This is a very excellent response to that article. You've got to be very arrogant indeed to write something that churlish. It must be difficult for the likes of Mr. Uygur to be surrounded by so many billions of delusional, superstitious freaks.

I would go further, and argue that Marx, by rebelling against the religion of his parents and grandparents, and attempting to create a secular form of morality, gave rise to a set of ideas that has claimed the lives of millions and still enslaves many. And that anti-semitism, of which Nazism was only one of the later forms, is an implicitly anti-religious response to the originator of current Western ideas of morality.

In fact, the age of secularism has been so short it is impossible to know whether there can be such a thing as secular morality. It may be that those people who believe in moral principles, but deny God, are in denial about the extent to which morality depends on the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Certainly there is no logical, rational way to arrive at our current moral code; and as the Church becomes less traditional it seems to become less moral too: look at the Anglican bishops' approach to the war in Iraq and terrorism in Israel.

Squander Two,
This is where your argument (partly over at Amy's site) staggers out of the bar and trips over its shoelaces:

You write: "Hume, who proved logically that God needn't necessarily exist, and who offered no explanation whatsoever for biological diversity. That's a cop-out."

Well, Hume wasn't a biologist, was he?
I've never studied him, but I'm more than prepared to accept the judgement of experts and history that he was a damn fine empiricist philosopher.
Erasmus was no mental slacker either in the 16th century. Yet he, too, failed to attempt to explain biological diversity, which makes him another "cop-out" on your terms - and to hell with his profoundly influential humanism.
By using Darwin as your line in the sand, you make irrelevant all those thinkers who concerned themselves with astronomy, physics, ethics, maths and all other non-supernatural disciplines throughout mankind's history.

On what planet were THEY taking the "idiot option"?

It IS cracked - and that's putting it politely - to argue that Darwin's Big Idea somehow negates centuries of enquiry independent to the "holistic" Biblical dogma.

Stephen West,
Your phrase "in denial" of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is daft.
Systems of thought don't develop in separate little jumps. Secularism doesn't reinvent moral principles any more than the Judaeo-Christian tradition can claim exclusive dibs on notions about ideals of behavior. The Constitution is a fascinating case in point, obviously.

> I've never studied him, but I'm more than prepared to accept the judgement of experts and history that he was a damn fine empiricist philosopher.

I have, and so am I. But there's a world of difference between damn fine and perfect. Richard Dawkins is an expert in this field. Are you willing to accept his judgment that Hume left a huge bloody great hole in his thinking? Or do you only accept the judgment of some experts? If so, which ones, and why?

Descartes was one of the greatest philosophers ever. He was also deeply, utterly wrong. There's no contradiction there.


> By using Darwin as your line in the sand, you make irrelevant all those thinkers who concerned themselves with astronomy, physics, ethics, maths and all other non-supernatural disciplines throughout mankind's history.

No I don't. To say that Darwinism was the final and by far the largest brick in the wall is not to say that it was the only one.

The level of apparent design in biology is of a whole different magnitude from that in physics, ethics can be sensibly explained without recourse to gods, and maths was always recognised as a product of the human mind, so is pretty much irrelevant. You seem to think that biology is just another scientific discipline. It's not. Life is fundamentally more astounding than the rest of this planet's contents. Any explanation of the world which doesn't even consider how both octupuses and acacias could both exist is deeply inadequate. An explanation that explains octopuses' superb eyes but doesn't mention quasars is only shallowly inadequate.


> On what planet were THEY taking the "idiot option"?

This one.

Incidentally, you should use quotation marks to quote people. I didn't write "idiot option".

> It IS cracked - and that's putting it politely - to argue that Darwin's Big Idea somehow negates centuries of enquiry independent to the "holistic" Biblical dogma.

That would be a silly argument, yes. Which is why I'd never consider making it.

Stephen,

> the age of secularism has been so short it is impossible to know whether there can be such a thing as secular morality.

No, it's been so short that it's impossible to know whether there can be prevalent and successful secular morality. There certainly is such a thing.

Sorry, you specifically wrote "Prior to Darwin's publication, atheism was the stupid option."
Stupid option/idiot option - huge difference, of course!

You also wrote: "First off, applying today's knowledge to the beliefs of our ancestors is a very stupid thing to do."

And that is precisely what you are doing to Hume by using Dawkins' criteria for selectively trashing him. True?

Sure I can grasp the polemical contours of Dawkins' argument.

But it's not a position that holds true by extension. It swiftly becomes fatuous.

Biology is not the only discipline that leads us plausibly away from God.

The "patient and humble understanding of how nature works" [Gould] has been the creed of many great thinkers before Darwin. Darwin was a genius, sure, but one soaked in the Western canon; a giant who also stood on Newton's famous "shoulders of giants".

And, again, I can't understand your sloppy - yes sloppy - elevation of belief in Genesis as "better" than atheism without Darwinism. Genesis is a construct of man's thought which requires faith in, not proof of, its principles.
How is that "a zillion times better" than putting the demands of faith to one side when we start observing our universe?

Newton's remark was a snide barb aimed at a competing scientist. Being the greatest mind of his generation, and one of the greatest minds of his time, didn't elevate him above terrible jealousy and insecurity. He was also a profoundly religious man.

By characterising Genesis as a construction of man's thought you rather beg the question, not so? And are you not a tad dismissive of a tradition that, according to our current understanding, gives a more correct account of how the Universe began than the more logical steady-state theory that was accepted until the Big Bang theory became current?

Your grounds for arguing that my assertion is "daft" seem suspect. Far from arguing that secularism has reinvented morality, my point is that secularism has an unacknowledged debt to religious thought, which it seeks to deny. And it is precisely the case that the religious tradition can "claim dibs" on moral principles, since it was the first to elucidate them. That's the whole point. Secularism has come along afterwards and said "these moral principles which you have; we say they can stand on their own, without all this irrational mumbo-jumbo". I strongly doubt that this is the case. I'm not sure which Constitution you are referring to, but the Constitution of the United States of America was written by men who were very much a part of a religious tradition that sought to cleave more closely to the original sources; so much so that some wanted Hebrew to be the language of the new experiment in democracy - in fact Harvard's motto is in Hebrew.

Stephen,
Then let me say upfront that I most certainly do acknowledge the debt secularism and indeed so many aspects of western civilisation owes religious tradition. In fact, I'll go further -for brevity's sake - and won't start banging on here about Epicurus (341 BC) and the evidence for pre-Christian moral thought, okay?

Flinging around "in denial" charges is footling. And should remain the preserve of therapists. Very few "isms" can shake off the influence of J-C tradition.

I suppose we disagree when you say "depend upon" and I shift that to "are influenced by".

Was Newton, for example, influenced by his faith? You betcha! Did his lasting scientific discoveries depend upon it. No.

As for Genesis Vs. Big Bang. Here - as always - we get to the problem of proof, the evolving hierarchy of testable theories over time and - groan - the absolute dogma of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Though, what's with your odd quibble about the Newton quote - and the thumbnail biographical sketch of his personality and faith?
The proper point of the "shoulders of giants" quote is, surely, the incremental nature of scientific discovery? Not that he was getting characteristically peevish with a shortish rival!

> Stupid option/idiot option - huge difference, of course!

I didn't say you had misrepresented my meaning. I find that, when people start putting words that weren't mine into my mouth (or fingers, since I'm typing), it's best to nip it in the bud.


> The proper point of the "shoulders of giants" quote is, surely, the incremental nature of scientific discovery? Not that he was getting characteristically peevish with a shortish rival!

It's an interesting quote, that one. Its intended point was that Robert Hooke was a shortarse. That's pretty clearly what Newton meant by it. His behaviour in general made it clear that he wasn't fond of crediting other scientists. The quote's fascinating, I think, because the way it is interpreted by most people is the right interpretation, even though that's not what its writer meant at all. Funny old world.

As an aside, I found it hilarious that Noel Gallagher used the quote as an album title at the same time he ditched all the short members of Oasis and hired some tall lanky guys.


> You also wrote: "First off, applying today's knowledge to the beliefs of our ancestors is a very stupid thing to do."

> And that is precisely what you are doing to Hume by using Dawkins' criteria for selectively trashing him. True?

No, that's the precise opposite of what I'm doing. Dawkins' whole point is that it's only in retrospect, with the Theory of Evolution in place — with today's knowledge in mind — that Hume's argument is fully convincing. (Please note the difference between "logically consistent" and "fully convincing".)


> As for Genesis Vs. Big Bang.

You're missing the point. Stephen was talking about steady state versus Big Bang, and comparing both to genesis. And he's got a point.


> Genesis is a construct of man's thought which requires faith in, not proof of, its principles.
How is that "a zillion times better" than putting the demands of faith to one side when we start observing our universe?

Because the issue isn't proof; it's evidence. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that biological life was designed. There's no proof — the holes in the teleological argument have been understood for centuries — but there is a hell of a lot of evidence. And, as we now know, that evidence points in the right direction: life on Earth was designed. The beauty of Darwinism is that it explains how a thing may be designed without the aid of a guiding intelligence. Without Darwinism, design and guiding intelligence were one and the same, so to deny one was to deny the other — which, anyone could see at the time, went against the evidence; and, as we now know, was wrong.

Well, the point about the Newton quote is that it is so uncharacteristically humble in its straight interpretation that Newton cannot possibly have meant that. He certainly felt that he owed no debt to any man, and that he had not only seen the Universe in a way no-one had before, but that no-one ever would again. Not only did he not recognise the incremental nature of science, he didn't even consider himself a scientist. To take its straight meaning the way you have is to co-opt Newton into a modern secular world view he would have found totally alien. And this really is the danger of secularism. You take out of the tradition only the bits that make sense to your worldview, even when they have to be strained out of all recognition to do so, and in so doing lose the essence.

This is what I feel about secular morality. Because the current fashion is to be anti-religion, morality has to be "rescued" from its religious underpinnings to be acceptable. But for those of us who do not believe that the newest line of thought is necessarily the best, the long view suggests that some caution is in order. New ideas need to prove themselves pretty comprehensibly against what comes before.

Obviously science has, in the material world, effected a revolution in old ideas, and has advanced our practical understanding of the universe no end. But it would be a mistake to grant it a greater purview than that. Attempts to replace traditional morality with scientific, rational ideas like Marxism have failed, spectacularly. And while we live in a comfort and a mastery over our environment undreamed of by our ancestors, it would be a grave mistake to presume that we are somehow superior to them for that. Quite the opposite, in fact. Not only has science failed to advance our spiritual selves, it has created much greater distractions in physicality, an illusion of control.

In the Jewish religion, we set aside one day a week when we set aside our mastery over materialism, and pay witness to God's creation of the world. By doing this we can come closer to the underlying truth that the world is designed to hide. For all science's wonders, it cannot advance on the story of Genesis. Before the Big Bang, science says there was nothing. This is literally true, because science can only deal with our universe and what is in it. But it is also limited, because our universe is not all there is.

If this is the case, then the laws given us by our Creator are for our benefit, because the creation was a pure act of love. We cannot benefit to the same extent by following any other laws, be they ever so logical.

Note: while I was composing the above, S2 commented; thus the "you" I am referring to is Jody.

Anyway, you probably think I'm a religious nut and therefore safely ignorable by now, so it probably doesn't matter.

That's a very good example of what pisses me off so much about the religion-is-stupid crowd, Stephen. I think you're wrong, and I think key parts of your beliefs are misguided (just as you do about mine), but you're clearly intelligent. Anyone who reads the sort of thing you just wrote and calls it "stupid" wouldn't recognise intelligence if it sat on their face and wiggled.

Stephen/Squander Two.
Yes, I suppose Stephen I do think some of your arguments are "safely ignorable" when I reach statements such as "because science can only deal with our universe and what is in it. But it is also limited, because our universe is not all there is." Because here, I think, you ascribe as a flaw to science a function it doesn't claim.
I am also, frankly, dumbfounded by Squander Two's positioning of Genesis as the pre-Darwin reasonable default explanation for the workings of the universe with atheism as the "stupid option".
I also deplore Squander Two's Dawkins-assisted idea that Hume plus Darwin equals "fully convincing", whereas Hume without Darwin equals "cop-out" - which is mere time-travel polemical fancy of the sort that mightily tickles first year college students.
The next bit is specifically for Stephen. Trust me, I do get what you mourn. I don't know Hume well, but I am familiar with similar fears to yours expressed by Matthew Arnold et al about the terrible void at the heart of civilisation when faith retreats. But most commentators seem on firmer ground harping fearfully on the negative, than expressing the positive; when they concentrate on the latter, so often they stumble into sanctimonious mysticism.
And the anarchy we see currently loosed upon the world doesn't have its fervor in voidless atheisim.
To get back to "that" Newton quote! I don't care if Hooke was a hobbit, and Newton, generally, the 17th century's most insufferable genius-jerk. Newton CAN'T have penned it - his quill ripping through the paper with glee at his own sheer nerve at concocting a faux-modest "diss" - without being aware of its wider connotations.
No, Stephen, I don't label people "nuts". But nor do I hand out self-regarding posies of flattery for their shining, if misguided, intelligence as Squander Two does. (I think I'd rather be called "stupid" than be damned with faint praise...)

Oh yeah, and Squander Two?
You describe Darwin as the final brick in the wall (to paraphrase). Call yourself a "scientist"?

What irks me the most about Mr Uygur's argument, is not that he doesn't believe in a god, I'm fine with that, but that he refuses to - sorry, I can't put this very scientifically - his scorn is especially reserved for those who have actually read their religious texts (such as the Bible) and STILL believe in their deity.
It's a little like if there's some remote primitive tribe somewhere, and I come up to them and say "did you know that huge metal machines weighing hundreds of tons, fly between continents at 500 miles per hour, 6 miles above the ground"?
"That's imposible. You're insane to believe that", they might well reply, justifiably at first, given their lack of understanding.
"No, it's true. Here's a picture of one. See, it's shaped a bit like a bird, which -"
"That's still insane! It could never get off the ground".
"Yes, I can see it is hard to believe. OK, let me go back a bit, and explain the concept of jet propulsion which gives it its forward thrust. Then I'll tell you about the shape of the wings being different on the underside than on top, which - "
"Stop it! I don't want to hear any of that nonsense! It's simply insane!"

I would like to propose to Mr Uygur that 16=26. It's worrying that Mr Uygur would rather call me stupid than ask me why I think 16 is the same thing as 26, but that's his problem.
Anyway, mathematics is all stupid because nowhere in my maths text book does it talk about the inner artistic beauty and nobleness of numbers and how it gives my life true meaning and purpose. Which, after all, is the obvious way in which a maths text book should be approached, isn't it?

> You describe Darwin as the final brick in the wall (to
paraphrase).
Call yourself a "scientist"?

Yes. I think you may be mistaken as to which wall I was referring to.


> I am also, frankly, dumbfounded by Squander Two's positioning of Genesis as the pre-Darwin reasonable default explanation for the workings of the universe with atheism as the "stupid option".

I didn't say "Genesis"; I said "genesis". Genesis with a capital G is a book in The Bible; genesis with a small G is a more general term for the idea that the universe was created, the idea that all this must have been designed. The former has never been the best explanation of the universe available. The latter has.

Anyway, this argument has already been won by history. There's a reason why widespread atheism occurred after Darwin's publication but not after Hume's or any of the other pre-Darwin atheist philosophers: convincingness. That's the same reason, incidentally, why the Creationist crowd fight such fierce battles against Darwin but not against, say, Russell: they're bright enough to recognise who their greatest opponent is.


> But nor do I hand out self-regarding posies of flattery for their shining, if misguided, intelligence as Squander Two does. (I think I'd rather be called "stupid" than be damned with faint praise...)

See, this is why I corrected you earlier: people who start out small by misascribing quotes always escalate to this sort of crap. Let me make this very clear, Jody. You want to argue about atheism or Darwinism or pretty much anything else, you're welcome here. You want to start hurling abuse, fuck off and do it somewhere else.

I apologize unreservedly for provoking you to this level. Gone, of course, immediately.

I don't know if anyone's looking, but the effect this post has had on my Google ads is a bit scary.

just wanted to point out (because I'm paranoid that as no-one took me to task on it, people are therefore thinking "he's just a complete eejit"), my "16=26" thing was converting from hexadecimal (base 16) to octadecimal (base 8). This fact does not in itself render the former assessment invalid.

And people give me a hard time for counting on my fingers in binary.