From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Sep 4 8:41:20 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 69FC337B400 for ; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 08:41:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from directvinternet.com (dsl-65-185-140-165.telocity.com [65.185.140.165]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A613243E3B for ; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 08:41:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nwestfal@directvinternet.com) Received: from Tolstoy.home.lan (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by directvinternet.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g84FfGGd088498; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 08:41:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nwestfal@directvinternet.com) Received: from localhost (nwestfal@localhost) by Tolstoy.home.lan (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) with ESMTP id g84FfFb6088495; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 08:41:16 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: Tolstoy.home.lan: nwestfal owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 08:41:15 -0700 (PDT) From: "Neal E. Westfall" X-X-Sender: nwestfal@Tolstoy.home.lan To: Joshua Lee Cc: dave@jetcafe.org, , Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? In-Reply-To: <20020903211527.1a0655b6.yid@softhome.net> Message-ID: <20020904082510.X88455-100000@Tolstoy.home.lan> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Joshua Lee wrote: > On Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:57:11 -0700 (PDT) > "Neal E. Westfall" wrote: > > > naturalism as a viable worldview. In fact, if naturalism is false its > > opposite, supernaturalism must be true. > > > > Moreover, not just any supernaturalism will do. It must provide the > > preconditions for rationality, ethics, science, human dignity, > > freedom, intellectual disagreements, etc. > > Exactly. Judaism. What, that wasn't the religion you had in mind? ;-) Which is why I said that not just any supernaturalism will do. Old Testament Judaism is an aborted version of Christianity. It is also no longer practiced today. If you were to propose what we now call Orthodox Judaism, I would have some very pointed questions regarding specific practices that occurred in the Old Testament. Orthodox Judaism repudiates the need for blood atonement and redemption, which means man can never know if he is in a right relationship with God. Moreover, whether or not you agree that the particular religion I propose is the One True Way, naturalism is still refuted, so the objection you raise really doesn't help you much as a naturalist. If you would like to seriously propose some other religion, we can talk about that. > The problem with these sorts of philosophical conjectures is that if, > despite Kant's objections, they could be proven; they rarely prove any > particular religion's cogence. A particular religion's cogence must be analyzed from an internal perspective for coherence. This too is one of the transcendental preconditions for the intelligibility of experience. If there are no worldviews that are coherent, it is foolish for either of us to even argue, and the skeptics are right. > Somehow I knew that since the subject line contained the word > "evolution" that the missionaries would come out of the woodwork. Or as Terry would put it, it is an "emergent" property. 8-) Neal To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message