I find that your post is not yielding much light.

If God wants us to know what he is like, then he can do that. And he has — Bartricks

Really.

Note, I am not interested in a psychological or sociological or historical explanation of why it is that Christians typically believe God created the world. — Bartricks

You might find more enlightenment about the matter if you don't insist on only "philosophical" reason.

Well, why do you not believe that God created the world? What justification do you have for this belief?

IF God is omnipotent, who else could have created the world? Some other omnipotency?

The belief that God created the world goes back to the development of creeds (over a fairly long period of time). "I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth".

A lot of what Christians believe is based on their early roots in Judaism. The Jews, per Genesis 1:1, believed that God created the heavens and the earth.

A God-Creator 'works' because we seem to require a beginning to everything, somehow. Big Bang or Fiat Lux.

The more we talk about the nature of God; what God did or did not do; what God is or is not like, etc. the deeper into the indefensible we get. Our claims about God are indefensible because we can't know God. In my opinion (talk about hubris!) God (the Father) is above and beyond our knowing. God (the Son) is the knowable person of God.

Christians chatter and natter on about God (the Father) as if he was as familiar to them as the manager of the local Safeway supermarket. Christians make as many unsupportable statements about Jesus (and the Holy Ghost). Why do they do this?

I tend to think that we are better off NOT thinking that God is all-loving. God might oversee without intervention. Omniscience is a major stumbling block for our alleged free will. If God is all knowing, I'm content thinking that we have zero freedom of action. For that matter, I'm not sure God is omnipotent either. (A limited God presents other problems.)

The problem isn't software. Software and machinery have no agency. They are tools. Whether the tools are deployed for collective benefit, or very individual benefit makes the difference. In the present world, collective benefit seems to be more accidental than intended. Mostly enterprise is directed toward corporate profit.

An axiom of Marxism is "labor creates all wealth". If substituting software and machinery for labor also creates wealth, we could -- if we so wished -- distribute the wealth created by machines among the laborers who lost their jobs.

Labor is an essential part of us; in a myriad ways, the work we do defines us -- positively as well as negatively. I have performed tedious detail work that I would have given to a machine in a flash, had one been nearby. On the other hand, creative work I have performed (not "art") was immensely fulfilling.

In a phrase: People over profit.

evangelists — Jamal

The problem here is more monomania or monotony than evangelism.

I am not an antinatalist despite the grim prospects for generations following in a hot world. However, Shopenhauer1 has done a good job of elaborating the principle that is behind the decision of people to NOT bear children. But hot weather is just the latest pain. Before global warming there were equally bad prospects for suffering.

Maybe the erudite moderators could have come up with something a little more elegant than "life sucks". "Suck" is worn out; as an expression of dissatisfaction, it sucks.

SO, OVER THERE LEADERS WILL RESIGN JUST FOR DOING A BAD JOB? SOUNDS NICE.

Well done, Johnathan Pie.

Isn't there a rule somewhere that says "when you're done, you're done"? Boris is way done. We are sick and tired of Bojo. We're even more sick and tired of Donald. "Sick and tired of..." is sufficient reason for these public trough hogs to retire to a any pigsty they can find. Go away, stinking ghosts of elections past!

Now for balance, we don't want Bernie or Barach back, either. Or any number of fine folks who did their bit and are now done.

Voters' attention spans are the same as everybody else's.

Unless an election is called soon, which seems unlikely if the Tories are in power -- they admit they'd be wiped out -- the next one is 3 years away. In just a few weeks, our election will be over; people appropriately voted based on conditions in 2022, not 2019.

Rapidly rising inflation is frightening to everyone whose income is marginal. They are not in danger of losing access to luxury goods, they are in danger of losing access to necessities -- milk, gasoline ($6+ a gallon in California), diapers, heating, decent food (fruits, vegetables, etc.) and so on.

Voting for conservative will not change the economy for the marginal income groups (which are composed of quite a few million people). Voting for the Democrats will not change the economy for the marginal income groups either. Our political system (like some others) repeatedly offers empty choices to the electorate.

Whoever is elected will be reliably committed to the articles of faith of the dominant capitalist paradigm. The economy is not democratic -- it's plutocratic. The millions of extremely rich, very rich, and merely rich income groups will be well taken care of. Fuck the food stamp crowd; fuck the must-drive-old-car-crowd; fuck the must-work-3-jobs crowd; fuck the priced-out-of-housing crowd; fuck 'em all!

Before then though, I expect the GOP in the US to ride into power through inflation-concerned voters and try to pull off the exact same thing, perhaps more successfully. — Mr Bee

Shhhh, don't say such things--it might encourage them.

The DEM vs GOP polls are already sending me into the slough of despond.

Here's a nice, concise update from the Financial Times on how Brexit is panning out, especially under the Truss.

Here's a clear, concise report from the Financial Times on how the 'promise' of Brexit is being fulfilled under PM Truss.

As to your counter point here that young composers are indeed carrying on without resorting to form fetishism — Noble Dust

No, no -- I meant their compositions are fresh and young -- as opposed to old and stale.

I could not make sense of Soundgarden vs. Breaking Benjamin.

This may be equally incomprehensible: Below is a large serving of Vivaldi musical matter--almost 4 hours worth, and that just concerti for cello. Just bounce around and sample bits here and there... It's all very similar. Stravinsky said that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 400 times. I'll take the worst of Vivaldi over the best of Soundgarden.



There are contemporary composers whose works are fresh and young which have not deteriorated into mere form : Gorecki, Pärt, Adams, etc. The first cut on this YouTube album is Spiegel in Spiegel -- Mirror in Mirror by Arvo Pärt.



New ideas eventually run out of steam, whether we are talking about painting, music, restaurants, car design, hog breeding, reading instruction methods, and everything else.

Ah. Got it.

The reason God isn't real is not because He doesn't exist! — Agent Smith

come again?

You don't need a list from me. I think you are a competent reality tester.

Sherlock Holmes and the old fashioned Celtic 'fairies' are not real because (per Clark #2) they have no existence independent of mind. Zeus, Brahma, Allah, God, Beowulf, Hogwarts, et al are hatchlings of the imagination. They are not real -- they have no existence apart from mind.

The reason why I bring up these "non-existent beings" is that they may be very important to us (Jesus, for example). Their place in our imaginations can be very central -- and may be as real as actual persons--maybe more so.

That we value what are imaginary beings is... real. It a paradox.

Of course Sherlock Holmes exists (is real) as a character created by A. C. Doyle. Just don't count on him solving your mystery. Contra Clark, the imaginary is "real" (as imagined reality. Middle Earth, like any well-done imaginary world, feels "real" (despite it being 100% fantasy) because it is consistent within it's imaginary territory."

4. Fairies are not real — Agent Smith

So, what am I, chopped liver?

Having objective independent existence — T Clark

Your #1 definition is closest to what "real" sound like to me. The expansive physical properties of the world which make up the 'solid ground of our being' are real. Our "reality" is tested on those properties. "Testing" has, over time, reduced the scope of the "imaginary world" of spirits. True enough, many people count spirits as real, but fewer now count on their alleged power--physical, chemical, and surgical cures beat out magical cures.

proximity, relation, care, and capacity — schopenhauer1

clarifies the matter.

Do you think that we have an obligation to save wild animals in a natural disaster? — schopenhauer1

There are some considerations to be made.

a) is it possible to save x wild animals?
b) if saved, will there be habitat for them
c) humans come first; if the choice is between saving an eagle or antelope vs. saving a human, save the human first. Then if it's possible, address the animals' survival.

If one saves a bear by giving it water during a severe drought, then what? Are we going to care for the bear indefinitely? If one feeds animals during their hard times, they will generally stick around. They may not practice higher reasoning, but they will figure out where the best deal is -- starve in the woods or survive by eating what we give them. Bears and people in close proximity usually doesn't end well.

]Some people feed deer in Minnesota; even if they are not starving, People like to watch the deer and they like our food. The are particularly fond of flowers like impatiens and begonias (definitely NOT native plants) and everything in the garden. Ordinary field corn just isn't that interesting in comparison, it seems. And some people feed deer during starvations times--cattle feed, basically.

There are groups who take care of raptors that are injured, and then release them back into their habitat. What if the habitat is gone? Eagles are not vegetarians; will there be enough live game for them to eat and raise chicks? They need animals larger than mice -- like rabbits, large fish, etc.

Ok — schopenhauer1

So that's settled. Fill your bird feeder with big earthworms so the northern forest survives.

But I am saying humans have obligations to them, because their survival is largely in our hands.

Because were are not kings with dominion over the earth with all animals as our subjects for protection. That's an odd and antiquated way of looking at it. — schopenhauer1

In a perverse way we do have kingly dominion over the earth. Heard about global warming? Heard about chemical contamination? Heard about soil exhaustion? Heard about 8 billion humans? Heard about Silent Spring?

Because we had the capacity to change global climate and everything that depends on a stable climate AND because we used that capacity, we have become responsible.

Because there is a distinction with the "natural world" and the human world. The natural world is that which does its thing without human (beings who are self-aware and can reason) — schopenhauer1

I wish we could reason better, and act on the results.

I used to think that the human and natural worlds were discreet, separate; it does its thing, we do our thing, and the two do not communicate. Take the trillions of bacteria in your gut: They are not you and they are part o the "natural world". It turns out that the relationship between these many species and us is far more interrelated and intimate than we would like to think.

As a species, we are part of the natural world, sharing DNA with everything from bacteria on up. Why are fungal infections difficult to treat? Because fungi and animals have a bit too much biology in common. Drugs that kill fungi negatively affect animals too.

Without the rest of nature, we'd be dead--starved, suffocated, sickened by all sorts of attackers.

Bears in the northwest help forests grow. How? The catch a lot of salmon, take it into the woods, and eat it/digest it. The bears bring specific nutrients to the forest floor through their kind of messy eating habits. Wolves help forests grow too. They eat animals that chew on trees, like deer and moose (elk). Too few wolves, too many munchers. The forest starts shrinking. Adding wolves results in fewer trees killed; hence, a thicker forest. [This has been extensively demonstrated on Lake Superior's Isle Royale, a 200+ square mile island 18 miles off the shoreline of Minnesota.]

We introduced 'exotic' earthworms into various states around a century ago. They have been working their way northward. These are the big nightcrawlers that people use for fishing bait.). They are now chewing up the leaf-litter under northern hardwood forests. They digest the leaves, of course, and leave worm castings behind. That's fine. But without the leaf litter, the thin soil in northern forests erodes too fast, impoverishing the soils.

Everything we do, and everything that happens in the natural world, including the affairs of gazelles, eventually affects everything else.

I suspect that what the "Western world thought about energy and energy transfer" was confined to a fairly small number of people. It isn't that the 99% who weren't thinking about energy were simpletons. Rather, modern uses of energy (radio, electric light, etc.) didn't require any thinking at all. They were presented as boxes with knobs that you could turn on, a switch on the wall you could flip. Voila! Sound and light! Amazing.

I may be an idiot because I was astonished to learn (recently) that "electrical energy does not travel though the wire as sound travels through air but instead always travels in the space outside of the wires. This is because electric energy is composed of electric and magnetic fields which are created by the moving electrons, but which exist in the space surrounding the wires." This is excruciatingly non-intuitive. "Of course electricity travels right down the wire!" one would think.

During the 20th century, the particles and energies that compose the atom were discovered. I don't know whether the nature of atoms is intuitive or not -- it's pretty much over my head. The electron and energy I sort of get, ut the subatomic Higgs Boson giving mass to objects--nope, totally incomprehensible.

That's all OK: Most people (most of the time) can go through life innocent of that kind of knowledge. Not saying they should, but they can.

Most of us are dealing with the product-form of the theory. There may be quantum actions going on in my phone's processing chip, but I do not need to know about it. Like as not it would take me forever to understand those quantum goings on. We quickly adapt and soon take for granted world-wide networks (the Internet).

Once war was declared between the Allies and Central Powers in 1914, English ships immediately severed critical cables between Europe and England to make sure that Germany and the AH Empire would be would be incommunicado with the rest of the world. So, 105 years ago, [at least some] world-wide networks wee already routine.

intra-wordly affairs — schopenhauer1

was that supposed to be '-wordly' or '-worldly'?

Words, words, words! Yes, from 'wordly' affairs we may, might, should, would resign. How many times have I told a tedious pontificator on National Public Radio or the BBC to SHUT UP! and turned the radio off?

As for the world and its affairs, I am not quite done.

discuss how to combat it in a way by which the corporate and political elite suffer the least, and the common man is made to bear the cost — Tzeentch

This is the way our world works. It's not a conspiracy; it's in the DNA of ruling class behavior.

Perhaps separation is the problem with the American Ayn Rand. She is a reasonably successful writer -- by which I mean her books are at least quite good, and people continue to read them decades later. I don't especially like her approach to life, her philosophy, or the philosophy and approach to life that people who adore her politics profess. But her books are separate from her followers, or from herself (when she was still alive).

Some artists are drunks, drug addicts (William Burroughs comes to mind), hateful bastards, dishonest, fakes, and so on. We like them because of the art they produce, in spite of their sometimes dissolute personal lives. (The artists are the ones who suffer; we should be compassionate.).

This issue tends to be more common than we thought.

I still think we should separate the works and the authors. Probably, the personality of the author is not good but his books are brilliant. — javi2541997

Yes. In principle, I think we should separate the work and the author. Or, the politician/producer/coach...and his sex life. Why shouldn't we let someone's personal life define their public life?

We buy the book to derive pleasure (or instruction). We are not buying the book as an endorsement of the author's private life (which is private after all. Most people want to be in public without some aspect of their private past being used to discredit an unrelated achievement.

Politicians, producers, professors, etc. are voted for (or not), funded, or hired on the basis of their ability to produce results. If the politician has a string of affairs, but is an effective politician delivering the results voters wanted, what is it to the voters that he was lecherous? John F. Kennedy was much more active sexually than the public was aware of. This is as it should be.

The NYT claims that 201 powerful men were bright down by #ME TOO. Powerful men, or powerful women, are powerful usually because they are productive and influential in their field, not because of their sex lives. James Levine was fired in 2018 after 40 years of conducting the NY Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (and the Boston Symphony and Munich Philharmonic) because of allegations of his having had sex with young (male) musicians. Some of the 'incidents' go back 50 years!

I can disapprove of the sexual relationships other people have without it determining how I rate their professional performance.

No question (philosophical or otherwise), just your (mis)reading of speculative essays by a novelist-dramatist. So why start a new thread? — 180 Proof

He claims to have only a casual interest in philosophy. Sort of like me.

Once upon a time, long ago, I read Camus and Sartre. I haven't had any desire to return to their books.

everyone was faced with the question of 'suicide' whether they liked to admit it or not — introbert

Oh to be young and angsty again! No, I don't think everyone is faced with the question of suicide. One could just as easily say that everyone is faced with the question of living, whether they like it or not.

God is dead. Or what?

"God is dead" (German: Gott ist tot; also known as the death of God) is a widely quoted statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche used the phrase to express his idea that the Enlightenment had eliminated the possibility of the existence of God.

wiki

I don't know if God ever existed, let alone died, but I'm pretty sure that if he does exist, he was able to survive the Enlightenment and Fred Nietzsche.

I'm talking about venereal diseased Don Juans to hospitals, disorganized anomics to psychiatry, drug addled to rehab, the deviant to corrections, the list goes on. — introbert

What are you going on about here?

It seems like the death of God in the minds of the people will feed the expanded mystical body of Christ in all its extremities, ironically giving God new life. — introbert

Are we, perhaps, possibly, out of our depth here? I know I am.

has become more and more susceptible to degrees of corruption that has become so widespread in current society as to be normalised, go uncriticised... — Deus

Humans have been corruptible from the beginning (write in your preferred date here ______________ I doubt that corruption has been "normalized" or gone "uncriticized". Unchecked? It's never been checked very well.

These are essentially new problems that society is facing but the old ones also have made their way unchanged from 200 years ago or more — Deus

200 years? That's just yesterday. We do have a few new problems (global warming, for instance) but most of our problems have equivalents in any time period we might look at.

The inability of man to think for himself — Deus

People are as able (or not) to think for themselves as they have ever been

I am not especially sanguine about our collective future, but I am reasonably confident that people are operating now with pretty much the same capacities they have always operated with, which means that we will tend to be a day late and a dollar short most of the time. We developed the ability to create problems that we do not seem to have the ability to solve. Perhaps big brains and abstract thinking aren't all that advantageous after all.

We aren't evil; we are smart and wise (once in a while) -- just not quite smart and wise enough.

It's called 'aristocracy'. It's the default system of government of which capitalism is a manifestation. The alternative is the communal ownership of wealth which is disgusting, as every schoolboy know. — unenlightened

you beat me to it, but YES.

The USA has an untitled aristocracy of heirs and entrepreneurs who began accumulating about 15 minutes after they landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620 (figuratively speaking). Land was the basis for the first big fortunes, especially when speculation was rampant. Agricultural production produced by slaves was a major wealth builder. After that, minerals (petroleum, among others) and manufacture produced great wealth. It still does.

Manipulation of money (a buck, a yen, a ruble, or a pound) and its various derivatives is a major source of wealth growth -- you have to be pretty flush to even begin that game.

Getting and holding wealth seems to be the point. A man whose assets less debts is maybe a quarter million dollars isn't wealthy, but can weather more storms than somebody without a pot to piss in. A man with 3, 30, or 300 billion dollars is practically no safer than a man with 1 or 2 billion dollars.

So, Jesus, the good steward provides for his family's well being and can help a few poor people, but a rich man owns most of Jerusalem and won't be getting into heaven.

I've played with these themes before, but we as individuals in this society have already lost. — schopenhauer1

"In this society" or in any society?

We play out the game other people have designed from a technological, economic, and political point of view. — schopenhauer1

Yes, we internalize it so it seems like our own game.

Being born into a framework where you have self-awareness AND you (the self-aware creature) cannot possibly know the hows and whys that sustain your being, is already an insurmountable setback. — schopenhauer1

Except that we can know the how's and why's, can't we? Not that knowing will automatically enable us to overcome. Maybe the truth will make us free. It depends...

Political democracy without economic democracy is a rigged sham — 180 Proof

100%!

I’d much rather find voluntary means of coordination. — NOS4A2

Sure thing! All you need is a sparsely populated world of hunter-gatherer bands composed of a few dozen people at most.

It could be as you suspect that states are now and always have been conspiracies against free individuals and small groups. In the present age (consisting of the last 5,000 years) states certainly have been conspiracies, especially more recently. On the other hand, larger populations don't exist in close proximity without regulation (the state), else one has constant violent turmoil.

There are people who think that the state preceded agriculture. They propose that some ambitious creative types introduced agriculture and village living as a means to the end of creating a parasitical state living off the labor of peasants. The book is Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott, 2018.

I don't know what you are like. What are you like? Are you constitutionally incompatible with densely organized and thickly populated statist societies? Are you a renegade? Are you a street-smart anarchist warrior? Or are you a typical guy who happens to be unusually peeved by the demands of others in the form of the state?

Hey, I don't like overbearing organizations either, be they states, corporations, non-profits, religious organizations (overbearing religious organizations are especially bad), kindergartens, book clubs or block clubs, or individuals. Who does?

States are essentially the organized means of exploitation imposed by the conquering class upon the vanquished — NOS4A2

That is true, but it doesn't exhaust the utility of the state for projects launched by the vanquished class of people. In a functioning society, even one made up of the vanquished, people coordinate their efforts; land is protected from floods; houses are built to a minimum standard; food is produced and distributed; literacy is acquired, etc. Sometimes the coordinated efforts run counter to the interests of the ruling class (literacy and political activity for example).

Conquest may be step 1, and if you exterminate the vanquished there will be a longer period of peaceful obedience before your own people develop divers desires and begin to organize themselves to acquire them.

Total control is very difficult to maintain for long. What applies to our best free and democratic efforts also applies to our worst, dictatorial efforts: The people get tired and sloppy; people are persistently devious; we find ways to resist. Before long, things fall apart.

I like "make a decent living". In 2000, the president of the U of MN agreed with one of the unions that $16 was a minimum living wage. two decades later, a minimum living wage would a good deal more, given inflation, depending on where you live. In the upper Midwest 31,000 per year might do it; in New York, 41,000 would be needed for an individual. For a family of four, something closer to $100,000 would be needed.

The other part, "regardless of what you do" might be tougher to pull off, because people (especially the upper middle class) tend to be quite wedded to the idea that certain jobs should get much more income--professions, especially. The reasons why the professions are well paid (college professors, lawyers, doctors, etc.) is that they worked very hard (in the early 20th century) to establish themselves as closed shops with steep entry requirements. It isn't that college professors or lawyers, doctors, dentists, etc. are worth what they are paid -- it's that they have managed to limit the supply. (There are more lawyers than there are jobs, happily,)

It might be more useful to pay people on a scale of how unpleasant their work is, rather than how limited the personnel supply chain is. The dirtier the job, the higher the pay -- rather than the reverse.

shoot the neighbours if they walk onto his lawn, set up a gun-nest and take out a few dozen people. Randomly or to a pattern. -- You can't find this much happiness in other countries — god must be atheist

Silly me! How did I fail to notice these splendid features?

Nuanced forms of socialism could be one way, the other is to accept capitalism as the best we have although not perfect. — Deus

Capitalism does not approach the low bar of "not perfect". There are several countries that are doing well with governmental / economic systems that include "socialistic" elements. (They are all capitalist, but have incorporated a reasonably robust social welfare system.) Accuulation of wealth at the expense of the working class is still the name of the game in these enlightened states (Norway, Germany, France, etc.), but at least th well being of the people as a whole has been given some consideration -- as opposed to the American system which is intensely capitalistic, and "drop dead if you can't hack it".

there could not be a form of government that embodies Marx’s system without resorting to some form of liberty denying authoritarianism — Deus

I disagree that a liberty-denying authoritarian system is unavoidable or inevitable -- while granting that often enough we have opted for, cooperated with, eagerly supported, or did little to prevent, tyranny. Nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind, per E. Kant.

One form of marxism that has been proposed is 'industrial democracy'. It's DeLeon's American plan. DeLeon thought that democratic means should be employed to achieve socialism IF the appropriate institutions are available. He thought that they were available in the last quarter of the 19th, first quarter of the 20th centuries. The key piece is wide-spread organizing of industrial unions plus public education, political activity, and elections. A fully organized working class (which composing the workforce) would have the power to compel deep political and economic change -- backed up, of course, by the imposition of sit-down strikes (denial of labor, denial of production).

108 years on from DeLeon's death, we know that his plan was unsuccessful, but not for lack of a bloody revolution.

Why is this simpler than having workers have a few board seats? I think that’s at least less extreme. — Xtrix

You can give the workers a few board seats if you want to, I don't care.

The thing is, though, the drive for profit for the few--regardless of consequences--is leading (and has led) to fatal consequences for the many, Making money is the corporate raison d'être. There's no end-point to it.

There's no easy way to convert the system from manufacture for profit to manufacture for need.

I for one stand corrected.