Many people use arguments like this to disprove theism. They say that if you were born into an atheist family in mainland China instead of a catholic family in Mexico, then you would hold different religious beliefs. — Ishika

Of course you would. And speak a different language and wear different clothes and eat different food and root for a different football team. And each of those things would probably change if you moved to another country.
Religious belief is not an equation. It's part of a cultural matrix. When you reach the age of contrariness - usually 12 or 13 - you begin to question everything your parents and other authority figures have ever told you. You eventually - usually at about 18 or 19 - come to conclusions of your own about the main points: you will eventually decide what to accept and what to reject in your upbringing. After that, you form a set of working beliefs: ideas regarding reality, society, the supernatural, other sexes, other races, citizenship, the limits of possibility, the purpose of your life.
You don't work it out with numbered P's.

That is, we should only speculate about something that can either be experienced or exactly defined. — ClayG

Why-ever not? Where is the harm in speculation? Particularly about a story we made up ourselves?

humanity does make contact with a higher intelligence, through the use of AI-powered communication tools, what sort of philosophical implications does that have for humanity? — Bret Bernhoft

First, there is the simple fact of other intelligent life. That should shake up the outlook of a good many anthropocentrists. How each of those groups responds depends on what their claims for the role of humanity in the universe had been before this news. I suspect, for some, it will sound like the rescue they'd been waiting and hoping for; others might see it as the demise of their aspirations to a Terran Empire.

Second, and rather more important, is the question of how that intelligent alien responds to us. I pretty much expect it to take one look and call out the interplanetary pest-control. It might be benevolent, attracted, interested, indifferent, repelled, or utterly horrified. Each of those attitudes - if we learn about them - can affect our view of ourselves. If they do something about it, our philosophies won't matter a damn.

One of the problems I see in the usual practice of education is that many teachers themselves are not actively engaged in learning -- not just in their field, but in other fields as well. — BC

I would like to see that. But might it not first be necessary to lighten their work-load, particularly the administrative bookkeeping, and liberate some time for intellectual pursuits as well as family and social life? Incidentally, I would like the same for people in the food service industry - it's not so easy to get self-educated between shift changes and diaper changes.

You've not provided a single citation in support of your contention that we ought teach critical thinking skills. — Isaac

I've questioned the necessity of 'teaching' as opposed to self-directed learning. You've not provided a single citation countering that position. — Isaac

Fact-check those claims. A self-taught tenured professor should be able to do that all on his lonesome, as easily as a pre-school aged child can.

Cited? Do you what a citation looks like? It isn't "watch a documentary". — Isaac

Unlike some people, I don't like repeating myself endlessly. I've given you explanations, newspaper articles, quotes, references and further clarifications. Any more would a be an unconscionable waste of my diminishing energies.

OK, the quote was bullshit — jorndoe

It doesn't matter what you or anyone cited: he didn't like school and he didn't like school, so there.

I ignored it because the idea of culture is precisely what you're trying to explain with something more ''rational''. — Baden

I'm not trying to explain culture; I assumed we had an idea of it already.
Okay. Somewhere along the line of great ape evolution, the irrationality gene mutated into existence. I can accept that.

What's the environmental motive for flying a plane into a building and blowing yourself up in the process? Certainly seems like a costly practice. — Baden

Cultural was the other half that set of motivations. The plane flying wasn't an all-of-a-sudden new fad; it evolved from a long cultural history of combat - mainly territorial, but also the struggle for identity and solidarity, which are often strong motivators.
In any case, even though that attack was unsuccessful, destroying only one of its three designated targets, it achieved a great deal. It did far, far more damage to America than a far, far costlier military operation could have. (More than its instigators ever envisaged, in fact.) From the POV of the pilots - this wasn't unique in the history of warfare: suicide missions are planned and carried out in every conflict, overt and covert; all soldiers have to put aside their normal impulse to self-preservation for what they believe is a greater purpose.

As I noted, it's not an all or nothing proposition. Some might be rational (like prohibitions against murder) and others not (like waving a sagebrush to ward off evil spirits). — Hanover

From whose POV?

Of course humans are insane, but they don't unquestioningly adopt every idea that's presented to them for no reason: whether a specific idea is rational or not, it fits into a larger complex of meaning. You or I may consider a particular requirement of a religion or proscription of law irrational when considered on its own, lifted out of its historical, religious and cultural heritage, but that doesn't mean it didn't make sense to the people who first enacted and obeyed it.

We cannot know all of the circumstances in which ancient peoples and especially perhistoric peoples, thought and lived, but we can learn quite a lot about their environment, history and lifestyle. We don't just base our understanding of them, or conjectures about those aspects of their lives that we don't know, on idle imaginings or desperate "clinging": there is a process of data and evidence collection, documentation, comparison and reasoning involved in anthropology, and in the history of civilizations since the invention of writing, a great more is known.

There's a line of thought that always looks for sociocultural / environmental reasons for taboos and you can almost always find something to cling to. — Baden

And yet the taboos and commandments come from someplace. In the absence of an irrational deity, they must have sprung from the minds of men. It's conceivable that every ancient law-maker on every continent was irrational, but much harder to imagine that entire societies routinely followed their irrational leaders, especially in costly practices like the sacrifice of cattle and male offspring, without any cultural or environmental motive to do so.

Don't you mean "God was not talking to or about children, but grown men."? — Art48

No. I don't think any god ever talked to anybody about anything. Men made up the laws of their kingdoms, according to what they considered needful, useful and expedient.

I think Pascal would have thought of that. It indicates to me that he actually already held a true belief in one particular choice (probably the one of his local culture), and the wager was put out there as a way to justify this belief despite the lack of it being a rational choice. So the wager is a rationalization of that actually held irrational belief. — noAxioms

I think he also believed in/hoped for social stability and good order, which in his time and mind was represented by a unified Catholic church. (Islam and Judaism were not even to be considered as possible choices, as Christian Europe was at constant hostilities with both of those infidel camps - as well as within itself.) and the pagan religions had been wiped out.
If only belief in God could bring the Protestants and the enlightenment skeptics back into the fold, all those wars and witch-hunts could be over. So he wrote extensively about Christianity as whole, and the role of faith in man's salvation.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.

The Biblical teaching about what should be done to a child who curses a parent is quite clear. And quite monstrous and evil. — Art48

To be fair, they were not talking to or about children, but grown men. The nomadic - or possibly fugitive - tribe had fairly recently ousted another tribe from its settlement and taken up farming. Land-ownership and inheritance were an unaccustomed concept as yet, and family squabbles a long standing tradition. (see OT: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, the prodigal son; Lot's lot, Abraham's peculiar domestic arrangements....) So it was important to law and order to keep the sons in line.

Do you care to share it? — Isaac

No. Watch a nature documentary.

It sometimes doesn't even do that. — Isaac

It sometimes does something entirely different. I'm not an advocate of cobblers sticking to their last -- or, indeed, employment of any kind. But that's another story.

Again, care to share your reasons? — Isaac

Beyond what I already elaborated and cited, no.

Students learn, teachers teach. — Isaac

Well, blow me down! If only someone had taught me that, I could have learned it sooner!

God is not mocked!
Whatever you fake, even if you're just faking it in the hope that you'll eventually make it, if He exists, He knows.
Which do you think He would despise more, sincere doubt or false belief?

God’s reasoning against a two-way, consenting, loving relationship. — Katiee

God had nothing to do with writing up the laws of ancient Israel. It's in the interest of militaristic regimes to keep women in the home, making more little soldiers, and men out there in the world, doing business to pay taxes and sending lots of sons (who all have an eye on the inheritance) to the army.
The warring Greeks were a lot smarter.

3: So, if you want to believe something, you should question it. — Katiee

of course you should! How else can you know that you actually believe it, rather than just repeating what you've been told? You have a whole life to live inside that same head; it serves you well to keep it as tidy and functional as possible.

Remember, too, that its okay to questionall of your sources of information regarding that creed. It may be that some are more reliable than others, more consistent, more in tune with your own way of perceiving the world - and some are less. It's okay to keep some tenets and discard some dogma. It's okay to custom-design your own personal faith. If Jesus is really up there, paying attention, he knows all about it: he went through the same process.

I quickly discovered that I was altogether NOT cut out to teach high school students. — BC

Very few people are. All teaching is difficult; all teaching requires special aptitudes and personality traits, besides the knowledge one is assigned to impart, but I believe dealing with adolescents in any settings is one of the hardest things for adults to do well, and dealing with unassorted adolescents in a closed box for hours on end is the hardest of all. I was fortunate to have a number - seven, on reflection - of really good teachers in high school, along with the mediocre ones and a couple of sadly misplaced individuals, one of whom quit after the first year.
One thing we could probably remedy in quite good order is to better appreciate and remunerate the good teachers. Of course, it won't happen. The people who form 'our future' are some of the least valued members of modern society. A secondary school teacher is worth maybe half a stockbroker.

Schools have lost some of their raison d'être; mass media have had 24/7 access to children for a good 60 years — BC

And yet, the home/computer education to which children were restricted during Covid lockdown was not beneficial, either to their well-being or their education.

It's not just a question of labour-pool and employability -- both of which are fast becoming obsolete concepts anyway; education is a much broader topic than training for an occupation: it includes socialization, familiarization the culture and its mores, the rules of conduct and transactions and participation in a community of one's species.
Learning of any kind: from parents, imitating adults, experimentation; learning from peers, from books, television, computer, storyteller, tutor, mentor, master, pastor, professor or public school teacher are all be parts of an "education".
Of course the public school system can be improved. In the past, and in other places, it has been very much worse, a little worse and somewhat better; I don't think it has ever been very much better (Athena notwithstanding) than the elementary and secondary schools to which prosperous families currently send their young. Higher education may have been very much better in the Aristotalian Lyceum or European grand tour - but I'm skeptical; certainly, there is more diversity in formal post-secondary education, as well as self-conducted courses of study now than there has ever been.

As above, do you have any grounds for this claim — Isaac

Yes.

Education improves job prospects. — Isaac

Not necessarily.

The myth that education leads to better employment (overall) does however, act as distraction to real change in those low-paid jobs, which is why conditions and pay have stagnated for those workers for decades. — Isaac

No, that's not why.

People like you keep lending succour to the idea that they can merely 'educate' themselves out of that labour pool and so solve their own problem. — Isaac

Not even close.

But yes, I suspect your blind political bias will probably prevent you from understanding that argument. — Isaac

Apparently.

1. How did you learn critical thinking skills sufficient for you to vote the 'right' way (in your interests)?
2. Why is this method not available to the working class without formal pedagogy? — Isaac

Both have been answered.

You were not taught formal critical thinking skills. So why do the working class need such intervention? — Isaac

I was. And so should everyone, including the working class. Education is not 'intervention'; it is a basic necessity to all intelligent life-forms.
I wouldn't recommend setting a young wolf free in the wild without teaching it how to hunt and how to relate to other wolves. I wouldn't recommend setting up shop as a carpenter, without first learning how to use a saw, an adze and a chisel.
I didn't specify 'formal'; you assumed it. But, yes, I do advocate for safe, clean, respectful and inclusive public schools from kindergarten through college, trade and technical school and university, accessible to all students, at all levels.
I didn't say one word in approval of the current state of public education in the disunited states; I may have implied a few against it. You seem to assume it's the only kind of education in existence or the realm of possibility.
I didn't say a word against improving the working conditions or standard of living for working people; you seem to think having access to education somehow impedes those efforts, rather than enhancing them.
I don't know why you think that, and I hold forth little chance of discovering it.

I don't think it includes anyone. — Isaac

Fine. We disagree.
(But I'm not sure you would happily submit your aortic bypass to a self-thought surgeon.)

Back in the real world. You advocated the teaching of critical thinking, I argued that this was unhelpful since education is only helpful in procuring better jobs (a competitive market) rather than improving the conditions of the jobs they already have. — Isaac

I do approve of critical thinking. I approve of reason, mathematics, the scientific method, literature, music and history. I approve of knowledge. I believe in education, libraries, public broadcasting, factual news reportage and the funding of culture for the public. I advocate for all of these things to be equally available to all classes, ages, creeds and genders.
You, apparently, believe that the daughter of a janitor should never want to be a psychologist, or the son of a roofer should never be an astrophysicist, or that neither of their parents should take an interest in philosophy or the arts or the workings of their own government, except in the random snatches of unfiltered infobabble they may catch on the internet. You seem to believe that The Workers don't need an intellectual life or aspirations beyond the improving their working condition.

I also suggested it was insulting since it carries the implication that the choices they make are the result of a lack of skill (critical thinking) which you naturally have, but they need teaching.

You didn't merely suggest it. You made it up out thin air. Even after I explained at length that i don't consider any skill 'natural' and that I appreciate the help, instruction and access to information that I enjoyed. And that every child - and now I will extend that to every intelligent creature - needs to be taught how to survive, how to communicate, how to relate to the world. Complex creatures in a complex world need a great deal of learning.
You seem to think this doesn't include blue-collar workers.
And I'm the one insulting them!

forever and ever salam

So because the right wing are bad, no criticism of the left stands? — Isaac

Huh? I have no idea what you're on about. Much earlier in this thread, somebody suggested that public education should include critical thinking - for every student. I then cited a declaration from the Texas legislation opposing critical thinking, because it might encourage youth to question its elders. With a great deal of unnecessary effort, you built that up into a mountain of paranoia, on behalf of a class of people who, I'm willing to bet, didn't elect you their spokesman.
I wonder why.

I always liked the words of this song, in some strange way, it always seemed to make my more pessimistic friends smile and 'sit down' for another beer of cheer! — universeness

...and another thing... liquor prices just took a wallop in taxation. I have to cut back on beer. An excellent reason to refrain from diluting it with salt water.
Good song, though.

.....on that happy note....

I recommend Thomas Hobbes. — Arne

He won't answer my emails.

Wow, you really don't pull punches with your bigotry do you? — Isaac

Of course not. Half-hearted bigotry is worse than no bigotry at all.
I'm not into deifying a whole class of people, and I don't delude myself into believing that magic will happen... if only.

campaign to give them higher wages and better conditions for the jobs they already do — Isaac

What do you think the liberal and socialist parties have been doing?

Lest we forget, Doug Ford’s Tories did the precise opposite four years ago. As promised, they cancelled a planned minimum wage increase — imposing a 26-month freeze on the old hourly rate of $14 an hour, shortchanging hundreds of thousands of working poor.

Mike Harris was premier of Ontario from 1995 to 2002. Prior to the election, he introduced the ‘Common Sense Revolution’, a platform that promised tax cuts and a solution to the deficit. He also pledged to cut funding to social programs, reduce the number of MPPs, deregulate university tuition, and weaken unions with new labour laws

The only voting group that did not vote primarily for the Progressive Conservatives was younger Ontarians just starting their careers with a good education.

Across the world, blue-collar voters ally themselves with the political right – even when it appears to be against their own interests. Is this because such parties often serve up a broader, more satisfying moral menu than the left?

And, yes, they do. They offer scapegoats, security, responsibility, morality and greatness. They always deliver on the scapegoats, and the pricetag is always higher than they 'estimate'.

Then perhaps avoid the suggestion that their condition is in any way the result of their own stupidity and simply campaign to give them higher wages and better conditions for the jobs they already do — Isaac

Indeed. That has never persuaded them to stop voting against their best interest. Ignorance may be blissful - though I doubt it - but it's neither a virtue nor an advantage.

destruction of the existing order, and starting over again, rebuilding from within the ruins, is not a viable option. — Janus

And yet, as a pessimist, what I see as most probable is just that.
Here on the precipice, on the eve of lemmingfall, I don't see any sign of reconciliation or a coherent plan for survival, and there's no time to change course.
Because of regressive conservatism... more accurately: because of the regressive steps taken by those forces which hijacked conservatism... there may be no way back to the negotiating table, and no acceptable options. I don't know about revolutions, but more civil wars are probable. So is economic collapse.
Somebody, sometime, may very well need to rebuild.
Thanks to the ant-people who stored up and preserved seeds and knowledge, their task won't impossible.

One example is the relationship between Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings, — Jamal

And its comical flip-side: Jeeves and Wooster, and its serious exemplar: Wimsey and Bunter.
Yes, I do understand that --- without subscribing to it.

It seems to me that people want to make a distinction between nice conservatism and nasty conservatism. My view in a nutshell is that the nice version, precisely in its niceness, functions to curtail freedom and protect power. — Jamal

Of course it does. But in the crass populist form, it protects a power that doesn't give a flying fig about the underling's virtues, feelings and needs, but feeds him empty slogans instead of recognition. Make 'em mad; make 'em fight for you; discard 'em.

Whether this is a bad thing or not is the key ideological difference: conservatives do not believe it is possible, advisable, or ethical to attempt to wipe out hierarchy on the basis of principles of egalitarianism. Others, like me, do. — Jamal

Yeas. So do I. Principles are difficult to reconcile. When one considers the historical precedent, sincere conservatives may be correct: perhaps hierarchy of some kind will always prevail, and the danger of radical change is that the most destructive kind of hierarchy will form - as in the French and Russian revolutions. It is a legitimate concern.
And yet, society cannot remain static.
So we're down to negotiating terms; plotting strategy; finding ways and means.
A hostile standoff just won't work.

What bothers me here is that calling an idea or person intelligent is intended to mean the same thing, but it also can't mean the same thing. — Judaka

Only, that's not a question of context; that's a question of judgment.

A human being's intelligence has to do with their brain, whereas an idea being intelligent has to do with its logic, accuracy or a host of other characteristics one might choose to focus on. — Judaka

So? All cognitive function has to do with the brain. How people use logic, intelligence, creativity, pattern-recognition (the accuracy of data has nothing to do with intelligence: it's external), etc. are functions of personality. The nature and makeup of personality is a much bigger topic than can be discussed in this context. But how somebody judges somebody else's use of their brain is certainly not determined by the structure of language.

But it's not always that obvious, and this creates confusion. — Judaka

I suspect you're creating confusion where none exists. We all know that lapses of memory have no connection to intelligence; we all know that stupid people are capable of making sound decisions and that clever people are equally capable of making disastrous ones. None of that is down to English or its usage.

Guard you words!

I see the basic driving idea in conservatism to be the preservation of the existing power and class structures, with which the economic status quo goes hand in hand. — Janus

Yes, only that's been labelled neoliberal.
There is - or there was - a brand of conservative who fits that image, but then adds anotherr dimension in the form of the obligations that go with privilege.

Luke 12:48 For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

The United Kingdom was fortunate to have a succession of remarkable philanthropists, thinkers and reformers during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, who sought to improve the destiny of the disadvantaged. Some with considerable wealth, such as William Armstrong, George Cadbury, George Peabody and Lord Rowton, built accommodation including housing, hostels, schools and hospitals, while John Rylands’ wealth helped to found Manchester University library. Complementing these leading figures were those, perhaps best described as activists, whose beliefs and actions benefited the underprivileged, particularly the aged. Among this eclectic group were:

In politics also, there have been conservatives who cling to tradition: ceremony, hierarchy and religion, while also embracing theprinciples of those traditions, rather than just gleaning the benefits: bread as well as circuses. That whole concept appears to have become obsolete.... hijacked by shills who replace patriotism with jingoist xenophobia; christian forbearance with militant religiosity; family and community cohesion with the vilification of minorities - tawdry imitations of conservative values.
Or so it seems to me.

And your personal middle class utopia is not an argument against the charge that focus on 'education' is an insult to workers who just want to be respected for what they actually already do. — Isaac

You's one discontented li'l badger! It hardly matters which way you direct the anger, does it? Plenty to go around.

Just one tiny correction. In my 'middle class utopia', my (ex)engineer father worked as an orderly by day and bowling alley janitor by night; sometimes in construction or the lake freighters in the summer; my (ex)architectural draftsman (in those days, they had archaic pronoun usage) mother worked in the tomato cannery and later as a nurses' aid. Yet we had a decent apartment in a safe neighborhood, with reliable, cheap public transit, good schools, parks and libraries. (still no guns.)
Did I mention libraries? That's where the working people find those books from which they're supposed to be learning history and the intricacies of their electoral system - sometime between shifts and looking after their kids. I respect the hell out of those people, but I wish they could have an easier life and a little more security.

(Oh well).

Upon deliberation I don't think it's much of an ethical dilemma, though. — Tzeentch

For me, the dilemma - more pragmatic than ethical - might be in contemplation of the post-disaster quality of life. Who is best suited and prepared on the hardships and privations that are bound to follow? How many able-bodied young people will be available to take care of the children?
I know I'm not fit, and my mother certainly would not be. I would only be saving either of us for protracted suffering. In that case, I should stay and do what I can for the others left behind.

And who is acting as the judge of what information is 'sound'? — Isaac

Rupert Murdoch, Meredith Koch....

I don't recall 'rights' lessons. — Isaac

They used to call it 'civics'; came in a package with history and geography.

What sort of insane upbringing did you have! — Isaac

An insane middle-class immigrant one: two parents who worked at menial jobs, one younger sibling, a minimum of fucking afaik. Mid-20th century Toronto public schools in working- and lower-middle class neighborhoods; public libraries, where we were conducted as a group and instructed in how to use it. Good teachers. Field trips to museum, botanical garden, science center, symphony. No hippies, no smoking, no assault weapons. One traffic-related death of a fellow student, in Gr 12.

he Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán set out in a speech of 2014 his vision of the future form of the state as 'a workfare state': — mcdoodle

That's an excellent example! Of values?? More of fang-gnashing fear. To me, he represents the rising rabid conservatism that will finally bring down the global house of cards.

I also advocate for getting rid of old bad traditions and backwards cultural norms. — universeness

That, too, shall come to pass.

Children are quite capable of learning what they need to learn for themselves. They need information, practice, and time. — Isaac

I didn't learn to walk by myself. I had a mother to help me stand up, who picked me up when I fell and held my hand when I was unsteady.
I didn't learn to read by myself. I had adults who would read to me, and who gave me books and helped me sound out the little verses.
I didn't learn to write by myself. I had a great big exercise book in which to copy the letter on the board, again and again, until I could form them correctly.
I didn't learn anything by myself: I was surrounded by people who answered when I was curious, and explained patiently when I didn't understand, and questioned what I did understand and paid attention to my concerns. I was surrounded by books and literate people who didn't lie to me.
I was lucky.
I'm happy for a carpenter to be happy in his work, yet I still think he should also be able to enrich his life with whatever interests he has besides. I'm happy if a nurses' aide is happy in her work; I still think she should have a right in engage in the democratic process of her governance on the basis of sound information. And I think they should know what their rights are and have the opportunity to judge who is lying to them. And I think they and their children have a right to a decent school, where they are free to become informed, are given a chance to practice and time to think and not be be massacred by lunatics.
Ah, but that's so utopian....

If it is all you dream it to be, it will reveal that to them. — NOS4A2

Sounds good. Now, if I could just convince 300,000,000 people to watch what I do....

With leading by example you do not sacrifice any one else’s autonomy on the alter of your own, and history will recognize this before it will recognize some authoritarian. — NOS4A2

That's just what Jesus said, sir!