I’ve heard a lot in the news recently about all kinds of budget shortfalls. The most notable of these shortfalls is Social Security. To be sure, a large part of our deficits stem from out of control spending and the belief that we as a nation can borrow our way out of this mess.
But for this blog I intend to talk about Social Security and the effect that pushing abortion, contraception, and by extension the devaluing of the institution that gives new life back to society because of the participation in this institution of men and women who wish to commit themselves to each other. That institution is the natural law institution of marriage.
People are under the erroneous impression that they pay into the Social Security system for themselves, and liberals have done absolutely nothing to discourage this impression they have of Social Security. Nothing could be further from the truth. The SS system is set up so that members of the workforce pay into the system for the people going into retirement ahead of them. So we are paying for others’ retirement and others are paying for our own retirement under this system. Aside from the affront to liberty regarding our own monetary affairs that this system represents, there is only one way that this system could work out mathematically: the government must value human life and dignity above all else and it must value marriage as the life-giving institution that it is. If the government ceases to do this, which it has, you wind up with more people entering retirement than there are people in the workforce to support their SS checks.
Back in the early days of SS, it did work out mathematically. People entering into retirement had at least a good 3 or 4 people paying into the SS system for them. This was because back then people never would’ve thought to kill their own child at any otherwise viable stage of human development or to glorify the devaluing of the sexual act as a mere tool to be used only for the satisfaction of base and carnal desires through the pushing of contraceptive use. But then people began to push for these things in the name of so-called “choice and freedom.” We bear stark witness today to the horrible and rotten fruits of this terrible push for the “right” to kill your own child and the “right” to devalue our greatest and most powerful gift, the gift that allows us to give to society in the form of new life.
Because of these things, the devaluing of human life as a blight upon “Mother Earth” rather than the gift to the world human life is, and of the sexual act that leads to new life, our population is aging. Whereas in the early days there were fewer people retiring than were people in the workforce, today there are more people retiring than there are people in the workforce to support them through SS. The fruits of this secular humanistic approach that the liberals are so fond of has wrought terrible fruits indeed, not only politically and socially but now economically. The system is collapsing not just because of out-of-control government spending, but by the simple mathematical fact that there are fewer people in the workforce than there are people retiring. The foundation of support for the elderly through social security, workers, is collapsing as a result of the push for those immoral things.
So because of the glorification by the left of the immorality of lifestyles that dissociate the unitive act from the procreative act and of lifestyles that are by nature closed to the gift of new life (seeking a moral equivalency between the homosexual lifestyle and the special and unique life-giving love that can only exist between a man and a woman), we witness today the severe economic repercussions of such glorification. All of these have led to a vacuum that people wrongly look to unconstitutional expansion of government to fill, when the proper solution is to restore life and liberty and the natural law that gave us these things to their rightful place in our Republic.
As for the homosexual lifestyle, I would like to add that liberals will, and have, lied about the nature of this lifestyle in order to make people who live with this unnatural lifestyle feel good about their sinful behavior by calling it love. That is patently incorrect, for the love that can only exist between a man and a woman naturally is our greatest act of charity as human beings. In this act man and woman give themselves totally to each other, and through their selfless act of commitment to each other give back to society in the form of the most wondrous gift of new human life. The homosexual lifestyle is rightfully known as unnatural and carnal precisely because by its very nature the homosexual lifestyle dissociates the unitive act from the procreative act of our sexual gifts by being intrinsically closed to this gift of new human life.
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You bring up a good conclusion and good tyings between our societal problems and the devalueing of life. That is something…well of our enemies. Our enemies strap bombds to their chests and the chests of innocents to create terror. AND we do have a losing of interest of people to enter the work force, and take the consequences of their actions away, all sense of responsibility.
I agree that the sex between a man and a woman is unique in that it produces life, Of course that’s only when they’re able to conceive, which is only during a limited time each month and a limited time during a life-time and some people are not “healthy” enough to have children. Would you accept artificial conception as an alternative? Would you say that impotent men and women should not have sex? Would you say that the only purpose for having sex should be that of creating life as was intended? Or do you think people should be able to have sex for the fun of it?
The love between a man and a woman is not an ethereal entity, it is a chemical response in the brain. Chemically, a crush has its on specific signature, just like the chemistry of the brain changes into a similar but different potpurri of chemistry after a few years of being together with a person. Like for couples that have been married 10 years, they still feel love when they see each other, but its a different kind of love that in popular terms are sometimes called things like “deeper”, although applying words to feelings is always problematic.
The same differences can be seen in the parent’s love of a child or vice versa and the love between friends, the admiration of an idol, and it goes for all kinds of feelings, including hate. The love between two gay people follow the same chemical characteristics as the ‘crush to “deeper love’ of a heterosexual couple. They can’t produce offspring, but they want to have sex with each other. (regardless of whether the chemical response is a result of genetics or environment. If the answer to the question if you think people should be allowed to have sex for the sake of fun is yes, then the arguments about what is natural are irrelevant because by this definition of “natural sex” only reproductive sex is natural as having fun through sex is not the intention of our reproductive organs. E.g. masturbation is not the natural purpose of our genitalia.
If you think it’s ok to have sex for fun, i.e. unnaturally, and you think lovers should have this right, then your only reason for being opposed to gay sex must be morals. I’m an atheist, so I don’t accept the fairy tale morals of any religions. Instead I base my morals on reason, like “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you”. It’s part of Christianity, but it’s also reasonable. And “As long as you’re not hurting anyone else, do whatever you like”.
I don’t believe in God, instead I believe that the meaning of life is life itself and thus reproduction is a necessity, but while we’re here I see no reason not to have fun with life. And a lot of people like to have sex so why not let everyone have sex with anyone they want (for fun, not for reproduction), as long as it’s consensual?
You got any reasons, besides what you with your limited mind assume is the true will of God, not to accept gay sex?
we have the freedom to have sex for fun certainly…..but the question is should we?whether or not you wish to devalue our greatest and most powerful gift is in the end your choice….but to use that gift in any way other than that which it is intended for…which is for the hope of procreation….goes against the very natural order which can be readily perceived by us as it is we who are fully cognizant of this natural order….this natural order is a constant which contains the moral precepts by which a fair and just system of laws can be formed…and no one has the right to redefine a constant to suit lifestyles that are intrinsically known to be unnatural
if romantic love was just a chemical reaction then there would be no need for marriage….but because there is….then it means that that kind of love is more than the mutual desire for sexual gratification…..it means that that kind of love must be designed to be one of our greatest acts of charity as human beings….to unite not just in body but in soul with our sexually complementary counter parts…….have you ever tried to fit together 2 non-complementary pieces of a puzzle? or tried to redefine a constant?…..doesn’t work does it…well gay “marriage” would be like trying to fit together 2 non-complementary pieces of a puzzle
what you do in private is ultimately your own business….it becomes society’s when you ask for legal recognition…and make no mistake….what you are asking for society cannot legally give….society cannot legally recognize a sexual lifestyle that abuses our greatest gift and devalues it as a mere tool for sexual gratification…..that is what the sexual act really is….an expression of that naturally life-giving love that can only exist between a man and a woman who have given themselves to each other in marriage…it makes this greatest of our gifts both unitive and procreative….to dissociate one from the other is to gravely devalue this gift
as to impotency…..if one is incapable of consummating a marriage then that person should not get married…simple as that….for that is the goal of man and woman when they get married….is to perform the marital act and create sense perceptible signs of their life-giving love in the form of children
as for artificial conception methods….that too is gravely wrong as it dissociates the unitive act from the procreative act of our sexual gifts and in some cases even involves a third party (e.g., proxy father) in what is meant to be a sacred act only between husband and wife….however if husband and wife can perform the conjugal marital act…then they can do so…any fertility problems can be dealt with over time as our medical knowledge advances
t is obvious that we as humans are endowed with gifts beyond the merely physical….because if our emotions were purely the result of chemical reactions as you contend….then how is it we are able to control them…..if they were just chemical reactions those cannot be controlled….because once you initiate a chemical reaction….you cannot stop it….that’s what I learned in Chemistry classes anyway…so the fact that we are able to exercise control over ourselves points out to us that our emotions cannot be purely physical
we are imperfect….so it is obvious that every society must have fair and just constraints imposed in the form of fair and just moral precepts in order for there to be true liberty….without necessary moral constraints a society degenerates from liberty to license…and that is what you are looking for…license
it all boils down to this….our laws are given by the light of natural the natural order…not by the imperfect and transient whims of man……as such they allow us all the freedom we can ever want provided we commit no crimes and respect that there are institutions that are not man-made that are governed by natural law…any institution that is governed by natural law logically speaking cannot recognize that which is not of nature……but if you’re dead set on violating it….that’s your business….just don’t make it society’s business
finally, you reject the natural law which serves as our guide for wisely and ethically using our gift of reason…..just who’s the one with a limited mind here? if you want license rather than liberty…go to the many and varied Third World countries that have embraced authoritarianism in some way, shape, or form….I’m sure they’d be happy to take you….such regimes reject the notion that true liberty means that there must be necessary moral constraints in favor of making laws based upon man’s own transient whims
in the end yo have the right to believe and live as you will….but you will always encounter resistance when you try to redefine the constant known as natural law…the constant which provides the self-evident truths by which our founding fathers formed this nation
You say you learned in school that chemical reactions can’t be stopped and “the fact that we are able to exercise control over ourselves points out to us that our emotions cannot be purely physical”. But What your chemistry teacher should have told you is that chemical reaction can indeed be stopped by other chemical reactions. In the brain there are several processes going on at once and it is the sum of their interaction that produces our behaviour. As an example, you can be extremely hungry and start devouring a hamburger with great passion as both the sight and taste of the hamburger entices you, even making you salivate like a Pavlovian dog, when suddenly you see a picture of a cow and remember a documentary about slaughterhouses you watched a year ago and suddenly you’re disgusted by the hamburger and unable to finish it. It’s simply that different inputs to your perception produces different trains of thought leading to different mental states and physical outputs. The brain is entirely made up of chemical compounds so a mental state is a state of chemical proportion geographically distributed in the brain. Each new input alters the chemistry and thus the path a new input takes can lead to a new output. This is what we call learning. Let’s say there is a soul that can metaphysically influence the chemistry of the brain and thus alter a physical output. If you accept that idea, then you have to explain how that influence occurs. To me, it seems redundant to invent a metaphysical (magical) explanation when the chemical explanation can account for all the whims as well as the “expected” behaviour of the body. Sexual desire and romantic love are both purely chemical, there is no magical component to it. There is no soul-bonding. That is a redundant metaphor produced by what can be called folk psychology. If you understood neurology you would see that there is a sufficient cause and reaction explanation for everything we do in life and maybe you would say to yourself: maybe there is no need to explain behaviour with a magical soul, maybe there doesn’t have to be a soul at all, maybe we don’t have a free will, maybe there is no magic at all, maybe there is no God.
“It is obvious that we as humans are endowed with gifts beyond the merely physical” No, it’s not a priori, intuitive or self-evident. It is only a delusion of the discrepancy between phenomenology and matter that has produced these cultural metaphors. Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”. Nietzsche said that the word, or concept, “think”, like all verbs, presupposes a subject, an “I”. Just like when someone refers to the universe as “creation” it is a priori stated there must be a creator, but that’s just a circular definition. So, you’re forced to discredit Descartes here. He can’t go beyond saying “there is thinking, therefore there is being.” And even that can be deconstructed because it’s not self-evident either. Does there have to be anything for there to be thinking? The definition of thinking presupposes being, so to say that thinking proves being is another circular definition. Thinking is instead just another historico-cultural metaphor for a material process, just like all words. I’m sure Derrida would have agreed with me on this.
You say that “natural order is a constant which contains the moral precepts”. I don’t know what you mean by natural order. It seems to be another invention with no basis in reality. If natural order was constant, then new species would not evolve, species would never die, the proportion of predator-prey would be constant, new niches would not be utilized, children would be identical to their parents, there would be no evolution, there would be no mutation, niches would never be abandoned, beings would neither develop, age nor die, beings would never be infertile, never be anything other than heterosexual, never starve, never fail to reproduce. And how are the moral precepts contained in this variable nature possibly self-evident? And please explain what in the natural order leads to what moral precepts.
“to unite not just in body but in soul with our sexually complementary counter parts…to dissociate one from the other is to gravely devalue this gift” I do devalue God’s gift of both love and the soul because I don’t believe in God. I accept reality without magic and therefore I disassociate your idea of soul-love from human relationships. I see only chemical love, because I’m not delusional. And so my moral attitude towards both non-physical ánd physical expressions of emotions is that as long as you’re not hurting anyone, do what you want. You should ask yourself if you can ever avoid disassociating sexual desire from the desire to procreate. Do you honestly think while your penis is going in and out “this will make a baby, oh you’re so hot, I can’t stop thinking of the baby we’re producing, the DNA of our bodies will unite through this act, oh you’re so hot, gonna be a great mom, I love our future family.” I doubt it. At the moment of orgasm nobody has any other thoughts left in their brain than what is produces by the nerves in the penis. People can’t even keep their eyes open when they come because the chemical reaction caused by the perception of the penis is overwhelming. You should try keeping your eyes open during orgasm, I assure you, it can’t be done. So, when having disconnected your wishful fairy tale of soul-mates from the sexual experience as a physical means of entertainment I see no reason not to accept all kinds of sex, as long as it is consensual.
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then it’s you who does not understand chemistry…..once you initiate a reaction…a product is formed….nothing can stop that process….just because some reactions are reversible does not change that fact… all that happens when a reaction is reversed is that the products and reactants change places….and you may have to add another chemical substance in order to initiate the reversal….so you’re still initiating a reaction that will inevitable form a product…..and when you stop a reaction by adding other chemicals…all you’re doing is preventing the intended end-product from being formed by forming a different end product…all reactions form products
you call me delusional……implying that I’m ignoring some very stark realities regarding our nature as human beings….it is you who is in fact delusional….the ability to form unique and exclusive bonds that transcend the physical is our greatest gift as human beings…..if as you say our emotional responses are purely the result of bio-chemical reactions….then tell me….why does it hurt so much when a man walks out on his wife or when a woman walks out on her husband? or how about when a couple’s child is brutally murdered? or even when a mother takes the life of her own child in what should be the safest place for that child? or when a man turns to p0rnography rather than showing his wife the love and attention she needs? he is after all merely indulging a “natural” biochemical reaction
as usual you have it backwards….chemical reactions to not produce emotional responses….it is our emotional responses that can form chemical reactions inside our bodies…..so these biochemical reactions you value so highly are actually in response to emotions….like the direct cause and effect of a rise in blood pressure when someone is angry so do the emotional bonds we are capable of forming produce certain biochemical reactions
and another fact that will never change is that the sexual act is the best way man and woman have of expressing the life-giving love they can have for each other….the calling to this life of matrimony is second only to a call to religious life (which in many ways is much like a marriage)
however as you have admitted…you do not know true life-giving love….therefore you reject truth….there is an inexorable link between truth and love…..and to dissociate one from the other does both a grave disservice
you also contend that all who are bound by certain moral codes of conduct are delusional……does that mean then that our founding fathers were delusional? with their declaration of independence and the constitution of the USA they formed an entire nation where people are free to live as they see fit as long as they abide by the rule of law….and this law is based on an entire set of moral precepts that tell us objectively what is right and what is wrong…and how could you not know the natural order that exhorts humans not to kill their own young…and that tells us that the sexual act…in addition to being mutually pleasurable for both husband and wife….is for procreation? or the fact that we naturally know that it is wrong to kill another human being in cold blood…..or that it is wrong to take what does not belong to you?
but until you know what true life-giving love is…you will always be the one who is delusional….as until you know love…you will never know truth
this discourse is at an end…..because you refuse to see what is to the majority of human society plain as day
I don’t refuse to see what the majority think is plain as day. Instead I question it and I know that those who have questioned the majority’s viewpoint have found that what seems obvious is not at all necessarily true. Maybe you should learn to be a bit more inquisitive, open-minded and read a bit more widely than the Catholic propaganda.
Btw, the feeling after the loss of a child is a chemical reaction. You say that emotions give rise to chemistry, but then you’ve misunderstood metaphysics because emotions are chemistry, just like mental states are chemical states, they are not the cause of them. Btw, I should say electrochemical, but it is the ions that create the current so I felt it was redundant.
Also, I’m Swedish, so I don’t really care what you and your founding fathers thought was moral or not. And as I atheist I don’t accept that God is love or any of your metaphysical metaphors as immanent.
If you consider this conversation to be at an end, I have one last recommendation for you, although hitherto you’ve ignore every piece of knowledge I’ve offered you, be it my own thoughts or those of historical philosophers and scholars. Read Nagarjuna, he was a 2nd AD Buddhist writer. That should broaden your mind sufficiently for you to get interested in the wisdom of non-Americans and the teachings Constantine deemed suitable at the Council of Nicea. Maybe the God delusion would be a good book for you as well, although I havn’t read it so I can’t really recommend it.
you offered me knowledge so full of errors it’s not funny
according to your faulty notions of metaphysics….effects precedes cause….you say emotions are chemistry….that is so laughably ignorant……none of the end products in my chem lab experiments ever formed an emotional response….i.e., I’ve never had an angry end-product…so it is clear that chemical reactions of any kind do not dictate our emotional responses….but the other way around…..high blood pressure does not cause anger….anger causes high blood pressure
so is it equally clear that the chemical reactions associated with love are the effect and love the cause….it is impossible to devise a chemical reaction of any kind that produces a product that displays emotion….that’s called reality ladies and gents….a reality that you are hellbent on ignoring because you are so hellbent…like the rest of Europe it seems like…on playing God that you will say or do anything in order to justify it….tell me….what’s the state of the natural family like in Europe now….I can take a wild guess…not good….I’ll make an educated guess and say that abortion, the divorce rate..and the rate of usage of man-made contraceptives has increased sharply….what you call freedom I call the sad state of affairs known as license….because freedom is not freedom FROM something (except tyranny)…it is the freedom FOR something……the moral precepts which objectively define right from wrong that our founding fathers used to create our system of laws gave is freedom from tyranny….not freedom from necessary and moral constraints…because those constraints provide the freedom not to live as we want to live…but to live as we ought to live…by bettering ourselves……your faulty notions…abided by the many governments of Europe….that reject these constraints have led to a society that is stagnant…they have in fact led to societies whose population is slowly but surely declining due to extremely low……birth rates….that is what devaluing life and the sexual act that is naturally ordered towards creation of life gets you….and what I fear is that our nation is going down the same misbegotten path….doing as you have done…rejecting the moral precepts which must necessarily constrain us as we are imperfect beings
oh…..and that feeling of loss? the chemical reactions are produced by the feeling of loss…were it not for that feeling the chemical reactions would not be occurring..the chemical reaction does not cause the feeling of loss….how many times must I drive that through your thick skull?
“and other sources of knowledge than the teachings…” I meant. Btw, for some lighthearted entertainment, maybe just watching a few episodes of QI (Quite Interesting, host is Stephen Fry) is enough to open your eyes to the possibility that many things taken for granted are delusions.
Nice Blog Joe…. but we have been talking about this and I am just not convinced of this correlation between Social Security and the devaluing of life thing and the fact that maybe more people are living in a gay immoral lifestyle. I mean I’m with you in that the institution of marriage (between and man and woman) is threatened more now than ever before. But that doesn’t mean that someone who may have consensual sex outside of marriage and have a child doesn’t mean that child can’t grow up to become a contributing member of society. They very well can! So I just don’t know if there is a direct correlation or not…it is intriguing though 🙂
I see nothing holy about life, marriage or reproduction. And I see nothing bad in divorces, and I don’t believe you can give any arguments why your assumed “natural family” is natural. Btw, I’m an anti-statist and anti-capitalist so your notion of freedom is probably radically different from mine. I don’t believe in an objective moral code because there is no God. Instead we must make up the morals ourselves, but you refuse to accept that God does not exist like a little child afraid of dying and not going to heaven.
And that old “playing God”, just like Jonathan Swift criticized Newton and the Royal Society of is only a valid point if you believe in God. If there is no God, then those who claim to speak the gospel are the ones taking upon themselves to judge, because since God does not exist, they’re lying when they’re saying it’s the word of God and not something they made up themselves and are trying to force other people into believing.
“high blood pressure does not cause anger….anger causes high blood pressure” This is what is called a psychosomatic disease, i.e. one of those occasions where the state of mind affects the body as opposed to the normal way where the brain creates the state of mind. I don’t know which rock you’ve been living under but this is not a disputed fact. Emotions come after chemistry, not before.
You can see it like in the case of a tennis player. When the opponent hits the ball you have milliseconds to determine the direction and speed of the ball and react accordingly. When tested it is found that the body response is so fast that the signal only has time to move from the visual center to the motor center and doesn’t enter consciousness until afterwards. I.e. you are not aware of anything you’re doing until after you have done it. Free will is a delusion, consciousness is an after-construction, which is also the source of the delusion of the existence of time, which although scientifically useful as a definition of motion does not exists as a Ding an sich. Just like when you put your hand on a hot plate, your hand withdraws before you feel the heat. Try it if you don’t believe me.
nature abhors a vacuum my friend…..by rejecting God you set yourself up as God…Master of Life and Death….definer of moral codes….and all these other things reserved to God
and no it’s NOT called a psychosomatic disease….it’s called the body’s response to an emotion….anger…so you basically just called one of humanity’s popular emotions a disease….more laughable ignorance
what is actually the undisputed fact here is that all chemical reactions are initiated by an outside force….in the lab that outside force was me…it was me who for example combined hydrochloric acid with sodium hydroxide to produce salt and water…therefore in our bodies certain biochemical changes that are related to emotions are the result of emotions…not the cause…..so in other words you STILL have cause and effect backwards……and also trying to compare emotions with reflex actions is not a valid comparison….that’s like trying to compare apples and oranges
and this time I have backup:
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/The_Chemistry_Of_Emotions.html – take a long hard look at the first and foremost point…a point made by Dr. Candace Pert, whose doctorate is in physiology and biophysics….if that ain’t enough credentials for ya….then I’d have to say that you are being deliberately obtuse
and see how long you’d last with an employer if “I believe time doesn’t exist…..that it’s just a figment of our imaginations” was your excuse for being 3 hours late for work….because if the existence of time is a delusion, as you say…then there would be no need for us to use such scientifically observable measurements as 1 day = 24 hours = the time it takes for the earth to make one complete rotation around its central axis….to reckon the passage of time
using the fact that our bodies are capable of reflexive actions to try to justify the fallacy that time is a delusion and it’s only needed to gauge the motion of an object is the height of ignorance
and I’ve put my hands on plenty of hot plates by accident…..believe me….I felt plenty of heat in the split second it took for me to withdraw my hand from the hot plate….the only time I wouldn’t is if the plate wasn’t hot…that’s because we have these things called nerves…..which only take a split second to transmit sensory input to our brains…so basically one withdraws his hand from an energized hot plate precisely because in that split second he received an “ow! WTF are you doing you idiot?!?!?! this thing is freakin’ HOT!” message transmitted to his brain from his nervous system…of course this only applies to things that can get really hot….like hot plates…so how quickly you withdraw your hand also depends on how hot the hot plate is
once when I was around maybe 6 – 8 years old I climbed up onto the stove not knowing there was a burner on to get something….as little kids do….little kids will climb anything if you give them a chance…..my hand went on that burner….I withdrew it in a split second…..but I still felt plenty of heat believe me…..got blisters on the tips of all my fingers in that hand in addition to enough pain to make me cry like the demons of Hell were after me…so yeah I’d say your theory that one can withdraw his hand before feeling any heat from a hot object lacks merit….though that reflex action in most cases does save the affected limb from becoming more damaged….though another thing that affects how quickly one withdraws his hand is a person’s tolerance for pain….some have very high tolerance for pain…others do not
and I have to now reiterate my point from before regarding the rejection of an objectively defined moral code….history gives us examples of entire societies have done that…..we see how well that worked….because in return…these societies got people like Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Nikita Kruschev (aka Mr. “We will bury you”), Che Guevera, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Benito Mussolini, Arcturo dos Santos (early 1900’s Portugal…declared the Church to be an enemy of the State)….the list goes on and on….do what you wanna do in the end…that is your right….just don’t come cryin’ to me when life takes a sour turn
Ok, just psychosomatic then, I don’t know why I wrote disease.
I don’t know if you read that entire article but it says:
“These [the neural pathways containing the chemicals in their synapses] become programmings that limit our emotions, reactions and behavior.” I.e. the brain produces the emotions, not the other way around. Emotion is a metaphor for neurochemical brain states created by input and affecting output.
“The brain takes the inputs from the eyes (40 times a second) and reconstructs what we “see” from what it already has experienced felt and believes.” I.e. it’s an after-construction.
And I don’t know why you quoted that article in particular since points 7-10 is well-known pseudoscience, discrediting your chosen author.
And I’m sorry if your perfect memory from the infallible age of 8 does not weigh as heavy as scientific research to me, but when you touch a hot plate the signal is “passed on to other nerve cells called motor neurons that cause muscles to contract. In this way we can react to pain even before we have realised what kind of pain it is. One example of this is touching a hot plate and retracting the
hand even before consciously realising that it is hot.”
quoted from http://www.mepha.com/Documents/Patient%20Information%20Service/Pain_e_72dpi.pdf
And I even found a quote for the tennis analogy I used before:
“The experiments most often cited in this regard are those of Libet (2004), who showed that during ‘voluntary’ hand movements, a readiness potential could be measured some 300 milliseconds (ms) before the subjects claimed to be consciously ‘aware’ of their decision to move the hand. The brain had already ‘made the decision’ and the person’s action merely followed. Such experiments reflect the observation that skilled tennis players or batsmen adjust to incoming balls and play their strokes too rapidly for ‘conscious’ decision-making to occur.”
taken from the American National Center for Biotechnology Information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1371044/
And, of course, while time is a useful metaphor for motion (like you said, the revolution of the Earth around the sun, or an electron around a nucleus) and I use it when going to work, it’s still just a metaphysical description; a mechanism of the small brain to be able to have a simplified, and erroneous, understanding of the huge universe. But indeed, it is very practical to accept the delusion of time as real.
And saying that history shows there have been bad people is not exactly an argument for the existence of God. But I’ll counter it nonetheless. Firstly by saying that religion has killed a lot of people. Secondly by saying that since God does not exist, there is no difference between “making up your own
moral code” and “making up your own moral code and saying God did it”. This is what all religions do, which is why 1 religion can create so many different denominations. I mean, Catholics and Sunnis both adhere to the Abrahamic faith, yet I doubt that you agree with them that women are inferior to men, as the bible states. Jesus is to men what a man is to his wife. Pfff. We’re all just monkeys, just look at your teeth in the mirror.
now you’re cookin’ with gas…cuz before you were sayin’ that chemical reactions cause our emotions….they don’t….now you got it right….our brains do produce our emotions in response to certain stimuli……those emotions then cause a release of chemicals….glad that we’re finally on the same page with something….but all that statement means is that we can control how we respond to these emotions….most likely with the aid of these chemicals….but the million dollar question that remains is why? why do our brains produce these emotions in response to certain stimuli in the first place? that is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of human existence
I’ll even let the time thing slide…..though I still believe that we need a reason for taking the trouble to measure the passage of time
and I’ll counter your “well members of religions commit crime too” with this “the abuse of a good does not diminish the good of a good…so while for example many people have done very horrible things in the name of the Catholic faith…..that in no way diminshes the good of the Catholic faith…..and indeed the Catholic Church does great things in the world…..not the least of which is having a non-profit organization with quite possibly the largest national and international presence of all the non-profits….just because people people try to devalue the natural moral code by doing bad things in its name…..it doesn’t diminish the good of the natural moral code……but as history has shown us…..people like Hitler who led societies that rejected it outright committed atrocities that boggled the mind….millions if not billions of Jews murdered…..quite the atrocity…..that kinda makes what some people may have done in the name of religion kinda seem like a picnic….not that I condone burning people at the stake…though I think the Salem witch trials were conducted by non-Catholic demoniations…..but I could be wrong
so that makes the difference not between making up your own moral code and making up your moral code and essentially “blaming it on God”…..the difference is between those who think they have the right to define and re-define moral codes as their whims change and those who truly live by an objectively defined natural moral code……those people (myself included) are in turn different from those who commit crimes then when they are caught out…..try to hide behind those objective moral codes…….yeah……that doesn’t work
“the abuse of a good does not diminish the good of a good”. This applies to atheism as well. Just because China is atheistic (not the people, but the state) doesn’t mean all atheists like the idea of a single party “democracy”. I know I don’t.
Billions of jews were not murdered. There were 12 million jews in the world before Hitler came to power and 6 million after the war. I think they’re back to like 12 million today. There were 2 billion humans on earth in 1900 and there are 6.8 billion great apes on earth today, of which 6,800,000,000 are humans and 650,000 are gorillas, chimps and orangutans (99.999% of great apes are today humans). So “billions” of jews, no.
“we can control how we respond to these emotions”. No, the input changes the brain so that next time we experience something the changed brain gives a different output to a similar input. As an example, you have a bad experience with a previously beloved clown, animal or liquor, next time you see the same thing, your response goes a different path and produces a negative feeling. In retrospect we call this “personality” or “learning” or some other metaphor for the actual neurochemistry. So there’s no element of a magical control organ intervening the process, the soul is just an after-construction trying to put words on what just happened.
Personally I see it like this. Every sensory experience, a black hat, a smell of roses, a sexy lady, a scary knife, are temporary. Each experience in a lifetime is created in the moment and is gone from the experience in the next moment, stored away in the memory. So “consciousness” is a process of constant creation, constant renewal. However, our awareness has access to memory because new experiences travel down the paths of the brain and the paths of the brain are the memories, so when we experience new things (every second of our life is a unique experience) we relate them to the previous experiences which we have stripped down to make them fit inside our brain by removing most of the experience, only remembering vague or sparse parts of our life through the means of categorization, generalization, simplification. By constantly looking backwards we experience a continuity. The mind is not itself constant, it’s renewed every moment, but the feeling is that we are a constant and this is why we believe in souls. In actuality, we experience everything only in the present, the past is an after-construction and the future is a continuation of the line drawn backwards, through generalization an assumption of how the future will pan out along the lines of what has happened looking backwards in time. Like, if you just saw a ball rolling downhill 50 meters on a 100 meters long slope, you’re gonna assume, given no hinders, that it’s gonna roll 50 more meters.
So, the idea of a constant, eternal essence or soul is a product of the interprocessing of generalized memories and novel sensory experiences. I mean, are truly aware of who you are all the time? Do you see your face and body every second of the day as it talks and walks? I’m lucky if for brief moments I become aware not only of the text I’m writing and the thoughts they’re representing but also of the claws typing away on the keyboard, even though they’re RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME ALL THE TIME 🙂
Try to imagine the number of minutes, in a day, you are unaware of having hair on your head. But that’s the thing about the differences between our after-construction of how we perceive ourselves and how we actually experience things in the moment, it’s a simplification, a delusion.
Free will does not exist, free will presupposes a magical supermaterial control mechanism connecting a metaphysical magical reality to the actual reality. The idea of choice is an after-construction describing why the body just did what it did. In actuality, you’re just a momentary passenger and all you can do is enjoy the ride.
Now, I’m a relativist, subjectivist, deconstructivist, post-structuralist or whatever so I have a real hard time with your “natural order” and “objective moral code”. These concepts are nonsense concepts to my ears so please explain what you mean by them and why they necessarily exist and try to avoid giving examples of the effects of their being like you’ve been prone to doing thus far and instead focus on giving examples of the causes of (i.e. arguments for) their being.
here’s the way I look at it:
our physical form is made up of the natural substances of the earth…..the Scriptures do say in the Book of Genesis that God formed man out of the dust of the earth after all…..and this leads me to the following thought process:
1. Our eyes, as you said, process what we see and send it to our brains.
2. We sometimes react emotionally to these visual inputs.
3. This reaction tells the brain to release the chemicals related to that emotion.
4. That release causes certain biochemical effects on our physical form.
This tells me that our emotional responses to certain visual inputs have observable effects on our physical form. That I do not dispute. What these observations cannot answer though is why do we have the emotional response to certain visual inputs in the first place and how is it then that we are able to control our responses? Because we are able to control our responses. If we weren’t then road rage incidents, for example, would be happening all the time.
Because we as humans are unique. All the other creatures of the world are driven by pure instinct alone. We, however, are gifted with rational minds. We are the only creatures in the world with this gift. Some of us have abused this gift. That much is obvious. What that tells me is that we as humans are not perfect. Since we are not perfect, we cannot, under our own power, objectively define right and wrong. This is because our whims are transient because of our imperfection. So we must necessarily look for a source outside of ourselves that defines right and wrong objectively so that we have the freedom to live not as we want to live, but as we ought to live, as people who constantly strive to better themselves. This concept though is something that cannot be learned from any textbook. This concept arises from the fact that a vast majority of humans believe that we have a dignity and worth that surpasses the transient things of a now flawed and imperfect world. That is when understanding the natural objective moral code is fully realized. SO you first have to realize your own dignity and worth as a human being and that the dignity and worth of every other human being is equal to your own. And that this dignity and worth far surpasses that of any other creature of this world. the realization of this dignity and worth of the human race is what enjoins good leaders of libertarian societies like the United States everywhere to rule and guide wisely and ethically by using the objectively defined moral precepts in the natural law that come from the realization of this dignity and worth.
So until you see our beauty, richness, and potential as beings of strong dignity and worth, then what I say will never make sense to you. For now let us just agree to disagree.
“before you were sayin’ that chemical reactions cause our emotions….they don’t….now you got it right….our brains do produce our emotions in response to certain stimuli……those emotions then cause a release of chemicals…”
Let me clarify. Brain = chemistry. The electrochemical signal rushing from the nerves in the arm to the brain open and close ion channels through chemical reactions and the opening releases chemicals from the synapses that in turn react with the next neuron, chemically causing it to release new chemicals, and so it goes on. It’s chemistry all the way from the start of input to the finish of the output as well as the storage in memory. In the case of vision, when a photon goes into the eye it hits a molecule in the retina and the reaction between the photon and the molecule in the tap causes isomerization and the mechanical shift opens a gate for the chemicals to rush through and cause a neurochemical reaction all the way to the visual centre at the back of your brain.
One more thing 🙂
There is no interaction between emotions and chemistry, because it’s all chemistry, all the way. Emotions are merely a simplified metaphor for describing the chemistry. All metaphysical concepts are delusional metaphors for a process that is too complex to be practically understood, which is why we’ve invented the concepts of soul, will, thought, God et cetera. You see what I’m trying to say?
“Because we as humans are unique. All the other creatures of the world are driven by pure instinct alone.”
No, we’re not unique in principle. We are driven by exactly the same things that all animals are. There is no difference in principle between a bacteria and a human cell. Humans are the children of monkeys, so in principle we are the same even though there are differences. We all eat, raise our kids, breast-feed them, shit, piss, put our genitals into each other until we go “mmm” and create a new one that’s almost identical. This is what a human does. The higher brain capacity is a result of the evolutionary benefit of improved social culture that make these things easier to accomplish by offering medical care, food stores, online dating et cetera.
“What these observations cannot answer though is why do we have the emotional response to certain visual inputs in the first place and how is it then that we are able to control our responses? Because we are able to control our responses. If we weren’t then road rage incidents, for example, would be happening all the time.”
Road rage incidents happen all the time. Just because we can “change our minds” doesn’t mean we’re doing something other (other = something magical) than chemistry. We all react differently to different situations because we all have different brains and experiences that have formed different neural pathways for similar inputs. When someone thinks about killing someone else, just about to pull the trigger because of an emotion like jealousy (eye sees wife in bed with another man, signal goes through the neural path way where it directs the body to the proper response according to that person’s brain setup, meaning, in this case, that the hand picks up a gun. Then another emotion, compassion, puts the gun down. Because the vision of the man fires neurons in a path that contains the knowledge of the very same brain that life is precious and tells the hand to relax. Maybe this experience causes chain-reactions, like the conflicting emotions of the situation, or maybe the insight that the marriage is over, produces a tear to flow from the tear-duct of the eye. Again, you miss the point that emotions are just metaphors for a process that can be explained purely through cause and effect without any magical intervention.
“We, however, are gifted with rational minds.” No, we’re just smarter than the other animals. We’re not a different kind of entity with a magical soul just because we’re slightly wittier, more knowledgeable and go on speed-dates.
“we must necessarily look for a source outside of ourselves” No. Why do always ignore the facts in front of you in favour of undefinable wishful thinking? This statement shows how religious belief is invented. Just because the majority of the world believes in God doesn’t make it true. There’s no reason why we should look for an explanation for something that’s already been explained through chemistry. If you don’t feel the explanation is satisfactory I would have thought you’d try to learn more about neurochemistry rather than dismissing the whole encyclopedia of knowledge within that field and automatically assume that it does not contain the answer and instead turn to an idea you have no proof of.
If my “chemical explanation” is not satisfactory, let me go on, I have tonnes of knowledge to offer and lots of examples to illustrate it with, if you hadn’t just given up and gone “no, I don’t understand it, it must be magic”.
(Magic = Metaphysical metaphors.)
“So until you see our beauty, richness, and potential as beings of strong dignity and worth”. These five adjectives are all metaphors. For once, try to base your assumptions on something real. I see beauty and potential in humans, as well as in all animals and in rocks and the sun. I see our potential to rid ourselves of delusion like God and build a society based on knowledge. I’m not so sure about dignity… Who is the objective judge as to that epithet when there is no God? And worth. No, there has to be an objective definer of worth for there to truly be worth and you have yet to explain why an objective moral code exists and you’ve also neglected to answer my question about what “natural order” is. But I’m fairly sure that by now you’ve stopped reading anything I write because you’ve ignored every single question or appeal I’ve made to you to clarify and you’ve resorted to just copying and re-pasting the same sentences you’ve written four times already. To no avail I must say, because I can still read the old posts, I don’t need them copied. Maybe you should read my posts over once more and maybe you’ll see what I’m trying to say at last. I feel like I’m talking to someone who has been told things like “there’s a natural order” without being given a reason for it and when confronted, unwilling to accept that there was no reason, unwilling to accept he had been duped; it was just a figure of speech handed down from generation to generation as a literal fact without anyone ever questioning it.
Why else would you be so infuriatingly stubborn about not giving a reason for this assumption?
*rolls eyes*…..and the truth falls upon deaf ears
the natural order is all around you….if you would actually open your eyes you’d see that the natural world is clearly structured and ordered according to a set of rules and laws that are not written down in any book are written upon our very essence as human beings…..the source of our capacity for reason
I enjoy exploring the world God created for us to live in. But like everything we do we need a compass….or we will surely get lost. Faith in God is the compass that provides direction in my use of the gift of reason. You say it’s chemistry that prevents one person in his anger from hauling off and beating the crap out of the other person……I say it’s because we are capable of making decisions by the objective moral code given to us through the natural order that serves to provide incentive for controlling ourselves.
it is you who is the deluded one…..you have been duped into blindness regarding our true dignity and worth as human beings……we’ve been going around in circles because it is you who is not willing to see that we as humans can accomplish great things if only good people quit trying to divorce the faith that guides our use of reason from reason
I’m done…I have better things to do with my time than argue with one who seeks to devalue humanity’s greatest gifts for his own personal gain
Ok, this will be my last post. Sorry if I’ve offended you. I only wanted a constructive debate.
You’re just gonna take everything at face value without questioning anything and actually trying to understand the world? Will you never give any actual reasons to back up your assumptions?
People make assumptions all the time. I can make stuff up too without bothering trying to prove it, but I’m of a different mind-set than you. I question everything. I don’t just assume there is a natural order just because I’ve heard it a million times. Instead I investigate the idea and in this case I found there was no natural order, it was just how it seemed. People do this all the time. The sun seems to orbit the earth, but in reality it’s the other way around. Just as an example of the many assumptions you’ve made without giving any explanation or reason or trying to dissect the statement: God formed humans out of dirt: http://tinyurl.com/38rv6hx
and this will be mine on the subject:
I understand the world quite well…..it’s you who needs a worldly education….an education you have demonstrated quite clearly that you aren’t ready to receive at this point in time…..I’ve given quite valid reasons….you just aren’t willing to listen…all the scientifically observable things we can observe regarding the natural world are sense perceptible signs of the structured order of our natural world
I question things too…I question what could possibly make 2 men or 2 women reject the natural sexual complementarity between man and woman and I question what could possibly lead one to believe that mankind needs no moral code in order to govern his own life and/or to govern the lives of others…..mankind is imperfect…..that much is obvious….at least to me if not to you….so we have 2 choices…either glorify our imperfection as you do by stating we need no objectively defined moral code…….or rise above it by abiding by a distinctly fair, just, and ordered moral code that objectively defines what is right and what is wrong that aids us in fairly and ethically using our gift of reason among other gifts
also a word to the wise…insulting people of faith by calling them delusional is no way to begin civilized discourse
for examples of this natural order….you feed and water a plant…it grows….it eventually dies…..that’s an example of the natural order
in chemistry one combines 2 or more reactants and studies how the product is formed and what the properties of the product are
in physics on studies the natural mechanisms which drive motion
and it is also natural for every species to want to propagate itself……ain’t gonna happen (in bi-gendered species anyway) unless a member of one gender of said species in question gets together with a member of the opposite sex
for humans what is natural is different because we are possessed of the gift of rational minds….the gift of knowing and learning these things….animals don’t know any better…we do…we have the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong….but because we are imperfect we sometimes reject this knowledge so that we can seek justification of elevating ourselves to the status of “source of knowledge”
I do however have to apologize….instead of remaining peaceful when you attacked people of faith I allowed my frustrations to show…..sorry about that…..there’s many things i can chalk it up to…..like for example my dad being nearly impossible to live with right now….when he’s sick he becomes meaner and more cantankerous than he already is
I shouldn’t’ve thrown the delusional thing back in your face….I should’ve remained peaceful after attacking me and othe rpeople of faith as delusional….but I didn’t and I’m sorry….what can I say…..I did say all of mankind is imperfect after all…with only 2 exceptions….so I’m just as imperfect as everyone else….you do have a great wealth of scientific knowledge…..that I will grant you….but the knowledge you do not have….and have demonstrated to me that you do not wish to have….is the knowledge of how human beings ought to live….science is all about learning and observing…something I am not against….faith…however…is needed because most faiths….with some exceptions…teach fair and just morals…..morals which aid us in rising above our imperfect nature….I firmly believe that both faith and science need to work together to form a balanced outlook
like I said since we are imperfect….we have a choice to make…wallow in our imperfection…or pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and live a life of laboring to rise above our imperfections….but if mankind is gonna rise above his imperfection…..he needs an objectively defined moral code
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