Why should I read them if we don't know what they say? — Gregory

Indeed. So why do you feel pressured to read them? Can you tell?

No, it wasn't obvious. God is a Social Darwinist and so somehow evades responsibility for his actions. — Banno

No. The reason why God cannot be held accountable is because he is God, not because he is a Social Darwinist.
God couldn't be held accountable even if he was a humanist.

...and your subservient pandering to a tyrant god is not at all idiosyncratic.

Ah. I'm trying to make sense of the God idea. This doesn't automatically include that I take for granted that God is on my side or that he will be or could be. Quite the contrary, actually.

So the suffering and cruelty of 'creation' is reflective of a cruel God who behaves like a Mafia boss in scripture? I think a lot of humanists have identified this scenario. It certainly makes sense that if there is a god he is either non-interventionist or 'evil' as far as human morality is concerned. — Tom Storm

Not by human morality, but by humanist morality.

Nevertheless, the intrinsic goodness of God is central to most traditions I am aware of and human beings are supposed to please god by being good also.

Sure. But again, it's not supposed to be goodness by humanist standards, but by God's standards.

You are welcome. And you can have this for after dinner — Apollodorus

Thank you, but I have to unplug the computer and all electronic devices now, because we have a storm coming.

There cannot be demonstrated to be any such higher knowledge, though. — Janus

So? There is no need for such demonstration.

Even the person who purportedly has such knowledge cannot be sure (as opposed to feeling sure) that it is true knowledge.

How can you possibly know that??

It's a conviction that things are a certain way; if things turned out to be that way it just means that the conviction would have turned out to be in accordance with reality.

How can you possibly know it's merely a conviction?

The problem is that no one could ever be sure of that being the case. Knowledge as it is normally understood is always uncertain, and consists in there being found no good reason to doubt, and that what we believe is also true. But the latter is what is always rationally uncertain.

If you wanted to be strictly accurate there is no possibility of certain knowledge that anything is the case, so really humans don't have propositional knowledge at all, they just have beliefs. That said of course within limited contexts we can be said to know things for certain, like I know I am sitting here typing on a laptop, or I know it is raining because I can see the rain falling and things getting wet.

You're taking for granted a measure of uncertainty and human incapacity for knowledge. You could be overstating the case, taking for granted that humans are necessarily thusly incapable. All in all, you are making definite claims about things you yourself admit to not having certainty of.

It's not like there is an actual need to decide about such things! Nobody is putting a gun to your head or a knife to your throat forcing you to decide one way or another.
Whence this need to decide about whether there is consciousness after death??
— baker

That's a silly comment, given what Ive been arguing.

Perhaps I need to adjust my style and be less colloquial.

I've been using that as an example; I'm not claiming the individual should decide one way or another. That's a matter of faith, of personal conviction, and up to the individual. I sometimes doubt you even read what I've written. I'm not even saying someone should not follow what some purported sage has to say; just that doing that is not an example of thinking for yourself, but rather of allowing someone else to do your thinking for you.

My point is that you're presenting the matter in either-or terms, while I think that the decision as you put it forward is not even necessary. It's avoidable, much if not most of the time. For the most part, we do not actually need to decide whether what someone claims is the truth or not.

It seems that most people, when they hear a claim, have the impulse to decide whether it is true or not, to decide whether the person is lying or not, or trying to deceive them or not. I contend that much if not most of the time, this is not necessary at all, and it would be a waste of energy and time to investigate each and every claim. Many, if not most claims that one hears in one's life, can be put aside without deciding about them, without this having any negative consequences for oneself.

Thank you, this will take some processing.

When people believe experts and authorities in various fields it is because they trust that those expert's expertise has been rigorously tested and demonstrated, and could be retested and redemonstrated if needs be. — Janus

It's not clear this is the case. Ideally, it should be the case, but I don't think it is, or only rarely. It seems that most people who believe experts and authorities in various fields don't even have a concept of "rigorously testing and demonstrating". Instead, their believing the experts and authorities is, essentially, a fallacious argumentum ab auctoritate.

The same does not apply with sages and gurus. There is no way to rigorously and without bias test their purported expertise, even in principle, let alone practice.

You cannot "rigorously and without bias test the purported expertise" of scientists either. You don't have the resources, you don't have the data, you don't have the access, and they sure as hell aren't going to do it for you.

But I know what kinds of cultures of gullible mythologizing actually arise around cult leaders and gurus of all kinds; the same kinds of lamentable human dynamics play out everywhere. People happily relinquishing their capacities to think for themselves; listening to the oracular voice of the "master" and believing every word; it's just sad in my view.

There's no guarantee that "thinking for yourself" will make you happy and successful either.

If we don't know what is literal in *religious texts* how can they have a "meaning" anymore? — Gregory

Whose problem is that?

Why should we try to have a certain understanding of what ancient texts say?

You're lucky that you're a moderator, so I can't report you for misrepresenting or anything like that.
You should be ashamed of yourself.


But just vote for Trump, honey, just vote for Trump.

The Talibans are taking life seriously and they don't fool around. This is what makes them so different from many, if not most people.

While all along, you get to be the arbiter of truth, eh?
— baker

Where did you get that from? — TheMadFool

Your words.

Anekantavada takes into account all parties involved, favoring none over the other. My views are the same as anyone elses, including yours.

That is your view. Surely you're aware that other people don't think this way. It's safe to say that most people don't believe that your views are the same as theirs, and certainly not as relevant as theirs.

However, that we disagree, a contradiction threatening to rear its ugly head unless it hasn't already, suggests a higher truth who's projections are the two of us. Don't you wanna what that truth is? I want to.

Underneath your optimism, idealism, egalitarianism burns a fire of supremacism. :blush:

...a Darwinist perspective (mainly in the sense of "life is a struggle for survival" and "might makes right")
— baker

This is a very narrow understanding of Darwinism. — Banno

Oh, and I obviously mean Social Darwinism. When your buddies talk of this or that being "Darwinist" or "Darwin" this, "Darwin" that, you correctly understand it in terms of Social Darwinism.

we can't make any comment about God at all (good or bad) since it transcends human experience and understanding. We can't know anything about it and it would be better to remain silent about the subject. — Tom Storm

No, such a claim of the total incapacity of humans to comment on God could be overreaching. Perhaps some humans in fact do have the proper knowledge of God, perhaps God did reveal himself to them, so they can speak with certainty.

I'm pointing toward an option that is repugnant to humanists: namely, the possibility that God is pretty much like major monotheistic religions describe him, and that the state of the world (with all its strife and suffering) is an argument precisely in favor of God's existence.

If they want the truth, they should care but, — TheMadFool

While all along, you get to be the arbiter of truth, eh?

doesn't explain why god is not culpable. — Banno

God cannot be held accountable to us.
Because God, by definition, precedes us, contextualizes us, and makes us possible in the first place.

My point is that judging God by human standards is in conflict with the basic definition of God. One cannot hold, even if just for the purposes of argument, that God is omnimax, and then judge God, and still think one is being consistent. Either one ditches the standard definition of God, or one abstains from judgment of God. But one cannot retain both, and still be consistent.

IOW, atheists and other critics of God operate with their own idiosyncratic definitions of God, thus making their criticism of God a strawman.

Right, Jains. People who make a point of eventually slowly dying of starvation.
— baker

Any hard evidence for this? — TheMadFool

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana#:~:text=It%20is%20the%20religious%20practice,all%20physical%20and%20mental%20activities.

Your reason for taking up arms might then be gone, indeed, but not your enemy's.
— baker

That's because they haven't looked at our differences from all sides - anekantavada failure. — TheMadFool

Why should they?? They are your enemies. Why should they care about seeing things the way you see them?

Boredom is terrible, isn't it. People should be sent to manually work in crop fields again, manually digging and pulling weeds.

Right, Jains. People who make a point of eventually slowly dying of starvation.

Once you realize that disagreements, the seedbed of all violence, including wars, arise from looking at issues from only one side and not from all sides, including your enemy's your reason to take up arms will be gone. — TheMadFool

Your reason for taking up arms might then be gone, indeed, but not your enemy's.

In everyday use, I notice that many people operate poorly with if clauses; ie. they tend to omit the if altogether. So that to the above question, they reply, "Tom must buy new socks."
It's not clear that this is what the OP has in mind.

What do you think the relationships between "if statements" and human intentions are? Most who have some basic understanding of logic know that if conditionals can be stated as if x then y. How can we utilize that logic when relating it to agency or human intentions? — Josh Alfred

You'll need to say more.


If Tom has holes in all his socks, he needs to buy new socks.
What must Tom do now?

But the truth is that Afghan tribalism and factionalism have always attracted foreign meddling. — Olivier5

But why?

Why not just leave them to their own devices?

The point to all this being contradictions (square circles like atheism vs theism, physicalism vs nonphysicalism, etc.) are actually not contradictions. They're just different sides (anekantavada, many-sidedness, Jainism) of the same greater truth that resides in a world the next level up so to speak. — TheMadFool

Sure. But what is the use of this? It's not as if understanding that things look differently from different perspectives is going to bring about world peace.

It's understandable that many people are exhausted from the pandemic and feel a desperate need for a solution. But exhaustion and despair, no matter how painfully they are felt, are still not means for arriving at an effective solution.

Seen this by me, as a foreigner, I also interpret it as a real open minded and free thinker country. It is not only about power due to votes. It is also about criticism and debating.
You all can criticize Joe Biden if you want due to their administration or whatever. — javi2541997

And what power does that criticism have? None. It's not going to change anything. It's an idle freedom.

I'd say this is far stranger. Firstly what could being autonomous in how one knows/ believes one knows things even mean? — Janus

Believing one is epistemically independent of other people.

You seem to have been disagreeing with my arguments that the enlightened person cannot rationally know that she knows whatever she thinks she knows, no matter how convinced she may be that she does, and yet here you say that epistemic autonomy is questionable. So, I can only guess you must mean something else.

Ethical and Epistemic Egoism and the Ideal of Autonomy

Epistemic Dependence

As I said before in my view thinking for yourself is just thinking what seems to be in best accordance with and evidenced by your own experience, understanding and rational assessment

Okay for now.

rather than thinking something because some authority told you it was so without providing any empirical evidence or rational argument to back up their assertion.

I seriously doubt anyone ever believes things the way you describe here. That's a caricature.

I think that when people believe experts and authorities, this has more to do with social dynamics and, to some extent, belief economy, rather than some "blind trust" or "not thinking for yourself".

So, if the purportedly enlightened sage tells you that there is an afterlife, and you say how do you know that and they say 'I just know', or 'I remember my past lives', you would be warranted in being skeptical about such a claim. That would be thinking for yourself. If you accepted the claim, and henceforth believed it yourself because you believed the person was enlightened and must know the truth, that would not be thinking for yourself.

Except that I would not ask the sage "How do you know?" anymore. There was a time in the past when I would, but not anymore. And no, this doesn't mean that I now accept their claims. It's that I contextualize the whole matter entirely differently. Namely, I don't see the declarations of a "sage" as being some kind of opening for a discussion and dialogue.

But their sublime confidence and perfect conviction is no good rational reason for anyone else to believe what they are so perfectly convinced of. — Janus

Nobody said it was. Why would/should it be?

How could you possibly know that consciousness survives death before you have died?

Because you have attained some higher knowledge that allows you to know such things.

I don't know whether consciousness survives death or not. My issue is with the form of your argument: you're making definitive claims about things you admit not to know.

You wouldn't make claims about the number of red socks in Tom's sock drawer before looking into Tom's sock drawer. But why make claims about, in this case, consciousness after death, as if you would fully understand the matter, even though you haven't died yet and even though you don't have some higher knowledge that allows you to know such things.

We are discussing a particular context here; beliefs about the nature of life and death. What other alternative could there be apart from thinking about it carefully, weighing all the evidence, such as it can be, and deciding for yourself versus believing what someone else tells you because you believe they are enlightened or whatever?

It's not like there is an actual need to decide about such things! Nobody is putting a gun to your head or a knife to your throat forcing you to decide one way or another.
Whence this need to decide about whether there is consciousness after death??

that there is no possibility of absolute rational certainly, or certainty of any truth, even if certainty of personal conviction is possible

What a strange thing to say, your very claim undermines itself.
— baker

It's one thing to say that what I said "undermines itself" and another to fail to explain why you think that. That complete rational certainty is not possible does not entail that people cannot be absolutely convinced of anything, if they are blind, willfully or otherwise, to the fact that complete rational certainty is not possible.

You're saying, with complete rational certainty, that complete rational certainty is not possible. And you don't see a problem with that?

We blabber on about our love for democracy. Yet what can be less democratic than a capitalist corporation? Why is that acceptable? — Xtrix

The American idea of democracy, as far as I understand it, is about obtaining a position of power through the majority of votes. This is how a capitalist corporation can be democratic.

The American idea of democracy appears to be essentially about the juxtaposition of obtaining a position of power through the majority of votes vs. obtaining a position of power through usurpation/brute force.

Yet the idea of corruption is what keeps the hope alive that there is something more, something true to all this.
How can you classify something as "corruption", when you don't know the original?

Why are such things considered as being a problem of logic, rather than a problem of the particular premises that are being used?

It's not clear how something can be a problem of logic itself, when it can more easily be explained by certain concepts being internally incoherent.

There's your problem: "out there" vs "in here".
— Banno

How so? — Constance

The BIV scenario takes for granted that there is an outside and an inside.

You don't even know what my stance is, and you don't bother to know it. You just judge. Authoritarianism at its best.

Yes, I'm aware of this.
One of the things that is happening is that efforts to capitalize the pandemic are being masked by emphasizing to place the blame on the currently unvaccinated.

There is also a dangerous simplificationism going on where the experimental covid vaccines are being advertised and praised as if they'd be in the category of classical effective and relatively safe vaccines, trying to borrow the glory of those classical vaccines.

Of course, I agree with that, and there’s plenty of commentary on it, but what I’m resisting is the utilitarian tendency to treat everything as a means to an end. — Wayfarer

Oh, like the idea of doing yoga in order to "improve" one's "sex life" or "business negotiation skills".
The horror, the horror!

At least back then people took vaccines because they didn't convince themselves the polio vaccine was a tool of the government to control the people, or whatever the argument is today. — Hanover

Whatever. There you go. You don't even bother to inform yourself what the arguments for hesistancy about vaccination are. You just spew your contempt and hatred. It's just so enjoyable to do so, isn't it? Righteous indignation feels so good!

Once you forget about striving for greatness in favor of some social cause, you lose your momentum. — Leghorn

There is a general plebeification of mankind going on.

There was a time, and some people still think so, that living without honor is futile.

Humanism is the view that morality is found in what humans choose, and so is not found in divine commendation nor in evolutionary necessity.

Do you agree?

That is, the key ingredient in humanism is the capacity of people to become better. — Banno

Sure. I'm saying there are different ideas about what counts as moral.

Morality, as understood from a Darwinist perspective (mainly in the sense of "life is a struggle for survival" and "might makes right"), is how we can make sense of monotheism; it is in this perspective that monotheism is internally consistent morally. A Darwinist monotheist has no qualms with there being suffering, unlike the humanist.

I expect a higher level of wariness from those responsible for public health. If even a single expert (well-recognised, in the correct field) says there's a problem, then the course of action is uncertain. Hesitancy at least, certainly not legally mandating the chosen course and banning discussion of the alternative as has been mooted in this case. — Isaac

Yes. If the governments are so damn sure of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, then why didn't they push the makers of the vaccines early on to produce sufficient amounts for everyone?

Why did the governments let the private pharmaceutical companies dictate the pace of the pandemic early on, at that crucial time when the pandemic could have been reigned in with an effective vaccine (even if not a particularly safe one)?

Matters of public health should not be left to individual citizens to decide, simply because they are too complex for an ordinary citizen to have the proper grasp of them, and too important to be left to lay public discourse and individual decision.

The government should make a decision and make it mandatory for people to comply. If it doesn't, this can mean several things:
-- The matter of public health is not as severe as originally thought or as popularily presented.
-- The matter of public health is worse than originally thought or as popularily presented.
-- The government doesn't have a solution, but refuses to admit so.
-- The government has a solution, but refuses to enact it, because it would possibly lead to public disapproval, and the government doesn't want to deal with that (it's either too weak, or too concerned about being reelected).

Not moral by humanist standards. But by Darwinist ones -- sure.