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What does God need with a starship? More seriously, why does God demand my praise? Me praising an omnipotent being is beyond comparison to anything else, but is similar to a nematode being impressed by me. Wow, it's neat that you can talk and drive a car and think about god, it might say, good job! So what? Also, the problem of evil has never been answered with more than handwaving. God is not good or not omnipotent. Pick one.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:02
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I can't believe we're still stuck on "atheists have faith too"  There is a being named Snurd. Snurd is a seven-dimensional chartreuse pelican that exists simultaneously in everyone's duodenum, and always has. Until reading that sentence, you were already an asnurdist. You did not believe in the existence of Snurd. That's all that was required, a lack of belief. I am going to suppose that well over 98% of you are still asnurdists, because just by reading my description of Snurd, you did not suddenly believe that there was, in fact, a seven-dimensional chartreuse pelican in your duodenum. You may go further, and actively disbelieve in Snurd. That is, you believe positively that Snurd does not exist. Now, you are making a metaphysical claim which may in some way be comparable to faith.* If you merely accept the fact that this is possible, yet sounds unlikely, silly, and frankly pointless to even consider, you remain an asnurdist. No belief claim is necessary, just a rejection of one. Most athiests merely aren't convinced that God/gods exist. They need not "actively disbelieve" or have aith-faith in a god-shaped hole in the universe. *I still think an evidence-based positivity is different from faith, but I'll admit it's at least in the ballpark.
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Nov 24, 2014 05:22
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Miltank posted:Aliens wouldn't conceptualize nature in an irrational way and therefore neither do atheists. I just cannot believe how christfuckingly stupid this whole derail of yours is. No one is using nature as a mystical force from which humans are apart. Yes, it is obviously true that we made up the word nature, but even if we hadn't, nature would still exist. The word describes a necessary reality. It follows from the cogito, even. Something exists. Unless you're going to try to explain how it's simulations all the way down, there exists a reality. We may understand literally zero percent of it accurately, but knowing that nature exists is not needing to understand it. And no one at ffrf is worshipping it and EVEN IF THEY WERE, that wouldn't change the definition of atheism.
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Nov 25, 2014 19:23
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Kyrie eleison posted:
I know you already moved the goalposts to 'first instinct' (which is a stupid analogy for a god you say is outside of time since he knew of the insult 9999999999 years before doling out the punishment) but what the gently caress dude? If a literally retarded person or small child or your retarded child (god forbid) calls you a doody-head, you have no compassion? No empathy? The infinitely compassionate, infinitely merciful answer to such a slight is permanent infinite torture? I sincerely hope you don't have children and aren't in a position to be responsible for any whilst you maintain that attitude.
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Nov 26, 2014 14:43
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Kyrie eleison posted:the tools of God Please talk more about your urge to torture retarded children. Or at least own up to calling that God's instinct and example of morality and appropriate compassion.
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Nov 27, 2014 00:25
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Nintendo Kid posted:Learn to write better. Though I agree with your apparent assertion that What Who Now is indeed a very real rear end in a top hat. A jumbotron could not contain an ironicat big enough to represent this post.
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Jan 31, 2015 01:00
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Kyrie eleison posted:
And, yes I have. Not regularly, though. I also help the poor professionally, and vote for progressive policies. All without the threat of hell looming over me.
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Feb 8, 2015 01:44
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Kyrie, your views are much more interesting to read and think about when you appear sincere and humble or sincere and righteous. When you try to be clever, you sound insincere and also are not actually funny, which is worse. Your long theological answers are worth reading. Your trite witticisms are not. Stick to what you're good at and keep the thread worth reading.
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Apr 6, 2015 21:52
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PerpetualSelf posted:I mix sound in the sound booth. It's cool. Truly, worship as Jesus intended.
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Apr 12, 2015 18:17
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Kyrie eleison posted:Listen, let's go easy on old Joe. Which of us, in our hearts, isn't a mass-murderer? Give the person on the street the power, and they'd kill millions, for sure. It's human nature to be that way. Most people do indeed have passing desires to harm specific others who have wronged them, but don't act on it even though they DO have the power. If you honestly think most people desire mass murder, this is probably symptomatic of a larger misconception about other people in general. Rectifying this misconception would likely go a long way toward better interacting with others, and therefore more effectively evangelizing. I would put some effort toward this end if you are at all genuine about anything.
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Apr 28, 2015 16:11
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VitalSigns posted:Babies gravitate to people who look like the people they interact with the most, not with people who look like them, dumbass. Babies don't know what they look like: they learn what familiar people look like by looking at their family who could quite well not be the same race as them. Thank you Jesus! I've been getting increasingly irritated as I read down the thread and no one said this. Multiple studies have shown that exposure to more different looking people during early childhood makes babies comfortable with more diverse people. Note why would a helpless infant have a drive to fear strangers and cry out when they are picked up by people that don't look like those they trust? Whelp, humans are racist everyone kill yourself. Kyrie, thanks for responding to me. It's already been touched on, but rhetoric like "kill all the X" is socially and politically rewarded in many circles. That doesn't mean most people literally wish for mass murder, and means even less so that they'd be willing to do it themselves. Human empathy prevents it unless overridden by mob mentality and the like, or in those (estimated 1%) with psychopathy, which represents a difference in physical brain structures. The burden is on you to show that most (or even many) people desire to commit atrocities.
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Apr 29, 2015 17:45
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Kyrie eleison posted:How many people -- if you created a button that would blow up the world, how many people would press it? It's already been addressed that your scenario is flawed because only kooks would believe the button did what was advertised, but as a contrived thought experiment I'll go along with it. Many people would try to push it. People who are overcome with long-term depression, momentary rage, and various forms of delusions or hallucinations might press it. Religious fanatics convinced of some irrational moral calculus might press it. Imbeciles might press it. So might squirrels, for that matter. However many people you think might press it, I contend that many more would protect it, with their lives if necessary, to see that it wasn't pushed. It would become the most obviously moral public service in the history of the world to guard the button. Also, 
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Apr 30, 2015 19:16
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Dzhay posted:This thread is interesting. Everyone must know that Kizza Elizza and pink cow av are trolling, yet people keep writing long, effort-filled responses. I think pink cow av is entirely sincere. And I think that perpetuating false information is a form of bad behavior. Doing good things for bad reasons is only a temporary lucky situation, and we shouldn't be too satisfied with it. Soon, the same people will do bad things for the same reasons we were just OK with, and it's pretty hypocritical to only call them out on it then.
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May 1, 2015 14:04
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Nessus posted:I actually agree with Kyrie here Nessus posted:pooped and then picked up the poop and ate the poop
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May 2, 2015 18:57
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Black Bones posted:That's a big "If". What if he created us to experience joy? What if he allows for and accepts our condemnation? What if he experiences our suffering? If he crafted us to experience joy, and the universe for us to experience it in, he did nearly the shittiest possible job. Far worse than one might expect from an omnipotent omniscient being who was trying. If her experiences our suffering, can he avoid it or is he some kind of masochist?
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May 4, 2015 14:55
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Lol at reading Plato's Republic and seriously thinking it's a suggestion for government. It's a suggestion for self-government and every bit of it is a metaphor for facets of the soul/ human experience. I guess I could see a modern person with no concept of how ancient people wrote taking everything at literal face value, but using that argument in here baffles me. No metaphor in the bible thread, no sir. The forms taken literally as existing is, of course, ancient ignorance or modern woo, but Plato was laying some strong groundwork for our modern understanding of mental schemas. It's actually amazing how accurate and useful the concept is, if you don't throw the whole thing out because of its framing itself in an outmoded fashion. Mostly a historical curiosity, though.
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May 4, 2015 15:06
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Disinterested posted:this post is literally exactly what I think The explanation for this that I like best is that Plato's writings are essentially the textbooks with problems for students of logic and ethics, and we don't have the teachers edition with the answers in it (not that he would have made one). Aristotle's surviving works are very much like the texts of non-philosophy disciplines of today: collections of "facts" and information. In other words, what to think. Plato's writings can be taken as exercises in spot-the-fallacy and training exercises in how to think. It was never his intention for there to be much in the way of specific "Plato thinks this" in there, other than that we should be open to questioning everything and aware of our own ignorance.* This is a generous reading, to be sure, but I really enjoy his works when looked at in this way. *edit: I'm really referring to the dialogues here The Bloop fucked around with this message at 17:07 on May 4, 2015 |
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May 4, 2015 17:05
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Kyrie eleison posted:This opinion is frankly ridiculous. It is not supported by wiki or any encyclopedia of philosophy. You think that because he draws comparisons between politics and the soul that therefore his political opinions are not sincerely intended. You think that in describing the ideal city he is only doing so metaphorically and has no desire to see such a city in practice. This is absurd and I can assure you it is a political work (in fact the cornerstone of political philosophy) and I don't know how anyone reading it could come to any other conclusion. The whole republic you're describing isn't even the one Socrates was arguing for. He suggested the best city would be a simple one with only the necessities. His interlocutor calls this the city of pigs, and says he needs cushions and delicacies, and the entire rest of the description, the city you seem to think Socrates was championing, was a list of all the hoops they'd have to jump through to have a well run city in spite of Glaucon's requirements for luxuries. So, even if it's meant as a literal political text (I maintain that it is certainly not), you've missed Plato's point entirely. As to citations, I don't have any handy, but I've taken a graduate level course specifically on Republic, said I can sure you there are quite a number of them. I can post some later if anyone feels like arguing the point
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May 5, 2015 19:38
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Kyrie, your guess as to what I'm a grad student of is as irrelevant as it is wrong. I only mentioned it as an aside to point out that I know there are many sources, not that I personally am any kind of authority. Reading back, I still think that's clear. Also, I have been very polite to you in this thread, and you speak shamefully to others. In any case, I don't have references handy, and I may have overstated something in the process of phone posting. Socrates may have been as happy with the final vision as the first, but his discussion with Glaucon was that truly just people wouldn't need so many checks and balances to live together, and this would be the best city. Given that even his learned interlocutor couldn't buy that people would live like this, he went to further lengths to seek justice in the city Glaucon would agree to. He did this even though he thought the city of pigs was sufficient for the task of finding justice, because Glaucon, his stand in for the reader, would object that such a city was possible. The more detailed city is explicitly unnecessary for Socrates' task, but less objectionable to the likely audience. It's an exploded view because the subject is still too obscure in the first example. I think talking about which city Socrates preferred largely misses the point, though, because he never wanted to talk about city governance per se anyhow. Remember, the exercise was in seeking justice. The three classes of people and three metals were analogs for the three parts if the soul he was describing, the appetitive, honor-driven, and executive/deliberative. Justice was about each part doing it's own job, and the best of them (the philosophical one, natch) being in charge. As a literal form of governance, the republic is preposterous. As a teaching tool to discuss the internal balance of that which moves individuals, it makes sense. Principle of charity, here. I do realize that this is not the historical consensus, because much like the bible, literalism is easier. Even your quote started with the idea that justice is the same in a city and a man so let's find it in a theoretical city, SO THAT WE MIGHT RECOGNIZE IT IN A MAN. The city is a heuristic device that's easier to be walked through than direct discussion of internal states and virtues. Socrates wouldn't have wanted the literal city, because it would have banned the classes having philosophical debates with each other. It would have done this on the grounds that the silver and bronze/iron were incapable. Socrates didn't believe this, but as a metaphor for your urges and pride, which can be directed and controlled but not reasoned with, it works. As another aside, if Socrates/Plato were pressed for a simple answer to what justice is, he'd almost certainly have said wisdom, his ubervirtue. In this case, the wisdom to self govern properly. The text isn't about giving people answers, though, because that wouldn't help (in the Socratic mindset), rather it's about walking through with someone and coming to conclusions yourself. Whether it does that well is another question entirely. The Bloop fucked around with this message at 00:05 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 23:57
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Kyrie eleison posted:He totes did. They even rant in the book about how philosophy has a bad name because all these wannabe philosophers make them look bad. Plato had no love for self-proclaimed sophists, to be sure, but not because they were incapable. They were just doing it wrong. He wouldn't have bothered showing Socrates engaging with every shlub at the marketplace otherwise.
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May 6, 2015 16:10
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The apologism about the rules not applying those who don't know God seem necessary to make the whole thing not seem ludicrously evil, buy wouldn't it then be great to remove all trace of religion to guarantee that your children and all your decendants go to heaven? It's always seemed a bit of a catch 22 to me.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:58
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