?
Have you read, studied, and understood John P. Muller, Beyond the Psychoanalytic Dyad: Developmental Semiotics in Freud, Peirce, and Lacan, Routledgew, 1996?
Have you read, studied, and understood basic concepts of biosemiotics, such as introduced in the following excerpt as I found it recently on the Internet?
http://semiorganized.com/articles/other/An%20Evolutionary%20Histroy%20of%20Biosemiotics%20(D.%20Favareau).pdf
Perhaps you are not yet sufficiently acquainted with “cutting edge” biosemiotics; if so, the Favareau article section, supra, may provide an initiation into relevant aspects of the field of my research.
It appears to me as though you, as I find characteristic of most of the people who mostly think abstractly using words, have difficulty with accurately distinguishing a-priori Bayesian probabilities and frequentist probabilities from a-posteriori Bayesian probabilities.
Consider the following quote from your post, which is a quote from my prior post, “and then demonstrate that the accident or mistake that actually happened was actually avoidable because it was actually avoided.” All of the probabilities in what I originally wrote are, with respect to the time of the accident or mistake, both Bayesian and a-posteriori.
If you misinterpret, “was actually avoidable” as a form of a-priori, frequentist, analytical-reductionist probability, it hardly surprises me that you may experience my work as some sort of verbal legerdemain absurdity. My work is Bayesian and relational-holistic.
Whereas I have, more than once, given the URL for my doctoral dissertation on the University of Illinois at Chicago Indigo web site, where it resides with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, I find no clear evidence that anyone who is a Turley Blog participant, other than myself, has bothered to read it with enough due diligence to fathom its content and structure.
Perhaps a comparatively short neurobiology lesson would have a tad of merit. But first, please allow that this lesson will employ some of what I regard as baseball jargon, and I am profoundly clueless regarding baseball; I may misuse some baseball jargon words in dreadful ways, for lack of sufficient familiarity with baseball to avoid doing that.
Imagine that you are a superstar outfielder, your team is two runs ahead, it is the bottom of the ninth, the bases are loaded, and the other team is at bat. One home run, and the other team goes to the World Series, no home runs for the other team, and your team goes to the World Series.
The other team’s best batter (who, for the purposes of this lesson, has the impossibly high batting average of .998) is at bat, the crack of the bat against the ball deafens everyone in the stands, and the ball is on a trajectory that will make it just touch the top of the outfield fence and bounce out of the ballpark.
If you can catch the ball, and hold it, the game is over, and you are the baseball hero of the season.
Using only your frontal lobes, and base ten arithmetic, you calculate exactly (to Planck time accuracy) when to fire each motor neuron as needed to catch the ball, so that the position of every atom in your body always within one Planck length of the optimal path for catching the ball. You do the mental arithmetic in the way an ordinary person might do mental arithmetic to sort out which of two different size cans of different brands of split-pea soup has the lower cost per fluid ounce.
One Turley Blog participant, a while ago, put forth the view that babies are not born with consciousness, and that consciousness develops slowly over the months that follow birth. Surely, that is true for babies for whom consciousness of their babyhood is only found in word-based memories that formed as the baby learned to learn words and then learned words. Without words, there can be no word-based memories.
In left hemisphere frontal lobe verbal dominant people, the right hemisphere frontal lobe tends to be picture dominant, a very oversimplified model may have it. The frontal lobes work best for declarative purposes, pictures and words are of declarative brain function activity. The back of the brain is the part that a successful baseball player uses to do stuff that is totally outside the realm of competence of frontal lobes.
For those of the mythic “everyone” who uses the back of the brain for procedural thinking and the front of the brain for declarative thinking, back of the brain procedural thinking may arise to word-thinking people’s conscious awareness when such a person “has a word on the tip of the tongue.” At such times, so I gather, the person with a word on the tip of the tongue has a strong sense of the meaning to be conveyed and no way to convey it. At such moments, consciousness resides in the back (procedural and not declarative) back portion of the person’s brain.
In people whose consciousness is ordinarily restricted to the frontal lobes, the back of the brain which is procedural and not declarative, is busy doing things and guiding the person’s actions, and will be free of conscious control; it is that of a person’s brain which is not within the person’s conscious locus of control that drives what may be usefully named “free will,” because such will is free from consciously willful control.
For anyone who troubled themselves enough, or otherwise read my dissertation, there is a profound reason why I based much of my work on that of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Abraham A. Low, and his book, Mental Health Through Will-Training, Willett Publishing Co., Glencoe, IL, 1950, Second Edition, 1952, 1978. The Third Edition, 1997, is now in print.
A trained will is a disciplined will, and therefore is not a free will. In the work of Dr. Low, as I understand it, a free will is required for a person to actually be so-called “mentally ill.”
Donald Favareau’s Chapter 1 Introduction: An Evolutionary History of Biosemiotics ends with the following two paragraphs:
And thus we end this brief overview of the ongoing history of biosemiotics as we started it – in media res. For while Thomas Sebeok (2001a) referred to the 1970s as the “prehistory” of biosemiotics, and Marcello Barbieri (2002), writing of the 1990s, opined that biosemiotics was as yet still coming into its “adolescence” – it is difficult not to feel as we end this as-yet preliminary “history” that both the reader and I have arrived here at the present moment in 2010 just as the real history of biosemiotics is about to get underway.
That said, all that is now left for me to do as a historian of the project is to welcome all our readers to this exciting young interdiscipline, and on behalf of my colleagues in biosemiotics everywhere, to invite you to actively contribute to its ongoing history.
In 1948, while in third grade and reading biology, psychology, history, and a variety of other academic discipline works that were at college and graduate school level or higher, it became clear to me that no field of human inquiry then in existence had the tools needed for solving the enigma of the predicament of human destructive reciprocal retaliation. During fourth grade, the only field of human inquiry I found that had any potential for solving that reciprocal retaliation predicament was engineering. The better to learn engineering, I borrowed a college text on radio engineering from the local public library, devoured it, and began successfully designing and building electronic apparatus before the start of fifth grade at the end of that summer.
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I am quite unlike such brilliant people as Albert Einstein, as he told of his live in Chapter 2, Self-Portrait, in Out of My Later Years , Philosophical Library, 1950:
Of what is significant in one’s own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should not bother the other fellow. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?
The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one’s own efforts. For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect, and I love it. Arrows of hate have been shot at me too; but they never hit me, because they belong to another world, with which I have no connection whatsoever.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
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I suppose it might be somewhat fair to say that arrows of hate have been shot at me. They often hit me, but never penetrate me. They belong to a world to which I am very connected, yet in which it is impossible for me to live. I have never known real solitude, and my actual youth was only rarely painful, and then only when someone was dead-set on teaching me a lesson similar to the one I am guessing that you, Tony.C. would willingly teach me, if you could.
Of what is significant of my own existence, I have always vividly known and understood; I am not a fish and I only sometimes swim in water.
The more I learn about people whose world view differs from mine and their views, the more I learn about the biology of human evolution.