I think Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window, and The Little Sister were great. — Jamal

I read "The Little Sister" and I did like it better. Less wordy and less psychological. Less chess. But still overwritten and over-complex for my taste. I like Elmore Leonard's simplicity more.

Speaking of detective novels, have you read Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books, e.g. "In the Woods" and "The Secret Place?" She's such a good writer but I can't read her anymore. She's ruthless. She hurts children.

If there were more artful cat feeding and less showy gun fights, cinema might redeem itself. — Tom Storm

I just rewatched that scene with Marlowe trying to fake his cat out about Coury Brand Cat Food. It reminded me why I like the movie so much. About 4 minutes.



Ok, ok. Back to books.

You're obviously deeply invested in equating theism and atheism, have at it. — DingoJones

Im beginning to understand this isnt a discussion for you, but rather some adversarial trolling. — DingoJones

If my recent experience with you is representative, your response to posts you don't like is to question the motives and good will of those you disagree with.

But what is a naturally good person? Nature doesn't create good and bad people; it creates biological strategies, which are then moulded by social contexts and judged through ideological lenses. — Baden

Good question and I agree. I was responding to claims that "theism can be the basis for a bad act by a good person." Of course it's much more complex than that, but I was working with what I was given.

No. Im saying theists as a group do more bad things based on their theism than atheists do bad things based on their atheism, and that theism can be the basis for a bad act by a good person.
You keep leaving out the “based of on their theism/atheism” part in service of your false equivalence. — DingoJones

I'm not "leaving it out." It's not relevant.

Once you broaden the scope by talking about groups in that way theism and atheism become a false dichotomy, for we know that they are far from the only moral factors/basis. — DingoJones

Another reason it's irrelevant.

I don't have that problem anymore: my children are in their middle, most powerful years, among the decision-makers. And they have - to my way of antiquated thinking, made many of the wrong ones. Now, I can fear for their children, who are in their teens and who will inherit... the wind? — Vera Mont

My children are in their 30s and early 40s. They are what is important in my ife. I have no grandchildren and probably won't. I want them to have safe happy lives.

Personally, I don't think it matters very much what's done with genetics, because I don't believe the future of our kind of society is long enough to affect the world more than we already have. — Vera Mont

I hope you're wrong.

As in the example in bigotry towards gays above, you can reference any instance where someone who is otherwise good, commits some immoral thing based solely on their theism. Have you seriously never seen evidence of that? — DingoJones

Are you saying that theists as a group do more bad things than atheists? I'm skeptical. Can you provide any evidence for that? Individual instances of bad behavior by theists is not legitimate evidence.

I don’t see it. Atheists and theists are people, people can be good or bad. The same is true for vegans and non-vegans, farmers and not farmers, etc. people being people.
The difference is that the atheist is not referencing his religious belief system for instruction, the theist is. — DingoJones

If atheists and theists are both naturally equally good people, and if, in addition to that natural proclivity, theists can be corrupted by their religion, then more theists should behave badly than atheists. I don't see any evidence of that.

What do you think about tinkering with genes? How do you feel about it? Are the thoughts and feelings reconciled? — Vera Mont

It seems to me humanity has entered a new technological phase which I think will be more far reaching than the industrial revolution. More or less suddenly we find ourselves capable of modifying the very grounds of our existence. We can destroy the world we live in with nuclear weapons. More and more countries are obtaining those weapons. We can change the foundation of our biological and genetic identity, creating diseases either unintentionally or as weapons, perhaps even creating artificial life. Our transportation system has created a world where we are in closer and closer touch with every other part of the world so that diseases that start in one area can rapidly spread all over the world. More than a million people have died of covid here in the US. We are building machines that may be able to gain wills and intellects of their own. We have overtaxed our environment to the point it is uncertain whether or not it will be able to support our current populations.

It's a dangerous time. Humanity has shown over and over it is not capable of controlling the effects of technological progress. Time after time the scientific and political establishment has lied and obfuscated for short term gain at the expense of long term well-being. Being fearful, or at least skeptical, of genetic technological progress is a reasonable response. Be that as it may, I am skeptical that attempts to reign in our scientific and technological institutions is even possible. I am afraid for my children.

good people will be good and bad people will be bas but for a good person to be bad you need religion. — DingoJones

In order for this to be true, one of two things must also be true.

1) Atheists must do bad less than religious people do. I see no evidence of this.

2) Religious people must be better people than atheists are.

T Clark watches and nods approvingly. — Baden

It’s part of a particular tribe of theism if it is “religious”. — praxis

Different people interpret it in different ways, which is not unusual.

Not all of them I imagine, he did show a lot of skin. :lol: — praxis

It could only be a religious feeling if whatever is experienced is inline with a religion, otherwise it’s just an experience, perhaps a spiritual experience. — praxis

Call it what you will, but it is part of what it means to be a theist.

The part with Arnold was just weird and definitely not his best work. — praxis

That's one of my favorite scenes, but you're right, Arnold's role would be a disappointment to his fans.

But naturally we want to lump people into categories that allow for a good ol' scrap. — Baden

Good posts. If people would just follow your advice, I would shut up. Or maybe not.

Of course. I think that the most significant difference is that the ‘religious system’ relies on absolute authority. — praxis

I don't find that a convincing argument. As I've said many times before, I think religious feeling ultimately comes from personal experience of God. As you note, it's true that many religious believers lean heavily on the Bible and similar religious documents.

...I'd like to address is the reasons for the intensity of what strikes me as a futile debate. — Ciceronianus

I agree. Although to be fair, many of the arguments we have on the forum are futile. I respond with intensity because of the self-righteous intellectual dishonesty of many anti-religious people. As I said, I am not a theist. I can understand skepticism. doubt, and even strong disbelief in the existence of God or gods. If I paint all atheists with two wide a brush when I get in these paint slinging fights, chalk it up to rhetorical overexcitement.

But if one goes around proclaiming there is no God, proselytizing as it were, I wonder why they bother to do so. — Ciceronianus

I agree. If they would shut up, so would I, at least about this. Seems like that should be sufficient incentive to get them to stop. Alas.

Atheists don't form clubs because there is not much to discuss about atheism. "Are you an atheist, too?" "Yes, I am." "Me too." And that's where the conversation ends.
— god must be atheist

This is absurd. — T Clark

It could be that. But this is what it is. I put to you that you never attended a meeting of atheists. They don't talk about what they believe is non-existent. They talk about how others talk about and what they say about what the atheists think is non-existent.

I really don't know why you said "This is absurd." It was not. It was a plain fact. — god must be atheist

Atheist groups:

• American Atheists
• Freedom From Religion Foundation
• Atheists United
• Atheist Alliance International
• Wikipedia list - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_irreligious_organizations
• Reddit subreddits
• Brights.net

And there are dozens more. Hundreds.

In a historical perspective: the persecution of Jews and Muslims after the "reconquista" in Spain had religious causes. — javi2541997

One war I'm not sure about is the conquest of southern Europe by the Ottoman Empire. The Empire was certainly strongly religious, but I'm not sure if that was a major driver for the wars.

The Church has always been another part of the status quo filled with a lot of power (more than I ever can imagined...) and tend to persuade people with their dogmas or religious doctrines. — javi2541997

I think up until the 19th century at least, you couldn't really separate the the state from the church. I'm not claiming that religious institutions were a force for peace, only that religion generally is not what causes wars.

And if you're saying religion and atheism are equally dreadful then you still seem to be saying religion has nothing better to offer than no religion. — Tom Storm

I didn't say that. What I said is that people gonna war. Religion doesn't seem to make it any better, but it doesn't make it any worse. If you want to interpret that to mean religion doesn't have any value, that's your conclusion, not mine.

And besides, I am yet to hear of a single case of an atheist war, one where everyone killed, blew up buildings and subjugated their enemies in the name of 'no god'. Political wars certainly. Even several that had atheism in the mix. — Tom Storm

I don't think atheism is a force for evil, but I don't think religion is either.

But come at me again with a witty and scathing riposte — Tom Storm

You're ugly and you smell bad.

You've done this philosophy thing longer than me but isn't that just an equivocation fallacy right there? It does nothing to address the point about the horrendous continued human rights abuses, bigotries and other crimes all around the world brought to us by specific religious responses. — Tom Storm

Well, I was talking about religious wars, but we can talk about this broader subject. What are the worst human rights violations in the 20th and 21st centuries? How about the holocaust, the Cultural Revolution, the genocides in Ukraine in the 1930s and 40s, the genocide in Cambodia, the Rwandan genocide. That doesn't even count World Wars 1 and 2, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Iraq War. Religion did not play a significant role in any of these. Of course there are some that had specific religious roots - the Iran/Iraq War, the Balkan wars of the 1990s, ISIS. If you go back further you find things that are similar - there are some wars and genocides that were religiously motivated, but most had to do with power, land, and money.

Name names. — 180 Proof

No thanks.

atheistic worldview
— T Clark
There's no such squared circle. — 180 Proof

I disagree.

Yes, that and the current state of a significant part of the religious world around the planet, from the Trump phenomena, to Modi's Hindu nationalism and all nasty shit done in the Middle East on behalf of Islam. — Tom Storm

I see that as a pretext like the whole religious war thing. As if atheists aren't just as capable of genocide, massacre, and total war as religious believers.

By “thought system” do you by chance mean science? Science is probably better described as a method. — praxis

I wasn't thinking about science in particular. Ciceronianus said this:

Theism breeds all sorts of convictions, demands, wishes, conclusions, dreams, hopes, institutions, strictures and emotions (not to mention wars and other forms of violence). — Ciceronianus

I think it's reasonable to apply something similar to the atheistic worldview.

As Tom Storm pointed out, that'll be because of conservative christian attacks that prevent policy improvement. — Banno

So... It seems you are acknowledging that it's primarily a political conflict rather than an intellectual one.

Atheism is not a thought system. — god must be atheist

It doesn't have to be, but the aggressive type I am talking about, and that we often see here on the forum, usually is.

Atheists don't form clubs because there is not much to discuss about atheism. "Are you an atheist, too?" "Yes, I am." "Me too." And that's where the conversation ends. — god must be atheist

This is absurd.

To answer the OP: atheism is significant to atheists as much as theism is significant to theists; and atheism is significant to theists as much as theism is significant to atheists. In my opinion, anyway. — god must be atheist

I appreciate that you're so straight ahead about this. You lay your position out on the table, unlike @Ciceronianus's cutie pie faux surprise.

The debate over atheism thus seems to me to be one engaged in only by those whose view of God is narrow and personal. That's not to say that atheists should be silent when challenged or attacked, but only to comment on the limitations of the dispute. — Ciceronianus

Your OP is very coy. Oh...why would anyone object to the things that atheists say about religion. It ignores the fact that our culture, and this forum, are full of atheists who aggressively attack religious beliefs and show disrespect for religious institutions. They are not passive. They are self-righteous and bitter. Many clearly are reacting to bad experiences with religion in their youth.

Which is fine. Just don't act all surprised when religious people respond back. The atheist's attacks on religion are more than that. They are often also political attacks on traditional culture and spiritual values masquerading as rational argument. I am not a theist, but I am interested in atheism because I think it is generally a mean-spirited, irrational, and generally poorly argued sham.

One has to understand oneself and reality in a way that is unique to onself. We're all wearing, how should I say this?, a pair of unique-to-us tinted glasses. The hue of the universe is determined by those glasses and when we self-reflect, as by looking in a mirror, the effect of the glasses is still there. This is what I mean by subjective view of the other and the self. — Agent Smith

I agree with this, but it doesn't mean that self can't be studied like any other mental process. It's just a bit more difficult.

I think this sort of self is a superstructure, a persona, to go back to Freud. I can lose my persona and yet still experience that loss; so it can’t be an essentially ‘complete’ determination. ‘Ego’ is more appropriate, something that can modularly reference unconscious, subconscious, and conscious drives at appropriate times within a characteristic personality so as to organize them to appear to fulfill drives with apparent fluidity.

It should be a system that fits gracefully in with itself with as little effort as possible. Unconscious motives must remain not worth knowing to itself, so it can rest comfortably inside it’s shell. — kudos

There are lots of names for it - ego, self, soul, identity, spirit, essence, personality, persona, consciousness.... It seems to mean something different to everyone. As people note, we each experience it immediately and intimately. I think that makes it hard to come to any kind of consensus about. Given that, I try not to be dogmatic about assuming the universality of my personal experiences.

What are the biggest puzzles in philosophy to you? — Andrew4Handel

The point of philosophy is playing with the puzzles, not solving them. There aren't really any solutions.

I think Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window, and The Little Sister were great. — Jamal

Thanks.

I think because it’s heavier than his other work, more emotionally revealing, tragic, and dispirited in tone. — Jamal

Maybe I'll try another. What's your favorite?

I probably have a fairly stable identity but it does fluctuate. I tend to take failures to heart at times and I have had quite a few. One thing which I do find is that I am sensitive about others' views and do get upset when others try to tell me what to do. I do enjoy being with others but do need time by myself and don't know how people cope who are in a constant social whirlpool. — Jack Cummins

This is pretty similar to how I feel.

The subjective nature of our experience of our selves precludes any attempt to analyze it objectively. I feel most studies on Being end in tautologies like Being is existence. — Agent Smith

You can't really talk about the nature of reality without talking about the nature of the self. This goes back to that whole consciousness thing. People seem to think it is impossible to understand, but I don't see it that way.

Director Robert Altman on The Long Goodbye — Tom Storm

Thanks for that. I really liked the movie. Elliot Gould was great and the rest of the cast was very good. It had a great script. But what really got me, stamped the movie into me, was that last scene. It was different from and wouldn't have made sense in the book.

Denny McClain, who played Terry Lennox, was a former baseball pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. He won 31 games in 1968, an amazing feat. I don't think he ever acted in anything else.

I am wondering about the way in which human identity is established, with potential soliptist or narcissistic aspects. How much are we influenced by others' minds and intersubjective meaning. Buber wrote in, 'I and Thou', how people see thou as God or in the communication with the other. — Jack Cummins

There is a similar discussion going on in another thread on the forum right now - "Corporeality and Interpersonal Being." They're talking more about the self than identity, but I think those are the same thing. Your take is more psychological while the other is more philosophical.

I experience my identity as a more or less stable foundation for my experience and understanding of the world. It's the unmoving, again more or less, platform on which I stand to look out at the world. I don't really feel it as having parts. My body is included as much as my mind, my perceptions, my feelings. All one thing. Where did it come from, I don't really know exactly, but I have no doubt that it comes from an interaction between inborn capacities, capabilities, and drives; and physical and social experiences.

I feel separate from other people, but I'm also drawn close to them by affection, interest, and compassion. I do feel a drive for intimacy and connection but I'm also comfortable alone. The prevalent negative feeling I have is a sometimes intense shame for my weakness and fear. Perhaps this is part of the reason I've learned to feel comfortable alone.

I don’t fully agree that the self is an illusion. It’s practically the most authentic thing there is. That is to say, not that it is more authentic, but everything else seems less so. — kudos

It doesn't seem to me that we disagree much. I see our sense of self as something personal. Different people will experience it differently. Different experiences are not right or wrong.

what good does it do for mind to separate itself from others and cordon itself from the corporeality of others? I assume that it must do some good because it seems to be a default idea, something that is constantly taking root within my unconscious and subconscious mental faculties and thereby of benefit to some type of fundamental being-motive. In short, why do we experience this person? — kudos

In my personal experience, my self is the foundation of my perception, conception, understanding, and interaction with the world, including other people. My self is the more or less unmoving platform I stand on to see reality. On the other hand, I think I can grasp, accept, and sometimes even experience the insight that the self is an illusion. There is a balance between these to ways of seeing that make me who I am.