How does the fact that a god is 100% demonstrably real and can have a direct visible impact in a setting change the dynamics of a religion? How does it change the behavior of the faithful and religous leaders compared to real-world religions? Would there be less or more corruption among the clergy?
I mean he is in the real world. People just like to ignore that
Prove it.
What would constitute as "proof" for you, anon?
I will except any extraordinary and remarkable physical occurrence that happens within the next 10 minutes from when this message is posted. For example, if the coffee mug that is sitting right next to me at the moment falling from the desk it's on to the floor (it is currently empty and my floor is carpeted so it is unlikely to break, but it is also well away from the edge so it's impossible for it to fall under its own power.
For the purposes of this example I will include not just supernatural movement (the coffee mug appears to move itself), but also things like, for example, my coffee mug falling because I accidentally hit it with something, or an earthquake causing the mug to rattle off of the desk. Anything that gets the mug from my desk to the floor, without me picking it up and placing it there.
God, if he is omniscent, is aware of these terms. If he is omnipotent, he is more than capable of fulfilling them.
So. Ten minutes. Starting from when this is posted.
>I will except any extraordinary and remarkable physical occurrence that happens within the next 10 minutes from when this message is posted.
Sorry, small amendment: Any extraordinary physical occurrence that happens within the next 10 minutes of posting, THAT I AM CAPABLE OF WITNESSING. An earthquake striking Tahiti won't count unless my TV is on (it is not), nor will, say, the miracle of cell division, which I can not capable of observing with my own eyes. I have terrible eyesight.
Sorry, should have been clear from the start. We can restart the clock from this post.
Matthew 4:7
Your confidence in the false god of Logic already outs you. You trust your eyes which make so many shortcuts that eyewitness reports are now rarely considered conclusive evidence in courts. You put your absolute faith in your own ability as the arbiter of truth, and even admit that the basic fundamental forces of life are what they truly are: a miracle that could only have been brought forth by the intervention of a divine creator.
I would meditate on the Trinity, and ask God for forgiveness for testing him.
Eyewitness testimony is still considered more reliable evidence in courts than religious epiphany. Telling people they can't trust their eyes so they should have faith in something less tangible than sight isn't very persuasive.
This
And eyewitness testimony is literal shit teir in a court compared to literally all other evidence. Thats the whole trick a lawyer pulls when a witness testimony doesn't match and they pull a gotcha.
If god wants to use "evidence" even weaker than eyewitness testimony, then hes a art-gay huffing his own pseudo-intellectual farts at best.
ah but you see, god has told me that logic and understanding is the true way to worship him. he told me anybody who thinks he doesn't want us to understand his magnificent design is an idiot for thinking he would have wasted his time making all this stuff for people reading a book and thinking it's all there is.
>homosexual 420:69
>Excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses excuses
Truly pathetic
Holy cope
So basically the guy who wrote the bible put in a disclaimer:
>"DO NOT ASK ME TO DO ANYTHING DIRECTLY FOR YOU OR AID YOU IN ANY WAY, CAUSE, UHHHHH, YOU JUST CAN'T OKAY?
Wow anon, you convinced me, he's real, zomg
Don't think it included "you must do every challenge that an angry 14 years old asks you".
Seems like for a loving god who wants you to worship him so desperately, he makes it really hard to convince anyone that he's actually real and thus destined to a world of torment.
> who wants you to worship him so desperately
You have the choice
>makes it really hard
Biggest religion of the world, so not that hard
A McDonalds is the most popular restuarant in the world.
People don't make good choices.
stfu homie mcdondal sprite btfo any other fast food soda
Anon, I'm not saying that its correct because most people follow it, I'm saying that your claim about it being "oh so haaaard" are weak considering that it does work pretty well by being the biggest religion of the world.
Kwab
How did it go, anon?
The mug, she is unmoved, at least by extraordinary happenstance. I re-positioned it on the table a few times to make room for my lunch, but that should in no way have impacted the experiment testing to prove an omniscient, omnipotent god, and in any event it never ended up on the floor, which was the terms of the original experiment. Nor did any other extraordinary physical phenomena occur.
So I must conclude one of two things to be true:
1) God does not exist; or
2) God does not want to prove himself to me.
Yeah sure thing Matt. All I'm hearing is that God is not willing to unambiguously prove his existence to me. I must therefore conclude that he does not care about my soul (if indeed such a thing exists).
>So I must conclude one of two things to be true:
>1) God does not exist; or
>2) God does not want to prove himself to me [by my terms].
Fixed that for you
Rolled 918 (1d1000)
Not wanting to prove himself to me by my terms is still him not wanting to prove himself to me. It's a distinction without a difference.
Tell you what, I'll make it easier and visible to the board. I'm gonna roll a d1000. If the result is 0001, God is real.
Rolled 775 (1d1000)
For the record, were I an omnipoent God who wanted my creations to come to Heaven and placed as a prerequisite for entry into Heaven a firm and true belief in me, then I'd make regular and unambiguous appearances.
Oh dear anon, it seems Allah has created you for eternal torment. Just your luck I guess.
NTA but if he did, then he is a sadistic bastard, and i'm the good guy in accepting eternal torment for not worshipping a monster.
How do you qualify being the good guy? In other words, what do you measure that "good" against?
Not for nothing but that's starting to sound like a metaphysical good you're referring to.
nothing metaphysical in saying: "let's both respect each other and work together to make sure our species and everything under our purview can thrive and prosper."
If one needs a sky magic daddy to be told what's good and what's bad is not a good person in the first place.
>let's both respect each other and work together to make sure our species and everything under our purview can thrive and prosper.
I still find this tangent referring to some presupposition that is not being addressed. In a material world there is no true value. There is value subjective to each person, even a multitude of person's, but that only means it is valuable to one person, or to many. There is no "true" value above them.
I think we would both agree that subjective value isn't necessarily good whether an individual holds it or many people hold it. 1 man out of 100 men might value his bloodlust to kill others, but it is not good. 99 men out of 100 men might value scapegoating the last remaining man, but it is not good.
In a material world, especially one with the narrative of evolution, respect becomes an evolutionary means to garner favor and communication between parties. Of course one might have a sensation of actually respecting another, or one might not respect another but pretend to respect the other to garner favor or to deceive for the killing blow, but in the end it's a behavioral display. Sure it helps the species, or at least in-groups within the species, to proliferate, but then all it does is help proliferate.
Now in a material world all living beings eventually die. In our far future our environment won't even be able to sustain life and everything dies. Proliferation is a means to a limited end. On top of that there is no true value to proliferation, it just is how things work.
I can proliferate by raping women, but is that a good means of proliferation. Or you could have a truly patriarchal society that allows women virtually no liberty, they are in essence breeding mares, and that society could proliferate for a long time. Doesn't mean it's a good way to proliferate.
Consider the distinction between what IS and what one OUGHT to do. So far I have only heard from you what IS.
>I can proliferate by raping women, but is that a good means of proliferation
Probably not since it's liable to get you killed, or at least locked away, and the fetuses aborted in either case.
>Probably not since it's liable to get you killed, or at least locked away, and the fetuses aborted in either case.
I suppose if I were to go to prison or were to be killed I would no longer be thriving. But the woman or women I rape are not all necessarily going to have an abortion. My progeny may proliferate for a long time, maybe even until the end of man.
Of course if I were to be clever enough I may never be killed or locked away. I am thriving while I am free and raping.
We don't respect everyone, right? Maybe as my rapist self I would respect the man who could lock me up or kill me, but (obviously) not the women I use for my pleasure and depending on the woman even proliferation.
>My progeny may proliferate for a long time
Cool, but what's that do for you?
>I am thriving while I am free and raping
Not really. You have to devote a fair amount of time, effort, and resources to hiding your raping when you could probably achieve a similar result with much less effort by just regularly donating to a sperm bank or volunteering to serve as a surrogate father, freeing up your time and effort and resources for other pursuits. Like, I dunno, posting on Ganker.
>Cool, but what's that do for you?
I just mention it as proliferation seemed to be a qualifier of your good. It certainly is a means to sustain humans. It produces humans (assuming there's no abortion).
>Like, I dunno, posting on Ganker.
We're both doing that, right? I just mention that in case it's a dig at me posting on Ganker.
>Not really. You have to devote a fair amount of time, effort, and resources to hiding your raping when you could...
I consider that thriving. The planning. The calculation. I devote my resources to it. Raping, its pursuit, and the means to bankroll it are what thriving means to me. And at least some others agree with me. And hey, I get a similar result to donating to a sperm bank (which I also do in my free time, along with being a surrogate father).
>It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
Raping is why I am a baker.
(I'm going to get off the rape train.)
It could be due to a lack of understanding on my part but I haven't found a measure of your good to be self-evident. Your good is perhaps practical, but being practical is not inherently good.
>If one needs a sky magic daddy to be told what's good and what's bad is not a good person in the first place
You're picking up on something here, but your qualification of what is good and bad still seems to me to be calling on the metaphysical. Something objective to measure our subjective experience. Because this person's motives are seemingly practical, even if his presupposition is erroneous. The funny thing is, if this person's presupposition is not erroneous his motives risk being immoral as you rightly point out, even impractical!
> I consider that thriving. The planning. The calculation. I devote my resources to it. Raping, its pursuit, and the means to bankroll it are what thriving means to me.
I mean, okay, but in an objective and measurable sense it isn’t. The point of having kids isn’t just to continue your genetic line, it’s also so that you can have a safety net when you live to a decrepit old age and are no longer capable of taking care of yourself. You aren’t getting that out of raping because none of your kids - again, assuming they’re not aborted - are going to be around you to support you. You are not doing anything that measurably benefits *you*, instead you are consuming a not inconsiderable amount of time and resources to a pursuit that you can’t even be certain is working since you have no control over whether or not the women you rape get abortions.
It just seems to me that you’d achieve similar results with a lot less effort by just finding one woman to be your wife and who both wants and is capable of having lots of kids.
Also consider a society were everybody acts with no care for one another ends up dangerous for everyone, including the bad people themselves.
Yup. From a strictly utilitarian standpoint, it makes sense to not be selfishly utilitarian.
You're nearly there homosexual.
Morality is just the Nash equilibrium for each individual within a tribe. No need for any god or meaning or anything too abstract. Just basic b***h maximising gene spreading that every organism was selected for over million of year. There is nothing metaphysical about killing your tribesmen being antisocial but pillaging and raping the other tribe being justified.
We talked about respect, we talked about proliferation, what about thriving?
Why ought we to thrive? HOW ought we to thrive? What about when there's an impassable opinion between how we ought to thrive that violence breaks out?
Let's say a small but powerful contingency of people believe only an elect group of people ought to thrive, while the rest ought to serve or perish. Let's say this group, through whatever power dynamics they utilize, win out in the end. They respect one another. They proliferate with one another. They thrive. They've hit all your marks. How would you feel if you were the elect? What if you were outside of the elect?
Let's say instead a large and powerful contingency of people believe all ought to thrive. What starts to happen, when through natural dispositions and talents, some people thrive more than others? Should the ones who thrive more than others be handicapped or made to "thrive less" so that others may "thrive more"? How would you feel if you were a thriver? How would you feel if you weren't thriving and others were?
Remember, in a material world you are not beholden to anyone or anything. You have incredible freedom in such a world. Don't let your preconceived notions of what is "good" or "bad" stop you from doing what you will to do, what you believe you ought to do. It's not truly good or bad whether you do it or not.
>Why ought we to thrive?
Because we choose to.
>HOW ought we to thrive?
In a way that can be sustained so that we and those we care about can continue to thrive.
>What about when there's an impassable opinion between how we ought to thrive that violence breaks out?
Well if it's impassible then I guess violence breaks out, but given the sheer number of religious wars and conquests in the Bible ordained by God alone, nevermind in the millennia since the Bible arrived in its present form, I don't think God has much ground to stand on concerning war.
>They've hit all your marks
No they haven't. The mark was "our species", not "a select group of our species".
>when through natural dispositions and talents, some people thrive more than others?
I dunno, I suppose that's what we have democratic governments for, but I'm not sure how this is an argument leads us to "and therefore God" given that the Bible is pretty damn down for unequal societies.
>in a material world you are not beholden to anyone or anything
In practical terms you are. You're not really going to succeed in life like that. Even genuine sociopaths usually at least learn to PRETEND because of the consequences of not doing so.
>In a way that can be sustained so that we and those we care about can continue to thrive.
What would you define as thriving? I think that can better define your reasons why we ought to thrive, how we ought to thrive, and even how it all could be sustainable.
>No they haven't. The mark was "our species", not "a select group of our species".
Whoops, sorry. Didn't mean to misrepresent you. My main point is that it is your mark, not an "omnipotent" mark. An all-good mark. An infallible mark. Not a species-encompassing mark (in that others have different opinions). It is Anon's mark.
I would say though that "our species" is quite a broad swath of people. That is in fact everyone. What happens when some members of the species disagree with Anon's definition of thriving, why we ought to thrive, how, etc? Because that can very easily lead to
>Well if it's impassible then I guess violence breaks out
which might include you using violence yourself. Which I suppose is small in comparison to the violence dished out due to religious wars. israelites were genociding groups in ages past, and they were almost genocided themselves by Nazis! That's quite a lot of violence.
Though I do start to think of the communist and Nazi purges. Lots of violence and bloodshed at their hands. Would you consider them religious? Would you consider their end goals religious?
>In practical terms you are
I think we would agree being practical doesn't make you good or bad.
You have mentioned the bible a few times. Have you ever read it?
the guy who you answered last was not me but he made points i agree with.
> Define thriving
I would define thriving as "work to minimize the number of people who are not guaranteed human needs and, when not possible, minimize how much every single individual has to suffer to find a compromise".
Humans are social animals, we are hardwired into taking care of each other and fearing not being accepted, and this made human tribes survive before civilizations. But societies have grown bigger than the amount of people we are naturally capable of caring about and so the natural survival instinct of all animals "me before you" has overtaken.
My mark is simple: to the more members of the "humanity tribe" you are capable of extending your ability of caring (which is what made human tribes thrive in the first place), the more good you are.
The funniest part of these threads is when people try to argue that you don't need religion to have a moral framework, and then give examples of christian morals as proof.
All of your morals come from being culturally raised in a christian society. It isn't 'natural' to want to help strangers. Humans in a vacuum without a religious framework devolve to family tribalism where they warlord, enslave, pillage, rape and murder their neighbours. You probably think that's wrong, and that's the thanks to religion.
Humans (and other animals) have evolved to cooperate with one another as a survival strategy and civilization is just the most advanced form of that cooperative urge. You're right that the moral structure of our society has been heavily influenced by the Abrahamic faiths but that doesn't make the Abrahamic faiths special or true. Just the most widespread delusion among a species desperate to impose meaning upon randomness. And they're widespread largely because they've violated their own moral framework by killing everyone who disagreed.
>Humans (and other animals) have evolved to cooperate with one another as a survival strategy
Which doesn't impact on real and tangible good and evil. Peoppe being able of cooperation says nothing if an action is good or bad or if good and evil are real.
See
Then stop crying that things are evil. You can't have your cake and eat it.
>doesn't need to be OBJECTIVELY evil.
So rape is not *really* evil.
>Hurting other people is bad
Under which assumption? If a person is about to murder you would you hurt him? If a person is about to steal your things, would you hurt them? You are making assumptions based on what?
>because bad people make the world worse for everyone and themselves too
Prove it, objectively and in all cases. The world is ful of cases where people improve their living standarts by making matters worse for others, all you are doing is making assertions.
Prove for example that somebody being selfish and imperialistic to increase the living standarts of his nation over others is objectively worse for his own population.
>If you are not capable of controlling your...
You didn't answer the questions presented.
> incapable to understand why that's bad in the first place
You haven't being able to argue apart from cold utilitarianism, that fails when the situation posits it as utilitarian.
>he creates a social climate in which some people have the power (and the equipment) to do bad stuff to everyone
So you are saying that being backstabbed by your mercs for refusing to give them what they want is the more utilitarian and inteligent approach for a monarch? Why losing a war and being killed are the most utilitarian thing for you as an individual? Specially if you fear only for yourself on your utilitarian view?
>Wonder why many dictatorship are a fertile ground for backstabbing?
Backstabbing happens all the time on all societies tho, doesn't need to be violent, any company is full of it.
>bad people cultivate bad enviroment
Define bad.
>People who need something to be OBJECTIVELY bad because they don't understand why it's bad, are not good people.
Define good.
rape is bad, there are a ton of reasons why its bad, physical, psychological andsociological. You trying to say it would not be evil if it's not "objectively" bad tells more about of a bad person YOU are than anyone you are responding to.
>Good and Evil doesn't exist but you are eeeevil buuuah
not even that anon, but this is pretty patethic.
#
never talked about him being evil, he could just be a pathological psychopath.
Don't project your inability to go beyond the simple concept of "people are good or evil" on me, anon.
>never talked about him being evil
>Don't project your inability to go beyond the simple concept of "people are good or evil" on me
Literally called him a bad person in a fit.
>Close. Good is what benefit your gene spreading.
To be honest, if that was true then atheism is bad.
Because atheists have the very little sex and reproduce much less than any religion according to data.
I merely removed the need of god for being a good person (follow the game theory of your gene spreading). Rejecting god has nothing to do with being a good person, and I'd go as far as saying most amerimutts atheists reject god as the dereliction of duty toward being a good person. Fatherless behaviour.
>I merely removed the need of god for being a good person
Uh, you sure gave - your - definition.
>(follow the game theory of your gene spreading).
Yeah, and I pointed out that under your logic, being an atheist is makes you more likely to be bad at it.
>Rejecting god has nothing to do with being a good person
I didn't make this argument, but your refutation was also pretty bad because you just created a definition of what being good is on your head, nothing says that your take is the correct.
And as a pointed out, its also self-defeating.
>rape is bad
You failed to prove it.
>physical, psychological andsociological
You are again - making an assertion and assumption - that causing those things on others is bad to begin with. The only reasons you managed to find for an argument is by saying that "if you do that they will do to you!" or "you will get caught, so its impratical" - so YOUR argumentation is nothing but acting selfish.
>You trying to say it would not be evil if it's not "objectively" bad
The entire point is showing that - by your own logic - good and evil are just dependent of the preferences of the one doing the deed. Smarter atheists have admited it on the past, you can too rather than - desperately - try to paint everyone questioning you as a sociopath. Your view of the world posits the universe itself as "amoral", so a "sociopath" would be as right as you.
Since morality changes with human culture and society, whatever maximize the satisfaction of the highest humans in existence is the highest moral.
If your idea of moral is based on a smaller number of satisfied people it's inherently weaker.
It's not rocket science.
>whatever maximize the satisfaction of the highest humans in existence is the highest moral.
Would attach most humans to crack injection machines be the most moral feat one could do, as it maximizes a state of bliss for the rest of their lives?
Not really, because crack has consequences on the physical well being of the individual that override the good.
But if you found a drug that has no collateral effect? sure, why not?
>But if you found a drug that has no collateral effect? sure, why not?
x 100000000
not an argument.
>But if you found a drug that has no collateral effect? sure, why not?
Yeah, so in your view - the MOST moral thing a person could do is to seek ways to shove people in pods that inject them with mind altering drugs for the rest of their lives?
Only if you can sincerely argue that doing such a thing can actually make the life of a person better both in physical and mental wellness.
You are moving goalposts.
Your post was about "maximizing satisfaction".
lifetime satisfaction implies both physical and mental well being. i'm not talking about satisfaction as in "i ate a good lunch and i'm satisfied", genius.
>"i ate a good lunch and i'm satisfied", genius.
Neither am I
>lifetime satisfaction implies both physical and mental well being
Nah, the words used were "maximize satisfaction" - adding other terms is the definition of goalpost moving AND the anon (not sure if you) even agreed on the drug usage if it had "no side effects", so I was spot on.
Bro, if you don't understand the difference between simplifing an argument for the sake of brevity and changing the goalpost work on your reading comprehension
and i still agree that if someone who truly meant well came up with a drug that gives everyone eternal bliss, without side effects, that is somehow not used by powerful butthole to control the and carry their interest against everyone else, then it's good and moral to use to give humans eternal bliss, but we are making a lot of assumption that something like that can be achieved
>simplifing an argument for the sake of brevity and changing the goalpost work
Anon, you are not simplifying an argument, opposite of it.
And then you goes on to just admit the silly ideas that people accuse you of having. So whatever.
why is a drug that achieves ultimate bliss for everyone without any physical, mental or social problem be bad?
Those properties are incompatible with each other.
the fact that it's not possible doesn't mean it's bad. just that it's not possible. it doesn't go against my point.
So then the Aztecs and Romans were right, ripping peoples hearts out and feeding them to lions was fine because it placated the mob
nope, because their understanding of the working of the world was flawed, and thus not right. As i said, our moral gets better the more our understanding of the world gets better.
No, because they achieved happiness of a maximum amount of people even at the expense of a minority. So they were moral by your line of thinking
you are not aiming at maximizing the lifetime satisfaction of the slave caste, so bad.
ah but they helped maximised the lifetime satisfaction of the much larger free caste so good
no, because you're not helping more humans, you are helping more a specific subsect of human by sacrificing another. still bad.
the objective is making EVERYONE as satisfied as possible, not making a bunch of people more satisfied than others, you dense mf
Sadly, you cant make everyone happy, its an impossible dream, so they did the next best thing and made the majority happy. Whats so hard to understand about that?
Actually it's been pretty well demonstrated in quite the wide range of methods that the existence of slavery worsens conditions for the lower classes of free people, while the socially-advantageous outliers of performance among the slaves are denied their outsized impact.
>Anon, the basis of science is metaphysics.
And what separates this from the genetic fallacy? Something's philosophical origins are not the only valid framework for the thing.
>Science operates within the ontological framework established by metaphysics. It assumes the existence of an external, objective reality that can be studied and understood through empirical methods. Metaphysics addresses the nature of causality and the relationships between events and phenomena. It explores concepts of determinism, indeterminism, and causation. Science relies on the assumption that natural phenomena are governed by underlying laws and causes. The scientific method is built upon the idea that these laws can be discovered through observation and experimentation.
All of this reduces to "empiricism", not "metaphysics". Empiricism may technically exist as a position in metaphysics, but can just as easily be taken as the foundational set of axioms for reason in itself without any active consideration of the other possibilities as is required for the metaphysical questions you insist upon to be relevant.
>Anon, you are just ranting against the basis of knowledge - and literally where you derive meaning for the things you are asking for.
No, I'm ranting against worthless academic bloat that hasn't been relevant in 200 years, and derive meaning starting from quite a number of steps past your obsession with minutia.
>By being a person that notices that you don't understand what you are talking about.
So you really do need bluntly told "I actively hate your premise, because it's entirely about obsessing over contemplation of premises themselves"?
>And what separates this from the genetic fallacy?
Because you are trying to argue against the thing that your entire framework depends to exist. You are creating a contradiction. If Metaphysics is useless and invalid, so is science, as science relies on it.
>All of this reduces to "empiricism", not "metaphysics".
Empiricism is build upon metaphysical claims." objective reality that can be studied and understood through empirical methods" is purely metaphysical claim.
>but can just as easily be taken as the foundational set of axioms
Why? You never showed proof of this. What you are doing is just ignoring what you find inconvenient.
>f without any active consideration of the other possibilities
You saying that "it doesn't consider other possibilities" doesn't make it truth anon.
>"I actively hate your premise, because it's entirely about obsessing over contemplation of premises themselves"
Yes, you are actively showing that you don't understand what metaphysics is. Your best argument about it was merely "just ssume that these things exist and work on this way, outside of the metahysical framework that is used to justify our use of it".
>Because you are trying to argue against the thing that your entire framework depends to exist.
No, my framework depends on empiricism, which started in metaphysical arguments but has long since become a framework of its own. Not everyone is a philosopher, not every argument can be reduced to philosophical underpinnings, you're making a fool of yourself trying to assert the importance of ivory-tower fart-sniffing.
>Empiricism is build upon metaphysical claims.
And why does that make it necessarily valid to actively argue the claim on a metaphysical level?
>Why? You never showed proof of this. What you are doing is just ignoring what you find inconvenient.
Can you give a reason why "objective reality exists, and can be studied and understood through empirical methods" is not valid as a pair of axioms? From there, science stands without any metaphysical consideration preceding it. You can technically debate those axioms with metaphysics, but that's you dragging things back to your brainbug, not logic as practiced anywhere useful.
>You saying that "it doesn't consider other possibilities" doesn't make it truth anon.
The person you were arguing against bluntly stating they're arguing from a specific axiom very much does.
>Yes, you are actively showing that you don't understand what metaphysics is.
Most people don't know anything about what metaphysics is, they hold AXIOMS that need metaphysics to debate. It is simply not useful to drag every argument to logical premises, and as such a great many positions start well away from them.
Just because you can logically tie the relevant teleology to metaphysics does not mean that it is a discussion of metaphysics. Teleology is not a subset of metaphysics, it's a subset of causality, which in turn has non-metaphysical (mostly empirical) frameworks. Not everything reduces to metaphysics, and metaphysics is not actually relevant to every discussion of things that do.
>No, my framework depends on empiricism
Empiricism is build over metaphysic assumptions of reality.
>Not everyone is a philosopher, not every argument can be reduced to philosophical underpinnings
You are literally arguing over the nature of meaning.
>ivory-tower
It's actually simple, you are just not humble and somehow hates a discipline that is the basis of science for some reason.
>And why does that make it necessarily valid to actively argue the claim on a metaphysical level?
Because otherwise you are building your arguments on things you claim to be irrelevant and false?
>Can you give a reason why "objective reality exists, and can be studied and understood through empirical methods" is not valid as a pair of axioms?
I could (ther is the Skeptic greek school of thought or Idealism for example), but ANYWAY, that would still not make it a non-metaphysical claim. I don't agree with neither of those positions, but as I explained, this in nothing makes these claims "not metaphysic". It's a valid axiom....BUILD on metaphysics.
>not logic as practiced anywhere useful.
????
"Knowing the source of where I get my knowledge and make my arguments involves metaphysics, so its useless and I prefer to ignore it"
>Empiricism is build over metaphysic assumptions of reality.
No it isn't. You're a pseud. We assume that there is a persistent reality if and when the evidence says that there is.
nta but Empiricism, as a philosophical position, does make certain metaphysical assumptions. For example, empiricism assumes that the external world exists independently of our sensory experiences and that our sensory experiences provide us with reliable information about this external reality. These assumptions, while rooted in common-sense beliefs, are metaphysical in nature as they pertain to the nature of reality beyond immediate sensory perception. The very notion that sensory experience can serve as a source of knowledge, and that empirical evidence is a valid means of accessing reality, carries implicit metaphysical assumptions.
Only within a metaphysical framework.
And with such a framework, anything related to anything is metaphysical, making it as useful as a fridge in Antarctica.
Discussing a workable classifier for good and evil outcome need concept such as agent, measure, action, etc..
And while indeed you could ponder each of those concept in a metaphysical framework, this is wholly irrelevant to the concept of good/evil anon was proposing, which is a very "mathematic" definition of good and evil.
You don't preface a math problem with the Oxford dictionary, nor a math problem suddenly require an English reading skill for everyone tackling it if it can be enonciated in English among other languages.
Same shit with the frameworks of metaphysics.
No, this works with every framework, I literally gave you the reasons for why that happens. Like seriously, answer me, does YOUR brand of empiricism exist without " that the external world exists independently of our sensory experiences and that our sensory experiences provide us with reliable information about this external reality"?
>anything related to anything is metaphysical
Metaphysics has a proper definition anon: "the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space."
>And while indeed you could ponder each of those concept in a metaphysical framework, this is wholly irrelevant to the concept of good/evil
What you are proposing is still bound to metaphysics.
>which is a very "mathematic" definition of good and evil.
The idea that you can classify "math" as either "good or evil" is by itself a philosophical assertion. Its not even empiric.
>You don't preface a math problem with the Oxford dictionary
You don't preface "good and evil" with math. But you DO need the definition of words and terms to make a math problem work, so yur example is a bit weird.
>Same shit with the frameworks of metaphysics.
Maybe you will understand now: Metaphysics is the study of what constitutes a valid framework.
>For example, empiricism assumes that the external world exists independently of our sensory experiences and that our sensory experiences provide us with reliable information about this external reality.
This is an evidence-based conclusion. You can call it an "assumption", but only if you concede that it is the most reasonable kind of consumption, and only if you promise not to conflate it with metaphysical assumptions (in which a person merely conceives of a paradigm, in their own mind or in conversation with others, and then assumes it to be true).
Theoretically, if your characterization of empiricism were accurate, then empiricists would have trouble recognizing when they were hallucinating or being deceived, but in fact empiricists are better at recognizing their own faults than non-empiricists, because empiricists understand that reality is separate from fantasy. That's not an assumption, that's an evidence-based conclusion.
>These assumptions, while rooted in common-sense beliefs, are metaphysical in nature as they pertain to the nature of reality beyond immediate sensory perception.
That's a crock of shit. My sensory evidence from yesterday or from last year is no more 'metaphysical' than the sensory information I'm taking in now. It's less reliable by some metrics and more reliable by others.
I could assume that my favorite restaurant is still open, and I could turn out to be wrong, that's an assumption. It isn't a metaphysical assumption, it's an assumption based on evidence, but my evidence wasn't perfect and it never will be. I would be more reasonable to assume that my third-favorite restaurant is still open because I got food there last week. And there are a lot of even-more-reasonable assumptions that I could make based on even-better evidence. And the single greatest body of evidence that I have, or that anyone has, is the body of evidence which says that there is a persistent reality which our senses can perceive.
>You can call it an "assumption", but only if you concede that it is the most reasonable kind of consumption, and only if you promise not to conflate it with metaphysical assumptions
You are doing what the anon mentioned:
>You can say "I don't care, I'll just pretend I know it's true for the sake of my broader point" but this ISN'T a gotcha on your part, it's admitting defeat on the issue and asking to move past it so we can focus on the argument you feel more strongly about.
>Theoretically, if your characterization of empiricism were accurate, then empiricists would have trouble recognizing when they were hallucinating or being deceived
WHAT THE FLYING FRICK?
Are you high?
I say "empiricism is based on X and Y way to meansure reality" and you go on to "huuur if that was true empiricists wouldn't know they are hallucinating!"
Its just a bizarre jump in conclusions.
>Its just a bizarre jump in conclusions.
No, it's something approximating a "reducto ad absurdum" counter to the "our senses provide a reliable representation of reality" part of your description.
>"our senses provide a reliable representation of reality"
Empiricism literally relies on that tho.
Basically, I was treating the word "assumption" as describing an unwarranted conclusion. An ideology which assumed a persistent reality (in the sense of drawing an unwarranted non-evidence-based conclusion) would have trouble coping with flaws in their senses, but empiricism does not have that problem, because empiricism is primarily concerned with evidence.
This goes back to the idea that empricism is 'grounded in", "based on" or "rooted in" metaphysics, which is true in the historical sense (because we begin in ignorance and must claw our way up to the truth), but in the ontological sense it's the other way around, metaphysics is based on (bad) empiricism. All children are empiricists, they just don't understand what should and shouldn't count as "evidence", they need to learn that through experience.
>You can say "I don't care, I'll just pretend I know it's true for the sake of my broader point"
"Pretend"? To what "pretense" do you prefer?
There is no such thing as perfect knowledge, that's why our belief in a persistent reality can be described as an 'assumption", even though our belief in a persistent reality is the closest thing that we have ever had or will ever have to perfect knowledge. It is far-and-away the most reasonable assumption that any person can make, because it has far-and-away the largest body of evidence, nothing else even comes close. I still don't like describing it as an assumption, because this is misleading, in common parlance it's the opposite of an assumption. But I will describe it as an assumption, for the sake of conversation, and in recognition of the fact that we can never have perfect knowledge of anything.
But "metaphysical assumption"? The only way you can say that is if you say that all conclusions and assumptions are necessarily metaphysical. Which you can say, but it's a bit silly of you, because you're robbing the term "metaphysical" of all possible meaning. And if everything is necessarily metaphysical then nothing can be "based on metaphysics".
It's very simple anon. Teleology is a metaphysical premise in the first place. A metaphysics which relies on the assertion of causality, which may be false. It's perfectly possible that reality resembles a rubik's cube, where any alteration in the present also changes the orientation of the past in such a fashion as to make them congruent; In other words, a world where causality is an illusion produced by the inability to see the way that reality might be changing beyond our ability to interface with the material present. Because this might be true, and you have no evidence to assert an alternative, it's speculation as valid as causality itself, while undermining the existence of causality as we define it.
In other words, no. Your assumptions about nature are not the most reasonable possible assumptions, they're merely the ones most convenient to your preferred model.
If causality works differently from how we think it does then the scientific method will be the best possible means of figuring that out. Because out senses give us data about the nature of a persistent reality. Maybe shit is really lovecraftian and it is literally impossible for us to understand what really works, maybe empiricism is only 'useful' and 'reasonable' on one little corner of reality, but that still wouldn't contradict any of the statements that I have made on empiricism. Empiricism isn't based on metaphysics, empiricism isn't based on linear causality, empiricism means using your senses (and not your imagination) as the source of evidence. Empiricism contains everything that empiricism needs to work, it's just that we historically needed to pass through metaphysics in order to get here, because reality didn't come with an instruction manual.
>It's a valid axiom....BUILD on metaphysics.
...Yeah, you're a worthless pseud. Axioms are the premises you reason from, not something you apply reason to. Just because somewhere in the post the axioms adopted were logically derived, does not make that derivation necessarily valid to argue today.
I reject the metaphysical arguments science is based on because I reject Christianity. If you need why that is explained to you, you are hopelessly lost to the ivory tower.
>and therefore completely subservient to an agreed upon metaphysical premise
The origin of a thing is not necesaarily binding. Again, science started as an explicitly Christian logical formulation. THAT is the metaphysics at the root.
>Anybody reasonable would agree that causality is a concern of metaphysics, and therefofe any component discussion of causality must entertain an argument that attacks it at the level of metaphysics.
...No? Metaphysics caring about something doesn't force that thing to care about metaphysics. Again, there's formulations of causality that are strictly about the observed, not the philosophical questioning of WHY that observation exists.
>..No? Metaphysics caring about something doesn't force that thing to care about metaphysics.
W....What?
Metaphysics is an area of study, you are literally mentioning its area of study. Metaphysics doesn't decide to "care" about a thing, it's like saying that physics decided to "care" about gravity rather than simply describe it.
"Care", "concerned with", "of relevance to", the nitpicking of exact words used does not change the point that the relation need not be two-way. Metaphysics can cover something, while those that engage primarily with that thing actively ignore metaphysics debates about it.
Are you moronic? This is like saying that not knowing how your phone works means that the science of how it is made is false and wrong. Literally nothing on your post opposes the metaphysical basis of science.
The metaphysical origin of science is explicitly Christian formulations of empiricism, wherein natural law is good to study as God's creation of it entails that His will be reflected in it.
Do I need to explain where this has me aggressively reject shackling science to its metaphysical roots?
Anon, you are dumb.
Science has metaphysical basis even for an atheist.
Metaphysics has a proper definition anon: "the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space."
>where this has me aggressively reject shackling science to its metaphysical roots?
It's because you are autistic. Probably a slav.
Claiming that a first principles abstraction isn't firmly rooted in metaphysics as a premise and therefore completely subservient to an agreed upon metaphysical premise to even begin being a use-case has to be one of the most bad faith takes I've read on here in a while.
Anybody reasonable would agree that causality is a concern of metaphysics, and therefofe any component discussion of causality must entertain an argument that attacks it at the level of metaphysics.
You can say "I don't care, I'll just pretend I know it's true for the sake of my broader point" but this ISN'T a gotcha on your part, it's admitting defeat on the issue and asking to move past it so we can focus on the argument you feel more strongly about.
#
>Prove it
The more societies are close to the ideal Rechtsstaat, the more they thrive: socially, economically, technologically and culturally.
You don't need a state of justice to be objectively good to see it makes everyone's life better.
And you don't need dictatorship to be objectively bad to see it makes everyone's life worse
> Then stop crying that things are evil.
I have not once mentioned good or evil in a moral sense in this entire thread, I’ve only spoken about things as being good or bad in a utilitarian sense.
Your African warlord example is a bad one because someone with the resources of a African warlord is better served by booking it to Barbados or somewhere else, starting a new life, and getting out of Africa, rather than remaining in a situation where he needs to allow rape in order to ensure his continued survival. You are not living a good (as in. “thriving, efficient”) life if you need to rely on rape for your personal survival when you have the resources to make other choices and put yourself into a different life where the average life expectancy is measured in decades rather than years.
>I’ve only spoken about things as being good or bad in a utilitarian sense.
Anf failed again and again to provide how being utilitarian is the best moral approach when all your justification about it is just a variation of "yu will get caught" or "you must look for your own interests" - as it posits all your takes under selfish behavior. If you remove any sort of "accountability" then suddenly none of those things are really "bad" in an utilitarian sense.
>Your African warlord example is a bad one because someone with the resources of a African warlord is better served by booking it to Barbados or somewhere else
Now this is pure non sense. African Warlords exist because they think there is merit and privilege in power. Many can actually get really rich and they would have to give up money and power to do as you say.
> You are not living a good (as in. “thriving, efficient”) life
Who says that an "efficient" life equals to a "good" life? What you define as "efficient" to begin with? Might as well say that a living computer has the "best" life because he is programmed to do nothing bu what he is told and only act based on efficiency.
> is measured in decades rather than years
Irrelevant to the argument to be honest. Anons are arguing that rape is ontologicaly evil, you are arguing that you must "get away from a situation where you might be forced to face that rape is the optmical approach according to your own definition". Your argument doesn't prove that rape is bad, it merely says "try to not get into a situation where rape is utilitarian, otherwise my ideology looks cooky".
>Then stop crying that things are evil. You can't have your cake and eat it.
I don't know who you think you're replying to, I've never complained about evil in this thread. My point was that the default state of humanity is not looting and raping and pillaging with wild abandon. That hasn't been the default state of humanity for tens of thousands of years. Even during the darkest period of the post-Roman collapse most people still lived in peaceful communities farming the land and providing for their neighbors. Because from a strictly utilitarian perspective, it is better for individuals to cooperate with the other individuals around them than it is to go on killing and raping sprees. People dislike killers and rapists and usually seek to kill and/or rape them for their crimes. That's not an argument about morality.
Sadism is a human concept, doesnt really apply to an alien inhuman being like Allah, and besides, he created you, he'll destroy, you are his property and he has the right and prerogative to do whatever he pleases to you
I can see that, but that doesn't make hin good and worth of worship, but a narcisistic sadistic tyrant.
And that's by his own book stated moral standards.
"narcissist", "sadist" those are all flaws and imperfections that dont really apply to a perfect being. He's innately worthy of worship by virtue of being God, and by virtue of literally creating humans to worship him
Sure they can, they apply to him because he says they do, although his love and caring are of course considerably different to the love of a human being.
>that dont really apply to a perfect being
What is perfection?
How can you be sure God is perfect?
How can you be sure that God is unique in his perfection?
>He's innately worthy of worship by virtue of being God
Why?
>and by virtue of literally creating humans to worship him
Why does a perfect being desire worship?
"God, according to classical theistic tradition, is an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, personal, unique, and essentially good being.
Let's proceed as follows: let's assume that someone has a basis to claim that an omnipotent "substance" exists. Now, they want to know what its other characteristics would be.
There are two possible senses of omnipotence. The first is that an omnipotent being can perform any action, even those that contradict the laws of logic. The second is a being that can perform all absolute possibilities, which is the group that includes the set of all things. Since a contradiction is not "something" that is possible in an absolute sense, it is not within the "everything" group to which omnipotence refers.
I will not use the first sense because it is illogical. It is impossible to describe or think within those parameters. I will only use the second sense.
First: an omnipotent being would be a personal being. A being that is incapable of relating personally to other beings is not omnipotent because it lacks that ability. And every being capable of personal relationships must, by logical implication, also be a personal being. Therefore, an omnipotent being must be a personal being.
Second: an omnipotent being must be omniscient. If there is anything anywhere in the Universe whose existence an omnipotent being does not know, it would not be able to modify it. And if it cannot modify it, then it is not omnipotent. Therefore, an omnipotent being must also be omniscient.
Third: an omnipotent, omniscient, and personal being is an essentially good being. An omnipotent and personal being is capable of acting of its own will. Libertarian theory (i.e., free will) postulates that:
L: A free act is not sufficiently caused by any agent external to the agent;
If this being is omnipotent, then it cannot have any of its acts sufficiently caused by an external agent. If that happened, it would mean that it is not omnipotent because it would not be able to resist the act (which is different from, for example, a scenario where it allows someone to cause it; in that case, it had to "make room," allowing causation).
In this sense, God is completely free because his actions have no external limitations. None of God's actions will be sufficiently caused by an external agent.
An individual always acts with the aim of bringing about a state of affairs that possesses a greater good.2 An omniscient being knows all the situations that would result from a particular action, as well as all the moral principles that have truth value. Therefore, being perfectly free, it will never have any relative hindrance to take its actions, and these will always be based on the greater moral good, which it knows.
A being that always takes good actions is a being that is essentially good. Therefore, an omnipotent being is also essentially good.
Fourth: if the omnipotent being is material, then it is materially limited in its constitution. Let's think, for example, that this being is a sphere of 1 cm3 in size. Therefore, this being would not be able to be present in locations that exceed its material limitation. But being present is a type of power—and the same goes for any other type of material limitation. Therefore, an omnipotent being is a being that is not materially limited in its composition; that is, it is immaterial. An immaterial being is a being whose composition is not limited in any material way; and it is also omnipotent and omniscient, knowing everything about anything and capable of taking every possible action anywhere, simultaneously. So it is exercising its power and wisdom over all places, without any kind of limitation in presence. From this, we can conclude that it is, in fact, an immaterial omnipresent bein0g.
I had fun reading the entire paper but i have to stop your tracks right here
>An individual always acts with the aim of bringing about a state of affairs that possesses a greater good. [...] A being that always takes good actions is a being that is essentially good. Therefore, an omnipotent being is also essentially good.
None of your reasoning corroborates the statement that an individual always acts to bring a greater good. You just tossed an unsubstantiated claim to connect omnipotence and good.
"Let me tell you a story to illustrate my point. Imagine that your lifelong dream has always been to own a Mustang. Since you were 15 years old, the idea of having a Mustang in your garage has been constant and unavoidable in your mind. You really want one of those cars for yourself, and nothing can dissuade you from this idea.
Now, suppose one day you open your mailbox and find two letters. Surprisingly, both letters are about the same topic: how to acquire a Mustang. Naturally, you are thrilled and hasten to read the details of the letters.
In Letter #1, a seller from another state informs you that there is a Mustang available for a considerable amount of money (quite high). To make it yours, they require a financial statement from a bank, along with fees, paperwork, and various other regulations. Furthermore, the Mustang can only be delivered to you in two years after a certain number of installments have been paid.
In Letter #2, the situation is much simpler: the dealership is just 15 minutes away from your home and offers the car for free. You simply need to go there, pick it up, and drive away; it will be all yours. Great, isn't it?
Ignoring all variables (such as the reliability of the seller, external dangers like theft, cognitive dysfunction, etc.), which of the two offers would you choose?
According to the axioms of human action, it is much more plausible that you would choose (2). In fact, it is reasonable to think that in every possible world unaffected by variables, any person would choose option (2).
Why is this important? Well, it's a way to show that human action always seeks a greater good when acting purposefully. The goods described in the story, although essentially the same (both were Mustang cars), had different values: option #2 was certainly more appealing than option #1, and that's why it was chosen.
So, when we discuss the meaning of life, we must remember that the meaning of something implies intentionality—which also demonstrates that there is an end tied to that intention.
By thinking that humans act with an end tied to an intention, we are also led to think that this means acting for some good one wants to possess and obtain. An end is always a good that one aims for and desires.
Is it possible for an end to be something else? That is, is it possible for an end not to be connected to a good? Without considering the variables, saying that our end (which is something we desire) is something bad (which is, by definition, something we do not desire) would simply imply a contradiction. Saying that we want an end that we do not evaluate as good would mean saying that we desire something we do not desire— which doesn't make sense.
So, what is a good? A good, as shown in the Mustang example, is something that pleases us or brings us pleasure. Different goods have different "values" for humans.
Now, let's return to the meaning of life: applying the reasoning we developed above, the human meaning within life is to pursue the greatest good within the act of "living"—which means living in a way that pleases us or brings us pleasure (remembering that following "moral goods" also counts in our evaluation—you probably wouldn't want the car if it were obtained through the actions of drug traffickers or financiers of slave labor, I assume).
And, finally, it is not absurd to say that living in the best way is what we understand by the concept of happiness. A person who lives in the best possible way is certainly considered a happy person.
Thus, we can say, considering all the exposition above, that the meaning of human life is happiness.
The argument could be summarized in this way:
(1) Meaning implies intentionality;
(2) Intentionality implies an end;
(3) An end is a good we aim for (because if we don't aim for it, it wouldn't be an end or a good);
(4) We always aim for what pleases us or brings us pleasure (considering all variables, like our moral values, etc.);
(5) The meaning of life is the intentionality to seek a good we aim for within the sphere of living—which can be understood, by (1), (2), (3), and (4), as living in a way that pleases us or brings us pleasure;
(6) Living in a way that pleases us or brings us pleasure is what we could call happiness;
(7) Therefore, the meaning of human life is happiness.
Perhaps it is somewhat obvious that the meaning of people's lives is to be happy. You don't have to be a genius to discover such a thing.
But what is something subjective and something objective, after all?
We can define subjective as something that is defined or concerning only the subject; the beauty of a piece or a famous painting is subjectively evaluated. It is the subject who makes a judgment like "this is beautiful" or "I just can't understand these artists!" There is no definitive way to determine which of these opinions is right.
Conversely, objective refers to things that are related to objects external to us. Drop something from your table to the floor. The law of gravity—which does not depend on subjects—must have caused that thing to fall and collide with the floor. You can imagine and make any judgment you want, but that won't change the existence of the law of gravity. Its existence is an objective fact and "external" to us.
As we have already concluded that the meaning of human life is happiness, to have an objective meaning of life, we need something external to humans that guarantees them happiness regardless of each individual's subjective evaluations.
And that something is the God proposed by certain theists. In these proposals, human eternal happiness is achieved through a relationship with God. It doesn't matter how you are, once you enter into a lasting and definitive relationship with Him, you will experience complete happiness.
>There is nothing metaphysical about killing your tribesmen being antisocial but pillaging and raping the other tribe being justified.
nta but this is a braindead take.
It's not braindead. It's the correct historical take that only changed with the emergence of strong nation state with a monopoly on violence.
Morality is entirely malleable and depending on the circumstance of the actor bound to it. Morality is only as universal as the separate circumstances of the individuals are shared.
>It's not braindead.
It is when you infer that there is no metaphysical component to it. This contradiction itself reflects differing metaphysical beliefs within the society regarding the moral boundaries and the treatment of in-group vs. out-group members.
No need for metaphysics or other ghost fairytales. You are confusing the form (ghost stories) with the substance (don't trust strangers, don't kill them on sight)
Once again, good/bad is basic b***h game theory : different environment will lead to different Nash equilibrium.
>No need for metaphysics
So you know nothing aout what "metaphysics" mean.
Protip: science itself has basis on metaphysics.
No, I just think you don't understand the word metaphysics . Or your brain entirely refuse my point because you lack the mapping ability to do so.
You do not need metaphysics for good/bad.
Good/Bad only layer of necessary abstraction necessary is the ability to compute the maximisation of gene spreading of an animal given a taken course of action.
You do not need to define "meaning", "the self", "what created the world" or this kind of bullshit.
>You do not need metaphysics for good/bad.
nta but...yes you need.
The definitions of "good" and "bad" are inextricably linked to metaphysics because they involve inquiries into the nature of moral values, the existence of moral facts, the foundations of ethics, and the relationship between human beings and the moral universe.
>Good/Bad only layer of necessary abstraction necessary is the ability to compute the maximisation of gene spreading of an animal given a taken course of action.
According to....
Your midwit definition for good/bad, sure.
The entire point I'm making is that its a fricking cope by people with a high enough empathy level to understand that's someone's good is someone else evil and too low iq for reconcialiting it with the possibility of having an universal definition of good and bad.
Good/Bad is simply a high order consequence gain function for the individusl gene spreading, and those high order consequence lead sure to emerging behaviours that the midwit brain will instantly map to what it consider being metaphysical properties of the world despite those mapping being unnecessary to classify things as good/bad.
Midwit gonna midwit though and they are gonna try to do overfitting of good bad and justify the classification with concept such as self, other, and other redundant metaphysical concept.
>Your midwit definition for good/bad, sure.
...anon, all arguments of good and bad are tied to it. I honestly think you don't understand WHAT metaphysics is.
>The entire point I'm making is that its
You are being pretty bad at it.
>someone's good is someone else evil and too low iq
People having different views doesn't mean that objectivity doesn't exist. Non sequitur.
> justify the classification with concept such as self, other, and other redundant metaphysical concept.
lmao
Are you sure you understand what any of these words mean? Seriously, why you think that your assertions have no metaphysical elements tied to it?
>People having different views doesn't mean that objectivity doesn't exist. Non sequitur.
I did not talk about viewpoints, you amobea.
Something that is objectively good for someone can be objectively bad for someone else.
>Seriously, why you think that your assertions have no metaphysical elements tied to it?
You are the one that assert that you need metaphysics to formulate a dna spreading gain function.
The entire point is to reject it to finally have some fricking clarity about what is good or bad in a culture and context agnostic fashion, without getting caught in the animist babble of our extremely limited pack ape brains, which are fundamentally what metaphysics is all about.
>I did not talk about viewpoints
You did, angry anon.
>Something that is objectively good for someone can be objectively bad for someone else.
That is by definition not OBJECTIVE. You are confusing subjective with objective.
>You are the one that assert that you need metaphysics to formulate a dna spreading gain function.
Yes it does need - because this implies that there is a foundational belief about the nature of reality underlying the scientific model. The concept of a "DNA spreading gain function" implies a teleological perspective, as it involves assessing how certain traits or behaviors contribute to reproductive success. Teleology explores questions of purpose and design in natural processes.
>The entire point is to reject it to finally have some fricking clarity
That is the fact anon, you can't. You can't reject it like you can't reject physics.
>Seriously, why you think that your assertions have no metaphysical elements tied to it?
You keep using this word. I do not think you know what it means. The connection metaphysics has to ethics is in ascribing moral value to supernatural causes, as "metaphysics" refers to the field chiefly concerned with "why are the laws of nature what they are?".
The Is/Ought paradox throws both of you out, but you're far more up your own ass with ivory-tower fart-sniffing.
>Teleology in metaphysics
Teleology is not wholly within metaphysics, though. Identifying that things have a purpose and what that purpose is is a question of what physically is, not a question of what causes what physically is. Pull your head out of your ass, clear your lungs of the digestive byproducts of ivory.
>Yes it does need - because this implies that there is a foundational belief about the nature of reality underlying the scientific model.
Again, you are insisting that absolutely all positions regarding ethics must reduce to your chosen field. We're on Ganker's /tg/ board, not even Ganker where this infestation of falsifiability is expected, let alone the areas this fart-sniffing is respected. How is it so hard for you to grasp that the one you are arguing against rejects your framework?
>The connection metaphysics has to ethics is in ascribing moral value to supernatural causes
Anon, the basis of science is metaphysics.
Metaphysics is LITERALLY the foundational philosophy that underpins and provides a framework for science.
>Identifying that things have a purpose and what that purpose is is a question of what physically is, not a question of what causes what physically is.
Science operates within the ontological framework established by metaphysics. It assumes the existence of an external, objective reality that can be studied and understood through empirical methods. Metaphysics addresses the nature of causality and the relationships between events and phenomena. It explores concepts of determinism, indeterminism, and causation. Science relies on the assumption that natural phenomena are governed by underlying laws and causes. The scientific method is built upon the idea that these laws can be discovered through observation and experimentation.
>Again, you are insisting that absolutely all positions regarding ethics must reduce to your chosen field.
Anon, you are just ranting against the basis of knowledge - and literally where you derive meaning for the things you are asking for.
Metaphysics provides the philosophical foundation upon which science is built.
>How is it so hard for you to grasp that the one you are arguing against rejects your framework?
By being a person that notices that you don't understand what you are talking about.
You are just plain wrong. Metaphysics is using the scientific method findings in some of its answer, but it's not even part of science, it's a subdomains of philosophy.
What the other anon was trying to make you understand is that one do not need philosophy to define good and evil. A prediction engine able to measure the gene spreading of any given human is enough. Something an unthinking algorithm could do without any higher order abstraction necessary, squarely placing this definition of good and evil outside any metaphysical framework, even though you could indeed derivate a metaphysical framework from it.
TL;Dr
You are of the temperament of a Wikipedia editor.
>Metaphysics is using the scientific method findings in some of its answer, but it's not even part of science, it's a subdomains of philosophy.
The metaphysical basis of science lies in its reliance on foundational assumptions about the nature of reality, causality, and the existence of an objective, external world that can be systematically understood. Without it, simply there is no science.
> that one do not need philosophy to define good and evil
And he failed at it, he just declared random things as good or evil and never answered why one should consider those such.
>A prediction engine able to measure the gene spreading of any given human is enough.
And why would that be "good"?
>The metaphysical basis of science lies
Science has no need for a metaphysical basis to do it's job. Metaphysical philosophers platonified science to be consistent with their own framework, not the other way around.
>And he failed at it, he just declared random things as good or evil and never answered why one should consider those such.
A definition on how to classify things as good or bad was given. You might not like the definition, but this is the definition of it within this proposed intellectual framework. You cannot disagree with a definition of something to be used as a classifier. It's just gonna classify things.
>And why would that be "good"?
Classifier said so.
The latent thesis is that this gene spreading classifier is a general model for good and evil that would perform classification better and more accurately than other generalisation attempt while still matching closely the classification results of various culturally local morality frameworks.
Bringing a metaphorical framework into it do not impact any of the prediction of the model nor it is necessary, given that the classifier do kit use any metaphysical concept in its results
>Science has no need for a metaphysical basis to do it's job.
The method scientific is build over metaphysical assumptions.
>platonified science to be consistent with their own framework, not the other way around.
Anon, metaphysics some first, scientific method came later.
>A definition on how to classify things as good or bad was given.
You never gave a reason for why that should be considered good and bad. Thus failing the argument.
>but this is the definition of it within this proposed intellectual framework.
The entire point is that you defined things arbitrarily, and you still relies on metaphysics.
> You cannot disagree with a definition of something to be used as a classifier.
I define and classify you as an idiot. Are you a proud idiot?
>Classifier said so.
"Its good because I said it is". No wonder you don't know what metaphysics mean.
>The latent thesis is that this gene spreading classifier is a general model for good and evil that would perform classification better and more accurately than other generalisation attempt while still matching closely the classification results of various culturally local morality frameworks.
Anon, there are so many things wrong with the idea that "breeding for breeding's sake is the maximun good" that I don't even think it's worth engaging. The simple fact that the people that you hate breed the most is already a pretty big take against you.
>given that the classifier do kit use any metaphysical concept in its results
But you did? The moment you try to derive meaning from the act of breeding you brought metaphysics to it.
>You never gave a reason for why that should be considered good and bad. Thus failing the argument.
>you never provided a metaphysical reason in your explicitly metaphysicaless definition
I accept your surrender.
>>you never provided a metaphysical reason in your explicitly metaphysicaless definition
>I accept your surrender.
You are the one that used the words "good and bad" to describe your position to begin with.
Like seriously anon. I'm baffled.
You does the "I accept your surrender." bit but literally I should be the one doing that because it was YOU that brought it up to begin with.
Genuine question anon, how much math have you done past junior high school?
You are failing at understanding very basic concept such as what a definition is in the mathematical sense, or the dependancy relationship between a statement and it's generalisation.
You are very wrong about metaphysics too. Metaphysics try to make sense of the other fields and use them, but the other fields do not need metaphysics to work properly.
>Metaphysics try to make sense of the other fields and use them, but the other fields do not need metaphysics to work properly.
I feel like I'm talking with a wall.
Anon, you SAYING this, doesn't make it true. My point is literally the default, the mainstream, the widely accepted point on any academia and among any scientist that is not braindead moron.
It's BASIC.
You failed at every opportunity in showing that empiricism is not built on underlying metaphysical assumptions about the nature of reality. Empiricism, like many philosophical positions, has metaphysical foundations that are central to its framework, even if these assumptions are not always explicitly addressed in everyday empirical investigations.
>the widely accepted point on any academia and among any scientist that is not braindead moron.
No. Your point is only popular within a specific subranch of academia teaching philosophy classes. Of course they are not gonna teach they are useless.
>No. Your point is only popular within a specific subranch of academia teaching philosophy classes.
Wait.
You believe that its widely accepted that metaphysics is NOT the basis of the scientific method?
>...Yeah, you're a worthless pseud. Axioms are the premises you reason from, not something you apply reason to.
Anon, does YOUR brand of empiricism exist without " that the external world exists independently of our sensory experiences and that our sensory experiences provide us with reliable information about this external reality"? If it does, THEN it has metaphysical basis. THAT is a metaphysical claim.
>I reject the metaphysical arguments science is based on because I reject Christianity.
This is pure non sense. The metahysical basis of science have nothing to do with christianism. You don't even need to be theist to admit (what most people on academy already know) that the scientific method has metaphysical basis.
You simply admited that you reject something that is widely accepted because you are butthurt over assossiation with christianism.
>metaphysics is NOT the basis of the scientific method?
It's not. Experimentation and replication is.
A machine learning algorithm can shit out accurate scientific model without the need for any metaphysical abstraction any more than a submarine need to swim.
You can describe the scientific method within a philosophical framework such as metaphysics, but the intrinsic meaning of the result of an experiment are not needed to compare it to the model. You could apply the scientific method entirely within a computer simulated world.
Anon, you are peak academic midwit moron, that see every problem as a nail for your only learned tool.
What a moron.
I'm not going to read the whole thread, but what was this guy's first post? Was it some variation of "science is just another religion"?
Yes.
>Was it some variation of "science is just another religion"?
What a low IQ take
The entire point is that science and empiricism is build upon metaphysics and this is literally widely accepted and self evident.
Reading this coming from a dude that argues that "breeding for its own sake is the ultimate moral good" and claims that said statement is not "metaphysical in any way"is simply ridiculous.
Wait, you believe that the scientific method is not build on metaphysical assumptions?
>It assumes the existence of an external, objective reality that can be studied and understood through empirical methods. Metaphysics addresses the nature of causality and the relationships between events and phenomena.
This is a posthoc definition made by philosophers.
Metaphysics is the human brain coping with trying to find intent behind every perceived stimuli.
>This is a posthoc definition made by philosophers.
The study of metaphysics dates back to ancient philosophy, particularly the works of Aristotle. Aristotle's "Metaphysics" is one of the earliest and most influential texts on the subject, and it delves into fundamental questions about the nature of reality, existence, causality, and substance. These inquiries have been a part of metaphysical discourse for centuries, long before any "post hoc definitions" were proposed. Throughout the history of philosophy, metaphysical inquiries have consistently addressed issues related to causality, the existence of an external reality, and the relationships between events and phenomena. These themes emerge organically from the broader questions about existence and reality that metaphysics seeks to answer.
You are making the very dumb assumption that thing need to be consistently modelized before they can be used.
Platonification is purely a post hoc exercise.
Metaphysics is such a field, reconciling the craving for intents of the brain with every other concept the brain came up with.
It is however a completely superfluous framework that do not push any of its concept and axioms to other fields.
I'm pretty sure you do not know what a hilbert group is, yet you can count to ten.
One do not need set theory to do arithmetic, even though set theory can dissect arithmetic. Arithmetic has no dependance on set theory.
>You are making the very dumb assumption that thing need to be consistently modelized before they can be used.
Again: The study of metaphysics dates back to ancient philosophy, particularly the works of Aristotle.
>Platonification is purely a post hoc exercise.
Again, you are wrong by every verifiable metric.
Anon, all that you are doing is making wild claims that have no scientific or historical basis, and are not supported by anything or anyone.
I will answer it lie you are a 5 years old child:
Lil homie, imagine you have a lot of questions in your mind, like, "Why is the sky blue?" or "Why do things fall down?" Well, metaphysics is like a big bag of questions that grown-ups like us have about the world. It's about thinking and wondering about things that we can't always see or touch, like why we exist, what is real, and how everything in the world fits together. It's like a big puzzle where people try to understand the most important and mysterious things about everything around us. So, metaphysics is like asking really big and interesting questions about the world and trying to find answers to them.
Metaphysics deals with fundamental questions about the nature of reality, existence, and what is ultimately real. In game theory, we make assumptions about how individuals and groups perceive reality and make decisions within a given context. The players in a game often have beliefs and perceptions that influence their strategies. These beliefs about the game world and the rationality of other players are metaphysical in nature as they concern the nature of knowledge and reality. The concept of Nash equilibrium, for example, relies on assumptions about the existence of strategies that players will adopt in a given situation. These assumptions are ontological in nature.
Game theory ALREADY intersects with metaphysics through the assumptions it makes about the nature of reality, existence, rationality, and social ontology.
Yes moron. And the entire fricking point is that those assumption that are metaphysical in nature are entirely fricking redundants and unecessary to compute if something is good or bad. You only need a gain function such as gene spreading that you can assign to any gene-having agent. No midwit metaphysics insertion needed.
You could define good/evil for a fricking rock if you define a proper gain function.
>And the entire fricking point is that those assumption that are metaphysical in nature are entirely fricking redundants and unecessary to compute if something is good or bad.
How can they be redundant if the entire basis - including your argument - are based on metaphysical premises?
>You only need a gain function such as gene spreading that you can assign to any gene-having agent.
And you still have failed to present why that is "good/bad". All you did was affirm it.
>No midwit metaphysics insertion needed.
You are making use of it, dun-dun.
> if you define a proper gain function.
Anon, the meaning of "Purpose" and even "meaning" itself are inherently metaphysic.
I honestly don't understand a person getting SO butthurt over a word that he decides to throw it away when it is....the basis for science and knowledge itself. It's like a person becoming irrationaly angry at gravity.
And what are those premises frick tard.
>what is good for an agent is what maximise it's gene spreading, what is bas is what minimizer it.
Where is your metaphysical concept in here?
>And what are those premises frick tard.
The moment you use the term "good", crying angry anon.
>Where is your metaphysical concept in here?
Teleology in metaphysics deals with the study of purpose or design in the natural world. The assertion suggests that what is considered "good" or "bad" for an agent is tied to the purpose of gene spreading or reproduction. Metaphysically, this perspective raises questions about whether biological entities, including agents or organisms, have inherent purposes or goals. It assumes that maximizing gene spreading is the underlying purpose of living beings. It touches on the intersection of metaphysics and ethics in considering the purpose of life.
homie, you simpy put foward claims about teleology, the nature of life, the role of purpose in evolution, and ethical considerations related to reproduction.
I do not use the term good. I fricking define it. In a metaphysical Independant fashion. That's the entire point of the exercise. To give a proper answer to all the theologians weeping over the question of can a pagan be good.
To the idle bourgeoisie trying to find a meaning in life, an intent behind it all the same way an homosexual erectus will associate the rain with the sky god pissing in him.
Reject that pseudo-deep bullshit. It's not complicated at all once you accept the inherent and hyper rational nature of good and evil.
What is good is what favour your genes spreading. What is evil is the opposite.
And this must include long term social and environmental consequence for your offsprings, not just fricking a prostitute without a condom.
You do not need god or an inherent meaning to life to be a man doing good. It's all unnecessary hypothesis that have no bearing on the model.
By extension, morality is a cultural thing that contain the tried and tested individual behavioural solution to maximise the gain of every individual. That's called a fricking Nash equilibrium. The Nash equilibrium of the golden horde and that of a modern wages lave are quite different.
>I do not use the term good. I fricking define it. In a metaphysical Independant fashion.
lmao
You saying "MY PROPOSITION IS NOT METHAPHYSIC!" doesn't make it not being metaphysic.
It's a very childish take.
>What is good is what favour your genes spreading. What is evil is the opposite.
Beig an atheist is evil then?
>You do not need god or an inherent meaning to life to be a man doing good.
I mean, atheists have TERRIBLE replacement numbers regarding having children. By your definition the most optimical thing to do would be to become amish.
Anyway, the point is that you never escaped metaphysics, and can't try to make meaning or declare "what is good" without a metaphysical framework. Logic, Science, everything comes from premises build on metaphysics.
>You saying "MY PROPOSITION IS NOT METHAPHYSIC!" doesn't make it not being metaphysic.
Again, teleology is not necessarily metaphysics. Mysteriously, this point was unaddressed in your first response to me. For your questions to be relevant, one has to be asking on that level to begin with, which asserting your conclusion as the initial premise very much does reject.
You cannot always drag an argument to its logical foundations. Very few people can engage meaningfully at that point, so few that it is irrelevant to the average person because it supremely rarely drives any appreciable scale of decision-making.
Even the Catholic Church has historically been far more concerned with the blunt political realities of influence-peddling than questions of metaphysics, despite the latter being the organization's JOB.
>Again, teleology is not necessarily metaphysics.
The connection between teleology and metaphysics lies in the metaphysical assumptions that underpin teleological discussions:
Teleology is a philosophical premise in the first place, so it seems weird to believe it's going to out you from Metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that I'd say 'teleology' pretty incontrovertibly falls into.
>You saying "MY PROPOSITION IS NOT METHAPHYSIC!" doesn't make it not being metaphysic.
Defining a concept without the prerequisite of any physical one make it not metaphysics though. That you lack the ability to map it this way is a different issue.
>Beig an atheist is evil then
Addressed above already. Being fatherless and rejecting to do good as a reaction is bad. Being a faithful and being considered of lower intellectual capacity because of it is bad.
>By your definition the most optimical thing to do would be to become amish
To an extent. If the amish genes would have spread more than yours, this is correct. However, the amish only exist due to the mercifullness of a powerful nation state, and while they do have many children, they would like the ability to efficiently resist and ethmocide. All the eggs are in the same baskes.
>Anyway, the point is that you never escaped metaphysics, and can't try to make meaning or declare "what is good" without a metaphysical framework. Logic, Science, everything comes from premises build on metaphysics.
You are entirely wrong on every single one of those points. Like the absolute opposite of a true statement in every single of your assertions. Causality do not need intent.
You sound like a university student that never had Independant thoughts, just shoved in the cranium whatever intellectual framework was taught in class and wrongly applies it to everything. You are the very definition of a bigot.
>Defining a concept without the prerequisite of any physical one make it not metaphysics though
You failed to provide a concept that prerequisite. The simple fact that you try to derive meaning already puts you on the metaphysical realm - it's literally it's area.
You are in a cage that you are incapcable of escaping, and you insist on shouting that you are free because dealing with the reality of the matter is unthinkable to you.
>Addressed above already.
Your rant is weird. "Fatherless", you mean "childless"? Regardless...actually, Imperius is that you? Are you russian by any chance?
> Causality do not need intent.
Nobody said it did. The point is how you judge and derive meaning and NOTICES casuality derives from metaphysics.
No. Metaphysics is all post hoc Platonification. That you can describe something within such a framework doesn't make the thing inherently dependant on the framework.
>That you can describe something within such a framework doesn't make the thing inherently dependant on the framework.
Except that in this case a thing literally came first and the other came later?
Animals spreading their genes came way before the Greeks.
And what that has to do with anything? We are talking about platonism, empiricism and metaphysics.
>Anon, the meaning of "Purpose" and even "meaning" itself are inherently metaphysic.
And at no point they were used.
Metaphysics as a whole is the pack animal brain doing animism on its own processes.
Trying to map intent on things the same way it will recognize a face in the clouds.
>You could define good/evil for a fricking rock if you define a proper gain function.
Rationalists need to be gassed Jesus Christ
Meaning is your moronic pack animal brain attributing intent where they could be none. Looking for a meaning to life is no different than animism. It's just a natural phenomena. It just is.
Intent itself is something fery few entities in the universe are able to understand, given the brain required to abstract it. Such a waste is only ever found in pack hunters, where it could be used to project the action and reaction of both your mates and the preys.
Your creator understanding intent (a necessity to judge people) imply that your god is a hunting pack animal.
>It just is.
Prove.
>Intent itself is something fery few entities in the universe are able to understand, given the brain required to abstract it.
Anon, this is a weird point to make considering that on the theistic tradition you are talking about God is not a material being, so not bound by a "brain".
You want me to prove that life exist?
Cogito ergo sum.
doesnt even matter if the universe is a simulation or whatever. Life is observable directly and hence its real by the very definition of reality being what is measurable.
>You want me to prove that life exist?
Nah, your assertion that it's "obvious" that meaning doesn't exist.
That is a loaded claim, so you must present evidence.
>Life is observable directly and hence its real by the very definition of reality being what is measurable.
and why is a thing being measurable proof that its real?
By the very definition of reality being the set of what is measurable, brainlet.
>Anon, this is a weird point to make considering that on the theistic tradition you are talking about God is not a material being
Lol no? There is an extremely small subset of religions where gods are not assumed to be humanoids within their "kingdoms". Even the Christian god is originally a proto semitic god of war that would descend on the battlefield.
>Lol no?
Low IQ I see.
>There is an extremely small subset of religions where gods are not assumed to be humanoids within their "kingdoms".
Yes, and this "small subset" tend to be the biggest religions of the world for the last centuries, so its pretty weird to see you bringing up stuff like greek gods to it, then acting surprised when people point out that this doesn't match what people are discussing.
Close. Good is what benefit your gene spreading. Bad is what doesnt. And this go beyond fricking a b***h, it include increasing the prosperity of your tribe, accumulating more ressources, having your tribe follow certain habit/reject them, etc...
moral ambiguity arise when several people gene spreading are in conflict.
Fifth: the omnipotent being is unique. There cannot be two things that are omnipotent because the omnipotence of one would limit the abundance of power of the omnipotent being, and then it would have its power limited, no longer being omnipotent. Therefore, a being that is omnipotent is a unique being in its characteristic.
If we have an omnipotent being, then we could also think that it is personal, immaterial, omnipresent, omniscient, essentially good, and unique.
For some reasons for omnipotence, you can research Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, and Richard Swinburne. We can refine this argument—I have thought of some possible criticisms myself, but it is already a starting point."
Perfection is being without flaws
>since divine is beyond our understanding >perfect divine nature that we cannot understand and thus we cannot define
see according to his books Allah explains his nature to humans. Not his complete nature, but the parts that concern humans
>Saying that something is worth of worship by nature of being god and creating us, means that even an evil god who creates creatures to enjoy torturing them and revel in their suffering is worthy of worship. Cool if you believe that, but i vehemently disagree.
And how is that "evil"? God created the concepts of good and evil, and so he can just edit good and evil to be whatever he wants it to be.
>And how is that "evil"? God created the concepts of good and evil, and so he can just edit good and evil to be whatever he wants it to be.
Again, cool if you believe that a being that can decide on a whim that slavery and torture are good or bad is worth or worship. I vehemently disagree: slavery and torture are bad no matter what god says, thus a god is worthy of worship only if he conforms to an ideal that is beyond himself as much as it is beyond us.
nta but I dealt with it here:
i read up to the example of the mustang, were you conflated good with easy of access. Unfortunately i found the example weak since not always easy is good (look at the state of the world because western societies always chose what's easy). I'll read on the rest and see if the argument recovers from this unfortunate example.
>slavery bad
If you are no a vegan today you would be pro slavery if born a muslim/in the roman empire.
yeah, because society evolves it's morals along with its understanding of the universe and it's inner workings. Nothing in that requires magic sky daddy.
Yup. And if slavery is beneficial to the tribe then slavery is good.
useful for a single tribe and bad for everyone else, thus is bad.
useful for nearly every tribe but bad for a single tribe, thus is good
in a society were slaves exist, slaves come from all tribes and are used by all tribes, thus every tribe can understand it's badness.
Unless you are impliying some magic tribe of houselves who exist only to be enslaved and is incapable of having slaves themselves, and the tribes who take slaves only take them from this slavetribe, but that's not how the world works.
>in a society were slaves exist, slaves come from all tribes and are used by all tribes
Literally not how numerous societies worked. Actually it's extremelly common that societies would form castes with slave castes.
> thus every tribe can understand it's badness.
Non sequitur, one might also conclude that "every tribe can understand its benefits, if they are the ones on top".
>Literally not how numerous societies worked. Actually it's extremelly common that societies would form castes with slave castes.
Yes, and EVERYONE who was not from the highest cast had i bad, so bad for most people.
>Non sequitur, one might also conclude that "every tribe can understand its benefits, if they are the ones on top"
and trying to be on top caused wars, death and destruction, so bad for most people.
>Yes, and EVERYONE
Prove.
>who was not from the highest cast had i bad
Prove.
>so bad for most people.
Prove.
>and trying to be on top caused wars, death and destruction, so bad for most people.
What if said wars bring "prosperity" for your own people, for the people you care about the most, or for "more people than you killed"?
>Prove
Open an history book.
>What if said wars bring "prosperity" for your own people, for the people you care about the most, or for "more people than you killed"?
You are still not maximizing lifetime satisfaction for many humans, it's bad. understandable from a weak human standpoint with limited resources, but still bad.
>Open an history book.
So whoever writes the history books decides if slavery was bad or not?
>You are still not maximizing lifetime satisfaction for many humans
You failed to adress if targeting small human populations is good or bad if it benefits most of them. As other anon said "many tribes attacking small tribe then is good".
See
Currently slavery in the west is outdated farming equipment. Wagies are cheaper, need much less care and responsibility, lawsuit and state monopoly on violence ensure loyalty better.
No thats just being poor, slavery is more like those US prisons run by private companies
That is how slavery worked in most societies but not all of them.
>magic tribe of houselves who exist only to be enslaved and is incapable of having slaves themselves, and the tribes who take slaves only take them from this slavetribe, but that's not how the world works.
ever heard of dalits, helots, burakumin, cagots, akhdam, ragyabpa, etc?
that's a lot of people who had it bad for the sake of few who were strong. thanks for proving my point
Nope. Those were all tiny minorities who were the designated punching bag for everybody else except maybe the helots, and even they were surrounded by free non-spartan greeks
Hey now, they work hard to own those seething pakis and chinese trolls on /misc/. Also nice seeing a brahmin here, we need israelites and buddhists to complete the bunch
enslaving them was still not aiming to maximize their lifetime satisfaction, so still bad.
>trusting a dalit to do anything
i don't understand what the fact that america is a land of capitalistic barbaria s that don't understand human rights has to do with the argument
>slavery and torture are bad no matter what god says
God, being omnipotent, can just edit reality so slavery and torture were always good
>thus a god is worthy of worship only if he conforms to an ideal that is beyond himself as much as it is beyond us.
And who decided that random arbitrary rule? Cetainly not god.
>God, being omnipotent, can just edit reality so slavery and torture were always good
god has no power on morality, since if he had it's not morality in the first place, just the whims of an autistic godchild who plays at making rules.
>And who decided that random arbitrary rule? Cetainly not god.
Exactly, so, since we are talking about "humans", whatever is good for humans in general is a higher morality than god
>god has no power on morality, since if he had it's not morality in the first place
So let me get it straight - God has no power over morality because God IS morality and that makes it autistic?
Anon, are you high?
>whatever is good for humans in general is a higher morality than god
This anon got you there
let me rephrase it, if morality is just "god said so" then the idea that morality as something good is not true, at that point morality is just "might makes right". I vehemently disagree.
No, it means that morality, just like every other concept can be changed by the being that created it, and even retroactively deleted from existence.
thus there's nothing worthy of praise in morality, it's just "who's strong makes rules"
>if morality is just "god said so" then the idea that morality as something good is not true
A lot has been argued that God is inherently good and the nature of the meaning of existence, in this thread itself, including arguments for why his existence works well with the idea of good.
>I vehemently disagree.
If God exists AND he is the source of morality, wouldn't that just make you comparable to a person angry to...laws of physics existing in the way they do?
see
i don't think laws of physics are worthy of praise, just the same as a god who decides what is morality
>god has no power on morality, since if he had it's not morality in the first place
He's omnipotent so he definitely has power over it. What is morality to you anyways?
>Exactly, so, since we are talking about "humans", whatever is good for humans in general is a higher morality than god
God, being knowledgeable of all things and wiser then any human can comprehend, knows what is good for humans more then any human could ever know. Being on Gods good side is better then anything else so even with you're idea you end up with God being the higher morality
but you are using a very human definition of "perfection" that may not apply to divine nature, since divine is beyond our understanding. For what we can understand egomany, sadism, tyranny and narcisism may all be part of the perfect divine nature that we cannot understand and thus we cannot define. And going but what he does and want in his books that would make more sense.
Saying that something is worth of worship by nature of being god and creating us, means that even an evil god who creates creatures to enjoy torturing them and revel in their suffering is worthy of worship. Cool if you believe that, but i vehemently disagree.
>Sure they can, they apply to him because he says they do, although his love and caring are of course considerably different to the love of a human being.
He didn't say anything to anyone we can question. Some people say he did, then other people wrote that in a book, then other people translated that making lots of mistakes along the way, then people who read the bad translation told other people what it means and then those last people go around telling everyone what's written in a book they never read in the first place.
if he is an alien intelligence to whom sadism cannot be applied, then neither loving, caring, good and moral can be applied to him
if he actually exists, i bet no book is right about him, since he would probably not even care about a bunch of pathetic hairless monkeys flinging shit at each other on a spec of dust among quadrillions in the universe.
God here. I'd like to clear some things up for you. I became aware of your request at the dawn of time, knowing that it will be incomprehensible (to you) eons before you would voice it aloud. I chose not to fulfill it because I don't particularly care one way or another whether you believe in me. What I want most is for you to be aware of your belief or lack thereof. That way, the retribution I inflict on you for rejecting me is all the more viscerally satisfying.
You see, the tenets that are presented to you as doctrine are arbitrary and nonsensical by design. They did not convince you because I do not want universal conviction. I gave you sentience so that you would have the mindfulness to make a choice, be aware of that willful decision and then regret it immensely as I unjustly (in your mind) torture you for eternity. There is no transcendent lesson to be learned here. No great enlightenment awaits you at the end of your torment, for indeed it will not end. Neither will there be any reward for believers, as their adherence to my meaningless codes are equally meaningless to me.
I did this simply because I am powerful and could.
Are you from some kind of Calvinist sect?
I'm not saying one would have to or ought to bank on this, but is it possible that there could be a future proof or past proof (in hindsight) given to you, not by your terms, that would convince you? An unexpected proof let's say.
do not bother, Allah has clearly marked him for damnation. Only pity him
The cope of non-believers doomed to the flames for being utterly convinced that they personally are somehow so special that they're deserving of God's direct and devoted attention, and are either being wronged or are proven justified in their beliefs for not receiving it, are always a trip to see. Enjoy "winning" the argument in accordance with the terms you think you're capable of shackling divinity to, and the damnation you're destined for when your life reaches its end.
if we are not special in the eyes of god, then he doesn't love us and doesn't deserve our worship.
I never totally understood this logic. Let's say God isn't all-Good, all-knowing, or all-powerful- He's just more good, more knowing, and more powerful than any human being will ever be and beyond the scope that all of humanity could ever achieve of. Let's say he's bound by SOME concept of causality, let's say there are certain quantum uncertainties he does not resolve with predetermined knowledge, let's say he sometimes has moments of wrath-
Why does this disqualify him from worship? Does it mean he's not really better than us? No, he obviously would be. Does it mean he lacks the power to change our lives if our prayers are heard? No, he obviously can. It seems to me like a God capable of hearing and answering prayers is worth worshiping because the reason you worship is to interface with a being so far above you he can completely alter your existence as a matter of whim.
What you're saying is heresy. A cornerstone of the christian understanding of god that his attention is simultaneously so broad and deep that he's aware of every person's inner thoughts(which is why prayer works) AND aware of any sparrow that falls anywhere in the world.
That's how omnipotence is supposed to work, yes. "Can god make a human he cannot pay attention to?" is the same kind of question as "Can God make a weight he cannot lift?" You aren't supposed to be projecting such failures in ability onto God.
The central tenet of the Christian faith is that God loves his creation and loves humanity. He WANTS people to get to Heaven; that’s why he sent/was Jesus Christ and endured the suffering at the hands of the Romans that he did.
The problem is that in the intervening 2,000 years he has, seemingly inexplicably, stopped putting in as many appearances as he used to if we take the Bible at its literal word. On top of that there are innumerable other religions that also all claim to be the One True Path to salvation, and which offer up precisely as much proof as Christianity. That is to say, zero.
If God truly loves me, if God truly wants me in Heaven, then a minor display of power so that I can be sure I am making the right choice does not seem like much of an ask.
Or in other words:
Why does faith have to be blind?
>then a minor display of power
Heck it wouldn't even take a minor display of power.
Modern regilgious morons claim he wants a close and personal relationship, but he hasn't even done that. My best friend would be a better god than the character they describe. Hell, a fricking rando on the street is probably better.
If a god or gods exist, worship is not a nessesary desire of theirs. Humans have already imagined scenarios where god isn't some mad omnipotent petty tyrant.
>Sorry, small amendment: Any extraordinary physical occurrence that happens within the next 10 minutes of posting, THAT I AM CAPABLE OF WITNESSING.
Allah is not your personal genie anon, he only grants wishes if you give him a lot of sacrifice and prayer and expect nothing in return
I dunno, but it doesn't matter since if god is all knowing, he can figure out what would make me believe.
Not demonstrably so, as very little about the Wars of Religion and the ensuing disintegration of moral authority are quite inexplicable in such a case.
You are wrong because most people's belief in a great deal of scientific principals is no different from the historic norms of this matter, trusting the intellectuals to be correct in the minutia the majority cannot be bothered with the cognitive load of. The difference is not in what people in general will think, but in things happening more in accordance with how they historically expected.
This assumes the Gods are easily-exploited busybodies, instead of actual people with their own wants, needs, and goals of assorted time-scale largely independent of the societies venerating them. Even the Chinese interpretation isn't going to look like that, its associated mystical tradition is filing the right paperwork for the Heavenly Bureaucracy to obligate the appropriate intervention.
Set aside the christcuckery and actually fricking read what people outside it thought. Even the israelites were more on "things man was not meant to know" than "not humanly comprehensible". There are ENORMOUS amounts of scientists who've bluntly stated they derive exactly such spiritual meaning from their work, in a context where honest understanding is the expectation.
Fpbp checked /thread
>With a god that is easily verifiable there is no need for faith.
The problem of evil would be even more of a problem so no, faith would still be necessary. Either that or fear.
>either that or fear
you're almost there buddy, just gotta take that leap.
>The problem of evil would be even more of a problem
The problem of evil is exclusively an issue in Abrahamic religions. Just remove one of singularity, benevolence or omnipotence, and you enter a much more interesting setting.
Scenario A: You have multiple gods. They are not omnipotent. Evil and horror is caused by one, or more, or a subset of them. Children get cancer because the God Of Illnesses sometimes sneak behind the back of the God Of Medicine.
Scenario B: Evil and horror exists because humanity keeps pissing off the One True God. Children get cancer because humanity as a whole didn't prostrate themselves before God to a sufficient degree.
Scenario C: Evil and horror is a inherent feature of the world, that God/the gods do their best to fight against. Children get cancer because that's just how human bodies work. The God Of Medicine is doing his very best, but can't help everyone.
A and C make for good stories but arent really logical, B is just Islam and Im pretty sure Judaism as well
>logical
lmao
A mix of A & C is generally how polytheistic faith structures work. In the Illiad, Homer describes how the Trojan wars happened because the gods would pick and choose their favorite mortals, which caused the conflict to escalate into a massive bloodbath.
Archeologists have found a plethora of curse tablets used by Romans, where common citizens would invoke dark gods and spirits to visit horror upon their enemies. Amusingly, there's also a bunch of amulets and prayers and charms meant to counter these curses, meaning that magical war was a lucrative market. Imagine a world were you hear that someone that hates you have invoked the Lady Nemesis, Governess of Hate and Revenge, to make your dick fall off. Your only option here to to bolt to the nearest priest and either send a superior sacrifice to Nemesis, or perhaps petition Priapus, Lord Of wieners, to place a spell of protection on your dick.
I agree anon Allah makes his presence known to all
It's been a while since Almighty Zeus gave us a sign, it's true, but you're right. That should be no excuse.
I think religions get to be a lot shittier and offer way less perks when their God is real. When a God is literally me fr fr, you don't even necessarily need to reward your followers. They will feel called upon to live and die by the whim of their lord. I recently played with this idea involving a Goddess of Wisdom who offers no blessings or boons, but those who follow her receive schizo-pattern recognition symbols they see in the environment, and if they follow them they play a small part in a rube-goldberg machine of blind, ignorant followers to produce the will of the Goddess, no single individual ever really privy to what the full context of their actions is.
She in, in truth, a racial goddess of the Elves and usually her plans end up fricking over all of the other races to the Elves' seemingly serendipitous benefit.
>not observing the feast days of Jupiter Optimus Maximus
>not honoring him before the other gods of the Pantheon
>innumerable nubile men and women into casual sex without the worry of accidental parenthood
Why would he bother doing any work?
>100% demonstrably real
Is he? How do you know god(s) are real and not just, say, immensely powerful ancient wizards.
Haha. But also take your meds.
If God was real, ignoring him would not be an option.
Based moron. People ignore demonstrable truth all the time.
God gave us freewill
Most people during history were 100% sure their gods existed.
Would be pretty much like how it is on the real world.
>Most people during history were 100% sure their gods existed.
Why would you ever think that? What a profoundly silly thing to say.
literal grrm levels of cope
Not cope, just humble realism. Literally hundreds of billions of people divided into thousands of cultures and sub-cultures, and you're putting them all into one basket as "hurr, all were 100% sure their gods were real". Why? Because you felt so. You don't know shit. And neither do I, mind you, but I'm not making such moronic claims.
So everybody back then was a secret athiest I see. And all those diaries and literature written by people who lived back then who all profess belief in whoever their deity is were actually just lies
Based, Millions of seething replies predicted and received, hats off King.
I think you meant bismillah.
I don't speak Greek but yeah, that. Orthodox are cool too.
>How does the fact that a god is 100% demonstrably real and can have a direct visible impact in a setting change the dynamics of a religion?
Religion would be entirely unrecognizable to the real world. There is no such this as a concept of faith, as faith is predicated on the fact that one must put aside evidence to the contrary or lack of evidence to the affirmative to believe regardless. This is a cornerstone of essentially every real world religion. With a god that is easily verifiable there is no need for faith.
>How does it change the behavior of the faithful and religous leaders compared to real-world religions?
Religion becomes inherently transactional as the deity in question clearly favors and aids certain individuals. They act far more like distant and cruel benefactors than gods, as they are simply watching from a position of relative safety while judging whether your worship is sufficient to receive reward. In addition to this transactional nature those who serve the gods understand inherent it is a tit for tat system, where their services promises them reward in no uncertain terms.
>Would there be less or more corruption among the clergy?
Less, but only because clergy would be nothing like the real world. You directly interact with the primary source of reward, corruption could only exist if the reward is insufficient to discourage it or the deity is shown to be unable to detect corruption.
Last time you've posted this stale pasta, it got 195 replies.
I sure hope /tg/ learned something within those few weeks between them.
You just added a reply yourself, so you can't really say much about that.
I don't count. I'm the main character.
Then don't b***h about the reply count the next time this thread is posted, given your direct contribution to the increased reply count.
No
Okay, continue to b***h about post count while actively contributing to the post count then.
Because that's totally solving your issue with post count.
Monotheism would only exist when malicious gods demand their followers be delusional, and they probably wouldn't last long in the face of reality, either due to crusading themselves to death or getting crusaded to death. People might have a "main" god, but nobody would deny the existence of others or fail to at least give them lip service when appropriate. It doesn't matter if you worship the god of thunder and mountains, if you're getting on a ship, you better drop a coin overboard so the god of the sea doesn't decide you don't deserve to cross his ocean.
Nice try, Satan(s), but everyone knows who is the only True God and who are just demons preying on little people.
If One True God doesn't protect it's worshippers from evil demons, but paying them does, people are going to do that, if not actually switching to worship demons instead.
NTA, but it's pretty much the only realistic case for the Henotheism ("Worship no other")>Monotheism ("There is no other") shift, given the condition that more than one god actually does exist. It's really only with Christianity that you finally saw an overt rejection of other deities' existence at-scale.
You meant to say Abrahamic religions.
The Roman-ruled israelites that spawned Christianity were very much henotheistic, quite often openly acknowledging the existence of the Roman religious mainstream but refusing to participate in active spite of several laws, which continued with Christians but went to the new extreme of taking it as a Must-Be-Believed-To-Be-Saved principal that no other gods exist, period, only Big G.
How do you know that your God isnt just one more demon who has convinced you into believing he is the only god? "Oh, his priests, followers and his book says so!" isnt a good argument.
Everyone's 'one true god' is everyone else's demon, Anon. Religious people are like football teams, each supporter thinks the one they support is the best one (in some cases the only one) and all the others are wrong. It's all pretty moronic when you think about it.
Seems more likely that those crusades would be nipped in the bud.
>you want to do WHAT to Constantinople?
>i never authorized this now go home
Worship would just be predictable transactions and religion would be a consistent, observable and repeatable science.
God would be considered just a particularly powerful immortal mage, and another kind of spirituality would probably be built around actual unknown mysteries of the cosmos.
Divinity would have to mean something special. Something qualitatively Different from just magic or power.
Makes sense to me. How would you make that difference clearer?
>unknown mysteries of the cosmos.
What sort of mysteries would those be?
What created "god"
Instead of Athiests, and Agnostics, there would be Anti-Theists, and Anti-Gnostics
A- is "without"
Anti- is "against"
There was an anti-theist npc in elderscrolls
Depends on how much the god can actually do to directly communicate with followers
No point in being real if your clergy can just sort of ignore your advice and make shit up for themselves without getting a lightning bolt to the head for the trouble
If you can actually communicate with your god, this changes A LOT
>no more religious schisms or wrong interpretations of divine creed
Either you can ask god directly if X is according to his will and he will tell you to frick off, or he does not and thus divergent believe X is just as valid as the main believe.
>no more religious schisms or wrong interpretations of divine creed
Depends on the god
You can be as clear as humanely possible, won't change people from not following it while claiming they follow it. Look at any manifestation of a will in human history, especially ones written in writing. Human beings are not rational creatures. People do not operate from what is the most objectively rational stance, but from what they feel is right or their desire to commit wrong despite consequences.
if the god is not capable to blast the first person who does the wrong, then it deserves anything it gets
Same thing that happens in reality: people don't care because people are more interested in following their own foolish ideas that lead to ruin instead of doing what God wants them to do, leading to nations being wiped out due to irreverence and people destroying their lives because they're conducted life in a way that is contrary to how they were created to live.. but yeah not like that could ever happen.. oh wait..
I’m working on a setting where the two main gods, who are definitely real and recognized as such, are a god of Creation, Chaos, and Light, and a deity of Destruction, Order, and Darkness. The former is a ceaseless engine of creation, constantly throwing out ideas for new creatures, items, and more, while the latter either refines their ideas to make sure that they’ll fit safely in the mortal world, or destroys them if they won’t, the latter being where monsters and cursed items come from, since they occasionally manage to slip through anyway.
I just need some advice on their respective faiths. I was thinking that the former would have a lot of artists and other creative types as worshippers, and have a more informal, decentralized vibe, while the latter would have a lot of government officials and be more centralized and structured, with a Pope-like figure. They just need to be flushed out a bit more, what would you suggest please?
I know your lolcow brain has the need to flood this board with stupid braindead questions in your autistic quest to kill off every general but could you at least pretend you give a shit about your own questions?
Fear and Hunger is a good exploration of this and literally nothing changed except there are a lot of horrible rape monsters
All this religion posting had me thinking I was on Ganker for a second.
I'm playing an anti-theist paladin of Talos at the moment in a Faerunian setting. He views the cosmic hierarchy as inherently unjust and wishes to tear down not only all mortal societies but the divine hierarchy and the structure of the very universe.
>and wishes to tear down not only all mortal societies but the divine hierarchy and the structure of the very universe.
...so he's devoted to Talos because...?
Talos is the Faerunian god that wants to destroy all the other gods and all of creation.
Ted Chiang had a really interesting short story about this titled "Hell is the Absence of God"
In the short story, Angels are real entities who show up and perform miracles. They also more or less prove the existence of God to humanity. I would explain the story here but it's a really dense yet short read and I would recommend checking it out for youself
This whole rape-centered morality argument is fricking stupid. There is no objective good or evil or morality at all. It's a spook.
In my setting the gods are all real and represent the four elements of Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. As you can imagine, that means that the Fire temples have a lot of sacred flames, for starters.
The thing that's real isn't the god, it's the magical being. You know people in the real world worship actual, real things, not just israeli fairy tales, right? There's multiple religious classifications that regard all real things to be innately divine, and then there's shit like cargo cults and Imperial cults, which worship specific, real (and even living) people, as gods. The issue is never with the existence of a being, this is purely a christisraelite hangup, its about whether or not we should assign to it the title of god, meaning, thinking it deserves worship. Plenty of people in official RPG settings, like the Athar in Planescape or the nation of Rahadoum in Golarion know full well that there are magical beings with immense power who are widely worshiped as gods, and still disbelieve in their divinity, because they either find the particular god lacking or they disagree with the idea of god in the first place. No amount of evidence will ever convince people like this (such as myself, in real life) of the existence of gods, except in the academic sense of acknowledging that some people do worship things and call them that.
if it's always been this way, society wouldn't be no different from our own, except social networks and hierachies peak at a god instead of some CEO/president/king/celebrity. people still go about their lives since the gods (in most settings) generally don't intefere at too granular a level, and divine favours are real but rare. it's like you'd still be slapped around by your boss at work, but once a while the CEO himself comes down to give you a pat on the back and buys you a lambo for being a good boy.
the one difference would probably be that said ceos/presidents/kings/celebrities would probably be a lot more wary of their own actions, since there's someone above them holding them accountable.
Surely you guys could have found a better example other than rape
It wasn’t my choice of example. But Christians who think that atheists are incapable of being moral inevitably resort to it because they think it’s some kind of “gotcha!”.
Problem is that I’ve been doing this for a long-ass time so I’m more than capable of arguing why rape is bad from a purely utilitarian standpoint (it’s inefficient). Which is not why I personally think rape is bad, but if I display even the slightest hint of actual morality he’s liable to go “aha! You believe in Judeo-Christian morality after all!
>why rape is bad from a purely utilitarian standpoint (it’s inefficient)
So if you are in a situation where it is efficient, rape is good?
NTA but you've not read the entire chain of messages.
It's bad in general because it shows you are lack empathy, self-control and are a danger to normal society, and capable of spreading a lot of hurt.
The argument was that, even if one would argue that an atheist is an amoral utilitarist without concept of good and evil, even if that was true (and it's not), rape would still be a bad idea
>It's bad in general because it shows you are lack empathy
And why this would be objectively evil, if it helps an individual thrive in a particular situation?
>self-control and are a danger to normal society
These are subjective and not consistent.
>The argument was that, even if one would argue that an atheist is an amoral utilitarist
Your argument over utilitarism is weak, and crumbles if you are in a situation where rape becomes the "utilitarian" approach.
An african warlord that wants to use it as a tool to scare people into behaving in a way that he finds efficient to him is utilitarism.
A king letting mercs of dubious loyalty rape enemy citizens as part of their payment is still acting in a utilitarian way.
>and why this would be objectively evil, if it helps an individual thrive in a particular situation?
It doesn't need to be OBJECTIVELY evil. Hurting other people is bad, because bad people make the world worse for everyone and themselves too.
>These are subjective and not consistent.
If you are not capable of controlling your "i take what i want" animal insticts or are incapable to understand why that's bad in the first place, you lack self control and are a danger to society.
>Your argument over utilitarism is weak, and crumbles if you are in a situation where rape becomes the "utilitarian" approach.
That it's still bad because he creates a social climate in which some people have the power (and the equipment) to do bad stuff to everyone, including the ruler. Wonder why many dictatorship are a fertile ground for backstabbing? Because bad people cultivate bad enviroment. And that's bad.
People who need something to be OBJECTIVELY bad because they don't understand why it's bad, are not good people. simple as.
>People who need something to be OBJECTIVELY bad because they don't understand why it's bad, are not good people. simple as.
This
>its bad because its... ITS JUST BAD OKAY
Your morality is based entirely on your whims, desires and feelings
>Your argument over utilitarism is wea
His point is that its weak, but still answers the motivation. It is not the only reason, you are cherrypicking in bad faith.
He's not arguing in good faith, and he's cherry picking your statements.
It's funny seeing theology debates in Ganker, /x/, and /tg/ and how they're different from each other
The priest get closer to engineers/academia that follow the right recipe to reproduce a phenomenon.
Either a phenomena is measurable and then it's the domain of science, or it is just based on unverifiable hearsay at best and then it's religion.
Heck, compare god and prayers to modern ai prompters.
>the more societies are close to the ideal Rechtsstaat, the more they thrive
Thriving societies should have the flexibility to adapt legal and governance structures to their specific cultural contexts rather than conforming to a single ideal. Thriving societies result from multifaceted factors that extend beyond legal and governance systems, including historical factors, access to resources, geopolitical influences, and more. The definition of an ideal Rechtsstaat can be subjective and may vary among scholars and policymakers. Many thriving societies have not conformed to the Western concept of an ideal Rechtsstaat in the past. For instance, some Asian nations with different legal traditions have achieved significant economic and technological progress.
And at last: What constitutes thriving may depend on the socio-cultural and historical context.
While you are doing is just saying "the closer society is to my vision of ideal society, the better it is" and acting like that is a objective statement.
Metaphysicists are chuds. Everything that they believe is based on metametaphysics and they're too stupid to even realize it. Look at how smart I am.
Unconditional bliss is, in fact, very bad. Even taken in a vacuum it's bad.
if by some hypertech process we can make it physically healthy, mentally healthy and socially safe from abuse what ise the problem?
It's impossible, much like universal and eternal world peace, but i think it's still good.
The human mind is a basic feedback mechanism and you're talking about destroying it. There is no separating "use" from "abuse", that is not a meaningful distinction here, even on the most abstract and theoretical of levels it is still not a meaningful distinction.
what were we talking about again ive kinda lost the plot
Imperius stop being atheist in such an autistic way.
Also hey from the star wars server.
I'm pretty sure at least one god exists within our world. Whether said God/gods are worth worshipping is a different story.
I got to this conclusion via what I call the annoying child mindset.
Take a natural phenomenon and ask how and/or why it works.
Usually this phenomenon has a scientific explanation for both. Repeat until there is no known scientific explanation. This is the part where the best scientists get tired of the annoying child and say "just because", or in more scientific terms "we're still figuring it out"
Assume there is one and continue.
Eventually, one of two things will happen.
1. It goes on infinitely
2. At some point nature says "Just because. It happens because I say so"
I personally think the second is more likely, but even in the event of the first, the how's and whys of these infinite "rules of nature" still act as anchor points for deities.
>I personally think the second is more likely
Why? There are no clean cut-off points in nature, there are no absolute endings, everything goes on forever or wraps around into itself.
In nearly every religion and philosophy and belief system that has a deity god is defined as being supernatural and seperate from nature and ignoring its rules or functioning by seperate rules.
You're just describing the beliefs that have survived to the present day, because falsifiable beliefs don't last as long as unfalsifiable ones. But that isn't even the point, anon is specifically trying to deduce the existence of god from his observations of nature, and his attempt is about as good as any of the others.
Because that entire grouping of infinite/looping rules is in itself, an axiomatic phenomenon.
Okay. I'm not sure if I understand your point, but I will try: You observe a pattern in the natural world, and you succeed at describing that pattern as an 'axiom' (even though it is directly based on observation), so now you conclude that it is no more valid than any other axiom (including axioms that are just completely made-up with no relation to your evidence). It's like you're shooting for a stalemate, but the conclusion that you have drawn isn't a stalemate, you've decided that there must eventually be a stopping point because (mumble mumble).
Also "we're still figuring it out" is completely different from "just because".
Also I'm pretty sure that "act as anchor points for deities" is utterly meaningless, literally anything can be an 'anchor point' for a deity but also deities don't need anchor points, it's like you got to the end of the post and completely forgot about what you were doing at the start of the post.
Why would the "just because" be a god, though? The way science has been going for the past couple hundred years, the ultimate and final explanation for the workings of the universe is more likely to be some kind of tiny particle.
Like maybe the quarks just do that.
He's working with a really open-ended concept of 'god', which is fine, I just can't tell where his conclusions are coming from.
A man says "I will walk west as far as I can see", but then he does that and lo and behold, he can see even farther now. So he, again, walks west as far as he can see, and again he doesn't find an endpoint, he just finds more ground stretching to the west. I could understand if he assumed it was endless and not worth exploring, and I could also understand if he wanted to keep going and learned to navigate and learned to sail. But imagine that he does the third thing, he says "I am not going to keep exploring, because I already know what is out there, eventually the land and sea end, and the endpoint is something absolute and unfathomable and possibly intelligent.. Unless the world turns out to be round, in which case it is the roundness which is absolute and unfathomable and possibly intelligent."
When the child asks "why", and the adult says "because I said so" or "just because", we understand that these things do not (usually) have any real-world meaning, we recognize that they are just useful as verbal maneuvers to terminate an unwanted conversation. Believing in god is like doing the same thing to the conversation inside yourself.
>I am not going to keep exploring, because I already know what is out there, eventually the land and sea end
That's a thing in some cosmological systems, usually ones that predate navigation. Eventually the land and sea end, and there's just a sheer drop, or an ice wall, or a giant snake. I have no idea why they thought that. It doesn't even conclusively answer the question, since the obvious next step is to ask what's behind the giant snake.
I think it's a manifestation of the basic idea that distance is dangerous, closer to home is more safe and far from home is less save. One of those situations where we were faced with a brutal statistical reality, (people don't always come home) and didn't understand the details behind it, so we told stories to fill in the gap. And the story is true in the sense that the fear is warranted. A lot of our stories are like that, the scary made-up things contain elements of real world things that you really should be afraid of.
We used to think atoms were the smallest thing, as defined by their name, and now we have the higgs boson described as the "god" particle, and I'm sure there's something smaller that defines even that. But even if it's turtles all the way down, isn't that in itself a fascinating phenomenon? If there is no smallest unit? That's exactly the type of example I had in mind in my first post.
>"I am not going to keep exploring, because I already know what is out there, eventually the land and sea end, and the endpoint is something absolute and unfathomable and possibly intelligent.. Unless the world turns out to be round, in which case it is the roundness which is absolute and unfathomable and possibly intelligent."
Wow anon you almost described exactly how I see it.
Though maybe instead of there being something at the end of the earth being the intelligent thing, I'd say something like it being proof that that there is an end to the world. This is the "just because" because something must have put it there.
And thus it wouldn't be the roundness that's unfathomable, but that would mean the world as a whole is the absolute axiom. The structure existing becomes the fascinating thing. Why is it infinite? Just because.
>Wow anon you almost described exactly how I see it.
So you really are just looking for an excuse to quench your innate love of truth? You would admit such a thing openly and without shame?
No? That's why I said almost.
You don't need a why for nature. That's your pack animal brain misfiring intent where the falsifiable model is that there is none.
Nature only has a how. The why is a mental shortcut used by pack hunters to coordinate with each other. Projecting a why on anything else is basic b***h animism, or if you want to use neologism, intentionism.
Thinking that it is raining because of the feeling of a god is the same mental shortcut as tying intent/meaning behind any other natural phenomena, like life itself or the fact the universe exist.
>Nature only has a how
Why?
Goodnight, friends, this thread was interesting. I look forward to engaging with Ganker Christians in the future.
It fully depends on the nature of the god.