ubuntuAnyone wrote:

Brian37 wrote:

Thoughts require a material process. PERIOD. To suggest that there is a "thing" out there that can think like a human that has no material, IS ABSURD, by any name, no matter what attributes you want to give it or what name you want to give it.

You are no different than any other human in human history. You may have been an atheist, but as far as I am concerned you might as well never have left theism. You are suffering the same self inflicted delusion of all the anthropomorphism no matter what pretty colors you want to slap on your empty box. You are merely projecting human qualities on a non-existent fantasy.

There never was a god and never will be a god. Gap filling is gap filling no matter who is doing it or why. All you are proving here is that you had a change of mind. Big woopty doo.

"I once was" is not an argument. Humans switch positions all the time, that hardly constitutes a universal standard. It just means you fell for something you like believing.

WHEN you can prove your pet invisible friend claim like we can prove DNA, mitosis, computers, cell phones, galaxies, black holes, ect ect ect, until then you have nothing.

I'm sorry it bothers you that I am pulling back the curtain and exposing your fantasy for what it is. You merely want a super hero to exist. Just because you claimed to have been an atheist doesn't mean shit to me. I used to be a Christian, so what?

"It's true, why don't you believe me".

EVIDENCE, plain and simple. You don't have it otherwise you'd have a Nobel Prize and beat everyone to the patent office by now.

"Allah, God, Yahweh, Thor, Marduke, god(generic), invisible thinking "something", are the same as Harry Potter. Klingons and tooth fairy. Fiction is fiction no matter how you dress it up and delude yourself into swallowing crap, no matter how elaborate the crap is.

Your pet fictional invisible friend is no different than any claimed in human history. It is merely another delusion with different colors.

What does any of this have to do with anythnig I said about moral obligation?

 

"...anthropomorphism...projecting human qualities..."

Well DUH!

We are humans. We think human thoughts. Our perspectives are HUMAN perspectives.

A dog, a fish, a bird, a human....each perceive reality through different eyes.

Since when are humans supposed to think like NON-HUMANS?

How ELSE are we supposed to describe the other beings we find existing in our human reality if not by reference to HUMAN language and HUMAN attempts at description of them?

 

OF COURSE we describe divinity in ways we can relate to!

What other way do we have?

 

Another point you don't understand, is that many people here, such as myself, and certainly cj, have already seen the issues you raise, and more, long ago, and have considered how to address them, and have gone on to recognize wider perspectives than what you are stuck on.

Who acknowledge that there are deep ethical/moral issues, but they are not realistically going to be addressed by the simple ideas you are focussing on.

Were you joking when you responded to redneF with

1. We will not find out one day, unless there is some 'life after death', which seems, on the evidence, extremely unlikely.

2. You are assuming that there is one possible category of God, who will punish you if you don't 'accept' him. Give the intrinsic impossibility of actually knowing anything about the motives of such a being, and which among the infinite range of 'possible' god scenarios actually pertains, if any, you have no grounds for such an assumption being the most likely.

Now I am promising never to explain any further why I think Pascal sucks, I really want to demonstrate how you will focus on such issues while ignoring any substantive points I make. As you do with Dawkins.

redneF wrote:

That's what I thought, and why I asked you what was missing in your life.

You make a lot of assumptions about what I believe...

...one does not have to consider retribution...merely reward.

redneF wrote:

Between 2 or more people. They both don't lose, but can gain.

zero-sum is that neither side can gain the upper hand...

redneF wrote:

In your application what your are saying is 'you win some, you lose some', which is not a zero sum game.

I was talking about in the context of evidence-based reasoning...

redneF wrote:

I've done better, I've given you the correct definition.

And I used it correctly...

... so what is your point?

In relationship to arguments for and and against god.... I said nothing about "faith-based reasoning", rather pragmatism based on what is wise and unwise.

redneF wrote:

So, I'll ask again, what's missing in your life that makes you anxious about knowing if there is a supernatural or not?

A loaded question... it assumes that something is missing, as if all who believes in a god are missing something...

redneF wrote:

If god exists, then (b)...

You're getting made at a self-made requirement you gave to god... that's the problem...

redneF wrote:

Not true. I have my own mind, and that I can make up my own mind about what is 'just'.

Punishing the son for the sins of the father is not just, not even according to the theist's worldview, since evil exists because of the 'father', and who is the very first 'father'?

Any guesses?

Why would the 'creator' of everything good and bad be exempt from 'justice'? Ohhhhh, because there isn't a 'society' of gods that he lives amongst? Wouldn't that be convenient for him?

The problem is, it is 'logically' possible in some world where 'creation' was a collaborative effort among a pantheon of gods. Now, in this possible world, where would the 'ultimate' law be derived from????

I imagine there would be no moratorium of justice in heaven, like there is on earth, and therefore no 'evil' people running around causing suffering to others for their own gain. I would be totally justified in having a grievance for god being able to be as 'just' while we are on earth, but not exercising that power to mitigate suffering.

He is actually an accomplice to anyone who commits 'evil'.

Sorry, the whole concept of a loving and just god is simply untenable but by a masochist.

You assume a lot about what I think about a god...

where did I say anything about the particular brand of theism that I was committed to?

Insofar as I can tell, this entire thing is a construct about what you think a god should be like

...and then you're getting angry at the construct....

redneF wrote:

I don't think you understand what an appeal to novelty is, either.

No one here has argued that anything is more accurate or even more probable simply because it's a newer argument.

Appeal to novelty says newer is better...

BobSpence1 was writing things off because they were medieval constructs...

redneF wrote:

No. The terms are not interchangeable.

No they are not interchangable.

Science is subset of a broader field...A bluejay is a bird but no tall birds are bluejay.

Methodological naturalism is concerned about the epistemic approach concerning natural phenomenon, not about claims about what exists.

redneF wrote:

The onus is on the one making the positive claim that a supernatural exists, and the only way they can do that is demonstrate the laws of physics can/have been violated. The Vatican would love just 1 example of the laws of physics being violated, but they've only managed to argue from ignorance, in order to fallaciously inflate the odds of probability, which is dishonest and a fallacy.

IOW, you have not found anything new, except a renewed hope that there is a supernatural, an after life, and your fear that there might be a wrathful god that could punish you for eternity, otherwise, you'd be an agnostic atheist.

What does the Vatican's search for violations natural laws have to do anything...

...largely, this is a red herring...

It is the lack of good evidence that made me agnostic...

...and what force me to look at secondary methods of justification..

I don't think we disagree on this.

BobSpence wrote:

What variation on 'superdominance' did you have in mind?

What I saw on Wikipedia still fails because it assumes that if God exists you get infinite reward. Which ignores the options that an actual God will punish you, maybe infinitely, as per Hell,  or ignore you, perhaps for being silly enough to fall for his scam. IOW it makes the unjustified assumption that the God is the Abrahamic God as imagined in Christianity.

Superdominance doesn't have to be infinite... it can be arbitrarily large.

And punishment doesn't have to be factored in at all...

Second, the entity giving the "payout" in Pascalian terms does not necessarily have to be a god per se... it could a state free from the angst of this world as found in Dharmic religions.

BobSpence wrote:

The Wager also assumes that belief in God makes you happier even if he does not exist, which by no means logically follows.

I think that is a common misrepresentation about Pascal. Pascal sounds more like Keirkegaard in that he sees ambivalence as the barricade to contentment and completeness. Like Keirkegaard he thinks that a person is more content and more complete when he or she commits to something...

EDIT: Pascal was a contemporary of De Cartes. De Cartes was probably the dominant thinker on continental Europe at the time, and he was really pushing hardcore skepticism. I think Pascal bought this idea, but wasn't existentially satisfied with the results, and why he even wagered in the first place.

BobSpence wrote:

Given your equivocation on the nature of the God you are thinking may exist, that makes you either dishonest or inconsistent.

What you are calling equivocation is misplaced. I'm not deliberately using ambiguity... Like I've said before, this is a rather recent development in my life, and I haven't committed to a particular form of theism... 

A few years ago he converted to Christianity and when asked why, he would explain that he simply came to the gradual conclusion that atheism was just too restrictive on his mind.

He was quite right IMO because even if you dont think one single religion answers everything, I would argue that "reality" is way too complex for atheology to manage.

 

Atheism : the no-God hypothesis - is a square you cant think outside of and it is a boring place to live for the (massively over-engineered) human mind.

Still only works if the God is a benevolent one.

Now that you remind me Descartes was even sillier than Pascal on this topic.

Equivocation, indecision, unable to decide,  whatever.

Still means you are not justified in interpreting PW as a positive, because you haven't decided what are the likely attributes of the God you might accept.

And if you are restricting your options to only that category of Gods promising infinite rewards for accepting them, you have closed your mind in advance to many possible Gods.

Neither of them were scientists and neither of them knew jack shit about modern scientific method.  Not to mention that was billions of years ago. Scientific data has improved slightly since then. They were merely mental masturbaters.

Yea, good advice, but not so good for the 6 million Jews of WW2. The Germans were committed and complete following Hitler.

BobSpence wrote:

With respect to philosophers, I am inspired to comment now, while listening to another BBC program, on David Hume, as the starkest contrast to Pascal and Descartes. The more I hear about Hume, the more impressed I am. He was way ahead of his time.

Whereas the other pair had brains rotted by Theism. As is yours, Ubu.

I appreciate Hume more than you know...

And I have a hunch, if Pascal and if Decartes were alive during Hume's lifetime, they would probably agree with him more than you give them credit for, particularly Pascal. If Hume was ahead of his time, Pascal was even further as he wrote in defense of the scientific method and was agnostic because he could not reconcile religion with science. Hume never claimed to be an atheist, but  his critics labeled him as such. There is evidence that he maintained his theism for pragmatic reasons, and this sounds a whole lot like Pascal.... if this is the case then I suppose Hume suffered from the same "brain rot" Pascal did and that I do...

Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can only be grasped through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.

We are obligated to do what we can do.  I could not help that child in North Carolina as I did not know about her.  I am not sure what I would have been able to do if I had known in advance so I could have prevented the torture and death.  If I were to walk up to or in on someone torturing a child like that, I would definitely do everything I could to stop it.

I would pick up the baby crawling towards the street.  I would - if I had any money at all to spare - contribute to charities.  (I interviewed for a job today that actually would pay me money.  Wish me luck.)  Volunteering is an option in lieu of money.  These are all the little things, I as a human, could possibly do.  And I feel an obligation to contribute my mite.

Now, someone more rich, powerful, informed, connected, educated, trained, etc, has an obligation to do more.  To start a foundation to aid and support.  To start a school or work for low pay in a drug rehab program for people who can't afford the Betty Ford Clinic.  And so on.

Someone who has darn-near-omni powers has an obligation to do more.  Because they know and they can, they should.  For an interesting take on this idea, read The Fresco by Sherri Tepper.  She is always good for standing our preconceived notions on their head.  She also has an interesting take on a universal deity in this book.

The extent of your obligation is the extent of your ability to contribute.  I'm with Bob, giving everything away would likely create more harm than good in this world.  Doing nothing when you could do much is at the very least, nonfeasance.  At least Satan doesn't lie about his love and care for us.

Wanting an invisible friend because you feel uncomfortable is also an okay position.  In that case, no need to hang a label or share your fantasies.

BobSpence wrote:

The 'brain rot' applies to God believers, and then mainly wrt to philosophy and religion itself, so does not apply to Hume. There are certainly strong indications that Hume was not a believer, but it would not have been wise to be 'out' about that at the time.

He was criticized on more tan one occasion for such and was branded for heresy. A friend of his said that Hume was an atheist and used that as a successful defense in that Hume did not fall under the jurisdiction of the church. But in any case, some of his writings seem to indicate that he affirmed teleological arguments for the existence of God. And he never came out as an atheist. I it difficult to tell though, an still a topic of discussion...

BobSpence wrote:

Pascal was a Theist. A Catholic Philosopher. His beliefs faded a little in an early part of his life. He later had a mystical experience, and abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. A lot of his contribution was more to mathematics, which is NOT science. There is little potential conflict between math and theism, because math has a similar model -start with assumptions (axioms), and work from there. You don't need to empirically test and justify things. And at that stage, the sciences which were most problematic to Religion were biology and cosmology, which he wasn't really into.

Pascal was a theist, true... He wrote in defense of the use of experimentation while he was doing science a way to gain knowledge in opposition to Decartes. What you are describing above is more how Decartes reasoned. The quote you have about Pascal communicates the essence of what lead him to agnosticism... he was trying to reach religion by science, but found no means to do it, so he wagered.

BobSpence wrote:

I will concede, after a bit more research, that it is Descartes that more deserves my ridicule, although Pascal got a number of his ideas from Descartes. His famous defence of science was not so much about the scientific method generally, as we understand it today, but about anticipating Popper wrt to the importance of 'falsifiability'. Which I personally think is a little over-stated, but still an important concept.

Science does change, and Popper was contributor in the arena of the philosophy of science with his falsification criterion. It will be interesting to see what changes and developments will occur in even my life time.

BobSpence wrote:

Descartes was nuttier. Pascal did demonstrate the existence of a vacuum, which Descartes never accepted. Kudos to Pascal there. Maybe in my memory I had got them confused a little, and it was Descartes I was mainly thinking of as deserving ridicule, rather than Pascal - they were associated in many ways.

Decartes and Pascal disagreed vehemently on how one should deduce truth. Pascal preferred more empirical approaches while Decartes preferred a priori approaches.

BobSpence wrote:

But the Wager does deserve ridicule. It DOES NOT WORK unless you assume something close to Christian Theology - see the quote in my sig from Harris on that crap. 

I agree that Pascal's Wager doesn't work unless you assume Christian theology. But that does not mean one can't tweak parts of it to apply it more broadly... that's essentially what I did.

How does this moral obligation fit into the realm of happenstance such as the situations provided in the prior post concerning raped children or children getting run over by a bus?

I don't know that I expect my friends and family to help me in a bind though.

But at the same time, I want to be there for them if they need me.

In any case, I don't that such expectations constitute moral obligations to help.

Gauche,

I don't always agree with your stances, but I think you've nailed it on this 'obligation' thing.

I think if you are talking in terms of moral 'obligation', it really should only refer to something analogous to a legal obligation, which is assumes some specific prior agreement.

It is regrettably true that ubuntu's attitude is more consistent with the Christian concept of morality as conformance to edicts of some ultimate Authority, who is assumed to be intrinsically 'good'.

Sad.

If you can devise a version that makes any idea of God you prefer 'work' with it, the whole framework is useless. Any argument that can be made to 'prove' anything is thereby shown to actually prove nothing.

To use a decision grid as in PW requires probabilities to be assigned to each input.

This is impossible in the case of a supernatural dependence, anything that we cannot derive actual finite probability estimates.

'infinite' payoffs also render it questionable - they make no sense when applied to finite beings.

There is a strong likelihood from all the evidence that any state of affairs would ultimately eventually bore us to insanity if continued indefinitely.

The whole 'eternal life in heaven' concept is an a primitive, naive idea.

EDIT: You cannot fill in the column "IF <this God doesn't exist> THEN ...". The answer could 'logically' range from plus to minus infinity, depending on what entity or state of affairs you postulate.

At best it is a wash - maybe infinite bliss maybe eternal torment. 

Doesn't help decide, unless you start restricting the cases considered, but there is no way to apply meaningful argument and logic to make positive assessments of possibilities in the supernatural, 'anything goes' realm. Only negative assertions, based on the only thing we can know, ie that we cannot know any specifics about what entities may or may not exist, or their motives or intent.

Any discourse beyond this is the purest empty speculation, AKA philosophy.

Everything which really exists in any form. Every 'realm' - to specifically include the proposed 'realm' which is 'outside' or 'beyond' 'time and space' in which it is commonly posited by Theists that God occupies, as a blatant dodge to avoid the fundamental problems we point out in their arguments.

And 'tweaking' PW to make it work is both dishonest and simultaneously demonstrating the fallacy of the basic concept. If you can devise a version that makes any idea of God you prefer 'work' with it, the whole framework is useless. Any argument that can be made to 'prove' anything is thereby shown to actually prove nothing.

That really is a fundamental when you are speculating about what is not 'accessible' to empirical/evidence-based investigation. Pretty much anything is 'possible' in that context. You cannot even do 'statistics' on the likelihood of any posited version of a God, which makes any version of PW void.

It seems like you're tweaking it to "Because I'm not really sure whether a God is a bastard or not It's safer for me to be on its good side (whatever that "good side" might be)"

Is that a reasonable assessment?