The Human Condition and Unchosen Desires

Your serious question deserves a serious answer. I believe…

You, like everyone else, are a human being with animal needs, desires, and instincts you did not choose and you cannot do otherwise than freely make choices in thought and deed in the absence of any certainty of anything other than your own existence.

I also believe that Man finds himself in a broken creation of which he is a part. No one can know with absolute certainty that the world is not actually (?) absurd or that the senses do not fully deceive, or that reason in anyway yields true knowledge. I further believe that the human heart cries out for something, anything, that could resolve this brokenness. We long for hope and assurance that our existence is not a vain exercise of ignorance and whim, i.e. “sound and fury signifying nothing”. Seeing that state of despair, I believe, God comes to every man and woman and, in a soft still voice, speaks the words, “Here I am.” To hear that invitation from within and to trust it, is, and always be, a leap of faith.

Personally, I have adopted the foundational beliefs that the world has an intelligible order, that sensory evidence is generally reliable and self-correcting, and that human reason is effective. I have also chosen to accept my innate sense that there is a Divine reality. None of the above beliefs are rational, in the sense that there is no rational reason to trust either reason or instinct. However, these beliefs are self-consistent and mutually supportive in a way that rejecting all or some of those foundational beliefs cannot be. As such I consider my stance reasonable despite the ultimate irrationality of all beliefs.

With all that said, I would say to you that your state of non-belief, while no less justifiable than my state of belief, is still not a good place to be. I say this speaking from personal experience and having listened to the testimony of great minds who also struggled with this “dark night of the soul.” Nor do I think cultures that fail, either explicitly or tacitly, to avoid nihilistic tendencies can long endure. This is the Gospel message: that we are broken personally and as a race, incapable of overcoming the human condition by our own power, and wholly dependent on Grace to deliver from despair those who freely choose to follow Him.

That IS the main issue because everything else follows from it, including concerns those of someone finding himself with desires he did not choose. Isn’t that the human condition? Is there anyone who finds himself or herself without unchoosen thoughts, feelings, and desires and wondering whether or not embrace or reject them or even celebrate them? By what criteria does one make such determinations? The first question to ask is not whether particular lifestyle choices are right and proper; but rather, do they follow from what one truly believes, i.e. the freely adopted stances by which one has chosen to live his or her life?

So to directly answer your question, I believe you are my existential equal and fellow traveler though life. As a Child of God, you deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. At the same time, I believe that you, like me, like every human that is, was, or ever will be, is broken in exactly the way I described above, finding ourselves, facing unavoidable choices that are sometimes very difficult one, such as those  between bad and worse OR with nearly infinite unknowns OR have potentially highly desirable outcomes and are just plain hard to do.

Nevertheless and because of my foundational beliefs, I am led to conclude that while many of those desires are right and proper for human beings to embrace, others are to be rejected and overcome. I too have desires that are oddly compelling, nearly irresistible, and seem to be very much a part of who I am. But I alone decide if I will let them define me and whether or not I will build my identity around them.

And here is a critical point that needs to be fully understood. I do not judge any human being as existentially inferior to me nor do I believe that by embracing the foundational beliefs I have make me superior to anyone in any way. It is the Lord, and He alone, who judges. However, I do not avoid comparing my life and the lives of those around me, with the Christian principles that follow from the those foundational beliefs, beliefs I consider necessary to hold in order to avoid nihilism, enjoy abundant life and promote a noble culture and positive civil society.

Against Empathy as a Source of Human Rights

Empathy can serve as a useful guide. However, it is not a truly rational ground since it is based entirely on feelings and intuitions about the feelings of others. Maybe a logical demonstration will help clarify my position:

1. Human beings have innate emotional responses that include but are not limited to delight, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, compassion, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.
2. Humans innately favor and seek to preserve the lives and well-being of themselves and their kin more than the lives and well-being of strangers and unrelated tribes.
3. Humans evolved to have innate emotional responses and prefer the benefit of their kin because they enhance fitness and confer reproductive advantages . Otherwise, those traits remain vestigial or have not yet been purged by natural selection.
4. The innate emotional responses and evolutionarily instilled preferences for fitness or reproductive advantage are instrumental goods.
5. The concept of human dignity means that every individual life is of absolute value in-and-of-itself, and not contingent on its instrumental value to any other individual or group.
6. Instrumental goods cannot ground absolute and non-contingent values.
7. None of the innate emotional responses or evolutionary preferences can ground human dignity.

In addition to the above:

1. Each of the innate emotional responses (that include but are not limited to delight, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, compassion, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.) either enhance fitness, confer reproductive advantages, remain vestigial, or have not yet been purged by natural selection.
2. Determining which emotional response should serve as the ground for human dignity requires a means by which evaluate the value of each.
3. None of the emotional responses can be used as the means for evaluating emotional responses without engaging in circular reasoning.
4. Therefore, some standard other than innate emotional responses, like empathy, must serve as a rational foundation for human dignity.

The Argument from Logic

The Argument for God from the laws of Logic:

http://www.proginosko.com/docs/The_Lord_of_Non-Contradiction.pdf

An analysis by Maverick Philospher:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/05/from-the-laws-of-logic-to-the-existence-of-god.html

Secularism: A Term of Art

Atheists think it means godless - godless government, etc.

But really it just means that the qualified citizens regardless of their religous belief should be free to participate in the offices and institutions of governance.

Faith and Reason, Some Bible Verses etc.

Not sure why I bother; but anyways…

(1st May 2017, 17:11)Whateverist Wrote:1) Think about the core mystery of your religion.  (Okay, I'll break "think about" down for you; I realize you may be a little out of shape.)  Whatever it is that you think of as supernatural, consider how it is that anyone ever found out about that stuff.  I mean all of the priest class agrees you can't detect it with an instrument of science nowadays.

At this point you have to decide whether your faith is in the core mystery of your religion or the claims of some ancient scribes. …

There are a couple of ways to address this. 

First, the naturalist would have others dismiss all miracles as impossible based on his own indefensible metaphysical commitment to physical causal closure.

Next, the core mystery of the Christian faith is the resurrection. The scriptural records of Resurrection are not based on the personal ecstatic visions of a revered mystic; but rather, purport to be historical testimony of observed events surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Next, your point rests on the idea that apprehension of the divine is limited to some exclusive priestly class. The prompting of the Holy Spirit is He who calls all Christian believers to faith. As such faith is a kind of gnosis, analogous to memory or perception. 

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” –Eph 2:8

“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” – Romans 10:17

Finally, core mystery of the Christian faith is the culmination of a long tradition, attested to by a unified narrative that traces across centuries and by various authors.  

“Then Jesus said to them, ‘O foolish ones, how slow are your hearts to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself.” – Luke 24:25-27

(1st May 2017, 17:11)Whateverist Wrote:2) Okay, if you got past step one you now realize that faith requires open ended-ness.  You can't dictate the details of God's nature or intentions.  If you're feeling a little insecure and humbled, you're actually on the right path now.  Keep it up.

That’s right. But I’m not seeing the problem.

“…That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” – 1 Cor 2:5

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” – Proverbs 11:2

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” – James 4:10

“…the Scriptures say, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.’ So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish.  Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.  It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom.  So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.” - 1 Cor 1:18-25

Even Thomas Aquanis, after his epiphany, exclaimed, “All I have done is as straw!”

(1st May 2017, 17:11)Whateverist Wrote:3) Next step, think about the nature of science.  It is not a body of facts.  It is a method of empirical investigation, the observational facts and theories which arise are always subject to reinterpretation.  But the beauty is in the openness of process and how readily one can assess the soundness of the experiments proposed to test the hypotheses.  You can trust science-the-method to investigate the nature of the empirical world more than any other method ever proposed.  In the absence of an authoritative alternative, scientific theory represents the best operating hypotheses for what's out there.  Embrace it, it won't bite - and cannot conflict with your religious faith if done correctly. You may now walk in faith regarding the central mysteries of who and what we are and any purposes you feel accrues to that, keeping in mind that little ole' you do not control the nature of that mystery; presumably the actual state of affairs is vice versa.  But by picking up and embracing the mantle of science you need not go blindly into the (empirical) world.  Rather you may stride confidently knowing you enjoy the fruits of a long history of careful investigation, which at its core is just as humble and open as you're now trying to be.  That's it.  Carry on.

This is indeed the glory of science that it can help illuminate for us the mind of God and His Providence through the book of nature. I simply do not understand this fanatical obsession to set faith and science as mutually exclusive.

I don’t get it, Whateverist. What’s your point?

Posts about Moral Realism as Properly Basic

(9th May 2017, 15:35)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:Indeed. The revulsion people feel towards the Holocaust is evidence that there are moral facts.

The revulsion people feel towards the holocaust is evidence that there are moral opinions, not that there are moral facts.  This is weak, Chad.  The feelings are evidence that people have feelings.  Nothing more.  Perhaps you'd like to explain how you torture moral facts out of this?

You seem to have a penchant for ignoring intentionality. Feelings are not just feelings - they are feelings about something. Feeling don't just arise for no reason in response to nothing. The horror of tragedy, outrage at injustice, and the pangs of conscience are responses tosomething about or in the world. Sorry, but I'm going to go with the idea that the wrongness of the Holocaust is immediately obvious to anyone with a properly functioning conscience. If someone is going to say that it isn't they better have a damn good reason. Do you?

(9th May 2017, 21:56)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(9th May 2017, 19:23)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:Exactly right. I want you to come out clearly and say that the evil of the Holocaust is not a moral fact. If someone has to explain to you why it was wrong then you wouldn't understand anyway.

You're fucking hysterical. If there are moral facts, they exist only in as much as they are a reflection of a shared, evolved psychology. As such, I don't believe there are any absolute moral facts, including whether the holocaust was evil. Moral truth is relative, the appropriate level of context being that of the species. A lion cares not one whit that humans were killed during the holocaust.

I must give you credit for managing to fit 3 logical fallacies in less than a paragraph. First, you try to invalidate my replies with an ad hominen. Then you make the genetic fallacy as if the origin of conscience has any bearing on its current relevance. Finally, you issue a non-sequetor because of course the scope of moral obligations is limited to human agency in the same way that structural failure is relevant only to buildings and bridges. Limited applicability has no bearing on its reality.

(9th May 2017, 21:56)Jörmungandr Wrote:Your appeal to emotion with the "wouldn't understand [it] anyway" remark is noted and ignored. You're simply begging off on providing an explanation because you, yourself, are incapable of providing an explanation...

You misunderstood my intention. I’m saying that moral realism is a properly basic belief. It only loses its warrant if there is a valid objection or defeater. A properly functioning conscience operating in an environment amenable to its use prompts us with what appear to be real moral imperatives. It is no different than a properly functioning memory allows someone to recall past events. It’s not perfect; people forget. Or they’re too tired to think. And sometimes people disagree. But it is silly to conclude based on its limitations that there are no facts about the past. Everyone assumes their memories are true until shown otherwise. It is the same with moral imperatives.

(9th May 2017, 21:56)Jörmungandr Wrote:That doesn't even remotely follow. Any connection between something real and our mind's contents is a result of selective pressures upon the evolution of the brain. Only under your theory of the mind is the connection between reality and the contents of the mind fortuitous, literally. You call it God. It's nothing more than explaining the resemblance between mind and reality as something that "just happened"; it's magic, according to you.

Magic is when people try to use symbolic representations to produce effects or extract information from reality. That sounds more like what you are proposing. You seem to have forgotten that I consider cognition as participating to various degrees in actual reality not some parallel subjective world that may or may not correspond to external reality (your claim). Natural selection works equally well with my model so that is not a valid way to distinguish between our stances.

(9th May 2017, 21:56)Jörmungandr Wrote:So I'm expected to accept whole hog your metaphysical gobbledy gook about moral facts, but you don't need to do squat.

My only epistemic obligation I have in claiming warrant is to consider possible objections and defeaters to moral realism. It is no different than other properly basic beliefs like the belief that external objects exist or that other people have minds like my own. (Actually, according to you I don’t need to do anything, do I? And yet you stated it as a moral fact, didn’t you?) You have no defeaters.

Moreover, if there are no moral facts then moral opinions are nonsense since they have no object. It’s like debating the color of Abraham Lincoln’s cell phone. Without some external reference point moral opinions have no content and are absolutely worthless.

Atheism and the Meaning of Life

A while back I got hammered for equivocating atheism with ontological naturalist even though 99.9% of atheists tacitly accept it. For the study of nature, methodological naturalism right limits its inquiries to matter [material cause] and efficient cause. Formal and final causes are not considered. Ontological naturalists make the metaphysical claim that only material and efficient causes exist. Physical objects and events are not ‘about’ anything. They just are. For the ontological naturalist the apparent intentional behavior of some things, from thermostats to human beings, is an illusion. That means that any concept that hinges on intentionality, like meaning and purpose, is also just a phantasy. Thus, the ontological naturalist that says their life can have meaning is contradicting himself or herself.

More...

(5th February 2015, 20:58)rasetsu Wrote:To say that something is an illusion isn't necessarily to say that it's phantasy. All it means is that there is a description of the phenomena that is closer to reality than the surface description normally attributed to a thing. If meaning and intentionality are illusions, it simply means there's a better description of them than the one we have. It doesn't imply that the phenomena are empty.

I think you are referring to an epistemological difference of degree (like Newtonian vs. Quantum physics) whereas I am pointing to an ontological difference of kind. 
I think an illusion occurs when something only appears to be one thing when it is actually another. For example, the thing in the dark corner may appear to be a snake when it is actually a coil of rope. Mistaking a coil of rope for a snake is an error of kind, not of degree. 

As it applies to the issue of intentionality, something either has it or it doesn’t. The needle of a thermostat only appears intent on reaching the set point, whereas a cheetah actuallyintends to nab zebras. I say the goal directed behavior of the thermostat is an illusion while the goal directed behavior of the cheetah is real – a difference of kind.

Likewise, as it applies to meaning, the idea that meaning can be found in a purely physical description of something is ludicrous. While the physical beads can represent the non-physical ideas of enumeration, no purely physical description of an abacus would ever reveal the significance of the beads. Again, we see a difference in kind between a sign and its significance.


More atheist idiocy...

(6th February 2015, 03:23)Esquilax Wrote:

(5th February 2015, 23:39)ChadWooters Wrote:As it applies to the issue of intentionality, something either has it or it doesn’t. The needle of a thermostat only appears intent on reaching the set point, whereas a cheetah actually intends to nab zebras. I say the goal directed behavior of the thermostat is an illusion while the goal directed behavior of the cheetah is real – a difference of kind.

Can I ask why you constantly assume that there's a dichotomy here?

When alternatives result in paradoxes and unsolvable dilemmas that means the proposed solutions are inadequate, incomplete, or down right false. The first alternative is that neither the thermostat nor the cheetah engage in goal-seeking behavior. The second alternative is that both the thermostat and the cheetah engage in goal-seeking behavior. 
The first alternative posits that the cheetah is without intention. Anyone, but the most strident eliminative materialist, can see that that is false.
The second is false because it attributes mental properties to the thermostat. A panpsychist would argue that this may not be entirely false. And I am open to considering this a real possibility, but the current state of that theory is very inadequate. 
The solution to the problem lies in recognizing the difference between essential and accidental properties. The goal-seeking behavior of the cheetah is an essential part of being a cheetah because the final end of any living thing is to live and thrive. It could not do if intentional behavior were removed. In contrast to this, the function of any artifact, like a thermostat is an accidental property of its composition. Any apparent goal-seeking behavior by the thermostat is derived from a person that has an intended goal in actuality.

(6th February 2015, 03:23)Esquilax Wrote:Likewise, as it applies to meaning, the idea that meaning can be found in a purely physical description of something is ludicrous.

Why do you think this? … what observations led you to this conclusion? [/quote]Really? LOL! It should be obvious. What is the meaning of a rock? Or a waterfall? Or a caterpillar? 

(6th February 2015, 03:23)Esquilax Wrote:So how did you come to the conclusion that significance can only be imbued from outside? …What's the actual quality that allows meaning to come into being?

The meaning of things come from recognition of the ideas they instantiate or some correspondence with those ideas. To understand this, you must know a little something about the problem of universals, as conceived by Plato, refined by Aristotle, and perfected by the Schoolmen. Plato observed that part of what allows us to identify universals from particulars is that the particulars, to greater and lesser degrees, all manifest the same form. But Plato imagined these as forms as distinct entities, which was problematic for several reasons, primarily because forms multiply without restraint. Aristotle observed that forms, while real, don’t float around in some separate realm, but are always embodied. While this was an improvement, comparison between particulars to determine a common form is only really possible by referring to an infinite series of super-universals above the universals. The Scholastic solution accepts that forms are embodied but that the intellect perceives the idea of the form by means of abstraction. However the idea of a form must exist in potential before it can be actually manifest in the intellect. In order for something to move from potential to actuality it must do so by means of something already in act. Thus the idea must exist in full actuality. And since God is the only being that is fully in act, the perfect form of any idea must already be in His intellect.

Quote:While the physical beads can represent the non-physical ideas of enumeration, no purely physical description of an abacus would ever reveal the significance of the beads. Again, we see a difference in kind between a sign and its significance.

(6th February 2015, 03:23)Esquilax Wrote:Because human beings are capable of imbuing meaning and purpose in other objects … is there any reason they can't apply meaning and purpose to themselves?

Duh! I said as much earlier. What is at issue is why we have that capacity. Having that capacity is inconsistent with ontological naturalism. 

(6th February 2015, 03:23)Esquilax Wrote:That's not exactly an impressive quality, and if god doesn't have a pre-existing entity to bring him into existence, doesn't that mean god is meaningless and purposeless, just as you accuse others of being?

Not at all. God is fully in act, as mentioned above.