So sweet of you, . I won't go, but I'll slow down.

Another form of entertainment would be to move to Old Calcutta; smear male and female pheromones on myself, and then watch the neighbourhood dogs converge on me.

Would provide hours of fun.

Talk about something new. Like whether or not Mount Everest was the tallest mountain before we discovered it. — Michael

Someone covered it before we got there?! I always suspected that much. Everyone trusts the Europeans to take the covers off.

Buy a bar in Cambodia and invite me to come work with you. Thanks — Michael

Why don't I buy a self-serve bar? Then we can both relax and play chess.

This is the lousiest (also inconsequential) post I wrote this forum. — James Pullman

Pullman, pull yourself together. Pull, man.

I am not interested in "claiming victory" just in clarifying thought and argument. If you don't have the energy for it, that's OK. — Janus

Cool. Thanks for understanding my tiredness.

@janus I opine you're being simply tiresome. I don't have the energy, interest, and incination to point out your faulty arguments each time you present one.

Like you said,

So, you are saying it is not possible to be neutral, neither believing nor disbelieving, on any question? — Janus

I thought we are arguing about god-belief, not about any question. You are being tiresome. Very. You changed the topic, and strawmanning is a fallacy.

If you take my getting tired of this as an admission to defeat, it is not. But if you insist that one of us is right, and one of us is wrong, and since I have no responses to you any further, I give you the right to claim victory.

However, if you refer to victory in the future, and I see it, based on this argument, then I hold the right to bring the attention of onlookers of the future argument to this argument, and let them decide whehter they agree with your points or with mine.

I had enough of this. I ran out of steam.

I agree to disagree ont his, Noah. I think you have spirit and steadfastness.

Belief is a judgment, a decision to affirm or deny something.

To say you have to believe or disbelieve is a false dichotomy because one can neither affirm nor deny something to be true in some cases. This is called “withholding judgment.” — Noah Te Stroete

I like this argument, Noah. This makes much more sense than the name-calling up to now.

Let's see what I can do with it.

To affirm or to deny something are both cummunicating your opinion to the outside world. You can deny you are married, while you know you are married, and you can affirm you are married, while you are single.

Thus denial and affirmation have potentially nothing to do with your opinion.

If you neither deny, nor affirm, you simply refuse to communicate your knowledge, or your opinion, or your belief, to others.

But you do have a knowledge, an opionion, a belief. You just refuse to communicate what it is.

So while your argument is good, in the sense that you are presenting reasonable thought, it is sitll not an argument to show that Janus's point can be valid.

Another way to state my counter-argument is that given a knowledge, an opinion, a thought, a belief, you can't negate it for your own inner self if it exists in a sense or the other.

Belief need not be based on empirical evidence. I believe in extraterrestrial life in this galaxy, but there is no empirical evidence for that belief. — Noah Te Stroete

We're getting to say the same thing. I've been saying all along that belief does not need evidence; Janus bases his arguments that need beleif to have evidence.

"Not not believeing is not believing." This is your statement. — god must be atheist

Noah, this is not my statement. I quoted Janus's statement, paraphrased. You are getting angry and it is influencing your judgement. Please take a deep breath and maybe you should retire for a while from this thread. Just a suggestion, please don't misconstrue that I'm bullying you. You do what you want, I only suggest that you are getting overly emotional here.

Not disbelieving is not necessarily equivalent to believing. This should be obvious. — Janus

Your lack of comprehension of the language is brilliantly displayed here.

"Not not believeing is not believing." This is your statement.

I rest my case.

As to:

Do I believe Trump colluded with the Russians? No, because I have no evidence that he did. Do I disbelieve that Trump colluded with the Russains? No, because I have no evidence that he did not. — Janus

Your example is faulty. For belief you don't need evidence, and yet you hold evidence as a crucial prerequisite for faith. A lot of people believe in god with no evidence. A lot of people believe in no god with no evidence. But knowledge can't be claimed without evidence. Yet you use faith as if it acted on evidence like knowledge does.

You are talking about knowledge. "Do I know that Trump, (etc.etc)".

Belief and knowledge are different things. You are trying to dress up the act of belief with the qualities of knowledge. That is your fallacy right there.

I can’t argue with people who are under the delusion that they make sense, understand logic, and are intelligent when they are none of the aforementioned. — Noah Te Stroete

It's more like you can't argue.

This is incoherent, unjustified and may be false. I reject your premises, and your conclusion doesn’t follow. — Noah Te Stroete

Now you are talking. You have the right to reject anything, as you are an autonomous human being.

But your rejection of my argument by no meanst renders my arguemnt invalid. Just declaring "it's wrong" does not do anything, but you have the perfect right to utter it,and thus admit to your ignorance of detecting and understanding valid statements.

I am comfortable with this. In fact, this rejection goes in line with my original objection and your rejection supports my thesis I described earlier.

You’re being a bully because you are presenting a false dichotomy. I’ve explained this. You’re either an ineffective bully, or you don’t understand the fallacy you are committing. — Noah Te Stroete

You never explained any fallacy I am committing. You simply base your judgment on my being a bully because you obsere me as a person who voraciously sticks to arguing his reasonable thoughts, and expects the same in return. You are incapable of returning the challenge in kind, and therefore you go outside the debate and call me a bully.

I could call you names, too. In fact, I have collected quite a few for you since this began. But I withhold uttering them, because, unlike you, I have respect for the site, and I follow its unwritten rules: when on a philosophy site, argue on bases of philosophical considerations, and name calling is not one of those.

A belief or disbelief is an active thing. Without empirical evidence or a personal experience, one can withhold judgment, neither believing nor disbelieving. — Noah Te Stroete

Belief is not a judgement. You can withhold judgement but belief isnot an active thing. It bases itself on things thjat have no or very little empirical evidence. If empirical evidence were extant, you would not need belief, you'd have knowledge.

Your counter-argument is invalid.

You’re trying to be a bully, but you haven’t the strength to be effective. — Noah Te Stroete

The only medium in which logic and reason can not be ineffective is a medium of not understanding, or in a medium of pretense non-understanding.

I am not a bully. You mistake those who don't hold your opinion to be bullies. I am simply a person who strongly disagrees with you, and I stated my reasons for my disagreement. You in turn can't defend against my reasonable disagreement, and therefore you call me childish, a bully. But this is not kindergarten, this is a philosophy website. If you don't present valid counter-arguments, then you do not belong here.

To

Can’t one withhold judgment? — Noah Te Stroete

What do you mean? Please elaborate.

You’re being childish. You’re trying to be a bully, but you haven’t the strength to be effective. — Noah Te Stroete

No, I am not childish. I am presenting valid arguments, and your only possible defence is an insult, by calling me childish. This is despicable and deplorable that you do it on a philosophy website, that you try to win arguments on the strength of your unfounded and vile insults.

I didn't say I "both" believe and disbelieve; I said I neither believe nor disbelieve. Are you reading selectively or merely poorly? — Janus

Your language skills are rather poor, Janus. "I neither believe nor disbelieve" excludes both. Both can't be excluded. If you exlcue "I believe" then you necessarily don't believe. If you exlcude "I don't believe" then you necessarily believe. You exclude both. You are really just mincing words now, because you are cornered, and you can't fight your way out of your stated self-contradiction.

And please stop accusing me of not understanding your writing. I have a superb sense of the language.

I neither believe, nor disbelieve, in God, since there is no empirical evidence either way, and I have had no personal experience of God, as some say they have had. — Janus

You can deny knowledge of the existence of god. But you can't both beleive and disbelieve at the same time and in the same respect. Your answer is nonsensical, because it denies the validity of the excluded middle.

Since you gave a nonsensical answer, I take it as a denial of answering my question. I take it you believe in god, just as I said earlier.

Scientism doesn’t provide any cogent arguments that science can explain everything. That’s the point. Scientism is the religion. Science includes fields of study and the scientific method. I don’t think Janus is religious by the way. — Noah Te Stroete

Scienticism does not claim that it can explain everything. So what's your point with saying that it can provide no arguments that it can explain everything? You made a statement that is neither here nor there in this debate.

Then you say Scienticism is a religion. Religions all involve a god figure, who has supernatural powers. Show me a the god in scienticism. There is no god in scienticism. Your claim that scienticism is a religion is false.

Janus denied being religious. But he did not deny a belief in god. Not to date, yet, anyway.

↪god must be atheist How wrong you are: I am not religious at all! — Janus

Would you say you don't believe in god, or do you believe in god? Many interpret religiosity as an adherence to one dogmatic faith or to another. Many call themselves not religious, becasue they don't associate with an organized religion, yet they believe in a god.

So I put you the question, Janus: Are you not religous and believe in god or are you not relgious and do not believe in god. Please feel free to answer or not answer this. In case you decide not to anser, I shall take it that you are not religious but have a faith in god.

Scientists, in the sense of 'adherents of scientism' (I have long thought that practitioners of science should be called 'sciencers' or 'scienticians') may believe there is an incompatibility between science and religion, but they can provide no good argument for this belief. It is, quite simply, a category error. Of course, they'll never admit that, but will carry on blustering and puffing up their "arguments" with empty rhetoric instead. — Janus

Janus, you speak truly like one who is devoted to a faith, and facts, arguments, will never daunt you. This diatribe you wrote only proves your ignorance borne out of blind faith and borne out of a conviction to never accept an otherwise valid argument if it speaks against your religion.

Your devotion to faith on the expense of rejecting known facts and valid teories is well described in your little note there.

When you say "they can provide no good argument" you admit that the huge amount of good arguments already extant, you simply, by necessity of convenience, ignore.

So what, if an old creation myth is contradicted by evolution or geology?
Our ancestors didn't have those answers, so the religious metaphor was all they could rely on. — WerMaat

There is one problem with interpreting scripture's impossible tales as moral metaphors or religious metaphors. I believe that the authors of scriptural mistakes in science were not trying to write metaphors, and neither was god when he instilled the prophets to write the scriptures. They were simply ignorant, and their efforts were honestly science-minded; they did not follow through, or had no sufficient knowledge base to follow through the ramifications of their facts; re: Noah's story, the guy in the big fish, etc. etc.

To call these tales scientific metaphors or moral- or religious metaphors is one the vile tricks the religious employ to defend their indefendible faiths.

I went over your bio, Patulia. Quite impressive, to attain such levels of philosophical insights as you have demonstrated, at such a young age as yours.

I used to belong to a club where one of the mottos in my local group was "Don't try to be clever. Everyone is clever here. Try to be kind."

Well, here on the philosophy forum, you can let your hair down and be as cruelly clever without any trace of kind as you want to be.

But as a man who has gone though an entire lifetime of living, I advise you to try to stay kind in your other circles outside this forum. You will go farther in life that way. (Not to misconstrue that I noticed any act of unkind behaviour by you here on this forum. No, you did not show unkindness, the way I see it.)

@Petulia, Thank you for proving that the perfect everything does not exist. If I encounter therefore a god-worshipping person, who insists that his or her God is perfect in every way, then I can poof-poof him or her down. If he or she changes her mind, that god or God is perfect only positive, good ways, then it's acceptable, until such time that you prove in an a priori way, that that's also impossible.

If the religeous person insists that god is good and perfect in good ways, I can show him then that that god is not of this world, and can't have any reign over this world, since this world is not part of God.

With regard to the notion of "perfectly imperfect" -- imperfect means not perfect. Perfectly means: in a way, that is flawless. Therefore something can be flawlessly full of flaws, since the first part applies to the entire expression of "full of flaws" or "having some flaws".

Perfectly imperfect therefore is not a self-contradiction of a term, or an oxymoron; it is, instead, a word with a redundancy. Anything imperfect is perfectly imperfect, since "perfectly" means "without flaws", and the "imperfect" includes some flaws, so it flawlessly satisfies the condition to have flaws. But anything that has flaws satisfies the condition to have flaws, therefore everything with flaws is flawlessly flawed, therefere every imperfeciton is perfectly imperfect.

@Razorback Kitten, @Noah Te Stroete, @Patter-chaser and @Petulia

Perfection is a noun, and to me it means: the embodiment of perfect things. Perfect, on the other hand, is an adjective, and it means without flaws, totally.

If something is without flaws, and is something, then it is the Platonic Ideal of that thing. (Plus it has to exist and be forever unchanged, aside from being perfect, accroding to Plato / Socrates, "Republc" pp. 1-234.) And what is the Platonic ideal or Form? Something that embodies the essence, usefulness, utility, beauty, appearance, etc. etc. of all things that are that thing.

In this light, God is the embodiment of perfect things, and perfect things are perfect forms of things.

So God is not of this world, because things in this world are all imperfect. They all have flaws, and if you argue they don't, they still don't last forever. Which is a necessary part of being perfect.

Since god or God is perfect, and it only comprizes perfection, in every way, but not imperfection, and since this world is full of imperfect things, god or God can't be of this world.

Therefore, I reckon, there is a God out there somewhere, outside of our universe (necessarily by distance), and that god or God is perfect; and it is not present in our world, because God, in his perfectiojn, only encompasses perfect things, which our world, including its details and itself as whole, is far from perfect.

Glad to be of service, Amity. I was helped out just a day or two ago with the @ thing by a good Samaritan on this site. I typed @, instead of point-and-clicked on it. But now I know better.



I've been talking to Street Preachers and Jehowa's Witnesses a bit too much lately, it seems. This is not a joke; I am so lonely, and hard up for human company, that I'll talk to anyone, and the JW-s are the most readily available people for this.

I tried the police, too, but they only listen to you selectively. I found that out the hard way.

And therapists have dried up in my country... the free therapists, that is.

@Amity and @Wallows, could you please tell me in a few words or less, what the heck that red triangle symbolizes that @Wallows stuck to the end of your reply to me? For me I can't make out anything but a red triangle, with some sticks coming out it, possibly also surrounded by a yellow halo. The yellow halo may be an optical illusion.

Most of these symbols are a one-way communication device... those who send the symbols, know what they mean, but those who receive it, haven't a clue.

Dear Hrvoje: I know of 1 person who did not laugh at my joke. That person is not "people". Two or more persons are people.

You assume that all humanity share YOUR sense of humour, and insist that my sense of humour is worthless. Hence I assert that you're employing the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

Also, you know of only one person who thinks my sense of humour is not funny. You can't extrapolate from there that people (more than one person) don't like my sense of humour.

And even if you can get a consensus of X number of people, where x is a positive integer greater than 1, who positively assert they don't like my sense of humour, you can't from that alone prove that there are no more than the author person of the joke himself who enjoy the joke.

Therefore I say unto you, that your reasoning to prove that my sense of humour is crap, is false.

Therefore I have the right to call you a boron, since it was YOU who first insulted ME, by calling me a humourless person. If you assume that you have the knack to decide what is humorous and what is not, then you automatically assign ME the right to judge over your sense of humour.

This is for internal quotes. I don't see anything about how to use the quote function for external sources.
I found this out by trial and error. — Amity

this I quote by clicking on the "speach" bubble

that is the sixth symbol from the left of the editing symbols on the top. For instance,

Proletars of the world, unite!

- Karl Marks
If you write the quote first, and then highlight it and then clickon the "quote" bubble, then it gives you options.

You can also edit it yourself.

Proletars of the World-- unite! — Luke, 3:24

Here I inserted the text '="Luke, 3:24"' (without the outer single quotes) right after the word quote in the opening of the quotation, which is embraced by square brackets.

What's an "egocentric" model versus an alternate model? — Terrapin Station

An egocentric model is where you go to a therapist to make yourself happy. An alternative model is when you go to the therapist to make the therapist happy. An alternate model is when you once go to make yourself happy, then next time to make the therapist happy, then next time yourself,then next time the therapist... etc.

I feel... your love all around me.

I don't know, the feeling is deliberate, not foreign in the sense of being induced by something external. Like a logical conclusion, where one finds oneself satisfied with the analysis done and gone over. — Wallows

Could still be side effect of medication, or the onset of a more serious depression, but there is a chance this will pass.

If you are suggesting that you are self-suggesting a low-grade depression, then be my guest, you are an autonomous human being.

Maybe you arrived (at happiness) but you haven't realized it. — Terrapin Station

TS is right... hapiness DOES feel shitty. Happiness is a feeling halfway between lethargy, apathy and suicidal ideation.

Better get used to it. What the poets and your Sunday School teachers taught you about what happiness feels like was rubbish. This is real life.

Go ahead. (Throw labels.) — S

You... you... you are an S.

There is just one pill they press each psycho-patient to take these days, It's one or another of a few anti-psychotic medications. It seems they give them to everyone, no matter what their diagnosis is, or what axis (as per the DSM) their disease lies on.

There are side effects to each. These unwanted effects are registered with each. Apathy and lethargy is typical to some of them, but not to all.

Google is your friend.

In my case it was paranoid schizophrenia at your age. Go get yourself checked out.

In the meantime, if you want to regain your youthful vigour and alacrity, I suggest the following:

Stay away from sex, autoerotica, and self-actualization;

Stay away from fatty food, from carbs, from proteins, from opioioioioids, from salt, from natural and artificial sweeteners, colouring and spices; from dairy prodcts, (they are full of dihydrogen monoxide, you know), from insecticides, from genicides, from pesticides; stay away from sleeping, from sitting, from standing, walking and running; stay away from people (they are a deadly bunch), and stay away from animals and plants, rocks, sand, grass, etc.

I have a clear conscience, as I was merely answering the question the best way I could, without trying to be clever or wit, or to ridicule someone, because such things backfire at you. — Hrvoje

Dear Hrvoje, I have a clear conscience, too. I like to make jokes; humour is like music appreciation, which enriches life without any biological benefit. Those who don't enjoy humour are a bit impoverished in their enjoyment of life.

I have met many people on social sites who have no sense of humour, and they harshly criticized me for cracking jokes. I don't agree with them, but I also appreciate that they don't agree with me. It's a given, a sense of humour is; either you have it, and you enjoy then jokes, or else you don't have it, and then jokes seem incredibly repulsive to you. I am sure I'm in the first pile; you must be in the second pile.

There is nothing we can do to bridge this difference. You will think of me as a fool, who makes light of serious stuff unnecessarily; you will think of me as a person who is irresponsible, and does stupid things, whereas you likely think of yourself as serious, smart, and not frivolous. I, on the other hand, think of my jokes as the salt of life, as the icing on the cake; and think of those who don't have a sense of humour as borons.

This is just how things are. I'm resigned to share the universe with borons. They bug me, but hey, I am not the ruler of the universe, they have just as much right to their boring existence as I have to mine, and I only hope that the borons gain enough insight to realize that there is something out in this world which they don't understand, which irritates them at best, and which enriches the life of those who understand it.

Not quite. A citizen of any country is also expected to know and follow the law - even if you haven't studied law. — WerMaat

In countries where English Common Law is the basis for legal issues, the citizens are expected to follow the law, but they are not expected to know the law. Nobody knows the law in its entirety in ECL countries.

It's easier in Germany, where Napoleonic law and its derivatives comprise the system.