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 HillaryA Justice Department review of business dealings tied to Hillary Clinton -- championed by President Donald Trump and his allies -- has wound down with officials not finding enough evidence to recommend the formal opening of a criminal investigation, according to current and former US officials. The Justice Department has not formally closed the review, which was led by US Attorney John Huber of Utah, the officials told CNN. A spokeswoman for Huber deferred comment to the Justice Department's spokeswoman, who declined to comment. The Department of Justice also declined to comment to the Washington Post, which first reported that Huber's review had essentially come to an end. |
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Hillary How can one person get away with all she's been doing? That's what I think! "Emails reveal Hillary’s shocking pay-for-play scheme" nypost.com "Hillary Clinton Is Living Proof That Crime Pays in Spectacular Ways" m.huffpost.com "A Full List of Hillary Clinton’s Crimes" www.sebgorka.com "Report Confirms Clinton Links To ‘Crime Against Children’" The New York Police Department tried to tell the world about the disgusting evidence they found, before the election. Jaw-dropping vindication of the New York Police Department’s stunning allegations, linking Bill and Hillary Clinton to notorious pedophiles, is quietly buried on pages 276 and 294 of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ 500-page report. Unsurprisingly, the liberal network media isn’t saying a single word about it. conservativedailypost.com "NYPD Source: Weiner Laptop Has Enough Evidence “to Put Hillary ... Away for Life”" www.thenewamerican.com It's just amazing! |
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It’s funny though That’s crazy, man. |
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Ha, Ha Why isn't Everyone Laughing? That the people with access to the information can’t find enough to charge her. But you, with only access to public info, think you know more than they do. >> There is nothing funny about CORRUPT FBI agents aiding criminal activities by the Clinton's for as many years as they have! Duplicitous in this is the lying corporate owned mainstream media which lies about these crimes to the American public. Worst of all are followers of the Clinton's, like Z_L, who would look the other way. "Report: FBI Has Enough Evidence to Prosecute Hillary Clinton for Public Corruption" www.breitbart.com "Treasonous FBI aided criminal Hillary Clinton in destroying evidence, wiping hard drives to avoid prosecution" www.govtslaves.com "Two tiered system of justice: Top FBI officials escape prosecution, while others pay heavy price" corruption.news "Hillary Clinton Got The Bad News From The FBI That She Was Dreading" deepstatejournal.com So, Z_L, what is your rational for continuing to support a very probable criminal like H Clinton? |
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Ihs |
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But to answer your question I said they couldn’t find sufficient evidence to charge her. I might add she’s the most investigated woman in history, and the GOP has spent hundreds of millions doing so. A nothing burger. Your sources are supposition and unnamed sources. And old news. |
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Addendum Is there ANYONE who’s not involved in anti-western conspiracies to destroy America? Wait...! Are you in an conspiracy? |
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Good, very good points. However, how do you wrap your brain around the facts concerning the clear disregard for turning over the emails from her unsecured server after they were subpoenaed by the FBI? These secret emails have been turning up everywhere. Including a computer of Jeffery Epstein - a known pedophile. Yet, no Investigation and no accountability. There's no rat here? Really? |
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pawntificator 10-Jan-20, 21:00 |
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But JUDGMENT IS ON THE WAY "Deep state in total panic as Durham’s investigation confirmed to have transitioned to CRIMINAL phase… indictments imminent" www.sgtreport.com "Deep state in total panic as Durham’s investigation confirmed to have transitioned to CRIMINAL phase… indictments imminent" Beyond “bombshell” news, we now have confirmation that U.S. Attorney John Durham has transitioned into a “criminal investigation” which will likely lead to criminal indictments of deep state traitors. Those most likely to face criminal indictments are John Brennan and James Clapper, which may lead to evidence implicating James Comey, Robert Mueller, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, among others. www.newstarget.com "CIA Agent Predicts Deep State Indictments" What kind of power and connections does Hillary Clinton have, Former Central Intelligence Agency operative Kevin Shipp wants to know, “to get all these members of the deep state shadow government to basically risk their own criminal penalties.” The most “bizarre thing,” Shipp insists, “is the people who protected her from clear felonious activity and violations of the Espionage Act.” A lot of Americans are calling for a public hanging. conservativedailypost.com Will she wear a hood? Probably! |
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Rotflmao Giants roamed the earth The Earth is flat The climate isn’t changing It’s all a conspiracy The Bible is literally true Hillary is the Antichrist You guys crack me up |
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What's So Funny? It's a historical FACT (speaking of facts) that Totalitarian governments always, in every instance, take control of the news and information which is allowed to be disseminated in the sphere over which they are controlling. "Why did totalitarian governments use censorship to control its people?" www.answers.com "Totalitarianism and Freedom of Speech" imrussia.org Strongly suggest your reading "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". << Giants roamed the earth >> Why are you not discussing the evidence for this FACT? Again, speaking of facts. << The Earth is flat >> We have not yet discussed this issue, have we? What say you we do so? << The climate isn’t changing >> There are many factors and agendas being pushed on this mass hysteria agenda which you and I have not touched on yet. Why are you including that here? Let's settle some of these other facts and issues first, okay? << It’s all a conspiracy >> Again, the evidence all points to that being the truth, doesn't it? What specifically are you having a problem with? Specifically? << The Bible is literally true >> Yes, the Bible is true in everything that is written in it. What passages are you having difficulty coming to terms with? Exactly? << Hillary is the Antichrist >> Who suggested this? Why bring up her Anti Christian stance here? << You guys crack me up >> What exactly is so funny? Exactly? |
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Ihs I’ve been in a plane at 35,000 feet. I saw the curve of the earth. I saw the change in the position of the sun as we flew with or against the earths rotation. I’ve seen other planets and the moon and they’re all oblate spheroids. All the mental gymnastics and arcane reasoning won’t change that. By the way, if they found giant bones, it wouldn’t challenge the theory of evolution at all. It would just mean there was a line on the tree someplace we didn’t know about. There’s no reason for a conspiracy to hide it. And someone who has such objects would be famous. There’s no gain in hiding such finds... nor any way to do so effectively for any length of time... certainly not if there were many such remains. No... you just have a paranoid mindset and see conspiracies everywhere. But it’s not really funny. It’s sad, and more than a little scary. |
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Would it be so "unreasonable" were the Biblical narrative of the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden true? You're position/ attitude of disbelieving the Biblical narrative places you in a bind as far as being objective - honestly objective - concerning the very real possibility that men have been in rebellion (as you are) since the beginning of time. Because you can not honestly and objectively assess this premise you are prejudiced against and unable to weigh in honestly on this entire conspiracy premise which you are so aghast to consider. << I’ve been in a plane at 35,000 feet. I saw the curve of the earth. I saw the change in the position of the sun as we flew with or against the earths rotation. I’ve seen other planets and the moon and they’re all oblate spheroids. All the mental gymnastics and arcane reasoning won’t change that. >> No, of course not. You've seen what you've seen and you're sure of what that was which you seen. However, with a few simple and uncomplicated "tests" of mathematics and perspective and looking at real phenomena which discounts and refutes the the heliocentric model of the world; why are we able to witness with our own eyes an understand with our own minds that maybe these "exceptions" to the prevailing understanding of the way things are actually opening up truths which have been purposely hidden? The Anti God and Anti Biblical crowd surely wouldn't want to let these exceptions be too much publicized, would they? << By the way, if they found giant bones, it wouldn’t challenge the theory of evolution at all. It would just mean there was a line on the tree someplace we didn’t know about. There’s no reason for a conspiracy to hide it.>> Oh, yes, they would! That's why they have been so keen on destroying evidence and keeping these strange creatures out of the literature and out of the science room. Real science does not shy away from evidence. Real science discovers truth, doesn't try to construct it! << And someone who has such objects would be famous. There’s no gain in hiding such finds... nor any way to do so effectively for any length of time... certainly not if there were many such remains. >> As I have pointed out before these people are purposely kept out of the news and the school text books! The fact that there has been a concerted effort to destroy these bones is telling also. << No... you just have a paranoid mindset and see conspiracies everywhere. But it’s not really funny. It’s sad, and more than a little scary. >> These conspiracies are real and they're all around us. What is more scary is the fact that they're getting away with it and nobody is paying any attention. |
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Interesting So they’ve hidden giants, a flat earth and made up evolution. How is your life worse? Why do you think it matters to them what we think? I think you feel we are far more important than we are to be worth so much effort to deceive. |
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Ok |
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The Naturalist world view sneers at and as a practical matter, from their perspective, must oppose the Christian world view. "A Naturalistic Worldview" What has dawned on me over the past weeks and months is that Naturalism, as it is ingrained in the postmodern mindset and in the educational system, is far more than an explanation as to the origins of the world. Naturalism is a full-blown worldview, and in reality, is a religious system that stands in direct opposition to Christianity." It matters very much to "them" what we Christians think. Our fundamental beliefs and faith are as diametrically opposed to one another as can be. "Naturalism" As defined by philosopher Paul Draper, naturalism is "the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system" in the sense that "nothing that is not a part of the natural world affects it." More simply, it is the denial of the existence of supernatural causes. In rejecting the reality of supernatural events, forces, or entities, naturalism is the antithesis of supernaturalism. infidels.org www.challies.com << I think you feel we are far more important than we are to be worth so much effort to deceive. >> I had composed a thorough and in depth answer for you, but doing this while at work is 25 X as hard than if I were at home. Maybe I'll get to work on it later. |
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Naturalism But you’re right... it rejects supernatural explanations, aka, magic, in lieu of science and logic. Exactly. Calling the absence of religion a religion is the height of intellectual dishonesty - it’s like calling the absence of money a kind of money. Like calling the absence of fat obesity. Like saying your lack of belief in Islam makes you Muslim. |
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Reasons For God (I) Let us begin by defining our terms; Metaphysical Naturalism: "Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophy which maintains that nature encompasses all that exists throughout space and time. Nature (the universe or cosmos) consists only of natural elements, that is, of spatiotemporal physical substance -- mass - energy. For example, astronomer Carl Sagan, an agnostic, described the cosmos as "all that is or ever was or ever will be." Non-physical or quasi-physical substance, such as information, ideas, values, logic, mathematics, intellect, and other emergent phenomena, either supervene upon the physical or can be reduced to a physical account. The supernatural does not exist, which is to say, only nature is real." en.wikipedia.org "Today I'd like to explain why I believe that naturalism is false (or irrational). This might sound surprising, because naturalism has come to feel like an 'obviously true' idea in our culture. For instance, in 2007, Oxford University Press published a collection of essays titled Philosophers Without God. One of the contributors, Georges Rey, wrote an essay called "Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception." He opens by saying, "I'm not a professional philosopher of religion and have no special knowledge of theology. However, I regularly teach an introductory course in philosophy in which I discuss the standard arguments for the existence of God. The exercise has produced in me a certain incredulity: I have come increasingly to wonder how such extremely smart people, like Aquinas or Descartes, could advance such patently bad arguments, as I think most philosophers (even those who claim to "believe") would take those arguments to be. 2 So what is his thesis? "Despite appearances, most Western adults who've been exposed to standard science and claim to believe in God are self-deceived; at some level they know full well the belief is false." This is amazing. In a book published by Oxford University Press, a contributor admits he doesn't know much about theology or religion, but nevertheless believes that naturalism is so obviously true that even people who say they are religious don't believe in that nonsense! Or as Richard Dawkins concludes, in an article for The Huffington Post, "We explain our existence by a combination of the anthropic principle and Darwin's principle of natural selection. That combination provides a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very, very improbable." THE START OF THE ARGUMENT So why do I think that naturalism is false? With our definition in place, let's consider the argument against naturalism. My first point is very simple: there are no good arguments for naturalism. I am unconvinced that there are any premises which are true and that validly conclude, "Therefore, naturalism is true." Perhaps someone who is here today will offer a good argument in favor of naturalism. But as long as there are no good arguments for naturalism, we have a reason to think that it is false or at least that it is an idea not worthy of our acceptance. As I see it, the main kinds of arguments that are given for naturalism are: 1 - The power of science to explain things, 2 - The lack of good arguments for theism, and 3 - The problem of evil. As for the power of science to explain things, I will argue that our very ability to reason is best explained on theism, but is inexplicable on naturalism. I also note in passing that naturalism cannot explain either the existence of the universe nor its design. Why is the universe law-like? And why is it comprehensible to us? Further, the capacities of science are well beyond what is needed for the survival of our species or, in some cases it might be argued, of the scientists themselves. As for the weakness of theistic arguments, I will mention in passing a variety of good arguments for theism, though the substance of my case against naturalism will also, as will become clear, function as an implicit argument for theism. And as for the problem of evil, in all of its various forms, I will argue that any affirmation of evil's reality and existence makes sense only if theism is true. Responses to these points aside, the issue is that these points need considerable development to become arguments for naturalism. Consider them in their bare form: Argument #1: 1 - There is gratuitous, pointless evil in the world. 2 - Therefore, the universe or cosmos consists only of natural elements, that is, of spatiotemporal physical substance—mass–energy Argument #2: 1 - Methodological naturalism, as developed within various programs of scientific research, is the most reliable way of understanding the world. 2 - Therefore, "anything that exists is ultimately composed of physical components." Argument #3: 1 - There are no good arguments for theism. Therefore, the world is "fermions and bosons, and everything that can be made up of them, and nothing that can't be made up of them." But perhaps these are straw men versions of what could become quite powerful, logically valid, evidentially rigorous arguments for naturalism? As I see it, there are no good premises available to link the start and end point of these arguments. However, I look forward to hearing attempts to do so during our discussion. It is also worth mentioning that I find the idea that naturalism is the "default" or "obvious" view to be a very weak position. If it is so obvious, what arguments support its truth? If it deserves to be the "default" position, what are the incredibly strong reasons that so clearly prove it to be true? So my first point is that there are no good arguments for naturalism. www.reasonsforgod.org |
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Thats ridiculous God has never been seen, touched or pointed to. It’s belief in magic. There is no reason to believe in magic just because we don’t understand everything about . Mental gymnastics |
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Reasons For God (II) There are many good reasons to think that theism is true. As Richard Swinburne, a famous professor of philosophy at Oxford University, has summarized: "Why believe that there is a God at all? My answer is that to suppose that there is a God explains why there is a world at all; why there are the scientific laws there are; why animals and then human beings have evolved; why humans have the opportunity to mould their characters and those of their fellow humans for good or ill and to change the environment in which we live; why we have the well-authenticated account of Christ's life, death and resurrection; why throughout the centuries men have had the apparent experience of being in touch with and guided by God; and so much else. In fact, the hypothesis of the existence of God makes sense of the whole of our experience, and it does so better than any other explanation which can be put forward, and that is the grounds for believing it to be true." But I will not rest my case against naturalism on these points today. I merely mention them to show how broad the range of arguments are in favor of theism, and therefore, against naturalism. If any one of these arguments for theism is successful, then it would follow that naturalism is false. THE ARGUMENT DEVELOPED The substance of my argument tonight is that naturalism is false because it cannot account for fundamental features of reality within its naturalistic ontology. In other words: there are real things that are not physical things. What are some of the things which we know to be real, but which are not physical entities? The list is large and varied, but I think it includes at least the following five features: 1 - Consciousness 2 - Free will 3 - Purpose 4 - Reason, including mathematics and science 5 - Objective moral facts, including universal human rights and the reality of evil As a preliminary note, it does no good to say "science will explain that one day." First, this is a "science-of-the-gaps" explanation. Structurally, it is an argument from silence. What REASONS do you have that science will explain it? That's what we need. To say, "I'm so convinced that naturalism is true, it must be the case that science will prove it is true" is to beg the question. That's a dogmatic naturalism, not a rational, evidence-based naturalism. To say, "the past ability of science to explain things like lightning and earthquakes means it can also explain consciousness and reason" is no better. Second, if science does explain some of the features I mention, that will be a self-defeating exercise. For instance, if science can one day provide us with a fully physical account of our reason, in doing so, it will eliminate rational causation from our view of the world. Saying that "science can explain that" means, at least in some instances, "science can explain that away, so we don't need to think it is real." Third, many if not most of the scientific discoveries have no bearing on whether or not theism or naturalism is true. The additional data about, say, how the brain works confirms neither theism nor naturalism. Confirmation bias might lead some to conclude, "we've got an improved scientific theory about how memory works in the brain, therefore, naturalism." But caution is in order. The same data might fit equally well (or better) within a theistic framework. The supposed worldview confirmation needs to be rigorously critiqued. Fourth, if past performance is a good guarantee of future performance, and science has only or even primarily validated naturalism to this point, than I have some stocks and bonds to sell you. Would you be willing to invest your money the same way you defend your ideas? The past performance of science to validate naturalism does not imply that it will always do so. Finally, let's say that kind of argument is good. Well, then it is equally legitimate to argue that science will further strengthen the theistic case in the future. Why not say, "one day science will prove the theists right?" We can argue, "Theism has rightly predicted the start of the universe, the uniformity of nature, the existence of consciousness, the transcultural nature of morality, and so much else, that surely science will continue to validate theism." If you are uncomfortable with a God-of-the-gaps argument, intellectual fairness means you should equally reject a science-of-the-gaps approach. www.reasonsforgod.org |
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Wrong Why not state why you think god exists in your own words succinctly and I’ll discuss w you. No time or inclination to tear apart a long winded poorly reasoned essay |
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Reasons For God (III) Conclusion The fundamental kind of argument that I will offer tonight is based upon a widely accepted principle known as the 'indiscernibility of identicals.' In their work Naturalism, Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro explain the relevance of this principle for our discussion tonight: "It is common today for philosophers to hold a principle called the indiscernibility of identicals. Given that water is H2O, then whatever is true about water is true about H2O (to drink water is to drink H20). But if something is true of consciousness that is not true of the physiology and various events and processes that are supposed to be identical with consciousness, then consciousness is not in fact identical with the proposed physical phenomena. The problem facing broad naturalism is that it appears you can have the physical phenomena and not have consciousness. Even if the two are always correlated, if there is reason to think you could have one without the other, you have a reason to deny their identity." 4 (4) Stewart Goetz; Charles Taliaferro. Naturalism (Kindle Locations 956-961) ↩ The kinds of things I've mentioned are categorically distinct from the kinds of things that naturalism says exist. They are real parts of our world which are NOT reducible to physical cause-and-effect. If we can discern differences between these features of our world and the physical world, then the two are not identical. And if they are not identical, but both are real, then naturalism is false. Again, here's the list of features which I suggest are not reducible to "fermions and bosons." 1 - Consciousness 2 - Free will 3 - Purpose 4 - Reason, including mathematics and science 5 - Objective moral facts, including universal human rights and the reality of evil This is the nature of my argument against naturalism. Let's look at each feature in turn: 1 CONSCIOUSNESS What is consciousness? In their introduction to The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Max Velmans and Susan Schneider begin their description of consciousness as follows: "Listen to the sound of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, taste the flavor of a strong espresso, or feel the heat of a summer day. There is something that it's like to have these experiences; something that it's like to be conscious. Indeed, anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives. 5 (5) www.blackwellreference.com ↩ What are the features of this awareness, of this experience? There are many, but here are four specific components of consciousness: 1 - A first-person perspective on the world; that of being a subject and not an object. 2 - Private beliefs and feelings which are inaccessible to others without us revealing them 3 - The experience of "qualia": to use a technical term, for instance, the "ouchiness" of pain. 4 - Intentionality. The ability to deliberately direct one's attention to various features of one's inner life or of the outer world. The atheist philosopher David Chalmers explains the conundrum well: "It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does." 6 (6) consc.net ↩ Or as T.H. Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog," once remarked: "how it is that any thing so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." 7 (7) Quoted at www.nyu.edu ↩ Furthermore, if the natural world is able to account for consciousness in terms of the fundamental laws of physics, then, given a full description of reality, and the physical particles that exist in the arrangements they have, it must be necessary that consciousness exists. There would be a law-like occurrence of consciousness. But it seems that we can imagine the world existing as it is, but there not being consciousness. If consciousness is contingent, then it is not the result of law-like forces in the physical world. Most acutely is that there are profound differences between the natural world and the reality of consciousness. An atom is only an 'object.' We can study it with scientific tools. But our first-person experience, as a subject, that can choose to study the atom is categorically distinct. The atom can hide nothing from us - whatever it is, with the right tools, we can learn about it. But a conscious actor is able to have private beliefs. If a scientist fully understood the neurological underpinnings of pain, and had read copious research on the subject, but never experienced pain personally, she would learn something new the first time a bowling ball dropped on her foot. The experience of 'ouch, that hurts!' is different from an objective, third-person understanding of which neurons are firing. 8 (8) See Stewart Goetz; Charles Taliaferro. Naturalism (Kindle Locations 586) ↩ And in the natural world, everything is a passive object that makes no choices, yet in our conscious experience, we are aware of our ability to make intentional choices. 2 FREE WILL After consciousness, one of our most basic experiences is the ability to make choices. But this capacity cannot be real if naturalism is true. Naturalism implies determinism. The Center for Naturalism explains the connection between naturalism and determinism: "We don't have free will in the sense of being able to choose or decide without being fully caused in our choices or decisions. Instead, as individuals we are part of the natural unfolding of the universe in all its amazing complexity." Not only does naturalism imply determinism, but naturalist philosophers have carefully articulated how deterministic processes have generated the illusion of free will. For instance, both Daniel Dennett at Tufts University and Owen Flanagan, a professor of neurobiology at Duke, have both argued that we think we have free will because we are ignorant of the nonmental, physical causes of our beliefs and behavior. As Dr. Rosenberg, also at Duke, argues, "Then there is the fact, discovered by Libet, that actions are already determined by your brain before you consciously decide to do them! (As for determinism and the denial of real free will, that is a conclusion which, so to speak, goes without saying for scientism.) We have to add to these illusions of the will and sensory experience, robust experimental results which reveal that we actually navigate the world looking through the rear-view mirror!" Likewise, consider Richard Dawkins, as he explained the tension in an interview: "What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, "Oh well he couldn't help doing it, he was determined by his molecules." Maybe we should… I sometimes… Um… You probably remember many of you would have seen Fawlty Towers. The episode where Basil where his car won't start and he gives it fair warning, counts up to three, and then gets out of the car and picks up a tree branch and thrashes it within an edge of his life. Maybe that's what we all ought to… Maybe the way we laugh at Basil Fawlty, we ought to laugh in the same way at people who blame humans. I mean when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is "Oh they were just determined by their molecules." It's stupid to punish them. What we should do is say "This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced." I can't bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse of whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood." Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views? Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion, it is an entirely separate issue." And from a critical perspective, Angus Menuge, a Christian philosopher, has explained: "For our purposes, one of the most important claims of naturalism is that all causation is passive, automatic, event causation (an earthquake automatically causes a tidal wave; the tidal wave responds passively): there are no agent causes, where something does not happen automatically but only because the agent exerts his active power by choosing to do it. … Indeed, before we can talk of being responsible for our decisions, we need an account of why those decisions belong to us. But the trouble is, on a naturalistic view, there is no entity that can plausibly own any mental states, there is simply a plurality of parallel, impersonal processes in the brain." 9 (9) "Libertarian Free Will and the Argument From Reason," available at www.reasonsforgod.org ↩ I submit to you that we have better reason to believe that we, as conscious subjects, may freely choose our course in life, than to conclude, as a free choice within the scope of our conscious experience, that everything is natural. If any conscious agent has ever made a free choice, than naturalism is false. 3 PURPOSE To have purpose is to have a teleology, a goal, or an end in mind. Purposefulness is related to intentionality. But clearly physical objects and energy have no goals or intentions. They simply are what they are. And so leading naturalists deny that there is any purpose; there is only the illusion of purpose. Alex Rosenberg: "If the physical facts fix all the facts, however, then in doing so, it rules out purposes altogether, in biology, in human affairs, and in human thought-processes." Richard Dawkins: "More fundamentally, to say that the purpose of all life is to pass on their DNA means that all living things are descended from a long line of successful ancestors, where success means they have passed on their DNA. So, they are all very good at passing on their DNA and they all contain organs, apparatus, which can best be understood as fulfilling a purpose of propagating DNA. It doesn't mean that anybody actually sat down and thought that purpose out…There is no purpose other than that." If there is no purpose, then there is no point to naturalism, to science, to your studies, to your life, to society, to the cosmos. If you have a purpose in believing or doing anything, then you have a reason to think that naturalism is false. But the denial of purpose creates problems for naturalism for our next feature of reality: 4 REASON Because naturalism leads to the denial of consciousness, free will, and purpose, it also denies our capacity to reason. But it also denies reason because of other features which are necessary for reason to exist. C.S. Lewis has articulated well the basic problem of reason on naturalism: "If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees." 10 (10) C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, “Is Theology Poetry?” ↩ The issue is broader than this. For reason to be possible, there must be: 1 - Propositions - nonmaterial, spaceless 'ideas.' Reason inherently involves the weighing and considering of propositions as true or false, likely or unlikely. 2 - Intentionality - "aboutness". When reasoning, a free agent considers which ideas to consider, to see how they relate to one another, and so on. 3 - Rational causation - if everything is caused by material causation, then there is no room left for a 'reason' to cause something. The event is already fully explained in terms of the matter-energy and the laws of nature. 4 - Unity of the self - instead of parallel, impersonal neurological processes, there must be a unified self, across time, that can comprehend the entirety of the argument, as well as each part of it, as a whole, in order to rationally evaluate it. 5 - Normativity - Reason requires normativity. What we ought to believe and what we ought not to believe. If we think "2 + 2 = elephant" is this irrational? If we answer "4" is that rational? By what standard? The descriptive picture of naturalism does not allow us to account for the normativity inherent in the rational project. There is no purpose to having true beliefs or false beliefs. 6 - The axioms of reasoning themselves - "principles of logic, mathematics, and metaphysics (the principle of causality)." 11 None of these axioms are physical. As Goetz and Taliaferro explain, "Perhaps biology can account for the emergence of logicians, but the laws of logic (such as the law of identity: A is A, or everything is itself) are not themselves laws of biology." 12 (11) From www.leaderu.com ↩ (12) Stewart Goetz; Charles Taliaferro. Naturalism (Kindle Locations 1159-1160) ↩ 7 - Memory. Where is memory stored? Who accesses it? Who owns these memories? The sensations and feelings that are associated with memory - recollecting the 'what it was like' of the first kiss or the acceptance letter into college. Or as the naturalist Dr. Alex Rosenberg says: "Perhaps the most profound illusion introspection foists on us is the notion that our thoughts are actually recorded anywhere in the brain at all in the form introspection reports. This has to be the profoundest illusion of all, because neuroscience has been able to show that networks of human brain cells are no more capable of representing facts about the world the way conscious introspection reports than are the neural ganglia of sea slugs! The real challenge for neuroscience is to explain how the brain stores information when it can't do so in anything like the way introspection tells us it does - in sentences made up in a language of thought… the brain can't store or manipulate information in words and sentences of any language, including mentalese… If there literally are no beliefs and desires, because the brain can't encode information in the form of sentences, then there literally is no such thing as linguistic meaning either. It's just a useful heuristic device, one with only a highly imperfect grip on what is going on in thought. Consequently, there is no point asking for the real, the true, the actual meaning of a work of art, or the meaning of an agent's act, still less the meaning of a historical event or epoch." Not only are these statements self-refuting, but clearly such a viewpoint makes reason impossible! If reason is undermined by naturalism, then so is all human activity built on reason. This certainly encompasses science, which is often thought to be one of the main arguments in favor of naturalism. Again, quoting C.S. Lewis, "All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like 'must be' and 'therefore' and 'since' is a real perception of how things outside our own minds really 'must be,' well and good. But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them - if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work - then we can have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true." I submit to you that the commitments of naturalism make reason and science impossible. So we inevitably have a more reasonable position to accept the validity of reason than to believe that naturalism is true. Therefore, again, we should conclude that naturalism is false. 5 OBJECTIVE MORAL FACTS Having considered consciousness, free will, purpose, and reason, we turn to the final feature: objective moral facts, universal human values, and the reality of evil. What is an objective moral fact? It is a truth about right and wrong that is independent of human perception. For example: Even if no human being thinks it wrong, it is objectively wrong, as Joseph Kony does in Uganda, to order child soldiers to bite to death another child who is trying to escape. Think about being a ten year old who is using your mouth to tear the flesh off of another child in order to kill him. To use the fear of a similar death to coerce children into committing murder is objectively wrong, even though Joseph Kony would disagree with us. 13 (13) www.cbsnews.com ↩ The question is: are there moral facts that we can be right or wrong about - or do we just have opinions about morality, none of which are right or wrong? The analogous example is to ask are there facts about the physical world we can be right or wrong about - or do we just have opinions about the world, none of which are right or wrong? 14 (14) See Do Objective Moral Values Exist? at www.shenvi.org ↩ The temptation to describe our morality as objective is very powerful, even among naturalists. For example, Daniel Dennett of Tufts has said, "I have sacred values - in the sense that I feel vaguely guilty even thinking about whether they are defensible and would never consider abandoning them (I like to think!) in the course of solving a moral dilemma. My sacred values are obvious and quite ecumenical: democracy, justice, love, and truth (in alphabetical order). 15 (15) Stewart Goetz; Charles Taliaferro. Naturalism (Kindle Locations 1194-1198). ↩ Richard Dawkins has likewise wavered between his naturalistic commitments and his moral awareness: "As an academic scientist, I am a passionate Darwinian, believing that natural selection is, if not the only driving force in evolution, certainly the only known force capable of producing the illusion of purpose which so strikes all who contemplate nature. But at the same time as I support Darwinism as a scientist, I am passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to politics and how we should conduct our human affairs." 16 (16) In Stewart Goetz; Charles Taliaferro. Naturalism (Kindle Locations 1112-1115) ↩ (In another place): "If somebody used my views to justify a completely self-centred lifestyle, which involved trampling all over other people in any way they chose roughly what, I suppose, at a sociological level social Darwinists did - I think I would be fairly hard put to it to argue on purely intellectual grounds. I think it would be more: "This is not a society in which I wish to live. Without having a rational reason for it necessarily, I'm going to do whatever I can to stop you doing this." 17 (17) www.damaris.org ↩ But other naturalists are more consistent. Rosenberg: "People have also sought moral rules, codes, principles which are supposed to distinguish us from merely biological critters whose lives lack (as much) meaning or value (as ours). Besides morality as a source of meaning, value, or purpose, people have looked to consciousness, introspection, self-knowledge as a source of insight into what makes us more than the merely physical facts about us. Scientism must reject all of these straws that people have grasped, and it's not hard to show why. Science has to be nihilistic about ethics and morality." Michael Ruse and E.O. Wilson, articulating an evolutionary ethics: [It is] " to conceive of an alien intelligent species evolving rules its members consider highly moral but which are repugnant to human beings, such as cannibalism, incest, and love of darkness and decay, parricide, and the eating of feces…. Ethical premises are the peculiar products of genetic history, and they can be understood solely as mechanisms that are adaptive for the species which possess them…. No abstract moral principles exist outside the particular nature of individual species" (186). 18 (18) In Stewart Goetz;Charles Taliaferro. Naturalism (Kindle Locations 1093-1096). ↩ As Goetz and Taliafero put it, "it is not clear how one can establish normative values on the basis of processes that are ultimately thoroughly unconscious, nonnormative, and contingent in nature." 19 (19) Stewart Goetz;Charles Taliaferro. Naturalism (Kindle Locations 1197). ↩ Again, I submit to you that we have more reason that ordering child soldiers to bite another child to death is a grave and real evil, or that cannibalism, incest, parricide, and so on - are objectively wrong acts - than to conclude that naturalism is true. If there are any objective moral values, then naturalism is false. IN CONCLUSION If the universal human experience of consciousness, free will, purpose, reason, and objective moral facts are all illusory, and are explained away by a deterministic, naturalistic, 'scientific,' explanation of who we really are, we must ask ourselves: how can we trust that our brains are giving 'us' the 'true' and 'reasonable' answer in this one particular domain of scientific research, but failing us in every other domain that we depend upon for all of our lives, including when we are doing science? If our universal human experience is fundamentally flawed, as naturalism would lead us to believe, then the naturalistic picture of reality is no better than brain-in-a-vat scenarios. This is a thought experiment that, as in The Matrix movies, we could possibly all be brains in a vat, whose neurons are being stimulated so we perceive that our existence is just as it is. But, in actual fact we are just brains in a vat. The brain-in-a-vat scenario leads to a global skepticism about all of our beliefs: how can any of them be trusted, since they are all produced by evil scientists or artificial computer programs? Yet, if we cannot trust any of our beliefs, then we cannot trust the 'brain-in-a-vat belief' either. Such complete skepticism leads to self-refutation. But if naturalism is no better as a working hypothesis of the world than brain-in-a-vat scenarios, it is irrational to think it is true. At worst then, this talk shows that if naturalism does happen to be true, it would be irrational for us to think that our brains reliably informed us that naturalism is in fact true. Therefore, the rational choice is to think that naturalism is false. And at best, if you can reasonably affirm that any one of these features of our world is inexplicable on naturalism, then you have even stronger reason to believe that naturalism is false. www.reasonsforgod.org |
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What was that you were telling me about the "book" I objected to reading regarding CNN's assessment of Trump's dealing with Iran? Pick a paragraph, pick a statement; pick something and refute it if you can. Don't whine about its too much to read. This is a complicated subject with many issues. Issue s which you can not defend. Come on show me I'm wrong - if you can. |
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Walk o incomprehensible text Don’t you have some words of your own? |
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These studies show that Naturalism goes against all reasonable inquiry! |
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Ok “Science of the gaps” is something only someone with no understanding of science would say |
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Many objective studies? |
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"Is Real Knowledge Only Scientific Knowledge?" A Betrayal of the Human Intellect First, scientism is self-refuting. The statement “Scientific knowledge is the only legitimate form of knowledge” cannot be verified by scientific methods. It’s a metaphysical proposition and thus not subject to scientific inquiry. No matter how successful science is, it is restricted to physical reality. Metaphysics deals with foundational truths about reality that go beyond the merely physical (e.g., questions about existence itself, time, space, etc.). Science can never go beyond the boundaries of its data source, so, in principle, cannot verify the truth of scientism. But if science cannot verify the truth of scientism, then scientism is self-refuting. Moreover, scientism is self-refuting because it undermines science as a rational form of inquiry. Consider that science presupposes various philosophical assumptions that are not subject to scientific verification—e.g., there is an external world outside the minds of scientists, the world is governed by causal regularities, and the human intellect is capable of uncovering these regularities. Now, in view of scientism, how could science be a legitimate form of rational inquiry if its presupposed assumptions are not the product of scientific inquiry? It can’t. Scientism seeks to exalt science, but it actually undermines it in the process. No Human Minds Allowed The second reason why scientism is unsustainable is because it leads to the denial of the human mind. Philosopher Edward Feser argues such in his article “Blinded by Scientism.” Feser explains how scientism is based on the divide in modern science between the quantitative-objective-real and qualitative-subjective-appearance images of the world. According to this divide, anything that cannot be quantifiably measured is not real. Since scientific inquiry is subject only to the quantitative aspects of reality, scientism views knowledge of such things as the only real form of knowledge. But this causes a problem. Concerning the mind, Feser correctly argues that it falls on the qualitative-subjective-appearance side. The mental activities in the practice of science such as the formulation of hypotheses, the weighing of evidence, technical concepts, and the construction of causal chains cannot be described in the language of mathematics. There is no microscope or telescope that can show us the existence of mental beliefs. They do not fall within the purview of the quantitative-objective-real image of the world. Consequently, the activities of the mind fall on the side of the divide that is subjective and mere appearance—that is to say the mind is not real. strangenotions.com |
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Exactly my point You don’t understand, and you can’t stand not knowing so you have to create a god to mask ignorance. Nothing wrong with ignorance my friend... it’s part of the human condition. Accept it. |
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