some of Johnson's recent moves have been commendable — Wayfarer

No. His moves are always and solely directed towards his own image and his own status.

Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. — Hannah Arendt

What is the point of inventing distasteful and unlikely dogmatic theologies, and then tut tutting at them?

Would you not be better employed trying to think of ways that life can be meaningful and worth the living?

When did the idea that people are obligated to discuss religion and politics to every troll become the rule.
— Hanover

It depends on the person, I see myself strong enough to speak freely and, most important, to entertains ANY ideas freely. For everybody, of course, it is different. — M777

Clearly not, you feel like folks are trolling you, and you're trying to ignore them. And then you complain that the man in the street treats you the same way.

Excellent! Try not to tense up.

↪unenlightened No, I certainly don't support the gender-theory or any of such movements. — M777

But you want to silence me, and you want to silence @Streetlight.

Are you one of them bullies you were talking about?

Well, since you ask so politely, a woman is an organic penis sheath. As every schoolboy imagines.

How? They cannot have another no confidence vote for a year. They knew this when they voted today; they chose who will lead them into the next election. — karl stone

They can change the rules, or push him under a bus; or 'exert some pressure', as they did with Thatcher and with May. I don't know how it works, bribery, blackmail, brainwashing?

Johnson won 60/40 - near enough; and now he's safe for the next 12 months. — karl stone

In theory. In practice, he's an election liability and the Tories are likely to find a way to get rid before the next election, which means in the next year. There is no way they want to get to election year with a new no-confidence vote looming.

Bring back monarchy, at least there's a chance of getting a decent leader.

The killer for Johnson is that Brexit is unravelling. It could only have worked for Ireland if we had basically a free trade deal with the EU, that May negotiated, and that's what Boris was brought in to prevent. Unfortunately, the other alternatives turn out to be either a trade war with Europe or a return to civil war in Ireland, or both.

It's rare for a conservative leader to actually lose a vote of confidence, but for most not winning by a large margin is enough to make them resign fairly quickly. However, Boris is another matter. I have even seen the suggestion that if he scrapes a win, he might call a snap election and lose all his detractors their seats, in a political mutual assured destruction gesture - Après moi, le déluge. The is very unlikely, but an unedifying attempt to cling to power is quite on the cards. There are a couple of by-elections coming up that he is set to lose too, and that will be concentrating minds, so it is just possible that he will actually lose the confidence vote outright. (This is an internal party vote not a full government vote in which the other parties also get to vote.)

In your nature/man/God division, the above distinguishes between nature and man, but not God. — Hanover

One can make the distinction because God. This is the story of the enlightenment. Leave God out of things, and then man is an animal indistinguishable from nature, and morals are 'subjective' aka. fiction. Meaning is lost and all the philosophers thereafter are trying to sort out the mess.

The point here is that we do need to talk about elves and angels if we want to maintain the natural/supernatural distinction. — Hanover

No, not at all. This is the materialist's finest folly, to look for the supernatural in nature and then declare it absent. Man is the image of god in the world, and it is in the judgement, caring, and moral discernment of man that the supernatural is manifested in the world, not some sky god's thunderbolt, operating on tree trunks for the convenience of the traveller. It is the intrusion of moral awareness into material sensitivity that is the unnatural miracle.

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

As I was saying earlier, one does not need to posit elves, angels or miracles. Rather, one posits human subjectivity as a moral dimension that is distinct from nature. This preserves the old meaning of the term "nature" as excluding the man-made, because humans have 'a higher nature'. Which is to say that we are not slaves to our physicality. At which point the miracle is that we can tend to the physical.

When Bankei was preaching at Ryumon temple, a Shinshu priest, who believed in salvation through the repitition of the name of the Buddha of Love, was jealous of his large audience and wanted to debate with him.

Bankei was in the midst of a talk when the priest appeared, but the fellow made such a disturbance that bankei stopped his discourse and asked about the noise.

"The founder of our sect," boasted the priest, "had such miraculous powers that he held a brush in his hand on one bank of the river, his attendant held up a paper on the other bank, and the teacher wrote the holy name of Amida through the air. Can you do such a wonderful thing?"

Bankei replied lightly: "Perhaps your fox can perform that trick, but that is not the manner of Zen. My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink."

https://ashidakim.com/zenkoans/80therealmiracle.html

We are both ok with that, yes? — universeness

Sadly, it seems you are. I can only leave you to your nonsense at this point.

If you see the contents of my posts on this thread as obvious truths then... — universeness

Sadly not. That nonexistents don't exist is fairly obvious, but it is equally obvious that you can refer to them, because you keep doing so.

I am trying to convince others that nonexistents don't exist — universeness

You'll be telling us next that the pope is Catholic and bears shit in the woods. :cool:

Logically, 'nothing,' cannot have a reference to it. — universeness

Why do you keep referring to it?

some species seem to be extremely vulnerable while others seem to be completely invulnerable. — Agent Smith

Appearances can be deceptive. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/deeptime/low_bandwidth.html

It is not possible to refer to nothing. — universeness

Your statement here is performative contradiction. Go and ask your bank what it means to have nothing in your account, and they will explain it to you.

'the supernatural does not exist' or 'god does not exist,' just like anyone else is prone to emotive commentary but I will normally reduce that to something less emotive such as 'well, I am strongly convinced that the supernatural or/and gods don't exist.' If you push further then I will state my 'level of conviction indicator,' as the by now, well-known and emotive, 99.9% — universeness

Yes, that is depressingly normal. So if the supernatural does not exist, it seems to follow that everything is natural. And this means that the term 'natural' does not make a distinction such that some things are natural, and some things are supernatural. And that means that in saying X is natural, one is not saying anything about X. One simply cannot have one half of a distinction and not the other half - left without right, true without false, this is how concepts work, by carving the world up.

Saying 'everything is natural' is equivalent to saying 'everything is', and the term 'natural' adds nothing, because it has no meaning. But you continue to use the term as if you are saying something profound, and as you say, deeply felt. It's not your fault, it's the result of the religious thinking out of which science was born and which it now usurps without much understanding.

If you would like to make a small adjustment that would save the situation at almost no cost to your scientistic philosophy, you simply say that you have no knowledge of the supernatural. This is called 'agnosticism', and allows you to be sceptical of other folk's claims about the supernatural and yet keep the meaning of the natural world coherent. At this point, the supernatural does indeed become 'whereof one cannot speak', but one cannot speak to deny or affirm.

Better to notice the limits of ourselves and be content with some vagueness in our talk, because one cannot fit the world exactly in one's mind. — unenlightened

Another way of putting this is to say that our ideas map the world, but a map is useful only to the extent that it leaves out all the fine details and radically simplifies everything. A road becomes a line, and the abandoned shoe on the verge is ignored.

“Supernatural” means above and beyond the natural world. It’s a valid, internally consistent concept. It’s also an empty, useless concept because we do not know the limits of the natural. — Art48

This seems problematic to me. Consider the term, "Shoreline". I think it is a useful term that designates the extent of an island. Yet it turns out on examination that its length is indeterminate because it is fractal, and it is constantly changing because of the tides. But this makes "island" an empty, useless concept because we do not know the limits. Better to notice the limits of ourselves and be content with some vagueness in our talk, because one cannot fit the world exactly in one's mind.

To deny meaning to "supernatural" is equivalent to claiming that "all is one" (all is natural), which, ironically, is very much the cry of the mystic.

How would you explain the situation we're in? — Agent Smith

The interconnectedness of all thing is called 'ecology'. Diversity produces resilience, because it allows more adaptation to changes in environment. Conversely, a monoculture is unstable because it is vulnerable to change in the form of pathogen, predator, or change in climate.

Humans are such a monoculture and prey to

(flies, roaches, mice, rats, mosquitoes) — Agent Smith

that can exploit us. In looking after ourselves, we also create a paradise for those that prey on us, and in eliminating our competitors for food - caterpillars, slugs, carnivores, etc, we eliminate the competitors of those that exploit us. Cats catch mice, birds eat bugs.

Well, I doubt I can make it any clearer for you, but as a matter of fact, the enlightenment leads to modernism, and modernism to post modernism. That is to say, 'truth' as a natural phenomenon cannot be distinguished from delusion, as a natural phenomenon. You have removed a leg of the tripod on which civilisation has been built, and have not quite noticed that the whole edifice has come tumbling down.

↪unenlightened Not sure what your point is. — Tom Storm

Here's the simplified version: a word has meaning by virtue of referring to something and not referring to other things. Thus if 'supernatural' refers to nothing, 'natural' refers to everything, and both terms lose their meaning. Thus science as 'the study of nature' simply becomes science as 'study'.

@Tom storm and @universeness suffer from enlightenment. It's highly infectious and most people here have it. The ancient regime had a triple concept at its root of God, Man, and Nature. (Or the supernatural, the human, and the natural.) Having a three legged philosophy is always a good idea for stability, and it is easy to see that as soon as the supernatural is eliminated, the distinction between man and nature collapses, and 'natural' becomes nothing but a comfortable advertising term, with as little meaning as supernatural.

Science can do without the term and just study phenomena, but then has to replace indistinguishable 'man and nature' with indistinguishable 'subjective and objective', or indistinguishable 'observer and observation'.

We have discovered in the Disunited Kingdom that the the right of self-determination of "the people" is extremely problematic, for at least 2 reasons. The first is the problem of the border. The border identifies "the people" who then establish the border by declaring their independence. Scotland, or The Donbas, or Crimea, or wherever has to already exist as a defined place in order for "the people" to have a defined limit such that they can decide their fate. It is not sufficient for this border to be clear, it has to be recognised as significant for self-determination by those on each side of it. Thus unenlightened cannot declare the independence of his house and garden, because the fences are not recognised as significant in that particular way, though they are in other ways. The second problem is the right of the other side of the border not to recognise it. It is not altogether clear, for example, that Scotland has the right to self-determination and thence independence, against the wishes of England to remain united.

Personally, I do not see it as my duty to argue for or against a particular renegotiation of the borders with respect to this thread's subject, but I want to at least point to some of the reasons why borders are always disputable, especially in relation to the right to self-determination, which governments claim for themselves by virtue of their existence , but do not necessarily respect the claims of other governments. And if the rights in such matters cannot be determined but are always debatable, then the morality of the disputants in terms of attack and defence is also indeterminate. An agreement is reached or there is a civil or uncivil war, or a separatist movement or a unification movement.

As I live in a dacha outside Londongrad, you can perhaps understand from that article some of my cynicism concerning the morality of supposed democracies.

Institutions mold people. — Moses

The real problem isn't with the Russian people, but with Russian institutions, namely the military culture.
— Moses

We can't say that the Russian people aren't the problem either. — neomac

______________________________________________________

The common good is more like it. One must tolerate a lot of unpleasantness to live in society, but if we spread this unpleasantness around equitably, then it becomes a fair, and hence tolerable, social contract. — Olivier5

You will hear no argument from me to contradict that an equitable society that promotes the common good is both a pleasant place to live and at least in these respects a moral society, though that is sounding a bit socialist. Do you broadly agree with the observations of others quoted above, that there is an intimate entanglement of people and institutions such that they mould the people that create them and are remoulded by the people they create?

Yet in the end, the principle upheld at the Nuremberg trials was that moral responsibility is always on individuals, those who made immoral laws, gave immoral orders, and each of those who obeyed them. there is no collective responsibility, no institutional responsibility, no national responsibility, and thus no morality of nation or government other than the morality of those individuals.

you seem to be talking about the fact that some countries are more pleasant to live in than others, rather than their moral standing.

I have lived and worked in many places, in Africa and Asia, including countries where the state jails or kills folks for their ideas, with total impunity. It takes some getting used to. — Olivier5

Excellent! Perhaps you can share your experience a little. what countries are top of the moral pops? My feeling is that I would prefer a wealthy country to a poor one, a stable one to an unstable one, a well organised one to a badly organised one, a peaceful one to a violent, and so on. and I feel I know in a general way how to start estimating these things. Do you think of the morality of a country in these terms or in some other way?

To what extent is this judgement based on your own personal experience with different modes or types of governments? Because this strikes me as something a person would say from the safe confine of a First World armchair. — Olivier5

My personal experience of living under governments is entirely First world, and only 2 European countries at that. What is your personal experience that gives you the advantage?

Ate you denying that Russia is presently a ruthless dictatorship, and/or that Ukraine is a democracy? If not, what are you saying? — Olivier5

I am denying that there is a vast moral difference between them on the grounds that I do not see a vast moral difference between governments in general. Power has no morality, but only competence, expediency, and habit. Thus I expect and see evidence of the same corruption, manipulation by oligarchs, and so on whether I am looking at the US, UK, Ukraine, or Russia. Which countries indulge in military adventures abroad at any particular moment is nothing to do with the moral fibre of the country, and everything to do with economic advantage and the possibility of profit, financial or power-wise.

Of course geography and history have a role as well, but I do not see nations foregoing any horror on purely moral grounds, but only on the grounds that they won't be able to get away with it. I am open to persuasion that say, Ukraine preferred to cede some territory rather than enter a long struggle with separatists, or that any supporters of Ukraine have done something noble and disadvantageous. Do you have an example at all?

I am saying though, that there is no moral equivalence between 1) a ruthless militaristic dictatorship and 2) the democracy attacked by 1. — Olivier5

You are saying it, but do not seem to be prepared to back it up or consider comparisons made by others. And it is odd considering that the ruthless militaristic dictatorship and the attacked democracy in this case were, within my lifetime at least, one and the same nation. How is it that all the saints of the USSR lived in the West and all the sinners in the East?

The firing squad will shoot you when the officer says "Fire!", and not until. Arguments about magical thinking will not affect them, but the order will. Humans that suffer the abuse of army training can be 'triggered' by a shouted word to react like a machine. Such manipulative abuse is a commonplace feature of human relations.

Pointing a gun cannot cause someone to hand over the money, but it can make them afraid and decide to obey. Likewise, a charging lion cannot cause a man to run, but... Magical thinking in such cases is not magical at all, but a shorthand for a causal chain that includes a sensitive, responsive, motivated organism. There is no reason to expect complex causal chains to be fully deterministic; even the properties of an inanimate object such as an iron beam cannot be made consistent, as microscopic variations in the material will change the bending and breaking points for example.

this moral cloaca where you cannot even distinguish between an aggressive dictatorship and a defending democracy — Olivier5

It is more history than philosophy which leads some of us there. Tell me more about this moral distinction, that is so clear to you and so imaginary to others. One compares levels of dishonest propaganda, deaths of civilians, abandonment of principles of justice such as torture imprisonment without trial, assassination attempts, etc, etc, and it appears to some of us that the moral high ground is unoccupied by any government. But if you berate folk for even making the comparison and insist that the difference is obvious at the same time, then you cannot expect to convince any sceptic of the righteousness of one cause over another.

Someone might add that it's especially Ukraine that is baring the brunt of the war as the war is fought in Ukraine, not in Russia, and naturally Western financial institutions are anticipating to gain profits from rebuilding Ukraine, not Russia. — ssu

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to make some money.
And all at Alice's expense,
They thought it very funny.

So Alice found her dress all torn
Her body bruised and broken
While Tweedledum cried "Liberty"
From Dee, "Freedom" was spoken.

Examiners just want to test your understanding and methodology, but God wants to test your calculating skill as well.

We can disagree about things without casting moral aspersions at each other or exchanging insults.
— unenlightened

Ah, I see. Such as...

Double down on your stupidity why not?
— unenlightened

your insulting stupidity
— unenlightened — Isaac

Yes. I am not immune from the general atmosphere, and not proud of it, and that is why I withdraw from discussion sometimes. And yet again you are making a conflict where there is no reason to. I'm going to go quiet now, because our conversation is not productive.

Unfortunate then that you're on a public forum whose membership is not limited to those who already agree with you. — Isaac

Not at all. We can disagree about things without casting moral aspersions at each other or exchanging insults. It is irritating that you use my comments to do that, and unnecessary and unproductive. But I will struggle on. You castigate @RogueAI for agreeing with my post, that you claim also to agree with, and have generally wasted a page of comments creating a disagreement out of nothing at all.

Yes, that is exactly what I meant by :

you want to try and make a partisan point of it. — unenlightened

It's really unproductive, serves to diminish the force of the argument I was making, and looks like the finger-pointing attitude it is pointing its finger at. I would like to make a discussion of war that does not mimic its topic, and this does not help me.