How to respond to "Secular Humanism"?

[wolpertinger]

Pax:

Read the references in my prior post. Kreeft pretty well shreds your position and explores virtually every argument and counter argument in his book Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

Your opening statement indicates you misunderstand my actual position. You are correct, however, that my standard of proof is high. For that matter, you may want to reflect on the intrinsic fallacy of resorting to apologetics as a means of inducing faith.

 

[Monarchy]

kjvail:

This is positivist nonsense, secularism is a profound *closing *of the mind - the inability or unwillingness to look beyond the natural world. It rejects 1500 years of scholarship by the finest minds in human history.

I will not continue a discussion beyond this reply, as it is off topic, but it is Theists whose minds are closed to anything that challanges their belief. Go here to see a discussion between an atheist and a theist. The atheist states that if the theist can provide a strong case for god, he will convert to the theist’s religion if , in exchange, the theist will renounce his faith if he fails to make a strong case. The theist, predictably, refuses outright.

 

[squirt]

Monarchy:

I will not continue a discussion beyond this reply, as it is off topic, but it is Theists whose minds are closed to anything that challanges their belief. Go here to see a discussion between an atheist and a theist. The atheist states that if the theist can provide a strong case for god, he will convert to the theist’s religion if , in exchange, the theist will renounce his faith if he fails to make a strong case. The theist, predictably, refuses outright.

How could any theist who believes that God’s existence is not dependent on his or her ability to articulate a strong enough case for a particular atheist to ‘buy into’ credibly commit to renouncing his or her faith for that particular reason?

I can see a theist agreeing to renounce his or her faith if he or she came to a point of not believing upon delving into the arguments, i.e., the case is not strong in his or her own view, but to renounce one’s faith because somebody else does not ‘buy into’ the argument does appear to be just slightly ludicrous. That would be lying to oneself and a bit hypocritical. How could you trust somebody who refuses to be honest with him or herself?

 

[Monarchy]

squirt:

How could any theist who believes that God’s existence is not dependent on his or her ability to articulate a strong enough case for a particular atheist to ‘buy into’ credibly commit to renouncing his or her faith for that particular reason?

I can see a theist agreeing to renounce his or her faith if he or she came to a point of not believing upon delving into the arguments, i.e., the case is not strong in his or her own view, but to renounce one’s faith because somebody else does not ‘buy into’ the argument does appear to be just slightly ludicrous. That would be lying to oneself and a bit hypocritical. How could you trust somebody who refuses to be honest with him or herself?

The person wrote to the site saying that he had the truth, and that the person should convert. The person asked him to a discussion where the theist would put their money where their mouth was:

Secondly, should you make a strong case for the existence of your god, I will convert to your faith. All I ask is that you be willing to renounce your faith should you fail to make a convincing case (in other words, should you agree that every one of your points are not strong and that you can understand why I would be skeptical). Remember, since you are making the claim, you must make the case, so if you don’t make the case, I don’t have to believe your claim (and you should not either).

 

[squirt]

Monarchy:

The person wrote to the site saying that he had the truth, and that the person should convert. The person asked him to a discussion where the theist would put their money where their mouth was:

Yeah. I read the page you linked to in your post. I don’t the buy the atheist’s ‘if I don’t think your case is strong, you shouldn’t either’ stance.

Who approached who first makes no difference in terms of whether or not the theist could credibly commit to renouncing faith should the atheist not ‘buy into’ the case put forth by the theist. What’s the point of making a non-credible commitment?

 

[Carl]

wolpertinger

I lack belief in gods in general and the Christian religion in particular, so everything that flows from such a presupposition is not persuasive to me.

I’m not surprised that this is your view. It is certainly consistent with Chesterton’s insight that there are two kinds of people: those who believe in dogmas and acknowledge them; and those who don’t know that they believe in dogmas and do not acknowledge them.

 

[wolpertinger]

Carl:

I’m not surprised that this is your view. It is certainly consistent with Chesterton’s insight that there are two kinds of people: those who believe in dogmas and acknowledge them; and those who don’t know that they believe in dogmas and do not acknowledge them.

Perhaps. Debating epistemology is getting too far away from the thread’s topic, though.

 

[David_E.Mahony]

I think a very useful little book in this arena is Gellner’s ‘Postmodernism, Reason and Religion’. It does a thorough demolition job on relativism from a philosophical perspective but Gellner being Gellner is not impressed at all by the claims of religion, which for him is probably not able to answer questions put by the Kantian ethic of cognition. Although he delineates three positions: religious fundamentalism; rational scientific fundamentalism and relativism it is quite clear that for him the battle is between the first two and those societies which are stable are those which come to some sort of muddling compromise between the two so that religion comes to occupy a position rather like a constitutional monarchy in a parliamentary democracy and gives a meaning to life but where solid true knowledge is concerned, when the chips are down it is to the reliability of scientific fundamentalism that the seeker turns. A dismal picture no doubt.

DEM

 

[SteveG]

wolpertinger:

I don’t consider myself a relativist and I don’t want to engage in too much nitpicking about this. If there is one here, he or she may do so. Relativism is prone to an internal contradiction, but it can be resolved for all practical purposes.

I am not trying to nit-pick, nor ridicule. I once held to relativism, so I don’t mean to demean or mock anyone holding such a position.

Nonetheless, claiming that the contradiction is resolved for all practical purposes is simply punting on the incoherent fundamentals of what a relativist claims to believe. Folks claiming relativism don’t really hold to it in truth if they admit an exception. It can be called ‘weakened’ relativism to make it more palatable, but it in truth is no longer relativism by definition. Once you admit an exception you are saying everything minus this single absolute is relative. It is simply illogical and incoherent. There is no way around it.

And weakened or not, if we even allowed for such an argument, the next logical question becomes…Why only this one absolute? How does one know it’s only this one? If you admit an absolute, you admit the possibility of more absolutes. What authority does the relativist have to claim this is the one and only? It just can’t hold together.

…The problem isn’t really the philosophical details, is it?

Yes, of course the problem is the philosophical details. These are not minor. We all hold to some underlying philosophy, which guides our moral system and choices. If the underlying philosophy is incoherent and makes no sense, then it is bound to cause misjudgments in the rest of the moral system built upon it.

 

[wolpertinger]

SteveG:

I am not trying to nit-pick, nor ridicule. I once held to relativism, so I don’t mean to demean or mock anyone holding such a position.

I don’t consider myself a relativist and have freely admitted to problems with this philosophy. If my answers are not satisfactory, please bear in mind that the fault is mine and somebody with a deeper understanding of all the different types of relativism may do better.

Yes, of course the problem is the philosophical details. These are not minor. We all hold to some underlying philosophy, which guides our moral system and choices. If the underlying philosophy is incoherent and makes no sense, then it is bound to cause misjudgments in the rest of the moral system built upon it.

This is where stand firm. Relativism as a philosophy has its problems, but you can’t dissuade me from interpreting the sum total of the posts in this forum on relativism as villifying it because of the intrinsic rejection of religiously inspired moral authority. The philosophical issues are an opening, but not the motivation, for apologetics.

Please note that I won’t make a case for relativism as a basis for moral judgements. I firmly believe that both absolute and relative moral systems will ultimately lead to failure, but I will leave it to the respective proponents to show which one will fail soonest.

 

[Carl]

I think one of the problems with this discussion is that the different kinds of relativism and dogmatism are not being clearly delineated.

I could be an absolutist or a relativist without qualms on just about any subject under the secular sun. It would depend on the subject as to how dogmatic or flexible I want to be or can afford to be or am obliged to be.

But when we come to God’s revealed truth, we have to look very closely at the matter under consideration. If one has faith, one cannot argue with the commandments of Moses and the Commandments of Jesus. We cannot simply say that they are relative to time and place or to the preference of my own exalted ego. This is the dilemma of Protestantism revealed by the thousands of sects each claiming its own absolute truth. A thousand competing and contradicting sects absolutlely cannot all be true.

The secularist will never be convinced of Catholic dogmatism because he denies its ultimate source … God, who preserves and protects all the absolutes taught everywhere and at all times by the one universal Church.

Yet the secularist is thrown back upon a dogmatism of his own: which is that there is no God and therefore no absolute ground for moral values. He does not see that this is an absolutism of its own kind because he does nort want to see it as such. He resorts to such weird, evasive, and seemingly clever remarks as “The only absolute is that there is no absolute.”

Sigh.

 

[wolpertinger]

Carl:

I think one of the problems with this discussion is that the different kinds of relativism and dogmatism are not being clearly delineated.

Granted. Absent mutually agreed upon definitions any discussion or debate is an exercise in futility.

I could be an absolutist or a relativist without qualms on just about any subject under the secular sun. It would depend on the subject as to how dogmatic or flexible I want to be or can afford to be or am obliged to be.

Fair enough.

The secularist will never be convinced of Catholic dogmatism because he denies its ultimate source … God, who preserves and protects all the absolutes taught everywhere and at all times by the one universal Church.

Yet the secularist is thrown back upon a dogmatism of his own: which is that there is no God and therefore no absolute ground for moral values. He does not see that this is an absolutism of its own kind because he does nort want to see it as such. He resorts to such weird, evasive, and seemingly clever remarks as “The only absolute is that there is no absolute.”

Sigh.

Since most atheists (or secularists, whoever they are) don’t hold that god does not exist, your statements based on this blatant misrepresentation amount to no more than an appeal to emotion.

By the way, every time you launch into that mode of speech, I get the impression that you preach to the peanut gallery and any further discourse is a waste of time. I can understand your frustration, though. For what it’s worth, it’s mutual.

 

[Carl]

wolpertinger

Since most atheists (or secularists, whoever they are) don’t hold that god does not exist …

When you launch into that mode, you become very tedious indeed.

What else would you call a person who does not believe that God exists if you would not call him an atheist?

 

[squirt]

Carl:

What else would you call a person who does not believe that God exists if you would not call him an atheist?

Uh … he didn’t say that people who don’t believe that God exists aren’t atheists. He said that most atheists do not hold that God does not exist (probably due to the fact that proofs of non-existence are problematic).

 

[SteveG]

wolpertinger:

Please note that I won’t make a case for relativism as a basis for moral judgements. I firmly believe that both absolute and relative moral systems will ultimately lead to failure, but I will leave it to the respective proponents to show which one will fail soonest.

Of course neither can be proved without a doubt. That is not my point. My point is that one is incoherent and self-contradicting, while the other is not. Let me lay out my own foundation in thumbnail form to illustrate (note: I put this together in less than 5 minutes and it’s meant only for illustrative purposes. I am not trying to be Thomas Aquinas and write a summa here, so please don’t be too rigorous if I ‘missed’ something)…

• I hold that there are absolute truths.
• I hold that in order for there to be asbolute truths they must by nature have a source, or a ‘writer’.
• I hold that source is ‘God’ (I put this in quotes because I am not talking about God in any Christian sense yet, just the concept of a prime mover or the uncaused cause. A creator of both the physical and moral orders).
• I hold that if God ‘wrote’ such moral absolutes it is plausible that they were intended to be disoverable.
• I hold that some of these are discoverable from simple observation of the natural world.
• I hold that if God intended these truths to be discovered, those which are not derivable directly from nature, would need to be revealed.
• I hold that God has the ability to reveal such truths.
• I hold that if God intended truth to be knowable, and has the ability to communicate it to us, it is plausible that God would indeed do so.
• …
• …

…I could go on, but I think you get the picture, and I am not trying to ‘prove’ such a system of thought to you. The key here is that while you may dismiss or disagree with any one of my premeises (for evidentiary, or lack of evidentiary reasons), and that would be fair enough, at least each step is logically consistend and coherent.

That’s my point. You have one system which is self-contradictory on its’ face, and should be rejected on those grounds. The other is not. You may reject the other on different grounds, but the two are in no way equivalent and can’t be cast together.

As for any failures, the failures in the Catholic moral systems is not a failure to logically or coherently define morality, it is a failure of individuals to live up to that moral system. This is vastly different than the failure at it’s base of relativism. Unless I am misunderstanding what you mean by ‘failure’?

 

[SteveG]

A thought I had on this which I think deserves posting.

I fear that we may have hijacked a thread from menardsguy regarding a real concern that he had for his son. I’d like to suggest that the original poster let us know if this is at all helpful in addressing that concern or not. If so, then we should continue, otherwise, we should really start a separate thread out of respect for the intent of the original poster and the intent of the thread.

 

[wolpertinger]

Carl:

When you launch into that mode, you become very tedious indeed.

What else would you call a person who does not believe that God exists if you would not call him an atheist?

I’m sorry you find me tedious, but that’s an inevitable consequence of answering the argumentum ad nauseam. I simply cannot grant you the use of this particular straw man.

It’s hard to phrase this without unintentionally coming across as condescending, but please let me ask you this: Do you understand the difference between the positive claim that “god does not exist” and the lack of committment either way (the default atheist position)?

 

[Carl]

squirt

He said that most atheists do not hold that God does not exist (probably due to the fact that proofs of non-existence are problematic).

You, and possibly he as well, are equating atheism with agnosticism, which questions the proofs for the existence of God but does not assert that God does not exist. Atheists most certainly believe there is no God. They are not confused about their conviction. Most often the certainty is stated in the following sentences: “God is a logical contradiction, therefore God cannot exist.” “There is no coherent proof that God exists, so there is no reason to believe in God.” “The universe is ifinite and eternal, therefore it need not have been created, and so we do not need a Creator.” The last version of atheism especially came under attack by Voltaire in his essay on atheism.

Whether this discussion is helpful to the father who started this thread should indeed be stated by the father. I think it should be helpful since we have played out part at least of what might be the predictable dialogue going on in his son’s head, especially with respect to relativism which is at the heart of secular humanism.

If anyone doubts it, look at the relativism promoted by the secular humanists at the ACLU, whose main agenda is to promote anti-religious causes.

 

[Carl]

wolptinger

Post # 37 was answered in Post # 38.

 

[wolpertinger]

SteveG:

I fear that we may have hijacked a thread from menardsguy regarding a real concern that he had for his son.

The keyword “morals” tends to trigger this kind of derailment.

To cut this as short as possible, upon first reading I can agree with your previous post, with some obvious objections of course.

Failure means that absolute and relative moral systems alike will break down when taken beyond their “design specs”.