Sunday, April 08, 2012
On Scientific Atheism
The Scientific Atheist Sees Chimeras
Isn’t it ironic that a scientific atheist decries our Transcendent God as so much chimera and smoke, and at the exact same time exalts modern science as the only real purveyor of truth? He is fooling himself, of course, since at the heights of today’s science lie chimeras and smoke of equal or greater etherealness.
What do we find there? Multiple Bubble Universes that can never be observed, directly or indirectly and cannot be tested; a General Theory of Relativity that cannot be reconciled with probabilistic Quantum Theory, a mishmash of mathematical netherworlds that goes by the name of String Theory, or later on, Superstring Theory, that has lost its promise to perform the reconciliation of those theories so devoutly wished for into a “Theory of Everything” because they find that many thousands of solutions exist to the equations put forward; and, an Anthropic Universe that suggests strongly that our Universe was designed for Man, and this simply cannot be. These entities and theories are no less chimerical than that of God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. There lies the irony!
This highly charged scientific soup is constantly stirred around hoping that something intelligible will magically pop out of the mixture to put order into our understanding of the origins of everything. They propose a God Particle(!) that permeates the Universe and gives mass to the particles of the Standard Particle Model—the so-named Higgs Boson, that physicists hope will be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and France; and talk about measurements needed that are many, many orders of magnitude smaller than we can ever measure-- the so-named Planck Length (1.62 exp -35 m); Gravity waves are supposed to be carried by an ocean of Higgs Bosons; again, more unobservable entities. They fervently believe that there is a “Wave Function of the Universe” that accounts for all phenomena in the Universe, but this function is a figment of their imagination. It doesn’t exist.
For all of their prowess in creating scientific theories they cannot explain the origin of life, or abiogenesis, and their revered Darwinian Theory of Evolution is so riddled with holes it is laughable that scientists still defend it religiously in public with all their might, while admitting in private that the theory needs some serious overhauling. The atheist gloried in the theory of evolution since it bypassed the need for God to perform his creation of the Universe and life. No more. That theory cannot explain the simplest of cell structures or molecules and how they were formed by random steps, or what information must be supplied and how, because it turns out that the number of steps needed for them is virtually unknowable and uncountable! This in turn means that there has not been enough time since the Big Bang for random actions to create complex biological structures on Earth.
Science therefore has totally let the atheist down in his need for a mechanical, Godless self-creation. The problem is, most scientific atheists don’t know these facts and still hold to their outdated views, and as for other atheists, they hold to their beliefs without any support at all.
Truly ironic!
Labels: Agnosticism, Anthropic Principle, Atheism, Darwinism, God, Intelligent Design, Origins, Universe
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
My Verities
1. The way is God and truth,
2. The virtues are Faith, Hope, and Charity/Love.
3. Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude follow closly behind.
4. Then comes my belief in Devine Law, Natural Law and Natural Rights
5. I must explicitly state my belief in the Golden Rule.
6. I am a sinner: I have not succeeded in following these beliefs, but I strive to perfect myself.
7. I believe in the Constitution as it was intended to be used.
8. But there are glaring exceptions to this paen to life: I believe in just war, just killing, and proper regard for the real nature of religions and pseudo-religions within our nation. A so-called religion that strives to conquer our nation, and to prevail as the one true religion, is not acceptable. I am speaking of Islam here.
Labels: Citizenship USA, God, Jihadists, Morality, Natural Law, Natural Rights, Philosophy
Friday, August 22, 2008
Obama the Abortionist
Genocide for Convenience in America
Obama, as we have come to realize, supports and voted for grisly types of abortion three times, which raises the question of just how Christian his beliefs really are. Abortion is against God's will, against His intent, and against His commandments, as a thorough study of the Bible will attest. This makes abortion a sin, and a clear violation of the commandment not to murder.
In the Bible, God refers to His children in many passages, and not surprisingly, He treats unborn children exactly the same as He treats born children. They are His Sons and Daughters, whether born or unborn, and He gives them His protection. They must not be murdered.
Today, abortion has risen to the level of genocide, we having aborted 50 million babies in the US since the passage of Roe versus Wade. Worse, it is predominantly genocide for convenience--the children are simply not wanted.
The Christian position on abortion is contained in the reference:
http://www.bible.ca/s-Abortion.htm
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Guns, God, and Likeminded People
Clinging to the last!
There is an elitist idiot out there that used the word "clinging" to describe Middle American people and their definite preferences for God, Guns, and Likeminded People. Thus, in his mind, there are only two types of Americans: God and Gun lovers, and Elitists like him.
I pray to God that this Obama idiot does not get one vote from Middle Americans.
Labels: Elitists, God, Guns, Obama
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Part II: Man and Society
To have a moral and just society requires that man give up some of his absolute freedom and liberty of his own free will, for the greater good of all members. Those that are born into this society must be taught the value of freedom and liberty, since they have not experienced totalitarianism, or even severe constraints on their freedom..
Man’s freedoms and liberties in a moral society are constrained by:
The Law and its proper enforcement.
Social, religious and personal morality.
Culture, custom, etiquette, and good manners.
Acceptable behavior in groups, associations, workplaces, institutions and public places.
Business ethics
Family values, commitments, duties and traditions.
Duties and responsibilities to the society or nation.
There is an absolute limit to the social constraints on liberty and freedom: personal life and the home.
A moral, orderly and just social order is one that:
ensures the freedom and liberty of citizens to exercise rational thinking, reasoning and freedoms of action, such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and free press, subject only to the Law of the Land,
ensures citizens’ freedom and liberty to assemble, to display their symbols and words of worship and to follow the precepts of God as they desire, so long as these precepts, constraints, displays or actions do no physical harm, or constrain the freedoms of other citizens, groups, institutions or the society as a whole, and that they also obey the Law of the Land,
that suppresses man’s evil nature and evil acts through just laws, customs, traditions, conventions, institutions, and both formal and informal methods of enforcement. The evils and vices to be abhorred include: unjust war; greed; envy; theft; hate; sloth; lust; gluttony; anger; selfishness; murder; pain; lies; insults; ignorance; harassment; propaganda; cowardice; evasiveness; torture; torment; and, Ad Hominem attacks.
that establishes treason and advocating overthrow of a moral society to be evil and punishable in the extreme,
ensures defense of the moral society against all forms of external and internal evils and threats to its existence, whether from military, criminal, social, economic, political, religious, foreign or natural causes. To this end, a dominant military force is absolutely necessary.
It is the philosophy of peace through strength.
ensures the preservation of the family unit-- man, wife, children, and the extended family-- as the building block of the society, and also protects the family homestead from unwarranted actions, such as search and seizure.
ensures a judiciary system at every level of society to serve the ends of justice for all citizens, groups, institutions and enterprises.
ensures that judges are well-qualified and free of bias in interpretation of the law, and removes those who exhibit either reprehensible behavior or undo bias in their decisions, and finally, ensures that judicial decisions are made in accord with accepted norms, not the whims of radical judges. Some latitude must be made permissible for special cases.
ü ensures citizen’s freedom and liberty to pursue their economic objectives, subject to the higher interests of the society when so determined by law and regulation.
ü ensures the health, education and welfare of its citizens with effective, judicial and compassionate programs, and with sanctions against immoral acts. Such programs are best performed at the local, province or state levels.
ü ensures the integrity of the borders of the nation, and the system for admission and tracking of foreign nationals, including prospective legal immigrants, and expels from the nation those who violate the law. Illegal immigrants must be deported forthwith.
ü ensures that legal immigrants are assimilated into the society, learn the language, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, local laws and customs, and the history of the nation, as well as adhering by their words and actions to the oath of allegiance to the nation on penalty of deportation.
ü ensures that foreign nationals are allowed visitor’s or migrant worker’s rights to enter and reside for a time in the nation, but should they commit a crime, they will be imprisoned and then deported after their term is over and banned forever.
ü collects taxes on a flat percentage basis to pay for its operations, since redistributive taxation of lawfully acquired gains is theft by the government.
ü maintains a fiscally responsible and balanced budget, unless an emergency is declared and accepted by the people through their representatives and leaders.
ü ensures that government remains dedicated to the organization and execution of the few functions it is assigned by its constitution, and that it contract to those limits where possible.
demands that its citizens accept their duties and responsibilities to maintain and defend the society, and severely penalizes those who do not. Draft dodgers and Draft Card burners should at the least be properly punished and ostracized by the public.
expects every citizen to strive to support himself and his family through diligent efforts at earning a living.
Provides support and health care to those citizens who cannot care for themselves because of illness, accident, or decrepitude, and who have no financial means.
is a constitutional Republic, as has been proven over centuries in the US to be the most effective form.
Incorporates balance of power and checks and balances.
Has a written constitution that ensures all citizens can know and accept the fundamental law of the land,
Ensures that the constitution and laws of the society can be modified to reflect the greater good, and the changes will be ratified by the people through their elected representatives and leaders.
Incorporates a tripartite form of government, which is the best organization to ensure checks and balances, and consists of Legislative, Judicial and Administrative branches,
Ensures that this tripartite form of government is replicated in the governmental subdivisions of the society as well, such as in provinces or states.
Permits subdivisions to have significant functional and legal autonomy from the parent federated government (States Rights).
Fosters and maintains rational mixed capitalism as the most moral form of economic organization yet achieved by man,
Ensures wide and diverse ownership of private property by its citizens. This is the essential requirement for a free society. It includes both physical and mental or intellectual property.
Ensures that every law-abiding citizen has and maintains the right to keep and bear arms and ammunition, to use them for training and sport, and to use them in defense of self, family, hearth and home.
Ensures that the government is not in competition with the private sector for business.
Ensures that a citizen who willfully, publicly and continually demonstrates his lack of allegiance to and hatred of the nation, its culture and its people, his rejection of the moral principles of the society, his desire to participate, support for, or actual participation in revolutionary activities to overthrow the government, and who does not use, or abandons, the democratic mechanisms for change provided to him in this moral society, and who refuses to accept the principle of majority rule, is marked by the government and the citizenry as an enemy of the State.
Enemies of the State must be deprived of the benefits of the State, defanged, isolated, shunned, imprisoned, or else killed.
The moral tenets of the society must be adhered to by all citizens, without exception. Multiculturalism and diversity are not rational objectives or sound policy, but rather hold-over circumstances from past immigrations. The more rational objective and policy is to create and maintain a relatively uniform moral environment, while allowing for private differences in religious worship.
Political correctness is not an objective or policy of the moral society. The only subject bearing on the idea is encouragement of comity in public speech.
The concept of discrimination has little bearing on a moral society, where equality before the law is maintained, and morality is practiced. Thus, the concept of affirmative action is not applicable.
These provisions establish what a moral society must ensure, but so far, it doesn’t establish how some of these provisions will be implemented. Some of the “how’s” should be:
Education of successive generations on what constitutes a moral society as opposed to an amoral or immoral society, as well as how to correct the society within the system if it has strayed from the moral path.
Obligate families to teach morality and discipline to their children, and for the family to be examined on the basics, at least during the parent’s schooling, and in their college-level work. Non-compliance may result in denial of government services. Immigrants must learn the moral code before being given citizenship.
Demand that both executive and elected officials conform to the established social morality or else be turned out of office upon proof of malfeasance. We must not tolerate dishonest members of government.
Insist that employers, religions, and the media not only conform to the moral society’s principles, but also to demand it from their employees in the workplace on threat of being fired.
Strict and complete law enforcement along the lines of the “broken window” philosophy, together with judicial practices of just punishments, not mere slaps on the wrist.
The death penalty will be invoked for conviction of: murder, rape, kidnapping, treason and sedition.
Recidivism by criminals with long rap sheets should not be allowed to occur. A three-strikes-you-are-in-for-life policy should be enforced, no matter the triviality of the felonies committed and convicted for in any court of law. If this means building and maintaining more prisons, so be it.
All executive and elected positions in the government must be staffed by citizens born in the nation, or citizens that have had legal residence in the nation for in excess of 25 years. The President must be native born.
Part III: Man, His Society and Societies of the World
· Amoral, immoral, and evil societies exist.
· A moral society must consider its own welfare first, the welfare of other moral societies second, and global welfare third.
· A moral society must defend itself against the amorality, immorality, and evil of other societies.
· A just war in self-defense is proper, including preemptive war against a threatening group or society. Shoot first, not second!
· The threat against a moral society need not be immanent, but it must be verifiable and serious.
· A moral society must remain completely sovereign so long as there are other amoral or evil societies in existence.
· Treaties and civil contracts covered by treaties are the only proper ways to interact formally with other societies, especially if they are amoral, immoral or just plain evil.
· A society that breaks a treaty or contract without sufficient cause must be held to account by all moral societies.
· Trust, but verify, is the only proper procedure when dealing with other societies on any matter whatsoever.
· World opinion is no basis for moral or just decisions or actions in the international scene,
· International justice is a valid goal to be strived for, but such a legal system has yet to be satisfactorily formed, partially because the world of nations collectively is not a moral group, and judges that have both political neutrality and devotion to the agreed international law are a rarity.
· The set of mutually-adjudged moral, democratic and free nations operating in concert is the best hope for organizing and achieving world order, peace, justice, and appropriate humanitarian assistance to needy nations.
· The UN should be deemphasized because of its amorality, its archaic organization, its unrealistic membership and the immorality of so many of its members, giving it no true basis for setting forth moral judgments, or performing regulatory actions.
· As the sole superpower in the world at this time, the US has a moral mission to help bring peace and prosperity to others, to defend the weak and poor, and to aid these underdeveloped and developing societies in growing economically and in becoming free, orderly and strong.
· The US has no intent or desire to create a colonial empire.
· Global economic development is a necessity for man and his societies.
· For global development to take place, massive investments must be made around the world.
· Poorly developed nations are a serious and perplexing problem for Western nations, because:
a) the investment environment is hostile and dangerous.
b) the effects of tribalism are a huge block. The cultures encountered are not far from primitive. Their work ethic is highly questionable too, because of tribal commands such as “go slow”.
c) education and training of the majority of citizens is deficient. Most Americans do not know the languages being used, and must depend on translators. Learning English is a necessity, but few can afford the schooling.
d) population growth often exceeds the ability of the land and sea resources and the existing infrastructure to cope. The list of basket-case nations is growing.
e) the health environment is dangerous, including insects, animals, endemic diseases, rampant AIDS, malaria, and other ills not normal to Westerners.
f) the land and climate in many cases is not conducive to effective cultivation, irrigation, or hydro-electric power generation.
g) the existing infrastructure is not able to readily support new energy-using industries, communications, water supplies free of contaminants, sewer systems that are sanitary, sound roads, effective police, fire, health, postal and rail transportation, thus they usually require massive improvements before industries can come into the country.
h) Many single-product nations have been captured by long-term contracts with international companies, who have thus tied up national resources and profits that otherwise might be used for local improvements.
i) Social instability brought about by extremely high crime rates, terrorism, religious conflicts, and even revolutions, makes the decisions to invest enormously difficult in many lands, especially for long-term, mega-dollar projects.
j) Myopic governments, often of the strong-man type, are not interested in their citizens, but rather in amassing fortunes, staying in power by force, and creating a military organization that supports their objectives. This climate suits many corporations, since they can work with the despots to rape the resources of the nation.
k) Corruption at all levels of government exists in many cases, requiring funds to be passed in secret kickbacks to the government by the contractor, which typically exceed 10 to 20% of the value of projects, which is both a moral dilemma and a burden on the investors and the purchasing nation’s taxpayers.
l) For Westerners, the sheer magnitude of the difficulties cited for investing in the poorer nations, most often redirects investor’s attention to safer environments in the more stable West itself.
m) The disappearance of truly enormous sums of aid money and physical aid in many nations that have been found to be lining the pockets of the ruling class or the warlords, and not helping the population, seriously dampens the ardor of Western governments and investors towards financial grants and loans.
n) A further difficulty is the immigration away from the gap society of the most talented and better educated citizens, those who would be instrumental in building a modern nation and moral society. Western societies are far more attractive to these citizens.
o) Former colonies were given good infrastructures, but the natives abused the machinery, took it apart for its parts; didn’t maintain it properly, or refused to use it because of superstition.
p) Western know-how was brought back to run things under contracts, but this slowed the process of takeover and independence.
q) Administrators and civil servants from the West provided stability and honesty to governments. This civil service cadre is now gone, and it is not easily replaced.
r) Compounding all of the above are the Islamic nations and Muslims worldwide that have called for a jihad against the West, declaring war on us, and using terror tactics to intimidate.
s) There seem to be few workable solutions to the problem of helping developing nations. Obviously merely throwing money at the problem does not work, nor do supervised projects, because of the rampant corruption in international business as well as the developing nations. Accepting the corruption makes one a part of the problem.
Labels: God, Philosophy
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Beginnings of a Philosophy: Introduction
Introduction
My belief system has been in development, modification and practice for well over a half century, but I have only recently distilled it into so few pages. There are reams of justification writings in my files, and a list of book resources that is quite long to underpin my thoughts, but only the book resources are listed in the appendix. I have eliminated most of the many footnotes and references to the book resources that I had wanted to include: they took up far too much space.
It was my deliberate choice to begin in the middle of philosophy, rather than at the beginning. After hacking my way through the usual prime subjects by the classic philosophers, and the twenty-five or so immemorial philosophical questions (see appendices), I felt quite exhausted and resentful that I could not then turn to a more practical level of working philosophy that I could use daily, without having to sort the issues out from the top at every step.
Every well-known philosophical system has been subjected to devastating criticisms that are to this date unanswerable. No attempts at synthesis have survived either. This has left me with the extreme difficulty of picking and choosing elements from the current systems, and the problem of creating ideas that attempt to factor together my own system out of the elements.
Perhaps it is common to find that no single classical or modern philosophy system satisfies one’s desires. It would have been nice to find a well-known and agreeable philosophy, and then be able to have infinitely more brilliant people illuminate its philosophical nooks and crannies. This was not to be, so I did it for myself, with undoubtedly imperfect consistency and enormous clashes with major philosophical bastions whose boundaries I only dimly perceive.
My system has been written from four principal vantage points: Protestant Christianity; the US Constitution; a virtues ethic; and Conservative political views. I find these vantage points quite compatible, and instinctively pleasing to me. It is my philosophy after all. I do have several departures from these vantage points which will become clear in what follows.
This version has six main parts: Man; Man and Society, Societies; Science and Engineering, Common Sense Conservatism; and the Global War on Terrorism. There are three appendices: A) Main Subjects of Philosophy; B) Eternal Questions; and, C) Book References Used.
Labels: God, Philosophy
Beginnings of a Philosophy: Part I
Part I: Man
· The Universe exists, and it exists in Time.
· The Universe contains all of the physical reality we can perceive, including Time, Life and
· No mere Man can tell us why the Universe, Man and Life exist.
· Man exists.
· Man is mortal.
· Man is sentient and reasoning and is thus manifestly different from sentient but limited-reasoning animals, and certainly different from to plant life and inanimate objects. Man has been given dominance over all lower life-forms by God.
· Man perceives that the Universe exists through his senses and instruments, but both imperfectly, and incompletely. Man senses a “human reality” rather than a perfect reality.
· Man is capable of rational thinking and reasoning.
· Man is born with certain innate capabilities and ideas, including instinctive behavior, the idea of God, a sense of morality, and a sense of learning. He is not a tabula rasa. This is added conformation of the grace of God, in my opinion. It is most likely that this innate knowledge is inherited at the earliest formation of a fetus; hence a fetus carries the messages of its elements, cells, genes and DNA from conception onward.
Parenthetically, it may be observed that abortion kills all of the information that would have been used as a person is created. This is murder.
· Man uses reason to analyze acquired data, determine its truth value, and then to store the knowledge that results for future use. Man conceives immaterial things as well, but cannot be certain of their existence or their exact definition. ( i.e. what is justice?)
· Man has positive-emotional, spiritual, mystical, altruistic and loving capabilities.
· Man has negative-emotional, egotistical, selfish, envy-driven, amoral and evil capabilities.
· God exists. The modal argument for His existence is as follows:
1) God’s existence is either necessary or logically impossible.
2) It is not impossible for God to exist, and there is no contradiction in assuming that He does exist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Therefore, 3) God necessarily exists. --- K. Gödel
· God, the Prime Mover, created the Universe, Life and Man in His own way, for His own purposes and in His own time. This is not to deny the findings of cosmological investigations that theorize the Universe we know was born by a Big Bang some 13 or 14 billion years ago, and that the Universe is expanding.
· At the instant of the Big Bang, cosmologists theorize that the laws of physics as we know them could not have been operative, unless the theory of Branes colliding in an eleven-dimensional space, and the existence of an infinite number of parallel universes proves to be valid. They also theorize that Time did not begin with the Big Bang, and that Big Bangs are a common feature of the Universes. There are unknowns here that science cannot yet explain.
There is an infinite regression in these explanations, as is shown by asking where all of these Branes and Universes came from, and then where that answer came from, and so on, ad infinitum. (This is not to claim any proof of God’s existence, but simply to sketch some current boundaries of the knowable.)
· The Total Reality of God and His Universe is quite beyond Man’s comprehension, and it will remain so. The questions of what was there before our Universe existed, and why the Universe came into being are unanswerable, except for the Prime Mover explanation. The ego of Man finds it difficult to accept the ultimate boundaries of what is knowable, what is timeless and what is infinite.
· Man comprehends some of reality through the sensing, information gathering, development, and test of models of the objects, characteristics, relationships and behaviors of “things” in the Universe. These models predict with more or less accuracy the future states of “things” based on the model’s assumed or known past states and projected state changes. The validity of these models hinges critically on man-made definitions and assumptions.
· This symbolic and mathematical modeling and testing is the foundation of physics, chemistry, biology and the use of the scientific method: inductive and deductive reasoning; hypothesis and test; plus independent repetition and confirmation of tests.
· Our search for knowledge is both beneficial and necessary for the survival and comfort of
· Man’s forever imperfect models of reality are obviously not reality itself, no matter how verified the science becomes. A theory remains a theory. Darwinian evolution is a perfect example.
· Epistemic knowledge of the Universe is bounded by the resolution of instruments, the speed of light, uncertainty and relativity. We act most often AS IF we possessed certain and justified truth.
· Man has Free Will.
· Man has a Conscience.
· Man’s purpose in life is to realize his highest spiritual being.
· Man’s moral obligation to himself, to others, to society and to God exists. His morality consists of three parts: consideration of consequences; consideration of maximizing good will and good intentions; and, practicing the virtues of the moral man.
· Man’s moral obligation to himself is survival, virtue, and enlightened and rational self-interest for himself, his wife and children, and his extended family. The Socratic “know thyself” is the first step.
· Man’s moral obligation to others is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The Golden Rule is the ultimate rule from which a host of other rules have been derived.
· Man’s moral obligation to society is to obey the law, and to assume and to carry out the duties and responsibilities of good citizenship. His actions must reflect the possibility that they could become a Universal Law (the Categorical Imperative of Kant.).
· Man’s moral obligation to God is to follow the Natural Laws and received wisdom of God, especially:
- Justice
- Beneficence & Benevolence
- Duties to husband or wife, parents and elders
- Duties to children and posterity
- Good faith and veracity
- Mercy
- Magnanimity
- God’s Word-- as given in the Holy Bible. This is the Devine Command theory.
· The Christian Holy Bible is the Word of God, but
one must be take into account that:
The text was translated and edited a number of times by different people from its original verbal form to a written language, and then to other languages, with some highly significant changes of meaning and emphasis occurring in the process.
The selection of books for inclusion or exclusion was voted upon by men.
Many of the ideas expressed in the Bible were also found in more ancient texts, sometimes word for word, such as in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
· Accepting the King James Version of the Bible, or any other version, literally and without well-founded linguistic and theological interpretation, is fraught with serious error, for the reasons given above. Literal interpretations are quite possibly flawed, and give rise to senseless religious distortions, such as snake worship, for example. This is a valid reason for seeking theological guidance.
· Miracles are a factor in Christianity. They happen.
· A major spiritual goal of man’s life is to practice the supreme virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
· Most men strive to be good, and to act with the virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude in addition to the supreme virtues stated above, as well as acting with the many other positive virtues man has identified as good. There is a “Virtue Ethic” that exists regardless of religion.
Major virtues in addition to those above include:
Loyalty, Moderation, Kindness, Humanity, Friendliness, Patriotism, Selflessness, Love, Reason,
Knowledge, Truth, Wisdom, Honesty, Honor, Integrity,
Family values, Citizenship, Learning, Courage, Comity,
Spirituality, Modesty, and Morality.
“Virtue is happiness!” ---Socrates
· Man strives to create, shape and maintain a hierarchical set of intrinsic values, including:
Spiritual: Reverence, Love
Human: Constructive Achievement, Understanding,
Fair Treatment, Moral Integrity,
Aesthetic Apperception, Human Association.
Organic: Eating, Drinking, Gregariousness, Sex, Fight,
Flight, Breathing, Exercise, Rest,
Elimination.
· Man has an inalienable right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and equality of opportunity. He has no right by mere virtue of his existence to equality of outcome.
· Men are not created equal in talent, capability, strength, or intellect. They are created equal before the law. Men of high talent, capability, strength, and intellect must be the leaders of the society.
· Man’s essence is his soul, which remains with him regardless of the physical changes of life.
· Good and evil exist in man’s life, both within himself and in his environment.
· Some men have a distorted and evil set of values and motives and will perform evil or unjust acts. These evil acts redound against both themselves and others, often catastrophically. Evil men must be restrained, punished, or rendered utterly incapable of such acts. In the extreme, death is warranted.
· Moral conflicts exist between man and himself, man and man, man and society, and society against society.
· Man must understand, evaluate, balance and resolve his own conflicting moral imperatives and values. Perhaps his greatest personal challenge is always to act with integrity.
· Man forms and joins groups, associations, institutions, religions and societies to reduce conflicts, and to enhance the likelihood of human survival and success through mutually agreed principles and actions. He conforms to these principles and actions of his own free will.
(Further Parts to follow)
Labels: God, Philosophy
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Memorial Day 2007
May God continue to bless both our fallen men,
and those men that are serving now around the world.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Philosophy 101.1
Musings on my philosophy
My struggle all these months and years has been to find the grounding principles for my personal philosophy. After a while, I simply avoided the issue of Epistemology and Ontology and proceeded to develop some practical principles that I believed in well enough to follow. These I have enumerated my paper on Philosophical Foundations I intend to publish later.
There seem to be two dichotomies in my approach; one of religious faith and Christian principles, and the other of practical, everyday, working principles that may or may not reflect Christian principles. When we speak of origins of these ideas, the religious side follows from my early life lessons from Sunday school and Church, and the practical side from life experiences and a modicum of common sense. Neither of these sides addresses the real foundations of knowledge and how we obtain it in an ultimate sense.
One idea struck me as the most plausible I had found to explain how we came about as thinking people. The idea was inheritance of “loaded genes”. Forgetting about origins for the moment, we inherit a set of genes that carry enormous information for us to use as we mature. Much of what we become is due to our ability to use the power of this initial information effectively, and then to acquire ever more information as we go along.
So the mind is not a tabula rasa, or blank slate; it is loaded to the brim from our gene package with “how to” mechanisms that need merely the guidance of parents and others to evoke, especially the “how to learn” mechanism, and various “instinctive” survival functions. We have from the start been bequeathed the autonomous functions needed to regulate our bodily activities, which is an enormous package of information all by itself.
This information passing mechanism works alongside the physical passing of information carried by base elements of “how to” perform the energy-to-mass-to-elements transitions, which provides the environment and building blocks for life to begin. This is what some have labeled “self-organizing” matter.
The obvious question, then, is where does all of this information come from in the first place? Does it evolve by millions of simple accretions over billions of years, or is it somehow created whole? I do not think that scientists have progressed to the point where very much, if any, of the micro information contained in genes or in base elements are known with certainty. Nor have they, to my knowledge, compared genes from the past with genes from the present at this micro level. So it is an open scientific question.
If genes and self organizing matter were indeed created by some sort of accretion, this opens up a welter of concerns, such as how does a gene know which information to acquire and which information to ignore as it rolls along? Then too, where did the pure information, ready for assimilation by a gene, come from? Random events over time are an unlikely possibility, in my opinion, at least for the bulk of the complex information needed.
If we follow this argument a bit further, creation whole seems to be the simplest choice. The difficulty with this conclusion is quite apparent: what agency created these information and self organization mechanisms in the beginning? Was it not God?
Addendum
Can a set of genes be self-modifying? That is, can life experiences or other factors alter person’s genes? I see no impediment to such actions, provided only that The Great Architect created the capability for limited self-modification, perhaps through some sort of heuristic algorithm embedded in our genes that assesses the need for change, the direction of the change, and then actually implements the change. The effects of the change might not be apparent for a generation or two, or it might show up quickly. Thus it would be rather hard to observe all such changes in humans in the near term. Adaptation to the environment seems to be a necessary survival characteristic. This is another open scientific question.
This meme argues for a First Cause, and then a set of incremental causes throughout the universe, the information for which is carried by elements and genes. It argues for a grand determination and a local free will for man.
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Labels: God, Philosophy
