Is morality objective or subjective?

[Will Bouwman]

A creature with a rudimentary eye will have an evolutionary advantage over totally blind competitors in many circumstances.

But it will not, so long as that eye does not function.

Yes it will. The thing that you clearly don't understand is that an organism doesn't need a fully functioning eye for sensitivity to light to confer some evolutionary advantage. If you were to trouble yourself with a bit of research, you would discover that the evolution of the eye is well understood. This is just the first Google hit in response to 'evolution of the eye'. Oops! Here it is:https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... f-the-eye/

This is what I was pointing out with the flagellar case: if the flagellum is too short, or lacks one of the 42 distinct parts required to make it rotate, or has even one of these parts underdeveloped, then the flagellum is only a long anchor hanging off the back of the organism.

These guys know more about it than you or I:
"As with the evolution of other complex structures and processes (29–32), we have shown the bacterial flagellum too originated from “so simple a beginning,” in this case, a single gene that underwent successive duplications and subsequent diversification during the early evolution of Bacteria."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/p ... 20Bacteria.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/131/Th ... _1922-1996

P.S. -- That's a good article.

Then as someone qualified to judge an article on Thomas Kuhn, you will appreciate that from outside your creationist bubble, it just looks like an archaic paradigm and the centuries of apologetics is analogous to the "normal science" Kuhn noted, which in evolutionary science is ongoing. Very few people think evolution is in crisis and that revolution is imminent.

I see you've got some familiarity with Polanyi, too. Have you read Personal Knowledge? It's well worth it.

What did you take from it?

[Immanuel Can]

You simply jump to place too much credibility on 'logic'

Are you female?

...by convention 'current' must be at the present or at most within the last 12 months.

????

At present, I have a project on proving why it is impossible for God to be real.

Yeah, well...

[Immanuel Can]

A creature with a rudimentary eye will have an evolutionary advantage over totally blind competitors in many circumstances.

But it will not, so long as that eye does not function.

Yes it will.

No, it won't. Break down the preliminary stages, and you'll see it won't. The alleged "light-sensitive" area, putatively eventually to end up being an eye, is at first barely light-sensitive at all. Its sensitivity is utterly uninterpretable to the rudimentary organism that has it, and it amounts to little more than a sunburn spot would. It presents no survival advantage, because it does not convey any survival-relevant and interpretable information to the organism. And in that state it must remain for thousands or millions of years, while the alleged slow-grinding of evolution works its way forward. In fact, the organism which has its survival attention divided between, say, its sensitive spot and its other survival faculties is not at an advantage but at a disadvantage.

The case becomes even more clear in the case of something like the bacterial flagellum. There's not only no utility to an undeveloped flagellum -- it's most definitely an injury, a survival-liability that, according to survival of the fittest, ought to result in the immediate death of the organism. But the Evolutionists' story requires us to think that not only did the injured organism persist, contrary to survival of the fittest, but that the injury was selected-for for millions of years; and not just in one organism, but in millions of others.

So the story eats itself. If survival of the fittest is true, then linearly-developing organisms cannot develop unless the mutation represents a decisive survival advantage at every requisite stage. The second it does not, survival of the fittest kills the organism.

This is what I was pointing out with the flagellar case: if the flagellum is too short, or lacks one of the 42 distinct parts required to make it rotate, or has even one of these parts underdeveloped, then the flagellum is only a long anchor hanging off the back of the organism.

These guys know more about it than you or I

So "appeal to authority"?

I don't think they do. I think they're ideologically motivated.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/131/Th ... _1922-1996

P.S. -- That's a good article.

Then as someone qualified to judge an article on Thomas Kuhn, you will appreciate that from outside your creationist bubble, it just looks like an archaic paradigm and the centuries of apologetics is analogous to the "normal science" Kuhn noted, which in evolutionary science is ongoing. Very few people think evolution is in crisis and that revolution is imminent.

Very few people thought the failure of Aristotelian cosmology was immanent. But it was. Aristotelianism, as you note from Kuhn's account and others, had become a sclerotic orthodoxy that was stifling cosmology, just as Aristotelian assumptions had once stifled medicine, too...and for thousands of years.

What if, as Thomas Nagel asserts, Evolutionism is just another sclerotic orthodoxy that's stifling science? I think he's right, of course: but even from a secular perspective, which is Nagel's perspective, there's a powerful case to be made that that is exactly what Evolutionism has become. We're failing to understand humanity -- its meaning, origin, morals, teleology and all of that -- because we're addicted to the paradgim that lets us reject God. And we're afraid to question it now, because man does not want God back in the equation...not because it's actually the right science, or the truth.

I see you've got some familiarity with Polanyi, too. Have you read Personal Knowledge? It's well worth it.

What did you take from it?[/quote]
Lots. He's very good at showing how our real understanding of science is formed. It's formed on a kind of faith, actually.

He uses the example of a bicycle, at one point: how many people who actually ride bicycles ever know that they are utilizing a series of falling motions mitigated by the curvature of a circle, thus generating gyroscopic stability as they produce a series of such motions? Most of us think of pedaling and steering, not of falling along curves. But we still ride bicycles, and imagine we know very well what we're doing. We're not conscious that what we are "knowing" about cycling is actually all tacit and pragmatic, not explicit and theorized correctly.

There's much more in him, of course. But that's an interesting snippet to me. So much of science is a kind of "practice" into which we are "initiated," not something we fully understand. It's not fully theorized before we do it.

For example, I'll warrant that we didn't learn science by understanding what science was. Rather, somebody in a lab coat, maybe a public school teacher reputed to be a science expert, told us to believe in it, and made us to rudimentary "experiments" until we came to believe in the experimental method. Then he maybe started teaching us some theory; but by then, we'd already been "apprenticed" into belief in what we were doing. So we didn't come as rational critics to the project: we came as naive children to an adult, and put our faith in his priestly knowledge, and only afterward found any confirmation of what he was saying.

We weren't wrong to trust him, perhaps. But we might have been, given the looseness of our actual method. And what he told us was very probably only half true. When he told us about the scientific method, perhaps, he was right; but if he, like scientists of old, had introduced us to phrenology or astrology...or to Aristotelian cosmology...we would have been powerless against his priestly authority. For we were only ignorant children, at the time; and we had faith in him that the facts really couldn't justify. He was an adult, but only a public school science dabbbler, not a true scientist, and not an expert, in most cases.

The upshot is that our introduction to science was not as we would like to tell ourselves, the mature exercise of advanced critical thinking, but rather a child's faith in an adult. And I'll warrant that was true not just for you and me, but for almost everybody who today calls themselves a scientist.

Very interesting how things actually happen.

[bahman]

So, I read some pages back and I am wondering what infinite regress, evolution, etc. have to do with this thread. Could you please enlighten me?

[Walker]

Interesting.

If this standard of ignoring style was applied to Trump, there would be no reason to criticize him.

How about for fast tracking the Covid vaccines and bragging about it and standing behind them.

What about it?

[Iwannaplato]

Interesting.

If this standard of ignoring style was applied to Trump, there would be no reason to criticize him.

How about for fast tracking the Covid vaccines and bragging about it and standing behind them.

What about it?

OK, if you've got no problem with that I misunderstood past comments of yours.

[Walker]

How about for fast tracking the Covid vaccines and bragging about it and standing behind them.

What about it?

OK, if you've got no problem with that I misunderstood past comments of yours.

What problem do you have other than retrospect, and your refusal to explain the problem?

[Iwannaplato]

What about it?

OK, if you've got no problem with that I misunderstood past comments of yours.

What problem do you have other than retrospect, and your refusal to explain the problem?

I thought I'd read you saying you were against the vaccines for a few different reasons. I must have been wrong, misrememberd, remembered the wrong person's posts, something, given your response. No need to go further. I made a mistake, no more on that to talk about.

[Walker]

I had to get vaccinated for international travel, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have because I’m healthy as a horse and strong as a Jersey bull.

Forced vaccinations, bad idea.

[Immanuel Can]

So, I read some pages back and I am wondering what infinite regress, evolution, etc. have to do with this thread. Could you please enlighten me?

Welcome to the world of free conversation. Things wander here.

[Veritas Aequitas]

You simply jump to place too much credibility on 'logic'

Are you female?

You playing gender-identity philosophy?
Focus on the argument.

Logic is merely a useful too, and some type of logic like the one you are relying upon is very blunt.

Again,

You simply jump to place too much credibility on 'logic' without taking into consideration that the strength of any logic is its limitation, making facts stripped naked and bald.

• That Logic should have been thus successful is an advantage which it owes entirely to its Limitations, whereby it is justified in abstracting indeed, it is under obligation to do so from all Objects of Knowledge and their differences, leaving the Understanding nothing to deal with save itself and its Form. Kant CPR Bix

Kant spent >40 years lecturing on logic. He differentiated between General Logic and Transcendental Logic. It is within the latter, that theists are led into believing an illusion as God.

Rational non-theists whilst acknowledge the use of logic which is limited, rely more on critical thinking and rationality with wisdom as reinforcements.

As such the Kalam Cosmological Argument which relies heavily on logic and its form without solid critical thinking, is at best 'half-cooked' and can never be realistic.

[Veritas Aequitas]

The upshot is that our introduction to science was not as we would like to tell ourselves, the mature exercise of advanced critical thinking, but rather a child's faith in an adult. And I'll warrant that was true not just for you and me, but for almost everybody who today calls themselves a scientist.

Despite the severe weaknesses and limitation faced by Science, Science [at its best] is still the most credible and objective Framework and System of Knowledge [FSK] when compared to other FSKs at their best.
Other than the mathematics FSK which is close, which FSKs are more credible and objective than the scientific FSK.?
The theistic FSK has the least or negligible credibility and objective in contrast to the scientific FSK as the standard.

There are two perspectives to Science, i.e.
1. Scientific Realism - there is an ultimate mind-independent reality.
2. Scientific Anti-Realism - there is NO an ultimate mind-independent reality, however it is adopted as an ASSUMPTION with the scientific FSK.

Re 1, scientific realists insist Science is attempting to discover in continual improvement to a really real ultimate mind-independent reality. This is philosophical realism grounded on an illusion.

Re 2, the purpose of Science is never after the ultimate Truth, i.e. objective mind-independent reality, but rather science [at its best] produces credible, objective, verifiable and justifiable conclusions that are useful to humanity.
Wiser modern scientists are Scientific Anti-Realists... ironically to be more realistic.
To them, an ultimate reality awaiting science's discover is meaningless or I would say nonsense.. merely useful to soothe psychological pains.

Model-dependent realism is a view of scientific inquiry that focuses on the role of scientific models of phenomena.[1] It claims reality should be interpreted based upon these models, and where several models overlap in describing a particular subject, multiple, equally valid, realities exist
It claims that it is meaningless to talk about the "true reality" of a model as we can never be absolutely certain of anything.
The only meaningful thing is the usefulness of the model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism

Scientific ANTI-Realists do not give a f... about any really real ultimate objective reality that is independent of the mind.
As with Kuhn, whatever the scientific conclusion, it must be qualified to the scientific paradigm and the specific scientific paradigm [Newtonian Einsteinian, QM].

In Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument [re P2] he relied on two scientific confirmations.
Craig's confidence on them is based on scientific realism.
But scientific realism [subset of philosophical] is grounded on an illusion.
As such, Craig's two scientific confirmations [grounded on illusion] are not credible at all.

Craig's Kalam relied on two Philosophical Arguments from Ghazali which are also based on philosophical realism which is grounded on an illusion.
All in all Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument is grounded on an illusion and thus whatever God that follows is illusory.
I will provide the detailed argument later in the Religion Section.

[Immanuel Can]

You simply jump to place too much credibility on 'logic'

Are you female?

You playing gender-identity philosophy?
Focus on the argument.

So...yes.

[Immanuel Can]

Despite the severe weaknesses and limitation faced by Science...

Sorry...not interested.

Somebody who has no respect for logic has no argument.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Despite the severe weaknesses and limitation faced by Science...

Sorry...not interested.
Somebody who has no respect for logic has no argument.

You're are really a philosophy gnat with so shallow and narrow thinking.

Here is ChatGpt's wisdom to your narrow-minded dogmatic clingingness to logic;
in [] = mine.

• ChatGpt:
  "While I recognize the undeniable value of logic as a tool in constructing and evaluating arguments, it's crucial to appreciate that logic, like any tool, has its limitations. Immanuel Kant, a prominent philosopher, eloquently pointed out that the success of logic lies in its ability to abstract from the complexities of real-world objects and their differences, focusing solely on the form [skeleton] of understanding.
  
  However, it's important to note that this abstraction, while powerful, also comes with inherent limitations. Logic operates within specific frameworks and structures, and its effectiveness is contingent on the accuracy of the premises it is built upon. Human reasoning is not always neatly confined to these logical structures, as emotions, intuition, and the subjective nature of experiences often play a significant role in shaping our perspectives.
  
  Dismissing someone's argument solely on the grounds of not respecting logic oversimplifies the multifaceted nature of human reasoning. Respect for logic is indeed important, but a well-rounded argument also considers the broader context, including the limitations of logic itself.
  In essence, the strength of an argument lies not only in its logical coherence but also in its ability to incorporate diverse elements of human cognition, ensuring a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding."