It's true that it could be a legitimate well thought out political act, so please elaborate if there are good reasons for the move; that you know first hand or then can speculate. — boethius

I didn’t say it was a thought-out political act. I said some people (for whatever reason) might want to erase their presence somewhere. I presented one such example I did not say that this is what happened, just that it was a possible explanation.

I have changed during these four years in the forum. But I don't regret any of my 6,291 posts. — javi2541997

But people are different, right? You don’t understand the move because you wouldn’t do this.

Why should we give the last word on this to neuroscience? — Banno

Because it makes us feel better about the argument. :wink:

Deleting the posts is an extreme option, indeed. Imagine everything you posted for years vanishing like the smoke in the air. — javi2541997

I have different view. Some people may experience a change in how they see the world and feel embarrassed or self-conscious about their past ideas. Sometimes we need to make radical or symbolic change in order to move on.

Ha! :grin:
That's the exact opposite of my childhood religious experience. — Gnomon

I'm glad to hear it. :up:

Rather I’m interested in the idea of a blended state, where a belief is seen as consisting of both cognition and feelings. — Banno

Very interesting. I can't say I have much to add to this, except that I've often thought people are drawn to beliefs that are emotionally satisfying. I recall Steven Pinker stating that we justify beliefs using reason, but we form them based on our affective relationships with the world.

intellectual honesty should disabuse one of the idea of "one truth for all" — Janus

From what I’ve seen, the experience is often all about ‘one truth for all' so how could we expect restraint? Intellectual honesty seems to me to be a separate project. Are we really expecting those touched by the divine to say, ‘I encountered a higher power and I know we are all one, but I’ll keep it in perspective because intellectually this is the right thing to do?'

The problem I see is when they conflate their interpretations with knowledge and make absolutist truth claims. In other words dogma, ideology and fundamentalism are the problems...thinking others should believe as they do. — Janus

I agree with you, but isn't it inherent to the experience that it feels like an encounter with truth and therefore natural, even inevitable, to conflate interpretation with knowledge that ought to be shared with the world? From their perspective, it's not dogma, it's clarity, even a form of compassion to share it.

But you seemed to imply that my somewhat positive worldview is based on Faith instead of Facts*1. Yet I rejected the "overarching narrative" of my childhood and constructed a philosophical worldview of my own from scratch. — Gnomon

No, I don't imply that, since I don't know whether you have a positive worldview or not. To me, it seems like you're working terribly hard to overcome a wounding experience in a fundamentalist religion. I'm not sure I would call that positive. Perhaps it's a determined effort to find somewhere safe?

I would make the claim that philosophy is concerned with the nature of being, rather than reality in the scientific or objective sense, which is nowadays such a vast subject that nobody can possibly know more than one or two aspects of it. And also that this is a philosophically meaningful distinction although not often mentioned in Anglo philosophy (while it's fundamental to Heidegger, as I understand it.) — Wayfarer

Ok. I think this makes sense, though I’m using the term ‘reality’ loosely here. Isn’t it the case that what you’re really talking about is some kind of ultimate concern, or a hierarchy of meaning within this understanding of being?

First of all, I specifically asked Tom Storm not to tell anybody about this. — T Clark

I’m indiscreet.

I wonder too if there's a general view that some disciplines, like physics and chemistry, are considered the “real” sciences, while others, like sociology or psychology, are dismissed as “soft sciences,” or even not science at all by some polemical voices.

I recall the philosopher Susan Haack having some interesting things to say about the so-called “scientific method.” In her view, the principles of good inquiry, like respect for evidence and critical reasoning, apply not just to natural sciences but also in fields like law and journalism. She argues that science is not one method, nor is it a fundamentally different way of thinking from other forms of disciplined inquiry.

Perhaps? Do the different realities share anything in common? Or are there as many realities as possible assertions? — Count Timothy von Icarus

What they might share, I guess, is us working hard to make sense. We do cherish our overarching models and unified field theories. But I’m not especially concerned by notions of infinite regress if that’s where we end up.

:up:

'm sorry if it came across that way. — Gnomon

No problem. We're just threshing things out.

But my current view does not predict anything for me, beyond this not-so-good-not-so-bad lifetime. — Gnomon

Fair enough.

But you seemed to imply that my somewhat positive worldview is based on Faith instead of Facts*1. — Gnomon

No. We all see what we want to see. The point of philosophy, as I see it, is to notice what we've overlooked. But how do we get there? That's rhetorical: no need for an answer.

FWIW, I'd suggest that you cut-back on your intake of Headline News. William Randall Hearst, magnate of the nation's largest media company, insightfully observed about the criteria for news publishing : "if it bleeds, it leads". Another version is "bad news sells". — Gnomon

You may not have intended it this way, but that comes across as both dismissive and tangential. I’m not generally a consumer of news, and this perspective is shaped by direct experience. My professional work brings me into daily contact with refugees, asylum seekers, survivors of abuse and trauma, former prisoners, the homeless, and those who are sick or dying. My father was in a Nazi camp during WW2 and some of my mother's family and friends starved to death in the Dutch hunger winter of 1944. My views are not based on some tabloid journalism of confected horror. I could take a cue from your tone and say back to you - why not get out into the real world and look around?

That said, I raised the point as a plausible interpretation of a world that appears deliberately built to produce suffering. I don't actually hold this view myself, but it's a useful counterpoint to those who see evidence of divine design in nature.

Our modern cultures are far safer from the ancient threats of tooth & claw, but now imperiled mostly by imaginary evils brought into your habitat by the Pandora's Box of high-tech news media. Maybe we all need a Pollyanna Umbrella defense-mechanism from pollution of the mind. — Gnomon

How is this relevant to my point? I'm said on here several times that I think this is the best time to be alive.

My argument is not so much against a commitment to materialism, but rather to any all-encompassing metaphysical system. It does seem to me that most people on the forum see one particular metaphysical system as right and all the rest as wrong. Do you disagree with that. — T Clark

Yes, that's hwo I read you as well. Agree.

Don't tell anyone else I said this, but I wonder if there are really no true ontological positions, only methodological ones. — T Clark

It's an intriguing idea.

My own tentative view is that we do not access reality directly, nor can we claim any definitive knowledge of what reality ultimately is. What we encounter instead are multiple realities, each intelligible through particular conceptual frameworks or perspectives. The pursuit of a single, foundational, unifying reality strikes me as superfluous in that it overlooks the plural and interpretive nature of our engagement with the world.

I would have thought "the limits of what we know how to investigate". — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's an improvement. I'm not attached to my wording. I quite like this as an approach and it seems to avoid scientism.

While they don’t yet have a mind, they do know things, they do have knowledge, how ever simple. — Punshhh

Indeed. Part of me believes that the animal is in a superior position to the human. They have what they need. They require no gadgets, no psychotherapies, no fictional narratives through which to interpret their existence. They act, they live, and that is enough. In contrast, we are burdened by self-consciousness- forever constructing and deconstructing meaning, seeking justification, and struggling to feel at home in the world and often being dreadful to all an sundry while we go about it.

reality is food, tools, homes, and people. Everything else we encounter can be seen as developing out of and connected with those basic elements. How can something be considered real if it doesn't affect our human lives? I think that's materialism of a sort and I think it represents a humanizing force in our thinking rather than an alienating one. — T Clark

One metaphysical position does not, can not, address all of reality. We need to use different ones in different situations. With electrons we talk about mass and velocity. With our brothers we talk about history and personality. — T Clark

I like what you say here. I believe it was the philosopher Simon Blackburn who said that even the idealist philosophy professor adopts realism the moment they leave home in the morning.

I'm not sure anyone on this site actually defends materialism as a full-blown worldview, though they may draw from some of its strands and influences. What seems more prevalent today is a commitment to methodological naturalism - the stance that scientific inquiry should proceed without invoking supernatural explanations - rather than metaphysical naturalism, which asserts that only natural, physical entities and processes exist. The former reflects a pragmatic stance, informed by an awareness of the limits of what can be known, the latter is a stronger ontological claim, one that is itself subject to philosophical scrutiny.

Therefore, something is going on here that smacks of Teleology*3 — Gnomon

Well that's your conclusion, not mine.

If pushed, and speaking from a human perspective, you might say the world appears designed and calibrated for dysfunction and suffering: children with cancer, mass starvation, natural disasters, a clusterfuck of disease and disorder wherever you look. Not to mention the defective psychology of humans. But I don't believe this theory either. Things may appear a certain way to us because we want to believe. We are sense-making creatures compelled to find or impose an overarching narrative on everything.

OK. I imagine meaning includes both: creation and intrinsic.

So even if it's true, as some argue, that meaning is “created by conscious beings,” we ought to recognize that this act of creation is not simply a matter of conscious intention. It arises from a much deeper orientation—one that begins, however humbly, with life itself. That, I think, is the current framework for the debate. — Wayfarer

But meaning may not arise from any deep metaphysical structure, rather from the ordinary, improvisational practices that help us stay oriented in a world we can’t help but attempt to interpret. In that light, its apparent importance may have less to do with ultimate truth or a foundational 'cosmic consciousness' and more to do with pragmatic survival. Why woudl making meaning not be like another sense?

Since I don't find the Judeo-Christian Bible or Islamic Koran plausible as the revealed word of God, I've been forced to create my own mythical story to establish the meaning of my own worthless life. — Gnomon

Human beings are endlessly creative.

yet it does conclude that the evolution of Life & Mind from a mysterious Big Bang was not "accidental", — Gnomon

Random thought: It's interesting how often Christian apologists seek to contrast "accidental' life from divinely planned life.

The idea of life being “accidental” seems to be a stumbling block for many who struggle to emotionally accept that life might not have an inherent human centric purpose. Many people fear and even loathe the idea of a purposeless universe. But it’s important to distinguish this from notions like randomness or accident. The absence of inherent purpose doesn’t necessarily imply arbitrariness; it simply means that meaning is not built into the fabric of reality, but must be created by conscious beings. This distinction often gets lost in emotional reactions to, shall we call them 'naturalistic' worldviews.

A scientific account doesn’t describe life as an “accident” in any meaningful sense. It simply explains that life arose through natural processes. To call it an “accident” is to impose a value-laden metaphor onto a description that is, at its core, neutral.

You know nicer atheists than I do! :smile: — J

I don’t spend much time with atheists these days, but I used to. Many are, frankly, dull zealots. That said, the more thoughtful ones today typically don’t outright deny the existence of God, after all, that would be a positive claim, and one that can’t be demonstrated.

I don't think this is the heart of the problem. We routinely accept subjective testimony about all sorts of things, if by "testimony" you mean merely "Here is what I saw/heard/tasted/thought." Rather, the problem is the explanatory value, as you say here: — J

I suppose so. For an extraordinary claim like, “I had direct communication with God” an atheist is going to need more than someone's personal testimony. And so do the priests and sisters I know. I'm pretty certain many theists would also be sceptical when someone says that have had a religious experince.

And this leads to the other point that the atheist wants to insist on -- your use of the phrase "naturalistic explanations." I think that, for most atheists, non-naturalistic explanations are ruled out a priori — J

I wouldn't say 'ruled out' but worth of robust skepticism certainly. Is there a non-naturalistic explanation for anything we can definitely identify?

You write this:

I think this is what most of the atheists I know would say: You can't have evidence for unicorns because there aren't any. Those who believe in them nonetheless are, charitably, misguided. — J

I'd say there are many theists for whom you could use the same argument in reverse. They already believe in God, therefore spiritual experiences are real.

.. at least the "God explanation" can join the other contenders and be weighed for its plausibility just like any other. — J

Yes, this is the nub of the issue: is the God explanation really of equal weight to alternative explanations - such as psychological phenomena, mental illness, or substance use? I would say no. That judgment ultimately comes down to a choice we make based on how we interpret and structure the world.

And perhaps it's not worth debating, these discussions rarely shift anyone’s position and too often descend into unproductive or abusive exchanges. Not from you, I hasten to add.

There's a general anti-religious argument that goes something like: "There isn't any personal God, because there's no evidence for such a being. That explains why so few people are 'mystics' and claim to have such direct evidence. They're a little crazy, and are misinterpreting their experiences." The question is, Which way does the reasoning go? Are we saying that the lack of evidence shows the non-existence of God, or are we saying that, because God does not exist, there couldn't be such evidence? If it's the latter, that would commit us to saying that even if everybody had mystical experiences, they'd still be wrong in believing they were evidence for a personal God. I think this is what most of the atheists I know would say: You can't have evidence for unicorns because there aren't any. Those who believe in them nonetheless are, charitably, misguided. — J

Well, atheists I know would not say, as you write, “there isn’t any personal god.” They would say instead that there are no compelling grounds for belief in a personal god, though they remain open in principle to revising that view should persuasive evidence arise.

Are we saying that the lack of evidence shows the non-existence of God, or are we saying that, because God does not exist, there couldn't be such evidence? If it's the latter, that would commit us to saying that even if everybody had mystical experiences, they'd still be wrong in believing they were evidence for a personal God. — J

Well, I think many atheists would more likely start with: there are no good reasons for belief in a personal God and one reason sometimes offered is mystical or personal experience of God. However, this is not a compelling justification, since such experiences rely on subjective testimony, which is inherently problematic.

The difference between some theists and atheists lies in the willingness to accept a subjective psychological experience, experiences that, while meaningful to the individual, could have multiple naturalistic explanations and thus can't meaningfully serve as reliable evidence for the existence of a divine being.

That said, I've known a number of number of Catholic clergy who also have little confidence in people's accounts of spiritual experiences. When discussing such cases with me, they tend to describe the person as likely to be mistaken or undergoing a psychological episode. Given their starting point is that God exists, I think this is interesting. Possibly it's the most appropriate default starting point whether you're a theist or an atheist.

And Sister Mary put her arms around him, held him and (I’m sure) wept with him. And that, I felt, was ‘how it would look in practice’. — Wayfarer

I've known a lot of those sisters and priests through my work and watched them closely. I'll have to mull this over, since I don't immediately recognize it as the answer to my question. Nicely written, by the way — a concentrated little jewel of description.

The simple answer is that one knows God via the body, rather than the mind. — Punshhh

I'm not sure I understand this either. What does 'know by the body' mean? You feel it rather than think it?

I also believe many atheists have more faith than they like to admit (or else they would not speak of “God” at all). Just as most theists have more doubt than they like to admit. — Fire Ologist

I susepct most atheists rarely talk about God. The ones who do are likely also to be activists who see religion as the enemy of reason and human progress (I don't share this view myself).

f I make my meaning all by myself, and no one agrees or shares my meaning, I, personally, would not find this meaningful to me, and cannot see how this could be meaningful for anyone. — Fire Ologist

I have a stronger sense of meaning in the world when I'm alone than when I'm with others. I think the lack of distraction helps. We're all different.

Regardless, it is just as arbitrary to believe in God, as it is to see the human condition as the experience of meaninglessness. It is even more arbitrary perhaps to believe in Jesus or Allah or Vishnu or Yaweh. I do agree that having faith is receiving a gift. — Fire Ologist

Is it arbitrary? Isn't it, in the end, unsurprising when someone either believes or doesn’t? After all, most people follow their culture or families into faith or secularism. Here in Australia, the subject of God rarely comes up - atheism seems to be the default setting. In other countries, God comes up at every dinner...

I was not always a believer in God. But when I thought there was no God, I thought everything I said and all that everyone ever said, and so all that could be thought, was like everything else - a whisper that remains ultimately unheard, misunderstood, empty, and as meaningful as the difference between two grains of sand. — Fire Ologist

For me, meaning seems to be evanescent and contingent, something we create and nurture in the moment, which, rather than being empty, gives it a unique kind of beauty and urgency.

An unknowable divinity would seem to be useless to us. I don't believe religious folk are looking for an unknowable divinity―that would indeed be a performative contradiction. — Janus

It does seem odd that a god understood as a nonspecific intuition, let's say, could be presented as a meaningful relationship with the divine/ultimate concern. By definition, there is no relationship. I'd be interested in seeing someone try to crystallize what this looks like in practice. Whenever I read Tillich or others, the reasoning seems diffuse and it's difficult for me to get any traction on it.

I am trying to translate Universal Truth... please help me as I Die to understand I am not crazy... please.. anyone? — Ian James Hillyard

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking or hoping for, but if life is beginning to slow down and cease, it might be helpful to focus on finding comfort and moments of peace in simpler, less stressful paths. Whatever brings you calm or peace now may be worth leaning into.

It is hard to understand western history, music, art, literature or architecture without understanding the religious impulse that lay behind much of it. Likewise for other cultures. So being familiar with the worlds religions is essential to understanding the societies we live in. — prothero

True. But equally, it's hard to understand Western history, music, art, and architecture without understanding slavery, autocracy, colonization, religious violence, patriarchy, and economic exploitation. The historic underpinnings of our culture don't have to be virtuous to be of significance. But I agree with you that comparative religion (that antediluvian term) is a vital part of anyone's education. :up:

I still cannot bring myself to believe it is all an accidental, purposeless, mindless creation the result of mere time and chance. I think there is something larger at work although traditional religion does not seem to provide an answer for me but certain philosophical conceptions do seem attractive to me. — prothero

I think a lot of people share this intuition. I personally don’t and I don’t encounter any transcendent meaning in life or the universe as I understand it. What I do see is humans telling stories - stories that offer solace, meaning, and guidance for how to live.

To me, the idea that life is accidental or mindless isn’t necessary either. It doesn’t have to be a choice between God and Meaninglessness or theism versus nihilism. There’s perhaps a middle ground: a world where meaning is made, not given.

Yes, I think that’s a fairly well-worn framework. The contrast, if not a kind of competition, between a hoary enchanted world and the Enlightenment is currently in vogue, and even a cursory glance at popular podcasts and books reveals a widespread appetite for anti-modernism in various forms, from Jordan Peterson to John Vervaeke.

This conception of religious faith, gives us a philosophy of religion, and a philosophy of the nature of God, that is more attuned to the experiences of mystics and prophets, rather than the belief systems of the average religious person. We should remember that almost all religions claim to be based in the revelations provided by God to some mystic or prophet. So even if the attitude towards God and faith that Tillich is describing is one shared by a comparative minority of religious believers, it is nevertheless at the root of the nature of religion itself. So I think from a philosophical point of view it is crucial to try to understand this. — FirecrystalScribe

What do you think is the best reason for trying to understand this?

I think Victor Frankel is right, man seeks meaning and purpose. Some find it in other pursuits but many find it in religion. I personally have a religious inclination but the traditional theologies are just not compatible with the rest of my understanding about how the world works. — prothero

I think it's fair to say that humans are sense-making creatures, we interpret everything we see, often incorrectly or through a messy web of interwoven preconceptions and biases. But the fact that we seek meaning and purpose doesn't necessarily indicate that we're on the right track, or that this is even what we ought to be doing. Possibly not needing to make sense of things may be a more sophisticated impulse.

It has often struck me that a tendency toward spirituality or theism is more like a preference, you either have it or you don’t, a bit like a sexual orientation. You can't help what you're drawn to. The theist is pulled toward the idea of God; the atheist sees no explanatory power or use for it. The more sophisticated the individual, the more sophisticated their theology or their atheism.

I think there are far more answered questions in science than unanswered ones. And expecting science to answer "ultimate" questions seems to be unreasonable. — Janus

Yes, and I think science's inability to answer these will have many of us reaching for our gods and our Platonic forms until the end of time... (or thereabouts).

That’s not quite what I’m trying to get at. It’s more that the answer to our origin, the reasons why there is a world like this etc, — Punshhh

I think much of this comes down to temperament. I've never really found myself wondering why there is something rather than nothing, or even why we’re here. To me, those questions feel like they are from the land of cliché. It’s not that I have any answers. It’s just that the questions themselves have never struck me as urgent or necessary. I'm not sure what you mean by 'ascended beings', they're not part of the framework I know.

The world as it appears to us is obviously understandable — Janus

Well, I don’t understand it, so there’s that. :razz: Logical fallacies aside, I suppose my intuition is that we understand some things. We’ve learned to make things work; we’ve developed remarkably effective models, tools, and narratives to account for what we observe. But does that amount to genuine understanding?

I wonder whether anyone can come up with a good example of a past understanding which has been completely overturned. The idea of a flat earth that is the centre of the cosmos would seem to be the paradigm example, but that view was based on inadequate capacity for observation, and was later corrected by more sophisticated observations, which were themselves enabled by technological advances based on science. — Janus

I hear you. There are still many unanswered questions that I’m unsure how certain we can really be about what we call scientific knowledge. We don’t know precisely what consciousness is, why there is something rather than nothing, or what the ultimate nature of reality is. We also don’t fully understand how life first began, or what dark matter and dark energy actually are. Science has achieved a lot, but it still leaves many of the deepest questions unresolved. That makes me cautious about treating scientific knowledge as the final word on reality.

When we say that the world is understandable, we should ask what kind of understanding we mean. Predictive success in mathematics and the physical sciences is impressive, but is it sufficient? Does it capture the essence of reality, or merely model some patterns?

We claim to understand the physical world, yet it's unclear whether we truly grasp the nature of physicalism itself. The concept is often assumed rather than examined. Likewise, our self-understanding seems limited. We remain confused about consciousness, morality, even how meaning works. These sorts of quesions seem central to any claim of understanding reality.

You are alive.

If you weren’t, you couldn’t ask questions. You couldn’t value anything. You couldn’t think, speak, or care.

Life isn’t a value. It’s the condition for value. That’s not opinion. It’s structure. If you deny that life is good, you use life to make the denial. That’s self-defeating.

You are standing on a platform while sawing through it. — Moliere

Standing on a platform while sawing though it may well be an appropriate action. Your metaphor is poetic but an act of high risk defiance or nihilism is not ipso facto wrong.

This argument (life is good axiom) was recently raised by another member here (I forget who).

The fact that life is a precondition for valuing does not mean life is good. It only means life is necessary to make judgments, whether positive or negative.

Therefore I don’t see any clear reason why one couldn’t argue that life is bad using the same logic. After all, life is the source of disappointment, conflict, pain, suffering, regret, and misery (have I left anything out?). Why would you settle on the good and not on the bad?

Furthermore, we are sort of assuming that we are in a world that makes rational, or logical sense. Follows the laws of nature for example. How do we know this? — Punshhh

I personally don't know that the world makes sense, but I accept that humans have some pragmatic relationship that allows us to get certain things done.

We are rather like(an analogy I like to use) an ant walking across a mobile phone that happens to be placed across his trail. — Punshhh

A nice image.

And yet, a bold ant might stand there and claim “I am the pinnacle of evolution, I know everything about how the world works. — Punshhh

Are there many serious people who would make such a claim? The main conceit of science seems to be the idea that the world is understandable, which is a metaphysical position.

Perhaps the best thing we can say about God, or referring to God, is the one about which nothing can be said. — Punshhh

A legitimate answer. But given what you've said about our ant-like limitations, one could also argue (using this frame) that God is our own creation; a comforting teddy bear to help us face the unknown.

Shouldn’t we also consider the evolutionary function of love? — Jeremy Murray

If you want. Humans are a social species who organise and flourish in family units. Not hard to see how love has survival pay offs. But what do we do with this frame?

I appreciate the sentiment and remember that it's never personal. — Martijn

Indeed. And we all come to different conclusions. :up:

Is the ability to feel love something you are born with?
In the example with the gangsters they were not given love growing up, they started with the ability to feel love, but their ability to love was not 'developed/nurtured'. (Words that do not quite fit)
Does the lack of love kill the sense of it? Or is it just dormant like a seed during winter? — Red Sky

Don't know. I was just reporting what I have seen. I suspect the ability to give and receive love is innate in most people. It takes many forms and does not always look the same across individuals, cultures or time periods. It's an emotion that has been hijacked by storytellers and marketing people who describe and promote specific and often commercial indicators of love.

There are people who are abused from infancy, and the way their understanding and behavior is shaped by this may preclude them from experiencing love. I have certainly met people who claim never to have experienced it.

Or if you're like me, you are out, then none of this is very interesting, for it all rests on a foundation of indeterminacy. — Astrophel

I hear you.