tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26443985950540005862024-03-17T15:17:25.219-07:00The Religious A prioriChristian Apologetics for 21st CenturyJoseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comBlogger208125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-45780022906759251442024-01-22T11:55:00.000-08:002024-01-22T11:55:21.126-08:00fun with the modal argument
This is one of the most complex issues there is,especially Hartshorne's version which I use,or one similar to his. On Victor Reppert's Dangerous Idea Blog I found our old friend Stardust makimng the claim that there are no valid arguments for God. As it turns out he didn't know what valid meant. He didn't know in logic it refers to the technical presentation of the argumet Arguments must be both valid and sound, soundness refers to truth. After dancing around that for a bit I decided to just challenge him to debate the modal argument.<br>
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My argument:<br>
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1. God is either necessary or impossible.<br>
2. God can be conceived without contradiction.<br>
3. Whatever can be conceived without contradiction is not impossible.<br>
4. God is not impossible.<br>
5. God is necessary.<br>
6. That God's existence is necessary is a good reason to believe that God is real.<br>
7. Therefore, believe in God's reality is warranted.<br>
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Notice I don't say god's "existence," Those of you who follow my blog and have seen my discussion of Tillich will understand this, for the rest of you it';snot important. Notice also that I argue in terms of warrant and not proof. Both Hartshorne and Plantinga refuse to contend they have prove the existence of God but Plantingia argues that the nodal argument is warrant for belief.[1]<br>
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Dusty argued:<br>
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"IF God exists THEN it is logically necessary that(God exists)"Only in the tautological sense that this statement applies to all existent things. If a thing exists then it is necessary that it exists since it is existent. That makes god nothing special.
Metacrock (me): <br>
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wrong, you are not paying attention ,What is being said is that there are only two possibles regarding God's modal status, either necessary or impossible. In other words no middle ground, if God exists he must exist he can't be a maybe, he could not have failed to exist, if there is a God there had to be a God. The only alternative is that if God does not exist it's impossible that God could have existed God either exists and it is necessary that he does or he doesn't exist and if so it's because he could not exit.<br>
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Dusty:<br>
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If you mean some notion of alternative possibilities that makes god special necessarily then no, one can speculate that something gave rise to god, god's god, but maybe god's god died, though previously greater than god, but now dead, so now god exists.
Meta:<br>
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Nope doesn't work that way. God has to be eternal or he can't be at all., he could not have a cause.If God exists he exists as a necessity, A necessity doesn't have a cause,if it did it would be contingent.<br>
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Dusty<br>
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The speculative alternative formulations are unbounded, hence the assertion of necessity is false.<br>
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Meta<br>
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wrong modal operators are not "unbounded." Yes there is a limitless field of speculation concerning God but NOT where modal operators are concerned.<br>
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Dusty<br>
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Fail from the git go, but then, you did not fully define your terms so you might think you have some definitional alternatives to these failings.<br>
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Line 3 is a non-sequitur. Just because we can imagine something that does not contradict itself as we imagine it does not mean the reality of the universe can possibly accommodate a realization of that fantasy.<br>
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Meta<br>
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p3 is the lynch pin of the thing, it's anything but irrelevant, the argent turns upon it.<br>
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[This argument is about logic and it came in the discussion when we where arguing about validity.So how constriction is regarded in logic really matters.The concept of impossibility is about logical contradiction. Since impossibility is obtained by being illogicality contradictory the lack of contradiction means possibility,]<br>
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Dusty<br>
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Hartshorne is asserting that mere fantasy is sufficient to allow for external realization. He obviously has a hard time separating fantasy from reality, but that is typical of the theistic mind.
Meta<br>
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No logician in the world thinks that, he is not saying that,<br>
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[He's equating using logic to Establishment of truth by logic with fantasy because he thinks empiricism is the only form of knowledge. As iv say below his position of empiricism as the only true knowledge cannot be proved empirically, He has to use logic to establish probability then to connect probability to empiricism.We know logic can tell us some things about the world. For example we don't have to go look for square circles we know there are none because the concept contradicts itself. For positive understanding of truth content thorough logic see below.]<br>
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Dusty<br>
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The whole argument hinges on thinking makes it so, an absurd notion. Why anybody takes this nonsense at all seriously is truly a wonderment for me.<br>
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Meta<br>
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It's so sophomoric to reduce the work of a recognized great thinker to "he thinks thinking makes it so." No he did not think that.He thought that the ontological principle is true. in other words if the terms of a proportion spell out the truth content of the proposition when understood then we have to assume the truth of the argument if the prepositions are valid.<br>
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Tillich's example of this principle is that the principle of truth cannot be disputed without admitting to the validity of the principle. One can only say the principle is false if one is willing to admit that truth exists and this principle departs from it, Thus to dispute the truth of truth is to accept the proportion that truth exists. Truth can never be disputed as truth or as sound based upon a logical denial. This is Duane Olson explaining Tillich's view:<br>
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The indubitability of the norm of truth is shown by a reductio argument regarding the process of knowing. In different places and in different ways Tillich points out that denial and doubt in knowing presuppose the norm of truth.[17 in the article] I want to systematize Tillich’s reductio argument at this point to show that all major theoretical postures presuppose this norm.<br>
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We can imagine four major postures taken by a subject to any theoretical judgment. One could affirm the judgment, claiming it corresponds with reality; one could deny the judgment, claiming it does not correspond; one could doubt, question, and debate the judgment; or one could claim a decision cannot be made about the judgment. All of the options presuppose the subject’s ability to apply a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth. Certainly one must apply a norm to affirm a judgment. One must also apply a norm, however, to deny a judgment. Any negative judgment presupposes and lives from the positive bearing of a norm of truth by the subject. One cannot deny that a judgment corresponds to reality without presupposing the subject’s ability to make judgments about reality. Doubting, questioning, or debating a judgment presuppose a norm of truth as well. One could not debate the veracity of a judgment without presupposing the capacity in the debaters to determine that veracity. Doubting or questioning a judgment is only meaningful under the presupposition of a norm that gives validity to that questioning and doubting. Finally, the claim that one cannot know whether a judgment is true presupposes the bearing of a norm to determine how or why a decision cannot be made.<br>
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It is important to note that the argument for a correspondence-norm, or norm of truth, is on a different level than arguments about the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object. The correspondence itself may be conceived in terms of naïve realism, idealism, or a multitude of positions in between. Every theory about the nature of the correspondence, however, relies on the presupposition of a correspondence-norm that would make it possible to formulate, and affirm, deny, debate, or declare uncertain that theory. Put differently, the theory of the specific nature of the correspondence between subject and object is another field of knowledge that is subject to the ultimate criterion of knowledge, which is what is disclosed in the idea of a correspondence-norm.<br>
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To claim that the capacity to apply a norm is indubitable is the same thing as saying the subject bears an indubitable awareness of truth. In other words, when one analyzes the major postures toward judgments and shows how a norm of truth is presupposed as something borne by the subject in every posture, one is pointing out an awareness of truth the subject has, though it is something the subject may overlook, especially in doubting or denying particular truths. Through the reductio argument, one focuses attention on the fact that the subject bears a norm of truth, thus raising it to conscious awareness. I speak more below about the character of this awareness, but for now I simply affirm something Tillich presupposes, which is the identity between the affirmation that the subject bears a norm of truth and the subject’s awareness of this norm.[2]<br>
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Heartshorne's version is the evocation of necessity with the possibility of God. In other words necessity is such that if X is necessary and possible the possibility of X means it must exist because it can't be merely possible if it's necessary. That's where no p3 comes in. The only two possibilities for go are necessary and impossible, If God is possible hes not impossible and thus must be necessary. This is all guaranteed by the nature of modal operators. Modal operators are words that disclose the modes of being; hence"modal" logic. Modes of being are states such as necessity or contingency. Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields document:<br>
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Hartshorne considered the empiricist position regarding the ontological argument as the least tenable. The second premise says, colloquially, if God is so much as logically possible, then it must be the case that God exists. Hartshorne calls this “Anselm’s principle,” or more forcefully, “Anselm’s discovery.” The discovery is that God, as unsurpassable, cannot exist with the possibility of not existing. Put differently, contingency of existence is incompatible with deity. Anselm’s formula that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” means, among other things, that any abstract characteristic for which something greater can be conceived cannot properly be attributed to deity. [3]<br>
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Dusty also tried to confuse soundness with empirical knowledge, after I pointed out the distinction between sound and valid, That is not the case either, its not abouit empirical evidence we are still dealing in logical argument. Here is the distinction on these terms:<br>
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I. Truth, Validity, and Soundness: probably the three most important concepts of the course.<br>
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A. First, let us briefly characterize these concepts.<br>
1. truth: a property of statements, i.e., that they are the case.<br>
2. validity: a property of arguments, i.e., that they have a good structure.<br>
(The premisses and conclusion are so related that it is absolutely impossible for the premisses to be true unless the conclusion is true also.)<br>
3. soundness: a property of both arguments and the statements in them, i.e., the argument is valid and all the statement are true.<br>
Sound Argument: (1) valid, (2) true premisses (obviously the conclusion is true as well by the definition of validity).<br>
B. The fact that a deductive argument is valid cannot, in itself, assure us that any of the statements in the argument are true; this fact only tells us that the conclusion must be true if the premisses are true.[4]<br>
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Empirical evidence is not the issue, Most atheists on the net make the assumption that empiricism is the only real form of knowledge and logic is just made up and doesn't prove anything this something no one can prove with any empirical standard.I dom't argue that i can prove the existence of God. The issue originally was validity,I shewed the argument here is valid, It's also sound because the preemies are true and the argument is valid. Does that prove god is real? No but it's a good reason to think he is, Therefore belief in god is warranted,<br>
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Sources<br>
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[1] Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields "Charles Hartshorne Theistic and Anti-theistic Arguments," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: a Peer Reviewed Academic Resource. Internet online resource. no date indicated, URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/hart-t-a/#H1 (accessed 1/15/17).<br>
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Donald Wayne Viney<br>
Email: don_viney@yahoo.com<br>
Pittsburg State University<br>
U. S. A.<br>
<br>
George W. Shields<br>
Email: George.shields@kysu.edu<br>
Kentucky State University<br>
U. S. A.<br>
[2]Duane Olson, “Pual Tiillich and the Ontological Argument,” Quodlibet Journal vol. 6, no 3, July-sep 2004, online journal, URL: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/olson-tillich.shtml visited 8/4/10
Olson has two foot notes in this quotation which are important to examine:<br>
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1) “In one of the more significant recent monographs on Tillich’s thought, Langdon Gilkey flatly states “[Tillich] denied that an argument for the transcendent power and ground of being was possible” (Gilkey on Tillich (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 105). Gilkey never discusses Tillich’s use of the traditional arguments.” (2) “In his detailed and extensive volume on the ontological argument, Graham Oppy mentions Tillich’s name only once in the literature review, and he never analyzes any of Tillich’s statements (Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 275). To Oppy’s credit, he discusses a type of argument to which Tillich’s is related. I comment on Oppy’s analysis of this argument in the final section of this paper.”<br>
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[3] Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields "Charles Hartshorne Theistic and Anti-theistic Arguments," op cit<br>
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[4] Introduction to Logic, PLE<br>
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http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/tvs.html<br>
<br>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-55880705081731090202023-11-14T10:52:00.000-08:002023-11-14T10:52:01.880-08:00bookmark to link on RE studies bibhttp://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/sources-of-empirical-study-of-religous.htmlJoseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-45029947970847704602023-09-21T03:40:00.000-07:002023-12-25T22:18:14.223-08:00Long-Term Positive Effects of Mystical Experience Long-Term Positive Effects of Mystical Experience
Research Summary
From Council on Spiritual Practices Website
"States of Univtive Consciousness"
Also called Transcendent Experiences, Ego-Transcendence, Intense Religious Experience, Peak Experiences, Mystical Experiences, Cosmic Consciousness. Sources:
Wuthnow, Robert (1978). "Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests." Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 18 (3), 59-75.
Noble, Kathleen D. (1987). ``Psychological Health and the Experience of Transcendence.'' The Counseling Psychologist, 15 (4), 601-614.
Lukoff, David & Francis G. Lu (1988). ``Transpersonal psychology research review: Topic: Mystical experiences.'' Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20 (2), 161-184.
Roger Walsh (1980). The consciousness disciplines and the behavioral sciences: Questions of comparison and assessment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137(6), 663-673.
Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar (1983). ``Psychedelic Drugs in Psychiatry'' in Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, New York: Basic Books.
Furthermore, Greeley found no evidence to support the orthodox belief that frequent mystic experiences or psychic experiences stem from deprivation or psychopathology. His ''mystics'' were generally better educated, more successful economically, and less racist, and they were rated substantially happier on measures of psychological well-being. (Charles T. Tart, Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm, p. 19.)
Long-Term Effects
Wuthnow:
*Say their lives are more meaningful,
*think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life is
Meditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style
Noble:
*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic
*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient
*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,
*increased love and compassion
Short-Term Effects (usually people who did not previously know of these experiences)
*Experience temporarily disorienting, alarming, disruptive
*Likely changes in self and the world,
*space and time, emotional attitudes, cognitive styles, personalities, doubt sanity and reluctance to communicate, feel ordinary language is inadequate
*Some individuals report psychic capacities and visionary experience destabilizing relationships with family and friends Withdrawal, isolation, confusion, insecurity, self-doubt, depression, anxiety, panic, restlessness, grandiose religious delusions
Links to Maslow's Needs, Mental Health, and Peak Experiences When introducing entheogens to people, I find it's helpful to link them to other ideas people are familiar with. Here are three useful quotations. 1) Maslow - Beyond Self Actualization is Self Transcendence ``I should say that I consider Humanistic, Third Force Psychology to be transitional, a preparation for a still `higher' Fourth Psychology, transhuman, centered in the cosmos rather than in human needs and interest, going beyond humanness, identity, selfactualization and the like.''
Abraham Maslow (1968). Toward a Psychology of Being, Second edition, -- pages iii-iv.
2) States of consciousness and mystical experiences
The ego has problems:
the ego is a problem.
``Within the Western model we recognize and define psychosis as a suboptimal state of consciousness that views reality in a distorted way and does not recognize that distortion. It is therefore important to note that from the mystical perspective our usual state fits all the criteria of psychosis, being suboptimal, having a distorted view of reality, yet not recognizing that distortion. Indeed from the ultimate mystical perspective, psychosis can be defined as being trapped in, or attached to, any one state of consciousness, each of which by itself is necessarily limited and only relatively real.'' -- page 665
Roger Walsh (1980). The consciousness disciplines and the behavioral sciences: Questions of comparison and assessment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137(6), 663-673.
3) Therapeutic effects of peak experiences
``It is assumed that if, as is often said, one traumatic event can shape a life, one therapeutic event can reshape it. Psychedelic therapy has an analogue in Abraham Maslow's idea of the peak experience. The drug taker feels somehow allied to or merged with a higher power; he becomes convinced the self is part of a much larger pattern, and the sense of cleansing, release, and joy makes old woes seem trivial.'' -- page 132
Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar (1983). ``Psychedelic Drugs in Psychiatry'' in Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, New York: Basic Books.
Transpersonal Childhood Experiences of Higher States of Consciousness: Literature Review and Theoretical Integration. Unpublished paper by Jayne Gackenback, (1992)
http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/cehsc/ipure.htm
"These states of being also result in behavioral and health changes. Ludwig (1985) found that 14% of people claiming spontaneous remission from alcoholism was due to mystical experiences while Richards (1978) found with cancer patients treated in a hallucinogenic drug-assisted therapy who reported mystical experiences improved significantly more on a measure of self-actualization than those who also had the drug but did not have a mystical experience. In terms of the Vedic Psychology group they report a wide range of positive behavioral results from the practice of meditation and as outlined above go to great pains to show that it is the transcendence aspect of that practice that is primarily responsible for the changes. Thus improved performance in many areas of society have been reported including education and business as well as personal health states (reviewed and summarized in Alexander et al., 1990). Specifically, the Vedic Psychology group have found that mystical experiences were associated with "refined sensory threshold and enhanced mind-body coordination (p. 115; Alexander et al., 1987)."
(4) Greater happiness
Religion and Happiness
by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD
Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?
Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.
What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness
Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.
Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
<Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-74707287432662302952023-04-14T05:48:00.000-07:002023-04-14T05:48:36.370-07:00 Koester did not believe in the resurrection
A Rational Look at Christianity; Basing Reason in Truth<br>
<br>
Trouble in Paradise? Helmut Koester was a Liberal!
By Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) - April 16, 2018
Image result for Helmut Koester
Helmut Koester 1926-2016<br>
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Much of the arguments that I make on this blog revolve around the basic concept that I call "PMPN" (pre Mark Passion Narrative). It is a particular document but it is also a hypothetical constrict like Q. The important thing about this notion is that it includes the empty tomb. Helmut Koester and John D. Crosson say it ends with the empty tomb: Koester writes, "John Dominic Crosson has gone further [than Denker]...he argues that "this activity results in the composition of a literary document at a very early date i.e. in the middle of the First century CE."<b>[1]</b> Said another way, the interpretation of Scripture as the formation of the passion narrative became an independent document, a ur-Gospel, as early as the middle of the first century! Both scholars dated the document about AD 50. This is a powerful testimony to the truth of the resurrection because it means the empty tomb was not invented byMark, it existed well before mark was written. It also means it was preached very early in the history of the Kyrigma, (the preached gospel). The problem is some atheist apologists think they have the death blow to this argument,So let's examine that.<br>
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The death blow is that they have a quote from a scholar saying that Helmut Koester, my major source on the PMPN, believed that the empty tomb was made up. Koester's theory says that Christians were venerating Jesus' tomb prior to AD 66 when they were forced to leave Jerusalem due to the revolt against Rome. When they came back they had to explain why non one was venerating Jesus' tomb. They said it's because it's empty.<b>[2]</b> Now he points out in his view, it's empty not because he rose but possibly for any number of reasons, including they took the body with them when they split town. He also mentions other possibilities. That was in 66. By the time Mark was written they Incorporated the empty tomb as an apologetic device into the Gospel narrative.<b>[3]</b> At this point, in the heat of message board battle, they start trying to shame me. O my major source says it I have to accept it. If he right about the one thing (PMN and it;s date) how could he not be right about the other?<br>
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First let's set some boundaries, if one quotes a source because said source is expert in some area and one is documenting a point with in the domain of that source's expertise one is not then obligated to believe everything the source said. This is especially true if one considers things beyond the expertise of that source. Dating the probable writing of a hypothetical source is is much different from expressing a conjecture about the resurrection. Koester was an expert in Biblical scholarship no one is an expert in the resurrection. No expert can tell us Jesus did or did not raise from the dead. Dating the PMPN is a matter of scientific investigation. Textual criticism is a science. It is tied to physical evidence (reading Manuscripts). not believing in the resurrection is an opinion.<br>
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Nor am I shocked to know that Koester did not believe in the resurrection. He studied under Rudolf Bultmann so it was to be expected,even though Craig studied with a guy (Kasemann) who also studied under Bultmann (Craig was Bultmann's "grand student"). Be that as it may I expected as much from Koester. I am not shocked nor does it dampen my faith. In fact it strengthens my position in terms of the argument, since Koester is less likely to support the early date for empty tomb for religious reasons. Since it actually supports a position contrary to his view he is less likely to argue for that position out of bias.<br>
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There is an important contradiction between Koester's exploitation of the creation of the empty tomb and his statement about the PMPN. The two come almost ten years apart. His theory places the the beginning of talk about an empty tomb after AD 66 and yet his statement about the PMPN dates the document around AD 50.(see FN1). So in that almost ten years he apparently changed his mind about the theory of invention. The really significant thing to note is the PMPN negates his whole theory because that theory depends upon the disruption of Christian life in Jerusalem as related to the Jewish revolt. But the PMPN comes about 20 years earlier, it misses that whole process of leaving town.<br>
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Koester clearly states that the PMPN ends with the empty tomb, He says it more than once:<br>
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A third problem regarding Crossan's hypotheses is related specifically to the formation of reports about Jesus' trial, suffering death, burial, and resurrection. The account of the passion of Jesus must have developed quite eary because it is one and the same account that was used by Mark (and subsequently Matthew and Luke) and John and as will be argued below by the Gospel of Peter. However except for the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection in the various gospels cannot derive from a single source, they are independent of one another. Each of the authors of the extant gospels and of their secondary endings drew these epiphany stories from their own particular tradition, not form a common source....Studies of the passion narrative have shown that all gospels were dependent upon one and the same basic account of the suffering, crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus. But this account ended with the discovery of the empty tomb. With respect to the stories of Jesus' appearances, each of the extant gospels of the canon used different traditions of epiphany stories which they appended to the one canon passion account. This also applies to the Gospel of Peter. There is no reason to assume that any of the epiphany stories at the end of the gospel derive from the same source on which the account of the passion is based.<b>[4]</b><br>
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He is saying the four gospels draw upon the same source for passion narrative and empty tomb but the individual sightings of the release Jesus come from a variety of different source; yet in saying this he clearly says: "Studies of the passion narrative have shown that all gospels were dependent upon one and the same basic account of the suffering, crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus. But this account ended with the discovery of the empty tomb." [ibid]<br>
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Many scholars agree with Koester,certainly Crosson did.<b>[5]</b> Gerd Theissen supports it and argues vociferously for it,<b>[6]</b> Reginald Fuller.[7]The PMPN remains consensus in the field: "the idea of a pre-Markan passion narrative continues to seem probable to a majority of scholars."[8]Perhaps the most noteworthy source of agreement is the Catholic Scholar Raymond Brown. While he does not necessarily speak of the PMPN as particular document he clearly believed there were sources prior to Mark that spoke of the resurrection and the empty tomb.<br>
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Brown, who built his early reputation on study of GPet, follows the sequence of narrative in GPet and compares it in very close reading with that of the canonical Gospels. He finds that GPet is not dependent upon the canonical, although it is closer in the order of events to Matt/Mark rather than to Luke and John.<br>
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GPet follow the classical flow from trail through crucifixion to burial to tomb presumably with post resurrectional appearances to follow. The GPet sequence of individual episodes, however, is not the same as that of any can canonical Gospel...When one looks at the overall sequence in the 23 items I listed in table 10, it would take very great imagination to picture the author of GPet studying Matthew carefully, deliberately shifting episodes around and copying in episodes form Luke and John to produce the present sequence.<b>[9]</b>
"In the Canonical Gospel's Passion Narrative we have an example of Matt. working conservatively and Luke working more freely with the Marcan outline and of each adding material: but neither produced an end product so radically diverse from Mark as GPet is from Matt."<b>[10]</b>
"I shall contend that the author of Gospel of Peter drew not only on Matthew but on an independent form of the guard-at-the-sepulcher story, and in GPet 8:28-11:49 the basic story is still found consecutively (even if the details in the story are modified by later developments.)" <b>[11]</b><br>
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Finally, Koester;s theory was wrong bcasue they they did venerate the tomb n the first century they never lost tack of it. This is too complex to go into herelIrefer thereader to my two part essay on the matter.<b>[12</b><br>
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Here is a source that understands Brown the way I read him to see GPet as using an early independent source not connected to Mark but equally old or older,Ron Cameron argues that the Gospel of Peter is independent of the canonical four (The Other Gospels, pp. 77-8):
Identification of the sources of the Gospel of Peter is a matter of considerable debate. However, the language used to portray the passion provides a clue to the use of sources, the character of the tradition, and the date of composition. Analysis reveals that the passion narrative of the Gospel of Peter has been composed on the basis of references to the Jewish scriptures. The Gospel of Peter thus stands squarely in the tradition of exegetical interpretation of the Bible. Its sources of the passion narrative is oral tradition, understood in the light of scripture, interpreted within the wisdom movement. This accords with what we know of the confessions of the earliest believers in Jesus: in the beginning, belief in the suffering, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus was simply the conviction that all this took place "according to the scriptures" (I Cor. 15:3-5). In utilizing scriptural references to compose the work, the Gospel of Peter shows no knowledge of the special material distinctive to each of the four gospels now in the New Testament. The developed apologetic technique typical of the Gospel of Matthew and of Justin (a church writer who lived in the middle of the second century), which seeks to demonstrate a correspondence between so-called prophetic "predictions" in the scriptures and their "fulfillments" in the fate of Jesus, is lacking. The use of quotation formulas to introduce scriptural citations is also absent.<b>[13]</b><br>
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Sources<br>
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[1] Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development, London. Oxford, New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark; 2nd prt. edition, 1992, 218.<br>
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[2] James D.G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus. Louisville, Kentucky: The Westminster Press, 1985,77.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hfAcOPGt69YC&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=koester+empty+tomb&source=bl
&ots=RyAekwJVX1&sig=BnvoF2QV0yRqKVrGU17ZbO-buhs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj44P-DlrTaAhUmLMAKHdqWAqkQ6AEIOTAG#v=onepage&q=koester%20empty%20tomb&f=false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_tomb#cite_ref-10
(accessed 4/16/18)<br>
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[3] Jesus The Evidence (episode 3) Video. published you tube (May 11,2012) begin frame 12:08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUywIdr9ems
(accessed 4/16/18)
Caveat: this source is a very heavy handed anti- Christian propaganda of the dying rising savior God-copy cat savior kind,<br>
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[4] Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, op cit,220.<br>
<br>
[5] Ibid, 218<br>
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[6] Peter Kiby, "The Passion Narrative," Early Christian Writings, (updated April 2018)
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/passion.html
(accessed 4/16/18)<br>
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Peter Kirby is an atheist,a talented amateur he does not an advanced degree of which I am aware he did do some seminary I believe, He is a fine researcher.<br>
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[7] Ibid<br>
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[8] Ibid.<br>
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[9] Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, Anchor Bible; Box edition (February 1, 1994)1322
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[10] Ibid, 1325<br>
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[11] Ibid., 1287<br>
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[12]Joseph Hinman, "Have Tomb Will Argue," The Religious a prori (No date given) website
http://religiousapriorijesus-bible.blogspot.com/2010/05/have-tomb-will-aruge.html<br>
<br>
part 2:
http://religiousapriorijesus-bible.blogspot.com/2016/05/have-tomb-will-argue-part-2.html
(accessed 4/16/18)<br>
<br>
13 Rod Cameron, lThe other Gospels: Non Canonical Gospel Texts. Louisville, Kentucky:Westminster John Knox Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1982 77-78.
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-64198755003955839702023-02-11T17:58:00.002-08:002023-02-11T19:03:11.278-08:00The Atonement: God's Solidarity With HumanityI.The Atonement: God's Solidarity With Humanity.<br>
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A. The inadequacy of Financial Transactions<br>
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Many ministers, and therefore, many Christians speak of and think of Jesus' death on the cross as analogous to a financial transaction. Usually this idea goes something like this: we are in hock to the devil because we sinned. God pays the debt we owe by sending Jesus to die for us, and that pays off the devil. The problem with this view is the Bible never says we owe the devil anything. We owe God. The financial transaction model is inadequate. Matters of the soul are much more important than any monetary arrangement and business transactions and banking do not do justice to the import of the issue. Moreover, there is a more sophisticated model; that of the sacrifice for sin. In this model Jesus is like a sacrificial lamb who is murdered in our place. This model is also inadequate because it is based on a primitive notion of sacrifice. The one making the sacrafice pays over something valuable to him to apease an angry God. In this case God is paying himself. This view is also called the "propitiatory view" becuase it is based upon propitiation, which means to turn away wrath. The more meaningful notion is that of Solidarity. The Solidarity or "participatory" view says that Jesus entered human history to participate in our lot as finite humans, and he died as a means of identifying with us. We are under the law of sin and death, we are under curse of the law (we sin, we die, we are not capable in our own human strength of being good enough to merit salvation). IN taking on the penalty of sin (while remaining sinless) Jesus died in our stead; not inthe mannar of a primitive animal sacrifice (that is just a metaphor) but as one of us, so that through identification with us, we might identify with him and therefore, partake of his newness of life.<br>
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B. Christ the Perfect Revelation of God to Humanity<br>
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In the book of Hebrews it says "in former times God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets, but in these latter times he has spoken more perfectly through his son." Jesus is the perfect revelation of God to humanity. The prophets were speaking for God, but their words were limited in how much they could tell us about God. Jesus was God in the flesh and as such, we can see clearly by his character, his actions, and his teachings what God wants of us and how much God cares about us. God is for humanity, God is on our side! The greatest sign of God's support of our cause as needy humans is Jesus death on the cross, a death in solidarity with us as victims of our own sinful hearts and societies. Thus we can see the lengths God is will to go to to point us toward himself. There are many verses in the Bible that seem to contradict this view. These are the verses which seem to say that Atonement is participatory.<br>
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C. Death in Solidarity with Victims<br>
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1) Support from Modern Theologians<br>
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Three Major Modern Theologians support the solidarity notion of atonement: Jurgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), Matthew L. Lamb (Solidarity With Victims), and D.E.H. Whiteley (The Theology of St. Paul).In the 1980s Moltmann (German Calvinist) was called the greatest living protestant theologian, and made his name in laying the groundwork for what became liberation theology. Lamb (Catholic Priest) was big name in political theology, and Whiteley (scholar at Oxford) was a major Pauline scholar in the 1960s.In his work The Crcified God Moltmann interprits the cry of Jesus on the cross, "my God my God why have you forsaken me" as a statement of solidarity, placing him in identification with all who feel abandoned by God.Whiteley: "If St. Paul can be said to hold a theory of the modus operandi [of the atonement] it is best described as one of salvation through participation [the 'solidarity' view]: Christ shared all of our experience, sin alone excepted, including death in order that we, by virtue of our solidarity with him, might share his life...Paul does not hold a theory of substitution..." (The Theology of St. Paul, 130)An example of one of the great classical theologians of the early chruch who held to a similar view is St. Irenaeus (according to Whiteley, 133).<br>
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2) Scriptural<br>
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<blockquote>...all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into his death.? We were therefore buried with him in baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death we will certainly be united with him in his resurrection.For we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him; the death he died to sin he died once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Chrsit Jesus.(<b>Romans 6:1-5</b>)</blockquote><br>
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In Short, if we have united ourselves to Christ, entered his death and been raised to life, we participate in his death and resurrection though our act of solidarity, united with Christ in his death, than it stands to reason that his death is an act of solidarity with us, that he expresses his solidarity with humanity in his death.<br>
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This is why Jesus cries out on the cross "why have you forsaken me?" According to Moltmann this is an expression of Solidarity with all who feel abandoned by God.Jesus death in solidarity creates the grounds for forgiveness, since it is through his death that we express our solidarity, and through that, share in his life in union with Christ. Many verses seem to suggest a propitiatory view. But these are actually speaking of the affects of the solidarity. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if when we were considered God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! What appears to be saying that the shedding of blood is what creates forgiveness is actually saying that the death in solidarity creates the grounds for reconciliation. IT says we were enemies then we were reconciled to him through the death, his expression of solidarity changes the ground, when we express our solidarity and enter into the death we are giving up to God, we move from enemy to friend, and in that sense the shedding of blood, the death in solidarity, creates the conditions through which we can be and are forgiven. He goes on to talk about sharing in his life, which is participation, solidarity, unity.<br>
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D. Meaning of Solidarity and Salvation.<br>
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Jurgen Moltmann's notion of Solidarity (see The Crucified God) is based upon the notion of Political solidarity. Christ died in Solidarity with victims. He took upon himself a political death by purposely angering the powers of the day. Thus in his death he identifies with victims of oppression. But we are all vitims of oppression. Sin has a social dimension, the injustice we experience as the hands of society and social and governmental institutions is primarily and at a very basic level the result of the social aspects of sin. Power, and political machinations begin in the sinful heart, the ego, the desire for power, and they manifest themselves through institutions built by the will to power over the other. But in a more fundamental sense we are all victims of our own sinful natures. We scheme against others on some level to build ourselve up and secure our conditions in life. IN this sense we cannot help but do injustice to others. In return injustice is done to us.Jesus died in solidarity with us, he underwent the ultimate consequences of living in a sinful world, in order to demonstrate the depths of God's love and God's desire to save us. Take an analogy from political organizing. IN Central America governments often send "death squads" to murder labor unionists and political dissenter. IN Guatemala there were some American organizations which organized for college students to go to Guatemala and escourt the leaders of dissenting groups so that they would not be murdered.<br>
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The logic was that the death squads wouldn't hurt an American Student because it would bring bad press and shut off U.S. government funds to their military. As disturbing as these political implications are, let's stay focused on the Gospel. Jesus is like those students, and like some of them, he was actually killed. But unlike them he went out of his way to be killed, to be victimized by the the rage of the sinful and power seeking so that he could illustrate to us the desire of God; that God is on our side, God is on the side of the poor, the victimized, the marginalized, and the lost. Jesus said "a physician is not sent to the well but to the sick."The key to salvation is to accept God's statement of solidarity, to express our solidarity with God by placing ourselves into the death of Christ (by identification with it, by trust in it's efficacy for our salvation).<br>
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E. Atonement is a Primitive Concept?<br>
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This charge is made quite often by internet-skeptics, especially Jewish anti-missionaries who confuse the concept wtih the notion of Human sacrifice. But the charge rests on the idea that sacrafice itself is a premative notion. If one committs a crime, someone else should not pay for it. This attack can be put forward in many forms but the basic notion revolves around the idea that one person dying for the sins of another, taking the penalty or sacrificing to remove the guilt of another is a primitive concept. None of this applies with the Participatory view of the atonement (solidarity) since the workings of Christ's death, the manner in which it secures salavtion, is neither through turning away of wrath nor taking upon himself other's sins, but the creation of the grounds through which one declares one's own solidarity with God and the grounds through which God accepts that solidarity and extends his own; the identification of God himself with the needs and cares of his own creation.<br>
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F. Unfair to Jesus as God's Son?<br>
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Internet skeptics sometimes argue that God can't be trusted if he would sacrifice his son. This is so silly and such a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine and the nature of religious belief that it hardly deserves an answer. Obviously God is three persons in one essence, the Trinity , Trinune Godhead. Clearly God's act of solidarity was made with the unanimity of a single Godhead. God is not three God's, and is always in concert with himself.<br>
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II. Is Belief in Salvation Unfair to Those of Other faiths?<br>
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A.Salvation unfair?<br>
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1) Well meaning people will not be saved?<br>
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Many good and well meaning people do not feel the need to be saved. Some wonder why is it not enough to jut be good and well meaning. Surely God knows that we are well meaning, if God looks upon the heart, so why do we need to conform to the ideological strictures of a particural religious view? Wouldn't God be extremely unjust to condemn someone who was well meaning? And aren't Christians really unfiar to assume that all but those who follow their views are not well meaning?2) Unfair because believers in other religious traditions will not be saved?This is an often heard objection and it is not without merit. Why should God send someone to hell for all eternity, simply because he/she was born in a culture that is not open to Christianity, perhaps has not herd of Jesus, and perhaps even at a time before there was any possibility of hearing (say before Christ came to earth). Such a person would have no chance of being saved. Closer to home, a person in another culture who is very committed to the religious tradition he/she was brought up in, why should such a person suffer eternally just for being who they are? That is basically what it amounts to, everyone is proud of their own culture, and everyone identifies with his/her own religious tradition in a very personal way. Why should someone be condemned just for being who they are, being born and raised in the culture they were born into?<br>
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B. Unjust because it implies an unjust alternative?<br>
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Sice hell is eternal, and sin is finite, it seems unjust to punish someone in a mannar that far exceeds the crime. Moreover, isn't the punishment unfair in the first place? Just to go to hell simpley for not being a Christian, this is very unjust becuase it means that who the person is and what they live for, and the nature of their intensions aren't even considered. To just whisk people off to hell forever, where there is no learning process so no chance to correct mistakes, is unjust.<br>
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C.Popular misconceptions of the nature of the Gospel.<br>
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"Gospel" means "Good News." The Good News is not that people are going to hell. The Good News is that God cares and provides a way to orient our lives toward him so that we can know him in this life, and in the world to come.<br>
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1) Are there really well meaning people?<br>
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"All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God." From a human perspective, relatively speaking from one human to another there are, of course, well meaning people. There are good people all around us, from a human perspective. Relative to the Divine however, no one is good, no one is capable of meriting salvation. We all have our sins, we all have our human frailties. We are all caught up in "height" (our ability through the image of God in which we were created to move beyond our human finitude and seek the good) and "depth" (our nature burdened in the sinful wickedness to human deceit).<br>
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These are Augustinian terms and they basically mean that we are both, good and bad, saint and sinner. God knows the heart, He Knows what we truely seek. God is merciful and is able to forgive our trespasses. But, if we are really well meaning toward God we will seek the turth. If we are seeking the truth than God will make it plan to us.<br>
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2) Other Religions<br>
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Paul said "To those who through persistance seek glory, honor and immortality he will give eternal life.But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the good and follow evil there will be wrath and anger...first for the Jew and then for the gentile; but glory honor and peace for everyone who does good. For God does not show favoritism. All who sin apart from the law will perish apart form the law and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.<br>
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Indeed when Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirement of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences bearing witness and their hearts now accusing, now even defending them..." (Romans 2:7-15). New American Standard and other translations say "their hearts accusing, now excusing them..." Most Christians are afraid of this conclusion and they down play this verse. Often Evangelicals will come back and say "he makes it clear in the next passage that no one can really follow the law on their hearts." Well, if they can't, than they can't. But if they can, and do, than God will excuse them. God knows the heart, we do not. The verse clearly opens the door to the possibility of salvation (although by Jesus) thorugh a de facto arrangement in which one is seeking the good without knowing the object one is seeking (Jesus). In other words, it is possible that people in other cultures who follow the moral law written on the heart know Jesus de facto even if they don't know him overtly. Paul backs up this conclusion in Acts 17:22 Paul goes to Athens as is asked by the Athenian philosophers to explain his ideas to them.<br>
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These were pagan followers of another religion. Paul stood up and said to them, "Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious for as I walked around and observed your objects of worship I even found an alter with this inscription 'TO AN UNKOWN GOD' Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you."He basically says that they are worshiping God, they just don't know who he is. That's why he says "I will make it known to you." He doesn't say "you have the wrong idea completely." Most Evangelicals dismiss this as a neat rhetorical trick. But if we assume that Paul would not lie or distort his beliefs for the sake of cheap tricks, we must consider that he did not say "you are all a bunch of pagans and you are going to hell!" He essentially told them, "God is working in your culture, you do know God, but you don't know who God is. You seek him, without knowing the one you seek. He goes on,(v27)"God did this [created humanity and scattered them into different cultures] so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out and find him though he is not far form each one of us." This implies that God not only wants to work in other cultures, but that it is actually his paln to do things in this way. Perhaps through a diversity of insights we might come to know God better. Perhaps it means that through spreading the Gospel people would come to contemplate better the meaning of God's love.<br>
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In any case, it does mean that God is working in other cultures, and that God is in the hearts of all people drawing them to himself. Of their worship of idols, Paul said "in past times God overlooked such ignorance but now he commands all people everywhere to repent" (v30). Now what can this mean? God never overlooks idolatry or paganism, in the OT he's always commanding the Israelite to wipe them out and expressly forbidding idolatry. It means that on an individual basis when God judges the hearts of people, he looks at their desire to seek him, to seek the good. That their status as individuals in a pagan culture does not negate the good they have done, and their ignorance of idolotry does not discount their desire to seek the good or the truth. IT means that they are following Jesus if they live in the moral life, even though they follow him as something unknown to them. IT also means that all of us should come into the truth, we should seek to know God fully, and when we do that we find that it is Jesus all along.<br>
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3) Justice of Punishment.<br>
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Jesus himself never speaks directly of hell, but always in parables. The other statements of Hell are mainly in euphemistic passages or in apocalyptic passages such as the book of Revelation. But I suggest that for some crimes hell is deserved. The slaughter of innocent people, the disruption of thousands of lives, the Hitlers of the world, and those who rationalize the deeds through "following orders" deserve to suffer the consequences of their actions. Evil has consequences, and those who commit evil should suffer the consequences, and they will.I have no direct knowledge of what hell is. It is based upon the Greek mythological concept of Tartarus which got into Hebrew thinking through Hellenization. There is no "hell" in the Tennach or the Pentateuch ("OT"). In the Hebrew scriptures there is only mention of Sheol, or the "the grave" to which everyone goes. But in the books of Revelation it does speak of those who work inequity being "outside the Kingdom of God." I don't' believe that hell is literal fire and brimstone, I do believe it is some state of anxiety or separation from God.<br>
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C. Knowing God.<br>
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Heb. 8:10-12 "...I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will a man say to his neighbor 'know the Lord' for they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more." This passage promises a "personal relationship with God."The word for "to Know" is the Greek Term Ginosko, which means personal experiential knowledge. To give one's life to Jesus means to develop a personal relationship with Jesus. Jesus said (John) "My sheep know my voice..." Personal relationship means that it is more than a set of rules, more than an ideology or a belief system, but a matter of the heart, the emotions, religious affections. IT may not be through dramatic miraculous effects (although I do believe that that is open to all Christians) but it is deeper than mere rule keeping, and does make for a satisfaction nothing else can match.God acts upon the heart. Salvation is a matter of "knowing God" not of mere intellectual assent. What does it mean to know God? It means that being a Christian is a matter of experiencing God's love in the heart and of loving God and others. It is also a matter of being "led" by God through impressions upon the heart, and not merely a set of rules or a list of beliefs that one must check off. IT is the development of "religious affections."The excitement of knowing God is unequaled by anything else in this life.<br>
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III. Developing Personal Relationship with God.<br>
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A. Getting Saved.<br>
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This is very simple. God keeps it simple so all of us can do it. John tells us "...that whosoever believes on him shall be saved." (3:16). Belief is the first step. But believe doesn't just mean intellectual assent, it means to place our faith in him, to trust him, as said above to place ourselves into his death, to express our solidarity with him.<br>
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Paul says "...That if you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the Dead, you will be saved, for it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved....everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:9-12).<br>
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Note that the resurrection is stipulated as a criterion of belief, and notice that it also says believe in your heart. Belief is not mere intellectual assent but is a decision of the will to trust in God. Does this mean we must believe in the resurrection to be saved? It at least means we must believe in the thing the resurrection points to, the new life in Christ, that we trust God to give us this new life and that such life is found in him. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. What does it mean to call upon the name of the Lord? It means, to place our trust in God and in Jesus as God's Son, as our savior.<br>
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B. The Name of Jesus<br>
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The name of Jesus then becomes our expression of solidarity with God, that we state clearly that we choose God's way, we want to change our lives and we are ready to accept God's terms for life; that we respond to the solidarity he shows us by committing to solidarity with him.In Acts 2: 38 the mob asks Peter what they must do, in response to the miracles of Pentecost and Peter's sermon on Jesus being raised form the dead. Peter tells them "Repent, and be baptized everyone one of you in the name of Jesus Christ that your sins may be forgiven." Does this mean that baptism is a pre-requiset for salvation? I don't believe so. They were really asking a more general question than "how do I get saved." IN response to Peter's sermon they were asking in a general way "well, we curcified the Messiah, what can we do about it."<br>
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Peter tells them two things, repent (change your mind, express sorrow for sin and determine not to sin any longer) AND be baptized as an expression of surrender to God (in keeping with the Jewish custom). The key here is to repent, turn from the present course of life and follow Jesus. Baptism is something we should do. It is an expression of our faith, and a symbol that we palce our hope in God, die to the old way, it is an outward symbol of placing ourselves in solidarity with God and in Jesus death. But the important thing here is to repent. And, "you will recieve the gift of the Holy Spirit."Latter in Acts when Peter takes the Gospel to the gentiles for the first time, the house of Cornelius. He tells them (Acts 10:43)"... everyone who believes in him recieves forgiveness of sins through his name." With that the Holy Spirit comes upon them while Peter is still talking. He does not tell them to be baptized, nor does God wait for that to give the gift of the Holy Spirit (which is the renewing of the spirit, the "born again" experience and empowering for service to God). So here again the common link is belief, which implies a commitment of trust.Eph 1: 13 "Having believed you were marked in him with a seal the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance unto redeemption of those who are God's possession."Romans 5 "since we have been justified through faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access into this grace..."Therefore, "getting saved" is very simple, although it may be the hardest thing you will ever do. Just place our trust in Jesus and give your life to God. Actively determine to believe (place trust) in Jesus and his sacrafice on the corss, God's expression of solidarity with humanity.<br>
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C. The formula.<br>
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It doesn't matter what formula you use, just pray, tell God you are sorry for your sins and you want to change and follow him, ask him to save you and to come into your life, and tell him you want to commit your life to Jesus. Don't formulate preconceived notions about how you are supposed to feel, just try to be sensitive to how you do feel. Read and study the Bible and find a chruch where you feel at home and where they beleive the Bible. It is important to develop freindships with believers, but don't burn your books, don't become obligated to obey some preacher man in everything he would tell you, if a group insists that you need their particuarl group to be saved, or if they impose a bunch of rules don't stay with them. God will convict you about what you need to change. Just try to be open to him. Of course some things are obvious, stop sinning try to be good to peole and spread the word about what Jesus is doing in your life.B. Personal Testimony Hesitate to give my "testimony" because it's private, and I don't want skeptics trying to disect it, and also because all conversions are different, most aren't dramatic, and I don't want people expecting that if they pray to be saved the same things will happen to them that happened to me. It is different for everyone, God tailor makes conversions special for each individual. But it does seem logical to at least mention it.<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-75835418795440273882022-12-31T04:45:00.000-08:002022-12-31T04:45:03.193-08:00The Amalekite ProblemThe Amalekite problem should be a much bigger problem for Christian apologists than it is. As a Christian apologist, I say we don't take it seriously enough. The reason for this, however, is because the atheists harp on it constantly, and no answer is ever good enough for them. I can understand that, since doesn't seem to be a good answer, but one does get tried of trying. I am more appualed by some Christian answers tahn I am by the atheists constant harping. In the OT God orders the Israelits to wipe out many differt people's, but for some reason the Amalekites have become the icon of brutality and genocide disguissed as divine wrath.Christian apologists only make it worse when they try to defend it as a rational action. This usually takes the form of "well they deserved it, they were really evil, God gave them 400 yeas to repent, that's more than enough time,in fact its just down right generous; therefore, it's ok to slaughter little babbies." I always get visions of Gastopo and guys in jack boots.<br>
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I sometimes wonder what my fellow Christians think about in their spare time<br>
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This is one of the basic reasons I'm no longer an inerrentist. I cannot accept the idea that God would ever command salughter of infants. Slaughtering anyone is bad enough, but to slaughter innocents, that's never acceptable. I don't accept that God would really do that. Here I draw upon my models of inspiration: the Bible is a collection of writtings made by humans which reflect their encounters with the divine. That's not to say these writtings don't have a lot of purely human understanding in them. People were very cruel in the ancient world. Genocide, slaughter, infanticide, brutality in war, these were commonplace, and they are all refected in the book of 1 Samuel.<br>
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It's not that there is no value to the conventional answer, but it doesn't go all the way.
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The Conventional Answer: The Amalekites were Jerks<br>
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The Amalekites were basically a grang of thugs, they tried to do to Israel what Israel did to them. In fact, they were foreign invaders, they were reaching beyond their own lands to raid others beyond their boarders. God's comman to wipe them out can be seen as an act of divine justice, the exicution of the highest authority agaisnt a lawless people who had to be stopped. But that answer doesn't cover allt he bases. It doesn't justify the slaughter of infants.<br>
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From Glenn Miller<br>
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The Amalekite initiative looks like an ordered annihilation. This is what the LORD Almighty says: `I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'" (I Sam 15.2f) The situation is thus: "The Amalekites are a predatory, raiding, and nomadic group; and are descendants of Esau (and hence, distant cousins to Israel). They would have been aware of the promise of the Land TO Israel, from the early promises to Esau's twin Jacob.<br>
<br>
They did NOT live in Canaan (but in the lower, desert part of the Negev--a region south of where Judah will eventually settle), and would NOT have been threatened by Israel--had they believed the promises of God. As soon as Israel escapes Egypt--before they can even 'catch their breath'--the Amalekites make a long journey south(!) and attack Israel. Their first targets were the helpless:
<br>
<br>
Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. 18 When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. 19 When the LORD your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget! (Deut 25.17-19).<br>
<br>
Before the attack on Amalek is initiated by Israel, the innocent are told to 'move away' from them: Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine. 6 Then he said to the Kenites, "Go away, leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt." So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites. (I Sam 15.5f). This action would have also served to give the people of Amalek plenty of notice (i.e., time to 'move away' themselves), and the impending attack by Saul--especially with the troop counts reported!--would hardly have been a surprise. Some of them would likely have fled--we KNOW all of them were not killed, since they 'lived to fight/raid again' in David's time (I Sam 27,30) and even in Hezekiah's time (200-300 years later!, 1 Chr 4.43).<br>
<br>
Kaiser notes in EBC: Exodus 17.8:<br>
<br>
Amalek's assault on Israel drew the anger of God on two counts: (1) they failed to recognize the hand and plan of God in Israel's life and destiny (even the farther-removed Canaanites of Jericho had been given plenty to think about when they heard about the Exodus--Josh 2.10); and (2) the first targets of their warfare were the sick, aged, and tired of Israel who lagged behind the line of march (Deut 25:17-19).<br>
<br>
But Amalek continues to repeatedly oppress, terrorize, and vandalize Israel for between 200 and 400 more years! And yet, Amalekites were freely accepted as immigrants to Israel during this period.
<br>
<br>
Let's note again that (1) they had plenty of access to 'truth' (at LEAST 400 years since Jacob and Land-promise), plus enough information about the miraculous Exodus to know where/when to attack Israel; (2) even their war conduct was cruel by current standards(!); (3) the semi-annihilation was a judgment; (4) God was willing to spare the innocent people--and specifically gave them the opportunity to move away; (5) children living in the households of stubbornly-hostile parents (who refused to flee or join Israel earlier) died swiftly in the one-day event (instead of being killed--as homeless orphans--by a combination of starvation, wild beasts, exposure, disease, and other raiders; or instead of being captured and sold as foreign slaves by neighboring tribes, for the older ones perhaps?)--they are victims of their fathers' terrorist and oppressive habits toward Israel; (6) the innocent members of the community (Kenites) and any change-of-heart Amalekites who fled are delivered (along with their children of the household.<br>
<br>
I think to some extent the action against adults was justified. One could understand this as the divine court passing sentence of lawless criminals; these were thugs who had tried to wipe out Israel; God gave them time to repent.<br>
<br>
None of that answers for total destruction and slaughter of infants.<br>
<br>
I will argue that God didn't order the slaughter of infants. While we cannot prove this with an actual text, there's a very good likleyhood that it was an addition to the text, and thus not the original command.<br>
<br>
Purpose of the Narrative<br>
<br>
Walter Brugmann<br>
<br>
Narrative and Theology<br>
<br>
1 Sam 7:3–15:35. The emergence of monarchy is the theme of 1 Sam 7:3–15:35, which is particularly linked to the person of Saul. There is no doubt that this narrative is the result of an intensive redactional process, but the exact features of this are impossible to determine. While the story is cast around the disputed leadership of Samuel and the emergence of Saul, the real debate does not concern personalities. Rather, it concerns the relationship between the faith of the community and public forms of power and how the trust Israel has in Yahweh should be implemented in institutional forms. The narrative discloses to us opinions which believe not only that monarchy is required to cope with historical threats, but that monarchy is a gift from Yahweh to Israel for the securing of the community. A counter opinion, more forcefully expressed, argues that monarchy is a departure from faith in Yahweh even as it is a departure from the old tribal organization. Both opinions are expressed in this complicated narration of chaps. 7–15. It is a truism of scholarship that the narrative contains two sources reflecting two strongly held political opinions which judge the institution of monarchy positively and negatively. Scholarship moreover has held that the pro-kingship source is from the period itself, whereas the anti-kingship sources are later, reflecting disillusionment with the tyranny of Solomon.<br>
<br>
The slaughter of the infants, which is just one phrase in a larger command, is not a major focuss at all. It is a refelection of the attitude of ancient peole, and the over all passage is designed to show that Saul did wrong by not wipping out enough people! The redactor doesn't really care about the infants at all, the only point is that the action is part of showing strength of Sauls character in following God's command. The action is not a polemic justifying slaughter of enemies, but a mere after thouht, part of a larger whole.The point of the passage is the justification of monarchy. Samuel represents the old form of power, the weak system which had to be changed because new times reqiured strong leadership. But Saul was not that leader; the monarchy was good but Saul was not the man for the job. He didn't obey God compeltely enough. There is also a discordant voice that God didn't want the people to have a monarch, but that voice is brought under submission to the will of the people.<br>
<br>
The Text<br>
<br>
The text of 1 Samuel is one of the most heavily redacted in the Bible. As we will see, it's very presence in the canon has been brought into question, but the version we have is probably a corrupted second rate copy, and the LXX is closer, and Q4Sama at Qumran closer still, to the actual original.<br>
<br>
Institutte Bibilcal Scientific Studies:<br>
<br>
Biblical Archaeology, Dead Sea Scrolls and OT<br>
<br>
"1&2 Samuel"<br>
<br>
"For the past two centuries textual critics have recognized that the Masoretic Text (MT) of 1&2 Samuel has much textual corruption. The Samuel MT is shorter than the LXX and 4QSama. The Samuel MT has improper word division, metathesis, and other orthographic problems. Certain phrases and clauses go against the Hebrew grammar rules. Parallel passages vary from each other" (See Charlesworth, 2000, pp.227-8).<br>
<br>
"In 1952 Roland De Vaux and Lankester Harding found manuscripts of Samuel under three feet of debris in Qumran Cave 4. 4QSama shows that the Old Greek Bible (LXX) was based on a Vorlage similar to 4QSama. Josephus agrees with 4QSama in 6 places against the MT and LXX. Josephus, 4QSama, and LXX share about three dozen readings against the MT" (See Charlesworth, 2000, pp.229).<br>
<br>
"Where the book of Chronicles parallels 1 Samuel, the readings of Chronicles follow 4QSama rather than the MT 42 times. Only one time does Chronicles agree with the MT. Over 100 times 4QSama does not agree with any ancient reading" (See Charlesworth, 2000, pp.230-31).<br>
<br>
The Book of Samuel varies widely and frequently from the Masoretic Text. 4QSama preserves a number of superior readings that help correct errors in the Masoretic Text (DSS Bible, 213). Let's look at some of these.<br>
<br>
One dramatic example is in I Samuel 11 where the MT and KJV left out the first paragraph. The Longer reading in the DSS explains what happens in this chapter. It says:<br>
<br>
"Nahash king of the Ammonites oppressed the Gadites and the Reubenites viciously. He put out the right eye of all of them and brought fear and trembling on Israel. Not one of the Israelites in the region beyond the Jordan remained whose right eye Nahash king of the Ammonites did not put out, except seven thousand men who escaped from the Ammonites and went to Jabesh-gilead" (The Dead Sea Scroll Bible translated by Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich page 225). Then verse one of I Samuel 11 starts.<br>
<br>
1 Samuel 14:30<br>
<br>
There is a mis-division of words here in the MT. The 4QSama divides it differently which makes better sense. The MT has hkm htbr rather than hkmh hbr in the 4QSama.<br>
<br>
1 Samuel 14:47<br>
<br>
There is a singular instead of a plural noun in 4QSama. 4QSama is the better reading.
<br>
<br>
1 Samuel 15:27<br>
<br>
There is an omission of the subject in the MT. According to 4QSama Saul is the subject who grabbed the garment, not Samuel.<br>
<br>
The Place of 1st Sam in Canon<br>
<br>
Revisited Albert C. Sundberg, Jr
Thomas J. Sienkewicz and James E. Betts
"The Old Testament of the Early Church"
published by Monmouth College
in Monmouth, Illinois in 1997.<br>
<br>
department.monm.edu/class...bergJr.htm<br>
<br>
The Prophets collection was canonized about two centuries after the Law, i.e., about 200 B.C.E. This collection is divided into two sections, the Former Prophets (the historical books): Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, which were in circulation about 550 and reached their final form before the Latter Prophets. Except for minor editorial changes made later, the Chronicler utilized the Former Prophets in their final form. However, apparently he did not regard them as canonical because he took great liberties with them, especially with Samuel and Kings, in his rewriting of the national history.<br>
<br>
The Latter Prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah and the Twelve12) contain sections undoubtedly from the third century (cf. Isa. 24-27; Pfeiffer 1941:61, 441-443). This places the terminus a quo after the Chronicler. On the other hand, the absence of the Book of Daniel (dating 164 B.C.E.) from the collection indicates that the collection was already closed at its writing, otherwise it would have been included. Thus, the Prophets collection must have been canonized about 200 B.C.E. Sirach13 44-49, a list of famous men in Jewish history, is a summary of the Law (ch. 44-45) and Prophets (the Former, 46-48.18; 49.1-50; the Latter, 48.20-25; 49.6-10, even naming the Twelve). H. J. Cadbury found that Septuagintal language has influenced the Greek of Sirach. He says, "That the translator knew the prior Greek translations of some of the canonical books is not only implied in the preface.<br>
<br> . .
but is sufficiently proved by his use of identical Greek with the Septuagint in the same context" (Cadbury 1955:219-225). This is shown in verbal coincidences that are most striking in the catalogue of famous men and their respective parallels in the Old Testament and in detailed descriptions of the accouterments and service of the High Priest. In some cases these coincidences are striking because of the unusualness of the words, or the transfer of a word in the same context where Sirach and the Septuagint agree against the Masoretic text (1 Sam. 13.3), or where the translator shows a knowledge of Greek Chronicles. This evidence that the translator of Sirach knew a standard Septuagint text tends to confirm the judgment that the statements in the prologue testify to the canonical status of the Prophets. Thus, it is evident that the canon in Sirach consisted of the Law and the Prophets. Daniel (9.2) cites Jeremiah (25.11 ff.) as "the word of the Lord to Jeremiah."<br>
<br>
This tells us that the place of Samuel in the canon was by no means assured. Because the redactor didn't feel the former prophets were canonical, great libertties were taken. We also see differences between the Ms which form the parent of the LXX translation, and those of MT. What all of this amounts to is that 1 Samuel is a very corrupt text, and the likelyhood is quite high that the passage is redacted. This is even more certain when we consider that the infant passage itself has been redacted.<br>
<br>
James A. Sanders, Inter Testamental and Biblical Studies at Clairmont, Cannon and Community, a Guide to Canonical Criticism. Philladelphia: Forterss Press, 1984, 15-16.<br>
<br>
"There are remarkable differences between the LXX and MT of 1 and 2 Sam. Jeremiah, Esther, Daniel, Proverbs and Ezekiel, 40-48, and on a lesser level numerious very important differences in lesser books such as Isaiah and Job. Before the discovery of the Scrolls [Dead Sea] it was difficult to know wheather most of these should be seen as translational, Or as reflecting the inner history of the Septuegent text, or all three. Now it is abundantly clear that the second period of text transmission [which is BC], actually that of the earliest texts we have, was one of limited textual pluralism. Side by side in the Qumran library lay scrolls of Jeremiah in Hebrew dating to the pre-Chrsitian Hellenistic period reflecting both the textual tradition known in the MT and the one in the LXX without any indication of preference. So also for 1 and 2 Sam."<br>
<br>
Redaction of Infant Slaughtering Passage<br>
<br>
Notes in the New Oxford Annontated Bible on 1 Sam 15:1-35<br>
<br>
"Another story of Saul's rejection: The late source. Compare this section with 13:7-15, Samuel, not Saul is the leading figure once more."<br>
<br>
This is the very passage in which Samuel relays God's command to wipe out the infants. So even though I still need to find more speicific evidence for that very passage, there is a good chance of proving redaction. While its true that I can't produce an actual MS showing no infant slaughter command, the passage in whcih that command is given has been redacted. The odds are very high that this command was not part of the orignal passage, or we can regard it as such. We know that slaughtering infants in evil, and we have no obligation to accept a command as divine that we know to be totally at odds with God's law and God's moral code.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-73804094125200986682022-12-31T03:25:00.001-08:002022-12-31T03:40:16.588-08:00The Dark Side of the Bible: wipe them out passages.I was recently conversing with an atheist, who for lack of anything better to say, pulled out the old bit about how oprressive the Bible is. Of course he had to multiply examples with quote after quote about stoning the women and killing others and making slaves obey, yada yada yada, like I haven't thought about this. Iike I was a political organizer in the central America movmenet for years and a seminary student in a very liberal seminary, and I never gave a thought to the social relations in the Bible!<br>
<br>
I said the verse about slaughter of the Amalektie infants was an interpolation. He responds with bo'd coup verses, one after another, all suppossedly saying the same things (of course they realy didn't say the same thing, just many things that offend the twentieth century sensiablity). Since there are just way too many veres to respond once for one, and it's all just mulitplying examples, I will list some general princples that I think answer the over all situtation viz God and social opression, especially as it realtes to the OT.<br>
<br>
(1)But first, it's important to recognize the objective.<br>
<br>
The atheist has to show that belief in God, speicifally the Hebrew God, made the situation worse. If it didn't worsen the lot of the people of that era, then where's the blame? To do that they have to do two things:<br>
<br>
(a) compare to sourounding culture<br>
<br>
(b) show that the problem comes directly from belief in the kind of God hte Hebrews had, as oppossed to other types of the day.<br>
<br>
(2) Can't hold up ancient world people to modern standards.<br>
<br>
We can't expect people in the ancinet world, who live prior to the modern western concepts of autonomy, indivuidualism and democracy and expect them to have leanred better at Woodstock. They didn't have Woodstock to learn from and they weren't hippies, they had no sexaul revoltuion and they couldnt' go to corner drug store and read about it in a teen magazine or a tabloid.<br>
<br>
(3) Social Evolution not Revoltuion<br>
<br>
Christ didn't explain to people how to build nuclear power plants or th theory of germs and anticeptic surgery, he didn't write medical books to make their lives better. He did some religious thing and went away again. That's becuase his mission was primarily spiritual. He was not a social revolutionary, even though what he said would be very revolutionary if it were practiced.<br>
<br>
But basically God keeps pace with the understanding of people. The atheists seem to think that eveyrthing should be a vast revelation, unfolding of the new world before everyone's eyes. I've already sketched out my theory of soeteriologial drama in which God wants an individual search in the heart, and that's why he doesnt' pull back the veil of the sky, reveal heaven and set up shop on earth.<br>
<br>
God allows us to make the journey. He allows us to set up our own socieity to apply the principles we learn to internatlize on our spiritual search as part of our ethical understanding concerning living in the world. Thus God allows Society to evolve at it's own place and allows the understanding of people to guide social reform and revolution.<br>
<br>
Naturally things will look a lot rougher at the begining than at the end. The ancient world will be a lot more primative and barbarck than the modern world. That's just the conept of social evolution.<br>
<br>
(4)The Bible is personal revealation not a guide to social utopia
<br>
<br>
What throws a lot of people off is that God seemed to be leading a nation in the OT. One would then expect that he would introduce that nation to the proper social enlightement. We forget a lot of those texts were polotical propaganda. The basic funciton of the OT is to form a cultural background so the mission of messiah makes sense. The real narue of Biblical revolation is the dialectical relationship between the reader and text. In other words, don't be suckered by ancient nationalism.<br>
<br>
(5) The God led society was progressive<br>
<br>
When you compare those barbaric practices of the Hebrews with those of sourrounding cultures they were better. They were more progressive. Consider the nature of war; most slaves were captives taken in war, for most nations around that day a woman captured in war was just a thing to be used as the captor saw fit. She would never again have any kind of rights or consideration and in a many cases be killed. In Hebrew culture she was protected form rape and in seven years had a chance to free herself.<br>
<br>
*poor people could glean parts of the harvest for thsemselves<br>
<br>
*everyone got land
*women went to Moses and demanded their fair share and it was given them<br>
<br>
*Women takne in slavery protected from rape<br>
<br>
*in Jubalee year the captives could free themselves.<br>
<br>
*court sysetm set up to hear compalints of people<br>
<br>
actually most of this stuff is more progressive than Bush's social agenda.<br>
<br>
(6) Christian principles led to modern concepts of personhood and human rights.<br>
<br>
the slave owners in the American south followed their econimic interest. But the workers int he underground RR who tended to be christains, and quakers and abolitinoists over all followed their reilgious princples,and they oppossed salvery, and closed down the slave trade in the 1820's before the civil war, and latter supported the union and helped end the insittution of slavery in the Confederacy and went on to push for women's rights as well.<br>
<br>
*First Women's sufferage group in America Pheobe Palmer and Methodist Woen's Association<br>
<br>
* firstt organize Abolition groui in America, very same people, Methodist women<br>
<br>
*Chrarles Finney crusaded agisnt slavery and supported the abolution movment,and brought the entire second great awakening into the cause. He said "revolution is of God when the intellegence and understanding of the people exceeds the oppression being done to them."<br>
<br>
*
*Pesant revolts in south Germany for rightrs of the poor<br>
<br>
*Olypia, Deconess of Constantinople gave her personal fortune to free slaves. St. John Crysostom led social reform movment that was headed by man Deconeses of his diocesies.<br>
<br>
*Christians for Socialism in 20th century chile<br>
<br>
*CLamb Central america<br>
<br>
*Snadinistas printed bibles tought Bible in literacy campign<br>
<br>
*Father Ernesto Cardinal in Nicaragua, Father Camillio Tores in Boliva, all over Latin America Preists and nuns lead social and poltiical revolution against US cold war poltiics and social oppression.<br>
<br>
*1930s America Chrsitians for socialism and industrial ation<br>
<br>
*Dorothy Day supports christian socialism and starts comminites to bring soup kitchens to poor and share all goods in common.<br>
<br>
In every time and place, in every social setting some chrsitrians have wored against the oppression to be the salt and light.<br>
<br>
It's a journey of hte individual heart but it plays itself out in the way we relate to each other.
<br>
<br>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-34638780181953984552022-10-22T07:55:00.003-07:002022-10-22T08:46:31.116-07:00How do we know God is not Evil?<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><a href="http://s36.photobucket.com/albums/e46/Spazmoticat/?action=view&current=christ-on-cross.jpg" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e46/Spazmoticat/christ-on-cross.jpg" /></span></a><br />
<br>
<br>
I've seen atheists ask this in various forms. The most recent I've seen is "prove God isn't evil." I answered that with three arguemnts only to find the atheists pulling the old relativism thing. How do we know good and evil even exist at all they said? Well, first of all, in answering the question about "prove god is not evil," the challenge was in reference to Christian ideas. To even ask the question assumes a Christian framework. You can't say on the one hand "God might really be evil," then say "but there's no such thing as evil." That would have no meaning. God might really be this thing that has no meaning and doesn't exist? What kind of meaning does that have? One get's the feeling of being set up for a cheap trick. Like we say "ok so God is evil ni the sense that there is no such thing as evil. so what?" they say "O you admitted it, God is evil you said it ok that's the end of Christianity!" Those are two completely different questions to answer the one you must bracket the other. first I will present my arguments to prove that God is not evil, and to do that assume the Christian framework for good and evil. Then I will deal with the relativistic stuff (that there is no good or evil).<br>
<br>
I am assuming there is such a thing as good and we all have a general idea of what that is. Now I also noted that many atheist in the discussion I allude to above (where the challenge was made "prove God is not evil") were assuming a contradiction in the Bible where on the one hand God says "love your neighbor" and on the other hand he says "slaughter the Amalekites kids." So there's the problem of a contradiction between the values God expresses and the behavior God exhibits. Thus we assume the values expressed are true values of good, and that is a meaningful term, but the question is does God seem to betray the very values that he instigates?<br>
<br>
Before giving three positive reasons to think God can't be evil, (that is a logical impossibility) we have to deal with the seeming contradiction in the Bible. In the discussion on a certain message board alluded to above, a friend of mine who is an atheist said this:<br>
<br>
Originally Posted by mikey_101 View Post
No genocide isn't evil, killing children and homosexuals isn't evil, eternal torture for not believing in one particular religion out of thousands isn't evil, slavery isn't evil. Actually you're right, God isn't evil because God is a reflection of OUR evil.
Those are based upon bible verses and bible verses are not creeds, they are not dictum they are not decrees. In short we don't have to bleieve them.<br>
<br>
There is NO official Christian doctrine or document or creed or council that say "you must believe every verse in the bible." The fundies say it but they didn't exist until the 1820s. They are merely late commers in Christian history.Each one of those passages must be analogized in the original language and discussed according to the history and culture and textual evidence to show it really belongs in the Bible or not.I can tell you now there is evidence Amalekite passage is added in latter.<br>
<br>
The text of 1 Samuel is one of the most heavily redacted in the Bible. As we will see, it's very presence in the canon has been brought into question, but the version we have is probably a corrupted second rate copy, and the LXX is closer, and Q4Sama at Qumran closer still, to the actual original.<br>
<br>
Institute Biblical Scientific Studies:<br>
<br>
Biblical Archaeology, Dead Sea Scrolls and OT<br>
<br>
"1&2 Samuel<br>
<br>"
"For the past two centuries textual critics have recognized that the Masoretic Text (MT) of 1&2 Samuel has much textual corruption. The Samuel MT is shorter than the LXX and 4QSama. The Samuel MT has improper word division, metathesis, and other orthographic problems. Certain phrases and clauses go against the Hebrew grammar rules. Parallel passages vary from each other" (See Charlesworth, 2000, pp.227-8).<br>
<br>
Redaction of Infant Slaughtering Passage<br>
<br>
Notes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible on 1 Sam 15:1-35<br>
<br>
"Another story of Saul's rejection: The late source. Compare this section with 13:7-15, Samuel, not Saul is the leading figure once more."<br>
<br>
This is the very passage in which Samuel relays God's command to wipe out the infants. So even though I still need to find more specific evidence for that very passage, there is a good chance of proving redaction. While its true that I can't produce an actual MS showing no infant slaughter command, the passage in which that command is given has been redacted. The odds are very high that this command was not part of the original passage, or we can regard it as such. We know that slaughtering infants in evil, and we have no obligation to accept a command as divine that we know to be totally at odds with God's law and God's moral code.<br>
<br>
All the other verses must be dealt with in similar fashion, one by one, and an overview entailing a theory of inspiration adopted so that one knows how to approach scripture. For an example on this one might consult my page on the nature of Biblical revelation as an example.<br>
<br>
Now I present the three arguments that prove God is not evil:<br>
<br>
I. Being is good.<br>
<br>
Being is not evil. We are all part of being, we all engage in the act of being. We know from our existence that existing is good and it's not evil. There's no reason to think it is. It's hard for a lot of people to get thier minds around the idea of God as being itself. I've certainly spent a lot of time blogging about the concept. I wont go into it here. It can be found on Doxa in several pages. I'm also just finishing my second book which is on the subject. Wait a couple of years and it will be out.<br>
<br>
syllogism:<br>
<br>
*God is being itself<br>
<br>
being is good.<br>
<br>
therefore God must be good.<br>
<br>
One objection to this is that some atheists tried to evoke the notion that life is not good. One cna mean this either in terms of "my individual life sux," or in terms of amorality or some form of relativism. That would be cheating the issues here becuase I explain above the original challenge assumes Christian categories of good and evil. Moreover, one can condemn the concept of life itself by one's own experiences. I can have a rotten life (to some extent that's what I make it) that doesn't mean all life is rotten. There is a goodness about life itself. Here I take life as a pragmatic form of existence. Existence in and of itself is "good," if not in a moral sense (which is one confusion of the argument--the mixing of senses between moral and pragmatic) at least just in the sense of the (apparent) goodness of open ended possibility.<br>
<br>
II. Love can't be evil.<br>
<br>
This is one of those mysterious points that of which atheists are most incredulous. Almost every time they will say "you are logic is so bad" on this point. When pressed they never say why. they can't give me a rule of logic that's violated, nine times out of ten it's a matter of rejecting the concept of a priori. That unusually happens becuase they have self esteem problems, as atheists are known to have.<br>
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The nature of love makes it the very definition of Good. What is the nature of the good, it's what love is, being kind, being gentile, caring about others, giving to others, living for others. How do we know this? First we have to realize we are not talking about butterflies in the stomach. Many atheists try to lose the concept of love in the emotions that go with it, which they sweep away as the side effect of brain chemistry. The kind of love experienced in romance, puppy love,infatuation, lust, sexual attraction and the like is what is meant here by "love." Here I speak of agape. This is "God's love" sometimes translated "charity." Although that is not a good translation. Paul Tillich defines it as "the will t the good of the other." I think that is the most apt decryption. The Greek does imply the willingness to assign to others the human dignity due them.<br>
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It is more or less an axiomatic tenet that love is the background of the moral universe (consult Saint Augustine, and Joseph Fletcher). I am not sure it can be proved, thus making it "axiomatic." Like most axioms, trying to deny it would be absurd. This is certainly true in terms of Christian theology.<br>
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1 John 4:<br>
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<blockquote>7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.<br>
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19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.<br>
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Don't even think about trying to argue that "you are trying to prove the Bible by the bible." I am not trying to prove the bible, I'm demonstrating the Christian categories which the original challenge assumes (so I have to go by the answer to the challenge). This is exactly what atheists would do to try and prove that an idea was Christian. If we are considering Christian ethics then we must consider that love is the background of the moral universe. Love is the basis of God's character.<br>
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That either the issue becomes redundant if we consider the relativist position (which we will soon enough) or it rebounds onto the Christian categories and becomes a matter of what we think about the Bible. With a fundamentalist view of inerrancy it's hard to see how there is not a contradiction in the categories, what God says and what God does. Yet of course that is not the only Christian answer; there are several other views that take up different approaches to the bible that serve as alternatives.syllogism:<br>
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Love is not evil<br>
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God's nature is love and God is the original source of love<br>
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therefore God is not evil.<br>
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Thus, from the perspective of the Christian categories each of the above arguemnts individually prove that God is not evil and cannot be construed as evil.<br>
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III. Evil can't be the first thing.<br>
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Evil is the absence of the good. That means there has to be a good preceding evil to be departed from to create an absence. evil is rebellion against good. Evil is rejecting the good. all of this implies good is first.God is eternal so God has to be first. A lot of people reject the categories of good and evil becasue they don't like the way they are made. One of the major issues in atheism (even though many atheists don't realize it--a psychological problem) is self rejection leads to rejection of the idea that a loving God would make me the way I am. I was an atheist I know what it is to think that way. The old cliche "God is not finished with me yet" has it's uses and this is one of them.If you don't like the way God made you it's only becuase he's not finished yet. If you rebel against God you are not letting him finish you.<br>
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That means there has to be a good preceding evil to be departed from to create an absence.<br>
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Actual Atheist Objection:<br>
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"That doesn't follow. A hole is an absence of earth, the existence of a hole doesn't imply there was earth. Counter example to your premise." I this I argued "are you kidding? Isn't a hole defined by what's around it? That's like saying "I don't believe donuts exist, only the holes exist." A hole with nothing around it is nothing.<br>
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syllogism:<br>
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evil is falling away from, therefore, good is prior to evil<br>
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God is eternal and thus is prior to all things<br>
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therefore, God can't be evil.<br>
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Now we come to the issue of relativism. For those who do not hold to the Christian categories of good and evil but try to define them either by sweeping them away, or by using the terms relative to other standards, how does one come to ascertain the truth content of the Christian categories? The only way one can really do this is empirically. Of course this assumes there's a God. Though many atheists will try not allow such an assumption, it's pointless to ask about God's character if you don't assume there is a God, at least for the sake of argument. I have certainly spent enough time on this blog giving reason enough why one can assume God based upon any number of things. For those tempted to make comments and demand reasons I tell you now, see my 42 arguments, especially no 7 and no 8. I single out those two because they form the basis of the empirical approach. One might also see my essay on phenomenology and Method.
Certainly we are talking about taking religious experience seriously. The same reasoning that would allow one to understand God as reality would also allow one to understand God's character as love. It makes no sense to take up a challenge or to even issue one about God's goodness then turn around and say "you can't prove that because you can't prove god exists." Ok so that what sense would it make to argue "god is fictional but he's really evil?" The realization that leads to faith is the same realiation that allows us to understand God's love. It's simply an empirical matter. We experince God's presence, swe sesne God's love. In a life of 30+
years that has never been disproved. Even in times when I lost faith and thought God was disproved, even in times when I lost everything and thought God was evil, he was neither evil, or absent nor unfaithful. (see part 2 here).<br>
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excerpt from those last two links:<br>
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Looking back on it things actually were better after we left the house. At the time, however, we couldn't see that. Then it seemed like the end. We were scared, we were homeless, we couldn't find an apartment because we had "financial leper" on our credit. Since 9/11 getting an apartment in Dallas was next to impossible. When I first moved away form my parents and went to New Mexico back in 80, no one cared who I was or what my credit was. I gave them money they gave me an apartment. By 2006, however, in Dallas, it was next to impossible even if your credit was good. It really seemed like the end. I began saying "I am dead, I died, they just haven't told the corpse to lay down yet." I also began to say "God has cursed me." "God loves to crush his own guys, this is what I get for caring about my parents." You know I was practicing for the glee club. I was a tower of faith. We did find an apartment, we had a couple of thousand dollars from the guy who bought the house (because he was a Christian he said) even though the mortgage company actually makes them promise not to help the victim, not to give more than the mortgage price in a short sale. It's set up so the the victim losing the house can't get anything for his/her hard earned ears of struggle to buy the house. He bought the furniture and car and then let us keep them.
God was faithful to me even when I was not faithful to him. I was calling him a lair and shouting at him and I said worse than that. I called him a monster and told him he loved to hurt people. He didn't care, he's heard it all. I didn't shame God into helping me, he was working to help me anyway, I only held up the process and made it take longer by not trusting and not looking to seek the spiritual instead of freaking out because things didn't look good. Easy to forget, we walk by faith and not by sight. That means its' going to look grim. That doesn't mean anything you just have to trust God. Cultivate your spiritual relationship with God. Cultivate our inner life! It's a life long project, work on it every day.<br>
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That requires a life of faith to understand. The first step is to seek. Then it will fall into place. It wont fall into place when you renounce God and make skepticism your watchword. If your principle is to see through everything, as C.S. Lewis said, you wind seeing nothing.<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-17759567079918667842022-05-05T20:02:00.007-07:002023-12-09T10:05:41.649-08:00Arguments for the Existence of God: short list.<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://cosmicpursuits.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Crab-Nebula-1024x907.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="800" src="https://cosmicpursuits.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Crab-Nebula-1024x907.jpg"/></a></div><br>
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<b>I. <a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2009/01/cosmological-argumemts.html">Cosmological Argument</a><br>
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II. <a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2015/10/fine-tuning-argument-part-1.html">Fine Tuning Argument</a><br>
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III.<a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2015/12/thomas-reid-argument-or-from-epistemic.html">Religious Experience </a><br>
<br><a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2015/12/thomas-reid-argument-or-from-epistemic.html">.....A.Thomas Reid argument</a><br>
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<br>.....B.<a href="http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2009/01/essays-and-arguments-on-my-religous.html">The Empirical Study of Religious Experience</a><br>
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IV.<a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2011/06/transcendental-signifier-argument.html">The Transcendental Signifier Argument</a><br>
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V.<a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2010/08/modal-argument.html">Hartshorne's Modal Argument</a></b><br>
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VI. <a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2016/05/argument-from-laws-of-nature.html">Argumemt from Laws of Nature</a><br>
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These arguments re not offered as absolute proof that God exists but as the basis for a rational warrant for belief.
https://literariness.org/2016/03/22/jacques-derrida-transcendental-signified/
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-47761532059491751792021-05-26T14:24:00.016-07:002024-01-16T07:36:25.757-08:00Welcome to the Religious A Priori. This site is a Christian apologetics website. It is an intellectual defense of the Christian faith. Follow the guide words above to sections dealimg with each subject.<br>
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This is not a blog it is posted on a blog but I want it to be treted as a static site.<br>
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982408765M<br>
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Joseph Hinman's new book God,Science, and Ideology ($28.11) Exposes the false science behind atheistic criticisms of belief in God as Unscientific.--Joseph Hinman.<br>
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“[T]hese detractors from religion illustrate the use of reductionism and its ideological assumptions in their work. . . they trade on the assumption that our mastery of reality through the physical sciences is so exacting that we can rip God out of heaven and hold him up to the light, and he will disappear in a puff of disillusionment. . . . They claim to disprove something that can’t be disproven using the methods they rely on.”<br>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-65222094089455174852019-11-23T08:54:00.002-08:002019-11-23T08:54:07.189-08:00Mind Not Reduceable To Brain part 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Empirical Data:</b></div>
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<b>There is No Empirical Data that proves reducibility</b></div>
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<b> </b>Both sciences and the general public have come to accept the idea that the mind is dependent upon the brain and that we can reduce mental activity to some specific aspect of the brain upon which it is dependent and by which it is produced. Within this assumption neuroimaging studies are given special credence. These kinds of studies are given special credence probably because the tangibility of their subject matter and the empirical data produced creates the illusion of “proof.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn26" name="_ednref26" style="mso-endnote-id: edn26;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> Yet EEG and MRI both have resolution problems and can’t really pin point exactly where neural activity is located.” In short, neuroimaging studies may not be as objective as some would like to think. There are still large gaps between observation and interpretation – gaps that are ‘filled’ by theoretical or methodological assumptions.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn27" name="_ednref27" style="mso-endnote-id: edn27;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a> Learning is not hard wired but is the result of “Plasticity.” This plasticity is what allows us the flexibility to learn in new situations. This means that most of our neocortex is involved in higher level psychological processes such as learning from experiences.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn28" name="_ednref28" style="mso-endnote-id: edn28;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a> Our brains are developed by new experiences including skills acquisition.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn29" name="_ednref29" style="mso-endnote-id: edn29;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a> Exercise and mediation can change the brain.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn30" name="_ednref30" style="mso-endnote-id: edn30;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Classical psychological reductionism assumes the mind is essentially the brain. Mental behaviors are explained totally in terms of brain function. Mental states are merely reduced to brain states.</div>
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But while it may be true that certain psychological processes are <i>contingent</i> on some neurophysiological activity, we cannot necessarily say that psychological processes reduce to ‘nothing but’ that activity. Why not? – Because much of the time we are <u>not</u> dealing with cause and effect, as many neuroscientists seem to think, but rather two different and non-equivalent kinds of description. One describes <i>mechanism</i>, the other contains <i>meaning</i>. Understanding the physical mechanisms of a <i>clock</i>, for example, tells us nothing about the culturally constructed meaning of <i>time</i>. In a similar vein, understanding the physiological mechanisms underlying the human <i>blink</i>, tells us nothing about the meaning inherent in a human <i>wink</i> (Gergen, 2010). Human <i>meaning</i> often transcends its underlying mechanisms. But how does it do this?<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn31" name="_ednref31" style="mso-endnote-id: edn31;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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Reducing mind to brain confuses mechanism with meaning.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn32" name="_ednref32" style="mso-endnote-id: edn32;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[7]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Raymond Tallis was a professor of Geriatric medicine at University of Manchester, and researcher, who retired in 2006 to devote himself to philosophy and writing. Tallis denounces what he calls “neurohype,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“the claims made on behalf of neuroscience in areas outside those in which it has any kind of explanatory power….”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn33" name="_ednref33" style="mso-endnote-id: edn33;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[8]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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The fundamental assumption is that we are our brains and this, I will argue presently, is not true. But this is not the only reason why neuroscience does not tell us what human beings “really” are: it does not even tell us how the brain works, how bits of the brain work, or (even if you accept the dubious assumption that human living could be parcelled up into a number of discrete functions) which bit of the brain is responsible for which function. The rationale for thinking of the kind – “This bit of the brain houses that bit of us...” – is mind-numbingly simplistic.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn34" name="_ednref34" style="mso-endnote-id: edn34;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[9]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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Specifically Tallis has refernce to experiments where the brain is scanned while the subject does some activity and the differences are attributed to some structure in that part of the brain. Tallis is highly skeptical of this method.</div>
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Why is this fallacious? First, when it is stated that a particular part of the brain lights up in response to a particular stimulus, this is not the whole story. Much more of the brain is already active or lit up; all that can be observed is the additional activity associated with the stimulus. Minor changes noted diffusely are also overlooked. Secondly, the additional activity can be identified only by a process of averaging the results of subtractions after the stimulus has been given repeatedly: variations in the response to successive stimuli are ironed out. Finally, and most importantly, the experiments look at the response to very simple stimuli – for example, a picture of the face of a loved one compared with that of the face of one who is not loved. But, as I have pointed out elsewhere (for the benefit of Martians), romantic love is not like a response to a stimulus. It is not even a single enduring state, like being cold. It encompasses many things, including not feeling in love at that moment; hunger, indifference, delight; wanting to be kind, wanting to impress; worrying over the logistics of meetings; lust, awe, surprise; imagining conversations, events; speculating what the loved one is doing when one is not there; and so on. (The most sophisticated neural imaging, by the way, cannot even distinguish between physical pain and the pain of social rejection: they seem to “light up” the same areas!)<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn35" name="_ednref35" style="mso-endnote-id: edn35;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[10]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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Hal Pashler’s study, University of California, San Diego is discussed in an an editorial in <i>New Scientist</i>, he is quoted as saying<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In most of the studies that linked brain regions to feelings including social rejection, neuroticism and jealousy, researchers … used a method that inflates the strength of the link between a brain region and the emotion of behaviour.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn36" name="_ednref36" style="mso-endnote-id: edn36;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[11]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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While no empirical data proves reducibility, some empirical data seems to support irreducibility. The mind cannot be reduced to the brain alone.</div>
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<b>Some empirical data supports claim:</b></div>
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<b>Irreducibility</b></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are, however, empirical data that imply that brain is not necessary to mind. One such datum is the humble amoeba. They swim; they find food they learn, they multiply, all without brains or brain cell connections.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn37" name="_ednref37" style="mso-endnote-id: edn37;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[12]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Various theories are proposed but none really answer the issue. Stuart Mameroff (anesthetist from University of Arizona) and Roger Penrose, Mathematician form Cambridge, raise the theory that small protein structures called microtubules found in cells throughout the body. The problem is they don’t cause any problem with consciousness when damaged.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn38" name="_ednref38" style="mso-endnote-id: edn38;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[13]</span></span></span></span></a> Nevertheless, the amoeba is a mystery in terms of how it works with no brain cells. That leads to the recognition of a larger issue the irreducealbity raises the question of consciousness as a basic property of nature. Like electromagnetism, there was a time when scientists tried to explain that in terms of other known phenomena, when they could not do so they concluded that it was a basic property and opened up a branch of science and the electromagnetic spectrum.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn39" name="_ednref39" style="mso-endnote-id: edn39;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[14]</span></span></span></span></a> David Chalmers and others have suggested the same solution for consciousness.</div>
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The late Sir John Eccles, a neuroscientist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1963 for his work on brain cell connections (synapses) and was considered by many to be one of the greatest neuroscientists of the twentieth century, was perhaps the most distinguished scientist who argued in favor of such a separation between mind, consciousness and the brain. He argued that the unity of conscious experience was provided by the mind and not by the machinery of the brain. His view was that the mind itself played an active role in selecting and integrating brain cell activity and molded it into a unified whole. He considered it a mistake to think that the brain did everything and that conscious experiences were simply a reflection of brain activities, which he described as a common philosophical view:<br />
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'If that were so, our conscious selves would be no more than passive spectators of the performances carried out by the neuronal machinery of the brain. Our beliefs that we can really make decisions and that we have some control over our actions would be nothing but illusions.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn40" name="_ednref40" style="mso-endnote-id: edn40;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[15]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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<b>Top Down Causation</b></div>
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<b>confirming irreducibility</b></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Or downward causation, as seen in last chapter: “Top-down causation refers to the effects on components of organized systems that cannot be fully analyzed in terms of component-level behavior but instead requires reference to the higher-level system itself.” <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn41" name="_ednref41" style="mso-endnote-id: edn41;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[16]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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*<b>problem of binding</b></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There is a problem with understanding what it is that binds together the unity of a conscious experience. We have many different kinds of conscious faculty at work in the process of being conscious, symbolic thinking, literal thinking, sense of temporal, sense of reality, and physical perceptions. Somehow it all gets brought together into one coherent sense of perceptions. How are the individual aspects, such as color, form, the temporal, and united into a coherent whole experience? Unification of experience is not achieved anatomically. There is “no privileged places of structures in the brain where everything comes together…either for the visual system by itself or for sensory system as a whole ” <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn42" name="_ednref42" style="mso-endnote-id: edn42;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[17]</span></span></span></span></a> McDougall took it as something that physicalilsm can’t explain.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn43" name="_ednref43" style="mso-endnote-id: edn43;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[18]</span></span></span></span></a> Dennett and Kinsbourne recognize the phenomena marking top down causation and acknowledge it, they spin it as undermining unity.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn44" name="_ednref44" style="mso-endnote-id: edn44;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[19]</span></span></span></span></a> The old approach was to assume there must be an anatomical center for binding. Without finding one the assumption was that it couldn’t be explained. Modern explanations of unity are based upon a functional approach.</div>
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The essential concept common to all of them is <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>oscillatory electrical activity in widely distributed neural populations can be rapidly and reversibly synchronized in the gamma band of frequencies (roughly 30-70 Hz) thereby providing a possible mechanism for binding.” (von der Malsburg 1995). A great deal of sophisticated experimental and theoretical work over the past 20 years demonstrates that mechanisms do exist in the nervous system and they work in relation to the normal perceptual synthesis. Indeed Searl’s doctrine of biological naturalism has now crystallized neurophysiologically in the form of a family of global workspace theories, all of which make the central claim that conscious experience occurs specifically and only with large scale patters of gamma band oscillatory activity linking widely separated areas of the brain. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn45" name="_ednref45" style="mso-endnote-id: edn45;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[20]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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In other words if consciousness was reducible to brain chemistry there should be an anatomical center in the brain that works to produce the binding effect. Yet the evidence indicates that binding mechanisms must be understood as functions of various areas outside either the brain (nervous<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>system) or<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in different parts of the brain which means it can’t be reduced to just a physical apparatus but is systemic and that is indicative of top down causation.</div>
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<b>* Projective activity in perceptual process</b></div>
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<b> </b>Our brains act as a sort of “word generating virtual reality system.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn46" name="_ednref46" style="mso-endnote-id: edn46;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[21]</span></span></span></span></a> That is the brain is constantly projecting and updating a model of the perceptual environment and our relation to it. Top down cross modal sensory interactions have been recognized as the rule rather than the exception, in perceptions, as several studies indicate (A.K. Engle et al, 2001; Shimojo and Shams 2001). <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn47" name="_ednref47" style="mso-endnote-id: edn47;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[22]</span></span></span></span></a> Evidence indicates that the ultimate source of projective activity may originate outside the brain. A great deal of knowledge is put into action for use in understanding language and in writing. Some researchers have advanced the view that the fundamental form of projective activity is dreaming.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn48" name="_ednref48" style="mso-endnote-id: edn48;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[23]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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<b>*Semantic or intentional content; word meaning and other form of representation.</b></div>
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This has been dealt with traditionally through reductionism. Representations were said to work by resembling things they represent. This was disproved by Goodman and Heil (1981). <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn49" name="_ednref49" style="mso-endnote-id: edn49;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[24]</span></span></span></span></a> In cognitive psychology there is a rule of thumb that meanings are not to be conceived as intrinsic to words, they are defined by the functional role they play in a sentence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The major approach to the problem used now is connectionism, from dynamic systems theory. The meaning of a given response such as settling of a network into one of its attracters or firing of a volley of spikes by a neuron in the visual cortex is identified with the aspect in the environment that produces the response. This account can’t deal with abstract things or non existent things. There’s nothing in the environment to trigger it. Responses do not qualify as representations nor signs as symbols. “That something,” as Searl so effectively argued (in 1992) “is precisely what matters.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn50" name="_ednref50" style="mso-endnote-id: edn50;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[25]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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<b>*problem of Intentionality</b></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Intentionality is the ability of representational forms to be about things, to reflect meaning and to be about events and states of affairs in the world. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn51" name="_ednref51" style="mso-endnote-id: edn51;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[26]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem of intentionality has plagued both psychologists and philosophers. Intentionality is inherently three ways, involving the user, symbols, and things symbolized. Searl tells us that intentionality of langue is secondary and derives from the intrinsic intentionality of the mind. “Intentionality can’t be obtained from any kind of physical system including brains.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn52" name="_ednref52" style="mso-endnote-id: edn52;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[27]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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<b>*The Humunculus Problem</b></div>
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<b> </b>The Homunculus was a medieval concept about human reproduction. The male was said to have in him little men just like him with all the basic stuff that makes him work that’s how new men get born. In this topic it’s the idea that we need in the mind another mind or brain like structure to make the mind work. The problem is it keeps requiring ever more little structures to make each one before it work; in endless regression of systems. Kelly and Kelly et al site Dennett’s attempt to solve the homunculus problem in the form of less and less smart homunculi until the bottom level corresponding to heard ware level end the recursion so it’s not infinite. (Dennett 1978)<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn53" name="_ednref53" style="mso-endnote-id: edn53;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[28]</span></span></span></span></a> Searl (1992) responds that there has to be something outside the bottom level that knows what lower level compositions mean. Cognitive models can’t function without a homunculus because they lack minds, as Kelly tells us.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn54" name="_ednref54" style="mso-endnote-id: edn54;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[29]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
No homunculus problem, however, is posed by the structure of our conscious experience itself. The efforts of Dennett and others to claim that there is such a problem, and to use that to ridicule any residue of dualism, rely upon the deeply flawed metaphor of the Cartesian theater a place where mental contents get displayed and I pop in separately to view them. Descartes himself, James, Searl and others all have this right: conscious experience comes to us whole and undivided, with the qualitative feels, phenomenological content, unity, and subjective point of view all built in, intrinsic features. I and my experience cannot be separated in this way. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn55" name="_ednref55" style="mso-endnote-id: edn55;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[30]</span></span></span></span></a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref26" name="_edn26" style="mso-endnote-id: edn26;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> Brad Peters, Modern Psychologist, “the Mind Does not Reduce to the Brain.” On line resource, blog, 2/4/12</div>
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URL: http://modernpsychologist.ca/the-mind-does-not-reduce-to-the-brain/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>visited 5/3/12</div>
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Brad Peters, M.Sc. Psychologist (Cand. Reg.) • Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref27" name="_edn27" style="mso-endnote-id: edn27;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a> Ibid.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref28" name="_edn28" style="mso-endnote-id: edn28;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref29" name="_edn29" style="mso-endnote-id: edn29;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a>Schore, A. N. <i>Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development</i>. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (1994).</div>
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<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: Symbol;">See also: </span>Siegel, D. J. <i>The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are</i>. New York, NY: Guilford Press. (1999).</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref30" name="_edn30" style="mso-endnote-id: edn30;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a> Peters, op cit.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref31" name="_edn31" style="mso-endnote-id: edn31;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref32" name="_edn32" style="mso-endnote-id: edn32;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[7]</span></span></span></span></a> K. Gergen, The accultured brain. Theory & Psychology, 20(6), (2010).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>795-816.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref33" name="_edn33" style="mso-endnote-id: edn33;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[8]</span></span></span></span></a> Raymond Tallis New Haumanist.org.uk Ideas for Godless People (blog—online researche) volume 124 Issue 6 (Nov/Dec 2009) URL: <a href="http://newhumanist.org.uk/2172/neurotrash">http://newhumanist.org.uk/2172/neurotrash</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>visited 5/9/12</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref34" name="_edn34" style="mso-endnote-id: edn34;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[9]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref35" name="_edn35" style="mso-endnote-id: edn35;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[10]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref36" name="_edn36" style="mso-endnote-id: edn36;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[11]</span></span></span></span></a> quoted by Tallis, ibid.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref37" name="_edn37" style="mso-endnote-id: edn37;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[12]</span></span></span></span></a> Science Research Foundation, “Science at the horizon of life,” independent charitable organization in UK 2007-2012. On-line resource, UFL:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=200">http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=200</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>visisted 5/2/12</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref38" name="_edn38" style="mso-endnote-id: edn38;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[13]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref39" name="_edn39" style="mso-endnote-id: edn39;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[14]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref40" name="_edn40" style="mso-endnote-id: edn40;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[15]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref41" name="_edn41" style="mso-endnote-id: edn41;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[16]</span></span></span></span></a> Mary Anne Meyers, “Top Down Causation, an Integrating Theme…” Templeton Foundation Symposium, Op cit. (no page number listed).</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref42" name="_edn42" style="mso-endnote-id: edn42;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[17]</span></span></span></span></a> Edward F. Kelley and Emily Williams Kelley, et al, <i>Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21<sup>st</sup> Century. </i>Boulder, New York, Toronto: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Inc, 2007/2010, 37.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref43" name="_edn43" style="mso-endnote-id: edn43;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[18]</span></span></span></span></a> Ibid. 38, referring to W.McDougall, Proceedings of scientific physical research 25, 11-29. (1911/1961)..</div>
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<div id="edn44" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref44" name="_edn44" style="mso-endnote-id: edn44;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[19]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid. 38 refers to Dennette and kinsbourne in <i>Consciousness Explained</i>. (op cit) 183-247</div>
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<div id="edn45" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref45" name="_edn45" style="mso-endnote-id: edn45;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[20]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid, sites C.Von der Malsburg, “Binding In Models of Perception and Brain Function.” Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 5, 520-526. also sited Crick 94; Dehaene and Naccache,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2001; Edelmon and Tononi, 2000; Engle, Fries and Singer 2001; W.J. Freeman 2000, and others.<br />
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Engle, Fries, Singer cited in Pub Med: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11584308#comments" id="see_pmcommons">See comment in PubMed Commons below</a><br />
<div class="cit">
<span role="menubar"><a abstractlink="yes" alsec="jour" alterm="Nat Rev Neurosci." aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11584308#" role="menuitem" title="Nature reviews. Neuroscience.">Nat Rev Neurosci.</a></span> 2001 Oct;2(10):704-16.</div>
<div class="auths">
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Engel%20AK%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11584308">Engel AK</a><sup>1</sup>, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Fries%20P%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11584308">Fries P</a>, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Singer%20W%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11584308">Singer W</a>.</div>
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<h3 style="-ms-zoom: 1;">
<a aria-expanded="false" class="jig-ncbitoggler ui-widget ui-ncbitoggler" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11584308#" id="ui-ncbitoggler-2" role="button" title="Open/close author information list"><span class="ui-ncbitoggler-master-text">Author information</span><span class="ui-icon ui-icon-triangle-1-e"></span></a></h3>
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<li><sup>1</sup>Cellular Neurobiology Group, Institute for Medicine, Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany. a.k.engel@fz-juelich.de</li>
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Abstract</h3>
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<abstracttext></abstracttext><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Classical theories of sensory processing view the brain as a passive, stimulus-driven device. By contrast, more recent approaches emphasize the constructive nature of perception, viewing it as an active and highly selective process. Indeed, there is ample evidence that the processing of stimuli is controlled by top-down influences that strongly shape the intrinsic dynamics of thalamocortical networks and constantly create predictions about forthcoming sensory events. We discuss recent experiments indicating that such predictions might be embodied in the temporal structure of both stimulus-evoked and ongoing activity, and that synchronous oscillations are particularly important in this process. Coherence among subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations could be exploited to express selective functional relationships during states of expectancy or attention, and these dynamic patterns could allow the grouping and selection of distributed neuronal responses for further processing.</blockquote>
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<div id="edn46" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref46" name="_edn46" style="mso-endnote-id: edn46;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[21]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<div id="edn47" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref47" name="_edn47" style="mso-endnote-id: edn47;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[22]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid, 40, he sites A.K. Engle et al, 2001; Shimojo and Shams 2001;</div>
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<div id="edn48" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref48" name="_edn48" style="mso-endnote-id: edn48;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[23]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>41-42 sites Rodolfo Llina’s and Pare’ 1996 Llina’s and Ribary, 1994.</div>
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<div id="edn49" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref49" name="_edn49" style="mso-endnote-id: edn49;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[24]</span></span></span></span></a> Ibid, 42 see Heil 1981</div>
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<div id="edn50" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref50" name="_edn50" style="mso-endnote-id: edn50;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[25]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid, 43 see Searl 1992</div>
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<div id="edn51" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref51" name="_edn51" style="mso-endnote-id: edn51;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[26]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<div id="edn52" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref52" name="_edn52" style="mso-endnote-id: edn52;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[27]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid, see also studies, puccetti 1989; Dupuy 2000 discussion of issue form opposing points of view).</div>
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<div id="edn53" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref53" name="_edn53" style="mso-endnote-id: edn53;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[28]</span></span></span></span></a> Ibid see Dennett 1978 and Searl 1992)</div>
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<div id="edn54" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref54" name="_edn54" style="mso-endnote-id: edn54;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[29]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref55" name="_edn55" style="mso-endnote-id: edn55;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[30]</span></span></span></span></a> ibid, 44<br />
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-76892898614830619932019-11-23T08:27:00.001-08:002019-11-23T08:27:35.560-08:00Mind is Not Reduceabel to Brain. (part 1)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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" 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This topic is of great importance for believers in God because it encompasses almost every facet of the territory upon which the battle over belief is fought. It impinges upon what one believes about the ability to be good or to refuse sin, the freedom of belief vs. the view that belief is just a side effect of bad psychology, the nature of religious experience and its veracity, even the after life. This topic should be of great importance to non believers as well as it impinges upon our ability to understand ourselves as free agents capable of governing ourselves, and as individuals who would seek the meaning of our lives and the expression of self in art. I suspect also that the determinist/reductionist view point encourages atheists in their materialism and rejection of the soul.</div>
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<b>Brain/Mind</b></div>
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Ideological and philosophical types of reductionism seek to reduce human consciousness to a level of side effect produced by brain chemistry; to do this reductionsts will lose the phenomena that describe an irreducible consciousness. This is done by employing the standard reductionist tricks of re-labeling, re-describing, and bait and switch. The bait and switch is primarily a replacement of consciousness with brain function. Phenomenoloigcally consciousness might be thought of as the awareness of self, others, nuance, place, time, ambiance, and the feel of perception. In place of this the reductionist places the way the brain functions, and puts it over as consciousness. The reductionst, assumes there is nothing to consciousness that is not produced by the physical apparatus of the brain. This just puts in place the outgrowth of the physical apparatus minus the aspects of consciousness the consciousness supporters talk about then points to those brain function aspects as proof that this is all there is; after all this is consciousness. Whereas in fact all they are doing is removing consciousness and pointing to the aspects they want to support as proof because those are the aspects they can get at through their methods. This is something like a prosecutor at a trial replacing the evidence with his own briefs then saying “well see the evidence is so in line with my briefs that it proves my case.”</div>
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The debate about consciousness stacks believers in unique irreducible nature of human consciousness against those who think that consciousness can be reduced to mere brain chemistry. This is not an issue of theism vs atheism; major positions allied against the reductionism are also materialist positions, as well as God-believing positions. On the side of the mind are materialists such as property dualists, Functionalists and supervenience theorists. Property dualists are often mistaken for theists by the term “dualist,” yet they are not true dualists they don’t believe there are two levels of reality but that each property can have dual aspects. Functionalists hold that mental states are functional states but mental properties cannot be identified with mental biological properties. Supervenience says that mental life correlates with physical body.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a></div>
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Perhaps the major source for this kind of reductionism where brain/mind is concerned is the now classic work <i>Consciousness Explained</i> by Daniel Dennett.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a> Dennett is a master of the bait and switch, using a vast amount of data about all sorts phenomena based studies dealing with brain function, all the while asserting that it’s explaining consciousness with which he does not even deal. I urge the reader to see the article by my friend Lantz Miller who wrote it for the academic journal that I once published; <i>Negations: an Interdisciplinary Journal of social Criticism.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[3]</span></b></span></span></a> </i> Dennett seems to say “we are all zombies, no one is conscious.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[4]</span></span></span></a> Kevin B. Korb seems to think this is just Dennett’s attempt to motivate the reading, sort of a shock effect by taking an extreme position.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[5]</span></span></span></a> Be that as it may Dennett represents the functionalists position. Functionalism, introduced by J.J.C. Smart and U.T. Place, is the thesis that mental states are identical to some particular brain states.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[6]</span></span></span></a> If the goal of Dennett is the old positivist’s dream of clearing away the clutter so science can get on with its work, the clutter he seeks to clear away is twofold, two positions stemming from the brain/mind questions as dealt with by philosophy: (1) mental states cannot be shared since the physical make up of our brains cannot be shared (Korb uses the term “goo”). (2) the dualistic homuncular theories which had been advocated by many dualists. That idea suggested something like this, there is a part inside us that has the true brain function and that part really understands our motivations, even though we don’t. This gives way to an infinite regress as there has to be a homuncular thinker inside to give the powers to the first homunculus and so on.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[7]</span></span></span></a> This latter view can work out to be one of the tricks of reductionism, redescribing an otherwise valid position in terms of “homuncularism.” Atheists on the internet tend to call anything that involves internal states “homuncular.”</div>
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Even though dualistic options are no longer defended, hold over ideas remain and obscure the valuable reductions. Korb sums up:</div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">Dennett shows that the homuncular concept retains a powerful grip on the imaginations of many, perhaps most, cognitive scientists. While explicit dualism and homuncularism are (no doubt properly) `endangered' theses, a great many theories and judgments advanced by cognitive scientists rely at some point upon there being a magical place in the head where everything comes together---in what Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater. This concept is pernicious in a variety of ways. For one thing, it leads to lazy analysis: if we can rely upon some arbitrarily complex central process to clean up our functional loose ends, we needn't be very careful about specifying whatever functional processes we do provide. But worse, this Cartesian Materialism (functionalism with the Theater at the center) again leads to infinite regress: if there is a theater where consciousness is `projected', then there must be an observer viewing the projection (else why bother with the theater?). As before, we will find it difficult to understand this observer: if the theater and its audience are needed to understand conscious processes,</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">then an `inner' theater and `inner' audience will be needed to understand the observer, and so on. But if the theater and its observer are not needed to understand conscious processes, then why introduce them in the first place? As Dennett notes, the best place to stop an infinite regress is usually at the beginning.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11.5pt;">[8]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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The opposition of the functionalists to the Cartesian theater is the opposition to a center of internal control where the subject makes a conscious decision or carries away an awareness of his own internal states. As an alternative to the ‘center’ (the Cartesian theater) Dennett proposes the idea of “multiple drafts.” This idea says that the version of what is perceived is contrastingly re-written. The drafts are edited and reedited endlessly and passed along through endless processes.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn9" name="_ednref9" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[9]</span></span></span></a> So there is no one key center perception. While this is highly reductionist, it takes out the conscious control of the subject. It loses phenomena of consciousness as our own experience tells us that we do take part in editing some of the drafts. It’s also problematic because it’s a reprise of the <span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">homuncular concept. Who is writing the drafts, a little reductionist inside the brain? The true position of Dennett is ambiguous, although no doubt he does believe that consciousness reduces to brain chemistry.</span></div>
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We know this from 150 years of neurology where you damage areas of the brain, and faculties are lost… You can cease to recognize faces, you can cease to know the names of animals but you still know the names of tools…What we’re being asked to consider is that you damage one part of the brain, and something about the mind and subjectivity is lost, you damage another and yet more is lost, [but] you damage the <i>whole thing</i> at death, we can rise off the brain with all our faculties in tact, recognizing grandma and speaking English!<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn10" name="_ednref10" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[10]</span></span></span></a></div>
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Atheists on the popular level use this argument quite a bit. From that premise, that brain damage means destruction of consciousness, they conclude that consciousness is reducible to brain chemistry and imagine a complete factual basis for the supposition. They have created a bogus science of neurology which they imagine has already answered all questions and proved conclusively that consciousness is reducible to brain function. This is far from a done deal. Science is just getting started on understanding the brain, despite what popular atheism wants to believe. This fact is stated bluntly by one of its expert teachers, Vitzthum in his lecture to the Atheist culb: “Since how the brain actually works is today one of the least-understood and most hotly-debated subjects in science, I'd like to explain briefly the most promising of these theories and in the process finish my discussion of philosophical materialism.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[11]</span></span></span></a></div>
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The position that mind is reducible to brain and that it is proved by neurology is far form a proven position. Moreover, the brain damage argument is a weak argument. There are better arguments to be made by documenting brain function through neurological evidence, even though that is not proof. The brain damage argument is almost separate from any scientific evidence as we can observe the connection between damage and loss of consciousness without any scientific equipment. Either way the bran damage argument proves only that brain is essential to accessing consciousness, not that consciousness is reducible to brain function. The access argument can be illustrated with the following analogies. We can destroy computer hardware such as the monitor and that eliminates or blocks our access to soft ware but it doesn’t’ mean that soft ware is hardware or that software is erased by the damage of hardware. The logic of the brain damage argument can be applied to prove that television programs are not broadcast through the air waves but originate in the tv box. After all if we damage the box, take out parts or what have you, we don’t get the picture or the sound or the program. By the logic of the brain damage argument proves that he signal originates in the box.</div>
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<b>Mind irreducible to brain function</b></div>
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By way of explanation of the two sides, I will take property dualism as representative of the pro-mind side, on the proviso that it’s not the only position. Panpsychism can be thought of as a subset (one of four types) of property dualism.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn12" name="_ednref12" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[12]</span></span></span></a> I will compare them with John Searle’s article “why I’m Not a Property Dualist.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn13" name="_ednref13" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[13]</span></span></span></a></div>
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Searle summarizes the property dualist position:</div>
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(1)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span dir="LTR">Empirical reality exits in two categories, physical and mental.</span></div>
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(2)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span dir="LTR">Because mental states are not reducible to physical states they are something over and above the physical. The irreducibility in and of itself is enough to demonstrate that there is more than just the neurobiological.</span></div>
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(3)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span dir="LTR">Mental phenomena do not constitute separate objects of substances but rather are features of properties of a composite, such as human or animal. Thus humans or animals have two types of features or properties, mental and physical.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn14" name="_ednref14" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[14]</span></span></span></a></span></div>
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Searle takes issue with this in that he ascribes the categories to just one world. There are not two sets of characteristics. We have one world, everything is physical, but we can describe it in a number of ways. Searle may be thought of as part of the pro-mind side, but he is not a property dualist. He explains why in terms of the problem of the mental and the causal. If the mental is removed from physical then it can’t play a causal role. Ultimately he’s going to argue that the conventional terms are the problem because they invite us to discuss the issue in dualistic ways. So Searle accepts the premise of the reductionists that everything is physical and material but he can’t be called a reducationist because he also recognizes the importance of ontology. He says in terms of neurobiology there is one world and consciousness is a product of the causal process. On the other hand, since descriptively our mental states are not reducible or accessible by others there is an ontological dimension that can’t be reduced. He seems to take the ontological as a descriptive dimension. As argument against the ramifications of Property dualism he lays out a dilemma. If consciousness is closed from the physical realm its not part of the causal mechanism and that means our behavior has nothing to do with consciousness. The alternative is that if the conscious is part of the causal it creates a dualistic causality in which case each action has two explanations, the mental and physical.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn15" name="_ednref15" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[15]</span></span></span></a> It seems rather coherent to me to appeal to the mental as motivation for movement and to the physical as the actual mechanics of carrying out the “enabling legislation” so to speak.</div>
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I agree with Searle that a large part of the problem is the dualistic nature of language. We are forced into categories of dualism by the way we are led to speak about the distinction between physical and mental. I can accept Searle’s position, even as a Christian, with the proviso that we can’t understand God and God is obviously an exception to what we know and could contradict all of it. The qualities in humanity that make us “eternal sprits” and put us above the realm of the mere physical can be described in functional terms rather than taken as “essentialist.” That is to say, we can see “spirit” as <i>mind</i>, and mind as mental phenomena without positing a discrete entity or ghost in the machine. On the other hand I hold back from commitment to Searle’s position due to one question that he doesn’t seem to answer. When we say “consciousness” do we mean the actual awareness, or even the texture of mental awareness that comes with mental states, or do we mean the apparatus that makes that texture possible? That seems crucial because if we mean the apparatus then I would agree with his position in so far as we stipulate for biological life only; for biological life consciousness is rooted in the neurobiological. We need not confine our understanding of the texture of awareness or the function of awareness to biological life. If the texture is what we mean by “consciousness,” then it could be much more vast and irreducible to the neurobiological. This is an explanation of the term “source of consciousness.” That term I apply to God.</div>
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I think Searle is wrong in assuming that two dimensions of human being (mental and physical) make for two causes in every action. One cause beginning with the motivation (mental) and working itself out as a cause over two dimensions of our being. That argument is not proof that mental can be reduced to the physical, nor does the threat of being dualistic disprove the reality of dualism. David Chalmers has an argument, or several arguments, for the irreducealbity of consciousness.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn16" name="_ednref16" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[16]</span></span></span></a> Chalmers observes that consciousness escapes the reductive net and is not easily reduced to the physical by the assumptions reductionists make. It’s natural to assume that everything reduces to the physical that consciousness <i>supervenes</i> upon the physical. No physical explanation can wholly account for the nature of consciousness. The argument is in what I call the “texture” or the “conscious nature” of consciousness itself.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn17" name="_ednref17" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[17]</span></span></span></a> Chalmers argues that consciousness does not logically supervene upon the physical. The reductionists pull a biat and switch by demonstrating the reduction of brain function to the physical, obviously, then speaking as though they have demonstrated that consciousness is the same as brain function when in fact they have no such demonstration. The very nature of consciousness resists such a demonstration, yet the reductionist is often blind to this fact because they can’t stop identifying consciousness with brain function.</div>
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Chalmers full argument entails the theory of the supervenient but he also makes arguments without it. He says one can do it either way. I will avoid the complex and highly specialized issue in order to keep it simple; otherwise I am apt to become confused. He sets up the arguments so that they can be made and make sense without the supervenient analysis.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn18" name="_ednref18" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[18]</span></span></span></a> The basic argument is grounded in the nature of consciousness which is seen in the so called “hard problem,” the inability to explain the nature of consciousness without losing the phenomena of consciousness. To illustrate the hard problem Chalmers constructs the notion of the philolophical zombie. Philosophical zombies differ from Hollywood zombies in that they are not mindless automatons who can’t think wondering about doing someone’s bidding. They are identical to us in every way so they cannot be identified as such externally. The only difference is they don’t have mental states or the “texture” of consciousness. They can think they can react logically and reason but they don’t have the mental experience going on inside. The zombie can’t feel the good morning but she can say “good morning” and in a way that implies that she means it. It doesn’t matter weather such zombies are actually possible or not. This is not a possible worlds argument its really more of an analogy that illustrates the distinction between consciousness and brain function.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn19" name="_ednref19" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[19]</span></span></span></a> The upshot of the zombie thing is that one could have all the brain function to memic everything humans do, but still lack consciousness and that illustrates that consciousness is not explained by brain function. If the organism with all the brain we have lacks the texture of consciousness then the two don’t share the same properties one is not dependent upon the other. Of course the opponent will argue that we are making more of consciousness than we should and that in imagining a world of such zombies we are inherently putting in the mental states just in ascribing to them our behaviors. The burden of proof is on them to prove that there is nothing more to the texture of consciousness than behavior.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn20" name="_ednref20" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[20]</span></span></span></a></div>
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The epistemic asymmetry of consciousness affords Chalmers a powerful argument. Conscious experience is a complete surprise given the relationship between mathematics and the rest of reality. That is to say, if not for our actual experience of consciousness we could never theorize or guess as to its’ existence just based upon scientific knowledge about brain function or the physical world. A world of philosophical zombies in which there was no experience of consciousness with all the scientific understanding we have could never come to realization that consciousness must exist for some beings somewhere.</div>
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<span class="nw">From all the low-level facts about physical configurations and causation, we can in principle derive all sorts of high-level facts about macroscopic systems, their organization, and</span> <span class="nw">the causation among them.</span><span class="ib"> </span><span class="nw">One could determine all the facts about biological function, and</span> <span class="nw">about human behavior and the brain mechanisms by which it is caused.</span><span class="ib"> </span><span class="nw">But nothing in this</span> <span class="nw">vast causal story would lead one who had not experienced it directly to believe that there</span> <span class="nw">should be any </span><span class="ff10">consciousness</span><span class="nw">.</span><span class="ib"> </span><span class="nw">The very idea would be unreasonable; almost mystical, perhaps.</span> <span class="nw">It is true that the physical facts about the world might provide some indirect evidence</span> <span class="nw">for the existence of consciousness.</span><span class="ib"> </span><span class="nw">For example, from these facts one could ascertain that</span> <span class="nw">there were a lot of organism’s that</span><span class="ff10"> claimed</span><span class="nw"> to be conscious, and said they had mysterious subjective experiences.</span><span class="ib"> </span><span class="nw">Still, this evidence would be quite inconclusive, and it might be most</span> <span class="nw">natural to draw an eliminative conclusion—that there was in fact no </span><span class="ff10">experience</span><span class="nw"> present in</span> <span class="nw">these creatures, just a lot of talk.</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn21" name="_ednref21" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[21]</span></span></span></a></div>
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If consciousness was dependent upon the physical entirely as a shared property of the physical it would be deducible immediately by its relation to the physical. We should be able to deduce anything that is physical by understanding its physical break down. We can’t even get at a definition of consciousness that doesn’t exclude the mental qualia and reduce to brain function. That is not an explanation (though its taken for one by reductionists) it’s nothing more than losing the phenomena and re-labeling.</div>
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What Chalmers calls the most vivid argument against the logical supervienence of consciousness upon the physical is ‘the knowledge argument’ put forth by Jackson (1982) and Nagel (1974). The example he uses is that of a woman he dubs “Mary” who is the world expert on neurophysiology of color vision. She lives in an advanced time when science has all knowledge of the physical realm. Mary has been raised in a black and while room where she has never seen color. She understands everything there is to know about the physical processes of producing color but she does not know what red looks like. No amount of reasoning from the physical facts can tell her how red appears.</div>
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It follows that the facts about the subjective experience of color vision are not entailed by the physical facts. If they were, Mary could in principle come to know what it is like to see red on the basis of her knowledge of the physical facts. But she cannot. Perhaps Mary could come to know what it is like to see red by some indirect method, such as by manipulating her brain in the appropriate way. The point, however, is that the knowledge does not follow from the physical knowledge alone. Knowledge of all the physical facts will in principle allow Mary to derive all the facts about a system’s reactions, and its various abilities and cognitive capacities; but she will still be entirely in the dark about its experience of red.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn22" name="_ednref22" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[22]</span></span></span></a></div>
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He reinforces this idea by reference to Thomas Negal’s famous article of the 70’s “What is It Like to be a Bat?”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn23" name="_ednref23" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[23]</span></span></span></a> All the physical knowledge about bats can’t tell us what it’s like to be one. That’s just multiplying examples at that point. We can’t know what it feels like to be a bat because we don’t have the consciousness of a bat. The texture of the experience is a point in consciousness. The reductionists sometimes substitute brain function for the actual nature of the experience of consciousness. Until they get at that they can’t get at the hard problem. They argue, as does Dennett in <i>Consciousness Explained</i>, discussing the theory of multiple drafts proposes that consciousness is just an epiphenomenal illusion that results from the process of editing perception by the brain. It’s like a number of still photos shown in rapid succession that becomes a moving picture. So it is with the multiple drafts and the continuous flowing sense of consciousness.<span style="color: black; font-family: times;"> "You seem to be referring to a private, ineffable something or other in your mind's eye, a private shade of homogenous pink, but this is just how it seems to you, not how it is."<span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn24" name="_ednref24" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[24]</span></span></span></a></span> There</span><span style="color: black;">’s a lot that could be said to this point, for example see Latnz Miller’s devastating critique of Dennett’s book in <i>Negations</i>. <span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_edn25" name="_ednref25" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">[25]</span></span></span></a></span> Yet the most to the point criticism that can be made is that it’s not about consciousness. This is about the function of the brain. That doesn’t do anything to get at the nature of consciousness itself. Tending to brain function in this way does not prove that consciousness arises out of brain function and has no larger reference as a basic property of nature. The only thing it does prove is that conscious awareness is accessed through brain function.</span></div>
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The issue of access is not the issue of causality. To say just exactly what is access and what is causing what, is hard to tell. It would be necessary to know that to resolve the argument either way. If there is a larger framework for consciousness than just being a side effect of chemicals in the head, such as a basic property or a principle of physical law or some such, then there must be some way in which what seems like an emergent property is actually connected to a larger principle. The fact that consciousness is communicated through brain chemistry is not a disproof. It may be the case that the evidence for irreducibility doesn’t prove it either. It would seem that irreducibility is a good reason to think that consciousness might be a basic property of nature. While at the same time the link between access and brain chemistry is not proof that mind reduces to brain or that consciousness is wholly a side effect of brain chemistry. The organizing effect of mind also adds another valid reason to suspect that consciousness could be a basic property.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[1]</span></span></span></a> Richard C.Vitzchum, “Philosophical Mateirlism.” The Secular Web, On-line resource, URL: <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_vitzthum/materialism.html#F9" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_vitzthum/materialism.html#F9</a> visited 4/12/2012 from lecture given to atheist students association, University of Maryland, College Park, Nov 14, 1996.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[2]</span></span></span></a> Daniel Dennett, <i>Consciousness Explained</i>. Back Bay Books, second edition, 1992.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[3]</span></span></span></a> Lantz Miller. “The Hard Sell of Human Consciousness part 1. (no 3, Winter 1998)</div>
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_______________________________________________part II, (no 4, Spring 2002)<br />this is only going to be found on line. go to this URL: <a href="http://negations.icaap.org/" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;"> http://negations.icaap.org/</a> see the menu on left side bar, click on winter of 1998, and scroll to the title "Hard Sell of Human Consciousness" by Lantz Miller, part one, then for <b>part Two </b>go to the 2002 issue and just scroll down until you see the title then sroll further to page number. It's well worth reading. If you really care about the top you must read this article.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[4]</span></span></span></a> Dennett, ibid, 406</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[5]</span></span></span></a> Kevin B. Korb. “Stage Effects in the Cartesian theater: A Review of Dennette’s <i>Consciousness Explained.</i>” Pdf file published online, URL: <a href="http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2271.pdf" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2271.pdf</a> visited 4/16/2012.</div>
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Korb is at <span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">School</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;"> of </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">Computer Science</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;"> and Software Engineering Monash University Clayton, </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">Victoria</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;"> 3168 </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;">Australia</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[6]</span></span></span></a> Ibid, section 1.1</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[7]</span></span></span></a> ibid, section 1.3</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[8]</span></span></span></a> ibid section 1.5</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[9]</span></span></span></a> ibid, section 1.6</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref10" name="_edn10" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[10]</span></span></span></a> Sam Harris quoted by <span class="authorvcardfn">Luke Muehlhauser, “Sam Harris, Argument Agaisnt the Afterlife,” blog, <i>Common Sense Atheism</i>,</span> March 15, 2011 URL: <a href="http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=14919" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;">http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=14919</a> the original quote is from a “You tube video” URL: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48xmvFgtKmc&feature=player_detailpage#t=92s" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48xmvFgtKmc&feature=player_detailpage#t=92s</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref11" name="_edn11" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[11]</span></span></span></a> Vitzthum, ibid.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref12" name="_edn12" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[12]</span></span></span></a> “Consciousness,” <i>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>. Archives pages. Website URL: <a href="http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/archives/sum2004/entries/consciousness/#8.1" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/archives/sum2004/entries/consciousness/#8.1</a> visited 1/22/11. Robert Van Gulick ed. and Copyright. (2004)</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref13" name="_edn13" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[13]</span></span></span></a> John Searle “Why I am not a Property Dualist” originally from online document: URL: <a href="http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #0000cc;">http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc</span></a>. from the Google Html version, propertydualismFNL.doc. November17, 2002 visited 12/6/10. URL: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Y4Fr7m7rItQJ:socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc+consciousness+is+not+reducible+to+brain+chemistry+but+is+a+basic+property+of+nature&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Y4Fr7m7rItQJ:socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc+consciousness+is+not+reducible+to+brain+chemistry+but+is+a+basic+property+of+nature&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref14" name="_edn14" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[14]</span></span></span></a> ibid.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref15" name="_edn15" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[15]</span></span></span></a> ibid.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref16" name="_edn16" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[16]</span></span></span></a> David Chalmers, <i>The Conscious Mind: In Search of a theory</i>. England, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 3-5.on line version: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/16574382/David-Chalmers-The-Conscious-Mind-Philosophy" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.scribd.com/doc/16574382/David-Chalmers-The-Conscious-Mind-Philosophy</a> Scribd, David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Theory of Conscious Experience, webstie Department of Philosophy, University of California at Santa Cruz, July 22 1995, visited 3/1/11 on line page numbers apply.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref17" name="_edn17" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[17]</span></span></span></a> Ibid, <i>supervenient </i>specialized philosophical term that refers to the necessary sharing of peripheries between two existents when one is a subset of the other.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref18" name="_edn18" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[18]</span></span></span></a> Ibid. 84</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref19" name="_edn19" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[19]</span></span></span></a> ibid.84-85</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref20" name="_edn20" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[20]</span></span></span></a> ibid. 90</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref21" name="_edn21" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[21]</span></span></span></a> ibid,</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref22" name="_edn22" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[22]</span></span></span></a> ibid</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref23" name="_edn23" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[23]</span></span></span></a> in Chalmers, 90, originally in <i>Philosophical Review</i>, pp. 435-50</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref24" name="_edn24" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[24]</span></span></span></a> Daniel C. Dennett, <i>op cit</i>, <span style="color: black; font-family: times;">329</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11516215#_ednref25" name="_edn25" style="color: #6b00ff; text-decoration-line: none;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;">[25]</span></span></span></a> Lantz Miller, “the Hard Sell of Human Consciousness, and the recovery of consciousness in the nature of new language. part 1.” <i>Negations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Criticism.</i> Issue 3, Winter 1998. On line copy: URL: http://negations.icaap.org/ (scroll down). For part 2 of Miller’s argument see the 2002 issue on the same site.</div>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-29040502936388824322019-03-04T00:23:00.003-08:002021-07-24T07:06:54.766-07:00Causal Necessity/contingency is a marker for Broadly Logical N/c in the CA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>There are different types of necessity and contingency,</b><br />
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Truth itself can be either necessary or contingent:<br />
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Distinction between kinds of <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/t9.htm#truth" style="color: #888888;"><span style="color: #dd7700;">truth</span></a>. Necessary truth is a feature of any statement that it would be <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/c7.htm#contr" style="color: #888888;"><span style="color: #dd7700;">contradictory</span></a> to deny. (Contradictions themselves are necessarily false.) Contingent truths (or falsehoods) happen to be true (or false), but might have been otherwise. Thus, for example: <em>"Squares have four sides."</em> is necessary. <em>"Stop signs are hexagonal."</em> is contingent. <em>"Pentagons are round."</em> is contradictory. This distinction was traditionally associated (before <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/kant.htm" style="color: #888888;"><em><span style="color: #dd7700;">Kant</span></em></a> and <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/k9.htm#krip" style="color: #888888;"><span style="color: #dd7700;">Kripke</span></a>) with the distinctions between <i><a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/a5.htm#a-pr" style="color: #888888;"><span style="color: #dd7700;">a priori and a posteriori</span></a></i> knowledge and the distinction between <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/a4.htm#ansy" style="color: #888888;"><span style="color: #dd7700;">analytic and synthetic</span></a> judgment. Necessity may also be defined <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/d2.htm#dedicto" style="color: #888888;"><i><span style="color: #dd7700;">de dicto</span></i></a> in terms of <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/e10c.htm" style="color: #888888;"><span style="color: #dd7700;">the formal logical property</span></a> of <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/t.htm#taug" style="color: #888888;"><span style="color: #dd7700;">tautology</span></a>. Recommended Reading: Jules Vuillemin, <cite>Necessity or Contingency?</cite> (C S L I, 1995); Colin McGinn, <cite>Logical Properties</cite> (Oxford, 2001); Alvin Plantinga, <cite>The Nature of Necessity</cite> (Clarendon, 1989); and Margaret Dauler Wilson, <cite>Leibniz' Doctrine of Necessary Truth</cite> (Harvard, 1984).<b style="font-family: serif; font-size: 16.5px;"><span style="color: blue;">[1]</span></b></blockquote>
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Notice there is no third kind of modal being. <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">"It is commonly accepted that there are two sorts of existent entities: those that exist but could have failed to exist, and those that could not have failed to exist. Entities of the first sort are </span><i style="background-color: white;">contingent beings</i><span style="background-color: white;">; entities of the second sort are </span><i style="background-color: white;">necessary beings." </i></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: serif; font-size: 16.5px;"><b><span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></b></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">That in so far as it goes establishes the fact that a thing is either necessarily or contingent there is no middle ground, no third option, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are many different notions of necessity. There are different kinds of necessity they are not contradictions or different opinions they apply in different ways, For example logical necessity is not the same as metaphysical necessity,</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">metaphysical or broadly logical necessity</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> deals with the nature of existence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">...<span style="background-color: white;">Something is “necessary” if it could not possibly have failed to exist. The laws of mathematics are often thought to be necessary. It is plausible to say that mathematical truths such as two and two making four hold irrespective of the way that the world is. Even if the world were radically different, it seems, two and two would still make four. God, too, is often thought to be a necessary being, i.e. a being that logically could not have failed to exist.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Something is “contingent” if it is not necessary, i.e. if it could have failed to exist. Most things seem to exist contingently. All of the human artefacts around us might not have existed; for each one of them, whoever made it might have decided not to do so. Their existence, therefore, is contingent. You and I, too, might not have existed; our respective parents might never have met, or might have decided not to have children, or might have decided to have children at a different time. Our existence, therefore, is contingent. Even the world around us seems to be contingent; the universe might have developed in such a way that none of the observable stars and planets existed at all.<b><span style="color: blue;">[3]</span></b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>This is true in the cosmological argument.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">The modal cosmological argument or “argument from contingency” is the argument from the contingency of the world or universe to the existence of God. The argument from contingency is the most prominent form of </span><a href="http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-cosmological-argument/" style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" title="The Cosmological Argument">cosmological argument</a> <span style="background-color: white;">historically. The classical statements of the cosmological argument in the works of </span><a href="http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/whos-who/historic-figures/plato/" style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" title="Plato">Plato</a><span style="background-color: white;">, of </span><a href="http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/whos-who/historic-figures/st-thomas-aquinas/" style="background-color: white; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" title="St Thomas Aquinas">Aquinas</a><span style="background-color: white;">, and of Leibniz are generally statements of the modal form of the argument.<b><span style="color: blue;">[4]</span></b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The Universe itself is contingent and everything produced in nature is as well. </b></span> <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Karl Popper tells us :</span><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Empirical facts are facts which might not have been. </span><b style="color: blue; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Everything that belongs to space time is a </i></b><b style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span style="color: red;">contingent</span> </i></b><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">truth because it could have been otherwise, it is dependent upon the existence of something else for its' existence going all the way back to the Big Bang, which is itself contingent upon something."</span><b style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: blue;">[5] </span></b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #202020;">Contingent beings are those whose existence is caused or explained, "</span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="color: #202020;">A contingent being (a being such that if it exists, it could have not-existed or could cease to exist) exists. This contingent being has a cause of or explanation for its existence. ... Therefore, what causes or explains the existence of this contingent being must include a non-contingent (necessary) being".</span><b><span style="color: blue;">[6] </span></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #202020;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #202020;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Necessity/contingency broadly logical and causally related</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #202020;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #202020;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This seems to create a dichotomy for some atheists in that they try to juxtapose two kinds of contingency against one another;</span></span><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> There are Types of necessity and contingency but the distinction between broadly logical or "Metaphysical" necessity and the causal type reflected in my CA is not one of them, These two types were shown by Hartshorne to be united,. The causal form of contingency is a marker for the broadly logical or metaphysical. This is my own idea.</span><br />
<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Necessity is that which cannot cease or fail to exist; that for which one could contradict to speak of such things. Thus contingency is that which can cease or fail to exist.</span><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But it seems that ceasing and failing are bound up with causes and circumstances of existence in the natural world, Thus we can think of causality an an ontological marker spellimg out for us the nature of contingency in the natural world,. After all anything that depends for its existence upon a prior condition (even an ontologically prior condition that is not temporally prior) is contingent because it could cease or fail to exist, thus its contingency is marked by its causality.</span><br />
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[1]<a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL" style="color: #990000; font-family: "times new roman", serif; text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;" xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#">Garth Kemerling</a>,"Necessary/Contingent," <i>Philosophical Pages. 1997/2011</i><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 14.52px;"><a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/n.htm#nec" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: "times new roman", times, freeserif, serif; font-size: 14.52px;">http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/n.htm#nec</a> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 14.52px;"><span style="color: #888888;"> </span><b><span style="color: blue;">(accessed 3/4/19 )</span></b></span><br />
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<dt style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", times, freeserif, serif; font-size: 14.52px; font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="nec" style="color: #888888;"><span style="color: #dd7700;">necessary / contingent</span></a></b></dt>
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[2]<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Matthew Davidson,"God and Other Necessary Beings", <em>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy </em>(Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), </span></span><span style="background-color: #f3ede9; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "source sans pro" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/god-necessary-being/">https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/god-necessary-being/</a>>. </span><b style="font-family: "times new roman", times, freeserif, serif; font-size: 14.52px;"><span style="color: blue;">(accessed 3/4/19 )</span></b><br />
<span style="background-color: #f3ede9; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "source sans pro" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: #f3ede9; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "source sans pro" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> </span>[3] Tim Holt, "Argument from Contingency," <i>Philosophy of Religion, 2008</i><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-cosmological-argument/the-argument-from-contingency/">http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-cosmological-argument/the-argument-from-contingency/</a></span><br />
<b style="font-family: "times new roman", times, freeserif, serif; font-size: 14.52px;"><span style="color: blue;">(accessed 3/4/19 )</span></b><br />
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[4] Ibid<br />
<span style="background-color: #f3ede9; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "source sans pro" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"></span><span style="background-color: #f3ede9; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "source sans pro" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>[5] <span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "source sans pro" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Carol Popper quoted in </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Antony Flew, <i>Philosophical Dictionary</i>, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 242.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">[6] </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Bruce</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Reichenbach, , "Cosmological Argument", </span><em style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</em><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/cosmological-argument/">https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/cosmological-argument/</a>>.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman", times, freeserif, serif; font-size: 14.52px;"><span style="color: blue;">(accessed 3/4/19 )</span></b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">B Reichenbach originally </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Jul 13, 2004</span><br />
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-70992006378241991052019-02-10T03:34:00.001-08:002019-02-10T03:34:15.029-08:00Do God's Omniscience and Omnipotence Contradict? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Atheists think it is. I've seen many a knock down drag-out fight, multiple threads, lasing for days, accomplishing nothing. I wrote that dilemma off years ago before I was an internet apologist, so long ago I don't remember when. I wrote it off because at an early date I read Boethius who, in his great work <i>The Consolation of Philosophy</i> (circa 524), puts to rest the issue by proving that foreknowledge is not determinism. In this essay I will demonstrate not only that this is true but the atheist error about omniscience and omnipotence contradicting <b><span style="color: blue;">[1]</span></b> are actually hold overs from the pagan framework which Boethius disproved.<b><span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></b></div>
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For years my debates on the matter were marked by silly repetition. I would constantly argue that just knowing that someone does something is not controlling it. But atheists were always cock sure that it was. I used the follow analogy: I know how the Alamo turned out. Travis and the men stepped over the line and chose to stay and die. I know they did that, does my knowledge of it mean that I made them do it? Of course the atheist say "O of course not, but you are not in the past, you are knowing this by a look back in history to see what they already did." Of course, but God doesn't know about events before they have happened in time, he knows about them because he's beyond time and he sees everything in time as a accomplished fact. From our perspective in time God's knowledge is "foreknowledge" because it is for us. But it's not foreknowledge for God, he doesn't know before it happens, he knows about events because form an eternal perspective its a done deal. Just as my knowing what the men at the Alamo already did does not give me control over their choices, so God's knowledge of facts we have already accomplish does not give God control over our choices.</div>
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Of course, predictably, the atheists dismiss this idea as "nonsense" and go right on asserting that to know of an action is to control, but they can't tell me why. They can tell me a theoretical reason but they can't tell me why if my knowing about the Alamo <i>ex post facto</i> does not control those actions why would God's knowledge of a past even already done control the past event? Why are these not analogous if God is outside time and sees all things in time as accomplished facts? They can't tell me but they are certain the idea is nonsense. The reason they give initially is this. Say that God knows today that I will go to the store tomorrow. That means that i can't tomorrow morning decide "I don't want to go tot he store, I hate the walk." I can't decide that and follow it because God already knows I went so I have to go. But the problem is they are not following a modern concept of God knowing because he's outside of time. They are still stuck in the pre Christian framework which has clung to modern Western Philosophy lo these many centuries. That frame work can be clearly seen in Boethius because that's what he was arguing against. The fame work is the Greek Gods were controlled by the fates, but they also had foreknowledge, so they were trumping the fates, to whom they were really subject. That creates an issue. Moreover, foreknowledge was about things that had not yet taken place, thus that is a contradiction; it hasn't taken place, how can it be known what one will do, to know it is to set in stone and thus not free will. But that only holds in the case of god in time not outside of time. It doesn't apply to the idea of God transcendent of time and thus that's why they can't answer me, but because they know the philosophers they read still assert the old Greek idea they must cling to it.</div>
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We can see the exact kind of thinking the atheists use in the <i>Consolation</i> and it is the framework against which Boethius toils. This quotation is form a summary in the <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/boethius/#6"><i>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.</i></a> The summary is by John Marenbon.</div>
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The first point which needs to be settled is what, precisely, is the problem which Boethius the character proposes? The reasoning behind (7) seems to be of the following form:</div>
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<li>God knows every event, including all future ones.</li>
<li>When someone <i>knows</i> that an event will happen, then the event will happen.</li>
<li>(10) is true as a matter of necessity, because it is <i><b><span style="color: red;">impossible to know that which is not the case.</span></b></i></li>
<li>If someone knows an event will happen, it will happen necessarily.(10, 11)</li>
<li>Every event, including future ones, happens necessarily. (9, 12)</li>
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The pattern behind (8) will be similar, but in reverse: from a negation of (13), the negation of (9) will be seen to follow. But, as it is easy to observe, (9–13) is a fallacious argument: (10) and (11) imply, not (12), but</div>
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<li>Necessarily, if someone knows an event will happen, it will happen.</li>
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(emphasis mine)<b><span style="color: blue;">[3]</span></b></div>
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The summary of the problem he's working against indicates exactly the problem I frame it, that the atheist (following the Greeks) is not assuming transcendence of time but is working on the <i><b>assumption that God's knowledge is prior to the completed nature of the action.</b></i> This was framework in which Boethius found the problem in his own contemporary scene which came from the pre-christian Hellenistic world. Even when the philosopher writing the article sums it up he still speaks form the same perspective:</div>
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The fallacy, therefore, concerns the scope of the necessity operator. Boethius has mistakenly inferred the (narrow-scope) necessity of the consequent (‘the event will happen’), when he is entitled only to infer the (wide-scope) necessity of the whole conditional (‘if someone knows an event will happen, it will happen’). Boethius the character is clearly taken in by this fallacious argument, and there is no good reason to think that Boethius the author ever became aware of the fallacy (despite a passage later on which some modern commentators have interpreted in this sense). None the less, the discussion which follows does not, as the danger seems to be, address itself to a non-problem. Intuitively, Boethius sees that the threat which divine prescience poses to the contingency of future events arises not just from the claim that God's beliefs about the future constitute <i>knowledge,</i> but also from the fact that they are beliefs about the <i>future.</i>There is a real problem here, because if God knows now what I shall do tomorrow, then it seems that either what I shall do is already determined, or else that I shall have the power tomorrow to convert God's knowledge today into a false belief. Although his logical formulation does not capture this problem, the solution Boethius gives to Philosophy is clearly designed to tackle it.<b style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: blue;">[4]</span></b></div>
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He's speaking form the perspective of future events which have not yet happened, being known before they happen. But that leaves out the assumption that's God's is not actuality foreknowledge so much as translucence eternal knowledge that sees the events as an accomplished fact because it sees the the end result <i><b>from a perspective after the event is accomplished.</b></i> That's the wider perspective. Transcendent eternal knowledge is the knowledge of all time as the "eternal now" not "foreknowledge" in the sense of known only prior to the doing of the event. Then there is also an issue about the nature of the knower. This is a point Boethius may be making but it's hard to say. God knows form the standpoint of eternity but he speaks within times arrow to us so it appears to be foreknowledge, knowledge of that which has not yet transpired. Thus the illusion of determinism is created. But the fact of it is the knowledge comes from viewing all events as accomplished facts. It's in the perspective of timeless transience which only God can have.</div>
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This latter issue of the nature of the knowledge is marked by the summary and by the text itself as "modes of cognition." The Constolation of Philosphy is the old fashioned Philosophical dialogue which no one writes anymore, the kind Berkelely write (out of date in his day--early 1700's).</div>
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Erronious: "hi fallacious how's it going?"</div>
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Fallacious: "great, I'm now considering a new idea"</div>
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Erronious: "prey tell good sir what idea might that be?"</div>
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And they go on to discuss and provide endless house of fun writing Monty Python style paradiges of themselves. Then burst into a course of "Rene Descartes was a Druken fart, 'I drink therefore I am.'</div>
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But before they do that they discuss issues and the philosopher places his arguments in the mouth of the character. In the <i>Consolation</i> the Character Boethius is agonizing over philosophy when Philosophy personified as a beautiful woman comes to him and gives him the answers. That's the context in which this reviewer states the following:</div>
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Her view, as she develops it (in V.5 and V.6), is based on what might be called the Principle of <i><b>Modes of Cognition</b></i>: the idea that knowledge is always relativized to different levels of knowers, who have different sorts of objects of knowledge. Although she initially develops this scheme in a complex way, in relation to the different levels of the soul (intelligence, reason, imagination and the senses) and their different objects (pure Form, abstract universals, images, particular bodily things), for most of her discussion Philosophy concentrates on a rather simpler aspect of it. God's way of being and knowing, she argues, is eternal, and divine eternity, she says, is not the same as just lacking a beginning and end, but it is rather (V.6) ‘the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unbounded life.’<b><span style="color: blue;">[5]</span></b></div>
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Boethius did not have the knowledge of modern cosmology, the big bang, quantum theory or any of the other scientific data that we have so he did not possess the concepts of being outside of time. He did however have an understanding of eternity that came form his own spirituality, and it seems to coincide remarkably with the modern notion. What's he's saying is that God an eternal perspective. He can see the events of what to us are the future but to him is an eternal now. So he's not knowing something that hasn't happened yet, he knows something that to him has happened, but to us has not yet happened. Without the big bang Boethius still has the concept of God being outside of time and he saw that as the basis of non-deterministic events in time which known to God as completed events due to God's unique perspective.</div>
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A being who is eternal in this way, Philosophy argues, knows all things—past, present and future—in the same way as we, who live in time and not eternity, know what is present. She then goes on to show why, so long as God knows future events by their being present to him, this knowledge is compatible with the events’ not being determined.<b><span style="color: blue;">[6]</span></b></div>
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Through the mouth of philosophy Boethius speculates that there two kinds of necessity. The first is:</div>
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Simple necessities are what would now be called physical or nomic necessities: that the sun rises, or that a man will sometime die. By contrast, it is conditionally necessary that, for instance, I am walking, <i>when</i> I am walking (or when someone sees that I am walking); but from this conditional necessity it does not follow that it is simply necessary that I am walking.<b><span style="color: blue;">[7]</span></b></div>
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Although some philosophers disagree, she is not noting the scope fallacy above but is actually using Aristotelian modality to argue about the eternal perspective. All things are known to God as though they were in the present. Future events for God are necessary in just the way that present events are necessary for us. What I'm doing writ now I am necessarily doing because I'm really doing it. But because it's my choice to do it and I'm doing it now (as opposed something I already did five years ago) my will to do it is not negated. I can stop doing it and so something else. But I can't go back five seconds ago and stop doing it in the past. All moments are known to God from this perspective.</div>
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Now so far so good. But there are two problems:</div>
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<b>(1) Most philosophers today do not accept this reading of the issues.</b></div>
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It is important to add, however, that most contemporary interpreters do not read the argument of V.3–6 in quite this way. They hold that Philosophy is arguing that God is a-temporal, so eliminating the problems about determinism, which arise when God's knowing future contingents is seen an event in the past, and therefore, fixed<b><span style="color: blue;">.[8]</span></b></div>
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That's going to be a problem for me becasue it means that timeless state of "beyond time" would mean God is "frozen" unable to act and thus can only act in time and thus the temporal problem. Rather, God sees as past and while may not control past is also not free to act in the past becuase it is a done deal.</div>
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<b>(2) Philosophy seems to swing to a predestination view at the end.</b></div>
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She makes God the determiner of events. There are also interpreters who see the Consolation as a satire that should be called "the insufficiency of philosophy." The only problem for me is that atheists will read this part of the article and say "O see Metacrock is stupid because he didn't read the whole article." Marenbon argues that Boethius purpose is complex it can't be summarized as either "philosophy is insufficient" or "the whole issue is decided." what he's really saying is that philosophy is an ongoing concern. The true consolation of philosophy is not that such issue can be put to rest and summed up easily in nice little easy to understand phrases that only take a few syllables but we can have partial solutions and we can continue to work on problems and continue to seek answers and the act of so doing is a consolation even if we never find clear and easy answers. The interpretation of <i>the Consolation</i> is a literary problem, not a theological one. I will, therefore, bracket that until such as a time as I work on literary criticism.</div>
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The first problem is of much greater concern but I have an answer. I think I've analyzed Boethius' claims in the section where philosophy answers the issues of foreknowledge,I think I have that right and it works. It doesn't seem to work when we extract it form the framework of his day and place it in the world of modern cosmology, but it works again when we extract it from the framework of modern cosmology and place it in the framework of my theology (<a href="http://www.doxa.ws/meta_crock/Berkeley_goswami.html">the Berkeley-Gaswami argument</a>). My theological frame work differs from the modern cosmological in this way: I do not see God as a big man in the sky existing beyond the big bang which is a timeless void. I see God as the mind that thinks the universe, and the universe is therefore, analogous to a thought in a mind. I say "analogous" because it's a metaphor. If it was literal it might be more deterministic than any other view because it would mean that all events are thoughts in the mind of God in a literal sense. I do not think that. The Gaswami part comes in where I take a page form the book of physicist <a href="http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/goswam1.htm">Amit Gaswami</a> (a Hindu vedantist who teaches physics at University of Oregon. Like Gaswami I see mind as the fundametnal stuff of the universe rather than energy or mater. I don't mean that in the sense of the universe being a mind, but that is related to mind in the way that a thought is related to a mind. I take that as a metaphor because like Bishop <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/">George Berkeley</a> I accept the premise "to be is to be perceived." God is the observer that collapses the wave function and causes the universe to be be by beholding it. God is observing a thought that he has set up to run on it own. He's not making it happen or thinking every event at a microscopic level.</div>
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Two analogies that will clarify the difference. In the standard view God's relation to the world is like that of a man standing in a big room holding a world globe. The room is the timeless void beyond our space/time. The man is God, of course, and the globe is our space time. That puts God as a thing in "creation" or at least a timeless void, it makes God subject to the laws of physics and the problem of time. It makes God out to be a big man in the sky, although really far up in the sky. My view we have the room and the globe, no man. The room is the mind of God. the globe and the empty void of "timeless" are both thoughts in the mind of God. What this means is God is not subject to either time or the problem of non time. Both are pseudo problems for God because they are just ideas he thought up to create a framework for our world, which is a further thought of that preliminary thought in his mind. God is no more subject to the problems of time or even non time than we are to our day dreams and momentary fleeting fantasies that cross our minds.</div>
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This has many implications that have to be weighed. For one thing we just forget about the issues surrounding the omnis,, let them go completely. Not that God is not all knowing or all powerful, but the concepts "all knowing" and "all powerful" are hazy shadowy concepts that do more to confuse us than to help us. These are Aristotelian ideas and they hold overs from Greek philosophy. These things enter Western philosophy from Greek thought and they preserved by the prejudices of Western European philosophers. Modern philosophers still think the Greeks were the summit of human civilization, even the Church adopted ht language of Greek philosophy to discuss doctrine so we should look to the Greeks. The Hebrews were corn pones and the early Christians were Greeks themselves so Greek ideas hang on in philosophy. Thus the older meaning of "foreknowledge" and it's problems adhere to all modern discussions. The church began to use the language of Aristotle after the Apostolic age so we continue to speak of "omnipresent." "Omnipotent" even though the Bible doesn't so speak. We should scrap the language of "all knowing" " all powerful" because it communicates badly. Rather than these we should say, not that God is the "most powerful" that's a mistake too (from a Tillichian perspective) but that God can do whatever is logically doable. God knows whatever is logically knowable.</div>
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The problem is in speaking of God as "doing" and "knowing" we give the importation of God as a big man and God's knowledge as the kind of knowledge city zoning board use to plan things. All of this anthropomorphic language is bring God down to the level of a thing in creation. It's not preserving the transcendent nature of God's knowledge which so different form ours we can't even know what it's like. What we can be sure of is that God has left us free will and he's not violating it. God knows whatever is logically knowable. It may not be logically knowable for God to know how it feels to be not God. But at the same time, he does know empathy, he knows the heart he knows the mind, he can take a much better intuitive feel of what that might be like than even we can ourselves. He doesn't know first hand what it's like to be human.</div>
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God does not have to make rocks he can't lift. That is a childish trap set for eighty grade apologetic hobbyists in Sunday school classes. I know because I'm still smarting from falling for it in eighth grade.God can't smell next Tuesday because days don't have smells. The eager beaver atheist can say "there's something God can't do." I say "so?" God cannot do nonsense, ok so what? We need to redefine the omnis and come up with a new term ( I don't like "maximal greatness" too easy to confuse with "most power being"). The import this has for this issue is that there is no contradiction between omniscience and omnipotence because those are not helpful words and they don't really mean that much so they don't really describe God's attributes well. Since God is beyond the problems of either time or non-time he is not in the big room of timeless void so he's not frozen. Thus God's knowledge can come form all perspectives, from the eternal now and from time's arrow.</div>
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Might there actually be aspects of time God chooses not to see? The problem with that question is it assumes God is a rubber-necking tourist roving the expanse of all existing matter and observing it as one would observe the country side of France from a train window. Because God is not a big man in the sky, not anthropomorphic we can come up with other metaphors to compare God to, and that indicate that God's relationship to time is one we can't understand. Compare God to the strong force, to the unified field, to the laws of physics, the Hegelian dialectic. The <i>Zeitgeist</i>. I don't believe that God is impersonal but I do think it's a good exercise to think of him that way at times just to break the habit of thinking of God as a big man in the sky.</div>
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Such a God cannot waste his time worrying about conflicts between one badly worded phrase that doesn't really describe him and another badly worded phrase that doesn't describe him. Thus the problem is now reduced to a pseudo problem. It' an antiquated problem because it's rooted in the pre-Christian Greek understanding of God and time and the world, and it's also rooted in thinking of God as a big man in the sky rather than the transcendent and immanent ground of all being that God is.</div>
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<b>Sources and Notes</b></div>
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[1] List of sources where atheists make this argument:</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;">Matt McCormick. "Atheism; Multiple Property Disproofs," <i>Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: peer reviewed Academic </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><i>resource, 2002;</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/atheism/#SH3b">https://www.iep.utm.edu/atheism/#SH3b</a><br /></div>
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Another form of deductive atheological argument attempts to show the logical incompatibility of two or more properties that God is thought to possess. A long list of properties have been the subject of multiple property disproofs...The combination of omnipotence and omniscience have received a great deal of attention. To possess all knowledge, for instance, would include knowing all of the particular ways in which one will exercise one’s power, or all of the decisions that one will make, or all of the decisions that one has made in the past. But knowing any of those entails that the known proposition is true. So does God have the power to act in some fashion that he has not foreseen, or differently than he already has without compromising his omniscience? It has also been argued that God cannot be both unsurpassably good and free. (Rowe 2004).</blockquote>
<br /><br />"Arguments Against the Existence of God Overview," Lumen: Introdiction To Philosophy (Overview) chapter Six Philosophy of Religion.<br /><a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sanjacinto-philosophy/chapter/arguments-against-the-existence-of-god-overview/">https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sanjacinto-philosophy/chapter/arguments-against-the-existence-of-god-overview/</a><br /><br />"The omniscience paradox contests further problems between omnipotence and omniscience, such as a lack of ability to create something unknown to God...."<br /><br /><br />Vexen Crabtree, "God is Logically impossible: The Argument from Incoherence," <i>The Human Truth Foundation, 2018, </i><br /><a href="http://www.humanreligions.info/god_is_impossible.html">http://www.humanreligions.info/god_is_impossible.html</a><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a class="Subtle" href="http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/god_has_no_free_will.html" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: #000044; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify; text-decoration-line: none;" title="A benevolent and all powerful, or an all-knowing God must have no free will.">Omnipotence and omniscience contradict free will and themselves are logically impossible</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;">; its </span><a class="Subtle" href="http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/omniscience.html" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: #000044; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Verses stating that god is omniscient in Christianity and Islam. But there are theological and philosophical problems with an all-knowing god that seems to make it impossible. On Vexen Crabtree's Bane of Monotheism website.">omniscience is impossible for it to validate and there are questions about its own being that it itself cannot answer (therefore, nothing can be omniscient)</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;">. If it is a perfect being, then, there is no need to do any creating. If it is </span><a class="Subtle" href="http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/dimensions.html" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: #000044; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify; text-decoration-line: none;" title="What does it mean to be 'beyond time', to be an eternal creator of time, and to exist outside of the known dimensions of the universe?">eternal and immutable, then its very thoughts are eternal and immutable - in other words, it has <i>no mental states</i></a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;">. If its basic emotional, behavioural and instinctive drives are all fixed (i.e., not created by itself, therefore, not under its own control, and unchanging), then it is hard to imagine how the being, existing in a world without stimulation nor change, can be conscious at all. Without </span><a class="Subtle" href="http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/god_has_no_free_will.html" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: #000044; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify; text-decoration-line: none;" title="A benevolent and all powerful, or an all-knowing God must have no free will.">free will</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;">, morality, </span><a class="Subtle" href="http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/omniscience.html" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: #000044; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Verses stating that god is omniscient in Christianity and Islam. But there are theological and philosophical problems with an all-knowing god that seems to make it impossible. On Vexen Crabtree's Bane of Monotheism website.">omniscience</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;"> the remaining </span><a class="Subtle" href="http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/universe.html#Thought" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: #000044; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify; text-decoration-line: none;">"god" is only an automaton: a being that follows necessity and logic</a><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;">.</span></blockquote>
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</dd><dd style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); line-height: 18.2px; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding: 0px;"><span id="wqXnO8Cy32" style="color: #333333; font-family: q_serif, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro", Meiryo, serif; font-size: 15px;"><span class="hover" id="__w2_wqXnO8Cy33_link"><a action_mousedown="UserLinkClickthrough" class="user" href="https://www.quora.com/profile/Steve-Waddington" id="__w2_wqXnO8Cy33_name_link" style="background: transparent; color: #333333; outline: 0px;">Steve Waddington</a></span></span><span class="NameCredential" style="color: #333333; font-family: q_serif, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro", Meiryo, serif; font-size: 15px;">,"</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: q_serif, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro", Meiryo, serif;">What are atheists arguments against "god" being omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent?" <i>Quora. 2018</i></span><div style="color: #202020; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px;">
<a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-atheists-arguments-against-god-being-omnipresent-omniscient-and-omnipotent" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">https://www.quora.com/What-are-atheists-arguments-against-god-being-omnipresent-omniscient-and-omnipotent</a><br /><br /></div>
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... omniscient knows everything that will happen, but has no ability to change what will happen, because any change they make they already know they will make, and so that is what happens anyway. There is no possibility of free thought or changing anything that has ever happened or ever will happen.</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"The Impossibility of an Omnipotent Omniscient God," </span><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>J.R.'s Free Thought Pages, No God's, No Masters </i>no date listed</span><br /><a href="https://www.skeptic.ca/Impossibility_Arguments_for_God.htm" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">https://www.skeptic.ca/Impossibility_Arguments_for_God.htm</a><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">All such arguments depend crucially on sets of divine specifications. A core traditional notion of God is one that specifies him as necessarily existent, omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect. God is also traditionally conceived of as being a free creator, and is often spoken of as immutable or transcendent. Some impossibility arguments attack a single attribute - attempting to show that the notion of omniscience is logically incoherent on its own, for example. Others attack combinations of attributes - arguing that it is not logically possible for a being to be omniscient and a free creator, for example. If either form of argument succeeds, we will be able to show that there can be no God as traditionally conceived.</span></blockquote>
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Omnipotence Paradox, <i>Rational Wiki </i>(last modoified <i>2018</i>) <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox">https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The omnipotence paradox refers to the apparently paradoxical ability of an omnipotent entity to both limit its powers and remain omnipotent.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The paradox is used both as an argument against an omnipotent God and against the concept of true omnipotence.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #202020; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">"Argument from Free Will," <i>Wikipedia </i>(</span></span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px;">19 November 2018</span><span style="color: #202020; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">)</span></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_free_will" style="color: #202020; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_free_will</a></div>
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<span style="color: #202020; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The argument from free will, also called the paradox of free will or theological fatalism, contends that omniscience and free will are incompatible and that any conception of God that incorporates both properties is therefore inherently contradictory.[note 1][1][2]These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination.</span></blockquote>
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Matt Nelson, "How to Prove God Doesn't exist," <i>Word on Fire Blog </i>(Feb 4, 2019)<br /><a href="https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/how-to-prove-that-god-doesnt-exist/5216/">https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/how-to-prove-that-god-doesnt-exist/5216/</a><br /></div>
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Let’s consider three of God’s best-known divine attributes: his omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence....<br />This brings us to the claim of God's omnipotence. Is there any philosophical contradiction that can be drawn out of God's infinite power? As we have noted, God cannot sin because he is morally perfect, the perfect standard of what it means to be good. Thus God has the power to do all logically possible things—that is, he has the power to do all meaningful things. That is why he cannot create a four-sided triangle (which is really nothing at all).</blockquote>
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[2]<span style="font-size: x-small;">Boethius </span><i>The Consolation </i><i>of Philosophy: </i>New York: Penguin Classics, 1969, no page listed</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius </span>(480?-524) the <i>Consolation</i> was Written early in the 6th century.</div>
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[3] John Marenbon. "<span style="font-size: x-small;">Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius."</span> <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/boethius/#6"><i>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.</i></a> </div>
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<em style="background-color: #f3ede9; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Philosophy </em><span style="background-color: #f3ede9; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">(Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/boethius/">https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/boethius/</a>>. (accessed feb 10,2019)</span></div>
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[4] Ibid.</div>
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[5] Ibid.</div>
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[6] Ibid</div>
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[7] Ibid</div>
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[8] Ibid</div>
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<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fi15.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fa361%2FMetacrock%2Fhand_earth.gif&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEi9s5ZEVqWId9baXw4yzsWFREPzKfR7_Nsh7jjEx0b4p945CZ_VOvmvTXNoLEpX9aiGkylmf6RF3KhQzKFASaKvSWmryRzEO126bTQs3skp3I4nu3gVcdpOQP9IOjEDVHnBYNAWTtfO1e63X_ogeKKB1vc-MOtHAFZ5jAD_Tv5K=" -->Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-42519381956444630132019-01-18T00:36:00.000-08:002019-01-18T00:36:08.874-08:00Interview with Randal Rauser<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Rauser is a Christian Philosopher he has interviewed me on my TS argumet.<br />
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<a href="https://randalrauser.com/2019/01/god-in-a-transcendental-signifier-a-conversation-with-joseph-hinman/">https://randalrauser.com/2019/01/god-in-a-transcendental-signifier-a-conversation-with-joseph-hinman/</a></div>
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-91008476243394935102019-01-03T03:38:00.002-08:002019-01-03T03:38:20.456-08:00Christinaity, Supernature, and the Rise of Science in Middle Ages. Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;">The medieval Christian doctrine of the supernatural<sup>1</sup> has long been misconstrued as a dualistic denigration of nature, opposed to scientific thinking. The concept of supernature, however, is not a dualism in the sense of denigrating nature or of pitting against each other the "alien" realms of spirit and matter. The Christian ontology of the supernatural bound together the realm of nature and the realm of Grace, immanent and transcendent, in a unity of creative wisdom and purpose, which gave theological significance to the natural world. While the doctrine of supernature was at times understood in a dualistic fashion, ultimately, the unity it offered played a positive role in the development of scientific thinking, because it made nature meaningful to the medieval mind. Its dissolution came, not because supernatural thinking opposed scientific thinking, but because culture came to value nature in a different manner, and the old valuation no longer served the purpose of scientific thinking. An understanding of the notion of supernature is essential to an understanding of the attitudes in Western culture toward nature, and to an understanding of the cultural transition to science as an epistemic authority.<br /><br />The ontology of supernature assumes that the natural participates in the supernatural in an ordered relation of means and immediate ends, with reference to their ultimate ends. The supernatural is the ground and end of the natural; the realm of nature and the realm of Grace are bound up in a harmonious relation. The Ptolemaic system explained the physical lay-out of the universe, supernature explained its theological relation to God. The great chain of being separated the ranking of creatures in relation to creator. The supernatural ontology is, therefore, sperate from but related to cosmologies. This ontology stands behind most forms of pre-reformation theology, and it implies an exaltation of nature, rather than denigration.<sup>2</sup> This talk of two realms seems to imply a dualism, yet, it is not a metaphysical dualism, not a dualism of opposition, but as Fairweather points out, "the essential structure of the Christian faith has a real two-sidedness about it, which may at first lead the unwary into dualism, and then to resolve [it]...[into] an exclusive emphasis on one or the other severed elements of a complete Christianity...such a dissolution is inevitable once we lose our awareness of that ordered relation of the human and the divine, the immanent and the transcendent, which the Gospel assumes."<sup>3</sup> Yet, it is this "two-sidedness" which leads unwary historians of into dualism.<sup>4</sup><br /><br />In his famous 1967 article, "The Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Lynn White argued that the Christian belief of the Imago Dei created "a dualism of man and nature;" "man shares in God's transcendence of nature." This notion replaced pagan animism, it removed the "sacred" from the natural world, and with it, inhibitions against exploiting nature.<sup>5</sup> Moreover, by the 12th century, nature became a source of revelation through natural theology. In the Latin West, where action prevailed over contemplation, natural theology ceased to be the decoding of natural symbols of the divine and became instead an attempt to understand God through decerning the operation of creation. Western technology flourished, surpassing even that of Islamic culture (although they still led in theoretical pursuits). Thus, White argues, medieval theology did allow science to grow, but at the ultimate expense of the environment.<sup>6</sup><br /><br />The insights of feminist scholarship, however, suggest an even more subtle argument for the denigration of nature. Feminist theologian, Rosemary Radford Ruther, argued that there is an identification between the female and nature, the male and transcendence. <sup>7</sup>Women have been disvalued historically through the association between female sexuality and the "baseness" of nature. <sup>8</sup>Londa Schiebinger, calls attention to the fact that the Judeo-Christian cosmology placed women in a subordinate position. Gender was more fundamental than biological sex, and it was a cosmological principle, "...Men and women were carefully placed in the great chain of being--their positions were defined relative to plants, animals, and God." The subordination of women was predicated upon their position in nature. "Male" and "Female represented dualistic cosmological principles penetrating all of nature, principles of which sexual organs were only one aspect. One might suspect that the place of women on the great chain of being is indicative of the true status of nature itself in Christian ontology; an overt denigration of women indicates a covert denigration of nature.<sup>9</sup><br /><br />Moreover, the very fact of the medieval cosmos, and the great chain itself, because of the relation of earth to heaven, might be taken as an indication that nature was denigrated. <sup>10</sup>Historians and classicists have tended to assume that the Ptolemaic system was designed so as to give humanity a position of honor and centrality. As Lovejoy points out, however, earth was the closest thing to hell, which was at the center of the cosmos. On the other hand, as Author O. Lovejoy himself admits, it was the fact that earth was the staging ground for the drama of salvation that gave it significance. Everything derived its value from its relation to the eternal. Nature was not disvalued, but re-valued, in its relation to God. It is this distinction that often leads historians to understand Christian medieval ontology as a denigration of nature.<sup>11</sup> White assumes that transcendence must imply denigration of the thing transcended. Transcendence, however, does not mean that God fled the world; God is both immanent and transcendent, in creation and beyond it. Fairweather argues that the most profound symbol of this relation is the incarnation, the transcendent in the immanent, the spirit in flesh.<sup>12</sup><br /><br />It cannot be denied that women were assigned an unjust and denigrating position in the cosmos, based upon the ignorance, pride, and self-interest of the dominate male hierarchy. Ruther makes an elegant argument, the associations between denigrated nature and the female gender (the great mother), and the triumphant sky father (the transcendent God of the Christians) fit so neatly, it is hard to reject. On the other hand, the medieval Christian relation to nature was very complex. In late antiquity, for example, St. Augustine is said by Scheibinger to have ascribed to women an inferior nature and lesser reason.<sup>13</sup> Yet, her comments do not represent Augustine's true positions. He tried to correct abuses against women through a doctrine of spiritual equality, he argued that they possessed equal reason to that of men, and he said nothing about inferior natures. Most Christian mystics believed in some sort of illumination of the transcendent through the natural world. Natural creatures were seen as vessels, or mirrors of the divine; "God in all creatures and all creatures in God."<sup>14</sup><br /><br />What these arguments really demonstrate, however, is a very complex situation. It is an oversimplification to say that Christian belief in transcendence resulted in the abhorrence and exploitation of nature. A combination of cultural and economic forces produced certain attitudes toward nature which are often read as denigration if one is not careful to understand the relation of value. Historians tend to read back into transcendence their own assumptions of alienation created by the enlightenment, Karl Marx, and Jackob Burkhart's view of Renaissance autonomy. There was a sense of medieval alienation from nature. In German culture, fear of the forest, fear of the unknown, created a certain sense of danger in the natural world. There were anti-naturalistic assumptions surviving from gnosticism and the Manicheans, which asserted themselves in groups such as the Cathori. The bias of Latin culture for action over contemplation created economic forces which took on a life of their own, and laid claim to nature as a thing to control.<sup>15-16(?)</sup><br /><br />David Lindberg draws upon Max Weber's theory of modernization in order to explain the way in which economic forces drove religious attitudes. After the fall of the Roman empire, the center of power and population shifted to the north, where Gaul and the Rhineland had already become the industrial base of the late empire. A less developed culture was struggling to come to terms with a civilization which had ceased to function and had to be re-created. Daily life under such conditions was hard, labor saving devices were much more important than theoretical insights. Technological applications, such as the heavy plow, the harness, wind and water power probably have more to do with conquest of nature than do metaphysical speculations. The supernatural ontology did not denigrate nature, but it did allow for trends which eventually issued in both science and capitalism. The supernatural ontology grew along with these developments, and plays a part in the rise of science. In order to fully understand this argument, however, it will be necessary to take an historical view, to trace the major themes as they unfold side by side, beginning with the Church's early self-identity and relation to nature.<sup>17-20</sup><br /><br />The Church, in the first three centuries of the era, forged its identity in opposition to gnosticism. In so doing, it also forged its understanding of the relationship between God and the natural world. The "gnostic" were not a unified movement, but most of them held in common a Persian style dualism, (a stark contrast between spirit and matter, represented as the forces of light and dark, good and evil) and an abhorrence of the material world. For most gnosticis, the flesh was evil, as was all matter. Humans were divine sparks of light trapped in evil flesh, only the secret knowledge which would return them tot he other world had any value in this life. In struggling to define itself apart from gnosticism's "tragic myth," the emerging orthodoxy, Irenaeus of Lyons in particular, (mid second century, C.E.) proclaimed that God's creation was "a single world full of the glory of the God who created it and to whose providence all its history is subject. The world of matter and time is not alien to man." <sup>21</sup>As the Church made more explicit its views on the relation between God, humanity, and the natural world, the analogical ontology was formulated as the action of Grace upon human nature.<sup>22</sup> External nature was not disvalued, but valued in its relation to supernature as its ground and end. Where the Greeks developed an emphasis upon the transcendence of God, and God's gracious approach to creatures, the Latins thought more along the lines of moral valuations.<sup>23</sup><br /><br />Thus, for Augustine, a product of Latin culture in North Africa (late 3d early 4th centuries) grace is divinely bestowed power of action, the effect of God upon the will. The relation of immanence to transcendence is, for Augustine, the relation of a scale of values; temporal and eternal. Eternal values represent that which we are to love, temporal values are that which we use. This does not mean, however, that because the temporal order of the natural world consists of things we use, less perfect than the eternal, that it is unimportant, or of no value. This scale of values, hierarchical though it may be, is not a dichotomy of denigration.<br /><br />It would be ridiculous, on the other hand, to regard the defects of beasts, trees and other mutable and mortal things which lack intelligence, sense, or life, as deserving condemnation. Such defects do indeed effect the decay of their nature, which is liable to dissolution; but these creatures have received their mode of being by the will of their creator, whose purpose is that they should bring to perfection the beauty of the lower parts of the universe by their alternation and succession in the passage of the seasons; and this is a beauty in its own kind, finding its place among the constituent parts of this world. Not that such things of earth were meant to be comparable with heavenly realities. Yet the fact that those other realities are of higher value does not mean that these lower creatures should have been excluded from the whole scheme of things.<br /><br />Moreover, for Augustine, no existence is contrary to God, therefore, mater is not contrary to spirit. Enmity with God did not arise out of nature, but of will. "Augustine insisted that sin is situated not in the body, but in the will. This was a point of extraordinary importance, because it helped to liberate Christendom from the [gnostic] notion that the soul is contaminated by its contact with the body--and therefore that matter and flesh must be inherently evil."<br /><br />Nor was Augustine opposed to study of the natural world, provided the study bare some relation to the scale of ultimate values. Augustine used references to the scientific learning of his day throughout his writings, mainly to illustrate his theological concepts. In the final analysis, he placed less value on knowing physical causes, than on knowing eternal values, but he did not obstruct learning. He even developed a conception of natural laws of cause and effect. Augustine's causality allowed for things to change according to their divinely bestowed natures, "God governs his creation `from the summit of the whole causal nexus.'" This is a description of the analogical ontology, the relation of natural law to the higher law of supernature. St. Augustine does not denigrate nature, nor does its place on the temporal value scale mean that an understanding of nature is to be condemned. Rather, nature is given theological value in relation to the higher scale.<br /><br /></span></span></blockquote>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-420459172025343742019-01-03T03:34:00.002-08:002019-01-03T03:34:25.606-08:00Christinaity, Supernature, and the Rise of Science in Middle Ages. Part 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;">Augustine's scale of values, plus Pseudo-Dionysius' hierarchies of being combined with the great chain of being to form the basis of the Medieval synthesis. The natural world was valued in its relation to supernature, and contemplated as a symbol of the transcendent (fire symbolized the soul's longing to rise to God, for example). The world was the fallen world of sin, a proposition which leads some historians to see dualism at work. Nevertheless, it was not a metaphysical dualism. The world was not sinful because it was alien to the spirit, but fallen from grace through human will. Moreover, it still stood in relation to and derived valuation from its ontological relation to the divine. An elaborate sacramental system grew out of the need and desire to "have a society which is guided by the present reality of transcendent divine character." Boethius (d. 524), Cassiodorus (d. 580), and Bede (672-735) laid down the principle of nature as a consistent system obeying a verifiable set of laws, and understandable through reason. Lindberg argues that this view of nature as "meaningful order revealing God's purpose" enabled the re-emergence of science. This "meaningful order" was embodied in the supernatural ontology. At this point, there was also in influx of pagan magic, to which the Church closed its eyes. Science, in the "dark ages," consisted of some Aristotle, Pleny, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and a few classical mannuels and encyclopedic works.<br /><br />In the early medieval period (the "dark ages") there does seem to have been a dualistic attitude toward nature, with transcendence of the spirit over matter outweighing an interest in nature. Nevertheless, this dualism is not necessarily linked to the supernatural ontology per se, but could easily be the remnants of gnostic influeces. Moreover, the church, under influence Bede, sought to preserve knowledge of the natural world. From the 5th to the 10th Christianity enabled the survival of ancient learning, through preservation of the "quadrivium," in monastic life (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, sometimes with medicine added). The earliest known presentation of the quadrivium was the work of Isidore of Seville (d. 636). "In the seventh century an efflorescence of scholarly activity took place in the British isles, and Isidore's encyclopedic efforts were complemented with those of Bede (d. 735)...the scientific activities of Bede's age formed part of a widespread missionary program. The spearheads of the program were the monasteries." Nevertheless, the monasteries were passive recorders of learning, not active students of science. The culture outside the monasteries was basically oral, but a true revival of the liberal arts came in the Carolingian Renaissance, in the eighth century. Most of the Carolingian contributions to science amounted to copying texts, but the Hortulus of Theodulph of Orleans made original contributions to the study of botany. Moreover, John the Scot, the most celebrated thinker of the age, advanced the notion of "man" as the microcosm of the universe. This notion placed humanity in a position of antinomy, between nature and God, but it also served to create a relation of dialectical connection between the two. It was a reflection of the ontological relation between God and nature. The Carolingian period deteriorated into a century and a half of administrative chaos and confusion.<br /><br />By the 10th century, economic forces combined with religious attitudes to create a new set of values, altering the human relationship to nature and the divine. Economic forces, such as the growth of cities, freed rural populations from agricultural life and created an artisan class. Gerbert of Aurillac (Rheims 972), helped to popularize the astrolabe, and algerism (arabic numerals) thus making a real contribution to trade, which was increasing dramatically. "There emerged a new set of values which--for better or worse--regarded the transformation of this world as sufficient for salvation in the next." As Lindberg documents, From the 10th to the 12th centuries, a new movement spread through Europe: the combination of monastic life and efficient economic production, the Cistercians being the most notable example. This prodo-capitalism brought with it exploitive attitudes toward nature, not because the ontology of supernature led to a juxtopossion of spirit and matter, but because the imperatives of economic production created the need to contorl nature. As White points out, however, these same force also brought with them an interest in understanding nature.<br /><br />The seeds of Renaissance were planted in the 10th century, they came to full flower in the 12th century, and with them, a vital upsurge of interest in nature. The 12th century saw some very complex developments, because it brought not only a Renaissance, economic expansion and the rise of scientific study, but also a religious reformation. The movement included reform of Church corruption, as well as a mystical sense of the divine. Schiebinger makes the point that monastic institutions afforded women a measure of power, education, and scientific study. She mentions Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), who was "the most notable medieval woman author on medicine, natural history, and cosmology." She was also one of the most notable mystics of the middle ages; a major leader of the reform movement. Hildegard, through her studies of the natural world, transformed static Greek science into mystical symbolism.<br /><br />The most strightfarward example of mystical nature symbolism is, as White says, the ant was a lesson to the lazy, fire symbolized the spirit's desire to rise toward God, "the view of natuare is artistic rather than scientific." A more complex form of nature sybolism is dealt with by William Inge, the entire last chapter of his famous Bampton lectures was entitled "nature-mysticism and symbolism." The host in holy communian, and the sacraments in general, become symbols of the divine. In the same way, all of nature becomes such a symbol. Fairweather argues that the most powerful example of the harmony of nature and supernature is the incarnation itself; the transcendent in the immanent, divinity in humanity, logos in flesh. In Hildegard's vision of the creation of the world, animals, fire, planets and stars symbolise human nature in harmony with the divine. She saw animal heads appear around a human figure and rays of light from the seven planets illuminated them. The meaning was explained to her in another vision as follows, as she states:<br /><br />On this world God has sourrounded and strengthened humans beings with all these things and steeped with very great power so that all creation supports the human race in all things. All nature ought to be at the service of human beings, so that they can work with nature since, in fact, human beings can neither live nor survive without it.<br /><br />A host of German woman, contemporaries of Hildegard, deserve mention: among them, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Gertrude the great of Helfta, and Gertrude of Heckborn. All of these figures used nature symbolism to illumine understanding of the divine. The German mystics, far from denigrating nature, were so enchanted by it that they are often charged with pantheism; Meister Eckhart being one of the primary examples of this type of mystic. In the southern mediterranean, St. Francis brought in a new understanding of the relation to nature. Francis put nature on equal terms with humanity, "he opened up nature with respect to its ground of being, which is the same as with man." Contrary to the popular image, however, St. Francis was not a "nature mystic," that title fits Eckhart much better. Francis did not divinize nature, nor did he romanticize it. Instead, he democratized it, putting animals, trees, the stars, and the planets on the same level as humanity (his hym to "brother sun, sister moon"); all creatures beloved of God. There is a story for example, probabbly myth, which illustrates Francis attitude toward animals. A hunter was about to kill a wolf which had become a killer. Francis stood in the way and said, "don't harm brother wolf." On the other hand, he did preach to animals, on the assumption that as creatures of God they loved God and enjoyed hearing the Gospel. He also began an active engagement with life in the world, rather than contemplation in the monastery. His new order, along with their female counterparts, the Poor Clares, began a medieval poverty movement which threatened to reform the whole Church. For this reason, and because he did change the attitude toward nature, Tillich calls him "the true father [parent we could say] of the Renaissance."<br /><br />The entire relationship of humans to nature was being re-thought, not to the exclusion of the divine, but based on and related to the divine in a different way. Through the works of John the Scot, the word "universitas" came into more common parlance, meaning, that nature was seen as a whole (a universe, a united diversity--a uninted and harmonious whole made up of many smaller parts). Theologians, artists, poets, and other thinkers "reflected that they were themselves caught up within the framework of nature, were themselves also bits of this cosmos they were ready to master." Nature came to be valued, not merely as a symbol of the spiritual, but in its own right (as with St. Francis). God had always been present in the world, but now God infused nature with divine being. "To conceive the world as one whole is already to perceive its profound structure--a world of forms transcending the medley of visible and sense-perceptible phenomena. The whole penetrates each of its parts; it is one universe; God conceived it as a unique living being, and its intelligible model is itself a whole."<br /><br />A new relation between nature and God led to the realization of nature's beauty in its own right, and to scientific curiosity. The study of nature was not divorced from the spiritual, however, but the two were inter-related. The search for natural causes began in many monasteries: at Tours, Orleans, Paris, but most notably at Chartres and Saint-Victor. There was a reaction against the search for natural causes, not out of denigration of nature, but on the grounds that God is the final cause of all things, one need not seek further. William of Conches denied that the search for causes detracted from the Glory of God, the search for natural causes was the great work of the believer. He charged his opponents with "placing more reliance on their monkish garb than on their wisdom." The major proponents of the new outlook at Chartres were William of Conches, Adelard of Bath, Bernard Silvester, Hermann of Carinthia, John of Salisbury, and most notable, Gilbert of Poitiers.<br /><br />These men wrote scientific treatises, they defended a naturalistic outlook which placed natural order interest in the natural order above the miraculous, but, they did so from within a framework of faith. Adelard distinguished between the creative acts of God, and the autonomous forces of nature, while Andrew of Saint-Victor argued that before recourse to miracles, one must seek out natural explanations. Hugh of Saint-Victor argued for a historicizing exegesis which declined allegorizing, thus moving interpretation out of the realm of nature as symbol, and into the realm of naturalism and history. This was not, however, the autonomous machine of a latter age. These theologians still operated under the categories of Greek metaphysics, nature was still infused with essence, and each aspect of the chain of being stood in relation to its next highest component, and was drawn toward the divine through supernature, which held it all together as whole in God.<br /><br />Curiosity about nature shifted, from wonder at the amazing (such as comets), to curiosity about regular order. The word "Nature" was spelled with a capital "N," and nature was personified and presented in a sophisticated and literary fashion. Alan of Lille wrote The Complaint of Nature, in which nature is personified as the goddess. Nevertheless, "to exalt these powers of Nature was not at all to detract proudly form the omnipotence of God,...and Alan's Nature was herself made to proclaim this fact: `His working is one, whereas mine is many; his work stands of itself, whereas mine fails from within...and in order that you may recognize that my power is powerless in contrast to the divine power, know that my effect is defective and my energy cheap.'"<br /><br />With so much attention upon nature, and humanity's place in it, an old idea re-emerged in new form. The theme of "man as the microcosm" of the universe was re-introduced (taken from the Timaeus by John the Scot in an earlier age). It was echoed in 1125 with the Elucidarium of Honorius of Autun. From that time on it had a wide diffusion through European monastic centers. William of Saint-Thierry based his physics on it, and it spread through Cistercian centers, taken up by a new generation after 1150. Hildegard of Bingen used the physics of William of Saint-Thierry in the construction of her theological symbolism. The scholastics also drew upon the Hermetic corpus as a source of the macrocosm/microcosm theme, which became so important latter in Renaissance alchemy, and humanism, and as a direct result of its revival in the monasteries. The concept of the macrocosm in the microcosm was part and parcel of the supernatural ontology. It was a picture of the harmonious relation between immanent and transcendent, nature and supernature. On the other hand, it was a new picture of these relationships. Humanity is placed in an antinomy, humanity is both an image of the world and an image of God. The tension is found between nature, which operates as God's ordered creation, and the radical distinction between God and creation.<br /><br />These ontological developments set up developments in the next century which would not only create the most sophisticated and elaborate expression of supernatural ontology, but at the same time, would sow the seeds of its own negation. Renaissance autonomy and humanism flow directly out of the ontological formations in the 12th and thirteenth centuries. The revival of Aristotle, due in large part to the conquest of Moorish Spain, would not only feed scientific knowledge, but submerge the ontological influence of the Timaeus as well. The major proponents were Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and in French vernacular literature, such as that of Jean de Meun. Of course, the greatest of these was Aquinas. Due to a complex situation, the attempt to prove the existence of God, and to prove the Trinity through reason, had become a major issue by the 13th century. This attempt flowed directly out of the theme of humanity as microcosm. It is also related to theorizing about the limits of reason and course of scientific study.<br /><br />If human nature still bore some trace of the Imago, human reason must be capable of decerning God. "Conversely, only if the state of nature were now devoid of the superadded gift of grace, could one contend, on Christian grounds, that certain mysteries of the faith...were beyond the reach of nature and of reason." This controversy was predicated upon the Augustinian notion of the relation between nature and grace. Before moving on to try and demonstrate the proofs for God (which are of no concern here), Aquinas first worked out a position on theological method. It was the development of that position which begins the autonomous life of reason and nature apart from grace. He argued that in other sciences argument from authority was the weakest. Not so in theology, however, because one is arguing from divine revelation. Thus, Aquinas' position was not based on empistemological concerns, which he side-stepped, but on doctrines of creation and redemption, on the relation between nature and grace (that is to say, reason is given though nature, revelation through grace). Aquinas was not separating nature and grace, but explicating their relation to one another. "Grace does not abolish nature, but completes it." Ultimately, for Aquinas, reason and faith will agree on final points of truth.<br /><br />Aquinas bound together knowledge of truth on different levels, through the relation of nature to grace. In so doing, he developed a position of autonomy, but not one of alienation. Nature is capable of certain effects, unaided by grace. But, grace completes nature and raises it to the level of the divine through supernature. Through reason one could conclude that there was a creator, but only through revelation could one know the Trinity. Human reason could know some things unaided, but it was not capable of knowing all things. This completion of nature means that human nature can be exalted, energized supernaturally, and sanctified (the eastern orthodox concept is called 'deification'). It is only through grace that humans are able to know what God is, but that God is can be gleaned from sense experience of the works of nature.<br /><br />Perhaps the greatest literary expression of Aquinas' views on the relation of nature and grace, are found almost a half century latter, in Dante. Even though literary scholars have long held that "`the Thomism of Dante is an exploded myth,'" Dante is clearly at home in the world of medieval Latin theology, and places into Virgil's mouth words which evoke Aquinas' distinction between that which can be revealed by nature, and revelation by grace. "So far as reason plead can I instruct thee; beyond that point, wait for Beatrice; for faith I here need." Only so far as reason is concerned can nature enlighten Dante, for matters of faith, the divine is required. Although, since the question was in regard to the nature of love, this answer tells us as more about Dante's notions of romantic love (a divine matter) than it does about Thomistic epistemology. Nevertheless, Virgil's answer is an interesting counterpoint to the rather unintelligible experiment Beatrice works out for Dante in order to demonstrate to him the nature of the moon.<br /><br /></span></span></blockquote>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-38976351088266806462019-01-03T03:30:00.002-08:002019-01-03T03:30:58.269-08:00Christinaity, Supernature, and the Rise of Science in Middle Ages. Part 3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;">While rising from Purgitory, toward the heaven of the moon, Dante wonders how they can enter the pearl-like substance. It is a mystery, "like the union of divine and human nature in Christ." Dante than asks how it is that the moon, a perfect heavenly body, has spots. Beatrice answers that the distribution of the intelligence which governs each body varies in different places. She then gives him an experiment to perform which confirms this revelation. The important point is that here knowledge is coming from both faith and reason (revelation and experiment). Since this is an occasion in which sense data will suffice, experiment will confirm what faith has already taught. Beatrice praises experiment as the fountainhead of the arts, "From this objection may experiment deliver thee, if thou its virtue try, (Source where from stream the arts that you invent)." (Paradiso, Canto II. 4-6. Thus, Dante forms the perfect bridge between medieval and early modern, he forms perhaps the greatest literary expression of the medieval cosmos just before the transition into a scientifically defined universe. The Comedy also represents one of the last great artistic expressions of the valuation of nature in relation to the divine, the exaltation of grace over nature.<br /><br />The dissolution of the unity began in the middle of the twelfth century, when a dispute arose over the independence of science from classical learning and tradition. This dispute set science on the road to mathematical precision, and to the view that the universe must be viewed as a dynamic system, no longer described in traditional ways. But, with the rise of Renaissance humanism, the exaltation of nature over grace begins. A comparison between Dante and Pico Dela Mirandola demonstrates how far the change had gone. Dante's Virgil is willing to remain silent in matters pertaining to revelation. The Comedy is a perfect description of the medieval cosmos, complete with the ontological relation of nature and grace. Human nature is exalted by grace, but human aspiration is in line with divine will. Thus, when Dante asks if those trapped in the heaven of the moon don't long for a higher state, he is told, "brother, the virtue of love hath pacified our will; we long for what we have alone, nor any craving stirs in us beside. If we desired to reach a loftier zone, our longings would be all out of accord with His will..."(Par. Canto III. 70-74). With Pico's oration "On the Dignity of Man," however, the notions of the Microcosm and Macrocosm are extended to their logical humanistic conclusions. These themes emerged out of the ontology of supernature, but with Pico, "there is nothing to be seen more wonderful than man." All the choice is with humanity. "He [God] took man, a creature of indeterminate nature...and addressed him thus,...`thou constrained by no limits, in accord with thine own free will, in whose hand we have placed thee, shall ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature.'" In the medieval ontology, humanity is fallen in will, but a spark of the Imago still resides in human nature, which bestows rational reason and spiritual love, and thus, grace can exalt and perfect human nature. With Pico's Renaissance humanism, humanity is set no limits, can choose for itself to rise to the heavens or sink to the earth. Humanity determines its own nature.<br /><br />This exaltation of nature over grace grew until, almost four centuries latter, a new valuation of nature emerges, independent of grace. The old relation of nature and grace was rejected, identified too closely with scholasticism. The Reformation, while preserving the relationship between God and the world (immanence and transcendence, God's grace present in the world) Luther removed the centerpiece form the system. For Luther, humanity was not "God-capable." A whole new relationship between nature and grace was forged, one based on sheer volunterism and equivocity (the unlikeness of creature and creator). Equivocity, for Luther, is based primarily upon the doctrine of the fall. He assumed that the act of sin had completely destroyed the image of God in which humanity was originally created. By the 16th century a new feeling for nature was forming. People wanted to own the world they had discovered, to feel comfortable in their new relationship with nature. Humanism marked a total rejection of scholasticism, the relation of nature and Grace was almost reversed. Thus, Fontenelle's Marquise, when asked "did you not have a more grandiose conception of the universe?" replies, "well, I hold it in much higher regard...now that I know its like a watch..." There was a trend toward the diestic view of a God "out there." The older view Fontenelle describes as "...a false notion of mystery wrapped in obscurity. They only admire nature because they believe she's a kind of magic."<br /><br />Newton and Boyle, having totally rejected scholasticism, in the last quarter of the 17th century, nevertheless maintain an ordered relation between God and the universe. Newton's sensorium of God, which explained "action at a distance" involved in gravity (his private explanation) was taken directly from the work of 14th century scholastics (Thomas Bradwardine and Nichole Oresme) who identified God with space itself. "Despite the virtuosi's sustained and vigorous denounciation of scholastic philosophy, they heavily upon the medieval heritage in their use of teleology...they combined the mechanical view of nature with the medieval conception that nature is the product of divine goodness." Newton and Boyle were at pains to explain God's activity in a mechanical universe, but, as Brooke says, "for latter generations less tolerant of paradox, less tolerant of things above reason, less tolerant of a realm of grace above a realm of nature, a clockwork universe demanded nothing more than an original clockmaker." D'Alembert said that one could understad the existence of God though natural reason, but he went on to say that scholastic ontology was superstition. Nature was valued in its own right, but as a separate piece of machinery, divorced from divine valuations and grace. For Newton and Boyle, grace was not so much completing nature, as it was propping up their cosmologies. In a sense, nature was completing grace.<br /><br />The supernatural ontology ceased to be important to scientific explanation, not only because it ceased to inform the scientific method, but also because cultural values had as much to do with the process as did scientific method. Scientists could have continued to understand the God-world relationship as an important completion of scientific understanding (as indeed they did until well into the 18th century). But, the cultural value of autonomy changed the way in which "higher" explanations were connected to the causal world. Rather than the immanent God who worked through supernature, dietic thinkers, and philosophes in the enlightenment, came to value the for itself apart from God, and to view God as the absent God who wound up the universe and left it to run on its own.<br /><br />When historians of science, such as Grant, Lindberg, and White, argue that Christian belief helped to spur the development of science in the middle ages, their accounts of those developments are incomplete as long as they ignore the supernatural ontology. White attributes the interest in science to developments in natural theology, but an understanding in natural theology is incomplete as long as it ignores the supernatural ontology upon which the whole foundation of natural theology was built. The 12th century developments above describe the rise of natural theology. Moreover, White explains the interest in natural theology merely as an attempt to "understand God's mind by examining his creation. Clearly, there is much more to the rise of natural theology. It was not only attempt at understanding God through creation (that attempt was made in using nature as a symbol of the divine). There was an actual value of nature which went into the process. The conception of nature as a whole, the notion of the Universitas, had given rise to an appreciation of nature in its own right. That was made possible by the value bestowed upon nature through its intimate connection to the divine, the harmony between immanent and transcendent. Grant argues that harmony between science and theology existed in the 12th century because theologians were trained in both natural philosophy and natural theology. True enough, but there must have been a reason why they were so trained. Grant suggests that the reason is because, being trained in both, they knew how to relate the two disciplines. On the other hand, there must be more to it than mere lack of professional jealousy. Why were they trained in both? Because, they saw both as an inter-related whole. Nature was valued "in its own right," but not as an autonomous piece of clock-work which with no relation to grace. They understood the valuation of nature as an extension of grace, nature was valued in its own right because it was the creation of a God who was immanent, as well as transcendent, and who gave nature theological significance.</span></span></blockquote>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-74238863586712946642019-01-03T03:28:00.003-08:002019-01-03T03:28:41.750-08:00Christinaity, Supernature, and the Rise of Science in Middle Ages. Part 4: NOTES<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY</b></center>
<br /><br />Augustine. <i>The City of God.</i> translated Henry Bettenson. Penguin Books, 1972. This edition 1984.<br />Bingen, Hildegard von. <i>Hildegard of Bingen's Book of Divine Works: With Letters and Songs.</i> ed. Matthew Fox. Sante Fe, New Mexico: Bear and Company inc. 1987.<br />Brooke, John Hedley. <i>Science And Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. The cambridge history of Sciences Series.</i> Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.<br />Charlton, D. G. <i>New Images of The Natural: A Study In European Cultural History, 1750-1800.</i> The Gifford Lectures, London: Cambridge University Press, 1884.<br />Chenu, Marie-Dominique. <i>Nature, Man, Society in The Twelfth Century.</i> Wehic Press, 1979.<br />D'Alembert, <i>Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot.</i> Trans. Richard Swab. The library of liberal arts series, Bobbs Merrill company, 1963.<br />Dante. <i>The Divine Comedy.</i> Trans. Lawrence Binyon, ed. Paolo Miano, New York: Viking Press, 1947.<br />Fairweather, Eugene R. "Christianity and The Supernatural," in New Theology Number One. Martin E. Marty and Dan G. Peerman, ed., New York: The Macmillian Company, 1964.<br />Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier. On The Plurality Of Worlds. trans. H. A. Hargraves. Berkeley: University of California press, 1990.<br />Grant, Edward. "Science and Theology in The Middle Ages," in God and Nature: Historical Essays ON The Encounter Between Christianity and Science. ed. David Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.<br />Inge, William Ralph.<i> Christian Mysticism. the famous Bampton Lectures</i>, Oxford, 1899, New York: Meredian, Living Age Books, 1956, second printing, 1960.<br />L Ladurie, LeRoy. "Introduction," <i>Montaillou: Promised Land of Error</i>. trans. Barbara Bray, New York: George Braziller, Inc. 1978 (American pub. date, originally 1975).<br />Lindberg, David "Science and The Early Church," in Lindberg, Op. Cit. . <i>Science In the Middle Ages</i>. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.<br />Lovejoy, Arthor O. <i>The Great Chain of Being: The History of An Idea.</i> The William James lecture 1833, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934. This edition 13th printing 1976.<br />Lloyd, Genevieve. The Man of Reason: "Male" and "Female" in Western Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.<br />Marcus, R. A. Christianity In The Roman World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974.<br />Pelikan, Jaroslav. <i>The Christian Tradition: A History of The Development of Doctrine. The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300).</i> Vol. III. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.<br />Ruther, Rosemary Radord. Sexism in God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology. Boston: Beacon Press, 1983.<br />Scheeben, Mathias Joseph. Nature And Grace. trans. Cyril Vollert, ST. Louis:Herder Book Company, 1954 (originally 1856).<br />Schiebenger, Londa. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in The Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.<br />Tanner, Kathryn. God and Creation In Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment. Basil Blackwell, 1988.<br />Tillich, Paul. A History of Christian Thought. ed. Carl Bratten. New York: Simmon and Schuster, 1968.<br />Westfall, Richard. <i>Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England.</i><br />Ann Arbor paperbacks: University of Michigan Press, 1973 (originally, 1958).<br />Willey, Basil. <i>The Seventeenth Century Background: STudies in The Thought of The Age In Relation to Poetry and Religion.</i> London: Chatto and Windus, 1934, seventh impression, 1957.<br />White, Lynn. "The Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," in Machina Ex Deo: Essays in The Dynamism of Western Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1968.<br /><br /><br /><b>End Notes</b><br /><br />1 The term "supernature" simply refers to the concept of the supernatural. But, that concept is much changed in modern parlance. The term first originated with Pseudo-Dionysius around 500 CE. In modern terms it refers to anything wired, or beyond the normal course of cause and effect; the occult, psychic powers, and so on. In scholastic terminology, however, it is two things: the realm of the transcendent (or God's presence beyond the created order), or the power to God to alter the natural and bestow grace. Miracles, for example, are "supernatural effects." To say that supernature is the ground and end of nature is simply to say that God is the origin of the nature, and whatever goal or purpose is fulfilled in creation, it is fulfilled to the extent that it moves toward God's purpose. This could be a moral goal, it doesn't have to be a physical effect, because "nature" includes human nature (and primarily human nature in scholasticism). Supernature is the higher law, rooted in God's will and grace (power). see Fairweather and Scheeben.<br /><br />2 Eugene R. Fairweather, "Christianity and the Supernatural," in New Theology N0. 1. Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman, ed. (New York: The Macmillian Company, 1964), 237.<br /><br />These are Fairweathers terms; the analogical ontology, which is juxtaposed to the "equivocal" and "univocal" views. The equivocal representing the reformed and neo-orthodox theology, the univocal representing enlightenment based liberal theology. Admittedly, Fairweather's schema is too Thomistic to be accurate, but his terms are handy descriptions of concepts which take a long time to lay out, so I use them. He speaks of the harmonious relation of immanence and transcendence as "analogical" on the assumption that religious language is merely analogy. Since the transcendent is beyond word, thought, or image, the most we can ever hope for is an analogical relation, or pure mystical experience. Of course, there is nothing to guarantee the accuracy of the analogy. But, in contrast to the other two views, the idea is that rather than losing the supernatural in the natural (which includes the materialist view as well as most liberal theology) and rather than losing the relation of nature to grace through sheer volunterism (which the reformers substituted for creative purpose in their notions of soverginty), what for Fairweather is the "correct" view, maintains some relation between creature and creator, even if we can only know that relation through analogy.<br /><br />3 Fairweather, 245-253.<br /><br />Fairweather traces the notion of supernatural from the early days of the Church to modern times, in summary fashion. He emphasizes the Greek, Augustine, Aquinas, the Reformers, and Paul Tillich. He argues specifically against the denigration theory.<br /><br />4 Fairweather, p. 237.<br />5 White, 86.<br />6 Ibid., 88.<br />7 Rosemary Radford Ruther. Sexism in God-Talk: Toward A Feminist Theology. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), 54.<br /><br />Ruther argues that in religious thinking of the West the association is always between the female, the earth, nature, and the mother goddess, the male associated with the sky, heaven, transcendence, and the sky father. Thus, transcendence is the longing of the male ego to survive, and is rooted in the warrior culture and its tendency to force young boys, when coming of age, to flee the "world of women" and join the men.<br /><br />8 Ibid.<br />9 Schiebinger, 162.<br />10 Lovejoy, 103.<br />11 Ibid.<br />12 Fairweather, 327.<br />13 Schiebinger, 1969.<br /><br />"Augustine had asserted that both sexes, having been created in the image of God, posses a rational soul (though woman's rationality was of a lesser degree). While woman might be inferior to man by nature, she was his equal by grace: in the afterlife souls have no sex..." She footnotes Eleanor Mclaughlin "equality of souls, inequality of sexes" in Religion and Sexism, Images of Women in The Jewish and Christian Traditions. ed. Rosemary Ruther. New York: 1974, 218. On the other hand, see Genevieve Lloyd. The Man of Reason: "Male" and "Female" in Western Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 29. Lloyd argues that Augustine was stuck with the baggage of Genesis, and was forced to explain woman's difference in creation in terms of subordination, but he tried to explain it in such a way as to correct the denigration of women. "His own interpretation of the sexual symbolism of Genesis is clearly supposed to defend woman against what he perceived as the misogynism of earlier exegesis...Augustine attempted to articulate sexual equity with respect to reason, while yet finding interpretive content for the Genesis account subordination of woman to man...what woman is as a rational spirit [not necessarily after life] must be distinguished from what she symbolizes in her bodily difference from man." What she symbolizes is human reason diverting toward the practical, Lloyd argues, not the lack of reason, or less reason. While this answer is unworthy of a thinker of Augustine's stature, he could hardly have picked up a better one at Woodstock.<br /><br />14 Evelyn Underhill. Mysticism. (New York: Meridian books, 1955) originally published 1911. 206.<br />15 Lindberg, Science in Middle Ages, 42.<br />16 Ladurie, viii. 17 Lindberg draws upon Weber at this point, to explain the economic developments and religious attitudes toward those developments in the 10th through 12th centuries. Science In The Middle Ages, 29-42. Unfortunately, Lindberg does not explain exactly what those theories are, or how they really explain the developments. He simply says that economic forces drove religious attitudes. Fortunately, I used to be a sociology major. Weber was one of my favorites. In The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic he says that the protestant reformation prepared the ground for capitalism by instilling an ethical base thorough religious attitudes. The same set of sensibilities required to be a good Calvinist, were also those required to be a good capitalist. His theory was also wider, and he applied it to many periods of history. Lindberg seems to be arguing that religious attitudes and economic developments were mutually reinforcing and laid the groundwork for the rise of medieval science in the 12th century.<br /><br />18 Ibid., 25.<br />19 Ibid., 23.<br />20 Ibid., 27.<br />21 R. A. Markus. Christianity In The Roman World. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974), 60.<br />22 Fairweather, 247<br />23 Fairweather, 248<br />24 ST. Augustine, The City of God. Trans. Henry Bettenson, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1972/84) Book XII, Chapter 4.4, p. 475.<br />25 Ibid., 473-4.<br />26 David C. Lindberg, God and Nature: Historical Essays on The Encounter Between Christianity and Science. ed. David C. Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 31.<br />27 Lindberg, 35.<br /><br />Augustine didn't really make any contributions to the development of science, but Lindberg numbers him among the "early church practitioners" of science. Augustine did apply scientific thinking on occasion. He used the example of twins to counter astrology; both babies are born under the same sign, at the same time, but one is often weaker and meets a different fate than the other.M<br /><br />28 Lindberg, 37.<br />29 Arthor O. Lovejoy. The Great Chain of Being. The William James Lectures, 1933,(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), 67.<br />30 Grant, 50-51.<br />31 D.G. Charlton. New Images Of The Natural In France: A Study in European Cultural History, 1750-1800. The Gifford Lectures (New York, London: Cambridge University Press, 1984),35.<br />32 Paul Tillich. A History of Christian Thought. ed. Carl E. Braaten, (Simon and Schuster: Touchstone, 1967), 154.<br />33 Lindberg, Science in The Middle Ages. 42<br 33.="" 34="" ages="" br="" in="" lindberg="" middle="" science="" /><span style="background-color: white;"> 35 Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Lindberg includes as magic, of course, the supernatural and the sacraments. From an anthropological view this is quite correct, but his inclusion of miracles is conceptually wrong. Miracles and magic are not the same thing, not simply because Christian belief (the Bible for example) condemns one and condones the other, but because they stem from two different concepts. Magic seems to be based on the ultimate premise that some force built into nature can be controlled by the user. For example, with the Hermetic corpus, there is a certain design which the ancients knew of that allows for the control of nature in a certain way. Miracles, on the other hand, or "supernatural effects" as Scheeben calls them, are not the result of the user's control, but of God's will. Moreover, they are not brought into play by some hidden design within nature, but by the orchestration of supernature; that is, they are the laws of nature obeying a higher law which is evoked at God's choosing. From an anthropological view this may be hair splitting, but from within the inner logic of a theological tradition it makes a large difference. Be that as it may, Lindberg's basic point still stands, by allowing the infusion of pagan magic, which is obvious in some respects, if not in the sacraments, Christianity allowed a combination of traditions which emerged as science in the Renaissance.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">36 Edward Grant, "Science and Theology IN the Middle Ages." in Lindberg, God And Nature. 49.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">37 In his famous lectures, the Bampton lectures (Oxford, 1899) on Christian mysticism, William Ralph Inge speaks of "medieval dualism" of spirit over matter. This is in contradiction to Fairweather, Tanner, and others. Nevertheless, even though the lectures were given at the turn of the century, Inge has been considered the major authority on Christian mysticism thoughout most of the 20th century. Inge does go on, however, to state that the view of the more developed mystics was toward the notion of harmony and unity. Christian Mysticism, 263. He also states, "all nature [for Christian mysticism] (and there are few more pernicious errors than that which seperates man from nature) is the language in which God expresses his thoughts," 250. Inge has long been one of my favorites, so I feel in all honesty I must admitt that this compromises my argument. But, I still think there is an idea here, so I have tried to qualify my argument (I'm tweeking it). After all, who wants to be an ideologue?</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">38 Lauderie shows that the Manachiean influences in France fed into the Cathari dualism, which did disvalue the natural world. Like some forms of gnosticism from the early centuries, this did not always take the form of asceticism, it sometimes meant licence to sin (we are trapped in matter anayway, so why avoid sex?). The Cathori had two levels of believer, (as did the Manachieans) the "perfects," or elites, abstaned, the ordinary people (peasants mostly) did not abstaine, but indulged at an almost alarming level.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">39 Ibid., 34.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">40 Ibid., 35.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">41 Chenu, 29.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">42 Lindberg, Science in The Middle Ages, 37.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">43 Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">44 Ibid., 30.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">45 Schiebinger, 13.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">46 Underhill, 458.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">47 M.D. Chenu. Nature, Man, and Society in The Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in The Latin West. ed. and trans. Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little, (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1957). 35.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">48 White, 88</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">49 Inge, 250.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">50 Fairwether, 237.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">51 Hilegard of Beingen's Book of Divine Works: With Letters And Songs. ed. Matthew Fox, Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear and company Inc. 1987, 26.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">52 Mary Jeremme Finnegan. The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics. (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1991).</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">53 Tillich, 144.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">54 Tillich, 181-82.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">55 Lawrence Cunningham. ed. Brother Francis. Huntington, Indiana: OSV, 1972. Cunningham argues that ST. Francis did not idealize or romanticize nature..the "nature mystic" image is fallacy. St. Francis was more of a democratic than a romantic, that is, he accepted all of God's creatures on an equal basis, but he did not divinize nature.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">56 get it</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">57 Tillich, 181-82.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">58 M.D. Chenu. Man, Nature, and Society In The Twelfth Century: Essays On New Theological Perspectives In The Latin West. ed. trans. Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, 1968 edition), 4-6.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">59 Chenu, 6.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">60 Ibid., 9-10.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">61 Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">See also Grant, 51. Grant gives the same developments of Platonic philosophy leading the search for natural causes, lists the same names, but with less development, he even includes another part of this same larger quotation from William of Conche.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">62 Lindberg, Science in The Middle Ages, 41-42.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">63 Chenu, 16-17.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">64 Chenu, 28.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">65 Chenu, 18.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">66 in Chenu, 19.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">I thought I would quote the expression of such a modern concern, cheap energy. 67 Chenu, 29.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">68 Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">69 Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">70 Chinu, 32-33.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">71 Ibid., 33.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">I could as easily footnote Lindberg's Science In The Middle Ages, and Grant, as both go hand in hand with Chenu on almost every point, concerning the developments at Chartres, but their accounts are much more general. </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">72 Chenu, 32.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">73 Jarslov Pelikan. The Christian Tradition, a Development of The History of Doctrine: The Growth of Medieval Theology, (600-1300). Vol. III. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 284-85.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">74 Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">75 Aquinas in Pelikan, Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">76 Ibid.,288.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">77 Pelikan, 289.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">78 This is an antiquated designation, I realize. The fashion is to speak in terms of early modern, and to include the 12th century as a "renaissance" in its own right. While I can see the value in that, I can't go along with it when speaking of Dante. In agreement with Peter Burke, I view the Renaissance as a literary movement rather than a time period, but Dante is a literary figure.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">79 Ibid., 291.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">80 Purgatorio. XVIII. 46-48.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">81 C.H. Grandent. Notes on Paradiso, The Divine Comedy, ed. Palo Milano, trans. L..Binyon. Canto II. (New York: The Viking Press, 1947), 371.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">82 The experiment doesn't make much sense. It involves three mirrors, one placed further away from the other two, and a light which can be seen in all the mirrors. The light is supposed to shine as brightly in the third mirror, proving that the spots on the moon are not the result of rarity and density...I think. Be that as it may, the point is not what is proven (I don't think anything is proven) but the fact that Dante used experiment at all, even if only theoretically.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">83 Pelikan, 291.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">84 Lindberg, Science in The Middle Ages, 43.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">85 Pico Dela Mirandola, "Oration on The Dignity of Man," in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Anthology, ed. Ernest Cassierer, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), 223.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">86 Ibid. 225.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">87 see Fairweather. 237.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Katherine Tanner argues that the real difference in Reformation and scholastic ontology was a problem of language. She argues that the relation of nature and grace is inherent in all Christian assumptions about the God-world relationship, but this relation gets distorted through language which is designed to convey one aspect of the system or another, and the other aspects are forgotten. Luther emphasized the need of the creature for grace, Aquinas emphasized the ability of the creature to rise to the level of grace (the operation of the Imago). My response is, all doctrinal disputes are disputes over language, all "errors" and "heresy" are linguistic problems. 88 Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">89 Fontenelle, ON The Plurality of Worlds, 12.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">This attitude marks what Fairweather calls the "univocal" side of the equation. There is only one voice, everything is pulled down into nature. In the 15th century disputes over foundationalism, the Catholic anti-foundationalists, because their position disvalued reason as a counter to Protestant foundations, took the opposite view. As with Montaigne, they took the equivocal side. That is, grace over nature. They supported Catholic tradition, but changed the content so that the harmonious relation which valued the world through supernature no longer valued the world. It is my contention that this feeling was transposed and read back by historians as the medieval attitude of Christian supernaturalism to nature. see Lovejoy, 103.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">90 Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">91 Grant, 57.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">92 Richard Westfall, 51.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">93 Brooke, 144.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">94 D'Alembert, 14, 25.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">95 Grant, 69.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">96 White, 88.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">97 Grant, 69.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">98 Ibid.</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white;" /></span></span></blockquote>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-70675291288645979972019-01-03T00:50:00.001-08:002019-01-03T02:46:08.227-08:00Science is a Social Construct part 2: A Critique of Science's Epistemic Limits Due to It's Socially Constructed Nature<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "palatino";"><br /></span></span><b style="font-family: "Arial Narrow";">I.Closing off other valid forms of knowledge</b><b style="font-family: "Arial Narrow";">and losing the phenomena.</b><br />
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The upshot of this entire argument is that scientific reductionism reduces the full scope of human experience and reduces reality from its full frame to preset conclusions than are already labeled "science" and "objectivity" and which screen out any other possibility. One of those possibilities is the phenomenological apprehension of God's presence through religious experience. In the conclusion to his famous Gilford lectures, Psychologist <b>William James,</b> whose <i>Varieties of Religious Experience</i>, is still a classic in the filed of psychology of religion, concluded that reductionism shuts off other valid avenues of reality.<br />
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The world interpreted religiously is not the materialistic world over again, with an altered expression; it must have, over and above the altered expression, a natural constitution different at some point from that which a materialistic world would have. It must be such that different events can be expected in it, different conduct must be required.This thoroughly 'pragmatic' view of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men. They have interpolated divine miracles into the field of nature, they have built a heaven out beyond the grave. It is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think that, without adding any concrete details to Nature, or subtracting any, but by simply calling it the expression of absolute spirit,you make it more divine just as it stands. I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, I know not."<br />
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But the over-belief on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist. The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in. By being faithful in my poor measure to this over-belief, I seem to myself to keep more sane and true. I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But whenever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word 'bosh!' Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow scientific bounds. Assuredly, the real world is of a different temperament,- more intricately built than physical science allows. So my objective and my subjective conscience both hold me to the over-belief which I express. Who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks?"<b><span style="color: blue;">[1]</span></b></blockquote>
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<b style="font-family: "Arial Narrow";">II.Philosohpical naturalism based upon</b><br />
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In fact this way of arguing is wrong on two counts. First, it is based upon circular reasoning. The reasoning behind this notion goes back to the Philosopher <b>David Hume</b> who argued that miracles cannot happen because we do not have enough examples of them happening."A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, form the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can be imagined."<b><span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></b> We see this same sort of thinking used over and over again. Scientists sometimes resort to it. Nobel prize winning geneticist <b>A.J. Carlson</b>, "by supernatural we understand...beliefs...claiming origins other than verifiable experiences...or events contrary to known processes in nature...science and miracles are incompatible."<b><span style="color: blue;">[3]</span></b><br />
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The great Theologian <b>Rudolf Bultmann</b>, "modern science does not believe that the course of nature can be interrupted or, so to speak, perforated by supernatural powers"<b><span style="color: blue;">[4].</span></b> The context of Bultmann's comment was in proclaiming the events of the New Testament mythological because they "contradict" scientific principles.B. Hume's Argument against Miracles.The nature of this circular reasoning is pointed out by <b>C.S. Lewis</b>, who wrote:<br />
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Now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely uniform experience, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all reports of them have been false. And we can know all the reports of them to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.<b><span style="color: blue;"> [5]</span></b></blockquote>
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The circular nature of the reasoning insists that there can be noting beyond the material realm. Any claims of supernatural effects must be ruled out because they cannot be. And how do we know that they cannot be? Because only that which conforms to the rules of naturalism can be admitted as "fact." Therefore, miracles can never be "fact." While this is understandable as a scientific procedure, to go beyond the confines of explaining natural processes and proclaim that God does not exist and miracles cannot happen far exceeds the boundaries of scientific investigation. Only within a particular situation, the investigation of a particular case can scientists make such claims.<br />
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<b>Philosophical Naturalism based upon Metaphysical assumptions</b><br />
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Philosophical naturalists go beyond the claims of scientific methodology to take up a metaphysical position. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy which seeks answers beyond the confines of the physical realm. Philosophical materialists claim to know that there is no God, or at least to be convinced of it. They rule out miracles from a philosophical basis rather than an empirical one. This is in fact a metaphysical position. But philosophical materialists also claim to debunk metaphysics. Since metaphysics holds to knowledge of things beyond the material realm philosophical materialists must count themselves its enemies. But to say that there is no God is to make a metaphysical statement. To claim to know that there is no God is claim to have knowledge of things beyond the material realm. Philosophical materialists are, in fact, taking up a position contradictory to their stated philosophy.What I am saying should not be construed as an argument against scientific investigation of miracle claims. Science should investigate with all the scientific techniques and assumptions fit for the task of valid investigation, but to the extent that such claims are ruled out science should not make blanket assumptions that God does not work miracles, but must pronounce only on those particular cases.<br />
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[1] <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The varieties of religious experience: a study in human nature. London,New York: Longman, Green, and Co. 1902/1911, </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">518</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">[2] </span>An <i>Essay Concerning Human Understanding</i><i><b>,</b> </i>Chicago IL.: Open Court 1958, 126-27<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">[3] </span>A.J. Carlson,<b> </b><i>Science Magazine</i> Feb. 27, 1937, 5<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">[4] Rudolf Bultmann, </span><i>Jesus Christ and Mythology<b>,</b></i> New York: Schribner and Sons, 1958, 15<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">[5]C.S. Lewis, </span><i>Miracles: a Preliminary Study</i>. New York: MacMillian, 1947, 105<br />
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-23254277568655980762018-12-29T05:25:00.001-08:002018-12-29T05:29:41.487-08:00Debate: Hinman v Bowen: Belief rationally waranted<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>*</b></span> </span>Josesph Hinman, "</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Preparation for my debate with Bowen</span><span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , "times new roman" , "times";">." <i>Metacrock's blog</i>, (</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-transform: uppercase;">JUNE 25, 2017</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #888888; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-transform: uppercase;">)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-transform: uppercase;">(ACESSED 7/12/17)</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/06/preparation-for-my-debate-with-bowen.html" style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/06/preparation-for-my-debate-with-bowen.html</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span><span style="color: blue;">this is Preperation or Q/Q doc</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><br /></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">*</span></b> </span>Joseph Hinman, "</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Opening argument Resolved : that belief in God is rationally warranted</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">," <i>Metacrcock's blog </i>(</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; text-transform: uppercase;">JULY 02, 2017</span><span style="color: blue;">)(accessed </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-transform: uppercase;">7/12/17</span><span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , "times new roman" , "times";"> )</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "book antiqua" , "times new roman" , "times";"><a href="http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/07/opening-argument-resolved-that-belief.html">http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/07/opening-argument-resolved-that-belief.html</a></span><br />
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this is "opening argument" doc<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: "book antiqua" , "times new roman" , "times";"><span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">*</span> </b></span><b>Joseph Hinman,</b> <b>"</b></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>First Defense</b> of God Argument 1," <i>Metacrock's blog</i>(</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-transform: uppercase;">JULY 09, 2017) </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-transform: uppercase;">(ACCESSED</span><b style="color: #333333; font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><a href="http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/07/first-defense-of-god-argument-1.html">http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/07/first-defense-of-god-argument-1.html</a></b></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">*</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;">Bowen -Hinman Debate: existence of God; Hinman <b>Second defense </b></span></span><br />
<b><a href="https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/07/bowen-hinman-debate-existence-of-god.html">https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2017/07/bowen-hinman-debate-existence-of-god.html</a></b></div>
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-14901653944875732872018-12-27T23:37:00.001-08:002019-01-02T23:15:26.417-08:00Summary Thomas Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolutions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">Summary of Thomas Kuhn's</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions:</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><b>Note:</b> this essayhas been saved from <i>Doxa </i>and thus uses MLA style foot notes, the (00) at the end of statements is not a foot note number but a page number in Kuhn;s book. <br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>Introduction</b></span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Before Summarizing Kuhn, a couple of basic things need explaining. Many people have trouble understanding what a "cultural construct" actually is. The best example I've heard is a very simple one. I once heard a professor giving a talk. She said that at a restaurant where she once ate, the rest room doors did nt say "Men" or "Women." They said nothing to indicate which was which, all they had was a picture of a crab and picture of a butterfly. Yet, no one ever went in the wrong door? How is it that everyone just automatically understood that crabs are masculine and butterfly are famine? There is no particular reason to think of crabs as masculine, or butterfly's as feminine, except that they each fit the general "feel" for what we think those words indicate; the crab is hard and tough and stubborn, the butterfly is soft and floats along in beauty. These trigger chains of cultural references that give us an indication without having to be told. That's because they trigger cultural references.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">A Cultural Construct, then, is a reference based upon culturally appropriated symbols and signs which is nested in a complex set of ideas, and which is given completely through cultural assimilation, not through genetics or instinct. Cultural constructs are ideas about the the world, or about feelings, or about the way we look at things, that are given by culture and that change from culture to culture.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>Science Not Cumulative Progress</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Because the "cultural construtivist school" has said that science is a social or cultural construct (really the same thing) this has been understood to mean that "science is wrong," or "science doesn't work." He is not saying that Science doesn't work, but he is saying that science is not cumulative progress. The old image of the scientist faithfully stacking one fact upon another, facts patiently gathered from totally objective and therefore totally true observations, is old hat and has to be replaced. Sorry to break the news to the reductionist, but the concept of "progress" is, itself, a cultural construct. There is nothing in nature called "progress." That is a Western notion that comes to us through philosophy and is not strictly speaking, a scientific term. Scientists don't record in their experimental observations "I found the progress in my subject matter." Progress is social and cultural, and it is a relative notion. When we perceive we are making progress it is always at the expense of someone else's notion of progress.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Due to the nature of paradigm shifts, science does not stack up facts one upon another until x amount of progress is achieved. Science regularly wipes the slate clean and starts over on new paradigms and each new bust of "progress" has to be judged relative to many factors, such as it's social effects.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br /><img alt="Image result for Thomas Kuhn" src="http://hekint.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Adams_Objections_to_Kuhn_Figure_1-300x269.jpg" /><br /><br /><br /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>Revolutionary development</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Kuhn theorizes that scientific revolutions develop cognitively through the acquisition and refinement of paradigms (vi). Scientific disciplines, in their early stages, struggle to unify themselves around a single paradigm, such as the mechanical model of the universe. Once having achieved a single paradigm, however, the discipline orients its professional growth, theoretical study, and research priorities around the preservation of the paradigm. Contradictions to the paradigm (anomalies), are treated as puzzles to be solved, and are absorbed into the paradigm. It is only when the discipline fails to solve certain anomalies over time that a sense of crisis emerges, new theories are proposed, and a new paradigm is accepted. This development marks the nature of scientific "revolutions."</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Kuhn developed this theory as an alternative to the former historiographical model, the major inadequacy of which was its tendency to view scientific development as a series of obstacles overcome by the accumulation of knowledge, bit by bit, in the face of error and superstition (2). Kuhn interjected an anthropological method into the history of science, but, in using the notion of a "paradigm" he drew upon Piaget's theory of cognitive childhood development (vi).Kuhn first constructs a description of "normal science," "research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements...that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice" (10).</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>The Nature of Paradigms</b></span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Scientific achievements constitute a paradigm when they meet two criteria:</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">1) they must be solid and foundational enough to draw researchers away from other models and other approaches;</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">2) they must be open-ended enough to allow for further problem solving to continue;</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">in this way, paradigms guide research priorities and dictate a set of shared rules within the scientific community (10). Kuhn likens the development of a paradigm to a judicial decision in common law, it is always open to further elaboration (23). The procedure of "normal science," then, amounts to what he calls a "mopping up operation," or attempts at fine tuning (24).</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Meanwhile, the discipline itself grows up around the paradigm. Research priorities are set, new instruments are developed with the paradigm in mind, and the discipline incorporates or weeds out that which does not lend itself to the needs of the paradigm. This process entails what Kuhn calls "paradigm based research" (25), fact-gathering operations, experiments and observations, based upon the accepted facts of the paradigm, oriented around prediction according to the paradigm (27). This fact-oriented nature of paradigm based research constitutes the procedures of "normal" scientific activity. That is to say, after the establishment of a paradigm, "normal science" consists of the attempt o "mop-up" or solve puzzles, to make the anomalies fit the paradigm (35). Anomalies are not treated as "counter instances," that is, they do not count against the paradigm, but are treated as mere "puzzles," to be solved through further research. Only a solution within the paradigm is treated as "scientific," only that which is in accord with the paradigm is presented as a real scientific question worthy of research, all else is "metaphysics" (37).</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">In chapters VI through VIII Kuhn elaborates upon the assumptions of the community with regard to paradigm-based research. Chapter six deals with discoveries in particular. Discoveries are made all the time, but it is only when they help to elucidate the paradigm that they are regarded as significant. Paradigm shift results from discovery when anomalies cannot be incorporated into the paradigm, and further elaboration of fact is required. Until that time, a discovery is not a "scientific fact" (53). In other words, data contrary to the expected outcome is not, a priori, a discovery, a fact, or anything but a mishap, until it is either solved as a puzzle within the paradigm, or the paradigm itself is replaced with a new paradigm. In order to demonstrate this point, Kuhn details the historical problems involved in the "discovery" of oxygen.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Three different researchers claimed to have discovered oxygen at different points in time: Scheele, Priestly, Lavoisier. Each found some aspects of oxygen, but no one researcher can be said to have discovered oxygen on a given day (although all three were working in the 1770s) (54).The point Kuhn is making is that discovery is cumulative process of conceptual assimilation against the background of the paradigm (55). But, the actual paradigm shift is not cumulative, it does not just happen after a certain number of new findings pile up. Scientists do not simply record data, and the data does not simply happen to include new discoveries; discoveries are anomalies, and thus, they are only truly known as "discoveries" in retrospect, in relation to the new paradigm (56). Priestly and Lavoisier had basically the same results in discovering oxygen, only Lavoisier was able to fully see what had happened in producing oxygen. The major point is that paradigms constitute the scientific world, and the shift from one paradigm to another is a shift, for the researcher, from one world to another. Rigid acceptance and enforcement of the rules is essential, even to the exclusion of new theories. This is not necessarily norrow-minded professional "climate of opinion," but a necessary means of guiding research priorities. It is only against the background of the paradigm that anomaly is known.The more precise the paradigm, the greater the ability to find anomaly, and fewer are the distractions for researchers (65).</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>Anomalies</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Chapters VII and VIII are pivotal chapters because they set up the notion of crisis and allow Kuhn to prepare to talk about revolutions in science. It is through crisis that new paradigms emerge, when old paradigms fail to solve the growing anomalies. At this point, even though Kuhn does not state it in this manner, one can see a developmental process, or stages of cognitive formation; from discovery, to theory, to paradigms (67). Anomalies don't just pile up until one day a new paradigm emerges, they are incorporated into the existing paradigm, or dismissed as an unscientific, but over time, a sense of crisis emerges when the paradigm fails consistently to solve a "puzzle," or a type of problem. Eventually, new theories emerge from a sense of crisis and a new paradigm is substituted for the old. a classic example is astronomy. The Ptolemaic system lasted for a long time without crisis because it was reasonable, and it satisfied astronomers. Over time, however, problems solved in one area were often found to show up in another, until it was observed that the complexity of the system was growing much faster than its ability to accurately disclose information about the heavens. Eventually, the Copernican system was offered in its place (68-69).</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>Dilemma in Nature of Science</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">There is a dilemma in the nature of science itself. On the one hand, counter-enstances cannot be seen as counting against the paradigm, because they are always turning up, and the paradigm is essential as the basis for shared rules of the community of science. On the other hand, a paradigm without anomalies (counter-enstances) fails to produce research questions and ceases to be an important area of scientific work (79). There is, therefore, a tension between anomaly and paradigm, which must be preserved. "Tension" may be a good description because counter-enstances must arise, but they cannot count against the paradigm, not until a new paradigm is ready to replace the old one. This is a crucial concept because it constitutes the nature of a scientific revolution (90).</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>Scientific Revolutions: Paradigm Shifts</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">In chapters IX and X Kuhn discusses scientific revolutions. Kuhn compares scientific revolutions to political revolutions in two important ways:</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">1) both grow out of a sense of crisis,</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">and galvanize themselves when segments of the community come to feel that existing institutions no longer function to resolve the problems which they are expected to solve;</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">2) revolutions "aim to change institutions in ways that the institutions themselves prohibit" (93).</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">The choice between paradigms is a choice between "incompatible modes of community life" (94). The clash of paradigms entails a circular debate, in which one must enter the inner logic of the new paradigm in order to understand the nature of it, but no reason can be given from outside the paradigm why the opponent should enter the circle. Each paradigm is used to argue in its own defense (94). In order to settle a paradigm debate, one must go outside the normal course of science. Kuhn argues that paradigm debates are like debates about values, they can only be settled through a system of value, not of fact (110). In the case of science, the value would be that which is placed upon answers to certain questions, those which demand new paradigms, those that are solved by the old.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Moreover, paradigms are even more fundamental than values because they constitute the world of our understanding. A paradigm shift is a world view shift (111).In Chapter XI Kuhn takes up a discussion of textbooks. Scientific textbooks are written from the perspective of the current paradigm and orient the student to an interpretation of the world and the discipline based upon the current paradigm. "More than any other single aspect of science, that pedagogic form has determined our image of the nature of science..." (143). Kuhn calls this chapter "the invisibility of revolutions." After the revolution, the "new" paradigm is fact, the revolution goes away and its findings become "normal science."In Chapter XII, Kuhn takes up his famous debate with Karl Popper over the nature of scientific verification. Popper believed that there could only be falsification, no phenomenon could be positively verified.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">To take up this philosophical position, and then to try and justify it through appeal to its "scientific" nature, is to misunderstand the nature of science itself. Science is not a totally objective endeavor capable of yielding 100% truth Science is a human endeavor and, thus, is limited to human cultural constructs. One of the major culturally constructed positions of science is the notion of the paradigm shift. Science works according to paradigms. One model, the paradigm, explains the nature of the world in a given area. An example of how paradigms have changed is that of the chemical vs. the mechanical model. In the 15th and 16th centuries some thinkers thought that the world worked by chemical correspondence, the laws of alchemy. This notion gave way to the view of the universe as a big machine, and that has been transformed into the view that the universe is like a giant organism. At each stage along the way, the paradigm shifts and the facts of the old paradigm become anomalies under the new. Conversely, observations which were made before the shift which were viewed as merely anomalous (observations which contradict the paradigm) become "facts" under the new. Perhaps the major historian of scientific thought today is Thomas S. Kuhn who worked out the theory of paradigm shifts in TheStructure of Scientific Revolutions [University of Chicago Press, 1962].</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">1) Paradigm not chosen based upon factual data</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Kuhn argues that anomalies are normally absorbed into the paradigm and explained way as anomalous. Hence, when supernatural effects happen, and if they cannot be explained by scientific means they are thought of as "unexplained." Scientists do not, and cannot declare them as "miraculous" just because they cannot find a naturalistic explanation. For this reason, paradigm shifts are not the result of passionless rational argument and are not predicated upon "fact" nor can they be. Rather, they are the result of a change in sociological factors. This is so because the system which makes one set of data "facts" as opposed to "unexplained anomalies" is the thing under dispute.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">2) Science not cumulative progress</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">A sense of urgency builds until the paradigm shifts as the old paradigm collapses under the weight of so many anomalies. He uses the analogy of political revolution precisely because of its sense of urgency and disorder. The notion of a urgent need to change, a great struggle fought on other than rational basis is the point of the whole thing. The major conceptual changes which happen in science are not the result of cumulative progress, and are not brought about through disinterested and rational discussion of the facts, and they are not predicated upon "scientific proofs." Granted all of these things are involved, but all they can function as is a regulator concept for the debate. The real change comes through a shift in perception, and thus, it scientific knowledge is not a cumulative endeavor.Thomas S. Kuhn(d. 1995)Kuhn himself tells us:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">"scientific revolutions are here taken to be those non-cumulative developmental episodes replaced in whole or in part by a new one..." (Thomas kuhn The Structure of scientific Revolutions, 92). "The choice [between paradigms] is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter as they must into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses it's own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense...the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle." The Structure of Scientific Revolutions(94)In section X we shall discover how closely the view of science as cumulating is entangled with a dominate epistemology that takes knowledge to be a construction placed directly upon raw sense data by the mind. And in section XI we shall examine the strong support provided to the same historiographic scheme by the techniques of effective science pedagogy. Nevertheless, despite the immense plausibility of that ideal image, there is increasing reason to wonder whether it can possibly be an image of science. After the pre-paradgim period the assimilation of all new theories and of almost all new sorts of phenomena has demanded the destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict between cometing schools of scientific thought. Cumulative anticipation of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost nonexistent exception to the rule of scientific development.The man who takes historic fact seriously must suspect that science does not tend toward the ideal that our image of its cumulativeness has suggested. Perhaps it is another sort of enterprise.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Kuhn-- Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 96. Kun was not a Christian. He represents the more rational end of a movement in academia, in some cases very much opposed to Christianity, which was big in the '80s and '90s: Postmodern social constructivism.The cultural constructivists realized that science is just another human endeavor, and as such it is not the essence of "objective fact." Rather, it is assigned a cultural role in our agreed upon definitions of fact.There are precursors to Kuhn among the great 20th century historians of science, who, while they did not say exactly the same thing, and while they did not develop a theory of change of scientific revolutions along the lines of developmental psychology, did observe that science is a social movement, that it develops along certain hap hazard lines which involve development of ideas from detailed work and the inability of former paradigms (though they did not use the term) to withstand repeated contradiction.These are contemporaries. Westfall is still writting as far as I know, and was a contemporary of Kuhn's (both began careers in 50s or early 60s). Collingwood and older contemporary and wrote in the 40's.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Two such thinkers were, R.G. Collingwood: The Idea of Nature. London, NY: Oxford, 1947, and Richard Westfall. The Construction of Modern Science, (Cambridge University Press 1971)Collingwood looks at major eras of scientific advancement beginning with the Greeks.He begins with a description of relation of developments between philosophy and Science which sounds a lot like Khun.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">(A.) Paradigm shift.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">(B). Three periods when idea of nature gained focuss:</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">(1) Greeks.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">(2) Renaissance</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">(3) Early modern.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">That is where the p. shift comes in, though he doesn't use the phrase. But he says it is not that a detailed and abstract view of nature is worked out as a whole then people take it and go out to do science with it (intro p. 1) nor is it that a period of thought is followed by a period of investigation. But,</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">"in natural science, as in economics, or morals, or law, people being with details. They begin by taking individual problems as they arise. Only when this detail has accumulated to a considerable amount do they reflect upon the work they have been doing and discover they have been doing it in amethodical way, according to principles of which hither to they have not been conscious...the detailed work seldom goes on for any length of time without reflection intervening. This reflection ...upon the detailed work: for when people become conscious of the principles upon which they have been thinking or acting they become conscious of something which in these thoughts and actions they have trying, though unconciously to do--namely to work out in detail the logical implications of those principles. To strange minds this new consciousness gives a new strength namely new firmness in their approach to the detailed problems."</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Richard Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science. (Cambridge University Press 1971).Westfall examines the two major themes which dominated scientific revolution of 17th century. The Platonic-Paithagorian tradition, emphasizing nature and as geometry, cosmos constructed by mathematics, and the Mechanical and Philosophical model: nature as huge machine, sought hidden mechanism to find order. These two major forces represent paradigms essentially and the struggle between these schools resolved itself in argument and in social spheres. The Scientific revolution was social phenomenon. Westfall believes ideas following own internal logic was central element in foundation of modern science. This is essentially one example of a social construct reading of early modern science.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>Obvious Objection</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">The obvious objection that most people make is going to be that scientific facts work. Things fall down instead of up, if you combine an acid with a base you get a certain relation, and mater interacts with mater regardless of what we think out it in our culture. All of these points are very true. But that's not really the point. Kuhn and most of the social constructivists are not disputing the "facts" of science There is an extreme school called the "hard project" that tries to put up epistemological road blocks to all scientific facts, but that's not the point here. The point is the big picture. The major assumptions and biases we make about the world based upon the way we interpret and understand scientific fact; and the use made of that by those who use science to hide their ideological agendas. Based upon cultural assumptions and biases about the reading of scientific fact we assume that there is nothing beyond the material realm, that all is explained by science and there is no need for God. But that is a paradigm and could easily change with changing social situations. The major point of the argument is: there is no scientific basis for concluding that there is no God. </span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>The Social Constructivist Movement:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Evidence of new paradigm shift</span></b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br style="color: #333333;" /></b><span style="color: #333333;">Taken together with Kuhn, on face value, these two works form the basis for a cultural analysis of scientific fact-making. Kuhn forms the general theoretical landscape which Shapin and Schaffer help to fill out in greater detail. Neither of these works claims a disruption of the stability found in historical narrative, much less a deconstruction of truth or logic as stable categories. Although, as will be seen, Lukes argues that Kuhn comes dangerously close to doing so (and, one might argue, so do Shapin and Schaffer). Both works require an historical understanding of their subject matter. Both lay bare the process of making scientific fact; it is not a matter of simply discovering how things work, but of manipulating (and being manipulated by) a cultural understanding of how things work. Yet, without a historical understanding, there is no sense to either work. Both are dependent upon conventional understandings of chronology, and upon conventional notions of historical event such that one can say "this is what happened, and this is why." Kuhn's examples wouldn't make sense without the notion that three different people worked on the problem of oxygen throughout the 1770s, and after that time, one of them actually discovered something. Nor would Shapin and Schaffer's notions make sense if one examined the events in textual isolation, with no regard for historical context or event. What would be the point of saying that Hobbes was written out of the history of natural philosophy, if the text is all that mattered? If the text itself is history, the history of natural philosophy never included Hobbes.On the face of it, the claim that chronology is meaningless seems like an absurd idea, yet, there are those within the postmodern and social constructivist camps who make this claim: i.e. Derrida, Baudrillard, Benhabib, and to some extent Foucault (Rosenau, 63).</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Moreover, it is more common for the constructivist position in general to find the content of scientific discovery challenged, and to find categories of truth and logic ascribed purely to social agents and cultural understanding rather than any sort of stable, universal categories. "Criteria of truth, or logic, or both, arise out of different contexts and are themselves variable...[they are] relative to particular groups, cultures, communities" (Lukes, 231). "In this view," [postmodern social constructivism] "the whole point of the sociology of scientific knowledge is that there is no such thing as an accurate representation of an external and objective reality" (Fuchs, 11). "Nor do these [skeptical] postmodernists view history as periods of time that unfold with regularity, that can be isolated, abstracted, represented, described in terms of essential characteristics...they reject history as reasoned analysis focused upon the general or the particular because both assume 'reality,' `identity,' and `truth.'" (Rosenau, 63).</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">Since about 1996 the fortures of Postmodernism have fallen. Almost as soon as Kuhn died major dennounciations of and attacks upon his work began. He was at the summit of fame and fortune int he last two decades of his life, he is now largely forgotten and rejected. Part of this is due to the guilt by association from lumping him in with the more radical Postmodernists. Once the stigma of being "no longer in fashion" wears off, I believe that he will be resurrected and will come to be seen as a great thinker. His theories need revising and re-work, but I'm convienced they hold the key to the best understanding of the natrue of science.</span><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;"><b>What Does This Tell Us?</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="color: #333333;" /><span style="color: #333333;">What Kuhn tells us that is of crucial importance for understanding the relation between science and religious belief, is that science is not all knowing. It is not a replacement for religion, it is not an objective means of probing to the depths of the meaning of life or of being human.It is a human activity, it has a relation to social paradigms and is socially constructed. As such it is not a "truth detector." We can discover the workings of the physical world, and that can, at times, correct our misimpressions about the nature of God, but it cannot tell us that God does or does not exist, and it cannot take the place of God.</span></span><br />
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-77688552657651145452018-10-26T23:38:00.000-07:002018-10-26T23:54:20.991-07:00Dialogue: Taking down Naturalistic Alternate Causes on RE argument<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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this is a dialogue with an atheist apologist known as "Skepie" (I am skeptical) which took place on Metacrock's bog,"Unicorns Don't Exist,Therefore God Doesn't Exist?" (Oct 22 2018)<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11516215&postID=7232974690527419022">https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11516215&postID=7232974690527419022</a><br />
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So you contend that there are no natural explanations for mystical experiences or the correlations between spirituality and beneficial outcomes in life? Joe, I have cited some of what various psychologists have said about these things.<br />
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<b>Not that there are no naturalistic forces innovated but they do not explain it by themselves,</b><br />
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First of all, the "experience" itself is indeed an emotional reaction, and all emotions are chemically stimulated. This has ample backing in experimental data.<br />
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<b>Of course the experience is conveyed by chemicals but that is like saying logic is just air waves because logical ideas are conveyed by vibrations of air wave striking the ear drum. The 8 tie breakers make arguments like this does not explain why it's always positive. why it's good for you, why it;s related to a sense of meaning in life, why it has noetic function and so on.<br /><br />your fear of emotion is biasing your view so you are not thinking anarchically about these issues,</b><br />
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Not only is it possible to induce these experiences by various types of electro-chemical means, but it is also possible to create the same emotional effect by psychological manipulation.<br />
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<b>false, (1)no one has proven that, you say that because propaganda tells you it should but you have no evidence. The fact is people who pretend to produce such effects do not use any control mechanism like the M scale so they Make up their own arbitrary criteria we don't know what they are actually producing but all they have produced is the effects they want not mystical experiences.<br /><br />(2) If there are chemical receptors that communicate the experiences the false stimulate could open those receptors and produce some similar symptoms but that doesn't mean the total experience is reproduced, just a pleasant sensation may be produced,<br /><br />(3)No longitudinal studies show them producing the same kind of effects in life from having the experience induced in lab,</b><br />
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As for the positive effects, I explained to you that most psychologists believe there is a common cause (in the psychological outlook of an individual) for BOTH the positive outcomes AND the emotional effect of the "mystical experience". Your problem is that you have limited your analysis to a tiny corner of the scientific community, and you completely ignore mainstream scientific views.<br />
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<b>you have it backwards, you cannot produce a single printed source saying that that is your stupid opinion it is totally wrong. First i've never seen any shrink say that, if they do those are the ones who don't do the studies,the who do the studies find significant effects that's close to 200 studies,</b><br />
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im-skeptical said...<br />
you have it backwards, you cannot produce a single printed source saying that that is your stupid opinion it is totally wrong. First i've never seen any shrink say that, if they do those are the ones who don't do the studies,the who do the studies find significant effects that's close to 200 studies<br />
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- I have tried again and again to tell you that the scientific community in general, and psychology in particular, is much larger that the narrow segment you pay attention to (psychology of religion, which is dominated by religious people like Hood).<br />
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<b>(1) You do not know anything about the field you do not speak for psychologists, you are not documenting it it;s just your little bigoted sophomoric opinion.<br /><br />(2) you are willing to take the view of those who don't work in the field over those who do because you are so simplistic in your thinking and paranoid in your hatred of God that you don;t even get that pathology of religion is not religious people definding religion, (I have shown before most of the researchers I know of are not Christians or not religious)<br /><br />(3) if this global warning you would be using the pinons of those who don;t study climate to argue against warming</b><br />
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You keep saying there's nothing out there, but there is plenty. You just ignore it because real science doesn't support your conclusions. You need to get out of your little isolated religious bubble and do a real survey of the pertinent scientific information.<br />
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<b>you still haven;t documented anything just little uninformed pinon</b><br />
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- It is part of psychology, and secular psychologists (not necessarily in the field of psychology of religion) DO study such things.<br />
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<b>No they don;t, there;s a big difference in reading about something and actually studying it. When one says study in this context it usually means doing a study.</b><br />
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There is plenty of material on it, and they don't have a goal to link these experiences to God, the way Hood tries to.<br />
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<b>where do you get that idea? Hood never said that. That's your little need to defame and destroy my work to ridicule my source because he says stuff you don't like.since you are not an academic and not a scholar you don't know one can have beliefs and not use them as clandestine motives for research. That tells us a lot more about you than it does Hood,</b><br />
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They are more interested in scientific understanding of the phenomenon. You have claimed that Hood is not religious, but I know that he is. He was the head of a Christian organization.<br />
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<b>Un cool. Very unprofessional trying to interpret the psychological motives of opponents in argument is very uncool and shows a real lack of professional understanding.</b><br />
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<b>Hood is considered to be the leading researcher in that field, you know nothing about that field. it is not dominated by fundies or Christians or believers. I;ve told you hes not a fundie he's not a Christian grow up,<br /><br />you are trying to think of this as a war, you are seeking to destroy belief, That is childish</b></div>
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<b><span style="color: blue;">I can sight chapter and verse where Hood says he ls trying not to deal God as a cause its not his place as a scientist, he has only made a God argument in private he's never published it, (see intro to chapter 11 in Hood Spilka books)</span></b></div>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-85625750793428207472018-09-10T23:52:00.004-07:002018-09-13T22:22:14.731-07:00The Truth of "nothing" emerges<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="byline post-timestamp" style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.54); display: inline-block; line-height: 24px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 8px; vertical-align: top;">(<a class="timestamp-link" href="http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2018/09/cosmological-argument-from-contingency.html" rel="bookmark" style="background: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;" title="permanent link">September 08, 2018</a></span></span></span></h3>
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This is an amazing exchange that came from out of the blue when someone who seems to know what he's talking about came into the discussion to set us both straight. I think what resulted is the truth that when Krauss says "nothing" he is being misleading because nothing does not mean the actual absence of anything the general public takes it to mean which has a;ways been my position. But we see out of the discussion the atheist doesn't even head that. He goes on conceited to misleading people. Not to say all atheists do this but this one does do it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="fn"><a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/116031743767990323943" rel="author" style="background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;" title="author profile"><span style="color: blue;">Joe Hinman</span></a></span><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.54);"> "</span><span style="color: #0c090a;">Cosmological Argument: from contingency," </span></span><span style="color: #0c090a;">Comment section: </span><span class="post-author-label" style="color: #0c090a; font-weight: normal;"> Cadre Comments blog,(Sept 8, 2018)</span><span class="byline post-timestamp" style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.54); display: inline-block; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 8px; vertical-align: top;"> </span></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6363362&postID=7186418592200543178&page=1&token=1536644224312&isPopup=true" style="background-color: transparent;">https://www.blogger.com/comment.gblogID=6363362&postID=7186418592200543178&page=1&token=1536644224312&isPopup=true</a></h3>
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<a name='more'></a>[note on fn I am quoting extensively from my own maritime the numbers correspond to the notes in that article, see notes at of the page]<br />
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<dt class="blog-author" id="c8270352013526458756" style="background-color: white; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.25em; white-space: nowrap;"><div class="profile-image-container" style="color: #202020; float: right; margin: 0.4em 0px 0.2em 0.8em; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 2;">
<span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null"><img alt="" class="profile" height="60" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-t808x50m0ck/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAMM/mxlGp8YZ3w8/s60-c/photo.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(187, 187, 187); padding: 0.2em;" title="Joe Hinman" width="60" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #202020;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png"); background-origin: initial; background-position: left top; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial;"><img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon gplus-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png") left top no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /></span> </span><span style="color: blue;"><span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">Joe Hinman</a></span> </span><span style="color: #202020;">said...</span></dt>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;">The skeptic merely says there are particles they are popping out of nothing. The problem is the physicists include the particles as part of nothing, there's no empirical observations that they are coming out of real nothing not just coming from some primordial field; in other words a group of more particles,</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;">That does not mean that Krauss doesn't understand or doesn't know what he's saying. He knows but what he is saying is really a faith statement. He wants us to think his statement is a precise factual understanding of the universe but it is actually nothing more than a faith statement based upon facts but those facts do not include empirical knowledge of the origin of the universe, he's really just discussing an educated guess.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;">Even if we assume field theory as a literally true statement of what happens with sub atomic particles it can't be the case that they actually do emerge from true nothing. The reason is very simple and it is assumed by the theory.The theory itself assumes that prior conditions exist, a framework in which the things emerge. They may not have direct causes in the conventional sense but they clearly do not just pop into existence out of actual noting. There are prior conditions without which the particles would not be possible. Those conditions have to be accounted for. The frame work consists mainly of Time, physical law, ad what they now call field,or Vacuum flux which means more particles.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;">"He [Krauss] acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that everything he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted."</span><b style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: blue;">[15] </span></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;">The term"nothing" is erroneous since by that term physicists do not mean what regular people mean by the term.They do not mean the absence of anything at all. "For a half century, physicists have known that there is no such thing as absolute nothingness, and that the vacuum of empty space, devoid of even a single atom of matter, seethes with subtle activity. "</span><b><span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: white;">[16]</span><span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"> </span></span></b><span style="color: #202020;"><b style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">I have quoted at least three physicists saying Krauss is wrong </b><span style="background-color: white;">his statements can't be taken literally. I think a good term for what they are saying is that his statements are faith based statements or atheist dogma based upon field theory. The three physicists are A Curious Mind, Arnold Neumaier,[</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><b>Neumaier Lectures at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Vienna</b>.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;">] and Paul Matt Sutter, I close with statement by David Albert the philosopher with Ph.d in physics (NYU), from his review of Krauss:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #202020;">The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in “A Universe From Nothing” — the laws of relativistic quantum field theories — are no exception to this. The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.</span><b><span style="color: blue;">[17]</span></b><br />
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<b style="color: #202020;">The statements Kraus makes are faith statements,they are not exactly wrong but they are not proven they are faith ,he has faith God did not create.</b></div>
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9/10/2018 10:29:00 AM</div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;"> </span><span class="item-control" style="background-color: white; color: #202020;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6363362&postID=8270352013526458756" style="border: none; color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Delete Comment"><img alt="Delete" class="icon_delete" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("/img/cmt/comment_sprite.gif") -32px -101px no-repeat; border: none; height: 13px; width: 13px;" /></a></span><br />
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<dt id="c3226916946459767845" style="background-color: white; color: #202020; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.25em; white-space: nowrap;"><img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon blogger-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("/img/cmt/comment_sprite.gif") -45px -117px no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /> <span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/08267710618719895303" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">im-skeptical</a></span> said...</dt>
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Joe, you still don't know what you're talking about.<br />
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The "lowest energy state" is what you have when you take away everything, including particles - leaving NOTHING. Your lack of understanding is clearly revealed when you say "Nothing is the lowest level energy state in a theory, so that would mean an individual particle is "nothing."" An individual particle is not nothing. It has energy. It is not the lowest energy state. Nothing is nothing. No particles, no charges, no energy. THAT's what we mean by the quantum vacuum. It is only a philosophical statement to say that nothing is really not nothing. It doesn't reflect reality. In fact, the vacuum really consists of nothing at all.<br />
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And you are still evading the central point here. Virtual particles come to exist without a cause.</div>
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9/10/2018 10:59:00 AM</div>
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<dt id="c1795552823436860584" style="cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.25em; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-size: 13px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png"); background-origin: initial; background-position: left top; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial;"><img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon gplus-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png") left top no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /></span> </span><span style="color: blue;"><span dir="ltr" style="background-color: orange;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/11943604951607471279" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="null"><b>Mark Tester</b></a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-size: 13px;">said...</span></dt>
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<span style="background-color: white;">There is no location in the universe where the energy state is equal to zero. There is no location in the universe where a true "nothing" exists. </span><span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Even a volume of space that has all "normal" mass and radiation removed still contains "something" and has a non-zero energy level for the following reasons:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">1) Quantum Field Theory (QFT) asserts that particles are excitations of fields. For every fundamental kind of particle, there is an associated field permeating all of space (including regions of "empty" vacuum). There is only one electron field, for example, permeating the whole of the universe; and all electrons are local excitations of this one field. Where there are no excitations, the field remains at it's ground state energy level. If one field is excited enough, it will cause excitations in other fields. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">2) Assuming QFT is an accurate description of our universe, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle applied to quantum fields requires energy to fluctuate about the lowest state (when not perturbed by any external energy). In other words, the ground state of a QF cannot be determined to be zero at any given time. (It is impossible to say the field has no energy). </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">3) Dark energy (if it exists) also permeates all of space (and may be related to the ground-state QF energy in 2 above), regardless of the presence of matter or other energy (although the energy density is incredibly small, 7×10^−30 g/cm^3). This energy cannot be filtered out or shielded. Like QFs, dark energy is present everywhere as a property of space itself.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Additionally, there may also be dark matter that we haven't been able to observe except indirectly. It's true nature is unknown, but probably exists as some type of particle that, so far, is undetectable in a laboratory setting. Given its abundance (5 times more abundant than regular matter) it is likely that if you evacuated a volume of space of regular matter, you could still have particles of dark matter remaining.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">So when you say "lowest energy state" you may mean there are no measurable particles present, but you certainly don't mean "nothing" in the common understanding of the word. Every point in space has a non-zero energy density and a fabric of fluctuating quantum fields. Also, any seemingly "empty" volume of space may also contain unknown amounts of dark matter. To say virtual particles come from "nothing" or that they are caused by "nothing" is a huge stretch to say the least. They are most likely caused by quantum mechanical energy fluctuations of the various quantum fields.</span></div>
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9/10/2018 02:44:00 PM</div>
<span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span class="item-control" style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6363362&postID=1795552823436860584" style="border: none; color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Delete Comment"><img alt="Delete" class="icon_delete" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("/img/cmt/comment_sprite.gif") -32px -101px no-repeat; border: none; height: 13px; width: 13px;" /></a></span><br />
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<span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null"><img alt="" class="profile" height="60" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-t808x50m0ck/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAMM/mxlGp8YZ3w8/s60-c/photo.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(187, 187, 187); padding: 0.2em;" title="Joe Hinman" width="60" /></a></span></div>
<img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon gplus-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png") left top no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /> <span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">Joe Hinman</a></span> said...</dt>
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Thank you Mark I appreciate it. Please stick arouind, do you know Barry Graham?</div>
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9/10/2018 03:06:00 PM</div>
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<dt id="c720579009576692922" style="background-color: white; color: #202020; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.25em; white-space: nowrap;"><img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon blogger-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("/img/cmt/comment_sprite.gif") -45px -117px no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /> <span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/08267710618719895303" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">im-skeptical</a></span> said...</dt>
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<i style="background-color: white;">So when you say "lowest energy state" you may mean there are no measurable particles present, but you certainly don't mean "nothing" in the common understanding of the word.</i><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">- I mean "nothing" in the sense that people (other than philosophers) have always understood the word. It's what is left when you take every detectable thing away. I think you mean something different by the word. But that's why I say this is a philosophical question. </span><span style="background-color: #f9cb9c;">And you're definitely not saying the same thing that Joe is. He insists that this low energy state contains non-virtual particles.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="color: #202020;">[</span><span style="color: blue;">Yes he is saying exactly what I said, Skep has a problem with refusing to admit that I can know anything scientifically, That would destroy his ideological understanding of the world,</span><span style="color: #202020;">]</span></span></span></span></div>
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9/10/2018 03:23:00 PM</div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="item-control" style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6363362&postID=720579009576692922" style="border: none; color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Delete Comment"><img alt="Delete" class="icon_delete" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("/img/cmt/comment_sprite.gif") -32px -101px no-repeat; border: none; height: 13px; width: 13px;" /></a></span><br />
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<dt id="c1663768553569923470" style="cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.25em; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-size: 13px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png"); background-origin: initial; background-position: left top; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial;"><img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon gplus-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png") left top no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /></span> </span><span style="color: blue;"><b style="background-color: orange;"><span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/11943604951607471279" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">Mark Tester</a></span> </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-size: 13px;">said...</span></dt>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The way that you mean nothing, as in completely devoid of everything, is meaningful </span><span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">only in conversational language, not in describing any real property of any portion of this universe.</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> If you take a region of space and evacuate all detectable particles and shield it from all external energy sources,</span> <span style="color: red; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold;">it will still have a fundamental level of energy that is not equal to zero at all times. </span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">[Holy clarity Batman can he get any cleaner? but Skep will twist it about]</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Energy and mass are interchangeable (E~mc^2). If a peak in the fluctuations of the quantum field energy get close enough to a certain level, this energy can precipitate into mass (virtual particles). The virtual particles are NOT there at all times (they come and go), but regardless of their presence, the energy density that gives rise to them is always present. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Historically (as in before the early 1900s), a complete vacuum meant nothing as you now mean it - no energy and no matter. In common vernacular that is how it is still used. However, a vacuum like that cannot be created in this universe because you cannot evacuate all of the energy from any given volume. The energy is nested inside the very fabric of space itself. The name "nothing" seems to stick around, but it is not nothing in the classical sense. There is "stuff" there.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">And it's not philosophical. It results in real, measurable effects. The acceleration of the expansion of the universe is likely a result, as is the Casmir effect.</span><br />
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9/10/2018 04:04:00 PM</div>
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<dt id="c653220900569483217" style="background-color: white; color: #202020; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.25em; white-space: nowrap;"><img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon blogger-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("/img/cmt/comment_sprite.gif") -45px -117px no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /> <span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/08267710618719895303" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">im-skeptical</a></span> said...</dt>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Mark,</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f9cb9c; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Thank you for the lesson, but I didn't learn anything from it.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> [</span><span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">understatement</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202020;">]I don't think we disagree about how things work in nature. That's something you should take up with Joe, because he's the one who argues against reality. What we disagree about is usage of the term "nothing". There are different schools of thought. I described my usage as being consistent with the "common vernacular" that you refer to. I'm not alone in that. Plenty of physicists agree with me. Your usage is consistent with the philosophical definition (let's call it "p-nothing"). It is the kind of "nothing" from which nothing can come.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #f9cb9c;"> </span><span style="background-color: #f9cb9c;">The problem with that is there is no such thing. It is a fantasy, just like p-zombies. I am of the opinion that physics deals with reality - not with fantasy. So I must disagree with your closing remark. "P-nothing" is indeed philosophical, but that's how you (apparently) define it, not how I do. I'm perfectly fine with saying that stuff does come from nothing.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">[<span style="color: blue;">I said before he talks like Richard Nixon but really he talks like Trump. He just claimed Tester is setting me straight because i can';t mean what Tester said,so I;m wrong and he is right and they agree of course even though he just said the exact opposite of what Tester said. But it;s ok because (especially that last statement in shade which seems to say whatever he wants something to mean is fine because anything for the cause, what he calls being philosophical</span>]</span></span></span></div>
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9/10/2018 08:01:00 PM</div>
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<span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null"><img alt="" class="profile" height="60" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-t808x50m0ck/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAMM/mxlGp8YZ3w8/s60-c/photo.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(187, 187, 187); padding: 0.2em;" title="Joe Hinman" width="60" /></a></span></div>
<img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon gplus-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png") left top no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /> <span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">Joe Hinman</a></span> said...</dt>
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Mark are you the Mark Tester at King Abdullah University? I soI really need to talk to you.</div>
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9/10/2018 09:33:00 PM</div>
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<img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon gplus-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png") left top no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /> <span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">Joe Hinman</a></span> said...</dt>
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Thank you for the lesson, but I didn't learn anything from it. I don't think we disagree about how things work in nature. That's something you should take up with Joe, because he's the one who argues against reality.<br />
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<b>What he said is what i was trying to say in a general way he was able to put the factual content into it,I had the basic concept right. When you call it "reality" that is another statement of faith.When you say "reality" you mean the world of your ideology. You are really saying you have faith that there's no God.<br /><br />What his testament said is that something is in the fabric of the universe and it is undeniable.What that means for our topic we still have to discuss.<br /><br />Obviously it means that statement "a universe from nothing" is loaded and misleading. The idea that the universe sprang up out of nothing for no reason is wrong. What we make of that is faith base on both sides.</b><br />
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What we disagree about is usage of the term "nothing". There are different schools of thought. I described my usage as being consistent with the "common vernacular" that you refer to.<br />
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<b>That is what is misleading. The vernacular implies there is true absolute nothing and it's not true. There is energy that must be accounted for,where did it come from?</b><br />
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I'm not alone in that. Plenty of physicists agree with me.<br />
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<b>No they don't they don't believe there is true absolute nothing and that is what calling it noting impieties,</b><br />
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Your usage is consistent with the philosophical definition (let's call it "p-nothing"). It is the kind of "nothing" from which nothing can come.<br />
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<b>You just reshaped what he said,</b><br />
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The problem with that is there is no such thing. It is a fantasy, just like p-zombies. I am of the opinion that physics deals with reality - not with fantasy. So I must disagree with your closing remark. "P-nothing" is indeed philosophical, but that's how you (apparently) define it, not how I do. I'm perfectly fine with saying that stuff does come from nothing.<br />
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<b>My God! you reason about yow actions like Nixon did! (Nixon voice:)ultimately we know we are right so if some people get confused by things we say it's ok as long as they stick with us, (flashes double peace sign)<br /><br />You are saying the word "nothing" is an empty place holder and you can fill it with whatever works for the cause. It is not empty it contaminant a connotation that is totally false. There is no nothing, therefore, no universe from nothing,</b></div>
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Tester and the atheist continued in a dialogue for some time here is a sample (see link above). The whole exchange is worth reading because Tester had totally trashed the idea that Quantum theory disproves<br />
God or even that it proves we don't need God and the atheist can;t accept even though he knows the guy knows more about it than he does,<br />
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<img alt="Blogger" class="comment-icon gplus-comment" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" style="background: url("//www.gstatic.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png") left top no-repeat; border: 0px; height: 16px; width: 16px;" /> <span dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/11943604951607471279" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00838f; text-decoration-line: none;" target="null">Mark Tester</a></span> said...<br />
"- It seems we disagree. Since virtual particles are detectable, they are "things". "<br />
From the wiki page on virtual particles, "Virtual particles are also excitations of the underlying fields, but are "temporary" in the sense that they appear in calculations of interactions, but never as asymptotic states or indices to the scattering matrix. The accuracy and use of virtual particles in calculations is firmly established, <b>but as they cannot be detected in experiments</b>, deciding how to precisely describe them is a topic of debate."<br />
You can disagree with me all you want, but you are also disagreeing with QFT, which is the basis of virtual particles in the first place.<br />
But even if they could be detected, they are not un-caused. They come about via 1 of 2 ways: 1) caused by particle interactions, 2) caused by perturbations in an existing quantum field in which the energy of the quantum field is momentarily converted to mass via the famous equation E=mc^2.</blockquote>
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"Joe, your last statement is absolutely correct. No physics based model of the universe can ever prove or disprove God. It's very hard to prove or disprove anything outside of mathematics."</div>
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From Joseph Hinman, "Quantum Field theory: No Proof of Something from Nothing," The religious a proiori (no date given) (accessed 3/8/18)<a href="http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2018/04/quantum-field-theory-no-proof-of.html"> http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2018/04/quantum-field-theory-no-proof-of.html</a></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">[13] John Rennie, ''What is meant by Nothing in Physics./ Quatum Physics?" </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Physics Stack Exchange </i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">(June 29, 2012)</span><br />
<a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/30973/what-is-meant-by-nothing-in-physics-quantum-physics" style="color: #888888; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/30973/what-is-meant-by-nothing-in-physics-quantum-physics</a><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">(accessed 3/29/2012)</span><br />
<br style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 13.2px;" />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Rennie, undergrad degree Cambridge in Qm Chemistry, </span><span style="color: #242729; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">PhD, also at Cambridge, in solid state </span><span style="color: #242729; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">photo chemistry. </span></span><span style="color: #242729; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">After finishing my PhD I worked as a colloid scientist for </span><a href="https://www.unilever.com/about/innovation/our-r-and-d-locations/port-sunlight-uk/" rel="nofollow noreferrer" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0587ac; cursor: pointer; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Unilever Research</a><span style="color: #242729; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">. </span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Neumaier Lectures at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Vienna.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">[14] Ibid.</span><br />
<br style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 13.2px;" />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">[15] Albert, op. cit.</span><br />
<br style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 13.2px;" />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">[16] Malcolm W. Brown, Physicists Comfirm Powerof Nothing, Measuring Force or universla Flux." </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> New York Times </i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;">(Jan 21,1997)</span><br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/21/science/physicists-confirm-power-of-nothing-measuring-force-of-universal-flux.html" style="color: #888888; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/21/science/physicists-confirm-power-of-nothing-measuring-force-of-universal-flux.html</a><br />
<span style="color: #0c090a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 15px;">(accessed 3/10/18)</span><br />
<span style="color: #0c090a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #0c090a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 15px;">[17] Albert op cit</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> </span></div>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644398595054000586.post-64489307782167762332018-09-08T08:16:00.001-07:002022-05-24T02:34:10.997-07:00Cosmological Arguments Note on Version A (using Tillich's notion of God as Being itself)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Something exists.<br />2. Whatever exists, does so either necessarily or contingently.<br />3. It is impossible that only contingent things exist.<br />4. Therefore, there exists at least one necessary thing.<br />5. If there is a necessary thing, that thing is appropriately called 'God.'<br />6. Therefore God exists.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">(revised 8/6/'18)</span></span></div>
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This version understands Necessity and contingency largely in causal terms. The necessity that creates the universe must be understood as eternal and uncaused for two reasons: (1) The impossibility of ICR<b><span style="color: blue;">[1]</span></b>, there has to be a final cause or nothing would ever come to be, (2) empirically we know the universe is not eternal. See the supporting material. Atheists will often argue that this kind of argument doesn't prove that God is the necessity that causes the universe. but being necessary and creator and primary cause makes it the sources of all things we can rationally construe that as God.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: serif; font-size: 16.5px; font-weight: 400;">Finally, even if the cosmological argument is sound or cogent, the difficult task remains to show, as part of natural theology, that the necessary being to which the cosmological argument concludes is the God of religion, and if so, of which religion. Rowe suggests that the cosmological argument has two parts, one to establish the existence of a first cause or necessary being, the other that this necessary being is God (1975: 6). It is unclear, however, whether the second contention is an essential part of the cosmological argument. Although Aquinas was quick to make the identification between God and the first mover or first cause, such identification seems to go beyond the causal reasoning that informs the argument (although one can argue that it is consistent with the larger picture of God and his properties that Aquinas paints in his </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: serif; font-size: 16.5px; font-weight: 400;">Summae</em><span style="background-color: white; font-family: serif; font-size: 16.5px;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-weight: 400;">). Some (Rasmussen, O’Connor, Koons) have plowed ahead in developing this stage 2 process by showing how and what properties—simplicity, unity, omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, and so on—might follow from the concept of a necessary being. It “has implications that bring it into the neighborhood of God as traditionally conceived” (O’Connor 2008: 67).</span><span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></span></blockquote>
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There's a problem in speaking of God as "a being" since it threatens to reduce God from infinite and omnipresent to a localized entity. This is a semantic problem and we can resole it by through understanding that God is the eternal necessary aspect of being. Being is a thing and God is "that thing" which is unbounded,eternal, and necessary aspect of being. This unbounded condition is implied by the nature of cosmological necessity.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The eternal causal agent that gives rise to all existing things could not be itself caused since that would just create the necessity of another explanation (it would mean that thing is not the ultimate cause but is just another contingent thing). Being eternal and necessary means the ground of being. The contrast between human finitude and the infinite evokes the senses of the numinous or mystical experience which is the basis of all religion.</span><span style="color: blue;">[3] </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-weight: normal;">Of course we understand this eternal necessary aspect of being to be God not only because the infinite evokes the numinous but also because the notion that God is being itself is a major aspect of Christian Theology.</span><span style="color: blue;">[4]</span></div>
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special note: mysterious stranger who knows Quantum field theory sets atheist critic straight,</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-truth-of-nothing-emerges.html">https://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-truth-of-nothing-emerges.html</a></span></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.doxa.ws/forum/">for discussion come to Doxa forums.</a></div>
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atheists try to deny contingency as a valid part of logic,<br />
<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4320149?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Arthur Prior used it in modal logic</a><br />
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This argumemt turns on use of Principe of Sufficient Reason (PSR)Alexander R. Pruss, The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment - PhilPapers<br>
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Link sent by Thomas M. Crisp May 23, 2022,<br>
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https://philpapers.org/rec/PRUTPO-4
<a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/PRUTPO-4">https://philpapers.org/rec/PRUTPO-4</a><br>
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[1] Infinite Causal Regression. For arguments against see: <a href="http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2010/08/against-infinite-causal-regress.html"><b>No Infinite Causal Regression</b></a></div>
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[2] <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Timothy</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="color: #1a1a1a; text-indent: -33px;">O’Connor</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; text-indent: -33px;">2008, </span><em style="color: #1a1a1a; text-indent: -33px;">Theism and Ultimate Explanation: the Necessary Shape of Contingency</em><span style="color: #1a1a1a; text-indent: -33px;">, London: Wiley-Blackwell.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; text-indent: -33px;">[3] David Steindl-Rast,OSB, "The Mystical Core of Organized religion," Greatfulness, blog, 2018</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://gratefulness.org/resource/dsr-mystical-core-religion/">https://gratefulness.org/resource/dsr-mystical-core-religion/</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: -33px;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[4] Timothy Ware, <i>The </i></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><i>Orthodox</i></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Church</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">NY: </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Penguin</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">,1964.65</span></span></span></div>
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Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.com