Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The dualists are coming the dualists are coming

According to this piece in the New Scientist. Moreland and Menuge reply here. 

22 comments:

Unknown said...

Both links go to the same place

Victor Reppert said...

I corrected the link.

Unknown said...

The New Scientist article was pretty disgusting but the stupidity of the comments was vile.

Papalinton said...

The articles are from around six years ago when IDiotism was still at its zenith and the Kitzmiller vs Dover School Board Trial had only just dealt the fatal blow a year or two earlier, which had yet to permeate throughout the community.

So I wouldn't get too excited about this one.

Unknown said...

Those opposed to a materialist account of mind and who tend towards dualism are reflexively labeled "Creationists"? Failing to mention that Moreland is a philosopher? Incredible dishonesty. The only surprising thing about the ordeal is how much I'm not surprised.

im-skeptical said...

Samwell,

The vast majority of dualists believe that God created living things (as well as their minds). Why is it a problem to label them as such?

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>The vast majority of dualists believe that God created living things (as well as their minds). Why is it a problem to label them as such?

Because labeling someone a "creationist" implies they believe the world was created in the year 4004 BC over an 144 hour period of time.

Theistic Evolutionists might object.

It's a fallacy of equivocation. Like labeling all Atheists as Communists & or reductionist materialists.

Ayn Rand wouldn't want to be labelled a Communist.

What about non-reductionist materialist Atheists? Or Platonic Atheists? Or Atheist Idealists?

BTW Property dualists need not believe in the supernatural either.

Live with it.

Victor Reppert said...

There are different senses of the word "creationist." Creationists earned a bad intellectual reputation since the days of the Scopes trial by holding to a lead-footedly literal view of early Genesis, leading to a Young Earth doctrine that flies in the face of scientific evidence. Tarring anyone who accepts God as a creator with the same brush is, to my mind, dishonest.

im-skeptical said...

"Creationism is the religious belief that life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being."
- Wikipedia

This is much broader than just "young-earth" creationism. I wouldn't dream of gratuitously pinning an inappropriate label on someone.

Papalinton said...

"There are different senses of the word "creationist." Creationists earned a bad intellectual reputation since the days of the Scopes trial by holding to a lead-footedly literal view of early Genesis, leading to a Young Earth doctrine that flies in the face of scientific evidence. Tarring anyone who accepts God as a creator with the same brush is, to my mind, dishonest."

Dishonest? No, I don't think so. The current morphing of mainstream [?] christianity is about slowly and painfully accepting the overwhelming evidence for evolution into the body corporate of Christian thought. Those Christians that have been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting evolution into christian teachings remain loathe to acknowledge one of the central tenets of evolution, unguided change. Indeed today's Christians still fly in the face of the scientific evidence for evolution on this point. They can be rightly tarred with the same brush as 'creationists'. They are "Old Earth Creationists".

What's the difference between a Young Earth Creationist and an Old Earth Creationist? Only the timing.

Victor Reppert said...

Well, actually there were Christians in the 19th Century, like Newman, who had no problem with it.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

By the 19th century the Vatican intelligentsia all accepted the idea of an Old Earth. They accepted Evolution of animals but they had to iron out the dogma of the creation and fall of man. Claims Man evolved & that the human soul was brought into existence by mere natural evolution as opposed to supernatural creation had been formally condemned.

Pius XII settled it by saying we are permitted to believe God created Adam using pre-existing living material.

Something akin to God giving a pre-human hominid a soul.

>"Creationism is the religious belief that life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being."
- Wikipedia

Skept did you read the whole article?

QUOTE"Those holding that species had been created separately (such as Philip Gosse in 1847) were generally called "advocates of creation" but were also called "creationists", as in private correspondence between Charles Darwin and his friends. As the creation–evolution controversy developed over time, the term "anti-evolutionists" became common. In 1929 in the United States, the term "creationism" first became associated with Christian fundamentalists, specifically with their rejection of human evolution and belief in a young Earth—although this usage was contested by other groups, such as old Earth creationists and evolutionary creationists, who hold different concepts of creation.[3][4][5]"END QUOTE

Creationism commonly means God causing individual species to come into existence by specific supernatural acts sans any type of macro-evolution or forces within nature. Old Earther types would admit some micro-evolution but insisted on the supernatural creation of individual species.

In modern times to make Theistic Evolution more palatable to Evangelicals the term "Evolutionary Creationism" was coined.

The problem with Skept's partial quote is why can't you just say Theist? If you are a Theist you are going to believe God is the source of existence of all that is not God which is unremarkable because that is the bloody point!

To be a Theist is to believe in an Ultimate creator God.

DUH!!!!!!!!!!!

im-skeptical said...

Ben,

I would say that even if you believe in evolution, if you think God 'guided' the development of species in order to make humans in their present form, that's still creationism. It goes to the whole issue of design. If God designed us, and God made us what we are, isn't it fair to say that's creationism?

Son of Ya'Kov said...

Sorry Skept a "creationist" is a species of Theist who believes in the specific supernatural creation of individual animal & plant species.

By your loose A-historical definition Walter the Deist is a "creationist".

That God via Divine Providence causes in a Transcendent way natural forces to produce humans in their current morphology & supernaturally intervenes to create a supernatural soul isn't so much "creationism" as mere Theism.

It is not design in the Paley sense but mere final causality.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>If God designed us, and God made us what we are, isn't it fair to say that's creationism?

No it is merely the trivial assertion that God "created" us which is the basic feature of general Theism which applies to the Deist, Classic Theist and even the Theistic Personalist.

im-skeptical said...

"By your loose A-historical definition Walter the Deist is a "creationist"."

I disagree. But if the idea that God 'designed' us humans is bothersome to you, I won't insist on calling you a creationist. Still, I see that you have absolutely no problem hurling all manner of labels and epithets at people. What gives?

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>I disagree.

You are entitled too your own beliefs but not your own facts.

Brute fact is according too your own Wiki citation it originally refers to Theists who believe God specifically and supernaturally created individual species vs God
causing a natural world to exist that produces them within nature.

>But if the idea that God 'designed' us humans is bothersome to you, I won't insist on calling you a creationist.

Thank you for that but your use of the term "designed" is just as equivocal.

I believe intentionality exists in nature & doesn't require an outside force to impose it like an artificer. God is not an artificer. We don't live in a Mechanistic universe where matter is static.

>Still, I see that you have absolutely no problem hurling all manner of labels and epithets at people. What gives?

I am not nice. But I can be fair if you return the favor.

Your choice.

Victor Reppert said...

But if that's creationism, then it doesn't deserve the kind of contempt that YEC receives.

YEC faces a straightforward conflict with the fossil record, though even that can be resolved by saying that God put the fossils in the ground to fool the scientists, a step your typical creationist is not willing to take.

im-skeptical said...

"But if that's creationism, then it doesn't deserve the kind of contempt that YEC receives."

What contempt? I am not contemptuous of creationists in general. I do take issue strongly with the DI people who try to undermine science education with their phony pseudo-science. It's not the creationism, its the deliberate destruction of public education that I have a problem with.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>I do take issue strongly with the DI people who try to undermine science education with their phony pseudo-science. It's not the creationism, its the deliberate destruction of public education that I have a problem with.

If I stopped believing in God I would reject public education in favor of home schooling. In fact among homeschoolers there are quite a significant number of Atheists.

I don't know if you all remember a Gnu by the name of Physics Dave I butted heads with?

He is a homeschooler, a Ron Paul supporter and an Atheist.

What to teach kids in school is just another example of the long running Right vs Left battlegrounds we have in today's society.

But that having been said. I do consider Creation Science to be a pseudo-science.

But the existence of God is a philosophical question not one of science.

No empirical science can refute any philosophy. If you are dumb enough to believe that you might as well tell me the Atomic Weight of Natural Selection or believe the Second Law of Thermal Dynamics refutes the descent of species.

im-skeptical said...

Ben,

"No empirical science can refute any philosophy."

My philosophy says that people who value armchair reasoning above empirical evidence are probably reasoning incorrectly.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>My philosophy says that people who value armchair reasoning above empirical evidence are probably reasoning incorrectly.

How is interpreting the meaning of empirical evidence an example of placing philosophy above said evidence(as if somehow it cancels out the brute facts of the evidence)?

Hopeless nonsense.