The Dork of Oxford: The Vanity of this Life

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.” – Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. (Emphasis mine)

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus echoed the same objections that can be seen in Dawkins’ writings today.  Some things don’t change much.  Epicurus held a nearly identical view of the afterlife or “second life” as Dawkins does now.  He thought that mankind would be better served if each man paid more attention to making this life better rather than wasting time and resources trying to appease non-existent “gods” in the hope of obtaining better crops or greater wealth (self-interest) or of being accepted by such deities in the next life (his real objection).  Epicurus believed that this preoccupation with the afterlife was one of the chief problems that kept mankind from enjoying the life they live in the here and now.

Furthermore, Epicurus suspected that the miserable, mean, harsh and impoverished life most people lived was caused partly by their preoccupation with the afterlife.

Of course, this assertion does not make it so, but it still continues to be a common belief among atheists and continues to see the light of day in the writings of Dawkins.  For example…

Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.”  ― Richard Dawkins

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”  ― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

It is clear that his use of words like “vain and presumptuous”, “infantile” and “The truly adult view” are used to convey the impression that his views are intellectually superior to the views held by theists without providing the reasons for his position laid out in cogent argument.  It is typical of the common response one finds on most blogs when an atheist responses to a theistic post.  Their posts are usually peppered with condescension, ad hominem disparity and aspersions of the vilest kinds.  These kinds of responses add nothing to the discussion of the post itself yet their authors often insist that their position is clearly the rational one.  Of course there are the occasional thoughtful exceptions but it is not the norm.

Dawkins’ polite disparagement when writing about the “second” life gives way to the more common umbrage salted with explicatives when publicly speaking and takes on a much more derogatory tone.  His content at times is not much better than the “God is a genocidal maniac so F*** You” kind of thing the average anti-Christian blogger brings to the table as an intellectual offering.  He simply assumes what he says should be taken at face value, that he is always correct in his historical assertions, and tops it all off with a little vitriol.

Observations: It does not seem to matter to Dawkins that his beliefs are contrary to what is known about the world.

As pointed out in previous posts…

• It is never observed that matter has incorporeal attributes in the real world.  In other words, matter never demonstrates attributes such as reason, ideas, desire, nor does it make choices, engineer a bridge, fall in love, or appreciate music.  If matter and energy are all there is, matter must cause these things to come into existence.  In short, the effect must be greater than the cause, which is another way of saying I believe in magic rather than science.
  
• While it is observed that matter can be used as a carrier of information (via Structure), it is never observed that matter is the source of the information that it may carry.
  • When ever the source of information can be determined, it is always because that structure that carries it has been imposed upon matter from outside of itself.
  • When we can determine its source, it is always because a mind has imposed a structure upon matter to carry information.  Basically an force outside the matter itself has ordered and arranged matter so that information can be embedded.
  • When matter is found to carry information  it is for the purpose of communication.
• Information is really the lowest level of mind.  As far as is known, such things as desires, perceiving the value of an object such as a nice purse or a fine watch, motives of passion or pleasure, love, loyalty, honor, hatred, bitterness, gratitude, etc., cannot be explained by the presence of information alone.  And information cannot be explained by matter alone.  These are difference categories of phenomena.

Thus, it is always the case, when the source is known, that information is from an external source that is not material in nature.  Dawkins and some atheists are aware of this, so there have been concerted efforts to fabricate explanations for this source from within the material realm itself.  While at the same time they employ every form of non-material faculty of their being (such as ideas, logic, argument, appeal to emotions, etc.) in order to persuade you their opinion is the correct one.  Opinion being another of those non-material incorporeal phenomena that should not exist if reality is as they say.

We could go on about this but, as I said, this subject has been covered HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.

The highest form of meaningful life?

But this is not really the point Dawkins is driving at in the above quotes.  Dawkins is asserting that hoping in a life beyond the grave is a vain one, so one should only live for the here and now, the existential experience.  So what is supposed to give this very temporary life of ours its grand meaning and significance?

According to Dawkins it is the wonder of discovery that science provides.  This “wonder”, this “feeling” of awe that is to be derived from scientific investigation is on par with the elation that one might experience while listening to music, going to the opera, a trip to the art museum, or standing in the presence of a great poet.

This “feeling of awed wonder”, this “deep aesthetic passion” is not a phenomenon of matter.  It is incorporeal in nature.  It has no mass or volume.  One cannot measure its hardness, taste it, or perceive its color.  Even so, the experience that is supposed to provide our meaningful existence is simply feeling a certain way.  It is a gratification of a desire.  It is an attempt to provide or create a certain state of feeling (the awed wonder) and nothing more.

It is also important to remember that these emotional states are to be treasured because we are very temporary in nature or as Dawkins puts it, “the time we have for living is quite finite”.  Dawkins does not prove his point about that because we all know that we live and die, at least, the material aspect of us does.  What he cannot and therefore does not explain is how matter comes to value this state of emotion in the first place, he just assumes that it does because he does.  And since he is nothing more than matter and energy flowing to and fro, temporarily coming together to form himself before moving on, it must have these unobserved magical qualities.

However, Dawkins assumes that the emotional bingeing that he hangs the meaning of life upon is the same for everybody.  He elevates his “feeling of awed wonder” to the top of the charts without any criteria but the satisfaction he gets from his own gratification.  Since that is his best experience possible, it must be the best that can be had by all and that is what the whole of humanity ought to pursue.

The best a D. Phil can offer?

So this is what a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford comes up with, self-indulgence, emotional gratification, a temporary state of wallowing in a feeling.  Setting aside that he cannot explain why this is so.  He cannot explain how these feelings even exist if the world is nothing but matter and energy.  It seems that his education has simply taught him how to hide his nakedness with clever words used to obfuscate the baseless assumptions he makes about “reality”.

The incorporeal, these “feelings”, are to provide meaning for our material existence.  Yet he declares hope in a second life, where it is said that incorporeal existence continues, is “vain” and “presumptuous”?   This is jaw dropping stupidity at its finest.   What Dawkins ought to do in order to truly maximize his experience is to drop some ecstasy the next time he experiences this “awed wonder”.

Kidding aside, if meaning is found in some emotion and its gratification, why it is assumed, as Dawkins clearly does, that music or science can be universally relied upon to provide its highest most preferred form?  What compels anyone towards this particular emotional state as opposed to any other?  Why not shopping for jewelry for instance?  Or power?  Or Wealth?  Or torture? Or hording?  So what if it harms someone else.  Why would an object composed of mere matter care about that?  So what if one’s desires are or aren’t met.  Get used to disappointment.

Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says differently is selling something.”  The man in black, The Princess Bride.

Most people in the world do not have the opportunity that Dawkins takes for granted.  And they find temporary pleasures in other things more available to them.   When people face the end of their temporal existence and they know they must leave this world do they really crave one more experience of “awed wonder” that science can provide?  Or do they wish to be surrounded by those they love?

But this too is mere gratification, a desire to be comforted or the desire to be loved one last time before departing this world is in principle no different than Dawkins desire to want “awed wonder”.  If our incorporeal existence terminates here, as Dawkins wants to believe, it is all vain.  His attempt to find meaning within ourselves is all that he or anyone else can come up with if life ends at death.  It is only temporary distraction from the vanity of life, no better than the pleasure derived from enjoying a good hoagie from Philadelphia.

Self-indulgence and gratification of desire need not take the arbitrary ranked “highest experiences” path that Dawkins suggests.  Dawkins guidance, more often than not, goes unheeded.  He simply provides no real reason for the rest of us to assign scientific awed wonder as the pinnacle of human experience.  Never mind the absurdity of an over-educated elitist attempting to find meaning for his material existence in the metaphysical and non-material attributes of his nature.  The common man may not know how to articulate the contradiction he sees in Dawkins’ own vain attempt to find meaning but he senses this contradiction never the less.

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The Dork of Oxford and the little boy

Category Errors are delicious, I’ll have yours.

From Mr. A.M.

Did you notice that the boy doesn’t answer the question? His own argument is, that god created him and he cannot see god. But so, the clay pony would have to assume that the BOY is god. But instead, you claim that there is another good, that they clay pony just can’t see. And why do you assume that the first god that the boy cannot see is the last one?

For Clarity, I am assuming the phrase “another good” is meant to be “another god”.

First of all Mr. A.M. once again dodges the argument in the article.  The past responses are of the same caliber.  He never actually answers or effectively refutes what is written, preferring to focus in on some unrelated minutia.

Actually in the Cartoon, which Mr. A.M. now attempts to discredit (or perhaps waste my time and resources), is one of those humorous philosophical dilemmas. Dawkins, being a materialist, assumes god, if there was one, would have to be a creature not unlike himself, a material being.  He accepts no possibility of a “god” being anything other than an advanced being, an alien, subject to and a product of the physical world that he himself is.

That is why he assumes “if god exists”, he is going to exist as a material being like any other.  Dawkins and Mr. A.M. have no problem violating cause and effect and peppering their rantings with logical fallacies galore. They do not even recognize it when they do so.  But any talk of God and now they suddenly understand cause and effect at least applied to the world of matter and energy to which there belief in materialism has confirmed them.

In Philosophy the question is often turned around as in “where did matter come from?” or more commonly “Why is there something rather than nothing?”  This is the start.  In the physical world, it remains true that whatever had a beginning had a cause.  Since we know that all things had a beginning there was an adequate cause.

In philosophy and logic as well, there is the infinite regression argument.  This argument, from the physical world, is considered invalid because as you trace thinks back to their previous cause you must sooner or later arrive at the first cause.  The Physical universe is not eternal or at least shows no evidence for that being the case.  Sagan my ponder this in the vain hope of a way out of this dilemma but it looks more and more like the Cosmos had a first cause because the Cosmos had a beginning.

Dawkins “Checkmate” only applies if “god” is caused by some other previous material physical phenomena.  Dawkins is attempting to bring the metaphysical into the materialists world he imagines he lives in.  He cannot adequately explain even why he has any conception of a “god” if indeed he is merely matter as he believes he is.  He cannot even explain cogently why he has a belief in anything at all.

The Universe had to have a first Cause because it had a beginning.  That cause is God.  The world we live in and the unseen world we cannot see, yet accept as readily as our physical one, such as the world of ideas, reason, desires, hopes, dreams, goals, love and hate are two different planes on reality.  This is easily seen unless blinded by materialist bias and anti-religious malice.

God does not have a beginning, so he doesn’t need a cause.  God is not a material being, but describes himself as a Spirit or at least living outside the physical realm where spirits dwell.  That is He is being and He is mind.  Whatever He ultimately is, he is not a mere physical phenomenon that Dawkins and Mr. A.M. conceive of.

Dawkins is attempting to apply physical argument to non-physical phenomena.  Oops, Category error.   Besides, why would Dawkins even be able to conceive of the idea of God or gods if he was what he believes he is; mere matter, batches of chemicals whistled together into complex forms by magic (evolution, time and chance, fairy dust).  He finds himself, like Mr. .A.M., at the end of the day loaded with all the incorporeal attributes of spirit or mind so he can enjoy and interact with the world around him and be free to make his own decisions for good or evil without interference from a God he hates.

There is also the question of “does Mind create matter or does matter create mind?”  We know that our minds create objects in the real world from available material.  We design, plan, make blue prints, build houses, breed dogs and ponies, make tools, design circuits, and utilize language to facilitate communication so we can learn and share ideas.  Matter does none of this.  So how does matter create mind?  Everything we see and do, including publish articles about irrational worldviews, is a product of mind.  Matter is merely its tool.  It is never observed to be the other way around.  That would be irrational.  Yet Dawkins and Mr. A.M. believe this very thing.  It is of no concern to them that it is not the matter they are composed of that believes, it is the “ghost withing the machine”, their spirit, their mind that does.  The very part of reality they reject if they were honestly consistent with their beliefs, which, of course, they cannot be.

For Prof. Dawkins, Mr. A.M., and anyone else who is unfamiliar with the First Cause argument, they can go to  Why Russell was wrong I: The First Cause Argument to get a better overview.

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Who would you rather meet in a dark alley?

Jesus or Muhammad?

I would like to mention one simple caveat before drawing a comparison between the example of Christ and the example left by Muhammad.  This is NOT a racial comparison but an ideological one.  While it seems that this is hard to grasp for progressive race baiters, most people readily comprehend this.  Let me illustrate this difference.  I have no concerns if a citizen from Germany decided he and his family would like to take part in the “American” experience and migrate to New York.  However if the German citizen was also an avid outspoken member of the Nazi party trying to implement the doctrines and practices of Adolf Hitler, then I would be more than a little concerned.  Nothing is wrong with Germans.  Their ancestry, culture, history is fine.  It is this ideology and the implications of its practice that are of concern.

So it also goes with an Arab.  It doesn’t matter what country or region he and his family are from.  If he and his want to immigrate to America and become part of the fabric of this country, let them come.  However if he is Muslim, then there are other things to consider.  Islam is a political philosophy that includes religion, militarism, law, etc.   It is the implications of practices and implementations of Islam that are of concern.  It is its worldview or ideology when followed by faithfully mimicking the example of its founder that makes it dangerous.  It is not some xenophobic fear that progressives imagine arises from conservative white males.

So what if you were in a dangerous situation, say a dark alley?  This alley has two ways out.  But to get out of the alley you have to pass some shadowy figures at each alley exit.  So you have two choices.  At one exit stand Jesus and his disciples, at the other stands Muhammad and the four rightly-guided Caliphs.  You can expect no help from civil authorities such as police.  Jesus and Muhammad are in complete control of their respective exits and can do what they wish with you without concern.

What you can expect from Muhammad

Muhammad led by example as did Jesus.  Followers of Muhammad’s often refer to him as “the perfect man”.  His example is to be emulated by all true faithful Muslims.   So what was his example?  Although initially there were many competing stories and traditions the common events of his life are well documented by both Islamic and non-Islamic sources.

If you are a non-Muslim

• If you are a women
  • Rape and sexual slavery is a real possibility.  If you are attractive to Muhammad or one of his followers, you may become a concubine.
  • If you accuse them of rape afterward, you must provide four male Muslim witnesses or you will be accused of adultery.
    • If accused of adultery, you may expect to be stoned if the accusers follow Muhammad’s example.

• You may be lied to – called Taqiyya meaning religious deception.
  • Muhammad allowed and encouraged his followers to lie to non-Muslims if it furthered the cause of Allah.
  • It is said that this is akin to “Love you with my face but hate you in my heart”.
  • Taqiyya does not apply to all men, but only the non-believer or the Muslim who is not being diligent enough in his following of Muhammad and Allah.  Usually, the extremist decide who it applies to when dealing with moderate “Muslims”.
  • Some of the source matter used in Taqiyya is the Quran itself because of the doctrine of “Naskh” meaning abrogation.  The Quran itself lays out this doctrine in Sura 2:106.  Abrogation simply means that later verses in the Quran cancel and replace (supersede) earlier verses.
    • Because of abrogation, the earlier, more benign verses are used to give non-Muslims a profile of Islam that is false.  The Muslim knows these verses have been abrogated by much more violent ones.

• You will be considered a Second Class Citizenship – Dhimmitude
  • Sharia law is designed to give special privileges to the Muslim that the non-Muslin does not have, thus establishing Islamic hegemony wherever it is implemented.
  • Muhammad states that Muslims are the best of mankind so they merit considerations that others do not.
  • Non-Muslims need to be humiliated and pay a special tax to Muslims called the “Jizya”.
  • The word of a non-Muslin is not as good as a Muslim and is often not allowed as credible testimony.  Male Muslim testimony is twice as good as female Muslim testimony.

• Do you have children?  They can be bartered, sold and Muhammad’s followers can beat them or have sex with them at their discretion.  They are considered plunder just like your wife and all your possessions.

• Theft, Plunder and War – this was a common practice among Muhammad and his followers
  • Muhammad raided caravans passing through his territory as a means of sustaining and paying his followers.
  • Muhammad was involved personally in at least 26 raids and four major conflicts.
  • Muhammad did not produce a product or trade his labor for wages.  He relied upon his ability to use his followers to plunder the goods produced by others.

• Forced conversion or martyrdom and beheading
  • It was routine to behead captives.  Muhammad oversaw many of these instances and approved such.
  • Often people were given three options.

1. Convert to Islam
2. Beheading
3. Become a dhimmi and pay the jizya.  See second class citizen above.  The jizya (economic oppression) will eventually force non-Muslim peoples to lose economic ground and into an ever lower economic class and eventually insignificance and in some cases extinction.  While non-Muslims are economically viable, they are cows to be milked by their Muslim betters.

• Assassination
  • If you escape the alley you may be visited in the night or be murdered by cunning and deception.  Muhammad approved this on several occasions.

What you can expect from Jesus

The life of Jesus, carried forth at first by oral tradition and then quickly written down starting with 10-15 years after His crucifixion and resurrection by eyewitness testimony is considered by knowledgeable people to be the best documentation that exists in the ancient world.

FYI: This is not about following the institutional Church, of which I have little use for.  Nor is it about following people like Augustine or Calvin, two worse examples of following Christ can hardly be found.  While some individuals may promote men like these to Sainthood it is nearly always based upon their moving writings and not their deeds.  This is about following the example laid out by Christ himself.

If you are a non-Christian

• Found in adultery
  • Forgiveness.  As demonstrated by the woman caught in adultery.  Jesus said to those who condemned her “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”
  • The one caveat being he also said “go and sin no more”.

• If you have ever lied – similar in the Old Testament commandment No. 9 – bearing false witness/giving false testimony.
  • Jesus’ condemnation of lying is stated or implied throughout the New Testament in very strong terms.
  • People who lie and reject the offer of pardon that Jesus Himself purchased on their behalf will be accountable for their own criminal and immoral conduct once they die and stand before God.  This embodies the primary warning he issued on various occasions.
  • Jesus appears everywhere in the New Testament to put a premium on honesty and truth and this is owed to all men, not just Christians.
  • Jesus will not lie to you, however.

• You will not be treated as a Second Class Citizenship
  • No such tradition exists in the teachings or example of Christ.  It is true that until his mission to the Jews was complete, the gentiles would have to wait for the revelation of pardon found in the New Testament.  But that was of historic necessity.
  • However Jesus made many notable exceptions to this and completely removed any distinction after His resurrection.  This was initially implemented in Acts 10.
  • Law based upon the principles found in both Testaments were evidentially based and applied equally to the Jews and Gentiles.  Lying is Lying, eyewitness testimony is eyewitness testimony.  Anybody can claim to be a Christian but the implementation of law applies to everyone.  Evidence for a crime is to determine one’s guilt or innocence regardless of how one’s label.
  • Jesus says clearly to his followers (disciples) that unless you also repent, you will perish.  Jesus makes it very clear that all men have deep moral issues and His prescription for them is the same.
  • Jesus treated all men uniformly, and offered pardon and redemption to all men regardless of background, caste, or status.

• You will not be raped – it is sin and is condemned equally whether Jew, Christian, Atheist or Hindu.  It is something that the civil authorities use the power of the “sword” as Paul puts it to secure justice and peace by punishing such crime.
  • Jesus did not come to change the civil order nor its institutions directly.  He came to change the moral order and by doing so, the change in the moral order would, over time, effect the institutions as in the case of slavery in Wilberforce’s England.
  • Jesus offers forgiveness upon true repentance.  What the civil authorities do is another matter entirely.

• Pedophilia and children as plunder – detestable practices, not going to happen.
  • Jesus example was one of denying self, not indulgence in every form of appetite and passion to the point where you become enslaved to them.  This is true for heterosexual fornication, marital unfaithfulness, homosexual promiscuity and child molestation.  Enslavement to sexual passions can and often does lead to the destruction of self-control and the inability for individuals to govern themselves.

• Theft, Plunder and War – Cannot be found in the example of Jesus.
  • Theft is condemned.  Jesus said to the soldier, be content with your wages, this is, do not use your position of power to exhort monies from those subject to your authority.
  • Jesus encouraged work, thrift, good stewardship and investing.
  • Jesus engaged in no wars.
  • Jesus never was involved in forced conversion or beheading.
    • When this was done by Church institutions or the state under the guise or cover of the Church (like the Spanish Inquisition), it was not because they were following the example of Jesus, they were violating it.

• Assassination – Jesus did not participate in anything like this.  People who do cannot honestly claim to be following Christ regardless of what is stamped on their belt-buckle or hangs around their neck.

Summary and Wrap Up

The debates around Jesus and Muhammad often center around the institutions that arose from some of their followers.  But this is not the same thing as discussing the examples they themselves left.  Any group of people, religious or atheistic, seem to become infected with corruption when they become the state.  Augustine and Calvin pushed for this and have provided the detractors of Christianity many black eyes because of it.  Charles Finney partially went down this road also with deleterious results as Rothbard points out.   Still some successes were had such as William Wilberforce ending slavery in the British empire.

Yet, the abuses that flow from history show a much worse record for Islam and the worse of all for Atheism.  Whenever the state concerns itself with more than justice (not Marxian social justice which is theft and redistribution) and peace it will careen off the tracks and exceed its legitimate jurisdiction.

Never the less, as to examples, Jesus and Muhammad provide very different choices that can not be overcome by the bogus moral equivocation of political correctness.

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The Dork of Oxford – Structure and Information Theory

Dawkins fails to understand structure.

Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place …. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.”  – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

The last post on this subject was meant to be a more general discussing noting the differences because the materialist/atheist/evolutionary viewpoint and the ancient dualism of the Greek and Hebrews and theism in general.  It is very easy to see the vast superiority of dualism over monism but rarely is a worldview decided by rationality.

One former reader, a Mr. A.M., asserted I did not understand the concept behind Dawkins “MEME” nor the idea behind the transmission and subsequent combination of information as it undergoes “selective pressures” and as matter flows from place to place (as Dawkins puts it) because the structure of matter is maintained.  Even though I gave valid references for its definitions and noted the good Professors books from which his theorems arise, still the critic missed the overall point of the post.

Now, structure can account for some things such as preserving and transfer existing information from place to place and through time.  For example, ink and paper can be used by an author to transmit a story, a theory, arguments, ideas, describe desires, advice, etc.

In biological systems, the double helix structure of the chromosomes, contain complex combinations of nucleobases held within a phosphate-deoxyribose spine.  The sequencing of the nucleobases (often represented by the letters C, G, A and T) are the source of the information within the DNA that code for protein synthesis.  It is important to understand that neither the DNA, chromosomes, genes, nor the nucleobases themselves are the information (they are not), but the patterns or sequences of the nucleobases are.  It would be the same thing to confuse the ink or even the shape of the ink (such as letters of the alphabet) as the information, when it is really the ink that is used to form letters that are cobbled together to form patterns that follow rules of syntax and grammar, imposed upon some form of matter, that create a language which is the true source of the information.

Letters are symbols used to represent sounds or objects in the real world.  They are organized by people using rules to construct languages so that communication can be facilitated between individuals who have shared understanding of the grammatical rules of that language.  It requires a sender and a receiver with this shared or common understanding to communicate information, ideas, desires, argument or any other incorporeal non-material mental conception via spoken or written language.

The only evidence we really have is that information requires a physical carrier in order to be conveyed to others who understand the same syntax and grammar, whether spoken or written or carved in stone.  There is no evidence that matter or matter’s structure creates this information (let alone ideas, desires, arguments, values, perceptions or moral standards) regardless whether it undergoes selective pressures to preserve and alter the information it carries or not.   An interesting idea for sure, likely born out of the desperation of the materialist to explain the incorporeal, but it is not science.

All known sources of information require an author which means information is the product of a mind.  Even with this, the author requires readers.  If mechanical (say a machine that can read music and play it back on a computer) it must be designed to do so by some entity that understands the information’s syntax and grammar.  It does not magically happen in the real world we live in; only in Dawkins imaginary world does this occur.  Matter does not comprehend syntax, grammar or ideas.  It does not have properties or attributes that are known to allow for this.  Everything that has been observed, and thus can be called science, is that matter can only carry information if an outside influence forces a structure (code, language) upon it.

In order for incorporeal concepts to be passed on to a receiver of these concepts, the receiver must either learn a language or must be programmed or designed in some fashion to understand the concepts that it will receive.  This goes way beyond mere information.  This includes ideas, perceptions, desires, self-awareness, morality, decisions, judgments, perceiving value, beauty, love of music, appreciation of color and composition, creativity, encouragement, kindness, respect, pride and humility, guilt and shame, virtue and honor, hope, faith, logic, articulate speech, design, and in short, anything that defines humanity.   You can believe that matter must have such abilities and you are welcome to such beliefs but don’t pretend its science.

Materialism and its plunge into the abyss of irrationality hides its nakedness in a wordy world of jargon masquerading as science.  Materialistic bias is not science and in fact violates it.  Yet Dawkins must hold on to this worldview, because the alternative is “unthinkable” (Sir Arthur Keith).   There is no backside of Mt. Improbable to climb in slow small incremental steps.

Materialism commits category errors in ascribing abilities to matter and energy it does not have.  It assumes that the effect is greater than the cause and must do so.  It must believe where there is no evidence to believe and insist that it is an evidenced based rational explanation of things it cannot explain.  It must parade itself as an rational alternative theistic dualism by educational monopolies and ad hominem mockery as intimidation because under its layers of wordy edifices there is nothing but naked irrationality and intellectual vacuity.  Yet it passes for science in a world that is easily fooled by skillfully utilized words.  So once again, God is proved by the impossibility of the opposite and mankind’s accountability to its creator is not assuaged.

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The Dork of Oxford Revisitied

Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place …. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.”  – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Prof. Dawkins has an unshakable belief in the materialistic paradigm and evolutionary biology.  Because of his great belief that matter and energy are all there was, is, or ever will be, Dawkins makes an amazing discovery, or rather, comes to an astounding conclusion.  Since your original matter and energy was not really present at the event of a children memory, yet you retain that memory, there must be a mechanism for the transference of this memory.  Because he rejects the obvious implication of dualism, he asserts that matter, flowing from place to place, has some unknown hidden trait that carries with it memories of events that it passed through.  Of course if this were true, I should be able to remember not only my own personal memories but I should have memories of all events my matter has passed through from the beginning of its existence.

For simplicity sake, monism as used here means that reality is composed of a single strata or substance, that is matter (or matter and energy) and is akin to materialistic atheism.  Dualism, such as was common to the belief of the ancient Greeks or Hebrews, states that reality is composed of both mind and matter and that these two things are distinct.  So when I say Dawkins in a monist I mean he believes in a single layer of reality.  This means that Dawkins has to explain how matter can acquire the attributes of the incorporeal, i.e., of mind.

Dawkins attempts to do this with the concept of the MEME he proposed in “The Selfish Gene”. Never mind that there is not one iota of evidence for it except for the use of large words used in a way to make them sound scientific. Never mind that He uses the canned Neo-Darwinian mechanism to explain how memes operate.

Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition and inheritance, each of which influence a meme’s reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread and (for better or for worse) mutate. –  Wikipedia

To keep things squarely in a materialist framework and avoid the more obvious conclusion of theistic dualism, Dawkins has to invent quasi-evolution constructs like memes.  There is no basis for this in the evidential world in which Dawkins claims to live.  He simply does not know how to explain memory, fashion, or social habits that are found in all cultures.  He certainly knows of no explanation for why a hunk of matter, like yourself, should find art, music or architecture of any interest at all.  After all, dirt is not musical.  It is not moral, it has no memory, contains no blue print or plan.  Matter does not choose a set of symbols and organize them to create the syntax and grammar needed by a sender and a receiver to communicate intentions.  Matter is not in and of itself information baring, nor does it impose upon that information syntax and grammar.  

We use matter in many ways, to pave streets or forge into tools or light up houses and keep warm.  What we don’t do is assume it can make moral choices or have unsatisfied desires.  My granite counter-top does not pine away wishing it were back in the old mountain it was dug from, at least, not to my knowledge.  Such a belief would be considered idiotic.  The average, normal, rational person, driven by the evidence all around him treats matter as distinct from mind.  The normal assumption of anybody free of materialist atheism that arises out of evolutionary pollution is to treat the world as dualistic rather than monistic.

Memes and replication really explain nothing at all, least of which is now matter acquires the attributes of mind.  Of course, to Dawkins, mind is brain.  But mind is not brain.  Brain is matter.  As an analogy we could use a television.  Now I realize no analogy is perfect but they can be instructive.

Say a person is siting at home watching “Happy Days”.  The cable or satellite or TV antenna is picking up the signal and passing it through the matrix of circuits that is the television.  Then, something goes wrong.  Prehaps the sound goes out, or all the reds drop out of the picture, or focus is lost.  What happened?  The signal is still there, with all the information is has always contained.  The other TV in the bedroom is still seeing the picture fine.  So, a repairman is called.  He replaces a part.  Then another, then another.  Finally the show can be viewed properly again.  But the television has new parts that were not in the original configuration.  Shouldn’t that make a difference?  Not at all because those parts that were needed to see the show properly are completely independent of the signal carrying the show itself.

The same is true of the soul or mind or spirit.  The brain may not always work right but it is mere interface for the mind.  Memory, desire, values, decisions, free-will, analysis, sorrow, guilt, wonder, amazement, fear, hope, love, hate, purpose, appreciation, gratitude, composition of literature or of music, devotion, ideas, beliefs, and rationality are not found in matter but in mind.

To believe that the love of architecture is merely a signature of some combination of matter and energy is to believe that the effect can be greater than the cause.  No rational person believes that.  It is akin to saying that books create authors or that I can pour one gallon of water into an empty five gallon bucket expecting it to overflow.  It is like believing that 2 + 2 will always be greater then 4.  It is a position of extreme irrationality in the presence of the evidence of all reality.  What Dawkins and all materialists do is attribute properties to matter that matter does not have and that there is zero evidence for.  According to the materialistic atheism of Dawkins, matter desires and remembers those desires and thinks about them using the laws of mind like identity and non-contradiction and excluded middle.  Matter has never been observed to possess any of these properties.  Matter has never been observed to possess ideas or logic or deductive reasoning.  These things are far beyond the pour capabilities of matter.  Matter has never been demonstrated to possess these things and no  evidence exists for such conclusions. Such a simple thing as a category fallacy sends very bright people into this maze of stupidity.

Yet, Dawkins, Dennett and a great parade of Oxford dons and Cambridge apostles array these beliefs as rational.  They tell us with sophisticated language and complex theorems that matter can create mind.   It is easier to believe that books create authors.  They want us to believe that they are the rationalists among us while the foundation of their beliefs are nitwittery.

Is it any wonder Dennett and Provine claim free-will is an illusion?  How could they not if they believe that all mental interactions are just collisions of electric forces governed by physical law.  But how does matter come to have the capacity of illusion?  How is the matter in our bodies self-aware enough to be even concerned about such an illusion?  How is illusion a construct of matter rather than mind?  In Dawkins’ world it must be so because mind really doesn’t exist, just matter flowing here and there with unknown magically memes recording everything.   After which it becomes me or you for a short time.  For that short time we are drones living an illusion and we then think deep thoughts and have unlimited desires and make billions of choices only to disappear again and flow somewhere else.  An this is called science?

While being a drone, devoid of free-will may make one a prefect candidate for the state collective, many people, common people, reject Dawkins’ atheistic materialism and evolutionary biology not because of ignorance or evil, but because its foundation forces upon them a belief in the absurd.   Dawkins’ monist worldview is not rational but irrational to the point of silliness, it is certain men professing to be wise when they are fools, it is a belief that the effect is always greater than the cause, it is saying that if you want to be considered a brilliant thinker by the elite pundits of the world you have to begin from a base of irrationality.

Why is it that those who believe in a reality of matter and energy only use non-material means such as ideas and language and argument to convince us we should dispense with our common sense and follow their light into darkness?

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Truth or Propaganda, 9 out of 10 can’t tell the difference

We exchanged a mediocre fascist regime for a more efficient fascist-communist hybrid

In ever increasing numbers, people today, and especially the young adults freshly minted from government schooling and our elite common-sense destroying colleges, view truth as relative. What this means is that there is really no baseline, no standard of measurement, beyond the subjective such as opinion, desire, personal perspective or the force used by the state.

Enforcing and law or indulgence in desire

This is like a policemen who only pulls over attractive women for speeding. Say the speed limit is 35 mph but the woman was going 55 mph. But instead of appealing to the speed limit as an external measure of the infraction, the policemen pulled the woman over for some other reason that was completely arbitrary and had nothing to do with the speed limit. Maybe the policemen has a hard time meeting women and the woman happened to be a fine looking specimen in his eyes.

His desire to meet women can not be used in any objective sense to measure a speeding infraction by any court. Subjective desires do not provide a measurable standard in this sense.  Were the policeman to act in this manner, it would be considered unjust and illogical, not to mention that this policeman may have real mental problems and possibly be a danger to the woman. Once the intention of the policeman become known to the woman, that she is not being stopped for speeding but because the officer has a problem with his loins, what will go through her mind? Fear? Feelings of being threatened? Rape? Yes, these and perhaps many more.

Concepts like justice and logic and safety, although subjectively perceived, are tied to external reality. And despite Hume’s best efforts to obfuscate the common man’s ability to clearly and accurately connect mental abstractions with the world around them, we all do just that, all the time.

Truth is never relative in the same way and at the same time. It is always concrete. If I say “I have cheese in my refrigerator”, then I either do or I don’t at the time that statement was made. The only way to tell if I am lying or telling the truth is to open the refrigerator and see if I indeed have cheese in it. If my statement corresponds to reality, it is true. If not, it is false. It may be my opinion that I have cheese in my fridge, and I may be mistaken. But the statement is never-the-less false, although it may not be a lie if there was no intention to deceive.  So while morality (whether a thing is a lie or merely incorrect) adds another layer of subjectivity to any incident by including motive and purpose to the accurate determination of truth, it still must have some correspondence to reality, even if that reality is logic or mathematics rather than corporeal.

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” F. A. Hayek

Even in economics (true economics, not Keynesian-ism)  the subjective desires of consumers to purchase this or that, no matter how whimsical, needs to be subject to measurement in some way.  This measurement cannot be found in Keynes or Samuelson’s mathematical macro economic models for sure.  Yet, the free market still provides businesses with all the feedback they need to invest, allocate resources, stock inventory and to measure success.  This feedback mechanism is called profit.  It is the pricing mechanism that works unless distortions are introduced by non-market forces seeking intervention and control, e. g., Governments, Banks, and their corporate lackies who are currently very busy destroying the economy in the ridiculous and arrogant belief that they can manage something they don’t even understand.

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” John Adams – on why were are a constitutional republic.

If truth were really relative as so many people are taught today, how could one tell the difference between truth and propaganda?  If truth is relative, it is mere opinion or preference or desire. If truth is mere opinion, all is propaganda. So what makes your opinion better than mine? What makes it better than the fascists who run the government? Why is your opinion better than the Nazis? In fact, can someone who believes that truth is relative really say anything meaningful?

The truth is, (not just my truth, but yours too), even the most ardent progressive who denies any absolute position on anything, be it moral or not, will quickly call someone a liar, a fraud, a bigot, racist, intolerant, close minded, and any other ad hominem insult he can think with little provocation.  But these assertions have no logical meaning without truth being objective and absolute.  If truth is relative there is no measuring stick.  The very idea of truth becomes an absurdity.  You can’t handle the truth because there is no truth to handle.

If everything is relative, then there is no logic.  Logic assumes the laws of the mind.  Non-contradiction, one of the basic laws of the mind, states that a thing cannot be both true and false in the same way at the same time.  A table is not a Christmas ham nor is a Christmas ham a table.  The object we place the Christmas ham on to serve before guests is either a table or it is not.  It cannot be both a table and not a table at the same time.  While Hume may play word games to illustrate that the symbol in the mind that corresponds to table is not identical with the word “table” which is not identical with the actual object in time and space which is the actual “table”.  In the real, functioning world, these distinctions are ignored.  People still call each other liars and appeal to external and historical facts to evaluate the truth or falsity of claims made by others even if Hume says you cannot know the thing in itself.  So many people may be to stupid to see the obvious contradiction between believing that truth is relative and how they live there lives.

If everything is relative, moral truth is absurd.  There are no lies and no liars.  Atheist world views do not provide any substance for moral evaluation yet they expect their moral pronouncements of right and wrong, of truth and lies, to be taken seriously and have meaning.

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear . . .There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.”  Provine, W.B., Origins Research16(1), p.9, 1994.

What was startlingly clear to Provine apparently escapes the less philosophically sophisticated Dawkins and Dennett.  Indeed, Dawkins and Dennett make ethical pronouncements galore spending much time over generalizing, setting straw men, and reducing argument after argument to reductio ad absurdum in an endless effort to obtain the moral high ground as a point of persuasion.  A high ground that should not exist in there world view.  But again, God is proved by the impossibility of the opposite.

So circling back the wagons, we come again to this generation of people, who like Dawkins and Dennett, believe in contradictory absurdities.  Truth is relative, so they can no longer distinguish between what is and what is not propaganda.  Perfect.  This is just what the government and there allies in the media and the central planners at the banks and treasury want.  A nation of drones, amused by bread and circuses, so freedom can perish and free men become slaves once again.

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Strange Objections #1: The Scotsman

An individual recently made an assertion in an attempt to frame the argument against Christianity by disallowing distinctions.  The actual phrase was…

And no, you don’t get to decide who’s a “true christian”. You also don’t get to decide who a “true scotsman” is (look it up).  – Name withheld.

The problems with this objection are many.  Who does get to decide?  He implies no one which must further imply that their is a criteria other then what the Bible lays down.  But since the Bible is the only authoritative document that lays out the criteria, the comparison to a Scotsman is hogwash.

• A Scotsman is born in Scotland.  A “true” Christian is one who decides to become a Christian, that is, he decides to repent and believe.  It is not decided where one is born.   If you are born into a nation that is considered a “Christian” nation because the institutional religion that predominates that country is of a Christian origin is not a criteria laid down in the Bible.  The chances may be higher that you may become a Christian, like being born in Italy may mean you are likely to practice Catholicism but it is not a foregone conclusion.   So a Scotsman’s place of birth is Scotland.  Not so the Christian.

• A Scotsman cannot stop being a Scotsman.  Nor can a non-Scotsman decide to be one.  This is not true of a Christian.  He can reject Christianity any time.  The non-believer can become a Christian at any time if he meets the conditions of repentance and faith.

• Biblically (which is the only valid standard) one is not a Christian by being born into a Christian country or family or culture or by claiming to be one or by wearing a cross or stamping Bible quotes on their clothing, any more than wearing a kilt makes one a Scotsman.  These are superficial earmarks.  I can wear a kilt but I am no Scotsman because of it.

• Repentance and faith are required
  • because each man is a criminal when measured by the external standard of Law (the 10 commandments) and one’s conscience.
  • What Christ offers is Pardon for the guilty.  This is only for those who acknowledge their guilt, regret their deeds and are willing to surrender (that is, give up their life of crime).
  • Saving faith is that faith by which the repentant individual accepts the offer of pardon.

So it is quite easy to see that the claim of being a “Christian” actually has nothing to do with being naturally born in a certain place or culture which is quite different from the Scotsman.  This is a queer attempt at trying to put the argument out of reach so he could make the ridiculous claim that Hitler and the SS were Christians because of mere claims or slogans on belt buckles.  Also the attempt to say that the “church” supported Hitler.  The Church being referred to was the Catholic Church during WWII.

Even so, there were members of the catholic church that hide Jews and members that aided the Nazis by turning them in.  Some obeyed conscience and some gave in to fear and some blindly followed the lead of their particular church institution.  This individual wants so badly to place Hitler into the Christian camp that he made a Scotsman into a straw-man.

He has never read the pre-Augustinian history of the church nor Richard Weikart’s book “From Darwin to Hitler” nor how the German translation of “Mein Kampf” uses “evolved” while the English publishers substituted “developed” nor is he familiar with Hitler’s great hatred of the Churches benevolence towards the poor, weak and needly as it violated the Aryan Superman and survival of the fittest.  Many of his rants are still available today.

As hard as it may be to believe that in the age of such free and vast amounts of information such freedom is often no match for human bias and ignorance in the face of such data.

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The absurdity of it stares you in the face.

Read something on Mises.org today.  It was a review of Thomas Nagel’s book “Mind and Cosmos”.  The author of the review seems to take the following statement as a given and rather uncritically.

Evolution can account for our attraction to pleasure or aversion to pain.

How so?  How does pain exist in inert matter?  Or pleasure?  And why do we come to value the one and avoid the other?  These things we come to value or despise are far beyond the capacity of matter.  Evolution can’t account for anything.  The naturalist must start with matter and energy.  But if that is all there ever was, is, or will be (to paraphrase Mr. Sagan), evolution cannot even account for the information that is needed to build the micro-machinery to cobble together a bacteria, let alone a metaphysical phenomena such as an impulse of pleasure.

There are more things in heaven and earth …
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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Life after Death

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.  Provine, W.B., Origins Research 16(1), p.9, 1994.

I find it logically absurd for people to talk about justice and injustice, right and wrong, good and evil, ethics or morality in general who believe that the here and now is all there is.  They do not believe in life after death so they really do not believe in any real and ultimate consequences or rewards to any moral conduct.  Here’s what I mean.

• What purpose does morality have since the ultimate reward for every individual is the same (death)
  • If you are as evil as Adolf Hitler or Jeffery Dahmer, your end is death
  • If you are as good as Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi, your end is death
  • If you make wise decisions, your end is death
  • If you make terrible decisions, your end is death
  • If you have every dream fulfilled or have very dream end in frustration, your end is death
  • If you “do your own thing” or fail at it miserably, you die regardless
  • If you take up a “just” cause and see it triumph or you become a genocidal madman who oppresses multitudes with fear, plunder, torture and death, the outcome is identical, i.e., death

In other words, the ultimate consequences for any moral position are the same, death.  If this is true, then what purpose does morality serve?  It does not convey a “survival advantage”.  Many animals succeed without it.  In fact, it only interferes with survival of the fittest.  Charitable, human acts often help the weak and poor survival when they normally wouldn’t.  Then they eventually die anyway so what is the point?

If no life after death, we shouldn’t be moral at all.  There is no point to it.  Yet people who claim they actually believe that there is no life after death, make moral judgments all the time.  But why?  If the consequence and outcome of all life is death, it serves no purpose, conveys no advantage (who cares about survival advantage since you and your progeny will die anyway) and makes no sense.  Why do they pretend morality, love, kindness, tolerance, benevolence, etc., has any value at all yet claim life is ultimately meaningless.   Why are they upset when someone lies to them or harms them?

What is their purpose in living?  For the pleasure of the moment?  Again, whether your life is filled with every pleasure or none at all, you are a dead man.

If there is no life after death, there is no real consequences, no real justice, no meaning to existence, and morality is simply non-sense.   Yet, it exists.

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Attributes of Matter #1

Some known attributes of matter	The attributes or properties of matter are physical phenomenon. They are not mental in any form. We label them in order to categorize, identify and manipulate them, that is, to use and make use of them for our own benefit. But matter does care about it’s own benefit or yours. Nor does it categorize anything. Should I place matter into some category of my own contrivance matter is not effected one bit.
Matter will not become self-aware (sorry SkyNet) no matter how complicated we arrange it. Self-awareness, opinion, perception of value, judgment, discretion, etc., are simply not known properties of matter but of “mind”. To ascribe things such as desire or choice or ideas to matter would be ridiculous. There is no rational proof or scientific evidence for such a thing. It would be a supreme leap of faith (actually more akin to superstition than faith) without any kind of logical underpinnings. Their are no eye-witnesses, no historical, forensic or archaeological evidence, no axiomatic logic or use of inference that can lay out a rational case for the belief that matter possess such qualities as love of beauty or lust for gold.
To ascribe properties of “mind” to matter is to commit the logical fallacy called a category error.  That is the same thing as ascribing taste to a color.  What does the color green taste like? or smell like? or feel like? or sound like?  It is just as silly to wonder what ideas matter came up with today? And then wonder how it came to its conclusion.  It also is to take the irrational position of believing that the effect can be greater then the cause.
Fanciful attributes of matter evolutionists and atheists wish for.	Non Theists must start with a grand leap into the irrational, disregarding all evidence to the contrary, believing in a concept that mind can arise from matter. The non-theist must believe that the effect can somehow be greater then the cause. They must metaphorically believe that one can poor 2 gallons of water into an empty five gallon bucket and it will overflow. They must believe that a book can create an author or that the outcome of 2 + 2 can be greater than 4.
In short, the non-theist must ascribe “magical” powers to matter.  Atheism and evolution are superstitious faiths rooted in the irrational belief that matter can come to create and possess attributes of mind like thinking and reasoning. This is why atheists and evolutionists do not discuss their presuppositions as they are founded upon the mere desire for certain things to be true. At their core their believes are not given to logical proofs or scientific evidences but run contrary to them. This is why they spend all their time arguing about the interpretation of minutia yet lack the philosophical clarity needed to analyze the assumptions they make about reality.
To call ones viewpoint logical or intelligent while maintaining that attributes of mind can and must have arisen out of matter is absurd in the extreme. It is not only ridiculous but it doesn’t even have the rational foundation of a good faith. It is patently false. Effects cannot be greater then their causes and no evidence exists for the belief that attributes of mind arise from matter.
To the contrary, mental constructs can make use of matter to fulfill a vision. An architect can draw up a blue print, the information of which can be used to arrange stone or brick, cooper pipe, etc., into a house. An interior decorator can style it to the owner’s liking. But matter itself does not care about style or the owner’s preference for sage instead of pink. Nor is matter aware of the information used from the blueprint or gleaned from the experience of skilled craftsmen to build a house or anything else.

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