This is a great piece by John Piper. A few exerpts;
Everyone knows in his heart that believing relativism to be true is contradictory, and everyone also knows intuitively that no one even tries to put it into practice consistently. Therefore, both philosophically and practically, it cultivates duplicity. People say they believe in it but do not think or act consistently with what they say. They are hypocrites. Relativism breeds hypocrisy and duplicity.
[…]
This is most obvious when relativists live their lives. They simply do not live them as though relativism were true. Professors play the academic game of relativism in their classes and then go home get upset when their wives don’t understand what they say. Why do they get upset? Because they know that there is an objective meaning that can be transmitted between two human beings, and we have moral obligations to grasp what is meant. No husband ever said, “Since all truth and language are relative, it does not matter how you interpret my invitation to sleep together.” Whether we write love letters or rental agreements or instructions to our children or directions for a friend or contracts or sermons or obituaries, we believe objective meaning exists in what we write, and we expect people to try to understand. And we hold them accountable (and often get upset) if they don’t.
Nobody is a relativist when their case is being tried in court and their objective innocence hangs on objective evidence. The whole system of relativism is a morally corrupting impulse toward duplicity. It is a great bluff. And what is needed in our day is for many candid children to rise up and say, “The king has no clothes on.”
[…]
The formula is simple: When relativism holds sway long enough, everyone begins to do what is right in his own eyes without any regard for submission to truth. In this atmosphere, a society begins to break down. Virtually every structure in a free society depends on a measure of integrity—that is, submission to the truth. When the chaos of relativism reaches a certain point, the people will welcome any ruler who can bring some semblance of order and security. So a dictator steps forward and crushes the chaos with absolute control. Ironically, relativism—the great lover of unfettered freedom—destroys freedom in the end.
h/t Alice The Camel.
This is a classic strawman argument. The absence of an absolute truth (of matters complex enough to involve nonlinear phenomena) that is knowable in completeness that transcends a narrower, personal perspective, does not imply that truth claims can be manufactured arbitrarily. By analogy, we can only forecast weather based on previous experience (a past perspective) and it can only be an educated guess, since the nonlinearities in weather create more information relevant to accurate prediction than humans can represent and process. The intrinsic inability to have objective knowledge about the weather in 10 days does mean you can simply make any prediction you want. Perspectivism does not imply relativism. Perspectivism follows from chaos theory. Roughly it observes that the world is more complex than our ability to represent it completely, so any representation of phenomena of nonlinear complixity is necessarily incomplete. By rough analogy, humans only get to represent x% of something. How you spend you representation budget is the perspective you apply. Some perspectives (light as wave; light as particle) are more useful for some tasks, others for other tasks.
Murray – you write nonsense, and your charge that Piper sets up a strawman argument is incorrect. He is not ignoring the complexity of life, but rather our consequent tendency to throw up our hands, say “oh, the hell with it, it don’t matter anyway…gimme a beer, and stop bugging me”. He argues against relativistic philosophy’s “man IS a island” thinking. Relativism accepts the concept of mutually inconsistent but operationally equivalent perspectives. This is absurd. The existence of absolute truth ought to be clear to everyone. Using fancy words borrowed from fields of science that have difficulty in defining their own operational parameters does not add weight to your argument, but detracts from it. Oh, and the light as wave and particle thingy? We teach this to undergrads to keep it simple. There still is only one correct “perspective” of atom-photon interaction.
Mr. Piper made a good point about the sensible side of relativism being what could be called contextualization of truths.
It’s my own impression that relativism’s origin was the use of relational truths in highly technical works of logic, as well as in Einsteinian physics, which made relativism a kind of status symbol in the academy.
When you look at the thing itself, though, it’s evident that moral relativism simply taps into the cognitive skills of old people. Its ultimate backing, in everyday life, is this basic piece of time-won wisdom: “some people are just incorrigible, so you’ve got to get along with them as they are.” Formal theories of moral relativism simply systemize this insight.
Murray said
“This is a classic strawman argument. The absence of an absolute truth (of matters complex enough to involve nonlinear phenomena) that is knowable in completeness that transcends a narrower, personal perspective, does not imply that truth claims can be manufactured arbitrarily. ”
my response to your argument is the following:
This is a classic strawman argument. The absence of an absolute truth (of matters complex enough to involve nonlinear phenomena) that is knowable in completeness that transcends a narrower, personal perspective, does not imply that truth claims can be manufactured arbitrarily.
The point about science and philosophy is true. Philosophy usually follows scientific insights on the basis that it should refelct the physical world. Oh and that it gives philosophy a patina of respectability by using scientific concepts.
Interesting that only half of the relativity argument gets used. YEs if you are in a different frame of reference you may well perceive the universe differently. But Einstein never indicated that those perceptions were right or wrong.
His theory gave a framework for working out what was actually happening in all of those frames of reference so you could unravel what was really going on.
As well, there is a constant in Einsteins world, the speed of light….I dont believe that in moral relativism there is an equivalent analogy of “c”.
ALL of these comments are thoughtful, especially the original post. Thanks Kate
Speaking of relativism.
This thread was probably the quickest burst of informed opinion i’ve ever seen on the internet.
Excellent stuff, folks, although I doubt you need my compliment.
murray – that is not a strawman argument; it’s valid.
Cognitive Relativism has nothing to do with the reality of complexity theory in mathematics, physics and biology, and its concomitant non-linearity and the Godel ‘gap’ between formal and informal realities. You cannot equate the actions of communication and cognition, which, although different from each other, are both linear processes, with non-linear processes.
Cognitive relativism is based on fallacious assumptions.
First the false assumption that there is no linear path of temporal origin, from point one to point two, and that the concept transmitted (call it X)from Person A to Person B is completely based within the interpretive powers of the second point, Person B. This denies the authorial powers of the origin of the concept, Person A. It rejects linear temporality and ownership/authorship of concepts.
Second, that there is no objective reality against which to measure the validity and reliability of the concept transmitted. This rejection of objective reality means that reality becomes entirely subjective. But, how is it that every spring, the same species of flowers emerges from the soil, the same birds return? Isn’t there an objective reality which functions quite exclusively to how anyone interprets it?
And third, that rejection of objective reality denies the existence of normative Laws, of constants, of commonality. Physics and biology show that this is invalid; there are normative laws, constants, and their consequent limits to individual existence.
The postmodernists, who latched on to the notion of ‘relativism’ in their gleeful desire to reject what they saw as ‘authoritarian Rule’ completely ignored all three rules.
The first rule, is that in normal spatiotemporal reality, Linear Temporality is the Rule. Existence moves from an earlier to a later point in time. That existence includes concepts communicated.
The second rule, is that there IS an objective reality, and my opinions and concepts can be measured against this objective reality. So, if I assert that I can fly, this can be tested.
The third rule, is that there ARE normative laws in reality, and these laws act as constraints on the emergence and function of individual expressions.
So, postmodernism, which is a theory dealing with communication and cognition, is competely false as an analysis of those processes – because it is based on fallacious and ignorant assumptions about reality.
Piper is ‘spot on’; great piece.
Very true. If you are a true practioner of relativism, then the concepts and theories of relativism are merely “relative” to situation and need 😉
I’ve only printed it yet. My Lexmark printer is very fast, er, relative to my previous HP and it even does duplex!
But jumping off the page from an intitial scan, The Evil and Destructive Effects of Relativism, #1, Relativism Commits Treason, opening sentence: “Relativism is a revolt against the objective reality of God”.
What about that statement, ET: Is that “spot on”?
“it is never a good idea to put reality up for grabs. there may come a time when you need it”
In my experience, moral relativists usually insist on the unknowability or unprovability of all statements (facts) but their own. It’s a way of disabling the other other guy’s capacity to debate a point they can’t a decent case about themselves, and it has the added bonus of relieving them of even the need to try to make a decent point. At bottom you can’t reason with them because from their point of view, there’s no provable basis for logical reasoning or knowable facts to be argued about. Words don’t necessarily signify anything real, if I understand the argument correctly. Therefore, anything goes and their point of view is as valid as yours even though they haven’t proven a damned thing. You can see how this would serve a political agenda, especially one whose arguments either make no sense or have long since been discredited (hello, Comrade Marx).
But they remind of those old idealists who used to maintain that it was unprovable that anything existed apart from the thoughts of your own mind. Those guys all still filled their stomachs regularly and refrained from walking off steep cliffs. Similarly, our modern relativists are usually deeply convinced of the absolute correctness of their own beliefs, which their own creed insists is not possible.
Another excerpt:
“Relativism is a revolt against the objective reality of God.”
If you believe that you’ll believe anything.
me no dhimmi- I’m an atheist, as you well know, and I don’t believe in the objective reality of God.
But I do believe in objective reality and I do believe that this objective reality has Normative Laws of Organization. So, some will call those Laws ‘God’. I don’t; I call them ‘Normative Laws of Organization’. As such, these Laws supercede the individual or particular spatiotemporal artifacts; ie, an individual atom or molecule obeys these collective Laws of Organization.
As for morality, I don’t accept moral relativism; it think that Reason is universal, and our humanity is universal; there are, therefore, universal moral standards – the best outline, I think, is found in the US declaration of independence
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Now – that’s perfection. There’s no moral relativism there.
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/NovakNihilism.htm
One of John Piper’s sources.
Says it all.
The responses miss the mark, in my view. Piper, for example, berates what he labels “relativism” among a certain set, but then notes that they act quite differently. Perhaps that is a clue to the fact that Piper misdescribes what he is calling “relativism” in the first place.
ET, your comments miss the mark insofar as we can only talk and reason about our rexpeirence of reality through communication, which is subject to the space-time limitations of the way we communicate. Further, once we are speaking and theorizing about the social world, the social world is in a large part constructed by the means tof communication, to facilitate communication, etc., so you have a mixing of levels, so to speak, which introduces nonlinearities aplenty.
A fine writer in the perspectivist, conservation tradition is Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a jurist. The common law method (which through Francis Bacon became the foundation of scientific method) deals with the problem of perspectivism all the time. There is no operational value in assuming the existence of an Absolute Common Law. rather, common law evolves in response to experience. It is a difficult, multi-faceted task to develop new law in the common law method: Holmes identifies at least four categories of constraint–doctrinal coherency, historical product (precedent), political expression and utility-calculus. One cannot describe or develop law along any one dimension in isolation of the extent of constraint violation along other dimensions. Further, once must consider, for example, that greater recognition of equity might imperil social constructs based on trust (such that fear of equity uncertainty would undermine reliance on contractual bargains).
Holmes and other perspectivists undoubtedly believe that common law and similar cognitive systems are capable of rejecting many proposed developments or alternatives as objectively wrong. However, a lot of intellectual work is required to decide whether and in what circumstances for example, oral communications should be allowed as evidence to contradict the clear written terms of a written agreement between two corporations. POsiting the existence of an Abolute Answer not only has no operational utility in approaching the problem, it impedes development. It begs the question to assume an Ideal and purport to make progress by measuring the distance from the (assumed) ideal. Rather, progress is driven by experiment/experience, from the guidance derived from obvious or proable error.
The flaw in the critique of “relativism” is that it assumes incorrectly the absence of criteria to identify error. Rather, perspectivism merely says identifing error may involve a lot of intellectuual effort, might not be achievable until there is further progress, and in many cases,not achievable at all (although this may itself be undecidable).
Ironically, idealist from both the Left and right have trouble with this. Terry Eagleton (Left) bemaons the lack of “teeth” in perspectivism. But Karl Popper got tyhe intuition right when he came up with the mataphor of scienctific theory being like posts driven down into peat. There is no bedrock of support–but thee is enough resistance (cumulative error feedback) to hold up a viable, pragmatic theory.
“When the highest type of men hear the Tao
They try hard to live in accordance with it,
When the mediocre hear the Tao,
They seem to be aware and yet unaware of it.
When the lowest type hear of Tao,
They break into loud laughter —
If it were not laughed at, it would not be Tao.”
–LAOTSE
The thing about an Absolute Nature is that it is universal and not particular.
As a universal nature, relative nature is not capable of fathoming it.
There is no form of relativistic epistemology that can do more than entertain possiblities in respect to a universal nature. As soon as one has started to define between concepts, one has already left the univeral nature inasmuch as the universal nature is in no way cognizable.
Infinity cannot be defined. You can’t put a definition to it. You can’t draw a line or parameter around it.
If you build a ladder a hundred miles high and another ladder that is a trillion miles high, you still are no closer to reaching infinity.
So if it is not possible to “prove” that a universal nature exists, it is also not possible to prove that it doesn’t.
We are told that “the light shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not” because it is impossible through science or through cognition or any other use of particulars to describe what ultimately is transcendental to epistemological efforts.
Now in religious phenomenology there is an attempt to fathom experiences that occur in the psychological and sometimes physiological realms that seem to be experiences in some limited way of an Absolute Nature.
It’s hard to refute what this person is talking about since it’s a straw man. Why not identify a real world case that you identify as “relativism” and start from there. It’s a big world, I’m sure you can find someone on the “other” side that you’re smarter than if you look hard enough.
The flipside of relativism is absolutism.
Killing is killing regardless of circumstance. Therefore, there is one punishment for taking the life of another. Once you add in the circumstance, the punishment (if any) is relative.
There is no clear cut universal morality. Somehow, using the Bible to bolster the point of universal morality is rather, well, funny. We’ve got some rape, some incest, some murder all allowed and encouraged by God. These were all moral actions because God is the ultimate arbiter of morals and can change his mind as he sees fit. This makes God a moral relativist, as he changed as long as it suited his ends.
Murder is bad, unless God says so
Theft is bad, unless God says so
Rape is bad, unless God says so
Yeah, so um, yeah. If, you see, Biblical Morality is the Universal Morality then whatever punishments meted out are the Universal Punishments. Keep in mind that Jesus was quite clear he was there to uphold the Law. That’s Matthew 5:17.
Cherry picking Bible quotes to prove universal morality is a waste of time. The Bible is one of those books that anyone can use to prove anything.
Murray…Piper does not set up a straw man (frankly I’m amazed that any could suggest this sophmoric argument unless it is an attempt to term drop)nor does he need to; besides his carefully crafted argumentations are what set up your responce of perspectivism which is relativistic-dualism thus proving his point. The Munich PhD has debated and warned of this issue for many years and much of those warnings are seeing their fruition today. His basic premise has been: bad theology (belief) leads to bad religion (practice). For you to contrast the arguments of absolute truth vs. relativism to that of weather is anemic.
“[I] think that Reason is universal, and our humanity is universal; there are, therefore, universal moral standards”.
What an interesting thing for someone professing atheism to say. Reason as a universal (along with morals for that matter) would be an immaterial reality; yet atheism is stuck with a materialistic view of reality — that the physical universe is all that exists, that it and life itself exists by chance and is without design, or purpose.
To suggest, without God, that our humanity is “universal” is especially intriguing. It exists on one insignificant planet within a vast universe. If another species dropped by, and its “reason” told them that it was OK to harvest and eat humans (in a responsible, sustainable manner, of course), on what possible grounds could we object?
Since life is arbitrary, unplanned, undesigned and purposeless, and since the atheist’s world is purely material, taking a human life can be no better or worse than smashing a rock.
I was wondering: Who Pays Piper?
Further to Piper’s article:
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=106724
…and noone ‘pays’ me.
Piper has two sources of revenue:
His church (http://www.bbcmpls.org/)which is run by a board of directors and gives a fixed salary as a line item in a budget and the publihing companies that market his books.
I realise that your question has deleterious intent because you likely believe that pastors need no pay or you wish to conjecture that Piper is living off of little old ladies pension plans. However from the anonymity of a blog site you have the luxury of malisious conjecturing as do so many that are accusors of Christians.
Relativism is a bad answer to some very good questions. For a better answer, I recommend Alasdair MacIntyre, especially “Whose Justice? Which Rationality?”
Richard Ball – you obviously have a perverse view of atheism. Atheism is NOT, got that – NOT a materialist view of the universe. It is NOT, repeat, NOT a reductionist view that all of matter is nothing but ‘bits’ randomly stuck together.
The error that you are making is to confuse atheism with material particularism, ie, with a view that rejects the reality of Universals.
My atheism rejects any and all notion of an agential God, an intentional Mind. But I certainly am a Realist, which means, that I accept that Universals are Real. The abstract Form of organization of an atom, which sets up a Law of normative patterns for hydrogen, helium, oxygen, etc – that Form is real; it is not an abstraction in my mind. And it is part of, it is expressed within the particular. The Universal is expressed within the particular. That’s Aristotle, not Plato.
These Laws of Organization, the Universals, are hardly arbitrary, unplanned; any consideration of the order that exists in our universe denies that. Were these universals created by a metaphysical agent? Not in my view. They are created within the development of matter.
Matter, as you know, exists below the speed of light, and right after the Big Bang, matter was formed, at first arbitrarily, but, immediately, these ‘bits’ took on Habits, Normative Habits, which became – habitual constants – and constrained future developments and evolution. This is a well known theory – see Charles S. Peirce on the development of synergy and normative habits.
Morality is an aspect of reason, a basic attribute of our species – and therefore, your example of another species, the aliens ‘taking a human life’ – doesn’t make any sense.
murray- I disagree; you are conflating cognition and communication. These are two very different processes. Indeed, cognition doesn’t rely on communication or language. You are moving into sociolinguistics – and I disagree with its axioms. I strongly disagree that our worldview is constructed by our language; that’s an old theory, promoted during WWII, based on Saussure, but also, Boas, Ruth Benedict, Whorf and Sapir, Douglas, etc.
Nonlinearity does not mean a ‘mixing of levels’.
Saying that, as you say perspectivism does, that finding an error will be difficult, is hardly a robust methodology.
And Popper, whose work I very much admire, most certainly was not a relativist. See his ‘Objective Knowledge’.
Laws, but no Lawgiver. Got it.
“Doesn’t make any sense”. If our minds were not designed, but, as you must believe, the random results of time-plus-chance, then it doesn’t make any sense to rely on them as accurate processors of information. Nor should the reasoning that emanates from them be trusted.
Morality is an aspect of reason, a basic attribute of our species…
Who’s morality? The one who blames criminal actions on society?
Relativism = Liberalism = the Big Self Deluding and Self Serving LIE! It’s a Sickness.
Biff,
“[to Murray]… besides his carefully crafted argumentations are what set up your responce of perspectivism which is relativistic-dualism thus proving his point. ”
I believe I already said that but I’m still waiting for Murray to refute me.
Richard Ball “If our minds were not designed, but, as you must believe, the random results of time-plus-chance, then it doesn’t make any sense to rely on them as accurate processors of information. Nor should the reasoning that emanates from them be trusted.”
Evolution isn’t random.
What is relativism? Well, I guess that depends…
richard ball – I don’t accept random mutation as the cause of evolution. That’s too mechanical. Nor do I accept ‘the Intelligent Designer’.
I accept self-organized design – and it’s too long to explain here, but self-organization is a basic theory of complexity theory. The Santa Fe Institute has online papers, see also the Wiley journal ‘Complexity’. See also Per Bak and his famous ‘sandpile’..etc. Stu Kauffman, ‘The Origins of Order’.
This self-organization produces normative habits of organization. These normative habits act as constraints on adaptive and evolutionary changes. There is also the important research area of hyperincursion and anticipation – whereby a system can’t just move into the future based on random changes; that would be disastrous. It has to make ‘informed’ choices; it has to anticipate and prepare itself. You could google ‘computing anticipatory systems’ and check out the CASYS papers on that.
ol hoss – you don’t understand how a society is organized as a collective (check out Aristotle and Popper), you are making silly remarks like ‘blaming criminal actions on society’.
You don’t understand tribalism, you don’t understand fascism – and don’t understand how a dysfunctional tribalism can generate a utopian ideology, such as fascism. Instead, you simply make silly remarks. How does that help?
ol hoss – you don’t understand how a society is organized as a collective…
I’m sure you have a borrowed theory you can spout to explain it.
ol hoss – yet another silly remark. Knowledge doesn’t emerge and exist only within one individual, but within a ‘community of scholars’ (Peirce). Think about it.
ET “This self-organization produces normative habits of organization.”
Fine. But since this “self-organization” is itself uncaused, undesigned, and undirected, it still doesn’t explain, to me at least, where objective moral truth comes from. The very concept of morality is a stretch if humans are surrounded by a vast, unthinking, amoral, purposeless, cold-hearted, and unfeeling universe that simple self-organizes.
Without a Creator who willed us to exist, designed us to exist, and created us to be more valuable than a blade of grass or a frog, killing a human being is no better or worse than cutting the grass or killing a frog.
A universe without God is totally indifferent to what we do.
You may say, “well, it goes against Reason”. Well, so what? Who made Reason God over us? If Reason was never intended, never designed, and is itself unfeeling and unthinking — an interesting concept, by the way — why should we be slaves to it?
We may say that it is somehow a terrible thing to take a human life, but that is only because we are thinking more highly of ourselves than our atheism warrants.
An ordered, but uncreated universe strikes me as half-way deism, a position someone takes when they want the comfort of an ordered universe without the obligations attached to belief in a Creator, who, no less than mankind, possesses mind, will, self-consciousness and emotions.
Your choice — but it strikes me as being nothing more than that.
Knowledge doesn’t emerge and exist only within one individual, but within a ‘community of scholars’ (Peirce).
True to form, another borrowed quote from someone as fallible as yourself. Gives meaning to the blind leading the blind and both falling into the ditch.
Incestuous relations doesn’t produce a healthy community.
ideologies have consequences.
darwinism, an ideology that believes single celled organisms evolved over millenium to become every species on the planet and that sees no difference between humans and other animals/plants, leads inevitably to the idea that all ideas are equally valid (relativism) and that survival of the fittest will sort them out. The ironic thing is that secular humanist/relativists tend to be leftists who believe in darwinism and who tend not to replicate – thus making relativism/secularism “unfit” in a darwinistic sense.
secular humanists/relativists/darwinists tend to find common cause with Islamists because they both would like to see the demise of the Bible based ideology (which “darwinistically” produces the most “fit” societies)
richard – you are attributing attributes to the universe that it doesn’t have, eg, ‘unthinking, amoral, purposeless, cold-hearted and unfeeling’.
The universe doesn’t have those attributes. It is not, in itself, cold or warm-hearted, or amoral, or unfeeling.
It most certainly has a purpose, and that is, the retention of energy. To retain energy and prevent entropic dissipation, the universe, since it operates below the speed of light, organizes energy into matter. Matter is highly organized and intricately networked. It is not created by any agent (ie, god).
Are we more valuable than a blade of grass or a frog? Why?
Morality is a basic component of reason. And the so-called ‘Golden Rule’ of ‘treat others only as you consent to being treated in the same situation’ is, I feel, a conclusion based on reason. No metaphysical agent has to tell me this.
ol hoss – I certainly hope I’m fallible! What utter arrogance to consider that I am infallible!
And a community of scholars is not incestuous. Do you seriously believe that any one individual is capable of knowing everything? That they don’t rely on the innovations and expertise of others both past and present?
Check out a top of the line science journal, and see how many co-author the same research, and how many citations they must have, acknowledging their familiarity with the research field.
ex-liberal- Evolution isn’t an ideology, it’s confirmed as fact. But believe in it or not, it’s not a threat to your religion.
Richard Ball- You may say, “well, it goes against Reason”. Well, so what? Who made Reason God over us?
Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
micro evolution occurs but there is no factual evidence of macro evolution – one species evolving out of another. In the pre-cambrian era there were only single celled organisms. Then there is the appearance in the fossil record of myriads of species fully formed, not evolving slowly one out of the other. This is the fossil record – not my “relative” opinion.
evolution answers questions for secular humanists – how did we get here, what is the meaning of life, etc. therefore evolution is an ideology and as an ideology it has consequences.
ET “Morality is a basic component of reason. And the so-called ‘Golden Rule’ of ‘treat others only as you consent to being treated in the same situation’ is, I feel, a conclusion based on reason. No metaphysical agent has to tell me this.”
Indeed, but you might wonder where this marvellous cognition and reasoning ability came from in the first place.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it is wrong to take another human life because of the golden rule — “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Fine. This is human mutual self-interest.
Now let’s say that another species from another planet visits us and is hungry. They apply the same golden rule — they don’t kill and eat each other. But what is to constrain them from killing and eating us? Do human beings have intrinsic worth and value that is greater than, say, a cow or a pig or a frog or a lettuce, or do we not?
If we think so, on what non-metaphysical basis? Without a metaphysical agent who designed us, brought us into existence and declares our worth, just who do we think we are in the universe, something special?
And, if as you say the primary purpose of the universe is to conserve energy, does killing and eating a human violate this purpose in some way that killing and eating a cow does not?
Accept Jesus as your person saviour or aliens will eat you.
‘Evolution in other animals had already hit upon a behavorial strategy that moderated fights between unrelated members of the same species, for example when two males compete for the same female. The Golden Rule was: Defend yourself if attacked, but don’t be the aggressor, and stop fighting as soon as the other relents. Game theorists with computers took 30 years to identify this strategy; evolution needed more time, but found it repeatedly, and long before humans appeared on the scene, the golden rule made many conflicts within species less lethal than they might have been. Nevertheless ‘murder’ remains commoner in many species, from gulls to lions, than it is in humans, who are not the atavistic killers they sometimes claim to be.
‘Human beings took their behavorial ploys much further, to attain cooperation between unrelated people. The powerful human brain could recognize faces, appraise newcomers, and recall previous meetings. Bodily evolution made those tasks easier by creating individualistic and expressive human faces, and supplying voices able at least to utter names. Dealings with nonrelatives could then become more urbane, especially in remembering whether previous encounters were friendly or angry. A variation of the golden strategy emerged as a basis for cooperation and natural justice: offer cooperation to a stranger and, if he defaults, retaliate but bear no grudge. This fostered altruism between nonrelatives, leading eventually to a species able to live in a wary kind of peace in cities of 10 million strangers. The most vehement form of this behavior was the ability of unrelated humans to form instant loyalties to a group, in rivalry with other groups – the basis for the highest human attainments and the worst wars’.— Nigel Calder in his book ‘Timescale’.
Evolution is based on gaming theory and existed long before man created God in his own image. Heh.
Our civilization has progressed on the basis of gaming theory, ie cooperation or no cooperation.
Between individuals, groups, regions, nations, and even gasp, religions.
Finally it is a natural basic instinct of the vast majority of human beings to NEED TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE FACE OF WHO WE ARE DEALING WITH, so as to make our value judgment of whether they are friend or foe, or worth our time.
And a community of scholars is not incestuous. Do you seriously believe that any one individual is capable of knowing everything? That they don’t rely on the innovations and expertise of others both past and present?
The incestuous part comes with the application of knowledge. Global warming hysteria is one good example.
The other being the theory of evolution which is used to subjectively interpret fossils. That subjective interpretation then being used to prove the theory of evolution. Circular reasoning.
I think it’s unfortunate that our ruminations on divinity seem frequently to move into the realm of cosmology.
Who started the system, how is the system organized, is the system designed by an agent, or is it a sort of self-perpetuating omni-cognitive or omni-rational organizer that arises from the organization itself, etc., etc., etc.
It might interest folks to know that modern theology as the theologian Trevor Greenfield says, “The theological agendas of Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, and Tillich were very different, but shared one thing in common. Each in his own way gave a voice to Christianity that was subjective. A religion that was based on supernatural largesse and dependency was no longer viable.
I should also mention that he says, “For Tillich, Anselm was wrong; finite language is inadequate for the discussion of infinite being… because God is not an object. Tillich believed that deity could only be described subjectively and personally by and through each individual.”
You know, years ago we thought that God controlled the weather. Today science has taught us a great deal about the weather, and although we may feel that divinity in some incomprehensible and ultimate way is the author of “weather” in its archetypal form, we basically no longer think that the weatherman is describing God’s movements every night.
Frankly this is just as well, because were we to think that the weather was produced by supernatural agency, we would be in the same boat as Islam: God looking and monitoring at every conceivable process and ready to strike at those who commit infraction.
(Of course, when we start having a lot of tornados down here, you really have to stop and think…)
This is why Bonhoeffer said that he did not want to have a “God of the gaps,” i.e., a God that can only be considered in areas where science has not already done a pretty good job of explanation.
So today we think of religious experiences as being personal and individual. With of course the allowance of unusual situations. For example when the church investigates miracles to see if they can stand up to scrutiny.
An example of relgious experience outside of a religious context that would be considered by religious phenomenologists is a passage from Tennyson’s memoirs:
“… a kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from my boyhood, when I’ve been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, ’til all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being; and this is not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.”
Now we would regard this as an example having a relgious experience. What was happening to Lord Tennyson? It would be very shortsighted to dismiss the experience as insanity, foolishness, brought on by too much wine, etc.,etc.
We would see this experience as similar in some respects to a certain category of experiences that may be related to one having an experience of their own true nature which puts them into an entirely different relationship with relative reality.
And so today we are not in the Middle Ages and are not dismissing science and don’t see science as an enemy, and yet we still believe that divine nature reveals itself in many ways through personal and individual experiences with the recognition that sometimes there are inexplicable events that most comfortably are laid at the agency of divine nature.
Whom do you wish to follow Pilate or Jesus?
Truth or relativism?
Wow. Biggest semantical fist-fight I’ve seen on here for a bit. Have to say relativism won. Nothing much in the way of absolutes here, mostly mythology… LOL!
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“Wow. Biggest semantical fist-fight I’ve seen on here for a bit. Have to say relativism won. Nothing much in the way of absolutes here, mostly mythology… LOL!”
Who can really say who won? One person’s absolutism is another person’s relativism.
“Relativism would hold sway if a person said one of these four things: 1) There is no objective, external standard for measuring the truth or falsehood of the statement “John MacArthur is tall.” Or 2) there may be an external standard, but we can’t know if there is. Or 3) there may be one, but no one can figure out what it means, so it can’t function as a standard. Or 4) there may be an external, objective standard, but I don’t care what it is; I’m not going to base my convictions on it.”
Thus, mental retards who don’t care at all about the real world are relativists. AND, people who care deeply about the world and are concerned about how our understanding of it is formed are relativists.
Brilliant. No matter how sophisticated an argument becomes about how our values ought to be established, it can never be distinguished from the most ignorant of ignoramius’s comment’s on whatever.
My, what a useful definition of relativism you’ve come up with John. Are you paid to come up with this?