Environment Man

No. I have read ALL the greats: Amerigo Vespucci, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz, Pierre Bayle, Newton, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Rousseau, Condillac, Diderot, D'Holbach, Voltaire, Leibniz, Wolff, Lessing, Kant, Fitchte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Comte, Whewell, Mill, Feuerbach, Stirner, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Mach, Bradley and this list does include my 20th century philosophers.

Sean

Oh, don't misunderstand, I LOVE Calvin & Hobbs.

Sean

You're full of shit.

Environment Man

Hobbes' Leviathan speaks of motion, imagination, etc. Ultimately his philosophy was crap.

Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" spoke of sensation, perception, intuition, etc. But Locke was deep for he believed in God and included God in his writings and equations.

Environment Man

As are we all but I assure you I imbibe prune juice once a week to clear the sewer. Glad to know of your concern though.

Environment Man

And you said you liked Locke. So you must like his God work.

Sean

No, you're confused; nothing new there though.

Environment Man

Well you did say that you like Locke didn't you? And Locke believes in and includes God as a central point of his philosophy. Ergo you like Locke's belief in God and thus you like God yourself.

nroberts

It's interesting you'd say that. That you're able to rattle off a long list of philosophers you've read isn't very impressive to begin with. Now you just showed, as point of fact, that you couldn't possibly have understood them. Since you subscribe to the belief that you have to take either everything or nothing someone says as truth, with no in between, there is little to no room for reflection on what is actually said. Clearly you simply believe everything that someone says if they believe in God, and nothing otherwise.

This rather raises an interesting question since there are many different Gods that people believe in. For instance, if we compare Locke to Spinoza...both believe in God but they are obviously quite different Gods.

As to God belief and the Argument from Design in general....those philosophers, like Locke or Hume, who came before Darwin can be forgiven their short sightedness and inability to imagine the alternative answer. The Darwin revolution was not just a revolution in biology, but in many other sciences and in philosophy as well. Previous to Darwin's theory there was no refutation of the Argument from Design (though Hume had some interesting ideas), hence Deism. Once Darwin's theory came about though, the Argument from Design, which is exactly what Locke used to "prove" God (the one I read anyway), became nothing but silliness...a childish argument put forth by brilliant people in the infancy of the human race. Nobody should be attempting to use it anymore...and nobody that understands rational discourse does.

Sean

Good call Roberts.