Apparently, not only did the commenters (except Astrophel) fail to watch the 10 minute video they are commenting on, they also failed to read the second sentence of the original post. Here it is again.

In short, religions disagree about what happens when I die, how to be saved, etc. Religions have had thousands of years to find the truth and have failed. — Art48

I hope that helps.

Astrophel: "Religion is the redemptive and consummatory structure of our existence"
Hm. I'd call that word salad. But if you can give it some meaning, I expect existing religions will disagree about that, too.

The thought experiment still implies that brains requires sensory input from outside of itself. The brain in a vat needs to receive input through its sensory interfaces and would still be connect to the outside world in some way. — Harry Hindu

True. But Descartes's Evil Demon does not require an external material world.

To say that we only experience sensations is plainly false. The cat is not a sensation. — jkop

So, in addition to the senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, we have other senses?
In particular, we have a special cat-sensing sense?
And when we see an apple, we use our special apple-sensing sense?
What we call a cat is a bundle of sensations.
A material cat may exist which is causes us to experience the bundle of sensations which we call a cat.
Or maybe we're a brain in a vat (as in The Matrix movie). Or we're hallucinating. etc.

Who cares about certainty in the first place? Or what’s true or real or fact?
Scientists care. The investigated the funny phenomena of rubbing fur on amber for centuries, which led them to eventually understand electricity, which led to the screen you are reading this on.

If matter is not what the mind directly experiences then it is something else, let's call it X. X has to exist objectively though otherwise the experiencing is not possible. X however has properties that cause our experiences to have features, so-called Qualia. — MoK

Exactly.

This is why we do scientific experiments. We poke and prod the thing and see how it responds. But this raises the following question. If it is true that "we are not allowed to leave the monitoring room", then what gives us the capacity to poke and prod the thing? — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a good point which shows the inadequacy of monitoring room analogy. See first response above about cat-sensing sense. My senses tell me I'm picking up a cat, petting it, etc. but everything I experience still all sensation, is it not? Cannot someone who is a brain in a vat or hallucinating, have the sensor experience of doing experiments and experiencing the results?

Your original claim was that we experience sensations, not matter. — hypericin

We do not directly experience matter. Matter might be the cause of our sensations, but we don't know that it is. We know we experience sensations. Matter is one explanation for the cause of those sensations. Other explanations of what we experience include Descartes' Evil Demon, Brain in a Vat (the thought underlying the movie The Matrix), the Simulation Hypothesis, and Hard Solipsism. Didn't Kant make the point that we experience phenomena but cannot know the noumena, the cause of the phenomena?

As an analogy, we are like security guards watching monitors. We see and hear what we believe is occurring on, say, a loading dock. But we are not allowed to leave the monitoring room, so we have no way of verifying the sights and sounds are coming from an actual, real, existing loading dock. Perhaps, a computer is generating sights and sounds we perceive, but no actual loading dock exists. Perhaps, the loading dock once existed and the sights and sounds were recording and are now being replayed. We cannot leave our monitoring room so we can never directly experience the loading dock. We experience only phenomena (the sights and sounds of the loading dock) but we cannot experience noumena (the apparent loading dock itself.)

This video makes a similar point: .https://youtu.be/1mW3nrQEJ8A

When we see a tree, we experience visual sensations. These visual sensations are experiences of a tree. — hypericin

In a mirage, we experience visual sensations of water but we do NOT experience water.
The point of the original post is we can be 100% certain of the sensations we experience but we can not be 100% certain of the cause of the sensations.

3 doesn't make sense on its own — Corvus

??? I"d say 3 makes perfect sense on its own. It's an integer, prime, odd, etc.

If numbers didn't exist, then you couldn't be writing about them, so they must exist somewhere. — RussellA

,
So, then, if the first even prime greater than 100 didn't exist I couldn't be writing about it?

When it searches for Adamford.com it goes to your site, but on and off for adamford.com - as you have listed it - it goes to car dealerships. And Google stopped me twice when I wrote www.adamford.com . Then not. Peculiar. Nice site you have though. — jgill

Thanks! I've verified the problem with www.adamford.com and will look into it. I just moved adamford.com to a new hosting service a few days ago.

How can you be so certain? — jgill

I'm not "so certain." That's what I believe based on evidence, but I could be wrong. Can you say the same?

P.S. I came back to change "excluded from modern philosophy" to "modern philosophy has lost interest".

When I see a diatribe like this I speculate why its author is so vehement. Why does your website on your bio page list www.adamford.com, a site Google warns against as a scam, or, when going to adamford.com, is a car dealership device? — jgill

It works fine for me. Does anyone else on this thread see a problem? If so, I'd like to know.

Obviously, you have an emotional involvement in this issue. But I don't see it as a modern philosophical topic. But that's just me. Others here may differ. — jgill

My emotional involvement is because the Bible tells enormous lies about God.
The validity of Christianity was once a philosophical topic. Are you saying it's been excluded from modern philosophy?

One point of the OP is that Christianity has a dark side. Without it, I don't think Sarah Palin would have had herself blessed "against all forms of witchcraft." Without it, parents would not refuse medical treatment for their child, use prayer and casting out demons, and have the child die. Without Christianity, much of the symptoms listed in the OP would not exist. I'd like to see that point addressed more.

NOTE: I was able to post on Reddit with the endnotes. So, if anyone is interested in where the items in the OP come from, go here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Trumpvirus/comments/1frbs2g/comment/lpbox89/?context=3

I did not detect anything false or untrue in the OP. What offended you so much? — tim wood

I'd answer what offended him is "The truth"

Honestly, it strikes me like exactly the sort of thing I see on Q Anon sites, except that there the selection would simply target a different group of people. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm puzzled. If it's "exactly the sort or thing I see on OAnon sites" then do you believe one of the two following choices?
1. The OP's items are factual but so are QAnon posts so the two are similar.
2. The OP's items are as false as QANon posts so the two are similar.

If 1., I've nothing more to say to you.
If 2., what are the numbers of the items in the OP you consider as unfactual as QAnon posts?

Just taking your first point, you give no attribution for the quote, which is a form of plagiarism, and you don't mention the fact that Roseanne Barr is also a comedian, one of whose jobs is to mock the silliness and stupidity of society. — RussellA

I mention that endnotes are in the Word version. Barr was quite serious; watch the video.
Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSSpCsj248Y

Why can't I appreciate and adhere to Christian principles and deny its history. Who says that you have two choices, believe and belong, or reject and stay clear? — ENOAH

Yes, you could follow Christian principles without believing in its supernatural aspects.
Some Christians, I suspect, do exactly that.
I'd add that choice in the OP if I were to do it again.

Make a choice and explain why.
1. This is ridiculous. Christianity IS true and that’s all there is to it. I’m not doing this silly thought experiment. Count me out. (No further explanation needed.)
2. I would become an atheist.
3. I would search for a God that isn’t false.
4. None of the above. I would do something else.

Well, as sketched above, my path had been from 4 through 3 to 2. :halo: — 180 Proof

I ended up at 3. as well.

OK. Edited. "proceed" it is.

I believe “supernatural” is a vacuous term because we do not yet know the limits of the natural world. — Art48

'Miracles are not against nature but against what we know of nature' ~ St Augustine. — Wayfarer

It seems to me, by that definition miracles need not be supernatural.

180 Proof: If you agree hard solipsism cannot be disproven, then wouldn’t the minimum that we must necessarily presuppose be our consciousness and sensations, and nothing else? — Art48

There are compelling grounds to doubt "solipsism" (e.g. disembodiment, immaterialism, brain-in-vat, etc) which suffice for dismissing it. — 180 Proof

I fail to see how this addresses my question. I say the minimum we must acknowledge is our consciousness and the sensations in it. Are you saying you'd add materialism to the list? The point of my video is that we never directly experience matter and so matter is a theoretical construct which explains what we directly experience, rather than what we directly experience.

***

Also, I’d say Newtonian Mechanics is wrong.

Well I say that beyond all doubt, above the Planck scale, shorter than Relativistic distances and slower than Relativistic velocities, "Newtonian Mechanics" is (almost) completely accurate. — 180 Proof

It's almost right, i.e., it's wrong.

I believe “supernatural” is a vacuous term because we do not yet know the limits of the natural world.

***
Physical laws and constants make explicit (some? many? most?) "limits of the natural world" and, after countless billions upon billions of experimental observations, that there is no evidence of violations of any physical laws is, imo, compelling grounds to doubt your "belief", Art. — 180 Proof

I'm saying we cannot with justification say something is supernatural. It may be a natural phenomena we don't understand yet (like lightening once was). I can't determine if you are agreeing or disagreeing in your response.

180 Proof: If you agree hard solipsism cannot be disproven, then wouldn’t the minimum that we must necessarily presuppose be our consciousness and sensations, and nothing else? Of course, the evidence for an external material world is very, very strong but the point of the video is that the evidence does not prove materialism.

Tom Storm: Even if we can never perfectly describe reality, I’d say that any particular narrative and model (e.g. Newtonian Physics) can be closer to reality than another (e.g., Alchemy).

T Clark: Are you saying a metaphysical position isn’t true or false? (Why? Because such positions go beyond the evidence and therefore their truth/falsity cannot be determined?)
Also, I’d say Newtonian Mechanics is wrong. It gives the right answer to a certain number of decimal places but if you go far enough (10th decimal, 100th decimal), it gives an answer that disagrees with Relativity and with reality.

Moliere: I wouldn’t know how to make a radio program of it. Maybe it could be made into a podcast but I’m not very familiar with podcasting.

Ciceronianus: I believe “supernatural” is a vacuous term because we do not yet know the limits of the natural world. Once, lightening was considered supernatural. I get in my car, talk into a little handheld device, and it directs me to a destination 100 miles away (i.e. mobile phone and GPS) or allows me to talk to someone on another continent. A few centuries ago, that would have been called supernatural.

Do you believe in God? You seem to say Genesis is a lie about God, and you capitalize God. We can’t talk about what God means in the Bible if you don’t believe there is a God. Do you believe there is a God?

Or are you just trying convert me to atheism? — Fire Ologist

Great question. Yes, I do. I'll elaborate. There are (literally!) more stars in the known universe than grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. Imagine a planet with intelligent rabbit-like beings who worship the Great Furry Mother Rabbit. And there's a special book! For me, the Christian God is too small. The Bible contains some wisdom, no doubt, but it also IMHO contains lots of nonsense and evil commands (e.g., Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.) The God I believe in is similar to Spinoza's God or to non-dual Vedanta's Brahman. It's The One. It has been claimed (for example, by Aldous Huxley in his Perennial Philosophy) that such The One is common to the experiences of mystics of all religions.And there's the idea that Gods who are Persons are personifications of The One. I could go on but I won't. If interested, here are two YouTube clips I made.
78 - What Is God?
79 - True God, False Gods

1. Genesis says God REGRETTED making humanity and so sent a worldwide flood to wipe it out (aside from Noah and his family). Even if the Genesis story was internally consistent, it would still be a fairy tale (and a lie about God.)
2. Do you think the command to kill a child who curses a parent is not evil?
3. The dictionary will tell you what "curse" means.

Wasn't Jesus in your quote asking them to think again what the law is and who is breaking it? He wasn't telling them why they were wrong. He was asking them why they were happy to enforce the law against some for eating with dirty hands, while they were not enforcing the law against others who cursed their fathers and mothers. This quote doesn't talk about Jesus' relationship to the law, or what the law is, or how or when it should be enforced, or what the result of enforcement is. — Fire Ologist

So, God "inspires" in two places in the OT the evil command to kill a child who curses a parent .
* Leviticus 20:9 says, “If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his blood guiltiness is upon him.”
* Deuteronomy 21:18–21 (verses omitted)
Jesus and his Father are one, so the OT commands are the commands of Jesus as much as his Father.

Then, God in the person of Jesus specifically cites the OT commands with approval.
And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4For God said, . . ..‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’

But some priest or preacher says when God writes "serpent" God "really means Satan" and when God says kill the child who curses a parent, God "really means don't." Which all goes to demonstrate that Christians follow their priests and preachers, NOT God and not even the (sometimes evil) Bible.

Do we really need to blame God for hell? — Fire Ologist

Of course not, because hell is a fairy tale to scare the gullible, so your mini-sermon that attempts to justify hell is moot.

I know all of that sounds like something a priest might say - but priests are sometimes just actually people, as ignorant as anyone else.

That doesn't sound anything like anything Jesus ever said. A grave sin that cannot be forgiven, I know it exists, but I hope I don't ever want such a thing. — Fire Ologist

It sounds as if you yourself disagree with some things the Catholic Church says in favor of your opinion of what Jesus taught. Here's Matthew 15:1-4 where Jesus is speaking. Can you justify that, too?

1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!” 3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’

I have a degree in Philosoophy and a post grad degree as well, I’m not the least bit superstitious (way more interested in a scientific explanation for any phenomena than some deus ex machina storytelling), not gullible at all as any 55 year adult on this planet should not be anymore. I’m really not as afraid as I probably should be, and I’m definitely too angry, but I know it, and can control it if you’d like.

And I go to Mass every Sunday. — Fire Ologist

I was taught in Catholic school that an unforgiven, unrepented mortal sin at the time of death results in hell. Do you believe that? I was also taught that intentionally missing Sunday Mass without a good reason was a mortal sin. Suppose one Sunday you skipped Mass merely because you didn’t feel like going. Do you believe that if you died unexpectedly later that day that you’d go to hell forever? If you do, you’re a faithful Catholic and IMHO gullible. If you don’t, then you pick and choose like most self-identifying "Catholics". Which is it? Or is this a false dilemma?

To show me how religion essentially holds us back, you have to show me some great advanced place far from religion where we might go. — Fire Ologist

Genuine religion can lead us to God. The idea of the perennial philosophy describes such religion. But religions of state are polluted religions perverted to serve the needs of nations. Christianity “hit the big time” when it was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire. Here’s some references for further philosophical exploration, if you’re interested.
78 - What Is God? https://youtu.be/8_vwtXMNj1M
79 - True God, False Gods https://youtu.be/gzFdC9fTJw0

Interesting post. Some thoughts.

I can see two perspectives for answering.

First Perspective: No, I would not agree because I would not trust the technology to not have a bug which might lead to a nightmarish experience.

Second Perspective: Suppose God Himself assured me that everything is as described in the post; that there will be no unpleasant surprises.

In this case, I have a question: if I picked “could forget,” would there be any discernible difference between my experience of the world now, and my experience after the procedure? If I could not distinguish the two types of experience, then maybe I’d accept the procedure because, for all I know, I might currently be in a simulation, and so I would merely be trading one simulation for another, more enjoyable simulation.

If I picked “could not forget” then I would know that I was in a simulation. I might not trade in what is, or, at least, what may be, reality for a simulation.

Suppose two "perspectives" - first person and third.
Posit that we cannot know what causes our sensations.
Supose first person accounts to be "more certain" than third person accounts.
Conclude that one doesn't see what one's eyes see.
Now I don't follow that. The argument is incomplete. — Banno

Here's a bare bones argument
1. I clearly see squares A and B are a different color.
2. Squares A and B in reality are the same color. Therefore, the light reaching my eyes reflected from squares A and B is the same color.
Conclusion: I do not see what my eyes see. Rather, my mind processes the light reaching my eyes and presents me with the image I do see.

What is the argument? — Banno

The argument is in the OP.
The conclusion is that I don't even see what my eyes see.
Rather, I see what my mind interprets.
That's why do not appear to me to be the same color.

Fun fact: if you did throw a dart at an infinitely dividable board, and you got the x,y coordinates of the point it landed, you'd be more likely to land on irrational numbers than rational — flannel jesus

Fun fact 2: There are a countable number of points with rational coordinates and an uncountable number of points with irrational coordinates (and some with mixed, as in (1,pi), which I'll ignore). This makes talking about probability difficult as the straightforward way of calculating probability
> (number of points with rational coordinates) / (total number of points)
which is
> (countable) / (uncountable)
which, it can be argued, equals 0.

So there is 0 chance of hitting a point with rational coordinates?

Yes, just like the probability is zero of geting EXACTLY 0.5 on a wheel with real numbers from 0 to 1.

No, the reason is that people cannot cope with the fact that we don't have free will. — Christoffer

So, do you believe that the man in the OP does not have free will? At the moment, the poll is 80% does not have free will and 20% other.

Logically, he would go directly diagonally across the field. Being tired he decides not to exercise his free will as to another path. I don't get it. — jgill

So he goes directly diagonally. The covering is removed. Only his diagonal path is black. The remainder of the field has been painted white. Did he have free will, or not?

I think that's a caricature. It would take a bit to unpack it all. — baker

It's certainly simplified but I don't think it's incorrect. An in-depth discussion might require an entire book of its own.

I’d love to hear your thought on how his arguments don’t hold up! — T4YLOR

Check YouTube for multiple criticisms of Craig's Kalam Argument.
(The Kalam is a Kalam-ity of an argument.)

Progressive toward what? — baker

More at ProgressiveRegressive_Excerpt.docx

Many posts seem to me to ignore or misunderstand the OP.
Let me try again with a simple example.

2,000 years ago, many people believed sin and demons cause disease.
This belief found its way into stories about a certain miracle worker, Jesus.
By one count, Jesus performed 34 miracles and 23 of them concern healing.
How did Jesus heal?
By forgiving sin and casting out demons (although once he used some supernatural spittle to cure a blind man.)

Since then, we've learned that bacteria and viruses cause disease.
But the false teachings of Jesus are enshrined in scripture.
The result? Google “Christian parent deny medical treatment child dies"

Old beliefs (which may have seemed rational at the time) find their way into scripture where they are preserved and propagated even today. Some results: disbelief in evolution; belief in an young Earth; and children dying of curable disease because their deluded religious parents deny them medical treatment.

To cite another example, a Jehovah Witnesses may refuse a blood transfusion even at the cost of their own life due to words written in a book that has a talking serpent, a mythological worldwide flood, and a flight of Jews from Egypt that even Israeli archeologists say never happened.

There are some good teachings enshrined in scripture. And there are some very bad teachings, as well. The enshrining occurs because of religion's childish epistemology where because some book or alleged prophet or god-man said something, it must be true.

it seems hard to justify the idea that religion makes people particularly more regressive — Count Timothy von Icarus

It seems obvious to me that for many believers, believing in witchcraft and demons, and denying evolution and geology (Young Earth Creationism) derive from Christian belief. Not for liberal Christians. But for Christians who take the Bible literally, i.e., fundamentalists. For example, Sarah Palin and Mike Johnson are fundamentalist Christian lunatics.

Hegel, Cantor, Maimonides, Descartes, Dogen, Avicenna, Augustine, Eriugena, Proclus, Newton, Eckhart, Avarroese, Leibniz, Porphyry, Pascale, Maxwell, Berkeley, Ibn Sina, Bonaventure, Hildegard, Al-Ghazai, Cusa, Erasmus, Rumi, Merton, Plotinius, Anselm, Abelard, Al-Farabi, Ibn Kaldun, Plato, Schelling, Bacon, Magnus, Boyle, Kelvin, Eddington, Pierce, Godel, Faraday, Mendel, Pastier, Lister — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quite a list but not to the point.
Plato was not Christian
Plotinius, Porphyry and Proclus were Neoplatontic philosophers.
Ibn Sina, al-Ghazai, Rumi, Al-Farabi, and Ibn Kaldun were Islamic
Some of the Christians you mention were not fundamentalists.

( Lisa Barrett, How Emotions are Made)

Josh, you seem to have some objection. Can you put it in your own words?

Do you suppose there might also be educated Christians and uneducated atheists? — Hanover

I do.

"CAN religion perpetuate and promote a regressive worldview?" or "can religion be USED to perpetuate and promote a regressive worldview". — LuckyR

If someone is a fundamentalist Christian then their religion MUST accept a worldwide flood. Etc.

It follows that your emotions, thoughts, and inner world are not you. — creativesoul

Good point. The only candidate for our permanent, enduring self is our awareness. But we also have a relative self. When someone says something about me, they usually refer to my thoughts, emotions, body, profession, family, nationality, etc.