Friday, July 14, 2006

Back to the trenches

Continuing with George:

***QUOTE***

A very common problem with theist simpletons, like Steve here, is they tend to bifurcate the world into just “two sides”. You know…”saved – unsaved”, “Good Calvinist Christians – evil, militant, relativist, unbelievers”, “good Republican conservatives - bad, liberal Democrats”…that sort of thing.

That’s called the logical fallacy of false dilemma (also known as falsified dilemma, fallacy of the excluded middle, black and white thinking, false dichotomy, false correlative, either/or dilemma or bifurcation).

***END-QUOTE***

Make a mental note of this statement as we run across examples of George’s own bifurcations.

“Again, this is another application of the false dilemma fallacy by Steve. I’m guessing he does this a lot. He seems to insinuate that altruism and self interest are mutually exclusive. His ignorance that altruism often serves a “self interest”, speaks volumes about his ignorance of basic evolutionary behaviors and the various strategies employed by social, cooperative species such as ours. I’m sure he’s never studied any game theory.”

The false dilemma is due to George’s inability to read and/or comprehend what I actually wrote.

I did not treat these as mutually exclusive. Rather, I brought up textbook examples in which altruism and self-interest are in tension.

This is a tension that evolutionary ethics cannot resolve inasmuch as the tension is generated by evolutionary ethics in the first place.

“Sigh…what can one expect from someone who derives his understanding of the world from 3000 year old Genesis mythology?”

Sigh…what can one expect from someone who derives his understanding of the world from the shifting sands of humanism?

“I’m not sure what planet Steve lives on, but I have always lived on one with limited resources. And there are lots of examples of other social cooperative mammals that use various altruistic survival strategies that have never heard of Steve’s gods or his idol John Calvin.”

Since other social animals operate by instinct rather than abstract reason, they are in no position to evaluate those instances in which altruism comes into conflict with self-interest.

“There’s no evidence to show that Christians are more or less altruistic than Buddhists or humanists or athiests.”

Even if true, that’s irrelevant. The point at issue is not who is more altruistic, but whose worldview is logically supportive of altruism.

“It seems Ted Turner and Bill Gates have given more to charity, then Steve’s entire congregation.”

Given Bill Gates’ net worth, that’s’ a pretty safe tautology.

“In the meantime, thanks for this simpleton view of complex, evolved behaviors your little brain doesn’t understand. “

And in the meantime, thanks for ducking the philosophical complexities of warranted behavior by your anti-intellectual resort to anecdotal decoys.

“For the same reason you have them Steve. They are part of your DNA and social learning. Unfortunately, our DNA and social learning are comprised of vast, unique gene combinations and life experience…thus, we don’t all have the exact same ones…”

i) This does not justify secular ethics. To the contrary, you are committing the naturalistic fallacy as well as the is-ought fallacy—both of which were raised by secular philosophers.

ii) The very fact that we are aware of our genetic programming and social conditioning makes it possible for us to evaluate our genetic programming and social conditioning.

Hence, we’re in a position to rebel against our genetic programming or social conditioning if they collide with our individual self-interest.

Appealing to the role of instinct or socialization is not a justification for instinct or socialization. Try again.

You yourself admit to the biological basis of sexual coercion, yet you apparently believe that rape is wrong.

“Imagine Steve as one of Calvin’s henchmen in 16th century Geneva, and you’ll quickly realize he was simply born 4 centuries too late.”

Imagine George as one of Stalin’s henchmen in mid-20C Russia, and you’ll quickly realize he was simply born a few decades too late.

Oh, and while we’re at it, notice how George, what with his bifurcated, either/or, black/white worldview divvies up humanity into good guys like himself and evil, militant Calvinistas on the other side.

“Poor Steve, he can’t quite figure out that ‘greater good,’ and the adjectives ‘gratuitous and pointless’, as they relate to ‘evil’, are all subjective value judgments that might be perceived quite differently, by different people in any given situation or moral dilemma.”

Poor George, he can’t quite figure out that if ‘greater good’, and the adjectives ‘gratuitous and pointless’, as they relate to ‘evil’, are all subjective value judgments that might be perceived quite differently, by different people in any given situation or moral dilemma, then Sam Harris et al. will be unable to disprove the Christian by invoking the problem of evil.

“Perhaps Steve never saw the results of the poll amongst Egyptian peasants who were asked if they thought Steve’s omnipotent god, slaughtering their first born children, so he could free some Hebrews, who he could easily freed without this genocide…”

Perhaps poor George never figured out that his moral subjectivism renders his opportunistic appeal to would-be defeaters like “genocide” otiose.

Notice how his current position amounts to a retraction of his previous position, in which he said:

“I’m not sure who told you that naturalists can’t believe that certain human behaviors are atrocious or gratutious or even ‘evil’ without the benefit on your three headed Hebrew tribal deity. But I assure you, you’re wrong. Just because someone accepts the universe and natural world for what it is, and perhaps can even identify the causes of disease or violent tendencies in certain humans, doesn’t mean we surrender our value judgments of what we believe is good or right behavior.”

Now, however, he relegates all of this to the realm of individual subjectivity.

And let us remember, once again, that I’m citing a distinction (“gratuitous” evil) drawn by secular philosophers as they formulate the problem of evil.

“Altruism is completely consistent with survival of genes in cooperative, sentient mammals, and mindless insects.”

It may be consistent with the survival of species. But it is frequently inconsistent with the survival of individuals.

An atheist is not a gene or mindless insect. He is a sentient being. And he will often be confronted with situations in which there is a conflict between altruism and his personal self-interest.

How does evolutionary ethics adjudicate that dilemma? Is he supposed to take one for the team? Why would he feel obligated to do what Mother Nature says when Mother Nature feels no obligation towards his individual wellbeing?

“And you see, I not only quoted the bible, I quoted the alleged second person in the three headed godhead. So excuse me if I take his word over Mr. Carson’s and Longeneckers.”

Quoting the Bible and exegeting the Bible are two different things. George has shown that he can quote Scripture, not that he can understand Scripture.

But if George wants to be an obscurantist, that’s fine with me.

Once again, ignorance is the royal road to unbelief.

“I never claimed to be a ‘secular humanist’ whatever you think that slur implies.”

You think that “secular humanism” is a slur? I guess that makes you a closet Fundy or jihadi.

“Well I would certainly count as evidence your reformed, protestant god manifesting himself in front of the whole world, clearly identifying himself as Steve’s god, and then slaughtering all the first born children of Muslim terrorists, and saying there’s more like that to come unless they all convert to Calvinism.”

This is why George’s appeal to evidence is frivolous and disingenuous.

“Or perhaps is it just one more example, in the long history of crazed theists, terrorizing and murdering people who don’t believe like them, and claiming their imaginary, invisible gods, authorized and helped them accomplish it?”

Not to mention the long history of crazed unbelievers like Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, terrorizing and murdering people who don’t believe like them.

Oh, and while we’re at it, notice how George, what with his bifurcated, either/or, black/white worldview divvies up humanity into good guys like himself and crazed theists on the other side.

2 comments:

  1. I'm sure we're going to get an immensely brilliant response from Mr. Grumpy. You better watch out though, he's a big big boy...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I’m very proud of Steve, for forgoing his typically smarmy preamble in his latest post, where he usually attempts to insult me, and claim premature victory in our on-going discussion.

    It appears his Christian ethics are evolving right before my eyes!


    Make a mental note of this statement as we run across examples of George’s own bifurcations.

    No place in your post did you actually demonstrate an example of where I presented a false dilemma as an argument. I guess you're not quite the prophet you think you are.


    The false dilemma is due to George’s inability to read and/or comprehend what I actually wrote.

    I did not treat these as mutually exclusive. Rather, I brought up textbook examples in which altruism and self-interest are in tension.

    I’m sorry Steve…in a complex world of 6.5 billion homo sapiens, when are cooperative and selfish behaviors “not” in tension?

    Tell me, is it altruistic or selfish, when you wait for the light to turn green before proceeding through the intersection?

    Again, when you try and oversimplify the world, in order to fit it into preconcieved theological notion you have, you typically are going to look like a simpleton to those with IQs above room temperature.

    Don't get me wrong. C.S. Lewis made a wonderful living doing it.

    You did make a nebulous reference to a “lifeboat” and “hedonism” in your last post, but actually never pursued the details of any “textbook examples”, much less any real world experiments that showed why a Calvinist would behave differently than an Islamist, humanist, Buddhist or Scientologist in any given moral scenario.

    Again, your desperate need to oversimplify the world, and complex human behaviors, to fit your bigoted, reformed theology is the single goal that drives your posts.

    I have no such agenda.


    This is a tension that evolutionary ethics cannot resolve inasmuch as the tension is generated by evolutionary ethics in the first place.

    Again, I’m not sure what “evolutionary ethics” are, in your Calvinista lexicon, but I assure you, it is not my claim to be able to resolve, or even begin to model and explain, all the “tensions” of competing organisms in my biosphere.

    Perhaps the next time you’re chatting with your Hebrew tribal deity, you can ask him why he created all this “tension” between microorganisms, plants, herbivores, omnivores, carnivores and viruses.

    Oh yes…now I remember…it was all due to the infamous fruit rebellion on Eden 5!

    Before that wolves and sheep would frolick together in the garden!


    Sigh…what can one expect from someone who derives his understanding of the world from the shifting sands of humanism?

    Again with the constant mimicry of my phrasing…I’m honored. It’s like having a pet monkey.

    I derive my understanding of the world via the empirical observation and testing method we generally refer to as science, and through the use of reason. And that method tells me I live on a planet that has had a constantly “shifting and adapting” biosphere for the last 4.5 billion years, of which my species is a recently evolved inhabitant.

    I wish this world, and human behavior, was all as simple as you need it to be, so your little, Calvinistic, primate mind could understand it all and proscribe it to your gods, but alas, that is never going to happen. In the meantime, it turns out, that the largest obstacle to intellectual discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. And that you seem to have in large quantity.



    Since other social animals operate by instinct rather than abstract reason, they are in no position to evaluate those instances in which altruism come into conflict with self-interest.

    Again Steve, your ignorance of how “instincts” motivate your own behavior, and your own anthropocentric pride, are again on display with this moronic quip.

    Are you a zoologist or animal behavior specialist, Steve? Perhaps you could link me to your thesis on why wolves, dogs, lions, elephants, whales and other sentient social mammals, are not in a position to use their brains and evaluate altruistic versus self interests in a variety of circumstances?

    Tell me Steve, if you and one of your reformed homeboys were walking through the woods, and all of sudden a huge grizzly bear started charging the both of you, do you think you would stand there calmly, and start to calculate your immediate behaviors, using your god given “abstract reason” and "objective morality"?

    Perhaps after several minutes of intense abstract thought and bible exegesis, and a very slow bear, you would determine that you should sacrifice yourself to the bear, so your friend, who is more worthy of continued life than you, is assured his escape?

    Or perhaps you momentarily freeze in panic, and then with a scream, and a blast of adrenalin, your primate “instincts” would kick in, and you would start running as fast as you could…not the least bit concerned about being “altruistic” at that point?

    I hope this “textbook example” helps you to understand, that human behavior is not all driven by “abstract reasoning”, nor is it always alturistic, in even the most pretentious Christian blowhards like yourself. I’d be happy to test this theory on you and another of your Calvinists bloggers, in a real life experiment, to determine if my hypothesis is correct.


    Even if true, that’s irrelevant. The point at issue is not who is more altruistic, but whose worldview is logically supportive of altruism.

    Alturism and cooperative behavior doesn’t need a “worldview” other than the one driven by survival and reproductive success in species.

    Given Bill Gates’ net worth, that’s’ a pretty safe tautology.

    I guess this means you won’t be releasing your tax returns so we can see how much of a hypocrite you are with all this “altruistic” posturing.

    Here’s an idea, instead of replying to this post. Sell your computer, your Ipod and cancel your ISP and cable TV, and go and give all that money to the poor, and then become an Christian Aid worker in the Sudan.

    I’ll hold my breath.

    And in the meantime, thanks for ducking the philosophical complexities warranted behavior by your anti-intellectual resort to anecdotal decoys.

    LOL…me “ducking complexities”…that’s rich.


    This does not justify secular ethics.

    What secular ethics are you talking about Steve? The ones that provides freedom of religion and speech, in direct violation of your Hebrew god’s commandments?

    What “justifies” that evolving ethic, is when some 18th century enlightenment deists, form a new moral code, based on them observing the history of several hundred years of corrupt Christian theocracy and persecution in Europe. Persecution never more personified, than in the butcher of Geneva, John Calvin.


    The very fact that we are aware of our genetic programming and social conditioning makes it possible for us to evaluate our genetic programming and social conditioning.

    Most modern christians, and historical ones from Paul on, have no clue about the role their evolved genome plays in shaping their behaviors.

    Even today, many Christians still posit all kinds of demons and evil angels who are responsible for "bad" human behavior, and deny the role of evolution in shaping human behavior.

    So I'm not sure what your point is.


    Hence, we’re in a position to rebel against our genetic programming or social conditioning if they collide with our individual self-interest.

    Yes Steve, we are sometimes in a position to subjectively evaluate our individual and group interests, with limited information, and we can attempt to make longer term decisions, on what the best courses of action are. That's the full time job of our government and industry leaders.

    These decisions will often turn out to be compromises in pluralistic societies and regulated, profit driven industries.

    Our species has just very recently begun to contemplate the concept that the interests of the rest of the biological biosphere, may also relate to our own species best interests in the long term. We have slowly learned what burning large amounts of fossil fuels is doing to our planet's climate and biosphere.

    It’s odd, but I can’t remember anything in the bible that would specifically help us develop a detailed energy or environmental plans that would be more “alturistic” towards the "best interests" and survival of our species 500 years from now.

    For some odd reason…”Thou shalt not burn too much fossil fuels” or “Thou must recycle”, is not a commandment of your bronze age tribal deity.

    Perhaps that is why the bible is useless and obsolete in that scenario.

    You yourself admit to the biological basis of sexual coercion, yet you apparently believe that rape is wrong.

    I also admit to the biological basis of tribal religious hatred and violence, but also prefer not to be a victim of it. Is that a problem with you? That I don't want to be raped or burned at the stake for heresy?

    Imagine George as one of Stalin’s henchmen in mid-20C Russia, and you’ll quickly realize he was simply born a few decades too late.

    More flattery…here’s another newsflash Steve, I’m not a supporter of Stalin, like you are of Calvin. They were both tyrants that used their positions of power to murder their theological and political opponents.


    Oh, and while we’re at it, notice how George, what with his bifurcated, either/or, black/white worldview divvies up humanity into good guys like himself and evil, militant Calvinistas on the other side.


    Notice how George never claimed to be a “good guy”, and never claimed Calvinists were any worse than Islamists or Scientologists or Communists.

    Sorry Steve…nice try tho…


    Poor George, he can’t quite figure out that if ‘greater good’, and the adjectives ‘gratuitous and pointless’, as they relate to ‘evil’, are all subjective value judgments that might be perceived quite differently, by different people in any given situation or moral dilemma, then Sam Harris et al. will be unable to disprove the Christian by invoking the problem of evil.

    I’m not sure what “disproving the Christian” means in your babbling lexicon of nebulous tripe.

    Is “Christian” a statement that has some binary truth value associated with it that I am supposed to discern?

    Again, there is no problem of evil for either of us. There is a problem in that you like to pretend you have an invisible friend in the sky, who stops evil on those occasions when he is either in the mood, or enough prayers or sacrificed goats satisfy his threshold for action.

    That is your problem.


    Perhaps poor George never figured out that his moral subjectivism renders his opportunistic appeal to would-be defeaters like “genocide” otiose.

    Again, those committing genocide in the name of the Christian gods are always right, and those committing it in the name of communism or fascism are always wrong. I don’t mind your double standard…It’s part of your theological self interests defeating your humanistic altruism.

    Btw…has your god ever come to you and told you to kill anyone for him?


    Notice how his current position amounts to a retraction of his previous position, in which he said:

    “I’m not sure who told you that naturalists can’t believe that certain human behaviors are atrocious or gratuitous or even ‘evil’ without the benefit on your three headed Hebrew tribal deity. But I assure you, you’re wrong. Just because someone accepts the universe and natural world for what it is, and perhaps can even identify the causes of disease or violent tendencies in certain humans, doesn’t mean we surrender our value judgments of what we believe is good or right behavior.”

    Now, however, he relegates all of this to the realm of individual subjectivity.

    And group inter-subjectivity. Again you are committing your favorite fallacy.

    Moral thought is not something that either exists in the objective mind of your imaginary god or just in an individual’s mind. It is an inter-subjective, evolving phenomena that is spread via DNA and human culture.

    Our U.S. Constitution is an, evolving, inter-subjective consensus of moral thought.


    It may be consistent with the survival of species. But it is frequently inconsistent with the survival of individuals.

    True.


    An atheist is not a gene or mindless insect. He is a sentient being. And he will often be confronted with situations in which there is a conflict between altruism and his personal self-interest.

    True. It happens all the time.


    How does evolutionary ethics adjudicate that dilemma? Is he supposed to take one for the team? Why would he feel obligated to do what Mother Nature says when Mother Nature feels no obligation towards his individual wellbeing?

    The individual human mind is what solves any dilemma. And that can be based on pure, subconscious instinct, or careful abstract reasoning, or some combination of the two, in a complex process that is far beyond your and my ability to understand and model with our symbolic language.

    It is the same complex, nureological processes used by theists and atheists. It is what inspires the behaviors of the Calvinist henchman, the Islamic terrorist, the abortion clinic bomber, or the atheist communist tyrant.

    Sorry you’re struggling to differentiate your brain processes from the rest of your fellow humans.

    Let me make it clear, I’m not claiming to be “better” than you, or that I use a different process to adjudicate moral scenarios than you. Nor am I claiming that my decisions are "absolute and objective" and correspond with the triune/monotheistic Calvinist god of the universe…

    ...you are.

    Yet you just can’t show any evidence that supports that premise or convinces me its true.

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