Miracles are, thought of as broadly as possible, suspensions of or violations of known natural laws — TheMadFool

I don't think this is how religious people define them. You seem to have assumed the Humean line on the subject, perhaps unconsciously.

You mean like Christianity? http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/types/christianatheism.shtml
It also has atheists and believers. — anonymous66

This is trying to have one's cake and eat it too. I once identified as such a person but then thought better of it. It unduly waters down the meaning of the word "Christian."

What are the real parents doing, and how old are you?

One thing it's not is that it's not a being that you can communicate with or pray to — stonedthoughtsofnature

Then you didn't find God.

Schopenhauer did not adhere to any religion, but he was a religious man nonetheless. He affirmed the existence of the transcendent through his philosophy. — Agustino

So he doesn't fall into any of the categories you listed?

where negative experiences inflicted must have consent from all individuals (who have working or repairable conscious machinery) affected. — sackoftrout

Well, you're still privileging this thing called "working or repairable conscious machinery," which I don't see the import of with respect to morality. Were it absent, then it's pretty clear that aborting a fetus is to inflict harm on it without its consent. I understand that the concept of inflicting harm may not apply to totally unconscious, inanimate objects like rocks, but a fetus is not a rock, despite not possessing the same cognitive abilities of a healthy human adult. So you need to explain how this presently arbitrary criterion somehow confers moral worth on individuals and when it takes place in an organism's development.

Something is good or right when it is predicted to increase the net positive-negative experiences in the set of all conscious experiences (opposite is true for bad/wrong). Therefore morality, by definition, requires consciousness. — sackoftrout

I disagree with this pre-supposition and so disagree with your argument. It is wrong to murder an unconscious person just as much as a conscious one.

Clearly, not everybody is going to be better off in the afterlife. — lambda

It's not clear, though. The Catholic Church, for example, hasn't definitively declared that anyone is in hell and one is allowed, even encouraged, to pray that all may be saved.

Where would you place Schopenhauer?

I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - the Christian God - and not the God of the philosophers. — Agustino

This sounds like a false distinction to me, depending on how you define these terms.

But hey, why bother, amirite? — Srap Tasmaner

Apparently, you're being sarcastic here, but about what I have no idea.

I'm saying that the Republicans do, and so that they're not just guilty of turning a blind eye to Trump "destroying the republic in full view of everyone" — Michael

To which my retort is, once again, that this is hyperbolic fear-mongering. If both sides do it, but you choose to make lunatic statements like the above when only one side does it, then I can't take you seriously.

No, I mean that every citizen has a reasonable opportunity to vote. So none of the suppression tactics that are designed to practically disenfranchise certain groups of people. — Michael

You'd have to be more specific, of course, but no reasonable person would disagree with this as stated.

Gerrymandering, institutional barriers laid in the way of voters are not new, and not good. If both parties are doing it, then it's worse. — Bitter Crank

This is as old as the hills. It's not going away pretty much ever. To the extent that both parties do it, there is some modicum of balance, but that's the best one can hope for. The sooner one stops expecting politicians to be saints, the better.

As for voter suppression, if memory serves turnout was higher this election in every state in the South except one: North Carolina. Want to guess what the Republican legislature has been up to in North Carolina? There was even a memo from NC GOP bragging about how low black turnout was. Real commitment to democracy there. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know the details, but I know a lot of the criticism of voter ID laws amounts to the soft bigotry of low expectations, e.g. "the black folk can't be expected to have driver's licences," etc.

With all the gerrymandering and voter suppression they're actively trying to destroy any semblance of a legitimate democracy. — Michael

This is a tad hyperbolic and ignores the fact that Democrats attempt to do the same thing. And I don't want to see a "legitimate democracy" if by that you mean a pure, direct democracy. The US was never intended to be that.

James Thurber's short stories, which are hilarious.

Neat!

Paul Boghossian — jkop

I'm not a huge fan of his, but he recently pulled off another delicious Sokal hoax: http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/

Edit: Wrong Boghossian! I'll have to check Paul out now.

I am not aware of any relativists who trouble to claim that all truth is relative. — tim wood

Then they're not relativists....

Further I do not know what truth is. Do you? — tim wood

Ignorance of the truth does not entail its nonexistence.

With respect to relativism itself, it's not whether this is true or that false, but rather the assertion that I'm right (in my beliefs and attitudes, and of course my actions), or that my position is justified (and yours isn't even part the discussion). So the first hurdle to get over, or trap to avoid, is that the refutation of relativism/nihilism is not just a clever - if irrelevant - logic game. — tim wood

I'm not seeing any great difference between asserting that something is true and asserting that one is right. "It is true that I am typing on a keyboard" and "I'm right that I'm typing on a keyboard" are making precisely the same truth claim.

rendering even his claim both meaningless and valueless, he likely would say, "Amen, buy me a beer!" — tim wood

Uh, what? I don't see any flaw you've identified here.

I don't much like either, as I suppose every right-thinking person doesn't. But how simple or difficult is it to conclusively refute them? — tim wood

Pretty simple, actually, for they are self-refuting. The claim that all truth is relative is itself asserted absolutely. The claim that nothing has any meaning or value, if true, must itself have no meaning or value.

that implies freedom to be nothing but a compulsion — TimeLine

Uh, no. I said freedom was the absence of compulsion. This could not be more crucial to understanding what I and Schopenhauer mean by freedom in this context!

I am confused as to how you assume choice is not a compulsion — TimeLine

What does this mean? Are you saying we have no choice but to choose? I can agree with that, and I think Schopenhauer would, too. My point is that one is free to deliberate on a course of action until the cows come home, but that one can only will one definite action at a time, and this with complete necessity.

The intellect is always subservient to the will. — TimeLine

Indeed it is, according to Schopenhauer. But the subservience in question is ontological in nature, in that the intellect is a manifestation of the will. The intellect must still provide motives for the will to act upon in the individual.

You need to remember that you replied to me with a purported objection that I admitted I didn't understand. So why don't you reformulate that objection as clearly and precisely as you can, and I will respond to it. Otherwise, there's nothing more for me to say.

To reiterate, how is your argument relatable to Schopenhauer with whom you have incorrectly associated it with? — TimeLine

I'm sorry, cupcake, but you haven't shown this at all.

And, please, I have no time to waste on a series of superfluous straw-mans; intentionally substituting the argument by pulling focus on something unreasonable and irrelevant undermines your own intelligence. — TimeLine

You're really spoiling for a fight here. Such exaggerated hostility looks feigned to me, I must say, as if you were trying to appear ridiculous.

Arthur Schopenhauer - Essays and Aphorisms — darthbarracuda

You should just read the whole Parerga and Paralipomena.

Conflicting volitions are a common experience, you can't physically stand and sit at the same time but it's perfectly possible to be internally conflicted as to which you prefer. — Sivad

Yes, and that inner conflict is best described as the tension between rival choices, not between rival wills. You only have one will.

So, exactly how does one make a choice? Does it just pop out of nowhere, like a daisy? — TimeLine

Perception, and then thought based on perception, furnishes the material which make up the different options available to choose from.

I think you may have confused what Schopenhauer meant here, that the will is independent, a thing in-itself. Our perception of the external world is merely a representation of this will, but what this representation may be perceived as does not necessarily represent reality as it is, as our instinctual drives can propel us to act independent of reason for instance. — TimeLine

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, and I certainly don't see any objection to what I said.

but it is not entirely absent and suddenly replaced with 'choice' which basically contradicts what Schopenhauer was attempting to convey — TimeLine

What is "it?" Again, I have no idea what you're trying to say.

I find that when people use the phrase "free will," they really mean "free choice." Humans possess the latter, but not the former, and the lack of this clarification tends to muddle a lot of contemporary philosophical debate on the topic. In other words, I am free to choose whether to stand up or to sit down so long as no one and no thing forces me to do one or the other, but I can will only one of these options at a time. I cannot will to stand up and sit down simultaneously. As Schopenhauer says, "man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills." Nor can he will that he wills. Willing is concomitant with being alive and existing.

In this way, "free will" is a nonsensical phrase, akin to "free thought" or "free digestion." So long as one lives, one wills, thinks, digests, etc. Freedom, at least generically, only applies to the absence of compulsion in determining what to decide.

and Thorongil, who, in such circumstances, seem unable to resist an opportunity to stick their oar in, and jump at the chance to criticise moderator action. — Sapientia

Ah yes, the moderator's life. Such a hard lot.

Mod's ways are not our ways.

"We are the Mod. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."

My replies were deleted, too. The mod who did it, if he sees this, will probably just tell us that they were deleted for being off-topic and unproductive. The mods have a low tolerance for sarcasm and getting off topic. It's irritating, but for whatever reason, those things tend to bring out their anal retentiveness.

It is enough to make me question the validity of evolution and his suppositions, among other things — Lone Wolf

I wouldn't go quite that far, but I see your point.

What's the point of studying science and philosophy if everything is meaningless and purposeless? We're just going to die, and recede into a state of stupor as time advances. — Lone Wolf

That is indeed the question!

Still no refutation. Just dime-store psychologizing.

Refutation of what? — Noblosh

My "irrational" and "dogmatic" thinking. Plus, you assumed that I was religious.

Because of their irrational and dogmatic thinking. — Noblosh

Ooh, brilliant refutation. I'm, like, totally devastated.

I largely agree. Most atheists are confirmed optimists and believers in progress, so they view any philosophical or religious tradition that stresses the rottenness of life and the imperfection of human nature as backwards thinking, primitive, and so on. As naturalists, they conceive of salvation on purely materialistic terms. Consider what Richard Dawkins says in the River Out of Eden:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference

But then notice how in a more recent documentary he blinds himself to the logical consequences of these claims and sounds the clarion call of optimism in the last line:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world.

Without the hope of salvation, which religion provides, life is demonstrably not worth living. Your typical atheist, like Dawkins, seems to realize this on some level, but the fact is clearly too much for him to bear, as shown above.

I didn't see it until after I posted. :-|

You asked several questions in an extremely long post. I felt like responding to one of them. In the future, maybe you should make your threads more concise, to make sure people respond to what you want them to.

Is it wrong to identity someone by their biological sex? — darthbarracuda

No. Humans are not clownfish. We can't choose our sex. If men want to dress like women or men want to dress like women, that's their prerogative, but you can't force me to use pronouns that don't match their biological sex.

But to deny it, people are wont to pass — schopenhauer1

This line is a bit confusing, especially the second clause. I think you're trying to say that people deny that life is a pain in the ass, but it doesn't quite read that way.

Here's a poem I wrote several years ago on a similar theme:

Were that I a bird
Free to fly above the herd
Were that I a snake
To slither away from hate
Were that I a rabbit
To hop as my habit
These and more I wish to be
For anything but human
Sounds better to me

I think philosophy has value, though not as an end in itself, as most philosophers seem to treat it as, but they're absolutely correct that a degree in philosophy is useless. Getting that isn't useful for learning about philosophy, which can be done without going to college. So the only legitimate usefulness it could have is that it helps one to find suitable employment, but it spectacularly fails at that, as do the other humanities.

You got it! (Y)

Not in this case tho.