Comments

  • What God Are You Talking About?
    It seems like God likes cockroaches more than humansHarry Hindu

    That'd be one of the best conclusions in this thread, were you not stating it sarcastically.
  • What God Are You Talking About?
    That is not evolution. Evolution is not progressive, it is not designed, it is a random process. You are talking about something entirely different.Jeremiah

    Throwing dice is random. The result is not designed. The dice and the system of throwing them are.
  • What God Are You Talking About?
    It is only when we took a more objective look at ourselvesHarry Hindu

    The good old "religion contradicts science and objectivity and is therefore false" straw man.
  • What is the opposite of 'Depression'?
    -0=0. You don't want the opposite of that, you want to add something.
  • What God Are You Talking About?
    I agree with all that but I'm arguing from the POV of the alternative against your arguments because they have some issues.

    So, from the POV of God, there's no reason to not compare us to animals.
  • What God Are You Talking About?
    Yes?

    We don't understand why that is for reasons that we don't understand, but can infer are the same reasons for which squirrels don't understand those things.
  • The world is the totality of facts not things.
    Are facts necessarily about things? What if things are defined by the facts about them?
  • What God Are You Talking About?
    Why would a god create beings incapable of understanding it and not being able to prove its existenceHarry Hindu

    Well he did create squirrels.
  • Perpetual representative realism—A proposal of where knowledge could stem from
    What would have happened is irrelevant. The idea was still triggered by something else than a mailbox.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    I am NOT making random substitutions as you are in your example.SnoringKitten
    I have reasoned my redefenitions out.SnoringKitten

    Both false. You missed the central step of showing the redefinitions match the existing ones.

    What?

    Let me explain again: We cannot ourselves prove that God exists or not therefore God / Atheism are unfalsifiable beliefs. That is taken for granted in all of my arguments in the OP.

    Atheists claim God does not exist. Therefore Atheism is unscientific.
    SnoringKitten

    See, this is the problem with changing the meaning of the words: that is agnostic atheism, so when you said that's incompatible with atheism I drew the conclusion you meant atheism must be scientific.

    Again reductio ad absurdum. I have also already explained the folly in agnosticism, in a post directed to you, you have yet to counter that. You are not reading my replies.SnoringKitten

    I read your replies and countered your point, literally in the thing you quoted. Reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy, it's a valid form of proof by contradiction. Believing arguments to be invalid is not apathy, and neither is apathy a valid basis for being ruled not agnostic.

    Think of when two arguments are perfectly matched, there yet remains one's feelings on the matter. Also, as l've said, either God exists or not, there is no actual middle ground, the middle ground is only when the two camps are perfectly balanced, regarding which, l've already explained: where are a person's feelings on the matter?SnoringKitten

    Excuse me, which one of us were you just accusing of not reading the replies and repeating their points? Literally answered this as well in the point you're referring to. The feelings remain, and are not a basis for an opinion. Stating that the feelings remain is "not even wrong".
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    As you are causing repetition of my arguments directly given to youSnoringKitten

    Not my fault you repeat irrelevant points instead of expanding your arguments.

    re-stating your ownSnoringKitten

    Hypocrisy.

    l shall therefore not answer your further posts.SnoringKitten

    If you wish to end the discussion, do so. Replying to me to have the last word is childish and rude.
  • Are we doomed to discuss "free will" and "determinism" forever?
    Then it won't die, unless proven false.

    What's your problem with free will anyway?
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    When l say Atheists know that they cannot scientifically dismiss God, l mean in the context of falsifiability, they cannot dismiss God. The scientific method is based on theorising & falsifiability, no?SnoringKitten

    Ok, within that context what's the problem with objectively aknowledging the difference between one's beliefs and knowledge?

    So i'm judging with regard to my own redefinitions? Yes, hence l made this thread.SnoringKitten

    Does not follow. When you redefine terms it's like creating a new language: you have to translate the terms. Example:

    I define "your" as "the smell of" and "opinion" as "the smell of purple". Therefore, your opinions are incoherent and their existence paradoxal.

    That does not mean your opinions are incoherent, because those words don't refer to your opinion. Similarly, you did not prove anything about agnostic atheism, only about what those terms mean with your definitions. That meaning is not what one refers to when they say they identify as an agnostic atheist.

    Rejecting every argument of both sides is apathy not agnosticism.SnoringKitten

    Not if it's the logical conclusion.

    Do I have a beard? I say I do because 2+2=5 AND that's false, although also true, and you can derive the conclusion from contradiction. Is your rejection of this reasoning apathy?

    Therefore the backend stuff is free to be aesthetic preferences or whatever.SnoringKitten

    It's also free to be the voice of rationality telling you to recognize and disregard irrationality when making objective claims.

    what moves you?SnoringKitten

    Eh?

    Where's that aesthetic feeling, the highest expression of the rational mind?SnoringKitten

    That's the highest expression of mind, if anything, and I'd debate that even further. The highest expressions of rational mind are rationality, questioning and logic.
  • Are we doomed to discuss "free will" and "determinism" forever?
    I can not simultaneously be subject and object in an analysis of my own behavior and thoughtsBitter Crank

    I can't see why not. It seems clear to me I can observe myself and my observations of myself. It doesn't seem to give any answers though.

    The material universe which would allegedly determine everything is infinitely more complicated than we can grasp. We can't obtain enough information, even if we could process it all, to show how the long history of the physical universe has determined that I will write these words.Bitter Crank

    We don't need to. Determinism would be proven by observing the space of just one human brain for a second and documenting the causal relationships between each state.
  • Are we doomed to discuss "free will" and "determinism" forever?
    it will have a date of death.StreetlightX

    Not if it doesn't get disproven, in which case it'd be false. That statement could be done about any belief and is thus meaningless.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    Agnostic Atheism = intellectual dishonesty. Atheists know that they cannot scientifically dismiss God, as God / Atheism are unfalsifiable.SnoringKitten

    Atheism =/= scientism. What agnostic atheism basically means is aknowledging their beliefs as beliefs, and as such subjective and not knowledge - if that's not an option, one can only be a theist.

    which totally contradicts the entire point of Agnosticism in my scheme.SnoringKitten

    So you're judging what the term agnostic atheism means with your definitions instead of the concept that the term refers to?

    How can we, as creatures of refined aesthetic, be so perfectly on the fence between two rival beliefs?SnoringKitten

    How not? An easy example is rejecting every argument of both sides.

    Have we no aesthetic inclination either way, at the very least?SnoringKitten

    A rational being would recognize such as not a valid argument and try to disregard it.
  • Why do athiests have Morals and Ethics?
    We religious people only work with them because we believe in the testAwonderingSoul

    Don't generalize, especially by projecting yourself unto others. As a religious person, that definitely does not apply to me.
  • Perpetual representative realism—A proposal of where knowledge could stem from
    This is because, the only way for him/her to trigger the idea of the mailbox, is by encountering one.SicklerTroy

    Not true; they could also encounter something they mistook for a mailbox, including a picture, a hallucination, an artificial electric signal sent into their brain, a real physical object that might in appearance be similar to a mailbox, etc etc.
  • God CAN be all powerful and all good, despite the existence of evil
    just as the evil demon, brain in a vat, and dreaming butterfly thought experiments can be brushed off.Sapientia

    Hol' up.
  • God CAN be all powerful and all good, despite the existence of evil
    Let's keep it real.Sapientia

    Why? The discussion has a bearded sky fairy judging your masturbation as a premise (not my phrasing btw).

    My point is we're talking of evil and/or suffering having a meaning and being a tool for greater good on a metaphysical level, so I don't think completely valid thought experiments can be brushed off merely for not being realistic from the viewpoint of our everyday lives.

    I guess what I'm saying is that you're arguing that those actions are unjustifiable but simultaneously assume that they can't have good consequences, which is circular reasoning.
  • God CAN be all powerful and all good, despite the existence of evil
    If you give people examples of evil acts, like rape, murder, child abuse, and genocide, they'll respond in their droves that these acts are unjustifiable.Sapientia

    The co-existence of multiple unjustifiable moral actions is incoherent in utilitarianism, which is a fairly wide-spread philosophy especially amongst those without deep knowledge of philosophy. If the answers were as homogeneous as you claimed it'd be because an average person doesn't understand the word unjustifiable. Would rape be unjustified even if it prevented a genocide (or vice versa)?
  • God CAN be all powerful and all good, despite the existence of evil
    No amount of harm, betrayal, exploitation, defamation or disenfranchisement can damn you. Nothing can do that, only sin, only God.All sight

    By your own choice. Damnation is a positive thing from the perspective of those that want it.
  • Sex
    Oh, right yeah.
    Reveal
    I don't remember consenting to you answering to my comments
  • Sex
    We do not typically ask for consent for other activities - I do not ask for consent to sit across from you, for example.darthbarracuda

    You definitely should, though. Maybe it's just my weird obsession with personal space - for example, I think manspreading is completely acceptable because no one in public transport has an inherent right to sit next to me.

    However, as Michael pointed out, communicating consent is not always verbal. Cashiers consent to doing their job by being employed, which includes interactions with customers. Similarly, me not placing a bag on the seat opposite to me on bus signals that the seat is free, while on other contexts a verbal consent might be very much in place, such as on private property or in a restaurant.
  • Is existence created from random chance or is it designed?
    think about what infinity means....and also think about what time is.xxxdutchiexxx

    Your reasoning assumes the existence of time. How about block-time theory? In it time does not exist prior to physical reality, the existence of which you also assume, so there can be no random chance for anything to be made before there is something. Neither can anything be designed however before there is something to design anything.
  • Is existence created from random chance or is it designed?
    A falling rock does not understand how to fall or why it is falling, yet it does that. Similarly a cell can replicate itself to form a complex being without understanding how that happens.
  • Human Rights Are Anti-Christian
    How surprising @Agustino left this thread.
  • Human Rights Are Anti-Christian
    The Right To Free Speech is the Right To LieAgustino

    Only when taken to the extreme.

    The Right To Bear Arms is the Right To KillAgustino

    That's just completely false.

    The Right To Freedom is the Right To Oppress OthersAgustino

    What?

    The Right To Property is the Right To TheftAgustino

    The exact opposite.
  • An argument defeating the "Free Will defense" of the problem of evil.
    Throwing a random die can result in 6. Can God create a random die that will result in 6? No, because that'd not be random so although the existence of such a die is a logical possibility, its creation is not.
  • Why free will is impossible to prove
    if one cannot disprove fairy magic then we can't really know if gravity is a force that attracts objects with mass.Jeremiah

    But that's true.
  • Are video games art?
    Books aren't art, literature is. The form in which it is delivered doesn't matter. Calling story-based games literature isn't unreasonable to me.
  • When you sold your soul to the devil
    In such a situation is it right to be unhappy with losing your entire self in the process?SherlockH

    Is it right to be happy? I think a person has a moral responsibility for themselves so selling one's soul is just wrong.
  • Is casual sex immoral?
    No point in wasting my time with a bigot.Maw

    That's an oxymoron. Being the one to quit the debate out of intolerance towards bigotry makes you yourself a bigot.
  • Mathematical Conundrum or Not? Number Six
    Every amount has a 50% chance of winning for a 2:1 payout.Michael

    That's not how it works in the paradox. You need to end up even. Otherwise you're implying the amount of money combined in the envelopes doesn't equal the amount of money combined in the envelopes.

    The envelopes are identical. Learning the amount of money in one of them is not relevant information, as can be seen in the table example, and in what happens when there're two people, each checking one envelope.
  • Mathematical Conundrum or Not? Number Six
    There's a 50% chance of winning and the payout is 2:1.Michael

    Only if you're the person betting £20. And that's fine as a thought experiment of its own but it doesn't relate to the envelope paradox. You don't know whether the amount of money in your envelope is the amount of money that has 50% chance of winning with 2:1 payout.
  • Mathematical Conundrum or Not? Number Six
    You can't balance your books with £20 bets with 50% chance of 2:1 payout and £10 bets with certain wins so clarify the system in your example.

    It's just that if you pick the loser then I will offer someone else who picks the winner a £10 bet.Michael

    And if I pick the winner you lose £40, so I assume you also offer someone who picks the loser a £40 bet, right?

    For the participants it’s still just a 50% chance with a 2:1 payout.Michael

    True, but notice that you can't make profit out of betting in this system. Taking part in it still isn't profitable.
  • Mathematical Conundrum or Not? Number Six
    Can the participant be certain they're the person getting the fair chance? The person betting £10 will always win and the person betting £40 will always lose.
  • Mathematical Conundrum or Not? Number Six
    Let's say you put the two envelopes on a table, and randomly choose to put one on the left side and the other on the right side. You can each time open the one on the left and then switch to the right one. If this is beneficial, you can just choose the right one each time without checking the amount on the left envelope.

    If that's not absurd enough, you can do the same reasoning for the left envelope.
  • Mathematical Conundrum or Not? Number Six
    As you've stated it, it's not an advantageous bet if you have to bet twice as much when you lose.