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

Personally I have no idea what it means to be 'like' me. — Tom Storm

The experience of being you holisticaly is to have the various individual experiences of being you. Whatever your holistic phenomenal state is right now could be imagined subtracting out any particular experience. That is, I could imagine what it'd be like to not be playing on my phone and therefore not being me as I currently am.

The concept of likeness isn't complicated, awkward, or elusive. I can know what things are like and not like, even though I'm just one perceiver.

To be like something for which I have no reference, though, is impossible, like being a bat. I do know what it'd be like though not to be me insofar as I've experienced other states I'm currently not experiencing. But, to jettison the concept of likeness as incoherent because all you've ever been is you simply isn't correct.

seems his whole idea of "like" is vague or inchoherent. — Jackson

Nothing is more clear to me than what it is like to eat an apple while I'm eating an apple.

Or is it that some people have simply adapted sufficiently to the capitalist system, or even that they are somehow genetically or otherwise predisposed to function well in it, while others are not? — baker

Or maybe work isn't where they look for meaning.

The holiest day of the week is sabbath, the day of rest. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

The idea that it cannot be or should not be questioned is what I question. — schopenhauer1

If you know a way to get the food to jump on the plate, I'm all ears.

Not only are we slaves, we're all slaves from the same series, for we react the same to the same stimulus! Yay.

(The term "robot" comes from the Slavic root for 'forced labor'.) — baker

We are slaves to our material existence and survival requires work. How we choose to emotionally respond to that reality is our choice.

Of course survival and material acquisition are only the rudimentary elements of our existence, and I would only buy into the generally pessimistic view that life is a series of harsh experiences followed by an unceremonial death if that's all there was.

Marx's description is abstract; millions-- hell, billions of people are, by Marx's definition alienated and it doesn't feel good. The alienated worker is insecure (he can be abruptly laid off. — Bitter Crank

I still don't think you have an alienated worker if he thinks he's not and is otherwise content. Maybe a more demanding person would realize his peril and experience the anxiety associated with it, but there is the real case of the happy worker.

The unalienated worker isn't just an anomaly to look upon curiously, but he poses an alternate solution to the Marxist, which is that we needn't dismantle and reconstruct the system with the proletariat in charge, but we need only reproduce the conditions to other workers that our unalienated worker has found.

And really, that's what we do. We negotiate back and forth the workers' conditions until we find a happy misery for both employee and employer to coexist.

Right, so any worker happy with their work is unalienated? — schopenhauer1

Alienation is a feeling of isolation, so if you don't feel it, you don't have it, and even if you did, but were happy about it, it's nothing to worry about.

The better rhetorical question to ask is whether you should address the unrecognized alienation experienced by the contented people.

What does unanlienated worker look like? Can anyone provide a vivid description? As I said in that thread: — schopenhauer1

I'm not out to "contradict" what you said, I'm out to dispute the frankly infantile framing of what you said. Can you imagine a state department lackey writing a white paper on geopolitics of Ukraine analyzing things in terms of "free will" and "moral responsibility"? They would be fired on the spot or else laughed at and told never to write that again on pain of infinate embarrassment. It's just so incredibly stupid.

Xtrix asked if the US contributed to the mess in Ukraine. And your response is a parable about bad parents and free will? What is this? Seasame Street? — Streetlight

No, what you're frankly out to do is continuously reiterate your narrative that you have some special understanding of the situation that somehow evades everyone else and so you stomp your feet around like that should make us better believe you.

What I said was that the Russians are morally responsible for their decisions. Somewhere you read into that that my position was that the best course of action for the US is to do that which would instigate immoral activity on the part of the Russians. That interpretation of my bad parenting analogy must also mean that you think I thought bad parenting was perfectly acceptable simply because they wouldn't be responsible for their children going out and committing murder.

In terms of the white paper you envision either of us being summoned to write, I suppose I would write it seeking to obtain whatever pragmatic objective I wanted to achieve, and I generally don't get sidetracked with moralizing. However, I do thank you for letting me know the consequence if I did moralize, as I'd be fired, laughed at, scolded, and just embarrassed until my face was so bright red that I'd never be able to show it ever ever again.

Other than just taking whatever opportunity you have to reiterate your narrative that you have an advanced and nuanced sense of understanding otherwise lacking everywhere you search, how exactly did what you say contradict what I said, even if what you said were true?

So let's leave that aside. Has the United States, as the world superpower, contributed to this mess in Ukraine? Yes, of course it has. Does anyone argue that this isn't the case? — Xtrix

To the extent that nothing occurs in a vacuum, sure, the existence of the US as a threat to Russia and the expansion of its influence through NATO sparked conduct on the part of Russia.

Who's to blame for Russian boots on Ukraine soil. I'd say Russia.

Moral responsibility rests not with the every actor along the causal chain, but upon the actor who interrupts that causal chain with a specific intentional act resulting in the specific bad act.

It's why we don't throw bad parents in jail for the acts of their children. It's that quaint notion of free will. That you killed because your parents sparked all sorts of bad conduct might be true, but if you pulled the trigger, it's on you and only you.

ask because I feel many if not all our problems are caused by not getting our priorities right. For example, I'm a sucker for good-looking peeps and my life is nothing but a series of disasters caused by my idée fixe with beauty. — Agent Smith

I'm not Hindu, but the idea of listing one's hierarchiy of priorities is an interesting one.

Truth and justice seem like they should make the list, but not beauty unless that is taken to mean all worldly pleasures.

At any rate, my top priority is my family, truth and justice be dammed.

You know those things by which to guide your life also without the Bible. You don't need the Bible for its content, you need it for the institutional justification of said content. — baker

That might describe someone, but it doesn't describe me.

I don't subscribe to the notion that wisdom and ethically appropriate behavior is known a priori. It is learned, and where that knowledge is found is varied. Maybe you acquired it from your parents, some role model, or a religion, I don't know. What I can say is that the Bible, for whatever historical reason, in Western society, became the vehicle for those most concerned and focused on finding meaning and purpose to our existence. From that piece of literature,with much creativity and bias, entire systems of often conflicting thoughts sprang forth.

My resort to the Bible for wisdom has nothing to do with delusions that God himself spoke it while Moses transcribed it. It has to do with it having been designated the human societal Western Constitution (so to speak) and the thousands of years of our best and wisest having wrenched meaning from it, even if the literal text no longer resembles the final interpretation.

I began making my argument, but you, as usual, jumped the gun. How dickish. — baker

Although I don't understand how I could have interrupted your argument before you could set it out, considering we're typing and not speaking, go ahead and say what you're wanting to say.

And back to the rule of the dick.

The surest way to keep the discussion of this topic superficial and never moving from the spot. — baker

There was nothing dickish or stubborn about my post. I made the obvious observation that the demand for abortion typically arose as the result of a mistake, namely in having gotten pregnant when the woman hadn't wanted to.

You indicated the choice wasn't in having had unprotected sex, but it was in having engaged in a relationship in the first place, and the sex that followed that was because society so demanded it that the couple had to submit and have the sex expected of them.

My point was that your argument was extremely poorly reasoned (i.e. pretty stupid) because (1) it defies my experience (in that the sex I've had, I truly wanted to have) and (2) if you believe most sex is under societal duress, you're claiming most sex is rape.

So, back to the discussion: women choose sex, then they choose abortion when they don't choose to have the child, and the reason the abortion is morally neutral yet unfortunate is because the fetus was not a person, but the emotional pain from the mistake is real.

There's nothing toxic about being too submissive, agreeable, etc. — Valued contributer

Rest assured, there's a dysfunctional side of stereotypical female behavior as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Girls

Why you think that the Bible is a life guide, I'm not sure, but it sounds like you bought what someone else was selling. Give the "Pentateuch" a read and see if you can find where it tells you what to do. — Ennui Elucidator

I recognize it's not the mainstream view, but see:

https://www.yoramhazony.org/phs/

Or watch the discussion with Rabbi Sacks: https://youtu.be/8bKJF3UjkLU

The question of moderation is then understanding what drinking all of the wine is like and what drinking none of the wine is like. Moderation can only truly be moderate if the extreme ends are understood to some relative degree. — I like sushi

Sure, and I can't know what cyanide does unless I try it because there's no other way to obtain information.

My point is that if you believe a certain act is immoral and seek to make it illegal, I need to address your concern one way or another.

Saying that it's a matter of choice does not address your assertion. — frank

I took your point to be that if someone is pro-choice, they should be able to proudly announce all the abortions they have had. I was saying it's not a matter of pride or celebration because abortions are not a moral event, and they likely involve a very difficult and painful decision.

I agree that I've taken a pro-choice position, which is why I was offering the logic behind the seemingly paradoxical views of (1) I believe people should be permitted to have abortions, and (2) having an abortion is not cause for celebration.

#2 only follows if abortion is NOT a morally positive act (like feeding the poor). That's what I'm saying. Abortion is not a morally positive act.

The choice isn't actually between engaging in sex or not. It's between having a relationship or not; or between being seen as normal and worthy, or not. — baker

The argument that all sex is coerced due to societal pressures is pretty stupid. It categorizes all sex as rape and it defies my personal experience in that I actually did want to have the sex that I did.

You wouldn't have that freedom of interpretation in every country/culture. Not even when it comes to bum knees.
If anything, people are expected to trust medicine unquestioningly, and if they don't they get regarded as irrational. Refusing a suggested medical treatment could even get one categorized as a negligent patient and one could lose one's medical insurance. — baker

If there is a hypothetical country where they condemn those who don't receive knee surgeries as immoral, i stand in opposition to their morality.

I don't know why you're sharing with me the underwriting policies of a hypothetical health insurer as if that has something to do with morality.

Depends who that "you" is. If it's "society", the legislative body, someone more powerful than you, how can you still say that it's immoral if they decide for you? — baker

I'm saying that it violates my conception of morality for someone else to dictate the treatment of my bad knees. The power of that someone else is irrelevant to the moral question.

Just cross posted the same thing.

where Laurie Kilmartin said she would "joyfully abort our fetus"
— Harry Hindu

I would kind of prefer this to "a woman has a right to choose."

If you think abortion is moral, go ahead and say it. Normalize it. Otherwise it's like: "abortion is moral for some of us, but not all."

That doesn't make any sense. — frank

It's not that abortion is moral. It's that it's morally neutral in certain circumstances. Helping an old lady cross the street is moral as is feeding the poor in that it's something to encourage and celebrate.

I would think that abortion would in most cases be a difficult decision and not something many (although maybe some) would think warmly about. The need for the abortion, after all, is typically the result of a mistake, in that they did not want to have a child at this time in their life, but they made choices that led to the pregnancy.

Any medical procedure that might become necessary as the result of my own negligence would be a matter of choice for me to undergo, but that doesn't mean I'm somehow heroic because I chose or don't choose a particular procedure. For example, my knee hurts because of the two years of kick boxing I did, but I'm not having it scoped because I don't want to. The decision isn't moral or not moral. It's just a matter of choice. What I would think would be immoral is if you got to decide for me

To quickly finish what was said here , as indicated in the same: — skyblack

To begin with, art experience is transient. — skyblack

In the initial thread, it seemed the discussion related to how one could have a meaningful aesthetic experience, but then there was, in my opinion, an evasion of what it meant to have an aesthetic experience and some amount of combativeness in terms of offering an explanation, and that then resulted in that thread being closed.

This post appears to be a more specific discussion of Schopenhauer's aesthetics, if I've read this correctly, although there isn't any mention of him. Other than recognizing it as such, Schopenhauer isn't someone I know enough about to really contribute.

What I can say about the general idea of the thread is that I don't share your despondency, and so the need to find an escape (through art or otherwise) has no appeal. I appreciate the need by some for self-medication and vice in order to numb themselves from reality. It's also obvious that dependency or addiction could be a consequence and that would lead to a greater unhappiness.

I think the typical response to the question of how much and how often one should take a metaphorical drink of alcohol without exposing themselves to the negative consequences would be to drink in moderation. Moderation means rationally controlling your urges, which for some is easy and others impossible.

But like I said, you premise the conversation that that there is this need to escape the reality we're in, and unless one buys into that basic premise, this discussion becomes a conversation about finding a cure for which there is no illness.