Our friend John Farrell has caused a bit of a stir in the blogosphere with his recent Forbes piece on modern biology and the doctrine of original sin. Citing some remarks by Jerry Coyne, John tells us that he agrees with Coyne’s view that the doctrine is “easily falsified by modern genetics,” according to which “modern humans descended from a group of no fewer than 10,000 individuals” rather than just two individuals. Those who have responded to John’s piece include Michael Liccione, Bill Vallicella (here and here), James Chastek, and Mike Flynn.
Several things puzzle me about John’s article. The first, of course, is why he would take seriously anything Jerry Coyne has to say about theology. (We’ve seen ample evidence that Coyne is an ignoramus on the subject -- some of the relevant links are gathered here.) The second is why John seems to think that the falsification of the doctrine of original sin is something the Catholic Church could “adapt” to. (John’s article focuses on Catholicism.) After all, the doctrine is hardly incidental. It is de fide -- presented as infallible teaching -- and it is absolutely integral to the structure of Catholic theology. If it were wrong, then Catholic theology would be incoherent and the Church’s teaching authority would be undermined. Hence, to give it up would implicitly be to give up Catholicism, not merely “adapt” it to modern science.
In fairness to John, it seems he may have been speaking imprecisely. He says, for example, that Eastern Orthodoxy does not accept the doctrine, which (as Bill Vallicella has pointed out) is not true. What is true is that Eastern Orthodoxy does not agree with the Catholic way of spelling out the doctrine. So, perhaps John would allow that it is not the doctrine of original sin per se that is in his view problematic, but only the Catholic understanding of the doctrine. Still, at least one of the aspects of the doctrine that John apparently objects to -- the claim that there was an original pair of human beings through whom sin entered the world -- is also traditionally taught by Eastern Orthodoxy. And whatever one says about Eastern Orthodox and other non-Catholic approaches to original sin, the point remains that if John were right, Catholicism would be in trouble.
But John is not right, and the third thing that puzzles me about his article is why he seems to think the evidence cited by Coyne is obviously incompatible with the doctrine of original sin. After all, the question of human origins is not a matter to which biological considerations alone are relevant. Metaphysical considerations are at least as important -- indeed, they are more important, as we shall see -- and when they are factored in it can easily be shown that there is no incompatibility between the doctrine of original sin and modern biology. Nor is the biological evidence something that the Church must now scramble to “adapt” herself to in order to salvage the doctrine. In fact the subject is one that was addressed long ago, by (among other theologians) Neo-Scholastic thinkers writing in the era of Pope Pius XII’s Humani Generis, who tended to approach the issue from a broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) point of view. (Unlike Coyne, John has knowledge of Scholastic and A-T philosophy and theology, so it is surprising that he does not consider the possibility that the answers to the questions he raises might be found in these writers.)
But John is not right, and the third thing that puzzles me about his article is why he seems to think the evidence cited by Coyne is obviously incompatible with the doctrine of original sin. After all, the question of human origins is not a matter to which biological considerations alone are relevant. Metaphysical considerations are at least as important -- indeed, they are more important, as we shall see -- and when they are factored in it can easily be shown that there is no incompatibility between the doctrine of original sin and modern biology. Nor is the biological evidence something that the Church must now scramble to “adapt” herself to in order to salvage the doctrine. In fact the subject is one that was addressed long ago, by (among other theologians) Neo-Scholastic thinkers writing in the era of Pope Pius XII’s Humani Generis, who tended to approach the issue from a broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) point of view. (Unlike Coyne, John has knowledge of Scholastic and A-T philosophy and theology, so it is surprising that he does not consider the possibility that the answers to the questions he raises might be found in these writers.)
There are two main issues that have come up in the discussion sparked by John’s article. First, is modern biology consistent with the claim that the human race began with a single pair à la the biblical story of Adam and Eve? Second, is modern biology consistent with the claim that this pair transmitted the stain of original sin to their descendents via propagation rather than mere imitation? The answer to both questions is “Yes.” In this post I will show why this is so in the case of the first question and in a follow-up post I will address the second. What I have to say in this post will overlap to some extent with what Mike Flynn has said in his own excellent reply to John, and with what Kenneth W. Kemp says in his important recent American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis” (see ACPQ Vol. 85, No. 2 -- the same issue in which my article “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways” appears). But I will approach things in a somewhat different way than either Mike or Kenneth Kemp do.
What is man?
We can begin by asking what a human being is. The traditional A-T answer is, of course, that a human being is a rational animal. We are animals insofar as we have the capacities typical of animality in general -- nutrition, growth, reproduction, sensation, appetite, and locomotion. These are all purely material capacities, all requiring bodily organs for their exercise. We are rational insofar as we possess intellect and will. These are immaterial capacities, and do not directly depend on any bodily organ, although they do depend on such organs indirectly. I have explained the how and why in several places -- most fully in chapter 4 of Aquinas -- and have addressed some of the relevant issues in earlier blog posts, such as this one. I will summarize only the most relevant points here.
What intellect involves, for the A-T tradition, is the ability to grasp abstract concepts (such as the concept man or the concept being mortal), to put them together into complete thoughts (such as the thought that all men are mortal), and to reason from one thought to another in accordance with the laws of logic (as when we infer from All men are mortal and Socrates is a man to Socrates is mortal). All of this differs in kind, and not just in degree, from the operations of sensation and imagination, which we share with non-human animals. Concepts have a universality and determinateness that no sensation or mental image can have even in principle. The concept triangularity, for example, has a universality that even the most general mental image of a triangle cannot have, and an unambiguous or determinate content that the auditory or visual image of the English word “triangle” (whose meaning is entirely conventional) cannot have. Indeed, concepts have a universality and determinacy that nothing material can have. So while the A-T tradition holds, in common with materialism and against some forms of dualism, that sensation and imagination have a material basis, it also holds that intellectual activity -- grasping concepts, putting them together into judgments, and reasoning from one judgment to another -- is necessarily immaterial. (Again, I’m not defending these claims here but just summarizing -- I’ve defended them elsewhere.)
All the same, for A-T the intellect does depend on matter in an indirect way. For one thing, though the concepts we grasp are immaterial, we must abstract them from the mental images that derive ultimately from sensation, and imagination and sensation are material. For another thing, even when we grasp an abstract concept, we always do so in conjunction with mental imagery (which is why the philosophically unsophisticated often confuse concepts with mental images). For instance, the concept triangularity is not identical with either the word “triangle” (since people who have never heard this English word still have the concept of triangularity) or with any particular mental image of a triangle (since any such image will have features -- a certain color, say, or being scalene -- that do not apply to all triangles in the way that the concept does). Still, we cannot entertain the concept of triangularity without at the same time forming a mental image of some sort or other, whether a visual image of some particular triangle, a visual or auditory image of the word “triangle” or of the corresponding word in some other language, or what have you. The judgment that snow is white is not identical with a visual or auditory image of the English sentence “Snow is white,” since a German speaker (say) could make exactly the same judgment even though he would express it instead with the sentence “Schnee ist weiss.” Still, we cannot form that judgment without at the same time forming some image or other (e.g. a visual or auditory image of “Snow is white,” or of “Schnee ist weiss,” or of some parallel sentence of some other language). And so forth. And this entails that any rational animal must have a material nature that is complex enough to support sensory and imaginative activity of the level of sophistication required to subserve immaterial intellectual activity. Such sensory and imaginative activity cannot be a sufficient condition for intellectual activity, but it is a necessary condition.
Now for A-T, all material things are composites of form and matter, and “soul” is a technical term for the form of a living thing, specifically. The soul is that which organizes a living thing’s matter in such a way that it is capable of the operations distinctive of living things. Since the activities of living things other than human beings are entirely dependent on matter, their souls are themselves dependent on matter, and A-T allows that such souls may therefore have material origins. But the human soul is different, precisely because it is that which makes us capable not only of material activities like digestion and sensation, but also of immaterial activities like thinking. Hence it operates, at least in part, apart from matter. Indeed, unlike the forms of other material things it is a subsistent form, capable of carrying on in existence beyond the death of the body of which it is the form, as a kind of incomplete substance. For this reason, for A-T the human soul cannot in principle have a material origin. In fact, it has to be directly created by God whenever a new human being comes into existence.
On the one hand, then, A-T philosophers and theologians have been open to the possibility of evolutionary explanations of various biological phenomena, including the human body. It might be that sensory and imaginative capacities of a level of complexity necessary to subserve intellectual activity arose gradually via evolutionary processes. On the other hand, there are metaphysical constraints on evolutionary explanations, just as there are on all forms of empirical inquiry. I have discussed some of these constraints in an earlier post, and for a more detailed treatment interested readers might look at an older Scholastic work like Henry Koren’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animate Nature, or the biology-related material in David Oderberg’s recent book Real Essentialism. Most relevant to the issue at hand, for A-T there can in principle be no evolutionary explanation of the human soul precisely because the human soul can have no material cause of any sort. We know this because (so A-T holds) we know on independent grounds that the distinctive capacities of the human soul (intellect and will) cannot be material.
A useful analogy is provided by the famous “weasel” example from Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker (which I here adapt for my own purposes rather than his – so please spare me any complaints that I have misinterpreted him). Dawkins describes a computer program which begins with a random sequence of 28 letters and “breeds” successive copies of the sequence, in such a way that via random errors or “mutations” in the sequence together with cumulative selection, the sentence “Methinks it is like a weasel” is eventually generated. Now whether this is as useful an analogy to biological evolution as Dawkins thinks it is can be debated, but that is not to the present point. The point is rather this. Suppose we allow that a string of marks that looks like “Methinks it is like a weasel” could arise in nature via random mutation and natural selection. Indeed, suppose we even allowed for the sake of argument that such a string could result only via random mutation and natural selection. Would it follow that the English sentence “Methinks it is like a weasel” has, in that case, a completely naturalistic evolutionary explanation?
No, that wouldn’t follow at all. For an English sentence is not merely a string of marks, even if it is partly that (at least when written). It also has a semantic content, and an evolutionary process of the sort described would no more generate that content by itself than my spilling ink on the ground in a way that left a set of shapes that looked vaguely like the word “cat” would by itself generate the actual word “cat,” semantic content and all. The existence of the marks – whether the marks making up the word “cat” or those making up the sentence “Methinks it is like a weasel” -- is a necessary condition for the existence of the (written) word or sentence, but it is not a sufficient condition. So, to explain the origin of a sequence of marks is simply not by itself to explain the origin of a certain English sentence.
In the same way, to explain how sensation and mental imagery might have developed via natural selection is simply not by itself to explain the origin of human thought, even if it is part of the story and even if it were allowed that the relevant material structures and processes could not have come about in any other way. The same could be said of evolutionary explanations of whatever purported symbolic processing mechanisms cognitive scientists might claim to uncover. Such mechanisms are really all sub-conceptual and not truly “cognitive” at all; for they are all, in effect, at the level of what A-T philosophers mean when they speak of sensation and imagination, insofar as computational symbols are of themselves no more universal or determinate in their content than mental images or words are. These mechanisms may track our intellectual operations in a rough way, but they can never in principle either exhaust those operations or even exactly track them, since there is always some slack between conceptual content on the one hand and material symbols on the other. (Again, these are themes I have explored at greater length elsewhere, including in this post and many other previous posts.)
To make a human being, then, it is not enough to make something having all the sub-conceptual or sub-intellectual capacities of the human body. An animal having all those capacities may well look like a human being, and indeed have all the genetic and phenotypic attributes of a human being short of those phenotypic traits indicative of intellectual activity, such as language. Perhaps it would look and act like the apparently sub-rational “humans” in the original Planet of the Apes movie. But it would not be a human being in the sense in which A-T philosophers and Catholic theology understand “human being.” For our nature is simply not exhausted by whatever traits flow from our genetic endowment. “Human being” as used in A-T philosophy and Catholic theology is a metaphysical concept, and does not correspond exactly to (even if it overlaps with) the modern biological concept homo sapiens sapiens. (In fact, some A-T philosophers would hold that the specific genetic and phenotypic traits typical of homo sapiens sapiens are not even essential to human beings considered as a metaphysical category: Anything that was both animal and rational would arguably be “human” in the relevant sense, even if it had a body plan radically different from ours. See Oderberg’s Real Essentialism for a useful discussion.)
The origin of man
What has been said so far is along the lines of the sort of views you’ll find in Scholastic writers of the period of Pope Pius XII’s Humani Generis, and it reflects the pope’s teaching in that encyclical that:
[T]he Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.
However, the pope goes on to say:
When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.
This is the passage John highlights as problematic. Perhaps he thinks that what the pope is saying is that enquiry into an evolutionary explanation of human origins is permissible only to the extent that it might confirm, or at least be compatible with, the claim that evolution somehow generated exactly two human beings, one male and one female, from pre-human ancestors. And since such a claim has been falsified (so John’s argument continues), Pius’s concession can be seen to have been too modest. Given that the earliest human population could not have numbered less than 10,000 or so, a much more radical rethinking of human origins is now necessary.
But in fact no such rethinking is necessary, and Pius XII was making no such claim. Notice that what the pope opens the door to is the possibility in principle of an evolutionary explanation of the human body, specifically, not of human beings full stop. Nor does the pope say that exactly two such bodies will have to have been generated by evolution for an evolutionary explanation to be reconcilable with Catholic doctrine. He also insists that the human soul can only have come from God.
The implications of all of this should be obvious. There is nothing at all contrary to what Pius says in Humani Generis in the view that 10,000 (or for that matter 10,000,000) creatures genetically and physiologically like us arose via purely evolutionary processes. For such creatures -- even if there had been only two of them -- would not be “human” in the metaphysical sense in the first place. They would be human in the metaphysical sense (and thus in the theologically relevant sense) only if the matter that made up their bodies were informed by a human soul -- that is, by a subsistent form imparting intellectual and volitional powers as well as the lower animal powers that a Planet of the Apes-style “human” would have. And only direct divine action can make that happen, just as (for A-T) direct divine action has to make it happen whenever one of us contemporary human beings comes into existence.
Supposing, then, that the smallest human-like population of animals evolution could have initially produced numbered around 10,000, we have a scenario that is fully compatible with Catholic doctrine if we suppose that only two of these creatures had human souls infused into them by God at their conception, and that He infused further human souls only into those creatures who were descended from this initial pair. And there is no evidence against this supposition.
This scenario raises all sorts of interesting questions, such as whether any of these early humans (in the metaphysical sense of having a human soul) mated with some of the creatures who were (genetically and, in part, phenotypically) only human-like. (If any of the latter looked like Linda Harrison in Planet of the Apes, the temptation certainly would have been there.) Mike Flynn and Kenneth Kemp have some things to say about this, but it does not affect the point at issue here, which is that there is nothing in the biological evidence that conflicts with the doctrine that the human race began with a single pair -- when that doctrine is rightly understood, in terms of the metaphysical conception of “human being” described above.
Daniel Smith,
ReplyDeleteAs much as possible I try never to conflate philosophy with Science.
>naturalist/materialist interpretation of those facts (which is, in large part, what the current theories of abiogenesis and evolution are.)
That natural processes(like Natural Selection) causes the offspring of certain species over time to become other species has nothing to do IMHO with the philosophies of Naturalism and materialism.
Grace does not destroy nature.
Are you saying my questions about the same culture using the same technology for the same basic ideas, but 24,000 years apart, is similar to the the notion of contemporaneous, distinct cultures advancing at different rates technologically? I have trouble seeing that comparison as valid.
ReplyDeleteThat reply just opens up more problems.
For one, on what grounds are you calling people spaced 24k years apart 'the same culture'? That seems pulled out of nowhere.
Second, the comparison is entirely valid because it illustrates the problem of thinking about developments like these in such stepwise terms - like you're playing Civilization and, darnit, this technology is next on the tree, it shouldn't take nearly this long!
Third, in this case the 'technology' you're talking about isn't even properly a technology - it's an intellectual capacity. You're asking why people with a particular intellectual capacity not only didn't produce such and such technology, but didn't do so while being kind enough to leave behind artifacts we not only could find, but have already found.
Really, I think anyone can see it's a bit much. 'If evolution is at all true, why don't we have fossils for each and every incremental step from an algae-like organism to a housecat? Sounds fishy.'
Well, except for the gaps the Creationists refer to get smaller every decade, while the gap to which I refer only seems to broaden as additional discoveries are made.
ReplyDeleteWrong on both counts. Yes, sometimes a fossil is found which closes one particular gap. Other times, a discovery or re-evaluation increases a gap or creates a new one - see the recent Archaeopteryx hoopla.
You can argue, perhaps, that our understanding of the fossil record and of evolution is 'always advancing' in some sense. The problem is that sometimes it advances by overturning previous wisdom - and not always by filling said wisdom in with another explanation in the process.
As for the other part of your comparison, you're for whatever reason trying to connect a rational soul with particular technological advancements, and arguing (apparently) that they should have had a variety of technologies essentially overnight - better yet, that we should have artifacts showing as much. It's not very tenable.
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteOne Brow you are an Ex-Catholic you should know that.
If is misses the point as badly as this post did, why bother?
>If is misses the point as badly as this post did, why bother?
ReplyDeleteOk then. I'll address your point.
Mid Eve isn't really a Mother(presuming she has no soul) thought she is a universal ancestor.
Animals don't have Father and Mothers but Sires and Dames.
Fatherhood and Motherhood are spiritural catagories.
If you mean they are both universal ancestors then we agree.
Crude you said it better than I could but I fear One Brow is unteachable.
ReplyDelete@BenYachov:
ReplyDeleteI fear One Brow is unteachable.
Or it could be that One Brow simply remains unconvinced beyond what you feel should convince him, due to a combination of different backgrounds, different philosophical vantage points, etc. Not every instance of “failure to agree with BenYachov” is culpable ignorance (or belligerence, or mental retardation); letting your claws out unnecessarily just makes it that much harder for your interlocutors to follow your reasoning.
James,
ReplyDeleteI could care less if he agrees with me. I just wish he would cut out the sophistry and equivocations.
Some people really like to hear themselves talk.
ReplyDeleteFrom VT,
ReplyDelete"Third, the suggestion that two rationally ensouled hominids wandered off from the other 9,998 and set up their own little race of rational human beings is ruled out by science, barring a miracle by God. If that were the case, then there'd be genetic evidence of a bottleneck of two people, since these two wouldn't have inter-bred with the other 9,998. But the genetic evidence indicates otherwise."
Am I mistaken or can it be the case that two descendants of an indefinitely numerous population could show evidence of having ancestors that existed in an interbreeding population of at least 10,000?
Does the evidence say that there always were at least 10,000 interbreeders or that only initially there were 10,000 interbreeders?
ONE PAIR OF EACH KIND
ReplyDeleteThere was one pair of dogs male and
female - genetically rich- that came off the ark - they gave rise to all the species eg poodles,labradors ,wolves,hyenas,
foxes - getting genetically poor.
Same with Adam and Eve - only two
to start with - there is no other
way - you can't have been 10,000
- who would make them ? Where would
they come from.
A creature needs a male and female at the same time to mate - who would make them - this is too simple for the "wise".
George R. & the O'Floinn,
ReplyDeleteSpontaneous generation is compatible with Aquinas' world view; so is hybridization as a source of new species. In both cases, the product is virtually "in" the entities that gave rise to it, and nothing really new appears. Not so with mutation. I have written more about this here:
http://www.angelfire.com/linux/
vjtorley/thomas1.html#smoking8
First, you don't explain why Eve has to be the closest "now" to us. She could be way early or way late.
ReplyDeleteBy definition Mid-Eve is the nearest common female ancestor for every human on the planet. There may have been older common ancestors (indeed Mid-Eve's female ancestors were also common ancestors), but none of her female descendants can be a common ancestor to everyone (or else they would be the Mid-Eve).
So for every human alive to be a descendant of the Biblical Eve she would have had to have been either Mid-Eve, or one of Mid-Eve's female ancestors. The same goes for the Y-Chromosome Adam... but then we already know that Y-Adam couldn't be Bib-Adam, as the Y-Adam is much closer to us then the Mid-Eve.
Second you do realize you have great great great.....great grandparents in your family tree from whom you receive no genetic material whatsoever?
Apparently you don't quite understand what exactly the Mid-Eve is... It relates to Mitochondrial DNA, which you receive from your mother, and she from her mother, and so on... your paternal grandmother doesn't contribute your Mitochondrial DNA to you. The same principal applies to the Y-Chromosome Adam, as you inherit your Y-Chromosome from your father, not your mother (interesting side note, since women don't have a Y chromosome their y-chromosome ancestry cannot be traced).
Now you could claim that the Bib-Eve's Mitocondral line died out at some point... but that still leaves us with the Y-Adam as the closest possible point where the Biblical Adam/Eve existed, as after that point there will be people alive today who cannot trace their line of ancestry back to either the Bib-Adam/Eve.
I will leave the psychology to other or when I have the time seek out some articles by either Stove or Bonnette or Adler on the gulf between Animals and humans.
Yet we are not talking about the difference between a human and a sparrow... we are talking about the difference between someone who is biologically classified as human but does not have a soul.
Bib-Eve has three sons, and no daughters. Each son marries a daughter of Mid-Eve. Bib-Even is every bit as much a mother of mankind as Mid-Eve.
ReplyDeleteThen the Biblical Adam could be no closer to modern time then the Y-Chromosome.
Other times, a discovery or re-evaluation increases a gap or creates a new one - see the recent Archaeopteryx hoopla.
ReplyDeleteThat is a bit of a misrepresentation... the recent proto-avid discoveries do not change the theories of avid evolution, rather they reinforce the theories by showing a proto-avid when one was predicted to exist.
Mid Eve isn't really a Mother(presuming she has no soul) thought she is a universal ancestor.
ReplyDeleteErr, yes she is... she is the closest to present female ancestor of everyone who is alive today, which would make her the greatgreat...grandmother of every human being that is alive today.
Does the evidence say that there always were at least 10,000 interbreeders or that only initially there were 10,000 interbreeders?
ReplyDeleteThe evidence shows that the total population of interbreeding individuals could not have been less then ~10 during the transition from proto-human to human.
A creature needs a male and female at the same time to mate - who would make them - this is too simple for the "wise"
ReplyDeleteExcept that there is no stark break between species, a species is just how we define a set of genetically similar organisms existing at a period of time. Each step of the way an organism is no more genetically distinct from its parents then we are from our parents
Stone Tops
ReplyDeleteI think you are missing my point so I will quote the Wiki on Most recent common ancestors,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor#MRCA_of_all_living_humans.
QUOTE"It is incorrect to assume that the MRCA passed all of his or her genes (or indeed any single gene) down to every person alive today. Because of sexual reproduction, at every generation, an ancestor only passes half of his or her genes to each particular descendant in the next generation. Save for inbreeding, the percentage of genes inherited from the MRCA becomes smaller and smaller in individuals at every successive generation, sometimes even decreasing to zero (at which point the Ship of Theseus situation arises[2]), as genes inherited from contemporaries of MRCA are interchanged via sexual reproduction.[3] [4]
It is estimated that the MRCA lived between 5,000 to 2,000 years ago.[4][5]END QUOTE
My point is there is no reason to believe any genetic material from a hypothetical Biblical Adam & Eve survive in the modern population thought if you had a hypothetical historical record that recorded lineage going back tens or a hundred thousand years or more you could verify it historically but not genetically.
>Err, yes she is...
Forgive me Tops I am equivocating Theological language with common speech. In Theology Motherhood and Fatherhood are spiritual offices as well as biological. Strictly speaking only humans can be Mothers and Fathers. Animals can have Sires and Dames but in the strict sense they don't have Fathers. Only creatures with spiritual souls can.
>she is the closest to present female ancestor of everyone who is alive today, which would make her the greatgreat...grandmother of every human being that is alive today.
Biologically yes but if she had no soul then not in the Theological sense.
Sorry for the confusion.
@Stone Tops
ReplyDeleteMy greater point which I have been stressing at the beginning of this thread is there is no reason or need to associate either Mid-Eve and Y-Adam with the Biblical Adam and Eve.
Thus Jerry Coyne is per usual is barking up the wrong tree which his "Eve came thousands of years before Adam" blather.
One Brow,
ReplyDelete"Dogs acknowledge humans exist, as a group, to the extent that many dogs treat humans in the same fashion. Do dogs recognize universals?"
I wonder the same thing myself. We talk like we understand what a "universal" is, but do we really? In his "Against 'neurobabble'" post, Feser states, "concepts and the thoughts that feature them are abstract and universal, while material objects and processes are inherently concrete and particular" and those same "concepts and the thoughts that feature them are (at least sometimes) exact, determinate, and unambiguous while material objects and processes are inherently inexact, indeterminate, and ambiguous when they are associated with conceptual content at all."
But universals, as Feser admits, are not universally "exact, determinate, and unambiguous." I'm not sure they ever are. What do we mean when we say there is a universal for chairs? How do we go about describing this univesral concept except by being vague? Universals are meant to be broad descriptions of things. They are inherently light on specifics. OTOH, material objects are very specific. We depend on universals because it would be impossible to make sense of the world otherwise. If every object we interact with was a new and unique particular we would have to re-learn how to interact with every chair we came across. We would have no clue that the chair in the kitchen served the same function as the chair in the den. We would have no clue that the human being we pass on the street was yet another human being. The world would be a mass of confusion. I think this "concept" of a universal may be less than a concept -- or we should rethink concepts. Universals may be inherent -- almost a requirement -- for anything with a brain. How does a honey bee know any flower in the field is fair game? that they are all essentially the same? Maybe this thing we call a universal is a lot more primitive and universal than we think.
bunko science (or at best, wild...guestimates), and hypocritical theology--the Feser usual
ReplyDeleteJosh,
ReplyDeleteFirst, I want to thank you for taking the time to make clear arguments that seem to take alternate viewpoints seriously and actually address what I say. It is a pleasure having a converstion with you, whether we agree or disagree.
What I do have a problem with is implying that arguments for realism are grounded in unjustified assertions as opposed to deductive arguments to explain certain things about human nature and reality.
See, I would replace the "as opposed to" with "because they are". By their very nature, deductive arguments must derive from initial axioms. Of course, the term "unjustified" is a relative term, but there are no absolutely true propositions regarding the reality of universals that I can have seen.
And I understand that you seem to think logic, like mathematics, is simply a tool that can change its nature to fit whatever task we put it to. That's fine too, though I disagree.
Yet, the very computer at whcih you sit uses an alternative logic to classical logic in it's color schemes (probably a three-dimensinal logic with values at least from 0 to 255 in each dimension).
Logics are like hammers, and classical logic is like a specific hammer (say a steel-shafted, steel-head with a claw). It's really useful for a lot of things, but there are better hammers when you want to use a gentle tap on PVC piping.
I second Ismael's distinction of concepts not being mental images; if you think it is merely an arbitrary distinction of classes, then I think you've misunderstood.
Entirely possible.
Our concepts are not arbitrary because they are dictated by the natures of the universals that they are formed from; in the case of triangles, triangularity as a concept is dictated by what it is to be a triangle, and nothing else. How is this arbitrary?
In what way is "what it is to be a triangle" not dictated by the definition of a triangle? Is the definition of a triangle an independently existing concept? Because if it is dictated by the definition, and definitions are provided by men, how does our choice of the definition not play a part in what qualifies in the concept of triangle? I don't see where the separation occurs, for you.
Dogs don't recognize universals, they get used to sense experience, to percepts. Read TOF's blog post for a better description on the distinction.
He's got some 300 posts. Do yo have a specific post (or set of posts) in mind?
Once again, this question shows that you seem to be confusing concepts with mental images, or percepts. Apply Ismael's critique to this question, because I agree with what he said.
He said the universal is the same even though the image is different. If the universal is more than just a categorization, I missed what the "more" was in his response.
I'll look at your Ch. 3 critique sometime, ...
I would be grateful. I hope to learn more from that exchange.
Josh said...
ReplyDeleteCan you explain what you mean by:
it's fairly clear our concepts of the Pythagorean Theorem are different
Because this fact is not clear to me at all...
For Feser, as far as I can tell, the Pythagorean theorm is an unshakable truth in reality (he certainly seemed to use it as such in his book). For me, it's an approximation, and there is no situation where is actually true. Carpenters never put boards together at exactly 90 degrees. Spacetime itself has negative curvature (the Pythagorean Theorm requires a curature of 0). Tht seems like a fundamental difference in conception to me.
Crude said...
ReplyDeleteFor one, on what grounds are you calling people spaced 24k years apart 'the same culture'? That seems pulled out of nowhere.
You are correct. It would be more appropriate to refer to the latter culture as a descendant culture.
Second, the comparison is entirely valid because it illustrates the problem of thinking about developments like these in such stepwise terms - like you're playing Civilization and, darnit, this technology is next on the tree, it shouldn't take nearly this long!
Assuming you meant "invalid", I agree that line of thinking would be invalid.
However, I am not referring to the next technology, I am referring to the use of the same technology.
Third, in this case the 'technology' you're talking about isn't even properly a technology - it's an intellectual capacity.
I agree.
You're asking why people with a particular intellectual capacity not only didn't produce such and such technology, but didn't do so while being kind enough to leave behind artifacts we not only could find, but have already found.
??? I did not understand what you meant here.
'If evolution is at all true, why don't we have fossils for each and every incremental step from an algae-like organism to a housecat? Sounds fishy.'
On the ohter hand, we have evidence for all major transitions. To use your metaphor, if we had the same amount of fossil evidence as we currently do for reptile-bird transitions, and no evidence for at all for reptile-mammal, would that not call into question the reptile-mammal heritiage?
Crude said...
ReplyDeleteOther times, a discovery or re-evaluation increases a gap or creates a new one - see the recent Archaeopteryx hoopla.
I referred to an overall trend, not a rule for every discovery. So, I agree with your points, but don't see why your points disagree with mine.
As for the other part of your comparison, you're for whatever reason trying to connect a rational soul with particular technological advancements, and arguing (apparently) that they should have had a variety of technologies essentially overnight - better yet, that we should have artifacts showing as much. It's not very tenable.
I'm just arguing that technologies we know to exist would have been used to support capabilities you say existed, since the same technologies were already being used to support very similar capabilities.
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteOk then. I'll address your point.
If you mean they are both universal ancestors then we agree.
See, that wasn't so hard, if you look at the comment of StoneTop to which this was a response.
StoneTop said...
ReplyDeleteThen the Biblical Adam could be no closer to modern time then the Y-Chromosome.
I gave a simple scenario to illustrate a simple point. It was not intended to cover everything.
Now, do you really think it is impossible to construct scenarios where BibAdam and BibEve lived after MidEve and Y-Adam? If such a scenario exists, do uyou think the term "could be no closer" is accurate?
It is estimated that the MRCA lived between 5,000 to 2,000 years ago
ReplyDeleteThat is blatantly impossible... as the MRCA for all of humanity would have to be just that, an ancestor that is within every human beings family tree. As such the ancestor could not have existed after the point that human populations like the Pintupi, the Sentinelese, and the various uncontacted tribes in South America became isolated from the general human population following their migration to the Americas.
Which brings up an interesting bit... if the Biblical Adam/Eve lived after humans migrated to Oceania, and then were isolated from the Euro-Asia human population then doesn't that mean that the indigenous tribes of North America did not have Bib-A/E in their ancestry until after the arrival of the Europeans? And if only H.Sapiens with Bib-A/E in their ancestry have souls (and are thus not human according to your definition).
Of course the elephant in the room is Noah... who would be the MRCA, as the only people to survive the flood were those descended from him (according the the Biblical account).
Only creatures with spiritual souls can.
So she would be either the dame or the mother of us all? What would be the difference to us, and how would we determine Mid-Eve's state as either Mother or Dame?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to clarify something I said before. Of course the Pope does not use the higher critical approach with an anti-supernatural bias.
ReplyDeleteHe accepts liberal conclusions about the dating and authorship of the Bible. (For example, he believes there are multiple Isaiahs, the Pastorals are not by Paul, etc.)
I've read the first volume of his Jesus series and he even praises liberal John Meier.
Not even fundamentalists believe everything in the Bible should be taken literally. I have never heard a good argument from Catholic exegetes why the infancy narratives and the opening chapters of Genesis are not meant to be historical.
@StoneTop
ReplyDeleteBy definition Mid-Eve is the nearest common female ancestor for every human on the planet. There may have been older common ancestors (indeed Mid-Eve's female ancestors were also common ancestors), but none of her female descendants can be a common ancestor to everyone (or else they would be the Mid-Eve).
Wrong! Mid-Eve is NOT "the nearest common female ancestor for every human on the planet". Her MITOCHONDRIA are the nearest common ancestor for every human MITOCHONDRIA on the planet.
Can't see the difference? Easy: are you descended from your paternal grandmother? Yes (to the tune of 25%, to be precise). Do you have any mitochondria descended from hers? No: nothing at all. In calculating M-Eve, you are following exclusively the female line, which leaves exponentially more females out of the picture the more generations you have.
So, yes, we could have a female "common ancestor to all mankind" later - indeed, much later - than M-Eve: if she passed on her genes through, say, a son, her genes would not appear in her descendants' mitochondria and would therefore not appear when we look for M-Eve.
Then the Biblical Adam could be no closer to modern time then the Y-Chromosome.
ReplyDeleteSame mistake: he could, if he passed on his genetic heritage through a daughter who would have no Y-chromosome.
Then the Biblical Adam could be no closer to modern time then the Y-Chromosome.
ReplyDeleteSame mistake: he could, if he passed on his genetic heritage through a daughter who would have no Y-chromosome.
Then the Biblical Adam could be no closer to modern time then the Y-Chromosome.
ReplyDeleteSame mistake: he could, if he passed on his genetic heritage through a daughter who would have no Y-chromosome.
Sorry for the multiple posting: I was getting error messages.
ReplyDeleteMy greater point which I have been stressing at the beginning of this thread is there is no reason or need to associate either Mid-Eve and Y-Adam with the Biblical Adam and Eve.
ReplyDeleteTrue, though those points do allow us to define when Bib-Eve and Bib-Adam existed, while still allowing time for every human being alive today to have Bib-Eve/Adam in their ancestry.
Again though, this ignores the problem of Noah, who could not exist any closer to the present then Y-Chromosome Adam, because he would be a Y-Chromosome Adam (as the father of all the surviving males following the flood every male today would get their Y-Chromosome from him).
Now, do you really think it is impossible to construct scenarios where BibAdam and BibEve lived after MidEve and Y-Adam? If such a scenario exists, do uyou think the term "could be no closer" is accurate?
ReplyDeleteIf you assume that every human alive today has the Biblical Adam/Eve somewhere in their ancestry then yes, either Bib-Eve is Mid-Eve or one of Mid-Eve's ancestors... or Bib-Adam is Y-C-Adam or one of Y-C-Adam's ancestors.
If you allow for humans alive today to not have Bib-Adam/Eve in their ancestry then the Bib-Adam/Eve could have existed (assuming they actual existed) at any point.
Of course the notion that Bib-Adam/Eve were the only humans to exist and that all humans can be traced back to that pair is quite close to impossible... though to suggest otherwise contradicts the Bible without a significant amount of hand waving.
Could someone please, as someone else has already requested, comment on djindra's comment from Sep. 9th @ 6:45 am re: the alleged difference between conceiving and imagining? I had the same confusion when reading Dr. Feser's POM
ReplyDelete@Stone Tops
ReplyDeleteYour argument is with the persons who wrote the wiki article I cited on recient Common ancestors. They clearly are not creationists, YEC's or anti-Evolutionary types. They cite non-creationist scientific article.
I think you need to recheck your personal knowledge if science. Just because you deny "gods" doesn't mean you automatically understand science.
@One Brow
>See, that wasn't so hard, if you look at the comment of StoneTop to which this was a response.
I wasn't trying I was busting your chops much like you do to myself and others.
>Assuming you meant "invalid", I agree that line of thinking would be invalid.
Clearly he means valid, changing his words to hector him is a dick move.
>I'm just arguing that technologies we know to exist would have been used to support capabilities you say existed, since the same technologies were already being used to support very similar capabilities.
Really? So that is your story now? What does this nonsense even mean?
Up till now myself, Crude, TOF and pretty much everyone else got the impression you where arguing if Adam spontaneously received rational faculties he or his immediate descendants would have produced technology, writing and Math & the fact we have no archeological evidence of this casts doubt on that speculation.
We have all been showing that this is not a valid object regardless of the existence of Adam or not.
Now you claim that not your argument? One Brow I may be a dick to people I have come to dislike. I may be a hothead. I may be rude and sometime jump the gun in my anger.
But unlike some of us(i.e. you) at least I am not disingenuous.
You have nothing of value to contribute here. You have no objective argument. You never do.
@Stone Tops
ReplyDelete>True, though those points do allow us to define when Bib-Eve and Bib-Adam existed,
I don't know. We just have to go far enough back in time for there to be nearest common ancestors. We can't scientifically know when they existed via genetics only that it must have been in the distant past and before any evidence we have of rational activity among humans. Likely it was when humans all lived in Africa.
>Again though, this ignores the problem of Noah,
We don't need to believe in a Universal Global Flood. We can believe in a local flood. We don't need to believe only Noah survived the flood.
(Hugh Ross makes that argument(& due note I reject his anti-Evolution stance and I don't hold to his Old Earth Creationism) over at REASONS TO BELIEVE. I'll have to do dig it up.)
Or Rather only the locals where whipped out and Noah survived but others who lived elsewhere where not a factor.
Symbolic and non-literal interpretations of Genesis go all the way back to Philo of Alexandra.
Noah is not a problem.
Ismael,
ReplyDelete"it is the same universal if you are both thinking of 'redness', only the MENTAL IMAGE is different."
Redness -- as we experience it -- is caused by our own particular color receptors. Yet, like all body parts, there is variation among us. My color receptors probably do not react to the exact same wavelength of light as yours do. Redness is somewhere in the 630–740 nm wavelength. Any attempt to standardize a "pure" or "universal" red must be based on things like empirically measured averages and/or Bell curves. There is no single wavelength that will excite everyone's red receptors to the max. Therefore there is no one wavelength that will be perceived by everyone as "pure" red. So obviously the "universal" of redness can be neither in the things we see as red nor the wavelength itself. If there is a "universal" it must be within us, and it must be base on whatever wavelength excites our own red receptors to the max. Again, the wavelength is different for each of us, but we each have some particular -- this is, unique -- wavelength that excites that max. So "universal" redness is really just the state of maximum red excitation within us -- no matter what wavelength caused that excitation. The wavelength itself is irrelevant. The level of excitation is the only relevant issue. So the "universal" of red is simply a maximum biological state of excitation reachable within each, separately . Let's forget that the max state could vary itself. But even if each of us was capable of the same level of excitation, there is still a problem. The so-called "universal" is highly individualized. It's highly personalized. It cannot be shared with anyone else because there is no way you can show anyone what your max excitation of redness looks like. So each person has his own "universal" and it is encapsulated totally within him. When "universals" become totally subjective and individually unique, speaking of "universals" that exist outside of ourselves becomes absurd. And when universals such as "red" are based so intimately on our personal biology, they sure seem to be fully described by the biology. That is, they are totally materialistic. The biology -- the existence of red receptors within us -- is the sole reason "redness" exists to us as a concept at all. So that "universal" is strictly biological.
OTOH if Noah was far enough in the past as early as Africa then maybe he could have been a universal ancestor. Maybe his children mated with unsouled hominids?
ReplyDeleteBut of course as early as the 18th century the educated clergy at the Vatican started to disbelieve in a Global flood and believe in a local one only.
BTW people djindra the troll is a fanatical dogmatic Nominalist while Feser is a Moderate realist.
ReplyDeleteWrong! Mid-Eve is NOT "the nearest common female ancestor for every human on the planet". Her MITOCHONDRIA are the nearest common ancestor for every human MITOCHONDRIA on the planet.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes her the nearest common female ancestor to everyone on the planet... by definition. If there was a female closer to modern times from to whom we can all trace our mitochondrial DNA then she would be Mid-Eve.
Now if Bib-Eve existed after Mid-Eve then the next boundary is the Y-Chromosome Adam, who was either the Biblical Adam or one able to trace his patriarchal line back to Biblical Adam.
Otherwise there are people running around today who cannot trace their ancestry back to the Biblical Adam/Eve.
Now there are other problems that relate to claiming that the Biblical Adam/Eve existed relatively recently... as that would mean that large swaths of humanity were not descendants of Adam/Eve for most of history. The natives of Oceania (Australia such) were isolated from the Euro-Asians until the arrival of European settlers during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Even today there are isolated tribes of people in places like New Guinea and Bolivia that have been isolated from the Euro-Asians for over ten thousand years.
If you are willing to accept a highly metaphorical reading of the Genesis account then that particular problem evaporates, though in doing so you start generating even more problems.
@BenYachov
ReplyDeleteI think both StoneTop and One Brow have contributed quite a bit to the conversation. Your argument that they are disingenuous simply because they refuse to accept your hand waving is fatuous
My mistake it wasn't Ross it was these guys.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html
Early Jewish interpretation
QUOTWE"Many Christian believe that a local flood interpretation is a recent invention of those who are trying to reconcile science with the Bible. However, the first century Jewish writer, Josephus wrote about other writers who indicated that the flood was local and that some inhabitants survived by seeking higher ground:
"Now all the writers of barbarian [Greek] histories make mention of this flood and of this ark: among whom is Berosus the Chaldean... Hieronymous the Egyptian.... Nicolaus of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, hath a particular relation about them, where he speaks thus: 'There is a great mountain in Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris, upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved; and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore upon top of it; and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be the man about whom Moses, the legislator of the Jews wrote'."8
Josephus does not seek to correct their narrative. So, the idea that the flood was a local event is not just a 20th century phenomenon.END QUOTE
Anon 10:48 AM,
ReplyDeleteI called One Brow disingenuous and this is based on past experience I had with him as well.
I did NOT called Stone Tops disingenuous.
Physician heal thyself.
@Stone Tops
ReplyDeleteYou need to read a little more closely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor#MRCA_of_all_living_humans.
QUOTE"It is incorrect to assume that the MRCA passed all of his or her genes (or indeed any single gene) down to every person alive today. Because of sexual reproduction, at every generation, an ancestor only passes half of his or her genes to each particular descendant in the next generation. Save for inbreeding, the percentage of genes inherited from the MRCA becomes smaller and smaller in individuals at every successive generation, sometimes even decreasing to zero (at which point the Ship of Theseus situation arises[2]), as genes inherited from contemporaries of MRCA are interchanged via sexual reproduction.[3] [4]END QUOTE
This is a scientific fact. No creationism. No religious apologetics material. Science.
All human have universal common ancestors from whom we have none of their genetic material. But we did physically descend from them.
It's possible you have a few great great great great great great grandparents from whom you have zero genetic material. But they are still your ancestors.
This is science my friend.
BenYachov.
ReplyDelete"BTW people djindra the troll is a fanatical dogmatic Nominalist while Feser is a Moderate realist."
Maybe I wouldn't be so "fanatical" if there was one good reason to be anything but a nominalist. Neither you nor Feser have given a compelling reason for rejecting it.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteYou asked: "Does the evidence say that there always were at least 10,000 interbreeders or that only initially there were 10,000 interbreeders?"
Answer: the latter. Thanks for your question. Professor Jerry Coyne refers to "science's discovery that the human population never went through a bottleneck of fewer than about 10,000 people." Whatever you think of him as a philosopher, no-one doubts his biological expertise.
Ben Yachov:
ReplyDeleteHere's a quote from Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter 3, para. 2). See http://www.creationism.org/books/
josephus/JosephusAntiq01.htm
#NoteJosephusAntiq01.Flood:
"2. Now God loved this man for his righteousness: yet he not only condemned those other men for their wickedness, but determined to destroy the whole race of mankind, and to make another race that should be pure from wickedness; and cutting short their lives, and making their years not so many as they formerly lived, but one hundred and twenty only, (12) he turned the dry land into sea; and thus were all these men destroyed: but Noah alone was saved..."
Here's another:
"3. This calamity happened in the six hundredth year of Noah's government..." (Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter 3, para. 3).
Here's another:
"5. When God gave the signal, and it began to rain, the water poured down forty entire days, till it became fifteen cubits higher than the earth; which was the reason why there was no greater number preserved, since they had no place to fly to." (Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter 3, para. 5).
Sounds like Josephus was pretty literalistic about the Flood to me.
The fact that Josephus cites a pagan myth which refers to "many" being saved by fleeing to a mountain in Armenia proves nothing. Obviously Josephus would expect a pagan myth to contain a garbled account of the truth.
Here's what the Catholic Church says about the Flood:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/
04702a.htm
The article says:
"The geographical universality of the Deluge may be safely abandoned...
"The Deluge must have been anthropologically universal, i.e. it must have destroyed the whole human race...
"[N]o one can deny that the prima facie meaning of 1 Peter 3:20 sq., 2 Peter 2:4-9, and 2 Peter 3:5 sqq., refers to the death of all men not contained in the ark."
They cite non-creationist scientific article.
ReplyDeleteThat they do... but then if you read further down your wiki then you will see that the issue of uncontacted tribes is brought up. Further they are relying on mathematical models to predict the existence of a MRCA, and don't provide any evidence to back up their claims.
We just have to go far enough back in time for there to be nearest common ancestors. We can't scientifically know when they existed via genetics only that it must have been in the distant past and before any evidence we have of rational activity among humans. Likely it was when humans all lived in Africa.
Well what counts as evidence for rationality? If rationality follows from the lineage of Adam/Eve then that change provides a marker that can be used to trace the progression of their lineage across the globe.
We can believe in a local flood. We don't need to believe only Noah survived the flood.
Really? Because the language in the Bible is quite specific on everyone but those with Noah being wiped out.
Symbolic and non-literal interpretations of Genesis go all the way back to Philo of Alexandra.
Sure, like the symbolic and non-literal interpretation that Jesus was born from a virgin, walked on water, was crucified, and rose from the grave.
One Brow,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy civil philosophical inquiry as much as any man, so thanks to you as well. Now, in order:
there are no absolutely true propositions regarding the reality of universals that I can have seen.
If you mean by "absolutely true" "self-evident," then perhaps I would agree. If you mean "necessarily true," then perhaps you could pick out one of the arguments in TLS pp.42-44 (Hardcover) and show what premise doesn't follow necessarily. Or pick out a particular premise that you think is false. Discussion is a lot more fruitful with concrete examples.
Logics are like hammers, and classical logic is like a specific hammer (say a steel-shafted, steel-head with a claw).
Here's the distinction; what I'm referring to is Logic with a capital L, which governs all rational thought, and is the most general, which makes it the proper object of study for Philosophy. It is the Logic/Metaphysics that is presupposed in the making of the little logics that you refer to (hammers). All of them presuppose the truth of the "laws of Being" even though their forms can become varied afterwards. And to say that there is no such Logic, is to deny the ability to Reason, and I would have to follow the Scholastic principle that "with someone denying the first principles, don't dispute," because argument would be futile.
In what way is "what it is to be a triangle" not dictated by the definition of a triangle? Is the definition of a triangle an independently existing concept? Because if it is dictated by the definition, and definitions are provided by men, how does our choice of the definition not play a part in what qualifies in the concept of triangle? I don't see where the separation occurs, for you.
The important distinguishing mark between us here is that I believe we discover what a triangle is, as opposed to us giving existence to it merely by naming it and describing it. It's simply the difference between the conceptualist/realist view: does reality dictate to us, or do we dictate to reality?
He's got some 300 posts. Do yo have a specific post (or set of posts) in mind?
I was thinking of the most recent TOF posts, "The Product of Conception," and "Adam and Eve and Ted and Alice," where he discusses human/animal distinctions.
He said the universal is the same even though the image is different. If the universal is more than just a categorization, I missed what the "more" was in his response.
Right, a universal is a categorization of the many into the one, and we are inquiring as to the ontology of the "one," and where the "one" exists: in the object, in our minds, nowhere, or some combination. It is "more" because we think, as realists, that the universal is real, that's all.
Concepts as defined aren't simply our mental images because we would say mental images are particulars, and call them percepts (when we are in the presence of an object, directly perceiving it) and phantasms (old term; when one is remembering an object). Those belong to subjective experience, as in your red/crimson fire truck example. The concept is formed when the intellect abstracts from the percept by "stripping away" particulars to get at forms or essences, which enables us to speak meaningfully about classes.
So, in making that distinction, one can see why the fire truck example was attacking the wrong notion of concept/universal.
One Brow, Cont.
ReplyDeleteFor Feser, as far as I can tell, the Pythagorean theorm is an unshakable truth in reality (he certainly seemed to use it as such in his book). For me, it's an approximation, and there is no situation where is actually true.
Feser would of course agree that the particular instantiation of a universal is an "approximation" of sorts:
"...Every particular physical or material triangle--the sort of triangle we know through the senses, and indeed the only sort we can know through the senses--is always going to have features that are simply not part of the essence or nature of triangularity per se, and is always going to lack features that are part of the essence or nature of triangularity. --TLS, p.33
In applied mathematics, the application of the Pythagorean theorem will always yield approximations, as you note with the carpenters example. But take note of what you said next:
the Pythagorean Theorm requires a curvature of 0
This statement presupposes that we actually do have the same concept of the Pythagorean Theorem, because you are appealing to the exact universal nature of it in its definition, which I understand exactly the same way you do. Even though there is no instantiation of a right triangle in Nature, there is in our minds, in a concept; a form. And the PT holds true in describing the relationship between those forms.
@VJ
ReplyDelete>he turned the dry land into sea; and thus were all these men destroyed: but Noah alone was saved...
This statement doesn't eliminate Josephus believing others survived. Josephus has been known to contradict himself. Heck he favors the apocryphal 1 Edrdas/4thEzra over the canonical Ezra/Nehemiah for his history of that period. Also if you read the article I cited "all" doesn't have to be exhaustive in it's use.
As a fellow Catholic you should know this when scripture, which is inerrant(unlike Josephus)says "All have sinned". Really? Including Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary?
Obviously not.
I am aware of the fact via the Catholic Encyclopedia it was the consensus opinion in the 19th century the flood wiped out all of humanity. But this view does not have the force of doctrine.
OTOH if the flood was very early & Noah was very close to Adam's time then it's possible Noah's grandchildren mated with unsouled hominids.
I am not wedded to any of these opinions. I follow the Church to give the final words on these matters.
>"[N]o one can deny that the prima facie meaning of 1 Peter 3:20 sq., 2 Peter 2:4-9, and 2 Peter 3:5 sqq., refers to the death of all men not contained in the ark."
One might as well say "all have sinned" applies to Our Lord and Our Lady.
Thus I find your response unconvincing. There is no De Fide statement handed down by our mother the church that proves me wrong as far as I can tell. Nor does it prove me right.
OTOH your differing view is just as valid as mine.
Cheers.
We are told that when "we grasp an abstract concept, we always do so in conjunction with mental imagery," and "we cannot entertain the concept of triangularity without at the same time forming a mental image of some sort or other." Furthermore, it is freely admitted that the "soul" is absolutely dependent on the body to receive this imagery.
ReplyDeleteBut the human soul has special ability roughly defined as "intellectual activity." This entails "grasping concepts, putting them together into judgments, and reasoning from one judgment to another." (Against “neurobabble”) Let's pretend we didn't say we cannot even form a judgment [like snow is white] "without at the same time forming some image." Instead, let's simply concentrate on concepts as opposed to imagination.
This means we are supposed to "Think of pure concepts divorced from sensation or imagination." (Vallicella on hylemorphic dualism, Part III). It's our "grasp of concepts or universal ideas" that distinguishes us from brutes. (Against “neurobabble”) This special intellectual ability resides in the soul -- solely in the soul, divorced from the imagery -- and that makes it immaterial. That means we should be able to entertain concepts without the body and its image factory.
But this contradicts the earlier claims. With body attached, the soul cannot entertain a concept unless it uses mental imagery. That mental imagery is in the body. Yet without the body, the soul will keep this ability to entertain concepts even though the supply of mental imagery is cut. This is a new-found ability the soul takes on after death. There is no explanation as to why it grows this new ability, or why it was denied when the body was attached. It's all so spectacularly inconsistent.
Stonetop,
ReplyDeleteThat they do... but then if you read further down your wiki then you will see that the issue of uncontacted tribes is brought up. Further they are relying on mathematical models to predict the existence of a MRCA, and don't provide any evidence to back up their claims.
First, why wouldn't the mathematical models constitute some evidence itself?
Second, the objection relies on assumptions of its own - that there are uncontacted people who did not interbreed with anyone for extremely long (multi-millenia) periods of time. Possible, sure, but it would need to be supported. And even its support would only push back the MRCA date.
Well what counts as evidence for rationality? If rationality follows from the lineage of Adam/Eve then that change provides a marker that can be used to trace the progression of their lineage across the globe.
So long as you stress what you mean by 'trace': Work with the evidence that is currently available to us to make a general inference, stacked with caveats.
Really? Because the language in the Bible is quite specific on everyone but those with Noah being wiped out.
Not really, unless you mean in the same way that the language is 'quite specific' God created by numbered days in Genesis 1. We're back to the distinction between all biological humans and all true humans, how to interpret these texts, etc.
Sure, like the symbolic and non-literal interpretation that Jesus was born from a virgin, walked on water, was crucified, and rose from the grave.
Really? Philo of Alexandria lived from 20BC-50AD according to the Wikipedia. Who from that time was arguing that those things were symbolic?
@Stone Tops
ReplyDeleteMy point remains valid, you sir and I objectively have ancestors from whom we have inherited no genetic information.
Thus it is folly to assume a Biblical Adam must be found by tracing genetics. It is possible all his genes are extinct. In fact not every male alive has Y-Adam's Y Chromosome or every human Mid Eve's mitochondria. Less than 10% or 5% or 1% don't(i've read different figures).
>Really? Because the language in the Bible is quite specific on everyone but those with Noah being wiped out.
According whose interpretation? The Vatican didn't declare it dogma anymore then they declared the lack of movement of the Earth Dogma.
I explained in the other thread to you Catholics don't believe in the perspicuity of Scripture.
VJ's entitled to his opinion. I am entitled to mine. But neither of us can claim our opinions are dogma. Anymore than the Thomists can claim their theory of Grace and Free Will is dogma over and against the competeing theory of the Society of Jesus and the Molinists.
>Sure, like the symbolic and non-literal interpretation that Jesus was born from a virgin, walked on water, was crucified, and rose from the grave.
Those are with the exception of water walking are DeFide defined dogmas of the Faith. Water walking is seems to me is merely a certainty of the faith not a dogma.
It would be helpful if you just take everything you learned from arguing with Protestant Fundamentalist & well forget it.
We are a different ball game.
>Well what counts as evidence for rationality?
Will, language, intellective communication, abstract thought, use of reason etc.
>If rationality follows from the lineage of Adam/Eve then that change provides a marker that can be used to trace the progression of their lineage across the globe.
I don't see how? Rationality is an immaterial quality. How do you trace something immaterial by examining material evidence? OTOH you are an Atheist & likely a materialist. In which case if science could explain rationality and show it is excusively material in nature you would have a chance.
BTW good luck with that.:-)
??? I did not understand what you meant here.
ReplyDeleteI think I spoke plainly there, so I don't know how else to say it.
On the ohter hand, we have evidence for all major transitions.
We "have evidence" for a wide variety of conclusions and claims, some of which are contradictory. Having evidence is a pretty easy bar to reach.
Likewise, 'major transitions' in those terms refers specifically to considerable structural changes. That's far away from what's being discussed here.
I referred to an overall trend, not a rule for every discovery. So, I agree with your points, but don't see why your points disagree with mine.
Because it's not clear that the 'overall trend' has been going in that direction either.
I'm just arguing that technologies we know to exist would have been used to support capabilities you say existed, since the same technologies were already being used to support very similar capabilities.
What you've seemingly been arguing is that given a rational soul, we should expect to have artifacts in hand and from those periods. If you're dropping that claim, I think we're done here anyway.
I was a little rash with my last post.
ReplyDeleteFinding tools, pottery, art and such show some rationality.
But even then there is no reason to believe when the phenomena of rationality first appears in man they instantaneously invent these things overnight. Thus we can never know.
>What you've seemingly been arguing is that given a rational soul, we should expect to have artifacts in hand and from those periods.
ReplyDeleteThat is what I thought too. Now he claims it's something else.
Who can follow this guy? Can anyone else here do that?
Anyone?
Djindra,
ReplyDeleteAgainst my better judgment:
Yet without the body, the soul will keep this ability to entertain concepts even though the supply of mental imagery is cut. This is a new-found ability the soul takes on after death. There is no explanation as to why it grows this new ability, or why it was denied when the body was attached.
The explanation is in an understanding of the words that you wrote yourself. When the soul is united with the body, the intellect receives information by way of the senses. When the soul is separated from the body, the intellect will still have its distinct being, but the way of intellection will be different. No one can describe this experience concretely, because...we aren't dead. The experience is closed off to us. But the theory isn't inconsistent simply because we cannot relate a death experience to our living experience.
This will likely be my only post in response, and this only because the anons are clamoring for it. Lest they take silence for assent...
@VJ & Stone Tops,
ReplyDeleteIt is rare an Atheist and a Catholic are united in disagreement with another Catholic. But it is no scandal for either of you.
These are the verses which you guys claim clearly teach God wiped out all men on Earth. During the flood.
I don't find them all that conclusive. I was confused by the last one till I remember old Catholic translations sometime number verses differently than Protestant ones.
1 Peter 3:20;
20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water,
2 Peter 2:4-9
if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
2 Peter 3:4-7
They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.
Well I don't see how any of these verses apply to those outside the ancient world? If the area of the black sea was once land and that civilization was wiped out that doesn't preclude others leaving far away surviving.
OTOH this is moot if the flood was way earlier and Noah's grandchildren mated with unsouled hominids.
So Noah's grandchildren either mated with regular humans outside the flood area who where never subject to the deluge or God's judgement or it took place long ago shortly after Adam.
All things being equal this is possible.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteI'd second your comments on this point and add a few things.
In all three of the verses you quote and respond to, what strikes me is that the sort of flood view people are advocating here isn't required to support the points Paul is making (being saved through water, that events God ordains can be sudden and far-reaching against the norm, that God can and does render judgments that are far reaching). The examples he uses illustrate his point, but illustrating his point is precisely why he's bringing them up.
BenYachov,
ReplyDeleteIt's bizarre that intelligent people should still be arguing about Noah's ark or Adam and Eve like they were historical events.
@Stone Tops, Crude and VJ
ReplyDeleteI will leave you gentlemen with these two links from EWTN in regards to Noah and the Flood. Then I will drop the subject since it is off topic.
Fr. John Echert take on the flood citing Pius XII
http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=300036&Pg=&Pgnu=&recnu=
Dr. Geraghty who seems to be open to the view we are all come from Adam but not Noah.
http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=429204&Pg=&Pgnu=&recnu=
Peggy Fry from Catholic Answers has some Thoughts.
http://forums.catholic.com/showpost.php?p=50453&postcount=2
Thought the link to Fr Most's views is dead. Which is a tragedy since I would have loved to see his take on it.
Cheers!
Sorry those where three I put the last one on at a whim.
ReplyDeleteOh and thanks Crude.
@StoneTop
ReplyDeleteWhich makes her the nearest common female ancestor to everyone on the planet... by definition.
Again, you still haven't understood the Mitochondrial Eve concept. We can have a much more recent common female ancestor to everyone on the planet. If her genes spread THROUGH HER SONS, it wouldn't show up on mitochondrial DNA. If her genes spread through her DAUGHTERS, those outside the extreme female line - like your paternal grandmother - also wouldn't show up on the mitochondrial DNA.
A mitochondrial DNA lineage is NOT the same thing as the female component of a person's (or a population's) full set of ancestors. Mitochondria (and chromosomes) are not people. We can learn something from them, but we have to be careful. On the other hand, this isn't rocket science...
Josh,
ReplyDelete"When the soul is united with the body, the intellect receives information by way of the senses. When the soul is separated from the body, the intellect will still have its distinct being, but the way of intellection will be different. No one can describe this experience concretely, because...we aren't dead. The experience is closed off to us. But the theory isn't inconsistent simply because we cannot relate a death experience to our living experience."
Of course it's inconsistent. And it's wild fancy on top of inconsistency. There is no explanation of why the soul has to change its way of inputting images. Why doesn't it receive input exactly the same in both cases? Why does the body shut down or preclude the method that's ultimately used after death? It's all so ad hoc and convenient. The HD enthusiast is very slippery on these issues. There is good reason for that. We cannot conceive of how this immaterial thought all works out. And that's the laughable part of it. Materialism is held up to strict standards of cause and effect -- how do we explain intentionality? What are the mechanisms?. Things have to make sense or they are rejected. But there are no standards when it comes to hylemorphic dualism. Any explanation will do no matter how unintelligible. "The experience is closed off to us," as you say. Case closed. Have faith.
Josh arguing with djindra is like arguing with John Cleese.
ReplyDelete"Yes it is! No it isn't!Yes it is! No it isn't! Yes it is! No it isn't! Yes it is! No it isn't! Yes it is! No it isn't"etc...
Except Monty Python is funny.
Cheers guy.
BenYachov,
ReplyDeleteCome on. You know I can be funny too.
Nevertheless, I give reasons for my positions. I research. I read. But to you this is just, how do you put it? "Proof texting," I think. You're not serious or funny.
>Nevertheless, I give reasons for my positions. I research.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall in the beginning all you did was mock (& you still do) and refused to do any back round reading.
You also condemned philosophy and equated it & metaphysics with theology and spirituality. You ignored counter arguments and responded with more mockery.
Has anything really changed since then?
These days you are a self professed nominalist and materialist. That's a start. I submit till you came here you didn't understand those philosophical views from a hole in the head.
Also I suspect the examples of more rational Atheists like dguller and Chuck toward the need for philosophy shamed you into slightly stepping up your game.
But you have a really long way to go before anyone take you seriously.
Of course it's inconsistent.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not. And if "we have no explanation or apt description for this currently" is "inconsistent", then holy hell, materialism is inconsistent like crazy.
Materialism is held up to strict standards of cause and effect -- how do we explain intentionality? What are the mechanisms?
This is complete bull. Materialists are more than willing to reject causality when convenient and posit brute facts. Others beg off to "We don't know how, but future research will vindicate our position". Still others embrace New Mysterianism. Others reject "intentionality" altogether and take an eliminativist route. And even others call themselves "materialist" but leave the definition of material open to radical redefinition (see Real Materialism.)
Nevertheless, I give reasons for my positions. I research.
Not really. Your track record is one of not even reading the damn OP of whatever you're usually complaining about, much less doing deeper research. And as always, this all goes back to politics for you. All indications are that if Ed identified as a nominalist and drew moral conclusions from his nominalism that you rejected, you'd be here screaming your head off about the truth and reality of universals.
But hey, keep on flailing I suppose.
BenYachov,
ReplyDeleteAs usual, you're imagining what you want. I certainly mock no more than Ferser mocks. And neither of us mock as much as you do. That's your primary tool. I never refused to do background reading. In fact, I stumbled upon this site because of background reading on Leo Strauss. I never condemned philosophy. I do condemn bad, or politically motivated philosophy which pretty much includes everything promoted here. You can submit that I didn't understand philosophical views before coming here, but that's merely an expression of your profound ignorance about me. I've always been a nominalist if by that you mean I don't give any credence to the realism of forms of any variety. I've almost always been a materialist in that I have no supernatural beliefs. Chuck and dguller haven't shamed me. They don't impress me but that's mainly because I haven't read much they say unless they refer to me directly.
So you and I don't take each other seriously. What else is new?
Thank you Crude for the assist.
ReplyDelete@djindra,
>I've almost always been a materialist in that I have no supernatural beliefs.
No you have always been an anti-supernaturalist or a metaphysical naturalist. I could be an Atheist, a anti-supernaturalist and a metaphysical naturalist & not a materialist.
I could be a philosophical idealist(the mind is the sole cause of "reality") mixed with some Solipsism.
You really have a lot to learn.
You seem somewhat intelligent which is why your performance to date is such a tragedy. Wasting your talents on PZ Myer type Gnu'tardation.
Tragic!
There is really nothing more to say.
Crude,
ReplyDelete"And if "we have no explanation or apt description for this currently" is "inconsistent", then holy hell, materialism is inconsistent like crazy."
That's rich. The truth is HD is a tactic to avoid demands for explanation. There is no hope for an explanation and no search to find one. It's an intellectual dead end. But from a materialistic perspective inevitable contradictions are expected to be corrected. Materialism -- if we're talking of science -- will do the weeding out itself. It's a self-correcting system. There are standards. There are none where you're coming from. Sure, there is a going through the motions. There are pseudo explanations that remind me of "explanations" we got with psychoanalysts. Ever read one of their books? Everything is malleable because it's profoundly subjective and untestable, just like HD.
"Your track record is one of not even reading the damn OP of whatever you're usually complaining about"
Yet I quote him often. You better think of a better reason to reject me than that because you look plain silly -- except maybe to true believers.
"All indications are that if Ed identified as a nominalist and drew moral conclusions from his nominalism that you rejected, you'd be here screaming your head off about the truth and reality of universals."
Well, I've thought platonic beliefs in forms were silly since I first read The Republic over 30 years ago. And then I was a Republican. So why don't you and BenYachov stop trying to analyze me instead of the issues. You're not very good at it anyway.
That's rich. The truth is HD is a tactic to avoid demands for explanation. There is no hope for an explanation and no search to find one. It's an intellectual dead end. But from a materialistic perspective inevitable contradictions are expected to be corrected.
ReplyDeleteSee, this is where that whole "djindra has reading comprehension problems" thing comes up. Do you understand that the lack of a complete description or understanding is not "an inconsistency", much less "a contradiction"? Or that explanations which are not material, or which follow from metaphysical argument and demonstration, are still explanations?
Likewise, no - these things things are not "expected to be corrected" on a materialist account. Hence the New Mysterians. Hence the eliminativists. Hence the reliance on brute facts. It not only is not an expectation on materialism that full, complete and coherent accounts of nature (much less mind) are expected, it's typically made clear that the universe is under no obligation to be comprehensible - either to us, or to anyone at all.
Materialism -- if we're talking of science -- will do the weeding out itself. It's a self-correcting system. There are standards.
Materialism is not "science". It is philosophy and metaphysics. Likewise, "science" is not a monolothic entity speaking in one voice, much less one speaking at all depending on the subject.
Likewise, science also has a little thing called "scope". Not every question is a scientific question, nor is every answer a scientific answer.
There are pseudo explanations that remind me of "explanations" we got with psychoanalysts. Ever read one of their books? Everything is malleable because it's profoundly subjective and untestable, just like HD.
God, what a great example - for me, not you. You realize psychoanalysis was considered to be scientific at the time, and for a long period thereafter? That Freud thought he was being a good ol' scientist (not to mention a good ol' atheist and materialist while he was at it)?
Psychoanalysis belongs in your materialist, "scientific" column. It just happened to flop - so quick, disown it! Freud was a Christian YEC Dominionist, really!
Yet I quote him often. You better think of a better reason to reject me than that because you look plain silly -- except maybe to true believers.
Sure, djindra. Just keep telling you that. "Anyone who accepts what Crude, and pretty much any regular here, notes about me is silly! Silly! They have to be! ... Someone tell me they're silly..." ;)
Look, it's not like this is your first time wading in here - we've seen this before. Same pattern each time, always storming in yelling and carrying on and always so, so frantic while bungling everything from basic concepts to quotes. All in the service of who knows what pet political issue.
Well, I've thought platonic beliefs in forms were silly since I first read The Republic over 30 years ago. And then I was a Republican. So why don't you and BenYachov stop trying to analyze me instead of the issues. You're not very good at it anyway.
Republican? Who said anything about political parties? You're the one who, once again, is fretting about politics, insisting that this is all 'politically motivated'. (Clearly Plato was a Republican too, right? He even wrote that book, The Republic!!!)
I'm fantastic at it, by the way - but I don't have to be. You are ridiculously transparent.
Crude,
ReplyDelete"Do you understand that the lack of a complete description or understanding is not 'an inconsistency', much less 'a contradiction'?"
Ah, yeah. But if you want to accuse me of a reading comprehension problem you ought to make sure you comprehend my words accurately. The inconsistency in question -- the one I was raising -- was the inconsistent nature of the soul's supposed conceptualizing. First it needs a body to do x, then it does not need a body to do x. That, at a minimum, is inconsistency.
"Or that explanations which are not material, or which follow from metaphysical argument and demonstration, are still explanations?"
No, I admit I have a very hard time believing that strictly "metaphysical" explanations resolve anything (except on the most superficial level -- like there is a "metaphysical" requirement for feedback and corroboration in truth seeking adventures).
Hence the New Mysterians.
There are quacks everywhere. That does not prevent other materialists from ignoring the facts an solving problems regardless of the hecklers on both sides of the fence. That's what I'm talking about. I don't claim all materialists are interested in truth. I claim it provides the environment to let serious people do it for everyone else.
Hence the reliance on brute facts.
This I don't get. What's wrong with facts?
Crude,
ReplyDelete"Materialism is not 'science'. It is philosophy and metaphysics."
It's the disowned child of philosophy. As evidence we have statements like, "dualism stands or falls more or less independently of the current state of our scientific knowledge." and "Further discoveries in neuroscience are largely irrelevant" to the question of mental processes. (Philosophy of Mind) That does not accept science as philosophy. It's an arrogant dismissal of it.
"You realize psychoanalysis was considered to be scientific at the time, and for a long period thereafter?"
As I said, there are and will always be quacks. But you conveniently forget that psychoanalysis was rejected (except for a few holdouts). And it was rejected on a materialist basis. It could not be verified to work. HD has no means of verification. It cannot be verified in principle because the whole principle of verification has been rejected.
"... always storming in yelling and carrying on and always so, so frantic..."
That's spin. You think pointing out errors in the dogma is "yelling." What a hoot.
"...while bungling everything from basic concepts to quotes."
I'm not perfect, I could misunderstand. But you've never shown any bungling of mine. You've never shown one mishandled quote. Care to show one?
"All in the service of who knows what pet political issue."
I've been pointing out problems with non-political issues. That you take it to be political means it must be so for you.
"Who said anything about political parties?"
You brought up political motivation: "And as always, this all goes back to politics for you." So you bring up the issue then whine when I point out it -- posting in this or many other threads -- is not political. You claim I bungle things yet you don't even own up to your own words. Like I said, that's rich.
"Clearly Plato was a Republican too, right?"
He did dabble in political philosophy. So political philosophy is not a recent phenomenon. It's not even necessarily bad.
BenYachov,
ReplyDeleteIt's so cute that you keep trying to label me. Keep trying.
djindra,
ReplyDeleteAh, yeah. But if you want to accuse me of a reading comprehension problem you ought to make sure you comprehend my words accurately.
Done and done.
The inconsistency in question -- the one I was raising -- was the inconsistent nature of the soul's supposed conceptualizing. First it needs a body to do x, then it does not need a body to do x. That, at a minimum, is inconsistency.
Who has been saying 'it needs a body to do x, then it does not need a body to do x'? What I've seen, at best, is a claim of how we understand the interaction between the senses and the intellect in the case of an embodied soul. In principle, I suppose, God could directly put something 'in the intellect'.
"It, while embodied, does X via Y" does not cash out to "Doing X requires Y".
No, I admit I have a very hard time believing that strictly "metaphysical" explanations resolve anything
People who say this usually go on to embrace metaphysical explanations without even realizing it. All the same, great, so that's your feeling on the matter. And yet here you are, again and again.
There are quacks everywhere. That does not prevent other materialists from ignoring the facts an solving problems regardless of the hecklers on both sides of the fence. That's what I'm talking about. I don't claim all materialists are interested in truth. I claim it provides the environment to let serious people do it for everyone else.
Man, that's precious. So let's just ignore all the materialists who happen to not be interested in truth, or who we can call quacks, or who believe nutty things, or who don't think all these problems can be solved or answered, etc. You're going to find no materialists left once you clear the room that way.
Not to mention that Freud and company could have grandstanded the very same way at the time. Psychoanalysis shall be vindicated, just you wait! Also Stalinism!
And again, you seem to still be equating "materialism" with "science". They aren't the same thing by a longshot - and 'science' has been delivering one long beating to materialism, currently leaving it downright unrecognizable.
This I don't get. What's wrong with facts?
There's the reading comprehension again.
Brute facts. Do you know what brute facts are?
djindra,
ReplyDeleteWhy are you even here?
Preaching at us with your "Oh your silly to believe in God and Adam..blah..blah..rinse repeat...You just don't understand because your deluded believing in myths....blah blah".
That is about as meaningful to us as some not too bright religious fundie wandering into the Dawkins forums & repeating over & over "Just read your Bible! Accept Jesus as your Lord and Personal Savior! You don't believe because your unsaved & want to be bad people....blah blah!".
Really get a new act or get off your lazy fundie Gnu'atheist arse and do some learning.
Even if you never believe in God for the rest of your pathetic life you would at least have learned something. Learned philosophy. Thinking! Logic! Reason! Traditon! Culture!
Or you can just be a little PZ Myers wannabe accept stupider. If that's even possible.
It's up to you.
I hope this interplay won't take away from the fruitful conversations that have been going on previously...
ReplyDeleteBut as far as I'm concerned, that's strike three on arguing with Djindra. I've been pulled in enough times.
It's the disowned child of philosophy. As evidence we have statements like, "dualism stands or falls more or less independently of the current state of our scientific knowledge." and "Further discoveries in neuroscience are largely irrelevant" to the question of mental processes. (Philosophy of Mind) That does not accept science as philosophy. It's an arrogant dismissal of it.
ReplyDeleteAgain, materialism is not "science". It is philosophy and metaphysics.
As for science and questions of dualism, etc - science has scopes, like it or not. Really, whatever success science has can in large part be attributed to respecting those scopes. It may really upset you that you can't wield science to take down various political, religious and other such dragons you wish to say - but hey, life isn't fair.
As I said, there are and will always be quacks. But you conveniently forget that psychoanalysis was rejected (except for a few holdouts). And it was rejected on a materialist basis. It could not be verified to work. HD has no means of verification. It cannot be verified in principle because the whole principle of verification has been rejected.
They weren't quacks at the time - that's a pretty recent turnaround. Nor was it "rejected on a materialist basis" - it was ADVANCED on a materialist basis. The fact that it ended up being discarded did not make it "not materialist", nor does the inability to verify a claim make the claim "not materialist".
Once again, you're confusing scientific practice with "materialism". Worse, you're trying to make it so any discarded theory either wasn't materialist, or was discarded 'because of materialism' somehow. By that measure, if science - by some stretch of the imagination - concluded in favor of panpsychism or even idealism, it's clearly a victory of materialism.
What bunk.
That's spin. You think pointing out errors in the dogma is "yelling." What a hoot.
I think being all quaintly worked up and angry and namecalling and bungling things left and right is the net equivalent of "yelling", yes. Your "errors" are largely "that which you don't like, or don't like the possible conclusions of".
I'm not perfect, I could misunderstand. But you've never shown any bungling of mine. You've never shown one mishandled quote. Care to show one?
Man, what a short memory. That you'll deny it doesn't mean it hasn't been done. Really, just look at you struggling with 'science' and 'materialism' in this very conversation. Hell, look at the psychoanalysis example. Great move, that one. ;)
I've been pointing out problems with non-political issues. That you take it to be political means it must be so for you.
No, you've largely been angsting that Feser and company argue what they do for political reasons. In the past, you've repeatedly alluded to the political dimensions of these arguments and ideas. Again, you're pretty transparent on this.
You brought up political motivation: "And as always, this all goes back to politics for you."
Uh, yeah. Do you know the difference between 'politics' and 'political parties'? They're not the same thing. You can be a liberal Republican, a conservative Democrat, an independent. Hence my talking about 'pet issues' - your "I was a Republican once" was a non-sequitur.
He did dabble in political philosophy. So political philosophy is not a recent phenomenon. It's not even necessarily bad.
By all means, make the claim that Plato defended the forms for political reasons. That'd be pretty funny to see.
There is an online Wiki called the Encylopedia Dramatica. I've read it.
ReplyDeleteI can't recommend it for moral reasons. It contains pornography, blasphemy. racism, anti-Catholicsim and rabid antisemitism. It seems a bunch of Internet Trolls got together and made it up.
But if it has one virtue the entry on Atheism is a funny as Hell. If only because Gnu'Atheist are a sick parody of their more intellectual forbears.
Fits djindra to a tee.
Josh,
ReplyDeleteI sympathize, and am pretty much done here myself. But I couldn't resist, especially after the psychoanalysis followup and the belief that science = materialism.
But hey, if nothing else the guy provides some moments of comedy, much as he didn't intend to.
>I hope this interplay won't take away from the fruitful conversations that have been going on previously...
ReplyDeleteThe thread is like life my friend. It has a lot of good and bad and an ambigious mix of both.
I doubt that will change though I am looking forward to Part II.
>But as far as I'm concerned, that's strike three on arguing with Djindra. I've been pulled in enough times.
I feel the same way about One Brow.
Cheers.
Ben Yachov,
ReplyDeleteRegarding what Catholics are obliged to believe, you may find this link to be of interest:
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p100.htm
Here's Fr. William Most at http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/most/getwork.cfm?worknum=81 :
"Was the flood anthropologically universal? A few commentators have tried to say no. They point to some odd names found in Genesis ... but that does not leave room for some surviving within the flood area."
This brief comment places Fr. Most on the side of those who believe only eight survived the flood.
I acknowledge that the Scriptural references are hardly conclusive, but the fact is that the Fathers of the Church repeatedly defended the historicity and anthropological universality of the Flood against sceptics who questioned it. Read what St. Augustine has to say in the City of God, Books XII to XV.
You might also like to read what Dave Armstrong says on the Flood:
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2004/05/flood-geology-global-flood-and.html
I personally don't think there were only eight survivors of any recent Flood, but I believe in an ancient flood (2 million years ago ) in East Africa that wiped out all but a few human beings. The recent Flood stories from myths might be based on an event like "Noah's comet" (should that theory prove to be true).
Re Josephus:
If you're right, the vast majority of humans survived the Flood. That's very different from all bar two (as in Original sin).
Cheers.
Ah, it's no big deal guys. It's just a blog combox; lots of shots being fired this way and that...
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure if One Brow is cut from the same cloth as Djindra though. But I haven't been following the monogenist thread, as I know so very little about the subject. The problem of universals, on the other hand...
Crude,
ReplyDelete'It, while embodied, does X via Y' does not cash out to 'Doing X requires Y'.
I suppose it's possible that it doesn't. But that's a whitewash of the situation. Let's assume X could be accomplished by Z. Why doesn't Z enable X when the soul is with the body? It seems reasonable that it could do so. Yet no claim is made that it does. I think I know why. Because Z is controversial. Nobody would take Z seriously when the body can accomplish the same thing (Apologies to Descarte but he's on the wrong end of science). Z is called upon as a last resort. it's the only way to keep X happening when all practical -- and conceivable (that nasty word) -- options are exhausted.
Crude,
ReplyDelete"You're going to find no materialists left once you clear the room that way."
Really? Which god dropped that computer into your lap?
Crude,
ReplyDelete"And again, you seem to still be equating "materialism" with "science". They aren't the same thing by a longshot -"
Non-materialists equate the two quite often. I'm just going with the flow for a change. Feser comes close to doing it too. He's pretty upset with the materialistic bent of science. His science is an alternate Gnu Age science where "final cause" is the secret sauce and God superglues everything together.
"...and 'science' has been delivering one long beating to materialism, currently leaving it downright unrecognizable."
Not hardly.
Crude,
ReplyDelete"Do you know what brute facts are?"
Gorillas? Hit men? Ex-wives? No, I'm sorry, I don't know what brute facts are to you and why they bug you.
BenYachov,
ReplyDeleteI'm here for several reason. First, I enjoy discussing and thinking about ideas. Although I haven't run across many people here (yet) who I would consider intellectually interesting, the issues themselves do provoke me and motivated me to think about them and research them. I enjoy that a lot.
Second, there are probably people who drop in and read some of this stuff and never leave a trace. I hope that maybe some stuff I write and others write will leave the impression that these issues are by no means settled.
Third, it keeps me sharp. The more one writes, the better one gets at it.
Fourth, I like to test my ideas. The best test is to throw them among sharks and see if they can rip them apart. That's one reason I do not normally visit sites where everyone thinks like me (not that one exists). That would bore me.
BTW, I'm kind of sorry about the Adam & Eve & Noah comment. That is one of the few of my posts you could legitimately claim was trolling. But I do really have a hard time understanding how people could still think they were historical events. We, as a culture, can hardly read a news story without questioning its validity. Nevertheless, myths are powerful whether they are true or not. There is no real reason why we need them to be true. People react plenty to movies they know are untrue. That, IMO, is the future of religion.
First, why wouldn't the mathematical models constitute some evidence itself?
ReplyDeleteBecause you can construct a mathematically valid model that shows that the MRCA lived a hundred years ago. Mathematical models don't constitute evidence by themselves, it takes supporting evidence to do so.
Second, the objection relies on assumptions of its own - that there are uncontacted people who did not interbreed with anyone for extremely long (multi-millenia) periods of time. Possible, sure, but it would need to be supported
They don't need to be isolated for centuries, they just need to be isolated in recent times.
For one of the uncontacted tribes in South America to not have a MRCA 5000 years old they would only have to be isolated since the arrival of Europeans, not for the whole of their history... as until the Europeans arrived in the Americas the only common ancestor between the people in the Americas and the Euro-Asians would have been over ten thousand years ago when the American population became isolated from the Euro-Asians.
According whose interpretation? The Vatican didn't declare it dogma anymore then they declared the lack of movement of the Earth Dogma.
Appeal to Authority is a fallacy... and the Vatican cannot change what the authors wrote just by ordering it to be so.
Those are with the exception of water walking are DeFide defined dogmas of the Faith.
And? You open the door when you start declaring that parts of the Bible that cause problems when interpreted literally are symbolic/metaphorical.
We are a different ball game.
So you are using a different set of arbitrary rules?
I don't see how? Rationality is an immaterial quality. How do you trace something immaterial by examining material evidence?
So if I sat you down with two people, one of whom was ensouled and one who wasn't there would be no way to tell them apart?
In which case if science could explain rationality and show it is excusively material in nature you would have a chance.
Fairly simple, the brain is a data processing organ that responds to stimuli based on rules that can be both inherited (such as flinching from something very hot to the touch) or learned (like turning on the light when you enter a dark room). As part of that process the brain generates models based on prior experience to map the internal rules to external stimuli.
Nothing 'external' required.
Finding tools, pottery, art and such show some rationality.
Depending on how you define "tool use" there are non-human animals alive today that use tools... but a stricter definition of tools, as in objects intentionally modified to better achieve some goal, that goes back ~2.6MYA by early Homids (such as Australopithecus).
I will leave you gentlemen with these two links from EWTN in regards to Noah and the Flood. Then I will drop the subject since it is off topic.
ReplyDeleteThose are more supportive of a global flood then against a global flood.
Crude,
ReplyDelete"Again, materialism is not 'science'."
Science is materialistic. It's totally materialistic. There is no room for the non-material. That's the context I mean when I "equate" science with materialism.
"science has scopes, like it or not."
Yes it does. But its scope keeps expanding. It's now overlapping what used to be considered strictly theological or philosophic issues. That expansion will continue. Although I didn't agree with a lot of the book, Wilson's Consilience discusses this issue.
"It may really upset you that you can't wield science to take down various political, religious and other such dragons you wish to say - but hey, life isn't fair."
As my posts demonstrate, science in not required. Most of these argument fall apart on their own. Bad reasoning permeates them.
"Nor was it 'rejected on a materialist basis' - it was ADVANCED on a materialist basis.
As if it couldn't be advanced and rejected on a materialistic basis! So what non-materialistic or metaphysical basis was used to discredit psychoanalysis?
We can have a much more recent common female ancestor to everyone on the planet. If her genes spread THROUGH HER SONS, it wouldn't show up on mitochondrial DNA.
ReplyDeleteSure... but then her sons would all carry the Y-Chromosome of her mate, their father, Adam... and down through the generations to us.
Crude,
ReplyDelete"I think being all quaintly worked up and angry and namecalling and bungling things left and right is the net equivalent of 'yelling', yes. Your 'errors' are largely 'that which you don't like, or don't like the possible conclusions of'."
Invention and more spin.
What anger? What namecalling? What bungling? What errors? I've been quietly showing the flawed arguments and inconsistencies in Feser's posts and a few others in this thread. No reasonable person could think I've done this in anger or used ad hominems. I think maybe you take rejection of your cherished beliefs too personally.
"In the past, you've repeatedly alluded to the political dimensions of these arguments and ideas."
Maybe you should grow thicker skin. In the past is in the past. If you've read my posts in the last several months, I don't bring up politics unless someone else does first or the issue itself is overtly political -- like natural law. And I didn't bring it up that much to begin with. Nevertheless, this is a hypocritical complaint. Feser is very political. I've read two of his books. He makes no secret about it. But I'm supposed to sit on my hands like a obedient, respectful child. Sorry, the world doesn't work that way. Expect in return what you dish out.
"Do you know the difference between 'politics' and 'political parties'?"
Play games all you want. You won't change the fact that you brought up politics not me. All else is your ridiculous squirming out of the truth.
"By all means, make the claim that Plato defended the forms for political reasons. That'd be pretty funny to see."
But it's reasonable for you to claim I have political reasons for rejecting Feser's vague distinction between conceiving and imagining. Yeah, that's fair.
BenYachov,
ReplyDelete"I feel the same way about One Brow."
That may be because none of you guys has the tools to make a serious attempt at defending your weak philosophic positions. It's much easier to point to a web site and say, "You see, he's just like that!" It's easier to claim arguments are ill-formed and full of errors without actually engaging in demonstrations of such. But that's okay. I'll just quietly point out the bad arguments as I see them. It saves me time to be left alone.
@VJ I appreciate your response. I find your view interesting and plausible. Our Lady be with you brother.
ReplyDelete@Stone Tops
>Appeal to Authority is a fallacy... and the Vatican cannot change what the authors wrote just by ordering it to be so.
Begs the question even VJ admits the texts by themselves are not conclusive and he disagrees with my interpretation. The Popes have not ruled on the matter.
As to the appeal to authority the Bible itself says it can be misinterpreted to the harm of the person (2 Peter 3:16) and it condemns private interpretation QUOTE" No prophecy [or explanation] of Scripture is made by private interpretation." (2 St. Peter i. 20.). The Popes and the Bishops have the final authority to interpret the scripture. Matt 16:18 and Matt 18:18.
Thus by definition the Bible according to itself is hardly clear now is it?
>And? You open the door when you start declaring that parts of the Bible that cause problems when interpreted literally are symbolic/metaphorical.
What are you trying to do here Tops? Convince me Atheism is true or Protestantism? Because you are using a Protestant argument and assumption. It's simply a brute fact the belief the Bible is perspicuous is not taught in the Bible. The Bible clearly teaches it's not clear. If you dispute my interpretation of the texts I cited for this that only proves my point. Also nowhere does the Bible teach it's the sole rule of faith either. Augustine taught and the Church accepts if a particular interpretation of Scripture contradicts the known science then it is the interpretation that must yield.
Problems only occur if private interpretation where true. But it isn't. Even the Torah says the Cohen interpreted the Torah. Jesus told the Jews to listen to the Pharisees because they sat in the Chair of Moses.
I don't think you are going to get far using a Protestant argument. You have to do twice the work. Defend Protestant doctrine which you do not believe as a foil for Catholic doctrine & then argue for Atheism.
I don't think it works.
>So you are using a different set of arbitrary rules?
Yes I realize you believe all religion is arbitrarily made up but it is a brute fact we do have different rules then Protestants.
>So if I sat you down with two people, one of whom was ensouled and one who wasn't there would be no way to tell them apart?
Of course but there are no souless near-humans left. You might as well postulate a Time Machine.
>Fairly simple, the brain is a data processing organ...
If you read a few posts down I reversed myself here.
>Those are more supportive of a global flood then against a global flood.
Father Eckart writes"As to whether or not we must affirm that the flood encompassed the entire orb of the earth, the text would seem to teach this and subsequent texts would tend to corroborate this, but there is some flexibility with regards to the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, as expressed in the encyclical “Humani Generis” of Pope Pius XII:.
Go back and read the quote from Pius XII it's enlightening.
As for Dr. Geraghty he was rather explicit.
I think it is as you said; namely, that the account of Noah is both fact and mystery. If we take the story literally, then we are descendants of Noah and his family since everyone else was destroyed. If we do not take the story literally as the destruction of the whole human race but only a significant portion of it, then we are all descendants of Adam and Eve but not of Noah. The point is that God does not intend to give us all the details but only those points which we need to know. And that point is that man can merit destruction for the sins he has committed on earth.
So I am not sure how they where mostly pro?
Cheers.
@VJ I appreciate your response. I find your view interesting and plausible. Our Lady be with you brother.
ReplyDelete@Stone Tops
>Appeal to Authority is a fallacy... and the Vatican cannot change what the authors wrote just by ordering it to be so.
Begs the question even VJ admits the texts by themselves are not conclusive and he disagrees with my interpretation. The Popes have not ruled on the matter.
As to the appeal to authority the Bible itself says it can be misinterpreted to the harm of the person (2 Peter 3:16) and it condemns private interpretation QUOTE" No prophecy [or explanation] of Scripture is made by private interpretation." (2 St. Peter i. 20.). The Popes and the Bishops have the final authority to interpret the scripture. Matt 16:18 and Matt 18:18.
Thus by definition the Bible according to itself is hardly clear now is it?
>And? You open the door when you start declaring that parts of the Bible that cause problems when interpreted literally are symbolic/metaphorical.
What are you trying to do here Tops? Convince me Atheism is true or Protestantism? Because you are using a Protestant argument and assumption. It's simply a brute fact the belief the Bible is perspicuous is not taught in the Bible. The Bible clearly teaches it's not clear. If you dispute my interpretation of the texts I cited for this that only proves my point. Also nowhere does the Bible teach it's the sole rule of faith either. Augustine taught and the Church accepts if a particular interpretation of Scripture contradicts the known science then it is the interpretation that must yield.
Problems only occur if private interpretation where true. But it isn't. Even the Torah says the Cohen interpreted the Torah. Jesus told the Jews to listen to the Pharisees because they sat in the Chair of Moses.
I don't think you are going to get far using a Protestant argument. You have to do twice the work. Defend Protestant doctrine which you do not believe as a foil for Catholic doctrine & then argue for Atheism.
I don't think it works.
@Stone tops
ReplyDelete>So you are using a different set of arbitrary rules?
Yes I realize you believe all religion is arbitrarily made up but it is a brute fact we do have different rules then Protestants.
>So if I sat you down with two people, one of whom was ensouled and one who wasn't there would be no way to tell them apart?
Of course but there are no souless near-humans left. You might as well postulate a Time Machine.
>Fairly simple, the brain is a data processing organ...
If you read a few posts down I reversed myself here.
>Those are more supportive of a global flood then against a global flood.
Father Eckart writes"As to whether or not we must affirm that the flood encompassed the entire orb of the earth, the text would seem to teach this and subsequent texts would tend to corroborate this, but there is some flexibility with regards to the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, as expressed in the encyclical “Humani Generis” of Pope Pius XII:.
Go back and read the quote from Pius XII it's enlightening.
As for Dr. Geraghty he was rather explicit.
I think it is as you said; namely, that the account of Noah is both fact and mystery. If we take the story literally, then we are descendants of Noah and his family since everyone else was destroyed. If we do not take the story literally as the destruction of the whole human race but only a significant portion of it, then we are all descendants of Adam and Eve but not of Noah. The point is that God does not intend to give us all the details but only those points which we need to know. And that point is that man can merit destruction for the sins he has committed on earth.
So I am not sure how they where mostly pro?
Cheers.
PS thank you VJ for the link to Fr Most I am going to get around to reading him when I can.
ReplyDeleteBecause you can construct a mathematically valid model that shows that the MRCA lived a hundred years ago. Mathematical models don't constitute evidence by themselves, it takes supporting evidence to do so.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that in your version, you're implying that the people constructing the model aimed for a MRCA from 100 years ago, then built their model to achieve that aim. That's not what happened in this model - they worked with reasonable assumptions and current data, and let the system work out itself. They reported the result they got.
You can argue that it's not certain, sure - the modelers would agree with you. You could argue that it's limited, absolutely. But arguing that it's not evidence of any kind just doesn't wash. And really, if you're discounting evidence like that, then the last MRCA is utterly up in the air and the entire line of criticism you're working towards falls apart anyway. "Science can't tell us when the MRCA was" would be a push here.
Appeal to Authority is a fallacy... and the Vatican cannot change what the authors wrote just by ordering it to be so.
Er, the "appeal to authority" fallacy doesn't apply in a case where the authority is agreed upon as decisive. For committed Catholics, that authority really is authoritative. You can dispute that, but recognize what you're disputing, and to whom.
Likewise, the Church doesn't "change what the authors wrote". It does, however, determine proper interpretation in particular contexts and on certain questions.
And? You open the door when you start declaring that parts of the Bible that cause problems when interpreted literally are symbolic/metaphorical.
The door is already open for Catholics. That the Church has authority over interpretation isn't some new innovation.
Now, get outside of the Catholic Church and you no longer have that authority of interpretation. Instead, you have private interpretation taking precedence.
In other words, you have the "interpretation" problem no matter what. I really don't suggest trying to get by purely with "Well, I think if you read the bible the interpretation I'm giving is obvious the correct one!" - There's no shortage of people (even atheists, apparently!) willing to say that.
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteI just came across this excellent summary by Robert Bradshaw of Jewish and Christian traditions regarding the extent and universality of the Flood, and the reality of Noah's ark.
http://www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/
pdf/chapter6.pdf
If you go here, you can read his whole book:
http://www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/
pdf/
The long and the short of it is that all of them believed in a global and anthropologically universal flood - even the arch-allegorist Origen (see Contra Celsus Book IV, chapter 41 at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/
04164.htm ). How binding they considered the belief to be is another question, of course.
Ben Yachov, thanks for your kind comments.
So many so blindly talk about Noah and the ark as if it was a historical event. But it's so obviously borrowed from the Epic of Gilgamesh. And that was obviously borrowed from the Sumerian flood myth whose hero was named Ziusudra. There ought to be some respectible limit to the gullibility of true believers.
ReplyDeleteWhat I can't understand, and could never understand, is how the Noah myth can be seen as anything but evil. The character Yahweh is presented as a mass murderer. God should file a defamation of character suit. At least the Babylonian myth does not try to transform genocide into a some sort of twisted morality play. In fact, the Babylonian myth knows the gods have done an unjust thing, a criminal thing. But in the Bible it's somehow the victim's fault.
But djindra if God created man He can uncreate him at will. Surely there is nothing wrong about that?
ReplyDeleteSecondly as an atheist you should hold that life is a particular arrangement of atoms. If such an arrangement were to be rearranged for whatever reason and by whatever mechanism yielding non-life, it would not be anything bad. Besides even if you hold life dear, the deaths of these people led to a food source for various other forms of life - bacteria, plankton, fungi etc.
I still think this whole discussion - Y chromosome Adam, Mitochondrial Eve, Original Sin, The Flood, 10,000 ancestors - is an attempt to reconcile theology with scientific hypotheses that may be overturned tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteSometimes we need to sit back and let science catch up with what we already know!
George R.: Mr. Green, I have to admit your argument is not ridiculous. But neither does it succeed. [...] evolution would be just another word for generation, and nobody would have a problem with it.
ReplyDeleteWell, thank you. And I would say that "evolution" is almost another word for "generation"; specifically, "generation with change" (i.e. living organisms can generate new organisms that are not exact copies). And I would even say that almost nobody does have a problem with it, except that the term is often misunderstood or misused. For example, wolves (eventually) producing chihuahuas or pit-bulls is evolution that everyone accepts.
"Special evolution" is more contentious, but even there people generally reject it not because of Thomistic metaphysics but because of Scripture (e.g. reading Genesis more literally than special evolution would allow) or because of science (e.g. because they think that biology shows limits on how much change can happen), or even because some loudmouth biologist said, "Evolution disproves God" (to which they correctly conclude, "So much the worse for evolution", though of course real evolutionary biology does no such thing). All I'm claiming is that it can be possible for evolution to occur that even leads to new species (whether or not God actually created a nature that worked that way, or caused it to unfold that way).
So, you see, in the case of substantial generation, like does indeed cause like, and it can never be otherwise. But the final cause can never be changed, for it is the cause of motion, not an effect. Therefore, substantial evolution is impossible.
That sounds right to me, insofar as we speak of the final cause rather than the efficient cause, but who ever said the final cause "changed"? When we speak of animals "evolving", nobody means that an individual pig morphs into a whale or something. It's (arguably sloppy) shorthand for a population's evolving, i.e. gaining members of a new species over time. Similarly, the final cause of any individual organism never "changes" — which, as you say, makes no sense — but rather, the final causes are different. There's no impossibility in having different final causes, so substantial evolution is possible.
One Brow: Simple enough: every organism has it's own form. We we talk about the form of a human or the form of a dog, it's actually talking about a grouping of similar forms, not a specific form.
ReplyDeleteNot quite — all dogs do actually share one and the same form of Dogginess; that is, the same substantial form (that makes them all dogs), as opposed to differing accidental forms (such as for red fur or brown fur, etc.). In Thomism, human beings are a special case in that we each have individual substantial forms.
evoution is possible by the gradual deviations of forms over time.
Yes, at least with the caveat that a form itself isn't deviated (cf. my point above to George R. that populations evolve rather than individuals, but I imagine that is what you meant).
Anonymous: BenYachov, seriously, knock it off with the crude language. You're bringing shame to Catholic Christianity.
ReplyDeleteBenYachov: No.
Wow. It's one thing to post garbage unwittingly, but to do it deliberately is the definition of a jerk. Are you really unaware of what a bad impression you give not just of yourself, but of Catholicism, of Thomism, and of everything else you represent? You obviously are capable of posting calm, reasoned comments, so why ruin it by posting temper tantrums too? Calling someone names is certainly not going to change his mind (whether you think he "deserves" it or not), and it spoils the forum for the rest of us. You are quick to stop when Ed has to step in and warn folks to smarten up, so why do it in the first place? Even if you "have no patience for thoughtless trolls & Gnus" (despite, as Anonymous points out, being an unchristian attitude), please have some consideration for the majority who come here for civilised discussions.
Anonymous: Could someone please, as someone else has already requested, comment on djindra's comment from Sep. 9th @ 6:45 am re: the alleged difference between conceiving and imagining? I had the same confusion when reading Dr. Feser's POM
ReplyDeleteProbably nobody bothered to comment because Djindra has been answered before but keeps repeating the same confused points. In this case, there's a double confusion in that he's making up new definitions and then contradicting himself. But if people haven't seen it before, perhaps it's worth addressing again.
djindra: I can conceive many-sided figures exist because I assume they can be made or drawn. My conceiving is merely my assumption that these things exist, or theoretically could.
No. That is not what "conceiving" is, either in the Thomistic sense of the term, or even the everyday sense (which are pretty close, although we also use "conceive" to mean "imagine", and vice versa, when we're not being philosophers of mind). "Conceiving" in the original context quite clearly refers to an intellectual concept, an abstract idea, the result of reasoning, not of sensing or experiencing or imagining or remembering.
IOW, I assume my conclusion.
No comment.
This distinction between conceiving and imagining is no more than a hidden form of begging the question.
Obviously you cannot disprove somebody's argument by making up new definitions and complaining they don't fit. However, let's pretend that instead Djindra was offering an alternative explanation: that wouldn't refute the argument, but it might give us an excuse not to accept it, if there were a different explanation that worked just as well. Is it possible that "conceiving" could be nothing more than the belief that something exists? Again, no.
What is the "thing" that we're believing might exist? What is "believing X exists"? They cannot be more images, or all we get is an infinite regress of images that never gets us to the actual idea of "such and such exists". The thought that "this image actually exists in the real world" is an abstract concept, not another image. Furthermore, we use our rationality to draw conclusions about things not only which we cannot image (e.g. complex mathematical objects), but also which we believe cannot exist in the world (e.g. the "extremely complicated" parts in the Banach-Tarski paradox). Besides the contradiction of thinking that something doesn't physically exist being a form of thinking that it does exist, if all thought were "imagining", it would be impossible to reason abstractly about matters where nothing in the argument has a physical counterpart, and yet mathematicians — indeed, all of us — do it every day.
Not quite — all dogs do actually share one and the same form of Dogginess; that is, the same substantial form (that makes them all dogs), as opposed to differing accidental forms (such as for red fur or brown fur, etc.).
ReplyDelete"Dogginess" is just an arbitrary category we use to define things that we find in the world around us, like "round" or "sweet".
Anonymous,
ReplyDelete"But djindra if God created man He can uncreate him at will. Surely there is nothing wrong about that?"
I know it's politically incorrect, but when I was a boy we used to call such people Indian Givers. It was not a term of moral indifference.
"Secondly as an atheist you should hold that life is a particular arrangement of atoms. If such an arrangement were to be rearranged for whatever reason and by whatever mechanism yielding non-life, it would not be anything bad. Besides even if you hold life dear, the deaths of these people led to a food source for various other forms of life - bacteria, plankton, fungi etc."
I'm not always successful, but I do try to keep from lumping all Christians or religionists in together as one monolithic group with one common belief. We non-believers have much variation too. Some of us love life very much, but human life more so than any other life. We do see a point in it. We do believe in moral truths. Perhaps you have me confused with some stereotype. There is nothing I *should* believe, only the things I *do* believe.
djindra,
ReplyDelete'I know it's politically incorrect, but when I was a boy we used to call such people Indian Givers. It was not a term of moral indifference.'
But djindra if God did create man He could uncreate him and the reason although appearing cruel to us may in fact not be cruel at all. Perhaps if the flood had not happened the world would not have developed civilisation to the degree it did. Who knows. Just because you can't conceive a just reason does not mean there isn't one.
"Secondly as an atheist you should hold that life is a particular arrangement of atoms. If such an arrangement were to be rearranged for whatever reason and by whatever mechanism yielding non-life, it would not be anything bad. Besides even if you hold life dear, the deaths of these people led to a food source for various other forms of life - bacteria, plankton, fungi etc."
'I'm not always successful, but I do try to keep from lumping all Christians or religionists in together as one monolithic group with one common belief. We non-believers have much variation too. Some of us love life very much, but human life more so than any other life. We do see a point in it. We do believe in moral truths. Perhaps you have me confused with some stereotype. There is nothing I *should* believe, only the things I *do* believe.'
I don't doubt you love life. As a rule humans have evolved to love life, most of us can't help it.
Those who did not love life died out without passing on their genes.
Those humans who did not co-operate well with others also died out. It's an instict though. But from your worldview it does not follow
that human life is any more special than than a waterfall or a quasar or the life of a plant. We are just an accident and although we may be deluded or self deceive ourselves that we are special, we're not. We're not important and the love you have for your wife is because of some lucky arrangements of neurons, genes and environmental factors and is there to encourage you to have children and raise them together. It is not valuable in itself even though you may be convinced it is.
In Christianity man is made in the image of God, and there is a way out of this despairing human condition. If you think Christianity is a delusion or a self deception, fine, but so is your view of love, life etc.
Egads,
ReplyDeleteI should never look at one of these threads while I have lots of work to finish. There are so many dubious claims made by theists here it's hard to know where to start.
I've already been in discussions about 'final causes" with people here, and I have
engaged Prof Feser in some back and forth on Eric Macdonald's blog...which is indicating to me that my initial assessment of the liabilities of A-T reasoning were well founded. Instead of cogent responses to questions posed, problems seem to multiply with Feser's replies. But I'll get back to this general issue when time permits.
But just briefly, this one itches so bad it must be scratched:
Anonymous wrote:
But djindra if God created man He can uncreate him at will. Surely there is nothing wrong about that?
Actually there is EVERYTHING wrong with that. To say there is nothing wrong with God killing humans because God created humans begs the question on the nature of morality. Many people, including many moral philosophers, would say that is wrong to think a Creator could do whatever he pleases with moral agents, even IF He created those agents.
There's a reason why the father yelling at his son "I brought you into this world boy, I can take you out!" is used as a joke. Might makes right, or "I created you I can kill you" fails to recognize the equation involved when the entity you are killing or harming is, itself, a moral agent.
Many have found on investigating the concepts of morality and value, that "Creator Rights" type arguments, as above, make no sense. That once you have agents with desires, who can suffer or experience well being, who can have their own plans and goals, and who are themselves moral agents, then you can't just go doing whatever you want to them and still be "good" even IF you created them. And that the notion of "good" implies certain virtues, virtues that can be violated even by a Creator's actions to His creation.
Now, a Thomist may whip out his value theory to counter this. But that will require an argument from the Thomist (none of which I have seen indicate any promise). No such argument was given above, which is my point as I'm addressing Anonymous' post, in which he makes an assertion VERY COMMONLY encountered from Christians - that simply on the basis of God creating humans, God can do as He wishes with humans. This is an extremely dubious claim and strikes me as a non-sequitur. It is FAR from obvious that one ought to accept the proposition that a Creator (God) can do as He wishes to His creation and still deserve the description "good."
RH
Also:
ReplyDelete"Secondly as an atheist you should hold that life is a particular arrangement of atoms. If such an arrangement were to be rearranged for whatever reason and by whatever mechanism yielding non-life, it would not be anything bad."
This is another one of those astoundingly bad arguments, yet it is among the most common from theists to atheists!
I don't know anyone, atheist or theist, who IN REAL LIFE thinks that re-arrangements of matter are not extremely consequential. That is why anyone saying "Let's drive the banana to work" instead of "let's drive the car to work" is understood to be saying something nutty - because we all understand that matter/energy arranged as a banana can not do the things matter/energy arranged as a car can do. Like anyone else here, I sure as hell would object to the atoms of my shins being "re-arranged" by a baseball bat! So this deflationary appeal to "it's all just matter in motion...hence what could it matter what happens to us?" is absurd. Any theist ought to be embarrassed to see another theist making this argument.
This argument is an incredibly lazy attempt to reason from atheist or materialist/physicalist tenets, in which it simply ignores that as an Atheist I would hold that it is extremely consequential how matter/energy is arranged, and that new or individual properties or characteristics emerge from different arrangements. And that the emergence of desires, ability to suffer or feel joy, to have plans, to rationalize etc, are properties that arise with particular arrangements of matter/energy (e.g. humans) and are of the greatest consequence to value and morality.
You can argue against that, and that is a separate discussion. But you can't just pretend you are making logical inferences from some set of premises an atheist might hold, while simply ignoring all the important premises held by the atheist.
Stop doing that. Please.
"Besides even if you hold life dear, the deaths of these people led to a food source for various other forms of life - bacteria, plankton, fungi etc."
Would you think that losing your child to a terrible disease or disaster would not really "matter" to you, because you can rationalize your child as feeding microorganisms?
Of course not. That is very obviously ridiculous. It simply has no connection to how people actually think and feel, and how value arises for human beings. Why then would you possibly think an atheist would go along with such an idea?
I value many other people enormously - as much as I can value ANYTHING. And I also recognize that they are moral agents, and also that they have desires, plans, feelings etc. Hence someone I love dying is certainly tragic for me, and I can see it as tragic for them and for others who love them as well.
It's no wonder certain people are theists, since they do such a poor job reasoning as atheists ;-)
Anyway, I'll have to leave this for others to descend upon...
Cheers,
RH
RH,
ReplyDeleteI agree, it's hard to know where to start. Christians habitually whine about moral responsibility yet many lose all perspective when it comes to apologies for the faith. Sorry, Dostoevsky: With God, everything is permissible.
The Popes have not ruled on the matter.
ReplyDeleteDoes the authority of the Popes lie on anything other then their claim to authority?
The Popes and the Bishops have the final authority to interpret the scripture. Matt 16:18 and Matt 18:18.
So that part of the Bible isn't open to interpretation... but the rest of the Bible is open to interpretation?
Also, if the Bible is open to interpretation that doesn't that mean that your passage about private interpretation being dangerous is open to interpretation?
Matt 16:18 and Matt 18:18.
The Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Protestant, and Latter Day Saint denominations seem to disagree that that passage is in reference to the Catholic Church.
Thus by definition the Bible according to itself is hardly clear now is it?
Yet you quote the Bible to back up your claims that the Popes have the authority to interpret scripture? By admitting that the Bible is "hardly clear" your claims that the Pope's authority to interpret the Bible is granted by the Bible becomes questionable.
Augustine taught and the Church accepts if a particular interpretation of Scripture contradicts the known science then it is the interpretation that must yield.
Doesn't that mean that the literal interpretation of the resurrection account must yield? After all someone rising from the dead after having been tortured to death then buried for a few days clearly contradicts known science.
RH:
ReplyDelete"Actually there is EVERYTHING wrong with that. To say there is nothing wrong with God killing humans because God created humans begs the question on the nature of morality. Many people, including many moral philosophers, would say that is wrong to think a Creator could do whatever he pleases with moral agents, even IF He created those agents."
Again there may very well be a valid reason for God to do what He did or is supposed to have done. Just because it may be inconceivable to YOU does not mean there isn't one.
"There's a reason why the father yelling at his son "I brought you into this world boy, I can take you out!" is used as a joke. Might makes right, or "I created you I can kill you" fails to recognize the equation involved when the entity you are killing or harming is, itself, a moral agent."
True. But the life in question originates from God.
"No such argument was given above, which is my point as I'm addressing Anonymous' post, in which he makes an assertion VERY COMMONLY encountered from Christians - that simply on the basis of God creating humans, God can do as He wishes with humans. This is an extremely dubious claim and strikes me as a non-sequitur. It is FAR from obvious that one ought to accept the proposition that a Creator (God) can do as He wishes to His creation and still deserve the description "good.""
If I build a house and find that it is not safe to live in, I may tear it down can't I? I don't really think God does what He pleases with His creation but again there may be a good reason you're missing why God may have done what He did.
Yes I realize you believe all religion is arbitrarily made up but it is a brute fact we do have different rules then Protestants.
ReplyDeleteSure, but even though your rules and Protestant rules contradict each other you've yet to offer any reason to favor your interpretation of the Bible as representing the intention of the writers over theirs.
Go back and read the quote from Pius XII it's enlightening.
Nothing particularly enlightening there regarding if the writers intended for the passage to be read literally (or that everybody except Noah was in reference to a small subset of people).
If we take the story literally, then we are descendants of Noah and his family since everyone else was destroyed. If we do not take the story literally as the destruction of the whole human race but only a significant portion of it, then we are all descendants of Adam and Eve but not of Noah.
Yet only one of those interpretations can represent the historical event... and further only one of those interpretations represents the intents of the writer.
We know that the literal interpretation isn't supported by the evidence (no evidence for a global flood), but then neither does the idea of a wide scale flood match the account (the language being rather clear that everyone was wiped out, plus the question of what was up with the animals and how they were fed for the duration of the flood).
RH:
ReplyDelete"This is another one of those astoundingly bad arguments, yet it is among the most common from theists to atheists!"
I heard this from the likes of PZ Myers. You know when he said he didn't feel anything when he dissected infant neurons or observed peristaltic movements of intestines.
"I don't know anyone, atheist or theist, who IN REAL LIFE thinks that re-arrangements of matter are not extremely consequential. That is why anyone saying "Let's drive the banana to work" instead of "let's drive the car to work" is understood to be saying something nutty - because we all understand that matter/energy arranged as a banana can not do the things matter/energy arranged as a car can do."
Sure because one is utility to you while the other is not. But why drive to work anyway?
"Like anyone else here, I sure as hell would object to the atoms of my shins being "re-arranged" by a baseball bat! So this deflationary appeal to "it's all just matter in motion...hence what could it matter what happens to us?" is absurd."
The pain you feel is just a change in matter/energy in your nervous system. Isn't it?
"Any theist ought to be embarrassed to see another theist making this argument."
I don't see how this is relevant. I am not a philosopher and am merely expressing my own views.
"This argument is an incredibly lazy attempt to reason from atheist or materialist/physicalist tenets, in which it simply ignores that as an Atheist I would hold that it is extremely consequential how matter/energy is arranged, and that new or individual properties or characteristics emerge from different arrangements. And that the emergence of desires, ability to suffer or feel joy, to have plans, to rationalize etc, are properties that arise with particular arrangements of matter/energy (e.g. humans) and are of the greatest consequence to value and morality."
But all these things are illusions. They emerged because they were in some way successful to the propagation of the species.
"You can argue against that, and that is a separate discussion. But you can't just pretend you are making logical inferences from some set of premises an atheist might hold, while simply ignoring all the important premises held by the atheist."
Everyone holds certain premises because we've developed that way. I guess people who did not value their own lives and lives of their children did not produce offspring as well as others.
"Would you think that losing your child to a terrible disease or disaster would not really "matter" to you, because you can rationalize your child as feeding microorganisms?"
Again we have these feelings in order to get us to take care of our children, spouses, form a community which is beneficial to survival and increased reproductive fitness. We're attached to people and things we value, sometimes total strangers. Evolution can explain that.
"Why then would you possibly think an atheist would go along with such an idea?"
From reading numerous comments made by your fellow atheists. From things like this:
http://telicthoughts.com/pz-myers-mediocrity-principle/
"Hence someone I love dying is certainly tragic for me, and I can see it as tragic for them and for others who love them as well."
We all do. We can't help it unless so part of our brain is injured. However is there any intrinsic value in that? It feels important to us but it isn't to the rest of the universe.
"It's no wonder certain people are theists, since they do such a poor job reasoning as atheists ;-)"
Yes, I guess I'm just a stupid Christian and I don't know that atheists have feelings.
Cheers.
If this is off topic I apologise. I also apologise for my lack of philosophical eloquence.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteYou've now shifted arguments. Now you are getting it and you are making my point.
You originally argued simply from the premise that "IF God created man" THEN "He can uncreate him at will." And that there is nothing wrong in how the latter follows from the former.
I pointed out it simply does not follow.
NOW you are bringing in a different argument:
"Again there may very well be a valid reason for God to do what He did..."
So now you acknowledge that what we want is for God to have morally valid reasons for how He treats his Creation (us). I agree: THAT'S THE POINT.
Is a morally valid reason to kill us or make us suffer "He created us, so He can do anything He wants to us?" No. You offer no reason to think so, and neither has any other theist given good reasons for this inference.
So now you are appealing to some other mysterious good reasons for how God treats us, that we may not know about. Leaving aside that this remains an impotent path to tread upon, at least we've moved past your original argument, which was untenable.
BTW, do you not acknowledge the flaw in your previous question, that presumed: "Since we are just atoms, why would the death of someone who is an arrangement of atoms matter to you?"
RH
RH,
ReplyDelete"You originally argued simply from the premise that "IF God created man" THEN "He can uncreate him at will." And that there is nothing wrong in how the latter follows from the former."
Because I don't think God did that for such a reason.
"I pointed out it simply does not follow.
I'm not convinced but let's leave it at that.
"So now you acknowledge that what we want is for God to have morally valid reasons for how He treats his Creation (us). I agree: THAT'S THE POINT.
Is a morally valid reason to kill us or make us suffer "He created us, so He can do anything He wants to us?" No. You offer no reason to think so, and neither has any other theist given good reasons for this inference.
So now you are appealing to some other mysterious good reasons for how God treats us, that we may not know about. Leaving aside that this remains an impotent path to tread upon, at least we've moved past your original argument, which was untenable."
I don't think it is an impotent path. It is always conceivable that we don't see the bigger picture.
"BTW, do you not acknowledge the flaw in your previous question, that presumed: "Since we are just atoms, why would the death of someone who is an arrangement of atoms matter to you?""
It seems that my reply was never posted. Things may matter to me but is that really important? Things may seem to matter to all of us because we've just evolved that way. Every day we do things we're convinced are important but at the end of the day they are all meaningless. They only seem to have meaning. You think the work you do is important?
In reply to the previous thread
things such as Myer's Mediocrity Principle come to mind as reasons to think why some of you should reason like this.
That's not what happened in this model - they worked with reasonable assumptions and current data, and let the system work out itself. They reported the result they got.
ReplyDeleteAnd if those assumptions are reasonable then there should be physical evidence to back them up.
Also, it seems from reading over their research, that whenever they increased the complexity of the simulation to better align with the real world the further back the MRCA moved.
For committed Catholics, that authority really is authoritative.
And I'm sure for some committed Buddhists the Dali Lama "really is authorative". Yet citing the Dali Lama as an authorative source when talking to non Tibetan Buddhists doesn't make much sense.
It does, however, determine proper interpretation in particular contexts and on certain questions
Yet since they are not the authors themselves what makes their interpretations the proper ones? Is it because they interpret the Bible to give them the authority to interpret the Bible properly?
Instead, you have private interpretation taking precedence.
So what makes the official Catholic interpretation not private interpretation, but everyone else's interpretation a private one?
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteBecause I don't think God did that for such a reason.
But you originally posited the simple fact of God being The Creator as the justification for
God wiping out a human's existence. If that is not the justification, why did you bother making your assertion?
Now at least you've moved past it...but you just don't want to acknowledge your original proposition was faulty. Even if you finally acknowledge it is faulty, there's a massive line up of Christians behind you wanting to make that bad argument again and again....
Things may matter to me but is that really important? Things may seem to matter to all of us because we've just evolved that way. Every day we do things we're convinced are important but at the end of the day they are all meaningless. They only seem to have meaning.
I see this so often from theists, and it is inevitably based on poorly thought out conceptions of "value" and "meaning" and "purpose" to begin with. (Not surprising, given the Bible starts you off on the wrong foot - it's like a perpetual motion generator of false ideas about value and human nature).
What would you possibly mean by "really important?" Of course human affairs are important to humans. How else could it be? Everything that is important, or of value to me would be so on the basis of how it impacts my conscious experience. How else COULD anything be of importance or value to any of us, outside of conscious experience?
The value and purpose and importance that arises from the relationship of desires, and the ability to rationalize about what fulfills desires - which is I submit necessary to the nature of value and morality, purpose and meaning - is as "real" and valid as possible. It's the only thing that makes sense of meaning, value and purpose in the first place!
We already display the characteristics necessary for "real" meaning, purpose and value to arise. A God would, if He existed, have to have share vital characteristics with us in order for value to arise in response to anything God says or does. (Not the other way around).
RH
StoneTop,
ReplyDeleteGood stuff. You keep needling quite well at the weakness of those responses.
Some portion of theists these days like to make a display of declaring atheists, especially "new atheists," shallow, naive, ignorant, etc. Yet I've found much of this to be empty bluster.** When you can finally pin a theist down to make an actual case for his beliefs, the weaknesses become glaring and it often turns out the bluff has been called. :-)
RH
**(I DO think some criticisms of atheists, including Prof Fester, have been justified.
Atheists of course can be bone-heads and I take my fellow atheists to task as well, as they do me. But when it gets down to the theist making his case, I find many atheists, "gnu" or otherwise, are quite adept at spotting the problems).
(Whoops, no edit function here so...)
ReplyDeleteShould have been:
**I DO think some criticisms of atheists, including those made by Prof Fester of some atheists, have been justified.
Atheists of course can be bone-heads and I take my fellow atheists to task as well, as they do me. But when it gets down to the theist making his case, I find many atheists, "gnu" or otherwise, are quite adept at spotting the problems.
RH, God is only capable of doing good.
ReplyDeleteIf you read my response (second post) to djindra you'd have seen that I suggested that there must have been a good reason for the flood, assuming it happened.
Secondly, I think we may be convinced that we have our own little purposes and goals we can strive to achieve but that would be an illusion. We do things because doing similar (although less sophisticated things) has been beneficial in the past.
For example, we love because the unguided mechanism which gave rise to those feelings turned out to offer an advantage in survival.
>After all someone rising from the dead after having been tortured to death then buried for a few days clearly contradicts known science.
ReplyDeleteNo it contradicts a Humean philosophical presupposition that claims miracles are impossible. Miracles are simply not against science. OTOH science does contradict the idea of a purely natural resurrection explainable by scientific means sans any supernatural act. But it doesn’t contradict the supernatural. You are conflating Science and Positivist Philosophy again.
>Sure, but even though your rules and Protestant rules contradict each other you've yet to offer any reason to favor your interpretation of the Bible as representing the intention of the writers over theirs.
This very statement concedes to me my claim the Bible is not clear. That is a start in the Catholic direction and away from the Protestant. It grants me the lion share of the argument since we obviously can’t appeal to the clarity of scripture.
>Nothing particularly enlightening there regarding if the writers intended for the passage to be read literally (or that everybody except Noah was in reference to a small subset of people).
It explains the nature of the text and how it should not be treated like a modern historical account like modern fundamentalists both Atheist and religious seem to treat it.
>Yet only one of those interpretations can represent the historical event... and further only one of those interpretations represents the intents of the writer.
ReplyDeleteSo what? Are you saying we need to know all this now? That is an alien concept to a religion which accepts the development of doctrine as a matter of course.
>We know that the literal interpretation isn't supported by the evidence (no evidence for a global flood),
Literal by modern standards the ancients as Pius XII explained used different literary gentres then us and what was literal to them was not so much to us. Besides Augustine taught the allegorical was the default interpretation for most of the Bible with a few noted exceptions (like the fall, Resurrection, Virgin Birth, Incarnation etc)
>but then neither does the idea of a wide scale flood match the account (the language being rather clear that everyone was wiped out, plus the question of what was up with the animals and how they were fed for the duration of the flood).
But it is literally consistent with a local flood with in it’s literary gentre. Read Fr. Most’s article for details.
The Bottom line Stone Tops is you cannot recycle anti-Fundamentalist Protestant Atheist polemics for use against Catholics. It is futile for you to appeal to your alternate interpretation of the Bible to us over our authoritative on or ones which we come up with which are consistent with dogma(that is how doctrine develops. It’s the Providence of the Holy Spirit). I can’t help but notice as I watch Atheists dispute with Evangelicals they are more and more challenging them on the clarity of Scripture and futility of private interpretation. “You Christians just reinterpret the Bible if it goes against the known facts! Blah Blah etc..”. But as a Catholic I have been making the same argument for decades against them. It can’t be used on me since I reject the premicises.
If you wish to do successful Atheist polemics against Catholicism you either have to make philosophical cases against the existence of God. Or refute classic Theistic arguments for God. Argue philosophically that miracles are not possible or argue against the historicity of the resurrection. But your alternate interpretations of Scripture are not going to cut it with us.
You just have to accept that.
Stonetop,
ReplyDeleteAnd if those assumptions are reasonable then there should be physical evidence to back them up.
What sort of "physical evidence" are you asking for here? Demonstrations that people from different locales can, in fact, interbreed? That travel to various islands took place or could have taken place? Look over what data they referred to in their model.
Are you really arguing that a computer model based on current data, one which introduces no novel forces, really constitutes no evidence whatsoever? You're welcome to that level of skepticism if you like, it's just one hell of a minority position.
Also, it seems from reading over their research, that whenever they increased the complexity of the simulation to better align with the real world the further back the MRCA moved.
Not really. From the paper: "If people actually followed a more diverse set of routes, which is likely, it too would lead to a more recent MRCA. The migration rates of the ports could certainly be questioned and it is not clear if they are under- or overestimates. But our simulations suggest that scaling these values up or down by a factor of 10 would probably only change the MRCA date by about 500 years in either direction."
That's just one example, but it's clear they understand the limits of their model and that they're making assumptions.
Besides, which is it: Is the simulation no evidence at all of the MRCA date they're offering, or it is evidence? If it's no evidence, then arguing over where the specific pointer moves if they alter the model assumptions is a non-sequitur.
And I'm sure for some committed Buddhists the Dali Lama "really is authorative". Yet citing the Dali Lama as an authorative source when talking to non Tibetan Buddhists doesn't make much sense.
Sure it does, if the non-TB is asking why the TB is privileging the Dali Lama's interpretation over the non-TB's. Again, "argument from authority fallacy!" doesn't work when the authority is taken by a party to be decisive. That you don't take it as decisive isn't a concern - I'm not trying to convince you either of the Pope's authority, or even of the correctness of the interpretation. I'm pointing out what factors are in play for me and others, like it or not.
Yet since they are not the authors themselves what makes their interpretations the proper ones? Is it because they interpret the Bible to give them the authority to interpret the Bible properly?
That gets into a nice, long discussion about history, apostolic tradition, and elsewise. An important subject, but not one I need to get into here - it's moot.
Take a look at your reply: "Well, they're not the authors!" True. Neither are you. Neither are any of the protestants or Catholics or even atheists around today. So what privileges your own interpretation? "Because I think this is the right one!"? Well, go for it - as I said, there's no shortage of people who disagree, and feeling really strongly that the text means what you think it means isn't going to get you very far.
So what makes the official Catholic interpretation not private interpretation, but everyone else's interpretation a private one?
That turns on whether the Church really has the authority it claims, yes? I'm sure you dispute that, but mere disagreement won't move me on that subject anyway.
You can walk down that route if you want, but in the end it just guts your argument anyway: Catholics aren't the only Christians around. Interpret privately, and you still have an army of protestants interpreting differently from you. It won't be resolved by saying 'But I think mine is the most obvious!'
>So what makes the official Catholic interpretation not private interpretation, but everyone else's interpretation a private one?
ReplyDeleteIf Catholicism is the True religion then by definition Her views are the correct one. O
If you want to convince us all Atheism is true then go for it but stealing from the Protestant playbook is not convincing.
It is irrational to deny this IMHO.
This was my first post that got cut ioff
ReplyDelete@Stone Tops
I sense you are starting to go off topic rather then concede my non-controveral and rational points.
>Does the authority of the Popes lie on anything other then their claim to authority?
Jesus gave them their authority. If I believe in the authority of Jesus then I believe in the authority of the Pope. It is the teaching of both scripture and tradition.
>Also, if the Bible is open to interpretation that doesn't that mean that your passage about private interpretation being dangerous is open to interpretation?
Can you give me another plausible interpretation of these texts backed by any Church Fathers according to the established Tradition of the Church on how Scripture should be interpreted?
The Bible is only open to interpretation if we start with the presupposition it has no authoritative interpreter. You have not proven your Protestant presupposition to me. I reject the Koran as having any authority from God. But I know it is irrational to appeal to my private interpretation of the Koran when disputing with a Muslim over & against his authoritative interpretation of that book based on a Hadith(i.e. oral saying attributed to Muhammed). He is not going to accept an infidel’s misinterpretation of his sacred text over the views of His so called Prophet. I also know better then to make such a futile argument. Do you?
If the Bible is open to interpretation then you all but concede the Bible is not clear. Thus by necessity it clearly requires an interpreter. This by definition grants me the lion’s share of the argument.
>The Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Protestant, and Latter Day Saint denominations seem to disagree that that passage is in reference to the Catholic Church.
Which makes for me my argument that the Bible is not clear. No it’s not absolutely obscure but it’s not completely clear either. The Constitution may be somewhat clear but you still need a Supreme Court. You can’t just give a copy to ordinary citizens and expect them to apply it’s laws themselves without any authoritative last word on the subject.
>Yet you quote the Bible to back up your claims that the Popes have the authority to interpret scripture? By admitting that the Bible is "hardly clear" your claims that the Pope's authority to interpret the Bible is granted by the Bible becomes questionable.
I would also cite tradition and history to back up my claims. There are no Sola Scriptura Protestants in the first century. Just theologically primitive Jewish Catholics.
http://www.catholic.com/library/Authority_of_the_Pope_Part_1.asp
>Doesn't that mean that the literal interpretation of the resurrection account must yield?
No since it is a doctrine that has unanimous consent. Everyone teaches it and they all claim that interpretation comes from the Apostles. Thus it can’t be questioned. There is simply no unanimous traditions on the book of Genesis other then the creation and fall of Man. Augustine believed in Instantaneous Creation based on Gen 2:4-7 & took Genesis one as an allegory. So did Philo and Athanasius while St Basil took Genesis One literally. The Church has never ruled on the matter. But she has with one voice proclaimed the resurrection.
"If Catholicism is the True religion then by definition Her views are the correct one."
ReplyDeleteLOL.
"I won't give you the justification, save to say if I'm right, I'm right."
Another head shaking moment brought to you from theism. ;-)
It did not go unnoticed that BenYachov utterly avoided StoneTops main point - that if the Bible is "unclear" and open to interpretation, then you've undermined your appeal to the biblical text. In other words, if you are still going to appeal to Biblical text to justify Catholic authority, you owe an explanation as to how the Bible can be appealed to as "clear" and unambiguous in terms of establishing Catholic authority.
At this point, this sits as arbitrary and awaiting justification as any Protestant claim. So responses like "If Catholicism is true, then by definition I'm right" are, rather hilariously avoiding the points raised by StoneTop and others.
RH
It did not go unnoticed that BenYachov utterly avoided StoneTops main point - that if the Bible is "unclear" and open to interpretation, then you've undermined your appeal to the biblical text. In other words, if you are still going to appeal to Biblical text to justify Catholic authority, you owe an explanation as to how the Bible can be appealed to as "clear" and unambiguous in terms of establishing Catholic authority.
ReplyDeleteOne problem with a response like this is that it suggests an all or nothing position on the Bible - that either an interpretation is clear from start to finish, or it's unclear from start to finish. That's not necessarily the case - but frankly, the moment you start interpreting any text you're going to run into problems like these potentially. A person can dig in their heels and hold to their interpretation, come what may.
But I think even that would only bolster what I take Ben's point to be: If private interpretation reigns, then he can point to various passages of the bible which he sees as supporting the Church claim to authority. If any individual agrees, the matter is settled, because private interpretation is at that point the standard. "But that interpretation isn't totally clear," even if we granted that, is a moot point - you give your reasons and your justifications or even appeal to the Holy Spirit, and that's that.
That said, Catholic authority doesn't derive solely from the bible. I think history and apostolic tradition, among other things, play a role here.
The Bible is only open to interpretation if we start with the presupposition it has no authoritative interpreter. You have not proven your Protestant presupposition to me.
ReplyDeleteWhat a transparent shift of the burden of proof!
This isn't about StoneTop having to prove Protestant presuppositions. It's him asking YOU to justify YOUR religious claims about the bible (and hence, justify your Church as the authority).
To the extent you try to justify your claim, you offer nothing but assertion and/or question-begging and circular reasoning.
If you want to say the Bible is unclear, then you can't expect in the next breath anyone should accept appeal to biblical text, e.g. Jesus "establishing" the church, as ratifying your church.
If you want to start saying "Well...er...SOME of the Bible is clear...you know, the parts that happen to support the authority of the Church" then you have to show how that is the case.
And in doing so, you end up in just the same mode as the Protestants you mock - cherry picking your way through.
And if you want to say "Oh, I'm not the one doing theinterpreting...it's The Church as authorised by Jesus..." then that simply moves the questions to your church authorities.
Catholic Authority: "The bible needs an interpreter! Hey, I'll be the interpreter!"
Skeptic: "But...I don't see that the Bible establishes YOU as the interpreter!"
Catholic Authority: "Silly Skeptic, there you go trying to interpret the Bible again. Didn't I already tell you the Bible needs an interpreter...and I'm the interpreter?""
The interpreter gets to interpret that he's the only interpreter. How conveniently circular. How utterly convenient for authoritative and hierarchical thinking that allows men a silly as many of the Popes have been to be "authorities."
Again, either you can justify the authority of the Church or not. Saying "if it's true it's true" is no answer. And all a Catholic needs is prodding toward providing this justification, to see how he is acting in exactly the way the Protestants do - interpreting the Bible, cherry-picking etc.
So it's not about "bringing Protestant presuppositions"...the point being made is you have yet to show how YOUR claims are any more justified than the Protestant (or the skeptical atheists, for that matter).
RH
Crude:
ReplyDelete:One problem with a response like this is that it suggests an all or nothing position on the Bible
Not at all! I see The Bible as a mess of competing claims and contradictions by various authors (which also helps explain the inability of Christians to agree on what the Bible teaches).
Some Catholics are going to decry Protestantism when it's clear the Catholic are in the same project of interpreting the bible as well...and on no firmer ground in their interpretation. (It's sort of like the self-blindness you get with certain Christians who say "I'm not interpreting the Bible...the Bible is clear and interprets itself." Uh...no buddy...you are just blind to yourself in the process of your interpretation. Similarly, Catholics often appear blind to just how similar they are to the Protestants they mock).
Ben's point to be: If private interpretation reigns, then he can point to various passages of the bible which he sees as supporting the Church claim to authority.
And Protestants will find support for their position. But Ben can't have it both ways: say it requires an interpreter...then allow himself his own interpretations, but if someone brings in a contrary interpretation Ben can't go saying "But you are not a churchly authority, so your interpreting the bible is invalid."
Ben will either have to go up against a Protestant interpretation...in which case he shows himself to be doing pretty much what he decries...or he has to establish the Church as the authoritative interpreter. But how does he do this without mere assertions, or special pleading or circularity, of the type I and others have pointed out? So far, there is no indication Ben can do this.
That said, Catholic authority doesn't derive solely from the bible. I think history and apostolic tradition, among other things, play a role here.
That is mere assertion. What we are looking for are arguments, justifications for WHY one ought to accept Catholic interpretive authority. Hence pointing to tradition doesn't answer the question at all.
Cheers,
RH
Not at all! I see The Bible as a mess of competing claims and contradictions by various authors (which also helps explain the inability of Christians to agree on what the Bible teaches).
ReplyDeleteMost of this is flat out incorrect, but worst of all it's largely a non-sequitur. The point was that particular passages in principle can be clear, and others not. So Ben really can argue 'these passages support the Catholic claim to authority - but these passages are unclear' consistently.
That said, I also know that just about any given passage - in or out of the Bible - can be argued into the ground, with one stubborn person forever insisting "Your interpretation is wrong and mine is right!"
Some Catholics are going to decry Protestantism when it's clear the Catholic are in the same project of interpreting the bible as well...and on no firmer ground in their interpretation.
No firmer ground? How can you tell?
Wait, let me guess. Because it's your interpretation that no relevant passages of the Bible have a clear interpretation? Except for the ones where you have a disagreement with the interpretation the Catholics and Protestants give?
But those interpretations are subject to the same criticisms. The gold standard here isn't to get the assent of every person who quotes the bible.
Ben will either have to go up against a Protestant interpretation...in which case he shows himself to be doing pretty much what he decries...or he has to establish the Church as the authoritative interpreter. But how does he do this without mere assertions, or special pleading or circularity, of the type I and others have pointed out? So far, there is no indication Ben can do this.
Again, if the standard is "Ben can be correct only if I and others in this thread concede that his interpretation is correct", the standard is a joke. I may as well tell you that you are only making an argument if I personally decide you are making an argument - otherwise, you're full of hot air.
If Ben provides a biblical verse that he interprets as supporting or establishing the Church's claim to authority, responding with "Well, I disagree! I interpret this otherwise!" just gets you nowhere. Call it a push, if you like. But it's a push that favors Ben.
That is mere assertion. What we are looking for are arguments, justifications for WHY one ought to accept Catholic interpretive authority. Hence pointing to tradition doesn't answer the question at all.
Answer the question as in "force everyone to drop to their knees and recite a Hail Mary"? No, but one more time - that's a joke standard. It can certainly provide evidence, even compelling evidence depending on what commitments a person is bringing to the table to begin with.
This is like those challenges where someone is offered 10000 dollars if they give 'compelling evidence that macroevolution is true', with the caveat 'The award committee is the sole determiner for what qualifies as compelling evidence'. Then look, hey, no one has ever won the award - there must be no compelling evidence, right? Otherwise someone would have won that ten thousand dollars by now!
Crude,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your input. However,
I believe you are missing my point.
Of course I think the bible admits of interpretation. That's all every Christian does with it. I already said I would have my own interpretation - that it is not representative of the divine, but is of strictly human origin and content. And certainly I feel the atheist has the better reasons on his side for this.
So it's not that in principle that someone couldn't have the "better" or more reasoned interpretation concerning the Bible: my point involves the types of moves being made by Ben (and other Catholics) in his claims about the Bible.
His arguments thus far tend to be circular or beg the question or ignore problems pointed out to him
When the question is "What justifies Catholic interpretive authority" you can't make the move of dismissing someone else's biblical interpretation on the GROUNDS that person is not a Catholic authority. And Ben keeps making this move every time he dismisses someone else's interpretation as some invalid representation of Protestantism. He's begging the question, given he has utterly failed to establish Catholic Interpretive Authority in the first place!
We already KNOW he views the Church as the interpretive authority! The POINT is - can he justify this? And what are the consequences as he tries to justify the claim?
There seems an inherent problem with these claims for Church authority. It is rather too convenient for them to say "Only we are the authorities able to interpret the bible...and we interpret the bible to say we are the only authorities."
No one would accept that kind of circular, question-begging b.s. from anyone else.
But then, how do you break out of this without undermining the whole claim in the first place? In order for any Catholic to not merely assert, but ARGUE for the proposition: "Only certain members of The Catholic Church are granted interpretive authority" the Catholic will have to go through the whole Bible interpreting it to ensure that claim is true. Whoops! He's not an authority...so he's not supposed to do that.
Let's say I claim I am the authorized interpreter of the Bible. Ought you accept this claim on face value? Of course not. I've given no reason but my assertion. So how will YOU interpret that I am justified in my claim? Obviously not by appeal to "RH's authority" right? That would be fruitlessly circular. No, you'll have to go to the bible yourself, read it and see if the text does indeed ratify my claim. But of course, to do this is to rely on YOUR interpretation of the text! Exactly what my "authority" says you are in no position to do!
So either you accept my claim on face value, in which case you don't actually have a good reason to do so. OR you accept my claim on YOUR interpretation of the Bible. But to do that, you've already undermined the claim that interpretation of the bible needs to be left to ME! It's basically self-refuting.
Whenever someone like Ben begins justifying his claims about Catholic Authority, these problems leap into view.
At least, the Catholic has to show these are not problems. And I've yet to see any attempt to do so that does not fall back to the criticisms I've made: question-begging, circular reasoning, contradiction etc.
RH
@RH you are wrong on so many levels even if there is no god.
ReplyDelete>It did not go unnoticed that BenYachov utterly avoided StoneTops main point.
Sorry no, you are simply not informed at no time did I take on the burden of proof to prove Catholicism true.
Rather Jerry Coyne made the positive claim biological polygenism undermines belief in Adam and Eve & thus overthrows Original Sin and make the Death of Christ unnecessary.
You are assuming I am arguing that Catholicism is true. Rather I am showing how Jerry's argument is false. Further more the only defenses of Jerry's argument I have seen from Tops and others are ad hoc question begging claims that the Bible is only to be given a fundamentalist Protestant YEC interpretation contrary to how the Church interprets the Bible.
Silly claims of a "literal" interpretation based solely on the English translations and not the historic language and gentres.
That is an invalid argument.
I would never make a positive case for Catholicism by Ad Hoc claiming the Bible teaches the Church has authority & the Church teaches the Bible has authority. So you have been arguing against a straw man argument I wouldn't be caught dead making.
I have been showing how Tops' polemics are not rational. Which they are not even if there is no God. Trying to pretend I was making a case for the Catholic faith a Red Herring.
Those are just simply the facts. I even gave a brief outline as to what would constitute a basis for effective Atheist polemics.
Ridiculing the concept of Church Authority isn't meaningful polemics. Disproving God philosophically, making a case for an Atheist Universe, polemics against philosophical proofs for God and arguments against miracles and the resurection are useful for Atheists.
Disputing the Church's view of Scripture is not.
Get over it.
@StoneTops
ReplyDeleteOK, I give up. As they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. With all due respect, you don't understand the relevant concepts of Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam, and so you shouldn't be arguing about them. No need to trust me; a quick Wikipedia check would do.
I'm out.
Thanks to all for the interesting conversation.
To make a positive case for Catholicism to an Atheist I would argue philosophically for the existence of God alone the lines of TLS.
ReplyDeleteI would polemic Atheism, metaphysical naturalism, Hume and Kant, Positivism, Scientism, materialism,monism, etc.
After God is established by solid philosophical rational argument I would make the case for the Resurrection of Christ and miracles.
after making the case for Christ I would show from the historical evidence the early Church strongly resembles a primitive Catholic Church and not a Protestant one.
One that is established then the Catholic Church can be trusted to be the final interpreter on Earth of Scripture protected by the Holy Spirit.
Catholics are not like fundies who make appeals to the authority of the Bible to persons who don't even accept the authority of the Bible.
That's not how we roll.
Accept it.
BTW the above is a brief outline of an argument for the Truth of Catholicism. Not the argument itself.
When the question is "What justifies Catholic interpretive authority" you can't make the move of dismissing someone else's biblical interpretation on the GROUNDS that person is not a Catholic authority. And Ben keeps making this move every time he dismisses someone else's interpretation as some invalid representation of Protestantism. He's begging the question, given he has utterly failed to establish Catholic Interpretive Authority in the first place!
ReplyDeleteWhat I saw was someone telling Ben that they have a different interpretation of the bible on a particular point, and that they think their interpretation is correct. In return, I saw Ben argue that their interpretation isn't the one that concerns him - what does concern him is the Catholic version which he sees as authoritative. The reply was 'that's an argument from authority fallacy'. I pointed out that it's not a fallacy for someone who accepts the particular authority as definitive to appeal to said authority.
Yes, presenting arguments as to why the Church would, should, or does have authority would be necessary to convince someone of its truth (at least if they didn't already accept it.) But at that point, Ben was offering up why he wasn't too concerned about other people's interpretations. If someone asks "Why won't you accept my argument X?", the reply of "Because I subscribe to authority Y, and Y doesn't endorse X" is reasonable. Going on to say "Well, why should anyone accept authority Y?" is a reasonable inquiry - but it's also distinct from the the first question.
Let's say I claim I am the authorized interpreter of the Bible. Ought you accept this claim on face value? Of course not. I've given no reason but my assertion. So how will YOU interpret that I am justified in my claim?
You're illustrating my point here. If I ask you "Why don't you accept this interpretation X as valid?", 'Because I adhere to authority Y, and Y rejects X.' is a reasonable reply at that point. Wonderful, I've learned something new. I can move on from there, I can inquire, I can object - but there's nothing wrong with that reply in and of itself at that point.
OR you accept my claim on YOUR interpretation of the Bible. But to do that, you've already undermined the claim that interpretation of the bible needs to be left to ME! It's basically self-refuting.
'I interpret this bible verse, which I hold to be authoritative, as indicating that authority X holds final authority on how the Bible should be interpreted' would circumvent that, if someone took the argument seriously. You can allow for an amount of personal interpretation even while having an ultimate and final authority.
Further, you can (and most do) bolster the arguments with everything from claims of practicality, to historical claims, etc. In either event, appealing to a biblical verse to bolster the view is entirely permissible - even if someone starts out with a view that private interpretation trumps all. That may not be the view they end up with ultimately.
@RH
ReplyDelete>He's begging the question, given he has utterly failed to establish Catholic Interpretive Authority in the first place!
How do I prove that to persons who don't believe in the existence of any God to be come Incarnate as Christ to establish a Church Authority in the first place? Much less inspire a sacred text?
Do tell?
I simply wouldn't make such a silly argument. No the issue here is Atheist polemics. What works what doesn't. It simply doesn't work for you guys to pretend we are Protestant Fundamentalists with Rosary Beads. We don't hold their suppositions about the Bible. Get over it.
Atheists and Catholics have to argue the existence of God, miracles and the resurrection of Christ. We Catholics can argue the Bible with the Protestants since that is our common ground. But you not so much.
The Bible is not common ground between Atheists and Catholics. Taking the role of Protestants who deny the existence of God in arguing with Catholics is simply disingenuous.
Crude,
ReplyDeleteIt's very clear StoneTop wasn't simply asking "what do you believe?" and that is all.
We KNOW Ben accepts the Church as the authority. It's a given. StoneTop was continually looking to Ben's justifications for holding the Catholic Church to be the interpretive authority of the bible - clearly prodding with questions to see if in fact they were consistent and reasonable.
Among StoneTop's many comments were:
(Ben wrote: Thus by definition the Bible according to itself is hardly clear now is it?)
StoneTop replied: Yet you quote the Bible to back up your claims that the Popes have the authority to interpret scripture? By admitting that the Bible is "hardly clear" your claims that the Pope's authority to interpret the Bible is granted by the Bible becomes questionable.
This is clearly looking at Ben's justifications for his claims, and casting skepticism on the reasoning Ben is offering for Churchly authority. (And it's ridiculous for Ben to claim that
StoneTop agreeing the Bible is unclear would grant Ben the "lions share" of the argument, that the Bible needs interpretation, because StoneTop has pointed out how this undermines appeal to the Bible, as Ben does, for Church Authority).
And StoneTop wrote:
"even though your rules and Protestant rules contradict each other you've yet to offer any reason to favor your interpretation of the Bible as representing the intention of the writers over theirs."
Just as I have continued pointing this out as well. And any "interpretation" StoneTop (or I) might bring of a Biblical passage (e.g. the Flood narrative) can not be dismissed on the grounds of Church Authority, because it is clear that the the grounds for the interpretive authority of the Church is UNDER QUESTION. Hence, why accept the Church interpretation over a Protestant or atheist interpretation? We don't care so much about your statements of dogma: we care if there are good reasons for holding that dogma!
'I interpret this bible verse, which I hold to be authoritative, as indicating that authority X holds final authority on how the Bible should be interpreted' would circumvent that, if someone took the argument seriously.
So problems can be "circumvented" so long as you are willing to accepting bad arguments ( like that one) ? A bit too convenient and not a good argument ;-)
All that does, ineptly, is try to mask what is going on. The "I INTERPRET THIS BIBLE VERSE, WHICH I HOLD TO BE AUTHORITATIVE" part is ultimately putting you in the driver's seat. The Church is "granted" authority only insofar as you would be granting the Church authority on YOUR interpretation, so it is YOUR interpretation that grants the authority, not the Bible's or the Church's per se.
And of course I, or a Protestant, could make the same claim about another verse "I interpret this
Bible verse, which I hold to be authoritative, as indicating sola scripture is valid." (Or, in my case, that the Bible is best understood to be merely human-born myths, rather than representative of a divine reality etc).
Of course it will come down to whose interpretation makes the most sense (all things considered). But Ben and his fellow Catholics do not seem to be off on a good start here.
RH
Note also that even IF the Bible contained extraordinarily clear statements that The Catholic Church would be the only authority on Christian matters, it STILL would not mean anyone ought to take such assertions seriously. In other words, it still wouldn't justify the Church's authority, insofar as one should accept the Church's interpretation of scripture.
ReplyDeleteIf I present a page declaring that "This page comes to you written by Aliens: RH is a super-advanced alien and everything RH says is perfectly logical. Everything following is to be interpreted only by RH, so you ought to do as he says."
Someone would be entirely justified to say "Actually, a more reasonable interpretation of that claim is that it's bullshit, made up by RH himself, who is merely human and has no such logical authority."
Someone waving the page saying "You have no authority to say that - look what it says on this page about RH! I shouldn't listen to you because of what it says on the page"
is hardly a cogent reply.
The Protestant will claim the best interpretation supports sola Scripture. An atheist may say the best interpretation is that X passages represent the conflicting claims of myth-making humans, instead of divine truth.
The Catholic interpretation does not get a free pass as "authoritative" - in that only a Catholic authority's declarations on the Bible are legitimate - even IF that's what the Bible claimed.
There has to be a very good wide case of reasoning to support the Catholic claim. But you can't just PRESUME the Catholic claim to wave away other interpretations of the bible, if Catholic authority is under dispute in the first place.
That is why whenever Ben says "Go away with your atheist/protestant interpretations, we don't believe that here"...it's just beside the point. We KNOW the Catholic interpretation is different. The point is do you have good justifications? Are they BETTER justified than the ones we may bring?
RH
Ben,
ReplyDelete"It simply doesn't work for you guys to pretend we are Protestant Fundamentalists with Rosary Beads. We don't hold their suppositions about the Bible. Get over it."
That Catholics don't hold to sola scriptura like protestants was understood long ago. It's you who keeps beating that into the ground, using it as a diversion to avoid answering questions.
The point has been: Are YOUR justifications (e.g. for the authority of the Church) on better ground? Any time an atheist brings his interpretation or mentions a protestant interpretation, it's not necessarily to ASSUME the other interpretation is better justified than yours. It's to ask "So, WHY is YOUR interpretation more justified?"
For you to continually point out you do not share a contradicting interpretation is already understood and completely beside the point. Please stop using this tactic to avoid answering questions.
Atheists and Catholics have to argue the existence of God, miracles and the resurrection of Christ. We Catholics can argue the Bible with the Protestants since that is our common ground. But you not so much.
No, that won't wash.
The Bible is common ground (or potential common ground) for any modern person. You aren't born with the bible in your brain. It's an artifact from ancient times, that contains claims made by people written long ago. The fact YOU may have bought into the claims no more makes you (or your church who has done the same) an authority, or on more justified in how you view the bible, as another person.
It's the same with any religious text, for instance the claims of The Book Of Mormonism. Are you beholden to the idea that the most sound interpretation of the nature of The Book Of Mormon is to be left to Mormons who believe the book?
There are schisms in Mormonism. Does this mean that the best, most justified interpretation of the book of Mormon is to be left to Mormons, who will of course hold it's miraculous claims about mormonism to be true? Surely you don't think so. No doubt you'd agree even with me that a non-mormon interpretation - that The Book Of Mormon is made up bullshit by Joseph Smith - is more sound than any Mormon interpretation that it's claims are true.
For these same reasons, from the fact you are a Christian who lives his life believing in Catholic Authority, or from the fact someone is a Protestant, it does not follow that either of your interpretations is privileged, or more authoritative, or more justified, than a non-Christian's view of The Bible as being of non-divine origin. We all get to put our hats on the table when it comes to justifying our conclusions about The Bible. He who can give the better reasons for his belief about the Bible...wins ;-)
RH
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCrude:
ReplyDeleteYou can argue that it's not certain, sure - the modelers would agree with you. You could argue that it's limited, absolutely. But arguing that it's not evidence of any kind just doesn't wash. And really, if you're discounting evidence like that, then the last MRCA is utterly up in the air and the entire line of criticism you're working towards falls apart anyway.
Indeed. Actually, if we're going to say that models don't constitute evidence, then the entire case for the human population not ever being much below 10,000 people evaporates, seeing as how it is based entirely on models.
Mr. Green,
ReplyDeleteI'll counter your post more thoroughly tomorrow but I have to mention:
What is "believing X exists"? They cannot be more images, or all we get is an infinite regress of images that never gets us to the actual idea of "such and such exists". The thought that "this image actually exists in the real world" is an abstract concept, not another image.
What makes you so sure? It seems to me that this is easily shown to be wrong. It merely requires an image search function which returns true or false and a property value of "sensed" associated with all images.
So in C:
extern int LocateImageInDictionary( IMAGE x );
extern bool IveSensed( int i );
bool Image_actually_exists( IMAGE x )
{
int imagefound;
imagefound=LocateImageInDictionary( x );
if( IveSensed(imagefound) ) return TRUE;
else return FALSE;
}
As you may be able to see, no recursion is required, and certainly no infinite regress.
RH,
ReplyDelete>It's very clear StoneTop wasn't simply asking "what do you believe?" and that is all.
How do you know? I was the one who has been having an on going discussion with Stone Tops. I have been doing it over a couple of days now and some of it has been a continuation from another discussion from another thread. The issue of Bible interpretation came up there too since Tops kept insisting the God of Philosophy was not the same as the God of the Bible. He didn’t offer any evidence or reasons for his claim other then to say it was self-evident from the Bible. I pointed out the Classical view of God was universal among Christian and Jewish writers & the Theistic Personalist anthropomorphic interpretation was post reformation & started by the Unitarians.
I know what this discussion was about I was there. You have just sweep in ignoring what I just said & are trying to force what you want the discussion to be about on the rest of us. I am not moved.
You want Catholics to prove their religion true to you? Well that’s lovely. Make that request and maybe someone here will take you up on the offer. But I never argued for the truth of Catholicism in this discussion. I argued against a bad polemic.
Live with it.
>That Catholics don't hold to sola scriptura like protestants was understood long ago. It's you who keeps beating that into the ground, using it as a diversion to avoid answering questions.
I am not obligated to answer “Do you still beat your wife?” type questions. I am obligated to focus the discussion so it is more profitable & relevant for both sides. It is simply a brute fact some New Atheists believe there is such a thing as a one size fits all polemic against religion in general and Christianity in particular. I wish to disabuse them of that folly and get them to argue philosophy. They have to accept not every orthodox serious Christian is a YEC fundamentalist. Just as I accept not every Atheist is a Dawkinite fruitbat Fundie Gnu.
>No, that won't wash.
ReplyDeleteClearly it does wash unless you are irrational. I define a fundamentalist as a person who dogmatically holds fast to their invalid arguments for their ultimate truth even at the expense of the credibility of that ultimate truth. Like YEC who defends Kirk Cameron’s silly banana argument or the Atheist who defend Dawkins Boeing 747 argument. Both are foolish & neither serves their Theistic/Atheist causes by making stupid arguments.
>The Bible is common ground (or potential common ground) for any modern person.
Only if you believe it came from God and that there is a God. If you deny the existence of God the Bible is not common ground & it is a moot point to argue what it means since you don’t think it has any authority anyway. Your claim here is not logical in either a Theistic or godless universe.
>The fact YOU may have bought into the claims no more makes you (or your church who has done the same) an authority, or on more justified in how you view the bible, as another person.
That is a valid point….if God does not in fact exist. If there is no God then the Bible is moot. It doesn’t really matter if Genesis 1 should be taken literally or not. It’s moot. But then the real issue is the existence of God or the truth of Atheism. You don’t seem to want to argue that. Why? After that one can argue the resurection and miracles and was the early church Catholic etc. We haven’t established the existence of God so arguing the Bible with me is vain.
>Are you beholden to the idea that the most sound interpretation of the nature of The Book Of Mormon is to be left to Mormons who believe the book?
I don’t believe in the book of Mormon so there is no such thing as a sound interpretation of something that is not true. There is only the interpretation that is authoritative for some specific Mormon sect. If I am disputing with a Member of the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints I know tis folly to cite the Utah Mormon Prophet as an Authority to a Reorginite.
But then again the Book of Mormon is not common ground for me & any Mormon. No the Mormon has to prove Joseph Smith a Prophet & I would add show the first century church taught Mormon doctrine till the evil Catholic Church came alone and re-invented it. That has to happen before I believe.
But Atheist have no common ground with Catholics in the Bible since they don’t even believe in God. It’s irrational to claim otherwise.
Anyway like I said I know fully well Catholics have to make the case for Catholicism. But Atheists have to polemic as Atheists not Protestants who deny God. That is just playing fair.
>Indeed. Actually, if we're going to say that models don't constitute evidence, then the entire case for the human population not ever being much below 10,000 people evaporates, seeing as how it is based entirely on models.
ReplyDeleteOuch!!!
We KNOW Ben accepts the Church as the authority. It's a given.
ReplyDeleteActually, we don't. Stonetop - who so far has been pretty polite - doesn't seem to fully grasp a few things that have popped up in this conversation. What I saw were demands to know why the reading Ben viewed as authoritative, was authoritative. The fact that he said that Ben was engaged in an 'argument from authority fallacy' at least tells me Stonetop wasn't really clear about where Ben was coming from.
And any "interpretation" StoneTop (or I) might bring of a Biblical passage (e.g. the Flood narrative) can not be dismissed on the grounds of Church Authority, because it is clear that the the grounds for the interpretive authority of the Church is UNDER QUESTION.
For you? Sure it is. But that means you're talking past someone who is laying out one of their standards for interpretation. So actually, yeah - any interpretation you bring forth really can be dismissed by someone who adheres to that authority, if you're trying to persuade them. If they're trying to persuade you? Sure, then 'papal authority' doesn't matter. But I don't really see anyone trying to persuade Stonetop or any other atheist in this thread. (Kind of putting the card before the horse on that one.)
So problems can be "circumvented" so long as you are willing to accepting bad arguments ( like that one) ? A bit too convenient and not a good argument
I didn't give "an argument". I gave a standard that avoided the circularity you mentioned. You talk about 'being in the driver's seat', as if it's a binary option: Either the Church can interpret, or I can interpret. I'm pointing out that it's a false dichotomy - individuals can interpret the Bible without the Church's explicit authority. What the Church has is ultimate authority.
Really, there are plenty of Bible verses - and plenty of theological topics - which the Church allows for individual discussion or debate on. Likewise, the Church can recognize that individuals can interpret the bible on their own, and understand things for themselves - up to a point.
Calling it 'convenient' and 'bad' doesn't get you anywhere. The faux circularity is gone.
The "I INTERPRET THIS BIBLE VERSE, WHICH I HOLD TO BE AUTHORITATIVE" part is ultimately putting you in the driver's seat. The Church is "granted" authority only insofar as you would be granting the Church authority on YOUR interpretation, so it is YOUR interpretation that grants the authority, not the Bible's or the Church's per se.
Not at all. You seem to think that if I come to the conclusion that Bible Verse X establishes the authority of the church, that I personally granted the Church authority. But my interpretation would be that God granted the Church authority, spelled out in the bible. You could argue my interpretation is incorrect, of course. But if it's correct, *I* haven't granted any authority to the Church. I just recognized it.
If someone writes and signs a note confessing to a murder, do *I* make them guilty of the murder just by the act of reading the note? Of course not.
Of course it will come down to whose interpretation makes the most sense (all things considered). But Ben and his fellow Catholics do not seem to be off on a good start here.
I think otherwise. I already said, I know better than to think these things can be settled (though tremendous agreement can be had between various Christians of different faiths). But I think the position Catholics are in on these bible interpretations alone, to say nothing of the extra-biblical considerations, is very solid. Your mileage may vary, but ah well - that's life.
Note also that even IF the Bible contained extraordinarily clear statements that The Catholic Church would be the only authority on Christian matters, it STILL would not mean anyone ought to take such assertions seriously. In other words, it still wouldn't justify the Church's authority, insofar as one should accept the Church's interpretation of scripture.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, it's going to depend on a variety of presuppositions you're coming to the entire discussion with - and that's one reason why I really don't see Ben as having been trying to argue an atheist into accepting the Church's authority on this matter by means of saying 'The Church says'. Everyone knows that won't be accepted.
So yes, I'd say if someone was already taken to believe the Bible had the relevant authority, it would certainly lead them to the additional steps.
That is why whenever Ben says "Go away with your atheist/protestant interpretations, we don't believe that here"...it's just beside the point. We KNOW the Catholic interpretation is different. The point is do you have good justifications? Are they BETTER justified than the ones we may bring?
"I've heard you before, I don't really care what you have to say," may not convince anyone, but at least it's honest and a time-saver. If Ben and others are convinced of Church authority (or are decidedly NOT convinced) and someone is going off on their counter interpretation, "I don't accept your authority on this" is brisk, but legit. Not everyone has to argue ad nauseum until everyone agrees. That's kind of revolting, actually.
Really, if you bring up a point to someone and they say "I don't care what you think, you're not someone whose opinion carries weight on these matters for me", I don't think that's a cue to start listing what fallacies you think their response engages in. Time to move on. In fact, there's a semi-related biblical quote about that - something about knocking the dust off your sandals and moving on.
The Deuce,
ReplyDeleteThat's one thing I was wondering about, really. But yeah, saying that models constitute no evidence whatsoever is an interesting claim to make in this context.
BTW RH you ignored this post which I think is quite telling. I shall repeat myself.
ReplyDeleteRH wrote:
>He's begging the question, given he has utterly failed to establish Catholic Interpretive Authority in the first place!
How do I prove that to persons who don't believe in the existence of any God to be come Incarnate as Christ to establish a Church Authority in the first place? Much less inspire a sacred text?
Do tell?
I simply wouldn't make such a silly argument.
You can't prove the Catholic Church has the authority to interpret Scripture if you deny the existence of the Incarnate God who both inspired Scripture and founded the Church on Peter.
ReplyDeleteYou have to do A before proceeding to D.
BTW remind me RH weren't you the one who wanted us to prove Feser's views correct but you refused to read TLS or any of the backround material? Yes or No?
RH:
ReplyDeleteI've been looking at some of your recent posts. I'd just like to explain to you how the Catholic Church justifies its position vis-a-vis Scripture.
Here's how it goes. You start by reading Scripture, and then you come across a vexed doctrinal issue where you could mount good arguments on both sides, based on Scripture alone. Two examples might be: the legitimacy of infant baptism and the question of whether we should attend church on Saturday or Sunday. In addition to being doctrinal, these are pressing practical issues, where you have to come down on one side or the other. Or in the moral sphere, the issue might be the morality of contraception, for instance.
Appeals to Scripture alone produce an argumentative stalemate, with well-meaning and learned people lined up on both sides of the issue. So you start to wonder whether Scripture itself might contain information about how to resolve such stalemates.
A friend of yours excitedly announces that he's heard of a group of Christians that have a practical method for resolving these kinds of disputes - and what's more, they say it's even described in Scripture. They have this kind of assembly (qahal in Aramaic, ecclesia in Greek) which meets from time to time, and thrashes these issues out until they come to some kind of consensus. The Church leaders, or bishops (who have a long line of succession going back to the apostles) are the key decision makers in these meetings, because they are shepherds and teachers, who claim to have a special commission from Christ. After a lot of discussion, they pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance and take a vote - and go with that decision, once the apostle Peter's successor ratifies it.
You ask these Christians what gives their leaders the right to decide things like this, and they point to verses like Luke 10:16, Matthew 18:18, John 20:23, Acts 15:28 and Matthew 16:18 to support their claim that the Apostles (and their successors) are the ones with the authority to sort out these disputes, with a special role for Peter's successor.
The case they make is hardly compelling, but it's certainly a plausible reading of Scripture. And the nice thing is that it resolves the nasty dilemma that you've been experiencing: what to do when Christians line up on both sides of a doctrinal or moral issue that needs to be sorted out NOW.
You check out this group of Christians, and find that they actually do have a long history and seem to go back to the time of Christ. And then one day, you decide to join them. What they say makes sense.
Hey, it could happen to you, RH.
StoneTop,
ReplyDeleteI think you are confusing the BibEve and BibAdam of this discussion (lets call them BibCathEve and BibCathAdam) with a pair who are the sole ancestors of humanity (BibFundEve and BibFundAdam). That also explains your mention of Noah. BibCathEve and BibCathAdam are putatively somewhere in every human's ancestral tree, but are not necessarily in anyone's line of strict matriarchal/patriarchal descent. The Noah most people in here seem to accept may well have been in a geographically limited flood (such as the one that filled the Back Sea basin).
Keeping that in mind, I can easily come up with a scenario where BibCathAdam and BibCathEve has the 65 children supposedly ascribed to her by Tradition, and yet are in no one's strict paternal/maternal acestry within 2 generations. YOu can also, if you care to think about it.
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteOne Brow: Assuming you meant "invalid", I agree that line of thinking would be invalid.
Clearly he means valid, changing his words to hector him is a dick move.
Then I apparently have a higer opinion of Crude that you. I would never think that he would say Civilizaiton forms a valid notion of cultural technological advances.
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteUp till now myself, Crude, TOF and pretty much everyone else got the impression you where arguing if Adam spontaneously received rational faculties he or his immediate descendants would have produced technology, writing and Math & the fact we have no archeological evidence of this casts doubt on that speculation.
I can always rely on BenYachov's ability to ignore an argument actually being made in favor of an argument he feels he can easily defeat, even after repeatibly being told he is addressing the wrong argument.
What are you playing at One Brow?
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you just said. It's perfectly reasonable and plain spoken?
What is your angle? You messing with me now?
One comment thought.
>I can easily come up with a scenario where BibCathAdam and BibCathEve has the 65 children supposedly ascribed to her by Tradition, and yet are in no one's strict paternal/maternal acestry within 2 generations.
As long as they have BibCathAdam and BibCathEve as ancestors they would have Souls. Strict paternal/maternal ancestry is not needed. I just thought I would mention that.
Clarification:
ReplyDeleteEverything you said in September 12, 2011 6:48 AM
>I can always rely on BenYachov's ability to ignore an argument actually being made in favor of an argument he feels he can easily defeat, even after repeatibly being told he is addressing the wrong argument.
ReplyDeleteIt's obvious Crude whom you have a high opinion of thought the same thing and has said so.
So the problem is with you not everyone else.
Crude after all said "As for the other part of your comparison, you're for whatever reason trying to connect a rational soul with particular technological advancements, and arguing (apparently) that they should have had a variety of technologies essentially overnight - better yet, that we should have artifacts showing as much. It's not very tenable."
ReplyDeleteI got the same impression that was your argument.
Now you claim it isn't what is the point of you?
Crude said...
ReplyDeleteOne Brow: ??? I did not understand what you meant here.
I think I spoke plainly there, so I don't know how else to say it.
Well, then I will try to interpret it accurately. If I err in doing so, please assume the error is unintentional.
You're asking why people with a particular intellectual capacity not only didn't produce such and such technology, but didn't do so while being kind enough to leave behind artifacts we not only could find, but have already found.
I have been relying on the existence of said technology (by comparing the writing of numbers abstractly to the lack of sriting of any other concepts abstractly). My point is the lack of application of this technology to words for thousands of years after it was applied to numbers. I have no explanation for how you acknowledge the technology existed while saying the technology did not exist at the same time.
We "have evidence" for a wide variety of conclusions and claims, some of which are contradictory.
It is the nature of evidence to be consistent with multiple, contradictory claims that only get resolved by further evidence.
Likewise, 'major transitions' in those terms refers specifically to considerable structural changes.
For a given meaning of "considerable", perhaps.
Because it's not clear that the 'overall trend' has been going in that direction either.
For every discovery that causes a shift, there are many others that simply fill in existing spaces. Even when shifts happens, it's because the original position was a best guess based on lack of evidence as much as due to the support of evidence.
What you've seemingly been arguing is that given a rational soul, we should expect to have artifacts in hand and from those periods.
Perhaps you should read less of what BenYachov interprets me to say and more of what I actually say.
For example:
... using the same technology for the same basic ideas, but 24,000 years apart, ...
That should have made it clear I was not referring to the lack of aqn existing technology, but an exstant technology. There are many similar comments. Why you did not pick up on that is a quesiton you should ask yourself.
Josh said...
ReplyDeleteI hope this interplay won't take away from the fruitful conversations that have been going on previously...
Hopefully that would include me.
I don't want to respond to your comments today. They deserve being reread a couple of times first. I'll get back to them in a couple of days.
If you like, my blog is a little quieter, and possibly only J would bother to respond at all, usually not in great volume. Would you prefer to continue there? I am fine in here, of course.
>I have been relying on the existence of said technology (by comparing the writing of numbers abstractly to the lack of sriting of any other concepts abstractly). My point is the lack of application of this technology to words for thousands of years after it was applied to numbers. I have no explanation for how you acknowledge the technology existed while saying the technology did not exist at the same time.
ReplyDeleteNobody here is claiming Adam developed technology (but you) just because he was suddenly rational. Where the hell does that come from?
Though hypotheticlly if he did the failure to find any artifacts is unremarkable. If you had read this thread humans developed language 6000 years ago yet the oldest temple is 12,000 ago. 6,000 years before recorded history. What where the rational humans doing since then? Who knows?
What where they doing between the time they learned how to cound vs learned how to write? Who knows? But clearly there is no reason to believe because Adam became rational via an Act of God or evolutionarly speaking some "rational" hopeful monster was born to a group of hominids that technology would soon follow or if it did that it would survive The Ship Wreck of Time.
BTW Crude addressed your actual words directly at face value like me.
Now it seems you don't mean what you say.
Stop the games! It was a bad argument so man up and admit it.
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way about One Brow.
When you offer relevant comments to my posts, I will engage you. However, if you decide to stop engaging me at all, I will feel no loss.
Mr. Green said...
ReplyDeleteNot quite — all dogs do actually share one and the same form of Dogginess; that is, the same substantial form (that makes them all dogs), as opposed to differing accidental forms (such as for red fur or brown fur, etc.). In Thomism, human beings are a special case in that we each have individual substantial forms.
Perhaps you could tell me what the difference is between having one form of Dogginess and each dog having its own form, which forms we aggregate into a single concept of Dogginess? Because I really do not understand what is involved in the former that is distainct from the latter.
edit: I meant to say humans developed written language 6000 years ago. It is likely they had spoken language for ten of Thousands of years or more.
ReplyDeleteOne Brow
If you would stop with the BS and obfuscations and speak plainly maybe your posts would be more relevant?
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteIt's obvious Crude whom you have a high opinion of thought the same thing and has said so.
This would be the same Crude you thought said it was valid to think of cultural progressions as if they were a game of Civilization?
So the problem is with you not everyone else.
There are theists in here with whom I can have interesting discussions, who seem capable of addressing my points. Even Crude regularly addresses my points (and regularly misses them as well). I have no expectation that anyone will understand everything I say hte first time I say it. So I agree there is not a problem with "everyone else".
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteNobody here is claiming Adam developed technology (but you) just because he was suddenly rational.
Nor have I made any such claim.
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteIf you would stop with the BS and obfuscations and speak plainly maybe your posts would be more relevant?
At the end of the post on September 12, 2011 7:32 AM I gave a brief quote that ilustrated the difference between what you say my claim is and my actual claim, a quote from the previous page of comments. I can find many, many more. The quote was quite plain and direct.
I have no reason to think that stating my claims plainly will result in your ability to derive those claims from what I write, based on past experience.
One Brow wrote:
ReplyDelete>That should have made it clear I was not referring to the lack of aqn existing technology, but an exstant technology. There are many similar comments. Why you did not pick up on that is a quesiton you should ask yourself.
I reply: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extant
Definition of EXTANT
1
archaic : standing out or above
2
a : currently or actually existing b : still existing : not destroyed or lost
# There are few extant records from that period.
# one of the oldest buildings still extant
# There is, he reports, no extant copy of the Super Bowl I television broadcast; nobody bothered to keep the tapes. —Joe Queenan, New York Times Book Review, 1 Feb. 2009
So what we are dealing with is a distinction without a difference?
You are so full of BS One Brow. You made a stupid argument. Man up & own up to it.
One Brow,
ReplyDeleteAll right, I'll transplant the comments over there...
One Brow,
ReplyDeleteYou did not deal with the fact there is no reason to believe Adam and his immediate would develop any technology just because they had rational faculties. I'm sure I brought this up you just blew it off.
There is no reason to believe any technology he would come up with would survive the Ship Wreck of Time as Crude argued.
Claiming aqn[antiquated] existing technology vs an exstant technology doesn't validate your argument.
Live with it.
At this point don't bother repeating yourself it's boring.
BenYachov said...
ReplyDeleteSo what we are dealing with is a distinction without a difference?
So, I point out that I am not referringt to a non-existant technology, but one that was extant and unpllied, and your response is that this is a distinction without a difference.
You have again validated every comment I have made concering you in this thread.
I agree, this is repetitive.
One some advice make an argument sometime & stick with it. Hairsplitting your adjectives when the argument turns out to be a bust.
ReplyDeleteNot working for you.
emonstrations that people from different locales can, in fact, interbreed? That travel to various islands took place or could have taken place?
ReplyDeleteEvidence that the travel did occur... genetic markers and archeological evidence come to mind as ways to show that the model is accurate regarding the motion of people.
From the paper: "If people actually followed a more diverse set of routes, which is likely, it too would lead to a more recent MRCA.
Again, a more accurate model would also include more highly isolated tribes of humans.
even of the correctness of the interpretation. I'm pointing out what factors are in play for me and others, like it or not.
So the Catholic interpretation is that competing (even contradictory) interpretations of the Bible are valid?
I'm sure you dispute that, but mere disagreement won't move me on that subject anyway.
Again, you seem to be saying that differences in theology are no more different then differences in ones favorite sports team.
If I believe in the authority of Jesus then I believe in the authority of the Pope. It is the teaching of both scripture and tradition.
ReplyDeleteTo which there is always groups like the Greek Orthodox Church, with plenty of scripture and tradition that says otherwise.
Can you give me another plausible interpretation of these texts backed by any Church Fathers according to the established Tradition of the Church on how Scripture should be interpreted?
Well there are the Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Latter Day Saint, ... interpretations.
The Bible is only open to interpretation if we start with the presupposition it has no authoritative interpreter
Doesn't it have to be open to interpretation to 'need' an authoritative interpreter?
Thus by necessity it clearly requires an interpreter.
That depends on what you mean by 'requires'... Can Romeo & Juliet be interpreted in a number of different ways? Yes. Does it require an interpreter? No
The Constitution may be somewhat clear but you still need a Supreme Court. You can’t just give a copy to ordinary citizens and expect them to apply it’s laws themselves without any authoritative last word on the subject.
Rather different subjects there... the interpretation of the US Constitution is not a matter of dogma, it is a matter of interpreting a legal code in light of a changing society. Further the US Constitution only applies to the US Government, while religious dogma supposedly applies to everyone.
I would also cite tradition and history to back up my claims. There are no Sola Scriptura Protestants in the first century.
Doesn't that mean that a Protestant could claim that scripture was being interpreted improperly at that time?
No since it is a doctrine that has unanimous consent. Everyone teaches it and they all claim that interpretation comes from the Apostles. Thus it can’t be questioned.
So what ever happened to scripture bowing to science when the two conflict?
>So what ever happened to scripture bowing to science when the two conflict?
ReplyDeleteUnanimous consent applies to matters of Faith(dogma) and moral(Right and wrong). That does not apply to science, philosophy or political opinion. All the Fathers for example believed Aristotle and the Greeks description of how the Fetus develops because that was the science of the day(i.e. Semen mixes with blood in the womb and grows into a baby). But nobody take that as Catholic dogma since none of the Fathers claim that view was handed down by the Apostles.
But the Fathers did all claim the dogma resurrection was handed down by the Apostles.
If you really want to know about the details of Catholic doctrine then go to CATHOLIC ANSWERS and do some reading or look at VJ's links.
>So the Catholic interpretation is that competing (even contradictory) interpretations of the Bible are valid?
ReplyDeleteOnly till the Church rules definitively on the matter then it is settled dogma. For example the Jesuits, Augustinians and Thomists have differing theories on the relation of Grace to Free Will. They may each defend their view but they may not call the other schools heretics or claim their views are dogma.
OTOH the Dominicans and the Franciscans disagreed over the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady. Pius IX settled it once and for all & the Franciscans are rather smug about it(just kidding).
>To which there is always groups like the Greek Orthodox Church, with plenty of scripture and tradition that says otherwise.
ReplyDeleteNot prior to the 10th century then they all supported the Pope.
>Well there are the Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Latter Day Saint, ... interpretations.
That is not what I asked for. First of all the Mormons don't accept the Church Fathers snd they believe the Bible contains errors. Except for the Pope and the Council of Chalcedon in regards to the copts they interpret these verses the same as we do. They condemn the Bible alone and Perspicuity.
>Doesn't it have to be open to interpretation to 'need' an authoritative interpreter?
You can interpret it all you want accept if you interpret it contrary to church teaching then you have misinterpreted it. You can come up with neutral interpretations but you can impose them on other Christians. Only the Bishops & the Poep have the power to Bind and Lose Matt 18:18.
>That depends on what you mean by 'requires'... Can Romeo & Juliet be interpreted in a number of different ways? Yes. Does it require an interpreter? No
Apples and Oranges. Shakespeare is neither inspired nor the basis of Religious dogma.
Different interpretations are not a problem. Interpreting contrary to Church teaching is twisting the words to you own destruction.
But as I told RH and as Crude pointed out. The Bible is common ground for Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. But not Atheists. After all you deny God so what use is there is debating your self-serving contrary interpretation of a Text you believe is of human origin anyway?
No Atheist have to meet Catholics on the battlefield of philosophy since reason is our sole common ground.
You are wasting your time tell us what our Scripture really means.
>Doesn't that mean that a Protestant could claim that scripture was being interpreted improperly at that time?
That is what they do but I personally don't find it reasonable the Apostles got the Faith wrong or mistaught their disciples and some German Priest 16 centuries after the fact somehow knows better.
A Catholic writer who left the Church was asked once if he would join one of the Protestant Churches. He replied "I have lost my faith not my reason".
Catholicism is the default Christianity.
>Rather different subjects there... the interpretation of the US Constitution is not a matter of dogma,
ReplyDeleteI guess you where not serious about the Romeo and Juiet example then eh?;-)
>it is a matter of interpreting a legal code in light of a changing society.
The Bible contains the Laws of God and Doctrines of God and the Laws that govern the People of God and God's Church. The Church from the begining has always had a Government. There has always been a Pope since Peter.
>Further the US Constitution only applies to the US Government, while religious dogma supposedly applies to everyone.
But by the Grace of God all human Governments rule the temperal secular order. But the Church rules on God's behafe the Temple order and calls all men to gather to their Mother the Church and their Father God.
So she needs rules even for the Bible.
Anyway as interesting as it has been to give you catacheism you don't believe in the existence of God. So this is all moot to you. You need to learn the Arguments for God vs the arguments for Atheism and you need to learn philosophy.
That is the only starting points between Atheists and Catholic Christians.
The Bible is not our Battleground. More often then not you Atheist are trying to play Hockey on a football field while we are trying to play football.
No common ground.
Cheers.
Mr. Green: the thought that "this image actually exists in the real world" is an abstract concept, not another image.
ReplyDeleteDJindra: It merely requires an image search function which returns true or false and a property value of "sensed" associated with all images.
bool Image_actually_exists( IMAGE x )
As you may be able to see, no recursion is required, and certainly no infinite regress.
Of course — because it's an example of what I said, not what you said. The point is that intellectual concepts and judgements must be different from the images of sense experience or memory. In your example, you have represented images with a data type of "IMAGE", but the understanding part (the "image_actually_exists" function) is represented by a different data type, a boolean. If it were all just "images", then the return type of that function would also have to be IMAGE, but of course that won't work. You could change the function to accept an IMAGE and return an IMAGE, but then we'd just need a new function to turn that into a bool, and we're back to needing a different data type.
Mr. Green,
ReplyDelete"Probably nobody bothered to comment because Djindra has been answered before but keeps repeating the same confused points."
All I've gotten in the past are muddled assertions that there is indeed a difference between the two. But on examination those supposed differences boil down to nothing.
Besides, I don't think the point I raised this time has been answered before because I don't think I raised it. That point is that "conceive" and "imagine" are used here as a hidden form of begging the question.
"'Conceiving' in the original context quite clearly refers to an intellectual concept, an abstract idea, the result of reasoning, not of sensing or experiencing or imagining or remembering.
Now that's what I'm talking about. Those words say nothing. We have:
1) Conceiving refers to an intellectual concept. Translation: Conceiving refers to conceiving. I'll call this the infinite loop explanation.
2) Conceiving is an abstract idea. Translation: Conceiving is imagining.
3) Conceiving is the result of reasoning. Clearly that's not true. According to Feser we're supposed to be able to conceive of seeing ourselves in a mirror, with our eyes gouged out. That's irrational. It's not the result of reasoning. It's an imagined scenario.
So I see nothing here that causes me to think you have defined conceiving as anything other than imagining.
edit: can't impose them on other Christians etc....
ReplyDeleteOne Brow: Perhaps you could tell me what the difference is between having one form of Dogginess and each dog having its own form, which forms we aggregate into a single concept of Dogginess? Because I really do not understand what is involved in the former that is distainct from the latter.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you have in mind by "aggregating", but the form is what different individuals have in common, so if there were more than one, we'd have problems. For one thing, all dogs must have the same Dogginess (since that's what it means to say they're all dogs), but by identity of indiscernibles, multiple such forms would have to be the same form. Also, if there were multiple forms of Dogginess, they would have to be similar, and since forms are precisely what accounts for commonalities, there'd have to some kind of meta-form of Dogginess-ness, and then a meta-meta-form, etc.
On Platonism (or Aristotelianism, etc.), a Form is the single concept of whatever it is we're considering; to hold that form "in" your mind is to understand it or think about it; to have that form joined to matter is to be an individual of that type. Since forms are abstract and universal and not material, they don't get copied or split up between individuals; rather all the individiuals "participate" in the Form (well, in different forms, since in addition to Dogginess, a particular dog will participate in forms that are accidental to it, such as for being short or furry, and so on.)
Mr. Green,
ReplyDelete"Obviously you cannot disprove somebody's argument by making up new definitions and complaining they don't fit.
You cannot clearly say what the definitions are so it's premature to suppose I've made up a new definition.
"What is the "thing" that we're believing might exist? What is "believing X exists"? They cannot be more images, or all we get is an infinite regress of images that never gets us to the actual idea of "such and such exists".
As I mentioned earlier, there is no infinite regress so you're confused.
The thought that "this image actually exists in the real world" is an abstract concept, not another image.
The "thought" that "this image actually exists in the real world" could easily be a true/false flag. If you want to call that flag an image, so be it. But it would be the terminal node. So there is no reason for infinite regress.
Furthermore, we use our rationality to draw conclusions about things not only which we cannot image (e.g. complex mathematical objects),...
In my original post I already granted we could conceive of a 10000 sided figure which we could not imagine in our heads. So you are not making a point here.
...but also which we believe cannot exist in the world (e.g. the "extremely complicated" parts in the Banach-Tarski paradox).
Even if I agree using our rationality to draw conclusions is the same as conceiving, it still seems you are making my case. You're saying we can imagine *and* conceive of things we believe cannot exist. IOW, the actual difference between the words is so fuzzy it's irrelevant. It sure looks like when "conceivability" is suddenly put forward as a test for "metaphysical" possibility, it's merely being used as a cover. The user has already decided in his own mind that the scenario in question is metaphysically possible.
Mr. Green,
ReplyDeleteThe point is that intellectual concepts and judgements must be different from the images of sense experience or memory.
I did not say they had to be the same as experience. But memory is a part of any thought. There is no way around that. For example, any thought involving words has to involve memory of words.
Mr. Green,
ReplyDeleteIn your example, you have represented images with a data type of "IMAGE", but the understanding part (the "image_actually_exists" function) is represented by a different data type, a boolean. If it were all just "images", then the return type of that function would also have to be IMAGE, but of course that won't work. You could change the function to accept an IMAGE and return an IMAGE, but then we'd just need a new function to turn that into a bool, and we're back to needing a different data type.
Wrong on both points. It's a practice of mine to use functions returning bool even though the function merely does pImage->sensed. IOW, sensed could easily be defined in the image structure itself. But even if not, the "sensed" function could still reference another image and we're not talking about infinite regression as you well know. There may still be terminal nodes, as in any language parser. "Sensed" looks to be an ideal candidate for that.
Curiously, the image lookup function would have to be designed in a lossy data compression fashion that completely destroys the typical elevated status of abstractions. Use of abstractions may be the only way any brain could work -- even an ant's.
Mr. Green said...
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you have in mind by "aggregating", but the form is what different individuals have in common, so if there were more than one, we'd have problems.
So, is the form of a dog just a subset of the processes of that dog, as opposed to the full set of processes?
... they don't get copied or split up between individuals; rather all the individiuals "participate" in the Form (well, in different forms, since in addition to Dogginess, a particular dog will participate in forms that are accidental to it, such as for being short or furry, and so on).
So, since the for of Dog is a subset of the form of Mammal, with is a subset of the form of Vertebrate, all dogs participate in multiple essential forms as well as multiple accidental forms?
djindra said...
ReplyDeleteUse of abstractions may be the only way any brain could work -- even an ant's.
Even the individual cell uses abstractions, in a limited fashion. That's what enables viruses to enter cells; they use the cells reactions to phenomena against them.
Dr. Feser said:
ReplyDeleteWe know this because (so A-T holds) we know on independent grounds that the distinctive capacities of the human soul (intellect and will) cannot be material.
Just because A-T holds that to be the case does not in any way provide any evidence that that actually is the case. Interestingly, the abstract for an article by Peter Dillard – Two Unsuccessful Arguments for Immaterialism – in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly examines two arguments for the “conclusion that thinking is not a physical process”. He concludes that “neither argument establishes the immateriality of thinking”. One must assume that Mr. Dillard must not be aware of the “independent grounds” that informs Dr. Feser’s “knowledge” of the “immateriality” of the human “intellect and will”.
There are any number of “non-material” “explanations” for material events, processes, capabilities and attributes the same way the “non-material” soul is supposed to be the explanation for various “genuine intellectual powers” such as “intellect and will”. But if Dr. Feser wishes to dogmatically insist on that construction then I don’t see why he should be surprised or exasperated at proffered analogies with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
There may be in fact (are in fact) some good arguments or at least plausible hypotheses for that immateriality, some of which I’m actually sympathetic to – for example, some electromagnetic fields exhibiting the properties of a laser bouncing around inside our brains, all maintained by electrical charges moving about in the neurons – and which may or may not be based on the irreducibility of consciousness to any materialist or physicalist explanations. But to insist that those are anything more than hypotheses to guide further research, to insist that it justifies some particular idiosyncratic concept of God along with some highly problematic mythology and questionable moral precepts, if not outright prejudices, is, I think, a bridge too far from the realm of reason to be at all credible.
well, in different forms, since in addition to Dogginess, a particular dog will participate in forms that are accidental to it, such as for being short or furry, and so on.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget that the dog is also part of the canidae family, the mamilia, the animilia, the eukaryote, and finally a living thing.
Further such groupings are simply ways that we humans organize them, and as such they can be reworked into any still consistent order (like an ordering where dogs and cats are in the same group, but bears are excluded).