Usually they go in for thanks and perhaps the needs of others. — iolo

When they go into the need of others, they are still begging. Not for themselves (and I never stated that the begging is always and only for the benefit of the person doing the begging; you assumed it along the conversation at one point or another, without indication), but still, they ask god to help their children, parents, community members, the world, in one aspect or another. This is asking, begging, praying, and without it a prayer is not a prayer.

You say a prayer can involve thanks. If it only involves thanks, then that's thanksgiving. And that hardly ever occurs. When we sit down to eat, even then we don't only just thank the lord for the bounty; we ask him to bless it. That's what makes it a prayer.

They might, though. To say ‘miracles can’t happen’ as matter of principle verges on superstition of another kind, as it put scientific orthodoxy in a role previously assigned to religious authority. — Wayfarer

You dressed up the facts in a different clothing... you used differently slanted words to describe one of the tenets of the philosophy of science. It is one of the fundamental beliefs of scientific thinking that everything that happens can be explained rationally, without supernatural influences.

Yes, it is a tenet, and an underlying principle. You say it's wrong to reject the underlying principles of religion on a scientific basis, because science uses an underlying principle too.

This I can't debate. You are right about that. But you have to commit to one or to the other, because you can't commit to both. I commit to science. It appears, you commit to the power of the supernatural.

So be it. Please don't tell me that I am wrong in my belief; and I won't tell you that you are wrong in your belief. I just won't rely on someone to cure my blindness by touching me, and I don't believe that a corpse can be brought back to life by willing it. You believe that, and good for you.

The "miracle" is that there are millions who believe the same things you do. Philosophically speaking, nobody can fault them for that. Rationally speaking, the world would look very funny if things were run on the principles of religion.

It’s weird, yeah, but that’s because we don’t usually talk about empty sets, because there’s almost no practical need to. — Pfhorrest

... strike "becasue there's almost no practical need to" and replace it with "because it blows our theorem to pieces making minced meat out of it."

Pfhorrest, at some stage one has to suppose that the unwillingness to learn displayed here is wilful. When one reads:
Years of indoctrination in the wrong logic hasn't touched me. I hope it never will.
— god must be atheist
the only sensible thing to do is to walk away. — Banno

Banno, the preceding page that has posts since the post of the above quote shows that I am not stupid, or unwilling to learn. It ought to show you the error of your way of reasoning. It is not my "unwillingness to learn" that is the stupid thing around here; the "stupid" was the ill logic that PfHorrest was trying to teach me. You, PfHorrest and CreativeSoul have argued a page worth preceding this post of mine, without resolution. Because, basically, if you stick to your wrong guns, and you are emotionally committed to stick by them, then you can't be convinced of your wrongness in logical terms. And I put it to you, Banno and PfHorrest, that you two are committed emotionally to the wrong argument.

What happened here? This:

PfHorrest showed me a Venn diagram that was self-contradictory or nonsensical. When I told him that, he said, "forget the Venn diagram".

Then later CreativeSoul pointed out to you and to PfHorrest that to have everything red in a box, you must have at least on thing in the box, because nothing (in case of an empty box) can't be red. You two, PfHorrest and Banno, tried to deny this with logical arithmetics, which was a futile and -- between us -- unthinking move.

This is where the impasse occurred, and I saw this happening, yet you, Banno, and PfHorrest, THOUGHT OF ME IN A VOCALIZED (WRITTEN) WAY AS THE STUPID ONE WHO IS UNWILLING TO LEARN, whereas what happened was that I saw the error of your ways, which you two are still unwilling to see or to admit to.

I pulled out of this futile thread, because you are unwilling to admit to obvious facts, and I was actually hurt and dismayed and filled with bitterness when YOU TWO, BANNO and PFHORREST called me stupid (not verbatim, but in so many other words).

Which means, in effect, that nothing happens that science cannot explain in principle. That's how it works out. — Wayfarer

With the exception of miracles. Miracles are the direct effect of god circumventing the laws of the universe.

Miracles can't be explained by science.

But scientists and atheists are on the opinion that miracles don't ever happen.

‘Miracles are not against nature, only what we know about nature’ ~ St. Augustine. — Wayfarer

St. Augustine also believed that having slaves was a good thing, and having those who refused to convert to Christianity spiked on a stake or burnt alive underwater was a good thing.

Your appeal to authority may appeal to you, but it has no philosophical weight. And this is a philosophy website, not a site to promote religion (other than on rational, philosophical grounds).

In my opinion, and in yours, miracles are signs of god, so if they are not supernatural, and they have no signs of impossibility about them, then by definition they are not miracles. For instance, raising from the dead by nothing other but sheer will, or healing the blind by nothing other than placing a hand, are miracles. Their only explanation is intervention by a supernatural being, god namely. I hardly would believe that you would argue against that.

So are miracles compatible with natural forces, like St. Augustine said, or are they the acts of a supernatural, of god? Clearly, they are acts of god, so St. Augustine was clearly wrong with his false beliefs.

Wouldn’t it be fair to say, though, that despite being forced to live “as if” they never gave up their faith, never gave up what they were hardwired for, despite being forced to live a lie. — Brett

Yes, I guess that would be fair to say. My point is that from their behaviour nobody could guess truly what their hardwire is. Many of them were devout Christians, and many of them were Jew-hating Nazis, and they both had to hide their hardwire. Many of them were Jew-hating Nazi Christians, too. And some of them, a minority, were atheists with no racist undertones in their hardwire.

You seem to be desperately hung up on gods and dictionaries. I'm not. Very few of those who have gone in for prayer have been asking for anything for themselves, surely? Look in your dictionary for thee word 'may': we are all free to use it. — iolo

You assume too much, my friend. I did not consult a dictionary; I know the English language.

What you are saying is that you go away from the commonly accepted meaning of the words when you speak or write English. To you "pray" does not mean pray; it means something totally different.

How on Earth do you suppose to communicate with your own species if you decide to use the words outside their meaning?

You've boggled your mind. You think speaking in tongues is the proper way to address issues on a philosophy website. At least that's what you are advocating when you say you go away from the dictionary meanings of words when you use them.

Which means, in effect, that nothing happens that science cannot explain in principle. That's how it works out. — Wayfarer

Hehe. so the holy triniti does not happen because theists don't know how to explain it.

The recorded and documented 238 logical self-contradictions in the New Testament can't be explained by theists, so the New Testament is smafu.

That's also what you are saying, Wayfarer.

If you can't explain something, there is still the possibility of an explanation. We just don't have it.

Of course extremely biassed people can't accept that, because they are not philosophers,they are devout religionists.

Just like if you look at a photograph of the statue of liberty, you have not actually experienced the statue of liberty in its essence. You have only seen an image of the light reflected from it. — Yohan

I suggest you get the essence of the Republic by Plato. You don't have to read the entire danged book itself, just Google it.

You are a brilliant mind: you reinvented the wheel that was first described 2500 years ago, and constantly remindered. This is actually brilliance, to come to the same conclusion as Socrates, without prior knowledge of his teachings. Well done. (I am NOT being facetious.)

Some religions get updated. Not often, but they do. "The Book of Mormon" is one example, as is "The New Testament" and "the Holy Koran".

Religions are codified in ancient, unchanging scripts.

iPhone OS is codified in C++, and constantly updated.

If religious scripts had been written in an AI fashion using some computer program or even just a similar type of self-changing script, they would be updated, too.

In a Simpsons episode Spinoza beats Jimi Hendrix in ping pong in a match in heaven, and a passing God with Homer on his side, comments, "don't get discouraged, Homer; 9 out of ten new religions fail in their first year of operation." This, in response to Homer retunring to church-going on sundays, and sleeping through the entire ceremony loudly snoring loudly and obnoxiously, dreaming the sequence in heaven (apparently and facetiously meant as a new devinely inspired form of worship.)

For those who are not in the know: Jimi Hendrix made a passing remark on a talk show that since everything is electric, maybe they should make an electirc church. This interview was recorded around the same time that he published the record album that shook the world and took it by storm, "Electric Ladyland".

Socrates famously argues that all wrong is done through mere ignorance of what is right; everyone means to do right, they just might be wrong about what that is. Though my position is subtly more nuanced, I lean in that direction myself. Weakness of will is I think the only factor Socrates misses; we sometimes do things we think are wrong out of weakness to do what we mean to do, too. — Pfhorrest

Again, I agree. I think what you mean by weakness of the will is a tendency to give in to the wrong philolsophy / ideology when we are confronted with a choices to make between what feels right for us and what feels wrong for us, while the "wrong" has its own fringe benefits.

My solution to this conundrum? Nobody sells his or her own soul to the Devil. We, humans, instead, rationalize our decisions that are incompatible with our moral stands, and off we go merrily.

Yes. But can it only be “as if”? Can one live it as real and override what you’re hardwired for? Assuming we’re moral creatures (you may or may not agree) were quite capable of not acting morally, so going against what we’re hardwired for. — Brett

Yes, I do believe as well that we are moral creatures.

And yes, one can live a life, an entire life, in an "as if" state. Living in an oppressive communist regime taught me that. Most of the generation of my parent's age lived a lie. They were, well, you know, with a statistical spread, all religious, to the day they died. And hardly any one of them openly worshipped their god. They openly denied their own gods. THE RAISING OF FAMILY AND SURVIVAL OF THE INDIVIDUAL WAS STRONGER A MOTIVATION THAN TO DECLARE ONE'S OWN HARDWIRED (AFTER AGE 9 OR SO) PHILOSOPHY AS TRUE.

The generation that followed, me and my brethren, were all-out atheists, thank god.

This was not the first, not the last time in history where one had to deny his or her own hard wire. Pot Pol comes to mind. And the age of spread of Christianity over most of Europe outside the ex-territories and domains of the Holy Roman Empire in the middle ages.

If someone, with full knowledge and full consent, does something against their true conscience, the only way to get out of the situation is to do something good that is greater than the evil done. If you put your crime on someone else (Jesus) and sing Amazing grace, or put your crime on everyone else and watch the movie Home, you are screwed — Gregory

This is a highly humanocentric view of the universe. Aside from your being right at the same probability rate as your being wrong, the thing you described is of very little concern to the universe as a whole.

While you maintain that you are materialist, this what you wrote and I quoted can't be verified as true unless you pull in some supernatural element, such as "justice prevails", or "karma catches up with you".

The first thing debateable of course is how you define evil. If it is something that is bad, then you can show of any evil deed that to someone else it was not only not evil, but a beautiful thing to create, to do, or to happen.

fundamentalist Catholic — Gregory

This I never thought would be printed. But everything under the Sun comes to pass, I reckon.

He is a fundamentalist Catholic who thinks all philosophies that don't agree with Thomism can be lumped into one theory. — Gregory

Well, in a way he is right. All philosophies that are different from single philosophy can be lumped together. "Not X" is the lump, if the philosophy is X.

The assumption isn't that wearing a dress makes you a woman. T — Harry Hindu

I'm old enough to remember, when people took exception to women wearing pants. "Who wears the pants around the house in your house?" Then came the men with long hair, and then later with earrings, and women started to wear cucumbers in their pants.

By this time, nobody gave a hoot that the majority of the people in a certain well-known country carried weapons, and were drunk or high on drugs at the same time.

Eventually we will all wear diapers, and defacate in each others' lattes and plates of soup, all due to gender identity boundary desruction issues, and then, in addition, because of PC, we will be forced to drink the blood of living creatures. The whore of Babylon shalt then in those times rise from the east, and throughout the land there shalten be a great rubbing of parts.

It's interesting, yes. But I do worship matter. Every object around is my idol. It's fun! — Gregory

Ooooo....kay... (I slowly back out, making no sudden moves.)

I think the universe is about justice. — Gregory

I agree. More precisely, the universe is about corn crop futures in the nineteen-eighties, affecting oil prices in south Lebanon, which had its reverberations in Chilean grape exports to Canada. DAT's what the universe is really all about. Injustices of price cartel agreements.

but during death there <a href="http://can.be.an" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">can.be.an</a> eternity. Paradoxes — Gregory

This is the chemical composition of acetophenone. Or maybe the protein sequence and its markers in the DNA.

↪Mapping the Medium I found the study here — frank

I found it in Scientific American, too.

Much to my surprise, no duplication of the experiment has been reported.

This smells funny. Like acetophenone.

How about shared hallucinations? — Athena

Is it conceivable that there is only a limited number of hallucinations a person can experience?

I think there is much to be said for such an activity if you don't ask for anything. — iolo

So just tell god simply that you love him, or something? If you don't ask for anything, it is not a prayer.
"to pray" is to beg, to ask for, to beseech. Examples: "I pray you lay down your weapons before I smite thee." "I pray for no rain today on my wedding day, the seventeenth in numerical sequence."

Matter is not at all sacred for us. You pray to something sacred, or you prevent defiling it, or you speak highly of it, or you worship it.

No materialist worships matter. That's very interesting, isn't it?

One thing is missing: the supernatural. Materialists and atheists believe that the world operates without any supernatural power's intervention.

It's a belief all right, but it's not religion. Religion necessitates the belief in supernatural powers.

@brett Whether your philosophy is hardwired or not, you can behave and advocate as if you believed the opposite to what you are hardwired for.

Behavour simply does not reveal hardwiredness.

But sometimes it does, for instance, when a communist is subjected to extreme torture to give up his comerades, he or she may withstand the torture for the sake of the communist ideal.

Or take the religious wars in any time in history: people went to death freely in order to preserve the dominance of their faith over an area or population. Case in point: Ottoman Turkish invasion of Hungary. Both sides took upon their lips the name of their respective gods in fights in battles. This I know for a fact, because my uncle was one of them who died in fight. !-:

So, for instance, an apparatchik of the communist party is overriding his hardwired beliefs in individualism and cooperation and choosing party ideology. Or is that ideology hardwired in him?
— Brett

So then, back to the beginning. — Brett

I frankly don't understand your question. That's why I dodged it the first time.

I meant to say that individualism and cooperetiveness are opposing forces. Maybe I should have drawn a diagram to show that.

So if you override your basic beleif, and you override the opposite of your basic beleif, (both can't be hardwired, only in chance cases -- most people are this way or that way, only some people are divided in their hardwired psyche in the middle), then you choose whatever you want? Why would you want to do that? I can't see a real-life example of this conceptualized question. If you have to choose one end of the two, why override both in the first place? No instance emerges where it can be true. Although I am not denying it can be true, but I can't see how that can happen. You deny both ends of the spectrum, only to choose one end of the spectrum, is what I read in your question.

I can't answer your question. I simply see no sense in it.

"there is no escape from the fact that one’s presuppositions lead either to a transcendental, participatory philosophy or theology, or else a nihilistic philosophy that creates its own counterfeit theology" — Gregory

What's counterfeit theology? I thought all theology was counterfeit, dogmatic, sharlatanism.

Not quite.

The two rows are different in location, but the bananas are identical to each other in every other aspect but location.

Try the experiment now.

Kinda left of center observation. — Yohan

I love this. Accusing math of being a Democrat.

Homosexuality is hard to explain physiologically, because we don't have an explanation yet. It might be forthcoming, but as of yet, no yeti.

Evolutionarily it happens, if it is mutation-driven. There are lots of mutations occurring every day, and actually in every birth, but some mutations are more common than others, and most are dead-end evolutionarily.

But what I said here everyone knows on these forums.

So, no such thing as a communist, just an opportunist. — Brett

Notice, I wrote "can". You jump into wrong conclusions.

"Either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female." — Baden

Right. We often speak of "ships" as "her" or "she", although they definitely have no tits.

It is a socially assigned role, he-she is. In jails oftentimes a male is referred to as somebody's bitch, and the guards call male inmates "ladies".

A butch is a Dutch dyke. These two are apparently very, very derogatory terms, and I would never use them beyond the value of a pun.

In England, many men are referred to as Kant, imagine the proper spelling. Other males are assigned the term "asshole", which is a common entry point in copulation, while agricultural terms are given to prostitutes, who can be male, female, or both, sich as "back hoe", when they specialize in one, and only one position.

I don't know if someone has said this yet, but my opinion can be expressed in one short sentence:

"What's good for the gander, is good for the gender."

I walked into an institute where I am a frequently seen guest, and wanted to use the washroom. But I was barred. It had a sign on it, "All Gender Washroom". I am only one gender. How could I with clear conscience pee in the toilet when I am not all genders?

"And verily I say unto you, collect manna on the Mount of Hober, and pay sacrifice by letting the blood of a black gander. Lo, I say unto you, thou shalt gather all the genders, and conjugate them during the congregation of the feast of Passover, praise be to the Lord of the highest, Amen."

Jokes over. Take it, Benny.

So, for instance, an apparatchik of the communist party is overriding his hardwired beliefs in individualism and cooperation and choosing party ideology. Or is that ideology hardwired in him? — Brett

Hohoh!! An apparatnyichkaya Gyevotchka can pretend to be a communalist, in order to serve her individualism. Because observed behavior of another is not a guiding post in measuring someone's motivations -- and sadly it is only behaviour we can base or judgment of other's motivs and characters.

And yet we know of unprovable truths. (IN mathematics - ed.)

Epistemology is broader than computability. — Banno

the only unprovable truths I know about math are its axioms and its axiomatic behaviour. (Such as 2+7=4.) Do they, the axioms of math, qualify as being outside of computability? I hardly think so, but I actually can't decide that.

Well, in Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant pointed out the existence of a type of knowledge that is not empirical. It is synthetic a priori. At the same time, he rejected classical Greek geometry as NOT being synthetic a priori, because it is highly visual, as it is an exercise in fiddling with visual puzzles. — alcontali

Ay-vey, Immanuel. Just because you can see it, it does not mean it can't be a priori existant. What a narrow-minded little block-head that Immanuel was. Or square head. Or take your choice of synthetic a priori geometrical shape, and apply it to Immanuel Kant's head shape. You can't lose.

Perhaps you confuse being true with being justified. There are obvious empirical truths - such as that you are reading this post. — Banno

Try solipsisism or syllopsysosm. I can't spell the danged thing, but I know what it is.

Try that. That refutes the entire truth value of observation.

If that won't convince you that I was right, then try the thought that everything you know, and stored as memory, both conscious and unconscious, and both subconscious and super-conscious, in fact your entire life experience and life just started a minute ago. Or this instant. There is no proof for this, but it is conceivable.

Under these two possible considerations empirical truths are shmafu. Only a priori truths can exist for a 100 percent degree certainty in any possible arrangement of the physical world.

Psychophilosophically, furthermore, pscyhopathiphilosophically, we are hardwired by evolutionary changes. This means hardwired for cooperation, but also for individualism. We'll save our fellow man from a fire, but we want the best car and the best-looking mate for ourselves. The species is not heterogenenous; some mutations made some people more left-centred, more right-centred, and more center-centred.

I am talking about "hard-wired" in terms and the sense of the most typical and detectable behaviour cluster, psychophilosophicopoliticopsychologically only. Particularly that of it which is hard-weird.