I prefer to define religion as organized around belief in/worship of gods, so Zen becomes a "philosophy" in my semantics. Much simpler that way.
As I've said, you insist on redefining the playing field until your pre-existing notions fit, rather than building notions that fit within what reality ACTUALLY is.
please stop trying to redife the bulk of judaism in to being the niche sect that your cousins fall in to.
The "bulk" of what is commonly called Judaism is simply an ethnic designation. Yourself being a prime example. You do not believe in the existence of Yahweh, the Jewish god.
Did you mean that Judaism is great because, in Judaism it doesn't matter what God wants anymore because you can just stop believing in God altogether? Okay, whatever.
The concept that the power of the torah is in the hands of man has nothing secular about it.
In the kind of Judaism you are talking about, there is absolutely nothing religious about it either. Jews like you treat the Torah the same way they treat the Code of Hammurabi, an ancient myth that is somewhat prescient to modern life but mostly not.
Qingu, you have shown time and time again that you have no idea what kind of Jew I am.
The fact that I don't believe in God doesn't prevent me from being religious, or even observant.
For all of your attempts to study religions in order to tear them down, you're still stuck in a very singular view of religions being about Gods. They don't have to be.
Wait...what? If you do not believe in the absolute most important tenant of a religion, how do you still consider yourself part of that religion. And perhaps equally important, why would you want to?
I mean, I can understand someone not agreeing 100% with absolutely everything a particular religion stands for, but belief in a god is pretty much by definition required. It'd be like me arbitrarily deciding to consider myself vegan because I like what they stand for...well, except for that whole thing about not eating animal products. I'm still going to eat meat by the plate-full.
WHO is defining God as the most important tenant of all religion?
Chrisitianity is absolutely about it's god. Judaism is not.
Judaism is about a book of rules. Those rules were said, originally, to come from god, but their origin isn't all that important, ion the end.
You could say "if god didn't write them, then why follow them?" But judaism ALREADY doesn't have a hell, so the question becomes "even if god DID write them, but he isn't going to damn you for eternity, why follow them?"
You see, viewing judaism for what it is, rather than through the filter of christianity, produces a religion with VERY different motivation.
Isn't the first of the Ten Commandments (and hence a part of the Law) something along the lines of "I am your God; worship no other god except Me"?
EDIT - I'm not trying to be a dick; I just want to know how you can completely divorce the concept of Yahweh from the Law.
.... religion can only work on an intellectual level when its defined by yourself. Its a belief structure that really only has to convince yourself.
....what? Is this one of those, "If I brush my teeth and eat my broccoli, I can go to Heaven! Jesus who?" kinds of statements?
Its more of "One word is not enough to generalize on my complete moral and spiritual views so trying to lump everyone into one philosophy makes understanding religion harder, not easier."
True, but look how this started. Evander said "I still think Judaism has the best answer to all of that. It [Judaism] says that what God wants doesn't matter anymore, that the power of decision is now in the hands of man."
What he probably should have said was "I still think certain forms of Judaism have the best answers to all of that."
Again, I point to Bava Metzia 59b
under stand that the secular jews are the ones who generally DON'T read the Talmud. When I'm throwing out Talmudic refferences, it stands to reason that all but the "lost tribes" are in agreement.
Also, "all Jews will never agree on ANYTHING", olol.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
please stop trying to redife the bulk of judaism in to being the niche sect that your cousins fall in to.
The "bulk" of what is commonly called Judaism is simply an ethnic designation. Yourself being a prime example. You do not believe in the existence of Yahweh, the Jewish god.
Did you mean that Judaism is great because, in Judaism it doesn't matter what God wants anymore because you can just stop believing in God altogether? Okay, whatever.
The concept that the power of the torah is in the hands of man has nothing secular about it.
In the kind of Judaism you are talking about, there is absolutely nothing religious about it either. Jews like you treat the Torah the same way they treat the Code of Hammurabi, an ancient myth that is somewhat prescient to modern life but mostly not.
Qingu, you have shown time and time again that you have no idea what kind of Jew I am.
The fact that I don't believe in God doesn't prevent me from being religious, or even observant.
For all of your attempts to study religions in order to tear them down, you're still stuck in a very singular view of religions being about Gods. They don't have to be.
Wait...what? If you do not believe in the absolute most important tenant of a religion, how do you still consider yourself part of that religion. And perhaps equally important, why would you want to?
I mean, I can understand someone not agreeing 100% with absolutely everything a particular religion stands for, but belief in a god is pretty much by definition required. It'd be like me arbitrarily deciding to consider myself vegan because I like what they stand for...well, except for that whole thing about not eating animal products. I'm still going to eat meat by the plate-full.
WHO is defining God as the most important tenant of all religion?
Chrisitianity is absolutely about it's god. Judaism is not.
Judaism is about a book of rules. Those rules were said, originally, to come from god, but their origin isn't all that important, ion the end.
You could say "if god didn't write them, then why follow them?" But judaism ALREADY doesn't have a hell, so the question becomes "even if god DID write them, but he isn't going to damn you for eternity, why follow them?"
You see, viewing judaism for what it is, rather than through the filter of christianity, produces a religion with VERY different motivation.
Isn't the first of the Ten Commandments (and hence a part of the Law) something along the lines of "I am your God; worship no other god except Me"?
EDIT - I'm not trying to be a dick; I just want to know how you can completely divorce the concept of Yahweh from the Law.
Not quite.
The first mitzvah is a statement, not a command. this was pretty common practice for official documents of the time. It sets up the authority of the speaker, and why he can issues commands to you. The statement is "I am God." christians may interpret this as a command, but Jews do not. Understand that, under the strictest forms of judaism, it is believed that not a single LETTER of the bible is wasted, and therefore if this were meant to be a command, rather than a statement, it would have been so.
The second commandment is "worship no other gods". I'm pretty sure we can all agree that one can refrain from worshing OTHER gods, without having to worship ANY gods.
please stop trying to redife the bulk of judaism in to being the niche sect that your cousins fall in to.
The "bulk" of what is commonly called Judaism is simply an ethnic designation. Yourself being a prime example. You do not believe in the existence of Yahweh, the Jewish god.
Did you mean that Judaism is great because, in Judaism it doesn't matter what God wants anymore because you can just stop believing in God altogether? Okay, whatever.
The concept that the power of the torah is in the hands of man has nothing secular about it.
In the kind of Judaism you are talking about, there is absolutely nothing religious about it either. Jews like you treat the Torah the same way they treat the Code of Hammurabi, an ancient myth that is somewhat prescient to modern life but mostly not.
Qingu, you have shown time and time again that you have no idea what kind of Jew I am.
The fact that I don't believe in God doesn't prevent me from being religious, or even observant.
For all of your attempts to study religions in order to tear them down, you're still stuck in a very singular view of religions being about Gods. They don't have to be.
Wait...what? If you do not believe in the absolute most important tenant of a religion, how do you still consider yourself part of that religion. And perhaps equally important, why would you want to?
I mean, I can understand someone not agreeing 100% with absolutely everything a particular religion stands for, but belief in a god is pretty much by definition required. It'd be like me arbitrarily deciding to consider myself vegan because I like what they stand for...well, except for that whole thing about not eating animal products. I'm still going to eat meat by the plate-full.
WHO is defining God as the most important tenant of all religion?
Chrisitianity is absolutely about it's god. Judaism is not.
Judaism is about a book of rules. Those rules were said, originally, to come from god, but their origin isn't all that important, ion the end.
You could say "if god didn't write them, then why follow them?" But judaism ALREADY doesn't have a hell, so the question becomes "even if god DID write them, but he isn't going to damn you for eternity, why follow them?"
You see, viewing judaism for what it is, rather than through the filter of christianity, produces a religion with VERY different motivation.
o_O
Whaaaa?
Have you read the Hebrew Bible?
o_O
Theism is at the core of Judaism. It has continued to be at the core of Judaism for nearly it's entire existence. It's only recently that some Jews have claimed to be atheistic. But don't redact the history. The origin was always important.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
Again, to restate my point, atheism is no less removed from ideology than religion is, nor is it somehow more progressive. If it is more humanistic, then, not being a humanist, I take that to be a bad thing.
Because I believe that the concepts of a trace and of a genesis/origin are routed in metaphysics and are improperly applied to the physical world.
Why?
Well, why do you think that they are? What are geneses and traces?
Immature answer: I asked you first.
Mature answer: Genesis in the scientific sense, as far as I'm aware, is the mechanism by which what are normally considered inorganic materials combined in a specific way to give rise to life. Obviously this gets into the thorny problem of how to define "life" (is a virus alive or not, etc.), which admittedly does render the mechanism fuzzy. I'm not aware that anyone has specifically nailed down yet how exactly it happened.
If I read Qingu's original post correctly, he uses "trace" to mean "We can compare modern life forms and their qualities to earlier life forms or fossils through examination of structural (e.g. skeletal) similarities, genetic similarities, etc., and make educated hypotheses that certain life forms (or certain modern traits) evolved from earlier life forms or traits."
Theism is at the core of Judaism. It has continued to be at the core of Judaism for nearly it's entire existence. It's only recently that some Jews have claimed to be atheistic. But don't redact the history. The origin was always important.
I've read it MANY times, in both Hebrew and English. I went to a Jewish parochial school, and minored in Judaic studies in college.
What is your background, beyond just reading it as a book? Have you read any Mishna? Gemmorah? Anything else in the Talmud? How about the Shulchan Aruch?
You can't just read the Tannakh and think that you know everythign about judaism.
The thing is that the semantic issue is my point. What do you call it if you derive a large portion of your ideas, personality, and morality from a particular religioin (for this example, Christianity). If a person attends church, prays, gets married in a Christian ceremony, celebrates Christmas and Easter as the birth and resurrection (respectively) but allows for some "wiggle room" in their interpretation of scripture, particularly the much older passages?
If you would call that person a Christian than you cannot just keep arguing with your horribly outdated view of this religion. My point is this- We are all using the modern Christian (or Jewish, or Islamic) faith as the central part of our arguments. You tell us that we are using the word incorrectly because these things are no longer the same as they "used to be". You have set yourself up in a trench that really bogs down this discussion much more than us using the word "Christian" in a much more broad and liberal sense because that is how the majority of these people are today barring extremists.
I'm pretty sure the majority of people who do all that stuff believe in God.
Also, are you saying that people can become more devoted to ritual and ceremony than their god, leaving an empty shell of the form, intonations and buildings? Small Gods all up ins.
Again, to restate my point, atheism is no less removed from ideology than religion is, nor is it somehow more progressive. If it is more humanistic, then, not being a humanist, I take that to be a bad thing.
What ideology is atheism tied to, exactly?
What ideology, for instance, does a small child have before anyone tells it about the existence of a supreme being?
Again, to restate my point, atheism is no less removed from ideology than religion is, nor is it somehow more progressive. If it is more humanistic, then, not being a humanist, I take that to be a bad thing.
#1) Atheism is the lack of belief in god(s). That's all it means. That's very much different from the set of beliefs and customs that make up a religion.
#2) Obviously, if atheism is the more accurate view of the world (i.e., if gods really don't exist), then atheism is more progressive. I would define "progressive" as something like forward positive scientific and social progress for mankind.
#3) I'm confused as to how your two statements above are relevant to this discussion, exactly.
Again, to restate my point, atheism is no less removed from ideology than religion is.
I really think that depends on how you define "atheism" (again, everything comes back to definitions). At its base, atheism simply means "lack of belief in a god." If by atheism we meant "The statement and belief that are no gods, that gods are absolutely impossible," then yes, I'd agree with your quoted statement, because there is no way to prove the positive assertion underlying that definition.
However, that's only one form of atheism. The broader form is as stated: A lack of belief in gods. As far as I know, most atheists would agree that if presented with credible evidence of the existence of a god, they'd be willing to reexamine their lack of belief.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
If I read Qingu's original post correctly, he uses "trace" to mean "We can compare modern life forms and their qualities to earlier life forms or fossils through examination of structural (e.g. skeletal) similarities, genetic similarities, etc., and make educated hypotheses that certain life forms (or certain modern traits) evolved from earlier life forms or traits."
Epigenesis as opposed to preformatism. Now, is the trace merely a metaphor for some mechanism by which genetic matter is passed on, or is the trace some actual component of reality?
@durandal: no child, unless he grows up feral in the wilderness, is ever unexposed to ideology, especially to something as deep-rooted as artistotelean metaphysics.
And I would argue that evolution and quantum mechanics are themselves heavily dependent on aristotelean metaphysics.
I can't wait to hear you explain this one.
I would say that I have no need for that, because beings can be authentically and inauthenticity existential, which means that you cannot attribute it as some essence or physical property, nor to an acquired behavior, and thus not susceptible to the genealogical activity of tracing natural evolution.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Consciousness does not correspond to a physical property? Okay, I agree. It's an emergent property of brain activity.
I would also question your structural terms of trace and the genesis/genetic structure of evolution.
So advance an argument questioning them.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
However, that's only one form of atheism. The broader form is as stated: A lack of belief in gods. As far as I know, most atheists would agree that if presented with credible evidence of the existence of a god, they'd be willing to reexamine their lack of belief.
I believe that the ontological argument for the existence of god, as essentia deum est existentia, properly argued from an a foundation of the onto-theo-logos, which I argued in a thread a few months ago, is evidence that nobody can doubt the existence of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and infinite. Most people ended up saying "ok, so Being might be that but I don't have to worship it." So i'm not sure I agree with that.
Theism is at the core of Judaism. It has continued to be at the core of Judaism for nearly it's entire existence. It's only recently that some Jews have claimed to be atheistic. But don't redact the history. The origin was always important.
I've read it MANY times, in both Hebrew and English. I went to a Jewish parochial school, and minored in Judaic studies in college.
What is your background, beyond just reading it as a book? Have you read any Mishna? Gemmorah? Anything else in the Talmud? How about the Shulchan Aruch?
You can't just read the Tannakh and think that you know everythign about judaism.
I majored in Religious Studies in college. I studied the Hebrew Bible in many different classes. I admit that my background is primarily Christian (Catholic in particular). I admittedly view Judaism through that lens.
I don't claim to know everything there is to know about Judaism. But I do know enough to know that Yahweh is at the very core of Judaism and has been for virtually it's entire existence. Yahweh handed down the law to Moses. He led the people out of slavery, through the desert, and to the promised land. Every book in the Hebrew Bible, every prophet, every writer in every century of ancient Israel held God and his relationship with his chosen people at the very forefront. It drives the stories. I can't really think of a single book in the Hebrew Bible where Yahweh isn't a major force or theme or person. Can you? I mean, it's been a while, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
It seems an affront to history to think that God and his relationship with his people isn't at the very core of Judaism. (Then again, Mormons think Jews sailed across the ocean to America, despite all evidence to the contrary, so perhaps I'm underestimating the power of Faith once again.)
I believe that the ontological argument for the existence of god, as essentia deum est existentia, properly argued from an a foundation of the onto-theo-logos, which I argued in a thread a few months ago, is evidence that nobody can doubt the existence of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and infinite. Most people ended up saying "ok, so Being might be that but I don't have to worship it." So i'm not sure I agree with that.
The ontological argument for the existence of god is semantic masturbation and you don't deserve your philosophy degree if you think it's convincing.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I believe that the ontological argument for the existence of god, as essentia deum est existentia, properly argued from an a foundation of the onto-theo-logos, which I argued in a thread a few months ago, is evidence that nobody can doubt the existence of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and infinite. Most people ended up saying "ok, so Being might be that but I don't have to worship it." So i'm not sure I agree with that.
The ontological argument for the existence of god is semantic masturbation and you don't deserve your philosophy degree if you think it's convincing.
I believe that the ontological argument for the existence of god, as essentia deum est existentia, properly argued from an a foundation of the onto-theo-logos, which I argued in a thread a few months ago, is evidence that nobody can doubt the existence of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and infinite. Most people ended up saying "ok, so Being might be that but I don't have to worship it." So i'm not sure I agree with that.
The ontological argument for the existence of god is semantic masturbation and you don't deserve your philosophy degree if you think it's convincing.
Ideology at work.
That's it?
Ideology is disbelief, therefore disbelief is ideology? That seems kind of pointless.
I believe that the ontological argument for the existence of god, as essentia deum est existentia, properly argued from an a foundation of the onto-theo-logos, which I argued in a thread a few months ago, is evidence that nobody can doubt the existence of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and infinite. Most people ended up saying "ok, so Being might be that but I don't have to worship it." So i'm not sure I agree with that.
The ontological argument for the existence of god is semantic masturbation and you don't deserve your philosophy degree if you think it's convincing.
Ideology at work.
That's it?
Ideology is disbelief, therefore disbelief is ideology? That seems kind of pointless.
No. The ideology is that my philosophical position is semantic masturbation, but the belief in a reducible universe is privileged and somehow not semantic masturbation.
but that thread months ago basically just came down to the resident atheists (well, the more reasonable among us) admitting that yes, such a Being must exist for existence to have any meaning. but that "Being" is really just reflects a belief in an intelligible universe/the universal laws of physics and physical reality.
you're the one taking the infinitely unjustified leap of ascribing properties to that being that move it closer to the laughable judeo-christian conception of "God"
i'm not gonna go worship the laws of gravity and the fact that the universe is here. i might as well worship myself, because i am as fully existing as anyone else.
an a-theist is one who denies theism, and theism is a belief in a particular "god", i.e. a personality-possessing Creator. that is an unimaginable distance away from the ontological argument.
you are being either deliberately obtuse or you filtered that right out unconsciously when you remember that other thread
No. The ideology is that my philosophical position is semantic masturbation, but the belief in a reducible universe is privileged and somehow not semantic masturbation.
How on earth is the idea of a reducible universe semantic masturbation? It's born out by experimentation. Matter is made out of atoms; atoms are made out of quarks. Quarks are made out of something we don't quite understand yet but that has measurable properties.
This is an incredibly disingenuous thing to say and shows you literally have no understanding of how science works or what major scientific theories are. You treat them as words to plug into your semantic formulas, formulas which I see no reason for indulging in the first place.
Do they teach you (Podly) how to speak in detached, almost ciphered English when you get your philosophy degree?
Maybe that's why philosophy puts me off so much. It doesn't seem rational. It feels like wordplay more than logic or reason. Whenever I attempted to read philosophy, or listen to my friends engage in philosophical "debates" - it feels more like one person trying to hide behind vague arcane words and disguised, circular reasoning more than anything else. It all sounds scholarly, but it really means nothing.
Now, is the trace merely a metaphor for some mechanism by which genetic matter is passed on, or is the trace some actual component of reality?
I think you're using "trace" wrong. It's a verb, not a noun. As in, "We can trace the evolution of the eyeball, or of the prefrontal lobe, or of fingers."
No. The ideology is that my philosophical position is semantic masturbation, but the belief in a reducible universe is privileged and somehow not semantic masturbation.
This sounds like a butthurt defense.
The universe, by people who do not try to add in things based on feelings, is taken as "this is how it appears to be by all verifiable measures we have available to us at this time." Do not confuse "this is how it appears to be" with "we know exactly how this shit works." That is redneck shit. There are certainly many many atheists who have what amounts to faith in the universe being exactly what they learned in science class in the 80s, but that's because stupid is not exclusive to any perspective.
However, that's only one form of atheism. The broader form is as stated: A lack of belief in gods. As far as I know, most atheists would agree that if presented with credible evidence of the existence of a god, they'd be willing to reexamine their lack of belief.
I believe that the ontological argument for the existence of god, as essentia deum est existentia, properly argued from an a foundation of the onto-theo-logos, which I argued in a thread a few months ago, is evidence that nobody can doubt the existence of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and infinite. Most people ended up saying "ok, so Being might be that but I don't have to worship it." So i'm not sure I agree with that.
I am not expert in metaphysical philosophy, but from what I've read on the subject, that is very much open to criticism.
It would help, by the way, if you could explain your position in standard English.
He's going to say that "but how can the conscious humans who thought of the idea of quantum mechanics and evolution be sure they're not living in an illusion?"
At which point we all say "the same thing applies to Aristotle thinking of the unmoved mover argument."
It's god of the gaps bullshit, writ metaphysically large. You can't know anything for certain; all knowledge is contingent, therefore God exists.
Unfortunately, once someone believes in something that provides a feeling of meaning or purpose or order or specialness, it is goddamn hard to get them to shrug it off. They may transform it, like the people in my family who tend to shift from Christian to Deist or simply to "there is more," but it's like working with Conspiracy Theorists.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
@Mike: Yes, but your a-theism is also connected to your ideological alignment with physical reductionism and empircism, which are covered over metaphysical propositions. It is not like saying "hey man, I'm just an atheist, it has nothing to do with my other beliefs. They are an interconnected web based on your metaphysical beliefs of the world.
@Qingu: No, it is not based out of experimentation. If it were, you would have to belief in a non-reducible universe, because that is the way the history of western science has pointed.
@Melkster: Logic is based on metaphysics, and logic is simply the way that arguments are soundly inferred or deducted. "Reason" is a category that is extremely fuzzy and may or may not exist. As for circular reasoning, I'm beginning to wonder about the function of tautology in Truth: if the law of the excluded middle is not in fact true, as quantum mechanics that argues against the copenhagen interpretation holds, then tautology may actually be incredibly useful.
@Brian: Sure, I'll try and type up a more approachable response when I finish working. However, I do not think that unphilosophized language is capable of stating what I think is true, so it creates a bit of a dilemma, in the same way that pop science books try to teach science without using math.
@Mike: Yes, but your a-theism is also connected to your ideological alignment with physical reductionism and empircism, which are covered over metaphysical propositions. It is not like saying "hey man, I'm just an atheist, it has nothing to do with my other beliefs. They are an interconnected web based on your metaphysical beliefs of the world.
1) I never denied having a metaphysical belief system.
2) Not all metaphysical belief systems are equally useful in describing and interacting with the universe.
3) None of this has anything to do with my argument, which is that you cannot use the Ontological argument to speak about a theistic entity, and yet you continue to do so.
@Qingu: No, it is not based out of experimentation. If it were, you would have to belief in a non-reducible universe, because that is the way the history of western science has pointed.
First, define what you mean by "reducible."
Then support this assertion.
if the law of the excluded middle is not in fact true, as quantum mechanics that argues against the copenhagen interpretation holds,
No it doesn't.
then tautology may actually be incredibly useful.
I don't know what's more ridiculously, that you drew this conclusion from any interpretation of quantum mechanics, or that you drew the conclusion that tautology is useful.
However, I do not think that unphilosophized language is capable of stating what I think is true,
This makes sense in light of your above statement about the perceived usefulness of tautology.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
@Mike: Yes, but your a-theism is also connected to your ideological alignment with physical reductionism and empircism, which are covered over metaphysical propositions. It is not like saying "hey man, I'm just an atheist, it has nothing to do with my other beliefs. They are an interconnected web based on your metaphysical beliefs of the world.
1) I never denied having a metaphysical belief system.
2) Not all metaphysical belief systems are equally useful in describing and interacting with the universe.
3) None of this has anything to do with my argument, which is that you cannot use the Ontological argument to speak about a theistic entity, and yet you continue to do so.
I was disagreeing with Brian888, who stated most atheists would believe in God if there were proof of it, and I said that they would more than likely close their eyes to anomalies like those presented by Heidegger's ontotheological constitution of metaphysics.
I was disagreeing with Brian888, who stated most atheists would believe in God if there were proof of it, and I said that they would more than likely close their eyes to anomalies like those presented by Heidegger's ontotheological constitution of metaphysics.
That's an absurd claim that I normally hear from Hellfire preachers on college campuses.
They might reclassify such an entity as an alien or some more useful term (because Deities are INCREDIBLY varied, and the idea of "God" even moreso), but they wouldn't just cram their ears with cotton if Zeus showed up at the door with lightning coming from his fists.
Certainly, a large number of atheists would not -like- the entity, depending on its personality and actions.
@Mike: Yes, but your a-theism is also connected to your ideological alignment with physical reductionism and empircism, which are covered over metaphysical propositions. It is not like saying "hey man, I'm just an atheist, it has nothing to do with my other beliefs. They are an interconnected web based on your metaphysical beliefs of the world.
1) I never denied having a metaphysical belief system.
2) Not all metaphysical belief systems are equally useful in describing and interacting with the universe.
3) None of this has anything to do with my argument, which is that you cannot use the Ontological argument to speak about a theistic entity, and yet you continue to do so.
I was disagreeing with Brian888, who stated most atheists would believe in God if there were proof of it, and I said that they would more than likely close their eyes to anomalies like those presented by Heidegger's ontotheological constitution of metaphysics.
Okay.
I am an atheist.
I would believe in God if there was sufficient evidence (proof).
I promise not to close my eyes to any evidence.
Okay, so go ahead. Lay it on me. I'd like to think I'm a fairly intelligent person, but complex, tricky philosophical language just doesn't compute in my brain - it doesn't translate into actual ideas for me. Plain English, though, works just fine. So use common English.
@Mike: Yes, but your a-theism is also connected to your ideological alignment with physical reductionism and empircism, which are covered over metaphysical propositions. It is not like saying "hey man, I'm just an atheist, it has nothing to do with my other beliefs. They are an interconnected web based on your metaphysical beliefs of the world.
1) I never denied having a metaphysical belief system.
2) Not all metaphysical belief systems are equally useful in describing and interacting with the universe.
3) None of this has anything to do with my argument, which is that you cannot use the Ontological argument to speak about a theistic entity, and yet you continue to do so.
I was disagreeing with Brian888, who stated most atheists would believe in God if there were proof of it, and I said that they would more than likely close their eyes to anomalies like those presented by Heidegger's ontotheological constitution of metaphysics.
I don't want to be rude here, but at least in my circumstance, I haven't closed my eyes to anything; I'm still waiting for a clear, concise, jargon-light explanation of your metaphysical position. Qingu has offered one up, but I will charitably allow you to frame your own assertions.
I would believe in God if there was sufficient evidence (proof).
I promise not to close my eyes to any evidence.
Okay, so go ahead. Lay it on me. I'd like to think I'm a fairly intelligent person, but complex, tricky philosophical language just doesn't compute in my brain - it doesn't translate into actual ideas for me. Plain English, though, works just fine. So use common English.
Alright: Go!
This argument can just be turned around again in the other direction.
I'll believe in god until there is sufficient evidence that He does not exist.
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As I've said, you insist on redefining the playing field until your pre-existing notions fit, rather than building notions that fit within what reality ACTUALLY is.
Religion is about more than just god(s).
Isn't the first of the Ten Commandments (and hence a part of the Law) something along the lines of "I am your God; worship no other god except Me"?
EDIT - I'm not trying to be a dick; I just want to know how you can completely divorce the concept of Yahweh from the Law.
Again, I point to Bava Metzia 59b
under stand that the secular jews are the ones who generally DON'T read the Talmud. When I'm throwing out Talmudic refferences, it stands to reason that all but the "lost tribes" are in agreement.
Also, "all Jews will never agree on ANYTHING", olol.
Well, why do you think that they are? What are geneses and traces?
Not quite.
The first mitzvah is a statement, not a command. this was pretty common practice for official documents of the time. It sets up the authority of the speaker, and why he can issues commands to you. The statement is "I am God." christians may interpret this as a command, but Jews do not. Understand that, under the strictest forms of judaism, it is believed that not a single LETTER of the bible is wasted, and therefore if this were meant to be a command, rather than a statement, it would have been so.
The second commandment is "worship no other gods". I'm pretty sure we can all agree that one can refrain from worshing OTHER gods, without having to worship ANY gods.
o_O
Whaaaa?
Have you read the Hebrew Bible?
o_O
Theism is at the core of Judaism. It has continued to be at the core of Judaism for nearly it's entire existence. It's only recently that some Jews have claimed to be atheistic. But don't redact the history. The origin was always important.
Immature answer: I asked you first.
Mature answer: Genesis in the scientific sense, as far as I'm aware, is the mechanism by which what are normally considered inorganic materials combined in a specific way to give rise to life. Obviously this gets into the thorny problem of how to define "life" (is a virus alive or not, etc.), which admittedly does render the mechanism fuzzy. I'm not aware that anyone has specifically nailed down yet how exactly it happened.
If I read Qingu's original post correctly, he uses "trace" to mean "We can compare modern life forms and their qualities to earlier life forms or fossils through examination of structural (e.g. skeletal) similarities, genetic similarities, etc., and make educated hypotheses that certain life forms (or certain modern traits) evolved from earlier life forms or traits."
I've read it MANY times, in both Hebrew and English. I went to a Jewish parochial school, and minored in Judaic studies in college.
What is your background, beyond just reading it as a book? Have you read any Mishna? Gemmorah? Anything else in the Talmud? How about the Shulchan Aruch?
You can't just read the Tannakh and think that you know everythign about judaism.
I'm pretty sure the majority of people who do all that stuff believe in God.
Also, are you saying that people can become more devoted to ritual and ceremony than their god, leaving an empty shell of the form, intonations and buildings? Small Gods all up ins.
What ideology, for instance, does a small child have before anyone tells it about the existence of a supreme being?
#1) Atheism is the lack of belief in god(s). That's all it means. That's very much different from the set of beliefs and customs that make up a religion.
#2) Obviously, if atheism is the more accurate view of the world (i.e., if gods really don't exist), then atheism is more progressive. I would define "progressive" as something like forward positive scientific and social progress for mankind.
#3) I'm confused as to how your two statements above are relevant to this discussion, exactly.
I really think that depends on how you define "atheism" (again, everything comes back to definitions). At its base, atheism simply means "lack of belief in a god." If by atheism we meant "The statement and belief that are no gods, that gods are absolutely impossible," then yes, I'd agree with your quoted statement, because there is no way to prove the positive assertion underlying that definition.
However, that's only one form of atheism. The broader form is as stated: A lack of belief in gods. As far as I know, most atheists would agree that if presented with credible evidence of the existence of a god, they'd be willing to reexamine their lack of belief.
Epigenesis as opposed to preformatism. Now, is the trace merely a metaphor for some mechanism by which genetic matter is passed on, or is the trace some actual component of reality?
@durandal: no child, unless he grows up feral in the wilderness, is ever unexposed to ideology, especially to something as deep-rooted as artistotelean metaphysics.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Consciousness does not correspond to a physical property? Okay, I agree. It's an emergent property of brain activity.
So advance an argument questioning them.
I believe that the ontological argument for the existence of god, as essentia deum est existentia, properly argued from an a foundation of the onto-theo-logos, which I argued in a thread a few months ago, is evidence that nobody can doubt the existence of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and infinite. Most people ended up saying "ok, so Being might be that but I don't have to worship it." So i'm not sure I agree with that.
Hilariously, you believe in the validity of the rules about as much as you believe in the existence of God.
So even if you define Judaism this way, most "Jews" aren't that Jewish.
I majored in Religious Studies in college. I studied the Hebrew Bible in many different classes. I admit that my background is primarily Christian (Catholic in particular). I admittedly view Judaism through that lens.
I don't claim to know everything there is to know about Judaism. But I do know enough to know that Yahweh is at the very core of Judaism and has been for virtually it's entire existence. Yahweh handed down the law to Moses. He led the people out of slavery, through the desert, and to the promised land. Every book in the Hebrew Bible, every prophet, every writer in every century of ancient Israel held God and his relationship with his chosen people at the very forefront. It drives the stories. I can't really think of a single book in the Hebrew Bible where Yahweh isn't a major force or theme or person. Can you? I mean, it's been a while, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
It seems an affront to history to think that God and his relationship with his people isn't at the very core of Judaism. (Then again, Mormons think Jews sailed across the ocean to America, despite all evidence to the contrary, so perhaps I'm underestimating the power of Faith once again.)
Ideology at work.
That's it?
Ideology is disbelief, therefore disbelief is ideology? That seems kind of pointless.
No. The ideology is that my philosophical position is semantic masturbation, but the belief in a reducible universe is privileged and somehow not semantic masturbation.
but that thread months ago basically just came down to the resident atheists (well, the more reasonable among us) admitting that yes, such a Being must exist for existence to have any meaning. but that "Being" is really just reflects a belief in an intelligible universe/the universal laws of physics and physical reality.
you're the one taking the infinitely unjustified leap of ascribing properties to that being that move it closer to the laughable judeo-christian conception of "God"
i'm not gonna go worship the laws of gravity and the fact that the universe is here. i might as well worship myself, because i am as fully existing as anyone else.
an a-theist is one who denies theism, and theism is a belief in a particular "god", i.e. a personality-possessing Creator. that is an unimaginable distance away from the ontological argument.
you are being either deliberately obtuse or you filtered that right out unconsciously when you remember that other thread
This is an incredibly disingenuous thing to say and shows you literally have no understanding of how science works or what major scientific theories are. You treat them as words to plug into your semantic formulas, formulas which I see no reason for indulging in the first place.
Maybe that's why philosophy puts me off so much. It doesn't seem rational. It feels like wordplay more than logic or reason. Whenever I attempted to read philosophy, or listen to my friends engage in philosophical "debates" - it feels more like one person trying to hide behind vague arcane words and disguised, circular reasoning more than anything else. It all sounds scholarly, but it really means nothing.
I think you're using "trace" wrong. It's a verb, not a noun. As in, "We can trace the evolution of the eyeball, or of the prefrontal lobe, or of fingers."
This sounds like a butthurt defense.
The universe, by people who do not try to add in things based on feelings, is taken as "this is how it appears to be by all verifiable measures we have available to us at this time." Do not confuse "this is how it appears to be" with "we know exactly how this shit works." That is redneck shit. There are certainly many many atheists who have what amounts to faith in the universe being exactly what they learned in science class in the 80s, but that's because stupid is not exclusive to any perspective.
I am not expert in metaphysical philosophy, but from what I've read on the subject, that is very much open to criticism.
It would help, by the way, if you could explain your position in standard English.
At which point we all say "the same thing applies to Aristotle thinking of the unmoved mover argument."
It's god of the gaps bullshit, writ metaphysically large. You can't know anything for certain; all knowledge is contingent, therefore God exists.
@Qingu: No, it is not based out of experimentation. If it were, you would have to belief in a non-reducible universe, because that is the way the history of western science has pointed.
@Melkster: Logic is based on metaphysics, and logic is simply the way that arguments are soundly inferred or deducted. "Reason" is a category that is extremely fuzzy and may or may not exist. As for circular reasoning, I'm beginning to wonder about the function of tautology in Truth: if the law of the excluded middle is not in fact true, as quantum mechanics that argues against the copenhagen interpretation holds, then tautology may actually be incredibly useful.
@Brian: Sure, I'll try and type up a more approachable response when I finish working. However, I do not think that unphilosophized language is capable of stating what I think is true, so it creates a bit of a dilemma, in the same way that pop science books try to teach science without using math.
(Probably both.)
1) I never denied having a metaphysical belief system.
2) Not all metaphysical belief systems are equally useful in describing and interacting with the universe.
3) None of this has anything to do with my argument, which is that you cannot use the Ontological argument to speak about a theistic entity, and yet you continue to do so.
Then support this assertion.
No it doesn't.
I don't know what's more ridiculously, that you drew this conclusion from any interpretation of quantum mechanics, or that you drew the conclusion that tautology is useful.
This makes sense in light of your above statement about the perceived usefulness of tautology.
I was disagreeing with Brian888, who stated most atheists would believe in God if there were proof of it, and I said that they would more than likely close their eyes to anomalies like those presented by Heidegger's ontotheological constitution of metaphysics.
That's an absurd claim that I normally hear from Hellfire preachers on college campuses.
They might reclassify such an entity as an alien or some more useful term (because Deities are INCREDIBLY varied, and the idea of "God" even moreso), but they wouldn't just cram their ears with cotton if Zeus showed up at the door with lightning coming from his fists.
Certainly, a large number of atheists would not -like- the entity, depending on its personality and actions.
Okay.
I am an atheist.
I would believe in God if there was sufficient evidence (proof).
I promise not to close my eyes to any evidence.
Okay, so go ahead. Lay it on me. I'd like to think I'm a fairly intelligent person, but complex, tricky philosophical language just doesn't compute in my brain - it doesn't translate into actual ideas for me. Plain English, though, works just fine. So use common English.
Alright: Go!
I don't want to be rude here, but at least in my circumstance, I haven't closed my eyes to anything; I'm still waiting for a clear, concise, jargon-light explanation of your metaphysical position. Qingu has offered one up, but I will charitably allow you to frame your own assertions.
This argument can just be turned around again in the other direction.
I'll believe in god until there is sufficient evidence that He does not exist.
etc. etc.
In the end faith is faith, and it goes both ways.