"Faith" is nothing but an anti-anxiety placebo, at most, that does not add anything substantively epistemic to claims made on that basis. — 180 Proof

But you've never had faith, so how do you know this? I've never been anxiety ridden. I've always been super chill.: :cool:

If a belief cannot be warranted and yet is claimed to be true, assent to it is unwarranted, or indistinguishable in the circumstance from being false. It's patently false to claim a mere idea (i.e. unwarranted belief, opinion, fantasy, etc) is warranted when it is not. — 180 Proof

I'm not following this. A statement is true if it corresponds to reality. If I say the cat is on the mat purely as the result of faith, that statement is distinguished from a false statement if the cat is on the mat. A lucky guess is different from an unlucky guess is different from a justified belief.

I'd agree if you reject faith as a basis for justification, my belief is unwarranted, but whether my mojo is reliable is determined by which horse wins the race. That I killed it at the track doesn't mean my guesses were justifiable, but it does mean I formed truthful beliefs.

"False belief" (i.e. make-believe, delusion) is "faith" — 180 Proof

This doesn't follow. It would be the justification you challenge for the belief held. It could be the belief based upon faith happens to be true, so you wouldn't be laboring under a delusion. You would be coincidentally correct, holding an opinion based upon faith and not reason.

The distinction is important because the way you phrased it, all faith based beliefs would not be true, which would mean faith is a perfect epistemology for determining the false. If that were the case, it would be a fairly helpful tool.

We can also agree that bread alone is bad. "Faith" may be a viable suppliment, it's just not a necessary or indispensible one, and doesn't sustain either body or mind for very long compared to bread (& water). Reason, contemplation, aesthetics (e.g. literature, music), friendship, love, family, scientific inquiry, etc are viable alternatives to "faith" separately or in combinations. I've never had need of "faith" even, so far, in my darkest, most harrowing moments (which, raised and educated Catholic yet never relapsing to / overwhelmed by subconsciously "religious" imagery or feelings, has surprised me ). — 180 Proof

I'll agree that faith is not indispensable, nor is reason, contemplation and all else you itemize. There are those who survive off feeding tubes, so I'll agree that we can pare down the true necessities to not a whole lot. Your journey is your own and I don't care to change you. I say this because it's often assumed the faithful give a fuck about other's faith, likely owing itself to the political motivations of religious institutions that hold proselytizing in high regard. So keep that in mind when I ask if you've ever been of faith, not as someone who was dragged to church by a well intended parent, or as a dutiful son or young man carrying out his good citizenship, but as a true believer. We all wear superficial clothing as need be, but you referenced "relapsing," which would indicate you were and then were not and aren't likely to return. I'm just wondering if you ever were because that would interesting. There'd be a story there.

I also try to live by Hillel the Elder's golden rule. So what does "faith" have to do with any of that? — 180 Proof

Maybe they can stand alone, but Hillel the Elder was of great faith. A factoid for you is that he is called Hillel the elder and not Rabbi Hillel because he lived prior to 70 CE, the destruction of the 2nd Temple, meaning he was part of that generation that offered sacrifices and performed other Temple rituals prior to the rabbinical era that was ushered in after the fall of the Temple. So you can separate out perhaps Hillel's views from religious belief, but you can't separate out Hillel from his religion.

Evidence warranting assent to this statement is, I think, overwhelming: living by faith alone, a person will starve long before s/he'll starve from living by bread alone. — 180 Proof

Given that dichotomy, yes, it makes more sense to chase one's food than to pray for it. The bigger question is whether you will be starved (in the metaphorical sense) of anything if you have no faith. We can agree that faith alone is bad plan though.

↪180 Proof Placebos do require faith. Without it they don't work
— Janus
This one.
— 180 Proof

10/10
Let the faithless behold! That's made my day. :) — bert1

"Placebos require faith" I take in this context as tautological. The definition of a placebo is that which gains its effectiveness by a belief in its effectiveness.

Contextualizing this in a non-analytic way where we are not just deciphering definitions, a different result emerges, however. In the typical medical context where one says a sugar pill is a placebo treatment for headaches, it may well be, but that isn't to suggest that mystical healing from a higher source comes to those who bow their head in faith. What it really means is that the healing properties of the body, which cure all ailment (as all medicine can do is act as a catalyst for the body's immune and healing abilities to take effect) are provoked by putting one's mental state in a position where it believes it will be cured. Since the mental state is considered to be a physical event in this context, it should come as no great surprise that one physical component of the human body can impact another. That is, it is not "faith" as some act where one interacts with the holy that causes our headache to go away. It is the physical effect of the brain acting upon the physical state of the rest of the body that does that and the placebo medication put our brain in that particular state.

Whether faith moves mountains where shovels cannot is a whole different sort of faith, having nothing to do with placebos. It is the belief my headache will come or it will go based upon a higher plan, but whatever way it should go, it will be for that higher purpose. That invokes the mystical, not mundane discussions about controlling for the placebo effect in scientific experiments.

I would take issue with the first sentence of the quote. I must have faith in the Covid vaccine to allow it to be administered. Lots of people have this faith. People who lack faith do not take the vaccine. There are people for whom no amount of evidence will instill faith and they will still refuse. So faith is necessary. But I am sure that this need for faith does not prove the vaccine's inefficacy. — Cuthbert

The first sentence was:

I

“If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished. — Corvus

I don't take this to refer to the faith required for someone to make a decision. When making a decision, some people rely upon faith, some upon gut instinct, some upon the advice of experts, and some upon careful deliberation, but that doesn't speak to truth values of statements. That speaks to idiosyncratic motivations of different sorts of people.

I take that first sentence to mean (using your example) that if our only evidence that the covid vaccine works is our faith in it working, then it likely doesn't. As to the truth value of the statement "the covid vaccine works," it is more likely true if there is scientific evidence supporting it. It is less likely true if the only support for its truth is faith. As the comment you cited points out, the more one relies upon faith for a belief that an assertion is true, the less likely the assertion is true.

Jefferson apparently had more ideas in his head than he knew what to do with. — Bitter Crank

It seems your beef with our late founding father was his lack of sense of style and impractical design features. I say maybe you judge him too harshly on those side ventures, and you look more closely at his areas of expertise, like politics and philosophy.

Frederick Wiseman has made a series of films like those you describe: His camera observes people going about their day in various institutions--mental hospital, emergency room, welfare office, high school and numerous other places. There's no narration, no comment, no interpretation provided. The films are a history, not the history. — Bitter Crank

I've thought about this as well, and, even when there's just a recitation of the facts, there is still the decision as to what to report. If I named a film "America" and filmed a working class family, a poor inner city family, an affluent suburban family, a newly married couple, a single mother, or a returning marine, etc., each would tell a very different account of America. And of course, what they showed throughout these people's days would affect one's opinion of what American was about. What the film maker chooses to show is an editorial decision.

And the interesting thing is that regardless of what the film maker shows, all of it will be factual, but the myth that is advanced would be purposeful and subject to the intention of the historian. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do disagree with those who claim that really Thomas Jefferson was not all he's been said to be. Those people aren't correcting history and myth busting. They're just replacing the old myth with their new one. If they are able to do that, that signals only a shift in politics, not an evolution toward more accurate truth.

The other interesting thing is that if the myth is the focus as opposed to the facts, we need not focus on the black and white facts as much as what the story intends to tell. By example, we needn't worry if there were actually a tortoise and a hare, but we need to concern ourselves with what the message that the story is trying to convey. This mindset might also allow us to reconsider other ancient myths we jettisoned as nonsense and outdated due their literal inaccuracies, the Bible being an example. If the objection to a historical account is that the content is fiction and that objection is considered irrelevant under this analysis, that changes the landscape of the debate into one of "what happened?" to "what is important?"

1776 or 1619? Either, neither, both. — Bitter Crank

All history is myth, designed to reveal ideals and enforce ideology. It is a political tool. Objective history is a video tape of events, no events prioritized, no events nterpreted, and no commentary provided. We embue with new meaning when we interpret.

Speaking of the end, in the end everything will be OK. If things aren't OK, it must not be the end

When the kids were young and at the beach I'd pull out my pockets and sing the hook to this song while revealing my collection of sea shells.

Good times.

under a libertarian view you can do whatever you want with your property — Oppyfan

If you're asking whether libertarians can logically afford animal rights, see: https://www.libertarianism.org/articles/do-libertarians-care-about-animals

This article attacks the question of whether animals have rights in a libertarian scheme, not the question of whether bestiality ought be illegalized as violative of a moral norm. I do think the libertarian would have difficulty explaining why bestiality should be illegal if you could not show how the animal is harmed in the process.

While I do think human on dog sex reveals some likely issues that the human needs to address, I'm not in favor of criminal prosecution of him unless there is identifiable injury to the dog. I don't see the behavior as immoral as much as extremely aberrant and likely a symptom of something bigger.

What is the dividing line between government censorship and private censorship? Would this site be in violation of the 1st Amemdment if it banned racist speech? How many followers must it have for it to be called a common carrier, which seems an odd designation for a website as opposed to the internet generally? Can I cast a racist into the street or must I allow him to dine at my dinner table?

If this is a matter of line drawing, are these lines drawn based upon some clear principle or are they arbitrary and political compromises?

If I stand before the court charged with violating someone's 1st Amendment rights, do you defer to the prosecution the right to define those limits after I'm charged?

I found the far left!. They're in this thread and they're forming an uprising, but they first have to debate why they haven't done it yet.

C. It is immoral to stop someone from having sex with their dog — Oppyfan

It doesn't follow that because you have the right to certain uses of your property that you have the right to do anything you want with your property.

Haven’t had a hemorrhoid flair up in years after I started squatting while poohing. Apparently we’ve evolved doing it squatting and there’s much less resistance or pressure doing it that way. — praxis

Do you stand on the toilet seat and squat? I'm just trying to form a visual.

I'm only now noticing that a number appears under the poster's name in each and every post. What does it indicate? — Olivier5

You take the number under my name and you subtract the number under @Baden's from it, and from that you arrive at the Baden sadness score.

What you said here is germane to the issue I raise in this thread. Work isn't just about survival then, it also has the added feature of empowering people through money — TheMadFool

I do things to entertain myself, like posting here, coming up with crazy ideas at work, trying to get the most up votes, stuff like that. I don't think you're going to come up with a comprehensive list of motivations for any task, including work.

Up vote please!

By the way, I really like your writing style. :up: — TheMadFool

Then up vote my posts. I'm currently in a competition with Baden, and I'm trouncing him.

What bothers me is no one really wants to work. — TheMadFool

I don't really know why this bothers you or what it really means. Do I want to take the garbage out to the street for pickup? No, it's not particularly fun and I'd rather someone else do it for me, but I realize at a pretty basic level that things have to get done, from taking out the garbage, to brushing my teeth, to tying my shoes, and since @Baden refuses to be my manservant, I'm stuck doing these things on my own.

Whether I'd actually prefer to be waited on for every task, I don't know that I'd actually prefer that, meaning that at some level I do want to work and I do want to be productive. I'm not arguing some Protestant work ethic here, but I do believe there is significant emotional value for having a sense of purpose and duty.

Anyway, apples don't fall from trees into your mouth. You have to pick them. Such is the fate of man, and, as you've pointed out, woman as well. Maybe one day we'll evolve backwards into trees where the sun and rain will nourish us while we sway carefree in the wind.

If someone took a single drop of water of finite size from an infinite ocean would it actually be taking from the ocean? — TiredThinker

There aren't any infinite oceans.

Perhaps we leave it as is. @180 Proof and I stopped debating long ago, but the discussion thread (although now under a different title) continues on, and we've got this thread as well. So much discussion generated from what is being questioned as in need of repair. We need to realize that all that TPF sells is discussion, and it looks like we've come up with a way to increase production.

You're really young. Perhaps if you had a better understanding of what gay people have had to go through to get where they are today, it would give you a better perspective. — T Clark

It's funny, but I almost said the same thing in that thread to another poster. Someone said that pronoun misuse denied someone their identity, making it just like genocide. Others called out the post, so I didn't want to pile on (until now I suppose). I thought to myself that there was a naive pureness in the comment, like the person never really knew what a truly bad day was. How lovely it would be if a rude uncaring comment would even register as a bottom 1000 day in my life.

And of course the comment included the innocent but critical oversight that there are actually those with entire branches of their family tree lost to genocide that were just told their experience is just like when a she is called a he. And I do believe the comment was innocent in intent, trying to protect the oppressed, but it missed the mark.
It does rest upon the aged to correct such youth. I'll admit though that some age very young and some never grow up.

People gender each other from an early age and are gendered. It's at a level of learning much like grammar. — Bylaw

Case in point, when I was at an early age, we grammared gender in that gender wasn't a verb, but a noun.

I think they want to be paid equally for the work performed and be provided the same opportunities for advancement and leadership as men.

Do you mean to argue that women ought be grateful for living in a society where they can be cared for without the need to get their hands dirty and they're foolish to challenge the benefits they have? It's not clear what direction you wish your argument to lead.

Wow, I forgot about the Shriners. — Noble Dust

Are those the panhandlers in the roadway with the funny hats?

The world is getting better over time: https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health-crime-literacy-good-news

@Baden 82 - Hanover 73 and closing in fast. Is that my footsteps you hear?

, I want to boycott China because of Hong Kong and the Uighurs, and I've been working towards that for quite some time now. Some things I've noticed. — Benkei

So you of course know China hasn't felt any sting from your embargo.

I see your tact as reverse charity, where instead of giving to the victims of society you withhold from the perpetrators upon society. That's moral behavior in theory, but I'm troubled with an ethic that is of good intent but no good consequence unless you accept a view that good thoughts and peaceful acts actually change the world in some indirect mystical way. I don't think that's where you're at though, but maybe, although I'm likely projecting.

With charity, I don't live under the illusion my small token will cure hunger, but I do need to know it will alleviate some amount of hunger somewhere for me to give.

I ask this because what you're doing is meaningless goodness, and you know it at a rational level, but you do it anyway. I suspect you feel good for doing it and feel some obligation to do it. Is this how atheists pray?

have a question:
What is the purpose of a debate? What is attempted to be accomplished by a debate — baker

hate debates. It is the folly of the age to reduce every important or pleasant activity to a mere competition. Even fishing! I await with despair the first series of The Great British Fuck Off *. — unenlightened

As to these two comments, I agree that the competition can be distracting, leaving open the question of why we'd do that to ourselves. Perhaps the debate should contain a preamble stating its purpose, declaring it should be to elicit interesting points, increase the understanding of the audience, and to do all such other things you might expect an educator might ask for, as opposed to do what a man in an arena might bring forth.

far as I know, Hanover is still looking for a running mate. — T Clark

I am actually. I'm probably going to pick whoever has the most up votes. That'd make sense.

LOWER TAXES, BETTER JOBS, FREE CHILDCARE.

VOTE NOW. VOTE OFTEN. VOTE HANOVER!

I'd like to see whether there is a direct correlation between "turn it off" votes and those with a low number of positive votes.

So for those with low up votes, if you've grown tired of being looked down upon,, what you should do is delegitimitize the system by casting meaningless up votes. As in. like right now, vote for me over and over. That way you can defend your own low up votes by saying, "Yeah, but up votes are bullshit. Hanover got them by leading a ridiculous rebellion."

You can find the thread here: here

Now that the debate is over and this thread has little to do with the debate, I've moved this discussion to a thread I named "What is Philosophy?" because I couldn't arrive at a better title. I'll be happy to change it to whatever you'd like though.

The interesting question ought to be not why people are resistant to pronoun change, but how you might change current practice. Your post seems to have annoyed people, driven them further from your wishes. I suppose that has to do with people not wanting to be told what to do, how to act, or being judged just for being themselves. Sound like a familiar battle cry?

My reaction was the same. Not sure how I might have responded if I was encouraged to take a moment and think about it, and if I could, please call you "they," that it would mean much to you, but would be understandable if I wasn't there just yet or if my old habits just weren't to be broken.

As others have said, the emergency of this situation is limited enough that we can take our time, accept as much as we're comfortable with, and slow down with the condemnation.

It's not clear that this is what all actual monotheists mean by God being necessary (apart from those in particular who argue like the above). Rather, the necessity of God's existence in monotheism is to be understood in contradistinction with the optionality or relativity of human existence, as in: God is necessary, but man is not; man is only optional. — baker

Outside of philosophical contexts, I've never heard God being described as necessary, certainly not in a deductive sense, as if God is the product of a syllogism. I was raised Jewish. Perhaps the concept of necessity appears somewhere, but I've not run across it. God is generally described as eternal, so the idea that he was caused really doesn't make logical sense.

I'd also point out that in a hyper-monotheistic religion like Judaism, the oneness of God can't be challenged. See, Maimonides 13 articles of faith, #2: http://web.oru.edu/current_students/class_pages/grtheo/mmankins/drbyhmpg_files/GBIB766RabbLit/Chapter9Maimonides13Princ/index.html
This oneness prohibits assigning attributes (or properties) to God. God is not considered to be a strange substance with various properties, but he is one and only one and indivisible in any way. Whether that makes sense or not I leave to the rabbis to better explain, but I did want to point out that these arguments that point to an attribute of God and then they try to explain how that attribute might be inconsistent with the concept of God is violative of the concept of his oneness.

The point being that these attacks of "God" take God as a very basic concept without contextualizing him into the definitional schemes of established theological systems. A believer of a particular faith would shrug off these objections as being inapplicable to what they believed God to be in the first place.

If God is a necessary being, his existence is entailed by the rules of logic.
— Hanover
I'm not so sure. Kripke broke the link between necessity and the a priori; do you want to put it back? Do we have grounds to do so? — Banno

In order for the Kripke objection to be applicable, you would have to show that your OP didn't make an analytic a priori claim but that it was synthetic a priori. That is, was your claim more akin to "all bachelors are unmarried men" or was it more akin to "the morning star is the evening star." The former being analytic a priori and the latter, according to Kripke, synthetic a priori in that it requires some empirical knowledge to know it's truth. I am aware of the Quine objections to synonymity, but one issue at a time.

Your OP stated "God is supposed to be a necessary being." I would consider that analytic a priori because I don't know how one should be expected to know God is necessary a posteriori. That attribute of God as you've presented it appears purely definitional. Thus my analysis holds.

You are doing an Apollonius. Or however he spells his name. Reducing an argument to bare naysaying. — god must be atheist

I'm only pointing out that debaters aren't always so disagreeable that they can't even agree to a debate. It's not always that hostile. It really depends upon the personalities.

Then it was a third party that made the rules and the debating partners agreed to heed to them. — god must be atheist

Unless it wasn't.