Darwinism, education, materialism's fatal flaw

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Dictating mandatory threesomes doesn't actually benefit people if they don't want 'em.

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Gee, I didn't realize what a machine you must be in bed, Dan.Most men have a difficult enough time satisfying one woman, but I guess you are an overachiever, eh?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-22-2004 07:00 PM

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"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."--Thomas Jefferson

LOL!!

Here is the web address of the complete text of Origin of Species.The Victorian prose is kind of labored, but the main thing I got from this book is what a great scientist Darwin was. He constantly questions his findings and his theory, looking for ways he could be wrong.The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

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a) Our family still works in terms of kids get raised, old people get taken care of, everyone is fed, sheltered, educated, etc. And the same, I believe could be said of American society, sure some fall through the cracks, but relatively few and overall the society works quite well in these terms.

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Actually, the same cannot be said of American society as a whole.Compared to other industrialized nations, the US does a terrible job of providing adequate education, shelter, healthcare, and food to it's citizens.It's not true that "a few fall through the cracks".Millions of us are in a free-fall.It is well known that US high school students have fallen behind in math and science skills compared to many other countries.Here are some comparative statistics for your viewing dismay:A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE US AND OTHER RICH NATIONSPoverty level (More):United States 17.1%
Canada 12.6
United Kingdom 9.7
Switzerland 8.5
Germany 5.6
Sweden 5.3
Norway 5.2Children under the poverty level:United States 22.4%
Canada 15.5
United Kingdom 9.3
Switzerland 7.8
Sweden 5.0
Germany 4.9
Norway 4.8Deaths from malnutrition (per million):Men Women
United States 7 13
France 4 9
Canada 5 7
Japan 2 1
United Kingdom 1 2
Norway 0 1Head Start (percent of age group enrolled in preschool)2-year olds 3-year olds 4-year olds
France 35.7% 96.3 100
Norway 22.8 31.6 44.1
Finland 20.2 16.0 19.6
Germany 9.1 32.3 71.6
United Kingdom 1.3 25.9 69.2
United States 0.0 28.9 49.0Percent of population covered by public health care:ALL NATIONS (except below) 100%
France, Austria 99
Switzerland, Spain, Belgium 98
Germany 92
Netherlands 77
United States 40Infant Mortality Rate (per 1,000 live births):United States 10.4
United Kingdom 9.4
Germany 8.5
Denmark 8.1
Canada 7.9
Norway 7.9
Netherlands 7.8
Switzerland 6.8
Finland 5.9
Sweden 5.9
Japan 5.0

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Wow, I totally missed that whole string of posts. For the record, Schraf, the main benefit I see of mandatory threesomes is that most men could use the educational experience of watching one girl work on another. The women of the world would be better off for it.

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Why do you assume they would be interested in working on each other?Maybe they just want you to prove how studly you are, since you think you can satisfy not one, but two women at the same time?

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...have I pissed you off or something? I'm not sure, because posts on the internet are all in monotone voice, but I'm just getting that vibe. If so, sorry. Not intended.

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No, no, no, Dan, I'm sorry. I'm not mad at all, just trying to tease you a bit about your assumptions.I should have put in a wisecrack or a smiley or something.Nothing that you have ever written has pissed me off.

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And I realize the whole group sex thing is a tangent, but a guy wielding his wang like Zeus' thunderbolt while two women bow in awe isn't really my experience in the matter. (Or something that would really appeal to me.)

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LOL!!Well, that's kind of what the standard male fantasy is, isn't it?A guy comes across two lesbians making out and they invite him to join them because now that there's a real man around they'd rather have him?Maybe I've got my sex fantasy cliche's all wrong.

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I am saying the Bible sets out God Himself as The Moral Standard, as well as the standard for reason, which is what much of human morality is based on.

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If morality comes from God, then if God said that it was good and moral to murder and rape, would that make murder and rape moral behaviors?

It just so happens that my husband is finishing up his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in a couple of months, so I have a very knowlegeable brain to pick for this reply.In addition, he has specifically studied visual perception and memory, so this is right up his alley. On to it...

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Don't have to. Try an experiment. Imagine a red Hummer. Close your eyes and see if you still see a red Hummer. Now if a neurosurgeon were to poke around in your brain would he find anything which is your red Hummer? So the mind has properties that the brain does not possess.

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Go to the web and find an image of a red Hummer.Now turn off your computer monitor.Now, have an IT technition poke around in your computer's memory files. Would they find a red Hummer?There is nothing in your brain that is red, mechanical, compensation for a small penis, or has poor gas mileage. However, there are neural codes that represent some or all of these aspects of a red Hummer in your brain.

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These secondary qualities to our experience seem to indicate something beyond the physical.

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No, that doesn't follow.If a person is awake during brain surgery, as they often are, a neurosurgeon can induce the patient to experience sounds, smells, visions, and a miriad of emotional states (including religious extacy) by stimulating various parts of the brain. Similarly, we find that when certain specific parts of the brain are damaged in humans and other mammals, specific deficits in function or changes in behavior are consistently observed. Again similarly, certain chemicals and drugs affect the brain in the same way, changing behavior and leading to similar experience among those in a group.What this strongly suggests is that behavior and thought originate in the physical brain.

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I am suggesting that it can be shown that the brain and mind are seperate entities in that properties can be assigned to the mind that do not apply to the brain and vice versa.

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Let us apply this analogy to other systems.Can it be shown that the heart and circulation are separate entities in that properties can be assigned to circulation that do not apply to the heart and vice versa?Can it be shown that the stomach and digestion are separate entities in that properties can be assigned to digestion that do not apply to the stomach and vice versa?If you cut into Michael Jordan's muscles, do you find the game of basketball?

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So (hang with me now, don't get upset, just an analogy) I assume you love your husband, yes? Could a neurosurgeon induce you to stop loving your husband? Could a neurosurgeon make you into me and cause you to begin loving my wife?

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Well, we do not currently have that level of sophistication in neurosurgery, but the short, simple answer is yes.Yes, if it were possible for a neurosurgeon to change my brain so that it was exactly like your brain, then they could essentially turn me into you.

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I am not denying there is an intimate tie-in between the physical brain and the mental states we experience; but when you start to get down to what is YOU and only YOU, it begins to at least get a little fuzzier, you agree?

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Remember, you initially gave several examples to say that evidence isn't needed to show that the mind and brain are separate.Now you say that it's "fuzzy".This is just another God of the Gaps fallacy.Considering that science has only been investigating the brain in any serious way for a few decades, don't you think it's a bit premature for you to point to the gaps in our knowledge and say that God is in there?Yes, you are right, the mind/brain issue is a little fuzzy.Let's investigate it, using the tools of science, and maybe we can learn more.You can stop investigating if you want to, and ascribe the unknown to magic if you like.

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Essentially, this means that even if our brains can be tampered with to induce experiences, it doesn't mean that consciousness is fully dependent on the brain.

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Let's take out your brain, mike.Where is your consciousness?Show me consciousness without a brain.

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No consciousness can be found in the natural, after death. So I cannot prove consciousness is beyond the brain,

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Right.So you agree with me that there is no reason, no evidence to even suggest that the mind is anything but a product of the brain.To believe otherwise is to believe, as dshortt does, without any evidence.

This is the first request for comment upon NDE's, soory I must have missed the first.There is strong evidence that NDE's are a result of the brain being starved of oxygen, and have been reproduced in a clinical setting, on purpose.

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Given that I have argued successfully (in my estimation) in this thread that a fatal flaw exists in naturalistic logic,

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Well, that would be in your estimation only, I'm afraid.

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and given that God was never in the gaps to begin with

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What did the ancient Norse people believe about thunder?What did the ancient Romans believe about the sun?

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(of course humans were destined to learn more through scientific exploration about the natural world,

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No, actually science-minded people had to brave death and imprisonment by religious leaders in Europe for quite some time before the Enlightenment.The right to think differently from the Church was very hard won and was not at all an inevitability.Look what has happened in the Arab world; once the fertile crescent was the seat of scholarship and learning, but now many of it's governments stifle real academic progress brutally, replacing it with the exlusive study of the Koran.

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does that in any way eliminate or diminish the supernatural), I would question your faith that science will ever solve this brain/mind conundrum in favor of a purely naturalistic philosophy.

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Where did I ever say that it would?There are many things that I suspect we will never be able to understand fully.Just because we do not understand, does not mean Godidit.

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Of course there is more to be learned, and of course we should continue scientific exploration. The danger comes in when you put empirical science in the driver's seat of being the one and only method that we attain knowledge

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What other method do you propose that will produce the same results when anyone, regardless of creed, uses it?

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(and as I have shown, under a purely naturalistic philosophy, even this knowledge has to be questioned, because an Ultimate Truth cannot exist).

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Science does not claim that Ultimate Truth does not exist.Science claims only to represent our current best explanation of natural phenomena.

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Consider my Science of the Expanding Complexities Theory (if this is part of a previous post, my apologies) in which science is clearing a field (representing man's expanding knowledge base), and as the field is cleared, it is believed that the horizons will be reached and man's knowledge will cover the entire landscape. But what man does not realize is the horizons are an infinite distance, and the edges of the field only represent the beginning of all that we don't know.

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This is fully understood in methodological naturalism as embodied in the concept of tentativity.

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Take space research: 40 years ago Carl Sagan was still promoting the idea that the universe was infinite and therefore anything that could ever happen has already or at some point in the future will happen, so it is not suprising we find a creature as complex as a human being. It had to happen. Now of course we know the universe is relatively young (13.5 billion years old or so?), and a beginning to the universe, life and man must now be explained.

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The atom was once thought to be the smallest particle contained by matter. We know differently now and the complexities are likely to expand even further with something such as string theory. In biology it was once thought that life was composed of a simple substance called plasma and nothing more. Now the intricate world of microbiology presents itself with information and machinery performing construction and repair and replicating functions and, much like brain research, it is very early in this study. And then of course the brain, as you have pointed out, is beginning to be studied in depth, but one complexity seems to lead to another in this area as well. But not one ounce of all of this, (in spite of claims to the contrary) has ever disproven the supernatural. And don't you think by now it would have?

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No, because science doesn't address the supernatural, only the natural.An effect of scientific discovery, however, is that the supernatural, as we have thought it effects the physical world, has become smaller and smaller.Now, instead of Thor the Thunder God, we have God residing in molecules.

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So science continues to implore us with each new complexity layer that we are getting closer to a "theory of everything" that will once and for all put supernaturalism to bed for good.

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It does? That's news to me. Science has become increasingly, excruciatingly specialized as we learn more and the vistas of research ever expand.

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And there will be an endless parade of these complexities to explore, so the faithful will fall in line in the belief that God is indeed unnecessary. I would prefer a logical worldview that allows an Ultimate Truth to ground man's knowledge and proceed from there.

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I'm sure you prefer a lot of things regarding your worldview.So do I.The supernatural is neither proven nor disproven with science.Science deals with the natural world.End of story.

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You say that I have not argued successfully that naturalistic philosophy has a logical fatal flaw. My post #55 in this thread makes the case fairly well. Show me which post refutes it.

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I'll have a look, but will repond in a different post.

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What exactly do the Norse gods and Roman gods have to do with Christianity? Try this for a good working definition of what the Christian God has been since AD 35-40 (the beginning of the church):

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"In the beginning was the Word (creative mind, reason) and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Through Him all things were made, without Him nothing was made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." John 1:1-5

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The problem is, you have gone much farther than this verse.You have mentioned several specific physical phenomena and claimed that because we do not understand them fully, that possibly God is evidenced in them.That is precisely what the ancients were doing when they explained thunder with Thor and the movement of the sun with Apollo's firey chariot.That is classic God of the Gaps.

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This is not an argument for the truth of any worldview.

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No, it isn't.However, it is a direct refutation of your statement:(of course humans were destined to learn more through scientific exploration about the natural world,It was not destined, or inevitable.It was fought for and won.Throughout history, there are many examples of religion stifling thought and learning, such as we have today in the Arab/moslem world, and in the Christian Fundamentalist movement to remove Evolution from science curricula in US public schools.

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And you convienently neglect to mention the many early Christian scientists.

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What other religion was anyone allowed to be in Europe in the time of Galileo and Newton, dshortt?What other educated class was there?Do you really think that there was any kind of choice for people regarding what religion they were allowed to practice when the Church controlled or owned most of Europe and Russia? You were Catholic or you were persecuted and driven away.

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But science is subject to interpretation, and a purely naturalistic philosophy doesn't even allow a grounding in logical premises, so how are we to interpret anything when we are sold out to naturalism?

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Unresponsive.Please answer the question.What other method do you propose that will produce the same results when anyone, regardless of creed, uses it?Just how are we to incorporate supernatural/religious beliefs into the investigation of the universe? Can you explain how doing this will benefit inquiry?Perhaps you can use the mind/brain issue as an example.Please explain how supernatural explanations or ideas help us to understand this issue better.

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I find it very interesting that by declaring science as only pertaining to the natural, and science as the only way we can gain knowledge that you back yourself into a corner from where no Ultimate Truths, no Ultimate Logic, no Ultimate Reason, and nothing ultimately worthwhile resides.

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You are confusing methodological naturalism with ontological naturalism again.The first is the method of science and the second is the philosophy of Naturalism.Anyone can use the first to conduct scientific investigations. The second is a philosophy that one may hold, but it is not neccessary to hold it to use the first.That's why there are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shintos, Ba'Hais, Zoroastrians, Athiests, Agnostics, Deists, Pagans, Wiccans, and people of a zillion other beliefs who use methodological naturalism to do science and it works for everybody. They get the same results.It works no matter what you believe.

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Sorry if I have been too harsh, but I get a little miffed at this silly god of the gaps stuff.

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When you point to the brain/mind issue, and say "Gee, don't you think things are a little fuzzy here? Don't you think that this fuzziness points to something that might be God?", you are using the God of the Gaps Fallacy.There were a couple of things in my previous reply to you that you did not address that I would like you to. The first one, in particular, is key to the discussion and something I have yet to see you address. I have copied them here:

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I would question your faith that science will ever solve this brain/mind conundrum in favor of a purely naturalistic philosophy.

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Consider my Science of the Expanding Complexities Theory (if this is part of a previous post, my apologies) in which science is clearing a field (representing man's expanding knowledge base), and as the field is cleared, it is believed that the horizons will be reached and man's knowledge will cover the entire landscape. But what man does not realize is the horizons are an infinite distance, and the edges of the field only represent the beginning of all that we don't know.

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"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."--Thomas Jefferson