God, Creation, and Evolution

The official New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia has no problem with evolution or science.

"God does not interfere directly with the natural order, where secondary causes suffice to produce the intended effect" (De opere sex dierum, II, c. x, n. 13). In the light of this principle of the Christian interpretation of nature, the history of the animal and vegetable kingdoms on our planet is, as it were, a versicle in a volume of a million pages in which the natural development of the cosmos is described, and upon whose title-page is written: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."

"To what extent is the theory of evolution applicable to man? That God should have made use of natural, evolutionary, original causes in the production of man's body, is per se not improbable, and was propounded by St. Augustine (see AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, SAINT, under V. Augustinism in History). The actual proofs of the descent of man's body from animals is, however, inadequate, especially in respect to paleontology. And the human soul could not have been derived through natural evolution from that of the brute, since it is of a spiritual nature; for which reason we must refer its origin to a creative act on the part of God."

"The scientific theory of evolution, therefore, does not concern itself with the origin of life. It merely inquires into the genetic relations of systematic species, genera, and families, and endeavours to arrange them according to natural series of descent (genetic trees)."

"The formation of new species is directly observed in but a few cases, and only with reference to such forms as are closely related to each other; for instance, the systematic species of the plant-genus Œnothera, and of the beetle-genus Dimarda. It is, however, not difficult to furnish an indirect proof of great probability for the genetic relation of many systematic species to each other and to fossil forms, as in the genetic development of the horse (Equidæ), of ammonites, and of many insects, especially of those that dwell as "guests" with ants and termites, and have adapted themselves in many ways to their hosts."

"At present, however, it is impossible to decide how many independent genetic series must be assumed in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. This is the gist of the theory of evolution as a scientific hypothesis. It is in perfect agreement with the Christian conception of the universe; for Scripture does not tell us in what form the present species of plants and of animals were originally created by God. As early as 1877 Knabenbauer stated "that there is no objection, so far as faith is concerned, to assuming the descent of all plant and animal species from a few types" (Stimmen aus Maria Laach, XIII, p. 72)."http://www.newadvent.org/ [italics added]

Evolution therefore is not inconsistent in the theology of Christianity with the statement, "In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth," because "Scripture does not tell us in what form the present species of plants and animals were originally created."

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Obama's Science is Political--As Politics Invariably Makes It

Let us never say that we have not been warned

"Consider that it takes about 1,000 wind turbines, occupying tens of thousands of acres, to produce as much electricity as just one medium-sized, coal-fired power plant. And that's if the wind is blowing: the intermittency of wind wreaks havoc on electricity grids, which need a stable flow of power, thus requiring expensive, redundant backup capacity or an unbuilt, unproven "smart grid."

"Or consider the "promise" of solar. Two projects in development will cover 12.5 square miles of central California withsolar cells in the hope of generating about 800 megawatts of power (as much as one large coal-fired plant). But that power output will only be achieved when the sun is shining brightly--around noon on sunny days; the actual output will be less than a third that amount. And the electricity will cost more than market price, even with thel ife-support of federal subsidies that keeps the solar industry going. The major factor driving the project is not the promise of abundant power but California's state quota requiring 20 percent "renewable" electricity by 2010.

"There is a reason why less than 2 percent of the world's energy currently comes from "renewable" sources such as wind and solar--the very sources that are supposedly going to power the new green economy: despite billions of dollars in government subsidies, funding decades of research, they have not proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. Indeed, without government mandates forcing their adoption in most Western countries, their high cost would make them even less prevalent.

"Will a green energy industry be an engine of economic growth? Many want us to think so, including our new President. Apparently a booming green economy with millions of new jobs is just around the corner. All we need is the right mix of government "incentives."

"These include a huge (de facto) tax on carbon emissions imposed through a cap-and-trade regulatory scheme, as well as huge government subsidies for "renewable," carbon-free sources. The hope is that these government sticks and carrots will turn today's pitiful "green energy" industry, which produces an insignificant fraction of American energy, into a source of abundant, affordable energy that can replace today's fossil-fuel-dominated industry. This view is a fantasy--one that could devastate America's economy. The reality is that "green energy" is at best a sophisticated make-work program. [condensed from the Ayn Rand Institute]

President Obama guarantees "to inflict untold damage on his own country and many others, on the basis of claims so demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies...

"Mr Obama begins by saying that "the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear". "Sea levels," he claims, "are rising, coastlines are shrinking, we've seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."

"Delegates from 190 countries met in Poznan, Poland to pave the way for this year's UN conference in Copenhagen at which the world will agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change," heard Mr. Obama speak these words.

"Mr Obama has again been taken in over hurricanes. Despite a recent press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that 2008's North Atlantic hurricane season "set records", even its own release later admits that it only tied as "the fifth most active" since 1944. NOAA's own graphs show hurricane activity higher in the 1950s than recently. A recent Florida State University study of tropical cyclone activity across the world (see the Watts Up With That? website) shows a steady reduction over the past four years.

"Alarming though it may be that the next US President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a "federal cap and trade system", a massive "carbon tax", designed to reduce America's CO2 emissions "to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050". Such a target, which would put America ahead of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the US economy.

"Mr Obama floats off still further from reality when he proposes spending $15 billion a year to encourage "clean energy" sources, such as thousands more wind turbines. He is clearly unaware that wind energy is so hopelessly ineffective that the 10,000 turbines America already has, representing "18 gigawatts of installed capacity", only generate 4.5GW of power, less than that supplied by a single giant coal-fired power station.

"He talks blithely of allowing only "clean" coal-fired power plants, using "carbon capture" - burying the CO2 in holes in the ground - which would double the price of electricity, but the technology for which hasn't even yet been developed. He then babbles on about "generating five million new green jobs". This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running around on treadmills, to replace all those "dirty" coal-fired power stations which currently supply the US with half its electricity." [condensed from Telegraph.co.uk]

Let us never say we have not been warned.

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Evidence-Driven Policies Remain Political

And look at this winter, already--will you?
Which way will you let the "evidence" lead you?

The American Thinker today published this, about the Obama Administration's push for energy independence:

"According to Reuters, President-Elect Barack Obama has asked Congress "to act without delay" to pass legislation that includes doubling alternative energy production in the next three years and building a new electricity "smart grid." He said he also planned to modernize 75 percent of federal buildings and improve energy efficiency in 2 million homes to save consumers billions of dollars on energy bills.

"It is important to understand that these pronouncements promoting energy efficiency and alternative energy are not propositions that have anything directly to do with the controversy over regulations of carbon dioxide or about the "global warming" that CO2 allegedly causes. The promoted activities address two separate and, I think, very worthwhile policy imperatives: 1) the nation's energy security, and 2) the need for efficient alternative and conventional energy sources and delivery systems. The global warming question is separate, and, if mishandled, it can lead to costly and ill-conceived interference with the two mentioned imperatives, and waste trillions of dollars.

"On global warming, and man's role in it, my friends who were devoted to the election of Senator Obama as President, some very close to him, have assured me in terms like: "Obama's administration will be evidence-driven" and, "Anti-intellectualism in presidential politics is on its way out." Supporters like these are "confident that the new administration will be very thoughtful about using scientific evidence in making policy decisions, including [carbon control]". "Senate Republicans Need to Demand Re-Examination on Global Warming" By Harvey M. Sheldon

I agree the nation's energy grid, and our dependence on foreign oil, must be protected. Everything Sheldon said, I agree with.

But "evidence driven" scientific policies are not made in a vacuum. The policies are specifically metaphysical in nature. And policies of the government are still political.

Scientific naturalism as supported by such varied authors as Susan Blackmore, Paul Bloom, Paul Broks, Daniel Dennett, Sheldon Drobny, Owen Flanagan, Ursula Goodenough, Joseph Hilbe, Nicholas Humphrey, Brian Leiter, Thomas Metzinger, Tamler Sommers, John Symons, Tom Clark, and many others apply the metaphysics of determinism to scientific discoveries.

(Determinism is the doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law; that all the facts in the physical universe, and hence also in human history, are absolutely dependent upon and conditioned by their causes. In psychology this is the doctrine that the will is not free but determined by mental states and at the same time by physical conditions, since the former cannot exist without the latter. Syn. with fatalism, necessitarianism, destiny. (adapted from the Dictionary of Philosophy: Runes 1942))

In this way, the metaphysics of each of us determines which way the evidence we validate is "driven." Some Christians, for example, will validate the "evidence" of God's existence from the fact of existence itself, and from the existence of the Bible will conclude that He made the world in six days. That is the power of metaphysics, and is a proper power. It is simply the way the mind works in the area of philosophy.

So telling us that a President Obama will set policy based on scientific evidence means nothing. Just last Friday, I published scientific conclusions that say "those carbons and other pollutants in the atmosphere are keeping out the sun rather than trapping it inside."

"Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the day, the real danger facing humanity is not global warming, but more likely the coming of a new Ice Age," says the website Winningreen.

"Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades." [emphasis added] Alex Jones' Prison Planet

El Nino has an 11 year cycle. The solar flares have an 11 year cycle, and the two don't seem to correspond, unless as with all bodies of water it simply takes that long between the ebbing of a solar cycle for the El Nino cycle to ebb.

Sub-zero temps and wind-chill factors up to -35F from a Canadian Clipper will push cool air all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico today.

"Meanwhile, a developing storm offshore of the Carolinas will race northeastward overnight, but remain offshore," says The Weather Channel. It concludes by saying, "If nothing else, the storm will leave a legacy of howling northwest winds and biting wind chills over New England tomorrow morning."

And I follow that up, with my metaphysics leading the way with "evidence driven" information, to tell you that this is a map of the "Ocean thermohaline conveyor system that transports warm, salty waters into the North Atlantic," a conveyor that runs right along the American eastern seaboard turning northward near Florida and rising all the way north to the Arctic Circle, "tempering the climate of Northern Europe. If the conveyor should collapse on its return loop near Greenland and Iceland, Britain's climate could resemble Labrador." http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=643

I believe I have demonstrated what "evidence driven" facts mean. Specifically they mean whatever the user can make them mean. What the user makes them mean must be reasonable. If one company can use scientific facts one way to their advantage, and another company can use the same factual evidence to drive their business in a different direction, they will do so. It is only when the ends do not demonstrate the rationality of the metaphysics used that the "evidence driven actions" will appear foolish--or worse.

When those actions that fail are in the arena of government policy, and those policies affect every American and his wallet, the policies will make the policy maker look awfully stupid.

That is why we have not seen much of Al Gore these days. His inconvenient theory of global warming is proving to be just the opposite. From China to Colorado the winter of '07-'08 was the hardest on record. Lower temperatures had never been recorded in China; snow was still on the mountain peaks of Colorado in June. Fires in California, at an all-time high, are fanned by hurricane-strength Santa Anna winds. http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/11/tuesday.html

And look at this winter, already--will you?

Which way will you let the "evidence" lead you?

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California’s Newest Chronic Disease: “Preventionitis”

Another Day Has Arrived

John R. Graham, the director of Health Care Studies for the Pacific Research Institute recently wrote that "Politicians interpret [ ] exercises in crystal-ball gazing as proof that they can never impose too much government control over people for their own good."

Before we get to what they saw in the particular crystal ball Graham is talking about, we must understand several things: 1) crystal balls are the same, in this case, as what is meant by the phrase "counting your chickens before they hatch." Politicians look at scientific data, as we shall see, and being the modern politicians that they are believe they have the right to implement policy and law based on the data.

In fact, they do, and they should. To ignore science would be catastrophic in many cases, not to mention silly and ignorant. But where these modern politicians go wrong is: 2) believing that the Constitution is a "living" document that allows them to ignore the original intent of the powers given to the Federal government, and to ignore that some powers were strictly given to the States, with all the rest of the powers not enumerated given to the individuals, to "the people", not collectively, but individually, making each of us sovereign and able to stand against the un-Constitutional abuses of government.

How can we know that the powers not enumerated as belonging to the Federal or the State governments are "reserved" to individuals? We can know this, because "the people", when not considered at individuals, are either entities of their respective States with Constitutional powers enumerated to them; or entities of the Federal government, with Constitutional powers enumerated to them.

(There is a flaw in that fact, a flaw which became law with the "citizens of the United States" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The States were empowered to protect their citizens from the over-reaching powers of the Federal government; we were never meant to be "citizens of" the Federal government. That clause literally and forever--until it is overturned--eliminated the original nature of the States as individual political entities united under law, and instead created, for the first time in Constitutional history, a single entity called the "United States."

(Before the Fourteenth Amendment we were Citizens with a capital "C" both in written law, and in popular writing such as newspapers. "Citizens" in the Fourteenth is spelled with a lower case "c" and never since have we citizens been Citizens.

(We belong to the Federal Government, which can manipulate us as much as the liberal courts will allow it to go. And if a court strikes down federal legislation or the policy implemented by a bureau, such as Health and Human Services, for example, there is always another day. Don't forget that the income tax was originally declared un-Constitutional, until another day arrived.

("Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/search?q=citizens+of+the+United+States)

And so, by the powers reserved to the people, we know the Founding Fathers meant, by "the people", to mean the individuals who make up the non-political entity called "the people," which is nothing more than the concept of all individuals considered as a group, e.g., "the people at Fox News," or "the people in prison."

The power to "impose too much government control over people for their own good" was never an original intent of the Founders, who all believed that governments instituted among men ought to be limited.

Now, just what is it that John Graham is talking about, above?

"A major driver of health costs over the last couple of decades is chronic illness such as diabetes and heart disease. It's time to add another chronic ailment to the list: 'preventionitis,'" writes Graham.

"Because much chronic disease is associated with bad lifestyle choices, many succumb to the utopian delusion that investment in 'prevention' – eating better, exercising more, and so on – will cut society's health bill.

Exercise and a healthy diet are of course good ideas. The 'investment' that preventionistas advocate, however, is not a personal commitment to oneself, a family member, or a friend. On the contrary, it is massive government intervention to change society's habits, paid for by tax hikes." [emphasis added]

The science that the government of California is taking note of is a report funded by three non-profit groups: the Trust for America's Health, the California Endowment, and the Prevention Institute. "They conclude," Graham continues, "that investing 10 dollars per person annually in 'prevention' in California would result in savings 4.8 times greater than the costs, starting five years out.

Overall, they claim that annual savings would be $1.7 billion, measured in 2004 dollars. Statewide health spending in 2004 was $166 billion, so we are looking at annual savings of one percent. Ten years from now the annual savings would go up to $1.9 billion (2004 dollars), which would be much less than one percent of overall costs, because health costs will be much higher in 2014 than they were in 2004, even after adjusting for inflation.

"Even so, such estimates are fantastically over-precise. Politicians interpret these exercises in crystal-ball gazing as proof that they can never impose too much government control over people for their own good."

Over-estimating is not the Constitutional problem. Neither is the crystal-ball gazing, nor the science. The problem is the corruption of the Constitution.

Certainly, modern society has problems to take care of that the 18th Century could never have imagined, from the kind of road, water and sewer infrastructures we have, to the infrastructures created by the use of electricity and the internet, to name only a few.

But these problems are made worse by assuming that because the Founders could not foresee them, we must ignore their--our--written Constitutional responsibilities. We cannot just willy-nilly do as we please depending on the Congressional, Judicial, and Presidential powers who are in office at the time of the decision making.

The Constitution must be changed as directed within the Constitution itself. Without that guarantee, we might as well quit pretending we rely on the Original Constitution and just admit that we manipulate it like so much Play-Doh.

Modern Americans who are not educated in the history of the Constitution, which is done on purpose by educators who become more left-and-liberal decade by decade, are in pursuit of absolute control over everyone else's lifestyle choices.

And instead of standing up and saying, "I refuse to control anyone's life," we all lie down and understand that we must allow ourselves to be controlled in things we wish we were not controlled, if we are to have the power to contol others where they wish they were not controlled.

That is the insidious and degrading power of modern liberalism. It must stop.

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Meta-Naturalism v. Sci-Naturalism

Sci-Naturalism's Strawman Argument

Against the Necessity of Contra-Causal Free Will

Yesterday, I quoted the Catholic Encyclopedia on the subject of soul. Catholics insist the soul is given to man by "Supernatural Order, by God, for the purpose of raising the rational creature above its native sphere to a God-like life and destiny."

Today, that same quote can be used against the scientific naturalists' strawman argument of "contra-causal-and-libertarian free will". http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/

"5. On her part, the Church cannot but set great value upon reason's drive to attain goals which render people's lives ever more worthy," wrote John Paul II. "Yet the positive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them." ENCYCLICAL LETTER FIDES ET RATIO OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF JOHN PAUL II

John Paul made an astute observation, that, "Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research has concentrated instead upon human knowing. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned."

This concentration is in scientific naturalism, which says that determinism is the fate of men but that if science someday proves otherwise, that which is proved otherwise will then be believed by science.

It is always correct to believe what science proclaims, but it is not science that proclaims determinism or the lack of it is; it is metaphysics--"the investigation of being"--that is denied by scientific naturalists, yet used by them, because all things are judged by metaphysics. And it is here that John Paul's criticism becomes important.

Scientific naturalism denies the existence of man’s volition, proclaiming the doctrine that man does not have contra-causal freedom. This is a straw-man argument. Neither the mystic Church nor any rational source ever claimed man had such powers. It is only supernaturalists on the order of those who claim such powers as sorcery who think contra-causal power exists or ought to exist.

Why, then, do the proponents of scientific determinism argue that free will and the soul do not exist based on the argument that contra-causal agency does not exist? It is because, having abandoned the investigation of "being" and concentrating instead on the physiological means of knowing, determinism is the only argument they have to support their arguments against the "supernatural."

Since the power of the soul is proclaimed by religion to be "supernaturally given to man by God to raise him up from the limitations of reason," then the only way to keep the millenial argument of the existence of God in play is to use science to prove the soul is nothing but the workings of physiology.

To support the argument that the soul is only physiology, the soul must be proclaimed to be "fully caused" by all things "natural," not "supernatural." Religion holds that the soul is supernatural; therefore, scientific naturalism must hold that it is not, and that because it is "fully caused" it cannot be "contra-causal", i.e., able to be the cause of itself.

Determinism is the doctrine of preferring to accentuate the ways in which man's will is limited and conditioned, for the purpose of denying supernaturalism.

But it is not supernaturalism that leaves metaphysical naturalists free to acknowledge that free will does not need to be contra-causal. As a matter of fact, to expect it to be contra-causal would be to defy the laws of nature, the very same laws used by the sci-naturalists.

This is the truth that transcends man's knowledge: that he is fully-caused by his actions and reactions to the reality of being, i.e., having life. It is the nature of man's being that empiricism is the cause of his consciousness. Let him conform to the things he cannot change, change the things he can, and unlike the sci-naturalists, comprehend the differences between what can and what cannot be changed.

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Testicles Thwart Bush and Religion

Stem Cells from Testicles Thwart Religious Intervention in Secular Lawmaking

The Christian right-wing-ness in President Bush caused him to put Judeo/Christian religion ahead of science and the cures for many diseases and biological defects, by banning the use of the reproduction of stem cells.

There may be no science that proves the human soul begins when life begins at conception, and there are epistemic arguments for saying the soul begins at birth. But the religious limitations placed on stem cell reproduction is being thwarted by men's testicles. That is something Mr. Bush can do nothing about, unless Christians wish to being arguing that the soul exists in each half of the human connection, i.e., in the sperm and in the egg.

Studies showed scientific potential using "spermatogonial cells" from the testicles of mice. "The new study used cells taken from biopsied tissue from 22 different men undergoing various medical treatments. The men ranged in age from 17 to 81. Researchers found that after a few weeks of growth, the cells could differentiate into various types of cells just like those taken from embryos," said the Associated Press.

However, some scientists, saying the idea is promising, also said testicle cells are not a reason to give up on research on embryonic stem cells.

"It's exciting. We could do it for males; that leaves women without as easy a method," said stem cell scientist George Daley of Children's Hospital in Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He was not part of the new research, said the AP.

This is great news for disease and genetic researchers all over the globe. But I have a problem when religion outweighs the secularity of our laws. Our Founders may have been superb theologians and great believers in the Deist God; but they knew the danger of allowing religion to dictate the terms of our laws.

The Deists were Naturalists, which is why Thomas Jefferson got away with writing that "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" were the basis for human equality; they allow us to assume among the powers of the earth our separateness from each other and our equal stations in life. He did not write "God" alone, and indeed there is anecdotal evidence that Benjamin Franklin might have had a hand in encouraging that turn of words.

The use of the words "Nature's God" allows each man and woman his/her own understanding of the nature of existence, including the total non-belief in the supernatural, if that is the decision one comes to; but invoking the "Laws of Nature" gets right to the heart of the naturalism of the Deists, indeed, right to the heart of any naturalist.

Christians and all religions of supernaturalism deny that only the the laws of nature exist devoid of a supreme being. Deists as supernaturalists believe, in the same moment as they believe there is a God, that that same God endowed Man with Reason and endowed the world with immutable laws, and that together those laws and Man's reason are all that can be counted on. God may have created the world, but after that he was strictly a hands-off kind of Creator. All the answers to the questions of the world are to be found in Reason, including the questions and answers on the meditations of faith. Faith itself, however, is a matter for the soul.

It is not of that reason, in other word it is not reasonable, to assume that a soul can exist before the tabula rasa has any empirically-generated material of mind by which such a thing as the soul can exist. The soul is not supernatural; it is part of the nature of Man's being, as much as his toenails or his liver--or his mind.

But mind is the product of sensory impressions retained by the brain; and soul is the emotional content, the structure of the metaphysical meaning of those retained impressions. "Nature's God" is to the description of the contents of each human's individualistic beliefs regarding the questions and the rational answers of existence, what "soul" is to the emotional content regarding the nature of existence.

"Every time we walk along a beach," wrote the naturalist Loren Eiseley, "some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.”

"Ancient urge" is not what I would call the emotional content of man's soul, but the soul is as old as man himself, so it is indeed ancient. But this emotional content is ostensive in its nature; in other words, it is the description in emotional terms that only that which we call a soul can point at using our volition of the faculty of consciousness.

How many times have you heard it said, "What I felt can't be described in words?" What was felt and indescribably in words was ostensive. My Webster's defines "ostensive" as "directly pointing out," as one can only point to the sky or the ocean to "point out" what is the color blue. Without pointing, the color comes down to the scientific description of the wavelength of the color. Without feeling the soul, its nature comes down, like the description of a wavelength, to the reductive, deterministic science that declares all things in consciousness to be merely the firing of neurons, and chemical and electrical operations of the physiology of the body.

The soul is much more than reductive descriptions of the scientific evidence of how the body works. In order for the "ancient urge" to awaken, it must be struck by empirical impressions. A human born without sensory awareness can never gain consciousness, because without things about which to be conscious, it cannot exist. To exist without things to be conscious of is contradictory of the definition of the word. That much does not not contradict reductionism.

The soul is the emotional content of consciousness, and as such it cannot exist until the mind has gained enough sensory impressions to create one. This can only begin at birth, and it may be almost immediate. It would not contain much at that point, but the volition of the soul cannot begin begin before birth, before the trauma of birth awakens the brain to the content of sensory knowledge. It is the volition of the soul that upsets the apple cart of reductionism.

Right-wing fundamental Judeo/Christians are fighting
the wrong enemy when they fight science as a whole. It is only this idea of
reductionism, of the idea that man is nothing but the contents of his physiology
producing a "belief" in the existence of the soul, that the fundamentalists must
fight. Many scientists who believe the soul begins at birth, not at conception,
believe in God and the soul, not in reductionism. These scientists are not the
enemy of Christians; many of them are Christians.

To believe that such an object as the soul, created by sensory impressions and emotionally judged by the nature of each man's metaphysics, is immutable while believing the physical body that created it is not, (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,) to believe that the soul is transcendental and that it is placed or created or somehow infused into the fertilized egg at the very moment the sperm enters it, is the stuff of religion. And that stuff of religion contradicts the non-deterministic, non-reductionistic laws of nature that define the means of the creation of the soul.

If there be a God, He caused its creation in birth, not in conception.

To post Comments click here Testicular Stem Cells Thwart Religion to Determine Law
Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

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Faith; Science & Candidates; PC Fixes Anti-Gay Agenda; Free Speech

The Irreconcilability of Naturalism with Faith

by Curtis Edward Clark

Not one person on Earth needs formal training to make a judgment about the world he/she lives in, in the sense with which this article deals. We all make those kinds of "world-view" judgments everyday of our lives.

Theology, alike with physics, requires more formalized education with which to conclude such "world-views." As a matter of fact, physics accepts almost no "world-view" that is not its own, naturalistic and unassuming of a supernatural presence in the structure and origin of existence. Theology accepts almost no "world-view" that does not assume a creator’s existence; and theology also assumes the intelligibility of the universe solely on the basis of that creator’s existence.

Without the influence of religion, science seeks the intelligibility, the cosmos-from-chaos, through individual thinking and peer review; yet one man may uniquely stand against all his fellows in science and be correct yet shunned, until one day the world discovers he was correct, in which case the “Copernican effect” http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/jupiter_satellites.html alters forever the cosmology of the civilization which accepts the logic, i.e., the line of reasoning; or the scientist stands alone until the world beginning with his peers disproves his theories convincingly.

Theology (proper) seeks to make cosmos-from chaos only from theories of the "faith-based" humanities, as opposed to physically or mathematically provable scientific concepts. Where no explanation of the cosmos results from such faith-based theorizing, religion joins reason to faith, "insofar as is possible" to do so, [Boethius] to create a dogma, a papal bull, or some other form of edict which is taken as policy and as gospel truth, until a proper theological explanation can be rendered. All theological explanations presume the existence of a creator.

The Copernican effect shook the foundations of the Roman Church. Dogma and papal edicts had to be radically changed because of the effect this naturalistic scientific idea had on doctrine. Scientific naturalism is epistemic and the logical metaphysical concomitant for most or many scientists is metaphysical naturalism, which is defined as denial of the existence of the supernatural, and thus of a creator.

Naturalism "holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but is self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing" through the cause-and-effect nature of the elements on the Periodic Table interracting with each other. No such effect as "gravity", for example, can exist without being "caused" by such elements interacting as they will by their own scientifically defined nature upon the same defined nature of other elements.

But epistemic naturalistic science does not presume or deny the existence of God. The epistemology of it naturally leads to the search for demonstrable proof, either empirical or mathematical. In the scientist's personal life, God may be a fact, and in fact for some scientists it is fact. But for purposes of peer review using proper standards of math or of physics, any theory or other demonstrable proof of science must be naturalistic in its epistemic foundations. Continued at Irreconciled Naturalism, Faith, and Populist Education

Poll: Americans are much more likely to vote for a candidate that will tackle science issues

"Science Debate 2008"

"In November, 2007, a small group of six citizens - two screenwriters, a physicist, a marine biologist, a philosopher and a science journalist - began working to restore science and innovation to America’s political dialogue. They called themselves Science Debate 2008, and they called for a presidential debate on science. The call tapped a wellspring of concern over the state of American science.
Within weeks, more than 38,000 scientists, engineers, and other concerned Americans signed on, including nearly every major American science organization, dozens of Nobel laureates, elected officials and business leaders, and the presidents of over 100 major American universities. See who here. Among other things, these signers submitted over 3,400 questions they want the candidates for President to answer about science and the future of America.
Beginning with these 3,400 questions, Science Debate 2008 worked with Scientists and Engineers for America, the AAAS, the National Academies, the Council on Competitiveness, and the other organizations listed to craft the top 14 questions the candidates should answer. These questions are broad enough to allow for wide variations in response, but they are specific enough to help guide the discussion toward many of the largest and most important unresolved challenges currently facing the United States."

For compete questions and answers from both candidates, see The Questions and Answers--A Side by Side Comparison

Court Clears Minister Who Wed Lesbian Couple
PCUSA OKs Changes to Faith Document, Removal of Gay Condemnation

"Three years after conducting a wedding ceremony for a lesbian couple, the Rev. Janet Edwards was acquitted Thursday on charges of violating Scripture and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s constitution.

"A 2000 decision by the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, the denomination's highest court, held that clergy could conduct services blessing same-sex couples but could not present them as marriages and that the services should not resemble weddings.

"Although the charges against Edwards contended she "knowingly and willfully" performed a ceremony that was "contrary" to the PC(USA) constitution, Pollock of the regional PJC said the prosecution offered no evidence that Edwards violated Scripture when it listed eight biblical passages defied."

Can anyone answer this question: "Why would a religious order have a Judicial Commission to decide whether secular laws were broken?" If secular laws are broken, is it not the business of the secular admisistrators of law to bring action?

"The Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) of the Pittsburgh Presbytery ruled unanimously 9-0 to clear the minister on the grounds that she could not have performed the ceremony since the church and state define marriage as between a man and a woman."

It was not just the Presbyterian Church's Constitution the Commission considered, but also the definition of marriage as presented by the state. Since the state does not define marriage as anything but between a man and a woman, the Rev. Edwards "could not have performed the ceremony." for continuation see Presbyterians Work on Removing Anti-Gay Agenda

The Looming Crisis over Free Speech

In a lecture today, October 6, 2008, "Dr. Eric Daniels examines the state of free speech in America and finds that it is under serious threat. From campus speech codes to anti-discrimination and harassment law, fromcampaign finance to commercial speech, Americans today enjoy less andless freedom in communicating their ideas. Today's colleges and universities have become a hotbed of censorship, producing generations of Americans who have accepted suppression of speech as the norm. Daniels argues that the emerging crisis is a result of the lack of aproper understanding of individual rights, especially property rights. Only by understanding the proper basis of rights can we act to secureour freedom of speech and to protect the rights that give rise to it. Where: 101 Morgan Hall, University of California, Berkeley. For more information on this lecture, please e-mail media@aynrand.org."

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

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Objections from an Eminent Naturalist

Yesterday, I wrote about differences in the descriptions of Naturalism, differences described both by Naturalists themselves, and by non-naturalists trying to drive a "wedge" between the various factions of Naturalists. (I failed to use the word "wedge," although I did refer to it in my 5-part series on "Secularity." 8.11-8.16.08. This wedge "is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement," according to Wikipedia. More on this tomorrow.)

But yesterday I used a quote from the Stanford Enclyclopedia of Philosophy, which in part read that various contemporary philosophers "interpret ‘naturalism’ differently," that "‘naturalism’ is [ ] a positive term in philosophical circles—few active philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as ‘non-naturalists’," and that "Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand ‘naturalism’ in a unrestrictive way..." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/index.html#note-1

One of those who work with a less "restricted" view of naturalism than does this Academy is Tom Clark of Naturalism.Org http://www.naturalism.org/ and The Center for Naturalism http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/ , which has a prestigious Advisory Board including Daniel Dennet and Susan Blackmore among thirteen listed, as well as a long list of "Allies of Naturalism," and a list just as long of "Contributors to the CFN qualifying as Allies of Naturalism (and wanting to be listed as such)." Some of my favorties are among them, including Julian Baggini, whose book, "The Philosopher's Toolkit" is one of my favorite quick reference books. Baginni is the co-founder of "The Philosophers' Magazine" http://www.philosophersnet.com/.

Now, none of this is relative to what comes next, but it was important for the reader to understand that Nat.Org and CFN.Org are well-known and much more established than is this Academy or its blog. We are not even toddlers yet, let alone walking among the "adults" in this field.

But Tom and I have been communicating, and it seems that some of that "unrestrictive" nature in the science comes out when I read Smith's work and he reads mine! It has led to some points of interest for both of us.

"I’m wondering about your prominent link," Tom wrote me, "to the Ayn Rand Institute on your blog. They strike me as being pretty irrational when it comes to ideas about the self and free will, and it seems to me this irrationality supports a morally objectionable radical individualism, see my critique here. "

It was "Part 4" of a series of very short pieces which together go by the name of "Libertarianism and the Myth of Radical Autonomy." I'm not a big fan of Libertarianism, not since I read Ayn Rand's scathing critique of it as having forgotten its epistemic roots, shooting only for the metaphysics, and shooting from the hip without regard for means, ways, and ultimate ends.

I don't know how much of the Party has come around to Rand's way of thinking to amend their ways by referencing the philosophical tenets from which the Party ought to have been conceived. Their ends are proper and all in the advancement of freedom, but at what costs, asked Rand, when the epistemic ends have been ignored or forgotten?

I clicked on the "here" link, only to find a piece I had read some time ago and forgotten about in the meantime. So I re-read it, made notes of my objections to his objections, and wrote back to him.

"Dear Tom: I can see your problem with Objectivism. I have encountered it many times. I don't often have the opportunity to address it."

Part of Tom's objection to Rand's firm reliance on the concept of "free will" was addressed this way: "...there’s no way to square Objectivism’s ostensible commitment to scientific objectivity, reason, and anti-supernaturalism with the idea of a self-made soul."

I wrote in return, "Where Rand says, 'As man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul," she most definitely does not mean that we create our soul as we might create another foot, both of which are impossible.

"In the same way that the mind is said to be tabula rasa at birth, so is the soul. The soul being self-made comes from this:

'Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments. [ ]
"Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are "tabula rasa." It is man's cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both.' The Virtue of Selfishness

"And:
'Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value-judgments, experiences emotions and acquires a certain implicit view of life. Every choice and value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world around him—most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him. What began as a series of single, discrete conclusions (or evasions) about his own particular problems, becomes a generalized feeling about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion—an emotion which is part of all his other emotions and underlies all his experiences. This is a sense of life. [ ]
'It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as "important," those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in a man's subconscious and form his sense of life.' The Romantic Manifesto

"It is in this manner [I wrote,] that is the mechanism for the "self-making" of the soul."

Part of Tom's criticism of what he calls "radical autonomy" in Rand's concept of the self-made soul was this:


"Science shows that individuals in all their aspects and capacities are fully a function of their environmental and biological determinants, not literally self-made. True, once we become autonomous, rational agents, it’s usually our own desires that determine our choices, including some choices that may influence our very character and values." [italics added]

My reply to that: "A man does not have to live with the education about society that he picks up from his family and friends; he can learn to live better if need be. In the same way, using your virtues to become a better person, to acknowledge the affairs of others when to do so is in one's interests, in short, to become a stronger and more virtuous character with an integrity that is better than before, is how a man makes his own soul.

"Or he leaves it to chance. He remains mentally passive and merely reactive, accepting his automatized reactions as if they were not subject to question."

These differences between Tom's assessment and mine of Rand's free will are major stumbling blocks for the many critics of Objectivism. I'm not certain if these criticisms come from casual readings of her material, or from something inherent in Rand's method of writing. I know that when I had such questions of her philosophy I could always find the answer in something else she wrote, as if she had picked up on her own thoughts there and addressed them here in realtionship to the current topic here on which she was writing about.

Now, perhaps I am mis-readind Tom, when I infer his inclination to believe that somehow Rand actually meant that "self-made soul" was in the same fashion as "self-made wealth," that somehow, just as a person can begin penniless and create a fortune he can begin without a soul and somehow fashion it from this or that and put it into his conscience or into his heart. It is difficult for me to believe that anyone could read Rand's words and take them that way.

But straightening out such misconceptions is what the free exchange of ideas is about, and I'm grateful to Tom in this case for showing me in just what fashion Rand can be mis-read. The rest of Tom's paragraph backs up his reading of Rand. (I won't call his a "mis-reading." We are all free to understand what others write and say in our own fashion, and it may be that after my letter to him he is unmoved to change his interpretation of what he has read.)

But his interpretation in Part 4 into the subject of "radical" free will goes much deeper:

"But there are two errors here," he writes, "in addition to thinking we’re ultimately self-made. One is to suppose that in empirical fact we are merely self-interested creatures. But we aren’t; there are many altruistic bones in our body.[2] Second, it’s to commit the naturalistic fallacy of arguing that if we are selfish by nature, that means we should be selfish. But there is no direct implication from a natural is to an ethical ought."

Until then, I had no idea that anyone thought of this as either an "ethical ought" or as a "naturalistic fallacy." Given that there are so many widely varying descriptions of Naturalism, I am hardly convinced that all Naturalists accept this "ought." I, for one, have never accepted it, and I'm a life-long Randian, at least, since high school some 36 years ago.

"On the subject of our 'altruistic bones,'" I replied, "I think Rand was much more aggressive in her definition of 'altruism,' [than you may be,] accepting [Auguste] Comte at his word."

I pasted a definition from the "Dictionary of Philosophy," Runes, 1942, which attributed the origination of the word altruism to Comte, and said in part:
"For Comte Altruism meant the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity. As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition not only to egoism (whether understood as excessive or moderate self-love), but also to the formal or theological pursuit of charity and to the atomic or individualistic social philosophy of 17th-18th century liberalism, of utilitarianism, and of French Ideology. "
[Wilbur Long] http://www.pragmatism.org/genealogy/cambridge.htm

"By this standard," I wrote in my email, "even your own pursuit of charity seems out of the question as a topic of debate, or it may apply [only] to Rand's own thinking: she never said the question was, 'Should men ignore the plight of those in need?' She always maintained that the proper question was, 'Do you have the right to refuse to help?' to which Comte's altruism would say no to."

Now, in a previous email convo, Tom and I discussed his humanist approach to Naturalism, because, as is the case with many of the various "versions" of Naturalism as hinted at by http://plato.stanford.edu/ in yesterday's essay, I could not comprehend where humanism of even a "soft" form of altruism fit into any concept of the science of Naturalism. When I questioned him about this, he replied:

"If you read the Guide to Naturalism and the Q&A, that will be a start in understanding where the progressive, humanistic implications come from in this version of naturalism. Others who have seen these implications (Spinoza, Darwin, Einstein) are quoted here. There are several contemporary philosophers that also take this view, among them Derk Pereboom, Tamler Sommers, Joshua Greene and Bruce Waller."

Again, I had no idea. I've been walking around in a world in which I believed Naturalism was the opposite of Creationism or its earlier incarnations. I didn't know that "progressive humanism" was attached to it by anyone, let alone by so many.

"To the question of are we 'morally required to pursue our self-interest?'," I continued, "it begs the next question: What is our best-interest?

"If my best interest is in helping to prevent my town from being flooded, I'm going to be shoulder to shoulder with everyone else who is filling sandbags. If my self-interest is in eliminating illiteracy--if only so more people can read my works, then I will be helping illiterate people to learn to read.

"But 'to commit the naturalistic fallacy of arguing that if we are selfish by nature, that means we should be selfish,' is the definition of 'logical' egoism, not 'rational' egoism.
See http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/egoism.htm ," I said. I am not, at this point, certain whether or not Tom knew there was a difference. Perhaps that was as much news to him as the "progressive humanism" was to me. I highly doubt that many of Rand's admirers or detractors are aware of the various "versions" of egoism.

"If," I wrote, "your logic is a reaction to the philosophy of Rand and other's, I understand the reaction. I began reading Rand in 1973, and often made the same mistakes of assumption I believe you are making. I had to read and re-read many other Rand passages to come to an understanding of how compassionate she could really be.

"Oddly enough, my post today, [8.19.08 ], is titled 'Who is John Galt: A Naturalist's Letter to a Critic,' and it addresses many of these concerns of whether or not Rand had any compassion or capacity for emotion."
Sincerely,
Curtis Edward Clark

Tom's short, simpl reply was, "Ok, many thanks for these clarifications, most interesting. It would be nice if all Rand’s acolytes examined her philosophy as assiduously as do you, ending up with more nuanced conclusions about the legitimacy of compassion and limits of egoism."

Well, it is my desire that Rand is not taken to be such a harsh philsopher than anyone could mistake her writings for anything less than "compassionate." Her entire philosophy presupposed that if one was objective enough in his/her dealings with other people and the world at large, that those who deserved compassion would get it as a result of the rational egoism of him/her who was dealing with the world; and that those who were egotistic or altruistic or tyrannical would come to a just end, or find their way like Pilgrim did in his walk of Progress, and as I have been finding my way among the many various factions of Naturalism.

I consider Tom Clark to be an eminent Naturalist. He has his objections to egoism, believing al egoism to be the same, as I once believed all Naturalism to be the same.

I can say that the compassion of my Objectivism would not allow me to help a person in dire and immediate need to save his life. But my compassion does not always apply to those who will not help themselves. I don't know yet how far Tom Clark's compassion goes. I have yet to read most of those links he provided me with. I certainly intend to read them all.

To be an "informed' Naturalist, one must know all of the objections made by those with eminent power to defeat one's own principles in argument, and understand how to prevent one's justifications from such defeat.

Maybe after I read all the links, I will happily discover that Tom and his famous associates and I are more or less on the same page. Until then, I can only confess to remaining confused as to how anyone can misread the rationality and compassion of Rand. When I want to meditate and immerse my sense of self and of the compassion Rand saw was capable of being brought forth by men, I simply take a few minutes and read and read and re-read Chapters 11 and 12 (11 especially) from "Anthem," which in part reads:

"...to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.
"I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold.
"The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.
"I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose." http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/anthem/complete.html

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The Big Question of Existence

What “Exists”?
“Existence” is often referred to as the "Universal Truth.” It is common for people to ask, “What is truth?” or “What is reality?” They are asking about Existence, the Big Question.
Cartoons depict people climbing to the top of a mountain to consult a “wise man,” to get the answer to a question that is burning in their minds. The comic strip B.C.1 integrated the “wise man” right into the prehistoric era of man, where the “wise men of mysticism,” Socrates and Plato, belong.

Often when asking about the “Big Question” it is with the expectation that a secret and mystic explanation will be given, and that perhaps it will be years before they can “divine” what the wise man told them is “the answer to the universe.” (That is why the mystics belong in the pre-history of philosophy.

But more than likely they harbor the wish that they, too, will comprehend this secret and divine or mystic explanation in one single lecture, in a revelatory moment. Sometimes, as with “Yahweh,” a single word which if spoken would do something. There are those who even say that word, when spoken correctly, will destroy the world.
People who ask about reality or facts don't always understand that they, too, are asking about existence. Existence is the universal preoccupation of our intellectual lives, because we not only want to know, “Where did it come from?” but it is the cognoscenti of our intellect. It is the object for which our consciousness pines and on which it is inextricably linked—cognoscenti are objects. Our consciousness is the subject of those objects.
When the Big Question is not phrased as "What is reality?" or "How do I know I exist?" or "Isn't the whole world subjective?", or “What exists and what does not?”, then, the Big Question is provoked of us in the angry, defiant tone of the indignant statement "Prove that I exist!"

Yes, people actually get angry about logic, and demand that someone talke them out of their irrationally induced life of skepticism. More often than not the Big Question is yet another but equal statement, “Prove God does not exist.”

Knowledge of what exists and what does not has become smudged and greyed when “existence” comes to be seen as “perceptions”. Don't you often hear the question, “Is reality our perceptions?” [continued]
[1Johnny Hart; http://lambiek.net/artists/h/hart.htm ]

[continued] The lines of knowing what exists and what does not have been blurred, sometimes erased altogether. A person can be convinced that the ego is necessarily egotistical; that nothing one does in life can have any meaning because “in the end we all die”; and that being “dust in the wind” has some significance to the life one must lead.
They can be convinced there is the possibility the sun won't rise in the morning, that the dog who got out won't get hit by a car, so they don't worry or hurry, then the dog gets hit, proving the human is flawed because he has been convinced of that (Kant) or because he wants to be convinced of that. Sketpicism has convinced him he cannot be right because there is the possiblity that he his not right.
Those two concepts of being “dust in the wind” and “in the end we all just die anyway” are the most skeptical arguments for un-reason in today's verbal arsenal on existence. Those questions have a lot of people flummoxed. What is the purpose of following a principled life if in the end you just wind up dead? We will get to the answer.

Consciousness and “Existents” Must Exist
But this concept of existence itself is not possible to comprehend without consciousness, and that very fact as a thing in itself implies the existence of at least one one thing in existence: consciousness. If one thing exists in existence, it becomes the proof of the existence of existence. That is how a tautology works, and why it must work. It cannot be defeated without at least one unworkable concept going to its grave, or another one proving to work right along it. Aristotle out; Copernicus and Galileo in.

(You can also say this is the time that traditional metaphysics went to its grave, because Aristotle out means his metaphysics. In came physics, standing alone in the mind of one man, and his metaphysics were different from Aristotle's. It was modernly cosmological, and ever since the cosmology of astro-physics has become more remote from its roots. I met a cosmologist in his office on a university campus, where he proceeded to call ideas of metaphysics other than those of physics to be “Bunk!”

“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, in “For the New Intellectual.”
In her “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,” she writes, “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

The "universal truth" is the following: "Existence exists." It is also equally as true that “Existents exist”, and neither statement can be true without the other also being true.
Existents (noun) are any thing and all things that exist, have existed, and can exist. From the “strings” in string theory—even if strings are someday proved not to exist, they still exist as ideas—to the spaghetti on your plate and the plate under the spaghetti.
Ideas are existents because they have existence in the mind. Rocks and gas, and muons, and Harry Potter, trolls and fairies and elves are existents, if not in empirical, “material” reality, then at least as subjective reality, i.e., concepts, in our heads. Concepts are subjective existents. Spaghetti is an objective existent. Spaghetti the idea is a subjective existent.

An “existent” is anything that exists; therefore, existents exit in existence.

Proof of the correctness of this statement is as follows;
If: existence did not exist, You would—could not—exist in any form, not as an independent objective existent in an independent, objective, empirical universe;
nor as a subjective existent in someone's mind or in the “godhead” or as figment within another mind;
nor as an existent in Your own mind whether or not you believed Your mind was the only existent in existence.

(To be existent in Your own mind, and to argue that all other things in existence are created by Your consciousness is called “Solipsism.” This is also called the Primacy of Consciousness.1 But it is a fallacy, having no basis in empirical reality. It still requires the acknowledgment that at least one thing, Your consciousness, is an existent. Solipsism is sometimes the reason for asking “IF a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?”; with the resultant answer, “No, because a 'sound' is something heard, and if you were not there to create the falling tree it could not fallen in the first place.2

(I have seen the question asked—more than once—“If I die, or close my eyes, does the world cease to exist?”)

If existence did not exist, You, in any form whatsoever would not exist because there would be no existents whatever. In what medium can an existent such as "consciousness" exist except in the medium of existence? Even if we discovered that the only existence is in “the godhead,” at least one thing would exist. Certainly nothing can be an existent in the absence of existence.

The "axiomatic concept"3 that "existence exists" began at least no later than Aristotle, who used it as formulaic. The formula "A is A" means literally that a “thing” cannot be something else. To Aristotle it means first and foremost that [continued]

[[1Ayn Rand: “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”
[2This is not even the true meaning of the question, but for most people that meaning has been lost or never found. We will examine that Q&A in Chapter &.
[3“An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts....all other concepts, all axioms, propositions and thought—consists of axiomatic concepts.” Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology; Ayn Rand; © The Objectivist, Inc. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/axiomaticconcepts.html ]]


[continued] Existence exists.”

The Axiomatic Concept (see Note 3 above) becomes “Just” an Axiom.
The first “A” in the formula is any “object” you want to put in the formula; the second “A” is its non-contradictory identity, called the “subject,” no matter which “identity” one chooses as the subject.
For example, Man can be identified as “an upright primate with opposable thumbs”; or as “the animal with grammatical and syntactic vocal patterns, or as “the rational animal.” None of these description contradicts what we know “Man” is, but the first two descriptions are more general as differentia than the second, which is more particular. (Differentia is the difference between two or more things. The cagegory the two or more things are in are called a genus.) They do not contradict each other, but the identity of “rational animal” supersedes any other description because it is the most particular of all the descriptions of “Man.”
The “most particular definition” of a thing is found in the “axiom”1. And that “most particular definition” is called the “essence” of a thing.“Rational animal” is the ultimate, most particular definition of the concept “Man.” The “essence” of a thing is always contextual. The “essence” of the concept “latch” can be either a thing that keeps something else, like a door, closed; or it can mean to secure something like a door with that thing called a “latch.” One is a noun; one is a verb. But if you are talking about “latching” on to a husband, the meaning of the verb again changes. There is no contradiction in these differences, because in each case we are not talking about the same thing.
But in the case of the question, “What is the essence of Homo sapiens?”, it can only be “the rational animal” because Bigfoot walks upright also, but we don't know if he is rational, yet we know that the only known rational animal is Man.
Existence in Metaphysics2 and in Epistemology3 See Chapter $"Existence exists" is the epistemological axiomatic concept ; "existents exist" is the metaphysical axiomatic concept. This means it cannot be said that “existence” does not exist; and it cannot be said that existents do not exist. To say either one, is to deny that whatever means by which you comprehend such things and come to deny them also does not exist!
These axiomatic concepts have, therefore, been argued if not utilized by all [continued]

[[1 “An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.” Galt's Speech; “For the New Intellectual”; Ayn Rand http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/axioms.html
[2 “Metaphysics” is the identification of the “essence” of a thing, as well as all the constituent identities, and whether or not they exist in the first place. And if one is found to exist, like “Goldilocks”, only in the mind and literature, but not in empirical physics, its placement in the importance of all things metaphysical may be low. All things metaphysical have a placement in a hierarchy of values that your mind determines. Your spouse would probably come before Goldilocks, your dog before your shoes.
[3 “Epistemology” is the method by which identifications are discovered, identified, and verified as true or real. It is a hard-wired faculty of the mind, ready at birth to go to work identifying the new world, just as the lungs are ready to go to work breathing. But neither faculty works until birth. ]]


[continued] philosophers, and none disagrees, at least by default, that existence exists because it would require the statement that "existents do not exist."
As axiomatic concepts, they are the given, the self-evident, and describe all things that have existed, exist now, and ever will exist. Therefore, since no philosopher can disagree that existence does not exist, even if he acknowledges it with Solipsism, all must agree that existence cannot never have existed, at the risk of contradicting that .
The Default Position on Creation Non-existence is not the "default position" to argue from. Creationists make it the default position. But why should it be said that at one time God was the only existent?
To argue this default position is to contradict the axiomatic definition of the word "existence", not to mention contradicting the axiom of physics that states that matter does not cease to exist, it only changes forms. God had to make Creation out of things that already existed, because the matter he used never disappears. (If you don't believe in God, it's OK; this is just a sidebar.)
Since matter, according to the accepted laws of physics, does not cease to exist, it must always exist in the future and cannot have been created or it cannot have always had the nature of being existent. If we admit that God exists, we must also admit that he used material in the Creation that exhibits the physics of not ever having been non-existant.
That goes directly back to the concept that the "absence of existents" is not the default position. The "absence" of a thing is not the existence of the absence of a thing. "Absence" of existence cannot be an "existent."It is from these axiomatic concepts that all other concepts, axioms, propositions and thoughts are derived.Axiomatic concepts are the most particularized definition (denotation) of existents. The concept “existence” is derived from the perception of “existents,” the very fact of which proves that at least one this exists in existence, even if that one thing is the consciousness of a Solipsist.

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