Tom Caylor wrote:
> On Mar 6, 5:19 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> Tom Caylor wrote:
>>>> A source that has given us the crusades and 9/11 as well as the
>>>> sister's of mercy. No a very sufficient source if nobody can
>>>> agree on what it provides.
>>> I don't like simply saying "That isn't so," but "nobody can agree
>>> on what it provides", referring to the source of ultimate
>>> meaning,
>> I was referring to the "sufficient source of *morality*". Such a
>> source should be able to provide an unambiguous standard that is so
>> clear everyone agrees - if it existed.
>>
>>> is not true. In fact it's very remarkable the consistency,
>>> across all kinds of cultures, the basic beliefs of truly
>>> normative morality, evidence for their being a source which
>>> cannot be explained through closed science alone.
>> Why not? Why isn't Darwin's or Scott Atran's or Richard Dawkin's a
>> *possible* explanation. And how is "God did it" an explanation of
>> anything? It's just a form of words so ambiguous as to be
>> virtually empty. "God" meant different things to the crusaders and
>> the 9/11 jihadists, to the Aztecs and the Conquistadores, to the
>> Nazi's and the Jews. So just because they use the same word
>> doesn't mean they are referring to the same thing.
>>
>
> We've talked about this before. Darwin cannot explain giving without
> expecting to receive.
Where do you get this nonsense?? Do you just make it up as you need it? No parent expects to receive anything but satisfaction from raising their children - as perfectly well explained by Darwin. And how dare you assert that money I sent to Katrina victims was simply calculated to get something back. There are many possible Darwinian explanations for feelings of altruism; but apparently you haven't bothered to find them.
> Actually that's true love. Only some people believe that God did
> that. But many other people somehow see the goodness of it.
>
>> And there is nothing "closed" about science. Science is perfectly
>> open to the existence of whatever you can demonstrate. People have
>> tried to show that the God who answers prayers exists and they
>> fail. But they could have succeeded; nothing about science
>> prevented their success. They failed because there is no such God.
>>
>>
>>> On your first sentence, it also can be said of science that a lot
>>> of evil has come that wouldn't have come (at least in the forms
>>> it has) if it weren't for advances of science.
Quite true. Science helps technology and technology provides power and power can be applied for good and ill.
>>> And I'm not knocking down science as being invalid in its own
>>> right. I'm just making the point that your statement does not
>>> address *root* cause any more than blaming science.
But there is no reason to believe there is any "root" cause that is deeper than variation with natural selection. You have not presented any argument for the existence of this "ultimate" or "root". You merely refer to "closed science" as though that proved something - but it begs the question. You have to show there is something outside science in order to know that it is "closed"; not just that there is something science has not explained, there's lots of that, but something that science cannot, in-principle explain.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Tue Mar 13 2007 - 00:04:02 PDT