[quote]forlife wrote:
If emotions, numbers, and other abstract objects didn’t exist, it would be impossible to be aware of them or manipulate them. Unless you’re claiming to be from Vulcan, I’m pretty sure you experience emotions just like everyone else.
Or course, that doesn’t imply emotions are concrete objects. Just because you’re aware of an emotion inside your head doesn’t mean it physically exists in the universe, any more than being aware of a god inside your head means it physically exists in the universe. Buddha, Jesus, and Thor exist as abstract objects, but it doesn’t make them real in a material sense.[/quote]
No one experiences emotions the same. But I claim I don’t, and you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Ah, so god exists. Why do you choose to believe and have faith in some abstract concepts and not others?[/quote]
If you have no emotions, how does that prove others don’t have emotions?
In an abstract object sense, all gods exist.
What abstract concepts are you under the impression I believe vs disbelieve?
[quote]groo wrote:
To Pat I am not entirely certain that what a number is is common to all people. Certainly the vast majority of people on this forum for example couldn’t define a number or might not even know what that definition entails. I would have to look to others work to adequately do it and I absolutely guarantee there would be no agreement on it. People don’t understand math at all and you could look at cracked.com the other day to see some examples.
[/quote]
Actually, you kinda made my point for me. I am not concerned with people’s understanding of math or numbers. Understanding is irrelevant to it. It is what it is despite peoples understanding of it. People understand it with their minds, but it doesn’t exist in people’s minds, it exists outside of that. Mathematical truths are true whether anybody knows it or not.
I am simply saying it’s a metaphysical object, not a mental construct. A mental construct would begin and end with the mind, math does not. If we all die, 2+2 will still equal 4.
.99999999_ to infinity does not equal 1, we round it to 1, but it is not exactly 1. Further it can’t ‘equal’ 1 because it’s not an equation, it’s a number.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Pedophilia is evil.
Adultery is evil.
Abandoning infants with birth defects to the cold wilds is evil.
Supernatural faith, get some.[/quote]
There are many people that don’t think adultery is evil can kinda be shown by their actions I’d say.
I agree fully with you on pedophilia though I don’t particularly believe in Evil with a capital E, but you have many even on this site that don’t think its that big of a deal. Also it certainly is somewhat cultural and arbitrary.
Eugenics has and has had many proponents.
[/quote]
And this is why Good and Evil does not exist if personal preference is one’s ‘moral’ authority. Law and Unlawful set aside, at least for the moment. Therefore, atheists don’t know that pedophilia is evil, with a religious like faith in the inherent evil of the act. “Tastes,” “Preferences,” etc. Talk like for just a few generations and your society will start resembling as much.
But, I suspect most New Atheists aren’t as free of those old ‘superstitions’ as they claim to be.
[quote]groo wrote:
To Pat I am not entirely certain that what a number is is common to all people. Certainly the vast majority of people on this forum for example couldn’t define a number or might not even know what that definition entails. I would have to look to others work to adequately do it and I absolutely guarantee there would be no agreement on it. People don’t understand math at all and you could look at cracked.com the other day to see some examples.
[/quote]
Actually, you kinda made my point for me. I am not concerned with people’s understanding of math or numbers. Understanding is irrelevant to it. It is what it is despite peoples understanding of it. People understand it with their minds, but it doesn’t exist in people’s minds, it exists outside of that. Mathematical truths are true whether anybody knows it or not.
I am simply saying it’s a metaphysical object, not a mental construct. A mental construct would begin and end with the mind, math does not. If we all die, 2+2 will still equal 4.
.99999999_ to infinity does not equal 1, we round it to 1, but it is not exactly 1. Further it can’t ‘equal’ 1 because it’s not an equation, it’s a number.[/quote]
My math isn’t the grandest to be able to derive all the proofs at the bottom of the page I can follow most but I could never independently generate them so I am going to do something weak:)
Here are the proofs that 1=.999… along with why people argue against it. If you bring up all the crazy ass non base ten numbers and shit like surreal numbers you can get away from this but there will be similar facts in different bases.
[quote]forlife wrote:
If emotions, numbers, and other abstract objects didn’t exist, it would be impossible to be aware of them or manipulate them. Unless you’re claiming to be from Vulcan, I’m pretty sure you experience emotions just like everyone else.
Or course, that doesn’t imply emotions are concrete objects. Just because you’re aware of an emotion inside your head doesn’t mean it physically exists in the universe, any more than being aware of a god inside your head means it physically exists in the universe. Buddha, Jesus, and Thor exist as abstract objects, but it doesn’t make them real in a material sense.[/quote]
No one experiences emotions the same. But I claim I don’t, and you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Ah, so god exists. Why do you choose to believe and have faith in some abstract concepts and not others?[/quote]
If you have no emotions, how does that prove others don’t have emotions?
In an abstract object sense, all gods exist.
What abstract concepts are you under the impression I believe vs disbelieve?
[/quote]
You believe in numbers, right and wrong, est. On what bases do you choose what abstract concepts you do vs. don’t believe in?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Pedophilia is evil.
Adultery is evil.
Abandoning infants with birth defects to the cold wilds is evil.
Supernatural faith, get some.[/quote]
There are many people that don’t think adultery is evil can kinda be shown by their actions I’d say.
I agree fully with you on pedophilia though I don’t particularly believe in Evil with a capital E, but you have many even on this site that don’t think its that big of a deal. Also it certainly is somewhat cultural and arbitrary.
Eugenics has and has had many proponents.
[/quote]
And this is why Good and Evil does not exist if personal preference is one’s ‘moral’ authority. Law and Unlawful set aside, at least for the moment. Therefore, atheists don’t know that pedophilia is evil, with a religious like faith in the inherent evil of the act. “Tastes,” “Preferences,” etc. Talk like for just a few generations and your society will start resembling as much.
But, I suspect most New Atheists aren’t as free of those old ‘superstitions’ as they claim to be.
[/quote]
I don’t think Evil and Good exist in the sense that you mean with capital letters. I don’t think a moral system has to be based on personal preferences either. It could be based on biology or it could be based on moral absolutes.
I am not a big moral relativist and of course we are influenced by our background so in the West we are all coming from a relatively similar perspective. I do think some actions are personally reprehensible and while we can agree on easy ones. There are many many actions that people cannot agree are moral or not. Also there isn’t common agreement between religions. Any religion that is based on the New Testament is going to have a different moral system than the old testament. I do think everyone applies their personal view to whether or not an action is moral and as troubling as that can be there is going to be some elements of choice in most moral systems.
If you assume that morals aren’t somewhat grey with elements of both societal arbitrariness and personal choice and discernment involved it can cause some troubling circumstances.
Take pedophilia. We both agree its evil…hell I’ll even go on board that its Evil. The problem comes in a situation like an adult man can have sex with an 18 year old and its ok but its pedophilia if he has sex with a girl of 17 years and 364 days. So is pedophilia immoral in this case? Or are you going to say well no she’s almost 18 blah blah. Pick an age. Roll back one day. There are always going to be arbitrary cutoffs and personal judgements made for questions of morality. There are going to be troubling cases on the border of any moral issue that are not black and white where we are going to be forced to use reason or some other tool to decide if an action was moral or not.
I think there are cases with less grey than the 3 you gave. For example those people that have killed their children by forgetting them in hot cars trapped in their carseats. Some of these people have gotten off which I guess means we are assuming their actions weren’t somehow unlawful. But I would never concede they weren’t as close to EVIL as you can get. There was never one moment when my kids were small that I couldn’t tell you instantly exactly where they were and who they were with and I think that would be a moral obligation you can’t escape.(I’d tie it into a biological moral imperative, but there is no need to try to posit a system like that I think we being most of us are largely in agreement).
This is akin to why cases like Casey Anthony hit harder. There is some biology behind the moral nature of an action. And I think cases like this show a disconnect between whats lawful and whats just in modern society that goes a bit beyond liberal and conservative.
You don’t need god to see that a mother killing her child is an immoral act. Or rape. Or selling indulgences. Or preying on people by using their belief and hopes to fund a material life of indulgence. Or promiscuous killing.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Pedophilia is evil.
Adultery is evil.
Abandoning infants with birth defects to the cold wilds is evil.
Supernatural faith, get some.[/quote]
There are many people that don’t think adultery is evil can kinda be shown by their actions I’d say.
I agree fully with you on pedophilia though I don’t particularly believe in Evil with a capital E, but you have many even on this site that don’t think its that big of a deal. Also it certainly is somewhat cultural and arbitrary.
Eugenics has and has had many proponents. Its certainly easier to discern defects prior to birth now and abort which is definitely done.
There also would be biological arguments that could be proposed pro and con on all these issues if we wanted to try to base a biological ethics.
[/quote]
Pro and con still requires a value assesment.
Then morals are your god.
.999 with a repetend is a concept, or process, not a number. And it approaches 1, doesn’t actually equal it.
Is rape wrong? yes or no.[/quote]
Rape is wrong because it increases suffering. And I do hold that compassion is one of the bases of morality. I’d say that is one of the better yardsticks I’ve found. Your man Jesus seemed big on it too. He wasn’t running around much condemning homosexuals and such. So is it immoral for someone to condemn homosexuality as evil? I’d say so. How about you?
Seems pretty out of touch with the new testament, but what do I know I’m a heathen.
.999…=1, you have to take math to be an engineer anymore?[/quote]
If I rape someone, I don’t see it as increasing suffering. How did you decide what suffering is, and why it’s bad?
And I don’t think you got what I was saying about one. The hypothetical result of the process of repeating a nine until it reaches infity does equal one. But you have to understand that the concept of an ongoing processes of repeating nines is not the same as 1. It is a hypothetical process that hypothetically would result in 1 if it were possible. It is really more correctly expressed as the limit of a function.
Point being it is a very very different kind of concept. It is mathematically equavalent, but not conceptually.
Rape is wrong because it increases suffering.[/quote]
You’ve assigned a preference. That’s fine, but it’s all it is.
Again. Atheist Randians believe charity is not a moral virtue. Preferences. Tastes. No one is more right or wrong. Charity is not neither good or bad.
He condemns sex outside of the confines of husband and wife, period. Man and woman.
[quote]So is it immoral for someone to condemn homosexuality as evil?
I’d say so.
How about you?[/quote]
Does it matter to you? You acknowledge that neither of our preferences is, in reality, more wrong or right. Tastes, preferences, whims.
It isn’t.
[/quote]
What would be the relevant scripture in the new testament condemning sex outside of marriage?
If you like I can find quite a few about everyone being a sinner and that one should love ones neighbor turn the other cheek and all that stuff.
I am not saying morality is equal to preference. I am saying morality has objective rules but they cannot be applied arbitrarily in all situations.
[quote]groo wrote:
To Pat I am not entirely certain that what a number is is common to all people. Certainly the vast majority of people on this forum for example couldn’t define a number or might not even know what that definition entails. I would have to look to others work to adequately do it and I absolutely guarantee there would be no agreement on it. People don’t understand math at all and you could look at cracked.com the other day to see some examples.
[/quote]
Actually, you kinda made my point for me. I am not concerned with people’s understanding of math or numbers. Understanding is irrelevant to it. It is what it is despite peoples understanding of it. People understand it with their minds, but it doesn’t exist in people’s minds, it exists outside of that. Mathematical truths are true whether anybody knows it or not.
I am simply saying it’s a metaphysical object, not a mental construct. A mental construct would begin and end with the mind, math does not. If we all die, 2+2 will still equal 4.
.99999999_ to infinity does not equal 1, we round it to 1, but it is not exactly 1. Further it can’t ‘equal’ 1 because it’s not an equation, it’s a number.[/quote]
Actually, groo is correct. One classic proof:
1/9 = 0.111…
9 x 1/9 = 9 x 0.111…
1 = 0.999…
In fact, every nonzero number with a finite decimal notation (.4, .667, .88, etc.) has a counterpart with trailing 9s. For example, 0.3999… = .4. In all of these cases, two manifestly different decimals actually represent the same number.
[quote]forlife wrote:
An ideal society doesn’t need religion. In such a society people treat one another with mutual respect for the sake of the act itself, and for the positive outcomes it creates for society as a whole. They don’t need to believe in supernatural entities in order to do this. By grounding themselves in reality, they circumvent the inevitable god wars that have plagued humanity during our entire history of creating religions to explain what we don’t understand.
Then again, the ideal society is a dream rather than reality. Many actually do need religion in order to treat others with respect, and thus society benefits in that regard from religion.
Die Religion ist das Opium des Volkes.[/quote]
You overemphasize the wars fought over/due to religion. Compared to wars fought over land/resources/disputes it is a very low percentage. Before any of you huff and puff at this, take a look at the wars we have, here in North and South America have been involved in. Plenty of wars in the last 400 years but none due to religion.
Now take a real close look at Asia (Unification wars in China, feudal wars in Japan, The Hun’s expansion etc etc), Africa (greed, greed and more greed) and Europe (WWI and WWII were NOT fought over religious differences) and you will find that only a small percentage of wars have been fought due to religion.
Yes you have the Crusades and the like and the current terrible situations in many countries around the world but at any given time there are dozens of situations one can label as ‘war’ and again only a few are based on religion.
That is not to say God wars have not been fought, they have, and there have been plenty BUT compared to land/resources/disputes wars it has been relatively a minor part of why we as humans like to bash each other’s skulls in.
You mention reality but for those that believe God is a reality and most believers are peaceful and wish the best upon their fellow man. Without the ‘reality’ of their God they might feel differently. I wonder sometimes how many wars have been prevented because of faith!
It is when resources are scarce and fear abounds that people start using religion as a way to distinguish themselves from their neighbor so that one is psychologically able to fight and kill.
[quote]forlife wrote:
If emotions, numbers, and other abstract objects didn’t exist, it would be impossible to be aware of them or manipulate them. Unless you’re claiming to be from Vulcan, I’m pretty sure you experience emotions just like everyone else.
Or course, that doesn’t imply emotions are concrete objects. Just because you’re aware of an emotion inside your head doesn’t mean it physically exists in the universe, any more than being aware of a god inside your head means it physically exists in the universe. Buddha, Jesus, and Thor exist as abstract objects, but it doesn’t make them real in a material sense.[/quote]
No one experiences emotions the same. But I claim I don’t, and you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Ah, so god exists. Why do you choose to believe and have faith in some abstract concepts and not others?[/quote]
If you have no emotions, how does that prove others don’t have emotions?
In an abstract object sense, all gods exist.
What abstract concepts are you under the impression I believe vs disbelieve?
[/quote]
You believe in numbers, right and wrong, est. On what bases do you choose what abstract concepts you do vs. don’t believe in?[/quote]
Give me an example of an abstract concept I don’t believe in. Why are you assuming there is one?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Pedophilia is evil.
Adultery is evil.
Abandoning infants with birth defects to the cold wilds is evil.
Supernatural faith, get some.[/quote]
There are many people that don’t think adultery is evil can kinda be shown by their actions I’d say.
I agree fully with you on pedophilia though I don’t particularly believe in Evil with a capital E, but you have many even on this site that don’t think its that big of a deal. Also it certainly is somewhat cultural and arbitrary.
Eugenics has and has had many proponents. Its certainly easier to discern defects prior to birth now and abort which is definitely done.
There also would be biological arguments that could be proposed pro and con on all these issues if we wanted to try to base a biological ethics.
[/quote]
Pro and con still requires a value assesment.
Then morals are your god.
.999 with a repetend is a concept, or process, not a number. And it approaches 1, doesn’t actually equal it.
Is rape wrong? yes or no.[/quote]
Rape is wrong because it increases suffering. And I do hold that compassion is one of the bases of morality. I’d say that is one of the better yardsticks I’ve found. Your man Jesus seemed big on it too. He wasn’t running around much condemning homosexuals and such. So is it immoral for someone to condemn homosexuality as evil? I’d say so. How about you?
Seems pretty out of touch with the new testament, but what do I know I’m a heathen.
.999…=1, you have to take math to be an engineer anymore?[/quote]
If I rape someone, I don’t see it as increasing suffering. How did you decide what suffering is, and why it’s bad?
And I don’t think you got what I was saying about one. The hypothetical result of the process of repeating a nine until it reaches infity does equal one. But you have to understand that the concept of an ongoing processes of repeating nines is not the same as 1. It is a hypothetical process that hypothetically would result in 1 if it were possible. It is really more correctly expressed as the limit of a function.
Point being it is a very very different kind of concept. It is mathematically equavalent, but not conceptually.[/quote]
I thought concepts didn’t exist? It really is the same number its that we don’t understand what real numbers are when we talk about them a lot. I wanted to pick a fact that is absolutely true and is 100 percent consistent with all arithmetic theory, yet that most people won’t agree with. And .999…=1 is such a fact.
Likely I decide that suffering is bad and that compassion is good the same way you came about your moral system partially learned behavior and partially thought. This is the way we all do it. Hopefully most of us are discerning.
[quote]forlife wrote:
An ideal society doesn’t need religion. In such a society people treat one another with mutual respect for the sake of the act itself, and for the positive outcomes it creates for society as a whole. They don’t need to believe in supernatural entities in order to do this. By grounding themselves in reality, they circumvent the inevitable god wars that have plagued humanity during our entire history of creating religions to explain what we don’t understand.
Then again, the ideal society is a dream rather than reality. Many actually do need religion in order to treat others with respect, and thus society benefits in that regard from religion.
Die Religion ist das Opium des Volkes.[/quote]
You overemphasize the wars fought over/due to religion. Compared to wars fought over land/resources/disputes it is a very low percentage. Before any of you huff and puff at this, take a look at the wars we have, here in North and South America have been involved in. Plenty of wars in the last 400 years but none due to religion.
Now take a real close look at Asia (Unification wars in China, feudal wars in Japan, The Hun’s expansion etc etc), Africa (greed, greed and more greed) and Europe (WWI and WWII were NOT fought over religious differences) and you will find that only a small percentage of wars have been fought due to religion.
Yes you have the Crusades and the like and the current terrible situations in many countries around the world but at any given time there are dozens of situations one can label as ‘war’ and again only a few are based on religion.
That is not to say God wars have not been fought, they have, and there have been plenty BUT compared to land/resources/disputes wars it has been relatively a minor part of why we as humans like to bash each other’s skulls in.
You mention reality but for those that believe God is a reality and most believers are peaceful and wish the best upon their fellow man. Without the ‘reality’ of their God they might feel differently. I wonder sometimes how many wars have been prevented because of faith!
It is when resources are scarce and fear abounds that people start using religion as a way to distinguish themselves from their neighbor so that one is psychologically able to fight and kill.
Ah well, rant over :)[/quote]
Since I never compared the wars fought over religion to wars fought for other reasons, I could hardly overemphasize them. I just pointed out that people have killed one another for religious reasons, and your post admits this.
And I made your final point myself, in the same post you quoted. I agree that religious beliefs can motivate people to be kind to others, regardless of the actual truth of those beliefs.
[quote]groo wrote:
To Pat I am not entirely certain that what a number is is common to all people. Certainly the vast majority of people on this forum for example couldn’t define a number or might not even know what that definition entails. I would have to look to others work to adequately do it and I absolutely guarantee there would be no agreement on it. People don’t understand math at all and you could look at cracked.com the other day to see some examples.
[/quote]
Actually, you kinda made my point for me. I am not concerned with people’s understanding of math or numbers. Understanding is irrelevant to it. It is what it is despite peoples understanding of it. People understand it with their minds, but it doesn’t exist in people’s minds, it exists outside of that. Mathematical truths are true whether anybody knows it or not.
I am simply saying it’s a metaphysical object, not a mental construct. A mental construct would begin and end with the mind, math does not. If we all die, 2+2 will still equal 4.
[/quote]
That is actually not true. In the pure abstract, 2+2=4 only because the conventions of algebra says it does. There is no physical 2 in existence and no physical meaning to addition if there was. It is all by convention. For example, in the convention of vector notation, 2+2 can be anywhere from 4 to 0.
[quote]
.99999999_ to infinity does not equal 1, we round it to 1, but it is not exactly 1. Further it can’t ‘equal’ 1 because it’s not an equation, it’s a number.[/quote]
Mathematically they do equal. The problem here is that the idea of infinity doesn’t conceptually translate to anything. Infinit force vs. infinit mass, which wins. People today tend to treat infinity as a number, but it isn’t its a hypothetical process, not a number.
If you could add nines until you got to infinity, it would equal. Unfortunately, doing that is impossible. Math uses many things than make no rational sense because its convenient. Like imaginary and irrational numbers, or infinity, and even to an extent 0.
[quote]forlife wrote:
If emotions, numbers, and other abstract objects didn’t exist, it would be impossible to be aware of them or manipulate them. Unless you’re claiming to be from Vulcan, I’m pretty sure you experience emotions just like everyone else.
Or course, that doesn’t imply emotions are concrete objects. Just because you’re aware of an emotion inside your head doesn’t mean it physically exists in the universe, any more than being aware of a god inside your head means it physically exists in the universe. Buddha, Jesus, and Thor exist as abstract objects, but it doesn’t make them real in a material sense.[/quote]
No one experiences emotions the same. But I claim I don’t, and you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Ah, so god exists. Why do you choose to believe and have faith in some abstract concepts and not others?[/quote]
If you have no emotions, how does that prove others don’t have emotions?
In an abstract object sense, all gods exist.
What abstract concepts are you under the impression I believe vs disbelieve?
[/quote]
You believe in numbers, right and wrong, est. On what bases do you choose what abstract concepts you do vs. don’t believe in?[/quote]
Give me an example of an abstract concept I don’t believe in. Why are you assuming there is one?[/quote]
[quote]Cathall L DW wrote:
Thanks lads, some great stuff here, yeah I guess it was kinda foolish of me to hope that debate wouldn’t break out here but there ya go. side note, the debate isn’t for class it’s EC
Hopefully I will be first prop speaker so I can use some of this stuff to prebut alot of what might be said.
[/quote]
I’d want to be last so you already know what people’s arguments are.
No, I would just call bullshit. Certainly we live in a world full of scientific advancement. One cannot make any argument that their would be more scientific advancement in the world were it not for religion, it they do, I’d say prove it.
Second, that whole notion is just crap. Religion held back scientific advancement? Really, which religion? All of them? Which advancement was held back? Because I see none of that.
Let’s say they bring up Galileo, you can simply rebut that we do believe the Earth goes around the Sun and that the Earth is not the center of the universe so how did the Catholic Church hold back this advancement? You can argue that they did not accept it at first, but it did later come to accept it.
To conclude on that topic, you can simply say if religion held back scientific advancement, we would not live in such a scientifically advanced world. Religion accepting or not accepting scientific theories does not stop science.
[quote]
I like using the idea of religion being the origin of good and evil as a prebutal to the idea that a person can be good without religion
want to pre but Marxism with what pat said about religion being the harder road than people who aren’t religious
[quote]
Shit that’s the easiest job you have here. Marxism has failed every single place it’s ever been tried. And governments societies who have tried to implement them have visited more evil that the world has ever previously seen. Marxism has failed every where every time and can claim over 300 million people killed. He was wrong about everything including his observation about religion.
Which war? What are the fact of that war, can it be truly said it was religious? If it was religiously based, was it justified?
[quote]
Should i make a point of how irish monks saved western education by spreading christianity and setting up monastaries throughout Europe after the fall of the roman empire??
Gotta go, will be back later,
Thanks again!![/quote]
The Roman empire was probably the biggest spreader of Christianity in the world. So no.
I would take the core tenets of a religion, like Christianity. Name the tenets and explain how they are beneficial to society. Love, mercy, charity, peace, protection of innocents, being honest, etc. Can someone really say these things are bad for society?
If people bring up bad religious people, it’s easy to say and show that where there are people, there will be evil people and people will do bad things. It’s certainly not something that exclusive to religious folks.
[quote]groo wrote:
To Pat I am not entirely certain that what a number is is common to all people. Certainly the vast majority of people on this forum for example couldn’t define a number or might not even know what that definition entails. I would have to look to others work to adequately do it and I absolutely guarantee there would be no agreement on it. People don’t understand math at all and you could look at cracked.com the other day to see some examples.
[/quote]
Actually, you kinda made my point for me. I am not concerned with people’s understanding of math or numbers. Understanding is irrelevant to it. It is what it is despite peoples understanding of it. People understand it with their minds, but it doesn’t exist in people’s minds, it exists outside of that. Mathematical truths are true whether anybody knows it or not.
I am simply saying it’s a metaphysical object, not a mental construct. A mental construct would begin and end with the mind, math does not. If we all die, 2+2 will still equal 4.
.99999999_ to infinity does not equal 1, we round it to 1, but it is not exactly 1. Further it can’t ‘equal’ 1 because it’s not an equation, it’s a number.[/quote]
My math isn’t the grandest to be able to derive all the proofs at the bottom of the page I can follow most but I could never independently generate them so I am going to do something weak:)
Here are the proofs that 1=.999… along with why people argue against it. If you bring up all the crazy ass non base ten numbers and shit like surreal numbers you can get away from this but there will be similar facts in different bases.
[quote]forlife wrote:
If emotions, numbers, and other abstract objects didn’t exist, it would be impossible to be aware of them or manipulate them. Unless you’re claiming to be from Vulcan, I’m pretty sure you experience emotions just like everyone else.
Or course, that doesn’t imply emotions are concrete objects. Just because you’re aware of an emotion inside your head doesn’t mean it physically exists in the universe, any more than being aware of a god inside your head means it physically exists in the universe. Buddha, Jesus, and Thor exist as abstract objects, but it doesn’t make them real in a material sense.[/quote]
No one experiences emotions the same. But I claim I don’t, and you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Ah, so god exists. Why do you choose to believe and have faith in some abstract concepts and not others?[/quote]
If you have no emotions, how does that prove others don’t have emotions?
In an abstract object sense, all gods exist.
What abstract concepts are you under the impression I believe vs disbelieve?
[/quote]
You believe in numbers, right and wrong, est. On what bases do you choose what abstract concepts you do vs. don’t believe in?[/quote]
Give me an example of an abstract concept I don’t believe in. Why are you assuming there is one?[/quote]
god…[/quote]
Did you see my post above where I said all gods exist as abstract objects?
Just because I don’t believe your god is a concrete object with a material presence in the universe doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the existence of your god as an abstract object. You are the one implying that only concrete objects exist, not me. Your god exists in the very same sense that Thor, the Easter Bunny, and Fred Flinstone exist.
Where we disagree is on what kind of object your god is, not on whether your god exists in the metaphysical sense.
[quote]groo wrote:
I’ll even go on board that its Evil.
[/quote]
But you can’t. It’s an emotional preference. It doesn’t mean any more in reality than the preference of the Man-Boy love folks. Even if a moral value such as “must continue the species” (it can’t, if faith in the supernatural is to be excluded), pedophilia would not threaten the survival of the species. The species will survive a whole lot of nastiness. Rape, pedophilia, theft, even murder.
But it’s silliness, as there is no moral virtue such as “the human species must survive” to be found. Evolution doesn’t care if we go the way of the dinosaur. We survive or don’t. If rape and murder-cannibalism are the most likely survival mechanism in a particular environment those acts go from Evil to Good? That’s a morality that doesn’t even believe in itself.
Had we never successfully had widespread change of hearts and minds, slavery wouldn’t be a moral evil? With that knowledge we need only to not fall for supernatural (god-given rights) and emotional arguments to keep a Good from becoming an Evil. Instead, we can intellectually comfort ourselves, by keeping the EVIL a Good, with the foreknowledge that there are only preferences. Good and Evil is what we wish to make of it. So relax, the slave trade was/is a Good for as long as we want it to be, and we can be comforted by that, so we might as well continue on.
As long as I check out after having some fun, why should I care that the species extends past my own life? Or, as to what of state their survival continues in? Greed, charity, violence to achieve objectives, peace, contraception, abortion, broken homes, child bearing and rearing in intact homes, an inheritance or a debt to pass on (household and national) to some unborn bio-chemical machines with the same emergent properties as my own? Preferences.
I will put no man in office who believes my right to life is nothing more than his whim. Would you?
Do you folks really believe humanity would be better if, poof!, religious faith in Good and Evil was replaced with a transient morality (philosophically, whim, or biologically) morality, that none actually had faith in?
