I'm sorta busy now.

May I request a definition of "atheist"? Because even the noted Atheist Richard Dawkins has stated that he is not 100% sure that God doesn't exist.

We are speaking of educated guesses here. If someone is a nominalist and views scientific laws as descriptions of the universe rather than things in the universe itself, then God is just another way of describing the universe. This "God" however, isn't particularly useful, as he doesn't generate any testable hypotheses.

Can you elaborate on why my belief in reality is not skeptical enough? How did you reach that conclusion, and how do you know how skeptical of reality I am? — DingoJones

I am just guessing. And I provided definitions and speculation because none was forthcoming from you.

I think your belief in reality is quite simply not skeptical enough.

Magical thinking is simply ritual activity without full understanding. We engage in magical thinking whenever we use a microwave.

Also, not assertions. Being able “to do anything” leads to an unavoidable contradiction. Maybe your unfamiliar with the rock so heavy it cannot be lifted? — DingoJones

I'm familiar with this argument from Philosophy 101. It admits various interpretations. The only relevant one is: "Can God deprive himself of his own powers as God?"

First, a note on the logical structure of the Boulder argument: Lack of strength is weakness. Does it make sense to argue that a strong person must also be weak in order to be strong? Not lifting something (or alternatively, not creating it) is a non-action, and by definition it is not done.

We have asserted that God can do whatever he wants, meaning he can create an arbitrarily heavy boulder and also lift an arbitrarily heavy boulder. In order to create the boulder which he cannot lift, it does not mean that he creates a super-heavy boulder, but rather that he limits his own future ability to lift that boulder. Thus, a wise person might simply answer "no" to the question about the boulder, since God could still make an arbitrarily heavy boulder and lift an arbitrarily heavy boulder. What is it that God can't do? In particular, he can't not be able to do something, which we have already assumed.

But why is god unable to not be able to do something? It is because we have assumed that he has not chosen to limit his own powers, because in so doing he would no longer be God. Then the creation of being which can't lift boulders or can't create boulders is merely the Christian genesis.

Christians are the only true atheists, because the God of Christianity has chosen to stop existing.

Your post lends itself to two interpretations. The first, "naive" interpretation:
lets start by converting your premises:

"Consciousness is not nothing" --> "Consciousness is something"
"Nothing comes from nothing" --> already an affirmative premise
"Nothing becomes nothing" --> already an affirmative premise

Conclusion does not follow because even though nothing comes from and becomes nothing, consciousness is something and so there is no shared middle term with either pair of premises.

The second, "sophisticated" interpretation:

"Consciousness is not nothing" --> "Consciousness is something"
"Nothing comes from nothing" --> "something comes from something"
"Nothing becomes nothing" --> "something becomes something"

Conclusion does not follow because "something" is an equivocal term.

The third, "intended" interpretation:

"Consciousness is not nothing" --> "Consciousness is something"
"Nothing comes from nothing" --> "everything comes from something"
"Nothing becomes nothing" --> "everything becomes something"

Conclusion follows. Consciousness comes from and becomes something. However, we must equivocate as to the meaning of nothing. The first nothing has a grammatical function -- it means "It is never the case that something" while the second nothing means simply what does not exist.

But as Isaac points out, the second and third premises, in order to be true, must already assume consciousness as coming from and becoming something.

I will assume that the Parmenidean dictum you quoted is not interpreted in the Aristotelian sense. I don't see how that ancient doctrine is compatible with quantum events or the Big Bang.

So the real question is not with regard to consciousness but about universal causality on the practical scale of human events. Some very early attacks on causality come from Pyrronian Skepticism. I've tried to adapt one to the discussion here.

The argument I had in mind is this one:

Furthermore, a cause produces an effect either at a time when it already exists and exists as a cause, or when it is not a cause. Now it certainly does not do so when it is not a cause; but if it does so when it is a cause, it must have existed and have become a cause beforehand, and then, this done, it must bring about the effect, which is said to be produced by it at a time when it is already a cause. But since the cause is relative, that is, relative to the effect, clearly it cannot, as a cause, exist before the effect; therefore it is not possible for the cause, at the time when it is the cause, to produce that of which it is the cause. And if it cannot produce anything either when it is a cause or when it is not, then it cannot produce anything. Wherefore, it will not be a cause, for apart from producing something a cause cannot be conceived as a cause. — Sextus Empiricus

This argument is 99% sophistical. But there is a 1% that matters.

So the causes that effect things in the present DID exist at one point or another in time. NOW they don't exist, but the effects of their CAUSING do exist now. — god must be atheist

The past is a previous state of the present. — Pantagruel

Both of you seem to be saying that the past does not presently exist, but that it is also not nothing. But supposing I have a box that once contained a stack of papers but is now empty. If I say "there's nothing in the box" you would need to correct me: The history of everything that was ever in that box is still in the box.

Alternatively, the space in that box, the place where those papers were stored, must have existed in some way before the box was manufactured, and after I send the box off to be recycled, and it is broken down into pulp, that space persists in some form.

Beauty is a kind of ambivalence with no absolute standard. Truth may be the same way in the sense that there is not a determinate algorithm for finding what is true in general.

How can we distinguish these two from each other? I say to do so based on function.

The function of the truth is to bring about conflict. In order for us to disagree or to otherwise engage each other in any way, we must agree first that there is a truth. We bring together our desires and personal experiences and share them in an emotionally rich way. It is the truth which makes this possible. For this reason, the truth must exist independently of the self; only through it can we show that we actually exist.

The function of beauty is to engage our desire. It is a quality of appearance which is not universal. Instead, it is itself artistic, and contains within itself abundant diversity and no maximum. It does not have its own independent existence; it is really the result of our concepts of of objects being activated and our own awareness of our desires being engaged by what we cognize. In fact, beauty is the source of our own inter-subjective recognition of differences between people.

Since these two are so completely and utterly different, I must now consider in which cases your equation can be true. What kind of thing can be both true and beautiful? In order for it to be true, it must have the potential to cause conflict. And in order for it to be beautiful it must be desired, meaning I capture the truth in my concept. What else is this but knowledge of the world?

Love is the only basic emotion. It is common to all life, not as the totality of desire but as the common thread of each desire, found in all other emotions as the essence of emotion itself. In the understanding of desire, the possibility of conflict gives way to perfect harmony in actuality. Love is our recognition of this harmony of desire, be it the desire to make love, or the desire to help and to receive help, or the desire to march into battle together, or for that matter, against each other. Indeed, even in the bird which flies away and the cat that jumps after it, there is love as these desires fall into perfect harmony with each other. Only perfect harmony can be absolutely correct because correctness is nothing but absence of error. The correct understanding of emotion is therefore always harmonious, and the meditation on the harmony of desire produces the sensation of love. As no emotion can be understood without this element, it is the essence of emotion. All other qualities of emotion are accidental qua love.

The most absolute form of reality is not material, but conflict. Nothing is real until opposition and impossibility emerge. When I see something, it is real because it is just an appearance, not completely visible and obscuring what is behind it.

When interacting with others, the difference between their desires and mine is what makes them real.

A better question for the OP to ask would be, is there anything is Carroll's books that support or depict child sexual predation. I've never read Carroll, but I believe the answer to that is a resounding No. — Grre

We have before us a bare fact. How are we to interpret it? I don't want to be the one to stick his neck out.

"Munchausen Trilemma" is nothing more than a restatement of what was already known at the time of Aristotle. From Posterior Analytics, part 3:

The first school, assuming that there is no way of knowing other than by demonstration, maintain that an infinite regress is involved, ...
Our own doctrine is that not all knowledge is demonstrative: on the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premises is independent of demonstration....
The advocates of circular demonstration are not only faced with the difficulty we have just stated: in addition their theory reduces to the mere statement that if a thing exists, then it does exist-an easy way of proving anything. — Aristotle, 350 BCE

Just another sad case of analytic philosophers reinventing Greek Philosophy.

I would like to have someone articulate what the actual problem with reading Lewis Carroll is.

I'd also like to point out a certain organization of social groups. We have (a) attackers (b) their targets and (c) those who stand between the attackers and their targets. For instance, in customer service, the (a) irate customer wishes to complain to the (b) corporate leadership but instead is connected to (c) the customer support representative.

So please, in articulating your response, don't be a Karen. I am not Lewis Carroll.

Ultimately in any argument it is necessary to be honest.

Progress in an argument comes from convincing individuals that they have made a mistake or to doubt their premises or definitions. These admissions of error are voluntary acts. Even if the realization that your argument is imperfect is unavoidable, admitting it to yourself and your interlocutor is still a choice. Fully reflecting on the implications of these errors is even more difficult than a simple choice. Since progress is only possible through voluntary admission of error, you can never lose an argument if you simply never admit any mistake, no matter how absurd your position becomes.

Thus to set out to argue with the object of winning the argument is already an act of dishonesty. And if people argue in a dishonest way, they are not pursuing truth but rather recognition. Epistemology has given way to narcissism. Much of philosophy really is nothing but narcissism, in which the object is to present beautiful, appealing, and elegant reasoning.

Truth has nothing going for it. It isn't beautiful, appealing, or elegant. Its biggest flaw is its lack of popularity. Those who start out by making a flawed argument and are suddenly confronted by the truth, will suddenly turn away from their own subject to begin attacking the truth, blind to how they are undermining their own argument. In their narcissism, they will never admit their error.

Without honest interlocutors, the argument is nothing more than a battle, a proxy for actual physical combat between people. Each wishes to force the other to agree to his terms so that he can validate himself. Under such conditions, it is only natural that each would resort to ad hominem. It is no longer the exercise of reason, but the base application of the tools of rationality to achieve selfish ends. When these ends come into conflict, the only solution is the elimination of the obstruction through whatever means necessary. Such dishonest interlocutors really wish for the death of the other, and indeed we are in the battle prior to the Master-Slave Dialectic of The Phenomenology of Spirit.

There is a turning point from which the argument ceases to be about truth and begins to be about individual egos. And if a person sets out to discuss "being right" rather than "truth" it is apparent that such a person has already turned the corner, so to speak. Ironically, the hallmark of the "being right" approach is the pedantic pointing out of logical errors or false premises. Such interlocutors reveal their hands when they do not see how the opposition won't admit to being wrong when confronted by this pointing out. In fact, the pointing out does not itself suggest anything. The truth value of nonsense is indeterminate -- it is neither better nor worse than false.

Question: Where did the formulation of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent come from? What is the textual support? — Bitter Crank

This is not a valid objection.

You just keep repeating yourself — god must be atheist

You are the one who is just repeating yourself.

That's not very polite. I utilized two of the most venerable philosophical dictums as the major and minor premises of a syllogism. — Pantagruel

You have not been polite to me.

Anything a nitwit like Peterson can say has already been better said thousands of years ago. However, the same can be said for analytic philosophy.

Nothing comes from nothing.
Nothing becomes nothing.
Consciousness is not nothing (cogito ergo sum).
Ergo... — Pantagruel

You didn't even make an argument here. You're just assuming your conclusion, which is literally ...
That's why my argument is better than yours.

It was almost a nice bit of sophistry though. — Pantagruel

My point was to concoct something less sophistical than what you posted. And I think I succeeded. Honestly your OP transcends sophistry to the depths of the shitpost.

The past exists as a memory in our imagination. — Pop

Then God exists. Because he exists in the imagination of anyone who believes in God and this has the property of existing.

The past does not exist. NOW. But it did exist.
...
So the causes that effect things in the present DID exist at one point or another in time. NOW they don't exist, but the effects of their CAUSING do exist now. — god must be atheist

So the past is nothing, and all effects are caused by nothing. Or alternatively, we remember the past because the past is part of the present, and what is contained in the past is only our memory of events which don't exist anymore.

And the conclusion is wrong, since the assumptions are invalid. — god must be atheist

Not correct, the conclusion simply doesn't follow if the assumptions are invalid. The conclusion can still be true.

or to put it in your patronizing style...

A wrong argument doesn't PROVE it's conclusion. Thus the conclusion can EITHER be TRUE or FALSE.

So you think the strength of an argument follows from whether you agree with it?

That's fine for things that have one function. But a related question to "how ought I to behave?" is "what is the purpose of my existence?" — Kenosha Kid

Well I've been working on an essay about this, but generally the answer to the question is "Ethics".

The point is debatable but you must admit my argument is a lot stronger than OPs.

It's not really despicable though because if you left it in the wild, it suffers terribly — neilldn74

This is an arbitrary point of comparison. It would be better to consider the case where that dog never lived at all. It's impossible to measure its suffering, but think of the part of the natural world, and the animals that lived there, that have to die just so we can cultivate a little more land and raise a few more animals in factory farms to produce the food for this pet dog?

If people want nature in their lives, they should turn off the TV or computer and go outside for a while, not keep animals as pets.

If you've ever played a MOBA this would be "inting". — khaled

If this is inting, who gets the 300g?

Had the US President not been the Ultimate Disaster President, but a marginally efficient autocrat with the balls to push through, it would have been totally possible situation to stage and to have a successful autocoup. — ssu

This is probably the most important lesson that America must learn from Trump. The simple fact that after the coup attempt Republicans did not unanimously support impeaching Trump shows just how many people in this country do not really support the system that is in place anymore. It shows how ignorant people are to really believe that it would be better to have totalitarianism than the current system.

Our Democracy literally won't survive. Even if we deal with Trump in the most severe way, the next Republican will be dictator.

Cue current dysfunctional Congress — schopenhauer1

The proposal you make is like such a small step. It's as if we were in a battleship on the morning before a naval battle debating what to have for breakfast. You are part of the problem just for making such a suggestion.

I'm the kind of person who thinks even advocacy for gay rights or ending racism is a waste of time. If you really think something like the lack of term limits for some elected positions is a problem worth discussing I don't know where you've been sticking your head for the last 40 years.

I think your thesis is hard to to defend because you don't ask whether God exists or whether someone can know God doesn't exists. Instead you ask how someone can believe they know God doesn't exist. This means you must defend even cases of people being completely mistaken. I can point to at least one person -- myself -- who believes he knows God does not exist. Are you really prepared to argue that you know what I believe better than I do?

ventually, the chatbot members would become the majority and they would probably vote to ban all humans from the forum and that includes the moderators. :chin: — TheMadFool

It would actually improve the quality of the forum considerably.

Communism and Fascism employed authoritarian models of control and attempted to force their populations to adapt particular behaviors. Although initially successful, the medium to long term prospects for creating such a totalitarian superstructure were poor and each failed (or is failing). — synthesis

You're radically underestimating the historical contingency involved here.

(1) We could have lost world war II, in which case the whole planet would be overtly fascist
(2) Stalin could have not rose to power in Russia, or Russia could have gone through a transition to a system more similar to modern China.

There's also a naive reading of history involved here because these early examples or early efforts of these ideologies do not definitively prove that the ideology itself will not work. Just as medicine has improved over the centuries, Communism and Fascism will also improve. A future Fascist state might easily out-compete us and destroy us.

Another questionable assumption is that Fascism (or totalitarianism / oligarchy) and capitalism are mutually exclusive. In some respects, its a more ideal government for capitalism than Democracy is. There are many examples throughout history of capitalist totalitarianism.

You also ignore the socialist / regulatory aspects of modern Democratic states. They are not pure capitalism. Every modern state has large social programs; these are the hallmark of being modern. Professional militaries are just one such public good provided through socialism.

My vote for greatest lesson of the 20th century is that the concentration of wealth alone will lead to the destruction of civilization on a global scale. Thomas Piketty's research on this topic largely confirms Marx's thesis in this regard, even if Marx's actual formulas are imperfect.

Some people would argue we should be just like nature (survival of the fittest?) and not try to transcend it. Are our attempts to control or thwart nature sustainable or psychologically healthy? I think our current era of prosperity (which is not available to many people) is ahistoric and we have to have faith that it is sustainable. — Andrew4Handel

This just gets at the issue with saying something like "you can't get an ought from an is". It stops you from evaluating whether things are working properly. Sure, you can say the economy is efficient, but then why investigate the efficiency? Why not waste all of our resources on bitcoin? You can say everyone might as well be selfish, but then why even pursue your own interest? Any question about what to do becomes undecidable.

The Greek answer to the question was to say that each thing has a function, and "good" merely means fulfilling this function.

I have a few interesting ideas. But it is really hard, as an unemployed 40 year old with no life prospects, living in his parents' basement, to motivate myself to research them. Not only that -- I don't have access to academic databases, only what I can find publicly available in college libraries.

Because I basically have nobody to really explore my ideas with in depth, they remain abstract and underdeveloped. I have joined philosophy clubs but it isn't like I can get anyone to read my essays. Everyone wants to talk about Kant or Zizek or something like that.

But why SHOULD I share my ideas with anyone? If I did have a good idea, it would just be stolen.

So if I build a rube goldberg machine out of rocks, sticks, playing cards, and other things from my garage, that has consciousness?

I say to read them in the order you listed them. But I would also read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit after Schopenhauer, and listen along to the Bernstein tapes. I say this because Hegel utterly demolishes Kant, seting up a new philosophical framework that is rather thought provoking, imho.

"[Who] thinks that Trumpists “believe” in the words of Trump in a literal sense? In the book Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes? (Did the Greeks believe in their myths?), Paul Veyne questions the meaning of “belief.” His conclusion is that the force of mythology does not consist in believing a metaphor literally, in forgetting about the brackets before and after the metaphoric enunciation. Mythological belief (like memetic contagion) today similarly enables a sort of pragmatic coherence in the life of “believers.” It gives sense to the world of those who heed such mythology, amidst a world that has lost any sense. — StreetlightX

A modern parallel might be the phenomenon where everyone says "I don't believe what I see on the TV and Internet." This is manifestly contradicted by the fact that we get almost all of our information about everything from these two sources.

Even the tropes of fictional TV shows teach us how to think about things. This insidious level of conditioning doesn't typically rise to our conscious awareness.

I am not assuming anything.

Seems to me that it's time for the entire country to go back to kindergarten and review some basic rules for carrying out a successful life. — synthesis

Seems like you're unaware of your own cognitive dissonance here...

I will side with Plato in this debate. There is something rather than nothing because of the Idea of The Good. It is best that there be something. In particular, it is better for good to exist than for it to not exist.

Then what are we arguing about?

The myth that spontaneously formed right after it happened was that it was the actions of disaffected, poor, white, working class people — StreetlightX

I admit that I was somewhat taken in by this myth myself. But I do not think the myth is Pro-Trump. Facts, even incorrect facts, do not have ideology all by themselves.

It is also not quite what has been argued by Democratic Socialists like myself, who see the general lack of social safety nets and dearth of Economic opportunities in America as a factor in the rise of Trump. Historically there are real parallels between the current era and past eras where Right Wing politics succeeded. Honestly, I feel squeezed on three sides -- the same old crap from the Right, postmodern identity politics from supposed "allies" who don't realize they are corporate stooges, and utopian dreams from the Revolutionary Socialists.

1. That which does not exist is nothing
2. The past does not exist
3. All causes occur in the past when measured in time local to their present effect
4. Therefore all causes are nothing
5. Therefore everything comes from nothing.

Ex nihilo omnia fit

I would start my investigation of cause and effect with Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Understanding the difficulties in merely asserting a cause-effect relationship helps to frame and qualify all later discussion of the topic. With this in mind it becomes possible to both appreciate Aristotle's work on the matter and dismiss offhand more recent obscenities like Hume's constant conjunction.

Imagine what would happen if on the last play of the Superbowl the superstar wide receiver, who just made a spectacular catch for the winning touchdown, goes up to the referee and tells him that the ball actually hit the ground and it was not a catch. How might society deal with this kind of honesty? — synthesis

Can you be a little more specific? How are you assuming the referee reacts? Because if the ref doesn't act on this information (and it is likely that he won't), there won't be a reaction from society at large. So I'll assume that the catch is then ruled incomplete. Furthermore I'll assume that we somehow hear or learn about this conversation.

We would largely regard that player's honesty as a bad play decision. Players are expected to fake things this way. It is not outside of the rules or outside of ethics, but a part of the game.

I don't think the behavior of athletes is any kind of evidence that morality has hit rock bottom. What you're describing is the hypocrisy written into all of human culture. Our very practice of ethics is always rife with such examples, and you will find them throughout human history. The pattern is simply this:

1. A law is set up to define what is allowed
2. Our intuitions sometimes conflict with that law
3. Some members of society take advantage of the law either by framing others or pushing their own behavior to the limit of what is de facto legal even when that is in conflict with our intuitions

If we imagine that the study of ethics amounts to the study of personal choices rather than institutions, this pattern will always reveal moral failings of individuals. However, this is not because the substantive ethical question really pertains to individual conduct, but because of where we have chosen to look. If we instead consider the way the institutions are constructed -- namely our laws and mechanism for enforcement -- we might find that there is no way to improve the outcome or indeed that outcomes have been steadily improving through legal and institutional reforms.

In the situation you described above, the institutional perspective looks rather different. The sport has very well written rules which allow referees to consistently enforce standards of fair play. Video assist, coach challenges, etc. are all set up with fair play in mind. It is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to point out any single change that could be made to the rules or refereeing of American Gridiron Football to improve the game.

So how can these two perspectives be reconciled? Before proceeding, let me give another example:

A woman is feeling lonely and wants to find a guy to hook up with. But she doesn't feel comfortable, so she decides to lower her own inhibitions with alcohol. She goes to a bar, gets drunk and hooks up with a guy that night.

When viewed from the perspective of her individual consent, she is making a choice that leaves her unable to consent. Thus, her actions are offensive to the cause of women's liberation. She should be personally responsible and remain sober, so that she can positively consent to the sexual encounter. Otherwise, she is just fueling rape culture. Using this line of argumentation, it is possible to view her act as immoral.

However, when viewed from the perspective of social institutions, it is a triumph of feminism that a woman can feel safe enough in our society to actually behave this way. She is not deterred by fear that she will be shamed as a slut nor afraid of being sexually exploited.

Looking at these examples, the way to reconcile these perspectives is to realize that laws, social customs, standards of enforcement, etc. open up the space for us to act freely. Rather than this personal view of morality existing in a separate space from the institutional perspective, it is actually a product of that perspective, indeed one of the many means by which social rules are enforced.

In truth, there are always lines of demarcation in personal morality which define the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. These are not determined by or derived from first principles in philosophy. Instead, they come from our own culture, and in that sense are nothing more than the reflection of the rules governing that manner of action. That is why we expect athletes to try pretend they've caught the ball, or (as in a game of soccer) sell another player's foul against them. It is also why we also do not find it morally objectionable when people take actions which do contradict philosophical principles which we ourselves hold, such as the principle of consensual sex. It is because we see some actions as "normal" and therefore do not critically evaluate them.

Since the very basis of the reaction that someone who is otherwise following the rules is still acting in an immoral manner is nothing more than a moral intuition, it is impossible to separate our own implicit sense of what is normal from this reaction. It is, after all, an intuition and not an argument regarding a stated rule. Otherwise, the rule would be part of our explicit understanding, an moral intuition would not be necessary.

I don't understand why nobody in this thread can accept that this forum doesn't fall on the exact midpoint between Brett's political views and whatever liberal views he had in mind when he made this thread. It should be obvious.