If you are going to have one staff per 100 homeless, MI/CD clients, you might as well not bother, even if that one staff is a combination of Florence Nightengale, Mother Teresa, and Wonder Woman. — Bitter Crank

Plus Xaveria Hollander. Don't forget Xaveria.

Shelter living is not what it's all cracked up to be. It's worse than jail. You get stolen of everything you own, and you can be beaten for fun and raped for sex all night long.

So a lot of homeless avoid shelters. It's safer in the streets. That, even when given that you can freeze to death or run over by a run-away streetcar. Not to mention being ushered constantly to go to some other place. And begging is not much fun either, it is a boring job, not much in benefits, and the chicks hate you. Your co-workers will constantly try to backstab you.

I am not even sure if you have to pay any protection money for a good stand to beg, like those pedestrian islands in the divider lines by intersections.

Many in this thread speak of mental illness coupled with drug use.

In Canada, drug addiction, including alcoholism, is classified as a bona fide mental illness.

And if it is coupled with a mental illness of the classic sense, then the condition is called "comorbidity".

You’re too funny. The police and the NSA know it’s me, though. Meta-data and all — Noah Te Stroete

Ah. So you are a metaphysical entity. I always wondered what they would look like in person.

Pleased to meet you.

Declaring you used your real name will start an avalanche of seraches on google, and of course this may or may be one allowable lie that is not a sign of weakness or dubiousness.

You won't need to prove that you are you, but I don't have to believe it, either.

By-the-by: my name, real name, is also God Must Be Atheist. And the profile pic was taken of me back in God school. (I failed, never graduated, after repeating grade 3 five times. I could not master the concept of 3-0=1 properly. Basic god math, if you ask the teachers.)

(-|

I never argue with my wife. She is always right anyway. But it is a better elixir of happiness than anything else imaginable.

Likewise. Especially on a website with our true identities hidden. Being naked for truth is easy and it lifts one's soul up. One place where one can be completely honest and no holds barred when it comes to declaring his or her true values and opinions.

What fool would want to not give his or her true self under circumstances like these, eh?

No, I don’t know him ("him" referring to @alcontali - ed) personally. Only on this site. It’s just my impression. — Noah Te Stroete

Thanks, Noah!

I, on the other hand, got to know @alcontali as a person who puts his or her faith in front of logic; he or she has set beliefs that can't be changed for him or her even when presented by overwhelming evidence; I find such people not logical, and therefore they bug the shit out of me.

This of course does not negate the fact you claim, unknown, that he or she (@alcontali) is good. That may very well be the case, I ain't no judge of that.

May I ask you also something that you could answer me in kind, seeing that I gave full disclosure about my moniker?

Do you personally know @Alcontali? Your asserting that he (@alcontali) is okay, indicates to me that you two are personal acquaintances, if not relatives, or if not family.

A direct and decisive answer would be much appreciated. Thanks.

We all know this thread was started as a complaint against alcontali. You don’t have to be so passive-aggressive. He’s okay. — Noah Te Stroete

no problem.

About my moniker:

We have faith in god, some of us, because his existence is an empirical truth that has not been shown to be valid.

Yet we believe in god.

If god existed and was shown to us that he does, then we would no longer be dependent on belief to accept his existence.

Therefore in our world, god is a concept that requires belief in him.

Those who don't believe in him, or lack faith in him, are called atheists.

Those who have direct knowledge of god are not required to have faith in the existence of god.

Therefore they don't have faith in god; they are knowers that god exists, not believers.

But those who do not have belief in god are atheists.

Therefore those who know god, and therefore lack faith in him, are atheists.

God knows god, so he is an atheist.

000000000000000000

This argument was destroyed by someone earlier, on this site, in a series of forum posts, where my moniker was also in question. He or she said that belief is a form of knowledge. It is not absolute knowledge, but a form of it. Therefore all faith or belief is a form of knowledge as well.

He or she said that if you know something, then you believe it, too. You can't know something and believe its opposite!

Now I have second thoughts.

I don't know if I buy that "believing the opposite" is the same as "lack of belief", but since that was a consensus, that faith is a form of knowledge, I declared that the claim in my moniker was false. I now say that the NECESSITY of belief is missing if you know something for sure. I believe now that my critic then used an equivocation of belief. "Not believing in (something)" is not quite the same as "believing that (something) does not exist". "Not believing in (something)" allows the thing to exist; the other does not.

Therefore god not believing in himself allows his existence. Therefore his knowing he exists allows his not believing in himself.

1. gives a quality to god, assuming god exists at the same time, since it can't have a quality without existence.
2. presupposes that if god does not exist, then its quality does not exist either.
2.1. There is a hidden assumption or premise: that the quality necessarily exists (i.e. that something is the greatest thing imaginable) as that is a concept without a doubt that anyone can entertain the thought of. You can rank all things for greatness; and if greatness is not equal between things, then there must be one that has the greatest amount of greatness.
3. It is impossible for god not to exist.

---------------

The "predicate" is a part of lines in a syllogism. Syllogisms consists of three lines, and they have strict rules of structures.

All Swedes are protestants.
Some Protestants are blonde people.
Therefore some Swedes are blonde people.

This is an invalid inference, but one of the forms of syllogisms. And syllogisms can be valid or invalid in their conclusions.

in the first line, "Swedes" is the subject, and "protestants" is the predicate.
In the second line, "protestants" is the subject, and "blonde people" is the predicate.
In the third line "Swedes" is the subject, and "blonde people" is the predicate.

In each line, the subject can be set to "all", "no", or "some". "Some" means "at least one", and it is a bit confusing, because in English "Some people are smart" presupposes more than one persons to be smart; but in syllogisms "some" strictly means "at least one".

The predicate, however, must be without a qualifier such as "some", "all" or "no".

Furthermore, in classic syllogisms, both the subjects and the predicates MUST be plural nouns. Countable plural nouns.

Thus, "exists" is not a predicate, in syllogistic terms, because it is not a noun in plural form.

-----------------

Since Aristotle, who invented syllogisms, for thousands of years, this was the shape of logic. Aside from the law of non-contradiction and of the excluded middle, the only form of acceptable arguments had been syllogisms.

This is not the case any more.

But I don't know if in Kant's time this was true or not, or if it was Kant that he himself destroyed the "hegemony" of syllogisms as a valid argument in logic.

--------------

To show what I mean:

"Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore Socrates is mortal."

is an invalid syllogism, although logically it is true. In a proper syllogistic form, it should read:

"All men (or beings) like Socrates are men.
All men are mortal beings.
Therefore beings like Socrates are mortal beings."

Likewise, we can transform Kant's Ontological argument into a syllogism:

All things that are the greatest things imaginable, are god-things.
(The second sentence can't be transformed)
Therefore god exists.

Here, we encounter two problems: 1. the argument is NOT in a syllogistic form, yet 2. it is a reasonable and acceptable argument. This could have presented a problem for Kant or his contemporaries; and since this argument exists, I assume that the invention of this ontological argument was the in-road into the new age of logical arguments where syllogistic forms were no longer necessary in an argument.

What then to do about
This Jesus mania
Miracle wonderman
Hero of fools?

No riots, no army,
No fighting, no slogans?
One thing I'll say for him:
Jesus is cool.

--------------

I read this above page of posts, and it turns out, that the men and persons who created Christianity, were just as much inept at creating it as God was in creating the world.

So in a way the Fathers of Christianity were consistent in complying with the scirptures: Man WAS created in the image of god. Both man and God are lousy planners and even worse than that at executing the plans.

Was Jesus born with Original Sin? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Nobody wears a stamp "Born with the original sin" or "born without the original sin" on their forehead or on any other parts of their body.

I think Christians are prepossessessessed by this idea. I am sure I was born without the original sin. I ain't Jesus, but you don't have to be. Just don't believe in the crap, and all of a sudden you are born back for the first time when it happened, not again; AND without the sin.

I prefer to deal with the real world rather than hypotheticals.

If someone has said that they have proven something, but the proof is couched in jargon and convoluted arguments rather than plain and explicit logic and I disagree with the conclusion then I am not going to waste my time finding the flaw(s) in their 'proof'. — A Seagull

I thought you don't like to deal with hypotheticals.... (Tse-hee-hee) (-:

I will however say that it is a person who has participated in this thread, so if everyone in this thread (or at least that person, without yet knowing it's them) is cool with it possibly being them, and (... etc etc) — Pfhorrest

Until we find out whodunnit, we are all suspects.

I can rephrase it: murder is by definition a wrongful killing. You can only quibble over which, if any, killings constitute murder. — Artemis

Would you call the killing of people by a government appointed executioner, whose job is to kill convicts sentenced to the death penalty, murder, or just killing?

If you call it killing, then it is not wrong by an executioner to kill people.

How bout a person sentenced to die by execution, and he or she gets executed, only to be revealed after the fact that he was innocent of the crime he was convicted of and for which he earned the death penalty?

Furthermore, would you call it a murder when an innocent person, removed from any causality of his or her killing, gets killed?

I wouldn't know which is murder and which is killing. Except for the innocent person who gets murdered, and for the convict who gets sentenced to death for his or her crime.

Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon that sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing that holds sway in the essence of modern technology and that it is itself not technological — Pneumenon

This has nothing to do with enframing. Challenge forth is not a verb in English; Standing-reserve is an army term, there is no meaning to this expression in English outside of military use. Enframing is a way of revealing. And the function of that revelation is that it holds sway in the essence of modern technology. (What's the essence of modern technology? one must ask the author.) Then there is a reference by a pronoun (it) that has an undefined antecedent. What does Heidenegger mean? That "it" refers to Enframing, to revealing, to essence, to technology? Without any indication of which of these the "it" refers to, the sentence is meaningless. And no such indication is given.

So there are several meaningless neologisms, several semantic problems, and these render the entire paragraph completely non-sensical.

No, you're just joking around... — Qwex

I've been never more serious than this.

For your self-security? Based on your judgement of my intellect? — Qwex

Ha? No. I just can't stand your posts around here. You are childish, infantile, and have horribly wrong and elementally unintelligent points. It really rubs me the wrong way.

You asked.

You should not take this that I am trying to silence you. You say what you want and what you will. I just answered your question, that's all.

That's not what I meant. We are able judges, but we are not thee judge. — Qwex

It would be a really good idea to say what you mean. But an ability to do so actually requires a certain level of intelligence.

Could this be used as a measure of intelligence?

If I need an intelligent idol, I'll appoint one - do I need one forced upon me? — Qwex

Apparently.

You don't need another human to clarify that you're intelligent; and that process is entirely unintelligent. — Qwex

So you think people are not intelligent enough to measure people's intelligence. That means, that people's intelligence is below the level of their own intelligence.

I think a lot of people are confused by the man-made league of intelligence. — Qwex

Would you say the confusion comes from a lack of enough intelligence?

it's by definition wrong. — Artemis

I suppose the definition is "murder is unjustified killing". This is the definition you used, and I accept it now.

If the qualifier "unjustified" renders the act wrong, then there are lots of acts that we think of as benign or even beneficial, are wrong.

I picked a flower and put it in my lapel. Was this justified? No. Was it wrong? No. Yet your definition renders this to be wrong.

I looked at the sky and took a big breath of air. Was it justified for me to look at the sky? No. Was it wrong to look at the sky? No.

CLEARLY the qualifier "unjustified" in and by itself does not render anything wrong automatically.

Yet you claim that murder is wrong because it is unjustified killing. Killing itself is not wrong; murder is, according to you, because it is unjustified. Yet unjustified does not turn anything from right to wrong.

Therefore I put it to you that murder is not wrong by definition. It may be wrong for other reasons, but not by definition.

It depends on the context. In religious law, it is an axiomatic belief. — alcontali

Whether it's a religious law or a physics experiment to establish the presence or existence of god, it is a philosophical matter. And both types of approaches give a clear, not-so-complex or -difficult, straightforward answer.

This is a demonstration that philosophical questions and problems and ideas and concerns and considerations etc are all very simple. Two, maybe three, four or five, maximum, agents to deal with in the argument. This is easy to keep in mind. Extremely complicated math as support of an incomprehensible or false theory is not going to serve an opposing debater against me.

In the "RED" (for short) example, PFHorrest, I eventually came to the same conclusion as you were trying to show me with logical transformations. I did not believe you, because I could not follow your reasoning. I still can't. Although it turns out your claim was right. But I believe you now; and not because of the "Not-not-everything is something-not-not everything else" type of transformation. I believe you now because I came to the same conclusion as per the law of the excluded middle or whatever that law is called.

You in that debate made an in-road toward my understanding your claim and to agree with you, by saying "every time machine owned by people these days are green" and "every time machine owned by people these days are not green" can only both be true if no person on Earth has a time machine. That was an in-road, because it was intuitive, it made sense, it was something I understood.

Let me put it this way. I used to belong before I was kicked out for misconduct to a society called "International Society for Philosophical Enquiry". Most of my time there was before the Internet. Our mutual club-wide correspondence occurred on a monthly magazine. Some dude published something, and a reader told the Editor about that article: "This makes no sense to me, Sir, but it must have made sense to you, since you published it." This the Editor took to heart, and admitted that he had made a mistake.

It is not good policy to agree to something you are not sure what it means. Much like it's not good policy to sign a legal document that you have no clue what it contains as far as your responsibilities and limitations of rights and benefits go by its wording.

If you are pressed, the worst you ought to allow yourself to do would be to say "This explanation is beyond my comprehension, and therefore I cannot in clear conscience accept it." Let them call you or me stupid; it's better than being a loser.

"Is there a god" is a question about an axiom. — alcontali

No, this is an empirical question, not an axiomatic question. You are on that opinion only because to you god is the alpha and the omega. To me god may be anything, but we don't know anything about it, even that it exists or not; any claim of any quality of a god, including its existence, is a matter of faith without any evidence. In other words, no authority exists on god's qualities, and if someone claims to be one such authority, he or she is badly mistaken or lying through his or her teeth.

Now suppose that Russell, who you probably trust to be a lot better at you than math, claimed that he could mathematically prove, with math too complex to follow, an answer to that "is there a god or not" question, an answer that you're very confident, for other reasons, is the wrong one.

Do you dismiss Russell's incomprehensible argument as obscurantist nonsense, or accept the conclusion of his complex technical argument you're not smart enough to follow just on his word? — Pfhorrest

Yes, I dismiss his math / logic proof.

If it does not make sense to a reasonable mind, then no amount of math or obscure symbolic logic will convince me.

This has already been demonstrated in the "red" example, where only an empty set can satisfy the two manifestations at the same time and in the same respect, "everything is red in this box and everything is non-red in this box".

A simple, intuitive thought is worth to me more than ten pages of stuff I don't understand.

This following an excerpt from Principia Mathematica (PM):
— alcontali — Pfhorrest

I missed that. My apologies.

It came too soon after cis. I was already possed off.

The thing that's being crossed or not is the assignment of gender at birth and present gender identity. Someone who identifies on the same side of the gender spectrum that they were assigned to at birth is cisgender, someone who identifies on the other side of it is transgender. — Pfhorrest

This is clear. Was from the outset after it was explained to me by PFHorrest what PFHorrest thought cis meant.

About Russell: it's math, he is proving math with logic. That is not conceptualizing or conceptualization of philosophical ideas. It is a proof of a highly complex yet only logical system, of math. Failed or not. I don't think the answer to "is there a god" comparable to proving second degree five-unknown sets of differential equations with N degree of freedom.

And to my satisfaction, it was first Russell who answered the "is there a god or not" question. It took two or three easily understood, simple sentences.

PM — alcontali

What's PM?

Again, unnecessary and irritating, vexing fucking fuckhing fucckihhing abbreviations.

Shit this fuck.

I know: post-menstrual.

Preparation Meningitis.

Principle of Mathematics? That would be PoM.

Puckering Asshole (M mistaken for A).

Physically Muscular.

Post Meridian.

Perpetrated Mainstreamism.

I have never. Homophobic, yes. Cisgender? It has come to that?

Trans actually does not mean across from; it means "transiting" or "having transited". Maybe in Latin it means that, but in modern English it does not.

If it meant "across from" then all women would be transgender males and vice versa.

Transpose is an action of removing and placing somewhere else. Again, it's a transition, not simply being across.

Transatlantic means "moving across the Atlantic", not simply "On the other side of the Atlantic".

Transfiguration, ditto.

Transaction, ditto.

ETC.

Cis may mean stationary, then?

What's cis white men? White men with cysts, misspelled? I wonder why you needed to use an obscure abreviation. I hate abreviations w.a.p.

PFHorrest, you never use incomprehensible, obscure abbreviation, so why, how, and when did this cis crop op? I have absolutely no clue what it stands for. And that bugs the shit out of me. A two-second saving of typing the world out you instead banished me into a fury of anger and resentment.

Death to logic I can't understand!

In my opinion to understand philosophical arguments you do not need math or a proof by symbolic logic. It helps, once in a while, but philosophical concepts, the ones I've encountered, are relatively and absolutely simple. The answers to questions are simple. I have yet to encounter a philosophical question or concept that needed an overly complex (beyond say, grade 7 math or grade 9 debate class) explanation or answer.

The questions of philosophy are straightforward and simple; there is no need to convolute them.

If you study Wittgenstein, Kant, Russell, and the other newfangled philosophers, you'll realize what I am talking about. There is no book on philosophy that presents incomprehensible, or hard-to-understand ideas; there are just books that present the ideas in a fashion that is hard to understand.

So PfHorrest, I am on the opinion that if common sense does not make ends meet in a proof or in an argument,then no amount of math or symbolic logic would, either.

When a man uses his feet to do something the hands are supposed to do, it means the hands are severely incapacitated. — TheMadFool

Hey, this is an age-old problem with men. Throughout the ages, we've used our wankolos when we ought to have used our heads.

Same effect.

... Glad you got the joke, Wayfarer.

By-the-by, the ten commandments were carved into stone for Moses in Hebrew or Arameic,when no Hebrew or Arameic writing existed yet. I think a Rosetta stone was attached, with Egyptian hieroglyphs, to explain what was actually written on the tablets in letters that were created several centuries later.

This is precisely the sort of reaction that Greta's parents would like her to provoke. If I have a political statement to make, and I have a child do it in the most controversial manner possible, I can guarantee a backlash. Which then makes my opponnents look like horrible people, attacking a child of all things. — Pneumenon

I love attacking children. They are useless lying, cheating, little bastards with no moral compass. They will sell their mothers down the river for a chocolate bar. They will betray their country for a Pokemon game, and sell their souls to the devil for some candy and a ride in Satanmobil.

I want my tombstone to read, "Here a man who once was a child remembers what it is to be a child."

And then the EU politicians are all tripping over themselves and fawning over her with smiles in their faces while they get castrated by a little girl, because — Hallucinogen

... because there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Greta will be remembered, and people's memories of seeing a particular politician or two with Greta, and a little while later when things have blown over, the politician can rightfully claim with being victorious supporting Greta agaisnt other (evil) politicians.

If I haven't seen it once, i havent' seen it a thousand times. One of the oldest tricks in the book of tricks for politicians to use.

(Incidentally: can anyone tell me who this Greta person is I used to keep hearing about?)

Instead, it is the case that we ought not murder un-gently, and that is perfectly compatible with it being the case that we ought not murder at all. — Pfhorrest

This is a flashback to the empty set being both red and not red (with the blood of the murder victim, presumably.)

So if you ought not to murder, then there is no murder, and if you do the non-murder, then that is compatible with the withheld action of doing the murder cruelly.

But I don't think "do it gently" means hands down "don't do it ungently", unless there is no murder taking place.

You're a one-negation logician, Pfhorrest. (-: