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  • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
    The only thing we know about early Christians come from the Church Fathers. And they are almost unanimous, even if not everyone wrote on it.
    Again, all of this has been pointed out to him and he chooses to ignore it and simply repeats himself like a deranged parrot clinging to snippets from my Jewish Learning -- who are anything but experts of ancient Jewish practices. Moreover, Flavius Josephus as well as works like the Pseudo-Phocylides, Sibylline Oracles and even the Didache (which was Jewish Christian) contradict their assessments.

    Starting with the New Testament, Luke 1:41, 44 clearly reveals that babies were considered alive and responsive while still in their mother's womb. That means killing them would have been regarded as the same as murder. And that is something repeatedly condemned.

    Here is a list of just some of those who condemned abortion early on:
    • I Enoch
    • Sibylline Oracles
    • Pseudo-Phocylides
    • Flavius Josephus
    • Didache
    • Apocalypse of Peter
    • Epistle of Barnabas
    • Origen
    • Athenagoras of Athens
    • Tertullian
    • Cyprian
    • Clement of Alexandria
    • Hippolytus of Rome
    • Basil the Great
    • Jerome
    • Apostolic Constitutions
    • Synod of Elvira
    • Synod Ancyra
    • John Chrysostom
    • 3rd ecumenical council (Chalcedon)

    And they all, in spite of coming from different traditions in Judaism and Christianity, agree that abortion is a sin on par with murder which is was usually associated with if not called a form of it.

    Here are a couple of my posts discussing this (although the best stuff was written by Adrift):
    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    The bottom line was that the "pro-choice" movement would have been viewed as nothing less than an abomination. For just one example, the Jewish Christian Didache (a.k.a., The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) which is commonly accepted as dating from the 1st cent. makes it crystal clear:

    And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born."


    They place abortion squarely in with other such gross violations of the natural and moral law as such acts as murder, infanticide, pederasty and stealing. It is impossible to envision the anonymous author of the Didache proclaiming that while he is personally opposed to abortion he thinks it ought to be up to the mother to decide if she wants to kill this unborn baby any more than they would have said the same about the murder of anyone else.

    And the Didache is not the only first century example of opposition of abortion from Jews and Christians we have. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus' defense of Judaism, Contra Apionem ("Against Apion") also spells it out:

    "The law moreover enjoins us to bring up all our offspring: and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten; or to destroy it afterward. And if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child; by destroying a living creature, and diminishing human kind."


    And prior to Josephus we have passages from manuscripts like the 1st-2nd century B.C. Sibylline Oracles:

    "The godless furthermore shall to all ages perish, all who did evils aforetime, and committed murders, And all who are accomplices therein, ... All who caused abortions, and all who their offspring cast unlawfully away."


    Shortly after that we can read in Pseudo-Phocylides:

    "Do not let a woman destroy the unborn babe in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and the vultures as a prey."


    Note the recurring theme? Killing an unborn baby was seen as no different than murdering a young child. Both were heinous crimes.

    But let's continue forward.

    In the 2nd century Apocalypse of Peter we read:

    "And near that place I saw another strait place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion."


    From the same time we have the Epistle of Barnabas which succinctly states:

    You shall not kill either the fetus by abortion or the new born


    Also around the same time, we have the Early Church Father (ECF) Athenagoras of Athens declaring in his Petition to Emperor Marcus Aurelius

    "We say that women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give account of it to God"


    In the next century the ECF Clement of Alexandria, in Paedagogus ("Pedagogue" -- the second part of his trilogy and where he explains Christian ethics)

    "Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, if order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings."


    Just a couple of years later the ECF St. Hippolytus of Rome, in his primary work, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium ("Refutation of All Heresies") is perfectly clear when he wrote:

    "Reputed believers began to resort to drugs for producing Sterility and to gird themselves round, so as to expel what was conceived on account of their not wanting to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same time."


    He called abortion murder.

    Now in the 3rd cent. A.D. St. Basil the Great brings up abortion in a few of his writings telling us:

    "She who has deliberately destroyed a fetus has to pay the penalty of murder...here it is not only the child to be born that is vindicated, but also the woman herself who made an attempt against her own life, because usually the women die in such attempts. Furthermore, added to this is the destruction of the child, another murder... Moreover, those, too, who give drugs causing abortion are deliberate murderers themselves, as well as those receiving the poison which kills the fetus."


    And

    "Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years' penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not."


    About a decade later we find the Archbishop of Constantinople and ECF John Chrysostom stating

    "Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth? For you do not even let the harlot remain a mere harlot, but make her a murderer also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather something even worse than murder. For I have no real name to give it, since it does not destroy the thing born but prevents its being born. Why then do you abuse the gift of God and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the place of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter?"


    So from the centuries just before the advent of Christianity and for the next few centuries after it we see an unbroken tradition of viewing abortion as a horrible act. And more important than any of that look what the Bible itself says as I've already pointed out in post #10.

    And
    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    Since the most commonly accepted view is that Adam was specially created, without a mother and never in a womb your use of Genesis 2:7 here reveals profound ignorance and desperate grasping at straws.

    And all humans were "living beings" thereafter without having to take a breath first or you wouldn't have verses such as Psalm 22:10

    On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.


    Kind of hard for a lifeless clump of tissue to have a God like that, wouldn't you agree?

    There is also Job 31:15; Psalm 139:13-16; Isaiah 44:24; Jeremiah 1:5...

    And obviously, as the New Testament clearly demonstrates, a baby in the womb was considered as being alive as we can seen in Luke 1:41, 44:

    And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ... For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.


    Likewise in the Old Testament we see in Exodus 21:22-25:

    “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.


    So if you injure (not by accident but while fighting) a pregnant woman and kill the unborn baby, your life is therefore forfeit "you shall pay life for life."

    Fail better


    This tradition that abortion is wrong and sinful was continued into the Protestant Church. For instance, in his commentary on Exodus 21:22, the 16th century Reformation leader John Calvin wrote:

    ...the unborn, though enclosed in the womb of his mother, is already a human being, and it is an almost monstrous crime to rob it of life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his most secure place of refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy the unborn in the womb before it has come to light.


    Around the same time Martin Luther said

    "Surely at such a time (conception), the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed."


    A century later the Church of Scotland minister John Wemyss wrote

    "It is a great cruelty to kill the child in the mother's belly, to kill this innocent in his first mansion, which should have been the place of his refuge; the tunicle in which he is wrapped in his mother’s belly is called Shilo, because the young infant should live peaceably in it, in his mother’s womb, as in a place of refuge."


    The Presbyterians here in the U.S. were particularly outspoken about it, at a convention in Pittsburgh in 1869 they issued the following statement:

    "We regard the destruction by parents of their offspring, before birth, with abhorrence, as a crime against God and against nature."


    And in 1962 and reaffirmed in 1965 they issued following statement:

    "The fetus is a human life to be protected by the criminal law from the moment when the ovum is fertilized.... [A]s Christians, we believe that this should not be an individual decision on the part of the physician and couple. The decision should be limited and restrained by the larger society."


    The Protestant churches in general continued this opposition to abortion until 1970 when some churches -- ironically including Presbyterian Church (USA) -- started becoming pro-abortion. One, the Southern Baptist Convention, supported abortion in 1971 but reversed that decision in 1980 and are now staunchly pro-life.

    I'm always still in trouble again

    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

    Comment


    • I was about to write the same Rogue06, thanks for the doing it.

      I wonder if we should create a sticky we can just link to and quote from?

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
        Originally posted by Leonhard
        Most traits we have, cannot be accounted for by natural selection.
        This is an ‘argument from ignorance’ fallacy.
        It is not. It would only be an example of an example of argument from ignorance, if I used our lack of knowledge to argue for it. In fact, most traits, and why they are precisely the way they are, cannot be accounted for by natural selection. This is actually normal science in evolutionary biology. There are many traits that are free to change without it having anything other than negligible effects on our survivability. There's a whole field called neutral evolution, that simply document these features.

        An example would be the shape of a maple leaf. There's no precise reason for how its shape has changed over the millenia, except just natural drift of the genes. There is no reason to think that there's an adaptive reason for any particular part of our mental make up, when in fact most features don't have any selective pressures.

        More than merely “speculated on it”.
        No, Darwin was pretty much limited to speculating when it came to the evolution of the human mind. This isn't controversial. It's also irrelevant. What Darwin believed, or didn't, isn't what the theory of evolutionary biology developed into. He just started it.

        Why are you going down with this ship? I don't understand. It doesn't cost you anything to admit that you were wrong here, in fact, it would establish a measure of integrity in you. If you insist in the face of evidence, the opposite conclusion that can be drawn from it, then it just makes you come off as incredulous.

        It is the role of science, not metaphysics, to ascertain how and why we are the way we are.
        Oh really?

        What scientific experiment did you perform to establish this, and what peer-reviewed journal did you write it up in?

        But this is a straw-man. I’m NOT arguing the field of Evolutionary Psychology. I’m arguing the evolved tendency in natural selection for the cooperation of hominids in order to render them successful survivors...


        So, what DOES matter in an ethical picture, Leonhard?
        Great, you're finally starting to ask me the right reasons. I might take you up on this later.

        Yes it was wrong because Aristotle had no means of establishing a verifiable premise.
        He made statements like "There are objects that move", he based that on empirical observations. And he was interested in what had to antecedently true in order for objects to move. His premise was that objects could move.

        ...are you in denial of that?

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
          It is not. It would only be an example of an example of argument from ignorance, if I used our lack of knowledge to argue for it. In fact, most traits, and why they are precisely the way they are, cannot be accounted for by natural selection. This is actually normal science in evolutionary biology. There are many traits that are free to change without it having anything other than negligible effects on our survivability. There's a whole field called neutral evolution, that simply document these features.

          An example would be the shape of a maple leaf. There's no precise reason for how its shape has changed over the millenia, except just natural drift of the genes. There is no reason to think that there's an adaptive reason for any particular part of our mental make up, when in fact most features don't have any selective pressures.



          No, Darwin was pretty much limited to speculating when it came to the evolution of the human mind. This isn't controversial. It's also irrelevant. What Darwin believed, or didn't, isn't what the theory of evolutionary biology developed into. He just started it.

          Why are you going down with this ship? I don't understand. It doesn't cost you anything to admit that you were wrong here, in fact, it would establish a measure of integrity in you. If you insist in the face of evidence, the opposite conclusion that can be drawn from it, then it just makes you come off as incredulous.



          Oh really?

          What scientific experiment did you perform to establish this, and what peer-reviewed journal did you write it up in?







          Great, you're finally starting to ask me the right reasons. I might take you up on this later.



          He made statements like "There are objects that move", he based that on empirical observations. And he was interested in what had to antecedently true in order for objects to move. His premise was that objects could move.

          ...are you in denial of that?
          And do we know the answer to Aristotle query, i.e to his question "what had to be antecedently true in order that objects move?" Being interested, and having questions, philosophy, is not the same thing as having knowledge. Knowledge is in the answering of those questions empirically.
          Last edited by JimL; 11-30-2019, 11:38 AM.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by JimL View Post
            And do we know the answer to Aristotle query, i.e to his question "what had to be antecedently true in order that objects move?" Being interested, and having questions, philosophy, is not the same thing as having knowledge. Knowledge is in the answering of those questions empirically.
            I would say yes we do, but even go beyond that. Just examine what you're saying here. You're doing philosophy right here, not science.

            If you limit yourself to only the results that can be acquired empirical statements in peer-reviewed scientific journals (how science is done today since the 18th century), as you and Tassman seem to define knowledge to... how can you know the answer to this statement? Everything you're saying here is perfectly philosophical statements. I wouldn't say they're well-made statements, but you're not doing science when you're doing this.

            The logical positivists, who were a philosophical school who did champion your idea, that only scientific statements (and abstract analytical mathematical statements) make sense, would claim what you said above was nonsense since it could neither be analytically deduced nor empirically verified.

            Like it or not, you can't escape metaphysics or philosophy. It supercedes science.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
              I was about to write the same Rogue06, thanks for the doing it.

              I wonder if we should create a sticky we can just link to and quote from?
              An Abortion Fact List of sorts. Probably in the Pro-Life section smiley hmm.gif




              As I said, Adrift has posted some awfully good stuff on this, and the same PRATTs keep popping up like mushrooms... I'd be for it.

              I'm always still in trouble again

              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

              Comment


              • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                An Abortion Fact List of sorts. Probably in the Pro-Life section [ATTACH=CONFIG]41137[/ATTACH]




                As I said, Adrift has posted some awfully good stuff on this, and the same PRATTs keep popping up like mushrooms... I'd be for it.
                I'd support it. Would be a useful resource for other forum discussions as well.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                  I'd support it. Would be a useful resource for other forum discussions as well.
                  What is this of which you speak? Other. Forums?

                  I'm always still in trouble again

                  "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                  "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                  "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                    I would say yes we do,
                    And what is the answer and how did we come to know it?

                    but even go beyond that. Just examine what you're saying here. You're doing philosophy right here, not science.
                    I didn't say that one couldn't do philosophy, I said that philosophy isn't knowing.
                    If you limit yourself to only the results that can be acquired empirical statements in peer-reviewed scientific journals (how science is done today since the 18th century), as you and Tassman seem to define knowledge to... how can you know the answer to this statement? Everything you're saying here is perfectly philosophical statements. I wouldn't say they're well-made statements, but you're not doing science when you're doing this.
                    Because being interested, having questions, philosophizing if you will, by definition are the opposites of knowing.
                    The logical positivists, who were a philosophical school who did champion your idea, that only scientific statements (and abstract analytical mathematical statements) make sense, would claim what you said above was nonsense since it could neither be analytically deduced nor empirically verified.
                    We can only empirically verify whether a philosophical assumption is true or false, without that verification, we don't know.

                    Like it or not, you can't escape metaphysics or philosophy. It supercedes science.
                    I don't think anyone is trying to escape them, and you might argue that they precede science, but they don't supercede science, and they are not necessarily a source knowledge .

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by JimL View Post
                      And what is the answer and how did we come to know it?
                      I'm glad you're beginning to ask the right questions.

                      I didn't say that one couldn't do philosophy, I said that philosophy isn't knowing.
                      In that cause you would be forced to admit "I don't know whether science works or not."

                      We can only empirically verify whether a philosophical assumption is true or false, without that verification, we don't know.
                      And how do you know that? What arguments are used to show this? You can't use the success of science, to argue that science says anything about reality for instance only that the results are useful. Though granted, there is a school of skeptical philosophy that rejects the notion of reality and considers science only as providing handy useful notation and mathematical models for predicting events, but not telling anything about what actually occurs.

                      I don't think anyone is trying to escape them, and you might argue that they precede science, but they don't supercede science, and they are not necessarily a source knowledge .
                      I think you're doing a misunderstanding I'd attribute to Carl Sagen, and other popularizers of science, who keep perpetuating the Dark Ages mythology. There's the claim that ancient philosophers rejected empirical knowledge. Yet if you'd read even a single chapter of the Almagest, or Plato, or Aristotle, Zeno of Elea, or Parmenides, or Aristotle, or Maimonides or any of the classic works, you'd realize that they frequently employed empirical observations. Aristotle especially did which created the whole scholastic tradition of philosophy.

                      The same is true of Bacon, or Descartes, or Russell, who were rebelling against the rather baroque metaphysics in their own era.

                      All of these philosophers begin with observations that are true, and derive results from them, and examine other results and concepts.

                      A classical discussion between Zeno and Parmenides about whether motion is a real phenomenon or an illusion, where Zeno holding that motion is real, and all things change and therefore "it is impossible to step into the same river twice", whereas Parmeineides held that motion was impossible and entire an illusion since according to him motion required something to cease to exist in one location and begin to exist in another location, but in between those two transitions it wouldn't be, and since from nothing nothing comes, such a movement would be impossible.

                      So here we have observations of entities in the world, the empirical fact that there is movement and successive changes, the fact that can successfully refer to items such as tables, chairs, and people.

                      It was solved later by Aristotle, who provided what metaphysics we would need to consistently talk about such things. Russell and Descartes had another solution based on mathematical functions, where position of items changes according to a function over time. This is consistent with Aristotle's answer though a little more specific.

                      That would be an example of a classical philosophical argument about movement and change. There is an empirical observation, and they proceed then by abductive and deductive reasoning. Coming up with a best explanation metaphysics of why something can be. In this case, Aristotle (and later Russell and Descartes) were able to come up with a much more satisfying metaphysics than Zeno and Parmenides.

                      I'm really broadbrushing the discussion here though, I really encourage you to read some classic philosophy. It really broadens your horizon.
                      Last edited by Leonhard; 11-30-2019, 02:22 PM.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                        What is this of which you speak? Other. Forums?
                        I think he may have meant other discussion topics on these forums. A sort of "boiler plate" or FAQ to address common recurring questions and arguments for each of a few different topics.
                        Geislerminian Antinomian Kenotic Charispneumaticostal Gender Mutualist-Egalitarian.

                        Beige Federalist.

                        Nationalist Christian.

                        "Everybody is somebody's heretic."

                        Social Justice is usually the opposite of actual justice.

                        Proud member of the this space left blank community.

                        Would-be Grand Vizier of the Padishah Maxi-Super-Ultra-Hyper-Mega-MAGA King Trumpius Rex.

                        Justice for Ashli Babbitt!

                        Justice for Matthew Perna!

                        Arrest Ray Epps and his Fed bosses!

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                          It is not. It would only be an example of an example of argument from ignorance, if I used our lack of knowledge to argue for it.
                          It’s also an ‘argument from ignorance’ if you use “our lack of knowledge” to dismiss an argument. This is what you are doing when you say: “Most traits we have, cannot be accounted for by natural selection”.

                          In fact, most traits, and why they are precisely the way they are, cannot be accounted for by natural selection.
                          How can "most traits" be accounted for if not, at bottom, by natural selection?

                          This is actually normal science in evolutionary biology. There are many traits that are free to change without it having anything other than negligible effects on our survivability. There's a whole field called neutral evolution, that simply document these features.
                          “Neutral evolution” only applies to micro-level organisms. It does NOT apply at the macro-level of genetic variability generated by mutations as they arise within populations.

                          An example would be the shape of a maple leaf. There's no precise reason for how its shape has changed over the millenia, except just natural drift of the genes. There is no reason to think that there's an adaptive reason for any particular part of our mental make up, when in fact most features don't have any selective pressures.
                          The selective pressures that do NOT reinforce survival (or that reduce the chance of survival) could result in extinction – as has happened millions of times on Earth.

                          Oh really?

                          What scientific experiment did you perform to establish this, and what peer-reviewed journal did you write it up in?
                          The role of science by definition is “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment” Oxford. This applies to humans as well to every other natural phenomenon. Unless you are arguing that humans are NOT natural phenomena.

                          Great, you're finally starting to ask me the right reasons. I might take you up on this later.
                          So, stop being patronizing and answer. What DOES matter in an ethical picture, Leonhard, and why does it matter?

                          He made statements like "There are objects that move", he based that on empirical observations. And he was interested in what had to antecedently true in order for objects to move. His premise was that objects could move.
                          Aristotle’s premise was also that the earth was the center of the universe surrounded by celestial spheres guiding the motion of Sun, Moon and stars etc. What empirical observations were these based upon?
                          “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post



                            In that cause you would be forced to admit "I don't know whether science works or not."
                            No. We know science works.

                            And how do you know that? What arguments are used to show this? You can't use the success of science, to argue that science says anything about reality for instance only that the results are useful.
                            The results of science are useful because they are reality based, (unless you are assuming that reality is non-material and non-natural). If they were not reality based, they would be of no more value than a philosophical argument which cannot be considered reality-based at all.

                            Philosophy has its uses but at bottom it remains a strictly academic discipline - useful for religious believers - but unlike science it cannot be verified, nor tested, nor make predictions - whereas scientific beliefs can.
                            “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                              It’s also an ‘argument from ignorance’ if you use “our lack of knowledge” to dismiss an argument.
                              Since I didn't do that, its not a an argument from ignorance. We know that most of our features aren't selected for by natural selection. Many are left to freely change over the years due to neutral genetic drift.

                              How can "most traits" be accounted for if not, at bottom, by natural selection? ... “Neutral evolution” only applies to micro-level organisms.
                              Read more than the first paragraph from Wikipedia next time. And try to read a little more deeply.

                              Neutral evolution doesn't apply to "micro-level organisms". Neutral evolution applies to all the micro-changes in our DNA. Most of our alleles have multiple variant copies, and they're all doing pretty much that. 90% of the historical changes to our DNA have no adaptive advantages. They can be demonstrated by combinatorial studies to be almost entirely due to random genetic drift.

                              I am not making an argument against natural selection here. Nobody denies that it plays an essential role in describing evolutionary history.

                              However, you're claiming, without a good cause as you might think, that various aspects of human culture and human psychology are due to adaptive features. That's not a given at all. Human willingness to sacrifice their lives, for their beloved could easily even be maladaptive, that we've incorporated by exaption. Meaning the feature was already there, and it was adapted to its present state from something else. The reason a maladaptive feature can be present is because features don't exist independently of each other. If we changed in some way in one place, other parts of ourselves would likely change as well.

                              The role of science by definition is “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment” Oxford.
                              So the Oxford dictionary supersedes and precedes Science? You were the one who claimed that science was the only approach we had of knowing anything, and now you're mentioning this magical entity called Oxford? Why should I trust the claims of Oxford over that of science?

                              See, what I'm trying to get at here, is that you're using philosophy, whether you like it or not. And you need to do that, even to answer basic questions, such as questions about what science is and what science is actually doing.

                              Science, ironically, can't answer those questions.

                              So, stop being patronizing
                              I will, once you start to show that you have intellectual integrity, that you can admit to being wrong, and that you admit that there's a lot of reading you need to do. Integrity and humility, if you showed either, and stopped with the new atheism bit that got old all the way back 2010, you'd come off as a much better person.

                              Otherwise, a discussion about philosophy is wasted on you. And I have better things to do.

                              I suggest you hang around the feminists for a spell, try to listen to the Talk Nerdy podcast by Carris Santa Maria, if you're not that much into books. She has a much more positive and humble approach to these things.

                              Aristotle’s premise was also that the earth was the center of the universe surrounded by celestial spheres guiding the motion of Sun, Moon and stars etc. What empirical observations were these based upon?
                              Uhm... again, I have to ask whether you're reading my posts at all, or whether you can remember anything of the conversation outside of the quotes you create. Because seriously it feels like your mental space is limited to just the quotes you've drawn.

                              I'll just requote you the post again

                              "I think you have Aristotle confused with Ptolomeus, who used the results of astrography at the time to chart the movements of the planets and drew up arguably the first empirically based model of the solar system.

                              I suggest you read the Almagest by Ptolomeus. He speculates that the stars are infinitely far away (though the greek can also be interpreted as just extremely far away). Each chapter of the book is full of astronomical measurements using the admittedly primitive tools at the time.

                              The model is wrong, but it was quite empirical."

                              As a further point, I'd argue in Ptolomeus defense that he was quite precise in the phenomenology he described. The planets, as he pointed them out, underwent retrograde motion. And he systematized the cataloging of planetary observations.

                              Again, for crying out loud Tassman read some books. You don't come off scholarly at all. And if you don't wanna do that, engage with some humility. Anything like that would make you a lot more affable, and people would listen to you more.

                              All you're accomplishing on this forum is confirming all the worst stereotypes Christians have about atheists. That's about it.
                              Last edited by Leonhard; 12-01-2019, 06:47 AM.

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                              • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                                No. We know science works.
                                But you can't use science to determine that. So how do you know science works, if you've limited your source of trustworthy knowledge to science?

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