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Author Topic:   Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.
Faith 
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Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 597 of 1006 (805044)
04-15-2017 7:58 AM


The three scientific demotions of humanity
As usual, such a simple point so strangely misunderstood and unnecessarily complicated.
Hey, I found the source of that quote I kept trying to remember. It had finally occurred to me that one of the three was Galileo, but I still couldn't remember the whole idea. Turns out it was Freud who identified the three blows to the human ego:
Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naive self-love. The first was when it realized that our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a tiny speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable; this is associated in our minds with the name of Copernicus, although Alexandrian doctrines taught something very similar.
The second was when biological research robbed man of his peculiar privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to a descent from the animal world, implying an ineradicable animal nature in him: this transvaluation has been accomplished in our own time upon the instigation of Charles Darwin, Wallace, and their predecessors, and not without the most violent opposition from their contemporaries.
But man's craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is endeavoring to prove to the ego of each one of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind. We psycho-analysts were neither the first nor the only ones to propose to mankind that they should look inward; but it appears to be our lot to advocate it most insistently and to support it by empirical evidence which touches every man closely.
Nowhere near as pithy as I'd thought, and I really don't agree with much of it anyway.
But the idea of science demoting humanity from a sense of specialness AS human is certainly there.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 599 of 1006 (805057)
04-15-2017 10:11 AM
Reply to: Message 598 by Dr Adequate
04-15-2017 9:56 AM


Re: The three scientific demotions of humanity
Misunderstood how?
All the previous posts on the subject misunderstand. And now you continue to misunderstand with your quote from Ecclesiastes, failing to recognize the sad irony in it. Here's another mention of the same sad situation in the right context:
Psalm 49:20: Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.
The Bible shows us to be this amazing creature made in God's image, "in honor," that has become stupid and animal-like. It's not our normal condition in other words, it's what fallenness has made of us.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 603 of 1006 (805063)
04-15-2017 10:38 AM
Reply to: Message 602 by Dr Adequate
04-15-2017 10:27 AM


Re: The three scientific demotions of humanity
Everything in the Bible is to be read in the context of everything else in the Bible and humanity was "made in the image of God," not in the image of animals.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 618 of 1006 (805135)
04-16-2017 8:03 AM
Reply to: Message 617 by Tangle
04-16-2017 5:07 AM


Such a simple idea so miserably twisted.
The idea is that evolution as a theory and a worldview doesn't give any grounds for assessing a human being as any more important than a bug in the large scheme of things. Individual believers in evolution may not have such a view (although it does have to influence you whether you know it or not) but what individuals think isn't the point. All kinds of SUBJECTIVE views are possible but the point is that the theory itself, the worldview it promotes itself, gives no grounds whatever for assigning different values to bugs versus humans. this has been explained many times already. It's not difficult.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 620 of 1006 (805139)
04-16-2017 9:03 AM
Reply to: Message 619 by PaulK
04-16-2017 8:14 AM


Nobody "expects" it to give such a standard.
And again, you can put humans above bugs, but it can only be a subjective valuation since evolution gives you no grounds for it.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 626 of 1006 (805157)
04-16-2017 10:30 AM
Reply to: Message 622 by Tangle
04-16-2017 9:20 AM


The thing about the ToE is that it defines a human being. It's not like the theories of the physical world, gravity or whatnot, it defines what a human being is. And people DO take it as a worldview and it does influence their views of how life should be lived. I'm sure it did mine. It has nothing to do with psychobabble concepts like self worth, it's about the nature of the human being itself. If we're animals that descended from animals why should we have any obligation to ...anything in particular? If we're animals there is also no objective moral authority. It's clear we have some kind of built in morality but it's all over the map, it's not like we have reliable instincts the way many animals do, so our nature leaves us a lot of leeway, thinking of ourselves as merely animals. Do whatever you can get away with is a moral principle that one could infer from this.
Living by God's authority is something entirely different.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 631 of 1006 (805178)
04-16-2017 4:50 PM
Reply to: Message 630 by Tangle
04-16-2017 12:26 PM


The thing about the ToE is that it defines a human being.
Nope, it defines the theory of evolution.
I know it would be a terrible crime for an evo to acknowledge that I ever said anything that makes sense so I do understand your great need to contradict my extremely simple obvious point, but nevertheless here it is again:
The theory of gravity does not define human beings, nor does the science of astronomy nor the science of any other physical phenomenon, but in contrast to those other sciences, yes indeed evolution does define human beings. It says we descended from something apelike. It says we are animals, that our ancestors are animals. Some people do make a worldview out of this scientific claim.
Now I know you can find some semantic slippage in the words that will allow you to contradict this simple point in dozens of different ways, and I know you have the motivation to do just that. Nevetheless as it stands it is indeed a very very simple and true point.
Happy Easter.l
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 635 of 1006 (805220)
04-16-2017 9:27 PM
Reply to: Message 634 by Dr Adequate
04-16-2017 9:17 PM


dup
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 636 of 1006 (805222)
04-16-2017 9:29 PM
Reply to: Message 634 by Dr Adequate
04-16-2017 9:17 PM


Am I the only one here who spent years among people who liked to talk in terms of our animal nature and how we evolved this or that function and so on? I can't believe all this evasive hooha going on here.
The ToE DID change how we think about our place in the universe. We became MERE animals rather than creatures with a soul or spirit, half related to angels. The nature of animals became the basis for common thinking about our nature. We started talking in terms of how this or that spiritual type of feature "evolved" -- how it was naturally selected to further our survival in whatever conditions we might imagine.
Enough is enough.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 638 of 1006 (805227)
04-16-2017 9:54 PM
Reply to: Message 637 by Dr Adequate
04-16-2017 9:47 PM


You're still ssying it in a way that suggests you aren't thinking of what I'm saying. Humans "having no value" is not really what I'm saying. It's more about how humanity's place in the universe was demoted.
People who think in terms of how we "evolved" this or that social or moral characteristic are putting all our human eggs in the one animal basket. If that is what you are also doing I consider that a devaluation of humanity from any kind of understanding of us as beings superior to animals, with a spirit and related capacities not possessed by animals and not something that could have come about by evolution.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 640 of 1006 (805238)
04-17-2017 2:58 AM
Reply to: Message 639 by Dr Adequate
04-16-2017 11:51 PM


Ah well, there is apparently no end to the ways the topic can be distorted.
No, the point remains that there are no grounds BASED ON EVOLUTION for the morality we ascribe to ourselves.
Sigh.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 643 of 1006 (805272)
04-17-2017 7:36 AM
Reply to: Message 642 by jar
04-17-2017 7:35 AM


Re: Finally Faith you say something that is correct.
Funny, that's been MY point.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 657 of 1006 (805424)
04-18-2017 1:00 PM
Reply to: Message 654 by Tangle
04-18-2017 5:34 AM


You really need to drop that straw man by now
dredge writes:
and evolution implies that all life is meaningless and dispensable and that humans are worth no more than bugs.
Do you think saying that repeatedly whilst hearing every 'evolutionist' deny it is helping your case? Has anyone here ever agreed with you? Has anyone outside your little bubble said that? Have you ever asked an atheist or an 'evolutionist' whether they think even their dog's life is worth more than a bug's? Or their goldfish?
Do you guys study to get it all so wrong? Over and over it's been said that this has nothing to do with individual relationships, feelings and valuations of your family, friends and pets, only that such valuations are of necessity subjective when your main worldview tells you that human beings are descended from animals and anything else we ascribe to ourselves has no scientific basis.
I used to be an atheist and I believed in evolution and I would say that it definitely WAS the prevailing worldview and it told me that there is no God, that there is no objective basis for morality and that all my feelings and assessments of the human condition were nothing but illusion. I believed all that, and it most definitely DID influence me. Sin was nothing of course, and my generation was really really big on "sexual freedom," which is easily rationalized by evolution. I had no ability to criticize that idea, we're just animals after all, "if it feels good do it" and all that legacy of the sicksties. I had to become a Christian to have any notion of sin. I did nevertheless strenuously object to the idea that we were merely animals anyway since I thought we are pretty noble creatures, but as with all such ideas there is no objective way to claim such a thing. And perhaps many people hold on to a traditional morality in spite of being atheists and believing in evolution but I wasn't one of them, and in any case the point here is that their morality is all subjective too. The theory of evolution, like it or not, was indeed the biggest influence toward atheism and toward the moral deterioration of society that ever before existed.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 694 of 1006 (805755)
04-20-2017 3:12 PM
Reply to: Message 691 by jar
04-20-2017 9:07 AM


Re: Could you explain your Good Lord remarks
Actually the Good Lord is Ganesha
Ganesha is widely revered ...
Romans 1:22, 23, 25
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things...Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator...
.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


(1)
Message 695 of 1006 (805756)
04-20-2017 3:13 PM
Reply to: Message 692 by 1.61803
04-20-2017 2:48 PM


Re: Atheists and Evolutionists cant explain 'altruism'..LOVE
Yes you can eat love because love is an action aimed at helping others with whatever they need. Love is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. etc. etc.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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