If you both intend on using rational argumentation there should be nothing for either to fear from having a moderator hold each of you accountable to the other. That should address the problems each of you have expressed about the others discourse. — DingoJones

Sounds like a reasonable proposition to me. And someone should delete ad hominems and other uncalled-for insults from both sides.

At the briefest glance looks very Eastern. — praxis

Yes, of course, a moderated debate (which I vaguely hinted at in my last reply to @3017amen.) :up:

The problem with deleting uncalled for insults is that each party would have the power to derail the discussion by claiming offence. There is bound to be instances where a perceived insult from one party is not at all perceived as an insult by the other. There will also almost certainly be instances of offence taken where none was intended, which is also not good for discourse.

I think a gentleman’s agreement for each party to try there best to keep it polite is the best you can hope for.
The moderator should for sure spend some time establishing some of the more obviously aggressive or passive aggressive moves each party has made in the past.

You've nothing to say anyone needs to bother with, Apollodoofus. Don't feel you need to logically demonstrate your positions on a site dedicated to philosophical discussion? Fine. Keep your bs to yourself and STFD.

Not sure it needs to be a debate, the moderator is merely there to keep everybody honest since each of you accuses the other of trolling/dishonesty.

Awesome yay. it's a holiday weekend but I may open up a thread tomorrow morning if I get time. Actually have your buddy Baden open up a separate category and just you and me duke it out — 3017amen

There's a debate category already. Put your proposal in proposals. I'd be happy to see this go ahead.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/categories/29/debate-proposals

Don't feel you need to logically demonstrate your positions on a site dedicated to philosophical discussion? — 180 Proof

The site may well be dedicated to philosophical discussion. Unfortunately, your comments aren't.

Keep your bs to yourself and STFD. — 180 Proof

Why don't you lead by example and show us how it's done?

I defend my positions and challenge others with sound reasoning. Observe, maybe you'll learn something.

As an angry non-believer I’d prefer to watch pistols at dawn but I guess that’s out of the question.

Oh, I've learned quite a lot from you, don't you worry. Unfortunately, nothing good.

Your "logical arguments" go something like this: ... "woo" ... "shit" ..."Wittgenstein" ... "bs" ... "woo" ... "Spinoza" ..."woo" ... "STFD" ... "woo" ... "shit" ... etc., etc.

Exceedingly "sound reasoning", I must say. Almost too sound to be true ... But hey, this is a "forum dedicated to philosophical discussion", so, yeah, koool.

Sounds awesome! Looking forward to it!

Like I say I may at least start the proposal tomorrow morning, and navigate through the rules... And if we both agree to the subject matter and the rules, then let's tentatively go for Tuesday after the holiday.(?).

But the gist of it will be I will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Atheism, and its belief systems, are not logical. Now there's a conundrum :razz:

Not only that, try to prove that atheism (as I argue it, not as you define it) is false. :wink:

I thought the topic was about atheist irrationality (anger, fanaticism, and unfounded pride). — praxis

Perhaps my reading skills have declined in my elder years, but I believe the original topic had something to do with this Einstein fellow?

Ok, so a thread just for you two. How to find a moderator now? Do you both agree to a moderator?

How to find a moderator now? — DingoJones

Ooo, oh, me, let me moderate...!

Perhaps my reading skills have declined in my elder years, but I believe the original topic had something to do with this Einstein fellow? — EricH

That was once upon a time, in the distant past. The world progresses very fast these days. And philosophy forums even more so ....

Lol, something tells me Amen would object.

Done. :up: :party:

...progresses... — Apollodorus

Perhaps my reading skills have declined in my elder years, but I believe the original topic had something to do with this Einstein fellow? — EricH

Einstein’s words have weight. They have the same kind of weight as he described the ‘chains of religious belief’ having. The chains he claimed that fanatical atheists had freed themselves of but still felt the weight of. The truth is that we all feel the weight of religious chains, if it’s part of our culture. It has influence. We can embrace it or push it away, love it or hate it, flow with it or flow against it. We can do this relatively freely or as a slave.

The claim is apparently that fanatically resisting weight, as I now generically refer to it, interferes with any kind of spiritual experience. I’d be the first to agree that high anxiety isn’t fertile ground for spirituality, and a newly freed slave might be disoriented and anxious.

What of the slave who is still chained? Are they immune to anxiety? No, chains can offer comfort and it may only be about that comforting embrace and not about listening to spheres.

Don’t be fooled by weight.

I was just wondering, out of curiosity, why you said that such images are couched in terms which were meaningful to peasant farmers and herdsmen in pagan agrarian societies but they "simply don't translate to modern post-industrial culture". — Apollodorus

I think there’s an obvious disparity between the imagery and tropes of the Bible and post-industrial culture. All of the imagery around sheep and fields and tares and so on was plainly addressed to an agrarian, pre-industrial culture. I’m by no means anti-religious but there’s a big disconnect there. Unlike others, I don’t think it’s simply all a myth in the pejorative sense - there are mythical elements but myths can embody larger truths, and do. But unless you can discern the real meaning, then belief is basically going to tend towards literalism or fundamentalism, which basically disregards the realities of current existence.

Now a Christian might say that the ‘real meaning’ is ‘unconditional compassion’ and the living out of the Christian virtues - with which I would agree. But the background of the belief system has to be interpreted in light of the human situation. There are those who can do that - there are certainly very discerning and technologically-literate Christian philosophers that I have come to appreciate (Jacques Maritain, Keith Ward, Gabriel Marcel come to mind.) But there’s also a tendency within the Semitic faiths broadly towards literalism and fundamentalism which manifests in various bad ways. I think that has to be acknowledged, at risk of bad faith. Biblical literalism will take issue with science when it disagrees with their dogma. ‘Arguing with rocks’, I call it.

My personal quest began with wanting to understand the enlightenment that Eastern teachers were on about. I grew up in the sixties, when the Beatles went to Rishikesh with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I was bought a Krishnamurti book by my mother for Christmas. I discovered those kinds of people. Are they religious? Well, yes and no. At the time I had nothing but scorn for ‘Churchianity’. The whole point was to attain insight through experience. Or so I thought. 50 years later a lot of things don’t seem to cut-and-dried. But there was definitely a kernel of truth in it. Anyway having discovered the ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’ meant, in effect, working as a labourer to pay the rent, I went back to Uni and studied Comparative Religion (along with philosophy, anthropology, history, and psychology). I was trying to understand what spiritual enlightenment or illumination was, and where to find traces of it in the different cultures. Comparative religion is the only subject which deals with that, or rather, where you will find those kinds of studies, even though the academics in that field weren’t particularly interested in it. (Although anthropology of religion is also a great subject, as is ‘history of ideas’.)

This is becoming a very long post, so all I will say is, I have come to something like ‘religious naturalism’ - that the insights and epiphanies of the higher religions arise from real encounters. There are sages and prophets, and they see real things. They’re not fictions, although they are often subsequently fictionalised. So I will never agree that man created God even though I no longer self-identify as Christian. The spiritual quest starts with seeing beyond the self, that is something that both East and West agree on. There are vast domains of understanding well outside the scope of our hedonistic technological culture. But we also can’t cling to the past. That’s the challenge of our day.

That’s why many of Einstein’s aphorisms appeal to me, especially those ones I quoted.

You're currently in the lead in the crowd of volunteers. :up:

@180 Proof accepted, @Apollodorus hasn't objected, so let's close the gate on it.

When do we start?

FYI: The proposed debate is with @3017amen and not Apollodoofus.

Oh... I should probably have known that. Oh, well, same old same old. Makes no diff.

Add my vote for Banno. Also, in as much as both have committed, hold both to it.

The spiritual quest starts with seeing beyond the self, that is something that both East and West agree on. There are vast domains of understanding well outside the scope of our hedonistic technological culture. But we also can’t cling to the past. — Wayfarer

I also find that, by training and sometimes by intellectual inclination, academics have a tendency to take an "impartial" approach to their subject that forces them to be so detached as to be virtually incapable of studying a tradition from within, which rather defeats the object.

I agree that we can't cling to the past, though we can and should draw lessons from it. We must cling to what is eternal and eternity is found in the present moment. The present is the gate to eternity. Those who look for it in the future will never find it. The agreement between seemingly disparate traditions seems to suggest that there is more than a kernel of truth in their teachings. Moreover, they all ultimately point in the same direction. It's just that the inner message often gets lost in external trappings and other secondary issues. Mainstream culture conditions us to look at externals and ignore the inner core of things and the true meaning of existence.

I also find that, by training and sometimes by intellectual inclination, academics have a tendency to take an "impartial" approach to their subject that forces them to be so detached as to be virtually incapable of studying a tradition from within, which rather defeats the object. — Apollodorus

Actually there's been a bit of a sea change in that respect. My first Prof. of Religious Studies was old school - religion was a phenomenon to be studied like pinning butterflies to a board. There was an element of cultural chauvinism in it, that a 'scientific' understanding was being sought, the implication being once again of the priviledged nature of the scientific perspective. (Not that he was a bad guy or anything, I very much liked him.) But that changed mid-last century with the ascendancy of the scholar-practitioner and the recognition that some of these traditions were actually peers of the Western intellectual tradition, not subordinated 'others'. (Edward Said's 'Orientalism' had a big impact on this.)

Anyway, overall in agreement.

... the priviledged nature of the scientific perspective. — Wayfarer

When did this happen? I've never heard of "the priviledged ... scientific perspective"? "Priviledged" elite theocrats and aristocrats, plutocrats and kleptocrats have never been a "scientific crowd" anywhere or anywhen in world history. In fact, they're almost always persecuting or politicizing "the scientific perspective" every chance they get.

I've never heard of "the priviledged ... scientific perspective"? — 180 Proof

As you yourself have noted in other contexts, fish have never heard of water. In the context in which I quoted it, I was referring to the 'Enlightenment' perspective on religious studies, which implicitly or covertly adopted a scientific stance towards other religious cultures. And indeed, Enlightenment philosophy, following Comte, priviledged the scientific stance in arguing that 'the scientific' supersedes and makes obsolete 'the metaphysical', which is the basic stance of positivism of all stripes.