The most reasonable course of action, the one with the most utility, in this situation would have been to lie to the man, which might have saved French lives, but Hampshire could not compromise his ow integrity (read honor) and lie to the man about such a thing. Can you question his moral position. — Cavacava

If his position is that it would me immoral to lie to the man, then yes. "What's more important Hampshire: your integrity or the lives of French children? What will their parents think of your integrity?".

I don't think it would be morally obligatory to lie to the man. In fact I would rather live in a world where we all make the moral agreement to not torture and lie to prisoners of war (in case we ever find ourselves in such a situation), but in survival situations quite a lot can be persuasively justified.

Reason has no value other than its own inherent utility, but what is moral/just is not always what is most reasonable. — Cavacava

What people think is moral is often quite unreasonable (see: all superstitions that have moral ramifications). Sometimes starting values are inherently unreasonable (pleasing god) and sometimes methods are unreasonable (honor killing), and sometimes both (honor killing to please god), and so I would posit that such positions, being unreasonable, are not actually moral by rational standards.

It's also noteworthy that in many senses our desire to please god in whatever arbitrary way can sometimes be build upon more basic values such as our desire to go on living and to live in excess. We sacrifice the human to please god, but we want to please god because of what we think it can do for us (heal disease, bring good harvests, prevent disaster).

I think morality arises somewhere in the distinction between justice and utility, where some actions we take may be viewed as being just but not serving a public sense of utility (serving the public's interest). Societies where religious and familial values are manifest in daily life view what is just differently, and not primarily based on a notion of utility. — Cavacava

The utility is there, it's just not our own idea of what is actually useful. Different environments and different world-views can lead to drastically different notions of what's valuable/important, and how to protect them. The practice of human sacrifice is a good example (pleasing the gods strikes again): a village might sacrifice what they know is an innocent child because they believe a good harvest depends upon it, and because the survival of everyone depends upon a good harvest, they see it as both useful and just to do so.

Wikipedia also suggests that in some societies, very little, if any social stigma is attached to honor killings. Defense of the family honor is considered just in these societies.

I don't think it is a weak claim, even Christ brought up honor killings. It is an established tradition some societies, part of a very different belief system. So how would that conversation go...I don't think it would go well or very far. It is perhaps in a way similar to the conversation between a slave owner and an abolitionist in the 18th century.

Old traditions don't change readily or all that rationally, unless new value systems are systematically enforced. Ultimately, I think it was establishment of a multiplicity of laws which have evolved over many generations that have changed public opinion, and continue to shape our considerations — Cavacava

Challenging honor for the sake of honor is difficult, and it starts with asking "why?" Why is honor so important that you're willing to kill your family (and vice versa) to keep it?

I have liked to think of Japanese honor culture as largely the result of a dangerous and feudal environment where reputation was the only available metric to judge a stranger (especially if the legends of samurai prowess are to be half-believed). Perhaps there are so many niceties/pleasantries in Japanese culture because everyone went out of their way to not cause offense (thereby not threatening reputation and honor). The oft mentioned "seppuku/harakiri " suicide of a samurai to regain honor I reckon wasn't done primarily out of irrational devotion to the samurai code, but rather because to live dishonored in a world where reputation means everything is already a grave prospect, and also because it was the only way to fix the damaged reputation of one's own family (which meant everything, including their physical safety).

If someone supports honor killing for no reason other than it's what they were told, I think I can very easily get them to question whether or not it's actually a good idea just by asking "why?". In some American jails and prisons though, where reputation can actually mean the difference between being raped and murdered or left alone, honor/reputation related violence is regrettably justifiable from the perspective of the individual (explicit honor killing perhaps not, but many other forms of violence).

The best rebuke I can presently come up with is as follows: Since we no longer live in a dangerous environment where we need to take justice into mob hands or pre-emptively kill in self-defense those with bad reputations as they approach. We are generally more free to live our own lives in peace and we're only made less free by being forced to conform to arbitrary social standards that were once a partially useful response to widespread violence, uncertainty, and oppression inflected on the masses by the warrior class. There's no earthly reason to carry on with honor killings since we can show that organized courts do a much better job of producing "justice" on a given day and in the end keep us all more free AND safe. If I can convince someone that the only good reason to retain honor is to retain freedom and security in society, but that there is now a much better way of doing so (or that honor killing no longer even works as they think it does), then won't hey submit to reason?

Are you saying that majority of atheists are equally unsure of both God creating the world and the world coming to existence by some form of chance or unconscious process lead by big bang and evolution? Are you saying they are equally rigorous towards both claims? — Henri

Intelligent design is a bit different than the basic existence of god. Atheism refers mainly to the lack of belief in god, not "do you think X, Y, and Z, are equally likely". Different atheists have different opinions about a lot of things for different reasons. What they share in common is that none of them go around saying god exists.

As I have written couple of times, I exclude that group. But I don't think that majority of people who consciously regard themselves as atheists, and publicly so, are in that group. — Henri

Well you're wrong, so buckup! Unfortunately the majority of the people you have long viewed as unreasonable are in fact reasonable. Judging by the content of this thread, more reasonable than thou.

One of the definitions of an atheist is that it's "the person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods". Yes, there are broader and less broader definitions. So? I am using one of the public definitions and I am reffering to people who don't believe in the existence of God. Those people, by the way, have at least some thoughts about origin of life, since they have already been thinking whether God exists or not, and no surprise, they mostly believe in or favor materialistic explanation of existence including big bang, evolution and other similar stuff. You know, all the stuff they have been listening during all the years of their education. What are you up about then?

And I never even once mentioned the term hard atheist, by the way. — Henri

Most people aren't atheists. You're using the popular misconception. If you go around looking at and polling the people who actually describe themselves as an atheist you find out that about 95% of them fit the label "soft-atheist" rather than "hard-atheist" (yes, i am using these terms to help you distinguish the difference). If you go around asking theists what they think atheists believe, you get the misconception that you have been insisting is what numerous self described atheists have told you is inaccurate.

What's the point of telling people the label they use means they believe something that they do not actually believe? (TIP: remember, there is a difference between "believing that a god exists", "lacking belief in the existence of any gods", and "believing in the non existence of gods").

Theists have all kinds of drastically different ideas about what god is and does and thinks, etc, but you don't expect the term theist to perfectly capture all of those differences do you? Likewise, the term "atheist" is very basic, and it does not need to reflect uniformity or anything at all regarding the origin of life, or the big bang, etc...

I can explain supernatural experiences I've had. But I really won't do it here. It's no evidence to you anyway. I could have a natural experience about something, for example I could feel suspicion towards something, but I can't prove to you that some time ago I felt that suspicion — Henri

So your evidence for god is that you suspected it existed some time ago?

The only thing supernatural about that is your willingness to think of it as evidence.

Honestly, unless you want me to keep suggesting that your evidence is laughable and demonstrably ridiculous (which is why you won't or cannot share it), then just share it.

That's true, I didn't give examples in OP.

The problem is that all the arguments I have read or heard are flawed. I would have to list them all and then explain them all. Or I would have to list them all for me privately, and then somehow rank them and explain most prominent or most regular ones. I could have done that, but I didn't.

This thread has some decent number of posts, though, and I haven't seen one reasonable argument to deny existence of God.

And again, I am not even arguing for the existence of God here. A position of neutral agnosticism can be reasonably argued, as I see it. — Henri

Why do you keep employing the incorrect definitions of agnosticism and atheism?

95% of all atheists do not assert the non-existence of god. What you presently understand to be agnosticism is actually the heart of atheism (and you're bastardizing agnosticism like every other laymen).

There are a few atheists who are dumb enough to take the hard position against the existence of god, and you're free to continue addressing them, but hard atheists don't last long and are few and far between (and none are present in this thread).

It's critical that you try to comprehend the difference between rejecting belief in god and actually believing that god does not exist.

Here's a really simple analogy to help clarify the difference between soft and hard atheism:

Let the claim "I have a soccer-ball in my closet" represent the claim "There is a god in heaven".

Now imagine that I asked you to take a position on whether or not there is a soccer-ball in my closet and that I am incapable of providing any actual evidence to show that it is there.

Are you going to just accept my claim and believe me without evidence?

Are you going to assume that there is no soccer ball in my closet?

The reasonable thing to do would be to abstain from believing (soft atheism) because it's clear you have no physical or reasonable access to relevant evidence (agnosticism).

If you decided to take the position of believing that there is no soccer ball in my closet, then you would be making the same error as hard atheists, which is the same error that theists make: they assume things without evidence.

Each and every one of your posts can be turned against theists as well as hard atheists, so I'm not sure what your agenda really is in this thread. Earlier you told me that the evidence for god is not natural, but super-natural. You do realize how silly that sounds right? Let me guess what you really mean by supernatural evidence: "evidence that I am unable to explain, share, or demonstrate exists; it's rationally useless".

Always in the relevant cases. — creativesoul

That seems like a fast and loose rule. What makes you say this?

Ridicule emboldens and further empowers that which you seem intent upon weakening... — creativesoul

Not always. As I alluded though, straight up ridicule isn't how I go about dissuading those who it would embolden. I will definitely reciprocate ridicule, but my main avenue will be in serious address of the ideas regardless of how cantankerous an exchange becomes. Take pro-capital punishment/anti-abortion Christians for instance. They argue on the one hand that thou shalt not kill means humans don't have the right to decide who dies and when, but when it comes to the death penalty the pro-life tenet goes flying off the gallows pole. Rather than calling them names for holding somewhat contradictory positions, I will first try and get them to recognize the contradiction.

If I really want to persuade a religious ideologue that abortion is not necessarily morally harmful in any way, mainly I will try to demonstrate that until a certain point of development a fetus cannot actually feel or perceive anything; it's not even a vegetable because its nervous system/brain doesn't even exist yet (not 'alive' in the important human sense). If they default then to the "potential life that is interrupted is the same as murder" position, then I will use that logic to again show inconsistency: If you happen upon a rape in progress, then interrupting it could potentially be interrupting potential life that would come into existence if you didn't intervene. In a way it's insulting because I'm averring that their moral reasoning would have them be bystander to a horrendous act, but it also actually follows from the potential life argument, which is what makes it a persuasive point.

If we get stuck on either of these two points things may naturally descend to ridicule, but what if they finally settle on the defense: "God says contraception is wrong"? Openly challenging their belief in and conception of god becomes my only rational angle of approach, but it is an angle so well guarded that to be successful requires a broad spectrum of emotional appeal. Ridicule is one of the only tools left with any sting once the goal posts have been relocated to the moon. It has to be done right of course. You don't simply insult someone, you demonstrate why the position they hold is ludicrous and worthy of ridicule.

Ridicule isn't meant to sway the indoctrinated, but it is meant as a persuasive tool to ward away readers from falling into the ideological pitfalls I point out.

Ridicule has it's place. The trick to using it well is by ridiculing ideas directly rather than the people who wield them. Sometimes though one just cannot help it...

Heh, good one! :)

I mean it needs to be shown for what it truly is, which is an embarrassingly naive superstition based mine-field of self-delusion.

How about honor killing, or suicide bombing..I guess divine command theory in general? — Cavacava

It's really important to pull this one out in the open and yank down it's trousers. "Making god happy" is in my opinion one of the most misguided values that humans have ever concocted because of how much bull-shit and variability is involved in making up what actually pleases god in a given circumstance. It would have long since failed and eradicated itself as a viable starting moral value, but it is in the end adaptable; it can superficially change itself into any other value as needed (it's resilient but risky).

Honor killing is done with the intention of protecting some notion of eternal position. It's utterly stupid to believe in such a metaphysical system, and so the best way to dissuade someone from engaging in honor killing is to convince them that their conception of what honor is ultimately does not serve their other more real values or is itself inaccurate/faulty.

The only way I know that you can convince someone to do a suicide bombing is to convince them that there's nothing left for them in this world and that by killing themselves they're guaranteed a spot in the afterlife (you can extort/force people to do it, but that's not them making a moral decision). This kind of decision appeals primarily to "makes god happy" to justify the actual killing, but it also appeals to the personal desire to live and be free (ironically), in heaven, on the part of the suicide bomber.

The rebuke following from my approach is to attack the notion that god wants the killing to occur (the existence of the value), and that the afterlife is a retarded delusion.

Metaphysical and otherwise superstitious foundations don't always need to be challenged, but they will always be rationally weak from the get go given the tall order of inventing an argument for a divine command.

The examples you give are "moral decisions", but the values which support them are not widely agreed upon at all, which is what makes them easily contestable and weak.

What makes some reasons better arguments than others though?

It is precisely the persuasive answer to that question that I am seeking to clarify.

The "reason" is the value; the why of the ought. Not all choices are moral choices and not all actions and decisions have moral components, but of all the decisions which we might classify as belonging to the realm of moral reasoning, there are none that cannot be most persuasively boiled down to an appeal to starting and core values.

(If we happen to be making the same decision using different moral starting values, it is not really a moral arrangement between us but instead a happy coincidence that our goals are aligned.)

Ultimately "morality" only successfully exists when it is shared, and so those moral tenets which appeal to the most commonly shared values have the most broad appeal and hence the most acceptance. Bring up any moral dilemma and I think it should be downright easy to locate and examine the starting value (which then makes it clearer how to appraise the efficacy of various possible decisions). The abortion debate revolves around the importance of protecting life and when life actually begins (the moral value and right to go on living); the gun debate is a classic dilemma between freedom and security (and how to maximize/reconcile both). The gay marriage controversy is about how it somehow damages the (godly/societal?) value of traditional marriage (freedom from harm in a nut shell).

Can you give an example of a moral agreement that is not based on some shared value?

Regarding multiculturalism, I completely agree.

But look at how college brand SJWism outright prevents actual multiculturalism with concepts like "cultural appropriation".

There are genuine idiots out there promoting the idea that to wear dreadlocks and not be black is to harm people of color, or to sell food prepared in a traditional style other than one's own heritage is outright theft of cultural intellectual property. It's this kind of overblown sensitivity (which for various reasons is more visible than it should be; see: The rise of social media and the children who operate them) that makes most adults recoil in disgust.

Outrage is the new rage.

58 is a harsh grade, but there is indeed room for improvement. As others have said, structure and outline seems to be what is lacking.

Mainly you need to start with a strong thesis statement. Your introduction is a kind of compound thesis that pulls the essay in different overall directions (exploring the problem, showing why it cannot be rectified, and rebutting one attempt to overcome it). Everything should be ordered so that it more or less supports one conclusion; if your conclusion is "Hume's induction problem cannot be overcome" then you need to craft an introduction that introduces what the induction problem is, and a thesis statement that summarily introduces your argument and it's conclusion. Here's what I think would be a more focused introduction with the thesis in bold.

In Hume's work "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" (1748), he elicits the concept of “The Principle of Uniformity of Nature”, which is used to justify inductive reason and scientific research. The problem Hume uncovers with respect to inductive inference is that if induction alone depends upon the uniformity of nature then the uniformity itself is not able to depend upon inductive reasoning or be considered scientific. All attempts to overcome it, such as Bonjour's appeal to a priori reason, have failed, and so Hume's problem of induction remains unsolved.

Defining the problem itself is secondary (but essential introductory ground work) to your main point, so you might as well get it out of the way in the introduction. The real form of your argument is to show why attempts to solve it have failed, and so to make your essay more persuasive you really ought to address more than one approach to solving the induction problem (this would also make for a much more satisfying thesis statement): All attempts to overcome it, such as Bonjour's appeal to a priori reason, Popper's insistence that science uses corroboration rather than induction, and Stove's argument from statistical truth, have failed, and so Hume's problem of induction remains unsolved.

Obviously getting into Stove's and Poppers positions are a matter of choice, but to do so would be well in line with supporting the position you have taken. With a more substantiated and specific position, the structure of the essay reveals itself:

para 1: [intro to Hume's problem + Thesis]

Paragraph 2 [Rebutting Bonjour]

Paragraph 3 [Rebutting Popper]

Paragraph 4 [Rebutting Stove]

Paragraph 5 [ restating/summarizing the argument/thesis with benefit of explanations from the body + adding a very brief afterthought if appropriate]

Doing all this in only 1000 words might be a bit hard hard to squeeze in, but it's much better to force concise writing and fit more substance in rather than to spend time giving a history and honorable mentions of the ideas and people involved (unless it's really relevant or important to your point).

That only works in silly games like Monopoly, in real life, unless the people in question are sociopathic or psychopathic, they would not want the workers to be extorted, since that is a breeding ground for rebellion and unrest. I'm sure if a food crisis were to arise, smart business owners would do their best to make sure food is as available as possible in the circumstance for the other workers. The entrepreneur cannot exist without the workers, so doing something that is bad for the workers is ultimately doing something that is bad for oneself as an entrepreneur. — Agustino

In some towns Wall-Mart has such a tight grip that decades owned small business that provide good jobs to the community (and keeps money within the community) go out of business. They indirectly create a large pool of out of work service industry workers which they can and do exploit. They over-hire and keep everyone on part time so that no befits or overtime need ever be offered, and at the first sniff of the word "union" they will happily fire and replace you. It's not just in the board game unfortunately. "Good for the workers" isn't as appealing to a corporation as "better for the stockholders" if they can get away with it. And boy do they get away with it...

Doubtful, their user base is declining very rapidly, and they may actually go out of business sometime in the future. — Agustino

Their user base is declining rapidly? That's just not true. They may have have had a down-tick in active users for a single quarter, but that doesn't spell doom, nor is the stock tanked.

At some point we may require competition/antitrust laws which ensure that the market can function as it is intended, and as we have done frequently in the past (with steel, oil and telecommunication) along with other regulations that ensure the existence of these companies is not detrimental in the long run.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the few owning the much and the many owning nothing as long as owning nothing isn't a prison or death sentence.

Let's start with the oldest and most secure form of wealth: land. If most of the land is owned by a few people that's fine so long as there is enough public or poor-owned land that the poor masses have an equitable amount of living space.

Regardless of who owns what and why, if for whatever reason the population should require use of some private land to ensure an equitable standard of living, the moral argument telling them to stay on their own land breaks down (and potentially the larger system maintaining land use and ownership rights). That we can own private land is nice and all, and the free market is the strategy we're employing so we ought to keep private land ownership around if at all possible, but we must realize that we should only agree to this arrangement if it actually functions as a strategy and regime of wealth production and distribution. The concept of a monopoly is ubiquitous in anti-capitalist rhetoric, and there's a good reason why: Once enough of the wealth becomes concentrated into so few hands, they get the power to extort everyone else.

During a widespread food crisis, should one arise, the concept of ownership in general may be subject to change. If the population can be kept fed and entertained though (neither of which are easy to do these days), then you can do just about anything to them while maintaining whatever form of government. It doesn't matter how much you own; so long as I have access to bread and games I will be content. A few fancy praetorian can then quell the entire Colosseum.

There's also a new kind of wealth at stake that is only just beginning to be considered as such (and yet it can be just as powerful as traditional wealth). Data, information, and control over the media we use to transmit it. The massive conglomerates which control the bulk of our media outlets possess a clear and present conflict of interest when it comes to the impartial delivery of the news, honoring the privacy rights of individuals, and ensuring fair and equal access to the information super-network that is the internet.

News outlets owned by larger corporations surely act in the primary interest of profit rather than honest and useful news. There do exist smaller outlets which are laudably independent and provide a useful service, but they are small and lack the massive virtual monopoly of outreach that the mainstream networks and the dominant social media networks currently enjoy (and if they do become very successful, there's a good chance the owner will cash/sell out and it will become yet another ad-revenue driven buzz-feed like echo-chamber).

Consider that twitter may be in some ways the single most influential social media that presently exists, and then consider as a corporation twitter has absolute authority to un-verify, ban, block, berate, edit, and manipulate any user and any tweet at any time for any reason. So far twitter has mostly tried to uphold the value of free speech, but they've had many many failures. Traditionally radio and news media have been subject to some regulations in terms of quality and right of access (the right of people to do public broadcasting, the right of people to have access to public broadcasts, and perhaps even the unwritten right to not be outright lied to), but there are no such regulations in place for any online media. "Net-neutrality" is about disallowing service providers and corporations like google from making deals to keep their sites fast while slowing down everyone else. Should they succeed, the public would be morally obligated to step in and claim ownership or the right to regulate over whichever apparatus are required to maintain minimum equitable standards of public access to information through the internet.

The moral justification actually holding society together (and it's present distribution of wealth) is not our adherence to sacred and objective moral truths like land ownership rights, it is rather that the current arrangement works and is beneficial to us. If and when a given arrangement becomes too detrimental to too many people then that society rightly collapses; we need not go down with the ship of property rights if and when it comes down to it.

I happen to know that astrology is a mix self delusion and superstition. I feel that it is generally stupid to employ as a decision making device but as far as superstitions go it's potentially less harmful than many others.

Astrological predictions and readings tend to work by making vague and general statements that seem specific but usually apply to anyone. I've heard them labeled as "Barnum statements" (from the famous P.T. Barnum circus' slogan "we've got something for everyone" which is what persuasive astrological readings tend to do). Consider the following reading recently interpreted by one astrologer:

"You're a very intelligent person but you could be better at saving money and organizing your relationships. You are likeable and quick to understand others, but others have a hard time understanding you. Be sure to get the extra sleep you need and you may achieve your goals for the coming months. Your predictive dream symbol is water, and your spiritually relevant number is 9."

Everyone thinks they're intelligent and most people would like to be better organized (especially people who are already well organized it seems). Everyone at least wants to think they're likable and thinks they understand others well while generally holding a much more complex understanding of themselves. Everyone tends to want more sleep and if someone doesn't have any goals for the coming months, they will probably just invent some on the spot. All of these statements more less apply to everyone but a few of them might feel like they apply perfectly. If something doesn't apply to you at all that's O.K because it only takes a few good hits to really impress someone and failures are quickly and easily forgotten. "Cold reading" they call it.

God reveals His existence in myriad of different ways. — Henri

Like when Joseph Smith read from the golden plates out of a top hat because god said nobody else was allowed to see?

Yes, but I would say that any atheism, hard or soft, is probably not reasonable. One can be agnostic but not an atheist. — Henri

Being a soft atheist is the rationally consistent result of being an agnostic. If knowledge pertaining to god cannot be rationally accessed, then it cannot be rationally held in belief.

What is god's revelation? How do you understand that god exists? Does your understanding base itself in reality, reason, or evidence?

Agnosticism is the position that evidence pertaining to god(s) existence and nature is not yet attained or is unattainable. I happen to be agnostic, but this is an entirely separate position than whether or not I believe in the existence of god(s).

Agnosticism is about the empirical un-knowability of god(s) existence, while theism and atheism refer to believing or not believing respectively.

The statement "I believe and claim to know that no god(s) exist" is the position of hard-atheism, and it only accounts for about 5% of all atheists. "Soft atheism" is the position of lacking belief in any god(s), and remember, agnosticism is believing that empirical or rational evidence of gods existence or nature is unattainable (so the two tend to come together).

Plenty of theists are happy to believe in god's existence based on faith rather than evidence and will happily admit that god cannot be scientifically shown to exist; it requires faith.

Faith. The thing that makes people choose to believe in something despite there being no evidence to believe in it. Beware of dog(ma).

The most coherent description of morality is that it's a a cooperative strategy between two or more parties that is designed to be mutually beneficial (the prevention of conflict/harm and sometimes the promotion of happiness).

In order for a moral agreement/system to actually exist between two or more parties, they must necessarily share some beliefs about what constitutes harm and happiness. Where conflict might arise that can infringe or damage our mutually shared values/beliefs, it becomes rational and appealing for us to come to an agreement in order to protect those values.

Under this view, the bulk of moral persuasion comes in the form of questioning and appealing to these starting shared values, and also by exploring whether or not a given proposed moral agreement (i.e: don't steal, don't murder) is actually successful or efficient. A further simplified conceptual model of morality can be positioned as such: All moral problems concern harm inflicted upon individuals (harm defined by starting values) and whether or not that harm is strategically avoidable (without causing some other harm, which may be justification for carrying out a harmful action).

Most moral thinkers seem to intuitively engage moral discussions according to this framework, although it is very common to get lost in one's own set of singular (and sometimes unexamined) starting values, which then makes the ensuing discussions about actual moral policy deeply confused from the outset.

One typically confused starting value goes something like "the most important moral value is to keep the gods happy" which is perhaps the single most misguided belief in all of human history. Every Shaman and their pet iguana has a different idea about what makes god happy, which has caused there to be constant and conflict generating disparity between mutually exclusive theistic moral platforms.

A better but still somewhat misguided approach goes something like "the most good for the most people". Broadly this is the crux of utilitarian moral systems, which do seem to have some merit as an approach to moral reasoning, but tend to generate disagreement concerning what is the "most good state of affairs" that we should aim for and "how we should get there". It is much easier to agree about states of affairs which are ultimately undesirable rather than what is ultimately desirable, and creating strategies about how to avoid particular states of affairs is inherently easier than creating strategies to achieve particular states of affairs (it's easier to agree about what we don't want, and how we can avoid it than it is to agree about what we both want and how to achieve it, although it's easy to conflate the two which leads to confusion).

"The least harm for the most people" is in my opinion a much more appropriate moral maxim; It still lacks clarity but at least it sends us in the direction of communally seeking to reduce harm rather than the more complicated affair of large scale social mobilization for the greater good. In theory the most beneficial mutually cooperative strategy we can make would have us all making personal sacrifices and taking positive actions that benefit us all in the long run, but that strategy is far too complicated for us to successfully and comprehensively devise (and we have tried earnestly a few times. See: Stalinsim for an example). The free market, for instance, is regretfully a better option than massively centralized economic planning because market complexity confounds long term planning, and likewise, moral reasoning is much easier to do with singular and minimalist claims about what not to do rather than what we all ought to be doing to maximize our moral praiseworthiness and state of well-being. Freedom is an efficient system of maximizing moral value/human happiness/well-being because it allows individuals to pursue (and change) their own version of happiness rather than a set of imposing instructions which cannot possibly function for every individual and in every circumstance.

If there is a true and ultimate moral strategy out there, it would be infinitely comprehensive and beyond complex. One last analogy:

Let the game "Tic-Tac-Toe" serve as an example where perfect strategy can be formulated: Any smart fifth grader can figure out how to always draw (or win if the opponent makes a mistake), making it the objectively best strategy to achieve victory and avoid loss.

Now consider the game of Chess, and imagine if we could program an AI to learn every possible result of every possible set of moves from the starting positions... If this was possible then it could become undefeatable by knowing the end results in advance of every possible variation and how to bring the game to a checkmate or stalemate. The number of possible variations in chess games is staggeringly large though, and both humans and AI are far from mastering it in the same way we can master Tic-Tac-Toe.

Now consider real life, where our ideal end conditions are not well defined, where there are more moving parts than we can count, and more combinations of moves between then than we can possibly imagine. This is why what they call "objective morality" or "the absolute best strategy" has been so enduringly impossible for us to find. Like Chess, the ideal strategy and next move is highly context specific and not always possible to calculate, leaving us to do the best we can in many cases. The strongest and most persuasive moral arguments are those that appeal to the most basic and commonly shared values and entail minimal amounts of compromise (compromise to one's own values). "Don't cut out people's eyeballs" is a claim that you would be hard-pressed to find an objection to. There may be a circumstance out there where the cutting of eyeballs is required for survival (like sacrificing a queen in Chess), but such circumstances do not exist in modern society aside from extremely rare medical cases. We can create strategic and moral rules-of-thumb and best-practices that may apply in general, but unique circumstances can always offer exception, and the values and strategic needs of a society as a whole can evolve or change (I.E: we're running out of fish that people need in order to live). This isn't to say that morality is relative, just that it is situational and depending on the needs, desires, and circumstances of the moral agents in question and the challenges of the environment they are in.

Emotional outburst to the OP is in line with being "quite unreasonable in interpreting what nature provides as clues for or against God."

Reversing the argument and saying that "if atheists are merely firing blanks, then people who understand that God exists must be playing with an unloaded toy" is true, actually, but it's true only on surface level.

The deeper you get into understanding God through God's revelation and creation, the more you understand that everything is exactly as it should be, at this point in time. Including that one cannot deduce that God exists by looking at people who claim to believe that God exists. — Henri

What makes you think the sacred Hindu texts aren't the revelation of the gods?

The opposite is true for atheism. On surface level atheism seems reasonable. But the more you look into it, the more atheism reveals itself to be unreasonable.[/quote]

Atheism is the lack of theism: the absence of theistic belief. I don't know how lacking belief in God somehow becomes more unreasonable once you get deeper into it (there's nothing deep about it though...).

My atheism is me saying that arguments purporting to reveal god's existence or nature have always been based on unreasonable evidence. Since the evidence is unreasonable, it would be unreasonable for me to submit to belief.

We are but humble thorns drifting on winds of fate. Pricks of the divine thralled to prod and poke the most devout as a test of piety. In truth we are very close to the arch-angels of old; lacking free will of our own we act as the natural destructive tools of our lord unto the righteous Jobs among us.

Verily, our special place is guaranteed.

On a more practical note, will atheist organisations now be eligible for the same tax-free status as churches? — Banno

Interestingly, an atheist "church" can get tax exempt status as long as it A, has at east 10k followes, B, claims to be a religion with some vague "purpose in life" shtick weaved in, and C, finds a sympathetic IRS ear or has enough lawyers to extort tax exempt status out of them with the threat of mass litigation (see: Scientology).

So Atheists are evidence of god because it's a miracle that they could be so stupid... XD

BEST ARGUMENT FOR GOD EVER.

10/10!!!!!

If as an atheist I'm merely firing blanks, then you must be playing with an unloaded toy "cap-gun"...

But if human stupidity can actually be miraculous, I would sooner point to all the superstitions of religion than their rejection...

Social systems, paths of least resistance, and incentive structures are very interesting concepts and seem genuinely helpful in trying to understand simple phenomena like the stagnant trends of monopoly, but the factors which cause real world societies to unfold the way they do are too numerous and too dynamic to be easily analyzed and understood through this one lens.

In the fictional, simplistic, and exaggerated world of Wall-E, social systems are depicted which have obvious direct and indirect impacts on individuals, to the point that the population has become totally homogeneous as their lives are utterly dictated by the system they inhabit. Broadly, the video thrusts the idea that it's all nurture and portrays even speaking about nature as despicable and un-virtuous. Reality is complex and messy though; "nature" along with many confounding circumstantial factors create too many complicated interactions for even our best models. For example, suggesting that we laugh at sexist jokes (or are ourselves conditioned to be sexist) because that's the path of least resistance says nothing about how or why it is actually the path of least resistance and doesn't address the complex psychological and biological components of what causes humans to laugh in the first place or the social forces which cause us to become sexist in the first place (let alone demonstrate that we are in fact living in a sexist society). Similarly, taking economic and other disparities between races or genders as direct evidence of patriarchy and white supremacy (paths of least resistance and incentive structures which harm women and non-whites) doesn't actually describe how these systems work to achieve this or how we can dismantle them. It's alluded that we're conditioned and incentivized, but we're never given coherent explanations of how the conditioning actually happens or how and which incentive structures produce negative results and how to correct them.

This is the same kind of rationale that suggests playing violent video games conditions you to become a violent person, or that provocative depictions of women conditions you to be sexist against women or "treat them like objects". Literally everything can be portrayed as racist or sexist using this most greasy logical incline. On the surface and in the abstract it makes sense, but the real world is just to messy for this approach to yield usable results. This is the same slippery slope that produced the concept of "micro-aggressions" out of a desperate search for a mechanistic explanation of how social systems enforce statistical disparity between demographics.

The majority of the video was just a synopsis of "Wall-E" and the ad-nauseam explanation of the concept of social systems which I don't object to (those parts were informative and entertaining) but I do object to it's complete rejection of nature and individuals/individual variation having anything to do with answering the question "why is society the way it is?". I also object to it's casual insistence that we're living in a white supremacist patriarchy; the video alludes to conditioning, incentive structures, and paths of least resistance as evidence but they're never elucidated on or actually explained (because the subjects are too complex to actually do so).

The intention behind saying "I don't see color" is the statement that you do not treat people differently based on their race. I don't see how this could possibly "Destroy their culture".

How exactly ought I take someone's ethnicity into account in order to "treat them better"?

Why do I have to treat people "better"?

What's wrong with the way I currently treat people? (I treat people equally, as if I don't see color).

Why should it be my place to assume how people want to be treated based on their race?

From what I gather, the argument missing from the opening post is something like:

Lions are not murderers, and I have some very strong moral beliefs. Therefore, objective morality. Therefore, God.

It's still not very convincing. — Sapientia

I got pretty much the same impression: "I can see no objective moral source for my strong and herein un-examined beliefs other than God".

Next he will be deducing the various attributes of god using his own objective moral positions as a starting point...

It's a valid argument. See:Modus Tollens.

P1 defines the existence of god as necessary for the existence of objective morals, and since P2 states that they exist, we can deduce that God also must exist.

The argument is valid, but the premises themselves are terrible. Neither God nor objective morals are defined, and using various mixes of definitions for these two concepts, I cannot find any appealing or persuasive combination that makes the premise seem intuitively or otherwise true.

Premise two is an extension of the assumptions made in premise one (in addition to not being defined whatsoever). If we're going to just assume that objective morals exist why don't we just also assume that god exists and not bother with these supposedly useful deductive arguments for it's existence?

Why not assume God exists and use then modus ponens form to deduce that objective morals exist instead?

Maybe objective morals exist but God does not, or maybe objective morals do not exist but God does. Why is God required for "objective morality" (what's that?) again?

If you can define and substantiate your premises with evidence, that would go a long way to making your argument more persuasive, but proving that "objective morals" require a "god", or that "objective morals" exist is quite the tall order. As it rests your argument is too facile to be taken seriously and hence is unpersuasive to almost everyone.

I wonder why you are back. Hadn't you decided that enough is enough? — Hachem

While most of the other posters have decided that there's no point seriously conversing with you, I don't recall making any such decision.

I did inform you near the outset of our interactions that I'm probably going to be the only one patient or stupid enough (or some combination of both) to actually sustain prolonged discourse with you given the nature of your suggestions. And since my assumption seems to have been accurate, why not just attempt to rebut my criticisms? If you don't at least attempt to have legitimate discourse (if not with me, then with who?) then I'm afraid the endless torrent of obscure threads you create will only illicit occasional ridicule rather than interesting dialogue that might actually be worth writing or reading.

I find your presumptions about the behavior of light to be deeply malformed and demonstrably false (example: the captain-sailor analogy where telescopes magically access photons which have not yet reached them). Your criticism of Romer's experiment depends on an explanation of how parallax or resolution might actually affect his results which you have not provided, nor have you offered an alternative model that could actually predict future deviations in eclipse duration such as the accurate predictions we can make when we use the model of finite light speed. The pinhole experiments you have conducted are interesting on the surface, but it's quick and easy to discover that Airy disk patterns are well understood to result from focusing a laser through a small aperture or lens. This photo is the result from shining a red laser through a 0.1 mm aperture. According to Wikiedia, a 0.25mm aperture and three extension rings sound like the conditions required to create the Airy pattern.

If the unintuitive nature of quantum mechanics upsets you, and that is actually the root and fundamental gripe driving the creation of these threads, then there can be no consolation; quantum mechanics unfortunately is what it unfortunately is.

But it seems like all of your threads form a path which wraps around a tangled and impenetrable bush that represents your own personal vision of how light really works. If you could clearly communicate that vision so It could be addressed rather than trying to challenge the existing theories with fringe objections (as if to prepare us all for the eventual true replacement that you provide us with) that would save you from having to create a crap ton of threads.

Please, I beg you, tell me again how it is you just know that telescopes break the laws of thermodynamics by accessing photons which have not yet reached them?

You may say "good day" and ignore me, but that will probably only encourage others to read my posts which are so very critical of your own. If you want to persuade anyone then you need to address my points directly as I have addressed yours. If you want to actually have your misconceptions corrected like you repeatedly claim, then likewise, you need to confront my explanations directly.

And no, I did not announce that enough is enough. You must be confusing me with literally every other poster. And so here you are, barking and biting at the only hand repeatedly attempting to feed you...

Why?

In addition to considering the above, could you formalize your actual hypothesis about what light is rather than trying to vaguely challenge the contemporary scientific consensus of it?

In other words, exactly what about your conception of light is incompatible with the conception of modern physics?

I don't recall where you stressed the importance of EM waves interacting with matter, but yes, that would be on the right (well evidenced) track!

Matter, in fact, generates EM waves (notably excited electrons). When something glows red hot for instance, it's electrons are bouncing back and forth so quickly that they actually generate photons (making them "glow"). I believe you can accept the above, and also that Roomer did essentially calculate the approximate finite speed of light (even if you think he didn't really prove it, so long as you can accept that the speed of light is finite then we can move on).

So, light interacting with matter. Yes. Let's talk about the quantum and Newtonian scale of the scientific models:

On the quantum scale, a single excited or energetic electron might generate a photon which goes flying off in whichever direction. This single photon can be thought of as a wave-particle in that it has a particular wavelength as it travels (a probabilistic super-position), but will inevitably end up with a single realized position should it encounter an obstacle. The energy that the electron lost in generating the photon will determine it's wavelength, thus maintaining the conservation of energy laws. If this single photon strikes an atom, the electrons in the atomic structure may either absorb some or all of the photon's energy (causing them to store the energy as excitement/heat), and then they reflect the remainder (technically the photon is annihilated and a new weaker one is created). Whether or not a photon will be absorbed or reflected (and by how much) when it encounters an electron depends on the potential energy values of the atomic structure that the electron is contained in, which is why different objects reflect different wavelengths and quantities of light. The wavelength of a given photon determines whether or not the various detectors in our eyes (the red, green,and blue ones) will be able to sense them, and depending on the mix of various quantities of differently colored photons entering our eyes, we therefore see different colors.

So, on the Newtonian scale, let's start by considering normal sunlight (generally white light). It's more or less an equal mix of red, green, and blue wavelength photons, and when a bunch of them enter our eyes at once we perceive the color white. White objects reflect RGB wavelength photons equally which is what makes them "white".

Now consider white light striking a green object: the surface of the "green" object is absorbing all or most of the photons striking it (causing it to heat up a bit) except for the green wavelength photons. The only photons which green objects do not absorb and instead reflect are green ones!

White is a color, but black is more accurately conceived as the absence of color. Black is what an object looks like when it absorbs most or all of the photons which strike it, and in a sense is what we see when very few photons enter our eyes from a particular direction. Notably the fact that black surfaces absorb most of the light which strikes them is why they heat up more quickly than other surfaces (and is also why white or highly reflective material like Mylar heats up the slowest due to electromagnetic radiation).

So imagine a world where light has a finite speed rather than some other mysterious nature as depicted in your captain/telescope + sailor below example. As we get farther away from a light source (a source of reflected light or a direct source) the photons that strike us become fewer and fewer because they tend to constantly spread out from one another the further they travel. This means that fewer photons from a given source will pass through a given aperture pointed toward that source the farther away it gets (think how the skin of a balloon becomes thinner the more it is stretched out as it's diameter increases).

Using the ship on the horizon example, the fact that the human eye is a smaller aperture means that it can collect fewer photons from a given source than the larger aperture of the telescope. The fact that sheer resolution issues will affect the human eye before a telescope is a function of their relative size.

Being unable to distinguish a ship on the horizon doesn't mean "you're seeing the ship as it is now rather the light which is reflected from it with some time delay", it just means that the human eye is in that case too small to catch enough photons from the ship to distinguish and recognize any meaningful details.

P.S: Have you begun watching the physics series I recommended?

I'm actually holding out hope that he's watching the lecture series I linked him to...

It's like at the end of Good Will Hunting XD!

I am sure others will be delighted to explain to me how such a magical happening is the most rational event one can conceive. — Hachem

Asking why the world isn't like your own personal imagination of how things should rationally be is backwards if you're trying to explore science.

Start by asking why your imagination of what is rational is different than the way things actually are, not why you might be mysteriously right from the apriori get-go. The world is the way the world is regardless of how you want or believe or imagine it is or ought to be.

Like your wailings regarding light, I could kick up an intuitive fuss about existence itself and say: "How is it 'rational' that something should exist rather than nothing? Physicists will have to explain their magical assumption that something exists or else admit that their theories of existence are unfounded"

Do you see the problem with the above Hachem? It's painfully obvious that things exist, just like it's painfully obvious that the contemporary and scientific models describing light mechanics reflect reality. We know our theories are quite accurate because of all the accurate predictions and technological applications we can create out of them (the science works in ways that go unfathomably far beyond your own crude attempts to describe light, making them superior in every conceivable way).

Electrons generate photons; they just do, and it's a brute observed fact of the world we live in. An electron can emit a photon if it loses energy (where the photon will have a total energy equal to the energy lost by the electron). We don't know the "why" of photon generation, we just observe that it happens (like existence itself) and try to understand the "what" of it.

You will surely find this unsatisfying, and this does get into the more speculative and hypothetical end of our physical models, but one answer to particle creation/annihilation AND the existence of something from nothing is the idea that for every particle that gets created of X energy, an anti particle of -X energy is simultaneously created. Why do electrons create photons? Because they have to; it's the way they are. If they wern't that way, we wouldn't be around to ask these questions; it's what's required for things to exist in this plain...

Why is it we live in a world where the laws of energy conservation are unbreakable? At what point of ad nauseam demonstration that you cannot break energy conservation laws will you accept that this is the case? Consider, for instance, your concept of how light fills a surrounding dark space and how objects are viewed at a distance. Do you realize that the farther away we get from the light source that the less and less light energy actually strikes us (light gets more diffused; if it didn't then the laws of energy conservation would be broken and we could create free energy/perpetual motion machines).

Physics isn't about sitting around, hypothesizing how we think things are or should be, and arguing from intuition why we're correct. Physics is about surrendering to evidence. Quantum mechanics was never appealing to anyone (except maybe Heisenberg, but nobody can say why) and it's filled with utterly uninuitive and borderline stupid sounding nonsense that makes most people (especially physicists) recoil in disgust at just how ludicrous and unintuitive it sounds. AND YET THEY ACCEPT IT DUE TO THE OVERWHELMING PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE. If you want to understand quantum mechanics, you've got to create new intuitive models, new visualizations, and you've got to forget about all the unproven physical assumptions you have previously operated on.

The field of quantum physics is indeed on the hunt for a new and revolutionary way of understanding, describing, and otherwise conceptualizing the behavior of quantum material, but it's got to actually be better than the "place-holder" observation based descriptions which are currently the best we can do. We don't fully understand electrons and we definitely don't understand why electrons behave in the way that we definitively observe them behaving, but we have experimental evidence to demonstrate that those behaviors are descriptively and predictively accurate.

Nothing you've suggested or offered provides insight or predictive power into the why of physics, and most of what you've suggested has long been scientifically falsified (that light transmission is instantaneous for example).

So... If you want to provide a replacement model, it must actually explain the results of the experiments we conduct and offer us greater predictive power over them rather than in fact being falsified by the results and offering no insight or predictive power whatsoever.

Asking questions about your lack of understanding is one thing, but framing it like an open challenge to refute the supposedly robust bushel of semi-decipherable nonsense you beat around and allude is the way things are, is another thing entirely. The moment you begin accusing people who are earnestly trying to explain the science (that you so evidently don't fully understand) as being intellectually dishonest (or whatever), it comes off like the most naively arrogant, pretentious, and exhausting thing we can imagine: here is someone asking random slews of questions with complex answers who then shits on everyone who cannot satisfy him with an answer while actually assuming that he knows more than every PhD holding physicist on the planet (even while he claims not to).

Don't be that guy Hachem. Start by educating yourself as formally as you can. Here is a series of lectures called "physics for future presidents" which covers pretty much all of the topics you have questions about. It will give you reasonable access to accurate enough conceptual tools to understand light, electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics as portrayed by the contemporary scientific consensus. Please watch it:

https://cosmolearning.org/video-lectures/atoms-heat/

The above link will start you on the first lecture. Watch them all. I would recommend this series of lectures for any would be philosopher actually.

Putting Michael's input in other words: Look at all known examples of mammals, and if all of them do not lay eggs, then the claim "some mammals lay eggs" will have been falsified.

Hmmm. I would say that if you find TP interesting, it must be because of some glimmer of your experience that resonates with the show. Unless you enjoy it purely on escapist terms. — Noble Dust

Some of the ideas are at least momentarily stimulating on an intellectual level, but it is mostly the dramatic and novel intrigue of being in interesting and exciting situations that makes me enjoy the show. Ultimately I relate to agent Cooper.

That might be fine for philosophy, but what about art? I think that's the missing piece in your critique here; art doesn't use your reason; art isn't "robust" and minimal (it can be). Art is primarily seductive, in a sense. It's more immediate than reason; the experience of "what the fuck is going on, why are there two Coopers??" is not only emotional and dramatic, but it does have a philosophical underpinning that grounds the immediateness of the experience. Why are there two Coopers? What does that mean philosophically? Two identities? Someone being other than they claim to be? Someone having an outer (real world) and an inner (philosophy forum) life? But the immediate experience is visceral, not reasonable. Why begin at a (further off) abstract position, when the immediate position for inquiry is, by nature of experience, the now? — Noble Dust

Art doesn't have to be this way, but in the sense of "does it reflect or teach us about reality?", robustness is my own main subjective standard. Art can evoke broad ideas, like the two Coopers evoking the concept of human duality, but if all art does is evoke a concept then it's sufficient to qualify as art. To then go beyond and interpret what useful and robust meaning and understanding we can gain from the exploration of those concepts (colloquially referred to as the process of "reflection") is more akin to philosophy than it is to being merely aesthetically pleased or entertained by something.

Art which goes beyond to decipher and explore the concepts they raise aren't necessarily better, they're just more.

What does rationality obtain, then? Robustness? What does that actually mean if it's not certain? If reality, ala TP is not beholden to rational observation, then you would need to let go of that fundamental grounding and search for something else; something not irrational, but something intuitive. Something that begins with, and trusts in, experience. — Noble Dust

Imagine that reality is actually totally unlike our perception of it, but also that we have no existing experiential or experimental access to that true but hidden nature of things... If we spend our entire lives trapped in and limited by our own ability to perceive (to experience), then we can never be aware of any of the details of the real reality, nor if the reality we perceive is not itself the real reality.

When two people share the same experience but interpret it differently, how else can we resolve the discrepancy without applying reason (which is itself learned from basic observations) to the experiences and observations that actually require interpretation?

Ideological and intellectual robustness seems to be the very objective of attaining certainty. I think that we yearn for certainty because of the comfort and safe feeling we get from knowing. Predicting the future is essential to our survival, and the accuracy and scope of our predictive power is the very engine of human success. A robust prediction is one that we're comfortable with because it's more reliable. For the sake of avoiding imbuing points of failure into our understandings, we ought to use the most robust observations and ideas that are available to us.

My entire epistemic and ontological world view begins with trusting experience, but it is very particular about which experiences to trust. For example: pain and pleasure/good and bad are rather subjective experiences, so as a robust example (a helpful starting point for the would-be normative or existential nihilist): imagine dropping a 50 pound dumbbell directly onto your foot from a decent height. Breaking the bones in your foot like that is painful and bad; it's something you don't want to happen and you can be as certain of this as you can be certain of anything.

You actually are precluding the possibility of those new hidden realities by beginning with evidence (presumably of the reasoned/material kind) as the litmus test for their possibility. In other words, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy; "I'm open to the unknown, as long as it is measurable". — Noble Dust

Don't you see the epistemic risk in choosing to believe in the immeasurable? (essentially this is the main beef with all metaphysical claims). But to be specific I'm not precluding the possibility of their existence, nor am I precluding the possibility of me one day accepting them. What I am precluding is precisely the possibility of me accepting the validity of these possibilities without experience, observation, or evidence of their existence.

I'm open to measurements of the presently immeasurable once we've figured out how to actually measure them!

How many religious texts and commentaries have you read? — Noble Dust

Maybe too many. I did read the entire bible at age 14 or 15. Are you suggesting that none of them are interesting or that some of them are well substantiated :D (I assume the former).

The Bible reads like a long winded joke, true, but there's a whole world of fanatical obscurity out there that can be quite titillating. Winged fire breathing serpents and goddesses embodying fertility and attraction make for great story telling. Pretty much anything which waxes consciousness related hypotheses immediately finds sympathetic ears because the consciousness itself is still so mysterious and our curiosity unending. Nobody can prove that god, souls, alternate realities, complicated and arbitrary concepts like scientology's "thetan", do not actually exist (at least all permutations of such claims). What stops us then from just believing in whatever our intuitive whims tell us to believe? It does take effort and self-control to abstain from buying into any number of these possibilities which can be genuinely reassuring and intuitively comfortable. It's like a bland diet bereft of sweets, ultimately healthier but more emotionally challenging to endure.

Through imagination! The mother of worlds... — Noble Dust

I think a lot of what we think is our own imagination is really just stolen from a mix of experiences and observations. I do agree though, our imagination is what we use to make sense of just about everything. We create internal conceptual models of how the things we observe actually work. Reason and imagination seems to be the main tools we have to actually work with and decipher our experiences.

Considering I'm almost 50 years younger than him, I have no idea. :) — Noble Dust

I only blame Lynch as short hand; whatever individuals, groups and processes are used to create TP. I do hope that they can find a sensical way back to sanity.

[SPOILER ALERT] How do you feel about the fact that Cooper has been shat out into a brand new alternate dimension? Personally I think it's a somewhat cheap way to create a clean slate, but ultimately I think it's necessary to eventually leave behind the unexplained and intentional confusion of the first three seasons. There was no way Lynch could really tie off the various plots and themes into neat and conclusive bows. I am eager to appraise the approach that the full facultied Cooper takes to getting a grip on his new world and whether or not the creators will let him succeed in doing so.

No; would I like it if I'm a TP fanatic? :P — Noble Dust

Instead of being dark and serious with the unknown, it's fun and playful. I can't be sure but I think you would like it!

I think that's it. The theistic sense of something "larger", "higher", etc, is actually compatible with the sense of the unknown. Apophatic theology has more potency vs. kataphatic. (sounds weird to suggest that TP would be compatible with theism. I'm sure any of my old church friends would be appalled by the show). — Noble Dust

I have a suspicion that if your Church friends could get past some of the sex and violence of the show they would actually be fascinated by it. Magical realism (in terms of the existential implications of the plot, as opposed to the epistemic one's I've outlined) is very much an emotional boon of theism. Transferable souls, essence, good and evil; TP is deeply nested within a traditionally theological alley.

Sounds like Lynch was successful then. :P — Noble Dust

Well yes and no. It's a lesson I've already learned throughout the course of confronting the gaps in my own understanding of the world and exploring the epistemological limits of observation, empiricism, and reason.

Through TP, Lynch makes us wonder whether or not some strange and imperceptible reality may actually be the case (what are we?), but to actually be impacted by this dilemma we need to go through an actual experience which makes it fundamentally real and relevant to our lives.

Without this experience, like Yetis and ghost stories, the extraordinary realities depicted by TP become mere possibilities of what really exists (what we really are). Without any real evidence each successive extraordinary claim becomes more obscure and less verifiable than the last; less intellectually extraordinary. At a certain depth of speculation, the possibilities become so numerous that none of them seem special, like turtles all the way down.

I do enjoy entertaining those possibilities which raise interesting questions, but intellectually I'm all to aware that fundamentally it's all speculation that exists in a space I believe it is impossible to rationally navigate. I do live with the understanding that nothing or almost nothing I think I know is absolutely certain or a ground floor of reality. As an atheist with a supposedly god-shaped hole, constructing moral and epistemic foundations (from very scarce and minimal starting points when bereft of "God") has absorbed the lions share of my intellect, and as a result they're minimal and robust. New evidence of hidden realities such as TP describes could come along, and there is room in my psyche for me to accept it, but without that evidence these speculations of hidden realities do not challenge my current "knowledge" in any relevant or new way.

I actually found that scene completely hilarious, but I know what you mean, it was definitely a foreshadowing of the darker moments of confusion to come.

Personally the deeper reason I enjoyed the show, I think, is because of my current state of belief/philosophy. I'm kind of in limbo, and the sense of non-real limbo in the show actually has a weird comfort to it for me. I find it necessary to explore that place, whether in the show, my experience of it, or the realm of ideas. The scene where Diane sees herself standing by the motel entrance, with it's almost complete lack of ambient sound, was actually beautiful to me. Terrifying and beautiful at the same time (the hair on the back of my neck literally bristled when that happened). I would say the same for the horror of the last scene of the season. — Noble Dust

Have you ever seen or read "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"? (there's a British reboot of the show which is quite good). If you haven't seen it I do recommend it (Frodo is in it!!!). In a way it's like TP but instead of discomfort being the result of enduring mystery and confusion, serendipity and trust come to dominate. [SPOILER ALERT] The Dirk Gently series communicates the concept of 'the interconnected-ness of everything" and like TP uses hidden an mysterious magical truths as thematic plot mechanics. I absolutely love the show (much more than TP) because it explores the unknown with a fantastical but ultimately appealing and intriguing direction as opposed fear and discomfort as destinations.

It's true that I would like it if these hidden and fantastic truths such as alternate dimensions, the interconnectedness of everything, and a benevolent God, actually were the way things really are , and so the entertaining escapism of exploring these ideas is indeed enjoyable to me. Rationally speaking though they are but flights of fancy...

Potential reality, for one. — Noble Dust

I'm reminded of a discussion I think we had (I almost always remember the ideas I discuss, but I easily forget who I discussed them with) where I outlined my approximately categorical rejection of a certain genre of lofty claims. Possibilities like eternal souls and alternate dimensions are among the most interesting and appealing ideas that are out there, but they're also among the least substantiated ideas that are out there. The revealed "fictional truth" contained in TP is in some sense a possible reality, and thus it reflects in some way what we know or can know (or don't yet know) about reality. I suppose art could reflect nothing from reality, but how then could we ever interpret it? Even abstract art can be taken as a reflection of an abstract and absurd aspect of life itself.

If I had to sum up my beef in a single sentence, it would not be that TP paints a picture of reality which I object to, but rather that Lynch is merely painting a picture of his own broad uncertainties (epistemic, existential, ontological, etc...) and so doesn't himself know where he is going. We're just along for the thrill ride on his roller-coaster of confusion, and into the apparent darkness of the unknown.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Cooper has already escaped the Black Lodge and overcome it. Perhaps the White Lodge will inevitably be reached if Lynch can find a way to get there. Where he is currently at is perhaps encapsulated in this quote from Windome Earle when he describes the White lodge:

"Once upon a time, there was a place of great goodness, called the White Lodge. Gentle fawns gamboled there amidst happy, laughing spirits. The sounds of innocence and joy filled the air. And when it rained, it rained sweet nectar that infused one's heart with a desire to live life in truth and beauty. Generally speaking, a ghastly place, reeking of virtue's sour smell. Engorged with the whispered prayers of kneeling mothers, mewling newborns, and fools, young and old, compelled to do good without reason ... But, I am happy to point out that our story does not end in this wretched place of saccharine excess. For there's another place, its opposite:"

I think Lynch views reason as loveless and inherently shrouded in darkness, which makes sense given the direction of the show's first two seasons. In 25 years, since, do you think Lynch might have changed much?

Interesting that the atheist here wants the comfort of the known, and the theist here relishes the nihilistic unknown in the show. :P — Noble Dust

I also find this interesting...

How can you really relish that much unknown though?. The final two episodes were in your words, nauseating.

If I had to describe that particular instance of nausea, it would be the result and angst resulting from having no sweet clue what is going on around you or what the immediate future might hold. It's something both my evolutionary endowed instincts and my rational mind utterly rebel against.

But on a surface level, I can understand why you weren't satisfied with the show. A lot of people weren't. I might be in the minority, I don't know. What appeals to me (along with the real as surreal piece that I talked about) is the classic Lynchian dream-logic. I have pretty vivid dreams, sometimes where the dream feels more real than the reality I wake up to. The last two episodes of the series felt just like that in a weird way. The surrealism felt...real. I guess at the end of the day I can only philosophize about the show so much; I enjoyed the show on a visceral, aesthetic level, which is how art should be enjoyed anyway. Lynch hit a deep nerve of some kind for me. Not the case for everyone. — Noble Dust

I can see the nerve that Lynch keeps rapping on, it's just that in myself it is perhaps dead or atrophied.

The show has a distinct existential message that it reveals through the medium of Cooper's metaphorical and somewhat literal descent into madness: the world is other than how we perceive; what really are we?

The constant subversion of expectations and the erection of mystery is the cognitive and emotional battery Lynch uses to strum that particular nerve. Perhaps as an atheist with a conscientiously constructed epistemological world view (one that is required to support my existential, moral, and emotional outlooks) I'm forced to rebel against this kind of ontological assault because so much of my understanding of everything is therefore at stake.

I wouldn't say the show was totally unsatisfying though, it just didn't satisfy me by offering me a useful understanding of things in the traditional sense. It turns that story telling model on it's head and instead communicates precisely that there may be a hard limit to the usefulness of our traditional understanding of things (our materialist, empirical, western understandings).

Here's a great example. In the following scene agent Cooper is explaining the origin of what he describes as an intuitive deductive technique. As the viewer the scene is interesting but ultimately we need to cut Lynch some creative slack to let him get away with it. After completing the series though, it's clear that this scene is one of the early salvos meant to chip away at our understanding of the world, to confuse us and make us doubt what we know, what can be known, and how we can know it.

This scene is dripping with the elements I've described: inexplicably taking place in a forested area, a comfortable helping of good coffee is applied to soothe and prepare us for the strange turns which are about to take place. Something like smooth jazz begins playing, like some kind of grease to make it all easier to swallow.



Whatever motivated Lynch to write this scene trying to write this scene also seems to be the main motivation behind the entire series: to make us question everything and to pull every thread until the entire garment has unraveled..

So, Vagabond, do you think art reflects reality? Should it? — Noble Dust

Art does reflect reality (what else should/could it reflect?), and yes I think it ought to. Twin Peaks reflects well the uncertainty and imperfection that is present in the human condition, and I think a major hurtle in life has to do with accepting dealing with that uncertainty and imperfection.

Any Twin Peaks fans here? — Noble Dust

I binged watched the entire original series and most of the recent season in a few sittings (and the final few episodes as they were released)...

It's was definitely an oddessy. I would say that I'm a fan in the sense that I'll watch the inevitable next season, but like a lot of people I do take some umbrage with the most recent direction the show has taken.

This brings up an interesting philosophical problem: does art reflect reality? Should it? Does art carry an intrinsic message? Is Lynch, for instance, trying to specifically show us the weirdness of our everyday lives, or is he simply responding to an aesthetic instinct, and finding what the results seem to indicate only after the fact? Is this sort of surrealism-made-real philosophically nihilistic? The ending to this new season, for instance, was sickening; I literally felt sick after watching it and had trouble sleeping that night. Not because of any horror element, but because of the element of the unknowable; the meaninglessness that seemed to permeate the finale. — Noble Dust

[SPOILER WARNING]

The show begins like most murder mysteries do; idyllic setting, the introduction of ambiguous characters to relate to, and the sudden murder of a pure and innocent victim. The incredibly polite and pleasant agent Cooper instantly becomes the lovable center of the show: the main lens through which the audience deciphers the unfolding plot. For the entirety of the season, as Cooper's situation progressively worsens, I found myself mostly just hoping for Cooper to get a decent coffee, and clean lodgings - at a reasonable rates. The FBI itself becomes like an arbitrary standard of normalcy; consistent, well disciplined, and logical.

The assortment of FBI agents in my opinion and their lovable and arbitrary consistency is perhaps the only running theme which allows the viewer to maintain a superficially coherent perspective for the duration of the show (like a buoy of sanity). As Cooper unfolds the central mystery of the first two seasons, like the audience, he becomes utterly battered by absurdity and confusion as the answer to any question only leads further down the disturbing rabbit hole. By the time season two ends, Cooper becomes trapped in a figurative and literal prison of absurdity. Almost everything is shown to be a facade which gives way to mystery and confusion: the Idyllic nature of Twin Peaks, the purity and innocence of the original victim, and Cooper's firm and well regimented grasp of reality.

I'm not entirely familiar with the circumstances of the show's original cancellation, but it probably had something to do with the fact that the entire show became so confusedly turned on it's head that the audience just couldn't stomach it. Where was Lynch originally going to go had he produced the third season back in 1992 rather than "25 years later"? Well, he was probably going to have Cooper slowly claw his way back to normalcy by tying all the weird and mysterious elements of the show into a symbolic exploration of "consciousness" ( whose final message or meaning Lynch may or may not have actually planned out). He likely would have inter-twined all the side-plots into one inevitable conclusion, but since the audiences just couldn't digest it, twas cancelled.

At this point I should say that there's a particular phenomenon that greatly afflicts show-writing which occurs when a writer opens up mysteries and questions which they have no present idea of how to solve, and ideas whose meaning they wish to explore but have no guarantee of coming to any meaningful understanding of. Without planned endings, writers sometimes must scramble to tie everything up at the end, and that scramble makes for painful and displeasing conclusions. Originally I think the show did suffer from a bit of Lynch not having any sweet fucking clue where he was really going with everything, but as experimental art he could have done a lot worse. If he had the full deck of cards to complete the third season rather than having to continue the story with aged and missing characters, the third season probably could have delivered a satisfying conclusion (the defeat of Bob and the emancipation of Cooper from his physical and mental incarceration) but alas the ratings were not there.

People were intrigued by the show and it was very well produced, so it did develop a bit of a cult following, but the final straw that made the third season possible was a vague reference made during season two: "I'll see you in 25 years", which was a line delivered without context or explanation at the time (originally it most likely was an allusion to Coopers eventual death). 25 Years later, here we are with the third season. It's a great example of that "write mysteriously now, actually solve that mystery later" which the show is rife with.

At the outset of the third season, like the now mentally unhinged Cooper, as a viewer we really have no clue at all what is going. In some ways as connections are revealed and Cooper eventually regains his mental faculties things start to make more and more sense, but somewhere along the line the progress toward sanity halts, and Cooper and the audience are inexorably sucked back toward deeper mystery and more confusion (although Cooper himself seems to be informed by a mysterious guiding force which he trusts).

At the end of season three, Cooper and the audience are shat out into a fresh new hell of confusion where everything is different. "We live in a dream" can be an interesting idea, but not when it is used to leave behind so many loose ends; then it's just a tragic departure. The atmosphere of mystery that Lynch creates is initially what sucks us in to the show, but ultimately it becomes so pervasive that we yearn for normalcy. The fragility of perception and understanding is the main theme the show reflects, and it teaches us to appreciate the normalcy we do have. I don't think Lynch wanted to portray things as meaningless, but rather how meaningfullness can degrade into unknowable absurdity.

Like poor Bilbo Baggins in his tale "There and Back Again", we spend the majority of the experience wishing only to return to our comfortable hobbit hole of understanding, except there is never any "Back Again", and the destination is the terrifying and utterly unknown.

I find the idea of pan-spermia quite fascinating, and I don't see any reason why it would not be plausible.

If abiogenesis is as rare an event as they come (the formation of that first replicating cell), then we can perhaps use pan-spermia to explain our apparently lucky existence.

It also does paint a very exciting picture about what kinds of intelligent life might be out there...

Until we actually discover some life elsewhere or crack abiogenesis though, we have no way to determine how likely or unlikely the formation of life actually is. But if we can show that it's possible for single cells to survive the long cold trip between solar systems, then it becomes at the very least, plausible.

I remember maybe 10 years ago, a meteorite was found that had organic material encased in it. It was speculated at that time that this might be evidence of life and might be how life began on earth. — T Clark

Such a find would be pretty strong evidence for panspermia, which is why you were most likely duped by the tabloids...

I reckon the only meteorites striking the earth that contain organic matter are the packages of poop jettisoned from the ISS :D . If you can find the original source, it might be interesting though!

No, because polygamy isn't a way to harmonise all aspects of our soul together. That's precisely the problem. You may solve an economic issue through polygamy, but you do that by neglecting other issues. — Agustino

Harmonize all aspects of our soul?

Aug, that's nonsense.

Whatever your idea of harmony and souls and togetherness is, it's not necessarily shared by everyone else. The idea that you know the best sexual practices for everyone else is a delusion

Maybe, but that wouldn't be a good situation to be in. It would be like having a sickness that one doesn't have much choice about. So not immoral, but not good either. It would be a temporary solution at most. — Agustino

And if no solution were found and polyandry became tradition, what then? Then would it be moral?

They're not going to be happy with lack of strictness either. People are woefully bad at determining what will make them happy. — Agustino

Maybe, but they're woefully great at determining what will make them woeful. Being told to conform in ways that are ultimately displeasing is enduringly painful.

It's a true psychological fact, virtually unanimously accepted in psychoanalysis for example. If you look at most people's lives you will see this as well. Most people aren't exactly happy - they always find reasons to complain, new desires, etc. Everyone is neurotic to a certain extent or another, not everyone is pathologically neurotic. Freud for example differentiated between an ordinary Oedipus Complex (which all people have more or less) and an abnormal one, which is pathological. — Agustino

(what's a true fact?)

It's a true homeopathic fact, virtually unanimously accepted by all crystal energy healing dealers, that bad energy needs to be sucked out of each and every human as often as possible using shiny and collectable rocks. Show me a single psychoanalyst who isn't high on their own cocaine conjecture...

What is desire and happiness in the first place? I'm sure it's fun to run wild with intuition and all hat but it's not clinically reliable. Homosexuality isn't just some "rival/model" confusion explainable from your fireside armchair...

Psychoanalysis is stupid, experimentally unsubstantiated, and clinically unreliable: it's mostly pseudo-science. There, I said it...

Happiness comes by degrees, they can achieve some degrees of happiness, I'm sure of that. — Agustino

But not that special monogamy kind of happiness right? Which is the real fulfillment right?

Yes, mental health issues are frequently more commonly seen amongst the trans, gay, etc. — Agustino

Derrrrrrr................... Gay people have more mental disease so gayness must cause it........

Derrrrrrr?

Trying to get a gay person to be un-gay I reckon is more harmful than letting them live as a gay person, so how does the gayness cause actual harm?

Well yes, the cuck is latently homosexual. He has reached the stage of desire where the sexual object can only be enjoyed in the presence of the rival. — Agustino

Leave it to the extreme variance of human beings to come up with retarded psycho-analytical explanations for cuckoldry that sound like some english lecturer explaining the life-cycle and reproductive habits of some obscure foreign bird...

This doesn't follow, they would not prohibit homosexual sex in that case, just people being entirely homosexual. — Agustino

Or maybe they were just intolerant ignorant bigots who thought we needed to kill gays or else the world would soon come to an end? Yea that.

Well yes, most people are incapable of too much self-control. Another psychological fact. — Agustino

This isn't a psychological fact, it's vague, imprecise, ambiguous, and not obviously true.

It's not peddled by third wave feminism, the argument is as old as Kant, and perhaps even older. But it is not intellectually bankrupt. Of course you don't actually treat her exactly like an inanimate object. The point is that there is a gradation from treating someone as a person to treating them as an object. You are lower down towards the object end in this case, but obviously not as low as raping her for example — Agustino

Why didn't you make this dubious gradient clear before and instead communicted in sloppy and innacurate absolute terms in the first place? No matter...

At what point do I begin to begin to harm a woman by treating her as an object on this descending gradient? How do we actually quantify or measure this "object" treatment and at what point does it become immoral?

How do we know when casual sex will cause someone to treat people like objects?

I don't care if Newton himself discovered sexual objectification, it's absolutely stupid to suppose that casual sex magically makes people behave harmfully towards one another. The only people peddling that idea these days are the third wave feminists.

No. You confuse what they think will fulfil them and hence what they do, with what would actually fulfil them. — Agustino

You confuse what you think would fulfill you with how everyone else is morally obligated to behave.

No, we're not individuals either. Just look at when someone posted a picture of feet in the Shoutbox - everyone else started to do the same. Just because people around here have a higher IQ doesn't mean they're less prone to succumb to mimetic tendencies which are biologically inherent in us. — Agustino

Do you have so little standards for consistency that you allow yourself to employ the notion "there are no individuals" as a part of whatever argument?

It's all great well and cool that people copy each-other, but obviously we have somewhat original thoughts and freedom right?

"There are no individuals" is useless...

Metaphysics isn't the same as absolute certainty. That's what Descartes thought, and he was wrong. Nobody needs metaphysics to do what? You do need metaphysics if you want to understand reality, it's inescapable if that's what you want to do. — Agustino

I'm not saying that metaphysics is the same as absolute certainty, I'm saying you invent a fictitious sense of absolute certainty by presuming that your personal assessments of human telos are grounded in metaphysical truth. Your metaphysics amounts to an assumption that your categories and classifications are the objective truth to begin with.