Put me out of my misery (appeal to Hope)

[Shaker]

And, as I've said several times before, you'll be waiting for the same length of time as I and others will be waiting for the answer to my companion question about evidence that a naturalistic approach is the only valid approach to reality.

Not really up to speed with this whole burden of proof thing, are you?

Earlier today I posted something on the "The downward trend continues" thread on this very subject. Rather than link to it, I'll reproduce it right here for you so that you can't dodge the issue again by claiming that you haven't seen it:

You're the one making the assertion and thus the one who bears the burden of proof. Those who are aware of the success of scientific rationality are the ones who can provide a methodology for their worldview - we have more than amply justified (because so often reinforced) confidence in it (there's the evidence you mentioned) and have not been furnished with any good reason to go elsewhere. That to me is what it boils down to - the lack of a valid justification to think that your claims have any basis and the lack of any good reason to think that there's an alternative methodology.

You're the one claiming that there are other realms of reality and other methods of evaluating them over and above the rational/scientific ones we already know work so well, and that's why you're being asked the questions about these allegations and asked to supply evidence for them.

You know, the questions which you're still dodging even now. You've been asked them so many times by so many people over such a long period of time that by now it's a perfectly reasonable position to conclude that the reason you continually avoid stumping up a single item of evidence for these assertions is that it simply doesn't exist. True scepticism demands that I allow for the possibility of these different realms and alternative methodologies, but rationality doesn't allow for me to accept them merely on the say-so of somebody who alleges them but continually ducks coughing up with the evidence for them. All sorts of things may be merely possible; the point in wanting accurate and reliable knowledge of the world is to have a means of sifting the possibilities and determining what's true and what isn't, or what's not demonstrably so at the very least. My methodology in that regard is done and dusted; where's yours?

[Gordon]

And, as I've said several times before, you'll be waiting for the same length of time as I and others will be waiting for the answer to my companion question about evidence that a naturalistic approach is the only valid approach to reality.  Its tantamount to you discussing the validity of an orange, whilst I and others debate ther validity of a cow.  The two issues don't match up with each other.

Or you could stick to discussing the oranges instead of ignoring them in favour of these spurious and highly convenient cows you mention.

You are fooling nobody since your reasoning errors have been pointed out to you on numerous occasions - so, I'll join Stephen in asking yet again what is this other aspect to reality: the burden of proof is yours.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

And, as I've said several times before, you'll be waiting for the same length of time as I and others will be waiting for the answer to my companion question about evidence that a naturalistic approach is the only valid approach to reality.  Its tantamount to you discussing the validity of an orange, whilst I and others debate ther validity of a cow.  The two issues don't match up with each other.

But I have never made your the claim that a naturalistic approach is the only valid approach to reality. Rather I am not aware of one. Not the same thing at all.

You claim to know of another method/approach. Therefore, it is up to you to provide evidence.

[Nearly Sane]

But I have never made your the claim that a naturalistic approach is the only valid approach to reality. Rather I am not aware of one. Not the same thing at all.

You claim to know of another method/approach. Therefore, it is up to you to provide evidence.

And not just you, but no one I know of on here, and many have made the same point when Hope has misrepresented this in the past. But he has ignored this and continued to lie about it.

[Shaker]

I basically agree, blue, though at one time I would have thought there were 'many paths to God' and any strange experience was grist to the mill of sustaining a belief in the divine. There are many people who feel the lack of ultimate meaning in their lives very keenly (and I was one of them), and it took me a long time to realise that because some people have a desire to feel that they are of ultimate significance, this desire must apodeictically (lovely word) have its fulfilment somewhere.

Your use of the term 'ultimate meaning' reminds me of interesting discussions I've had elsewhere. It does seem that some people desperately want there to be such a thing as an ultimate meaning of existence (where ultimate means the end-point of all the questions, something that many parents of small children would give their right arms for, I'm sure) which would give a rock-bottom foundation not dependent upon anything else. I suspect that for many the appeal of theism is that positing the existence of a god would provide such an ultimate meaning, but I'm not remotely convinced. Not only is the existence of such an entity wholly unproven (of course); I can see no reason why a god's meaning should be anybody else's meaning. It strikes me as a prime example of what Sartre called mauvais foi, or bad faith - inauthenticity, in other words; taking on somebody else's meaning off-the-peg (as it were) instead of taking responsibility for and putting in the hard yards of creating your own. (This is why Sartre said that even if there was such a thing as a god, it would be every human being's duty to defy it).

No, it seems vastly more likely to me that there's no ultimate meaning, only proximate meanings that we discover for ourselves, which we live by temporarily and that die with us (although others can take them up for themselves after we're gone). If my picture of human existence is true (and of course I think it is, otherwise I wouldn't hold it) then that's the way life actually is for us, and for many that seems to be a truly dreadful prospect. Hence the fact that so many people chase ultimate meaning and ultimate significance mostly through religions.

[Nearly Sane]

Even as I write something, do I hold the ultimate meaning. I not the same as when I started this post, the writing of the post changes me, even ignoring the multiplicity of what 'me' might mean at single instant. But if you ask me now what I meant by the start of the post, we either have to go on my thoughts on it now, and the me is changed, or my, again changed, memory of what another me might have meant, and we know the issues of memory, well I, that is what was I did mean, though my now knowing might be different and indeed must be.

[Rhiannon]

No, it seems vastly more likely to me that there's no ultimate meaning, only proximate meanings that we discover for ourselves, which we live by temporarily and that die with us (although others can take them up for themselves after we're gone). If my picture of human existence is true (and of course I think it is, otherwise I wouldn't hold it) then that's the way life actually is for us, and for many that seems to be a truly dreadful prospect. Hence the fact that so many people chase ultimate meaning and ultimate significance mostly through religions.

I agree; I truly don't get why people find this alarming. It's not just religion that people chase in looking for meaning; society, our parents and peers will have us looking for fame, material wealth, beauty, and/or career success as the trappings of a meaningful life.

It's a cliche to say that the meaning is in the moment but what else is there other than that? And if that is all there is then I am responsible for exploring it and defining the meaning in it, in this moment and the next, knowing that the me who finds meaning in watching my dog play won't be the me who finds meaning in watching him play tomorrow. And the meaning of watching my dog play is simply that in this moment, that's what I'm doing.

[Rhiannon]

Just finished writing and posting and seen that NS has said much the same thing about constant change. What meaning can be found if I don't even know what 'me' is? It's actually easier to find meaning - coming back to this idea of taking responsibility for the moment - with 'no me', because that doesn't impose limits of what 'me' likes, does, understands and is capable of.

[Nearly Sane]

Just finished writing and posting and seen that NS has said much the same thing about constant change. What meaning can be found if I don't even know what 'me' is? It's actually easier to find meaning with 'no me', because that doesn't impose limits of what 'me' likes, does, understands and is capable of.

That for which one might use the perpendicular pronoun agrees. And yet it is much much worse than this, for there to be an ultimate meaning, that has to exist outside the ever changing I, and be accessible to every I in exactly the same way. Indeed it cannot allow for any confusion, since to have ultimate meaning it must be judged against an ultimate meaning which must be knowable by all, since if it isn't nothing can be written with ultimate meaning.

[Rhiannon]

That for which one might use the perpendicular pronoun agrees. And yet it is much much worse than this, for there to be an ultimate meaning, that has to exist outside the ever changing I, and be accessible to every I in exactly the same way. Indeed it cannot allow for any confusion, since to have ultimate meaning it must be judged against an ultimate meaning which must be knowable by all, since if it isn't nothing can be written with ultimate meaning.

Well quite. 'My own personal ultimate meaning' has to be meaningless.

I still come back to not seeing why it matters though.

[Shaker]

I agree; I truly don't get why people find this alarming. It's not just religion that people chase in looking for meaning; society, our parents and peers will have us looking for fame, material wealth, beauty, and/or career success as the trappings of a meaningful life.

It's a cliche to say that the meaning is in the moment but what else is there other than that? And if that is all there is then I am responsible for exploring it and defining the meaning in it, in this moment and the next, knowing that the me who finds meaning in watching my dog play won't be the me who finds meaning in watching him play tomorrow. And the meaning of watching my dog play is simply that in this moment, that's what I'm doing.

I think I understand it intellectually; I just don't recognise it as valid for myself, IYSWIM.

By 1816 the human population of the planet had risen to one billion. Apart from a tiny minority of prominent figures - philosophers; political thinkers and leaders; major creative artists and so forth; people whose ideas are still discussed and implemented; people whose books are still read and whose music is still listened to, that kind of thing - absolutely everything else important to people at that time is now gone. Vanished. Almost every single thing that people considered important, meaningful and worthwhile about their individual lives is now as meaningless as though it had never existed at all in the first place, because those lives are over and done with.

This is why trying to find (which in practical terms usually ends up as  trying to impose) meaning, worth and value somewhere outside of life itself is a fool's errand. If those things are not found or made in life as it is lived, they're nowhere. Some people who are that way inclined have deep existential dread that if there's no such thing as an afterlife with the preservation (somehow) of personality, existence is meaningless. But as I said just a few days ago, adding an infinite string of zeroes to zero just gives you zero. There's absolutely no reason why infinite time should invest existence with value - quite the opposite, in fact, since the certainty, ubiquity and the randomness of death, working to do stuff against the clock as it were, is what adds meaning to existence. With an infinite amount of time in which to do things would Shakespeare have ever written a sonnet or Beethoven a symphony? Why bother?

[Nearly Sane]

Well quite. 'My own personal ultimate meaning' has to be meaningless.

I still come back to not seeing why it matters though.

I wouldn't worry, it's all just talking.

[Nearly Sane]

As ever here and elsewhere I am brought back to my favourite philosophical quote 'If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do'

[Rhiannon]

I can understand the idea of eternal life giving meaning to suffering, death and loss (the latter especially) - it acts as a kind of celestial compensation I guess, a recompense for the pain. And what very often lies behind that is a desire to see the continuation of the relationships in this life; it takes but moments to blow holes in how heavenly that would work though.

I've said on here before about the fact I regret wasting so much time - not doing what I could have, not being who I could have been. And it's not that I think I should have written a sonnet or penned a symphony, just that I should have been bloody well alive for the whole time that I was here.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

But I have never made your the claim that a naturalistic approach is the only valid approach to reality. Rather I am not aware of one. Not the same thing at all.

You claim to know of another method/approach. Therefore, it is up to you to provide evidence.

Bumped for Hope

[Leonard James]

Bumped for Hope

Forlorn hope! 

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Forlorn hope! 

Very good.

I think you are correct.

Seems a pity, genuinely interested but nothing is forthcoming.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Stephen,

Very good.

I think you are correct.

Seems a pity, genuinely interested but nothing is forthcoming.

I lost Hope long ago.

In both senses.

[wigginhall]

The only thing that occurs to me is so-called irrealism, which seems to argue that there is no objective reality, and that there are different versions of the world.    For example, many people favour a physicalist version, but some people favour phenomenology, i.e. that this experienced moment is the real.   One can also cite, for example, the the idea that everything is empty (an Eastern idea), or without characteristics, and the philosopher Whitehead's view that there are only processes, and not things.   

However, I don't think Hope had these things in mind!  And please don't ask me to defend any of these.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Wiggs,

The only thing that occurs to me is so-called irrealism, which seems to argue that there is no objective reality, and that there are different versions of the world.    For example, many people favour a physicalist version, but some people favour phenomenology, i.e. that this experienced moment is the real.   One can also cite, for example, the the idea that everything is empty (an Eastern idea), or without characteristics, and the philosopher Whitehead's view that there are only processes, and not things.   

However, I don't think Hope had these things in mind!  And please don't ask me to defend any of these.

I don't have have a problem with any of these. If one of them is your reality, then it is your reality. The problem though is that - unless we're to stay under the duvet with our separate realities until the twiglets and Vimto run out - we have to find a common language of at least a probabilistic reality in order to function. If the good folks at Waitrose and I share our realities I'm more likely to be fed than if, say, my reality is that I'll survive on unicorn farts and so I never need darken their doors.

This doesn't seem so controversial to me - the reality of intersubjective experience may be rough and ready and to an extent arbitrary, but it works because we have a method to test it - in this case, either I starve to death or I don't. The problem I find comes when some claim their personal realities - "god" for example - to be part of that intersubjective reality with no method of verification whatever, so if they're allowed to gatecrash that space any one personal truth is as valid as any other personal truth: allow in one of them and you have to allow in all of them.

That those who privilege just one personal reality over the rest (the Christian god over, say, the Norse gods for example) can bring to the table only logical fallacies to support their claim seems to me to be telling too.   

 

[Sassy]

EFFECT - you moron - the word you want is effect! You should be charged for the cold-blooded murder of the English language!

The only time you don't bollox up the spelling of something is when you copy and paste from the KJV!

As God is my judge I thought about writing 'effect' and deliberately wrote 'affect' but in hindsight, anyone would have guessed and only had to look at my history of using the word it was nothing to do with not knowing.

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=11072.msg564109#msg564109

There shows the ignorance and double standards of yourself as an atheist.
Anyone can make a spelling error. If an atheist nothing said but if a believer we are called a moron etc.
Nothing in your post is about the actual thread but is evidence that you are here to attack people not take part in the thread discussion.

When you plan a trap for someone remember God isn't stupid. In future if you comment on such silly things as a spelling error and engage in such an attack everyone now knows it is all you are here for.

At the time I had no idea what the reasoning behind using the 'a' instead of the 'e' was.
Now I see God used it to show the true mentality and reasoning being to attack believers even on the slightest thing and not the actual content of the post.

Well done! Who really looks the Moron, now?

[Maeght]

EFFECT - you moron - the word you want is effect! You should be charged for the cold-blooded murder of the English language!

The only time you don't bollox up the spelling of something is when you copy and paste from the KJV!

I get affect and effect wrong a lot of the time. Don't think I'm a moron but perhaps you do.

Its not so much the spelling which can be an issue in posts as far as I'm concerned but more whether the meaning comes across. Often it doesn't, usually due to a poor sentence structure it seems to me.

[Shaker]

Yeah, well ... you can prove anything with facts can't you.

[SusanDoris]

Use of affect and effect would be easierfor those who are not so sure because effect can be used as a verb,  meaning 'to make happen'.   

[Owlswing]

SusanDoris and Maeght

I agree, others make the same, and similar mistakes, but they do not do it in demonstrating the pompous arrogance that Sassy does in all her pronouncements!