Posted on 11/06/2003 7:34:45 PM PST by Heartlander
Two words, Dernavitch: "Chaos Theory." Get a clue!
Get the appearance of a clue…
That "A" and "B" are the same thing. And that the true nature of an event or a thing is not affected by the language we assign to it. If you want a rejoinder to the above article, by the way, that was it, in one sentence.
Is there an intelligent design to it all or mindlessness?
I don't know. If there is a design, though, I believe that it is likely much more subtle than anyone has yet suggested, and that God is not nearly so hamfisted as most design theorists make him out to be.
Even more precisely, we've been here before.
:^)
He probably could have done away with the first part, which seems mostly to be intended to introduce the topic of unacknowledged assumptions. Then again, it's entirely possible that I'm reading my own opinions into his words....
I realize that's a fairly common assessment, but the reality is that, like all scientific theories, evolutionary theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is entirely silent on the matter of how we should live our lives, or should behave towards others, or should function as a society.
The author himself acknowledges that. The problem comes in when a materialist or objectivist begins to address the question of how we should live our lives, etc. (And we have yet to discuss why such a thing is even necessary.) On what foundation might a materialist build his moral system? How would he identify what was moral or immoral, and on what basis could he conclude that a competing moral system was wrong?
A materialist's choices for constructing a moral system are pretty limited: he can make something up, he can go by what "feels right," or he can go by what he sees in the world. (A theistic approach offers another option: God can tell us what's right and wrong.)
Of these, the latter can be supported by scientific evidence concerning how beings should act and interact. It's easy to see that the natural world apparently works according to the mechanisms of evolution, which leads to conclusions that are inimical to what we would construe to be right and wrong.
And anyone who claims that the theory of evolution, in and of itself, either justifies or proscribes some behavior is committing a category error of the first degree.
There's no error here -- nobody is saying that evolution, in and of itself, justifies or proscribes anything. It's just that we're not addressing the theory in a vacuum. Instead, we're embarked on a search for morality -- sets of rules for how beings ought to interact. In that case the interactions and processes contained within the theory of evolution are quite relevant to the moral question, because we've got to somehow decide whether or not the evolutionary behavior we observe is morally correct. (And, as our PETA friends would tell you, this question is not necessarily limited to interactions between humans, but might include human interaction with other species.)
We are struggling with the problem of deciding how people should live their lives. The first step in that process is to decide upon a set of moral goals, of which the theory of evolution suggests a goodly number, including "the good of the species," and "might makes right." Neither of these are particularly consistent with the idea of individual rights, but both of them are observably important in the natural scheme of things.
There are of course different materialistic approaches such as, for example, an economic argument based on Western successes (though in so doing, we would have to dodge the theistic basis of Western morality and its related economic successes). But that merely gives credence to the idea of moral relativism, since the requirement for evidence would also lead a materialist to acknowledge the viability -- and thus the legitimacy -- of "might makes right."
What materialists cannot do, is arrive at the tidy set of "derived by reason, no initiation of force or fraud" sorts of principles so beloved by objectivists of the Randian or otherwise libertarian stripe.
Your words become less than characters.
OK. And to take a step back: how beings and things dointeract, is not a theory in a vaccum but the product of human thinking. It is anthropological, selective, historical, and concerns itself with consensus.
There's always the middle ground of an object constructed for the express purpose of enabling evil (pick any medieval torture device). Sure, it was the creator of the object who's evil, and the object is, after all, inanimate. But at the same time the object is an embodiment of evil, and may well evoke in its viewers the very response intended by the evildoer.
For example, both an iron maiden, and the castle outside of which it's hanging, may be inanimate objects, but they would most likely evoke a feeling of dread (or moral outrage) in passers-by. There is no "actor" in that scenario, merely the recognition of the evil purposes to which those items are intended to by put.
So are the objects "evil?" Probably not, but they act upon us as if they, and not their user, were evil.
Does your conscious mind have the appearance of order or chaos?
It's true they're the same event. However, from a moral, metaphysical point of view they're quite different.
Case "A" applies equally well to a snowflake landing on a radiator, or a fly hitting a windshield, as it does to the interaction between humans. There's no intrinsic moral content to it.
Case "B," on the other hand, has undoubted moral implications, by virtue of the fact that it deals with humans, as opposed to inanimate objects.
Dernavich's question is: Why does Case "B" have moral implications, whereas Case "A" does not?
They do that for themselves. When it comes to order, appearance really is everything.
Does your conscious mind have the appearance of order or chaos?
Mine does a good imitation of chaos.
Now you explain Santa Claus. How big is that sleigh?
I already did one, remember? It's your turn.
You have not explained anything.
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