@180 Proof, make the correct mistake.

While I was in college I talked with a guy who knew a few in the adult industry. He said they all smoke dope or snort cocaine.

I'm sure you can find pornography associated in some way with most vices — Shawn

Indeed, pornography is a gateway activity - the first domino to fall or the first link to disappear with the anchor into the abyss. Kinda like C₂H₅OH, oui monsieur?

I wasn't exactly talking about learning. Close enough nonetheless.

Ethically, it's suspect in the eyes of even those who earn their daily bread from it.

Nice! The happy mistake, the blessing in disguise, the lion that scared away the wolves. :cool:

Your posts crack me up. — Tzeentch

I always wanted to be a comedian. No luck, perhaps I ain't sad enough! :lol:

I didn't say that it was — Sam26

:ok:

We're all (genetic, re mutation) mistakes. Mistakes making more mistakes is what explains the population explosion.

Agnosticism isn't a lack of belief.

:cool: is unworthy. — :cool:

Where does a 600 pound gorilla sleep?

Any damn place he wants to! :lol: :monkey:

It must be quite disheartening for philosophers to hear someone say "This? This is merely real!" What's priceless is the unreal and we do an about turn, leave philosophy (tata Thales) and head for mythology (hi there Homer).

If censorship becomes a normal everyday affair, we must learn to listen to the silence! :cool:

Is there a philosophy of porn? If there isn't one, I'd be happy to collaborate with anyone who wants to socratically examine the subject.

By the way, I may be wrong, but the dopamine rush you experience while watching porn/engaging in sex is identical to the one you get when, for example, you have an Eureka moment. :chin: It's all about sex, Freud was bang on target. So much for Mill's higher and lower pleasures.

Having sex with a real woman is far, far better than doing it with Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. :lol:

if you can have multiple singularities, you'll need to change the name. — Wayfarer

:lol: Witfarer! For me "singularity" is interchangeable with "revolution". A transformation in type and not in degree. There's no such thing a human god (sorry Jesus, you were :ok: this close, but so near and yet so far. 'Tis true, "almost" is the saddest word in the dictionary).

To answer the OP, pageantry was always part of the act; it just wasn't as spectacular as it's now. I believe it's called presentation, in this case the musical counterpart of rhetoric. The reason why music concerts are sold out events is that it's full-options car that every family dreams of. There's talent and it comes with bells 'n' whistles. It must come as a relief though, to music aficionados, that the glitz is secondary to talent. If you simply can't carry a tune, you're not gonna please the crowd no matter how you present yourself. A monkey is a monkey even if you dress it up in a Tux.

Yeah, and we are an extension of "mindless evolution" that has adapted – programmed – itself to tell itself the story "I have a mind, therefore we are minds". :smirk: — 180 Proof

We seem to owe nothing to animals - we eat them without as much as a twinge of guilt/remorse.

The first atom was a singularity, the first cells, the first animals, yes these are all lower level singularities that occurred in the past. AI will be a singularity and i bet there will be another one after AI since it would fit the ongoing pattern. — punos

:up:

Evolution evolves. We evolve. — punos

Evolution is trying to understand evolution. Marvelling at nature is nature blowing its own trumpet. Humans can do better and that's a (technological) singularity in its own right, oui? AI seems possible if it hasn't already happened. Are there hermits still?

Evolution is not as blind as she used to be.

It's all part of the same evolutionary process. Evolution is simply operating at a higher level of efficiency in the human, social, and cultural domains. I'm just amazed that i'm alive to see it with my own eyes, and to feel it in my own bones — punos

China copies America copies Nature. Nature doesn't think. Quite the role model, eh?

Agnosticism is not having a belief concerning god.
— Banno

Therefore rocks are agnostic! — fdrake

:lol: That's exactly the point I was looking for. Rocks lack belief. So are rocks atheists if atheism is, as some claim, a lack of belief?

You should try using emojis because your so-called "thinking" is :roll: tonight. — 180 Proof

:lol:

I don't know if I should be thoroughly impressed or utterly bored of such achievements. As a human it sure is amazing how we've built robot birds but the fact that mindless evolution did that just through trial and error does subtract from the glory.

It's sad that our ideals don't include our nature - we have to discard that which makes us us to be any good in some people's eyes. Sex is a case in point. We're sexual creatures, our libido being, as is obvious, liberated from the rhythms of the universe; quite unlike other animals, we're arousable 24×7, 7 days a week, 30 days a month, whole year round. That's biological sexual revolution, anticipates and dwarfs the cultural sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s in me humble opinion. We'll always be unworthy in our own eyes.

Has anyone mentioned the Kama Sutra?

first saw actual hardcore aged, I think, 19, when an incredibly vulgar full-page photo was printed in a student newspaper in defiance of obscenity laws. I regret to say I was electrified by it, although at that time (early 70’s) it was still impossible to get hold of. Then I went to Amsterdam, awash with porn stores, followed by Copenhagen, in 1973 and saw Deep Throat which was - how to say - something you can’t un-see. I don’t want to go too deeply into personal experience other than to acknowledge that I instantly became habituated, and that I regret it and think that I would have been a better man had I not become so. — Wayfarer

:up: There's sex and there's Tantric sex. Part of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition is to come to an understanding of our sexuality or so I was told. I've seen plenty of pornography in Buddhist iconography, paintings, sculptures.

The other day I saw Jordan Peterson talking about pornography.
— Shawn

*instantly leaves thread* — Changeling

:lol:

I'm just curious about a fact that's obvious given but a moment's reflection - why are there no aesthetically-challenged female singers?

I'm sure every teen in me stretch of the neighborhood has watched porn, but when I talk to them, they seem like normal, good people. As far as I can tell, a (young) person who's porn-literate is no different than one who's not.

Atheism mistakes spiritual with religion.
— Agent Smith

As I say - it's one of the consequences of the way Western thought, in particular, evolved. Because Christian orthodoxy absorbed so much of so-called pagan philosophy, and then made it subject to right belief, all of it tends to be lumped together and then abandoned together. The Indian view is very different. — Wayfarer

I'm left wondering whether this isn't just some kinda mistake we're making. If there is a connection between e.g. philosophical nonphysicalism and religion, then necessarily if one sinks the other does too. Have you seen ships drop anchor? The chain holding the anchor consists of rings linked to each other. As the anchor descends, it takes along with it the first link which pulls the other link attached to it and soon enough the entire chain disappears into the depths.

Though there's overlap at the margins (e.g. naturalism, secularism), one ought to observe the distinction between "New Atheism" (i.e. polemical irreligion) and philosophical atheism (i.e. critique of theism, critique of supernaturalism). — 180 Proof

True that. Fine distinctions you're making there. Kudos. I used to follow New Atheism, but it's kinda lost steam over the years with the most vocal members having withdrawn almost completely from public life. A change of guard hasn't taken place in any real sense - Hitchens for example seems to be irreplaceable.

In a sense war/destruction/death/decay/decomposition is part of the game. Our world seems to be based on a conflict model i.e. it's adversarial - all the niches available have been filled and now competition is inevitable.

My take is that (in the context of consciousness which I take to be a definitive feature of what is in question) necessarily there exists some greatest thinking thing. Ergo that thing is by definition God (without attaching any further implications or speculations as to the nature of that thing, which, based it would be invalid for inferior beings to do anyway). — Pantagruel

:ok:

Sorry Amigo, you have completely bypassed my argument which I can only repeat, but wont. I think we may be too far apart to continue. I'll leave it to — Tom Storm

That's ok.

Indeed. Atheism mistakes spiritual with religion. The idea of nonphysicalism, a philosophical view, is indistinguishable from religion to the atheist. The testimony of the senses (empiricism) is not being denied here, but to claims that's all there is to the universe is a bit too rash.

As a lack of belief, atheism let's itself off the hook - no longer is there a duty to justify itself (no belief, no justification needed).However, one must justify the outlook itself and that comes in the form of beliefs should be justified.

she scorns badly behaved children, as any self respecting mother ought to do. I don't blame her in the slightest — Benj96

:ok: She cares not whether humanity survives or tapeworms survive - we're not exactly her pet, oui?

(Momma) nature is red in tooth and claw, eh mon ami? A taste of her own medicine :love:

Yoi're well-versed with the rules of the game mon ami.