To say that the Catholic Church should be judged by its era is to misdirect a vital point which is the claim that the Church knows the Truth of God. To say what the Church did was no worse than what any other political entity at the time did, because they “didn’t know any better”, is to lie by failing to note that the Church should in fact have known better. What better proof could there be that God exists than if the moral behaviour of the Church was consistent throughout all history. If morals truly come from a good and unchanging God then the Church should have known and acted consistently since their founding. The fact that they have not, that their ethics and morals have changed and have been consistent with prevailing political and social trends, demonstrates clearly that morals come from Humanity and not from God.

all-useless (omniuseless)

Ya, I think that sums it up nicely and in terms religious people will find very familiar and understandable.

Some cite the symbol as historically important, which certainly it is, and yet where are the other symbols of historical importance? The icons of ancient Roman gods and figures? Clearly, it is not the historicity of the crucifix that fixes it on the walls of the classrooms.

Some claim it is a beloved symbol, and thus merits the respect of being displayed. People love football teams too, should all the team logos and icons be likewise displayed in a place of education?

There is no denying, as would be done in America, that the crucifix is being displayed for religious reason. The laws requiring the display of the crucifix date to the early 20th century and only now are they being overturned, due to concerns about those of other faiths and human rights. I don’t pretend to know the intricate details of Italian political history, but I don’t need to be disturbed by the public support of the symbol and the public rejection of the court decision. What is there to be disturbed by? It is simply this: the intolerance and failure to respect the opinions of others in a public, shared space.

And what, precisely, do I mean by that? Well it is this. In a public place, especially in a school, there are people from all areas of a society. These are people potentially reflecting each and every aspect of a society, and for human rights to be maintained, each member of the community must be treated equally and fairly. Failing to show respect to any one member of the community–by failing to account for their feelings and opinions–lessens and diminishes the whole community. Each time one human subjugates another’s view, the whole of humanity is worse off for it.

The thing that religious advocates don’t want to hear or think about is that rulings such as this are not denying the display of the crucifix anywhere, just removing it from places where it is not appropriate. Display the crucifix on your house, your church, your business, visibly where ever you like, so long as it is your place alone and not the public’s. School is not yours, it is not a private religious school, it is a public school, free to all… and to all religions or no religion at all. The freedom of religion of each individual person must be upheld and respected in any public forum. No one should be forced to show deference to any religion they do not choose to follow.

To represent one religion–to the exclusion of other religions or the lack of religion–demonstrates a belief in the superiority of that religion; that it is important and dominate over all people. But it is a public place where all the views held by the people should have a voice, and should also know when to be silent.

School is a place where religion must learn to be silent. The children in a public school cannot be expected to adhere to any particular religion and the religious rights of their parents should be respected. That is not to say that children should not be exposed to religion, but they should be exposed to religion in general, to all the variety of religions held throughout the world and the history of religion. Comparative religion is a very enlightening topic of study and if a child is exposed to one religion, they ought to be exposed to all religions, or else none at all.

All religions and none. That is the right of every human, adult and school child alike.

“Given the inherent inferiority of supernatural explanations and the incompleteness of our knowledge, theists would be justified in offering a supernatural explanation for a phenomenon only if they could prove that it is in principle impossible to provide a natural explanation of it. In other words, to undermine the scientific proof for the non-existence of god, theists have to prove an unrestricted negative, namely, that no natural explanation of a phenomenon will be found.”

In connection with Clifford (there must be evidence to justify any belief), if a logical argument can be considered as evidence, then Schick’s argument does not violate the rule of requiring sufficient evidence. If that is the case, then God can in fact be proven not to exist!
As ever, the important thing here is simply that God does not NEED to exist. If theologians wish to keep God, they must redefine him.

“The realization that the traditional God of theism is not needed to explain anything-that there is nothing for him to do-has led a number of theologians to call for the rejection of this notion of god.”

What I wonder tho is what is the point of that type of God? If the traditional all-powerful God wasn’t needed to explain, then surely a lesser-powered God isn’t needed for human life either. If people wish to have “truth” in anything, they have to stop being so afraid of the answers they find.

I begin to see very distinctly the difference in our views of the world. Mine has been ‘tainted’ by a deep understanding of basic scientific laws and principles, such that if I too begin with doubt of all things, I quickly and easily logically re-establish science and the physical universe. In much the same way he quickly re-establishes God, but he never really addresses why God must even be considered, at best being considered is just part of the definition of God.

“Unquestionably, those ideas that display substances to me are something more and, if I may say so, contain within themselves more objective reality than those which represent only modes or accidents. Again, the idea that enables me to understand a supreme deity, eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, and creator of all things other than himself, clearly has more objective reality within it than do those ideas through which finite substances are displayed.”

Here is our difference, our opposite conclusion given similar parameters and reasons. Here God is given a rather long and impressive list of adjectives which are not merely descriptive of God, they are inseparable aspects of God. This is fundamental to Descartes argument that God exists. He goes on to argue that God is perfect and not only that, but ‘perfect’ is an inherent aspect of God. It is not like saying “I can imagine a perfect Island and therefore that Island must exist” because an island can be defined without perfection whereas God cannot be defined without perfection and since existence is necessary to perfection, God must exist. The flaw here is that there is no such thing as a clear and distinct idea of ‘perfection’ and Descartes cannot have such an idea. The flaw here is so painfully obvious and yet Descartes would deny that it even exists (thus why he disliked ‘imaginary numbers’).

“I judge God to be actually infinite, so that nothing can be added to his perfection.”

Descartes, I have but one thing to say in reply: ∞+1

Now, when I started this section I struggled a lot with what Descartes meant when he talked about “perfection” because to me perfection is only something that exists in the mind, a sort of ‘ultimate type’ of a thing which is purely imaginary but serves as a guideline for identifying the real thing. Perfection is derived from a gradient of imperfect things, much like ‘absolute zero’ is inferred by the scale of degrees of temperature.  Clearly tho as I read Descartes held a very different understanding of perfection. To Descartes, perfection was a singular idea, isolated from imperfection by its very definition, and that definition was contingent on God. This is of course a circular and self affirming definition which was not Descartes intent. Even Descartes’ beloved mathematics disagrees with the idea that we can have a clear idea of infinity; tho to be fair, calculus did not exist then as such.

Descartes argument for God’s existence is simply no longer valid. It falls apart on its first premise “I have a clear and distinct idea of God which includes infinity and perfection.” No, Descartes, you don’t. I’m sorry, if theologians are to prove that God exists, they must now use a different argument.

To be fair, I can see how, in their time, these ideas became the basis for a new form of thought and enabled the transition from scholastic thought to modern thought. I can see how it was necessarily a slow evolution gradually weaning humans from faith to reason. The Ontological Argument may be flawed, but it took the idea of God from the sole province of Faith and handed it over to Logic and Reason. Descartes altered the foundations of knowledge from mindless faith to reasoned understanding; he may have had flaws in his ideas or methods, but the impact of these ideas cannot be doubted. Cogito, ergo sum indeed.

I find it odd that through processes and ideas similar to ones I myself have considered Descartes can reach such conclusions. I cannot help but wonder if it is simply a product of the understanding of our times. The fundamental ideas that exist now are not those that existed in the 17th century and it seems that they are inseparable from our thought processes. The idea that wax holds many properties beyond mere human senses is so ingrained in me that it is hard to ignore that and focus on the point that Descartes is trying to make. That the mind is a physical, chemical construct may be plainly demonstrable now, but it was so ill understood then. That is not to say that the points he makes are inherently invalid because of modern understanding, just that they are clearly shaped by his frame of references. Despite his claims to doubt all things, the methods of thinking are instilled in us since infancy and childhood and they are not so easily discarded.

It is still an interesting point that the mind is the most knowable and certain of things. In a way it’s true since everything we know is stored and accessed by the mind; it is our ultimate tool for knowing the universe and so it is the basis of knowing. The mind is the root and tool of understanding, but it is not its own thing and it is not separate from the body; and the idea that it is, is certainly not to be assumed nor is it inherent in us.

I really like Descartes here, I think his approach is fine but that the ‘excuse’ of God is so deeply inlaid that he cannot help but come to the conclusions that he does.

Beginning with doubt and tearing everything down only to then build it back up by examining the reasons and causes of certainty and knowing rather than examining each idea separately he creates a means whereby ideas can be known. Here he addresses the skeptic’s creed, “if it can be doubted, doubt it”,  though it is more of a theoretical doubt as he of course finds the same conclusions at the end that he started with. The important thing is that he relays the foundations of what can be known and places them firmly within the individual; as opposed to the Church, as it was before with scholasticism. Descartes is entertaining thoughts that certainly everyone has considered at sometime but he is doing so to change the mindset of the Chuch. I suppose for that reason it was important that his conclusions ultimately be the same at the end as they were at the beginning.

The real problem is that people spend so much time living someone else’s life vicariously that they forget to live their own.

String theory offers some interesting parallels to Intelligent Design, and some important differences. String theory has been criticised as being un-falsifiable and as such there are many who view it not so much as a scientific theory as they do a philosophy or metaphysical idea. Yet, String Theory is allowed to be discussed by scientists (now, in the early years it was denied publication and rightly so). Why is it that String Theory can be discussed but Intelligent Design can’t? It comes down to this: while the ultimate premises of String Theory are not yet falsifiable, they could be and the theory offers means of demonstrating its validity (such as various particles and phenomenon that it predicts as a result of particle accelerator experiments). Also the theory is founded firmly upon mathematics and mathematical formula and proofs that work. This makes String Theory a combination of Theoretical Mathematics and Physics which are both valid fields of scientific study. Intelligent Design on the other hand is a type of Theological study with no mathematical or biological foundation.

My primary complaint with Expelled is the juxtaposition of irrelevant footage of Nazi Germany with very brief quotes. The quotes are from various unidentified people and does not even consist of their complete sentences. I recognized Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, and I think Sam Harris, tho I couldn’t be sure it was him because the clip was so very brief. This is simply poor form and I would (and do) complain about this directorial style regardless of topic. If I cannot hear enough of what a person says to understand the point they are making I will disregard everything they are shown to say, even if it something I want to agree with.

The ultimate failure of this documentary is that it never actually presents a scientific theory of intelligent design. All they talk about is that evolution has “problems” and “scientist and biologists don’t agree”. Which could describe any scientific theory, especially gravity! That’s the key to science: that there are always problems, always unknowns, always things that can’t be fully explained yet. And that’s what scientists do, they identify and focus on all the unknowns and then they research, explore, study, observe. They form hypotheses with falsifiable claims and then they seek to falsify them They seek solid data to support their claims, and their peers seek to break down their data and their hypotheses, and that’s how theories are formed. Intelligent Design has not done this because it offers no hypothesis or data or anything more than “an Intelligence caused it”.

Intelligent design was defined by Dr. Nelson of Biola university as “[t]he study of patterns in nature that are best explained as a result of intelligence” and was “a minimal commitment, scientifically, to the possibility of detecting intelligent causation.” Not to pick apart his words, but nothing he said could actually be science. The study of patterns is certainly valid and is a common theme in theoretical mathematics. But to claim that they are best explained as being caused by intelligence is at best a hypothesis, it can’t simply be assumed to be a part of the patterns from the outset. As to the second part, science is always open to possibility, but it does not commit to anything as the source of causation with out substantial proof. If intelligence as a causation of life on earth could be demonstrated that would open up a variety of new possibilities, including alien intervention or seeding of planets which would be no more or less plausible than a god-like entity. Even if life on Earth were being intelligently designed, there could be other explanations which would not necessarily be an extra-dimensional, all powerful, energy being like God. The point is that for Intelligent Design to enter the realm of science, there must be something about it that can be proved or disproved. There must be a hypothesis which can be falsified or else it cannot be science.

The prime complaints presented by proponents of Intelligent Design were that evolution was wrong, that it altered the data, that it didn’t have evidence, that it didn’t explain how life began. Even if they were right about all of these claims, they still don’t offer a functioning theory that could replace evolution and be just as useful, all they say is “there has to be something else!” Later in the show the Intelligent Designists ultimately admit that they fear that evolution takes away all their religious hopes and that evolution “deconverts” and “erodes faith”. Ben Stein says, “Evolution leads to atheism.” The last 30 minutes or so of the “documentary” is just fear mongering,  with the juxtaposition of unrelated footage and voiceovers and claims that evolution leads to Nazism. And that seems to be at the root of Intelligent Design, not that they have a theory or want to be credible science, but that they are afraid that science is undermining religions and religious values.  And that is not science, that is political.

The bottom line is that the suppression of ideas is never the solution, but neither is blindly embracing any idea that presents itself.