What should the state be responsible for? And why? — frank

My view is that a civilized state works to build cohesive community and the health and happiness of its citizens through the provision of care, essential services and amenities.

We have free medical care in Australia and have had so for many decades, It works pretty well and people are not bankrupted here if they get sick.

Matters of life and death, given that they are matters of life and death, should be approached with the according earnestness, as opposed to treating them as a mere hobby. — baker

I'm glad you feel that way. But that's your business. I don't think you are in a position to judge another - unless you are trying to emulate the punishing captious God you seem to want to bring into being.

Agree. Which is why I have never really seen the New Atheists as anything more than fundamentalist busters. A job worth doing, but not philosophy. Bishop Shelby Spong did similar work as a devout allegorist. His book Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism[/i] contained everything Hitchens tried to do but managed to retain the baby.

That's lame then, to combine mere curiosity with matters of life and death. — baker

Yeah, I think curiosity about matters of life and death is lame too.

Augustine was plainly struggling to interpret the meaning of the Creation myth of Genesis. As that quote showed, he realised that creation really could not have occupied seven 24 hour days - there were no days before there was an earth, that was understood even in the 4th Century. — Wayfarer

I read David Bentley Hart on this and I recall him suggesting that Augustine understood Torah stories as allegorical. Not sure that patristic understanding of the stories ever took them as literal truths . Even the Apostles, particularly Paul saw the work as allegorical and were not literalists.

"As should be obvious, Paul frequently allegorizes Hebrew scripture; the 'spiritual reading' of scripture typical of the Church Fathers of the early centuries was not their invention, nor just something borrowed from pagan culture, but was already a widely accepted hermeneutical practice among Jewish scholars. So it is not anachronistic to read Paul here as saying that the stories he is repeating are not accurate historical accounts of actual events, but allegorical tales composed for the edification of readers."

David Bentley Hart. The New Testament: A Translation. Yale University Press:

Curiosity. Something to do. The idea galvanises so many wars and conflicts and animates so many internecine feuds, even on these virtual pages. How could one not be intrigued? Are you a theist? I forget.

I guess so - I try to be aware of the various interpretations people hold.

Then why bother with the God concept at all? — baker

God is one of my favourite characters from literary fiction.

And how is that supposed to help you? — baker

I rarely think in terms of help.

Some people are scared by technical terms. — Bitter Crank

Some people are just scared.

I had my two jabs of Pfizer and no side effects. I don't generally suffer form paranoia about government or the wealthy, even if both groups frequently showcase an ugly agglomeration of unprincipled douche canoes. The wealthy and governments generally struggle to organise a bonk in a brothel so a billion person death conspiracy is surely beyond them. Besides, if they wipe out all the poor people, what will the rich have to eat?

Changed my comment.

I'm not debating if the science is accurate (how would I know?) just what they say it was.

It misleads because physicists maintain there was no explosion. The term was started as a joke by Fred Hoyle.

So why was it condensed at first place? What was the nature of the condensed matter? — Corvus

The bouncy castle pumped it up.

Wow, that is a bouncy castle pumping up then. ok. — Corvus

Exactly. Now you have it.

BB sounds more magical than Harry Potter's magic wand. — Corvus

When you read physicists about the Big Bang it's not described as an explosion, it's an expansion of condensed matter all at once in every direction. Big Bang is a misleading appellation.

To learn how wrong you are, read up. — Wayfarer

Perhaps Corvius has it on faith that there was no big bang.

The agnostic picks a side based on the sum of experience at the time. Being an atheist/theist is like assuming there’s a lion in the cage or not, and stating this claim well before approaching the cage. The agnostic stays aware of changing conditions, and is open to continually revising their prediction on approach. — Possibility

II get what you are saying but 'm not convinced by this. I think that metaphor is off the mark. For one thing, lions exist and we can readily test if they are in a cage or not.

You either believe or you don't believe. The 'don't know' option doesn't address belief, it addresses knowledge - a separate dimension to this matter. Like many others I would consider myself an agnostic atheist. I don't believe in God, but I am agnostic about its existence.

But in the end labels are not all that important. Most agnostics are effectively atheists in their lifestyle - there is no contemplative prayer, no devotional ritual or worship, no transcendent experience of being or bliss. Some agnostics may well be more open to theistic possibilities than some atheists, but I doubt the distinction is useful. There are atheists I know who are into astrology and fortune telling. It's a broad church. :joke: I'm certainly open to revising my views on theism if the evidence/information changes. Or if I change. Not all atheists are Richard Dawkins...

Hmm. Perhaps so that you may have the choice not to be? obstacles are meant to be overcome no? — Benj96

Not sure what obstacles you are thinking about but thanks for the advice.

Of course. Given I am not a philosopher or a some other appropriately qualified expert, it is of almost no consequence what I understand or think about this 'hard problem'. Like most people, I'm better off doing the dishes or finding a suitable can...

I guess that could make you a Mysterian. :razz: Coming from this perspective of science's blind spot - is it even worth considering this question, or do we just meditate?

Trust me, it's much more complicated than anyone would believe. — Art Stoic Spirit

Thanks for elaborating your ideas. I guess we differ on the question of individual certainty. If someone says that they believe a thing I'll accept that they do. Ditto with unbelief. I don't think people need to articulate an ontology of the transcendent to be called a believer.

Have you read much phenomenology?

Doesn't sound very plausible. Maybe you could try to explain. People either believe or they don't. It's not complex.

No. But that might be the case.

:up:

In economics there's a saying, that a rising tide lifts all boats... — Shawn

Seems like a variation of Reagan's fabled 'trickle-down economics'. What is it with the disciples of Hayek and water?

It was meant as a quip, not theology.

Yep, I know the book and I saw Krauss' roadshow on the topic. As I'm sure you'll agree, Krauss is a pop star not a philosopher. But he's way smarter than me in many areas so what can I say?

In classical theism God is always omnibenevolent. But even if what you say is true, asking why remains pertinent. I always suspected he wasn't loved when he was a small god.

:up: I'm pretty mediocre myself, but let's keep that between us...

Agree. Have you read his 1979 Crisis of Confidence speech? He describes the current era pretty well.

A sample:

"The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed. Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like it, and neither do I. What can we do?"

Why are you such a cunt?

Well, just off the top of my head, you guys were extremely concerned with the environment back in the 70's. — Shawn

Not really. All our cars were V8 and we set fire to tyres and bushland just to watch them burn.

Are we living in an age of mediocrity?

This is a pretty popular claim. I don't think so, (or should that be no more than ususal?) but it depends on where you live and how you interpret what you see. I was young in the 1970's and I much prefer it now (despite all the challenges).

The young people I know (and I know a lot) seem curious and hold good values and care about others. But they are a mix, like they always have been.

I would be interested in how one would even measure the difference between our current age and, say 1975, or whenever.

Anyone who reflects that they have become a mindless consumer in a bland world (which was a significant preoccupation in the 'me generation' 1970's) has a choice to change how they live.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and thus nothing in physical existence ever ‘began to exist’ in the sense we are interested in.
— Tom Storm

Doesn't big bang cosmology and the ever-expanding universe somewhat undercut this? — Wayfarer

Cripes! - my wording was all over the shop. Not sure what I was trying to say. Except that some physicists, Sean Carroll (being one) have stated that there was likely to be something before the big bang which may have had its own physics on a smaller scale that post PB. I don't think we can say there was ever nothing, assuming we can even define what nothing is.

As I've said many times before, people generally choose their metaphysical systems. The standard I apply is usefulness rather than truth. In my, and some other's, views metaphysical principles are not true or false. — T Clark

That's what I've found myself doing more and more as I get older.

In the mereological version of the Kalam i wasn't trying to state it as true, — Ghost Light

Yep, I understood that.

My response is that the principle is more specific that everything has a cause; it says that whatever begins to exist has a cause — Ghost Light

Yes, and if the premises are correct the argument is valid.

But there's so much missing from this to get us to William Lane Craig.

I have no significant views on this matter which is why I sent Alex O'Conner's angle.

Personally, I don't care if the universe (whatever that actually is) had a cause or not as it doesn't lead me anywhere.

Humans trying to make sense of existence/being is always going to end in loose ends or additional confusions.

2. The universe is an arrangement of mereological simples into a specific structure. — Ghost Light

Is the universe an arrangement of mereological simples? Given our knowledge of the universe is limited and/or speculative I couldn't possible say. I'm not sure we can ascribe causality to anything we understand so poorly. And surely, no matter how many examples of things having causes we find, this doesn't mean everything has a cause.

The merits of this argument notwithstanding it doesn't get you to Craig's Jesus, even if valid. The best Kalam can do is establish there was a cause to the universe. Muslims use the same argument.

From Alex J O'Connor:

"We should assess the first premise: ‘Everything that begins to exist has a cause.’ This phrase, in all its unassuming simplicity, has the potential to strike its reader as a truism, but it pays to ask yourself an important and relevant question: when have you ever actually known something to begin to exist? Have you ever seen something begin to exist, or even heard of such a thing? You may be inclined to answer that this happens all the time. Just this morning my coffee began to exist — only, it didn’t really begin to exist at all, rather it was the product of a rearrangement of preexisting matter.

Keep in mind that if the kalãm seeks to draw a parallel between things within the universe beginning to exist and the universe itself beginning to exist, they must ‘begin to exist’ in the same fashion. To reiterate, for philosophical relevance the kalãm argument must deal with things that begin to exist from nothing. Since this was obviously not the case with my coffee, it is an inappropriate comparison. What, then, within the universe, has truly begun to exist (from nothing) at a particular point in the past?

Nothing. The answer is nothing. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and thus nothing in physical existence ever ‘began to exist’ in the sense we are interested in. Not my coffee, nor my computer, nor my father, nor the Burj Khalifa. Even something as seemingly abstract as an idea cannot begin to exist from nothing, since ideas are ultimately nothing more than signals in the brain, and hence physical in nature. It is this realisation that allows us to dispel the first premise as founded on an equivocation fallacy, since the concept of ‘beginning to exist’ is being used, it seems, inconsistently.

Nonetheless, it might be said, this variety of matter and energy constantly rearranging itself must itself, collectively, have an origin. This is of course plausible, but this origin would consist in the very beginning of the universe itself, when all matter simultaneously began to exist. That is to say, no matter has ever begun to exist except when the universe itself came into being. The only thing that ever actually began to exist from nothing, then, is the universe itself, and even this can be confidently asserted only because of our previously granting an entire premise of the kalãm.

Consider the implications of this. If the only thing that ever began to exist (in the relevant sense) is the universe, then the first premise, ‘Everything that begins to exist has a cause’ becomes ‘The universe has a cause’, since the universe is everything that begins to exist, being the only thing that began to exist. It should be immediately apparent that this premise is identical to the conclusion, and thus the kalãm can also be rendered as follows:

Premise one: The universe has a cause;
Premise two: The universe began to exist;
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.

As is clear, the second premise is in fact irrelevant, and the argument is now transparently circular. It says nothing whatsoever, since the first premise states the same as the conclusion, and therefore is not a functional syllogism, but a mere claim. It is a claim which, to be at all convincing, will require far more to support it than this unimpressive yet ubiquitous attempt."

Do you have a view about what the most plausible form of deity could be?
— Tom Storm
The God of the Taliban. — baker

Cool. Coherent but unlikely.

For me if God is the jealous, dictatorial, error-prone fuck-knuckle he appears to be in the Old Testament, then we should blow a raspberry in his direction.