Redstate

out of a possible 10.

Why do scientists have the right to place the dividing line between religion and science? Because if they believe the universe doesn't require a god, there's no room for one.

And they say science can't be a religion. It has to be for an atheist.

is that this whole post follows from the assumption that evolution is inherently atheistic, when in fact it is clearly agnostic.  A proper understanding of evolution and a belief in God (and whatever moral code one wants to follow, incidentally) are far from incompatible.

Clarence Darrow made this point convincingly in the 1920s - Stephen Jay Gould fleshes it out here:

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html

This will surely light up a thread over there. May even drag DS back for a shot or two, but I guess he's gone for now, no?

No, it does not. It only ADDRESSES atheistic evolution. It does not assume that all evolution is atheistic, I just chose not to address theistic evolution.

I'm waiting for a future date to do that one, and it will probably be a diary, as opposed to a front-pager.

"Humans are no more special or worthy of protection than any other species of animal, since we are are merely matter arranged in a different structure, and our existence here is just a matter of random chance."

Not quite.  Worth and specialness are in the eye of the beholder.  The fact that there is no external being defining worth doesn't preclude us humans from defining worth.

Not everyone who disbelieves the literal truth of Genesis thinks that humans are no better than hairless apes.  We may have originated that way, but we aren't that way now, and it's reasonable to treat people as being different and special.

I'm no philosopher, but if you want something logical, it goes something like this:  I know I am different from an animal, and that makes me special.  I know you are like me and unlike an animal.  Therefore you are special, and the same goes for every other person.

(As an aside, no, this doesn't have implications for abortion and all that.  Terri Schiavo, for example, was still human, even in her degraded state.  If we take an engine out of a car, we'd still call it a car, only one without an engine.  Schiavo was still human, only without a brain.  Likewise, an embryo is still human, only at an early stage of development that all of us have gone through.)

Not everyone who disbelieves the literal truth of Genesis thinks that humans are no better than hairless apes.

We are specifically discussing atheistic evolution here, not theistic evolution. I tried to make that painstakingly clear.

And one of the unavoidable tenets of atheistic evolution is that matter is all there is. There is no soul, no mind that exists apart from the physical matter of the brain, etc. Humans are just matter arranged somewhat differently from apes, plants, rocks, etc. We're just the latest fruit to bloom on the evolutionary tree, and if we rot and fall off, the world moves on.

You answer me this: If humans arrived where we are through the random processes of evolution, why should we be afforded special worth over an ape, or a tree?

... but here's my view on things as a common schmuck:

I think you leap too far in your implications to atheistic evolution above. From some outside species' perspective (should there be one), those implications may be perfectly reasonable. However, looking at them from the perspective of a homo sapiens, I don't think that they're all that reasonable given that humanity is inherently a social species. In other words, it makes sense for humans to (generally) look out for one another because the capabilities of N humans working together is more than the N times the capability of an average human. (specialization)

I think that you touch upon the question that falls out of specialization of  portions of human societies: Why keep around those humans who are unable or unwilling to specialize and contribute to the greater human capability? I think the answer to this may lay in the fact that humans are not static beings. Today's slacker may be tomorrow's leader. A complete physical invalid may be incapable of assisting their fellow man in physical chores, but he may provide some non-physical value in another realm. Since we don't have any good ways of picking out the good apples from the bad, the general principle of not killing the slackers and invalids has probably paid off when a handful of those individuals came into their own and accomplished something great, despite their past history or disabilities.

With respect to the afterlife, I'm a person who doesn't think there is one. I imagine that when my time comes, my consciousness will blink out like a light and that'll be the end of me. Personally, I'm fine with that. In terms of the paths I've chosen and and how that relates to my belief in no afterlife, the best explanation I can offer is that I personally value progress and accomplishment. If I can leave this world having done something to push the human race forward (no matter how small), I'm grateful for that. I try to make the most of what I have and having lived a life where nothing was accomplished and years were squandered would be the worst possible outcome from a personal standpoint.

Now, I don't know what this means for you or the Republican party, but there's my perspective for you. I think it would be fair to categorize me as a believer in atheistic evolution (though I'm not beyond changing my mind when contrary evidence surfaces), but people who hold that belief do not believe the same things as Pauling or that the Nazi's were justified in their killings, or that Pol Pot and Mother Teresa are somehow morally equivalent in how they lived their lives. And personally I find Locke's philosophy to be much better than Marx's.

For what it's worth...

Erick apparently banned him today.

I have to say reading his Kos diaries DS seemed like a rather . . . disturbed individual.  My experience has been that that is typical of people who obsess over arguing creation theology versus evolution theory and trying to use it extrapolate the intelligence and/or moral values of people who disagree with them.

In my case, I'm an atheist and evolutionist but  I could care less what others chose to believe as what people think about it tends to have little bearing on whether they're intelligent or a good person.

My impression is that most "atheistic evolutionists" are willing to assign some sort of "special" value to life, consciousness, whatever, a priori. This might well be viewed as a sleight-of-hand introduction of religion or spirituality to their philosophy (and hence, perhaps, grounds for ridicule), but I don't think most of them subscribe to this interpretation. (I'm not raising this point because I think highly of, say, Richard Dawkins or James Watson — who is pro-eugenics, for that matter — but because I don't want to get run over in a countercharge of zealous people telling me that evolution and Christianity are incompatible because of these conclusions.)

I am Roman Catholic and I believe in evolution, and I do not believe in the theory of  intelligent design. Is the evolution that I believe in "theistic" because I assume that a creator was required to set the chain in motion, or is it, in your opinion, the same as atheistic evolution with the exception of the creator?

On another point I'm not sure that it follows from the premise of athestic evolution that humans are no more worthy of protection than anything else, assuming that by protection you mean human protection. You would be right to say that humans would have no more moral weight than anything else, but that does not mean that it would be wise for humans to give rocks as much protection as they give humans.

In my understanding darwinian theory holds that lifeforms are built to reproduce themselves, and humans seem to maximize their reproductive capacity by working together under systems of government that include rights and laws for humans. So whether you believe that the purpose of humans is to breed, or you believe that humans are special and have a higher purpose, it is still a good idea to treat humans differently than rocks.

I think the far more telling point is the one related to the treatment of the weak. The extreme Atheistic Darwinian position can lead to the idea that some people are not worthy of protection because of their inadequacy.

I admit that I sometimes think in darwinian terms when I think about welfare allowing some of the least fit of our species to have an unlimited number of children at the expense of others, while exorbitant tax rates and lack of housing cause many other people to not be able to afford to have as many children as they would like.

by implying that evolution is atheistic.  Evolution does not say anything about the existence or non-existence of God and to use evolution (or science of any kind for that matter) to disprove the existence of God is a fool's errand.  Now if your belief in God depends on the proposition that the Bible is a scientifically and historically accurate account of history and prehistory, then yes you are in deep trouble.

And I will dismiss Pauling as a fringe character.  He was a brilliant chemist when he was younger, but sometime in the seventies he knocked some screws loose and he was a certifiable loony for the rest of his life.

Even if everything you say was true, the simple fact is that evolution is an undeniable fact (the how is the theory, that evolution has and is occuring, the earth is 4 billion odd years old, that life appeared on earth about 3 billion years ago).  Now, like the discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe, hell is not beneath our feet, nor heaven above our heads, we have to understand God in the light of those facts whether we want to or not.

by implying that evolution is atheistic.  Evolution does not say anything about the existence or non-existence of God and to use evolution (or science of any kind for that matter) to disprove the existence of God is a fool's errand.  Now if your belief in God depends on the proposition that the Bible is a scientifically and historically accurate account of history and prehistory, then yes you are in deep trouble.

And I will dismiss Pauling as a fringe character.  He was a brilliant chemist when he was younger, but sometime in the seventies he knocked some screws loose and he was a certifiable loony for the rest of his life.

Even if everything you say was true, the simple fact is that evolution is an undeniable fact (the how is the theory, that evolution has and is occuring, the earth is 4 billion odd years old, that life appeared on earth about 3 billion years ago).  Now, like the discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe, hell is not beneath our feet, nor heaven above our heads, we have to understand God in the light of those facts whether we want to or not.

Another explanation for not killing off the defective humans is for self-defense. In some respects, every human is defective and from a social point of view, it makes sense for an individual to support some sort of policy valuing human life because in the absence of such a policy, the individual might be the one purged.

Do you consider, say, a diamond or a hundred-dollar bill more valuable than a dirt clod because God tells you to?  Or do purely human concerns influence your evaluation of wealth?

Humans have minds.  We can use them.  We can show loyalty to each other, and have compassion for each other.  Religion doesn't have a monopoly on such things.

Well, since the question assumes a particular evolution of the atheistic variety, then let me Quote the Apostle Paul in

1 Corinthians 15:32

If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." [ Isaiah 22:13]

The most striking aspect of the question is that the Subject noun of evolution is modified by an adjective that dwarfs the noun in the gravity of its implications.

Once we've eliminated God, well then.

To be sure there is no God who created the universe requires more faith than I can imagine but, despite the likelihood that such a person is a post-modern anti-intellectual probably boasting of many academic degrees from other evolved creatures of chance, I will still take a chance, akin to the civilizing of NELL, and refer the mammal to "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis.

The most important philosophical and political implications of the theory is that philosophy and politics and most every other concept that comes to mind are exponentially reduced in significance.

But les than one second after considering the concept I open my eyes and see on the ground, a pile of dog feces and a cross in a jar of urine and am immediately certain that a dog and a tenured NYU professor have  been there.

But then I notice something else.

The ground.

What mechanism of evolution works in 7 days?

I think you leap too far in your implications to atheistic evolution above. From some outside species' perspective (should there be one), those implications may be perfectly reasonable. However, looking at them from the perspective of a homo sapiens, I don't think that they're all that reasonable given that humanity is inherently a social species. In other words, it makes sense for humans to (generally) look out for one another because the capabilities of N humans working together is more than the N times the capability of an average human. (specialization)

Many, many animals are social, and animals are also capable of some degree of specialization. For instance, my wife keeps some pet rats that she "rescued" from the psyche lab of her college alma mater. They're incredibly sociable and exhibit definite personality traits. In experiments, they each learned to perform different tasks. Now, I would submit to you that the only difference between us is that our brain is a little larger, our arms are a little longer, our tails a little shorter, but is there anything in that that makes us special and unique, and different in essence from either the rest of the animal world, or any other classification of matter, living or dead? Truly there is not.

You are therefore left with the "we ought to look out for our own species" as your only means of differentiating between humans and others. Which is fine enough from a functional standpoint, but what of others who don't necessarily care whether humans remain the dominant species? And doesn't that kind of thinking lead directly to the kind I'll address below?

I think that you touch upon the question that falls out of specialization of  portions of human societies: Why keep around those humans who are unable or unwilling to specialize and contribute to the greater human capability? I think the answer to this may lay in the fact that humans are not static beings. Today's slacker may be tomorrow's leader. A complete physical invalid may be incapable of assisting their fellow man in physical chores, but he may provide some non-physical value in another realm. Since we don't have any good ways of picking out the good apples from the bad, the general principle of not killing the slackers and invalids has probably paid off when a handful of those individuals came into their own and accomplished something great, despite their past history or disabilities.

This, in my mind, constitutes evidence that atheistic evolution is not true, and that we are unique not only in degree, but in essence, from the rest of the biosphere. But I digress, and slap myself on the wrist for doing so.

With respect to the afterlife, I'm a person who doesn't think there is one. I imagine that when my time comes, my consciousness will blink out like a light and that'll be the end of me. Personally, I'm fine with that. In terms of the paths I've chosen and and how that relates to my belief in no afterlife, the best explanation I can offer is that I personally value progress and accomplishment. If I can leave this world having done something to push the human race forward (no matter how small), I'm grateful for that. I try to make the most of what I have and having lived a life where nothing was accomplished and years were squandered would be the worst possible outcome from a personal standpoint.

You are certainly entitled to your own personal satisfaction without belief in an afterlife. I couldn't manage it, but I'll grant that perhaps you could. The point is that there really is no final difference in the life that is lived by Mother Theresa and Stalin - both go to their graves and their consciousness is no more, and each share the equal fate. Nothing seems wrong to you about that?

I know what you'll say - history will remember. But what if Hitler WON World War II?

but people who hold that belief do not believe the same things as Pauling or that the Nazi's were justified in their killings

That's not what I said. I said you are left without justification to condemn them for their killings. And I challenge you to do so.

Well, I'm a theistic evolution kind of guy myself, but I've talked with plenty of the agnosto/athiest persuasion.  While a universe without a higher moral agent than man might scare the wilies out of you and I, it doesn't everybody.

For one, I think that most (but not all) would reject the notion that human beings are not special.   The very fact that we can perceive and act upon the universe in a way that a rock or a tree cannot is (so far as we know) unique to the universe.  Our capacity for understanding is greater than a dog, ape, or dolphin, and that makes us more special than them.  They recognize that their fellow man is like them, and therefore also special.  They perceive that they prefer pleasure and freedom to pain and slavery, and can conclude that their fellow man also prefers pleasure and freedom.  Ergo, since they are equally special, to cause them pain and loss of freedom would be bad in the morally wrong sense.

That's just the basic framework that I gather humanists work worth.  The only thing missing is someone higher than us standing around making sure that the good are rewarded and the bad are punished, eternally if necessary.  For more information, I'd suggest seeking one or two out and talking to them with the motive of understanding.

Why not leave it to theists to draw the political and philosphical and political conclusions from evolution instead of setting them up as a brush with which to attempt to tar evolution. There's no such thing as "atheistic Darwinism" even if there are Darwinists who are atheists.

The existence of God is not a factor in the study of evolution any more than existence of God is a factor in calculating the motion of the planets. The fact that theories about the motions of the planets used to be in conflict with some church doctrines still does not mean that there exists or ever existed an "atheistic astronomy." If atheists and theists choose to draw conclusions from evolution or astronomy, that's a feature of atheism or theism.

It is certainly correct to note that value can and often is arbitrarily assigned to various things (the 100-dollar bill, diamond, etc.)

It is further true that, without God, man can assign value to his fellow beings.

However, it is also true that without God, there is nothing to say that man ought to assign value to his fellow beings.

And there's a huge difference betwixt the two.

This might well be viewed as a sleight-of-hand introduction of religion or spirituality to their philosophy (and hence, perhaps, grounds for ridicule), but I don't think most of them subscribe to this interpretation.

You're absolutely right. The point of my post is that they are logically inconsistent for failing to do so.

I think you overstate this alleged 'tenent'

Your 'tenent' assumes completely knowledge of all 'matter' -- in order to know that nothing else exists, we have to assume that we know everything.

This is clearly not the case and, as such, there's really no support for the claim that "souls" do not exist outside of theistic evolution and no support for the belief that self-consciousness requires God.

Further, even if we are "just matter" that's far cry from saying we're just another kind of rock. In fact, it's an assertion you've made but not defended in the least.

In fact, to demonstrate this, consider this point:

Assume all premises above are true. Assume, further, that theistic evolution is 'true'. Where is the line between "being" and "just plain matter"? If we assume that line excludes everything but humans, then it must be perfectly acceptable to throw a puppy just as one would throw a rock.

Or does it include mammals? What about fish? Birds? Insects?

Where's the line? No matter where you draw the line, there's going to be something living on the other side of it... unless you say that all living things exist on "our side" of the line... in which case you're really not that far away from the conclusions reached from theistic evolution -- which is to say that everything living deserves protection.

(PS: it might be worth noting that there seems to be a clear contradiction in saying that 'everythign deserves protection' and saying that the weakest humans do not. Clearly if this is the case, animals that cannot protect themselves do not deserve protection)

...(agnostic would probably describe my personal belifs) but I think that your argument makes at least one false assumption. Disbelief in a deity or an afterlife does not automatically lead to an every man for himself outlook on life. There is a logical argument to be made that a life which respectes the rights of others to be happy will provide the individual with the most chance of happiness.

Indeed, while the Christian outlook of America's founders is not in dispute, it seems to me they provided a foundation for the country which does not rely on citizens sharing those Christian beliefs for its appeal.

And notice the bolded warning:

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is NOT a thread to discuss the scientific validity of evolution. If you would like to involve yourself in such a discussion, please participate in one of the above three diaries.

Your post is off-topic in this thread. If you'd like to try again, I'll attempt to respond if I'm still awake.

With respect, it won't lead you anywhere.

Your beliefs about the truth or falsity of "atheistic evolution" don't matter one whit.

If I sit around all day saying, "I don't believe in physics - the tenets of modern thermodynamics go against my religious beliefs", my statement would have exactly zero effect on the world of physics.

My ignorance or my mistake don't force the physicists to lose ground.

In similar fashion, the musings and protests of the creationists, or the intelligent design believers, have zero effect on the world of the life sciences.

All over the world, in hundreds of labs and universities, researchers happily work, live their lives, make exciting discoveries, publish, argue, alter their paradigms. Knowledge progresses, in fits and starts. And you can't stop it.

The fact that many - most - of those researchers believe in God just as strongly as their creationist neighbors is ironic, but nobody notices that irony much. Safe to say, I think, that the researchers, even the evolutionary theorists, feel a sense of awe and wonder at each new discovery. How that sort of wonder might be threatening to a dogmatic believer is the dogmatic believer's problem.

It doesn't matter what you think about NASA engineers' ability to hit a comet with a rocket  - THEY thought they could do it, and they did.

Likewise, it doesn't matter what you think about a geneticist's ability to use knowledge of heredity - knowledge firmly rooted in the idea of evolutionary change - to learn more about DNA's form and function. The geneticist thinks she can do it, and she will. E. coli's DNApol has a set, known rate of mistakes, and that known rate leads to certain predictable consequences, and, knowing that, we can get a better handle on how E. coli alters itself and its progeny.

It doesn't matter if you think the archeologists haven't discovered transitional fossils - THEY think they have, and, since  YOU don't read their journals or attend their conferences, your opinion doesn't count.

The only effect the creationist or ID campaign can possibly have is to squelch genetics research here in the USA. It is happening already, in a fashion, with creationism being taught in some schools. If we teach our kids that genetics research is blasphemy, then we will inevitably lose some bright minds which might have furthered our knowledge.

The stem cell ban is another example.

Say the creationists win. If the USA's own population seeks to limit scientific research into genetics, either by decreasing the number of children exposed to the life sciences at an early age (way to GO, Kansas!) or by politicizing public school or university research, then the result will be that the researchers will go elsewhere. It's that simple.

In the '30s and 40s (thank God) the Nazis politicized science by persecuting Jewish physicists. Germany lost lots of smart people, Los Alamos gained.

The USSR did the same thing, in many, many areas of study. And look what it got them. In what field of scientific endeavor does Russia lead the world? None.

Why is it that so few evolutionary researchers argue with creationists? Because they know it doesn't matter - the creationists can go on all day long - who cares? The research will still get done. If not in the USA then somewhere else.

Given the fact that gains in the life sciences in the last few decades have been incredible, it seems short sighted to pick NOW as the time to limit genetic research. But, then, go ahead - the EU or Malaysia or S. Korea or Japan, or even China will be hiring...

The essential distinction that Descartes pointed out almost 400 years ago--that we are the only animal that thinks about these things.  Very few animals even have a sense of self, and that is rudimentary at best.  As far as we know we are the only ones who have the ability to ponder the meaning of our existence.  That is what sets us apart.

Assume all premises above are true. Assume, further, that theistic evolution is 'true'. Where is the line between "being" and "just plain matter"? If we assume that line excludes everything but humans, then it must be perfectly acceptable to throw a puppy just as one would throw a rock.

Or does it include mammals? What about fish? Birds? Insects?

That's my point. Granted atheism, there is no line.

For one, I think that most (but not all) would reject the notion that human beings are not special.

That while this is certainly true, my post was intended to show that it is logically inconsistent for them to do so.

You'll recall that the logical conclusion of Descartes' argument which you reference was, of course, that God exists.

He struck me as someone who's spent a little too long on the front lines of the fight over ID. Now, I think most of what Behe et al. peddle is mendacious and deceptive, and I'm glad to see people fighting to keep it from being labeled "science". On the other hand, the people charging in against him are usually atheist/materialist, and can be found hurling bombs not just at ID, but at religion and spirituality as well.

The incident I mentioned in my diary was really seminal for me; I knew the person to be scientifically competent, yet staunchly refused to accept evolution. From my perspective as a scientist, if people can, in fact, be good scientists (which in biology at least implicitly involves accepting the consequences of evolution) while refusing to endorse it as a historical fact, then I don't think it's really harmful. I don't think a lot of people on the pro-evolution side realize this (it certainly wasn't apparent to me for a long time), and so they assume that people who refuse to explicitly accept evolution don't accept the conclusions of modern biology in general.

That there is something called

"atheistic evolution"

and something else called

"theistic evolution"

It's just BS that you are unintentinally or intentionally adding to the arguement that serves as a smokescreen.

There is simply evolution, or more accurately, there is the original theory of evolution as outlined in Darwin's "Origin of the Species" and then there are all the subsequent modifications to the basic concept that have arisen as scientific knowledge and thought has advanced.  An athiest may choose to pay attention to the scientific thought, so may a 'thiest', but the theories themselves are not predicated on, nor do they care about the religious predilections of the person involved.  Strictly speaking, an 'athiestic' theory would require that, as one of its basic premises, God does not exist.  Of such a scientific theory, I am not aware, and I use the word scientific loosely here because such a theory would be inaccurately described as scientific, just as ID is.  If you can't disprove the theory through tests, and if the theory cannot make predictions about further tests, then its not science.  

To summarize, differentiating between 'theocratic' vs 'atheistic' evolution makes as much sense as differentiating between 'theocratic' and 'athiestic' Neo-classical architecture.

There is the school of neo-classical arhitecture such as it is.  There are undoubtably athiests who believe that neo-classical architecture is as it is because of cosmic chance and there are undoubtably theists who believe that neo-classical architecture is as it is because of some undevined but perhaps intentional spark of God's creation.  Arguing about their points of views doesn't change Neo-classical architecture one bit.

I think someone made the good point upthread - value and "specialness" is in the eye of the beholder. With respect to your wife's rats, should they be able to possess a point of view, I wouldn't be surprised or hold it against them if they placed more importance on fellow rats than humans.

You are certainly entitled to your own personal satisfaction without belief in an afterlife. I couldn't manage it, but I'll grant that perhaps you could. The point is that there really is no final difference in the life that is lived by Mother Theresa and Stalin - both go to their graves and their consciousness is no more, and each share the equal fate. Nothing seems wrong to you about that?

I'm really not bothered by the fact that I don't think there's some sort of cosmic scorekeeping going on. I do disagree with your statement that there was no final difference between Mother Teresa and Stalin's life. I think it's pretty obvious that Stalin's actions held his people back while Mother Teresa's actions advanced others' lives.

That's not what I said. I said you are left without justification to condemn them for their killings. And I challenge you to do so.

I wasn't attempting to put words in your mouth. I figured that I'd make it clear to the reading audience that just because someone subscribes to my positions, it doesn't imply automatic support for Pauling, the Nazi's, and Marx.

I also have a pretty good justification why the Nazi killings were wrong. Looking at the Jewish scientists that fled Germany prior to WWII, it would have been tragic had someone like Einstein been murdered in the concentration camps. To be honest, we don't know who was murdered and what they would have contributed had they not been murdered so early. (This is also a wonderful argument against abortion.)

From a more self-oriented perspective, I think that it would be terrible to killed simply on the basis of my ancestry and for me, that's enough moral justification to condemn their killings. I don't remember anywhere in the Golden Rule there was a requirement that a god arbitrate.

merely pointing out that religion must acknowledge evolution whether you like it or not.  You seem to be saying that we should reject "atheistic evolution" because it would have negative consequences.  You can't reject a scientific discovery because you don't like the consequences.  

You can judge "atheistic evolution" on the merits and scientific facts.  You can't reject it because you don't like the consequences.  

Science is science, you don't get to pick and choose the parts you like and reject the parts you don't.  That's like saying I don't like nuclear weapons, so I reject nuclear theory.

First off, talking about "atheistic" evolution is a horrible strawman. You might as well just be talking about the political implications of atheism rather than evolution.

More importantly though, I don't understand at all how ethics magically change because of either atheism or especially evolution.

With regards to evolution, evolution does not deal with orgins or life after death and there for has little to do with atheism or religion.

I'm a Christian, know about several denominations, and ethics nevers rest on the fact that you get paid after you die, so when you say "What is the value of choosing one path over the other, except to satisfy one's own personal desire?" I have to question your sincerity.  

You have not offered "an honest discussion of where atheistic evolution leads us". You say you don't want to invoke Godwin's Law. This whole post is an example of why Godwin's Law is good. You set up a strawman and prove it wrong by making extreme comparisons.

I think someone made the good point upthread - value and "specialness" is in the eye of the beholder. With respect to your wife's rats, should they be able to possess a point of view, I wouldn't be surprised or hold it against them if they placed more importance on fellow rats than humans.

Then you accept the conclusion that humans have no intrinsic value, but only the value placed on them by other humans. So then, if other humans fail to value a particular person/group of people, they no longer have value. Is this not a correct assumption?

This is the problem that you have when dealing with the holocaust. The people of Germany, within their own sovereign country, formed laws that dictated that Jewish human beings held less/no value and hence proceeded to eradicate them much as we would a pack of - say - troublesome rats.

But wait, you say. That's wrong!

Well, from your perspective, it certainly is. From Himmler's perspective, it isn't. He doesn't hold you in any kind of special value.

So who gets to decide who's right? The one holding the gun, of course.

You're fine with this?

albiet not in life sciences, this, I think, is a direct answer to a post from a guy on here a couple days ago about why scientists are so largely hostile to the current republican party when, quite frankly, 2 decades ago it was probably a pretty even split.  No doubt some genius will jump in here and point out that we live in ivory towers sipping lattes all day discussing communism or something similarly stupid, but for the less ignornant, this should be a wake up call.  If you want to continue to post diaries about how global warming is 'unproven', or ASCs are just as good as ESCs or any other such thing because its your parties agenda, well, so be it, but it is having an effect.  

My dad, a lifelong republican, worked at LLNL for the past 20 years.  He was remarking about how he noticed a trend about how even at the national labs scientists were getting more and more 'liberal'.  If the national labs physicists are 75% liberal (his guess, I wouldn't know), your party has a problem with science.  

What atheistic evolution defenders miss with their "we consider ourselves special" argument is what I believe the main point of the post is:

Whether or not you can get some subset of people to agree with you that people are "special", athiestic evolution as a belief rules out the possibility that there is any inherent validity to that specialness.  You can point to some things that make us "unique" (e.g. language) - but as they are products of random chance, you are simply deceiving yourself for the sake of "common good".

If we are simply the product of chance and matter, my opinion has as much value as your opinion, and vice versa.  A belief in law, order, right, wrong, is merely a functional convenience - it has no intrinsic value.

I would go one step further - evolution is irrelevant to this argument.  Evolution allows one to avoid the question "where did we come from" - as one evolutionist put it, it allowed him to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist".  Evolution is merely a logical outgrowth of atheism - "if there is no God, what is the best possible explanation for how I got here?"  ANY atheism, evolutionary or not, lacks a foundation for assigning "value" to humanity.  We simply are - we have no purpose, no greater meaning.  Sucks to be you.

Of course, as a society, we don't have to deal with the bankruptcy of a social system founded on atheism.  Fortunately, we have the Judeo-Christian background that assigns value to the individual - and so far democracy and capitalism are the two best political/economic systems we've discovered to maximize the protection of the value of the individual.

It would be an interesting experiment, though, to see what a political/economic system founded in atheism would be like - oh wait, we've already done Communism...

However, it is also true that without God, there is nothing to say that man ought to assign value to his fellow beings.

that statement assumes that there is no incentive for man to assign that value himself - no reason that he ought to do so for the good of himself as an individual, his family and community.

In fact there are plenty of incentives for man to assign that value to others - not the least of which is to insure himself the same treatment and safeties that come with that assignment.

is not appreciated.

This:

Science is science, you don't get to pick and choose the parts you like and reject the parts you don't.  That's like saying I don't like nuclear weapons, so I reject nuclear theory.

Is nothing more than saying that evolution is scientifically valid, and ID is not. This kind of point was explicitly prohibited in this thread.

You can judge "atheistic evolution" on the merits and scientific facts.

You can do that in another thread. Not here.

You seem to be saying that we should reject "atheistic evolution" because it would have negative consequences.

No, I am not. I said, let us grant the presumption of atheistic evolution, and see where it leads us. I thought the title of the post pretty clearly indicated that this was to be a philosophical and political debate about implications.

In case you didn't get the message, this is intended to be a philosophical and political debate about the implications of atheistic evolution.

Debates about the validity of it are elsewhere. Thanks.

how does evolution change if someone is an atheist?

How does atheism change when confronted with the prospect of evolution?

To both questions I would answer "little to none," therefore I do not understand what "atheistic evolution" means.

This is intended to be a discussion of the philosophical and political implications of atheistic evolution.

Saying, "Creationists are stupid and reject science" is just a not-very-clever way of ignoring the warning in the title post.

(see Subject)

My politics are probably in discord with most everyone here, but that is irrelevant at this juncture.

If you think me a troll, then so be it, and ban away - fine and good, it's your site and your perogative. I have a DailyKos account, and I have lurked here on RedState off an on since its inception, and I am quite critical of many of the opinions and posters here...

That said, I would like to engage in this discussion. I will never post this on Kos or any other site, nor will I use this as an attempt to stir the hornet's nest or any other such games. I will respond directly and as honestly as I can.

Evolutionarily, I would argue that the single most important adaptation enabling the survival of the human species is cooperation as expressed through language and enabling the formation and maintainence of communities.

Humans lacking communities die. Communities that are too small die. Communities that destroy the meaning of language for the purposes of eliminating sub-components and external communities, and that abuse cooperative endeavor for the purposes of subjugation...die.

The monstrosity of Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Pot or Suharto or Marcos or Pinochet or the Southern Slaveholders or the American Indian Exterminators (equal opportunity condemnation!) can be framed entirely in evolutionary terms:

The actions of those people and the groups that they represent and led into battle with their own species on a massive scale were directly and blatantly attacking the foundation of human survival by warping language, warping cooperative effort, warping community and destabilizing the survival potential of the species.

The Soviets politicized engineering least of all - they needed the weapons systems.

I wonder which branch of science in the USA has the highest % of registered Republicans? I bet it's the engineers...

If you make your nation's scientists' research findings conform to your faith (or ideology) then the science becomes worthless. And the scientists will leave.

To get techincal: Humans have the capability of reasoning ourselves out of the prisoner's dilemma, thanks to the indefinite repetition of the game that life provides.  The golden rule comes naturally.

by whom?

We are the ones doing the affording of special status.

It is entirely consistent with non-religious thinking to allow for the fact that species and individuals within species desire survival.

Some would argue (Dawkins) that survival desire is a fundamentally encoded genetic trait, and that any species or individual that carried an encoded and fundamental anti-survival trait...would cease to exist within a short number of generations (like...1)

Please stop the "creationists aren't scientists" junk.  Most scientific advancement in the world was done by non-evolutionists.  Those NASA people you're so proud of?  Let's see, I seem to remember a certain Von Braun character involved in that whole rocketry thing - wonder what his opinion on Origins was?

Face it, evolution as an explanation of origins is IRRELEVANT to scientific advancement.  Genetics is founded by Mendel, not Darwin.  The only difference between evolutionary genetics and creationist genetics is whether RANDOM gene changes can create new complex biological structures over hundreds of thousands (millions) of years.  And, since random means "not predictable", and since your lifespan is guaranteed to be magnitudes < 1ma, that's not really very helpful, eh?

Did evolution create the computer? er, no.  Did evolution help develop the concept of the vaccine? er, no.  MRI? Airplane? Pharmaceuticals? Power plants?  Internal combustion engine? The only thing evolutionists research is....evolution.

What kind of "discussion" occurs only within the confines set by you?

That's not discussion - that's parroting.

How can anyone carry on "a discussion of the philosophical and political implications of atheistic evolution" without considering the "philosophical and political implications of creationism"?

What, you want to lead readers down the path of "evolution is bad", and not allow any dissent?

I did't say "creationists are stupid". Show me where I wrote that.

What I said was that the opinion of creationists about evolution have no impact on evolutionary or life science research, and the only way it ever could have an impact is if the creationism or ID movement gathers enough political steam to squelch such research.

...but technically, you're describing natural selection, not evolution.  And that is not debated - everyone from Creationists to ID'ers to Evolutionists believe in natural selection - which means that the less fit get subtracted from the equation.  Which is devolution, not evolution.

And its also interesting that those societies which propound Theistic beliefs....

...are more "fit" to survive than Atheistic societies.  Somewhat ironic, don'tcha think?

"Then you accept the conclusion that humans have no intrinsic value, but only the value placed on them by other humans. So then, if other humans fail to value a particular person/group of people, they no longer have value. Is this not a correct assumption?"

It is not correct.  If a million people want to attack a man, saying that the man is not human, I as the 100th person can still see him as being human.  I may not be able to protect the man from the mob, but I can still condemn their actions as wrong.

The world is what it is.  A million people saying something doesn't make it so.  It may mean that the particular defect in reasoning or observation that leads to that conclusion is common.  We can't know for certain, because we are imperfect humans, but we try the best we can.

I've never disputed that man has the capability to assign value to his fellow human beings. Surely, that is beyond dispute.

However, man is also capable of not assigning value to his fellow human beings (see Nazi Germany).

Now, what we are lacking, in the absence of God, is not something that says, "Man CAN assign special value to his fellow human beings," but rather, "Man OUGHT to assign special value to his fellow human beings."

See where I'm going?

Is it not particular, unique to a specific thing, person, or category?  So how would the treatment of life, and in particular human life, unique in all the cosmos, not be considered special?  And how would this be inconsistant?  Its only inconsistant if you view humans in component form and not as a sum of all their parts.  Structure matters.  The sun is special, moreso than a random free floating cloud of hydrogen and helium.  It is also special because it provides us with life.  Which is special because we alone have the capacity to appreciate that fact.

I think the evolution aspect of this thread is throwing everyone off.  The question that you're asking seems more like, "What are the implications of atheism on a society?"  Definitely a worthy question to explore, it's just that including evolution gets everyone into battle mode on another topic.

As far as atheism's implications go, we can only judge from the limited experience we've had with atheistic societies, as most cultures have been theistic, and, yes, the results speak for themselves.  Just look at the old Communist bloc and Nazi Germany for starters.

That said, it is also clear that a theistic society can also become quite corrupt.  Just because one is basing its laws on what the people in that society believe to be revealed truth or natural law does not mean that they are correct about those supposed revelations.  One only needs to look at the centuries of god-kings to see that.  Or for a more contemporary example, just take a gander at modern-day Arabdom.

Neither do I think that Judeo-Christianity is solely responsible for the wonders of Western Civilization.  While I am a Christian, and I do think that the basic values of my faith as laid out by Christ are good ones, I would be denying what I know about history to claim that Western republicanism is somehow rooted in Christianity.  To the contrary, pagan Greek philosophers were experimenting with these concepts long before the first Christian missionaries reached European shores.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think that the fact that atheistic societies don't work out proves anything about the inherent truth of theism, though it may prove that there is societal value to it, which I believe is generally true.  

OK, now it seems to me logically inconsistent to argue about the existence or nonexistence of an absolute moral framework by starting your sentences with "I think..." or making similar subjective statements.

it would have been tragic had someone like Einstein been murdered in the concentration camps. To be honest, we don't know who was murdered and what they would have contributed had they not been murdered so early.

To you and I it would have been tragic. To Hitler it would have been a service to humankind. Who's right? It it us, and if so, is it only because our "side" won WWII?

From a more self-oriented perspective, I think that it would be terrible to killed simply on the basis of my ancestry and for me, that's enough moral justification to condemn their killings.

But again, you insist on giving away the argument by framing your statements with "I think..." Anyone who does not think like you do is free to reject your moral construction. Those who argue self-interest, at least, are doing a far better job.

I don't remember anywhere in the Golden Rule there was a requirement that a god arbitrate.

Other than the fact that a man who claimed to be God proposed it, you mean.

Even so, I think you're right. I don't think that this was a commandment devoid of any earthly justification. Indeed, I think Jesus was being devilishly clever (pun intended) in creating what was effectively a device for sifting out our moral compass from within the chaff of our own selfishness. That by turning our moral decisions upon ourselves, we are most likely to arrive at the proper result.

But something still must motivate us to choose that device. And I frankly think that the quote from Paul sums it up best. Those of us who accept an absolute moral framework from upon High are making a sacrifice in this life for the promise of the next. That if there is no "next", we would be best to serve our own hedonistic interests.

... as they are products of random chance

Random chance is an inaccurate description.

Evolution works. Creatures mutate in response to environmental stimuli, traits arise, and their carries either benefit, are not affected, or suffer from the expression of those traits.

It's not random, it's contingent.

Not only that, but self-organization, symbiosis, cooperative combination, and synergy, along with competition and natural selection all play roles.

A belief in law, order, right, wrong, is merely a functional convenience

No, belief in Law, Order, Right, Wrong serves a crucial function in maintaining the viability of our species. Our species requires community cooperation and shared labor to survive. It is our primary and fundamental successful adaptation. The moral codes of the various religions bear significant similarity despite having arisen in relative isolation from one another. There is a reason - they are the first attempts to codify and reify the fundamental basis of species survival. Our culture reflects our basic organizational adaptation strategy.

Honestly, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't - not one tiny bit.

The idea of mutation of genetic material is so fundamental to cell biology and life sciences that to say it is "IRRELEVANT" is just funny.

Come on. What can I say?

Your opinion is your opinion, and the research keeps plugging along. And 100 years from now (or maybe 20) the creationist believers will look just as idiotic as the flat earth believers did way back when.

I don't have to convince you, nor do I have to educate you. I only have to hope that you can't convince enough voters that you're right that you shut research down.

If you do that, then scientists move elsewhere.

was hardly an athiestic society.  

Some would argue (Dawkins) that survival desire is a fundamentally encoded genetic trait, and that any species or individual that carried an encoded and fundamental anti-survival trait...would cease to exist within a short number of generations (like...1)

Yes, but the failure of this explanation is that many animals and some humans (again we return to the Nazis) do not see that special protection for all members of their species is necessary to the survival of the species as a whole. Numerous species of wildlife eat their young, kill each other, compete to the point of near extinction, etc. Much of that behavior is sometimes exhibited in humans.

The problem is, who is to say that it is wrong to act thusly (for a human mother to eat her young)? Especially if it is viewed in nature and generally recognized as a survival mechanism for the species?

With all due respect, there is no such thing as "atheistic evolution". Use of the term betrays ignorance of science.

Evolution is as "atheistic" as geology or physics or any other physical science.

You just refuse to treat any human definition of right or wrong as valid.  Which isn't fair, because you assumed for this argument an atheistic world from the beginning.

Society is perfectly capable of setting rules, and norms, and game theory tells us absolutely what the consequences will be.  Certain sets of rules will objectively lead to better outcomes for all concerned than other sets of rules, so we can define "right" as that which makes us all better off, and "wrong" as that which breaks the right rules.

Thus, even if a million people go and murder Jews, the rest of us can say that's wrong, because they set the wrong rules, and those rules are harmful.

So fine, 999,999 people disagree with you. You're the only one who thinks that person X has value.

And so, by consensus, X is given a death sentence and is summarily executed.

What exactly, was your moral belief worth then? The smug satisfaction that you were right? That and $3.10 buys you a latte at Starbucks, in some markets at least.

At least with a theistic worldview you have someone with an infinite number of votes on your side :)

I was thinking of Hitler himself.  As I recall, he was personally an atheist.

I agree that there certainly are many examples of loathsome professing monotheists and polythieists and will take your word concerning the intellectual and behavioral qualities of atheists. (The poll sample is rather sparse down here in Dixie.)

But, I must confess, that I am prejudiced in presuming a lack of intelligence regarding adults that express certainty in the non-existence of God.

The presumption is rebuttable however, and is usually resolved upon examination, that, in fact , the person is not so certain after all.

The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord and i would suggest that any doubt concerning the civilizing effect of faith is irrefutable in my view.

Pagan cultures encountered by the Hebrew people practiced virgin sacrifice and one can trace a profound improvement with the coming of mono-theistic adherence to absolute truth and moral be standards.

If one looks at the atheistic Nazi's and Communists, one has a clue about the inevitable result of the lack of accountability of man to a higher authority.

Anything goes and civilization breaks down. Kill 20 million. Starve 25 million. All for the state.

See Mere Christianity - cs lewis

and witness by whittaker chambers

and look at those vermont mountains

and then ask yourself

could howard dean be an accident!?

god bless

What kind of "discussion" occurs only within the confines set by you?

That's not discussion - that's parroting.

You must be new here. In case you haven't noticed over the past couple of days, we've had a veritable plethora of discussions over the kind of stuff you just posted. They always degenerate into ugliness and name-calling. You can go participate in them and see if you get a better response.

In that I have been afforded editorial privileges by the gracious directors here, I sought to provide a forum for a more philosophical discussion that would hopefully not so degenerate. You would do well to follow the example of Neil Stevens in this thread, he gets what this is all about, and what it isn't.

depends on assigning special value to our fellow human beings, regardless of whether there is a God, a Soul, or any other religious entity or entities.

That is why societies that did NOT assign special value to fellow humans died out and continue to die out.

Our survival as a species also requires assigning special value to our environment...societies that do not assign special value to their environment, work to understand their relationship to and dependence on that environment, and act accordingly...die out (e.g. Easter Island).

The existence or non-existence of God is irrelevant. We, as a species, require cooperation between individuals on or above a certain scale to survive. That cooperation requires assigning special value.

Except that atheism implies evolution. If it doesn't, I've certainly never heard another alternative biological theory.

Really, it is all wrapped up in the idea that man is a product of the random chance of interatcions of matter - AND that God does not exist. Those are both important points in this discussion.

Even in Christianity, being right doesn't necessarily change this world one bit.  In Rome there are long lists of martyrs to testify to that.

So an atheistic worldview isn't any different in that.  A Christian might feel more comfort, but the world isn't any different.

they did politicize it, and it cost them dearly.. they were miles ahead in aeronautics at the beginning of WWII, e.g., working on delta winged rocket power planes (precursor to 1960's technology jets) before 1935, but they killed a number scientists working on such items in political purges, sent most of the rest to the gulag, and it set them back dearly.

Thank god for us, for it gave us a chance to catch up...

and yes, belief in God had declined to a very low point before Hitler came to power.

systems are all non-theistic for example.  Mill, Kant, Aristotle, etc all came up with ethical systems that could be used to establish a system of right and wrong for society.

Society is perfectly capable of setting rules, and norms, and game theory tells us absolutely what the consequences will be.  Certain sets of rules will objectively lead to better outcomes for all concerned than other sets of rules, so we can define "right" as that which makes us all better off, and "wrong" as that which breaks the right rules.

The problem is that societies (Nazi Germany, Communist Russia), often make horrendous decisions about what is "right" and what is "wrong". Now, if the only marker that you are willing to accept is man's decision on the matter (essentially, majority rule), then you are left again with a question of "is-ness." We DO value this human life, or that one, because we have so decided to do.

However, if we decide NOT to do so, there is nothing that tells us that we OUGHT to do so anyway.

And thus the Nazis are perfectly excused. The only basis you have left for condemning them is the court of world opinion, which is basically the same thing as saying that they were wrong because they lost the war - because if they had won, and spread their empire over the earth, then their view would certainly have acquired world majority status.

If that seems farfetched, cannot it be said that entire time periods of world history were literally filled with "wrongness"?

(from my understanding) that if evolution is true then there is no room for God in the equation and thus there is no God.  i.e. evolution is a proof against the existence of God.  - perhaps I am wrong, but I think I understand his meaning roughly.

Mill, Kant, Aristotle, etc all came up with ethical systems that could be used to establish a system of right and wrong for society.

Okay, who do we pick? Mill? Kant? Aristotle? Marx? Hitler? Hobbes?

Again, I've never disputed that man can make good decisions, what I am disputing is that without a higher authority there is nothing to say that he should.

I definitely have difficulty drawing obvious philosophical and political implications of evolution.

I disagree with the logic above drawing obvious philosophical and political implications of atheism.

Drawing philosophical and political implications of creationism is a somewhat easier task.

If a child, just having learned to read, reads the Bible, he/she will draw some conclusions. Revelation is not a perfect one afternoon process, therefore he/she may come to some wrong conclusions. If the child is then faced with apparent contradictions to her conclusions in her future observations; that does not contradict the Bible. That means that the child needs to go back and read the Bible to find that understanding.

For example, as the pope said

Revelation teaches us that he was created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:27-29). The conciliar Constitution Gaudium et spes has magnificently explained this doctrine, which is pivotal to Christian thought. It recalled that man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake" (n. 24). In other terms, the human individual cannot be subordinated as a pure means or a pure instrument, either to the species or to society, he has value per se. He is a person. With his intellect and his will, he is capable of forming a relationship of communion, solidarity and self-giving with his peers. St Thomas observes that man's likeness to God resides especially in his speculative intellect for his relationship with the object of his knowledge resembles God's relationship with what he has created (Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 3, a. 5, ad 1). But even more, man is called to enter into a relationship of knowledge and love with God himself, a relationship which will find its complete fulfilment beyond time, in eternity. All the depth and grandeur of this vocation are revealed to us in the mystery of the risen Christ (cf. Gaudium et spes, n. 22). It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter the spiritual soul is immediately created by God ("animal enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides nos retinere inhet"; Encyclical Humani generic, AAS 42 [1950], p. 575).

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.

With man, then, we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference, an ontological leap, one could say. However, does not the posing of such ontological discontinuity run counter to that physical continuity which seems to be the main thread of research into evolution in the field of physics and chemistry? Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition into the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again, of aesthetic and religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator's plans.

In conclusion, I would like to call to mind a Gospel truth which can shed a higher light on the horizon of your research into the origins and unfolding of living matter. The Bible in fact bears an extraordinary message of life. It gives us a wise vision of life inasmuch as it describes the loftiest forms of existence. This vision guided me in the Encyclical which I dedicated to respect for human life, and which I called precisely Evangelium vitae.

By which I take to mean that understanding Evolution, if nothing else, only makes more clear our relationship with God. Our relationship with God by is not by virtue of our "mind [] emerging from the forces of living matter", but through "communion, solidarity and self-giving with his peers".

If the above child declares that he/she need learn no more, dening his/her "speculative intellect", the child has then turned away from God.

have entirely different survival adaptions and expressed traits than do humans. Humanity's specific survival trait is cooperation and community. Those groups or individuals that reject and act contrary to the dictates of that survival adaptation ... die.

Examples: Nazi Germany and the USSR were fundamentally organized on a basis that ran contrary to that survival mechanism.

blanket.

Because MN wants us to argue his 'point' and ignore the smokescreen as badly worded as it is, I will..

Reading this back and forth it comes down to this.  The hard-line theist side seems to believe that any moral relevence an athiest gives to an action or thing is irrelevant because they don't believe in something higher.  In other words, from their point of view:

people cant have intrinsic morals from either logical or evolutionary imparatives (e.g. philosophically deciding a kitten is worth more than a rock or e.g. evolutionary 'programing' influncing behavior such that killing becomes 'wrong' while war becomes 'ok')  

Why can't these intrinisc morals exist?

One person argues because when you die there iesn't any cosmic justice.  A murder who is never caught is never punished.  Another argues that its not real because its, in effect, artificial.

As a scientist, I say, so what? Prove it.  You can't.  In the end, you find out (or don't) when you die just like everyone else, and your system of beliefs is no more logically consistent than an athiests.  Quite frankly, the most logical belief system is the agnostics.  

In fact, you might argue that the whole point of faith, hinges on the fact you can't prove or disprove any of this - sure you can convince yourself as MN or DeCarte has that there must be a  God, but inevitably any such arguement relies on a postulate that because this and that circumstance is unbareable without one, therefore there must be a God.  Thats called fooling yourself.  You haven't proven anything.  You want to believe in something called God, and you want to do it without any self-deluisonal false logic, that requires faith.

Thats my 0.02 'on topic'.

There is a reason Godwin's Law exists. Constantly using Hitler as part of your central argument does not help you. The discussion is otherwise interesting.

Even in Christianity, being right doesn't necessarily change this world one bit.  In Rome there are long lists of martyrs to testify to that.

I kind of think, by definition, that the whole martyrs thing was PRE-Christian Rome.

A Christian might feel more comfort, but the world isn't any different.

It isn't a matter of comfort, it's that there is literally nothing that has been done or will be done about which you can say, "That is wrong." You may only say, "I disapprove."

And that, as it has already been pointed out, is worthless when you are in the minority. Which is often disastrous politically, as in the numerous societies we have noted in this thread.

should make good decisions regarding the treatment of fellow humans if we wish to survive.

Belief in God need not have anything to do with it.

It may very well be that the best way to organize and express that survival trait is through the mechanism of religion...but the actual act of making the choice to respect other humans and cooperate them need not rest upon appeal to a higher power.

the most significant characteristic of hebrews, then jews and then christians in the days of augustine onward was their adherence to higher moral standards.

This defined them to their neighbors as both faiths grew and is the major factor in the rise in western civilization evne to this day. Witness that is was the west, first in Brittain and then here in the Us where it was fought over and abolished on mmoral, not economic grounds.

And the civil rights movement.

The success of the US is impossible without our faith and the principles of the Bible. The whole concept is wrapped up in the idea of human beings born free creatures of God to pursue him with the goverment established with limited powers to preserve that freedom.

A culture where the people as a whole understand that they answer frst to a holy god, makes it possible to respect the property of other's which is the fruit of their labor.

And that encourages labor to create.

Our God is a creator god with us in his image.

And it is no accident that  a society trying to come as close to god's will as possible excels and prospers.

Whom did I insult? What names did I call?

Maybe you can outline the terms of the discussion more clearly, then?

Is discussion of the political effect of creationism completely dis-allowed? You only wanna discuss the effects of atheistic evolution (whatever that is)?

of those horrendous decisions that ran counter to cooperative effort and community building for the purposes of species and individual survival?

Those societies died.

The same is true for numerous historical examples of making the wrong choice regarding cooperation and community, regarding shared effort for general survival.

and you need to read some history.

My first google link that came up for your edification:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm

is already breaking down with no god. One of the implications of atheistic evolution is that since we'll all be dead with no hope of another life, who cares what anyone thinks.

I think I'll go have my neighbor's wife...

Humans should make good decisions regarding the treatment of fellow humans if we wish to survive.

Belief in God need not have anything to do with it.

Yes, it does. Because, as I've already noted numerous times, there are plenty of people (Darwin included) who don't think that special treatment of humans (especially the weak and disabled) is even desirable, much less necessary.

Now, you might disagree.

Who is correct? Whoever is holding the gun.

Or, whoever gains the ear of the one holding the gun, whichever.

as an outrageous and unfair parallel for the behavior of my opponents. I'm using him in the proper historical context of showing that societies can often make decisions that human lives don't have value.

If you'd prefer that I reference Stalin or Mao, so be it.

Thus, even if a million people go and murder Jews, the rest of us can say that's wrong, because they set the wrong rules, and those rules are harmful.

we can take steps to both stop that behavior as well as guard against future behavior of this type by reinforcing those norms upon ourselves - e.g., we "ought" not allow genocide because it may be us next, or it may kill individuals that cure cancer, or whatever.  

We can make that determination both individually and collectively without God - and in fact do so specifically for the collective good of the species - meaning that the behavior is not inconsistent with aethism.  Were we to ignore that - allow for the choice of "not" which LeonH implies as a valid option in a world were man CAN choose rather than OUGHT to choose - over time our species would eventually fail as the whole structure by which we are able to survive and thrive (remember humans ONLY natural advantage in this world is adapability based on intelligence) would collapse forcing us into direct competition with other species that are stronger, faster, more durable, more able to withstand cold or heat, etc.

you're describing natural selection, not evolution

Natural Selection is an integral (but not the only) component of evolutionary change.

atheism and evolution with Hollywood nihilism.

and those who profess it are actually both on the rise.

But it was essentially a cult of personality and the mixture of christian faith with ex-biblio material is cultish and establishes my point of the decline of christianity.

Communism is based on atheism. Marx and Lenin declare that since there be no God man can do anything

and that anything turns out to be slaughter on a massive scale

Those societies died.

All societies eventually die.

But, let's postulate, what happens if the Nazis hadn't died out?

Let's examine the situation in, for instance, Communist Russia, a society encompassing a larger land area than Nazi Germany at its highest extent, and which lasted for the better part of 75 years. Now, during that 75 years, you had untold human suffering and misery, perpetuated by the hand of the state, upon the decision of the society - at the very least, the decision of the society circa 1918.

Now, if you, FDR, and I are sitting around a campfire in the 1940s and 50s, and I say, "You know, that Stalin is a real monster, killing all his people like that, we ought to do what we can to put a stop to it," and YOU respond, "No, that's the decision their society has made, who are we to judge that it's wrong?" in a world without God, you and FDR are correct.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

"Except that atheism implies evolution"

No, it does not. Perhaps your particular interpertation has certain implications for you but in the real scientific world your assertion is, with all due respect, nonsense.

Again, with all due respect, saying "atheism implies evolution" betrays a severe ignorance of science.

In your original post you framed the issue so as to take science out of the debate but by now you've probably gathered that this is impossible.

This is a discussion of science. You either subscribe to the validity of the whats called the scientific process or you don't. You can't pick and choose your sciences to suit your belief system.

The source of ethics as coming from "who is holding the gun" is, I think, a Hobbesian point of view. It does not have many proponents. I think you are well aware of this.

The absence of God is why we have a social contracts. They balance and average out our animalistic interests -- we do still have interests and desires, even if they don't mean anything objectively -- so that we all get to pursue our interests to a certain degree.

So Stalin and Mother Teresa get the same void after death. What does that have to do with anything? It's not reality's fault we want meaning. It's not reality's fault Santa doesn't exist. It's not reality's fault that rabbit's feet aren't lucky. We can't always get what we want and for that reality is held blameless because it's our desires that are the abnormality, the reality just is.

We come up with moral meaning because it's the best possible way for the highest number of people to surive and most of us seem genetically predisposed toward buying into a moral scale of some sort and feeling empathy.

"Suffering" doesn't matter to reality, doesn't matter to evolution, but it matters to me. I don't know why and it doesn't matter why. The idea of suffering's a fantasy and an illusion. I don't care and neither do billions of people and that's why we're all still alive.

Who mentioned marx?

You can define nazi christianity as a pagan cult, I'd agree, but its not ATHIESTIC which is the word you used.

Living a good life does not guarantee "victory". Read Job.

If there is no God.

If there is no higher authority to which man answers, then whoever possesses the force to impose his/her will is automatically correct.

Talk to a resident of China during the "Cultural Revolution" if you don't think I'm right.

I might fly out to LA and beat them over the head with a Bible!! Help that nihilism along a bit..but what with that turn the other cheek thing, Ill stay in Dixie and ride out hurricanes

Did evolution help develop the concept of the vaccine? er, no.

Actually...yes.

Pharmaceuticals?

You're kidding, right? Evolutionary theory and the results of that theory have direct and practical application in all aspects of pharmaceuticals, medicine, blood transfusion, testing of embryos, understanding of diseases, and much much more....not to mention the development and preservation of old and new species of foods, insecticides and pesticides and herbicides necessary for modern agriculture, and many many more examples.

"Except that atheism implies evolution"

No, it does not. Perhaps your particular interpertation has certain implications for you but in the real scientific world your assertion is, with all due respect, nonsense.

Then please explain to me, granted atheism, another metaphysical explanation for the existence of man?

< cricket chirping>

< /cricket chirping>

Thought so.

This is a discussion of science. You either subscribe to the validity of the whats called the scientific process or you don't. You can't pick and choose your sciences to suit your belief system.

I don't take scientific advice from those who have such apparent difficulty reading simple sentences. Especially when they're bold printed.

We can never really know what western civ would be like had Constantine converted to, say, Zoroastrianism instead of Christianity in the Fourth Century, which, of course, was the event that led to the consolidation of Christianity under the Church of Rome and accelerated its growth and influence throughout the continent, culminating in, well, what we have today.

I don't think, though, that Christianity is somehow the only belief system that could have yielded the Magna Carta, John Locke, and a constitutional republic like the one we have.

It's entirely plausible that the same things could have transpired under a Zoroastrian civilization.

Like I said, I'm a Christian.  I don't doubt that it was the will of God that all of this transpired, and that America is fulfilling her divinely-ordained destiny.  

But I still think that, as Jefferson showed (he was a "Deist" after all), one doesn't have to be rooted in traditional Christian theology in order to come up with the political and societal mechanisms that have been adopted by the West.  You seem to be arguing that without the former, it is impossible to have the latter.  I just don't think that's the case.

I did not say that you were engaged in name-calling, I said that ID/Evolution debates typically degenerate into name calling, and I'd like to avoid that here.

Is discussion of the political effect of creationism completely dis-allowed? You only wanna discuss the effects of atheistic evolution (whatever that is)?

If you'd like to discuss the philosophical implications of creationism, feel free.

So long as it doesn't involve, "The philosophical implications of creationism are that science will be utterly squashed" because you're again reverting to a passive-agressive way of saying that ID isn't scientific.

The bottom line is, we're dealing with philosophy, not science, in this thread.

"And that is not debated - everyone from Creationists to ID'ers to Evolutionists believe in natural selection - which means that the less fit get subtracted from the equation.  Which is devolution, not evolution." -dcarraher

No, that's evolution because the more fit animals reproduce whereas the less fit ones are dead. That's the backbone of evolution, that's why species evolve, because a portion of their population doesn't breed as well as another due to a certain trait or a combination of traits.

By the way there's no such thing as devolution in biology. This was my first hint you probably didn't know what you were talking about. Even "regression" is evolution. Things getting stupider, weaker, smaller, etc. still represent "evolution," which has no goals or endpoints except as determined in the short short term by which members of a species are more apt to survive.

that if you believe in creationism or ID then you must (if you bother to think about it) must also reject Anything that says that the earth was not created in 7 days, invalidating among other things, Quantum mechanics, relativity, nuclear physics, electromagnatism, as well as a ton of other things that are all interconnected in this thing we call science.  Pretty much the only thing that survives your list is the Internal combustion engine, and that is assuming that you believe that the oil was put there as is on the 2nd day.

Then please explain to me, granted atheism, another metaphysical explanation for the existence of man?

Evolution does not provide a "metaphysical explanation" for man. Glad we cleared that up. I'm sure I'll never hear that claim again.

Christian sybols were used essentially to augment worship of Hitler and os really take on a pagan aspect that approaches atheism. The "religion" if you can cal it that in Gernmany bore no

resemblance to churches and synagogues in the us and so

It is more atheistic than theistic

as compared to buddhism, islan,  and asian religions

It was about Der Fuher

not jesus

So the premise that an evil society will inevitably perish, or rather that they will necessarily perish quicker than a good one, is false.

Besides which, a useless comfort for those living in the evil society.

numerous times, the recognition of the need for treating other humans, including the weak and the disabled, with special respect and cooperating with them in communities is not necessary predicated on belief in God.

Invoking Darwin's words with respect to "the weak and disabled" or invoking the social Darwinist mangling of Darwin's theories does not make your case for you. Frankly, Darwin provided a starting point, and evolutionary theory and practice has gone far beyond his initial, naive, deterministic models.

Example: The survival and fluorishing of Stephen Hawking despite his crippling disability, and his subsequent brilliant contributions to cosmology, sparking of debates about string theory, dimensionality, and space time...all of which are starting to show promise for developing practical applications in Aerospace and more.

Stephen Hawking's work has added to the survival potential of the Human Species, and his survival depended upon the cooperative efforts and prior medical/technical advancements of that Human Species.

There is no need to invoke God to understand why cooperation, respect, community shared effort for common survival and advancement are beneficial.

And, as has been pointed out, socieities and cultures that act against that imperative die out, regardless of whether they are Religious or Atheistic.

survive?  Is it god, or is it that the morals of society are linked to survival of that society.  

Cannibalism, although often linked to a belief in supernatural law, never really made it in any successful society.  We think cannabalism is bad.  God or survival?

Our society thinks polygamy is bad.  Many societies survived successfully with polygamy.  God or survival?

do you claim that FDR et al are incapable of making moral choices? You seem to imply that the very existence of Stalin introduces some moral ambiguity.

Evolution does not provide a "metaphysical explanation" for man.

You are aware, of course, that two of the primary defintions of the word "metaphysics" are thus:

1. The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline
   
2. A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.

I say that Evolution falls squarely under both in examining the nature of man.

"Then please explain to me, granted atheism, another metaphysical explanation for the existence of man?"

The problem is not with the answer but with the question itself.

I could answer your question like this:

"Man was created when the dandruff of Zues melted  in the tears of Athena".

See? Thats as valid answer as "Man was created by God" and we can proceed to discuss the metaphysical meaning of it all.

With all due respect Leon, your whole premise is flawed.

I'm not claiming that they're incapable of making moral choices, I'm claiming that there is no inherent validity or invalidity to their moral choices.

There is only "I prefer" or "I don't prefer"

There is no "right" or "wrong".

http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/atheism/webster.htm

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

An overwhelming majority of the population of Nazi Germany believed in a religion.  It wasn't yours, but it was a religion.  That makes them thiests, not athiests.  You can continue to argue this very obvious point if you like, but you are wrong, and I'm done with it.

yertl

have you ever read the opening letter to my children in "Witness" by Whittaker Chamber?

It is a quite powerful essay by a former devout communist who rejects the marxist view of history as a class struggle and traces communism's root appeal and by analogy all totalitarian system's appeal back to the tempting of Adam and eve in the garden that"ye shall be gods" if they eat of the tree of god and evil.

that communism is man without god

So that faith is the choice that decides the fate oif the world.

To reject God and to be one's own god in discerning good and evil proves disasterous for mankind, due to his nature: a fallen creature made in God's image that God desired fellowship with so much that he chose to lower himsel and become man so that we might REALLY EVOLVE!!! beyond this world

When I ask:

"Then please explain to me, granted atheism, another metaphysical explanation for the existence of man?"

And someone answers:

"Man was created when the dandruff of Zues (a god, LH) melted  in the tears of Athena (a god, LH)".

I perceive immediately that I'm dealing with someone who doesn't even know what aTHEISM means, and that I'm wasting my time.

Given that, I don't even know why I wonder that you're unable to grasp the question itself: if there is no God, whence came man, if not evolution? Is there some alternate theory of origins that I've never heard of?

Science doesn't do well when forced to dance to a politician's (or an ideologue's) tune.

Creationism and ID are both faith-based. Their proponents believe in a particular God, and believe certain things specified in a religious text.

Science that calls into question those religious (or, in the case of the USSR, ideologic) beliefs will always wind up being persecuted.

See Gallileo. See Darwin.

Science that does NOT question religious beliefs gets a pass. Some aspects of astro-physics get a pass. Some aspects of astronomy get a pass. Most aspects of aerospace science get a pass.

Imagine a Physics Dept. One associate prof. has a DOD grant to study and develop more efficient ballistics for a weapons system. His research offends nobody - he's happily working away.

His neighbor down the hall is an assoc. prof with a DOD grant studying conservation of energy, which leads him to Big Bang theory thinking. He spends his research money peering at stars millions of light years away and he publishes papers which claim the universe is 10 billion years old.

The 2nd guy pisses the dogmatists off. They write their Congress-critter, etc., and demand an end to public finance of such blasphemous research.

Luckily, that sort of thing isn't happening, yet. But, it might.

"unanswerable to scientific observation"

You seem to have answered your own question, and then promptly drew the opposite conclusion.

As I said before, in my post quoting the Pope, evolution provides insight into how the "mind [] emerg[es] from the forces of living matter", but does not give insight on "communion, solidarity and self-giving with his peers".

But it's currently 12:42am, local time, and I have work tomorrow. Therefore, until at least 6:00pm CST tomorrow, you will have to continue largely without me.

Never fear, however! I am certain that a professional (Thomas) will be here to pick up my slack tomorrow.

Godwin's Law is an observation, just like the Law of Gravity or Moore's law.

Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies: As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the
probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Mike Godwin, August 18, 1991

Thanks

your postulate is a hypothetical...both Nazi Germany and the USSR did die out.

As to why, in the absence of a moral imperative, an atheist might decide to oppose those societies directly and by force, I will give my personal example:

I am a hard atheist. I do not believe in God, and I think that when we die, we rot and our constituent atoms get redistributed into the soil, air, and water, ultimately to be recycled into minerals, other animals, plants, or what-have-you. Furthermore I strenuously oppose the societies that represent the inheritors of the anti-community, anti-survival brand of culture - North Korea and the PRC. Why? Because those societies reduce the survival potential of the species.

who brought up marx?

Its very nice that you would like to point out that marxist communism premises athiesm.  That would be historically correct, irregardless of whatever essays you choose to cite.  It is for that VERY REASON that I choose to chide the original poster for including NAZI GERMANY as an athiest state, but did not mention marx or stalin at all.  One might imagine, having brought this up twice now, that you simply don't want to say, hey, i was wrong about germany.

that knives trump mere grey matter.

I'm also dealing with somone who doesn't know what athiesm means.  It would seem that that particular trait runs on both sides of the fence.

I'll accept your superior technical definitional analysis of the word theism and atheism.

My point is that the theism practiced in germany resembles paganism and, so I guess my real dichotomy is that a true atheistic rejection of god and the metamorphosis of a society that was once a bastion of orthodox belief into such a gross bastardization of same is pagan and deserves no qua;litative incllusion with mono theistic christianand jewish worship.

If it makes you feel better to have them included in my theistic camp, then I'll leave you to the mao-stalin slaughter as your legacy.

happy?

You're telling me that nobody in Rome (or Constantinople, for that matter) today keeps track of various maryrs in pre-Christian Rome, including the Popes among them?  I'm pretty sure they are remembered, and those lists are in Rome, are they not?

And fine, being right is intrinsically worthless.   Nobody said otherwise.  But still, I have shown that it is possible in a Godless universe to distinguish bad behavior such as Hitler's, from the decent behavior that most people have.

Being right is intrinsically worthless here on Earth in the Christian worldview, too.  The only payoff to a good Christian in Communist China today comes in the afterlife.  It does him no good to be sure he's right when the regime thugs come after him.

Specifically I'm refering to the idea that if one can draw a comparison, however tenuously, to Hitler's regime, that you have therefore proved that idea false.

Maybe I'm just refering to some logical fallacy that happens to be highly correlated to the mentioning of Hitler.

Look at Bhutan which is drafting a new constitution.. one that looks quite similar to our own, but is very different at the same time becuase Bhutan has Tantric Bhuddism as the national religion, and therefore have determined to create societal norms, and secular law, based on those beliefs, e.g., their "bill of rights" also has "responsiblities", they require pacifism, etc.

Now Bhutan is a very isolated community... meaning that I doubt that they as a community have much collective knowledge of say the Federalist papers by which to guide their choice of secular structure, to add to that, given their devotion to Bhuddism I find it hard to believe that they decided "aw what the hell, the Jews and Christains did this right, to hell with our beliefs lets just copy theirs" - that would be somewhat inconsistent...

Despite this they end up with a very similar form of governance, and set of secular norms, to our own....

that evolution, geologic time, and the theories surrounding the formation of the solar system are intrinsic to our ability to find oil, metal, gas, minerals, and energy resources like geothermal fields.

I have no hatred for the bible or for religious people - I respect their faith and devotion...but I challenge them to find oil with the bible and the bible alone, without reference to any of the science - specifically evolutionary science and its offshoots and corollaries, upon which the post-WWII (post-tectonic theory) boom in oil discovery was based.

Evolution and Atheism are not synonyms as you well know.  You are merely trying to cut off avenues of escape for those who lie (sp?) somewhere between you and DS.

Second, I have been inundated, since I was a child, with people telling me "where we come from".  And three times out of four the people telling me this have different, and mutually exclusive explanations for human origins.  Who am I to believe?

My parents?, You?, My sister?, The guy on the street corner?

Frankly, I like you all! and I cannot decide why I should take one's word over the others.

So I learned this thing, starting in high school, it's called science.  You look at the world, gather evidence, then you think about what you've seen.  And you come up with a hypothesis to explain what you see.  And the thing is, !and this is the important part!, when you come up with your hypothesis it has to be testable.  That means you have to:

a) be able to do experiments/studies etc. that could show the hypothesis to be true.

b) be able to do experiments/studies etc. that could show the hypothesis to be false.

But I see, and I delete several paragraphs, that we are not arguing about the science here and we are granting that atheistic evolution is true.

What are the implications?

Well, first, I am up too late.  

I still have to go to work in the morning.  

And my wife is now more likely than ever to forbid me to ever "boggle" again.

First, there is not just matter but energy.  (Not to mention anti-matter etc. see Kowalski for details.) There could be more "stuff" out there physicists just can't show it yet.

1.  This is silly.
   
2.  This is stupid.
   
3.  This is a** e .

As for Schweitzer's work, I suspect you have taken it out of context rather dramatically.  You have provided no link so I will consider it when you do.

(Do you really mean to suggest that this:

Instead of the principle of maximizing human happiness, I prefer the principle of minimizing the suffering of the world.

is somehow inimical to Christianity?  Or even to compassionate thought of any kind??!?)

So Darwin was a horse's a**, and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.  Does that mean that either of them wasn't brilliant?

Further, if atheistic evolution is true, then there will be no accounting after this life is over for how one's life has been lived. In other words, Stalin, Hugh Hefner, and Mother Theresa all receive the same recompense - absolutely nothing. What is the value of choosing one path over the other, except to satisfy one's own personal desire?

Sucks doesn't it?  Hey!  Maybe we should come up with some rules, and hire some big guys who can enforce them just in case anyone get out of line?

"These are a few of the starting points when discussing where throwing God out of the equation...."

We don't have to throw God out of the equation (which I hope is your point) but even if we did, can't you and I Leon agree to rules by which we will behave and submit to be governed?  Can't we think about things and look at the world and say "Hey! it would be better if I didn't steal your food and you didn't hit me in the head with a brick!"?  

Chimpanzees even do this kind of thing and I'm quite certain they haven't read The Bible or much else.

is irregardless a word?

Lokk, yertl, all who say Lord, Lord, will not see the kingdom. What I'm telling you is that what is significant in this theism vs atheism dichotomy is a subjection to all men as answerable to God.

the atheist rejects this.

the nazi's made a man equal to God.

So therefore, while nazism gives lip service to the existence of a god, what they call god is stripped of the power of God that distinguishes theistic absolutes above man.

the magic is not in the word

its in the belief and the authority

in theism, god is the authority

in nazism. hitler is

Someone ban this "troll".  Apparently the mirror image of DS has arrived.

It's clear from the author's replies in this thread this whole point of this post was to bring up the Hitler card, which violates the posting rules of the site.  It's clearly disruptive, uncivil, and pushes a fundamentally un-American ideology (it denies the ability of humans to create just institutions, which denies the US Constitution, and implies a theocracy).

It's also idiotic.  When you go around doing this, it's as though you're trying to break the Republican coalition.

Of course, if the powers of this site decide that this is okay, then maybe I'll make my next diary about how no Christian can distinguish himself from abortion clinic bombers.

Darksyde's A**.

Once, billions (or a few hundred) of years ago, the first amorphous mass belched forth from a rising promontory a life form so profound, it would change the history of the universe itself.

Was it the formation of single celled structures combining to make multiple celled, complex spawning life forms? No!!!

Was it the vast selection process which nature has made through the millenia that it came to be? No!!!

Could it be a ground dwelling water beast with no arms or legs that just happens to like the land? I think NOT!!!

It was.., "THE BEER HOP" (large gaspe).

Billions of years of evolution has transpired. Billions upon billions upon billion of life forms were created. Entire eco system of forrest, oceans, mountains, streams and even in the permafrost were fordge from the explosion of life that was needed to create, "THE BEER HOP".

Oh, I know this really seems like a strange coincidence, all this happening at once. But it's very clear by the evidence, this was all made for beer to be made and for us to be made to drink it!!!

Oh fine, alot of people have their theories, blah, blah, blah.., heard it, been there, done that. I'm telling you it's BEER!!! If you don't watch it, someone just might come along and decide that we should no longer have our rights to drink beer, hmmm? What then? We just let them take the beer from us? I say NO!!! NEVER!!! "We shall fight in the taverns. We shall fight in the 7-11's. We shall fight in the brewery's. We shall take the fight to the steps of the Capital itself and do what ever is neccessary by any means neccessary, but we shall not give up.., we shall never give in.., we shall NEVER SURRENDER, the beer.

Yes indeed, this could not have all happened by itself, this was by design I tell you.

http://www.greatsociety.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&
id=76&Itemid=2

I choose not to convert at this time.

can feed the world and defeat the nazis and the evil empire.

Jefferson declared that judeo-christian principles were indispensible for self government such as ours to work. He reccommened the Bible for all school children.

I contend that we can't imagine what might have been. We have 5000 years of evidence.

And I contend that it is the combination these principles and a moral people subject to God and a system of government that seeks to maximize the freedom in the garden that has produced this nation, unmatched in any respect of human feedom, prosperity and less abuse of power given whta we could do.

Yes, we don't have a monolpoly on all truth and we are not perfect. But ot is no accident that a nation founded by people very devout chriustians for the main purpose of freely worshiping our God have wrought such a nation as us.

It should not surprise beleivers that a closer approximation of effort in god's will produces fruit.

One of the reasons jews have been hated in history is that they had the law and tried to follow it and therefore prospered with better health and great acheivement casuing jealousy.

Again you fail to address to core issue which is your flawed premise. Not satisfied with my first response you ask the same question again but worded in a new way. Regardless, the fatal flaw is still there.

Let me transpose your new question to better illustrate the flaw:

You ask: "if there is no God, whence came man, if not evolution?"

which can be transposed to:

"if there are no Martians, whence came man, if not evolution?"

Do you see the flaw now? Atheism is taken out of the equation but the question is still flawed.

Now you can certainly ask: "Whence came man, if not evolution?". A valid question. The answer to that would be simple: Biological evolution is currently the best and only explanation for the origin of man.

You brought to the forefront something that needed to be brought up by someone who wants to discuss the issue rather than just sow dissension.

My take: I'm a Christian, a Mormon, and a skeptic, in no particular order.

When it comes to ethical decisions, I sometimes ask myself what the right answer is from the point of view of an absolutist (one who has a clear understanding of ethics from the vantage-point of omniscience) (my own esoteric definition of "absolutist") and from the point of view of an agnostic (a pragmatic agnostic).  Sometimes I get to the same result from both points of view (murder and larceny tend to be wrong in both paradigms).  But sometimes I get to dramatically different results. (for example: do you always tell the whole truth or do you sometimes "color" it in order to "make the sale" or protect yourself or protect someone else?)

So your diary was on a topic that I think about a lot.  And when you brought up Dr. Schweitzer, that made me think about one of the concerns that I have about environmentalists.  I'm ok with an environmentalist insisting that sewage dumps aren't upstream from drinking water intakes (as they were at one time in Leningrad and some other parts of the world).  What I'm not ok with is environmentalism that tends to go along the lines of "stop building everything."  This type of environmentalism quickly devolves into mantras and dogma.  And for a group of people who tend to get annoyed by the dogma of religionists, the environmentalists put up with a lot of dogma on their side.

For example: "paper is good, plastic is bad" "nuclear energy is bad, wind/solar power is good"

"militaries are always bad, peace is always the right choice"

"the earth is getting warmer every year.  Soon, this whole planet will be like Mars because of those darn SUV drivers."

These dogmas are often just flat-out wrong.

It is infuriating that a group of people that has zero tolerance for Christians asking them to accept their teachings on faith turns around and asks everyone to swallow their dogmas on nothing more than, well, faith.

Keep fighting the good fight, Leon.  Your message resonates with me.

I seem to recall reading somewhere about a research study on the origins of agriculture. It was long thought that the invention of bread might have been the driving factor in bringing about organized agriculture, and, by extension, civilization. However, the study suggested that the natural grasses in Anatolia or wherever would have provided enough grain to support a nomadic population making bread...that the real impetus for settled cultivation was beer.

(And hops are "new fangle", as Malory would no doubt have it; "Turkeys, heresy, hops in beer/Came into England, all in a year.")

Anyway, let the brickbats resume.

= science, you are mistaken.  

evolution describes a process and does not address the state evolved from, hence the non sequitur

the implications of atheism would be dire, reducing the meaning of human life to the equivalent of that of an insect

and where man rejects god, people are slaughterd on thta scale

the implications are scattered throughout history, especially in stalin and mao

and, i would contend, given the subordination of god to hitler in the nazi cult, also in the holocaust

was much more complex than that

on that scale where Man Accepts God.

Inquistions, Crusades, Jihads, American Indians, Aztecs, Mayans, Inca, African Slavery, American Slavery, British India, Tasmanians, Belgian Congo Tribes, and so much more.

Over the course of history, the numbers killed in the name of God are comparable to the numbers killed in the name of any ideology, communist, nazi, or otherwise.

what is your point?  That the Bhutan's choice of a parlimentary style of government is irrelevant because they are small isoloated himilayan country?  

This goes directly to the heart of the point that Dave was making, that given the chance, non-Judeo Christian societies may also decide that a liberal democracy is the most rational way to organize.  Bhutan is a perfect example of that point becuase it is a.) not Judeo-Christian and highly unlikely to make choices based on Judeo-Christian theology, b.) choosing a liberal democracy as a form of self governence...

Does it mean that the U.S. founders didn't use Judeo-Christian principals to guide their decisios in choosing liberal democracy? No... But it also means that its just possible, that the choice of liberal democracy is NOT predicated on Judeo-Christain beliefs.. which in the context of this discussion opens the door for the possiblity that an atheist community may also choose a liberal democracy as form of self-governance...

What's the good fight?  To brand all non-Christians as Nazis, and expel them from the Republican party?

You took apart that riddle in seconds, unbelievable.

From your noted connection;

From the Gilgamesh Epic, written in the 3rd millennium B.C., we learn that not only bread but also beer was very important. This epic is recognized as one of the first great works of world literature. Ancient oral sagas from the beginning of human history were recorded in writing for the first time. The Gilgamesh Epic describes the evolution from primitive man to "cultured man".

________________

"Enkidu, a shaggy, unkempt, almost bestial primitive man, who ate grass and could milk wild animals, wanted to test his strength against Gilgamesh, the demigod-like sovereign. Taking no chances, Gilgamesh sent a (prostitute) to Enkidu to learn of his strengths and weaknesses. Enkidu enjoyed a week with her, during which she taught him of civilization.  Enkidu knew not what bread was nor how one ate it. He had also not learned to drink beer. The (prostitute) opened her mouth and spoke to Enkidu: 'Eat the bread now, O Enkidu, as it belongs to life. Drink also beer, as it is the custom of the land.' Enkidu drank seven cups of beer and his heart soared. In this condition he washed himself and became a human being. "

__________________

Well done ConservativeMutant, well done. Most never, if ever catch those.

Offered as an anecdote.

jefferson was a diest, or at least so close to one that its accurate enough a title.  Judging from his earlier posts, I think gamecock would not agree with jefferson's theistic beliefs.

For edification:

http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/jefferson_deist.htm

which includes references for longer quotes if neccesary.

-yertle

athens?

Leon, with the folks saying that you're proceeding from a faulty premise. Evolution is not premised on atheism and though it represents challenges to various creation myths, it does not necessarily imply the non-existence of the divine.

(I hurry note that I do not intend disrespect to anyone's beliefs when I refer to scripture as a "creation myth". I use the word myth in the sense of its definition #1, not #3 or #4.)

I also don't know that evolution truly implies what you suggest it implies. One can accept evolution, and even the idea that human beings are merely arbitrary arrangements of matter, while at the same time noting that this particular arrangement has qualities that set it apart from other, different arrangements and make it worthy of unique consideration. In other words, acceptance of evolution doesn't compel me, on pain of condemnation for hypocrisy, to subscribe to the notion that human = ostrich = rhododendron = chunk of carbon. We can draw some distinctions even if we concede that it's all, at some elemental level, the same matter; we need not embrace Pauline, or Marx, or Hitler.

democratic traditions - the moot house and etc?

as enunciated in the Bible were the key to jefferson and the founder's basis for their vision of free men governing themselves, the key being that man be held to higher authority and specifically that the Bible was essential. Even "doubting" Thomas who, yes yertl, would have insisted on touching the spear wounds, was a staunch advocate for the Bible

and yesm he is complicated and even if I could post till eternity, I'm sure some nitpicker will insist that I failed to cover the significance of the one'breasted woman he encountered in paris (that;s a joke, don't look it up).

But, to cite jefferson's deism, and to ignore his support for the distribution of Bibles to scholl children is an obtuse attempt to deny history.

Thanks for cite yertl. Ive read quite enough on tj to enlighten those receptive to same, thank you.

Keep looking (are you a woman? I started to say , doll, as in barbra streisand), but that atheististic paradise died at the berlin wall and was not established in the fruited plain.

as I am mostly just watching this and adding some poorly constructed humor, I do have one question.

Is the term "atheistic evolution" not to be confused with other types of evolution and terms to discribe them? I mean are you making a distinction or and overall view of all of evolution and all it's theories?

I'm not yet confident to add to this posting unless I am sure I have that one clear.

again you dont comprehend the word athiesm.

Diests aren't athiests.  A diest would 'distribute bibles to school children.'  He would also disagree with much of what you have written, specifically denial of science and the physical world.  They believed, as many still do, that while god may have started the whole shebang, once started, no tampering was neccesary.  The evolution (haha) of hte universe then proceeded through natural, not supernatural, laws such as evolution.  I daresay he would lump you in with the connecticut 'protestant popedom' described below:

"I had believed that [Connecticut was] the last retreat of monkish darkness, bigotry, and abhorrence of those advances of the mind which had carried the other States a century ahead of them. ... I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character. If by religion we are to understand [i.e., to mean] sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, 'that this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.' But if the moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical constitution, as necessary for a social being, if the sublime doctrines of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth, in which all agree, constitute true religion, then, without it, this would be, as you again say, 'something not fit to be named even, indeed, a hell.'"

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.??

Or

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.??

Plus, they do have our example. See japan and s. korea and others.

Any choice now is more informed, but the choosing is  not the main point.

The main point is adoptoion of the principles in the Bible as to the form of government, its basis as defender of inalienable rights it can' take away and the state of freedom to ursue happiness and the fruits of one's labor that combine to have produced the result we live in.

Our particular brand is superior to Europe precisely due to our distinguished faith in God.

And the result seems very providential from plymouth rock to this suoerpower in such a short time that defeated tyraanny and in that we out perform other civilizations that are thousands of years old.

Buhtan has a lot to do...

You don't have to believe in atheism.  But it is the way things are nonetheless.  Debates about "what if it were true" seem pretty moot to a guy like me.  It is true and has been for millions of years.  Sorta pointless worrying about it really.  If atheistic evolution is true, nothing changes.  

I personally find it somewhat comforting that all this so-called morality that we lord over the rest of the animal kingdom and each other is indeed man made.  Theists don't give us much credit.  I do.  

In "atheistic evolution" we humans are "merely" an animal species.  And like all animal species currently in existence we are the current end point of a long line of forebearers.  (the taxonomic tree is a fabulous resource for tracking our ancestry back)  Any animal species that failed to favor their own kind over their fellow animals didn't make it this far.  That is why very few animals will kill their own for anything less than necessity.

I hope this post isn't found to be insulting.  I certainly didn't mean to insult.

particular passages for a good reason, and it is not to get involved in duelling quotes or flamewars...it is to point out that Jefferson clearly believed that the Bible and the Christian faith and history contained much that was admirable, good, and useful for the construction of a societal/governmental framework....he equally believed that the bible, the Christian faith and Christian history contained much that was bloody, stupid, and despicable and should be avoided at all costs in the construction of that societal/governmental framework.

My point is that Jefferson was pretty clearly judging the bible and its contents, and using a moral compass and practical moral calculus to evaluate the words and ideas in the bible.

What was he using to make those judgements and evaluations?

His other quotes suggest...Reason as defined by the enlightenment deists and skeptics.

was using "atheistic" to qualify evolution rather than to describe it. I don't think that's immediately clear to everyone who would read it, though, and I think he could have done himself a favor by explicitly making the distinction in the post. (For that matter, since this seems to have largely turned into a discussion of whether or not a system of morality can be justified as arising ex nihilo in atheism, it's not clear that dragging evolution into the picture helped any, either.)

because as we all know,

America invented democracy (or more accurately, the representative republic).

I certainly hope you are joking on that score...

whether or not a system of morality can be justified as arising ex nihilo in atheism

I would argue that it can.

and writes much about the importance of the book for the proper raising of children and moral living.

This is not a hypothetical deist we're discussing.

Kind of like you aren't "woman." hear me roar? you are the yertle version of woman, and if I may compliment you, your high intelligence makes you rather on the order of a deist heretic as per your sex. THAT'S A JOKE. PC ALERT.  sorry, since you arn;'et here to slap me

Jefferson expressed deistic doubt and advocated the PRINCIPLES of the Bible in the Dclaration and many aspects of law and right living.

so get off the word fixatyion and smell the roses. This virginian deist distributed Bibles.

deal with it

diversity? does that word help and comfort you

if not, repent!!

kidding

because he summarily decided that was what his post was about.  Fine, but I would still like him to address the fact that saying "athiest evolution" vs. "thiest evolution" is meaningless.

I think he made his position perfectly clear.

criteria did Jefferson apply in extracting the principles of the bible for use in the declaration?

How did he evaluate the bible and choose from its multitude of often contradictory statements?

my tongue was planted in my cheek for that one.  

when 10% of mexico swims to buhtan past hannity's camera, call me

athens lost to sparta right?

the climate change part is his fault for not having made hot fusion work. In return, he can blame me for not curing cancer. (Yes, I jest. Someone has to do it in this thread.)

he actually published a version of the new testatment with pages cut out he didn't like!

YOU!!! You were that 'conservative scientist poster' I was refering to that mentioned that you thought GO P and scientists were not incompatable, if I now remember correctly.  :)

BTW, I think my father voted for kerry 2004, though he wont admit it.  Mom would kill him.  

even if he doesn't correct himself

we know

good night barbra

i'm in court in the morning defending some poorly evolved slob for acting like an ape

i intend to walk upright  and beg the jury to apply the new testament, not the old

except for those disturbing rferences to HELL that the libs never seem to mention when citing Jesus as the reason they be tolerated

god bless

even if he doesn't correct himself

we know

good night barbra

i'm in court in the morning defending some poorly evolved slob for acting like an ape

i intend to walk upright  and beg the jury to apply the new testament, not the old

except for those disturbing rferences to HELL that the libs never seem to mention when citing Jesus as the reason they be tolerated

god bless

And what principles did he apply in his editing work?

What moral compass did he yse to evaluate and judge the words in the bible?

Even if there were no G*d, would that really matter in how you treat your fellow man, or how you yourself behave?

I know it would not in my case.  Because even though I do have faith, maybe not the type that is en vogue with some or the right flavor for them, I also aknowledge that I could be wrong and that there is no G*d.

Still not going to change the way I act, because at the very worst and there is no divine creator, the actions are still the right thing to do.

But since there is no known way to proove or disprove the existence OF G*d I don't think you are going to have a major problem.  

Relax a little.

Upthread, Leon repeatedly makes the following argument: [paraphrased] "If there's no God, then people have to make up their own ethical rules. This leads to people's rules coming into conflict. At that point ethical correctness is determined by who has the gun."

I have two points in reply to this. Firstly, this is a horrible argument to make in favor of theism. It says "If there weren't a God, that would be really awful. Therefore there is one." Unfortunately, just because something is awful, doesn't mean it isn't true.

The second is that theists are no better off than atheists when it comes to this regard. You can claim that humans are special, and that this implies a particular code of ethics, but what happens when you run into other people who ascribe to a different code? You may both believe in God, you may both believe that certain things are universally right, and other universally wrong, but when it comes to whose God takes precedence, it typically comes down to whose God armed Her followers the best.

Or kinship.

Our country was established, founded and its laws informed by men and women, the overwhelming majority of whom either accepted the whole Bible as the literal word of God with the doubters as to the theology of same, nevertheless  were shaped by and dedicated to the principles taught there.

Jefferson was one of those men. Most of the men exercising reason and pleding their lives and fortunes (the 56!!) were Born again christians.

The Bible Jefferson had distributed with government funds was not defaced.

had Tommie exercised a bit more reason and not discarded certain pages that his peers deeded worthy of inclusion he might have refrained from adultery and freed his slaves.

55 reasoned signers and founders kept all the pages

1 didn't

But the bottom line is that the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord.

go see who establisged the colleges in this country

sin

man is also capable of not assigning value to his fellow human beings (see Nazi Germany).

The trouble with all of the horror stories is that they are better explained by the existence of sociopaths than they are by the absence of belief in a higher being. As soon as you start dragging creatures like Hitler, Stalin, etc. into the argument, you have also started to collect sociopaths.

It is an unfortunate characteristic of communism in particular that it creates the perfect environment for a sociopath to acquire power, and then provides the winning sociopath with absolute power. This has repeatedly led to mass murder on a truly horrific scale. But my sense is that the sociopathy comes first; the atheism is along for the ride.

I see no empirical evidence that religion is proof against sociopathy. Osama bin Laden comes to mind as one who turns his religion into just another reason for him to treat other humans as objects. If you would prefer one with a more Western religion we can use the Rev. Jim Jones of Kool-Aid fame. Such individuals come from the factory incapable of seeing other humans as "special," but that is not because of a lack of belief. There is just something odd about them.

i.e. evolution is a proof against the existence of God

That is how I took the term as well, i.e. Atheistic Evolution is a form of propaganda used by missionaries of athiesm when they are out proselytizing. The intent is to trick Stupid People® into believing that "science" has disproved the existence of God. To be one of the really cool, smart people, you have to jettison faith. Same Jehovah's Witness, different Watchtower.

That is not how the practitioners of evolutionary biological science look at or use their work.

They are, in my direct experience, not even really interested in dealing with the issue of whether there is or is not a God, as that is not a scientific question answerable by scientific means.

I, personally, am an atheist - very much so. But I do not, and will not "proselytize" my atheism, your beliefs are your own, and mine are my own. If you leave me alone, then I will leave you alone.

Just because some "Missionary Atheists" are using scientific research to further their aims, why does it follow that the tool they use in this instance (Evolutionary theory) is to blame for their use of it?

Isn't that a lot like blaming the inventor of the semi-automatic handgun for it's use in gang wars?

any honest atheist/scientist will gladly admit, nay proclaim!, that the scientific evidence for evolution has NO BEARING on the existence or non-existence of God.

It DOES have direct bearing on the young earth and intelligent design creation theories as they currently are expounded.

But is there not a huge difference between YEC and ID theoretical arguments and the belief in God?

Is one required to accept YEC or ID in order to believe in God?

I would argue that continued pushing of demonstrably false theories in the face of overwhelming evidence (YEC and ID) is a disservice to Christianity and to God, precisely because they are so easily dispensed with.

If one bases one's religious faith on a foundation as weak as those two theoretical constructs, then one is doing one's religion a disservice.

I can imagine that people who take up your challenge, and come from a theistic viewpoint, will conclude that the underpinnings of society would be ripped out. Atheists, such as myself, will pretty much just shrug, because they accept it as true already, so nothing would change.

Some people are horrified by a lack of absolute oversight. They don't believe humanity can act responsibly without the promise/threat of absolute reward/punishment. It offends them that people they cherish or despise might not get what they've decided is fair. These people will create stories to tell themselves to fulfill their emotional needs.

As my dad used to say, "life isn't fair." He didn't mean it the way I'm using it, but it's no less true. Value and fairness are entirely human tools. Like most other tools, they can be used constructively or destructively. They also very distinctly by culture. Our culture is dominant now, so our ideas of value and justice are dominant. It hasn't always been so and won't always be so.

The desire to be special or unique is a natural and understandable vanity. It satisfies the ego. I don't understand why this value must come from an abstract superbeing, however.

How can you be certain that superbeing's opinions on things are absolutely correct, anyway? Because it says so?

while the Christian outlook of America's founders is not in dispute, it seems to me they provided a foundation for the country which does not rely on citizens sharing those Christian beliefs for its appeal.

While their design might appeal to those who do not share the founders' beliefs, the founders themselves recognized that they were operating in a society where, denominational differences aside, everyone was socialized in approximately the same way. They were thus able to take shortcuts that they could not have taken otherwise. As John Adams put it, "Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

It is observably true that there are some non-Christian religions which teach values similar enough to those of Christianity that people socialized in such religions will play happily here. But to pick an example, Moslems who take to heart the idea that telling white lies to the infidels is a holy thing to do, will be a bear to do business with. They will be worse than the French.

It is true that atheism-as-religion can also turn out appropriately socialized individuals. But that is more likely to occur among the crowd that would frequent a political blog than it might in the general population, where atheism can be less a religion than simply the absence of belief in anything in particular.

... always keep from provoking passionate emotions?  Are passions out of bounds for a debate or a discussion?  Is this site a discussion site or a debate site?  What is the difference?  

If a party to a debate invokes casually without the intent to do so the passions of another party to the debate is it no longer a debate?  What has it become?

What is a debate?  What is a discussion?

I was born to a christian family.  If I was born to a Bhudhist family, I would not have the God I have now.  If I was born to an Atheist family I would not have any God.

I think I've read it has happened a time or two where a human actually was raised by wolves or some other, not being found by other humans until into the teens.   What God did they have?  How did they know him?

I don't see how we can discount some kind of survival of the fittest, by culture, a  religious evolution of sorts, dependent of who our parents are, when it is clearly by biological chance that we are born in to Christian families.  

There are millions, perhaps more than a billion people that have come and gone never hearing of Jesus and given the chance to be saved.  Is that their curse?

What kind of "discussion" occurs only within the confines set by you?

OK, never mind what he wants. You're still going down the path of "evolution is right and you can't stop it so ha ha ha." The issue is not that Leon disapproves of that, it's that we've all read that thread a hundred times. We know all the arguments; we know how it ends; it's boring.

Leon was attempting to do something else, and the sheer number of responses so far indicates that it isn't boring. Any attempt to hijack a big chunk of the page to play 'neener neener' with the Creationists is just a pain. It's like the kid who wants to watch Lion King, in the house no less, for the 54th time.

... When in the history of the world has ethical correctness, or whoevers view of ethical correctness wins the debate, has not been decided by whoever has the "biggest gun"?  In US History: The Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The Spanish American War, Manifest Destiny, The Civil War, WWI, WWII, The Gulf War, The Iraq War...  We were the righteous victor.  

Even Jesus is coming back as a Victorious General.

I have no hatred for the bible or for religious people - I respect their faith and devotion...but I challenge them to find oil with the bible

This is precisely why Leon did not want people to go here. Once it starts, it's only a matter of time before somebody implies — as you did here — that "religious people" reject science and all its works and pomps.

You will tell me that you didn't really mean that, and yes it's a generalization typed in haste, but this is where this stuff always goes, and nobody needs it. So don't go there. Please.

He was not a Born Again.  He believed in God.  If you read everything in the founding documents he wrote you'll understand he loved the God of Natural Laws, Natural Order.  But he was most of his life against Christain Law having anything to do with our government.

"The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels."

-The Rev. Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister and historian (lamented in an 1831 sermon)

Here, take it from Thomas himself:

Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

Jefferson's Autobiography

"[A]n amendment was proposed by inserting `Jesus Christ,' so that [the preamble] should read `A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion'; the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination"

That amounts to a quibble over how the adjective atheistic modifies the noun evolution. We can simply define a term, Atheistic Evolution, to mean "use of the science behind the theory of evolution to proselytize on behalf of atheism." Then we don't have to worry about whether there are two kinds of evolution, we only have to worry about whether there are multiple kinds of atheists.

There is recent empirical evidence that there exist atheists who would use evolution in this way.

I think that is what he is trying to say.  And there is a push by Republicans in Kansas to allow Intelligent Design to a mandatory part of the science corriculum in schools there.

Many Christains, I would say millions and millions and millions of them, have absolutely know problem resolving science, along with all it's technonic plates and speeds of light, with their belief in Jesus.  What does it matter how old the earth is?  Thats all materialist matters.  Jesus, and most of the Bible for that matter, was concerned with the interactions of men on earth, not the earth itself.  

So many of us get sort of upset when we have no problem understanding and accepting science and Christ at the same time, and then someone comes along who can't accept it and often can't refute it very well tries to force the rest of us to conform to their viewpoint when we don't see the point to it.

Science allows for a better explanation to come along and wash away prior thinking.  All you have to do is come up with a new hypothesis, design experiments to test/prove it, get your peers to agree and off you go in a new direction.  

That's not comparable to religion with  attendant hard and fast beliefs set in stone.

I don't think good scientists are trying to tell you anything with regard to religion.  They just require you to show some data to back your hypotheses before you call it science rather than conjecture.

Yes, some of us might have a great place to start with, and a bright star to guide us.  But if part of our belief is that we are certainly fallable, then part of our rules must certainly be screwed up.  How many dozens of major Christain churches are there?  They all follow the teachings of Jesus, but even building to building in the same church you're going to find differences in what is acceptable and what isn't.  We're making it up!  Noone really knows!

As for divine guidance, it's also what works.  Can you tell me any major country in the world that does not have anti-murder laws?  Can you tell me one which allows you to steal, or bear false witness?  

Do we stone adulterers?  Are we sure we shouldn't be?  Who changed the rules?  What rules did Jesus put in place then?  If I die in a desert of thirst with no water for baptism after being saved by my friend do I go to hell anyways?  Is it up to any of us to really decide?

Should the Quakers or Mormons have more say in our government because they show a better ability to run governments?  What would the Catholics have to say about that?

Don't we need to make rules up when the rule we make don't agree with one anothers?

Isn't that what our government is about?

"in fact he is attacking the very pillar of the government of our country"

What is the pillar?  

Someone ban this "troll"

We're waiting for Leon to post his "Bwaaa ha ha" diary on Kos. Then we nail him.

That is not how the practitioners of evolutionary biological science look at or use their work.

A data item which you appear to lack is that an individual who arguably does use evolution to do missionary work on behalf of atheism made a recent pass through the atmosphere here. He did burn up before hitting the ground, but left a sparkling trail, some of it over on Kos.

The existence of this article makes more sense if you know about the other one. Those who came in late will just have to make do.

"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

But this is what we will do anyways.  You live and work alongside billions of other people who work with you to get oil and metal out of the ground, build houses and skyscrapers, plow fields, fish the seas, slaughter animals, police the streets, legally represent their constituents, corperations or clients... we all eat and drink together and we have to do a little work together to get the eating and drinking done.  Then we watch TV, sports, plays, listen to Music on CD's...  Lots of eating and drinking, in more than just the gastronomical sense.  To a conservative this is good, no?

Why is the Godless person so bad for doing this alongside you?  

Yes, but the failure of this explanation is that many animals and some humans (again we return to the Nazis) do not see that special protection for all members of their species is necessary to the survival of the species as a whole

clearly not true.  There is no need for special protection of individuals to ensure the survival of the species.  Why else would fish lay hundreds of eggs so that a few survive (among thousands of examples) in order to keep the species alive?

I didn't notice that he mentioned atheism anymore then this thread is refering to theistic evolution.  In fact I rather saw him as explaining how he sees Christianity and Evolution not at odds.

I just don't think they have ever thought of it as having a sense of self.

So many of us get sort of upset when we have no problem understanding and accepting science and Christ at the same time, and then someone comes along who can't accept it and often can't refute it very well tries to force the rest of us to conform to their viewpoint when we don't see the point to it.

It happens a lot in our society that some sizeable fraction of the populace gets all upset because The Other Guys used a government mechanism to ram their beliefs down everyone's throat. This has happened on abortion, gun control, eminent domain... lots of things. Right now there are people out there agitating to ban the eating of meat. Others say that bears and humans can co-exist peacefully in New Jersey while the birds sing happy songs. It takes all kinds. Personally I usually stay out of this one because I'm too busy trying to halt the spread of country music. But if this is the battle you've picked for yourself, have at it.

... Once you're dead, you're dead.  Still do pretty much.  But they do indeed still believe in God.

Pray tell, which religious beliefs drove these:

American Indians, Aztecs, Mayans, Inca, African Slavery, American Slavery, British India, Tasmanians, Belgian Congo Tribes

And I like the elision of "over the course of history." The cutie atheists of the twentieth century made up a lot of ground in very little time.

...To basically say that Atheists are immoral, or rather amoral?  Evolution has nothing to do with it then?  What is the point of going on about Evolution?  Why not just Hypothesize that Atheists have no moral compass?  

If that is what we are saying here, why confuse all of us, and possibly split the right from the center and such, by injecting sludge, a discussion of evolution, into statements about atheists?

I believe it's a tad more complicated than that. I defer to those with more knowledge, though.

But his point is more or less valid. But as Leon says, this is a bit afield.

Well, one could argue that it was a reaction to a guy who slipped some evolutionary pointy sticks into an article that purported to be about world petroleum supplies. But I can't say for sure.

But the way I'm reading it, I don't see that it necessarily leads to that error. And I add, in honesty, I would have left this a diary for a host of reasons.

With that said, having read the thing through, it seems a perfectly acceptable topic to debate. And if the Republican coalition can be broken over a philosophical debate over the logical implications of the application of a scientific theory without respect to God, well, then I'd submit the topic of Pizza Topping Choice may be deadly at the 2008 convention.

Perspective, neighbor.

I banned him. Kinda regretted it because it gave him what he wanted from the start; enjoyed it because he's a prat.

ditto. Teach me. :)

Just because some "Missionary Atheists" are using scientific research to further their aims, why does it follow that the tool they use in this instance (Evolutionary theory) is to blame for their use of it?

That is my direct quote...and bringing up the actions of a "missionary atheist" or at least someone you claim to be a missionary atheist do not refute my statement/question:

Why do the actions of a few people who use evolution as a cudgel necessarily invalidate the science of evolution?

OK, now it seems to me logically inconsistent to argue about the existence or nonexistence of an absolute moral framework by starting your sentences with "I think..." or making similar subjective statements.

To be 100% honest, I'm not arguing for some all-encompasing moral framework. I'm telling you what works for me. I'm not going to be arrogant enough to assume my particular framework is the best one or that everyone should use it. I find that it works best for me, so I use it. For what it's worth...

To you and I it would have been tragic. To Hitler it would have been a service to humankind. Who's right? It it us, and if so, is it only because our "side" won WWII?

Well, we are not walking around in an Aryan dystopia, so it looks like the question is moot. Personally, I think that because we don't murder the likes of Einstein was one of the reasons we did win. Look at all the scientific talent we acquired when stuff started to hit the fan in the late 1930's.

But again, you insist on giving away the argument by framing your statements with "I think..." Anyone who does not think like you do is free to reject your moral construction. Those who argue self-interest, at least, are doing a far better job.

I agree that the self-interest people above are making my point better than I am. Again, I'm not claiming that my moral system should be adopted by everyone. I honestly don't care why people believe that something is right or wrong, only if the outcome of their actions is reasonably the same as my own. If you need a god to tell you what is right or wrong - that's fine. If your god starts telling you to kill your fellow humans, then I have a problem.

Other than the fact that a man who claimed to be God proposed it, you mean.

If you have evidence that Jesus was the first to think of the prisoner's dilemma and that he created the Golden Rule, instead of simply articulating it, I'd like to see it. Not that it changes anything in the least.

But something still must motivate us to choose that device. And I frankly think that the quote from Paul sums it up best. Those of us who accept an absolute moral framework from upon High are making a sacrifice in this life for the promise of the next. That if there is no "next", we would be best to serve our own hedonistic interests.

Not quite. While it may be in my personal interest to become a hedonistic fellow, what would society look like if everyone were hedonists? It's not unlike the tragedy of the commons. I choose not to be a hedonist because I think living in a society where everyone were hedonists would frankly suck. Is that motivation enough?

and the White Man's Burden were explicitly religious, as were the crusades, jihads, and inquisitions.

One major justification for the Belgian nightmare was religious teaching and civilizing the savages, as was the case in North, Central, and South America and much of Africa.

Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans both slaughtered each other and were slaughtered by the Conquistadors in the name of various gods and relgious tenets.

As for "making up a lot of ground in very little time" - 'tis true...populations were larger, more closely spaced, and more tightly connected via modern transport, and technological capabilities much greater, too...and that can and should account for some of the difference

I think maybe this thread would be better off if it were simply about the philsophical and political cosequences of atheism per se, without any referrences to evolution as I cannot see that anything changes in that area when you add evolution to the mix except that the discussion will veer off (as it has) into a debate over the validity of evolution itself, and over the distinctions between science and religion.

Atheism does not require non-belief in an afterlife nor does theism imply one. Several schools of Buddhism are atheistic, but still accept the core tenet of that religion that the soul processes though multiple incarnations (yes, I know that's a bit of an oversimplification) while there have been theistic religions which had only the vaguest and uncertain notions of an afterlife (early Judaism for example). There are two sets of questions here: what the consequences for us if there is no God, and what are the consequences for us if we become personally extinct with death?

that was atheistic. The morality of ancient pagan peoples (which in some cases, i.e., the Stoics or the Buddhists, was as profound and elevated as Christian morality) is emphatically not an example of a "godless morality"

or Nature's God, whether by evolution or special creation, has placed certain unconscious imperatives in us. Perhaps a successful system of ethics (theistic or not) is one which leads to those imperatives being fuilfilled with self-contradiction.

Re: If there is no higher authority to which man answers, then whoever possesses the force to impose his/her will is automatically correct.

So if some Grand High Potentate and Poobah decides that 2+2=5 or that the speed of light in a mere 5 mph his force and power make those errors correct?

Re: The problem is that societies (Nazi Germany, Communist Russia), often make horrendous decisions about what is "right" and what is "wrong".

And note something very obvious about such societies: THEY FAIL. In effect, a form of natural social selection disposes of their errors.

Re: All societies eventually die.

True, but in the same sense that all species someday go extinct and all individuals die. Yet there are two different kinds of death in all these case: a successful death which leaves either litreral or metaphorical progeny behind and true extinction which leaves nothing behind. Classical Athens and ancient Israel have been dead for many centuries but their progeny lives on all around us. Can one say that of Nazi Germany? So to with species: our early primnate ancestor is long gone, but we're still here. And individuals: George Washington is two centuries gone to dust and did not even leave children of his seed (he was sterile), but the whole American nation is his progeny. He is far less dead than Hitler.

I saw your post last night and let it simmer for a few hours before responding. Please know that I respect you a lot, so I took this very seriously.

It seems clear to me, upon reflection, that what you are doing here is expressing anger over the fact that DS was banned. That's fine. Please don't drag me into it. There are a number of ludicrous statements in this post that are frankly beneath you.

It's clear from the author's replies in this thread this whole point of this post was to bring up the Hitler card, which violates the posting rules of the site.

It is clear from my mention of Godwin's law in the original post, that that was not the intent. But regardless, mentioning Hitler is not a violation of the posting rules of this site, and I hope you don't mind me saying that it's pretty stupid to claim that it is. Calling someone else a Nazi is, making historical references to the Nazis is not. I really do believe you understand the difference between the two.

and pushes a fundamentally un-American ideology (it denies the ability of humans to create just institutions, which denies the US Constitution, and implies a theocracy).

Here I have to assume that you're either not reading or being deliberately obtuse. I plainly said that man was perfectly capable of making good moral choices absent God, but I also made the point that, absent God, there is nothing that says that we ought to make good moral choices. And that is a position I defend. And no, it doesn't necessarily mean theocracy.

It's also idiotic.  When you go around doing this, it's as though you're trying to break the Republican coalition.

I'll let Nick Danger's comment stand on this.

Individuals are not gauranteed happiness through virtue ("Job" is correct) because of the sheer randomness of life. But when we start talking about societies the law of large numbers comes into play and the randomness factor ceases to dominate. So that it is indeed true that wicked societies are more dysfunctional than just ones and less likley to survive and flourish.

This is like saying that the reason my wife married me is because she's a devout Catholic, rather than, for whatever bizarre combination of reasons, she enjoyed my company and wanted to build a life together. Every single act you attribute to religion either contained religious justifications among others, or used religious belief as a fig leaf. Thus, as for your first example, Manifest Destiny (itself not the only reason for Westward expansion and the Indian Wars) was itself highly but not exclusively Protestant in nature. There was a lot of Enlightenment silliness tossed into it, too, including the need to civilize the Earth.

Try again.

Re: You're telling me that nobody in Rome (or Constantinople, for that matter) today keeps track of various maryrs in pre-Christian Rome, including the Popes among them?  I'm pretty sure they are remembered, and those lists are in Rome, are they not?

The ancient martyrs are still remembered and venerated. Every Vespers service at my church the priest gives a brief sermon telling the history of the saints being commemorated on the date, which of course includes the martyrs of old (and of new as well).

As an aside this sense of historical connectedness, as opposed to much of the present-obesssed rootlessness of American religion, is a big part of what drew me to Orthodoxy

Ethics is not an exact discipline after the model of mathemetics and some branches of science.  The argument - and it is quite sound, as is borne out by both intellectual history and plain old history - is that in the absence of a deity and/or some set of facts or realities (an "is") which gives rise to definable moral obligations ("oughts"), it is only force that determines "right".

a non-belief in the soul, the afterlife, "spirit" etc. Again I will cite the atheistic schools of Buddhism as an example.

The beneficial is not the obligatory.

Re: The stem cell ban is another example.

There is no stem cell research ban.

One theme running through this thread that makle me quite uncomfortable is the notion that "we need God to be good". This reduces God to a mere instrument, a tool for virtue. Something does not set right with me there.

One does not "use" air in the sense that you mean it to breathe. One does not even "use" food that way. "Use" suggests a potential of choices not in play here. The a priori assumption is that God is the only choice of "instruments" to that "end."

I personally agree that but for the existence of God, we're all just walking pieces of flesh to be manipulated at will, but that's an aside. The point stands: Instrumentality is the wrong metaphor.

This is an important theological question, but from the perspective of the aetheism/theism debate it doesn't make any difference and neither does anything specifically Christian.  The question as originally stated was 'How does disbelief in any ultimate creative and judicial authority affect how we approach the world?'  If there's a theological problem it should certainly be addressed (and this particular one has been from many different angles within the Christian community), but if Christianity had never existed you would still have the atheism/theism dichotomy and all of its associated ethical consequences (of course you could argue that because God exists Christianity necessarily exists, but for the sake of apologetic argument I'm going to conceed that line of thought!).

often behave this way. But then, there are plenty of examples of tyrants (and small-scale sinners too) who were theists. Belief in God does not guarantee virtue. And ethical truths are true regardlesss of God's existence (or rather, thay depend on God in the same sense that mathematical and scientific truths do: they derive from God's nature rather than being arbitary proclamations in the same way that secular laws are arbitrary proclamations of human desire.)

Belief in God does not guarantee virtue.

Never said that. What I said was that if God does not exist, there is no such thing as something that is objectively virtuous. There are only preferences.

And ethical truths are true regardlesss of God's existence (or rather, thay depend on God in the same sense that mathematical and scientific truths do: they derive from God's nature

But if there is no God then they necessarily become arbitrary.

When you talk about science and religion, it's important to make a distinction between science (the method) and naturalism (the philosophy).  Many people (including most naturalists) make the mistake of assuming that scientific discovery requires naturalism, the belief that the world is absolutely regular (God could not act upon it) and is entirely self-contained (God could not have created it).  This is simply not true; all science requires to function is a reasonable regularity, so that when an experiment is performed repeatedly the same result occurs.  It does not require absolute regularity, where a repeated experiment always gives the same result.  In fact, science itself has 'proved' this to be impossible with the recognition that the universe is inherently uncertain and random, and this randomness precludes scientific determinism.  Scientific 'facts,' then, are merely probabilities--probabilities that because of their high degree of certainty can be relied upon in our daily lives--and always carry a bit of doubt.  The jump from the existence of scientific knowledge to the belief that 'The prosecution of science requires that everything be explainable scientifically' simply has no justification.

I think one of the most intriguing questions right now is what is going to happen in the clash between science and post-modernity.  In aetheistic (or at least agnostic) post-modern thought, the ultimate (and only) virtue is tolerance.  We see this most clearly in the rise of political correctness and our discomfort with black-and-white moral judgments, but it prevades today's society.  Post-modernism is based on an 'incredulity toward meta-narratives,' or more simply, the dismissal of absolute truth claims--what is 'true' for you may not be 'true' for me.  It is therefore a serious threat to any discipline that requires absolute truth, not the least of which is science.  Fundamentally, science claims that there are absolute truths and they (at least to some extent) can be found and 'proved' through experimentation.  Post-modernity denies that there are any absolute truth claims to discover.  The interesting thing about this is that right now people are straddling both sides of this chasm--when we fly in airplanes we believe in absolute truth, but when we discuss religion we don't.  I wonder if as this incoherence becomes more pronounced it might actually serve to discredit post-modernism and all the things that go with it: pluralism, political correctness, and feigned tolerance, to name a few.  Since one of the major challenges to religion today is pluralism, perhaps science and religion will turn out to be unlikely allies.

wicked theists.  But the point is that unless there exists some "is" which generates the "ought", there exists no rational, epistemologically justifiable basis for condemning their wickedness.

is that God's existence is an objective fact quite independent of all these ethical conundrums. I cannot see a way to to prove God by saying "we need to be good,  God is good, therefore God must exist", which is what a lot of this boils down too. Indeed, I am reminded of a certain school of conservatism (Strauss?) which is personally quite agnostic and secular but sees religion as a useful fiction for maintaining public order and virtue.

I've been trying to say this literally all night, with no success. May you have better as I leave for work.

India.

A non-Judeo-Christian Democracy (primarily Hindu a multi-theistic religion).

Also India is a good example of a twentieth century country where there has been a lot of killing based on religion.  So I killed two birds with one stone.

He exists because he exists.

Like I said, though, could someone prove that there is no God, then to my mind, all of the rules are out the window, except when they must be obeyed in public so as not to run afoul of negative, direct consequences. Those rules may be broken with abandon if no one is looking, or if those looking may be silenced.

I would argue that continued pushing of demonstrably false theories in the face of overwhelming evidence (YEC and ID) is a disservice to Christianity and to God, precisely because they are so easily dispensed with.

Yeah, well, I'm not the one you have to convince. I would prefer to avoid these things altogether.

Why do the actions of a few people who use evolution as a cudgel necessarily invalidate the science of evolution?

I don't see how it does. But then, I haven't seen that claim made either. I merely noted the existence of such people.

you are "blaming" atheism for the crimes of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, etc.  Those people were not killed to advance atheism.  And the number of people killed by those regimes because of their religious beliefs (and the Jews were killed for racial purposes, not religious beliefs per se) was a very small portion of the total.  They were killed for a variety of reasons that usually had nothing to do with religion.

Your thesis seems to be that most of the mass murder of the twentieth century was committed by atheists because they were atheists (and of course you ignore the first great genocide of the twentieth century the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks).  We are merely pointing out that throughout history, religious people have been perfectly capable of committing mass slaughter in spite of their religion, often have used their religion as a justification or excuse, and sometimes religion has been the cause of the war.

Exhibit A from this morning:

My question for war cheerleaders: Explain to me again how having a democracy in Iraq is supposed to decrease terrorism?

I just read that myself and thought about posting it, but decided to curtail my assumed obsession with the fits of rage on Kos today.

This is so ironic.

You want a post-modern world where all values are relative and there are no absolute truths? You can't have it without allowing that there is no world view that is more correct than any other.

God did not exist or that I am an atheist?

If you are assuming that just because I am a strong defender of the theory of evolution and believe that Genesis creation myths (and yes there are two distinct creation myths written by two different groups of authors) tell us important things about the relationship between God, man and nature, but are not an historical account of the creation of the earth or humankind; that I am not a Christian, then you are sorely mistaken.

that the philosophy you describe might be more familiar under the moniker of naturalism, than of atheistic evolution?

Furthermore, you might have better luck discussing matters of intrinsic value in humanity in the context of same. Without external authority (cf. God), whatever intrinsic value there is present in humanity is either axiomatic (i.e. because I say so) or sentimental (i.e. because I am human) (AFAIK, and I'm not a philosopher, so I'm open to being wrong--I do want a semi-concrete example, though). These are both basically arbitrary options, and can be dispensed with as desired. (There is, I suppose, the argument that the charge that humans are a reflection or part of the divine nature (cf. Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism) is basically axiomatic or fallacious, being an argument to authority, and, thus, likewise arbitrary and dispensable, but this hinges on the idea that the appealed-to authority is not universally respected by those arguing the matter. I'm pulling this out of the air, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that this was not at issue in many past societies: it could be taken for granted that the basic worldview supplied by the Church, for instance, undergird the arguments of nearly all points of view for a very long time in Europe.)

If the divine nature and the intrinsic value that goes with it are stripped from humankind (or, I'd wager, extended to everything else, but I'm less familiar with that line of reasoning or its actual effects in the world), then it really doesn't matter so much that one person dies, or ten million. There are, after all, six billion human beings. We'll make more.

There are a number of other implications of this line of reasoning, i. e. naturalism must, if it is to be consistent, deny free will except as an illusion, or possibly as formulated by J. P. Sartre--but I don't much care for Sartre's existentialism. This would (excepting Sartre) also necessarily absolve one of guilt, except as a feeling. After all, how can one be responsible for outcomes determined from the moment of the Big Bang? Of course, complete consistency eventually leads one from naturalism to nihilism, but that is very much the crux of the problem.

The good fight that I was referring to is asking questions of all orthodoxy--religious, environmentalist, whatever.

I didn't mean to sound overly anti-environmentalist or overly religionist.  I have just noticed over the years that the religious right does not have a monopoly on dogmatic beliefs and people who march in lockstep.  The environmentalists, including Dr. Schweitzer, have put forth many over-reaching proposals.  I'm sorry if I offended you.

I didn't say that. I said that it's disingenuous at best to attribute those slaughters/whatevers to religion.

I also said that the atheists of the twentieth century played a fast game of catch-up.

Note the difference.

Now, I suspect that the absence of God in those systems made the rise to inhumanity much easier, but that's a different argument altogether. That's not to say that it doesn't happen where God is worshipped, merely that the transactional costs to depravity lower in God's absence.

Which god do we pick - Jehova, Jesus, Shiva, Allah, Zeus, Ba'al?  How do we know which god is the true god (and by implication, which morality is the true morality)?

Further, the whole point of the Establishment Clause was to prevent what had been going on in many of the localized colonial governments, where many colonies had "official" state churches, usually the Anglican, and religious precepts ended up in civil laws, such as requirements to attend religious services and exclusion of "nonbelievers" from civic life.

The Establishment Clase wasn't about the 10 Commandments in a courthouse.  It was about something far more serious.

That's why I think it's dangerous to make the argument that our civil government is somehow intertwined with Christianity.  Clearly we're a "Christian nation" in the sense that most of our settlers were Christians, most Americans are still Christians centuries later, and those precepts carry over into our culture.  But making Christianity a requirement of American democracy seems to be exactly the sort of thing the Founders were trying to avoid.  Once you accept that premise, you can basically argue that anything that fits within the notion of "Christian jurisprudence" belongs within our legal system, including those very types of aforementioned laws our Founders wanted no part of.

If so, how is it any different from the Christian God?

Rationality is a tool to be mastered and used.  I can measure the results of its use in terms of how well it works to achieve concrete goals.

More to the point, how is the Christian God different from any other god?  They are all putative beings that demand your faith but never have the decency to show up in person at your doorstep and make their case.

I should also point out that god is no solution to the problem of morality either.  It's the Euthypro problem.  Is morality what is loved by God, or does God love morality for its inherent good.  If the latter, then God has no moral meaning because morailty lies outside of God.  If morality is merely what God loves (i.e. God creates morality) then morality is merely the dictates of some other being followed merely out of fear of that other beings power.  Following dictates out of fear is not what most people intutitively consider moral behavior.

Epicurius (341-270 BC); or rather his pholosophies.  In essence what Paul is saying is that if the dead in Christ are not raised then the Epicurian pholosophy certainly makes sense.  IOW, if there is something beyond this life then there is a higher purpose than simply personal pleasure.  If there is nothing more than this life, then personal pleasure would be the highest goal.

The difference, veritas vos liberabit, is the object of our striving.  

"should make good decisions regarding the treatment of fellow humans if we wish to survive."

Leon, He's right in this statement.  What his argument is missing is that if fails to conclusively answer the question "What is Good?"  If one assumes that it is nothing more than a cultural norm or societal subjectivity, then morally you can only criticize Hitler or Stalin for offending your own subjective societal standards, and you really cannot accuse them of being objectively wrong, only subjectively wrong.

If however we accept the concept that Good is objective and immutable, in effect what we are saying is that there is an external measure of behavior.  

He also said, "but the actual act of making the choice to respect other humans and cooperate them need not rest upon appeal to a higher power."

If there is an absolute standard of right and wrong one doesn't need to make an appeal to a higher power to be subject to this absolute standard, it just is.

No, I don't think DS should have stayed.  I agreed with the complaints about his first diary.

I also don't think divisive stuff like this is appropriate.

But, as I wake up this morning, it appears like something's going on in London, so I'llj ust let it drop.

in the pursuit of self-preservation of the species it is... Besides there is no evidence that the obligatory is obligatory for Theists either - as there is no evidence of an afterlife beyond belief..  Perhaps there is an heaven, but what if everone gets in regardless of their behavior on Earth?  The point is we don't know.

Sorry if I was too hostile and aggressive.  As I thought about Leon H's post, and read his replies, I started to get angry.

I made that reply not long before I went to bed.

Thanks for the clarification,

Perhaps these things are on the rise because folks have noticed the decline of our society, and this rise is the reaction of the societal decline.

Self-preservation is not obligatory, for either the individual or the species; it may be what the vast majority want, but wanthing something is not the same as that thing being justified.  People may very well opt for death, destruction, chaos and nonbeing (as do certain extreme fringe environmentalists who call for the end of the human species), and one can only rationally refute them if one can demonstrate that life is a good, an overriding value: which is precisely what, on the assumption of atheism, the bare fact of existence does not do.  There is but matter, and the universe takes no concern for the particular forms assumed by certain arrangements of matter; they come to be and cease to be, all in their time, and generate no scheme of valuation of themselves, for value - and specifically, life and surivival as values - presupposes purpose, of which, in an atheist universe, there is none.  That's what the whole bit about evolution not being purposive is all about.  The fact that you, I, and the majority of the human race wish to survive means only that - that we want to survive, not that there is some oughtness or value implicit in that desire; we are not the purpose of evolution (assumning atheism), but a happenstance, and there is no "should" about a fortuitous arrangment of the primal stuff.  It just is.

As to the second count, it invloves a number of confusions - concerning what counts as evidence within religious belief systems, the differences between religious systems as regards the afterlife, and the nature of moral obligation in theist systems - that properly fall beyond the scope of this now-bloated thread.

More to the point, how is the Christian God different from any other god?

Absolutely wrong. That is completely not the point.

You have a world view. Others have different world views.

I believe your world view meets the test of "religion". I believe it is based on faith. Just because your world view includes denial of a deity does not mean it is not faith based.

And I like the elision of "over the course of history." The cutie atheists of the twentieth century made up a lot of ground in very little time.

You aren't implying that the "cutie atheists" are more deadly due to belief - or in this case lack therof - than other murderous societies of the past?  I am quite certain that technology and industrial revolution might have had a bit of a hand in that...  

I wasn't sure why the poster put the "over the course of history" part in there, for it did nothing to alter his/her point.

"that if you believe in creationism or ID then you must (if you bother to think about it) must also reject Anything that says that the earth was not created in 7 days,"

To say that one must believe in a literal 7 day creation to believe in ID is farcical, and a misinterpretation of ID.  All that ID requires its proponents to believe that the process by which our universe is created is not random but rather the work of a higher/external power.  I will grant you that ID is not what I would call empirical science, because it cannot be proved, but is rather way of counteracting the atheistic tendancies that have permiated much of evolutionary teachings.  Don't misunderstand me, I don't disagree with teaching evolution, what I disagree with is the implication within the teaching that there is no God.  I know that there are plenty of teachers that eschew any such implications, because they understand that science cannot answer a question of faith.

While I don't want to put words in Leon's mouth, what I think he criticizes is the attempt by some atheists to propagate their religious beliefs (atheism) while teaching evolution.

I believe your world view meets the test of "religion". I believe it is based on faith.  Just because your world view includes denial of a deity does not mean it is not faith based.

I don't believe in unicorns or evil spirits either.  Is that an article of faith as well?  Or does one have to be agnostic on the existence of hobbits and jedi to avoid being "faithful" to a worldview.

No, the issue is proof.  Given the difficulty of proving a negative, responsible inquiry requires the one who asserts the existence of something to provide the proof.  The mere assertion that 'God exists' or 'unicorns exist' does not throw one into a state of agnosticism regarding the asserted existence of that entity.

Bring Jesus over later, or Zeus, or a unicorn, and I will happily change my worldview to one that conforms to my newly discovered facts.

Or are you agnostic about unicorns? ;)

was not preaching rank hedonism (though this slander was current in antiquity too). He was teaching a sort of extreme detachment, freedom from the passions. His ethical doctrine actually resembled Buddhism more than it does "eat drink and be merry"

Re: But if there is no God then they necessarily become arbitrary.

Of course. And so do all truths, even the truths of mathematics. If reality has no absolute grounding then how can it be real?

whemn we move from the question of "What is the Good?" and "How do we know it?" To "How do we enforce it?" You seem to be espousing the instrumentalism that I note (far below) is troubling here. To put it crudely, you are dragging God in as the ultimate big brother with a club to beat up the wicked and then saying that this justifies belief in God.

What is the value of choosing one path over the other, except to satisfy one's own personal desire?

Well, the moral path is more satisfying personally, according to me and to most atheist philosophers as well as religious philosophers, but as to value beyond desire, you are correct.

It is first immediately recognized that physical matter is all that exists. As such, humans are neither unique or special in the cosmos, as they are merely matter arranged in a specific way. The implications of this are staggering, from both a philosophical and political point of view. This means:

Humans are no more special or worthy of protection than any other species of animal, since we are are merely matter arranged in a different structure, and our existence here is just a matter of random chance.

Humans are no more special or worthy of protection than any species of plant, for the same reasons listed above.

Humans are no more special or worthy of protection than inanimate objects such as rocks, since the only principle difference between us are the proportionate amounts of Carbon, Hydrogen, and various other elements.

I don't find these conclusions are logical at all.  They assume that prejudice in favor of or against something or someone is either illogical or immoral.  It isn't always. You are not distinguishing idiots like PETA from serious philosophy, no matter how erroneous.

The problem is to establish a highest value.  Although some atheists may believe in "no highest value" or even "no higher values", there is nothing about not believing in God that makes hierarchy unavailable.

then to my mind, all of the rules are out the window, except when they must be obeyed in public so as not to run afoul of negative, direct consequences. Those rules may be broken with abandon if no one is looking, or if those looking may be silenced.

Your example provides no room for self awareness.  Part of self awareness is recognition of the role that society plays in protecting our self.  The reason I don't steal is not becuase I am driven by some moral of God, not for fear of direct consequences, not even because I don't want someone to steal from me - but because its not in my best interest to live in a society where it may be okay for someone to steal from me just becuase others aren't looking.  

Because the fabric of society that protects me, my family and my friends is dependent on others in the society treating me with respect, I respect others - in fact I want to respect others, treat them better than I am treated in hopes that they do the same for others - becuase it improves the world for all - and therefore those that I care about.  Sure there are sociopaths that operate outside of the norm, but society continually attempts to deal with them, there are even sociopaths that lead whole societies astray, but because those societies are flawed at their core they are doomed to failure - and failure in a very short time in the grand scheme of human existence.

This is why I think that there is plenty room for differing opinions on the matter whether God is necessary, for at the heart of it, you come back to a set of guiding principles on both sides that for the most part are harmonious (for different reasons of course, but nevertheless harmonious) not only with one another but with the guiding principles by which we have chosen to organize our society - theistic or atheistic views both fit. To believe otherwise would mean that large swaths of our population would be operating against their own will by choosing not to steal when given the chance - either that or they are religious and they didn't know it.  

All societies are declining always just as every one of us is aging.

If that is the case, then you are a pretty sad excuse for a human being.

I truly believe that I am alone when I am alone.  Yet I don't hurt people.  I don't steal.  I don't cut in line to get ahead.  I don't cheat, even when I can get away with it.  Why?  Not because I am expecting a reward or fearing punishment from the almighty.  I do it because I was well raised.  Because I respect the concepts of fair play and cooperation.  I don't believe in Karma, yet I can't stand the feeling of being a hypocrite.  

This entire thread seems to devolve into what you said.  Namely, if there is no God, all bets are off.  Thing is, to the evolutionist athiest, we are comforted by the facts that successful social interaction among humans pre existed the concept of God by thousands of years.  And will continue long past his shifting from the status of 'religion' to the status of 'myth.'

A more accurate statement of the purpose of this thread is not "What if atheistic evolution were true."  It is "What if everyone believed atheistic evolution were true."  We can only change what we believe.  You don't have to believe in evolution for it to exist.  

I can see a reason to do good even without a Last Judgment impending. Doing good leaves one happier (in the larger philsophical sense that is) in the long run.

If it's all about now, I'm getting mine. Enough short runs add up to a long run.

Perhaps, that is, if one assumes a certain content for the concept of happiness.  I can think of many people, Russian mafiya for example, who do naught but evil, and are yet quite happy with all they have attained in this life.

And you're entitled to pick your comforting myth of choice.

I truly believe that I am alone when I am alone.  Yet I don't hurt people.  I don't steal.  I don't cut in line to get ahead.  I don't cheat, even when I can get away with it.  Why?  Not because I am expecting a reward or fearing punishment from the almighty.  I do it because I was well raised.  Because I respect the concepts of fair play and cooperation.  I don't believe in Karma, yet I can't stand the feeling of being a hypocrite.

And without an objective Truth behind these acts, you're doing them because you're a well-trained monkey.

This entire thread seems to devolve into what you said.  Namely, if there is no God, all bets are off.  Thing is, to the evolutionist athiest, we are comforted by the facts that successful social interaction among humans pre existed the concept of God by thousands of years.  And will continue long past his shifting from the status of 'religion' to the status of 'myth.'

Well, no, it predates the Judeo-Christian identification, not the concept of "God"; societies that existed before that and outside that tend to be rather nasty in a lot of ways. And your faith in Man's ability to play cuddly absent a God of some sort is charming, but not backed by the historical evidence.

But like I said, whatever makes you comfortable.

I guess my reply should have been to gamecock.  he is the one who said "and where man rejects god, people are slaughterd on thta scale".  You just objected to pinning slaughters committed by people in obstensibly religious societies as based on religion.  I pointed out that although atheists in the twentieth century did indeed commit mass murder, atheism was not the reason they committed mass murder.  

Atheism in and of itself is not a philosophy, rather a rejection of a concept.  So it hardly makes sense to kill anyone in the name of atheism or convert anyone to atheism.  There are no churches of atheism.

You're entitled to your comforting beliefs. I would never deny someone their entitlement to whatever thought practices get them through the day.

Your example provides no room for self awareness.  Part of self awareness is recognition of the role that society plays in protecting our self.  The reason I don't steal is not becuase I am driven by some moral of God, not for fear of direct consequences, not even because I don't want someone to steal from me - but because its not in my best interest to live in a society where it may be okay for someone to steal from me just becuase others aren't looking.

First problem: "Collective action problem."

Second problem: I'm actually acutely aware of self awareness and self-interest. Indeed, that's why it makes sense to game the system while no one is looking as much as possible.

Because the fabric of society that protects me, my family and my friends is dependent on others in the society treating me with respect, I respect others - in fact I want to respect others, treat them better than I am treated in hopes that they do the same for others - becuase it improves the world for all - and therefore those that I care about.  Sure there are sociopaths that operate outside of the norm, but society continually attempts to deal with them, there are even sociopaths that lead whole societies astray, but because those societies are flawed at their core they are doomed to failure - and failure in a very short time in the grand scheme of human existence.

And without an objective Truth on which to fall back, you've simply set arbitrary rules that can be bent, rearranged, distorted, and ultimately disregarded at will. There is nothing, in other words, to stop your society from walking off the edge, unless you imagine that people are naturally friendly and benevolent. If that's the case, practice law for a while.

This is why I think that there is plenty room for differing opinions on the matter whether God is necessary, for at the heart of it, you come back to a set of guiding principles on both sides that for the most part are harmonious (for different reasons of course, but nevertheless harmonious) not only with one another but with the guiding principles by which we have chosen to organize our society - theistic or atheistic views both fit. To believe otherwise would mean that large swaths of our population would be operating against their own will by choosing not to steal when given the chance - either that or they are religious and they didn't know it.

Actually, I believe more or less precisely that. If you truly believe there is no God, there is no incentive to conform to behavioral norms set in place by and large by Christians.

But the long run may not be made up of a lot of short runs. Time is a funny thing: it isn't really linear at all. Although this gives the physicists fits, it's not a parameter it's an operator. Meaning that it changes things. So lots of short-run pleasure any transform into lots of long run grief. I don't think it's very hard to find examples of that even on the scale of huamn experience.

I am speaking in philosophical terms, rather as Aristotle or our Founders  ("the pursuit of happiness") would understand it. I am emphatically not equating happiness with mere sensual pleasure.

And note again (I have made the point before) there are non-theistic ethical systems which work along these lines so the claim that a non-theistic ethical system is an impossibility is false.

and doesn't respond to my statement.

history helps support this contention much either.

Well, no, it predates the Judeo-Christian identification, not the concept of "God"; societies that existed before that and outside that tend to be rather nasty in a lot of ways. And your faith in Man's ability to play cuddly absent a God of some sort is charming, but not backed by the historical evidence.

Man's history, with or without the concept of a God, has hardly been "cuddly".  We tend to kill each other a whole lot, whether or not we believe in God.  Sometimes God gives us an excuse or justification for killing the tribe or nation over the hill because they worship the wrong God or no God at all, sometimes we ask God's forgiveness for killing the tribe over the hill even if they worship the same God, sometimes God doesn't enter into the decision at all.  But there have been very few societies in the history of the world, believers or not, that have solved the problem of violence, either internally or externally directed.

The only human societal development that has seemed to successfully curtail our rather nasty habit of slaughtering eachother is not religion, but the development of secular democracies and modern independent legal systems free of religious interference.

I didn't miss the fact that you were employing the term in a more philosophical sense; I am only making the point that, while there are nontheistic systems of ethics that operate along those lines, in the absence of some sort of transcendental grounding for the ethic itself, it will amount to the assertion of a preference or an "it seems to me", which is quite ineffectual before the "it seems to me" of the mobster or maniac.

What proof do you have that there is a rational explaination for your perception of the universe?

First, not all evolution is "atheistic".  I'm an evolutionist and a Christian.  There is no reason that you can't believe in both.

Second,

Further, if atheistic evolution is true, we are doing a great disservice to ourselves by keeping the weakest members of our society alive and affording them legal protection. From Darwin himself, in The Descent of Man

You presume to understand the workings of God and Evolution?  You presume that we are not MEANT to keep alive the "weaker" members of our society?  How would you define that term?  In fact, many of our society that are physically weaker possess our largest intellectual powers.  Thus, by keeping them alive, we increase our own chance at survival.

Ah, once again an evolution post.  Leon, "atheistic evolution" as described is just plain old fashioned atheism, particularly since you have defined the debate into a dichotomy between "theistic evolution" and "atheistic."  Evolution does not lead to atheism, nor does atheism lead to evolution.  They have no causal connection - atheists who use evolution to "prove" there is no God make as much sense to me as biblical literalists who use gaps in the fossil record to "prove" there was no evolution.  Conflating the two terms leads to these belabored posts.

To answer your direct question, atheistic evolution, as a facet of general atheism, can certainly lead to very bad things.  So can any orthodox faith, when abused by those with earthly gain on their mind.  IMHO agnosticism is the only rational "faith," as it does not try to prove what cannot be proven by human means.  This doesn't mean I'm agnostic, but I feel use the powers of reason to construct faith will all ultimately fail miserably.  This includes atheism.

Evolution is not a faith, and when it is used in place of one it has just evolved into atheism, or naturalism.

 

You're entitled to your comforting beliefs. I would never deny someone their entitlement to whatever thought practices get them through the day.

Likewise.. that's why I love this country.

If you look at Europe, which for most of the last 2000 years was the center of Christianity and also had a major Jewish minority (which was ruthlessly persecuted and blamed for practically every natural disaster that occurred), it had suffered nothing but an almost continual state of war, some of them religious, some of them not.  

However, for the last sixty years, as the continent has rejected religion in droves, they have had their longest period of peace in their history and now have arguably the most peaceful societies on the face of the earth.  They have actually managed to overthrow entrenched and brutal governments in numerous countries almost without bloodshed.  The wars they have suffered have been directly tied to religious strife (in Northern Ireland and the Balkans).

assumes that there is sort of "decline" going on. In a sense, yes, because our society is aging. but in another sense, No, because nothing out of the ordinary is happening. If you read history you will quickly find that every single generation always thinks things were going downhill from a just-past golden age. Since these opinions are usually the work of people middle-aged or older I suspect that their own personal decline influences them to think that way about the world as a whole.

have to be trancendental?  Why can't it be non-random behavior cultivated over the course of millions of years - where choice is no less of a possibility than for me to choose my gender or eye color?  At this point in time, both are equally verifiable..

Are the interactions of a society based merely on individual choice, and the whims of that choice, or some set of rules that the species as a group self-enforces, and has selected for over time -  not as individuals but collectively to insure that the group is able to continue propogate and flourish?  I don't know, but I am willing to entertain the possiblity of both.

if godwin's law holds up ("probabilty approaches one"), nazi germany does live on--though not as hitler intended.

have not been religious in nature. In fact we are approaching the 400 year mark since the last time Europe did have a religous war. Indeed the bloodiest of Euroepan wars have not involved religion. They have rather involved plain old power politics, just liek watrs everywhere else in teh world. therefore your notion that the decline in Europe's wars is somehow due to its decline in religiosity is not justified. A more economical explanation is that Euorpe's elites have found ways to get what they want without war, due in part to the explosion of modern technology and its goodies-- resourcse are no longer scarce and people need no longer fight over them. Let that fact change and you may well see the blood flow again. Also, don't ignore the fact that Europe has been kept at peace by the implied threat of American troops based there.

has ocurred in your argument. we are no longer talking about God, but only about a "transcendental grounding", which could be provided by just about anything one wishes to promote to that status.

are you referring to? The one between the Atlantic and the Urals or another one?