15.1.1.1
kairosfocus
August 22, 2011 at 3:09 am
Philip:
It is actually worse than that.
The desperate resort to contain anarchy is well known: tyranny.
Indeed, that is the core principle of fascism — in the teeth of the unprecedented existential challenge, some core community identity group turns to a political messiah, the great man who can rescue us from utter chaos, and who therefore has a right to be a nietzschean superman, above morality; or as Schaeffer pointed out, an oligarchy could emerge, or we could even see the shadowy tyranny of those who manipulate the public to get the magic 51% vote.
And such a tyranny by the individual, the group and/or the shadowy manipulators in the hands of the amoral or nihilistic, is a road to a new dark age.
Our civilisation is in mortal danger.
GEM of TKI
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
And:
18.1.2.1
kairosfocus
August 22, 2011 at 3:26 am
Mel:
The truly self-evident will be true, will be necessarily true, and its denial will lead to patent absurdities.
There are indeed self-evident moral truths, but the problem is that they are connected to the issues like: morality– oughtness — is real, so we live in a world where there is a foundational IS that grounds OUGHT.
There is only one serious candidate for that job.
But, so many are so desperate to avoid that implication, that they willingly embrace the absurd and deny that the absurd consequences and incoherences are just that, absurd and self-refuting. They deny and suppress the truth; soon, en-darkened in mind and benumbed in conscience, they demand approval of error and wrong.
Resemblance to the current picture of our civilisation is no accident.
Nor is resemblance to what Plato described in The Laws, Bk X, or Paul in Rom 1 and Eph 4:17 – 19, or Jesus in Matt 6:22 – 23:
Matt 6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
Our civilisation is in mortal danger and many do not understand the conflagration that threatens, even as they resort to incendiary words and rhetoric.
We need to think again, and pull back now.
Or, we will face a horror and conflagration that we do not begin to conceive of in our worst nightmares.
Already, the fires have begun to spread.
Mortal danger!
Stop the madness!
Fire!!!
Douse it now, before it burns totally beyond control!
GEM of TKI
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And:
19.1.2.1
kairosfocus
August 22, 2011 at 3:51 am
VS:
Please read here, where the point is developed at 101 level.
In the most desperately compressed summary, I am here highlighting a point popularised by Hume, that there is a gap between commonly accepted IS-statements and premises, and OUGHT-obligations. He artfully expressed a surprise to see the usual IS suddenly giving rise to an ought and challenged the grounding of ought.
It turns out that here is a major gap between is and ought that needs to be bridged by any serious worldview that professes to guide individuals and communities.
To do that, we have to have a foundational is in the worldview that can bear the weight of ought. (Note, I did not say, the religious institution, or the school or the state, I said in the worldview.)
The worldview being pushed ever so hard in our day, evolutionary materialism, only permits matter, energy, space, time and things that draw on or depend on these materials and forces. It has no ability to bear the weight of ought. It is inherently amoral, and ends in the principle that Plato pointed out: the highest right is might. Which opens the gateway to factions, chaos and embracing tyranny to get enough stability to survive for now, i.e. as long as I am last in the line for the crocodile, it is enough. Maybe, something will happen . . .
The Euthyphro dilemma, ironically [it is usually presented to try to undermine any foundation of morality], shows the way forward. The necessary being and architect of the cosmos, who is also a loving, inherently good, caring Creator God, is an IS that can ground ought, on the strength of his goodness.
In that context, we are equally made in his image, as morally governed creatures, who thus have unalienable rights, that we are obligated to mutually respect. Life, liberty, reputation, etc. Governments are then instituted under that context, by consent of the community, to defend the civil peace of justice from those who would war against such rights, by robbery, fraud, invasion, etc. Governments that fail in this duty should be reformed or replaced. Hopefully by the peaceful means established in recent centuries, the ballot box.
But therein lieth the rub.
If a people can be systematically deceived and benumbed in conscience, they will vote in tyranny, usually in the form of charismatic, glib-tongued political messiahs who promise rescue from danger.
Hence the need for guaranteed protection of independent individuals and institutions that fearlessly stand for the truth and the right. And, the need to come down hard on those who would persecute, censor or slander such.
A difficult task, and by no means necessarily a sustainable one.
THAT IS WHY THERE IS EVER A NEED FOR COURAGE AND FOR REFORMERS.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, and we have been asleep at the wheel.
GEM of TKI
------------------------------------------------------------------------
And:
25
kairosfocus
August 22, 2011 at 4:51 am
Dr Liddle:
Divine moral law has been appealed to to justify all kinds of atrocities . . . . I’m still waiting for enlightenment as to how we are supposed to derive a system of ethics from religion in general, and Christianity in particular. How do you judge which commandments to take seriously and which to discard?
Why do you persist in a category confusion like that, not to mention an insistence on a barely veiled hostility?
Religions as such — being human, cultural institutions — no more than courts, governments or media houses and personalities or even university academic staff [even the ones dressed in the holy lab coat] — do not and cannot ground moral law, the truly binding OUGHT.
At best, they may teach it [or as the case of the troubles in Ireland vs Col 3:5 - 14 as pointed out shows, may also fail tot each it], but the premises of such law, the ISes that can ground OUGHT come under an entirely different head.
Even, our consciences are not enough, they — if properly trained and not benumbed — testify to that law implanted within. Which is a clue, this is a core part of our being.
As you have been forced at length to concede, evolutionary materialism and the like, have no basis in an IS that can ground OUGHT. So, such a worldview is morally bankrupt and absurd. It has no answer to the testimony of conscience within than to dismiss it as a delusion or manipulate it as a handy emotion to use to rhetorical advantage.
Such a bankrupt worldview cannot stand in a world where ought is patently real.
(Oh, how ironic then is the old — now plainly failed — appeal to the reality of evil to try to make the existence of God seem absurd. For, in it lurks the problem of good vs evil. If evil is real, so is good, and if good is real, then so is The Good. this of course is desperately compressed and can be elaborated.)
Let’s cut to the chase scene.
The only serious candidate for an IS capable of grounding OUGHT is the necessary being and architect of the cosmos, who is also a loving, just, inherently good, Creator, Lord and God.
Once such a being is on the table, it is immediately apparent that the old Euthyphro dilemma type argument [unsurprisingly -- it was properly directed at the old pagan gods who were precisely not as just described] misses the mark, as God is not separate form good, nor is good simply another world for his arbitrary decree. Good is at he core of his character and so the creation of which he is the architect builds in that moral character, in particular in creatures who are ensouled and enconscienced, made equally in his image. So, we have rights, a proper expectation that our dignity as being so made should be respected, starting with life, liberty, and reputation, etc. Governments — executive, judicial and legislative — in particular exist to protect those rights by guarding he civil peace of justice, and are subject to reform or replacement if they fail.
In that context, the core moral principles are respect for the good God and Lord of our nation and the world we live in, and respect for our fellow creatures made in his image, i.e love to God and love to neighbour as to self. Then we can jointly look to the stewardship of our common land, and world, etc.
None of this should be strange to us. Just, an astonishing hostility and pile of fallaciously dismissive rhetoric have been erected to hide it from view.
As to the idea that the first point of departure is that divine moral law can be appealed to to warrant abuse and atrocity, this misses several key issues, coming out the starting gate:
1: We are finite, fallible, morally fallen/struggling and too often ill-willed, so we must be open to correction and reform.
2: That takes care of most cases, i.e. abuse and fraud are not a reason to dismiss right use.
3: it also points to the failure of institutions charged to teach and carry out the right, i.e. it implicitly embeds the same error of institutional relativism corrected in this post above.
4: As was pointed out yesterday, the case of abuse that was flung out with quite incendiary words, husbands abusing wives, Eph 5 to use a specific case, makes it quite plain from context that authority never justifies abuse but instead calls for self-sacrifice to the point of laying down life, literally if necessary. Which is sensible and a case of a carefully balanced and reasonable teaching that can be wrenched out of context by the unstable and unlearned.
5: the same obviously extends to the courtroom or the government, as we can say see from the example of the apostles in dealing with the Sanhedrin in Ac 4 – 5: should we obey you, or God?
7: That is, human authority is under the higher law of our nature as made by the perfectly good and just. (Hence the rights to freedom of conscience, religion, prophetic correction, expression assembly, association etc.)
8: However, there are such things as evildoers, and so there are those who bear the solemn duty of the sword, to protect the civil peace of justice, from enemies foreign and domestic. Including he power of lower magistrates to act jointly with or for the people and interpose themselves in defence of the innocent, as say we may see in Daniel 1 – 4.
9: And that includes cases where some polities have made themselves plagues upon the earth. We may decry what say a Bomber Harris did, after the fact, but we must then answer, what is the reasonable and feasible means of containing a Nazi Germany and breaking its power? Or, what about an Imperial Germany? [It was failure to sufficiently break the latter that led to the rise of the former.]
10: In that context, I think we must realise that the private individual slapped on his cheek does not hold the same moral state as the policeman who bears the revolver and truncheon in defence of the community, or the soldier with the M-16 or AK 47, or the statesman who must decide whether to loose the power of armies, knowing full well the horrors that may obtain, as there may be worse horrors that are predictable if he does not.
11: So, while we do try to restrict wars and the like, we have to recognise that there are different circumstances, and that God as ultimate authority, is in a very different position than we are. Every death, every soul brought before him to account, is under his responsibility as ultimate Lord and Judge. And, we are in no position to push God into the dock and sit in judgement on him. But we are in every position to know and recognise that goodness is central to being God, so we can understand at least the rudimentary principles of what happens when God must judge nations, by consequences, by prophetic correction, by relevant degrees of destruction if they defy correction and become plagues upon the earth.
12: So, let us listen to Dembski’s remarks on Boethius:
In his Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius states the following paradox: “If God exists, whence evil? But whence good, if God does not exist?” Boethius contrasts the problem that evil poses for theism with the problem that good poses for atheism. The problem of good does not receive nearly as much attention as the problem evil, but it is the more basic problem. That’s because evil always presupposes a good that has been subverted. All our words for evil make this plain: the New Testament word for sin (Greek hamartia) presupposes a target that’s been missed; deviation presupposes a way (Latin via) from which we’ve departed; injustice presupposes justice; etc. So let’s ask, who’s got the worse problem, the theist or the atheist? Start with the theist. God is the source of all being and purpose. Given God’s existence, what sense does it make to deny God’s goodness? None . . . . The problem of evil still confronts theists, though not as a logical or philosophical problem, but instead as a psychological and existential one [as was addressed above] . . . .
The problem of good as it faces the atheist is this: nature, which is nuts-and-bolts reality for the atheist, has no values and thus can offer no grounding for good and evil. As nineteenth century freethinker Robert Green Ingersoll used to say, “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are consequences.” More recently, Richard Dawkins made the same point: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” ["Prepared Remarks for the Dembski-Hitchens Debate," Uncommon Descent Blog, Nov 22, 2010]
GEM of TKI
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Mortal danger!
Stop the madness!
Fire!!!
Douse it now, before it burns totally beyond control!"
Will someone please throw a big bucket of water on gordo? If anyone is a mad, tyrannical, nazi-esque, fascistic, manipulative, nightmarish, evil, morally bankrupt, persecuting, censoring, slandering, en-darkened in mind and benumbed in conscience, burning out of control mortal danger and messiah-wannabe, it's religious lunatics like gordon e. mullings and his IDiot comrades.
And just think, all of that bullshit about morality is coming from a cretin who lies on a daily basis.
Oh, and what is that that the IDiots keep saying about ID not being a religious agenda? Well, there sure is a LOT of religion on UD; a site that claims it is "Serving the Intelligent Design Community". But of course ID is a "scientific" theory/inference and has nothing to do with a god or religious beliefs. Yeah, sure.
gordon e. mullings, maniacal shithead:
kairosfocus
August 22, 2011 at 3:09 am
Philip:
It is actually worse than that.
The desperate resort to contain anarchy is well known: tyranny.
Indeed, that is the core principle of fascism — in the teeth of the unprecedented existential challenge, some core community identity group turns to a political messiah, the great man who can rescue us from utter chaos, and who therefore has a right to be a nietzschean superman, above morality; or as Schaeffer pointed out, an oligarchy could emerge, or we could even see the shadowy tyranny of those who manipulate the public to get the magic 51% vote.
And such a tyranny by the individual, the group and/or the shadowy manipulators in the hands of the amoral or nihilistic, is a road to a new dark age.
Our civilisation is in mortal danger.
GEM of TKI
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
And:
18.1.2.1
kairosfocus
August 22, 2011 at 3:26 am
Mel:
The truly self-evident will be true, will be necessarily true, and its denial will lead to patent absurdities.
There are indeed self-evident moral truths, but the problem is that they are connected to the issues like: morality– oughtness — is real, so we live in a world where there is a foundational IS that grounds OUGHT.
There is only one serious candidate for that job.
But, so many are so desperate to avoid that implication, that they willingly embrace the absurd and deny that the absurd consequences and incoherences are just that, absurd and self-refuting. They deny and suppress the truth; soon, en-darkened in mind and benumbed in conscience, they demand approval of error and wrong.
Resemblance to the current picture of our civilisation is no accident.
Nor is resemblance to what Plato described in The Laws, Bk X, or Paul in Rom 1 and Eph 4:17 – 19, or Jesus in Matt 6:22 – 23:
Matt 6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
Our civilisation is in mortal danger and many do not understand the conflagration that threatens, even as they resort to incendiary words and rhetoric.
We need to think again, and pull back now.
Or, we will face a horror and conflagration that we do not begin to conceive of in our worst nightmares.
Already, the fires have begun to spread.
Mortal danger!
Stop the madness!
Fire!!!
Douse it now, before it burns totally beyond control!
GEM of TKI
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And:
19.1.2.1
kairosfocus
August 22, 2011 at 3:51 am
VS:
Please read here, where the point is developed at 101 level.
In the most desperately compressed summary, I am here highlighting a point popularised by Hume, that there is a gap between commonly accepted IS-statements and premises, and OUGHT-obligations. He artfully expressed a surprise to see the usual IS suddenly giving rise to an ought and challenged the grounding of ought.
It turns out that here is a major gap between is and ought that needs to be bridged by any serious worldview that professes to guide individuals and communities.
To do that, we have to have a foundational is in the worldview that can bear the weight of ought. (Note, I did not say, the religious institution, or the school or the state, I said in the worldview.)
The worldview being pushed ever so hard in our day, evolutionary materialism, only permits matter, energy, space, time and things that draw on or depend on these materials and forces. It has no ability to bear the weight of ought. It is inherently amoral, and ends in the principle that Plato pointed out: the highest right is might. Which opens the gateway to factions, chaos and embracing tyranny to get enough stability to survive for now, i.e. as long as I am last in the line for the crocodile, it is enough. Maybe, something will happen . . .
The Euthyphro dilemma, ironically [it is usually presented to try to undermine any foundation of morality], shows the way forward. The necessary being and architect of the cosmos, who is also a loving, inherently good, caring Creator God, is an IS that can ground ought, on the strength of his goodness.
In that context, we are equally made in his image, as morally governed creatures, who thus have unalienable rights, that we are obligated to mutually respect. Life, liberty, reputation, etc. Governments are then instituted under that context, by consent of the community, to defend the civil peace of justice from those who would war against such rights, by robbery, fraud, invasion, etc. Governments that fail in this duty should be reformed or replaced. Hopefully by the peaceful means established in recent centuries, the ballot box.
But therein lieth the rub.
If a people can be systematically deceived and benumbed in conscience, they will vote in tyranny, usually in the form of charismatic, glib-tongued political messiahs who promise rescue from danger.
Hence the need for guaranteed protection of independent individuals and institutions that fearlessly stand for the truth and the right. And, the need to come down hard on those who would persecute, censor or slander such.
A difficult task, and by no means necessarily a sustainable one.
THAT IS WHY THERE IS EVER A NEED FOR COURAGE AND FOR REFORMERS.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, and we have been asleep at the wheel.
GEM of TKI
------------------------------------------------------------------------
And:
25
kairosfocus
August 22, 2011 at 4:51 am
Dr Liddle:
Divine moral law has been appealed to to justify all kinds of atrocities . . . . I’m still waiting for enlightenment as to how we are supposed to derive a system of ethics from religion in general, and Christianity in particular. How do you judge which commandments to take seriously and which to discard?
Why do you persist in a category confusion like that, not to mention an insistence on a barely veiled hostility?
Religions as such — being human, cultural institutions — no more than courts, governments or media houses and personalities or even university academic staff [even the ones dressed in the holy lab coat] — do not and cannot ground moral law, the truly binding OUGHT.
At best, they may teach it [or as the case of the troubles in Ireland vs Col 3:5 - 14 as pointed out shows, may also fail tot each it], but the premises of such law, the ISes that can ground OUGHT come under an entirely different head.
Even, our consciences are not enough, they — if properly trained and not benumbed — testify to that law implanted within. Which is a clue, this is a core part of our being.
As you have been forced at length to concede, evolutionary materialism and the like, have no basis in an IS that can ground OUGHT. So, such a worldview is morally bankrupt and absurd. It has no answer to the testimony of conscience within than to dismiss it as a delusion or manipulate it as a handy emotion to use to rhetorical advantage.
Such a bankrupt worldview cannot stand in a world where ought is patently real.
(Oh, how ironic then is the old — now plainly failed — appeal to the reality of evil to try to make the existence of God seem absurd. For, in it lurks the problem of good vs evil. If evil is real, so is good, and if good is real, then so is The Good. this of course is desperately compressed and can be elaborated.)
Let’s cut to the chase scene.
The only serious candidate for an IS capable of grounding OUGHT is the necessary being and architect of the cosmos, who is also a loving, just, inherently good, Creator, Lord and God.
Once such a being is on the table, it is immediately apparent that the old Euthyphro dilemma type argument [unsurprisingly -- it was properly directed at the old pagan gods who were precisely not as just described] misses the mark, as God is not separate form good, nor is good simply another world for his arbitrary decree. Good is at he core of his character and so the creation of which he is the architect builds in that moral character, in particular in creatures who are ensouled and enconscienced, made equally in his image. So, we have rights, a proper expectation that our dignity as being so made should be respected, starting with life, liberty, and reputation, etc. Governments — executive, judicial and legislative — in particular exist to protect those rights by guarding he civil peace of justice, and are subject to reform or replacement if they fail.
In that context, the core moral principles are respect for the good God and Lord of our nation and the world we live in, and respect for our fellow creatures made in his image, i.e love to God and love to neighbour as to self. Then we can jointly look to the stewardship of our common land, and world, etc.
None of this should be strange to us. Just, an astonishing hostility and pile of fallaciously dismissive rhetoric have been erected to hide it from view.
As to the idea that the first point of departure is that divine moral law can be appealed to to warrant abuse and atrocity, this misses several key issues, coming out the starting gate:
1: We are finite, fallible, morally fallen/struggling and too often ill-willed, so we must be open to correction and reform.
2: That takes care of most cases, i.e. abuse and fraud are not a reason to dismiss right use.
3: it also points to the failure of institutions charged to teach and carry out the right, i.e. it implicitly embeds the same error of institutional relativism corrected in this post above.
4: As was pointed out yesterday, the case of abuse that was flung out with quite incendiary words, husbands abusing wives, Eph 5 to use a specific case, makes it quite plain from context that authority never justifies abuse but instead calls for self-sacrifice to the point of laying down life, literally if necessary. Which is sensible and a case of a carefully balanced and reasonable teaching that can be wrenched out of context by the unstable and unlearned.
5: the same obviously extends to the courtroom or the government, as we can say see from the example of the apostles in dealing with the Sanhedrin in Ac 4 – 5: should we obey you, or God?
7: That is, human authority is under the higher law of our nature as made by the perfectly good and just. (Hence the rights to freedom of conscience, religion, prophetic correction, expression assembly, association etc.)
8: However, there are such things as evildoers, and so there are those who bear the solemn duty of the sword, to protect the civil peace of justice, from enemies foreign and domestic. Including he power of lower magistrates to act jointly with or for the people and interpose themselves in defence of the innocent, as say we may see in Daniel 1 – 4.
9: And that includes cases where some polities have made themselves plagues upon the earth. We may decry what say a Bomber Harris did, after the fact, but we must then answer, what is the reasonable and feasible means of containing a Nazi Germany and breaking its power? Or, what about an Imperial Germany? [It was failure to sufficiently break the latter that led to the rise of the former.]
10: In that context, I think we must realise that the private individual slapped on his cheek does not hold the same moral state as the policeman who bears the revolver and truncheon in defence of the community, or the soldier with the M-16 or AK 47, or the statesman who must decide whether to loose the power of armies, knowing full well the horrors that may obtain, as there may be worse horrors that are predictable if he does not.
11: So, while we do try to restrict wars and the like, we have to recognise that there are different circumstances, and that God as ultimate authority, is in a very different position than we are. Every death, every soul brought before him to account, is under his responsibility as ultimate Lord and Judge. And, we are in no position to push God into the dock and sit in judgement on him. But we are in every position to know and recognise that goodness is central to being God, so we can understand at least the rudimentary principles of what happens when God must judge nations, by consequences, by prophetic correction, by relevant degrees of destruction if they defy correction and become plagues upon the earth.
12: So, let us listen to Dembski’s remarks on Boethius:
In his Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius states the following paradox: “If God exists, whence evil? But whence good, if God does not exist?” Boethius contrasts the problem that evil poses for theism with the problem that good poses for atheism. The problem of good does not receive nearly as much attention as the problem evil, but it is the more basic problem. That’s because evil always presupposes a good that has been subverted. All our words for evil make this plain: the New Testament word for sin (Greek hamartia) presupposes a target that’s been missed; deviation presupposes a way (Latin via) from which we’ve departed; injustice presupposes justice; etc. So let’s ask, who’s got the worse problem, the theist or the atheist? Start with the theist. God is the source of all being and purpose. Given God’s existence, what sense does it make to deny God’s goodness? None . . . . The problem of evil still confronts theists, though not as a logical or philosophical problem, but instead as a psychological and existential one [as was addressed above] . . . .
The problem of good as it faces the atheist is this: nature, which is nuts-and-bolts reality for the atheist, has no values and thus can offer no grounding for good and evil. As nineteenth century freethinker Robert Green Ingersoll used to say, “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are consequences.” More recently, Richard Dawkins made the same point: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” ["Prepared Remarks for the Dembski-Hitchens Debate," Uncommon Descent Blog, Nov 22, 2010]
GEM of TKI
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Mortal danger!
Stop the madness!
Fire!!!
Douse it now, before it burns totally beyond control!"
Will someone please throw a big bucket of water on gordo? If anyone is a mad, tyrannical, nazi-esque, fascistic, manipulative, nightmarish, evil, morally bankrupt, persecuting, censoring, slandering, en-darkened in mind and benumbed in conscience, burning out of control mortal danger and messiah-wannabe, it's religious lunatics like gordon e. mullings and his IDiot comrades.
And just think, all of that bullshit about morality is coming from a cretin who lies on a daily basis.
Oh, and what is that that the IDiots keep saying about ID not being a religious agenda? Well, there sure is a LOT of religion on UD; a site that claims it is "Serving the Intelligent Design Community". But of course ID is a "scientific" theory/inference and has nothing to do with a god or religious beliefs. Yeah, sure.
gordon e. mullings, maniacal shithead:
