Again you come up with no counter arguments... that you have none I will have to assume. — Devans99

No, you don't have to assume that. That's being lazy and immoral. The alternative would be to do what's right and check properly, and it would be a bonus if you did so and then learnt a valuable lesson from it.

Again, it is your responsibility to put the effort into listening to criticism, and taking it into account with respect to your argument. It is irresponsible to do what you're doing.

You must have made that point about a hundred times now. Stop spamming.

Ok, fine your point? — Anaxagoras

I went on to explain the point.

According to you. — Anaxagoras

Well yes, obviously according to me, but obviously not just according to me. That is a clear example of wishful thinking which anyone verify themselves, so long as they're capable.

Religious belief or otherwise is personal and whether you perceive it as wishful is up to you, but nonetheless it is, my belief. — Anaxagoras

No, it isn't up to me. That is a conclusion I have reached through reason. Abandoning reason is not a choice for me. I am convinced that it is wishful thinking, and would need to be convinced otherwise or deceived to believe otherwise.

Of course it's personal, but so what? It is not private, because you've made it public. We're discussing it. I am exercising my right to freedom of expression by telling you what I think about it.

But you're nobody to me. You're an opinion on the internet and not an authority and even if you were an authority you're still a nobody online. Regardless how you formulate your arguments philosophically to where an atheist would jerk off to it and splooge all over the place, it would not change how I would believe spiritually.

I would stop if I were you because this road is actually closed. The "proving that God doesn't exist" stops here. — Anaxagoras

That's all that ethics is. There is no authority. I can't force you to share my judgement or my values. I can only argue what I judge to be the merits of it, and the demerits of going against it.

It is also my judgement that it is a bad attitude to treat me as a nobody to you, instead of someone who might be worth listening to.

True. This is called belief...I believe the Lakers will one day win the NBA championship just as I believe the Cowboys will win the NFL. — Anaxagoras

No, it is an example of belief, but not all belief is like that. That particular kind of belief is belief based on wishful thinking. It is unreasonable, and should therefore be rejected and avoided, if you share the same values as me in this regard.

Of course, it gives my brain confidence, but it doesn't make me wrong for the belief. — Anaxagoras

I judge it to be unethical.

Well my ideas of a spaghetti god are different than my ideas of what and who God is. — Anaxagoras

Well, yes. But so what? Believers often seem to have difficulty with this point. They point out differences, apparently forgetting that an analogy is not the same thing as an equivalence. It is about what the one and the other have in common in a specific respect, not in a different respect, and not in every respect. The analogy is about the epistemological basis, not about the fact that one is a spaghetti god and the other isn't. That much is obvious. It is actually quite silly to miss the point like that.

The actual content of the belief is irrelevant. Only the effectiveness of the purpose it serves is relevant. So, spaghetti god or just plain old god, it doesn't really matter in this sense.

Oh God. But that just sounds very much like you're believing what you want to believe. The belief isn't reasonable, but it serves a purpose. It comforted you when you were vulnerable and experiencing trauma. It didn't need to be belief in God. In theory, it could have been belief in anything whatsoever, including things that believers themselves find ridiculous, preposterous, absurd, and unthinkable, but that is undoubtedly a double standard.

This sort of thinking is in sharp contrast to the critical thinking encouraged in philosophy. It is the sceptic who is more ethical in this regard, assuming we share the same values. The believer is not as principled. The believer caves in.

You always say my arguments have been proved false elsewhere but won't give a link to where. — Devans99

Don't you agree that it's immoral to sit back and let someone else do that work, when it is your responsibility?

None of these arguments have you addressed here or elsewhere. — Devans99

Don't you think that it's immoral to lie or to make easily avoided mistakes through laziness, unwillingness, or sheer incompetence? The last one might be a tad more forgivable, but I find it hard to believe. I think you're probably just being lazy or otherwise unwilling. You haven't properly checked, and you don't want to. You want to try your hand at manipulating me into doing so.

It's worse, because I'm the type of person who is actually having to put effort into withholding a repetition of my criticism of said-argument here, in the hope of teaching you a lesson about morality. Don't exploit my good will. Do what's right. Learn a valuable lesson. If I end up repeating it here, then we both lose.

Click the smiling face icon, top right, above the text box.

Yes. Once it is recognised that the first cause has no cause, it becomes clear the only possible answer is 'no reason'. — Devans99

The only problem is that you don't know there is one. You stubbornly cling to arguments previously shown to be faulty, and you want to act like an amnesiac in this respect.

No, they're a good example of the exact opposite. Lying through your teeth, being fake, telling them what they want to hear, acting all pleasant, tight control of your body language and mannerisms...

If I was uninformed then you wouldn't be "reminding" me, you'd be "informing" me. I guess this is what you do, you go look on the internet for obscure religious cults very few people know or care about, create a contradiction-of-terms-troll-nickname and "remind" us all of the existence one of likely six thousand forgotten renditions of a forgotten pagan sun god religion, which were all of course based on forgotten religions that predate them. Interesting. — whollyrolling

Bullseye! :grin:

Haha. Alright, calm down, bruv. There's no need to shout. I probably got you mixed up with Devans99 because you both have light green avatars and incessantly repeat yourselves.

legislated by reason with pure practical predicates — Mww

:lol:

Glad you corrected yourself lol — Anaxagoras

:monkey:

Ah sweet, you created another discussion about me. Or so says my ego.

Yes, it can be a type of ad hominem or some other fallacy of irrelevance. But, nevertheless, I have said that it can be important to express these assessments, because if you don't express them, then you aren't making anyone aware of what you have identified as a problem, an if you don't make anyone aware of a problem, then you aren't even taking the first step towards a possible resolution. And also, as people with a keen interest in philosophy, we should care about pointing out the truth as we see it, and expect like-minded people to likewise care.

My psychological assessments seem come to me intuitively. It's probably that I'm picking up on something, reading between the lines. Or, of course, I could be reading things into something that isn't actually there, and I could be off the mark. I'm aware of my own fallibility. But, basically, if the shoe fits...

I don't agree that comments of this sort should be silenced or shut down. I'm in favour of freedom of expression here. And I don't approve of any disapproval on the grounds of etiquette or political correctness.

People are puzzles, and I like puzzles. I like putting together the pieces, and sometimes they just seem to connect in all the right ways.

I'm still waiting for the OP to define "Gnostic Christianity" for me. — whollyrolling

Sounds like it's Christianity as interpreted by an atheist with attachment issues.

So say the unenlightened. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

If that's what you're calling enlightenment, given the full context of what I said (you quoted out of context), then I would much rather be unenlightened. Although a more accurate term than "enlightenment" would be "sophism".

I honestly am not in the habit of raising busted arguments. — Devans99

Well, I'm sure you don't mean to do so...

I have. It is correct, in the presence of no evidence either way, to start at 50/50 for an estimate of an unknown boolean proposition with normally distributed answers. — Devans99

Okay, so long as we both acknowledge that a working assumption is not a justification. I will check out your argument when I have time. I'm about to start work.

But if it is an already presented argument with objections not properly dealt with, then that should be the starting point. Let's not act like amnesiacs.

Fantastic counter argument :( — Devans99

Hitchen's razor. You have yet to justify your starting point.

But what if the coin was six dimensional, had four faces, magic powers, ate cornflakes for breakfast, but also not conflakes for breakfast, and was made of rubber and also cake, but was also a hippopotamus? Why can't we just admit we don't know what side it will land on? — StreetlightX

:grin::up:

Well I have argument that builds on the 50/50 and concludes that there is a 91% chance that the universe is a creation: — Devans99

You can't build on thin air.

If you toss a coin 100 times, would you predict:

- All heads
- All tails
- 50/50

It's the 3rd. The question 'was the universe created?' is of the same nature - boolean answer, no reason to suspect a non-normal distribution in the answer, so 50/50 is the correct probability to assign. — Devans99

I wouldn't predict any, because I don't have to, and because I am more sensible than that. I would say that a 50/50 result would most likely be closest to the actual result, which could be anything.

But anyway, you can't reasonably jump from your coin example to the creation of the universe. So what's your argument about the creation of the universe?

I think the question 'is there a God?' is not a 50/50 proposition. — Devans99

Okay.

But the question 'was the universe created?' is a 50/50 proposition. — Devans99

And what's your argument for that? The last time we got this far, you refused to present one.

Correct...which is why I would not make it.

I merely say that I do not know. — Frank Apisa

Ah, okay, so you've changed your stance. You've scrapped the 50/50 thing. :up:

(By the way, I would strongly warn you against spamming the forum. If you keep that up, I predict you'll end up being banned).

Yourself? — Janus

Prévisible.

Yes, he came and the poor fly was evicted from its familiar abode.

Poor fly. — Wallows

The fly doesn't need your sympathy, this is a cause for celebration. It has been liberated. Fly away, dear fly, fly away. Up, up, and away.

Until I shewt you down.

Teaching is an odd profession in that if one does it well, the student will no longer need the teacher; teachers seek to do themselves out of a job. If people did not insist on having more kids, we would not need teachers.

We would not need philosophers if folk stopped getting tangled up in their worlds and words. — Banno

So we'll always need teachers and philosophers. Perhaps philosophy is useful after all, although it is a Monday, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow until we're on the same wavelength.

This is actually an inaccurate definition, since nothing at all is known for certain. — Maureen

It's a considerably better definition than knowledge as certainty, because under that definition we would know next to nothing, yet we know so much. Why are you even bringing up certainty? How does that help?

Even scientific "facts" such as the nature of the earth's rotation are not known with 100 percent certainty to be true. — Maureen

Right, but they're known nevertheless, which was the point, I believe.

With that said, it may indeed be justified for you to claim that there are no Gods, but there is still a possibility that there are Gods nonetheless. — Maureen

And...? Who do you think has suggested that it's impossible? I mean, it could be impossible. Unless I've missed it, you haven't even made it clear what exactly you're talking about, so how can I know that it doesn't lead to contradiction?

If I asked you what you meant by "Gods", and you replied, "Gods are beings which blar-de-blar...", and something about that description implied a contradiction, then it would be reasonable to conclude that Gods, as described, cannot exist.

Something here is troublesome to me... — creativesoul

Is it the relationship between green eggs and ham?

That's a duplicate post. Is your circuit board overheating? Do we need to send you away for repair?

S.: Aristotle? We ain't got no Aristotle. We don't need no Aristotle. I don't have to show you any stinkin' Aristotle! (With apologies to the Bandito.) — tim wood

What are you talking about? We all need Aristotle, otherwise how can any of us ever know anything about happiness? Someone ought to act to rectify this great travesty, posthaste. What are all of these newly weds doing wasting time on their honeymoon? They know nothing of happiness. They should be reading Aristotle!

Mother just given birth? Take that newborn out of her arms and replace it with a book written by Aristotle!

You make the usual mistake of thinking it is all a matter of opinion, and this is shallow thinking, as well as being the definition of sophistry. Winning or losing is all about opinion, but that is not philosophy; see the difference? You should loosen your grip on the need to think in terms of winning, that is in terms of black and white, if you aspire to one day actually be wise. — Janus

You are in no position to talk to me about wisdom when you deliberately miss the point like that and take a cheap shot instead. Go on then, you can scuttle away now that you've predictably exploited my use of that term and spewed out some patronising drivel, if that's all you care about. (Hmm... evasion, exploitation of language, patronising drivel... now what does that remind me of...?)

I meant it in the sense that, in my assessment, he presented a more reasonable or compelling case. And by that criteria, I consider him to have "won". And there's nothing wrong with that. Not that I have to justify myself to one such as you.

Being moral relative to S is about S's judgment. — creativesoul

Would you two kindly stop talking about me?

Seriously, though, if this is that difficult for you, we need to concentrate on tackling stuff like the Cat in the Hat first. — Terrapin Station

:rofl:

Dr. Seuss utterly failed to distinguish between green eggs and the reporting of green eggs. Green eggs are distinct to and/or from that which is prior to green eggs. Green eggs are existentially dependent on ham.

The Cat/Feline in and/or around the Hat.

Eggs/ham is distinct from eating about eggs/ham.

Why in the world do we have to keep posting the same thing over and over? — Terrapin Station

On the bright side, at least he has stopped going on about thought/belief, existential dependence, and that which is prior to language.

I can now take the shotgun out of my mouth.

But the difference of quality is obvious in extremis, so we know that Shakespeare is better literature than Mills and Boon, and we know that Bach created greater musical works than probably anyone today, and that Da Vinci is a greater artist than the middle class hobby painter. We know that acts of love are morally better than acts of hate, and so on. — Janus

None of those "in extremis" examples are factual, true, correct. They're simply opinions that one can have. — Terrapin Station

I think that's just bullshit; — Janus

"That's sophistry" isn't an adequate response to the objection. — Terrapin Station

You're both kind of right. But Terrapin wins in my assessment of this exchange. It does seem obvious, and calling it bullshit will likely seem agreeable on the surface to many people.

But can you provide reasonable support for such claims without the added qualifications? If calling something obvious or bullshit or sophistry is adequate here, then why not in other contexts in philosophy? Where is one to draw the line? Is it just whatever Janus says goes, or is it another appeal to the masses, or what?

Sophistry. Hmm. What is it? — Wallows

It's a type of jellyfish.

It was spontaneous. Like enlightenment, ya 'know? — Wallows

Of course I know. I'm the Buddha.

And, I'm Sir Wallows. — Wallows

When were you knighted? I must have missed that. I was probably off my tits on drugs or engaging in mental masturbation.

Yes, yes. I think the medicine is working now. — Wallows

Of course it is. I'm the doctor.