What do you believe?

So is belief in Nazism as good as belief in Buddhism? One thing you gotta say about Hitler and those Nazis--they practiced their beliefs and were impeccable in the thoroughness and ruthlessness in which they carried them out.

 

Shifting the burden of proof.

 

I believe in anything, you'll believe in anything.

 

(S)he who asserts must prove. I take strong atheism as an assertion. If I said "There is a God", I'd have to prove that.

 

My only assertion is that your assertion is a crock of shit!

 

Are you saying it is because of their strong debating position?

We live in a phenomenal world, not a morally induced one.

Helpful is a matter of timing, not of principle.

The thing that allows mans inhumanity to man is his level of self identification.
The reason groups find contention in each other is that they tell themselves the other group is not me or mine. We have a native prohibition against self destruction but the other or outsider is expendable, undeserving of personal devotion.

Special endowment is ignorance's greatest defense against the truth. It doesn't matter if the special nature comes from religious beliefs or secular beliefs. All you need is a sense of "rightness" that you cannot share with someone else for whatever reason.

Nothing is so tastefully arranged as nature and the sun lights every alike except where we ourselves would cast a shadow.

Yes, belief in Buddhism is as bad as belief in Nazism if it cannot be shared or allow for everyone. We do not need the level of distinction, good or bad, to organize our lives. In fact such perpetual arbitration creates debilitating stresses.

 

I believe pro wrestling is real.

You can't change my mind, dont try.

 

No, because of the content of their principles.

And an important part of the phenomena is morality, which is a human induced but vital part of reality.

Which, of course, it can.

If you mean group exclusion, you're right. If you mean moral relativism, you're wrong. The Nazis were evil--really. To deny that is to condone their actions. If such ideas took hold, the world might even be in a worse mess than it is now.

 

I believe that whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you stranger.

 

It was not the content of their principles that allowed them to wreak havoc, gave them power.
Their principles were a good idea to them.
All exchanges of energy are equal aside from human perceptions which is why seemingly "evil" phenomena flourish aside seemingly "good" phenomena.
The difference in which perspective prevails in that instance, and only temporarily, is in intensity of effort toward a desired aim. In a world so colored in the disparity between good and evil neither one can endure for long as our own intensity waxes and wanes according to our relative vitality.

The only universal morality is the instinct for self preservation. We are inherently devoted to our own good. It is an authority problem, not a moral problem. What is in your best interest and as an extension of that, who do you include in that best interest. Morality is not phenomenal, it is abstraction.

Can what?

No, moral relativism is an effect of arbitrary judgement. The, existence of evil makes everyone suspect even to the extent of checking for defect while still in the womb. No matter how well meaning a crusade for rightness, on that basis, we have at our disposal suspicion at best to viciousness at worst.

To project that the world would be much worse if not for human intervention is a vain apprehension of what is so.

If such ideas took hold, maybe the world would be much better.

ONLY GOD IS GOOD.

 

Scientific proofs are enough right? To show that god epistemically unnecessary?

 

I'd say that "epistemically unnecessary" isn't good enough, especially since that usually means God doesn't work in someone's mathematical equation. For example, M theory or the Hawking-Mlodinow theory provide godless solutions, of sorts, to the creation and design problems, but (1) they are without empirical foundation, (2) are, from a practical standpoint, irrefutable, and (3) seem to violate the principle of Occam's razor, which admittedly is not a scientific law. So does the God theory. One could as easily say that the mathematical theories are "epistemically unnecessary" because the notion of an intelligent agent works as well or better. They do offer what I'd consider to be the advantage of being naturalistic, thus conceptually providing a model of reality that doesn't depend on possibly capricious supernatural agents. My own preference for the God theory has more to do with the way it works in my life and society than its role in a mathematical model. Ultimate reality is inaccessible to us. We have to place our bets on the best evidence available, in light of personal experience, intuition, judgment and risk-taking. This could be a win-win solution for both of us.

 

Do you doubt that you are real?

It is not that reality is inaccessible to us but that we create a facsimile based on the unreliable metric of good and evil. Reality is quite evident beyond the distorted perception of moral judgements.

Now I understand your use of the term, making a bet. You think it is a crap shoot and it is not. You only have one choice in life and it is yours. Life arises naturally and consistently from conception. If the effects of your conceptions are not to your liking, choose again.

 

No, I'm a confirmed Cartesian. That's why I edited the post that you quoted to read: Ultimate reality is inaccessible to us.

I disagree. The answers to the Big Questions, moral and otherwise, may simply be beyond our grasp, as smart but not omniscient apes. We seem to have far more intelligence than is necessary for our survival--a puzzle for evolutionists: enough to ask the Big Questions and ponder our existence on Hip Forums. But we don't have the smarts to answer them definitively. Martion Gardner identifies these as "mysterian mysteries"--not just unknown but unknowable to our limited minds. Support for this notion comes from two experts on brain functioning: Colin McGinn
and Steven Pinker. Ergo the "crap shoot".

I make educated bets, on the basis of the best available evidence. And I'm reasonably confident in my judgments--that the Nazis were evil, regardless of that they thought about it; that Sara Palin is a Dingbat; that Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich are assholes, etc. But I realize intelligent people can disagree and I could be wrong--maybe most of the time, maybe all of it. That's life.

If I can choose again, that would seem to mean I have more than one choice in life. I agree. But it's not exactly a cafeteria, picking what is to our "liking". Life is real, life is earnest, and we have to take it as it comes and adjust to it, not always as we like.

 

What is ultimate reality as compared to reality? What part of reality is more real than any other part?

That is not a problem considering the nature of reality is emergent. We live in an expanding universe. There are questions we haven't even thought to ask yet. You have yet to be what you will be in the next moment.

There is nothing you can know that cannot be known. Knowledge in real and practical terms is being shared. There are things that can only be understood through reflection on being and there are impressions that cannot be symbolized.

It is true that we cannot see infra red with the naked eye. Our sensory apparatus are tuned to a certain band-width of frequency. On the one hand it is claimed to be limited mind and on the other it is claimed that we have more computing power than is necessary for our survival.

I say it is neither. That what we have is ample to answer any relevant question related to our being.

Perceptions of good and evil are not the best available evidence, i.e. judgements.

If we observe of Hitler that he loved his mother, what do we say of him then?
If we observe Hitler playing with a dog, what do we say of him then? If we observe that Hitler is in pain, what do we say of him then?

We are all creatures of the same species. The same mammalian hormones pulse through all of us. We are all at times, like Hitler and Hitler at times like us. I am called many things but I am none in particular. To define persons in the way that you have reasonable confidence in, is to deny ever present facts of our own existence.

The effect of this type of thinking is simply to make the world, (reality), appear as you have described. The measure you give is the measure you receive. Measure being, evaluation. Appearances conform to your descriptions and you go to great efforts to maintain those appearances, insisting to those around you that this is the way it is although we may disagree and that is life.

This type of judgement compromises situational awareness.

Our minds are best suited to making distinctions in the form of telling one thing from another, not whether a thing is worthy to be real.

The power to choose is what is relevant because the world will reflect your choice whatever it is. In this respect you cannot make a wrong choice but you can be mistaken about the nature of the world and the aspects you are choosing from. It may not always be what you like, but it is always as you insist.

Adjustments to life are the result of ambivalence, lax creative concentration.
Accidents are the miscreant use of mind.

 

thedope: "Appearances conform to your descriptions and you go to great efforts to maintain those appearances, insisting to those around you that this is the way it is . . ."

I agree, and the McGurk effect is a kind of illustration of that point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0"]Try The McGurk Effect! - Horizon: Is Seeing Believing? - BBC Two - YouTube

 

The part immediately accessible to my senses is reality, but I infer a reality beyond that.

You say.

And that's it? Your assertion?

They're all we got, baby.

I'd say he's an evil mother and dog lover. Not to recognize that is to condone his evil. I don't judge him, in the sense of ultimate moral judgment. He was obviously messed up, may have had a rough childhood and genetic environment, etc. And as you say, we've all got our faults, although I haven't gassed 6 million people lately. We "hate the sin, love the sinner". But what he stood for and what he did were, on balance, evil. If we don't recognize that, it could happen again.

I find this too nebulous to reply to. Enjoy your trip.

 

Of course, my agreement might be the result of some variation of the McGurk effect! I have to go think . . .

 

Yeah, but what is the difference between evil and insane?

And if God hates the sin, but loves the sinner, why is the sinner--and not the sin--condemned?

 

Well epistemology is where the scope of this god ends.... This "no evidence one
way or another" god you're talking about is a celestial teapot, and the inability to
invalidate it is not at all the same thing as proving it true contrary to what "no
evidence one way or another" makes the "issue" out to be.