This preserves the old meaning of the term "nature" as excluding the man-made, because humans have 'a higher nature'. — unenlightened

In your nature/man/God division, the above distinguishes between nature and man, but not God. The God category though is the question of the OP, which refers to it as the "supernatural." It is clear what we mean by nature and by man, with a trip to nature being a trip to Yellowstone National Park and a trip to the man-made to Disneyland.

In common parlance, we mean nothing metaphysical by the nature/man distinction. We just note the two categories, even if ultimately humans are part of nature and Disneyland is as natural as a park.

Should I be stranded in the wild, unable to cross a river back to civilization, finding a fallen tree bridging the river would be a lucky event, with some debating whether it was a natural event and others supernatural divine intervention,, but whether it was man-made would be simply an empirical inquiry, looking for evidence of saw marks and the like.

The point here is that we do need to talk about elves and angels if we want to maintain the natural/supernatural distinction. Talk of the subjective and the moral only protects the supernatural for those who think it the result of something beyond humanity, not just a creation of humanity. The supernatural is beyond nature and humanity. That's just how we use the word.

find this confusing if your X = 'natural' as X(a) and X(b) would then have to be subcategories of natural.
Surely the contest is between x=natural and y=supernatural.
If y doesn't exist, then sure you can still reference it as a nonexistent, just like winged horses, orcs and elves or the word nothing. — universeness

X = everything. X(b) world include the non-exustent, like elves, ghosts, and gods.

And so that's the point. The lack of a physical referent does not, as the OP argues, dissolve the term into uselessness. If it did, when you said "supernatural," I would look at you confused, as if you uttered gobblygook.

Don't read this as a suggestion that because the term supernatural is useful and non-empty that there must be elves. I'm not uttering objects into existence.

This just seems like desperation to hold on to your own attraction to or need for the supernatural. — universeness

I didn't read it that way. The OP states the supernatural is an empty useless term, but the existence of the supernatural isn't necessary for the term to have meaning or use.

If the world consists entirely of X and only X and we speak of there being exactly two categories of X, X(a) and X(b), and we learn there are no X(b)s, we can cease referencing to X(a) and just say X. If howevee we continue to refer to X(b), even just to declare it doesn’t exist, it has usage and meaning.

I did not read his comment that way. The story of the Garden of Eden is based on the idea that God (the father; the authority) punished humans (children) for being disobedient. The lesson is we should obey God, regardless of how good our parents are. — Jackson

I don't see the Garden of Eden mentioned in the OP. Nowhere in the story of Eden does it talk about parents and the duties owed to them. The commandment related to parents (which occurs much later) states you should "honor" your parents, which does not mean to obey, and it actually doesn't even mean to love.

I'd also disagree with you that the Bible is written to mean you are not to challenge the authority of God (or, by extrapolation, one's parents). There are plenty of instances where the authority of God is challenged by humans and even instances where he relents after being challenged.

I'm just pointing out that your biblical analysis is highly interpretative and not bound by the text.

But if it's the godlike elemental primacy of parents in early childhood, then it's true, I thought this was shared experience. — hypericin

To the extent God is portrayed in an anthropomorphic way, and especially in a paternalistic way (as in God the father), there is a parallel between parents and God. How far individual families extend that metaphor would vary by family, but it's not a universal experience to have parents that present themselves as absolute infallible entities. I never had the experience and I never thought of my parents as occupying a superhuman role.

Again, this isn't to deny your experience. You might have had parents that were placed upon a godly pedestal only to be disillusioned when you learned otherwise, but that says more about your upbringing than it does about fundamental human family structures.

Delusions are restricted to opposition/denial of known facts. For instance to say the earth is flat is delusional. — Agent Smith

There is often dispute over "known facts," which makes it difficult to call someone delusional just because they might be proceeding under a very different worldview and might be accepting justifications that you would never hold acceptable.

For instance, that the world is only a few thousand years old, that it was created in 6 days, that there was a flood that wiped out all living creatures except those housed in a protective ark, that the earth is in the center of the universe are all beliefs very much contrary to what I take to be "known facts," but I don't think a believer in those are delusional. I think they're wrong, but I also don't think they are mentally ill.

If someone believes that God spoke directly to them and warned them to watch out for the demons masquerading as small children who are out to destroy them, then that person would have delusions of grandeur, delusions of persecution, and paranoia, all of which I would have no difficulty as declaring as delusions. That mentally ill person though is far different from the guy who holds to antiquated beliefs imposed by an insular and likely unsophisticated social group.

am a reasonably normal person and I think my understanding of reality is consistent with how most people in my culture see it. — Clarky

Why is your culturally relative evaluation of reality relevant here? Are you presenting an argument based on that?

That isn't what I wrote. — Clarky

We don't exclude how normal people see the world when attempting to determine the nature of reality anymore than we exclude how abnormal people see the world. We note only that the concept of normal perceptions have no bearing on reality.

My comment about you referenced how I suspected you had a notion of normal, which was in reference to your internal standard. What is the the normal response to hot peppers? Are they really hot or mild?

Everything you say is true, but that doesn't change the fact that if we exclude how normal people see and understand the normal world on a normal day from what we call "reality," it's goofy. It's philosophy at it's most useless. — Clarky

If you define reality as how you see it (and I mean you as in Clarky in particular), then that's that.

I'm not sure that's useful philosophy. I'm not even sure that is philosophy at all.

To say that reality as people experience it is not really reality is goofy. — Clarky

Except in cases where there is a disconnect between reality and experience, meaning it's not at all goofy to say that the schizophrenic and the drug addict are seeing something that's not there.

And so then you have to figure out what makes you normal and them not.

And then you have to acknowledge that the shape of your lens varies from mine and you see things differently from me.

And then you have to acknowledge that regardless of the curvature of either of our lenses, the lens is between the object and the perceiver and so it mediates the object and presents it a way peculiar to what mediates it. That is, you are not just experiencing the chair, but you're experiencing the light emanating off the chair through a particular type lens.

And we've not even begun to talk about how your brain might further mediate what you see, making it look different from the way I see it, and very much different from the way a bee might see it.

So what to do? As far as being able to describe the thing without reference to the way we subjectively modify it, we can't. It's not possible. That's the noumena. And that results in some saying let's just jettison all this metaphysical talk because it gets us no where. But I have no desire to abandon the correct answer just because it's troubling.

This Freudian sounding description might be autobiographical and true to your experience, but it doesn't ring true to mine or my children.

The problem with this sort of armchair analysis is just that, that it is theorized and then verified without any investigation beyond sorting through your own thoughts.

There seems to be a nexus between the comments in this thread and the replies, despite the fact that all replies are voluntary and not coerced.

What this means is that it is correct for me to claim that someone's post caused me to reply, even if someone has trouble realizing that "cause" is defined as all words, within a particular context.

Cause can mean as little as "persuaded" to as much as "forced." It just depends. Fascinating stuff.

Chris Rock caused Will Smith to slap him, but he didn't have to slap him. Wrap your head around the "could have done otherwise" idea. Head exploding emoji here.

Hey, everyone has to die at some point, somehow, so who cares if a few billions die of hunger, floods, etc., right. — baker

What are you responding to?

Arguing about the true meaning of Nietzsche often seems like arguments over the meaning of Bible versus. — Tom Storm

Do you find Kant or Wittgenstein more easily deciphered?

That we have experience can be define as the subjective, but our experiences themselves are not merely subjective. — Jackson

Yes. I saying experience is objective. — Jackson

That is the topic of the thread. I am saying the subject--object dichotomy is false. I gave reasons why. — Jackson

I don't see how these 3 quotes from you are consistent.

Yes. I saying experience is objective. — Jackson

Then what is subjective?

You chose a particularly poor quote for your OP. That's down to you, not I. — Banno

Your objection is silly, as if you're so offended on behalf of the apes that they might have been used to describe a less advanced man so much so that you can't move beyond it and address the substance of the quote.

Science claims only physical particles are real. Christianity claims the spirit is real. Thus science is the outer and Christianity is the inner. A dialectical relation. — Jackson

Certainly traditional Christianity is dualistic, but at some level most every belief system is. That is, everyone acknowledges we experience things and most acknowledge there are things. The debate typically centers upon how we explain the experience versus the object.

My point here is that there is nothing particularly Christian and contrary to science or physicalism about claiming there is a phenomenal state apart from the object.

My understanding of the high regard for subjectivism among Christians (as in Kierkegaard's famous line "subjectivity is truth") relates to the idea that truth is found in the experience of living life, of obtaining meaning and understanding by having the experience.

Saying you need Christianity (or religion or God generally) to address inner states doesn’t give science its due.

That truth as a function of subjectivity was coming to an end. — Jackson

Share with me that quote. The subjective nature of truth seems critical to Christianity, so it would make sense that he sees its destruction imminent.

It would take a truckload of charity not to call the above an evil thing to say, an evil teaching. — ZzzoneiroCosm

It's a hyperbolic criticism to an exaggerated interpretation of the virtue of meekness within Christianity.

would be surprised if anything positive said about Nietzsche would be worthwhile to you; mired in your self-imposed ignorance of his work as you seem to be. — Janus

I agree. I don't see Neitzche as evil or simplistic. I see his criticisms of traditional ethics as presenting significant challenges to it and I think he points out the consequences of the declaration of God's death.

It's a question of evolution: from ape to man to Superman.

(... And, of course, from Superman to Superduperman - a vision eternally projectable into the future.)

I've heard folks say that a figure like Napoleon ought to be considered, as it were, Supermanly. The passage above indicates an altogether different vision. As an ape can never be a man, a man can never be a Superman. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Putting this into the greater context of his writings, I take Neitzche's superman to be a rationally advanced person who rejects the slave morality of Christianity and derives his morality from this world. The need for such people arises from the death of God, who previously served as the central locus of morality.

The ape quote I take as metaphor, to illustrate the dramatic distinction between a person still adhering to the slave morality and the person who has risen above good and evil, as it were.

I do not read this quote to suggest humanity is in a literal state of continued genetic evolution or even that there is a superman ideal we all strive to emulate. To become a superman, as far I can tell, occurs from a pure act of the will based upon a heightened adherence to rationality and rejection of God. That is, you desire it and you do it.

To begin with, fossil fuel extraction and its wide spread use is a miracle of modern science and economic ingenuity unimaginable just 150 years ago, a mere flash in pan of human existence. What we fear today is our inability to maintain our current success. Our failure isn't in what we have done, but it's in our inability to figure out how to keep doing it forever. We fear we'll have to live as we did for the 1000s of years before we had all the riches deriveable from the soil.

Judging from our past successes, I'd bet on our future success. I have no idea what 150 years from today will look like, but I imagine it'll be as different as it was 150 years ago. Whether that will be harnessing the power of magma, the sun, hydrogen, the ebb and flow of the tides, or the spinning of the planets, who knows?

As to magma specifically, or any particular solution, such is not a philosophical question, but entirely empirical, and I'd be completely uninterested in anyone's thoughts other than an actual scientist with actual data and some evidence based proof. I remain skeptical of magma not because I think it's impossible, but because it's not been shown doable in a large scale way.

1. If the OP is correct that the statistical likelihood of any event occurring is >0%, then:

2. The statistical probability that I will be able to accurately describe an event that has a statistical probability of 0% of occurring is 0%.

There is no paradox. 1 is synthetic. 2 is analytic.

Only that which is illogical is impossible (0% likely).

I have an objection to the OP in combining the mystical with the psychotic.

It's one of two things, either it's an altered state brought about by deprivation, over-indulgence, or a genetically caused misfiring or it's the truly mystical and from the gods.

It's as Kierkegaard asked. Was it God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son or was Abraham just a murderous schizoid?

It's cooler to think the gods speak to us and that our epiphanies come from the heavens, but funnier to think the leader of the world's major religions was criminally insane.

If my memory serves me right, sources of the virus include cutaneous lesions, saliva, nasal secretions and faeces, and is most likely to occur in crowded stock. — Jamal

As you can imagine, I spend most my days interacting with the fluids you've described above, with only my peanut butter and jelly sandwich available to wipe off my hands.

I once got smallpox from Biggie Smalls.

I hope to one day have a designer pox. I had thought there were only chickenpox, but then I learn of monkeypox. I've been rolling around in rabbit pellets trying to get rabbitpox and have gotten unusually close to my goats in an effort to get goatpox.

Spellcheck has confirmed the following are actually words: rabbitpox, cowpox, and horsepox. However, goatpox, raccoonpox, and platypuspox are not words, but I still one day hope to contract them.

You say that you have no delusions that God communicated the Torah to Moses on Sinai. My position I think is even more skeptical; I don't know what such a thing would look like. If we were with Moses on Sinai and heard a booming voice coming down from the clouds would that be God? Maybe we're delusional? Or maybe it's not God? I don't know what it means to talk to God. — Moses

I haven't entertained the possibility sufficiently enough to ask myself what it would be like to talk directly to God. It would be like asking me to actually consider what it would be like if Winnie the Pooh were a non-fictional book and that would lead me to start contemplating what it would be like to interact with a sullen talking donkey.

I guess I just don't understand why someone would go through such lengths to write historical fiction/lies about an event that actually happened and that they were presumably there for. Do you hold this level of skepticism for other historical accounts? When we find ancient greek texts about e.g. the construction of a public place like a library or a temple do you just assume it to be lies? — Moses

You're imposing a modern standard of historical reporting upon ancient civilizations. The idea of seeking objective truth cleansed of bias with all sources checked and verified is a modern scholarly ideal which suggests a virtue in recording truth for truth's sake. There is nothing particularly virtuous, however, about maintaining historical accuracy above all else, especially when the writer never pretended to be doing that and the reader never expected it. That is, none of these ancient writers were lying in that they intended to fool anyone and none of the readers were fooled because they knew the intent of the writers.

What I'm saying is largely accepted, which is that we can't trust the historical accuracy of ancient texts, but that has nothing to do with our ancestors being liars.

For more on this, see https://www.historynet.com/can-trust-ancient-texts/

Use of the term doesn't change what people are actually doing. It may influence what they do going forward, but "naming" doesn't do magic and suddenly render something with some characteristic that it didn't have before (or remove some characteristic that it did have). I know the law sort of perverts the notion of language as non-magical (things can be lawful or not with significant future consequence riding on that determination), but what social structures are implicated by deciding that something is religion? — Ennui Elucidator

I agree with this, and I also don't mean anything pejorative to call a group non-religious. Framed this way, this conversation becomes a purely esoteric linguistic argument that invokes discussions about usage, context, essences, and prescriptive usages, but we would be limited within that esoteric context where none of this actually matters. In other words, this is pure philosophical navel gazing.

If someone commits to a prescriptive use of the term "religious" to require the existence of a deity and that negates your atheistic group from being a religion, but makes it more akin to a fraternal organization, I wouldn't consider that reclassification a relegation, but just placement into a separate category.

My misread (if there were one) occurred when you referenced those who might refuse to consider your group a religion as being petulant. That seemed to me to mean that how you were classified mattered on some social level. For example, if you wish to call my SUV a car and not a truck, I really don't care, unless you mean to say that car drivers are lesser than truck drivers.

Maybe I missed the point. To the question, is your group a religion? It's like anything else. It depends upon how you mean to use "religion." Sometimes it might be, sometimes not. As to @Banno's question whether science is a religion, same answer. Regardless of the answer, though, I don't think you can say anything more from that, as if to suggest the scientifically minded are at all like the religiously minded in other contexts simply because we found a way to sort them into the same bucket in a particularized instance.

I spent a few hours yesterday trying to determine whether a person were an "insured" under a particular insurance policy, which, of course provided its own set of definitions and exclusions. At the end of the analysis, I think reached a correct conclusion, but I wouldn't suggest that the person would have been an "insured" under a policy with differing language, and the question would have been even more uncertain had I been interpreting the term "insured" from common everyday usage and not from pre-defined terms. Whether the person would have been an "insured" in varying contexts means nothing though in terms of who that person is.

The question then was why science does not count as a religion, since may invoke all three. — Banno

Because science doesn't address the ought.

That sounds like a hip coffee shop with a liberal vibe, where you can talk about pretty much anything on the Democratic platform, avoiding Trump, pro-life, and border walls I'm guessing.

The label of "religion" seems important for your religion, where you object if someone degrades you to less than a religion and calls you a Saturday meet up group, right?

I'll concede too much energy is expended over labels and the fight over form and not substance is a wasteful one, so I'll grant yours is also a bona fide "religion" if that brings greater joy, but, really, the distance between you, and say the Satmar, is such a vast sea, it's odd to think you fall in the same category.

To psycholoanalyze (why not, right?), yours appears a struggle to preserve tradition without having to acknowledge faith and a demand that yours is as authentically religious as theirs.

All you can say is that only you can have your experiences; but that says nothing. — Banno

Knowing isn't an experience?

What? — Banno

Huh?

If the OT is propaganda for the Israelites, why is a good portion of the OT prophesying destruction for the Israelites because they've strayed from God? Why are most of the kings described as bad/evil kings? The kingdom of israel constantly looks bad, and Judah is only marginally better. If you were to say that it's God propaganda I would agree with you. — Moses

Actually one way to decipher authorship is to look at who is being made to look best, so if the Northern Kingdom is looking bad, you might suspect someone from Judah wrote it. But sure, God's constant interaction with the Hebrews is what the saga is about.

If you're trying to argue from the text that it must be true else why would it be written as it is (or something along those lines), I'm really not biting. The Torah is a book or many sources sewn together over thousands of years. I don't really see that as a point of contention outside fundamentalist circles.

It would, on my view, be an act of petulance to insist that the wedding was non-religious because no one there was concerned about beardy-head. — Ennui Elucidator

I'd consider it an act of petulance to insist a theistic religious service was atheistic because no one was concerned about beardy-head, largely because I do not believe in a corporeal deity, so i would think the physical description misplaced and somewhat mocking.

Not just can the concept of religion include religious communities that traditionally did not include god worship/belief, but it can also include religions that have changed from including it to not including it. — Ennui Elucidator

I hear you saying that belief in god is not part of your religion. What belief is part of your religion? What view should I hold to be able to preach from your pulpit?

How about book of ezra? book of nehemiah? do you believe that the babylonian exile happened? do you believe nebuchadnezzar existed? i don't currently believe in oral tradition/"the oral torah."

and by believe i don't mean 100% true, i just mean that it can be considered as a reliable/reasonable historic account. let's start with our benchmarks and go from there because nebuchadnezzar does mention at least one hebrew king. — Moses

I believe the entire work is selling a point of view, namely of the heroic tales of the Hebrew people. Whether there are moments of accuracy, I don't know, and I don't think it's terribly important. Recording history for the sake of accuracy is a modern phenomenon.

I'm referring to other people's (,e.g. Chalmer's, Nagel's, McGinn's) dualism. Banno is spot on; the subjective-objective distinction and the subsequent "problem" of describing one in terms of – reduced to – the other is incoherent (i.e. category mistake). — 180 Proof

This is question begging. If there is a category mistake, then the primary question still remains unaddressed: What is it about the phenomenal and the tangible that distinguishes them so significantly that they be placed in separate categories?

To claim they are simply two objects of the same substance that have drastically different properties begs another question: What is it about the one than lends itself to certain properties that the other does not have?

If all "category mistake" ultimately means is that they're just very different things and you can't use the same descriptions for both of them, you've offered no explanation; you've just reiterated without explanation that the two are just two very different things.

How are they different?

If the book is a work of fiction then the authors possess moral insight beyond the current day. I — Moses

It is a work of fiction. That's just the case.

Biblical interpretation is based upon thousands of years of interpretation following the final editing of the Bible, much of which is based upon an "oral tradition" that is largely a made up back story for the Torah. Then add to that the highly creative midrash method of interpretation, and you can pretty much derive whatever you need it to say. None of this is to suggest that Biblical interpretation is in constant flux because most traditions rely heavily upon prior interpretations.

That, as explanations go, is not the best. Made me laugh, though. — Banno

That the whole is comprised of its parts is a pretty basic explanation.

But one can easily imagine what it would be like to fly at night using sound to "see". So that does not seem right. — Banno

Thanks for the poem, but I think there's quite a distance between that and what the reality would be.

No, my friend, for the reason that "subjective experiences" are not objective; to require that subjectivity be described objectively is a category mistake, which is why (many philosophers and almost all cognitive neuroscientists consider) Chalmer's "Hard Problem" a pseudo-problem — 180 Proof

I take this as distinct from what @Banno us saying. He seems to deny the subjective/objective distinction, arguing (in other threads) that reference to the experience of the cup and the cup are not to be divided into separate entities.

Here, you intentionally or not, admit to a dualism, claiming two categories, each with their distinct vocabulary. That is there are (1) cups and (2) experiences of cups, just the latter are not to be described in the language of the former.

It's like other times you have eaten an apple, — Banno

It's actually like eating a pear, which would be a good cross reference to use to describe to you my experience if you lacked it and needed it