My strategy is not to get covid. — Baden

Then you should be more discrete about who you shack up with.

However, just straight up letting 5% of people die without any attempt to help them is obviously not politically feasible. — boethius

Even if the death rate were 5% of those infected, that wouldn't equate anywhere near 5% of the total population. Communicable diseases are common and with no controls at all come no where near infecting 100% of the population.

My strategy for this and really my strategy for everything: Tracht gut, vet zein gut.

I'll let you know how it turns out, but so far, so good.

, stupidly I'm just presuming Alex Jones's anti-coronavirus toothpaste doesn't really work and the spread in the U.S. will be similar to other countries who failed to take the virus seriously enough when they had time. — Baden

This changes your point, which was that graph told me something. Now you're telling me I can extrapolate from other data from other countries. Maybe yes, maybe no. The Italian population is older than the US.

See where this is going? — Baden

Actually no, and neither do you, as there's no way to extrapolate based on that graph, unless you're suggesting that y is approaching infinity based upon a current death count of 40.

If the y axis were marked in units of 1 million, the death toll would be imperceptible without a microscope on that graph and you'd be making toilet paper jokes like me.

You're at about Feb 15th Italian time. — Baden

I was talking about deaths, not every Corona induced sneeze. 6455/worldwide population is the current number.

In all seriousness, there are expectations that the death toll in my home state of Georgia will double at some point. It's currently at 1 but on the verge of chaos.

The US is at 41. That's 41/50ths a person per state we've lost. Do you know what it's like to lose just over 80% of a person? It's not pretty I tell you.

Yahweh thus murdered A & E unjustly. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

That assumes no other justification.

I found some toilet paper online with a delivery date in one month. i've never scheduled a shit out that far, but that's the new reality.

That may be why Christians sing that Adam’s sin was a happy fault and necessary to god’s plan. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I don't even understand how Adam's act of eating from the tree of good and evil was evil if he didn't know what evil even was until he ate the apple.

I think it's a conspiracy started by the international toilet paper conglomerate to raise toilet paper prices. I suspect toilet paper operatives have been mass purchasing to create the hysteria.

Can you really use a bidet and no paper? Sounds like you'd just have a drippy muddy bunghole. I'd almost prefer slick pasty skid marks to that, but I respect that every man might have his own preference.

Speaking of that, does the coranavirus cause a gent to piss out his asshole? If it does, I might rethink my casual attitude about it. I hate hearing that firehose sound behind the bathroom door, knowing someone is feeling that burning spray out their rectum.

Speaking of that, how do you guys wipe an irritated ass pucker? Do you grin and bear it with a quick hard wipe or do you stroke it quickly as if writing Morse code, maybe sending an SOS to your netherlands?

I just took my last toilet paper wiped shit. From now on I have to use pine needles, sandpaper, old French novels, and masturbatory socks. I have plenty of toilet paper mind you, it's just I'm tired of being a slave to it.

I almost hate hoarders more than sycophants. Just how many shits can one dude take? — Baden

It was interesting to see what they ran out of. Bread, eggs, toilet paper, and rice were all gone. Seafood, canned beans, yogurt, and cheese were plentiful. I bought some precooked hot wings, which is my staple survival food during coronavirus scares.

My prediction is that no one here will die or lose a close family member to the virus. If they do, I'll look like a dick for saying this, but that's the risk I'm willing to take, putting my nice guy reputation on the line.

As to whether Trump did a good job responding to this virus, meh. It's not like if diagnostic tests were readily available, the average American would get tested, and even if they tested positive would they let anyone know, and they'd doubtfully quarantine themselves.

From my end, I've been licking handrails, doorknobs, and stripper poles, and I got nothing but open mouth sores to show for it.

I went to my local supermarket and they were out of eggs and toilet paper, so no toilet paper omelettes for me this week.

Sure, then go have 3 kids when you're a single mom working as a part time barista. Those are tomorrow's problems anyways.

I'm obviously not saying you need 250k in the bank right then and there. — BitconnectCarlos

I agree you shouldn't have kids outside a committed relationship, but the financial concerns aren't my primary concerns.

if you're planning on having children (which most people are) it makes sense to say at least wait until you're financially secure. — BitconnectCarlos

If you wait until you can afford children, you'll never have them

Wallows. As I recall, he was someone before that too. I can't remember all the incarnations.

Just let me point out that if there's nothing wrong with stupid questions, then I don't think there should be anything wrong with a lazy one??? — Shawn

Since your name change, I'm picking up a defiant vibe. Maybe change your name again and return to the Eeyore thing you had going for a while. It was just as annoying, but the spinelessness kept you out of harm's way.

Milliniel?

And how would you be able to tell that you are using it coherent? Suppose on Day Fourteen on the island you mis-remember that "S" is for things you found ironic...

How do you check the meaning of "S"? — Banno

Suppose there are only two people on this island (hopefully just me and you, that'd be bliss) and I misremember that S is for things you found ironic. You then tell me that I misremember and I tell you I don't. We both stubbornly refuse to change our views and so S means different things to each of us until we then one day start using S to mean popcorn, at which time we agree it means popcorn, until I say it means ironic, but you stick with popcorn. And then we keep doing this, and we never realize we're doing this because we're both fucked up, but not as fucked up as the argument that the best way to remember what words mean is to rely upon someone else. Especially when the someone else is you.

I want off the island.

errr... I'm not American so I've got excellent social security but I do pay about 52% taxes after deductibles. I wouldn't know what a realistic upper middle class US family income would look like. — Benkei

I think I pay around 25% to 30%. It's hard to know after state, federal, local, and sales tax and it's so complicated. I pay a high school grad at a strip mall place to do my tax returns. He tries different numbers in the program until we get it like we like. My charitable deductions vary depending upon what I say my old junk was worth that I took down to the Goodwill. Some years I'm quite the philanthropist according to my tax returns.

Speaking of charity, I give I think $10 a month to a philosophy forum, or maybe it's $5. I don't really remember. When you're big money like me, you don't have time to watch every penny.

Bizarre the way Americans talk about Sanders. He's a middle-of-the-road Social Democrat advocating for stuff that most of the developed world takes for granted. That's about it. The rest is figments of diseased political imaginations. — Baden

The question isn't so much where he falls on the political spectrum when compared to much of Europe. It's where he falls on the spectrum in the US and how far away he is from the center in the US. He is quite far in the sense that America is a very conservative country in the scheme of things with relatively minor variations in political ideologies.

All of this is to concede much of what many say of America, which is that there has always been minimal choice among candidates. Assuming that true, it isn't bizarre at all that some would find larger variations from the center than expected to be a radical departure, and one would expect those trying to win an election to point out that their opponent is a radical. It's the theory of relativity I guess. A radical is determined by where you stand.

Learning the names of things is as basic as basic gets if we require all belief to have propositional content. None of the three are basic beliefs, even if we rule out non linguistic ones. — creativesoul

In the earlier parts of this thread I think posters have said what I'm about to reiterate, but then at some point this discussion became more of a linguistic analysis. I'm sure much is to be said about that, but I take the primary focus of the article to be pragmatic, meaning there are certain beliefs we hold to be self-evident and therefore basic and from that we build a world around it. When we see the tree, we certainly can question whether it's a tree and we can doubt all the way down to Descartes' cogito, but as a matter of pragmatics, we don't. We just start with a basic unwashed acceptance of certain things, and the question then becomes whether an acceptance of God is just as reasonable as an acceptance of trees.

For what it's worth, I think not. I think a belief in any meaningful god requires an act of faith that goes far beyond an acceptance that there is actually a real tree out there when you see it. In fact, I think a belief in God requires a suspension of rationality in some regard, and it requires a belief in purpose and meaning that goes far beyond seeing a tree. The foundational elements of most theological systems do not contain such simple statements as "the tree you see is the tree there is." They contain such statements as "The Bible is a sacred text that identifies the will of God and the path to a fulfilled and meaningful life." Surely there is a difference there.

So I read it, and my take is somewhat different, likely just because of my starting point on such things.

To begin, I saw the objective of the article to substantiate the legitimacy of a belief in God, although not to prove the existence of God. That is, the inquiry was whether the epistemological standard a believer in God accepts is substantially similar to the one that the non-believer in God accepts in other matters.

Take, for example, what Plantiga accepts as a foundational belief: "I see a tree." He suggests that one's acceptance of the tree is foundational in that it requires no proof, but it is basic, and he suggests then that a belief in God is as well. According to this, we no more need to justify the tree's existence than we do God's, which would make the argument (in theistic terminology) that our acceptance of the tree's existence is no more or less an act of faith than is our belief in the existence in God.

My initial thought is that I'm not entirely convinced that our belief in the existence of a tree is foundational, at least not for Descartes (although the existence in God was ironically foundational to him, thus providing a basis for him for our knowledge there wasn't an evil genius manipulating our thoughts). "Foundational" therefore does not mean indubitable to Plantiga, nor does it mean fundamentally necessary for comprehension in some Kantian sense. I sense that his view of foundational is a form of pragmatism.

Regardless, Plantiga's question as I take it most generally is whether it is equally rational to accept God's existence as the tree's. The part of Plantiga's analysis not really discussed in this thread, which I took to be the crux of the counterargument against him, is that of the Great Pumpkin. That is, if I can say that God exists as a foundational belief, then why would I not be able to say the same of any absurd non-physical entity, like declaring there is a Great Pumpkin who visits us each Halloween and delivers us pumpkins.

The problem, as I see it, is that we're being asked a question without being provided a basic definition of what we're being asked to believe in. It seems clear that God as Plantiga envisions him is not the Great Pumpkin, so I'm left with the conclusion that the Great Pumpkin God is not a foundational belief, which means I don't know of the existence of the Great Pumpkin God like I do of the existence of trees. So, then, what sort of god would be foundational and just as rational a thing to believe in as a tree?

I think I can conclude that a god who parts seas and sends manna from heaven would be as absurd as one who delivers pumpkins, so that god wouldn't be foundational. If the god I'm being asked to accept as foundational is some nebulous, abstract, unknown entity that might have had a hand in our existence, then I guess that could be foundational, but if it's so ill defined, I'm not sure what the atheist is denying when he denies that existence either. So, should a Christian tell you that his view of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is as foundational as my view of the tree, I think that's nonsense and fails under the Great Pumpkin objection.

The question I don't think is answered adequately is what makes Yahweh (or Zeus or the Sun God or whoever), different from the Great Pumpkin? All of this is to say that I think the Great Pumpkin objection is not adequately responded to. So, to the question, "Is Belief in God Properly Basic?," a discussion of "basic" and "foundational" seem to put the cart before the horse if we don't know what God is.

In researching this issue, I noted that the Black Plague is said to have killed as much as 50% of Europe in the mid 1300s. America was spared as far as I can tell, largely because no one knew about America, except of course the people who lived in America. This is what a plague doctor looked like:



These doctors were apparently as effective as they looked.

My thoughts:

The LSD use is a symptom of the illness.

You might see a neurologist to rule out a physical cause of your problems but I doubt the testing will reveal anything.

Your focus on the vague symptom is more a concern than the vague symptom.

A realistic treatment would attempt to allow you to best cope with the symptoms because it's doubtful they'll fully go away.

I wish you well and hate to hear you're having a difficult time.

I have zero training or personal experience in these matters and could be completely wrong except about the last part of wishing you well.

I'll read the article because you've posted something I might finally be interested in.

I will point out also that the responses so far have been entirely unresponsive to your question as I understood it. Your question was whether a belief in God is properly basic in a foundationalist system, which is the question of the article. Your question and the article's question is not whether the concept of foundationalism is flawed. The meta-analysis of the posters here of foundationalism generally is based upon the laziness of not wishing to read the actual article, but instead just to fall back upon their general philosophy 101 objections to the enterprise of foundationalism.

Now that I've properly chastised our good posters, I'll actually read the article.

Carry on.

My thoughts:

I tried to mortgage right now it would be yeah, which is why I need to save a ton of money for a huge downpayment in order to make it manageable. I basically have to pre-pay-off over half the house in order for “buying” (mortgaging) to not delay the day I have something paid off even longer than renting + saving already will take. — Pfhorrest

I don't fully follow your numbers. You save 75% of your income and you won't buy a home until you can make a 50% down payment? This points to either (1) low income and fear of a high mortgage, (2) unrealistically financially conservative. (3) credit problems, or (4) residing in a very affluent unaffordable area. You seem to suggest it's 4, but that you're in a trailer suggests otherwise (sorry, but true). What area are you from?

It might also be 2, based upon your statement that you think the goal of buying is to outright own. The goal of buying is to accumulate equity and hence wealth, as well as to get tax benefits, regardless of whether you eventually pay off the mortgage.

I think it'd be a struggle to survive at $200k per year at that tax rate if I insisted upon squirreling away $150k per year (75%), especially if I had a family and other mouths to feed, even though $200k would be considered quite wealthy.

I

Why is medicare for all a bad idea? — frank

I actually believe there needs to be a major change to the hacked up private health insurance situation. Obamacare was dying and Trump killed whatever was left.

Whether Medicare for all is a solution is a question of expense, amount of increased taxes, and whether it will curb or increase out of control health care costs. I question whether it'll work, but most anything at this point would be better than what we have. The Republican response of ignoring this issue is a major failing.

To me, it's all pragmatics.

Ideologically, I'd suspect opponents would think it violates free market dictates, and the ideologues control

I ran a Google search and it returned this post, so it looks like you said it. Now we can discuss it

Nice. Thankful for that post. Can't forget that every moment is sacred.

All who believe in Jesus and or the Christ, have to read scriptures literally as that is the only place, basically, where anything is said of a Jesus.
— Gnostic Christian Bishop

It does not logically follow that a literal reading of the NT is required just because it is the only source of information about Jesus. I don't follow that line of reasoning at all.

Your stat is belied by other surveys that put belief in Jesus at about 70% and in hell which is even higher. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

That stat is unrelated to my poll which spoke to the percentage of believers who accepted a literal meaning to the bible. Your poll relates to entirely different subject matter.

How often have you heard some a hole Christian say, god said Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?

How often have you heard, he shall rule over you, when Christians are trying to justify their misogyny? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

This isn't responsive to my claim that the biblical prohibition against homosexuality derives from Leviticus and not Genesis.

I don't care about the latter as the homophobia and misogyny in Christianity today is from their not understanding Eden and sin. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

There are specific passages forbidding homosexual acts (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) which are not part of the Eden story of Genesis. That is, the anti-homosexuality laws do not derive from Genesis, but they are explicitly stated in Leviticus

Yet the vast majority of Christians have to be literalists, to some extent, to believe their dogma and religion. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

24% of Christians take the bible to be literally true. https://news.gallup.com/poll/210704/record-few-americans-believe-bible-literal-word-god.aspx . The view is most prevalent among evangelicals and fundamentalists.

The word "dogma" has a very specific meaning in the Catholic faith, which isn't really applicable to Protestants, so your claim that literalism is necessary for all Christians so that they can sustain their dogma is unclear because it's not clear what Protestant dogma would be (and it's not clear if you use the term Christian to include all denominations, including Mormons who have a a very distinct theology).

I'd also point out that a claim that the Bible is to be understood by construing it using simplistic literalism is difficult to maintain. It's unclear why anyone, including God, would be limited to speaking in purely stark terms and why the use of metaphor would be off limits

Did sin enter the world through Adam, Satan or Yahweh? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

God was not known in Genesis as Yahweh, but later in Exodus at 6:3, God reveals his name as having been Yahweh. Despite this claim in Exodus, it's been questioned by biblical scholars whether El-Shaday, which was his name in Genesis, was actually a different, and more ancient God of Egypt named El. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Early_History_of_God.

Your question therefore cannot really be answered without first asking from whom's perspective are you asking it. The Christian tradition provides its analysis to the question but then so does the Jewish tradition, and then there would be a secular response as well, which wouldn't come from a position of faith, but would come from a position of historical and literary analysis. From my own perspective, the secular discussion is the most interesting.

The basic tension I have is this: God is not evil, but seemingly according to the bible he does cause evil - or at the very least - misfortune (translational issues concerning "evil" are relevant here). In my discussion with yeshivists they were pretty adamant that God was ultimately behind everything in the universe, but that he is also perfect. Everybody agrees that he is perfect. — BitconnectCarlos

And I also was having this very discussion with a Chasidic rabbi down at my local Chabad center and his position was unequivocal that God was all good and that those things we think are evil are only due to our inability to understand. The analogy was how a child might think the medicine is bad, but it serves a higher good he could not understand. Of course, this line of thought creates serious problems because you are left with the idea of thanking God for the holocaust, hurricanes that kill tens of thousands, the 9/11 attacks and so on.

The problem of evil is a real challenge to religion and I don't think there is a good way out. I'm not terribly worried about it personally because I view religious writings as culminations of historical and cultural wisdom, full of value and meaning, just not of literal meaning.

I'm not fully convinced the Torah even speaks of the same God throughout, with references to El and Yahweh, so I'd have to get past that first before I even attempted to attribute all sorts of specific attributes to him. And, speaking of attributes, Rambam has an entire line of thought that claims that if you itemize attributes of God, you violate his monotheistic nature and are therefore polytheistic, guilty of the highest sin.

As an example, assuming a person could physically "survive" in a homeless shelter and have all of their basic material wants needed, or even have children despite having no income, a person could potentially meet all of their most basic "material" needs this way, much as how a person spending life in prison could have all of those basic needs met as well. — IvoryBlackBishop

I don't understand how this reasoning suggests that first world people have higher mental wants than physical. It seems more reasonable to state that the reason the homeless and the incarcerated are unhappy is because they lack more luxurious physical possessions.

Your discussion about limiting children also points in the direction of first world people wanting more physical possessions so they therefore limit the financial burden of having more children.

I would also assume the move from polygamy has less to do with economic concerns than the move toward greater civil rights to women.