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[Micro102]

Didn't we already conclude that Scientism was created by a nutjob and that it doesn't actually have anything to do with science at all? It's about torturing yourself so that when you die you turn into a spirit.

[Siquo]

Oooh, bolding quotes! I can do that! 

If they feel their belief is attacked because it is attached to the action, that's out of my hands. I also believe in personal responsibility, and that works two ways. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and beliefs. If a belief tells you to do X, that is in no way an excuse for anything if you actually do it.

Also, rendering everything invalid because 2 of the X statements contradict is... well kind of lazy, don't you think? Scientists contradict eachother constantly, so Science in general must be invalid, something like that?

Micro: no, we didn't. Or I missed that, either one. You could read the wiki-article it links to? It mentions a lot more, and it's a derogatory (sp?) term for "belief that science holds all answers" rather than an actually created belief.

[Huesoo]

You dont sound like your over 18.

[dreiche2]

Didn't we already conclude that Scientism was created by a nutjob and that it doesn't actually have anything to do with science at all? It's about torturing yourself so that when you die you turn into a spirit.

What... what? Do you mean ScientOLOGY?

If the belief specifies specific things that are incompatible with my belief (such as killing), one of us will have to reinterpret the belief.

(emphasis mine) Bingo! But that's going against everything you've been saying so far, in terms of people can just believe in whatever. Also, who's going to have to reinterpret their belief out of two people disagreeing? How are you going to resolve this without appealing to reason, evidence, and things that are arguably real? Just stand there and shout at each other?

Everyone is responsible for their own actions and beliefs. If a belief tells you to do X, that is in no way an excuse for anything if you actually do it.

"God said so" sounds like a pretty good excuse to me... if it were to be true - which we can't question, according to you.

The kind of beliefs you are talking about here are almost irrelevant by (your) definition. Yes, one can belief whatever one wants, but according to what you just said they can't be used to justify an action, and the moral value of an action is evaluated by external criteria anyway.

That was exactly my point: You can believe in whatever as long it does not affect anyone. As soon as it comes to actions and decisions, rationality is the only way to go.

[Sordid]

I'm not here to troll you or trick you or anything. Release the fear of being bamboozled.

Stop telling me how I feel.

I lump in free speech with murderers because it is a list of actions that may offend people. I say yes, address the symptoms, not the "cause", because the cause is not really the cause

Yes it is and, and I explained why. If you disagree, you're going to have to do better than say "no it isn't".

the cause is not something that can be changed easily.

Right. It's difficult, so let's not bother. That's totally the right attitude.

Example time: Sikhs need to wear a turban and a knife at all times, according to their religion. That really is a bummer at airport security. Instead of stopping being a Sikh altogether, they adapt and don't wear the knife at all times.

And therefore cease to be Sikhs. If a Sikh is wear a knife at all times, then a Sikh who's willing to put it away for convenience isn't really taking his religion very seriously. That's kinda the problem with absolute rules that religions like so much. They're absolute, inflexible. I'd say if the highest power in the universe tells you to wear a knife at all times, then you bloody well should. I sure as hell would, if I truly believed it was God telling me this. Because God knows best, and some mundane nonsense like inconvenience or inability to use rapid transport has no business interfering with his will. "Wear a knife at all times" means "wear a knife at all times", not "wear a knife as much as possible, when it's convenient". Likewise, "give to anyone who asks of you" means "give to anyone who asks of you", not "give to the poor and needy".

Another example where changing your actions is possible without changing your belief. Are you saying that just because the religion sais you have to wear a knife, and wearing a knife is illegal in some places, that the entire religion is illegal?

I don't remember saying anything of the sort, so that'd be a no. In fact I'd say requiring Sikhs to put away their knives is infringing on their right to practice their religion.

Question: So do you think ridiculing people is allowed, as long as they share your belief? So atheists may ridicule unicorn believers, but not the other way around? Or can anyone ridicule anyone, and let the world become one bitter, hostile, ridiculing place?

Oh I'd say ridicule is not only allowed but desirable and necessary. If you're accommodating to silly beliefs, then the people who hold these beliefs will think they're okay, they'll persist in them and never learn. Shaming them into rethinking their position by ridicule is a perfectly viable strategy. I believe the technical term for it is satire.

[Andir]

God cannot be omnipotent without also being ignorant.  This has been discussed before.  Free Will cannot exist without a certain amount of ignorance.  You cannot be omnipotent and ignorant at the same time because you'd already know what you are trying to ignore.

So therefore, if God exists, he is in control of ALL of us 100% completely and totally.  Even atheists.  What's their purpose?  Do you think he enjoys reading endless religious debates as well, especially when he's in control of them?  What purpose does it solve?

[Areyar]

life's ultimate goal is to continue life (if not continue to live).

And the ultimate goal of all things with mass is to fall?

lol.
you are right there!
I used the wrong words at least and at worst ascribed concious planning to a process. I dont recall what prompted this, I had a whole rant on adaption, society and tooluse written up. hehe, deleted it.
Probably I tried to provide meaning or direction, many miss such things in a materialist worldview.
Taken to it's extreme, this would end up with everything eventually ending up in the same blackhole, becoming one in the end. What happens after that is anybody's guess.
(not that such things can be predicted with any degree of certainty yet though. New data changes cosmology models all the time currentltly)


@Andir: that is pretty sound circle reasoning and it is supporting the view that gods are nonsense.

[Siquo]

God cannot be omnipotent without also being ignorant.  This has been discussed before.  Free Will cannot exist without a certain amount of ignorance.  You cannot be omnipotent and ignorant at the same time because you'd already know what you are trying to ignore.

So therefore, if God exists, he is in control of ALL of us 100% completely and totally.  Even atheists.  What's their purpose?  Do you think he enjoys reading endless religious debates as well, especially when he's in control of them?  What purpose does it solve?

He could be in control of us, but I believe he isn't/doesn't, by his/her own choice. He created ignorance for little parts of it so she could learn. It is experiencing through us. So there is no absolute evil or absolute good, it is all experience. The only good and evil that exist are in your own mind. On that subject I'm just as bad as a murderer is: I will inflict my definition of good upon others. That the murderer is harmful and I'm not doesn't make either of us good or bad.
Of course, experiencing is merely one explanation, one I took from "conversations with God" (which is a good book, read it!). Usually I take the easy way out and say that God is such an alien concept to us that we cannot conceive what the purpose is. If you think that's an easy way to get out of explaining, look at the job others do who personify God and make him jealous, vengeful, or wrathful. Like you'd care about those things if you were omnipotent...

Both to Andir and Sordid: Religion is not as black and white as it sometimes seems. Old ones like Catholicism have come a long way, and have been through numerous changes. Not abiding by one rule of a religion doesn't make you relinquish membership. Sordid, if one'd follow your definitions, no religion would have any member left.
Also, have you ever learned something from being ridiculed (also, satire is ridicule, not all ridicule is satire)? I'm guessing no, and neither will anyone else. I sure hope you're not a teacher 

Dreiche: I said you can't question what God told him, but you CAN question his actions. Believing something does not mean you HAVE to act on it, we're all still people with free will. Even eternal damnation hasn't stopped people from disobeying their Gods, so it's entirely possible to not do as our religion or belief tells us to. True, resolving the difference of a direct confrontation between two beliefs is going to be hard, but reason and evidence have nothing in common with morality. You could reason that the death of a handicapped person is better for the community. Evidence of that aplenty. Still you have not convinced me they all should die. The resolution of conflicts such as these is not directly apparent. In the real world, usually the strongest guy wins. Or the guy with the most friends. The guy with the most friends is usually a guy that wants the best for everybody. I'm in that category myself.

Using reason to convince others to change their beliefs is... Well, I'd say naive

Huesoo: You almost tricked me into a sarcastic reply there. Almost

[Sordid]

I believe...

On what grounds?

Religion is not as black and white as it sometimes seems. Old ones like Catholicism have come a long way, and have been through numerous changes.

All the more reason to scoff at them. "Get your latest, brand new eternal immutable truths here!"

Sordid, if one'd follow your definitions...

Those aren't my definitions, they're the definitions of those religions. There's plenty of absolute dos and don'ts in the various holy books.

no religion would have any member left.

You say that as if it would be a bad thing.

Also, have you ever learned something from being ridiculed (also, satire is ridicule, not all ridicule is satire)? I'm guessing no

You're guessing wrongly. Have you never been laughed at, only to realize that what you'd said was really stupid and you felt ashamed for even thinking it?

[dreiche2]

Siquo, please tell me what you would say to the people doing the witch killing and the hacking-off of hands.

If someone comes to you and says "I think that kid over there isn't it really a kid, it's a demon that turns into a flesh-eating monster at night, let's burn it alive", it would be ludicrous not to say "Uhm dude I think you might be wrong there". But apparently you would say "yeah dude you might be right about that demon stuff, but hey let's not kill the demon because it's wrong for reasons I cannot actually argue about because actions are not justifiable by beliefs anyway".

Dreiche: I said you can't question what God told him, but you CAN question his actions. Believing something does not mean you HAVE to act on it, we're all still people with free will. Even eternal damnation hasn't stopped people from disobeying their Gods, so it's entirely possible to not do as our religion or belief tells us to.

Of course (assuming free will) you can act against it. But the question is on what you base the decision of how to act. If god says hacking off hands is the right thing to do, then that's the right thing to do. There's no question. You can still do the wrong thing, but that's besides the point.

True, resolving the difference of a direct confrontation between two beliefs is going to be hard, but reason and evidence have nothing in common with morality. You could reason that the death of a handicapped person is better for the community. Evidence of that aplenty. Still you have not convinced me they all should die.

I hope you're not implying that such would be my position. But anyway, I think what you are trying to say here is that moral judgements/ meaning etc. cannot be deduced from science/evidence, and I agree. However, that doesn't mean that reason and evidence cannot play a role in moral judgements. In particularly, whatever your belief is, how this belief is applied in any kind of situation will depend on what that situation actually is, and that means you need reason and evidence to explore what is real and what isn't. Similarly, if the belief is based on a factual statement ("the bible is god's word"), then pretty much every person on this planet apart from you, if they were to decide whether to uphold that belief or not, would indeed care whether that statement is actually true or not. Yes, sometimes things cannot be decided, but you seem to imply that things can never be decided, or that whether something is true or not is actually irrelevant.

The resolution of conflicts such as these is not directly apparent. In the real world, usually the strongest guy wins. Or the guy with the most friends. The guy with the most friends is usually a guy that wants the best for everybody. I'm in that category myself.

No the resolutions are not apparent, but it's not like people are not thinking about these things in philosophy.

Using reason to convince others to change their beliefs is... Well, I'd say naive

Only if those others are immune to reason. Which you seem to be proud of, even.

[Siquo]

Sordid: No. And you're really not getting anything, but I will not ridicule you for the sake of educating, since I don't believe in that.

Dreiche:
Hmmm, good questions.
1. Indeed I cannot argue beyond "I think killing children for whatever reason is wrong". Why? Just because! It kinda stops there. But on the other hand, since I believe that reasoning can rarely change a man's beliefs, it's neither necessary nor useful. I'd indeed say "You might be right about the demon stuff, but I'm still not going to let you kill the kid". I'm not that good with words.

2. Hmmm, you are not your beliefs. They are, however strongly you feel about them, not your identity. They can change. What you feel is right and wrong hardly changes. People often look to religion for justification for violence, but that is exactly what I oppose. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, Jesus said, and he put the responsibility of stoning an actual person back into the individual, where they before just stoned because that's what their belief said. Just stop and look at what you're doing, was all that was needed to stop people from acting out on their beliefs.

3. No accusation, it was an example of how wrong things could go. Reason and evidence are fairly new, compared to beliefs. Also, there are many forms of reason. Will you be using logic, rationality, intuitive reasoning, circle-reasoning, faith-based reasoning, theology? Only when all parties agree to use one single form, you can gather evidence. But evidence has "value" or "worth". Based on what? Is the being a demon-evidence more important than the being a child-evidence? Why? Then, when those things are decided, you may apply them to morals. Which ones? etc. And in the end, the loser will say that "yes, the reasoning says A, but I still feel B, so the child still dies".
I am indeed implying the things you think I imply; that things can never be decided, or that whether something is true or not is actually irrelevant.

4. True dat. Not the subfield I studied though, so I wouldn't know

5. Yes, I am. I am not to be reasoned with! Reasoning is empty rhetorics, based on fantasy. Hollow phrases, designed in patterns. They get you from A to B, but nobody knows where A really was to begin with, let alone where B is going to be. It's fun, really, but like a game of MagicTG is fun. Complicated, entertaining, occasionally educating, but in the end, utterly pointless. There is one place, only one, where reasoning belongs: in Science. When you leave Science, leave reason at the door. Outside of Science, it's more of a blindfold than a guiding way. Using reason in an unreasonable world will just get you smacked in the face. I mean, I would if I still smacked people in the face.

Really, if one stood before me, saying "You can't smack me, because you believe in non-violence!" I'd just smack him anyway, to prove that reasoning  usually does not work, and it makes one annoying. 
(this is not aimed at anyone in specific here, I've got a certain "I'm always right and can reason my way in circles around you"-know-it-all-annoying-nerd in mind)



Who? Myself, 10 years ago. 

[dreiche2]

I am not to be reasoned with!

Indeed. And I'll stop trying now, and recommend everyone else the same, because this is really quite pointless.

[dreiche2]

(sorry double post, avoid editing confusion etc.)

ps: Sorry if that sounded harsh, but I mean really, it's just pointless to continue this discussion.

Your position now pretty much seems to be:

You believe in whatever you want, you do not care what is true or false, real or unreal, right or wrong, you don't have or strive to have a coherent moral philosophy or world view, and you seem to be opposed to rational arguments on principle.

I mean, how exactly are we then supposed to have a discussion in the first place? To you, we might as well just sit in a circle and make fart noises.

[Sordid]

Sordid: No. And you're really not getting anything, but I will not ridicule you for the sake of educating, since I don't believe in that.

Then how about a reasoned debate? I'm trying, at least.

Reasoning is empty rhetorics, based on fantasy.

That's theology, actually.

When you leave Science, leave reason at the door.

And where would that be, exactly? What aspect of the natural world that we interact with on daily basis do you think is outside the realm of science?

Really, if one stood before me, saying "You can't smack me, because you believe in non-violence!" I'd just smack him anyway, to prove that reasoning  usually does not work.

Oh but it does. By smaking him you're proving, to any rational observer, that you do not actually believe in non-violence. Quite the contrary, you're obviously eager to resort to it at the slightest of provocations. Even though the situation had not played out as expected, valuable insight has nevertheless been gained.

This is not aimed at anyone in specific here, I've got a certain "I'm always right and can reason my way in circles around you"-know-it-all-annoying-nerd in mind. Who? Myself, 10 years ago. 

And I imagine you think you're much better off now and you're proud that you've managed to shed the shackles of reason and achieve the intellectual freedom of... what exactly is it anyway that you call your way of thinking? How, if not by reason, do you make decisions? Do you flip a coin? Read astrological charts? Look for patterns in the clouds? Or what? Seriously, I want to know.

[Andir]

God cannot be omnipotent without also being ignorant.  This has been discussed before.  Free Will cannot exist without a certain amount of ignorance.  You cannot be omnipotent and ignorant at the same time because you'd already know what you are trying to ignore.

So therefore, if God exists, he is in control of ALL of us 100% completely and totally.  Even atheists.  What's their purpose?  Do you think he enjoys reading endless religious debates as well, especially when he's in control of them?  What purpose does it solve?

He could be in control of us, but I believe he isn't/doesn't, by his/her own choice. He created ignorance for little parts of it so she could learn. It is experiencing through us. So there is no absolute evil or absolute good, it is all experience. The only good and evil that exist are in your own mind. On that subject I'm just as bad as a murderer is: I will inflict my definition of good upon others. That the murderer is harmful and I'm not doesn't make either of us good or bad.
Of course, experiencing is merely one explanation, one I took from "conversations with God" (which is a good book, read it!). Usually I take the easy way out and say that God is such an alien concept to us that we cannot conceive what the purpose is. If you think that's an easy way to get out of explaining, look at the job others do who personify God and make him jealous, vengeful, or wrathful. Like you'd care about those things if you were omnipotent...

Look at it this way, alien concept or not, if God is the creator of all rules and all processes, it would know the outcome of everything.  It's like a programmer trying to make a game that he himself enjoys playing without using a random number generator (because he also would have created the sequence of random numbers) and since God is so powerful that it can think of everything all at one time, God would know the outcome of every interaction, ignoring it or not.  Even if God created ignorance and applied it to itself, it would still know the outcome because it's omnipotent.  You literally CANNOT ignore that you already know, especially if you wrote the rules.  Why/how could someone try to live through someone else when they already know the solution?  The solution would be the same with all variables involved being the same, every time.  You literally cannot say that an omnipotent being can be ignorant.  Since this God has all of space and time (because of omnipotence), all equations have already worked out.  All molecules would have already been sequence monitored and all situations will have occurred at least once.

Without omnipotence, God (as many see him) is fallible and therefore more realistically an alien race or non-existent.