>>Are you sure Aquinas said anything like that?<<

No. But there is so much we can never be truly sure of. Given the enormous volume of Aquinas's writings I'm not about to check. Be my guest.

>>Why would you now advocate Aquinas when, as an atheist, you hardly ascribe to anything he says anyway?<<

I'm not an atheist. I'm not a Christian either. Or an alchemist. Newton was both a devout Christian and an alchemist. Should I ignore his work in maths and physics? Disagreeing with Newton or Thomas on some points of theology is no reason to reject any good ideas they may have. Rejecting good ideas just because the person who had them doesn't share your faith is a logical fallacy not to mention silly.

Cheers,

Tony

Dan,
I’ve argued with many lay-creationists and not one, in my experience, had read or considered the arguments of evolution. I’ve read a few attempted defences of creationism, but nothing compelling.
George,
Thanks for the questions and I’d start by saying I’ve never pretended to be absolutely consistent; indeed I’ve quoted Emerson a couple of times on OLO to the effect that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds”. I like to think I’m not wildly inconsistent either, though I don’t dogmatically defend any position or ideology as mine—this is precisely what I accuse too many people of doing; as though once having stated something in haste one is bound to it. Who is it who has such a command of any topic that s/he can be inflexible on one side or the other? I like to think I’m open to challenge and willing to reconsider. I’d even say that our convictions are probably most doubtful, and likely based on predisposition and ideology.

No I don’t consider myself a postmodernist, except in that I subscribe to the idea of the “postmodern condition” Jameson describes in the link I cited. Derrida is more a poststructuralist and deconstruction is its practical side, though deconstruction began earlier and was consummated by Heidegger, following Nietzsche, which ostensibly spelled the end of metaphysics—though I’m sceptical. If you’re interested, here’s an excellent short book on it by an excellent scholar: http://tiny.cc/hl9tcw
Derrida’s deconstruction is linguistic and subscribes to the idea that we’re, at least subjectively, utterly constructed and that all experience, and thus “truth”, is derived from the “symbolic order”, though he doesn’t discount the idea that there’s a “remainder”; Levinas too speculates about “creaturely being”.
I agree that we’re subjectively constructed, but I see consciousness as something more fundamental than subjectivity and possibly exceeding its cultural determinants. I see our subjective enthralment as consciousness’s suspension of disbelief. Despite the hype, science is nowhere near explaining consciousness, and indeed many experts concede it’s unlikely materialism can explain it. At the very least they concede we ought to consider non-material determinants,
tbc

..cont.
including variations on the old theme of dualism, and even the possibility of something akin to a soul. This will provoke howls of derision, but these “analytic” philosophers argue that nothing should be arbitrarily discounted.
So yes I am a “limited” cultural (rather than social) constructivist, and as I’ve indicated above, I do believe science is at least partly, though substantially, conditioned/impeded/conflated by the host culture, and that research design and findings will almost certainly be coloured by unconscious biases; designing impartial scientific methods remains an enormous challenge.
Russell says that “numbers hold sway above the flux”; I can’t comment.
With the New Atheists I object a) to reductionist notions of philosophical/theological culture—as though these were nothing more than boneheaded theism—which they’ve never read; b) to their apoliticism, which is neoliberalism by default since, as I’ve argued, “empiricism will always confirm the status quo”; c) to their uncritical stance apropos the “macro” and destructive irrationalities the capitalist order is founded on. Simultaneously, they summarily condemn “micro-ideologies” (symptoms rather than the disease) they don’t understand; d) their refusal to consider their own ideological biases; e) the general problematic of making rationalism an institution, without having theorised an existential ethics, and without having considered that humans are inherently irrational/creative/idealistic creatures who are, nevertheless, to be converted and made rational; f) the overall dearth of thinking that’s gone into the crusade.
As I said above, I tend “toward the coherence theory of truth”, as opposed to the “correspondence theory” held by empiricists (and Aquinas), and I trust my comments in that other thread were coherent in their whole context. I’m not above using hyperbole, however, and let’s not forget that all signification, in any case, is highly rhetorical and open to distortion and idiosyncratic interpretation. Are we not all of us constantly misinterpreted?
At bottom I’m interested in how human life could be better; I’m open-minded about what constitutes the human condition, an idealist/materialist mix, but I’m more interested in criticising and addressing the mess we’ve made in the here and now—which science and religion are both complicit in

George says of Squeers, "I really am trying to understand you, labeling you somehow as belonging to this or that philosophical school:"

It's difficult, George. You ask him if he's a post-modernist, he says "no" (consistent with his blanket comment on a thread you cited), then goes on to hammer science as being socially constructed, showing where he stands in the Science War. His stance has shifted and it is simply because it is necessary to prosecute his case against rational scientific thought to attack atheism.

Science is self correcting. People claim all sorts of ideas based on rationalism (not to be confused with rationality) on matters not based in science without ever having them tested. Scientific ideas are jettisoned or amended as they fail. Ideas only hold currency while they are supported by experiments designed to test their predictive capacity. Empiricism is basic to this process, and for Squeers to assert/barely argue that "empiricism will always confirm the status quo" is complete bunk as many a failed scientific idea attests to. To say science is "prone to accept as realities things that are merely evidence of underlying biases and ideological pressures" is the same bs put up by some in the humanities who clearly didn't understand the built-in self-righting capacity built into science.

Science is corruptible, it's true, but in it's normal progress any bias brought to it is snuffed out simply by its process. Still, some dupes see claims on toothpaste commercials as exemplary of bias in real science.

Clearly I'm a realist in the war, so I need not go on. Squeer's attack on scientific truth, the matter he picks me up on, is a short reprise of the post-modernists' side of the Science Wars.

cont'd

The reason Squeer's "philosophical school" is hard to characterize after having read a lot of him, George thanks to your links, George, is that he borrows what he needs from each school to prosecute whatever the case at hand requires, consistent with his dis-belief in belief. He doesn't really have a strong position on anything, let alone his own supposed atheism. He makes a virtue of the inevitable inconsistency in his positions thus arising over time (e.g. post-modernism)with a fine line from Ralph Waldo.

Therefore, to a degree he's a devil's advocate, so justifying my questioning of his atheism in my last post.

He equates Dawkin's and Hitchin's public appeals with those of tele-evangelists'. They do/did not invite anybody to join in a belief. They appeal(ed) to rationality not insecurity. If Squeers truly thinks that rationale is flawed at it's foundation, and that there is the highest virtue in accepting the limitations of our intelligence, then why doesn't he take the next step and give over to the tele-evangelists who agree with him.

While I'm loathe to get in the way of this fascinating debate between Luciferase, George and Squeers, I just wanted to add this piece by Umberto Eco on Thomas Aquinas on the 'concord' he introduced to religious thought.

"...Thomas did not aristotelianise Christianity, he christianised Aristotle. He never thought that with reason everything could be understood, but that everything is understood through faith; he wanted to say only that faith was not in conflict with reason, and that therefore it was possible to enjoy the luxury of reason, emerging from the universe of hallucination. And so it is clear why in the architecture of his works the main chapters speak of God, angels, the soul, virtues, eternal life, but, within these chapters, everything finds a place that is, more than rational, "reasonable." Within the theological architecture you understand why man knows things, why his body is made a certain way, why he has to examine facts and opinions to make a decision, and resolve contradictions without concealing them, trying to reconcile them openly....These are all solutions based on equilibrium and on the virtue he called "prudence," whose job was to "retain the memory of gained experience, to have an exact sense of ends, prompt attention to situations, rational and progressive investigation, circumspection of opportunities, precaution to complexities, and discernment of exceptional conditions."
It works, because this mystic who was so eager to lose himself in the beatific contemplation of God to whom the human soul aspires "by nature" was also alert, in a human way, to natural values and respected rational discourse."