Jordan Peterson - The Existence of Free Will--meaning conscious moral responsibility

A very thoughtful reflection from Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, Ph.D. in clinical psychology, McGill University.

Don't be confused by the contrary claims of various thinkers who state that all humans are only helpless "puppets," incapable of moral responsibility and creative choice, etc.


Seek the Good, the True, the Just, the Altruistic, the Kind, the Equal,

Daniel Wilcox

Is This True: "Most Scientists Are Non-Religious" According to Jerry Coyne?

Biologist and Atheist Jerry Coyne writes on his science webblog,
"Why else are most scientists nonreligious—far more so than the general public?"

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/ideologically-motivated-teachers-indoctrinate-students-into-thinking-that-science-and-religion-are-compatible/

Caution: Whether or not religion or non-religion, theism or atheism, is true, isn't a popularity contest!

The number of scientists who are or aren't "religious" is only a general indicator of whether or not science and religion are compatible, not whether religion is true or false.

HOWEVER, contrary to atheist Jerry Coyne, according to Pew Research, 51% of scientists aren't atheists.

That means that a majority of scientists are 'religious," not the "most scientists are nonreligious," Coyne's claim.

"According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power."

"Finally, the poll of scientists finds that four-in-ten scientists (41%) say they do not believe in God or a higher power."
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/

That doesn't sound like "most scientists" are "non-religious."

But let's give professor Coyne the benefit of the doubt; maybe his claim was that "most scientists" are not organizationally Christian?
--

Also, consider this study done by Rice University:
"First worldwide survey of religion and science: No, not all scientists are atheists
AMY MCCAIG – DECEMBER 3, 2015

"Are all scientists atheists? Do they believe religion and science can co-exist?"

"These questions and others were addressed in the first worldwide survey of how scientists view religion, released today by researchers at Rice University."

“More than half of scientists in India, Italy, Taiwan and Turkey self-identify as religious,” Ecklund said.

“And it’s striking that approximately twice as many ‘convinced atheists’ exist in the general population of Hong Kong, for example, (55 percent) compared with the scientific community in this region (26 percent).”

“No one today can deny that there is a popular ‘warfare’ framing between science and religion,” said the study’s principal investigator, Elaine Howard Ecklund, founding director of Rice University’s Religion and Public Life Program and the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences. “This is a war of words fueled by scientists, religious people and those in between.”

"The study’s results challenge longstanding assumptions about the science-faith interface. While it is commonly assumed that most scientists are atheists, the global perspective resulting from the study shows that this is simply not the case."

"Elite scientists: 34% Atheist, 30% Agnostic, 36% Religious"

"The researchers did find that scientists are generally less religious than a given general population."

However, there were exceptions to this:
39 percent of scientists in Hong Kong identify as religious compared with 20 percent of the general population of Hong Kong,
and 54 percent of scientists in Taiwan identify as religious compared with 44 percent of the general population of Taiwan."

"Ecklund noted that such patterns challenge longstanding assumptions about the irreligious character of scientists around the world."

"When asked about terms of conflict between religion and science, Ecklund noted that only a minority of scientists in each regional context believe that science and religion are in conflict."

"In the U.K. – one of the most secular countries studied – only 32 percent of scientists characterized the science-faith interface as one of conflict. In the U.S., this number was only 29 percent."

"In addition to the survey’s quantitative findings, the researchers found nuanced views in scientists’ responses during interviews. For example, numerous scientists expressed how religion can provide a “check” in ethically gray areas."

"Ecklund and fellow Rice researchers Kirstin Matthews and Steven Lewis collected information from 9,422 respondents in eight regions around the world: France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S."

"They also traveled to these regions to conduct in-depth interviews with 609 scientists, the largest worldwide survey and interview study ever conducted of the intersection between faith and science."

About Amy McCaig
Amy is a senior media relations specialist in Rice University's Office of Public Affairs.
http://news.rice.edu/2015/12/03/first-worldwide-survey-of-religion-and-science-no-not-all-scientists-are-atheists/

Also, consider this survey's results:
NBCNews
updated 6/23/2005 11:42:26 AM ET

"CHICAGO — A survey examining religion in medicine found that most U.S. doctors believe in God..."

"In the survey of 1,044 doctors nationwide, 76 percent said they believe in God..."

“We were surprised to find that physicians were as religious as they apparently are,” said Dr. Farr Curlin, a researcher at the University of Chicago’s MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics."
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8318894/ns/health-health_care/t/survey-most-doctors-believe-god-afterlife/

Of course, probably, Coyne would argue that doctors aren't scientists.

But even discounting doctors, it isn't true that "most scientists are nonreligious."

Professor Coyne needs to edit his incorrect claim, or provide contrary evidence.

In the Light of Ultimate Reality, God, Deity, Divine, Essence, the Good, Transcendence, Process, Higher Power, Meaning,
(or whatever other term religious people use to refer to their convincement
that matter and energy aren't the only reality).

Daniel Wilcox

Part #2: Ultimate Becoming, Divine Process

INTRODUCTION:
(Skip, if you are in a hurry.)

At birth (that of our species, and individually), we humans awoke into this cosmos and have been asking "Why?" ever since.

What makes this so difficult is that while many of our brilliant scientists can make fairly reliable observations of matter and energy, so many of them disagree on almost everything else.

It does appear that we humans can only make educated guesses about--Ultimate Reality, traditionally called "GOD."

But even the term causes untold arguments, harmful hostilities, and brutal slaughters. "GOD" is the most conudrummed of all semantic jungles.

Unfortunately, it is almost always a 'con' being 'drummed' into other people's consciousness by Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Hindus, and others.

Usually, one needs to spend hours of writing long complicated explanations of why what others think you mean by "GOD" isn't at all what you mean, nor for that matter is it anything like how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the general word.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
God--"1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality"

So without further ado, I am, again, going to move toward using UR, and seldom mention the traditional empty-bucket term.

That way, hopefully, most readers won't be sent down millions of other rabbit holes
chasing after Alice and Humpty Dumpty;-(

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."
--





POINT #1:

This article will approach the issue/complexity/conundrum/philosophical WHY from our human 'bottom up' of practical daily living. (For those who want very abstract, more technical discussions, please Google that. There are thousands of such fine sites including http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/, https://philosophynow.org/, and http://plato.stanford.edu/.)

We all have presuppositions that we live with that shape our views and our choices and our actions. Millions of humans are unaware of their central presuppositions in a similar way that a fish wouldn't be aware that he exists in the ocean.

We get "thrown" into our society, culture, nation, family at birth and so grow up seeing the world, time, and reality through those particular glasses. Thankfully, millions of us get a good enough education that we learn to distance ourselves from thinking our own colored glasses are the only real view of reality.

SO HERE WE ARE AT THIS MOMENT!

SUBPOINT A: CHOICES

In order to function from moment to moment, each of us assumes that we can make choices, that we can alter our life, that we are responsible, that we can make a difference in the world, etc.

The only exception to this, of course, are the severely mentally ill--those who have no sense of individual self or who have catastrophic delusions.

In my view this is why determinism/fate/foreordination doesn't work in real life despite the fact that some brilliant thinkers claim that all humans are "puppets" and that "human choice" is an illusion.

But those very same thinkers don't actually put into practice their convinced view in their own lives. In fact, it would seem impossible to do so.

Rather, they mostly use their conclusion as a hammer to smash other worldviews that they disagree with.

For example, here is one very clear example:

Biologist Jerry Coyne states almost weekly on his website that no human has any choice. He agrees with neuroscientist Sam Harris that we have no more choice than the mass murderer in Texas whose brain tumor forced him to kill other people.
(Listen to Harris' interview with Jerry Coyne and to his podcast "Tumors All the Way Down.")

According to Coyne, we can't even choose what we want to eat for lunch. Even worse, he argues that every murderer and every rapist has no choice but to murder and rape because it was determined that they must.

Thus there is no moral responsibility, none at all--according to Coyne.

Yet Coyne repeatedly bans individuals on the Internet if they disagree with him or his views; or if (from his perspective) they choose to be "discourteous."

This makes no rational or scientific sense!
(Which is unusual for such a brilliant scientist.
In contrast, Coyne's book on evolution, Why Evolution Is True,
is a lucid, very rational explanation of biology and life!

Take a look at the contradiction.

Today, on his website, Coyne states this:

"But Penn neglects a serious problem when he says this: 'You’re not allowed to hate people for their ideas.' Now that’s just not right. Excuse me for Godwinning, but are we not allowed to hate Hitler, only his Nazism and anti-Semitism? Are we not allowed to hate Jihadi John, who cuts off people’s heads, but only the religious ideology that promoted that action? Are we not allowed to hate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose “theology” has led to the deaths of thousands?"

"The fact is that people instantiate their ideas through their actions, and holding beliefs that can inspire bad acts is itself reprehensible."--Jerry Coyne

WAIT a minute. Coyne declares that no one can even choose what he would like to eat for lunch. And much worse declares that ALL murderers and rapists
aren't morally responsible for their murders and rapes!

YET now he states that people who hold ideas and actions and beliefs that he, Coyne, disagrees with are "reprehensible."

That doesn't compute!

How can anyone be "reprehensible" if they are "puppets" incapable of choice??!!

According to Coyne and other hard determinists' view of reality,
Nazis, Hitler, Jihadi John, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi don't have a choice, can't even move a finger,
let alone choose
what ideas they hold, what beliefs they choose, and what actions they take.

They are only dust in the cosmic wind determined by the laws of physics; always done to,
never able to choose contrary to what has been determined.

Of course, Coyne has already stated many times, too, that he himself has no choice about anything. Nothing!

So I suppose Coyne would now say that he doesn't have a choice but must "hate" others and must write this article.

But see what a confusing, contradictory, endless loop that gets us all into.

The word Coyne uses is "reprehensible" which means "very bad : deserving very strong criticism," but Coyne at the same time says that no human has any choice but to do what has been determined.

Then Coyne goes onto state, "But what about good people who adopt and act on those bad ideas? Don’t they become bad people?"

HUH? Coyne has already stated that murderers don't have any choice, none at all. Neither do civil people. So how in the world could a "good" person "adopt and act on those bad ideas"?

None of us can do 'nothin'.

Some determinists argue that while "human choice" is an illusion, it is yet practical to assume it in daily life.

But, again, notice that in their argument they have temporarily abandoned their determinism and instead now state that any one can choose to "assume" they have a choice, (which is really an illusion), because it is beneficial.

??

Despite all their brilliance, it seems determinists are wrong about determinism because none of them--none of us--can operate from moment to moment, living as a "puppet" or a "wet robot," not choosing.

Such a view automatically incapacitates my next moment because in order to be human I need to assume that I can choose!

SUBPOINT B: ETHICS

Many atheists and non-religious commentators think that religious people live in illusions. And there is a lot of truth to such a charge.

For instance, consider brilliant scholars like Richard Lyman Bushman, winner of the Bancroft Prize, author of the brilliant biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of Latter Day Saints (Mormon).

Bushman is a fine scholar, yet when it comes to analyzing the rampant adultery and promiscuity of Smith, Bushman clearly shades the facts, trying to exonerate Smith, because of his biases, his own faith in Mormonism.

But religious people can also be motivated by objective ethics, not only by illusions and irrational ideas. Many critics of religion fail to realize this.

Neil Carter, a former Christian, and now atheist blogger wrote on his website today, "Your approach to conversation with the devout must also take into account that they themselves are active participants in their religion, continually creating their own personal experience of the divine on a subconscious level, apart from their own awareness."
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2016/08/26/what-lies-beneath-the-suit-of-armor/

Evidently this was Neil's own experience and that of the Christians he knew, but I didn't ever experience God in such a way. I never experienced what countless Christian leaders said Christians did--a vivid sense of God's presence--so I thought there was something wrong with me.

In all my years as a Christian, I NEVER once received an answer to even one of my prayers. (These weren't minor prayers or self-centered prayers). But no answer ever came.

Spiritual leaders told me to wait.

I did for years.

I couldn't understand how other Christians were so dedicated to prayer.

And their claims of answers to their prayers appeared to be illusionary, at times very bogus.

So why did I stay with the sinking ship?

My chief reason for being a Christian was always ethical. I was dedicated to human rights, to the good, the true, the just, the equal, and the beautiful, and so on.

Many of those who opposed my faith and hope--
our professors who were secular, (many atheists), other students (at the University of Nebraska, Long Beach State) who were skeptics and anti-religious, and then later other non-Christians--
often supported and participated in unethical behavior.

So even though I found myself constantly doubting my religion, and totally opposed to other parts of it,
I didn't jump ship for a very long time, because of the ethics.

When it became clear that there was another way to be more ethical, one much better than Christianity, then I left.

Some very smart people assert that there are no real ethics, that we humans "construct" ethics, so slavery is really not wrong, but is advantageous to survival and so is correct, though that is only a subjective cultural, societal view. Back in the past, when most humans supported slavery, then slavery wasn't wrong.

This sounds like an atheistic version of how Neil is describing Christian illusion.

If one's ethics aren't grounded, based in, reality, then they would appear to be delusionary.

Besides, if humans have to "construct" ethics, then there is no basis for holding all humans to the same ethical standards. Then morality becomes whatever an society claims it is.

Some non-religious leaders including Bob Seidensticker and Hermant Mehta state that ethics are "programmed" into the human species, but this is clearly denied by nearly all biologists.

1.If there is no programmer, then no programs can be written.

2.Almost all biologists state that evolution has no goals, no purpose, no meaning.

Many of the non-religious biologists go even further and emphasize that homo sapiens aren't better than other species, but only a twig on the bush of natural selection.

3.And even if one decides to think that humans are more important than other species, there is no basis for deciding which traits of natural selection are better, are more ethical than others.

Millions of humans have chosen the very successful behaviors of deception, enslavement, abuse, and slaughter.
Some humans--a minority--have instead chosen honesty, equality, compassion, and non-violence.

If there are no true, real ethics, no actual "oughts" in the sense that philosophers of the past meant such as Immanuel Kant, then how can humans decide which actions are better and which are wrong?

If we humans must "construct" our own ethics, who is to say that it is wrong for parents to mutilate little girls (as over 80% of Muslim parents do in Egypt)?


Or that it is wrong for all women to be in subjection to their husbands and that women can't be leaders (as the vast majority of Muslims, many conservative Christians believe)?

Or that all humans are equal and have unalienable rights (as Enlightenment leaders and human rights organizations claim)?

The whole basis of the Enlightenment, the abolition of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and so forth is that ethics are real and true, and need to be discovered and lived for by everyone.

Some atheists argue that survival is the only true value.

But if there are no true "oughts," then why do they make "survival" an exception?

For many who claim ethics are subjective preferences of human cultures and societies, not objectively real, contradictorily state that the human species "ought" to continue.

But why "ought" we humans to continue if there are no "oughts," none at all?

Besides, a quick glance back down history-way will show the innumerable horrors that the ethics of survival have led millions of humans to commit. Billions of humans have been abused, tortured, and slaughtered including millions of innocent civilians, including many children!

Fairly recently a number of human thinkers have justified the intentional slaughter of many infants, children, elderly, etc. to protect their country and their country's soldiers in the speculative future! This the view of millions of Americans, Palestinians, and others.


Subpoint C

To be continued--


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox



1 Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

How Would You Answer Jerry Coyne?

How would you answer this?

The atheist, biologist, and hard determinist Jerry Coyne asked this question today on his website:

Jerry Coyne: "If you were asked to explain to someone, say an open-minded person you’d just met, why you’re an atheist,
and were limited to at most three sentences,
what would you say?"

Wouldn't the most reasonable answer be--if one is a determinist:

"I had no choice
because it was determined by the cosmos, the laws of physics, etc. that I must be an atheist,
exactly like it was determined by the cosmos that some humans must be theists."

According to biologist Jerry Coyne, God doesn't exist because
#1 of "lack of evidence"
#2 of "evidence against the idea of God...existence of undeserved evil..."
--


For free will theists out there--those who think all human do have a choice--what would you say to Jerry Coyne
as to why you think God is real?


What would you tell Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris, and other determinists,
why you think that all humans
do have moral choice and creative ability?


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Are Science and Religion Best Friends, Sworn Enemies, Unknown Strangers?

Do science and religion conflict?

If so, how much--partially, or completely?

Are many scientists who are also theists, (about 51% according to Pew), being dishonest as atheist thinkers claim?

Why do such scientists say they think religion as well as science is true?

Or do science and religion coexist as friends, not always getting along, but complementing each other, even existing in "harmony"?

Or are science and religion completely separate ways of understanding within human thinking?

Let's start with antagonism:

#1 The SWORN ENEMIES VIEW
(of Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and other contemporary atheists):

TIME MAGAZINE: "Professor Dawkins, if one truly understands science, is God then a delusion, as your book title suggests?"

RICHARD DAWKINS: "The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no."

"I think that's the mother and father of all cop-outs. It's an honest scientific quest to discover where this apparent improbability comes from. Now Dr. Collins says, 'Well, God did it. And God needs no explanation because God is outside all this."

"Well, what an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain. Scientists don't do that. Scientists say, 'We're working on it. We're struggling to understand.'
You're shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word God."

"People who believe in God conclude there must have been a divine knob twiddler who twiddled the knobs of these half-dozen constants to get them exactly right. The problem is that this says, because something is vastly improbable, we need a God to explain it. But that God himself would be even more improbable."

[OPPOSED TO DAWKINS]:
TIME: "Dr. Collins, do you believe that science is compatible with Christian faith?"

FRANCIS COLLINS: "Yes. God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer. From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in."
Time International, 2006
--

DR. JERRY COYNE:
"...had there been no Christianity, if after the fall of Rome atheism had pervaded the Western world, science would have developed earlier and be far more advanced than it is now."

"The different methods that science and religion use to ascertain their “truths” couldn’t be clearer. Science comprises an exquisitely refined set of tools designed to find out what is real and to prevent confirmation bias."

"Science prizes doubt and iconoclasm, rejects absolute authority, and relies on testing one’s ideas with experiments and observations of nature. Its sine qua non is evidence — evidence that can be inspected and adjudicated by any trained and rational observer. And it depends largely on falsification."

"Religion begins with beliefs based not on observation, but on revelation, authority (often that of scripture), and dogma. Most people acquire their faith when young via indoctrination by parents, teachers, or peers, so that religious 'truths' depend heavily on who spawned you and where you grew up."

"Beliefs instilled in this way are then undergirded with defenses that make them resistant to falsification. While some religious people do struggle with their beliefs, doubt is not an inherent part of belief, not is it especially prized. No honors accrue to the Southern Baptist who points out that while there is plenty of evidence for evolution, there is none for the creation story of Genesis."

"Some religious claims are untestable because they involve knowing about the irrevocable past. There is almost no way to show, for instance, that Jesus was the son of God, that Allah dictated the Quran to Muhammad, or that the souls of Buddhists are reincarnated in other humans or animals."

"(There could, however be at least some evidence for such claims, such as concordant eyewitness accounts of the miracles that supposedly accompanied Jesus’s Crucifixion, including the darkness at noon, the rending of the Temple’s curtain, the earthquakes, and the rising of saints from their graves. Unfortunately, the many historians of the time have failed to report these phenomena.)"

"What science can do is point out the absence of evidence for such claims, taking them off the table until some hint of evidence arrives.now what it is until we have hard evidence. That is precisely the opposite of how the faithful approach their own claims of truth."

"In the end, religious investigations of “truth,” unlike those of science, are deeply dependent on confirmation bias."

Faith Vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible
by Jerry Coyne,
Viking, 2015

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, SIMON WORRALL: "You are now an evolutionary genticist. How does your day job inform your views on religion?"

"If you teach evolution, you’re teaching the one form of science that hits Abrahamic religions in the solar plexus. There’s no evidence that there’s any qualitatively different feature about humans from other species...We’re not special products of God’s creation."

"Religion doesn’t have a methodology to weed out what’s false. In fact, it’s a way of fooling yourself."

NAT. GEO. SIMON W.: "You call religion "the most widespread and harmful form of superstition.” Make your case.

COYNE: "Since I see all religious belief as unfounded and irrational, I consider religion to be superstition. It’s certainly the most widespread form of superstition because the vast majority of people on Earth are believers."

NAT.GEO.: "How have new developments in science like neurobiology or cosmology affected our understanding of the universe and our place in it?"

COYNE: "They support what Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in physics said, 'The more we learn about the universe, the more we realize how pointless it is.' We're learning a lot about the unierse and what we are seeing is that it's all a naturalistic process."

NAT.GEO.: "Are all religious as bad as each other?"

COYNE: "Oh, no. I think anybody that says that is on some tendentious gambit to discredit religion. Clearly, religions differ in how harmful they are and that’s proportional to how much they proselytize and how perfidious their beliefs are.

"There are religions that I would consider either harmless or maybe even beneficial. Quakers barely believe in God at all and are dedicated to social justice."
--

MY RESPONSE: LOL. While it is true, some modern Quakers are non-theists, it is incorrect to state that "Quakers barely believe in God at all."
Actually, most Quakers now, and in the past, are devout theists.

And "they are dedicated to social justice," (Coyne's statement) because of their deep faith in God, not contrary to it.
Examples include John Woolman, William Penn, Elizabeth Fry, Levi Coffin, etc.

from Wikipedia:
"The first anti-slavery statement was written by Dutch and German Quakers, who met at Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1688. English Quakers began to express their official disapproval of the slave trade in 1727 and promote reforms."

"From the 1750s, a number of Quakers in Britain's American colonies also began to oppose slavery, and called on English Quakers to take action with parliament. They encouraged their fellow citizens, including Quaker slave owners, to improve conditions for slaves, educate their slaves in Christianity, reading and writing, and gradually emancipate (free) them."

"An informal group of six Quakers pioneered the British abolitionist movement in 1783 when the London Society of Friends' yearly meeting presented its petition against the slave trade to Parliament, signed by over 300 Quakers. They were also influenced by publicity that year about the Zong massacre, as the ship owners were litigating a claim for insurance against losses due to more than 132 slaves having been killed on their ship."

"The Quakers decided to form a small, committed, non-denominational group so as to gain greater Anglican and Parliamentary support. The new, non-denominational committee formed in 1787 had nine Quaker members and three Anglicans. As Quakers were non-conformists and were debarred from standing for Parliament), having Anglican members strengthened the committee's likelihood of influencing Parliament."

"Nine of the twelve founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade were Quakers:
John Barton (1755–1789);
William Dillwyn (1743–1824);
George Harrison (1747–1827);
Samuel Hoare Jr (1751–1825);
Joseph Hooper (1732–1789);
John Lloyd;
Joseph Woods Sr (1738–1812);
James Phillips (1745–1799);
and Richard Phillips."

"Five of the Quakers had been amongst the informal group of six Quakers who had pioneered the movement in 1783, when the first petition against the slave trade was presented to parliament."

"Three Anglicans were founding members:
Thomas Clarkson, campaigner and author of an influential essay against the slave trade;
Granville Sharp who, as a lawyer, had long been involved in the support and prosecution
of cases on behalf of enslaved Africans;
and Philip Sansom."

Despite such clear historical evidence, strangely, Coyne asserts, "The less a religion has to do with a tangible God, the less it hands out moral dictates and the better it is. Once you believe in an absolute authority that tells you what to do, you’re heading down the road to perdition, I think."

But that is the exact opposite of the Quakers' dedication to "social justice"!

In fact, Quaker abolitionists did give out very strong, absolute moral dictates against slavery, and for women's rights, human rights, etc.

And it didn't lead "down the road to perdition" as Coyne claims.

On the contrary, Quakers' belief in a God of social justice was part of the Enlightenment. According to some historians, Thomas Paine was influenced to so actively oppose slavery because of his Quaker parent.
--

NAT. GEO. SIMON WORRALL: "The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould developed a theory known as NOMA...religion deals with the realm of meaning and moral values. Isn’t that a compromise you accept?"

COYNE: "Well, no! [Laughs] It’s not only a compromise I can’t accept...Philosophers have also rejected Gould’s idea that meaning, morals and values are the purview of religion. There’s a long tradition of secular humanism in philosophy beginning with the ancient Greeks and passing through Kant, John Stewart Mill and Hume to contemporary thinkers like Peter Singer."
--

MY VIEW: Hmm...Immanuel Kant was a theist, not an atheist.

Quite a bit of secular humanism, while rejecting the dogmas of religion, actually comes out of the philosophical views of theism.

Besides how can we humans get ethics from what "is" in nature, in natural selection?

How do we get from "is" to what "ought" to be?

Here, Coyne seems to be disagreeing with David Hume, which, of course, is his perfect right to do.

But his disagreement is unlikely to find any support in science.
How could science possibly tell us whether or not it is right or wrong to drop atomic bombs on enemy civilians?

Lastly, Coyne says human consciousness is "a neuronal illusion."

If human consciousness is "a nueronal illusion," then how is it possible for our consciousness to use reason, the scientific method, etc. to find out the complexities of the real universe?

Jerry Coyne was interviewed by Simon Worrall, National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/150531-religion-science-faith-healing-atheism-people-ngbooktalk/
--


#2 The COMPARTMENTALIZATION VIEW:

These scientists don't reject "reason and science," aren't "being dishonest."

They use reason and science to figure out matter and energy issues, but
use philosophy and non-scientific thinking to figure out issues of "ought," and "meaning."

It would seem that the famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky holds to this view. Dobzhansky wrote that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

How does he reconcile being an Orthodox Christian with evolution?

He doesn't. No more than he tries to love his wife by cutting a tiny piece of her skin out to put under a microscope to figure out if she's his soul friend, and if he loves her and she loves him;-)

In compartmentalization, science and religion are opposed, not in harmony.

For how can Dobzhansky reconcile natural selection with benevolence to all of creation?

I don't think he can. Or how can he reconcile the regularities of the cosmos with the miraculous?

It seems that he can't.

But, my guess, also, is that he doesn't try.

Never the twain shall meet. Opposed from the get-go. But held instead as separate parts of his mind for different purposes.

However, notice that hard naturalists have this problem, too, assuming, of course, they agree with Hume's claim that humans can't get "ought" from what "is."

Various atheists try to explain altruism, and some do interestingly such as Richard Dawkins' idea that altruism is a "misfiring" of evolution. Intriguing.

But
that doesn't explain why humans "ought" to be altruistic.

Since by scientists' definition, evolution has no purpose and no meaning, then obviously, too, "altruism" isn't true, it's just another possibility along with other successful developments of evolution including ruthlessness, deception, slaughter, etc.

There are the 'negatives' of natural selection as well. Natural selection isn't concerned with what "ought" to be, but only with survival.

Think what a long active life--for hundreds of thousands of years--various evil actions have had including millions of cases of
deception, slaughter, rape, polygamy, theft, torture, persecution, inequality, etc.

Such immoral actions have dominated human history. They are very natural, but NOT right, not good, not true.

Even in the last 200 years, in most wars, both sides of humans regularly engage in most of those behaviors, and almost never in altruism.

Lastly, some atheists say, well, the reason for humans to be altruistic is (they argue)
it will somehow increase the chance that human social groups will survive.

But why "ought" homo sapiens to survive?

That is a philosophical question, not a scientific one.

In the end, as even some secular philosophers have emphasized, NOT everything can be solved by science.

Should I forgive a person who has harmed my family or my kin or my country?

A. Ought nations to create, store, even use atomic weapons, as did the United States to slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians?

B. Should infants developing in the womb be executed as worthless tissue or be considered worthy of protection as tiny human beings?

c. Ought all humans to have rights and to be treated equally?

D. Should everyone be honest in their studies and reports?

Etc.

None of those deep, in-your-face-daily questions which fill the media can be answered by science.
--

#3 For others, it's a case of differences in EDUCATIONAL LEARNING.

It isn't that science and religion disagree or are sworn enemies, rather, the difficulty is that one area of humans' lives hasn't caught up with the other area.

A person can be very well-informed about physics, but not really know much about philosophy, literature, aesthetics, personal relationships or culture.

Or in my case, one can grow up knowing a lot about literature and religion and plenty of "oughts." And learn a lot about philosophy--the great thinkers of history--in high school, (Lincoln Southeast in Nebraska being one of the few high schools which taught a subject not usually dealt with until university).

But he may not know much yet about scientific subjects such as evolutionary biology. I loved science, but knew only physics in high school.

Finally, I started to catch up in the technical field when I took complex science classes at university--geology and anthropology. And after graduation with a B.A. in Creative Writing, I read many popular biology books. Then my scientific understanding caught up with my literary and philosophical self.
--

#4 THE NOMA VIEW of Stephen Jay Gould:

TIME: "Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard paleontologist, famously argued that religion and science can coexist, because they occupy separate, airtight boxes. You both seem to disagree."

FRANCIS COLLINS: "Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life. Because I do believe in God's creative power in having brought it all into being in the first place, I find that studying the natural world is an opportunity to observe the majesty, the elegance, the intricacy of God's creation."

Time International, 2006

STEPHEN JAY GOULD: "...creationism based on biblical literalism makes little sense in either Catholicism or Judaism for neither religion maintains any extensive tradition for reading the Bible as literal truth rather than illuminating literature, based partly on metaphor and allegory (essential components of all good writing) and demanding interpretation for proper understanding. Most Protestant groups, of course, take the same position—the fundamentalist fringe notwithstanding."

“The position that I have just outlined by personal stories and general statements represents the standard attitude of all major Western religions (and of Western science) today. (I cannot, through ignorance, speak of Eastern religions, although I suspect that the same position would prevail in most cases.)”

“The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives."

"The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly."

"I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria—the NOMA solution. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways."

"If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of the world's empirical constitution. This mutual humility has important practical consequences in a world of such diverse passions."
--

"Here, I believe, lies the greatest strength and necessity of NOMA, the nonoverlapping magisteria of science and religion. NOMA permits—indeed enjoins—the prospect of respectful discourse, of constant input from both magisteria toward the common goal of wisdom. If human beings are anything special, we are the creatures that must ponder and talk."

From Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," Natural History 106 (March 1997): 16-22; and Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, New York: Harmony Books, 1998, pp. 269-283.
--

#5 THE BROAD DEFINITION OF RELIGION VIEW,
(instead of the narrow religious dogmatism to which Jerry Coyne refers):

Albert Einstein: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

From Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton University Press:
"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written."

"The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

from The Quotable Einstein:
"I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand in awe of the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty."

"It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in Nature."

"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that , compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

"Where dull-witted clansmen of our tribe were praying aloud, their faces turned to the wall, their bodies swaying to and fro. A pathetic sight of men with a past but without a future." (Regarding his visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, February 3, 1923)

"Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us."

"I appeal to all men and women, whether they be eminent or humble, to declare that they will refuse to give any further assistance to war or the preparation of war."

"It is my belief that the problem of bringing peace to the world on a supranational basis will be solved only by employing Gandhi's method on a larger scale."

--

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written."

"The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."
--

The above quote from Einstein gives credence to biographer Walter Isaacson who stated that Einstein "held to a deistic concept of God."
page 385, Einstein: His Life and Universe

Translated Transcript: Princeton, 3. 1. 1954

"Dear Mr Gutkind,

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition."

"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them."
--

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly,” he wrote in another letter in 1954. "If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
--

"I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
--

What are other views of the relationship between science and religion?

Please add to the discussion.


#6

#7

#8

To be continued--



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Yes, the Future Is Open, Part #2: “Biological potential” not “biological determinism”

Evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould emphasized, there is a difference between “biological potential versus biological determinism.” Our human nature “permits us to be aggressive or peaceful, dominant or submissive, spiteful or generous..."

"Violence, sexism, and general nastiness are biological since they represent one subset of a possible range of behaviors. But peacefulness, equality, and kindness are just as biological—and we may see their influence increase if we can create social structures that permit them to flourish."
Stephen J. Gould, Ever Since Darwin, pp. 251-259

Science Writer John Horgan explains Gould’s opposition to determinism:
“Gould’s famous 1981 work The Mismeasure of Man (W. W. Norton & Co., 1981), in which Gould exposed case after appalling case of scientists in the past two centuries "proving" the biological inferiority of certain races as well as criminals, the poor, "imbeciles" and women...”

“Defenders of slavery embraced Morton’s work. After he died, an editorial in the Charleston Medical Journal and Review declared, ‘We in the South should consider him our benefactor, for aiding most materially in giving to the Negro his true position as an inferior race.’

In Mismeasure, Gould reanalyzed Morton’s skull measurements and concluded that the average sizes of blacks’ and whites’ skulls were roughly equivalent. Gould suggested that Morton’s racial bias had led him, probably unwittingly, to ‘discover’ results consonant with his beliefs.”
---

“Maybe Gould was wrong that Morton misrepresented his data, but he was absolutely right that biological determinism was and continues to be a dangerous pseudoscientific ideology. Biological determinism is thriving today..."

Scientists who claim we have no choice include,
anthropologist Richard Wrangham of Harvard University who claims “that the roots of human warfare reach back all the way to our common ancestry with chimpanzees.”

“In the claim of scientists such as Rose McDermott of Brown University that certain people are especially susceptible to violent aggression because they carry a "warrior gene….”

“In the insistence of the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne and neuroscientist Sam Harris that free will is an illusion because our "choices" are actually all predetermined…”

“In the contention of James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, that the problems of sub-Saharan Africa reflect blacks’ innate inferiority.”

According to science writer John Horgan, “Biological determinism is a blight on science.”

Why, since many modern scientists claim we have no choice?

Horgan continues because, “It implies that the way things are is the way they must be. We have less choice in how we live our lives than we think we do.”

“This position is wrong, both empirically and morally. If you doubt me on this point, read Mismeasure, which, even discounting the chapter on Morton, abounds in evidence of how science can become an instrument of malignant ideologies.”
John Horgan, science writer, teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology
Scientific American, June 24, 2011

On the subject of ethics and purpose, Gould stated, “Our failure to discern a universal good does not record any lack of insight or ingenuity, but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms."

"Morality is a subject for philosophers, theologians, students of the humanities, indeed for all thinking people. The answers will not be read passively from nature; they do not, and cannot, arise from the data of science."

"The factual state of the world does not teach us how we, with our powers for good and evil, should alter or preserve it in the most ethical manner.”
Stephen J. Gould in Natural History, February 1991

Thank God for Gould, that’s good;-)

Wait a minute; Gould is an atheist who thinks humans are a “fluke.”

Well, isn't it better to be a “fluke” than just a “meat puppet,” just a "bag of chemicals" (what some scientists such as Anthony Cashmore call humankind)?

Contrary to Harris, Coyne, Cashmore, etc., Gould and many other modern scientists think we humans do have future possibilities and great potential.

We AREN’T merely “meat puppets,” “bags of chemicals,” or chaff in the cosmic wind. We aren't biologically determined.

I can live with Gould’s view that we humans are a “fluke.”

Gould said, “We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction.”

I don’t agree, but Gould’s view that humans have an open future, (aren't passive puppets of biological determinism), is refreshing and hopeful.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Is the Future Open?

For thousands of years, most of the leaders of our human species have said, “No. The future isn’t open; everything is determined.” As recently as the devastating tsunami that killed almost 250,000 humans in Indonesia and other countries in 2004, world religious leaders claimed that the tragic event was necessary, was ordained, must take place, had to happen.

Al-Fawzan, member of the Senior Council of Clerics,
Saudi Arabia's highest religious body, and professor
at the Al-Imam University:

"These great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities and even entire countries, are Allah's punishments..."

Amazingly, now many secular leaders are also claiming the same thing—that every event is necessary and must happen, that there are no human choices and no accidents in nature (though instead of a god doing the determining it is the cosmos or the Big Bang). Everything is determined and therefore must happen. Every rape, every murder, every cancer victim…it all must be so.

In the last several months some leading scientists have especially emphasized this in their writing. (I guess they didn’t think they had a choice;-) Sam Harris has called this “tumors all the way down.” Jerry Coyne has written that not only does no one have a choice when it comes whether to murder; we don’t even have a choice of “whether to have a sandwich or salad at lunch” and “…we’re not morally responsible, for that means that we could have freely chosen a better way.”

So this ISIS leader doesn't have a choice each time he beheads an innocent victim?

Whew:-(

I'm not a scientist so I can't marshal hard evidence to contradict such a nihilistic, hopeless claim, but it surely is the worst of the worst if Coyne and Harris and Al-Fawzan, etc. are correct.

According to such thinkers, even supposed accidents and chance events in nature, such as the gigantic meteor that probably eliminated the dinosaurs millions of years ago weren't actually accidental happenings. They had to happen.

Thankfully some modern scientists such as evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould think differently. Gould wrote before his death that the meteor which devastated earth millions of years ago was a chance event. Further, if time were re-run, humankind might not even show up.

Determinist thinkers disagree. According to them, the earth-changing meteor was fated to hit the earth from the moment of the Big Bang over 14 billion years ago.

And all of that, if true, means that I am typing this article, not by choice. Nature, existence, the Big Bang, whatever, is doing it. My consciousness is but a passive observer.

Well it’s worse than that. Scientist Sam Harris states that even our sense of self, the “I” of our consciousness is an illusion, that we humans are “tumors all the way down”—meaning no human has any more choice than a mass murderer who can’t stop killing because of a brain tumor making him slaughter.

Is this true? Is the Future Closed? Was the Past always closed?

Was it necessary for the Black Death to devastate Europe, the 30 Years War to slaughter nearly a third of Germany’s people, the Nazis to gas and execute 10 million humans including 6 million Jewish individuals?

Is this very present moment only a lockstep instant long ago determined by the cosmos’ beginning?

Is our future as a species so determined as this, that we a conscious species who thinks it makes decisions, thinks there are ethical choices, seeks to achieve goals, and dreams and hopes
is actually no more
than chaff on the cosmic wind?

That every action, every instant, moment by moment, was unalterably fixed, necessitated, determined at the moment of the Big Bang over 14 billion years ago? Everything including the mirage of us conscious beings is nothing but outward expanding debris?

Of course not all leaders or secular scientists think the Present and the Future are so totally Closed. As mentioned earlier the famous evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould disagreed, as do others.

Our existence and every action is not a lockstep result of the Big Bang; one needs to factor in Chance and Creativity and conscious human choice for good or ill.

What about the evidence? Philosophers, scientists, and thinkers come down on opposing sides, though at the present, it appears many leading thinkers in the United States are complete determinists. According to them it is obvious that the Future Isn't Open.

What do you think?

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Determinism of Jerry Coyne, PhD.

One of the most incisive and informative science websites on the Internet is Jerry Coyne’s http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com. The nature photos he posts are worth daily visits alone, and Dr. Coyne’s articles are personal, intriguing, and reflective. He is Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago and has a PhD. from Harvard University.

But sometimes his views, such as his hard determinism, leave me scratching my brain. Of course, it seems Dr. Coyne would argue that my confusion, too, was determined by the points he was determined to make.

Consider this one by him about Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic star who murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp;
Dr. Coyne states: “As someone who doesn’t think that Pistorius, or any other criminal, had any choice about their actions, and that the nature of any punishment should take that determinism into account, I need to think about whether premeditation makes such a huge difference. As I see it (and I know others will disagree), the laws of physics had already determined that Pistorius was going to murder his girlfriend that night. Would his plotting to kill her in advance be much worse than his having decided to do so on the spot?”

Huh?

If everything and everyone is determined, no one has any alternative choice, then even Dr. Coyne’s question and the answers from various posters were already determined.

So what’s the point? (It was determined that I would ask that.)

This reflection, Dr. Coyne's article, the punishment of Pistorius are all being determined by the laws of physics as is everything else, on and on and on to the end of time. To misquote a famous bard, “A tale told by idiotic nature….”

That was also determined.

If so why does Dr. Coyne get so upset at religious thinkers, who he claims are irrational and dangerous?
Doesn't Dr. Coyne remember that he thinks no one has a choice?

So of course, not only do all crooks not have a choice, neither do religious individuals. Millions of them were determined by the laws of physics to be irrational and dangerous.

And Dr. Coyne was determined to oppose religious thinkers....

None of this computes in my mind, but then according to him, nature is doing this to me. It’s not my choice to think humans have choice.

Confused...

Daniel Wilcox