The Brain, the Mind, and Metaphysics

To suggest that somehow the mind is independent of the organ that gives it its existence is nonsense.

In the January-February newsletter from the Center for Naturalism, the case is made for the rise of physicalism, the doctrine"calling into question the notion that we need appeal to anything beyond or above the brain and body – an immaterial soul, for instance – to explain behavior and experience, whether normal or abnormal. [ ]

"This isn’t to say that physicalist explanations are anywhere near complete," the newsletter goes on, "nor does it conclusively disprove the existence of the soul or some other immaterial aspect of ourselves – nothing could do that. But it is to say that as physicalism makes headway, the dualist hypothesis that the mind is categorically independent of the brain in some respect has less and less going for it."

Inherent in scientific naturalism, that form of naturalism that seems to be prevalent in today's moral marketplace, is the idea that others somehow believe the mind is independent of the brain.

I wish to set something straight here and now: the mind is a process of the brain, just as digestion is a process of the bowels. Without the bowels there would be no ability to digest. Without the brain there would be no ability to have a mind.

No one disputes the scientific idea that neurons firing in the brain, that chemicals and electricity must be active in the brain, that synapses must be created, and that other processes must be in effect for the mind to work properly, or to work at all.

To suggest that somehow the mind is independent of the organ that gives it its existence is nonsense. But when scientism suggests that the organ and its functions were "once considered categorically immaterial mental phenomena [but] are now shown to have a material basis in the nervous system," a straw man is being set up.

Scientific naturalism loves that straw man. They use it against the immaterialism of the soul.

The sum of the parts is greater than the parts alone. Ink, paper, and glue alone do not make a postage stamp. But the idea that when properly put together those things are not an immaterial metaphysical phenomena is wrong.

A postage stamp, or anything else that is metaphysical and therefore greater than the sum of its parts, is definitively immaterial. The material is the ink, paper, and glue. The immaterial is the "idea" that when properly put together those things can create a postage stamp. Ideas are immaterial.

Yet no one disputes that a postage stamp is made of material. Objectively, however, a "stamp" is immaterial when it is considered to be the idea of an object made legal only by the production and acceptance of its existence by the proper authority.

No such stamp ever has to be produced. A stamp not produced yet definable is metaphysical, not physical. What is metaphysical is immaterial.

The mind is the metaphysical description of the events of the brain which, when analyzed, are greater than the sum of the physical parts that make it.

The "idea" of a light bulb, for instance, or of that postage stamp, is greater than the forces which create the synapse. It takes the metaphysical mind to put concepts together in the proper order in order to make sense of existence, to create stamps and light bulbs and space shuttles. It isn't the physical workings of the brain that do that. It is the mental workings of the mind, which of course do not and cannot exist without the brain, any more than sight can exist without the eyes.

But the recognition that what the eyes see is a tree or a bird or a newborn human being is greater than the sight unrecognized.

The "notion that we need appeal to anything beyond or above the brain and body" is not the straw man scientific naturalism makes it out to be.

Instead, it is a notion that metaphysical naturalism takes for granted, because metaphysical existence is properly a matter of the mind, not of the brain.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
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The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:
© 2008-2009 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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Conservative Politics and Liberty

The life of Man must be defined as unalienably self-sovereign.

In a recent article in American Thinker, Bruce Walker wrote this piece of politically conservative observation:

"Seventy-five years ago this month, one of the most insidious laws in human history came into effect in Nazi Germany. The innocent sounding name was The Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring. It was the ghastly pinnacle of an unholy theory of human eugenics. Darwinism -- not the Theory of Evolution, per se, but the sinister notion that natural selection made God superfluous -- liberated man from his obligation to treat fellow men as special creatures in a divinely ordered universe."

While Walker is correct in calling the law "insidious," and "the ghastly pinnacle" of eugenics, he demonstrates what is wrong with conservative epistemology, namely, the inability to see that political and social values and the virtues required to attain them must be values and virtues proper to Man--not to a God who is unattainable in life.

Men are never "liberated" from their "obligation to treat fellow men" as endowed with self-sovereignty. Whether or not God is "superfluous" can never be allowed to be part of the equation. The most avid atheists are often the most avid defenders of human rights, and they see no "divine" order in the universe.

What they see is the equality of creatures born with the unalienable right to life and liberty. The necessity of saying "liberty" ought to be superfluous itself, since the right to life necessitates the liberty necessary to live life as the rational animal. It is entirely superfluous to say "and the pursuit of happiness," for the same rationale.
However, it has come in handy in certain arguments with people who forget that the right to pursue one's happiness necessitates the liberty to achieve it.

It ought to be enough to simply say, "Until a man violates the rights--equal to his own, of other men--he has the right to libertarian life." Libertarian in this sense does not include the right to violate the rights of other men, which are equal in value by virtue of their unalienablity by right of birth.

Libertarian means specifically the ability to act with all the unalienable rights of birth with which Man is endowed by the nature of his metaphysical existence. That existence is defined as "the rational animal."

It can only be when a man has violated the equal rights of others that justice may require forfeiture of his libertarianism for a time, e.g., jail or prison or probation. In some cases of gross violation justice has required he forfeit his very life.

America's Founders were mostly Deists, no matter which denomination they attended. It was politically incorrect for public leaders not to attend a regular denomination such as Baptist or Episcopal, but there were some like Thomas Paine who managed to evade without even that constraint on his freedom. He had to flee America for France, literally for his safety and probably his life, in order to remove that constraint, until President Jefferson invited him back with a guarantee of his safety.

It is important to note America's Deist beginings because those Deists were more dedicated to worshiping God than were most of the commoners who followed established denominations. There is one and only reason for being able to say this: the Deists themselves said their devotion to the virtue of Reason and to the Rule of Law was precisely because they believed it was God himself who had endowed Man with that virtue.

Then He stepped back and allowed the nature he had created to run its course. A form of Darwinism one to two centuries before Darwin was born was part of the metaphysics of Deism. They believed God was superfluous only because He was willing to let the Reason He had provided them rule the affairs of the Men He had created as rational creatures.

Libertarian action translates into the value of being both free of coercion from others, and is non-coercion of others, for the purpose of furthering the pursuit of human life as well as one's own, through the virtue of Reason.

Yet, "when one speaks of a man's right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others." Ayn Rand; The Virtue of Selfishness: The Objectivist Ethics

The Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring was ghastly because it used the power of government to choose the criteria set by a leader with a criminal mind, criteria for the sacrifice of others. Clearly Hitler's was not "rational" self-interest. Rational self-interest cannot be coercive or it is self-defeating and therefor non-rational.

But conservatives do not see that such men--Mao Tse Tung, Hitler, Mugabe, Stalin, Pol Pot--care nothing about whether or not God is superfluous. The only thing such men have ever cared about is power, and that is the power to control.

If it is insidious to find God superfluous, then America's Deists were insidious. Since that is not a word that can be used to describe them, Mr. Walker uses a "package deal" consisting of tying together the concepts of Hitler's policies with a disregard for God, as if God was anywhere in Hitler's thoughts. Corrupting or ignoring a "divinely ordered universe" was never a consideration for Hitler.

If Hitler had a devout belief in God, he would have continued his policies, believing as do Islamicists that what they do is in the name of God.

Neither Hitler nor the world's current Islamicists believe they are liberated from any obligation to "treat fellow men as special creatures in a divinely ordered universe." As a matter of fact, Islamicists believe that to continue the "divinely ordered universe" of Allah it is moral to martyr one's self in the destruction of those who actually see Allah--but not necessarily the Judeo-Christian God--as superfluous.

A supernatural God is superfluous for anyone who calls him or herself a naturalist, because in the cosmic scheme of the laws of nature, "nature's god" did not create existence.

The only "sinister notion" in natural selection is in the motives of men who refuse to accept individual sovereignty as the right of every human being, the selection by nature's god of the species of Man to be the one to obtain the virtue of rationality.

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The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:
© 2008-2009 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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God, Prejudice, and Alcoholics Anonymous

I'm A Success as Atheist in the AA "God Program"

Bill Wilson is responsible for writing the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," referred to as the Big Book. AA is a spiritual program, and a "God program," meaning it depends upon what AA terms a "higher power" to relieve the alcoholic of his/her need to get drunk.

In many places in the Big Book we read specifically that other things than God can be considered a higher power. The use of the AA group itself with people you come to rely on, friends, and other people with whom you can discuss your problems, are often suggested as a higher power. A man can think of his wife and children, and use them as his "higher power" because of the very real possibility that if he goes on another binge, or gets arrested one more time while drunk, he could lose them.

Anytime one of us who is alcoholic goes to a meeting and says anything like, "When I fought with my son over something stupid, I knew I had to get to a meeting"; or "I realized I was letting myself become hungry, angry, lonely, tired--I knew I had to get to a meeting," we are then using the group and our time there, away from the "outside world", as our higher power, to recoup a bit of our spirituality.

But in the end, AA members are expected, not by any membership requirement, but through the incessant urging of Wilson to "accept" that the higher power he expects us to discover is God. (Accepting God is not a requirement because there is only one membership requirement: the desire to stop drinking. But the constant urging to accept God has made many people see AA as a multi-denominational religious cult.)

"We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God." [emphasis added] The Big Book page 46

Naturalism, to Wilson, was unnatural. Naturalism was prejudicial. "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face." For Wilson, his own prejudice made him believe that "to continue as he is [as an atheist or agnostic] means disaster, especially if he an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. page 44

An alcoholic of the hopeless variety can only be hopeless because he does not accept God; to accept God means he isn't hopeless. "There Is A Solution" touts the previous chapter's title, and that way is through God. "This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer." p 17

The expectancy is that eventually all AA members will have "made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the power of God as we understood him"; and it expected to come sooner than later; turning over one's will is the third of twelve "steps". AA dogma, gathered up from the first few years of attempting to find the steps and the means to make them work, was that you could not get to Step Four without "doing" steps one, two and three first. (Step Two is admitting that only "a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"; Step One is "admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.")

But Bill Wilson was an extremely prejudicial and biased man. Do you notice in that quote from page 46 how he deftly turned "a power greater than ourselves" into God Himself, without even the pretext of qualifying "God" with "as we understood him"?

The phrase "as we understood (or understand) him" is always italicized in the Steps, in an effort to be inclusive of all religions. But Wilson had to be talked into accepting that phrase, and then only grudgingly. Yet whenever he wrote of his own experience and how it ought to be used by others, God stood alone and every member was expected by Wilson to "graduate" from using the group or other people or a hope as his/her higher power, to using God Himself--who in Wilson's mind stood alone without need of "understanding." After all, he wrote, "it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God." How could He be a God of anyone's understanding when Wilson admits that it was impossible for "any of us" (the original members) to understand Him?

Naturalism, which is necessarily an atheistic doctrine, and agnosticism, were, to Wilson, biases which the new members had to let go of.

"We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results..." [emphasis added] page 46

Page 46 is in the chapter of the Big Book entitled "We Agnostics." Wilson was never an agnostic, and he wrote no chapter for atheists, though he mentions them there. He speaks to the agnostics as though he had once been there himself, putting his brotherly arm around them in words, comforting them in the knowledge that things will be alright if they just let go and let God.

He writes in the first paragraph that "you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience can conquer." Many naturalists and others don't believe in the "spirit" because they have always been told it is linked to God, and God is what they are trying to discard by using an epistemology that admits of nothing supernatural. But this is not a problem for all naturalists.

The Deists were theistic naturalists. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

In Metaphysical Naturalism (MN) the spirit, the soul, is a naturally occurring non-supernatural physiological phenomenon of the fact of being human. When someone says he could not do something or was compelled to do something because his "conscience was being affected," it is the naturally occurring physiologically emotive phenomenon we perceive as our soul, that he is referring to.

MN understands existence to be natural and only natural, with nothing supernatural existing within existence. And of course, there is no existence outside of existence. Not even a God can be outside existence, though many believe a God could.

God could not--not without causing an irreparable contradiction within human language. If you believe in God and believe, as did America's Deist Founders, that it was God who gave us Reason in order to be able to solve our own problems without His intereference or help, then such a God would not also have allowed us to conceive acceptable contradictions; they break all the rules of the logic of linquistics. Allow one, you must allow them all. Then "nothing" will be "something," "yes" will be "no", and Reason will be worthless. We will return to the growling animalistic expressions of Man before he gained language, because without Reason language has no expression.

Boethius told us to join faith to reason, "insofar as is possible." Thomas Aquinas and others did that, and the juxtaposition led us to the scientific and then to the industrial revolutions. But at the same time, it did not banish faith by elevating Reason, and the Founders were forced to conceive a nation with a Constitution which assumed the separation of church and state. The assumption was common, was therefore not included in the Constitution in those words, and that common assumption allowed the Supreme Court to declare it a de facto part of the Constitution. The Deists would say it was Reason that dictated the Constitution.

Yet, Wilson tells us we must abandon Reason, for the blindness that comes with "accepting a power greater than ourselves" in the realm of the spirit while upholding Reason in the realm of all other things.

"Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists [There he goes again!] chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word... Rather vain of us, wasn't it?" page 49

But Thomas Paine, in "The Age of Reason", wrote: "The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall. [ ] I know, by positive conclusion resulting from [my] search, that there is a power superior to all [ ] things, and that power is God."

Paine was one of the most outspoken Deists, even fleeing to France for his life because his devotion to God would not allow him to have faith in anything but a Reasonable God, and no organized religion is Reasonable to a Deist.

"The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists," wrote Paine, "accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud." [emphasis added]

"If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago," Wilson wrote. [p. 44/45] Yet, isn't that what blind acceptance of a higher power is--a supposed better "code of morals" or "a better philosophy of life"?

Actually, Wilson must have realized they were not the same, or he would have said so. Instead he said, "We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, but the needed power wasn't there.

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma," he wrote, instead.

Their lack of power was from the desire to turn a wish into reality, without the "mere code of morals" or the "better philosophy." Philosophy is nothing without epistemology. Faith in God is the epistemology of disavowing Reason; faith is the only thing that Wilson serves up.

"Besides a seeming inablility to accept much on faith," Wilson wrote, about the problem of human intelligence as the last word, "we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinancy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. [ ] This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. [ ! ]

"Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith. [ ] We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far. But somehow we couldn't step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning on Reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support.[ ]

"Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason. So, in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time! [ ! ]

"[A religious doubter] recounts that he fell out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by the conviction of the Presence of God. He had stepped from bridge to shore. [ ]

"His alcoholic problem was taken away."

I sit here and copy and paste and write these things, in order to tell the reader that I had my own spiritual experience, and my "alcoholic problem was taken away."

But my spiritual experience was not what faith would have me believe it to be; it is what Reason tells me it was.

The mind is the most powerful force in human life. My experience was one of a comgination of mind and that natural phenomenon, the human soul, because they are irrevocably connected even in death; the soul follows the mind into the grave. If I could bottle my experience and release it in a room with someone who was looking for God, he would claim his experience that came from my bottle was God, and then try to convince me of it.

Humility seems to be the greatest virtue in AA. It is mentioned specifically on nine pages of the Big Book and those mentions carry various descriptions of how it works and why it works and why we need it. There are many more references to humility in the other AA "approved literature," such as the "Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions". Honesty is mentioned on twelve pages, but we all know a man cannot be humble if he is not first honest.

Men whose humility does not extend to allowing the possibility that an atheist such as myself can have a spiritual experience and become sober by it, despite "the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON;" wrote Paine, "and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself."

Bill Wilson believed in the elevation of faith over Reason. Rather vain of him, wasn't it, to despise the "choisest gift of God to man," Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions;" wrote Paine, "he prays dictatorially; [ ] he follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say: Thou knowest not so well as I."

Wilson's prayers were like that: "Relieve me of the bondage of self," goes his Third Step Prayer, "that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power..."

The strictest adherence to Reason is the act of binding one's self to one's self; altruism was conceived as the act of giving one's self completely over to God, without asking for such things as the removal of one's difficulties: one took what God met out. And what kind of humility is it to ask God to remove one's difficulties, then turn and call that "victory over them"?

"It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything; and, in this case, it would be just as consistent to read even the book called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How, then, is it that those people pretend to reject reason?" Paine

The rejection of Reason was not all Wilson's. It was, and is, endemic of the kind of organization that AA is. The co-founder of AA, "Dr. Bob," wrote in his own chapter of the Big Book, that atheists, agnostics, and skeptics have a form of "intellectual pride which keeps [them] from accepting what is in this book, [and] I feel sorry for you." [emphasis added]

He also ended his chapter saying, "Your Heavenly Father will never let you down!"

Rather prejudiced of him, wouldn't you say?

Note: I get my 3 year token in January. That spiritual experience that I had in my soul didn't put the fear of God in me; it put in me the fear of being drunk--and of dying that way or of killing someone else. That is a stronger deterrent, apparently, than God who I do not accept as an existant. But I am grateful to have found an AA community in which my outspoken atheism is not rejected. I am fully accepted by my home group and other groups, and I currently hold two "service positions" with my home group.

AA works if you find the higher power of your understanding. Mine,
"the most formidable weapon against errors of every kind," is Reason. I trust I will never use any other weapon, a weapon which leads me to the positive conclusion that it is a power superior to all things available to man including the irrational prejudice of belief in God.

Happy New Year to all my readers, to all sober members of AA, and to all those who have not found the means to conquer their alcoholism. Don't let your prejudices against Alcoholics Anonymous keep you from using it to find serenity in sobriety. Accept the things you cannot change and change the things you can, and may you all have the wisdom, as I am grateful myself to have had, to know the difference between them.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:
© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

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Naturalism's Definitions and Deficiencies Part 2

In Part I of this series, Naturalism's Definitions and Their Deficiencies, I discussed how the "apparently most influential website on the subject, The Center for Naturalism, with its sister site Naturalism.Org, describe mental and moral processes as non-contra causal."

"This is a straw man argument. Its ostensive purpose is to say that because we live in a world we did not create, and among forces we cannot control, and being influenced by our genes, our nurturing, memes*, people stepping on our toes, the rain falling from the sky and other forces which are the result of living in existence, we have no free will. We are forced to always apply our will toward dealing with existence, over which we have no control. If we had such control, that would constitute free will. Hence, we have no contra-causal, i.e., free, will."

It is interesting that at the same time, sitting in my email box, was a fund-raising letter from The Center for Naturalism (CFN). I subscribe to their infrequent mailings to keep up with their activities. In the letter was this statement:

"Although naturalistic in outlook, none of the worthy humanist, skeptic, or atheist organizations I know of are articulating the full implications of seeing ourselves as completely natural beings. Many secularists still harbor quasi-supernatural beliefs about human nature, even if they've long since abandoned belief in supernatural gods."

I admit this is not a widely-read blog, although the director of the CFN and probably a few of its famous, listed supporters, and a few of its famous critics, do read The Academy Blogger. I know that some of its critics read the Blogger, because I have received email from them. I'm going to have to promote this blog in order to make it "worthy", so the CFN can say that at least one widely read and influential organizations is worthy. This is not the desire to be worthy in the minds of the CFN, but rather to be worthy enough to help counteract the influence of the CFN.

However, the CFN will never admit the Blogger is worthy even if became as influential as the CFN--precisely because the Academy does not "articulate the full implications" as the CFN sees them. The Academy Blogger is distinctly opposed to much of what the CFN publishes and believes.

Why? The scientific naturalism (SN) of the CFN does not admit the metaphysical importance of the finite human soul. The CFN claims the human soul does not even exist, that it is merely the neurological events of the human being as perceived by its consciousness. This is strictly in keeping with the tenets of SN, which is never to admit that the existence of the world around us with all its parts are the only things upon which our will can be exercised.

SN tries to make the argument that our will is not contra-causal, or libertarian as SN sometimes calls it, because it cannot change the influences upon which our will is exercised. These influences are the very things the CFN says "fully causes us", in its strange use of the language, to be who we are. "We are fully caused creatures," it repeats over and over, as if to drum into the readers' minds that we cannot "cause" ourselves because we cannot "cause" the influences upon which our lives are made.

If you go to the CFN's list of "Allies of Naturalism http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/allies_of_naturalism.htm you will not find one author I am aware of who supports human free will while at the same time admitting that of course it is not contra-causal and libertarian if they are going to make such a silly straw man argument out of it.

Free will is, however, libertarian in the sense that psychologically uncoerced thinking in an otherwise biologically sound mind is free to be whatever it wishes to be or to become, including senselessly drug or alcohol affected, and that it has the power to think or not to think.

And that is the point that scientific naturalism does not wish you to understand. Their language is that of obfuscation, and contains the "soft", non-concretized idealism of the New Age. That is to say, as long as their words walk softly and talks the soft-language of diversion--away from enabling individualism, and toward mystic "memecry"* --they can get away telling you the mesmerizing phrase that humans are fully caused by things out of their control.

[*"memecry": a play on "mimicry", connoting that "memes" are the causative force of learned human behavior, a cause from which we cannot escape and which thereby acts as one of the elements of our full causation and denying metaphysical individualism. SN states specifically that memes are such a causative agent, and SN's adherents use memes to as one more argument to deny free will; but metaphysical naturalism accepts them--if they exist--as simply another element of existence itself, without which we would and could be nothing at all--so they are no different than the rain or a hurricane or a family event or anything else in the existence of an individual person. Memes, therefore, do not connote lack of free will.]

Men, says SN, cannot change what is. While that is absolutely true, they use it as an excuse to say that since men are fully caused, they cannot take total blame for their actions or be held totally accountable for them, nor can they take total glory for their accomplishments.

This doctrine is epistemologically flawed, metaphysically creating impotence in men, and is psychologically abusive. Yet it is gaining ground in intellectual circles, including, I believe, the circles containing such people as Al Gore, Barak Obama, and others who's influence will rise with the policies of the Obama Presidency, just as the Silent Majority rose with President Reagan.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:
© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

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Naturalist Resources--A Short List Part 1

Today is a bit of an easy day for this blog. Naturalism has many homes both on the internet and in universities and elsewhere. For your benefit, here is a list of just a few of them. In an attempt to identify such organizations and educational sources for our readers, we will for the next few weeks or longer be publishing these lists on Friday of each week.

If you know of a particular website or organization or educational center you would like to see listed, or if you would like to have your own included here, please use the mailto: at the bottom.

American Society of Naturalists http://www.amnat.org/
About the ASN : The purpose of the Society is to advance and to diffuse knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles so as to enhance the conceptual unification of the biological sciences. This is achieved by publishing The American Naturalist and by holding an annual meeting with a scientific program of symposia and contributed papers and posters.

History : 1867 First issue of The American Naturalist published in March. It was organized by Alpheus S. Packard, Jr., Frederick W. Putnam, Edward S. Morse, and Alpheus Hyatt, who had been students of Louis Agassiz and assistants at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. Packard had been an assistant surgeon in the Civil War (1st Maine Volunteers) and Hyatt had been a captain with the 47th Massachusetts Regiment. After the museum tried to prevent the assistants from working on their own research after hours, they went to the Essex Institute and Peabody Academy of Science in Salem, Mass., in February 1867. Putnam was a nephew of George Peabody, the donor. The masthead said, "A Popular Illustrated Magazine of Natural History." more http://www.amnat.org/ASN/abo.html#history
Past Officers : http://www.amnat.org/ASN/past-ec.html#pres
Online Table of Contents : http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/an/current?cookieSet=1

The Center for Inquiry http://www.centerforinquiry.net/
About : The Center for Inquiry is a daring new concept. Although modern world civilization is based upon the achievements of science and technology, until this time there has been no authoritative and credible voice defending the scientific outlook in examining religion, human values, and the borderlands of science. If the naturalistic outlook is to supplant the ancient mythological narratives of the past, it needs a new institution devoted to its articulation and dramatization to the public. The Center for Inquiry is that institution.
The purpose of the Center for Inquiry is to promote and defend reason, science, and freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor. The Center for Inquiry is a transnational nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that encourages evidence-based inquiry into science, pseudoscience, medicine and health, religion, ethics, secularism, and society. The Center for Inquiry is not affiliated with, nor does it promote, any political party or political ideology.
Through education, research, publishing, and social services, it seeks to present affirmative alternatives based on scientific naturalism. The Center is also interested in providing rational ethical alternatives to the reigning paranormal and religious systems of belief, and in developing communities where like-minded individuals can meet and share experiences.

Mission : (In Part) [U]ntil the Center for Inquiry, there were no institutions dedicated primarily to promote and defend science, reason, and free inquiry in all aspects of human interest.
The purpose of the Center for Inquiry is to contribute to the public understanding and appreciation of science and reason, and their applications to human conduct. [ ]
There is, in the public mind, a vast confusion between genuine science and fringe or pseudoscience. Moreover, there is a large reservoir of antiscientific attitudes about the dangers of scientific research, and fear that scientists who tread in unknown domains are aping the work of Frankenstein. The widespread apprehension about cloning research is reminiscent of the fear of nuclear physicists expressed only a generation ago, that in investigating elementary particles they have opened a Pandora's Box which will destroy humankind. Many even insist that there are areas of human life that scientific inquiry cannot or should not enter. [ ]
What would it mean to extend the scientific spirit to our most basic and cherished convictions? It would be to embrace a thoroughly scientific outlook (an outlook referred to in the scholarly literature as scientific naturalism or philosophical naturalism). The naturalistic outlook is at once a method of inquiry, a cosmic world view, and a new form of ethical inquiry.

Projects : Introducing The Jesus Project R. Joseph Hoffmann, Ph.D.Chair, Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion http://www.jesus-project.com/intro.htm
(In Part) [ ] in January 2007, at the University of California, Davis, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) asked the question that had been looking for a serious answer for over a hundred years: Did Jesus exist? [ ] The Jesus Project, as CSER has named the new effort, is the first methodologically agnostic approach to the question of Jesus’ historical existence. But we are not neutral, let alone willfully ambiguous, about the objectives of the project itself. We believe in assessing the quality of the evidence available for looking at this question before seeing what the evidence has to tell us. We do not believe the task is to produce a “plausible” portrait of Jesus prior to considering the motives and goals of the Gospel writers in telling his story. http://www.jesus-project.com/intro.htm

The Center for Inquiry's 12th World Congress: Science, Public Policy, and the Planetary Community April 9-12, 2009 Speakers already confirmed include NASA climatologist Drew Shindell, Roger Bonnet from the International Space Science Institute, author and social critic Christopher Hitchens, acknowledged authority on evolutionary biology Michael Ruse, skeptical investigators James Randi and Joe Nickell, renowned psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, and many others.

Publications and Libraries : The flagship magazines for the educated public published at the Center for Inquiry are CSI's The Skeptical Inquirer and the Council for Secular Humanism's Free Inquiry (with a combined readership of nearly 100,000).
Additional magazines at CFI are read in the U.S. (The American Rationalist), United Kingdom (The Skeptic), the Spanish-speaking world (Pensar), Perú (New Skepticism, and The Journal of Applied Philosophy), and Russia (Common Sense).
The Center's ground-breaking peer-reviewed academic journals include The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, and Philo. more
The Skeptics Library and the fast-growing Library of American Philosophical Naturalism is unique in the world, while the Library of Humanism and Freethought is the foremost such collection in the English-speaking world. http://www.centerforinquiry.net/about/publications_and_libraries/

The Atheism Tapes : As part of the making of the ground-breaking series “A Brief History of Disbelief,” Jonathan Miller filmed conversations with some very distinguished minds. Jonathan, of course, could not resist the temptation to make these conversations wide ranging and so – naturally enough – their final contributions to “A Brief History of Disbelief” are only a small part of the original interviews.
Now this six part series is an opportunity to see and hear the conversations at much greater length as Jonathan Miller goes head to head with Daniel Dennett, Denys Turner, Richard Dawkins, Colin McGinn, Arthur Miller and StevenWeinberg. http://www.centerforinquiry.net/store/
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI)
Council for Secular Humanism (CSH)
The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER)
Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health (CSMMH)

Philo
Philo is published biannually at the Center for Inquiry with assistance from Purdue University. Its goal is to publish original, conceptually precise, and argumentatively rigorous articles in all fields of philosophy. Although not devoted to any specific branch of philosophy, Philo encourages the submission of work that examines philosophical issues from an explicitly naturalist perspective. It also welcomes work on the philosophical credentials of both naturalism and various supernaturalist alternatives to naturalism. This would include work ordinarily classified as philosophy of religion (theistic proofs, the problem of evil, and the like) as well as any other work that directly or indirectly defends or challenges naturalism. Philo is the publication of the Society of Humanist Philosophers.
(See Philo's impressive list of associated scholars and authors @) http://www.philoonline.org/index.html

The Center for Naturalism
The Center for Naturalism promotes science-based naturalism as a comprehensive worldview - a rational and fulfilling alternative to faith-based religions and other varieties of supernaturalism. The under-standing that we are fully natural beings is the foundation for an effective approach to personal and social concerns, and highlights our intimate connection to the awe-inspiring universe described by science. Through its educational activities and initiatives, the Center develops constructive applications of naturalism, supports progressive social policy, and in collaboration with other secular groups, helps to build a community of naturalists.

Statement On Naturalism : Naturalism is the understanding that there is a single, natural world as shown by science, and that we are completely included in it. Naturalism holds that everything we are and do is connected to the rest of the world and derived from conditions that precede us and surround us. Each of us is an unfolding natural process, and every aspect of that process is caused, and is a cause itself. So we are fully caused creatures, and seeing just how we are caused gives us power and control, while encouraging compassion and humility. By understanding consciousness, choice, and even our highest capacities as materially based, naturalism re-enchants the physical world, allowing us to be at home in the universe. Naturalism shows our full connection to the world and others, it leads to an ethics of compassion, and it gives us far greater control over our circumstances.

Guiding Philosophy : http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/about.htm
Programs : http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/programs.htm

Naturalism.Org, a production of the Center for Naturalism, is a resource for those interested in scientific naturalism and its personal and social implications. For background and FAQs on this understanding of naturalism, please see http://www.naturalism.org/

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