Experience and Reliability

Over the last several years I've come across a couple of "philosophies" when it comes to how a person's personal relationship to a belief affects their ability to represent it accurately. I have heard people state that if someone does not believe something, then they cannot accurately represent it. The "support" provided is that if they were familiar enough to represent it accurately (and in its most powerful form), the person would believe it. But then I've also heard many say that those who believe something cannot accurately represent it. The "support" provided is if someone believes something, they obviously want it to be true, so they will misrepresent a false belief in order to support its truth.

What's interesting is that I've heard both from a couple of the same people, but with regards to different topics: "You can't trust the disciples of Jesus to tell us the truth about him because they obviously wanted to believe he was God and the resurrection happened," and "You can't trust a Christian who used to be an atheist (or other worldview) to accurately represent atheism (or other worldview) because he does not want it to be true." The only identification of when to use which is, "whichever one supports my own view." But that is not a valid reason because of its subjective foundation. When I apply either critique is dependent totally on me, and I can change it whenever I please.

Dangers of Consistent "Tolerance"

The new tolerance has plenty of philosophical and pragmatic problems. Last year I discussed the intolerance of the new tolerance. I showed how the new tolerance is actually self-defeating. However today I want to talk about the effects if the new tolerance was the philosophy and practice of the earliest humans.

Traditionally tolerance has been described as being able to civilly live alongside a person if they hold contrary beliefs. The person being tolerant could still be considered "tolerant" if they questioned and debated the other person. However, today tolerance eliminates that last bit. In order to be considered "tolerant" we not only must be able to civilly live alongside those who hold contrary beliefs, but we cannot question or debate the other person. Some would even take it as far as to say that one person must celebrate or even accept the contrary view as containing the same level of truth as their own belief.

Can We Be Good Without God?

One word and one phrase need clarification in this question. "Good" and "without God".

I want to look at the phrase "without God". My first clarifying question would be "do you mean 'without God's existence' or 'without believing in God'?" The answer to this question will determine how my unasked question about the meaning of "good" will be answered.

If the atheist answers "without God's existence," then it is quite easy. The answer is "yes" and "no"- both meaning the same thing and being just as valid as the other. Since atheists must base their morals on sociocultural contract theory, "good" (which is a moral term) has no objective, intercultural definition. So, one person in one culture may answer the question "yes" (basing his answer on the "goodness" of general behavior), and another person in another culture may answer the question "no" (same basis). If God does not actually exist, this answer does not change even if someone believes that He exists.

Naturalism and Cultural Isms

This is going to build a bit more on my previous post "Naturalism and Human Equality". Naturalism demands that all living entities be ascribed equal value.

This includes bugs and plants. Why should we ascribe greater value to humans? Why not whales, because of their size, or certain trees, because of their long life-spans? If evolution is to be used as a guide, then we must conclude that survivability is the ultimate ascription for value. We could look at survivability of an individual or of an entire species, and we still would not conclude that humans are on top, though.

Useful or Useless Evolutionary Terms?

I want to look at a couple terms that have been added to the evolutionary vocabulary, but are hotly contested:

Microevolution- evolutionary changes that result in differences within a species or genus.

Macroevolution- series of microevolutionary changes that result in a new genus, family, order, etc...

The other day, a naturalist claimed that no such distinction is necessary. The argument is that there is a long string of microevolutionary changes from species to species, from genus to genus, family to family, etc...; macroevolutionary changes are a series of microevolutionary changes that result in a new species, genus, family, etc...; thus macroevolutionary changes are really the same as microevolutionary changes over time. Since they are ultimately the same, there is no need to distinguish between the two terms. This person further claimed that even if they allowed the distinction in terms, the fact that small changes over time is undisputed, means that many changes over time is proven; microevolution is undisputed, therefore a lot of microevolution (macroevolution) is proven.

Default Positions, Atheism, and Fulfillment

Atheists claim that atheism is the default position that people take. Many atheists use this to bolster their philosophy of methodological naturalism in the sciences. But many Christians deny that atheism is the default position. I tend to agree with the atheist, but only to a point. All people are born with a sin nature that denies God, and specifically the Christian God. Technically, Christianity expects that the default worldview of any human being will be anti-Christian, and atheism falls into this category. So, atheism is one of the default positions of man when it comes to a worldview.

However, the atheist is claiming that naturalism is the true worldview. The default position in naturalism, though, is not atheism, as they believe. The default worldview of a person is relative to the culture in which the individual grows up. If the person grows up in an atheist home, and chooses anything other than atheism as their worldview, they have denied their default position in favor of another (be it Hindu, Islam, Christianity, or whatever). However, if a person grows up in a Christian home and remains a Christian, they have stuck with their default position.

Book Review: "The Closing of the American Heart"

The Closing of the American Heart
By Dr. Ronald Nash

The Closing of the American Heart is a critique of today's school system. Even though Dr. Nash wrote this book in the late 1990, it still seems quite applicable today. What attracted me to this book was first that it was written as a response to Alan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind; second that it recognizes the emotions are a critical part of our reasoning process as fallen human beings.

Nash starts out critiquing Bloom's book in Chapter 1. His main critique was that even though Bloom correctly identified an issue in the school system (and traced its history), he did not offer much of a solution. It seems that Nash was thinking that memorizing more facts is not the solution. The problem is the philosophical foundation- hearts set against God to the point that they will accept erroneous conclusions to avoid Him. Although Nash wrote this as a response to Bloom, it seems to me to be more of an addition to Bloom. Bloom answered the questions of "what happened" and "how it happened". Nash offers to answer "why did it happen" and "what should we do about it"