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Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Dualist Examples



As I've said in my last post: 

Western Dualism was historically expressed as deism; this is the view that God is to his created world as the skilled human artisan is to the automata of the 18th century. In both cases the created object is thought to have an animus of it's own, an animus by which it is able to function autonomously: Sci-fi stories where the created object runs out of the control of its creator tap into this paradigm. When pushed too hard deism leads to a creation cut adrift from its Creator and eventually death of God secularism: Somehow it is supposed that the cosmos is sufficiently self-provisioned to create and run itself.

 ...this kind of thinking represents a cultural legacy whose effects can be found among both atheists and Christian theists.  It is a short step from deism to atheism. and the consequence is that some Christians see it as their duty to do all in their power refute any hint that so called "natural forces" have the efficacy to generate life, because for them such an efficacy can only mean "God didn't do it". See this for example:

DUALIST: What some of us find curious is that Christian evolutionists so seldom want to grasp the fact that the problem for most Christians is Darwinism, which is an explicitly materialist and naturalist theory of everything

(https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/biologos-hopes-to-calm-the-fears-of-ignorant-christians-about-evolution/)

MY COMMENT:  The above presents us with a "Darwinist" strawman frequently seen among anti-evolutionists; that is: an explicitly materialist and naturalist theory of everything . No! Real "Darwinism" does not claim to be a theory of everything except in the minds of some atheists and Christian theists who think alike on this question, But Darwinian-like processes, if they are to work at all, are necessarily provisioned by highly contingent conditions and information. Therefore "Darwinism" is far from a "natural process". And at least some of those "Christian evolutionists" the hack above refers to do grasp this fact. 

Although I'm not necessarily committed to standard theories of evolutionary mechanisms myself, I would never argue against evolution in the fashion presented above: Given that this quote comes from what claims to be an Intelligent Design stable I find it curious that this pundit does not want to grasp the facts of her glaring inconsistency: For although one might argue against evolution from a Biblical literalist standpoint, ID per se doesn't contradict evolution. This followers because effective evolutionary mechanisms require such a high degree of contingent input that this too is easily cast into the mold of Intelligent Design. 

Below we have another hack who also thrusts his misconceptions into the mouths of Christians who don't agree with him: 

DUALIST: So why aren’t the idea of the big bang and the creation account in Genesis compatible? Well, the big bang is based on the religion of naturalism, which assumes that the universe arose by natural processesIt’s a way of trying to explain everything without God. We should never take elements of a different religion and mix them in with Christianity and the Bible....(https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/universe-final-era/)

MY COMMENT:  Once again we see a crypto-atheist concept of "naturalism" being used as the strawman by which an attempt is made to spiritually intimidate Christians into accepting the misleading views of this author. Once again "natural forces" are wrongly portrayed as the automatic nemesis of a creator God; therefore, according to this author one must reject "the religion of naturalism" unconditionally.  It  is true that many an atheist thinks just like this author and believes that "natural processes... explain everything without God".  So here we have a Christian fundamentalist with an atheistic mindset skipping over the fact that it is logically impossible for natural processes to explain themselves: they can only ever be descriptive of natural history and therefore are bound to be the depository of a  high informational contingency.

Now consider the following from the same post: 

DUALIST: Now, what many Christians don’t realize is that the big bang isn’t just a story about the origins of everything—it’s also a story with predictions for the future. In the most common model, the universe eventually reaches thermal equilibrium with zero energy available (a “heat death,” but it’s not hot as there’s no energy—so it becomes cold). But this is opposite of what the Bible states will happen in the future! 

Once again we see this author thrusting his strawman arguments into the mouths of Christians who disagree with his own flawed way of thinking. He's assumed the because atheists extrapolate the laws of physics willy-nilly into the future then so must Christians who accept the big bang. Now, one can understand why from an atheist standpoint there is little choice but to assume one can extrapolate physical laws into the far future; what else can they do? But unless one makes predictions to test hypotheses, far-flung predictions of this ilk are metaphysical because unlike the past we get no observational messages from the future. So unless we can go there ourselves such predictions cannot be tested. See here where I took this issue up with another fundamentalist.