What you shared is very important because it is something I was waiting for. Exactly, what can happen if we pass the buck? Imagine we do so and them there are different criteria. 8 hikers would think it is good to blow up the fat man but the other 8 not. This a dilemma inside the dilemma itself but as you perfectly explained one will do it anyway because at least one of them will give up about morals and them would blow him up.
Another scenario here could be if the losing of time debating if they should or not exploding him can actually kill them because they do not take solutions in extreme context — javi2541997

Its possible none of the people want to kill the fatman and in that case I see no moral violation, except that of the fatman. A moral person would volunteer to die to save the others and if fatman doesn’t then fatman isn’t acting morally.
Losing time to debate is more mismanagement and costly hesitation rather than a moral issue. Ideally the hikers will have spent some time on a philosophy forum discussing moral dilemmas to avoid the consequences of inaction :wink:

I simply hold they cannot morally kill the fat man without his permission. — ernest meyer

I understand that is your position, but it isn’t a morally sound position for the reasons I stated. You state your position but haven’t defended it.

:100:

Well stated sir.

If you choose to defend the fatman, which I take to mean preventing others from using the dynamite, then you are asserting your own morals not only over the morals of the other people but also over their lives. You are defending one persons right to life by violating the right to life of all the other hikers. This doesn’t seem at all different in principal than deciding to use the dynamite.
The only moral option if you truly feel like its morally wrong to use the dynamite is to abstain from the decision, making the decision not to use the dynamite for yourself. Then, if you are truly committed to making the correct moral judgements you would have to struggle with another moral dilemma; whether or not it is morally correct to exploit the dynamite use and exit the cave to save yourself. If you truly prioritise morals over life then you wouldn't exit the cave. If you do not, and instead exploit the immoral (in your view) actions for your own survival then you might as well have used the dynamite in the first place. You end up making the same moral violation anyway except the initial moral violation (using the dynamite) also saves the lives of a bunch of people. The latter moral violation (exploiting the immoral actions of others) only saves yourself. (Since you didn’t actually do anything to save the people, they saved themselves).

So I think in the end the fatman dying is the only morally sound way to do it. The other solutions simply pass the buck, shift the moral burden.

You blow the fat guy up. If he is willing to let so many others die so that he may live then he isn’t the kind of person worth sacrificing so many other lives for. Fat man would either choose to die to save the others or he is a cowardly, selfish person not worth saving.

Surely you realise how weak an explanation “its just how the universe works” is...
How do you know the lessons will save millions? By what metric did you measure the bad and good?
In what way can you even say the lesson has been learned? By who? There are still genocides, still horrors of all the kinds so where exactly are these lessons saving millions?
And again, how do you know it ends up equal?

If you loose your sense, never had past experiences of your reality but maintain your own awareness does reality still exist? — SteveMinjares

It may or not still exist, you would have no way of knowing. The reality you could confirm would be your experience of your own mind which requires no experience or senses to detect.

What role would logic, knowledge, faith and wisdom play to bring meaning? — SteveMinjares

Bring meaning to what?

Sure but opposites existing isn’t the same as “an equal amount of good and bad in everything”.
Even if you want to claim there is some good and some bad in everything, how did you determine that the amounts are equal?
What is the equal amount of good to the bad in the Holocaust for example?
Even if you want to change your claim to just a general one about good and bad existing in a ying/yang sense as opposed to a specific thing like the Holocaust then you still need to explain how you can draw the conclusion that the amounts are equal.

Really? How so?

Totalitarianism is always coming, will always be coming. The herald for its arrival is people thinking it’s not just around the corner, lurking.
We will know it has arrived in full force when what's around the corner is called by another name, disguised as benevolence.

True, though I would call that misinformation rather than ignorance. That there are bad actors trying to keep people ignorant is a whole other can.

I don’t think people are getting more ignorant, I think people seem more ignorant because the breadth of human knowledge is so much greater than an individual can know. Its not that ignorance of things is growing so much as the knowledge of things is growing. It’s the contrast of the individual humans ability to know things vs the breadth of the knowledge humans have breached as a species/civilisation.
Take technology for example...its advancing much faster than people are able to adapt to so there are huge gaps in peoples technological knowledge and expertise. I think other knowledge (facilitated by technology/internet) is like this too. There are so many frontiers of knowledge, so many areas of knowledge that humans seem to know so much less.
Basically human knowledge is leaving the individual behind.

:100:

Right, or any number of other examples. Good point.
Ok so say in Ireland then. You don’t think the hate was useful? I think it helped motivate, helped justify and helped the general fight. You could probably say the same of both sides, that hate had it’s uses.

I always thought that (the war) was more fear based. I agree hatred and fear often show up together or lead to each other...maybe those are two ends of a spectrum.

Hmmm, not sure. Having an active hatred isn’t the same as recognising evil so maybe not. You could just be a good person (recognising Hitler as evil) who doesn’t spend enough energy thinking about Hitler that they could be said to “hate” Hitler.

Was that hate or fear?

I think you’re overthinking it. Whats significant about hate is the reasons for it. Most people have recognise it’s ok or good to hate Hitler. Most people couldn’t care less if you hate the taste of Milk.
It’s the basis of hatred that is significant or not, most of the time.

I’m not trying to win, just asking a question and didn’t see where you really answered it. You avoided directly answering. Also, You don’t find discussing things fun?
Anyway, sure take a good mental note of my name and you can avoid wasting both our time in the future.

:chin: Some people believe science can be applied to the god question and some do not. But certainly, we can apply philosophy to the god question. — Athena

Basic logic and critical thinking, haven’t come across a god concept that passes even that simple test let alone a scientific one.

Now, what boundaries do you think we should set for the god question and why? Or, instead of boundaries, should we expand our understanding of the god question? Does not it begin with a desire to understand all of life? I certainly prefer expanding our understanding of the god question. I absolutely what to avoid the futile argument of if god exists or not because that is so repetitive and boring after several years of the same arguments again and again. — Athena

Well the right answer is always going to be boring and repetitive, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the right answer and make one up instead.
Also, the “does god exist question” isn’t futile. It’s actually really easy to answer. What might be futile is trying to get someone committed to the idea after a lifetime of indoctrination to listen but even that I dont agree with because people reason their way put of that delusion all the time. I couldn't call it futile for those reasons.
Again, you aren’t really answering my question. You want to talk about understanding all life and what that might mean then great but why call that a god question? Just make it the “life” question... that conversation doesn’t require “god” at all but you keep wanting to put “god” in there. Why?

I want new arguments. What is the unified force? — Athena

Is there a unified force? How do you know?

Ok, but I’m not asking why someone might use the term “god”. I’m being more specific, I want to know why you, a person who recognises that the term “god” is being used to describe not the usual characteristics of “god” but to describe something else for which we already have a name for yet instead of using that name still insist on calling it “god”.

I would say the shirt.

A complex series of variable repetitions. The way the thread is not the shirt.

Science isn’t about patterns it’s about repeatability, at least in the context you’re using. That’s an important distinction to your argument. Once you swap out “patterns” for “repeatability” your question doesn’t need to be asked anymore.
It would preclude the part of your argument that depends on 100% certainty as well, as science is concerned only with repeatability not certainty.

Thanks for correct me. :lol: I feel like an idiot for that mistake. Maybe I need to check my medication? — Athena

Lol, no problem.

I understand you want to drop the religious mumbo jumbo and think about god in those other terms, but I’ve never understood why some folks keep the term “god”. Why define god so differently that it no longer resembles the religious god at all? Why not just let go of the label and talk about whatever it is you were trying to redefine god to be? (Like love or mystery or the universe...just talk about love, mystery or the universe! Lol)

Why use the word "god"? To avoid the dead-end conflict of if there is a god or not. I hate that argument because it is the same over and over again. — Athena

I don’t see how that would end the conflict of whether god exists or not. Using the term “god” when what you really mean is the universe or mystery of the universe only confuses the matter. How would it end the conflict?

What do you mean by scientific bias? I don't think research is supposed to be biased? — Athena

“Basis”, not “bias”.

Brilliant.

I’ve reached the limit of my willingness to explain it to you. It’s not remotely a strawman argument I’m making. I suspect you think that because you do not understand the logic of what you are saying so it seems like I’m creating a strawman but unfortunately for your “argument” the premiss and logic I’m using is yours. It’s just that it’s fallacious, as in logically fallacious. You haven’t actually addressed that at all.
Or you just don’t understand what a strawman actually is.

No, his good reasons for believing in “strong AI” are not thats it’s possible. There is an entire branch of science that give good reasons to think AI is possible contrasted by no such scientific field to source for good reasons god exists. All believing in god has is naked possibility, like any number of absurd possibilities I could name. You are making a false equivalence between a possibility (not a good reason to believe anything) and good scientific reasons. The former is all belief in god has going for it and the latter has both but more importantly it has a basis in science and rationality.
You have shown no self contradiction to what you have claimed Dennetts position is because your argument is fallacious...a false equivalence is a fallacy.

It’s fallacious as an argument against a position Dennett holds. You started by quoting Dennett, “good reason” being the two key words. You have not provided a “good reason” to believe...something being possible is not a good reason to believe in it. So your argument in no way refutes what Dennett said. Dennett isnt denying the possibility, he is denying that there are good reasons.

Ok, so you don’t seem to really be saying much at all then. You haven’t presented a “good reason” for believing, just acknowledging a possibility.
A - that is one possibility out of a virtual infinity of possibilities and demonstrates nothing.
B - it doesn’t refute anything you say Dennett claims.

I’m afraid your argument is still fallacious.

It doesn’t follow that because consciousness can be created by humans that human consciousness must be created too.
I can create ice by putting water in the freezer that doesn’t mean ice that I find outside in the winter is also created by someone.
The fact that something can be created doesn’t mean that it can only be created. Your argument is fallacious sir.

Ok, why would we want to call any of those things “god” instead of the names you just used for them? Why not call Logos, “logos”? Also, what you mentioned are a handful of possibilities not scientific definitions for god. That would require a scientific basis for making the connection between those things and god and I don’t see one.

What do you mean exactly? A scientific definition of god looks like what?

Well it depends on what you mean by “like” the universe.
If you mean god as just another name for universe then maybe not awful but still not good because it encourages magical, wishy washy thinking. Just call it the universe.

Well said sir.

Don’t you ever get tired of contributing useless negations? You are neither helpful nor entertaining so just save it.

I think it’s often both. Atheists think that there is no good reasons to think god exists but many also recognise how awful it would be if god actually did exist, especially if various horrifying content of the bible were true as well.
Google Christopher Hitchens on the celestial dictatorship. He explains the answer you are looking for quite well.

Ah, right. I phrased that poorly lol

Sadly not. — bongo fury

What do you mean? To me it’s sadder if it’s being done poorly , that means a bunch of people are out there making mistakes and creating confusion. Also, does that mean you think it’s being done well, in general?