Out of curiosity, what ontology would you subscribe to? — Bob Ross

Do you think that consciousness can be provably determined as reducible to brain states?

What problems do you find with positing a Universal Spirit?

So, if our brains are representations like anything else [ ... ] The question then is what is doing the representing? — Janus

From this old post: if "to be is to be perceived", then, for a perceiver to be, a perceiver must be perceived by another perceiver ... by another perceiver . .. by another perceiver .. ad infinitum. [ ... ] My naturalism is too pragmatic for this conceptual jabberwocky. — 180 Proof

I still don't know why you [Gnomon] have received such reactions. What forums did you go to? Because, here, it would be out of place to label you as religious and irrational, unless, of course, you're talking about religion and theism. — L'éléphant

For pissing off that same supernatural entity you then rely on saving you - for a price. — Vera Mont

So, if our brains are representations like anything else [ ... ] The question then is what is doing the representing? — Janus

Biden to sign the clean debt ceiling raise into law by the first [fifth] of June.

No US Default -– come hell or highwater! – is my prediction. — 180 Proof

There is an irony in atheism insofar as it is a theological position. — NOS4A2

Religion is about control, that seems to be the nutshell here. — Darkneos

Religion doesn’t answer how to live so much as tell/force you to live as such or else. — Darkneos

Even Christ wasn’t exactly a good guy in the book itself. There is a reason a lot of atheists say they became atheists by reading the Bible. — Darkneos

So a piece of Christian Dogma may be "Jesus Christ rose from the dead". What makes this dogma? — Moliere

Another point is that even though causality and propositionality (or causes and reasons) might seem incommensurable to us that can be, as Spinoza says, on account of looking at the one thing from two different incommensurable perspectives and may not reflect on the nature of physical processes, but rather on our naive understanding of them, or our dualistic "either/ or" kind of thinking. — Janus

Promissory materialism, then. — Wayfarer

I don't think we have access to reality or can even define it, except in the shallowest terms. — Tom Storm

That's the weasel argument. We happily accept the idea of a physical quantity – a measure of "stuff" or substantial being, such as charge. And so the linguistic trick is get us thinking of a quality – qualia – in a similarly physicalist and countable way. Little jolts of experience like the feeling of red or smell of a rose flashing through the mind.

The sleight of hand works as our folk metaphysical notions of physical quantity are as suspect as our ones about mental qualities.

Something fundamental like charge is treated as if it were like a measure of some fluid stuff that flows. It is already pictured and talked about in an overly concrete fashion. Then Chalmers takes that folk physics and applies it to the mind as if consciousness is also a quantity of this atomistic stuff called qualia, or isolated flashes of experience. — apokrisis

There is something it is like to be a football. — NOS4A2

Aristotle's definition of "man" as rational animal. — Metaphysician Undercover

... spelled "Meta-Physics", and defined as the science of the non-physical. 

Does any of that make sense to you? — Gnomon

... why would you accept Fooloso4's assessment that for Aristotle there are no independent forms? — Metaphysician Undercover

Fooloso4's statement — Metaphysician Undercover

act in harmony with your nature — wonderer1

My question wasn't rhetorical, as if to argue either an absolute ethic or nihilism. I was asking why it's not a dichotomy. — Hanover

What you find hateful [harmful], do not do to anyone.

What then makes ethical realism intelligible? — Hanover

Without ethical realism, how do you avoid nihilism?

You've got a few choices here with your secular humanism: (1) accept a subjective morality but chase the elusive idea that your there are universal subjective truths (which there aren't), (2) use secular terms to appease yourself that you're not actually a theist, or (3) accept the nihilism inherent in the position — Hanover

This system of belief is not beholden to rational thought ... — Noble Dust

[ ... ] Wheeler conceived of information, not as non-physical, but as "a fundamental physical entity"!

@Gnomon :point: You also might want to read this to educate yourself as to the diversity of views on the matter of information.

This is nice apt summation:

According to Aristotle biological beings are a single physical entity. There are no separate forms and hyle floating around waiting to be combined. There is not one without the other, substantiated in living physical entities, that is, substances.
— Fooloso4 — Janus