For me, the problem with the God debate is that it requires a definition of ‘God’ that can be agreed upon and then objectively measured/observed. Does this particular definition of God exist - yes or no? It implies that someone ‘knows’ who or what God is. But we don’t, or at least we’re still trying to figure it out. So asking the question of whether God exists or not is unproductive, in my opinion.

The way I’ve been trying to tackle it is to think about all the information we have about ‘God’ as expressions of genuine human experience, without rushing into an evaluation. So, Moses relaying what God apparently told him on the mountain when everyone else only heard thunder probably didn’t happen in the way it was written - but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have an experience which he was motivated (as a human being in time and culture and with human emotions, etc) to describe in this particular way, and then for someone to write it in this particular way.

The question I keep asking is: how do these experiences we associate with ‘God’ relate to each other and to the experiences/understanding/knowledge of the universe that we can verify? What is it about the universe and how humans relate to it that enables these expressions of experience to make sense to those who experienced them? And if I leap to a conclusion based on what information I have, and then encounter those who disagree, I have to exhaust the very high probability that they at least have experiences of the universe that I don’t. Like the blind men and the elephant...

I realise it’s a messy way to approach it, particularly to those who prefer to work systematically or analytically (or alone). It often feels like I’m piecing together a jigsaw puzzle without an image - one that doesn’t have any edge pieces to speak of. I’m not looking for a definition of ‘God’ - I’m looking for an understanding of the universe that is fully inclusive of these experiences we associate with ‘God’ and spirituality, rather than of what anyone claims to ‘know’ about ‘God’.

As far as I’m concerned, it shouldn’t matter whether ‘God’ exists or not. What matters is that people keep referring to experiences of ‘God’ as if the personal and reciprocal nature of such experiences point to the existence of an actual, sentient ‘being’. Like our experience and awareness of ‘time’, it could easily point to our ignorance of the complex relations between all events in the universe, and may effectively ‘disappear’ as an external entity as our awareness develops. I think we need to accept that possibility, frightening though it may seem to people of faith, if we’re going to engage meaningfully in the discussion.

But just as ‘time’ still exists for us in our inner experience of relating to the world, I’m confident that ‘God’ will continue to exist as part of this same inner experience for many of us. And for those of us who approach the discussion from an atheist perspective, accepting the existence of God as a very real part of people’s experience of the world will be as much of a challenge. That’s my take, anyway. Sorry for the long post.

Ok, explain to me why it is foolish to love a plant - as in to do what I can in order to enable that plant to grow, develop and do what it can. Tell me how loving a plant in this way is the same as saying that I ‘love’ a hairstyle.

If you love plants and shoes and your hair style, we are not defining love the same way. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Interesting that you relate to plants in the same way as you do to shoes and hairstyles. I don’t, and I’ve already explained my understanding of love, but this statement indicates that you haven’t taken much notice of that.

I sincerely hope this is not just a feeble attempt to trivialise my argument. That would be disappointing.

Do you really think it’s wasted? Is it wasted to love a plant - to feed and nurture it, give it your time and effort, knowing that it may never show its love for you in return? If what we do is ultimately for our own benefit, how is that love?

Have you raised children? Have you ever spent time preparing a special meal or gift for a two year old, only to have them throw it on the floor or reject it without so much as a thought to how you might feel? I can see how you may think this is ‘wasted love’, but it isn’t really, because love is never wasted when it’s given without needing reciprocity. It only seems that way because we’ve been taught that avoiding pain, humiliation and loss is apparently what we should be striving for. Everything we do must have a kickback, otherwise what’s the point?

Yes. The speed or duration of time is determined by curved spacetime, not entropy.

“the substratum that determines the duration of time is not an independent entity, different from the others that make up the world; it is an aspect of a dynamic field. It jumps, fluctuates, materialises only by interacting, and is not to be found beneath a minimum scale.”

We need to get away from thinking about ‘time’ as a single concept - it appears to be no longer helpful in relation to the current understanding of physics. The variables of time change in respect to each other, and these relations between time duration and the notions of past, present and future are themselves all relative to a moving observer.

Again, you’re referring to romantic love (which in my view is primarily desire, but potentially points us towards love) as if that were the same love as described in the bible. It isn’t the same thing.

When I love someone, it doesn’t matter if they love me in return. When I ‘fall in love’, it does matter. But how I respond to a lack of reciprocity is not to stop loving them, even as I walk away from the romantic relationship.

It seems either:

1) Time causes entropy
2) Entropy causes time

I am of the first persuasion. Time appears to pass the same in low and high entropy environments so I deduce that entropy cannot be the cause of time. — Devans99

This is not how I see it. Time always flows from low to high entropy, and every other basic law of physics is reversible: acknowledging no difference between past and future. It is not so much the cause but the direction of time that is determined only by entropy - but can we say that “time appears to pass” without this direction? I guess you could say I’m of the second persuasion, then.

“All the phenomena that characterise the flowing of time are reduced to a ‘particular’ state in the world’s past, the ‘particularity’ of which may be attributed to the blurring of our perspective.” That is, “my perception of the passage of time depends on the fact that I cannot apprehend the world in all of its minute detail.” This comes from Boltzmann’s work on entropy.

Can’t get something from nothing so something must have existed ‘always’. IE if there was ever a state of nothingness, it would persist to today, so something has permanent existence. It’s not possible to exist permanently in time, so the ‘something’ must be a timeless first cause. — Devans99

What you refute as a ‘state of nothingness’ is more accurately a state of zero entropy - which is also the ‘start’ of time as we are aware of it - but not necessarily the start of spacetime (ie. the Big Bang). I think Carlo Rovelli better explains this in The Order of Time. I’m only applying it to these arguments, as I understand it.

“Entropy [which is the only indication of time in physics] is nothing other than the number of microscopic states that our blurred vision of the world fails to distinguish.”

“We are used to saying ‘this glass is empty’ in order to say that it is full of air” - and the same ignorance applies to the activities occurring in that apparently still and empty space. “The time of physics is, ultimately, the expression of our ignorance of the world.”

Outside of this sense of time is indeterminacy, potentiality - a timeless, formless existence that is frequently dismissed as ‘nothingness’, yet is the underlying ‘cause’ - the origination - of everything that can and does occur in time.

I did not have romantic love in mind but I find it interesting that for romantic love, you would think that reciprocity of desire would not need to be around. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I did say that for romantic love - DESIRE as you more accurately put it - reciprocity is necessary to advance towards romance, sex, marriage, etc., but this is not love as the bible describes it - not love as I understand it.

For love, reciprocity is not necessary, and in fact should neither be expected nor requested. If, by chance, I desire AND truly love someone who does not return one or both, I would continue to love them: to wish them happiness and to do what I can to enable them to do all they can in this world, despite the loss/pain/humiliation I would undoubtedly experience. That would be love in my opinion, and it would have nothing to do with my desire, which may divert my attention but makes no decisions for me, in the end.

Sorry, I didn’t read that as a definition.

Simply said, love is something you send out to another but if not reflected back, it is never a completed love. You cannot have true love alone. Love to be real love takes two. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

You seem to be talking specifically about ‘true love’ as romantic love - an emotion that, if reciprocated, supposedly leads to romance, sex, marriage and ‘happily ever after’. This is not ‘love’ as described in the bible. Yes, love does require action (works and deeds), but not reciprocity.

I love my husband, and he loves me in return, but I know that if something happened that somehow prevented that awareness of reciprocity, I would continue to love him - because I love him for him, not just for me.

I don’t see that this is the same as ‘putting something above yourself’, either. Love in my view is not an emotion that comes and goes, and it’s not a self-deprecating act - it’s an awareness and actualising of potentiality: doing what I am capable of to enable another to do what they are capable of.

In this same way, I strive to love my children, my work colleagues, my siblings (most of the time), and more...

The term ‘first cause’ is unhelpful. As sushi pointed out, there cannot be a first cause that is also timeless. Your understanding of a timeless cause of causality itself is flawed - you’re still thinking about it from inside time.

A timeless cause would have to always be the underlying cause of every action and interaction - not just the initial ‘something from (apparently) nothing’.

So when you say, for instance, that you love your dog, are you really putting your dog above yourself, or are you loving the dog as a possession, a pet and a loyal companion? If your dog suddenly turned on you, would you continue to love it - putting it above yourself - or would you determine that it no longer fulfilled your narrow view of its potential?

Love without reciprocity, works and deeds, according to scriptures and Jesus’ own words, not that a supernatural Jesus ever existed, is not a true love.

All you need to do, to know the truth of that notion; is to look at your own standards of love. You would not love someone who does not return that love, as that is more a stalkers kind of love. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I’m curious as to what is your understanding of ‘a true love’? What do you think it means to love someone?

In my view you can love someone who doesn’t return that love, without being a stalker. I’m thinking perhaps there is a fine line between love understood as recognising and actualising potentiality as a broad concept, and love understood as recognising and actualising a more specific/narrow view of potential.

I feel like it is possible for our core morality to stem from natural selection and adaptive drives. However, if that were really the case, why isn't the dog-eat-dog morality one of our morals? If we are so determined to survive and overpower the strong, why is murder or even just hurting someone not one of our core morals? Why do we feel it is wrong to mess with weaker people? Bullying is exactly that: picking on weaker people, but we, overall as a society, view bullying to be wrong. — Play-doh

We feel it is wrong to ‘mess’ with anyone, but we also feel individually weak ourselves in relation to the universe as a whole, if we’re honest. Bullying is a strategy to make ourselves feel or appear stronger by challenging someone we’re confident we can dominate.

We are not determined to overpower the strong - we’re determined to construct an illusion of strength around ourselves, to overcome the humiliating awareness that individually we’re one of the most vulnerable creatures on the planet. But then, we haven’t really evolved to survive - we’ve evolved to increase awareness, to interconnect and to pursue the overall achievement of the universe.

Our strength lies in valuing the supposedly ‘weak’ - in recognising that people’s strengths aren’t related to their capacity to survive. We can feel that, even if we don’t yet understand why. That’s why we view bullying to be wrong.

We are subject to the laws of physics, but we are not subject to any laws governing evolution. All of our behaviour is rather subject to awareness.

We behave similarly to lower-order animals only when we deny awareness - both of the universe beyond our own existence and of the overall value of interactions in the success of that universe - when we focus only on the value of those interactions for our sense of ‘self’. Other ‘higher order’ animals with self awareness behave in a similar way, and then also exhibit altruism and advanced social behaviour when they have nothing to fear.

I see morality as an effort to broaden our awareness of value beyond ‘selfish value’. Selfish value informs and motivates internal processes of the organism lacking awareness of the universe, and amounts to a basic instinct towards the survival and benefit of the organism and/or its genetic code. Our awareness of this value in conflict with a more universal value that effectively renders humanity fragile, gives rise to self awareness and fear. Universal value depends on our awareness of the universe and of what would promote overall achievement. What is considered morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends on whether we have the courage to include family, community, ideology, generation, species, animals, life, the planet, etc in our awareness of ‘self’. We tend to draw the morality line where this broadened notion of ‘self’ appears threatened.

So killing is considered morally acceptable (without being necessarily ‘good’) behaviour only when it protects or benefits our community, our nation, our species, etc. Likewise broadening the notion of ‘self’ to include nation or ideology enables people to see the ‘moral goodness’ of sacrificing their own lives in order to protect it.

Conversely, homosexuality is considered morally ‘bad’ behaviour when it threatens the ideology or the specific notion of family or masculinity with which one has identified. And broadening the notion of ‘self’ to include generations of life beyond our own enables us to recognise the ‘moral goodness’ of environmental action that sacrifices our own comfort, convenience and economic benefit.

We’ve also had the capacity to completely wipe ourselves off the planet for a number of decades now - another opportunity to play the role of God.

While I question your example as a form of cloning (the clone is in the form of sperm to parent another dog - is this just getting around the red tape of cloning as a ‘moral issue’?), I do think in many ways our capacity to clone animals does enable us to play the role of God in some small way - but I don’t think we should prevent advancement because of that. I consider it an opportunity to learn.

When children play at adult roles, they learn about responsibilities, relationships, politics and expectations. When we’re ‘playing the role of God’ we’re also (hopefully) learning some practical lessons as a species, such as the responsible use of power and potential, or the Ancient Greek concept of praos as a balance between the capacity for and application of force. Of course, such practical lessons often come at a cost before we get the message, and some people prefer ignorance.

The capacity to clone a beloved pet is another opportunity to question the commodification of technology in promoting our desire to avoid suffering at any cost. Experiences of pain, loss and humility are the source of life itself. We don’t really prevent loss by trying to avoid loss, and we don’t succeed at living by trying to avoid death. Unfortunately, throwing more money or technology at the ‘problem of suffering’ won’t solve it.

I would agree with most of this. I think we developed the push for survival at a point in our growing awareness when we began defining, quantifying and measuring interactions to determine their value.

We recognised that there was ‘value’ in relation to the organism as distinct from ‘value’ in relation to everything else. For instance, a shark is an impressive creature that inspires awe in many respects - yet an interaction with one is potentially fatal for the organism.

From this awareness of conflicting value we formulated a sense of ‘self’, and began a dialectic with the environment - this sense of ‘other’ - that motivated our actions of fear, violence, domination and oppression.

What allowed us to increase awareness, interconnection and achievement in spite of this was initially religion. By anthropomorphising this increasingly impressive sense of ‘other’, we were able to interact with the environment/god(s) with reverence, wonder, awe and courage, to strive for understanding and knowledge of our surroundings and each other, and potentially develop in wisdom and right judgement. Of course, we didn’t always - our sense of value in relation to the organism/community/ideology/species won out more often than not, unfortunately. But we made progress.

This dialectic eventually split into religion, philosophy and science as we developed an awareness of infinite interaction - a way to understand and connect with the universe well beyond our own brief physical existence. But as reasoning became the dominant way to increase awareness, we retreated back to value-based awareness, and began to glorify survival above all else.

By re-uniting and balancing science, religion and philosophy as methods of increasing awareness, interconnection and achievement, I think we may learn (among other things) that we’ve distorted our awareness of ‘value’ in order to mask our vulnerability, our nakedness. And that it’s not a will to survive, or to maximise individual or even collective wealth, power, independence, fame, autonomy or accolade that ultimately enables ‘success’.

As far as I can tell (so far), I am a collection of complex, interactive processes (chemical and physical) that amount to a feeling, sensing, thinking and remembering/imagining process of ‘being’ that seeks ultimately to increase awareness, interconnection and overall achievement at every level.

All the processes of this organism in interaction with each other and the universe, including but not limited to the brain, are essential to this process of information in and out. But at the end of the day, I am a temporary collection of processes, and it is only the unique wealth and complexity of information I can acquire, process and, more importantly, contribute to the overall achievement of the universe and life in general that matters in the end.

What I do with my life should then amount to maximising awareness, interconnection and overall achievement external to this temporary sense of ‘self’, insofar as I am currently aware of the universe as an ongoing and complex series of processes and interaction in spacetime.

Any positive contributions I make will amount to my ‘eternal life’, and whatever I hold onto or take with me to the grave is wasted effort.

We’re only unaware of the processing of sensory input because our conscious thinking is concerned with the more informative details of our experience. In most cases, we’re less concerned with what is happening around us because it tends to be fairly predictable, or it enables us to function sufficiently without conscious thinking. That doesn’t mean the conscious mind is on ‘auto-pilot’ - it’s just busy with something else, like replaying memories or imagining possible futures.

Perhaps we can think of the conscious mind as CEO, with the majority of the work carried out by other systems that have been trained or trusted to do so - because it doesn’t really provide us with any vital new information. Many decisions come into our conscious mind not so much as a fait accomplis, but as a formulated plan awaiting executive sign-off. We can trust it’s all been taken care of, we can go back over the data ourselves and make sure, or we can apply new information as it comes in - even in that last fraction of a second. Prediction accuracy in the research shows that the conscious mind can still change the outcome.

When I say ‘informative’, I mean information we don’t already have. We take note of changes in the environment, but this information has usually been assigned as a rule to particular systems to ‘take care of it’. It’s easy enough to train these systems to retain more or less of that sensory information (not the raw data) within reach of our conscious mind, if we want. It requires the time and resources of our conscious mind to put it in place, though.

Suffice to say, I disagree that the research proves your conscious mind is totally passive and does nothing.

As for the Turing machines, I think it’s possible for computer software to eventually trick most humans with an imitation, but how long they can be fooled for depends on how conscious they are in that moment of certain subtle differences in how we respond to experiences, that cannot be replicated.

We may eventually have to train our minds to detect this artificiality, in the same way we’ve learned to detect when an email from the bank is fake. It starts with consciousness.

I run into the problem were the first learn it from, after all life seems pointless in the light of reason alone. Sure people my say we learn it from a deity but some of them (if they were really) don't seem to care about human life. — hachit

Sure, life seems pointless now that the light of reason doesn’t have ‘God’ to dialogue with anymore. But for thousands of years it was perfectly reasonable to insist on our God-given right or purpose to populate the earth and have dominion over its inhabitants. At least, that’s what we convinced ourselves, because the alternative was to accept that human life was never the priority.

Darwin might have taken ‘God’ out of the picture, but he maintained that we were compelled to pursue our own existence as a priority, just like every other animal. This is what evolutionary theory teaches.

But our experience (if we pay careful attention) tells us that the ‘self’ is not the priority. And so the dialectic continues...

Religion is a set of beliefs about spirituality, bringing people together and giving them a sense of community. — Purple Pond

Religion originally served to counteract the painful and humiliating awareness that what we most value in life is not our own physical existence - by projecting that value system onto something other than our sense of ‘self’. The resulting conflict and dialogue has resulted in this modern society that continues to pollute the environment and pursue dominance, independence and power over those outside of our set of beliefs and sense of community.

It is the process of striving to understand this sense of spirituality by bringing people together in community that is ‘natural’, in my opinion. Religion as a fixed or governing set of beliefs/traditions/rules need have nothing to do with it, and may in fact do more harm in modern society than living without religion as such.

So, a sophisticated Turing Human couldn't function simply in terns of executing a program, but we'd have to give such a human the capacity to have experiences?

Explain — Unseen

My daily activities are not restricted to conversations on a computer, for starters - which is, I believe, the limit of the Turing test at this stage. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I’ll admit I’m struggling with information theory, but I think IF you gave a computer system the capacity to process information from experiences in the same elaborately complex, 4-dimensional manner as humans have worked their way up to, you could hypothetically end up with a better example of human potential. In my opinion, we took a wrong turn with the concept of ‘self’ and we’ve been struggling with one hand tied behind our back for millennia.

But that’s a very big ‘IF’. The biggest problem I see is with our capacity for interconnectedness: humans can potentially feel a connection to the universe on a complex cellular or even subatomic level that I’m not convinced can be replicated digitally. That we often dismiss or oppress experiential information gleaned in this manner is beside the point - the dialectic is part of what makes us human.

Having said that, humans ‘function’ at a wildly diverse range of awareness levels every day, and we still call most of them ‘human’. Consciousness is arguably unnecessary for survival of the species at this point, but I would argue that a lack or deficiency of consciousness is threatening continued success for the diversity of life on a global scale, at least.

First I'm not asking for what is right or wrong, rather were do our sense of right and wrong come from. — hachit

An alternative approach:

In my view, we start life with the need to increase awareness, interconnectedness and overall development and achievement.

This alternative path of evolution leads to developing the most detailed picture of a relation to the environment, including what combinations of stimuli (experiences) are preferred - what the various systems of the organism are drawn to. This has lead to recognition of diverse preferences, and then to developing a system of value so that preferences can be arranged into some sort of hierarchy according to what becomes a constructed idea of ‘self’.

The problem is that this ‘self’ has different priorities to the ‘overall’ development and achievement to which all matter is inherently oriented (IMO). This conflict rapidly develops into a battle between the ‘self’ and its environment (or God) for dominance/authority, and our experience of suffering begins.

We are taught that we need to continue our species’ existence - it is NOT inherent, but a fearful denial that fights to maintain ‘self’ as the apparent priority, based on preferences observed within the organism that are determined from a very limited awareness of the universe.

Our morality is a dialectic between what the ‘self’ prefers and what our current awareness of (and interconnection with) the universe informs us about this ‘overall’ development and achievement we should be working towards.

The more we interconnect with other experiences of a similar morality - and attack, deny or oppress instances of diverging morality - the stronger our apparent position. The more we interconnect openly with a diverse morality with a view to increasing awareness, the more our own morality will broaden to reflect a commitment to development and achievement on a more universal scale.

But it comes with experiences of pain, humiliation and loss to the physical, genetic, social, cultural and ideological ‘self’...

If you look at evolutionary theory as a matter of survival value, then no, there is no reason for us to have conscious experiences at all. There is also no reason for us to have soft, sensitive skin or the capacity for abstract thought, either. Or to reproduce sexually, or to be artistic, or any number of capacities that humans and other animals have developed.

But I disagree that ‘survival value’ is the motivating force behind evolution. And it’s not an external Creator Being, either.

We could function as we do without having any experiences whatsoever. — Unseen

That depends what you mean by ‘function as we do’. I’m not sure about you, but there are plenty of my normal daily activities that require me to have experiences.

I'd love it if well-informed nonphilosophers participated along with the philosophers. — Unseen

My current understanding of consciousness is a work in progress (read: crazyism), but it draws from process philosophy and integrated information theory. I’m in the process of trying to formulate it in ways that might eventually make it testable, but I think I’m a long way off, so I’ll just outline the basic idea, and we can go from there...

A rock lacks consciousness as described, however each molecule in that rock has the capacity to receive some information about its environment - even if that environment consists only of other rock molecules - as well as the capacity to respond to that information. If I pick up a rock from the riverbed and hold it in my hand, the molecules on its surface will respond to a change in temperature, causing a change in adjacent molecules, until the entire rock has responded (only not as a rock). If I break that rock with a hammer, each molecule will respond to the vibration of the impact, but certain rock molecules will also ‘experience’ a change in environment, new information, and respond accordingly (oxidation, etc).

Does this mean a rock molecule is conscious? Not in the sense of having experiences, because it could only ever be vaguely aware of a momentary interaction with ‘more’. It has nothing to relate each piece of new information to except the sense of this/here/now that constituted its entire universe. This is what I refer to as one-dimensional awareness. Each interaction is a momentary and unrelated transfer of information from one molecule to the next. Anything non-living has one-dimensional awareness.

Most animals have developed a two-dimensional awareness: they can relate these momentary interactions to each other, and use the information they receive to make sense of their environment in terms of space (in front, behind, above, below, etc) and time, as well as other sense data. This awareness is a matter of distinction - they can prefer certain stimuli based on memory and respond accordingly, but not define or evaluate possibilities at this level. There is no self awareness at this level.

Humans (and higher animals) have gone on to develop a three-dimensional awareness: they can relate these interactions and the wealth of information they offer to each other and to previous scenarios, and determine a sense of ‘value’ in spacetime. They can develop the capacity to define, quantify, measure and evaluate the ‘best’ of possible responses (based on past experiences and detailed sense data) for future reference. Self awareness occurs at this level, but I would argue that this has created certain problems (eg. a flawed evolution theory).

There is a four-dimensional awareness, too. Humans have developed the capacity to relate these detailed interactions to each other, to all their previous experiences, and to the experiences of others as communicated to them through various means. This enables us to make sense of the universe well beyond our own existence in spacetime, to empathise with others, understand our place in history, imagine possible worlds, get creative or suggest an explanation for consciousness.

There may very well be further dimensions...

What is ‘nice’? It’s such a non-word, really. A ‘nice’ guy is a guy who doesn’t behave disrespectfully towards you, who appears to take an interest in who you are as a person. The problem is that this describes behaviour, not intent.

I’m going to put forward my point of view as clearly as I can here.

Back when I was single, I encountered quite a few ‘nice’ guys who turned out to be real jerks, as well as ‘players’ who turned out to be kind and genuinely considerate. The behaviour of ‘nice’ guys in the dating game is always suspect, so I think there is a tendency for women to adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach when faced with someone who acts like your ‘friend’. As for ‘jerks’, we’re at least aware of their intentions going in (for the most part, they’re not fooling us), so there’s no nasty surprise.

It’s the ‘nice’ ones you’ve gotta watch, because their intentions are unclear. Are they being nice because they want to be ‘rewarded’ for it, or are they genuinely kind, gentle and generous? Do their actions match their words and their words match their thinking? This is difficult to work out, and takes time, because experience tells us that boys have a tendency to do or say anything and even employ elaborate, long term strategies and lies to get what they want. Many of these ‘nice’ guys have been acting nice so long, they’ve started to actually believe that this pretence is who they really are.

These guys may genuinely want a long term relationship, but if they’re going to readily employ dishonesty or underhanded tactics to get it, then they can’t be trusted in a relationship. A jerk who is not afraid to be honest up front can be refreshing for a woman who is continually tricked by monsters under the mask of ‘nice’.

My tip for guys chasing a relationship: be honest, be genuine, even if they don’t like what you have to say initially. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Women might chase the illusion, but just as men are happy to enjoy meaningless casual sex until they find the right girl, I think women are happy to enjoy being treated like a princess until they find a ‘real’ man - and they don’t mean macho, they’re actually looking for integrity.

Of course, I’m stereotyping here, and going on my own experiences. Men also tend to reject women on the first impression of her being a ‘bitch’, which is often just her being honest and not trying to be ‘nice’ so you’ll like her more. Men like to chase the illusion, too - probably more so than women, if you ask me.

My perspective is quite different to yours. I was born into Christianity, but consider myself SBNR for the purpose of this discussion. In my work I see young people both born into and exposed to Christianity on a daily basis. The way I see it, there is no decrease in spiritual awareness and thought, but there is a decrease in traditional spiritual practice as such.

Young people get nothing useful from attending traditional church services that they cannot get outside of church. They learn this distinction very clearly as teens. There is no sense of community for them, no deeper understanding of their faith and no sharing of subjective experience to which they can relate in weekly masses at your average church. Why would they bother?

Young people are not really after a coziness from religion, and if they are they won’t find it anymore without suspending rational and independent thought. They’re after relevant answers that they can verify in their own experiences. Church attendance doesn’t offer that anymore - we’re no longer taken in by a sense of reverence for an unquestionable authority.

In my experience, there is a large percentage of the population who are non-practising religious or SBNR - not because they’re after coziness without rules, but because they’re after answers without sacrificing critical thinking. As long as religion fails to offer this in their practices, they will continue to lose people between school age and parenthood. And as long as they measure their faithful by either church attendance or census questions, then the numbers simply won’t add up because these two measures are worlds apart.

The problem as I see it is that we’ve been barking up the wrong tree since we evolved into a three dimensional awareness of value and subsequently of ‘self’. Our observation of the world of animals (and our own fears) told us (mistakenly) that the ultimate aim must be survival. Whether that manifested in the belief that we could find a way to cheat death individually, or the idea that all of evolution is geared ultimately towards survival of the fittest, we’ve been leading ourselves and the rest of the world astray for thousands of years.

Having said that, we have progressed regardless in many respects, while we have been failing devastatingly in others. When we look back on our achievements and success as a species, is it our survival and dominance that we are most proud of? For some, it might appear to be - but only in relation to our initially perceived capacity as individuals. Or are our greatest successes due mainly to our increased awareness of the world, our ability to work together to our diverse strengths and our overall capacity for achievement?

Isn’t it ironic that arguably the most ‘developed’ species on the planet has nothing physically going for it in terms of individual survival or dominance? We have evolved soft, sensitive skin, and a vulnerability that defies the whole concept of ‘survival of the fittest’. But we have evolved an unsurpassed capacity for awareness, communication/interaction and diversity. You can argue that this has come about because these qualities were somehow deemed most advantageous for ‘survival’, but the more I hear these explanations, the more they sound like apologetics. I’m just not buying it anymore.

In my opinion, the whole idea of ‘survival’ as the ultimate evolutionary purpose needs to be re-examined in light of our failures and success so far.

In my opinion, some people ‘see’ the particle, others ‘see’ the wave...

For many who discuss God, I think the term refers to a concept they are making an attempt to explain, insofar as they understand or experience it - recognising that not everyone is likely to experience and therefore articulate this same concept in the same way. For these people, I would imagine written descriptions of ‘God’ are evidence only of subjective experience, including culturally shared experiences, education and other discussions about God. The God they refer to (whether they ‘believe’ or not) is not designed to stand up to logical scrutiny, but to evolve and adjust to their awareness and experiences. It remains a concept that exists regardless, and encompasses their personal response to other descriptions of the same concept.

For others, God refers to something or someone much more concrete and defined, with specific properties that are ‘objectively’ established or stated, and as such are rarely up for discussion. In this respect they are not discussing the same God: neither with the first group nor, I would imagine, with others who discuss God in this way. Whether they accept or reject its existence, they are not seeking any more information about the God they have apparently defined (even if that definition cannot be articulated, either clearly or logically). Any additional information they encounter will be immediately assessed based on whether it contradicts or correlates with their definition.

This is in my experience, anyway.

But how aware are we of what is really going on? And what are we doing about it? When we become aware of something like, for instance, the fact that the coffee we love to drink is ultimately contributing to the oppression or exploitation of entire communities in South America, what does it take for us to improve that situation? The awareness of one person is only the first step, and it’s not a linear process, either. There have been many advances and retreats in different aspects of awareness since Ancient Rome - but the application of them is more complicated.

Utilitarianism seems rational in theory, but fails in practice on a large scale, because everyone has to agree and the more individuals that have to agree, the less likely that’s going to happen. There are many different factions of utilitarianism, each with different strategies for implementing it. Nevertheless, utilitarianism contributes in part to our growing awareness of what’s going on.

Most of us look only at our current era in relation to the span of history, and get frustrated and impatient that we aren’t already advanced enough to fix all the problems we’re aware of. But this era is only a drop in the ocean - we shouldn’t be expecting to fix everything before we die, but to contribute as much as we can to the gradual advance in awareness and compassionate action on a global/universal scale, ensuring that subsequent generations are more woke than our own and have the courage (and support) to do something about it.

Greater awareness, I think, brought us to this state.

What I am trying to say is that our system that we have created still has a lot of room for improvement, in the sense of being inclusive and thinking on a wider scale. In the present world our great minds think about, how do we make more money? Or how can we raise the gross domestic product? Or how do we get more clicks on Instagram? But this shouldn’t be question. Why don’t we think about how the human family can live together in peace, sharing knowledge and thoughts? Imagine we include the brilliance of every human individual and put this together. I see humanity working with nature, as if they were one, I see humanity exploring space, making new discoveries, extending their knowledge. — lucafrei

I feel the same way as this, but I also relate to TS’s question - I think mayhem has always been the general situation, we’re just more aware of it now on a global scale, and of how it all connects together. This, I think, is an improvement. Without this awareness, we wouldn’t WANT to do something about it, to make a change...

You’re taking a statement out of context. I wasn’t talking about extraordinary claims - I was talking about intuition, falling in love, ‘gut’ instinct, etc: the ‘feelings’ that we tentatively accept as part of human experience, yet in a rational discussion we’d probably dismiss them. The scare quotes are there for a reason - ‘psychic phenomena’ was praxis’ term, not mine.

Everything you’ve both said is startlingly familiar to me.

Sometimes I won’t begin to regret my words until hours later, but other times at social gatherings I get that moment of self-awareness in the middle of a conversation, ‘why am I even saying this?’ So I just have to stop talking or let the conversation end naturally and regroup.

I am also quite content to be silent all night, but at other times I have sometimes regretted not coming forward with a heartfelt word or two for someone who I realised afterwards probably would have appreciated it. It takes me too long to formulate the ‘right words’, and the moment is missed.

I think it highlights, for me, the incohesiveness of what we call the ‘self’ or ‘consciousness’.

As the title of this OP says: What can't you philosophize about? Is there something so mundane that there simply no application for philosophy? — Purple Pond

There are plenty of things that are not philosophy, but that wasn’t the question. You can philosophise about science, but science is not philosophy, nor is it a branch of philosophy. Science requires a certain amount of philosophising as a rule, but like baseball, there’s not much point in philosophising about it unless at some point you act on it: test the theory, apply it to a ‘controlled’ sample of subjective experiences and look for the holes, errors and inconsistencies.

I think the only things you can’t philosophise about are whatever you would consider to be a sure certainty in life. If you have no questions about it, or would rather not know what you don’t know, then there is no way for you to apply philosophy to it.

Of course, there are many of us here who choose to just keep philosophising, almost as a reason not to act - like we’ve taken the structure apart to explore how it all works, but lost interest in putting it back together and getting it working again.

And there are others who’d rather just drive the car until a red light comes up on the dash, and then take it to a mechanic...

I keep going back and forth on this one, to be honest. There is a necessary moral burden, but I’m not convinced that this burden would always be greater in allowing two people to die instead of one.

If I were responsible for the lever - and therefore also the direction of the train, then I would switch the train to Track B. I don’t put much stock in % chance of living a ‘bad’ life and killing someone - all this does is convert it to a maths problem, and distance it even further from real life. This is not a moral dilemma.

But if I were a passerby who realised that I could reach the lever in time, then I wouldn’t switch tracks, because in all honesty, this would involve me first choosing to accept moral responsibility for the actions of the train in killing before choosing which track. I’m not going to voluntarily do that. If I choose inaction and the train continues on and kills two people, that is not a greater burden for me to bear than my actively directing the train to kill a different person instead. I am not to blame for the train’s actions - it does not automatically become my responsibility to act when there is no ‘good’ choice to be made. I imagine I will continue to wonder if I did the right thing, whatever I decide. But I think I would struggle more to sleep at night after taking conscious, voluntary action that was directly responsible for an individual’s death, than if I was to regret inaction. Enabling two others to live is not going to make up for that, in my opinion.

The logical choice certainly sounds better (more rational/sensible) in hypothetical discussions like these, but then we don’t have to experience the whole gruesome event and have it play out in our memories and nightmares when rational thought is asleep.

I don’t think it’s a matter of protecting my own sense of morality, either. I don’t believe anyone will succeed in preventing suffering, but I can succeed in not causing it by my thoughts, words or actions.

I guess I figure there’s only so much I can do and still be true to myself. But hey, if you’re gonna put me in charge, that’s what you get...

And I doubt the decision would ever be completely in my hands, no matter how you try to force or contrive the situation. I don’t think that’s how the world works - and I get that it’s only a thought experiment - but the minute anyone besides me finds out what’s about to go down, people will have their own opinions on what should be done. They certainly wouldn’t leave it up to one person to decide for them, no matter who they are.

I’ve been attempting to answer this in the spirit of the inquiry, but I keep coming up against some issues.

My first reaction was ‘here’s a perfectly good reason why I would never be world leader’. The responsibility for selecting individual lives to end in order to continue humanity as a whole is not something I would even come close to accepting. My reluctance to lead or to make permanent decisions for others is a character trait I have long ago come to terms with, especially as a parent and in my career. Even if, for whatever highly improbable reason, I found myself in the position of being the world leader, it’s not a decision I would take on alone. This is a decision that must be made for humanity as a whole, and therefore by humanity as a whole.

Having said that, my decision has become this:

I would call for volunteers, but would ensure their names be forever acknowledged and recorded for posterity, and their family (or nominated beneficiary) would receive a significant financial benefit. Whatever dollar amount would be a small price to pay for the continuation of humanity (I would assume that as a singular world leader, I could command quite a sum). The number of volunteers would be updated live, so that those considering whether or not they would volunteer would be complicit in the knowledge that if the 1 billion isn’t reached in time, they will all die anyway. And all of it would be made public, streamed live, whatever it takes so that all of humanity is aware of the significance of this act. And, of course, I would be the first to add my name to the list.

The only leadership I could offer in this situation is to have faith in the ultimate altruism of humanity, because otherwise would we really be worth saving?

This was probably not what you were chasing, but every other thought led to inaction for me.

I would say I believe in the literary Jesus...
— Possibility

We can chat more when you recognize what you said in what I quoted, while denying that you wrote that you believe in a literal Jesus. If you do not have the couth to recant, on a spelling or grammar error, we have nothing to say to each other. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I give up.

I would think the ‘good’ of a promise is contingent upon integrity as always morally good, rather than adherence to correct promise-making procedure.

Just a thought...carry on...