The same is true of Marxism btw, and that's not a coincidence. — frank
But I share your concern about grand ontological projects gliding past large gaps in our understanding[. That is exactly what I was warning you about with your hierarchy theory. — frank
You and I seem to have very different histories of our atheism, and given the religious demographics I suspect most peoples' is more like mine than yours. — Pfhorrest
Stop arguing. — Terrapin Station
to speak angrily to someone, telling that person that you disagree with them: ]
to give the reasons for your opinion, idea, belief, etc.:
Reductive explanations don't work very well in cases where the studied phenomena are difficult (ontically/ontologically or epistemically) to completely specify. Try to explain why a photon takes a particular path in a double slit experiment in terms of the particular photon and the slits and you get nonsense. Try to explain why one Vietnam vet becomes mentally ill and another does not based upon their shared experiences and background differences and you don't get a complete picture due to the available information (and randomness in life). Try to study whether a butterfly flapping its wings 1 day ago caused a tropical storm now and the system itself pulls apart arbitrarily close causal histories - rendering the question askable but moot. — fdrake
When I come across and organized system/structure, it is easier to accept the system was constructed under and intelligent process than to believe it to be the result of random and disorderly interactions — staticphoton
But why set up such a dichotomy: either chaos or human-like agency (aka "intelligent design")? Aren't you missing the simplest, most obvious alternative: structure? "Structure" not as a house or a bridge, but in a more general sense, as a closed system subject to fixed constraints - what is conventionally called "laws of nature." — SophistiCat
By Intelligence I don't imply human-like in any way or form — staticphoton
And "a closed system subject to fixed constraints" like you refer to, does not preclude the possibility that the universe was formulated through a conscious, deliberate process. — staticphoton
If I am to take seriously the attempt at distancing from the traditional divine creation narrative, then I just can't see any attraction in this overcomplicated account — SophistiCat
I am open to possibilities, but possibilities are endless, and without a shred of justification there is no reason to take any particular possibility seriously — SophistiCat
I find that kind of strange a focus because in philosophy I've always focused principally on what seem to be broader questions (like what do we even mean when we ask things like "what is real?" or "what is moral?", what criteria would we use to judge answers to those questions, what methods could we use to apply those criteria, what faculties do we need to employ those methods, who should be in charge of doing so, and why does any of it matter) and answers to questions like "does God exist?" just fall out as a consequence of answers to those questions, rather than as a principal focus. — Pfhorrest
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