It seems that many atheists put god in a box.
My observations are these. The RBL is a Charity and the poppy appeal is part of its marketing for funds. It has been very successful and the effect of this is the almost complete poppy coverage that currently exists on TV, on football shirts and the like
The history of the RBL is of interest. It was (I read) formed rather quickly, when WW1 vets found the govt had no plans for injured soldiers and the possibility of revolution was quite high (there were millions of trained ex army around and jobs were rather thin on the ground)
I find the organised and "compulsory" remembrance somewhat overdone in its current form. A view my late WW2 vet father shared. He (and many soldiers quoted in many forums) think that the remembrance "industry" has been high-jacked by politicians and the establishment - so that we do forget and allow more young men and women to be killed by the whim of politicians. My WW1 vet grandad's (gassed but survived on the western front) view of the RBL are not printable. Just to say he thought it (this was a while back...) full of those who were never near the sharp end and liked the image.
I have found the odd visit to cemeteries in France and Belgium more powerful than the choreographed "poppy season" I don't need to be told when and how to pay my personal respects and feel that the current position is counter productive
I also think that the RBL is doing work that the Govt should have full responsibility for.
I also think that I would like to make those who bravely online call deserters cowards and the like face live firing and see if they feel so brave.
The best remembrance would be not to send off our young people to die for failed politics.
We are noble in reason and infinite in faculty, and yet still a quintessence of dust.
QuoteWe are noble in reason and infinite in faculty, and yet still a quintessence of dust.
Nearly Sane.
I am saying that pagans are those people who have turned the festival from a religious or even spiritual one into a secular one and chosen to replace the concentration on the birth of the saviour of the world with the earning of as much money as possible and extravagent hedonism.
It's not even book worship any more, it is worshipping the parts of a book that let you act like a heartless prick. Idolatry of bigotry.
It’s a convenient and simple position to adopt because it means you don’t have to engage, understand, empathise, imagine or connect. You just have to hate.
I wonder if there are pockets if anti-time to be discovered? :-\
If that is a mistake then it is a creative one: 'trouser of time' sounds just wonderful.
You can quote stats at me as much as you like, but we all know that stats can be made to tell anything.
I though that I would separate this off, especially as we are close to getting an answer:
Quote from: Beau Know. on December 23, 2014, 09:59:20 PM
Hillside... I am waiting for your definition of guessing . ... If you find some courage to define said term...I will come and face the ''Hill''quisition....
Quote from: bluehillside on December 23, 2014, 10:17:25 PM
I've told you that I'm happy to take the bog standard dictionary definition of it. So presumably your next stunt when I tell you what it means - "making claims or statements with insufficient information to know whether or not they're true" for example - you'll have a field day with, "what do you mean by "or"?" or some such stupidity.
I'm really looking forward to this!
Hillside, Trying to hand wave away the distinction between methodological materialism and PM is turd polishing.bluehillside:
Puffing unknown unknowns whilst saying that arguing God is not even wrong is turd polishing.
Trying to maintain a position as ''explaining morality'' when that explanation has dispensed already with the notion of morality in it's terms of reference is turdpolishing.
Farmer Jenkins just rang. Apparently the paddock, the main barn and the lower field are now completely full with your straw menBeau Know.:
Where would you like him to put your latest one?
Behind your Turd Polisher?Well it amused me, anyway.
Do you just replace Jesus's comments in the Bible with what would Rupert Murdoch pay people to say?
..the usual nonsense...
It must be frustrating for you each time Blue folds up your attempts at reasoning into paper darts and throws them out of the window...
...
The spirit of evil perceived in the holocaust is still with us today, with dreadful atrocities being committed in Nigeria, Sudan and the Middle East. Jesus conquered evil by His death and resurrection. Through Him we can be delivered from all evil.
Well clearly the guy didn't conquer anything, or the Holocaust and other atrocities throughout the centuries wouldn't have happened would they? ...
it's the sort of territory I like - the fundamentals of human experience, consciousness, free will, the value of faith etc.
Argghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Oooh oooh Mr Peavley, Mr Peavley, look look, quantum stuff it does shit, stuff you don't understand, so it does the shit I suggest , leaving aside that it doesn't appear to work like I'm suggesting at all.
Quantum is not a bucket to push the shit nonsense you want into it while you ignore the outcomes!
I just went cold turkey. Haven't touched a fag in over twenty five years.Cymrudinnion used to say the same
What do clean shaven guys do with their hands all day?
Some may argue that that there is no mystery to our lives, but even as a secular person I cannot preclude the 'spiritual' dimension of my life. Spiritual is such a loaded term, but I can't think of a better one right now. I have no interest in religious belief, but am fascinated by the exploration of being human.
Dear Elevenes,
Your exploration is over, enjoy your new journey ;)
Gonnagle.
Do you taste like chicken? I only ask since you obviously are a bit keen on eating yourself[\quote]
Sometimes I feel like I might love nearly sane a little bit.
Dearie me, when you miss the point, you don't just miss it, you move to another continent and hide a lead lined bunker sticking your underpants over your head to avoid it.
Sorry, the rabbit/highway code comment reminded me of this...
Researchers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found over 200 dead crows near greater Boston recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu. A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone's relief, confirmed the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu. The cause of death appeared to be vehicular impacts.
However, during the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colors of paints appeared on the bird's beaks and claws. By analyzing these paint residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.
MTA then hired an Ornithological Behaviorist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.
The Ornithological Behaviorist very quickly concluded the cause: when crows eat road kill, they always have a look-out crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.
The scientific conclusion was that while all the lookout crows could say "Cah", none could say "Truck."
Except that Shaker's comment is untrue. Rhubarb is dormant during the winter.My faith grows every day.So does rhubarb, and for the same reason.
That is a fucking belter.
During discussions within this rag-tag community passions can run high. Occasionally certain posters will be witnessed reaching the soaring heights of eloquent expression or plumbing the depths of idiotic rambling. Sometimes new and fresh ideas will be put forward, and some people even manage to be funny. This thread is all about celebrating those moments on these boards that make you love coming here.
It might be a joke, a flippant but excellently worded insult, a particularly witty comment, an astute observation or simply the fluent way an idea is articulated.
I have owned my French property for 21 years. My wife and I bought it for our Silver Wedding. She was diagnosed with cancer a year or so later, but we were able to use it for several years before she was taken from me. It is a place I share with her - even if only through memories.
The second relationship was so short. Less than two years. I feel as though I have been widowed twice. But with each relationship there is a place which is personal and powerful and I cherish my memoroes of both.
Okay, Sassy, I'll help them out of that ditch their in.
Look you two, you must read the Bible! Read it right through and never argue with one word it says! Never ever question any of it because God actually sat and wrote every word - Sassy guarantees it!
Now, every time you post on here, quote a page of verses ... in Bold and at least using a 72 font!
If anyone else posts a reply, just tell them they haven't read the Bible - and always ALWAYS add 50 columns of great big verses, just in case they don't understand.
Get it, you heathens!
Tsk, tsk, Vlad doesn't need to read what you have writtten, he simply jizzes all over a ouija board and makes up posts from the bespunked letters.
I said I have seen no such answers, hence "unanswered."
I think we live in a universe that is more than simply material reality, one that is dependent on God and which is imbued with value and purpose because of its grounding in God.
As rebuttals go, you forgot the rebuttal. Should I presume you cede the point? Or should I presume that you are allergic to facts and reason, and are going to continue to claim that some god thought Australians would really, really like marsupials...?
And just to pick up Vlad's point on special pleading, he has, as he as a special knack, for managed to get not just the wrong end of the stick but to have ignored the stick, found a blancmange and declared this is the end of the stick I shall talk about.
I suppose it is the fear that the already wobbly tower of Jenga blocks that is Christianity will collapse if the merest scintilla of doubt is allowed to creep in - although I think myself it collapsed long ago, and now lies haphazardly strewn upon the coffee table of reality.
I can't believe a conversation like this even needs to be had with people.
If you're able to set the evidential bar low enough, you cleave inextricably to narratives that make sense to you however daft
"Should" doesn't really come into it - assuming they are not all willing to die in order to not inconvenience you, your way of life, or current standard of living. If I was in their predicament, I would head to where I had a hope of having some future. Single young men travelling to a foreign country as refugees or migrants and sending money back home or sending for their family later once they have the means, is pretty standard - it's been happening for centuries.
I suppose hindsight bias fits inasmuch as current science may conclude something, then someone says, "Ah, but if you take verse 3 of Genesis, re-translate it through the the babel fish converter, divide the resulting number of lines by six, take "lion" actually to mean "iPhone 6", then bingo-shmingo, Genesis was right all along!"
There is nothing that can prove poggreeinism untrue, my recently made up belief that saying poggree on a Tuesday at half past two while hopping makes the world more balanced. Will you try it?
Being eaten alive can be stressful...but only to one who wants to live! If you don't mind being eaten alive, where is the stress?
Outrider
I'm particularly amused with people's grasp of time - the idea that Tyrannosaurus Rex lived closer in time to us than it did to Stegosaurs just doesn't compute.
Why is my brother more worthy than a refugee? Aren't they both people, trying to do their best? That's what bugs me about people in rich western countries complaining about 'foreigners' coming and stealing 'our jobs' and taking 'our benefits' - we're all people. We've been fortunate to be born in a nation with free health care, with employment rights, with a social security system, with relative domestic peace and stability. It's not enough to say 'these people aren't in immediate danger in Lebanon, let them stay there in this piss-hole, prospectless, destitute nomad camp' rather than share what we have. What makes us special? Why do we deserve this and they don't?
Yes. It's just yet another one of your woo filled wank fests where you frantically try to get your superstitious bollocks to jizz all over science.
Anyone seen the thread on 'Spooky action at a distance'..yet?!
You mean .. like visualize the end effect and let everything else fall into place to achieve it - muscle memory.
If that is trigonometry .. it would explain all the sportsmen with honorary maths degrees.
"What I can rely on is the ground beneath me, the sky above me, clouds, trees, stars. They are ever with me"
2: Antitheism does not own science. it merely sits on top of it like a bloated, sweaty custard tart on a hot day.
From Udayana... HeHeHeHeHe..
"hmmm.. yes, and what is mass? Why does it bend space-time, and what the heck is space-time anyway?
Never mind... I've decided not to let it drag me down..."
Try as hard as you like Christianity's relevance in the UK is in decline, and whilst we choose to keep some of the historical traditions for sentimental reasons you no more own Christmas because it has 'Christ' in it than Boots owns my Wellingtons.
Most people try to camouflage their fallacies, but it's good to see someone so confident/guileless that they just throw themselves into it. Bravo...
My arguments are, indeed, based on ignorance - yours.
Thinking that we can see the big picture places us in the position of the gods, when in fact we are fools.
I'm beginning to have second thoughts about visiting Scotland now.
Words can only hurt you if you let them, but silence leads to ignorance, and ignorance can hurt any number of people.
The only problem presently is in regarding current methodologies and techniques as irreplaceable and unquestionable. That makes science as dogmatic as other beliefs and prevents fresh knowledge from beyond our normal sensory perceptions.
Hope the weather stays calm for you, Vlad, as you drift helplessly upon the Ocean of Fallacies without sail, oar or rudder to help you.
If you think (just to concentrate on a few items from the 20th century alone, otherwise the list would be unmanageable) Passchendaele, the Holodomor (look it up if necessary), the Second World War including special guest star the Holocaust, Balkan ethnic cleansing nee Yugoslavia and Rwanda are examples of your god "dealing with" evil then I personally wouldn't have him running a whelk stall.
Fear is one of the primary emotions that all animals have; if you say 'boo' to a goose and then you say 'boo', to a lawyer you will induce a feeling of fear in both your victims, and there is no particular reason to think that the feeling of fear is qualitatively or fundamentally different. Lawyers and geese share a common ancestry which is why we share the six or seven primary emotions with all other vertebrates. It is not coincidence. I agree the goose's reaction may be predictable, I agree the goose does not have free agency; but on your part, you ought to understand that the goose does have internal mental states; it has feelings, inner experience, emotions, just like us, and if you can see that then you are half way there to seeing that the hard problem of consciousness is not some inexplicable magic unique to humans, but rather conscious experience is pretty ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom. The testimony of every bat, every lobster, every haddock, every goose and even every lawyer (yes even lawyers), is that inner mental states are the same thing as neural activity, just understood and experienced from a different perspective. Mental states are what neural activity feels like.
You aren't providing any evidence and are denying the evidence provided by the methodology we do have, while admitting you have nothing to replace it. You are not just 'gilding the lily', you are calling nothing a lily and then applying invisible gilt.
Fifteen Fife fitba fans fling fireworks. Fiscal furious, all fined a fiver.
"it is written" ... three little words that can make an otherwise intelligent person belief the daftest of things.
Outy,
Quite. Be fun wouldn't it if we could all post anonymously for a day, then try to work out who said what after the event. The correlation between "this guy's a fucking disgrace" (copyright: Wigginhall) and Vlad would be pretty much 100% I'd have thought.
It's quite awesome how you {Mr Burns} pack so much wrongness into one post, as others have pointed out. Let me just mention that the literature on perception, e.g. visual, auditory, is voluminous. However, I appreciate that your wall of ignorance is very important to you, as it enables you to preserve intact these pre-scientific ideas of yours. Normally, I would recommend a couple of books to read, but there is no point really, as you are so determined to keep out any ideas which challenge yours.
No amount of claiming you know something makes it true that you do know the thing.
Curiously, people who make the baldest claims to 'truth' are also those who are least willing to put their claims to the test ime. Maybe that is not a coincidence.
Christianity originated as a tiny sect in the Greco-Roman empire and yet every Christian alive today can trace the origin of their beliefs back to that seed. We have never come across a group of humans without previous contact with Christian Europe who independently came up with the same religion ... What is more compelling than the promise of not dying when you die. It's an empty promise, of course, but people still believe it.
For a post full of pig ignorant fucking bollocks this is easily the fucking pig ignoranty bollocksy bollocks ever fucking bollocked.
Of course, the irony is that God has provided us with multiple tabs, if you include fingers and tongues, and multiple slots, modesty forbids me from outlining them. However, only some combinations have a bar-code by Yahweh.
Same here, not going to be around much today. I have an insatiable urge to get my tackle out and head for the canal.
The existence of a god is exactly as puzzling as the existence of a universe. In terms of the fundamental puzzle of why things exist and are the way they are, a god explains nothing, it just moves the problem.
In the last few hundred years, Europe has been beset by internal conflict. In many cases Britain, although on the sidelines, has not turned its back on its European neighbours but has stepped in, usually on the side perceived to be morally right.If only every Jeremy could come up with such oratory.
In the Napoleonic wars we fought against the political hegemony of France with other countries in Europe and helped overthrow a dictator in control of the most powerful army in history. Many British people gave their lives.
In the Crimean War we fought with France and Turkey against Russian land grabbing. Many British people gave their lives.
In the First World War, we threw in our lot with France again. Many British lives were lost.
In the Second World War, we fought against Hitler's empire building. Many British lives were lost.
Britain has a history of facing up to crises in continental Europe, often at great cost. Now, nobody would claim that the EU is in a crisis rivalling that of the Second World War (except Jack Knave), but it has its problems that need to be sorted out. And here we are running away.
Sassy, contrary to forgetting about the British people who gave their lives for the cause in the past, we shame them by running away from the current challenge.
Well yes, though a common criticism of that from the religious is that those of us who think that way must be shallow, ungrounded – after all, we have no meaning in our lives!
It fails I think for several reasons. Fundamentally it’s an argument from consequences – “I think that there has to be a universal planner for there to be meaning in my life, therefore there’s a universal planner!”
It also fails to grasp that many people are perfectly capable of feelings every bit as deep and profound and important as they are within the paradigm of the uncaring and largely parochial universe we appear to occupy. Why wouldn’t we be? I’d even go further sometimes – how much more grand, more transcendent is the understanding science gives us of the universe than tawdry and un-ambitious tales of porcine slaughter, tribal genocide etc?
than tawdry and un-ambitious tales of porcine slaughter, tribal genocide etc?
Not quite sure what this all means, perhaps it is a touch endowed with Vladerian kitsch. We are all born with a state of partial knowledge; we'd like to understand everything but we can't. Many take up with a somewhat traditional belief in a God as the basis of an ultimate explanation for everything; to some of us that doesn't look plausible so we don't set about building a faith or nurturing a belief. Hence we remain without theist faith, ie atheist. The burden of proof lies with those making the claim; I make no positive claim about some grand transcendental narrative that explains all, I am content to wait for whatever enlightenment might come via small incremental improvements in our understanding through research. In the meantime, we carry on, of course, chocolate still tastes good, the dog still needs walking, we take whatever pleasures come our way.
and at the daily how many assertion/fallacies can be used in a single post, Alan Burns comes out swinging. Starts off with a begging the question on spiritual properties, with a side assertion about animals, which ignores that we are animals. Rolls into a combined ad populum and naturalistic fallacy, then exits into an implied ad consequentiam! Finishes with a triple assertion including two more begging the questions.
'well, Jim, I have to say that was a great start by Alan Burns. Not as tight as some posts, but it still packed a lot into the routine! Ideally I think there was an opening for a couple of NPFs there that wouldn't have heightened the overall fallacy rating but he's set a bar for others today'
My point is that if we rewrite history once, we will be rewriting it time and time again. Let the past be as it was.
It isn't rewriting history - that would be to claim that those individuals were never charged and convicted at the time. It is righting a wrong, pardoning them, which is different to implying they weren't convicted in the first place. So in a way it is the opposite of rewriting history as, by definition we are clearly acknowledging what happened in the past and trying, in a small way, to make reparation for the wrong committed.
It is for people making the (theist) claim to identify the evidence. But nothing is ever said about the nature of god that would qualify as evidence. Nothing about his coordinates, speed, temperature, provenance, constitution, mass, charge, spin, there is nothing that we could use to calibrate a god detecting machine with, so we cannot ever justify theist beliefs through empirical means. If we could, well that wouldn't be god would it ? God is an unevidencable concept, so on what grounds can anyone justify their belief ? Once objective empiricism is removed, all that is left are the deeper psychological motives and personal preferences of the believer. This god is the god of human mind, this is the kingdom within, the part phenomenological, part cultural, part philosophical, mental construct that works for some people in the sense that it provides a good enough working backdrop to our daily experience enabling us to make sense of things. But none of this is evidence, rather, it is personal justification.
That's all very nice, but I think it creates more unanswered questions than it solves. It says nothing about what a spirit is, about where they came from, what their properties are, how many are there, are these spirits discreet and unique or are they all part of a greater whole, is the number of spirits constant over time, does each e-coli bacterium have a spirit of its own, do spirits exist in spacetime or do they transcend it in some way, would we expect there to be spirits on Mars and Europa ?
Could go on but you get the picture - I see this sort of top down rationale as creating more unexplained things than it explains, and for evidential support in the modern sense you end up having to rely on fragmentary and anecdotal claims of exotic aberrant phenomena like out of body experiences whilst ignoring the overwhelming bulk of insights accrued through mainstream research into the nature of life.
It's an interesting contrast to western traditional ways of thinking, but at the end of the day it seems to me to fly in the face of evidence more than it explains the evidence, and furthermore, like western judeochristian traditions, it is anthropocentric at heart, it starts from our human experience and extrapolates a universe from that. In contrast, modern research shows us a cosmos in which we are very much an exotic extreme rarity rather than the centre of things; and it is telling that your philosophy depends much on introspection paralleling the western traditions of meditation and prayer - by focussing on what is inside us we end up seeing the cosmos through a highly personalised human-centric lens rather than an objective view. These ways of thinking appeal to our narcissism, so they become popular. They also act to support our denial of mortality, again, an immensely seductive power.
I always think how dull AB's descriptions are. He talks about the soul as if it was a pile of washing. OK, I'm not expecting thrilling poetry, but once he's said 'it's the soul that produces free will/perception' and so on, that's it. The instructions for an electric kettle are rather similar.
If this story is true [the Trump prositutute g*lden shower one], we need to start cacking our pants, if we haven't done already.
Why? How much does he pay for that?
I use religion in the same way that I use culture and morals - I have a combined emotional and intellectual reaction to adopting certain views - and I go with what gives me the most satisfaction and happiness and that doesn't break the law. Obviously all cultural, moral or religious views may sometimes impact negatively on others, where they disagree with your views, but that is part of the challenges of living in a society - to try and accommodate that difference in a way that benefits society. Of course then you have the problem that there is no objective view of what benefits society.
Good grief. Watching chunsty trying to get the point is like those stories (from the Falklands) about penguins that were so intent on watching planes fly over them that they ended up falling flat on their backs.
"Look! Look! There's the point. Up in the sky! Look look it's going straight over us!" THUD. "Wow. That point was amazing! Look! Another one, another one!" THUD. "They keep going right over our" THUD. "heads!" THUD...
I feel you have tried to deflect the category question back to consideration of mere unfalsifiability.
There is a whole antitheist industry or modus of entertainment/expression based around ridiculing all of theism which rides on the back of unfalsifiability.
Apart from revealing the inner redneck there is real social harm to be had here.
The term ''there might be categoric differences'' is disingenuous.
These are either points to take seriously or humourously. If we are to take philosophy seriously we must look to non categorising or generalising.
... there's real social harm here.
Atheists find God unfalsifiability.
Atheists find ridiculous things unfalsifiable
Atheists then conclude that all unfalsifiables are ridiculous
Atheists challenged by multiverse
Atheists conclude not all unfalsifiables are ridiculous.
Antitheists still like the ridicule link though.
Antitheists arbitrarily single out which unfalsifiables are ridiculous and include God.
Antitheists take the rise out of theists and mock them on the same bases that homophobes might ridicule say a gay pride march........ based on logical fallacies.
Of course we know we are talking about the FSMers here.
Other than that lapse though Outrider, a fair post.
I think the language is becoming a little intemperate. Words like "vilify" imply more than deserved criticism. It's true that this whole Brexit and hence Indyref2 was caused by the Tory leader of the time embarking on a poorly thought out strategy for silencing the Eurosceptics in his party. Yes he deserves criticism and Theresa May's handling since has hardly been stellar but "vilify" has a connotation of unjust criticism. Can't we just agree that the Conservative Party has fucked us all royally up the arse?
Modern English is virtually two languages existing side by side - Norman French and Anglo Saxon (including words sourced from other north European lanquages). It is quite possible to make statements which are largely influenced by only one language which can be matched by an equivalent statement using the other source.
For instance, deriving from Norman French, you could say "Meretricious sesquipedalianism".
And, deriving from Anglo Saxon "Bullshit baffles brains."
Anglo Saxon, I believe is characterised by meaning arising from the use of short "particles" while Norman French is inflected, meaning being determined by specific word endings (clearly influenced by Latin). Our normal everyday usage is about 80% Anglo Saxon and north European and 20% latinate words. People wishing to appear intellectually superior tend to use multisyllabic and multimorphemic words which are more likely to have had a Latin-influenced source
A quick glance in my Oxford Dictionary gives "window" as coming from the Norse vindauga, the latin word for which was fenestra.
A level of complexity, however, is added by the old Norse word meant an unglazed opening (Wind eye) and the German word for glazed opening is actually fenster.
The polls are all over the place Floo. Yesterday there was one that gave the Tories an 11% advantage. Today 1%. I hope for a miracle but I fear, as they nearly always seem to do, the British people will go in for yet more self-flagellation and vote the despicables in to power.
Maybe it's an appeal to the baby in us that wants a Nanny - albeit that the Nanny is more Rebecca de Mornay than Julie Andrews.
We aren't talking about whether people who have a particular belief would, ideally, hope others agree with them.
No, we are talking about the methods that the might use to ensure that others believe the same as they do.
It isn't secular humanists who devise initiation ceremonies to 'welcome' new born babies into their belief with parents required to promise to bring up the child to believe.
It isn't secular humanists who create complex layers of further initiation throughout childhood linked to belief but carefully (and disingenuously) also linked to growing up.
It isn't secular humanists who get the state to fund a thousands of schools run by their organised belief system which have as part of the their ethos a requirement to ensure that the children that attend become members of that belief system.
Nope those all exist elsewhere - I guess you know where that is don't you Vlad.
Maybe some of those arguing against you are of the 0.01% of the population who are curious to look beyond the obvious, to scratch the surface and see what lies underneath. I'd agree with you in the sense that the vast majority of people for the vast majority of time do not concern themselves with concepts of logic or of epistemology or try to figure the mind bending concepts in cosmology or fundamental physics. It's not for everyone. I've never watched a single episode of Big Brother. I really can't figure why people watch soap operas. Maybe I'm just weird, but it seems to me like so many just fritter their time away on trivial flimflam when there is so much to learn and so little time to learn it in.
AB,QuoteGenetic mutations are the driving force -…
There’s no such expression as “driving force” in the TofE. If you meant something like “a critical component but by no means the only one” then yes, you’d be right.Quote…without them there would be no natural selection.
That much at least is true because there’d be nothing on which natural selection could act. Just as, say, without an engine a car wouldn’t be a car. That's not to say though that a car isn't a lot more than just an engine.QuoteThe main point I have tried to make is that truly beneficial mutations will be extremely rare if all mutations are randomly generated.
Two problems there. First, once again “beneficial” is a judgment after the event. As you actually mean something like, “better adapted to their environment” then say so.
Second, yes adaptations that better enable the genome to relate to its environment can be said to be rare in the sense that, say, they happen 1/1,000, 1/1,000,000 etc times a mutation occurs. They are precisely not rare though when you take into account the billions of events and the huge amounts of time involved. Rarity depends on context – when you look at the number of opportunities for them to occur they could just as well be described as common.
To point it another way, your “point” still fails.QuoteYet the TOE seems to presume…
The TofE doesn’t “presume” anything. Rather it relies on evidence, mathematical modelling and various other techniques to arrive at its conclusions. It’s an exceptionally well-supported theory – in some was better supported than the germ theory of disease and the theory of gravity – and your personal incredulity about it doesn’t detract from that.Quote…that there will always be sufficient beneficial mutations to drive the natural selection process to build up highly complex organs using thousands of incremental steps, each of which has to have substantial survival benefit in its own right.
No it doesn’t say there will “always be” anything. What it actually says is that all the available evidence tells us that complexity has always come from prior incremental steps.QuoteYou claim the end product is just pure chance, because the TOE has no underlying aims or goals apart from survival.
I don’t “claim” it – it’s just simple logic.QuoteBut can you not see divine purpose in the awesome attributes you have acquired?
No, because that would be irrational and potentially idiotic for several reasons that have been explained to you repeatedly and at length already but that you continue to ignore.
There is no "there" ... we are always here, in a life or death situation at least until we do die. My father had a pig heart valve replacement, dying a few months later when it became infected. My sister died after refusing treatment for flu after far too long spent paralysed by MS.
BeRational is correct in that many of the lines drawn in the argument are arbitrary and it is not possible to come to any objective position on the extent and acceptability of suffering.
Every moment of ones life, one is causing the deaths or affecting the continuing lives of innumerable other lives.
Where you draw the line really depends on the extent of your empathy with them. We try and limit it by including "my family" or "humans", or "the same species", or "entities with nervous systems", "sentient" beings - but ultimately it is illusory - we have no real way of separating our "individual selves" from that of our own gut bacteria or the rest of life in the universe. So what we ultimately do to other lives depends on how connected we feel to them and how responsible we feel we should be for their suffering or destiny - and our own.
when you point out he's at least knocking on the door of the negative proof fallacy he goes all faux indignant, "Who me? – Never!". It's slipperier than an eel in a Swarfega jacuzzi, but as true to form as ever.
I do not support hate crime but I do support the right to speak out against the campaigns by the RC church to prevent legal abortion for those who need it - even victims of rape and incest - and their desire to reverse marriage equality and the damage that would do. If you hold abhorrent views and try to foist them on others then you have to expect to find that society does not much care for what you stand for.
And it's not 'mainstream' to support abortion rights and marriage equality, as if this man is taking some courageous stand against liking the X Factor or Pizza Hut. It is still risky to be openly gay. We still judge women for abortion - it's still taboo to talk about having one. It's not 'mainstream', it's humane to want a society that allows both, its humane and compassionate. It's no surprise that Catholicism fails drastically in this regard, but then its made-up god of guilt and vengeance is created in its image.
Yes, triple irony quoting Lewis on fallacies. Fake dichotomies abound in Lewis, e.g. lunatic, liar or lord. I think he also got into the impersonal/personal arguments, which usually fall off a cliff. For example, atoms are impersonal, therefore can't produce personality. Eh? Well, atoms aren't green, therefore can't end up in green things. Yeah, sure, would you like to give me your bank card pin?
The statement "the bowl is empty" is a positive claim. I'm making a definite claim that the bowl is in a particular state. As such, it demands evidence to substantiate it.
The position of most atheists is more like "I have no reason to believe there is anything in the bowl, therefore, for the moment, I will assume there is nothing in it".
I would go a little further. I observe that the Milkians have been trying to find evidence for milk in the bowl for 2,000 years and have so far only produced a few anonymous stories to support their claim. To me this shifts the balance of probability to the bowl being empty or at least not having milk in it.
Milkianity has an interesting history, by the way. Milkians believe the bowl was filled with fresh milk 2,000 years ago which then went sour after being left out for three days. However, it was rendered fresh again in a miraculous event known as the Pasteurisation. In the early days, some Milkians held unorthodox beliefs: some believed the milk was turned to cheese; others - yoghurt. However these dairytics were all put to the sword by the true Milkians. The bloodshed was as nothing, however, compared to what happened in the 15th century after the schism between the full fatolics and the semi-skimmedants.
All you are claiming, is that we feel in control, therefore we are supernatural. This is the sort of unevidenced irrational naive thinking you might expect from a ten year old still immersed in a storybook world, it is not worthy of an educated adult. An alpha male chimpanzee exerts control over his group so do we scratch our heads in astonishment and conclude that the alpha male must therefore be supernatural ? All this demonstrates is a readiness to abandon reason and enquiry in the face of the merest intellectual challenge and regress back to magic thinking, and magic thinking in the end solves nothing it merely hides issues you cannot fathom. 'God's will' and 'human will' merely provide a magic cover, they do not further or deepen any understanding
What methodology other than 'I really, really, really want what my ancestors really wanted to be true to turn out to actually be true' do you propose? Faith is unrealiable, and for those of us with any sort of logic-dominated thought processes 'just want it to be true' isn't enough.
we only want emotionally charged opinions here , no facts please :o
See, here’s the thing. If you want to attempt the special pleading of “consciousness would have to be fully explained whereas "soul" doesn’t have to be explained at all” then anyone else can play that game too. To take the above examples, I now have a free hand to assert our model of gravity to be wrong and that it's actually caused by pixies with very small strings, and for disease to be caused by wicked spirits. After all, just as you do I can “define” these agencies by what the do (hold stuff down and cause disease respectively) and, naturally, being supernatural there can be no naturalistic explanations for them of any kind. Zip. Nothing. Nada. The square root of zilch.
Been utterly fabulous, me and incredulity got together for a big sesh with George Clooney, the Duchess of Cambridge and the fattest pig in the world at The Sagrada Familia, and we danced tributes to Rev Richard Coles in Strictly. I do love incredulity but he kept bringing down the vibe by saying it wasn't happening because he just couldn't believe it, so I told him as with everyone else, prove it doesn't.
Anyway off to watch Harvey Weinstein be installed as the He-Man Moderator of the church of Iceland, and yes I do mean the store.
... the way to convince people of the failures of religion is with logic, reason and evidence, and if they were the sort of people that would be influenced by those they wouldn't be theists in the first place. The point is to keep making the point publicly and clearly so that more and more impressionable youngsters grow up in a world where there are no sacred cows, where the holy is ridiculed, where the obvious nudity of the Emperor is printed in the headlines every day. This is the long game.
I see your 'Millions of people can't be wrong' and raise you a 'the global homeopathy market in 2016 was estimated to be over $2 billion'.
As a health and safety professional I can attest to the rule 'Always count on human stupidity.'
I once worked for a Laos based NGO supporting victims of disability prejudice.
And what was the underlying reason for such prejudice ? Our field workers reported the same story over and over again - it was a belief in karma, disabled and disfigured individuals were targetted for hate because of the widespread belief that they were being punished for, and deserved being punished for, their immorality in a previous life.
Irrational beliefs always come with costs attached. Irrational beliefs always cause harm.
I think claims of anti-semitism are often used to shut down criticism of the modern state of Israel. On the other hand, some of the criticism of modern Israel are unfair. At least, in Israel, if you are gay you can live a life without fear. This is not the case in the Palestinian controlled territory or any of the surrounding Islamic states.
Look, it’s simple enough. If you’re feeling upset that a cherished notion has been undone but so out of your depth that you can’t process it just say so. There are people here who readily will help you with the basics of how logic and argument work, and moreover you’ll be better equipped to deal with the world once you do grasp it.
Africvan military regimes have rarely been any closer to democratic than Mugabe's.
Surely the first word in your post is redundant?
No, it was Africvan.
Remember: the only thing that flat-earthers fear is sphere itself.
You didn't grasp the significance of the previous post. There is ultimately no puppeter and puppets scenario; there is no controller and the controlled. This is a mindset gifted to us by ancient theism which envisioned our reality as one created by a creator who is separate from its creation, and thousands of years on, people are still having difficulty in excising this way of thinking. There is no separation between us and a creator god, there is no separation of humans from nature; rather humans, along with termites and tree frogs and all else exist in a shared reality and interact in ways which boil down to logic ultimately. There is nothing separate controlling us, but rather, our actions and choices are the working out of the fundamental principles that underlie all things; our actions and choices are the manifestation of deep logic through the domain of higher biology. The very notion of 'control' needs to be ditched; it is just a naive anthropomorphism that serves to keep understanding at bay.
... your particular approach to theism, Alan, is getting in the way of your thinking. I suspect you have the compartment in your head labelled 'God' so well protected by now that were you ever to realise just how fallacious your attempts at reasoning are then your belief in 'God' would be a casualty - so you stick doggedly to your mantra.
from: Rhiannon on Today at 08:58:56
This is what I think too. Catholics who also happen to make porn.
so in 3-2-1 terms, we are obviously waiting for something. That could be a bus, or maybe a holiday, or perhaps the council bin collection. But when we add scientific it brings to mind relativity and maybe relatives in a far away country might get to see.
But if that's slid in could that be a reference to a football tackle, or the 'lid in' a Dusty Bin?
Now however it's not scientific, rather it's scientism so if we apply that to relativity it becomes relativism, and yes some people might like this but many won't so while it's a good prize to some you may be disappointed that it's our old friend Dusty Bin, and here he is dressed as that relativity man, Einstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckf_6GiLO1E
Waiter: I wish to complain about my salad - it seems to have words in it.
I find it quite astonishing that in the various puff pieces on the news about this, that the Beeb and others seem quite unaware of May proclaiming that tuition fees are amongst the highest in the world in a slightly surprised tone is a tad disingenuous.
You fucking introduced it. You bastard useless politician. Its your fault. Are you suffering from amnesia?
I also wondered about that. Indeed if people who are 'believers' accept they have a terminal illness, they will accept it but it's normal and human to want to make the most of life and to prolong it because it's what we know. Also life is to be celebrated and enjoyed as well as used to best of our abilities. I love life & hope it will continue for a while; if it becomes obvious it won't I will accept the inevitable. If we didn't feel that way we might as well die as soon as born and who wants that? It's such an interesting world.
Having tattoos doesn’t stop anyone from being employed or doing a job. The only thing making them unemployable is the up-their-own-arse attitudes of prejudiced dipsticks.
+1 from me.
"I've been to far too many funerals - and conducted some as well. The body in the box may be centre stage, but the funeral is there for the family, usually the closest relatives. It's their show. If they want to demonstrate their love and devotion for their loved one in laughter, or in tears, using hymns ancient and modern, or rock anthems, wearing black, purple or whatever, then that's their way of coping with their loss. If I'm conducting, I'll allow anything within reason....bad language or similar acts in a church setting would be out; apart from that, as long as thwere is dignity and compassion in the service, that's fine by me. I want folk to walk out of church, or leave a crematorium or graveside with some memories of the day which will help them cope in the days, weeks and months which will s urely follow."
:-[ :)
Because that makes no sense, that is why. Choices are made by a brain, we do not interact with a brain to tell it what choices to make. Brains evolved to make optimal choices. The idea that brains need another brain to tell them what choices to make is both bizarre and baseless. There is no evidence to support such a notion and it is logically incoherent implying a regress. Conscious awareness is not a separate thing to a brain, it is produced by brain functioning to better prioritise awareness, but it is not a separate thing to that which produces it.
You seem to have a mental blockage around the concept of 'physical'. There isn't a separate domain of logic for things that are 'physical'. Two plus two will equal four irrespective of the nature of the things being added. If someone on my team makes two suggestions for improvements and another guy makes two suggestions, then we have four suggestions. If I buy two apples from one stall and another two from another stall, then I will have four apples. The fact that apples are 'physical' does not alter the logic and we cannot deny the logic of the situation by the claim 'but they are physical'. That is just a trivial ploy to try to deny the underlying truth.
You seem to have a mental blockage around the concept of 'control'. I can control my hands and arms by willing them to move. Likewise an elephant can control its trunk, a more complicated business in terms of the neurology required. If brains alone were insufficient to do the translation of desire and intention into motor action then every creature on the planet would be dead already, being totally immobile, unable to will their limbs to move. The fact that humans can do this derives from the fact that great apes can do this, and so on. What we cannot control is the subliminal preconscious functioning that gives rise to desires and intentions in the first place. I cannot look up at the sky and choose to experience it as green, we have no control over that. I cannot put a strawberry in my mouth and choose to find it tastes of garlic, I have no control over that. We have no control over the fundamental primitives of how we interact with the wider cosmos, functioning at these base levels is entirely consistent with a deterministic account of nature. Concepts of 'control' and 'freedom' at higher levels of biological complexity are useful concepts at those levels of emergence, they are essentially feelings produced by mind at the interface between thoughts and actions and although we live our lives almost exclusively in those higher domains of emergence does not mean that feelings do not derive from an underlying substrate of biological functioning which is entirely deterministic.
You are again making the mistake of concluding what death is, even before investigating it. If we begin with the conclusion that 'death is the end'....then any clue about it through anecdote will only mean "Well...it can't really be death can it?"....which is a circular way of approaching it.
Doctors and investigators have confirmed that many of the NDE patients had indeed been dead in medical terms, and later came back alive for whatever reason. The patients have also seen and heard many activities and conversations during the time they were dead.....which have been confirmed.
My point is that, if we assume that NDE's are only due to some activity in the brain, then there is no way of ever investigating the phenomenon at all.
Double blind tests cannot be the only way of establishing real experiences...because such trials are not possible in all cases.
The overall goal of the AWARE Study is to study the processes that take place in the brain and also the cognitive and mental processes in people who have had a cardiac arrest and have therefore by definition died for a period of time.
As you probably realised from my lecture at Goldsmiths, the evidence is now suggesting that mental and cognitive processes may continue for a period of time after a death has started. This of course makes sense when we understand the process of death better, which is that it is essentially a global stroke of the brain. Therefore like any stroke process one would not expect the entity of mind / consciousness to be lost immediately.
There is so much anecdotal evidence that suggests(experiencers) can. at least sometime, perceive veridically during their NDEs ....but isn't it true that in all this time, there hasn't been a single case of a veridical perception reported by an NDEr under controlled conditions? I mean, thirty years later, it's still a null class(as far as I know). Yes, excuses, excuses-I know. But, really, wouldn't you have suspected more than a few cases at least by now??..
And you need not to take things so literally. I had qualified those odd phrases with the words "a spiritual something", which should have given you some idea of what I was getting at. In fact, the first expression "Old Nobodaddy" comes from William Blake, who used it to directly refute the idea of "a big daddy up there". But Blake was no atheist - and in fact most of his poetry is concerned with developing what you would call "the higher regions of consciousness". Likewise, the second expression "Somebodaddy" comes from George Bernard Shaw, who was using it to suggest that there might be some kind of impersonal "life-force" (akin perhaps to the Hindu prana) which was the source and sustainer of all living things. In this, he was doing exactly what you have been advocating - to find underlying common links between the religious belief systems of the world. Aldous Huxley (as I said) also advocated this kind of 'ecumenism'.
I have parted company with these ways of thinking now. But I'm a firm believer in 'getting civilised' - as I suspect are most members of this forum. What I haven't lost faith in is the power of the arts - particularly great music - to 'raise consciousness', as you might put it. I would say that the performing arts are very much the West's form of yoga, and may be more valuable to us here (being home-grown) than trying the whole-sale adoption of systems of thought which have a long period of development elsewhere. We can all learn from each other, but 'changes in perspective' have to come about organically. And, if I may say so, you're doing your own bit to be divisive by partitioning off human beings in the way you seem to be. If those of a more scientific and analytical bent are 'doing it wrong', then perhaps a phrase of William Blake's might be useful "An error must be taken to its extreme before it can be combatted". Maybe that's a bit extreme in itself in these dangerous times, but people have to start from where they are.
You are so full of prejudice against the world you think your god made, 'puppet' being typical of your skewed presentation. We are not puppets of something separate that is controlling us, we are logical outcomes of our formative circumstances. The will we have is derived from influences. Were this not the case then there would be no rationale at all to what 'I' am and there would be no reason for me wanting the things that I want. If humans had evolved in the way you imagine, free of reason, then we would be long extinct, it would be a curse.
Your scenario has no explanations for the resolution of choice. It cannot explain why people do the things they do. Some bloke in Wolverhampton decided it would be a really good idea last year to cement his head into a microwave oven. People do bizarre things, stupid things, bad things. Can your scheme explain why people make such choices ? It cannot, it is a scheme that avoids explanation and settles for a facile dismissal, that guy is a stupid guy, that bloke is 'evil' and so on without entertaining any notion of why he might be stupid or bad. The more insightful understanding comes about through recognising that there are always reasons for things; no one and no thing can be exempt from this principal. I see no virtue in the elevation of ignorance over insight; we can do better than that.
This is, to a degree, hubris, taking human superiority as an unquestioned given. I agree, chimpanzees have not produced a Shakespeare or a J S Bach, or landed a rover on an asteroid yet. On the other hand, they are not knowingly driving species into extinction, filling the oceans with plastic or building weapons of mass destruction. Maybe there is a terrible maths to this, the cost of producing a genius, is a hundred thousand morons.
On the subject of the racist incompetent lying PM saying she is about to resign soon (just like she said she wasn't going to call a GE), what then means that you as an MP would vote for a deal you wouldn't before? If some form of MV3 does get through, and I don't know why Bercow gets such shite for putting a precedent here, then those changing their mind, including the dangerous slug, Johnson are in some cases voting to get a chance to be PM. One of the many things that May is responsible for is allowing Johnson to be in the tent pissing in, and pissing on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's chances of being released by keeping him to save the Tory party. A disgrace leading a band of disgraced chancers.
People have long admired honeybees for their extraordinary social cooperation. If only we could get along this well together. Despite being mere animals (and millions of years older than modern humans) the bees would appear to be model exemplars of what Sriram calls the ‘higher self’ and all without engaging in years of ‘objective techniques and methods’, yet the difference between our two species is down to genetics. Humans will never be like bees, even though we may look to them for ‘spiritual’ inspiration. Unlike us, bees are not busy wrecking the planet nor do they wage war on their own kind, and it is doubtful whether they occupy themselves with fantasies about living forever or transcending their own natures. Of course, they don’t send rockets to Mars or post comments on internet forums and most live for only a few weeks, but only in our eyes could that possibly diminish them. Perhaps the humble admiration of bees could be added to the list of methods by which humans might ennoble themselves while they still have time.
Follow-up regard Jo Swinson's (who happens to be my MP) initially reaction to Corbyn's letter - perhaps, to follow on from NS's earlier point, she has to do a reverse Meatloaf and decide to 'do that' to remove the prospect of no-deal, and hopefully Brexit.
Baffling watching people trying to pick holes in evolutionary theory, like some detail here or there is going to bring the whole house down. People like you put me in mind of a visitor to London's Natural History Museum who unlike everyone else marveling at magnificent structure and its contents, spends all his energies going round the building hoping to find brick with a crack so that he can claim the entire edifice to be invalid. I mean why ? All you can achieve is nit picking holes when you could be growing in insight with the positive attitude of someone open to learning.
Do you really think a god that created life and set it loose in a changing dynamic environment would then impose arbitrary limits on its ability to adapt and evolve in line with changing environment ? It would be madness as a design principle. Every time a big rock falls out the sky and causes a mass extinction. god has to come down and get busy all over again, a horse here, a hedgehog there, a colony of penguins for Antarctica, that would be nice. No more triceratops or velociraptors though, he's gone right off them now. I mean, really ?
OK, so...
Anthropic Principle, as you've espoused, being based upon the fallacy of 'fine tuning' is on rocky ground at best. The unwarranted presumptions in the fine tuning argument are well established.
Quantum Mechanics - the misinterpretation here of the 'observer' is also well-established. There is no requirement for an observer to be conscious in order for a wave-function to collapse. Evidence of this is readily available every time we look up at the stars and see light twinkling. You may suggest that our looking is what causes the wave-function to collapse so that we can see, but the twinkling is caused by interactions with the atmosphere on the way through, waveforms that have to have already collapsed during the interactions; are those ozone molecules 'conscious'?
Evolution - design is not evolution, the two are very, very different. That design can, at times, involve an iterative modelling element does parallel the natural selection element of the current model of evolution, but design is not a random variation on prior success, it's a deliberate researched attempt at progress. Most importantly, though, is the misunderstanding that evolution is a process from simple to complex and one of development. Evolution can move towards simplicity if that's what's of benefit in the instant, there is no overarching framework to evolution with 'development' to somewhere as a goal.
Artificial Intelligence - evolved intelligence will almost certainly diverge from artificial intelligence in some ways, but there's nothing in either that seems to require the supposition of 'soul/spirit/atma'. Whilst it's true that any potential artificial intelligence will not have invented itself, neither did we 'invent' us - we emerged from the iterative process of evolution. You say that 'If automatons can behave like humans, we cannot conclude that we are also automatons!' - we perhaps cannot prove, but it's not an unreasonable supposition based upon the evidence. If two things manifest the same behaviours in response to similar inputs, why would we presume (in the absence of any other evidence) that there are qualitatively different internal processes going on? It's possible, but you need a reason to presume it, not just the possibility.
Spectrum - I'd agree, to an extent, that the human tendency - or, at least, the Western cultural tendency, perhaps - to classify into rigidly defined 'boxes' is increasingly something that the natural sciences are having to undo. Species classificiations, with clearly demarked and defined boundaries are not always the practical reality. However, accepting that biological classifications often fall on a continuum is not sufficient to warrant claims of 'spirit' - saying the line between two species of birds is actually more blurred than was originally thought is not the same as suggesting, therefore, that phoenixes are real.
Suffering and pain are part of human life - every human life.
We do not see the full picture of causes and reasons, but I know God will give whatever we need to endure and bring good from it if we put our faith and trust in Him.
Jesus Himself had to suffer torture and death in order to bring us eternal salvation.
A wee tribute to this thread hitting 2 Million Views - take that Dr Evil! With appearances from the mad mods, we have 'Alan Burns in Wonderland'
There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and Nearly Sane and Gordon were having tea at it: Trentvoyager was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using him as a cushion, resting their elbows on him, and talking over his head. `Very uncomfortable for Trentvoyager,’ thought Alan Burns `only, as he's asleep, I suppose he doesn’t mind.’
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: `Two million views! Two million views’ they cried out when they saw Alan Burns coming. `There’s PLENTY of views’ said Alan Burns happily hoping to have converted someone, and he sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.
`Have some wine,’ Nearly Sane said in an encouraging tone.
Alan Burns looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. `I don’t see any wine, I see the blood of our Lord,’ he remarked.
`There isn’t any,’ said Nearly Sane.
`Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,’ said Alan Burn unctuously.
`It wasn’t very civil of you to post without reading other posts’ said Nearly Sane.
`I didn’t know it was YOUR thread,’ said Alan Burns; `it’s posted on by a great many more than three.’
`Your post wants modding,’ said Gordon. He had been looking at Alan Burns for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.
`You should learn not to make personal remarks,’ Alan Burns said oleaginously; `it’s very rude.’
Gordon opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was, `Why is Searching for God like a writing-desk?’
`Come, we shall have some fun now!’ thought Alan Burns `I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles.–I am a member of Mensa,’ he added aloud.
`Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?’ said Nearly Sane.
`Exactly so,’ said Alan Burns.
`Then you should say what you mean,’ Nearly Sane went on.
`I do,’ Alan Burns fallaciously replied; `at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.’
`Not the same thing a bit!’ said Gordon. `You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’
`You might just as well say,’ added Nearly Sane, `that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”!’
`You might just as well say,’ added Trentvoyager, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, `that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’
It's a made up parallel immorality score to justify religious interference in individual freedom.
People in the world are dying and you can only insult others beliefs... The bigots it appears are right here on this thread. Those who insult the Christian God do make themselves as bad as any other bigot. I bet you all feel proud of yourselves. Tell me how does it feel to know you are as bad as any other bigot. Even they believe their beliefs given them right to insult others. Nah you cannot blame God for mans own ugly characteristics.
At the age of eighteen I was unmarried and pregnant. This was in the early sixties. It was considered by society, at that time, that to be pregnant and unmarried was unacceptable. So my only option was a mother and baby home resulting in adoption. The home that was chosen for me was run by a group of catholic nuns.
The home consisted of two large Victorian houses, one to house girls until six weeks pre birth. The last six weeks of pregnancy, birth and time spent waiting for the adoption to be arranged, was spent in the adjoining house.
We had to pay our board and lodgings. Except that each week our personal finances were reviewed by the nuns and if they considered we had too much money, they took it. I hid mine to avoid this!
Food was often inadequate, yet if questioned the amounts changed temporarily.
We were allowed little in respect of personal items.
We were not allowed post, we had to use the local Post office.
Friendships were discouraged and girls were split up when these became obvious.
We had little freedom, times allowed out were rigid with one late pass per month til 10pm.
No telephone, no family visitors allowed.
Little pre or post natal care.
No discussion or advice whatsoever about having a baby.
No understanding shown about the situation we were in.
Little or no conversation with nuns.
We worked constantly doing household tasks.
No entertainment, no tv, radio, music.
We had to attend the 'in house church' every day, being repeatedly told about the error of our ways. Constantly riminded that we had no one to blame but ourselves. We had to pray to God for forgiveness or we would go to hell.
No information about the actual adoption, the nuns were doing us a favour in removing the baby, giving it a chance for a decent life!
Any girl wanting to keep their baby was put under huge pressure to change their mind. Most did.
We felt that this pressure indicated that the babies were being sold, but I know of no evidence for this!
The whole experience was one of being in a prison with hard cold people who cared nothing for us or the babies.
Girls were not allowed to help each other when a birth was imminent.We were locked out of the delivery room.
I have no memory of the birth, except a dark room and a strange smell. I cannot remember having a baby.
The nuns were cold. They did not appear to care about us at all. Their regime had to be followed at all costs and it was an arduous one.
We were not allowed to care for our babies, the nursery being locked after feeds so that a mother could not attend to a crying baby. Consequently the house was always full of the sound of screaming babies.
I was lucky in some respects. My baby had a low birth weight, so I had to do an extra feed at 2am. I would spend most of the night nursing my baby going to bed about half an hour before 6am. (Time to get up and feed)
When the time came to give up the baby we were told the night before and given no information whatsoever about this process.
I had to find my own way with all my luggage and a baby, to a central building in the city, where the head nun just said "hello", took the baby and told me to leave.
We were not allowed any information about the adoptees and had to sign a form giving up all rights to the baby.
The ethos was coldness and punishment with the constant reminder that we were sinners and had to pray daily for Gods forgiveness.
Quote from: Spud on Today at 07:24:02 PM
The man penetrates and the woman is penetrated. Homosexual acts reverse those roles, so that men play the role of the female and vice versa.
Surely it'd be more to the point getting hold of some evidence that actually supports this general god/Jesus idea firstI'm pretty happy to concede that there isn't any of that so there's no point in trying.
and then if there was any found, it might then be worth the effort of sorting through the detailI think it's interesting to understand how the Bible came to be written even with Jesus not being God.
in the mean time what's the point of threads like this one? .Do you only do things that have a point? If I had just said "Jesus wasn't God so I'm not interested" I wouldn't know anything like as much as I do about the history of 1st century Palestine - or history generally, or archaeology or a lot of other things. Discussions like this thread are interesting for their own sake and also for lots of tangential reasons. I can understand why you might not be interested, but it is not compulsory to read every thread on this board, nor comment on them
It's an onomatopoeic alert siren, signalling the deployment of a weapons-grade logical fallacy cluster.
Speak for yourself. Making up a pseudo-moral points system to avoid having to actually justify any of the arbitrary 'moral' prohibitions and proscriptions doesn't wash here.
Except when it's god that does it, right? Thou shalt not murder?
If I'm called to repent for being human, by the being that allegedly made me human, I think I have good case for suggesting the system's rigged.
"Hit me with your rhythm stick."
O.
QuoteQuote from: Sriram on Today at 06:44:26 AM
It is not an unsupported belief. It is not just plucked from nowhere.
It is. I asked you what methodology you had to validate any evidence you had to support it, and you said you didn't have any. It is, by your own description, an unsupported belief - again, that doesn't make it definitively wrong, but it just doesn't give anyone else a reason to accept that it's right.QuoteI have the instances of QM where observation (consciousness) influences wave-particle duality.
And you've had it explained to you that 'observation' does not need to be a conscious observer - again, that's an unfortunate metaphor.QuoteI have Wheeler's participatory anthropic principle.
Which, whilst put forward by a very eminent scientist, was not in any way anything more than unsupported ponderings on his part. He defined it as speculation, and never submitted the idea in a peer-reviewed paper anywhere.QuoteI have instances of documented NDE's.
Which, when investigated, have better supported explanations that don't involve spirits and which, even if you discount the conventional wisdom of science, still aren't supporting your theory, they're just not contradicting it.QuoteInstances of documented reincarnation cases.
As above.QuoteI have Chalmer's new ideas of panpsychism.
For which there is no methodology for testing or investigating, and no conventional demonstrations of validity.QuoteI have ideas of Jung's collective consciousness.
For which there is no supporting evidence.QuoteI have Eagleman's theories of the unconscious mind being larger and more powerful than the conscious mind.
Which is not really in question, but doesn't support your claim, it just doesn't contradict it.QuoteI also have centuries of world philosophies where consciousness (Self) is considered as the real power behind the apparent events in the world.
And there are centuries of folk-wisdom to support ghosts, witches, black-magic, fairies, kelpies, naga, bakemono and who knows what else. Fairy tales are not a reliable source of data for determining the nature of reality.
You have a pyramid scheme, you have the MLM of woo. Your woo claims stand proudly on the shoulders of other woo-peddlers and hijack the idle speculations of people with actual credentials. None of what you've cited here is any better an indication of reality than me suggesting that the magic of Jesus is supported by the fact that Lewis Carrol wrote about Aslan and Tolkien wrote about Gandalf, therefore magic's real.
You need a methodology, you don't have one.
You need some basis for assessing whether that methodology produces valid results, you don't have one.
And then you need those results, and you don't have them.
You can suggest that these are possibilities, and no-one can argue strongly against that, but you're over-reaching the validity of your claims when you suggest that you've definitively identified a limit to the capability of conventional science to investigate a phenomenon or when you claim that your failure to accept the capabilities of the mechanisms that science has evidenced is therefore sufficient grounds to presume that some unrelated claim is valid.
That's not peace. You're not in favour of peace. All you want is for Russia to be able to commit genocide in peace.
Then given she was in part given it for her services to the Post Office, it seems to me you are happy to not support the state honouring someone for actions that led to suicides. And yes, it's a minimal thing but one you are choosing not to do.
The evidence lies in your ability to think - to guide your own thoughts.
Can you not see how impossible it would be for reasoned arguments and verifiable conclusions to just drop out from the unavoidable, inevitable consequences of physically defined material reactions?
You can try to explain it all away by quoting the complexity of neural connections and pathways, but the bottom line is that in any material model we have no control over the physically defined material reactions in the human brain.
The only feasible explanation for our ability to guide our own thoughts comes from the miraculous power of our conscious awareness to interact rather than just react in order to give us the freedom we all enjoy.
You, like many others, seem to misunderstand what I mean by free will - it does not mean free of constraints.
Any form of consciously driven will is free in the context of it not being just an inevitable reaction beyond your conscious control.
If you are in conscious control of your thoughts, words and actions then you have the gift of free will.
The materialistic alternative is that you are entirely driven by material reactions beyond your conscious control.
It is either your conscious self in control or the uncontrollable laws of nature - there is no alternative.
I think you would agree, though, that a good dictionary would have a more extensive definition than that. After all conscious and supernatural would describe a ghost or an angel.
Consciousness is hard to pin down and as with the terms Universe and time there are different views on them. How do you feel about an unconscious supernatural necessary entity?
Yes, I think you have rightly touched on how fundamental and ultimate the necessary entity would be. I’m not a great one for talk of the supernatural because of it’s perjorative baggage, or the “natural/supernatural” divide. However, as evidenced by resistance to it on here at least, non- contingency is not a staple part of naturalism. The concern and focus on cause and effect and change has led to it’s sidelining and forgetting. Having said that there is no justification for the conclusion, therefore it doesn’t exist or for some of the fantastical intellectual contortions to get round the necessary entity.
So I would say a universe popping out of nothing, or existing infinitely, or creating itself or causal loops are beyond the natural....or supernatural.
Secondly, being fundamental. The necessary entity would not itself be subject to the laws of nature for everything else. So whether something like that can be described as natural,I’m not sure.
Which brings us to consciousness.
I believe I have said because the necessary entity is not subject to any laws it gives rise to. Why these laws arise is indistinguishable from volition or will. Will is a sign of consciousness. Being fundamental, there is no context for any randomness or unconsciousness, or accident.
I guess, sort of. It's just important to me that my beliefs have a reasonable chance of being true. You talk of 'progress' as if I'm stuck or something, but I really don't see it like that at all. To be honest, the way of thinking you describe just doesn't make sense to me. Even if I decided for some reason that I wanted to 'progress' in that way, I'd have no clue how to go about it. My brain just doesn't seem to work that way. My beliefs are based on whether I'm convinced by the information I have or not. It's not something I can just choose, something would have to change my mind.
The Pinker/Russell quote made perfect sense to me, as does the following:
"I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?" I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose - which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell."-- Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out