a maximum speed of 55, 65, or 75 mph (depending on the state) on state and federal highways (and less, if so posted) is not a suggestion, it is the actual law. — Bitter Crank

This is not the law. It is your loosely transcribed ideation of what the law is. The law you can look up in the law books... I am tempted to look up the law on speed limits. If you give me approx. 30 minutes, I shall come back with a quote from the Highway Traffic Act (Canada), as I don't live in the USA. You will see what the law looks like.

There are a lot more vocal atheists here than believers. The atheists also tend to be more rabid. Case in point - Gnostic Christian Bishop. — T Clark

I think Gnostic Christian Bishop is not an atheist. In my opinion he has an agenda and he is very careful in advocating it... he tries to prepare the intellectual terrain, so to speak, to accept it, but he is slow because he encounters too much resistence as is.

If you want to find a rabid atheist, then look no further than me.

And I don't know how many rabid atheists you've known, so this may sound new to you: in my opinion any serious talk about religion is an insult to intelligence. This is so because: No prediction has ever come true as written in religious texts; their content is getting more and more ridiculously childish by modern standards; the religious, instead of admitting the failure of their scriptures, try to smoothe over the self-contradictions and obviously wrong claims by "interpreting" the texts; and the entire body fo scriptures, that form the base of religions, is refutable, ridiculous (but not funny) and logically unsound and have been so since day one.

Under this light, maybe you can understand our, the atheists', fervent attacks against ANYTHING that has to do with religions or with gods. It is an outdated, anachronistic, should I say stupid and ignorant, belief system, and deserves no respect. Atheists will leave no stone unturned to show this, and I think the smart thing for people would be to post on segregated forums: atheists where no religious talk is allowed, and the religious, where no atheist talk is allowed. A lot, and I mean a lot, of ill feelings and futile argumenting could be avoided this way.

it makes sense to me if you are a Catholic to focus on such a narrow doctrinal issue, if you are not, it seems like an odd choice. This forum is full of criticism of religion by non-believers from all sorts of directions. — T Clark

Your last sentence in this quote above is true. But please also consider this:

This forum is also full of illogical theorizing by religious thinkers.

I t hink it is better to focus on a real problem, however small it is, than to spew out all kinds of horribly unsubstantiated belief-borne dogma.

Guys, what is ethics? Everyone argues "this is ethical", "that is unethical", moral, immoral, but what is the bases on which you make these judgments on?

Is there an agreed-upon defintion or description of ethics? Real or imagined, real or artificial, natural or artificial?

If there is none (and I haven't heard of any, really, ever), then what the heck is all this belly-aching about ethics?

In a few words, if possible, could you describe why it is valid to call the atrocities against animals "unethical", instead of calling them "unkind"?

What element in ethics do the tortures breach? I am equally as abhored by these events as you are, but why call them unethical, instead of unkind?

What is the very point in ethics that you feel the unkind actions go against?

Please give me some answers, because I am confused. I see no problem with ethics, but huge problems of unkind behaviour.

Given that God is so much larger than us, and beyond dimensions we know — Fine Doubter

You believe attributes of god, but you don't know them. Or even if god exists. Your claims are ridiculous on a philosophy forum. On a Christian forum you'd be applauded for saying this... here you are making a fool of yourself with the same thing.

Is it true or not that the Bible claims that human beings have immortal souls? — Daniel C

It is not true. According to the Scriptures, those whom Jesus rejects, will perish like a moth in the eternally burning fire.

In other words, only those who are saved have an eternal soul. The soul of those who are not saved will not last forever.

Therefore not every soul is immortal. Get that out of your head. If you are a Christian, Jew, or Muslim.

Not all of us. Only those of us who are changed into a dead body. As long as we are alive bodies, we ought not to be dead. Live bodies have simply not changed into dead bodies.

You may want to argue that our experiences from day to day change our psyche, and our metabolism and aging process and diseases change our physical being. In that case, one person is changed into another person. The person went from one formation to another formation, in other words, changed, and s/he is a different person. But s/he does not need to be dead to be different from what s/he had been. Two different people can coexist or exist in chronolgical sequence. There is no need to die to go into inexistence... if you change, your old self goes into inexistence, and a new self is created, but no death needs to be involved in this.

You did not recite one single law. You recited a whole bunch of common sense things that you think the law is.

The law is much more complicated than stating rules and seeing if someone disobeyed those rules. They have to be proven in court, and there are exacting rules in court behaviour and court dynamics that nobody other than a lawyer knows. And that is just the beginning of it. Personality of lawyer, client and jury or judge play a large rule in law. The same alleged crime can be found to be true or untrue by similar but differing set of court players (jury, judge, attorneys, witnesses).

The law is not just to find the truth and deliver justice; the law is to convince the decision makers either way. This can result in a verdict which is a far cry from actual justice, as what the court accepts as truth, can be totally false and untrue.

Does every player in court know ahead of time, how the judges and the jury will decide? If the answer is no, then nobody knows the law.

==============================

You mentioned a few areas of law that are not part of the commonly known laws. But they still need to be obeyed by every citizen, as ignorance is no excuse, right? Why do you want me to disregard a large area of law? I put to you, that you only want to convince me to discount the importance of obeying obscure and boring laws in order to prove your point.

What do you make of the 1919 eclipse that confirmed Einstein and disproved Newton? — fishfry

Newton's laws have been showed to work in special cases of the law that explained the 1918 experiment.

Newton's Laws were not refuted, but expanded with adding some special conditions under which N's laws were not useful.

Same thing as to say, (conceptual example follows) "Primes are consecutive non-zero positive integers", if you can only count to three. Once you learn about the numeral four, and the concept of four, you have to rework your claim, while your oginal claim is still true up to no. 3.

So your reworked claim will become, "All non-zero positive odd integers are prime", if you can only count to 8. Then you come to learn about "9", and you need to revise your claim again. Your third claim will not contradict your second claim if you only consider integers to 8.

Once this circle becomes a triangle, what is that circle at this moment? — elucid

This circle is not existent at the moment. It has been changed, or it changed, into a triangle.

I thought that the original topic was "change is impossible". Well, it is not. If you change a circle, a triangle, a geodesic tri-point transformation of an ancient Indian burial ground into something else, you've made the change.

I can't see any difficulty there.

Can we come to an agreed description of God, or is that just a pipe dream? — Pattern-chaser

You can come to any agreement, as long as you and the parties you are conversing with agree on something.

Let me put my vote on this description of god: "An imaginary but non-existent entity that many use as a crutch to fill all kinds of gaps in their philosophical outlook. The tangible benefits of god worship are non-existent. Only spiritual benefits can be measured, but these benefits are counter-balanced and nullified, or displaced by spiritual damages."

But it's difficult for them — Pattern-chaser

Obviously you have never even seen an atheist. It is easy to talk about the alleged god: "God does not exist." Period.

Did you see any hardship or difficulty there? There was none. So there.

It should be clear where I come down. — T Clark

The planet Neptune?

Hi,

I would like comments on the following statements. It is about change.

Statement 1:

A circle is never the same as anything that is not a circle. Therefore, a circle is something that is never anything that is not a circle.

Statement 2:

Something existent is never the same as something non-existent. Therefore, something existent is something that is never non-existent. — elucid

Change the stupid circle into a triangle or something. The circle ceases to be a circle, because it was cahnged into a triangle.

What's the actual problem here, or the topic even?

The Riemann hypothesis is a question that arises under the assumptions of number theory (Dedekind-Peano), or a theory that encompasses it, such as set theory (ZFC). — alcontali

Thanks for the explanation, Alcontali. I looked up "The Riemann Hypothesis" and this is the simplest explanation that I found:

What is the Riemann hypothesis for dummies?
The Riemann Hypothesis states that all non trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function have a real part equal to 0.5.

Well, f... me.
:-)

but that doesn't make it more easier to learn — Swan

Especially when your English is not perfect, either.

I've heard that Norwegian is the easiest for native English speakers to learn. — Swan

Right. @philosophy, forget Kant, Hegel, and the Continentals, and forget Socrates and Aristotle. Cross the corridor and attend lectures on Kierkegaard.

German is easier to learn for a native speaker of English than Ancient Greek.

So many respondents missing the point regarding "proof". He clarified that by "proof", he means showing to be true. — S

All proofs mean that. Proofs in physics mean that. Except there are no proofs in the science of physics.

This is preposterous. Any one counter-example that does not obey the law destroys that law's usefulness. Newton's laws have not had examples in real life that would nullify his laws, but CONCEPTUALLY they may happen. Therefore a billion experiments and observations that are thought to be showing Newton's laws to be true by S and by Fernando Rios, can be shown to be false by just one experiment or one single observation.

This is philosophy of physics. If you want to see the LOGIC that lead Newton to arrive at pronouncing his laws, then that's a different matter. If you want to see the process in chronological order that were the steps of Newton's developing his insights that lead to the formulation of his laws, that can be done. But to see what makes his laws true, is not possible.

Gnostic Christian Bishop has been doing this for YEARS, on a number of different forums. — petrichor

I would pass real quick.

Regards
DL — Gnostic Christian Bishop

... and he always closes his posts with Regards, DL.

He abandoned that for a while, but old habits die hard.

===================

My take on the original topic: There is no god, so there is no just god or unjust god. Just say no to god.

Kant explicitly argues otherwise though. Self-imposed restrictions do make your freer. Because if you don't impose restrictions on yourself, you're a slave to your instincts. — Echarmion

Kant either uses the word "instinct" in a way which is different from what we understand to be instinctual behaviour; or else he is a moron.

You can't overcome your instincts, as such. Instincts are behaviour patterns developed during evolution that are hard-wired into your psyche and othe response systems. You can't act against your instincts.

You can act against conditioned response. But you can't act against natural instincts.

If you spot something flying fast toward your face, you raise your arm to protect your eyes. This is instinctual behaviour.

If you see a good looking woman, you get an erection. This is instinctual behaviour.

Restricting yourself from boning the woman on the spot if the social milieu is inappropriate for it, and she did not give consent, is NOT acting against instinctual behaviour. You still get an erection and mounting desire.

I can't expect Kant to be well-versed with twentieth-century advances in behavioural psychology. But you can't build an argument on outdated ideas either.

Kant explicitly argues otherwise though. Self-imposed restrictions do make your freer. Because if you don't impose restrictions on yourself, you're a slave to your instincts. — Echarmion

So if I am slave to my instincts, I am less free than if I am a slave to my other considerations, which have nothing to do with the embetterment of society as an end?

I don't know if this is right. Who is to say that instincts' restrictions make you less free than arbitrary and self-contradictory restrictions imposed by Kant? Because they are not imposed by ME, I am just a medium via which Kant influences me to self-impose restrictions. Without Kant, I would be void of the self-imposed restrictions suggested by Kant, which satisfy Kantian parameters.

This is a mess. First Kant compares apples to oranges, and declares one is less restrictive than than the other. Then he imposes on us a guidance, which we are supposed to follow when we create our own self-restrictions.

This Kant guy was a sadistical, control-hugry, evil genius, who duped millions of philosophers. But not me.

I thought "ignorance of the law is no excuse" was the general idea. No? — Bitter Crank

That is the paradox of the British Commonwealth Legal system, or whatever else it's called. Because of precedence, and because it's so huge, nobody knows the law. Legal professionals will openly admit they don't know this or that branch of the law. It's a complete mess. Nobody knows the law, yet you are supposed to obey it, and you're right, BC, ignorance of it is no excuse from guilt.

So wtf.

I think this is a misunderstanding. Kant's morals are personal. The goal of acting morally is not primarily to make society a better place. — Echarmion

Kant is a bit like the bible. Many people misunderstand him, in so many different ways, that a person who happens upon his philosophy will learn nothing of what Kant was trying to say.

Do I believe that Kant's teaching was personal, and not societal? I hardly think so. If I thieved, and raped and pillaged with impunity, I may be freeer than I am now, and society would be a worse place.

To make society a better place is an END; to feel free in a process I adopt is MEANS. So I can see your point, if you take Kant's directive to make moral actions into MEANS and not ENDS; this speaks for personal morals.

But restrictions take away freedom. I restrict my behaviour to those of a set of behaviour which is accepted by Kantian standards. Restrction. I don't become freer.

Therefore Kant finds himself in a terrible fix which cuts his house of cards in two: personally you are not freer, so the MEANS are not met; personally you don't want to work for an END, which is to make society better; these two terrible blows to his philosophy smash and shatter his ideas and ideals into small smithereens.

Imagine a world where everyone adopts behavior that is universalizable. — TheMadFool

That is easy to imagine. But hard to come by. You'd need to visit all the planets of quite a few galaxies before you'd get to one.

If that was achievable, and diversification was stopped in its very basic, the world would still be just filled with amoebas or with the basic slime of the primordeal ooze.

But I guess I digress. If the world was universalizable in behaviour, AND not following the Kantian rules, then it woudl also attain a stable state, which had nothing to do with Kant's suggestion. For instance, thieveing could possibly be universal behaviour, or bashing each other's heads, or the like.

My issue lies within the dichotomy: you either have to lie, or you have to tell the murderer where your children are. — Clint Ryan

Why don't you take the fifth? The "no comment" or "withhold information" choice. That's not a lie, yet saves your children.

Philosophers can be so daft sometimes. Simone de Boudouire is not exception, and Kant was a prime example of an idiot gone mad and famous.

What differences, if any, are there between Kantianism and Deontology? — Zachary Beddingfield

Anus and Feces. One is borne by the other. The two are unseparable, to a point.

Kantianism says you Kan't do this, you Kan't do that. Deontology says something else, and if you find out what it says, please let me know, because I haven't the foggiest, either.

I have a vague feelilng that it has to do with epistemology, or with dualism, or with the contintental school of philosophy, or with Schlager and Hellmunger. Beyon'd that, I Kan't say.

(Response to the first post, the opening post.)

I believe I am a man. -- what's the virtue in this?

I believe you are a woman. -- there is no virtue in this belief

I believe there is a god. -- no virtue to be found. It's nice if you are a fellow believer or if you are the particular god concerned, but virtue? In the action? I see no virtue. It's no more viruous than tying your shoe or taking out the trash.

I believe there is a proof that renders the statement "belief is not a virtue" true. The proof is finding even just one example when belief is not a virtue. That does not make all beliefs unvirtuous, but shows that some beliefs are not virtuous, while others may be.

Sorry if I seem ignorant, but how can we know they are true then? — Fernando Rios

They seem to be true, but you can never be absolutely, 100% sure. Most people treat gravity and Newton's laws as true. It is practically very useful to think of them as true. But science is not capable of proving that they are true. Science has a lot of evidence that supports that Newton's laws are true, but science will never claim that Newton's laws are true.

Sorry, this is how it is.

Does someone just know what were the experiments Newton performed to prove his laws? — Fernando Rios

He did not prove his laws, so he performed no experiments to prove his laws.

This was the easiest question to answer so far on the forums.

I would like to know how can you prove these laws, but not using devices that use the the same laws. — Fernando Rios

Physical laws can't be proven by science. All physical laws are subject to change, correction, or invalidation.

You don't seem a moron to me. You seem young. — Wayfarer

Thanks, WF.

It's two out of two in a day's work.

Only if you were a moron. It doesn't take that long to assimilate the central ideas of any philosopher if you care to make the effort. — Janus

Yes, you're quite right. I am a... moron. No doubt about it.

I sometimes wonder if people in other forums--like say antinatalist forums, or particular apologetics forums, don't tell each other to head over here and start threads about their pet topics.

Either that I sometimes I wonder if it's not a one or two housebound, over-the-top OCD folks with numerous accounts here. — Terrapin Station

The second part can be belied by different writing styles of authors.

The first part is more like it. I sicked a whole bunch of insane or borderline insane god believers on another site, I think it's called Science chat forum, because they pissed me off hugely by their heavy-handed, elitist, favouritist MODerating. The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was when the Chief and Only MODerator announced his resignation and did not resign; instead, created a special thread addressed to me visible by all members what I, personally, must do and say, and other things that I must not do and must not say. I sicked the sickos from another forum on them, but only one or two stuck. The science chat forum is dead anyway, because they over-moderated it and have not been nice about it either. They tell people what to say and how to say it, and if some users don't comply, they get actioned.

This here was a good forum until a few weeks ago, wehn the proliferation of nutty religious posts occured. I swear it was not me who sicked the new wave of the nutty religious on this site, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize this is one of the way some folks strike back. IN other words, it's neither new, nor unique, nor original action of civil strife.

The forums are dynamic places. There is compliance, and there is strife. Civil disobedience. If the taxes are too high (tax = curtailed freedom of speech) then people leave. If moderation is too lax, then it gets overpopulated by soapbox heroes and preaching walnuts.

I can't give any constructive advice to moderators. I discussed it with several other users on other forums, who were so exasperated by the religious, that they were willing (almost, but not quite) to put in their money and effort to open forums where religious talk would be banned.

This is the bane of society, and the bane of forums. Anachronistic, outdated, mindless, logicless submission to religious ideation. The owners are happy to see increases in number of users and in volume of traffic, but they seldom if ever realize that this is the Judas-kiss of death of resonable and reasoned discourse: letting in too many with very storng religious world views.

It cannot possibly be the case that anyone not already disposed to do so would see the value in any given text otherwise it would be impossible to read two opposing texts (in value terms) without entering into a state of constant vacillation. — Isaac

Too many negatives for my mutual understanding, but I think I agree with you. And I at the same time plead guilty as charged.

I'm 65. By 45 I had learned enough life so that my world view would be cocooned in. I am able to accept that god-belief is philosophically acceptable, that solipsism is a valid thought, and reincarnation is possible. (I want to come back as a bouquette of carnations.) But at the same time I reject them as not my own beliefs, and I fiercly will argue against instances of these beleifs when they are out of their pure cocoon, and out in the open and attributes are attached to them (such as Christianity or Greek mythology to the god-worship, or ghost spotting to the idea of the undying soul.)

My point is that I learned a few things in philosophy, mabye, in the past 20 years, but my VALUES as they pertain to philosophical convictions, are set, and would take a godly good effort to change them.

Maybe that's the experience that you describe in others, and again, I agree with your words, if you mean what I read into what you wrote, what with your tons of negating the narrative within a sentence or two.

No-one can mount a counter-argument because no argument was ever made in the first place, just a long-winded translation of the blindingly obvious into the satisfyingly obscure. — Isaac

I totally so agree, but I'd like to extend the approach one step beyond cool. YOU DON'T NEED TO DEPEND ON TRANSLATIONS. I memorized "Der Kritik der reinen Vernunft" and "Quo usque tandem, abutere, Kataline, paciencia nosssssstra?" and I can silence any wafflers with these babies. (In LIterary circles I use "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers". In circles who adore opera, I use "Gotterdammerung" and "Die Zauberflote".)

This is not my original approach. I have to give credit where credit is due: My dad was in the Basilian seminary for three years before he got honourably discharged by his Father Superior. My old man never again spake a word in the rest of his worldly existence. Instead, he sermoned. It did not even matter that he became a communist, and a member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. He continued sermoning, and as the case was, he sermoned communist propaganda. He had a brilliant and high-reaching career because of it. Most of the other communists in the district were uneducated hoodlooms who grabbed the easy way to success without needing to do work. They respected and feared my dad. Because of his sermons. They had the brawl and brash; he had the words. A classic case of "The pen is mightier than the sword."

He learned and retained one, sage und schreibe, one latin sentence, quoted above. As quotes go, it is a good one. it can be quoted anywhere, in any occasion, to nail down and to win any argument. It is a great opener to a speech of anger, or praise, of love, of calling the warriors to fierce battle to defend the nation and the land, or in preparation to go to the outhouse with a bunch of rolled-up old newspapers. Heck, the old man used to say this even when he successfully swatted a fly. Or unsuccessfully.

Therefore I say unto you, Isaac The Insomniac, son of Andromedea, believer in Intercontinental philosophy, to not rely on translations alone.

Well, full marks for honesty! — Wayfarer

Thank you, WF, but did you actually look at the quote? It says "god is an image of humans." This is what I needed to emphasize for you, and who better to quote for you that you'd believe, than a religious leader? Emerson was a Unitarian minister, to my knowledge.

Maybe you were just joking, but here's what continental philosophy refers to...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy
4 minutes ago — Coben

Thanks, Coben!

I looked up the link. This is what it (partly) said:

refer to a range of thinkers and traditions outside the analytic movement. Continental philosophy includes German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism (and its antecedents, such as the thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche), hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, French feminism, psychoanalytic theory, and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and related branches of Western Marxism.[3]

1. I don't know what the analytic movement is. It is essential to know that in order to know what the continental movement stands for.
2. Of the listed movements, that the Continental School or Movement includes, in all earnesty either I know infinitesimally little of, or else I haven't the foggiest, what these are:
2.1. German idealism,
2.2. phenomenology,
2.3. existentialism (and its antecedents, such as the thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche),
2.4. hermeneutics,
2.5. structuralism,
2.6. post-structuralism,
2.7. deconstruction
2.8. Frankfurter Schule

To me "continentalism" stays a big black matter. Impenetrable, inscrutable, and undefined.

I'd need to study philosophy for at least 40 years before the term "continental philosophy" would start to gain any meaning.

humanism today is too often grounded in the myth that life is a chemical reaction and humans accidents of fate. It's not actually 'humanism' at all — Wayfarer

I am on the opinion which is unproven, that you feel humanism is void of humanity, because it is void of god... and that can only be because god is a glorified human in most religions, definitely in Christian faiths. In Greek mythology, big time, too. Every human religion has some god(s) that are painfully human.

"The god of a carpenter is a carpenter. The god of a cannibal is a cannibal. The god of a businessman is a businessman." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He meant to say, in a way, that "the god of a human is a human".

(I once actually rephrased Emerson. "The god of a businessman is a businessman. The god of a carpenter is a carpenter. The god of an atheist is an atheist. The god of a Christian is a Jew.")