on discussing god and religion

He’s, like, totally amazing. :happy-cheerleaderkid:

You’re too pedantic in this case and making a meal out of it.

Note I have been discussing with you 'ALL that is to be known …" is an impossibility. Thus in this case when I stated ‘all’ it does not mean absolutely. Note the contexts I have used it,

In addition I stated;
I am not claiming I have ALL knowledge of the “I” but have sufficient knowledge based on my research.

The principle is ‘all’ but in practice is to cover as much as possible.

What is critical is what have you done to understand the Philosophy of the Self and if so, it is reasonable sufficient?

Note my “what is “sufficient” information/knowledge “in your head”” is at least supported objectively by the materials I have covered. I am asking you for evidence on the same objective basis.

Btw, have you ever done a formal thesis and do you understand the process of ‘literature review’ in writing a thesis?

Note the above is a very critical requirement to maintain one’s intellectual integrity.

Your seemingly sole reliance on “dasein” [the corrupted version] is definitely not sufficient.

The above basis is objective.

Whether I understand and practice what I have read or know, is a different issue.
However my principle is what is knowing must always be accompanied by ‘doing’ as much as possible in accordance to relevance.

Nope.
I see the main subject of this thread is ‘how to yank you out the hole you have dug for yourself.’
I have suggested you must first reframe your questions, adopt the generic problem solving technique for life and understand the ‘self’.

Re your issue of conflicting good is off topic to the above and I have suggested such conflicting good must be dealt within Philosophy of Morality and Ethics.

I have mentioned the above MANY times. Btw, do you have a memory problem? This is a serious question because not remembering the critical points I have posted is not reasonable to the other party within an intellectual discussion, i.e. wasting someone’s effort and time.

How can this be merely an intellectual world of words?
A state of equanimity is a critical ‘prescription’ for anyone’s well being at the highest level.
Equanimity is an essential psychological state to deal with conflicting goods in general.
This must be accompanied by real ‘doing’ to rewire one’s brain to enable a state of equanimity not merely intellectualizing it.

If you don’t like the intellectual and philosophical bit, you can take short-cuts to a state of equanimity via drugs, e.g. prozacs, various tranquilizers, hallucinogens. The short-cut way has potential side effects.

The above are the practicals I have proposed. So don’t keep accusing me of being a intellectual maniac.
Actually you are the one who is caught in the intellectual maniac trap and loop. You keep arguing within yourself and cannot act to get yourself out of the hole you have dug for yourself. I give you good grades for this self-deception.

You cannot compare the make up with human inventions [< 200 years] to a human being which has evolved from 4 billion years ago.
Note the difference between parts a car and the 100 billion of neurons each with up to 10,000 synapses in only the brain and other complicated parts of the human body.
It is ridiculous to compare them in this case.

I noted you yourself is not demanding 100% of anything.

The first thing you need to establish is;

  1. God is an impossibility - as argued
  2. All [100%] to be known is an impossibility.
    If God is an impossibility there is no such thing as God knowing 100%. It is a non-starter.
    If God is a non-starter there is no need for you to bother about 'ALL there is to be known" at all.

The point is you are intellectually entrapping yourself if you cannot get over with 1, i.e. God is an impossibility.
If you can understand and accept this thesis, God is an impossibility, you will not be bothered with guilt over the issue of abortion so emotionally. Rather you can then view the issue rationally, morally and ethically with the human collective wisdom rather than being threatened [subliminally] by God’s commands and wrath.

I believe the state of equanimity is a very generic prescription for the well being of an individual.

I believe there is something wrong with the person and out of one’s mind if they reject the idea of ‘equanimity’ and not wanting to cultivate such a state.

Note the opposite of equanimity;
agitation excitement distrust doubt fear frustration uncertainty alarm anxiety discomposure excitableness upset worry.

Are you implying you ignore equanimity and prefer the above tuburlences of the mind which you are acting out at present.

I believe any rational wiser person will spontaneously agree ‘equanimity’ is a prerequisite state that everyone should strive for.

You are challenging my views [not bothering to review it rationally] merely for a deliberate ‘challenge’ sake regardless it is helpful or not.

There you go challenging merely for ‘challenge’ sake.
There is no your Middle-Way or my Middle-Way. It is a general principle of life not to be stuck to one extreme all the time.
Your approach is definitely not the Middle-Way especially when you deliberately ignore and not wanting to know the other-way.

Dualism and opposites are inevitable and inescapable in life and one must embrace and toggle between both sides where necessary but stick mainly to the Middle-Way.

The point being missed here is that people don’t discuss religion; they do religion.

Prismatic 567

Otherwise known as balance to you ~~ or not?

People discuss religion all of the time. What do you think occurs in here?

Do religion? Can you define do here.

This is rather preposterous.

No, not the part about the link between the unknown begetting spiritualism begetting souls begetting religions begetting Gods.

That is clearly rooted historically in the evolution of the human species.

To wit:

Why does something exist at all?
Why this something?
How ought we to live?
What happens after we die?

The answers can then revolve around one or another Scripture.

No, the absudity revolves more around equating the Abrahamic religion with Nihilism.

Consider:

Nihilism:

“the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.”

Or, from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence.”

Yes, we know there are folks able to twist the meaning of nihilism into any number of self-serving configurations. The point being to define it so as to further their own philosophical or political agenda.

But, come on, the Abrahamic religion, like most other denominations, is hardly intent on arguing that human existence – human interaction – is essentially meaningless and absurd. On the contrary, the whole point of creating these generally doctrinaire and dogmatic litrugies, is to argue that the soul is sacred only to the extent that it follows the One True Part to immortality and salvation.

That way our behaviors can be judged on this side of the grave is either virtuous or sinful.

And that way the is/ought world is able to be conveyed as the embodiment of the either/or world. Either you do the right things or you burn.

But, again, if you wish to reconfigure Nihilism into that, so be it.

Yes, it is ‘balanced,’ grounded, anchored on a strong center of gravity, etc.
A state of psychological composure [equanimity] is necessary for one to be ‘balanced’ in whatever the conflicting situations.

I was talking about the broad here and now. What you do when you interact with objectivists. The moral stance you take in relation to them.

I seem to have triggered a lecture, but it is unclear to me how this relates to the moral superiority you implicitly claim to objectivists.

My point was that even if you identify with non-objectivism and argue that you find no ground to make moral claims YOU MAKE MORAL CLAIMS just as objectivist novelists do EVEN WHEN they do not directly state those moral beliefs in the novels. One can deduce the novelists moral objectivism just as your is present if not stated directly.

And again, just pointing out how you are acting in a couple with any discussion partner. These posts reek of moral superiority, not simply epistemological superiority.

Which I notice you do not do. You do not demonstate this, that the moral superiority you constantly implicitly claim relates to objective facts that are true for all of us.

Doing that does not preclude being an objectivist. One can claim to be a feminist, call out support for victims of rape, and then hit women. This happens and Metoo seems to have found a number of such men.

So what is in it for you feeling morally superior to objectivists?

Systematic presentation of moral superiority, not instances of fallible dasein influenced slips. That the relationship dynamic has that as a rule.
Ask outsiders, via the net, socially, to read the threads and see if they have the same experience. Try to get an outsider’s impression. Humans are notoriously poor judges of these kinds of things.

Surprisingly, you’re not that far off from where I see things, P-man. The moral compass endues the atheist and theist alike because its value dynamic [truth] is woven into the fabric of existence. The true-true union [what we call “correspondence”] of the information of minds with propositions (e.g., the mind uniting with the proposition “moral laws possess truth”), because it senses or intuits (or abstracts, as Prismatic suggests) that same true-true relation in everything from the unifying nature of mathematics’ relationship to the function and operation of existents with the physical laws to the good feeling one experiences upon helping a less fortunate, etc. These are all t-t connections, and this dynamic of connection is why true beliefs are available to reason for the religious and non-religious alike. Truth is a universal quality that permeates reality; it doesn’t discriminate, a point my more fundamentalist brethren don’t seem to grasp.

What if you get “good feelings” from abusing the less fortunate? Or if you get “good feelings” from being indifferent to the less fortunate?

That happens a lot.

The first is pretty common, but good feelings specifically from being indifferent to the less fortunate doesn’t make sense…indifference suggests a neutral state of mind.

But to the first, actions that damage or deny the well being of others is a prescriptive falsification. Those who give in repeatedly to wrong–true-false propositions, i.e., knowing that to cause detriment is wrong, as in inventing justifications (hiding the truth) because the abuse is found to be pleasurable] eventually create a false-false state where the false (abusing the less fortunate is good) is accepted as true. Thus, abuse is the act of a significantly falsified mind. In Christian theology this is called “spiritual death”, the acceptance of false religious belief as true. The principle works across the spectrum of moral behaviors, from religious belief to pedophilia to genocide, etc.

Indifference allows you to focus on something else and to get “good feelings” there instead of through some interaction with the less fortunate. Sure, children are starving in Africa, but you have profitable YouTube videos, a big house, a pool and steaks sizzling on the barbecue. It’s all good.

How do they know that? How do they know what detriment is?

That’s really the issue. You seem to treat it as obvious.

But this takes the equation outside the realm of common sense. Any person, no matter his wealth or lack thereof can reasonably be culpable for the less fortunate worldwide. And the good feelings you mention have no association with the suffering of others, it’s (as you describe it) merely pleasure gained from the fruits of one’s labor. Those fruits may or may not have included unethical behavior against one or more persons to get there, but that’s a different matter. I think it prudent to suggest that if one is morally responsible for the less fortunate, that responsibility can only reasonably extend to the those in one’s immediate sphere of existence.

It appears you didn’t fully understand my previous post. Wrongdoing is very often not obvious to the wrongdoer. I suggest knowledge of wrongdoing and its accompanying culpability are available to the mind of the wrongdoer in degrees. In the part you’re referencing I mention the starting point for blameworthiness in previous post:

" Those who give in repeatedly to wrong–true-false propositions, i.e., knowing that to cause detriment is wrong, as in inventing justifications (hiding the truth) because the abuse is found to be pleasurable] eventually create a false-false state where the false (abusing the less fortunate is good) is accepted as true. Thus, abuse is the act of a significantly falsified mind."

It was late at night, probably didn’t word this clearly. I’m suggesting that all wrongdoing begins with some knowledge, on some level, that the decision being contemplated is wrong by virtue of at least one [probably many] t-f relation in the decision-making process.

A t-f relation denotes the truth value of those elements of the mind’s information involved in the decision to do desired wrong in connection with the false, wrong or immoral information of a proposition used to contemplate a desire to perform that wrong. The discord this relation causes in intellectual operation can probably be mapped to the sense of ‘guilty conscience’ we’re sometimes said to feel in recognition of a false, illegal or immoral desire.

The important thing about this relation is that it causes tension and resistance (the secular version is called ‘cognitive dissonance’) in the mind; moral responsibility affixes by degrees to one’s reactions to tension/resistance raised in contemplating the pursuit of a desired wrong. My mention of the truth being hidden from the contemplator but eventually resulting in a f-f condition refers to the increase of self-falsification of the essence—and causally, the mind—of the desirer by recurrent pursuit of paths to justification for wrong desire. We falsify our own essence by repeatedly ignoring the dissonance and contemplating the wrong action we desire. In other words, this position is that we falsify our own essence or stain our souls by bad or unsound choices.

In a sufficiently falsified state, a f-f connection (or collection of connections) is achieved by the contemplator. In other words the contemplator comes to hold the false proposition (I am justified in performing x) as true. At each successive level of falsification, the contemplator becomes less culpable for the wrong he desires because he has, by inventing justifications for why he is not morally/ethically responsible for committing the wrong he desires, falsified (convinced) himself to believe that wrong does not exist for him in the equation. Another way to express this is that quantitatively sufficient f-f connections between intellect and propositions to justify the commitment of a wrong are established so that the motives and grounds for doing wrong [false] are held as acceptable [true]. The f-f connection translates to the holding of a false proposition or belief as true: Joe deems himself justified to p because q and r, where p is wrongdoing (by reasonable external standards) and q and r (as elements of a set) are false reasons Joe uses for justification. Joe eventually accepts the false as true, or the wrong as not-wrong, or possibly even as good.

Culpability doesn’t lie in libertarian certainty, it almost always attaches by decreasing degrees to the wrongdoer and is stronger in the early stages of contemplation of a wrong desire than late. This explains why, when accosted for his crime, the criminal often has trouble explaining why he did it…he knows intuitively that he “knew” on some level (though almost certainly doesn’t recognize and can’t articulate the process involved) his desire was wrong. Sorry about going on and on, I feel I’m not explaining sufficiently.

But you’re the one who is suggesting that there is some kind of truth embedded within the fabric of existence. So if you are right to get good feelings from helping the less fortunate, wrong to get good feelings from abusing them, then isn’t being indifferent also a wrong (although a lesser wrong than outright abuse)?

Being indifferent doesn’t count?

Sure. It’s obviously wrong to you. But he doesn’t think that it is wrong. Why are you right in your evaluation and why is he wrong?

That’s the thing. You’re saying that he knows it’s wrong. But maybe he doesn’t know it “on any level” at all. Maybe he does it because he thinks it’s absolutely right.

To show that it’s right or wrong, you would have to extract the truth out of wherever you think it resides. And it seems impossible to do this. He is either extracting another truth or there is no truth to extract.

I know that in your head you’re convinced that this is an adequate response to the point I raise. But in my head it is not even close.

I guess we’re stuck.

You have either ingested all of the knowledge/information available pertaining to these relationships on planet earth or you have not. And while the speculations of those on other worlds is entirely hypothetical, any number of folks in the scientific community are convinced that they are out there.

Instead, you fall back on this:

What seems an impossibility here is any mere mortal having access to all that has been experienced, written, discussed etc., about these questions. In other words, who knows what insights have been accumulated in the exchanges that we are not privy to.

Right?

Instead, what folks like you insist is that the information/knowledge that you have accumulated is just enough — just enough to make it possible for you to claim to know that what you know is all one needs to know in order to close the book on these mysteries.

Mysteries like this: bbc.com/earth/story/20141106 … ist-at-all

So, where does “I” fit into all of this?

Now, the God folks simply create a shortcut here to one or another Creator. And, dispite your protestations [here and elsewhere], you are not able to demonstrate that a God, the God, my God does not in fact exist. Other than pertaining to and predicated upon the assumptions embedded in the arguments in your head.

Or so it seems to me.

And then back up into the scholastic clouds bursting at the seams with “general descriptions” of…of something.

How on earth does this pertain to the “intellectual integrity” of the arguments that I have raised on this thread?

Objective pertaining to what? Let’s choose a context in which value judgments come into conflict. And then explore attempts made to resolve them in either a God or a No God world.

On the other hand, we are clearly at odds regarding the “practicals” here:

I can only call them as I construe them. And don’t I point out over and again that the problem may well be me not understanding your own particular rendition of a “right makes might” world?

I’m just trying to connect the dots between conflicting human behaviors here and now and this imagined future of yours where objective moral interactions are finally achieved. And achieved not pharmaceutically but philosophically.

Ridiculous perhaps in a wholly determined universe. But in a universe in which the human species is said to possess at least some measure of autonomy, where are the philosophers/ethicists able to concoct the definitive argument regarding the political prejudices revolving around those who either do or do not want to replace cars with mass transit systems?

The parts that comprise the car or the subway are able to be noted objectively. But what about the parts embedded in the conflicting goods here? Then we are back to the gap between the knowledge/information that any particular one of us might accumulate here and all of the knowledge/information that was, is or ever will be exchanged by all of those who have thought about this.

What key insights might we never have become aware of?

All I can do here is to point out how hopelessly abstract this is. Unless and until we bring one or another existential rendition of the Middle-Way down out of the clouds and discuss it pertaining to an actual context, we’re just batting words back and forth.

Although, for some, I suspect, that is really the whole point.

Morality and ethics is a difficult subject, with few easy answers. To suggest that someone well off is responsible to every less fortunate person in the world or even in other parts of the country or state he lives in is sophistry. Whether a fortunate person has a moral obligation to share with the less fortunate in his own community is an interesting question, but consists in moral minutiae not relevant to this discussion. You’ll have to engage your introspection to determine whether or how much of your own wealth you should give to the poor if this is a matter of great concern to you.

Human beings are fragmentally falsified. The consequence of this is that we perceive both factual and moral matters obscurely. This is well known; it’s not unusual for human imperfection to be injected into conversation. Our indistinct grasp of the depth and breadth of truth and the moral issues surrounding it naturally makes conceptualization of ambiguous matters—like whether a well-off person is responsible for all the world’s poor—difficult and irrelevant. What I’m suggesting has a single goal: the pursuit of truth is the single most important goal one can engage in. Let that be your guide to ambiguous moral questions.

More sophistry. As you well know, I made no claims to rightness. I claim that truth is right and that clarity of truth is unavailable to fragmentally falsified humans. If you want to discuss, don’t twist the issues. I don’t have much patience with bullshit.

Now you’re either being purposefully absurd or everyone you hang with is an amoral sociopath. If the latter, I suggest you find some new friends whose behaviour can give you a refreshingly new slant on life and improve your understanding of moral issues. If the former, the interesting question is, what is it about what I wrote that stings you? Are there truths in the informational content presented that provoke the sophist inside? One of the interesting features of this hypothesis of truth is its predictive capabilities, you know.

Oh, I see.

Many of the above points are repeats so I will not go through them again.

As I had stated many times to optimize living one has to complement the ‘knowing’ [intellectual knowledge] with the ‘doing’ [the practical] and thus they Middle-Way, i.e. the way of Wisdom. ‘Doing’ is the most critical whilst must be supported by the ‘knowing.’

What I find you are lacking is sufficient ‘knowing’ and also insufficient ‘doing’ i.e. actual practices that would rewire your brain for wisdom.

It is as if you want to be like Roger Federer or Stephen Curry or even 50% of their ability. What is lacking here is you have not bothered to gather the necessary knowledge and doing the right actions and sufficient practices in the right direction to develop the necessary knowledge and relevant skills.
Note the generic model re life problem solving technique I presented in the various posts.

I had stated ALL humans are infected with desperate existential psychology that generate existential angst.
One of the most effective solution to the existential angst is theism, i.e. just believe and viola! one is saved and feel secured. As you had mentioned you were once clinging to this ‘straw’ in your life.
Whilst theism provides REAL psychological security, it is very flimsy like clinging to straws in the middle of the deep ocean. Theism supporting knowledge and practices are very faith-based, irrational and insecure thus will raise doubts in those with rising intellect and rationality BUT the fact is it works [with limited conditions].

I believed you was once one of those with rising [in baby steps] intellect and rationality and saw through the irrationality [or stupidity] of theism. Then you jumped into existentialism [Barrett] and others.

The problem is the jumping into existentialism is like ‘jumping from the frying pan into the fire’.
Whilst existentialism is more rational than the rigid theological doctrines of theism, in generally and in most cases it does not by itself provide the real psychological security that theology does. What it will do or did to you as you have stated is it shattered the “I” and leave all its broken pieces suspended in mid-air and ungrounded.
Note the exception of Kierkegaard who shifted into existentialism but he kept his theistic beliefs and thus maintain the necessary real psychological security to deal with the real inherent existential angst.
Note Sartre who had to eventually clung back to theism.

On your part you abandon theism and clung to secular existentialism thus giving up the essential REAL psychological security and thus digging a deeper and deeper hole and being trapped therein.

Existentialism which directs onto the subject [rather than external objects or god] is filled with all sorts of flimsy intellectual contraptions [Existence precedes essence,
The Absurd & Meaningless, Facticity Authenticity The Other and the Look
Angst and dread, Despair, etc.] that do not provide a strong enough real psychological security to deal with the very desperate inherent real existential angst.

When you cling to the above ideas, you lack the right knowing and worst I don’t see any ‘doing’ on your part. Question: What are doing to secure the anchor to deal with the inherent and unavoidable turbulences in life? Look like you are not doing anything but merely intellectualizing the ideas.

As least with theism [irrational and whatever] the belief [unreal] ensures real psychological security to deal with the real desperate existential crisis and angst.

With existentialism of your kind you may acquire some truth that the focus must be on the subject and self, but you deliberately don’t want to acquire the relevant knowledge of the self or “I” as I had proposed nor cultivate the necessary wisdom and equanimity in doing the necessary practicals [to rewire the brain with the right circuitry].

You keep accusing me of being stuck to intellectual contraptions. Nah it is not ‘contraptions’, but in a forum the only activity has to intellectual, what else? But I am intellectualizing on the right knowledge not contraptions.
Outside the forum I am doing the right practice [over many many years] to cultivate equanimity and practical wisdom to modulate the inherent and inevitable unavoidable existential angst. What right practices have you done?

What on earth are you talking about here?

What I have come to embody [in the is/ought world] is a fractured and fragmented “I”. And on this thread that revolves around my speculation that in a No God world there does not appear to be a font/foundation that mere mortals can turn to in order to make a philosophical distinction between right and wrong, good and evil.

All I do here is invite those who do embody one or another God world narrative to explore the relationship between the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave and what they imagine their fate to be on the other side of it.

And I recognize that my own value judgments are basically existential contraptions [political prejudices] rooted in dasein.

How are yours not?

So what? What counts [from my perspective] is the extent to which any particular individual is able to demonstrate that his or her own value judgments reflect the optimal or the only rational understanding of human virtue.

All we can do here is to bring this assertion down to earth — by exploring a particular context. Is there a “systemic” fallibility that ethicists are able to discern? And then encompass in an argument intertwined in a description/assessment of a particular context?

I don’t agree. But clearly you know me better than I know myself. So, by all means, convince me.