That was an absurd argument, Islewood.

Embryology and other life sciences state the beginning is conception. When the egg and the sperm merge and the gentics are completed.

They don't begin a thing that become human.

And the Bible does show a complete human at conception.

But of course, when one embraces all they can find an argument somewhere giving permission to their position.

One who sits on the fence trying to embrace all sides just ends up with a fence board in a bad place.

Your use of the word “absurd” reflects your literalistic bent. Rather than saying that such-and-such appears absurd to you, you tersely pronounce it---apparently for the entire universe---ABSURD! So you just say it (no need for clear explanation) and what you say is so. Where of where do you get this abracadabra power? A gift right out of God’s own words, I am sure. By the way, is absurdity both imminent and transcendent, or should I penitently accept that it only resides in me?

As for myself, I think that satirical representations are absurd, in point of fact that is at the heart of such efforts—to reflect in words or cartoonist pictures some off-center observation of a larger off-center reflection. Good for you, you got it.

As for your contention as to what embryology and all life sciences state about life: [1] embryology deals in both live and dead embryos. It leaves life qua life to other realms of human speculation (I do at this moment fancy my Radian extrapolation from “man qua man”). [2]few in the life sciences are inclined to slow down their research efforts by speculating as to the root meaning of LIFE---well aside from going to Mass to worship the Life of life.

If one is interested in a provocative consideration of life, they might consider reading “Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life,” by Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan---this might be unacceptable to those who are reluctant to put down their bible for a short read. But it is titillating to consider what the bounds of life may be—to wit, as these two people of scientific thought observe:

“...cells from the cervix of Henrietta Lane, a woman who lived in Washington, D.C.—continue to be grown in laboratories around the world, despite Lane’s death from cancer of that same cervix in the 1950’s.”

In the consideration of science’s inability to adequately define the limits of life, David Hume’s words seem appropriate:

“Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach on the province of grammarians, and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern.”

For myself, I can only reflect my religious conviction that life is the immortal and eternal gift of God. Without beginning or end it is to me as St. Hildegard von Bingen sang it, “Jesus the Christ is the Life of life.” As this twelfth-century mystic wrote of in Word, Life and Reason:

“I, flaming Life of the divine substance, flare up above the beauty of the plains, I shine in the waters and blaze in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and with an airy wind, as if by an invisible life which sustains the whole, I arouse all things to life. ... And so I, the fiery power, lie hidden in these things, and they themselves burn by me, as the breath unceasingly moves the man, like windy flames in a fire ... I am Life whole and entire ... all that is living is rooted in me. For Reason is the root and in it blossoms the resounding Word.”

Or, considering of this season of worship, Easter and Passover, I find an equally poetic answer in the current Catechism of my Roman Catholic Church in its referent us of words of St. Hippolytus (c160 235 AD):

“Life extends over all beings and fills them with unlimited light; the Orient of orients pervades the universe, and he who was ‘before the daystar’ and before the Heavenly bodies, immortal and vast, the great Christ, shines over all beings more brightly than the sun. Therefore a day of long, eternal light is ushered in for us who believe in him, a day which is never blotted out: the mystical Passover.”

Do have a good Passover and may God be with you, of course He already is,

Islewood

...is likely rolling over in his Edinburgh grave over your invocation.

Though I think he began and ended in precisely the wrong places (I think Reid's criticisms of the entire Cartesian tradition are just dead-on right), he is one of my favorite philosophers. (I managed to "put down my Bible" long enough to read the Treatise and Enquiries.) And this is because, unlike your confused and confusing posts, Hume placed a high premium upon clarity of thought and expression and knew how to offer and assess *arguments.*

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"The philosophical case against theism is rather easily dealt with. There is no philosophical case against theism."
--G.K. Chesterton

If you are a Bible literalist and a few that use this post seem to be, your embrace of Thomas Reid’s philosophy would not be too surprising. Also, since Reid seemed to echo two saints of my Roman Catholic Church, St. Scholastica and St. Thomas Aquinas, maybe you intellectually dance to that old time religion of the Church of Learned Latin.

As for Reid’s criticism of the Cartesian tradition, he would not get much of an argument from we Christian humanist who reject Descartes’ dualism. But I am not sure that dualism is dead; I note that some religious affiliations, Protestant and Catholic, still put pointed steeples on their churches. Are these no more than architectural gestures only echoing the body-and-soul dualism of the past, or are they tapered points of departure between the world ephemeral and heaven eternal.

Shall we pause and listen to the steeple bells, and say the Angelus? Those were the good-old days of worshiping Christians.

Hume’s clarity of thought and capacity to offer a well-stated argument ought to be challenging to Bible literalist who seem bent on the cooptation of everything and everyone to their witness. It will take a good word-bending trick to use an Enlightenment thinker like him. As Hume wrote on Christianity:

“The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.”

Reid criticized the Cartesian *epistemological* tradition that embraced the "theory of ideas" combined with classical foundationalism. He argued, rightly, that Descartes planted the seeds that inevitably grew into Humean skepticism. Hume concluded that we cannot know whether there is an external world of enduring substances, much less that they bear causal relations. Indeed, as far as he could tell, the very idea of an enduring self (conceived either physically or "spiritually") is unknown to us because we never have a perception of ourselves. And then, of course, there is his subjectivist take on our moral beliefs, which fits a Darwinian account like a glove.

Hume is no threat to my Christian worldview. Indeed, he helps me to make my case. He is the forebear of that now happily obscure position of logical positivism which committed a gruesome philosophical murder-suicide in the first half of the last century.

Thomas Reid never challenged the idea of substance dualism. Nor do I. Indeed, the most promising varieties of physicalism appear to be saddled with fatal problems of incoherence. The problem is one of explaining how, since a thought just *is* a physical event of some kind, the content of a belief can play any causal role in explaining behavior. The result: epiphenomenalism. A good book to read in this regard: Victor Reppert, C.S. LEWIS' DANGEROUS IDEA. I'll stick with dualism.

And from a Christian perspective, it is hard to see how one can affirm the survival of the death of the body and yet deny that some variety of diualism is true. Michael Scriven once offered his personal eschatology: "First we die; then we rot." How rise above this rotten philosophy without a soul?

What, pray tell, is a Bible literalist? Alvin Plantinga offered what, as near as he could tell, people meant when they called other people "fundamentalists." It means, apparently, either "sumbitch" or "stupid sumbitch." And that, on further analysis, just means something like, "a guy whose views are farther to the right than my own." Does "Bible literalist" mean anything like this?

As you note, Hume quipped that Christian belief requires a sort of "miracle" because it is so contrary to common sense. J.L. Mackie wrote a book with a title that echoed this remark. Plantinga observes that Hume may have been correct after all: perhaps those "Bible literalists" are privy to something the rest of us don't know. I mean, if you *really are* walking with Jesus on a daily basis, encountering his objective presence, then it would be just as natural and warranted to believe that you are as it is natural and warranted to believe the sun is shining as you are tanning.

By the way, Plantinga's majestic WARRANTED CHRISTIAN BELIEF would provide you with a healthy antidote. Read it carefully and, before you know it, you may find that you are learning how to think. His dealings with the likes of Harvard Professor of religion Gordon Kaufman and later discussion of Richard Rorty's antirealist views seem particularly relevant.

Finally, unlike PTC Guy, I'm happy with the notion of "Christian Humanism." If "humanism" is taken simply to mean that individual persons enjoy inherent worth, then I would suggest that, as bearers of the imago dei, this is precisely true. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that, apart from a theistic worldview there are no grounds for affirming such worth or dignity.

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"The philosophical case against theism is rather easily dealt with. There is no philosophical case against theism."
--G.K. Chesterton

I defer to your authority on Thomas Reid’s musings. My early encounter with his philosophy was of little assistance in my effort to move on in my own. Aside from common sense being not all that common (or was it too common?), Reid seemed to me to be into “thingness.”

I must have read Gilbert Ryle’s “The concept of mind,” before I encountered Reid. Anyway, I would have thought of Reid being in error 180 degrees opposite to the error Ryle had labeled the “Cartesian Myth.”

In retrospect, Reid would have been in part arguing against something that I would not have pleaded guilty to in the first place, i.e. too great of a reliance on reason. To this day, when I am in consideration of ultimate reality, I am informed more by Heschel’s “Wisdom of Awe” than by either fact or reason.

I am much like Kelly James Clark’s grandmother (“Return to Reason” with my insertion): “If evidentialism (or factoidism) is true, then my grandmother has a noetic defect---she believes in God without sufficient propositional evidence.”

I believed in and loved God before I had heard of common sense or reason. This was also before I could read or knew that there was a Bible. I do not remember any epiphanic moment in my life when I said to my self, “Hey, I believe, I am born again.” I have always somehow known. In my early years, I was just a little beast that bounded along and played within the forest of my faith. I did not stop to catalog its trees, nor climb upon a stump to ask, what have we here?

Anyway, the dual headed error (Reid directionally opposite Descartes) was what I had in mind in that portion of my previous post that retold of the supposed mystical point at the tip-top of old church steeples where the natural world of “things” stopped (things not restricted to physical objects, but also including air, fire, good, evil, etc.) and where the supernatural realm of aether began (Heaven, all that is in it, and He who sits there).

To be sure, the metaphoric illusion does not do justice to either Descartes or Reid. And, it gives little definition to any of the various ways that anyone might consider dualism: a theological distinction of between body and soul, a psychological one between mind and body, a Skinnerian distinction between behavior and environment, a cosmological one between matter and energy, an ethical one between right and wrong, ad inf.

Though I frequently express my self in dualistic terms, I am a monist—religiously, psychologically, cosmologically, ethically, philosophically, and any of the other “icallies” I can think of.

The God of my faith is imminent and transcendent, instant and eternal, before and beyond and to be found everywhere, nowhere and anywhere. This is the “Essent” God of Beingness and the ONE-of-one that I personally experience via the triune miracles of my faith: Existence, Life and Awareness. This is the One-and-Only God that does not stand apart from all that is, but is all that is and all the more.

Those who might charge me with pantheism might better up the ante to panantheism. However, for me the label is too restrictive and I consider a more complete representation to be pictured as in the faith of my birth and people, Roman Catholic with an Irish twist, and all filtered through a monistic perspective.

Thus, things supernatural are to me only products of human imagination (along with the mind, just the mythic stuff of Gilbert Ryle’s Ghost in the Machine). For me to think of God in location, I would have to look in a direction opposite the supernatural (mythic) and one that runs down through the natural to the meta-natural.

No thing would be found there (be it even the Most Wondrous Thing of all things). But from the meta-natural God emanates through space/time---the Wondrous Process-of-process and Possibility-of-possibility, and that which "existed before," is "I AM," was "with the Father before the world began" and is the Essence of Life—Jesus Christ the Son of Life and the Vernal Lamb of infinite beginning.

Just for you and for dualism, I end with some of Chesterton’s words that Clark used epigraphically in “Return to Reason:”

“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith.”
--G. K. Chesterton

Islewood

Thank you Muddle for the nice thoughtful and thought stirring message for me to consider on this seventh day of Holy Week, the SABBATH of Sabbaths of my faith and the eve of the Holiest Day of the Liturgical Year.

In the prayerful words that are used to end this day’s ritualistic carving of the Paschal Candle, “May the light of the gloriously risen Christ scatter the darkness of minds and hearts”---my own most included.

With no objection I will later attempt to send a post in as thoughtful a frame as you have sent this day. For now, I must go and attend to keeping this day as holy as I can—sundown will soon be upon it and soon enough on me as well. Then I will at last be told by my Maker, “Ite, Missa est,” and “Ecce Agnuse Dei.”

Islewood

error

And this is because, unlike your confused and confusing posts, Hume placed a high premium upon clarity of thought and expression and knew how to offer and assess *arguments.*
To offer and assess *arguments* is to present proposed truth claim evidence and examine them for proof and disproof.

Clarity of thought does not accept all claimed truths lead to the one Big Truth. Thus my statement on the fence.

Or, to put it in another way, "One who believers in everything believes in nothing." And nothing is the bottom line for 'situational ethics' and 'there are no absolute truth, but only shades of grey.'

Islewood shopping carts his thinking to conform to his own image of 'Truth.' And is critical of all who take a position of actual absolute truths instead of examining the positions to see which truth is the real Truth. Thus the leap to cancer cell research and the attempt to equate that issue to existence of a human personage. A non-sequitor argument.

I know you know it all, you sort of told me that. Now if you really believe in black and white, where does that leave the red text in your King James Bible? Are not the words of Jesus more than black and white? As for your new found friend, David Hume, I think he had you in mind:

“The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.”
--David Hume--

I use the NIV, NASB and an Interlinear for my study. Not the KJV.

Once more you error.

And I did not quote Hume. Again you error.

And final, 'Christian Humanist???' One can be a humanist, One can be a Christian. But one cannot be both since they are mutually exclusive terms.

Again you error!

Batting zero, Islewood.

You need to get off that fence and believe in something, not everything when actually it means whatever from each appeases your personal desires.

You wrote: “I use the NIV, NASB and an Interlinear for my study. Not the KJV.”

PTC Guy love, that certainly sets me straight. But could you tell me what you find wrong with the King James? Maybe I should burn mine.

You wrote, “And I did not quote Hume. Again you error.”

It was not your quote of Hume that prompted my comment. You started your previous post with the following:

"And this is because, unlike your confused and confusing posts, Hume placed a high premium upon clarity of thought and expression and knew how to offer and assess *arguments.*"

I obviously missed the intended slope of your very meaningful and cleverly crafted segue.

You then wrote, “One can be a humanist, One can be a Christian. But one cannot be both since they are mutually exclusive terms.”

I am not sure who “One” is. Should I know him? I am familiar with Petrarch, Soren Kierkegaard, and a man some folks consider the first Christian Humanist, St. Justin Martyr. There are others of faith who were clearly humanists and Christians, but I guess these noted men of letters and scholarship just do not live up to your high intellectual or moral standards. By the way, is that St. One or just plain old brother One?

You then kindly advised me: “You need to get off that fence and believe in something, not everything when actually it means whatever from each appeases your personal desires.”

So if one is on a fence they do not believe in “anything?” Or is it “everything?” Or is it “whatever?” Your clever use of “appeases” makes me think that my desires are at war, or are aggressors? Oh my, I think that it is probably good that I am batting zero. If I got all straitened out I might be an intellectual bully. Or would it be a bully intellect?

This is such fun to talk in tongues---you are a good mentor.

On Humes, you failed to note I was using the cite tags, meaning I was quoting the prior poster, not Humes.

And on Christian Humanist, I suggest you look up the FULL meanings of each. One cannot be both at one time UNLESS one does not mean it literally. But means it as in being a humanist.

A Christian actually follows Christ and what he taught. That IS what the word means. That dismisses all the other religions you uphold as being equally to God. And all attempts at adding human created dogma, law and traditions.

A Humanist holds human reasoning and science as supreme, rejecting religion.

You cannot uphold both as the source of Truth at the same time. Science and reasoning, in Christianity, are tools to understand what God gave us via the Prophets, Apostles and Christ.

In Humanism they are the source of Truth, understood through purely human perspective. Spirituality is not considered, even ridiculed.

Man is the god of Humanism. Science. with total dismissal of the spiritual, is its Bible.

Yes, you need to get off the fence. You hold yourself Christian while embracing Universalism of religion and even Humanism. That means in fact you ebrace nothing as being actually the Truth.

Christianity includes concern for the welfare of Man. But that does not make it Humanism. Humanism does not embrace God.

As for the KJV, you phrased it in a way that seemed to come across as painting a picture of a wild eyed KJVO radical.

KJV is a Bible. Just not the best out there for study.

Dear PTC Guy,

You wrote, "KJV is a Bible. Just not the best out there for study."

Thank you for the information, however is the King James Bible (and I am not sure which version you refer to) not the best one for all of Christendom or just for ________ heathens like me (please fill in the blank with the appropriate pejorative)? In addition, if matters of faith are still all black and white, how about the red text for words of Jesus in the NIV?

No need for a quick quickly set me straight again, I would like to make another quick post and then be off to worship of the Paschal Lamb, the Lamb of God.

Pax tecum, et cum spiritu tuo,

Islewood

No way am I going to get into a manuscript discussion here.

We have a KJV forum on CTZ. Freely read.

People who argue religion with unknown persons are simply admitting that they doubt religion themselves--at least most of the details. It is bad enough to listen to some dumb preachers, who don't even know what they are talking about, without listening to amateur philosophers. Also, using words that aren't in most peoples alphabet, copied from zealots, is also dumb. Whom are you talking to?
Mind your own salvation peacefully and quit bugging others---that is what causes stuff like we now have in Iraq--everyone thinks, but don't have proof, that they know the truth by faith.

Highgreen109. You don't like to hear people include religion in looking at issues? Then plug your ears or don't read the posts.

I have never saw you having a problem expressing your views on things. Or the sources of your views.

And comparing my views to what goes on in Iraq? Last history I read had Secular Humanistic societies and counties like China, the Old USSR and such topping the list on cruelty to fellow man.

And your beliefs are a religion and you do have your god. Read up on the definition of relgion and god.

I just love the way your kind want to say only your secular humanistic views can be voiced in society and politics.

Disagree with my views. But don't tell me I cannot voice them.

Saddam was a Baathist, meaning a secularist.

Dear Highgreen:

In matters of faith, a twist to this existential expression (not to decide is to decide) might well be, “To preach against preaching, is to.”

I would think that arguing religion with a known would be an even greater symptom of doubt. But you make a good point; if one is trying to convert another to what might better be their closeted mode of communion.

It could be contended that in the great scheme of things that is beyond human understanding all are amateur philosophers. As for minding St. One’s own salvation, maybe thinking in terms of redemption would be a better way to keep us from witnessing to another. There being a difference between salvation and redemption for some of us fallible believers.

And be assured, you did not bug me at all, even thought you put a bug in my ear. But, ‘tis better to have one in the ear than someplace else---a lower posterior and upward place of a bug can really bring about what we now have in Iraq and elsewhere.

I am now well into reading Cobra II. As Lewis Carroll would have it, “If you’re not sure where you are going, you are liable to end up someplace else.” Or as George W. Bush is having it, if with certainty, you do know where you are going, you will surely end up someplace else.

One who straddles the fence too long is bound to get a splinter.

And one who cloaks their beliefs as rejection of others beliefs are merely saying they don't like beliefs at all.

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