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@Athias
In your example how do you separate a woman who got into a fight from one who was defending her family and should she then still be prosecuted for manslaughter?
Is it in fact ever alright to press charges on an unarmed person who has been assaulted with a deadly weapon for being assaulted with a deadly weapon?
If you flip a man off on the highway and he shoots you and incidentally your passenger killing them but leaving you alive are you guilty of manslaughter? You did instigate gun violence did you not?
If not please explain how the two situations differ in any discernible legal sense.
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@crossed
If i had no knowledge of apple trees and had never seen/heard of fruit growing on trees and trees were only mentioned in ancient texts of questionable authorship, scientific merit and veracity then your example would hold up however you are again comparing a known and demonstrated agent (an apple tree) with some unknown and as yet undemonstrated agency (god(s)).
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@crossed
False analogy. You are comparing known and demonstrated agent (you) with some unknown and as yet undemonstrated agency (god(s)). Your example is not proof but only a claim. Claims must be supported with sufficient evidence or they can and should be dismissed in logical discourse.
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@Athias
Then your argument is that abortion should be considered justified in the same way and is therefore not murder in which case miscarriage is not manslaughter in which case there has been a miscarriage of justice in Alabama?
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@crossed
You are not offering any evidence only more claims.
You claim some god(s) did x or y. Now demonstrate that god(s) were the cause rather than it being purely the result of unguided naturalistic causes.
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@crossed
This is your claim. Can you demonstrate it in any way or are you only to continue baldly asserting your position?Fine Jesus did it.God created animal using his very basic common sense.
- He created winter animals with lots of fur
- He created desert animals with little fur.
- He created night animals with night vision
- He created day time animals with normal eyes.
Winter animals did not adapt and grow more fur. They have always had more fur then desert animals. Because god created them that way by useing his common sense.Night time animals have always had night vision. They did not adapt to the darknsess. God created the owl with night vision because he had common sence
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@crossed
gods creationIn the beginning god created animals.God created all the animals .
You must demonstrate some god(s) before you can put the god(s) under discussion forward as a potential cause for anything that does demonstrably exist. You seem to be confusing the claim with the evidence.
Your claim is that some god(s) [specifically the jesus] exists and somehow caused things to exist (presumably not through the implementation of the event commonly if imprecisely known as the big bang) now you must demonstrate that said god(s) actually exist. Otherwise all god(s) are equally likely and exactly as likely as no god(s) whatsoever.
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@Mopac
I know your trying to seem pithy but you don't come off as pithy to me when you use so many words to say essentially nothing you come off as vacuous.
I have no intention of engaging you further I just thought you might appreciate some constructive criticism.
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@TheRealNihilist
You said you go by convenience and I am asking why.
So that I can communicate with others. Standards like Celsius allow us to import more precise information about the temperature but only if both parties recognize it as a valid system for measuring temperature.
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@crossed
That dogs and snow exist is evidence for dogs and snow not god(s). You must demonstrate that something exists before I can accept it as a possible cause for anything that has been demonstrated to exist.
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@crossed
yes he could have just created the dog and not winter
This statement tells me that the content of the evidence is unimportant to you and that you would reach the same conclusion regardless of the evidence. This is not a good pathway to truth. In general it is better to examine evidence critically and accept whatever conclusions this leads to rather than beginning with a conclusion and then interpreting the available evidence to fit with it.
Before we continue perhaps you should tell me which god(s) are under discussion here.
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@TheRealNihilist
I'm not sure what you are asking here. By accepting a standard like Celsius we can communicate the temperature to one another.
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@TheRealNihilist
I have a tendency to follow the discussion where it goes.
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@bsh1
Well it seems Mopac and I have both simply chosen to assign subjective meaning to the terms moral and perfect that allow for perfection and morality to coexist. If you need me to do the opposite however I can.
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@Dr.Franklin
Thank you it's good to be back.
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@bsh1
If we are pretending morality is objective we should really both be using the same standard. The same goes for pefect.
If I can simply choose whatever I like then I shall choose the absence of unhappiness as my moral standard and flat as my standard of perfection.
In that case a perfectly flat world would likely contain no people and so no unhappiness so there perfection and morality.
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@bsh1
Please present the standard of morality you intend we use in that case and also your standard for oerfection
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@bsh1
Not only is morality subjective but perfection is too. This question can only ever be answered with opinions not facts.
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@TheRealNihilist
Why do you accept one over another?
For convenience. I believe I already said that.
What do you mean with "=/="?
That is short hand for does not equal.
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@bsh1
I do not assume that. Can you demonstrate it?
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@TheRealNihilist
In most cases I do not justify any standard over any other but I do accept many commonly held standards as a convenience since it allows me to impart information on others who presumably also accept said standards.
Bsh1 may do as Bsh1likes but axiom =/= objectivity.
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@TheRealNihilist
I think that most if not all standards are subjective and also that without them we could not evaluate things objectively. We decided how hot 0°C is subjectively in order that we could make coherent objective statements about temperature when measured in Celsius.
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@janesix
Unless that too is conscious and objects to being eaten.
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@Fallaneze
Atheism is just a lack of belief that a God exists.Atheism isn't a worldview.
As always I must argue that these are not errors. I do not believe in any god(s) so I am therefore an atheist. I do not know with certainty that no god(s) exist so I am also therefore agnostic. When you falsely equate agnosticism which concerns itself only with knowledge, or at least the claim of knowledge, with atheism which concerns itself only with belief, you are muddying the waters.
There is no evidence of God.
You could claim that the fact that anything exists is evidence for some god(s) but it is equally evidence of universe creating pixies and spaghetti monsters or even just evidence that things can in fact happen spontaneously with no cause.
You could say that evidence exists that had convinced you that some god(s) must exist but you clearly mean a very different thing than I do when I say that I can provide evidence that gravity exists.
Science evidences atheism.
If any atheists say this then they misunderstand what science is for but I feel this may actually be a mischaracterization of the argument "science does not evidence any god" which is true.
You can't prove a negative.
Again it is true that some negatives can be proven (specifically those that violate physical law) but surely you realize that atheists who use this argument are referring to a very specific kind of claim. For example you cannot prove conclusively that the universe when viewed from the outside does not form a perfect four dimensional model of Jay Leno's head because the universe cannot be viewed from the outside and so no contrary evidence exists for the idea.
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@janesix
The alternative to starvation is eating some organic lifeforms. You have asked a yes no question but no is an impossible answer.
Not unakin to asking if someone who wants to go flying would jump off a bridge.
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@crossed
You are presuposing god(s) and then attributing it/them motivations. Also unless you're argument is that your proposed god(s) lacked the ability to make any conceivable universe it liked then surely this god could have made hairless dogs and not winter. This then becomes a circular argument as it can be applied to any configuration of matter or energy regardless of the form it takes or the physical laws that govern it.
With no practical way to test your hypothesis the difference between a created world and an uncreated one is completely indistinguishable from our perspective.
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@janesix
Before answering your hypothetical what alternative are you suggesting? That vegans starve themselves to death for their moral convictions?
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@crossed
Dragons are also discussed in Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone. Unless you are implying that this is evidence that dinosaurs exist in contemporary England then I don't see your point.
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--> @Discipulus_Didicit
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This is an interesting treatise on why claiming some creator being doesn't so much solve mysteries like why are we here and how did the universe come about as simply appealing to a greater mystery. Whether such a being existed or not faith has observably less efficacy informing our understanding than science has shown.
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@Paul
This is beyond our epistemology and so is not a question for science.
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@Dr.Franklin
In a way I agree. Evolution versus creation is useless. They are in fact unconnected. Whether the universe was 'created' or not (and indeed whatever that means to you) it clearly includes functional evolution which can be measured in real time as generational mutations.
This is a little like saying gravity versus creation is useless. That is technically true as whether or not the universe is 'created' or not it clearly includes the force we refer to as gravity and its effects can be measured in real time through the movements of celestial bodies.
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I know this isn't what you wanted to focus on but there is no standard of morality that is not subjective and I really want to be talking about the same thing since I've been gone so long.
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@bsh1
Morality is a subjective system which, if agreed upon, can be used to make objective assessments to distinguish right from wrong and assign praiseworthiness and blameworthiness to actors.
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@RoderickSpode
All this because I asked you the difference between a religion and a cult (which you have still not explained adequately).
I tell you what there is alot going on in those three posts of your so lets justgl get back to basica and maybe we can resolce this.
Just tell me the difference as you see it and we will go from there.
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@keithprosser
Let me put it another way. What is it exactly that disqualifies an AI that you and I possess and how can you be sure it was still lacking if you made a program so sophisticated that it seemed concious?
Forget what consciousness is for a moment and let's talk about what it is not.
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@keithprosser
Let's say you did succeed at creating an artificial consciousness with the capacity for subjective feeling. How would you know you had succeeded?
What measure of consciousness do we have other than the behaviors that we usually associate with consciousness?
You say you believe that I am conciousbut if you could see my mental processes as computer code wpuld you still feel that way? Perhaps all that takes the magic away is understanding how the trick was done.
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@keithprosser
The difference is that we subjectively attached more meaning to a human than a mannequin. Even dropping a dead human body feels wrong somehow while I will happily drop mannequins all day long. This makes no sense as the dead body doesn't mind being dropped any more than tbe mannequin does but its true.
I submit therefore that we devided there was a difference and that is the only difference.
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@keithprosser
What is the difference from a physics perspective?
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@keithprosser
None of that changes that all brain function would seem to be physical. Unless u2 is more than physical it is simply u1 and the distinction is artificial.
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@zedvictor4
There is a difference between theory the way you mean it and theory when speaking of the theory of gravity or the theory of germ medicine. A scientific theory is a fact. A casual theory is not. If you cannot differentiate the two then I'm not sure we can have any effective discussion. My personal recomendation is that you only use the word theory when reffering to a scientific theory (fact) and not a casual/weak/conspiracy theory (not a fact). Otherwise you will have to explain which you mean EVERY SINGLE TIME you use the term.
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@zedvictor4
conflation can be as positive as it can be negative.
Positive and negative in this context are largely subjective but for my stated goal of clear precise communications that do not muddy the waters of a discussion a conflation of terms is almost always negative.
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@zedvictor4
In science a theory is the closest to a fact you can get and a hypothesis is just an idea that needs to be further tested. These are the only usages I will recognize for clarity sake. If you wish to be imprecise in your conversations that is your business, and good luck with those who will refuse to acknowledge a scientific fact in light of your policy, I will not.
In that way you can be certain what I mean when I use the two terms.
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@zedvictor4
In science a hypothesis is not directly equitable with a theory and I find that if I am not strict in observing the difference there us liable to be a tendency in my interlocutors to conflate the colloquial usage of theory, which is a synonym for hypothesis, with the scientific usage of theory, which is not.
When that happens, whether the conflation is purposeful or the result of ignorance, I find I am liable to hear inanities like "evolution is just a theory". Better to be clear on the difference at the outset and I appreciate your cooperation in clear communications here on the thread.
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@Greyparrot
Is that a good holiday in your estimation?
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@keithprosser
And yet there is no reason to think that anything the brain does is not a direct consequence of this sifting process.True,but that isn't the difference that gets people to say sieves don't (but brains do) have free will.
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@keithprosser
If there are common features between how sieves work and how human choice works they seem less important and less interesting to how sieves and people are different.
One quantifiable difference is that brains are more complicated and sifts chemicals and electrical signals rather than sand.
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@Greyparrot
Sorry to hear that "your day" is not to your liking. Perhaps you could outline your ideas on a better holiday. Something that, as a veteran, you would find fun. Any reason for a party.
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@Greyparrot
Gay pride is not a government enforced holiday in the way that veterans day is and even veterans day does not involve a government mandated celebration. No one is being firced to do anything so I'm not sure what your objections have to do with the actual situation.
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@Greyparrot
So you do not subscribe to the maxim "any reason to have a party" then?
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