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Old 11-05-2006, 02:46 PM   #119 (permalink)
KnifeMissile
 
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Location: Waterloo, Ontario
Okay, I'm back. Wow, there's so much to say. This will be a long post to multiple people...

Quote:
Originally Posted by mixedmedia
So here it is. Atheism is reasonable and religion is ludicrous. Or, at least Christianity is because you admittedly don't know alot about other religions. Maybe something about your exposure to Christianity in the past has led you to this point. If so, I understand, believe me. I have witnessed the ignorance and hypocracies of extreme Christian dementia.
Well, not just extreme ones although they are, for obvious reasons, the worst ones. While it's hard to talk about the concept of religion, in general, my argument fits Christianity, Islam and Mormonism, which are all based on fantastic scripture and constitute more than half of the world's religious people. That's a lot...

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BUT, being back in the real world, I give respect to the fact that there are very reasonable people practicing the world's religions. And for many of them, the stories in scripture and other religious texts are not what gives them their faith. It is experience and wisdom and reflection. So I stand back and give them room for their beliefs and I respect them. Just as I respect yours. If your atheism prevents you from doing that then to me you are no different in attitude than the evangelists and proselytizers of Christianity.
Reasonable people can be religious just as reasonable people may make mistakes. I'm neurotic to a fault but am, otherwise, reasonable. Again, we're riding semantics here but a generally reasonable person may do some unreasonable things.

Personally, I actually have no problem with religion, in and of itself. Life is hard and whatever helps you get through the day is more power to you. However, (I wll be using the royal "you" here since obviously none of this applies to you, in particular) when your religious doctorine starts dictating what I may do then you make your religion my problem. In this case, I would prefer that you not be religious, thank you...

Of course, this is the real problem. You might like to say "well, they're just extremists and should learn to respect others' opinion," but that really isn't fair to them. They're "extreme" because they truly believe and part of their doctorine is to enforce their beliefs on others for their own good (religions that have no method of procreation don't live too long. This can be a topic for another thread!). To not follow this is to not truly believe which is, again, against their doctorine (religions that have no self-defense mechanisms also have short lives). So, they must necessarily enforce their views upon me and that is when you must throw your arms up and say "okay, about your religious beliefs..."

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It's not hard to deny. I deny that the truth of your belief is as evident as the law of gravity.
Unfortunately, regardless of how self evident something is, you can deny it if you want. How about this: can you see that the Bible is as fictitious as Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer. Is it incredulous that others don't see this?

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I didn't say that our conscience is evidence of god. Only that such is the argument I have been given by Christians as evidence of god. In fact, I have stated multiple times on this thread that I don't believe in deities. I have not committed myself to any formal philosophical understanding. As I said before, my own path runs closest to that of Taoism in that I suspect the unknowable may reside within its obvious manifestations in the natural world.
For crying out loud, I qualified my statement about conscience and I was merely pointing out how nonsensical it was.

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It was your depiction of philosophy as bullshit. But I understand now you didn't mean to say that philosophy is bullshit.
Please tell me you understand this because you took another look at the senetence and saw the relationship between adjectives and nouns. Philosophy was not depicted as bullshit, it was bullshit that was depicted as philosophy...

Quote:
Originally Posted by mixedmedia
I assume you are referring to my rebuttal to this statement, specifically the bolded portion...
Quote:
Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
I have avoided the multi-faceted aspect of the word to avoid confusion. "Ah, you believe something too! All viewpoints are the same, I knew it!" They are not the same. Some are reasonable and some are ludicrous and I'm trying hard to show the difference...
No, I was referring to the very exchange that I gave as an example in the post to which you are responding. I called it "less contrived" becase it actually took place between roachboy and me...
Quote:
Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
As a side note, the etymology of metaphysics comes from a chapter of a book that Aristotle wrote and literally means "after physics." It was a chapter that came after the chapter about physics and he titled it as such so that the reader can know that he was no longer talking about the real world and is moving onto the topic of philosophical bullshit...
Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
hmm...philosophy is "bullshit" but religion is serious.
He clearly interpreted this my statement to mean that philosophy is bullshit and, judging from your posts since, you felt the same way. If it is not evident how this is not a statement on philosophy then, please, say something and I will explain but I can't help but feel that it must be self-evident by now...


pigglet, your comments on philosophy are illuminating. I had totally forgotten that Ph.D.s are philosophical doctorates.

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As far as I understand it, personified deities probably made terrific sense a long time ago. You're trying to figure out what all this experience and existence stuff means, why you're here - all the classic questions - and in doing so a hypothesis is formed. People reasonably conclude they are the top dogs in the local area, and if they are being acted upon by forces out of their control, well a super-person would be a pretty decent guess as to who's poking them with sticks. Such a belief system would serve its purpose and let them move on to hunting some buffalo, smoking some herb and drinking a beer, getting it on, etc. I just think that hypothesis has outlived its usefulness.
This is a good hypothesis and it sounds very plausible. It might also fit with ustwo's idea of how people might need these explanations...

The idea of shoving everything we don't know about into some idea like God has been referred to as "living in the margins (of science)." For example, whatever we don't understand we will attribute to religious explanations. When we understand one of these religious explanations, we will pretend that it wasn't important to the religion and retreat to another margin of science. Astronomy used to be vital to Catholic doctorine but is no longer after so much of what they were saying about the stars were shown to be false...

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Incidentally, all "science" says is that one has a set of a priori theoretical hypotheses which seem to be consistent with our interpretations of our perceptions. It doesn't mean any of it is real - only that its useful. The whole thing could very well be nothing but smoke and mirrors - but its useful for making computers and bridges and such. I don't think any of the diagrams in scientific textbooks exists - they are just convenient ways for us to categorize what we think we know, so that we can move forward in making more intricate toys and tools. Out of all the potential interactions and potential causal relationships that govern our universe, we've carved out a set of theories which seem to work for us.
I'm impressed. It's very rare to see someone on these forums that actually understands what science is. When we say something is "real," we really only mean that it's consistent with observations with which we can agree upon.

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I personally like to remind myself every so often how little we actually know - and I think that to truly accept everything in reality is to also embrace all of the aspects of reality, including those of we we have no knowledge. To me, on a fundamental level, that is one of the main purposes of relgions in the abstract.
I don't know if I'd agree with this philosophy. I mean, it sounds a little wishy-washy with ideas like embracing the unknown. I mean, if we don't know about it, how are we to embrace it? We can embrace the idea that there are things that we don't know but to embrace the unknown? I don't think I get it...


Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
1. on pascal's wager: the trick of that passage is rhetorical--for it to function, you have to allow yourself to be pushed around by the narrator--and in the section, as throughout the pensées, there are two, the believer and the skeptic. the wager presupposes that the believers framing of the question is compelling: this IS your situation, you MUST choose.
on that, the problem is pretty obvious, even though pascal is a great writer and his writing makes as strong a case for the power of his argument as can be made: but in the end, if you accede to the frame, you are trapped in a christian way of modelling reality.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. How does the narrator "trap" the reader into anything? Into what is the reader "trapped?" What is the "christian way of thinking" of which you speak? Are you talking about parts of the Pensées beyond the wager?

I could hardly tell what you were talking about for the rest of your post. I can only assume that it was all leading up to this point, here:
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whence the problem i had with the notion that philosophy is bullshit.
Now, I can see that you've posted a following post saying that you'd like to drop this subject and I can agree, although I don't take kindly to the threat:
Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
but if you want to push it, if you feel this buzz buzz buzz is important enough to keep forcing it into the discussion, then go for it.
but i will stop being nice.
You were not nice before and you're not nice now. I'm not looking for an apology, I'm looking for an understanding of how the English language works so that we may avoid future problems in this thread and others since I plan to conitnue using English in all my posts. If this upsets you, I'm sorry. If you think this is cause to "not be nice," I'm sorry about that, too. Since you felt so strongly to threaten me, you must have read the posts I have made to clarify the matter. Do you see how no comment on philosophy was ever made? Do you see how you had gone wrong? You're not the only one who made this mistake, so this discussion isn't directed solely on you but you were the first so you were the easiest one to quote...

Quote:
but wait, there is more--on the problematic notion of metaphysics that is floating about in this thread--but i need to do some more work and so am stopping here.
This board should never trump your life. If you have things to do, everyone implicitly understands...
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