Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

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_Thama
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _Thama »

Moniker wrote:I'm new to their arguments! It just seems so strange! I just lately have been reading anti-atheist literature and anti-evolution literature and it just smacks of misconceptions and fear mongering.

How precisely does one combat the immorality arguments? I've been trying to counter these arguments lately on CARM and I seriously just seem to make no headway. The misconceptions of the theory seem to be a big buggaboo. I post links and spell it out slowly and still I get a one liner reply about survival of the fittest and how pity is not something that evolved and charity would not be possible without God creating us. This is after tedious attempts to explain how cooperation is linked to survival. It's sort of exhausting. Of course I'm an atheist and don't understand -- I can only understand after I know God.

:(


How does one combat the immorality arguments? Sounds like you've done about all you can logically. The other option would be mass lobotomies... something that should never be ruled out when dealing with fundamentalists. ;)
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains.
_The Nehor
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _The Nehor »

History also seems to me to show that a believed and cherished religion system leads to a stable society. Less stable religions with more violent and capricious gods, no real afterlife, and more fear then devotion towards their gods don't last as long, are more plagued by internal conflict, etc. The more cynical approach to this is to call it an 'opiate of the masses'.

I don't think it's likely that we can get to that point again though. If states like Israel (founded around heritage and religion) are as secular as they are I don't think western nations are going to wholesale return to their religious roots or embrace some new religion. We're going to find out how atheistic/agnostic societies function whether we want to or not. I for one expect it to be an interesting ride.

I also despise the idea that we should believe in 'religion because' concept. We should believe it because it will bring utopia or a stable society or save us from moral degradation or whatever. If one believes it one should believe it because one has found God and worships him and loves him. Anything else cheapens the whole concept. In my experience, those who try to use religion for social reasons and for social change alone usually fail. Those who go in with love of God also find other goodies on the way.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics
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_Moniker
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _Moniker »

John Larsen wrote:
EAllusion wrote:Evolution leading to immorality, and specifically the horrors of the Nazis, has been a pillar in the creationist/anti-evolution movement for a long time. Besides evolution - atheism - moral chaos the other big arguments are evolution - we are merely animals - it is Ok to behave like animals and evolution - survival of the fittest - involuntary eugenics and/or might equal right. This person isn't arguing that so much as he's arguing that the notion that evolution supports atheism is dangerous because atheism leads to wanton immorality.


Evolution might teach that we are all animals, but religion teaches that just the other guys are animals. Which is worse?


Well, from the Christians I've been conversing with I've garnered that they think man is actually born "bad" -- all of them, even themselves!

That's so sad.
_Moniker
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _Moniker »

Thama wrote:
How does one combat the immorality arguments? Sounds like you've done about all you can logically. The other option would be mass lobotomies... something that should never be ruled out when dealing with fundamentalists. ;)


Oh, sheesh. Don't mention logic! Oh, I also explained tediously why using analogies is showing respect (removing the personal belief away from the discussion) not mockery for their beliefs to no avail!
_The Nehor
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _The Nehor »

Moniker wrote:Well, from the Christians I've been conversing with I've garnered that they think man is actually born "bad" -- all of them, even themselves!

That's so sad.


I call it realistic. One can't look at history without seeing there's some truth in the words of Blackadder:

"If history has taught us anything, it is that the story of man is one long round of death and torture and burning people as witches just because they've got a wart."

Most Christians don't believe we're utterly depraved but they do think that man is fallen, a bad creature that has a desire to be good. Whether that desire is allowed to grow or squashed is up to the individual. Most try to make some kind of compromise. A few squash the desire and become truly evil. Even fewer defy everything else in a struggle to beat the evil within their nature. This explanation fits the facts for me.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics
"I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
_EAllusion
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _EAllusion »

Moniker wrote:How precisely does one combat the immorality arguments?


It depends on which ones you are talking about. I presume you mean the "without God, all things are permitted" arguments? I have three recommendations.

First, and most importantly, you simply need to ask them what atheism lacks that God has that grounds morality. The answers are relatively predictable, and you just need to know what is wrong with them.

Second, you can bring up theEuthyphro dilemma. The gist of the argument is that if morality is contingent on God, it is arbitrary and empty, but if is contingent on something independent, then belief in God doesn't matter. One way to get the point across is to ask why you can't have what the theist has by grounding your moral views in the will of Gadianton? Why is that any worse?

Wes Morriston has an excellent discussion of the dilemma here:

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/GodGood.pdf

Quoting that paper alone should be enough to start running victory laps, but I wouldn't expect people to agree with you.

This atheist message board post offers a good way to help explain it on a message board:

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread ... ost2647848

Finally, and this is probably the most difficult, you can familiarize yourself with metaethics and share some of the theories that are taken more seriously in the discipline. They're all secular. Just explain that's how some atheists think about metaethics and normative theory. When I compared divine command theory to creationism, I wasn't kidding. One of the similarities is that like most theist biologists find creationism ridiculous, the same is true of theist philosophers of ethics towards these moral arguments. The field is essentially secular with these religious arguments on the fringe.

And finally, finally, as a bit of fun read this from DCP:

First, the critics' basis for criticizing Mormonism on moral grounds is unclear, and its coherence needs to be demonstrated. "Rebellion cannot exist," observes Camus, "without the feeling that, somewhere and somehow, one is right.28 But on what basis can a materialist, whose universe is exhausted by material particles and the void, claim that something is objectively wrong? Do right and wrong not become matters merely of personal preference, and, perhaps, of power? Not only existentialists but many superficial "life counselors" suggest that we should construct our own "meaning" for life. But is self-constructed meaning really meaning at all? Or is meaning not, rather, something that can only be received, from another intelligence? And why should anybody else pay even the slightest attention to somebody's self-constructed "meaning?"

Camus observes of the atheistic French revolutionaries of 1793 that, when they effectively "guillotined" God, "they deprived themselves forever of the right to outlaw crime or to censure malevolent instincts."29 "From the moment that man submits God to moral judgment, he kills Him in his own heart. And then what is the basis of morality? God is denied in the name of justice, but can the idea of justice be understood without the idea of God?"30 If those who deny any objective basis for morality nonetheless go on behaving morally and invoking morality, we can only be grateful that they have not pursued the implications of their position to their logical end, and that they continue to live on borrowed moral capital. Of the nihilistic revolutionaries who are the subject of his brilliant meditation in The Rebel, Camus remarks that

All of them, decrying the human condition and its creator, have affirmed the solitude of man and the nonexistence of any kind of morality. But at the same time they have all tried to construct a purely terrestrial kingdom where their chosen principles will hold sway.31

It is not surprising that, just prior to his tragic and early death in a 1960 automobile accident, Albert Camus was evidently giving serious consideration to being received into the Roman Catholic Church. He was, I'm guessing, horrified by the revolutionary excesses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and had come to suspect that only theism could provide an objective basis for moral judgments. It is precisely the same kind of reasoning that led the Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden to embrace Christianity: He found himself sitting in a movie hall in the late 1930s, in an area of New York City then heavily populated with German immigrants. As a newsreel played, depicting acts of Nazi barbarism toward European Jews, the audience around him erupted with cheers and surges of pleased laughter. Shaken by what he had witnessed, Auden realized that his secular worldview couldn't provide him with a firm moral ground from which to protest that Nazi brutality was objectively evil.

Camus and Auden may have been right. On the basis of what moral principles do secularizing critics pronounce the Church wanting? How were those principles chosen, and why should anybody else defer to them? Even if one were to grant the factual claims on which they stake their moral judgments, it is not at all clear that those moral judgments are capable of bearing any objectively real weight.


http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences ... onism.html

He won't be caught dead defending that online against someone who has decent knowledge of the subject.
Last edited by Guest on Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
_Moniker
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _Moniker »

The Nehor wrote:History also seems to me to show that a believed and cherished religion system leads to a stable society.


Well, there's been very few societies in history that didn't have some sort of religion. Right? The societies that collapsed were the ones without the stable religion and the ones that soldiered on were the stable ones? Is that how this works?

;)


Less stable religions with more violent and capricious gods, no real afterlife, and more fear then devotion towards their gods don't last as long, are more plagued by internal conflict, etc. The more cynical approach to this is to call it an 'opiate of the masses'.


Can you state precisely what religions and societies you're discussing here.

I don't think it's likely that we can get to that point again though. If states like Israel (founded around heritage and religion) are as secular as they are I don't think western nations are going to wholesale return to their religious roots or embrace some new religion. We're going to find out how atheistic/agnostic societies function whether we want to or not. I for one expect it to be an interesting ride.


Well, Japan is almost entirely secular now (ethics are traced to Confucianism and Buddhism and their culture is Shinto). Yet, the Japanese themselves created the religion, right, Nehor? They still have that same culture (which was created by them!) without the necessity of the supernatural anymore. And if you're willing to admit that the Japanese created their own society, beliefs, religions, ethical conduct (unless you think that their mythology was not manmade) then we can see how man himself figures out ethical systems without the need of God.

Oh! And there's no afterlife AT ALL in Shinto belief! Japan = Shinto! :)
_Mad Viking
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _Mad Viking »

The Nehor wrote:History also seems to me to show that a believed and cherished religion system leads to a stable society.


Examples?

The Nehor wrote:Less stable religions with more violent and capricious gods, no real afterlife, and more fear then devotion towards their gods don't last as long, are more plagued by internal conflict, etc.


Examples?

The Nehor wrote:The more cynical approach to this is to call it an 'opiate of the masses'.


According to your first statement, only believed and cherished religions are an "opiate".

The Nehor wrote:I don't think it's likely that we can get to that point again though.


Get back to what point?
"Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis" - Laplace
_The Nehor
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _The Nehor »

Moniker wrote:
The Nehor wrote:History also seems to me to show that a believed and cherished religion system leads to a stable society.


Well, there's been very few societies in history that didn't have some sort of religion. Right? The societies that collapsed were the ones without the stable religion and the ones that soldiered on were the stable ones? Is that how this works?

;)


Less stable religions with more violent and capricious gods, no real afterlife, and more fear then devotion towards their gods don't last as long, are more plagued by internal conflict, etc. The more cynical approach to this is to call it an 'opiate of the masses'.


Can you state precisely what religions and societies you're discussing here.

I don't think it's likely that we can get to that point again though. If states like Israel (founded around heritage and religion) are as secular as they are I don't think western nations are going to wholesale return to their religious roots or embrace some new religion. We're going to find out how atheistic/agnostic societies function whether we want to or not. I for one expect it to be an interesting ride.


Well, Japan is almost entirely secular now (ethics are traced to Confucianism and Buddhism and their culture is Shinto). Yet, the Japanese themselves created the religion, right, Nehor? They still have that same culture (which was created by them!) without the necessity of the supernatural anymore. And if you're willing to admit that the Japanese created their own society, beliefs, religions, ethical conduct (unless you think that their mythology was not manmade) then we can see how man himself figures out ethical systems without the need of God.


When looking at the longevity of societies I think some of the best examples of stable ones would be Egypt and China. Both had conflict but they survived mostly unscathed for over a millenium with a stable belief system that sometimes grew richer and sometimes poorer but was still there.

Mon, my point really had nothing to do with God or the supernatural. While I suspect God may have aided in the creation of belief systems I don't think that's what is important for stability. I also don't think Japan is a good example of a stable society. It's lasted just over 60 years since they repudiated the Emperor as divine, not what I would call long-term.

I personally don't think man can create ethical systems without God. I do think they can do it without acknowledging God. In any case, atheism/agnosticism is not an ethical system shared by a collective group in any real way. Confucianism and some forms of Buddhism are.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics
"I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
_Moniker
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Re: Kenneth Miller's New Book - Only a Theory...

Post by _Moniker »

EAllusion wrote:
Moniker wrote:How precisely does one combat the immorality arguments?


It depends on which ones you are talking about. I presume you mean the "without God, all things are permitted" arguments? I have three recommendations.


Okay, those are great! Thank you... I have some reading to do... :)
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