By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”
-Gary North, “The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right,” (Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, Number 1, Spring, 1982)
In Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S 1 (1967), the Supreme Court held that Virginia’s prohibition of interracial marriage violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. “The freedom to marry,” wrote Chief Justice Warren, “has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” 366 U.S. at 12. Many people were hoping that the Court would formally accord that status to same-sex marriage last month. But it did not happen. Edith Windsor will receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax refunds from the federal government, but the Court did not find it necessary to address the issue of same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, and elected not to do so. United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307 (June 26, 2013).
While that central constitutional issue remains unresolved, opponents of same-sex marriage are on the move. The Freedom Federation, a coalition of civil and religious right-wing organizations ranging from Americans for Prosperity to Wallbuilders, has issued a pre-emptive strike in the form of a signed letter declaring that “the Supreme Court has no authority to redefine marriage… .” The letter, which can be found on the Freedom Federation website, asserts that should the Court grant legal recognition to same-sex marriage, it “will be acting beyond its proper constitutional role,” and concludes with the vaguely ominous warning that “this is the line we must draw and one we cannot and will not cross.”
We have witnessed in recent years an increasing willingness by state legislatures to adopt nullification statutes, facially unconstitutional but politically potent. Now the religious right has determined to extend the nullification doctrine to the judicial branch, employing the language of religious freedom to hide a theocratic dominionist vision of government and society.
In 2004 and again in 2005, legislation known as the Constitution Restoration Act was introduced in both the House and the Senate. If adopted, the act would have stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to consider any case challenging the acknowledgment of God as a source of law by any federal, state or local governmental unit. The act would have also mandated impeachment for any violation. The legislation did not make it out of committee, but its intention was crystal clear: the rejection of the secularist notion of separation of church and state.
The drafting of the statute was largely the work of Herb Titus, a lawyer who served as the first dean of the law school at Regent University and who famously represented Judge Roy Moore, the Alabama jurist removed as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for his refusal to comply with a federal court order compelling the removal from the courthouse rotunda of a monument to the Ten Commandments.
The failure of the attempted legislative assault on established jurisprudence construing the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, combined with the pronounced hatred of the LBGT community by many religious fundamentalists, virtually guaranteed that something resembling the Freedom Federation letter would emerge when it did. The co-author of the letter is Mat Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law. In March of this year, Liberty Counsel welcomed the Florida Faith & Works Coalition to its member organizations. The Coalition represents approximately 600 conservative pastors engaged in promoting universal Christian dominionism. From its website: “Subduing and having dominion over all the earth commands responsibility over the entire animate and inanimate world including the moral values that form the basis of society. We affirm that, historically, America was established as a Christian nation and its policies were based on biblical principles. The guardian of those biblical principles has always been His church. And His church, in recent history, has passively abdicated its guardianship responsibility.”
The arguments in the Freedom Federation letter are boldly theocratic. First, it is urged that marriage solely between a man and a woman is mandated by “natural moral law,” a product of reason. But it approaches natural law in the same manner that Justice Scalia approaches the Constitution, as a rigid and dead body of law. (It also fails to identity which system or systems of natural law it endorses, but that’s another topic.) The truth is that our understanding of natural law theory and of the Constitution have evolved precisely because reason evolves as it is informed by knowledge and experience.
The letter next asserts that natural moral law is “affirmed, fulfilled, and elevated by Christian teaching,” thus adding the biblical foundation for the treatment of marriage between a man and a woman as divinely ordained and not subject to expansion or modification by positive law. This is not only an argument against a secular view of marriage; in accordance with dominionist theology, it is also a rejection of religious pluralism.
Finally, the letter claims that same-sex marriage, once legitimized, will inevitably lead to its compulsory recognition by Christians, thereby undermining freedom of religion and conscience. This position is demonstrably absurd, of course, since no religious sect has ever been compelled to grant sacramental status to any marital union that conflicts with its own doctrinal requirements. And in the eyes of the law, no marriage has ever required religious approval as a condition of legitimacy.
Fundamentalist Christians must recognize by now that they are losing the battle against the ultimate acceptance of same-sex marriage. But they are also patient and vigilant. The Freedom Federation letter is a reminder that the preservation of secular government and religious freedom will also require patience and vigilance.
OS,
Truly, almost every argument against equal rights for homosexuals here has ended in the “name a specific harm” question. None of the proponents for discrimination can ever overcome that question. What’s even more impressive is that David like others before him don’t realize that specific harm is a sound and long recognized legal threshold for limiting fundamental inherent rights. Free speech for example is limited by exceptions for defamation and threats, both of which cause specific harms, but not for insult which does no actual specific harm. Saying “that guy is a rapist” can cause all kinds of legal and economic repercussion for the object of that statement whereas “that guy is a jackass” only hurts the object’s feelings. There is no right to not be offended or not to have your feelings hurt (with the exception of the very difficult to prove tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress claim which even then has a real specific harm component).
Gene,
He now talks of what he calls “short term harm” and “long term harm.” However, he cannot point to a single harm to anyone or anything, in any time frame. Yet there is significant short and long term harm to people who love each other and want a committed legal relationship. Those legal, medical, and psychological harms have been pointed out to him repeatedly but he ignores them for some amorphous claim of harm that he cannot name. I am getting dizzy from the mental gymnastics as he tries to spin it to fit his narrative.
If he wants to worry about long term harm, he better start worrying about climate change. Methane release as the polar ice caps melt due to global warming is likely to cause as much as $70 trillion dollars in damage to the global economy. That figure does not include how many will die because of it.
Like Gene said, what harm, specifically? Name three? Can’t even name one!
OS wrote: “Like Gene said, what harm, specifically? Name three? Can’t even name one!”
There you go being dishonest again. There were ten harms mentioned in this last post alone. I guess you didn’t bother to click on the link.
In any case, you guys talk like a State somewhere is making same sex unions a crime. Nobody is doing that. The issue concerns how marriage has traditionally been defined and how best to define laws in regard to same sex unions.
I mentioned to you before about gay marriage activist Masha Gessen saying that gay marriage advocates who say that heterosexual marriage will not change if gay marriage is allowed are basically lying. You dismissed her as being only one activist with that view.
Well, Boris Dittrich is basically the Dutch father of the gay marriage movement. He makes it clear that group marriage is next on their agenda. The following link might give you some insight into how the gay marriage agenda is really about destroying marriage as we know it.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/group-marriage-is-next-admits-dutch-father-of-gay-marriage/
Actually the issue isn’t complex at all. Rights are inherent to the individual. Homosexuality and homosexual pair bonding is a natural behavior. It neither steals your property, breaks your leg nor makes you literally insane.
Your gyrations to justify wanting to treat homosexuals as second class citizens is growing ever complex though. Argument by verbosity is a fallacy although some find it an effective propaganda technique like they do many other logical fallacies. And I’m perfectly familiar with the concepts of harm. You want to ignore that a specific harm is required to curtail others rights. Name a specific harm. Not a general harm.
You’ve already admitted you can’t.
You lost this argument the instant you started it because you don’t understand what you are talking about. Your argument is based on false beliefs and ignorance of how law operates. Repeating yourself doesn’t make you any more right, although it’s a time tested propaganda technique.
Like I said, you have the sales pitch, but not the magic trick.
Name a specific harm.
Typo: I meant “that is unnecessary.”
DavidM: You apparently have not considered the concept of intelligent design very much.
I considered it for the moment it took to reveal it is irrelevant.
If life was designed by an intelligence, where did it originate?
Do not say it was itself designed; that leads to irrational infinite ascent; where did the original intelligence come from?
Was the original intelligence “alive?” If it was alive, then life had already originated!
If it is not a life form, you presume intelligence can exist outside of life, which is something we have never observed and for which we have zero evidence.
If all we are concerned with is the beginning of life (after which evolution takes over) then, if we presume such an intelligence is more complex than a bacterium, then the chances of it spontaneously appearing in the universe are obviously (due to the number of neurons and neural connections in the brain) quadrillions of times more remote than the chance that a bacterium would spontaneously assemble itself in some early soup to kick start the evolutionary process.
Your Creator concept explains nothing, it posits something quadrillions of times less likely than is unnecessary.
(For the record, I do not think the bacterium appeared spontaneously; I think the most plausible theory so far is the “RNA world” theory, with free-floating strands of RNA (not DNA) that we can already observe self-replicating and are somewhere between inanimate and alive.)
DavidM: To then expand that decision to same sex marriage is simply delusional since same sex marriage had not even been thought of at the time,
So, you think freedom of speech should not extend to TV or the movies, because those had not been thought of at the time? Do you think the second amendment should only apply to guns that existed when it was written? Do you think the right (widely violated now) to only be searched with a warrant should not apply to one’s personal computer system, or should not apply to phone calls, because those did not exist?
Loving, like those rights, applies because it is general reasoning that IS extensible. If the same court held differently in the past over homosexual rights, they should be challenged by their Loving decision. Presumably they were influenced by their widely bigoted culture at the time and a less fearful, less bigoted court, due to being better informed and educated, would see Loving as the correct precedent that it is; discrimination on a physical characteristic is wrong. Homosexuality is a physical characteristic.
And the foundation of marriage should be a romantic interest and lifelong partnership. Basing a marriage upon reproduction is a recipe for a short marriage; once the kids leave the house the marriage has lost its point. A marriage based on a lifelong partnership can raise kids as a project, and still enjoy each other once the kids are grown and on their own. A project of love; but still not the only reason to stay married and faithful.
Tony C wrote: “So, you think freedom of speech should not extend to TV or the movies, because those had not been thought of at the time?”
Not automatically, no. It has to be discussed and evaluated. The rights in regards to TV initially were very strict in regards to speech because it was piped into a person’s private residence, somewhere free speech laws do not apply. Slowly these rights are evaluated and discussed and changed. The application of “free speech” arguments basically had no basis in regards to TV in the beginning.
Tony C wrote: “Loving, like those rights, applies because it is general reasoning that IS extensible.”
Wrong. The extension of their reasoning is not automatic because great differences exist between race and sexual orientation. To extend the concepts there requires rational discussion and ultimately an independent evaluation.
Loving based its argument on the idea that a fundamental right was being violated. If the right is fundamental, a heavier burden exists by the State to provide a rational and compelling reason for its laws that might infringe on that right. Well, to identify the right to marry as being a fundamental right, they turned to previous case law which defined it as such. The two cases they cited was Maynard v. Hill and Skinner v. Oklahoma. Both cases used reproduction and the right of a person to produce progeny to define marriage as an inalienable right of all persons. The Skinner v. Oklahoma which was about whether the State has the right to sterilize prisoners. Because the reproductive component is lacking in same sex unions, we cannot apply Loving automatically in regards to identifying these same sex unions as being a fundamental right.
What other argument is there to establish same sex union as a fundamental right? The right to contract? It is not a fundamental right and has routinely been subject to rational basis review by SCOTUS. Furthermore, other cases indicate that marriage is much more than a contract, hence the reason it cannot be dissolved in the way normal contracts are dissolved. Therefore, lacking any rational answer for why same sex unions should be considered a fundamental right, the reasoning of Loving does not automatically extend to same sex unions because its reasoning was based upon defining opposite sex marriage as a fundamental right based upon its role in reproduction.
There are other important differences as well.
First, in Loving we are dealing with a minority of States making interracial marriage a crime. To my knowledge, no State makes same sex unions a crime. This is a very important difference concerning what harm is being caused by a State treating same sex unions differently from opposite sex unions.
Second, the Loving case involved recording the racial classification of people applying for marriage certificates, and it would use the basis of race to determine whether or not to issue the license. No State today classifies applicants based upon sexual orientation. They do not ask or record whether the applicant is homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual. The creation of racial classifications by the State weighed heavily on the rationale used in deciding the Loving case. Because no sexual orientation classification is used as a basis for giving marriage licenses, the reasoning in Loving does not apply automatically to the alleged marriage discrimination based upon sexual preferences or sexual orientation.
Third, in Loving the rationale was based upon a cognizance that the 14th Amendment was passed following the Civil War, and part of its objective was to make sure laws were applied equally to everyone regardless of race. The history of slavery and attitudes of white people toward black people as being an inferior race was very ingrained. Up until this time, blacks were considered property and three-fifths of a person for representation purposes. This is a very different history than we have with homosexuals who have always been counted as full persons and never considered to be another person’s property. Therefore, the rationale here does not directly apply to concept of homosexual marriage.
The fact that the SCOTUS was very focused upon RACE as opposed to any other criteria is evident in the following quote from Loving regarding why the SCOTUS allowed discrimination in a list of other cases they had decided:
“In these cases, involving distinctions not drawn according to race, the Court has merely asked whether there is any rational foundation for the discriminations, and has deferred to the wisdom of the state legislatures. In the case at bar, however, we deal with statutes containing racial classifications, and the fact of equal application does not immunize the statute from the very heavy burden of justification which the Fourteenth Amendment has traditionally required of state statutes drawn according to race.”
One cannot simply substitute the word “homosexuality” or “gay marriage” or “sexual orientation” or “polygamy” or “pedophilia” or “incest” or “beastiality” or whatever other word you are so inclined to substitute and pretend that their reasoning applies. Words have meaning, and if they use the word race, then their reasoning applies to race, and if they use the word marriage being defined as between a man and a woman, then that is what marriage meant to them and their reasoning is based upon that definition and not your preferred new definition of marriage.
The bottomline is that there are a plethora of reasons why the Loving v. Virginia reasoning does not automatically extend to gay marriage, despite whatever syntax games people play with the wording of their decision. Words have meaning and changing the words with words that have a different meaning will change the rationale behind the reasoning.
I would like for somebody to explain to me how anyone who professes to be a Christian can and does advocate for violent dominionist revolution in this country over LGBT rights. In an essay published (andlater taken down) by World Net Daily, David Lane takes American Christianity to task for failing to produce martyrs and for substituting an, “…heretical Americanism for Christian orthodoxy.” He insists that to put things right, “Christians must risk martyrdom,”to force people to either, “…acknowledge Jesus [as] an imperator and the church as God’s imperium or to begin drinking holy blood.”
If David Lane’s name does not ring a bell, he is usually described as a top Christian Right political operative and longtime behind-the-scenes “power broker.”
David Lane recently led a religious right oriented summit in Iowa, featuring such luminaries as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Reince Priebus. David Lane believes that the US will see car bombings in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa…if we’re lucky.
Lane told conservative talk show host Steve Deace that such attacks would occur as part of God’s “process of mercy,” otherwise, God will be finished with the US and the country will “…get judgment like Nazi Germany.”
Such car bombings will take place, Lane explained, as a result of abortion rights, the national debt and “…homosexuals praying at the Inauguration.”
David Lane in his own words, on SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/lane-expect-car-bombs-over
What Gene said. Here is Larry The Cable Guy On Gay Rights: “It Ain’t Affecting My Life.”
Here is the story with video of the whole interview. The interview excerpt with just the relevant part was up earlier, but was pulled from Hulu and replaced with the entire interview.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/larry-the-cable-guy-on-gay-rights_n_3644816.html
Actually, no, the question has never been answered except . . .
“The answer was that no harm happens to me directly.”
You should have stopped right there. Without a specific harm, you have no right to curtail others rights. Harm means a loss of or damage to a person’s right, property, or physical or mental well-being. Homosexuals being married doesn’t steal your property, break your leg or make you literally insane. End of story.
“The harm is to society by failing to define marriage rightly according to natural law.”
That’s an opinion and displays a stunning amount of ignorance as to what constitutes natural and what natural law means to jurisprudence. Also, even if true (which it isn’t), that would be a general harm, not a specific harm. But let’s look at that whole misconception you’ve got about natural law . . .
The science fact is the homosexuality is a normal part of human behavior and numerous other species. It is a genetic trait no more changeable than eye color. Either you are born with the capacity for sexual attraction to the same sex or you aren’t. Nature as properly described by science tells us that homosexuality and homosexual pair bonding is just as natural as heterosexuality and heterosexual pair bonding.
Natural law doesn’t mean legally speaking what you seem to think it means. Natural law doesn’t mean “given by God”. It means that the precept is derived from nature and is a universal, such as “all men are created equal” or “rights are inherent to the individual”. The term “natural law” has got jacksquat to do with a religious definition of marriage.
Natural law tells us those rights are inherent to the individual and that those rights may not be curtailed without a specific harm.
So name a specific harm. Not some vague generalized “it’ll harm society” bullshit. The Spartans not only practiced homosexuality, they encouraged it, and their society lasted a lot longer than 237 years. The Egyptians not only had no issue with homosexuality, they thought bisexuals were blessed by the Gods because they got to enjoy the best of all worlds. They lasted longer than the Spartans by a long shot.
You are right about one thing.
I don’t like your answer.
It’s wishy washy, religiously based, mumbo jumbo that shows no understanding of sociology, biology, philosophy or law.
And it’s wrong and non-responsive.
Name.
A.
Specific.
Harm.
I am starting to think English isn’t your first, second or even third language.
DavidM wrote:
“The answer was that no harm happens to me directly.”
Gene H wrote:
“You should have stopped right there. Without a specific harm, you have no right to curtail others rights. Harm means a loss of or damage to a person’s right, property, or physical or mental well-being. Homosexuals being married doesn’t steal your property, break your leg or make you literally insane. End of story.”
I should not stop right there. Your false premise here is that civil government is only about prohibiting immediate harm to specific individuals. If an action is not like murder, which results in immediate harm to another person, you are unwilling to consider that action as harmful in other ways.
The issue is more complex than this.
First, there is the consideration of short term harm and long term harm. You consider short term harm only and ignore long term harm.
Second, there are three levels at which harm might happen. 1) harm to another specific individual, 2) harm to the individual performing that action, and 3) harm to society as a whole (sometimes acts which do not harm any particular individual immediately harms society as a whole in the long run).
Third, there is not just harm to consider, but also benefits to consider. Sometimes civil government puts into place laws that work toward the overall good of society. Such laws may sometimes on their surface appear discriminatory toward specific individuals. For example, creating a heavier tax burden on wealthy people in society might on the surface appear discriminatory toward wealthy individuals, punishing their inherent propensity for economic success, but it would be justifiable if such benefits society as a whole by putting that wealth into use in the form of social programs and job creation.
So my position is that harm is caused in these other areas which you choose to ignore and refuse to discuss in a rational way. I have mentioned two specific areas of harm: 1) to the individual doing it, and 2) to society and societal consciousness about what marriage is. There are other arguments besides these. The problem is that you have already determined that this is a “marriage equality” issue and a discrimination issue, and no discussion about it will change your mind. That is fine in itself, but do not go down the dishonest path of pretending that your detractors have no answer to your objections. We have discussed this enough that you know better. You might not like the answer. You might find them unsatisfactory answers. But you have been given answers.
Gene H wrote: “The science fact is the homosexuality is a normal part of human behavior and numerous other species. It is a genetic trait no more changeable than eye color. Either you are born with the capacity for sexual attraction to the same sex or you aren’t. Nature as properly described by science tells us that homosexuality and homosexual pair bonding is just as natural as heterosexuality and heterosexual pair bonding.”
First of all, I’m not sure it would be proper to confuse homosexuality with same sex unions. They are two different issues when it comes to law. I admit that there is a relationship because one might assume that without homosexuality you would not have same sex unions, but to switch between arguments about gay marriage and homosexuality can create confusion. If you are going to switch the topic from gay marriage to homosexuality, we should be clear about it.
Secondly, you have your science all wrong on this issue of homosexuality as I have explained many times before. While there is a genetic component to a person having a propensity toward homosexuality, it is no more significant than a person having a genetic propensity toward becoming an alcoholic. Just because genetics is involved does not mean it is natural, nor does it mean that it is good. We can better predict a person will suffer Down’s Syndrome than predict that a person will become a homosexual in life. You might argue that Down’s Syndrome is natural because it occurs in nature, but most people consider it a defect, a mistake of nature, and not something that is inherently good in the person who suffers from it. Most people would want to take actions against Down’s Syndrome from happening to their child.
A certain proportion of our population are pedophiles. Do we discriminate against their sexual orientation? What about incestual relationships between adults? From time to time I read about fathers and adult daughters wanting to marry. We don’t accept sexual orientations like these on the basis of natural law just because they exist in nature. An analysis based upon natural law means using our minds to determine rationally what is congruent with nature.
Homosexuality is nothing like eye color, hair color, skin color, or gender. Your refusal to acknowledge this and to falsely intimate that science has somehow proven homosexuality to be something like race or skin color is clearly false to every objective scientist knowledgeable about the data and scientific studies. Homosexuality is a result of both genetics, hormonal environment during gestation, child rearing issues, parenting issues, cultural and social issues, education, social choices made by the individual growing up, sexual choices made by the individual, what the person meditates upon and ideas that he accepts as healthy and good, and a host of other issues.
Gene H wrote: “Natural law doesn’t mean legally speaking what you seem to think it means. Natural law doesn’t mean “given by God”.”
I am not aware of ever suggesting that “given by God” is the meaning of natural law. Natural law is based upon reason to determine what is law dictated by nature and would be universally true for all societies. In contrast, positive law is determined simply by the will of the one who makes the law. The authority of positive law is the lawmaker, and the authority of natural law is nature and our rational understanding of nature and the undiscovered or unarticulated laws that govern nature. Both positive law and natural law can have a theistic mindset behind them, but neither require that. I have given you NO RELIGIOUS DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE. You don’t see me quoting the Bible to establish a definition of marriage, nor do you see me quoting some religious authority, nor do I quote any dogma of a religious institution. My definition is based in law, in tradition, in history, and in rational thought concerning how marriage functions in society and the reasons why civil government might be involved with marriage in the first place. You keep throwing up this strawman argument that I am arguing religion so you can dismiss it without working at rational thought.
Gene H wrote: “So name a specific harm. Not some vague generalized “it’ll harm society” bullshit.”
I have dealt with the specifics of the harm previously. One of these was an article Prof. Turley posted about the florist. Are you seriously thinking this is not specific? I have many more specifics, but it is useless to continue with more information when the grounds of rational thought and discussion are not agreed upon. When you continue to ignore data, it leads to irrational discourse on your part. As long as you cannot hear the small matters I raise, it would only unnecessarily complicate it further to bring up additional considerations. When you agree that the governmental issue of harm is more complex than just looking at how a same sex union immediately harms an opposite sex union, then maybe we can talk further about it.
Although I am reluctant to discuss this further at this point, perhaps you might consider this article from Peter Sprigg outlining his opinion about the top ten harms from same sex marriage:
http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF11B30.pdf
Also consider the following article by Stanley Kurtz whose Harvard Ph.D. is in social anthropology. This article examines the ten year same sex marriage experiment in Scandinavia where the out of marriage birth rate now tops 50%.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/660zypwj.asp?page=1
Gene H wrote: “The Spartans not only practiced homosexuality, they encouraged it, and their society lasted a lot longer than 237 years.”
Strange comment when I recall Aristotle criticizing the Spartans for their lack of homosexuality, and the culture itself basically left us nothing in the way of art, literature, scientific knowledge, etc. They were basically a military society bordering on barbarism.
I’ll be over here not holding my breath.
David,
When you come up with a theological model that can be empirically tested, replicated, has baseline data, and is accepted as science, get back to me.
The young earth creationist models were logically invalidated long before empirical clocks were necessary; they violate logic for all the reasons I stated above: They presumed attributes of a Creator that were not necessary to the creation; and such presumptions amount to unfounded assertions of fact without reason or evidence.
Yep. x2.
To answer the post I missed more specifically:
DavidM: We consider the possibility of a creator when we DO UNDERSTAND just how complex a system is.
1) Except that you do not understand, because you think the system is more complex than it actually IS.
2) Even if one considers the possibility of a “creator” it is a fallacy to make attribute arbitrary powers to that “creator” that are not necessary to accomplish the creation in question.
For example, would a “creator” have to be immortal? No. Would a creator have to be all-knowing? No. Would a creator have to know the results of the creation? No; many mathematicians have created algorithms or proofs without knowing if or how they would ever be used and with no intent of how they should be used. That does not invalidate their creative power.
Would a creator even need to be intelligent? Not necessarily, there is a clear path by which complexity results from simple interaction in an environment with limited resources.
When we strip away all the arbitrary, piled on features of your “creator” we are left with random chance and Evolution.
When you talk about the convergent evolution of eyesight; there is no reason that should suggest a creator.
Here is a video explaining how.
It does NOT require life to originate more than once; the common ancestor can be a bacterium or tiny animal with rudimentary photo-sensitive cells; and as the video shows we find those tiny animals even today.
DavidM: Digging in deeper and deeper and gaining a better understanding of what is required might lead a rational thinker to consider the common designer model more probable.
That is NOT rational, because it explains nothing. The most probable explanation is that a population of organisms with some primitive level of sight (like single cell photo-sensitivity) became split by natural means (e.g. transplantation by hurricane or tsunami) so they no longer interbred, and therefore embarked upon separate evolutionary paths, each with their own random mutations and increasing sensitivity of their respective patches. That is convergent evolution. It is the more probable route because it does not require any arbitrary super powers or intelligence or outside agency: A natural cataclysm isolates a sub-population in a lake and the deed is done.
DavidM: but it never has gained much traction because of the improbability of abiogenesis happening more than once in history.
You don’t know anything about that probability at all, because nobody does. For all we know, once life occurs, because it has zero competition from prior life, it spreads exponentially, and by competing with itself gets exponentially better at survival, until the point where if it ever occurs spontaneously again it gets immediately eaten by the existing life, and never has the chance to spread again. Once life occurs, it may become pervasive and stand in the way of any alternative form of life ever gaining another foothold; so only mutations of the original life ever have the basics needed to compete with the original life.
Consider Baseball: It was invented in 1845; the first modern baseball game was played in 1846. But the “best in the world” in 1846 could not compete with the modern major league baseball player, a person of their skill level probably could not make a minor league team.
Still, the probability of life occurring spontaneously can be relatively high; in the sense that with the entire planet as the test tube and millions of years worth of events and zero competition anywhere, there could be a good probability that some very fragile form of self-replication would form. But we don’t know that; it is also possible that with the entire galaxy as the test tube and 9 billion years of events, life originated out there (we see the building blocks of it all over the galaxy) and arrived here as single-celled organisms on asteroids (which have been shown able to survive both strong radiation and the heat of re-entry).
We, and you in particular, have no idea how probable the spontaneous origin of life may be given the entire surface of the Earth and a few million years. The fact that we have not done it in a test tube means nothing, the test tube is hardly the surface area of Earth (or volume of its oceans) and does not recreate that environment at all, for nearly enough time, to draw any conclusion that means anything. If we did do it in a test tube, it would mean it was nearly inevitable, but not doing it does not remotely mean it was unlikely on a real world with real time spans.
Positing a creator as the reason X exists begs the question of the reason the creator exists. If all things require creators, then the creator requires a creator. If it does not, then not all things require creators, and X may be one of those things that does not require a creator. That makes the creator of X an unnecessary and arbitrary complication.
David,
You keep arguing theology when Tony, Gene, myself and others are discussing science. This is a law blog (blawg). If you were to try and introduce your type of arguments into an objective court of law, they would be thrown out under Rule 702. Because I said so, does not cut it any more when it comes to proof. Of course, given the current makeup of the SCOTUS, they get away with basing some of their opinions on their theological beliefs rather than the law, and there is not much one can do about that except wait for those Justices to retire.
Lets look at how that burden of proof works when it comes to science:
The testimony (i.e, opinion) is based on sufficient facts or data. That is data and facts, not the opinions and beliefs of theologians who lived and died ten or twenty centuries before the scientific method was even conceived.
Rule 702 requires that the testimony (opinion) is the product of reliable principles and methods; i.e., the scientific method wherein baseline data are developed, the procedure can be replicated by others, and the resulting data are valid. The scientific principles and methods used to develop the opinion have been applied to the facts.
The legal concepts of validity and reliability differ somewhat from how a scientist or statistician uses them. This has caused problems in the past because to lawyers and judges have slightly different definitions of the terms “reliable” and “valid.” To the scientist, validity means the test or procedure measures what it purports to measure. Reliability means the test or procedure is repeatable across a broad spectrum of conditions.
When a judge or lawyer hears the word “valid” they interpret it to mean something like, “Binding; possessing legal force or strength; legally sufficient.”
The legal concept of reliability refers to the subject or witness being “trustworthy, truthful, candid, and credible.”
Those differences in word meanings have caused untold misery to both experts, Courts and litigants. As the prison official said in the movie Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
To get back to your comment(s), you are basing most, if not all, your arguments on things that cannot be proved to be valid, tested for reliability, or even generate a consensus. BTW, consensus of opinion was the basis of the old Frye standard for scientific evidence. Consensus? Gotta be kidding, since there are ideological splits within every major religious group in the world. Christians are a hodge-podge of every kind of belief imaginable. The same can be said of Muslims and Jews. There are even ideological differences among atheists and agnostics I have known.
OS wrote: “You keep arguing theology when Tony, Gene, myself and others are discussing science.”
This is a lie. You and others often make vague and worthless statements like this without pointing out any specific example. Nobody here has any foundation for understanding theology so there is no reason I would even begin to make a theological argument. It would be like trying to explain calculus to a third grader.
OS wrote: “To get back to your comment(s), you are basing most, if not all, your arguments on things that cannot be proved to be valid, tested for reliability, or even generate a consensus.”
Another statement made from ignorance because we have not even begun to discuss the various models and the aspects of them that would be testable through empirical means.
I can point out one creationist model that in the minds of most scientists would have to be considered testable because it is already considered falsified by the great majority of scientists. These would include the young earth models that claim the earth and universe is less than 10,000 years old. If we can agree upon empirical clocks which demonstrate that the earth and universe are older than this, then these models are falsified scientifically. These models would be in a class like the classic Lamarckian evolutionary theory which were falsified more than 100 years ago.
An honest scientist who adheres to the Popperian view of scientific theories being potentially falsifiable by empirical means would agree that such young earth models are testable and therefore subject to scrutiny by scientists. Unfortunately, most scientists will not agree because of their prejudice and other biases. Allowing for the idea of even one creationist model as being empirically testable might open up a floodgate for additional models involving intelligent design. They absolutely cannot allow that because they fear that it would break down the barrier between religion and science which they have erected. I am fairly certain all of you will not agree that the young earth creationist models are testable scientifically even though they are if we accept the premise that empirical clocks have falsified them.
Congrats on the computer repair OS. I have had the same problem when I had to buy a new one a couple of years ago. Some of the files wouldn’t transfer. It is a lot of extra work to get back up to speed.
Thanks, raff.
Admirable and tough young woman. I can see her being a formidable campaigner if she ever decides to get into politics. Politics takes a thick skin and willingness to dish it out when attacked. She has those traits in abundance.
I just got my computer back from the computer hospital this afternoon. They upgraded some of the hardware and reinstalled Win7, but the new version is a freaking headache. It does not work like the version I had,. They saved all my files, but my installed programs wouldn’t transfer. That’s what happens when you replace the motherboard. At least the internet works.
OS,
Wow! Kudos to that brave young lady.
This story was too good not to share. An Austin, Texas 14-year-old teen has been exercising her Constitutional right to protest the Texas legislature’s war on women and reproductive rights. She carried her homemade sign in front of the state capitol, and photos of her and her sign have gone viral. Her sign says:
The online reaction of the religious right was swift and predictable. About the mildest thing this young teenager has been called is a “Whore.” She has gone public, with the full support of her family. She has declined to be labeled in such a fashion. She fired back at her critics, pointing out with irrefutable logic she could not very well be a whore, since she is a virgin and has no intention of having sex until she is much older. Story and photo is at the link, but here is an excerpt of her statement”
http://www.xojane.com/issues/billy-cain-tuesday-cain-jesus-isnt-a-dick-so-keep-him-out-of-my-vagina
DavidM: consider an aboriginal finding a jetliner that lands in the desert. If logic caused him to consider that a designer or creator was responsible for it, this would not be irrational.
Believing a designer is responsible for something highly unlikely to occur naturally is not irrational. Believing the designer is magical, all-knowing, all-powerful, immortal and eternal, all of that is irrational. The rational position, for the aboriginal and modern man, is to not posit any more than is necessary to explain the phenomenon.
What is NOT rational, for the aboriginal, is to presume the designer can operate outside the laws of the universe; what is not rational for US is to conclude anything that happens violates the rules of physics, chemistry, or anything else.
It is rational to presume we do not know all the laws of physics. Asimov said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But it is important to understand that claim correctly: It is still technology.
That is what is most important in Asimov’s claim, there is no magic, and if it looks like magic, you are being deceived.
Your problem is hubris. You are the aboriginal looking at the metaphorical Television and thinking it is a magic window, instead of a clever device operating entirely within the bounds of something you could learn and understand.
The same is true of all of us, at some level, I too am an aboriginal struggling to understand reality, but I do not think it is magic, I think it is just very complicated to understand.
The mistake, the hubris, comes in thinking that if you can’t understand it must therefore be beyond the ability of all humans to understand.
There are things in this world that nobody understands …. Yet. Just because nobody understands them does not mean they cannot be understood.
If a spaceship a hundred miles wide entered our solar system and we observed it destroying the planet Mercury in an apparent mining operation and dropping the planetary trash into the sun, would you just assume that God’s had made that mining spaceship because the technology in use was beyond our current understanding?
That would be irrational. Unlike the aboriginal encountering an airplane or television, what we encounter with life is not unusual at all. We have an entire spectrum of life, from humans down to viruses, that all support the theory of evolution and random mutations competing for survival.
The aboriginal assumes a designer partially because there are no correlates in nature, the television and the airplane are not made from parts the aboriginal can see used elsewhere in nature. Sheet steel and plastics and long straight-edge lines and right angles are unnatural.
None of that is true for biological beings; everything in your body is found in other bodies of other species. That does not point at design, that points at evolution and the conservation of useful structure.
Theism is irrational in nearly every respect. As I said before, you make the mistake of presuming something complex can only be created by something more complex, and that leads to an infinite ascent which leads to paradox. On the other hand, it is quite obvious that the interaction of simpler patterns can produce more complex patterns, and that leads to finite descent, to zero complexity: that some simple interactions of non-living, naturally occurring things can produce a self-replicating thing that becomes a living thing.
My direction is rational. The opposite direction is irrational.
Tony C wrote: “Believing a designer is responsible for something highly unlikely to occur naturally is not irrational. Believing the designer is magical, all-knowing, all-powerful, immortal and eternal, all of that is irrational. The rational position, for the aboriginal and modern man, is to not posit any more than is necessary to explain the phenomenon.”
Theism does not require belief in a “magical, all-knowing, all-powerful, immortal and eternal” creator. Theism can accept the idea of a creator who works within the natural laws that exist. A theist can simply perceive that some intelligence is responsible, that the creator is subject to natural laws the same way that we are, but that his knowledge of natural laws exceeds our own. I say that it exceeds our own only because thus far we have been unable to replicate certain events like abiogenesis. Hopefully, one day, as our knowledge grows, we will be able to accomplish that too.
Tony C wrote: “The mistake, the hubris, comes in thinking that if you can’t understand it must therefore be beyond the ability of all humans to understand.”
I have never expressed this position to you, nor do I hold such a view. The whole point of being a researcher and scientist is to understand it. I think we have the potential to understand everything in nature. My theism fosters this idea of being able to understand it. It does not detract from it in the way you imagine.
Tony C wrote: “None of that is true for biological beings; everything in your body is found in other bodies of other species. That does not point at design, that points at evolution and the conservation of useful structure.”
You apparently have not considered the concept of intelligent design very much. This is not surprising because the court systems under the pressure of atheists have blocked our public schools from considering alternative viewpoints about origins. The evidence you mention here is entirely predicted by models of intelligent design in the same way that many evolutionary models predict it. Why do vehicles have common design and components? Why do computer monitors look similar? Why do different software products share so many similarities? Granted there is some level of diversity, but there are also common similarities. It is because of the common designer aspect. Someone designs something that works, and others copy that design because it works. We expect a designer to use the same genetic code within biological system. When contrasting intelligent design models of origins with evolutionary models of origins, we must look at the areas in which they differ rather than areas where they are similar.
Tony C wrote: “My direction is rational. The opposite direction is irrational.”
I certainly do not challenge the rationality of your approach. I question the premises and assumptions by which that approach operates. All progress in knowledge should begin with identifying the premises which are accepted without proof. If a premise might be wrong, then we should consider what the result would be if a different premise were true. You are intractable in the process of reconsidering your premises, so logic causes you to consider any other path to be irrational. That irrationality would be true if your premises were true, but it would not be true if your premises were false. My position is that one or more of your foundational premises might be false.
For the most part, in this most recent post especially, you define theism much too narrowly.