And yet people lose themselves to drug-induced euphoria, or role-playing video games. Not every life is purposeful and meaningful in reality. — Vera Mont

You missed my definition of meaning. I focused on the absolute core meaning that can be objectively argued for, the core universal purpose of entropy; how we are a part of how our reality fundamentally works:

It does not need to be noticeable or make you famous, rather it is about being part of this entropic universe. As I live in this reality I am in sync with the entropic forces of this universe, I am part of something and that has meaning, however minute that meaning is to us and how essentially meaningless that is within the context of what we consider having purpose. — Christoffer

You still do that when engaging with art/video games or taking drugs because you interact with actual reality and people. But you aren't doing that when living inside a simulation that only have p-zombies as its population and no real consequences to its reality.

If I'm facing death and this is a way for me to continue existing, then yes, if you fear death and don't want it, it may be preferable, as long as you have an off button for when that reality reaches its pointless conclusion.

If, however, you are speaking of a simulation with other people in which you can continue your existence and have meaningful interactions with others, then it would be a rather soothing continuation of your self when you face death in the real world.

I would not, however, in good health in actual reality, choose a simulation over reality when I still have life left to live. I see it only as a continuation for when my physical body can no longer function and provide me life.

Do you really want to live in a "heaven", populated by shadows, guaranteed to be (in reality) completely alone, for the rest of your life? Where every achievement will in fact be in vain, and go unnoticed, except in your mind? To live a life, in truth, that will be guaranteed to be meaningless? — hypericin

The meaning we create in reality is closely linked to making a mark on history. It does not need to be noticeable or make you famous, rather it is about being part of this entropic universe. As I live in this reality I am in sync with the entropic forces of this universe, I am part of something and that has meaning, however minute that meaning is to us and how essentially meaningless that is within the context of what we consider having purpose.

If my actions and existence lose that core and basic meaning as being a functional part of reality, then there is only an absolute meaninglessness left and I don't believe anyone could find joy in that other than for a brief moment.

What we really want is to never have suffered in the first place. Annihilation after the fact doesn’t negate this. — schopenhauer1

Doesn't non-existence in the first place leave the equation absurd? To not have existed is to never have had a will to not suffer. The relief from suffering cannot exist for something that does not exist. We have to exist with suffering in order to want to be free from suffering. This paradox makes the will to never have existed an essentially meaningless yearning. Since it is with even less meaning in its fundamental emptiness than a meaningless existence that actually exist.

That's why I wonder if they will consider the case before the resolution of the January 6th proceedings. It seems completely illogical that they could. After all, if he's found guilty (which seems likely considering the massive weight of evidence), then even without reference to the 14th Amendment, you will have a situation where an ostensible candidate will have been found guilty of trying to subvert the very process that he's supposedly participating in. — Wayfarer

Would a guilty or non-guilty charge become a reality before election gets going? It seems they actually need a proper sentence before they could conclude the decision proper or not, but if the sentencing is after any election machine gets going that might screw up their ability to decide in the matter.

Would be easier for them to actually just ditch him and get another candidate into action, but I'm not sure republicans would dare to lose the maga-fanatics voting base.

That would be hilarious.

Japan has usually set the highest standards for avoiding suicide, considering this act as an offense. — javi2541997

Making it illegal is fruitless for most people committing suicide. They give up on life, they give up on everything, making it illegal only put more pressure on them. They need guidance, help and better understanding from people around them. One thing to do is to instead stop making villains out of them, stop the sigma around the subject and make it a non-issue to talk openly about suicidal thoughts. having it so that it is shameful to be suicidal makes them hide everything, hide their depression, sorrow, their thoughts and all.

While therapy has done wonders in our modern era, one problem of it is akin to the problem of us not handling the care of our dead ones ourselves. We have outsourced these things. We let a hospital or funeral agency take care of our dead, we do not take care of their bodies and bury them or do rituals anymore than what is necessary... show up to the funeral, eat cake, go home.

So therapy is good as it can be a place away from people around us to deal with issues maybe related to them, but it has also become an outsourcing of all difficult topics that friends, family, loved ones should be part of helping with. The common reply from those who lost someone who took their own life is a cry about how they never opened up to them. But how could they when we treat mental issues as something outsourced to a therapist while shunning any difficult topics in day to day discussions. Even though the reaction might seem harsh, I almost laugh every time someone cries out that their friend who took their life never opened up about their issues, because the irony of it all has went over everyone's head so hard people should have gotten bald.

I thought this was a cultural phenomenon, but the government there expresses concern about the numbers. — javi2541997

Culture is more than the composition of state and people.

Some see ending life as suitable when it is not worth living, rather than continuing until death 'approaches us' due to age or sickness. — javi2541997

It's important however to differentiate between euthanasia and suicide. If one really do suffer in a way that cannot be fixed or helped without just prolonging the suffering, I see no reason for these people to have to suffer just because people cannot cope with the idea of their death. The campaigns against euthanasia just points out how immature and childish society behaves around the topic of death.

Is it a failure of society rather than the sloppiness of the state? While citizens who die from terrorism or gender violence are recognized as failures of the state, those who die by suicide are not given the same status. This surely happens because of the significant influence of religion in the state over centuries. A suicidal person tends to be considered as 'sick,' a mad person. Generally, the only backup is to provide pills to people with suicidal thoughts, creating an atmosphere of perpetual disorder with reality, instead of sitting down and listening to what is going on with this person. — javi2541997

It's both, society is the general culture of the people and their relation to the suicidal person. It's about how we culturally handle these topics, and how we talk and act around them. State has more to do with the result of culture, what laws will the society demand from the politicians to help mitigate the issue. It needs to start with the people in society growing up on the topic before the state starts to make changes that help people. As mentioned, making it illegal is a naive move against suicide rates. It may make people less prone to it if they know their family will suffer economically, but as mentioned, that only put more pressure on them and is just damaging society further, maybe even creating more people with suicidal thoughts as a result of criminalize the ones who need help the most.

We can call suicidal people sick, but I would call them a symptom of a sickness in society. As long as we tend to hold onto a culture that form depression and suicidal thoughts in some individuals, we are keeping the sickness alive.

Then, it is understandable how some authors incorporate suicide or suicidal characters. It is natural and even more realistic than some other fictional environments, plots, dialogues, etc. Stating this doesn't endorse actual suicide but provides another perspective in an artistic way. At least, a portrayal of suicide in a story can be more relatable than a plot where characters go to Mars and come back. — javi2541997

And writing fiction is also about metaphors and allegories, and in this we turn to archetypes and the exploration of the extreme ends of experience and perception of reality of the human condition. So suicidal characters in good writing transcends just being characters in the plot, they aren't just devices or causes for dramatic tensions or tragedy, but a communication of ideas that exist on the fringes of our experiences as people and individuals in and beyond society.

I remember debating about this a few years ago. Even ChatGPT argues that suicide is universally frowned upon and doesn't distinguish among cultures, something that I fully disagree with. — javi2541997

What suicide is culturally, directly or indirectly, seem to be regarded as an act of rebellion against everyone's existential struggles. When everyone else is suffering through the different major acts in life, suffering through the hard times, then someone taking their own life is considered an act against them, not the one committing the act. This is probably why it is frowned upon. And it also seems that people are utterly terrified that they would start to be seduced by the idea, that they would somehow get infected by the thought and do it to themselves.

It's probably why some religions, primarily the Catholic church view the act as something to be punished by blocking you from getting into heaven. You cannot cheat your way into heaven, you need to be tested in life. It would bypass a key part of the whole package; that your life is judged and the judgement decides where you end up in the afterlife. So if you kill yourself, you would essentially bypass a lot of years that would risk you not getting into heaven. This is a major problem for a church that wants to communicate that the afterlife is true and that their doctrine is valid truth.

But I think the main part is that suicide is primarily a failure of society and the people around the person committing suicide. And people cannot cope with the fact that they were partly responsible for failing to help that person. And they cannot cope with questioning society for pushing people to such thoughts. Instead, we frown upon it, we try to ignore the issue, we create religious doctrine around it and we blame the people doing it.

In my perspective, it's one of the clearest indications of how naive and mentally lazy the majority of society is. Turn away from the subject, ignore it, ban anything related to it, stop talking about it. In many people's eyes it's worse than murder, because there's no perpetrator in the same way as with murder. The murderer and the victim are one and the same and the victim's rationale behind the act can be empathized with and people are really bad at empathy when it comes to violent concepts and conflicts.

It's maybe a reminder of their own fragility, that it hints at a clarity of thought underneath all the noise that keeps them occupied in life. They are terrified of dipping their toes into such existential clarity because "what if" they come to the same conclusions as the one committing suicide?

And that's why things like this NEED to exist in fiction and discussions in society. In order to improve society's ability to find a place of comfort for people who fall into the idea of giving up. That means also questioning everything about life, how we live a good life in general, what meaning we create for ourselves. There's no wonder that suicide rates go up when we live in a neoliberal free market clusterfuck of a Baudrillardian nightmare. As long as people ignore dissecting and deconstructing this modern life, we will keep seeing people take their own lives.

The tyranny of black and white thought warps and twists the gradations of reality. — Vaskane

And in our modern times all of society is infected by binary structures of thinking and ideologies.

'm an atheist but more sympathetic to religion than you. I don't quite know why. — mcdoodle

It may look like that, but if you have the energy to read through my posts in this thread I think you will see that I'm sympathetic to religion in a certain way. I value the practices of religion but deny religious belief. What I mean by that is that there are too much evidence that show the positive effects of religious practice on the individual. The acts of praying, in a sense, meditation, the act of surrendering to a larger context, the act of feeling meaning.

One purpose of my exploration in philosophy is about finding such practice within a context that excludes religious belief. The reason being that religious belief skew and distorts an honest perspective of reality, especially collective reality. And so by that distortion the individual will always have trouble navigating reality as it truly is and will always end up in either internal or external conflict with others in a collective society. In order to find harmony, religious belief needs to be excluded. But in doing so we lose the parts of religion that is of tremendous importance to our mental health and social bonding. The practices we have in rituals, mythological storytelling and exploration needs to somehow be reworked into a context of non-religious belief, which requires a new paradigm of how to live life. We can see hints of this in how meditation has become a science backed practice for some, but the baggage of religious belief still haunts it and keeps inserting itself into groups conducting and leading others in meditation, and in doing so start to install beliefs in the supernatural once again.

So, I criticize religious belief, but I'm not unsympathetic in the way I think you see me.

I've been studying philosophy academically in later life, and I confess, after lots more reading, that the notions of qualia and emergence feel dodgy. They come over like vague and sometimes slippery notions that are struggling to explain what happens beyond the limits of materially-based rational enquiry. — mcdoodle

I'm not sure what you mean by them feeling dodgy? Qualia is the experience, the point of view experience of you, the individual. The experience you have right now reading this text is not something I can experience even reading the same text. It's the hard line between knowing about something (like how consciousness works) and the internal experience within that function and process. It relates to the concept of philosophical zombies, Mary in the black and white room, the Chinese room etc. and how it is seemingly impossible to cross that hard line and know that this emergent phenomena is in fact experiencing something with a point of view and not merely functioning as a simulation.

We can add another example of this in face blindness. As a person with face blindness tries to recognize a friend, the face-blind person will have developed strategies to recognize his friends without being able to see their face. His friends might not even know he is face blind as they, as outsiders from his mind, can only recognize that he functions just like they do when they meet, so they think that this face-blind person is functioning and experiencing reality just as they do, while he in fact only "simulates" recognizing their faces.

It's the major problem of AI research as well. When we have an AGI superintelligence that seemingly mimic or surpass human intelligence and we interact with it, how do we know that it has qualia? Or isn't just a form of functions that never has any holistic experience as a result? The problem with qualia is that we might never be able to know this, it's part of the hard problem of consciousness.

When it comes to emergent properties, it's actually very supported in science. It's everywhere in nature. Rudimentary functions in extreme numbers can form patterns generating a higher complexity and emerging functions that has no relation to the functions themselves. Just a basic example of this is how neutrons and protons in of themselves cannot be "wood", and the basic composition of a carbon molecule has a higher complexity than just the neutron and protons, but still does not produce "wood". Only when you combine a number of different compositions of atoms into a molecular structure do you get "wood" as matter, but that doesn't create the structure of "wood", which requires bonds of those molecules. And these bonds in relation to the environment (other bonds and other molecules) can produce the structure of a "tree". But that structure cannot be simply explained reductionistic by looking at neutrons and protons. The "tree" is an emergent structure and form out of the extreme complexity of the whole of its parts. The function a tree has in relation to the rest of the universe is a function that emerges out of all of it.

To draw connections to consciousness, it's all there. En emergent function that cannot be explained by its parts. If it sounds abstract it's because it is, because it's not tangible in the same way as an object. We can view it in the same way as how we have trouble viewing light as both a particle and a wave. We know there's this thing called consciousness, but it's also no thing but a function/process that exists beyond what we can seemingly measure. But if we apply emergentism to this it makes sense, a function that can only exist as a byproduct of a certain complexity that rises out of a specific set condition of less complex functions.

Some people who have gone through near death experiences have explained their experience waking up from it. As parts of the brain and body starts working again, but not fully in sync as a whole, they have explained a deep sense of confusion, hearing words, but not able to understand them, seeing light and images without having spatial knowledge etc. If consciousness is an emergent phenomena, then at less than full complexity the experience they talk about would logically form a broken sense of reality, even if some parts of the brain function correctly. They explained that reality started "popping" into clarity, in my interpretation, almost like if watching a Picasso painting start to pop its cubist sharp forms into realistic shapes until it feels familiar and correct.

As I see it, the emergent explanation for consciousness holds most promise out of all research on the topic. It may sound abstract, but it has an elegant logic to it.

But I think that in every expression of culture, suicide pops up, even unintentionally. — javi2541997

Because it is part of the human experience. Death by sickness, death by old age, being murdered and committing suicide are constant outcomes in our human lives. It is impossible for us to ever rid ourselves of it, regardless of losing all knowledge in the world and starting over. Immortality is the only redeemer to these concepts, but even with that, and maybe even more so, suicide will still exist as a concept in need of exploration for the sake of sanity.

Otherwise it's like constantly telling children up into their adult life that Santa Claus is real because you cannot accept that they will grow past innocence and eventually die. Even if we become immortal beings incapable of dying and a culture forms out of that in which death has no meaning or existence, the end point of the universe, heat death and destruction of reality would surely still end us, thus making death a concept that still exist even in absolute immortality.

There are many suicides in my writing. More than I like to think about. I have been afraid that I, in this way, may have contributed to legitimising suicide. So what touched me more than anything were those who candidly wrote that my writing had quite simply saved their lives. — javi2541997

I find today's constant trigger warnings about suicide in fiction to be appalling. Made by uneducated people, probably over-protecting parents who knows nothing of mental issues believing suppression of exposure to complex issues would in any way help people and children from handling such things and then ignoring the very reasons why bad things happen. It's anti-intellectual and stupid.

What Fosse is writing there is exactly what happens with fiction in relation to reality. No serious author is promoting suicide, not even Camus did so as he positioned it as the negative relation to his solution for the absurd. People who experience suicidal thoughts need to find good exploration of the concept they experience, it gives perspective and in almost all cases exposure to such ideas in fiction lead to calming such thoughts rather than triggering them. I've seen stuff in fiction that makes fun of suicide to the point of almost being tasteless and it still seem to help suicidal individuals overcome their negative thoughts.

We need more writing like his than we need overprotective uneducated anti-intellectuals stumbling around thinking they are helping other people.

As I said in the post you're responding to

I think a genuine religious path charts a way altogether beyond dread, not that that is necessarily an easy path to tread
— Wayfarer

But plainly we're not going to agree on that. — Wayfarer

It may be, in times when people lived inside such a bubble and never ventured outside. But how do you apply it in times like these, when the bombardment of alternative perspectives constantly question the validity of ones faith? Does treading that path soon not become impossible as any shred of doubt only creates its own type of dread, slowly intensifying and corrupting the ability to hold onto the specific faith. Would it not rather be better to explore a path that consist of better validation for its existence, finding a harmony that is more stable than the chaotic ocean of different religious beliefs clashing themselves to pieces and impossible to be convinced about in a socially complex society?

What I see today is this basically appearing in two types. Either a life of religious belief filled with doubt, keeping it hidden from others in order to try and keep it from being exposed to criticism, hidden crosses, hidden shrines, never talking to others about personal faith. Or turning to fundamentalism, shutting out all influences from the surroundings, extremify the bubble, silence anyone or socially excluding anyone who risk installing any kind of doubt, and double down on dogmatic dedication, isolating themselves from the rest of society or join societies in which this fundamentalism is the standard.

How can that hard path not become impossible when the world is constantly infusing doubt on a scale and movement that has never been experienced among religious groups before?

In another perspective, what is the goal for the believer with their belief? What are they striving for? Hoping for? If fundamentalism is the only path to successfully be convinced of where the path leads, what hope is there for non-fundamentalists to be free from this other type of dread setting in? The dread of possibly being wrong?

Wayfarer, I actually agree with you on your criticism of reductionism, not sure if you picked up on that. I'm a materialist, but there is a special case here. Mind can drive matter... no doubt. — Mark Nyquist

Can mind drive matter or are we simply another type of matter driving matter in perfect accordance with entropic processes? On a large enough scale, does not the complexity of the entire human race only just become another set of a system based on universal principles forming complex outcomes?

The problem with reductionism is that it focuses too much on trying to explain something complex by analyzing the details separately or trying to find a set pattern in a holistic overview of the sum of all parts. This is why I argue for emergentism since we see it all over in nature and in physics. For instance, you cannot explain consciousness with reductionism, it has been tried to death in scientific research. But emergentism instead acknowledge how the pieces of our brain and body cannot in of themselves form consciousness, rather it forms a new function not found in the parts out of the complexity that appears through the almost mathematically infinite sum of all parts, it emerges out of the complexity, it isn't directly the complexity itself. Which means it's not a tangible object that can be found somewhere, it is the result of all without clear and direct paths able to be seen between the result (consciousness) and its sources (parts).

This means that emergentism and materialism works better together than pure reductionism, and it solves much of the problems with how reductionism is unable to explain things like consciousness. I would however say that physicalism is a better modern term for how most materialists argue as materialism only traditionally focuses on matter, not physics as a whole.

As Trump is poised to once again become president of my country (unless someone manages to cap his butt) I feel challenged by my own theory that social "winners" are sort of naturally selected and serve the larger social life cycle, whether the people on the ground understand that or not.

I believe this about leftism: whatever its merits may be, it lost. The western world turned away from it. The opposing perspective didn't win by a blitzkrieg, but by giving the people what they wanted.

To arrive here, you have to stop being sanctimonious and see a social group as it is: a naturally evolving being, playing out it's own story. — frank

Isn't this ignoring the complexity of manipulation?

Not only do we have intentional manipulation by political powers utilizing the gullible nature of humans (all humans) and ride the fact that the ones who see through bullshit are a small enough group to not have actual democratic power in elections.

On top of that we have the unintentional or automatic manipulation. How the zeitgeist ebb and flow between the extreme ends of society. When one group had their perspective as a primary driver of society for a while, the other side feels removed from being participants in society and will strike back during times when the primary side has grown lazy in their power.

Right now we also have the algorithmic manipulation of social media. How the business of it push negativity as an interaction method for driving ads, and produce more intense groups of extremes being radicalized by a skewed world view built on misinformation. Algorithms manufacturing a reality that does not exist but affect the values that drive how people vote.

Because of this, most people aren't free in their votes because they are being shuffled around by different kinds of manipulations all the time. The proof of it can be seen in all kinds of marketing, how industries can influence fashion and cultural mentalities by marketing alone. And since democracy relies on 50% of the population's support in order to produce a win for one side, it requires more people than the amount who are able to see past the sum of manipulation.

All democracies are therefore slaves to whatever side manages to manipulate most efficiently and whether or not functions in society produce a balanced or skewed perception of reality (like with the algorithms of social media).

So to put absolute trust in such a fragile system to be good for people just because someone wins, is a rather problematic ideal. Democracy is only the best system so far, and our focus on why it is good is only in contrast to all current alternative systems that truly does not work. Right now, people are too occupied with just keeping democracy alive and going and not fall back into authoritarian regimes, otherwise we would focus on improving democracy past the problem of manipulation.

In the hands of smart people, democracy can function as an alternative to authoritarian power, in which the population are manipulated into believing they are free when in fact they are controlled just as much as in an authoritarian state.

The only question that is relevant: does the state and nation have enough safeguards against such manipulation? If not, how does the population know they are free or in an authoritarian democracy?

That's the philosophical question, and a deep question. I think the intuition is that at bottom, everything in nature is transient and perishable. I think at bottom there's a deep intuition that there is a flaw or fault or imperfection in nature and in human nature, for which the remedy is not to be found on the same level at which it is perceived. That is expressed in different mythological and metaphorical clothing in different cultures. In Buddhism for example, it is the observation that existence is dukkha, one of those hard-to-translate terms that is usually given as 'distressing' or 'unsatisfactory'. The root of this dukkha runs very deep, and is ultimately related to the inherent tendency of beings to cling to sense-objects as sources of a satisfaction that they can never provide, as they are by nature transient and perishable. Hence the valuing of renunciation and giving up attachments. The ultimate aim of Nirvāṇa or Nibbana is realising the state of deathlessness.

In the Christian mythos, the unsatisfactoriness of existences is put down to the Fall, which is signified by the 'fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil'. I take that to be a symbolic representation of self-consciousness, the burden of our reflexive intelligence. Through faith in Christ, the believer overcomes the sense of separateness and anxiety and the fear of death, by the realisation of the individual union or oneness with the divine (although this is highly attenuated in popular religions many of which have become corrupted in my view). — Wayfarer

And it is this that I speak of. The existential dread, this "Dukkha". However, in Buddhism, it seems that "Samudaya" describes the cause of "Dukkha" and that the cause of suffering is our craving for "things" and pleasures. But what I'm saying is that the cravings for things, for the materialistic needs, pleasures etc. isn't the cause, it is the symptom due to our desperate need for comfort against the dread. The dread is the curse of knowledge and the irony is that while our knowledge has produced better living conditions, it also opened our eyes to the meaningless, producing this existential dread. The more we know, the more clearly we see our existence.

In such line of thinking I'm aligning somewhat with Buddhism in that I argue for finding a harmony with the natural world and universe, a balance, that does not rely on materialistic or delusional comfort. Materialistic, in this concept, is how many live their life today; buying new things, craving for the next pleasure, the addictive behavior that never reaches a content state and blinds by the noise of the sum of all material. Or the delusional, to surrender to a made up concept, giving up the ability to conduct critical thinking and wisdom in favor of an authority to form a fixed worldview that controls you. The delusional is religion, how an authority, another, or even the self, create a fantasy concept that is then transformed into a factual description of reality, often complete and with a promise that this life and its suffering will end and be transformed into something better as long as you hold onto that belief and defend it, like a manufactured and raging obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Both are desperate and rapid responses to the dread, in order to try and keep it at bay. But I also see a creeping and increasing horror of uncertainty within those who live by these two strategies. How the dread still creeps into these people's lives. How the materialistic individual can sense the dead existence within their owned stuff. How they sometimes wake up and look upon all their things and see a dead manufactured ocean that slowly drowns them. Or that the religious person holds onto their faith, try to keep it solid and unchanging, consistent and unbroken but keep feeling doubt due to the world around them, from other perspectives giving them other answers, other stories that they cannot prove are more or less true than their own convictions, and their confusion rising into anger, horror and depression.

As we hear people in their dying breaths voice their regrets and memories, they most often talk neither about their materialistic journey or their religious beliefs, but about the people around them. About life as it was, no more, no less.

So truth for what truly gives us comfort seems not to be found in the materialistic, or religious belief or even the absence of it. But rather in the life we live, truly live, honestly, with ourselves and with others. Why then not accept reality as it is, no more, no less? Accept all knowledge as it is, as it grows, explore it as a constant journey, live in it without demanding more.

Such balance acknowledge the pleasures by not pushing them into their extremes. We can have things, as long as they support, not being the source of it. If we find meaning in music, we may value a good record player. But we do not constantly buy new record players to fill some void. We already filled the void with music and the record player is only a tool for that purpose and meaningful experience. In this sense, we aren't materialistic anymore because we do not handle things other than as tools for a purpose. And we do not need religious belief if we find harmony with the natural world as it is and we do not need to accept the religious teachings as facts to value the stories being told as teachings for a good life. And we do not need to believe in illusionary concepts to value the experience of meditation.

The flaw as I see it, is in this core belief:

I think at bottom there's a deep intuition that there is a flaw or fault or imperfection in nature and in human nature — Wayfarer

I don't think there are any flaws because there isn't a template of perfection anywhere to hold reality up against. Reality is what it is and everything about the human condition is rooted in how we interpret this reality through our emotional experience, not our intellect. People are experts in blaming the external world for their own shortcomings and sense of despair. If they aren't happy or content, they essentially blame the universe for it, calling it flawed. This is what I call the human arrogance. We place ourselves onto pedestals and try to judge the universe by viewing ourselves as masters of it or capable of mastering it without realizing that we're not only slaves to the universe and its laws, we are also part of it, equal to everything around us.

This arrogance of trying to fix the imaginary flaws of this reality is the driving force for the delusion of any solutions to those imaginary flaws. Such solutions, in the form of religious beliefs or comforts in the ownership of material only function as temporary comfort towards a dread that ironically only arise out of the initial arrogance in the first place.

The solution is to not have that arrogance in the first place, to not view reality and our existence as flawed. We do not explore this reality or control it because it needs fixing, we do it because we're part of it and our existence is already in balance with it. The comfort lies in finding this harmony with reality, not in trying to fix some imaginary flaw in it. We exist because the universe and reality is as it is, without reality having its principles and laws as they are, we would not exist at all. We therefore fool ourselves if we seek out to fix a flaw because the flaw is imaginary and changing reality would essentially annihilate us, including any ideal we try to achieve.

Of course. Inside the Catholic Church, there was dissent over Galileo's censure. Whilst the conservatives were keen to see him condemned, there were progressives who believed the entire effort was misconceived. The Church is concerned with 'how to go to Heaven, not how the Heavens go', was their mantra. They lost the argument (much to the discredit of the Church.) Likewise after the publication of the Origin of Species, whilst some conservatives were quick to anathematize it, there were many within the Church who saw no inherent conflict between evolution and divine creation. It wasn't until the American fundementalists came along that it really blew up. But for those who never believed the literal truth of creation myth, the fact that they are *not* literally true is not the devasting blow against religion that Richard Dawkins seems to think. Origen and Augustine used to ridicule the literal reading of Scripture in the 1st and 4th centuries AD respectively. — Wayfarer

All I see are shifting goal posts back and forth through history to fit a narrative that best suits the storyteller. And I question the need for any of these religious narratives and beliefs as they do not fix anything other than being good stories as inspiring fiction. There's a desperation boiling underneath it all as they seem to sense some core truth hidden under all that fiction but desperately hold on to their narrative in order to stay sane. It's why I call it "comfort" against the dread. Because removing the narrative and stare right into existence is downright terrifying, but necessary as a step before finding harmony and balance with reality as it is, without imaginary flaws to be fixed.

so we're now looking to science for moral guidance, which is a mistake, as science is only quantitative and objective. — Wayfarer

This isn't true however, it is a simplification of the experience of us who value science over beliefs. We do not seek moral guidance by it in the way you summarize it, and we do not ignore the human experience. We acknowledge the importance of human experiences, but we do not attribute magic to it because we don't have to, we accept our experiences for what they are. I think the core difference is that we do not view reality as "flawed", as you described it, and thus formulate any need to fix anything. We accept all things in nature and reality as they are, without attributing "good" or "bad" to them. Letting reality inform us how things are rather than us interpreting reality through human values and emotions.

As I see it, we are arrogant to believe ourselves to stand above reality, to believe that we have to fix some flaws of it because we cannot cope with reality as it is for us. Nothing about that means that science as a process is used to find meaning instead, only that it informs us not to be arrogant to value ourselves as more important in this reality.

Such a conclusion leads to something else than you frame us as, it leads to a balance with reality that I find much more in sync with reality than any religious belief can ever produce. A clear and direct indication of what we need to do in order to find true peace with our existence. And it shows that we cannot find it in the materialistic addiction, religious fantasy, the rejection of all or total control of our emotions, but instead in the acceptance of reality as it is and living in harmony with that realization as a state of mind.

Finding that state of mind and harmony defeats the existential dread without being dishonest with the truth of existence. It does not require lies, delusions, illusions or fantasy to produce a shield and spear to control the dread, rather, it lay down arms and let the dread flow past you through the acceptance of reality for what it is.

Not you, in particular, but our culture in general. Lloyd Gerson, who is a Platonist scholar, has a book Platonism and Naturalism: the Possibility of Philosophy. It's a pretty specialist text, but his argument is that Philosophy just is platonism, and that if you deny Platonism, there is no conceptual space for philosophy proper. And, he says, Platonism is irreconciliable with naturalism, which is the mainstream view by default.

I think naturalists tend to turn the kinds of dialectical skills that philosophy has inculcated into our culture against philosophy proper. Daniel Dennett is an example. His more radical books, like Darwin's Dangerous Idea, say that evolutionary theory is like a 'universal acid' that dissolves the container that tries to hold it - that 'container' being Western culture, and one of the things being dissolved, philosophy as philosophers have always understood it. — Wayfarer

I think that's taking it too far. Contemporary philosophy, at least how it appears today, exists right at the edge of science. The difference today is that science has forced philosophy to focus even more on a composition of logic and rational reasoning. I.e there's less room for the purely speculative and the things that are speculative still requires a rational component.

While I do think that its problematic for philosophy to drive wild concepts in metaphysics due to how much more effective science is in that area, we still have areas of thought that need philosophy. Ethics is still very much alive and I think the main area for philosophy today has to do with our place in the universe, meaning, how we live in an ever growing explained universe.

With just how much philosophy has changed the last two hundred years, it may just be that philosophy goes through the same tidal shifts as the rest of the world, changing faster and faster. But there's a difference to concluding something dead and concluding something changing or shifting.

We generally define facts scientifically, but existential issues are not necessarily tractable to scientific analysis — Wayfarer

Our personal experience may not, but we can explain more and more of the roots of our emotions and components of our mind and body generating experiences. And some of those factors are root causes of some existential experiences. As an example, that the existential dread we feel may be something we can never overcome and that comfort against it (as I described it) is vitally required for us to function as a human consciousness. If that is the case, how do we deal with that without hiding truths from people or fall into addictive replacements like materialistic life-styles?

How I see it, there's a lot more than people seem to realize, that can be explained utilizing a combination of different scientific areas for a holistic explanation of a phenomena. It's easy to look at a specific and isolated field in science and conclude it fully unable to explain something, but when combining many fields together there are logical conclusions that start to emerge. As I see it, this should be the role of contemporary philosophy. Scientists to be specialists, philosophers to be generalists.

Not true. It is not about 'ideas' at all. It is about a hard-won transformative insight. — Wayfarer

I meant in the context of the discussion. The reason for its existence still emerge out of those questions. The rise of any religion starts by the unknown trying to be known by man. But it extends beyond religion, it's a core driving force of our consciousness. The unexplained scares us and we comfort ourselves by trying to explain it. But even the act of finding harmony with not explaining it is still part of the same process of dealing with it. What I meant here boils down to a simple rhetorical question of, how did Buddhism begin, or rather "why" did it begin?

So how can you deny the accusation of 'scientism' on the back of statements like this? — Wayfarer

Because scientism have problems with handling holistic speculation, even if those speculations are rooted in rational logic. I.e scientism has problems coexisting even with contemporary philosophy. It's too rigid. It also does not function well with emergentist conclusions, even if emergentism is a large part of many fields of science. Because scientism is largely functioning on reductionism and a specialist approach, not holistic reasoning.

What I meant by that statement is that if I say that we should handle society and our collective space based on scientific conclusions, I mean that we should not let religious claims define our world. For instance, laws in society. As soon as we use religious beliefs as a foundation for how we shape our principles of a shared world, we open the door to conflicts over different made up concepts. It ends up being as ludicrous as if people start a knife fight over which console, Xbox or Playstation is the best. Emotional attachments to the concept that comforts.

To follow science more is about collectively agreeing that, what can be proven for all, we agree by. Not arbitrary or unsupported claims that can never coexist between people of different cultures and beliefs. A shared world, shared existence requires a shared primary world view. If that can be combined with individual religious beliefs, sure, but so far I've yet to be convinced that the people of this world are able to co-exist with such powerful forces of psychology pulling their very experience of reality in such different ways compared to others.

What 'comforting results' are you referring to? If the illusions of religion are put aside, then what constitutes a real solution to the predicaments of human existence, other than comfort and standard of living? — Wayfarer

"Comfort", as I've explained in this discussion is primarily about ways and strategies to handle the dread and terror of meaningless existence. And what constitutes a real solution beyond religion and the materialistic? That's the solution I try to explore and formulate. One thing that I've found hints at such solution is the question; why cannot nature and the universe, as it is, be enough? Why does there have to be some divine purpose and meaning for us, in order for us to feel comfortable in existence? While Camus gives as an answer on how to live in the absurd, I'm asking, why not the opposite? To be curious about nature and the universe as it is and embrace it for what it is. Many Native American traditions follow a simple idea of harmony with nature around them. Removing the spiritual and religious claims in their traditions still leaves a practice that embrace our bond to reality and nature for what it is. A dedication to the ebb and flow of the ecological bond we have to the environment around us.

I see no major attempts to formulate a way of living outside religious beliefs in such a sense, I only see desperation and quick fixes. People won't explore, they want answers fast. That's why the materialistic has easily replaced religion for many people today, and why some double down into their religion as we can see in radicalized movements, or why many accumulate into extreme groups like Maga followers and cults like Qanon. Even the "Xbox vs Playstation" brawls follow the same path and psychological pattern.

In a sense, you hit on an important distinction with Buddhism. The problem I have is that there are still many religious components in Buddhism that muddy the clarity of its practical use. But it is further away from the religious and dogmatic claims that religions with a God component has. Which is why I say that religious practices in themselves has importance for our lives, I just think that we can accept existence for what it is, no more fantastical than we can rationally speculate, no less profound than what it already is. And live with practices that produce a meaningful experience without any fantasy components included.

Which is reductionist, 'explaining away'. I have studied religion through anthropological, sociological and psychological perspectives in comparative religion, but it's not reducible to those categories, even if they provide very useful perspectives. — Wayfarer

But they paint a pretty rational explanation for the emergence of different religious beliefs and claims, and that makes it hard to view such emergence of religion in history as having divine intervention. People are too susceptible to self-manipulation into fast explanations of the unexplained and too prone to solidify such inventions into larger patterns of meaning, in forms like mythology. The less proven facts that exist to explain anything, the easier people invent myths that grow into accepted facts.

Point being that the emergence of religion, especially sharing traits between cultures, has so many explanations in psychology and human behavior that it's hard to ignore all that and instead conclude the emergence of religion to be something more magical than it seems to be. We can also see the emergence every time we find a cult that has formed today. The same driving forces, the same inventions out of desperation for answers, but before the long term formation of myths becoming religious "facts".

All due respect, I don't believe you have 'knowledge that counters it'. What you have is a firm conviction. — Wayfarer

In this I refer to when such knowledge exists. Like for instance, we have proven evolution to be true, we have proven general relativity. If someone makes a religious or other claim that acts in opposition to it, I won't act like there's some grey area to it, in those cases they are wrong, provable wrong. If there's a psychological explanation for a certain behavior, I cannot ignore that component when analyzing a concept. What my point was, is that religious claims considered "facts" by believers, but that has more rational explanations is not something I can ignore and just play along. When people start out their claims with a demand to accept something that has more provable or rational explanations than they provide, their entire argument falls apart and this is why I argue for a clear line drawn between religious belief, its fantasy/illusions, and the practices in religion that has clear provable value for our experience. To formulate a living beyond religious beliefs but retaining aspects that comfort against the dread.

I thank you for a well put argument. I see your perspective, yet the core issue I have is that since we can only rely on some kind of evidence for a collective understanding, I can only formulate my world view on what we can actually prove or at least speculate as logical based on facts as we define facts. That doesn't render meaningful experience as dismissable, only that I cannot accept ideas and theories when I have knowledge that counters it. If I'm presented with a concept that I can clearly see a solution in psychology explaining it better, then the most likely explanation of said phenomena is the psychological one. And the more I learn, the more perspectives I learn, the less I can summarize anything in any other way than through a holistic perspective that incorporates all of them. What I find problematic in religious perspectives is the random claims of, in their view, factual concepts that only works within its own framework and often affect the ability to have an open mind, to the extent of sometimes radicalize people into harmful acts. Within it, all makes sense, but requires ignorance and denial of a large part of what we know about the world, universe and life. I cannot dismiss that baggage and I cannot dismiss evidence of psychological processes connected to religious experiences that show how they form and develop.

but I don't know if you yourself realise how embedded you are in the materialist mindset. — Wayfarer

It depends. I'm not a reductionist but more in line with emergentism. Emergent behaviors of complex systems. These cannot be explained by simple reductionism and somewhat transcend pure materialism.

But yes, I do not accept supernatural explanations since I have yet to be presented any evidence that supports it. And the more I learn the more inputs I have to explain a phenomena by other means than the supernatural. And the process proves itself over and over. The more we prove of natural phenomenas the less supernatural things get.

You push these ideas that I'm not doing philosophy, but yet, I am. To hold a firm stance within philosophy is nothing strange. I have this stance and I argue for it and if you tell me an argument that can logically undermine my conclusions, then I'm open to discuss adjustments. But I cannot dismiss the philosophical position I have on the mere fact that you disagree with me and it does not make me less of a philosopher when I require much better support in evidence for counter claims to my conclusions. In the end it becomes almost like you point out that there is experiences unexplained and therefor I am wrong, which isn't how this works. You cannot use the unexplained as evidence for my framework being broken. The experience is simply an experience that exist, yet to be explained. It does not require religion.

you take for granted a way of seeing the world which I think is inimical to philosophy per se — Wayfarer

You frame it as such, maybe because you feel it is a threat to your own position in philosophy, that doesn't render it objectively harmful, which I feel is a bit over the top in regards to what I've written. That feels more like expressing a need to downplay my position and paint it as dangerous in order to remove the perspective all-together. I don't understand this at all since I find this much more hostile than how you frame my writing. If you find it hostile, as I said, might it just be so because it is in such direct contrast to the position you hold close to heart? But isn't philosophy actually about clashing such positions together in discourse without hostility? This way of framing my writing seems more like a knee-jerk reaction to what I write rather than engaging philosophically? However, you also present a thought through counter argument so I'm not really sure how to interpret what you mean by all of that?

in your analysis, it is simply assumed that religion only ever *is* an opiate, a pain-killing illusion. I have devoted considerable time to Buddhist studies, and there is no way you could mistake Buddhist praxis as 'seeking comfort' or 'comforting illusions'. — Wayfarer

Not an opiate, for some it is, but that's not what I mean by comfort. Comfort is simply what holds back the sheer terror of the experience of a meaningless existence. I require such comfort as well, so does all people. Without it we would fall into utter despair. What I underscore is that most people experience panic and swan dives right into whatever comfort there is as fast as they can, not even having time knowing that they do so. Most people just accept anything that turns their mind away from this dread and fear boiling underneath their experience.

What I'm advocating for is to align everything towards an experience that rejects illusions and fantasy but can still reach such comforting results. Because there's too much baggage that comes with most of religion.

What Buddhism is about is still such a process. It starts with the painful questions about our existence and evolves into an exploration of ideas to comfort against that sense of darkness and lack of meaning. The reason to begin the journey is always the same, for all. That is not an opiate, that is a strategy against the experience of meaninglessness. A journey for meaning can be painful and hard, but against the utter despair of meaninglessness it is still a comfort.

And my position in this is that there's a gradient of the ability to handle this, from person to person. Some, most people, jump straight into it as an opiate against the dread, while some explore other means of experiences and exploration. If the opiate is on one end I just happen to be on the opposite end, rejecting anything that doesn't logically follow the universe as it is and presents itself to us. What is a good and bad strategy has nothing to do with it really. However, I personally believe that we need to follow science more than illusions and fantasy as the defining foundation for mankind as a collective, because the part that is fantasy is often prone to cause unseen consequences that most often does not have mankind's best intention in mind. That does not remove the need for experiences with fantasy and illusions, only that our experiences with such can remain in fiction and still have just as important and mythological impact on our experience.

the principle involved is obtaining insight into the causes of suffering and cutting it at the root, which (it is said) opens up horizons of being that remain unknown to the regular run of mankind. — Wayfarer

How is that different from experiences featuring LSD or Psilocybin? From the research going on into therapy with such substances, it is becoming known that they cut off the negative emotions, the suffering durring a session, letting the patient explore the roots of their suffering in a much more exploratory way. An intense form of induced meditation. And as many seem to point out, there are patterns similar to deep meditation. Why would one then need Buddhism as a religion when the praxis of meditation can be detached from it? My point is that there seem to exist an inability to look at many practices in isolation from many different religions. Key point being that the explorations in Buddhist practices do not require the whole religious package of Buddhism. Just as a prayer in Christianity could be explored without the religious whole.

I think it's within this that makes it problematic to frame me as a pure materialist. I need evidence and logic in explaining the universe and life, but the experiences we have as humans still is an emergent process that has extreme complexity and function only based on the rules, both known and yet unknown, of our psychology. In the end we may require a spiritual kind of experience in order to actually function as a species, and it is my conviction that we can develop such things without the baggage of religion.

But we've yet to enter such a phase in history as the current state of humanity is about replacing religion with materialistic ideologies and ways of life. It's when humanity realizes the futility of doing so that we may enter a phase in which we seek experience beyond the materialistic and religious.

Regarding scientism and nihilism I don't see how you can avoid it with the stance you take. The scientific mindset revolves around reduction to mathematical simples — Wayfarer

That is a simplification. I don't see the need for illusions and fantasy to be actual and real in order to experience wonder. Storytelling, art, music, experiencing nature as it is, experiencing love and other people. While there is no objective meaning, we build meaning for ourselves. Living as a nihilist has problems functioning together with the ability to produce meaning and experiencing such meaning actually makes it an objective part of reality for us as humans, the experience is a provable process. The difference, however, is that this meaning is created by our hands, by our ideas, not framed as meaning through illusions and fantasies viewed upon as facts that negatively influence our ability to understand reality for what it is or most likely is.

Living as a nihilist is for those who've yet to land in a functioning comfort framework of existence outside of religious beliefs. Those stuck in nihilism have no guidance, because, there really is no common one in existence. Today, we either have religion and if not that we have cults, addiction or materialistic life-styles. There's very little guidance and philosophies out there about this next step from nihilism toward a sense of meaning and that's what I'm interested in exploring and formulating. I would say that Camus may be the closest to it, but I still think it lacks inclusion of all human complexity.

I truly don't have any beliefs in gods or the supernatural. Yet I feel no nihilism in my bones. I don't act out such nihilism and I instead appreciate and love life. Am I not then a walking contradiction to your point? If I can't avoid it, how can I then not be acting as a nihilist and at the same time reject religious beliefs? I think you ignore other dimensions to this.

But as Nagel eloquently points out in many of his other works, this is at the cost of excluding from consideration the nature of lived experience. — Wayfarer

And I would say that it is possible to include the nature of lived experience without requiring religious beliefs. A rejection of religious baggage is to acknowledge the practices in religion separated from the fantasies. To follow science, facts and evidence does not equal a rejection of human meaningful experiences. Only a rejection of the act of concluding unsupported claims as something factual and specific based solely on religious concepts and inventions. We can still have profound experiences without that.

So it produces a kind of one-dimensional existence — Wayfarer

In my perspective, as would be considered to exist in that kind of existence, I don't experience it one-dimensional. I'd argue that people stuck in religious belief are unable to grasp the experience of a non-believer who still live life full of meaning and profound experience of living. The reason they're unable isn't because they're stupid or anything like that, but that the perspective of a believer is so far away from the non-believer that it reshapes how they experience reality. I would say it's easier for a non-believer to imagine themselves in the shoes of a believer than the other way around. Because if you are fully convinced you have the answers to why things are as they are, you are unable to imagine an experience not having those answers, but a person who accept only what we already know and accept that there are answers we've yet to find, they aren't bound to such biases. In essence, It's easier to imagine having a bias than to be a slave to one imagining being without.

I've never bought Nietszche's 'death of God'. Time Magazine published a cover story on it which I read aged about 11 or 12. — Wayfarer

Is that the extent of your knowledge of that concept? A Time Magazine story?

The death of god is about how modernity removes much of the need for religion and a belief in God. The concept's end point is to warn about nihilism as the world transitions more away from religion. But what gets lost is what he's actually warning about and it's about the desperate replacements for God. He couldn't have predicted how the world looks today, but he predicted how our modern culture basically replaced the church and God with the free market, materialistic life-style.

What if there really is a dimension to existence which is pointed to, however inadequately, in the various religious traditions of the world? — Wayfarer

That dimension of existence would not require the religions themselves. You don't need the entire forest to have a tree. You can study tree in itself. And then you've really just entered the science of researching the validity of such a dimension and the journey towards that enlightenment. Why is that similar journey less profound? This "What if" is not enough to argue for the need of religion itself since your goal seem to have nothing to do with religion, it has to do with purely a focus on our experiences. As I've mentioned with LSD, when I've heard people describing their experience and the experience of life after it, that sounds like a profound religious experience, without the need for religious beliefs and fantasies claimed as facts. Why would such induced experience be considered less profound or meaningful to these people? Because it's not within the framework of a religion? Or is it just that we've yet to actually looked into such experiences outside of the framework of religious beliefs?

Your conviction that it can only be empty words mirrors the certainty of religous dogma to the opposite effect. Religious philosophies are universal across culture and history, and show no sign of fading away, Nietszche's proclamation notwithstanding. — Wayfarer

Here I feel you strawman my position a bit by making a simplification of it.

And the fact that religion exist universally across culture and history can easily be explained by analyzing human behavior. What the psychology is for people trying to figure out the world around them in ancient times. How so many have sun gods because... well, it's the most profound thing to witness in a time when there are no answers to anything that happens. The similar experience that people have globally by living on the same planet with similar conditions, would of course produce similarities across the religions that forms.

And once again, it's not fading away because its being replaced by something else (which is closer to what Nietzsche meant). And we can see it in the modern world. The fact that it doesn't fade away only supports what I've been saying, that the desperation into meaning makes it close to impossible for most people to find any alternatives to what we already have, as the journey towards such alternatives demands more work.

I see the role of renunciate philosophies as being especially crucial in today's world, because consumption obviously has to be drastically curtailed. — Wayfarer

I agree, but that doesn't require the baggage of religious beliefs. Why cannot such life-styles and experiences be lived accordingly without having to accept a deity, God, pantheon or made up concepts of existence?

My position is that we can. And without the baggage we skip the risk of skewing people's perspective of our collective physical existence that can end up in, as has happened so many times in history, war and misery. The only reason for the world looking like it does today is because many people have replaced religion with the modern condition and materialistic ideologies. Going back to religion isn't the answer, that would just put us back where we left off and wouldn't really solve the core issue.

But what alternative does our culture provide? — Wayfarer

Maybe we're not there yet, maybe such guidance can't be easily found? Maybe that's what my philosophical position is all about when it comes to this topic? All I can see is that the tired old battle between religious believers and non-believers continue on a shallow level in which that's the only binary discourse that can be heard out loud in society. So when I try to talk about this topic I get shunned into the usual corner. If that happens to all of us trying to actually explore such alternatives, then of course those explorations won't be easily spotted in society.

Our internet algorithms have radicalized our brains to only function on binary assumptions about everything, so a non-believer becomes some kind of zealot of nihilism.

But my position is anything but that. I value exploring our experiences, I value the importance of practices that can be found in rituals, I value all things in religions but reject the claims religion makes about reality that is then acted upon as facts. I reject the need for religious belief when exploring meaning and purpose. Because the beliefs easily shifts into being facts these people believe in, which skews a collective understanding of reality and easily promotes ridiculous conflicts over such "facts", often with deadly outcomes.

Your wish is granted, including that it is legal to make laws and enforce them. The fundamental problem with anarchy is that it fails to forbid government. — unenlightened

:up:

While I like the anarchistic ideals, I fail to see how any such form ever lasts long enough to be sustainable on a large scale. Not necessarily to fall into ruin, but rather how people in their dynamic shifts over the course of history wouldn't just end up gravitating away from anarchy if the zeitgeist of a particular time in their history produces enough people to support another form of society.

In the end it feels like anarchy instead functions better as a perspective used to criticize hierarchies and deconstruct rigid structures to put them into a perspectives that can prove them not being a natural order, but instead an invention that can be criticized.

However, methods that result in the creation of basic life forms and the explanations accompanying those do not preclude, out of logical necessity, the creation of life by a God. — FreeEmotion

The problem is that it further pushes away the direct intervention by another being. This is the problematic nature of shifting goal posts by those defending the idea of us being God's creation. The more we've historically learned and explained by science, the further away any "God" as a concept gets from direct interaction with us. We're basically at a point in which God or a pantheon would be so dislocated from us that they exist outside of reality so far away that the mere scale of the universe renders us less impactful on the universe than a speck of dust. Our insignificance only exponentially magnifies by the concept of constants varying between different inflationary bubble universes. If we aren't more relevant than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a giant petri dish, and any Gods no more aware of us in their petri dish than we are of a single bacteria on our entire planet, then even with the existence of such beings, we still do not have any purpose or meaning outside of being just another speck of dust. Thus, applying meaning to us becomes equivalent of us giving the same level of meaning to a literal speck of dust on the floor.

The more we explain scientifically, the further away any God gets from us and the further away our existential purpose or meaning becomes. How far can we push away the concept of a God before we can finally summarize our existence as actually meaningless? It all looks like human arrogance and desperation for meaning. Like children who never grows up, who gets lost in the crowd of humanity always looking for their parents to come and fix their pain.

In the next ten thousand to a million years, there is no doubt that increasingly complex and elegant theories might be proposed, however the basic human act of faith in the existence of the yet unknown, be it God or be it future explanations, the acts of blind faith may continue to be committed far into the distant future. Therefore I do not think there can be a rational argument against religious faith. — FreeEmotion

Such faith comes from fear. We are desperate for comfort. It's part of our psychology, how we handle our experience as human beings being self aware. I cannot ignore the fact that we have these basic psychological drives for comfort in face of existential dread. When someone attributes these psychological drives to instead be about objective support for religious belief I question that conclusion as the actual conclusion is simply found in psychological processes that have no more value than any other psychological drive. We feel hunger, we eat, we feel a dread when being aware of our existence, we seek comfort from that dread.

That we invent elaborate illusions in order to convince ourself that this comfort is a real thing and not just a warm blanket, seems to be an integral part and consequence of our mind's pattern seeking biases driven by our strong emotions.

Makes me wonder what you think you have to contribute to a philosophy forum. — Wayfarer

What makes you say that? Questioning religious illusions and the illusions of meaning is quite a large part of philosophy, especially the last hundred or so years. And the specific contribution here is to question the circle of reasoning that so often happen when logic goes out the window in favor of an emotional need for comforting ideas and ideologies that cannot pass basic deconstruction of the argument. I have a strong conviction that it is possible to create a framework of a non-religious experience of living that is not ending up nihilistic. To form an experience rooted in scientific thinking without becoming scientism, which seem to be the usual derogatory emotional reaction whenever arguments focusing on science and scientific approaches pop up. That I attribute religious praxis and belief to grow out of an emotional need for comfort is me deconstructing faith through psychology. That doesn't necessarily mean that faith should be shunned, it simply underscores how it's a strong process that all people seem to gravitate towards and that we cannot use as a foundation for knowledge by its very nature of acting as illusions rooted in the need for existential comfort. It's basically working off the Nietzschean ideas of what happens when God is dead. If religion is gone but we still have the need for comfort, how do we get that without turning into what we see much of today; the materialistic church where identity life-styles and radicalized consumerism reign supreme. The desperate need for comfort in a world without religion requires a framework that solves this need for comfort without inventing new illusions, and its one of the hardest question to solve for philosophers who don't buy into religious convictions.

But still, I find that questioning of my contribution to the philosophy forum to be rather awkward. Like, do people need to accept your specific philosophical ideal in order to be valued as a contributor? Is not even my questioning of certain ideas a contributing factor on a philosophy forum? Sounds a bit weird to imply a lack of contribution in that way?

was the fact that your post misunderstands confuses the existential question of purpose with the functional sense of purpose assumed by physics. — Wayfarer

My point was that there is no such purpose, only the purpose as a function of the universe just as much as the purpose of electromagnetism as a function in relation to everything else.

The existential sense of purpose I'm referring to, is the kind of question philosophers and the religious ponder - is there a purpose to existence, other than pro-creating and 'passing on our genes'. — Wayfarer

And the overall conclusion I made was that there is none such thing. Because even, as I described, if there was an entity which were responsible for dice throwing the fine structure constant and other constant's from which the universe inflates into what it is, the significance of us as a species is so low it would be irrelevant to them. So there's no existential purpose to us and the only purpose that life and evolution has is by being a function as any other functions of the universe, a byproduct and result of entropic forces. A dead universal function.

That we attribute further ideas of meaning and purpose to all of this is out of existential dread and fear. We cannot cope with this sense of meaninglessness and therefor seek comfort in ideas that makes us feel special.

This is such a powerful emotion that the decline of interest in religious beliefs has instead led to people desperately trying to find meaning elsewhere. The rise of fanatical ideologies and ideas outside of religion comes from the same source of existential dread. Most people, almost all people, seem unable to grasp existence for what it is because it demands such a high level of tolerance of that existential dread.

It's like if the fire Prometheus stole was the knowledge that dismantles religious claims and that the answers that knowledge brings, tortures us as we're stuck on this rock on the coast of the black ocean. As Camus said about Sisyphus, we could apply to Prometheus.... "one must imagine Prometheus happy".

Your laugh at what I said seem to imply that you feel what I said was nonsense, but now I can't find that response anymore? Anyway, the thing you responded to is not nonsense. It's an existing scientific hypothesis about a possible purpose for evolution as part of physics itself. And it makes sense, if the universe moves towards higher entropy and it tends to gravitate towards whatever gets there the fastest, then life and evolution in itself is such a function that would fall in line with that process. If anything, it would underscore why there is life, why a chemical process would form such forms and functions.

I'm also extremely dubious of the vague notion that chemical components basically ravelled themselves into DNA and thereafter the enormous variety of living forms through something like a spontaneous chemical reaction. I'm more inclined to sympathise with Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasighe's panspermia thesis, although I'll go with the Hindu aphorism for now: life comes from life. — Wayfarer

Panspermia does not solve anything though. It would just position life appearing somewhere else. And in the state that earth was in back when life began, what would be different on another world? It all becomes a kind of circular reasoning in which the central question remains: how did life began?

With experiments and findings of chemical reactions actually forming potential sources for self-correcting structures, abiogenesis is still the most logical solution to the question. In the context of entropy, it also makes sense.

The philosophical issue comes down to one word: purpose. Any ideas of purpose, and therefore meaning, were jettisoned by early modern science, associated with the dreaded scholasticism. The only admissable kinds of causes were what the scholastics would call material and effiecient causes. So, in the Aristotelian sense, nothing happens in evolutionary theory for any reason, other than to propogate. And all behaviours are subordinated to, and explained by, that requirement. — Wayfarer

Actually, there may be some purpose to life and evolution in that life as a function increases entropy as a function based on the second law of thermodynamics. An ocean with bacteria can have up to almost 700% more efficiency than a dead ocean in entropy of the sun's energy. So it may be that life in itself is a product of the universe tending towards more efficient entropy and be an essential byproduct of this universe's laws of physics.

But what about more subtle qualities that one could argue make little sense any other way. For example the human eye by physics must be a certain shape to focus light correctly. — TiredThinker

Why does this off the shelf drone fly better than the competition? Did the designers figure out the best aerodynamics and carefully invent it for that purpose?



No, this drone was created by letting an algorithm iterate thousands of versions of the drone based on initial function parameters. In essence, they needed the function to fly balanced and well in this size and shape and the algorithm iterated it until it ended up in the most optimal shape and design.

Theres no real reason that evolution didn't come up with the design we humans have by the iterative trial and error that life gets chewed through by its environment. The requirement (the necessary function needed to survive as a species) defines the direction an evolutionary trait takes. Birds who are required to move around large areas of the globe are theorized to have built in compasses based on the ability to sense the earth's magnetic fields. We do not need such a function since we don't need to travel such distances at a short notice, but instead need to find localized positions of survival (resources in an area). It may be that our senses, our eyes, have been developed by evolution through a trial and error that ended up giving us the optimal ability to function based on the requirements and needs of our species survival. We could have been given a larger range of wavelengths to see, like infrared and UV light, but why didn't we? Maybe because a large point of our species is herd behavior and the ability to dynamically interact with other members of a tribe. So our range may be tuned through trial and error just as we developed a special part in our brain only meant to process the holistic understanding of faces.

We can go on and on about the tiniest function and form that some evolutionary thing has, but it can all be boiled down to enough time testing a function until the optimal form is achieved to function in harmony with the environment.

So, evolution is a remarkable outgrowth from our universal laws. Like seeing a spectacular rock formation that seems impossible at first sight, but when looking closer you can see how the wind, the mechanics of the ocean hitting it, the sun burning its surface over millions of years would produce such a shape.

We only attribute our awe towards how we exist as a species in the now, a naive first impression of our function and shape. But if we were to include the millions of years of trial and error that have been happening on this planet since the dawn of life, I see no more magic to it than a spectacular chemical reaction producing a remarkable end result.

As for a combination of creationism/intelligent design and evolution, the only synthesis of those two would be if there was a highly advanced being outside of our reality that basically produces test inflation bubbles in order to reach some end result. Like a highly advanced species doing research with different physical constants as starting points. Many theoretical physicists and cosmologists theorize that there may be many, if not an infinite amount of inflation universes happening all the time, all with different set of constants that solidify after the initial inflation. Ours being the famous fine structure constant 1/137 (and its decimals). If it were slightly off we might not have had the foundation for anything in our universe, matter might not have been able to form as it did and so on. But that also means that we might not even be the intended outcome of such higher beings, we might just be one of the scrap inflations they don't care about, they might not even know we exist or that any life in the universe exists. So in the end, even if we were created like that, we wouldn't have a purpose as we're just a byproduct of some other intention. And we're back again to beings trying to force feed meaning into people's hearts when there is none.

Creationism and intelligent design is based on the desperation for meaning. Changing our origin story over and over just to make sure there's always some meaning somewhere. I just see it as the desperation in front of a horror of existence that is too hard on some people's hearts.

Many, if not most people, are terrified of life, what it is, our experience of it and we all seek out comfort in face of such terror. Even the most atheistic minds, the ones who deny any idea of a creator, purpose or intention of our existence, can be utterly terrified of existence anyway.

But I would argue that the defining factor for how perceptible some are towards ideas of a creator compared to the meaninglessness of life as just an entropic function of the universe, is how strong skinned they are against existential dread. Just like some are tough enough to cope with being a soldier in a warzone and others aren't. There's nothing saying that being tough in war is equivalent to being a better person, only that this is a fact. Some are more afraid than others, but more accurately, some are better at handling fear than others. The dread of existence either force people into believing a fantasy to find comfort or they find comfort in other means.

I find comfort in decoding reality, decoding everything around me. The exploration in itself is a journey that comforts me and that experience is joyful even without any underlying meaning. I feel awe in this experience of existence, my body and mind being a product of the universe able to experience itself. I can feel my eyes tear up when seeing something beautiful in nature, not because of some divine sense of its creation, but at the beauty in its very meaninglessness still being able to produce my mind and body experiencing how time and space shaped this thing that I experience.

But such perspective requires a lot more mental energy than the comfort of a creator. A comforting end point of everything, no need to dwell on it further. And once such religious belief solidify itself in someone's core belief systems, it can lead to a lifetime of trying to convince themselves that they are right and that all the conflicting knowledge out there in the world is wrong.

The hard truth is that the facts does not care about being comforting. They are what they are. Nothing points towards a creator or intelligent design with a purpose, and if there was a creator or creators, those beings would be so far dislocated from our existence that we still end up in a meaningless and purposeless universe.

We cannot apply human values, ideas or purpose onto a system of the universe that does not have a human perspective. Evolution is not a human perspective, it is a physical system and function and it does not care about our arbitrary values applied to its process or our perspective of purpose and function, since we aren't the architects of its function. And applying a sense of some other architect outside of our human perspective and reasoning would just be filled with the same meaning and purpose as the more scientific explanation for evolution as an entropic process, basically rendering any sense of meaning and purpose irrelevant and non-existent.

you only think that because you're biased and probably evil — flannel jesus

:lol:

You seem very curious, which is only a fantastic quality to have — flannel jesus

This is also lacking today, especially online. Being curious into other people's perspective before arguing against them would solve many problems in the world today.

Do you think death threats should be legal?

I think everything should be legal. — NOS4A2

You've just underscored why it's impossible to take anything you say seriously.

Are there mindsets that can help an individual or a society easier to choose honesty? — YiRu Li

In my view, a soft Kantian ethical framework functions best. The categorical imperatives in my opinion are naive in their absolutism and centered around only the individual's responsibility, but a softer line in which you combine the first imperative on being honest and tell the truth with the epistemic responsibility of making sure each situation does not lead to harm should guide most people. Basically, always tell the truth, but always focus on being knowledgable enough to know that said truth does not in itself harm.

My friend indeed complains Eastern philosophy sounds like self-help, or maybe homework. :sweat: You can tell me how to think about this in western way. Thanks! — YiRu Li

It might be because western philosophy is more rooted in the analytical while eastern focuses more on the experiences, the phenomenological, at least that's my take on it.

The one takeaway I've got from eastern philosophy that in western philosophy seems to go missing is the power of a holistic perspective. Most sciences focus on specific areas and rarely combine everything into a holistic overview. It's mostly when such a holistic viewpoint is applied that we get breakthroughs, but it seems to get lost in the scientific and western philosophical day to day practices. Einstein's general relativity is a good example of a theory that has a holistic perspective that includes most physics up to that date.

In looking at what practical use philosophy has, I'm certain that western philosophy has a better approach on many subjects, but including the holistic approach of eastern philosophy elevates it.

Actually, I think we should ditch the whole eastern vs western concept, since it's mostly just a historical perspective on how different cultures thought about hard questions. Instead, the actual status of philosophy has merged so many approaches from so many corners of the world that the only true method is the one that takes the best approaches from all, ditch the crap, and combining it in a modern framework.

There is value to the way non-western philosophy approaches different topics that breaks free from the chains that western philosophy has in its rigid logical nature. But at the same time, western philosophy is better at universalizing concepts on solid grounds forming logical and empirical foundations. So in my opinion, using non-western traditions in exploring ideas sometimes works better and then take those concepts down to earth with western traditions to evaluate their validity as universal concepts.

What characterizes the mindset associated with honesty? Considering that individuals may occasionally engage in falsehoods, how do we conceptualize the mindset of honesty? Is 'honest' a noun or a verb? Can one still be deemed an honest person if they occasionally engage in deception? — YiRu Li

I don't look at the world in a binary way, everything is a form of gradient, statistical, or a matter of probability. You cannot be only honest or only not honest. Instead, the morality around subjects like honesty has to do with the amount of honesty you live by and in which situations you are not honest. If you are honest in all situations but those in which such honesty would hurt others or put you in danger, then that would in my book make you an honest person.

For example: If you hit a human with a hammer it makes a noise because it feels pain. Interestingly (or not) if you hit a rock with a hammer is also makes a noise. Can we conclude that the rock also feels pain, by analogy with the human? — bert1

Got damn we need to protest against the mining industry, all those hurt little rocks!!!

The way you show I did NOT present a logical argument is by showing how it is illogical, by dismantling the actually assumptions and or extrapolations therefrom. — ken2esq

I did, I pointed out the fallacies and the biases. I pointed out that you make up some arbitrary speculation based on a wrong interpretation of already defined science, and then you use your made up stuff as supporting evidence for new speculations, ending up in a mess of interconnected made up ideas that you try to communicate as a solid rational conclusion.

EVERY argument which has an opponent necessarily is viewed as an ILLOGICAL ARGUMENT by the opponent — ken2esq

Not at all, not in philosophy. I've read a lot of logical and rational reasoning on this forum that changed my views. Sometimes a lot, sometimes just as a slight tweak to my own concepts. But for this to happen, you need to have a good philosophical praxis. You do not.

You position is so absurd... — ken2esq

Maybe you shouldn't just take my word for it, but also everyone else in here.... it's your position that is absurd. This "no, it's you who's stuooopid" behavior when people point out your lack of logic and proper arguments is downright childish.

This is literally the HEART and MEAT of philosophical debate, dismantling -- in detail, with exactitude -- why the opposing view IS illogical. To claim you are free from that because the other side is somehow a priori illogical is just nonsense. — ken2esq

I dismantled it, by pointing out how your logic is faulty, your interpretation of evidence is wrong and your argument is fractured. Now, either you present a new argument that's properly put together, with avoiding biases and fallacies, which use a proper premise and conclusion structure (doesn't need to be hardcore, but at least clear points of evidence that leads to something inductive or deductive).

As I said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you've done nothing in that department and instead just continue to try and force others to accept your perspective.

The only perspective you've presented when reading your argument is that you're absolutely confused about all of it. You don't understand the science you use as a foundation and you don't know how to avoid the most common biases and fallacies.

It's like someone picked up a dictionary about philosophical terms and then tried to shoehorn them into an argument to make the appearance of being smart, or thinking they are doing high level philosophy because they believe in their idea so much that any notion of it being wrong is shattering their entire ego.
You're absolute lack of humility is a dead giveaway.

Will you blame drugs? exhaustion? brain fart? being under the control of a super-conscious organization that does not want you to see the logic of my arguments and so puts really really stupid words in your mouth? (I'm partial to the last, by the way, do not blame you but that which controls you.) — ken2esq

Why don't you go back to reddit where your rhetoric belong, if you argue like that you won't last long in here. Check the forum guidelines if you don't believe me.

Calling something "nonsensical illogic" is not a logical argument. — ken2esq

No, because you have to present a logical argument first, burden of proof is on you since you have an extraordinary claim that features misunderstandings of physics and cherry picked non-correlated parts that does not equal any of the conclusions you make. So, yes, what you are doing is nonsense, that's why I said so.

Your close-minded rejection is the OPPOSITE of philosophy and logic. — ken2esq

Philosophy is not about just thinking whatever bs you can think of. Philosophy requires a praxis of rational reasoning, which you haven't presented yet, so it's not close-minded to ask for better philosophy, it's the exact purpose of philosophy.

If all you do is demand that people accept your "theory", then you are doing nothing right. You need some philosophy 101 and then come back with a proper argument, otherwise there's no starting point for any of this.

It is quite an interesting time we live in, in which wars are fought on the premise of not killing innocents. In all of history, the only reason more soldiers were killed instead of innocents in the heat of battle was due to soldiers being more of a threat. But wars were generally about going into a land, kill as much as you can, loot their supplies and install your own power. Today, every nation has some kind of trade interest in another and any attempt at conducting war by the old strategy is met with such a global ostracization that you will cripple your own economy and the living standards of your country. You will also, by your actions, create a moral perspective and prejudice against your nation and your people in a way that can last for years.

Look at Russia and look at how much shit China got by even intel rumors of invading Taiwan. And it has created a situation in which Russians will be treated with suspicion for maybe decades.

So the question then becomes, how can you win a war by killing civilians if the amount of collateral damage, and especially if your troops kill civilians on purpose reaches such high numbers that the entire world turns against you?

There's a positive aspect to this, and it's a political and economical deterrent. You could argue that a nation like Russia will manage anyway, but the crippled culture and hate against them could drain its potency in the future. Most nations benefit from exchange of trade and experts and if they have little to none left and no new people immigrating, that will set them back on the technological and cultural stage more and more.

So today, no nation really benefits from invading and killing everyone. It's a political death sentence.

What I'm suggesting is that there is an inherent mystery to life which science hasn't come close to excavating. If anything, the light of science is illuminating depths and expanses far beyond our wildest dreams. But at some point the institution started to exist for its own sake (as institutions will do) and for some reason decided to react against this mystery, instead of embracing it. — Pantagruel

I'm not sure what you're aiming for here? You mean the institution of science? Because the mystery and the urge to decode the universe is still alive and well.

And I'm not sure how that connects to morality and ethics? Do we have problems with the materialistic lifestyle of modern life? Yes, a lot. But to say that morality can't be find among people who aren't spiritual or religious is false and can also be argued to be the opposite seen as how much violence and bad morality that exists among today's religious people compared to the non-religious. Adding to that, a belief system that replaces religion, such as the belief in material and materialistic values to bring meaning is also producing mob mentalities and deindividuation.

It just shows that the problem doesn't seem to be a lack of belief or religion, it seems to be the opposite, meaning, belief systems gets radicalized today and become more extreme, faster. The solution then is to live a skeptical life, in which only evidence and facts form the world view. To think that a person cannot feel awe and mystery about life and the universe just because they don't accept religious views and other collective belief systems, is just not true.

You fail to recognize that when we observe various phenomena we cannot explain, and people come up with various individual explanations for each of them — ken2esq

That's not how science and philosophy works, and you attempt to do claims in both here.

though the single theory has no scientific proof, its greater simplicity gives it greater credence, all else being equal. — ken2esq

No it doesn't, this is nonsensical logic.

Yes, I'm kind of leaning that way. My sense is that embracing the larger (than self) reality is tantamount to the recognition of (self) transcendent values. As I mentioned, material calculations are all well and good, except where they are plainly insufficient. We think just because we have assigned a dollar value to everything via economics, everything hence becomes computable. When, in fact, our valuations are arbitrary and often misguided. — Pantagruel

But that isn't materialism in the philosophical sense though, that's capitalism and consumerism. What you are referring to is "materialistic" rather than the philosophical "materialism".

Outside of those semantics, what you are arguing is rather that the materialistic society we live in is lacking meaning and means for morality to form on the grounds of people's actual value as human beings and instead has been replaced by a dollar value.

While that is a true assessment with support in many fields of study of society, it still does not equal an afterlife being necessary for morality and it's not really connect nihilism with the materialistic. The materialistic people does not operate on nihilism, they're rather operating out of the fear of nihilism. They've rather changed from religion, a "church of religion" to a "church of the free market". They seek meaning in the materials they acquire, they attribute arbitrary value that gets validated through the exchange of money.

It's not nihilism or a lack of belief, it's just another belief system operating on the same principles as normal religion.

True atheism has nothing to do with the materialistic. And as I mentioned, putting value into the only life that we have and thinking about our moral legacy can produce a much deeper moral thinking than believing your consciousness just continues.

You can easily apply a nihilism to such afterlife ideals as well since if there's an afterlife, then this life doesn't matter that much. These are the same principles that much of the islamic extremists operate under, enforcing a deep and soul crushing nihilism to the actions in this life, in order to reach paradise.

If people viewed their existence in this life as the only thing that will exist for them and that the moral legacy of their life will be the only thing people remember them by, then the drive for better moral behavior can increase since the life right now must be the one to be good and if all treat others well, then all will benefit from this only life.

It's the lack of correlation between a lack of an afterlife and good morals that I find is the problem here. And that the materialistic is a nihilistic behavior, when it's rather operating on another type of belief system. That the conclusion is that a lack of afterlife equals nihilism feels like ignoring an honest exploration of morality systems in atheistic lives. Because the materialistic lifestyle is not connected to atheism or a lack of belief in an afterlife. The materialistic lifestyle is a lifestyle that appears throughout society, regardless of religion.

On top of that, the attempt to build a moral system outside of religion is more practically useful than requiring religious belief for it to function. Morality focus on being guiding principles human collective behavior. If requiring a belief system, it then impose a requirement of a specific worldview without any evidence that this worldview has any validity to it. A moral system that can be true for all humans, regardless of beliefs, fantasies or atheistic ideals, should always be preferable over a system that requires specific religious ideas. And the materialistic lifestyle as opposed to the religious afterlife lifestyle has very little to do with morality and more to do with different belief systems clashing.

Everytime the word "quantum" comes up anywhere except a discussion about physics, I know for a fact whatever is coming is going to be nonsense. — Lionino

Exactly, especially when it uses a faulty interpretation and then build an entire conclusion around that faulty interpretation as a premise.

I am writing a theory of the universe that explains Fermi's paradox. The notion that we live in a conscious universe, that we are part of that conscious universe, experiencing itself, is not new or novel. — ken2esq

No, you are cherry picking concepts together and call it a theory when its not a theory or hypothesis, but wild speculation. Evidence must bind together as premises towards a conclusion, that's not what you're doing here.

No, my theory is NOT "true." Of course not. But I believe it is MORE TRUE than anything yet postulated. — ken2esq

This is called bias. You are biased towards your own belief without any actual evidence to support it. Why is your belief more true than the facts that can be extrapolated out of the latest scientific consensus?

And, yes, the WHOLE THING is a theory, based on the fact we observe things in nature that we cannot reconcile. — ken2esq

It's not a theory, you have no actual evidence, you have wild speculations or interpretations of speculations that you use as premisses for your conclusion.

This is philosophy, not a hard science. It's not physics. — ken2esq

Philosophy still requires due diligence in logic and rational reasoning. You treat philosophy like it's something that's about just wild speculation, which it's not. You still need to follow the praxis of philosophical arguments.

And since its not physics either, you have neither the logical rational reasoning of philosophy, nor the scientific rigor of physics. Then what have you other than wild speculation and nothing more?

So wherever there is quantum uncertainty, when we collapse it, we CHOOSE what it collapses into. — ken2esq

We do not choose how it collapses. I don't think you understand what the collapsing wave in quantum mechanics is about. The collapse due to observation has nothing to do with us as humans, it has more to do with the uncertainty principle and how measurement introduces forces onto the measured particles so that you inflict change that wouldn't be there when not measured.

The pseudo-religious conclusion that we as a consciousness "choose" the collapse has more to do with a misunderstanding of the physics. It's what happens when people are confused by the science and doesn't bother to actually understand it before using it as a premise in their argument.

Lastly, have you considered how all the greatest scientific leaps were scoffed when first presented? Do you really want to scoff at this because it is too much of a leap WITHOUT actually giving me one logical or evidentiary argument against it? Basically just rejecting it for novelty?!!! Really?!!! Novelty??? — ken2esq

They were scoffed at by religious people or by the community before evidence were presented. Those theories didn't magically become serious theories before they were proven. First, they were presented with careful rational reasoning, either with deduction or mathematical calculations, and then proven in experiments. So if you feel like the theory is scoffed at, then you need to do what all of them did, prove your theory right. But no, you are demanding that others prove you wrong.

You aren't doing philosophy or science at all. You scream for others to accept your wild speculations as some possibility. All while you clearly show you don't understand physics or general common philosophical praxis.

Once again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Provable axioms of morality are hard to prove as it is, so adding another layer of unproved dimension to the fold does not help humanity achieve any common ground on ethics.

All things being equal, would you rather trust the ethic of someone whose actions are premised around the belief that, when you're dead you're gone. Or someone who believes in the idea of an ongoing responsibility for deeds? — Pantagruel

Why does the ethics automatically become worse because existence isn't on going? I don't see the correlation between "dead and gone" and bad morality. It's like you argue that nihilism is the only realm of thought for materialists?

A buddhist thinker likens the passage of spirit from one form to the next like the transmission of fire between two pieces of wood. — Pantagruel

What about nirvana? If the highest goal and end is nirvana, then morality isn't structured on ongoing but to reach that state. How does that differ from "dead and gone". Couldn't morality be structured around legacy?

That you have one chance in life to achieve a moral legacy so that when you are "dead and gone" your moral choices echo through history. This would put the effort into actually doing good since you only have one chance in a short period of time to make sure the good stays after you died.

You can easily break a reincarnation morality down to focusing more on selfish gains. Doing moral actions for the sake of "promoting yourself" to a better next life. Even if it would lead to moral actions, the psychology behind it makes moral actions a selfish action rather than an action for someone else or the collective.

I would say that it's not logical to assume that "dead and gone" equals nihilism. The fact that forming morality on the ground that something doesn't continue after death makes someone value life even more. It's the only thing that exist for any life form and valuing it for what it is should be the focus.

I'd say that the idea of an afterlife makes people rather apathetic and ignorant of the ethical problems we have in this life. People treat it like some "waiting room" for whatever good existence that comes after it rather than focusing on making this life the best it is, for themselves and others.

The fact that there's pollution and destruction

The belief in "progress" that says things are always getting better. When that is getting less true every day. — Pantagruel

This is a common misconception that is historically false. Look at the actual statistics on a long time.

I think there is a cult of individuality — Pantagruel

Initiated by the neoliberal individualism which grew in popularity in the 80s and influenced most of the early millennials.

The world needs some kind of fundamental change, because every indication is that we have been on a collision course with disaster since industrialization. Technologies which should have bolstered equality have increased the gap between the rich and the poor. Something is fundamentally wrong. — Pantagruel

This isn't materialism in the philosophical sense. What you are talking about is consumerism and industrialism.

And the progression of technology isn't what's bad and wrong, it's the ideology of neoliberal free markets that produce a wasteful living in which we produce toxic waste and value short term "fixes" over long term happiness. That coupled with deifying strong personalities rather than those of good leadership who lead towards bettering ourselves and society.

The problem you are describing has nothing to do with any nihilism of a lack of an afterlife and more to do with bad systems that we've yet to get rid of.

One such thing is that people act like representative democracy is the end goal. While the world has yet to achieve democracy everywhere yet, we're still stuck in the ideological battle between old bad systems of power and modern democracies. So all deconstruction of democracy gets put aside until we've reached a global implementation of democratic principles. But democracy in itself is very fragile and easy to manipulate. We've seen this with manipulating voters through social media and how we have little to no safety nets to block anti-democratic movements to form. We essentially safeguard democratic values on the naive pretense that no one would ever want to remove it, while the door is open for anyone to vote democracy away. So instead of trying to evolve democracy to safeguard against bad actors we just naively hope that democracy survives.

So while we, on paper, have gotten rid of dictators, kings and elites in favor of democracy, we've replaced it with incompetence and manipulation.

If you're gonna talk about how society is today, I don't see how your ethical argument about an afterlife versus no afterlife fits in. Because it's not materialism as a philosophical concept, you are talking about consumerism, industrialism, individualism in opposition to religious collectivism and thought. Which is another dimension.

Reality is a dance / battle between two opposing forces, a consciousness that, by observing waves of probability, collapses them into particular reality. This is the process of creation. This I call the Particle Consciousness. On the other side is Wave Consciousness, which seeks to turn particular reality into waves, I think by blocking/destroying/hemming in the observations of the Particle Consciousness. — ken2esq

You're speculating and using your own speculation as evidence for your next points. Making your speculations eve more speculative the further the text goes on:

The fact we create reality with our EXPECTATIONS of what we will find, is a heavy responsibility. — ken2esq

This is nonsense.

Well, there is much more to this theory. — ken2esq

This isn't a theory, it is speculation, it isn't even a hypothesis.

If anyone has logic, reason, evidence, scientific studies, that refute this, I am happy to reconsider / revise. — ken2esq

Why don't you begin with logic, rational reasoning, actual scientific evidence for the actual claims because you have the burden of proof first. This way of presenting extremely incoherent speculations and then demand that others disprove them is a failure of philosophy and science. It's the exact opposite of the praxis required.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — Carl Sagan

Maybe the deleted thread wasn't holding up to the template for thread posting? While posts can vary in quality without a problem, a new thread needs to present a thesis and an argument that is clearly defined. It could be that you failed this rather than the point you were making.

Then again, I think that there are a lot of threads started that ignores this praxis, but when it comes to scientific topics, the argument quality needs to be especially well written, especially if it's about a claim that isn't wildly within consensus.

Like, a basic thing that I cannot see in your argument is if you're making a conclusion based on Reductionism or Emergentism, is it saying that the smaller parts are aware of the whole or does it functions as a Complex Adaptive System?

Because fractals are so overhyped in pseudo-science that it's being used in all sorts of different ways without any scientific rigor whatsoever. Do you have links to published papers we can look at instead of pop-science videos?

If you are talking just about "mandatory education". Then the question is what is the punishment if you don't do your "mandatory education"? Is it a fine, or then an social-worker comes to check up how you are doing. Or then you aren't allowed to have children? It seems so based on what you state here:
— ssu

So, if two people plan to get a child, they need to first apply for this evaluation (or education as you can see in my answer to Echarmion) and go through with it. If they are evaluated to be in the A category, a potential harm for a child, they cannot go through with it, and if they do, that child will go into adoption. — Christoffer

This is more Orwellian I thought. Before planning to have children, I guess a couple needs to show to the authorities that they are to be eligible to have children. So this evaluation happens when there even isn't a child! Perhaps it should be done immediately if people get married. Or just move together and are deemed to be in sexual relationship? Just in case... — ssu

You have two scenarios, one in which you plan to get a child, in that scenario you simply apply to the education, go through it and gets an ok to move on with that plan. The second is that you accidentally conceived a child, then you need to go through the education.

I see no difference in the demands on people getting pregnant today? More than the need to go through an education. Couples who get pregnant need to do checkups, need to maintain close communication with the health care to make sure the pregnancy goes well.

A mandatory education isn't an academic education that only a few people are able to achieve. It's important to understand the level this is at. The mandatory aspect is that parents are forced to be exposed to the knowledge, forced to show engagement in the topics of child care. Because if they don't care, then that is and should absolutely be a red flag for the ability to take care of children.

Why should we birth children and be naive about the necessary knowledge of taking care of them?

In tribes there's long been practices of the community being part in caring for the children being born into the community. Just as I said to Echarmion, we have built a very strange bubble around the concept of "family" in which we believe that we, as parents, know what's best when in reality there's little to support the fact that every person understands what it takes to raise a child without producing traumas and issues in their psychology. Why then not support even further and by having such education we can evaluate the capabilities of the parents, while building a ground for supporting them if they're not scoring well. As I said to him, this is more about the community, as in society, being part of making sure children does not come to harm and the ones who gets a no because they fail the education or evaluation aren't your common families, but those who are clearly not good for children, through things like addiction, active crime, alcoholism, violent tendencies or clearly bad practices.

I see no problems with this education being part of the normal preparations that parents go through today. The only difference is that instead of volontary education, it's mandatory. You have to go through it when you're becoming a parent.

Sucks to be planning for your first baby. Especially in the West that some countries try to get people to have more babies... — ssu

Yes, this is actually an apt counter point you're making. After a time in which we've been taught that the world is going to shit because we will be overpopulated, it seems that it's the opposite, that we're dropping in numbers all over the world and that this can have dire consequences as well.

The argument I'm making isn't very good in that perspective, however, I do think that we can't look at numbers alone and that the well being of individuals is too important for society as a whole and therefore we have to make sure people get the best childhood that we can achieve as a collective.

Yet just education isn't same as a license for "being fit to have children". Besides, flunking that exam and wow, I guess looking for job places will be tough after you cannot to have this license. — ssu

You still need to go through the education to "have the license". It's mandatory and if failing you can get more support to finish it through. But as I said, this isn't some high education, most of it is basic stuff, some is concepts that are easy to follow but things that I've seen people don't understand today. You'd be surprised as how many basic things that parents today don't actually know. In order to flunk the exam you need to be really unfit, but it would catch those who actually are unfit and who produce a strong risk for children's well being, regardless of their intentions.

The focus is rather to force people to expose themselves to the knowledge. So that people don't ignore it which happens when it's voluntary.

Again I have to make ask again: why the obsession with a license? A reproduction permit?

Why not a softer approach? — ssu

I already think it is soft, I think that you apply your ideas about authoritarianism onto it and imagine a far more dark scenario than I'm actually presenting. It's easy to see it as the opposite of soft with that lens, but if you look at the cogs and bolts of it it's not really that wild as a concept. Especially since there's no authority that impose ideologies onto parents, but a process that enforces the knowledge from science of child well being onto parents so that they are more aware, as well as better support to catch problems before they escalate and the ability to prevent the most extreme cases of child abuse and malpractice that gets missed because of how lose the system is today.

Already authorities intervening in cases where parents simply cannot (or will not) parent their children are dramatic and some controversial. It's a delicate matter, not some regulation of handling hazardous stuff. — ssu

Because of our culture around the concept of "family". It's controversial because we've put the value of family and the individualistic ideals before the actual care for children's well being. I see, daily, the arrogance of parents and the controversy often just stems out of that arrogance. The care and well being for children takes second place over the identity as family.

So it's a delicate matter, yes, but I couldn't care much when the foundational structure of it all is based on almost spiritual values of "family" rather than the necessity to make sure all children are well.

And the problem today is that authorities just intervene when that trauma has already been set in motion. I'm interested in preventing things, to make sure something doesn't break, I have no interest in trying to fix something that's already broken.

I would, and from my own personal experiences, support the Finnish method of the government giving free maternity package to pregnant mothers and couples and free counseling for future parents. It works, it has all the correct things and is very useful. That usefulness makes it so that people really use it. Rules and the threat of punishment isn't the only way you can inform people. And a very lousy way to try to "educate" them.

A Finnish maternity pack: — ssu

This I'm all in support of. But the problem I see is that there's a large portion in society that just don't give a fuck. It's easy for us to discuss the ins and outs of 90% of people's situation as parents, but the 10% has a major impact on society and for the individuals. 10% of children who're affected by malpractice is too much.

The unfortunate thing is that this number is probably higher, if we add in minor traumas that makes a large chunk of adults seeking therapy because of something dark from their childhood, it's not 10%, it's far more.

My point is that if we have such mandatory education we can mitigate a lot of problems that we might even miss in statistics due to only the most extreme cases being visible. But there are so many adults who I've witnessed have childhood traumas without there ever being extreme situations considered part of their childhood.

I've read about the finish maternity pack and as a Swede I'm jealous of how well Finland handles these things. Even if we're so similar up here in the north around this subject. But I still think we can add more and improve more. And I think you form somewhat of an extreme totalitarian scenario in your head around the concept I present, while it's more or less a larger extension of the support system you have in Finland.

Well, no, it will not be a child because your proposed solution is to not have the child born. So you'll have to explain who is supposed to be the subject whose rights you are protecting in this scenario. — Echarmion

This is getting down into the gritty trenches of philosophy. We already have diseases that can be tested for at the very early stage of pregnancy and inform if the right course of action is to terminate the pregnancy because the child will suffer if born. So if that is already in practice, an idea of a child that is likely to end up in harm is even less problematic to avoid. Remember, these are the few cases in which parents are utterly unfit to be parents, where there's a high likelihood of harm.

Let's say there's an 80% chance that an unborn unconceived child is likely to be harmed or live in harm during their childhood. Would you say "go ahead" or argue for that child not being conceived? Let's say that a couple who are regularly taking drugs and who zone out due to it that they can't have the focus to care for a child. There's no sign that they are willing to go to rehab and change their ways anytime soon and they don't show any knowledge of even the most basic daily care for children.

Would you argue that they should not conceive a child, or allow them to do so, knowing the likelihood of harm to the child?

Schemes like that already exist, like regular checkups for children, where failure to attend leads to an appointment with child protection services. Of course such a scheme must be set up with special care so that it does not further aggravate the situation of families under financial pressure. — Echarmion

The big problem is often that such checkups only starts after the fact. A child can be traumatized for life because of one single event and even if child protection services start to involve themselves, it's often too late because the child already has trauma.

Better then to have a system with checkups for all children born, as a common practice in order to spot dangers before anything evolve into an event that could traumatize the child. Of course, some falls through the cracks, as with all systems in society, but the aim is to mitigate and lower the probability as much as possible.

Well, sure everyone should have basic knowledge. But at the same time the amount of problems caused by simply lack of basic knowledge seems small. — Echarmion

Not really. I've heard many stories from adults who have minor traumas from their childhood, things that seem basic, but that affect their entire life after. Many patients going to therapy have traumas they didn't even realize they had but realize when getting their childhood into context through the process.

A common thing that parents on a large scale are bad at is handling the first five years of a child's life. This period is part of solidifying a lot of basic psychological traits and can also catalyze underlying mental disorders. A common mishandling is the basis for "attachment issues", in which the adult exhibit problems handling social interactions due to the parents not able to carefully handle these first years of the child's life. For instance, many parents scream at their children when they're loud, but they do not understand when they can set boundaries and when they shouldn't. So they might either never set boundaries or they set too many of them. Either way can produce a minor trauma on the child's psychology. Understanding when and where to set boundaries and when not to is one concept that is important and that many fail at on a broad scale.

In the research I've done, there's a disturbing amount of adult issues that can be traced back to these early years of life, seemingly due to very common behaviors that slip through the awareness of educated child care personell.

It's the emotional/ psychological side that's difficult, and that cannot easily be taught. Parenting is simply such a huge change to your life that you cannot really prepare for it. — Echarmion

The psychological side is greater than the physical in my opinion. And it can be taught how to mitigate such problems, it's just not mainstream enough and there's a stigma of "telling parents how to raise their children" that I personally think is pure bullshit. The arrogance of parents believing they know everything that's best for their child might be a hormonally biological drive, but it's also a cultural narcissism of parents believing themselves to be the "gods" of their children.

Rather we should accept the fact that most people are unprepared and that maybe we should losen the fanaticism on such ideals and collaborate more in society for the sake of children's physical and mental health. Both for the common good and for the sake of the individual children.

And you also touch upon the huge change in that, because of it, why not focus more on mitigating that unpreparedness? With education and support and making sure unfit parents don't harm the children that comes into this world. It is for this very reason, that we are unprepared, that I'm arguing for these concepts.

Well, that's a good plan, but one does need to consider that the knowledge here is still very much in flux. While there may be broad agreement on what the psychological needs of children are, it's much harder to tell what this means in practice. — Echarmion

Of course, but no knowledge as opposed to knowledge that exists is still relevant, and knowledge that exists still has more positive outcomes. It's basically the same with all types of knowledge. I learned things in school that would never be taught today. We can only move society based on the best knowledge we have and using the best knowledge we have is still better than no knowledge at all.

Even if it wasn't, knowing and doing is very different. It's one thing knowing in the abstract how you want to raise your child. It's quite another to actually deal with children. Parents are exposed to very strong emotions and I'm not sure how preparation for that would even look. — Echarmion

Child care personell and child psychologists usually have very simple guidelines that are still both being ignored and aren't known in the mainstream. In good fact-respecting newspapers you can sometimes see article series with child psychologists answering questions from parents that seem obvious but aren't to many people.

The problem is that we have created a culture around those strong emotions, instead of creating a better collaborative atmosphere around child care.

It may look like I'm advocating for some cold authoritarian system, but in truth, the full concept has a much stronger focus on collaborating for the sake of the child, that we structure society more away from the hard borders that families create around themselves and be more open with caring for our children as a collective.

There are plenty of examples of this around the world in which tribes and collectives raise children more as a group, more collaborative.

But the problem is that in the west especially, we've created this mythological aura around the concept of being a family as parents and children. It's part of our individualistic culture to form a family, a constitution in which we build borders against the world and we know best. This I want to blow up, because we're obviously damaging our children in ways we don't even realize. The arrogance of the individual is a problem.

Plausibly, education might improve things but I think a lot of bad parenting practices are a result of desperation. So I'd prefer first to improve the resources parents have available. This reduces the focus on the parents as the single point of failure and might be necessary to even provide the kind of time parents need for their education. — Echarmion

I agree with the resources part. I'm not opposing support for parents, but the psychology is being ignored or downplayed when, in fact, our first years in life mostly defines the well being of our entire lives. So if we can maximize the ability for parents to give the best possible life to a child during their first years, that would not only help them as individuals, it would make them as adults much better capable to handle the complexity of life.

All in all, the ones not getting approved for parenting should not be a large sum of people and they will still have the chance to change their ways and be reevaluated. While those who get approved but with caution would receive a lot of support, far greater than we have today, even in nations like Scandinavia where the support for families are much greater.