Shooting Our Way out of Plato's Cave

I like answering questions that others have posed, when I think I can give an Objectivist spin on the answer. And so I read the question of whether we are "reverting" to our animalistic nature, our brute side, with all the violence we seem to see that comes from not only terrorists, but from normal, everyday people. Is this reversion "predestined", asked the question. No explanation was given as to why it would be "predetermined", but the reversion to our brute side made me think in another direction.


No, not predestined. We are simply going backward into the cave of Plato, as we did after St. Augustine incorporated him into Christianity. Now, however, he has been incorporated, since the writings of Kant, into secular thinking.

"Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history... whenever it fell, so did mankind. The Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century brought men to the Renaissance. The intellectual counter-revolution turned them back toward the cave of his antipode: Plato." Review of J.H. Randall’s Aristotle http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/aristo…

It was because of the Augustine/Plato connection that the Inquisition used torture, murder, and the killing of witches. 

• St. Augustine, on the contrary, was still opposed to the use of force... Finally, however, he changed his views... Apropos of his apparent inconsistency it is well to note carefully whom he is addressing...in his writings against the Donatists he upholds the rights of the State: sometimes, he says, a salutary severity would be to the interest of the erring ones themselves and likewise protective of true believers and the community at large. link

• "No human judge," Augustine wrote, "can read the conscience of the man before him. That is why so many innocent witnesses are tortured to find what truth there is in the alleged guilt of other men. It is even worse when the accused man himself is tortured to find out if he be guilty. Here a man still unconvicted must undergo certain suffering for an uncertain crime –- not because his guilt is known, but because his innocence is unproved. Thus it often happens that the ignorance of the judge turns into tragedy for the innocent party.

 Now the Platonic/Kantian epistemology has turned a different direction, from the religious to the secular, where men (and increasingly, women,) are randomly killing others on campuses and in post offices and other public places. 

Why? They have been taught that it does no good to leave the cave; the flash of rationality and sanity outside the cave is no longer what it was. Those who keep men chained to the cave and cast long shadows are now on the outside of cave where they can catch you, and it is safer inside the cave. 

No one wants to remain in a cave, so they shoot their way out.

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Religion and Revelation: What if We're Wrong?

Why are People Driven to Ask Atheists About Revelations?

After taking three holi-days of breaks from blogging, (I don't blog on Sunday,) and working exclusively on my brickfront retail operation Meta Candles and Gifts*, I would like to say that I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving weekend. Even the smallest turkey was too large for the two people in my home; I'm going to freeze one of the breasts, but we managed without too much difficulty to finish off the pumpkin pie! I know at Christmas I will be forced to eat what ever pie we decide on, and freeze half the Honeybaked Ham.

[*Click on one of the pretty images if you want to order online America's best-made candles or fabulous gift baskets! Hint: Join the Candle of the Month for a near-50% discount! Or contact me through that online site if you have questions about the products and services. Blatant capitalistic promotion is naturalistic, don't you think?]

I had a casual, workplace conversation with the owner of the brickfront, who deals in rare, unusual and expensive antiques. He is religious, and has talked about his work in the church as organist; he keeps a piano (for sale) in the antiques store and sometimes sits down to play it. But until yesterday he never brought up the subject of religion in any way that required an answer or reaction from me, except to listen.

Yesterday he asked if I "believed." I told him I did not. What came next is not unusual in such a situation; it has happened to me many times, so many over the course of four decades of discussing it that I try never to discuss it, because what I hear, and what I am forced to repeat, is simply too pedestrian, and lame at that, to allow myself to be forced into discussing my beliefs--because no one ever lets it go at what I answer.

I cannot recall one incident in all those many years when someone simply said, "Wow. I never would have guessed!" or "Each to his own," or anything that resembled the conversational equivalent of "I have no intention of impressing on you what I think is wrong in your way of thinking." That would be a blessing to hear.

Everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to show what he/she thinks is the error of my logic. Or it goes the direction it went yesterday, when the antiques dealer brought up the subject we can call, "What if you're wrong?"

The "what if you're wrong" debate takes two forms. The first is about the idea that when we die we discover we were wrong, by discovering ourselves in the "afterworld." What will we do, then? we are asked.

The second form of the debate takes the position of, "What if something happens while you're fully alive to change your mind?" The implication here is that if we atheists were faced with some sort of revelation, either a revealed revelation, or one of observation and logic resulting in a possible change of mind, would I be able and/or willing to change my mind? see Horvath and Revelation and On Revelations; Thomas Paine

Why do people need to know this? Why are they driven to inquire? Are they convinced we may say we would be "forced by the circumstances" to believe? Are they convinced, perhaps, that some argument on their part could makes us see the "error" of having a "closed mind"? Are they looking for an opportunity to make the case that "no one can be certain that no god exists"?

It seems my friend was of the mind that he could get me to admit that I could not be certain. I've been drawn in to this argument before, and I knew that it was he who did not have the "open" mind to listen objectively to me, and to objectively ask about my logic. People like him, who are otherwise fine as friends, would rather impress upon us the logic they believe will show we are the ones with "closed" minds.

And by the way, this is behavior in which I never engage, that is, trying to convince someone who doesn't want to listen to the logic of naturalism. It is improper etiquette--and rude.

I did not take the bait. I merely got up from my chair, walked to my computer, pulled up the Academy's "Strong" Position on Naturalism--which I then read to him. I thought that if I presented my argument in its written form, rather than trying to speak from the mind and heart--a situation where I knew he would not be able to resist interrupting me, repeatedly, to argue this point or that--that he would understand I had given the subject considerable scrutiny to publish it in a blog that is readable world-wide.

Instead of being objective, or at the least considerate of my well-thought out argument, his reaction surprised me.

"Do all those big words impress you?" he asked? Believe me when I tell you there was no sarcasm ringing in his words. He wasn't trying to be rude either, though of course it was one of the rudest things he could have thought to ask.

No, he wanted an objective answer: Was I impressed by the words?

I said no, of course not. I said I understood each and every word, that to me each of the words were not "big" words; they were the properly definitive words for the concept expressed by the word in that context. "Do not use two words when one will do," said Thomas Jefferson, though I must admit you must also take into account who will be doing the reading, and choose your words carefully for the purpose.

He was not someone who understood the words of the Academy's Position.

He told me about his cousin, his best friend, who for one of his university degrees was forced to read some difficult books with similarly "big," difficult-to-understand words, and how his cousin had read some of it out loud to him and tried to impress on him the meaning of what he was being forced to read. He had no more understood what his cousin was explaining than what I was explaining.

My friend had successfully changed the subject from my concrete, written logic (and his beliefs, for that matter,) to something else entirely: how he was not impressed by big words that meant nothing to him.

What it came down to for my friend was that he was not prepared to overcome my concrete logic with his faith. Faith, in the end, has no words, and that is the meaning of faith: that it is a matter of faulty epistemology that results in a metaphysical world-view that the supernatural must exist.

When confronted by logic that declares all things to be natural and that nothing is supernatural, this faulty epistemology is frustrated. It cannot make the leap from faith-based beliefs to objective, i.e., non-faith-based, arguments. It must stick to what it knows and that is implicit, unconscious knowlege that if a believer enters into the area of objective language, he will be forced to admit that his belief is not objective. That must be a very difficult thing to be forced to accept.

And attempting to accept, to argue, the position that naturalism and not supernaturalism is the "default position," [see The Big Question of Existence] of objective discurse, it may open a door to the other side of faith that he is not prepared to face. That door is precisely the fact that supernaturalism was the skeptical position for two thousand years, until the faulty Platonic epistemology of St. Augustine reversed the logic, making naturalism the skeptical position against supernaturalism.

But what, the frustrated believer would ask by taking Augustine's position, about the door that opens to faith, the door he would say we naturalists are keeping closed?

The answer is that Reason permanently closes that door, and the only way it can be opened is if Reason fails--if a person of Reason has what is defined as a "revelation" and his Reason cannot overcome the neuropathological or psychological causes.

The epistemology, the logic, of naturalism challenges the seemingly-convincing appeal of the cosmological, mechanical, and moral arguments for the existence of existence itself, and holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government. If someone who maintains this logic suddenly has a neuropathological or a psychological experience that causes him to abandon Reason for faith, or at the very least question his Reason in an episode of skeptical vulnerablility to faith, then he as abandonded what makes Man sui generis from all other creatures, and that is the faculty of Reason.

Faith is understandable. Our animal brains are succeptible to latching on to any argument that seems reasonable. When Man gained enough brain neuropathy to be able to add philosophy to his mental tools, it quickly became apparent--within a few hundreds of years--through the Atomists and others, that the universe was natural and that it had natural laws.

Natural laws do not admit of the existence of things which are not natural; it would be contradictory, and supernaturalism is by definition not natural. Supernaturalism is what man clung to before he discovered the discipline and science of philosophy.

There is no longer any Reason to continue thinking, as I'm certain many of our other animal relatives do, that a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightening, or the shaking of the earth, is anything beyond our understanding.

But the religiously faithful still ask "what if we naturalists are wrong, what if the supernatural exists and what if we find reason to regret our earthly logic when we die and meet our maker"?

If God exists, He will not ask us to regret using the Reason He blessed Mankind with; but He will pity the fool who believed that faith and the abandonment of Reason was what He blessed them with.

He would say that the pre-philosophical belief in the supernatural is not the default position, and therefore supernaturalism is contradictory to naturalism.

Of course, that being so, He would never exist in the first place, to tell us such a thing.



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Variations on a Theme of Naturalism; and The Wedge Strategy

Variations on a Theme of Naturalism
"As defined by philosopher Paul Draper, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_draper/bio.html naturalism is "the hypothesis that the physical world is a 'closed system' in the sense that nothing that is neither a part nor a product of it can affect it." More simply, it is the denial of the existence of supernatural causes. In rejecting the reality of supernatural events, forces, or entities, naturalism is the antithesis of supernaturalism. -- Keith Augustine http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/

Augustine continues: "As a substantial view about the nature of reality, it is often called metaphysical naturalism, philosophical naturalism, or ontological naturalism to distinguish it from a related methodological principle."

But as we shall see, the definitions of all of the varieties of naturalism have differences within the definitions that make the use of any typecasting impossible. You can be a "metaphysical naturalist" in one critic's or one scientist's opinion; yet be another type in the opinion of another critic or another scientist.

Richard Carrier, in defending metaphysical naturalism, says we must reject the "conclusion that naturalism must abandon materialism and realism about material objects and other minds." [ibid "Augustine"]

But materialistic naturalism is sometimes contrasted with metaphysical naturalism. "The meaning of the terms naturalism and materialism depends on the meaning of one's conception of matter and nature. One can have, for instance, spiritualistic and materialistic naturalism. Likewise, there is materialistic monism such as physicalism (there is no other matter than physical matter) and materialistic pluralism (for instance, there is biological in addition to physical matter)." http://www.asa3.org/evolution/vandermeer.html
[original document] http://www.iclnet.org/pub/facdialogue/Issue26/METHMAT3.pdf

The same author writes, "My thesis is that Christians are mistaken in their belief that material reality can be understood without reference to non-material created causes, such as mind, or to non-material uncreated causes, such as God."

By definition, some definitions of some forms of naturalism don't admit of the existence of "non-matter," let alone "non-material causes," "mind," "spirit (soul)," or "uncreated causes."

"There is an objective difference between one who has knowledge of something and one who does not. This is true in both the occurrent and the dispositional senses of "knowledge" and "knows. [ ] Can this objective difference among human beings consist in properties and relations that fit within a naturalist ontology?

"[T]hose in the 19th and 20th centuries who insisted upon distinguishing Naturalism from Materialism--have held that it could be. But with the rise and development of the mind/brain identity thesis during the last half of the 20th century, the generous naturalism (as we shall call it) of Dewey, Santayana, Sidney Hook and others has largely disappeared in favor of a narrower naturalism more commonly and more correctly called "Physicalism" (the older "Materialism").

"Only someone who reads "descriptive" (as opposed to normative) in a strongly materialistic or physicalistic fashion would take the opposition of normative to descriptive to be the issue of naturalism in epistemology. Dallas Willard http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=64

So now we must differentiate the "older materialism" as something called "physicalism." "Physicalism is the thesis that, in some sense, everything (beliefs, thunderstorms, people, sounds, etc.) is physical. [ ] A further condition of physicalism is that the physical world is causally closed. The causal closure thesis essentially states that every physical event has a physical cause. More strongly, it often asserts that everything that happens in the world can be explained by the causal interactions that occur at the fundamental physical level. Physicalism is to be differentiated from materialism because materialism is committed to a very particular physical theory in which matter serves as the fundamental entity. Physicalism, while committed to physical monism, is not committed to a particular view of the fundamental physical stuff and recognizes that the basic level of reality could be non-material (e.g. energy, strings, fields)." International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Physicalism [The ISCID is a highly developed enterprise of teleological thinking.]

Then Willard continues, dividing us even more:

"What might be called 'generic Naturalism' has a long history that includes: Classical Naturalism, with figures such as Democritus, Epicurus, Aristotle and Lucretius; Renaissance Naturalism, with Bruno, Campanella and Telesio, and--born too late--Spinoza; Empiricist/Nominalist Naturalism, with Hobbes, Hume, D'Holbach and most of the French Encyclopedists and Comte; 19th-Century Materialistic Naturalism, with Jakob Moleschott, Karl Vogt, Ernst Haeckel, Ludwig Büchner, Herbert Spencer and, it is often presumed, Charles Darwin; Mid-20th-Century (largely anti-Materialistic) Naturalism, with Santayana, Dewey and others; and Late-20th-Century ("Identity Thesis") Naturalism, which wavers between Scientism and Physicalism, with Quine, David Armstrong, Paul and Patricia Churchland, John Searle, etc." [ibid Willard]

"What is meant by naturalistic and materialistic explanations? Naturalism assumes that only natural laws are adequate as explanatory accounts for all events or phenomena. Materialism claims that physical matter is the only fundamental reality—that the interaction of matter can explain all processes or phenomena. This naturalistic assumption in explaining all things within science by materialistic explanations is known as methodological naturalism (MN)."
Donald J. Eckard, DDS [italics added] www.textbookaccuracy.org/documents/eckard/PHILOSOPHICAL%20ASSUMPTIONS%20IN-1.doc

From the sidebar of this blog page, we pushlished two definitions of mataphysical naturalism, under the heading of "Phrase of the Week." (This sidebar block is changed each week, but this is what it said:)

"The metaphysical presuppositions established by Newtonian science influenced scholars from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. David Ray Griffin defined this type of naturalism, which he referred to as naturalism (SAM) as encompassing sensationalism, atheism, materialism, determinism and reductionism, sometimes referred to as metaphysical naturalism. In addition to these attributes, Griffin also states that it encompasses what he refers to as naturalism (NS) which he concludes is only a rejection of supernaturalism and casual relations interruption. In Griffin's opinion naturalism (NS) is compatible with theism, whereas naturalism (SAM) is not.

"The present problem is that naturalism (SAM) seems to have dominated science and is synonymous with scientific naturalism. This is primarily represented in the works of Searle, Dawkins, Weinberg, Uttal and others. Although scientific naturalism dominates in the academy, particularly in its methodology and mechanistic varieties, it is increasingly being challenged both inside and outside the academic circles." John J. Eberts http://www.philosophos.com/philosophy_article_124.html

So here are two descriptions of the simple word "naturalism" from the same mind, to be distinguished only by the use of (SAM) and (NS).

How are specific naturalists defined?

"[Daniel] Dennett uses our scientific knowledge of brain and consciousness to ultimately defend an entirely naturalistic and materialistic interpretation."http://www.freeinquiry.com/naturalism.html

On this, Willard would seem to agree. "In the typically "naturalistic" mode he declares his "starting point to be the objective, materialistic, third person world of the physical sciences," and holds "that philosophy is allied with, and indeed continuous with, the physical sciences." [ibid Willard]

"Willem Drees endorses not only minimal naturalism, understood as the rejection of supernatural interruptions of the world's normal causal processes, but also maximal naturalism, with its reductionistic materialism. Besides arguing that this reductionistic naturalism provides the best framework for interpreting science, he believes that it is compatible with religion (albeit of a minimalist sort). The "richer" naturalism advocated by Whiteheadians is, accordingly, unnecessary. Drees's position, however, cannot do justice to a number of "hard-core commonsense notions," which we inevitably presuppose in practice and thereby in science as well as religion. His naturalism is too poor, in particular, to account for subjectivity, freedom, and mathematical, religious, and moral experience." [italics added] David Ray Griffin http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119157042/abstract

Now we have another division: minimal vs. maximal. Does the subject get more complicated than this? Yes.

For now, let's leave it at this level! My head is spinning.

But I will add one thing: The Academy's "Strong" Definition of Naturalism with its caveats is intenteded specifically to delineate any definition you might come across from that of the Academy. This Academy believes in "soul," "spirit," "mind," and "free will," as natural arisals from empirical existence, as much as the brain is a natural condition of certain atoms that are the basic building blocks--in differing orders depending on the nature of the empirical existent--of all real, knowable matter, and make up absolutely anything that empirically exists.

And while this Academy believes that sentience and cognizance and emotions and the mind are composed of natural, physiological, i.e., empirical events occuring within the form of life that contains them, this does not explain them a "nature deposing free will."

"Free will" is merely the freedom to think or not; and if one has only one or two choices to make with his/her free will, so be it. Circumstances of life are the conditions of life without which sentience and cognizance could not exist. If I am cognizant that I must do the one and only thing open to my choice, I still have the free will to make the choice do nothing at all.


The Wedge Strategy
Secularism in Naturalism was always supposed to be the norm. A Naturalist does not go looking for signs of God, neither does he go looking for means to disprove God's existence. The Naturalists does begin with the epistemic proposition that since "non-existence cannot ever have existed, otherwise non-existence would have been an existent,--which of course is a contradictory statement used only by theists--it is normal that the Naturalist exclude God as a causative agent in the laws of nature. If god exists, he could not have created existence, without that pesky contradiction getting in the way of epistemic integrity.

"If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this,...We call our strategy the "wedge." --Phillip E. Johnson [1]

"With the simplest of metaphors, Phillip Johnson describes the "wedge" strategy adopted in order to advance "intelligent design" theory, the most recent--and most dangerous--manifestation of creationism." Barara Forrest http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/wedge.html

"In Dover, Pennsylvania, the school board decided to introduce Intelligent Design into 9th grade science classes and undermine the teaching of evolution be describing it as merely a theory, different from the rest of science. This was done for religious reasons and the school board was sued. A long, scathing decision explored the religious nature of Intelligent Design and ruled against Dover."

"One of the refreshing things about Judge Jones' decision in the Dover trial was his reference to the infamous 'Wedge' strategy of Intelligent Design supporters. Far from being a scholarly and scientific research program, Intelligent Design was conceived from the outset as a means for injecting more religion, theism, and Christianity into schools and American culture generally." Austin Cline http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/01/01/wedge-strategy-of-the-christian-right-pushing-religion-in-the-guise-of-science.htm

"[T]he wedge strategy is being aggressively and systematically executed by the Discovery Institute's (DI) Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC) through an extensive, constant, and sometimes dizzying range of activities which, as Johnson says, are intended ultimately to "affirm the reality of God." [ibid Forrest]

"The Wedge Document is an internal memorandum from the Discovery Institute (the leading proponent of Intelligent Designer "Theory") that was leaked to the Internet in 1999. The Discovery Institute later admitted to its authenticity. Since then, Discovery Institute hasn't talked very much about the document, or the strategy it outlines. The reason is crushingly obvious, since the Wedge Document makes it readily apparent that the Discovery Institute is flat-out lying to us when it claims that its Intelligent Designer campaign is concerned only with science and does not have any religious aims, purpose or effect." Lenny Flank (including the entire "Wedge Document" itself) http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hangar/2437/wedge.html

“Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.” –Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903

"It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story.

"Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing, at that time, to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion.

"It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian church sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand: the statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus; the deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints; the Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything; the church became as crowded with one, as the Pantheon had been with the other, and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud." Thomas Paine (1794) "The Age of Reason"

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On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius: A World View

Atomism is incompatible with Judeo-Christian principles. It is because atomism views matter as independent of God that atomism was demoted by St. Augustine from the predominating world view, a view that held sway for nearly 1000 years. St. Augustine turned it into the skeptical position against theism
1) because atomism declares existence exists from eternity, and denies creation by a God; or
2) because atomism's justification for the cause-and-effect laws of nature are independent of control by a God. (Quentin Smith; " The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism"; http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

All men have a world view that for each, in some way, is his explanation of the meaning of existence, of the world. For those who have not "examined" his or her own world view, Ayn Rand defined that view as "sense of life, a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence." “Philosophy and Sense of Life,” The Romantic Manifesto, 25 Whether a person has a world view, a sense of life, or a fully examined cosmology, it sets up the psychology of a his/her emotional responses and the nature of his/her character.

"He who does not know what the world is," wrote Marcus Aurelius, in "Meditations", "does not know where he is. And he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is. But he who has failed in any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself." So it is true that some people--perhaps many people in the twenty-first century where the major metaphysical question seems to be, "How can I be sure?"--do not know "for what purpose he himself exists."

But having a world view is something that almost every man, woman, and child have described, only a few hundred years ago, when certainty was required for staying alive.

This concept of a world view is called "metaphysical cosmology," vs. a purely science-related cosmology that explains a physics-oriented world view. World views have been described as: "A [ ] set of presuppositions (or assumptions) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic makeup of our world." (James Sire.) As: "A person's fundamental 'world outlook,' or life perspective." (borrowed from the German word "weltanschauung." http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldview.htm

You can even take a test to determine what your world view is. http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=23320

"In the 5th century B.C., some Greeks reasoned that matter cannot be infinitely divisible, and they called the smallest particles in nature 'atoms.'' [ ] Many Greeks believed that atoms 'existed from eternity, for they had not been created.' Lucretius supposed, in like manner, that nothing is ever annihilated and that matter exists in the form of invisible atoms.

"The [atomists] supposed that life had developed out of a primeval slime, man as well as animals and plants. Man was a microcosm of the universe, for he contained every kind of atom. As this is the viewpoint of modern evolutionists, the reader may appreciate that Lucretius, not Darwin, has been the principal spokesman for evolution during the last two millennia.

"Lucretius (c.100-c.55BC), chief proponent of atomism, still offers the prevailing world view of reality. No less than twelve English translations of his poem "On the Nature of Things" are readily available in print, the most recent being published in 1995." http://www.commonsensescience.org/atomism.html

"On the Nature of Things," is a description of what Thomas Paine in 1794 in "The Age of Reason" referred to as "the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness" of religion.

"It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind;" Paine wrote, "and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel."

So did Lucretius, and this is his telling of his world view, of Man's place in it, and of the evil influence of religion against the better judgments of men. This is only a very small part of it. Go to the link below the title information to see all of it, or search for other sources.

"Lucretius' scientific epic "De rerum natura" is considered a masterpiece of Epicurean philosophy. Epicurus taught that the world could be understood by reason and that religion only arouses unnecessary fear. Lucretius denounced popular beliefs in deities and supernatural creatures.

"As a poem, "De rerum natura" is remarkable [as] a lyrical presentation of what would otherwise be tedious information." "De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things): Introduction." Epics for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 1 September 2008. http://www.enotes.com/de-rerum/

On the Nature of Things

By Titus Lucretius Carus (c.99-55 BCE)

Written 50 B.C.E Translated by William Ellery Leonard

http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.html

pro·em noun
1 : preliminary comment : preface 2 : prelude

Mirriam-Webster Online

http://www.merriam-webster.com/

Part I
by Lucretitius
Proem

Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,
Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars

Makest to teem the many-voyaged main
And fruitful lands- for all of living things
Through thee alone are evermore conceived,
Through thee are risen to visit the great sun-
Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,
Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,
For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,
For thee waters of the unvexed deep
Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky
Glow with diffused radiance for thee!
For soon as comes the springtime face of day,
And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,
First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,
Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,
And leap the wild herds round the happy fields
Or swim the bounding torrents.
Thus amain, Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee
Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,
And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,
Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,
Kindling the lure of love in every breast,
Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,
Kind after kind.
And since 'tis thou alone
Guidest the Cosmos,
and without thee naught
Is risen to reach the shining shores of light,
Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,
Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse
Which I presume on Nature to compose
For Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to be
Peerless in every grace at every hour-
Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my words
Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest
O'er sea and land the savage works of war,
For thou alone hast power with public peace
To aid mortality; since he who rules
The savage works of battle, puissant Mars,
How often to thy bosom flings his strength
O'ermastered by the eternal wound of love-
And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,
Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,
Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath
Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined
Fill with thy holy body, round, above!
Pour from those lips soft syllables to win
Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!
For in a season troublous to the state
Neither may I attend this task of mine
With thought untroubled, nor mid such events
The illustrious scion of the Memmian house
Neglect the civic cause.
Whilst human kind
Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed
Before all eyes beneath Religion- who
Would show her head along the region skies,
Glowering on mortals with her hideous face-
A Greek it was who first opposing dared
Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,
Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke
Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky
Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest
His dauntless heart to be the first to rend
The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.
And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;
And forward thus he fared afar, beyond
The flaming ramparts of the world, until
He wandered the unmeasurable All.
Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports
What things can rise to being, what cannot,
And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.
Wherefore Religion now is under foot,
And us his victory now exalts to heaven.
I know how hard it is in Latian verse
To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,
Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find
Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;
Yet worth of thine and the expected joy
Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on
To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,
Seeking with what of words and what of song
I may at last most gloriously uncloud
For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view
The core of being at the centre hid.
And for the rest, summon to judgments true,
Unbusied ears and singleness of mind
Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged
For thee with eager service, thou disdain
Before thou comprehendest:
since for thee I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,
And the primordial germs of things unfold,
Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies
And fosters all, and whither she resolves
Each in the end when each is overthrown.
This ultimate stock we have devised to name
Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,
Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.
I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare
An impious road to realms of thought profane;
But 'tis that same religion oftener far
Hath bred the foul impieties of men:
As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs,
Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,
Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen,
With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain.
She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks
And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek,
And at the altar marked her grieving sire,
The priests beside him who concealed the knife,
And all the folk in tears at sight of her.
With a dumb terror and a sinking knee
She dropped; nor might avail her now that first
'Twas she who gave the king a father's name.
They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl
On to the altar- hither led not now
With solemn rites and hymeneal choir,
But sinless woman, sinfully foredone,
A parent felled her on her bridal day,
Making his child a sacrificial beast
To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:
Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.
And there shall come the time when even thou,
Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek
To break from us.
Ah, many a dream even now
Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life,
And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.
I own with reason: for, if men but knew
Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong
By some device unconquered to withstand
Religions and the menacings of seers.
But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs,
Since men must dread eternal pains in death.
For what the soul may be they do not know,
Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth,
And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,
Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves
Of Orcus, or by some divine decree
Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,
Who first from lovely Helicon brought down
A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,
Renowned forever among the Italian clans.
Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse
Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,
Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare,
But only phantom figures, strangely wan,
And tells how once from out those regions rose
Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears
And with his words unfolded Nature's source.
Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp
The purport of the skies- the law behind
The wandering courses of the sun and moon;
To scan the powers that speed all life below;
But most to see with reasonable eyes
Of what the mind, of what the soul is made,
And what it is so terrible that breaks
On us asleep, or waking in disease,
Until we seem to mark and hear at hand
Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.

Any variation in this publication of "On the Nature of Things" that varies from Latin hexameter verse, in which each line has six "feet," or units of rhythm, is purely accidental, and the fault of the copy/paste procedure allowed by the copyright from the website listed above.

The Causal Connection Between Naturalism and Metaphysics

The more I learn about the secular philosophical science of Naturalism, the more astounded I am by the variations in its description, by the kinds of denunciations of it that come from theists, the misrepresentations of it by those theists in their criticisms--though the misrepresentations may be honestly made propositions--and by the lack of cohesiveness among the ranks of Naturalists to describe or even to defend their own scientific bearings.

All of this is leading to a breakdown of our civilization, because science in all its forms, including the value judgments of metaphysics as a science, and the epistemology by which we reach or deny such metaphysical judgements, is the underpinning of the way a civilization conducts itself--and metaphysical value judgments are definitely being denied, by some Naturalists and by some of the general population, regular people who rely on what science and philosophy tells them, for their assessment of their identity and their place in the world in which they live.

"Different contemporary philosophers interpret ‘naturalism’ differently. This disagreement about usage is no accident. For better or worse, ‘naturalism’ is widely viewed as a positive term in philosophical circles—few active philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as ‘non-naturalists’.[1] This inevitably leads to a divergence in understanding the requirements of ‘naturalism’. Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand ‘naturalism’ in a unrestrictive way, in order not to disqualify themselves as ‘naturalists’, while those who uphold stronger naturalist doctrines are happy to set the bar for ‘naturalism’ higher.[2]" [italics added] Stanford.edu http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/index.html#note-1

Philosophers who "are happy to announce themselves as ‘non-naturalists’" are theists, which in and of itself is not problematic for the science of philosophy (nor for the philosophy of science,) nor for that matter for those Naturalists who know how and when to defend their science. Most of the important philosophers in Western history--with Augustine standing out predominately in the early lead--have been theologists. But vying to replace naturalism is the field of theistic philosophy called "theistic realism."

"Phillip Johnson, one of the founders of the intelligent design movement, has proposed an alternative form of reasoning to that used by modern scientists. He refers to his form of reasoning as "theistic realism", while the alternative could be called "empirical naturalism". Allen MacNeill http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2008/07/phillip-johnson-theistic-realism.html

It is no wonder that "Different [ ] philosophers interpret ‘naturalism’ differently." The traditional philosophic science of Naturalism, which would seem to carry the connotation of "scientific" when compared to anything containing theism, cannot even be called "scientific naturalism" without careful consideration. That term has been usurped, it seems by "theistic realists", who prefer to call plain, old, traditional and objective Naturalism by the prefix of "scientific" so that they can berate Naturalism, when the mood strikes them, over the issue of the matter/spirit dualism.

"Just what is scientific naturalism (hereafter, naturalism)? Succinctly put, it is the view that the spatio-temporal universe established by scientific forms of investigation is all there is, was, or ever will be. Brains and buffaloes exist (for instance), but minds and moral values must not, because they are invisible to the five senses and therefore invisible to scientific enquiry." [italics added] J. P. Moreland http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000872.html

But this is where the theists want to put Naturalists: right smack in the position of appearing to deny that a soul can reside within the human infrastructure of mind and body. Some Naturalists do deny it. Not all do. It is as unfair to put all Naturalists into this stereotype as it is to call all believers in Christ by the stereotype of "right-wing born-again evangelicals." The defense of this senseless attack on the matter of dualism is plain to see when it can as easily be said that "the five senses" are "invisible and therefore invisible to scientific enquiry." But we go on investigating the senses all the same.

Just as the senses can be felt within the body, so can the conscience and the soul and all emotions be felt within the body; but they, too, are "invisible." I know of no Naturalist who would deny the appearance of a conscience or of emotions within the consciousness of the mind. It is, however, plain to see that some Naturalists appeal to the chemical/electrical actions of the body in determining the nature of thought and of emotion and mind.

This, however, appears to be reactionary, an attempt to distance themselves from any connection however tenuous to knowledge that emotions have rational attachments to metaphysical values. Naturalism that denies the mind is more than chemical/electrical reactions that can be predicted by causes also deny much, if any, importance to metaphysics. Such reactions of denial are not mainstream else this would not be the extremist position. We would be the extremists, we who do not deny the mind is more than simply biology acting naturally. Of course, that is precisely what the mind is, but not to the denial of free will in the determination of what goes on in the mind.

These who oppose anything but empirical causal relationships in human emotions, deny metaphysics any importance in human thoughts and ideals, where such metaphysical values are accepted by mainstream Naturalists and theists alike as the very cause of the emotions these reactionaries are trying to determine as merely empirically caused.

And yet, what is sometimes called "theistic realism" is also called "Creation Science," an oxymoron if ever there was one. Impartial, "empirical" naturalism is sometimes called "Representational Naturalism" by theists. (It would seem that any line of thought, any "label" they can come up with to split the field of Naturalism within its own ranks, is within their arsenal of tools with which to destroy Naturalism.)

"The representational naturalist holds that knowledge and intentionality are entirely natural phenomena, explicable in terms of causal relations between brain states and the represented conditions. [ ] Since knowledge is a form of success, this relation must involve a form of reliability, an objective tendency for beliefs formed in similar ways to represent the world accurately. [ ] Knowledge could then be identified with true beliefs formed by processes whose proper functions are fulfilled in normal circumstances." [italics added] Robert C. Koons http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/arn/koons/rk_incompatibilitynatreal.htm (In fairness, it does not appear that Koons himself is a theist realist.)

But in Koon's own words, "at present, our best scientific picture of the world is an essentially materialistic one, with no reference to causal agencies other than those that can be located within space and time." In other words, the mind, its thoughts, our emotions and our conscience and our soul and even our consciousness are outside the purview of science because they are "invisible" empirical science.

Such "true beliefs" come in two varieties: justified and unjustified, or "informed" and "uninfomed," according to Quentin Smith. http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/08/loss-of-secularism-in-naturalism-part-2.html

Koons, however, does not appear to be a theist, nor does he appear to be "uninformed." He argues that Naturalism and Scientific Realism are incompatible. He makes a case that "even though we have no reason to think that the origin of our aesthetic attunement to the structure of the universe is mysteriously prior to experience, there remains the fact that experience has attuned us to something, and this something runs throughout the most fundamental laws of nature. Behind the blurrin' and buzzin' confusion of data, we have discovered a consistent aesthetic behind the various fundamental laws."

But the most comprehensive definition of "naturalism" to my way of thinking was written by B.A.G. Fuller http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou00985 http://www.enotes.com/classical-medieval-criticism/parmenides/b-g-fuller-essay-date-1923?print=1 and published in D.D.Rune's "Dictionary of Philosophy" in 1942. To my way of thinking, Fuller's assessment contains this aesthetic. I have never doubted that it was contained within, and it helped lead me to the aesthetic deduction that is the thesis of my book, "The Single Intelligible Object." Fuller describes the aesthetics of the "SIO" this way:

"Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but is self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic events), and only incidentally productive of man; that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny." http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html

To my way of thinking, there is no equivocation about the meaning of classical, Atomistic, secular, impartial and "empirical" science of Naturalism, neither epistemic equivocation nor metaphysical; nor as a basis for investigating all other sciences, because it acts with the awareness that proof of God might turn up and become part of the evidence discovered in the impartial search for truth. (It does not have a single solitary belief in the whole wide world that such proof of God would ever turn up, and it is not the Naturalist's job to go looking for it; but if found, it would not be denied.) "Theistic realism," or "Creation science" begins with the presumption that God exists, and goes looking for every piece of evidence that is left open to question, so that it can argue that since the evidence does not overwhelmingly disprove God's existence, it must be allowed to be argued that God's presence is a given "because everything in nature necessarily needs a creation."

It is one thing to have a justified belief that everything in existence must have had a creation, though Fuller's and Rand's explanations deny any such creation. It is entirely another matter to begin from the reference that God as creator is the given and then go looking for evidence of that position using "an alternative form of reasoning." A "scientific" epistemology that begins with the assumption of supernaturalism is flawed from its very basis, but that does not make a justified believe in God flawed. I understand perfectly how rational men can believe in God. I cannot find the justification for it in my own life; as a matter of fact, I find the opposite justification.

But a science that begins with the assumption of supernaturalism by using "an alternative form of reasoning" is introducing pure theology into a secular undertaking. Theology is theology and science is science.

Nor is there anything in Fuller's definition to exclude the acceptance of mind on the metaphysical plane, and there is everything in it to support it. "[H]uman life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature..." Fuller did not leave out the causative elements of Naturalism on the moral and spiritual aspects of Homo sapiens sapiens; he left open the door to the integration of "mind" as a metaphysical element "in the ordinary operations of nature."

But Koons makes an appeal to the reactionary position, when he says "our best scientific picture of the world is an essentially materialistic one, with no reference to causal agencies other than those that can be located within space and time." This leave completely out of the picture any notion of soul, spirit, conscience, or emotion except as "the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/ He might as well claim that because emotions and the soul are invisible to science that they cannot be determined to exist except as chemical/electrical events within the human empirical infrastructure.

If Naturalism is attacked by theists for its reliance on a scientific framework that is exclusive of the supernatural as part of the framework except where it may objectively be so discovered, then it will come as a shock to theists to learn that none other than the atheist philosopher Ayn Rand argued thoroughly and epistemically for the recognition of the existence of soul, conscience, and emotions.

"Emotions," she wrote in "The Virtue of Selfishness", "are the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss."

She included that these value judgments are "the programming consist[ing] of the values his mind chooses. [M]an chooses his values by a conscious process of thought—or accepts them by default, by subconscious associations, on faith, on someone’s authority, by some form of social osmosis or blind imitation. Emotions are produced by man’s premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly."

In "Philosophy: Who Needs It", Rand said, "If you default, if you don’t reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance—and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted."

This is the explanation described by metaphysics, the very metaphysics that the reactionaries of Naturalism reject. These reactionaries cannot be called "extremists." Rand herself was an extremist, and to the best of my ability I consider myself an extremist. Giving to any act of discurse less than the act requires does not serve the argument or the science. Extremism is not a vice; extremism is covering all your bases. But these reactionaries may rightly be said to "diverge in understanding the requirements of ‘naturalism’." Stanford.edu And the theists may rightly be said to be understanding them correctly, but incorrectly addressing them as though they were the mainstream of Naturalist thinking.

"Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments" [Stanform.edu] are not going to deny the matter/spirit dualism. Nor will those who refuse to shut the door on all open , rational, and objective inquiry.

"There is no [ ] dichotomy between man’s reason and his emotions—provided he [ ] discover[s] the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come," Rand said in her 1964 interview with "Playboy." "[I]f his premises are wrong, he corrects them, [ ] he has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, [ ] emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. [ ] This relationship cannot be reversed [i.e., ] take[ing] his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect..." [italics added] http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html

Theist science by any name or description cannot be allowed to destroy Naturalism on the false basis of stereotyping all Naturalists as reactionaries who deny that Man can place a metaphysical face on the chemical/electrical forces of nature that are the material--but not the cause--of his emotions. Just as Man can feel the effects of his five "invisible" senses, just as he can feel the "invisible" loves, jealousies, fears and other emotions that describe his mental states, so he can feel his soul as the emotional end result of his value choices in play within his conscience. Reversing the cause-and-effect is an epistemic error, but it may be one that is deliberately reactionary, against the theists who deliberately choose the epistemic error of accepting a creator as the given.

Metaphysics is no more "visible" to science than any other value judgment, yet value judgments are an integral part of the standards--indeed, they are the standards--by which every scientist of every ilk conducts his business. Value judgements are the standards by which every human makes any choice of one thing over another. Value judgements determine the direction in which he will turn his will, because it certainly one thing to be the Good Samaritan, and another to be the uninterested and immorally refrained witnesses to a beating, as we ourselves have been witness to on nightly, daily, and twenty-four-hour new broadcasts.

This reactionism on the part of some Naturalists (of whom some might better be identified as vehement anti-theists rather than Naturalists,) are afraid of making Rand's "causal connection in reverse," taking emotions as the cause and their minds as the passive effect. This attitude of reactionism is what such "bad Samaritans" are made of. They are being taught that emotions are merely chemical/electrical mechanisms of the body that say nothing about deeply human, metaphysical value judgements; and instead of rushing in to help the truly needy at their moment of desperation, they misunderstand that what they are witnessing is indeed going on right in front of them and that it will not go away if they close their eyes and let their emotions dissipate. (Or, they are aware of Rand's "rational egoism" and believe they are her adherents, but are among the many who confuse that "egoism"with such total selfishness that they believe it is against their interests to help other humans in their moment of need. At least call 9-1-1, for god's sake.)

It is the badly mistaken belief in consciousness as the cause of all that exists--which is the very act of getting Rand's causal connection reversed--that leads the reactionaries to their denial of metaphysics; and this belief in consciousness as the cause of all that exists is the denial we see in passive witnesses to acts of crime and of great human suffering.

This causal reversal and the acts of people staring blindly at acts of crime are inextricably connected, and as it is the dedicated task of this Academy to maintain the rationality of Naturalism, I will be looking for more evidence of this connection. It seems vitally important to understand how Naturalism in its reactionary mode, the denial of metaphysical values by the public because of this reactionism, and the disintegration of our civilization as witnessed by the horrible, violent, and insane acts of crime going on, are inextricably connected.

Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

The Loss of Secularism in Naturalism Part 5; Defeator Arguments

The case has been made that many naturalists are, in the words of Dr. Quentin Smith, http://www.wmich.edu/philosophy/index.php?content=smith_faculty_profile "uninformed," having an "unjustified true belief" in the ancient science. "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism"; PHILO [see link in left column of this blog] http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

The ancient science is nothing less than calling a spade a spade, which in the words of Leonard Peikoff http://www.peikoff.com/ concerning existence is "a self-sufficient primary [that is] not a product of a supernatural dimension, or of anything else," with nothing being previous to existence, "its nature [ ] irreducible and unalterable." Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology ; by Ayn Rand. Piekoff defines it in its atheistic countenance, but even in its theistic trappings it is irreducible, unalterable, and "natural" in its working, in a form of molecules-to-man evolution in its epistemology.

"As Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy (1946) points out, philosophy and practical science were not originally separate. They were born together in the beginning of the 6th century BC and they both involved a transition from a theistic toward a natural way of thinking about the world." http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/section1(210).htm

"The controversy [between the theists and the naturalists] erupted early in the 19th Century when geological discoveries implied that the earth is much older than was suggested by the contents of the Judeo-Christian Bible [ ] The profound impact of this early debate upon the popular mind was directly responsible for the 1857-1860 revival in protestant religious enthusiasm."
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Theistic-realism

In "the publication of The Genesis Flood in 1961, Dr. [Henry] Morris saw clearly that good science—the proper handling and interpretation of scientific evidence—would demonstrate the veracity of the biblical accounts of Creation and the Flood." [italics added]

"Today, thousands of creation scientists [can] be found in literally every discipline of science [ ] Evolutionists are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction that evolution is 'science' and creation science is 'religion.' Such statements today merely reveal the speaker's own liberal social philosophies—not his or her awareness of scientific facts." [italics added] http://www.icr.org/research/ The Institute for Creation Research, from which this quote comes, maintains laboratory facilities on its campus in Dallas, Texas. Its researchers and faculty http://www.icr.org/research/scientists_faculty/ are well-recognized in their fields.
In the "National Review," author Barry Freundel reviews the ideas of one of the latest and most controversial of these creationists, Phillip Johnson, and his book "Reason in the Balance." Johnson himself is also Program Advisor to Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, UC Berkeley, where he is a law professor and former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, and holder of a named chair at Berkeley. (See below for "Discovery Institute.")

But before we get to any discussion of Johnson's book, we need a definition of Naturalism. "Carl Sagan summed up the philosophy in these words: 'The Cosmos is all there is, all there has been and all there ever will be.' A naturalist believes that nature is the whole show. There is no 'super-nature' (God). For sure a naturalist could talk about a pantheistic 'God' who is Life Force or Energy or even the Ground of Being, but not Creator. There is no place in a naturalist scheme for a God existing independent of nature, who created it and on whom it depends." http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2964/reason.html

But this is not the view of many naturalists, though they may keep it out of their work. Most have some logical or emotional basis for a continuing belief in a deity, and they are not to be maligned for this.

"[R]eligion is an early form of philosophy, [ ] the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, [ ] before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very—how should I say it?—dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith."
“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” March 1964 http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/religion.html

And "faith" is the very nature of the disagreement between theists of any sort and naturalists of any sort.

"Explaining in great detail [ ] Naturalism and its deep flaws," [quoting Johnson,] Freundel claims Johnson makes a case that Naturalism is as much a religion as any other, if it means "a system based on unchallengeable orthodoxies. Indeed Naturalism may be more 'fundamentalist' than [ ]conventionally defined fundamentalism." The disagreements between naturalism and religion "is leading us toward a culture war [ ] when rational discourse breaks down and one side resorts to denigrating the other -- in this case, as "phobic," "authoritarian," and otherwise dangerous. Only by restoring the search for objective truth, and allowing all viewpoints a fair hearing, can we avoid such a frightening prospect." [italics added] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n24_v47/ai_17955372

Johnson, in his chapter "Theistic Naturalism and Theistic Realism", wants us to believe that "the much-hyped physical theory of everything may never be more than a myth (and in any case would explain disappointingly little)"; and that "scientists pursuing the grand project [ ] have refused to consider that there may be limits to what can be learned about reality through their methodology. [ ] Perhaps their dogmatic metaphysical naturalism has even led scientists to disregard some aspect of reality that is virtually staring them in the face. Could it be, for example, that living organisms (in Richard Dawkin's wording) 'give the appearance of having designed for a purpose' because in fact they are designed?"

To a creationist, this fallacious logic is all that is needed to write off naturalism as the denial of creationism, when no such thing is intended. Peikoff's definition of existence may belong to that of the atheists, but it is astoundingly true that "thousands of creation scientists [can] be found in literally every discipline of science," and that does not disclude the field of naturalism. One does not need to be atheist to believe that God created the universe with laws that allow for our understanding of a molecules-to-man epistemology.

"Scientific naturalists meet this shocking suggestion with one of two inconsistent responses," says the Discovery Institute. http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=358 "One is to make a few superficial debater's points against design and then declare the subject closed." This is precisely what Smith contends too many of us do with a wave of the hand. It is precisely the reason that in some quarters, creationism is winning, all too easily, and the very reason we naturalists must learn arguments that defeat the "defeator arguments" of the creationists. It is easy for us to see that the creationists often use fallacious, emotion-laced or based logic. But it is not as easy to overcome these fallacious objections in the real world when we ourselves have no understanding of how to defeat the creationistic logic that would have us becoming the skeptical position against theism, rather than what ought to be happening, which is reverting back to the pre-1967, pre-Plantinga era when theism was the skeptical position against naturalism.

The Discovery Institute quotes Johnson: "[T]he very atheistic physicist Steven Weinberg [says] '[T]he only way that any sort of science can proceed is to assume that there is no divine intervention and to see how far one can get with that assumption.'"

To "assume there is no divine intervention" may be the atheist platform of naturalism, but does not even attempt to overcome Johnson's defeators. This abdication of any dismissal of creationism denies the epistemic principle of existence as a self-sufficient primary, ignores logic that is assumed in the argument for Creation, and ignores (or affirms) that there must be the possibility that before Creation there was "nothingness" as the only existent.

But the sound conclusion is that "nothingness" cannot be reified into an existent. Thus, according to this hypothesis by Weinberg, there is the tacit admission that "nothingness" was once a reified existent, and that we need to "see how far we can get" with that illogical assumption.

For any committed creationist, Johnson's argument is this: "On the contrary, the very notion of 'natural law' grew out of the concept of a lawmaker."

I must, myself, assume from ignorance that this is where Augustine and Plotinus had such an effect in reversing the roles of naturalistic world view to being the skeptical position of theism, as Smith alludes to in PHILO.

This "very notion," of the concept of a lawmaker, Johnson says of biology as he uses one example, "will not only survive but prosper if it turns out that genetic information really is the product of preexisting intelligence. Biologists will have to give up their dogmatic materialism and discard unproductive hypotheses like the prebiotic soup...Freed of the metaphysical chains that tie it to nineteenth-century materialism, biology can turn to the fascinating task of discovering how the intelligence embodied in the genetic information works through matter to make the organism function." [italics added] How many naturalists can argue that while it is our job to discover such nature embodied in genetic information, that this natural intelligence is not divinely created but is an act naturalistic molecules-to-man, even if he/she must maintain a belief in the supernatural creation of the molecules themselves, as many naturalists do?

Yet, for all his subjectivity, Johnson makes the astonishing declaration that, "If there really is a materialist explanation for the origin of life, or the human mind, it surely will be found by a scientist who resolutely ignores the objections of people like me and persists in looking for it."

His theme in this book may come when he writes, about the current state of naturalist knowledge, that "the managers of the enterprise may be confident that a smashing success is just around the corner," then undercutting that by saying the epistemic problem "is deciding when to stop believing [the] promises of eventual success, particularly when the managers have been successful in the past.

"How can we tell who is correct? ...the solution is not to grant the insiders the exclusive privilege of auditing themselves. I do not urge scientists to give up on any theory or research agenda until they themselves are convinced that further efforts would be fruitless."

This is why the Discovery Institute calls it "shocking [ ] to make a few superficial debater's points against design and then declare the subject closed." Johnson wants the debate. He knows as well as Quentin Smith does that most committed naturalists are "uninformed" with "unjustified true beliefs." He thinks his creationistic arguments will hold up in this increasingly de-secularized, evangelical atmosphere in which our society now exists. He's probably right.

Johnson gives us our due on the one hand, then undercuts it with the other. "In view of the cultural importance of the naturalistic worldview, however, and its status as virtually the official philosophy of government and education, there is a need for informed outsiders to point out that claims are often made in the name of science that go far beyond the available evidence." [italics added]

So Johnson also uses the word "informed" to designate himself and others like him who can defeat our arguments. But what do they use as defeators? The fall-back position of saying, "Naturalists have not proved this or that, we are going beyond our own proofs into supposition, and therefore the creationists must maintain their own belief that a blind watchmaker is not the cause of what we propose.

But he labels such attempts such as the scientist who resolutely ignores the objections of people like him and persists in looking for naturalistic proof--and finding it--attempts at working with "heuristic assumptions," or assumptions that provide help in the solution but that are not independently justifiable or provable. And yet, if they are not provable, how can the scientist who ignores critics like Johnson find that there "really is a materialist explanation for the origin of life?"

"How can we tell who is correct?" Johnson asks. "[T]he solution is not to grant the insiders the exclusive privilege of auditing themselves."

But it never has been the exclusive privilege of any science to audit itself, because every science has an impact in one way or another on the other sciences and on the arts and humanities in general, not to mention that more generalized philosophers of epistemology must set the standards. (Smith, himself, is a professor of, among other things, epistemology.)

"Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go," wrote Ayn Rand. "It is not the special sciences that teach man to think; it is philosophy that lays down the epistemological criteria of all special sciences." http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/science.html It makes one wonder what the epistemological criteria must be for Johnson's odd defence of creationism. He seems to find it in his desire for the naturalists to go on toiling, maintaining "the fiction that evolution is 'science' and creation science is 'religion;'" or that "creation science" which assumes the supernatural ought to go about attempting to prove supernaturalism; in the desire that naturalists go on "pursuing the grand project;" or that we refuse "to consider that there may be limits to what can be learned about reality through [naturalistic] methodology."

I know of no naturalist who would claim there are no limits. The state of science changes all the time, and the methodology of the twenty-first century is not the methodology of the Atomists.

No, the epistemology seems to be in the attitude that a little bit of evolutionism is not so worrysome.

To "Johnson and his ilk [a] new adaptation here, a lost adaptation there--who cares?" writes Michael Ruse in "Naturalistic Fallacy" Reason Magazine http://www.reason.com/news/show/30010.html " Rather, it is the very moral fiber of the nation that counts. Let in evolution, and pornography, abortion, and sodomy are next. Or rather, because we let in evolution, pornography, abortion, and sodomy are now. Johnson starts with an introduction to the enemy [as those] 'who assume that God exists only as an idea in the minds of religious believers [,that] humankind created God--not the other way around. In that case, rationality requires that we recognize the Creator as the imaginary being he always has been, and that we rely only on things that are real, such as ourselves and the material world of nature."

That is exactly Smith's point when he writes, "The four goals of the informed naturalist are i) retrieve naturalism from its de facto reclassification by medieval philosophers; ii) reclassify the philosophy of religion as a subfield of naturalism, viz. skepticism about naturalism, so that the position in the various fields of philosophy formerly occupied by 'the philosophy of religion' is replaced by the field 'the philosophy of naturalism;' iii) to understand in outline an actually extant version of original naturalism (Greco-Roman naturalism) that these original naturalists justifiably believed to be an informed naturalism and which contemporary informed naturalists justifiably believe is approximately the best that could be done by naturalists in the epistemic situation of Greco-Roman philosophers; and iii) A third goal is to understand in outline an actually extant version of original naturalism (Greco-Roman naturalism) that these original naturalists justifiably believed to be an informed naturalism and which contemporary informed naturalists justifiably believe is approximately the best that could be done by naturalists in the epistemic situation of Greco-Roman philosophers; [and] iv) to justifiably reformulate, and answer, the two basic ontological why-questions that medieval philosophers took over from the Greco-Roman naturalists, and which have (for the most part) remained ever since 'questions asked in the field of the philosophy of religion.' The successful accomplishments of these four tasks will restore academia to the mainstream secularization it possessed before the post-1967 breakdown in the field of philosophy."

"This retrieval [i] is also a reversal. The aim is that theism be justifiably reclassified as a subfield of naturalism, namely, as a skepticism about the basic principles of naturalism whose refutation serves to stimulate and further develop the naturalist program. 'Philosophy of religion' disappears, to be replaced by a new subfield of naturalism, namely, 'skepticism about naturalism,' with skeptical arguments being put forth and argued against, with the aim in mind of further developing the argumentative foundations of the naturalist world-view."

"[T]he most basic answers to the ontological why-questions in a certain naturalist theory permit the two most basic why-questions, formulated in the following way, to be positively answered, [and] then that theory is explanatorily complete.

"Q1. Why do these things exist and why do these laws of nature obtain rather than some other possible things and other possible laws of nature?

"Q2. Why is it the case that there is not only nothing? (The reason for formulating the question this way will become apparent when I discuss the atomists.)" [For that discussion, please read Smith's paper in the link at the top of this blog.]

Clearly, we "uninformed" naturalists have a long way to go. Not being in academia, I have long believed that my naturalism was "justified true belief." But then, I do find myself in a different class from most naturalists who are either agnostic or have some form of belief in a creator.

My argument for naturalism runs this way, as I said above and have said on many past occasions: existence is self-sufficient, primary, the given, and is "self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic events), and only incidentally productive of man [Greek Atomism]; that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny," http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html because anything less that this denotation would require that "nothingness" be the original state of existence and it is an epistemic contradiction to insist that "nothingness" was at one time an existent, the thing that existed before existence existed. There can be no "thing" in existence before existence allowed for the conditions necessary for a "thing."

"Existence and identity are not attributes of existents, they are the existents . . . . The units of the concepts “existence” and “identity” are every entity, attribute, action, event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist." Ayn Rand: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

The deductive syllogisms by which we uninformed naturalists must come to discover are the "defeators" of our beliefs, defeators which prevent our beliefs from being "justified and true" beliefs, Smith lays out in his paper:

Where "N (a thesis). Naturalism, i.e., the thesis that there exist inanimate or animate bodies, with animate bodies being either intelligent organisms or non-intelligent organisms, but there exists nothing supernatural; then

"A (a defeated justifier). A is the argument that contemporary science and naturalist philosophy are known to be probably or certainly true, even though A includes no counterarguments against contemporary arguments for theism: or

"DA (a defeater for the justifier A). DA is a sound argument that argument A is unsound; or

"B (a defeated justifier). B is an argument that, contemporary science and naturalist philosophy, when conjoined with an evaluation of contemporary theist arguments for not-
N, (where “not-N” implies naturalism is not true) justify not-N; or

"C (an undefeated justifier for N). C is the argument that, contemporary science and naturalist philosophy, when conjoined with an evaluation of contemporary theist arguments for not-N, justify N.

"According to the informed naturalist, the predicament of at least ninety-nine percent of contemporary naturalists is represented in the following columns. We can state very briefly the arguments different philosophers believe in terms of our symbols. The mentioned belief states are arguments believed to be sound by the relevant parties.

"Belief State of Most Contemporary Naturalists
1.A.

2.A justifies N.

3.Therefore, N is justified.

Defeater Recognized by Informed Naturalists
4.DA.

5.DA defeats A.

6.Therefore, A does not justify N.

Belief State of Most Contemporary Theists
7.B.

8.B justifies not-N.

9.Therefore, not-N is justified.

Defeater Recognized by Informed Naturalists
10.DB.

11.DB defeats B.

12.Therefore, B does not justify not-N.

"Since both A and B are defeated, most contemporary naturalists, as well as most contemporary theists, hold defeated beliefs about the truth-value of naturalism. The informed naturalist knows the complex argument C that constitutes the defeater of B and the justification of N, as well as meets other conditions explained later in this paper.

"Belief State of Informed Naturalists
13.C.

14.C justifies N.

15.Therefore, N is justified.

"Some naturalists believe they are informed naturalists. But whether they are in fact informed naturalists is not an issue I am addressing in this paper. This paper is a metaphilosophy of naturalism, not a philosophical argument that naturalism is true. Such philosophical arguments can be found in other papers and books. In this paper, I am (in part) characterizing the contemporary epistemic situation about naturalism from the point of view of a real or hypothetical informed naturalist."

We real and hypothetical informed naturalists have a great deal of work ahead of us.

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