I would say either according to their reasoning religion is rational. Or they feel science is not qualified to deal with the human experience and its aspirations. — Zenny

Religion can at times be internally consistent which creates the illusion of rationality, but outside the strict, self serving parameters of religious dogma the reasoning does not hold up.
Also, just because you feel science doesn’t deal with the “human experience” doesn’t mean you should just make up an answer which is what religion does.

Ultimately I think whether a person is religious or not or science based depends on emotional belief factors.
I think rationality in terms of cold logic is a myth.
But that's not to say emotional belief is irrational per se or untruthful. But it can be. There are true beliefs and false beliefs. Deciding which is which is again a personal emotional decision. — Zenny

I just couldn’t disagree more. First, you yourself just submitted that some scientists are religious so obviously it’s not an either/or situation. I’m not sure what you mean by “emotional belief factors” but it sounds like you are trying to draw a classic false equivalence between the basis for believing in religion and the basis for believing in science.
It’s obviously not true that “rationality in terms of cold logic” is a myth. This, if you will forgive me for saying, is an attempt to ignore rationality in order to create legitimacy for religion by taking it away from rationality and by extension science. This is the false equivalence. Religious ideas have no real comparison with science, you know this, admit this and practice this every day in everything except religious ideas. You would never fix your car, plan a route to work, follow a recipe to make a meal, figure something out or any number of things on the basis of personal emotional decisions. You might have some emotions but the tool you rely on is rationality, logic. It’s only for religion this tool is suspended. If you didn’t suspend it, you would come to the conclusion that religion is false.

Not necessarily irrational no...at least no more irrational than anyone else.
I don’t think science inoculates a person against being duped by emotional appeal which is what most religion is. The persons failure of reason on religion doesn’t mean their reason no longer functions.
I would say of these scientist who believe in religion that they are in error to doing so, but I can draw no conclusions about their general rationality.
What do you make of these scientists?

:cool:

I am logging out for tonight, but I am thinking that the main issue to be addressed is the underlying source of consciousness, whether it is explained in religious or scientific terms. — Jack Cummins

Nothing really gets explained religiously, all of its answers are made up. Sure religion claims to have answers but there is no substance to the claim, no power for those answers to be demonstrated because its all imaginary, mythological.
Why would religions answer to consciousness be any different? It will just be made up, like everything else in religion.
No, the answer to your question is actually “neither”. Science nor religion explains consciousness, it is a mystery. Again, religion claims to explain it but it cannot demonstrate that knowledge any more than science can.
As to whether one or the other will eventually give us answers? I’ll bet you anything it will be science, a bet I would have won over and over and over throughout all of history...the first only time religion gives any answer to anything is when it relies on the same basic tool science utilizes: reason. They only get answers right when they apply reason, and do not apply religion.

Nice work - agree. A lot of people who have been socialized into religions seem unable to even hear the definition in order to grasp it and seem willfully culpable of misrepresenting atheism wherever possible in order to trash the idea with some interpretive smear or another. Of course many atheists do similar things to theism, so I guess it's par for the course... — Tom Storm

Yes, dishonest argumentation knows no group boundaries Im afraid.
It’s the nature of the internet too...it’s pretty easy to wiki or google an argument for or against whatever you choose and repeat it without really understanding it. You see it a lot with logical fallacies, people are always making accusations of ad hom or argument from authority without really understanding the fallacy.
It’s strange when you find atheists who are dogmatic about it...you would think coming to atheism requires some thought but alas many come to it through anger at religion as well. Understandable of course given religions horrors but not a sound process.

As to the religious...well they already believe in fairy tales and myths so expecting an honest, straightforward conversation is a long shot from the get go. They have already drawn their conclusion and all argumentation is just a attempt to rationalize that conclusion. This of course is the exact wrong way to come to conclusions.

My own impressions on the link between philosophy and so-called mental illness (depression, suicide, or worse) is that it (the connection between the two) is, inter alia, about how emotionally invested we are in a particular philosophy. At a minimum, becoming involved at the level of feelings with a certain philosophical theory/hypothesis makes one susceptible to all kinds of mental ailments from anger & frustration towards those who hold an opposing view (e.g. theists vs atheists) to total insanity/inanity. — TheMadFool

That doesn’t answer my question. How are you able to tell the difference between philosophy as a cause of those things (anger and frustration to insanity) and other pre-existing conditions (like certain personality types/traits for example) that cause those things?

You have a theory about philosophy as a cause but you haven’t at all demonstrated that it is.

:lol:

Right and breathing kills because every dead person did breathing.
Buddha obviously had some sort of eating disorder I bet that’s what killed him.

As you can see, there are certain areas in philosophy (Nihilism, Absurdism) that have known negative effects on our mental well-being and that, in my humble opinion, if not counteracted with an opposing positive force, this force either itself another philosophical perspective or, as in most cases, Prozac, could lead to matters spiralling out of control until the inevitable happens...suicide. — TheMadFool

How did you determine philosophy of any kind leads to suicide? How have you determined that any philosophy leads to spiralling out of control?

To summarize, in the simplest sense, should books on philosophy carry a statutory warning like cigarette packets do: SMOKING PHILOSOPHY KILLS? — TheMadFool

No, because there is no evidence that philosophy kills. At all.
If you want to lay some instances of mental illness at the feet of philosophy you have to be able to show how you can tell the difference between the philosophical cause and a pre-existing mental illness. How would you be able to tell when it was the philosophy doing it?

I know the basic question has been asked many time and in different ways but what I would like to hear and discuss from others the why of religion or more exactly why do humans have the belief that there is some entity or entities outside of their own species that have influence and determination of their being something after the physical death of a human. — David S

Religion is mankind’s first attempt to explain the world around them, born of fear of the unknown. Fear of death is at the foundation of religion and from that fear comes a need for comfort.
So, fear and comfort.

Indeed, and some religions criticize believers who obey religious laws out of fear of punishment or out of hope for a reward. — baker

A red herring I think. These religions that make such criticisms simply fail to recognize that fear of punishment and hope of reward are the basis for their beliefs as well.

Yeah, completely agree. It’s funny how once a drug epidemic started affecting mostly white suburban and rural kids they changed their tune. Yet with the crack epidemic all anyone wanted to do was increase policing, especially in predominantly black neighborhoods. I’m willing to remain open minded about the intent behind these efforts, maybe it’s coincidental, I don’t really know. But it certainly sends the message that we, as a country, care more about white people than other minorities. — Pinprick

Or they care more about a people with money than those without. The crack epidemic was in poor black neighbourhoods, and suburbs are generally doing much better financially.

That said, when it comes to drugs, or laws in general, what I look for first is the justification for prohibiting that act. If that appears reasonable, then I look at whether or not that justification is applied consistently. The justification for banning drugs seems to be because they’re harmful and addictive, at least that’s the primary justification as I see it. That’s true enough, but if all harmful and addictive things should be banned, then McDonald’s should have been shut down a long time ago. So I think the best solution is to try our best to allow each other the liberty to make our own decisions when those decisions only affect ourselves. — Pinprick

Well the research into drugs and drug addiction is showing that it’s less about the drug and more about the person. Trauma is what leads to addiction, not drugs. Everyone who has had surgery has been given opioids yet rarely do people come out of these surgeries craving more. This is because of the setting and reason for taking the drug...if your trying to fill a hole with drugs that’s when you’re going to face addiction.
That’s one of the reasons legalizing drugs is a good thing, that frees us to learn more about them. That’s what we do with all drugs already except the ones arbitrarily deemed dangerous.

Very well put sir.
If you only do the right thing because you are commanded to you are not acting morally, you are acting the slave.

I don’t know why this question has gotten 13 pages of mileage.
Asking if atheists hope there is no god is like asking if atheists like vanilla ice cream. They may or may not, as like their taste in ice cream whether or not they hope god doesn’t exist will vary with each individual.
Hoping whether god exists or not isn’t definitive of atheism, what’s definitive of atheism is whether or not you believe there is a god and that’s it.
Some atheists might like the idea of god bit just are not convinced there actually is one. Other atheists are anti-theists and reject that there being a god is a good thing.

Just asking this question displays an ignorance of what atheism is.

How about a method? — ssu

Wouldn’t the method be the tool?

Well that’s another topic but caring doesn’t seem the sort of thing you need a good argument for. You either care or you don’t, and whether or not you should care about something has no bearing on if you actually do.

Obviously I'm not just talking about what I care about in an emotional sense. This is a philosophy forum, I'm asking how to address the problem from the perspective of moral philosophy. — Echarmion

Right, and if the survival of humanity isn’t important to your moral philosophy then my argument wouldn’t apply. I’m not knocking that perspective I’m just conceding that my argument requires that you care about humanities survival.

The difference to me is that I'm already alive and I want to keep being alive. This doesn't apply in the same way to potential future generations. And it's not just about having or not having future generations. It's about whether or not the advantages to actual people outweigh the drawbacks for potential people. — Echarmion

I’m not sure how to respond to that. I’m not really concerned with future generations or drawbacks for potential people I was talking about survival of the species.
Survival of the species is good, science is bad because it will ensure our species will not survive.

Does it? This is a serious question. Why do we care about the ultimate survival of humanity? For one, as long as we don't figure out a way to get around the 2nd law of thermodynamics, total destruction will happen anyways. For another, future humans aren't actual people. They're potentials. Their moral standing seems questionable. How is it to be measured? — Echarmion

Sure, if you don’t care about the survival of humanity then science isn’t bad according to my argument.
Also, just because total destruction will happen anyways in billions of years doesn’t mean we should not care about being destroyed now. That’s fallacious, like saying there is no point to living because you eventually die.

And then the question is, what's the price we're willing to pay for that delay? You're calling it a grace period, but it means real, tangible benefits for a lot of real people? How do we even begin to weigh these against future risks? — Echarmion

Same way we do with all future risk assessment. In this case we know that science is the tasty poison that will eventually kill us. So we weigh the benefits against total destruction. Total destruction trumps those benefits and shows us that science is bad.

Science is a good thing — Banno

Science is not good. Science and technology advance much faster than does our process of evolution. (Biologically and sociologically) Inevitably science will advance faster than we can adapt to it. An example would be the way science has effected the way we communicate...science/tech has greatly changed the way we do it. Socially and biologically we aren’t adapted to it. That’s why it (social media especially) has such a detrimental on our mental health and well being.
Because science will always evolve faster than our societies, our biology and our understanding of science it will inevitably cause conflict and destruction when it interacts with human biology/society, science is NOT good. There will be a grace period where we enjoy it’s benefits, especially the siren call of medical technology, but the science will advance beyond our societies and biology quickly and with exponentially increasing speed until it destroys us.
It will always evolve past our ability to understand and utilize it. Some examples of what I mean:
-We invent nuclear weapons before we figured out how to get along.
-we make it easier to soapbox and spread (mis) information before we have adapted socially enough to do it responsibly.
-we invent ways to cross vast distances quickly but lack the evolution of culture/foreign policy to do that without destroying the cultures and the places we land.

You can even see where science cusses internal problems within science. The cross vast distances point illustrates this...we had the science to get across the ocean but not the science to stop the spread of disease that wiped out 90% of the native population.
So not only is science bad as it interacts with other things it also results in disaster entirely within its own paradigm.

Science is bad because we can never use it properly (it advances faster than our ability to use it properly does) and will inevitably lead to the destruction of all humans. It only seems like science is good because we are enjoying the benefits that will inevitable turn to poison and kill us.
I’ll end with an analogy:
Science to humans is like chocolate to the dog. It’s so tasty and delicious until the dog dies from it. The sweet taste of chocolate disguising it’s poisonous nature.

Because people are discovering that most of what they’ve told about drugs and drug addiction is a bunch of bullshit.

A trans man is a person who was assigned female at birth and later identifies as/transitions to being a man. Did you mean to be referring to trans women (those who are assigned male at birth and later identify as/transition to being a woman)? — Michael

Yes, thank you. I meant a trans woman.

But on the topic of trans men, should they compete in women's or men's sports? — Michael

Not sure, there are complications either way, that’s why I thought an open league of some kind might work.
I’ve heard some people suggest transitioning to no leagues and no restrictions on performance enhancements. A free for all. Not sure that works either.
To me the answers to this question are not nearly as obvious as the trans woman competing against biological women.

This is true. According to this study it takes at least two years of hormone therapy for transgender women to match cisgender women in push ups and sit ups, although they still have an advantage in the 1.5 mile run. — Michael

Right but we are talking competitive sports. General athletics as opposed to a very specific physical activity as you’ve referenced. For combat sport bone density and structure are important and hormone treatments only reduce those things so far. A biological woman might outdo a trans woman at push ups, sit ups and even the run but still be at an unfair advantage at specific sports.
But anyway, eventually the hormone treatments will be so good none of this would be an issue. The treatments will keep getting g better till the differences are no longer significant.

Using the study above you'll see that trans men have a significant advantage over trans women. So should there be both a transgender men's league and a transgender women's league? Perhaps also an intersex league for those with ambiguous genitalia/other sex chromosome disorders? — Michael

There is no link to the study. Maybe two leagues sure.
Genitalia and most chromosome disorders do not confer advantages or disadvantages of performance as far as I know, so none issue.

Do you have examples? I've found two: Mary Gregory in powerlifting (after just a year of hormone therapy) and Veronica Ivy in track cycling. — Michael

A few have been mentioned, but no I don’t have references on hand. I found them pretty easily when I searched though.
You can also compare records to get data on this as well. I’ve read articles (which in the news media of today is always to be taken with a grain of salt) that say high school boys do as good or better than biological women pro level athletes. That’s telling as well.

Well said!

:lol:

That was pretty entertaining.

If someone won't show the due nuance-fu to say something like: "Going through the puberty associated with male natal sex might render an unfair advantage to trans women in sport" vs "trans women shouldn't be allowed in women's divisions because they're not real women", then I don't see why I should interpret something which is indistinguishable from transphobia with good intent. — fdrake

I can’t see where anyone said that, or made that argument. Is lack of nuance bigotry? Again, doesn’t intention matter? It doesn’t seem like it’s that difficult to ask some probing questions before determining whether someone is a bigot or not. Maybe if it’s so so easy for phrasing to be indistinguishable from transphobia there is a problem with how loosely you define transphobia?

I can't chart out necessary and sufficient conditions, or contexts, for phrases to be prejudicial for you. A rule of thumb might be - does the post deny that trans women are women or rely upon that in the argument? — fdrake

Well it gets really important for you to chart things out a bit when “lack of nuance” and poor phrasing will get someone banned.
I mean...you do realize the irony of moderating someone for lack of nuance while explicitly refusing to use nuance in determining whether or not they are transphobic, right?
I’m not trying to be difficult but that’s a bit rich.

I will be much more suspicious of claims that don't articulate the issue precisely, if you're going to make a hot take which I can't easily distinguish from transphobia - and that's a low bar - expect it to be deleted. If you want to have this kind of discussion, get your nuance on. — fdrake

Ya that’s not a very nuanced approach, I don’t think it’s that low a bar if what’s been said so far qualifies. I haven’t detected any transphobia, have you? (Again, not a snide comment)
At least it’s deleted comments, I thought you were about to drop the ban hammer.
Thanks for responding, I do appreciate your efforts.

Your views are the ones that matter to my inquiry because you are the one who will decide which such distinctions will result in being banned.

Ok, so what does it mean to say that? If someone is trying to make a distinction between biological women and trans men/women it can be semantically confusing, Calling the biological woman a “real” woman is one way of doing that. I understand that a transphobic person would use that term in a derogatory sense but surely intention matters here?

Well there are already well watched sports that feature mediocre athletes (compared to the top ones) right? Different divisions get different viewerships with the most elite athletes getting the most viewership. I’m not sure why it would be different with a new open league or trans league. Friends, family etc...all the people that fill the bleachers at non-trans, non-top pro sports games.

Are we allowed to talk about what it means to say “trans women are not real women”?
Not being snide.

Every once in a while you need to be reminded not to bother addressing me. I have nothing to say to you, I consider you a bad actor (dishonest and foolish) with whom it is pointless to engage. Stop wasting your time.

It came from women athletes supportive of women's sports trying to find a compromise. I don't see a political agenda beyond trying to figure out the best thing to do. — T Clark

Trying to find a compromise IS a political agenda in this case. They are trying to defend their sports from the total compromise of fairness and integrity. If it wasn’t political then they would just keep things the way they are and trans men wouldn’t be competing with women. It’s only because they are responding to a political agenda that they need to compromise in the first place. Know what I mean? The best thing to do would be to keep trans men out, and only by indulging political pressure would you consider not doing that.
If you still have doubts and don’t have the energy for a deep dive then just look at combat sports and what’s been going on there with trans athletes. Mediocre male league fighters become champions in the women’s league. It would be a joke except it’s horrifying to watch a trans male beat the shit out of a woman like a domestic abuse victim. Like I said (not directed at you but in general btw) if you disagree that trans men have a huge physical advantage then you’ve lost your mind and need to rethink.
One day science may help change that when the natural biology can truly be be evened out with treatments but we aren’t there yet and as far as I can tell the research has more political basis than science.

“It appears that there is a possible compromise, whether or not this is exactly the one.“

I’m not so sure there is a rational compromise for the reasons stated above...what did you think of the idea of a trans league?

You have to look closer at that research. I understand they are trying to make policy but a year of hormone therapy doesn’t even the playing field by a long shot.
The data just doesn’t support that research, it’s politically driven research.
What makes sense to me would be a trans league, or an open league of some kind.

Right?! She is clueless on trans, ignorant. You just have to listen to one of the god awful interviews celebrating her to realize it’s more about celebrity, spotlight and attention seeking than anything else.

Well Caitlyn Jenner is a narcissistic meathead, not sure why anyone would want to listen to her regardless of topic. She would be an authority on winning gold medals and being a champion perhaps but trans issues? No.

I’m got a better question, why would you need to be a gold medalist in order to be an “authority” on whether or not trans men should compete in women leagues?
Anyone not blinded by ideology can see the problem. All you have to do is look at how badly women’s world records are being shattered every time a trans male competes in women’s leagues of any and all sports. All you have to do is talk to some of these women who have worked their whole lives to achieve peek performance only to have less skilled and less dedicated trans men come in and use their huge physical advantage to take a dump on the women’s sport/league and every woman in it. All you need to do is look at the numbers...mediocre competitors become champions when they switch to a woman’s league.

If a trans male actually cares about women then they should stay out of the women’s leagues. To do otherwise is an affront.
If you think biological males do not have a tremendous physical advantage that compromises a women’s sport and any integrity or honour of the women in that sport then I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve lost your fucking mind. Time to reevaluate.

Exactly. We can't exclude the possibility on logical or philosophical grounds. — Apollodorus

Yes, it would be overreaching to say it wasn’t at least possible.

I never said "always". I said "denial is often a fear reaction". That's an established psychological fact. — Apollodorus

I’m not saying you did, I intended only to clarify. I don’t know how often denial is a fear reaction compared to other sources of denial but yes I think denial and fear are psychologically linked.

We agree on these two points. I’ll wait for you to respond to the rest of what I said.

Yes, but as far as I am aware, denial is often a fear reaction. It is a function of the defense mechanism that seeks to protect the ego from things that the individual cannot cope with or thinks it cannot cope with. — Apollodorus

Denial is not always a fear reaction, so atheism is not always a fear reaction. So associating fear based denial with atheism is fallacious.

It may well be that some atheists reject the idea of God on “rational” grounds. But not all people are rational, many are emotional and react emotionally to ideas and other things. — Apollodorus

Sure, you would have to ask the person what the reasons for their atheism. If you didn’t believe them and want to deny what they say and posit fear based denial as their reason then you would have to demonstrate that to be the case. (And no, the fact that it is possible does not demonstrate this).

I understand what your personal opinion is, but is there any scientific reason to exclude the possibility of that denial being rooted in fear, anxiety, etc. when those emotions often result in denial? — Apollodorus

There is no “scientific” reason to exclude the possibility, but only the possibility. All we could say is that that is one possibility until we get more information to conclude one possibility over the others.

We are not. Fallibilism is built into the very idea and method of science. So if your thesis is that science is just like religion because both are dogmatic, then you are missing the mark. And I don't think it's fair to characterize religion as essentially dogmatic either. At least in some religious practices there is a place for searching, doubt, dispute and progress. — SophistiCat

Well said but I wondered how you are defining religion there. All religions reference a higher power, if not an outright god then at least some form of enlightenment. I would say that is essential to religion (higher beings, higher realms of existence or states of being). I think that by the nature of that belief itself there is inherent dogmatism so even if at lower tiers there is room for searching, doubt etc there is still the surrender to this higher power and its dogma.

I didn't ask you to agree with any such assumption. I posited that in a situation where this is the case, then going "this group has worse outcomes, therefore it's being discriminated against somehow" is a viable first approximation. For reference, we can assume the ethnic groups are french and germans, or New York and Chicago citizens. — Echarmion

Sorry I accidentally hit the post button, there was more to my last comment.
Anyway, worse outcomes=discrimination needs to be backed up with some evidence of discrimination. Sometimes that can be demonstrated, and other times it cannot. If it cannot, then we shouldn’t assume discrimination. That seems pretty straightforward to me.

Your point is that different outcomes mapping to, say, ethnic groups is not a sign of a problem, even if we assume there are no fundamental biological differences between the groups? — Echarmion

There are fundamental biological differences among some groups. I don’t recall agreeing to the assumption there isn’t.

My claim is that "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcome" describe different judgements of an outcome. You claim that they describe different methods. — Echarmion

Those are not mutually exclusive, they can describe both can’t they? Again, I don’t much care what you want to call it.

I obviously don't believe that, so I don't believe you can actually describe any method. So I expected you to not do that, and instead claim that you cannot do so in the abstract. So now I am asking you to do it in the concrete then, though I expect you cannot do that either, because that would prove me wrong, while I think I am right. — Echarmion

It’s generally a good idea to not reach conclusions to questions that haven’t been answered yet, and extra not good to draw conclusions based on questions you haven’t asked yet based on answers you don’t have yet.
Lol, ok, so a game of gotcha it was. Nice to have that confirmed, thanks.
I could use many different examples, but let’s start with something obvious. I want to hire someone to do heavy lifting. I put out the call to whoever in the land can lift the most weight to all demographics. That would be equality of opportunity, everyone gets to try out for the job. All the strongest people from all the demographics show up. If I’m hiring 10 people for the job, it’s going to be men in the top ten position from those demographics because the top ten strongest men are going to be way stronger than the top 10 women. So the demographic for whose doing my heavy lifting job is going to skew to men.
Equality of outcome would be to look at the top 10 strongest and see they are men and then replace a number of men with women so the demographics of the heavy lifting job look more like the demographics of the general population.
There are many such examples, certain demographics skew to certain jobs and career paths. Not just between men and women but between different different cultures, ethnicities, religions and race as well. The degree to which these are factors vary, but that these factors have a statistical trend based on demographics is supported by the data.

I specifically stated "if you believe there are no biological differences". Cultural differences cannot justify different outcomes as every difference can be framed as "cultural" and consequently no comparison would be possible. — Echarmion

Describe the differences in demographics however you like, makes no difference to my point.

That's exactly the answer I expected to get. Ok then, give me one specific case and sketch the different methods. — Echarmion

Why did you ask the question then? And why wouldn’t you just ask for a specific example if that’s what you wanted?
I explained the concept to you, do you not understand it and need an example or are you just asking leading questions so you can play gotcha?