"Truth is that thought which accords to reality whether we recognise it or not. Subjective opinion is only truth insofar as it is truly our opinion...sometimes it also accords with reality, that we call knowledge. Sometimes people claim knowledge , when in fact, it is merely their false opinion."
—Chester

Or in other words human beings are to fallible for us to safely assume that any axioms or 'truths' through either mental construct and/or opinion really applies in the real world. And to quote Socrates again "I'm the wisest man in Greece, since I know that I know nothing". Actually I don't think it is noted that Socrates said that but since we only know him from what Plato wrote of him, it is plausible that he actually said something like that either at during his trail or perhaps some other time.

"No. However, I do believe people who have devoted their lives to furthering this subject, and who have studied the prior thought for centuries, and who discuss their resulting thoughts with each other in formal ways, have together built a far better explanation than any one person can ever obtain via intuition."
—ernestm

You are committing an argumentum ad populum fallacy, argument from authority fallacy, and likely a few others as well. Just because someone wrote down something in a book somewhere and other people sometimes agreed with them doesn't necessarily make such ideas better than those you can come up with from the top of your head. And besides there are just as many existentialist/ deconstructionist/ nihilistic philosophers that have dedicated their lives to writing books and making similar arguments to mine. Because of that it really isn't accurate to say I'm just pulling it all out of my hat even if I more often than not came to my conclusions before reading their work.

Also subjectivity isn't really about undermining math, scientific ideas, concepts (ie. pure science supposedly assumes hypothetically ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE even if from a technical standpoint we don't always have to be aware of that issue) it is about dealing with hard core ideological dogma that tries to paint the world in 'Good'/'Evil', Black/white, True/False as well as other binary/false dilemmas that are too common is Western ideology. If you don't understand WHY people need and use subjectivity as a tool, perhaps it is just something you are not ready for.

"Truth" can remain 'ok' when used to reference mental constructs, but human beings are too fallible for us to know whether these mental constructs really are one for one in regard to the real life counter parts. However once one gets over oneself and the fallibility of the human race as a whole is isn't that big of a deal, unless one encounters someone who is unaware of human fallibility.

"I think Ernestm was merely paying you a compliment."
— Pierre-Normand
Actually you are right, I misread the post and didn't see the part that he actually complimented me. :D

Sorry about that, my ADHD sometimes hinders me from seeing part of a post when another part kind of set me off but at least I'm not to arrogant to admit that it happens.

"Absolutely I am sure. In modern philosophy, truth is very clearly defined in formal terms. As I stated, I attempted to define it in a way compatible with the theories of Russell, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, through Carnap, Strawson, Putnam, Searle, and Kripke to Popper, Kuhn, and Davidson."
—ernestm

One's ideas/beliefs may be considered the 'truth' or more accurately 'true' in the context of their own work, but when critiqued by others it usually loses such meaning and especially so when critiqued by those who have different opinions. In Post Modern philosophy the search or hope for 'Truth' has all but been completely abandoned in the face of diametrically opposing viewpoints and the understanding/ acknowledgement of how complex the world really is.

"We do what we do because that is the way that we do it", and that is both the way it is and the way it is going to be for the foreseeable future. But seriously your type of arguments/viewpoints where abandoned back in the age of enlightenment when most philosophers had to grow up and realize 'perfection" and "truth" were merely an illusion and they had to adjust their perspective to account for such things.

"Well, without any education in formal logic, you clearly have ability in the subject, I hope you find time in your life to further your studies, and I look forward to seeing your posts."
— ernestm

So because your degree is bigger (or something else for that matter) than mine, you think you automatically know more than me?

I have taken courses and studied enough in digital logic/philosophical logic to not have to bother taking them over again. However the 'truth' when used by the nomenclature of such things is not the same thing as 'truth' when used in ethics/religions/morality. If you don't know that and/or the basics of identifying fallacies or differences between facts and opinions then you really don't know anything about philosophy itself and instead you are merely to regurgitating some of what you heard in your classes while not even bothering to think for yourself.

"It would be helpful to me if you could state what school teaches the views you state. Mine are from Oxford University, and thus follow the standard formal progression of thought in modern logic, from Russell, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, through Carnap, Strawson, Putnam, Searle, and Kripke to Popper, Kuhn, and Davidson, I take it you are already familiar with those, as you speak with such authority.

And obviously, the framework I propose has to be rather basic, in order to support all their varying opinions without inconsistency, but I believe it does so adequately, albeit without the exactitude I would really prefer, but more details would extend its length beyond that which people actually read these days, so really I cannot avoid the laxity. If you can please provide the authorities behind your own thought, I would be able to respond appropriately."
— ernestm

Thank you for noticing the authority (perhaps even arrogance?) I try to speak with. It doesn't come studying but from the time I have devoted to the subject and effort I make in trying to get others to want to knock me off my soapbox; as well as the hope that I can find someone that can do this.

To be honest, I was just guessing that your arguments/parts of your posts came from a formal education and not just something you where pulling out of your..hat (or just cutting and pasting) like some people arguing philosophy do. The only formal education I have in philosophy is about three courses at a community college (Intro to Philosophy,Intro to Religions,and intro to ethics) but I have over a decade of studying and debating philosophy which in some ways can trump an actual education in the subject. However there have been countless debates and several books I have read that have influenced my opinions; and yes I am aware that my arguments are only my opinions. Also I have read the following books which have helped influence some of my thinking:

Philosophy For Beginners
Eastern Philosophy For Beginners
Postmodernism For Beginners
Kierkegaard For Beginners

(I even have a pdf copy of Kierkegaard For Beginners which I can give you a copy of, and point out the parts where he talks about morality being subjective; or at least the author of the book commenting on the subject.)

I will have to admit that since I have ADHD, I have trouble reading some of the more wordy text books and have to rely on sources, such as the 'for beginners' books, that cut to the chase. While you may look down on me now for admitting I don't have a real education on philosophy, the irony is that I have something better than an education which is ten years of having to deal with the subject without being hindered by a formal education in the subject where I have been forced to think for myself and come up with my own stuff without support from the philosophers that came before me. I don't know if you are aware of the quote from the teacher who commented on the full verses empty glass, but I think it sort of applies here.

If time is short and/or you are unable to access the books I noted you can even look up the following links which more or less same similar things as passages to the books I noted:

Is–ought problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

"The is–ought problem, as articulated by Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711–76), states that many writers make claims about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between positive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones. The is–ought problem is also known as Hume's law, or Hume's guillotine."
— Wiki

Turtles all the way down
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
Münchhausen trilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma

"In epistemology, the Münchhausen trilemma is a thought experiment used to demonstrate the impossibility of proving any truth, even in the fields of logic and mathematics. If it is asked how any knowledge is known to be true, proof may be provided. Yet that same question can be asked of the proof, and any subsequent proof. The Münchhausen trilemma is that there are only three options when providing proof in this situation:

The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other
The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad infinitum
The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts
The trilemma, then, is the decision among the three equally unsatisfying options."
— Wiki

There are a couple more sources but I think this should do for now. I will have to admit the whole fact/data vs opinion/judgement call is just something I created to simplify the problem (as it can be worded in may other ways) so trying to find an EXACT source for it would be kind of futile except other than perhaps finding my previous posts.

"That is a very common error in the post information age, so you cant be criticized for believing it. Data are neither true nor false; they are simply data. And mathematics is not 'facts determined from real world things."
— ernestm

I disagree with your analysis and I will explain why...

"Tautological truths within formal systems, such as mathematical equations. These are established by syntactic consistency with core axioms. The core axioms themselves describe the formal systems, and so truths at this level are necessarily true, in accordance with first-order formal logic. These systems can be extended to create propositional logic, which defines rules of deduction and inference without introducing meaningfulness and causality."
— ernestm

Tautological truth are merely what I explained as mental constructs/models of the world around us and they are true only because we and/or our models say they are true. It has been well know since Ancient times that in our mind we can construct 'perfect models' (ie abstract models) of something in our own mind, yet these abstract models never translate into a real world thing. What your describing may be more accurate according to some philosophical text book, but my description is meant so that it can be understood by anyone while yet not being inaccurate. What we are talking about here is close enough to the same thing that I don't really feel the need to waste time splitting hairs about, even if our wording of things could be construed as that we each are talking about something else.

"{2} Empirical truths, which are determined via ratification by observation of material states and events, as long as the propositions describing material states and events are logically coherent. If the observation verifies the proposition, then the RESULT of the observation is factually true, but the proposition itself without empirical ratification remains a proposition that is neither true nor false, and is simply a statement. The specific and exact nature of truth itself depends not on facts, but on the epistemological factors relating the proposition to the material world in different metaphysical systems, most predominantly in the theories that define the relation of subject and predicate to objects, states, and events in the physical world. These theories add semantics (the meanings of words) to the syntactic relationships described in first-order logic."
— ernestm

These "Empirical truths" you talk about are merely best guess and opinions as opposed to actual truths. I'm not sure how much you read about the Enlightenment period of philosophy, as this passage seems to be one of the propositions made at the beginning of it which got torn apart as soon as some of the skeptics like Hume stepped in. I also hope you realize there is a difference between 'sort of the truth', 'sometimes the truth', what we guess is the truth', and actual 100% objective TRUTH which is the truth under any condition. The 'truths' devised from Empirical study/observation are merely thing derived from statistical analysis and/or human observation and are better describe as best guesses in order to not confuse them with actual objective truths.

Put it to you this way even nature laws, such as the Laws of Thermodynamics (which are about as close to something we know being true 100.000% of the time) are considered to be contingent on certain rules in our universe staying the same; however it is not a given that these rules have always been the same nor that they will ever change in the future. In other words every nature law, or any variation of "Empirical truths" is contingent on the things making them possible to never change, however it isn't a given that the thing that allow them to be will be as they are today.

While your argument may be more valid in a certain academic context, outside of that context it falls apart if one factors in the actual complexity of world

"{3} Causal truths, which again first must be consistent within first-order formal logic, and secondly must not contain any causal fallacies as defined in second-order formal logic. These are the most complicated forms of truth, and the basis of science. They are the most complicated because causal relationships cannot ever be proven necessarily true. They can only be proven not to be false. That distinction remains one of the least understood aspects of truth in the current world, because causality is so often claimed yet logical errors in statements of causal truth are so frequent. The metaphysical factors of causality are better understood if they are known to exist, but only a small number of people even know that there are metaphysical factors involved. Those who do know the metaphysical factors understand that the relation of the subject and predicate's in the cause, to the subject and predicate of the result, is an abstraction that can be very complex."
— ernestm

These "contingent truths" are even weaker than "Empirical truths" since the only thing different between is that causal truths almost wholly rely on human observation where as empirical truths have things like statistical analysis/studies, etc. in order to prove there validity. Needless to say because they are the same thing but weaker it is a given that they have the same problems (if not even more) as empirical truths.

"While these are the *basic* forms of truth, the truth of many statements rely on combining two or more these forms together. For example, most commonly believe they know that the sun will rise tomorrow. This is based on empirical observations of many prior days where the sun did rise, leading to the simple second-order deduction that it will rise again tomorrow. Logically, one cannot know whether the belief is true that the sun will rise tomorrow until after the event has occurred. But in most cases, when sufficient empirical validation of many prior similar events has occurred, it is loosely assumed true that the same future event will occur again in the same circumstance. This 'axiom of probabilistic certainty' is the foundation of prediction in much scientific theory."
— ernestm

In other words it our BEST GUESS that the sun will rise each morning that we are alive as long a wondering black hole, sun going supernova, or other similar event prematurely interrupts the stability of the star our planet orbits; but it isn't a given that nothing will interfere with a star during it's normal life cycle nor is it a given nothing will happen to our star in our lifetime. While we often like to talk about truths in an academic setting or working with something that is nothing more than a mental model; with dealing with real world issue

"Beyond that, there are some other very specific forms of truth in philosophy. For example, there are 'self-generating' truths in linguistics, such as promises, statements of intent, contracts, and some statements of belief, which all become existent by their own statement. One should be aware these kinds of truth have limitations. For example, after making promises, it becomes true that promises were made, but the truth of the promise itself remains an indirect proposition, and still must be determined within the rules for the three basic forms of truth described above."
— ernestm

Isn't it a given if these other 'truths' are always contingent on in order for them to be 'true' that something doesn't undermine them, that they are only 'sort of the truth' or 'truth unless some contingency/Act of God/etc changes it' truth, that they are a bit less than the 100% of the time objective kind of truth when we think of something being the TRUTH?

Of course, I might be just splitting hairs here if you already assume that these academic, contingent,
and/or empirical truths are obviously fallible under nearly an endless variety conditions and you are only using the word 'truth' as a means to describe a problem in a more.. palatable means; or perhaps the people that wrote the works you are referring from used such nomenclature and your just repeating it.

"Hi! What would you say truth is? Doesn't it presuppose truth to say what truth is? If this is so, is it bad?"
— mew

The closest thing we have to truth as human beings is something we call facts and/or data (ie. information about a physical thing) but such information is obviously transient and dependent on time, place, etc. in order for it to be useful. Also 'facts' in our mind seem to be not as transient as those applied to real world things (1+1 always equals 2, but the sky isn't always blue), but these things are either only true because we say they are true and or merely labels for real world things (ie. Main Street could be called Broad Street if we desire it and instead of 1+1= 2 we could have I + I = II).

This is not that hard to visualize until you have to deal with axioms; social/culture/ideological 'truth' most people have been ingrained with since they became aware of their surroundings. Such beliefs include human life is 'good', killing is 'evil' (unless it is done to defend oneself or country), famine/ war/ disease/etc is bad; I think you get the point.

In order to overcome your own indoctrinated axioms you have to realize there is an aspect of morality that is highly subjective, most ethical/moral beliefs are merely opinions/beliefs and not 'truths', and every action done by any human being requires a judgement call that is subject to own biases and prone to errors of one sort or another. While most people understand this to some degree, they don't like to admit how fallible our beliefs, knowledge, judgement, etc are and when we do screw up, we merely pass it off as IT IS THE BEST WE COULD DO WITH WHAT WE KNEW AT THE TIME, instead of realizing part of the problem is that we were too arrogant when taking certain actions.

I know this sounds like one has to be to politically correct or fret over one's actions too much, but that isn't a given. If fretting too much and being to PC IS counter productive then my arguments should be interpreted as to why someone SHOULDN'T care about fretting or trying to be PC if for them it creates more problems than it solves.

I guess my overall message is that the world, our choices of actions (as well as the lack of resources/time to always choose wisely), and other issues makes things more complicated than we often like to acknowledge them to be; and too often holding on to the idea we know some non-transient 'truth' just makes thing more FUBAR than they need to be.

So the answer to you OP is yes, presupposing something is 'truth' without doing the due diligence to prove something is actually truth (ie. which it is pretty much a given that it is impossible to due at this time) is "bad" because it can hinder one's judgement.

I have no idea what you are talking about but it sounds to me more like you are screaming for attention because of an absence of love.
—TimeLine

No, I'm trying to be serious and neither am I just crying out for attention; or at least I'm not crying out for attention any more than anyone else wasting their time here.

What I'm talking about is stuff I believe they teach to college kids taking psychology 101 in that they compare the human mind to a feedback control system used in electrical engineering. This is sort of similar to comparing the human mind to a computer, however a feedback control system and a computer are similar in some ways and different in others. For one feedback can be purely analogy where as computer are almost always pure digital.

Feedback
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback

Maybe it wasn't the best analogy,but it wasn't moon bat stuff unless I I happen to be really tired while writing it.

That nihilism, and the thinkers who circle around, mistake meaning or value for states of the world.

Sartre, for example, treats meaning as if it's​ a human creation. Rather than understanding meaning or value is an infinite expressed by a state itself, Sartre treats it like it's nothing more than a human whim.

Hegel's point is nihilism, "subjectivism" and maybe even scepticism amount to a rejection of meaning as expessed by things-in-themselves. These positions either consider the meaning of others (and everything else) is only them or has no presence at all.

For the artist (or philosopher!), who is dedicated to creating things of meaning outside of themsleves (e.g. for others to see, to record meaning in an object beyond themsleves, etc.), it is a deeply ironic postion to hold.

—TheWillowOfDarkness

I think I get part of what you are saying, but it is kind of confusing because the word "meaning" could be used to reference a real physical thing, or it could be used to reference the mental construct we create in order to reference a physical thing. It is kind of like in computer science you sometimes have memory locations that hold data that is to be used and at other times it is used to hold a information that is used to point to a location of data (or sometimes to another pointer as well), and to mistake a location holding a pointer to have data or a data location as a pointer can really screw things up.

Anyways the problem I'm trying to understand here is whether you are talking about that they rejected a certain aspect of reality itself (which I guess could happen but I'm not sure why) or if trying to undermine certain aspects of the labels or system of labels we use to reference everything. If I was to hazard a guess I would say I believe they are doing the latter since if you wish to question Western ideology and Abrahamic religions, you would want to find something wrong with it and get others to believe you when you say there is a issue with it. Also saying there is a problem with a the-thing-in-and-of-itself is tricky because reality just is and if there is a real problem it is the job of the technical sciences to find a solution since it's not up to philosophy to try and resolve it. Or at least this is what I gather from reading what you said in your post.

"I agree. It's as if personalities are founded on core beliefs. Sometimes a core belief is abandoned and a person experiences a revolution in their thinking. A child who believes in God might eventually decide that the sky is empty and the universe doesn't care. That all the talk of right and wrong is just talk about preferences. Those with power prefer X and will punish Y. So the world is transformed from a righteously ruled rational realm to a chaos of force, persuasion, and self-invention. I think those who want God not to exist are attracted to being a small, fragile god themselves. Indeed, the lonely little man in the void is simultaneously grand and godlike in his consciousness. To lose God properly is also to lose every ideology that might dominate the individual (it's just monkey-breath in the void, right?) On the other hand, our starring monkeys want a dominant position. They want their self-invention recognized and thereby realized objectively. So they identity themselves with trans-personal principles (politics, art) that others also identity with, so that status becomes a measure of incarnating truth or justice or science rather than the traditional God. But as you say, it's more or less the same. The point is to climb to the high place. The point is status and its enjoyment in terms of some virtue. Of course I would use this theory to explain the creation and presentation of this theory."
—Ignignot

True. Whether we are a hedonist, atheist, or theist we are influenced by our id/ego and the base desires that come with them. While we all may have dreams and higher purpose in mind to guide our actions, the human condition binds us much like a leash does with a dog. And this is true whether we remain in a low place or manage to occasionally climb to a higher place that you mention. After all a higher rung on the latter only means one is able to get a leash is just a little bit longer for a little while until someone decides to put it back to it's original length.

It may sound very demeaning for me to word it this way, but if it is really that way (perhaps I'm just exaggerating just a little), it would still be appropriate. At least while reading your comments I feel a little bit less crazy then I sometimes imagine myself to be. :)

Socrates said ''the only thing I know is that I know nothing''. They killed him but that's beside the point.
—TheMadFool
Part of the reason they killed him is they realized he knew too much. For many knowing that you know nothing sounds like your stupid, but for others they realize he is aware of the things he doesn't know; which means he is at least smarter than the people who thing he is stupid for admitting his knowledge of what is more or less insignificant when compared to that which he doesn't have knowledge of. Of course when he says this he is hinting that this is true of us all whether we like to admit it or not.

One person knowing this may not make much of a difference, but if that one person is able to teach/influence too many others it might upset the status quo that exists in a society. And that is likely the reason they decided to kill him; that plus he might of seemed to arrogant at his trial.

"Now, while I have never drank alcohol except for Chianti wine from Tuscany and the occasional social dribble to pretend I resembled the morons I was forced to socialise with, I have found it to be a lot more satisfying being brutally honest while in control of all my faculties, facing the terror with integrity. I think you are right when you say that over time, as one continuously seeks alcohol or other types of methods to escape or paralyse themselves from facing whatever it is that they are afraid of, tricking themselves into thinking that if they face this reality then they will experience something devastating (when it is the exact opposite), they become dependent on objects like alcohol or recreational drugs or other people like their partner or social customs etc in order to continue avoiding. The myth of Sisyphus."
—TimeLine

I mostly agree with you, but I know even if I don't drink I have to use some other form of romanticism/escapism every so often to deal with reality; and I believe this is almost true of everyone. Whether someone tries to keep their vices to a minimum, like the Victorians tried to, or feed there indulgences as much as their hearts desires; we are often faced with the nearly identical problem which is mainly maintaining our biofeedback pain/pleasure principle good enough that we do not lose our little minds. Or perhaps for some just maintain it long enough to go out with a 'bang'.

Perhaps the biggest problem is just focusing on that one thing alone seems to never work in and of itself and only by having an elaborate system of beliefs, plans, goals, game theory, hedonistic calculus, etc.can one possibly begin to have some control. However the more complicated the system or plan the harder it is to maintain; or at least it is that way for adults, for children/teenagers it is often getting immediate wants and needs or at least it is that until they get bored with it. Maybe as adults we often have already experienced enough of our petty desires that it just becomes more work and/or more expensive to do something we haven't done before. Or at least haven't done it enough yet.

I will admit after reading that passage, I will have to reread it a few more time to be sure what he means by it. As a person with ADHD I have a hard time reading certain things even if they are just slightly long winded (which is what nearly all great philosophers have to do if they want to be thought of as more than just amateurs), which is why I like talking/arguing with regular people who sometimes study the greats instead of sticking my nose in certain books. At any rate I'm glad that you shared that with me but if it is possible could you explain what it means to you in layman terms if you can. If you don't have the time I'm ok with that too. :D

"Presumably they find value and fulfillment in writing about pessimism.
— darthbarracuda

Exactly."
— Baden
It might also help if someone has had a near death experience before and/or similar events happen to them.

In my twenties I found out that alcohol (especially mixed drinks) where a effective way to forgot all the problems of the world and get generally hosed up. I guesstimate I likely blacked out on more than a dozen occasions before I took my adventures just a little bit too far. At the time I knew someone who could make GHB and while taking it and drinking (a mixture of zima, wild irish rose, cheap wine, gold crown royal, and a little bit of some other stuff I can't remember) I quickly became very, very drunk very quickly. What I didn't know was that the batch of GHB I was using was more than 3-4 times stronger so I overcompensated with the amount I took and the strength of the drinks (which was too week the last time I did it) and created a recipe for disaster.

It took only an hour before I first started feeling the effects of an oncoming blackout; which I would have noticed if it didn't come on so fast and I wasn't so drunk. The issue wasn't that I just wasn't able to walk straight, the issue was when I tried to walk straight there would be momentary lapses of conscience where I wasn't even aware of what I was doing. It was kind of like watching a movie or TV and and the screen goes black for a moment and then when it reappears a couple seconds later 10-20 seconds had past instead of the couple that seemed to. If I was smart I might have stopped drinking and went home but I didn't however it didn't take that long for me to realize how badly I messed up because about twenty minutes later I reached the apex of my expedition.

I don't know about anyone else but whenever I black out there is something I call "a moment of clarity" (and what I have heard some people call "drinking yourself sober") where it seemed I was almost even more sober than when I wasn't drinking. Even my vision seem to get better when this happened. I have no idea how it happened but my guess it was ditch effort of the body to momentary fight the effects of alcohol by flooding the itself with whatever endorphin's (and anything else) in order to help get me somewhere safe. Whenever this use to happen I knew it was a clear signal from my body that I was going to black out very soon, and would find some half way safe to crawl into for 2-4 hours at least. While the "moment of clarity" during that event allowed me to know that I was super drunk and about to black out it all happened way too fast for me to do anything about it.

While the specifics of some of what happened are more than I have the time to write about at this moment. I will say at a certain point it seemed as if I had "no pain". Maybe it was that I was feeling too euphoric to notice the pain or something else but I can reasonably say that I can't remember ever another situation before or after that which I felt so devoid of pain as that moment.

However it wasn't really a happy event since just as I became devoid of pain it also felt like I was both losing control of my body and becoming paralyzed. Up until this time I sort of had a fantasy that perhaps it was possible for there to be a way to get so drunk that I would become oblivious to the pain and troubles around me, yet aware enough to enjoy such a sensation without blacking out first. After that I knew that such a experience sort of exists, yet it far to close too OD'ing to ever be pursued under any normal circumstances.

And it wasn't just the feeling of paralyses, it was the feeling of blackness and me sinking into my own mind and body and getting trapped in it. The only thing I can compare it too is if someone is venturing into one of those narrow underground caves by themselves and they get stuck and don't have a flashlight. I also know my sensations isn't that far from those sensations because when I described them to someone who did get stuck in a cave and passed out from it, they pleaded with me to stop because phobia from their own experience made it unbearable to even think about it.

The mind and body instinctively fear darkness and getting trapped by something, but combined it is the kind of terror that quickly overcomes the rational mind attempts to overcome the situation. I eventually wondered somewhere I didn't know, loss my glasses and backpack, puked my guts out (luckily while I was face down and not face up), and withing a half-hour to an hour regained consciences. I don't know if I didn't keep moving, laid down, and/or didn't puke my guts out that I may have never regained conscience but it all was too close of a call for me to try it again.

I guess the moral of story is even though every day depression, anxiety, duḥkha, etc. is not that great, the alternatives could be far worse. It is kind of the "Reverse - Grass is greener on the other side", when one is in a horrible environment but becomes somewhat acclimated to it, one can grow to fear the alternatives because A) they might not be any better and/or worse B) even if it not worse, if it is no better it will require one to become acclimated to it as well. Or it might be like the old saying "the Devil you know".

However maybe one just becomes a coward for some time after experiencing such things. I don't know if an eternity of paralyses and blackness is worse than spending an eternity of rolling a rock up a hill, but my guess is that it isn't worse. The people who where described as:

"Presumably they find value and fulfillment in writing about pessimism."
— darthbarracuda

Could be doing it because that is all they know what to do and/or it serves as a means of distraction. Maybe they do it merely to pay the bills, not end up on the street and then in jail, and then have to become someone's girlfriend in order not to get beaten up by stronger inmates around them. I'm not saying that it is a given there isn't 'noble' reason in their writing and/or other work, I'm just saying that the human condition more often than not makes it impossible NOT to do anything without someone ending up in worse predicaments. Even if this fear of worse predicaments could be nothing more than for cowardly reasons.

" dclements thank you for your detailed answer, i also hope some other people would also read and contribute to this conversation."
— Override

Your welcome. :D

"You have pointed out some interesting themes where any of them i would lie to talk about, but one of the most interesting ones for me is just in your first sentence where sadly you mention that doesn't interest you much, that is the relation of good and evil with religion. If you don't mind I would like to start as beginning point on this, at least not what is good and evil in religion, but the relation of it with these terms.

The question i would have would definitely be "would there be good and evil if there was not religion and no punishment and reward for these actions after death" at all. This could be a difficult question for me to answer at once. To answer this question let's think this question first; "Which one was first in timeline: first religion or the invention of terms good and bad"? I don't think there would be any way to figure out the answer of this question also. This or alike sub-questions that would try to support answering first question will hardly bring us to a real answer, so not spending too much time on them, let's go to first question in simple way "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad?". This question is nearly impossible to answer in an absolute way cause there would be too much unknown and too many variables to consider about including human itself and relations with its social environment."
— Override

Your kind of getting into some of the over thinking of things that I usually like to avoid but I guess that is "Ok" for now. If you can try to separate your thinking into two different tasks where one task you can either ask questions and/or speculate on whatever and the other is to merely collect data without asking too many questions or try to interpret the data in any way than what it is. You can think of this as some sort of medieval form of scientific inquiry on whatever but I believe it is not that far different than how they go about things today. The purpose of such methods is to sort of take take a snapshot and preserve whatever it is being monitored before the people that are allowed to speculate on the data can molest it for their own purposes. Maybe you can envision and understand the purpose of this but I will leave it at that for now.

Anyways your question if it could be easily answer would be worthy of a few doctoral thesis for sure if it was to be done properly, but since I don't have the time or resources for that I will have to rely on a more quicker and messier method. Man most likely discovered religion/ethics right about the time he evolved from animal to be something of what we consider to be human. While it is possible for man to have do this even earlier or for animals to have kind of ethics and religion, what we consider to be "ethics" and/or "religion" is to be a uniquely human trait (at least how it is defined in Western societies) I will stick with this version of it since it is the easier thing to do and will unlikely make a difference.

I'm no anthropologist but I believe it is likely the most of the first ethical/religious type questions and actions done by early man was a cross between day to day survival ( ie. primitive pragmatism) and early ceremonies and questioning about nearly anything. It might be hard to imagine why early man would bother to bury their dead or start rituals, but if you look at Shintoism (a primitive religion still practiced in Japan) you will see how the line between religious ceremony and common, if not occasionally odd social practices (like the Shiners with their funny hats and tiny motorcycles at parades) are not that far apart. If you think of it parades while not exactly the same thing as religious ceremony they are close enough to be the same thing in certain cultures. Anyways for me they are mostly the same thing and since I doing this the quick/dirty method I'll again just leave it at that and that most if not all religious ceremonies are just a kind of social ritual of one sort or another covered with a little bit of fluff so even if we didn't have 'religions' we would still have some sort of social/religious ceremonies of one sort or another just because it is part of human nature.

Ok, at this point I'm going to have to do something to make things quicker by mentioning that my viewpoint is influenced by Julian Jaynes's "Bicameralism" and his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" even though I have never really read the book. To the best of my knowledge his belief was that early man had kind of a "split personality" where at some times he operated as a simple minded individual that didn't think to much for themselves (or at least even more simple minded than many simple minded people today that still do the same) and a second ego that was tied directly to the Super or "God" ego. While not really the same thing in certain insect of other than human societies there is a kind of hive mind at play. Certain individuals in the group do the actual leg work of thinking about things and other members of the hive mostly focus on carrying out the tasks that need to be done. I like to think of the thinkers as some kind of 'chiefs' (who's job is sometimes made easier by other doing most of the physical work for them) and the other people as, as well just workers or drones since Indians doesn't have a good ring to it. The funny thing is that these workers or plebs can often do the job of thinking for themselves by merely asking themselves "what would the chief tell me to do" whenever they get cut off from their tribe. Or at least they could do that kind of thing long enough until they often got reconnected with them if they knew enough about how to survive. Anyways the theory goes that this mentality fell apart as soon as tribes got much bigger and people no longer had any real "chief" to rely on to tell them what to do, or at least any person that really act like a chief when too many other people also try and pretend to be a chief. Also the theory goes that there is a residual aspect of this mentality with us, and of course if this theory is true it would do a lot to explain the what, where, when, and whys of religion but it is mostly still just a theory and I believe there is still a lot of controversy and problems with it.

However if what Julian Jaynes and Bicameralism says is mostly true than religion was created as a kind of leftover mentality to help deal with our inability to function without a hive or tribal mind. It might also help to explain a bit why human beings tend to form hierarchical if not corrupt social structures since the beginning of time but some of that would be beyond this topic. For me ad my view of things it is merely a means to explain a lot of 'fluff' with religion/ethics that I usually like to ignore and/or explain away with the excuse that it is because, well it is just seems counter-protective to me.

Another issue I will mention is the binary/false dilemma. Whenever anyone talks about "good" and "evil" they often will have the tendency to think that something has to be one or the other much like some people think some answers have to be yes or no or how Beavis and Butthead would think that something was either cool or sucks. However characteristics or attributes of something in our world is more often than not more complicated than can be merely summed up in either one or two states. Even in digital logic where circuits are built specifically for their ability to be able to represent either '0' or '1', the actual implementation/dynamics of the circuits are more complicated and messy so the idea of them being a mere bit storing either a 0 or 1 isn't the whole truth. I'm getting a little bit long winded here but the point I'm trying to make is reality is often more complicated than can be represented in simple 'good'/'evil' labeling or any other models or labeling we can think of at the moment. I could on about other fallacies and how they effect our judgement but pointing out one, along with some of the issues of how religion can effect our judgement (whether for good or bad) should do for the moment.

Ok, so after all that we are left with a simple but real question which is "What action or actions(and/or thoughts) should I take that are best for me that would allow me to have the best life possible and/or the best outcome for both me and everyone else.". You see underneath all the fluff or morality, religion, and whatever else, ethics is merely a tool we use to survive. It is really nothing more and nothing less than this, however every waking moment of your existence is governed by the problems and issues that ethics tries to grapple with so it would be hard for me to stress enough the actual importance of it when everything we do requires us fall back to our 'simple tools' in order to fix or guide things in our lives.

Another way to break it down, is that ethics (and/or religion depending on how and what you define as religion) is instrumental in not only the big questions that primitive man use to really on their chiefs for, but also their supposedly mundane tasks they did each day to survive. I guess this in a way answers your question "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad" which would be both yes and no in that 'yes' people would still have to rely on some kind of system of beliefs in order to answer the question as to what they 'ought' to do (which in itself wouldn't be completely different from ethic/ religious/ ideological type thinking that we have today but also 'no' in that it isn't a given that such thinking would frame our actions and problems in the same way as today when some people say such and such are 'good' while something else is 'evil'. In other words there would or could be something of a "paradigm shift" where our system of seeing/talking/labeling of the world around us would be differnt than it had been before.

Hopefully I answered enough to move on at least for now...


"Until now i just wanted to show that there seems to be no direct way of answering the correlation between religion and good and bad relation directly. In such cases what i would like to do is go through the current phase, because current phase is the result of what have been in the past, without knowing the real reasons of what created them. This may not bring us to a point of absolute reality, but may bring us to a point where at least satisfies us to live with our questions in our minds."

— Override

In my way of thinking about things religion/ ethics/ morality/ ideology/ labeling things 'good'or 'bad/ and even any kind of system of beliefs you can think of are ALL MERELY LABELS FOR THE SAME THING. When your talking about someone's religion, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about someone's ideology, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about when someone chooses to label things either 'good'or 'bad, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about someone's morality, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about even any system of beliefs they may use to get about their day, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. I'm being kind of repetitive and I know each of those terms don't mean EXACTLY the same thing but in my humble opinion more often than not it isn't necessary to split hairs on how they are different when dealing with some of the more complicated stuff.


"I don't want to discuss religions deeply, but according to my perception of the world that we live on today, for majority of people including me, good and bad are related to religion. How i come to this point is the outside world taught me like this because i see on movies and on televisions and on holy religions this way. So looking at the current situation i think good and bad are thought to me and they are related with religion.

We can go to a different point from here, but if we can justify the thesis "good and evil is related with religion" that would be good starting point. Open to suggestions of course on how to continue."

— Override

If you have ever read post modern philosophy you might familiar with the terms 'narrative' and 'context'. In layman terms, a 'narrative' is kind of like a giant story that is told to everyone from the time they are kids to when they become adults and the term 'context' is term use to describe how something relates to narrative but more or less means the same thing as a narrative. As inside larger or main narrative there can be another smaller narratives or sub narratives much like there are sub plots within the main plot of a movie; and possibly smaller/sub narratives within those.The concept of a narrative/context can be both simple and complex because while they are something the same thing as mere religion and morality they are also concern with things like social norms, psychology social conditioning, various kind of subtle and/or benign brainwashing,etc.

To give you an example of how this works a type passage in post modern philosophy using the words narrative to say something might go something like this "the word 'good' and 'evil' only have meaning withing the context of the narrative they are derived from, but outside of that narrative they could be meaningless and/or moot". While someone who believes in 'good' and 'evil' could argue that that is not true and that their concepts of the world around them really has good and evil in it, the problem is left open for debate.

For the post modernist saying this, it is possible or probable that 'good' and 'evil' are merely labels/mental constructs of the world around us but may not actually represent how or what the world actually is. Even if they are wrong and mistaken in some way (and the guy who says such and such are 'good' or 'evil' is ACTUALLY correct in some way) is position is STILL SOUND AND 'Ok' from his point of view and for people that think like him. The reason for this is he is not arguing whether such and such are actually good or evil, but merely the possibly there being issue with how we label things good or evil. He likely also aware that even his own question of labeling of good and evil is in large part due to his own narrative that he is drawing from and since other people's narrative could be biased/flawed it (hopefully) would be as much of a surprise to him to eventually notice a thing or not correct in his own system of beliefs, even if that sometime takes a bit of time.

Ok, I finally got to the part where I need to reference the medieval scientist's data collectors. To quickly recap the data collectors (whether it is being done then or now) are only allowed to collect data and are nether allowed to 'fudge' the information/numbers nor add any kind of opinion into their process of collecting data. If you ever studied statistics and/or how people are able to 'lie' and/or cherry pick with it, you should understand why it needs to be done that way. If there needs to be any lying and or cherry picking actually done, it will be the data collector's superiors who have the authority to draw opinions and conclusions about such things. However the beauty such a system is the raw data can still be referenced by others (if it isn't destroyed, which could create more problems for the people who wish to destroy it than it is worth to do that) if they what to draw their own opinions about it.

In a system where collecting the data and drawing opinions is being done at the same time (which is how human thinking is done most of the time) any kind of data that we can find useful has a better chance to be shewed. The reason I'm bring this up is since you are wondering what it looks like to live in a world not influenced by 'good'/'evil', religions, etc all you got to do is think like one of these data collectors for a little while and you will start having a better grasp on it. While I'm sure you or anyone reading this may realize that writing down numbers appearing on a senor and deciding whether to lie to a killer who asked you to tell him where your friend is hiding are two completely separate things, there is actually a simple work around for that. But I probably should reference Hume in order to do that.

Hume's most famous quote (or at least the quote of his I know best) is "you cannot get an ought from an is". In layman terms this means that the actions one believes they should carry out for their greatest benefit (the 'ought' part of the post) CANNOT be derived by the mere facts and/or data (which is the 'is' he is referencing) that one is able to access at the time of that decision. That could sound really bad, since we but often derive and 'ought' when put in a certain situation and that choice isn't too rarely probably the best course of action at the time; whether we really had enough or not enough information/resource to go by. But the wrinkle is even if we are 'Ok' with getting an ought from an is throughout our lives, we are also aware of how fallible our thinking and actions can be and we also know that such 'judgement calls' can be full of issues and human error. Another way to look at it is every time you DO derive an 'ought' from an is and make one of these judgment calls, YOU HAVE TO RELY ON YOUR OPINION (or your best guess if you prefer to call it that) instead of actually being able to simply use the facts around you to determine what to do. I think Kierkegaard mentioned something about life being open ended because of this,but I can't remember too clearly if this was what he was talking about. Hopefully I'm not getting too long winded by now.

Anyways all this would be merely a kind of anal retentive for ethics except it can be applied to desensitizing ethical questioning and inquiry. While mere data can no longer apply to determine what need to do, the process of how data is used has determined (or at least in the how it works in the model I'm describing). While the paradigm shift isn't completely obvious, it isn't too hard to flesh out for you (or anyone reading this) who isn't already aware of what I'm talking about, of course that is if you don't understand.

For example it is a fact that you have to put gas in your car to go, but it isn't a fact that you ought to put gas in your car to make it go. The reason I used this example is it shouldn't be that hard to realize that for people that drive cars there often isn't a question of whether they should put gas in their car if they need to get somewhere but at the same time it is also obvious that it isn't a given that people should be taking that course of action at certain times. Also it is obviously a fact that cars need gas to go somewhere where needing to go somewhere is obviously not a fact, or at least it is almost is obviously not a fact.

A tougher example would be " is isn't a given a doctor 'ought' to give a patient a life saving vaccine/medicine/treatment/etc if doing so will save their life". Obviously saying something like this at the wrong time and/or place can get me B-slapped by someone that disagrees (which is part of the reason I use it) but I hope that anyone emotional just reading this can put such this to the side for one moment. In a narrative that relies too much on 'good' and 'evil' there is obviously a dilemma here. I'm sure some people can say saving someone is almost always 'good' and choosing to not help them is almost 'evil' and that there might be some exceptions here or there, but even that kind of open mindedness is incomplete. The thing that is being overlooked even in that context is that whether or not the doctor chooses to try and save someone depends if they believe that a human life is worth saving, which isn't as much of given (in Hume's type analyzing of things) as it is often a given in the 'good'/'evil' framework of things.

If you take that even one step further and start asking the questions such as " 'ought' we do everything to prevent wars and/or mass deaths of human being by other events", "is it a given that human beings/ the human race ought to survive","is a a given that humans 'ought' to pursue knowledge and progress to the best of our ability", "is it a given that my life has value and I ought to do everything in order to live" you might end up in area where John Pride was in his opening post if you are not in the right mindset when pondering such things. Depending on your frame of reference and how one ponders such things such questions can lead to skepticism, fallibilism, nihilsim and such. Anyways hopefully this kind of wraps up things as I started with primitive religions and ended with talking about some aspects of Post modernism and the issues dealt with by nihilsim and similar philosophies.

If there is some confusion it might help by listening to an old Jane's Addiction song called 'Ain't No Right' which is sort of about the issue at hand:

Jane's Addiction - Ain't No Right (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx6691i0KDE

(One of my favorite parts of the video is when he gets hit by a shoe that someone threw at him at the concert)

Also one final note, this whole "can't get an 'ought' from an 'is' ", no good and evil, nihilism, etc isn't about it being a better system of morality/religion or whatever since all my arguments can be construed as one kind of hedonism or another (I like to label myself as a hedonistic nihilist, but I'm obviously trying to be cute when I do that).and anyone that knows something about hedonism could come up with reasons it is not so great. At any rate I hope I sort of got you where you wanted/needed to go.

" dclements thank you for your detailed answer, i also hope some other people would also read and contribute to this conversation."
— Override

Your welcome. :D

"You have pointed out some interesting themes where any of them i would lie to talk about, but one of the most interesting ones for me is just in your first sentence where sadly you mention that doesn't interest you much, that is the relation of good and evil with religion. If you don't mind I would like to start as beginning point on this, at least not what is good and evil in religion, but the relation of it with these terms.

The question i would have would definitely be "would there be good and evil if there was not religion and no punishment and reward for these actions after death" at all. This could be a difficult question for me to answer at once. To answer this question let's think this question first; "Which one was first in timeline: first religion or the invention of terms good and bad"? I don't think there would be any way to figure out the answer of this question also. This or alike sub-questions that would try to support answering first question will hardly bring us to a real answer, so not spending too much time on them, let's go to first question in simple way "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad?". This question is nearly impossible to answer in an absolute way cause there would be too much unknown and too many variables to consider about including human itself and relations with its social environment."
— Override

Your kind of getting into some of the over thinking of things that I usually like to avoid but I guess that is "Ok" for now. If you can try to separate your thinking into two different tasks where one task you can either ask questions and/or speculate on whatever and the other is to merely collect data without asking too many questions or try to interpret the data in any way than what it is. You can think of this as some sort of medieval form of scientific inquiry on whatever but I believe it is not that far different than how they go about things today. The purpose of such methods is to sort of take take a snapshot and preserve whatever it is being monitored before the people that are allowed to speculate on the data can molest it for their own purposes. Maybe you can envision and understand the purpose of this but I will leave it at that for now.

Anyways your question if it could be easily answer would be worthy of a few doctoral thesis for sure if it was to be done properly, but since I don't have the time or resources for that I will have to rely on a more quicker and messier method. Man most likely discovered religion/ethics right about the time he evolved from animal to be something of what we consider to be human. While it is possible for man to have do this even earlier or for animals to have kind of ethics and religion, what we consider to be "ethics" and/or "religion" is to be a uniquely human trait (at least how it is defined in Western societies) I will stick with this version of it since it is the easier thing to do and will unlikely make a difference.

I'm no anthropologist but I believe it is likely the most of the first ethical/religious type questions and actions done by early man was a cross between day to day survival ( ie. primitive pragmatism) and early ceremonies and questioning about nearly anything. It might be hard to imagine why early man would bother to bury their dead or start rituals, but if you look at Shintoism (a primitive religion still practiced in Japan) you will see how the line between religious ceremony and common, if not occasionally odd social practices (like the Shiners with their funny hats and tiny motorcycles at parades) are not that far apart. If you think of it parades while not exactly the same thing as religious ceremony they are close enough to be the same thing in certain cultures. Anyways for me they are mostly the same thing and since I doing this the quick/dirty method I'll again just leave it at that and that most if not all religious ceremonies are just a kind of social ritual of one sort or another covered with a little bit of fluff so even if we didn't have 'religions' we would still have some sort of social/religious ceremonies of one sort or another just because it is part of human nature.

Ok, at this point I'm going to have to do something to make things quicker by mentioning that my viewpoint is influenced by Julian Jaynes's "Bicameralism" and his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" even though I have never really read the book. To the best of my knowledge his belief was that early man had kind of a "split personality" where at some times he operated as a simple minded individual that didn't think to much for themselves (or at least even more simple minded than many simple minded people today that still do the same) and a second ego that was tied directly to the Super or "God" ego. While not really the same thing in certain insect of other than human societies there is a kind of hive mind at play. Certain individuals in the group do the actual leg work of thinking about things and other members of the hive mostly focus on carrying out the tasks that need to be done. I like to think of the thinkers as some kind of 'chiefs' (who's job is sometimes made easier by other doing most of the physical work for them) and the other people as, as well just workers or drones since Indians doesn't have a good ring to it. The funny thing is that these workers or plebs can often do the job of thinking for themselves by merely asking themselves "what would the chief tell me to do" whenever they get cut off from their tribe. Or at least they could do that kind of thing long enough until they often got reconnected with them if they knew enough about how to survive. Anyways the theory goes that this mentality fell apart as soon as tribes got much bigger and people no longer had any real "chief" to rely on to tell them what to do, or at least any person that really act like a chief when too many other people also try and pretend to be a chief. Also the theory goes that there is a residual aspect of this mentality with us, and of course if this theory is true it would do a lot to explain the what, where, when, and whys of religion but it is mostly still just a theory and I believe there is still a lot of controversy and problems with it.

However if what Julian Jaynes and Bicameralism says is mostly true than religion was created as a kind of leftover mentality to help deal with our inability to function without a hive or tribal mind. It might also help to explain a bit why human beings tend to form hierarchical if not corrupt social structures since the beginning of time but some of that would be beyond this topic. For me ad my view of things it is merely a means to explain a lot of 'fluff' with religion/ethics that I usually like to ignore and/or explain away with the excuse that it is because, well it is just seems counter-protective to me.

Another issue I will mention is the binary/false dilemma. Whenever anyone talks about "good" and "evil" they often will have the tendency to think that something has to be one or the other much like some people think some answers have to be yes or no or how Beavis and Butthead would think that something was either cool or sucks. However characteristics or attributes of something in our world is more often than not more complicated than can be merely summed up in either one or two states. Even in digital logic where circuits are built specifically for their ability to be able to represent either '0' or '1', the actual implementation/dynamics of the circuits are more complicated and messy so the idea of them being a mere bit storing either a 0 or 1 isn't the whole truth. I'm getting a little bit long winded here but the point I'm trying to make is reality is often more complicated than can be represented in simple 'good'/'evil' labeling or any other models or labeling we can think of at the moment. I could on about other fallacies and how they effect our judgement but pointing out one, along with some of the issues of how religion can effect our judgement (whether for good or bad) should do for the moment.

Ok, so after all that we are left with a simple but real question which is "What action or actions(and/or thoughts) should I take that are best for me that would allow me to have the best life possible and/or the best outcome for both me and everyone else.". You see underneath all the fluff or morality, religion, and whatever else, ethics is merely a tool we use to survive. It is really nothing more and nothing less than this, however every waking moment of your existence is governed by the problems and issues that ethics tries to grapple with so it would be hard for me to stress enough the actual importance of it when everything we do requires us fall back to our 'simple tools' in order to fix or guide things in our lives.

Another way to break it down, is that ethics (and/or religion depending on how and what you define as religion) is instrumental in not only the big questions that primitive man use to really on their chiefs for, but also their supposedly mundane tasks they did each day to survive. I guess this in a way answers your question "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad" which would be both yes and no in that 'yes' people would still have to rely on some kind of system of beliefs in order to answer the question as to what they 'ought' to do (which in itself wouldn't be completely different from ethic/ religious/ ideological type thinking that we have today but also 'no' in that it isn't a given that such thinking would frame our actions and problems in the same way as today when some people say such and such are 'good' while something else is 'evil'. In other words there would or could be something of a "paradigm shift" where our system of seeing/talking/labeling of the world around us would be differnt than it had been before.

Hopefully I answered enough to move on at least for now...


"Until now i just wanted to show that there seems to be no direct way of answering the correlation between religion and good and bad relation directly. In such cases what i would like to do is go through the current phase, because current phase is the result of what have been in the past, without knowing the real reasons of what created them. This may not bring us to a point of absolute reality, but may bring us to a point where at least satisfies us to live with our questions in our minds."

— Override

In my way of thinking about things religion/ ethics/ morality/ ideology/ labeling things 'good'or 'bad/ and even any kind of system of beliefs you can think of are ALL MERELY LABELS FOR THE SAME THING. When your talking about someone's religion, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about someone's ideology, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about when someone chooses to label things either 'good'or 'bad, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about someone's morality, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about even any system of beliefs they may use to get about their day, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. I'm being kind of repetitive and I know each of those terms don't mean EXACTLY the same thing but in my humble opinion more often than not it isn't necessary to split hairs on how they are different when dealing with some of the more complicated stuff.


"I don't want to discuss religions deeply, but according to my perception of the world that we live on today, for majority of people including me, good and bad are related to religion. How i come to this point is the outside world taught me like this because i see on movies and on televisions and on holy religions this way. So looking at the current situation i think good and bad are thought to me and they are related with religion.

We can go to a different point from here, but if we can justify the thesis "good and evil is related with religion" that would be good starting point. Open to suggestions of course on how to continue."

— Override

If you have ever read post modern philosophy you might familiar with the terms 'narrative' and 'context'. In layman terms, a 'narrative' is kind of like a giant story that is told to everyone from the time they are kids to when they become adults and the term 'context' is term use to describe how something relates to narrative but more or less means the same thing as a narrative. As inside larger or main narrative there can be another smaller narratives or sub narratives much like there are sub plots within the main plot of a movie; and possibly smaller/sub narratives within those.The concept of a narrative/context can be both simple and complex because while they are something the same thing as mere religion and morality they are also concern with things like social norms, psychology social conditioning, various kind of subtle and/or benign brainwashing,etc.

To give you an example of how this works a type passage in post modern philosophy using the words narrative to say something might go something like this "the word 'good' and 'evil' only have meaning withing the context of the narrative they are derived from, but outside of that narrative they could be meaningless and/or moot". While someone who believes in 'good' and 'evil' could argue that that is not true and that their concepts of the world around them really has good and evil in it, the problem is left open for debate.

For the post modernist saying this, it is possible or probable that 'good' and 'evil' are merely labels/mental constructs of the world around us but may not actually represent how or what the world actually is. Even if they are wrong and mistaken in some way (and the guy who says such and such are 'good' or 'evil' is ACTUALLY correct in some way) is position is STILL SOUND AND 'Ok' from his point of view and for people that think like him. The reason for this is he is not arguing whether such and such are actually good or evil, but merely the possibly there being issue with how we label things good or evil. He likely also aware that even his own question of labeling of good and evil is in large part due to his own narrative that he is drawing from and since other people's narrative could be biased/flawed it (hopefully) would be as much of a surprise to him to eventually notice a thing or not correct in his own system of beliefs, even if that sometime takes a bit of time.

Ok, I finally got to the part where I need to reference the medieval scientist's data collectors. To quickly recap the data collectors (whether it is being done then or now) are only allowed to collect data and are nether allowed to 'fudge' the information/numbers nor add any kind of opinion into their process of collecting data. If you ever studied statistics and/or how people are able to 'lie' and/or cherry pick with it, you should understand why it needs to be done that way. If there needs to be any lying and or cherry picking actually done, it will be the data collector's superiors who have the authority to draw opinions and conclusions about such things. However the beauty such a system is the raw data can still be referenced by others (if it isn't destroyed, which could create more problems for the people who wish to destroy it than it is worth to do that) if they what to draw their own opinions about it.

In a system where collecting the data and drawing opinions is being done at the same time (which is how human thinking is done most of the time) any kind of data that we can find useful has a better chance to be shewed. The reason I'm bring this up is since you are wondering what it looks like to live in a world not influenced by 'good'/'evil', religions, etc all you got to do is think like one of these data collectors for a little while and you will start having a better grasp on it. While I'm sure you or anyone reading this may realize that writing down numbers appearing on a senor and deciding whether to lie to a killer who asked you to tell him where your friend is hiding are two completely separate things, there is actually a simple work around for that. But I probably should reference Hume in order to do that.

Hume's most famous quote (or at least the quote of his I know best) is "you cannot get an ought from an is". In layman terms this means that the actions one believes they should carry out for their greatest benefit (the 'ought' part of the post) CANNOT be derived by the mere facts and/or data (which is the 'is' he is referencing) that one is able to access at the time of that decision. That could sound really bad, since we but often derive and 'ought' when put in a certain situation and that choice isn't too rarely probably the best course of action at the time; whether we really had enough or not enough information/resource to go by. But the wrinkle is even if we are 'Ok' with getting an ought from an is throughout our lives, we are also aware of how fallible our thinking and actions can be and we also know that such 'judgement calls' can be full of issues and human error. Another way to look at it is every time you DO derive an 'ought' from an is and make one of these judgment calls, YOU HAVE TO RELY ON YOUR OPINION (or your best guess if you prefer to call it that) instead of actually being able to simply use the facts around you to determine what to do. I think Kierkegaard mentioned something about life being open ended because of this,but I can't remember too clearly if this was what he was talking about. Hopefully I'm not getting too long winded by now.

Anyways all this would be merely a kind of anal retentive for ethics except it can be applied to desensitizing ethical questioning and inquiry. While mere data can no longer apply to determine what need to do, the process of how data is used has determined (or at least in the how it works in the model I'm describing). While the paradigm shift isn't completely obvious, it isn't too hard to flesh out for you (or anyone reading this) who isn't already aware of what I'm talking about, of course that is if you don't understand.

For example it is a fact that you have to put gas in your car to go, but it isn't a fact that you ought to put gas in your car to make it go. The reason I used this example is it shouldn't be that hard to realize that for people that drive cars there often isn't a question of whether they should put gas in their car if they need to get somewhere but at the same time it is also obvious that it isn't a given that people should be taking that course of action at certain times. Also it is obviously a fact that cars need gas to go somewhere where needing to go somewhere is obviously not a fact, or at least it is almost is obviously not a fact.

A tougher example would be " is isn't a given a doctor 'ought' to give a patient a life saving vaccine/medicine/treatment/etc if doing so will save their life". Obviously saying something like this at the wrong time and/or place can get me B-slapped by someone that disagrees (which is part of the reason I use it) but I hope that anyone emotional just reading this can put such this to the side for one moment. In a narrative that relies too much on 'good' and 'evil' there is obviously a dilemma here. I'm sure some people can say saving someone is almost always 'good' and choosing to not help them is almost 'evil' and that there might be some exceptions here or there, but even that kind of open mindedness is incomplete. The thing that is being overlooked even in that context is that whether or not the doctor chooses to try and save someone depends if they believe that a human life is worth saving, which isn't as much of given (in Hume's type analyzing of things) as it is often a given in the 'good'/'evil' framework of things.

If you take that even one step further and start asking the questions such as " 'ought' we do everything to prevent wars and/or mass deaths of human being by other events", "is it a given that human beings/ the human race ought to survive","is a a given that humans 'ought' to pursue knowledge and progress to the best of our ability", "is it a given that my life has value and I ought to do everything in order to live" you might end up in area where John Pride was in his opening post if you are not in the right mindset when pondering such things. Depending on your frame of reference and how one ponders such things such questions can lead to skepticism, fallibilism, nihilsim and such. Anyways hopefully this kind of wraps up things as I started with primitive religions and ended with talking about some aspects of Post modernism and the issues dealt with by nihilsim and similar philosophies.

If there is some confusion it might help by listening to an old Jane's Addiction song called 'Ain't No Right' which is sort of about the issue at hand:

Jane's Addiction - Ain't No Right (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx6691i0KDE

(One of my favorite parts of the video is when he gets hit by a shoe that someone threw at him at the concert)

Also one final note, this whole "can't get an 'ought' from an 'is' ", no good and evil, nihilism, etc isn't about it being a better system of morality/religion or whatever since all my arguments can be construed as one kind of hedonism or another (I like to label myself as a hedonistic nihilist, but I'm obviously trying to be cute when I do that).and anyone that knows something about hedonism could come up with reasons it is not so great. At any rate I hope I sort of got you where you wanted/needed to go.

"I do think my negative outlook on life was "eventual" in some sense, as I have a disposition to see flaws and have always been skeptical. If it wasn't this it would have been that, but it was True Detective that formally introduced me to pessimistic philosophy. The show is edgy af but then again so is some of the pessimistic literature (also I agree with Maw that the first season is superior than the second).

I'm also in debt to True Detective for getting me into doom metal and psychedelic rock. For example, this song by The Black Angels:"
—darthbarracuda


Ok, I when you put it that way it makes me really want to check the show. :)


"In regards to "horror" philosophy in general, I do find it to be cathartic and revealing in some ways, but I am also fundamentally repelled by the idea of actually enjoying horror if we're being philosophical. If you're enjoying horror, it means you're still considering it entertainment. In my opinion, it's not truly horror unless you actually legitimately wished you hadn't read that book or watched that movie."
—darthbarracuda

I don't think "horror philosophy" or even horror itself is really about horror. I mean if you are able to watch about fifteen to twenty minutes of "three guys and a hammer" or some of the worst videos on heavy.com on street justice, Chechen war, ISIS then you have a better stomach for that kind of stuff than me. Most people can watch horror and crime shows because they either know it isn't real or perhaps they have seen enough stuff where it does no longer seems real to them. In ancient Rome and a few other civilizations people used to be entertained by watching people beat each other to death or get killed in some other fashion, but I think it more likely becomes real horror if it is someone's own life on the line than someone else's.

But you are right in that there is kind of a thin line where something goes from being entertaining to a bit unsettling and from that to completely unbearable, however something doesn't have to 'real horror' since such things are completely unmarketable except perhaps to those with the most jaded or oddest of tastes. And while the rest of us can only be entertained by "watered down" horror, I think the reasons for this are sort of obvious if one stops and thinks about it.



"That's what people like Nietzsche, Freud and Zapffe were going on about, how people can't handle too much truth, that truth isn't comfortable. I think Ligotti once said that truth will leave you empty handed on the side of the road wondering why you even pursued it in the first place. It destroys your beliefs, illusions, and securities and leaves you naked and afraid. This is ultimately why I am very hesitant to explain some of my philosophical beliefs to other people, as I don't know how they'll react. For all I know they might react in a very poor way, similar to how I reacted when I was initially introduced to pessimism (which is embarrassing looking back).

To be honest, valuing truth even when it's horrible is just a coping mechanism, I think. It's a transcendental (escape) "I'm holier than thou" attitude to make up for the fact that it's not exactly comfortable to believe these sorts of things about life. I know Cioran once said in The Book of Delusions:

"A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It’s not easy to be on the wrong foot with life." "
—darthbarracuda

While knowing truth isn't always pleasant, it has it's uses. It is kind of like that old show on TV called "Dirty Jobs", not everyone has the tolerance to do such work. And even if most people that have the tolerance for them would be rather be doing something else it still has to be done by someone that is desperate for some money. I don't know if pessimist/skeptics are the "holier than thou" or the pooper scoopers of philosophy but I think they serve some kind of purpose



"Now of course I will admit that modalities like horror can be cathartic, and that's fine. But if you go beyond catharsis and start glorifying horror and pessimism (as shows like True Detective have the tendency to do), you end up leaving behind the essence of pessimism in favor of a shallow aesthetic.

It's telling, to me at least, that the ending of the first season of True Detective was the way it was. It ended on a "positive" and "hopeful" note. People were sucked into the show because of its novel pessimism and cathartic nature but ultimately there was an expectation that it would end in an affirmative vindication of life. And that's exactly what it did, and this is exactly why it's ultimately shallow. Without a good reason to affirm life and existence in general, the act of affirmation becomes a bitch-slap cop-out.

The other thing that tends to repel me from "horror" philosophy is that it almost seems like sometimes the writers are intentionally trying to construe things to be horrific. Which, if done for the sake of intellectual exploration, is fine. But certainly I think pessimism has been a marginalized philosophy that hasn't been taken seriously, and one of the consequences of this is that it hasn't been subjected to any serious objections (perhaps there are none?) So I think if there's anything to criticize the "pessimists" for, it would be the tendency to exaggerate certain aspects of life. Pessimism has been going under the radar since practically its "inception" in literature like Ecclesiastes and hasn't been given the time is deserves, which means it's been marginalized but also means that there hasn't been any real opposition (except perhaps Nietzsche or Camus) to draw the line in the sand and say "that's pessimism enough, now you're taking things too far". An example of this would be Zapffe's contemporary Herman Tønnesen who wanted to "out-Zapffe" Zapffe. Is this really the search for an unambiguous description of existence, or was Tønnesen just trying to compete with Zapffe and see who could be more pessimistic?"
—darthbarracuda

What you said reminds me of how I kind of like watching the old CSI shows instead of the new ones. In the old ones you have ugly office and morgues with terrible lighting and paint on the walls from the 40's-50's and everywhere people went it seemed dark and depressing for some reason, but if you think about what it might be like for cops working in a underfunded decaying city area it might not be that far from the truth. However in the new CSI shows the offices all look like something out of a cross between silicon valley/Sci-Fi show, everyone that works there is obviously a model of some sort, and every house they go to is a beach side mansion even if the person that owns it works as a janitor.

I guess my argument is don't fault pessimism/skepticism (or maybe the shows with such themes since I'm not sure which you really find fault with) with being less than perfect or too far from it. I mean you can find fault with a show for having too many flaws (or even a type of philosophy for that matter), but it is sort of a given that when you have a branch of philosophy that is mostly about pointing out the flaws in all other philosophies that it too will have plenty of warts of it's own. Maybe we are supposed to kind of like it even with it's warts and all or maybe something else, but I'm out of coffee so I think this will have to do for my reply for today.

Sure Override, I'm willing to discuss it. In fact ethics ,aside form religion, is one of my favorite topics. :)

You can do all kinds of mental gymnastics if you wish, but eventually many of us realize that what we know of as 'good' and 'evil' are merely best guesses as to what is good and evil according to true objective morality, that is if true objective morality exist. In layman terms humans are highly fallible so every time you hear someone say such and such are 'good' and/or 'evil' then it is helpful to note that it might only seem that way from their point of view.

In theory if one could perceive ALL the wants, needs, hopes, desires,etc of not only every thing that exists and has some kind of self interest BUT ALSO everything that could potentially be, you would have something very close (or at least a heck of a lot closer than we have) to an idea of what objective morality really looks like. As far as I can tell, the amount of information average person has on this kind of information would be less than one grain of sand in an hour glass, and possibly less than one grain of sand on a beach.

The easiest work around for this issue is too simply admit one's own ignorance on all kinds of big questions, label any of these really big questions as 'non-trivial' problems, and replace the words good and evil in my own internal critical thinking with the words 'useful' and 'counter productive' (or anything else that you wish to signify that good/evil merely means something is either useful to them or it is counter productive to the things they see as useful) and accept that when other people use the words good or evil that it fairly often that it is merely their opinion.

Also it is helpful to note that good/evil more or less can only be judged by the consequences of any particular action may cause. Kant and some other philosophers have made the mistake of saying certain actions are always 'good' (such as trying to be nice and polite to people I guess) and others are 'evil' (such as killing innocent people) regardless of the consequences of such actions. In simple mental models (or more accurately social norms and rules) of our world these things seem 'ok', until you factor in more complex factors.

I guess the simplest way to say that consequences are the only thing that doesn't make moral beliefs merely arbitrary, the only non-biased way to determine whether some action is good or bad has to be based on whatever actions such consequences bring; even if trying to determine what consequences certain actions may bring can be more complicated and messy then the way we usually think about it.
Anyways my time is kind of up (cause I got to go somewhere ) , but I'll continue if it seems like a few people are actually reading this stuff.

Not really, in order for me to get my meds it was a requirement that I had to continue seeing someone but I would try to schedule the appointments as far apart as possible. There also have been plenty of times where I haven't seen anyone.

Then again your talking to someone who has type 2 diabetes and has never monitored or really been careful with their blood sugar for the last two years that I've had it. I kind of get a kick out of watching a doctors reaction when I tell them that. :)

Ok, what about if you found out that there was no God and no afterlife and no nothing else. Do you believe such a situation would be as comforting as this other situation you are describing?

Maybe, but in my experience (5+ years of seeing behavioral health 'specialists') the only benefit of going to the head shrinkers is that sometimes you can get them to give out meds. If there is anyone that it would help talking to it would be a friend or family member is has some real idea of the situation.

I'm not saying that none of them can help, I'm just saying that if a person fairly disciplined, intelligent, and knows enough about life and psych 101 to deal with most of their problems but yet has issues that can not be easily resolved then a few minutes (or even a few hours) with a behavioral health specialist will unlikely change things other then perhaps some access to meds that they where unable to get before. However even trying to get meds is such a process that it is often almost not worth it.

If you can tell yourself "don't worry, be happy" then you know about 98% of the skills it take to take care of yourself instead of seeing a newbie behavioral health specialist. And even if telling yourself that doesn't do anything, it doesn't matter since it won't work any better coming from someone else. Of course this is just my humble opinion and it is unlikely to hurt someone to see a head shrinker once if they haven't done so in order for them to draw their own opinion.

I don't know if you can relate or if your situation is similar but I use to worry about how short of a life we have along with the fact that if we die and don't live again or have an after life it kind of makes everything moot; along with the fact that even if we could live a little long ours lives in many ways could or would still be moot. The sensation of such anxiety and depression could be a liken to someone trapped in a slow burning house where they as well move about slowing yet inevitably knowing that no matter where they run to they will still be in the same house and they will always need to find a way to escape. It also doesn't help that the people around you being in the same situation since they likely don't see the problem at all or at least not the same way as you do.

"We do what we do because that is the way that we do it". and after some time of playing this game we call life, reality, or whatever we return back to the inanimate nothingness from which we came. While other people may try to rationalize the situation, the truth is under all the narratives built up by our axioms and sugar coating we put on our reality is there is no truth, or rhyme or reason to everything. And to make matters worse or mind/neural bio-feedback system CRAVES purpose and meaning like a addict fiends for drugs, often making it difficult for someone in situations that are like what you say you are in.

I don't have advice that is guaranteed to work since I don't know you, and each person in such a situation may require unique help but it might be useful to take a step back and realize that a it is somewhat normal to be in this state of mind (as anyone being depressed over the questioning their religion or belief system sometimes becomes), and that by taking some small steps you can help normalize the situation.

If you can't find a rational reason for putting up with reality, you can choose to just become more hedonistic and choose to do things that you like to do, instead of always sacrificing momentary happiness for some greater goal. Yes, this may make you less disciplined and less focused but as you said yourself those things don't matter as much as they use to. Think of it like this way, when you are a kid you are really only focused on your momentary happiness, and it really doesn't matter if the world is going to end next week if you get to have a really cool party today. While this isn't perfect it might be a better course of action than being paralyzed by anxiety and depression.

The only other advice I can give you than being a reckless hedonist is to try and develop a variety mental tricks that help you with your depression and anxiety. I call them trick because they are simple techniques people use to cope with their problems. Some of these might be momentary escapism/romanticism, dark or cavalier humor, occasional drinking and other vices when things gets a little to much, and/or certain eastern philosophies if and when using vices and dreaming all day become too much of a problem. Ok, maybe I don't have the mental tricks thing down since many of them may make matters even worse but the alternative is to find a way to brainwash yourself enough so that you believe in whatever you believed (or perhaps start believing something else) before you stopped believing it.

Good luck! :D

To your question on whether I would like God to exist or not (and I'm sure that some other agnostic/atheist might agree as well), I would have to say that it would be dependent on whether his/her/it's existence would be of any use to us.

I know that WE are supposed to serve him or some 'higher' calling but since we have been left in a deterministic/Machiavellian world where sometimes might seems to makes right and living beings often have to consume each other to survive, I hope that this 'God' would understand our questioning on whether his existence would be of any use.

Don't get me wrong in that if he is Mr. Super nice guy and is willing and able to shower us all with kittens and puppies and such (as some people say he is) then of course it is unlikely that his existence to be a problem. However we are also talking about a being that is supposedly willing to kill people (and possibly destroy entire worlds) at the drop of a hat. And although 'God' is supposedly good, the bible talks about he being good because he is all powerful and the creator of things, but on the other hand the creator/owner of all things can use and abuse his creation and subjects as he pleases. I may be wrong but being ruled by a God that is a tyrant may not be any better than ruled by human tyrants and could possibly be worse.

I think the problem isn't whether there is a 'God' but more if there is even a 'good' anywhere in the entire process of everything. We have a society that demands that we sacrifice the better part of ourselves so that very few of us can live in comfort and possibly sometime in the distant future 'humanity' can afford a better life for the rest of us; along with the opportunity for us to have a better understanding of our world as well. But is there any really anything 'good' beyond that?

The human race doesn't necessarily need 'God' to save us, but we need the proper tools to get us beyond the current limitations we are stuck in and beyond being condemn to spending our brief existence pushing rocks up hills and eggs with our nose. Maybe certain religions are right in that we deserve no better because of our 'sin' but then again maybe religion merely exists as a means for some people to find a way for them to find a a way to accept that their entire existence is merely meant as a way to provide more meat for the machine. And if 'God' can't understand or empathize with this predicament we are in (whether by his will or some other), then he/she it isn't a 'God' at all.

I'll have to look into and see if what you say is true about True Detective when I have a moment, but the purpose of my OP and argument isn't really about whether Rick and Morty or True Detective better encapsulates horror philosophy or nihilism but more about the lack of appreciation of nihilism altogether.

It might be a bit of a hasty generalization to say this but nihilism is kind of the antithesis to the Western culture/Abrahamic religions thesis, and the conflict we are seeing right now between the two is juts a ongoing resolution between Descartian "Thinking thing" philosophy (which stresses the "I" in our worldview perspective of things) and Eastern/Dharmic's philosophy where the "other" is more stressed, or at least more stressed than our own.

At any rate I think that the existence of nihilist philosophy shows some of the weakness in other modern philosophies.

I've read some of Lovecraft's works but perhaps not enough to know exactly the passages your talking about. Even if I did it is probable that I wouldn't remember it without an eidetic memory because it has been ages since I read anything by him and Lovecraft's work can sometimes be almost as long winded as Stephen King's 'It' novel.

Perhaps you can lookup and post the specific parts you are referring to in the hopes that either I or others know what you are talking about.

Um....no. While Existentialism and Nihilism touch on similar issues and topics and are often associated with the same philosophers, they are two separate types of philosophies in and of themselves.

While there is existential nihilism (which I believe is a type of nihilism, and not necessarily a type of existentialism) there isn't a view that neatly crafts the two ideologies together.

Here is a sample from "The Difference Between Existentialism, Nihilism, and Absurdism"

"Many philosophers have believed for centuries that there’s no intrinsic meaning in the universe. Here I’ll summarize three of the major responses to this belief.

Existentialism is the belief that through a combination of awareness, free will, and personal responsibility, one can construct their own meaning within a world that intrinsically has none of its own.

Nihilism is the belief that not only is there no intrinsic meaning in the universe, but that it’s pointless to try to construct our own as a substitute.

Absurdism is the belief that a search for meaning is inherently in conflict with the actual lack of meaning, but that one should both accept this and simultaneously rebel against it by embracing what life has to offer."

The Difference Between Existentialism, Nihilism, and Absurdism
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/difference-existentialism-nihilism-absurdism/#gs.74AGWhU


Anyways I found the follwoing videos on Youtube that do a halfway decent job of explaining existentialism and/or nihilism:

Existentialism and Nihilism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtabjzJNwZ4
Introduction to Nihilism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ajv-RrQs4o

The answer to your question of what the probability of God existing is simply that it is a non-trivial problem (ie. more or less unknowable at the moment because of our limited resources, but may not always be unknowable if our situation changes) because knowing what God is or isn't as well as whether he exists or not are non-trivial problems. I could spend some time explaining this but I think someone already mentioned in this post some of the issues of determining the probability of something and how if you don't know enough or really anything for that matter then you end up with just guesses being pulled from thing air.

Another thing I didn't see anyone mention was whether God did his creating or whatever using technology or some kind of magic. If God used technology then I imagine we are speculating about something like some kind of alien life form (which has it's own issues if we want to determine the probability of), but if it is a being that uses magic instead then there is the issue of determining what 'magic' is and how it works if it does exist.

Or maybe it might be easier just to say there are many things about God we don't know or understand, and just leave it at that. or at least l;eave it at that until we are better prepared to answer such things.

Or they could being doing it just so they don't have to work at Mc Donald's, which really isn't all that different than what you said, :-|

If I had to do one or the other, it would be a difficult choice.

That is one easy argument to dismiss.

The existence of 'good' (or fleeting moments of non-pain and no suffering) don't necessarily undermine an evil/oppressive world where the individual is merely meat for the machine and nothing more.

In the movie 1984, a character by the name Winston Smith can for brief moments seem to be able to outmaneuver the totalitarian state by both knowing the truth from the many of the lies he is told and by the fact he is willing to take risks when undertaking many actions which he knows could get him into trouble. One could imagine the fact that an individual such as Winston doing such things could be a threat to 'Big Brother' (the evil all powerful state), but Big Brother often just sits back to when it suits them to arrest someone instead of 'swooping in' merely at their first thought crime. As the movie seems to put it, 'Big Brother' prefers for some it's victims to have a fantasy that they have managed to safely fooled him before getting caught, brainwashed, and made a scapegoat like all of it's other political prisoners.

Another way to put it, in a Machiavellian world the ability of people to sometimes be good and or have pleasure doesn't mean it is any less Machiavellian. I guess someone might believe that an all-powerful Machiavellian God might want to increase suffering as much as possible, but there is nothing that I know of that says that such a God would do so, As far as I know an all-powerful Machiavellian God could merely be an apex predator choosing to consume and destroy (and possibly sometimes creating something to later consume and destroy) as it pleases them, and things not immediately being harmed by it would very unlikely threaten it omnipotence, and any other omni whatever powers it might have. All it would mean is that it is still just meat for the machine.

What are you trying to argue?

If your trying to build an argument based on 'truth', I would be a little careful. We can construct 'truth' through mental constructions in our own mind but these 'truths' are only truth because we label them as such. When dealing with reality, our mental constructs can adequately represent the things we perceive some of the time; but not perfectly. This isn't a big deal unless you are dealing with issues such as ethics, certain philosophical questions involving non-trivial problems, etc.

While many sciences have 'truths' which are really just information on how to deal with such and such, 'truth' in philosophy can take on a grandiose meaning if you are not careful where you use it. I personally prefer the terms 'data' and 'information' than the term 'truth' when dealing subjects since those terms make it obvious they are only useful in certain contexts and subject to change.

Hopeful this advice helps you if your argument is being undermined by using the term 'truth' in ways that displeases others; otherwise I have poorly spent my time by writing this.

The cosmological argument and every other argument that followed in it's foot steps starts with the premise that 'God exist' and then throws a lot of nonsense/red herrings in front of it to confuse people into agreeing in order so that they don't have to look dumb when having to deal with non-trivial problems they have no real idea about. Using word play and/or sleight of hand tactics tactics is not all that different than the red herrings used when trying to confuse people when creating a Chewbacca defense.

Chewbacca defense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdba9C2G14
The Chewbacca Defense 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clKi92j6eLE

Thanks. :D

I remember getting a email or PM about many forum members relocating to another site, but that was before the site stopped working and other issues that required my attention and caused me to stop posting for awhile. By the time I started posting again it had been awhile since I got the message and wasn't sure where to find it to use the link to get here.

Anyways I'm just glad to see someplace that has some of the old forum members in it. :)

You're welcome. :D

To be honest I should be thanking you since usually people consider any anti-capitalist rhetoric (even if it is mere questioning the ideology) as somewhere along the lines between conspiracy theory and communist propaganda and having someone willing to even consider that there could be rational reasons behind such arguments is kind of a relief.

Since you found the last links useful, I spent a few minutes looking up some related material such as the studies showing the rich behaving less ethically than the rest of us (which contradicts the idea that they can "watch themselves" without the need of check/balances, oversight from arbitrators, etc) and an book on the economy that more or less talks about the problem in general:



Economix
==========================================
(Economix more or less talks about the problems and biases in
our economy, some of how it can be fixed but why it isn't)

Economix: How Our Economy Works (and Doesn't Work),
Paperback – Sept 1, 2012 by Michael Goodwin
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0810988399/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Studies show why the rich are unethical
==========================================
Studies show why the rich are unethical
https://www.google.com/search?q=studies+show+why+the+rich+are+unethical

New Study: The Wealthy are more Unethical
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/new-study-wealthy-are-more-unethical

Rich People More Likely to Lie, Cheat, Study Suggests
http://www.livescience.com/18683-rich-people-lie-cheat-study.html


Why the rich are unethical
==========================================
Why the rich are unethical
https://www.google.com/search?q=why+the+rich+are+unethical

Are Wealthy People Less Ethical?
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wealthy-people-ethical/story?id=23758468

Why the Rich Are Less Ethical: They See Greed as Good:
A new study suggests that being wealthy primes people to act like jerks.
http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/28/why-the-rich-are-less-ethical-they-see-greed-as-good/

Are rich people more unethical?
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/27/health/rich-more-unethical/

STUDY: Rich People Are More Unethical Than Poor People
http://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-how-unethical-are-the-wealthy-2012-3


I hope you find some of them useful. :)

Anyways I think the realities of the problems outlined in Economix and studies showing that a lot of the super wealthy are playing a game of "Do as I say, not as I do" (ie. double standard) are about as close as someone can get to 'scientific proof' when it comes to problem of morality in society. Of course whether anyone cares is another matter.

I wish I could find it but there was an article titled something along the lines of runaway capitalism where it talked about since the cold war just ended that the industrialize world would assume that 'capitalism worked' instead of socialism working and such an assumption was bound to create an unbalance economy (since there was no other ideology to contrast capitalism to) until there was another economic paradigm to put everything back into perspective.

In reality (or at least my interpretation of it), capitalism is really kind of a feudalism 2.0 where the rich and powerful are able to use their resources to take advantage of the poor and the working class to better themselves. Without anyone in authority to challenge the 'status quo' and cronyism (since the people in charge of that kind of thing answer to the rich themselves), nobody can really do anything.

Without any real checks and balances, 'democracy' reverts to 'might makes right' and plutocracy which seems to be the real model of government for Western civilization for the past several hundred years.

If you have a chance watch some of the following clip on YouTube and skim some of the other links:

Poor Us: an animated history - Why Poverty?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxbmjDngois&t=0s

It's the Inequality, Stupid
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

Why Screwing Unions Screws the Entire Middle Class
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline

Overworked America: 12 Charts That Will Make Your Blood Boil
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

Facts are just pieces of data that may (or may not be) relevant, however they are not the 'truth'.

It is ironic to suggest someone should always do the 'right' thing, when the 'right' action often is the one with the worse consequences.

Where I live a man tried to help a woman being harassed by her boyfriend. Unfortunately both the man harassing the woman and the woman he was trying to help where know drug dealers and instead of helping her he got shot dead.

http://fox61.com/2016/12/12/groton-good-samaritan-shot-dead-in-parking-lot-armed-and-dangerous-suspect-on-the-loose/

It is ironic that I actually lived in the neighborhood, but even when I lived there (when it was considered part of the projects) most people knew not to get involved in matters that didn't really concern them. As the old saying goes 'no good dead goes unpunished'. :(