Saturday, March 19, 2011

The Challenge of Real Education Reform

by Michael David Rawlings

The underlying problem of the public education system's ills is the peoples' lose of control, and the only cure for the problem is to send the unions and the agenda hounds packing.  This problem is twofold. It is both political and structural, but stems from a misunderstanding that is widely bandied about in America and rightly countered by few.

The Warren Court attached this misunderstanding to the First Amendment when it mangled the principle of the wall of separation between church and state in the '50s and '60s. While Jefferson rightly championed a separation, he would not recommend the Warren Court's ridiculous version of the principle. Now, nearly fifty years after the Warren Court confounded it, far too many conservatives, most, if not all, liberals and even some libertarians have lost all prospective of the original intent of the First Amendment as it should apply to the public education system.

The political problem, therefore, is one of confusion and entails the challenge of building a political coalition of unwavering consensus, for the structural problem is deeply entrenched and defended by a recalcitrant mob of self-serving nitwits who are indifferent to the woeful state of public education in America and cannot be reasoned with at all.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Checkmate

By Michael David Rawlings

See the entirety of Immune to Indoctrination's argument:  Part I, Part II.


P-K4
I did not change the meaning of your statement.  I merely inserted a phrase by way of clarification in order to wake you up to what you were saying.  Fine.  We'll go with precisely how it is written.

Talking about the science and nothing else but the science, I write:
Creation and ID scientists have justifiably concluded that the results of nearly sixty years of prebiotic-chemistry research resoundingly falsify abiogenesis. —Michael David Rawlings
Directly under this, you write:
I bet it's fun to falsify things when your beliefs were specifically designed to be unfalsifiable, complete with beings who reside in separate realms to avoid detection and are openly contrary to logic and reason. —Immune to Indoctrination
It's not me who keeps confusing things!  The only one who confounded meaning is you.  But your confusion doesn't end there.  Why in the world would you be talking about the falsification of supernatural things even if I had been talking theology? The potentialities of human consciousness that reside beyond the boundaries of empirically demonstrable idealizations are not subject to scientific falsification or verification; rather, they are subject to refutation or affirmation in accordance with the rules of logic and the imperatives of pertinent facts. And two pertinent facts that have been established beyond all dispute are (1) biogenesis is subject to falsification and (2) the claim that it has been falsified or is ''obviously false'' is bogus!


KB-QB4
There's a big difference between the way that young-Earth Creationists and an old-Earth Creationists approach science. The former's approach entails a battery of certain hermeneutical apriorities, which, in my opinion, are presumptuous, erroneous and ill-defined. The latter simply employ a methodological naturalism; hence, their theological biases are irrelevant. They are not doing anything different than what scientists have always done, once again, before Darwin came along. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Boyle, Pasteur—all of these guys were Creationists. Bacon and Newton were Christian theologians as well. So what? None of these guys confused the difference between that which can be inferred in accordance with the rules of science and that which can be rationally asserted by Judeo-Christianity. Obviously, they did not impose their religious views on the scientific method or on their interpretations of the empirical data insofar as science is concerned. This approach rejects both the young-earth Creationist's a priori imposition of a semi-theological naturalism and the materialist's and/or the Darwinist's a priori imposition of a philosophical naturalism.

I've established the scientific facts of prebiotic chemistry and what the conceptually legitimate construct for science is. Neither I nor anyone else is beholden to the gratuitous extrapolations of a philosophical naturalism with which the materialist thinks to displace the standard rules of scientific inquiry and evidentiary substance as if no one would notice. These are the very things you keep trying to assert against an unremitting torrent of unassailable imperatives. Once again and for the last time:  ontological/philosophical naturalism is no more subject to scientific falsification than any other philosophical or theological construct.

What was that you said again, you know, when by mistake you essentially changed my scientific observation about abiogenesis into a theological argument?
I bet it's fun to falsify things when your beliefs were specifically designed to be unfalsifiable. . . . —Immune to Indoctrination
And so you go on about an authentically scientific solution, as if you had one: something about mindless chemicals eventually achieving self-awareness all by themselves. Whoop dee doo. That's not science. That's story time, just another scenario among many that derive from the potentialities of human consciousness, the stuff of philosophy. And that's all Darwinism is or ever was—from chemical evolution to a common ancestry. Creationists who abide by the standards of classical empiricism are not reactionaries. That's the narrative of your worldview. They are the realists of a methodological naturalism and see Darwinism for what it is. Yank Darwinism's ontological presupposition out from under it, and it comes crashing down—a broken pile of junk comprised of ancient prejudices and pretentious.


Q-KB3
You're quibbling with me over semantics? Assumption or faith? Have it your way then, assumption. I don't care which of these two essentially synonymous terms you use. You're still not talking about science, but the underlying metaphysics and rational formulations on which science is contingently based, as you insinuate an obvious non sequitur, i.e., that faith necessarily precludes logic or reason or evidence. Error. Your defining blind faith, not faith. You forgot the modifier. And Judeo-Christianity, for example, emphatically denounces the former, not merely because it is foolish, but because it is wantonly sinful, habitually indifferent, for example, to the meaning of words and the truth. Further, Judeo-Christianity holds to the epistemological construct of a balanced rational-empirical realism against the irrationalism of pagan and materialist systems of thought. Your's is a distinction that makes no difference, just one of the many silly pretensions of atheism.


Q-KB7, Checkmate
Now that's the debate I was looking for. Please lets shift our focus to how you reached that conclusion. —Immune to Indoctrination
So your intent was to discuss the validity of philosophical or theological accounts of origins all along? Yet you have incessantly imposed the intellectually stifling constraints of an ontological naturalism on the counterargument as if materialism were an objectively verifiable fact.

Okay. Fine. But now we would be weighing arguments that are strictly rational in nature. They are not bound by the limitations of scientific inquiry. Theology, for example, encompasses not only the constituents of any given religious system of thought, but those of any given philosophical system of thought and the asseverations of science. That's why it's King, by the way.

So, yes, beyond the science, all things considered, I am ultimately asserting creation ex essentia. So what? We have moved beyond science now and into the realm of the potentialities of human consciousness. And my article is properly structured. The introduction defines the dispute as being one that is both scientific and philosophical/theological. The body of the article deals strictly with the science. The conclusion summarizes the state of the science and reveals the actual nature of the materialist's assertion and its weaknesses in the face of the stronger argument that God must be.

Your entire argument rests on the asseveration of materialism, a philosophical construct, nothing else and nothing other.

Your argument:

Major Premise: The only substance that exists is matter.
Minor Premise: Life exists.
Conclusion: Life arose out of non-living matter.

Other than the faith-based assumption that the limits of sensory perception necessarily constitute the limits of existence, despite the universal and objectively self-sustaining idealization of transcendent origins, what is the substance of your major premise?

*Crickets Chirping*

On the other hand, we have my argument:

Major Premise: All biological life is from life.
Minor Premise: Biological life did not always exist.
Conclusion: God created biological life.

And what sort of things do I rally in support of my major premise? Well, looky here: they're scientific. You know, like the indisputable facts that spontaneous generation has been falsified and the conjecture of chemical evolution defies explanation. Biogenesis stands.

Sorry, but repeating this irredeemingly disfigured rash of madness gets you nowhere fast:
If you don't buy the Big Bang at all then I'd point out that no creator I've ever heard of qualifies as life, so biogenesis, exactly as stated, is still false. —Immune to Indoctrination
What does the Big Bang have to do with anything? The God of Judeo-Christianity, for example, is not biological life? So what? Your observation is pointless. Biogenesis does not attempt to address origins. It merely refutes the erroneous notion of spontaneous generation and pronounces the extant state of biological systems, nothing more. With regard to origins, its limitations as an explanation is due to the limitations of scientific inquiry only. These things have no force beyond science. None! Pasteur could not have pushed the evaluation of the experimental data beyond "all life is from life" without exceeding the limits of science. Where has life ever been scientifically observed to arise from anything but life? Pasteur's axiom is not false.

Arguably, science can legitimately ask the question how did life begin? But it doesn't appear that it can answer it even on its own terms, and only philosophy or theology can answer it in any ultimate sense.  What's wrong with you?
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. . . . Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened (Rom 1:20-21).
And again . . .
It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. —Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627), Of Atheism


Please let[']s shift our focus to how you reached that conclusion[, i.e., that God must be]. —Immune to Indoctrination
But I've already addressed that, here in this debate and in the article "Abiogenesis: The Unholy Grail of Atheism". I don't have the time to write everything all over again. It would be much easier if you were to just reread the article and review the defeat of your arguments in this debate.

As for the Big Bang theoryclick link.

As for Summa Theologica . . . good luck with that.  It's a tome.  Actually, let me recommend instead that you read The Gospel of John first.  Ultimately, my words are nothing, just those of another imperfect, half-blind creature scratching at the surface with hand and the pimples on his arse with the other.  It's not that any of things I've told you aren't true.  It's just that they're less than a fraction of the things that really matter.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Je ne sais quoi: the debate with Immune to Indoctrination continues. . . .

By Michael David Rawlings

Continued from "Spiritual Particles of Empirical Substance?!"
See the entirety of Immune to Indoctrination's argument.

First things first. . . .

I shared:
The Evolutionary model says that it is not necessary to assume the existence of anything, besides matter and energy, to produce life. That proposition is unscientific. We know perfectly well that if you leave matter to itself, it does not organize itself—in spite of all the efforts in recent years to prove that it does. —Dr. Wilder-Smith
Your response:
Maybe I'm just nit-picking his wording (but what['] s a quote without it's wording?) but he's obviously wrong. When water gets cold its molecules will organize themselves into a rigid, crystalline structure that many would consider aesthetically pleasing. Many other examples exist. It's very simple and mostly unrelated to the abiogenesis argument, but it is, undeniably, matter organizing itself. —Immune to Indoctrination
Right you are. But the error is not Dr. Smith's, it's mine. I carelessly ripped that quote from its context without properly prefacing it, which, by the way, begins with the observation that the cosmos entails a foundational universal of material organization. He then goes on to say that "[t]he Evolutionary model says that it is not necessary to assume the existence of anything, besides matter and energy, to produce life. . . ."  Hence, his observation goes to the organization of biological systems, the aggregation and polymerization of infrastructural and informational complexity beyond nature's fundamental and unspecified structures.

* * * * *
I never said spiritual entities do not exist. . . . I just explained why science is justified in ignoring them ["spiritual or supernatural things"] completely. —Immune to Indoctrination
Well, things get a little confusing when you insist that science cannot regard transcendent things, but then heedlessly go on about things that do not exist like scientific definitions of God and spiritual particles of empirical substance. That's why after reading your second installment, which appears to go on in the same vein while simultaneously correcting my alleged misapprehension, I asked for clarification:
Science cannot ascertain or assert anything whatsoever about that which is not empirical. Yes or no? If no, please explain. —Michael David Rawlings
Your response:
Yes I agree. I'll rephrase to avoid any confusion: Science can only make assertions about things for which objective evidence or data can be collected. This data must be potentially reliable enough to test the subject directly or indirectly by experiment. If the data can't be collected science can't form a theory for or against. Of course I view this as science's biggest strength not a weakness. It basically means 'no faith allowed' and it's why we've progressed so much. —Immune to Indoctrination
Great! I agree, mostly, for whether you are aware of it or not, science does entail an apriority of faith as a matter of practicality: the assumption that the rational forms and logical categories of the human mind are reliably synchronized with the apparent substances and mechanics of empirical phenomena. Beyond that, the above is precisely what traditional methodological naturalism holds . . . unlike ontological naturalism, which is gratuitously mired in a metaphysical caveat that leads it's proponents to habitually invoke sarcastic theological arguments when challenged by standard scientific practice as we shall plainly see.

I wrote:
Spiritual concerns are not incompatible with science. They are transcendental. That's all. Science simply cannot address them in any case whatsoever. And that's why science is the weakest of the three major branches of human inquiry. Theology is king. Philosophy is queen. And as the rational precedes the sensorial, science is contingently based on the former and cleans up the leftovers as directed. —Michael David Rawlings
Your response:
Wow. I've NEVER heard a claim like that before. First of all, your attempt to link rationality with theology and philosophy before science is simply ridiculous. —Immune to Indoctrination
Uh . . . Immune, the only reason you haven't heard that before is because you're not well read in the history of ideas. But more to the point, your incoherent statement, sans any detectable argument, appears to suggest that science embodies the ontological and epistemological presuppositions on which it contingently rests. This demonstrates that you do not apprehend the realities of the matter at all, and it appears that you are unaware of the nature and perhaps even of the existence of your own a priori biases. Further, in addition to its procedural technicalities, the scientific method is an overlapping, cognitive orchestration of observations, interrogatives, suppositions, evaluations and inferences. What's ridiculous is the idea that science and its methodology precede metaphysics and rational formulation—as if the former established and outlined themselves, as if the empirical data of experimentation interpret themselves.

Ontological naturalism, which is your bag, and traditional methodological naturalism, which is mine, are not science, Immune. They're the underlying philosophical constructs which inform our respective views of what science is and our interpretations of empirical data. And here's a news flash for you: your obsessive insinuation of transcendent concerns in a discussion about the science of prebiotic chemistry is annoying, for in the world of methodological naturalism after the tradition of a Baconian or Lockean empiricism, there is no place set for them at the table at all. No plates, no glasses, no silverware . . . no chairs! Or as Locke would put it: je ne sais quoi, i.e., I do not know.

But it would appear that the "science" of ontological naturalism knows a lot about transcendent entities, namely, that they don't exist. And what precisely is the scientific or empirically demonstrable evidence for this knowledge? There is none, of course. The substance of this is nothing other than the reiteration of the materialist's faith-based, metaphysical presupposition.

I wrote:
Creation and ID scientists have justifiably concluded that the results of nearly sixty years of prebiotic-chemistry research resoundingly falsify abiogenesis. —Michael David Rawlings
Your response:
I bet it's fun to falsify things when your beliefs were specifically designed to be unfalsifiable. . . . Biogenesis is obviously false. —Immune to Indoctrination
No. See, you're mistaken about this, my friend.  The spontaneous generation of life out of non-living organic matter is obviously false. It was falsified by Pasteur's body of research, and it's indisputable that insofar as science can presently ascertain or assert, in accordance with its structural rules and limitations, life does not and cannot arise from inanimateness. Pasteur's axiom stands, and it most certainly is of a nature that is subject to falsification, a circumstance that nearly sixty years of prebiotic research necessarily concedes. Indeed, proponents of abiogenesis had in the beginning quite casually expected to falsify it, only to reinforce its validity with their research instead.

If all life came from life where did the first life come from? —Immune to Indoctrination
Ah! Here we have a legitimate scientific question, only to be followed by a theological argument of sorts against a standing scientific axiom—mere sophistry, a denial, laced with insult and one non sequitur after another.
Of course some supernatural creator being would not be considered life in scientific terms, and even if it was, it itself would break the "law". Clearly life came from non-life it's just a matter of how and when. Biogenesis is even more contrary to creationism than abiogenesis. Abiogenesis explains how and when but not why. It can still be claimed God guided it. Biogenesis destroys the concept of God all together and paints a universe where life has always existed. I'm su[r]prised you haven't come to that conclusion yourself. I can only assume your thinking is impaired by the layer of dishonesty that[']s required for you to sustain your beliefs. —Immune to Indoctrination
Of course, those who have minds that still work perceive the unhinged logic of this screed and that it ultimately derives from the materialist's gratuitous apriority. And science? Why, it's nowhere in sight. In the meantime, the Creation scientist—standing on the only legitimate foundation for science, a traditional methodological naturalism—responds to the question: "currently, all we can say scientifically is that life comes from life; beyond that, je ne sais quoi." There's no appeal to the transcendent or denial of the same. No philosophizing here. Science cannot ascertain or assert anything whatsoever about that which is not empirical or not in evidence.

I don't understand how you can concede that science can't address the immaterial whatsoever and then call materialism pseudoscience. That[']s totally contradictory. You've lost that assumed credibility I gave you earlier. —Immune to Indoctrination
. . . he blurted, as if methodology and materialism were synonymous, underscoring my credibility and the utter lack of his own.


In any event, I actually referred to “the pseudoscientists of materialism”.  By definition materialism holds that matter is the only substance that exists.

In the meantime, back in the world of real science: je ne sais quoi.

While the experimental data indisputably falsify spontaneous generation and chemical evolution, the pseudoscientists of materialism argue that abiogenesis must be true, not based on any demonstrable empirical evidence, but based on the unscientific apriority that nothing exists but matter—as if from some elevated vantage point outside the space-time continuum they were authoritatively describing something more than the limitations of sensory perception, as if the universal potentialities of human consciousness were merely the stuff of subjective impressions, as if all of cosmological history were necessarily an unbroken chain of natural cause-and-effect.

In the meantime, back in the world of real science: je ne sais quoi.

You and your materialist cohorts show your hand every time you're compelled to defend your unscientific conjectures—gratuitous extrapolations—with philosophical gibberish.

In the meantime, back in the world of real science: je ne sais quoi.

I bet it's fun to falsify things when your beliefs were specifically designed to be unfalsifiable, complete with beings who reside in separate realms to avoid detection and are openly contrary to logic and reason. You guys are just hiding behind your impenetrable wall of poorly defined phrases ('transcendental', 'spiritual', 'God' etc.) and taking cheap shots at people who have truly inquisitive minds and won't accept your overly simple, illogical, paper-thin, faith-based answers to the universe's toughest questions. —Immune to Indoctrination
Still more of this, eh? Like I said at the top, you don't understand what classical empiricism is about at all. You've been brainwashed by the likes of Dawkins et al., atheist savants who incessantly demonstrate their ignorance about the history of ideas that reside beyond their reductionist world of stunted cognition. I told you in my last post that "Creation scientists abide by the conventions of a traditional methodological naturalism and faithfully distinguish the essential difference between the inferences they make about the constituents of empirical phenomena and the assertions they make about the potentialities of the transcendent. . . . They are doing nothing different today than what most of the great scientists had been doing since Copernicus . . . before Darwin came along." But you paid it no heed. The only one who keeps reverting to theological or philosophical arguments, i.e., to "overly simple, illogical, paper-thin, faith-based" blather against established scientific theory is you!

"Abiogenesis explains how and when but not why", you write. LOL! My friend, you child, abiogenesis can't even begin to account for the mind-boggling complexities involved in the aggregation and polymerization of the pertinent precursors, much less the realization of biological systems. It's not even close. Your claim is the bluster of one who does not grasp the realities of prebiotic chemistry at all.

And finally, we have this bit of superfluous nonsense:
Secondly we must have wildly different ideas of what 'theism' is (in practice). To me its the study of ancient writings and the attempt to reconcile them with what we see in nature and what we've discovered scientifically. That[']s by FAR the most generous definition I can come up with. —Immune to Indoctrination
That's exactly right: I know what revealed religion and theology are, and you don't. But then again, what does any of this have to do with the substance and the limits of scientific inquiry? What does any of this have to do with abiogenesis? I thought for once I had run across an atheist who actually knew the science and was prepared to discuss it. Instead, you're just another Bill Maher knockoff, veering off into one irrelevant metaphysical vignette after another.

Look. I've heard all of the atheist's trite and conceptually illiterate appraisals of theological matters before. It's all pretty stock. What are there, two, maybe three routine litanies consisting of maybe a half-dozen clichés strung together in a semblance of thought?

But since you keep bringing the matter up out of context, i.e., are so masochistically insistent on getting a theological beat down as well: the idea of the transcendent, the idea of God objectively exist in and of themselves, as they indisputably impose themselves on human consciousness without the latter willing that they do so. These things are not akin to mere cultural idealizations like unicorns or leprechauns as atheists foolishly argue. They entail the force of universal and ultimate origination. And the atheist, whether he be ultimately right by accident or not, acknowledges the truth of this every time he opens his mouth to deny their existence. And by accident, I mean that he might be right, objectively speaking, not because it's rational to flatly deny that which is indisputably possible, but merely because he stumbled into it as a matter of blind faith. In other words, concluding that God must be, is not a matter of faith at all. Faith goes to in whom or what one places it. I conclude that God must be by reason; I place my soul in the hands of Jesus Christ by faith, as opposed to tossing it over to the likes of Allah or Vishnu or, in your case, Mindless Rocks.

You see, If I want theology, I can go to Augustine or Aquinas or Henry. Beyond Christ crucified and resurrected on your behalf and mine, what could possibly be the point of discussing such matters with you at this stage? Suggested reading: Summa Theologica, Aquinas. And after that monument of exquisitely precise, systematic logic of unassailable, self-evident truths, masterfully extrapolated from the Bible, rolls over you and your prattle about an "impenetrable wall of poorly defined phrases", you can crawl back to me for yet another drubbing, my friend.

Come on, Immune, just talk to me like a real person. Forget about all the rubbish that typically passes between believers and non-believers. "I can only assume your thinking is impaired by the layer of dishonesty that[']s required for you to sustain your beliefs", you write.  Oh, really? That's truly what you believe? And you, you're truly as stupid as your stubborn disregard for certain indispensable rules of science would imply, rules without which science would quickly veer off into la-la land? I don't believe that.

Stanley Miller himself in the spirit of real science acknowledged after decades of prebiotic research that insofar as science was concerned, we do not know at this point and may never know how life began. Presently, in terms of natural cause, there's no way to explain away or to overcome nature's prebiotic, monomeric dead ends. All we can do at this point is move on with the materials and biotechnology derived from extant life. And you would see that if you were to take the blinders off.

The debate concludes in "Checkmate".

Friday, March 11, 2011

Spiritual Particles of Empirical Substance?! I debate Immune to Indoctrination

By Michael David Rawlings

(For the entirety of Immune to Indoctrination's argument, see comments below "Abiogenesis:  The Unholy Grail of Atheism".)


I admit I don't have the biology knowledge to refute the details of your argument. I have seen many creationists who grossly misused and skewed scientific fact to mislead those with less knowledge. Usually I can spot this easily but in your case I'm going to have to give you the benefit of the doubt.   —Immune to Indoctrination
Hmm. That's odd. I know the science very well and while I have run across many blunders made by Creationists, the vast majority of these were the errors of laymen with little or no real scientific training—a matter of ignorance, not dishonesty. Laying aside the assertions made by young-earth Creationists, with whom I disagree, I don't think I've ever encountered any serious or calculatedly dishonest errors made by progressive Creationists trained in the sciences. The only kind of routine "errors" made by the latter of which I am aware are those attributed to them by evolutionists who merely reassert their presupposition and its dogma as if these things did not constitute the very essence of the dispute! For an example of this sort or thing, see my refutation of Labsci's assertion.
 


"Intelligence" isn't the issue here. "Supernatural" and/or "spiritual" is. Of course it's obvious that the concept of the supernatural is completely incompatible with science in most cases. —Immune to Indoctrination
Spiritual concerns are not incompatible with science. They are transcendental. That's all. Science simply cannot address them in any case whatsoever. And that's why science is the weakest of the three major branches of human inquiry. Theology is king. Philosophy is queen. And as the rational precedes the sensorial, science is contingently based on the former and cleans up the leftovers as directed. Your materialistic apriority is open. You might want to zip that up.




 
. . . imagine if scientists did deny abiogenesis. —Immune to Indoctrination
Real scientists don't deny things, they falsify them. Creation and ID scientists have justifiably concluded that the results of nearly sixty years of prebiotic-chemistry research resoundingly falsify abiogenesis. The Pasteurian axiom that omne vivum ex vivo, i.e., all life is from life stands. Nature's prebiotic, organic materials are monomeric dead ends. As for the pseudoscientists of materialism, they are welcome to go on with their fantasies.





After that you get all tangled up with some very odd notions. Scientific definitions of God? Spiritual particles of empirical substance? Once again, science is not equipped to deal with spiritual or theological matters. Arguing that because spiritual entities are not empirical—a truism—spiritual entities do not exist is neither rational nor scientific. Your premise is AWOL, your conclusion is absurd. State your premise and then prove it empirically.

Got reductio ad absurdum?

The idea that science must necessarily assume an abiogenic origin of life is hogwash. That's merely the stuff of a Darwinian naturalism run amok. Has it not ever occurred to you to question the rather awkward, scientifically unconventional practice of arbitrarily displacing an established law of biology with a body of research premised on a mere supposition. When did the rather shaky hypothesis of abiogenesis falsify Pasteur's theoy of biogenesis? According to your account of things, I must have somehow missed that in my reading.

Contrary to the claims of evolutionists, Creation scientists do not impose any theological construct as such on science, nor are they obliged to do any such stupid thing. They simply reject evolutionists' self-serving imposition of an ontological naturalism on science, whereby the latter then proceed to politicize the matter. (And in their typically fascistic fashion, evolutionists have been quite successful in convincing stupid and corrupt judges and politicians to overthrow natural and constitutional law in our public education system.  Also see "The Challenge of Real Education Reform".)

Creation scientists abide by the conventions of a traditional methodological naturalism and faithfully distinguish the essential difference between the inferences they make about the constituents of empirical phenomena and the assertions they make about the potentialities of the transcendent. Their axioms (Pasteurian biogenesis and irreducible complexity) are rock solid.  They are doing nothing different today than what most of the great scientists had been doing since Copernicus . . . until Darwin came along.

Science deals with the empirical. Theology deals with the transcendent. Creationists do not confound the distinction. We leave that sort of foolishness to materialists.
The Evolutionary model says that it is not necessary to assume the existence of anything, besides matter and energy, to produce life. That proposition is unscientific. We know perfectly well that if you leave matter to itself, it does not organize itself—in spite of all the efforts in recent years to prove that it does. —Dr. Wilder-Smith
And again. . . .
Ultimately, the essence of this perversion is a Darwinian naturalism run amok: mere theory elevated to an inviolable absolute of cosmological proportions, which displaces not only the traditional conventions of methodological naturalism, but is superimposed on the discipline of science itself. Never has so much been owed to so little. —Michael David Rawlings
See Je ne sais quoi: the debate with Immune to Indoctrination continues. . . .

RELATED ARTICLE

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Tolerance Begins with Common Sense

By Michael David Rawlings

In the piece "Religious 'tolerance' doesn't include dissent" (see below) printed in the religion section of the Arizona Republic, Scott Hunter demonstrates precisely why liberty is so difficult to maintain in a fallen world.

He begins his op-ed  with the silly assertion that "[r]eligious freedom is a misnomer", presumably because religions tend to make exclusive claims about reality. But only nitwits go about their business pretending that mutually exclusive ideas are simultaneously true. If it's sensible for Hunter to argue that there exists "no freedom within religions" then it's sensible to argue that no organized group formed around a specified system of thought about anything, religious or otherwise, is free from within. Hunter's assertion is meaningless. The title of his op-ed is redundantly meaningless.  Moreover, the construct of religious freedom pertains to free association, not to any obligation on the part of others outside any given religious group.  Hunter's not defending freedom at all; he's a multiculturalist thug asserting an obligation on the part of others with regard to his idiotic worldview.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Is Atheist-Think "Hardwired" for Irrationality and Statism?

by Michael David Rawlings

Is atheist-think "hardwired" for irrationality and statism?  In other words, how do we explain the fact that the vast majority of atheists embrace the inherently irrational, self-contradictory supposition of relativism, which almost invariably leads to the oppressive or even totalitarian politics of the statist?

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Abiogenesis: The Unholy Grail of Atheism

By Michael David Rawlings
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Years of experience have shown me that most atheists are more obtuse than a pile of bricks. They are either breezily unaware of their metaphysical biases or are unwilling to objectively separate themselves from them long enough to engage in a reasonably calm and courteous discussion about the tenets of their religion: namely, abiogenesis and evolution. While science's historical presupposition is not a metaphysical naturalism (or an ontological naturalism), most of today's practicing scientists insist that the origins and compositions of empirical phenomena must be inferred without any consideration given to the possibility of intelligent causation and design. The limits of scientific inquiry are thereby reconfigured as if they constituted the limits of reality itself, the more expansive potentialities of human consciousness be damned. In other words, if something cannot be quantified by science, it doesn't exist, regardless of the conclusions that any rational evaluation of the empirical data might recommend. Hence, should one reject what is nothing more than the guesswork of an arbitrarily imposed apriority, one is said to reject science itself, as if the fanatics of scientism owned the means of science.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Another Atheist's Unexamined Thought Processes: A Close Encounter of the Raw Kind

by Michael David Rawlings

Ever notice that the vast majority of atheists are statists?  Seriously, out of all the many atheists I've encountered in my life, only a small handful were not.  But more to the point, have you ever noticed how many of them don't seem to realize it themselves, as they inexplicably perceive the Christian's defense of Lockean natural law to be an apology for theocracy?  Theocracy?  Lockean natural law?  Ever notice how many of them never seem to really grasp the sociopolitical implications of their slogan-speak?  But that's giving them the benefit of the doubt; that's assuming that they're really not as sinister as their expressed thought processes would suggest, just stupid.

Check out the following statement recently made by an atheist on Yahoo! Answers who considers herself to be really, really smart and "an open-minded person" who "believe[s] in equal rights for all":

Note the casual arrogance: "Obviously these are misguided motives. . . ."

She continuous:
Many of the negative outcomes of religion stem from organized religion. Religion and government[,] and religion and education don't mix. . . . —Catherine

"[N]egative outcomes" of "organized religion"? She might as well talk about the negative outcomes of organized political parties, organized fraternities or organized sports. Name one formal group of individuals formed around a common belief or purpose that is not "organized". Further, any person with an IQ above that of a gnat and knows his history understands that beyond the whims of nature, the biggest threat to humanity is organized government, informed by one ideological system of thought or another. In the real world, no institution exists in an ideological vacuum.

But what are these mysteriously unique, negative outcomes of organized religion? In what sense are they different from those produced by other kinds of organizations? Never mind the logical fallacy of generalization, never mind that in the real world a myriad of different religious perspectives collide. This is important. We'll just lump all religions together as if they all ascribed to the same system of metaphysics and moral philosophy.

Wait! Wait! Eureka! Religion promotes charity!

But, no, that's not a negative . . . just a misguided plus.

False alarm.

Moving on. . . .

Now, we may quickly dispatch the atheist's delusion that religion and government don't mix; after all, human beings do not just throw their ideological biases, regardless of their nature, to the four winds when they enter the political arena. There most certainly is an intrinsic relationship between religion and government, for in fact human beings just so happen to be the very essence of that relationship!

I think we just stumbled across one of those sociopolitical implications of atheistic slogan-speak that its practitioners routinely and mindlessly overlook. Apparently secularists in general and atheists in particular are operating under the delusion that they don't drag their ideological baggage—including its morality, such as it is—into the political arena. And if they did, so what? It's supposedly not the stuff of religion! And it follows that the theist may not enter into the political arena with any legitimate expectation that the law of the land reflect his sociopolitical concerns, for obviously he must defer to the secular humanist in all things governmental.

Well, gee wiz, someone has to govern!

(Is there an atheist in the house who can explain precisely where in his godless and, therefore, meaningless universe this imperative exists beyond his thuggish, self-serving rhetoric and irredeemably convoluted mind?)

But then we've already been down that road before. Wherever atheistic and invariably totalitarian regimes have prevailed—in spite of the typical atheist's depraved indifference to the historical record—the wholesale slaughter and imprisonment of not just thousands or even tens of thousands, but tens of millions of dissenters, especially unrepentant religionists, have always followed.

But surely Catherine doesn't mean that theists should be effectively disenfranchised or perhaps slaughtered and imprisoned as they were in the Soviet Union and continue to be in the People's Republic of China . . . just for starters.

Moving on. . . .

Religion and education don't mix?!

And what are the sociopolitical implications of this arbitrary rash of madness?

How exactly does one attain a credible understanding of the history of ideas and events without examining the pertinent cultural , societal, political and, yes, religious aspects of that history? Are the pertinent professors at her school only partially trained in history and the humanities?

From what planet did Catherine's saucer fly in from? Her statement is essentially meaningless. Inscrutable.

But what she's really getting at ultimately goes to the abolition of parental authority over matters of education and socialization. And If not, why not? Clearly, she would apply this nonsense to public schools at the very least, the educational philosophy of religionists be damned. That's what leftists are doing in the public schools now, shoving their rubbish down everybody's throats in their one-size-fits-all trash cans. (See "Revisions and Divisions".)  And if religionists don't like it they can educate their children at home or in a school of their choice. Really? Is that before or after they are fleeced of the tax dollars they pay into the system out of which they are driven by disgust? As for the others who do not artificially compartmentalize their approach to education, but cannot afford to pay for it twice: well, their children will just have to accept whatever lefty allows.

Of course, this assumes that lefty allows anyone to leave the public schools. There's no guarantee, as leftist activists incessantly use the courts to attack homeschoolers, for example, in states like California, Oregon, Minnesota, New York and others. The plight for ideological liberty in education is even worse in Canada where Catherine lives or comes from. It's likely that since she was knee-high to a grasshopper her mind's been thoroughly conditioned to think that such violations of natural law by the state are perfectly normal and just.

Who are these people who casually prattle about what does and does not constitute a legitimate regiment of education as if they were articulating some kind of self-evident absolute to which we are all beholden? Who are these people, these perfect strangers, who would essentially invade our families and the minds of our children via some instrument of the State with their filthy, atheistic blasphemies of secular humanism? Who are these people who would that are children essentially be the property of the State, chattel of whatever educratic oligarchy they deign to erect and dictate to the rest of us what we may or may not teach? More to the point, by what authority other than brute force do these thugs first eschew the existence of God and then elevate themselves to His position above the heads of their peers? In short, who are these putatively open-minded, freethinking enemies of ideological liberty?

Stop sputtering, Catherine. There is no other logical end to your mindless utterances.

The truth about the atheist is that he worships himself first and then inevitably some demagogic megalomaniac like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Kim Jung-il.

Catherine reveals the agenda or her worldview, though it's doubtful that until this very moment she's ever come face-to-face with the conclusion that resides at the other end of the logical chain of thought premised on the rhetoric she's been spewing all her life—regurgitated by rote, clearly planted in her head by others, ideas never once truly her own. Well, that is, unless she really has consciously been a monster all your life . . . chomping at the bit to get her Seig Heil on.

But Catherine does lay here finger on two of those supposed negative outcomes . . . or maybe not.
[B]ut when . . . [religion] causes people to discriminate against one another or to disregard science, it quickly does more harm than good. —Catherine

While Catherine's statement is of the sort that gives leftists that weepy, snot-infested-hanky feeling, this stunningly obtuse asseveration is littered with logical fallacies. It contains (1) an obvious and thoughtlessly irresponsible sweeping generalization that (2) a priori begs the question and (3) implicitly appeals to authority without qualification. It also contains (4) the fallacy of affirming the consequent which proceeds from (5) a fallacy of essence and leads to (6) a multilayered fallacy of false cause (specifically, cum hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e., because X and Y simultaneously persist, X caused Y). The latter fallacy, at least in part, most likely stems from (7) the genetic fallacy that prescientific biblical exegesis, for example, accurately represents the essence of the biblical narrative, or that contemporary biblical exegesis does not conform to the demonstrably or reasonably incontrovertible evaluations of scientific modernity.

In short, her statement is a mess, but it would take volumes to thoroughly untangle it. I'd be moving way too fast for the minds of Catherine and her ilk anyway, minds whose cognitive faculties have been artificially stunted by years of reductionist conditioning, wherein cognition is reduced to the accumulation of disconnected constituents, bits and pieces of information.  The process is more technically assimilative than imaginatively analytic or systematic. It tends to stifle intellectual curiosity and passion. That is why so many secularists—typically leftists—think and speak in slogans.

Hence, I will simply make a few incontrovertibly self-evident observations.

Discrimination, in and of itself, is not evil or bad or wrong. On the contrary, it is an inherent, inescapable facet of human consciousness. Cognitively, it is the necessity of identifying or distinguishing the difference between characteristics or modes that are incompatible, a matter of differentiation. Duh. Ideological discrimination goes to the differentiation of cultural or sociopolitical beliefs and actions within the collective. These differences can either be suppressed by force or permitted to peacefully coexist by way of untrammeled free association. Choose.

All those who believe that Catherine does not discriminate against the ideology of Judeo-Christianity and its adherents (would happily welcome a group of us Bible thumpers into the hall of her atheistic ho down, not "discriminate" against us, but happily allow us to impose our ideological values on her group—extinguish it by way of forced assimilation) raise your hands. The rest of you, being sane, behold the arrogance, the pretentiousness and the veiled totalitarian threat of multiculturalism.

Once again, assuming that Catherine's rhetoric is nothing more than another page out of the book The Glaringly Obvious Gullibility of Unexamined Suppositions, it is essentially meaningless, another absurd example of her indoctrination. All she's really saying is that only those who disagree with her discriminate against other people. . . . Her discrimination against other people is not discrimination against other people, but merely the rejection of the beliefs and behavior of those who discriminate against other people (even though the nature of the discrimination of those with whom she disagrees is the rejection of her worldview and its values), as she does not discriminate against other people. . . . Oh, never mind.

Who made Catherine the arbiter of truth, the knower of the difference between good and evil forms of discrimination? On what uncontestable moral authority does this atheist stand?

Sure religion is a comforting thing but when it causes people to . . . disregard science. . . . —Catherine

Like the adherents of the religion of materialism?