I told you, the secular legal frameworks will keep people in check. No need to coerce them with religion.
As for the morals, I have showed you that my moral standard is superior to what is presented in the scriptures.
Know when the harm is done, and know the consequences of your actions.
You think that we in the West will turn into Soviet Russia if we abandon our belief in the supernatural beings. That is just childish.
You are being childish says the guy who wants to abolish the first amendment of the US constitution. Freedom of religion must go of course if we are going to make it illegal for parents to share their religious beliefs with their children. My moral standard is superior says the guy who insists his ideological opponents are not only without legitimacy but so crazy and dangerous that should be institutionalized so a team of "medical professionals" can teach them to think in the approved manner. The secular legal frameworks will keep people in check says the guy who is proposing a road to government tyranny and dystopia so blatantly that it sounds like the prequel to Orwell's 1984. Honestly I don't really know what to say. I am baffled that you cannot seem to see the darkness in your dreams of secular utopia. In my Argument for God I made the case that rejection of God starts a gradual but progressive slide towards totalitarianism. You are a data point supporting my claim. Thank you for providing a real life example of how one can embrace tyranny after rejecting God. |
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If you fail to see the harm that is being done, then I cannot help you. Your rejection of science is hilarious.
But then again, you believe some infinite entity created this universe and is transforming the world through us, LOL.
You are stuck in the past, like the rest of the religious freaks. Yes, you are a freak, IMHO.
You need a team of professionals to help you. I'm afraid one psychiatrist will not do.
Not only do I not see the harm I actually think your beliefs threaten far more harm. Super Freaky! Should I be institutionalized against my will? Freaks are dangerous after all especially ones that are so deranged that they they require not a single psychiatrist but an entire team of professionals to help them. There should be plenty of people available to do the institutionalizing. After all if we are going to be putting video cameras into the home of every religious person to make sure they are not talking about God and abusing children and/or encouraging children report their parents to their school teaches and principle and denounce their parents if they hear the forbidden word God there is going to be lots and lots of "child abuse" to deal with. We are going to need a new branch of the police to deal with all this work. I like the name Thinkpol for this new group. It has a nice ring to it. What do you think? One question before I go: "Do you think the Bible was inspired (or written) by your infinite entity?"
At a minimum I think it was written by people who were inspired by God or the ideal of God. Beyond that I am not certain I try to keep an open mind. |
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CoinCube, just google about the founding fathers and their support of slavery
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I am familiar with the founding fathers views on slavery. Below is an article on Thomas Jefferson's views . He was from the south and a plantation owner. He inherited many slaves and bought more. He also was consistently and publicly opposed to the institution and advocated for its gradual abolition. He felt that if it was not abolished it would lead to a civil war. He was also broke and his slaves represented much of the little wealth he possessed. He was in so much debt that most of his possessions including his slaves had to be sold to pay his debts when he died and he passed little on to his children. Sometimes we have the vision to perceive evil and the wisdom to speak out against it but not the will to overcome its temptations. Thomas Jefferson's Attitudes Toward Slaveryhttps://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jeffersons-attitudes-toward-slaveryBTW, I do not have desire to brand anyone criminal specifically based on their particular religion. I object to teaching nonsense to children.
You have the right to believe in nonsense, just don't force your children to believe in it. ...
You have no desire brand anyone as criminal based on their religion unless they happen to share their religious beliefs with their children then they are criminals and child abusers? Sounds like tyranny to me. "No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?" - George Orwell, Animal Farm ...
You think I support SJWs? Christians and SJWs are the same type of animal in my book. Inventing their own reality and claim it FOR others.
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I find it ironic that you are blind to the fact that your criticisms also describe you. Christians at least by and large do not seek to impose their beliefs on others using violence or by making it a crime to share a non Christian worldview with ones children. |
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We only need reason and logic and to be able to debate freely about it. That's why we are here...
A false assertion. Science or natural philosophy cannot be maintained by the consensus of society unless that same consensus accept the metaphysical and theological axioms on which natural science is based. See this excellent essay on this topic by John C. Wright. http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/04/science-romance-and-the-scientific-romance-of-christendom/I think this whole thread comes down to ''do we really need religion or religious books to have morals'' and then answer is pretty simple, we don't.
Also untrue. We lack any form of viable replacement. Without religion all that exists are arbitrary beliefs. Subjective choices not grounded in objective reality. This was highlighted well by an earlier poster. While it is true that there is no definitive atheistic worldview, all atheists share the same fundamental beliefs as core to their personal worldviews. While some want to state that atheism is simply a disbelief in the existence of a god, there really is more to it. Every expression of atheism necessitates at least three additional affirmations:
1. The universe is purely material. It is strictly natural, and there is no such thing as the supernatural (e.g., gods or spiritual forces).
2. The universe is scientific. It is observable, knowable and governed strictly by the laws of physics.
3. The universe is impersonal. It does not a have consciousness or a will, nor is it guided by a consciousness or a will.
Denial of any one of those three affirmations will strike a mortal blow to atheism. Anything and everything that happens in such a universe is meaningless. A tree falls. A young girl is rescued from sexual slavery. A dog barks. A man is killed for not espousing the national religion. These are all actions that can be known and explained but never given any meaning or value.
A good atheist — that is, a consistent atheist — recognizes this dilemma. His only reasonable conclusion is to reject objective meaning and morality. Thus, calling him “good” in the moral sense is nonsensical. There is no morally good atheist, because there really is no objective morality. At best, morality is the mass delusion shared by humanity, protecting us from the cold sting of despair.
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So I'm guessing slavery is all kosher in your book? Most of the founding fathers either owned or supported slavery.
For someone who claims to dislike the liberal SJW movement you sure sound a lot like them. Your statement about the founding fathers is misleading and no I do not approve of slavery. The founding fathers were great men but they were still men and living in a society they inherited. That society was full of men and evil. As a group their actions were consistent with a desire to restrict slavery to keep it from spreading with the long term goal of eliminating it. This was well highlighted by Abraham Lincoln who finishing the job of cutting out the cancer. https://www.npr.org/2011/07/06/137647715/weekly-standard-founding-fathers-opposed-slaveryThe founding fathers, said Lincoln, had opposed slavery. They adopted a Declaration of Independence that pronounced all men created equal. They enacted the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banning slavery from the vast Northwest Territory. To be sure, many of the founders owned slaves. But they asserted their hostility to slavery in principle while tolerating it temporarily (as they hoped) in practice. That was why they did not mention the words "slave" or "slavery" in the Constitution, but referred only to "persons held to service." "Thus, the thing is hid away, in the constitution," said Lincoln, "just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time." The first step was to prevent the spread of this cancer, which the fathers took with the Northwest Ordinance, the prohibition of the African slave trade in 1807, and the Missouri Compromise restriction of 1820. The second was to begin a process of gradual emancipation, which the generation of the fathers had accomplished in the states north of Maryland. I would not want to live in a country where my president goes to war after God told him to do so. You need to have a mechanism to prevent such a thing. Individuals with mental issues should not be near the nuclear codes.
Agreed that is why the US constitution invests the power to declare war not in the presidency but in congress. Another smart move by the founding fathers. Dangerously congress has started to neglect it's duties in recent years and allowed the executive branch to engage in combat operations aka war without its approval. That is unconstitutional but a manifestation of corruption in the US government and the failure of the legislature to fulfill its duties. As for the SJWs running the higher education, yes, you've got a big problem. What is happening in America is sad; same thing is happening in Canada and Europe. Liberals are shutting down all discussions, any views remotely conservative and being equated with racism, sexism etc. I think all this identity politics is the root cause of the problem...
The protest you highlight are just another manifestation of the human desire to use violence and power to force conformity to ones beliefs. Having proclaimed their the "truths" of microaggression, hate speech, racism, etcetera as a highest moral cause it is not at all surprising that attempts are then made to capture the mechanism of governance be it university administration or city governance and use violence or even better state sanctioned violence to eliminate the their ideological opposition. Its not really all that different then your own desires to brand your ideological opponents as criminals and use the might of the state against them. Different truth same fundamental motivation. |
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Your idea is Orwellian. If you define religion as child abuse it logically follows that the state should intervene in the families of some 3.6 billion people and force parents to not share their beliefs with their children. If they refuse you rip the children from their parents and homes of course. That's what we do with people who repeatedly abuse children.
Your idea is so crazy so nightmarish that it makes believing in flying horses look totally sane.
Fundamentalist always justify their crimes as advancing the greater good.
Not so if you want your children to succeed in the modern world. Evidence is evidence. Not sure what you can disagree there. Or I should have said: "objective physical evidence". If that better for you? If your child will go around the MIT campus saying that Earth is 6000 years old, and snakes can talk, I am sure someone would pull your child from school to evaluate his/her mental status. Ok well at least you are honest and upfront in your desire for tyranny. Fortunately I live in a country founded by far wiser men then you. Bill of Rights:"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" I agree with you that anyone promoting traditional religious or even mainstream conservative views on a college campus these days is probably in for a chilly reception at best. Report: 39% of Top Liberal Arts Colleges Have No Republican Professorshttp://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/05/07/report-39-of-top-liberal-arts-colleges-have-no-republican-professors/Christian group at Oxford University banned from fair out of fear it would 'alienate' studentshttp://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/10/11/christian-group-at-oxford-university-banned-from-fair-out-fear-it-would-alienate-students.html |
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Religion and IQ
High IQ is usually regarded by those that possess it as an unmitigated good. Those gifted with superior intellect are not only smarter, they are statistically more likely to be taller, healthier, and more athletic than average.
You mean, like Stephen Hawking? The point is that people with a high intellect usually have more interesting things to do than to spend the days doing sports. Stephen hawking suffered from ALS a horrible and progressive motor neuron disease. Yes he was a high IQ individual one with a terrible disease. What exactly is your point? If you want to challenge my statement here is a discussion on my data source from page 2 of this thread. To the best of my knowledge this data has only been confirmed with follow up research.
Let's start with your first claim
You are claiming that people with high IQ are also taller, healthier, and more athletic
Where the hell did you get that idea?
The original studies are old and to my knowledge not available online but a summary can be found here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_TermanTerman found his answers in his longitudinal study on gifted children: Genetic Studies of Genius.[12] Initiated in 1921, the Genetic Studies of Genius was from the outset a long-term study of gifted children. Published in five volumes, Terman followed children with extremely high IQ in childhood throughout their lives. The fifth volume examined the children in a 35 year follow-up, and looked at the gifted group during mid-life.[13]
Genetic Studies of Genius revealed that gifted and genius children were in at least as good as average health and had normal personalities. Few of them demonstrated the previously-held negative stereotypes of gifted children. He found that gifted children did not fit the existing stereotypes often associated with them: they were not weak and sickly social misfits, but in fact were generally taller, in better health, better developed physically, and better adapted socially than other children. The children included in his studies were colloquially referred to as "Termites".[14] The gifted children thrived both socially and academically. In relationships, they were a less likely to divorce.[6]
Additionally, those in the gifted group were generally successful in their careers: Many received awards recognizing their achievements. Though many of the children (affectionately known as “Termites” [6]) reached exceptional heights in adulthood, not all did. Terman explored the causes of obvious talent not being realized, exploring personal obstacles, education, and lack of opportunity as causes.[9] |
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don't preach this BS to children.
That would constitute a child abuse.
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You seem to be saying that it is a crime for Christian or Jewish parents to teach their faith to their children. Yet you admit that you teach your own non theistic beliefs to your own children. So your position is that your atheists ideology represents absolute truth and that differing beliefs especially Christian beliefs must be suppressed by state force if necessary "to save the children"? ... In my Argument for God I highlighted my belief that without God society will inevitably fall into totalitarianism. You are not doing the best job of convincing me I am wrong. You should teach your children what is true based on an objective evidence. Teaching them that the Earth is 6000 years old and flat or that there are talking snakes and winged horses is wrong. No matter the flavor of the supernatural myth you follow. Yes you should teach your children truth but people disagree on what is true. People also disagree on what constitutes objective evidence. In the face of that disagreement a totalitarian fundamentalist turns to state violence and power to force conformity to his beliefs. You are attempting to define people who disagree with your worldview as criminals. That is extraordinarily dangerous. Believing in the literal existence of winged horses is a wild idea. However, as crazy as the idea of winged horses sounds it is much less crazy then the idea that people who teach their children their traditional religious beliefs are criminals. Your idea is Orwellian. If you define religion as child abuse it logically follows that the state should intervene in the families of some 3.6 billion people and force parents to not share their beliefs with their children. If they refuse you rip the children from their parents and homes of course. That's what we do with people who repeatedly abuse children. Your idea is so crazy so nightmarish that it makes believing in flying horses look totally sane. Fundamentalist always justify their crimes as advancing the greater good. |
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My world view is based on evidence, his is based on nonsense. Teaching religious ideology to children, especially the nonsense from the Bible (talking snakes and 6000 year old Earth etc.) is child abuse, IMHO.
Regardless of the relative merits or lack thereof you seem to be taking the position that teaching ones children one's historical and traditional faith say Judiasm, Islam, or Christianity in itself constitutes child abuse. Child abuse by definition is an action that should be suppressed by state force once identified. Thus your position appears to be that we need the state to intervene in the families of these 3.6 billion people and if the parents refuse to stop teaching their religious beliefs we need to remove the children from their homes and place them under state care. That is after all what we do in cases of child abuse. In my Argument for God I highlighted my belief that without God society will inevitably fall into totalitarianism. You are not doing the best job of convincing me I am wrong. |
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Your dopamine levels must be really high. It is ok though, just don't hurt anyone, and don't preach this BS to children.
That would constitute a child abuse.
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BADeckers philosophy appears to be a traditional Christian view of the world. Maybe his understanding is correct or maybe it is lacking but by throwing the charge of child abuse around gratuitously you detract from the very real abuse that can and does occur to children. Child abuse is a crime. It is a violation of parental responsibility so severe that society must step in and interject itself into the family dynamics by force if necessary by removing the children from their parents if necessary. You seem to be saying that it is a crime for Christian or Jewish parents to teach their faith to their children. Yet you admit that you teach your own non theistic beliefs to your own children. I teach my kids my life philosophy and they are like sponges. They are my hope...
So your position is that your atheists ideology represents absolute truth and that differing beliefs especially Christian beliefs must be suppressed by state force if necessary "to save the children"? Atheists fundamentalist totalitarianism has been tried. It has not worked out so well. |
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Coincube uses a lot of science and philosophy in his arguments, it's funny that he doesn't realize none of that is in the bible.
The best way to challenge a system of belief is to show that it fails on its own terms when applied to reality. Often it is only after that failure is manifest that those who have accepted that worldview are willing to revisit the assumptions it is predicated upon. My own path towards a faith in God started with the realization that I should reject atheist utilitarianism on utilitarian grounds. That was the necessary first step. The more developed Argument for God came later. @CoinCube - does it bother you that you're simply making Religion a utilitarian necessity? "If you follow a religion, you'll be happier. healthier, etc". It doesn't matter if there's a god or not, right, as long as you're better off in a religion?
And then that the reverse is also true -- that if you're unhappier and unhealthier in a religion, you'd be better off not being in a religion?
Imagine for a moment that this is not an abstract philosophical question but a walk down a twisting and branching alleyway. First there is a single way with no choice but soon we come across a fork and from the single path we find two. To the right there is carefully laid cobblestone engraved with the words of theism. To the left there is newly pressed brick and a crisp printed sign labeled atheism. As we walk down these paths we find the walls of our alleyway glowing with living and undulating writings. These are runic words and assumptions indeed the core of each choice. As we accept them they detach themselves from alley walls gently merging with and setting over us forming a fine film over our skin, eyes and ears. Their function is that of a filter interpreting and cataloging the world around us. If we choose the brick road we soon come across a second fork. Here we see a dark and shadowy opening into nihilism and a large and particularly well worn path into hedonism. Small branches into esoteric philosophies can also be found. The road of hedonism leads to a smaller opening into ethical hedonism and finally a tiny path into utilitarianism. Here the road ends and we find ourselves facing a brick wall covered with the words and beliefs of the choice we have made. This is were my own journey took me the blind alley where I spent 15 years thinking I had arrived at end of the road. Does rejecting atheism on purely utilitarian grounds bother me? On the contrary it is the purest, cleanest, and most liberating rejection of atheism, ethical hedonism and utilitarianism that I can possibly imagine. It is the final realization that the complex writings on the brick wall translate into a single sentence. "Wrong way turn around!" The arguments in this thread should not be thought of as strong theist arguments. Indeed a true and strong believer will likely find them all a little off and a little odd like a TV whose tuning is sort of correct but just a bit wrong throwing static into the picture. They would correctly argue that it is through faith not through happiness that creates a true belief in God. The words of faith, however, cannot reach those far along the brick road. They are blocked or interpreted as nonsensical by the filter of assumptions those on this road have adopted. To grasp these deeper arguments one must first turn around travel back to the original fork in the road. Only then as the assumptions of atheism peel away is possible to hear and truly consider the deeper arguments of faith. The arguments herein will not prove convincing to all atheist as the filter each atheist had adopted is different. My sense of self preservation kept me far away from the shadowy road of nihilism but there are branches there that teach that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. That life is insignificant without purpose and that even continued existence is meaningless. For those that have fully accepted this belief it is possible that even utilitarian arguments of health and happiness will be filtered out as nonsensical. My argument is that atheism is false. As for what is true I cannot help you for I have only taken a few steps down the cobblestone road and do not yet know where it will take me. |
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Re 2) That is where my (and I suspect any other) moral standard faces challenges. Like I said before most people are stupid and don't think before they act. That is why in most civilized countries we have secular legal frameworks to deal with those who break the law. However the law is vague on many moral actions or does not cover them at all so it is a problem. The issue is that the law is legislated by the most popular idiots not the most intelligent elements of our societies. But that is how our democracies are structured. If I had my way I would introduce some sort of stringent licensing requirements for politicians so that we can elect the most intelligent, morally capable people to run the government. You need to have a way to filter out the psychopaths.
The failure with this solution is that it does not really solve the underlying problem. High IQ while generally a good thing does not make one morally capable. Without moral capability all high IQ does is enable you to cause more damage and defection. High IQ Psychopathshttps://www.iq-brain.com/blog/high-iq-psychopaths/A recent study by an undergraduate student at the University of Huddersfield has posited that up to 3% of people in senior management positions may be High IQ psychopaths. The study suggested that people who display Factor One psychopathic tendencies and higher IQs were much more likely to be able to fake their emotional responses in tests giving them free reign to climb the corporate ladder and access senior management positions.
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higher IQ psychopaths are smart enough to know and recognize what they are, and are able to tone down the responses.
As a superior alternative I would suggest the establishment of voluntary institutions throughout society focused generally on the importance of moral behavior. These could be costly in terms of membership perhaps requiring time consuming weekly meetings and monetary donations as a demonstration of commitment. Individuals with psychopathic tendencies would have difficulty consistently participating in costly membership rituals dedicated to a premise they find pointless. Consequently they would be less likely to participate in them especially on a sustained basis over multiple years. High IQ people drawn from these institutions on average would be more morally capable then equally high IQ people drawn from society at large due to this self selection effect. Society would learn via trial and error that better results are obtained from selecting qualified leaders with long histories of membership in one of these institutions. I guess I don't have the 'religious' gene in me.
If my analysis in the opening post of this thread is correct this is not ideal when looked at from a purely Darwinian perspective. |
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I'm sorry, but I don't agree that all humans follow a faith based belief system. This is merely an extension of your belief that to be alive is to be religious. My personal beliefs are based on an evidence based system. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this topic.  All evidence based belief systems require basic fundamental assumptions that these systems rest on. These assumptions are assumed a priori to be true and cannot be proven. To assume something is true and derive conclusions from that assumption that you also define as true is to accept that assumption as true without proof. This is the definition of faith. From your statement I assume that you define things as true only if they can be verified by the scientific method. The scientific method is a wonderful thing but it also rests upon unprovable assumptions. Its discoveries are not objective truth but conditional truth and dependent on it's a priori assumptions. I highlighted some of these assumptions in a recent post.
Metaphysical Foundation of Science:
✧ The external world is real and knowable.
✧ Nature itself is not divine. It is an object worthy of study, not worship.
✧ The universe is orderly. There is uniformity in nature that allows us to observe past phenomena and to understand and predict future occurrences.
✧ Our minds and senses are capable of accurately observing and understanding the world.
These assumed truths are so deeply ingrained in us now we have difficulty even recognizing them as assumptions but they are necessary for science to exist.
If you don't believe the assumptions science becomes impossible for you. The progress and maintenance of scientific achievement requires that these assumptions be accepted and propagated at least by an educated elite.
The same situation applies to the apriori Truth of God which rests at the foundation of western culture. Undermine the assumption and the whole society starts to wobble.
This is what Nietzsche foresaw when he announced "God is dead" in 1882. Nietzsche predicted drastic consequences as a result. He predicted millions would die in the 20th century in wars of extremist ideologies. Peterson describes these ideologies as parasites that act on a damaged religious substructure.
Nietzsche also predicted that it would not be until the 21st century that we would be forced to acknowledge the crisis of nihilism. These predictions given in 1882 are an intellectual tour de force.
Believing blindly without contemplation still works for some but that blanket of protection is gradually being pulled away. Going forward it will increasingly be necessary to fully define oneself down to your core metaphysical truths. Unless you can look into the abyss of nihilism and reject it with certainty the abyss will sooner or later pull you in.
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I just wanted to understand why you believe what you believe.
Fair enough in the course of the friendly jabs we both throw back and forth to keep the debate fun you should know that you have my respect for reading and evaluating the views of others. The end goal is always to reach consensus or in our case where consensus is not attainable a solid understanding of the position of ones opponent. Ultimately, my view is that your moral framework is untrue because it is insufficient. I believe it fails when actually applied to the world both in the vast majority of individuals and for society as a whole. I made this case for why it fails in my Argument for God upthread and our following conversation. You disagree. You feel that your moral framework is true and sufficient capable of accurately mapping to reality and sustaining humanity. You also feel that the framework I use to support my worldview is arbitrary, unnecessary and ultimately imaginary. This is a basic disagreement about the nature of reality. Below are a couple of queries I recommend holding in mind going forward as you observe reality. It is my opinion that they will help you to either solidify your current worldview or reject it as false. 1) Does your worldview keep you on track in the face of temptation? When the opportunities arise to accomplish your desires at the cost of minor or major breaches of your code is your code functional? Does it keep you in line? 2) Does your worldview propagate and keep others on track? Are you able to share it with your children and with your neighbors. Do they in turn adopt it and live by it or dismiss it as your eccentric and individual ideas? In then end we all implement our beliefs in our lives. We are tested against the framework of reality and reality provides feedback. Often it is in the process of living the implementation that we find our best opportunities to discover truth. |
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I not sure why it is hard for you to understand.
I don't think any supernatural entities exists or influence our actions. There is no evidence for it.
Most humans are dumb as rocks. That is a fact.
I never said the same stupid humans are capable of developing moral standard, the top 5% smart ones develops it then teaches the masses. How do you think the religion myths were developed?
I do understand why some people need to create the God concept to help them define what is right or wrong, this very concept helps them deal with issues in their lives as they come up. It is sort of an imaginary father figure that is always 'there' for them.
Strong intellects do not need to resort to such brain exercise, they see the world as is, they can interact with the world effectively without such imaginary help.
I see so you and you fellow "strong intellects" are going to develop the perfect moral standard free of all references to the devine and minister to the great unwashed masses who will absorb your wisdom with rapture as you lead us all to human moral perfection and utopia huh? Good luck with that. |
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I thought you said that this supernatural infinite entity (aka God) transforms the physical world. Never mind, tomato, tomato.
God transforms the world by rectifying it through us as we contemplate him. Our actions, essence, and potential change. I have a question about your worldview. You agree that humans are capable of great evil describing us as collectively evil. You also agree that a belief in God helps us establish and follow a moral standard the very thing that makes us less evil. I agree that external God (supernatural cop) helps you establish your moral standard.
. Yet you argue against a belief in God. You state that humans are mostly stupid Every population you look at, you'll have 1% really smart ones, 5% that are capable to doing creative/design work, 30-40% can do repetitive, manual work, the rest is not suitable for work or any intellectual activities, this cohort needs constant training, and fails at what they do.
Yet believe these same stupid humans are capable of abstractly developing and following their own moral codes modifying them on the fly in the face of temptation. ...
I am saying that we have evolved enough to make that determination (when to follow or breach our moral standards) ourselves
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Your views appear incoherent to me. Please clarify where I am misunderstanding your position. |
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Of course we stray from our moral standards sometimes.
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Many people live by my moral standard and do not require external source such as 'God'.
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sometimes we have to bend our rules in order to survive
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I am saying that we have evolved enough to make that determination ourselves
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I think this position of yours in particular is hopelessly naive. I also think it represents a fundamental misjudgment of human nature utterly misjudging our capacity for evil and attributing to our species a wisdom we do not possess. Jordan Peterson - Your Capacity For Evilhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S8cAD0DEcJE |
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You might find my recent post in the Health and Religion thread interesting. I was asked why I believed in God. This was my answer. Why Do I Believe In God?
. I am a Chinese and I am an atheist. I have to say that from the perspective of mysticism, I can NOT understand some of the points. Please forgive my disrespect. Let me break down his points in more readable form. CoinCube believes that because there are truths and infinities in Mathematics that cannot be proven there must be an external infinite entity that exists but cannot be proven to exist.He also claims that such truth (about existence of such infinite entity aka God) predicates all our system of logic and is required for that system to work truthfully. He also claims that this infinite entity interacts with the physical world, is the source of the moral code that we should follow. He claims that any other moral code that is not dictated by predicated on this external supernatural infinite entity is doomed to fail and leads to atrocities and disintegration of societies (or utter tyranny). More or less. The underlined statement skips 8 steps from opening permise to final conclusion but anyone who wants to read those steps can follow my link above. I also corrected a few minor areas of your summary. Also when talking about infinity it is useful to differentiate the potential infinite from the actual infinite. Mathematics as it advances is inching us ever closer to the realization that the actual infinite exists.
Potential Infinity vs. Actual Infinityhttp://www.numbersleuth.org/trends/potential-vs-actual-infinity/ What is infinity and does it even exist? In our everyday experience, we find only finite things. A basket of eggs contains only a fixed number of eggs and no more. Our bodies are composed of particles (molecules, atoms, protons, quarks, etc.). But whatever particles describe our make up, we find only a finite number. It may be billions or trillions or more, but it still doesn’t get close to infinity. Even the known universe is finite – it’s only so many light-years in diameter and contains only so many elementary particles.
How, then, does one even get close to infinity? People have long realized that there’s no biggest number because it’s always possible to add 1 to any number and get still a bigger number. So numbers themselves, taken collectively, are infinite. Any given number is finite, but the mere fact that numbers go on forever – that’s infinite.
But what sort of infinite is this? The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384– 322 BC) proposed that there are two types of infinity, a potential and an actual infinity. In a potential infinity, one can keep adding or subdividing without end, but one never actually reaches infinity. In a sense, a potential infinity is an endless process that at any point along the way is finite. By contrast, in an actual infinity, the infinite is viewed as a completed totality. Aristotle rejected actual infinity, claiming that only potential infinity exists.
So what, you say? For all practical purposes, we get on quite well with quite a bit less than even a potential infinity. Take the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Japan’s K Computer, which runs at 10 petaflops, using 705,024 SPARC64 processing cores. There are absolute limits to what this machine can do in terms of storage, retrieval, and processing. It’s safe to say that 10^100 (i.e., the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, aka “google”) sets an absolute limit on the amount of processing steps this machine will ever do, on the length of the longest number it can compute, and on the amount of bytes available to the machine’s memory.
And yet, the infinite is not so readily cast aside for practical reasons. Modern mathematics is done almost entirely in terms of sets (recall the “New Math”). Set theory treats just about anything as a set (the only things that are not sets are things too big to be sets – more on that in another post). Now numbers are sets. For instance, 0 is the empty set (it contains zero items). The number 1 is also a set (it is the set that contains zero, and thus is a set with one item).
But all the numbers taken collectively (0, 1, 2, etc.) also form a set, known to mathematicians as the natural numbers and represented as {0,1,2,3,…}. Ah, but what’s that ellipsis, those three dots (i.e., …), doing there? Doesn’t that tell us that the natural numbers are really just a potential infinity? Mathematicians don’t treat the natural numbers as a potential infinity but as an actual infinity – a completed totality that includes all numbers 0, 1, 2, etc.
But what do mathematicians know anyway? Perhaps treating the natural numbers as an actual infinity is just a convenient way to think about numbers and do calculations. If people’s concerns about infinity were left simply at the level of mathematics and its scientific applications, the debate over potential and actual infinities would be moot. But it turns out that this debate spills over into other areas, notably theology. If God is real, is he an actual infinite or is he just a potential infinite? Most religious believers see God also as unchanging, so if God is real and infinite, he must be an actual infinity.
Now it’s interesting that Georg Cantor, who invented set theory over 100 years ago, did so in part for theological reasons, seeing the infinite sets he came up with as a reflection of the infinity of God. Others, however, not believing that God exists or thinking that the very concept of an actual infinity is incoherent, reject the actual infinity and thus view Cantor’s so-called actual infinities as simply a device for describing much more mundane and finite processes. Yet it is a device that every working mathematician uses. As the great mathematician David Hilbert put it, “No one will drive us from the paradise which Cantor created for us.”
The debate over potential and actual infinities has been ongoing for centuries, and this short post won’t resolve it. Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that Cantor’s work on set theory has showed that the concept of an infinite set makes mathematical sense and avoids contradiction. Certain paradoxes, such as that infinite sets can be put in one-to-one correspondence with proper subsets (e.g., there are as many even numbers as natural numbers: 0à0, 1à2, 2à4, 3à6, etc.), may fly in the face of common intuitions, but science confronts us with lots of things that are counterintuitive.
In any case, modern mathematics, especially in its wholesale incorporation of set theory, has given the single biggest boost to the view that the actual infinite exists. Not that this proves the actual infinite exists – the nature of existence itself (a field philosophers refer to as “ontology” – the study of being) is itself up for grabs. But the mere fact that treating mathematical entities as actual infinities has yielded incredibly fruitful mathematical insights (Cantor’s paradise) gives the actual infinite breathing room that it never had in the past.
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References:
Joseph Dauben, Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
Michael Hallett, Cantorian Set Theory and Limitation of Size (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
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You might find my recent post in the Health and Religion thread interesting. I was asked why I believed in God. This was my answer. Why Do I Believe In God?
. I am a Chinese and I am an atheist. I have to say that from the perspective of mysticism, I can NOT understand some of the points. Please forgive my disrespect. Let me break down his points in more readable form. CoinCube believes that because there are truths and infinities in Mathematics that cannot be proven there must be an external infinite entity that exists but cannot be proven to exist.He also claims that such truth (about existence of such infinite entity aka God) predicates all our system of logic and is required for that system to work truthfully. He also claims that this infinite entity interacts with the physical world, is the source of the moral code that we should follow. He claims that any other moral code that is not dictated by predicated on this external supernatural infinite entity is doomed to fail and leads to atrocities and disintegration of societies (or utter tyranny). More or less. The underlined statement skips 8 steps from opening permise to final conclusion but anyone who wants to read those steps can follow my link above. I also corrected a few minor areas of your summary. Also when talking about infinity it is useful to differentiate the potential infinite from the actual infinite. Mathematics as it advances is inching us ever closer to the realization that the actual infinite exists.
Potential Infinity vs. Actual Infinityhttp://www.numbersleuth.org/trends/potential-vs-actual-infinity/What is infinity and does it even exist? In our everyday experience, we find only finite things. A basket of eggs contains only a fixed number of eggs and no more. Our bodies are composed of particles (molecules, atoms, protons, quarks, etc.). But whatever particles describe our make up, we find only a finite number. It may be billions or trillions or more, but it still doesn’t get close to infinity. Even the known universe is finite – it’s only so many light-years in diameter and contains only so many elementary particles.
How, then, does one even get close to infinity? People have long realized that there’s no biggest number because it’s always possible to add 1 to any number and get still a bigger number. So numbers themselves, taken collectively, are infinite. Any given number is finite, but the mere fact that numbers go on forever – that’s infinite.
But what sort of infinite is this? The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384– 322 BC) proposed that there are two types of infinity, a potential and an actual infinity. In a potential infinity, one can keep adding or subdividing without end, but one never actually reaches infinity. In a sense, a potential infinity is an endless process that at any point along the way is finite. By contrast, in an actual infinity, the infinite is viewed as a completed totality. Aristotle rejected actual infinity, claiming that only potential infinity exists.
So what, you say? For all practical purposes, we get on quite well with quite a bit less than even a potential infinity. Take the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Japan’s K Computer, which runs at 10 petaflops, using 705,024 SPARC64 processing cores. There are absolute limits to what this machine can do in terms of storage, retrieval, and processing. It’s safe to say that 10^100 (i.e., the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, aka “google”) sets an absolute limit on the amount of processing steps this machine will ever do, on the length of the longest number it can compute, and on the amount of bytes available to the machine’s memory.
And yet, the infinite is not so readily cast aside for practical reasons. Modern mathematics is done almost entirely in terms of sets (recall the “New Math”). Set theory treats just about anything as a set (the only things that are not sets are things too big to be sets – more on that in another post). Now numbers are sets. For instance, 0 is the empty set (it contains zero items). The number 1 is also a set (it is the set that contains zero, and thus is a set with one item).
But all the numbers taken collectively (0, 1, 2, etc.) also form a set, known to mathematicians as the natural numbers and represented as {0,1,2,3,…}. Ah, but what’s that ellipsis, those three dots (i.e., …), doing there? Doesn’t that tell us that the natural numbers are really just a potential infinity? Mathematicians don’t treat the natural numbers as a potential infinity but as an actual infinity – a completed totality that includes all numbers 0, 1, 2, etc.
But what do mathematicians know anyway? Perhaps treating the natural numbers as an actual infinity is just a convenient way to think about numbers and do calculations. If people’s concerns about infinity were left simply at the level of mathematics and its scientific applications, the debate over potential and actual infinities would be moot. But it turns out that this debate spills over into other areas, notably theology. If God is real, is he an actual infinite or is he just a potential infinite? Most religious believers see God also as unchanging, so if God is real and infinite, he must be an actual infinity.
Now it’s interesting that Georg Cantor, who invented set theory over 100 years ago, did so in part for theological reasons, seeing the infinite sets he came up with as a reflection of the infinity of God. Others, however, not believing that God exists or thinking that the very concept of an actual infinity is incoherent, reject the actual infinity and thus view Cantor’s so-called actual infinities as simply a device for describing much more mundane and finite processes. Yet it is a device that every working mathematician uses. As the great mathematician David Hilbert put it, “No one will drive us from the paradise which Cantor created for us.”
The debate over potential and actual infinities has been ongoing for centuries, and this short post won’t resolve it. Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that Cantor’s work on set theory has showed that the concept of an infinite set makes mathematical sense and avoids contradiction. Certain paradoxes, such as that infinite sets can be put in one-to-one correspondence with proper subsets (e.g., there are as many even numbers as natural numbers: 0à0, 1à2, 2à4, 3à6, etc.), may fly in the face of common intuitions, but science confronts us with lots of things that are counterintuitive.
In any case, modern mathematics, especially in its wholesale incorporation of set theory, has given the single biggest boost to the view that the actual infinite exists. Not that this proves the actual infinite exists – the nature of existence itself (a field philosophers refer to as “ontology” – the study of being) is itself up for grabs. But the mere fact that treating mathematical entities as actual infinities has yielded incredibly fruitful mathematical insights (Cantor’s paradise) gives the actual infinite breathing room that it never had in the past.
—–
References:
Joseph Dauben, Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
Michael Hallett, Cantorian Set Theory and Limitation of Size (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
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