“This may surprise you, but Murray agrees with me. He changed his mind about Christianitywhen he started writing Human Accomplishment. Here is a quote from his interview:”
I know this. I have the book. I never referenced Murray with regards to Christianity. And I disagree with the man. His argument isn’t convincing. My previous posts should be able to explain why. I only referenced him with regard to rate of accomplishments in all field.
“In the first post, I wasn't talking about roots. But if you want to talk about roots, that's fine too. It just isn't an 'objection' to my main thesis.”
The roots of Christanity is faith which is irrational since it doesn’t demand evidence, or logic,or anything at all except acceptance. Early Christian scholars understood this. They may not have admitted it but by using the Ancient Greeks to validate Christianity is an admittance that Christianity is lacking and that’s why they try to validate it by referring back to the ancient Greeks. We’re going around in circles here. You keep avoiding the premise. The Ancient Greeks were used to rationalizing Christianity because it was not rational to begin with. The roots of Christianity lead nowhere except to blind faith.
“Everything 'eventually' falls back on faith. If you try to validate a statement like "horse A is likely to win" and use empirical evidence to justify it, you are assuming that empirical evidence is objective and doesn't depend on your perceptions.”
Then your perception is faulty. I would suspect that the individual is moved by emotion rather than accepting reality for what it is. The fault lies in the person. Not the evidence.
“As far as directly justifying everything on the basis of "God did it", the scholastics didn't do that. They used Aristotelian evidence to justify the existence of God. So they 'eventually' fell back on faith, but it was faith in reason and not God.”
Yes, there were Christians, notably, Thomas Aquinas who proved, using inductive reasoning, that God exists. I didn’t deny that. I used a *side note* because when I pointed out that inductive reasoning is faulty when it leaves out our senses (if you recall my example) (check out: correspondence theory of truth). This was off topic but I felt a need to address this since you also went off topic. Anyway, back to the topic: You agree in the importance of Aristotle in validating Christianity but you haven’t proven that Christianity, on its own merits, have anything to with science. As I have stated before the Dark Ages wasn’t a time of learning and it was the Dark Ages that the Christian mind set dominated. You don’t see any type of progress until the Ancient Greek texts are reintroduced. Once again I’m repeating myself and you haven’t addressed this point.
“Because Christianity had its roots in Judaism. The 'roots' of a worldview like modern science are multiple and (like that of a tree) branch out the deeper one gets. In this case, Judaism is also one of the two main roots.’
Yes, and I proved that the Christian world view is geared towards the “better world.” Early Christians spent their lives with their fingers crossed that the world was going to end soon. The Hebrews were pretty pessimistic themselves. Whenever they suffered, they considered it to be God’s wrath. An outside force beyond their senses directing their lives.
““He is separate, and the world is like a deterministic machine that he made but then left alone to operate. Judaic monotheism led to a desacrelization of nature. On the one hand, God is rational and consistent so nature is also rational and operates based on intelligible rules. On the other hand, nature itself is not God so one can investigate it without 'infringing' on the divine. So in other words, God is not "pulling the strings",
This a belief in Christian thought that didn’t gain ground until the Enlightenment. Many of the founding father’s were Deists. Throughout the Torah God plays a direct role in the lives of the Hebrews. If you recall the story of the Hebrews being lead out. I also recall God causing a flood and, this is even more vague, giving hemorroids to the enemies of the Israelites. That stuck with me when I was learning the old testament in my freshman year in high school. Throughout the torah God goes about playing a direct role in nature. So he was pulling the strings. Manipulating nature as he sees fit. And this claim that since the world is rational and follows a natural order has yet to prove that an omnipotent being exists. Someone could take that argument and say it proves that aliens created our world. Still not proof but yet we give more credence to someone who claims the role of a God than someone who claims the role was filled by alien life forms. Neither has proof.
I would agree that monotheism “desacrelized” nature for that particular group of people. But monotheism is not necessary for that to be accomplished. Aristotle had done so and for a different reason. For Aristotle nature became something you should deal with directly. For the Ancient Hebrews and later the Christians (up until the influence of Aristotle.) Nature was secondary.
“That this attitude itself doesn't necessarily motivate one to seek natural rather than supernatural knowledge is a red herring. It is an attitude that is necessary but not sufficient in creating the modern scientific worldview.”
No, it was an attitude that denounced the importance of this world for that of “the other.” That’s why Plato was so popular with Jews and Christians. I’ve pointed this out before.
“(Just like the rediscovery of Greek learning was necessary but not sufficient in creating modern science.) Consciously or subconsciously, the concept of nature as distinct from the supernatural is the operative worldview of any modern scientist. It was built on by the medieval 'natural philosophers' who thought that the best way to "find out how God thinks" is to investigate his works (i.e. nature), and that such investigation was pleasing to God. This notion had its origin in Hebraic as well as Greco-Roman roots.”
This is incorrect. First of all, any person who believes in a supernatural world without presenting evidence is irrational. Also, this notion of discovering how God thinks by investigating his workd wouldn’t have evolved until the reintroduction of Aristotle. All other attempts to discover how “God thinks” was geared towards Torah for the Hebrews and the Gospel and Torah (in its distorted form) for the Christians. St. Paul was the biggest influence and his attempt to understand God has to with his interpretation of the Bible. You may have added Rome because of St. Augustine but Augustine was a neo- Platonist. Platonism conflicts with science. Aristole does not. One pushes the belief that the world around is in imperfect and therefore our perception is faulty, while the other pushes the idea that we must deal with the world around us and not some “other world.” One is obviously conducive to science. The other is not.
“No, reason was a very sticky term throughout history, similar to 'good' or 'justice'. If you look up 'reason' in the dictionary, you will find many conflicting definitions, none of them adequate for our purposes.”
They don’t conflict at all:
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=reasonwww.thefreedictionary.com/reason“In any case, it's not a semantic issue. If we say that (e.g.) the medieval scholastic philosophers were 'rational' we mean that they fit a definition of rationality (i.e. logical consistency; intelligibility) that is relevant for developing the scientific method. The Ancient Greeks were also rational, but they didn't attribute this rationality to nature.”
Incorrect. How can you say Aristotle did not attribute rationality to nature when he was the first to propose the importance of direct experience? He dealt with nature. Not some other world. And Christian thinkers didn’t begin to focus their attention on the world around us until after Aristotle was reintroduced. I hate repeating myself but the answer is the same.
“This may surprise you, but Peikoff/Rand's notion of rationality is controversial -- to say the least. In any case, you can't find their definition in any "dictionary". (But then, there are so many...) I don't have the time or inclination to discuss this in great detail here, but I can provide some web sites about the objectivism controversy:”
I’m aware of the controversy. I don’t know how this would “surprise me.” I’m not a 17 year old kid just finding out about Ayn Rand. All philosophies are controversial but none of her critics have convinced me that she’s incorrect. In fact, I’m amazed that so much that she said has come to fruition. There was controversy over Hayek’s “the Road to Serfdom” (in fact, it took forever to get in published in the USA) and he was proven correct and time has proven Rand correct as well. You assumption that I’m not aware of that she’s a controversial figure is your attempt at being condescending.
The first link had problems. I had troubel accessing it.
With regards to the 2nd link:
On page xii the author states (I can’t copy and paste it but you can see for yourself). “The reason most of the criticisms leveled against Rand’s philosophy are weak, unfair, irrelevant, and/or invalid has nothing to do with the intrinsic soundness of Objectivism.” I find that interesting. But apparently he will be able to mop up the floor with her. Comical. Better men then he have tried.
“Mo moral value can be proven on fact alone”– this guy is just annoying. Maybe he goes into this more sometime down the road.
He also negates reason and by looking this over quickly he seems to accept irrationality as acceptable. For example, he states that if two men disagree with the weight of a rock then one should test the weight to see who is correct but if two people disagree with a moral value then it has to be accepted that there is a disagreement and this is rooted in the person’s basic character (a case for irratioanlity?). Hmm... okay, lets follow this line of reasoning. Lets say you meet someone who claims the he likes to beat up on elderly people. Violence to him is a moral value that he has come to accept. But what is morality? It’s the distinction between right or wrong. In simple terms what is right is what is free of error. What is the definition of an error? A wrong action attributable to bad judgement or ignorance or inattention. What is the ultimate error? That which leads to death. Now that we have that out of the way... To make the distinction between right and wrong you must make a choice. You must decide what is right and what is wrong. Violence can lead to death. If you accept violence as a moral value then you have to accept that the same can be done to you. In other words, your value can cause your death. Your value leads to your own death. Death, conflicts with life (obviously), and moral values exist to direct us in our life. So violence can’t be anything other than immoral. (Self defense, of course, is an act of violence but it’s an act of self-perservation so therefore it’s moral.) Another example, perhaps you meet someone who holds lying as a moral virtue. What are the consequences of lying? distrust from others. Lying would be considered immoral since trust is the foundation of human interaction. Without trust you can’t make economic transactions, or generally be part of human relationships, you put your life at risk because no one is willing to deal with you.
Based on the what I have read this guy is repeating the same old arguments I’ve heard a million times. He mentions “the will.” He’s making an excuse for the irrational. If I didn’t now better I’d think this was written by Giovanni Gentile.
Something wrong with those two websites (homespry.net). I was unable to view them.
First of all Rand never ascribes values to non- human beings. Values come from choice. Animals are instinctual creatures. They don’t choose their values. Second of all, their instinct keeps them alive and dictates their life. Staying alive is obviously good. With regards to the prayng mantis the male mantis is unaware that he will end up as dinner. He is, I suppose you can say, tricked:
“Because of the interesting sexual cannibalism of the species, there have been many studies on the praying mantids reproductive processes. Breeding season is during the late summer season in temperate climates.
The female secretes a pheromone to attract and show that she is receptive to the mate. The male then approaches her with caution. The most common courtship is when the male mantis approaches the female frontally, slowing its speed down as it nears. This has also been described as a beautiful ritual dance in which the female's final pose motions that she is ready. The second most common courtship is when the male approaches the female from behind, speeding up as it nears. He then jumps on her back, they mate, and he flies away quickly. It is most seldom that courtship occurs with the male remaining passive until approached by the female.”
It’s also not common:
“Although the praying mantis is known for its cannibalistic mating process in actuality it only occurs 5-31% of the time.”
serendip.brynmawr.edu/biologyb103/f02/web1/mdoughty.htmlFriedman makes the assumption that the male Mantis is aware that he will be killed afterwards.
With regards to female animals who become pregnant and left by the mate and therefore put at risk it is a weak argument considering they do tend to survive AND be able to protect their brood. They have the capability to go at it alone. It’s not a risk at all considering they take precautions against predators when they are in a vulnerable position... and that includes when tehy are not pregnant and need sleep.
Freidman’s second attack is even more annoying. I’ve come to the conclusion that he just picked out sentences out of context and ran with them. What Rand, taken in context was trying to say, with this statement (And this based on my readings of her work. It would have helped if he references the exact book and page.)
"Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death."
That course of action is accepting reality as is and dealing with it. What other option is there that Friedman pretends to be that doesn’t lead to your own destruction? If you’re stranded on an island what other option do you have than to deal with what you have in front of you? “willing” the existence of food doesn’t help. He also mentions Hitler. A person whose value is freedom would put his life in danger to kill Hitler. Obviously Friedman never read Rand’s “Virtue of Selfishness.” Actually, Rand pushed the idea of sacrificing yourself for a value you hold dear. To her that was a noble act. I’m surprised he didn’t notice. It’s amazing how people mis interpret Ayn Rand. Sometimes I wonder if they read her non fiction work.
The last link can not be found.
“No, no -- this was exactly what I was denying. Christianity taught that the world itself was good (since God made it) but not divine. On the other hand, the world was real (contra Platonic idealism), rather than an illusion. This topic is discussed and debated in much greater detail in the books I cited.”
*More on those books later* This world is not considered to be the good by Christians. The fact that God’s world is held up as being the perfect world is just a reassertion that this world is degraded. I direct you towards the early Christians sitting around with their fingers crossed hoping for the end of the world and willing to sacrifice their lives. Hey, if I believed the world was a mess and that if I died faithful to God he will reward me after death by allowing me to be apart of his perfect world.... I do believe I’d sacrifice my life. (Luckily I’m not that crazy)
“Most scientists are waiting for the universe to end too (but that's another story). The point is that your worldview presupposes historical time flowing in a linear progression. For the Ancient Greeks, historical 'progress' is a contradiction in terms, and time is circular and pointless.
Once again, it wasn’t pointless to them. If you attempt to understand the world around you then you acknowledge life isn’t pointless at all, whether you believe it will end and reform again or not
I can turn your own reasoning around on you. If I know the world will end then what’s the point of seeking knowledge of the world. It’ll be destroyed and it’s all for nothing. Of course, this conflicts with man’s need to understand, and of course, deciding that all you need to know can be
in the bible is one thing and discovering knowledge in this world is another.
“The fact that you don't realize the significance of this paradigm proves my point: it's very hard for you (or anyone else) to even conceive of time as repeating itself over and over again indefinitely. In this matter, you think like a Hebrew, not a Greek or Roman or Chinese.”
I understand perfectly find. It’s a weak argument which I disproved above.
You might also be interested in this book, which discusses this topic in greater detail:
-On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding
by Michael Novak
Thank you for the recommendation
“This statement is (to steal a phrase from Hume) "so absurd, as to elude the force of all argument". Weapons can be used to defend as well as attack. If weapons were used to defend Europe against the onslaught of Muslim imperialism (which was probably the primary cause for the economic denigration of the early middle ages), this is a "secondary benefit" that was obviously beneficial. (And of course, nothing is intrinsically beneficial. Something is always beneficial for something/someone.)”
You miss my point or you understood it but are playing games. Whether weapons are used to defend or to attack it doesn’t lead to understanding of our world except in a few cases. Also, Muslim influence in the Mediterranean was one of the factors helping rejuvenate Western Europe economically. Italian city states were built on piracy. Check out the famed French historian Braudel’s book “ A History of Western Civilization.” Viking piracy also helped in the north by ransancking monasteries that horde wealth and then spreading that wealth about.
“In any case, the key issue is: whether technological weaponry were inspired by a desire to understand nature, or vice versa? In the case of Christianity, it was the former.”
Incorrect. If this was true other fields other than military technology would have been advancing the (correctly named) Dark Ages .
“These questions are the discussed in some of the books that I listed.”
I was hoping you could give me a brief overview. I was about to go to bed when I posted and noticed yourlinks. What I didn't notice is taht they are all to amzon.com. I'm not going to buy all those books.
“Yes, and I'll respond again after you've taken your time to read them. Otherwise, we'll just go through the same material over and over again. Everything I have said had been said with greater breadth, depth, and clarity in these books. To the very skeptical, it would take no less to provide a genuinely compelling case.”
“My advice to you is: Read and investigate, then decide for yourself. This is far more effective than letting me regurgitate what was discussed in far greater detail.”
First of all, that’s insulting. You assume ignorance on my part when I clearly bested you in this debate. You're not pushing anything new. I've heard these arguments before. The only thing you got any points on was because I stated “Middle Ages” when I meant to say “Dark Ages.” You got some milage out of that until I noticed my own mistake. Second of all, if you can’t prove your case based on your readings of those books then either you are unable to explain your view or the information is faulty. I try my best to take a look of the information in those books without buying them considering I don’t have a money tree to shake but not much has come of it. The only thing I could look and make a judgement on is the article in The American Scientific Affiliation you posted.
“In addition to serving theology, Greek scientific knowledge occupied a prominent place in Christian world views, from the time of Basil of Caesarea and Augustine through the end of the Middle Ages and beyond. The notion that any serious Christian thinker would even have attempted to formulate a world view from the Bible alone is ludicrous. For example, contrary to popular belief (which White's Warfare has helped to shape), the church did not insist on a flat earth; there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge its sphericity and even know its approximate circumference. By the beginning of the thirteenth century, virtually all of the works of Aristotle had become available in Europe, and from this point onward we see a persistent effort to integrate Aristotelian natural philosophy, or science, with Christian theology. In the end, Christianity took its basic categories of thought, its physical principles, and much of its metaphysics and cosmology from Aristotle. By means of its power to organize and interpret human experience, Aristotelianism conquered Christendom.”
Interesting article so far. I especially like that last line.
Ah, and then we have this next paragraph:
“The condemnations did place a lid on certain lines of scientific speculation; henceforth, philosophers or scientists were forbidden to uphold certain Aristotelian positions and forced to tread lightly whenever they approached theological territory. But while losing certain freedoms, they gained others. Theological condemnation of a considerable body of Aristotelian propositions weakened the heavy hand of Aristotelian authority and freed scientists to speculate in non- Aristotelian and anti-Aristotelian directions. Thus we see in the fourteenth century a steady stream of attacks on various Aristotelian doctrines and a veritable orgy of speculation about non-Aristotelian possibilities, including such notions as the rotation of the earth on its axis.”
Let’s assume this to be true. The Church’s intention is not to move beyond Aristotle and develop but instead an attempt to deny Aristotle because he conflicts with the Church’s dogma. This doesn’t prove that Christianity is conducive to science because the intention to take what information was already at hand, maul it over, and move on wasn’t there at all.
We’re dealing with unintended consequences. And the author assumes that without those unintended consequences that Western man would be stuck in a rut. This doesn’t prove that there is anything within Christianity that promotes science at all.
“White reports that Copernicus feared to publish his discoveries in Rome or Wittenberg-the centers, respectively, of Catholicism and Protestantism. Instead, the astronomer turned to Nuremberg, where his work was published with a "grovelling preface," written by the Lutheran clergyman Andreas Osiander (1498- 1552), which contained the "apologetic lie that Copernicus had propounded the doctrine of the earth's movement not as a fact, but as a hypothesis." "The greatest and most ennobling, perhaps, of scientific truths" was "forced, in coming before the world, to sneak and crawl."
Should I even bother? At this point I stopped reading it. I’m able to pull out information that proved my point and when there is an argument contradicting my point it is easily beaten. This article in no way proves that Christianity, with its own “merits,” are conducive to science. If you want Christianity unhampered by Aristotle then I point you once more to the Dark Ages.
We’re going around in circles. I posted my view and you have posted yours. If you want to respond to this post that’s fine. Both our views are there for people to see and repeating ourselves is a waste of time so I’m no longer going to do so.