No, you don't have support from Occam's Razor. You merely made the assertion that Occam's Razor would support nothing existing over something existing, but that is false --- it's simply an assertion you have made without any foundational support. Something always existing is supported by the very fact that we exist now, and out of nothing, nothing comes, so, if anything Occam's Razor is against you.

I'm not sure I understand your point. If the particle is perfectly balanced on top of the dome, then there it shall remain until some net force moves it. You didn't specify what that net force would be, or how it could be interpreted as a fall versus a push. The object is in an unstable position thermodynamically speaking, because any movement will cause the potential energy to drop, at least if we only consider movements along the dome as opposed to lifting it off the dome. However, that has nothing to do with the nature of the net force that would come along and cause the particle to move from an equilibrium position.

Devans99: Like I stated, you'd fail. No, it is not the simplest position to say nothing should exist. That's simply an assertion you made without any support whatsoever.

Tim Wood: I gave you the name of an author and you can check up on his published pop works, you don't even have to read his actual textbooks for university courses. The fact you are too lazy to read up on logic and math isn't my problem --- it's yours. I have no responsibility at all to educate you. You have that responsibility.
If you can't understand the most basic concepts in logic and math, then that's also not my problem. I explained how the principle works in a manner that anyone with half a brain should be able to grasp. The fact you can't, probably is because you don't know much mathematics. Have you ever even taken a non-computational course in math?

And there you go again with the BS about a dragon? Like you seriously don't think that there is actually evidence against the existence of a dragon in your garage? Really?

Denas99: Boy, the word irony must be lost on you. Talk about unsatisfactory pseudo-answers. Ok, gfo ahead and give us a rational, coherent explanation why nothing, as opposed to something, would be the default position? Good luck with that.

You are asking two different things --- evidence for the supernatural and evidence for a God, which I assume you mean some sort of omnipotent creator. As for the latter, no amount of evidence could ever be sufficient. Even if a being appeared before us all and claimed to be "God," and it did everything we asked of it for hundreds of years, for all anyone would know, the next request would stump this alleged "God." And how could this being show it was responsible for all of creation? It couldn't. It may make such a claim, but proving it would be another matter entirely.

On the other hand, evidence for the supernatural could include all sorts of things, including someone claiming to see a ghost. That may not be convincing evidence, but, it would still be evidence of some kind.

No one can answer the question "why is there anything at all." The answer to the question "how is it that something exists as opposed to nothing," can be partly answered, since out of nothing, nothing comes, which simply means something must have always existed. But "why" this is the case, who knows? It can't be answered.

Tim Wood: I DID give you a citation ---- READ Raymond Smullyan. I'm not going to waste my time educating you, that's your responsibility. If you are too lazy to read up on mathematical logic, then that's not my fault, it's yours. I didn't even bother to read the remainder of your comment, since your first sentence was disingenuous.

Tim Wood: Go read Raymond Smullyan. Before he passed away he was ranked something like the third greatest mathematical logician of all time, and I know in one of his pop books he wrote for the general public, he mentioned this. You can also check out most basic books on statistics and probability. Or, you could use your common sense. This is a very, very, very basic aspect of logic and math so it always puzzles me when people like you can't grasp it. Just think it through: If there is a proposition, A, and there is more evidence against it than for it, then it would be rational to think it is probably not true. On the other hand, if there was more evidence in favor of it than against it, it would be rational to believe that the proposition is most likely true. So, what happens when there is no evidence for or against the proposition? It would be irrational to claim it's likely to be true, a situation where there is actually evidence in its favor, and it would also be irrational to consider the statement less likely to be trur, as there is no net evidence against the proposition either. A 50/50 is the logical position to take given no evidence.

As far as your example, this is not a very good one. While you personally may have no access to information regarding the attack, that is not to say that such information does not exist and is not known by those who deal with this topic involving national security. In many cases where a person is thinking that a statement has no evidence in its favor or against, there is actually evidence either for or against.

People who believe in a literal interpretation of Christianity, etc., are stupid. Even if there are a large number of such people, that does not make them any less stupid. There was no Noah's flood, and the story, taken literally, requires a person to ignore basic common sense even. As if two penguins would have gotten off a mountain top in the Middle East and successfully waddled up to a polar region?

Alistering: Please don't lecture me on logic and mathematics. Here are the facts: What I stated is correct. A proposition for which there is neither evidence for nor against is assigned a 50/50 probability. This is true both for basic logic, as well as statistics., Mathematics is basically applied logic, so there is no bright-line distinction between the two subjects. There is nothing about Pascal Wager that changes this because Pascal's Wager offers no evidence for the existence of any alleged God. In fact, it does not even take into account that if the majority of alleged Gods send people to hell for worshipping another God, then Pascal's Wager tells any rational person that they should not worship any God, because the probability of worshipping the wrong one is greater than the probability of worshipping correctly.

Like all disciplines, philosophical issues arise in psychology. Just take cognitive psychology for example? In deciding whether people are being "rational," one has to figure out what is in fact rational decision making or behavior, which is an issue philosophers have input on.

Bitter Crank is right --- money has value because a government says so. The reason why people value US currency is because the US government states that such currency is legal tender, and, furthermore, one can only pay their federal taxes with US currency, which means it's safer to deal with US currency. Historically, the earliest coins all had political symbols on them, as they were issued by a governing authority that made such currency legally available for exchanges.

I fail to see how anyone believing in the claims of Scientology isn't stupid. These claims have no credible evidence backing them up and are as outlandish as hell, and there is no credible way for the founder of Scientology to have any knowledge of such claims either. Regardless of IQ test scores, a person believing in Scientology is not using even basic common sense.

lupac: No, Pascal's Wager does not weigh in favor of the theist when it comes to the burden of proof. At least not under logic. Since there is no credible evidence for God, then there is nothing in favor of an alleged God existing. In fact, if we had a description of a God for which there is no evidence for or against its existence, then logic tells us we assign a 50/50 probability to the assertion that such a God exists. Pascal's Wager does absolutely nothing to alter this.

Pascal's wager is absurd on its face. It does not offer a single argument for the existence of any alleged God, and simply assumes one should be safe by randomly picking one to worship, without even taking into account that one may end up making the "real" God angry by worshipping the wrong one, so as a mini game-theory exercise, it does not even take into account all the possibilities. Moreover, it also does not address the absurdity of claiming that someone can automatically "believe" in an alleged God based on a risk-calculation. I don't believe in any God and even if I accepted Pascal's wager, I still wouldn't be able to believe in any alleged God.

There really were no free-market Republicans. This was merely dog whistle politics. The GOP slogans of "smaller government" never once brought about an actually smaller government. "Smaller government" was simply code for --- "we'll cut off welfare, which will hurt colored people." Poor white people in the USA have often gone along with policies that hurt them, simply because they liked the idea of hurting colored people in the process. The same with slogans like "law and order," which was code for, "we'll lock up colored people."

Since Trump is now out in the open with white-nationalism being the party platform of the GOP, the dog-whistles have gone silent, and now we have blatant white-nationalism as a matter of policy. From the pardoning of a racist sheriff in Arizona, which was a high-five to the Nazis in Virginia, and an assault against the judicial branch of government, to the racist symbolic border wall, to the myths about lazy Hispanic immigrants stealing our jobs. If they're so lazy, then how can they be stealing jobs?

America First was the slogan of Americans who supported Hitler before our entry into WWII, and it is not a coincidence that this is now the slogan of Trump and the GOP.

Bitter Crank: It is my understanding the GOP finally released the documents showing that Kavanaugh was aware of the emails and used them. His testimony before the previous Senate committee was that he had no idea about any such emails. Here is the thing too, as an attorney, an attorney who has reason to believe he has been sent confidential documents by mistake, and this does happen fairly often in the practice of law, the attorney is bound by the rules of ethics to immediately send them back, to let the other side know he received the documents which look like documents he never should have been sent, and he has to destroy his copy of the documents and cannot use them in any way. Kavanaugh definitely violated that ethical rule as well. I'm not sure if that alone would get him disbarred, but there would be a likely sanction. He's not fit to be on our highest court. He's not even close to being fit. In fact, he could be impeached if he is appointed. Lying under oath to a Senate committee alone would be grounds to later remove him from the Supreme Court.

I'm fairly certain that the majority of the human race has blinders on when it comes to estimating their own personal moral integrity. Most of us are neither good people, nor bad people, we engage in both types of conduct quite frequently. However, with respect to Kavanaugh, we now know for a fact that he lied about using stolen emails from the Democratic party during his first confirmation hearing before a Senate committee. That alone disqualifies him from being a judge in his current position. Yet, the GOP members are overlooking this conduct. In fact, this conduct will likely get him disbarred by whichever state he has a law license. Lying under oath is a HUGE violation of attorney and judicial ethics.

Relativist: I agree with you that those are some valid points and there are definitely large segments of the American public that fall into each of those categories you mentioned. It still seems bizarre to me that people are signing up for what has long been considered immoral behavior In their leader. Although, most Americans dislike Trump and most Americans did not vote for him. But, I have seen a rise in Trump support after he was elected, sort of similar to Germany having an increase in anti-Semitism after Hitler took over. People in a nation, for whatever causal reason, seem to adopt the beliefs and mannerisms of their political leaders. Not everyone, but a fair number seem to.

I can see Robin Hood as a hero, because he took money from the rich and gave to the poor, as opposed to keeping the money himself. Especially if the wealthy of that time did not justly earn their wealth but came into it in an arbitrary fashion, like through inheritance, much like Trump obtained his wealth as well.

I was just thinking though if I was writing a novel, and came up with a fictional character like Trump, I would be thinking of Trump as a villain because he is so selfish and self-centered. That's why it's hard for me to comprehend how he is president.

I agree that Trump has simply appealed to white supremacists and have given them a false target to blame for their problems, which is an old tactic that authoritarians use. Why poor white people support politicians who harm them, simply because they believe those policies will harm colored people even more, is one of life's mysteries that I doubt I'll ever understand.

Actually, it's very difficult to even define what a religion is and there are examples of religions as well as religious members who do not engage in supernatural beliefs of any kind. Defining a religion in such a way that it ignores the actual empirical evidence we have regarding religion, is a foul. Basically, you end up with a false premise, so one's conclusion then cannot be logically supported. Religious people have for thousands of years come up with actual secular arguments justifying their moral rules, or at least attempting to, and have often not resorted to the simplistic notion of "because God said so."

It's disingenuous to say that it is only a religious position if someone claims "because God said so." That's hardly the case for numerous religions. In fact, not all religions even believe in a God. I suppose if you misrepresent religion, and paint it into a corner, falsely claiming that all religious assertions are of the form, "Because God, therefore X," you would have a "logical" point, but, empirically, it would be way off the mark and false.

There is a video by Stanford neurobiologist, Robert Sapolsky, that people can watch on YouTube, where he discusses depression. The alarming thing is that it may became our number one killer in the near future. It's certainly nothing to make fun of, or downplay as if it is no big deal. My understanding is that depression has a way of feeding on itself with positive feedback loops --- one gets depressed, so one does not see people as much. Because one is not interact with other people as much, one gets more depressed, etc., etc.

Too bad we still have a stigma against people with psychological issues like depression. It would be nice if we can accept the fact that a psychological injury or illness is just as harmful as a physical one, and in many cases, more harmful to the person.

Cancer is basically another way of saying people are dying from old age, which is a sign of improving conditions, not worsening ones. While there are sad cases of children getting cancer, what we typically see is cancer increasing with age. As we are now living longer, we are more and more likely to die from cancer. How this gets turned into a bad thing is unclear to me. Especially since our cancer treatments are also vastly improving.

The Dems should not have sat back on the information, and that tactic should be condemned. I agree with you that it does not change the actual facts, and is certainly not as disingenuous as Trump constantly making up "facts" out of thin air. But, I am an independent for a reason --- I am sick and tired of our two major parties acting like immature children instead of adults when it comes to governing this country.

The economy was doing well before Trump became president, and it was anticipated by the vast majority of economists to do well after he was elected. Trump's policies have virtually nothing to do with the present state of the US economy, except for some rising prices and problems for companies as a result of the trade-wars he started. His fiscal polices don't come into effect until next month, in October. At that time, most economists are predicting a slow-down due to Trump's deficit-spending, and the need for the FED to establish counter-monetary policy to control inflation. Such policies by the FED during a time when the stock market is in a bubble, could cause an implosion.

The people who claim -- Trump is president and the economy I doing well, so Trump must be given credit, are simply engaged in a post hoc fallacy. They never come forward with any causal basis for their claims, most likely because there isn't one to point to.

If a religious person says that one should not lie under oath, because lies under oath undermine justice in a court of law, a position held by many religious people, as it stems from the Ten Commandments, is that a non-philosophical position? How could that be the case, since it is a position backed up by a reason, and that's what philosophy is about --- coming up with reasons to support one's position. I'm an atheist myself, so would prefer it personally if people could stop being religious, but, in trying to be honest here about religion, much of it is philosophically based.

Strange that the Republicans are claiming that this is just all a big conspiracy hatched by the Democrats. These are the same Democrats who failed to produce a single witness to accuse the first nominee of Trump's for the Supreme Court? A nominee who also happened to go to the same school as Kavanaugh? While it may be true women who come forward to claim that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted them help the Democrats, that's substantially different from stating that the Dems are just intentionally making all this up. Talk about "fake news." It's sad these days that all one has to do is make a false accusation --- that the Dems are engaging in a conspiracy, without a single shred of evidence to back it up.

I'm not sure what the Catholics got right. The Inquisition? Burning of witches and stealing their property? Being against birth-control?

But then the Catholics went off on a crusade against scientists that claimed the Earth revolved around the Sun and was not the immovable center of the universe, as well as against evolution.

I only have two problems with religion --- 1. when a religious belief is used to deny a scientific theory, and 2. when religion is used as a basis for abusing people who fall outside the religion, or even a hierarchy of abuse within the religious group. Sometimes religion is used to fight the good fight, like it was used during the civil rights movement in the USA. Other times, it is used to oppress others and persecute those with new ideas, especially in science, in which case religion is a bad thing.

Based on the historical evidence I don't see all religions falling under some universal banner of either good or bad, and evaluate each religious belief separately. Like, if someone believes that God created white people to rule over colored people, I would consider such beliefs immoral and absurd. But, if someone believes that giving to the poor is a good thing, then I would support such a belief.

I'm not in agreement regarding how the OP defines the terms education and the process of learning. While it is true that some educational institutions do emphasize a drill and indoctrination strategy, this is not always the case. This is especially true in subjects that emphasize critical thinking, at least about the subjects under consideration, like physics, mathematics, biochemistry, engineering, computer science, and many other topics. Just try getting an advanced degree in any of these subjects without learning how to reason your way to a solution? It won't happen.

It depends on what one means by religion. It's certainly true that some religion takes the view, "because God said so," in addressing moral issues. However, this is not universally true, and many religious people are quite philosophical in outlook, and do not simply take a top-down approach to religion, which is almost always the case among new-atheists. This is the position that if one can show a belief in God is unjustified, then all religious beliefs can be tossed aside. Instead, if we take a bottom-up view, we can often see that religious beliefs can often be justified through reason, and often are. For example, in Judaism there is a story about a man pretending to be disabled and defrauding people who gave him money thinking he was disabled. The immediate response among the city was to ban begging. However, this idea was rejected when a rabbi offered the following argument: It was not a disabled person who defrauded you, but a person who is not handicapped. So why should the handicap suffer for his actions?

It's impossible to state one way or another, at this time, what the realistic probability is of Trump being reelected is. We know for a fact that he is one of the most disliked politicians, who ever held the office of president. After all, he actually lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton who is hated among Americans. He is presently losing every demographic, except is still popular with white men over 45. So, we can rule out Trump being anything like a sure bet.

The thing is though it largely depends on who ends up running against him. If the Democrats foolishly nominate Hillary Clinton again, which is conceivable, then I think the odds on Trump winning go up. However, if the Dems find a new face and someone who shares the values most Americans do, then I would give Trump slight odds of winning.

Elections are about competing choices and we don't know who the alternative candidate is at this juncture.

He's already been busted lying to the Senate during his first confirmation hearing, which means he should be facing impeachment proceedings. He lied about not knowing about stolen emails from the Democratic party, and we now know from recently available documents that he knew about the stolen communications and actively used them.

It is a current GOP strategy to claim the event happened, but that Ford is confused on the identity of the person who attacked her. That's not likely to be true. That's a political move, not a rational assessment of the evidence.

Why would Ford make up a story that places a witness who is likely to be against her at the scene? To me, that one fact alone brings a lot of credibility to her complaint.

With respect to the very first sentence in the very first post, I'm not claiming any expertise at all in this field, but I do recall watching a video of the biologist Kenneth R. Miller, on youtube, where he was interviewed by Gad Saad, a university professor himself. As I recall, since Mr. Miller's most recent book addresses the free-will issue, although not in the depth I thought it would have given the title of the book, he said that he had spoken with a lot of neuroscientists on this topic. The overwhelming response he got was that we know far too little about the brain and consciousness to even be discussing this issue of free will. In other words, most working neuroscientists who are engaged in full-time work at universities were unwilling to even take a position on free-will. Sam Harris may claim he is a neuroscientist, but he simply got a degree in the subject, and does not research in it, and his background was in philosophy, not something like biochemistry. Robert Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford in neurobiology, and he often states there is no free-will, but his actual research has nothing to do with the topic and his reasoning on the issue is rather overly simplistic, and such views have been ripped to shreds by the likes of Massimo Pigliucci, who has 2 biology Ph.D.s and one in philosophy.

The idea that free-will cannot exist in a causal universe has several problems. For all we know the process that gives rise to consciousness also allows for free-will in the sense that the mind is now a causal agent. That would not prevent a causal chain, it would simply make free-will a part of this chain, and I've never heard Harris or Sapolsky explain why this cannot be the case. Moreover, neither of them has a sophisticated background in math and physics, where topics like non-linear dynamics arise.

I certainly sympathize with anyone who is puzzled about the current state of western democracies, especially given the rise in right-wing populism, as I am myself dumbfounded over this issue. However, I also believe it's something that we will never be able to truly understand in the same way we can acquire knowledge in fields like physics, because we cannot do any large-scale social experiments to see what will happen if we change just one variable. The best we can do is make some intelligent guesses.

From the history I've looked into, it appears that right-wing populism tends to take off when their is a feeling of economic insecurity present as well as insecurity regarding cultural identity, along with the further factor of non-responsive government institutions. I think, I am guessing, after the fall of the USSR,, many social scientists and political pundits thought that there was no alternative to democratic capitalism, so why bother addressing concerns that people living in these societies are having? They have no alternative but to accept the system. Only now we have come to realize how mistaken this thinking was ---- that there is the danger of fascism or some form of authoritarianism returning.

It's also my understanding that social media has a lot to do with the rise in authoritarianism. Social media uses algorithms that allow people to live in a bubble world, a self-reinforcing echo chamber, where they only see one view presented, and often it's a bullshit view of entirely made-up nonsense that people post on the web without really checking into whether the post is accurate, or meaningful in context.

It's simply one of those mysteries I doubt we will ever have a good handle on, except for maybe some broad facts that are present. We have history involved, social media, racism, educational institutions, political institutions, group-think, etc., etc., and how any of these factors contribute to the end result is hard to figure out.

It's discrete and not a continuum at all.

I never look up links referenced during a discussion. This is for two reasons: 1. Any nonsense can be posted on the web, and often is. 2. If someone has an argument to make, then they should be able to state it in their own words.
When a mathematician lays out an infinite series, the mathematician is not stating that this is a process that goes on forever, but, rather, is actually conceiving things as if all calculations for the series have been done. As an example of how this helps science, just think back to Zeno's paradoxes. The one where one cannot possibly get out of a room, because in order to do so, one must first travel half the distance, then half the distance again, and etc., etc., so motion like leaving a room must be an illusion? The series would be S = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8, which can be thought of as the series from zero to infinity of 1/2 raised to power n as n goes from 0 to infinity. The series adds up to 2, which is finite, and solves the paradox --- the series collapses on a finite number and one can certainly travel a finite distance in a finite amount of time. It's rather basic, but shows how dealing with the transfinite gets us out of puzzles and advances science.