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What's your opinion on free will?

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


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Author Topic: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion  (Read 660367 times)

Frumple

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7800 on: January 26, 2024, 06:39:44 pm »

It... mostly refers to second order effects the good intentions didn't recognize, though? It's asbestos, the ethical observation.

It's primary usage after that is when the "good intentions" are seriously fucked up, ala conversion therapy or exorcisms or whatever, where the intent sometimes isn't terrible (help their child, etc.), but their execution is fractally, sometimes fatally, scuffed. This one is where stuff like the lewis quote on tyrannies comes from.

It's usually not about falling short or falling off the road, least not that I've seen it used.
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lemon10

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7801 on: January 26, 2024, 08:13:02 pm »

Objective morality is like objective tastiness... it just doesn't really make sense.

Obviously for most people tastiness is basically the same: Stuff with (a reasonable amount of) sugar in it: Good. Stuff that's clearly rotten: Bad.

But the argument that sugar is good because of some empirical law of the universe is just strange. No, sugar is tasty because sugar=calories and lack of calories is pretty much the prime way life dies.
Similarly the argument that rotten meat isn't tasty because its just... evil or something is equally strange, no, it tastes bad because eating it will mess you up and possibly kill you.
But if someone went: Nah, rotting meat *is* tasty I would give them a look, because while there is no true objective tastiness, there is objectively standard human tastes, which almost always go "nah fam, don't eat that shit".

Of course this isn't absolute either, tastiness depends on both nature (your tastebuds, DNA) and nurture (what you ate growing up, how that one time when you were 6 you had bad sushi and threw up for two days and thus as an adult hate raw fish). So while most people would look at Lutefisk as being objectively nasty that doesn't mean that it actually is, or that said opinion of rotting stuff=bad even applies to all humans.
---
Its the same with morality, even though say, cannibalism isn't objectively wrong that doesn't mean I won't look at anyone who says its fine as being kind of crazy in the most generous interpretation.
But of course as with many other 'evil' things its trivial to think of circumstances where cannibalism isn't wrong, most notably where the other person is already dead and your only way to survive is to become a cannibal. By the same token its also a thing that many cultures throughout the world partook of willingly and *didn't* think was evil.
I would look way back, to human early history. Their morality was simpler, - what is good for my tribe is good, what is bad for my tribe is bad. Therefore, killing a competing tribe and taking their resources is good. And it comes directly from biological evolution, from the rudimentary morality of non-human social animals.
I disagree, conflict is and has always been extremely expensive (assuming the other group isn't way weaker), and the other tribe can cooperate with and help you as well, which can be very significant when life is as risky as it was back then.
Quote
Back at the lab, researchers analyzed them to find that they were black pigments: The oldest paleo-crayons ever discovered, dating back to around 300,000 years ago.

That was only the beginning of the intrigue. Having long studied this site and this period in human evolution, Potts knew that early humans generally sourced their food and materials locally. These “crayons,” however, were clearly imported. They’d formed in a briny lake, but the closest body of water that fit that description was some 18 miles away. That was much farther than most inhabitants likely would’ve traveled on a regular basis, given the uneven terrain. So what was going on?

The pigments, Potts and his co-authors now believe, were part of a prehistoric trade network—one that existed 100,000 years earlier than scientists previously thought.
Even hundreds of thousands of years ago trade was a thing, and along with alliances (which certainly existed as well) there would be incentives to maintain relationships with neighboring tribes and travelers. If you don't care about them at all your members are more likely to start conflicts (which again, are very expensive), so part of ethics, even way back then presumably included caring for people not in your tribe to some small extent.
That said if they are messing with you or otherwise impacting your chance of survival *and* they are too weak to stop you then just killing/enslaving them all becomes the logical choice, so you can't care about them that much.
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Travis Bickle

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7802 on: March 24, 2024, 04:14:56 am »

To-day the Messias enters into the city of Jerusalem, as foretold by the prophet Zachary, and is proclaimed king by the people who days later clamor for his blood.
Pueri Hebraeorum
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StrawBarrel

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7803 on: March 29, 2024, 04:03:34 pm »

ReligionForBreakfast
 Where Did Ancient Christians Meet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnJ0komM8tU
It appears that some scholars believe that some early Christians had meetings in insulae and villas. Later on more dedicated places of worships would be formed.

The background music in the video is a bit loud. Opening the transcript or closed captions might be needed.
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Travis Bickle

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7804 on: March 29, 2024, 11:11:24 pm »

In honor of Good Friday:
The Passion According to St. John
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StrawBarrel

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7805 on: June 08, 2024, 03:35:15 am »

Chinnamasta: The Headless Goddess of Self-Sacrifice | Fate & Fabled
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00tx3uS8_7c

edit: june 27, 2024 el jueves
https://youtu.be/JFI0cwCklx4?si=kRvW3JNsGGOHgrtR
The children of priests searching for their fathers | Compass
Aug 17 2023

It was good to learn about this problem in the Catholic Church. I had no idea beforehand that there were so many children and women hurt by the Church in this manner. I think the importance of reproductive rights is highlighted in this video by Compass.
« Last Edit: June 27, 2024, 06:33:22 am by StrawBarrel »
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StrawBarrel

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7806 on: July 10, 2024, 01:54:51 am »

1A in Action: Imam Ossama Bahloul and Fighting for the Right to Worship
https://www.freedomforum.org/1a-in-action-imam-ossama-bahloul/
Quote from: FREEDOM FORUM
Eventually a federal judge allowed the project to move forward, but some residents still tried to stop it. A man pleaded guilty to threatening to blow up the mosque.
It seems like the fight for religious freedom here was met with violent opposition.

Quote from: Asma Uddin
The controversy reflects dynamics around acceptance of religious diversity and highlights the need for dialogue and respect among different religious groups.
Interfaith dialogue does seem like a good idea. Communication can bring people together.
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pisskop

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7807 on: July 30, 2024, 04:27:19 pm »

 :-\  I wouldnt consider myself a member of any specific denomination or faith, but I was nominally raised roman catholic.

The concept of a singular god works well enough, and I tend to think that Jesus is a historical figure, not a part of any holy triangle.  Im perfectly fine with a hands off interpretation of divinity, and even a callous and vengeful god.  At the very least, I believe that the function of religion is to enable people to live within norms and teaches norms while removing anxiety.  Its a tool, and a good one even.  I mean good in both senses.

Free Will, as a concept, is a bit of a joke.  We're free to do and act as we please, but the idea that we are completely in control of our actions has been dis-proven enough in modern society.  We act within the confines of what we know and often how we feel, and are biased towards specific things.  We make up our causality post factum.  We live in constant cognitive dissonance, and I think one of the hardest things we can ever do is purposely deconstruct our world and viewpoints, especially when faced with something we so painfully try to avoid.

Free will describes the capacity to do anything, but it doesnt reflect the reality that we often cant even conceptualize anything other than a narrow range.  something something overton or whatever.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2024, 04:28:51 pm by pisskop »
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Strongpoint

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7808 on: July 30, 2024, 06:02:11 pm »

You can, and pretty much always in your daily life, have (some degree of) faith in things without proof.  Is that food you just bought going to give you an infection? Is the building you are in going to collapse?  Can you prove it? No - you take it on logical belief based on engineering standards, food protection laws, the fact that the building didn't collapse yesterday, etc.  This is despite the fact that there are and have been examples of such failures in the world.

It is neither faith nor belief. Those are reasonable assumptions based on experience and observed reality.

Quote
Would you throw out a belief system that generally says to treat everyone kindly, including giving your resources to others, just because that belief system says the reason you do that is because we have inherent value given to us by a creator?

Yes. Absolutely. This belief doesn't reflect reality and it means that it will lead to wrong decisions. For example, value of a psychopat is NEGATIVE and treating him\her kindly because of the "inherent value given by a creator" fantasy is a disservice to the society, an immoral act.
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Frumple

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7809 on: July 30, 2024, 06:52:31 pm »

It is neither faith nor belief. Those are reasonable assumptions based on experience and observed reality.
The old fun thing is that experience and observed reality are hinged on having faith that what you're experiencing isn't cocked up somehow, so you're going to run into it at some point. Assumptions in general are (or at least can be described as) an expression of faith, really... one of the reasons they make an ass of folks as often as they do :V
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McTraveller

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7810 on: July 30, 2024, 07:36:58 pm »

This belief doesn't reflect reality and it means that it will lead to wrong decisions.

I hope nobody takes this the wrong way - these topics are interesting to me and I enjoy talking about it - even (especially?) when there are differing viewpoints.

By what metric is "reflects reality" measured?

By what metric is "wrongness"?

If you're going to make a bold claim that treating a psychopath with kindness is immoral, you've better have some bold evidence to back that claim.  You don't have to kill or abuse a psychopath to protect society. You can treat them gently, in comfort, etc.  Maybe we have different definitions of what "kindness" means?  I mean after all we even consider euthanasia to be a kindness in some instances.

I think I understand the argument about the theistic view not reflecting reality; I can appreciate arguments that you have no personal experience with empirical evidence collected in what you consider to be an appropriate time frame.  I would disagree that there is no evidence though. So it becomes a question of the veracity of the evidence, not the existence or lack thereof.  I mean, we typically don't claim that, oh, Plato doesn't exist, even though the only evidence we have is literary. Plato isn't presently demonstrating his existence to us.  I think it's hubris to assume that if there was a God acting in the past, manifesting in certain ways, that such a being is obligated to present themselves to us in the same way through all time.

I mean, what if God was really an interdimensional being that just showed up for a period of our history, then moved on? There are no modern physical measurements which could be made to confirm or deny historical reports of such a visit.

Basically it's impossible to claim absolute absence of evidence; it's only possible to claim present statements.  You can make a valid claim "I haven't seen God manifest physically today."  It's an empty statement to say "I didn't see God manifest a thousand years ago."  But this doesn't mean that there was some phenomenon ten or six or four or two thousand years ago.  It's fundamentally unknowable - unless you just trust historical artifacts as evidence - which boils down to what most people would call faith.  And if you say "oh if there was a God, they'd leave incontrovertible evidence..." - what evidence would that be? Do you trust nothing in the universe from the time before you can remember experiencing it? Do you even trust your memories?

This is why this stuff is philosophy, not engineering.
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MaxTheFox

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7811 on: July 30, 2024, 07:43:06 pm »

Quote
Would you throw out a belief system that generally says to treat everyone kindly, including giving your resources to others, just because that belief system says the reason you do that is because we have inherent value given to us by a creator?

Yes. Absolutely. This belief doesn't reflect reality and it means that it will lead to wrong decisions. For example, value of a psychopat is NEGATIVE and treating him\her kindly because of the "inherent value given by a creator" fantasy is a disservice to the society, an immoral act.
And that is where we disagree. Yes, I would treat a psychopath as kindly as is reasonable, I'd try and get them into therapy to help them mitigate their condition and function in society, that's kindness as it reduces harm done. Even if I couldn't-- I wouldn't be a dick.

And yea I 100% agree with McTraveller. Wrongness is subjective in everything except STEM. Proof is for mathematicians and brewers.
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Strongpoint

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7812 on: July 30, 2024, 09:00:46 pm »

It is neither faith nor belief. Those are reasonable assumptions based on experience and observed reality.
The old fun thing is that experience and observed reality are hinged on having faith that what you're experiencing isn't cocked up somehow, so you're going to run into it at some point. Assumptions in general are (or at least can be described as) an expression of faith, really... one of the reasons they make an ass of folks as often as they do :V

Yeah. We can't prove some very basic stuff like "reality is real". But if reality isn't real then there is no point in even trying to understand anything, understanding is just impossible in this case -  logic falls apart, observations are useless, predictions can't be made.

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Frumple

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7813 on: July 30, 2024, 09:44:01 pm »

Oh, don't be silly. Most forms of logic are largely inapplicable to most situations anyway, observations have major issues at the best of times (see: everything regarding witness testimony for an easy example, basically the entirety of the history of science for a more complicated one*), predictions could totally still be made, there'd just be no causal connection between their proposition and accuracy, and that's never done much to stop people from making the things, ha!

Reality not being real is no obstacle to giving things an even more metaphorical than usual college try!

... but things do tend to function a bit more smoothly if you just have a bit of faith in the little things like temporal consistency, heh. You build everything else off that, though, which do taint said everything with that mess, at the end of the day. Which is fine, really. At some point you have to tell solipsism to go fuck itself so you can go eat breakfast or you starve to death, so on and so forth.

* one way to describe it is the continuing saga of how incredibly wrong all the observations we've made are, after all :V
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Strongpoint

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Re: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion
« Reply #7814 on: July 30, 2024, 10:15:41 pm »

By what metric is "reflects reality" measured?
The only way to test the accuracy of a hypothesis or a theory is predictions. "Knowledge" that can't make predictions hardly qualifies as knowledge

By what metric is "wrongness"?
By the metric of human morals that arose from how we evolved as a social species with empathy. We have a wired-in concept in our brain - it is good when other people are happy, it is bad when other people suffer. Good actions increase happiness and\or decrease suffering, Evil does the opposite. We need no God to understand this.

Objective morality either doesn't exist or there is no way to know it, no way to test or observe.


If you're going to make a bold claim that treating a psychopath with kindness is immoral, you've better have some bold evidence to back that claim.  You don't have to kill or abuse a psychopath to protect society. You can treat them gently, in comfort, etc.  Maybe we have different definitions of what "kindness" means? 


I think we do have different definitions. Being kind to someone means improving their life, making them stronger, more capable, more successful. Should I explain why it is not good when you do it for a psychopath? Also, not torturing\abusing someone is not kindness - it is not being evil and cruel.

I mean, we typically don't claim that, oh, Plato doesn't exist, even though the only evidence we have is literary.
If literary evidence about Plato included stuff like that he walked on water and was turning water into wine, we would have more doubts about the accuracy of the literary evidence.

I think it's hubris to assume that if there was a God acting in the past, manifesting in certain ways, that such a being is obligated to present themselves to us in the same way through all time.

I mean, what if God was really an interdimensional being that just showed up for a period of our history, then moved on? There are no modern physical measurements which could be made to confirm or deny historical reports of such a visit.

What if the Old Norse mythology is correct and abrahamic religions are the result of Loki's prank with his regular visits to ancient Jews? There are no physical measurements to disprove this new hypothesis of mine. It is just as valid (and testable) as the idea that the Bible is inspired by the legit creator of the universe

Basically it's impossible to claim absolute absence of evidence
You know... I am actually an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy.

You now have evidence that I am an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy in the form of my words. It is extremely weak one but you can't claim absolute absence of evidence.


It's fundamentally unknowable - unless you just trust historical artifacts as evidence - which boils down to what most people would call faith. 


We have plenty of evidence that those historical artifacts are not true. The Bible and other holy texts make many claims that can be tested. Also, why selective trust? Why not treat all historical artifacts with evidence of supernatural equally? Are there tests to determine which are more truthful?

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