As the Third Christian Millennium dawns, the Caribbean is at kairos: the nexus of opportunity and risk. In light of the Christocentric fulness theme of Ephesians 4:9 - 24, perspectives and counsel will be offered to support reformation, transformation and blessing towards a truly sustainable future under God.
In recent months, I have been tracking the Open Source Ecology movement, and especially Marcin Jakubowski's Factor-e-Farm initiative.
This, because -- if successful -- a shift to open source, modular industrial technologies would be a way to move towards economic self-sufficiency for small island developing states, through implementing a localised, self-sustaining industrial infrastructure. In short, industrial civlisation 2.0, following the general pattern of the increasing success of the open source software movement: core technologies are open to all as a common good for humanity, and businesses can make money from providing adaptations, off-the-shelf implementations, technical support and extensions. Or, by embedding their own implementations inot their production systems.
The advantage for the community is that a move to localised modular, open source technologies for critical agriculture, construction and industrial systems creates a more robust, resilient economy in the face of possible dislocations. So, if we develop down this road, we would become much more self-reliant to feed development and prosperity in the region.
Jakubowski's Humanity+ presentation on building a replicable, post-scarcity resilient community gives a good overview of -- and preliminary progress report on -- this possibility:
The ongoing development of the LifeTrac tractor and associated Power Cube prime mover are an iconic, more specific case in point. The key idea here is that by creating a modular prime mover and using fluid power hydraulic technology to move power to where it is needed, with controls, many functional systems can be implemented in a much less complicated, easier to fabricate and maintain way.
Such initiatives are of course very experimental, but they offer a new world of possibilities that are well worth exploring. For instance, many of the ideas are well within reach of technology departments of regional community colleges. END
Given the unfortunately flawed UN investigation and report on the Mavi Marmara incident, it is a useful balancing exercise to look at the following IDFNA timeline videos on the May 31 2010 incident:
Time will eventually tell where the full truth lies, but we should be aware that there are two distinct sides to this story. END _______________________
PS: My at the time impressionistic preliminary analysis is here.
PPS: For those requiring more details, the UN Watch submittals here will provide a treasure trove to balance the general run of regional punditry and news, as well as international news. (Sadly, this does not seem to be former Trinidad Attorney General Karl Hudson-Phillips' finest hour.)
In a day when the so-called new atheists confidently set out to trash belief in God as a destructive delusion, and seek to smear Christians and other theists as inevitably ignorant, stupid, insane and/or wicked, we need to subject their confidently projected evolutionary materialism to serious scrutiny.
So, as a part of my ongoing development of an Independent Origins Science Education course, I have been updating my longstanding critical examination of the logical underpinnings of evolutionary materialism.
I therefore wish to excerpt the following from the in-development IOSE's survey unit, in the section on the emergence of man, mind, and morals. (Comments and suggestions are of course welcome.)
Excerpting:
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>>12 --> Some materialists . . . suggest that consciousness is an “emergent” property of matter in the brain in action; one dependent on that matter for its existence and behaviour. But, "emergence" is itself immediately problematic: is "emergence" a euphemism for "Voila: poof!" . . . i.e "magic"?
13 --> Some materialists go further and suggest that mind is more or less a delusion. For instance, Sir Francis Crick is on record, in his 1994 The Astonishing Hypothesis:
. . . that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased: "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.
14 --> Philip Johnson has replied that Sir Francis should have therefore been willing to preface his works thusly: "I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and even the thoughts expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Johnson then acidly commented: “[[t]he plausibility of materialistic determinism requires that an implicit exception be made for the theorist.” [[Reason in the Balance, 1995.]
15 --> In short, it is at least arguable that self-referential absurdity is the dagger pointing to the heart of evolutionary materialistic models of mind and its origin. This can be drawn out a bit in a fairly simple way:
a: Evolutionary materialism argues that the cosmos is the product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature; from hydrogen to humans by undirected chance and necessity.
b: Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of purposeless laws of chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of chance initial circumstances.
c: But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this picture. So, we rapidly arrive at Crick's claim in his The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994): what we subjectively experience as "thoughts," "reasoning" and "conclusions" can only be understood materialistically as the unintended by-products of the blind natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains.
d: These forces are viewed as being ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance shaped by forces of selection [["nature"] and psycho-social conditioning [["nurture"], within the framework of human culture [[i.e. socio-cultural conditioning and resulting/associated relativism].
e: For instance, Marxists commonly derided opponents for their “bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians frequently dismissed qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? Should we not ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is little more than yet another operantly conditioned rat trapped in the cosmic maze? And -- as we saw above -- would the writings of a Crick be any more than the firing of neurons in networks in his own brain?
f: For further instance, we may take the favourite whipping-boy of materialists: religion. Notoriously, they often hold that belief in God is not merely error, but delusion. But, if such a patent "delusion" is so utterly widespread, even among the highly educated, then it "must" -- by the principles of evolution -- somehow be adaptive to survival, whether in nature or in society. And so, this would be an illustration of the unreliability of our reasoning ability, on the assumption of evolutionary materialism.
g: Turning this dismissal of theism around, evolutionary materialism itself would be in the same leaky boat. For, the sauce for the goose is notoriously just as good a sauce for the gander, too.
h: That is, on its own premises [[and following Dawkins in A Devil's Chaplain, 2004, p. 46], the cause of the belief system of evolutionary materialism, "must" also be reducible to forces of blind chance and mechanical necessity that are sufficiently adaptive to spread this "meme" in populations of jumped- up apes from the savannahs of East Africa scrambling for survival in a Malthusian world of struggle for existence.
i: The famous evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane made much the same point in a famous 1932 remark:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true.They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." [["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (Highlight and emphases added.)]
j: Therefore, though materialists will often try to pointedly ignore or angrily brush aside the issue, we may freely argue: if such evolutionary materialism is true, then the "thoughts" we have, the beliefs we hold, the reasonings we attempt and the "conclusions" we reach -- without residue -- must be produced and controlled by blind forces of chance happenstance and mechanical necessity that are irrelevant to purpose, truth, or logical validity. (The conclusions of such "arguments" may still happen to be true, by astonishingly lucky coincidence — but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we have “proved” or "warranted" them.)
k: And, if materialists then say: “But, we can always apply scientific tests, through observation, experiment and measurement,” then we must immediately note that -- as the fate of Newtonian Dynamics and many other theories shows -- empirical support is not equivalent to truth for a scientific theory. For, one newly discovered countering fact can in principle overturn the most reliable of theories.
l: Worse, in the case of origins science theories, we simply were not there to directly observe the facts of the remote past, so origins sciences are even more strongly controlled by assumptions and inferences than are operational scientific theories, such as the way that direct observations of falling apples and orbiting planets allows us to test theories of gravity.
m: Moreover, as Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin reminds us all in his infamous January 29, 1997 New York Review of Booksarticle, "Billions and billions of demons," it is now notorious that:
. . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel [[materialistic scientists] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
o: But, more importantly, to demonstrate that empirical tests provide empirical support to the materialists' theories requires the use of the very process of reasoning and inference which they have discredited.
p: Thus, evolutionary materialism arguably reduces reason itself to the status of illusion. But, as we have seen: immediately, that must include “Materialism.”
q: In the end, it is quite hard to escape the conclusion that materialism is plainly based on self-defeating, question-begging logic.
[ . . . . ]
Now [also], the only “is-es” permitted in the dominant scientific worldview are matter, energy and forces that put them in motion and combination . . . Thus, there is an apparent explanatory gap between our experience of moral obligation and constraining conscience, and the implications of a materialistic view . . . .
In short, the is-ought gap by which is does not ground ought, save if “ought” is inherently in the foundational "is," is real. In that context, evolutionary materialist theories of origins plainly embed a serious moral hazard. One that, by its nature, can seemingly only be balanced by abandoning what many view as a fundamental finding of fact of modern science: that we are wholly material creatures in a wholly material world.
Will Hawthorne draws out some sobering conclusions from that, echoing the concerns on amorality that Plato made in his The Laws, Bk X (as was already mentioned in the Introduction and Summary):
Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [[= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' [[the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces]. (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.)
Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one oughtto refrain from performing that action.
Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action. (This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal deontic logic.) We've conformed to standard principles and inference rules of logic and we've started out with assumptions that atheists have conceded in print. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion: therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action.If you'd like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'. For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time.
Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit.
Thus we are forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more intuitively appealing) principle that one can't infer 'ought' from [[a material] 'is'. [[Emphases and paragraphing added.]
Also, we must make a painful footnote on Darwin himself. For, it is indisputable on the facts of Chs 5 - 7 of Descent of Man, that Darwin was indeed one of the first Social Darwinists; e.g. arguing that natural selection explains how Saxons [[= Englishmen] dominate Celts [[= Irish] and Scots. Similarly, in a July 3, 1881 letter to William Graham, he cited how natural selection explained how Europeans beat the Turks “hollow” in previous centuries of struggle. Worst of all, in Ch 6 of Descent, he coolly predicted that by natural selection the more advanced races would wipe out the “inferior” ones such as Negroes and Australians in the centuries to come. (Nor will angry dismissals and distractive retorts or attempts to assert immoral equivalency etc. change such painful facts.)>>
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Such issues are sobering, and need to be carefully reflected on, especially in a day when evolutionary materialists are reaching for state power and control of key institutions such as education. We would therefore be wise to ponder the warning Plato made in his The Laws, Book X, 360 BC:
Ath. . . . [[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only.[[In short, evolutionary materialism premised on chance plus necessity acting without intelligent guidance on primordial matter is hardly a new or a primarily "scientific" view!] . . . .
[[Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new.] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might, and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions, these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others, and not in legal subjection to them.
As the Greeks used to say, "a word to the wise is sufficient." END _________________ UPDATE, Oct 3: The argument under point 15 has been extended.
Occasionally, Wikipedia hits the nail solidly on the head.
In describing the Marlboro man ad campaign from the 1950's on, it did just that:
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>> Philip Morris & Co. (now Altria) had originally introduced the Marlboro brand as a woman's cigarette in 1924. Starting in the early 1950s, the cigarette industry began to focus on promoting filtered cigarettes, as a response to the emerging scientific data about harmful effects of smoking. Marlboro, as well as other brands, started to be sold with filters. However, filtered cigarettes, Marlboro in particular, were considered to be women’s cigarettes.[2] Advertising executive Leo Burnett was looking for a new image with which to reinvent Philip Morris's Marlboro brand to appeal to a mass market. In particular, Philip Morris felt that the prime market was “post adolescent kids who were just beginning to smoke as a way of declaring their independence from their parents.” [3]
Most filtered cigarette advertising sought to make claims about the technology behind the filter. Through the use of complex terminology and scientific claims regarding the filter, the cigarette industry wanted to ease fears about the harmful effects of cigarette smoking through risk reduction. However, Leo Burnett decided to address the growing fears through an entirely different matter; creating ads completely void of health concerns or health claims of the filtered cigarette. Burnett felt that making claims about the effectiveness of filters furthered concerns of the long term effects of smoking. Thus, refusing to respond to health claims matched the emergent, masculine image of the New Marlboro . . . .
The New Marlboro not only innovated cigarette advertising, but advertising on the whole through its use of image to convey meaning. Since the inception of major advertising campaigns, advertisers felt the need to explain the product as a way of introduction or as a reminder. Advertisements went to great lengths to explain why to choose their particular brand and were particularly wordy. In the Marlboro Man advertisements, the imagery spoke for itself, and the brand was redesigned to have a “personality and a reason for being,” according to Burnett. >>
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Thus was our era born -- our era in which image, impression, and induced emotions so often substitute for substance.
How sadly ironic is it, then, to have to note with Wikipedia that:
. . . Three men who appeared in Marlboro advertisements - Wayne McLaren, David McLean and Dick Hammer - all died of lung cancer, thus earning Marlboro cigarettes, specifically Marlboro Reds, the nickname "Cowboy killers".
So, we see the telling force of Aristotle's remark in his The Rhetoric, Bk I Ch 2:
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker [ethos]; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind [pathos]; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself [logos]. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible . . . Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile . . . Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question . . . . [The Rhetoric, Book I, Ch. 2]
Of these three, emotions driven by our impressions and perceptions are clearly the most persuasive; as they exploit how things seem to be to us. However, our mere strength of feelings or perceptions are no stronger than the underlying accuracy of the judgements they are rooted in. Similarly, no authority, expert or witness is any better than his or her facts, assumptions and reasoning. So, it is only when the claimed facts are so, fairly represent the truth, and are linked to good reasoning, that a conclusion will be well warranted.
Thus, we easily see the vital importance of focussing on substance, not image and impression.
But also, there are a couple of interesting twists to the Marlboro Man story.
First, as Sports Illustrated noted in a January 1977 story, the original Marlboro Man -- astonishingly -- is indeed a real-life cowboy, not a model posing as a cowboy:
It is a good face. It is authentic. So is the scenery, the cattle; so are the horses. But that doesn't mean you think for one minute that the owner of this good face is a cowboy. The Marlboro Man? Come on. He would be too rich by now, for one thing. Authenticity is something you find by taking pictures of about 1,000 models in that cowboy getup and asking about 1,000 housewives which model has it. If the Marlboro Man were a cowboy, that would be truly ironic.
If Darrell Winfield could just hear you. "How you do go on," he would say. Winfield is in the cow town of Pinedale, Wyo. for several unironic, quite coherent reasons. He used to live here, before he bought 40 acres over north at Riverton, 165 miles away, so he is here, for one thing, to see old friends. He is here to deliver two horses that he sold the day before yesterday in Riverton. And, primarily, he is here to rope steers in the rodeo.
When we turn to the originator of the campaign, Leo Burnett (who also created the Jolly Green Giant, the Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger), we learn that he . . .
followed Walter Lippman's philosophy of creating an image around the product. Until his time, advertising centered on long text descriptions of the product, with detailed arguments as to why it was better than competing products.
Burnett concentrated on style, creating icons as a symbol of the product. He stressed that the creator of an ad needed to somehow capture and reflect what he called the "inherent drama" of the product.
So, there is a measure of validity to identifying a visually powerful icon, that then becomes the pivot of a short, moving, authentic drama that tells the central message or story of the product, idea, or whatever that is being promoted. Indeed, as we look at the key role in our culture played by Bible stories like David and Goliath or the parable of the Good Samaritan, we can see how this has been understood for thousands of years.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a powerfully moving image and story.
Except, that such can be used to mislead and manipulate; whether by outright lies, or by telling half the story, or by inviting the listener to see things in a twisted way, leading him or her to draw unwarranted and biased inferences.
Which, we must never do.
The apostle Paul therefore lays out a challenging standard for the ethics of information and persuasion:
2 Cor 2:2 . . . we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. [NIV]
2 Cor 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood], but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds, 5 [Inasmuch as we] refute arguments and theories and reasonings and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God; and we lead every thought and purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) . . . .
Col. 2:3 In Him all the treasures of [divine] wisdom (comprehensive insight into the ways and purposes of God) and [all the riches of spiritual] knowledge and enlightenment are stored up and lie hidden. 4 I say this in order that no one may mislead and delude you by plausible and persuasive and attractive arguments and beguiling speech . . . [AMP]
A tough challenge, but one we must measure up to. END
________________ FOOTNOTE: An interesting e-mail response reads:
Very timely, thanks for this. The way the media portrays its images these days in indeed very beguiling and deceptive. I also noticed that by relying on images to appeal to emotion rather than relaying what is actually good about the product, anything could be portrayed as ''good'' no matter what it actually was. Just show a few popular or influential people using it or create a fictitious one and you're sold. Also it seems by relying on the image to emotion technique more than arguing for the ''superiority'' of the subject Leo Burnett was also able to take on its clients competitors. Unlike ads of the past it no longer had to create ads that pitted competitors against each other. i.e representing Marlboro, Miller Light and Benson and Hedges??!
When you highlighted the use of imagery tell the story as with the Good Samaritan and, David and Goliath, this reminded me of an insight God gave me when I was questioning some advice several influential persons in my life had given me. It was that - a Principle used outside of its true purpose creates a subsystem of dominance and control.
This is what has been achieved with porn, fashion, food and much of modern day advertising. We no longer think critically, but are almost hypnotised through our eyes into believing what is presented to us. And by simply using imagery without making any direct claims - good or bad, the advertiser abdicates himself from any form of direct responsibility.
A seeming stroke of genius on the surface but deception underneath.
In recent weeks, there has been a headlined constitutional crisis here in Montserrat, where there have been serious questions about a draft developed based on a Foreign and Commonwealth Office standard draft for UK overseas territories [what colonies are now called].
As I reflected on the crisis, one point that struck my attention was the phrasing in Section 9 of the earlier drafts that would have slyly imposed so-called same-sex marriage as a claimed basic human right; by implication rather than in any straightforward way.
(Somehow, this was overlooked for several years, but once it was spotlighted, it was promptly changed, then the FCO experts insisted on a "fair exchange": sexual orientation was to be inserted as a specifically protected class in the anti-discrimination Section, 15. When the May 12 redraft appeared here, it was also written right into Section 1 on fundamental rights, as in fact the second listed item!)
Sexual orientation is a key term: it is not a legal word, but is a psychological description that ranges into all sorts of aspects of what used to be called abnormal psychology.
But now, increasingly, acceptance of "anything goes" amorality on sexual matters seems to be the accepted thing here in the Caribbean and in the wider world.
1 --> Desensitise to evil (benumb the conscience) by gradually increasing exposure and through glamourisation, making the abnormal, disordered, bizarre and destructive appear to be sympathetic, acceptable or even normal and even attractive behaviour. Once the proverbial camel's nose is admitted under the tent, pretty soon, the whole beast will be inside; and the former owner of the tent will be shivering out in the dark, cold night.
2 --> Jam out the messages of those who make objections, by using the classic trifecta rhetorical/propaganda strategy: distract attention from inconvenient truth through red herrings led away to strawman caricatures soaked in slanderous and often cruel ad hominems. Ignite to cloud, choke, and poison the atmosphere, polarising the community against objectors, now increasingly perceived as evil kill-joy hypocrites and threats to "freedom." (It helps to muddy the waters by conflating liberty with license.)
3 --> Convert a critical mass into tolerators, supporters and even advocates, by exploiting the perceived moral high ground captured in phases 1 & 2, so that evil is rationalised as if it were acceptable or even good.
When this is laid out in cold hard terms, it sounds ruthless and mechanical.
Ruthless it certainly is, but it is not mechanical at all; the desensitisation- jamming- conversion strategy works by so framing issues, ideas, alternatives, views and people that our emotions and impressions pull us to support what we would not otherwise wish to support. And if inhaling smoke from shredded leaves wrapped in paper that at first cause us to get sick can be successfully marketed as a mark of glamour, coming of age and "cool" iconic Marlboro Man manhood -- then, sustained for decades in the face of mounting evidence of the deadly diseases that smoking causes -- almost anything can be "sold" to us.
To see what that means practically, let us explore how a tidal wave of porn has been used to help pave the way for sexual orientation amorality, and for the acceptance of a radical redefinition of marriage to include the notion that a man can marry another man, or a woman another woman.
Let's put a face on the process (by virtue of fair use):
This lovely, fresh-faced smiling young miss (I gather she was precisely 18 at the time of this picture [and, no, I will NOT link the source that gives the context of that carefully cropped image . . . ]) would pass for the girl next door, and any young man would love to take such a beautiful young lady out on a date.
In fact, she is a rising "porn star."
The above image is a posed shot of her engaging in a lesbian sexual act, with details fully exposed.
(NB: The accompanying videos make it very plain that she is not just posing, but indulges for fun and profit in a wide range of on-camera sex acts with her "toys" [Betty Dodson's"self-love"], her girl friends [Dr Dodson's "partner sex" does not distinguish men/women or women/women] and her boy friends [in that order]. The girl friends also have linked sites. In these sites, some pictures and videos are accessible as free samples, and others on a subscription basis, i.e. the public are invited to become regular viewers of the ongoing addictive story of the increasingly raunchy sexual adventures of this circle of porn actresses and their support men. [Of course, this is taking the stories at face value; the "stars" could be being manipulated, or even abused, given what evidently happened to Linda Lovelace. Cf this sobering report, also. In the video evidence this girl was crying out in Spanish; which I find a suspicious contrast to the slick, fluently English web site. She may well be an exploited Mexican illegal. Porn is NOT a victimless crime. This story tells us how the two narratives: rising star vs exploited teen so often conflict; given the balance of power in the situation, I usually believe the victims. Sometimes, even when they actually are "entrepreneurs." If you still doubt me, cf. here.])
The slick marketing storyline, however, is a clear case of desensitisation in action.
There is now a rising flood of free -- much of it amateur [or pseudo-amateur] -- Internet pornography, just a simple Google search away. All you have to do is make a simple mistake in a search and the links to the most graphic, "hard core" porn sites will start to come up.
Thus, we are being lured into a world of graphical, aural and verbal stimulation, designed to pull us into an addiction to not only watching but participating in anything-goes action, and to eventually join the fun by (a) taking and posting public pictures of your "equipment" or adventures, or even (b) advertising in pop-ups on the same sites. And, since it is fairly easy to identify the location of a given PC on the net, even in very small territories, (c) invites will pop up for LOCALLY available, willing "partners."
Beyond such sites, cable TV channels, especially movie channels later at night -- and "later" is gradually getting earlier -- somewhat less graphic but just as addictive soft-core materials are visible, just click the remote control. Comedies now must have their homosexual characters, who are uniformly portrayed in a sympathetic or approving way. Even family-friendly time is now increasingly raunchy.
In this context, the various physically possible pairings and acts are portrayed as though they were morally equivalent.
Indeed, astonishingly, anal penetration -- the prime cause of the rapid spreading of AIDs in the early 1980's -- is making a "comeback" as an exotic "treat"!
(And the role of oral sex acts in spreading Herpes etc. is neatly omitted. One finds no health warning labels on these sites. To see the significance of this, contrast every box of cigarettes you inspect in those shops that still have them. [Cigarettes were identified as a hazard, and they were sponsored by those big, evil tobacco companies. So, a morally tinged campaign was carried out against cigarettes over decades, until now they are increasingly rare and even prohibited. The dramatic contrast to porn is plainly no coincidence.])
The value of reserving sex for committed marriage is simply dismissed as ridiculous, or is even ignored as though that is so outdated it can be simply put out of our minds.
As to virginity, the issue is how to get rid of it in the least embarrassing way, not how to treasure it as a commitment of honour and virtue.
In the resulting context of increasingly widespread porn and sex addictions, leading to benumbed consciences, it then seems increasingly plausible to appeal to our emotions to call for the "rights" of those who just want to "partner" a bit differently, for fun -- sex is now the most popular "body-contact sport" --or for "love."
The punchline: Who could object to such a pleasant young miss wanting a little AC/DC fun with her friends? Or, later on, "marrying" the one she "loves"? Even, if it happens to be another girl?
Try, Miss California . . .
All too soon, this example shows how those who do object can ever so easily be caricatured, slandered, rhetorically skewered and left writhing in emotional pain.
"Serves those hypocrites right!"
Worse, with just about every cell phone having a camera and capability to text or send images etc, not to mention just about every PC, the pressure is on for amateurs to get into the action.
For, our young girls are now in direct competition with "glamorously" sexy and active "hot" porn stars like the one pictured.
So, they are increasingly under pressure to "measure up" -- not only by becoming prematurely sexually active, but to do it digitally: circulating upskirt or down-blouse shots, or full nude shots and videos of self- or partner-love in action; including sexting on the cell phone as a part of keeping a boyfriend interested, when he could so easily click instead on a "hot zone" site and maybe hook up with the local live action advertised on the site in pop ups. Often, when you pop over for a visit and a fun romp, the cameras will be rolling, sometimes with your knowledge; sometimes without your knowing it.
Inevitably, some of these titillating shots and videos then make the rounds in the local community. Then, some of the resulting pictures and amateur videos will make their way into the Internet's hot zone repositories, accelerating the floodtide of filth.
And, frankly, filth it is.
Astonishingly, older women (up to and including grandmas!) are also being pulled into the trend. (This category is why Mrs Palin -- utterly inappropriately -- was often discussed during the 2008 US Presidential Campaign as a MILF.)
In that anything goes, besotted acidic morally toxic sexually addicted conscience-benumbed context, moral fibre breaks down, and the damage to individuals, marriages, families and the community is sharply discounted.
Then, we come to jamming by personal destruction.
For, if you speak out against what is going on -- as Ms Carrie Prejean did, but sometime, somewhere you did some glamour semi-nude [or worse] ""modelling" shots and maybe what you thought had been a private vid shared with a boy as an act of what you thought of as love, then it will all come out and be plastered all over the Internet. And, if the shaming materials were underage so the laws against child porn apply, that's no problem: "substitute" videos will be relabelled as the infamous video, and busybodies will develop and gleefully present cruel parodies (as in this link) to mock, demean, shame, blackmail and discredit or silence you. And, if they can get in a blasphemous punch at God, the scriptures and the gospel while they are at it, they will.
You have just been jammed out, and will be forever tainted in the public mind.
For, slander and scandal work. As any gossip can tell you.
However earnestly you may admit, publicly regret and turn from where you have gone wrong or acted foolishly, and however staunchly you may object to the personal violation and trashing of important principles in favour of self- and socially- destructive folly and evil:
(This case is key, as the issue Ms. Prejean objected to was homosexualisation of marriage, in response to public probing questions by a homosexual advocate judging a beauty contest, live on television. That is how powerful and arrogant the homosexualist lobby now is.)
Pause:Girls, kindly think twice before pushing that record button or agreeing to pose for pictures or videos you may later have reason to regret.
So, we see how pornography and deviant sexual behaviours walk hand in hand and play a joint role in desensitising, jamming and converting the culture to moral anarchy. Which is now increasingly being embedded in law -- including Constitutional Law; right here in the Caribbean.
What a refreshing contrast do we find in Paul's letter to the Ephesians:
Eph 4:17So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
20You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness . . . .
Eph 5:1Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
3But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. 4Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. 5For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.[a]6Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. 7Therefore do not be partners with them.
8For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9(for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10and find out what pleases the Lord. 11Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
"Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."
15Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. 18Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, now let us expose and break the desensitising, jamming, conversion porn-perversion agenda, instead turning tho the good, the true, the virtuous and the right. And, let us pray for those enmeshed in the benumbing, endarkening destructive agendas that now stalk not just the wider world but our own region.
Before it is too late.
Why not now, why not here, why not us? END _____________ Addendum, Dec 9th: I have just discovered the Manhattan Declaration. I strongly recommend reading it, at least in the summary version. Notice the balanced focus on life, marriage and liberty of conscience. If you feel so led, please consider signing it. In my opinion, especially in the full form, it is excellently reasoned and expressed in a very carefully balanced way informed by the planks vs sawdust in eyes principle. It is comparable in historical significance to the Barmen Declaration of 1934; which denounced Fascist and similar forms of political messianism as idolatry.
Over the weekend the following July 21st, 2010 statement by former US House of Representatives Speaker, Newt Gingrich (who is a professional historian by training) was brought to my attention twice.
The statement is so important that I will link and cite it, highlighting key parts, then comment briefly:
There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.
The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks - is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.
Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to "symbolize interfaith cooperation" when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way.
Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for "religious toleration" are arrogantly dishonest. They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City. Meanwhile, there are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia. In fact no Christian or Jew can even enter Mecca.
And they lecture us about tolerance.
If the people behind the Cordoba House were serious about religious toleration, they would be imploring the Saudis, as fellow Muslims, to immediately open up Mecca to all and immediately announce their intention to allow non-Muslim houses of worship in the Kingdom. They should be asked by the news media if they would be willing to lead such a campaign.
We have not been able to rebuild the World Trade Center in nine years. Now we are being told a 13 story, $100 million megamosque will be built within a year overlooking the site of the most devastating surprise attack in American history.
Finally where is the money coming from? The people behind the Cordoba House refuse to reveal all their funding sources.
America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could.
No mosque.
No self deception.
No surrender.
The time to take a stand is now - at this site on this issue. >>
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This superb statement exposes the many inconsistencies, hypocrisies and patent absurdities in the commonly promoted politically correct stance on IslamISM, its roots in foundational Islamic history and theology, and the challenge it poses for not only the wider world but also us here in the Caribbean.
We would do well to ponder on it carefully, even if we are disinclined to agree.
(Ask yourself why you find it disagreeable, and then take time to explore the Quran, Surah 9 -- look closely at verses 5 and 29 ff -- and also this survey of foundational Islamic history here, noting remarks here and the declaration here on Islam the gospel and the Caribbean. A glance at the details at Answering-Islam.org, especially the Nehls-Eric Book/course here (cf. their primer on controversies here), will provide references and background. Mr Gingrich, sadly, has his key facts correct. And, he quite justifiably skewers the many gaping inconsistencies in the commonly promoted views on the issue.)
It is sad that, nine years after the 9/11 attacks, many of us still struggle to get basic information on Islamism, Islam, the gospel, our region and the world straight. Not to mention, on a due and balanced response as individuals, as members of the Christian Faith tradition, and as citizens or -- most challengingly -- leaders of nations responsible to establish and protect the civil peace of justice.
So, let us think, let us pray, let us love and commit ourselves to alertness and the civil peace of justice, and let us act resolutely. END
I have been busy elsewhere, but have noticed how there are evidently two initiatives to erect Mosques in lower Manhattan, one of them at a site where landing gear from Mohammed Atta's hijacked aircraft came through the roof on Sept 11, 2001.
Even more significantly, it is intended to open the giant Mosque on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
(Remember, the attacks themselves came 318 years but one day after the decisive defeat of Ottoman forces at the gates of Vienna through Jan Sobieski's cavalry charge that turned back the tide of global subjugation under the Caliphate. So, not only were the means used highly significant -- America is the creator of both Skyscrapers and aircraft -- but the date was also highly significant. And, yes, it means we now have to read and parse the symbols in symbolism-laced actions. In the thought-world of radical Islam, these things are obvious. They have to become obvious to us too, if we are to survive.)
This mosque is to be named after Cordoba, the capital of Al Andaluz, the Islamic state imposed on Spain by conquest and subjugation under Sharia. As such it is evidently part of a longstanding Islamic pattern of erecting Mosques on captured sites with significance for the conquered people. (The Mosque that -- by happy accident -- seems to be just a little north of the actual correct site of the Jerusalem Temple, is a classic case in point).
But it is similarly no accident that Hagia Sophia, the main church of Constantinople, was turned into a Mosque, or that Hindus in India routinely have conflicts to reclaim their former sites, or that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan destroyed world heritage site statues of the Buddha. In fact, the practice traces all the way back to Mohammed, who is the designated exemplar for Muslims, when he converted the former pagan pilgrimage site in Mecca into the Muslim shrine it is today.
So, while many may have problems with Fox News and with Mr Beck, we need to at least attend to the following exchange with Mr Gaffney:
We may in the end choose to disagree with Mr Beck's views and Mr Gaffney's analysis, but we should at least be aware of them and respond on the merits, not reflexively and emotively. And, plainly, they have a serious point, as the Muslim Brotherhood is real and it has embarked on a 100 year global subjugation project through a Civilisation- settlement- jihad process. Al Qaeda -- especially the Egyptian wing from which Mr Atta came -- is a derivative of the Brotherhood. Hamas, the terrorist de facto government of Gaza, is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Worse, Iranian Mahdism is indeed a dangerously apocalyptic detabilising force in the Islamic world and far beyond it. One that is now plainly at the nuclear threshold.
So, while the West plainly is not at all without sin (to say the least), we must recognise that there is a lesson to be learned from the fate of disaffected Christian peoples in Syria and Egypt in the 630s; who chafed under Byzantine domination. They jumped from the frying pan of Byzantium into the fire of Islamist domination.
1,400 years later, they are still in the fire, as the Maronite Christians of Lebanon and the Copts of Egypt can testify. "A word to the wise . . ." END _________________
FOOTNOTE: Michael Totten -- an independent journalist whose beat is the ME, and who has routinely given outstanding coverage -- has an interview on what it was like for an Israeli to visit S Lebanon. Eye-opening. For instance, try this scoop from Jonathan Spyer, the Israeli who visited S Lebanon:
A perfect storm is brewing in the Middle East. We’re experiencing the convergence of two historical phenomena. The first is the rise of Iran, which we’ve already talked about. We have an ambitious ideological elite committed to radical Islam and the expansion of power. Second, in country after country in the Middle East, various forms of radical Islam are becoming the most popular and vivid forms of political expression. We have Hamas among the Palestinians, Hezbollah among the Shia of Lebanon, the Islamic Action Front in Jordan, and the Muslim Brothers in Egypt . . .
In recent weeks, I have been testing out a beta version of an online course reader, for the Independent Origins Science Education (IOSE) course, also hosted at Blogger. In doing that, I have been engaging in commentary exchanges at several discussion threads at the Design Theory blog founded by leading Design theorist, Dr William Dembski, Uncommon Descent.
In the most recent of these discussions, the issue that rapidly became focal is the reality of a transcendent "I" (i.e. self) that is conscious, perceives, feels, values, thinks and decides for him- or her- self; however much we may struggle to consistently live up to good intent, and however much we must seek the help of the Transcendent to be transformed from within by the renewing of mind, heart and life (as Rom 7 - 8 and 12 outline).
In particular, it was argued that the sense of inner freedom to decide, to incline one's self, and to act -- however one may struggle in so acting -- is not only ill-conceived, but is actually incoherent. In particular, both materialistic and theistic determinists now often argue for "compatibilism," by which it is promoted that since one acts according to one's inner inclinations and states of mind [or whatever], one is in reality "free" even though such inner states are in turn subjected to pre-determining forces and factors that trace to powers and processes beyond one's local control.
Compatibilism, as championed by the ancient Greek Stoics and the early modern philosopher Hume, is a theory that argues that if free will and determinism exist, they are in fact compatible. Determinists argue that all acts that take place are predetermined by prior causes, including human actions. If a free action is defined as one that is not predetermined by prior causes, then determinism, which claims that human actions are predetermined, rules out the possibility of free actions.
A compatibilist, or soft determinist, in contrast, will define a free act in a way that does not hinge on the presence or absence of prior causes. For example, one could define a free act as one that involves no compulsion by another person. Since the physical universe and the laws of nature are not persons, actions which are caused by the laws of nature would still be free acts- therefore it is wrong to conclude that universal determinism would mean we are never free.
For example, you could choose to continue reading or to stop reading this article; while a compatibilist determinist would not deny that whatever choice you make will have been predetermined since the beginning of time, they will argue that this choice that you make is an example of free will because no one is forcing you to make whatever choice you make . . . . according to Hume, free will should not be understood as an absolute ability to have chosen differently under exactly the same inner and outer circumstances. Rather, it is a hypothetical ability to have chosen differently if one had been differently psychologically disposed by some different beliefs or desires . . . . Hume also maintains that free acts are not uncaused (or self-caused as Kant argued) but rather caused by our choices as determined by our beliefs, desires, by our characters, or just for the hell of it (spontaneous random act). While a decision-making process exists in Hume's determinism, this process is governed by a causal chain of events. For example, one may make the decision to support a charity, but that decision is determined by the conditions that existed prior to the decision being made.
If you feel that you are being "had" through the clever art of subtly loaded redefinition of key words, you are right; or -- with all due respect to those who sincerely believe the above -- you are as close to right as makes no effective difference.
For, first, as Wiki goes on to note, critics rightly observe that "the compatibilists are showing something to be compatible with determinism, but they think that something cannot properly be called free will." In short, genuine freedom of mind and heart are at stake. And, on the premise that genuine love -- from the Golden Rule, the foundation of virtue from which (As Jesus said) all the law and the prophets hang -- requires the freedom to choose, morality and accountability over our morally freighted choices are also at stake.
You may doubt that love requires genuinely free choice.
To see why that is so, think about an advanced technology, where we meet a robot pre-programmed to carry out all the words and acts that would be associated with love.
At first, we do not know that we are dealing with a pre-programmed robot; until, one day, we happen to push a hidden button behind the right ear, and the robot's head opens up, a printer screes away for a few minutes, and the control program is revealed to us.
Our perception of what has been happening will immediately shift, and what hitherto appeared to be self-sacrificial love suddenly turns out to be predetermined computer code. At best, we now hope that the programmer of the robot did so out of genuine love, but we feel cheated and the robot has fallen steeply in our estimation. For, it is now merely a programmed machine, not a freely choosing and responding, loving person.
Worse, consider what we would now think about the many serious discussions we had with the robot on many topics.
Now that we know that there was no freedom to think and follow the force of the logic from ground to consequent, or from body of credible facts to the best explanation, just a spewing out of preset strings of symbols on receipt of particular inputs, we have to rethink the credibility of the arguments and conclusions.
We now no longer respect what we thought was the mind of the robot, but instead we want to assess the soundness of its programming, and ask ourselves whether we have reason to trust the programmer. (One hopeful clue is that there was that hidden button.)
So, we can see just how much is at stake on this subject.
It gets worse. For, as the issue of the trustworthiness of the programmer of the robot reveals, a very direct and horrendously practical inference from the above point of view, can be to lend unwarranted credibility to abusive control by imposing what Garvey aptly called (in a phrase Marley popularised), "the chains of mental slavery." In short, compatibilism smacks far too much of Orwellian double-speak: language now has an outer meaning for the ordinary common-sense thinking person, and an inner, manipulative one for the inner circle of manipulators.
As I commented earlier this morning (with slight adjustments):
___________________________________
>> Often, we are tempted to see wranglings over meanings of words as pointless and useless.
But, if we will remember George Orwell’s 1984, we will be reminded that the manipulation of language and of concepts are often the first steps to the manipulation and captivation of minds. As Wiki — that hostile witness — acknowledges in the just linked [and the onward links are worth exploring]:
As literary political fiction, 1984 is a classic novel of the social science fiction subgenre, thus, since its publication in 1949, the terms and concepts of Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Memory hole, et cetera, became contemporary vernacular, including the adjective Orwellian, denoting George Orwell’s writings and totalitarianism as exposited in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm (1945) . . .
Thence, we see how manipulation of our thought life is a tool towards the loss of liberty, as Plato also subtly warned of in his Parable of the Cave.
In recent years, for instance, it was saddening to see how the term “Democracy” was cynically used to promote tyrannies of one stripe or another. Similarly, in even more recent years, I have lived to see “marriage” suddenly being deemed — with a straight face — a far more flexible and ambiguous term than any previous generation would have tolerated.
And more, much more . . . .
Now, as we may see, even the term “Science” itself is a subject of manipulation by those who would reinterpret it away from what it is at its best:
science: a branch of knowledge conducted on objective principles ["objective: external to the mind; actually existing; real"] involving the systematized observation of and experiment with phenomena, esp. concerned with the material and functions of the physical universe. [Concise Oxford Dictionary, (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 1990 -- and yes, they used the "z." (Definition of objectivity from the same source added.)]
scientific method: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge [[= "the body of truth, information and principles acquired by mankind"] involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. [Webster's 7th Collegiate Dictionary,( Springfield, Mass: G & C Merriam), 1965. (Definition of "Knowledge" in the same dictionary inserted.)]
All of these are soberingly important cases in point. But, they pale into relative insignificance when we reflect on the significance of the key word whose meaning is at stake in this thread:
FREEDOM
Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the history of the past 500 or so years, will know just how important freedom has been, and how central has been the concept that the individual human being, the transcendent I that unifies our conscious experiences and memories, is inherently free within, and ought not to be subjected to chains from without.
However — and though it will be painful to some participants, it is necessary to put this plainly, as what is at stake is so important — as Bob Marley reminds us from Marcus Garvey’s classic remarks, in an era of the wily and ruthless manipulator (I almost wrote: in an era of the ad man and the PR consultant — propagandists for hire), we must ever be vigilant for “the chains of mental slavery.”
So, pardon a cite from the ever-helpful Collins Dictionary, 2003:
freedom n
1. personal liberty, as from slavery, bondage, serfdom, etc.
2. liberation or deliverance, as from confinement or bondage
3. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the quality or state of being free, esp to enjoy political and civil liberties . . . 6. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) autonomy, self-government, or independence
7. the power or liberty to order one’s own actions
8. (Philosophy) Philosophy the quality, esp of the will or the individual, of not being totally constrained; able to choose between alternative actions in identical circumstances . . .
So, let us understand what is at stake.
And, let us understand why some of us have been willing to go to the wall to stand up for the premise that the intuition of inner liberty of mind and will to think, analyse and incline one’s heart to love, and that to incline one’s intention to the way of the truth and the right in love — however stumblingly — are vital to any coherent understanding of the intelligent and purposeful self.
Having said all of this, it must be noted that in the end, design theory does not depend on first positing these premises. As has been repeatedly highlighted, the fundamental design inference is about observing that there are empirically reliable signs of the frequently observed or experienced causal pattern of directed contingency, or design. On the strength of this — especially in mathematical forms linked to information theory and onward to statistical thermodynamics [cf my online note for an introduction] — we have every epistemic right to inductively infer from the reliable sign to the signified causal process, design, even in cases where we did not directly observe the design process.
This is the same basic uniformitarian principle of inference on origins science matters formerly used by Lyell and Darwin et al, only, we are applying it to a causal pattern that hey did not emphasise in their work. But the causal pattern is a well established one, and we have every right to use it.
When we apply it to the digitally coded, Functionally Specific Complex Information in cell based life on earth, it points to the design of such life. In simple terms, we empirically know how codes, algorithms, specific data in data structures and organised implementing machines reliably come about: directed contingency, aka design.
We also know that directed contingency comes from intelligence, and so we have every right to infer to design as the cause of cell based life on earth. (Observe, this thread shows abundantly how no serious empirically credible counter-example exists to this inference.)
From Thaxton et al in the mid 1980′s, in the very first modern technical design work, it has been freely acknowledged that this empirically based — as opposed to metaphysically based — inference is insufficient in itself to infer to designers that are either known to be within or beyond the cosmos. (The intensity of debates over this case is linked to the history over the past 150 years, where advocates of materialism in one form or another used the concept of the chance and necessity driven spontaneous origin of life and of biodiversity [i.e. Evolution], to imply and infer that God was out of a job.)
When we lift our eyes to the origin of the observed cosmos, and see that it shows fine-tuned complex organisation that enables the existence of Carbon-chemistry cell based intelligent life, we can make an inference to design that does point to an extra-cosmic, powerful, knowledgeable and highly intelligent designer. An inference that as John Leslie showed, comes through even in the context of a suggested multiverse, as the point is that our cosmos is locally fine-tuned, and hitting a locally isolated target is just as significant as would be hitting an absolutely isolated one. But . . . many who so stridently object to the credibility of the design inference on design of life [where issues of an extracosmic designer are not actually directly at stake] fall oddly silent in the face of the evident fine-tuning of the cosmos and where it invites us to infer.
And that is maybe the most telling point of all.>>
____________________________________
So, let us beware the Jabberwock of subtle manipulation, friends!
And, let us dare take up the Vorpal Sword of truth (used in tough love) to strike and strike hard, before it is too late. END
