Total posts: 2,768
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@PGA2.0
Bullet 3
This bullet explains that much of your argument is the moralistic fallacy: a contrast to is/ought, it’s the ought/is - that because some fact ought to be, that is true.
You repeatedly point to moralistic decisions, and continually state that subjective morality is wrong because it would mean there is no true good, anyone moral decision could be construed good and multiple variations therein. your argument is not that this doesn’t fit what we see (it does), but that it’s just wrong. What makes it a moralistic fallacy; is the reliance on emotive arguments to conflate the undesirability of subjective morality (“would Nazi genocide be ok?” For example) with its validity.
That’s pretty open and shut:
This bullet explains that much of your argument is the moralistic fallacy: a contrast to is/ought, it’s the ought/is - that because some fact ought to be, that is true.
You repeatedly point to moralistic decisions, and continually state that subjective morality is wrong because it would mean there is no true good, anyone moral decision could be construed good and multiple variations therein. your argument is not that this doesn’t fit what we see (it does), but that it’s just wrong. What makes it a moralistic fallacy; is the reliance on emotive arguments to conflate the undesirability of subjective morality (“would Nazi genocide be ok?” For example) with its validity.
That’s pretty open and shut:
Me. If morality is subjective, we can’t truly deduce an objective right or wrong. Morality is ever changing, conformant to group ideals, mutable.
“That morality is subjective is your assumption, not mine.”
The statement you are replying to is of the form “if x then y” - This is not “an assumption”, this is a logical formulation. Specifying what the resulting conditions would be were the contention true. We do this for both sides, then abduct which best fits reality.
I do this throughout: using if then, to logically deduct/induct how reality would look if morality were subjective so we can compare results.
That you confuse this logical process with pure assumption is simply staggering, as it implies that you don’t understand how logical formulation works.
I do this throughout: using if then, to logically deduct/induct how reality would look if morality were subjective so we can compare results.
That you confuse this logical process with pure assumption is simply staggering, as it implies that you don’t understand how logical formulation works.
“If you haven't noticed, I have been arguing all along that subjective morality does not have a firm foundation to rest upon. That is because it can't identify what is really the moral "right," for it becomes different and conflicting things to other people and groups.”
I have noticed: unilaterally assuming that morality is objective without justification, and then use this as a rationale for discounting subjective morality - you have assumed your own conclusion, otherwise known as [Begging the question]
“You really do need to tackle my argument regarding the laws of identity (A=A). If logic is irrelevant to morality, it can't help us determine the actual case. There would be none. “
[Begging the question] your identity formulation assumes that good/bad are true - which means you assume they are objective.
“You call it moral. If there is no unchanging moral standard or reference, how is it moral? It is just preference.”
[No true Scotsman] see previous posts.
“What makes that right? Nothing”
The subjective preference you just discounted without basis a line before makes it “right”, to us.
“It just makes it doable, as I continue to say and you disregard. You ignore addressing my points. I continue to bring them up. “
[false] oh, I am very much not ignoring your points. If you recall, over the last dozen or so posts, I have been specifically attacking this point on the basis that it’s [begging the question]
You should be logically demonstrating that morality is objective, that morality is based on a universal standard and that a true best can be derived.
What you are doing, is simply repeatedly pretending as if the central point of contention, the very aspect of reality that is in dispute in this thread - is not in dispute by simply asserting over and over again that morality is objective.
At this point, given how much this has been pointed out; and given how unwilling you have been to even acknowledge that this has been pointed out, leave alone correct it, seems to indicate you are either unwilling or unable to engage in any sort of intellectually honest conversation.
You should be logically demonstrating that morality is objective, that morality is based on a universal standard and that a true best can be derived.
What you are doing, is simply repeatedly pretending as if the central point of contention, the very aspect of reality that is in dispute in this thread - is not in dispute by simply asserting over and over again that morality is objective.
At this point, given how much this has been pointed out; and given how unwilling you have been to even acknowledge that this has been pointed out, leave alone correct it, seems to indicate you are either unwilling or unable to engage in any sort of intellectually honest conversation.
“And you may not like the idea that morality cannot constantly be changing for it to be meaningful”
[begging the question] prove that morality as we experience it is objectively meaningful.
[proves my point]
P1: objective morality is meaningful.
P2: constantly changing morality is not meaningful.
P3: morality is constantly changing.
C: morality is not objective
[proves my point]
P1: objective morality is meaningful.
P2: constantly changing morality is not meaningful.
P3: morality is constantly changing.
C: morality is not objective
“...and actually something other than preference, which in itself is not moral.”
[No true Scotsman]
“Anybody can justify anything if there is no ideal reference point, the true value”
[Begging the question]
“And your survival scenario doesn't work.”
[argument by assertion] your objections to the survival scenario were primarily straw men, and covered in posts above.
“Morality, I have argued, would mean God exists, and you are ultimately responsible for what you do.”
You have assumed the conclusion - this is not the same as argued.
To have argued means that you should have logically demonstrated that morality is objective - rather than simply continually assume it is.
To have argued means that you should have logically demonstrated that morality is objective - rather than simply continually assume it is.
“The correspondence of an idea has to match what the thing is, and my point is that you can't nail down what the thing is in relation to the moral because it can mean whatever the person or group wants to make it --> basically nonsense.
[begging the question] same as before. You’re just assuming that morality is objective, then complains that subjective morality does not match.
“When I speak of my SUV, I speak of something that corresponds to an actual vehicle sitting in my yard, not just an idea that is not real. That vehicle is independent of my mind. Denying it would not lessen its actual reality. There is indeed a genuine SUV sitting in my yard, whether I (or you) deny it or not”
[begging the question] this argument assumes that morality is a real thing. Denying the possibility that morality could be an idea that is not real, is begging the question
Me. You are repeatedly implying because that conclusion is undesirable - it is wrong - attempting to appeal to the unpleasant nature of no act being truly or objectively immoral outside the lens of our own subjective moral compass as a reason not to believe it, is incoherent.
“That is not the gist of my argument.”
[strawman] I’m not saying it’s the gist of the argument - it’s a fallacy you employ throughout. And ironically, you employ that same fallacy in defence;
“It is not wrong because I imply it to be incorrect; thus, my subjective feelings determine right and wrong. That would be the case with your worldview, and if I were to adapt to your worldview, I would justify "morality" on such terms. I'm implying that morality is not understandable (nonsense) if there is no true, unchanging value for something moral because anyone can make it whatever they want to without such a standard.
[Moralistic fallacy] you employ the same moralistic fallacy to defend against accusations you are employing a moralistic fallacy.
If there is no universal standard - morality is unanchored, not objectively determinable (though it would not necessarily qualify as nonsense - given the objective imperative I described, and engaging in the concept of enlightened self interest, which is another story), and there would be no true basis for comparing moral standards.
So? If that was the case, it makes your position true, how exactly?
You don’t explain why our morality being nonsense means it can’t exist (see bullet 1 - don’t confuse morality being subjective with not being experienced).
The emotive language you’re using repeatedly means you are strongly
implying that the conclusion is false because it is undesirable.
If there is no universal standard - morality is unanchored, not objectively determinable (though it would not necessarily qualify as nonsense - given the objective imperative I described, and engaging in the concept of enlightened self interest, which is another story), and there would be no true basis for comparing moral standards.
So? If that was the case, it makes your position true, how exactly?
You don’t explain why our morality being nonsense means it can’t exist (see bullet 1 - don’t confuse morality being subjective with not being experienced).
The emotive language you’re using repeatedly means you are strongly
implying that the conclusion is false because it is undesirable.
“You and I could point to countless examples of this in human societies. Can you get your head around that?”
[proves my point] Of course: the existence of ever changing, subjective, arbitrary moral beliefs on human that we argue about continually almost seems to suggest there is no universal unchanging anchor grounding morality, doesn’t it.
“I say that the Ten Commandments, as they apply to human relationships, is the objective standard. You shall not murder, steal, lie, commit adultery, covet, dishonour your parents. On the foundation of these principles, wrong is determined.”
[argument by assertion] Simply citing a paragraph from a book, and stating it is an objective standard does not make it so.
Please demonstrate why. Let me use something more specific;
Imagine two possibilities:
A.) an all powerful omnipotent God exists, and wrote down a universal moral standard in a book that survived to this day.
B.) God doesn’t exist, and Bronze Age humans wrote down a fictional set of moral standards.
If I have you a book that contained a moral standard: how would you logically identity whether it was A or B?
Please demonstrate why. Let me use something more specific;
Imagine two possibilities:
A.) an all powerful omnipotent God exists, and wrote down a universal moral standard in a book that survived to this day.
B.) God doesn’t exist, and Bronze Age humans wrote down a fictional set of moral standards.
If I have you a book that contained a moral standard: how would you logically identity whether it was A or B?
“though we see much subjectivity and opposite values in the world throughout recorded history, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, every significant culture of society has recognized such things as murder, stealing, lying, respecting parents as of right and codified them to some extent into their codes or laws. I also argue from the biblical text that humanity invented relative values by the Fall when Adam rejected God's good counsel and made up his own. Since we are created in the image and likeness of God, we retain a semblance of right and wrong because it is built into our being/consciousness by God.”
As I pointed out, this is all largely explained by having a learned morality driven by an evolutionary imperative.
Lying, murder, stealing, etc is bad because it causes group dysfunction; sexual morality - no cheating etc; can be described by simple reproductive selection; but all within an individual group.
Explaining why things like war, and lying to enemies is weighed by different standards.
So In this respect, both frameworks explain these facts.
Lying, murder, stealing, etc is bad because it causes group dysfunction; sexual morality - no cheating etc; can be described by simple reproductive selection; but all within an individual group.
Explaining why things like war, and lying to enemies is weighed by different standards.
So In this respect, both frameworks explain these facts.
“I'm not applying morality based on my subjective morality. Instead, I'm appealing to or pointing to a standard that is not my own with what is necessary to make sense of morality.”
[begging the question] assumes morality must make sense.
As I pointed out; the ever changing moral state of humanity is made sense of my a subjective morality too (arguably better as it requires fewer assumptions)
Conclusion Bullet 3:
Same question begging/NTS throughout. Moralistic fallacy simply repeated.
Your strategy here appears to be what I refer to as the argument shotgun.
Rather than deal with the broad argument, it is broken down to small individual phrases or statements, which are all attacked with a set of independent individual arguments which are not joined up to attack the overreaching point being made.
IE: to contest that you are using the moralistic fallacy, you launch into a whole bunch of unrelated argument on points that are not really related to the moralistic fallacy, without actually contesting the underlying claim much at all:
You don’t, for example, outline the moralistic fallacy, and specifically describe how the conclusion is justified without using desirability, you simply restate your argument with the same implied desirability.
I’m really just getting the feeling that rather than engaging with anything that anyone is actually saying, your trying to continually drive the argument into regurgitating the same talking points being contested.
As I pointed out; the ever changing moral state of humanity is made sense of my a subjective morality too (arguably better as it requires fewer assumptions)
Conclusion Bullet 3:
Same question begging/NTS throughout. Moralistic fallacy simply repeated.
Your strategy here appears to be what I refer to as the argument shotgun.
Rather than deal with the broad argument, it is broken down to small individual phrases or statements, which are all attacked with a set of independent individual arguments which are not joined up to attack the overreaching point being made.
IE: to contest that you are using the moralistic fallacy, you launch into a whole bunch of unrelated argument on points that are not really related to the moralistic fallacy, without actually contesting the underlying claim much at all:
You don’t, for example, outline the moralistic fallacy, and specifically describe how the conclusion is justified without using desirability, you simply restate your argument with the same implied desirability.
I’m really just getting the feeling that rather than engaging with anything that anyone is actually saying, your trying to continually drive the argument into regurgitating the same talking points being contested.
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@PGA2.0
Bullet 2
My whole point here is that you continually and repeatedly assume your own conclusions by assuming that subjective morality must have objective notions of good and bad - so can’t exist.
My whole point here is that you continually and repeatedly assume your own conclusions by assuming that subjective morality must have objective notions of good and bad - so can’t exist.
2.) You are confused as to what subjective morality is.
“No, I am not. I am delving into what is necessary for morality and your subjective OPINIONS do not justify calling it moral unless it is.”
You say that you are not confused: and then show you are confused.
Subjective morality is where what we humans feel as moral is based on subjective emotional responses, rather than some Universal fact.
Unilaterally asserting that a morality that operates on those rules isn’t true morality is
(> ‘’ )> [no true Scotsman]
“What is moral has to be based on what is truly right and good..”
[Begging the question] ironically, your respond to a bullet that explains how you’re begging the question, by begging the same question again.
“Making it up just makes it preferable”
[Strawman] Morality being derived from an objective group standard is not “making it up” - which implies conscious decision.
[No true Scotsman] this is your favourite fallacy it seems. Moral is what we feel is moral - if what we feel is moral is subjective and learned; then what is moral is based on the subjective.
The question is not whether we feel that things are good or bad - it’s whether the concept of good and bad are products of our mind, and thus have no true value outside of them; or whether good and bad are objective external things that exist outside of our ability to feel them.
“If something is not objectively true then is it true at all? You are making up a subjective value that depends on you and others who think like you and calling it morally good or bad. That is where we differ. While I point to something eternal to myself or yourself, I point to a Mind. I point to a Mind that is necessary and eternal. You point to contingent minds that make things up. “
I’m suggesting what is good and bad has not external meaning outside humanity. You are asserting that it does (but not showing it)
“If they are not independent objectively external things then what makes your "truth" truer than my opposing truth? You jokey around truth as if it is subjective”
[strawman/begging the question] assuming there is a universal true morality is assuming your own conclusion. Please stop doing that.
Also a Strawman as the entire premise of my entire argument top to bottom is that there is no universal objective moral truth - so to imply that my moral truth is someone truer is to completely misrepresent my argument.
As I said earlier: If you’re unable to characterize my position correctly, and repeatedly argue as if I am saying the exact opposite of what I am - I must wonder if you’re capable of engaging in an argument in an intellectually honest way.
Also a Strawman as the entire premise of my entire argument top to bottom is that there is no universal objective moral truth - so to imply that my moral truth is someone truer is to completely misrepresent my argument.
As I said earlier: If you’re unable to characterize my position correctly, and repeatedly argue as if I am saying the exact opposite of what I am - I must wonder if you’re capable of engaging in an argument in an intellectually honest way.
“Your response through your entire first play, and the bill of the second can really be summarized as:
“there must be a true best, because otherwise, how can there be a true best”.
Nope, my entire first play is that true or actual truth is based on an objectively omniscient, omnibenevolent, immutable, eternal necessary Being who is greater than our thinking and who has revealed what is true.
[Argument by assertion] even you have to acknowledge that shouting at someone that God exists, and it’s the truth, is not a coherent logical argument no matter which words you underline.
Note: you also completely fail to address the accusation.
“My Ace beats your two of Spades, for I have what is needed for and makes sense of morality. You do not; only think you do.”
[Argument by assertion.] simply saying you are right is not a valid argument.
Worse, it’s also horrifically false.
As I have explained; morality being learned and subjective allows us to explain almost all of human behaviour. It explains why infanticide is acceptable in many previous cultures, it explains the
Zeitgeist, how some cultures have condoned genocide, it explains why morality appears mutable and subjective throughout human history.
Why has morality changed so much for so long, and continues to change throughout the world if it’s all based on a universal moral standard? I don’t know - you haven’t at any point explained why. Indeed, it seems you have been repeatedly unable to talk about human morality in a way that doesn’t exactly fit my proposed explanation...
Worse, it’s also horrifically false.
As I have explained; morality being learned and subjective allows us to explain almost all of human behaviour. It explains why infanticide is acceptable in many previous cultures, it explains the
Zeitgeist, how some cultures have condoned genocide, it explains why morality appears mutable and subjective throughout human history.
Why has morality changed so much for so long, and continues to change throughout the world if it’s all based on a universal moral standard? I don’t know - you haven’t at any point explained why. Indeed, it seems you have been repeatedly unable to talk about human morality in a way that doesn’t exactly fit my proposed explanation...
“Your subjective opinion is not an authority I can justify or trust as "knowing" based on a materialistic, naturalistic framework where blind chance happenstance is at play. Jerry Coyne and many others admit as much.”
[Argument from incredulity] this is addressed in greater length in my previous posts about evolution.
“That framework unravels with introspection. It is inconsistent with what we witness in that "morality" as you call it, has no true identity, just subjective feelings based on what is, not what should be (except where it jives with God's revelation). The identity changes between individuals and groups as to what is right, making the "right" redundant, nothing but a power play that you are playing at outmaneuvering me.”
[Argument by assertion - outright denial of reality] How exactly is a subjective, changing morality, that differs between generations, between groups and individuals , where no one can agree on what is moral “inconsistent” with what we observe in human morality - that appears to be constantly changing, that differs between generations, between groups and individuals , where no one can agree on what is moral?
Indeed, as I noted in point (5) you hilariously affirm that facts match my framework throughout, you have failed to address any of the points where I explain that what we observe appears subjective, and as of yet, have ignored every mention of how objective morality does not fit what we observe. This is bordering on the absurd.
Indeed, as I noted in point (5) you hilariously affirm that facts match my framework throughout, you have failed to address any of the points where I explain that what we observe appears subjective, and as of yet, have ignored every mention of how objective morality does not fit what we observe. This is bordering on the absurd.
Conclusion:
So on bullet 2, the whole point I make is that you continually and repeatedly assume your own conclusion. Your criticism of my explanation assumes that morality is objective; and thus is invalid.
Your response is not to explain exactly how you are not assuming your conclusion, but to simply loudly and more strongly assume that same conclusion.
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@PGA2.0
Bullet 1.
The criticisms of your argument are central to my point: and I’m going to address them first so I can return to them in further responses.
The criticisms of your argument are central to my point: and I’m going to address them first so I can return to them in further responses.
“Me: Good, bad, our conscience are all part of what morality is; thus your argument is that as good, bad and our conscience exist - they must be driven by something objective. This is a ridiculously obtuse non sequitur.”
Clarifying: Your argument is that what we determine good and bad are universal truths driven by a universal standard. In mine, what we determine as good and bad are subjective - learned by the standards. As the concepts of good and bad exist and are explained by both solutions; you can’t use their existence alone to justify one or the other.
“Oh no, it follows; a necessarily moral objective, not a group preference”
[argument by assertion / no true Scotsman]. You arbitrarily dismiss my explanation of morality without consideration or justification.
“Truth is objective. Truth never changes, thus eternal. Truth is independent of human minds since the object exists whether or not you do.”
[argument by assertion/Begging the question] What is true is objective - however, you are arbitrarily asserting that the concepts of “good”, “bad” = truth;.
You should be proving they are true (and thus good is objective), rather than asserting they are true (and thus objective): and then state that this proves they are objective.
Note: I paraphrased your argument that because the concepts of good and bad exist, they were objective; you said: “I don't like the way you paraphrase and misrepresent my argument below the point” ... but the argument above almost verbatim makes that claim.
You should be proving they are true (and thus good is objective), rather than asserting they are true (and thus objective): and then state that this proves they are objective.
Note: I paraphrased your argument that because the concepts of good and bad exist, they were objective; you said: “I don't like the way you paraphrase and misrepresent my argument below the point” ... but the argument above almost verbatim makes that claim.
“Also, how would you know the "good" or "bad" without comparing it to the "best;" the fact?”
Through the very thing you arbitrarily dismissed without reason a few lines ago.
Me: [assertions of objective morality] utterly fails to address any of the ways in which morality is clearly and unambiguously subjective.
This is pointing out that a subjective learned group behaviour, fits REALLY well with what we see. Different groups with different standards, morphing standards over time - the fact we are taught right from wrong.
“What you view as moral is nothing more than selective personal and group preference.”
[argument by assertion / no true Scotsman] You again reject my entire explanation for no reason.
“What makes something liked or desired moral unless there is a fixed and final (absolute) reference point?”
The very thing you arbitrarily dismissed without reason a few lines ago.
“I'm asking a question. You just draw good and bad from mid-air and call it such, while someone else, some other group, calls it the opposite. Who is right? You don't have a right, no fixed address.”
[Begging the question] Asserting that one of those two groups is “right”, assumes the universal standard you are trying to show. You are assuming your own conclusion.
It should be clear to you at this point, that the entirety of my argument, top to bottom; is solely predicated on the simple premise that there is no true right - that morality is subjective with no universal standard.
If, despite repeated correction, you constantly argue as if the centrally disputed fact of this entire argument is not in dispute and is as you claim it is: I can only conclude that you’re unwilling or unable to have an intellectually honest discussion.
It should be clear to you at this point, that the entirety of my argument, top to bottom; is solely predicated on the simple premise that there is no true right - that morality is subjective with no universal standard.
If, despite repeated correction, you constantly argue as if the centrally disputed fact of this entire argument is not in dispute and is as you claim it is: I can only conclude that you’re unwilling or unable to have an intellectually honest discussion.
Me: You are asserting that because those things exist, it requires morality to be objective. Recall, my entire argument provides a technical explanation of how these things can specifically exist
“I presume you are speaking of the Ten Commandments”
No: I’m referring to the exact the same fallacy you’ve used in conjunction twice above, and ignored again.
You dismiss the alternative explanation; and then declare that there’s no other alternative explanation other than objective morality.
You dismiss the alternative explanation; and then declare that there’s no other alternative explanation other than objective morality.
“Is there a culture that does not view killing innocent human babies for fun as good/right?”
This is actually half an argument without being based on an assertion or fallacy. Literally your first in the last 5-6 posts.
The US. Abortion is considered morally fine for over half the population. That’s pretty close to your request. No?
If you want to be specific, though: child sacrifice was practiced at various times around the world: so the idea that multiple cultures supported killing their own children as a moral good, pretty much flies in the face of your claims.
Kids were murdered extensively by the Nazis - including for fun; and were murdered as payback in Lidice for fun.
Infanticide was only made illegal in the 4th century in Europe; female infanticide in various cultures was pretty well accepted; many cultures view honour killings positively.
If you want to be specific, though: child sacrifice was practiced at various times around the world: so the idea that multiple cultures supported killing their own children as a moral good, pretty much flies in the face of your claims.
Kids were murdered extensively by the Nazis - including for fun; and were murdered as payback in Lidice for fun.
Infanticide was only made illegal in the 4th century in Europe; female infanticide in various cultures was pretty well accepted; many cultures view honour killings positively.
God sent a bear to maul children for mocking someone for being bald. He murdered all children on the entire planet during the flood, all children in sodom and Gomorrah, murdered all the first born in Egypt - so even God gets in on that baby murdering action.
So yeah - multiple cultures have repeatedly murdered children, and it was viewed as okay. And even we’re we to use your arbitrarily narrow definition of “for fun” presumably because you know anything less will have innumerable examples.
Such universal barbarity against children throughout history, seems pretty open and shut against objective morality, no?
Yet: were morality simply a learned standard - it would make perfect sense.
So yeah - multiple cultures have repeatedly murdered children, and it was viewed as okay. And even we’re we to use your arbitrarily narrow definition of “for fun” presumably because you know anything less will have innumerable examples.
Such universal barbarity against children throughout history, seems pretty open and shut against objective morality, no?
Yet: were morality simply a learned standard - it would make perfect sense.
Me: I explained how morality could exist without being objective - you have ignored it.
“No, I have not ignored it. I have addressed it. What you call morals is nothing more than personal and group preference unless there is an objective, fact-based best to compare moral qualities.”
[argument by assertion / no true Scotsman] You again reject my entire explanation for no reason; then claim rejecting it for no reason is “addressing” it.
“I pointed out to either you or someone else that abortion is never morally right unless there is no option to save at least one life..... Yet, recent abortion stats show that [financial, personal reasons] comprises most abortions in America.”
[Argument by Assertion/begging the question] Simply asserting that abortion is never moral, doesn’t make it so. It smacks of simply assuming your own conclusion.
Prove that abortion is never moral.
Conclusion on bullet 1.)
The whole point of (1) was that I am arguing that morality is subjective, and to point out that you are simply repeatedly asserting that morality is objective; nominally using its sole existence as proof.
Not only did you utterly fail to refute that point at all, your response was effectively continually repeating the same error.
This reply is so riddled with assertions, no true Scotsman fallacies and assumed conclusions; that it borders on utterly intellectually bankrupt.
Prove that abortion is never moral.
Conclusion on bullet 1.)
The whole point of (1) was that I am arguing that morality is subjective, and to point out that you are simply repeatedly asserting that morality is objective; nominally using its sole existence as proof.
Not only did you utterly fail to refute that point at all, your response was effectively continually repeating the same error.
This reply is so riddled with assertions, no true Scotsman fallacies and assumed conclusions; that it borders on utterly intellectually bankrupt.
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@Fruit_Inspector
Modern science, and the understanding of the modern world through science is built upon the premise that there are natural causes for observed phenomena. Modern science, and scientific process works because it excludes supernatural events as part of possible explanations.
Science only works because it inherent precludes magic and the supernatural. And precluding the supernatural and positing only naturalistic explanations is how we determine truth.
Science only works because it inherent precludes magic and the supernatural. And precluding the supernatural and positing only naturalistic explanations is how we determine truth.
Your assertion to the country is just that.
Theists can practice science - but they too work as if magic and the supernatural are not factors in effecting the things they study: Methodological naturalism.
Theists can practice science - but they too work as if magic and the supernatural are not factors in effecting the things they study: Methodological naturalism.
All modern science, and understanding of the world that has come from it, has been predicated on the inherent assumption that the supernatural does not effect things: naturalism.
Newton invoked the supernatural surrounding orbital motion and made no further discoveries - Laplace assumed naturalism, and explained planetary Orbital motion.
Your assertions aside, the modern world is built on naturalism. Understanding the world and determining how it works to the point it can be explained and exploited has been done presuming that faith, the supernatural, magic, etc is not necessary.
That’s the point. Science and explaining the world removes faith and belief from the specifics of how the world works - when that happens, human invention surges forward.
Your comment on death is absurd and incoherent. When someone “saves your life” any rational human being presumes this means preventing death at a given time - rather than preventing their death in general.
Given your reasoning, war and science hasn’t killed anyone either - because everyone was going to die anyway.
This bizarre, ludicrous argument barely needs a rebuttal. It’s just clutching at straws.
You then go on to make an argument from morality.
This is not related to the nature of faith that we were talking in any way. It’s a red herring argument.
It’s also empty assertion. In the Bible, God commits genocide of humanity, kills everyone in Sodam and Gomorrah, commands genocide against the Amelkites, and even killed lots wife for “looking back” - and that’s just in the first few books!
The Ten Commandments, a list of moral edicts includes such gems as “don’t say God damnit when you stub your toe”, “even thinking something for a split second and not ever acting on it ever” is immoral, as is working on Saturday, and having any images of God. Slavery is supported, seafood is bad, no tattoos, long hair for men is bad, etc.
Christians are simply really good at asserting how you need God to understand morality, good and bad, when the Bible is an utter sh*tshow of mad lunacy and kids being mauled by bears for mocking elijahs baldness; the Bible is an unhinged, immoral mess; that cannot possibly be used as a rational basis for anything.
Indeed, it requires no objective morality, no Bible and no deity to recognize, “I am a human, and I don’t like it if someone is a d*ck to me, so maybe I shouldn’t be a d*ck to other people.” My morality in this respect is just as subjective as yours; with your moral compass, I would hope, being firmly untangled from the Bible, and from its God; with your compass driving your interpretation of scripture rather than the other way round.
The reality here is not religion, Christianity or faith provides any true moral guidance - theists are just really, really good at loudly asserting it does.
I mean, you are in no better position to determine what is moral or not than I, you have no real ability to determine whether anything really matters outside of our own feelings than I, you can’t tell whether we are clumps of matter or more.
You’ve just gotten really good at pretending you can.
Drop 3: completely dropped the argument that you are dishonest.
Drop 4: you completely dropped the argument about justified trust.
Drop 5: you completely dropped that you’re argument is doing exactly what I stated faith is.
Drop 6: you completely dropped that you have no ability to show we are more than simple clumps of matter: you simply affirm the assertions
Drop 3: completely dropped the argument that you are dishonest.
Drop 4: you completely dropped the argument about justified trust.
Drop 5: you completely dropped that you’re argument is doing exactly what I stated faith is.
Drop 6: you completely dropped that you have no ability to show we are more than simple clumps of matter: you simply affirm the assertions
Drop 7: completely dropped the fact that faith has cured no diseases, and solved no problem.
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@ILikePie5
I think there is an issue with your screen/monitor.
I posted a detailed and systematic disproof of everything you said, but you seem to have missed it....
I mean, such a rational, coherent, correct human being would never have simply ignored an argument that shows they’re completely wrong... so must be a technology issue.
To answer your question: it only benefits one side - because you ignore all the cases where it doesn’t benefit one side.
For example - the reporting on Hillarys emails before the election; her passing out - didn’t help Democrats.
Requesting and publishing Faucis emails Didn’t help one side. Publishing claims about Cunningham, Northam, Cuomo - didn’t Simply help only one side.
I’m terms of political supremacy, I think that assuredly applies to both sides.
Court packing is a Knee jerk reaction to the Republicans brazenly using their power to deny a valid democratic pick; then force through their own in similar circumstances. It would not be under discussion had McConnel not forced through ACB.
Statehood did DC, PR, expanding voting rights is indeed an attempt to gain power. The same way “anti-voter-fraud” legislation, is almost surgically targeted to make it harder for Democrats to vote.
The Democrats way of gaining political supremacy right now seems to be to a) allow everyone to vote, b) remove barriers to vote, c) enfranchise a bunch of people. D.) prevent people’s vote by being diluted through partisan gerrymandering.
This is not to say that Democrats can’t be voting right hypocrites At times: but the main proposals are basically “if more people can vote we win”, if you’re against that you do have to ask yourself “are we the baddies”?
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@ILikePie5
Great gish gallop deflection!
Recall post 6, this basically explains all you need to know here.
Your defense itself is ludicrous; in that we know aid was withheld, we know it panicked the Ukrainians, and it seems clear that while it’s probably certain they would have eventually got the aid, it’s unclear whether they knew that, and whether that “eventually” would be far enough in the future to harm them.
It’s the same logic as suggesting a death threat wasn’t a death threat if it wasn’t serious.
What you’re doing, though is a common strategy of flat earthers and creationists - and many others who have irrational indefensible beliefs- “if you’re wrong about one thing, you’re wrong about everything, if I’m right about one thing, I’m right about everything”.
Irrational people don’t like conflicting information, as it challenges the thinking they are emotionally dependent upon. As a result, they have defence mechanisms like this, short cuts and strategy’s to deflect and dodge from information they don’t like.
IE: all the critical news is fake. Everyone who says different is lying, etc. And you’re simply trying to find a way to rationalize that knee jerk rejection.
It’s exploited by those in power - to cut off your ability to accept critical information - so that you only digest and accept information that agrees with your position.
So in terms of the news; you simply strip our all context and relevance, somewhat misremember what actually happened; and look at any deviation in accuracy of any kind as total proof they’re lying about everything.
Russia, for example: it has been shown that there was a systematic pattern of dubious and unethical behaviour, as well as unusual and highly suspect interactions between the Trump campaign, and Russia. There have been repeated attempts to illegally obstruct the investigation, and outright lies Teump has told to obfuscate and misrepresent what had happened. Given the behaviour, the media was actually pretty accurate in what they reported, and was largely justified as how they reported it - overly sensational, sure, but not fake by any means. We’ve subsequently found out there were links between The campaign and Russian security (manafort and passing of polling data) Russian hackers and Trump Jr (guccifer DMs), and Trump affiliates and Wikileaks. A bunch of People went to prison.
All of this hugely suspect and unethical behaviour warranted much of the reporting. However these objectively determined facts are now dismissed as all lies, based on the inability to find criminal conspiracy and a suspect dossier which was reported on (but was not a key component of reporting).
HCQ was pretty accurate. Trump touted it as a miracle cure without clear evidence, and despite potentially impactful side effects (which was mostly how it was reported), and it ended up being tested and its efficacy inconclusive.
Even the recent Lafayette square updates is ridiculously revisionist.
Trump have a speech saying “As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults, and the wanton destruction of property.” He talked about the need to dominate the streets: Almost as the square was being violently cleared - and then went to give a photo op in the square that had just been cleared.
The idea that someone in charge of federal troops says that he is sending armed troops to clear the streets “as we speak”, and that as he spoke armed troops violently cleared the streets - and those two things are unrelated - is flat out batsh*t nuts.
The immediate joining of those obvious dots and resulting speculation was completely justified; with the fuller story of Barr’s involvement and the earlier decisions only came out over the next several days. And at that point the speculation of how the attack played, who ordered of out had largely played out.
Now we know exactly what happened, the right wing media is trying to dress up that fairly reasonable speculation given specifics of the events at the time was unreasonable, by exploiting your fading memory of the events, hindsight; and your own confirmation bias, expecting that you’ll just swallow the “media bad” pill, and not think too hard about the detail.
This is not saying the media is perfect; or even unbiased. They are often sensational, jump to conclusions, speculate a lot and assume the worst; but the idea that they are systematically selling a false narrative is unsupported claptrap, sold by a political wing that needs you dismiss any unflattering story.
Even considering all the “errors” above; the media has been broadly accurate with much of its reporting, the worst actions and behaviours are largely uncontested; and for a collection of media dedicated to selling you fake news narrative, the sure as F report a lot of stories, information and narratives that conflict with that narrative. Conflicting positions that don’t seem to factor into any analysis.
At the very worst, the media is making the objectively terrible behaviour of the right look marginally worse.
The dynamic here, is pretty simple.
The left wing media is making Stalin look like Hitler. The right wing media is pointing to the few cases where the left wing media hasn’t accurately portrayed Stalin and scream “LoOk At HoW uNfAiRlY tHeY ArE TrEaTiNg GhAnDi”
Recall post 6, this basically explains all you need to know here.
Your defense itself is ludicrous; in that we know aid was withheld, we know it panicked the Ukrainians, and it seems clear that while it’s probably certain they would have eventually got the aid, it’s unclear whether they knew that, and whether that “eventually” would be far enough in the future to harm them.
It’s the same logic as suggesting a death threat wasn’t a death threat if it wasn’t serious.
What you’re doing, though is a common strategy of flat earthers and creationists - and many others who have irrational indefensible beliefs- “if you’re wrong about one thing, you’re wrong about everything, if I’m right about one thing, I’m right about everything”.
Irrational people don’t like conflicting information, as it challenges the thinking they are emotionally dependent upon. As a result, they have defence mechanisms like this, short cuts and strategy’s to deflect and dodge from information they don’t like.
IE: all the critical news is fake. Everyone who says different is lying, etc. And you’re simply trying to find a way to rationalize that knee jerk rejection.
It’s exploited by those in power - to cut off your ability to accept critical information - so that you only digest and accept information that agrees with your position.
So in terms of the news; you simply strip our all context and relevance, somewhat misremember what actually happened; and look at any deviation in accuracy of any kind as total proof they’re lying about everything.
Russia, for example: it has been shown that there was a systematic pattern of dubious and unethical behaviour, as well as unusual and highly suspect interactions between the Trump campaign, and Russia. There have been repeated attempts to illegally obstruct the investigation, and outright lies Teump has told to obfuscate and misrepresent what had happened. Given the behaviour, the media was actually pretty accurate in what they reported, and was largely justified as how they reported it - overly sensational, sure, but not fake by any means. We’ve subsequently found out there were links between The campaign and Russian security (manafort and passing of polling data) Russian hackers and Trump Jr (guccifer DMs), and Trump affiliates and Wikileaks. A bunch of People went to prison.
All of this hugely suspect and unethical behaviour warranted much of the reporting. However these objectively determined facts are now dismissed as all lies, based on the inability to find criminal conspiracy and a suspect dossier which was reported on (but was not a key component of reporting).
HCQ was pretty accurate. Trump touted it as a miracle cure without clear evidence, and despite potentially impactful side effects (which was mostly how it was reported), and it ended up being tested and its efficacy inconclusive.
Even the recent Lafayette square updates is ridiculously revisionist.
Trump have a speech saying “As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults, and the wanton destruction of property.” He talked about the need to dominate the streets: Almost as the square was being violently cleared - and then went to give a photo op in the square that had just been cleared.
The idea that someone in charge of federal troops says that he is sending armed troops to clear the streets “as we speak”, and that as he spoke armed troops violently cleared the streets - and those two things are unrelated - is flat out batsh*t nuts.
The immediate joining of those obvious dots and resulting speculation was completely justified; with the fuller story of Barr’s involvement and the earlier decisions only came out over the next several days. And at that point the speculation of how the attack played, who ordered of out had largely played out.
Now we know exactly what happened, the right wing media is trying to dress up that fairly reasonable speculation given specifics of the events at the time was unreasonable, by exploiting your fading memory of the events, hindsight; and your own confirmation bias, expecting that you’ll just swallow the “media bad” pill, and not think too hard about the detail.
This is not saying the media is perfect; or even unbiased. They are often sensational, jump to conclusions, speculate a lot and assume the worst; but the idea that they are systematically selling a false narrative is unsupported claptrap, sold by a political wing that needs you dismiss any unflattering story.
Even considering all the “errors” above; the media has been broadly accurate with much of its reporting, the worst actions and behaviours are largely uncontested; and for a collection of media dedicated to selling you fake news narrative, the sure as F report a lot of stories, information and narratives that conflict with that narrative. Conflicting positions that don’t seem to factor into any analysis.
At the very worst, the media is making the objectively terrible behaviour of the right look marginally worse.
The dynamic here, is pretty simple.
The left wing media is making Stalin look like Hitler. The right wing media is pointing to the few cases where the left wing media hasn’t accurately portrayed Stalin and scream “LoOk At HoW uNfAiRlY tHeY ArE TrEaTiNg GhAnDi”
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@Wylted
You’re at least half right.
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@Double_R
Democrats and their media sidekicks swung into a war dance as they convinced themselves that Mulvaney said, “We stopped military aid to Ukraine until they concocted enough dirt to sandbag the Biden campaign.”
While that’s what Trump haters heard, Mulvaney actually said: “Did he [the president] also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that’s it. And that’s why we held up the money.”
While that’s what Trump haters heard, Mulvaney actually said: “Did he [the president] also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that’s it. And that’s why we held up the money.”
Wake up libtards
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@Wylted
Garret Dupre was both smart and an idiot.
I rolled him a few times
I rolled him a few times
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@Double_R
It’s really interesting the little hoops these guys are jumping through in order to not address the key central points.
My favourite part, is that I could automate 95% of the replies in this thread by writing an algorithm that responds with the first paragraph of the first results“[Random Crazy right wing news source] Democrats actually did [claim]”, followed by a randomly selected generic right wing insult.
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@PGA2.0
And you are mostly ignoring the critical points in my arguments with this post.
I’m actually not. As I pointed out; your broad attacks fall down onto the 4 or 5 variations I outlined above. They still do - you’re just asking the same invalid question over and over, without addressing the key points - which I will show at the end.
I’m actually not. As I pointed out; your broad attacks fall down onto the 4 or 5 variations I outlined above. They still do - you’re just asking the same invalid question over and over, without addressing the key points - which I will show at the end.
Your view is similar to this one.
You're then begging the question of why your definition of harm is the truth
“Does the majority make right? Is that your basis? If there is nothing the moral good is fixed to, then it is all relative.”
[strawman] imagine my surprise after explaining what morality is in detail, after repeatedly and explicitly stating that there is no objective moral standard, good and bad is subjective: that you come back and argue a second time that what I’m arguing does not work as an objective system.
Misrepresenting my position once can be an accident; doing so twice after explicitly being corrected suggests dishonesty.
Please review bullet #2 in the above post.
To be explicitly clear for a third time: I am not advocating any framework, I am not justifying moral decisions, I am not trying to provide a definition of “best” - I can’t, best is subjective, morality is subjective.
I am providing an objective imperative for why morality would necessarily exist as we currently experience in evolved organisms such as ourselves in order to be successful as a group.
I could make a similar argument for fear: harm to individuals from the environment or other organisms is an objective imperative that would necessitate the evolution of fear. It explains what we experience as fear, and why we are scared of certain things: but that argument is making no judgements about whether clowns or grass snakes are objectively scary.
As such, the overriding majority of your contention here is simply irrelevant as you’re attacking an argument I’m not making. I have clipped out all parts of your reply here that are predicated on this strawman.
“This paragraph begs many questions, one of which is the agency for acquiring the desire or ability to survive.”
Note: you mean “raises the question”. “Begging the question means the conclusion of an argument is being assumed in the premise” as none of the things you raise are part of my conclusion, there is no question to beg.
“natural selection has no ability and no personal traits, yet evolutionists give it all sorts, such as needs, as you did above.”
[Strawman]: evolution has no traits, no agency, no motivation: my argument neither depends, requires or argues it does. You’re taking the metaphors I use to convey the process, applying them literally, then attacking this literal interpretation.
Organisms reproduce with changes that effect the subsequent generations ability to reproduce in their current environment. As a result, while mutations are random, there is a non-random pruning of these changes that causes a statistical bias towards acquiring traits that improve reproductive success over multiple generations. This is often summarized as evolution “causing” things, because it’s simply easier to describe that way.
That you have attacked the way I have conveyed evolution, rather than what I am conveying; when you clearly have some understanding of how the process is supposed to work can only interpreted as disingenuous.
Again, things just happen, and why you think anything would be sustained by blind chance happenstance is beyond me.
[argument from incredulity] I have added a fairly succinct explanation above. Indeed, evolution itself is best described as a mechanism by which random chance with non random pruning can lead to non random outcomes. (But for some strange regions no one ever talks about the non-random aspects of evolution)
The part about exhibiting a conscience without first the existence of God is pure speculation in the evolutionary chain
How do you get morals from the way one biological bag of atoms reacts as opposed to another?
[Argument from incredulity] My first reply, and the post you are replying to explicitly explains how. Your incredulity is not a valid argument.
My conclusion is based on a variety of observed facts, which I have brought together using a logical argument, it’s self consistent, it has extraordinary explanatory power, is consistent with processes such as evolution that we can observe.
So it’s not really speculation as much as informed hypothesis, that is able to fully explain reality.
This is actually almost identical to what you’re doing: you’re using the facts and logic to try and extrapolate an explanation; so your position is literally no better.
Indeed, your position has no actual explanatory power (it’s mostly a tautology - god made morality because god needed to make morality), it isn’t predicated in any physical observable processes and, as I showed in my post above - isn’t even self consistent.
The idea that my explanation can’t be accepted because it’s speculative, and yet yours is fine whilst being no better, is [hypocritical].
Once again, I invite you to make sense of morality without an actual objective.
I’ve done that twice. That morality is a subjective evolved response that allows us to learn and respond to various anti-group behaviour; makes sense of what we experience as morality.
It allows us explain - objectively A why we have morals, it explains why we experience them the way we do, it explains the moral zeitgeist; it explains how Nazis can be done with the holocaust; why people’s moral judgements change dependent on their group, and whether the person being harmed is in or out of the group.
Indeed, a subjective evolved morality is the only way to make sense of what we experience; as all objective explanations end up being incoherent to some degree.
What you’re doing is [Begging the question] - presupposing that morality must be describable objectively is assuming your own conclusion.
You go on about this for many paragraphs. Bullet 2 in my above covers this in its entirety.
It allows us explain - objectively A why we have morals, it explains why we experience them the way we do, it explains the moral zeitgeist; it explains how Nazis can be done with the holocaust; why people’s moral judgements change dependent on their group, and whether the person being harmed is in or out of the group.
Indeed, a subjective evolved morality is the only way to make sense of what we experience; as all objective explanations end up being incoherent to some degree.
What you’re doing is [Begging the question] - presupposing that morality must be describable objectively is assuming your own conclusion.
You go on about this for many paragraphs. Bullet 2 in my above covers this in its entirety.
My thought about your speculation on the existence of God:
To deny God, you must first have a God (the irony: you can't deny God without first affirming Him).
[non sequitor] to deny god you must first have a description or concept of God. You don’t have to affirm it.
To deny Darth Vader exists you do not have to affirm him.
My whole take is that your philosophy of life, your worldview, is ultimately meaningless. Naturalism is nihilistic, yet you want things to matter.
Let’s ignore the wild [strawman] introduced by you putting several paragraphs worth of words in my mouth.
You’re making the same class of error I pointed out in #1 in my previous post: Confusing subjective with not existing.
Humanity could wink out of existence tomorrow. That can can both matter to me, and to us, but not matter at all in the universal scale of things. A dollar has no intrinsic and objective value; but it does to us.
[a] The [objective moral imperative] is from a naturalistic viewpoint. That is one way to examine existence but not morality.
[argument by assertion \ no true Scotsman] simply saying I’m wrong and that what I’m describing is not true morality, is fallacious.
"An objective morality would be [i] one everyone could agree on, anyone, regardless of culture or belief can validate is correct and true, and can be deduced independently without belief, preference; or assertion."
[i] Not quite. An objective morality would be one that existed whether or not we agree with it that IS true.
This is logically incoherent with everything you’ve said up to this point.
If Good and bad were objective, they would exist outside of our minds and our opinions, it would be a real thing - like trees or fusion. True simply means “in accordance with reality.”, so by definition of morality could be shown to be objective if would be shown to be true.
Now, to show it’s objective; you can’t rely on a your belief in a book, faith, trust: that causes that morality to anchor its truth in your opinion. We have to tether morality to something outside our human opinion or thought: IE: if morality were objective, we would be able to derive it without the use of books or faith, and it would be possible to independently validate it without using any of your opinions or assumptions. That’s what being objective entails.
If you can’t do that; then all you have is loud assertions that it’s is objective; but it’s really your brain that is making your morality real - and is thus is not objective.
So by definition all the things I said must be true of an objective morality: and given that to prove it exists would intrinsically be demonstrating it true - it’s not unreasonable that it would be like other incontrovertible facts - that are just absorbed in to general consciousness and assumed true - like the earth being spherical, atoms and Germs existing. Obviously not precluding crazies - but if proven real - there would not be any source of serious contention.
This is completely refuted by the utter sh*tshow of moral disagreement at every level by everyone - including in the same faith believing the same thing. This is covered in my previous posts.
How does a subjective, relative human being independently verify and deduce objective morality? It would have to be revealed by a necessary omniscient.....
[argument by assertion] What a load of asserted nonsense; no rationalization, no logic, no justification; just assertion.
Why could we not verify morality the same way we can validate electricity? Or mathematics? Or the existence of other planets? There is literally no rational justification for suggesting we need a deity to reveal objective morality should it exist.
Worse, ignoring my previous posts (that it would still be subjective), if a deity came and revealed morality to us - you may have a point.
You’re arguing that this happened, but in reality you simply have a book that purports it happened and for which you believe. This kinda sets up a [circular argument] that you use the existence of objective morality to support the existence of your deity, but at the same time you use your deity to justify the existence of objective morality.
[c] Not a shred of evidence for such wildly speculative assertions (as if they could deduce such things).
I actually explained why in the post you’re replying to.
The evolutionary imperative is objectively determinable - meaning any amoral analysis of human evolution would recognize that there is a selective pressure to generate some constraining influence: and the nature of that influence, how it would appear, and how it would work could largely be deduced from analysis objectively.
This is as opposed to your wild speculation above.
Despite all the fallacies above what is interesting is what you didn’t argue:
- You made no attempt to try and contrast reality with what I’m proposing. (Ie: show where my argument deviates from what we can both agree is real)
- you made no attempt to demonstrate why there must be an absolute Good, or a best.
- You made no attempt to assess or critique the evolutionary explanation in terms of known evolutionary mechanisms. (IE: show my argument is inconsistent)
Make no mistake. Your rebuttal is like arguing nuclear physics is false, without ever talking about atoms; without talking about what nuclear physics predicts or calculates; simply that it cannot explain an effect you can’t even show even exists.
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RuvDraba
That guy steamrolled creationists. By that I mean, slowly, inexorably, methodically, patiently advanced into their arguments, crushing them one line at a time.
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@Double_R
so it seems that if you ever want to rob a bank in a red state: simply dress yourself in a first principles proof of why something Trump did was objectively bad.
Not one f**ker will ever acknowledge your existence.
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@Double_R
I love the weaponized hypocrisy here. If you are ever interested in evolution, watch the right wing ecosystem when Trump, or some related aspect key to their worldview is objectively shown to be terrible.
What you see, is experimentation with different explanations that get culled down based on survival of the fittest until the ecosystem settles on the bullet points that allows the sheep to simply shout down anyone without thinking about it too hard. It’s like argument short cuts; the mental equivalent of a chant : you don’t have to think about it, if anyone disagrees, just throw out the bullet point.
The prime example is here, you can see repeatedly in this thread - that it’s okay to investigate corruption, indeed it’s a duty. Unless your Barrack Obama - in which case it’s the biggest abuse of power in history (of course it didn’t really happen that way but, you know, facts) - hence the weaponized hypocrisy.
The biggest issues with this interpretation is simple, but all avoided by supporters looking for any defense they can rationalize themselves and who don’t want to think too hard about it.
What you see, is experimentation with different explanations that get culled down based on survival of the fittest until the ecosystem settles on the bullet points that allows the sheep to simply shout down anyone without thinking about it too hard. It’s like argument short cuts; the mental equivalent of a chant : you don’t have to think about it, if anyone disagrees, just throw out the bullet point.
The prime example is here, you can see repeatedly in this thread - that it’s okay to investigate corruption, indeed it’s a duty. Unless your Barrack Obama - in which case it’s the biggest abuse of power in history (of course it didn’t really happen that way but, you know, facts) - hence the weaponized hypocrisy.
The biggest issues with this interpretation is simple, but all avoided by supporters looking for any defense they can rationalize themselves and who don’t want to think too hard about it.
It is of course, a load of horsesh*t.
The President isn’t and shouldn’t be, responsible for investigating people at all - and sure as f**k shouldn’t be responsible for investigating his opponents in any scenario.
Why? Well because you cannot tell whether the motivation is to get to the truth, or the motivation is to harm is opponent.
Actually, that’s not entirely true - you can often tell when it’s clearly one or the other:
For example; if this was driven by the justice department requests, the FBI, and more information was needed, and this was the only way in which the president was involved and he was reluctant because of how it was look, but was told the only way to get at the truth was to ask the Ukrainians to assist the investigation, and he made clear he only wanted them to assist the investigation: then you could possibly make this claim.
But that’s obviously not the case for a variety of reasons - not least that the justice department were not touching it with a barge pole, the person making the deal was Trumps personal lawyer, and the goal being requested was not to launch an investigation, or to ensure the facts came out - but to publicly announce that there was an investigation.
And the fact that the scheme was so legit, so valid and such a necessary investigation that the whole thing was shut down the moment anyone blew the whistle.
The real bottom line here, is that if Trumps interest was simply harming Joe Biden : then leveraging his power as president with an ally to ensure political harm to an opponent - is a clear cut definitive abuse of power. Now; you can probably forgive some things, shifting resources around to harm a governor - they would be bad; but in this case it specifically risked the US relationship with another country and it’s global strategic interests in order to try and harm a political opponent. That’s pretty clear cut.
So let’s draw a scale of 1-10 here between 1 being 100% legit - and 10 being total corrupt abuse of power.
At 1, you have the president simply stating to his justice department “do whatever you think is good, keep me informed, but I can’t be involved due to the clear conflict of interest.”
At 10? That would involve explicit pressure outside of formal channels (check), threats (check) personal involvement (check), use of extra governmental actors linked to the president rather than formal staff (check), not using the FBI and investigatory staff to properly check it (check), fixating on the harming action rather than investigating crimes (check), subsequent cover up when discovered (check), personal recriminations (check), everyone at every level raising alarm bells that if looked like a drug deal (check).
There’s not many ways this could look more obviously like a politician hit through an abuse of power, it’s like at a 9.5. On a scale of 1-10 for clear cut nefarious actions.
There doesn’t seem to have been a substantial investigation into the original claims, at least we have not heard anything about one (presuming by the logic that it would be the presidents duty to tell us one existed), Trumps own security services have said many of the key claims are false - and has at the time, the senate has outlined that none of Biden’s actions appear at odds with US interests at the time (that’s the second most laughable claim about the Ukraine prosecutor nonsense), indeed, the only “evidence” of any wrong doing at all, were a couple of emails on a laptop that was magically found by the same guy implicated in the same political hit of the same person for the same thing and written by journalists who declined to put their name on the story...
So in terms of everyone’s actions before and since - it gives all the hall marks of this just being made up claims backed up by to make an opponent look bad.
Saying that, I actually largely agree - in that the Ukraine scandal was only the third, or forty worst abuse of power and violation of oath of office in the one term. But hey - that’s just me.
If this was Barrack Obama, he would have been impeached probably six times by a Republican senate and congress and I suspect is likely have been removed 5 of those times.
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@Timid8967
That website has come up with the longes possible way of saying “we’re begging the question”
Any discussion on the universe is predicated on two assumptions: reality exists and we are able reason about it.
If both those two things are true presuppositionalism is false. If either of them ate false a then presuppositionalism is false.
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@n8nrgmi
Time is a dimension, it’s is not really significantly different in nature from any of our other dimensions.
The only aspect that makes time different from length, is that entropy increases with time.
The key to understanding how we perceive time is In asking the question - why can’t you remember things that haven’t happened yet?
At the time an event occurs your brain creates order in the universe to encode the memory in your neurons, but adds More disorder from expending energy. If this encoding went backwards in time, then the order would be present, but the disorder would not; violating the second order of thermodynamics.
So it’s this entropic principle (as someone mentioned) that governs our perception of time as a linear set of events - when really its not much different from length.
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@zedvictor4
Please stop saying two things that are fundamentally and inherently different things boil down to semantics.
Science works on levels of confidence - not absolutes. No one can say what definitely happened, only give you a level of confidence - based on evidence that a thing happened.
In this respect - science does not assert that any specific thing definitely happened - so the original question you asked is nonsensical.
In terms of speculation - almost all definition specify that speculation is conjecture that is not supported by firm evidence. Colloquially it’s used to mean spitballing or guessing solutions
Some scientific theories may very well have started off as the latter; and the progressed to the first once the idea was self consistent and could not be ruled out.
But those things are not “believed” or assigned a level of any confidence.
However, theories like the Big Bang - or the acceptance that there is some form of dark matter and dark energy in the cosmos is based on actual firm evidence, that confirms the claim. Thus is absolutely not speculation.
Perhaps you are confused at the difference between confidence and certainty - and are assuming that if one is merely confident then the reason for that confidence is speculation.
That’s just silly: if one has firm evidence that something is probably true; then suggesting it is probably true is not speculative any more. And in that respect - no accepted theory (explanations so well supported by data that we can claim that they’re almost certainly true) can be considered speculation.
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@Athias
Let me address the entirety of your argument in one go, disjointed scattershot rebuttals that do not tie things back to a central premise or point drive arguments off the rails by introducing exponential numbers of points as the replies proceed.
Of course physical quantity is objective:
You have five fingers on one hand: the word/number is a description of a physical state - one that can be objectively determined independently by all observers. The state is objectively distinct from having 4,3,2 or 1 finger.
So in this respect physical quantity refers to the objective differences between distinct objective physical states - and is thus objective.
If numbers and physical quantities weren’t objective, then we could change the logic of maths change numbers arbitrarily on a whim if we do chose (this is exactly what you’re argument implies and, even were it not - would be a straw man not a non-sequitur FYI).
As I said, the only way to do that would be to untether maths from the objective thing it references.
For example; I can arbitrarily decide that 11 now means 5: and vice versa, but that simply changes the physical reference of the symbols; and no amount of numeric adjustment or redefinition would cause you to grow or lose fingers.
I can also convey the new meaning of 11 to someone else; because it is objectively reference to something outside my mind; and has that to validate any maths I use.
As these are objective, I could say 1 + 11 = 6; if you knew the physical quantities I was referring to; you could derive that relationship by placing stones - because it’s based on the real world. If you said green + purple = orange - that’s unanchored in the real world; and while I could learn the asserted logic from you, unless it’s tied back to something physical - it’s subjective: the association between operands is in your hand, and not derivable from reality.
It’s that anchoring, and the derivation from external things that allows you to determine that if is objective: “not dependent on the mind for existence; actual”.
As I showed, by placing stones, you can demonstrate the relationship between 1, 5 and 6 using the real world; but cannot do so with your example of colour. That demonstrates the difference between an objective and subjective conclusion.
I explained this by showing you need not use numbers, but can use physical objects in their place - I will note you did not challenge this; but instead implied that because I didn’t do so in the following sentence, I can’t.
That’s a particularly poor argument; as if let’s you suggest I can’t represent 2 or 6 with physical items without actually explicitly stating it and looking silly if I did (number of feet, number of protons in a carbon atom.)
The real issue objection appears as if it’s just asinine word play. Language is often abstract and arbitrary - and its as if you’re confusing the arbitrary nature with the things it represents being subjective too.
Based on what you implied in your very first reply on this thread, what you’re trying to show is:
P1: Science is only valid if it depends on objective information.
P2:science doesn’t not depend on objective information.
C: science is invalid.
But you seem to be equivocating the definition of objective between P1, and P2.
I find this is a common argumentative tactic: to bury a fallacy deep in layers of abstraction in order to obfuscate where it is.
So to prevent equivocation; I can be more explicit, by clarifying exactly what objective means in P1 based upon why an objective basis makes science valid: what about objective things is it that drives the validity of science.
So let’s skip explicit definitions and approach the issue functionally.
We all have to start with two basic assumptions - that we’re all experiencing the same reality and that reasoning about that reality is valid.
This is to say that we’re both here talking to each other and basic stuff like true != false. Without making those two assumptions, there is no basis to have a conversation about anything; so they’re pretty fair.
Making these assumptions : To determine what is true - to make true claims about realty, we need the ability to correctly analyze reality as it is, without error.
If our inputs and quality of processing has errors - we cannot rely on the output to be true.
So to get at the truth, we have to ensure that we have removed error from our inputs and processing.
Because we can only calibrate ourselves using ourselves - we can’t really ever determine what is true, we can only tell what is true having nominally ruled out specific errors.
The more errors you can rule out, the more confident that your output is true.
This brings us back to science - and “objectivity” that we’re talking about.
Science of all forms is at its simplest a way we have figured out for eliminating as many errors as we can from our thinking and our interpretation of reality to derive an accurate description of reality.
The inputs have to come from reality, the output has to be consistent with the inputs and itself. If a measurement contradicts the output, or there is an inconsistency; we can presume an error has occurred and needs to be tracked down. The error may be solved, or may cause the output to be discarded.
We apply Occam’s razor - limiting assumptions in order to minimize points of failure and number of places we could be wrong (more assumptions - more potential of being wrong)
We experiment - we use the output to predict inputs we haven’t seen, and to confirm inputs match what is expected. This is probably the most important - an explanation may require additional things to be true or false; if we find this is truly the case it’s more likely to be because the explanation is accurate rather than coincidentally correct.
If we cannot find and way to check whether the output is true or false; we discard it - as we can’t tell whether it is in error or not.
We can even validate whether the process works; the process allows us to exploit the world; split the atom, cure illness, etc; that our descriptions of the world lead to practical application raise confidence in the accuracy of those descriptions. Why should a pressurized water reactor work so consistently if the description of the physics is incorrect?
But, a big element of where we remove error; is by using objective information; or to be more specific - information that can be independently derived and validated from external things, without depending on our mind.
People lie, people are mistaken, people are deluded, mislead, etc - the source of input data cannot come from someone’s mind and be assumed to be without error. If we cannot tie inputs to reality, it cannot be expected that the output reflects reality. Is the observation real, a fluke, or a delusion: the best way to have confidence in that is to have multiple people observing it; or agree on what is being observed.
We have to agree on meaning - what is a meter, what is a second, a gram, what is 5: (which is the error in your last argument, I can no more tell you how much 5 weighs than I can tell you how many meters a second is; they’re all descriptions of different things).
As long as anchored together the real world; even if it’s literally a yard stick in a vault that people use to cordon are ans bade a distance - it’s still objective as it can be tied to something physical: unlike, say, how long is a piece of string.
If we’re all looking at the same thing, measuring the same aspect of reality, and removing our preference, feelings, and opinions and baselines to what we observe, we are minimizing our brains as a source of individual input error.
It is in this vein, that your objections, as the tie back to science,maths and objective processes is largely irrelevant.
As long as things are anchored in something physically measurable, can be agreed by al observers, and all relationships are derivable at their base from physical measurements (as most maths is) - that’s the part of objective facts that make science valid.
So in this respect, even though you’re clearly wrong in your interpretation of what is objective and not; even were we to accept your implicit interpretation, it doesn’t even matter; as all the things we’re talking about clearly meet the functional requirements to minimize error and improve confidence in conclusions by removing our brain as an input - the reason these things are used to produce valid results.
Incidentally, though it’s another conversation: it’s what makes theism so bad - the lack of any significant error correction and unchallengeable data - meaning that if you’re wrong - you cannot self correct and not be wrong any more.
Of course physical quantity is objective:
You have five fingers on one hand: the word/number is a description of a physical state - one that can be objectively determined independently by all observers. The state is objectively distinct from having 4,3,2 or 1 finger.
So in this respect physical quantity refers to the objective differences between distinct objective physical states - and is thus objective.
If numbers and physical quantities weren’t objective, then we could change the logic of maths change numbers arbitrarily on a whim if we do chose (this is exactly what you’re argument implies and, even were it not - would be a straw man not a non-sequitur FYI).
As I said, the only way to do that would be to untether maths from the objective thing it references.
For example; I can arbitrarily decide that 11 now means 5: and vice versa, but that simply changes the physical reference of the symbols; and no amount of numeric adjustment or redefinition would cause you to grow or lose fingers.
I can also convey the new meaning of 11 to someone else; because it is objectively reference to something outside my mind; and has that to validate any maths I use.
As these are objective, I could say 1 + 11 = 6; if you knew the physical quantities I was referring to; you could derive that relationship by placing stones - because it’s based on the real world. If you said green + purple = orange - that’s unanchored in the real world; and while I could learn the asserted logic from you, unless it’s tied back to something physical - it’s subjective: the association between operands is in your hand, and not derivable from reality.
It’s that anchoring, and the derivation from external things that allows you to determine that if is objective: “not dependent on the mind for existence; actual”.
As I showed, by placing stones, you can demonstrate the relationship between 1, 5 and 6 using the real world; but cannot do so with your example of colour. That demonstrates the difference between an objective and subjective conclusion.
I explained this by showing you need not use numbers, but can use physical objects in their place - I will note you did not challenge this; but instead implied that because I didn’t do so in the following sentence, I can’t.
That’s a particularly poor argument; as if let’s you suggest I can’t represent 2 or 6 with physical items without actually explicitly stating it and looking silly if I did (number of feet, number of protons in a carbon atom.)
The real issue objection appears as if it’s just asinine word play. Language is often abstract and arbitrary - and its as if you’re confusing the arbitrary nature with the things it represents being subjective too.
Based on what you implied in your very first reply on this thread, what you’re trying to show is:
P1: Science is only valid if it depends on objective information.
P2:science doesn’t not depend on objective information.
C: science is invalid.
But you seem to be equivocating the definition of objective between P1, and P2.
I find this is a common argumentative tactic: to bury a fallacy deep in layers of abstraction in order to obfuscate where it is.
So to prevent equivocation; I can be more explicit, by clarifying exactly what objective means in P1 based upon why an objective basis makes science valid: what about objective things is it that drives the validity of science.
So let’s skip explicit definitions and approach the issue functionally.
We all have to start with two basic assumptions - that we’re all experiencing the same reality and that reasoning about that reality is valid.
This is to say that we’re both here talking to each other and basic stuff like true != false. Without making those two assumptions, there is no basis to have a conversation about anything; so they’re pretty fair.
Making these assumptions : To determine what is true - to make true claims about realty, we need the ability to correctly analyze reality as it is, without error.
If our inputs and quality of processing has errors - we cannot rely on the output to be true.
So to get at the truth, we have to ensure that we have removed error from our inputs and processing.
Because we can only calibrate ourselves using ourselves - we can’t really ever determine what is true, we can only tell what is true having nominally ruled out specific errors.
The more errors you can rule out, the more confident that your output is true.
This brings us back to science - and “objectivity” that we’re talking about.
Science of all forms is at its simplest a way we have figured out for eliminating as many errors as we can from our thinking and our interpretation of reality to derive an accurate description of reality.
The inputs have to come from reality, the output has to be consistent with the inputs and itself. If a measurement contradicts the output, or there is an inconsistency; we can presume an error has occurred and needs to be tracked down. The error may be solved, or may cause the output to be discarded.
We apply Occam’s razor - limiting assumptions in order to minimize points of failure and number of places we could be wrong (more assumptions - more potential of being wrong)
We experiment - we use the output to predict inputs we haven’t seen, and to confirm inputs match what is expected. This is probably the most important - an explanation may require additional things to be true or false; if we find this is truly the case it’s more likely to be because the explanation is accurate rather than coincidentally correct.
If we cannot find and way to check whether the output is true or false; we discard it - as we can’t tell whether it is in error or not.
We can even validate whether the process works; the process allows us to exploit the world; split the atom, cure illness, etc; that our descriptions of the world lead to practical application raise confidence in the accuracy of those descriptions. Why should a pressurized water reactor work so consistently if the description of the physics is incorrect?
But, a big element of where we remove error; is by using objective information; or to be more specific - information that can be independently derived and validated from external things, without depending on our mind.
People lie, people are mistaken, people are deluded, mislead, etc - the source of input data cannot come from someone’s mind and be assumed to be without error. If we cannot tie inputs to reality, it cannot be expected that the output reflects reality. Is the observation real, a fluke, or a delusion: the best way to have confidence in that is to have multiple people observing it; or agree on what is being observed.
We have to agree on meaning - what is a meter, what is a second, a gram, what is 5: (which is the error in your last argument, I can no more tell you how much 5 weighs than I can tell you how many meters a second is; they’re all descriptions of different things).
As long as anchored together the real world; even if it’s literally a yard stick in a vault that people use to cordon are ans bade a distance - it’s still objective as it can be tied to something physical: unlike, say, how long is a piece of string.
If we’re all looking at the same thing, measuring the same aspect of reality, and removing our preference, feelings, and opinions and baselines to what we observe, we are minimizing our brains as a source of individual input error.
It is in this vein, that your objections, as the tie back to science,maths and objective processes is largely irrelevant.
As long as things are anchored in something physically measurable, can be agreed by al observers, and all relationships are derivable at their base from physical measurements (as most maths is) - that’s the part of objective facts that make science valid.
So in this respect, even though you’re clearly wrong in your interpretation of what is objective and not; even were we to accept your implicit interpretation, it doesn’t even matter; as all the things we’re talking about clearly meet the functional requirements to minimize error and improve confidence in conclusions by removing our brain as an input - the reason these things are used to produce valid results.
Incidentally, though it’s another conversation: it’s what makes theism so bad - the lack of any significant error correction and unchallengeable data - meaning that if you’re wrong - you cannot self correct and not be wrong any more.
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@Fruit_Inspector
1.) Entering into a conversation (on a debate forum) and making claims that you have no intent of defending - and only admitting it after being called out multiple times - whilst also asking questions to make others defend theirs - is intrinsically dishonest.
Ridiculing aspects of science, or various theories; then declaring that you will not defend that ridicule or consider a defence of them - is also intellectually dishonest.
2.) naturalism - You are conflating validity with impact. Indeed, your conflating a lot of things.
The premise of my argument is that naturalism, science and technology relies upon the premise of objective evidence, and provable claims being the best way of determining truth.
We can validate this, from how this process has allowed us to exploit how the world works in a way that faith has not.
We can harness the atom, not because men have “understood the physical world”, but because first newton derived laws of physics that were proven based on objective measurable evidence; Einstein overwrote this with relativity based upon objective measurable evidence, and atomic behaviour was derived based on objective measurable evidence; and all of this was done under the pretence that there is a naturalistic, determinable mechanism by which things we see happen.
From that application of objective evidence, we can derive how the world works; and we can have confidence that it is true, as we are able to exploit it. If E != mc^2, is our explanations were not true - then there is no reason to expect nuclear reactors to work.
The point is, that people are asserting that faith, somehow, derives how the world works too - and yet provides no objective means of exploiting anything.
A few individuals who tested hypotheses that a given illness conveys immunity to another; then provided an objective measurable proof of it subsequently lead to the complete or near complete eradication of multiple diseases that have killed billions of people.
How many diseases has prayer eradicated? If Jon snow had prayed instead of removing a pump handle, how many people would have ended up dying from cholera?
That’s the difference here: assuming the way the world works is physical only allows us to explain the world and solve problems - assuming the supernatural exists - has not solved anything (and indeed has stood in the way)
Moralistic fallacy aside, vaccination, modern medicine, the haber process, and others have each individually saved more lives than all wars combined.
Saying that, it’s a red herring; whether you like the outcome or not, it’s impossible to deny that the application of naturalism has lead to more objectively true understanding of our reality in 300 years than faith has done in the last 10,000.
3.) Justified trust.
If you believe something is true, is it really true, or just your brain tricking you into believing is is true?
Justified trust is trust which everyone can confirm for themselves is true to the degree the trust is held; we don’t have to rely on someone asserting it is true, or solely on our faulty brains to convince us - as you are doing.
The reality is, that religious beliefs are not objectively justifiable - if they were, there’d be a single universal religion that almost everyone would believe - and the very concept of faith would not exist.
Faith - the conviction of trust you have, is not justifiable, not because I simply disagree - but because of all inherently boils down to things you have to simply believe as true without being able to objectively show them in a way that anyone can confirm.
Take all your assertions, you can’t objectively show that we’re more than simply clumps of matter, you can’t show that the level of complexity necessities a designer - leave alone a god. That conclusion is not arrived at independently or objectively - but is inherently influenced by the belief in God you’re using it to justify.
I don’t believe without reason that we’re just clumps of matter - I trust based on the objective facts that treating ourselves as clumps of matter has led to the advent of modern medicine; and the distinct absence of evidence to the contrary - and all attempts to verify whether we are something more generally fail - though obviously this could change with new evidence.
The irony here, which is not lost on me, is that I am arguing that faith is a form of denial - belief in the absence of facts - and then maintained by ignoring contrary arguments and facts.
The way you defend your faith, is by just asserting you have the truth over and over again, with no independent facts - and then systematically ignoring all contrary arguments and facts.
The irony here is beautiful - in that the way you are defending your faith here is doing EXACTLY what I specified faith is in my argument.
4.) Drops
Drop 1: I explained this in the previous post, explaining the specifics of your behaviour that made it dishonest; you failed to address this.
Drop 2. In your previous posts, you accused me of misdefining faith, then came up with your own definition, I pointed out that you definition and my definition are the same thing - meaning that I was never misdefining it.
Ridiculing aspects of science, or various theories; then declaring that you will not defend that ridicule or consider a defence of them - is also intellectually dishonest.
2.) naturalism - You are conflating validity with impact. Indeed, your conflating a lot of things.
The premise of my argument is that naturalism, science and technology relies upon the premise of objective evidence, and provable claims being the best way of determining truth.
We can validate this, from how this process has allowed us to exploit how the world works in a way that faith has not.
We can harness the atom, not because men have “understood the physical world”, but because first newton derived laws of physics that were proven based on objective measurable evidence; Einstein overwrote this with relativity based upon objective measurable evidence, and atomic behaviour was derived based on objective measurable evidence; and all of this was done under the pretence that there is a naturalistic, determinable mechanism by which things we see happen.
From that application of objective evidence, we can derive how the world works; and we can have confidence that it is true, as we are able to exploit it. If E != mc^2, is our explanations were not true - then there is no reason to expect nuclear reactors to work.
The point is, that people are asserting that faith, somehow, derives how the world works too - and yet provides no objective means of exploiting anything.
A few individuals who tested hypotheses that a given illness conveys immunity to another; then provided an objective measurable proof of it subsequently lead to the complete or near complete eradication of multiple diseases that have killed billions of people.
How many diseases has prayer eradicated? If Jon snow had prayed instead of removing a pump handle, how many people would have ended up dying from cholera?
That’s the difference here: assuming the way the world works is physical only allows us to explain the world and solve problems - assuming the supernatural exists - has not solved anything (and indeed has stood in the way)
Moralistic fallacy aside, vaccination, modern medicine, the haber process, and others have each individually saved more lives than all wars combined.
Saying that, it’s a red herring; whether you like the outcome or not, it’s impossible to deny that the application of naturalism has lead to more objectively true understanding of our reality in 300 years than faith has done in the last 10,000.
3.) Justified trust.
If you believe something is true, is it really true, or just your brain tricking you into believing is is true?
Justified trust is trust which everyone can confirm for themselves is true to the degree the trust is held; we don’t have to rely on someone asserting it is true, or solely on our faulty brains to convince us - as you are doing.
The reality is, that religious beliefs are not objectively justifiable - if they were, there’d be a single universal religion that almost everyone would believe - and the very concept of faith would not exist.
Faith - the conviction of trust you have, is not justifiable, not because I simply disagree - but because of all inherently boils down to things you have to simply believe as true without being able to objectively show them in a way that anyone can confirm.
Take all your assertions, you can’t objectively show that we’re more than simply clumps of matter, you can’t show that the level of complexity necessities a designer - leave alone a god. That conclusion is not arrived at independently or objectively - but is inherently influenced by the belief in God you’re using it to justify.
I don’t believe without reason that we’re just clumps of matter - I trust based on the objective facts that treating ourselves as clumps of matter has led to the advent of modern medicine; and the distinct absence of evidence to the contrary - and all attempts to verify whether we are something more generally fail - though obviously this could change with new evidence.
The irony here, which is not lost on me, is that I am arguing that faith is a form of denial - belief in the absence of facts - and then maintained by ignoring contrary arguments and facts.
The way you defend your faith, is by just asserting you have the truth over and over again, with no independent facts - and then systematically ignoring all contrary arguments and facts.
The irony here is beautiful - in that the way you are defending your faith here is doing EXACTLY what I specified faith is in my argument.
4.) Drops
Drop 1: I explained this in the previous post, explaining the specifics of your behaviour that made it dishonest; you failed to address this.
Drop 2. In your previous posts, you accused me of misdefining faith, then came up with your own definition, I pointed out that you definition and my definition are the same thing - meaning that I was never misdefining it.
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@Athias
You need not explain to me Mathematics. I know what it is. And what you've described does not inform objectivity; what you've described informs logic.
That is, "abstract silliness" does not "allow" one to derive xxxxx out of adding xx and xx because xx +xx = xxxx is logically necessary (not objective = independent of qualia.) One could attempt to derive the number five from adding two and two, but that would be inconsistent with the abstract's logic. It would be inconsistent with the accepted standard. And as I informed DoubleR, objectivity =/= consensus.
Physical quantities are objective. There relationships are objective and can be described externally to maths by referencing various Physical quantities alone. I don’t have to use numbers, I can use things like, the number of fingers a typical human has, or eyes (assuming you’re not disfigured in some way); I can describe pythagorous theory by drawing two squares and 6 triangles.
“The abstracts logic” - the logical rules of maths - are derived from Objective observable physical relationships.
2+2=4 not because of an arbitrary subjective whim, but because that’s the relationship between physical quantities.
If you marked a finger for each ear and eye you have, one hand would be unmarked, and you would have a number of fingers equal to the number of heads you have unmarked on the other.
The relationship is objective; and the basis of mathematical logic is describing that objective relationship.
As maths is describing objective things the logic of maths is objectively verifiable and independently validatable.
Thus it is objective - not consensus, whatever that means - 2+2=4 not because everyone says so, but because it’s describing an objective physical relationship.
If this standard is overhauled, then it's very possible that 2+2=5. Because numbers are just forms.
Maths is at its basic a logical description of the relationships between objective physical quantities
“Is this standard is overhauled”, basically means if you made maths not maths any more. maths is based on an objective standard ; the only way to overhaul that standard, is to make It not objective any more: you have to remove the very thing that makes mathematics objective.
As this seems to be the basis for you claiming that maths is not objective - your argument boils down to saying that maths is not objective, because if you made it not objective, it’s not objective.
That’s just absurd.
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@Athias
And, you used an inept example. "2+2=4" is NOT objective. Not even in the slightest. Mathematics, and by extension arithmetic, is abstract. Numbers are abstract. They are neither found in nature, nor independent of qualia. It's akin to stating: red + blue = purple. Numbers are assigned forms.
If you have this number of penguins x x and they meet this number of penguins x x them there will be this many penguins x x x x.
That x x is demoted as 2, and x x x x is demoted as 4 is not abstract, but semantics. The physical quantity they are expressing is still a physical quantity; with no amount of abstract silliness will ever allow you to successfully make
x x x x x out of adding x x and x x.
While mathematical operations often get abstract, like a Laplace transform, mathematics is inherently falls down to a descriptive system of the physical world that may differ in representation (such as symbols used, or numeric base), but isn’t able to manifestly change what is being described.
The word of digits of pi, or prime numbers are a mathematical description of an aspect of the physical world; and any two individuals from any two cultures, including aliens could independently deduce then value of Pi, or the first 100 prime numbers and convey that information to the other.
In that respect, mathematics is absolutely objective.
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@Fruit_Inspector
At no point in any of that theocrababble did you explain how or why anything I said was false. In fact:
... believing something is true may fit the general description of faith ...
You just conceded that my definition is actually broadly accurate.
In fact, in that reply: the only difference you point out is that as part of your faith, there is also belief >>in<< your deity of choice.
But they’re exactly the same thing.
Belief in a person, is belief that something is true - belief that they exist, that they will act in a given way, that they have your best interests; that something will happen. Without that, the sentence and sentiment is nonsensical and incoherent.
Simply omitting the thing that is believed is yet another example of your intellectual dishonesty.
So after all that, we are indeed taking about the same thing; and the specifics of what you actually said are, as I suggested simply meaningless.
But as I said , and the whole point of this:
You have no objective reason or justification nor any evidence to believe that anything you just said is actually true to any degree you are simply telling everyone it is; and have conviction that it is - and that unjustified conviction, together with the pretence of validity in the face of lack of evidence is precisely why faith can be considered a form of denial.
Defending this faith requires you to be dishonest. We can see it in the way you are acting, you are forced to ignore every argument, you are forced to drop what you’re saying and move on; you’re forced to ask gotcha questions, draw false equivalences
You are forced to argue as if I am not saying anything, to not acknowledge anything being said, to throw out claim after claim and refuse to defend it because you’re trying to defend something that is inherently indefensible.
So now, with this ridiculous gotcha question, we’re right back at the beginning of the first reply you ignored.
I have absolutely no believe that you will continue with any more intellectual honesty than you have started; but I will start counting up the points you’re ignoring.
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@Fruit_Inspector
You just dropped everything again! This is hilarious. I mean come on lol.
Are you unable or unwilling to justify what you’re saying in the face of rebuttal?
I’ve characterized faith multiple time’s here, to multiple people; and provided a justification for why my characterization is accurate.
Multiple theists here have largely agreed with me insofar that it is a form of trust, confidence of conviction in a position; you even implied this is the case yourself using trust in planes as an analogy. I even used what the Bible talks about as faith to underline my point. Our difference is that I am showing that effectively an unjustified belief.
Are you disagreeing with everyone here, and the Bible, that faith is broadly described as the trust one has that what you believe is true?
If not, then what you specifically believe is irrelevant as faith is related to your belief in any specific dogma, but what that dogma is. Is not relevant; if so - then by all means explain exactly why everyone’s interpretation - including your own 20 posts ago - of what faith is, is so fundamentally wrong.
Frankly, what’s happened is that you started off solely contesting the amount of reasonableness and justification of faith; then after failing to defend that position, and every other position - you’ve then told me my definition is wrong, but aren’t even hiring at specifically why or how; and accusing me of misrepresenting something, but not explaining how and why.
Given all that, given the false equivalence - and the dishonest questions I’ve shown you’ve already asked; and your fixation with me having to “agree”, to something where you could just explain why I’m wrong leads me to believe that me agreeing is somehow more important than what you’re going to say; and I’ve told you I don’t bite on gotcha questions.
If you can show me explicitly why I’m wrong ; paying careful consideration to the constant and repeated justifications I gave already, feel free to do so; but given that what I’m saying is based inherently on something that’s pretty consistent with everyone else’s description (save from my conclusions on whether it’s valid), I doubt this is going to happen.
This is neither specifically anti-religion or a tirade; it’s simply an anti-dishonesty; your behaviour, questions and responses here are inherently intellectually dishonest, as explained by your response to evolution an abiogenesis - is the reason that many religions that are forced to object to those examples are themselves cannot be defended honestly.
Lastly, if you want to concede the conversation; go ahead. If you want to lay up a couched face saving out for yourself; whilst still trying to bash my position or my statements - I’ll pass.
I’ve characterized faith multiple time’s here, to multiple people; and provided a justification for why my characterization is accurate.
Multiple theists here have largely agreed with me insofar that it is a form of trust, confidence of conviction in a position; you even implied this is the case yourself using trust in planes as an analogy. I even used what the Bible talks about as faith to underline my point. Our difference is that I am showing that effectively an unjustified belief.
Are you disagreeing with everyone here, and the Bible, that faith is broadly described as the trust one has that what you believe is true?
If not, then what you specifically believe is irrelevant as faith is related to your belief in any specific dogma, but what that dogma is. Is not relevant; if so - then by all means explain exactly why everyone’s interpretation - including your own 20 posts ago - of what faith is, is so fundamentally wrong.
Frankly, what’s happened is that you started off solely contesting the amount of reasonableness and justification of faith; then after failing to defend that position, and every other position - you’ve then told me my definition is wrong, but aren’t even hiring at specifically why or how; and accusing me of misrepresenting something, but not explaining how and why.
Given all that, given the false equivalence - and the dishonest questions I’ve shown you’ve already asked; and your fixation with me having to “agree”, to something where you could just explain why I’m wrong leads me to believe that me agreeing is somehow more important than what you’re going to say; and I’ve told you I don’t bite on gotcha questions.
If you can show me explicitly why I’m wrong ; paying careful consideration to the constant and repeated justifications I gave already, feel free to do so; but given that what I’m saying is based inherently on something that’s pretty consistent with everyone else’s description (save from my conclusions on whether it’s valid), I doubt this is going to happen.
This is neither specifically anti-religion or a tirade; it’s simply an anti-dishonesty; your behaviour, questions and responses here are inherently intellectually dishonest, as explained by your response to evolution an abiogenesis - is the reason that many religions that are forced to object to those examples are themselves cannot be defended honestly.
Lastly, if you want to concede the conversation; go ahead. If you want to lay up a couched face saving out for yourself; whilst still trying to bash my position or my statements - I’ll pass.
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@Fruit_Inspector
Calling you intellectually dishonest for a pattern of objectively dishonest behaviour I have outlined at every stage of our exchange, and you continue to do so - is completely accurate.
I’ve summarize this jumping around, non defence of your position repeatedly, and you’re still doing it.
For example: at one point you adamantly professed you’re position was evidence based, given what was mentioned in the bible; then you incredulously belittled the idea that life could come from non life:
But when I point out your evidence is shoddy; you ignore it, and when I go through and specifically explain why life coming from non life is perfectly Justified, you then start complaining that it’s unfair for you to argue against a rebuttal for the thing you just said.
However it seems completely fair to talk about the entire sum of dogmatic beliefs, even though as I explained and you haven’t addressed - it’s not really relevant to anything I’m saying.
Right now, I’m calling you out for trying to systematically avoid any conversation on the matter, false equivalency, and flat out dishonesty - because that’s what you’re actually doing. It’s definitive, I’ve detailed why and how I know that.
It’s not possible to have an honest conversation with someone who repeatedly changes the subject, and refuses to defend anything they’ve said before.
If you find pointing out your pattern of behaviour is degrading or insulting- perhaps you should review your behaviour.
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@Reece101
Correct.
We don’t know what produces gravity, we just know how it works.
So in this case, the idea of a graviton is speculative; but no one is saying that gravitons actually exist.
How gravity works, time dilation, frame Dragging, etc is not speculative at all.
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@EtrnlVw
What you’re doing here, is selecting your words in order to talk around the issue.
Trust, confidence, belief; are not the right words to focus on.
The right word to focus on is “justified”
It is absolutely fine and dandy to have justified trust, justified confidence and justified belief in something. It should be encouraged, and what I encourage.
But that’s not what faith actually is. Focusing only on the former leaves a gaping and obvious whole in your argument where the latter should be.
Let’s look at it this way:
A given level of Belief, confidence, or trust in a thing, concept or opinion is either justified or it’s not.
If there is no evidence, or very shaky evidence; believing it to a level of confidence more than is warranted - is irrational.
Of course faith is just “trust” or “confidence”, but not justified trust or confidence.
This whole premise of unjustified trust is central to religion, it’s described in Hebrews - the evidence of things not seen.
Indeed, consider for a moment why God doesn’t simply come out of the clouds reveal himself objectively and without doubt to all of humanity today?
The answer invariably given is that being convinced of God based on direct provable evidence - such as him revealing himself - goes against the need to have faith in God - that he wants you to believe without knowing for sure.
When that sort of justified belief in God is deemed antithetical to faith: it clearly indicates that faith Is itself simply an unjustified belief, unjustified trust, unjustified confidence.
On top of this, faith is used as both a noun and in the context of an act. Faith is used to describe unjustified belief as a noun; and the process of maintaining that unjustified belief: such as “you need to have Faith”, or “keep the faith.”
Fauxlaw is talking about a process of generating “faith”, of that confidence - it is this process that is a manifestation of denial:
Take one of the best tropes: “god has a plan”
This is normally used in the context of a person who things they’re good, undergoing hardship, and maybe finding it hard to reconcile that hardship with belief in God; or are simply in pain.
This trope is effectively trying to suppress or ignore the negative actions without specific justification. This seems remarkably similar to abuse victims convincing them self’s that their abuser loves them, and must have some other driver of their behaviour.
I’ll also point out that knowledge is not knowing anything. Knowledge ; being in possession of information or facts that indicate the way reality is - is inherently demonstrable.
If you can’t show it, you don’t know it: if you can’t compare your statement to reality, you can’t tell whether it matches reality.
Finally, and here’s the inherent problem with faith.
Should we have faith in Charles Manson, David Koresh, the WBC, the leader of heavens gate? The people’s temple? Should we have faith in winning the lottery? Nigerian princes?
Should you have the same trust and conviction in the existence of Allah or Zeus as you do in God?
I know the answer, but to get to that answer rationally requires you to show those faiths are unjustified. There’s process of doing that without invalidating all faiths.
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@Fruit_Inspector
I did not respond to much of your last post because you misrepresented what make up the essential truths of the biblical Christian faith. Would you like to know what they are?
This is odd; in the post you’re referring to (the top of this page), I made no claim of any kind related to an essential truth of the biblical Christian faith.
At no point, in any of my posts in any of this thread have I made any claims or statements regarding what are “the essential truths of the Bible” other than my very last post where you asked, only had a small fraction of the post dedicated to it, and misrepresented nothing.
Do you know how to have logical, rational discussion? Or are you just used to using this type of ridiculous, dishonest non-argument strategy you’re using here? It’s getting obtuse.
We’ve gone two and a half pages now, and you have not once tried to defend anything you’ve said. It’s ridiculous - are you simply incapable? Or unwilling?
But to let’s go back and answer that obtuse question for a second time.
There are innumerable denominations of Christianity, in 2000 years no one has really been able to settle the argument of what the central “truths” of Christianity, really are other than God exists, and Jesus was the son of God and came to atone for the worlds sin.
Other than that, central truths differ from sect to sect.
Westborough baptist church generally ignore Jesus, and focus more on one individual portion of deutoronic and Paulian edicts; evangelicals beleive the Bible is literal whereas Catholics believe it is simply inspired by God; you have the trinitarians and non trinitarians; you have those who believe Jesus overrode the old covenant and those that dont; or that believe that the Ten Commandments are still valid (though always seem pretty cool with the 2nd and 4th) even how you get into heaven is debated, with a belief alone vs belief and good deeds.
Now, I’m sure you can probably list a few of your core beliefs, which may change significance or context depending on what point you wanted to prove at the time; and I’m sure that they will neither be novel or outside the grand spectrum of Christian beliefs. I don’t know what you will chose from that pantheon; but I am intricately familiar with everything in that pantheon.
The issue is, faith is inherently why you keep believing it, it’s the process of self reassurance that keeps you believing it.
Like I said, what belief you have faith in, is largely irrelevant to the topic of what faith actually is.
Of course, I’m sure you won’t actually acknowledge this, so I’ll preemptively call you out for dropping everything I said to ask another question.
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@zedvictor4
If you agree with the all of it, you have to agree with the last line because they’re saying the same thing.
Anything that is presented has having, definitely, probably of likely happened, probably has firm evidence to support it.
So something like “what is dark matter” is currently speculative, that dark matter exists, or the Big Bang occurred is not.
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@Fruit_Inspector
And again. Hilariously skip everything, ask a different question.
What you believe, and the process by which you believe it are different things.
What you believe, and the process by which you believe it are different things.
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@Fruit_Inspector
If you’re interested, a single global biblical flood, population bottlenecks that result, post flood diaspora, single creation even of all animals at once, would be imprinted in every facet of geology and genetics top to bottom.
They’re not, clearly refuting a biblical flood; in addition, given that if life was created, it was created as protocellar life and then subsequently evolved - which contradicts the biblical account.
This clearly shows the testable supernatural claims in the Bible are absolutely false.
Either way, believing the bible on the basis of some Historical events being accurate is like believing that a Nigerian Prince is going to give you money On the basis that Nigerian princes can exist....
Or even more accurately: believing that there was a real magic man with supernatural power who lured children away with a magic flute that cast a spell on rats and humans On the basis that there was some recorded Tragedy in Hamlyn.
I thought I’d reiterate this, as I absolutely love saying things are false, almost as much as I loved following it up with short explanations of why.
You seem to omit this, and pretend as if I’m doing what you do; which is simply to assert my position. If you scan back, you will see a fairly detailed explanation on almost every time I’ve suggested something you’ve said was wrong.
You seem to have ignored all of them; in order to simply throughout another question, and refuse to defend what you just said.
I’ve told you this is what you’re doing for the last 48261 posts - and you deny it, only to drop everything you just said and asked something new - as you’ve done again.
The answer is no: because there doesn’t seem to be an agreed set of central principles to Christianity - other than a general acceptance that Jesus was the son of God. There’s simply a fractured set of denominations that all have substantial variations in how they pick and chose the parts of the Bible they agree with and don't; and variations on how large the inconsistencies in their beliefs are.
Either way; even if I hadn’t got a clue - it isn’t even relevant to anything we’re saying, unless you’re again trying to divert the conservation away from talking about faith
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@fauxlaw
Actually yes, I’ve seen Ganymede transit from a mid size observatory. I’ve observed Jupiter, from a home telescope - it’s pretty easy.
Why you bring up things you can see, and we can observe is a little odd.
Here’s your problem.
If I decided to try and have faith that I will win the lottery some day, I would be able to convince myself that it was true.
If I convince myself using faith that Satan exists, and he’s a cool dude, every day, I would end up believing it.
If I convince myself using faith that Zeus was real, I would end up believing it.
I have literally no doubt, that with enough effort, I could enter that building, I could convince myself of many things.
I would feel that I was correct, I would feel like I had all this knowledge. That I had secrets that no one else had.
That truth, that fact, that feeling is simply self delusion. It has no factual basis, reveals no objective knowledge, and indeed helps prevent you from understanding or appreciating the truth.
What you’re talking about as a magical building that one must enter is simply the human capacity of self delusion and denial, to convince oneself of things that are not true.
That is not a virtuous thing, that building of self delusion should be avoided at all costs.
Going into it will lead to you doing stupid things; like convincing yourself that the faith produces knowledge; despite having not a single example of a piece of objective knowledge coming through faith
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@Tradesecret
How do you know you’re not one of them?
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@fauxlaw
That’s what is called a trope.
It’s fairly useless, it’s empty and vacuous, tells you nothing: and doesn’t add to the conversation.
You seem to be repeatedly saying how much faith offers; yet are unable to show a single thing faith specifically offers, and are relying on these sort of tropes in order to act as if there is something there when there’s not.
It’s fairly useless, it’s empty and vacuous, tells you nothing: and doesn’t add to the conversation.
You seem to be repeatedly saying how much faith offers; yet are unable to show a single thing faith specifically offers, and are relying on these sort of tropes in order to act as if there is something there when there’s not.
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@Fruit_Inspector
I’ve explained where and how you’ve jumped around - how you’ve made an argument, dropped it, moved on to the next, dropped it, moved on to the next, dropped it; etc.
You’ve done it again right here.
What I’m doing, is explaining why you’re wrong at each point, I’ve used examples, analogies and more detailed explanations to show why.
At each point you’ve dropped what you’ve said and moved onto another point; indeed the only reason the conversation has moved where it has, is because you’re pushing it there with your deflective questioning. Blaming me for you moving the line of questioning is just the same sort of dishonesty you’ve been displaying throughout.
If you recall, in the posts you’ve ignored; I have been continually trying to pull the conversation back to talking about faith.
This is the main issue with your slippery deflection.
The whole premise of faith, is that every single definition of faith, from technical to theological, is about believing something more strongly or with more strong conviction than the evidence allows. As per my previous posts, where I explained it.
It’s trust without foundation; it has generated to knowledge and from its failure to deliver anything objective is certainly not a valid epistemological position.
Indeed, as I alluded to previously; it’s a form of denial, when you compare religious where faith is strongly encouraged to scenarios of actual denial they are astonishingly similar.
I will go further though: while this doesn’t necessarily apply to all religious people by any means; but for biblical literalists, creationists especially, but many type of fundamentalist religious groups find thus; when you get to a certain point you are forced to confront a decision of whether to remain religious, or whether to remain honest. It’s not possible to be both.
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@zedvictor4
What on earth? Lol no.
I don’t think you understood what I meant at all.
Science doesn’t deal with absolute truth: it deals with levels of confidence. On this respect, there is no absolute knowledge or truth - we can’t “actually” know anything for sure; because everything is subject to change with more evidence.
Saying that science is calculated speculation is the type of thing intellectually dishonest creationists say as rhetoric to try and suggest and imply science is faulty, rather than show it.
Jumping to conclusions about what science can and can’t do without any analysis of how they made the determination appears to be similar.
The reality is, that at its worst - for ideas proposing to explain some event or aspect of space; begin as grounded testable hypotheses that fit within the known laws of physics or are specifically suggested by the data; are not held to be true, and are investigated.
At worst the type of accepted science you’re talking about, is tested hypothesis that fit the facts, have produced valid predictions that have shown to be true; are consistent with observations and provide both explanatory and predictive power.
This is many ballparks away from speculation.
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What’s the difference between a run down bus stop, and a Lobster that’s had a boob job?
One is a crusty bus station, the other is a busty crustation.
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@Fruit_Inspector
Firstly, pointing out your disingenuous questions is exactly what I’m doing, and have been throughout.
If you recall from your opening post, you have drawn false equivalences, failed to defend your statements and claims, and have been systematically evading any argument presented and simply moving onto something else each time.
You suggested flying on a plane required faith.
When rebutted, Instead of defending the claim; you then moved on to suggesting you had evidence to support your position.
When that was shown to be false, you ignore it and simply moved onto attacking abiogenesis.
When that was defended; you complained I didn’t answer the question.
When I pointed that out; you’ve simply moved onto suggesting that your belief is valid and attacking evolution.
You seem to be just changing the subject, adding a new question, moving on.
This does not appear to be the behaviour or actions of someone who has any interested in any sort of intelligent discussion.
I am questioning your motives; because your engaging in a pattern of dishonest conduct; and given my experience, you are doing so because this is all you have.
If you recall from your opening post, you have drawn false equivalences, failed to defend your statements and claims, and have been systematically evading any argument presented and simply moving onto something else each time.
You suggested flying on a plane required faith.
When rebutted, Instead of defending the claim; you then moved on to suggesting you had evidence to support your position.
When that was shown to be false, you ignore it and simply moved onto attacking abiogenesis.
When that was defended; you complained I didn’t answer the question.
When I pointed that out; you’ve simply moved onto suggesting that your belief is valid and attacking evolution.
You seem to be just changing the subject, adding a new question, moving on.
This does not appear to be the behaviour or actions of someone who has any interested in any sort of intelligent discussion.
I am questioning your motives; because your engaging in a pattern of dishonest conduct; and given my experience, you are doing so because this is all you have.
As I said earlier, loudly professing how reasonable you are being, or how much faith works does not make it so: and given the pattern of behaviour above, claims that you’re being rational or asking reasonable questions is really just p***ing on the thread and telling us it’s raining.
You are indeed right that you have your reasons for your belief: the ones you have already gave are objectively false - the book you cite has been shown to be false on a number of supernatural claims relating to a global flood and the origin of life; and the idea that a book being correct about mundane facts means unverifiable supernatural claims are true, is terrible and incredulity is not a valid reason for believing anything.
This is the entire point I am making about faith; your reasons do not boil down to evidence or the type rational justification any regular belief - such as flying on a plain - has; but in a form of denial where you are forced to reject lack of evidence - or contrary evidence in order to maintain your belief; and thus sort of evasion is EXACTLY what you’re doing here.
The way you are jumping around in the argument; asking disingenuous questions, engaging in intellectually dishonest tricks - such as framing questions in a way that allows you to unilaterally ignore any evidence you don’t like, like you just did again is really just proving my point.
You are indeed right that you have your reasons for your belief: the ones you have already gave are objectively false - the book you cite has been shown to be false on a number of supernatural claims relating to a global flood and the origin of life; and the idea that a book being correct about mundane facts means unverifiable supernatural claims are true, is terrible and incredulity is not a valid reason for believing anything.
This is the entire point I am making about faith; your reasons do not boil down to evidence or the type rational justification any regular belief - such as flying on a plain - has; but in a form of denial where you are forced to reject lack of evidence - or contrary evidence in order to maintain your belief; and thus sort of evasion is EXACTLY what you’re doing here.
The way you are jumping around in the argument; asking disingenuous questions, engaging in intellectually dishonest tricks - such as framing questions in a way that allows you to unilaterally ignore any evidence you don’t like, like you just did again is really just proving my point.
I could continue to answer your questions: for example by pointing out that arbitrarily demanding only one type of evidence; even though other evidence may proof the point - is intellectually dishonest; or by pointing out that not a single organism in history has ever “turned into a different kind of organism”, because that’s not how evolution works; or pointing out that we have dozens upon dozens of examples of organisms turning into something else that I’m sure you will arbitrarily reject using a no true Scotsman argument; or pointing out that any method or mechanism of determining if two organisms are related, and how related organisms are; all show that they are, and all broadly agree in how much - to the point that common ancestry is provable beyond any reasonable doubt - I can do that, but I have no reason to suspect you will not simply ignore the response and ask a new question.
This is the inherent issue; you’re not looking to engage or discuss, you’re trying to ignore everything I’m saying and find some chink of issue you can exploit to say “aha I am right!” after ignoring the dozen or so examples of having been proven wrong.
I am more than happy to have a rational discussion with you, but I strongly suspect you’re doing this because you don’t have the ability to defend the things you’re saying.
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@Fruit_Inspector
You seem to be disinterested in a discussion; I can tell by the way you’re ignoring everything and defending nothing; you’re just asking a disingenuous questions, drawing a whole lot of false equivalences then deflect when you don’t get the answer you wanted.
If you paid attention in the last post - I answered the issue of abiogenesis in detail; I covered how we have confidence that is correct; and I drew your attention to all the examples of observable evidence that help us conclude it’s probably valid.
That should cover, any honest question you have about the evidence supporting it.
If you wanted to compare abiogenesis with faith; as I pointed out that abiogenesis is not believed without question or without reason; and as I pointed out, this is unlike much religious conviction. So any honest question on that front is covered there too.
You could be wanting to compare the evidence for abiogenesis with that for God; for which I broadly covered in my response too. Specifically that there is still direct objective measurable evidence in its support, for which an equivalent theistic evidence doesn’t exist.
As I’ve covered every honest reason you could have asked the question, the only reason I can think of that you would continue to ask a question that implicitly rejects certain types of evidence as valid in a discussion that is revolving around evidence, is as a deliberately loaded question that wants to exclude some types of objective measurable evidence because they harm your argument.
I don’t bite on obviously loaded rhetorical questions like that, that are not asked for honest reasons.
Now if you take issue with any of my framing of evidence; or you want to actually make the argument that you would have made had I answered the question, rather than relying on this type of silly disingenuous tactic, feel free to do so.
If you paid attention in the last post - I answered the issue of abiogenesis in detail; I covered how we have confidence that is correct; and I drew your attention to all the examples of observable evidence that help us conclude it’s probably valid.
That should cover, any honest question you have about the evidence supporting it.
If you wanted to compare abiogenesis with faith; as I pointed out that abiogenesis is not believed without question or without reason; and as I pointed out, this is unlike much religious conviction. So any honest question on that front is covered there too.
You could be wanting to compare the evidence for abiogenesis with that for God; for which I broadly covered in my response too. Specifically that there is still direct objective measurable evidence in its support, for which an equivalent theistic evidence doesn’t exist.
As I’ve covered every honest reason you could have asked the question, the only reason I can think of that you would continue to ask a question that implicitly rejects certain types of evidence as valid in a discussion that is revolving around evidence, is as a deliberately loaded question that wants to exclude some types of objective measurable evidence because they harm your argument.
I don’t bite on obviously loaded rhetorical questions like that, that are not asked for honest reasons.
Now if you take issue with any of my framing of evidence; or you want to actually make the argument that you would have made had I answered the question, rather than relying on this type of silly disingenuous tactic, feel free to do so.
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@Fruit_Inspector
So what you’re doing is pretty typical of those who don’t have a valid position; in that you’re ignoring almost everything I’m saying in order to deflect onto a single small point in what appears to be an attempt to drive the conversation off the rails so it is never brought back to the point you can’t really defend.
So let’s recap:
Faith is a form denial, it’s training yourself to maintain a belief despite lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. I’ve summarized this quite a few times. No one seems able to defend faith against this claim. Odd!
You attempted to falsely conflate faith, with justified trust - they’re not the same thing as I showed - and faith in religion is inherently silly if you use the same nature of what is believed by religion on something we see in real life.
You then attempted to argue that you don’t really have faith, but you’re simply convinced by the evidence. Which is odd, as it seems that denying your religion is faith-based implicitly concedes that faith is not a valid way to determine truth. You can’t have it both ways.
Obviously, that claim wasn’t true either, as the best evidence you suggested would be terrible if you needed to use something similar in real life; as I mentioned above
Indeed, your defence of faith in religion, is not showing that faith has any relevance of benefit: but really trying to argue your position is not one of faith but mine is.
Let’s bring this conversation back before we go on: faith has not provided any invention or innovation. In 3000 years of Abrahamic religion there has been no widespread cure of disease, no discoveries and no useful revelation that came about due to faith. In 500 years of evidence driven modern science, we’ve cured diseases, discovered how our bodies work, harnessed the electron, the atom, fly around the world and walked on the moon.
Methodological naturalism is responsible for every thing you see around you; in a fraction of the time it has taken faith based approaches to reveal absolutely nothing useful.
Moreover; in many cases, faith itself has been a barrier stifling innovation, thought and understanding - because that’s what faith is, a mechanism to push back against contradictory information. If the facts show a belief is wrong - faith is how people maintain that belief.
Now, you imply that I have faith in abiogenesis. If that were true, it wouldn’t change how baseless your faith is, nor would it change how successful not having faith has been; it would simply mean in one respect, I am as deluded as you.
However, that’s not the case; and we can take abiogenesis as the example.
Let’s look at the top level. On the one hand you have religious texts telling me life was created by supernatural means.
These religious texts don’t match the observed facts - we can tell there was no global flood, we can tell the order in which organisms were created is incorrect, and the evidence definitively proves life has evolved from a single ancestor; invalidating most religious claims.
The claims that don’t fail are not even testable - there is no test one can make on divine creation that could prove it correct (t
So on the one hand, we have religious claims invoking a deity we can’t prove even exists, using a mechanism we have never observed to create life in a way we can’t show and can’t prove, and the only justification for this is a book that says it happened that we know is wrong.
On the other hand, it could be caused by some sort of a natural process. We can show natural processes forming everything around us, we can tell that a natural process formed life as we know it from a common ancestor, and we know that there isn’t really much else to what we see in the creation of life than chemical processes.
So even without any other evidence, the natural process argument is much more reasonable and valid.
Science deviates from religion by being unsure, and specifying that we don’t really know how - as we don’t; as opposed to simply loudly asserting that we are correct without evidence.
Abiogenesis is simply vastly more likely given the observations we’ve made so far than magic.
But saying that, you should take a look at the evidence.
Observation shows that in plausible environments amino acids and nucleobases can be created, lipid bilayers and RNA strands can self assemble; that bilayers are single direction permeable by RNA, and if trapped in a lipid bilayer; osmotic pressure drives division.
We know in the right configuration RNA can catalyze it’s own division; not to mention a vast array of other examples where we have been able to show more
Complex chemistry being generated from less complex chemistry.
We also know; that once we have self
Replicating molecules subject to selective pressure - everything else is mostly explainable by evolutionary processes.
There’s no reason why any of these things have any reason to be true if life hasn’t come about naturally - which means that each discovery continues to lend credence to the hypothesis that it did.
Even then, science is not religion, it doesn’t have faith: and so it doesn’t pretend it’s proven, or definitive: it is simply the current best explanation of the origin of life. Which is true.
Your objection is really patently false in many ways, but the extremity of the demand for full proof or clear evidence before one can draw conclusions is inherently dishonest:
It’s only the religious who profess that no human between now and the end of time, will ever know enough or experiment enough to be able to finish that end to end process; based on that same denial.
Your fundamental objection to sciences position on abiogenesis, though, is predicated on the projection of your own false conviction about the origin of life.
You may be convinced beyond question that God created the universe, despite no evidence (and in some cases contradictory evidence), and no technical explanation of how. But I’m not, nor are any scientists I have ever heard about.
So please refrain from projecting your own false confidence onto me.
From all the explanations I have seen, I have simply concluded based on the balance of evidence, probability and general observation, life arising naturally best fits all the facts. Nothing more.
So let’s recap:
Faith is a form denial, it’s training yourself to maintain a belief despite lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. I’ve summarized this quite a few times. No one seems able to defend faith against this claim. Odd!
You attempted to falsely conflate faith, with justified trust - they’re not the same thing as I showed - and faith in religion is inherently silly if you use the same nature of what is believed by religion on something we see in real life.
You then attempted to argue that you don’t really have faith, but you’re simply convinced by the evidence. Which is odd, as it seems that denying your religion is faith-based implicitly concedes that faith is not a valid way to determine truth. You can’t have it both ways.
Obviously, that claim wasn’t true either, as the best evidence you suggested would be terrible if you needed to use something similar in real life; as I mentioned above
Indeed, your defence of faith in religion, is not showing that faith has any relevance of benefit: but really trying to argue your position is not one of faith but mine is.
Let’s bring this conversation back before we go on: faith has not provided any invention or innovation. In 3000 years of Abrahamic religion there has been no widespread cure of disease, no discoveries and no useful revelation that came about due to faith. In 500 years of evidence driven modern science, we’ve cured diseases, discovered how our bodies work, harnessed the electron, the atom, fly around the world and walked on the moon.
Methodological naturalism is responsible for every thing you see around you; in a fraction of the time it has taken faith based approaches to reveal absolutely nothing useful.
Moreover; in many cases, faith itself has been a barrier stifling innovation, thought and understanding - because that’s what faith is, a mechanism to push back against contradictory information. If the facts show a belief is wrong - faith is how people maintain that belief.
Now, you imply that I have faith in abiogenesis. If that were true, it wouldn’t change how baseless your faith is, nor would it change how successful not having faith has been; it would simply mean in one respect, I am as deluded as you.
However, that’s not the case; and we can take abiogenesis as the example.
Let’s look at the top level. On the one hand you have religious texts telling me life was created by supernatural means.
These religious texts don’t match the observed facts - we can tell there was no global flood, we can tell the order in which organisms were created is incorrect, and the evidence definitively proves life has evolved from a single ancestor; invalidating most religious claims.
The claims that don’t fail are not even testable - there is no test one can make on divine creation that could prove it correct (t
So on the one hand, we have religious claims invoking a deity we can’t prove even exists, using a mechanism we have never observed to create life in a way we can’t show and can’t prove, and the only justification for this is a book that says it happened that we know is wrong.
On the other hand, it could be caused by some sort of a natural process. We can show natural processes forming everything around us, we can tell that a natural process formed life as we know it from a common ancestor, and we know that there isn’t really much else to what we see in the creation of life than chemical processes.
So even without any other evidence, the natural process argument is much more reasonable and valid.
Science deviates from religion by being unsure, and specifying that we don’t really know how - as we don’t; as opposed to simply loudly asserting that we are correct without evidence.
Abiogenesis is simply vastly more likely given the observations we’ve made so far than magic.
But saying that, you should take a look at the evidence.
Observation shows that in plausible environments amino acids and nucleobases can be created, lipid bilayers and RNA strands can self assemble; that bilayers are single direction permeable by RNA, and if trapped in a lipid bilayer; osmotic pressure drives division.
We know in the right configuration RNA can catalyze it’s own division; not to mention a vast array of other examples where we have been able to show more
Complex chemistry being generated from less complex chemistry.
We also know; that once we have self
Replicating molecules subject to selective pressure - everything else is mostly explainable by evolutionary processes.
There’s no reason why any of these things have any reason to be true if life hasn’t come about naturally - which means that each discovery continues to lend credence to the hypothesis that it did.
Even then, science is not religion, it doesn’t have faith: and so it doesn’t pretend it’s proven, or definitive: it is simply the current best explanation of the origin of life. Which is true.
Your objection is really patently false in many ways, but the extremity of the demand for full proof or clear evidence before one can draw conclusions is inherently dishonest:
It’s only the religious who profess that no human between now and the end of time, will ever know enough or experiment enough to be able to finish that end to end process; based on that same denial.
Your fundamental objection to sciences position on abiogenesis, though, is predicated on the projection of your own false conviction about the origin of life.
You may be convinced beyond question that God created the universe, despite no evidence (and in some cases contradictory evidence), and no technical explanation of how. But I’m not, nor are any scientists I have ever heard about.
So please refrain from projecting your own false confidence onto me.
From all the explanations I have seen, I have simply concluded based on the balance of evidence, probability and general observation, life arising naturally best fits all the facts. Nothing more.
I am able to justify that logically, with evidence and without faith of any kind.
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@Fruit_Inspector
Ardent protestations about right you are and how wrong everyone else is, is all you actually have.
This is what faith actually is; typified by both what you and fauxlaw are doing.
Adamantly and Vehemently professing how correct you are, and how much evidence you have when you have none.
Like I explained; you have no actual evidence. There’s no measurements of God, of magic, of the divine, of heaven; they cannot be objectively seen or viewed; there’s nothing even close to any ability to verify any of the claims.
The information you mentioned; presumably the best you can think of, are essentially two things.
- Unverified supernatural claims in a book are completely true because some non-supernatural claims match with history.
That’s not evidence, thats nonsensical.
- You are personally incredulous about other explanations.
Also not Evidence.
This is what faith is, you are simply pretending as if this were good evidence, when it objectively isn’t attempting to rationalize the lack of evidence behind exceptionally poor reasoning and whatever argument you can shoe horn.
Compare this to, say, abiogenesis or evolution.
I can show you the incontrovertible evidence that life has evolved from a common ancestor; and I can assuredly talk about all the interesting evidence that strongly indicates it’s possible for life to spring from non life; I can talk about the fun of Montmorillonite, or lipid bilayer vesicles, etc: all evidence and experiment based.
It’s all evidence; and not once would I have to rely on personal incredulity, arguments from ignorance or simply denial to retain the belief.
That’s the inherent difference between faith, and reason: reason follows the evidence and what we can show: faith is defended against evidence that proves it wrong.
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@zedvictor4
You’re emphasis on “actually” misunderstands what science is, and what it shows.
Science doesn’t “actually” know a single thing. Everything is tentative.
What science has, is a collection of testable - and tested explanations of the observations of the universe we make.
We don’t “actually” know anything: we simply have a variety of mathematical models, explanations and frameworks that very accurately correlate to what we see, and allow us to predict how things we haven’t; which we repeatedly test to confirm their accuracy.
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@Fruit_Inspector
I’m sorry to have flummoxed you by not giving you the response you wanted; but generally speaking, ignoring what the other person said and pretending as if they had said what you wanted - is not an intellectually honest way of conducting a conversation.
Like I said; the nature of the facts are completely different. For the plain, the facts are objective and measurable.
We literally see planes take off and landing. We can see the regulations, we can see the physical checklists, we can see the maintenance staff - we can talk to them.
There is no comparable evidence of any theological conclusion of any kind.
So your argument - pretending convincing people of God is like convincing people of aeroplane safety is inherently disingenuous.
A better comparison would be this:
Imagine you are walking In the forest and stumble across a metal “kinda” plane - it didn’t look like any plane you’d seen before, the wings looked too small, and you cannot discern its power source.
A group of people tell you that this plane is safe and will definitely fly because they personally know the designer.
You can never meet the designer directly, ask him questions, question his credentials, nor can you inspect the device, or confirm how it works.
All you are given Is a book with some stories in it, some of which may be based on real events, some of it depict magic; and seems more akin to a fantasy novel.
Believing that device flies requires actual faith - there are no discernible objective facts to tell you the plane will fly; and worse, all the simple objective facts that could prove the plane would fly are being withheld from you.
To proudly profess that plane will fly requires stupidity or denial.
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@fauxlaw
I have offered the detailed means of how to use faith. That you resist is on you.
I feel this warrants it’s own reply.
If you even marginally questioned whether science worked, and whether it could generate truth; what you would be faced with, is an unending wall of every major scientific discovery that has been spun into practical applications and improved our lives; it would be pointed out how 500 years of modern science has built our civilization and got us from the horse and cart, and leaches, to nuclear power, mrna vaccines and landing on the moon. Every time you said it, you’d face a list of all the times sciences has harnessed a new power, fixed a problem, or allowed us to exploit some new law of physics. It would be a deluge of facts, figures, examples, and proof.
That you’re response is not a wall of such accomplishments; or any accomplishments of any kind, but hand waving that you can’t show what faith can do - proves beyond any date that faith does absolutely nothing.
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@Fruit_Inspector
Do you check the credentials of the engineers before boarding a plane, that is after you personally observe all of the safety checks and inspections done before the flight? Or do you just board the plane, trusting that you will arrive safely at your destination?
Neither.
Trust is qualified on facts.
For example, I know that there are safety checks, I know there are regulations, and I know the general safety records of the planes. I have factual data to support the conclusion that the plane is almost certainly not going to crash; and If that data changes probabilities my decisions would change.
For example, I likely wouldn’t have thought twice about flying on a 737 max after the crashes based on the generalized probability.
This is a typical issue with the way people present faith.
Riding on a plain is a tangible risk, for which we have evidence, and real information to inform the decision, and inform the trust.
Pilots are required to complete pre-flight tests: I don’t have faith that they will do it, I am convinced based on the overwhelming balance of known probabilities that’s they will do them.
At its root, as I said: the flight records are known. I am reasonably confident that the plane I am on is well designed and we will not crash; based on historic data from all other air travel.
That’s not faith.
Faith - as in religious faith - is having no probabilistic grounding, no actual facts, no basis on establishing the truth - and in some cases contradicted by evidence or probabilistic grounding but still concluding the belief is valid.
Now; if we could show heaven existed, we knew people who were good got into heaven - then you may be able to argue the two are similar.
The comparisons to real world examples are simply the same nutty false equivalence of people trying to mask their denial as simple probabilistic trust.
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@fauxlaw
You’ve not really answered anything. You’re really just shouting at me for showing nothing, ignoring the whole argument; then running away.
You’re entire argument is based on self delusion; you’re trying to convince yourself that faith is much more than simply denial, by throwing out a whole bunch of meaningless babble about what faith means.
The reason that you’re no longer engaging and are running away, is because you can’t offer an argument against any of the things I’ve said and you’ve ignored.
Faith is most assuredly invoked in order to believe things for which there are no evidence. It is used to remain convinced of ones beliefs in the face of conflicting data and information (as in the examples I cited)
I even tied this back to the biblical definition of faith - that you misquoted which explicitly agree with me.
Faith is nothing more than training yourself you keep believing when the facts are against you, by your definition.
Running away from that conflicting data, is (as I quoted in the definition you ignored), simply denial.
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@fauxlaw
What’s curious, is that I have provided multiple repeated examples, arguments and justifications that you have ignored.
Doubly curious is why you keep demanding evidence whilst ignoring every difficult argument, as if evidence is the defining baseline of truth.
Triply curious, is that you’ve been given an opportunity to prove the validity of faith as some valid way of gaining knowledge and have ignored it.
Your complete inability to actually post an argument, and rely on vague vacuous tropes about what faith is, and try and yell loudly about how wrong I am really expresses how intellectually bankupt the faith position really is better than any argument I can make.
It seems you’re obviously terrified in engaging in an actual conversation, because you know your position is wrong; so you’re evading, dodging and generally trying to obtusely deny any contrary positions
Would you travel on a plane built by engineers working based on faith? You can either say no, or you can lie through your teeth; that is the inherent nature of faith. You don’t trust it on any matter where you need the answer to be true.
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@fauxlaw
Ironically you’re asking for evidence and citation. No one ever asks for anything related to faith in an argument where they want to get the truth. Curious, right?
This is the clinical definition of denial:
“a defense mechanism in which unpleasant thoughts, feelings, wishes, or events are ignored or excluded from conscious awareness”
(https://dictionary.apa.org/denial)
Faith is used as a mechanism to allow people to maintain a belief despite a lack of evidence, or in the face of evidence to the contrary.
If you have uncertainty gnawing away at you, if your rational mind starts doubting; you will often be told to “have faith”; to suppress the rational problems your brain is grappling with, and simply believe.
If you’re being beaten by your partner, and refuse to leave because you’re convinced they love you, and they can change: that is denial.
If you’re subject to all manner of bad luck, and hardship that is not your fault, and convince yourself God loves you and “has a plan” - that’s “faith”
If your partner is cheating, and spins you all sorts of unbelievable stories, inconsistent narratives, etc to explain where they’ve been, why they keep being spotted with the same person in social settings; and you convince yourself they aren’t cheating - that’s denial.
If God is logically and morally inconsistent, the stories and narrative don’t make sense, and there are philosophical questions that don’t make sense, and there is no evidence for anything and you convince yourself he still exists - that’s faith
In this respect, almost by definition, faith is a form of denial.
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@fauxlaw
I’m not limiting my scope of what faith is, what I described is what faith is. A form of denial.
What often happens is people like you pretend or act as if it reveals some truth, pointing to faith as if it’s some epistemological framework.
In reality, all you’re doing is pretending that you are right about things you can’t prove, and are often demonstrably wrong - and that’s what faith is. Simple Denial.
By all means, prove me wrong; real knowledge about the world has practical application.
Science as an epistemological framework has allowed us to harness the power of the electron, the, atom, the sun, has flown us into the sky, and to the moon, has produced vaccines, cured illness.
Tell me, what equivalent knowledge has come From the application of faith?
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@Reece101
If you mean quantum entanglement:
Imagine that you can entangle two coins when you clip them such that they cannot land on the same side.
You flip then, then place both into a bag; then take them to other ends of the universe.
They’re still entangled, so the relationship is still maintained.
You open the first bag at the same time the person on the other side opens the bag and tip the coins on the to the table.
One will show heads, one will show tails.
But as you can’t control which way the coins will land, knowing that one will be heads and tails doesn’t transfer any information.
The only way of transferring information would be, for example, one of you calling the other to tell them which side their coin landed. If you did that you would know what your coin will show before you take it out of the bag. But that information has to be sent desperately, and is limited to light speed.
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@fauxlaw
Not really, the two are effectively the same thing in a religious context.
It’s a form of trained denial; faith at its core is a method to hold a belief without evidence and often when in contradiction to the evidence.
Literally every definition of faith you will find anywhere, including The definition in hebrews which you misquoted:
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”
In reality, and how faith is applied by those who are religious: “faith is a conviction held without reason and defended against all reason” -Aron Ra
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