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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN 4.03am. about to smoke some weed and listen to some trance

Well define study

I took a look at his book list and it's quite obvious he's done a fuckload of reading on this subject overall.

I should probably switch my minor to Philosophy, surprisingly my major in Theology isn't really helping me much in this debate because we're sort of leaving the matter of Church history out of it... Not that it really has much place in this sort of debate, apart from the questions of exegesis that have emerged.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov It's actually not at all dissimilar from Plato's world of forms. Plato was obviously not a Christian theologian, but he laid the base for Christian dogma quite well by arguing that every object and being on Earth must exist in pure form in another realm. Mankind's "form" has been usurped by the concept of God - various doctrines may get the details wrong (i.e. creation), but Plato's formulation serves quite well when pondering whether or not "God" can evolve as well. I can't remember which dialogue it appeared in, but Plato had a whole discussion about forms and the divine.

that's funny, because plato's world of forms is the single thing i remember about him. after i encountered it i just couldn't take him seriously anymore.

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Originally posted by Alex Well define study

well, of course plain old reading is "study", but out of all of my fields of interest, i "know" far more about the topics i covered at school than any other subject. renegade knows more about most of the shit i studied than i do, without any (formal) outside assistance.

im a bright lad imo but the 4 guys i mentioned in the other thread, are just extraordinary.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov

seriously, i am totally my favourite DJ. love my own work. and yes, that's definitely the stuff that i listen to

This is a neat little thing I came across, it's called Pascal's Wager and it is sort of a "proof" or facilitation to a proof of God's existence, not through the need for his existence but more based on a gamble:

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Suppose you, the reader, still feel that all of these arguments are inconclusive. There is another, different kind of argument left. It has come to be known as Pascal's Wager. We mention it here and adapt it for our purposes, not because it is a proof for the existence of God, but because it can help us in our search for God in the absence of such proof. As originally proposed by Pascal, the Wager assumes that logical reasoning by itself cannot decide for or against the existence of God; there seem to be good reasons on both sides. Now since reason cannot decide for sure, and since the question is of such importance that we must decide somehow, then we must "wager" if we cannot prove. And so we are asked: Where are you going to place your bet? If you place it with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything: God, eternity, heaven, infinite gain. "Let us assess the two cases: if you win, you win everything, if you lose, you lose nothing." Consider the following diagram: The diagram is in the shape of a square with the opposite corners connected by lines. Going clockwise from the top left the labels are 'God Exists' then 'God does not exist' then I believe in Him' then 'I do not believe in Him' The vertical lines represent correct beliefs, the diagonals represent incorrect beliefs. Let us compare the diagonals. Suppose God does not exist and I believe in him. In that case, what awaits me after death is not eternal life but, most likely, eternal nonexistence. But now take the other diagonal: God, my Creator and the source of all good, does exist; but I do not believe in him. He offers me his love and his life, and I reject it. There are answers to my greatest questions, there is fulfillment of my deepest desires; but I decide to spurn it all. In that case, I lose (or at least seriously risk losing) everything. The Wager can seem offensively venal and purely selfish. But it can be reformulated to appeal to a higher moral motive: If there is a God of infinite goodness, and he justly deserves my allegiance and faith, I risk doing the greatest injustice by not acknowledging him. The Wager cannot�or should not�coerce belief. But it can be an incentive for us to search for God, to study and restudy the arguments that seek to show that there is Something�or Someone�who is the ultimate explanation of the universe and of my life. It could at lease motivate "The Prayer of the Skeptic": "God, I don't know whether you exist or not, but if you do, please show me who you are." Pascal says that there are three kinds of people: those who have sought God and found him, those who are seeking and have not yet found, and those who neither seek nor find. The first are reasonable and happy, the second are reasonable and unhappy, the third are both unreasonable and unhappy. If the Wager stimulates us at least to seek, then it will at least stimulate us to be reasonable. And if the promise Jesus makes is true, all who seek will find (Mt 7:7-8), and thus will be happy.

Now I know this isn't exactly the most serious argument at all but I thought it was pretty funny and rather enlightening regardless

nothing more than an exercise in intellectual dishonesty.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN nothing more than an exercise in intellectual dishonesty.

Alright, I like you pkc but you really know how to act like a childish bastard when you have nothing of importance to say. And you are the king of typing up bullshit that has 0 basis in anything whatsoever, drunk or not

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN intellectual dishonesty.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN that's funny, because plato's world of forms is the single thing i remember about him. after i encountered it i just couldn't take him seriously anymore.

You're missing out on a lot of Plato by disregarding him like that. Plato is arguably the cornerstone of modern Western philosophy. The world of forms was designed as an intellectual exercise, and was hardly the embodiment of his work.

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Originally posted by Alex Alright, I like you pkc but you really know how to act like a childish bastard when you have nothing of importance to say. And you are the king of typing up bullshit that has 0 basis in anything whatsoever, drunk or not

well, how else would you like me to phrase it?

pascal's wager is all about subduing any real thought on the matter, and basically feigning belief for purely selfish reasons. more importantly, how can anyone make themselves believe or disbelieve anything?

when it comes down to it, i have far more respect for this god i do not believe in than to think he gives two shits about whether someone believes in him or not. the idea that god will punish dis-believers is such a juvenile concept its not even funny.

if god is as pernicious and cruel as say, the old testament makes him out to be, then he isn't worth my belief anyway.

in short: pascal's wager = intellectual dishonesty.

You took it too seriously

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov and was hardly the embodiment of his work.

oh, of course not. its merely the only thing i remember (10 years ago man!). i only discarded plato because i discarded philosophy generally to focus on politics. but his perfect forms still annoyed me

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN oh, of course not. its merely the only thing i remember (10 years ago man!). i only discarded plato because i discarded philosophy generally to focus on politics. but his perfect forms still annoyed me

Ah, but then how can you discard The Republic! It's the first work of political science!

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Originally posted by Renegade No it isn't: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection

Yes, it is. We are talking about humans, not plants or social insects.

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No it isn't. (I'm beginning to enjoy starting my replies like that.) Morality is derived from our capacity to sympathise with the mental states of others. The gratuitous suffering of another causes me to suffer and this is wired into our very being (I mentioned it before, but read up on mirror neurons). When I say that morality is instinctive (or objective - the suffering of another is not likely to be any more or less apparent to another human being than it is to me, for this very reason) this is what I mean.

And I am beginning to wonder if you read any of the stuff you post from wikipedia, I was looking at the section about HUMANS and I couldn't help but notice how inconsistent and faulty their results and data seem to be:

"It is not normally possible to study single neurons in the human brain, so scientists cannot be certain that humans have mirror neurons."

And:

"However, a recent study shows that the signal measured by fMRI from human 'mirror neuron regions' is not necessarily generated by true mirror neurons"

Also I'd suggest you read the studies that seem to cast a huge cloud of doubt over this theory that are listed in the references section at the bottom of the wikipedia page.

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So if morality "begins with God" and "has been passed down" wouldn't it be fair to say that the original interpretations have a greater chance of being correct than the latter ones? If morality began with god and has been passed down from generation to generation, on what grounds can we say that the injunction to stone an adulterer to death is immoral (or that the murder of an excommunicated Catholic is unlawful) without resorting to non-theistic (dare I say, humanistic) rationalisations?

Why would early interpretations be more reliable? Logically that makes no sense, early interpretations relied on a select handful of people who could read, write and understand the interpretations and also teach them to others who may or may not have had anywhere near the capacity we do now to understand such things. Besides, you keep returning to this point regardless of the fact that I've explained it numerous times (I guess not clearly enough). God instilled us with a sense of morality AS WELL AS a free will to go against the very system granted to us. For once the argument actually ties into the belief in God being important morally, because the free will he granted us allows us to reject God as well as all the notions of right and wrong, good and evil etc that were also instilled in us.

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You can't have it both ways. You can either denounce the morality of generations past who claimed to derive their morality from God, or you can claim that your generation of Catholics has inherited - to the exclusion of all previous generations - the one true morality. In either case, your claim that moral systems can only be derived from God appears to have no basis in reality (I'll say it again: where did the "wrong" moral system come from?).

I can have it both ways, to an extent.

I can denounce the morality of generations past on the basis of things since corrected and reformed. At the same time I am not going to claim that my generation of Catholics has inherited the one true morality, I cannot claim that as I do believe (to an extent) in the evolution of morality in the context of becoming more correct and closer to the desired morality of God over time.

Now lets clear something up, perhaps the language I've been using has been misleading. I do not believe that ALL morality came from God. I do however believe that God instilled in us our very core sense of morality, the objective morality. I also believe that because of the free will given to us (by God) we have the ability to, overtime either shy away from our moral evolutionary obligations (IE: go in the wrong direction), remain in a frozen state of (moral) evolutionary neutrality or continue down the guided (by God's original instilled morality, as well as his intervention in our moral thought process IE: Old Testament laws to New Testament) path of progression in morality.

Now I know I've sort of just made a leap of faith, and I'm hoping that it doesn't strike a hard contrast with my liturgical beliefs, I will have to research this idea more as it is only a tentative result of this debate really, but I think it could be plausible if I can begin to explain it better.

And that isn't to say I agree with Matt J Rossano's theory that religion is merely an invention to enhance moral structure and ensure easier survivability, I don't think his explanation of that theory is adequate enough to write off religion at all as it doesn't have any reasoning behind why religion would have to be so complex, nor does it explain why religion would ever change from the original model. (Which wouldn't make much sense given we're talking evolution of morality )

That Scooby-Doo picture is perfect

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Ah, but then how can you discard The Republic! It's the first work of political science!

I need to tell you something, Lebz. Political Science kind of started with the wrong foot

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Originally posted by Alex See this is why things can get a bit hectic, but no matter when I get the chance I will respond to each in turn... Except Psy-T because I don't really understand what you were trying to accomplish in your post,

accomplish? i didn't know i shouldn't write stuff unless i have a specific goal i'm trying to reach. i guess i could say i was trying to 'accomplish' the joy of debating - quite rude of you to deny me of that pleasure.

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Originally posted by Alex it seems you made a bunch of statements saying what I was saying was irrelevant to the discussion.

yes, that's called pointing out fallacies, if i'm not mistaken.

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Originally posted by Alex If Renegade had thought so, he would not have responded to the things I'd said, but he did.

that's an interesting conjecture, i wasn't aware renegade was obligated to ignore everything not directly relevant to the discussion at hand.

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Originally posted by Alex For now though, I will explain my point about objective morality a bit better because it appears it isn't so obvious a solution for some as I thought it would be. (PS Renegade this is from Kant, it's just a summary of the arguments but it shows the train of thought that I was trying to lay down): In reference to the normativity of morality: 1. It appears to human beings that moral normativity exists. 2. The best explanation of moral normativity is that it is grounded in God. 3. Therefore God exists. 4. Moral normativity is best explained through the existence of authoritative moral rules. 5. Authoritative moral rules must be promulgated and enforced by an appropriate moral authority. 6. The only appropriate moral authority is God. 7. Thus, given that there is moral normativity, there is a God.

2. it is? how was this conclusion reached?
3. jumping the gun, aren't you?
4. it is? how was this conclusion reached?
6. it is? how was this conclusion reached?
7. a bit redundant, no? seeing as you've already said the same back in point 3.

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Originally posted by Alex Arguing that there is no God based on objective morality would be a tricky case and it would be difficult to prove how human beings would all be instilled with the knowledge of an act being wrong if there was no "guiding morality" behind it that set the standard in the first place, otherwise there would simply be nothing to compare our moral or immoral actions to. There simply would be no standard.

necessity may set the standard, and if we make a leap and assume necessities are equal in all humans, we can see a fast example of how objective morality does not necessitate the existence of a god.

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Originally posted by Alex PS: Psy-T Are you really asking how the Bible could be considered divine? Really? Come on now Your understanding of the Bible is extremely primitive and I think you either need to look a little deeper or actually read it before making the statements you did about it merely being a bunch of stories passed down. A big portion of the Bible are stories and parables, there is also an enormous portion devoted to straight forward teachings that involve absolutely no stories. There are letters from Saint Paul to Churches all over the known (at the time) world that were not stories at all, and there is apocalyptic literature there... Some of which relies on mythology and parables and a lot of which does not.

actually, i was referring to the old testament alone, slipped my mind back there that the word bible refers to both testaments for christians, sorry.

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Originally posted by Alex The Bible is considered divine because it is a record of the word of God, it is not written by him, this we know. But it is written by a number of Prophets and witnesses to his actions and teachings. The Bible is divine in the same way that Jesus is considered divine, it combines the human element AND the divine one, just as Jesus combined both being a man and God.

a subject being considered to be x does not prove property x exists in the subject.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Section IX Here Aristotle seems to argue that morality (ethics/virtue) is grounded in man's desire to attain god's gift of happiness. To be moral is to be rewarded with that which only God could have created.

there's so much wrong with aristotle's argument there
i'd be happy to argue against the quoted portion if you'd be willing to argue for it.

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Originally posted by Alex Just think about it: Intrinsically-valuable, thinking persons do not come from impersonal, non-conscious, unguided, valueless processes over time.

erm, what are these impersonal, non-conscious, unguided, and valueless processes?

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Originally posted by Alex A personal, self-aware, purposeful, good God provides the natural and necessary context for the existence of valuable, rights-bearing, morally-responsible human persons.

it does? how?

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Originally posted by Alex That is, personhood and morality are necessarily connected; moral values are rooted in personhood. Without God (a personal Being), no persons - and thus no moral values - would exist at all: no personhood, no moral values. Only if God exists can moral properties be realized.

erm, if moral values are rooted in personhood, why is a god required for their existence? and god isn't the only personal being around, i think i qualify to that definition myself.

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Originally posted by Alex In reference to naturalistic or the evolutionary theory of ethics/morals based on survival: quote: Ethical awareness has only biological worth. Such an approach leaves us with the following problems: First, can we even trust our minds if we are nothing more than the products of naturalistic evolution, trying to fight, feed, flee, and reproduce? Charles Darwin had a "horrid doubt" that since the human mind has developed from lower animals, why would anyone trust it? Why trust the convictions of a monkey's mind? The naturalistic evolutionary process is interested in fitness/survival-not in true belief; so not only is objective morality undermined so is rational thought. Our beliefs-including moral ones-may help us survive, but there is no reason to think they are true. Belief in objective morality or human dignity may help us survive, but it may be completely false. The problem with skepticism (including moral skepticism) is that I am assuming a trustworthy reasoning process to arrive at the conclusion that I cannot trust my reasoning! If we trust our rational and moral faculties, we will assume a theistic outlook: Being made in the image of a truthful, rational, good Being makes sense of why we trust our senses/moral intuitions.

yes, we can trust our minds, even if we are nothing more than the products of naturalistic evolution. why can we trust our minds? because there is no practical alternative (barring some true display of an omnipotent being's existence via an otherwise impossible change of nature), and can not even visualize an alternative that would be in any way preferable. i could link you to a long discussion me and renegade (among other forum denizens) have had on the issue of free will a few years ago if you'd like, it touches on this very point.
on the other hand, i don't see how the fact our minds have evolved from those of lower beings would bring us to questions their trustworthiness. nor do i see why we should not trust the minds of lower beings to begin with.
furthermore, it seems like you're positing that interest in fitness/survival/et cetera undermines rational thought. how would that be? rational thought aides and facilitates fitness/survival/etc.
onwards, a conclusion that you can not trust your standard reasoning could be the most correct ones in various situations in which your knowledge is limited.
a high success rate for our senses and intuitions makes more sense as a reason for why we trust those faculties.

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Originally posted by Alex To reinforce further the point about the God-morality connection, a number of atheists and skeptics have noted it. The late atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie said that moral properties are "queer" given naturalism: Agnostic Paul Draper says:

sorry, appeals to authority don't really impress me, particularly when those authorities are questionable .

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Originally posted by Alex Now lets clear something up, perhaps the language I've been using has been misleading. I do not believe that ALL morality came from God. I do however believe that God instilled in us our very core sense of morality, the objective morality.

what is included in this objective morality we've been instilled with?

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Originally posted by Psy-T yes, we can trust our minds, even if we are nothing more than the products of naturalistic evolution. why can we trust our minds? because there is no practical alternative (barring some true display of an omnipotent being's existence via an otherwise impossible change of nature), and can not even visualize an alternative that would be in any way preferable. i could link you to a long discussion me and renegade (among other forum denizens) have had on the issue of free will a few years ago if you'd like, it touches on this very point. on the other hand, i don't see how the fact our minds have evolved from those of lower beings would bring us to questions their trustworthiness. nor do i see why we should not trust the minds of lower beings to begin with. furthermore, it seems like you're positing that interest in fitness/survival/et cetera undermines rational thought. how would that be? rational thought aides and facilitates fitness/survival/etc. onwards, a conclusion that you can not trust your standard reasoning could be the most correct ones in various situations in which your knowledge is limited. a high success rate for our senses and intuitions makes more sense as a reason for why we trust those faculties.

This argument, if I can call it that, is so beyond invalid it's unbelievable. You contradict yourself at least 3 times here in trying to point out some absurd relation between naturalism and the evolution of reason.

Please re-structure it in a logically valid way that at least makes some sort of sense and I'll have another look.

Also, please stop trying to apply the socratic method to absolutely every post you make. Yes, asking the questions makes us look smart, I get it. Especially seeing as how the questions you ask are in the following format "how"/"why"/"huh"? With absolutely no request for any specific information whatsoever

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what is included in this objective morality we've been instilled with?

This leads me to believe that you do not understand what is being discussed here, the answer to your question is in your question. Literally.

At the very least if Renegade asks a question or says something is wrong he provides some sort of reason/proof/quote/link/logical retort that allows me to further address the matter. You on the other hand either make one line statements with no follow up, ask questions with no follow up or post personal opinions with no follow up.

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Originally posted by Alex This argument, if I can call it that, is so beyond invalid it's unbelievable. You contradict yourself at least 3 times here in trying to point out some absurd relation between naturalism and the evolution of reason. Please re-structure it in a logically valid way that at least makes some sort of sense and I'll have another look.

seeing as it's "so beyond invalid it's unbelievable", how about you actually demonstrate how it is so? shouldn't be too hard, after all, it's so beyond invalid, that you shouldn't have any problem doing so.

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Originally posted by Alex Also, please stop trying to apply the socratic method to absolutely every post you make. Yes, asking the questions makes us look smart, I get it. Especially seeing as how the questions you ask are in the following format "how"/"why"/"huh"? With absolutely no request for any specific information whatsoever

is there anything wrong with the socratic method? or do you just dislike it when people actually use debating 'techniques' while debating?

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Originally posted by Alex This leads me to believe that you do not understand what is being discussed here, the answer to your question is in your question. Literally.

you've just contradicted yourself. and here's the kicker, i'll even explain how you've contradicted yourself!

you've just admitted that i apply the socratic method to "absolutely every post (i) make", and a moment later you believe that me asking a question stands for me not understanding the subject at all, rather than staying in line with your own statement that i'm using the socratic method.

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Originally posted by Alex At the very least if Renegade asks a question or says something is wrong he provides some sort of reason/proof/quote/link/logical retort that allows me to further address the matter. You on the other hand either make one line statements with no follow up, ask questions with no follow up or post personal opinions with no follow up.

sorry my posts force you to think for yourself a tiny bit more, if that's what you're saying.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN not to gush here or anything, but renegade is the owner of the keenest intellect i have ever come across. what's really crazy is that he hasn't studied any of this shit. his uni involves something quite separate if i remember correctly. he's definitely a freak!

I tend to agree with you here, and I really like that we're usually on the same side in our arguments. Arguing against him is really a difficult task. I only hope he uses at least some of that talent and insightfulness on real world stuff and not just on internet debates

As for morality being objective, I tend to say it is objective but pretty vague. I don't think it's right to say it's the best possible rule system for a social group, I think it would be closer to the truth if we declare morality as being a rule system that needs to be at least as effective as to prevent a group from falling apart. That's why it changes so much over time and across societies. As long as it keeps the group sufficiently homogenous and vital, it can be considered adequate. However, occasionally it can happen that a moral system becomes insufficiently effective in preserving the group, or that the group with a weaker moral system encounters a group with a better moral system. In such cases, the group that harbours the ineffective moral system unfortunately perishes very quickly. Nice examples for that would be Pol Pot's ideas of morality in Cambodia or Aztec ideas of morality when confronted with the European explorers. Moral itself basically follows the evolution pattern of random mutation and natural selection. Different societies come up with different rules on a pretty random bases, and as societies compete their culture and morale also compete. The more effective ones usually prevail and become the moral standards.

Humans, however, do have at least some basic moral values installed at birth, similar to the universal grammar Lira was talking about. Those values then get shaped by the society and a person accepts his societies values as his own. But as much as societies can vary in their moral standards, there usually is an intrinsic moral background that every person except a marginal amount of psychopaths and serial killers instinctively has. So a moral system that deviates significantly from those inherent moral values usually stands at the verge of a collapse.

Ultimately, an inverse relationship may also be possible. A system that proves to be better than the moral values a person inherits could in the long term shape population by sanctioning and eliminating individuals whose own moral system differs from the social norm and therefore restricts their ability to breed by imprisoning or killing them. However, as the inherent morality is based on millions of years of adaptation, it is hardly possible that a newly constructed system would prove significantly better.

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Originally posted by Psy-T seeing as it's "so beyond invalid it's unbelievable", how about you actually demonstrate how it is so? shouldn't be too hard, after all, it's so beyond invalid, that you shouldn't have any problem doing so. is there anything wrong with the socratic method? or do you just dislike it when people actually use debating 'techniques' while debating? you've just contradicted yourself. and here's the kicker, i'll even explain how you've contradicted yourself! you've just admitted that i apply the socratic method to "absolutely every post (i) make", and a moment later you believe that me asking a question stands for me not understanding the subject at all, rather than staying in line with your own statement that i'm using the socratic method. sorry my posts force you to think for yourself a tiny bit more, if that's what you're saying.

Your posts don't really force me to think at all, just give monotonous responses to statements about the Bible having 2 testaments and the fact that Objective morality is Objective morality.

Yes I contradicted myself by exaggerating, get over it

All you're trying to do is "debate" without actually providing any evidence for anything, I notice you didn't respond to that part of my post. Interesting.

Get some sources, get some actual points of some sort instead of just trying to hop on the Renegade bandwagon. Lets face it, in all your posts I don't think you've cited a single source for anything, and you have actually been wrong about some very basic terminology, so without exaggeration this time; I believe you have attempted to use the Socratic method but as a result of not knowing what the hell you were talking about in the first place. Therefore my point is still valid

As for the only statement you made at length about anything... And your absurd attempt to rationalize our ability to reason and why we should trust our minds:

How could we possibly trust our minds if, in a naturalistic view, our minds simply think the way they do at a given time based on environmental conditions? AKA: Sense perceptions, as Renegade pointed out? "If such reasoned conclusions are only built originally upon a foundation of sense perceptions, then, the argument being considered goes, our most logical conclusions can never be said to be certain because they are built upon the very same fallible perceptions they seek to better."

So that calls any conclusion your mind reaches into question if it is purely based on sense perception. Therefore, if any sort of alternative were to arise to our current one, we would not even be able to acknowledge it as an alternative. The fact that people DO trust things apart from their own minds, as Plato put it a "higher reality" that allows us to arrive at truth without relying purely on the senses proves that there are existing alternatives without empirical proof of a higher power.

And here is your glaring contradiction that invalidated what you first wrote:

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a conclusion that you can not trust your standard reasoning could be the most correct ones in various situations in which your knowledge is limited. a high success rate for our senses and intuitions makes more sense as a reason for why we trust those faculties.

Your "standard reasoning" appears to be sense perception, and you admit there are situations where you don't have much knowledge AND you admit that your standard reasoning would not be sufficient in analyzing those situations...Therefore you admit that an alternative would be welcome to deal with those situations that our senses clearly fail to address.

Basically you are admitting that the naturalist sense of reasoning is not all that practical itself, and if our minds are merely the result of natural evolution and are unaffected by the evolution of reason (since according to you we're still only relying on sense perception) any alternative that could possibly arise would automatically be considered irrational. Therefore our minds are self-defeating and your point is self-refuting because you seem to admit the (however unlikely) possiblity that there could be some other alternative.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Humans, however, do have at least some basic moral values installed at birth, similar to the universal grammar Lira was talking about.

Before I forget, here's an interesting book I think some of you may want to read:



There's also a primatologist called Frans de Waal that has a lot to say on this topic.

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Originally posted by Alex Your posts don't really force me to think at all,

this is unfortunately far too evident.

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Originally posted by Alex just give monotonous responses to statements about the Bible having 2 testaments and the fact that Objective morality is Objective morality.

please seek to improve your reading comprehension skills. the statement regarding the bible having 2 testaments was basically me pulling back an argument on the grounds of a mistake. the one about objective morality being objective morality doesn't exist anywhere outside your head.

you know what, nevermind reading comprehension for now, let's take it one step at a time - how about just reading?

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Originally posted by Alex Yes I contradicted myself by exaggerating, get over it

thanks, i was obviously so fussed about it all that i was gonna take my life.

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Originally posted by Alex All you're trying to do is "debate" without actually providing any evidence for anything,

so far i've mostly been questioning your statements, rather than supplying anything that requires evidence.

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Originally posted by Alex I notice you didn't respond to that part of my post. Interesting.

which part of which post? and in any case - i notice you didn't respond to approximately 90% of my posts, so in other words, shut the fuck up.

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Originally posted by Alex Get some sources, get some actual points of some sort instead of just trying to hop on the Renegade bandwagon. Lets face it, in all your posts I don't think you've cited a single source for anything,

sources for what?
on one end you say i'm on this "Renegade bandwagon", yet on the other (later in this post), you quote Renegade to refute me (at least in your mind).

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Originally posted by Alex and you have actually been wrong about some very basic terminology,

which terminology? are you further illustrating your inability to comprehend what you read by referring to the bible example again?

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Originally posted by Alex so without exaggeration this time; I believe you have attempted to use the Socratic method but as a result of not knowing what the hell you were talking about in the first place. Therefore my point is still valid

good for you, your point is still valid - a point which is a red herring to begin with, since regardless of whether i actually know what i was asking you about, the question would still stand.

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Originally posted by Alex As for the only statement you made at length about anything... And your absurd attempt to rationalize our ability to reason and why we should trust our minds: How could we possibly trust our minds if, in a naturalistic view, our minds simply think the way they do at a given time based on environmental conditions? AKA: Sense perceptions, as Renegade pointed out? "If such reasoned conclusions are only built originally upon a foundation of sense perceptions, then, the argument being considered goes, our most logical conclusions can never be said to be certain because they are built upon the very same fallible perceptions they seek to better." So that calls any conclusion your mind reaches into question if it is purely based on sense perception. Therefore, if any sort of alternative were to arise to our current one, we would not even be able to acknowledge it as an alternative. The fact that people DO trust things apart from their own minds, as Plato put it a "higher reality" that allows us to arrive at truth without relying purely on the senses proves that there are existing alternatives without empirical proof of a higher power.

at no point did i limit myself to environmental conditions alone.
again, reading comprehension, try it out.

quote:

Originally posted by Alex And here is your glaring contradiction that invalidated what you first wrote:

contradiction? as in singular? what happened to the other two (at least) you mentioned earlier?

quote:

Originally posted by Alex Your "standard reasoning" appears to be sense perception,

while to you, it might appear to be so, it is not. it relies on sense perception among other things, but it is not sense perception itself. see how the socratic method you so casually dismiss would have helped you here?

quote:

Originally posted by Alex and you admit there are situations where you don't have much knowledge AND you admit that your standard reasoning would not be sufficient in analyzing those situations...

yes, it would be quite foolish to deny those.

quote:

Originally posted by Alex Therefore you admit that an alternative would be welcome to deal with those situations that our senses clearly fail to address.

non sequitur. i admitted no such thing.
just because i admitted i can not trust a particular conclusion does not mean i am looking for one i can trust - it doesn't even mean such a conclusion necessarily exists.

quote:

Originally posted by Alex Basically you are admitting that the naturalist sense of reasoning is not all that practical itself,

straw man. i'm not.

quote:

Originally posted by Alex and if our minds are merely the result of natural evolution and are unaffected by the evolution of reason (since according to you we're still only relying on sense perception) any alternative that could possibly arise would automatically be considered irrational. Therefore our minds are self-defeating and your point is self-refuting because you seem to admit the (however unlikely) possiblity that there could be some other alternative.

again, no, that would be according to you (or your skewed perception of my words), not me.



...you mentioned something about invalid arguments and contradictions?

Alright well, when the "shut the fuck ups" start I put you on ignore, there is no reason to start with things like that, I guess my points sort of got to you, and I'm sorry. Not to mention all you've really tried to do is bait me into a poo-slinging match that I will not participate in, sorry bud.

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