So, please disprove and then prove that religion does the same — Christoffer

If you wish to debate a theist, I'm not one. Just so you know.

Human reason is how we know facts about the world and universe, the very reason you are able to write on a machine right now is because of this. — Christoffer

All true. But not proof reason is qualified to meaningfully comment on the very largest of questions.

The burden of proof is on the one making the claim. — Christoffer

Please prove that human reason is qualified to meaningfully address the very largest of questions. Thank you.

Perhaps it is a case of self-censorship, where forum members feel that they might get into trouble if they expressed their honest opinions on this thread. — RussellA

Ya think?

Yes, and FDR is Hitler and so is Obama and you're the only one in this world who has any semblance of moral decency. — BitconnectCarlos

I've asked a mod to lock this thread, but I doubt that will work. What do you say the two of us run up the white flag of surrender and bail on the thread? All we're doing is feeding their fantasies at this point. Would enjoy discussing anything with you, some place else.

My discussions with numerous posters have ran their course but I'm still going strong with one. — BitconnectCarlos

There are good discussions to be found here. Maybe not on this topic, but many others.

It's possible this topic could be addressed constructively somewhere else, but I don't know where. Should you find such a place, I'd welcome an invite.

Talking about Hamas till the cows come home will not justify any of Israel's actions. — StreetlightX

I'm not justifying Israel's actions. I'm revealing that you don't care about them.

Philosophy. A search for clarity.

If we are to have a productive conversation on this subject it starts with you condemning Hamas — BitconnectCarlos

Hamas is small potatoes compared to Assad, and they have no interest in him, so why would they be interested in Hamas? Hamas is small potatoes compared to Saddam, they had no interest in that either. Hamas is small potatoes compared to the Iranian despots, couldn't be less interested. Hamas is small potatoes compared to the Taliban, not on their radar. The corrupt Lebanese leaders have crashed a once beautiful country, no outrage. The Saudis slaughter critics on foreign soil, and saw their bodies up for disposal, and then relentlessly lie about who ordered it. Ho hum, who cares?

China is the biggest dictatorship in the history of humanity. Can't seem to find the outrage thread for that.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Recognizing Israeli crimes is not contingent upon talking about Hamas — StreetlightX

You're right. Unless you wish to have credibility. Otherwise, doesn't matter a bit.

It was actually really funny, I gave him an article about how Hamas arrested & imprisoned 3 Palestinian grassroots peace activists for talking with Israeli peace activists over skype or zoom and his response was basically "well it was all done by the books and done very professionally, unlike the Israelis!" — BitconnectCarlos

The folks you're referring to are in lock down mode. There is no evidence or reasoning which will have the slightest impact on their point of view. In that sense, we've done a good job of creating a Middle East thread. :-)

I guess the "now what" is that we've reached the end of our conversation and we move onto a different topic. — BitconnectCarlos

I do believe that would be the rational choice. Maybe we'll get lucky and a mod will lock the thread, save us from ourselves. :-)

Well, if you did wish to continue, I suppose one option could be to find another place to have this conversation. I'm not sure where that would be, or if there is such a place that won't devolve in to more of this.

Hmm..... Is there any non-partisan charity which is funneling funds to both Arab and Israeli victims of the recent conflict? A thread which organized support for such a project would be interesting. But then we'd have to be serious, which seems unlikely, so sorry, just another bad idea.

Is it because you want to change my mind? — BitconnectCarlos

Say they did change your mind. Or you changed theirs. Then what?

Nothing. That's what.

We're all beating our tiny brains against a brick wall, and even if we were successful in achieving the victory we seek, it would accomplish nothing. Nothing at all.

I don't understand why you keep engaging me. — BitconnectCarlos

They don't either.

And what am I doing here? No idea. We, all of us, united in cluelessness.

If we are to have a productive conversation on this subject it starts with you condemning Hamas and their methods. — BitconnectCarlos

Given that there is exactly no chance of that happening....

Now what?

Now start your thread on Syria — StreetlightX

But why? None of us give a shit about what's happening in Syria, or there would be plenty of such threads already. If we cared about innocents in Gaza we'd be using this thread to organize something like GoFundMe donations.

The best guide to what we believe, to what we care about, is what we do.

Not what we say.

and it's interesting to reflect and think back "why did this person have this affect on me? — BitconnectCarlos

That's what the other thread is about. You won't find answers there though, just lots of questions and speculations.

Yeah, I did get sucked into the shit storm a bit, and it's interesting to reflect and think back "why did this person have this affect on me?" Thinking about this question helped me define myself and my values a little better. Every once in a while you'll just come across someone who not just manages to push the right buttons, but to also push them in a certain way. — BitconnectCarlos

Sadly, I am a veteran button pusher myself, with a regrettable degree of talent for such a pointless endeavor. I call it philosophy to dress it up and make it sound grand, important blah blah blah etc. But jerking off does come closer to the truth.

Perhaps I should spend more time doing the real jerking off, that might help. :-)

which is to be expected from someone who does his utmost to change the subject form Israeli crimes. — StreetlightX

Right. We understand. You wish to chant the same propaganda over and over and over again. Ok, go for it. Nobody can stop you. They're your posts to do with as you please.

Kindly go back to jacking each other off about how nice you all are toward apartheid regimes. — StreetlightX

Sorry to pop your bubble again, and I know it's foolish to try. But you don't actually care about repressive regimes. You don't. You sincerely think you do, agree there.

How many people has Israel killed in Gaza and the West Bank over the years. I don't claim to know, feel free to count them up and share the total with us.

Now read this:

Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, by opposition activist groups, vary between 494,438 and about 606,000 as of June 2021. On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 400,000 that had died in the war. — wikipedia.org

400,000. And that estimate is now five years old. And the killing in Syria continues, day by day by day.

Right next door. Just across the border. A day's drive away from Palestine. But too far away for you to see.

It take's an absolutely stunning degree of political maleducation — StreetlightX

Almost all of your posts on every topic make this same point. You are smart, they are stupid. The fact that you can't let go of this endlessly repetitive refrain is revealing more to us than you may care to share. Your slip is showing. Trying to do you a favor here, though I'm sure it won't be welcomed.

I'll admit that there has been that "conflict for the sake of conflict" element in this thread but I don't see my current discussion here with fdrake as falling under that banner. — BitconnectCarlos

Imho, you're the sanest and most serious person in the thread. You got sucked in to the shit storm a bit here and there, but overall you kept your cool and stuck to reasoning.

I don't know if "psychologically satisfying" is the word I would use. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, there could very well be a better word. I'm just not sure what it is yet, thus the other thread.

This sounds right, and I just want to add that people change when they're exposed to high levels of stress or trauma over longer time frames. One's environment does change people. — BitconnectCarlos

I hear you, yes, agreed. The endless cycle shit storm is kind of like a disease that spreads throughout the population, infecting the formerly reasonable. Imho, corporate media which fuels conflict for profit is a big part of that.

I know two people in my close life who have never been that in to politics or news. And then they started watching cable news during the Trump era. One on the right, one on the left. And now they argue all the time. Neither of them has a depth of knowledge of the issues, so they're both mostly chanting what the cable news shows push in their face. Neither of them really grasp that they're being manipulated by large corporations in search of profit.

Repeated exposure to conflict and hate drags one down. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, a sad fact of the human condition. In the other thread we're discussing why we so often seek out such experiences. Like I did in the case of this thread. Others can speak for themselves.

I have no problem living my life based on logic and reason. — Christoffer

Except, if you are an atheist, your life is not based on logic and reason. At least not that part of it.

Atheism is not reason. Atheism is an ideology which competes with religious ideology.

Many theists are blinded by the idea that religion and God is a foundation for which a fragile society is built upon. — Christoffer

Most of the critiques of religion arise right out of a moralism which was given to western culture by the Jews. The Christians then became the leading salesmen of such moralism (not to be confused with being morally superior). So many atheists think they can just pull the plug and walk away from these thousands of years of history. It doesn't work that way.

An example...

I was raised Catholic. I made the choice to leave the church over 50 years ago. I had the option, the choice, to stop attending services, and be a critic of the Vatican etc. That much we can do.

But I can't stop thinking like a Catholic, that is, being interested in the kinds of things Catholics are interested in (thus my comments here) because that doesn't arise from my personal choice, but from many centuries of Catholic DNA up my family tree. That's built in. We don't just turn it off with the flip of a switch.

It's just an endless cycle. — BitconnectCarlos

If you haven't noticed, we've begun to discuss this endless cycle business more generically in another thread. Would welcome your participation should it interest you.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11211/conflict-addiction

A great deal of this thread seems fairly described as conflict for the sake of conflict. That is, conflict engaged because we find conflict somehow psychologically satisfying. I'm wondering the degree to which this phenomena helps fuel the endless cycle in the Middle East.

As I picture it, most people on both sides of the MidEast conflict are probably fairly reasonable. They have their positions, but they don't want to live in the endless cycle. A minority on both sides may have become addicted to the conflict more for personal reasons than substantive ones.

And then corporate media gets involved, and feeds a steady diet of conflict imagery in to the population, because conflict is engaging and keeps people glued to the channel, keeps the ratings up, and the ad dollars flowing etc. That's what's happening in the states anyway, not sure about the Middle East.

Here's a question. To what degree is the Middle East conflict endless conflict cycle fueled by the very same psychological needs and motivations etc that have fueled this thread?

Well said Jack. Yea, we all have a story about ourselves that we're always working on. This story business seems to be the source of a huge amount of trouble. We might be able to get away with stealing a guy's money and girlfriend, but if we mess with his story, watch out.

A display of peacock feathers. The fact the debate doesn't achieve a solution is irrelevant. These people just want to vent and belittle others to feel better about their insecurity. — Trinidad

This sounds pretty insightful and accurate to me. And I just want to add here that my peacock feathers are FAR SUPERIOR to everyone else in the aforementioned thread!



I am big, and they are small!!

Or, um, I am small pretending to be big, to hide my smallness from myself.

Definitely one of those.

This is why I don't think irrational belief, religion, and theism have any place in philosophy. It's the very antithesis of what philosophy aims to do. — Christoffer

First, atheists typically assume that theism is nothing but a pile of ideological assertions, thus revealing the ignorance which prevents them from being effective critics. This misunderstanding is particularly RAMPANT on philosophy forums.

Next, generally speaking, taken as a whole, religion is more realistic than atheism about the human condition, and more compassionate in serving that reality. This not because theists are smarter, but only because they've been doing their thing far longer. Here's the evidence...

To this day, religion continues to thrive in every time and place. It's been doing so for thousands of years. That is, religion is a "creature" very well adapted to it's environment, the human mind. Natural selection is demonstrating the power of religion to anyone willing to listen to the evidence.

Every little detail of these four people's arguments is scrutinized to the core — Christoffer

Except that it's not. In atheism the core (blind faith in reason) is very rarely touched. Most atheists don't even know it's there. There's typically far more doubt honestly expressed in theism than in atheism.

I agree that theism shouldn't be considered philosophy because philosophy should require reason and logic as the foundation. Atheism works in this sense since it's founded on thinking with reason and logic. — Christoffer

Any method which declines to challenge it's own fundamental assumptions is not philosophy, but instead merely ideology. It's not reason and logic to refuse to examine and challenge the qualifications of reason and logic.

It wasn't until the early 20 the century, philosophers realized that it will all come to an end. — Wittgenstein

In one interpretation, the Book Of Genesis predicted our current state of affairs and likely future some three thousand years ago.

1) We ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and then...

2) Were evicted from the Garden of Eden.

Here's how I think this remarkable prediction was accomplished. It wasn't a vision from beyond, the word of God transcribed, or magical psychic powers. It was deep insight in to the human condition, a condition which hasn't really changed since the prediction was made.

As example, if you've read enough of Foghorn's posts, sooner or later it becomes clear that my human condition is to go endlessly blah, blah, blah about all kinds of things like a typoholic madmen, and swing wildly back and forth between being a jerk and a decent dude. Once you see the pattern, once you understand my human condition, you can predict the future of my writing with a degree of certainty.

Ancient peoples had some advantage in understanding fundamental properties like the human condition because their minds weren't crammed with all the kinds of mass produced noise which assaults our attention today.

There are of course many other interpretations of the Book Of Genesis, and no way to ever finally conclude which is correct. I'm just reporting my current favorite interpretation.

Atheism is simply accepting logic and reason over belief and experience — Christoffer

Yes, agreed. The debate is a choice of which authority to reference.

The problem God thread philosophers on all sides face is that in centuries of such debate nobody on any side has been able to prove the qualifications of their chosen authority for this particular task.

The next problem is that nobody cares about that. :-)

God debates are like dancing. There's a series of steps that everyone has memorized, and it's fun to get together on the dance floor and do the dance yet again.

There's no crime in it. Life is short and fun is good. It's just not philosophy, that's all.

My one contribution to that thread was asking whether any of the participants had ever visited both Israeli and Palestinian territories. Predictably, there did not seem to be anyone who had. — Tzeentch

One member may have, Israel at least. Doubt it for the rest of us. Not me.

I've never been outside of the United States, because those other countries don't really exist, but are just fake news cooked up by the cable news outlets. As example, the BBC is run out of somebody's garage in a trailer park at an undisclosed location in rural Alabama.

People love to preach and be sanctimonious.
Makes them feel better,temporarily. — Trinidad

Yes, and yes. But why? Why does engaging in pointless conflict make us feel better?

Good news is in real life most of these clowns wouldn't say boo to a goose. — Trinidad

It's true. I've never booed a goose. Not once. Definitely too scary. :-)

I only took a quick look at couple of pages so have not seen this impartiality. — skyblack

The user mentioned was not impartial, just mostly not hysterical. He lost it a time or two, just not routinely.

For the same reason we like thrill rides and horror movies, so we can learn how to cope better with the demons and threats that we already know are out there’s, are always in the back of our mind and infiltrate our dreams nightly. — Joshs

Hmm....

it appears in that case the "central committee" was fueling the conflict. — skyblack

I wonder if his friends, the ones involved in the conflict, are infuriated by his impartiality. — Joshs

He wasn't impartial, he definitely had a perspective. He was just less hysterical than the rest of us.

It’s possible that it seems to you that a vacuous ‘addiction to conflict’ motivated the arguments precisely because you were not invested in the topic. — Joshs

I saw only one member of that thread that seemed actually sincerely invested in the topic itself, due to his personal real world relationships with some of those involved in the conflict. And he was generally the sanest and most mature of the lot of us. Go figure?

We’re not addicted to conflict, we’re addicted to sense-making, and it drives us crazy when someone spouts off with an opinion that sounds completely outrageous to us. — Joshs

Ok, that seems a reasonable theory. It's complex for sure.

To counter, why do we so often deliberately seek out the experience of being driven crazy?