If you like it, then you like it. I sing alone. I suppose in the long run singing in from of and or with others is more important to me, but we get to value what we want. Singing in the car and the shower are both cliches because a lot of people do that and usually alone.

He means that he thinks it is true that God exists.
What you are really asking him is how he arrived at his conclusion.

The metaphysical by it's definition ought to lie out of reach of the scientific method as from one point of view — ssu

Though science and the scientific method are not the same. And without some metaphysics in the air, so to speak, no on is using the scientific method. It is always done - the scientific method - in a context saturated with metaphysics. Models, ideas about natural laws, realism, and then specific ontological assumptions that underlie the method in general and then in the specifics of any research application of it.

No, science is not devoid of metaphysics. First off it makes claims about the nature of reality and the meta-nature of reality: iow ontology which is a part of metaphysics. Certainly if any scientist is working with a model: physicalism, natural laws: they are working with metaphysical assumptions. Metaphysics often gets treated as a pejorative term. It's not. And science weighs in on metaphysics - certainly physics does - with great regularity.

But I have done a thorough investigation into the use of the word "believe" (and "belief") and when used in discussions about the REALITY of existence...IT IS A DISGUISE FOR THE WORDS "BLIND GUESS." — Frank Apisa

I still think this is a category error. You think that people should not use the word belief for what is in fact their blind guesses. But the words 'belief' and 'believe' are not specific at all about rigor in epistemology. They, in fact, relate to what something thinks is the case, EVEN if they shouldn't.

Unless you are actually saying that when people have poor grounds for believing something, they actually don't believe it.

To me it is clear that people can often have great confidence in their conclusions, even on terrible grounds. These conclusions are their beliefs. Perhaps some are arrived at rigorously and others are arrived at through guesses.

None of that matters in relation to their use of believe.

If, actually, they don't believe in God (and inside they are saying to themselves 'I am merely guessing' well, fine, 'guess' would be a better word. But in general I think people who say they believe in God, do believe in the existence of God.

There are people who believe in evolution for terrible reasons. (and often this is coupled with misunderstandings about things like natural selection, but not always). Most people accrue beliefs due to the subcultures they grow up in, they memorize 'the right answers', and this is not restricted to ontology/metaphysics/religion and so on. This is across the board. Appeal to authority is the root of a huge swathe of beliefs.

If someone says to me 'I believe X'

I do not assume ANYTHING about epistemological rigor.

I do now consider myself informed about what that person considers to be true.

There is only miscommunication when people lie - but of course if they said the guess X is true and they were lying I'd be in same boat.

This whole thing rests on a category error that the word belief or the verb believe carries with it some threshold of epistemological rigor that has been passed. It does not.

Mine. The one that sentence was in. This is a self-serving answer. And what followed were the details of that answer in that post.

We got millions of virtual circuses.

Well, this is a self serving answer but I'd like to say that it is ad hoc, flexible and not too fussy. That tools and models from other metaphysics or approaches can be used without feeling like one is a hypocrite. I think there's a bit of (perhaps quite useful) hubris in thinking one can come up with the right ontology the right tools for all situations. That'll all be in our messy lilttle language and using metaphors and points of view coming from our motor cortex and primate brains. When we navigate our days we mix intuition, empirical study, listening to experts, deduction and a whole lot of not conscious at all tools, assumptions and problem solving approaches. We have more time when we are doing philosophy, if we do, but I still think a mixed approach suits our brains/minds and also 'the situation'.

Well, I feel like you may have experienced me as pettily critical, so I went for 'cool, we agree'. :smile:

:up:

If we were to try and identify these "perturbations" in the lives of the unfortunate poor, the most common would be diseases and these diseases, by and large, are untreated because the poor can't afford them, eventually leading to death. — TheMadFool

I'm thinknig of the poor in WEstern nations who yes have to deal with diseases, but they also have to deal with the stress of making ends meet, of living in dangerous neighborhoods, of the dangers for their children (crime, drug use, violence, pregnancy, not doing well in school, and so on) I don't know where you got your idea that the main stress for the poor is diseases, but I guess I would need to see some documentation of that. Also why you think the articles I linked to are not correct.

Where would you even turn to start to create a probability — Gregory

Yes, I think it is very hard to figure out a probability.

The people involved in the decoding portions of the british ww2 intelligence kept the secret for decades about their work even though there was no real reason to keep the secret. Then you have incredible public punishments for whisteblowers. That is public, official punishments. What other punishments we don't know about. Last you have marginalizition of anyone who claims to have been part of or to have witnessed any portion of what gets classed as a conspiracy theory. They leak, but nothing happens because their accounts are completley marginalized. You may find them on youtube, though less so now after the social media changed their algorithms.

No, stress is generally a worse problem for the poor.

https://www.verywellmind.com/relationship-between-job-stress-and-income-level-3145085
https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/PathwaysWinter11_Evans.pdf

Now higher income people may express more disatisfaction and stress than for example middle class people. But that's what they express, something they feel entitled to express and relating to their expectations. And I do believe they are stressed. But there are different kinds of stress, and shortcomes on expectations are a different kind of stress compared to not knowing if you are going to manage to pay the next power bill, etc.

c Sure that happens. But that doesn't mean that stress starts in the brain. Or do you think child abuse is ok? Some children will grow up to be fine, non-ptsd adults. Some will suffer the effects the rest of their lives. Is sex with your child ok, because you didn't cause the pain and later suffering, because their are exceptions and some children don't seem to suffer during it?

If I release a pathogen that causes a massive immune system overreaction in most people, but not all, and you die. Am I innocent of a crime because it was your immune system and because some other bodies do not react that way? Would a person doing that to you be, then, innocent of a crime since they did not cause anything?

I notice you did not respond to the limb or solitary confinement examples. You reiterated your positins.

Does understanding arise as a result of thought, or in the gaps between thoughts. — Antidote

Well, both. But if you think too much it will cut down on experiencing new things. Thinking - if by this we mean, verbal private thoughts - while someone is talking, is a problem. We need to be silent, to physically interact with things without mental thoughts, to list, to watch, to put ourselves into attempts to act and try doing things and a lot of other activities where thoughts can get in the way. Ruminating often is both a waste of time and a way of not learning but staying in a loop. There are many ways to find thoughts getting in the way.

On the other hand we don't have to choose in general between these two things. We can think and do other things in different moments. In fact watching, trying, and self-reflecting over the result is an incredible sequence for learning many things. There are other wonderful combinations.

Right, it seemed assumed that there was a comparison across time, when I don't see one in the OP. The OP seems to be saying this is what is happening now, which is not contradicted by what happened at other times.

If there are any full grown adults inside a woman's womb without her choice, it's just an intruder, and with home as castle lethal force laws, I think she should be able to kill that intruder. Anyone suddenly hooked up to my body, using it for nutrition and they are adult is a parasite and I would be allowed to terminate the relationship. Even if it involved their death. But look, they could manage on their own. Animals often rebabsorb fetuses in times of danger. It's not a person, yet. If it was, it wouldn't be a part of her body.

there's a bunch of assertions, including mind reading.

Well, no. Unless you want to say the God is committing great crimes by putting fetuses in women who don't want to give birth.

If it's the regular, habitual human response to certain environmental forces why would it not be a cause? How does the body remain outside, for example, a determinism including it's being affected on by the world. If we want to technical we could say that someone bleeding out from a knife wound is caused by the heart pumping blood to that limb. Or that corona does not cause any deaths. Or that solitary confinement has no effect on a person's pscyhological well being. I don't think we should say those things however.

We are social mammals. We are built to want social lives with certain qualities and quantities. If we don't have these, then we suffer. People may avoid being with themselves in ways that might also be good for them, but feelling lonely is NOT necessarily or as a general rule actually an inability to be with oneself. It's the unpleasant lacking of something we are hardwired to need and love and yearn for.

Fear seems to me to be irrational — Shawn

It's non-rational. It is a very effective pattern of mobilisation of the body. It is an evolved facet of animals. It is different from rational thought, but not necessarily at all irrational. In fact it would be irrational to remove a pattern that is so necessary and useful to the most complicated species on earth.

It's funny, I've posted something sort of like my response earlier quite a number of times and the only reaction I've gotten is for the person in question to re-explain that nothing matters or to demand that I demonstrate that there is objective meaning. So, it was pleasant to find someone who actually not only understood what I wrote but agreed.

Then on the tangent. I don't beIieve in elective beliefs in any short term sense. Like, hey, I'm gonna believe in God...ping, now I do. I do think one can aim at certain beliefs - say by exploring something experientially that one hopes or considers it possible will lead to belief X. And I think one can aim at consciously undermining certain beliefs - which can result in belief B rising to the fore. So, I think there is an elective potential.

Yes, that is precisely how I view agnosticism.

If someone asked you if there was a waterbufflo in your bedroom because they heard a sound, and you said no, I don't believe there is one. (or used a more normal utterance that means the same thing) you would during that time have a belief there is no waterbuffalo in your bedroom, even if you're not sure what made that sound. During that time. In a world where God is constantly brought up that kind of time is extended and repeated so it makes sense to say once does not believe in God or believes there is no God. If no one brought up the topic, it would fade away as a description. People would not identify with that label, because there would no longer be a trigger for it. And that's me as a theist saying this.

There are all sorts of things we believe did not happen do not exist. You must have some have some yourself. FAiries, ghosts, ufo abductions, vampires whatever, or perhaps global warming. Everyone has things about which it is perfectly logical to say I do not believe X exists. And by the way my above possible examples are not a list of things I am saying are real or not. Just choosing some things that many people do not believe are real.

1. All thinking ceases

2. The impression of a self/I is lost — TheMadFool

Right off dreams are a clear exception to this - not all dreams but in most there is a sense of an I and also there is often recall. I actually think it is a different sense of self, but still a sense of self. I feel, for example, upon waking that I have been very relaxed for a long time - if I slept through the night, and needed what I experienced. Not just 'I am rested now' but what a pleasant time I've been having for a long period of time.

How do we know because when we wake up we don't recall anything that contradicts both 1 and 2 (we don't remember thinking and being aware of a self) and recall is a widely accepted necessary property to conclude thinking was ongoing and self-awareness was present. — TheMadFool

It's possible that it is widely accepted by I don't think it's a necessary criterion. People can experience things and be conscious but not remember them - this can happen on some dentistry pain medications. IOW one can be experiencing but not recording the experiences in the same way one does while awake. I'd just like to throw in that one can also connect to the conscousness in non-dream sleep - IOW be lucid in this also AND have recall. Meditation after long periods can do this and likely there are other techniques, perhaps more directed. I have experienced this state fairly often. It is quite different from waking states. My mind is blank of verbal thoughts. It is very grounded in the body. I often hear myself snoring. Sometimes I wake up, because it can be a bit exciting. Sometimes I drift back to non-lucid states or dreams.

That's not what I said. You are now making a claim that that's why I think the way I do. Which is fine. I made a claim about them. You made a claim about me. But in the structure of your response - even if unintended - it looks like you are summing up my position and that's not my position.

That was quite a bit of energy spent trying to convince other people who don't matter to believe something. In fact it's hard to believe you think they don't matter. I mean, you could have done something hedonistic in that time, but you wanted others to think X, for some reason. When their thinking X or not thinking X wouldn't matter, since they in total do not matter. So, why not do something fun or as close to it as you can get given your circumstances.

Fallacy of "Appeal to authority". Go home already — god must be atheist

That was not an appeal to authority.

It is not possible for a religious person to comprehend anything more complex beyond "let's have a drink". — god must be atheist

I metioned two theists, Newton and Erti, as counterexamples to your ludicrous claim. Let me explain what an appeal to authority would be: if I said God existed because Newton was a theist. That's an appeal to authority. I gave a couple of examples to show that your idiotic claim was not the case. Not an appeal to authority.

No, it's not The reply to this, is for you to name something that is not capable of existing. You demonstrated that you can't name such a thing. You even deflected the challenge as not part of the argument. But it is a very essential part of the argument. Becasue EVERYTHING is capable of existence. God included, whether it is existing or not. — god must be atheist

So God has a capablity even though God may or may not exist? How do you know God is capable of existing?

capable
adjective: capable

1.
having the ability, fitness, or quality necessary to do or achieve a specified thing

Perhaps you mean some other word since only things that exist are capable of anything.

I think that fits with my description and with my experience with agnostics and their beliefs. And it does not fit with his op.

That's why most atheists say they are also agnostic, whereas a religious person never says that. It is not possible for a religious person to comprehend anything more complex beyond "let's have a drink". — god must be atheist

That's demonstrably false. Like off the top of my head Newton, say. And there are many modern examples who not only are smarter than your summation, but smarter than most of the participants in this forum, like, say, Gerhard Ertl. I am sure you're just expressing some bile and don't mean for that to be taken literally, but jeez, why bother.

He does not have to. He just can't both believe and not beleive in god. That's the simple version for the benefit of the religious. — god must be atheist

You're not responding to the argument I made.

Can you name something that is NOT capable of existing? I challenge you to name anything that can't exist (outside of god). — god must be atheist

This doesn't fit my argument either. I am saying that if an agnostic makes the positive claim: God is capable of existing, that is an extremely strong ontological statement. And it has nothing to do with agnostics I know where they would say something more along the lines of 'the cannot rule out that a god exists (and implicitly, that they cannot rule out that a god could exist). Not being able to rule out is NOT the same as saying that something is the case. Here that not being able to rule out that a god could exist is not the same as saying a god is capable of existing.

Yes, you're right and I think it should be pointed out also that there is a slide between the definition of agnosticism - as a belief in the capability of God to exist (early on in his post) and his later definition of agnostic. And that first rendition of agnositism

Agnostic" means a person who believes that god is capable of existing, but the person has no knowledge or decisional capability to tell whether god exists or not. — god must be atheist

Is an incredibly convoluted belief to have. That 'agnostic' would have an extremely complicated positive belief about ontology and metaphysics. This person would feel they know that the nature of things means that gods are capable of existing, they just can't tell if they do or not. Wow! How does one know that the universe or reality is such that gods are capable of existing? What are the criteria for that?

It is no use explaining to me what it means. I know perfectly well what it means. (A) "Agnostic" means a person who believes that god is capable of existing, but the person has no knowledge or decisional capability to tell whether god exists or not. — god must be atheist

I don't think that is necessarily the case at all. An agnostic need not assert that a deity is capable of existing. On the other hand the agnostic can say 'I cannot rule it out. For all I know one might exist and/or for all I know it might be possible. Again, I cannot rule that out.' To say that they believe a deity is capable of existing means they have a positive beliet that given the ontology of deities and the make up of reality, God's are capable of existing.

I do think a lot of anger at women for having sex type issues underly some or perhaps many anti-abortionist positions. IOW it offers a release for the anger that seems to be noble - protecting innocent victims. There's at least one guy posting in this thread who has that feel. in this and at least one other post. I am also skeptical in general about their rule. That they would not contribute to the deaths of innocents. It seems to me most do and a large percentage of the anti-abortion lobby supports wars that necessarily kill unborn children as they frame them. If we get to take a utilitarian view of killing babies - like in a war it is ok for the greater good, then women and others can also take a utilitarian view of the fetuses in their bodies. You can't rule it out deontologically. It's not an absolute, it depends.

I don't feel like a victim, nor did I present myself as one. My last post was me summing up my experience of how you responded to me, or perhaps also did not respond to me. I was not insulting, nor did I complain about suffering. As I said in my previous post. You thought the points I raised about government and corporate use of our money were not relevent to this thread. I responded to that in my next post and argued it was relevant. If you disagree with that argument or need clarification, feel free to respond to that post. I explained what I had experienced in our interaction to explain why I am not repeating points I have already made, which it seemed like you were asking me to do. Yes, it did seem like you attributed things to me I did not assert, but it would take a hellava lot more than that for me to feel like victim. Nor does telling me I am framing myself as a victim, when I'm not, make me feel like a victim.

I've made a number of points in a number of posts. Was there one of my points you didn't understand? I'd prefer not to start repeating myself. My first post you responded to raised a number of issues related to the general rule your position on abortion has. You thought that should be in a new thread. I explained why I thought it belonged here. I wrote posts regarding 'responsibility'. A few times I pointed out things you seemed to be saying I said which I had not. You neither accepted that I hadn't said them nor explained how I had in response to that. Now you are asking me to repeat posts I have already made.

That men can and should take responsibility for sex, the pregnancies they may cause, and the children they may sire seems obvious to me. — Tzeentch

Sure, of course. Something that this person at least forgets to include.

It seems to me that you are saying men and women have different responsibilities, not that men cannot take responsibility. — Tzeentch

I am pretty sure I made it clear that men could take responsibility. They just can't take as much. There is a unavoidable difference here, not men's fault, but there it is. A woman, for example, can in fact take all the responsibility for a pregnancy and birth, once it is underway. A man can never do that. Of course men can take responsibility and many do.

Well, the woman is carrying the baby/fetus. Her body is taking care of those needs. Her choices in what she puts in her mouth, how she moves, what she does and doesn't do are part of her responsibility taking. The birth and the pregnancy will alter her body, perhaps permanently. She may never come back to her original weight. Her genitals may change shape and tension. She will experience, should she come to term, pain the man cannot. Her responsibility includes a risk of dying, post-partum depression, The woman is responsible for her own heath and the health of what may become her child in ways a man cannot participate in. He can support her in millions of ways but she has de facto responsibilities that he cannot, however loving, take on.

responsibility
/rɪˌspɒnsɪˈbɪlɪti/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: responsibility

1.
the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone.

Those are all very interesting topics. I'd happily discuss them with you in another thread. I don't see how the existence of other issues should stop us from discussing abortion, though. — Tzeentch

To raise those issues was to point out the general rule - I may or may not have unfairly constructed, but it's on topic. If the general rule is one must take responsibility for one's contribution to the death of innocents, we are all on the front lines, not just pregnant women. And if that is the rule than I am amazed I don't hear much about the other ways most people contribute to the deaths of innocents, including from those against abortion. So, it makes me wonder if the reasons they put forward are really the reasons. Or if they do not realize that they are involved already in other deaths. If people are actually consistent about the rule, then fine. But if they are not consistant about the rule, then their argument, against abortion, may actually not be the reason they have that position. It's kind of a test.

I don't think I suggested that anyone should stop discussing abortion. I don't know where that came from.

By the way, I am in favor of men taking responsibility for sex just as much as women. — Tzeentch

That's good, though of coure they can't. But to the extent they can, they should, yes.