Posted on 05/02/2009 3:19:55 AM PDT by spirited irish
"At present, science has no satisfactory answer to the question of the origin of life on the earth. Perhaps the appearance of life on the earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their choices are limited: either life was created on the earth by the will of a being outside the grasp of scientific understanding, or it evolved on our planet spontaneously, through chemical reactions occurring in nonliving matter lying on the surface of the planet. The first theory places the question of the origin of life beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science. The second theory is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that the scientific view of the origin of life is correct, without having concrete evidence to support that belief." (Robert Jastrow, Ph.D Theoretical Physics, "Until the Sun Dies," pp. 62-63, 1977)
"...the biological theorists don't know that Kant has analyzed why one cannot have an immanentist theory of evolution. One can have empirical observation but no general theory of evolution because the sequence of forms is a mystery; it just is there and you cannot explain it by any theory. The world cannot be explained. It is a mythical problem, so you have a strong element of myth in the theory of evolution." (Eric Voegelin, CW Vol. 33, The Drama of Humanity Conversations, III, Myth as Environment, p. 307)
Out of one side of their mouths, Progressive Darwinists tell us to believe that 'God is dead,' and with His death, immutable truth, universal morality, original sin, and Nature's Law are dead as well, for these point to eternal verities: "It is a proposition of eternal verity that none can govern while He is despised." (American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828). Yet out of the other side of their mouths, it's common for them to brazenly proclaim that in reality, the evidence supporting Darwinism is overwhelming. Some go so far as to claim that evolution is an established fact.
Their claims however, are self-refuting, irrational, and based on a massive edifice of falsehood. Here's why:
Both fact and evidence point back to unchanging truth and reality. Truth is exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be. History, as it unfolds, is a record of truth and reality; of what works and what does not work; of what is right and true and of what is not. The long-term collective memory of this unfolding historic knowledge is common sense.
Truth, as recorded over and over by history shows that the seed of wheat has never brought forth anything but wheat. We all know this is true; it is common knowledge. Never once in our long history has the seed of wheat brought forth tomatoes, or something never before seen. Yet these miraculous events ought to have happened at least once if evolution is true.
History records the cyclical repetition of the four seasons, year after year, down through the long history of mankind. History likewise records that the return of Spring is always, without fail, accompanied by the return of birds. Each kind pairs off, builds nests peculiar to its own kind, and procreates. Not one time has history recorded the absence of Spring nor a robin mating with a bluebird or a frog. Nor has history ever reported a nest adorned with a porch, TV antenna, or swimming pool. Why not? Because just as the seasons must repeat cyclically, birds must likewise do what birds do. They possess no free will, hence must do as instinct dictates. Yet if evolution is true, one might reasonably expect to hear of extraordinary displacements upsetting the rhythm and pattern of the four seasons as well as to see evolved bird/frogs (brogs?) nesting in terraced penthouse nests.
Refusal to anchor the order in the Creator declares Stanly L. Jaki, cannot "but leave one with the fearful prospect of a radically random state of affairs. There stones would not regularly fall, but just as likely hang in mid-air or take off unexpectedly in any direction. There it would be most unlikely that the hatching of a chicken egg would yield a chick. There a flower would perpetuate its own kind only as an exceptional case. In other words, in a world severed from its Creator, lawfulness would be the miracle, that is, a most unexpected event." (Miracles and Physics, p. 29-30)
Truth is clearly on display when mating season arrives and each kind procreates, as they must. Anyone who spends time around animals, such as farmers , ranchers, and hunters knows this to be true. Never once has history recorded lions, cattle, deer, or horses, for example, refusing to procreate. Just as with birds, these animals lack free will and have no choice but to reproduce as instinct dictates. No, it's only mankind who can freely choose to either procreate or not; to nurture and love babies or to sacrificially kill them on behalf of the great god Hedon (sexual liberation), Mammon, 'saving Gaia', or some such pretext.
Truth says that over the long course of history, not once have stallions deserted their mares in order to 'go gay.' Nor has history ever witnessed even once, a titmouse dying its crest orange or purple nor a monkey putting rings through its nose, tongue, or naval. Truth reveals that only man possesses the free will to choose to pierce his body and do things contrary to nature, like 'coming out gay.'
Despite that truth can be clearly known by reason, Progressive evolutionists willfully disbelieve what they cannot help but know is true--- that mankind is only of two sexes and has free will, for instance.
"The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will..." Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970
"Everything, including that which happens in our brains, depends on these and only these: A set of fixed, deterministic laws. A purely random set of accidents." Marvin Minsky, artificial intelligence guru
"We are descended from robots; and composed of robots, and all the intentionality we enjoy is derived from the more fundamental intentionality of these billions of crude intentional systems." Daniel C. Dennett, Kinds of Minds
The Darwinian mythos, observed C.S. Lewis, is devised not to seek truth but to keep God out:
"More disquieting still is Professor D.M.S. Watson's defense. "Evolution itself," he wrote, "is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or...can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible." Has it come to that? Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend not on positive evidence but simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice. Was it devised not to get in facts but to keep out God?" (CS Lewis, The Oxford Socratic Club, 1944)
Death of America
Described by Alexis de Tocqueville as the freest most enlightened civilization in history, America was firmly founded on Judeo-Christian principles. John Adams (1735-1862), signer of the Declaration of Independence, main author of the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1780, Vice-President under George Washington, and 2nd President of the United States, concurs:
"The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence, were...the general Principles of Christianity...(1813, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson) Religion and Virtue are the only foundations...of republicanism and of all free government..." (http://summit.org/)
As early as 1896 however, Progressive intellectuals had begun the work of demolishing America's founding worldview. Liberal theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, leader of the Social Gospel movement, used the pulpit to preach a pantheistic, anti-individual liberty, anti-truth message. "Individualism means tyranny," sermonized Rauschenbusch, by which he meant that 'oneness' with nature (pantheism) brings salvation through a divinized God-State controlled by Progressive 'god men.' In this morally inverted view, moral good is submission to Progressive dictates while moral evil is dissent against it.
This morally-demented nonsense, writes Jonah Goldberg in his book "Liberal Fascism", laid the groundwork for the equally morally insane preachments proclaimed decades later by Marxist Frankfurt School intellectuals such as Herbert Marcuse in the 1960s---'oppressive freedom,' 'repressive tolerance,' 'defensive violence.' (Liberal Fascism, p. 86-87)
By the time of Pres. Woodrow Wilson's regime, Progressive intellectuals had speculatively replaced the living Creator with a pantheistic 'ineffable force' that works its black-magic 'inversion of morality and reality' through Darwinian evolution-magic. By waving the wizard's wand of evolution-magic over our Constitution---presto!---it 'came to life,' and now 'lives, breathes, and evolves.' Having unshackled themselves from universal moral law Progressives saw themselves as possessing a divine writ from their divinized ineffable force of nature (spoken of in public as God) for organized cruelty, immorality, lying, power-grabbing, and for furthering their work of destroying America's worldview foundations. Those who stood in the way of 'progress,' that is, the defenders of America's founding worldview and Constitutional Republic, were demonized as the 'other,' because says Goldberg, "they were by their very existence blocking the will to power that gave the mob and the avante garde...their reason for existence." (p. 85)
The world's first totalitarian regime was not Soviet Russia nor Italy under Mussolini. Neither was it Hitler's Nazi Germany. No, it was Progressive Fascist America under the Wilson regime, reveals Goldberg. Like Mussolini and Hitler who had jack-booted activist-enforcers at their beck and call, so too did Wilson. In Italy they were called Fascists. In Germany they were called National Socialists. In America, Wilson's badge-carrying goons were called progressives. Nothing has changed, for today, Obama's jack-booted goon squad activists are called progressives.
Viewing themselves as enlightened, scientific, and elite, the West's Progressives, noted Whittaker Chambers, had "rejected the religious roots" of its own civilization for a "new order of beliefs" of which Communism was "one logical expression." (George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, p. 253)
Though differing in degree, Progressive Liberalism nevertheless infects both right (RINOS, for example) and left and is merely the continuation of the 20th century's genocidal totalitarian irreligion. Their common foundation: some form of the Darwinian mythos disguised as science.
Darwinism denies the existence of the transcendent Permanent Things that, grounded in unchanging truth and reality, comprise this nation's founding worldview and give rise to our inalienable individual rights and enduring principles of liberty: our living Creator, Nature's Law, immutable truth, universal moral law, virtue, the individual thinker and 'choice-maker' made in the spiritual image of God, and even the two sexes, male and female. Progressive evolutionism tells us to believe that everything came into being by chance---accidentally, without meaning, purpose, or design-- from nonliving matter. Hence, since man is an accidental emergence from 'nothing', then he is in the image of 'nothing'. 'Nothing' has no free will, nor should man. 'Nothing' owns nothing, nor should man. And since 'nothing' is neither male nor female, then neither should man be, rather man ought to be 'gay,' another word for polymorphously perverse androgyny.
When all men have finally submitted to being ruthlessly pounded down into nothingness, egalitarianism (sameness), social justice and fairness will have been achieved and the immoralists Eden (sinners paradise)---hell on earth--has arrived.
Additionally, we are conditioned to believe that everything remains in continuous movement as it readies itself for the next quantum leap in evolution. By extension of this superstitious illogic, evidence is merely an illusion, for not only is continuous motion anathema to truth, fact, and reality, but these verities along with all activity of the mind (thought, imagination, memory, dreams) are of the immaterial (metaphysical) realm, which Darwinism claims does not exist. Hence the monstrously imbecilic claims made by willfully ignorant Darwinists regarding evidence, fact, and reality in support of evolution refutes evolution's main claim, that truth and reality cannot and do not exist. The foolish King not only has no clothes, but he has no mind!
How can this self-contradictory conundrum be explained?
Massively egoistic Progressive irreligionists immediately respond, "Sinless man is the measure of all things. Put your faith in him!"
But what does history record? It relates that in addition to seeing man choose to do things contrary to nature, it says that since the dawn of history, it has heard man tell lies over and over and over. Man, records history, lies to himself, and he lies to others.
"I do not want to believe in God," confessed Dr. George Wald, Nobel Prize winner and professor emeritus of biology at Harvard University. "Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution" Wald admitted to Scientific American magazine.
"I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores," confessed Sir Julian Huxley, former president of UNESCO and grandson of Darwin's colleague Thomas Huxley.
"We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom," concurred his brother, the late Aldous Huxley.
Writing to his friend and colleague Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin baldly confessed, "Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have devoted myself to a phantasy."
Darwinism---the Lie
In a letter to a friend, C.S. Lewis writes that he is right in "regarding (evolution) as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives..." However, Lewis astutely observes, "it is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders." (Letter to Bernard Acworth, Spt. 13, 1951)
Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
"We have to use any ruse, dodge, trick, cunning, unlawful method, concealment, and veiling of the truth." V.I. Lenin, progressive anti-hero
Today our Constitutional Republic, called the 'shining city on a hill' by Ronald Reagan, is on a dangerous fast-track to totalitarian socialism. What yet remains of our founding worldview and Constitutional Republic is rapidly suffocating and dying under an ever-expanding interlocking matrix of lies, from small lies to Big Lies, all of which are defended by the 'fanatical and twisted' tellers of them---immoralist Progressive power-grabbers at every level of government and society who willfully disbelieve what they cannot help but know to be true. As frightful and evil as this prospect is, there is more. The Progressive dream of utopia is fueled by Gnostic Manichaeism. In this demonically-occluded view, Progressive believers are 'sinless and good' while the 'others' (Conservatives, the Right, all defenders of American tradition) are automatically evil. Ridding the world of evil becomes a matter of purging it of both the evil others and utterly destroying Western civilization. Toward this goal, Progressives have forged an unholy alliance with Islam. Jamie Glazov writes, "Upon the foundation of their hatred for the United States, its members have forged their alliance with radical Islam, whose wellspring of anti-American hatred runs just as deep. In word and deed, both of these allies make it plain that they consider everything about Western civilization to be evil and unworthy of preservation; that they wish to see freedom and individual rights crushed by any means necessary, including violent revolution." (United in Hate, pp. xx-xxi)
What sort of people are immoralists? In the words of Alexis de' Tocqueville they are "they who obey the dictates of their passion..." In other words, they obey everything from virulently inflated narcissism (god man megalomania, psychopathology) and lust for power to sexually perverted lusts, covetousness, gluttony, hatred, resentment, and envy---all fueled by will to power. In this light, political correctness, multiculturalism, hate crime laws and speech codes are seen for what they are: anti-social pathologies translated into politics and perverted law.
John Adams prescient warning speaks to our own time:
" We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." (1798)"
The Road Home
C.E.M. Joad, a 20th century progressive philosopher, spent most of his life proclaiming his distaste for the great I AM, the doctrine of Original Sin, and the transcendent Permanent Things. As a Progressive he wholeheartedly embraced revolutionary doctrine and the necessity for socialism. It was the genocide, catastrophic destruction, and massive suffering unleashed by application of Progressive ideas under direction of sinless men unshackled from God and moral law that led to Joad's eventual rejection of Progressivism. In a book entitled The Recovery of Belief, Joad documented his transfer of allegiance from Progressivism and evolution back to Christianity, special creation and the Permanent Things that made this nation the freest most enlightened nation in the history of the world.
Joad wisely repented of the dark "dream of destroying the world...and building a utopia on its ashes---that has shaped and represented the modern progressive movement." (Jamie Glazov, United in Hate, p. 2)
Not so Lenin. Only after Russia flowed with the blood of millions of people and his hands were darkly red with their blood would he finally admit:
"I committed a great error. My nightmare is to have the feeling that I'm lost in an ocean of blood from the innumerable victims. It is too late to return. To save our country, Russia, we would have needed men like Francis of Assisi..." (Richard Wurmbrand, Marx and Satan, p. 50)
Copyright Linda Kimball 2009
Additional Sources:
Darwin Day in America, John G. West
The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard, Ph.D. & Denyse O'Leary
Why Academics Embrace Evolution, Marylou Barry, WND, Apr. 27, 2009
Permanent Things, Andrew Tadie & Michael MacDonald
The Deadliest Monster, J.F. Baldwin
Linda is the author of numerous published articles and essays on culture, politics, and worldview. Her writings are published both nationally and internationally. Linda is a team member of Grassfire, New Media Alliance, and MoveOff.
“Objectivism is nothing more than naturalism dressed up...”
You’re right there. I should have used the term “not ‘materialism’” instead, something that implies the impossibility of free will without something spiritual to “animate” it as Irish says.
In short, Rand’s thoughts “were” herself. Absence evidence that no randomness exists in nature, there’s no reason to believe that her thoughts were determined by anything outside the dynamics of her conscious and its physical basis (aka: herself). Environment of course “influences” us, but Objectivism assumes that there is enough randomness in the world (and in our skulls) so that we own ourselves.
Typically, many who seek to misrepresent the Objectivist position on this issue, by trying to charge that Objectivism stands for ontological materialism, make the mistake of assuming the false alternatives involved in monism — and indeed are often just hawking their particular religious views, which they hold on faith and not by reason, but which they seek to smuggle into the discussion of philosophical issues. By trying to associate the natural exclusively with the material, such religionists hope to pave the way for their version of reductive spiritualism and supernaturalism. Since Objectivism rejects monism and the false alternatives of materialism and idealism/mysticism from the start, this dishonest tactic does not succeed. It must only be pointed out.If seems to me it is not the "religionists" who are hoping to reduce the natural to the material, so to "pave the way for their version of reductive spiritualism and supernaturalism." [Reductive???] They are just the ones who notice that it is the atheists who specialize in this sort of thing. Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism, was an atheist. As such, she had all the fashionable atheist presuppositions, the most famous being that faith and reason are absolutely mutually exclusive entities. She ever purported to be "Aristotelian" in her methods, while excoriating Plato, Aristotle's own teacher, for his "idealism," not to mention his putative fascist tendencies. She evidently did not see that both men saw just the same thing, albeit from different perspectives: That is, at bottom, the world is as it is because it is the creature of a divine will and intelligence that emanates from outside the natural world system. Both recognized that "creature" manifests "form." Plato put creature-specifying Form outside of or "beyond" nature; Aristotle, within the creature itself. In either case, "Form" for both of them remains a metaphysical entity that specifies all the particular living systems in the (immanent) natural world.
I just think the woman was terribly confused....
In any case, you mention that you couldn't tell whether the belief in naturalism or idealism came first. The question strikes me as anhistorical to begin with. For if we want to know the answer to that question, we have to go back to the original sources of the ancient world. And if we do that, we have to interpret them in light of the meaning and intent of their authors — who will not have been applying such modern categories as "naturalism" and "materialism" or "idealism" to their efforts, nor had they ever heard of "the scientific method."
To clarify this, C. S. Lewis drew the distinction between the "use" of a text, and the "reception" of a text.
In An Experiment in Criticism Lewis draws an important distinction between “using” and “receiving” the text. If we are to understand an ancient text, or any text for that matter, we must get out of the way. We must toss all our culturally and historically conditioned biases aside and “receive” the text in the manner in which the author intended. When we approach ... [a] text, we must read it in the light of its own cultural, historical and literary context. Since modern scientific and historical precision were foreign to the ancient writers, we must not hold them to such standards.Of course, this is the very opposite of what the literary deconstructionists recommend.... But it seems to me that Ayn Rand has taken a page from their book. She must, for it seems she uses Aristotle as some kind of ventriloquists's dummy, through which to speak her own thoroughly disordered and distorted ideas.
Anyhoot, I'm not an Objectivist (as you can see). I'm also not a Libertarian, through I am so often sympathetic to their views. As long as they keep taking "pot shots" at religious believers in general, and Christians in particular, I can find no home among them. FWIW
I love articles like this!
“If evolution were true, then [this thing that has nothing to do with evolution] would happen! Evolution tells us to expect [something that evolution doesn’t predict at all]. Everyone laugh at stupid evolution because these things don’t happen.”
Linda doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
But she's pretentious. Doesn't that count for something?
As if this were remotely possible. It should be clear to any reasonable person that it is not. And reasonable people know that absent an absolute standard, reason itself would be powerless.
Thank you oh so very much for your wonderful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!
And kudos for the laying bare the materialist worldview with Russell as your prime example!!!
First, I’m blown away that you’d actually read “The Monist/Reductionist Fallacy”. It shows an uncommon degree of courage.
I think that the term “reductive” was used to describe the supposed alternative to idealism as materialism rather than naturalism. That eliminates all energies, forces, dimensions and transitions between them and matter (both known and unknown) so that a supernatural force becomes a more compelling necessity for consciousness. I think that’s why he points to reductionism by theists (not to be confused with atheistic deconstructionists).
I’m no authority regarding faith. My understanding of the Christian view in short is that it is what is necessary after reason has been exhausted and a choice of direction must still be made. Assuming that’s accurate enough for this discussion, I think Rand believed that religions promote a premature arrival at that conclusion, and she clearly didn’t give them the benefit of the doubt as to why.
Regarding Rand’s divergence from Aristotle on form and identification, that may be the most revolutionary (yet simple) concept in Objectivism, that “forms” or patterns exist and we simply identify them and create concepts of those patterns. It was ridiculously simple (A = A) but infinitely controversial because it eliminated the need for divine guidance in either Aristotle’s form conceptualization or Plato’s form creation. It eliminated previously well reasoned arguments that forms were impossible without the divine. I don’t know whether it was the profound implications of that or just Rand’s blatantly confrontational personality that made her such a target, but the whole thing certainly snowballed.
I’m not aware of Rand’s reliance on Aristotle as some kind of “ventriloquist dummy”. If nothing else can be said about her, she took ownership of her own words rather than relaying on authority. She claimed Aristotle’s most profound achievement was defining an independent objective reality (denying Plato’s world of forms, a “shadow projection controlled by a divine dimension” as she said).
“Let us note… the radical difference between Aristotle’s view of concepts and the Objectivist view, particularly in regard to the issue of essential characteristics.She called Aristotle “the father of logic”, the “philosophical Atlas who carries the whole of Western civilization on his shoulders”. But just as our understanding of what makes up the “essence” of an object has progressed, she didn’t consider his work to be the end of the road in how we identify that essence. In line with Lewis’s thinking, we can still appreciate and “receive” Aristotle’s description of form as a historical achievement. But I think it would be absurd to believe it following our understanding of molecular structure.It is Aristotle who first formulated the principles of correct definition. It is Aristotle who identified the fact that only concretes exist. But Aristotle held that definitions refer to metaphysical “essences”, which exist “in” concretes as a special element or formative power, and he held that the process of concept-formation depends on a kind of direct intuition by which man’s mind grasps these essences and forms concepts accordingly.
Aristotle regarded “essence” as a metaphysical; Objectivism regards it as epistemological.” [ITOE, 68]
FWIW, We probably hold similar opinions of Libertarians. And technically, I’m probably not an Objectivist either. Like anyone, Rand made mistakes, just a lot fewer than myself unfortunately.
BTW, I think that people in all ideologies take way too many pot shots at one another. I resist the urge to join the “us vs. them” mentality until someone starts throwing more than insults.
Good talking with you BB, but this takes more time than I’ll likely be able to continue.
Information codes do not just happen. The evolution debate should have been over the day DNA and RNA were discovered.
But this entire set-up seems so strange to me. For the "supposed alternative" to idealism would be neither materialism nor naturalism — which are both severe reductions of nature in doctrinal form — but realism.
Just to clarify terms, materialism is the doctrine that all things in the universe ultimately reduce to "matter in its motions" according to the physical laws, in a directionless or non-purposeful process. Naturalism simply states that all natural objects must have natural causes exclusively.
I don't think Piekoff or Rand disagree with naturalism. For both seemed preoccupied with that they called the "supernatural," and held it in contempt. Indeed, it is the reason, I suspect, they hold Christians in contempt, for believing in "supernatural" (and thus fictitious on their view) things. These Christians, therefore, must be irrational people! From this they derive that faith and reason are mutually exclusive, and that only reason can be trusted. They deny on a priori grounds that religious belief could ever be "reasonable." At best, they allow it to be a palliative for the existential angst of morons.
Sigh.... I see I'm grinding my ax again. Sorry, elfman2!
To get back on-track, let's look at idealism and realism. Both are tough to define because even philosophers do not all agree on what they refer to. The dictionary defines idealism as "the theory that the object of external perception, in itself or as perceived, consists of ideas." The philosophers Kant and Hegel are often classified as idealists.
The dictionary defines realism as "the doctrine that universal principles are more real than objects as sensed.... names somehow denote the essences of things or categories of things." By this definition, Plato would be a realist — although many people classify Plato as an idealist (Rand does).
Neither idealism nor realism gives priority to sense perception, a key ingredient of the scientific method. Realism suggests that objects exist independently of our observation or thoughts about them. They are what they are according to their organizational principle, which is immaterial and superior to them. Idealism suggests that objects are the reification of ideas, that is, of thoughts. Thus the world and all its contents is (somehow) the manifestation of Thought. In both cases we are speaking of systems of causation with immaterial, non-"natural" sources.
So I think it's safe to say that neither Rand nor Piekoff was either an idealist or a realist. It seems their ideas correspond to naturalism.
I don't understand the statement that materialism "eliminates all energies, forces, dimensions and transitions between them [Christians???] and matter (both known and unknown) so that a supernatural force becomes a more compelling necessity for consciousness." Christians, like all other human beings, and indeed all existents in nature, have physical bodies composed of matter. Matter operates with "energies, forces, dimensions and transitions"; the activities of matter are constantly going on in our physical bodies all the time, and at astronomical rates. Christians are not freaked out by such facts regarding the body. What probably separates a Christian from a Randian, however, is that where a Christian would say, "I have a body," the Randian would say, "I am my body." [Looks to me like the "reductionism" here is coming from the Randian side.]
But since there is no known natural source for human consciousness, it is unreasonable to expect that consciousness, and especially self-consciousness, arises from material, bodily states — unreasonable on the basis of the total lack of evidence to support such a view. If the cause or source of consciousness is not "material," as it appears, then consciousness, mind, thinking, reason, etc., are not subject to the laws that govern matter. They are "supra"-natural; or even "super"-natural in this sense.
In short, Christians are committed to the idea that the human person is an ensouled body. (They weren't the first to think this, BTW. The classical philosophers and Jewish scholars thought this, too.) The body is finite and perishes; the soul (mind, consciousness, spirit, heart) is infinite, immortal and imperishable. Science can corroborate that the body is, indeed, finite. But it has no method for addressing the phenomenon of soul — because soul is intangible, non-material, and completely nonsusceptible to direct observation.
Anyhoot, it seems to me that Christians not only do not try to "reduce" the world to make it fit their comfort zone, rather they do the very opposite. I think Rand and Piekoff have constructed a "strawman" on which to beat. I can't for the life of me figure out why they would want to do that.
Thank you so very much, elfman2, for the interesting discussion!
P.S.: To the extent that Objectivism regards "essence" as merely "epistemological," it is flirting with idealism, which conditions everything on the act of knowing (which is part of the subject matter of epistemology), not on the presupposition that things exist independently of our knowing them (the realist position).
As you say, science has “has no method for addressing the phenomenon of soul”. That’s because science makes no claim that it exists. A soul (or consciousness as an entity) is a religious creation. Now that this religious invention is incompatible with the natural world, it’s supposedly evidence that Objectivist epistemology is misguided and that God must exists? Come on, a slight of had like that should be taken to Vegas.
The evidence that self awareness is naturally possible is that it exists in nature. Even some animals have self awareness The burden of proof that it’s a creation of the supernatural lies with those making the claim.
“And consciousness is a natural attribute of certain living entities, their natural power, their specific mode of action--not an unaccountable element in a mechanistic universe, to be explained away somehow in terms of inanimate matter, nor a mystic miracle incompatible with physical reality, to be attributed to some occult source in another dimension.” – Rand’s review of Herman Randall's book Aristotle.
The key word there is consciousness as an “attribute” rather than an entity.
The “transitions” I referred to was between components of nature, not between natural components and Christians, although I didn’t mean to leave them out. I’m sure you guys transition too ;^)
I’d post some theist rips on atheism in response to atheists’ mistreatment of Christianity if that would ease your pain, but do we really want to go there?
“P.S.: To the extent that Objectivism regards “essence” as merely “epistemological,” it is flirting with idealism.”
So if I put a straight string of dots on a piece of paper and you label it “a line”, you needed divine intervention to identifying that “essence”?
I know it’s simple, but that’s an example of concept formation, one that then build upon its own conclusions to form letters, literature etc... It’s no more complicated than that.
Thank you so very much for your wonderful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!
I don't think of a straight string of dots as finding its "essence" in a straight line (sounds kinda metaphysical to me...). This suggests that dot strings find their "fulfillment" in the line. ("Analog" would be a better word than "fulfillment" here, IMHO.) Whatever the case, sometimes our problem requires that we think in terms of dots (points), and sometimes in terms of line. Thus the two are non-equivalent, and not in a condition where one's essence lies in or depends on the other. Point and line have meanings of their own, and typically are associated with different dimensions; point, zero dimensions; line, one dimension.
If you're interested in concept formation, I'd recommend Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (See, e.g., his remarks on synthetic a priori concepts), and not the Objectivist literature.
How come you slipped "divine intervention" into this piece? Just because I'm Christian? I feel reasonably sure that God is confident that the gift of reason He indued in me from creation is sufficient for me to handle problems like this.
Also it cannot make any claim that the soul does not exist — that can be corroborated by the scientific method. Nor can you demonstrate that it is a mere "religious invention." What actual evidence do you have for this?
I am very well aware that the lower animals have a form of self-awareness. I've been fascinated by some of the studies I've been reading involving the "remembering" and "learning capabilities" of the amoeba, and other unicellular life forms.
But to argue that all living beings possess some form of sentience, or awareness, or consciousness in some degree (as I hazard to do) is proof of a naturalistic origin of consciousness is a complete non sequitur. You say this, but you can't show this. If consciousness is universal in living systems, all the more reason to doubt it has a naturalistic cause. For finite things do not constitute universal things.
I disagree that consciousness is an "attribute." Philosophy generally regards attributes as accidental, rather than substantial qualities. Substantial qualities inhere in the very nature or essence of a thing, or what defines it as being what it is. For example, WRT a rectangular solid, its extension, susceptibility to gravity, and like considerations are its substantial properties. (I.e., it cannot lose these properties and still be a rectangular solid.) Accidental properties of the solid might be things like its color, or its surface texture — things that could go missing without detracting away from the idea of a rectangular solid.
My own view is that consciousness is a substantial, not an accidental property of living systems. For the very idea of a living system predicates consciousness.
You wrote, "I’d post some theist rips on atheism in response to atheists’ mistreatment of Christianity if that would ease your pain, but do we really want to go there?"
I didn't come here for a food fight, elfman2. I came here for a rational debate. And I am not in pain.
betty boop. If movement for instance “is universal in living systems”, is that also “all the more reason to doubt it has a naturalistic cause”. Of course not. That needs to be rethought.
Consciousness grows more apparent in higher animals. It corresponds to regions of brain development that we see light up during mental processing. We study how it's diminished from various brain injuries. Evidence points to it as a process like “running”, “revolving”, “computing”. I just looked up what’s available and found the second and third review of The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach to be interesting.
The burden of proof for the existence of a soul (or anything else) is on those promoting it. Science (like myself) simply disregards it. If the soul's possible existence is to be considered evidence based, its proponents need to present evidence.
I’m not aware of philosophy regarding attributes as accidental. Every characteristic, property and every adjective AFAIK is an attribute.
This explains why we revolted and went to war with England. The Church of England was obviously anti-creationist.
betty boop. Of course you have the capability to identify and distinguish existents and to conceptualize patterns. You’re making my point. Most simple identification has been done subconsciously since you were an infant. Some is probably instinctual. But Plato and Aristotle didn’t have the science to understand molecules, forces, protons and neurons so they imagined otherworldly mechanisms (divine intervention) that reflected form onto matter or that allowed us to perceive an “essence” in it. Rand used the term “essence” tongue in cheek in that quote above.
That example of a line for instance… It’s composed of existents that we’ve distinguished and named electrons and protons. We’ve identified their various arrangements and forces in their relationships and named them molecules. We rearranged them into a new version of what we call pigments, and ordered them into a specific instance of a pattern that we conceptualize as a line. It’s an amazing process, but there’s no reason I’m aware of to believe that it doesn’t occur naturally. Absent that, evidence supporting natural explanations is compelling.
The term “divine intervention” is not a slight. There should be no problem with people believing in it, only with calling it evidence based. Just don’t misrepresent evidence supported natural explanations as misguided or faith-based. Have enough confidence in your ideology without needing to misrepresent mine.
elfman2 replies: betty boop, If movement for instance “is universal in living systems,” is that also “all the more reason to doubt it has a naturalistic cause.” Of course not. That needs to be rethought.
Okay. Let’s rethink it. But let me clear about your presupposition here. You appear to allege that movement and consciousness are "like" phenomena (i.e., they are "alike" each other); and being a naturalist (I gather), you view both as purely “natural” phenomena.
Now movement does indeed appear to be a “natural” phenomenon. Absolutely everything in nature is moving all the time, at all levels from the microscopic to the macroscopic. We perceive it to be the result of cause-and-effect relations as natural bodies come into proximity with each other. And then the natural (mechanical/physical/chemical) laws kick in to determine what happens next. This is essentially the classical or Newtonian view, which pertains to a 3-space (three-dimensional) universe. [I contend that human beings do not live in a three-dimensional universe. But I'll save that argument for another time.]
Some questions immediately arise: Where did the natural laws come from? Are they themselves the products of nature? And, if so, since nature is ever-changing, how do we explain how these laws acquired their leading characteristic of changelessness and universality? [This speaks to my contention that “finite things do not constitute universal things.”]
An even more interesting question (to me) is epistemological in character. As you know epistemology is the science of knowledge and knowing. It asks the questions: What do I know? How do I know it? And how do I know I know it? You might think such are tiresome, merely pedantic questions. And yet the very foundations of truthful knowledge depend on them.
The interesting epistemological question pertains to the so-called law of cause-and-effect itself, of which the universal phenomenon of movement is the by-product. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume analyzed this question as follows:
All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses…. I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other….Hume was sensible of “the strange infirmities of human understanding, even in its most perfect state, and when most accurate and cautious in its determinations.” He attributes this infirmity to the apparent fact that “the mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connection is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning.”When it is asked, What is the nature of all our reasonings concerning matters of fact? the proper answer seems to be, that they are founded on the relation of cause and effect. When again it is asked, What is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions concerning this relation? it may be replied in one word: Experience. But if we still carry on our sifting humour, and ask What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience? this implies a new question, which may be of more difficult solution and explication…. [E]ven after we have experience of the operations of cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are not founded on reasoning, or on any process of the understanding….
As to past Experience, it can be allowed to give direct and certain information of … precise objects only, and that precise period of time, which fell under its cognizance: but why this experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which, for aught we know, may be only in appearance similar; this is the main question….
These two propositions are far from being the same, I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, and I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects. I shall allow … that the one proposition may justly be inferred from the other; I know, in fact, that it always is inferred. But if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning….
To put it in a nutshell, Hume avers the so-called universal law of cause and effect is fundamentally a matter of human habit or custom, based on experience, rather than anything necessarily intrinsic in the natural world. If there is an intrinsic connection between our perceptions of the world and the actual facts of reality, there is no way for the human mind to discover it by either observation or reason, let alone “prove” it.
Further, what “reality” can be captured by the human mind is based on perceptions of unique, concrete events, which are then extrapolated from the unique (in space and time) to the universal (spaceless and timeless). If Hume is correct in his view — that all human beings can ever know is based on sense, memory, and past experience — it is a great leap to simply presume that the constant basis of human experience never changes, such that our past experiences will always be a reliable guide to predicting and understanding future events.
In short, human reason itself has limits which cannot be overcome. Far from being the “god” that many modern intellectuals have made it, there are things in nature which are not accessible to reason, or explicable by it. Such an observation is confirmed simply by reference to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, or to Heisenberg’s uncertainty (indeterminacy) principle.
Uncertainty is an absolute fact of life. It simply cannot be gotten rid of by the operations of human reason. Even the “exact sciences” are not “exact.” This being the case, we do well to recall that the universal laws of nature are not themselves so much causal, as descriptive. The only reason they look like laws is because that which they describe has a given form, a pattern, an order, a structure which experience, but not reason, can confirm.
And it is evident to me that such an order or structure cannot be the result of a concatenation of random natural events in three-dimensional reality.
The takeaway is: Reason goes wrong when our presuppositions are faulty. Therefore, we must always be willing to test our presuppositions. But this is rarely done nowadays.
To reconnect with our original question, part of its answer is: Movement, though ubiquitous and universal, is not a universal, in the sense of a law of nature. Rather it appears to be an "effect" of the cause-effect relation which, as Hume suggests, is an artifact of limited human observation, experience, and custom. If it's an "effect," it can't also be a "law." For an effect takes place in space and time, and a law validly operates without reference to space and time. In other words, a law is a true universal.
What of consciousness? It seems that you want to make consciousness merely an epiphenomenon of physical brain activity. If true, this would have the virtue of placing consciousness firmly within the naturalistic framework of cause and effect — i.e., all "super"-natural causes are ruled out a priori. This view holds the brain is simply doing what brains do according to the physico-chemical laws, and what we call consciousness is simply an ineffectual by-product of its activity, of no real consequence. With respect to the brain you say that “evidence points to it as a process like “running,” “revolving,” “computing.” And that’s an interesting, if ultimately misleading analogy.
For a computer has nothing to do until an intelligent agent comes along and gives it a task to perform. Plus to say that the mind or consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain does not at all explain how an epiphenomenon can serve as a cause of events in the objective world exterior to ourselves. And yet this “epiphenomenon” has been known to cause all kinds of hell to break loose in our world. That is the thrust of the saying, “Ideas have consequences.”
The question then becomes: Are such ideas the brain’s ideas? What would motivate the brain to entertain such questions as, e.g., love and war, the nature of reality, the condition and fate of humanity?
If the brain is a natural physical object (as seems clear), then it is conditioned wholly by the physico-chemical laws of nature. Where in these laws is there any basis that could motivate and enable the brain to entertain such topics?
Especially since they are such enormously vast and complex topics? New insights from information science suggest the physical brain (as a computer-like system) likely would be wholly overtaxed by the sort of questions posed above. For now it is widely recognized that the algorithmic complexity of the physical laws which explain brain activity is remarkably low. (The mathematician Gregory Chaitin estimates it as ~1,000 bits.) And then you bump into Kahre’s Law of Diminishing Information (Kahre, 2002), which states that physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than was present at their input. Thus, to put the matter very crudely, the brain ain’t smart enuf to write Shakespeare….
One last point: “…if our thought processes are determined, we have no basis for rationality. So if we are to take reason seriously, we must assume that humans are nondetermined creatures. This point is particularly significant when we recall that a free action is one that is explained in terms of reasons, which … are distinct from causes.” [Burson & Walls, C. S. Lewis & Francis Schaeffer, 1998, p. 104]
You wrote, “The burden of proof for the existence of a soul (or anything else) is on those promoting it. Science (like myself) simply disregards it. If the soul’s possible existence is to be considered evidence based, its proponents need to present evidence.” Each of the above considerations, to me, serves as evidence the hypothesis that the brain is what “thinks” is, to put it mildly, fundamentally and fatally flawed. For myself, I think it more reasonable to entertain the hypothesis that the brain is the “tool” or instrument that the mind (or consciousness) uses. In the degree that our thoughts have consequences in external reality, we can’t say consciousness is “merely” an epiphenomenon of the brain, giving rise to illusions only, which by naturalist definition can have no causal effect, because ultimately they are unreal.
And thus we get into the domain of the soul; or perhaps we should just refer to it by its ancient Greek name, psyche, thus to denude the term of specifically religious connotations. I’ll start by observing that the scientist who begins by asserting the non-existence of the psyche effectively involves himself in self-contradiction and ultimately self-denial. For if the psyche does not exist, and only the physically-determined material brain does, then for all the above reasons, not only could there be no reason in the world, but there is also no “subject” (thinker) to have any thoughts about the world, or any ability to communicate his observations and insights to any other person, or enter into reality as a causal agent.
For psyche — soul — is an autonomous, enduring, and durable complex of feeling, sentience, consciousness, and cognition. Both the hard-nosed philosophical pragmatist, medical doctor and psychologist William James, and the scholastic philosopher and churchman Antonio Rosmini, seem to be in agreement on this definition. James won’t call this autonomous cognitive center “soul” (he was constitutionally allergic to anything he considered “metaphysical"); he simply calls it “Thought.” But as they say, “a rose by any other name….”
By the way, James’ method was intensively experimental. It was on the basis of replicable experiments and observation that he concluded the phenomenal reality of this thing he called (not “self,” not “I,” not “ego,” not “soul”), but Thought.
Well I see that I’ve run on long here. Time to put a sock in it! (For now.) Thank you, elfman2, for raising such fascinating topics, and for your kindness in engaging them with me.
Excellent post, betty!
“For myself, I think it more reasonable to entertain the hypothesis that the brain is the “tool” or instrument that the mind (or consciousness) uses.”
I have always believed the same thing.
I'm pretty spent after my last, so will be brief here. (Yay!)
WRT the above italics: Granted Plato and Aristotle did not have knowledge of "molecules, forces, protons and neurons" [they did have atoms, thanks to Democritus and Leucippus]. Does this mean they were not world-class thinkers, or that their ground-breaking work — on which so much human knowledge rests throughout history, across all knowledge disciplines — really has no value? You say it was from "ignorance" that they posited "otherwordly mechanisms." What they were saying is that, on the basis of their own observations and rational analyses, the purely "natural" does not explain itself all by itself. A logos — a rational principle — is involved in some way in everything that exists. Rational principles are not supplied by nature itself; nature, rather, is the manifestation of them. What occurs "naturally" is that form manifests as existent beings. But form itself is a "non-existent entity" — it has the quality of a universal.
I wouldn't sneeze on an analysis like that. To me, it accounts for a very great deal of what I observe and experience in Nature.
My real point in raising the Christianity issue in the first place was not because I feel I have to justify myself to you as a Christian, but because I object to anti-Christian bigotry. I find it utterly irrational. (Not to mention ignorant.) And I think to the extent that Libertarians indulge in this sort of thing, they alienate a great many potential allies.
But maybe thinking Libs and Cons actually working together for a change is too much to ask for. Personally, I'm usually with Libertarians on most issues. But I have to draw the line on Life issues. And that's non-negotiable.
Thanks ever so much for writing, elfman2!
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