There is a kind of 'religious underground' in Western thought - Descartes secretly a Rosicrucian, Newton with interests in alchemy and occult, Hegel an hermetic. — Wayfarer

:up: You brought back memories of my fairly recent and very superficial encounter with 15th, 16th natural philosophers (scientists) and mathematicians who had delved into the occult. I dislike the word "occult" though, wish there was a better word without the negative connotations the word has acquired over its history. I suppose it's got to do with our rather unhealthy and thus unwise fascination with the unknown - both the occult and natural philosophy, not to mention mathematics, were uncharted territories, at least in Europe, back then. Yet, I can't shake off the feeling that there's, not to toot my own horn, a hidden and deep relationship between these subjects. Look at how it all panned out - the nexus between math and science in the modern world is as clear as crystal and the occult, at least alchemy, has transformed into chemistry, chemistry itself built upon a bedrock of rigorous math. A penny for your thoughts...

Yep, I think you hit the nail on the head. So ↪Olivier5 is quite happy to bring intersubjectivity in to the discussion, not noticing how it is used by, for comparison, ↪Pfhorrest, ↪simeonz and ↪Mww.

So there's folk as for various reasons don't differentiate between what is true and what is believed - they suppose for example that nothing is true, just believed to a greater or lesser extent. They've various epistemological structures to reinforce this view, versions of coherentism or pragmatism, sometimes rejecting truth outright, sometimes redefining it in terms of a sort of popular vote or a final goal.

I'd just point out that being popular or being useful is not the very same as being true. I hope that's apparent.

But also I've no objection to the suggestion that some experiment that is repeated successfully should reinforce one's belief in the result; that's not at issue here, at least for me. — Banno

There seem to be some kind of a paradox hidden in this part of the philosophical universe. Scientific reproducibility, as understood in the obvious way, would have us believe that, well, more the merrier - the probability of something being real is directly proportional to the number of observers that report whatever that something is.

On the flip side, there exists a named fallacy that cautions us against such a mindset called, if I remember correctly, argumentum ad populum which basically denies any link between beliefs and the number of believers.

Perhaps, there's a difference, subtle or not, you be the judge, between observation and belief. The scientific principle of reproducibility is about observation and the argumentum ad populum fallacy concerns beliefs. While it's true that when it comes to observations, the number of observers has a major role to play in the authentication of the observation, the same doesn't apply, in fact the situation is the exact opposite in a sense, when beliefs are an issue.

Frankly, I have no clue. Both beliefs and reproducibility-based verification of observations seem inferential in character and hence, both should be equally fallacious if numbers are treated as a measure of truth/realness.

like a rooster taking credit for the sunrise — Wayfarer

:rofl: :up: :clap:

highlight how superficial our knowledge might be. — Wayfarer

:up:

I want to run something by you if you don't mind. I've always been fascinated by science and math, not so much by religion except maybe Buddhism and the fringes of faith proper viz. esotericism and mysticism. What kind of a mindset does that reveal? The obvious conclusion seems that, to people who share a similar outlook, science, math, esotericism, and mysticism are connected in some way or another but then there are many mathematicians and scientists who think nothing of mystics and vice versa.

Well, to be frank, humans live, at the most, up to 70 years, give or take 5 years on average. The lifespans were much, much shorter back in the day when religion was all the rage. We have the, how shall I put it, the benefit/privilege of hindsight, thanks to writers, historians, etc. and can actually see how history has played out up to this point in human history. Our ability to do this is a godsend for the simple reason that we can make out, quite clearly I suppose, where we got it right and where we f**ked up. You have that advantage and it shows in your comments. You're lucky in that sense because you have the golden opportunity to learn from the mistakes and good decisions of your forefathers. I don't know why I said this but I hope you can tie it all together at the end.

Religion is, whatever said and done, advertised/presented as a force of good - that's the basic idea of all religions and this realization is key to understanding why people behaved/behave/will behave the way they did/do/will do. Surely, if one feels that one is doing good, that good being defined by one's particular religious affiliation, then one will have a conviction, an unshakable conviction, that one must do whatever it is that one sees as good. This, in a nutshell, gives you a general idea of all acts committed in the name of religion.

The crusaders, Christian jihadists if I may say so, were all acting in good faith - they were thoroughly convinced that they were good and that what they were doing was good. They didn't have the privilege of possessing historical records on similar religious undertakings as theirs (unlike present-day Moslem jihadists) that could've changed their minds regarding the nature of holy wars. People like us, in the 21st century, are luckier in that we have a somewhat reliable record of past human activities and that gives us an advantage, an unfair one if the matter concerns the moral aspects of actions.

I know, I've experienced, that there's such a thing as love at first sight but then I've also heard people say that it takes time to know people. I suppose a similar rule, if I may call it that, applies to the relationship between ideologies and people. Religion, because of how appealing its core ideas are, could've been a case of love at first sight but then, over centuries of this rather passionate affair between man and god, we've begun to realize that we, some of us at least, want to end this nexus.

Overpopulation is the easy target here. I remember doing a back-of-the-envelope population, factoring in things like average family size, ideal living space, and what do you know the current world population of 7 billion can be fit into an area the size of an average-sized European province; we could, in principle, leave the rest of earth untouched and allow it to evolve as it naturally does. Of course I didn't calculate the space required for the industrial complexes, the agricultural infrastructure, etc. necessary to support 7 billion people but my hunch is, if we plan it well, they might occupy just another province-sized area of the earth. I hope this gives you an idea of how, if we play our cards right, the earth can support humans in even greater numbers.

Well, I don't think fear alone, as you seem to be suggesting, is the reason why society, excluding the occasional disturbance to peace, is able to function as smoothly as it does. I do realize that, from the rioting that follows when law and order breaks down, the general calm and harmony that we experience in society is extremely fragile and complete chaos being a function of the health of the police.

However, there are two sides to this coin. As I mentioned earlier, the opportunities to engage in criminal activity and then being able to, in your words, "...get away with it..." are aplenty given the citizen to police ratio is huge in most places around the world and yet peace and calm are more the norm than the exception.

I concede that fear does play a role, probably a huge one, in morality but I don't agree that it's the only reason that we're, society is, good.

Life is absurd — Tom Storm

You can say that again. Camus, despite what his detractors, if any, say, was, in my opinion, a success story, no? Plus, built into his philosophy is the expected harsh criticism leveled, if that's the case here, against Absurdism. What could be more absurd then faulting a philosophy that, at its heart, is optimistic even as it hurls itself directly into the crosshairs of an unfeeling enemy that gives no quarter to man, woman, or child and picks us off one by one with deadly accuracy. :joke:

"Greed is good." — baker

How so? Going down that road, naive it may sound, leads to the rich get richer and the poor get poorer "quicksand" you seem so eager to wade into.

Inertia, fear of conflict, minding one's own business, physical exhaustion due to overwork and stress.

I'm not convinced that people set out to try to "maintain peace". For that, they would actually have to know what brings about peace. Rather, I think peace is one of those states that are essentially byproducts of other things. — baker

Really, fear? Fear of what? As I mentioned the police forces are spread thin over large urban settlements - it would be quite easy, in my humble opinion, for people to, as you said,

get away with endangering and damaging it (property/lives). — baker

I don't think you're giving good people due credit.

How exactly do you think the world runs its cities? How is the peace maintained in towns, cities, megacities? The police force is, by my reckoning, just too small, in some cases poorly trained, ill-equipped, evn corrupt - surely some other factor is in play here? What, in your view, is that?

Yes, and this asymmetry has to somehow be considered good and moral, good. — baker

How exactly, may I ask?

I just realized that the hypotenuse isn't just its length, there's also slope to consider and the slope of the hypotenuse does have meaning - the going rate for 3 apples. I'm still not satisfied with the answers other posters have been kind enough to offer.

In Minkowski space-time (I hope I got this right), the hypotenuse, if the x axis is time and the y axis space, does have a meaning - it's the worldline of the object passing through 4D space-time and here too, like my apple-dollar scenario, the two axes are measuring totally different quantities. Whether that actually means something or whether it leads to an answer to my original question is not clear to me.

As it seems to me space-time is equivalent to apple-dollars.

If an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good being was on your side in a battle, wouldn't it be silly to question faer commands? Of course, assuming such a being exists.

Seems like cherry-picking to me - you've got few instances in which being moral would likely be a fatal error but you're ignoring what must be instances where the only sensible choice is to be moral.

Too, if you haven't noticed (I have), morality makes so much sense that some, if not all, people have come to believe in "good for the sake of good". It is/has become a reason unto itself - it needs no argument to hold it in place, it's self-justifiying.

Judith N Shklar kind courtesy of @Banno. Only a woman's heart could've penetrated the dense fog of male power struggles to see what's really going on underneath the hood of patriarchical societies where the Devil's work is done in the name of God. :joke:

The ‘mutually hostile gods’ can just as easily be seen as our warring passions. — Wayfarer

So, it's all in my head...and heart...then?

Do you see a better way of approaching the issue of the now official position of those who've peeked inside the box of meaning/purpose and found none for themselves than Camus'? I haven't read Camus but I know he was deeply involved in the whole meaning of life question but what if, just what if, his conclusion was, as @Wayfarer once said, "the least worst option" or as I like to see it, the lesser of two evils? This is a question worth asking and if someone has a good answer, it'll be worth a listen/read.

You can see it like that if you want. — Wayfarer

What do you recommend for a person down on his luck?

I don’t mean I believe in the Greek gods. What I mean is, that imaginative realm is far richer than the picture in which human life is simply the outcome of the random collocations of atoms — Wayfarer

I don't want to contradict you but isn't that like saying "I don't mean that I want god to exist but I find that life without god rings hollow" A distinction without a difference! The alternative to "...human life is empty..." in our case is a pantheon of mutually hostile gods.

I've been trying to figure out whether or not there are actual infinities in the universe or not. However, that seems rather ambitious for finite beings like us, bound as we are by an invisible boundary we can't ever cross. So long we we're stalked by death and decay the mystery of actual infinities will forever remain unsolved.

Perhaps we're in dire need of a genius the likes of Newton or Einstein to shed light on what is a vexing issue insofar as I'm concerned. I probably won't live long enough to watch the breakthrough being announced on CNN or BBC but I'm rooting for all the young ones of the planet - someone must have what it takes to crack the problem.

:lol:

I don't think I can help — simeonz

Sorry to hear that. You come across as more than capable of coming up with a good response. Too bad. Thanks.

It is not nearly so desolate and barren as atheism. — Wayfarer

Some would probably think differently. Would you feel your life were enriched if you came to know that, as someone, I can't recall who, said:

We're to the goods as flies to wanton boys; they kill us for sport — Unknown

?

I'm not sure I get that. You riddle me too hard a riddle there, I'm afraid — simeonz

I feel the same way you're feeling, maybe we're in identical situations. All I can say is you're coming at the issue from a rather conventional point of view. I'm asking you to relax, bend, ignore, contradict the rules/principles/whathaveyou that's making you think that there's

no actual geometric model — simeonz

.

I think I get what you mean but you must surely have had the experience of not being able to say "no, this is impossible" to someone, someone you love dearly perhaps, and then quickly thought of something appropriate - the next best thing to say. Imagine you're in the same position with me (not that I'm a lovable character). What's, for you, the next best thing to say?

:up:

What I find intriguing is that polytheism with a pantheon of quarrelsome gods seems indistinguishable from atheism. In both cases we'll get the same results - wars, disease, disasters, etc. things I expect should be usual occurrences if there's, there has to be, "trouble in paradise" or if the population of heaven were zero.

What is ruled out or is highly improbable is an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent god [ref: Epicruean dilemma]. There's and was and probably will be too much bloodshed that makes such a god an impossibility - an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing god just wouldn't jibe with the reality as it was/is/probably will be. All life is just too "short, brutish, and nasty" to be the handiwork of god thus conceived of.

Come to think of it, Buddha's weltanschauung wouldn't have been able to accommodate a single divine being as the be-all and end-all of goodness because, it seems quite obvious on hindsight, Buddhism's central tenet is that life is suffering; how then can there exist an all-good god and even if such a god exists, he must surely be powerless to come to our aid or both [ref:Epicurean dilemma].

The whole point is that the 2D Cartesian coordinate system is not a picture. It is ascription of coordinates to some plane of points, which points correspond in pairs to vectors, which vectors individually correspond to lengths and in pairs correspond to angles. Ok, the points are angles-apples, but the remaining properties are not automatic. They are not provided by the Cartesian coordinate system for you, mathematically. They are provided by you, originally, so that you can justify the use of Cartesian coordinate system. Otherwise, what you have are just pairs of numbers corresponding to points, and the rest is as real as Tolkien's world — simeonz

All I can say is that I'm talking about Descartes and you're talking about Descartes' father. We're talking past each other.

Well, that’s a valid point. A Christian might say that the Buddha never denied ‘the God of Abraham’ because the two traditions were culturally remote. A Christian also should say, I think, that ‘God’ is not a God at all - not like Shiva or Vishnu or Baal or Zeus, or any of the other pantheist deities, but is of an entirely different order altogether. Although that is a distinction that atheists are probably not inclined to recognise.

(Also notice that the Indian ‘deva’ and the English ‘divine’ both spring from the same Indo-European root.)

If you ever encountered the writings of Thomas Merton or his successors, or the Jesuits like Raymondo Pannikar, (e.g. here)they have very interesting reflections on the relation of God and Buddhism, but it’s a pretty long way off the beaten track. — Wayfarer

Thank you, as always. The etymology part about the word "deva" is telling indeed. I wonder how the concept of god evolved over time. My guess is that it started off realistic - gods with personal agenda bickering among themselves and humans getting caught in between - then it became unrealistic - the omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent god - and then it became realistic again but sporting a different look - atheism. What's your take on the history of the god concept?

I'm going to rework my presentation in order that you may better understand my predicament. Please keep the explanation simple as I'm not a mathematician.

Here goes...

1. There's the usual 2D Cartesian coordinate system (x and y axes are perpendicular). I'm not willing to debate on the matter of whether the x and y axes are perpendicular or not because that's a given. Imagine now a person travels 3 m along the x axis and 4 m along the y axis. The person started from point (0, 0) and is now at the point (3, 4). If I know calculate the length of the hypotenuse it's 5 m and this 5 m is a distance just like the 3 m traversed along the x axis and the 4 m along the y axis. In other words, the hypotenuse makes sense to me - it's a distance, just like the adjacent and the opposite sides

2. There's, again, the usual 2D Cartesian coordinate system (x and y axes are perpendicular). This time, however, the x axis is labeled as apples and the y axis is labeled dollars. 3 apples cost 4 dollars. Here too there are 2 points: (0, 0) which represents 0 dollars for 0 apples and the other point (3, 4) which represents 3 apples for 4 dollars. This time too we can construct a hypotenuse which is 5 "something". 5 isn't dollars, neither is it apples. We have nothing else to choose from since we haven't anything else to choose from apart from apples and dollars.

:chin:

In that book, Nietzsche was actually referring to Greek tragedy (plays, dithyrambs) and how it came to pass that the Greeks gave birth to such things in relation to music, hence the title "On the Birth of Tragedy out of the spirit of music." He was talking about tragedy as an art — Nagel

As far as I can tell, from my own personal experience that is, music has the power to stir up all kinds of emotions, from joy to sorrow and everything in between. I don't see how and why the Greeks seem to have found it particularly useful for tragedies. Perhaps music, the right kind, can intensify the heartache of tragedies but I'm unable to see the connection between sadness and music - it should exist if what you say is true, assuming I read you correctly.

The square root of the square of the number of apples plus sixteen. An amazing breakthrough in marketing! — jgill

I don't get your joke. We have two items in our list: apples and dollars, each of them forming a side of a right triangle. What's the hypotenuse in terms of apples and dollars?

If I ask a similar question with distance, the answer is quite obvious: the hypotenuse is the shortest distance between the two points that form the ends of the hypotenuse; the hypotenuse is a distance.

I don't want to split hairs but devas as gods seem to be a misnomer of sorts for they are nothing like the god we encounter in the Abrahamic triad. I think those who translated the Hindu/Buddhist scriptures were just too lazy to think of a better term for devas. They're definitely not gods who would be moral exemplars, a necessity if Buddha wanted a divine aspect to his teachings.

All that went over my head.

If memory serves, Pythagora's theorem works only for right triangles and yes the axes that I used are perpendicular and yes there's a right triangle (3, 4, 5) formed. There are 3 apples that come at a total cost of 4 dollars. What's the hypotenuse in terms of apples and dollars? That's all I'm asking.

Nothing for something no more exists than does something for nothing.

Somebody is paying the freight.

Even if somebody gives you something for "free," it is not really free, not only literally, but in all the other ways that makes the recipients of free stuff dependent. — synthesis

How do people get rich? I can't quite put a finger on it but there must exist an asymmetry in the exchange between, say, buyer and seller, for such a thing as profit to be real.

Context counts for a lot. — Wayfarer

I completely forgot about atheistic religions the only one of which I'm somewhat familiar with being Buddhism. The Buddha's refusal to discuss god is legendary, at least in my eyes. I suppose the Buddha didn't wish to throw away a good idea (Buddhism) by including in it subject matter (here god) that would prove to be difficult to talk about and keep one's credibility intact. Perhaps he realized that the doctrine of Karma was, in and of itself, speculative enough to preclude more speculation which would've been the case if he had made room in his philosophy for a deity not to mention what the Epicurean dilemma would've done to his idea of how to live the good life (Buddhism).

I don't see a/the connection between alphabets and logic. For instance, there's nothing logical about "h" or "o". How are we going to proceed from there to an argument? Plus, what's the number of alphabets got to do with logic? There are many languages around, all with different number of alphabets, but Godel's theorems don't vary between them.

Indeed, you're correct in pointing out the rather narrow Abrahmic triad version of God I seem to have written about.

It appears that some folks have a different idea in mind by god, god as a principle that ties everything together into a unified whole, god as a the universe itself, god as even a deus deceptor, god as a mischievious Cosmic Joker, god as something not to be discussed, but all of this variety in the way god is viewed have something in common viz. inconsistencies between a priori definition (omni-powered god) an a posteriori observation (evil) and our struggle to harmonize the two into a picture of god that makes sense.

Unfortunately, as the Epicurean dilemma proves, the OOO (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) god is untenable and the fact that we have refused to let go of the OOO god despite all the hard evidence that seems to tell a different story and making only minor adjustments to the god concept points to, even as we've learned, as the adage "trust in god but keep your powder dry", over countless generations that "god only helps those who help themselves", a very deeply-rooted desire for a loving, powerful, knowledgeable protector of sorts which some might construe as veering on or as a full-blown case of pathological obsession cum delusion.

I'm ranting.

My two cents worth...

The need for god can be, in my humble opinion, inferred from how we've defined faer - as all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing. In essence, we're looking for someone, maybe even something (I'm not sure whether these 3 attributes constitute a "someone") who/that wants to take care of us (all-good), who/that can take care of us (all-powerful) and who/that knows how to take care of us (all-knowing).

The underlying premise in theism seems rather parochial - we want to be taken care of - and, of course, the reason for that is not at all surprising - we can't take care of ourselves - and the obvious conclusion from that is once we've figured out how to take care of ourselves, god would immediately become redundant i.e. god would no longer be needed.

So you have V = r times whatever. As r goes to zero, V goes to zero.
And you have A = r times whatever. As r goes to zero, A goes to zero. — tim wood

What about the ratio between A (surface area of the cylinder) and V (the volume of the cylinder)?

A = 2 * pi * r * h

V = pi * r^2 * h

A / V = 2 / r ??!!

One way of making sense of this is as below:

2 * pi * r = C = Circumference of a circle with radius r [1 dimensional object]

pi * r^2 = = E = Area of a circle with radius r [2 dimensional object]

A = C * h

V = E * h

As r -> 0, the 2 dimensional object (E) collapses to a point and subsequently, all objects based on E, like the 3 dimensional object V, vanishes.

But as r -> 0, there's still h to deal with; the cylinder becomes a 1 dimensional object, a line with length h to be specific.

Well, even the great Einstein, possesed of such a powerful intellect, seems to have missed a spot. To be fair his idea of god seems Spinozist which would've effectively hidden the possibility of a mischevious Cartesian deus deceptor bent on keeping us from the truth, one way of doing that by simulating indeterminism. Had he given Cartesian skepticism a few moments of thought, I bet he would've immediately seen this rather unsavory possibility. I daresay his much-publicized atheism stemmed from the evil his people had to face in world war 2 but the irony is a deus deceptor isn't ruled out by evil, in fact even the Spinozist god is susceptible to a deus deceptor interpretation. After all, whence all the evil? Surely if Einstein assumes a god that he believes doesn't play dice, that god must be the cause of all the evil - a deus deceptor seems too plausible to ignore.

Maybe not. There are tests of randomness but I don't think they are that useful, they can spot something that is deterministic if it makes no effort to use randomness from the results. Reasonably random results adhere to a distribution that can be detected using the Chi-square test for example.

But I don't think its that interesting to consider if you can be tricked or not. — Paul S

My point is somewhat along the lines Descartes' deus deceptor idea which I believe has modern incarnations mutatis mutandis or so I'm led to believe. I wonder if Albert Einstein ever thought of that. All I can say is it can't be ruled out with any acceptable degree of confidence. The indeterminism we encounter in our lives could be divine mischief/deception.