Love, in fact, is just as silly and superstitious a concept as God (and for those who believe God is Love, this too is a distinction without a difference). Chesterton's observation that the purely rational man will not marry is just as correct today, because science has done far more damage to the ideal of love than it has done to the notion of an awesome God beyond our ken. Genes, hormones, instincts, evolution: These are the cause for the effect of love in the purely rational man's textbook. But Maher would get few applause lines from his audience of sophisticated yokels if he mocked love as a silly superstition. This is, in part, because the crowd he plays to likes the idea of love while it dislikes the idea of God; and in part because these people feel love, so they think it exists. But such is the extent of their solipsism and narcissism that they not only reject the existence of God but go so far as to mock those who do not, simply because they don't feel Him themselves. And, alas, in elite America, feelings are the only recognized foundation of metaphysics.Hat tip: Rev. Mike
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
That silly superstition called Love...
Check out Jonah Goldberg's The Sore-Loser Party. An excerpt:
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Paul,
Merely acknowledging the existence of the abstract has no bearing on whether it can be generated by purely naturalistic means. Doing so is tantamount to circular reasoning (e.g., “our reality is completely natural; the abstract exists; therefore, the abstract was derived through natural means”). Naturalists continue to posit naturalistic pathways for the generation of the abstract, yet it is still obvious that they haven’t a clue as to how the process could occur. It’s one thing to argue that the concept of morality came about through a natural selection process; it’s quite another thing to actually provide evidence that such a process occurred in the past, or of such a process occurring at present.
I do not limit M/PN to determinism alone but, rather, determinism and chance. E.g., the Mars-sized body that presumably impacted the Earth about 4 billion years ago was guided by determinism in areas such as its mass, orbital speed, etc.; but that it impacted the Earth when and how it did, was more a matter of chance. Also, I don’t believe that science is limited to determinism and chance; I believe science to be the study of the natural order, in its entirety.
From a naturalistic position we have virtually no good reason to think that the abstract can exist. Consider that there is no way for you to empirically demonstrate the validity of the abstract. You have no way to bottle up, measure, or analyze the abstract itself. Yet you believe that it exists but for the simple reason that you perceive that you experience it, and that you perceive that others also experience it.
That’s all well and good…
But it’s not naturalism.
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