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@Castin
Can we really prove that unicorns don't exist?
Don't fret - they do exist, i promise.
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@Castin
A few bells and whistles missing doesn't bother me much because while DArt might lack a spellchecker it does have a castin!
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@Castin
I just wondered what 'not officially up' meant. It's not important at all at this stage.
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@disgusted
There are plenty of historical accidents that made Christianity the dominant religion in Europe and from there, the world. Being adopted by the Roman Empire was critical.
Of course Christians today would say it was fated to be that way, but they'd say that if it was the worship of mithras or dionysus they followed!e
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@Castin
Scale to what level? Suppose Dart grew so there were 500 RFDs for each of 50 debates active at any one time?
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@Tradesecret
Hence the question is not about continuing your prejudice but about examining the evidence and seeing where it leads.
The white swan example is well known because it is unusual. Science is all about generalising from a limited number of examples. It has to be.
Science is only useful because it can tell you about new instances. Geologists assume a new lump of granite will be much like every lump of granite they have seen in the past. We assume every electron is identical, but we haven't examined them all! We can't wait to test every piece of granite and every electron before applying what we have learned about granite or electrons.
The white swan example is famous because it's one time such generalisation let us down.
Of course one shouldn't generalise too hastily, but millions of dead people have been examined and none of them have come back to life. It's totally scientific to assume that death is irreversable. it could be wrong, but it's not unscientific; not after checking so many examples.
Science isn't about certainty.
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@secularmerlin
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Another bugbear! I say absence of evidence often is evidence of absence. It's not proof, but it can be evidence.
But "absence of evidence is not proof of absence" doesn't zing!
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@disgusted
I'dsay the Christian God - ie a single monotheistic deity - really dates from exilic times when YHWH was transformed from a tribal god into 'the one true god'. But YHWH existed a long time before that - the other gods were killed off or demoted to 'false gods' by YHWH's priests.
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@Castin
Any site with this kind of format. Given all the 'drama' with just a handful of active members, imagine it with a thousand! I'd say on most sites like this a very few posters contribute 80-90% of the content.
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@Castin
but the site isn't really finished or officially "up"
But how many active members can the internet forum/debate model actually handle? I'd say its actually very few. The structure works well for a dozen or so members, but it won't scale very well.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
A race with an average low I.Q. doesn't belong in high I.Q. professions, such as law or university research. However, that same race may excel is visio-spatial awareness, and thus would do much better on a sporting field.
Analgesic.Spectre
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@disgusted
Why do Christians worship a god invented 3k years ago and not one invented 200k years ago?
YHWH is probably very old. He would have been one of the many gods in a middle eastern pantheon whose origin is lost in antquity.
It was the custom for each tribe or city-state to have its own 'patron' god selected from this pantheon - the Canaanites had baal, the babylonians had marduk etc. YHWH ws the patron god of the Hebrew. That is the Hebrews believed YHWH was one god amongst many, but it was YHWH who protected them, in exchange for exclusive worship.
At least that was the view of the Hebrew's priests of YHWH! The Hebrew people do not seem to have been solid,unwavering YHWHists. Nor did all their kings. The (largely fictitious) history of the Hebrews in the OT is a cycle of disasters befalling the Hebrew as punishment for apostasy, often in the form of military defeat. Then a messianic figures comes forward who restores YHWHism and the Hebrews start to win battles again, until the next disaster.
About 3000 years ago (C7th bce) after a terrible defeat at the hands of the babylonians, the exiled priests of YHWH set about writing down all the old legends of the hebrew, nturally with YHWH in thes starring role!
So YHWH wasn't invented 3000 years ago, but his character got set in stone (or written on scrolls) about then. but YHWH is much older than that - perhaps not quite 200,000 years old, but more than 3000.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
I enjoy your posts, deb!
It makes no odds - theists will still think we hate God.
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@secularmerlin
This guy might disagree.Physical reality is not built on math math is built on physical reality.
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@3RU7AL
They certainly fall short of proving the existence of an entity that "so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." and has strong views on marriage.
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@Plisken
I'm having problems working out what an 'agnostic deist' believes in!You mean agnostic deism?
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@3RU7AL
Maybe because god is important to theists they think god is important us... but its RELIGION that matters to atheists, particularly its many negative aspects.
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@Castin
That my post appeared proved that!
Alas.... I fear for this thread.
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@TwoMan
Is that necessarily the case? Is an atheist also an adeist by definition?
In 2018 the main debate is between theists and 'full on' atheists, with deism a very distant 3rd. In 1818 (say) the debate would have been between theists and deists, who the theists would accuse of atheism. What I called 'full on' atheism barely existed until the C19th.
Today if you self-identify as an atheist it implies 'adeism' simply because you have the option of self-identifying as a deist if that is more accurate.
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@Castin
No-one but you should post to this thread.
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@secularmerlin
Merely a hard skeptic.
You often remind me of the tortoise in this very short story by Lewis Carroll...
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@3RU7AL
I think we agree.
I'd say there's no big difference between deism and atheism. Both suppose there is no god now. The difference is deism supposes the origin was something conscious and hence god-like; atheists suppose it was an unconscious and naturalistic process. Beyond that there is no difference.
I'm sure many deists of the past would be full-on atheists if they had access to modern cosmology and biology.
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@secularmerlin
Whover invented that adage shouldhave been strangled at birth!It is impossible to prove a negative
There are unprovable statements, but being negative or positive has nothing to with it. Consider 'Unicorns exist' and 'unicorns don't exist'.
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@3RU7AL
Isn't it so that the Bible is irrelevant as to whether gods exist?
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@Fallaneze
People aren't computers or Vulcans - we can believe things we cannot prove and even things that are contradictory or illogical.
In everyday speech we often say 'I know' when it would be correct to say 'I believe', especially when the belief is strong. In proper philosophy, we should be much more careful to use the right word in the right place.
Internet philosophy forums fall in the middle!
Atheists believe there is no god. If that belief is strong and one isn't being pedantic an atheist might say 'I know there is no god' but strictly speaking no-one 'knows' either way. The only things we can know in the strict sense are, or reduce to, definitions and tautologies. Empirical facts ('all swans are white') are inherently provisional and uncertain.
So technically we are all 'agnostics' but its not very helpful or useful to lump Richard Dawkins and the Pope together as agnostics! So in practice we don't use what someone knows to classify the but what they believe.
An agnotic believes the arguments for and against god are evenly split. Some agnostics think that will always be the case, and that is what the word meant originally. Nowasays it aslo means someone who is sitting on the fence and might go either way. Darwin would have been agnostic in the former sense.
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@Plisken
That's important, but I think this thread is about offering Muslim pupils the choice between hunger and sin.
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@Stephen
You sent me some messages. I deleted them unread as I always do whoever they are from. I don't do 'friends' or debates either. i just read and write posts.
As I see it, a school or pupil who wants halal can either acccept pre-stunned halal or go without. That seems fair compromise.
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@Stephen
It is the pandering to a ideology over a custom and tradition of a whole race of Asian peoples.
True. Anti-asianism is the hidden racism of our times. I'm glad you spoke up against it.
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@Mopac
Without free will, there is no "moral culpability".
That is taken as axiomatic. It's the relationship between intelligence and free will/moral culpability that is under discussion.
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Did you notice the sentence in the quote:
"Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake."
CD recognised faith was more a matter of psychology than logic.
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@Stephen
They will be able to, not 'they will'. They can go for unstunned meat because it is not illegal due to old laws designed for the Jewish community, but if they do they do so on their own bat. If they do at all. In this thread you have suggested unstunned slaughter is illegal and the council capitulated to Islamist pressure. Neither is true.
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@disgusted
1859 - Origin of Species was published.
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@disgusted
I agree. For 200,000+ years 'Gods' has been the best/only explantion for things we could have. I'd say that ceased to be the case in 1859.
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@3RU7AL
If it's correct that "Moral culpability is better represented by emotional intelligence than IQ." then nice people should be punished more than nasty people if/when they do something bad.
I'm not sure that's a good idea!
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@Fallaneze
I would grant a link between atheism and physicalism, but which is the cause and which the effect?It makes much more sense for an atheist to be a physicalist than an idealist.
Do people wake up one morning thinking:
a) there are no gods therefore the universe is mechanical or
b) the universe is mechanical therefore there are no gods.
For me it was certainly b.
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@3RU7AL
Do you think me incapable of such a simple thing?
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@SkepticalOne
"Atheism" might narrowly be defined as a belief god does not exist, but that is not an all-encompassing definition.
There's lot of things I don't believe in - Feng shui, magic crystals, lay lines, gods, the tooth fairy, horoscopes, yetis.. there's more but you get the point. atheism is incidental to my worldview, not central to it.
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@TwoMan
Obviously we are born with the basic mechanism in place, but i think we must pick up our moral values from our environment.
For humans it's more like 'survival of the society' than 'survival of the species' that counts so each of us has to learn the rules and conventions that obtain in our particular society.
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@Goldtop
internet forum denizens aren't a representative sample of humankind.... I hope!
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@Fallaneze
Why not? Your guts don't send the message 'your stomach ph is out of range' - it just gives you tummy ache.Discomfort from their conscience would be like indigestion after eating tacos. ca
Your conscience gives you a differnt sort if ache about rape.
Pain evolved because it can be used to modify beaviour without needing too much in the way of higher mental powers. Critters evolved to avoid what was bad for them because they hurt, not because they understood why they were bad for them or could grasp the concept of 'bad for you'.
Pesumably whatever the seeming upside of rape is, it is not good for the species so we evoled to feel asort of mental pain to help block doing it.
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@David
In that case who in their right mind would create 30+ different email accounts just to bog us down?
maybe the answer is already in the question...
Dealing with nutters is another reason i don't want to run a board.
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@Vader
I'd say on past evidence PW has issues and wont/cant change.
i like PW.
My attitude would be that she was too scattergun and indiscriminate to take seriously and a ban will have no effect whatsoever. i'b ban people for reacting to her badly, so it's a good job i will almost certainly never have anything to do with running this place!
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@Goldtop
The only surprising thing was PW was almost rational here on DA occasionally. I was quite thrown by it.
Normal service was resumed.
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One who desires control and pleasure, but initially felt held back by their conscience, can intellectually justify their desire to rape innocent women by considering it good. Does that ring true?
If you think something is good (or bad) but everyone else thinks its bad (or good) the first thing to do is wonder if you are right. If you still do then you have two choices: Live according to your unorthodox belief or 'go with the flow'.
I don't imagine any rapist has ever thought rape was morally good. But a white south african who was against apatheid obviously should work against the system, not to maintain it.
A rapist who knows rape is bad is one thing - he is morally culpable because knowing the good he chose the bad. A hypothetical rapist who believed rape is good has his brain wired up all wrong. He is sick, not criminal. But i think such rapists are rare if they exist at all. In general it is often right to follow one's conscience, not the crowd.
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