Sometimes metaphysical concepts are so poorly defined it's hard to get started toward a consensus. Look at the tens of thousands of pages devoted to "being", for example. Then how about "truth"? That is why the more bizarre aspects of physics are better discussed in a mathematical setting than a metaphysical one. Math may lead to predictions of reality, whereas metaphysics doesn't seem to lead anywhere.

But I'm an old codger, so ignore me. :roll: — John Gill

You touch on an important theme here. Does metaphysics/philosophy get anywhere? If one judges by online philosophy forums, then perhaps not. But keep in mind that on forums like these that Cantor's basic results are rejected-- without being understood in the first place. (Note that this forum also has excellent members.) We can't, in short, expect a consensus on difficult topics between those who daydream or half-troll and those who are (relatively) serious about philosophy.

I mostly read 'continental' philosophy, and for me it's one long conversation in which massive progress has indeed been made. What differentiates it from math and physics and makes it so questionable is (among other things) its relative distance from technology and therefore income. Because serious philosophy is difficult, and because we live in an almost post-literate age, those who have worked at it are mostly only intelligible and interesting to one another. But Harry Potter is far more famous than Julien Sorel. People like the fun and easy stuff. To me, people are just missing out.

Technology doesn't have this problem. The shrinking size and the expanding power of our smartphones are a constant update on the incremental march of technology. That said, a person with no mathematical training would be at a loss to differentiate absurdity from good math.

Because serious philosophy is difficult, and because we live in an almost post-literate age, those who have worked at it are mostly only intelligible and interesting to one another. — softwhere

There are two types of serious philosophers these days: 1. academic philosophers, whose jobs are mandates to delve into topics as hard and difficult a way as possible, and 2. gentlemen (or gentle lady, or Aristocratic) philosophers, who have a lot of time, energy, and other resources to devote to enquiries in philosophy.

The second type, type 2. philosophers, have the option of reading the same material and work through it and work it through as the type 1. philosophers. The type 2 . philosophers' other option is a speculative approach, which discovers for them brand new, but to the professional philosophy circles well-known philosophical thoughts.

I belong to the second optioner group of type 2. I am having ball. I don't know if I could even handle a disciplined study at an institution (academic, not psychiatric or penitentiary). I have taken four courses, but I used them mainly to shoot down the ideas of the presented topic's original author. I had a ball debunking Socrates and Hobbes, and had a chance to fall in love with the ideas and mind of Hume.

I belong to the second optioner group of type 2. I am having ball. I don't know if I could even handle a disciplined study at an institution (academic, not psychiatric or penitentiary). — god must be atheist

I used to think that I'd feel cramped in an institution by dogmatic personalities, so I studied something else when the time came. I never stopped prioritizing philosophy, though. If I could go back, I'd just choose philosophy and just deal with its dark side (which was really my dark side and unruly arrogance?)

This is mostly because I would have met more people who were equally passionate about philosophical conversation. I find myself frustrated with talk that remains on the surface of things, even if that surface is intricate and useful.

academic philosophers, whose jobs are mandates to delve into topics as hard and difficult a way as possible — god must be atheist

This one is tricky. I suppose 'difficult' makes sense in terms of intensity. If I make my living researching and teaching, then one hopes that I'm more serious and diligent than others working in their free time.
Then this extra intensity of the ideal scholar allows them to make the difficult original text as easy as is reasonable, to pre-digest the situation for accelerated assimilation by others. At the same time all of this is creative, and they express themselves as intellectuals by what they focus on and the nuances of their interpretation. One of the nice things about philosophy (which is shares with life) is that its past is not fixed. Once Z comes along, we can read X and Y in a new light. If I study Heidegger, Hobbes changes.

The type 2 . philosophers' other option is a speculative approach, which discovers for them brand new, but to the professional philosophy circles well-known philosophical thoughts. — god must be atheist

To me this describes the position of any of us born 'too late,' when 'everything has already been said.' What really matters is the insight. I grant that. Indeed, I often find that an insight clicks and then realize that that must of been what X meant all along. We seem to have to reconstruct the cognitive act in our own singular context. Sometimes philosophers help us to do this. At other times we manage insights 'on our own' that were crucial for us in an old book and feel less alone. I'd be lonely without my books, at least in a distinctly philosophical way.

I used them mainly to shoot down the ideas of the presented topic's original author. I had a ball debunking Socrates and Hobbes, and had a chance to fall in love with the ideas and mind of Hume. — god must be atheist

I relate to this antagonistic attitude. Its like the demon in philosophy that constantly tests things with a hammer. At the same time, the notions of truth and rationality are implicitly aimed at a community
of some kind. Sometimes the debunking attitude is genuinely aimed at liberation. At other times (as I see it) it's also a resistance to identity-threatening novelty.

I also love Hume, but then Socrates and Hobbes are great too.

Likewise, it's possible that a being humans would call "God" could exist, who would know that there aren't any such things as gods, if that's actually the truth. That doesn't mean that the "God" we're talking about doesn't exist, just that he doesn't think of himself as a god. — Pfhorrest

But then if he’s omniscient he would know that humans would see him as a God, so he wouldn’t think they’re wrong for seeing it that way, he would know that from their point of view that’s how it looks.

Also if he exists and he isn’t all-powerful, maybe sometimes he impresses himself, like sometimes we achieve things we didn’t think we were capable of, maybe not all would be easy peasy for him. Which would explain why there is so much suffering, the loving God isn’t all-powerful. But if the loving God is much more powerful than humans and other life here on Earth, then he could prevent suffering if humans and other beings were responsible for it, so if he can’t then some other very powerful being must be ultimately responsible for that suffering, so if there is a loving God who isn’t all-powerful there must also be an evil God on the other side...

Or maybe there is a loving God who isn’t all powerful, because there is an evil God competing with him... — leo

That's another possibility, although it's a non-standard concept of God.

Not quite. When all things move towards unity, from any point of view all things are seen to move towards us. When all things move towards separation, from any point of view all things are seen to move away from us.

Now if you agree that unity is correlated with feelings associated with good (love, happiness) and separation is correlated with feelings associated with evil (hate, suffering), then good and evil aren’t relative, they are absolute. In many situations one can be mistaken for the other, but there are situations in which the two cannot be mistaken because they appear the same from all points of view.

That's interesting, but I think beside the point. I think your theory of good and evil has some merit, but that doesn't stop people taking on self-defeating values, and defining good-for-them and evil-for-them in self-defeating ways. So God might, in a sufficiently revelatory mood, remind us that good is unity and evil is separation, but we can still disagree, no matter how foolishly. And in the act of disagreement, we create our own values. And God himself must value separation, or we would not exist (on the assumption of a creator God of course).

I also love Hume, but then Socrates and Hobbes are great too. — softwhere

Socrates was an addict. He was addicted to winning arguments. Philosophical arguments. In that sense I feel akin with him (without his genius, but never mind).

He, however, was not shy to employ fallacious reasoning to win arguments, which I never do. I use fallacious arguments to create facetious humour, but not as an argument in philosophical debate.

Hobbes, however, was a mechanical thinker, who was bereft of human insight -- it seems Hume has got all the humanity in his mind that Hobbes lacked.

Hume! Hume! Humanity!!

I think your theory of good and evil has some merit, but that doesn't stop people taking on self-defeating values, and defining good-for-them and evil-for-them in self-defeating ways. — bert1

Yes I agree with this, but the fact people can be mistaken about what’s truly good and what’s truly evil does not imply that good and evil are fundamentally relative, that there is no such thing as true good and true evil. For instance taking advantage of others for one’s own personal gain can be seen as good from the point of view of the person doing it, but from the point of view of many other people enduring it it isn’t good as it creates suffering.

So God might, in a sufficiently revelatory mood, remind us that good is unity and evil is separation, but we can still disagree, no matter how foolishly. — bert1

Yes we can disagree, but then we pay the price as a whole as we move towards suffering as a whole. There can still be some people feeling good while global suffering increases, but eventually the ones who feel good end up paying the price too. And we don’t have to see it as a single loving God punishing us (which seems incoherent), if the loving God is doing his best then it’s simply evil that is spreading because we’re letting it spread.

And God himself must value separation, or we would not exist (on the assumption of a creator God of course). — bert1

Yes, unless again it’s the evil God who values separation and suffering while the loving God attempts to prevent it and to move back towards unity. In that view without separation we would still exist, we would all be united as the loving God himself, whereas now we are a part of him who got separated from him by evil, and evil attempts to move us towards his side.

I’m not asking anyone to believe that this loving God and this evil God truly exist, but I find a lot of things make sense that way. Even if people don’t want to believe in them, I think we can still come to agree on the sort of things that contribute to spreading happiness and on the sort of things that contribute to spreading suffering, and see that they aren’t purely relative.

Socrates was an addict. He was addicted to winning arguments. Philosophical arguments. In that sense I feel akin with him (without his genius, but never mind). — god must be atheist

It is nice to win arguments. To me it's a temptation I try to manage. As you say, it's an addiction. Perhaps you'll agree that learning is often a case of us admitting to ourselves that we were biased and wrong.

Hobbes, however, was a mechanical thinker, who was bereft of human insight — god must be atheist

I really like Hobbes' prose, and I love "Of Man,' his sketch in Leviathan of human nature. He can be too mechanical. But he had a fierce, penetrating mind.

Continual Successe in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call FELICITY; I mean the Felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life itself is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense. — Hobbes

Hume! Hume! Humanity!! — god must be atheist

Hume was lovable indeed.