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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[TD1]

Things have intrinsic worth in the fact that they are. Subjectively, the sun is good for me because it is pretty. Objectively, it maintains the life of the entire planet, and so it has worth. The cockroach may not know this, but it is still true. Worth may either be determined by the person or just be. Given the mentally challenged person has no concept of the sun's worth, I prefer to think that worth exists whether we attribute it or not.

[Arx]

But why is maintaining life on the planet something that's worthy? It's still just an interaction of two systems.

The alternative interpretation of the mentally challenged person's lack of knowledge would be that it has no inherent worth, which is consistent with worth as only subjectively meaningful.

Also, everything having worth simply by being is equivalent to nothing having worth, since value is only meaninful as a comparison.

[TD1]

Compare existence to non existence, and you see the worth in everything. It's not that it specifically maintains life which is worthy, but that the sun does something as opposed to nothing, and that something has a great chain of effects on earth which adds to earth's worth. Existence and effect give worth, no matter what a human thinks is worthy. The human mind attributes more or less worth to some things, is all, but the human mind is a selfish thing and only determines worth according to what benefits it.

[Arx]

Eh. Fairly basic clash of philosophy, again - I don't think that existing conveys value, thus everything is ultimately valueless. You do, thus everything has value. Neither of us can convince the other of their incorrectness.

[TD1]

So you think non existence and existence have the same worth? Strange idea, given that one encompasses everything and the other quite literally nothing. If you have a larder full of food, or one full of nothing, which is more valuable?

[Arx]

Neither has any inherent value. One has subjective value in certain cases, the other has subjective value in others, but on a universal scale neither is significant at all.

You know when I said we have a fairly basic clash?

[TD1]

Hrrrm yea.

We are both right, and both wrong I guess. 

[Angle]

No, there's no objective meaning... But so what? Subjective meaning is plenty good enough for me.

[TD1]

I wasn't speaking about meaning. There is no meaning but what we give it. I was speaking of worth - I determine existence is worth more than nonexistence, interaction better than non-interaction. Arx says there is no worth to anything.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[TD1]

Seems to me the Higher Being should meet the Ubermensch.

[Angle]

 I think you're misunderstanding. He's not talking about reaching towards objectivity, he's talking about reaching towards understanding. And he's not against the "irrational" animal brain, he's against the shortsighted animal brain. Rationality is of no use without emotions. All it does is let you compare and correlate things.

[SirQuiamus]

Yes, but what is understanding, anyway? "Knowledge" and "understanding" in the natural sciences are simply alternative terms for the process of making reliable predictions, but, as penguin just pointed out, that guy's idea of understanding is of the mystical variety. His moment of overcoming the "inner animals" is presented as an epiphany whereby the obscured Truth is momentarily revealed – first you see "through a glass, darkly," and then Bam!: enlightenment. That brand of spirituality is probably not any worse for your self-improvement than, say, Zen Buddhism or Christian contemplation, but what does it have to do with all that neat scientific stuff he adores? Truth is a useful concept in formal logic and in everyday conversation, but it does not figure in the practice of empirical science. It seems to me that the author is inappropriately conflating his mystical, absolute Truth with the provisional truths of scientific knowledge.             

[Ghills]

It seems to me that the author is inappropriately conflating his mystical, absolute Truth with the provisional truths of scientific knowledge.             

Yeah, that's an incredibly common mistake.   I've seen a lot of variations on treating science as a religion that come from this basic problem.  People hear 'scientific truth' or are told by teachers / parents that something is true, and never realize that the truth science can provide is very different from a religious truth.  And that's without getting into the problems of bias and methodology that so many people gloss over.

[TD1]

To any heaven believers:
I dote on someone. They are my life and reason to live. I die, go to heaven. As he/she was all I wanted, I'm a bit bummed they're not there. Still I know they must die and join me. Until then, heaven isn't bliss.

When I die, they curse God or somesuch. For this impiety, they are cast into the fiery pits to forever reflect on how bad it was to say that thing that one time.

Given how my contentment is dependent on them, how is heaven heaven without them there?