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@Alec
We have to do the moon first to learn how it can be done.
The moon may also be more suitable as a start point for Mars expeditions. If the US started a base on Mars, China could establish a moon base before the Mars base has even begun. I'd be surprised if Mars is selected ahead of the moon. I'd put money on it if I thought I'd be alive to collect!
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@Stronn
@Ramshutu
@Discipulus_Didicit
If a reationist was interested in listening and learning they wouldn't post on a forum.
They come here to testify their faith.
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@ludofl3x
But it's not as pithy, and less open to emotional attacks like "Should we then kill all of the people who have birth defects?!?!" which no one thinks. "Survival of the fittest" some people think means "survival of the animal in the best physical shape" when it literally means "most fit to survive."
It's quite important to note that 'survival of the fittest' is a statement of what occurred in the past to produce the world as it is today. What it is not is a statement of how things should be because science doesn't deal with 'should' questions - that is the job of philosophers and politicians.
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@3RU7AL
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@Reece
What you call "free will", I call will.
What is your interpretation of the term 'free will'?
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@secularmerlin
Either your 'choices' are subject to cause and effect (which is incompatible with the idea of freewill) or they are random (which is incompatible with the idea of freewill).
I think people would have picked up on such a simple idea before now if it was that easy!
Free will is a cause. That is to say what goes on in a mind is the result of all the usual physical 'causal factors' plus this mysterious additional 'causal factor' of free will.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Certainly, but the first step in the dialectical method is to identify what a person says...
I'll get my coat.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I get that... but first we have to identify the process people actually use, not the process they think or say they use!I am more interested in first wondering whether the process one uses to make their conclusions is a sound process rather than whether the conclusion itself is sound.
Sorry we drifted into YAFDAFW (yet another futile debate about free will) while you were away.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I suggest a belief is a 'scrap of information in a brain' and are usually tagged with a 'level of confidence'. I would say bob originally believed (ie had the belief) 'Charlie is not around'. On hearing the noise bob updated his belief to '80% charlie's turned up, 20% he still isn't here'.Yeah, sounds right to me
Bob ears deteted air-born vibrations which were turned into conscious experience of sound. That sound was matched to an entry in a vast library of remembered sounds and identified as 'charlie's truck'. The inference 'charlie's here' was made, qualified to 80% because the fact that other trucks sound the same was factored in. All that happened - and probably a lot more - without bob giving it any conscious though at all.
So I shouldn't have said "bob updated his belief" - bob's brain updated it for him to use.
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@secularmerlin
Nothing dead would go the terminator could only pass through due to the living tissue surrounding its metal endoskelleton. This means that transporting the t-1000 should have been completely impossible.
Unless it used a thin covering of living tissue purely for the trip.
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@ludofl3x
I don't think the tone is "Clutching their pearls, as if HOW DARE YOU say that about the Catholic church! Where do you get the nerve! We're a religion!"
It doesn't mention "meals for the homeless" anywhere, despite the quotes used!
Clearly the Bishop of Brooklyn is a bit peeved that SNL seemingly ignored the steps the Catholic Church has taken recently to put its house in order. I suppose its rather like a muslim might feels about Islam being portrayed as equivalent to terrorism.
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@Stronn
But trees don't have a mechanism to read those tree rings and then use the infomation obtained. The DNA in a cell is read by ribosomes that click along it 3 bases at a time, grabbing the amino acid corresponding to the codon read and adding it to the protein coded for. There's a bit more to it than passively indicting an annual cycle of growth.DNA contains information in the same sense as tree rings.
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@Reece
It seems to me we agree.
Reece: Belief in free will stems from experience or observation; it doesn't stem from materialistic explanation.
is the same as
KeithP: Belief in 'no freewill' doesn't stem from experience or observation; it stems from the lack of a materialistic explanation of free will.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Yes, it is possible to have reasons for believing things you are not 100% sure about.The only beliefs that don't have reasoning behind them are unjustified beliefs.
I suggest a belief is a 'scrap of information in a brain' and are usually tagged with a 'level of confidence'. I would say bob originally believed (ie had the belief) 'Charlie is not around'. On hearing the noise bob updated his belief to '80% charlie's turned up, 20% he still isn't here'.
In ordinary, untechnical language we tend to say 'know' when confidence is high, 'believe' when confidence is low, eg I know paris is the capital of france, I believe Bangui is the capital of Chad'.
As people are people (not robots or computers) the level of confidence attached to a belief may have no relationship to its jusification or even validity!
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@Reece
@Discipulus_Didicit
For similar reasons that secularmerlin outlined previously, or for different ones?
FYI, reece, secmer said:
My lack of belief is based on the lack of evidence. The universe gets on just fine without freewill. Occam's razor demands that if we already have an observable explanation for an event (say cause and effect) that we dismiss any extraneous and unprovable explanation (such as freewill). If freewill does not exist then we would expect to see no evidence whatever and that is precisely what we see.
He's dead wrong. We see evidence of free will every day. Everytime you see someone choose tea not coffee, coke not pepsi, chicken not beef, democrat not republican it is evidence of free will at work, unless you can see the reason why they chose one and not the other. Belief in 'no freewill' doesn't stem from experience or observation; it stems from the lack of a materialistic explanation of free will.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I suspect that the god=truth thing was taught to Mopac along with the dictionary nonsense when he was coverting to orthodoxy. pga is apparently chaneling a presuppostionalist theologian called van Till, who he names as a favourite author on his profile.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Nice find. It also covers pga's presuppositionalism as a bonus.
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@PGA2.0
How does your system of thought achieve justice and who decides on what is right? If my biological bag of atoms is governed differently than your then why is that wrong if you don't like what I do? Should you be the one who determines what is right or should Kim Jong-un? What makes your preference any better than his, or that of President Xi of China, or Putin's?
My system does not 'achieve justice' - but perhaps it explains why justice is not automatic. If there is to be justice we have to make it happen ourselves. If i trip then then i will fall due to gravity, but if I kill someone I will only be punished if I am caught - nature won't punish me herself.
My sense of what is right and wrong evolved as an approximation to what is likely to beneficial to myself and my society. I don't mean I make a conscious cost/benefit analysis; my brain is wired up to encourage me to do certain things or avoid doing other things by making things feel 'good' or 'bad'. Your brain is not wired identically to mine so there will be differences in what we find good and bad, and how good or how bad we feel them to be.
99% of the time we don't think about whether something is good or bad - our attitude to murder or wanton violence are hard-wired because they have been evolved over the ages. We might have to ponder our attitude to,say, insider trading because we haven't evolved a hardwired response to it yet!
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How do you think the Jews of the first century thought about Daniel's prophecy? Do you think they were looking for a Messiah around this 1st-century period?
I accept a date between c. 200 to 150 BC or Daniel, when the Jews were really sufffering under the Seleucids. I think they were certainly hoping for a traditional messiah to restore the glory and independence of israel.
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@PGA2.0
Why would I need to strike a balance with you if I am just a biological machine driven by the way my biological factors are determined to act? Why do I have to live according to what you deem as necessary or desirable? If all I am is strictly a biological machine and I act in selfishness in letting you live then consider it as only being done so that it would benefit me. That is not altruism.
At this time I don't want to quibble over definitions or if altruism is only 'enlightened self-interest'. My poinytis simply that pur behaviuor is the resut of competing 'drives' to be selfish on one hand and a dutiful member of society on rhe other. Those drives exist because they are wired into our brains by a billion years of evolution.
For most of us - most of the time - the latter 'wins', but occasionally the former does. Feelings such as guilt is one way evolution has arranged that we are encouaged to reject selfish behaviour.
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@PGA2.0
A simple yes or no would have sufficed! I think your saying it is impossible to be neutral - I agree we are biased; I am not quite assure it can't be overcome.
But I suggest that human behaviour is shaped by the need for each individual to strike a balance between selfishness and altruism because neither pure selfishness nor pure altruism is a practical stategy for a human being living in human society.
What is not explained by that simple observation?
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I'm not a luddite, 3R!
Accidents - 'blue on blue' and 'collateral damage' occur in wars and i think its highly probable that robots will make fewer errors than humans. It's not ust about them goib wrong though... it's also about when they work according to plan! Rhe big questio being what 'the plan' should be!
My guess is that the tech isn't quite upto producing an effective fully autonous weapon - yet. We're decades at least off creating robot infantry. A more realistic scenario is a drone being programmed to seek and destroy a particular enemy asset such as radar installation. But suppose the enemy has, unknown to us, deploys a human shield? Do we need a human veto?
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@3RU7AL
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@Reece
i do not dispute that you believe in metaphysical determinism.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
Sometimes I have wicked thoughts that the Noah story might not be entirely true.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu:
Tear down the house and build a boat!
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!
Make all living beings go up into the boat.
The boat which you are to build,
its dimensions must measure equal to each other:
its length must correspond to its width.
Roof it over like the Apsu.
Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI,Sumer c. 2100 BC.
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@secularmerlin
At this distance, I now judge t1 to be a superior film to t2, based on which I'd rather re-watch. but when it came out, i was hugely impressed by t2 - its sfx were stunning for the time. Now we're too used to stunning sfx.
i thought t2 was a good sequel because the scenario didn't seem forced for the sake of cashing in - unlike t3,t4 etc!
T1 has the feel of a low-budget independent movie - a human-looking robot from the future was a great idea for doing sci-fi on the cheap! T2 was big-budget hollywood action block buster - and it's damn good one, So t2 was an amazing movie and a good sequel - one of few examples of a sequel being a match for the original - did someone mutter 'Matrix'?
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@IlDiavolo
Humanist marriages are the same as religious marriages.I guess humanist marriages are the same as civil marriages. Is it right?
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@PGA2.0
it seems to me that if sexual preference is influenced by home environment the role of conscious choice is reduced.
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@PGA2.0
Are you saying it is impossible to start from a neutral position on God's existence and deduce whether God does or doesn't exist?
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@secularmerlin
OK - so you think of something we can argue about...!
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@PGA2.0
Surely a country that exploits its people is not socialist? I know of no socialist theorist who has put 'exploitation of the people' as the core principle of socialism!Show me a socialist country that does not exploit its people
African countries are not socialist - they are kleptocracies.
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@secularmerlin
I think we can be more precise. We can only be certain of definitions; we can be certain there are no married batchelors because we have defined 'batchelor' in a way that makes it is so.Certainty about practically anything may be beyond human epistemology.
What we can never be certain about are 'empirical beliefs', that is our beliefs about the real world. For example I believe my friend Tom is a batchelor, but it's possible he's secretly married.
Here's one for you: What is a fact? Consider there are two moons orbiting Mars. Is the fact the state of affairs near Mars or is it the proposition 'Mars has two moons'. I'd say the former was the fact and the latter is a description of that fact.
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@David
My reading is they don't share a mind - they are two people. There is communication between their brains via a shared structure so stimuli applied to one twin can be sensed by the other.
Given how badly the relationship between brain and mind is understood in normal circumstances, I don't see how this makes the case for mind-body dualism any stronger or weaker.
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@Alec
Is humanist just a positive connotation for an atheist?
Why put 'just' in there?
However, you are right. Atheism is often characterised negatively, ie as nihilistic or iconoclastic. Atheists are often portrayed as immoral and selfish, having no desire other than to sin without conscience. That caricature follows from religion claiming a monopoly on morality; that to be good one must love and fear god, the only alternative being to give way to bestial desires. Religions teach that man is inherently evil and sinful.
That misrepresentation naturally upsets the majority of atheists who are compassionate human beings, who care about all the suffering in the world and 'do their bit' to reduce it. Philosophers can debate if it makes sense for an atheist to care, but whether it makes sense or not most atheists do care and have very good morals. You don't need an ethical theory to feel compassion!
O course there are evil atheists - Stalin for one! But Stalin was not a humanist; he is the antithesis of a humanist.
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@secularmerlin
Everyone thinks they hold true beliefs. I paradoxically both believe that everything I believe to be true is true and simultaneously believe that at least one thing I believe to be true must be false. What I value is the scientific method as the most reliable method of separating fact from falsehood. Provided of course that our observations accurately reflect reality.
"Everyone thinks they hold true beliefs."
I think everyone thinks most of their beliefs are true. I hope people who think all their beliefs are true are relatively rare IRL, even if they are common on internet forums!
Q: would the word 'correct' be more appropriate than 'true' in this context?
Also, I suggest that the way you seperate fact from falsehood is very rarely by using the scientific method! you cannot subject every news item you see or read to experimental verification! You distinguish between 'news' and 'fake news' by checking its consistency with your existing knowlege (or is that 'existing beliefs'?).
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@Deb-8-a-bull
I would define a humanist as 'a nice person whodoesn't believe in god'.
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@crossed
The article gives the impression that all errors in DNA replication are corrected; that isn't quite true. Replication errors are reduced to very low levels, but not completely eliminated. It is estimated there are about 130 mutations per generation.
Many cancers are caused by uncaught errors in replication.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
I am a 'humanist', but I wish they'd think of a better word for it, because humanists also care about animals, the planet etc. The neatest summary of humanism is 'good without god', where good is to be understood in very conventional terms!
I do believe human activity is having a significant effect on the climate. Humanists know it is down to humans to fix it because God isn't going to, no matter how hard people pray!
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@crossed
Living things on earth have to compete with each other for such things as food and shelter to survive, but even the winners will die of an accident or old age. The species that survive must reproduce, which they do by making copies of themselves; the copies being similar but not quite identical to the original. The offspring also have to compete and it is the variants that compete best that survive to reproduce the most.
It is a phenomenon like no other on earth; there is no good analogy or metaphor for life - nothing in our experience is quite like it.
For that reason, we develop no reliable intuition what that process will lead to over hundreds or thousands of generations. I can well believe some people can't accept that complicated life-forms can come about by the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on the naturally occurring variation between similar but not quite identical self-reproducing individuals. There is nothing like it to serve as a handy parallel to aid the imagination to visualise Darwinism operating over thousands or millions of years - life is unique.
But evidence is out there that no matter how counter-intuitive Darwinsm is, it is what happened.
It is imposible to demostrate what Darwinism can do over the span of millennia in front of anyone's eyes - unless they are prepared to wait millennia! But evolution on a smaller scale is easy to see. It has very real consequences, such as the advent of anti-bacterial resistance.
I accept that it's not easy to visualise how a kangaroo (or even a microbe) can come about by a Darwinian process. It is conceptually very simple, but deeply counter intuitive - that is why no-one thought of it until Darwin (and the unfairly neglected Wallace) just over 150 years ago.
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@Outplayz
i would call someone close-minded and/or deluded based on beliefs... religious or not, is one one presupposes they have the right answer.
The thing is that taking up atheism means giving up on having 'right answers'. Atheists don't claim to know the right answer - the claim is that 'goddidit' is the wrong answer. That's a sort of close-mindedness of course, but nothing's perfect!
Atheists believe that truth might be forever out of reach,but the way to get ever closer to it is to think hard, and work hard. Do experiments. Be prepared to admit mistakes and try again. Atheists don't think truth is something people can make up to suit their tastes. Anybody can fantasize so fantasies aren't very interesting. I can riff on 'what if nde's are true' too, but what's the point when they are neurological events, not mystical ones.
Theists are close-minded because they do claim to know the right answers, but atheists are open to well presented, cogent arguments. it's just that such arguments are very rare!
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@David
You need a self-regulating panel of voters. The panel itself is reponsible for kicking bad voters off and inviting new voters on to the panel. There is no automatic qualification for voting - you have to apply or be invited.
The site owner can of course dissolve the panel if it fails to maintain the standards required.
Panel members receive a notification or e-mail when their vote is cast. Thus any faux vote will be picked up.
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@Castin
What's your #1?I'm sure you've said before but I seem to have forgotten.
If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.
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@Mopac
Perhaps you should explain how prelest relates to hesychasm and theoria.
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@EtrnlVw
I have no doubt you believe that to be true.I can attest that my own spiritual experiences are not like dreaming, they are much more alive and conscious than the physical experience.
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@Castin
I think as atheists we need to exercise a little humility here and admit that we too are merely hostages of circumstance and chaos.
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Eccles. 9:11
2nd best book in bible.
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@EtrnlVw
I don't think people who describe their nde's and obe's are liars, but there is no solid reason to treat ndes/obes as anything except dreams.
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@secularmerlin
I'm not going to get into a serious debate about free will - unless there something new to be said about it you can think of!
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