Yes, prostheses – like verbal or psychological crutches – useful for the disabled but crippling from premature / over-use by the (once) abled. — 180 Proof

Assuming even worse, that religion is that which only the stupidest morons believe in, the OP's concern is resolved: The word has meaning.

Think I mentioned that before. I don't; understand what sort of thing a concept is, apart from just the way we use a word... — Banno

This is an unnecessarily excessive extrapolation of the meaning is use concept. The concept is a self contained linguistic theory offering a description of how communication occurs, leaving in silence that which is unreducible to words, but not denying its existence.

This is to say, you don't understand my concept of a tree except to the extent you understand how I use the term "tree," but you need not deny my concept of the tree may contain attributes unidentified in my speech.

An open polythetic approach does capture much of what is implicit in the notion of a family resemblance. But as the article points out, just providing a polythetic definition does not remove ethnocentric or other biases. The next step is take to be an anchored polythetic approach, the example being that a religion has at least the characteristic of "a belief in superempirical beings or powers", together with some combination of other criteria. This is taken as answering the question as to why Buddhism is a religion but not Capitalism. — Banno

I thought it an odd post by you because the riddle of "what is a religion" is no more a curiosity than "what is X," meaning religion doesn’t pose a special case anymore than any other word, and the riddle (as the article points out) was solved by Wittgenstein. Words simply don't have essences, and their meaning is based upon usage and context. That's that.

For some reason though, you don't accept that and instead try to assert an essence (i.e religion at its essence is "a belief in superempirical beings or powers"). Surely we are all creative enough to design a "religion" without that attribute. If we could not, then we'd have defeated Wittgenstein and proved essentialism.

The covert point of the OP I suspect is to prove that the religious believe in a meaningless concept, striking a fatal blow against religion. My reply to that is it may be that religious beliefs are false, but that they might have no referent and that they may be defintionaly elusive doesn't make them meaningless. Meaning is use. We use the term, to be sure. It must therefore have meaning.

Events we call causes may not lead to events we call results 100% of the time. Being bitten by an infected deer tick causes Lyme disease, but not everyone who is bitten by an infected deer tick gets Lyme disease. — T Clark

Causes always lead to events if we accept that every event has a cause, which is a basic metaphysical assumption. What you have identified isn't a metaphysical problem, but an epistemological one, meaning every cause doesn't have a predictable event, and by "predictable," I mean knowable. That we don't know whether you will contract Lyme's disease by the bite of an infected deer tick doesn't mean that there will not be an event that is caused by the bite of the infected deer tick, it just means you don't know what it will be.

As you increase the number of variables that can affect outcome, predictability decreases and is arguably eliminated, which is the foundation of chaos theory, but chaos theory doesn't suggest some events don't have causes.

Again - For this thread I’d like to focus just on the meaning of the words “cause” or “causalty,” not on any other philosophical issues. Also, as I noted, I’d like the focus to be on physical causes. — T Clark

This seems more of a focus on the physics question of what causation is as opposed to the philosophical issues related to causation. The philosophical debate related to causation is: https://iep.utm.edu/causation/

For example, take Hume's comment "We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have always conjoin'd together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable." This denies direct knowledge of causation and claims it's based upon an assumption that A causes B as opposed to A always seems correlated to B. Statistically speaking, the best you can say is that A is 100% correlated to B after n number of trials, but you can't ever say that A causes B.

So, you've spoken of causation, but you can't see the property of causation, as in your example, the bounce off one ball to the other. You can see the movement, but not the actual causation.

The rooster came first, as males often do, which fertilized the egg, which was then laid, which was then sat upon by the hen, which resulted in a hot little chick, who was eventually noticed by another rooster, and the laying cycle began again.

On the contrary, gamblers, like lovers, play to lose – to keep the games going. The action is everything, that's the jones! :broken: — 180 Proof

Ain't no fun in a truly broken heart.

Either you're unaware how the expansion happened or you're playing a semantic game. Which is it? Are you just taking issue with the word expand? — Benkei

The latter. I'm drawing a distinction as to what happened. It's not as if western Europe and eastern Europe are both invaders into Ukraine fighting over the same prize. Western Europe has allowed countries to voluntarily apply for membership into NATO and decide how they wish to align. Russia has engaged in a hostile military takeover.

Whatever pressures the West has exerted to encourage NATO alignment doesn't equate to military force. My point being that if Russia wishes to justify their "expansion" into Ukraine as responsive to the West's "expansion" into Ukraine, that sounds like spin control, trying to assert an unjustified moral and logical equivalency.

For this to work, you have to show it's reasonably possible for Russia to effectively occupy Ukraine. I don't think this is the case. Maybe Eastern Ukraine but then if Mearsheimer and Kissinger are to be believed only true neutrality would've seen them survive as independent countries. — Benkei

I don't know why occupation or displacement is necessary for full control. The USSR controlled its member states.

And what exactly are Russians to believe when the US overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014 and has an outsized influence on NATO and a proxy war between Russia and NATO/USA may have been going on since then? — Benkei

This is a very one sided view. Can I say the US played no role in the overthrow, no, but I can't say the overthrow didn't represent the will of the Ukraine people either.. Ukraine was a pawn for both sides in 2014. They seemed to be moving toward the EU but then their President swung back to siding with Russia, in opposition to the will of the people, thus resulting in the uprising. Do you suspect Russian meddling caused the change of heart away from the EU? Seems the best explanation.

At any rate, do you think an uninfluenced Ukranian vote would side with Russia or the West? You can argue either will result in some form of subjugation, but the economic subjugation of the West is infinitely more palatable than the totalitarian subjugation of Russia.

This isn't some democracy vs. autocracy battle. But nice example of US propaganda I suppose, let's pretend it's about ideals when we all know another game is being played. There's a reason NATO chose the expansion in certain countries and that reason isn't benign. — Benkei

NATO doesn't expand. Nations voluntarily join or they don't, and there are requirements for joining that must be met. I'd consider the Crimea event or the current invasion an expansion.

Does anyone live under the illusion that Russia was not going to eventually invade Ukraine regardless of NATO expansion into other nations? Are we to believe that Russia really thought a NATO protected Ukraine might one day invade Russia despite the Russian nuclear arsenal and so this defensive move became necessary now?

If the driver for the war is the reestablishment of a Russian empire of the likes of the former USSR (which i think it is), then the war had to be fought not just prior to Ukraine entering NATO, but prior to Ukraine breaking all ideological ties to Russia.

The window to seize Ukraine was closing through a potential NATO alliance, an EU entry, or just through continued liberalized democratization of Ukraine. If Russia wished to reestablish its past glory, it had to act before it lost all its potential prey to the protection of the West.

The problem is that Putin is learning is that the window was more shut that he thought it was. The fierce Ukraine resistance is based upon its belief that it is truly autonomous and not, as Putin would suggest, a group a Russians stranded in a Westernized state. Ukrainians stand with the full belief Russia is an invader and the West is a protector, indicating Russia is in a weaker position than maybe Putin appreciated.

This is just to say that whether NATO signaled it was expanding, or even if it signaled it was contacting (as Trump would have had it in his America first protectionism), Putin had to act now or forever lose Ukraine to the West.

Putin is fighting the infectious disease of Democracy, making this war inevitable as long as self rule is what the Ukrainians want. The only way for Ukraine to have avoided this war was to abandon democracy and submit to Putin. What backed Putin into a corner is that his country sucks and no one wants to be a part of it.

Words are clearly dependent on meaning based on the language that instantiates it for him. The 'use' is the application of the language. — Shwah

Again, I've not argued words have no meaning. I've argued words need no referent for meaning, and I've not conflated reference for usage.

The bottom line is that Yahweh's existence is not logically required simply because that word has been used. Usage provides meaning, but it doesn't create the referent. That is, you can talk about God and the term can be impregnated with all sorts of meaning from that use, but that does not create the God you're talking about.

The same holds true for the person who believes that Tom Sawyer is non-fiction. They can talk about him, understand him, and be fully wrong about his existence. I'm an A-TomSawyerist in that I disbelieve in his existence.

He makes no claim to word meanings being dependent upon reference. He's talking about words lacking meaning outside of usage or context. That is, "Moses did not exist" only obtains meaning within particularized contextualized use, being devoid of meaning just as a stark statement.

Incorrect. Atheists say god does not exist. Which is different than saying god is fictional. I just said that about bigfoot and company. — L'éléphant

An atheist would claim that God is a fictional character in the Bible. They wouldn't deny he existed as that fictional character. If they did, I think someone would just open the Bible and show them where he was being talked about.

The same holds for Tom Sawyer, Tiny Tim, and Harry Potter. They don't exist as anything other than fictional characters.

So it's a reference to an existential construct (subjective fact). — Shwah

Saying its only referent is its subjective meaning is denying it has a referent.

The referent to "Donald Trump" is Donald Trump. See how you have a word, its meaning, and the actual referent? You're missing the actual referent with the term "King of America."

Okay but there are times the king of america does exist and even times you are the king of america. There are certainly references which make that true such as choosing monarch in civilization as america. — Shwah

By America, I mean the USA, and the USA never had a king.

was replying to him. I don't know what that refers to. I said term which includes adverbs. — Shwah

You've just argued that a referent must exist for there to be meaning. What does "intelligently" refer to?

How can you parse the phrase "king of america" without a referent at all? I feel it's necessary to emphasize that the referent does not need to be material but if you don't know what a king is or what america is or what they are when conjoined (a linguistic conception, a monarch of america game simulator) then you can't meaningfully decide whether it's true or not. — Shwah

I've not argued words have no meaning. I've argued they need not point to anything to have that meaning. The word "the" means something, but there is no "the" in a material or non-material way.

said term which includes any part of speech or phrase. — Shwah

Every part of speech has a referent? What about articles, prepositions, verbs, gerunds, etc? Where is the "the", the "about", the "cooking"?

it has no reference then how can you predicate anything about it? It needs something to build off of. For instance the queen of england has a material reference where the queen of france has one as well but in the past etc. In any case the queen is the object which is more accurately understood through predications. — Shwah

"I am the king of America" is a meaningful proposition. It has a truth value, and it is false. "King of America" has no referent. "I am the king of Canada" is similarly a false proposition, but it is distinct in meaning from the first proposition, meaning "king of America" and "king of Canada" have different meanings, despite neither having a referent.

That's the whole point. You don't need an *empirical* reference but you do need some reference otherwise it's a meaningless non-proposition. — Shwah

No, it' is a proposition and it has meaning and it has no referent whatsoever.

No your objection doesn't work because you still have to speak of them all as existing. — Shwah

Nouns, even proper nouns, needn't have referents to have meaning. "The king of France doesn't exist" is a meaningful proposition despite the non-existence of a king of France.

Your argument that the very declaration that God doesn't exist somehow bootstraps him into existence because logic dictates every speakable noun have an empirical referent is absurd. I can't speak aberjobbies into existence.

I'm a theist, by the way. There are atheists too. I can't deny their existence because I've actually seen them. I'd be hard pressed to claim I know there is a god more than I know there are atheists.

Hah! Good one. I guess the statement "There are no bigfoot, ghosts, and aliens" could logically trip you off. But in fiction, we could be at liberty to talk about them. So, the proper way to deflect this type of inquiry is, bigfoot, ghosts, and aliens exist in fiction. — L'éléphant

So atheism is logical as long as God is fictional ? Isn't that exactly what atheists say?

fallacious argument can still be a proposition and even a valid proof even if unsound. — Shwah

No proof for this existence of God is valid.

any case there are proofs of creation from God in cosmological arguments, contingency of creation arguments, ontological. Aristotle required a prime mover and Plato required a form of good. I'm not sure if those overlap with your statement. — Shwah

Those aren't proofs. Those are fallacious arguments. If they were proofs, the matter would be concluded.

I have a spoiler alert guys for those who missed Philosophy 101, no proof for the existence of God succeeds, including this one, which appears to suggest that God's existence arises from the pure force of logic in that God is supposedly logicaly impossible to negate.

Wherever the nonsense arises from that one can't negate that which they don't believe, I don't know, but nonsense it is. Bigfoot isn't forced into existence by logical entailment because I'm unable to deny his existence because I don't believe in him.

If science has no way to demonstrate how the universe came into being, there is one possible explanation left. — EugeneW

From this, why doesn't this follow:

If theism has no way of proving how the universe came into being, there is one possible explanation left.

3rd

To me atheism does not make sense. What it tells me is, atheists don't believe in something that never existed in the first place. It's a circular argument. — L'éléphant

What about the denial of Bigfoot, ghosts, or aliens? Can one logically deny those?

I still loved her but couldn't take the madness anymore. — Olivier5

I think the OP was pretty ridiculous, but I'll give you kudos for salvaging this thread with your compelling story of how you banged a girl cross eyed on the way to Bangkok (my spin).

But this last line above is what caught me. Hit home.

The idea that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, to be taken literally from Genesis to Revelations is a recent innovation in the 2000 year history of the faith. — Bitter Crank

So very true. It's frustrating that people believe the reactionary literalism to be all that religion ever was or is.
Over a thousand years of Jewish midrash and Christian exegesis goes so far beyond a strict four corners literalism.

The stories within the Bible show us scenes of gore, rape, slavery, and so many more violent acts, yet Christians sit here and preach that we must do what the Bible tells us word for word. — Edward235

Point me in the direction of this mythical group of Christians (or Jews) who hold that the Pentateuch is to be interpreted literally in isolation from all other religious literature for its meaning.

This is to say your concern is a strawman. There is a reason Jews and Christians don't stone children, despite what the Bible might say. It has to do with the fact that the Pentateuch is not accepted by any group I am aware of as the sole guiding document for all life decisions.

That the Christians have a New Testament and the Jews a Talmud is a good reason to question the assumptions of your OP.

It strikes me that the purpose of the law is to make local school boards in progressive districts fearful of discussing homosexuality or transsexualism.. The vagueness might be intentional. Prudence would dictate steering very clear from any such discussion. The likely result though will be defiance by someone and then the courts can figure out the scope of the law.

Nothing much, just dancing and attempting to raise the true savior of my world. Tis the noble stoat. — Wosret

Life is always a transition from one phase to the next, always in pursuit of righteousness.

I think that's what this thread is about.

I can assure you that the universe has no meaning or emotion. — L'éléphant

No you can't. You can choose to believe there is no meaning and you can live your life that way. Or, you can choose to believe every thing is where it is for some purpose and live your life that way.

Give me a reason for choice A, not just an assurance you know A is correct.

They won't have a choice if the West reaches an agreement with Putin. One wild card is that I think this is personal for Biden. I think he wants to take a chunk out of Putin. — frank

If the agreement is reached without Ukraine's approval, you really have recreated the Munich Pact.

In any event, if the plan was to surrender, the West has certainly not set the stage for that about-face. Getting everyone lathered up about the immorality of the attack and how the Russians have to be stopped does look like a step towards an appeasement policy.

He already signalled his demands at the negotiating table: he wants Ukraine to be recognized as neutral. He wants it demilitarized, and he's probably going to choose its next leader, who'll be a puppet. — frank

This is certainly an optimistic outcome, unless, of course, you're Ukraine.

My guess is that Ukraine says no to the idea that it be de facto annexed into Russia. The proposal you've suggested is for Ukraine to surrender and hand over the keys to Russia. Surrender avoids war for sure.

Or maybe not for sure. It's hard to know. Reminds me of the Munich Agreement just a bit.

In real life, people need to act and react based on what others do and think and say, justified or not. Because typically people are not utter morons who can afford to entirely ignore their strategic environment out of some high-minded sense of principle, although NATO and the EU seem not to have got the memo. — StreetlightX

This logic works both ways of course. Putin can be blamed for not having gotten the memo either, because he too has the intellectual capacity to recognize that the Western world acts out of a sense of high minded sense of principle, even if he thinks those principles are hypocritical and naive bullshit. That is to say, just as you can criticize NATO for having acted in a way that provoked certain action, it should have been fairly obvious to Putin it would have done exactly as it did. If you're going to require that NATO and the EU be Grandmaster chess players in this environment and expect them to respond precisely to the strategic environment, then let's impose that same standard on Putin.

The matter is just unfolding, so we don't know the final result, but it is worthy to note that Russia is getting backed into a corner where their only option is nuclear, meaning on all conventional levels, they will likely come up short in the conquest to to rebuild their former empire. With the money being pumped into war effort by the West, it should go on for decades and the economic sanctions will do their fair share of damage, and Russia will also be cast off the world stage in every other regard.

It would seem that if I were Putin, I would have calculated a high minded moralistic response from the West, where the fight was not going to be over empires, land, or resources, but over righteousness itself.
Why would I want to provoke a group of crazies that believe that God is on their side? Sounds like someone just provoked a proverbial battle of Good versus Evil that the West can't help but throwing every last of its soldiers at.

Reminds me of this:

"This is the doctrine of bitachon, or trust in G‑d, which the chassidic master Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch (1789–1866) distilled as the Yiddish adage, Tracht gut, vet zein gut—'Think good, and it will be good.'

What this means, says the Lubavitcher Rebbe, is that bitachon, the absolute assurance and conviction that G‑d will make things good, actually becomes the conduit and vessel which draw down and receive G‑d’s blessings. Positive thinking is not just a way to weather negative occurrences, but actually makes positive results happen."

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2492/jewish/Good-Thinking.htm

I don't buy into these things literally of course, but I do have this instinct of refusing to say or think bad thoughts for fear that I'll think them into existence. It derives from the idea that God spoke creation into existence ("And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."). This goes well beyond as @Average suggests because it references a mystical event, as in when divine creatures of God think something or say something, they change the course of the universe.

Like many religious ideas, the far-fetchedness makes it hard to fully accept, but I do like the idea of the power it provides to each of us to change the world and the responsibility it imposes upon each of us to say and do as we'd like the world to be. I also like the paradoxical construct of this system, because it is through the power of prayer that one obtains power over the universe, as opposed to the idea that we're down on our knees begging for external assitance.

Be strong!

Do you feel the strength now within you?

Is Romanticism the cause of world wars and dreams of Utopia leading to mass murder and tyranny? — Athena

You romanticize the reason for war. War is over gold. Look deep enough, and its over something.

Yes, or threaten your job because you do accept Joseph Smith as a prophet, for that matter. — Janus

A more apt analogy would be for them to threaten your job for being anti-Mormon, which they probably would.

No, we found ourselves inching closer, objectively, as has been done in other parts of the world, to something that violates human reason. And, just for clarity's sake, any proposal that includes the compelled expression, or silence of expression the Human Consciousness that isn't itself a violation of the Human Consciousness, is evil and must be battled to the hilt. The historical record is clear as to what states do with that specific intrusion into human life. — Garrett Travers

You need not fight the American Revolution again. Your side won. We wrote a Constitution that has enshrined every principle you speak of into the very fabric of our country, so much so that we intepret our Constitution much like the Bible, it's each inerrant word leading our every move.

I know what horrors lie beyond our border. That's always been something worth fighting to protect ourselves against.

Leave the transsexuals out of this battle for the soul of our country is all I'm saying. They aren't the enemy. They are the scapegoat. It can be hard to decipher one from the other.