[quote]TooHuman wrote:
No it’s because your parents threatened you with eternal damnation or a proxy as a child.[/quote]
What about people who were atheists for most of their life and then turned to Christianity in middle age?
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
People talking about evidence of afterlife don?t understand one or both of the terms. An afterlife is supernatural, evidence is the presence of physical clues. There can be no evidence, because the notion is non-sense. It?s like discussing the existence of purple based on what you can hear. I?ve never heard purple, therefor I don?t believe in it, never-mind that purple isn’t a concept bounded by hearing.
But I can say that the idea that we are the product of random chance and there is nothing else is completely self-defeating. If existence is random then humans are a randomly produced product of mindless functions without a point. This means that if that idea were true then the idea itself is an entirely random product of arbitrary laws and there is no reason to even discuss it as true or not because it is the random meaningless product of a mindless universe. What reason is there to believe your brain if it is just a random accident? If the idea is “true” then there is no reason to believe it.
I believe in more than we can see, not because I have evidence for or against it, but because it?s the only actual answer I know of. Everything else I?ve ever heard is self-contradiction or just plain avoidance of the question.
[/quote]
Good post. this concept of some mystical world that is forever outside of our observation like the Platonic world of perfect forms is absolute nonsense.
Abandoning this mysticism and embracing the Aristotelian philosophy of an observable universe and, as an extension of our senses, the scientific method is the driving force against violence in this world.
[/quote]
I don’t think you understand what I meant. According to science, there is no morality, so why would one avoid violence? If there is nothing mystical about you, you (including your thoughts on this subject) are nothing but randomly caused meaningless physically dictated reactions. If we throw out the mysticism, your thoughts are the nothing but a chemical reaction akin to metal rusting.[/quote]
Ah i see. There is actually objective proof based on empiricism and the scientific method of secular morality IF you define morality as universally preferable behavior.
Universally preferable behavior is the foundation for non aggression as a universal principal.
Empiricism is also the foundation for the existence of free will because you cannot generate or put forward evidence for the absence of free will or determinism without generating more evidence for it’s existence. By speaking, writing, arguing you are creating infinitely divisible concrete observable evidence for your will to do so.
In other words, arguing against free will is always self-defeating unless you ascribe to the platonic perfect form philosophy and mysticism where you can make a “perfect” argument against free will.
if you want the full proof of Universally Preferable behavior, you can find it here:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEAQtwIwBQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DvZvTXFxPwb0&ei=AMBFVO_3NoucyQSArIC4Dw&usg=AFQjCNEguUYJfn0ebhSOliWApxdtEDARmA&sig2=jTIlxuSGa_QSqV8nPipimg&bvm=bv.77880786,d.aWw
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Who believes in it, and why?
Your thoughts?[/quote]
Me.
Because it pleases me to do so and there is no evidence to the contrary.[/quote]
No it’s because your parents threatened you with eternal damnation or a proxy as a child.
That’s why it pleases you in place of actually doing good while you were alive.
In fact, the idea of virtue and pleasure in the afterlife in diametrically opposed to achieving virtue and happiness in this life.[/quote]
Ahhhh…you’ve read Em’s biography? I didn’t think it had been published yet.
Or did you interview her parents?
What a twit ye be.
[/quote]
When people abandon evidence and reason and cannot express why, there is only 1 reason why…
self-preservation against the threat of violence as children…the violence of their parents or those in their environment…with religion or the state, etc… as proxies.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
No it’s because your parents threatened you with eternal damnation or a proxy as a child.[/quote]
What about people who were atheists for most of their life and then turned to Christianity in middle age?[/quote]
IMPOSSIBLE![/quote]
As long as you place certain human(in government or in religion) beings outside universal principals you bind yourself to…you are not an atheist.
Your god is the state and politicians and other statesman your proxies for the divine.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
[quote]IamMarqaos wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Always interesting to see the devout anti-faith/anti-religious/anti-God folks flock to threads like this one so as to express their faith.
Like moths to a light.[/quote]
I don’t know what the point of your post was. People believe different things. No reason to be condescending about it.[/quote]
Speaking of condescension and hypocrisy…no one in the history of this website has been more consistently condescending in discussions about faith than…YOU.
No one.
Not a single soul.
Seriously.[/quote]
Not in this thread though, my friend. Not in this thread. He seems to have had something happen to him that he cannot explain and he’s been nothing but respectful and open-minded. He’s started an interesting topic discussion and is facilitating it very well.[/quote]
There are a few things, but to make a very long story very short, a close family member died and it has sent me into a sort of existential depression that I have never had before, even though I’ve had plenty of people just as close die and I’ve always read a good bit of philosophy.
So some intense reading has followed, and I’ve absorbed a lot of different beliefs about God and the afterlife and the possible lack thereof (mostly from physicists, but not always.) I’ve also been reminded of some things that occurred in the past with said family, things that 1. Have absolutely occurred and 2. Have absolutely no scientific reason for having occurred.
And so two weeks later I have found myself back at the start - affirming a belief in the sort of deism that Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson believed in, where God is here, maybe anthropomorphic, but definitely the creator of things. I still don’t think he answers prayers, or finds lost cats, or helps people get better, but I do think he’s there, and I do think that there’s something else going on that we as humans simply can’t wrap our heads around.
This is evident for me when I look at the history of the world, and I found a great quote that, I thought, explains it well.
“The materialist would have us believe that non-living, non-sentient energy accidentally assembled itself in such a way as to discover itself. That energy now ponders itself through chance chemical reactions in the brain of an insignificant life form next to an unremarkable star in a far away corner of the universe.”
THAT is a bridge too far for me.[/quote]
This won’t fully answer your question to me but you and I agree in a number of ways here.
I do take it farther though. I’m not content with mere deism and a disinterested God. I think He’s far more interested in us than you do. I have faith that that is the case.
I have faith that just because you and I and our very finite, very limited intellects can’t come close to even halfway comprehending an omniscient, omnipotent, interested Almighty Creator doesn’t mean He isn’t what He claims to be.
I will try and answer your original question in the next few days, BTW.[/quote]
In place of “omniscient, omnipotent, interested Almighty Creator” put the platonic world of perfect forms, then go and examine the foundation of Aristotles arguments for empiricism and the observable universe and you will see how that argument is self-defeating. See my above post for a related short exlanation related to free will and the longer link to a full proof.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
In place of “omniscient, omnipotent, interested Almighty Creator” put the platonic world of perfect forms…
[/quote]
I shan’t.
Exodus 20:3[/quote]
Okay then. Then I’ll summarize it plainly as I can. If there is a being of perfect knowledge, then the knowledge ascertained through our senses and as an extension the scientific method of categorizing sense data is by definition imperfect.
This is a self-defeating argument because you must rely on sense data to both have learned the word and concept of such a being and to communicate such an argument.
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
As long as you place certain human(in government or in religion) beings outside universal principals you bind yourself to…you are not an atheist.
Your god is the state and politicians and other statesman your proxies for the divine.
[/quote]
Wtf is this supposed to mean?
Aren’t you the guy that proffered Molyneux’s “Universally Preferable Behaviour” as your own ethical system and was then unable to defend it and claimed you didn’t have the time? Lol!
Let me break it down for you:
You have embraced Molyneux’s radical libertarianism as a religion. By which I mean, it serves the function of what Ernest Becker called an “immortality project” - causa sui; an attempt to “create or become part of something which [you] feel will last forever; [you] “become” heroic and, henceforth, part of something eternal; something that will never die, compared to [your] physical body that will one day die. This, in turn, gives [you] the feeling that [your] life has meaning, a purpose, significance in the grand scheme of things.”
This is why you are fixated on this utopian dream of yours. It’s why it has taken up such undue importance and significance in your life. It’s why in a discussion about the afterlife, you can’t help but to bring up your pet project and start injecting completely unrelated ideas about government into the discussion.
This infantile, idealistic political ideology based on the creation of a “better world” - a utopia, dominates your thought processes and everyday life. You are basically part of a cult. You have the mentality of a cultist.
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
As long as you place certain human(in government or in religion) beings outside universal principals you bind yourself to…you are not an atheist.
[/quote]
Molyneux’s ticks all the boxes for a charismatic cult leader. His forum members act as ideological police who shut down dissent by banning members who threaten the ideological superstructure.
Your religion is an infantile utopian political ideology that aims to create a perfect society.
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
As long as you place certain human(in government or in religion) beings outside universal principals you bind yourself to…you are not an atheist.
Your god is the state and politicians and other statesman your proxies for the divine.
[/quote]
Wtf is this supposed to mean?[/quote]
He’s a member of a cultish like political movement(radical libertarianism) and it dominates his thought processes and takes up undue importance in his life. His life needs to have some meaning or purpose so he has latched on to a utopian ideology. It serves as his religion. Although it’s completely unrelated to this discussion he can’t help himself - he has to inject it into the discussion. He fails to see the irony in any of this of course.
[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
As long as you place certain human(in government or in religion) beings outside universal principals you bind yourself to…you are not an atheist.
Your god is the state and politicians and other statesman your proxies for the divine.
[/quote]
Wtf is this supposed to mean?[/quote]
What can I clarify specifically?
Also, I meant “your” and “you” in the general sense as in “one”.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
When people abandon evidence and reason…
[/quote]
This is precisely what YOU have done.
Like I said, what a twit ye be.
[/quote]
You have any actual rebuttals instead of personal attacks?
Molyneux, like all charismatic cult leaders urges his followers to break away from their families:
Like other utopian ideologies his polemics are aimed at the destruction of the family unit itself and the undermining of the authority of the father. It’s pretty much the same thing that Engels was doing. See “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” - the Maoists and Khmer Rouge used it as the ideological basis for separating children from their parents in order to indoctrinate them.