Zobel said:
because reason is intangible, immeasurable, and completely abstract with no physical corresponding reality. you can assign other words to this ("process" "emergent") but it doesn't change anything...emergent properties like wetness from water molecules are physical, but reason has subjective qualia that aren't. seeing functional MRI scans that show neural correlates of reasoning point to natural activity, but reason itself doesn't reduce to brain activity.
for example - do animals reason? do plants? how would you know, could it be proven or disproven? for that matter, how can it be proven or disproven that another human is reasoning?
we don't understand consciousness, and there's no real support other than religious faith in materialism to assert that the qualia of reasoning emerge purely from physics.
I agree with a lot of this, but maybe not your conclusion. I suppose I'd start with your last sentence and say that I agree that we don't understand consciousness, BUT, I don't hold to a religious faith in the emergence of reason from physics alone. I also don't hold a religious faith that things like consciousness and reason are divinely or supernaturally given.
The trouble I have is the jump from reason being intangible, immeasurable and abstract to, therefore, supernatural. Abstract systems like mathematics and language are human constructed frameworks that do not require the supernatural. I don't think that the appeal to subjectivity experience proves reason must have supernatural origins, I think its further evidence that we don't fully understand things like reason or consciousness.
Do animals use reason? I'm worried about answering this without an agreed on definition of what constitutes reason. Generally, though, I would say 'yes'. Animals use reason, or at least some animals use forms of reasoning. Some animals can use tools to solve problems, they build social structures and exhibit social intelligence, they understand basic casual relationships. I would classify some animals at least on the spectrum of being capable of reason.
An argument could be made that AI uses reasoning, though I think that becomes gray for a few reasons. But, I would suggest that the potential of AI to use reason or to develop to the point where it can reason would undermine the idea that reason must be supernatural. Or maybe I overestimate the potential for AI. This one could be a fun thread to its self.
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my point is that you can't decouple any moral or ethical system from a religious foundational layer. there is no way to derive unlimited suffrage democracy and individual freedom from first principles. in fact, the king of first principles thinking came to very opposite conclusions about the organization of human societies.
the appeal to secular laws as an "adopted system of values" is just saying that your country D has no moral or ethical foundation. in that country, if slavery was illegal, and became legal, you have no grounds to say whether that is good or bad. it just is. their values are adopted. they adopted new ones. likewise, by a kind of bizarre irony, if that country transitioned from a type-D society to type A, B, or C there's no value judgment. they just adopted a new system of values. this is all just empty.
to put a finer point on it, if you say that ideally the US should be a type D society and we accept that - perfect. we used to not put the ten commandments in schools. now we do. type D in action.
I don't personally see an issue with decoupling moral or ethical systems from a religious foundation. But, if I recall, we've had similar discussions and I think an argument was made that any value system constitutes a religion regardless of whether or not God is invoked. Similarly, I don't need a higher authority for personal justification of equality or democracy. Its not my goal to tie my values to an unquestionable and object source.
I think that part of your response above is just a criticism of moral relativism, which I accept. I don't know if you would accept any my criticisms of moral objectivism. In this case, that an appeal to supernatural authority for said moral and ethical foundation as objectively and incontrovertibly true cannot be proven or demonstrated. So, a society built on a religious tradition can use a moral foundation to say that 'x' is good or bad, but it can never justify that moral foundation without faith or unjustified presupposition.
I don't know if the US Constitution formally qualifies as a moral and ethical foundation, but it certainly offers some of this.
Finally, the process by which the 10 Commandments have been put into schools can be described as democracy in action - although, in our current system, laws are often passed without consensus because power has become too far concentrated away from the citizens. My original concern with this bill was meant to be less about the process and more about an appeal to the US Constitution and an appeal to what I think is a discrepancy between what I think Christians might want and what I think are the probable outcomes. In short, I don't think the 10 Commandment bill offers any positive utility in support of Christianity's influence within the public square. If there is a goal to highlight Christian values in public discussion, I feel this is a poor way to do it.
