Liza, you use a lot of unnecessary words to sound smart. All you have done is insult me in your words in an
ad hominem attack. I did refute your claim, but not by simply contradicting the conclusion with my own conclusion (that is not good argumentation) but by exposing the lies of the premises upon which your conclusion is built on. And I would think that I know what is philosophy and what isn't, little girl, both of my BA and Masters degrees are in philosophy. My refutation of your claims is based on classical pre-enlightenment metaphysics and ethics; you say that I "clearly alluded to faith-based and incredulously outmoded argumentation." Please show me how my points are "faith based", and also show me how my line of reasoning is "outmoded" in your view. Just because you hold that a non-positivistic-empiricist line of thinking is "outmoded" does not make it so. Please respond to my point by point address of each of your premises that I took completely from your own line of reasoning. I will let common sense and the voice of reason (in the general public on this website) express who is closer to the truth in our reasoning. I have re posted my responses for the sake of convenience. Please address the actual content of what I have written. Note that it is not a valid argument to simply say "you are appealing to classical metaphysics and ethics therefore you are wrong." If you are going to write off thousands of years of philosophical history (prior to secular-enlightenment of the 18th century) you need to give a credible reason as to why this is so. I look forward to your astute philosophical analysis which I presume you have picked up in your highschool studies in public school.
Liza's own words will always be cited in
bold. Liza is disagreeing with my thesis that “
Contemporary feminism has"destroyed marriage and family life." She offers three premises in support of her argument against me that “
there's no credible evidence to suggest that feminism in particular has "destroyed" anything from the perspective of mainstream political science.” I will treat the three premises that she uses successively and individually.
PREMISE I:
The first premise Liza's argument rests on is that any cultural phenomena [such as the breakdown of marriage and family] happens when “
Social and cultural evolution progresses on behalf of a number of quantifiable variables, including society's political and economic climate, social liberalism and conservatism and the public sphere's reaction to these ideologies, the presence and proliferation of political countercultures, and the like.”
Liza's argument is as follows: The so called “destruction of marriage” is itself a phenomena that is found in the mix of history (it is a product of the coming together of various “quantifiable variables”). Accordingly, it is arbitrary to identify the historical feminism movement as the cause of the cultural phenomena of the breakdown of marriage and family, since
“from the perspective of mainstream political science,” only a plurality of
“quantifiable variables” can bring about such an occurance.
There is actually an embedded philosophy that is hidden in Liza's argument. It is my job as a philosopher to expose it for the common good
Liza is presupposing a method of looking at reality as if nature itself is a mere conglomeration of empirical
“quantifiable” parts (this is a peculiarly post-enlightenment modern-way of thinking developed by Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes amongst others). There is nothing wrong with modern science. This way of looking things that exist is fine when you need to figure out how to create a propulsion fuel that will send a rocket to the moon, or when you want to build a bridge or do any kind of utilitarian work involving mechanistic 'parts' that are empirically observable.
But when it is a question of studying the beauty and goodness of
human nature, the modern mechanistic science of “quantifiable parts” reaches its limit. Masculinity and femininity is not just an empirical “phenomena” that happened to come to about by chance as a result impersonal forces. The beauty and goodness of manhood and womanhood speaks of another more robust and deeper manner of studying reality and nature (this is the way of western philosophy and Christian theology which used to hold prominence before the dawn of secular humanism following the “enlightenment.”) Main stream political science operates under the assumption that everything we can study in society is simply a product of forces that happen to come together (this is what Liza refers to when she mentions “
society's political and economic climate, social liberalism and conservatism and the public sphere's reaction to these ideologies, the presence and proliferation of political countercultures, and the like”). Mainstream political science is incapable (on its own terms) of grasping the essence of Human Nature (and therefore what true femininity is) because it is constricted to operate within its own limited method of analyzing the world in terms of what is
“quantifiable” as parts. Only a more profound and lucid way of looking at reality can realize that the proper goodness and beauty of “masculinity” and “femininity” within family life is not just the result a conglomeration of a plurality of worldly-based factors. The cause of the beauty of man and woman and of the goodness of the institute of marriage and the specific gender-roles that it involves is the result of FREEDOM. Only FREEDOM can create beauty and goodness. Quantifiable parts cannot cause beauty and goodness to come to exist out of nothing. A person who is FREE TO CREATE needs to be there to bestow order and purpose to whatever comes to exist as something meaningfull. (Christians and Jews understand this to be God in the original act of Creation). That quantifiable-wordly-phenomena cannot be the original-absolute source of goodness and beauty is evident to human reason regardless of whether or not one is speaking religiously. We do not need “religious faith” to know this, this is a rational point.
Contrary to what Liza is arguing, I hold that the break-down of marriage and family life is not just a occurrence that just so happened to come together from various economic and political factors operative in history in a general sense. Liza's claim that “
there's no credible evidence to suggest that feminism in particular has "destroyed" anything from the perspective of mainstream political science” is correct only if we accept that the
“perspective of mainstream political science” exhausts all true perspectives. I propose that Liza is wrong in thinking this way. It is reductive. It limits the study of human actions to modern sociology and modern political science (which is rooted in a purely empirical method of analysis). I answer that the break down of marriage and family life can only be caused by specific persons who are endowed with FREEDOM. The demise of marriage and family life is caused by all those who freely reject what is given to us as “femininity” and “masculinity” in its original beauty and goodness (and that is what secular feminism accomplishes).
(Response to Liza Continued)
PREMISE II
She writes: “
Irrespective of one's religious preference, the philosophical concept of liberty and justice for all in any society that values equal rights should be upheld and respected in the highest degree... What women do with themselves within the context of this society is then up to the woman in particular, and that's exactly how it should be. Period.”
She is presupposing that the modern system of a democratic state is correct in placing all the emphasis on the fulfillment of the
individual who is acting. This is a direct inheritance from the political philosophy of John Locke and Hobbes. It's logic is similar in as much as it bars out the relevance of the freedom of a person who lies BEYOND any worldly force, namely, the freedom of GOD who wills to create what is good and beautiful. It is certainly true that people [who themselves are free] are capable of deviating from the will of God, it is certainly true that every individual human being has the capacity to exercise his or her own freedom to do as they please: but that does not justify Liza's point that “
What women do with themselves within the context of this society is then up to the woman in particular, and that's exactly how it should be. Period.” What if the women want to kill their own unborn children in the womb? What if women want to have success and a career more than they want to be a sacrificial presence for their family? When Liza says that “
the philosophical concept of liberty and justice for all in any society that values equal rights should be upheld and respected in the highest degree”, she means the modern post-enlightenment concept of liberty developed in John Locke and Hobbes and applied in contemporary American constitutional-law. Liza apparently does not realize that the modern democratic forms of government and its accompanying language of “individual rights” is not fool-proof morally speaking. The “ individual freedom” of a democratic republic can error, and it does (it did when it made child-murder a recreational activity under the feminist guise of “a woman's right to choose” when the U.S. supreme court ruled in “Roe vs Wade” for example). Under the post-enlightenment “philosophical concept of liberty” that Liza is apparently so committed to, in the United States over 50 million innocent lives have been lost in the name of the feministic “right to choose.” Under the same “philosophical concept of liberty,” Marriage itself has been re-defined by the state so that homosexuality is no longer considered immoral by the vast majority of the public. Soon, the legalization of polygamy is likely to follow... I think both you (and modern secular-humanist democracy) are missing something from the equation, Liza. Goodness and beauty does not originate in human freedom, it originates in the intention of a Divine Creator. The lie of secular-feminism is that women can individually re-create for themselves what it means to be a good and beautiful woman-- even if to 'such and such' an individual it means murdering their own child so that they can have a lavish career. Again, my criticism of Liza's 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] premise is not simply a “religious” argument that owes its credibility to faith, my criticism is entirely based on reason, I have not quoted scripture once.
PREMISE III
“
Theology has nothing to do with the intrinsically social nature of the status of contemporary marriage and family structure. Theologians deal predominantly in spiritual matters pertaining to God and the nature of religious beliefs, not extrapolations from religious beliefs. Theology may offer an opinion on a given social matter, but it can't markedly associate anything without alluding to political science, demographics, or the like.”
Huh? Let me get this straight: The reality of God [if indeed the pagan philosophers Plato and Aristotle were right in positing through the use of their human reason that One God who orders the cosmos does exist] and the discipline which studies the link between God and the whole of nature (
i.e. Theology) has nothing to do with the “
intrinsically social nature of the status of contemporary marriage and family structure” as you say? I might be tempted to call your reasoning absurd, but I understand where you are coming from. It is important that anyone else who follows this thread understands as well. Lisa stated that “
Theology may offer an opinion on a given social matter, but it can't markedly associate anything without alluding to political science, demographics, or the like.” This reveals that Liza is thoroughly taken in by the false secular-human ideology that wants to reduce everything to a purely
human science, so that the transcendent and divine has no real relevance or importance to practical human civilization. In the old-world, before globalized atheism took affect in all modern world governments, Theology was considered the Queen of the sciences, so that
any human affair (political, spiritual, domestic, whatever) found it's ultimate order and principle in the goodness and beauty of a
Logos (Greek) or
Ratio (Latin) which transcended the world: GOD. Today, contemporary western society may pay lip service to a “God” by having his name inscribed on our currency or perhaps having invoking his name at baseball games, but on the grand scale human freedom has ousted any transcendent cause from human affairs. Most evident of what I am saying is the current conditions of marriage and family life in America. People who think with Liza that
“spiritual matters pertaining to God and the nature of religious beliefs” has nothing to do with the intrinsic identity of gender-roles and family structure certainly must have SOMETHING to do with the break down of marriage and family life in the culture. It has EVERYTHING to do with it.
