Apologists wasting their talent

[_Chap]

2) Dawkins is using Wise as a worst-case scenario to show what religion can do to otherwise talented people.

He's using Wise as an example of why religion in general is worthy of opposition.

That is perfectly reasonable, if Wise exemplifies things that he believes to be generally true of the effects of religion in stultifying intellectual potential.

This is as sensical of me pointing to Linus Pauling wasting his later years lauding the miracles of Vitamin C as an example of why scientific thinking is worthy of opposition. And mind you, I could've picked one of any thousands upon thousands of examples of scientists spending their time believing in bad ideas in preference of good ones.

The difference is that those engaged in science are engaged in an activity which is historically demonstrable as being able to produce new and useful knowledge that commands a consensus, and through which former ideas are recognised as wrong and replaced by new ones which work better. Religion is not like that, is it?

Dawkins uses fundamentalism as his avatar for religion because it is an easy target he can handle. He knows how to confront Ted Haggard in a parking lot. Alvin Plantinga in a refereed journal? Not so much.

That is mere chest-thumping on your part. "My big brother can bear your big brother". Yawn. The point is , who can you beat here and now?

My parenthetical comment would've been just as apt if someone said science is worthy of opposition because pursuit of scientific thinking caused Franz Joseph Gall to waste his considerable talent on phrenology.

You can't get it, can you? Science is a process that historically has enabled us to get from goodish but not necessarily perfect ideas to better (but still not necessarily perfect) ones. Evidently that is not good enough for you. Hence you urge us to consider the value of religion, which gets us from not very good ideas to ... well, the same not very good ideas restated and elaborately defended by the apologetics industry. Boring. Useless. A waste of a good mind.

[_Chap]

Clearly, very clearly, most of the people here responding to Light's Beckwith post are either not willing, or not capable of following the complexities and nuance of Beckwith's argument such that any really serious dialog is possible regarding the issue. This is dispiriting, but precisely what you get through Stargate Exmo. This is exactly the kind of anti-intellectualism and hackneyed dismissal of serious thought that virtually defines much of the anti-Mormon world.

Most of the responses to Beckwith, including Dude's either miss the point so severely or simply ignore the philosophical substance of his argument, that the entire thread has become, in essense, tangenital to the original post.

Any philosophical materialist who posits the nonexistence of anything outside the physical, observable universe, is trapped in logical self contradiction at any point at which he posits meaning to anything in the universe, not the least of which is meaning to a human life. Dawkin's own simplistic and facile pop Atheism, his scientism, and his fevered concern that many others don't share it, or that one person among many held to beliefs to which he does not subscribe, implies meaning in a universe where the utter, irreducible random chance nature of the entire created order imply just the opposite.


Dude's purely subjective and idiosyncratic use of the term "meaning" does nothing to rescue Dawkin's logical inconsistency from philosophical oblivion. In Dawkin's world view, there is no general or overarching meaning or purpose to the universe in general, or to the existence of human life in general (or to the entire biosphere). Human beings only find there specific, unique meaning in a universe of common meaning in which life qua life has meaning within a universe that is in some manner related to and a part of that meaning. Playing subjective word games with the term "meaning" doesn't alter Beckwith's primary point: that Dawkins holds to what are in essence religious views (secular naturalism, scientism etc.) and imputes values and value judgments to others, illogical if Dawkins core world views are correct.

It should also be noted that Dawkin's anti-religious screed The God Delusion, demonstrates a positively gross ignorance of comparative religion, philosophy, and history that make that book meat and potatoes to the Madalyn Murry O' Hair type of self satisfied pop demagogue, but should even make intellectually serious nonbelievers cringe and its simplistic and shallow analysis.

Poor old Coggy. Can't manage without the Big Daddy in the sky, or else his life is meaningless. Poor Coggy. Don't argue with him, it's cruel and it just makes him more upset, and he will start shouting. Tiptoe away ...

[_Coggins7]

The difference is that those engaged in science are engaged in an activity which is historically demonstrable as being able to produce new and useful knowledge that commands a consensus, and through which former ideas are recognised as wrong and replaced by new ones which work better. Religion is not like that, is it?

To accept this, one must accept an unstated premise that scientific knowledge, and its technological applications, are the only kinds of knowledge that really matter. That, of course, is a subjective value judgment and world view assumption, and tells us nothing about what science and technology mean at a deeper level, less the various contraptions and gadgets it creates.

That religion does not produce either new or useful knowledge is nothing more than a modern secular humanist prejudice. What is the basis for a claim such as this? The problem is, of course, that science and scientific applications tell us nothing regarding how to live, even as they allow us to live, materially speaking, better. They also tell us nothing regarding-returning to Beckwith again-meaning; what human existence means against the background of our being conscious of our own existence.

[_Coggins7]

Poor old Coggy. Can't manage without the Big Daddy in the sky, or else his life is meaningless. Poor Coggy. Don't argue with him, it's cruel and it just makes him more upset, and he will start shouting. Tiptoe away ...

This is just a perfect example of precisely what I was getting at in my response above. He could have responded in an intellectually substantive manner to my arguments. He could have engaged me in a serious philosophical dialog on the logical or semantic components of Beckwith's claims.

But he doesn't take the argument seriously, and he is not of an intellectual temperament that allows him to engage the elements of this kind of discussion at any depth.

Therefore, he bows and leaves the stage.

[_Coggins7]

You can't get it, can you? Science is a process that historically has enabled us to get from goodish but not necessarily perfect ideas to better (but still not necessarily perfect) ones. Evidently that is not good enough for you. Hence you urge us to consider the value of religion, which gets us from not very good ideas to ... well, the same not very good ideas restated and elaborately defended by the apologetics industry. Boring. Useless. A waste of a good mind.

I can very well see who it is in this debate who doesn't "get it". You quite obviously haven't even read and digested Beckwith's argument, otherwise you would never have said "A waste of a good mind", making Dawkin's mistake yet again and proving Beckwith's major point.

There is so much question begging and unstated assumption in this post it would be difficult to know where to begin surgery. You are still assuming that science and its applications are the only kind of knowledge worth knowing, but as yet, you have provided no basis for that assertion.

[_Coggins7]

metaphysical materialists........

Forgive my unserious reasoning, but isn't Joseph Smith's statement, "There is no such thing as immaterial matter" metaphysical materialism?

As the Tall Man said, "No, its not."

[Guest]

Poor old Coggy. Can't manage without the Big Daddy in the sky, or else his life is meaningless. Poor Coggy. Don't argue with him, it's cruel and it just makes him more upset, and he will start shouting. Tiptoe away ...

This is just a perfect example of precisely what I was getting at in my response above. He could have responded in an intellectually substantive manner to my arguments. He could have engaged me in a serious philosophical dialog on the logical or semantic components of Beckwith's claims.

But he doesn't take the argument seriously, and he is not of an intellectual temperament that allows him to engage the elements of this kind of discussion at any depth.

Therefore, he bows and leaves the stage.

I did reply to the OP in some detail, Coggy. See page one of this thread. It's you I have ceased to take seriously.

[_Chap]

Coggins:

There is so much question begging and unstated assumption in this post it would be difficult to know where to begin surgery.

Repeat with variations whenever you can't think what to say ...

You are still assuming that science and its applications are the only kind of knowledge worth knowing,

Dunno that I have said that. But I don't see what useful knowledge has ever come out of god-talk, while science just gets better all the time

but as yet, you have provided no basis for that assertion.

Look Coggy - you are the one making claims to some kind of super-special knowledge source. So far all the evidence of it that you have produced is your lame and frankly embarrassing assertion that your god talks to you, plus a lot of stuff I can't even characterise as argument. Cut to the chase. Either explain to us what your super-special knowledge producer is, and convince us that we should adopt it, or stop all these endless bletherings about what an intellectual you are. Oh yes, and your god talks to you too.

Put up or shut up.

[_A Light in the Darkness]

If you want to argue this point solely within the context of Dawkin's larger, anti-all-religion stance, then your OP was even more misleading and inappropriate that I first realized.

This is a subdiscussion concerning a parathetical criticism I made of something Dawkins was saying. My main concern is the argument I posted. At best you are conflating issues, at worst you are equivocating them. This thread is about why it is wrong for an atheist to say someone is wasting their talent as demonstrated by the philosopher Francis Beckwith. In a paranthetical, I noted a problem with what Dawkins was saying. I put it in an aside for a reason. The Dude choose to reply to that aside locked away in a paranthetical comment, and I felt the need to address his misunderstanding.

As such:

To simply assert that LDS apologists are wasting their talent is not the equivalent of arguing all religion is worthy of opposition.

Duh?

How soon before you deny having written this post? Give it a couple months. Before then I might be able to hunt it down in short order.

[_The Nehor]

The arguments make some sense until you argue the morality of conferring purpose on each other which is what the OP was about. If the person's intellect came about totally by chance what right does anyone have to claim he is wasting it and not doing what he should be doing with it. Without God any attempt to ascribe purpose is a subjective value judgment. If there is a creator than an absolute value judgment is possible regarding purpose as he can create specific things for specific purposes.