Less than 3 months to go…

Just finished: The Wire-Season 5 Now watching: The Sopranos-Season 1

Currently Listening to: Super Furry Animals-Dark Days/Light Years

Currently Playing: Resident Evil Zero-Gamecube

july 25th is fast approaching, in a lot of ways it can’t get here soon enough.  wedding planning is almost the least of my concerns of late.  i’m in the midst of moving stuff back to my parents house as my apt. lease expires at the end of may.  Abbie and I have been searching out places to live for July and we thought we found a house to rent but it fell through so we are back to square one.  ideally we’d like a small 2 bed house with a garage and yard and such in northern joco for less than $900/mo.  something that can tide us over for a few years while i’m waiting to get back to a sturdier job situation and we can pay down debt and save for a house.  we’d like to avoid apt life if we can.

speaking of job stuff, i’m still on part time, but my 8 days a month is going to switch from Thur/Fri to Mon/Tues, apparently to make it easier for them to call us into training.  i have yet to really get called in since i went to this part time thing.  It appears things are very very very slowly turning around, but i couldn’t tell if its because business just normally picks up this time of the year of if the economy has finally bottomed out and might be on its way back up.

k thats my little life update for this month.

Evolution: The Atheist’s Religion-Part 2-The Great Chain of Being

currently watching: The Wire-Season 4

currently listening to: Dan Deacon-Bromst

The Great Chain of Being

Picking up from where I left off, from the fall of Rome till the renaissance, the Catholic church had taken hold and generally dictated philosophy/cosmology.  Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas all managed to push a mishmash of Creationist principles and pantheistic ideas (like that of Plato, Aristotle, “The Great Chain of Being/Scale of Being”, but also like some theistic evolution you see today) to the forefront while atheistic/naturalistic ideas were pushed underground.

With the “Scale of Being” concepts dominating the time, many evolutionary precursors sprung forth from it.  Remember, the original idea behind the scale of being philosophy was that it worked “top-down”, sort of a devolution (i.e. From God, or a god, came about successive lower forms of life–not necessarily directly from each other, but rather conceptually so everything could be ordered in a way to be better understood).  It was quasi-theological at best, and certainly not Biblical.  Though in fact all that separated the scale of being from evolution was a conception of time in vast quantities added to mutability of form.  In other words, a universe not made but being made continuously.

One of the first to look at the great chain in a more modern evolutionary approach was Comte de Buffon (1707-1788).  His work, Histoire Naturelle, while leaning heavily on Scala Naturae (great chain of being), managed to put forth many of the ideas used in later works by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and ultimately Darwin himself.  His writings included precursors to comparative anatomy, long time scales, and biogeography.  He did, however, still believe in the immutability of species.  Darwin himself gave Buffon some credit in early pre-”Origin” writings and Ernst Mayr said of Buffon ” He was not an evolutionist, yet he was the father of evolutionism.”

Alongside Buffon, rose other ideas based on the scale of being.  “Progressionism” (and sometimes catastrophism), developed by Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), probably helped reverse the top-down scale of being approach more than anything else.  Cuvier believed that catastrophes (the last being the Noahic flood) brought about new assemblages of organisms with each group being progressively more complex than the preceding (bottom-up development).

Another important idea developed from the great chain of being was ontogenetic recapitulation.  This theory (now completely discredited) became a cornerstone for “proof” of evolution by Darwin himself. What it says is that embryonic development of humans is in itself a representation of going from the bottom of the chain to the top. Friedrich Kielmayer, amongst other German “nature philosophers”, originated this idea going back to the late 1700s.  More on this theory later.

So, now we have connected the ancient greek philosophical idea of the Great Chain of Being as a profoundly influential concept in the development of evolutionary theory.  Next up: A look at those most influential to Darwin

Evolution: The Atheist’s Religion–Part 1–The Why and the Background

currently watching: The Wire-Season 3

currently listening to: Cymbals Eat Guitars-Why There are Mountains

Having discussed Atheism/Humanism and Liberalism going hand in hand, I’d now like to venture into how Atheism/Humanism has managed to infiltrate into the minds of people today.

The Why

Since the creation, those opposing God have sought to discredit, disprove, and ultimately destroy the idea that man did in fact originate in perfect form from a god, most often the God of the Bible.  Paganism and its many offshoots are as old as Jewish history.  Like I wrote in my description of Humanism, man opposes God because he does not want to submit to His will, does not want to admit sin, and desires to live entirely for himself.  James 4:4 …whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God.  Romans 8:7 The mind of the flesh [with its carnal thoughts and purposes] is hostile to God, for it does not submit itself to God’s Law; indeed it cannot.

So why is evolution so important to Atheists?  Its perhaps best summed up by Atheist Richard Bozarth in an article “The meaning of Evolution” published in the American Atheist:

Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing!”

The Background

Evolution itself is Paganism, and it originated long before Darwin published the “Origin of Species”. Upwards of 2,500 years before Darwin in fact.  Some early cosmologies included a concept of God or a form of intelligence, and some were strict Atheism.   I’ll detail both, and I’ll start with a few more well-known figures.

Plato (422-347 B.C.), of whom we have a ton of writings from, combined purpose and chance as an explanation for the cosmos.  He talked about a form of “devolution” (that from God came about successive emergences of lower and less worthy forms) and used descriptions for the universe that defined it as a “Living Creature” (a form of pantheism).  Plato’s successor, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), began to remove aspects of the Biblical God by referring to God as a more impersonal “Prime Mover” that simply set the pre-existing and uncreated (eternal) cosmos in motion–then leading to devolution (summarized in his “Great Chain of Being” theory).  While these two had some concepts of evolution, they were not what was surmised by Darwin.

To get closer to the Atheistic/Darwinian views, you actually have to go back further than Plato and Aristotle.  Around 6th century B.C.(about the same time other “rationalistic” religions like Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Vedanta Hinduism were beginning–not a mere coincidence i’m sure) in Asia Minor the father to Greek philosophy, often called Milesian or Ionian philosophy, began.  Thales was its creator, he was the first to introduce naturalistic and materialistic lines of thinking to describe the world rather than supernatural.  From Thales’ thinking developed Atomism (5th century B.C. philosophy developed by Leucippus and Democritus) which simply said that there were invisible building blocks(atoms) making up anything that exists.  Ultimately this lead to the philosophy of Epicureanism.  Epicurus (342-270 B.C.; who today would be an absolute champion of the Humanists) believed that everything that occurs is the result of the atoms colliding, rebounding, and becoming entangled with one another, with no purpose or plan behind their motions.  From this you would have little trouble conforming it to modern “sciences” and evolutionary ideas.

So as you can see, the original line of thinking (that we developed from random and chaotic chance) began in and around Ancient Greek philosophy.  From there evolutionary thinking was broken down and redeveloped many times, often by people in the church trying to mesh it with Christianity (see Origen, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas for some examples).  Then in the 19th century Charles Darwin published “Origin” and the same atheistic philosophies developed 2000 years earlier were finally accepted as “science”.  Though before we get to Darwin, we still need to look at the more immediate precursors to “his” theories.

Connecting Atheistic Humanism to Liberalism

currently watching: The Wire-Season 2 (finished the 1st season in 4 days..its quite good)

currently listening to: Boy Least Likely To-The Law of the Playground

Continuing with my working thesis that one’s belief in God defines their political beliefs, I will now try to connect the dots between Atheistic Humanism and American (Social) Liberalism.  Please note, I am not saying all liberals are atheists.  Rather I am pointing out the similarities in beliefs and that nearly all atheists would be apt to vote for liberals.

Going to go through this by running down typical liberal positions on common issues (I pulled these stances from various sources, though mostly its from my own experience and observation of the political landscape).  My responses are based on my previous post covering the 6 main points of humanist manifesto 3.

First-the most polarizing topic: Pro-Abortion

Humanist Manifest 2, in the “individual” section, it says abortion should be a recognized right.  In addition to that, a more philosophical reasoning for supporting abortion comes from Humanist Manifesto 3 point #2 which specifically outlines that people are the result of random unguided change.  In effect this cheapens life to the point of total obscurity.  When life is devalued, it’s very easy to define life’s beginning (and ending) at whatever point is convenient.  Thus, an atheist doesn’t feel like they are murdering an unborn child with abortion because they justify it by saying it was never a life (or much of a life?) up to that point.

Second: Pro-Homosexual Marriage

I refer to Humanist Manifesto 3 point #4 for this (and further detailed in manifesto 2, the “individual” section). With sexual exploration of all kinds (between consenting adults) being strongly encouraged along with the general pursuit of individual happinesses, this would lead to an obvious acceptance of homosexual activity.  Its questionable to assume humanists would really need marriage, but if its needed to achieve particular societal benefits then certainly a humanist would go along with the idea…clearly objecting to any religious part of it.

Third: Public education, universal health care, welfare, and other social programs

Refer to humanist manifesto 3 point #6 here.  societal happiness increases individual happiness so a humanist would pursue at a minimum a lot of major social programs like education and health care that assumingly helped society.

Fourth: Protecting the environment

Humanist manifesto 3 point #2.  “Humans are an integral part of nature”  pretty easy.  we came from nature, we return to nature.  Essentially with nature and the environment being all that there is it becomes more than necessary to protect it, almost with a religious fervor.

Fifth: Cutting Defense/adverseness to military engagement/gun control

Humanist manifesto 3 point #5 talks about resolving conflict peacefully and without violence.  What an idealistic world humanists live in.  Either way its clear liberals and humanists agree on this subject.

Sixth: Progressive taxes/socialism

Humanist manifesto 3 point #6 is all about socialism.  “We seek to minimize the inequities of circumstance and ability, and we support a just distribution of nature’s resources and the fruits of human effort so that as many as possible can enjoy a good life.”  i.e. they are all about a redistribution of wealth.

Seventh: Separation of church and state

This appears to be obvious.  If you don’t believe in God, then clearly you don’t want it to be a part of your government.  Humanist manifesto 2, in the first 2 points, talks about religion.  its an amazing read.  and its certainly clear humanists want nothing to do with religion as it interferes with the pursuit of human needs and ideals.  Liberals and their allies in the ACLU have long pursued the separation issue so there is no doubt atheists and liberals agree here.

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Conclusion:

I believe almost all of the opposition I have faced in political discussion is based on whether someone believes in the God of the Bible and his son Jesus Christ.  Rather than get into arguments anymore with people over the sometimes trivial issues in politics (as hard as that is for me), I’m simply going to figure out if someone believes in Jesus first and either ask more about that or just drop it.  because I won’t find any common ground or resolve any arguments if we differ on our belief in the God of the Bible.

What next?

I think i’d like to go a little into origin issues. I now believe evolution to be the #1 tool for creating opposition to Christianity (and thus spreading atheism), and since it is taught in public schools, its influence can’t be ignored.  I will be working from an idea that an acceptance of evolution is just as much a faith as creationism, and no more a science than creationism.