So in defense of Morlocks everywhere, let me as you for a few reasons for your Eloi assumptions. Why, precisely, is moral to believe in “the sacred, and with it our belief in transgression, sin, guilt, and atonement.” Can you show me how to build a “sin meter” so that I too can determine which things I should avoid? Or just exactly how does atonement work? Can you atone for Obama’s sins? For your father’s sins? Okay, how about your own sins? And how do tell when I am half-way atoned, or three-quarters atoned for? If I get 100 people to atone for 1% of my sins, am I completely atoned? How can I tell?

In short, you don’t have an answer for any of those questions. Your Eloi assumptions are all assumed in the literati echo chambers that you write for, and you never had to give concrete answers to the Morlock engineers who fix the computers that you type your blogs on.

Have I defended Morlocks sufficiently? Any Morlocks out there who would like to add to my defense?

Because I do believe, James, that there are Morlock answers to Morlock questions, just as there are Eloi answers for Eloi assumptions. The problem is that we haven’t made our case.

Eloi really do know something about atonement, but they’re afraid they will be criticized for saying it. And Morlocks really have tried bioengineering, and it didn’t turn out well. It is my contention that these morals that Eloi take as assumptions have their roots in Morlock experiments. And these mad scientists aren’t really mad at all, but are violating certain built-in limits (dare I say Eloi regulations) to their equipment that they refuse to acknowledge.

And defending those rather than myths or literature about them, is the real McCoy.

Yet we cannot deny the indictment that we seek a solution for practically every problem of life in quantitative terms; and are not fully aware of the limits of this approach. The constant multiplication of our high school and college enrollments has not had the effect of making us the most “intelligent” nation, whether we measure intelligence in terms of social wisdom, aesthetic discrimination, spritual serenity or any other basic human achievement. It may have mad us technically the most proficient nation, thereby proving that technical efficiency is more easily achieved in purely quantitative terms than any other value of culture….No national culture has been as assiduous as our own in trying to press the wisdom of the social and political sciences, indeed of all the humanities, into the limits of the natural sciences…the result is frequently a preoccupation with the minutiae which obscures the grand and tragic outlines of contemporary history, and offers vapid solutions for profound problems.

Thank you for your comment.

You are clearly right, and I stand corrected.

Please see the note I’ve added to the body of the post.

I have tried to rebut scientism in its own terms in my “What Is Life?” series (especially, Part II), and of course in more detail in my dissertation.

You seem to give up the opportunity to rebut the “scientific and reductionist views of human nature” using their own criteria. In other words, some might suggest I fall into that category, and yet I agree with many of your other conclusions.

So America inherits all this detritus, all these alcoholics from broken homes, the riffraff of Europe, the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and has to shape them into a responsible nation. How did it do it? Because that is precisely the problem we face today, only we can generated our own problem through misguided social engineering experiments.

The answer is in the introduction to the movie “Amazing Grace”. It was the Reformation of England’s poor that kept the French Revolution from crossing the channel. It was a reformation of work, of taxes, of prisons and slavery. It changed England then, and it could change it again. Give us a Wesley and Whitfield, a Wilberforce and a Washington and we can do it again. As Wilberforce wrote in his journal, “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.”

We celebrate the first, but it was the 2nd that permitted the first. And that, I submit to you, was what Washington wrote in his journals, what Whitfield and Wesley were all about. We’ve lost touch with this earthy aspect of Evangelicalism, thinking that heavenly destiny is the sole function of evangelicalism when it has always been equally about the reformation of manners.

I picture Orwell shrugging his shoulders at us foolish mortals as if to say, “This is what I told you would happen, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

LG

Not sure I follow, but this seems more like something we should take offline. Feel free to write me privately, if you like (see Contact).

Here again, the “foundationial premise” is wrong.

Problem, how can I exhibit my brilliance without giving away the store…:) (Seriously, I was going to ask you that question).