But what about the sceptical earthling who does not trust the holy texts? Who then will allow or forbid him anything? — Kai Rodewald

I can only really speak for myself, but there are layers of moral barriers:

Greed and selfishness are the outer layer, Locke's social contract is one way of looking at the moral/ideological basis for threatening to incarcerate and judge me for certain actions which (for the most part) most of us agree are necessary to prevent in preservation of public freedom and safety. The carrot end of the stick however is that cooperation and ethical behavior such as the golden rule is a rationally successful strategy for creating a desirable community for myself to live in. Taking everything I want by force could potentially make society a worse place for myself the people I love, so I have disincentive to do so.

The inner layers of my moral barriers stem from my capacity to feel sympathy and empathy for others. Like most humans I'm hard wired to consider harm to one's in group to be emotionally repulsive, and cognitively I consider all humans (give or take a few) to be a part of my in group.

So I simultaneously appeal to self-interest and sympathy for others.

Answer me this though: what about the holy texts do you think creates such a strong moral barrier between the desirous and the taking of their desires?

Yes, but it is up to you to figure out the analogy behind it, how it corresponds both historically and culturally, its parabolic symbolism to broader concepts and that can only be done when you don't follow by refraining from conforming to anything material including other people and cultures; when you just read for the sake of learning. That is the point of reason and how to transcend to a rational, autonomous being, which is only possible without such attachments and yet, conscious of the fact that we need to attach ourselves to something in order to stimulate our capacity to progress epistemically, the point of wisdom is to attach yourself to God - the omnipresent, the greatest good, hence your conscience and why the Bible says God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth - and your attempt to reach him so to speak is your will to consistently progress towards reaching a better understanding of yourself. You can't do that if you follow people and that includes religion, which is what happens after morality before becoming corrupted. — TimeLine

So what's the parable behind the binding of Issac? Oh yea that's right, total submission to god's will. Great moral fiber that.

P.S You're making claims like "you must be unattached to people and culture to be rational", and "god is a spirit of greatest good", but you have not in any way substantiated those claims with evidence or argument. What parabolic symbolism does the Issac story have.

Moral consciousness, your conscience, love, is what leads to authentic happiness and peace forever, 'eternally' rather than being temporarily yet consistently stimulated by base pleasures. When you see your own mistakes and seek to improve yourself - hence being honest - there is no greater happiness. But righteousness is not all fluffy bunny feet stuff, it isn't walking around talking and pretending your are a nice person when you produce and do absolutely nothing, or as Solomon says for the lips of an adulterous woman drop (as) an honeycomb, and her mouth [is] smoother than oil as liars sweet-talk their way by deceiving you into thinking they are good people via tact, but it is fighting injustice, stopping the pain and anguish that others experience as much as it is taking care of yourself and enjoying the feelings that autonomy produces — TimeLine

I don't understand how you start with asceticism and then explain that by preserving the base pleasures of others you will in fact discover more lasting pleasure. If it makes you happy to attempt altruism in this way, that's fine, but I'm thoroughly unconvinced; if base pleasures didn't exist or were not important, neither would be pain, anguish, or injustice for altruists to combat or take solace from doing so.

That is the point, we are selective with what we choose to believe. Heidegger is a douche. Does it mean that everything that he writes is unworthy of study? If you choose to hate the bible because you have some vendetta against religion, no matter how much one can exemplify the benefits of the wisdom - that is, the stories used through parables to help you appreciate your own moral fibre - you will refuse to acknowledge it. If you are going to be selectively stubborn, fine, but the reality is that you are not interpreting the scriptures, you are only hating the interpretations made by others. — TimeLine

Well I'm still waiting for you to explain the moral wisdom behind the binding of Issac. And I'm not exactly filled with hate so much as I am filled with ridicule. I don't hate religion or the bible, I hate certain ideas (I detest them as harmful or irrational or both); ideas which I ridicule. Ideas like : your refusal to strain meaning from these ancient and largely barbarous fairy tales is why you will never be rational, moral, or happy. When I was a child I might have responded to such a veiled threat by acquiescing to your world view, but now that I've actually experienced life I know it's only an inexperienced mind that could possibly assent to it, or else an unrobust one seeking emotional refuge.

I am. You not only prove that you know nothing about Kant but that you are also painfully trying to mimic my methods of expressing the disillusionment to your so-called argument. Now run along and get your own personality. — TimeLine

So you think that I'm trying to mimic your missing argument (which you're now telling me is that i have no argument) by asking you to submit your missing argument? What ironically foul school-yard circularity is this? Priceless:

You made a statement, "morality leads to religion". I said "why?". You said "go read Kant". and I said "how about you posit your own argument". I don't want, and refuse in principle, to waste any time trotting out and swatting down Kant so you can feel like you've contributed something to a debate. Kant isn't the one trying to tell me religious wisdom is the height of morality and reason, you are. So make with the reasoning already and spare the pleasant candor.

Moron. — TimeLine

Here's a paraphrasing of the series of vague statements you made which I reckon is your argument:

Religious wisdom allows you to transcend into a rational autonomous being by shedding material attachments in favor of attachment to god (omnipresent and greatest good), which crates moral conscience in worship of the spirit of god, which allows you to progress toward a better understanding of yourself, which is what leads to authentic eternal happiness and peace forever.

Ah yes, smell that opium: Eternal happiness through religious wisdom.

I take it you agree though. Being willing to kill your own son for love of god is in reality more akin to Stockholm syndrome than moral-well being. It's a typical cult trait to demand that every adherent value their commitment to the cause above and beyond their love for their own family. The bible contains verses which are no exception. Deal with it.

Geez, that's fair. :-| — TimeLine

Some laws contained in the old testament are unequivocally barbaric. Do you disagree?

So Christians believe in the smurfs? It was you who said... God is Gargamel and we're the surfs, right? You must be proud of your countries' education system. — TimeLine

This was just a humorous analogy and not a statement of actual Christian belief. Did your education system not teach you about humor?

No, people want to see blood, not God. It seems that reconciliation with their conscience is only satisfied when they see death or violence of an innocent person since the injustice is shocking enough to make one conscious of the love for someone they have outside of themselves. Humans are not only innately evil but profoundly moronic and those pagan rituals they did were never warranted or requested, they were just transferred, a way of saying 'don't do such rituals to false idols but if you are stupid enough to do it, at least do it to the one true God'. You seem to be having trouble reading between the lines, probably because you have little historical knowledge; many Catholic traditions are extensions of Roman paganism, for instance. — TimeLine

Timeline, my whole point is that people, such as yourself, will happily sit around telling people what god wants and doesn't want. In this case the bible tells me that god needs blood to forgive, and you tell me that he doesn't, and that the bible is actually filled with arbitrary pagan rituals held-over from earlier times.

I might have trouble reading between the lines of the bible, but you have trouble reading the lines themselves: "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace" Ephesians 7... "This is my blood of the[a] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" Matthew 26:28"

Christianity? Do you realise how many different religions fall under this umbrella? I mean, hasty generalisations are one thing, but to do it with such confidence is downright spooky. — TimeLine

So a hasty generalization is a generalization that you make on the basis of too small a sample size. Since you seem to agree that Christianity resembles paganism, you've already agreed with my fair generalization. Misunderstanding fallacies is also spooky.

Calm down. *sigh, clearly things need to be spoon-fed to you. It is a story that has a point, the point being faith. Isaac wasn't actually murdered and he became a 'great people' as Abraham became the father of the monotheistic religions; individuals often represent broader subjects, a person represents a city or a country but clearly since you lack the wisdom, having this conversation with you is fast becoming tedious. — TimeLine

So then the story isn't about how we should be willing to faithfully obey god even if he commands you to murder your own child? It's really about becoming the father of religion and a great people? Oh. Makes complete unabridged sense.

You think defending religion from ridicule is tedious? Try composing effective ridicule for each of the hundreds of different religious approaches and interpretations that people haphazardly erect and ritualistically dance around.

If the story of Isaac escaped you, I highly doubt you actually read it 'cover to cover' but to be fair, you probably did read the cover, as in, just the one word before screaming off naked into the wilderness saying 'this is wrong!' — TimeLine

So the story of Isaac unambiguously depicts Abraham being willing to kill his son to prove his devotion to god. Your bit about "father of religion" or "great people" is your own happy abstraction from the actual scripture. Now I'm convinced you've never actually read the bible.

Go read Kant and then we'll talk. — TimeLine

How about you show you understand what you're talking about and show that it makes sense by submitting the argument I've requested you to submit. That's "talking". If you have no argument for your statement, then I'll casually brush it aside for the unsubstantiated postulate that it is.

Since when is reading the scriptures following a religion? No one is asking you to follow a religion. I read the Qur'an, but I'm not a muslim. Morality comes first, but you will never reach moral consciousness without rational autonomy and the elimination of anything prejudicial including the cultural or social influences that render your interpretations flawed. You need to see the wisdom as a way of accessing and improving your moral consciousness by making it your active duty to improve yourself and not as a duty to gain the approval of people or leaders. If you actually care about your moral well-being, you would see the wisdom behind the language and the parables. Religion is corrupt and it controls and demands with codified processes that is an inescapable problem for autonomy, but it doesn't suddenly mean that what it may have originally espoused and the reasoning behind it's existence as also completely wrong. There is no need to burn the Bible. — TimeLine

I refuse to submit to religiously inspired emotion; I've already told you I've read the entire bible. It's not "reading scripture" that I'm refusing to do, it's "submitting to religiously inspired emotion".

You might think it's wise to emotionally submit to the wisdom of the parables, just like how Abraham emotionally submitted to the will of god and was prepared to murder his own son, but that's not moral well-being. That's closer to Stockholm syndrome than it is moral enlightenment.

"Don't murder", "Don't steal", "Don't lie", these are absolute basic moral positions which we don't need scripture to figure out or have confidence in. If that's the moral boon of religion, we could instead just be taught this by a cartoon designed for toddlers. I've never advocated for the burning of any books, but I can see how my pointing out the stupidity and immorality contained in the bible might make you see it that way.

Why not say the same thing of empirical observation? — Noble Dust

There's something peculiar about the statement "Don't trust what you observe blindly", but yes, we would say that. Empiricism is about testing predictive models (of observed phenomena) to find out how accurate and reliable they are, but god/the infinite is not a testable and therefore falsifiable theory, leaving us no way of knowing how reliable said intuition really is.

That's certainly true, there's no moral evolution per se. But I think we're dealing with different kinds of moral failings now. Less barbarous and more cunning, so to speak. The older, more spiritual world seems less dependent on reason, and we can almost smell the blood sacrifices of the holy. A brutal and barbarous world, no doubt, but one swimming in Meaning. Now we live in a world predicated on civility, thanks to sciences offspring (technology) which allows us to live a less barbarous, more reasonable life, but the human condition (the lack), still presents itself, just in a more cunning, subversive way. See "fake news" and our apathy and inability to personally do anything about it. Fake news is almost the grand culmination of postmodernity and the loss of Meaning, and it's hard to say whether it's a comedy or a tragedy. We live in a different milieu of moral failing, but we have the cloak of civility. Blake says "Pride is shame's cloak", and we could say "civility is barbarity's cloak". — Noble Dust

What Meaningful spiritual riches are there to be found in the past which cannot be found today? People seemed more deeply committed to their religion and derived more of their meaning directly from it in the past, but nothing stops people so inclined from wholly embracing sprituality. I don't see why we would benefit were we all more spiritual.

Post-modernism, and "fake news", aren't really connected with the rise of atheism, but I'm sure they do share some common contributing factors. The rise of sophisticated empirical science (which replaces a lot of the whys of the world religion used to explain) contributes to atheism, and maybe post-modernism is in part a scramble to find meaning since the disheveling of traditional religious societal and psychological foundations, but fake news is another thing entirely. That's mostly the result of unmoderated propaganda flooding the internet and it's growing communication channels

So, to be very clear, I'm not suggesting we should revert back to the barbarous times of a spiritual milieu. (impossible to do anyway, unless we find ourselves in a post-apocalyptic wasteland anytime soon, which I don't rule out). I'm just describing what I see as the change from an inner spiritual life, to a poverty of spiritual life, and the changes that occur. This change is even mirrored in the very common experience (at least in the US) of the child growing up in the church "losing her faith" in the 21st century. The microcosm reflects the macrocosm. — Noble Dust

While you view "losing one's faith" as the descent into spiritual poverty, I view it as the ascent into intellectual development and robustness. In my view children don't start out with faith, it's arbitrarily forced upon them by their family and community before they're capable of critical thought. Babies are soft-soft-atheists!

I'll trust that you're able to do that, but I'm cautious of the idea that a separation of those views can be actual. It's certainly possible to do so in abstraction, for the sake of analyzing each, but surely each aspect of your whole view of life affects the other, whether you're aware of it or not. — Noble Dust

What you're trying to tell me is that my moral and existential views are a symptom of my lack of spirituality. My moral and existential views aren't spiritual, but they're not predicated on "non-spirituality". Spritual moral and existential views are founded on spiritual beliefs; non-spiritual moral and existential views are founded on something else. I don't found my moral or existential views on the absence of god, they just don't include god in their workings. They work with or without god in fact (generally).

The possibility of God to me is existential; it's based on existence and experience. How else can we go about an inquiry into an infinite being that exists outside of and generated the world we know? Not through empiricism, clearly. Empiricism deals with that world outside of which the eternal being would exist. This is why I find your soft-atheism unsatisfying. It's not about empirical proof. On the other hand, I'm way more sympathetic to the idea of God being unknowable. So, the God concept is only irrational insofar as it transcends rationality. The reason you find it irrational and end your inquiry there is that your inquiry seems to begin and end with rationality. — Noble Dust

I'm very sympathetic to the idea of god being unknowable, including it's existence. I find all of metaphysics unsatisfying because it inherently moves past the observable and testable world and heads into a purely invisible, unknowable, and therefore hypothetical world to which we have no access. It's all true, it's all false; it doesn't matter: who knows? Nobody can know. Some people might object to my use of the term metaphysics in this sense, but theological metaphysics does tend to have the quality of being unfalsifiable; blind.

I don't blame you for trying to figure this out, because I haven't done so myself. The curse of an intuitive approach to life and philosophy. I don't have a firm structure of my philosophy in place as you do, and I'm ok with this for now. But things like infinite freedom, infinite life and Meaning all need to be predicated on a supreme moral reality, a reality that I don't think exists yet. Optimistically, I'm searching for a way for morality to evolve. Pessimistically, I'm not sure if it can. But my experience of the infinite (almost related too to Plato's "memory" thing), is a driving factor in my view of how morality could evolve. That's more of the thrust here for me, not the infinite itself. The use of the word infinite in this discussion actually came about arbitrarily in the midst of it. It's just an aspect of my view, not the goal. My discussion of the infinite was just in response to your questions about it, as far as I remember. Again, I'm not over here in my corner trying to work out how to fool God into letting me live eternally and avoid hell. If I have any fixation on the infinite, it's because of my search for a moral evolution that I find satisfying. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. — Noble Dust

I too am looking to evolve (my own) morality, but I'm very wary of anything presenting itself as ultimate because it then becomes more justifiable to sacrifice the temporal (one's life and everything else in it) to preserve it. Ultimate importance has no equal, so in your future pursuits when you see someone claiming to have found it, feel obligated to really put it to the test should you consider adopting it. If it really is an ultimate force, it can take it.

Pascal makes an impassioned case for gambling your one chit on the ultimate, and I'm here to be the conservative nag who urges people to really consider the risk. Gambling is after all frowned upon in most religions ;)

So if it makes good pragmatic sense to harvest the organs of a healthy young person in order to to keep 5 rich old geezers alive, that is moral? Or is there something about the quantification of what is moral or immoral that misses the concept of what it means to be moral, and pragmatism is all about quantification. I think moral value is a quality & not quantity. — Cavacava

Well in some situations quantity is all we can achieve. Economic theory is a good example of how we orient parts of our society around what we think will result in the most profit for the most people.

But in this case, it's not as if not criminalizing murder is to sanction murder. The pragmatism we're looking for in such a situation is how well murder is reduced by the two stratagems. Pragmatism as a broad end goal in and of itself is a bit misleading because we often disagree about specific end goals; we can only look for pragmatic solutions in regards to those values we share and are trying to preserve or promote.

Even if the geezers are O.K with the butchery of the young to preserve their own skin, the young person would still deem it immoral on the basis that their life is arbitrarily being sacrificed against their will; the young person would never agree to such a moral supposition. A moral system which arbitrarily sacrifices certain lives is unappealing and hard to agree to, and in such circumstances morality tends to break down and gives way to conflict.

Edit: pragmatism isn't meant to encapsulate or outline morality with any good degree of precision or specificity, but in some moral contexts utilitarian approaches are the best we can do because of complexity. Harvesting youth organs for a few geezers can be crossed off the moral list because it crosses certain lines of personal rights that we all agree we ought to have. Give me a moral dilemma too complex to solve otherwise though (i.e, the whole world dies unless we harvest this one individual), and I'll anesthetize them myself, but I prefer to think of such situations as a breakdown of morality rather than murder being moral...

Can pragmatism encompass morality? — Cavacava

It can in the sense that societal laws are bargains we strike (bargains which we want to work and be mutually beneficial/practical). If laws are indeed moral stratagems then they need to be pragmatic to some degree else they wouldn't serve their founding values.

Pragmatism doesn't have much to do with founding moral values, but when it comes to assessing how to promote these values across different and changing situations and environments, pragmatism is indispensable for differentiating between competing moral stratagems.

Think of it like this: not-illegal

Legal just means whatever the laws are. If something is not criminalized/made illegal by them, then it's legal.

We want our laws to be fair and just, that's true, but if we lived in a world where making murder illegal actually caused more murder to occur, we would think such a system to be less just or less fair (or at least less desirable to live in, perhaps).

We can define it as the immoral killing of someone though...

Directly comparable no, but the issue I'm outlining is that there are all kinds of hypothetical deities out there which form the basis of theistic belief. A given theist generally believes in one notion of god with certain particulars, and so they must lack belief or disbelieve in gods with different particulars. In reality a theist can have atheistic attitudes and positions towards every possible god except their own.

So my point is that when a theist asks an atheist to disprove all possible gods (such as Zeus) the theist also has to disprove all possible gods (minus the one they believe in) because they too must share the atheist lack of belief or disbelief. So, as an atheist I only ever need to refute one god at a time, the one a given theist happens to believe in.

Jesus must have been pretty chill for the most part... But every now and then he gets this infinitely stern and terrifying look on his face and just stares at you with eyes of fire and brimstone. After a few moments he suddenly lightens up and starts chuckling, like everything is fine, and in our scared and confused state we chuckle along with him; pretending to get the joke so as to not reawaken his ire.

If legalizing murder reduced murder rates so much that the public agreed it is a better moral stratagem for reducing murder (which is still an immoral thing) then yes, there's nothing bad about legalizing it.

The morals we base laws on a are particular moral positions which generally stem from shared values amongst the populace (yay democracy!). We all want to not be murdered (the value, which is generally contained in constitutional precepts of liberty and happiness), and police forces which try to prevent murder reduce overall murder rates (the moral stratagem), therefore we should make a police force to do so (the legal-moral foundation).

It might seem counter-intuitive to make murder legal because in thought experiments you're left wondering "is murder moral now?" or "what's stopping me from doing murder or someone from murdering me?", but if you think about it, A) murder is still something people consider immoral, and B) however legalizing murder works to prevent it, that's what stopping you from doing murder or being murdered. If the hypothetical were true, then a society where murder is illegal would have fewer barriers between you and murder.

In both cases we're still trying to reduce murder, which is the thing we agree is immoral and provides the justification for some of our laws, it's just that in one situation letting people sort it out themselves is the best strategy and in another policing people happens to work better.

P.S You're right about punishment for the sake of punishment serving no justifiable purpose. I hold it to be quite immoral; it's akin to revenge. Being severely punished to serve as an example/deterrent is not a role anyone wants to find themselves in.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding...

I don't bastardize scripture, I interpret it quite fairly. And these aren't my beliefs I'm injecting, they're Christian beliefs:

In the old testament forgiveness was purchased through the blood of sacrificial animals. In the new testament forgiveness was purchased through the blood of Jesus. God explicitly requires blood (death/suffering) in order to forgive....

The ritualized nature of this in Christianity resembles pagan blood magic. Modern Christians scoff at haitian hoodoo priests cutting off the heads of chickens as if they're practicing black magic, but what exactly would you call sacrificing a goat (or human/son of god) on an altar or symbolically consuming the flesh and blood of Christ every month as if it somehow bestows boons?. The tale of the binding of Isaac disgusts me: "God says to sacrifice my son... GREAT IDEA GOD! And oh! God gave me a lamb at the last possible second to sacrifice instead! WHAT INFINITE WISDOM!!!".

So tell me exactly how it is that morality leads to religion?

I've read the bible cover to cover and it didn't awaken my conscience through love. It awakened a sense of thankfulness for not being governed by people who are willing to carry out abhorrent, wasteful, and violent actions (as depicted in the bible) in the name of god-love.

I refuse to submit to religiously inspired love because if I do that then I'm at the mercy of all the ridiculous baggage that tends to come included in any actual religion. I love myself and my family well enough without religion, and I somewhat have love for humanity, and that's enough. I don't need what religion offers, so why should I bother?

Jesus is your pal until judgment day. Sure he offers you eternal after-life in paradise, but in the other hand he has a 1-way ticket to damnation. Unless we scramble to live according to Christian laws, according to Jesus we'll be sent straight to hell. This isn't me injecting belief, I'm just relaying what most Christians believe.

It's not, no. I prefer to leave it undefined because it's a term used ad hoc by preachers and pastors at large (it changes with their usage).

Generally though Catholicism has the most rigid internal hierarchy where studying scripture still is somewhat in the hands of the clergy. You confess your sins to a priest and the priest forgives you; he's an intermediary. The priest blesses the blood and the body, and interprets it's meaning for you.

I'm not too familiar with Pentecostal trends, but non-denominational born-again Christians basically incorporate this idea into all of their religious practices. For them God is a relationship, not a religion. They "speak in tongues" and believe that they're communicating directly with god.

The chasm between a Catholic notion of "relationship with god" and the non-denominational notion is massive.

I think the emergence of "personal relationships with god" concepts were specifically in reaction to the fact that the Christian clergy long held a monopoly over reading/interpreting scripture. A new sect which can offer you a personal relationship with god was seen as offering more than just salvation for submission.

I'm fine with this, but I think the difference is that I don't stop there. I can see how this jives with your reliance on empirically observing reality. I rely more on creativity or intuition; that's what leads me to go beyond simple experience. I do really on experience, but I also drape it unto the backdrop of what my intuition tells me about reality. This is connected to the experience of the infinite, which I'll get to later as per your question. — Noble Dust

All I'll say is that intuition can be impressively powerful, but it mustn't be blindly trusted.

I recently wrote this note to myself: "Belief in life means passively leaving yourself open to the possibility that life has a meaning or purpose." Along with your comment above, it's definitely a much more existential approach. The reason I call it belief is because I think it's possible to have a belief in life even within feelings of meaninglessness. I may feel no meaning in my life, but I might still believe in life. But the difference is that I won't necessarily stop there; that's not the end point. Belief leaves me open to experience in a way that can change my perspective in the future. That's why it's a passive, open stance, rather than an active, closed stance of putting the lid on the jar of meaning/truth. This is an important principle to me, especially when it comes to avoiding dogma or fundamentalism, whether religious or atheistic or otherwise. — Noble Dust

I too am open to the possibility that through learning we may one day come to find something we can label with an upper case M (for Chistianity, this would entail meeting god) but I've given up expectation that such a thing is ever going to happen in this life. So, bereft of hard Meaning i've decided to settle for the soft kind, preferably as much quantity, quality, and variety of it as can be found. Higher learning instead becomes oriented around soft meaning. I do take intrinsic pleasure in learning itself, but the utility of the things I learn often facilitate more reliable paths to soft meaning (which again is valuation of temporary things as opposed to the value contained in the infinite).

I didn't mean it needs a Christian framework specifically. My concern is that, when religious principles are taken out of their religious or spiritual context, they lose the inner life that substantiated them. Moral claims need a rich inner life in order to flourish. We live in an age of spiritual poverty, and I think the moral failings in the world right now are a clear indicator of that inner poverty. This may or may not apply to you or me specifically, but it applies to the general state of humanity. — Noble Dust

It sounds like you're saying that religious or spiritual beliefs (and their inner life) are required for moral claims to flourish, and that the spiritual poverty of today is the cause of today's moral failings, but the past was actually no morally superior to the present by any metric. The further back you go the more spiritual things seem to get, but also the more you tend to see widespread "moral failings". Is there a context that I'm missing?

Why? — Noble Dust

Because heaven doesn't resonate with observable truth. As much as I want it to exist, I know allowing myself belief would be an arbitrary or irrational emotional treat.

What I'm trying to point out, is that if life is in fact tentative, and so meaning is also, then your position needs to be equally tentative. It needs to be open to change and correction, but the way you've been arguing has been with such a firm hand that it almost feels dogmatic; I would expect your arguments to be more open and tentative if you see life and meaning in that way. You seem to be invested in convincing me of your position, for instance. Why do so if it's only tentative? — Noble Dust

So we need to separate out atheism from my existential/moral views, and also my existential views from my moral views, because they're not predicated on one-another and are distinct aspects of my mind. I'm an atheist because I find no argument for god's existence satisfyingly persuasive. It's a lack of belief which I defend by criticizing the arguments of others. To convince you to assent to my atheism would be to have you agree that X or Y proof of god is irrational. (I attack the proof of others, but I have no central claim of my own which requires proof).

My existential views pertaining to the subjective value (and therefore meaning) of life (being a subjective interpretation of one's desires) is minimalist in comparison to anything seeking objective meaning. You're free to grab a pick and start digging for spiritual gold, but I'm satisfied with less.

The moral values I promote are functionally universal and the moral arguments I use to promote them employ observation and logic rather than creativity or the spirit. I find it very easy to convince others to adopt my moral positions because I only make moral claims which appeal directly to basic shared values via logic and reason to show how moral positions can preserve or promote those basic shared values. I don't even have to use words like "immoral", "right" and "wrong" because I can frame all my arguments directly in terms of benefit. A good moral tenet is like a technology that allows humans to thrive; it's like offering irrigation to a farmer, you just need to show them and they will want it.

So when it comes to my moral positions, I would be invested in convincing you to adopt my positions if we actually had a moral disagreement. My existential views are something which more or less everyone already assents to in the way they behave. Even asceticism, which is meant to be a rejection of earthly value, is itself an embrace of earthly values: emotional/cognitive fulfillment. When it comes to my position as an agnostic atheist, I'm not actually very interested in convincing you to join me in my atheism, but I am quite interested in refuting any proof's of god that you might offer. My atheism is in fact tentative, but my existential beliefs are not, and my moral views are only as tentative as they contain room for improvement.

The firmness of my existential and moral arguments results from their rational robustness. The firmness of my atheism results from the lack of rational robustness in theistic arguments.

The difference seems to be that an atheistic seeking of the truth remains less open. The classic spiritual seeker, whether studying religions, committing to asceticism, philosophy, meditation, etc etc., is on a journey, and takes the position of a student. I don't get that sense from atheists who claim to be seeking the truth, rather they seem to feel that they've found it. This is what leads to atheistic dogmatism and fundamentalism. I'm not accusing you of that, but I do feel like I sense a little bit of it in your arguments. You seem very settled for one who claims to be seeking the truth. — Noble Dust

How long should I search for the truth of god to the expense and detriment of searching for other truths (non-god related truth)? It's not as if I've suddenly decided there are no good proofs of god arbitrarily. I went looking for them, and I've seen many many different attempts to prove the existence of some kind of deity, and they've all wound up proving irrational. It's like "ghosts"; when I was a kid I was open to the idea of ghosts, but now that I'm older and I've seen the absolute hogwash they call "evidence", I'm so firmly skeptical of "ghosts" that you might as well call me the pope of dogmatic skepticism.

In the face of continuous failure (trying to prove god) it eventually becomes prudent to give up and move onto other things. I'm seeking lower tier truth because that's what I've learned can actually be found.

Regarding your description of your glimpse of the infinite, it doesn't exactly seem like creative energy requires some external force in order to exist. Instead of an external force, a subconscious internal force seems like a more plausible candidate. I'm not saying for certain that your creative energy doesn't come from god, but can you actually prove to a reasonable degree or persuade me that your experience did in fact come from god or the infinite and not your own subconscious mind?

It's an idea borrowed from the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. I personally am not married to it, but I like it. The idea is that freedom is ultimate, prior to being. From freedom springs spirit, and the physical world is a symbol, an objectivization of the spiritual world. — Noble Dust

What if science and technology could offer you potentially infinite life extensions and no upper limit on your ability to increase your freedom? (ignoring that it doesn't).

I'm curious because I'm trying to understand the root of the value you place in the infinite... If infinite freedom and infinite life was your state of existence in this world, would that be a capital M source of Meaning?

Are these the sort of arguments you expect to see in philosophy, though? — darthbarracuda

It would be a wonderful world indeed of all philosophy was rational.

This is easier to see in some lines of thought within atheism. For example, when the atheist is saying the burden of proof is on theism to show it is true and that atheism is the default position, the atheist is really saying that they meet a requirement that allows them to claim that god does not exist. In other words, the atheist is saying they are epistemolgically justified in claiming god does not exist, and in a sense, know that god does not exist. They acknowledge they might be wrong, but, under their epistemological system, they can claim knowledge on the nonexistence of god.

I will go further into depth as needed. — Chany

But most atheists don't say "god does not exist" and claim it as knowledge. When atheists say the burden of proof is on the theist, they aren't really saying they have proof of god's non-existence.

You've brought up the fact that god has an amorphous definition, so let me ask you this (presuming you believe in a Christian god):

Do you lack belief in Zeus?

Do you believe that Zeus does not exist?

Do you have proof of Zeus's non-existence?

Are you an atheist or agnostic when it comes to Zeus?

What about all the other notions of god?

How can the burden of proof be on the soft atheist to disprove the existence of all possible gods if all we really do is reject arguments for specific gods when and where they arise?

Why don't atheists just refer to themselves as agnostic instead of sneakily trying to avoid a burden of proof? It's because we use the terms differently: "atheism" for lacks belief in god(s) (and optionally possesses belief in god(s) non-existence) and "agnosticism" for believes knowledge of god(s) is unknown or unknowable/unattainable.

But they nevertheless believe God exists. They may think they cannot "know" if God exists, but clearly they do think they have some reasons to believe God exists.

If you truly do not believe one way or another, then you are an agnostic, plain and simple. Nobody actually goes around denying knowledge of God and yet believing anyway. That's stupid.

Saying "I don't know God exists" but believing anyway is confusing and dishonest. Why would anyone believe anything they didn't think was actually true? And how can someone actually know that they know something? And why should anyone else care how "strongly" you believe in God or whatever? Why don't we just ask them what their reasons for belief are and go from there? — darthbarracuda

"Agnostic theism" fairly describes a large number of religious attitudes toward the nature of their own belief in god. Reason logic and evidence are concerns of science and (some) philosophy as a means to indicate what to believe is true, but this brand of agnostic belief differs because it uses things which are distinctly separate from reason in order to substantiate or justify a belief. I've seen it countless times; here are some examples of it's framing:

"I believe God exists because I feel him in my heart".

"I believe God exists because faith in God transcends logic".

"I believe God exists because that belief offers me comfort".

Even pascals wager is an example of a theistic argument from an agnostic perspective. "I believe in God because I'm gambling intellectual integrity on a hypothetical afterlife"...

Disbelief is a claim of knowledge. Any sort of belief is held because it is seen as true, even if one is a fallibilist or whatever. — darthbarracuda

Some atheists possess disbelief, some do not. (hard and soft-atheists respectively). What's common between both positions is specifically: lacking belief in god. That said, you can believe something is true without any rational reason to support that belief (agnostic theism and agnostic hard-atheism)

Agnosticism applies to things outside of the god debate. — darthbarracuda

Yes but it has to to with knowability, not belief. It's an epistemic position about whether something is knowable, not whether it is believed.

Which makes them theists, not agnostics. — darthbarracuda

A theist who claims their belief in god is based on faith rather than knowledge is a good example of an agnostic theist.

How am I employing it in a bastardized form? — darthbarracuda

You're ignoring the main connotation of agnosticism which is "skeptical of knowledge", not "abstains from belief or disbelief in god".

Many people are skeptical of human knowledge pertaining to god but they believe in god none the less. Originally agnosticism was a skeptical reaction to theistic claims of knowledge (which rationally leads to abstaining belief) but the new colloquial usage forgets that to focus strictly on the "abstaining from belief" aspect. People who can say "I don't believe in god" (atheism) use agnosticism as a label to try and highlight the fact that they abstain from belief either way, but in doing so they're removing the nuance of it's original thrust (skepticism toward knowledge, not explicitly abstaining from belief).

The bad rap of atheism (people insisting it's a claim to knowledge, rather than a lack of belief or disbelief) is what drove people to try and redefine agnosticism in this way.

Truly, truly, I tell you, the hour is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so also He has granted the Son to have life in Himself. And He has given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out—those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.…John 5:26-29

For me the core of Jesus' teachings will always be that suffering, pain, and damnation await those who do not kowtow to God.

God created Jesus (himself) and then forsook (betrayed IMO) Jesus when he had him crucified in order to make the world right again. (I like to joke that God uses blood magic to do his mysterious works and so dispenses with human life whenever). God is Gargamel and we're the smurfs.

Well now Jesus is paying it forward, and threatens to judge and torture us in a similar manner so that forgiveness can happen (revenge). If Jesus is our heavenly father and God is our heavenly grandfather, Christians are afflicted by inter-generational domestic abuse.

You do realize agnosticism is a position about know-ability and not about existence? The way you're employing it is in a bastardized form.

The difference between hard atheism and soft atheism (also known as strong/positive and weak/negative atheism respectively) is the distinction that you're pointing out, and so it's true that there's ambiguity inherent in the term "atheism". All atheists lack belief in god, but only hard atheists go further to possess the belief that no god(s) exist.

The diagrams still do make sense, they're just less useful if we take atheism to mean soft-atheism.

I consider myself an agnostic (soft) atheist (I don't believe in God and I believe knowledge of gods is unattainable). Gnostic soft-atheist would be someone who doesn't believe in god but believes that knowledge of god is attainable. A gnostic hard-atheist would be someone who believes no god(s) exist and believes that knowledge of god(s) non-existence is attainable.

I condone the genocide of the entire coconut race if I'm honest. Especially the rum.

I do find it interesting though that all the examples of immorality you gave (swearing, atheism, apostasy, polytheism) are all examples of generally shitty moral positions. Since they don't cause any harm, it's impossible (from a progressive perspective) to justify taking any harmful action against offenders.



Affairs and DUI both have the capacity to cause harm, so certainly the basis for us considering them to be immoral is still the harm that they (tend to) cause.

The third example you gave is curious... If someone is so rich that stealing a small amount from them wont have any effect whatsoever, then it's not immoral to do so. In theory if 7 billion people all then did the same action then harm of some kind would in fact be done, but that's a much larger action than just a single small transaction with guaranteed zero effect. That actually does jive with my political views though. If someone really is that rich and the masses can thrive only at the leisure of the elite, exploiting them back becomes a simple matter of reciprocity.

Something I've been trying to get at all along here, is where does your conception of morality stem from? Historically, a lot of the moral framework we all live within is descended from Christianity. That's why I asked about your flowers. How do you even conceive of "lives, rights, and well-being of innocent individuals" as having value or meaning? Why do those things matter? Why do they matter within a temporal life? Those concepts were originally predicated on the eternal, not the temporal. Ripped from an eternal framework and placed within a temporal one, they have no actual content. — Noble Dust

My morality stems from values I derive through experience (values which are shared by others). They matter because that's how we feel about them. Imagine dropping a TV on your foot experimentally substantiates value in avoiding pain (or preserving comfort). The desire to go on living substantiates value in preserving life itself. And finally, the joy that can be found in life substantiates the value of actually living. (the last bit is more existential than moral).

They aren't exactly ripped from an eternal framework, they emerge naturally within our temporal. You can say that Christianity had "don't murder" first, but that doesn't mean Christianity or some other eternal framework is required to have it make sense or be useful. We hold murder to be immoral because if we didn't work to fight against it (along with some other crimes) society would fall apart and our temporal lives would be worsened or worse.

Since a temporary life seems to be what we've got, it's imperative we make the most of them.

I agree on want being present in the human condition in general. But as far as how we fill the hole encapsulating our meaning in life, I revert back to Tillich's faith. That sound's like ultimate concern to me; the problem is that you're equivocating it with something absolute. The fact that you label our own individual search as the meaning of life labels that search as absolute. If it's not absolute, then it's easily over-turned. Which I think it is — Noble Dust

Something can be not absolute and also not easily over-turned. (you've got to overturn pain and pleasure as things people care about)

An ascribing of meaning that is not absolute is always, ultimately, only tentative. So your description of the meaning of life here would only be tentative. How can it be otherwise if it's based purely subjectively? This to me is an equivocation of objectivity with subjectivity. "The meaning of (one's) life" is an objectivity, but you're assigning it subjectively. The Meaning (capital M) should rather be the objective, while the subjective is you or I. — Noble Dust

Life is tentative. We're born bereft of Meaning, we learn, we make meaning, it changes over time, sometimes we lose it, and we die.

You're approaching the question of "what's the meaning of life" as if we can make sense of it from outside of the subjective human perspective. The actual Christian answer to that question is "to worship God" because per the christian doctrine, that's more or less the purpose for which we were created. That's a boring and unfulfilling purpose though. Even if it's eternal I'm not enticed by it.

Unless you've got some God or creator/designer that is external to ourselves, how are you going to find the objective meaning of human life itself? If you're agnostic you should already have given up on this. The only thing that's left is the lower case meaning that we assign to our own lives by virtue of how we choose to live, what goals we set for ourselves, and how we feel about them. Even if there is some creator out there with an objective meaning written down in their pocket, it's not like that meaning should matter to us because we don't have access to it and might not stand to benefit from it.

Right, and I don't think cherry picking is a problem; the phrase just has a negative connotation. I "cherry pick" when I accept Jesus's unconditional love as something I want to emulate, and something I consider deeply True. And then I continue cherry picking when I reject the notion that Scripture is innerant, or that hell exists. I'm not taking the convenient bits, I'm taking the bits that resonate with the part of me that seeks the truth. — Noble Dust

I seek the truth too, but instead of picking what resonates with me (when it comes to truth), I pick what resonates with observed reality. If I reject hell because it doesn't resonate with reality, then I've got to reject heaven too. When it comes to things I value (morally) then I pick what resonates with me. What is generally unobservable (like a hypothetical eternity or after-life) I find myself unable to value from a moral perspective because it's unobservable; unreal.

But you and other atheists philosophize, and you do so from your position of atheism. I really don't see how you can keep saying otherwise. I get that atheism is, formally, a lack of belief in God, that's obvious. But to then say you have no atheistic philosophy is nonsensical. Just because it's a simple lack of belief does not mean you have no philosophical beliefs that relate to your stance of atheism. Lack of belief in God has to profoundly affect how you do philosophy, which it clearly does. — Noble Dust

All of my philosophical beliefs relate to my being an atheist in that none of them incorporate the existence of god(s).

How can I explain this... Imagine a philosopher who based most or all of their philosophy on the Boston Redskins. Imagine that most of the philosophy they typically navigated also had to do with the Boston Redskins... From their perspective, a philosopher who does not base any of their philosophy on the Boston Redskins in appearance has philosophy that is based on the non-existence of the Boston Redskins, but it's not necessarily the case at all. They may base their philosophy on things other than the existence of the Boston Redskins.

Belief in God profoundly affects how people do philosophy, so since I don't believe in God, I don't experience that effect. It only appears as effect because belief in God is the presumed norm.

Once you've glimpsed the infinite, the eternal, it's hard to be satisfied with just the temporal. — Noble Dust

Can you describe your glimpse of the infinite?

explained that in my description of physical reality being an objectivization of spirit. There would be no meaning without Meaning, in this scenario. Lowercase meaning is descended from Meaning. — Noble Dust

I don't know what that means though (objectivization of spirit). I've re-read all your posts on it and all I can decipher about this is that it has something to do with your belief in "the eternal".

Out of curiosity, on what basis might you consider something to be immoral if not harmful?

In other words, if something is not harmful what makes it immoral?

There's simply a lack, so to speak. The cause may become more clear later on, or not. — Noble Dust

I would say we're each born with a uniquely shaped hole (or it grows into a unique shape). Want is present in the human condition in general, regardless of station, but the form it takes can vary greatly from person to person. How each of us goes about filling this hole (even if filling it is only temporary) basically encapsulates what I take to outline the meaning of (one's) life. Finding happiness through love or pleasure or scientific or spiritual enlightenment are all expressions of the same basic principle: human want. We can only apophatically approach or discern these wants individually; subjectively. One person can say that material delights are not a sufficient source for happiness, and another can say that spiritual pursuits are also insufficient producers of happiness.

Studying them would be a good place to start. This is one of the paths of thought that I'm currently hoping to embark on soon. But yes, it's often hard to know how to interpret them. — Noble Dust

What I really meant was that within each religion there is a vast set of doctrines that different groups within the religion all claim to be more important than the other. I know what I would pick as the most sacred parts of various religious doctrines were I a believer (the doctrines/verses that correlate with my moral views), but I would inevitably be cherry-picking my own basket. This is a good function of religion though (religion has some capacity to adapt as is by virtue of what religious groups choose to focus on) because it allows religion to somewhat change with the evolving needs and moral views of it's adherents.

In my youth I was over-exposed to several competing Christian sects, the result is that nothing emerged for me as sacred between them. The thing they all had in common though was damnation of the others. The concept of damnation is what most repels me from religion as a whole.

I'm absolutely no expert at all, but I feel like there's enough particle/wave physics, and theoretical physics out there to at least ask the question of whether nature is self-evident. It's a topic I personally am curious to explore more. — Noble Dust

There's really no philosophy of atheism (any good philosophy that is) because there's nothing to philosophize. Theology is philosophy about god, so atheist philosophy would be about "absence of gods"?

Day 1: God is dead. The priests are running amok. I've contracted syphilis. *cough*...

Atheist philosophy is relegated to the rejection of theological and religious belief/philosophy. I too am quite interested in theoretical physics, but unless theoretical physics (the scientific kind) is used to substantiate theistic belief, we need not employ it for a rebuke. Whether or not the presupposed nature of things we interact with is accurate is one thing (the nature of the material world), but presupposing the nature of something that we don't (unambiguously) interact with is something else altogether (the nature of god).

If we cannot even be sure about the former, imagine the strain required to rationalize the latter.

But who out there is actually implementing this on the political world stage? My question was a bit sarcastic, but that's what I was getting at — Noble Dust

The moral framework I've thrust in this thread is really quite basic. It's main feature is an outline of morality itself: standards and strategies designed to promote human welfare (based on shared human values). This differs from some other moral frameworks which suppose that morality represents a set of unchanging and absolute standards (which tend to come from the will of a perfect creator god). Going further to emphasize the use of empiricism, logic, (and even technology), to alter and improve our existing moral stratagems toward more successful ends basically describes humanism. On the world stage this moral platform is quite persuasive. Politics as a whole is meant to be about human welfare, so let's just say that secular humanism is one of the forces which inform that purpose.

Please forgive my tone there; I don't think I was quite in my right mind when I made that post. It's a tendency of mine. But yes, I would love to hear your reasons for that statement. — Noble Dust

Meaning requires interpretation, and interpretation requires awareness. In a nut shell.

Do you think a temporal life that ends in nothingness is worth living? — Noble Dust

Isn't a temporal life better than no life at all? There's some value there; of course it's infinitesimal next to the infinite. I have a basic question though:

Why is the value of meaning dependent on the value of Meaning?. You said it follows, but from what? Can't meaning exist independent of it's capital cousin?

I wasn't just talking about religious experience in that paragraph, though. I want to be less critical in my tone than I have been in the past in this discussion, but I can't help but feel like this is some classic atheistic "soft-preaching" here; proselytizing the idea that "everyone's religious experience is different and equally valid [but also total bullshit, we just know we're not aloud to say that just yet]". That's honestly how I take this sort of sentiment, so please correct me if I'm wrong. I sincerely hope I'm wrong on that.

For instance, what else is there in religious experience other than flailing in "inspiration of [one's] own personal religious beliefs"? (flailing clearly being a derogatory word that suggests the implausibility of religious experience). So, to my point, I'm not really sure what you're getting at, here. Is religious experience acceptable or condemnable to you? Religious "experience" seems maybe ok, but "flailing" about religiously (whatever that is), is not? What exactly are these precious flowers you speak of? — Noble Dust

There's "valid" from the "does it lead to happiness" perspective, and then there's "valid" from the perspective of science and history. Not all religious beliefs are invalid as sources of happiness (but many are. See: Scientology for examples) and not all religious beliefs are irrational (Jesus' do unto others works whether or not god exists). Beliefs pertaining to the supernatural however are as yet not scientifically or empirically or even theoretically substantiated.

Religious flailing comes in many forms. Sometimes it's spiritual inspiration, sometimes it's dogma in a discussion (not to imply anything), sometimes it's actual flailing on the floor (see: modern evangelical revivalists), and sometimes it's the (to me) arbitrary and irrational moral and political views and actions which leak out of the religious world and into the secular world. When the puritanical abolitionists banned booze in America, that was religious flailing. When we socially and physically persecute homosexuals on religious grounds, that's religious flailing. When one religious person condemns another for not sharing their religion, that's religious flailing. The flowers are the lives, rights, and well-being of innocent individuals who don't deserve the treatment that religion can sometimes prescribe or otherwise render.

I condemn some religious experiences, namely the ones which cause harm to self/others. If a religious person holds beliefs which make them happy without contributing to any harm, why should I expect or want reason/empirical science to dissuade them? Why should I bother?

What if it crosses the borders, and becomes online harassment — Rozylee

Then take action.

report/block/ignore them from your feeds, ban them from your personal spaces. Keep your profiles private.

Well if they deserve "hate", then what makes hateful people so different from the people they hate?

Sure using profanity and issuing threats is different than merely hating someone, but where do you think emotion like hatred tends to lead people? (hint: it ain't toward kindness). If you hate someone, so be it, but morality isn't about justifying hate.

Someone issuing empty threats and using profanity need not be worried about unless they cross some line into harassment. Someone using profanity or issuing an empty threat via anonymous internet comment isn't exactly harassment so much as it is cursory ridicule, but really it's up to internet users to police the public internet spaces they carelessly create.

North Korea might be bat shit crazy as a nation, but they still must have sane military and economic strategists. They can barely stay afloat while in a perpetual 1984 state of faux war. A real war would likely exhaust them very rapidly.

If North Korea actually nuked someone then everyone else, including China and Russia, would lay waste to every strategic target inside of North Korea with nuclear attacks of their own, or they would at least stand by and bow their heads (China and Russia that is).

That said, North Korea cannot ensure the destruction of anyone but SK and themselves so far as I'm aware, and so only SK is really included in the "mutual destruction" resulting from NK aggression.

We dissallow Japan from having a standing army capable of invading another nation (or at least used to, do we still?) because of that whole deal from the 40's. Similarly, we disallow them nukes (we disallow nukes for anyone who doesn't already have any). I'm not entirely sure about the legality of developing anti ICBM technology, but if you're a nuclear armed nation and someone gives the ultimate ICBM countermeasures to your nuclear armed enemies, you're fucked. (but with the numbers of ICBM's available, combined with traditional bombers and nuclear armed subs, MAD is probably more guaranteed than ever before)

If we're talking about military technology though, Japan ain't the prodigy. The western military industrial complex as a whole has a firm grip on the ultimate weapons of today, with the U.S being it's main consumer.

I don't really know what the insular North Korean regime wants. I am certain that the collapse of the Soviet Union provided no window of opportunity because China would almost certainly have countered any invasion.

I also don't know what it will take for them to collapse economically. They have never been a robust economy to start with, and they have endured famine. — Bitter Crank

I know that China has used them for quite some time as an easily exploitable trading partner. Really China is probably the reason why they've been able to make it through extended famine(s) (smuggling gold out of NK is one example). The main weakness of their economy is that A, nobody is permitted to trade with them (China still does it outside of the humanitarian trades knowing it's too economically powerful to be severely sanctioned and they get away with some plausible deniability AFAIK), and B, most of their money seems to get spent directly on the military and their apparatus' of internal political control (preventing growth).

Perhaps china would have been strong enough in the early nineties to prop NK against American backed invasion (I hadn't considered China), but maybe not. We still would have had to face ridiculous casualty rates from the chemical warfare which surely would have been employed.

Side note: I'm sure from China's perspective, they would love for North Korea to grow economically so it could have a trading partner/ally in the region not beholden to western political influence.

What would North Korea gain from using nukes offensively? They want to unify the Koreas, not blow them up...

They're also well aware that if they actually attacked anyone else with nukes every other nuclear armed country in the world would probably take the opportunity to test their submarine based nuke delivery systems (on North Korea).

Maybe we had a window to invade between the collapse of the Soviet Union and 2003, when NK supposedly developed usable nukes, but the ensuing war would have caused millions of North Koreans to die and possibly millions of South Koreans too as every weapon of mass destruction becomes a viable tactic to a collapsing government intent on keeping power by any means necessary.

Nope... We would rather just wait for it to economically collapse just like the soviet union did. Since it managed to get nukes we're pretty much forbidden from ever invading it, hence the cold war like atmosphere which presently engulfs North Korea.

Hey Mac, let me take a whack at it...

"It would be a contradiction from god's perspective to expect humans to understand why he makes them suffer..."

That's how I decipher it...

Wait a minute...

In my opinion, the best neuroscience model of the mind is Karl Friston's Bayesian Brain approach. And that does describe it as a semiotic dissipative structure - http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/The%20free-energy%20principle%20-%20a%20rough%20guide%20to%20the%20brain.pdf

The mind as informational mechanism is all about reducing the uncertainty that a physical/material world has for an organism. So it is all about modelling that is intimately tied to physical regulation. And that is why a lack of such a tie makes artificial intelligence so impoverished - unless it is, as I argue, tied back into human entropic activities as yet a further level of semiosis. — apokrisis

What do you mean by intimately tied to physical regulation (in ways that ANN's cannot be)?. Sensory input is used and encoded by existing ANN's to construct predictive models easily describable as information networks that reduce Frinston's free-energy, they just aren't sophisticated or robust enough to be handed the real-time wheel of their own destiny. Frinston is attempting to gain insight into the nature of how data-networks carrying out semiotic exchanges encode and learn in the first place. That they learn and communicate intelligently is itself the mystery he seems to be investigating, which applies to learning ANN's somewhat equally.

The human mind as a dissipative structure resisting uncertainty in statistical modelling is quite different from biological organisms as dissipative systems resisting thermodynamic equilibrium. The power to resist the second law (steady-state) in the latter is analogous to the power to resist surprise in the former. The power to resist surprise is what the genetic mind, the human mind, and an artificial mind all have directly in common. Resisting surprise from a statistical modeling perspective is fundamental to intelligently sequestering and exploiting engines of dissipation to resist thermodynamic entropy in the first place.

Another conclusion also seems eminent from your argument:


1. The parameters of a free market are informed by market forces
2. Market forces are precisely human (economic) desires
3.b. Some human (economic) desires are moral
4.b. Some market forces are moral
5.b. The parameters of a free market are informed by a moral element

This might not be relevant to your interest, but it seems fair enough to point out.

Cheers!

Edit: Reminds me of democracy... Is the Vox Populi actually just laissez faire in disguise!?! :-O

BUY! BUY! BUY!

Are you sure it's not more a matter of your desperately trying to avoid its conclusions? ;-) — Wayfarer

The issue I suppose is that there's no good grounds for discerning when semiosis does and does not occur such that such that I can be satisfied a sufficiently sophisticated artificial neural network doesn't constitute a self-organizing semiotic system.

Information acting intelligently is at the heart of my interest in comparing ANN's to biological life. DNA has the ability to intelligently build itself from the ground up as information existing in a physical form and manifests it's expressions (the meaning of it's data; the semiotic bit) through very direct physical/chemical interaction with it's environment. Conscious brains however don't have this ability; to DNA, a brain is an artificial computer that it constructed and maintains as a tool to process external stimulus for it's own benefit.

Apokrisis argument is that biological life perpetuates itself at the most fundamental levels by governing dissipative structures: intelligent data governing engines of the dissipation, but human minds themselves cannot readily be described as dissipative systems/structures. All the dissipative structure of human minds could be abstractly looped through the things minds do to keep their bodies alive, but it's all fed back into and reliant upon the dissipative engines governed by DNA, not the mind. We eat and breathe, but to a mind digestion and energy dissemination within the body (and eventually the brain) is automatic and inexorably governed by DNA and the intelligent expressions contained in it's data, not data contained in the mind.

I'm with Apokrisis that we're not about to stumble onto materials which are so perfect that intelligent computers just start building themselves out of it in a way that can compete with things like cell-division, but biological minds don't build their own housings either, only the software which runs on them constitutes the self-organizing property of human minds.

So my conclusion is that there's something inherently lacking in the semiosis + dissipative structure description of life as it applies to conscious minds. In human minds it appears to be strictly semiosis (interactions of data producing intelligence) which is their main feature, while actually governing the engines which resist thermodynamic equilibrium at a fundamental level is entirely left up to the genetic mind. A dissipative system is a great description of biological organisms because the description is true from a thermodynamic perspective, but all the interesting complexity still seems to be locked up in the semiotic bit. I want to understand how semiosis originates and sequesters dissipative structures toward it's own final causes in the first place, and so far the only explanation offered for this is that fundamental material instability/indeterminacy allows data to exhibit intelligent behavior. But how does data contain intelligence? That's what I'm focused on, and is the basis for my comaprison of learning artificial neural networks to human brains and intelligence, and to the anticipatory intelligence contained in genetic data (whose form is far more impressive because it is self-building in addition to self-organizing).

So again, life and mind constantly shed information, which is why they are inherently efficient. But computation, being always dependent on simulation, needs to represent all the physics as information and can't erase any. So the data load just grows without end. And indeed, if it tries to represent actual dynamical criticality, infinite data is needed to represent the first step. — apokrisis

If digital computation requires infintie data to represent actual dynamical criticality (particular physical states and the laws of physics as they are?), don't human minds also need infinite data to do the same? (if so, where do human minds get that infinite data? If not, please disregard)

I can assent to your description of biological life as organized data expressing through material/chemical control channels (the semiotic bit) which maintains, reproduces, and develops itself by intelligently sequestering/creating dissipative engines (the thermodynamic facilitators of perpetual work (including semiotic work?)), and I'm well with you that we're far from reproducing or imitating that level of dynamic self-organizing complexity (in particular, the bit about how biological life builds it's own physical structure from the ground up and how it tends to rely on the non-grainy laws of physics themselves to provide the rules of interaction), but do human minds also exploit physics such that the data stored within them benefits from non-grainy amplifiers (adding NP potential) and such epic and far-reaching bottom up stability?

You've convinced me that DNA based biological life is nowhere near analogous to our highest hopes for ANN's, but you're also convincing me that human consciousness (and the functions of the data contained within the brain) is likewise not analogous to it's genetic underpinnings. Like ANN's, the human mind requires an external intelligence to step in and provide arbitrary instruction to ensure stability and proper function. DNA does this by governing the production and physical effects of some hormones which can also function as neurochemicals...

You mention that a camera cannot learn, but neither can an eyeball. Biology designed better and better eyes through natural evolution, and we design better and better cameras as our understanding grows. As far as data input goes, there's no necessary difference between incoming signals from a biological eye or a mechanical/digital one. In fact, digital eyeballs would probably be far superior to our own. Light enters our eyes and gets focused by the lens onto an membrane/array of light sensitive cells which individually form the pixel of our vision. There's not an infinite amount of data contained in light, and even if there were our eyes only imperfectly capture a finite amount of it at a certain refresh rate. Data being fed into a real brain from an eyeball cuts the connection between physics and information in the same way an artificial camera does because they both turn them into abstract and finite electrical impulses.

I am genuinely trying to grasp how your argument applies to a hypothetical ANN but not the human brain, but given that it is only the growing intelligence aspect of life which I am interested in as a defining feature, to me the fact that genetic biology can utilize the physics of protein folding to essentially encode unfathomably complex data isn't necessarily an issue because these basic biological mechanisms don't directly participate in the processes of human intelligence (they merely underpin it as it's designer and maintainer). The base informational units of the human mind appear grainy, finite, and cut off from physics in the same way the base units of digital information are.

An extremely powerful anticipatory model capable of real-time reaction, (something DNA is poor at) is like a tool that DNA creates for it's own benefit (our brains). DNA puts it's life in the hands of this more useful anticipatory model because letting it direct the whole leads to long term success. If and when we create ANN's with far more anticipatory power than humans, what we might see when we step back could be something not unlike a how a bunch of like minded cells all organize around the maintenance of this one more powerful anticipatory system. (side note: the processor of genetic diversity flows through death and reproduction where successful reproduction (over the long run) is what represents a successful model). So the more powerful and reliable learning machines become, the more humanity will come to rely on them for top down guidance (because we will be more successful in doing so).

I don't expect us to try and install emotional intelligence as an operator of AI's or stick them in human-like bodies (why re-engineer the wheel? Although we will want them to recognize human emotion), instead we will manipulate their base structure in order to guide them toward the completion of tasks we desire (much like how DNA does that for human minds via pain/pleasure/instinctual drives). I can't think of how we might go about doing that just yet, but I also cannot understand why not.

That's an unsupported materialist assumption. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hardly. I've already clarified that laws describe behavior. How we informally use words for convenience hardly amounts to "materialist assumption".

I'm desperately trying to understand your argument (that the machines we build cannot be minds or that the machines (learning machines) we currently build are no where near approaching or approximating minds), but that understanding continues to elude me.

You point out that machines are stable in their individual parts which ensures stable and predictable outcomes, and generally this appears true, but ANN's are themselves built from what amounts to simulated instability in individual neurons which embrace chaotic interaction. A single simulated neuron can exist in a ridiculously large number of different configurations defined and determined by it's weighted connections to other neurons. This gives a single neuron the ability to dynamically influence and be influenced by networks of other neurons in steady-state like informational exchanges that manage to consolidate anticipatory power. Catastrophic forgetting demonstrates this instability very clearly in that such simulated neurons aren't stable enough in their environment to retain what sub-networks have learned because learning new tasks overwrites and destroys critical elements of the psychical network that comprised previous predictive models. (I think it's fair to point out that forgetting - usually not catastrophic - occurs in the human mind as well, perhaps due to similar causes). This is an engineering problem that might not be without possible solutions.

The bottom up stability found in the mechanisms of biological life doesn't exactly get carried across the matter-mind threshold in human minds. An individual cell pulls itself together, cleans itself, generally governs itself (as a physical expression of recorded information and rules of interaction) and also dismantles itself too when it's lifespan is done. That is very impressive, but how does this kind of bottom up stability contribute to the robustness of conscious human minds?

I do understand what you mean when you say there is "mind" operating even before the formation of the brain in a biological organism (you're speaking of DNA as an intelligent and anticipatory force, a description I agree with), but this primordial genetic mind is necessarily separated in many ways from the mind produced by interactions in biological brains. The genetic mind is able to build a brain and program certain autonomic functions (unconscious or hard-wired parts of the brain) and define the basic rules of the system (like the behavioral traits of neurons), but when the brain actually swings into function, the genetic mind can only sit back and watch as it's physical creation records and refines it's own networks of information and generates a mind which exists symbiotically with, but distinctly from, the genetic mind.

So in a way we can both assent to the idea that minds can be intelligently designed so to speak (DNA designs the brain), but what I'm specifically having a hard time with is how our current attempts at simulating minds are as far off base as you say they are? In other words, why is data stored and manipulated by artificial neural networks not analogous to the way biological neural networks also store and manipulate data in participation of creating human intelligence and mind? Hurtles such as catastrophic forgetting are to me indicators that we're not designing neurons and the basic principles of the system intelligently enough to sufficiently increase mental stability (compared to how intelligently DNA can build a brain). I see the recent successes in the anticipatory strength of these models as evidence that ANN's are in fact doing something similar to the biological neurons they loosely imitate.

What am I not understanding? What will prevent us from making progress on solving the top-down stability from fundamentally unstable parts dilemma?