Reductionists Whining About People Who Are Willing To Make Arguments On Their Own Terms

Longtime readers will know that one of my sources of pride is the one and only time I got the atheist ideologue and ideological cosmologist, Sean Carroll, to admit that there is not a single object in the universe, not an atom, not a proton, neutron, electron, quark, no, not even the current star of the reductionist pantheon, the Higgs Boson which physics knows comprehensively and exhaustively.  He was reluctant to admit that - as I counted, it took 17 days of repeatedly asking that he answer the question to get him to admit to the obvious - because there is nothing that more conclusively shows the pretension of his ideological brand of cosmology that it will soon or not quite so soon have a theory of everything, a TOE, which will explain the entirety of the physical universe and, so, according to them, put the final nail in the coffin of God and religion.  

The idea that particle physics or quantum physics would be necessary to discern the tiniest basic component of physical reality and to, as they think, come up with the most general of all possible theories of the forces those exist or, really, move under,and so explain everything is the materialist and atheist faith tradition of reductionism.  It is the ideological conceit that everything is reducible to its smallest and simplest components which contains the ultimate reality of everything at every resolution of perception.   It is, to say the least, fervently believed in by most atheists with the intellectual capacity to either follow the incredible contortions of thought necessary or the many, many more who depend on the oracular statements of that priesthood.  The lower levels of that laity depend on the Discover channel, PBS and, Planck help us, Youtubes.  The even lower level of that laity relies on repeating mantras and mysterious phrases harvested from other commentators.  They're the same folk who like to argue whether they're chimps or bonobos on some of the sillier of the pretentious blogs.  

Such folk are the ones who believe that anything that is real must be reducible to the nature and qualities of tiny fundamental particles and the most general of humanly construced physical law*.  

All of that precedes my challenges surrounding the reality of equal rights and the moral obligations to respect those.  It's an atheist faith that without them being present at that level of resolution in the physical universe that they are not really real or are illusory or have ephemeral and transient existence and. so. can be disposed of and which no one needs to observe if they can get away with not considering them.  If rights are real then subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, the combinations of molecules enclosed in structures made of such groupings of molecules that comprise our bodies must all, at every level, have those qualities of rights and moral obligations.   I don't have any problem with pushing people who believe such reductionism is the key to all reality to account for the existence of their rights, of demanding that they tell us where their rights come from and why we should take them as being really real and that we are morally obligated to respect them.   

It's your faith, not mine, I gave you the logical foundation of rights and moral obligations according to mine.  That you don't like it changes nothing about me having an absolute foundation by which I am morally obligated to respect your rights even when I really don't want to and I know I could get away with it in every day life.  I know that there is a consequence to not doing that, you don't.  That it's an argument that's longer form than you seem to like to think in doesn't mean much.  It's simple compare to what the guys like Sean Carroll have to present to try to do what they obviously can't. 

*  Sorry, bunky, even physicists aware enough to be aware of it freely admit that physical law is a creation of human imagination.  The stupider ones believe they are not mitigated by the minds in which their only locus in the universe is known.

Update:  Oh, Neil Diamond. Not even Neil D.T. but Neil Diamond.   I'll bet you thought he was real boss back in the day. Or did you still say "gear"?   Well, we can't all be as groovy as you.