nihilism

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Immanuel Can
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Re: nihilism

Post by Immanuel Can »

promethean75 wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 10:55 pm Duddint matter if you got a hunerd gods or just one.
It's actually a statement on which Socrates rests his entire case: if "the gods" don't disagree, it's over.
That whole exchange between socrates and his homeboy was totally irrelevant.

Funny...a minute ago you were citing Plato. Now it doesn't matter, suddenly?
Is what is 'good' good because 'god' declares it is, or does 'god' declare what is 'good' good because it is independently of what 'god' declares?
Easy.

False dichotomy: God is good, and what God declares good is good. There is, absent multiple gods, no contrary opinion to that. What you're asking makes no more sense than asking, "Is this man a male, or is this male a man."

The answer is simply -- yes.
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Re: nihilism

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Alrighty then. So we've deduced that morality is a system that is neither objective or absolute - option (2) - but instead the multifarious product of a whimsical divine version of Kim Jong-un who might at any moment change 'his' mind and wipe everything out that he once called 'good'. Moreover, all we are given to understand of this duplicitous tyrant's values is what 'he' has given us in a very, very short collection of very, very general rules, which, history will show, can hardly be the subject of agreement even among the most devout Christians, much less the atheists, when confronted with all the extraordinarily complex social, economic and political problems we daily face.
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RCSaunders
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Re: nihilism

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Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:18 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 8:50 pm What do you mean, "in a secular world?"
I mean, in a world that thinks there is no God. There, there is no "good" or "bad," even instrumentally.
I'm not assuming anything
You don't realize you are; but you are. If you assumed nothing, you could not even ask a question. Your question assumes things.

I'm just inviting you to realize what your actual assumptions are, to become aware of them. Why should that cause you anxiety?
You know more about my mind and what I feel than I do. How can you not be embarrassed by that kind of presumption.
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:18 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 8:50 pm What makes something just?
You can't even ask the question unless you already are assuming the coherence of the question.
It's your word, not mine. I'm just asking you what it's supposed to mean. As far as I can see, from all you've said, it doesn't mean anything.
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:18 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 8:50 pm Since I wasn''t invoking anything, much less whatever you mean by, "a moral dimension," which has all the same meaninglessness as your justice, are you implying any event outside whatever that context means to you is just trivial stuff that happens.
In a no-God world, there is nothing, no matter how big or small, that is anything other than trivial. That you and I exist is trivial -- a mere hiccup of the indifferent cosmos produced us, and we go to nothing. You can't get more trivial than that.
So now you think this is a, "no-God," world in which every thing is trivial?
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:18 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 8:50 pm That dying in anquish at the hands of murderers or tyrants, burning to death, suffering from cancer, or starving to death are, "just trivial stuff that happens?"
That is what a person in a no-God world would have to accept. In fact, all the empires that ever existed were, on a cosmic scale, so trivial as to be beneath any mention. And all the suffering and sorrows of this world are mere accidents and contingencies of a universe that only happened by accident to make us exist at all.

How can terms like "good" and "bad" apply to any phenomena that are mere accidents? There isn't even somebody who's not himself a complete accident, who can pass such a judgment.

As a human being, if you throw out God, that doesn't mean you get to hold onto concepts like "meaning," "intelligibility," "morality," "justice" and so on, as if you hadn't. It means you've doomed the concepts as well; because deep in your heart, you have to know there's nothing behind them but a giant cosmic accident. And you cannot help but realize that you can owe no reverence, no respect, no honour, no persistence to concepts you know are entirely unrelated to reality.
Good grief! Just asking, but do you really believe the development of life-saving drugs, heavier-than-air human flight, radio, television, cell phones, automobiles, and all wars are mere accidents?

Are all my questions just accidents?

I'm not making a point here, but you might ask someone else if they consider their own life and their enjoyment of it a triviality. It is really not up to you to decide for others what matters or is important, is it?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: nihilism

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RCSaunders wrote: Sun Mar 20, 2022 2:43 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:18 pm
What do you mean, "in a secular world?"
I mean, in a world that thinks there is no God. There, there is no "good" or "bad," even instrumentally.
Just asking, but do you really believe the development of life-saving drugs, heavier-than-air human flight, radio, television, cell phones, automobiles, and all wars are mere accidents?
I do not.

But if you're an Atheist, you do. Because then, everything is a mere byproduct of a giant cosmic accident called the Big Bang, and of whatever came as happenstance before that. So every single thing on earth is likewise a byproduct of that accident.
Are all my questions just accidents?
Well, do you believe in the Big Bang being an accident, or not? Or do you suppose it could have been produce by the intention of an Intelligent Being? No, I know you do not suppose that, so it must be the first...

If you do, then for everything, including the most intimate cogitations of your own mind, the answer is ultimately, "Yes: you are an accident. Your thoughts are accidents. And your demise will be yet another outcome of the original cosmic accident. Nothing more."
I'm not making a point here, but you might ask someone else if they consider their own life and their enjoyment of it a triviality.
What an accident "considers" would be unimportant. But of course, I think the Atheists are completely wrong, so I do not think of these things as trivialities. Still, as I said earlier, I can read their claims and understand the implications with no trouble.

I wonder how many of the Atheists themselves ever bother to do the same. Nietzsche seemed to get it, at least a bit.
It is really not up to you to decide for others what matters or is important, is it?
On the contrary, I don't decide it: they do. :shock:

They pronounce the sentence of "accident" on the universe, and by logical consequence, upon all its works and all the thoughts of the beings in it, whose origin -- they have to believe -- was improbable and unintentional, and whose end will be oblivion.

And then, nothing ultimately matters. Everything that happens is just contingent and accidental. It happened that way because it happened that way. That's all they can honestly say.
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Re: nihilism

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Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am
RCSaunders wrote: Sun Mar 20, 2022 2:43 pm What do you mean, "in a secular world?"


I mean, in a world that thinks there is no God. There, there is no "good" or "bad," even instrumentally.
RCSaunders wrote: Sun Mar 20, 2022 2:43 pm Just asking, but do you really believe the development of life-saving drugs, heavier-than-air human flight, radio, television, cell phones, automobiles, and all wars are mere accidents?
I do not.

But if you're an Atheist, you do. Because then, everything is a mere byproduct of a giant cosmic accident called the Big Bang, and of whatever came as happenstance before that. So every single thing on earth is likewise a byproduct of that accident.
Are all my questions just accidents?
I wouldn't know what an atheist believes, because I am not one. I know only that all the things I described require a conscious mind to discover or design, and that conscious minds only exist in human being. Everything else in the universe, except for those things which have been created by human beings, exists and has the nature it has and is not contingent on anything. There are no, "accidents," (because there are no preconceived notions of what is, "supposed," to be, there is only the fact the universe exists and has the nature it has all everything in it can be explained and understood in terms of that nature. Nothing else makes it do any or behave in any particular way, it behaves as it does because it is what is.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am Well, do you believe in the Big Bang being an accident, or not? Or do you suppose it could have been produce by the intention of an Intelligent Being? No, I know you do not suppose that, so it must be the first...
What I believe or don't believe is irrelevant. I do not believe in the, "Big Band," theory of cosmology or any other guesses so-called sciences make about the origins of anything. I do not believe the universe had a beginning and life probably didn't either, but I have no specific belief about them, except that, however much it might have changed, there was never not a universe.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am If you do, then for everything, including the most intimate cogitations of your own mind, the answer is ultimately, "Yes: you are an accident. Your thoughts are accidents. And your demise will be yet another outcome of the original cosmic accident. Nothing more."
There are no accidents in the physical world. Every aspect of the physical worlds behavior is determined by the nature of the physical entities that are that physical existence. Nothing happens by caprice or serendipity. The whole of science is dedicated to discovering the nature of that physical existence just because there are no accident.

"Accidents," only pertain to human activiti (and by analogy sometimes to animal activity), and mean something a human being does that was not intended or failed to achieve what was intended. There can be no accidents where there are no intentions. Sans human beings, there are no accidents in the universe.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am
RCSaunders wrote: Sun Mar 20, 2022 2:43 pm I'm not making a point here, but you might ask someone else if they consider their own life and their enjoyment of it a triviality.
What an accident "considers" would be unimportant. But of course, I think the Atheists ...
What is this hang-up you have with what you call, "atheists?" There is a handful people who like to address particular ideologies and make it their mission in life to correct what they think is wrong with them, much like you, but most people, especially those who have not swallowed some version of mysticism or religion are not interested at all in what other's believe. If you want to call everyone who doesn't happen to believe the same fairy tales you do, an atheist, you certainly can but it is very ignorant.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am ... are completely wrong, so I do not think of these things as trivialities. Still, as I said earlier, I can read their claims and understand the implications with no trouble.
What claims? As I wrote on another thread, "Most people who do not believe what you believe would never think for a moment about what you believe one way or the other if you didn't bring it up, just as they never think about spiritualism, ghosts, demons, magic, or fairies (except as fictions and fantasy). They don't waste their time on such obvious nonsense. They couldn't care less what you choose to believe and certainly aren't worried about it.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am I wonder how many of the Atheists themselves ever bother to do the same. Nietzsche seemed to get it, at least a bit.
Like the existentialists who smuggled in the false premise, "if there is no God, there is no meaning (or purpose, value, etc.)" in rightly rebelling against that false premise (which is what they should have rejected), assumed everything is absurd, the very opposite reaction of the physicalists who made the same mistaken acceptance of the false premise, and simply rejected anything that actually required rational values and a human mind. Dostoevsky was wrong, it's not, "there is no God, everything is permitted," it's, "there is no God, nothing is permitted," because there is no forgiveness in reality and no one can violate the requirements of reality and their own nature and get away with.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am They pronounce the sentence of "accident" on the universe, and by logical consequence, upon all its works and all the thoughts of the beings in it, whose origin -- they have to believe -- was improbable and unintentional, and whose end will be oblivion.
I suppose if one's view of the nature of reality is totally wrong that must be the conclusion. It's the inevitable result of beginning with a false and baseless premise.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am And then, nothing ultimately matters. Everything that happens is just contingent and accidental. It happened that way because it happened that way. That's all they can honestly say.
Well that's confused. If something is, "contingent," (i.e. dependent on something else, like the universe you think is contingent on God's creation and control, it can also be accidental, can it? There are no accidents in the universe because it has a specific nature, not imposed on it by anything separate form it, but simply because it is what it is. It is neither contingent or accidental. It's a bit sad that the false premise you hold has completely distorted your ability to understand reality.

Please don't assume this excursion of yours has evaded the question of what you mean by justice. I don't think you intend to answer it but I'll ask another which can just as well answer it:

Does justice serve any purpose? If so, what is the objective, purpose, end, goal (or whatever you want to call it) that justice pertains to. In other words, what's at stake? If there were no justice, what difference would it make?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: nihilism

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RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am I do not believe the universe had a beginning...
Interesting.

That means you don't know the science on that...at all. You don't know about the red shift effect, or about entropy, for example.
The whole of science is dedicated to discovering the nature of that physical existence just because there are no accident.
If the beginning of the universe was not an accident, then it had to be intentional...but by whom, or what?
"Accidents," only pertain to human activiti
No, actually.

An "accident" just means "a happening nobody deliberated or created on purpose." In that sense, all empirical happenings that are not caused by an intelligent agent are "accidents."
If you want to call everyone who doesn't happen to believe the same fairy tales you do, an atheist, you certainly can

I don't. It's what they call themselves.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am ... are completely wrong, so I do not think of these things as trivialities. Still, as I said earlier, I can read their claims and understand the implications with no trouble.
What claims?
I can see that you don't understand that any propositions, and even questions, are premised on particular suppositions; and even if the speaker chooses not to articulate them they remain logically detectable, and thus are subjects of reasonable interrogation.
As I wrote on another thread, "Most people who do not believe what you believe would never think for a moment about what you believe one way or the other if you didn't bring it up, just as they never think about spiritualism, ghosts, demons, magic, or fairies (except as fictions and fantasy). They don't waste their time on such obvious nonsense. They couldn't care less what you choose to believe and certainly aren't worried about it.
We could easily pull apart that statement and expose it's underlying assumptions. One would be majoritarianism: you argue as if "most people" is a meaningful metric of truth. Another is that my beliefs are "nonsense," rather than, say, somebody making a different kind of sense than you are accustomed to, and that thinking of such things would represent "a waste of time," and that what is "obvious" to you must be true, and that if people "couldn't care less" and "aren't worried "about something, it can't be relevant to them.

See? It's easy to unpack these things, if you simply read what the other wrote and consider what would be necessary for them to be supposing in order to make the claim they do. And then, these implicit claims, these necessary premises, can be discussed.

And it's useful. For example, majoritarianism is no way to decide truth: so even if it were true (and statistically, it's not), it would not help your case. The same could be shown for the rest.

Now you know how it's done. See? No magic.
...the false premise, "if there is no God, there is no meaning (or purpose, value, etc.)"
That's actually a true premise, if you examine it fairly.

You're mistaking the idea that people can make up what they want to think are real purposes, that that can be substituted for an objective purpose. But it cannot. What people can make up does not make anything true. The imaginary figments of "the human mind" as you put it, are no substitute for facts.
...no one can violate the requirements of reality and their own nature and get away with.

It depends what you mean. People can certainly violate moral requirements and escape the temporal consequences.

Whether they can escape Judgment is quite a different question.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am They pronounce the sentence of "accident" on the universe, and by logical consequence, upon all its works and all the thoughts of the beings in it, whose origin -- they have to believe -- was improbable and unintentional, and whose end will be oblivion.
I suppose if one's view of the nature of reality is totally wrong that must be the conclusion. It's the inevitable result of beginning with a false and baseless premise.
Well, what's your premise? It's that the universe never had an origin at all...which is unscientific. So that's a problem.
Please don't assume this excursion of yours has evaded the question of what you mean by justice.

I'm happy to come back to it.

Have you made up your mind what you're asking me for? I'd love to supply it to you, but I don't know what you understand by your use of the word "justice," which seems to be different from mine.
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Re: nihilism

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"That means you don't know the science on that...at all. You don't know about the red shift effect, or about entropy, for example."

Granted, available evidence suggests to cosmologists that the universe 'had a beginning'. However , here the burden of proof is not that heavy for atheists. Let me explain.

It is much more parsimonious (I'm a parsimonious dude) to bet that there is a much higher order of complex physics that we aren't aware of, that would explain the big bang event as a local event in a larger system that by necessity exists, was never created and will never be destroyed.... then it is to bet there is a 'god' existing beyond space and time that created everything that exists.

Why?

Theoretical efficiency. You don't posit a theory to explain a phenomena that ends up becoming more complicated than the phenomena you hope to explain with it.

Incomplete theories such as the oscillating model and string theory are not so crazy that it would be more logical to imagine a self caused being that somehow and somewhere existed before the known universe, which 'he' then created (out of nothing).

The 'physics of god' are shirley more outlandish and bizarre than any measure of QM could ever be. So, if indeed the the theory that the big bang wasn't the beginning of everything, and there ended up being a larger system in which big bangs happened, it would likely involve a great bit if that outlandishness and bizarre character... even still being less of a theoretical venture and stretch than a theory of 'god'.

The absence of an alternative cosmology to explain how the big bang wasn't really THE beginning - a grand unified theory let's say - isn't enough to cause one to stop expecting there to be one and start claiming there is a 'god'.

If you do, you start making shit up based on ancient ontogical, cosmological and teleological arguments for 'god' that have all been thoroughly criticized. Whereas, there is no criticism for the conjecture that a system could exist in which a big bang happened, one that wasn't created by a 'god', one that will never not exist.

So admitting of no grand unified theory (yet) doesn't give you clearance to substitute a 'god' theory for it. I mean you can, but it'll end up being ridiculous anthropomorphic nonsense that can only have origins in such stories as what end up being the contents of a Bible or a Koran.

That stuff is literally like an anachronistic marvel universe of supernatural characters, heros and villains. Stop thinking for a second and take a step back away from your compooter. Breath. Think instead of what I just said. In fact, read it again.

...

But a theist can't really do what he would need to do to be able to switch perspectives and observe the theists as atheists do; how it's so certain this is all childish nonsense that it's almost instinct to be baffled by people who actually believe it is true.

Say you are an atheist and two philosophers, each representative of a different religion, insist that the other is wrong and that their religion is the 'right' one, the 'true' one. But there would be no real substantial argument or logic original and unique to one, that couldn't also be available to, and used by, the other. The epistemological arguments are shared by them all... fundamentally deism and monotheism stand on the same platonic and aristotelean metaphysics that dominates everywhere from Europe to the middle east, and always has.

Instead, quibbling over history, storylines and very trivial details, is what becomes of the disagreements between theists.

No god didn't have a son. Oh yes he did. Jesus. No, god wouldn't do that. That guy was just a prophet. Okay well Gabriel visited Muhammad in the desert. No he didn't. You need to pay attention to Moses. Nuh-uh he wasn't terribly important. Important, but not real important, like Muhammad. Well God has three parts. Father son and holy ghost. Nope, there's only one god and he's one way, not three.

This is what the atheist sees, and the theist can't really see it like this... how absurdly stupid the context of contention and argument is here.

It's like the atheist knows that god wouldn't do it like that if he actually existed and did anything at all. It's all so silly... the pathos of the theist, the Christian and/or Muslim apologist, like a child reciting the contents of one of his Harry Potter books to the class.

Nietzsche even asked it almost two hunerd years ago; can it really be? That people actually still believe in that stuff?
Last edited by promethean75 on Tue Mar 22, 2022 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: nihilism

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... and you can't reverse engineer an argument for the existence of a 'god' because your self-awareness is weird on you and you think you can't explain it in pure reductionist or functionalist terms. You can't go from there to there, I mean. You can, but you don't have too... you just want to, for ulterior reasons. Dante is always more exciting than Democritus. That doesn't make him right tho.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: nihilism

Post by Immanuel Can »

promethean75 wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:53 am "That means you don't know the science on that...at all. You don't know about the red shift effect, or about entropy, for example."

Granted, available evidence suggests to cosmologists that the universe 'had a beginning'. However , here the burden of proof is not that heavy for atheists.
The Atheist has one burden only, just as he has one statement only to offer, and that burden is to establish that he has some way of knowing there is no God.
Theoretical efficiency. You don't posit a theory to explain a phenomena that ends up becoming more complicated than the phenomena you hope to explain with it.
You're sort of parroting Occam there, but you've got him wrong. The claim, in the form you offer it, was one Occam was too aware to make, and which is manifestly false.

To illustrate, if I go to an art gallery, and see a painting signed "Picasso," then it is the best explanation that it was painted by a man named "Picasso." But paintings are comparatively simple objects, being made only of canvas and oil paint in basic configurations. However, a human being named Pablo Picasso is an immensely complex entity.

According to your theory, then, I should not suppose Picasso ever painted. In fact, I ought to suppose, for "theoretical efficiency," that no painting on earth was ever painted by a human being, because all human beings are more complex than paintings.

So that seems a poor theory.
The absence of an alternative cosmology to explain how the big bang wasn't really THE beginning - a grand unified theory let's say - isn't enough to cause one to stop expecting there to be one and start claiming there is a 'god'.

That's not an argument I made, at all. And I don't think it's one I would make. There are much better ones that prove beyond any reasonable doubt that our universe had a beginning -- as Alexander Vilenkin, the great cosmologist put it, "With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning."
...you start making shit up based on ancient ontogical, cosmological and teleological arguments
Well, I'm not making anything up. You need to read the book. These arguments are not "ancient," but new, well-documented, scholarly and significant, by major players in the field. Check it out for yourself, and satisfy your own skepticism.

But you won't know if you don't read. So it's odd that you're making such definite claims about something you admit you know absolutely nothing about, having never read the book.

It's interesting to me how often Atheists do that -- make absolute declarations about things that they don't know anything about.
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Re: nihilism

Post by promethean75 »

"that burden is to establish that he has some way of knowing there is no God."

We can't even be sure about which one we're saying we don't know exists. We have to let you theists argue that one out and get back to us.

"So that seems a poor theory."

Really your painter analogy was a bad representation of my position. Everything we know about paintings points toward the necessity to posit painters as their creators, while everything we know about the universe doesn't point toward a necessity to posit a 'god' as it's creator. It was a nice try tho.

"It's interesting to me how often Atheists do that -- make absolute declarations about things that they don't know anything about."

But bruh, there hasn't been a new argument for the existence of 'god' in a thousand years. I'ont know what in the heck you're readin... but I ain't readin it. You're just being taken in by the sophistry, the language games, and you're missing the subtle formal and informal fallacies that are everywhere throughout those kinds of arguments.

Member what I said earlier; if you want 'god' to exist, you're gonna makes the things you read, work.
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Re: nihilism

Post by RCSaunders »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am I do not believe the universe had a beginning...
Interesting.

That means you don't know the science on that...at all.
There is no science on that. Just anything is called science today, but cosmology is nothing more than conjecture based on very shaky hypotheses, which keep changing as so-called scientist change their minds trying to fix the constant contradictions new evidence introduces. If you want to simply accept such conjecture, fine, but it's not science. None of the so-called, "origins," hypotheses--evolution, cosmology, even most of geology, are sciences.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm You don't know about the red shift effect, or about entropy, for example.
But you know all about what I know. What hubris. It is because I do know all the arguments in every cosmological hypothesis that I understand they are only conjecture, not evidence based (the past cannot be examined), and actually doesn't matter. Only what is, presently, actually matters, because only what is can actually be studied and dealt with. There is no reason to assume anything had some ultimate beginning, only a history. The very ideas of, "beginnings," is just religious rot--hardly science.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm If the beginning of the universe was not an accident, then it had to be intentional...but by whom, or what?
There was no beginning.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am "Accidents," only pertain to human activiti
No, actually.

An "accident" just means "a happening nobody deliberated or created on purpose." In that sense, all empirical happenings that are not caused by an intelligent agent are "accidents."
You just made that up. Nothing in the universe is an accident. Everything happens exactly as it must and why it must is what all the principles of science describe. Nothing happens in the physical universe in violation of those scientific principles--there are no, "miracles," no, "magic," no, inexpliscable, "accidents," that happen without explanation. The fact you or I may not know what the explanation of any event is only means we need to learn some more science. The only phenomena in the entire universe that cannot be explained (or predicted) are those produced by living organisms, especially human beings.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am If you want to call everyone who doesn't happen to believe the same fairy tales you do, an atheist, you certainly can

I don't. It's what they call themselves.
You must not get out much or are getting all your views from religious publications or something. I know now, and have known in the past, literally hundreds of people who have not a religious bone in their bodies who would never think of calling themselves atheists. I know there are a few crackpots who embrace their concern with religion as an ideology and call themselves atheists and write books etc. so you hear about them. The vast majority of individuals who just have no interest in any religious superstition don't advertise it, because it just isn't that important to them, like not taking drugs, not being a pedophile, not being an anti-semite, or not being religious. Its just what normal decent people are. It's the drug addicts, pedophiles, racists, and religious that are the notably abnormal human beings--and unfortunately the majority of human beings as well.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am ...the false premise, "if there is no God, there is no meaning (or purpose, value, etc.)"
That's actually a true premise, if you examine it fairly.

You're mistaking the idea that people can make up what they want to think are real purposes, that that can be substituted for an objective purpose. But it cannot.
You have that backward. You are the one that believes in some mystical non-objective purposes. You believe that there can be values that have no purpose whatsoever, just dictated or mandated by some supernatural being.

There are no purposes unless there is a human being who wants something. Before anything can have a purpose, there must first be some end or goal, some objective relative to which something is needed or required to achieve or realize that objective. Without an objective, nothing has a purpose, nothing matters, and there are no values or meaning.

Your idea of purpose is like the evil concept of, "duty," some kind of responsibility foisted on someone they neither deserve or chose, which is used too emotionally browbeat individuals in doing what there is otherwise no reason (or purpose) for them to do and does them no good whatsoever. It's like the idea of children born in debt incurred by someone else.

Purpose cannot be something imposed on someone. There is no purpose where there is no individual human being with some chosen objective or end. Sans individual desires, there are no purposes. Only those who believe in some kind of, "mystic," purposes believe there can be purposes which actually serve no purpose whatsoever, no objective, no end, and achieve nothing whatsoever of any value--like those imposed by some God.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pmWhat people can make up does not make anything true. The imaginary figments of "the human mind" as you put it, are no substitute for facts.
But that's exactly what every religion is, just something made up in someone's imagination, and everyone who swallows one of them agrees they are all nonsense--except their own.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am ...no one can violate the requirements of reality and their own nature and get away with it.

It depends what you mean. People can certainly violate moral requirements and escape the temporal consequences.
Required by what for what? There cannot just be wild disconnected, "moral requirements," running around. Nothing can just be required, morally or otherwise, unless it has some purpose, something to be achieved or realized. It's the one thing you never consider or address. It's why you can never answer my question about justice. To you, something is just just, because it is, for no purpose or reason whatsoever.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm Whether they can escape Judgment is quite a different question.
No one escapes the consequences of their choices and actions in this world (and there are no other consequences), and you cannot escape them either. Just because you like to see people you have judged are bad suffer and they don't appear to suffer enough to satisfy your lust for others' tormented, doesn't mean they escaped anything. Both you and they, for example, will suffer the waste of the only life you'll ever have pursuing what can never satisfy the requirements of a human life for success and happiness in the only world there is. And though you'll never know it, that loss is permanent.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 am Have you made up your mind what you're asking me for? I'd love to supply it to you, but I don't know what you understand by your use of the word "justice," which seems to be different from mine.
Pehaps you missed it in my last post. I'll quote it here.
Justice has no meaning for me, except as a word others use. It's because I can so no real meaning in the word as you and others use it I'm asking the question. It's supposed to be, I gather from how its used, some important concept determining some kind of value, but what, is referred to in vague unspecified terms like, "right," (but never right for what), "good," (but never good for what). Here's the question:
Does justice serve any purpose? If so, what is the objective, purpose, end, goal (or whatever you want to call it) that justice pertains to. In other words, what's at stake? If there were no justice, what difference would it make?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: nihilism

Post by Immanuel Can »

RCSaunders wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 12:55 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am I do not believe the universe had a beginning...
Interesting.

That means you don't know the science on that...at all.
There is no science on that.
QED.

There is.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm You don't know about the red shift effect, or about entropy, for example.
But you know all about what I know.[/quote][
Not the point. Red herring.

The topic here is whether or not you know these scientific facts, not what I do or do not know.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm If the beginning of the universe was not an accident, then it had to be intentional...but by whom, or what?
There was no beginning.
That's scientifically false.

But of course, you have the right to cling to things that are scientifically falsified if you wish to.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am "Accidents," only pertain to human activiti
No, actually.

An "accident" just means "a happening nobody deliberated or created on purpose." In that sense, all empirical happenings that are not caused by an intelligent agent are "accidents."
You just made that up.
The dictionary did. Check it out.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am If you want to call everyone who doesn't happen to believe the same fairy tales you do, an atheist, you certainly can

I don't. It's what they call themselves.
You must not get out much

No, you'll even find Atheists doing it here, on the PN forum, if you go and look.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am ...the false premise, "if there is no God, there is no meaning (or purpose, value, etc.)"
That's actually a true premise, if you examine it fairly.

You're mistaking the idea that people can make up what they want to think are real purposes, that that can be substituted for an objective purpose. But it cannot.
You have that backward. You are the one that believes in some mystical non-objective purposes. You believe that there can be values that have no purpose whatsoever, just dictated or mandated by some supernatural being.
No, I've got it the right way. It's not "mystical," and it is, by definition, "objective." There is nothing "objective" about the "purposes" a man subjectively makes up.
There are no purposes unless there is a human being who wants something.
Those are purely subjective -- a human being makes them up as he/she sees fit, but they have no objective reality beyond that of a personal delusion.
Before anything can have a purpose, there must first be some end or goal, some objective relative to which something is needed or required to achieve or realize that objective.

Ah, I see...you've mixed up two uses of the word "objective" there.

Back to the dictionary we go. "Objective" can mean: a) real, or b) a goal. It partially depends on whether it's being used as an adjective or as a noun. (There are other uses of the word too, but we they aren't relevant here, of course.) You are assuming that something becomes "objective" if it involves "a goal"; but this is not the correct use of the word "objective" in this context -- in our context, it's the opposite of "subjective," and means "real" or "grounded in the ontological truths of how things are, regardless of subjective opinions."

To say, "I have an objective" tells you nothing about the value or possiblity of that "objective." You could have the "objective" to flap your arms and fly...but it would not make that "objective" objectively possible...meaning, reality would not allow or make your goal possible, because people objectively cannot flap their arms and fly.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pmWhat people can make up does not make anything true. The imaginary figments of "the human mind" as you put it, are no substitute for facts.
But that's exactly what every religion is,
Red herring, and et tu quoque fallacies, in one.

Even were every religion a delusion, that would not make human fictions "not-a-delusion." In fact, it would just furnish a further proof of the claim I made.

So your protest here does not help your case.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:17 am ...no one can violate the requirements of reality and their own nature and get away with it.

It depends what you mean. People can certainly violate moral requirements and escape the temporal consequences.
Required by what for what?
]
Required by objective morality.

For example, if we can accept that pedophelia is wrong (and I hope we both can), then perverts violate that wrongness all the time, and escape without comparable consequences...or so it seems evident to us. There are predators with hundreds of victims, who, even if we locked them up for the remainder of their natural lives, would not have "repayed" in any sense for the things they've done to helpless children.
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm Whether they can escape Judgment is quite a different question.
No one escapes the consequences of their choices and actions in this world (and there are no other consequences), and you cannot escape them either.
Even in the case above, you think?

I'm prepared to hear your argument, if you think that all pedophiles get full payment back for the damage they do, and get it in this life. But I can't quite imagine what that argument would be.
Justice has no meaning for me, except as a word others use.
Then I guess you can't expect any. And yet you seem to have something like it bedded in the words you use, like "consequences," "suffer," "bad," "lust," and so on. You seem pretty free with accessing moral language to try to describe a problem you also claim doesn't even "have meaning."
Does justice serve any purpose? If so, what is the objective, purpose, end, goal (or whatever you want to call it) that justice pertains to.
This gets back to your confusion of the two meanings of "objective." Human justice serves human "purposes, ends, goals or whatever," perhaps. When a policeman arrests a criminal, it "serves the purpose of" the State in limiting wrongdoing. But that is not what we mean when we say that justice is "objective."

We're not saying, "Does justice have an objective (noun use: i.e. does it have a human purpose)." We're saying that justice is an objective fact (adjectival use: it is something real.)
In other words, what's at stake? If there were no justice, what difference would it make?
Well, public order, for one thing. But you should also ask the victims why they value having the perps locked up...they might have a further thought on that, I suspect.

But my use of "justice" is ontological, not merely sociological. I don't think justice really serves human purposes -- at least, not more than in imperfect ways -- because the real purpose of ultimate justice, eternal justice, is to serve the purpose of righteousness...the righteousness of God, not merely of fallible man.
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Re: nihilism

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 3:50 pm I don't think justice really serves human purposes ...
Then it serves no purpose at all. There are no other purposes. Teleology begins and ends with human consciousness. Sans human beings, there are no purposes.

It doesn't matter what you believe and I have no interest in changing it. It does me no harm if you choose to throw your life away chasing fictions. You probably cannot see it, but it is those fictions you embrace you use to justify your own irrational lust to see others suffer to fulfill your absurd view of justice. The desire to see others tortured and tormented is a kind of disease, a pathological hatred, put over as some kind mystic justice that promotes an irrational vindictiveness. Like all other pathologies, it makes one unable to see the damage it does to their own mind, reducing one's life to a pursuit of revenge and persecution of others, which is often mistaken for a kind of perverted love or, "righteousness," or, "morality."

This pathology usually ends as a kind of socio-pathology--a totally irrational hatred of anyone who even seems to genuinely love and enjoy their life and are totally satisfied with it, especially if they are not living the way the religiously consumed believe they ought to. They cannot bear the thought that anyone can actually be enjoying their life in way they do not approve of, and so hate such individuals, desiring to see them suffer in the most horrible ways they can think of. Your view of justice is a terrible self-destructive disease, a form of irrational hate which will eventually totally consume you.

It is probably too late, but I would be delighted, for your sake, if you could escape the inevitable consequence, but it think you will refuse to, and suffer the inevitable. If it were in my power, I'd prevent it, because unlike you, I despise the very idea of anyone suffering for any reason. It is inevitable in all cases where individuals attempt to live in defiance of reality, but it is never good, and always only a negative which can be endured when necessary to achieve higher values, but otherwise has no positive purpose at all.
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Re: nihilism

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RCSaunders wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 6:14 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 3:50 pm I don't think justice really serves human purposes ...
Then it serves no purpose at all. There are no other purposes.
That's the point upon which we disagree. You've already arbitrarily ruled that there is no God, so no other being can even imagine they have purposes.

But again, you're makind a grammatical mistake that's confusing your thinking. "Purpose" as a verb, means "to intend." And, of course, human beings can "intend" all kinds of things...many of them impossible. But for something to "have a purpose intrinsic to it" is quite different. There, it does not refer to some human making up a "purpose," but to a transcendent "purpose."

Somebody who asks, "Why do I exist," is not asking, "Can I make up a purpose?" He knows that answer, and it's "Sure, anybody can."

What he wants to know is if he has any transcendent purpose. He wants to know if his existence was "purposed" by a higher power, or whether he's here as a kind of mere cosmic hiccup.
Teleology begins and ends with human consciousness. Sans human beings, there are no purposes.
Then there is no teleology. For human beings are contingent: they are born, they die, and for no purpose.
The desire to see others tortured and tormented...
I'm sorry you struggle with that. I certainly don't.
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Re: nihilism

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Good news for nihilists? Life is meaningless after all, say philosophers
Tom Howell
at the CBC website
Llanera co-authored the 70-page study, entitled A Defence of Nihilism, with the British philosopher James Tartaglia, a professor at Keele University. His earlier books include Philosophy in a Meaningless Life.

"I'm passionate about nihilism," said Tartaglia. "It's so badly misunderstood."
Me too. Only, given my own frame of mind, nihilism is no less rooted subjectively/existentially in dasein. And not only are very different people living very different lives likely to understand it in very different ways, there is no way in a No God world for those like philosophers either to encompass it in the most rational manner or to conclude whether all rational men and men ought or ought not to be a nihilist.

Nihilism and dasein.
Nihilist viewpoints begin with a refusal to believe that human life draws meaning from a greater context, such as the will or purpose of a divine being, or another external force such as fate or moral goodness, or any measure of the worth and quality of human life. In some interpretations, a purely nihilistic outlook disdains any attempt to attribute value or meaning to anything at all.
On the other hand, how far does that refusal go? Me, I'm considerably less adamant about it myself. I don't argue that human life has no greater or essential meaning...period, end of story. After all, how exactly would I go about demonstrating that? Instead, I merely suggest that my life up to now has led me to believe that this is the case. Then like all the rest of you I'm confronted with "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule". And there is absolutely no getting around the fact that there is no realistic human interaction at all without tons and tons of existential meaning.

After all, that's what begets all the conflict.
Such views traditionally receive bad press and blunt condemnation from thought leaders across the world. During the pandemic, critics on the political left and right have targeted "nihilism" as a root cause for what they perceive as widespread cultural and moral malaise.
Here of course -- existentially -- "nihilism" means all those who don't think like we do. Joe Biden, the nihilist to the fulminating fanatics in the Trump camp, Trump the nihilist to the fulminating fanatics in the Biden camp.

In other words, derived from dasein, whatever that means to you.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195600
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