Showing posts with label sntjohnny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sntjohnny. Show all posts

Friday, October 3, 2008

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A Response to Anthony "stjohnny" Horvath
On "Road-to-Damascus" type Revelations
To read the original blog by Horvast,click on Guest Author Rev. Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath
Note: I have been mistaken in the title to use for "sntjohnny." Here is what he wrote to me recently: "For quick reference- I am not a pastor or a reverend. I did finish the pastoral ministry degree in college which in many denominations is sufficient to receive ordination but in my denomination an additional four years on top of the bachelors degree is required- and I didn't do that. (and no complaints about it, either!)"

Introduction by Tony Horvath:

"Recently an atheist [Clark] stumbled upon my site and put [there]
a post responding to a post on my own blog on
the distinction between ‘natural’ revelation and ’special’ revelation.
The reader has all the information in the links above to follow this exchange, if they like.
"In my blog entry I indicated that many atheists won’t be convinced by anything less than their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. Mr. Clark responds:"

Part Two, (or is it Three?)
Atheists don’t believe such revelations as "revealed" or "natural" are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. A revealed revelation, as Horvath points out, "concerns that which is known and can only be known because God himself reveals it." A "natural" revelation is one which comes through contemplation about the nature of existence.

Any "atheist" who could possibly be looking for a revelation, revealed or natural, would be a contradiction, in terms of what his beliefs were, as concerning the lack of a god who could give such revelations versus what he expected as either an epistemic or metaphysical quality of knowledge. In other words, he either believes no god exists, in which case no quality of knowledge can be called "revelation" in the religious sense; or he believes religious-type revelations are possible, in which case he is wrong about being atheist.


By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one’s mind is what he “knows.” This is sometimes called “justified true belief,” as opposed to “unjustified.” The justification comes from the soundness of the argument that there are only two choices: naturalism and supernaturalism; and from the soundeness of the proposition that faith is the negation of reason.

Theists, on the other hand, 'know,' by the same standard, that God exists. Atheists 'know' he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation, or even to expect that perhaps such a supernatural quality of knowledge will be imparted to him, implies that he knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other.


You say I am engaged in an unnecessary discussion on what constitutes an atheist, that there are different kinds of atheists, including what we construe in technical terms as weak and strong atheists. You say your problem as a Christian Apologist is that these issues are largely an internal matter among atheists but each atheist insists on telling you what atheism absolutely is! "Atheism," you say, "reduces, ultimately, to each individual atheist’s perception of atheism."


My contention is that just as there cannot be such a thing as a strong chair vs. a weak chair--which would be what: anything not manufactured as a chair but which works as a chair anyway?--and just as there cannot be a thing such as a strong apple versus a weak apple......The point is, "chair", "apple", "naturalist," numismatist," and "atheist" are concepts. What is a weak concept versus a strong concept?

It is true that "naturalist" and "atheist" are concepts indicating epistemic determinations. But a definition is still a definition, and the only one that can be argued is the one that takes the idea to its logical extreme. Anything less than the extreme is less than the essence of the concept. Why debate things which are not the essence of the debate?You say you recently had one instance where you asked an atheist if he agreed that revelations were possible if one happened to him. He answered, “You’re asking me whether if god came to visit me (like some amplified Jehovah’s Witness) and explained the whole thing, then would that change my opinion? Uh, yes."

Tony, I myself will tell you the same thing: If God came to me it would be less than rational to ascribe his identity to him. But I will also tell you that since the concept of "atheist" means denial of the supernatural realm, asking your question is like asking whether one would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. Of course I would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. It isn't going to happen.

Let me tell you a story. Nearly three years ago I had what you and other believers would have described within your own beings as a "revelation." It truly was as if from God. I had an immediate apprehension of a truth, and the truth set me free, so free, in fact, that I went to a "church for alcoholics" within five minutes of having this apprehension, and I've been alcohol free ever since. The fellowship of A.A. has helped me to cope with my new life; but it was the apprehension which set me free.

That apprehension hit me as if I had been thrown against a brick wall at 60 miles an hour. It physically hurt. If I was a weaker man in my constitution, I might have run off the road and hit a house, a pedestrian, or another car. It was all I could do to keep driving and to remember where the Alano Club was.

I was shaking in my shoes. I had a hard time finding my voice. After my first A.A. meeting, someone asked if I was ok because she said I was pale as a ghost. I don't think I recovered my normal color for more than 24 hours, and not until after my fifth A.A. meeting in that same 24 hour period. I know I could not even crack a smile until after that fifth meeting. It was a truly spiritual experience, the kind that every member of A.A. hopes to one day have, a bolt of lightening out of the blue.

The immediate apprehension is what a believer would call a "miracle," what he would call a "revelation." As a matter of fact, I call it a natural revelation, myself, but I do not admit that natural revelations admit of a God, or of any form of supernaturalism. Because I reject Boethius' call to "join faith to reason, isofar as is possible," because I reject faith as the abnegation of reason that all theologians say it is, I can only attribute my immediate apprehension to what is epistemologically called "intuition." Was this my own personal "Road to Damascus" type revelation?

"Intuition" is from the Latin "intuere," meaning to look at, and is "The direct and immediate apprehension by a knowing subject of itself, of its conscious states, of other minds, of an external world, of universals, of values or of rational truths." "Dictionary of Philosophy"; Runes; 1942

Step One of A.A. says I "admitted I was powerless over alcohol--that my life had become unmanageable." Oh how very true is that statement, in light of the life-altering immediate apprehension of my situation.

Step Two says I "came to believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity." Again, in my immediate apprehension I most certainly did come to believe that.

So you might ask, what "greater power" do I believe in? It turns out to be the greater power of the mind than that of overt consciousness, the greater power that is within each of our subconscious minds to turn a problem over and over without our overt knowledge of this process. Man existed and was conscious and able to form language and ethics long, long before the pre-Socratics discovered the power of "thinking about thinking."

That subconscious power that allowed a more intellectually primative man to continue existing and to grow and to learn from his mistakes and to add knowledge to his impressively growing store of knowledge resides within each of us. If Thales had not grasped the element of "thinking about thinking," we would still be acting on the conscious level of Homo sapiens, instead of that of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Technically, Homo sapiens is said to have become extinct many tens of thousands of years ago. We are his only living cousin. But our name, Homo sapiens sapiens, means that we have the power to add sapience upon already existing sapience, that we are as a matter of fact the only species that is sapient of his own sapience, and that that is thus the determining virtue for distinguishing Man as the "rational animal."

It is not too far fetched to say that until men learned the art and science--not to mention the joy--of thinking about thinking, that he was not truly Homo sapiens sapiens. He was a potentiality, waiting for a time when he would have his first conscious experience with "immediate apprehension," viz, "intuition."

Tony, you say, "Perhaps the hang up is my phrase ‘looking for’ [a revelation,] which I think is actually the problem. Mr. Clark is resting his disbelief on the ’soundness of the argument’ but I maintain that a single contrary fact is enough to put an argument to bed. [ ] [L]et me just say that its difficult to imagine how God could possibly meet the burden of demonstration many atheists expect him to fulfill if they would immediately discount the evidence if it was actually provided."

The "soundness of the argument" is that there are two choices: naturalism, and supernaturalism; Reason, and faith. So-called "natural revelation" requires reason to determine the nature of the object in question; but it requires faith to place its nature in the category of "supernaturally created." Intuition as "immediate apprehension," by natural methods of human neurology and psychology, can account for both type of revelation, without resorting to supernaturalism.


No naturalist who is also atheist has any justified true belief in either kind of revelation of the supernatural. The naturalist who believes in 'natural' revelation is not an atheist. The person who believes in 'revealed' revelations is not a naturalist." "Natural" revelations are not revelations of metaphysical naturalism and have nothing to do with "intuition" as defined above.


You continued in your response to me: "Well, obviously the naturalist wouldn’t see the natural order as revelation about God. The phrase ‘revelation’ can still be rehabilitated, though, because if one wants to get to the bottom of just what reality is all about, than they are going to have to rely on more than just introspection. They’ll have to open their eyes and let the universe around them ‘tell’ them about itself. You cannot deduce the law of gravity. For that you must drop an object and allow it to ‘reveal’ its speed as it rushes to the earth."


And that, my friend, is exactly what "intuition" is when it is left devoid of any supernatural origins and overtones. Rune's Dictionary of Philosophy is not interested in determining where such "intuitions" come from. That is for science to decide, after which philosophers and theologians may argue what it means, and whether or not the epistemic roots of the investigation contained strict scientific integrity.

You also said, "Atheists may not be looking for evidence of revelation but my contention is that they ought to be, and that they ought to do so without prejudging the issue, because that would be circular reasoning." You base this on your premise that we must let the universe tell us about itself. In the sense that men "intuit" the information the universe provides us, I totally agree. We cannot see without looking.


And if some men intuit the supernatural in their seeing, it does not speak to what the universe is trying to tell us; it speaks only to the principles of epistemology and the accepted metaphysics of the one who says he sees.


Thank you, Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath, for the "back-and-forth" nature of our discussion. This is what human discussion is supposed to be. You, and I, and our readers, know that there are those out there in the world who could not have a dialectic such at we are having.


sntjohnny and I have agreed to keep this discussion going until we reach what each of us considers a good ending. It may happen every 10 days to two week, more or less, give or take, as we see fit. I will always be certain to link the threads together for you, as he did at the top of his piece.


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Saturday, September 27, 2008

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Reverend "sntjohnny" Horvath Wrote Me an Email:
I Responded


Actually, I only responded to the first two paragraphs, as you will read. He sent the email because of his contention, which I challenged, that followers of Ayn Rand's Objectivism would "inevitably" come around to embracing Christianity.


[Dear Curtis:] "It is only 'inevitable' in certain senses. If you apply the principles you hold dear in Objectivism consistently I believe that you will find that Objectivism does not in fact have the answers while Christianity does.

"Consider. One of the most cherished doctrines of the Objectivist is the rights and freedoms and dignity of each individual human. However, to what degree can this be supported from an atheistic philosophy, especially an atheistic perspective on evolution, which is the prevailing scientific explanation for the rise of humans? Under this framework, a human is nothing more than an animal." [signed Anthony Horvath]
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"stjohnny" and I are too familiar with each other to actually bother writing "Dear X," or actually signing it, except that my "automatic" signature is automatic, I do sometimes write "Sincerely," or simply "Curtis," and this time he finished his letter with "Yours."


My (Partial) Response
The atheism and evolution have no bearing on the freedom and dignity of the human individual.

You say according to evolution I ought to conclude man is "nothing more" than an animal. But the denotation of "Man" is that heis the "rational animal." From this perspective we conclude several things:

1. That "Man qua Man" requires the highest degree of rationality a man can discover;
2. That rationality belongs to individuals because there is no "collective" mind;
3. That since rationality belongs to the individual, just as his fingers are his, and his stomach is his, his mind cannot be coerced into doing, being or thinking what it does not want to be.

Oh, certainly a man can be forced to do things. But it does not mean his reason will accept it, and unless you break his spirit altogether, he will put himself back together, possibly better than before, and prove that while force may be powerful, its initiation is obscene and immoral, if by "immoral" we mean initiating one's own forces upon those of another.

Because a man's rationality belongs to him and to him only, he is endowed with certain unalienable rights. That his rationality belongs only to him is not one of these rights; that is a fact of nature. Since naturalism accepts what it sees as "natural," the right to be free of coercive forces is a moral axiom. If it is not an axiom, then it cannot be accepted that a man's rationality belongs only to him--it must belong to whomevercan use it to his own devices.

It matters not that Man came to be from the primeval ooze, from the reptiles, from the primates, from the apes. The fact is, no matter how he got here, he is here, and that is an unalterable fact, and along with that fact comes his unlienable rights, i.e., those with which he is born and which he would die of old age, still in possession of, if coercive individual and governmental forces did not restrict them.

Since in order to maintain the integrity of his ownership of his own unalienable rights, he must not compromise those same rights in another human. Once he does so, he opens himself to criticism at the least, and to punitive punishment, corporal or capital, as the defenders of unalienable rights may decide. Those decisions must also pass muster as containing the integrity of their nature, or using them against a transgressor is no more moral than the act of the transgressor himself.

These unalienable rights are derived in theory from the Lockean idea of "the consent of the governed," which gets its authority through the mechanism of "common sovereignty." There is no evidence that Locke ever thought of the concept of "individual sovereignty;" but America's founders derived this sovereignty from the idea that no man could give to the "common" sovereignty what he did not possess to begin with. If he could give up some portion of his own rights to self-defence and rule making, then what he gave up must have been his to begin with.

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Joseph J. Ellis; "American Sphinx, The Character of Thomas Jefferson"

"A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

"The concept of a 'right' pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice.

"As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights. The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave. Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own
it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values."
Ayn Rand; "Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness, 93.


As for Christianity being "flattering" to human dignity:

"There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism -- the inviolate sanctity of man's soul, and the salvation of one's soul as one's first concern and highest goal; this means -- one's ego and the integrity of one's ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul -- (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one's soul?) -- Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one's soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one's soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one's soul to the souls of others.

"This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men's natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war -- both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man's soul)."
From a letter to Sylvia Austin dated July 9, 1946, in Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 287

Rand was able to say this because as was her habit she always looked to the extreme position of the logic involved. If you say "X means this,"she would take it to the next level and then the next, until she showed that "X means this" was untennable if carried to its logical end. This is why she can make the statement about altruism stick--because she used Comte's original definition of the word:

"For Comte Altruism meant the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity. As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition not only to egoism (whether understood as excessive or moderate self-love), but also to the formal or theological pursuit of charity and to the atomic or individualistic social philosophy of 17th-18th century liberalism, of utilitarianism, and of French Ideology."
http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html

You know full well Rand was fundamentally morally ethically epistemologically against "self-abnegation." Rand contends that if it is true that Jesus allowed himself to be murdered, and did not fight it on the grounds that he was saving the rest of humanity by his act, then he was the biggest altruist, who committed the biggest act of "self-abnegation" in the history of religion. But she isn't certain that is true. "Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism..." Jesus never wrote a word himself. All we have is the words of people who say that Jesus said what Jesus said. And many of those accounts differ. We may never know whether Jesus was an altruist or not. But if he was not, then the religion based on his alleged altruism has a false basis for existence.

Well, I think I have addressed the first 3 paragraphs of your email. Honestly, I have not even looked at the rest of it yet. You may be certain that after I read it, I'll have more to say.
But now, what say you?
Curtis
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