>>For what it's worth, Tony, I've been on your side all along and find your position eminently reasonable. How anyone can defend Craibe's position is beyond me.<<

Thank you for your kind words Squeers. Craibe's position is defensible for Christians if its widely accepted among Christians that sinners - not just homosexuals: out of the list St. Paul makes in the passage being discussed I'm guilty of gossip, insolence, arrogance, disobedience to my parents, debate and fornication at least so I'm probably worse than some homosexuals - deserve their inevitable and probably natural or accidental death if they do not seek redemption through Christ. I'm don't know if it is that widely accepted: most of the Christians I know are really nice people and would have no truck with the idea that some of us deserve our deaths because we don't belong to the Christian faith.

>>The point was whether Craibe was arguing that homosexuals should be killed, and he wasn't. You acknowledge that. The rest is waffle designed to try to hide the fact that you do acknowledge that.<<

Well obviously: I acknowledged that six days ago in my third post on this thread:

>>GrahamY is right. Major Craib said gay people deserved to die not that they should be killed<<

TBC

That particular point was never in contention between me and you and I don't know why you think it has been unless you haven't been reading my posts all the way through: from the very start of our discussion I have been in agreement with you that Major Craibe did not say homosexuals should be killed just that they deserved to die. If I've been trying to hide the fact that I acknowledge that I've been doing a rotten job of it. I don't know why you're so eager to argue about a point that was never in contention.

The discussion has moved on from that point to cover topics like whether we die because we're human or because of Genesis 3:1-6; whether the death St. Paul refers to in Romans 1:32 is a metaphorical spiritual death or a literal physical death and whether or not sinners are more deserving of that death than those who seek redemption through Christ. If you don't want to discuss these issues - which I think are a lot more interesting and meaningful than what some Salvo said on the wireless - any more then all that remains is to thank you for the interesting discussion we've had so far and to wish you all the best: live long and prosper, GrahamY.

Cheers,

Tony

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Dear Dan S de Merengue,

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I'm afraid I have no means of knowing what the motivations are of the neuroscience researches whose findings I was referring to. There are three, in particular, I had in mind:

Professor Jordan Grafman, of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, in Bethesda, near Washington

Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain Cognition and Professor in the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California

Dr Michael Persinger, a cognitive neuroscience researcher and Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience at the Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

I am not aware of anything having been published by any of their peers contesting their findings or their research. Also, perhaps it is because I am a perfect neophyte in such matters that I tend to naïvely consider that renowned academics of the stature and reputation of these specialists have nothing to gain and everything to lose by indulging in non-scientific practice and publishing non-falsifiable results.

I understand your scepticism and sympathize with you but I do not interpret their findings as an attempt to "explain away all religious beliefs" but rather to "explain what they find to be an important contributing factor (or facilitator) of religious beliefs". The human brain is an important mechanism in the complex process of perception, feeling and thought, leading, inter alia, to belief.

Perhaps further research will belie the findings of these specialists and offer another explanation but I suspect that the brain will have something to do with that as well.

I take comfort in your remark to david f. "However, in scientific and philosophical disputes we must be free to follow evidence wherever it leads".

Please allow me to reiterate my personal understanding that religious belief or faith seems to have its origins in custom and tradition, handed down, generation after generation, possibly synchronizing favourably with genetic receptors located in the temporal lobes of the human brain, as posited by cognitive neuroscience researchers.

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Pericles,
the concept of purpose suggests teleology and I know of no materialists or evolutionists who support that. Justice is a luxury, a word applied by a dominant power to its activities; a rationale, rather than vested in any presiding ethical order. How can we prate about justice in a society remarkable for its injustice? Pragmatism is precisely a response to a world without justice; justice has not "come about through a process of evolution". It's a conceit, hypothetical at best, a floating signifier conjured as need arises and abandoned just as readily. Our sense of justice, to mean anything, has to rest on some kind of moral authority. Reason has no moral authority, because it's not disinterested, but is riddled with conceits and vested interests it fails to account for. Pragmatism is a partial acknowledgement of this.
"What is it about logic that you find so threatening, that you have to redefine it as vanity? I personally find rational thought has a generally civilizing effect"
It's vanity to suppose we are logical or rational (or that these exist in themselves); as Hume pointed out, we are not. Neither is reason vested in the individual (any more than a slug is self-determining) who is only the dupe and mouthpiece of his respective cultural logic.

GrahamY,
on the basis of what I've just said, I'm sure Craib's position is eminently "reasonable". I retract the term "hate-speak", though his words were hardly ecumenical or calculated to foster tolerance.

I know exactly what I mean by "formalist"; the question is do you? Eclecticism is precisely what the New Critics threw out.

I have read Milton and do not believe he "saw the whole thing metaphorically and had no problem writing his own version". He said himself that he was justifying the ways of God to men. The whole is a rationale of the fall and a defence of "limited" free will. Indeed Milton warns allegorically against the ruses of reason and rhetoric that the will is prey to; it's a great work of humanist scepticism.

Dear Dan,

There simply is no other explanation for the development of species than evolution. It is the basis of biological science. That you don’t accept that fact is your problem. Science does depend on evidence and must follow where it leads. It simply does not lead anywhere but to evolution. There is no evidence for any other process by which species develop.

The way life on earth came to be has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution deals with the development of species. The origin of life is another matter. Scientists are agreed that life started out when some matter became self replicating.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replication will tell you about self-replication. Since we cannot with certainty know what the early earth was like we probably will never know for sure how life began.

US law forbids either the promotion of religion by the government or interference by the government with religious belief. What people choose to believe or not believe is simply no business of government. That is the meaning of separation of religion and state.

Creationism is not a competitor with evolution for the explanation of the development of species. It is religious belief. When schools teach Creationism as an alternative to evolution or a competing theory and the schools are financed by US government money they violate US law since US government funds should not promote religion.

There is no controversy about evolution any more than there is controversy about gravity. Gravity is the only scientific explanation we have for the attraction of mass to other mass, and evolution is the only scientific explanation we have for the development of species.

You are free to have what religious belief you wish. However, it should not be confused with science which relies on evidence. US law forbids government money to promote religion. Judges certainly do not decide what people should say or think. However, they can decide when government funds are wrongfully spent. Teaching Creationism in public schools in the US is misusing government funds since it is using government to promote religion.

We have been through this before.

Squeers,

"It's vanity to suppose we are logical or rational (or that these exist in themselves)..."

Our concept of "justice" (or any concept) whether it has meaning or reality, can be ascribed to our having evolved with a massive outgrowth of brain matter called the neo-cortex. (Of course, the fact that it's overlaid onto mammalian and reptilian brains does throw a spanner in the works somewhat.)

My point is, even if we're "duped" by our concepts (or vanities?), isn't the fact that we're capable of forming them down to the physical evolution of our brains?