Atheistic Science

Atheistic Science

From RationalWiki:

"Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. To avoid these traps scientists assume that all causes are empirical and naturalistic; which means they can be measured, quantified and studied methodically.

"However, this assumption of naturalism need not extend beyond an assumption of methodology. This is what separates methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism - the former is merely a tool and makes no truth claim; while the latter makes the philosophical - essentially atheistic - claim that only natural causes exist."

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism

Can anyone doubt that the grand scientific theories simplified and promulgated in the mainstream discourse of our day are intended to form our understanding, not only of our physical surroundings, but of our self-understanding, and the courses of action we should take?

It cannot be doubted.

The grand theories of cosmology, evolution, climate change, and all the rest are narratives composed and arranged out of facts selected by the method of methodological naturalism. 
What is more, all narratives must follow a certain logic.  In our day, this logic is supplied by philosophical naturalism, i.e., materialistic atheism.

Therefore, the above quoted definition disingenuously separates method from philosophy.

However, the scientific method wasn't always practiced this way.  In the past, many theistic scientists assumed a Creator and a creation designed to operate according to laws established by the Creator.

For the Christian, there is an additional source of true information found in special divine revelation--the Bible.

The Bible isn't a scientific textbook or naturalistic historical account.  Yet, it presents us with true facts pertaining to history, natural phenomena, and the origins of the universe.  

Before dismissing me as a wild-eyed biblical fundamentalist, let me ask a simple question:

What should have priority in the Christian mind--the Christian Creed or atheistic narratives arranged from facts selected by a method presupposing naturalism?  In other words, is Theology the Queen of the Sciences or not?

Israel in the Church

The Church is the eschatological expansion, exaltation, and glorification of OT Israel. Her head is Christ qua Christ, the great Prophet, Priest, and King of *Israel*. He sits on the throne of his father David, which has been raised & exalted above all thrones & powers, even the angels. All the nations, not just Israel, have become the Son's inheritance.

But ethnic Israel has a favored place as the elect core of the Church. We wild olive branches owe our continued preservation to God's favor to the Israelites, his intention to preserve a remnant until Israel's fullness be brought in.

 Relevant here is Romans 15: 25-27:

"But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints. For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things."

 Here, we see that even in the Church of God Gentile Christians have an abiding obligation to care for the physical needs of Jewish Christians. This means that even in the one new man Jew and Gentile identity is maintained to a degree.

 

St. Paul gave a spiritual reason why we Gentile Christians are especially obligated to minister to the corporeal needs of Jewish Christians: because we partake in the spiritual things belonging to the Jews.

Therefore, in the Church there is a special place of preference for Jewish believers. The elect remnant has a special place within the body.

 

Just as man and woman remain man & woman when they become one flesh, so Jew and Gentile remain Jew & Gentile when they become one new man in Christ. They receive salvation equally but they don't receive the same position in the body.

It is not necessary for Gentiles to become Jews to be included in the new covenant, and ethnically Jewish Christians haven't lost their ancestral connection.

 

The remnant of Israel remains intact in the bosom of the Church.

 

At the present time, Gentile blessing depends on honoring Abraham's seed.  Those who bless Israel will be blessed. Those who curse it will be cursed.

There are varying degrees of this. We Gentiles who call on the name of the Lord Jesus will be blessed with salvation for ourselves, but if we fail to bless his natural brethren our lines of descent will not endure.

 

And this brings me to the subject of the Christian family. Gentile Christian families as units have been joined to Israel as honorary member houses of Israel. This is why the expectation that the intergenerational offspring of faithful Christian believers be Christian too is valid. And, it is a significant reason why our children should be baptized. Christian baptism accomplishes incorporation into Christ, and hence into His covenant people, the Israel of God.

God sovereignly saved and gave the Spirit to all, whether Jew or Gentile. Separate instructions for different sexes, races, and stations in life imply differentiation within the body. Equal membership, but not equal status or equal treatment, except to recognize each other's priceless dignity as Christ-bearers.

What needs to be overcome is an unbiblical notion of equality, proceeding from the amorphous spirituality of Gnosticism, i.e., spiritual vs. physical, heavenly vs. earthly, grace vs. nature, love vs. justice, etc. On the cross, where our Incarnate God died, all these oppositions were reconciled and the world, with all its beauty and diversity, was redeemed.

Comparative to the unsurpassable dignity of being in Christ, circumcision means nothing. But, it isn't nothing.

In the West, feminism, homosexuality, gender confusion, and all other varieties of social disorder proceeded from denying the validity of differentiation within the body of Christ. Today, the place of the Jew in the Church is denied, tomorrow the leadership of women will be accepted, later, open immorality. These things will be tolerated in any church that denies the Jew’s favored place, should it last long enough.

The pattern has replicated enough times to be certainly true.

ON NATURAL SOCIETY

Natural society is the association of human beings on the basis of kinship, i.e., natural affection for one’s blood.  Such societies organically emerge as families produce offspring, multiply, and form alliances.  The kernel of natural society is the nuclear family, the first human society, and the index of social health is the health of its families. 

The good of the family is the conservation of its existence over time.  This occurs by the transmission of a particular way of life (a heritage) down through the generations.  The purpose of the father is to bless members of his household whose actions tend toward this conservation.  He also must curse those whose acts tend to its dissolution.  The chief blessing (or privilege) is to remain in relationship to the father as head of the family.  The chief curse is to be alienated from his society.  Additional blessings and curses enhance the various states of acceptance or alienation.

In patriarchal societies (i.e., natural societies lacking higher forms of organization above the clan unit), the father holds the power of life and death over the members of his household.  This power is symbolized in an instrument having a dual function:  the ploughshare-sword (cf. Isa. 2:4 & Joel 3:10). 

The ploughshare, the cutting edge of the plough, pierces and divides soil in order to plant seed for husbandry. 

The sword is the archetypal symbol of justice.  It is the symbol of distributive justice in that the fruits of the family’s agricultural labors are divided and distributed among its members.   The sword is also the symbol of retributive justice.  In this function, the sword is used to protect and enforce the physical and moral boundaries preservative of household life. 

The ploughshare-sword is an instrument of tremendous creative and destructive potential.  It is the effective extension of the father’s word, his expressed will, and is an analog of the Divine Word (cf. Eph. 6:17 & Heb. 4:12). 

City-states and nations are organized communities of families bound to particular lands or territories.  In these societies, the archetypal ruler is the king.  Under deity and in his realm, the king’s role is to act as the agent of divine blessing and wrath (cf. Rom. 13:4).  By the scepter, the king executes the power of justice by rewarding good, i.e., acts tending to the conservation of the state.  By the sword, the king punishes evil, i.e., acts that tend to the state’s dissolution.

Internal cohesion of states and nations is fostered through intermarriage, through the bond of marital alliance.  Regular alliances are eventually formalized by covenant and governed by laws, the terms of the covenants.  Covenants are enacted by promises of loyalty (oaths) and solemnized by rituals appealing to the community’s supreme god (hopefully, *the* God) as witness.  A particular society’s network of covenants is that society’s constitutional structure.  And deity is invoked as the ultimate guarantor and enforcer of the social constitution.

Religion is the respect members of society pay to the covenantal bonds binding themselves to their god and their fellows.

Priesthoods are formed to regularize and perpetually remind the people of their religious duty and to summon the deity to enact or renew covenant. 

Prophets are individuals who arise on extraordinary occasions when the official priesthood has broken down and not fulfilling its basic functions.  In the name of deity, prophets call for covenant renewal and restoration. 

Sometimes, anti-religions masquerade as religions.  External religious forms may be kept (or mimicked), but their conservational functions have been disabled or sublimated.  Schemes of salvation have been offered by these anti-religions, but such “salvation” ultimately involves liberation from covenant duty and the abandonment of natural society.

True religion honors the Creator by conserving and sanctifying natural society.  False religion dissolves it by weakening kinship loyalty in favor of artificial arrangements of convenience and by replacing sacred covenant with disposable contract.  These pseudo-bonds serve the ambitious who desire the benefit of rule but who wish to avoid the burdens and liabilities entailed in fatherhood, kingship, and priesthood.  To be a father, a king, or priest is to be responsible to exemplify and promote the virtues of filial obedience, fraternal loyalty, and paternal love.

Today, moderns believe their societies have progressed beyond the need to be rooted in ties of kinship.  They believe natural societies are a thing of the past, of humanity’s primitive childhood.  They believe their modern technologies afford them the ability to transcend the limits of nature itself.  They redefine the family apart from its biological and procreative basis.  They even attempt to alter what it is to be male or female.

Temporarily, the modern project appeared to be successful.  Increasing rates of mental illness, suicide, crime, illegitimacy, and non-fertility give the lie to this, however.  In the long term, apart from the bonds of natural affection social cohesion cannot be maintained.    To abolish fathers, kings, and priests is to abolish filial obedience, fraternal loyalty, and paternal love at every level of society.  “A house divided against itself will not stand,” and a people without a heritage is no people.  They will perish from the face of the earth.

From a Letter to a Syriac Christian Friend

If Christians in the region had their own political identity apart from the Muslims, I'd support them. But, as it is now, they seem to be shrinking (not having children & leaving) and the Muslims are absorbing the ones that are left.

In the contest between Muslims and Israelis, I support the Israelis. Christians should not be in alliance with the Muslims against the Jews. They should be neutral or in alliance with the Jews to drive the Muslims out. Jesus and the prophets came from the Jews not the Muslims. Mohammed is not a prophet I recognize.

Because the Christians are in the minority they will have to live with whatever regime takes power--or leave. Christians will not be in control any time soon unless many Muslims & many Jews convert to Christianity.

Killing is what happens in war and war is what you have right now. It was inevitable. They should have been allowed to fight it out to a conclusion a long time ago. War is how these things are decided, not ineffective "peace talks" and political solutions no one respects. Generals and armies make the borders, not politicians. They always have.

The people that bleeds, sacrifices, and most importantly--wins--earns the right to make the rules, nobody else. This is the only way peace can be achieved. I'm sorry.

Sluts and Sissies

Jim writes:

Sluts cause collective externalities far more serious than tobacco smokers. Because of the grave and great externalities produced by sluts, they should be taxed and penalized, like tobacco smokers, only at considerably higher rates, rather than subsidized, and subjected to official shaming and exclusion similar to that applied to tobacco smokers, only more severe.

I comment:

People are offended by the use of the word "slut" because they think it's demeaning to women in general.  They think it's an unjust word because it applies to women only.  They try to discredit the basic assumption behind the word by saying that, "it takes two to make a slut." 

But it takes many more than two to make a slut.  A slut is made by many encounters with many men.

Jim also writes:

For men, there is an equivalent to a girl being easy.  If a man who wants to marry young, reveals that he wants to marry young, no woman will want him.  Women despise men who are eager to have a relationship, even good women despise men who are eager to have a relationship, just as men despise women who are eager to have sex...

...Everyone admires the man who has sex with lots of women, because that is hard, while everyone despises the woman that has sex with lots of men, because that is easy.

The male equivalent of a slut is the emotionally promiscuous man who quickly shares his heart with every girl that comes along, whether he's able to be physically intimate with them or not.  Such men usually don't get any, because they are despised by everyone, including sluts.

Is NRx Antichristian?

I thought some statements Zippy Catholic made against the neoreactionaries on a comment thread here could be challenged fairly easily.  His original statements are in bold and are followed by my responses:


1. “[Neoreactionaries] don’t mean someone who is living off of the tattered remains of Christian patrimony while not being a believing Christian.”


[On the contrary:] This is almost exactly what Moldbug thinks; for him, the essential elements of the Puritan patrimony have carried over, except the elements aren’t tattered–they’ve never been stronger.


2. “NRx is so committed to its postmodern nominalism that Christian neoreactionaries literally blaspheme the name of Christ…”


“Christianity” is not the name of Christ. Anyone who is capable of understanding Moldbug knows he uses the term to say he thinks modern day Progressives are intellectual heirs of a specific type of Christian sectarianism.


3. “NRx expects to be able to resist cultural forces better than a millennia old notoriously reactionary institution.”


Similarly, “Christianity” is not the Catholic Church. No one is required to use the term to connote the “true beliefs and correct practices of the Christian faith.” It can be used to refer to the set of communities (either in whole or in part) who claim to follow the precepts of Jesus Christ, a very mixed bag indeed.


Jim would like to bring back the old Anglican system, which he thinks–with a few improvements–would make the most effective safeguard against progressivism, which he clearly understands to be evil. In this, he is not far from the Kingdom of God.


Jim wrongly thinks that biblical fundamentalism is the strength of true Christianity. Again, he is close to the Kingdom here because he senses that plenary inspiration is essential.


What Jim can’t see (because he lacks faith) is that the true Christian Religion, embodied by the Catholic Church will be preserved because of the divine promises and the sacraments. He thinks everything depends on the present [apparent] milquetoast leadership of the church.


It doesn’t. The novus ordo mass, despite its accidental deficiencies is more than enough to overcome the world.


4. “It is not considered acceptable for NRx to be a Christian movement or to develop into a Christian movement.”


It did not begin as a Christian movement. Why don’t we take a look at a list of the essential insights of NRx and then decide whether it’s compatible with the faith or not?

Bentham on Filmer & Locke

In an unpublished manuscript, Jeremy Bentham wrote:

Filmer's origin of government is exemplified everywhere: Locke's scheme of government has not ever, to the knowledge of any body, been exemplified any where. In every family there is government, in every family there is subjection, and subjection of the most absolute kind: the father, sovereign, the mother and the young, subjects. According to Locke's scheme, men knew nothing at all of governments till they met together to make one. Locke has speculated so deeply, and reasoned so ingeniously, as to have forgot that he was not of age when he came into the world...Under the authority of the father, and his assistant and prime-minister the mother, every human creature is enured to subjection, is trained up into a habit of subjection. But, the habit once formed, nothing is easier than to transfer it from one object to another. Without the previous establishment of domestic government, blood only, and probably a long course of it, could have formed political government.[10]

Bentham went on to claim Filmer had failed to prove divine right theory but he had proved "the physical impossibility of the system of absolute equality and independence, by showing that subjection and not independence is the natural state of man".


10. J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1688-1832. Ideology, social structure and political practice during the ancien regime (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 75-76.


Source:  Wikipedia