@wandeljw,
Quote:If creationists want to do real scientific research and prove me wrong, go for it
I'll go for it wande and I'll go step by step in the hope that you half-educated clunkers can follow it.
1--Your position as atheists REQUIRES you to think there is nothing in the universe that is not material. In Hobbes's words--" The whole mass of things that are is corporeal," You have no alternative. Once you allow immateriality you are lost.
2--Thus human minds, to you lot, are material, as I have been telling you all along with my references to Dr. Armstrong's The Materialist Theory of Mind in which The Central-state Theory says , circularly of course, that mind is the "physico-chemical workings of the central nervous system." Irrefutable once immateriality is ruled out.
3--Reason is a capacity of these material minds. Thus reason, in which you set such store, is a mere working of the central nervous system just as unreason is or as being thirsty and getting horny is. Reason is corporeal. An object, or a collection of objects, just like a short thick plank. And there is motion in the matter of the mind as in all matter above absolute zero.
4--Nature does not waste energy. The mind is subject to "preferred pathways" as are rabbit runs, road pathways and water run-offs. Once the path is first preferred subsequent paths follow on the same route. Habit grooves them and it takes an earthquake or some other like cause to shift them.
5--Thus reason is nature's slave and not its master and, being matter, amoral. The atheist cannot have free will.
6--So what you have here is one lot of preferred pathways saying to another lot of preferred pathways that "my preferred pathways are better than your preferred pathways so there mnuurh!!"
7-Now if we use a metaphor we might say "my lawn is better that your lawn" on the outdoing of the Jones's principle. Both the lawns and the minds are arrangements of physico-chemical structures.
8--Which begs the question of what is the lawn better than the other lawn for?
9--As I have also been saying all along that some consequence is what matters, then what activity does the one lawn facilitate better than the other?
10--Hence, and it's dead easy, the superiority of one mind over another is a matter of what desired consequence is in view and how best to acheive it.
11--The anti-ID argument is identical to the Creationist argument, or any other argument once consequences are ignored. They are both just very slightly different arrangements of matter. An extremist nihilist might say they are identical anyway because consequences are philosophically irrelevant in a world consisting of nothing but matter. Both boil down to "my preferred brain pathways (my conditioning) are better that your preferred brain pathways (your conditioning). Or I was better brought up than you were. I'm posher than you. My ego stands higher than your's.
12--In the light of that everything written and pasted on this thread, apart from my contributions which had this in mind the whole way through, are complete and utter balderdash assertions of personal superiority with no reference to the future smooth running of society just as the occupants of play pens are unaware of such considerations.
13--It is another matter entirely, of course, if immaterial substance is allowed. But you lot, as materialists, can't allow that so you are stuck with the above reasoning, just energised atoms and molecules jiggling about in your conks on energy saving habit trips. Reason has real meaning to a non-materialist. A materialist perforce must make moral values both relative and absolute at the same time and man a mere collection of matter and a great thinker also at the same time.
Then a stone or a gatepost might be a thinker too.
For a glimpse into the consequences of atheism I recommend the movie Manufactured Landscapes which, from a materialist point of view, may well represent a new evolution in the history of mankind assuming the basic human nature does not, or cannot, revolt against it.
Incidentally, a short section of the movie shows how the ships all your exports and imports are shifted in are scrapped in Bangladesh. It's a good test of the strength of your socialist hand-wringing.
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