Lev I'm totally flummoxed.

If enough adults agree on a course of action the action becomes morally good? If we agree to drive on the left this is a moral act?

Resuscitating a child who cannot give assent and is not fully rational still must deserve our moral approbation. Yet there is no intersubjective agreement between the parties. Is this not a moral act?

What then of decades of masturbation to pornography? The consumer and pornographer both assent to the exchange and the actor and pornographer similarly. Yet common sense tells us that behaving like this deserves moral condemnation.

Do you mean that humans through intersubjective dialogue create objective moral values? Do you also believe physical scientists through dialogue create objective physical laws?

Help me out here, at the moment I'm incredulous.

Phillip Tang,

Thank you for referencing Dr. Francis Collins, co-head of the Human Genome Project, as he is an example of a deist who explicitly rejects "intelligent design".

Contrary to what you say, Dr. Collins did not become an "evangelical Christian" after working on the human genome project. As your own link explains, his conversion to theism occurred whilst dealing with critically ill patients as a doctor and reading the essays of C.S. Lewis.

In "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" (2006) Collins expresses his own theory of Theistic Evolution (TE), which explicitly rejects both Creationism and Intelligent Design.

The key elements of the book include:

a) The universe came out of nothingness c14 billion years ago.
b) Despite the extreme odds, the possibility for life were present and occurred.
c) Natural selected has causes the development of biodiversity over a long period of time with no need for supernatural intervention.
d) Human beings also include aspects independent of scientific evolution (the development of the human spirit is one such example).

You appear to have been misinformed. I hope you can take a leaf from Dr. Collins and accept that your theism does not require you to accept largely well-intentioned fairy tales literally.

It may surprise you, but I actually attend a mainstream church every week and evenly occassionally give services. This does not require me to reject scientific investigation or facts. Please, use the common reasoning powers that Providence gave you - and that includes the ability to realise when you've made a mistake.

PS: I would also double check your statistics. The chance of abiogenesis has been well studied:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

Martin,

I understand that you are flummoxed and incredulous. You are indeed suffering from a formal pragmatic modal confusion. If you don't know what that means, look it up.

Resucitation is an act of raising a person to the point where they can give assent. Moral acts do not just occur "in the instant" but with a spatial and temporal perspective as well.

I have already explained to you that objective reality is not determined by intersubjective consent and nor do moral acts determine objective reality (cf., post on 14 February). I should further emphasise that neither determine aesthetic expressions either; that too is a rational sui generis.

What is true and false is verified by correlation with the external world. What is right and wrong is verified by agreement between participations. What is beautiful and ugly is verified by the individual expression.

Your "common sense" that masturbation and pornography deserved moral condemnation is not something I share. You cannot show objectively why either of these acts in themselves morally wrong. All you are doing is asserting the aesthetic prejudices of yourself and some others on the matter. If you don't like masturbation, don't do it. It's a simple as that. But don't try telling other people what they can and cannot do with their body - because you wouldn't want others telling you what you can and cannot do with yours.

And by thinking about that illustration you might just begin to understand why moral acts require intersubjective agreement.

Thanks for saving me effort of responding, Lev.

Philip Tang,

Had you bothered to check the links I posted before, you could have saved yourself the embarrassment of posting the incorrect statistic.

If you check the last link in my last post, it will explain it very simple and indisputable way.

It amazes me that Creationists continue with the same old rubbish that has been debunked time and time again.

It would only take an hour or so of internet searches for you to find out that everything you think you know about evolution is wrong. The internet contains a wealth of information, and it's all at your fingertips... Use it.

AJ's fire and brimston muddled thinking is leading nowhere. Let's make it simple for him/her.

Atheists point to the evolution theory to support their view, believing it is scientific.

Agnostics claim that there aren't sufficient data to know for certain whether God/gods exist. Most agnostics subscribe to the evolution theory to explain how life began.

Theists believe in the existence of God/gods. They attribute the origin of life to intelligent design either by (i) spontaneous creation (ii) theistic evolution. Some would like to differentiate between intelligent design and theistic evolution. (Would someone like to explain the difference between ID and TE?)

Eminent scientist who subscribe to theistic evolution is Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, an evangelical Christian according to
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/07/collins/

Eminent scientist who subscribe to Creation is Australian Dr.Ian Macreadie who has won many prizes. There is a couple of hundred of scientist who subscribe to the Creation theory.
http://www.icr.org/research/index/research_biosci_macreadie/
http://bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/CreationistScientists

THEORY OF THEISTIC EVOLUTION

Between the outspokenness of the Creationists and Evolutionists and, the focus of the coverage of the media on these two groups, it is understandable as to why many people believe that there are only two positions that exist in regard to the creation/evolution controversy. However, there is a middle ground between the two extreme positions, ie Theistic Evolution.
http://www.blog.beyondthefirmament.com/video-presentations/does-science-contradict-the-bible/

wow! a couple hundred scientists subscribe to creation theory? i'm impressed!

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/steve/