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Argumentation Specialist - Cases for God (Oh, God.) Let the Atheists and Agnostics Try to Win These Debates
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DavidFord

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July 18, 2024 - 7:53 pm

“How is ‘the Golden Rule… self-evident’ to you?”

“As a self-evident principle, it can’t be proven deductively.
But I can illustrate the dialectic that compels us to acknowledge it.

Step one: Envision that someone somehow seriously and deliberately harms you without justification. (Don’t for the moment worry about what counts as justification; that will be one of the nasty details we have to work out later. For the moment, presumably you can come up with some example that you think would clearly count as serious an unjustified harm).

Step two: In that vision, what is your response? If you are a normal person, it will be something like indignation. You will be angry with the person. You will blame the person.

Step three: Because moral blame, as a concept, only makes sense if the person knowingly did something wrong, part of assigning the person blame is claiming that the person should have known better. That claim is only plausible if you appeal to some universal moral principle: Universal, first, in the sense that anyone in the malefactor’s position should have been able to know it, and second, in the sense that it applies equally in all comparable situations. Universal statements by nature don’t include arbitrary restrictions or terms-reason recoils from distinctions without differences.

Look at the actual behavior we see in people who are outraged: They justify themselves, they justify their outrage with statements like, “you (meaning ‘anyone’) don’t do x to someone (meaning, ‘anyone’)” or “there just isn’t any excuse for (anyone) doing y to someone (anyone).”

In effect, in justifying our anger in the face of being deliberately harmed, we naturally seek protection under a universal law-universally knowable and universally binding-, and in seeking that protection we at the same time acknowledge that we too know that universally binding law and so we acknowledge that we too are bound by it.

Generalizing the conclusion, we acknowledge a law that one ought not do to others the sorts of things that you would blame them for doing to you.”

Re: “Generalizing the conclusion, we acknowledge a law that one ought not do to others the sorts of things that you would blame them for doing to you,”
according to that “law,” is it not-OK to kill infants?

Re: “Step two: In that vision, what is your response? If you are a normal person, it will be something like… ,” was Jesus “a normal person”?

Luke 23:34 (NIV)
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Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Would the people who “lived in concentration camps” and “who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread” be considered “normal” people?

Viktor E. Frankl, _Man’s Search for Meaning_, 4th ed.
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Most important, do the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings?
Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?

We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle.
The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action.
There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed.
Man _can_ preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

And there were always choices to make.
Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become moulded into the form of the typical inmate.

Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions.
Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually.
He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

Dostoevsky said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behaviour in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.
It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.
It is this spiritual freedom– which cannot be taken away– that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

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DavidFord

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July 18, 2024 - 7:59 pm

“some atheists have drawn invalid conclusions from atheist principles”
What (if any) are those “atheist principles”?

“Attacking the weakest representative of the opposing viewpoint is the mark of a cowardly, disingenuous, and unserious thinker”
I thought it’s OK to attack arguments, but bad to attack people.
Do you think it’s OK to go about “attacking the” strongest “representative of the opposing viewpoint”?

“Serious thinkers pick the best representative of the opposing view and address their actual position.
In fact, really serious thinkers go even further, and construct for themselves the most defensible position in favor of the opposing view”

_Beyond Matter:  The moving experiences of a scientist with the spiritual world and his afterlife research_ (2023), 385pp., on 182-183

…I was ready to invest time and effort in new ways of seeing and thinking and I found not waffle but solid arguments.
Understanding the scientifically-sophisticated arguments of Behe, Meyer and Axe is tedious and time-consuming, but at the same time worthwhile, and if you want to criticize them, even if you are reluctant, you must have read their books.
With most materialists, however, I have the impression that they have not taken the trouble.
I have read Dawkins myself, otherwise, I would never allow myself to criticize him.
In my opinion it is only honest criticism if one presents concrete arguments for Intelligent Design (for example, the implications of the flagellular motor of bacteria) and then refutes them in argument and with solid facts.
This does not happen in most cases.
Those who do not know the arguments _for_ Intelligent Design cannot formulate any serious counter-arguments.
To protect their own worldview, they take the easiest way out of this dilemma and accuse Intelligent Design of being a theory for religious fanatics with a literal interpretation of the Bible.
With this pseudo-argument, they protect themselves from having to get into an embarrassing scientific discussion using real evidence.

_A Mousetrap for Darwin:  Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics_ (2020)

Stephen C. Meyer, _Return of the God Hypothesis:  Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe: Discoveries in Physics and Cosmology_  (2021)

Douglas Axe, _Undeniable:  How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed_ (2017)

In your view, who has done the most-devastating takedown of Behe’s and of Meyer’s arguments?

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DavidFord

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July 18, 2024 - 8:13 pm

“the depression as difficult as it was, often brought out the best in people”

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prayer from an unknown author in the Ravensbruck camp was scrawled on wrapping paper found near the body of dead girl after the camp was liberated by Allied forces.
It’s one of the most powerful prayers on forgiveness I have ever read, the closest I have known to Jesus’ words on the cross,
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23.34).

“O Lord,
remember not only the men and women of good will
but also those of ill-will.
But do not remember only the suffering they have inflicted on us,
remember the fruits we have brought, thanks to this suffering–-
our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility,
the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this.
And when they come to judgment,
let all the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.”

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Porphyry

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July 18, 2024 - 10:45 pm

“are you claiming that… in the Netherlands involuntary euthanasia is being used as part of a eugenics program?” No. “Do you think that makes my original claim wrong, that” No.

So then why did you bring it up and ask me to respond to it?

I can understand that the advice to ‘Do to others what you would have them do to you’ is very practical. In this world, a practitioner of that advice will typically have an easier, more-pleasant time in life than those who mistreat others.

The Golden Rule, as I (along with many ethicists, including Christians and atheists, Singer included) understand it, has nothing to do with making friends or having people treat you well. Any expectation of reciprocity is completely beside the point.

Do you consider Singer’s “principle of equal consideration to be a reformulation of the Golden Rule”?
Yes, but I disagree with the way he applies it.

You have a whole series of questions that relate to Singer and infants, and I don’t really feel like answering them because I’ve already said I’m not defending him, and the material is a tangent.

It appears to me that, per Singer, “from time to time,” it’s OK for everybody to be killed.
Again, Singer is a consequentialist. He doesn’t accept moral absolutes. Yes, I think he will say that, in theory, anyone could be killed under the right, very extreme and unusual, circumstances.

If someone considers himself worthy of being worshiped, it would be quite rational for him to single himself “out for special treatment.”
“not singling yourself out for special treatment” should be taken to mean “arbitrarily”. Look, a father can, in some respects, treat his minor son differently than that son can treat him. A judge can demand some things of observers in a courtroom that they cannot demand of him. People can expect disparate treatment in certain respects, but there needs to be a universalizable and reasonable rationale for the disparity. It isn’t about the individuals (“you will treat me this way, and I will treat you another way”) but their objective roles and what prerogatives it is reasonable for them to have given those roles.

John Rawls has an interesting thought experiment, that, I think, might clarify the idea:

He suggests we imagine ourselves in an “original position”–something like all of humanity assembled as disembodied spirits before we got stuck into actual bodies in the course of history (bear in mind this is all hypothetical, a mere thought experiment). In this position we are behind a veil of ignorance: none of us knows anything about who we will be when we are born: who will be white and who will be black, who will be born to wealth and who will be born impoverished, who will be a man and who will be a woman, who will be healthy and who will have various debilitating conditions, and so forth. From that position we have to agree on the rules of ethics. From that position, behind the veil of ignorance, there is no reason to object to giving some members of society certain prerogatives in light of their roles–if someone ends up being a judge, we can all agree it will be reasonable for that person to have certain prerogatives the rest of us won’t have because judges’ having those prerogatives is important to their doing their job, and their doing their job is important for everybody.

Anyway, going back to people who think they should be worshiped. In my opinion they are just delusional. But it doesn’t really address the issue that I was trying to make: the heart of ethics is not singling ourselves out, not having double standards, not making arbitrary exceptions for ourselves.

Moving on, I don’t understand why you included all the stuff about Hitler’s final solution.I am again baffled.

according to that “law,” is it not-OK to kill infants?

As I would apply the Golden Rule, it prohibits killing infants.

Responding to my comment that normal people feel indignation when “someone seriously and deliberately harms [him] without justification”:

was Jesus “a normal person”? . . . Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Note that he gives a reason: ” . . . for they know not what they do” If you take that seriously, then this was not deliberate and unjustified harm. I mean if the soldiers genuinely thought he was a criminal duly convicted of a capital crime, he couldn’t very well blame them.

One does sometimes find among Christians a really perverse theory of forgiveness (derived from a selective reading of the NT) that basically turns being a simpering doormat into a virtue. I’ve always–even as a Christian–found that theory repulsive. That is to say nothing of dangerous: I was horrified when a popular Christian marriage course said that spouses need to forgive like God forgives, without asking the person we forgive to change (interthread duality: that’s one fruit of sola fide). That’s how you get abused women staying with their abusive husbands. Anger, at the right time and moderated by reason, is a virtue, damnit. If I walk in and see a man raping my wife, I’m going to get pretty ticked off and that is *healthy*. Something would be deeply wrong with me if I didn’t.

Would the people who “lived in concentration camps” and “who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread” be considered “normal” people?

I don’t understand what this question–or the extended quotations from Victor Frankl–have to do with anything. If they were truly indifferent to the injustice being done to them and those around them, then I think they were broken people (and given what they were enduring, I wouldn’t judge them for being broken). But the fact that they were generous to those suffering with them does not indicate to me that they were indifferent to the injustice.

What (if any) are those “atheist principles”?
My point was that Darwinism (which isn’t necessarily atheistic, though it seems that you were treating it as such) isn’t falsified by the fact that some people (like, Hitler) and social Darwinians drew bad conclusion from it.

Do you think it’s OK to go about “attacking the” strongest “representative of the opposing viewpoint”?
Attacking his thought, yes.

Okay, I’ve run out of time. Will have to discuss Behe at al. some other evening.

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Robert
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July 19, 2024 - 8:14 am
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Porphyry

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July 19, 2024 - 8:57 am

Your view of theology reminds a not-yet-caffeinated me of one understanding of philosophy.

It is offered in response to the charge that philosophical questions–despite thousands of years of work–never get answered; after all, we are no closer to consensus on many of the philosophical problems that were first articulated in the ancient world. So what’s the point of doing philosophy if thousands of years of history suggest that we are just chasing our tails?

And to this charge, it has been suggested that philosophy does in fact make progress. Philosophy works at the limit of human knowledge, it takes up questions that other sciences can’t answer. But when philosophers do make progress and settle questions, that question stops being a philosophical question and the answer becomes the basis for a new science. The most obvious example would be the fact that the natural sciences as a whole used to be called natural philosophy. Just look over the topics that Aristotle investigated in his known work you get things like the nature of the stars and the movement of animals–those were philosophical questions in 4th cent. BC Greece.

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Robert
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July 19, 2024 - 9:02 am
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DavidFord

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July 19, 2024 - 12:46 pm

Thomas Nagel, _The Last Word_ (1997), on 130-131
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I am talking about something much deeper– namely, the fear of religion itself.
I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself:
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.
It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief.
It’s that I hope there is no God!
I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.

it is just as irrational to be influenced in one’s beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist.

============================
Christopher Hitchens, _god Is Not Great: How religion poisons everything_ (2007), ~pg. 283
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Above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment… depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected.

Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse.

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1:04:56+
What Best Explains Reality: Theism or Atheism? (Frank Turek vs. Christopher Hitchens), lightly edited transcript

So it’s an insult to be told that without superstition and without the supernatural, we wouldn’t know how to treat one another well, we wouldn’t know the difference between right and wrong, we couldn’t perform a right action, or utter ethical remarks.
It’s a degrading insult.
It makes us serfs, it makes us slaves, it makes us people dependent upon a celestial dictatorship that cannot be altered, that watches us while we sleep, whose verdicts cannot be challenged, who can convict us of thought crime.

In my judgment, the emancipation of humanity, which has taken a very great deal of time–
just as the expansion of our life expectancy had to be worked on very hard, if once when it was left just to a God to decide these things, we didn’t live very long, couldn’t cure any diseases, and didn’t know that our planet wasn’t the center of the of the universe–
but once this emancipation has begun, I think it’s unstoppable.
And the emancipation of humanity begins when you throw off the idea that you live in a celestial North Korea, and that only a dictator can give you permission to think or behave well or act morally.

======================
I don’t know whether the guy’s “intellectual objections” were “feigned” or actual.

Frank Turek, _Stealing from God:  Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case_ (2014), 269pp., on 109-110
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You may be thinking, “That’s outrageous! Racism, murder, assault, and rape are objectively wrong, and people do have a right not to be harmed!”
I agree.
But that’s true only if God exists.
In an atheistic universe there is nothing objectively wrong with anything at anytime.
There are no limits.
Anything goes.
Which means to be a consistent atheist, you have to believe in the outrageous.

Why do people believe the outrageous?
Because sometimes the heart gets in the way of the head.
My friend David, who pastors a large church in North Carolina, saw this truth at work in a young critic one Sunday morning.
After David finished preaching a sermon that refuted some of the arguments of the new atheists, a young man approached him and said, “I once was a Christian, but now I’m an agnostic, and I don’t think you should be doing what you’re doing.”

But the young man would have none of it.
Without acknowledging David’s point, he immediately brought up another objection to Christianity.
David succinctly answered that one as well, but the kid seemed uninterested.
He fired a couple of more objections at David, who realized the objections were really cover for something else.
So instead of providing another intellectual answer that would be ignored, David cut right to the heart.
He said, “You’re raising all of these objections because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend. Am I right?”
All the blood drained from the young man’s face.
He was caught.
He was rejecting God because he didn’t like God’s morality.
And he was disguising it with feigned intellectual objections.

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Stephen
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July 19, 2024 - 3:39 pm

…In principle, I’m also open to idea that one day all things may be fully understood without any further appeal to the mysterious unknown or God.

I identify as an atheist precisely because I think we have long since gone past this point. God has zero explanatory power. Try to think of a question to which God would be a necessary and sufficient explanation. In science inadequate hypotheses are discarded. But we can still keep all the associated cultural artifacts. Icons and Arias produced through religious inspiration (always by human beings of course) are still beautiful. The desire for transcendence and feelings of awe and wonder remain to find their expression. Like the sages keep telling us, discard the bad ideas and strengthen the things that remain.

So what’s the point of doing philosophy if thousands of years of history suggest that we are just chasing our tails?

I think there has been a growing realization that we all need data. Even philosophers. Just brooding alone in a room is a dead end. I’ve long thought Theology was simply a branch of creative writing. But there are still important philosophical questions. But in the end, the act of thinking is probably more important than what we think about. Or to put it another way, philosophy is the process of disciplined thought. This is why I prefer the analytical philosophers over their continental comrades. Wittgenstein helped me try to learn how to think. (That he sometimes sounds like a raving mystic is just part of the entertainment value, inevitable when one pushes up against the limits of what can be said. Joyce, my other “guru”, had the same experience. We are simply more forgiving of the artists than the philosophers.)

…So you’re a provisional agnostic, not fully an atheist until you’ve heard and rejected the best arguments for every god ever imagined.

Well how many UFO stories have to be debunked before you reach the conclusion that they probably aren’t alien spacecraft? Sure, that UFO sighting in Albania in 1899 might just be the one, but until someone can present convincing evidence, say a material piece of alien technology that could not have been produced on Earth, why suspend judgment unless you have some vested interest in belief?

That gods are so timebound and culture-bound are not aspects that favor belief. Many take the ubiquity of gods as a sign otherwise. I think this is mistaken. More to follow.

The fact that the “Golden Rule” has appeared independently in almost all cultures goes a long way toward demonstrating that there is nothing revelatory about it. It’s a commonsense answer to a commonsense question: How do the individual members of communities get along with each other with a minimum amount of disruption?

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Robert
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July 19, 2024 - 4:23 pm
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DavidFord

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July 19, 2024 - 9:14 pm

Richard Dawkins: ‘Immoral’ not to abort Down’s foetuses
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The Oxford professor posted the message on Twitter in response to a user who wrote she would be faced with “a real ethical dilemma” if she became pregnant and learned that the baby would be born with Down’s syndrome.
“Abort it and try again,” Dawkins tweeted in reply.
“It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
…he insists his views are “very civilised”, tweeting:
“These are fetuses, diagnosed before they have human feelings.”

Peter Singer, _Practical Ethics_ (2011), 3rd ed., on 166-167
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The issue of ending life for disabled newborn infants is not without complications, both factual and philosophical.
Philosophically, the most difficult issue is whether to accept the prior existence or the total version of utilitarianism (or some other view altogether), because in the case of infants with disabilities whose lives are nevertheless worth living, the justifiability of a decision to end the infant’s life will depend on which view we choose.
Nevertheless, the main point remains clear, even after the various objections and complications have been considered:
killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person.
Very often it is not wrong at all.

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DavidFord

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July 20, 2024 - 4:30 pm

Neil Thomas, “How I Came to Take Leave of Darwin”
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author of
_Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design_
amazon .com/dp/1637120036/
I guess few people with busy personal and work lives have the mental repose required to spend too much time considering the existential imponderables of life, and in my own case I was well in to my retirement years when the realization came to me that nothing I had learned about Darwinism — a polite fiction I had allowed myself to accept on trust for decades — stacked up logically.
In the light of cool analytical thought, it appeared to me that Darwinism was a badly supported and even ludicrous theory.
This realization drove me towards what, as a lifelong rationalist, I deemed to be the responsible course of action:
researching the whole subject properly, something which, regrettably, I had omitted to do heretofore.

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DavidFord

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July 21, 2024 - 10:56 am

Nazis employed the grisly dehydration-to-death approach,
but later developed more-humane ways of killing that human life within [atheist Singer]”the selection of those who shall die.”
Some Nazis, e.g. Himmler, sought to kill [atheist Singer]”in the best possible way.”

Peter Singer, _Practical Ethics_ (2011), 3rd ed., on 186
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The infant dies from dehydration or hunger.
Baby Doe took about five days to die, and in other recorded instances of this practice, it has taken up to two weeks for death to come.

To summarize: passive ways of ending life result in a drawn-out death.
They introduce irrelevant factors (a blockage in the intestine or the presence of an easily curable infection) into the selection of those who shall die.
If we are able to admit that our objective is a swift and painless death, we should not leave it up to chance to determine whether this objective is achieved.
Having chosen death, we should ensure that it comes in the best possible way.

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DavidFord

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July 21, 2024 - 3:35 pm

Michael Tooley, _Abortion and Infanticide_ (1983), on 419
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Summary and Conclusions
If the line of thought pursued above is correct, neither abortion, nor infanticide, at least during the first few weeks after birth, is morally wrong.
This conclusion rests upon a number of claims, some normative, some purely factual.
In this chapter I shall offer a brief synopsis which focuses upon the central issues, and upon some of the more important considerations of method which have guided the discussion.

Debate – Is God Real? William Lane Craig vs Michael Tooley

Debate – Michael Tooley vs John Lennox – Atheism and Christianity

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DavidFord

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July 22, 2024 - 10:00 am

_Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design_ (2021), 165pp., on 142-143

…I find that the most rational conclusion of this rationalist is to view as the default position the hypothesis that sentient life could not have developed without some form of foresight and an accompanying instrumental power to realize that vision in practice.
This must point away from nature itself as a sufficient causal power for that “mystery of mysteries” in the direction of an unknown (and potentially unknowable) source of intelligence outside nature– and, to judge from the sublime intricacies and spellbinding wonders with which our world abounds, a supra-human form of intelligence at that.

The genesis and evolution of our fine-tuned cosmos and biosphere must in the end come down to a clear binary:
either nature did the fine-tuning and selecting or God did (however that latter entity may be conceived and glossed).
To say that “God did it” obviously does not sit well with people holding a non-theistic worldview.
To say that “nature did it” arguably carries even less plausibility, so that many persons may feel themselves torn between two equally improbable positions.
However, with the naturalistic/ materialistic alternative having failed so signally, we are left with no other choice but to consider the possibility of the “God hypothesis.”
Faced with the sheer unfeasibility of a purely natural explanation, logic leaves us with little other choice.
Extending the old adage that nothing comes of nothing, it might be contended that in real life and contradistinction to the magician’s claim of a rabbit magically emerging from the hat, nothing can “magically emerge” or “naturally evolve” without a supporting agency– little though we may know of that originating agency.
In default of a better explanation than that offered by the Darwinian paradigm and its various materialistic descendants and kissing cousins, however, this hypothesis surely cannot be discounted out of hand.

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Stephen
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July 22, 2024 - 4:09 pm

No, that’s not at all what I meant.

I certainly don’t want to chat with someone not here or respond to an argument not being made.

What apophatic theology says is that God is outside of all categories that we might include in a definition or concept of God. God, if ‘he’ ‘exists’, is not a species in a genus, ie, cannot be comprehended or defined. So, if he exists, he is outside of what is currently known as an object of the intellect. He exists, if he exists at all, outside of and beyond any and all categories of human thought, a God of the gaps only in that sense.

But am I the only one who perceives an internal contradiction here? Apophatic theology does indeed hold onto a God concept that it insists must exist. And that concept is, The Concept of God Beyond Categories. We can never escape concepts. Defining God as undefined is still defining God.

Robert, I’m not being snarky, I’m really not, but it seems to me that in the end, Apophatic theology is the response by folks who can no longer defend an Immanent God but cannot bring themselves to abandon the God concept.

And if we ever stretch all of our human categories of thought to eventually be able to understand and explain all things, and there is no God, that is perfectly fine with me. Or, if there is, that’s fine too.

But the Apophatic God can never be known, right? There will always be gaps in which God may hide.

Meanwhile, we will explore the cosmos or not.

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Robert
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July 22, 2024 - 4:34 pm
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Stephen
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July 22, 2024 - 9:15 pm

It may well be that the best way not to define the unknown God is not to believe in Him at all.

I freely admit to being a product of my upbringing. After you’ve been taught to expect the Lord of Hosts, terrible, speaking out of the roaring whirlwind, surrounded by thunderings and lightnings, the god of the theologians and philosophers seems awfully thin gruel.

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Robert
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July 22, 2024 - 9:38 pm
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DavidFord

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July 22, 2024 - 9:40 pm

“Believing theologians who think that humanity is ultimately destined for divinization”

Anthony M. Coniaris, _Daily Vitamins for Spiritual Growth Vol. 1: Day By Day With Jesus Through the Church Year_ (1994), 377pp., on 163:
Jesus came down from heaven as the Eternal Son of the Father, but when He went to the seat of honor and glory at God’s right hand, He took with him our human nature.
He returned to His Father as God-man.
It was our nature, in everything except its sin, that sat down at the right hand of God.
The Son of God descended to become one of us and ascended to enable us to ascend with Him.
Through the ascension and enthronement of Christ, all human nature has been enthroned at the right hand of the Father.
Since the manhood of Jesus was taken up to the heavenly places, our manhood will also be taken up.
The Ascension is proof that man was made for heaven, not for the grave, for glory not for corruption.

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