Perhaps we might agree that any categorisation of what it is to be human will fail? — Banno

Outside of religious claims, where much has been said of the soul. A human being has a human soul, which isn't reducible to a physical attribute. Not helpful to you I realize, but that is where the conversation of human essence belongs.

Where there is an intersection with the theists and secular humanists is the positing of humanity in a special place, the theists infusing the soul with the divine and the secular humanists making humans just as holy, but using different language.

For something to be holy just means that it is set apart from all else, but I digress. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/christiancrier/2014/05/24/what-does-the-word-holy-mean-bible-definition-of-holy/

a shame he then goes on to posit intellect as somehow essential to being human — Banno

But I didn't. I just said it's an important part of what it is to be human, and I wouldn't deny the most intellectually deficient an iota of humanity.

I point out that it would be a terrible loss to deny someone their intellectual development, which is consistent with how we treat the most intellectually challenged. We spend tremendous energy trying to teach them whatever they're able to learn. It's why being an educator is a higher calling. You're shaping human beings.

But should someone be entirely without any intellectual capacity at all, so much so there is nothing to advance, they too are as human as you or I.

I'm talking about the philosophical underpinnings of pedagogy that define the process of education from start to finish. That's where the meat of the issue lies. — Baden

I do see the difference, but I can also say that my leanings are heavily in favor of learning for learning's sake, which should come as no surprise given the bulk of my formal education was in the humanities, which has limited economic application. So, then the question becomes why are my leanings superior, and that conversation will either devolve into pragmatism (as in which society works better, one which prioritizes the technical skills or the one the holistic person), or it will make a declaration about human worth (as in, human creativity, expression, and understanding are per se valuable, regardless of application).

If we argue our position from pragmatics, it's an empirical question which philosophy will work best that we may lose depending on what data we look at. I therefor take the other approach, which makes me feel very much like an ideologue, which makes me feel like I'm trying to mold society a certain way just because that's my belief.

That is, why prioritize the humanities? Because Hanoverian principles demand such and a Hanoverian society is of highest value.

So, to the question “What came first, the universe or the laws of physics?” I would answer “The universe.” — Art48

What do you envision, a chaotic random stew being suddenly jolted into order?



Note this translation is more accurate and does not indicate creatio ex nihilo.

My answer would be that uni means one, which describes a single thing existing as it always has, whether that has a starting point or has been eternal.

Dividing creation/ultimate origins into stages is problematic.

Searching for the essence of anything, from what it is to be human to what it is to be a cup is a failed enterprise. The enterprise will also not at all be metaphysical, but will be linguistic, meaning we will be quibbling over best definitions regarding how we use words as opposed to what is intrinsic in the thing.

To avoid the language game, I find it more important to ask the moral question, as in how ought we treat people and what are the aspects we most highly value in people.

In the folks you work with, surely I would not claim myself more human than they because I'm smarter and more intellectually gifted, but I still find those traits specially (although not uniquely) human. That is, as much as we realize they'll never read and do math, we would provide them educational opportunities and instruction befitting their ability. To deny them intellectual development that they could achieve would be inhumane.

So, no, I don't think intellectualism makes us human, but to deny it, denies our living up to the height of our creation, and so it is a human thing to link our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development to our humanity.

If the tragedy of our time is that the masses have been manipulated by the expert manipulators, then why not clarify once and for all The Truth so I can know what to believe in and avoid this trickery.

This Forum in particular has been of no help so far. Every post offers a different opinion and every one peddles a different point of view.

claim Christianity says that eventually there will be only heaven and hell.
If that is not correct, please tell us 1) where it’s incorrect and 2) what is the correct view.
Prediction: you can’t. — Art48

"Good people go to heaven as a deserved reward for a virtuous life, and bad people go to hell as a just punishment for an immoral life; in that way, the scales of justice are sometimes thought to balance. But virtually all Christian theologians regard such a view, however common it may be in the popular culture, as overly simplistic and unsophisticated; the biblical perspective, as they see it, is far more subtly nuanced than that."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heaven-hell/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20relatively%20common,of%20earthly%20lives%20we%20live.

From the same article:

"So one way to organize our thinking here is against the backdrop of the following inconsistent set of three propositions:

All human sinners are equal objects of God’s redemptive love in the sense that God wills or aims to win over each one of them over time and thereby to prepare each one of them for the bliss of union with the divine nature.
God’s redemptive love will triumph in the end and successfully win over each and every object of that love, thereby preparing each one of them for the bliss of union with the divine nature.
Some human sinners will never be reconciled to God and will therefore remain separated from the divine nature forever.
If this set of propositions is logically inconsistent, as it surely is, then at least one proposition in the set is false. In no way does it follow, of course, that only one proposition in the set is false, and neither does it follow that at least two of them are true. But if someone does accept any two of these propositions, as virtually every mainline Christian theologian does, then such a person has no choice but to reject the third.[1] It is typically rather easy, moreover, to determine which proposition a given theologian ultimately rejects, and we can therefore classify theologians according to which of these propositions they do reject. So that leaves exactly three primary eschatological views. Because the Augustinians, named after St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), believe both that God’s redemptive (or electing) love will triumph in the end (proposition (2)) and that some human sinners will never be reconciled to God (proposition (3)), they finally reject the idea that God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally (proposition (1)); because the Arminians, named after Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) for his opposition to the Augustinian understanding of limited election, believe both that God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally (proposition (1)) and that some of these sinners will never be reconciled to God (proposition (3)), they finally reject the idea that God’s redemptive love will triumph in the end (proposition (2)); and finally, because the Christian universalists believe both that God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally (proposition (1)) and that this love will triumph in the end (proposition (2)), they finally reject altogether the idea that some human sinners will never be reconciled to God (proposition (3))."

So you've shown the folly of a literalist caricature version of Christianity. Challenge yourself and arrive at a version that makes sense to you.

And everything in between. But yes, the basic polarity is between instrumentalists, often politicians and business leaders, whose goals focus on efficiency, outcome, and concord, and who see students as little more than pegs to be fitted into socio-economic roles vs holists/liberal humanists/existentialists etc., who are more likely to be educational theorists or practitioners, and who are more interested in individual development, flourishing, and creativity. — Baden

I think both sides accuse the other of trying to fit students into a mold so that the next generation will be in their image. Everyone claims indoctrination from the other.

The fact that people are afraid to discuss ideas is precisely the problem. — Tzeentch

Isn't a healthy state of affairs if people are afraid to be racist, for example, or do you envision the ideal state where you can go up to someone, spout your racism, and expect appreciation for your openness?

I initially read this OP in the abstract, as if the lament was that people weren't more open in airing their views to random passersbys, but now it seems people just wish they could offend in peace without repercussion.

Yeah, that's not how the world ever worked

I think I already explained it above. In my country we had about 60% vaccination rate and every day I would read the news that about 10k people tested positive, 6k of them were vaccinated and 4k unvaccinated. So pretty much no effect here.
Yet about 10 died, roughly 8 of whom were unvaccinated, 2 vaccinated. So some effect here. — M777

The data is inconsistent with your recollections:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages

why, what word would you use? — M777

Naive maybe.

There's no more confusing way to prove that one's free speech is being suppressed than by discussing all the things one is not permitted to discuss.

That's your approach. I usually find power in speaking truth, so it's hard for me to imagine a scenario where I would avoid a response. ) — M777

I do believe in speaking truth to power, but I see no value in speaking truth to every guy trying to make a TikTok video. If you think yourself heroic in defending your views to every passerby, have at it.

In any event, my views on "what is a woman" are probably close enough to the current politically correct position that I'm not worried about being bullied, yet I still wouldn't answer. When did the idea that people are obligated to discuss religion and politics to every troll become the rule.

I'd say I am amazed by how easily seemingly grown up people would bend over backwards to cater to some hypothetical bullies. — M777

They're not bullies. They're just annoying, so they go ignored. If you stick a microphone in my face and ask me my views of abortion, I doubt I'd respond. If you made a comment trying to provoke a response, I'd probably give a "sure, whatever you say" sort of response. It's not a sign of courage to stand up to every petty battle.

I'd say that is a rather cowardly approach - being afraid to speak your position just because some petty bully might not like it. — M777

My comment was that refraining from discussing one's position isn't equivalent to internally suppressing one's position. Whether that behavior is cowardly or prudent has no bearing on my comment.

In my opinion such internal blocking of engaging with certain thoughts is a very bad idea, as it noticeably hinders one's ability to think clearly. — M777

They are not internally blocking or hindering their own thought. They are reacting in a socially appropriate way to a situation that that might lead to conflict and trying to decide the best way to handle it. They have been asked a question that is polarizing and divisive and they don't know who their audience is or how their answer might be used for or against them. Their views on "what is a woman" might be very well formed and thought out, but they refrain from responding simply because they don't care to have that debate or advertise their position.

This preserves the old meaning of the term "nature" as excluding the man-made, because humans have 'a higher nature'. — unenlightened

In your nature/man/God division, the above distinguishes between nature and man, but not God. The God category though is the question of the OP, which refers to it as the "supernatural." It is clear what we mean by nature and by man, with a trip to nature being a trip to Yellowstone National Park and a trip to the man-made to Disneyland.

In common parlance, we mean nothing metaphysical by the nature/man distinction. We just note the two categories, even if ultimately humans are part of nature and Disneyland is as natural as a park.

Should I be stranded in the wild, unable to cross a river back to civilization, finding a fallen tree bridging the river would be a lucky event, with some debating whether it was a natural event and others supernatural divine intervention,, but whether it was man-made would be simply an empirical inquiry, looking for evidence of saw marks and the like.

The point here is that we do need to talk about elves and angels if we want to maintain the natural/supernatural distinction. Talk of the subjective and the moral only protects the supernatural for those who think it the result of something beyond humanity, not just a creation of humanity. The supernatural is beyond nature and humanity. That's just how we use the word.

find this confusing if your X = 'natural' as X(a) and X(b) would then have to be subcategories of natural.
Surely the contest is between x=natural and y=supernatural.
If y doesn't exist, then sure you can still reference it as a nonexistent, just like winged horses, orcs and elves or the word nothing. — universeness

X = everything. X(b) world include the non-exustent, like elves, ghosts, and gods.

And so that's the point. The lack of a physical referent does not, as the OP argues, dissolve the term into uselessness. If it did, when you said "supernatural," I would look at you confused, as if you uttered gobblygook.

Don't read this as a suggestion that because the term supernatural is useful and non-empty that there must be elves. I'm not uttering objects into existence.

This just seems like desperation to hold on to your own attraction to or need for the supernatural. — universeness

I didn't read it that way. The OP states the supernatural is an empty useless term, but the existence of the supernatural isn't necessary for the term to have meaning or use.

If the world consists entirely of X and only X and we speak of there being exactly two categories of X, X(a) and X(b), and we learn there are no X(b)s, we can cease referencing to X(a) and just say X. If howevee we continue to refer to X(b), even just to declare it doesn’t exist, it has usage and meaning.

I did not read his comment that way. The story of the Garden of Eden is based on the idea that God (the father; the authority) punished humans (children) for being disobedient. The lesson is we should obey God, regardless of how good our parents are. — Jackson

I don't see the Garden of Eden mentioned in the OP. Nowhere in the story of Eden does it talk about parents and the duties owed to them. The commandment related to parents (which occurs much later) states you should "honor" your parents, which does not mean to obey, and it actually doesn't even mean to love.

I'd also disagree with you that the Bible is written to mean you are not to challenge the authority of God (or, by extrapolation, one's parents). There are plenty of instances where the authority of God is challenged by humans and even instances where he relents after being challenged.

I'm just pointing out that your biblical analysis is highly interpretative and not bound by the text.

But if it's the godlike elemental primacy of parents in early childhood, then it's true, I thought this was shared experience. — hypericin

To the extent God is portrayed in an anthropomorphic way, and especially in a paternalistic way (as in God the father), there is a parallel between parents and God. How far individual families extend that metaphor would vary by family, but it's not a universal experience to have parents that present themselves as absolute infallible entities. I never had the experience and I never thought of my parents as occupying a superhuman role.

Again, this isn't to deny your experience. You might have had parents that were placed upon a godly pedestal only to be disillusioned when you learned otherwise, but that says more about your upbringing than it does about fundamental human family structures.

Delusions are restricted to opposition/denial of known facts. For instance to say the earth is flat is delusional. — Agent Smith

There is often dispute over "known facts," which makes it difficult to call someone delusional just because they might be proceeding under a very different worldview and might be accepting justifications that you would never hold acceptable.

For instance, that the world is only a few thousand years old, that it was created in 6 days, that there was a flood that wiped out all living creatures except those housed in a protective ark, that the earth is in the center of the universe are all beliefs very much contrary to what I take to be "known facts," but I don't think a believer in those are delusional. I think they're wrong, but I also don't think they are mentally ill.

If someone believes that God spoke directly to them and warned them to watch out for the demons masquerading as small children who are out to destroy them, then that person would have delusions of grandeur, delusions of persecution, and paranoia, all of which I would have no difficulty as declaring as delusions. That mentally ill person though is far different from the guy who holds to antiquated beliefs imposed by an insular and likely unsophisticated social group.

am a reasonably normal person and I think my understanding of reality is consistent with how most people in my culture see it. — Clarky

Why is your culturally relative evaluation of reality relevant here? Are you presenting an argument based on that?

That isn't what I wrote. — Clarky

We don't exclude how normal people see the world when attempting to determine the nature of reality anymore than we exclude how abnormal people see the world. We note only that the concept of normal perceptions have no bearing on reality.

My comment about you referenced how I suspected you had a notion of normal, which was in reference to your internal standard. What is the the normal response to hot peppers? Are they really hot or mild?

Everything you say is true, but that doesn't change the fact that if we exclude how normal people see and understand the normal world on a normal day from what we call "reality," it's goofy. It's philosophy at it's most useless. — Clarky

If you define reality as how you see it (and I mean you as in Clarky in particular), then that's that.

I'm not sure that's useful philosophy. I'm not even sure that is philosophy at all.

To say that reality as people experience it is not really reality is goofy. — Clarky

Except in cases where there is a disconnect between reality and experience, meaning it's not at all goofy to say that the schizophrenic and the drug addict are seeing something that's not there.

And so then you have to figure out what makes you normal and them not.

And then you have to acknowledge that the shape of your lens varies from mine and you see things differently from me.

And then you have to acknowledge that regardless of the curvature of either of our lenses, the lens is between the object and the perceiver and so it mediates the object and presents it a way peculiar to what mediates it. That is, you are not just experiencing the chair, but you're experiencing the light emanating off the chair through a particular type lens.

And we've not even begun to talk about how your brain might further mediate what you see, making it look different from the way I see it, and very much different from the way a bee might see it.

So what to do? As far as being able to describe the thing without reference to the way we subjectively modify it, we can't. It's not possible. That's the noumena. And that results in some saying let's just jettison all this metaphysical talk because it gets us no where. But I have no desire to abandon the correct answer just because it's troubling.

This Freudian sounding description might be autobiographical and true to your experience, but it doesn't ring true to mine or my children.

The problem with this sort of armchair analysis is just that, that it is theorized and then verified without any investigation beyond sorting through your own thoughts.

There seems to be a nexus between the comments in this thread and the replies, despite the fact that all replies are voluntary and not coerced.

What this means is that it is correct for me to claim that someone's post caused me to reply, even if someone has trouble realizing that "cause" is defined as all words, within a particular context.

Cause can mean as little as "persuaded" to as much as "forced." It just depends. Fascinating stuff.

Chris Rock caused Will Smith to slap him, but he didn't have to slap him. Wrap your head around the "could have done otherwise" idea. Head exploding emoji here.

Hey, everyone has to die at some point, somehow, so who cares if a few billions die of hunger, floods, etc., right. — baker

What are you responding to?

Arguing about the true meaning of Nietzsche often seems like arguments over the meaning of Bible versus. — Tom Storm

Do you find Kant or Wittgenstein more easily deciphered?

That we have experience can be define as the subjective, but our experiences themselves are not merely subjective. — Jackson

Yes. I saying experience is objective. — Jackson

That is the topic of the thread. I am saying the subject--object dichotomy is false. I gave reasons why. — Jackson

I don't see how these 3 quotes from you are consistent.

Yes. I saying experience is objective. — Jackson

Then what is subjective?

You chose a particularly poor quote for your OP. That's down to you, not I. — Banno

Your objection is silly, as if you're so offended on behalf of the apes that they might have been used to describe a less advanced man so much so that you can't move beyond it and address the substance of the quote.

Science claims only physical particles are real. Christianity claims the spirit is real. Thus science is the outer and Christianity is the inner. A dialectical relation. — Jackson

Certainly traditional Christianity is dualistic, but at some level most every belief system is. That is, everyone acknowledges we experience things and most acknowledge there are things. The debate typically centers upon how we explain the experience versus the object.

My point here is that there is nothing particularly Christian and contrary to science or physicalism about claiming there is a phenomenal state apart from the object.

My understanding of the high regard for subjectivism among Christians (as in Kierkegaard's famous line "subjectivity is truth") relates to the idea that truth is found in the experience of living life, of obtaining meaning and understanding by having the experience.

Saying you need Christianity (or religion or God generally) to address inner states doesn’t give science its due.

That truth as a function of subjectivity was coming to an end. — Jackson

Share with me that quote. The subjective nature of truth seems critical to Christianity, so it would make sense that he sees its destruction imminent.

It would take a truckload of charity not to call the above an evil thing to say, an evil teaching. — ZzzoneiroCosm

It's a hyperbolic criticism to an exaggerated interpretation of the virtue of meekness within Christianity.

would be surprised if anything positive said about Nietzsche would be worthwhile to you; mired in your self-imposed ignorance of his work as you seem to be. — Janus

I agree. I don't see Neitzche as evil or simplistic. I see his criticisms of traditional ethics as presenting significant challenges to it and I think he points out the consequences of the declaration of God's death.

It's a question of evolution: from ape to man to Superman.

(... And, of course, from Superman to Superduperman - a vision eternally projectable into the future.)

I've heard folks say that a figure like Napoleon ought to be considered, as it were, Supermanly. The passage above indicates an altogether different vision. As an ape can never be a man, a man can never be a Superman. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Putting this into the greater context of his writings, I take Neitzche's superman to be a rationally advanced person who rejects the slave morality of Christianity and derives his morality from this world. The need for such people arises from the death of God, who previously served as the central locus of morality.

The ape quote I take as metaphor, to illustrate the dramatic distinction between a person still adhering to the slave morality and the person who has risen above good and evil, as it were.

I do not read this quote to suggest humanity is in a literal state of continued genetic evolution or even that there is a superman ideal we all strive to emulate. To become a superman, as far I can tell, occurs from a pure act of the will based upon a heightened adherence to rationality and rejection of God. That is, you desire it and you do it.

To begin with, fossil fuel extraction and its wide spread use is a miracle of modern science and economic ingenuity unimaginable just 150 years ago, a mere flash in pan of human existence. What we fear today is our inability to maintain our current success. Our failure isn't in what we have done, but it's in our inability to figure out how to keep doing it forever. We fear we'll have to live as we did for the 1000s of years before we had all the riches deriveable from the soil.

Judging from our past successes, I'd bet on our future success. I have no idea what 150 years from today will look like, but I imagine it'll be as different as it was 150 years ago. Whether that will be harnessing the power of magma, the sun, hydrogen, the ebb and flow of the tides, or the spinning of the planets, who knows?

As to magma specifically, or any particular solution, such is not a philosophical question, but entirely empirical, and I'd be completely uninterested in anyone's thoughts other than an actual scientist with actual data and some evidence based proof. I remain skeptical of magma not because I think it's impossible, but because it's not been shown doable in a large scale way.