Philosophy Now Forum

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:37 pm If you don't understand the religion, then how will you understand the extremism?

And if you don't understand the extremism, then how will you be able to understand the danger and respond to it?

I don't need to know why, nor even care why, certain religious movements might be campaigning and lobbying against abortion rights, for example. If I want to play a part in opposing them, I just need to understand the strategy and techniques they employ to achieve their aims.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:51 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:37 pm If you don't understand the religion, then how will you understand the extremism?

And if you don't understand the extremism, then how will you be able to understand the danger and respond to it?

I don't need to know why, nor even care why, certain religious movements might be campaigning and lobbying against abortion rights, for example. If I want to play a part in opposing them, I just need to understand the strategy and techniques they employ to achieve their aims.

You won't understand the strategy and techniques because you won't understand their motivations and aims.

Sun Tzu said Know the enemy and know yourself in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:47 pm
There's no difference. Evolutionism IS a theory.

You don't get to summarily declare something a fact without providing sufficient warrant, and then claim it's scientific and nobody's allowed to question it. That's anti-scientific procedure. But it's the procedure of Evolutionism.

There may be people who have formed a belief system around evolution, and developed some kind of quasi religion from it, in which case it would not be unreasonable to call them "Evolutionists", and they may well call themselves that. I am not aware of such people, but I wouldn't deny their existence. But, to most people who accept evolution as a scientific truth -which would be most educated people, I suspect- it is just one of many scientific truths that they accept. It holds no special place in their world view.

That in no way attests to the correctness of the theory, but to suggest it is the subject of serious doubts among those qualified to have a legitimate opinion, and within the scientific establishment as a whole, is dishonestly misleading.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:56 pm You won't understand the strategy and techniques because you won't understand their motivations and aims.

Why do I need to understand their motivations and aims, rather than just be aware of them?

Sun Tzu said Know the enemy and know yourself in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

Fear not, phyllo, I don't intend to go into battle.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:40 pm I have no complaints about the way things are.

This suits me just perfectly -- as you may well imagine. It's wonderful, isn't it? to be 'on the same page' as the popular saying goes.

Why do I need to understand their motivations and aims, rather than just be aware of them?

So you are "aware" of their motivations and aims?

I'm not sure what your distinction is between 'understanding' and 'awareness'.

Fear not, phyllo, I don't intend to go into battle.

You just wrote that you might be opposing some religious movement.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:51 pm I don't need to know why, nor even care why, certain religious movements might be campaigning and lobbying against abortion rights, for example. If I want to play a part in opposing them, I just need to understand the strategy and techniques they employ to achieve their aims.

That is a defective strategy on various accounts. One is that to combat something (let's say effectively) it must be understood thoroughly. If you cannot, let's say, understand Christian adamancy for the right of the fetus, you will not be able to understand the so-called extremism that results in defense of that fetal life. But on what basis do Christians value the life of a human being? Why does a human being have rights? And rights that are distinct from say cows and chickens? That would be something else you (I mean someone genuinely concerned for the issues) would need to know. It would in fact be a requirement in a true battle. You would be required to oppose and even defeat the Christian's concept of value of life (fetal life) through a counter-proposition. If you had no counter proposition you'd have no basis for opposition.

You see how ideas work, Harbal? People have *ideas* and they have *values* and, as a result of defining them, and believing in them, they are then compelled to put their beliefs into action. And there is a special word for that! It's called morality.

mo·ral·i·ty

2. A system or collection of ideas of right and wrong conduct.

Just like you I am learning -- at lightning pace! -- as we go along here. No turgidity for me buster! Clear, lucid prose. Thanks Belinda!

Hallelujah!

::: prances around, kicking up heels like an Irishman :::

If you had no counter proposition you'd have no basis for opposition.

He would present a counter proposition which would work on someone like him but not necessarily on his opponent.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 4:24 pm But, to most people who accept evolution as a scientific truth -- which would be most educated people, I suspect -- it is just one of many scientific truths that they accept. It holds no special place in their world view.

You are, I might submit, wrong in what you conclude. The views and beliefs that we have (let's say those of scientism) are actually far more determining than you'd imagine. They are in fact metaphysical.

In a sense a 'scientific view' received by Everyman as such is an invitation to no longer need to think. And there are certainly consequences to that.

Some have opined that when we see the world through a good deal of modern lenses that we actually stop seeing it. "Ho-hum. Oh that. Yes I understand that." I have an anecdote I'd like to share with you. When I was interviewed at the rather tiny university I attended I had to spend an afternoon with the dean who, naturally, went on about the merits of the program. At one point, speaking of the Occidental canon and of course the scientific view, he said something like "Yes, it is our Occidental system that gives us the ability to explain all that" and he waved his hand vaguely at the surrounding mountains as if 'all that' could even be explained. It always struck me as a powerful metaphor for how seeing (in some particular way) acts as a sort of screen so as not to see any longer.

But here I am referring to people like, say, Robert Bly who have unconventional viewpoints and seem to be seeking other modes of seeing as well as being.

True, I did eventually invite the dean to live with my former tribe in the wilds of the Peruvian Amazon Basin and he did -- eventually -- renounce all his former views and subscribe to others (here is a recent picture of him) but I assume you get the point.

(True also that ayahuasca had not a small bit to do with is change of worldview . . .)

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 4:33 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:40 pm I have no complaints about the way things are.

This suits me just perfectly -- as you may well imagine. It's wonderful, isn't it? to be 'on the same page' as the popular saying goes.

And it's not like we live next door to each other, or anything as ghastly as that, is it?

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 4:24 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:47 pm
There's no difference. Evolutionism IS a theory.

You don't get to summarily declare something a fact without providing sufficient warrant, and then claim it's scientific and nobody's allowed to question it. That's anti-scientific procedure. But it's the procedure of Evolutionism.

There may be people who have formed a belief system around evolution,

For any claim proposing to be scientific, and yet not having evidence, the right term is "unscientific." They're ideologues.

...to most people who accept evolution as a scientific truth -which would be most educated people, I suspect- it is just one of many scientific truths that they accept. It holds no special place in their world view.

I'd add a word...for most people, it holds no self-aware place in their worldview." That's because, as we routinely observe, people don't examine their own worldview for consistency. Rather, they tend to live ad hoc and semi-consciously, either distracted by their busy lives or actually resistant to too much introspection and self-questioning. Their worldviews are things they "see through," like a pair of spectacles, not so much a thing they ever want to "look at," like a subject on a microscope slide.

But anthropogeny, the assumptions about origins, actually always hold a foundational place in all our subsequent assumptions, even when we're not consciously concentrating on them. They are our spectacles, even when not our specimens.

And what do these "spectacles" lead us to assume, on a semi-conscious level, even when we're not thinking about them? Well, what we are is defined by whether or not we believe we were made, and made by design, and made with any end in view. If, as Evolutionism asks us to believe, we are accidental products of time plus chance, then the logic of that assumption is that there is no purpose, direction, design or intention in our existence. And, we might add, whatever "morality" is, it has to be some sort of odd "epiphenomenon" of being human, but not related to any objective property about the universe, and hence, not obligatory or enforceable for anyone, save through the morally-questionable application of power.

We can force people to be good, but we can't tell them why they have a duty to be. And we can beat them silly when they cross the lines we've imposed, but we can't know we're right to do it. And we can't be find indicators of what it means to be a "good" person, except that we find ourselves self-satisified or compliant with social pressures.

So we have no reason to look for direction, objective value, objective purpose, or objective fulfillment in life...just maybe subjective pleasures or complacencies. And no form of inquiry will help us with that.

I'd say those are pretty serious assumptions that shape worldview, wouldn't you?

...to suggest it is the subject of serious doubts among those qualified to have a legitimate opinion, and within the scientific establishment as a whole, is dishonestly misleading.

So you don't regard guys like Thomas Nagel, or David Berlinski, or Francis Collins, or Wilder Penfield, or andy of these people https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/people qualify as to express an opinion on the subject? And presumably, if ordinary people like you and I have any view of the subject, we are also unfit to voice those concerns?

That's an interesting assumption. I don't share it. I think any real scientific theory would only benefit from addressing the concerns they represent, if only to overcome them and refine its terms. However, I do agree that a hokey, pretentious, pseudo-scientific theory would wish to avoid their scrutiny...that, I can understand.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 4:40 pm

Fear not, phyllo, I don't intend to go into battle.

You just wrote that you might be opposing some religious movement.

Only if they venture onto the forum, and even then my role will be that of a sniper, operating from a safe distance.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 5:04 pm For any claim proposing to be scientific, and yet not having evidence, the right term is "unscientific." They're ideologues.

Master intoned: 2) Another question with an apparent answer but also a deeper answer needed. Thus the apparent and the non-apparent. Ultimately, it is self-indoctrination. More properly a refusal to accept an explanation that doesn’t explain. When the insufficiency of an explanatory model is realized (intuited) this calls forward those who rationalize what is sensed. Can’t due without a rational explanation! (Even a lunatic must ‘sound rational’ and as if he is ‘making sense’).

There has to be formulated then a counter-narrative to an explanation without (genuine) explanatory power. It could be mythically simplistic like a child’s story — or expounded with CS Lewis intelligence and including footnotes. But there must needs be one.

Evolutionists are counter-counter-indoctrinators. Upon them religionists project back on them what anti-religionists say of religionists: “You’ve turned Darwinianism into a superstitious quasi-religion. We are the true rationalists!”

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 5:04 pm I'd add a word...for most people, it holds no self-aware place in their worldview." That's because, as we routinely observe, people don't examine their own worldview for consistency. Rather, they tend to live ad hoc and semi-consciously, either distracted by their busy lives or actually resistant to too much introspection and self-questioning. Their worldviews are things they "see through," like a pair of spectacles, not so much a thing they ever want to "look at," like a subject on a microscope slide.

He got this from Blake!

“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”

Man, we are really making progress here finally at page 833! Just wait till we pass 1,000!

Rather, they tend to live ad hoc and semi-consciously, either distracted by their busy lives or actually resistant to too much introspection and self-questioning.

And what if it were proposed that you, too, seem to live within a restraining system?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 5:08 pm There has to be formulated then a counter-narrative to an explanation without (genuine) explanatory power.

A perfect description of Evolutionism.

And you can see it. Why was Darwinism so quickly and widely embraced? Had it been confirmed by lab testing? Was it repeatable? Did it actually account for "origins of life" from non-living material? Could it be produced under controlled conditions? Were variations in pidgeon or finch physiology logically evidence of trans-species macroevolution? Was its application to humans actually demonstrated anywhere?

None of the above, obviously. What did people like about it? That, for the first time, it gave them a narrative that might free them from the expedient of referring to God at all. And that also accounts for their total addiction to it now.

But if I raise a theory about, say, lithium batteries...say that hydrogen batteries could prove better...how will the scientific community react? Will they call me "unscientific"? Will they say, "You only believe in hydrogen batteries because you're indoctrinated, or irrational, or a loon?" Will the exclude me from the lab, and take away my equipment? Will they scoff, and refuse to consider my evidence?

No, they'll welcome my investigations as useful in proving either a) that hydrogen batteries can be better, or b) that the full reasons why lithium batteries are still yet to be revealed, so that addressing and disproving my critiques can make the case for lithium batteries even stronger and more sophisticated. They'll give me a grant, a lab, an ear, and venues for publication of my results when I'm done.

So ask yourself this: if Evolutionism is so "scientific," then why is that the one allegedly "scientific" theory in which allegedly-science-motivated people absolutely refuse to behave like real scientists?