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Religion
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
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In quick and dirty terms, Euclid's 5th has 3 flavours:
Given a line and a point,
1 - Flat/Eucidean - 1 Parallel line through the point
2 - Elliptica/Riemannian - 0 parallel lines throuh the point
3 -Hyperbolic/Lobachevskian - infinite number of parallel line through the point.
1 is always true in the abstraction of 'school' Euclidean geometry and if space is flat.
2 or 3 is true dependoing on how space is curved.
Given that the curvature space is governed by the distribution of mass, it is likely that there are regions of the uniniverse that have space that is flat, 'postively' curved and 'negatively' curved. That seems to imply which flavour of the 5th is true depends on where you are - ie that 'the truth' varies from place to place! If we suppose reality to be 'what is true' is it, er, 'true' that there is only one reality?
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Philosophy
Christian doctrine is that Jesus established a new covenant between mankind and God, replacing the old covenant between God and Israel.
A theological issue that raises is the relationhip between God and Israel. When the new covenant was established, either the Jews continued to have a relationship with God under their old covenant (dual theology) or they lost their relationship with God (replacement theology).
Christian Preterists point to the destruction of the Jewish state around AD70 as evidence that god did indeed break wth the Jews. The historical/social/poitical issue is whether dcoctrines such as preterism are a) causes of or ) caused by anti-semitism
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Religion
I've always had a soft spot for Marcion of Sinope! Wikipedia puts it thus: "Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament."
I don't propose Marcion was right - I don't believe in gods, whether singly, pairwise or multiple! But Marcion didn't baulk from stating the obvious - the OT and NT conceptions of God are completely different and incompatible.
yhwh's origin lies in the traditions and culture of the (very) ancient middle east. Yhwh is a tribal chief with magical powers. An ancient Hebrew - or anyother ancient mide easterner - knew there were many gods (more or less one per tribe or city). Gods looked after the interests of their particular people in exchange for ritual worship. It was essential to keep your god 'sweet' or it would inflict -or not prevent - disaster, such as a famine, drought or defeat in war.
The gods of the ancient middle east had little interst in individuals, before or after death. The were gods of entire nations.
The NT God reflects very different social and cultural conditions. 1st century Jews weren't a primitive nomadic tribe - they were a politically powerless people under the occupation of foreign powers. yhwh would not hold with 'the meek shall inherit the earth'!
But Marcion's ideas didn't catch on, and Christians have been saddled with the baggage of the OT ever since.
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Religion
... we landed on the moon.
I thought I'd mention it.
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Science and Nature
Some people object to teleporting because it is less a mode of transport than a suicide machine.
I, however, am a totally pro-teleport! I'll discuss is with anyone who cares to. It's a given that its an impractical fantasy...
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Philosophy
The OT probably began to be a written scripture in exilic times. Over time it became - amongst other things - a saga of the Hebrew people from the begining of the world to the time of the second temple. It was a vast undertaking, probably unprecedented in scale.
One problem was how to weave together slightly (or sometimes very!) different traditions and versions into a single story, and on the whole the editors and redactors did a good job, but there are still clear signs of the OT being 'cobbled' together.
The first and best known is gen 1 and gen 2, which are different accounts of creation, clumsily(?) linked by Gen 2:4. Just as well known is the ambiguity between the number of animals on Noahs ark - was it 2 of each, or 2 of some and 7 of others?
The story of Abraham passing his wife off as his sister appears 3 times, gen 12:10, gen 20:1 and gen 26:6.
There are 3 different accounts of Saul's ascent to kingship, and Goliath is killed by David in 1 Sam 17 and by Elhanan in 2 Sam 21.
2 kings 19 and Isaiah 37 are word-for-word identical chapters!
There are loads other 'doublets' in the text, even if you ignore Chronicles, because that was a later rewrite of the material.
More thorough analysts than me identified 4 'strands' (JED and P) which are intertwined in the OT we have today. I can't think of a good reason to doubt that is essentially true.
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Religion
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Science and Nature
Stephen wrote:There are what people are calling no go zones here in the UK, but mention this to an apologist for islam and they will call you an outright liar.
Apparently he is not alone in that view.
Almost a third of British people now believe the myth that there are “no-go zones” where non-Muslims cannot enter, according to a report warning of mounting intolerance.
(The Independent newspaper, oct 2018)
But no one seems to know where these no-go areas are, depite 'great swaths of the UK that have been taken over by Muslims' (stephen's words).
I have to correct Stephen on one point - I am not an apologist for islam. Yassine is, I am not. The last thing I want is an Islamic Republic of Britain.
What I am is 'anti-xenophobic'. Stephen calls me an apologist because I have tried to counter some of the more egregious fibs told about Islam and Muslims because - due to the unstinting efforts of Stephen and his like minded friends - anti-Muslim feeling is ratcheting up. I don't fear Britain becoming an Islamic state, but I do fear it becoming an un-liberal and intolerant one.
The prospect of an Islamic Britain is a bogey man - it isn't on the most distant horizon. But a Britain that has abandoned its traditions of tolerance to appease baseless fears peddled by xenophobes in the near future is very much on the cards.
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Religion
A placeholder - I'll do proper OP later - in the meantime I hope people will comment on the difference beween 'god' and 'God' as they see it.
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Religion
Taken literally, I'd say no because the Turing test isn't strong enough. But if we are less literal, the issue is wheher sufficiently sophiticated artificial entities should be granted at least some 'human rights'.
I'd guess we are at least 100 years from producing artificial entities that would require more consideration than toasters or vacuum cleaners, but perhapsitsnot too early to begin the debate.
My view at this stage is to bear in mind a famous quote by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832):
The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?
Bentham was referring to animals, but I think his principle applies equally well to artificial enties (and foetuses, but that's a different debate!)
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Philosophy
Following D's 'salvation' thread I'd like to discuss atonement.
I can accept that Jesus was partly historical, and that he was very likely crucified. Over the centuries, Christian theologians have speculated on why it was necessary that Jesus had to suffer and die.
Some of the theories aput forward are described in wikipedia as the ransom theory, the recapitulation theory, the satisaction theory, the moral government theory and others.
It seemsthat there is no consensus amonst Christians about its most central events! They agree Jesus was crucified, but not about why or how it helped with man's sinfulness!
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Religion
A popular - if facile - argument is that religion is poplular because people are scared of dying.
A counter argument is that the grand-daddy of the Abahamic faiths - Judaism - had no notion of posthumous existence. The most familiar expression of that is in Matthew 22:23 "The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection..."
AFAICT belief in an afterlife remains widespread but not universal amongst Jews today.
Early Judaic writing is sometimes ambiguous as to whether death is or is not permanent oblivion, but there is scant support or the idea of posthumous reward in heaven or punishment in hell. All - rich and poor, good and evil all have the same fate of 'sheol'.
Ecclesiastes 9:2 "2 All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad,[a] the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not."
The idea of an afterlife more familiar from a Christian perspective appear in later writings, almostcertainly the result of syncretism from Greek ideas. An example is Daniel 12 “Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence” — implies that resurrection will be followed by a day of judgment. Those judged favorably will live forever and those judged to be wicked will be punished."
Ancient mesopotamian legends also say almost nothing about an afterlife. There was no heaven for dead babylonians to look forward to!
in contrast, the Egyptians took great pains to ensure the afterlife was comfortable - at least for the rich and powerful. But the Jews had little time for Egyptian religious notions!
In hinduism, re-incarnation would seem to be a palliative for death's sting, but a pious hindu does not seek to re-incarnate. Life is a punishment, and the goal of Hiduism is the peace and oblivion of nirvana.
In Christianity,the idea has developed to the point where earthly life is reduced to a mere testing ground. In Christianity, there is a strong tradition that suffering is good, because it leads to posthumous rewards. Presumably that has roots in Greek ideas about the grossness of flesh and the fact that early Christians tended to be poor - hence their inescapable suffering at the hands of grasping landlords and corrupt priests could presented as a positive.
All in all, it is overly simplistic to suppose religion exists because people are scared to dying.
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My point is not to defend Islam or sharia - which I detest - but to point out that the problem is with fanaticism, not with any paricular creed.
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Religion
If you hold a stone in your hand and let it go it will fall to the ground, but if you hold a bird and let it go it may not land for minutes, or hours.
The argument against free will is that the bird is no less subject to the laws of physics than the stone; the apparent difference is due to our ignorance of the forces and effects acting in the case of the bird. It is, I think, clear that argument is not rigorous! As we don't know the forces and their effects we can hardly be sure they account for the bird's behaviour.
In fact, we haven't got anywhere. We neither know that physical laws do account for the bird's behaviour nor that they do not. Whichever position one takes, an opponent can challenge with 'prove it!' to which no good answer can be made.
My view is that the world contains objects - such as rocks and steam engines - that manifest simple, deteministic behaviour and objects - such as birds and people - whose behaviour is far from simply deterministic. Without prejudging the nature or existence of 'free will', objects of the latter kind appear to manifest 'free will'.
One view of free will sees it as a 'high level' function, dependent on having a brain capable of consciousness and hence 'illsusion', but I want to present a different view. Consider,for example, an amoeba. An amoeba encountering a food particle behaves in a complex but inflexible way. I don't think amoeba can be said to have free will! But more complicated organisms have a wider range of responses and have to choose how to respond to a stimulus. Successul organisms will select a good option more frequently than unsucessful organisms. Thus the power to make choices will evolve. That is to say that organisms will evolve to make choices based on present conditions, past experience and even future expectation. That is to say that if one interprets 'free will' as 'the power to make choices' then free will can be expected to arise by normal evolutionary principles.
I'm not interested in word-games that focus on whether free will is free or even if it is will. I take free will to be only a name or label for our faculty to make choices. The advantage of that is that it avoids getting bogged down in pointless semantics and turns the study of free will into a scientific study of a brain process. I think we can get an understanding of free will by studying organisms of increasing omplexity and learning how they choose between optional strategies. I expect that when we have done that, there will be no deep mystery about human free will.
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Philosophy
I think that the title is a bit misleading, because all religions are backward. Western societies are more liberal and progressive now than in the middle ages but that's not because we have different scriptures - the injunction to stone anyone working on the sabbath is still in our holy book - but it's because we have found ways to get around the awkward bits. Except of course when it serves our purpose not to ignore it, such as when we want to burn witches or condemn homosexuals - then the validity ofhe old scriptures is re-invoked!
But in the islamic world a narrow, fundamentalistic attitude to scripture developed centuries ago is still going strong, and (some would contend) only getting stronger, to the detriment of everbody (especially Muslims)
I have located what I think is an excellent article examing the historical and contemporary forces that have shaped islamic culture. I won't attempt to paraphrase it - I dont think it is over-long.
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Science and Nature
in the 6th entury BC the israelite king jehoiaikim refused to pay tribute (ie 'protection money') to the powerful Babylonians which resuted in the Baylonians attacking and defeating the Israelites. Consequently the israelite elite and part of the general poultion were removed from israel to babylon.
The exiled priests were concerned to preserve the ethic identity of the israelites and did so by creating an official mythology, in writing so it was immune from change, dilution or contamination from foreign ideas. It was a scheme that blurred nationalism and relligion, myth and history.
70 years later the babylonians were themselves defeated by the Persians under Cyrus. Cyrus permitted the exiled jews to return to jerusalem, making israel a vassal state of his empire. jewish royalty and aristocracy had been destroyed; the reconstitued Israel was highly theocratic.
For the next few hundred years israel changed hands repeatedly. However it remained a small minor theocracy on the fringes of world event.
By the time of Jesus, israel had passed from Greek control to the Romans, but most Isealites were poor, highly taxed subjects of foreign power. Traditional judaism was represented by a corrupt and venal priesthood and the mass of ordinary people were open to a very different vision.
Christianity has little in common with judaism. Judaism is ethnocentric and is not concerned with aterlife; Christianity is universal and salvation is central.
Christianity was more successful outside israel than with the Jews inside. However this is a period where there were any number of competing creeds and religions around the mediterranean. The dominance of Christianity was due to a historical accident - it was championed by a roman general who went on to become emperor. Almost at a stroke christianity was transformed from 'just another cult' to the official religion of the world's greatest empire.
islam is closely modelled on Judaism. In my view, islam was invented as a political device - it was intended to forge unity aross a pan-arabian empire containing a wide variety of ethnicities and religions.
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saith PGA!I don't believe you can demonstrate I am here because of chance happenstance
I'd pick up the gauntless myself, but right now I want to watch a movie.
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1 How are you certain that no gods exist?2 Do you believe this is the only reality? Basically, that this is the only universe and there are no other universes? Again, how are you certain?3 Do you believe aliens exist?4 Do you believe human intelligence is the only type of intelligence that has ever existed? Basically, that humans are the first entities that exhibit this type of intelligence, consciousness, sentience?
i think they are good questions.
1 - very certain. As a sciencey type I should really say "No, because we can't be certain of anything". But on that basis the answer to every question 'are you certain X?' is no, so there's no point asking. So i'm as certain no gods exists as i am certain of anything. About as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow, a lot more certain than I am brexit is a good idea.
2 I read pop-sci. I tend to go with whatever seems most mainstream amongst proper scientists, which (at 7/3/19) is that there are multiple universes. I don't have strong views about it.
3 Lots of uncertainty here. my gut tells it's 50:50 for bacterial life in the solar system. Intelligent aliens exist somwhere, but probably itoo far away to matter. I'm not expecting the light-speed barrier to be broken and space is very, very big.
4 i think we humans over-estimate our uniqueness. I think the differences between human brains and animal brains is mostly in degree, not kind.
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It's hardly rigorous but unsurprisingly (to me anyway) I am, apparently, 100% humanist.
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How can I tell what is right and what is wrong? What is the measuring tool of such value statements?And moreover, by what measure are you going to use to determine whether my believe is reasonable or not?
How can I tell what is right and what is wrong?
You don't need to know how - you can tell right from wrong already!
You can tell squares from circles but you don't know how - it's basically 'circles look like circles and squares look like squares'. Your brain is wired-up to tell shapes apart and your brain is wired up to tell good and bad apart, or more accuratey wired up to judge things as being somewhere on a good-bad/right-wrong scale.
What is the measuring tool of such value statements?
i think you are asking what tool is used to determine what is good and what is bad. Well, it's not really a tool. judging thing as good or bad is a function of how you brain is wired up. Most brains are wired up to judge mugging an old lady to as a bad thing; if you have a brain wired differently you are a danger to society.
what measure are you going to use to determine whether my moral judgement belief is reasonable or not?
Note I'm answering out of the original context.
I have implied moral judgement is instinctual, that it is unconscious and outside our control. And so it is. You cannot change your opinion on capital punishment by will power alone. But what we can do is use the rational part of our brains to check, confirm or override our intinct. Being disguted by homosexuality is not a choice - refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding is.
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The girl's parents said her fate should be left in the hands of God.
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I can't believe polly appears to be banned (again). Surely no-one is actually upset by her loose-cannon broadsides aimed (if that' the word) at anything and everything that moves. It's only a time to worry if you don't get called a bigot tard by P - you'd know you must be really losing the plot.
I hope she is soon restored to being the breath of fresh ai... well, of fresh bile and strangely innoccuous vitriol, actually DArt needs. I miss the silly girl already.
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DebateArt.com
First up, I don't intend this to have a right answer.
Suppose you are the sole witness of an old lady getting mugged. If you help the old lady the perp will escape.
Do you
a) help the old lady (who does not appear very badly hurt)
b) chase the perp (who you could easily overpower)
c) fudge the issue and give a complicated answer.
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Philosophy
The stories of Genesis cannot be read apart from their original cultural context, and when we read them as they were meant to be read, we see that the creation story was a gauntlet thrown down before the prevailing culture of its time.
The creation stories affirmed that the Jewish God, the tribal deity of a small and internationally unimportant people, alone made the whole cosmos. That meant that He was able to protect His People. It meant that, properly speaking, all the pagan nations should abandon their old gods and worship Him.
These stories affirm that the Jewish God is powerful enough to have created everything by a few simple orders.
I agree that is what gen 1 is.
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Science and Nature
Suppose there are 600 people with fatal disease A. You have to choose between
treatment 1 - 200 people will be saved
treatment 2 - there is a 1/3 chance everyone is saved, a 2/3 chance everyone dies
Now suppose there are 600 people with fatal disease B. You have to choose between
treatment 3 - 400 people will certainly die
treatment 4 - there is a 1/3 chance everyone is saved, a 2/3 chance everyone dies.
What choices do you make?
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Science and Nature
Most references to death in the OT suggest it man's final state:
2 Sam 14:14 Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die.
Job 7:7-9 Remember that my life is a breath My eye will not again see good…A cloud dissolves and it is gone;
So is one who descends to Sheol. He will not ascend.
However YHWH can restore life if he chooses to: Deut 32:39 "I kill, and I make alive;". Elijh revives a dead child (1 kings 17:17-24) and Eisha does the same (2 kings 4:18-37). But those are revivifications, not indictions that immortal souls are judged and go to heaven or hell. It is worth noting other Middle eastern gods had the power of revivifiction:
And all quarters extolled [his] greatness:.
Who but Marduk restores his dead to life?
Apart from Ṣarpanitum which goddess grants life?
Marduk can restore to life from the grave,
Ṣarpanitum knows how to save from destruction, (trans. by W.G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature 1960)
The writer of Ecclesistes has this to say of death: "19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return."
The psalmist writes: "The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence." (Ps 115:17) and "For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness." (Ps 38:18).
We get the first hint of judgement of the dead in Daniel (2nd century BCE)
And many of those who sleep in the dusty earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, others to everlasting reproach and contempt. Then the knowledgeable shall shine like the brightness of the sky; those who justified the many, like the stars, forever and ever. Dan 12:2-3.
Matthew tells resurrection was not accepted by Jewish Sadducces upto Jesus time. "On that day some Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to Jesus and questioned Him," (Matt 22:23)
Given the weight of evidence that judaism rejected ressurrection, an ambiguous passage such as isaiah 26:19 cannot be taken as proof that a belief in Christianity-like afterlife is ancient. It almost certainly arose in Judea no later than a century or two BC.
"Your dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise – awake and sing you who dwell in the earth! – for your dew is as the dew of light, and the earth shall bring to life the shades." (Isaiah 26:19)
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Religion
inhabited exoplanets is a theory that many physicists today are seriously discussing. They remain divided on the issue, but if we assume for the sake of discussion that they exist, then to theists, I ask:
Do you believe there would be a different God for each planet, or one God over them all? If the latter, do you think God's values and commands would change from planet to planet, as befitting their fundamental differences? If you believe in an afterlife, would you expect to see souls from other planets there? Or would it be one afterlife per planet? Do we share heaven with little green angels?
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Rig Veda10 HYMN CXXIX. Creation.
6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
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Religion
i wonder what goes on in the 'atheist free' thread.. Is it all happy-clappy and singing kumbyah or do the catholics and protestants gang up and beat the crap out of the muslims?
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Religion
Suppose you are captured by a man who holds a gun to your head. He gives you another gun and tells you to kill a random stranger before he counts to 10 or he will kill you. From his manner you believe him and his gun is right on the back of your head.
So you kill the next guy who comes along, whereupon the gunman says 'thank you' takes his gun back and walks away.
Does a plea of self-defence get you off for murdering an innocent stranger?
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Philosophy
In 100 years we'll be dead. In what way does it matter what is going on then?
We will have descendants alive then, but we won't know or care about it. it won't affect us in our graves if there is no oil or tigers for our children to enjoy. Why should we stint for people of the future who don't even exist yet? They might thank us for leaving them a nice planet (if we do!), but what can a insentiate corpse do with a thank you?
We atheists are often charged by theists of being amoral monsters. We aren't - but why not?
So why aren't you and I amoral's elfish hedonists?
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Religion
Are 'X exists' and 'X is real' only different ways of saying the same thing or are they different?
I'm leaning towards the former.
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Philosophy
1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
Obiously something is wrong in there but it's hard to identify exactly what!
The problem is that defing god as something 'maximally great' incidentally defines god as necessarily existing because 'neccessary existence' is greater than mere 'existence'. While that is acceptable as a definition, it is problematic to use it as a premise in the OA because it assumes what it sets out to prove.
For purposes of the OA you have to define a god as a entity that is 'maximally great, except it it does not necessarily exist', that is we still allow gods to possibly exist but we remove the hidden assumption their neccessary, certain existence.
Of course that means the OA no longer works.
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I deliberately wrote 'any thing' not 'anything' because it's obvious statements expressing falsehoods exist - 2=2=5 for example. But there is no actual case or instance of 2 plus 2 making 5 in the universe - ie 2+2=5 does not describe any actual 'thing'.
The true exists, the false does not exist. Discuss!
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Philosophy
Is there any such thing as morality? It is clear that if morality is a 'thing' it is not a thing made of atoms. Nor is it made of 'energy' because if it was it would be possible to use morality to heat water. Nor can morality be located anywhere in space.
We talk about morality a lot on DA... but what - if anything - are we talking about?
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Philosophy
There is a 10-over a side competion going on in the UAE.
Can cricket get any shorter? I quite like 5 day test matches that end in a tame draw....
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Sports
Ethang wrote:The NT is saying do not make earthly wealth your hearts desire, not that wealth is bad
I think the NT does go further than saying 'do not make earthly wealth your hearts desire' and does imply 'wealth is bad'.
Perhaps the most explicit passage is
"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:23-26
There are other verses that express similar ideas, and I don't know of anything that can be construed as otherwise.
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Religion
Is it the case that the first Christians did not conceive of 'eternal life' in terms of the survival of ethereal souls in heaven? I get impression that the new order was imagined more like a re-establisment of a pre-fall Eden right here on Earth, where life was easy and there was no death or suffering,
It was only when that failed to materialise that it was re-interpretted in terms of posthumous survival of souls.
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